"[Private investigators] can get information more quickly, and can do things that journalists do not do, would not do or would not know how to do," he said.

Often, Campbell says, private investigators present a completed story to a newspaper. "In most of the newsrooms, there are fewer [journalists] with more pages and online space to fill, and less time to do it," he said. "These are important factors, but they should not be excuses to let standards and ethics slip."

A former official in charge of investigating potential breaches of privacy by newspapers for the information commissioner told the Leveson inquiry that he was ordered to back off because the newspaper groups were "too big" to take on.

That was despite his uncovering a cache of documents showing thousands of ex-directory telephone numbers were being obtained on behalf of journalists. The numbers included those of the parents of Milly Dowler, and well as those of Charlotte Church and Sara Payne.

Alex Owens, who had spent 30 years in the police force, said every newspaper apart from the "Dandy and the Beano" was named in the documents uncovered as part of the Operation Motorman investigation in the early part of the last decade.

Evidence of the illegal access of private data was recovered in a raid on the Hampshire home of private investigator Steve Whittamore on 8 March 2003, the inquiry heard. In four notebooks, coloured blue, red, green and yellow, Whittamore had documented 17,000 to 17,500 requests for confidential data ranging from criminal records; to car ownership details to ex-directory telephone numbers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/nov/30/leveson-inquiry-dowler-phone-hacking

In a stunning appearance before the inquiry into press standards in Britain, a former deputy editor at the now defunct News of the World has robustly defended the practice of hacking mobile phones for stories.

Paul McMullan's extraordinary, unapologetic testimony to the Leveson inquiry was in sharp contrast to the apologies given elsewhere by News Corporation management, including chairman Rupert Murdoch, his son James, and former editor Rebekah Brooks.

The second week of the media ethics inquiry, prompted by the phone-hacking furore, heard the former tabloid journalist unapologetically lay bare the dirty tricks of his former paper.

He said the practice of phone hacking was not uncommon.

"It would just be written, you know, 'Pop star A is leaving messages on pop star B's phone at 2:00am in the morning, saying I love you, shall we meet up for a drink?'," he said.

"I mean it was that blatant and obvious. I don't think anyone realised that anyone was committing a crime at the start."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-11-30/british-journo-describes-tabloid-culture-of-fear/3702966

Alastair Campbell has been kicked out of the Labour Party.

Apparently, he voted for the Liberal Democrats in the recent European Parliamentary elections, and then announced he had done so on Sky News. Thus putting him in breach of paragraph 2 of Labour’s Membership Rules, which states:

A member of the Party who joins and/ or supports a political organisation other than an official Labour group or other unit of the Party, or supports any candidate who stands against an official Labour candidate, or publicly declares their intent to stand against a Labour candidate, shall automatically be ineligible to be or remain a Party member, subject to the provisions of Chapter 6.I.2 below of the disciplinary rules.”

It’s a fairly open and shut case, to be honest. 

And so ends the Labour career of Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s PR man, one of the key architects of the “dodgy dossier”, a man complicit in every death that resulted from the US/UK illegal invasion of Iraq.

The reaction of anyone, with even the most rudimentary grasp of ethics, should be “good riddance”.

Clearly therefore, the vast majority of the pundits, “journalists” and talking heads do not have a rudimentary grasp of ethics.

Yes, Campbell was actually defended. By journalists. And celebrities. And members of parliament.

Campbell is a “strong voice for Labour values” according to some, his expulsion is “Stalinist” according to others.

It’s time for a very serious reality check: Alastair Campbell should not be in the Labour Party.

He shouldn’t be tweeting his thoughts or giving interviews or writing columns. He shouldn’t have any power or influence or authority. He shouldn’t even be breathing free air.

He should be in the dock at the Hague, briefly. And then – hopefully – spending the rest of his time in eternity’s waiting room, carving tally marks on a cell wall. 

Who cares who he voted for? He’s a fucking monster.

This is not “silly” or “old fashioned” or “predictable”. It’s just true.

As a society it’s important we try and recognise principles and morality. Virtue matters. Truth matters. There ARE absolutes. Most of the Labour MPs defending Campbell voted FOR that war. They all voted against investigations into it. 

They are complicit in crimes against humanity. That is a statement of fact. And yet their opinions are treated as if they carry weight. They are assumed to have ideals, to be sincere, when their actions demonstrate this is simply not the case.

We don’t talk about Pinochet’s economic reforms.
We don’t isolate Pol Pot’s opinion on free healthcare.
We don’t defend Mussolini’s well organised internal transport infrastructure.

It is accepted that crimes of a certain scale put a mark on you that you can’t scrub off. That doesn’t change because these criminals are all well-spoken chaps with open shirt collars, it doesn’t change because they managed to slime their way out of punishment, it doesn’t change because our national ego lifts Britain above the law, and it doesn’t change because we’re all so English and confrontation makes us uncomfortable.

These people are monsters. Who they vote for does not matter. What they say does not matter. They have no values. They have no standing. They have no place in a decent world. If it were any other crime of the same magnitude that would not need to be explained.

“Progressives” will vilify Tulsi Gabbard for even daring to speak to Narendra Modi, or visit Assad’s Syria. Corbyn has been raked over the coals for talking with the IRA. Nigel Farage is considered a “Russian stooge” for deigning to even vaguely compliment Vladimir Putin.

All those people combined don’t add up to the butcher’s bill Campbell racked up in the Middle East. Not even in the most fevered, deceitful propaganda of the Western press. 

But no one is talking about Iraq. When Momentum tweeted about it, they were accused of being “shallow” and “stuck in the past”. 

Maybe people are just divorced from the reality. Maybe the scale warps in their minds. Maybe it’s just too big, too dreadful to actually picture.

One. Million. Dead.

The entire population of Birmingham dropping dead tomorrow.

More than double the British losses in World War 2. 

9/11 happening every single day, for a whole year.

Alastair Campbell helped make that happen. He did it dishonestly. He did it deliberately. He did it for personal and political gain.

And he has not, to this day, faced any kind of punishment. In all likelihood, he never will.

If you EVER find yourself defending him, whether opportunistically to undermine Corbyn or earnestly because you see no problem with his actions, then you are through the looking glass. Your morality is tonaly inverted. 

Alastair Campbell’s voting record is an irrelevance. I don’t know who he voted for, or if he voted at all. I don’t care. It probably was the Lib Dems. It’s the mootest of moot, and the media outcry about it is beyond absurd.

Every time any person who played a part in the crimes of the Iraq war is allowed to exist in our society, without reference to the immense crime they committed, we normalise the idea that murder is OK when WE do it to THEM. That our wars are mistakes, or misjudgments or “foreign policy blunders”. They don’t really count. We don’t really mean it. We’re nice.

Blair and Campbell are given column inches. Their enablers in parliament rail against “antisemitism” and for the “people’s vote”, or talk about the evil “dictators” in Venezuela or North Korea who don’t share our “values”. Their cheerleaders in the press talk up Vladimir Putin as a “pariah” because of the totally bloodless Crimean referendum, but happily chuckle through interviews with Campbell as if he isn’t soaked to the bone in the blood of innocents.

Criminals discussing Brexit and football and Love Island, like it’s all a big joke. Campbell talks “candidly” about his “battles with depression”and we’re all supposed to go “awwww!” 

All the while the man who proved their criminality rots in jail, barely able to move.

The world of the media is upside down. 

It is disgusting, but wholly expected. The Establishment is rallying to defend one its own, it always does.

But most people know the truth: The only thing wrong with Alastair Campbell being kicked out of the Labour party, is that it’s fifteen years too late.

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2019/05/30/who-cares-how-war-criminals-vote/

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Why is Alastair Campbell learning German in lockdown?

The coronavirus pandemic has prompted the former director of communications to British Prime Minister Tony Blair to brush up his German skills. He told DW about his progress — and about fighting depression in lockdown.

It was Alastair Campbell's partner and mother to his three kids, Fiona Millar, who gave him an intensive German-language course with the Goethe Institute as a 63rd birthday present last May.

In our interview, Campbell is soon bragging that he's been so keen in class that his tutor, Andrea in Leipzig, has noted he's the most demanding of her charges. But what does that mean? That he's asking a few extra questions 10 months into his course?

"I've written this book in English about depression," Campbell says in German by way of explanation, holding up a copy of Living Better: How I learned to survive depression. "I have translated the book. The whole book! And then I sent it to Andrea, and she then — ha, corrected a little — she then corrected A LOT."

There probably would have been plenty to fix. Campbell's German is confident, grammatically ambitious and fairly free-flowing — and surely better still in writing than in conversation — but it's still a far cry from his flawless French.

Campbell has published 16 books at this point. His diaries, with volume 8 soon to hit the shelves, exceed 2 million published words.

He's most active today as a prominent journalist, Brexit critic, and mental health advocate. But his fame stems from his being former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's unelected right hand from 1994 (still in opposition at that point) until 2003. 

His reputation, especially in Britain's conservative press, snowballed as a conniving and Machiavellian "spin doctor," and as the real driver behind New Labour policy around the turn of the century. In his diaries, though, Campbell often refers to himself as more of a "lightning rod" for Blair's government when times were tough.

Perhaps the event that came to define him (and Blair) was the Iraq war, and later a fiery bust-up with the BBC over its coverage of the steps that led the British government into the conflict.

Campbell resigned his post in front-line politics in 2003 (albeit to be tempted back many times in the future to try to help the Labour Party) when a Defense Ministry civil servant, David Kelly, committed suicide after Downing Street leaked his identity as the source in the BBC's contested reporting.

Would the University of Cambridge modern languages graduate have dusted off his German skills in a more normal 2020 and 2021?

"Probably not," he says, wheeling back to Fiona before too long. "She knows me very well," and sensed that her jet-setting partner might need a project to stop him climbing the walls while shut-in at home. Despite the restrictions on travel, Campbell, Fiona and their dog managed a weekend getaway in the southern German city of Freiburg last October to practice, or at least to try to. The hotel staff could not stop themselves from responding in English, Campbell laments, even after he said he wanted to use his German — a tale likely to resonate with English-speakers residing in the country.

Campbell's only reading German books and only listening to German podcasts just now. The podcasts have an obvious political bent, but the literature homes in on suicide and mental health explored in the past and the present.

"I've actually just finished Die Leiden des jüngen Werther [The Suffering of the Young Werther, by Goethe], which I did at university. But I'm now reading Ein allzu kurzes Leben [A Life Too Short], the story of Robert Enke, the footballer who killed himself," Campbell says, back in his mother tongue at this point. He'd read it already, but not in German.

Enke's death marries two issues close to Campbell's heart: mental health and football.

"It's obviously a really sad story and that's partly why I wrote the book about depression, because I think we've got to be more open about this stuff," he says.

Read more:

https://www.dw.com/en/why-is-alastair-campbell-learning-german-in-lockdown/a-56825826

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Free Assange now !!!!

Let 's not forget that Alastair was helping Tony Blair from bullshitting the public and this is the main rot that is eating his brain..

The report on the United Kingdom's role in the Iraq War delivers a devastating verdict on ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair. He will go down in history as a liar and a warmonger, Barbara Wesel writes.