Today…

Enron witness found dead in park

A body found in north-east London has been identified as a banker who was questioned by the FBI about the Enron fraud case, sources have told the BBC…

All very reminiscent of this

Three years ago…

On the morning of July 17, Kelly was working as usual at home in Oxfordshire. Publicity given to his public appearance two days before had led many of his friends to send him supportive e-mails, to which he was responding. One of the e-mails he sent that day was to New York Times journalist Judith Miller, who had used Kelly as a source in a book on bioterrorism, to whom Kelly mentioned "many dark actors playing games,"

He also received an e-mail from his superiors at the Ministry of Defence asking for more details of his contact with journalists.

At about 3:00 p.m., Kelly told his wife that he was going for a walk. He appears to have gone directly to an area of woodlands known as Harrowdown Hill about a mile away from his home, where he ingested up to 29 tablets of co-proxamol, an analgesic drug. He then allegedly cut his left wrist with a knife he had owned since his youth.

They say trouble comes in threes, so what could possibly come next?

Labour fundraiser Levy arrested

Tony Blair’s chief fundraiser Lord Levy has been arrested.

His arrest is in connection with the "cash-for-honours" inquiry by the Metropolitan Police.

Lord Levy, 61, made his money in the music industry in the 1960s and 1970s, managing singers including Alvin Stardust and Chris Rea.

He has been a high profile fundraiser for Labour since Tony Blair’s election. Lord Levy is understood to be being held at a North London police station.

Wide-ranging investigation

Asked if he had any reaction to the news that Lord Levy had been arrested, the prime minister’s official spokesman said: "I cannot comment on that, it is a party matter."

He confirmed the peer was still the prime minister’s Middle East envoy.

A Scotland Yard spokesman would not confirm whether Lord Levy had been arrested, but did say a man had been arrested by the Specialist Crime Directorate of the Metropolitan Police in connection with inquiries into possible breaches of honours and election laws.

The spokesman said the man had been asked to attend a London police station on Wednesday morning and questioned about possible infringements of the Honours (Prevention of Abuses ) Act 1925 and the Political Parties Elections and Referendums Act.

Scotland Yard is conducting a wide-ranging investigation into loans and donations made to all three parties to see if there is any evidence that honours have been given as rewards for financial help.

It was prompted by the revelation earlier this year that a number of multi-million pound loans were secretly given to Labour before the last election, and that some of the lenders had subsequently been nominated by Tony Blair for peerages.

All involved have denied any wrong-doing.

‘Fate intertwined’

BBC Political Editor Nick Robinson said the arrest was "deeply damaging for Tony Blair" because Lord Levy is a particular friend of the prime minister.

He said the fate of Lord Levy and Mr Blair was "intertwined". "It doesn’t get much more serious than this," he said.

Angus MacNeil, the Scottish Nationalist Party MP who initiated the police inquiry, called for a freeze on all future honours until the investigation is completed.

"This is a significant development and one that would appear to justify my decision to report this matter to the police," he said.

Definitely what you call a brown-trousers moment for out Imperious Leader - could this be where it all starts to unravel, or will Levy take the fall alone?

From Craig Murray…

New Labour are not as stupid as they seem. I have now had a chance to take legal advice, and that advice is as follows. To defend this case would cost the price of a London house. I don’t have a house, in London or anywhere else. I am therefore obliged to give in to force majeure and remove some of the documents from my own site. This reeking government is therefore able to mask its stink on this particular miniscule corner of the internet.

Here is another piece of legal advice I received. Copyright cases cover one instance of publication in one place. Anyone else who has published any government documents that might be Crown Copyright, or not, (and I believe there are hundreds of thousands of documents on the web on which the government could, by the argument in Mr Buttrill’s letter, claim copyright), is an individual case and can wait to hear from Mr Buttrill.

Force Majeure wields a two-edged sword.

Fear not, a workaround may be in the offing…

Indie labels want copyright shift

The UK’s independent music labels want a change in the law so internet service providers (ISPs) become liable for illegal file-sharing by their users.

The Association of Independent Music (Aim) has outlined the plans in a discussion paper on copyright reform.

Aim is concerned the internet has made it easier for people to share music and breach record firms’ copyright.

The organisation wants a fresh approach to copyright law that would cover the role of ISPs in music sharing.

So for starters what AIM want is someone with enough assets to make it worth suing them, but that’s not all…

Aim wants to move away from bringing legal action against individuals who upload music to internet file-sharing services, and encourage the emergence of legal sharing services.

Ways of charging ISPs for acting as an "intermediary" between and music buyers is another area highlighted in the paper, which was published on Wednesday.

This could take the form of a collective licence - similar to the current radio licence in the UK - which would allow ISPs to host file-sharing for a fee that would go to record companies and musicians.

Ultimately, Aim wants the music industry to create a commercial relationship with any company deriving value from either the sharing or storage of music.

Chair Alison Wenham said the plans were the "most innovative potential answer" to issues in the music industry which current copyright law cannot deal with properly.

Yes, the old tape tax returns in a bright new shiny form, under which ISPs would be charged for carrying filesharing traffic, which naturally would be passed on to the customer in higher charges - most likely irrespective of whether a particular customer actually uses a filesharing system or not.

As ever, what the music industry fails to consider in putting forward its ‘innovative ideas’ is that net users are invariably that bit more innovative than they are when it comes to circumventing ideas like this.

At the moment, because of the technical aspects of how most filesharing systems work, it might just be possible to introduce restrictions on the traffic they generate at the ISP’s end and/or charge users a premium rate for an account with filesharing enabled… but for not for very long.

At each stage in the development of filesharing technologies, from Napster to Bit Torrent, the same pattern has emerged in which each legal or technical obstacle put up the industry is rapidly overcome - in fact, the pattern has been that by the time the industry has any success at all in curbing the use of one system, one or more replacement systems are already in place and most of the users, and the traffic they generate, has long since moved on.

Any attempt to single out filesharing systems and their users and levy the kind of additional charges AIM envisages is doomed to failure right from the outset, simply because as soon as they try it you can guarantee a new filesharing system will be rapidly developed to bypass the levy - in this case all one has to do is use a combination of data encryption to prevent ISP’s from analysing and identifying traffic by type, coupled with technical changes in filesharing software to merge the traffic theose systems generate in with standard net traffic, such as web pages, conventional file transfers or even legal music/film downloards, and any chance of applying the levy only to users of filesharing systems disappears out of the window immediately.

The alternative is to charge ISPs, and therefore everyone, a standard filesharing ‘tax’, the problem being that this will almost inevitably result in even more people downloading music illegally on the basis that they’ll figure that they’re already paying for it once, in higher ISP charges, so they’ll be damned if they’re going to pay for it again…

…and a another attempted tape tax bites the dust…

Oh, if only - yes, Mad Mel’s back in the Mail and as completely barking as ever…

The Redundant Male?

Her name was Frances Swiney, a feminist whose vision for the sisterhood and humanity was more than a trifle extreme.

She thought men were the waste products of the reproductive process and wanted them eliminated. Her ideal method was asexual reproduction — the creation of children without a man involved. That way, she thought, women could look forward to the ‘gradual extinction of the distinctive male organism and the assimilation of the male to the female’. Until now, people like Mrs Swiney, who lived in the 19th century, were considered to be several apples short of a picnic. But now her vision of a female-only world is all but with us.

Oooh goody, a history lesson to start with, and not just any old history lesson but about a barking mad 19th Century eugenicist. Don’t you you know we’re in for a good one here…

Sorry to tell you, men, but you are shortly to be declared redundant, superfluous to the requirements of the human race, written out of the reproductive script. Cheerio and please close the door behind you on your way out of history.

Is it me or does this kind of barking mad prediction always crop up any time a medical story about reproduction hits the news. Men have been going to become redundant at least since the first successful use of IVF, if not before, It could well be that this prediction first surfaced back when women first realised there were alternative uses for a turkey baster, for all I know. And yet, strangely enough, there still seem to be plenty of folks procreating by the time-honoured and traditional methods to keep the population going.

At least this is the prospect laid out before us by the latest lurch into the brave new world of medical research. In the attempt to find a cure for male infertility, a Newcastle University biologist, Karim Nayernia, has succeeded in using artificially produced sperm to fertilise mouse eggs.

He removed stem cells from mouse embryos and coaxed them into developing into sperm, which was used to fertilise eggs transplanted into female mice, resulting in the birth of seven baby rodents. Professor Nayernia believes his work offers hope to men whose lives are blighted by their inability to father children. However, the rest of us might wonder whether he is sounding the death knell for fatherhood altogether — and, more to the point, threatening to undermine the very basis of what it is to be human.

Strangely enough, the thought that this might be the death knell for fatherhood hasn’t really crossed my mind.  however, the idea that this might just the death knell for Mad Mel’s last tenuous grasp on sanity…

…I think you can figure the rest.

The success of these experiments opens up a number of possibilities. One is to extract stem cells from an infertile man and use these to grow sperm in a laboratory. These could then be transplanted back into the man’s testicles, enabling him to procreate in the normal way. That at least — despite the awesome safety issues to be overcome — would retain the man’s genetic connection with any child he produced, as well as allowing him to father that baby through a normal sexual union.

While I’m not a doctor, I can;t help noticed that Mel’s grasp of human biology seems a bit off here - the testes do rather more than just serve as a recepticle for sperm, they actually produce the stuff pretty much continuously. There’s, therefore, no real point in simply ‘transplanting’ sperm into a man, unless you’re going to fit him with some sort of valve arrangement so he can pop back to the clinic every few days for a top-up - in fact, why not do it that way - you could start having sperm pumps on garage forecourts…

"And would sir prefer four-star or unleaded? And something for the weekend as well?"

But other possibilities are far more problematic. It would become possible, for example, to use stem cells not from the infertile man at all, but from embryos which are routinely produced in IVF clinics, but are then discarded as surplus to requirements. This would mean there would be no genetic connection whatever between ‘father’ and child.

No genetic connection with the child - what you mean like step-parenting?

Moreover, such a process could mean the eggs being fertilised might not even come from the mother of the child being produced. Instead, spare eggs donated by another woman could be fertilised by the artificial sperm. As a result, there might be no genetic connection with either parent. This could mean courtship and sexual love would be replaced by the mating dance of test tubes.

Oh my god… That’s it!

Deprive people of the power of procreation and what happens? They all automatically lose all interest in shagging…

… Yeah, sure Mel, that’s really what happens, isn’t it.

How would a child feel about the fact that one or both of his parents was merely a cluster of randomly selected cells grown artificially in a laboratory? How would he feel, indeed, to know that his parent was a discarded human embryo?

Funny, most kids seem to be under impression that the adults that care for them day-in day-out are their parents

The truth is that having a mother and father is essential to our sense of identity. That’s why family disintegration is so harmful to children and why the stampede to produce and bring up children without a biological father around — through artificial insemination by donor, IVF or sperm banks — spells disaster for the future.

Way to go Mel, you just go right on shitting on step-parents because only the biological father counts.

Can’t say I’ve noticed much a stampede for single-parenthood either, although there’s plenty of single parents out there who had kids with someone they thought they stay together with.

Test-tube mating could deliver a terminal blow to the pulverised nuclear family. True, we have already under-mined sexual reproduction and genetic transmission through IVF. But at least the mother in such cases has a powerful biological connection to the baby.

Fatherhood, however, is altogether trickier. Since human babies take years to become independent, they need prolonged care. It is difficult to furnish this while simultaneously providing subsistence and protection. That’s why the human male is essential, to protect and nurture the mother and child.

That’s why the human male is essential, to protect and nurture the mother and child? Fucking hell, she’s mutating in Barbara Cartland before our very eyes…

But the male needs a certain amount of cultural coaxing to stick around. And essential to that bargain between the sexes is his certainty that he is the father of the child. While there is no such question mark over motherhood because women bear the baby, fathering, by contrast, is a socially constructed institution. Men have a fragile sense of their role in the human drama. At some deep level, they dread that they are merely an add-on to a female genetic inheritance. As we can see from the epidemic of fatherlessness, it doesn’t take much for them to say ‘I’m off!’ if they feel pushed away.

Awww, for shame… Poor wickle men… i do so enjoy being patronised by Mad Mel.

And pushed away they have certainly been. No one bats an eyelid when a woman has a baby without a father on board. Male breadwinning is regarded as an unforgiveable anachronism. Masculine characteristics such as stoicism or emotional restraint are scorned or vilified. And now, men find that their active involvement in the reproductive process might be by-passed altogether.

Masculine characteristics such as stoicism or emotional restraint are scorned or vilified - right, so you listen to Auntie Mel, girls, and go get yourself a Vulcan for a husband. You know it makes sense…

Currently, it is against British law to create a baby without the need for a man — even if a child can be brought up without one. But considering how all our taboos are being systematically smashed in the interests of fulfilling every desire, can anyone doubt that, if the technological problems can be overcome, medical ethics and the law will be adjusted to suit?

Clearly, these developments have the potential to undermine parenthood and our very understanding of kinship and human identity itself. As so often, the aims are noble — to remedy the suffering of childlessness. But medical research, which invariably takes the amoral view that the end justifies the means, brushes aside the fact that the damage such advances may do to our society might hugely outweigh any benefits they may bring.

And so all notion of an enthical debate on the subject is neatly brushed aside in the face of Mel’s moral omniscience…

Already, the use of discarded embryos has helped brutalise our society by commodifying and cannibalising early human life. And most outlandishly of all, some even claim it is theoretically possible to produce sperm from female cells and eggs from male ones.

This seems frankly absurd. There is no form of higher animal life that has not depended on sexual reproduction. But now that scientists are modern gods, who knows what unnatural developments might become possible? Such a world, where procreation was through asexual reproduction, was the vision of those early feminists, such as Mrs Swiney.

But in their book The Ethics Of Human Cloning, the American thinkers James Q. Wilson and Leon Kass wrote: ‘Only sexual animals can seek and find complementary others with whom to pursue a goal that transcends their own existence.’ In other words, sexual reproduction produces the sense of generosity and concern for others on which our human society is built.

The authors also observed that asexual reproduction was found only in the lowest forms of life: bacteria, algae, fungi and some lower invertebrates.

Curiously enough, the ability to form relationships is actually a function of the brain, not the old wedding tackle - despite appearances to the contrary found in night clubs across the country every Saturday - which tends to explain the whole bit about asexual reproduction. Nor does it follow that sexual reproduction universally produces a sense of generoisty and concern - there’s no real shortage of mammals, reptiles and birds where the father contributes their genetic material and then immediately fucks off and has nothing more to do with either mother or offspring - you want to try watching Attenborough a bit more often, Mel…

Would it not be an irony if, through their egregious hubris, the effect of the most brilliant scientific minds in the most advanced age known to mankind was to reduce the human race to the status of primordial slime?

And there is a further theory that suggests that the tabloid press succeeded in this many years ago…

Having passed the anniversary of the 7 July bomb attack on London - read this - another anniversary approaches rapidly.

In ten days time (22 July) it will be one year on from the extra-judicial killing of an innocent Brazilian, Jean Charles de Menezes, by the Metropolitan Police in Stockwell Underground Station.

Last August, as it become more and more apparent that getting any answers to the question of what went wrong, let alone any hint of accountability for what happened that day, was going to be a slow process, I wrote:

Here’s how it goes:

The IPCC report will not be finished until the end of this year.

This will then go privately to the Met and the Home Office who will decide whether any matters should be referred to the CPS for possible criminal charges - add three months on for that decision.

If it is referred to the CPS, they will then need to instruct another Police Force to carry out a criminal investigation into the circumstances of the shooting - add another six months - after which the CPS will have to decide whether there is sufficient evidence to proceed to trial - another six months again.

Then there’s the trial itself - anything from six months to a year during which time the matter will be sub judice.

Only after all that - assuming they’re not out time by then - would the Menezes family have a shot at civil litigation - which would add another 6-12 months on anyway.

It’s also going to be the case that the Met will not start any serious disciplinary proceedings against officers until an criminal trial(s) are disposed of and quite how long such proceedings might take is anyone’s guess as, if things run true to form, anyone who might face a disciplinary will, by then, have developed some sort of ailment - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - which means they’ll be unfit to attend any such proceeding until…

…well, until they’ve had time to rack up enough in the way of additional pension contributions to make retirement from the Met on ‘medical grounds’ a viable option.

What we’ll be left with in, at best, a junior officer or two in the frame for a bollocking over minor mistakes while all the command officers, including Blair himself, will be safely out of the way and retired on nice fat pensions before the shit get anywhere near the fan, let alone hits it.

That’s modern day Britain for you - fuck justice, we have bureaucracy at its best.

So you can imagine that I take no pleasure whatsoever when it appears that I may well have been right all along.

The Metropolitan Police looks increasingly likely to be prosecuted under heath and safety laws for the fatal shooting of a Brazilian man at Stockwell Tube station - but no officers are expected to face criminal charges.

Yes, if there is to be any prosecution it looks like it will be under health and safety law, under which the Metropolitan Police could be subject to an ‘unlimited fine’.

In case you haven’t figured out utter inanity of that proposition, the sequence is that were the Met actually convicted and fined then they would have to pay the fine over to the court, who pass it on to Treasury, who can then give it the Home Office to be given back to the Metropolitan Police…

Meanwhile:

It has also emerged that most of the 11 police officers who were considered for possible prosecution have taken legal advice to refrain from giving full statements to investigators.

So they lawyered up and stuck strictly to ‘no comment’, did they? That is certainly their right, but I’ll bet the many a defence lawyer will crack a wry smile at that bit of news…

And it gets even better…

The health and safety laws have been changed in the past year so that the commissioner or chief constable is no longer personally liable for the actions of their staff.

Well, isn’t that just peachy! - although its also factually inaccurate inasmuch as the changes to which the Indy are referring are contained in a statutory intstrument, the Police Reform (Health and Safety) Regulations, which was enacted in 2003…

Still it comes as no surprise at all to find that:

Any prosecution would cause long delays for the two independent inquiries into the shooting and the police action that followed it. If a trial takes place then the inquiry reports, known as Stockwell 1 and 2, would almost certainly be delayed well into next year.

No shit, Sherlock!

And despite some hint of action…

The inquiry into the shooting, carried out by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, is understood to have accused the Met of organisational failure, particularly in the areas of surveillance and communications.

The strong criticism of the running of the Met will be damaging to Sir Ian Blair, the Commissioner, who is facing pressure to resign. He will also be censured for trying to prevent the IPCC from investigating the case.

We end up with this…

The two IPCC reports into the shooting and the Met’s handling of the case now look certain to be further delayed. Even if there are no prosecutions the reports will probably be delayed until late autumn at the earliest, but they may have to wait for internal disciplinary action, which could see publication put back to next year. An IPCC spokeswoman said: "We will publish as soon as the legal process allows."

Which is pretty much as I predicted last year.

Just one question I do have though…

The IPCC inquiry also found that a surveillance officer had altered a logbook and written in the word "not" so that it read that the suspect had "not" been identified as the wanted man. The offending officer is likely to face disciplinary action.

Disciplinary action? Is that it?

If either Marcin ot Tony Hatfield swing by I wonder if they could offer an opinion on this, as tampering with evidence in this way looks to me, at least, rather like attempting to pervert the course of justice, which, in other circumstances, would result in a prosecution.

*Title quotation - Martin Luther King Jr.

Part 1 - A taxing little question…

Yes, just a little more digging into some of the background to the whole Prescott/Anschutz/Dome/Casino thing - only this time let’s take a look at Anschutz’s partner in the proposed casino development, Kerzner International…

First up, there’s a rather interesting section on Kerzner’s 2004 form 20-F - which, in the US, is the equivalent of filing an annual report/accounts with Companies House in the UK.

United Kingdom

Development of Resort Casinos in London, East Manchester and Glasgow

On July 13, 2004, we announced our appointment as the preferred developer and operator with respect to the development and management of gaming, hotel and entertainment facilities for two sites in two key markets in the United Kingdom. The sites for the projects are the Scottish Exhibition + Conference Centre (“SECC”) in Glasgow and Sportcity in East Manchester. We are negotiating binding agreements for both of these projects. These developments are part of major regional regeneration projects supported by the respective council for each city. Each of these projects was the subject of a competitive bidding process.

In addition, on July 13, 2004, we also announced that we had entered into a binding agreement with affiliates of Anschutz Entertainment Group for the development and operation of a casino and hotel resort facility at the Millennium Dome in London (the “Dome”).

Our development and management of our sites in the United Kingdom is subject to a number of contingencies. First, the United Kingdom needs to pass gambling reform legislation. Second, a special government committee that is expected to be established upon the passage of such legislation then must select eight localities that will be entitled to have a “Resort” or “Regional Casino,” as such criteria are defined by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and the Parliamentary Joint Committee, which reviewed the draft Gambling Bill. Our sites must be in the selected localities and must further compete for and be awarded a regional casino license by the local authorities.

The three developments are subject to certain conditions, including the receipt of applicable regulatory, municipal, regional and other approvals, and a maximum effective tax on gaming revenue of not more than 25%. If these projects do not proceed, we will be required to write-off certain costs that have been incurred (as of December 31, 2004, we had approximately $10.4 million on our balance sheet with respect to these projects). As noted above, the SECC and Sportcity developments are also subject to the negotiation and execution of binding agreements. If all of the necessary conditions with respect to any of these projects are satisfied, we expect the project to be completed within two years from the date of issuance of a license. In connection with each project, we will be responsible for the financing, development and operation of a casino and hotel.

Now the bit about these projects being contingent on a maximum effective tax on gaming revenue of 25% may be a bit problematic - I can’t be absolutely sure due to the inherent difficulty one inevitably encounters in trying to navigate the tax system, but the current tax regime for casinos is as follows…

Current law and proposed revisions

The new duty bands are as shown below:

The first £546,500 of GGY - 2.5%
The next £1,212,500 of GGY - 12.5%
The next £1,212,500 of GGY - 20%
The next £2,124,000 of GGY - 30%
The remainder - 40%

GGY is ‘Gross Gaming Yield’ which in 2001 was descrbed by the Treasury as being ‘largely the casino’s gross profit from the gaming’ although in 2000, a more precise definition was given - ‘the difference between stakes placed and winnings paid out’.

As a bit of an aside before moving on, if you’d have gone to Labour Party Conference  in 2004, amongst the fringe meetings you could have taken was one arranged by the Social Market Foundation titled:

"Gambling, regeneration, and social responsibility: can everyone be a winner?"

The meeting, so it transpired, was sponsored by Sun International, who operate the Sun City Resort that was, for many years, a real favourite amongst anti-apartheid campaigners like…

…Peter Hain, for example.

The panelists listed for this meeting were…

Lord McIntosh, Minister for Media and Heritage
Sir Cllr Albert Bore, Leader, Birmingham City Council
Peter Collins, Centre for the Study of Gambling, Salford University
Peter Byrne, Executive Director, Sun International
Chair: Lord David Lipsey, Chair, SMF

Yeah, that’s right, one of the panelist was an executive director of Sun International. Meanwhile not one of the panelists represented an anti-gmabling organisation or one involved in treating gambling addiction.

Okay, so you might that Peter Collins, from the Centre for the Study of Gambling, sound like an independent voice on the panel… except that what wasn’t disclosed to delegates was that Sun International’s Peter Byrne wass the Chairman of the Centre’s advisory board and Lord David Lipsey wass also on the Centre’s advisory board.

The link back to Kerzner, here, is Sun City, which was where he made his name in the casino business although he got out of South Africa back in the late 1980’s.

Why?

Well, this might help explain matters…

Stella Sigcau, Minister of Public Works who died this week, cut her teeth on homeland politics and was involved with government from the late 1960s, when I was still at school. At that stage, the Matanzimas ran Transkei…

Stella Sigcau joined Matanzima’s Transkei National Independence Party (TNIP) and served on his cabinet from an early age. She held various portfolios in the homeland cabinet, including minister of the interior; and became TNIP leader and ruled the territory briefly in 1987, before her government was toppled by the Transkei Defence Force (TDF).

The TNIP’s strong-arm tactics in Transkei are well documented, including laws allowing detention without trial and banning liberation parties. Many young Transkeians skipped the country to join the African National Congress or Pan Africanist Congress in exile…

In 1976, Transkei became “independent”, requiring the government to establish departments — and this also provided opportunities. Indeed, Matanzima recruited some exiles back into his government…

A major weakness of the TNIP was the growth of corruption after “independence”. Matanzima wanted to build airports and harbours to prove that the territory was truly independent. In one of a number of similar incidents, a shady Middle Eastern character, Mr Elhajj, managed to cheat the government of R9-million on pledges for a harbour…

We in the TDF decided to force him out. The TNIP then appointed Sigcau as prime minister.

At that stage, she was a respected senior party member who was not associated with corruption. There was general relief that the Matanzimas were no longer running the show and many expected a breath of fresh air to blow through the government.

As defence force commander, I worked closely with her office and the armed services to ensure a smooth transition.

Three months later, however, the Transkei security services showed me [Bantu Holomisa, author of the obituary] and other senior officers documents, including bank statements and transfer records, proving that casino magnate Sol Kerzner had paid George Matanzima’s cabinet R2-million for exclusive gambling rights in Transkei. Unfortunately Sigcau — seen at the time as Transkei’s saviour from corruption — had benefited….

[Kerzner’s explanation was that this money was extorted from  him  by Matanzima]

The Kerzner bribe was referred to a commission of inquiry, which confirmed that the money was paid to Matanzima, who distributed it among his cabinet ministers. Sigcau testified before this commission.

George Matanzima was later sentenced to nine years in prison for his role in this scandal, serving three. The military government also tried to extradite Kerzner and other South Africans to face the music, including directors of JALC Construction. South Africa’s Foreign Affairs Department flatly refused to cooperate.

This fuelled tensions between the two governments, already complicated by our efforts to forge strong links with the liberation movements. It was at this time that Kaizer Matanzima and Sigcau approached South Africa to topple the Transkeian government, militarily or through sanctions. In 1990, Pretoria was involved in an abortive coup attempt in Transkei….

You might think, given the identity of the author and its publication in an African online newspaper, that this account could be a touch one-sided - in which case maybe this piece from Time Magazine in 2002 is more up your street:

THE AFRICAN CONNECTION. They don’t make them more controversial than Solomon Kerzner. There’s the over-the-top casino he built on a South African homeland, taking advantage of apartheid; the money scandal that linked him to a Prime Minister who had to resign; the succession of wives, including a former Miss World; and these days the Mohegan Sun, a billion-dollar Indian casino in Connecticut that he made happen.

Kerzner, 67, was ideally placed to make a killing as a financier in Indian gaming. He has succeeded in gaming systems with loose rules before. His native South Africa once banned gambling but allowed it in tribal areas carved out by the apartheid-era white government for blacks to inhabit. Kerzner, who began his career as an accountant, opened the first hotel-casino in 1977 in Mmabatho, the capital of the homeland of Bophuthatswana, about 150 miles from Johannesburg. That year he began planning what would become the opulent Sun City resort-casino-entertainment-theme-park complex. When it opened in 1979, Sun City–with four hotels, a 6,000-seat arena and a 46-acre manmade lake for water sports–became a favored destination for whites in Johannesburg and Pretoria who wanted to escape their nation’s moral restrictions and gamble, view soft-porn movies and watch topless showgirls, white and black. Dubbed the richest man in South Africa, Kerzner got into trouble in 1986 when he won permission for a hotel and casino in another homeland, Transkei. To acquire an exclusive gaming license, he had paid more than $900,000 to Transkeian Prime Minister George Matanzima, who was forced to resign and was later jailed for fraud. Kerzner maintained that Matanzima extorted the money, and the South African government declined to prosecute him. Kerzner moved his base of operations to Britain, and from there he expanded his hotel-and-casino empire to France, Morocco and the Bahamas, where he opened the very profitable Atlantis Casino and Resort.

Convinced? No? Well how about a parliamentary bulletin from the African National Congress from 1996…

Sol Kerzner and David Bloomberg were accused of paying R2m in bribes in December 1986 and January 1987 to the former Transkei premier Chief George Matanzima, in exchange for a gambling monopoly in Transkei. In 1988, Kerzner and Bloomberg admitted the payments to the Harms Commission on cross-border irregularities, but claimed they were subject to undue pressure from Chief Matanzima.

In 1990, the Transkei Attorney General began preparations for extradition against Kerzner and Bloomberg, and forwarded extradition applications to the National Party Government in 1991.

In 1993 the National Party Government refused to extradite Kerzner and Bloomberg, on the grounds that there was no case to answer, and the case was shelved. Following the 1994 elections and the reintegration of Transkei into South Africa, the case has again been taken up by the Transkei Attorney General…

This month, the Transkei Attorney General’s report into the case against Kerzner and Bloomberg listed a catalogue of failures and deliberate obstruction by the National Party. The Transkei Attorney General’s report found that:

- the National Party Government delayed progress for almost two and a half years by dodging the extradition application lodged by the Transkei Attorney General

- the National Party Government tried to kill off the case in 1993, by insisting that there was no case to answer

- the National Party Government prevented the prosecution in Transkei by refusing to extradite Kerzner and Bloomberg, despite the Transkei Attorney General’s confidence that there was a case to answer.

The National Party is to blame for the failure to prosecute Kerzner and Bloomberg before 1994.

The ANC has been blamed for the failure to prosecute Kerzner and Bloomberg since 1994. But the Attorney General again laid the blame at the door of the National Party for the delays since the April 1994 elections. He cited:

- the ten-year delay in bringing the case to trial, which means witnesses may now be unclear about their statements, or may no longer be available - one key witness has already died in the interim

- the refusal to extradite Kerzner and Bloomberg in 1993 on the grounds that there was no case to answer, which may make it constitutionally impossible to reinstitute the prosecution

- the point-blank refusal of FW de Klerk to co-operate with the Justice Portfolio Committee’s investigation of this matter.

To be absolutely clear, Kerzner was never convicted of bribery in the case, but he was also never put on trial either, so one cannot say anything conclusive here, just present the information as it is…

What one can say, here, though, is that I doubt very much that Kerzner is overly keen on stories like this one from the Providence Journal, in which one of his casino resorts, the Mohegan Sun, features

Chris Armentano accompanied a woman to court a few weeks ago. She had stolen $500,000 from her employer to cover gambling debts.

Armentano does things like that as director of problem gambling services for the Connecticut Department of Mental Health. He sees the side of gambling not seen in the Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun commercials.

The woman who stole the money has a 12-year-old son who was looking at spending some crucial growing-up years without his mother. The woman’s husband was looking ahead to years of debt because of the money she stole to gamble at the casinos…

One case that did make the papers was that of former Middletown, Conn., Mayor Stephen Gionfriddo. He pleaded guilty to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from clients of his law firm. Prosecutors said he began stealing to cover gambling losses at Mohegan Sun.

I talked last week with Armentano and Marvin Steinberg, executive director of the Connecticut Council on Problem Gambling, to get some sense of what Rhode Island will have to deal with if a casino is eventually built here.

It will have to deal with more problem gamblers than it has now because a casino creates problem gamblers. It will have to provide mental health services that aren’t available now.

And it just might have to face up to the social costs of gambling. For too many years, Rhode Island has been a state in denial about the damage gambling does. It provides a pathetically small amount of money to deal with problem gambling considering the huge profits it reaps from its lottery and slot machine dens. And in the tortured debate over the West Warwick casino proposed by Harrah’s and the Narragansett Indians, there has been virtually no mention of what the casino would do to deal with the problems it creates…

"Proximity is a big issue," says Steinberg, who compares the impact of a casino to that of a bar opened just down the street. "A casino will increase problem gambling in Rhode Island. For the first time, it will be 10 minutes away instead of an hour."

Steinberg says the Connecticut casinos provide a large amount of money to The Council on Problem Gambling. They also accept a simple truth about their presence in the state:

"They know their presence has created significant problems," says Greenberg.

We have not heard that from Harrah’s and the Narragansetts. We have not heard their take on the obvious: that a casino brings with it a temptation that can ruin lives.

"You have broken families, family stress," says Armentano. "There’s loss of homes, loss of jobs, an increase in domestic violence, neglect of kids."

He says that states have to recognize that gambling is the one enterprise they promote that causes people harm.

"States have a responsibility to provide services," he says.

But Rhode Island doesn’t. Even without a casino, it is a state drenched in gambling, and yet it does little or nothing to deal with the ugly underside.

"You already need services," says Armentano. "You’re a gambling state. But without a constituency that’s really interested and willing to push for services, problem gamblers and their family members remain a neglected group."

Connecticut had gambling before Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun. It had jai-alai, off-track betting, a state lottery, dog tracks. But the number of people being treated for gambling problems multiplied more than 10 times when the casinos opened, says Armentano. And the number of women treated for gambling problems increased from near zero to about 40 percent of the total.

The new regional casinos, especially the much coveted super casino licence, are supposed to serve as the ’suck it see’ phase for the liberalisation of gambling laws in the UK, and yet one has to wonder if, as this report suggests, we see a similar effect to that claimed for Connecticut, will the government really be able to pull back from further expansion when there are clearly so many vested interests at work already.

Eithe way, from what can be found in the public domain about both Phil Anschutz and, now, Sol Kerzner, there will be plenty of people question just who it is that their elected representatives have been doing business with, and on quite what terms these deals have been struck…