Nazi 'Angel of Death' Mengele's diaries bought by Jewish collector

An Orthodox Jewish man has paid more than £150,000 for the diaries of a man held responsible for murdering and maiming thousands of people during the Holocaust.
The 31 notebooks are an account of Josef Menegle's life after the Holocaust in South America. Known as the Angel of Death, Mengele carried out grotesque and often lethal "research" experiments on concentration camp inmates, including twins and children.
Despite controversy over the sale, the 3,400 hand-written pages were put up for auction on Thursday in Stamford, Connecticut.
The buyer, who paid less than the amount the diaries were expected to go for, has not been identified but is understood to be a collector of Holocaust-era memorabilia.
The diaries cover the period between 1960 and 1975, after Mengele fled post-war Germany – where he had been posing as a farm labourer - for South America in 1953.
Although he was put on trial for war crimes in 1985, Mengele was not present in court and some months later a body was exhumed in a Brazilian town near Sao Paulo. It was later confirmed as that of the Nazi doctor and it emerged he had died of drowning in 1979.
The sale of the diaries was condemned as distasteful and crude by Holocaust survivors and academics.

 

Machine-gun toting cops are no match for a man with plates of shaving-foam': Jonnie Marbles brags about attack on Murdoch

The activist who infiltrated a Commons select committee to throw a shaving-foam pie at 80-year-old  Rupert Murdoch today bragged about how easy it was to dodge shambolic security at Westminster.

In a self-justifying article, Jonnie Marbles, 26, claimed he had carried out his 'circus crusade' for all those who couldn't.

'Parliamentary security, with its machine-gun toting cops and scatter X-rays is apparently no match for a man with some shaving-foam covered plates in his bag,' he wrote.

The incident, one of the most extraordinary seen in Westminster for years, came as the select committee wrapped up questioning the Murdochs.


Rant: Jonnie Marbles justified his attack on Rupert Murdoch, claiming he was acting on behalf of all those who could not

Mr Marbles - whose real name is Jonathan May-Bowles -  launched himself across the room brandishing the plate of shaving foam.

He was stopped by Mr Murdoch's wife Wendi Deng who launched herself into his path to protect her husband.

 

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'I had intended to unleash a wave of polemic as I made my move,' he wrote on the Guardian website today.

'As it turned out, the whole thing was far too weird for me to string two thoughts together, particularly as Murdoch's wife rose from the chair to prevent and avenge her husband's humiliation.'

Mr Marbles, who is one of the founding members of a left-wing protest group, was arrested by police and spent the night in the cells.


Shock: Mr Marbles rushes towards Mr Murdoch brandishing a plate of shaving foam during the select committee hearing


Wendi to the rescue: Mrs Murdoch (in the pink jacket) hurls herself at the activist as he rushes towards her husband

He has been charged with a behaviour causing harassment, alarm or distress in a public place and will appear before Westminster Magistrates on July 29.

Today, he remained unrepentent about his actions, claiming Mr Murdoch would never face any real justice over the phone hacking affair.

'Yesterday's select committee hearing was a farce before the foam ever left my fingers: a toothless panel confronting men too slippery to be caught between their gums,' he added.

Mr Marbles claims he had nothing didn't 'have a vendetta against anyone over 80' and that he was even worried about Mr Murdoch's feelings.

'You see, I really don't hate 80-year-olds and, at the end of the day, Rupert Murdoch is just an old man.

'Maybe what I was trying to do was remind everyone of that – that he is not all powerful, he's not Sauron or Beelzebub, just a human being, like the rest of us, but one who has got far too big for his boots,' he wrote.


Arrest: Mr Marbles is taken away in handcuffs after the incident at Portcullis House

Mr Marbles, who was not paid for the article, described Mr Murdoch as having 'one of the insiduous and toxic forces in global politics.'

He said News International was 'a media empire built on deceit and bile, that trades vitriol for debate and thinks nothing of greasing the wheels of power until they turn in its favour.

The comedian, who is from Croydon, south London, was last night suspended as a member of the Labour party.

He had been tweeting live updates from inside the hearing on an iPhone.

Moments before he carried out the attack he wrote on Twitter: ‘It is a far better thing that I do now than I have ever done before #splat’.

Mr Marbles is allegedly involved with UK Uncut – a protest group who have targeted Barclays, Topshop and Vodafone for alleged tax avoidance with a series of sit-ins.

 

Piers Morgan demands MP apology over hacking 'lies

Piers Morgan has demanded Tory MP Louise Mensch apologise for claiming he had admitted using phone hacking to get stories when he was a tabloid editor.

The two clashed on CNN after Mrs Mensch said Mr Morgan had "boasted" in his book about hacking phones to get a news story while he was at the Daily Mirror.

But the MP refused to repeat the claim outside Parliament where statements by MPs are protected from prosecution.

Mr Morgan accused her of "cowardice" and of telling "an outrageous lie".

Mr Morgan also firmly denied sanctioning any phone hacking while he was at those newspapers, saying: "For the record, at my time at the Mirror and the News of the World I have never hacked a phone, told any body to hack a phone or published any stories based on the hacking of a phone."

The row was sparked by comments made during the Commons culture, media and sport committee hearing with News Corporation bosses Rupert and James Murdoch on Tuesday. She also repeated them when the committee questioned former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks - a former colleague of Mr Morgan.

The MPs were questioning the Murdochs about phone hacking allegations at the News of the World - and their company's response to them, in a lengthy session.

'Little trick'
Corby MP Mrs Mensch - best known as the best-selling author Louise Bagshawe, until she married Peter Mensch, manager of rock band Metallica, in June - asked why they had not spoken to Mr Morgan about it.

In the committee hearing, she said: "As a former editor of the Daily Mirror, he said in his book The Insider recently that that 'little trick' of entering a 'standard four digit code' will allow 'anyone' to call a number and 'hear all your messages'.

"In that book, he boasted that using that "little trick" enabled him to win scoop of the year on a story about Sven-Goran Eriksson. That is a former editor of the Daily Mirror being very open about his personal use of phone hacking."


I feel no need to apologise”

Louise Mensch
A furious Mr Morgan, who now hosts his own programme on CNN, challenged her to provide evidence of her claim in an interview with CNN.

In his book, published in 2005, he makes a reference to phone hacking in relation to a Department for Trade and Industry investigation he was subject to over the "City Slickers" share dealing affair - noting that developments in the case appear to have been leaked to journalists.

In an entry dated 26 January 2001, he says: "Given that the DTI has not to my knowledge leaked anything about this case to anyone, I am mystified. But someone suggested today that people might be listening to my mobile phone messages. Apparently, if you don't change the standard security code that every phone comes with, then anyone can call your number and, if you don't answer, tap in the standard four digit code to hear all your messages. I'll change mine just in case, but it makes me wonder how many public figures and celebrities are aware of this little trick."

'Cowardly'
Speaking on Wednesday, he said: "For an MP to use Parliamentary privilege and state that I wrote in my book that I use phone hacking for stories is a complete outrage because anyone who has read the book knows that I said no such thing.

"I would quite like her to read the book and then apologise in the same public forum that she used to make these ridiculous allegations."

On CNN he accused her of telling "an absolute blatant lie during those proceedings" adding: "You are hiding in a cowardly way, as a lot of MPs tend to do ... behind the cloak of this privilege that you have".

In the CNN interview Mrs Mensch would not repeat the allegation but said she was "perfectly content" with what she had said.

"I can't comment about it outside that committee room because as Mr Morgan will know, inside Parliament when I spoke as a select committee of Parliament I am protected by absolute Parliamentary privilege - to repeat something outside of Parliament doesn't give me that cloak of privilege and Mr Morgan is a very rich man."

But she added: "I feel no need to apologise, I refer you to what I said in the select committee."

A spokeswoman for Mrs Mensch said on Wednesday she was not making further comment on the row.

 

push into Afghanistan’s lethal ­bandit country – Helmand Province – by British forces was done ­without enough planning or equipment and under pressure from Nato

THE push into Afghanistan’s lethal ­bandit country – Helmand Province – by British forces was done ­without enough planning or equipment and under pressure from Nato, senior officers have said.
A damning new report by MPs has ­condemned the lack of troops, armoured vehicles and helicopters available to support Britain’s mission in 2006.
Yet even as commanders struggle to beat the Taliban without the resources they badly need, still more troop cuts are to be announced.
The Ministry of Defence will reveal tomorrow that 17,000 more posts are to be slashed over the next nine years, reducing the regular Army to its smallest size since Victorian times.
Current Army strength of 101,000 regulars is to be cut to 84,000 by 2020. At the same time, a £1.5billion programme to boost Britain’s reserve forces, including the Territorial Army, the Royal Air Force Volunteers Reserve and the Royal Naval Reserve, is also to be unveiled.
The report on Helmand Province reveals commanders were criticised for not anticipating that a push south would “stir up a hornets’ nest”, while mixed messages between military and government left Defence Secretary Dr Ian Reid believing there were enough resources.
The original plan was for a maximum of 3,150 British troops to be deployed for just three years. Today Britain has nearly 11,000 troops committed to the country, with a conditional pullout date of 2015.
The decision to deploy south into ­Helmand was taken on the back of a “moribund” Nato campaign that had achieved limited success in the north and west, MPs were told.
Gen Sir Robert Fry, former deputy to the Chief of Defence Staff, said: “If Nato ran out of fuel (political will) after half a mission, and the easiest, most benign half of the mission, question marks would be placed against its efficacy and its future role.”
Had Britain not gone into Helmand, there was a chance that Nato would never have gone into the south, with untold ­consequences to the alliance, he said.


He added: “We would have created the very ungoverned place that we went there to deny.” The move was ill-planned, supported with little intelligence and failed to ­anticipate the level of opposition troops would encounter, however.
Although efforts were made to delay the deployment, they were scuppered by pressure from Nato.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup said: “I can recall discussions that essentially went along the lines of ‘We don’t know much about the south but we know that it’s not the north.’ It’s real bandit country. I personally said, ‘We need to call a halt in our planning.’ We did halt for a time but then concerns grew within Nato. We were asked to step forward again, which we did.”
Brigadier Ed ­Butler, former head of British forces, Afghanistan, said the strength of the Taliban had been surprising.
He said: “There was an assumption that we were going to deploy the Force into a ­permissive environment…we would go out and start engaging with the people. As soon as we arrived, of course, they wanted to engage us.” That was because the Taliban, opiate dealers and warlords, felt their existence was being ­threatened.
Matters were made worse by some 200,000 casual labourers from Pakistan who stayed on as guns for hire and the Army’s failure to adapt to IEDs quickly.
Britain was expected to hold Helmand with just 3,000 men. Now there are more than 30,000 coalition troops in the region, the report by the House of Commons Defence Committee said.
The envelope was soon being pushed to the bloody quagmires of Sangin, Musa Qala and Now Zad, as part of “game ­changing” decisions which should have been put to Ministers, the committee said.
More worrying, warnings of equipment shortages were ignored or did not fall on the right ears. They needed more air support – Chinook and attack helicopters as well as transport aircraft. Brigadier Butler said: “We had something in the order of a 45 per cent shortfall of ­vehicles.”
This contrasted with Dr Reid, who in March 2006 reported: “I am reliably informed that the commander of the ­helicopter force is content with the number of flying hours available to him.”
James Arbuthnot, Commons Defence Committee chairman, said: “Our forces have achieved the best tactical outcomes possible in very difficult circumstances but the force levels deployed were never going to achieve what was being demanded by the UK, Nato and Afghan government.”

 

Piers Morgan, the former tabloid newspaper editor, was yesterday pulled into the phone hacking scandal after an influential website linked him to the phone hacking scandal.

MPs called for Mr Morgan to be questioned on his involvement in any alleged illegal practices.
Paul Staines, the political blogger who writes under the pseudonym Guido Fawkes, drew attention to comments in Mr Morgan's book The Insider, which is a version of his diaries.
In it, Mr Morgan says the “little trick” of entering a “standard four digit code” allowed “anyone” to call a number and “hear all your messages”.
After Mr Staines highlighted the comments, Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs demanded he be questioned during the independent inquiry.
Aidan Burley, Tory MP for Cannock Chase, said: “Piers Morgan should be called to the phone-hacking inquiry to face questions on oath.”

Last week, Adrian Sanders, the Lib Dem MP for Torbay, implicated the Daily Mirror in the widening scandal.
But the issue was fuelled when Mr Staines quoted Mr Morgan’s diary entry for January 26, 2001.
It reads: “Apparently if you don’t change the standard security code that every phone comes with, then anyone can call your number and, if you don’t answer, tap in the standard four digit code to hear all your messages.
“I’ll change mine just in case, but it makes me wonder how many public figures and celebrities are aware of this little trick.”
The blogger then claimed that the same “little trick” generated a story about Ulrika Jonsson, then a television presenter, and Sven Goran Eriksson, then the England football manager, having an affair.
The story subsequently won Mr Morgan, who was editor of the Mirror between 1995 and 2004, the prize of Scoop of the Year at the British Press Awards.
The Mirror has always said it has never hacked phones.
As well as being the former editor of the Mirror, Mr Morgan is also the former show business editor of the Sun and the former editor of the News of the World.
He is now a successful broadcaster in the US, working as a judge on America’s Got Talent, the US version of the British show, and as the host of CNN’s main talk show, after he replaced Larry King.
By yesterday afternoon, Fawkes’ story had been picked up by US websites, which noted “Americans only familiar with Morgan’s role as CNN’s prime time talk show host may not be aware that the native Brit began his media career in the tabloid world”.
The broadcaster has not made any public comment on recent developments on the hacking debate.
However, when Andy Coulson, the former editor of the News of the World, resigned from his post as David Cameron’s head of communications, he wrote on Twitter: “Very sad to hear news about Andy Coulson – good man, good friend…”
One US site questioned whether Mr Morgan might now be summoned to meet senior executives at CNN to reassure them that he knew nothing of any hacking.