The Powers that Be

The way in which ass-covering and slandering victims...especially the poor and unrepresented was able to survive for nearly a quarter-century is quite sickening. This is a British story...but it is undoubtedly a universal one:

The chief constable of West Yorkshire police, Sir Norman Bettison, "boasted" about having helped to "concoct" a false account of how the 1989 Hillsborough disaster was caused, according to the Labour MP Maria Eagle...

"We were in a pub after our weekly evening class. [Bettison] told me that he had been asked by his senior officers to put together the South Yorkshire police evidence for the forthcoming inquiry. He said that 'we are trying to concoct a story that all the Liverpool fans were drunk and we were afraid that they were going to break down the gates so we decided to open them'." That was the version of events South Yorkshire police put forward to the official inquiry into Hillsborough by Lord Justice Taylor, and to the inquest into the deaths. Taylor, and the panel in its report, found that account was untrue, that there was no excessive drinking or misbehaviour by the supporters, and in fact the police mismanaged the crowd on the day.

96 people died in that disaster -- for a bunch of people that just went to see a soccer match. Incompetence killed them and then the authorities smeared them.