Stokes on front foot in $1bn media brawl

It will be very interesting to follow this story in the coming months and reading it from a number of media sources. This first one is from News Limited.


SEVEN Network owner Kerry Stokes took the biggest gamble of his corporate career yesterday, beginning what could be a month-long stint as a Federal Court witness by lifting the lid on a private meeting at his Sydney home with fellow media mogul James Packer.

In a quest for up to $1.1billion in damages from the rest of Australia's TV industry, Mr Stokes put his credibility on the line by leading Seven's attempts to prove its now-defunct pay television sports channel, C7, was the victim of a conspiracy to run it out of business.
Moments after taking the witness stand in a dark suit and blue patterned tie, the West Australian entrepreneur tabled four witness statements, which included his version of a conversation five years ago with the son of the nation's richest man.

Mr Stokes, who turned 65 this month, told how Mr Packer visited him at his home in Sydney's exclusive Double Bay in December 2000, only days before the Packer family's Channel Nine, News Limited and Network Ten finalised a bid to beat Seven for the AFL broadcast rights.

According to Mr Stokes's version of events, Mr Packer said: "I've come to tell you that we're going to take the AFL rights off you. We don't really want to do it but News are making us."

Mr Stokes, who owns an $800million stake in Seven, said he told Mr Packer that meant he was left with no choice but to mount a rival bid against the Packer family's listed company, Publishing & Broadcasting Ltd, and News Limited for the National Rugby League rights.


Mr Packer reportedly replied: "But it doesn't matter what you spend, I would not be against Rupert (Murdoch) when it comes to getting the NRL rights."
Mr Murdoch owns News Limited, publisher of The Australian.

Mr Stokes said he told Mr Packer: "I understand very clearly what it means to go up against the both of you, but I am not going to be run out of my own country and Seven will remain a competitor."

The joint $86million-a-year bid for the AFL rights by News Limited was preferred over Seven's $60million bid in late December 2000.

The same month, Seven's NRL bid was lost to Fox Sports, owned by News Limited and PBL.

Seven has told the court its NRL bid was worth $50million more than the six-year deal tendered by Fox Sports.

C7 went out of business within 18 months of losing the AFL and NRL bids.

The network is suing 22 parties, including Telstra, Foxtel Management, the AFL, the NRL and Optus, as well as News Limited and PBL.

Mr Stokes was at times forgetful under cross-examination, relying on a "can't recall" response to many questions by News Limited barrister Noel Hutley.

In response to one question, the executive chairman told the court he was "involved in the overview not the detail" of Seven's attempts to set up a pay TV sports channel in the mid-1990s.

During another exchange with Mr Hutley, Mr Stokes admitted to the Federal Court he realised when C7 was established in 1998 that it was "likely" it would be closed down if it ever lost the AFL rights.

He agreed that if anyone else won the rights, he would view them as "killing C7".

News Limited has told the court that C7's business model was "highly risky and flawed" because it depended on retaining the AFL rights.

Mr Stokes said in one of his witness statements that at another meeting in his home in May 2000, he told then Telstra chief executive Ziggy Switkowski he was concerned Fox Sports might bid for the AFL rights.

"If C7 loses the pay rights, it will be finished," Mr Stokes told Dr Switkowski.

At the same meeting, Dr Switkowski allegedly told Mr Stokes: "We always seem to be in court with you."

Mr Stokes replied: "Unfortunately, if you want to protect your interests, there is sometimes no other way of doing business with Telstra."

Mr Stokes said he could not recall Dr Switkowski telling him in early 2000: "Doing deals with you is very hard. You come at issues differently to us and we find you difficult to deal with."


Stokes aim - C7 on Foxtel

The Seven Network was so keen to persuade Foxtel to run its C7 sports channels that it offered to "give up" half of C7 to Telstra in May 2000.

In a written witness statement to the Federal Court yesterday, Seven's executive chairman Kerry Stokes recalled making the offer to Telstra's then chief executive, Ziggy Switkowski, during a one-on-one meeting at Mr Stokes's Double Bay home.

read on....


The day Packer told me: We'll wipe you out

James Packer has emerged as another key suspect in the developing drama of who killed C7, the pay-TV channel once run by the Seven Network.

Seven's executive chairman, Kerry Stokes, made his first appearance in his billion-dollar damages suit yesterday and pointed the finger at his opposite number at Publishing & Broadcasting Ltd, the owner of the Nine Network.

Mr Stokes recalled a meeting at his Sydney home in December 2000 when Mr Packer had said: "I've come to tell you that we're going to take the AFL rights off you. We're all going to get together to take those rights."

That month, the Australian Football League and the National Rugby League awarded the rights to broadcast matches on pay-TV to Foxtel and Fox Sports.

C7, which had held the AFL rights, closed down in May 2002.

In a written statement tendered to the Federal Court, Mr Stokes also recalled Mr Packer saying: "It doesn't matter what you spend, I would not be against Rupert when it comes to getting the NRL rights."

That's Rupert Murdoch, whose News Ltd is accused by Seven of organising bids for both codes designed to destroy C7. During its five-day opening address, which finished last week - the case is expected to run for nine months - Seven mostly targeted senior executives of News.

According to Seven, News wanted to create monopolies for its half-owned pay-TV sports channel Fox Sports and the pay-TV retailer Foxtel, of which it owns 25 per cent.

But with Nine's owner, PBL, holding the same stakes in both Fox Sports and Foxtel, it was only a matter of time before one of the Packers rated a mention.

PBL was apparently not the instigator, however. "We don't really want to do it but News are making us," Mr Stokes recalled Mr Packer saying about the AFL bid.

News's barrister, Noel Hutley, SC, said last week that his client would argue that documents from 2000 using expressions such "kill C7" were "nothing more than the commercial language of competition".

A document already frequently referred to since the case opened on September 12 is a December 2000 email exchange between executives of Telstra, which owns 50 per cent of Foxtel.

"We should not be part and parcel of the wider objective ... of 'killing' C7," the email says.

But Mr Hutley could not get Mr Stokes to agree yesterday that such language "passes for the normal banter of competition". Mr Stokes repeatedly denied ever hearing his senior executives or directors use the lethal expression, other than when relating what they had heard from the News and PBL camps.

"You have never heard someone saying, 'Let's kill the opposition'?" Mr Hutley said.

"Correct," Mr Stokes replied.

" 'Let's murder these people who are our competitors?' "

"No."

Mr Stokes wouldn't use it to encourage his staff?

"Absolutely not."

HAARP - Is This Storm More Than We Think?

It's really hard when researching HAARP to find anything other than the US Government's standard on the subject or stuff that sounds like a conspiracy theory so my link is from Wikipedia which seems very balanced.


IS THE HURRIACANE MORE THAN A HURRICANE?

Mmmmmmmmm...

If its a hurricane, what can you do? You have to try to ride it out. But what if it is MORE than a hurricane? I am getting strange reports from all over the place about fears of WEATHER MODIFICATION as a weapon of war.

WARNING: I AM NOT WISE ENOUGH TO EVALUATE THE VERACITY OF THIS NEXT POSTING. READ WITH CAUTION AND SKEPTISISM.

THERE ARE WEATHER WEAPONS

First, a Montreal-based scholar, Michel Chossudovsky, whose work I am sometimes wary of, and who is often associated with well-documented but controversial conspiracy claims, writes about weapons that he does not argue are being used:

The important debate on global warming under UN auspices provides but a partial picture of climate change; in addition to the devastating impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on the ozone layer, the World's climate can now be modified as part of a new generation of sophisticated "non-lethal weapons." Both the Americans and the Russians developed capabilities to manipulate the World's climate.

In the U. S., the technology is being perfected under the High-frequency Active Aural Research Program (HAARP) as part of the ("Star Wars") Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI). Recent scientific evidence suggests that HAARP is fully operational and has the ability of potentially triggering floods, droughts, hurricanes and earthquakes. From a military standpoint, HAARP is a weapon of mass destruction. Potentially, it constitutes an instrument of conquest capable of selectively destabilising agricultural and ecological systems of entire regions...

www.infowars.com

WAR?

NOW IT GETS WEIRDER...

Next, a post from Richard Hoagland or Richard C. Hoagla -- it's not clear -- in what is called the "Captain's Blog, Space News & General Commentary.?

The conclusion: ?We are at war, whether we like it or not.?

WHAT IF IT'S NOT WHAT WE THINK?

More than a million people (according to CNN) have now been forced to flee New Orleans. They form the largest mass migration in American history: familes wrenched apart and sent to widely separated States; seniors forced to start over from literally nothing; children banished to start classes in strange cities and unfamiliar schools all across the Country ... some as far away as Alaska! The dead who've been left behind in New Orleans now number in the "low hundreds."

At the moment the myriad commentators, the scores of network anchors, the faceless government officials -- and, certainly, the millions of ordinary Amercians watching this catastrophe play out on television -- are viewing this stillunfolding tragedy as the "greatest natural disaster in American history."

But -- what if it was not? What if, as we have asked before, "Katrina" was not a just "an incredibly destructive, natural storm...?

Remember, I am not a subscriber to this view, but it is too sci-fi or sci-real not to pass along:

FEARS OF WEATHER MODIFICATION

To try to answer this essential question, I began this "Captain's Blog" entry with a little known but incredibly important statement -- from a MAJOR figure in American politics, an individual with both "the clearances" and the senior position in the Executive Branch of the U. S. Federal government to KNOW ... former Secretary of Defense, William Cohen.

Almost no one, even now, is aware of Secretary Cohen's remarkably revealing testimony re "eco-terrorism" in 1997, reproduced at the beginning of this entry. Still fewer seem to realize -- even after they've actually read his statement -- the staggering technological and political implications behind what this Republican Clinton Administration Defense Secretary stunningly revealed

Regarding the current existence of this "god-like" technology ... a technology which can actually, as Cohen testified, "alter the climate ... set off earthquakes [and] volcanoes remotely ... through the use of electromagnetic waves ..."

Flash forward to 2005 -- and the quiet introduction this Spring (in both houses of Congress) of a bill to officially institutionalize within the United States Government precisely such major "weather modification" ... under the Secretary of the Department of Commerce -- and, by October 1, 2005!

A Bill entitled:

"Weather Modification Research and Technology Transfer Authorization Act of 2005."

Its purpose ...?

Link if you want more:

www.enterprisemission.com