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| Down Under |
| Churchill's great-grandson heads to prison |
| 2007-12-24 |
| SYDNEY, Australia - The great-grandson of late British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was sentenced Thursday to three years in prison for his part in a multimillion-dollar Ecstasy racket. Nicholas Jake Barton was arrested at his Sydney home in June last year during a series of raids in which officers seized about 250,000 Ecstasy tablets worth about $13 million. The 34-year-old Briton, son of Sir Winston's granddaughter Arabella Spencer Churchill and James Barton, pleaded guilty in Sydney's District Court last month to knowingly taking part in supplying a commercial quantity of a prohibited drug. The charge is punishable by up to 20 years imprisonment. Judge Colin Charteris sentenced Barton to three years. He can be considered for parole in 20 months. Charteris found Barton had a "belated and limited role in the supply of the drugs seized by police." "In determining the appropriateness of the sentence, the fact the defendant is descended from a hero of the 20th century does not affect the sentence I must impose," the judge said. |
| Posted by:Seafarious |
| #1 Sir Winston thought of himself as the "blacksheep of the family. Maybe this lad will come around in time. Follows are a sampling of Churchill's quotes. Still quite relevant I'm afraid: "I do not admit... that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia... by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race... has come in and taken its place." -Churchill to Palestine Royal Commission, 1937 "(We must rally against) a poisoned Russia, an infected Russia of armed hordes not only smiting with bayonet and cannon, but accompanied and preceded by swarms of typhus-bearing vermin." -- Quoted in the Boston Review, April/May 2001 "What is the true and original root of Dutch [South African Boer] aversion to British rule? It is the abiding fear and hatred of the movement that seeks to place the native on a level with the white man...the Kaffir is to be declared the brother of the European, to be constituted his legal equal, to be armed with a political rights." -London to Ladysmith via Pretoria, 1900 |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2007-12-24 01:16 |