These resignation statements are meaningless

By Gary Younge, the Guardian

"Action," argued philosopher Hannah Arendt, "without a name attached to it is meaningless." It leaves you with objects without subjects and consequences without causes. So it is with the resignations that have emerged from the phone-hacking scandalso far. Time and again people with huge salaries and immense power acknowledge they had responsibility, but are careful not to concede accountability, for fear that it will suggest culpability. Nobody claims they were just following orders because apparently there were no orders and no one to give them. It appears what we assumed were extremely hierarchical organisations such as News International and the Metropolitan police apparently operated like anarchist collectives. So with each new revelation – and not before – those who resign concede that "apparently" something terrible was done on their watch but insist that they knew nothing about it nor did anything related to it. They left not because of any wrongdoing but because the wrongs were being done to them – wait for it – by a hostile media. Then they make a break for it to spend more time with their lawyers….