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The Daily Briefing 31/10/05
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1 Boris Johnson flays the UK anti-terrorism laws/Spectator (2 links below)
2 Andrew Sullivan on Bush and the indictment/Sunday Times (17 links below)
3 Paul Krugman welcomes Ben Bernanke/NYTimes (2 links below)
4 Tony Blair on tackling climate change/Observer (2 links below)
5 Seymour Hersh interviews Scott Ritter on Iraq/Nation (link below)
6 Martin Bell says Ireland should not honour Easter 1916/Guardian
7 Emily Bell on editing a newspaper for the global village/Guardian
8 Lynton Crosby on the wonderful land down under/Daily Telegraph
9 TECHNOLOGY: Digital camera update/Sunday Times (3 links below)
10 Christine Rosen on the children of the narcissistic generation/Hoover Inst (2 links below)
11 Studs Terkel on the White Sox curse/NYTimes
12 IN THE PAPERS: National, Opinion, Business round-up
1 This bill is an abomination
As avid readers of TDB know, the editor has something of a soft spot for Boris Johnson (rather like the one Boris has for Cherie Blair really). What's not to like about a bicycle riding, classically educated novelist, columnist, editor, Conservative MP and lad about town? Frankly, Johnson has more going for him than the entire lumpen lot who make up our Federal Parliament. But I digress.
As we also know, our proposed anti-terror laws are modeled on those Tony Blair scrambled together in the political panic following the London bombings (to which everyone else responded admirably). Anyway, our Boris thinks the laws are an abomination, and notes that they were shaped by the desires of the intelligence services (rather like our own) but can't understand why anyone would take a blind bit of notice of that lot. "Who gives a damn what these intelligence charlies want, and what business is it of theirs to be telling Parliament what to do? These are the klutzes who were so pathetic that they could not get a single credible agent into pre-war Iraq, with the result that Parliament and the public were told a load of old cobblers about the state of Saddam's WMD. There is no reason to believe everything they say; there is no reason for either of these provisions, not least since Labour feels so guilty about their impact on ethnic minorities, especially Muslims, that the Government has been symmetrically obliged to come up with an even worse measure, namely the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill, thankfully felled by the Lords."
(Oh, yes, and that religious hatred bill that TDB has spoken about often has copped it in the neck, at least temporarily.)
Speaking of the Right Honourable Boris, The Independent reports that he will give up his job as Spectator editor if David Cameron becomes Tory leader. "In the latest chapter of his colourful personal and professional life, Mr Johnson appears to have accepted he can no longer moonlight as a journalist and politician, revealing that his lust for power has eclipsed his desire to be a high-profile editor."
And the NYTimes reports that the case of "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla (which looks as dodgy as all get out from this distance) is set to go to the Supreme Court .
BORIS JOHNSON/THE SPECTATOR
2 The Libby Indictment
If you want just one article on the indictment of Vice-President Dick Cheney's advisor Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the Andrew Sullivan column linked to below is the place to go. Sullivan has also been following developments at his blog, although Josh Marshall does it better.
Sullivan said that if he were Cheney, he'd be "sweating a little", and if anything, the focus on the Veep has intensified since the Sullivan column was written.
For those who want "just the facts thanks Ma'am", this is how the NYTimes reported the indictment, this is the transcript of Prosecutor Fitzgerald's remarks and this is the actual indictment (pdf file) and this is The New Republic article referred to as having sparked the investigation.
The NYTimes looks at the challenge to get a conviction: "the special prosecutor is pitting three prominent journalists against their former source, a strategy that experts in law and journalism say has rarely been used or tested".
The Washington Post looks at the impact on Valerie Plame, "the spy who got shoved out in the cold" and reports that the CIA hasn't fully established the damage done by her outing. "There is no indication, according to current and former intelligence officials, that the most dire of consequences -- the risk of anyone's life -- resulted from her outing."
The NYTimes reports that Democrats say the indictment shows the White House was prepared to risk national security to protect the flawed case for the invasion of Iraq; and that the indictment shows just how hard Cheney worked to discredit war opponents.
Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel of Knight Ridder Newspapers report that the indictment does not give any clues to the mystery about who created the Niger yellowcake forged documents. However, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has again denied Italy was involved in this article in which Berlusconi says he was against the war and tried to talk George Bush out of it. (An interesting comment to make just before a visit to Washington, although as the article notes, Berlusconi is up for re-election in six months. The Iraq war has precious few friends these days.)
Editor & Publisher reports that one half of the legendary Watergate reporting team, Carl Bernstein sees comparisons with Watergate and thinks we are watching "the implosion of a presidency".
In the NYTimes, David Rosenbaum gives a history lesson on presidents who have had difficult second terms.
And just for a little balance, or a wry chuckle, a couple of conservative optimists who see silver linings while others are watching the thunder and lightning show. In The Spectator Mark Steyn thinks it is a lot about nothing, although to be fair, Steyn did write before the indictment was published.
And the godfather of US conservatives, William Kristol, the editor of Rupert Murdoch's The Weekly Standard thinks the worst is over, and that really things are not so bad as all that.
ANDREW SULLIVAN/THE SUNDAY TIMES
3Krugman likes Bernanke
Climate change sceptics and Iraq war optimists aside, no group of pundits get it wrong more often than economic commentators. If TDB has a dollar for every useless word read in the past 12 months predicting this economic outcome or the other that did not come to pass, this edition would be coming to you from a cottage in the south of France. And it has to be conceded that NYTimes columnist Paul Krugman has predicted for some years now that the economic sky would fall someday soon, when he is not giving George Bush 'what for'. (It also has to be conceded that a lot of good judges think he will be right, eventually.) He is at it again in the column below in which he welcomes the appointment of Ben Bernanke to replace Alan Greenspan as Federal Reserve chair, and gives Bush a bit of 'what for'. "All of this raises a frightening prospect. Has President Bush been so damaged by scandals and public disapproval that he has no choice but to appoint qualified, principled people to important positions?"
Those yet-to-come-to-pass predictions also leave him open to his many critics on the right, and Donald Ruskins takes issue with them, and with Krugman's opinion that Bernancke is not a supply sider, in this column for National Review Online.
And in the column below for The Daily Telegraph, historian Niall Ferguson says the world is run by pols, geeks and wonks. He welcomes the appointment of Bernancke whom he describes as an über-wonk. "On that basis, of course, you could end up handing everything over to the wonks. The result might be an ideal Platonic form of government - rule by an enlightened, omniscient elite. On the other hand, it would be a technocracy, not a democracy. In any case, are we absolutely sure the wonks know what they're doing?"
PAUL KRUGMAN/NYTIMES
4 Get real on climate change
Tony Blair has been criticised of late for having gone soft on the issue of climate change and TDB recently linked to this George Monbiot column which suggested Britain's chief scientist had been nobbled. In the column linked to below, Blair gives every impression that the issue is important to him as he previews discussions this week between the G8 and China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa. "We also have to recognise that while the Kyoto Protocol takes us in the right direction, it is not enough. We need to cut greenhouse gas emissions radically but Kyoto doesn't even stabilise them. It won't work as intended, either, unless the US is part of it. It's easy to take frustrations out on the Bush Administration but people forget that the Senate voted 95-0 against Kyoto when Bill Clinton was in the White House."
And in The Week-end Australian, Matt Price explained Environment Minister Ian Campbell's stance on the issue, and gave a wonderful lesson in how to gently rebuke a fellow columnist - Christopher Pearson. Only one quibble, Matt. You end off by saying "The debate, I suspect, ain't over yet." Maybe not for the climate change deniers it ain't, but out in the real world it was over long ago (see Geoff Strong in The Age this morning). As for the sceptics, well, there are still folk around who believe the earth is flat and that the moon landings were faked on a Hollywood studio set - but who takes a blind bit of notice of them?
TONY BLAIR/THE OBSERVER
5 Iraq: past and future
Both veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh and former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter have books out about Iraq, Ritter's having just been released. In this interview, Hersh, the journalist who revealed the abuses in Abu Ghraib, asks Ritter about the weapons inspections and the best time for foreign troops to leave Iraq. Hersh also challenges as "an urban myth" the widely held notion that all of the world's intelligence organisations believed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. "One of the things that's overwhelming to me is the notion that everybody believed before March of '03 that Saddam had weapons. This is just urban myth. The fact of the matter is that, in talking to people who worked on the UNSCOM and also in the International Atomic Energy Agency, they were pretty much clear by '97 that there was very little likelihood that Saddam had weapons. And there were many people in our State Department, in the Department of Energy, in the CIA who didn't believe there were weapons. And I think history is going to judge the mass hysteria we had about Saddam and weapons."
And anyone looking for a guide to the best books about Iraq might be interested in the list compiled by NYTimes' Baghdad reporter Robert Worth. Worth says "Arabian Sands" (1959) by Wilfred Thesiger is the pick of them. "I sat up late that night, devouring Thesiger's account of his travels with a group of Bedouin tribesmen through Saudi Arabia's Empty Quarter, where he hunted oryx and lived on dates and on water that tasted of camel urine. It was a far, far cry from the air-conditioned compound where I cowered behind my laptop eating PowerBars. It was also my first glimpse of the Arab history that lay beneath the rubble of Baghdad."
SEYMOUR HERSH & SCOTT RITTER/NATION
6 Forget 1916
Perhaps Martin Bell will take this crusade to every other country on the planet, because he doesn't explain why Ireland alone should not remember a violent rebellion that led to it becoming an independent nation - the Easter Uprising of 1916. (It would be interesting to see him trying to sell the argument that the US should not celebrate the War of Independence, for example.) The marvelous irony about the Easter Uprising is that it was a bungled fiasco that had next to no public support at the time and may have been a largely forgotten footnote in history if the British hadn't decided to line the rebels up against a wall and shoot them - a drawn out process over several days that aroused public disgust (especially when one of them was dragged from a hospital bed for the occasion). Nowadays the joke is that the Dublin GPO is so big because it had to house all the people now claiming to have taken part in the short uprising (which Australian troops helped to put down, by the way).
Anyway, Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern has announced there will be major celebrations of the centenary in 2016, and Mr Bell is not so sure this is a good idea. "For years, Sinn Féin has been systematically appropriating the militant milestones of an Irish state whose legitimacy it has never recognised. This year it claimed ownership of the centenary of the original - and unrecognisably different - Sinn Féin movement of Arthur Griffith. Next year it aims to annex the 90th anniversary of the socialist James Connolly and to serve it up in a heady cocktail mixed with the 25th anniversary of the IRA hunger strikes. But the biggest target of all is control of the centenary of 1916 itself. To allow Sinn Féin to colonise the events of Easter 2016 as its own would be an existential challenge to the very republic itself."
MARTIN BELL/THE GUARDIAN
7 Newspaper for the global village
A short piece by Guardian editor Emily Bell on the challenges thrown up by editing a paper that is read around the world - of the Guardian Unlimited's 12 million monthly users, the majority are from outside the UK. In particular Bell highlights the recent kidnapping of journalist Rory Carroll in Iraq, in which case everything the paper ran was likely to have been seen by his captors. "Every piece we put out about Rory or abductions in Iraq had to be carefully vetted and considered in the context of how it might be received."
EMILY BELL/THE GUARDIAN
8 Things are great in Godzone
Nothing more than one of those curios linked to occasionally, but in case you are interested this is what Lynton Crosby (ex-Liberal Party campaign director who ran the Tories' losing election campaign back in May) is telling the Brits about our island, girt, as it is, by sea. "Which country will have no government debt within a year, contributed the most to help those in need after the tsunami, and was described by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development as a "model for other countries", America or Australia? You've guessed it. Australia. For so long simply seen as an adventure playground for gap year students or a breeding ground for sportsmen, Australia has now graduated into the world of big players."
LYNTON CROSBY/THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
9 Digital cameras, Palm and Google
With annual sales of digital cameras outstripping film models by 15 to 1in the UK, Nigel Atherton (link below) evaluates the latest digital camera offerings.
The Independent lists the 10 gadgets you'll want next year. "You've got a mobile phone, a camera, an MP3 player, a diary, an address book, a portable radio, and not enough pockets. Nokia is coming to the rescue with the N91. It's a chunky phone with 4GB hard drive, so it's aiming to make your iPod redundant."
In The Washington Post, Rob Pegoraro tries out the latest offerings from Palm. "They're not bad, but they also don't represent any great achievements."
And the NYTimes reports on Google's assault on the world of advertising. "This year, Google will sell $6.1 billion in ads, nearly double what it sold last year, according to Anthony Noto, an analyst at Goldman Sachs. That is more advertising than is sold by any newspaper chain, magazine publisher or television network. By next year, Mr. Noto said, he expects Google to have advertising revenue of $9.5 billion."
THE SUNDAY TIMES
10 The children of the children of the revolution
Ethicist and journalist Christine Rosen uses Christopher Lasch's 1979 book "The Culture of Narcissism" as her stepping off point for the article linked to below which looks at the society being created by the children of that generation. "Today a book about the vagaries of the American character might still have a great deal to say about narcissism, but its subtitle would likely point to something other than diminishing expectations. It would, perhaps, document "Life in the Age of the Overpraised American," for praise (and its kin, attention-seeking), is our common cultural currency. If, in the twentieth century, "character" gave way to "personality," as Lasch and others such as Richard Sennett and Anthony Giddens argued, then in the twenty-first century "personality" exists only if it is broadcast, rated, praised and consumed by as many people as possible - put on display for strangers as well as intimates. In addition, the over-praised American personality expects regularly to assess the worth of others, regardless of his qualifications for doing so."
Paul Harris in The Observer reports on the end of the metrosexual. According to the book "The Future of Men" the übersexual has taken his place, with Bono the ultimate example of this "new" breed.
And coming out from behind the pay-to-view wall that is TimesSelect, Maureen Dowd updates feminism, looking at where things are at for women through a personal prism. "Throughout the long, dark ages of undisputed patriarchy, women connived to trade beauty and s*x for affluence and status. In the first flush of feminism, women offered to pay half the check with "woman money" as a way to show that these crass calculations - that a woman's worth in society was determined by her looks, that she was an ornament up for sale to the highest bidder - no longer applied. Now dating etiquette has reverted. Young women no longer care about using the check to assert their equality. They care about using it to assess their s*xuality. Going Dutch is an archaic feminist relic. Young women talk about it with disbelief and disdain. "It's a scuzzy 70's thing, like platform shoes on men," one told me."
CHRISTINE ROSEN/HOOVER INSTITUTION
11 The White Sox curse
Who better to reflect on the "lifting" of the White Sox curse than author, broadcaster and story-teller Studs Terkel, who think Shoeless Joe Jackson ("say it ain't so, Jo?") and his team were hard done by, and do not deserve to remain as outsiders. "Even with the Chicago White Sox's remarkable World Series sweep of the Houston Astros, ending the Black Sox curse of 1919, we cannot say that a chapter of infamy is over. This is because the players of that infamous team of 86 years ago remain on the outside. I'm only sorry that they (and Bill Veeck, the team's eccentric former owner) aren't alive to see it."
STUDS TERKEL/NYTIMES
| 12 IN THE PAPERS: National, Opinion, Business round-up IN THE BROADSHEETS Well, somebody is in trouble with their anti-terrorism laws, or perhaps both somebodies are. The Herald's lead says a de facto alliance of Liberal Party moderates, state premiers and Labor's left wing appears set to delay and water down the Federal Government's proposed anti-terrorism laws; and The Age carries a similar report from Michelle Grattan. (Hugh White gives them a good belt, see opinion below.) Meanwhile The Australian says Kim Beazley faces an internal Labor Party revolt on two fronts today over failing to argue against "draconian" anti-terrorism legislation and unveiling his own proposal to ban books that promote hate and violence (what on earth does this big blancmange stand for?). The Herald reports that Dr Graham Budd, AM, a scientist who scaled Mawson's Peak in Antarctica in 1965, has compared the Government's proposed anti-terrorism laws to those put in place by Adolf Hitler in 1933, which removed habeas corpus; that sole parents entering the job market under the Federal Government's welfare-to-work regime will be recruited to train as home-based child-care workers under plans being finalised with the Family Day Care Council of Australia; and that Liberal Party members nominated for preselection in John Brogden's former seat of Pittwater were asked detailed questions about their s*xual histories and financial dealings before the party allowed them to run for endorsement. The Age reports that Victoria's public hospitals have reported a sharp rise in medical errors, including operations on the wrong body part or the wrong patient, overdoses of medication and surgical equipment left in patients after operations; that the Director of Public Prosecutions may have to decide whether a nurse in Geelong should be charged with homicide after he allegedly withdrew life support from a dying patient without authority; and that Victoria's most senior Vietnamese leader has called on Prime Minister John Howard to state unequivocally that Melbourne's Nguyen Tuong Van should not hang in Singapore. The Australian reports that Peter Costello's department is the Government's worst regulator, according to his own economic advisory body, the Productivity Commission; that Australians could be drinking treated sewage within a decade thanks to "good" bacteria in clean water feasting on germs; that John Howard has put off major decisions on the direction of the defence force and the defence budget until next year, prompting renewed speculation about the departure of the minister, Robert Hill; and that relatives and friends could be paid by the Government to take care of the elderly in their own home under a radical option being considered by the Government. Mike Steketee reports that one of the most enduring conspiracy theories of Australian politics has been debunked after 30 years by one of the lesser-known players in the drama of Gough Whitlam's dismissal; almost 50 per cent of people believe getting drunk occasionally is part of being Australian; an Australian company with an international market for organic tampons has falsified documents to support the claim that its product contains no chemicals or pesticides; self-preservation is one of the things that drives girls to bully others in the school playground, research suggests; and God will guide Ian Harper, the man charged with setting the minimum wage.. OPINION The Age: Hugh White says the Federal Government has failed to explain just what gaps in the law its proposed anti-terrorism legislation would fill, or exactly how it would stop an attack; Geoff Strong looks back at the history of climate change denial when he says it was obvious 20 years ago that the problem was real; Michael Gawenda offers a simplistic account of NYTimes reporter Judith Miller's role in the Valerie Plame affair, blaming the paper's editors for the problems with her work (no wonder this guy is a former editor); and Tony Cutcliffe says the out of control world of on-the-spot fines is a form of hidden taxation. The Australian: Glenn Milne uses the findings of experienced US pollster Vic Fingerhut to say that the ACTU's ads on industrial relations changes have been an inexpensive success and that the Government's have been an expensive failure; John O'Sullivan (conservative columnist, formerly with the National Review) puts the Bush administration's woes in the best light before saying it should not be written off (it won't be while he is doing the writing); Mark Steyn thinks Russia is a dying nation, with nuclear weapons, being eaten away by Islamist extremists; and Imre Salusinszky is enjoying watching Australia's baby boom. The SMH: Joe Wilson (LATimes) gives his side of the outing of his wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame, and says the US is owed an explanation and apology for that and Iraq; Paul Sheehan gives us his impressions of China after a week in Beijing; Hugh White and Michael Gawenda see The Age above. BUSINESS The Herald lead tells us that Qantas chief executive Geoff Dixon has closed the door on the possibility of merging the national airline with Singapore Airlines to form an Asia-Pacific mega carrier. Matt Wade looks at the eye-popping price rise buried in last week's inflation figures that had nothing to do with the cost of oil - the price of child care jumped 9.1 per cent in the year to September; and Hamish McDonald profiles Liu Changle, the boss of China's own wannabe CNN. The Australian's lead reports that Telstra chairman Donald McGauchie has warned that people in rural areas could end up paying 10 times more for their telephone lines if the competition regulator forces Telstra to cut the amount it charges competing telcos for network access in the city. It also reports that Citibank , the world's largest financial services company, is on the hunt for Australian branch network and credit card acquisitions, Citibank Australia chief Les Matheson has advised; and that St George Bank chief Gail Kelly is today expected to deliver on her promise of a record net profit after tax of about $815 million. The lead in The Age says that Indian call centres are reeling after a report slammed them for operating like Roman slave ships. Tim Colebatch and Malcolm Maiden look at the case for and against negative gearing; Canberra is drowning the country in regulation, with a new official report showing a 55 per cent increase in the number of regulations introduced by the Federal Government; and the World Trade Organisation's Doha round negotiations are in deep crisis, after the European Union's offer to increase market access in agriculture was roundly rejected at the weekend by other key countries. STATE ROUND-UP The Daily Telegraph: A mystery punter yesterday placed a $1 million bet on Makybe Diva to win the Melbourne Cup tomorrow; The regional rorts controversy flared again yesterday after it emerged John Howard pledged money to rejuvenate an outback town in the run up to the election just a day after bureaucrats had vetoed the plan. The Herald-Sun: Tax cuts of $18 a week from next year are affordable, according to a Canberra economics agency; The Royal Children's Hospital is considering legal action against a police and emergency services charity to recover money raised in the name of young cancer patients. The Courier-Mail: The Federal Government can afford to deliver an $18-a-week tax cut to Australian workers from next year; Terrorist sympathisers who preach hate on the Internet will be jailed for seven years under tough anti-terrorism laws being considered by state premiers. The Advertiser: Right-hand turns from King William St in the city will be banned next year to make way for trams but Lord Mayor Michael Harbison says Melbourne-style hook turns are an option; Adelaide man Graham Clifford Payne is today expected to face an Indonesian court on drug possession charges which could result in spending 20 years behind bars. The West Australian: The Federal Government has called on the States to scrap liberal cannabis laws, saying they are sending the wrong message to users; Big chunks of four WAFL grounds will be sold and turned into shops and homes under a radical redevelopment plan that could generate up to $100 million for the State Government. The Mercury: Hobart has been hit by an outbreak of potentially deadly salmonella poisoning; Economic thinktank Access Economics has issued a warning about a loyalty program run by online betting agency Betfair. SPORT The Cup field; Feature on Makybe Diva's trainer Greg Bennett; Justin Langer has been warned he risks puncturing a lung if he faces the West Indies with a cracked rib this week, but it is a gamble the defiant Australian opener with the abnormally high pain threshold is prepared to take; After helping New Zealand to all but secure a place in the Tri-Nations final with another man-of-the-match effort against Great Britain on Saturday night, Stacey Jones advised his teammates they will have to win the tournament without him. THE DAILY BRIEFING |
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re: The Daily Briefing 31/10/05
Wayne, I don't understand your comments about Michael Gawenda's They
were wrong: a sign of the Times.
What should he have said?
re: The Daily Briefing 31/10/05
Hi Trevor, I think Gawenda's take on the matter is fine so far as it goes, but that it is a couple of weeks off the pace in terms of where this story is up to now; and that it is simplistic and incomplete in terms of the Times' handling of Miller. Any journalist of Miller's experience and stature is given a certain amount of license - a news room has to operate with a certain amount of trust because no editor can be across the minute details of every story (especially not complex investigative stories); and because ultimately it is the journalist who is dealing with the sources so only they are in a position to make an assessment of how good, reliable, credible, trustworthy and/or in the know they really are. Miller is a Pulitzer Prize winner, and as co-author of the book Germs was considered an expert in the field of biological warefare - one aspect of WMDs.
Yes, the editors certainly could have done a better job with her ... but then there is evidence that she was deliberately vague with them; and that she did not reciprocate the trust that was placed in her by being sufficiently sceptical about the line she was running. No amount of good editing can compensate for those sorts of failures by Miller.
I also thought it remiss of Gawenda to have criticised the New York Times (and they had some of it coming, let me repeat) without mentioning the extraordinary - in Australian terms - role of the Public Editor. That showed a degree of openness and accountability, and a preparedness to face up to the paper's failures, that Australian readers can only dream of - without ever hoping to experience. Here, readers get "we stand by our story/reporter", perhaps followed up by a story that reports the criticism while saying, in effect, "what we reported was sorta right, if you look at it this way".
I'm curious about what is happening with Gawenda, whose work I had a certain respect for. His previous column, in which he suggested that another Pulitzer Prize winner - and arguably the most read columnist on the NYTimes - Maureen Dowd, was there as the "token woman" was quite bizarre. He was all but saying Dowd had been unfair on Harriet Miers. Given what other writers, mostly on the right, were saying, and given what was known of Miers at the time, again Gawenda seemed to be taking an obscure and slightly contrarian position that could only be justified by a slightly skewed and incomplete reporting of the known facts. And given what has transpired since, Dowd has been shown to have been on the money.
I shall watch with interest what Gawenda does from here.