The long reach of Putinismo - Opinions Review
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How had the force that had driven the German army across France and back into Germany just five years earlier, at the end of World War II, lost the ability to fight effectively?
The answer: During those few years, U.S. political leaders had concluded that with the advent of nuclear weapons, land wars were a thing of the past. Taking this cue, generals had allowed the armored brigade combat teams from World War II to atrophy. In their place were skeletal divisions of poorly trained U.S. infantry on constabulary duty in Germany and Japan.
Slightly more than 40 years later, a very different U.S. Army evicted Saddam Hussein’s military — a far more formidable foe than the North Korean army of 1950 — from Kuwait. In 1991, the U.S. Army was not only better trained and had better resources; it was also working as part of a joint force.
Virtually no Americans anticipated either the North Korean attack in 1950 or Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait 40 years later. That seems to be the pattern: U.S. presidents send the Army to resolve unexpected crises, ready or not.
The world today presents a wide array of potential threats to U.S. interests, including a failed North Korean state losing control of its weapons of mass destruction, the morass of civil war in Syria, an aggressive and expansionist Russia or China, or still-unforeseen humanitarian crises in Africa and other areas. If called upon, the U.S. Army would deploy and engage in peacekeeping operations or major combat between state and non-state actors. In any event, it needs to be ready.
Some have argued that after the frustrating wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is little American appetite to send the Army into foreign lands, whether to fight, build nations or distribute humanitarian supplies. This line of thinking holds that the U.S. Air Force, Navy or Marine Corps can handle most of the security problems the world throws our way.
Defense expert Kori Schake and retired Navy admiral Gary Roughead, for example, argued last yearthat the Army should be reduced to about 290,000 soldiers and have a large part of its capacity for ground combat moved to the National Guard and Reserve, in effect turning it into a constabulary force capable of humanitarian missions — in other words, an army that can’t fight. A more recentrecommendation is for the Army to be reduced to 125,000 soldiers who are highly trained and backed up by the National Guard and Reserve.
These arguments resemble those made in the years leading up to North Korea’s invasion of South Korea. Then, too, it seemed that the world did not need an army that could fight; it was assumed that American ownership of atomic bombs would somehow do the trick. The result was a near disaster on the Korean Peninsula. Even though Ridgway’s forces held, American casualties were higher than if the Army had been prepared to fight.
Will the U.S. Army be reduced in size in the coming years? Budget reductions and a changing strategic environment demand a smaller, reorganized army. However, converting it into a force suited only for homeland defense or humanitarian missions abroad, without the ability to fight sophisticated foes as part of a joint force, would result in an unprepared Army likely to experience high casualties when called on to fight a war.
If history is any guide, the Army will inevitably be deployed again as a fighting force. The American people should invest in preparing for that event, and avoid the near-catastrophe that occurred in South Korea decades ago.
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Tell me your Ukraine and I will tell you who you are. The Ukrainian crisis is a political Rorschach test, not just for individuals but also for states. What it reveals is not encouraging for the West.
It turns out that Vladimir Putin has more admirers around the world than you might expect for someone using a neo-Soviet combination of violence and the big lie to dismember a neighboring sovereign state. Russia's strongman garners tacit support, and even some quiet plaudits, from some of the world's most important emerging powers, starting with China and India.
During a recent visit to China, I kept being asked what was going on in Ukraine, and I kept asking in return about the Chinese attitude to it. Didn't a country that has so consistently defended the principle of respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of existing states (be it former Yugoslavia or Iraq), and that has a couple of prospective Crimeas (Tibet, Xinjiang), feel uneasy about Russia simply grabbing a chunk of a neighboring country?
Well, came the reply, that was a slight concern, but Ukraine was a long way away and, frankly speaking, the positives of the crisis outweighed the negatives for China. The United States would have another strategic distraction (after Al Qaeda, Afghanistan and Iraq) to hinder its "pivot" to the Asia-Pacific region and divert its attention from China. Cold-shouldered by the West, Russia would be more dependent on a good relationship with Beijing. Ukraine sells China higher-grade military equipment than Russia has been willing to share with its great Asian ally, but the new Ukrainian authorities have quietly assured the Chinese that Beijing's failure to condemn the annexation of Crimea would not affect their future relations. What's not to like in all that?
Beside this realpolitik, I was told, there is also an emotional component. Chinese leaders such as Xi Jinping, who grew up under Chairman Mao, still instinctively warm to the idea of another non-Western leader standing up to the capitalist and imperialist West. "Xi likes Putin's Russia," said one well-informed observer.
Chinese commentary has become more cautious since Putin moved on from Crimea to stirring the pot in eastern Ukraine. The nationalist Global Times, which last month spoke of "Crimea's return to Russia," now warns that "Ukraine's eastern region is different from the Crimea. Secession of the region from Ukraine strikes a direct blow to territorial integrity guaranteed by international law." (But then, Putin is not aiming at outright secession, just a neutral country with a version of "federalism" so far-reaching that the eastern regions would become Bosnia-style entities within a Russian sphere of influence.)
However, this growing concern did not apparently cool the warmth of the welcome given to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Beijing on Tuesday. Xi said that relations between China and Russia "are at their best" and have played "an irreplaceable role in maintaining world peace and stability." The Chinese Foreign Ministry pronounced China-Russia ties to be the "major-country relationship that boasts the richest contents, the highest level and the greatest strategic significance." Cry your eyes out, USA.
It is not just China. A friend has just returned from India. He notes that, with the likely electoral success of Narendra Modi as prime minister and the growth of India's own "crony capitalism," liberal Indian friends fear that the world's largest democracy might be getting its own version of Putinismo. In any case, India has so far effectively sided with Russia over Ukraine.
Last month, Putin thanked India for its "restrained and objective" stance on Crimea. India's postcolonial obsession with sovereignty, and resentment of any hint of Western liberal imperialism, plays out — rather illogically — in support for a country that has just dramatically violated its neighbor's sovereignty. Oh, and by the way, India gets a lot of its arms from Russia.
And there are others. Russia's two other partners in the so-called BRICS group, Brazil and South Africa, both abstained on the U.N. General Assembly resolution criticizing the Crimea referendum. They also joined Russia in expressing "concern" at the Australian foreign minister's suggestion that Putin might be barred from attending a Group of 20 summit in November.
What the West faces here is the uncoiling of two giant springs. One is the coiled spring of Mother Russia's resentment at the way her empire has shrunk over the last 25 years.
The other is the coiled spring of resentment at centuries of Western colonial domination. This takes very different forms in different BRICS countries and members of the G-20. They certainly don't all have China's monolithic, relentless narrative of national humiliation since Britain's Opium Wars. But they do share a strong and prickly concern for their own sovereignty, a resistance to North Americans and Europeans telling them what is good for them, and a certain instinctive glee, or schadenfreude, at seeing Uncle Sam (not to mention little John Bull) being poked in the eye by that pugnacious Russian. Viva Putinismo!
Obviously this is not the immediate issue on the ground in Ukraine, but it is another big vista opened up by the East European crisis. In this broader, geopolitical sense, take note: As we go deeper into the 21st century, there will be more Ukraines.
Timothy Garton Ash is professor of European studies at Oxford University, a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution and a contributing writer to Opinion. His latest book is "Facts Are Subversive: Political Writing From a Decade Without a Name."
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On Thursday, I questioned Russia's involvement in mass surveillance on live television. I asked Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, a question that cannot credibly be answered in the negative by any leader who runs a modern, intrusive surveillance program: "Does [your country] intercept, analyse or store millions of individuals' communications?"
I went on to challenge whether, even if such a mass surveillance program were effective and technically legal, it could ever be morally justified.
The question was intended to mirror the now infamous exchange in US Senate intelligence committee hearings between senator Ron Wyden and the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, about whether the NSA collected records on millions of Americans, and to invite either an important concession or a clear evasion. (See a side-by-side comparison of Wyden's question and mine here.)
Clapper's lie – to the Senate and to the public – was a major motivating force behind my decision to go public, and a historic example of the importance of official accountability.
In his response, Putin denied the first part of the question and dodged on the latter. There are serious inconsistencies in his denial – and we'll get to them soon – but it was not the president's suspiciously narrow answer that was criticised by many pundits. It was that I had chosen to ask a question at all.
I was surprised that people who witnessed me risk my life to expose the surveillance practices of my own country could not believe that I might also criticise the surveillance policies of Russia, a country to which I have sworn no allegiance, without ulterior motive. I regret that my question could be misinterpreted, and that it enabled many to ignore the substance of the question – and Putin's evasive response – in order to speculate, wildly and incorrectly, about my motives for asking it.
The investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov, perhaps the single most prominent critic of Russia's surveillance apparatus (and someone who has repeatedly criticised me in the past year), described my question as "extremely important for Russia". According to the Daily Beast, Soldatov said it could lift a de facto ban on public conversations about state eavesdropping.
Others have pointed out that Putin's response appears to be the strongest denial of involvement in mass surveillance ever given by a Russian leader – a denial that is, generously speaking, likely to be revisited by journalists.
In fact, Putin's response was remarkably similar to Barack Obama's initial, sweeping denials of the scope of the NSA's domestic surveillance programs, before that position was later shown to be both untrue and indefensible.
So why all the criticism? I expected that some would object to my participation in an annual forum that is largely comprised of softball questions to a leader unaccustomed to being challenged. But to me, the rare opportunity to lift a taboo on discussion of state surveillance before an audience that primarily views state media outweighed that risk. Moreover, I hoped that Putin's answer – whatever it was – would provide opportunities for serious journalists and civil society to push the discussion further.
When this event comes around next year, I hope we'll see more questions on surveillance programs and other controversial policies. But we don't have to wait until then. For example, journalists might ask for clarification as to how millions of individuals' communications are not being intercepted, analysed or stored, when, at least on a technical level, the systems that are in place must do precisely that in order to function. They might ask whether the social media companies reporting that they have received bulk collection requests from the Russian government are telling the truth.
I blew the whistle on the NSA's surveillance practices not because I believed that the United States was uniquely at fault, but because I believe that mass surveillance of innocents – the construction of enormous, state-run surveillance time machines that can turn back the clock on the most intimate details of our lives – is a threat to all people, everywhere, no matter who runs them.
Last year, I risked family, life, and freedom to help initiate a global debate that even Obama himself conceded "will make our nation stronger". I am no more willing to trade my principles for privilege today than I was then.
I understand the concerns of critics, but there is a more obvious explanation for my question than a secret desire to defend the kind of policies I sacrificed a comfortable life to challenge: if we are to test the truth of officials' claims, we must first give them an opportunity to make those claims.
• Edward Snowden wrote for the Guardian through the Freedom of the Press Foundation
• This article was amended on 18 April to correct the attribution of comments from Andrei Soldatov to the Daily Beast
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MOSCOW — The annexation of Crimea, the media offensive against Kiev and the threat of military force against Ukraine are President Vladimir V. Putin’s ultimate response to Russia’s own failures. His latest actions are a veiled recognition that all of his other efforts to prove that Russia is regaining the Soviet Union’s status as a global superpower have come to nothing.
Mr. Putin and his cronies preside over a country with the planet’s largest land mass and the vast material wealth that comes with it. Russia is one of the world’s largest producers of oil, gas, diamonds and nickel. It boasts one of the largest mechanized forces of any army and a nuclear arsenal that is comparable to or even larger than that of the United States. Kremlin officials love to regale their countrymen with orations recalling Russia’s military triumphs, its space program, its cultural significance — on and on, ad nauseam.
Yet the reality behind the rhetoric is bleak. No matter how many warheads he commands, no matter how much wealth his sycophants amass, no matter how much publicity his propagandists attract, Mr. Putin is constantly reminded — mostly by the Western press and by the shrinking pool of domestic independent news media — that he has been doing a poor job.
Transparency International ranked Russia among the top 30 percent in its Corruption Perceptions Index last year. The World Economic Forum finds it the least competitive of the so-called BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Its business and investment climate is fraught with hostility and risk. It is repeatedly cited by human rights organizations as economically, politically and socially “unfree.” The quality of life for most Russians is embarrassingly low, while the number of its billionaires is obscenely high.
Much the same can be said for Ukraine. Under President Viktor F. Yanukovych a government and business elite grew wealthy as corruption spread and the quality of everyday life deteriorated. “Both Russians and Ukrainians are very similar in the way they evaluate the corruption and poor governance of their respective countries,” says Lev Gudkov, director of the Levada Center, an independent pollster. “But unlike Russia, Ukraine has no unifying figure, a Vladimir Putin who can use the power of the state to cast himself as a protective force, the source of all social benefits, public good and national security.” Moreover, Ukraine lacks the vast natural resources that keep Russia afloat, and its economic situation is worse.
While Russia is not the nation Mr. Putin yearns it to be, it would be unfair to say that the country has never tried to resolve its problems. A tax and an administrative reform program was implemented during his first term as president, from 2000 to 2004. Numerous initiatives to fight corruption have been announced, and Moscow is currently seeking to improve Russia’s standing in the World Bank’s Doing Business index and other indices.
But those responsible for improving governance have never had the power to do so: Modernization programs have always been stymied. In a phrase coined by the political scientist Nikolay Petrov, the reformers in Russia Inc. have always been mere managers, never real shareholders in the country’s fate.
There was a time when the Kremlin tried to play with the problem by producing its own (“fairer”) assessments of social and economic conditions. A few years ago the Moscow State Institute for International Relations published a list of nations with strong “international influence” potential, ranking Russia as seventh from the top. If only they continued that ranking, Russia would be on the way to No. 1 right now. The growth of Russian G.D.P. would have been endlessly celebrated, and the state-run media would be certain to trumpet the news whenever Mr. Putin won praise from a Western publication.
But the internal conflict between democratic reform and the status quo has ended. Most Russian sources of honest information and constructive criticism — the independent media, academia, the business community — are blocked. Most formerly autonomous government institutions, such as the courts and the Parliament, have been destroyed or brought under control. The country’s managers are reduced to acting as Kremlin errand boys who are kept busy minimizing the damage while Russia Inc.’s “shareholders” loot the nation.
But as the Russians stumbled along, the Ukrainians sought more radical solutions to surmount similar problems: stronger economic ties with Western Europe, a greater push for parliamentary democracy, and the one action that Mr. Putin absolutely could not abide: the deposition of a ruler who had always done Moscow’s bidding.
Mr. Putin thought if he let go of Ukraine he would be seen as a “lame duck,” an autocrat who allowed regime change in a smaller country with parallel problems. A neighboring state that implemented all the reforms Mr. Putin himself aborted would pose an obvious threat to his rule. It would provide millions of Russians with a clear example of non-Russian, non-authoritarian prosperity and freedom.
The revolutionary aspirations expressed by protesters in Kiev’s Maidan are exactly what Mr. Putin wants to suppress in Russia. His reasons are not just geopolitical. He realizes that the quality of governance in Kiev is worse than in Moscow, but that Russian aspirations are not too far behind those in Ukraine. While the Kremlin permits Russian official TV channels to call Ukraine a corrupt and failed state, to describe its leaders as populist, nationalist or even fascist, such media descriptions of leaders in Russia are taboo.
The Russian regime is looking at what is happening in Ukraine through a glass darkly, without realizing that what it is seeing reflects its own image. Mr. Putin does not like what he sees. So he is punishing Ukraine for Russia’s failure to put its own house in order.
Maxim Trudolyubov is the opinion page editor of the business newspaper Vedomosti.
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As is true of every generation, today the threats to freedom come from many sources. And there is none more pervasive and insidious than terrorism. It has become commonplace to speak of the "war" on terrorism - a metaphor much used, although not invented, by the second president Bush. And while there are important commonalities between terrorism and conventional forms of war, there are obvious differences as well. The most important, particularly in the age of the Internet, is invisibility.
Terrorists marshal no armies. Their organisations are amorphous and mutable. Their warriors are lonely fanatics, not professional soldiers. And, for that very reason, the task of anticipating them is much more challenging.
Not that this is a new phenomenon. It was, after all, a single terrorist, Gavrilo Princip, who on June 28 a century ago precipitated the Great War in Europe when he assassinated the Archduke and Archduchess of Austria on a Sarajevo street.
Not that this is a new phenomenon. It was, after all, a single terrorist, Gavrilo Princip, who on June 28 a century ago precipitated the Great War in Europe when he assassinated the Archduke and Archduchess of Austria on a Sarajevo street.
Margaret Macmillan, in her magnificent new study of the causes of the first world war, The War That Ended Peace, writes of the Young Bosnians and their terrorist organisation, The Black Hand, as:
Mostly young Serb and Croat peasant boys who had left the countryside to study and work in the towns and cities. While they had put on suits in place of their traditional dress ... they nevertheless found much in the modern world bewildering and disturbing. It is not hard to compare them to the extreme groups among Islamic fundamentalists such as Al Qaida a century later.
Of course, the Austro-Hungarian empire had an extensive network of spies and informers. Its police kept the activities of The Black Hand under surveillance, and there is evidence that Princip was known to them. But they did not pick up his visit to Sarajevo that fateful Sunday.
Now, as then, information is the key. The difference between the world on the eve of the great war, and the world of today, is that there is so much more information, and so much more communication. Terrorists no longer plan their crimes over hushed conversations in coffee shops (although no doubt some still do). The sheer volume of information, and the internationalisation of terrorist networks mediated through modern telecommunications, poses huge challenges for national security agencies, in terms of resourcing alone. But intercepting and correctly analysing that traffic is at the heart of the global counterterrorism response.
Yet, as we are all well aware from the heated public debate in both of our countries following the Snowden revelations, the question of the extent to which the state should invade the privacy of its citizens by the collection of intelligence will always be a controversial one.
Yet, as we are all well aware from the heated public debate in both of our countries following the Snowden revelations, the question of the extent to which the state should invade the privacy of its citizens by the collection of intelligence will always be a controversial one.
Some, usually those with a better informed appreciation of the capabilities and danger of sophisticated modern terrorism, would wish for fewer limitations on intelligence gathering in the name of public safety. Others, most commonly those who do not bear responsibility for the protection of the public and who have the luxury of approaching the question from a largely philosophical or legalistic perspective, argue that there should be much wider limitations upon the collection of intelligence. However there are few - very few - who take the absolutist position that either there should be no collection of intelligence, or alternatively no limitations on its collection.
Governments have struggled with this issue in recent months. Australia has closely watched the evolution of this debate, and welcomes president Obama's recent clarification of American intelligence collection policies. That is not to say, of course, that Australia would necessarily have resolve these policy choices in exactly the same way. Every country’s needs and circumstances are peculiar to it.
In the post-Snowden environment, one thing which remains just as critical as it has ever been – indeed, even more critical – is that longstanding allies remain committed to their close co-operation in intelligence-gathering and intelligence-sharing. Along with our friends in the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand, Australia and the United States are part of the quintet of western democratic nations which have for many years collaborated intimately in such matters. That collaboration must continue unaffected by the Snowden fall-out and I am confident that it will.
I am not going to attempt to tackle the deep ethical and legal issues at stake concerning intelligence-gathering, let alone to comment on domestic American politics. As a lawyer, I have a bred-in-the-bone respect for due process and civil liberties. But I must confess frankly that, as the minister within the Australian system with responsibility for homeland security, the more intelligence I read, the more conservative I become. The more deeply I come to comprehend the capacity of terrorists to evade surveillance, the more I want to be assured that where our agencies are constrained, the threat to civil liberty is real and not merely theoretical.
In the post-Snowden environment, one thing which remains just as critical as it has ever been – indeed, even more critical – is that longstanding allies remain committed to their close co-operation in intelligence-gathering and intelligence-sharing. Along with our friends in the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand, Australia and the United States are part of the quintet of western democratic nations which have for many years collaborated intimately in such matters. That collaboration must continue unaffected by the Snowden fall-out and I am confident that it will.
I am not going to attempt to tackle the deep ethical and legal issues at stake concerning intelligence-gathering, let alone to comment on domestic American politics. As a lawyer, I have a bred-in-the-bone respect for due process and civil liberties. But I must confess frankly that, as the minister within the Australian system with responsibility for homeland security, the more intelligence I read, the more conservative I become. The more deeply I come to comprehend the capacity of terrorists to evade surveillance, the more I want to be assured that where our agencies are constrained, the threat to civil liberty is real and not merely theoretical.
Over the decade or more since 9/11, some commentators began to suggest that terrorism no longer posed as significant a threat to national security as it once did. That view is simplistic and frankly wrong. While there is some evidence that we are witnessing a shift in terrorism tactics and techniques from large-scale, September 11 style attacks to "lone-actor", smaller-scale, multi-mode attacks, a change of terrorist tactics if that is what is occurring, is not equivalent to a diminution of the terrorist threat.
Countries must continue to work together against the global terror threat wherever it is originating, and not simply view threats and vulnerabilities as local versus international. There is much evidence to suggest that so called home-grown or regional threats are influenced, if not directly assisted, by offshore events and groups.
I am sorry to have to tell you that per capita, Australia is one of the largest sources of foreign war fighters to the Syrian conflict from countries outside the region. On 3 December 2013, two Sydney men were arrested and charged with foreign incursion-related offences as part of a Joint Counter Terrorism Team investigation carried out by Australian police and Australian authorities who continue to monitor recruitment, facilitation and financing of terrorist activity in Syria from Australian sources.
We also know that Australians are taking up senior leadership roles in the conflict. This shows that as a nation we need to address this issue early, in order to prevent individuals from travelling to participate in that and other foreign conflicts. This is, of course, not a new concern for Australia, nor other countries. Between 1990 and 2010, the Australian government investigated at least 30 Australians who travelled to conflict areas such as Pakistan and Afghanistan to train or fight with extremists. 19 engaged in activities of security concern in Australia upon their return, and eight were convicted in Australia of terrorism-related offences and sentenced to up to 28 years in prison.
While not new, the difference is the scale of the problem. The number of Australians participating in the conflict in Syria is higher than we’ve experienced with previous conflicts, with assessments of between 120 and 150 Australians travelling to the greater Syria region to participate in the conflict. In mid-2013, the conflict reached a new milestone as the number of foreign fighters exceeded that of any other Muslim conflict in modern history.
What does this mean for our future?
I believe that Australia and the United States are better placed than at any time to respond to hostile events both predictable and random. Experience from events like September 11 means that our national security structures are more agile, our information sharing mechanisms are more sophisticated and our policy is focused on building resilience and implementing prevention strategies instead of just responding to singular threats or mere responding to events after they have taken place.
The dangers which I have described are the principal reason why the compromise of our intelligence by Edward Snowden was so profoundly damaging to the interests of both of our countries. The massive damage which Snowden’s disclosures caused was at two levels.
Obviously, the revelation of intelligence content was hugely damaging to our interests. But no less concerning – indeed, arguably even more damaging – was what those disclosures potentially revealed about our capability. The problem of "going dark" has been raised in recent years. Going dark refers not to the absence of legal authority to conduct interception, but the practical difficulties in obtaining information. People who pose national security threats are using disclosed information to update their methods and avoid detection by our agencies. Criminals similarly use the information to avoid detection and prosecution. Capability, which can be decades in development and expect to enjoy a significant operational life expectancy, may be potentially lost over night. Replacing capability after a set-back is not a fast process and attracts substantial cost. The harms of the Snowden disclosures will continue to be felt for an unpredictable time to come.
I know some people naively claim that Snowden is a whistleblower. That claim is profoundly wrong. As The Economist’s senior editor Edward Lucas points out in his recent book The Snowden Operation, Snowden meets none of the criteria of a whistleblower. According to a widely-accepted series of tests developed by the Princeton scholar Professor Rahul Sagar, in his book Secrets and Lies, there are three principal criteria which define a whistleblower.
I believe that Australia and the United States are better placed than at any time to respond to hostile events both predictable and random. Experience from events like September 11 means that our national security structures are more agile, our information sharing mechanisms are more sophisticated and our policy is focused on building resilience and implementing prevention strategies instead of just responding to singular threats or mere responding to events after they have taken place.
The dangers which I have described are the principal reason why the compromise of our intelligence by Edward Snowden was so profoundly damaging to the interests of both of our countries. The massive damage which Snowden’s disclosures caused was at two levels.
Obviously, the revelation of intelligence content was hugely damaging to our interests. But no less concerning – indeed, arguably even more damaging – was what those disclosures potentially revealed about our capability. The problem of "going dark" has been raised in recent years. Going dark refers not to the absence of legal authority to conduct interception, but the practical difficulties in obtaining information. People who pose national security threats are using disclosed information to update their methods and avoid detection by our agencies. Criminals similarly use the information to avoid detection and prosecution. Capability, which can be decades in development and expect to enjoy a significant operational life expectancy, may be potentially lost over night. Replacing capability after a set-back is not a fast process and attracts substantial cost. The harms of the Snowden disclosures will continue to be felt for an unpredictable time to come.
I know some people naively claim that Snowden is a whistleblower. That claim is profoundly wrong. As The Economist’s senior editor Edward Lucas points out in his recent book The Snowden Operation, Snowden meets none of the criteria of a whistleblower. According to a widely-accepted series of tests developed by the Princeton scholar Professor Rahul Sagar, in his book Secrets and Lies, there are three principal criteria which define a whistleblower.
First, a whistleblower must have clear and convincing evidence of abuse.
Second, releasing the information must not pose a disproportionate threat to public safety.
Third, the information leaked must be as limited in scope and scale as possible.
Lucas concluded: “Snowden has failed all three of these criteria”. I agree. Snowden is not a genuine whistleblower. Nor, despite the best efforts of some of the gullible self-loathing left, or the anarcho-libertarian right, to romanticise him, is he any kind of folk hero. He is a traitor. He is a traitor because, by a cold-blooded and calculated act, he attacked your country by significantly damaging its capacity to defend itself from its enemies, and in doing so, he put your citizen’s lives at risk. And, in the course of doing so, he also compromised the national security of America’s closest allies, including Australia’s.
So I agree Hillary Clinton’s assessment of the consequences of his Snowden’s conduct, when she said recently: “It puts people’s lives in danger, threatens our national security, and undermines our efforts to work with other countries to solve shared problems.”
Third, the information leaked must be as limited in scope and scale as possible.
Lucas concluded: “Snowden has failed all three of these criteria”. I agree. Snowden is not a genuine whistleblower. Nor, despite the best efforts of some of the gullible self-loathing left, or the anarcho-libertarian right, to romanticise him, is he any kind of folk hero. He is a traitor. He is a traitor because, by a cold-blooded and calculated act, he attacked your country by significantly damaging its capacity to defend itself from its enemies, and in doing so, he put your citizen’s lives at risk. And, in the course of doing so, he also compromised the national security of America’s closest allies, including Australia’s.
So I agree Hillary Clinton’s assessment of the consequences of his Snowden’s conduct, when she said recently: “It puts people’s lives in danger, threatens our national security, and undermines our efforts to work with other countries to solve shared problems.”
Despite these threats and setbacks, it remains the case that liberal democracies like the US, UK and Australia lead the way in upholding values of individual liberty. Significantly, the fundamental principles of governments upholding individual freedoms and ensuring national security do not have to be mutually exclusive. Instead, they should be seen as mutually complimentary – without security there can be no freedom. In his Jefferson Oration in Virginia on 4 July 1963 entitled The Battle for Freedom, Sir Robert Menzies, the prime minister of Australia stated:
American history has reconciled both conceptions. For it has been your glorious destiny, notably in the turbulent years of the twentieth century, to evolve a system in which national power has grown on the basis of a passionate and Jeffersonian belief in individual freedom.
That attitude should always be the starting point in any debate about the perennial question of where, particularly at times of threat and danger, the balance is to be struck between the protection of public safety and the freedom of the individual. And it remains liberal democracies that continue to achieve that balance correctly today. No matter what the era, the most stable, open and transparent countries are liberal democracies, not those under authoritarian rule.
Many of the threats we face today are variations of known themes—military conflict, terrorism, crime or espionage. But globalisation and technological advancements mean the threats have evolved and that the challenge is now about international security, not just national security. Once more, we can expect them to continue evolving into the future. Most likely in ways we cannot entirely envisage today.
So, in the face of ever changing circumstances, how can we make a real difference in shaping our national security environment?
First, we must realise that no nation, no matter how large or powerful, can disrupt and prevent threats to global security alone. We must continue to work together and build large partnerships to counter the threat posed by those who would do us harm, whether offline or online. Our strength lies in our alliances and relationships with close and trusted partners. I believe there is no more important partner for Australia than the US and that the US has no readier or better friend than Australia.
However, the partnership cannot afford to only react to threats. In the current global environment, and post-Snowden period, there is a risk democratic states will play a waiting game. We cannot afford to simply wait for the next world-changing event and then espouse how similar it really was to previous moments – this will only play into the hands of our adversaries, most likely be more expensive in the long term and risk the individual freedoms for which we have worked so hard.
The Australian government is strongly committed to ensuring that Australian national security agencies have the resources they need to continue to achieve the significant outcomes we have experienced in protecting our most fundamental human rights—the right of our people to life, liberty and security of person.
We must continually work to address the gaps between technological progress and policy. This is true for all work of governments, but particularly so in the area of national security. Just as the technology employed by terrorists, agents of espionage and organised criminals adapts and advances, so too must the capabilities and powers of our law enforcement and security agencies.
But this must always be done with the highest regard to ensuring proportionality to the threat and continued testing and maintenance of oversight mechanisms. While our countries have different systems, we both share a commitment to individual freedoms. Progress in this area does not have to diminish our collective security, but can ensure appropriate oversight and smallest necessary encroachment on individual rights.
In a 2005 interview, former US national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, said:
Many of the threats we face today are variations of known themes—military conflict, terrorism, crime or espionage. But globalisation and technological advancements mean the threats have evolved and that the challenge is now about international security, not just national security. Once more, we can expect them to continue evolving into the future. Most likely in ways we cannot entirely envisage today.
So, in the face of ever changing circumstances, how can we make a real difference in shaping our national security environment?
First, we must realise that no nation, no matter how large or powerful, can disrupt and prevent threats to global security alone. We must continue to work together and build large partnerships to counter the threat posed by those who would do us harm, whether offline or online. Our strength lies in our alliances and relationships with close and trusted partners. I believe there is no more important partner for Australia than the US and that the US has no readier or better friend than Australia.
However, the partnership cannot afford to only react to threats. In the current global environment, and post-Snowden period, there is a risk democratic states will play a waiting game. We cannot afford to simply wait for the next world-changing event and then espouse how similar it really was to previous moments – this will only play into the hands of our adversaries, most likely be more expensive in the long term and risk the individual freedoms for which we have worked so hard.
The Australian government is strongly committed to ensuring that Australian national security agencies have the resources they need to continue to achieve the significant outcomes we have experienced in protecting our most fundamental human rights—the right of our people to life, liberty and security of person.
We must continually work to address the gaps between technological progress and policy. This is true for all work of governments, but particularly so in the area of national security. Just as the technology employed by terrorists, agents of espionage and organised criminals adapts and advances, so too must the capabilities and powers of our law enforcement and security agencies.
But this must always be done with the highest regard to ensuring proportionality to the threat and continued testing and maintenance of oversight mechanisms. While our countries have different systems, we both share a commitment to individual freedoms. Progress in this area does not have to diminish our collective security, but can ensure appropriate oversight and smallest necessary encroachment on individual rights.
In a 2005 interview, former US national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, said:
America has never seen itself as a national state like all others, but rather as an experiment in human freedom and democracy.
Australia is a much younger nation than the US, but our societies have evolved from common traditions. We share the same fundamental democratic values. prime minister Tony Abbott said of the United States during president Obama’s visit to Australia in 2011, “no country on the earth has done more for the world".
For both of us, the liberty, as well as the security of our peoples, lie at the heart of national policy. We Australians will continue to work in close partnership with the American friends and allies to protect those values and to thwart those who would make it their cause to destroy our freedoms and to tear down our democracy.
For as Australians and Americans both know, we whose societies and systems had their inception in the values and optimism of the enlightenment will always prevail over the dark forces which would seek to do us harm.
For as Australians and Americans both know, we whose societies and systems had their inception in the values and optimism of the enlightenment will always prevail over the dark forces which would seek to do us harm.
• This is an extract of a speech given by George Brandis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC
• This article was amended on 18 April 2014. The earlier version included incorrect formatting after a quotation from Brent Scowcroft that made it appear that the next paragraph was also part of the quotation.
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April 17, 2014 7:06 p.m. ET
New York's new mayor, Bill de Blasio, has an interesting sense of timing. Tuesday was the first anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing, in which two Muslim brothers from Cambridge murdered four people and injured nearly 300. The same day, Mr. de Blasio's new police commissioner, William Bratton, announced that his department is formally disbanding an antiterror surveillance unit started in the wake of 9/11.
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Manhattan Institute fellow Heather Mac Donald on the NYPD's decision to disband an antiterror surveillance unit. Photo credit: Getty Images.
This is being hailed by the usual suspects as a triumph for civil liberties, but it's really a bow to political correctness that removes an important defense for a city that has stopped at least 16 terror plots since 9/11. It's also more fallout from a series of sensationalist Associated Press stories from 2011 that were riddled with distortions and have since been rebuked by a federal judge.
Some background: After the attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993 and 2001, the NYPD concluded that it couldn't rely on the FBI and CIA to do its antiterror work. New York was the target of choice for Islamist terrorists and sometimes also their home. "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdel-Rahman, who was a spiritual leader to the 1993 bombers, preached from three mosques in New York. Several of the 9/11 hijackers lived in Paterson, N.J., only miles from the George Washington bridge.
The result was a strikingly successful effort, under former police commissioner Ray Kelly, to keep all New Yorkers safe. Part of that effort involved a small "Demographics Unit" (later renamed the "Zone Assessment Unit") to keep an eye on "hot spots" and "venues of radicalization," including mosques, bookstores, barbershops and other public places. The point wasn't to spy on entire communities, which the unit—with never more than 16 officers—lacked the resources to do in any case. It was to keep an eye on places where terrorists would seek to blend in.
Such police work might seem like ordinary prudence, but critics alleged the program was unconstitutional and ineffective. The first claim stems from ignorance of the "Handschu" rules on police surveillance, overseen by a federal judge, which note that to prevent terrorist acts "the NYPD must, at times, initiate investigations in advance of unlawful conduct" and permits officer "to visit any place and attend any event that is open to the public."
A police officer from the NYPD Counterterrorism unit search a commercial van at a security checkpoint on 34th Street in January 2014. Associated Press
The NYPD has never been charged with violating the Handschu rules. In February, federal Judge William Martini dismissed a lawsuit brought by several Muslim associations and businesses claiming they had been stigmatized by the surveillance. The judge noted that whatever harm suffered by the plaintiffs "flow from the Associated Press's unauthorized disclosure" of the work of the Demographics Unit. "The harms are not 'fairly traceable' to any act of surveillance."
Also false is the claim that the unit was ineffective. "The Demographics Unit was critical in identifying the Islamic Books and Tapes bookstore in Brooklyn as a venue for radicalization," Mitchell Silber, a former NYPD director of intelligence analysis, noted in Commentary magazine. "Information the unit collected about the store provided a predicate for an investigation that thwarted a 2004 plot against the Herald Square subway station."
Critics of the program claim that the Demographics Unit never contributed to direct "leads," but this ignores the painstaking process of evidentiary accretion, which is how all law enforcement, particularly of the preventive kind, has always worked.
After the Boston bombings, we learned that one of the bombers, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, had twice had outbursts in his Cambridge, Mass., mosque, in one case denouncing a speaker as a kafir, or unbeliever, for comparing Martin Luther King Jr. to the Prophet Muhammad. A spokesman for the mosque later told the Boston Globe that he didn't think the comment merited police attention; perhaps a policeman in the mosque would have reached a different conclusion.
The U.S. is now in full-scale retreat from what used to be called the war on terror, with new limits on the use of drones in Pakistan, new curbs on the National Security Agency, and now this. If there is another attack, the American public should know who was responsible for the policy retreat that made it harder to prevent.
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April 17, 2014 7:10 p.m. ET
The Edward Snowden Fan Club got a special bonus this week. The man who stole the secret operations of the U.S. National Security Agency and shared them with the world showed up on Moscow television to interrogate Vladimir Putin about citizen privacy.
Well, OK, he didn't really interrogate the Russian president. It was more like an appearance on a Russian version of "The Colbert Report," with Mr. Putin playing the role of a mock civil libertarian.
Wonder Land columnist Dan Henninger on how historical ignorance contributes to Western apathy toward Russia and Ukraine. Photo: Getty Images
The venue was President Putin's annual televised event in which he takes questions from the Russian public. All of a sudden on a large screen via video hook-up appeared Russia's most famous celebrity, political asylum resident Edward Snowden.
Mr. Putin immediately tried to put his new guest at ease by suggesting a shared career path. "Mr. Snowden, you are a former agent, a spy," the Russian president said. "I used to work for an intelligence service. We can talk one professional language." And with that, the Vlad and Ed Show was on. Mr. Snowden spoke in English and Mr. Putin in Russian, but it was still one language.
Edward Snowden: "Does Russia intercept, store, or analyze in any way, the communications of millions of individuals? Do you believe that simply increasing the effectiveness of intelligence or law enforcement investigation can justify placing societies rather than subjects under surveillance?"
Russian President Vladimir Putin takes part in a live broadcast nationwide phone-in with Edward Snowden on April 17, 2014. Reuters
Vladimir Putin: "We don't have a mass system of such interception and according to our law, it cannot exist." He continued: "Our special services, thank God, are strictly controlled by the laws of society and are well-regulated."
That settles that, thank God. Still, it would have been nice to be able to bounce the Snowden-Putin privacy dialogues off leading Russian dissident and anti-corruption blogger, Alexei Navalny, who has led pro-democracy demonstrations against Mr. Putin. These days that's difficult, however, because Mr. Navalny, unlike Mr. Snowden, is under house arrest in Moscow.
Oh, by the way, Mr. Putin took the occasion to say that the idea that Russian agents have been in eastern Ukraine fomenting the unrest reported on front pages all over the world is "nonsense." Thank God for that, too. Actually Mr. Putin said that himself: "Kiev is talking, thank God, about decentralization."
Mr. Snowden deserves some sort of award for getting Mr. Putin to say before a worldwide audience that mass surveillance of Russian citizens "cannot exist." Perhaps Mr. Snowden's evangelists, Glenn Greenwald and the Guardian and Bart Gellman and the Washington Post, GHC +1.81% Graham Holdings Co. U.S.: NYSE $675.00 +12.03 +1.81% April 17, 2014 4:05 pm Volume (Delayed 15m) :32,113 AFTER HOURS $675.00 0.00 0.00% April 17, 2014 4:29 pm Volume (Delayed 15m): 138 P/E Ratio 36.69 Market Cap $4.99 Billion Dividend Yield 1.51% Rev. per Employee $249,13368067066010a11a12p1p2p3p4p5p 04/18/14 Charles Fairbanks: An Independ... 04/02/14 Agreement on Audit Reports Pro... 04/01/14 Washington Voters Head to Poll... More quote details and news »GHC in 
Your Value Your Change Short position can now dutifully report it all as the God's truth and enter a Russian journalism competition.
Your Value Your Change Short position can now dutifully report it all as the God's truth and enter a Russian journalism competition.
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Gabriel García Márquez greets journalists and neighbours outside his house in Mexico City earlier this year. Photograph: Edgard Garrido/Reuters
Sometime in the very early 1970s two Australian friends returned from Colombia and asked me to ghostwrite the story of their adventures, which included a conversation with an unknown writer named Gabriel García Márquez. In an effort to overcome my reluctance they lent me an English edition of One Hundred Years of Solitude. None of us understood that they had thereby changed my life.
I tried, and failed, to help them memorialise their adventure. Worse, I "forgot" to return the book. Worse still, I arrogantly decided that this novel by this unknown writer would be of far more use to me than it could ever be to them.
I was, at the time I became a thief, stumbling to find a way to escape what Patrick White had called "the dun-coloured realism" of my own country's literature, to make the windswept paddocks on the Geelong Road, say, become luminous and new. The stories worked well enough, but I still wasn't up to the bigger challenge. The absence of placenames in the stories is a good indication of what I was avoiding, a sign that I was still too young (and damaged) to see that Myrniong was a beautiful strange name and that Wonthaggi was a poem unto itself.
It would take 10 years (some 20 stories and a novel) to free myself of this colonial bind, but the first step, without a doubt, was when I opened One Hundred Years of Solitude and read: "At that time Macondo was a village of 20 adobe houses built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point."
Thus Márquez threw open the door I had been so feebly scratching on.
In truth he had done it before that: "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."
And he would keep on doing it line after line after line. And I was drunk on Márquez. And of course I had no idea what I was reading. I knew nothing of Colombia, let alone Macado. Thus, like the foreign reader of an Australian saga, I was left free to believe that the novelist has personally invented the koala and the platypus.
Even 10 years later, when this lightning strike began to show its effects in my own work, when I could finally celebrate names like Myrniong and Wonthaggi and the attendant miracles and cruelties of my native land, I still did not have a clue about how Márquez's art grew from his own soil. I was like my friend the Australian painter Colin Lancely who loved Miró and finally, in Catalonia, those "original" Miró symbols on every corner.
So, like many of my generation, in a swirl of admiration, I learned from Márquez and was even nourished by my misunderstandings.
It is, of course, unseemly to talk about myself when the greatest writer of our time has died. If I persist it is to make a larger point, that while a writer's greatness can be marked in many ways, it can be objectively measured, across the barriers of translation and oceans, by his or her influence on succeeding generations.
Like Joyce and Eliot, Márquez gave a light to follow into the unknown. He made us braver, he returned us to the path of story and he showed us, thank you Sir, that a large and generous heart is no impediment to genius.
Peter Carey has won the Booker prize twice, for Oscar and Lucinda and True History of the Kelly Gang.
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They say it's the sincerest form of flattery. At a press conference yesterday President Obamaasserted that when it comes to ObamaCare, the Republican Party "is going through the stages of grief--anger and denial and all that stuff--and we're not at acceptance yet." We used the same gag in October, though ObamaCare supporters were the butt of our joke. And we were recycling our own material: We also invoked the Elisabeth Kübler Ross "stages of grief" way back in November 2000 in reference to Al Gore's refusal to concede his loss to George W. Bush.
Blogress Ann Althouse astutely observes that Obama skipped "bargaining," perhaps "because he doesn't want his party to have to bargain with the other side." She is put off by the analogy:
Tell someone who's angry and unaccepting of a political situation that they [sic] should go away until they've accepted what is being done to them sounds to me like taunting and bullying. There's absolutely no reason why they should back down because some of their emotions correspond to Kübler-Ross's (bogus) stages. You're saying if someone doesn't believe that a political cause is dying or feels angry at the idea that it's dying, all you need to do is wait out the process, because bargaining and depression need to occur and then you win because finally there will be acceptance. Infuriating nonsense! It only intensifies and justifies the anger. Your opponents aren't just going through a "stage," and you sound inert and supercilious talking about them that way.
Another adjective that comes to mind is "unpresidential." Obama, after all, isn't president of only Democrats, nor are only Republicans opposed to ObamaCare or worried about its consequences. To those who see an inconsistency in this column's criticizing Obama for using a gag we've employed in the past, let us clarify things with a Shermanesque answer to a question nobody is asking: We promise that we will never run for, or serve as, president.
In his opening statement, Obama asserted that "the repeal debate is and should be over. TheAffordable Care Act is working." He said the same thing on April Fool's Day, though the repetition is beginning to feel like "Groundhog Day." The assertion, and especially the reassertion, that the debate is over is self-refuting, for it is simply a statement of Obama's position in the debate.
Associated Press
An editorial in the Washington Post tries to cheer on Obama but ends up illustrating our point: "Obamacare's critics have had a bad week," the editors assert. "On Thursday, President Obama announced that 8 million people have enrolled in new health insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act's marketplaces, and a significant portion of them are young Americans."
ObamaCare's critics would counter that there is good reason to be skeptical about numbers released by an administration that does not, to put it kindly, have a record of honest dealing. And the Post immediately concedes the point: "Yes, we need to learn more about the numbers. And yes, a lot needs to happen to complete the ACA's phase-in."
The editorial continues: "The debate about how well the law is working is not over." That doesn't directly contradict Obama's claim, since one can debate "how well the law is working" without debating "repeal." But the Post then asserts that "Mr. Obama is right to insist that continued Republican demands for repeal are unproductive and unwise." If the debate were over, they'd be nonexistent.
A Politico reporter asked the president: "Do you think it's time for Democrats to start campaigning loudly and positively on the benefits of ObamaCare?" Watch him contradict himself in response: "We need to move on to something else. That's what the American people are interested in. I think that Democrats should forcefully defend [ObamaCare]. . . . I don't think we should apologize for it, and I don't think we should be defensive about it."
He says "we need to move on," and two sentences later calls for a forceful defense, before saying that "I don't think we should be defensive about it," which reminds us of Martin Short as Nathan Thurm: "I'm not being defensive! You're the one who's being defensive! Why is it always the other person who's being defensive? Have you ever asked yourself that? Why don't you ask yourself that?"
Not all Democrats agree with Obama either that the debate is over or that the not-yet-over debate is good for their party. The Boston Herald reports that Rep. Stephen Lynch, the only member of Massachusetts' all-Democrat congressional delegation to vote against ObamaCare in 2010, "now predicts the law's botched roll-out will not only cost Democrats valuable House seats but could even jeopardize their control of the Senate in this year's hotly contested midterm elections":
"We will lose seats in the House," the plain-talking South Boston Democrat said in Boston Herald Radio's studio yesterday, delivering a harsh diagnosis. "I am fairly certain of that based on the poll numbers that are coming out from the more experienced pollsters down there. And I think we may lose the Senate. I think that's a possibility if things continue to go the way they have been . . . primarily because of health care."
Lynch cuttingly questioned whether many of his colleagues who echoed President Obama's health care promises even "read through the bill really," noting that many mechanisms created to fund the law still aren't in effect.
Among them, Lynch said, is a hefty tax on employers who offer so-called "Cadillac" plans that won't come into play until 2018.
"There's all these taxes and fees that are the tough medicine, that up to now they haven't implemented. I don't know who's going to do that," Lynch said. "Maybe . . . they expect the next administration is going to put these penalties in place. I think that's the time it's going to hit the fan."
Politico reports that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has adopted a "triage" strategy of "shoring up imperiled incumbents and [supporting] only the most promising challengers. . . . The goal is to stop Republicans from padding their 17-seat edge and keep the party within striking distance of the majority in 2016, a presidential election year that could well be more favorable to Democrats."
Sounds defensive to us. The Politico piece doesn't mention ObamaCare, or any other substantive policy question for that matter, but it's difficult to reconcile the Democrats' perception of their own political peril with the president's insistence that all is well. About the closest anyone comes to an optimistic assessment of Democratic prospects is this:
Many Democrats argue that 2014 is shaping up to be very different from the last midterm election, when the party lost 63 seats and the House majority. While the political environment isn't favorable, they say, it's far less bleak than it was in 2010. . . .
"This is a completely different cycle from 2010. In 2010, the map kept expanding [for Republicans] and that's just not the case this time," said Robby Mook, a former DCCC executive director. "This is not going to be a wave election."
He has a point there. It is impossible for the Democrats to lose their House majority this year. A Republican gain of 63 seats is out of the question as a practical matter, if not as a matter of pure math. On the other hand, Republicans currently hold a 233-199 majority. There are three vacancies owing to resignations; if they are filled with representatives of the same party, the GOP advantage will be 234-201. Republicans had 241 seats after the 2010 election, so a gain of just seven would be sufficient to duplicate the 2010 outcome.
There's no guarantee that Republicans will succeed in the end in capitalizing on these apparent advantages. But neither is there any evidence that acceding to Obama's demands to "move on" from ObamaCare would be productive or wise.
Truth or Consequences
- "President Obama Details Consequences of Sequester Cuts"--headline, ABCNews.com, Feb. 24, 2013
- "Syria Crisis: US Warns Assad Regime of 'Consequences' of Breaking Chemical Weapons Deal"--headline, Independent (London), Sept. 15, 2013
- "Obama Warns Republicans of Dire Consequences"--headline, WSJ.com, Sept. 27, 2013
- "Obama Warns of 'Unemployment Cliff' Consequences"--headline, MSNBC.com, Dec. 9, 2013
- "OBAMA WARNS: 'There Will Be Consequences if People Step Over the Line' in Ukraine"--headline,BusinessInsider.com, Feb. 19, 2014
- "Obama Warns of the Consequences of the Republican Budget for the Middle Class"--headline,AllVoices.com, April 5, 2014
- "Obama Warns of 'Consequences' for Russian Actions Destabilizing Ukraine"--headline,CBSNews.com, April 16, 2014
Metaphor Alert
- "The public collides uncomfortably with the private in the [public] bathroom as it does nowhere else, and the unique behaviors we perform stem from a complex psychological stew of shame, self-awareness, design, and gender roles. If you boiled this stew down, though, it'd come down toboundaries--the stalls and dividers that physically separate us, and the social boundaries we create with our behavior when those don't feel like enough."--Julie Beck, <a href="http://TheAtlantic.com" rel="nofollow">TheAtlantic.com</a>, April 16
- "The president came into office pledged to heal the nation's suppurating political wounds. To pacify its angry heart and so on and so forth. But you don't do that when you are out raising political money. That is an exercise that calls for throwing lots of red meat to the hungry partisans and getting them to believe that unless they write those checks, the barbarians will be soon inside the gates."--Geoffrey Norman, <a href="http://WeeklyStandard.com" rel="nofollow">WeeklyStandard.com</a>, April 17
Fox Butterfield, Is That You?
"IRS Chief Committed to New Rules for Nonprofits Despite Conservative Resistance"--headline, Washington Post, April 17
"IRS Chief Committed to New Rules for Nonprofits Despite Conservative Resistance"--headline, Washington Post, April 17
Out on a Limb
"In the end, testing people on their beard preferences can probably tell you about one thing--what that group of people, and others like them, think about facial hair."--Joseph Stromberg, <a href="http://Vox.com" rel="nofollow">Vox.com</a>, April 17
"In the end, testing people on their beard preferences can probably tell you about one thing--what that group of people, and others like them, think about facial hair."--Joseph Stromberg, <a href="http://Vox.com" rel="nofollow">Vox.com</a>, April 17
We Blame George W. Bush
"White House Blames Fox for Destroying Michelle's Garden"--headline, <a href="http://DailyCaller.com" rel="nofollow">DailyCaller.com</a>, April 18
"White House Blames Fox for Destroying Michelle's Garden"--headline, <a href="http://DailyCaller.com" rel="nofollow">DailyCaller.com</a>, April 18
The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations
"Carney: The Toughest Interview Obama Had Was With Jon Stewart"--video title, <a href="http://RealClearPolitics.com" rel="nofollow">RealClearPolitics.com</a>, April 17
"Carney: The Toughest Interview Obama Had Was With Jon Stewart"--video title, <a href="http://RealClearPolitics.com" rel="nofollow">RealClearPolitics.com</a>, April 17
Math Is Hard
"California Democrats Face New Calculus After Scandals"--headline, The Wall Street Journal, April 18
"California Democrats Face New Calculus After Scandals"--headline, The Wall Street Journal, April 18
So Much for the War on Drugs
"Rep. Esty, Connecticut Officials Hold Community Conversation on Heroin"--headline, New Haven Register, April 17
"Rep. Esty, Connecticut Officials Hold Community Conversation on Heroin"--headline, New Haven Register, April 17
It's Wabbit Season!
"Lame Ducks' Wings Not Yet Clipped"--headline, Washington Post website, April 18
"Lame Ducks' Wings Not Yet Clipped"--headline, Washington Post website, April 18
Longest Books Ever Written
"Here's How Long That Teen Would Have to Pee in the Portland Reservoir to Make It Unsafe to Drink"--headline, <a href="http://Slate.com" rel="nofollow">Slate.com</a>, April 17
"Here's How Long That Teen Would Have to Pee in the Portland Reservoir to Make It Unsafe to Drink"--headline, <a href="http://Slate.com" rel="nofollow">Slate.com</a>, April 17
Hey, Kids! What Time Is It?
- "It's Time to Move From Engagement to Embedment in Digital"--headline, MediaPost.com, April 18
- "Time for America to Rethink the Way We Nuke People"--headline, Medium.com, April 18
Question and Answer--I
- "Why Chelsea Might Be Just What Hillary Needs in 2016"--headline, NationalJournal.com, April 17
- "Alert: Chelsea Clinton's Baby Can Run for President in 2052"--headline, TheWire.com, April 17
Question and Answer--II
- "Is There Room to Improve Surgical Skills and Training in Rodents?"--headline, ALNMag.com, April 18, 2014
- "Find a World-Class Doctor With a Click of the Mouse"--headline, Philippine Daily Inquirer, May 26, 2000
Question and Answer--III
- "Cindy: A Goat in Every Front Porch?"--headline, Spokesman-Review website (Spokane, Wash), April 17
- "Goat Towers: An Idea Whose Time Has Come"--headline, ModernFarmer.com, April 16
Question and Answer--IV
- "How to Fight the Preteen Power Struggle and Still Lose"--headline, Houston Press website, April 17, 2014
- "Stop Forcing Your Kids to Learn a Musical Instrument"--headline, NewRepublic.com, Sept. 16, 2013
Question and Answer--V
- "Why Are There No Butch Lesbians on Television?"--headline, Slate.com, April 17, 2014
- "For Sunday Entertainment, Butch Wins Hands Down"--headline, Pittsburgh Press, Sept. 27, 1976
Look Out Below!
"Column: Hillary Falls to Earth"--subheadline, Washington Free Beacon, April 18
"Column: Hillary Falls to Earth"--subheadline, Washington Free Beacon, April 18
It's Always in the Last Place You Look
"Biology Pupils Find Horse in Kebab Meat Test"--headline, TheLocal.de, April 16
"Biology Pupils Find Horse in Kebab Meat Test"--headline, TheLocal.de, April 16
Everything Seemingly Is Spinning Out of Control
"Domino's Rolls Out a New Pizza Crust Made Out of Chicken"--headline, Chicago Sun-Times website, April 16
"Domino's Rolls Out a New Pizza Crust Made Out of Chicken"--headline, Chicago Sun-Times website, April 16
News You Can Use
"Advice to Democrats: Don't Say 'Recovery' "--headline, Associated Press, April 18
"Advice to Democrats: Don't Say 'Recovery' "--headline, Associated Press, April 18
Bottom Story of the Day
"Report Says Obama Proposal Would Produce Larger Deficits"--headline, Boston Globe, April 18
"Report Says Obama Proposal Would Produce Larger Deficits"--headline, Boston Globe, April 18
You've Been Warrened
In discussions of the 2016 presidential race, Democrat Elizabeth Warren, the senior senator from Massachusetts, occasionally gets mentioned as a possible alternative in case Hillary Clinton doesn't work out again. Warren has a new memoir out, which is sure to raise questions as to whether she's ready for prime time. As the Puffington Host notes, she certainly wasn't five years ago:
In discussions of the 2016 presidential race, Democrat Elizabeth Warren, the senior senator from Massachusetts, occasionally gets mentioned as a possible alternative in case Hillary Clinton doesn't work out again. Warren has a new memoir out, which is sure to raise questions as to whether she's ready for prime time. As the Puffington Host notes, she certainly wasn't five years ago:
Warren has gotten an awful lot of mileage out of her popular appearances on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart." But it was something of a revolting experience the first time she prepared to sit across from the sometimes caustic comedian.
She had such a bad case of nerves before the 2009 broadcast that Warren threw up. Twice.
"I was miserable. I had stage fright--gut-wrenching, stomach-turning, bile-filled stage fright. And I was stuck in a gloomy little bathroom, about to go on The Daily Show," the Massachusetts Democrat recalls in her new book, A Fighting Chance, due out next week.
"I was having serious doubts about going through with this. I had talked to reporters and been interviewed plenty of times, but this was different. At any second, the whole interview could turn into a giant joke -- and what if the joke turned on the work I was trying to do?"
"For the zillionth time, I asked myself why on God's green earth I had agreed to sit down with Jon Stewart," Warren writes.
The Boston Globe reports that a 2012 interview didn't go well either:
The story began at McKay's, a diner in Quincy, where Warren sat for an interview of around 20 minutes with Daily Beast reporter Samuel Jacobs. Her campaign spokesman, Kyle Sullivan, sat by and recorded the interview.
The reporter "really seemed engaged," she writes. "Kyle said he thought it was a good interview. Me too."
And then, a week and a half later, she read the article.
The headline was "Warren Takes Credit for Occupy Wall Street," and it quoted Warren saying that she "created much of the intellectual foundation" for the nascent movement.
Warren could not believe she had said such a thing. She quickly contacted Sullivan, to review their recording of the interview. He already had. Indeed, the quote was correct.
"I was deeply embarrassed," Warren writes. "My words sounded so puffy and self-important, and they made it seem as if I were trying to take credit for a protest I wasn't even part of. I wondered if some alien had invaded my body and said something stupid while the real me was visiting a desert island."
"I wondered if politics turned everyone into an idiot--or was it just me?" she added. "I wanted to cover my head with a blanket and never come out."
If it's any consolation, Senator, it isn't just you.
(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Rick Wiesehan, Eric Jensen, Michele Schiesser, Phil Christenson, John Williamson, Miguel Rakiewicz, Mark Hendershot, Storrs Warinner, Michael Segal, Irene DeBlasio, Ed Lasky, Gerald Massoudi, Evan Slatis, Chad Weaver, Rod Pennington, David Hoffman, Vin Flynn, Bruce Goldman, John Hunt, Marion Dreyfus, Leonard Peirce, Brian Warner, Thom Fries, Charlie Gaylord and Sean Kelly. If you have a tip, write us atopinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
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When did you learn Spanish?
I first studied Spanish in high school, in Philadelphia. My family were not Spanish speakers.
How did you become a translator?
A friend who edited a magazine asked me to translate a piece by the Argentine Macedonio Fernández. When I said that I was a critic, not a translator, he said, “You can call yourself whatever you want; just translate the piece.” I did, and the rest is history.
How involved was García Márquez in the work of translation?
He was not particularly engaged in the process. On the other hand, I normally don’t consult with an author until I’ve finished the translation. I usually take about six months to do a novel, depending on its length and difficulty.
Did he have any rules about how he wanted his work translated?
He did not like adverbs that ended in -mente (in Spanish; the English equivalent is -ly). I sometimes felt like a contortionist as I searched out alternatives.
Which work of his did you find the hardest to translate?
Everything he wrote was gold. They were all wonderful to work on; I can’t say which was the most difficult.
Do you regret not translating “One Hundred Years of Solitude”?
Yes, of course I wish I’d translated “One Hundred Years.” I wish I’d translated everything he ever wrote.
You’ve said that translation is not about creating an equivalent text from one language to another but that it is a “rewriting of the first text.” What did you mean by that?
Translating means expressing an idea or a concept in a way that’s entirely different from the original, since each language is a separate system. And so, in fact, when I translate a book written in Spanish, I’m actually writing another book in English.
Did you feel you had to get into García Márquez’s head to understand what he meant to convey?
I’ve always felt that you get inside an author’s head by translating his or her work and beginning to see the world through the writer’s eyes. Everything you need to know about an author is in the writing.
As a reader, do you have a favorite García Márquez novel?
I think my favorite may be “Love in the Time of Cholera.”
You also translated his memoir, “Living to Tell the Tale.” How different is it to translate fiction and memoir?
I didn’t approach the memoir differently from the fiction. He used to say that writing journalism and writing fiction are on the same continuum, and he didn’t differentiate them in any hard-and-fast way.
What do you make of the “magical realism” label? Is that the right way to think of García Márquez’s work?
I don’t think the term “magic realism” is especially helpful. All fiction is make-believe that comes out of the imagination and fantasy of the writer. Fictional worlds may use elements of reality, but they are the products of an individual mind.
You’ve also translated Cervantes’s “Don Quixote.”
When [García Márquez] heard that I was going to translate “Don Quixote,” he said, “Dicen que me estás poniendo cuernos con Cervantes” — “I hear you’re two-timing me with Cervantes.” Brilliant!
Who are the young novelists writing in Spanish today that you most admire?
I’m very fond of the work of Santiago Roncagliolo, a Peruvian who currently lives in Barcelona.
What do English speakers miss by reading García Márquez’s work in English? What is lost in translation?
I try not to think about what is lost but what is gained. For the reader who doesn’t know Spanish, this is a chance to read books that otherwise would be out of reach; for English, translation adds to the expressive capability of the language by introducing elements that might not have been there otherwise.
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