Walter Cronkite, 1916-2009

UPDATE: [BELOW] "Celebrating Cronkite while ignoring what he did." Glenn Greenwald says what I wanted to say but didn't.

Walter Cronkite, one of the true giants of American broadcast journalism, passed away last night at the age of 92. Often cited in public opinion polls in the 1970s as "The Most Trusted Man in America," Cronkite was, for me, the embodiment of what a broadcast journalist should and could be. A consummate professional, he told us what was happening with a blend of integrity, humanity, warmth, and a rare and genuine gravitas.

After growing up in Houston, Cronkite attended the University of Texas at Austin, where he worked on the student newspaper The Daily Texan. Though he left UT in his junior year to become a newspaper reporter, he maintained a connection to the school throughout his life. His personal papers are housed there at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, and he also served as the voice of numerous recruiting ads for the school. While a lot of famous people have attended UT, I've always felt especially proud that Walter Cronkite was a fellow alum.

Maybe because I grew up watching Cronkite on the CBS Evening News, and his voice seems to resonate in various childhood memories, I felt a real loss upon hearing the news of his death. Not a loss for him, because he lived a tremendously rich and full life, but a loss for the rest of us. It's the simple, powerful feeling that a great and good man has passed from the world.

The last few days, I've been following the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Lunar Landing - wechoosethemoon.org is a terrific site - and it's interesting that Cronkite passed away during this time, because I have some wonderful reminiscences of the Apollo missions - lying on the floor of my old house, a kid totally enthralled by the events taking place on TV - and it seems to be Uncle Walter's voice that narrates those marvelous moments.

Cronkite loved the space program, and in the clip above, speaks eloquently of what it meant in an often dark and chaotic time in our history. Incredibly, his was probably the voice that first told millions of Americans about the darkest and brightest moments of the 20th century: World War II, the Nuremberg Trials, the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Vietnam, the Lunar Landing, Watergate, and Three Mile Island.

Here are some clips of Cronkite reporting these events. It's like a tour of 20th Century History.

The Assassination of JFK. (November 22, 1963)

Editorial on Vietnam. (February 27, 1968)

The Assassination of MLK. (April 4, 1968)

Apollo 11 Landing on the Moon. (July 20, 1969)

Death of LBJ. (January 22, 1973)

Three Mile Island. (March 30, 1979)

Other interesting videos are Cronkite in his own words and President Obama remembers Cronkite.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald eviscerates our flabby, obsequious contemporary "news" media in his post on Cronkite: "Celebrating Cronkite while ignoring what he did."

"The Vietcong did not win by a knockout [in the Tet Offensive], but neither did we. The referees of history may make it a draw. . . . We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds. . . .

"For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. . . . To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past" -- Walter Cronkite, CBS Evening News, February 27, 1968.

"I think there are a lot of critics who think that [in the run-up to the Iraq War] . . . . if we did not stand up and say this is bogus, and you're a liar, and why are you doing this, that we didn't do our job. I respectfully disagree. It's not our role" -- David Gregory, MSNBC [and current host of Meet the Press], May 28, 2008.

. . . .

Tellingly, [Cronkite's] most celebrated and significant moment -- Greg Mitchell says "this broadcast would help save many thousands of lives, U.S. and Vietnamese, perhaps even a million" -- was when he stood up and announced that Americans shouldn't trust the statements being made about the war by the U.S. Government and military, and that the specific claims they were making were almost certainly false. In other words, Cronkite's best moment was when he did exactly that which the modern journalist today insists they must not ever do -- directly contradict claims from government and military officials and suggest that such claims should not be believed. These days, our leading media outlets won't even use words that are disapproved of by the Government.

Despite that, media stars will spend ample time flamboyantly commemorating Cronkite's death as though he reflects well on what they do (though probably not nearly as much time as they spent dwelling on the death of Tim Russert, whose sycophantic servitude to Beltway power and "accommodating head waiter"-like, mindless stenography did indeed represent quite accurately what today's media stars actually do). In fact, within Cronkite's most important moments one finds the essence of journalism that today's modern media stars not only fail to exhibit, but explicitly disclaim as their responsibility.

"And that's the way it is."

Jon Stewart on the War in Gaza

Jon Stewart returned last night after a seemingly endless break . . . and he didn't flinch for a moment.

Once more, like some Jubu master, he applies a much-needed sandal slap across the face of the American media.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Strip Maul

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

I think it's so important - and admirable - for Jewish-Americans to speak out like this about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Stewart could take a lot of heat for his comments, but I think he knows that perceptive criticism of American media coverage is crucial if we're going to have a healthier and more open dialog about this ongoing crisis. The endless bloodshed between Israel and Palestine not only destroys too many innocent lives in that region, it has a direct affect on our own economy (billions of dollars a year), foreign policy, and national security.

Bravo, Jon.

When the history of early 21st-century journalism is written, how interesting (and shameful) that it basically took two comedians and a sportscaster to shake the media out of its lethargy and subservience.

Stewart continues to raise the issue of media coverage in his interview with David Gregory, the new host of Meet the Press.

A Murky Olympics

Beijing's Olympic Village - 11 Days Before the Opening Ceremony

"In Beijing, Blue Skies Prove Hard to Achieve"

Less than two weeks before the Olympics, Beijing’s skies are so murky and polluted that the authorities are considering emergency measures during the Games beyond the traffic restrictions and factory shutdowns that, so far, have failed to clear the air, state media reported on Monday.

Other murky business . . . .

"China to Limit Web Access During Olympic Games"

Since the Olympic Village press center opened Friday, reporters have been unable to access scores of Web pages — among them those that discuss Tibetan issues, Taiwanese independence, the violent crackdown on the protests in Tiananmen Square and the Web sites of Amnesty International, the BBC’s Chinese-language news, Radio Free Asia and several Hong Kong newspapers known for their freewheeling political discourse.

The restrictions, which closely resemble the blocks that China places on the Internet for its citizens, undermine sweeping claims by Jacques Rogge, the International Olympic Committee president, that China had agreed to provide full Web access for foreign news media during the Games. Mr. Rogge has long argued that one of the main benefits of awarding the Games to Beijing was that the event would make China more open.

“For the first time, foreign media will be able to report freely and publish their work freely in China. There will be no censorship on the Internet,” Mr. Rogge told Agence France-Presse just two weeks ago.

"I.O.C. Member Accuses Committee of Betrayal on Censorship Issue"

The senior International Olympic Committee member who on Wednesday made the announcement that Chinese government censors were blocking sensitive Internet sites despite assurances that Web access in China would be unfettered has accused the I.O.C. of “betrayal.”

The official, Kevan Gosper, an I.O.C. member for 31 years, told the Sydney daily The Australian on Thursday that his reputation and that of the I.O.C. had been damaged by China’s actions.

“I don’t know who did the deal,” Gosper told The Australian. “I am still finding out. I understand it was reached with very senior officials. Whoever was involved in that shift, that position should have been made known to the international media community. As a conduit to that, I should have been informed, too, instead of being isolated and given misinformation for some time.”

“China changed course at some stage,” Gosper told the newspaper. “I don’t know when. I can’t guarantee there won’t be other changes.”

Blues All 'Round My Head

Blind Willie McTell, bluesman extraordinaire

I've been sick for the last two weeks. The fun included two trips to the doctor and a mind-numbing 6-hour gig at the Emergency Room one beautiful Sunday. (All for very simple issues.)

But that's not why I haven't been blogging.

Basically, I haven't had anything to say. It seems that I've got . . . well . . . the blues.

The War in Iraq reaches another horrific milestone - 4,000 dead American soldiers. (Not to mention hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians.) But nobody really cares or wants to hear about the war:

The War Endures, but Where’s the Media?

Iraq coverage by major American news sources has plummeted, to about one-fifth of what it was last summer, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Meanwhile, the race for the Democratic nomination has devolved into a bitter, ridiculous, and seriously damaging battle. I see no light at the end of the tunnel.

Hello, President "Walnuts" McCain!

Things are so bad, I'm linking to a David Brooks article: "The Long Defeat," from today's New York Behind-the-Times.

Last week, an important Clinton adviser told Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen (also of Politico) that Clinton had no more than a 10 percent chance of getting the nomination. Now, she’s probably down to a 5 percent chance.

Five percent.

Let’s take a look at what she’s going to put her party through for the sake of that 5 percent chance: The Democratic Party is probably going to have to endure another three months of daily sniping. For another three months, we’ll have the Carvilles likening the Obamaites to Judas and former generals accusing Clintonites of McCarthyism. For three months, we’ll have the daily round of résumé padding and sulfurous conference calls. We’ll have campaign aides blurting “blue dress” and only-because-he’s-black references as they let slip their private contempt.

For three more months (maybe more!) the campaign will proceed along in its Verdun-like pattern. There will be a steady rifle fire of character assassination from the underlings, interrupted by the occasional firestorm of artillery when the contest touches upon race, gender or patriotism. The policy debates between the two have been long exhausted, so the only way to get the public really engaged is by poking some raw national wound. . . .

When you step back and think about it, she is amazing. She possesses the audacity of hopelessness.

Why does she go on like this? Does Clinton privately believe that Obama is so incompetent that only she can deliver the policies they both support? Is she simply selfish, and willing to put her party through agony for the sake of her slender chance?

The better answer is that Clinton’s long rear-guard action is the logical extension of her relentlessly political life.

For nearly 20 years, she has been encased in the apparatus of political celebrity. Look at her schedule as first lady and ever since. Think of the thousands of staged events, the tens of thousands of times she has pretended to be delighted to see someone she doesn’t know, the hundreds of thousands times she has recited empty clichés and exhortatory banalities, the millions of photos she has posed for in which she is supposed to appear empathetic or tough, the billions of politically opportune half-truths that have bounced around her head.

No wonder the Clinton campaign feels impersonal. It’s like a machine for the production of politics. It plows ahead from event to event following its own iron logic. The only question is whether Clinton herself can step outside the apparatus long enough to turn it off and withdraw voluntarily or whether she will force the rest of her party to intervene and jam the gears.

So, Bill Richardson endorsed Obama. A few weeks too late.

And James Carville called Richardson "Judas" for betraying the Clintons. Then he refused to apologize.

Thank God! I'm so sick of all these surrogates calling each other names and then having to quit or say they're sorry. If you're going to resort to schoolyard taunting, then buck up and stick by your nasty names for God's sake!

“I was quoted accurately and in context, and I was glad to give the quote and I was glad I gave it,” Mr. Carville said. “I’m not apologizing, I’m not resigning, I’m not doing anything.”

For the record, I think Hillary Clinton is a "monster." And I'm not resigning either. Deal with it.

(Well, at least she and Bill together are some form of monster species.)

Don't even know where to begin with the Jeremiah Wright stuff and Obama. Liam had a good post on it. If everyone in the U.S. was as intelligent and thoughtful as Liam, there wouldn't be a problem for Obama. (Though if everyone were like Liam, we'd have a lot of other problems! We'd all have to root for the Utah Jazz, for one thing. On the other hand, we could finally appoint Nick Cave as Ambassador to Groove-istan.)

But this is the country that re-elected George W. Bush. The country where half the Democrats don't think what Geraldine Ferraro said might be considered racist and insulting. Personally, I think the Wright stuff has probably done in Obama's candidacy. And I don't know why he didn't deal with all of this way ahead of last week. It was a major shit storm waiting to go Level 5 at any moment, yet they seemed surprised. Whatever. I'm a lousy prognosticator, so I hope I'm wrong.

Did I mention that the economy's in the toilet?

Ah . . . But at least I have the Blues. Since I didn't feel like blabbing away on my blog, I spent time creating a new playlist at Finetune: Blues All 'Round My Head.

It's still in progress, but check it out anyway.

And though I've got the blues, my face did brighten when I saw this wonderful poster today and read about the DVD release of The Phantom Empire:

For indigenous American surrealism, it’s hard to beat the Saturday matinee serials of the 1930s, and I’m not sure that “The Phantom Empire,” a 1935 release from the Poverty Row studio Mascot, can be beat at all. Very likely the world’s first singing-cowboy science-fiction adventure, this 12-episode chapterplay, directed by Otto Brower and Breezy Easton, features Gene Autry in his first starring role — as “Gene Autry,” the proprietor of Radio Ranch. This curious institution seems to be at once a working cattle concern and a full-scale broadcasting business from which Gene and his pals (including his longtime sidekick Smiley Burnett) send out a daily program of country-western songs.

Life is sweet at Radio Ranch until a band of “renegade scientists” arrives, looking for the massive radium deposits of the secret underground nation Murania, the gateway to which happens to be located in a canyon behind Gene’s ranch. Before too long, Gene and his two l’il pardners (the child actors Frankie Darro and Betsy King Ross) find themselves caught between the rampaging savants and the legions of Wagnerian Thunder Riders (accompanied by appropriate sound effects) and lumbering mechanical men (whimsical robots built for a production number in MGM’s “Dancing Lady” but cut from the final film) sent forth by Murania’s “She”-like Queen Tika (Dorothy Christy) to prevent her land of peace and plenty from being invaded by rapacious “surface men.” It’s a lot for Gene to handle, particularly since he has to get back to Radio Ranch by 2 p.m. every day for his broadcast, which he carries on as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

It is said that Wallace MacDonald, one of the serial’s five credited writers, came up with the concept while under the influence of nitrous oxide at his dentist’s office. That seems quite possible, given the screenplay’s furious imaginings, which include an interesting kind of television that requires no cameras (but has an inconvenient, floor-level circular screen) and “radium bombs” posed to destroy the entire planet.

Absurdity saves the day!

And now, back to Blind Willie McTell and Lonnie Johnson. . . .

Obama's Edge in Money and Technology

While reading various Texas newspapers today, I came across major internet ads from Barack Obama in the Houston Chronicle; Dallas Morning News; and Austin-American Statesman.

These are huge ads that take up much of the home page of the newspapers' web sites. They include short campaign videos and important information on how to caucus on Tuesday night. It's a smart, savvy expenditure of money, and another example of the Obama campaign's superior skill in using new technologies.

I can imagine political and media historians of the future writing about the importance of the internet in the 2008 presidential election and Obama's mastery of it, in much the same way that they've written for years now about television's role in the 1960 election and how the younger candidate, John F. Kennedy, understood its impact much better.

I checked other Texas papers from San Antonio, El Paso, and Corpus Christi, but they didn't have the ads. Interestingly, the ad-buy was in areas where Obama has already shown strong support, as opposed to areas where he's probably lagging behind Clinton.

Then, I checked some Ohio papers. The Cincinnati Enquirer also featured the ad, though, obviously, without the Caucus information. Cleveland and Akron newspapers didn't have it.

Adam Nagourney has a story featured on the home page of the New York Times web site, "Obama Spends Heavily to Seek Knockout Blow," which mentions the internet ads:

Mr. Obama has been particularly aggressive in these contests in using Internet tools to identify and turn out supporters, building on tools they have developed throughout the campaign. For example, anyone using the search engine Google to look for Texas caucus locations will see an advertisement from Mr. Obama’s campaign listing the caucus sites, and, after a click, inviting people to sign in with their names and e-mail addresses.

Visitors to the Web sites of The Houston Chronicle and The Cincinnati Enquirer were confronted with a moving advertisement that took up nearly half the screen that showed a video of Mr. Obama and urged voters to sign up and pledge their support to his campaign.

“We are trying to grow the electorate,” said David Plouffe, Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, referring to the Internet effort. “We have had almost 20,000 people come through our ads looking for their early vote location.”

The article's worth reading for several other reasons as well.

UPDATE: Obviously, this wasn't enough of an edge.

Obama Wins Nevada

In case you missed it in all the media coverage of the Nevada Caucus, Obama actually won more delegates.

AP: On the Democratic side, Clinton claimed the Nevada vote as a victory. "This is one step on a long journey," Clinton told cheering supporters in Las Vegas. She captured the popular vote, but Obama edged her out for national convention delegates at stake, taking 13 to her 12.

Howard Wolfson, communications director for Clinton, in The Washington Post on Wednesday, "This is a race for delegates. . . . It is not a battle for individual states."

Although they haven't said anything yet, I'm sure the New York Times, The Washington Post and other professional news organizations will cover this minor detail at some point. Right?

Total Delegate Count through the Nevada Caucus:
Obama - 38
Clinton - 36
Edwards - 18

UPDATE: The New York Times finally tackled the subject:

[T]he delegate count under the intricate rules of the caucuses appeared to favor Mr. Obama because of his support from a wide swath of the state, giving him 13 delegates compared with 12 for Mrs. Clinton.

In a statement, Mr. Obama noted that he had received one more delegate in Nevada than Mrs. Clinton because of a strong performance in precincts outside Las Vegas.

“We came from over 25 points behind to win more national convention delegates than Hillary Clinton,” Mr. Obama said, “because we performed well all across the state, including rural areas where Democrats have traditionally struggled.”

Strategists from both campaigns, as well as the Nevada Democratic Party, were poring over the returns several hours after the caucuses concluded. If the Democratic presidential race becomes a bare-knuckle fight to the nominating convention in August, the extra delegate for Mr. Obama could prove as important to him as the momentum that Mrs. Clinton might receive from winning the most votes in the state.

Still waiting on The Post.

News and No News

Glenn Greenwald at Salon on the "Surge" you haven't heard about, and why:

Is there any distinction between what a "reporter" does and what a "pundit" does covering this campaign? There doesn't seem to be any.

As but one example, consider this new daily tracking poll today from Rasumussen Reports. At least according to this poll, it is true that there has been one candidate who has been genuinely surging in the last week or two among Democratic voters nationally -- John Edwards:

Edwards -- who, just one week ago, was 10 points behind Obama nationally among Democrats -- is now only two points behind him. Less than a month ago, he trailed Clinton by 29 points. Now it's 13 points. He is, by far, at his high point of support nationwide.

Yet to listen to media reports, Edwards doesn't even exist. His campaign is dead. He has no chance. They hate Edwards, hate his message, and thus rendered him invisible long ago, only now to declare him dead -- after he came in second place in the first caucus of the campaign.

There are certainly horse-race counterarguments to all of this. This is only one poll. Obama is ahead in New Hampshire, where his support has increased, etc. etc.

But I'm not focusing on the accuracy of horse-race predictions here, but instead, on the fact that the traveling press corps endlessly imposes its own narrative on the election, thereby completely excluding from all coverage plainly credible candidates they dislike (such as Edwards) while breathlessly touting the prospects of the candidates of whom they are enamored. Their predictions (i.e., preferences and love affairs) so plainly drive their press coverage -- the candidates they love are lauded as likely winners while the ones they hate are ignored or depicted as collapsing -- which in turn influences the election in the direction they want, making their predictions become self-fulfilling prophecies.

It's just all a completely inappropriate role for political reporters to play, yet it composes virtually the entirety of their election coverage.

And now for a newsflash from across the pond . . .

BBC: Recession in the US 'has arrived'
Times (London): Merrill calls US recession
Daily Telegraph: US recession is already here, warns Merrill
Scotsman: Banking giant warns US economy in recession

Meanwhile, back at the ranch . . .

New York Times: Bush Admits Economy Faces Challenges

“We cannot take growth for granted,” Mr. Bush said in a speech to a group of business leaders in which he acknowledged that “recent economic indicators have become increasingly mixed.”

On top of it all, the beloved Golden Globe Awards show has been canceled because of some scruffy, sushi-eating, latte-drinking, left-wing, pinko writers out on strike.

(In my book, anyone who can get an awards show canceled should be considered a HERO!)

But don't despair, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have returned.

The Front-Runner

Believe it or not, October begins on Monday. Third quarter fund-raising numbers for the 2008 Presidential candidates will be released. And it’s just three and a half months before the primaries begin.

So what are analysts saying about the race for the Democratic nomination at this point? Let’s take a look:

Headline: “Clinton is the candidate to beat.”

Headline: “Clinton Appears To Be The Likely Nominee”

Headline: “Analysts And Insiders Say It's Looking Like Clinton.”

Zogby: “Given where we stand now, it's hard to see a way to stop Clinton, especially if she has a strong showing in Iowa, which she very well may have.” Zogby said Clinton swept all demographic categories, leading among all age groups, among union and non-union voters, and among self-described progressives and liberals. “This is stunning,” said Zogby. “This qualifies as juggernaut status.

Larry Sabato, Director of UVA's Center For Politics: Clinton is the candidate to beat. “Over the years, I have followed so many of these and watched the candidates and the numbers and everything. . . . I don't want to give my own Crystal Ball away, but Clinton is just running away with it. When you put all the factors together and weight them properly as I think we have done with this analysis, good luck to the others.”

Democratic strategist Donna Brazile: “I think if I were Clinton's campaign manger, I would feel comfortable now that for the last three months Hillary Clinton has been in the driver's seat.”

So, Obama, Edwards, Richardson, and the others gave it their best shot, but it looks like the Clinton Machine was simply too much for them. You wonder why they even bother staying in the race at this point?

Well, I can give you one very good reason: All of the above quotes and headlines were actually from October 2003, and they were all about Howard Dean.

Read back through the news coverage at this point in the last election and Howard Dean was the longtime front-runner, the “man to beat,” and Wesley Clark was stirring up things with his entrance into the race. In October 2003, Dean led the national polls, with Clark second, followed closely by Dick Gephardt and Joe Lieberman. (Remember Lieberman, Al Gore’s sublime choice for VP in 2000? A real, dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, Joe was. We miss you, Joe!)

John Kerry was in fifth place and couldn’t even break into double digits, eking out a measly 9%.

But National Poll numbers are never as important as poll numbers from the individual primary states, analysts like to say. So, in October 2003, Dean and Gephardt were tied in Iowa, with 26% each. Kerry was struggling at 15%. John Edwards wasn’t listed anywhere, his numbers were so pathetic.

The results in January 2004? Kerry 38%, Edwards 32%, Dean 18%, with Gephardt a distant fourth.

In New Hampshire, in October 2003, Dean was running away with the race at 40%. Kerry was tanking at 17%. Wesley Clark and John Edwards were tied at 6%.

The results in January 2004: Kerry 39%, Dean 26%, Clark 12%, Edwards 11%.

I decided to look up these quotes and headlines about Dean after I saw the following Washington Post headline: "Clinton as the Insiders' Shoo-in." (“It's official: Washington insiders believe Hillary Rodham Clinton will be the Democratic presidential nominee.")

And, of course, the guy in the White house said this week that he thought Hillary would be the nominee. I don't know about you, but the last thing I would want as a candidate right now would be George W. Bush saying he thought I would be the nominee. Hillary's staff must have ordered a lot of extra TP after that little jewel came out in the media.

Hillary Clinton may indeed wind up as the Democratic nominee. But this is a funny world we live in, and I guess I still believe that in politics, as in football, anything can happen. That's why we still play the games and still hold the elections.

We'll know more in a few months.

UPDATE: Discounting the nomination process in 2000 (Gore was a sitting VP) and 1996 (Clinton's re-election), the next example of a contested nomination for the Democrats was in 1992.

Who was the front-runner in the fall of 1991? The guy who never ran: Mario Cuomo. A November 1991 national poll in the LA Times looked like this: Cuomo 38%, Jerry Brown 11%, Douglas Wilder 7%, Clinton 6%.

The Iowa caucus that year wasn't a factor, because Iowa's senator, Tom Harkin, was a candidate and no one else contested him there. New Hampshire was the first primary test. In November 1991, Bill Clinton only had 5% support, placing him fifth behind Paul Tsongas, Bob Kerrey, Tom Harkin and Jerry Brown.

The results: Tsongas 34%, Clinton 26%, Kerrey 12%, Harkin 11%, Brown 9%.

That's an especially impressive showing for Clinton, considering that the primary took place just as the stories of his infidelities were coming out.

Other intersting poll numbers from that time period:

Gallup Poll, Oct 91: Clinton Favorability

25% Favorable; 16 Unfavorable; 17 Heard of, no opinion; 40 Never heard of

Bush 58% vs. Clinton 22%

News Stories I Haven't Seen in the U.S.

One of the greatest aspects of the internet is the ability we have now to read news from all over the world. There are a number of international news web sites that I check regularly. I just wish I could read more than English, Spanish and a touch of French. How interesting, for example, to read Hindi, Chinese, Arabic or Russian, to see what they're saying about global events. One can get English-language news from most of these areas, and it's interesting, but I always wonder how it compares to the native press. When La Reina and I returned from living in Spain for several years, one of the biggest culture shocks we received was to see how soft and incomplete news coverage had become in the U.S. In the lead-up to the war in Iraq, it became even more clear to me how important it was to get news from around the world. American Journalism reached a nadir, I believe, between 2000 and 2003. While it's gotten somewhat better since then, I still find it lacking.

One web site that particularly impressed me in the lead-up to the war was The Guardian, from the UK. I can't remember now how many important stories I saw there that eventually made it across the Atlantic - after 6 months to a year. They still offer interesting stories that don't get covered here - at least right away. Here are some bits and pieces I found recently that I haven't seen over here:

CIA tried to silence EU on torture flights
Richard Norton-Taylor

According to a secret intelligence report, the CIA offered to let Germany have access to one of its citizens, an al-Qaida suspect being held in a Moroccan cell. But the US secret agents demanded that in return, Berlin should cooperate and "avert pressure from EU" over human rights abuses in the north African country. The report describes Morocco as a "valuable partner in the fight against terrorism".

The classified documents prepared for the German parliament last February make clear that Berlin did eventually get to see the detained suspect . . .

After the CIA offered a deal to Germany, EU countries adopted an almost universal policy of downplaying criticism of human rights records in countries where terrorist suspects have been held. They have also sidestepped questions about secret CIA flights partly because of growing evidence of their complicity.

The disclosure is among fresh revelations about how the CIA flew terrorist suspects to locations where they were tortured, and Britain's knowledge of the practice known as "secret rendition". They are contained in Ghost Plane, by Stephen Grey, the journalist who first revealed details of secret CIA flights in the Guardian a year ago. More than 200 CIA flights have passed through Britain, records show.

So the Bush administration is not only trying to silence U.S. critics of its torture and rendition policies, but it's trying to shut up the Europeans as well. And though the CIA may no longer host annual dinners for New York Times reporters, they obviously have other methods of influencing the press here and abroad.

If we miss this last chance, then our soldiers will have died in vain
Timothy Garton Ash

Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has estimated that the total, eventual costs of the Iraq war, "including the budgetary, social and macroeconomic costs, are likely to exceed $2 trillion" - that's $2,000,000,000,000. That would be $2,000 a head for each of the world's poorest billion people, who live (and die) on less than $1 a day.

I thought $400,000,000,000 was bad enough, but I've never seen a figure like this in our media. Ash's column is actually in favor of keeping the U.S. and the U.K. in Iraq, but he doesn't pull any punches on how bad things have been up to this point.

Blair-Bush ties hamper Europe, says Schröder
Jess Smee

Former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder has written a damning critique of Tony Blair's special relationship with the United States, saying it hampered Britain's links with Europe.

In his memoirs, Decisions: My Life in Politics, which were launched yesterday, Mr Schröder examines Mr Blair's relationship with George Bush. . . .

"In the foreseeable future, Britain will not give Europe any momentum," he said. "Quite the opposite, the country will continue to protect its role as a transatlantic mediator, even if that is to the cost of the European decision-making process."

He described how signals from Washington that they were "not amused" by a European bid to hammer out its own security policy prompted Britain to swiftly distance itself from the plans.

Both Bill Clinton and Mr Bush found that their national interests were best served by a fragmented Europe, Mr Schröder commented, which gave way to America's "divide and rule" approach to Europe, especially in relation to military, trade and economic affairs.

"But the United States could always count on its special relationship with Britain," he wrote.

I found this interesting because it's the first time I've seen a major European leader discuss an issue that's only going to become more important in time. The creation of the European Union as an economic and political power must lead eventually, it seems, to the development of their own military and a reconsideration of their relationship with the United States. The invasion of Iraq forced a crisis on the EU as most countries were against the war, while a few became part of the Coalition of the Willing. Imagine if California and Kentucky decided to join the Chinese Coalition of the Willing to invade Country X, while the rest of the U.S. seriously opposed the war. You cannot have a successful "kingdom" if it's divided against itself. And I don't think the Eruopeans have spent several decades and gazillions of dollars establishing the EU to have it split apart so easily. Schröder's right to be concerned. What will England do once Blair is out of office? How long will NATO exist as it does now? How will the EU handle another situation like the invasion of Iraq? Will the significant cultural and historical differences between some of the countries in the EU eventually cause it to fall apart? How far will the U.S. (or China?) go to continue its "divide and rule" approach to the EU? England will be the key battleground in this geopolitical struggle. It will be interesting to see what happens over the next 10-20 years.