Detail from a Japanese subway poster, asking commuters not to leave umbrellas on trains. The slogan, "repeated prayers to the gods," sounds like the word for umbrella, "kasa"
Wiki leaks staff
The global coverage of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks has more than matched in volume the 251,287 leaked US embassy cables the whistleblowing organisation has begun to release. But there has been less attention on the disputes within WikiLeaks itself that preceded the public release of this torrent. Since September, these quarrels have led to the resignations of over half a dozen WikiLeaks staff, including its German spokesman, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who accused the group of having a “structural problem” and of being obsessed with the US. “There is a lot of resentment,” he told Der Spiegel, “and others, like me, will leave.”
Dissent focused on Assange’s autocratic style and his unilateral decision to leak information to selected media sites. Has the time now come for him to step down? After his arrest on 7th December in Britain, in connection with allegations of sexual offences in Sweden, WikiLeaks announced on Twitter that “today’s actions against our editor-in-chief Julian Assange won’t affect our operations: we will release more cables tonight as normal.” A firm indication that the release of more cables doesn’t need a ringmaster.
Meanwhile, the US state department chose the day of Assange’s arrest to announce it will host Unesco’s World Press Freedom day event in 2011 in Washington, DC. The theme? “21st Century Media: New Frontiers, New Barriers”—in the proud context of “our enduring commitment to support and expand press freedom and the free flow of information in this digital age.”
A Tweet too far?
As our deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, put it, now is a time for “grown up politics.” But has the Lib Dem leader’s message trickled through to his backroom staff? The Twitter account of one Henk van Klaveren, his former researcher and now a press officer for the Lib Dems, suggests not.
Take Van Klaveren’s riposte to England’s failed World Cup bid: “Right, that’s it, let’s get rid of Trident one nuke at a time by shooting them at Moscow.” His finest hour, though, was his 15th April tweet on David Cameron’s performance in the first of the pre-election leaders’ debates: “Cameron is a slimeball and sickening, using his own kid for electoral purposes.” Van Klaveren was, he told Prospect, Tweeting in an entirely personal capacity. Let’s hope the deputy PM, who sponsors his Commons pass, doesn’t let this dampen a promising career.
Geithner elbows in
Did US treasury secretary Tim Geithner play a crucial role in persuading the Irish government to drop its reluctance to ask for the IMF-European bailout this December? Behind the scenes, Geithner appeared keen for his Irish counterpart, Brian Lenihan, to seek the bailout, as he was worried about the impact of an Irish default on US banks. The global banking exposure to Irish debt was over $500bn, according to analysis from the Peterson Institute for International Economics. And after British and German banks, US banks had the biggest exposure.
Geithner’s fear was a cascade of credit default swaps, as had proved disastrous during the Lehman Brothers collapse. By Friday 19th November, when the markets were still fretting that Dublin would not cave in, Geithner appeared confident that they would. Asked on Bloomberg TV if the deal would go ahead, he said: “I believe they will achieve that because this government, Ireland, has demonstrated that they are willing to do some very, very difficult, very, very hard things to dig their way out of this mess.” Geithner, at least, appears to have got what he wanted. Irish taxpayers may feel differently.
Straw’s war wounds
Tough talk from Jack Straw after his Whitehead lecture at Chatham House in early December on relations with America. Asked whether Tony Blair had come under pressure from the US to shift him from the foreign office, (replacing him as foreign secretary with the underwhelming Margaret Beckett), Straw said that Blair had acknowledged later that “he had been plain stupid to move me. And I agreed with him.”
Straw, who is still MP for Blackburn, but who has stepped down from being shadow justice secretary, admitted that “I have scars from the [faulty] intelligence on Iraq.” He described the decision to invade as “a rational judgement at the time, but not the only one possible.” Less diplomatically, he warned that: “We can’t rely on them [the US]. Our interests are not always identical.” President Obama was wrong, he suggested, to call David Cameron an insubstantial prime minister, as has been reported. “I don’t agree with him [Cameron], but he’s not a lightweight.”
Screening Chris Patten
With Michael Lyons due to step down as BBC chairman in May, former Conservative minister and Oxford University chancellor Chris Patten has confirmed his application for the position and is thought to be a strong candidate. Senior management at the BBC, Prospect gathers, are excited by the prospect of a man some are calling “Christopher Bland mark two” getting the job: a big-hitter with a big personality and a distinguished record, plus both the connections and the hardheadedness to be an ambassador for the Beeb in troubled times.
Might Patten be a little too sympathetic towards the top management for the tastes of the Tory-led coalition, though, given the party’s BBC-bashing tendencies? Patten is certainly less likely than some to start slashing and burning on arrival: something that Mark Thompson in particular might appreciate, given his £800,000-plus salary and the political capital that a headline-chasing chairman could make by throwing him to the austerity wolves.
Leading lefty flees Libs
One of the biggest names to switch allegiance from Labour to the Lib Dems in the wake of the Iraq war was the American sociologist and LSE professor Richard Sennett, author of acclaimed works such as Respect and The Corrosion of Character. Now Sennett has revealed to Prospect that he is turning back to Labour, horrified by the coalition. “My new year’s resolution,” he noted, “is to quit the Lib Dems and rejoin the Labour party.” The “Orange Book” Liberals have clearly won, he says, and they are “tone deaf to ordinary people.” He is most disappointed with Vince Cable “who should know better”—but says he didn’t really expect any different from the deputy prime minister: “There are a million Nick Cleggs.”
One to watch
A new name is being talked about as one of Ed Miliband’s secret weapons against the coalition: Mark Serwotka. General secretary since 2000 of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), the trade union for civil servants, Serwotka recently declared that “strikes are inevitable.” He is currently on a collision course with the government over cuts to public-sector jobs, and has offended almost everyone: not just Francis Maude, cabinet office minister, but former friends across the hard left and the unions. But although some see his firebrand style as outdated, he will play a key role in testing the appetite for strikes—and potentially in providing private intelligence to Ed Miliband’s office on the nature of the cuts. And he’s attractive to a surprising range of audiences. His recent address to a gathering of City fund managers left them impressed with his intelligence and force of personality, even though they clashed over policy.
Serwotka, born in 1963, started work in his local benefits office in Aberdare, South Wales, aged just 16. He was an orphan, adopted from a Catholic orphanage by a Polish father and a Welsh mother. The Tablet has called him one of Britain’s 100 most influential Catholics. Known perjoratively as “Marek” by his detractors, he has antagonised the leaderships of many other key public sector unions. They say that he has provoked the government into much more radical cuts than they previously thought likely. But he lacks powerful internal opposition within his union.
The PCS is not affiliated to Labour, nor has Labour relied on PCS for support. But if Ed Miliband is able to engage Serwotka privately to get insights into the proposed cuts and their impact, the union leader could prove an important ally.
One letter from disaster
As the world’s leaders look ahead to the annual World Economic Forum in Davos at the end of January, the more superstitious might want to beware the example of Icelandic president Ólafur Grímsson, who at January 2010’s gathering singled out for contempt a British joke: “What’s the difference between Iceland and Ireland? One letter and six months.” As became clear, the line was just too good for fate to resist.
Wiki leaks staff
The global coverage of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks has more than matched in volume the 251,287 leaked US embassy cables the whistleblowing organisation has begun to release. But there has been less attention on the disputes within WikiLeaks itself that preceded the public release of this torrent. Since September, these quarrels have led to the resignations of over half a dozen WikiLeaks staff, including its German spokesman, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who accused the group of having a “structural problem” and of being obsessed with the US. “There is a lot of resentment,” he told Der Spiegel, “and others, like me, will leave.”
Dissent focused on Assange’s autocratic style and his unilateral decision to leak information to selected media sites. Has the time now come for him to step down? After his arrest on 7th December in Britain, in connection with allegations of sexual offences in Sweden, WikiLeaks announced on Twitter that “today’s actions against our editor-in-chief Julian Assange won’t affect our operations: we will release more cables tonight as normal.” A firm indication that the release of more cables doesn’t need a ringmaster.
Meanwhile, the US state department chose the day of Assange’s arrest to announce it will host Unesco’s World Press Freedom day event in 2011 in Washington, DC. The theme? “21st Century Media: New Frontiers, New Barriers”—in the proud context of “our enduring commitment to support and expand press freedom and the free flow of information in this digital age.”
A Tweet too far?
As our deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, put it, now is a time for “grown up politics.” But has the Lib Dem leader’s message trickled through to his backroom staff? The Twitter account of one Henk van Klaveren, his former researcher and now a press officer for the Lib Dems, suggests not.
Take Van Klaveren’s riposte to England’s failed World Cup bid: “Right, that’s it, let’s get rid of Trident one nuke at a time by shooting them at Moscow.” His finest hour, though, was his 15th April tweet on David Cameron’s performance in the first of the pre-election leaders’ debates: “Cameron is a slimeball and sickening, using his own kid for electoral purposes.” Van Klaveren was, he told Prospect, Tweeting in an entirely personal capacity. Let’s hope the deputy PM, who sponsors his Commons pass, doesn’t let this dampen a promising career.
Geithner elbows in
Did US treasury secretary Tim Geithner play a crucial role in persuading the Irish government to drop its reluctance to ask for the IMF-European bailout this December? Behind the scenes, Geithner appeared keen for his Irish counterpart, Brian Lenihan, to seek the bailout, as he was worried about the impact of an Irish default on US banks. The global banking exposure to Irish debt was over $500bn, according to analysis from the Peterson Institute for International Economics. And after British and German banks, US banks had the biggest exposure.
Geithner’s fear was a cascade of credit default swaps, as had proved disastrous during the Lehman Brothers collapse. By Friday 19th November, when the markets were still fretting that Dublin would not cave in, Geithner appeared confident that they would. Asked on Bloomberg TV if the deal would go ahead, he said: “I believe they will achieve that because this government, Ireland, has demonstrated that they are willing to do some very, very difficult, very, very hard things to dig their way out of this mess.” Geithner, at least, appears to have got what he wanted. Irish taxpayers may feel differently.
Straw’s war wounds
Tough talk from Jack Straw after his Whitehead lecture at Chatham House in early December on relations with America. Asked whether Tony Blair had come under pressure from the US to shift him from the foreign office, (replacing him as foreign secretary with the underwhelming Margaret Beckett), Straw said that Blair had acknowledged later that “he had been plain stupid to move me. And I agreed with him.”
Straw, who is still MP for Blackburn, but who has stepped down from being shadow justice secretary, admitted that “I have scars from the [faulty] intelligence on Iraq.” He described the decision to invade as “a rational judgement at the time, but not the only one possible.” Less diplomatically, he warned that: “We can’t rely on them [the US]. Our interests are not always identical.” President Obama was wrong, he suggested, to call David Cameron an insubstantial prime minister, as has been reported. “I don’t agree with him [Cameron], but he’s not a lightweight.”
Screening Chris Patten
With Michael Lyons due to step down as BBC chairman in May, former Conservative minister and Oxford University chancellor Chris Patten has confirmed his application for the position and is thought to be a strong candidate. Senior management at the BBC, Prospect gathers, are excited by the prospect of a man some are calling “Christopher Bland mark two” getting the job: a big-hitter with a big personality and a distinguished record, plus both the connections and the hardheadedness to be an ambassador for the Beeb in troubled times.
Might Patten be a little too sympathetic towards the top management for the tastes of the Tory-led coalition, though, given the party’s BBC-bashing tendencies? Patten is certainly less likely than some to start slashing and burning on arrival: something that Mark Thompson in particular might appreciate, given his £800,000-plus salary and the political capital that a headline-chasing chairman could make by throwing him to the austerity wolves.
Leading lefty flees Libs
One of the biggest names to switch allegiance from Labour to the Lib Dems in the wake of the Iraq war was the American sociologist and LSE professor Richard Sennett, author of acclaimed works such as Respect and The Corrosion of Character. Now Sennett has revealed to Prospect that he is turning back to Labour, horrified by the coalition. “My new year’s resolution,” he noted, “is to quit the Lib Dems and rejoin the Labour party.” The “Orange Book” Liberals have clearly won, he says, and they are “tone deaf to ordinary people.” He is most disappointed with Vince Cable “who should know better”—but says he didn’t really expect any different from the deputy prime minister: “There are a million Nick Cleggs.”
One to watch
A new name is being talked about as one of Ed Miliband’s secret weapons against the coalition: Mark Serwotka. General secretary since 2000 of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), the trade union for civil servants, Serwotka recently declared that “strikes are inevitable.” He is currently on a collision course with the government over cuts to public-sector jobs, and has offended almost everyone: not just Francis Maude, cabinet office minister, but former friends across the hard left and the unions. But although some see his firebrand style as outdated, he will play a key role in testing the appetite for strikes—and potentially in providing private intelligence to Ed Miliband’s office on the nature of the cuts. And he’s attractive to a surprising range of audiences. His recent address to a gathering of City fund managers left them impressed with his intelligence and force of personality, even though they clashed over policy.
Serwotka, born in 1963, started work in his local benefits office in Aberdare, South Wales, aged just 16. He was an orphan, adopted from a Catholic orphanage by a Polish father and a Welsh mother. The Tablet has called him one of Britain’s 100 most influential Catholics. Known perjoratively as “Marek” by his detractors, he has antagonised the leaderships of many other key public sector unions. They say that he has provoked the government into much more radical cuts than they previously thought likely. But he lacks powerful internal opposition within his union.
The PCS is not affiliated to Labour, nor has Labour relied on PCS for support. But if Ed Miliband is able to engage Serwotka privately to get insights into the proposed cuts and their impact, the union leader could prove an important ally.
One letter from disaster
As the world’s leaders look ahead to the annual World Economic Forum in Davos at the end of January, the more superstitious might want to beware the example of Icelandic president Ólafur Grímsson, who at January 2010’s gathering singled out for contempt a British joke: “What’s the difference between Iceland and Ireland? One letter and six months.” As became clear, the line was just too good for fate to resist.
