Russia Military Maneuvers

Feb. 18 - Here's something I never expected: Sweden calls for common U.S.-EU stance against Russia.

Mr. Powell offered muted criticism of Russian domestic and foreign policy during a January meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, and Mrs. Freivalds said EU leaders are trying to formulate a new strategy for dealing with Russia.

"The United States and the European Union have to work hard to cooperate on Russia," Mrs. Freivalds said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "We share some values, and we are not sure that Russia today shares those values."

When Washington and Brussels present the same message, she added, "it is much more likely to be heeded."

Her remarks came as Mr. Putin and top Russian defense officials gathered in the Barents Sea to observe what are being billed as the country's largest military exercises in more than two decades.

Read it while I go into the bedroom just to see if I'm still there sleeping. If I'm not there, I'm checking the British press.

(Sorry if the flippancy seems irreverent, but I am shocked, and I don't mean in the Claude Rains sense.)

Also, be sure to read Paul's newswatch compilation of the, er, evolving story about Putin's participation in the military exercises in the Arctic seas. It's significance sure changed after I read the Washington Times piece.

UPDATE: Nothing in the Telegraph (UK) but they are somewhat gleeful about the miltary exercise spectable Putin's nuclear show blows up in his face:

Russia's biggest military exercise since the collapse of communism flopped yesterday, ruining an attempt to project Vladimir Putin as a global leader and reaffirm the country's status as a nuclear superpower.

With Mr Putin and a host of military officials watching from the nuclear submarine Arkhangelsk, two intercontinental ballistic missiles went wrong during a firing from a submarine believed to be the Novomoskovsk. They were aimed at Kamchatka on the Pacific coast. A malfunctioning satellite was blamed.

I'm not so sanguine as the Telegraph; maybe it's my Inner Nervous Nellie popping up after years of dormancy or I've seen Dr. Strangelove a few times too many, but what if one of those missiles had gone astray into, say Alaska? (see the map I've so thoughtfully provided.)

To paraphrase from Vern Partlow's Talking Atom blues, You know, Sweden said there were scared, And if they're scared, I'm scared. Actually, I'm not, but I am working slightly harder at being my usual calm, cheerful self. /mendacity

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Journalistic fascism

Feb. 3 - Interesting column by Martin Kettle of the Guardian (UK) about some of the lessons and reactions to the Hutton Inquiry The threat to the media is real. It comes from within:

[Former BBC Today producer Rod] Liddle's article in the current Spectator exemplifies this approach, and incarnates a great deal of what is wrong with modern journalism. Liddle's article is wrong on the facts (Lord Franks, chairman of the inquiry into the Falklands war, was not a judge, much less a law lord), sneering (Lord Hutton's Ulster brogue is mocked, and he is described as anachronistic and hopelessly naive), and unapologetic (the best Liddle can manage is that Gilligan's famous 6.07am report went "a shade too far"). Above all, Liddle's piece is arrogant, embodied in his remarkable final sentence: "I think, as a country, we've had enough of law lords."

Think about the implications of that. To Liddle's fellow practitioners of punk journalism, it can be excused as sparky, or justified on the grounds that it is what a lot of other people are saying. To criticise it is to be condemned as boring or, like Hutton, hopelessly naive. To me, though, it smacks of something bordering on journalistic fascism, in which all elected politicians are contemptible, all judges are disreputable and only journalists are capable of telling the truth, even though what passes for truth is sometimes little more than prejudice unsupported by facts.

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Germany seeks new partners

Feb. 3 - Germany has signaled it is disengaging from some of its closeness to France and seeks closer ties with Britain, the U.S., and perhaps Poland:

They said the row with Washington over Iraq had been "catastrophic" for Berlin and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder had become "a prisoner" of President Jacques Chirac's campaign to oppose the war to topple Saddam Hussein last year. (Link included)

"We were more dependent on the French in that situation. But this will not be a permanent situation," said one authoritative source.

Another official explained: "We have to be careful that we are not identified with every word that the French president utters. We must have our own identity and be a little more clever."

[...]

Germany has no intention of abandoning the close partnership with France, a central plank of its foreign policy. Any change, if it comes, is likely to be gradual.

But Berlin apparently wants to redesign the once all-powerful "Franco-German motor" to include Britain and perhaps Poland.

"German-French understanding is a necessary condition to move Europe forward, but it is not sufficient," said one senior official. "The European project cannot move without Britain and Poland. This is not always understood in France."

Foreign Affairs Minister Jack Straw noted action such as the pressure put on Iran to be honest about their nuclear weapons programme by Britain, France and Germany thorugh the EU, but the article counters by citing the surprise move by Libya to voluntarily disarm, an action in which Britain proceeded without involving the EU.

Sources say that Germany will not oppose sending NATO peacekeeping forces into Iraq (although not German troops) and may also offer limited help in Iraq (presumably in reconstruction projects.)

UPDATE: Tim Blair notes that they should be embarrassed to admit they were pushed around by the French.

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The Corruption of Chirac

Feb. 3 - I followed a link at Mischa's to an article in Prospect Magazine about a French magistrate, Eva Joly, who investigates corruption, and the harrassment she receives. The allegations in the article were shocking, and I found it hard to believe until recent events provided confirmation.

The Daily Telegraph (UK) reports that Chirac has seized control over the investigation of Alain Juppe, France's former prime minister, and 21 of Chirac's former aides and business partners, on illegal party funding during the 80's and 90's.

The magistrate who ruled in the investigation has, like M Joly, been subject to harrassment, says her office and computers have been broken into, her phone tapped and that she received a death threat before passing sentence on Juppe.

Now Chirac has stepped in:

M Chirac seized charge of an inquiry into alleged telephone taps, break-ins and violent threats against judges investigating Alain Juppe, the former prime minister and his heir apparent, convicted on Friday of organising illegal party funding.

The extraordinary intervention came the day after the justice ministry announced it would investigate the allegations.

His gazumping of his own ministry indicates the seriousness with which he is taking the insinuation that he or his allies tried to pressure the judges in the Juppe case.

[...]

The allegations lend a murky aura to a long legal process which has bedevilled M Chirac and his entourage. They are also consistent with complaints by other judges who have threatened the highest levels of the establishment.

Eric Halphen, a magistrate who spent seven years investigating alleged kickbacks paid to M Chirac's staff for building contracts while he was mayor of Paris, left the legal profession in 2002 and wrote a book describing what he endured. He said threatening notes were left on his windscreen and his telephone was tapped.

M Halphen summoned the president as a witness in the case, but after months of delay M Chirac succeeded in having the law on presidential immunity changed to protect him from legal suits while in office.

Several other cases against M Chirac remain in legal limbo because of his immunity. These include charges that he fiddled his grocery bill at the Paris town hall.

The leader (editorial) in the Telegraph notes that Chirac was seen as a "decent" man compared to Mitterand and this prediction:

A Gallic shrug may greet this latest evidence of venality and harassment of those who seek to uncover and punish it. But do not be surprised if voters react in disgust by voting for Jean-Marie Le Pen's far-Right Front National, which offers itself as a clean alternative to the mainstream parties, in forthcoming elections for regional councils and the European Parliament.

The Telegraph is more optimistic than I. What good is a charge of corruption if they can't connect Vice-President Dick Cheney and Halliburton? What good is wiretapping and illegal fund raising if they can't connect it to Watergate?

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Andrew Gilligan

Feb. 1 - Andrew Gilligan, the BBC reporter who claimed the Blair government had "sexed up" the weapons's dossier, was facing disciplinary action prior to his resignation last Friday. BBC chiefs vent anger on 'devious' Gilligan saying that his assurances that his claims were correct and refusing to admit he had been speculating when the government first challenged his assertions led to Dr. David Kelly's death, the Hutton Inquiry and the crisis at the BBC.

Gilligan for months insisted to BBC executives that his reporting had been a fair and accurate account of what Dr Kelly told him during their fateful meeting in May 2003.

One said: "When Richard Sambrook [the head of news] investigated and saw that his notes of the meeting were inadequate, Gilligan said, 'You know what notes are ... they are only partial'. He then gave his word that all his reports were accurate."

BBC executives learned that was incorrect only when Gilligan appeared before the Hutton inquiry on September 17, 2003, and made an unambiguous apology for his infamous 6.07am Today broadcast on May 29, 2003. In this report, he accused the Government of inserting intelligence into the Iraq dossier which it "probably knew" to be wrong.

One executive said yesterday: "He should have been more forthcoming about the weaknesses in his story. He left that far too late. He was also wrong to 'out' David Kelly as a source for another report on weapons of mass destruction.

"The disciplinary procedure could have resulted in him being sacked. At the very least he would have been seriously reprimanded for his shortcomings."

Gilligan will not receive severance pay because he failed to give an undertaking not to discuss the corporation's affairs in public. He had a negotiated an agreement to sell his story to another publication prior to his last meeting BBC executives, and even announced his resignation through the Press Association rather than the BBC.

Short version: the BBC stuck its neck out for him, he continued lying to them, then betrayed them, and is now selling his story to the highest bidder.

A defiant Gilligan insisted that he could not be held responsible for the downfall of Mr Dyke. He told the Telegraph: "Ninety per cent of my original story was right. I have admitted that the 6.07 broadcast was a bad idea.

"No one has ever told me about disciplinary action. That is not the reason why I left the BBC. I had my own reasons for going and I wanted to go quickly.

"By Friday morning I could not see myself having a useful role at the BBC. I knew I had to go and the only question was whether I should resign with dignity or try clinging on. I did not want to stay and be regarded as the man who brought down Greg Dyke. Greg Dyke brought down Greg Dyke."

What a guy!

AP reports that the entire BBC board is considering quitting. They still fail to understand where they went wrong; it isn't about protecting whistleblowers, it's about fabricating a statement from someone who was not a whistleblower. It's about the lying and the assumption that they are entitled to lie. Astonishing.

UPDATE: Jay analyzes the accusation of Hutton Whitewash:

In a sense this argument is really about whether or not it is possible to come up with facts of the matter when ideas like truth are seen as the products of given agendas.

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