A new news beast: Newsweek goes digital

In an interview that could easily have passed for Fox talking to Murdoch, the Newsweek Daily Beast Company sat down with its editor-and-chief and founder Tina Brown to discuss the end of print at the venerable magazine Newsweek.  Newsweek fell into the hands of Brown and Beast two years ago but have been unable to resist sliding circulation and rising costs. The last print edition will be December 31.

Brown was on “Newsbeast” this week seated next to the company’s new CEO Baba Shetty as they said why Newsweek was shedding staff and its print publication.  For Brown, it about protection, both of journalists and content. Senior suited-up columnist John Avlon lollypopped his bosses with the opening question phrased as a statement: “So we are taking the bull by the horns, going all digital…”

“We are,” replied Brown.  “We must embrace the future.”  
Newsweek was 80 years old, she said. and it was time to start looking at the next 80 years.  

Brown, like many editors before her, conceded defeat for print.  

The industry has reached a tipping point and it was no longer a case if but when, she said.

And “when” said Brown, might as well be “now”.

“We decided to take away the when and…embrace it, be ready for it.”

Avlon turned the discussion to Shetty with management speak.

“Being proactive not reactive is always a good idea…”

“Yes,” replied Shetty, who unlike Avlon, was dressed down with a jumper and shirt.

The new CEO, a “brand guru”, said Newsweek was a great brand and a powerful media icon but was encumbered by “the form factor” and its economics. Taking away issues of physical printing distribution and circulation by porting the core product to digital would be “incredibly liberating”, Shetty said.

Consumers were moving to digital and advertisers would want to be there to grab these audiences, he said. Tablet devices, web usage for news, and social news meant it made perfect sense for Newsweek to now go “completely native on digital”. 

Brown gave an economic rationale to back it up. She said it cost Newsweek $42m a year to print, manufacture and distribute "before you’ve even paid one writer or one intern".
“That’s an enormous albatross,” Brown said.

“We thought it was more important to protect the journalists, the contents, the photographers, the ideas.” 

Brown said she wanted a digital Newsweek to focus on the marketplace of ideas.

But how then, would it be different to the Daily Beast, also entirely online, asked Avlon.

Shetty said they were “incredibly complementary".

In four years, the Beast had gone from a start-up to a site with 15 million visitors a month, up 70 percent since 2011, a huge spike in readership and engagement.

Many were “lean forward, participatory, multiple visits a day,” Shetty said. “The Daily Beast is indispensable in many people’s information diet.”

A healthy portion of this traffic was generated each week by Newsweek’s strong original journalism. Newsweek, said Shetty, “a step removed”,  offered more considered, thoughtful, long-form journalism. 

Brown said the the Daily Beast and Newsweek spoke to “the same reader in different moods”.  The Daily Beast offered news that was “hot and happening” while Newsweek appealed to the ipad reader on the train home. But, she said, they offered the same sensibility: reflection, context and “a thorough look at what was happening in the world”. 

Avlon steered the conversation to the new brand: Newsweek Global.  CEO Shetty called it a terrific new perspective and described who the product would appeal to: “The mobile, highly informed, highly engaged, person very aware of what is happening over the globe.”

He said removing legacy print, meant Newsweek could re-interpret what it could be in pure digital form. Brown said the Daily Beast now appealed to a similar global reader who lived in India, London or Brazil.

Brown said one of the focuses was on “really powerful live events” including ones they had organised like Women in the World. which has an associated foundation which last week launched a campaign for education of girls in Pakistan with Angelina Jolie, hot on the heels of the shooting of 14-year-old education campaigner Malala Yousafzai.

All aspects of the company, said Brown were “now playing together” but print was the anomaly. Getting rid of it went with “enormous regret” as some “incredible brilliant talent” would be leaving the company but it was “the right decision for the company.” Avlon concluded that in terms of content that was “good news for journalists” and an exciting new opportunity” before nodding to the camera to end the interview.

The Daily Beast article that went with the video, gave some statistics to back up the “tipping point” :

There are now 70m tablet users in the US, up from 13m in two years. A further explosion of use is likely, especially as two in five Americans get their news online, a number that is also growing.

“Exiting print is an extremely difficult moment for all of us who love the romance of print and the unique weekly camaraderie of those hectic hours before the close on Friday night,” the article concluded. "But as we head for the 80th anniversary of Newsweek next year we must sustain the journalism that gives the magazine its purpose—and embrace the all-digital future.”

Dear Minister (Redacted): Assange and FOI

On Thursday, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade published their answer to a Fairfax Freedom of Information two-fold request on Julian Assange. The first part was for briefings to Foreign Minister Bob Carr about Wikileaks, Assange and Bradley Manning. The second was cable traffic (the kind made freely available by Wikileaks) between the embassy in Washington and the department on Wikileaks, Assange and Manning in the months February to April this year. The aim of the FOI was not to release Assange but to embarrass the government by proving Bob Carr a liar. Fairfax's gotcha today was DFAT’s long-held concern Assange would be extradited to the US was “at odds with Carr's repeated dismissal of such a prospect.” More importanly however, DFAT's heavily redacted response gives much insight into Australian concerns about Assange

The response started with a letter addressed to Carr on March 2. The letter was written by the department’s secretary Dennis Richardson who was also ambassador to the US for four years to 2009.  While this was before the period of Assange’s international infamy, Richardson presumably had some sage advice on how to deal with the Assange dilemma. “Dear Minister” it began followed by five pages all marked “redacted”.  Some tantalising notes were left on the last page. Consider, Stephenson wrote to Carr in note s22.1(a)(ii), on any given day, the department is dealing with around 1500 consular cases. The appendix s22.1(a)(ii) also deals with workload and said consular work was increasingly complex due to the travel behaviour of Australians and the number of cases raised to the media which require ministerial involvement. We don’t know where this was leading as the next page was redacted.

There followed a suggested response to possible questions on Assange lawyer Jennifer Robinson whose name was included on a Heathrow “inhibited travel” list.  This was to confirm events but to deny any Australian involvement or British restrictions on her travel. The problem was caused by “management of Ms Robinson’s check-in” and “inadvertent comments by airport security and other staff”. They said check-in staff eventually cleared Robinson to travel and she boarded the flight as planned. The talking point ended “I hope this will put all the conspiracy theories to rest.”

Those conspiracy theories had to wait for the next page which was redacted. The next point was a problem of Carr's own making. A month prior to becoming Foreign Minister, Carr used his own blog to decry the role of judges as prosecutors in the Swedish legal system as “an outrage by Australian standards”. The possible question was shouldn’t the Government do more to stop him from being extradited there. The answer was whatever his opinions as a blogger, as a representative of the Australian Government, he had to express “confidence in the integrity of judicial processes of Sweden”. 

The matter of a US indictment should only be discussed “if raised”. The response should be that while the US is investigating Wikileaks there was no announcement of any action against Assange and the US has not advised Australia of any such action though “the details of our conversations are confidential”.  Australia refuses to comment on the leaked emails from Stratfor which spoke of the sealed indictment.  Two other issues to discuss only "if raised" were the “temporary surrender” extradition mechanism and the likelihood of Australia extraditing him to the US if he returned here.

The briefing said Assange was welcome home “once international orders preventing his travel have been lifted”. Any extradition from here was a matter for the Attorney-General though Assange could fight such an order in Australian courts. There was also an ambiguous answer to avoid confirming Assange’s eligibility to run as an Australian Senator as “suggested on Twitter”. It was Wikileaks’ own suggestion and while the response was to be handballed to the A-G, Senator Carr’s own opinion was that “Assange has not been charged with an offence in Sweden or elsewhere”.

There follows background on the legal proceedings. British police issued Assange with a European Arrest Warrant in December 2010 which a court found valid two months later. Assange appealed to the High Court which upheld the decision in November 2011. However they allowed an appeal to the Supreme Court on the legal matter of whether a prosecutor was a “judicial authority” who could issue an EAW under UK law. After hearings in February, the Supreme Court has reserved its opinion. If the appeal is successful, Assange is free to walk. If it is unsuccessful, Assange still has one last legal avenue open, the European Court of Human Rights.

The Department said they had spoken to Assange twice by phone, twice in person, facilitated a visit by his mother and had attended all legal proceedings. If he ends up in Sweden, he would probably be kept in detention while any trial was pending. As for the US, there a Grand Jury was deliberating the Wikileaks cablegate affair in secret. Wikileaks was accused of providing a rainbow table to crack passwords in Manning’s pre-trial. After Wikileaks released the Stratfor email, Australia sought clarification on whether there was a sealed indictment for Assange. The request was denied due to the secrecy arrangements of the Grand Jury. 

The secrecy of DFAT files on Assange continued with 10 more redacted pages. There followed a cable from Washington marked “routine, information only”. The cable provided a summary of the Manning case which described in great detail the links to Assange and Wikileaks. These included file-sharing, contact details and on-line chat. Implicit in the cable was that prosecutors were building a case against Assange. 

This possibility was made explicit in another similarly undated “routine” cable which said the US has been investigating Assange for more than 12 months. An unconfirmed grand jury was empanelled in Virginia in 2010 but this has been a Kafkaesque black hole for information with no one involved allowed to talk about it and the US refusing to even confirm its existence. The cable also quotes commentary which suggests a successful US prosecution of Assange would be “challenging and complicated”. Possible charges could include accessing computers without authorisation, theft of US property, disclosing prohibited material or criminal conspiracy to “defraud the US”. Any prosecution would not tackle First Amendment rights even though as a non-American he may not be covered. 

A few more redacted pages occurred before more routine cables.They quoted a Wikileaks press release denouncing UNESCO for banning Wikileaks personnel from a conference about Wikileaks. They pointed out the conference was organised by “Washington insiders, cold war ideological allies (such as Freedom House and the disgraced IAPA) and U.S. mainstream media groups.” When media asked the US State Department, spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said given US’s state of “suspended animation” in UNESCO, she was “not sure we’re going to have much to say about it."

Another cable gave an update on the Manning arraignment. With the complexity of the case of 40,000 documents containing 400,000 pages, it would mean an August start date. Manning would be detained for 800 days by the time it starts. It reported a voice from the gallery shouting “Judge, isn’t a soldier required to report a war crime?” It also reported the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights Michael Ratner’s comment that prosecutors were “bludgeoning Manning to accept a plea where he would then implicate Assange”. 

Then it was back to the leaked Stratfor emails. On 27 February Wikileaks began publishing the Global Intelligence Files based on five million emails from a company called Stratfor which provides subscription-based analysis of geo-political issues. It was a private sector Cablegate which Wikileaks publicised with newspaper partners. The cable did not mention the “sealed indictment” but did say Australia was mentioned twice. The first, an East Asia Monitor Guidance, talked about Australia’s submarine crisis and the second from a “well connected former Senator” discussed Chinese mining interests. 

A cable followed that explicitly mentioned the Stratfor “sealed indictment” email. The email’s author Fred Burton was an ex-deputy chief of US counter-terrorism with “close ties” to the intelligence and government network. The email was not official confirmation and the cable author said Burton might be mistaken due to a draft indictment “commonly used by prosecutors to ‘game out’ possible charges.” Either way the silence of the Grand Jury made everything just speculation.

There was a long explanation why Grand Juries operate in secrecy. It was imported from English law, it protected witnesses, it would lessen the risk someone indicted would flee, and lastly it would prevent someone tried but exonerated from “being held up to public ridicule”. While Assange might have coped with the indignity, it is also designed to prevent “satellite litigation in advance of judgement”. 

More cables discussed new allegations in the Manning case. Firstly, that he provided material assistance to the enemy, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). It discussed in detail the legal arguments and the media commentary with many saying the case was weak and questioned the benefits to AQAP.  Another cable followed that talked about the “rainbow table” allegation. 

Another one discussed the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture’s report to the UN on Manning (Manning data starts page 74). Juan Mendez said Manning’s detention was punitive but he did not accept monitored access to the prisoner. It had a letter from the Department of Defense to Mendez saying they were satisfied with the detention and had placed him on death watch. 

The last significant cable was about Wikileaks’ request for the US to publicise details of Manning’s court martial. The Center for Constitutional Rights' Michael Ratner said the public had First Amendment and common law rights to access to criminal trials. Ratner quoted Circuit Judge Damon Keith’s dictum “democracies die behind closed doors”. He noted Mendez’s objections and said the public had a “compelling interest” in the Manning case. Particularly Assange had a “unique and obvious interest” and “it appears” federal prosecutors had a sealed indictment against him. 

The last cable in the document about Jennifer Robinson’s flight difficulty was completely redacted. By my counting 39 pages out of 125 were redacted showing Assange has been a major topic of discussion and concern for DFAT. Yet there is much revealing about what is left in. Australia almost certainly knows about the sealed indictment but is content to hide behind legal niceties from confirming it.  This was certainly the take of today’s Fairfax report on the material. The Department as ever played a straight bat. Fairfax concluded with DFAT’s non-response. “A spokesperson for Senator Carr said yesterday Assange's circumstances remained a matter for the UK, Ecuador and Sweden, with Australia's role limited to that of a consular observer.” Carr hopes the convenience of consular observation will keep Australia off the hook as this high-stakes game heads towards a spectacular climax.

Sport and Politics: an Olympic history

Munich 1972 was the first Olympics I remember. Aged 8 I have hazy memories of Olga Korbut in the ring, Lasse Viren and Valery Borzov on the track, Mark Spitz in the pool and hooded men in the Village. The Palestinian involvement was an early indication to me the Olympics was about far more than just sport. Here in the middle of the Cold War, the US and USSR were once again battling for supremacy in Germany.   

Only six nations nations have topped the OIympic medal tally: USA (16), Soviet Union (7), China (1), Germany (1), France (1) and Britain (1). The US dominated most of the 20th century but the Russians beat them in 1956 and 1960. As the space race intensified, the US regained control in the 1960s.  By Munich it was the turn of the USSR to come out ahead again. I remember this strange thing called “East Germany” with their forbidding looking athletes running a very creditable third well ahead of their western rivals despite a population of just 16 million people to the West's 50 million plus. They would rub salt in fellow German wounds with another home soil victory in the World Cup two years later in the only time they would ever meet (the West lost that battle but won the war against the Dutch in the final). 

With the pride of communism on the line, the 70s and 80s were the glory era of East German sport. It was the German College for Physical Culture which produced with ruthless efficiency the coaches, trainers and sports medicine personnel responsible for East Germany's remarkable success. There was drugs and cheating there but there was also genuine success. The problem was, as 1980 Olympic 110-metre hurdles gold medallist Thomas Munkelt said, “we ran our sports by the performance principle, but not our economy."

The 1980 Olympics was East Germany’s first high water mark. It was also the year any doubt the Olympics wasn’t political was wiped out with the west’s boycott after Afghanistan. Without the US, the East Germans ran second to the Russians. The Russians got their own back and boycotted Los Angeles in 1984. They cited “security concerns, chauvinistic sentiments and an anti-Soviet hysteria whipped up in the United States” but no one was in any doubt it was tit-for-tat. 

Little brother East Germany wasn't there either but Ceausescu’s Romania was the one Communist Bloc that ignored Konstantin Chernenko’s directive and they finished second to the Americans. 1984 was notable for another reason. Five years earlier, the IOC decided to rename the Republic of China to Chinese Taipei. With Taiwan downgraded, China would not lose face by competing for the first time since 1952.  They finished a creditable fourth in their first outing.

The Seoul Olympics in 1988 was the first truly global Olympics. It was also the first since Montreal to feature the US and the Soviets. East Germany were there too and they forced the Americans into third place. Other eastern bloc countries in the top ten were Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania. The Chinese dropped to 11^th.  But East Germany’s second high water mark was to mark a rapidly changing tide. 

The stunning collapse of Eastern bloc Communism meant the medal table in Barcelona looked radically different. The USSR was the last to go in 1991 so there was still a strong “Unified Team” consisting of 12 of the old 15 Soviet republics. They were still unified enough to win the most medals a year later. It would be the last time Moscow would finish in front. East Germany was gone and China was back up to fourth behind the united Germany. There was still an East German clone in Barcelona as one of the last of the Communist countries Cuba finished fifth.

There was further change in the New World Order of Atlanta 1996. On home soil, the Americans finally beat the Russians for the first time since 1968. China stayed fourth but cut the gap on Germany as they were doing in the real world. In Sydney, China beat Germany and got the same amount of medals as the hosts (58) but with 28 golds to Australia’s 16. At Athens, China went clear as number two to the Americans. They got fewer medals than the Russians but as they did in Sydney, they knew how to get gold.

In Beijing they did to the Americans what they did to the Russians four years before. The US had 110 medals to China’s 100 but it was 51-36 to the hosts in golds.  China’s remarkable powerhouse economic advance was on display in Beijing and the last four years have accelerated the trend. it will be no surprise, that even without home advantage, they get more medals and golds than anyone else in London.

Sure enough, they have won the first gold of the 2012 Olympics (though arguably that honour belongs to Specsavers). Top-ranked Yi Siling of China captured the first gold medal of the London Olympics in the women's 10-metre air rifle at Royal Artillery Barracks on Saturday. Another Chinese woman, Yu Dan won the bronze.  If the 21^st century is the Asian century, then the place to watch for proof will be the Olympic Medal tally. It won’t be too long before the likes of India and Indonesia become the new East Germany – but getting the economics right as well as the sport.

Dark night rising

Photo: Barry Gutierrez/AP

It was impossible not to think of the Denver shootings as I attended the new Batman movie at the local cinema tonight. This latest random mass murder could have been scripted in the film itself, though it would have been the work of a cardboard-evil mastermind rather than just an unhinged student. While I'm a fan of the work of director Christopher Nolan, this latest effort was turgid twaddle. The plot was so predictable I left after an hour of tedious violence, with the hero in a bit of pickle but assured that the good guys would "win" in the end. 

I came away thinking it was folly to believe there is no connection between the film and the murders.  Guns and the power they confer are at the heart of the Batman movies – as they are at the heart of most Hollywood blockbusters. Guns are the ultimate deus ex machina plot device. Whoever is holding one, calls the shots. The drama moves towards the pivot where either the tables are turned or someone is shot. In the Dark Knight Rises, guns were everywhere and only “superhero” powers can overcome them. When the real murderer went loose in the cinema, many in the dark assumed the noise was from the film and paid no attention.  James Holmes called himself The Joker for the stock Batman villain. He painted his hair red and used tear gas before opening fire.  There was no superhero to stop him.

The film producers’ coy reaction showed they are part of the problem. Warner Bros said they took “the unprecedented step” of delaying revealing “eagerly awaited weekend box office figures for Dark Knight out of respect for the victims and their families."  How the box office news would affect grieving families is beyond immediate comprehension, though there was no sign any of the record takings would be used to compensate victims or be put to a campaign against weapons.

America’s “foremost defender of Second Amendment rights”, the National Rifle Association were as quick as I was to blame the culture.  The problem was caused, they said, by “violent imaginary movies", many of them like Batman having, perish the thought, “absolutely no patriotic value”.  As NRA’s Wayne Lapierre deadpanned when wheeled out to defend their position, "Guns don't kill -Batman kills.  Had someone in the audience been armed, this tragedy could have been averted."  Multiplexes, were according to Lapierre, death traps.  Lapierre may have preferred a good old fashioned saloon shoot out where everyone could have taken a pop at the dark knight.

Lapierre is of course right on the point of violent movies, though somewhat muddled about multiplexes and patriotism.  The culture promotes death and violence, as do the movies of many other countries  But there is one big difference about America compared to nearly every other first world country. There, guns and weapons are as easy to get as movie tickets and popcorn.  The major reason the unhinged Holmes had no difficulty in acting out his fantasy was because he was able to accumulate a formidable collection of weapons and 6,000 rounds of ammunition.  None of the journalists baying at Lapierre for answers picked him up on his glib lie: Guns do kill and the tragedy would have been averted had no one in the audience been armed.

As the New York Daily News said, Holmes did not act alone. Lapierre was at his side as were Obama and Romney both cowed into silence over gun control for fear of unleashing NRA’s mighty political wrath.  “(Also) Standing at Holmes’ side as he murdered 12 and wounded 59, were the millions of zealots who would sooner see blood flow and lives end than have to check a box on a gun registration form,” the Daily News said. It wasn’t just about the occasional newsworthy massacre but the “day-to-to-day mayhem of street-crime shootings, responsible for more deaths than all the mass carnage combined, (that only) makes it to the police blotter, the courts, the newspapers, the emergency rooms and the cemeteries.” 

The Daily Beast's Adam Winkler said mass shootings don’t lead to gun control. Colorado has some of the weakest laws in the land despite the Columbine High School massacre 13 years ago. Winkler said the radicalisation of the NRA in the 1970s stalled American gun reform. He quotes Bill Clinton as saying the Brady Bill (named for Reagan aide shot in the 1981 assassination attempt) cost the Democrats the control of the House of Reps in 1994 and neither party has mounted any gun control since, despite America having five murders for every 100,000 people. 

The NRA vigorously defends its stance at every opportunity against every perceived threat to its clout. This week they attacked Obama signing a UN Arms Treaties because they might “trample our Constitutional right to bear arms.”  The 18^th century need for a well-regulated militia remains a holy cow despite bearing arms now sounding as ridiculous as arming bears.  America deserves a referendum on the “right” but in the unlikely event it happened, the majority of Batman watchers across the land would probably vote against change. Violence is endemic in the culture. Unless one of the dead in Colorado had a well-connected senior operative in the Republican Party for a relative, this latest massacre won’t change anything after all the hand-wringing is completed. Superheroes are as thin on the ground in Washington as they are in Aurora.

Assange and Correa: Welcome to the Club of the Persecuted

For hints on whether Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa would give Julian Assange asylum, I took a look at the May 22 interview between the men for Assange’s self-titled show on Russia Today. Russia Today is a strange beast that will analyse anything in depth except Putin. Its series of Julian Assange Show episodes of interviews with many world leaders who don't get easy access to the western newsrooms, is passable telly.


“Correa is a left wing populist who has changed the face of Ecuador,” Assange announced in his introduction. “But unlike his predecessors he has a PhD in economics.”

Correa is a significant president and Assange quotes US embassy cables released by his own Wikileaks project that say Correa is the most popular president in Ecuadorian history. He was also taken hostage in a 2010 coup d’etat. Assange said Correa blamed the coup on corrupt media and launched a counter-offensive on the grounds the media define what reforms are possible.

Assange asked Correa Ecuador’s relationship with the US. Correa quoted Bolivian president Evo Morales who said the US is the only country in the Americas safe from a coup because it doesn’t have a US embassy. Assange admitted to Correa he liked his jokes. Correa suddenly got serious and said the only way he could eliminate funding US provided to Ecuadorian police was by increasing their salary.  "I'm not anti-American, I got two degrees there but Iwould never allow Ecuadorian sovereignty to bcompromised by the US".  Correa said he wanted Wikileaks to release all the cables as they had nothing to hide.

Assange asked about kicking out the US ambassador after the release of the cables. Correa said Heather Hodges was right wing with 1960s cold war attitudes. Hodges accused Correa of deliberately appointing a corrupt police commissioner. She didn't like the government and her main contacts were leaders of the opposition. The cables confirmed what they already knew. As Hodges was shown the exit door, Correa grew relationships with China, Russia and Brazil in her stead. 

Assange brought the subject back to freedom of information as he reminded Correa why he was 500 days of house arrest. Were Correa’s reforms were a step in the wrong direction for release of information?
Correa replied he was all for release of information. He mentioned an Argentinean book about Wikileaks which said Ecuadorian media did not publish.  He has long supported Wikileaks. “We believe, my dear Julian, that only things that should be protected against freedom of speech are those set in the international treaties,” Correa said. Correa said media power is greater than political power in Ecuador. “They usually have self-serving political, economic, social and above all informative power,” he said. He claimed the government were persecuted by journalists using insults and slander – mass media serving private interests.

With most TV stations owned by bankers and no public station in Ecuador, he faced merciless opposition to any banking reforms. “These people disguised as journalists are doing politics for fear of losing the power they always had,”  Assange said he agreed with his market description of the media which had censored Wikileaks material for political reasons. However he said the correct way to deal with monopolies or cartels to break them up. He asked could Correa have made it easier for new entrants. Correa said that was what they were trying to do was making one third of TV stations for the community and non-profit, one third commercial and the final third state owned by governments and councils. He said his 2008 law has been systematically blocked by big media and their lobbyists. 

Correa said Ecuador and Latin America are moving from the Washington Consensus.  “The policies dictated by the US had nothing to do with our needs in Latin America,” Correa told Assange.  Correa said governments had to put people before economic politics. He told Assange it was a pleasure to meet him in this way,
“Cheer up, welcome to the club of the persecuted,” Correa said.
“Thank you,” Assange replied. “Take care and don’t get assassinated.”
“That’s something we have to avoid every day," Correa replied.

Slavery is as old a curse as humanity

The issue of slavery doesn’t seem like an important topic to be discussing the 21^st century but it is still a real issue in many parts of the world, including Australia.  Attorney-General Nicola Roxon recognised the fact this week when she announced new laws to criminalise forced marriage, forced labour and organ trafficking.  Roxon said Australia wasn’t immune from slavery and people trafficking. The new bill tackles worker exploitation, ensures those who help to enslave or traffic can be charged as well as those who keep slaves and allows for reparations with up to 12 years in prison for forced labour charges.

The news comes a week after an Irish publication revealed the news slavery exists today in Ireland and is exported to Australia. The Cork Independent quoted from a new book called ‘Open Secrets: An Irish Perspective on Trafficking & Witchcraft' based on data from the Trafficking in Persons Report issued annually by the US Department of State. Book co-author David Lohan said the data was available for several years but the issue was under-reported. 

The report found that Irish and Filipino people on 457 visas were “fraudulently recruited to work temporarily in Australia, but subsequently are subjected to conditions of forced labour, including confiscation of travel documents, confinement and threats of serious harm." It quoted a $174,000 fine issued to a Perth construction company in 2008 for violations of the Workplace Relations Act for “the deliberate exploitation of Filipino and Irish migrant workers.” The workers were not entitled to move between employers and presented with undated work agreements while being denied the required documents outlining their rights.

At the time of the case, Australian Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Senator Chris Evans welcomed the fine and warned that the exploitation of workers would not be tolerated by his Government. The Cork Independent said slavery exists in Ireland today because of a demand. “Irish people are willing to use, abuse and exploit their fellow human beings for economic benefit or their own gratification,” it said.

But this is not just true of Ireland or Australia. Slavery is as old as organised human society. It was codified in the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi 3800 years ago and accepted in the Old and New Testaments. Exodus 22:2-3 allows for a thief to be sold if they cannot redress their theft.  Ephesians 6:5 cautions servants “who are owned by someone must obey your owners”. The classical Greek definition of democracy glossed over slavery and it was a key component of the Roman Empire economy until it was gradually replaced by serfdom.

Slavery continued in many societies and gained a new lease of life in Western Europe with the opening up of the Americas in the 16^th and 17^th centuries. The Atlantic triangular slave trade brought textiles, rum and manufactured goods from Europe to Africa, slaves from Africa to the Americas and sugar, tobacco and cotton from the Americas to Europe.  Merchants of Liverpool and Bristol combined with the big American cotton producers and the slave-trading kingdoms of western and central Africa to move 12 million Africans across the Atlantic in three hundred years. 

American-based British historian Simon Schama addressed the subject in his blood Rough Crossings:  Britain, Slaves and the American Revolution. The book tells the story of black Americans who sided with the British in the War of Independence because King George III embodied the idea of freedom for them better than George Washington.  The framers of the new American constitution had a bold plan for taxation and representation but behind the rhetoric of freedom, the reality of slavery was their Achilles heels. Tens of thousands of Black Africans looked to Britain to deliver them from the slavery.  When Boston lawyer James Otis called out the contradiction and said slavery diminished the idea of American freedom,  Founding Father John Adams could only “shudder at the consequences of such premises.”

The fact was the trade in humans kept the American cotton industry in profit and this was something the southern colonies were not to give away lightly. Slave rebellions in the sugar islands of the Caribbean created a terror the cotton economy was next and thousands of white Americans signed up for the revolt to protect their livelihood. 

But Britain was a dubious saviour for the blacks. Slavery was still legal in the British Empire and repeated attempts in parliament to ban it were always rejected on the economic grounds it would give bitter enemy France too much of an advantage in the Caribbean sugar trade. The notorious case of the slave ship the Zong where the captain threw 122 sick slaves overboard to get £30 a head compensation for their loss at sea spurred campaigners such as Granville Sharp (a founding father of Sierra Leone) and Thomas Clarkson to lobby for change. But even when revolutionary France rejected slavery (Napoleon re-established it in 1802), a suspicious British parliament would not immediately follow suit.

It wasn’t until 1807 the slave trade was made illegal in Britain and also in the US.  But the economic benefits of the institution of slavery continued in both countries until Britain made it illegal in the Empire in 1834. The internal contradictions of the US system were brilliantly exposed by 28-year-old runaway slave Frederick Douglass who wowed Britain when he toured in 1846. The articulate, witty, handsome and charismatic Douglass gave a dramatic account of cruelty in the plantations and lived constantly under the fear of re-capture. The book on his life was an immediate best seller.

Back home, many called Douglass anti-American but he defended his criticisms. “I have no love for America, What Country have I? The institutions of this country do not know me.” The contradictions tore the US apart leading to a reluctant Lincoln declaring war on the south in 1861.  The war claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and led to Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Declaration. When Lincoln was murdered, Douglass said Lincoln “shared the prejudices of his white fellow-countrymen against the Negro, [but] it is hardly necessary to say that in his heart of hearts he loathed and hated slavery.”

And while the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery after the South was defeated in 1865, the attitudes Douglass saw in Lincoln, lingered on in others. Slavery continued but went under a different name abetted by Jim Crow Laws.  Australia too enslaved its blacks by making them wards of the state.  While most of these schemes were wound back by the 1960s, slavery continues to be a worldwide issue.  In an article about South African slavery during the 2010 World Cup, Time said there were more slaves around today than ever. “Slaves are those forced to perform services for no pay beyond subsistence and for the profit of others who hold them through fraud and violence,” said Time. Slavery is likely to continue as long as humans have economic value.