Monitor: All the News of the World

US embassy bombings Falling markets Pornography and censorship Anthea Turner Released Mink 'Critical Condition'

FALLING MARKETS

Opinions on the likely consequences following the worldwide fall in capital markets

Herald Tribune

France

THIS CRISIS is not an Asian crisis - it's a global emerging market crisis. The distinction is important, economists say, because, if there is nothing inherently "Asian" about the causes of the crisis, Latin America and Eastern Europe could easily be the next victims of economic turmoil. Economists say that the currents that contributed to the crisis are still at work because they are fundamentally structural flaws in the global financial system. Too many countries are producing similar products following the massive doses of foreign investment into emerging markets in the past decade. Asian countries that have broken their peg against the dollar are now more competitive, but only at the expense of countries such as China and other developing countries around the world. (Thomas Fuller)

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La Repubblica

Italy

THE ASIAN crisis has been here for almost a year, but, until it began to show symptoms of being ungoverned, it hadn't impeded on the West's market. It seems impossible that the entire world would let itself be put in a tight corner because one country has let confusion and corruption take over internally. If this was a game, Japan vs the rest of the world, it seems natural that the rest of the world would win. Instead, it is not clear how it will end, or if the United States and Europe know what to do to win it.

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Hindustan Times

India

IN MAJOR markets across the globe stock prices have been crashing on account of the sudden collapse of the yen against the dollar. The yen reaching an all-time low against the dollar has revived the fears of a prolonged Japanese recession, which can adversely affect the Asian region's growth prospects. The pessimism at world bourses is also affecting the Indian stock market. A weaker yen will force China to devalue the rinminbi and regain its export competitiveness, but this will make recovery slower for all the crisis-afflicted South East Asian countries.

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The Economist

UK

THIS WEEK, the growing conviction that Obuchi's government may not last all that long sent tremors through stock markets everywhere. At present the yen is being pulled down by the difference in fundamentals between Japan's depressed economy and America's more exuberant one. Until Japan can show real progress in clearing up its banking mess, and until a slowdown in the American economy becomes apparent, the yen will weaken further. So long as that happens, Asia's financial markets will continue to be on edge.

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Business Times

Singapore

HAVE WE at last come to the end of the greatest equity show on earth? In just 17 days - Tuesday's contribution excluded - US share prices have fallen by a shade under 10 per cent. Alarm bells are ringing in financial capitals around the world. If the run of seven fat years begun on Wall Street in 1991 is about to end, are seven lean years to follow? American investors now seem persuaded that, for all the Federal Reserve's concerns about inflation, it is the deflationary spiral they should fear. Deflation could be the thing that ultimately unravels the US stock market.

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US News & World Report

WHEN THE Dow Jones industrial average plunged 396 points in two days, analysts were quick to cite fears over the growing Asia crisis as a major factor. While most attention was concentrated on Tokyo, recent developments in China may soon prove even more important to Americans' portfolios.

A vicious message of hatred

Time

US

FEW KENYANS will ever exorcise the hideous images of charred bodies draped from a bus, of mutilated corpses stacked in the bed of a pickup truck, of the dazed walking wounded stained with the bright red of fresh arterial blood. No arrest, trial or conviction will make sense of the losses. That is precisely the nightmare message the terrorists intended to stamp upon the minds of Americans. However hard you come looking for us, we will always be out there, planning and plotting to hit you again, sometime, some place.

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Tages-Anzeiger

Switzerland

THE BOMBS in Nairobi and Dar-Es-Salaam (which, in a bitter irony, means "place of peace" in Arabic) show a disregard for human life, but not for logic. Terrorist acts, as their perpetrators intend, always have propaganda intentions. The message of these bombs is: Look, the Americans are vulnerable! As long as conditions in the Arab nations and US policy in the region remain unchanged, there will be attacks. Even if all embassies become fortresses.

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New York Post

US

WILL THIS country awaken to the challenge before it? The war the terrorists are engaged in has a fancy Pentagon name - it's called "low-intensity conflict". Its purpose is to depress and demoralize the US, with the result that America retreats into its shell. It's time the US went to war right back. Post-Soviet terrorism is not a police problem. It is a military problem, and it requires military solutions.

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The Nation

Kenya

OUT OF the debris and ashes that remain, a new nation has a chance to emerge. Out of this disaster, a new hope can be found for rebuilding the lost glory of Kenya. Let us not wait for another disaster to pull us together. Let us not slip back into the mire of hopelessness. Above all, let us not lose the opportunity to take what was meant for evil to turn it into good.

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Jerusalem Post

Israel

THE BOMB'S American victims were just as innocent as the Kenyans, but they knew representing their nation abroad carried some risk. For the families of the Kenyan and Tanzanian dead and injured, there is not even this slim consolation or explanation of the tragedy that has befallen them. This calamity is compounded by the poverty of both countries, which makes both medical and economic recovery more difficult.

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Los Angeles Times

US

UNLIKE IN many parts of the world, Americans are not disliked in Kenya, a former British colony best known in the United States for its tea, coffee and spectacular wildlife. If anything, their tourist dollars are a welcome antidote for the country's ailing economy, which limps along on the strength of overseas visitors and commerce. But with Friday's attack and its fallout for Kenya's international standing, people are learning that friendship with the United States can come at a high price.

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Clarin

Argentina

TERRORISM HAS returned to show a more ugly face. The attacks show the impunity and randomness of this kind of violence. The fact that the terrorists had chosen American embassies in countries outside of actual zones of international conflict is part of a tendency to spread out the location of these attacks. This obligates us to multiply the preventive work needed against this kind of aggression. Terrorism to achieve political ends is reprehensible under any circumstance.

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Philadelphia inquirer

US

THE ONLY sure way to end terror is to go to the source and root out the state sponsors, whether in Khartoum, Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus or Tripoli. But since Americans are not prepared for that kind of war, and our allies - Western or Arab - are not prepared to support us in any such venture, it is time to consider whether the United States might be better off leaving the Middle East to the Middle Easterners. Of what vital interest, after all, is it to us whose flag flies over what patch of desert? In 1968, populist George Wallace said of Vietnam: 'Win it - or get out!' Sound advice, too, on the Middle East. (Patrick J. Buchanan)

PORNOGRAPHY AND CENSORSHIP

Reactions to the film censor James Ferman's recommendation that controls on non-violent pornography should be liberalised

The Daily Mail

IF THERE is an argument for legalising explicit pornography, James Ferman, the out-going director of the British Board of Film Classification, hasn't come up with it. Indeed, his tortured logic will be seen as further proof of the common sense view that such material must remain banned. His complacent view misses the fact that the appetite craving the kind of pornography that worries him will always exist. Indeed, such filth is created to tickle palates jaded by pornography of the more "conventional" kind. If Ferman's ideas are indicative of the way he has fulfilled his role over the past 23 years, it is a pity he did not go sooner.

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The Times

IT IS not necessary to be a puritan to find fault with Mr Ferman's record in office. It is enough simply to ask if an individual who enforces rules should also, in effect, make them, and construct them in such a way as to nudge society in one direction. The use of pornography can, in some cases, develop into an addiction. But given the growing availability of pornographic material by mail order and through the Internet, it must be better to attempt to police this market in a more sophisticated way rather than taking refuge in old rules. In the end, however, that is a matter for legislators, not regulators, a point which should be borne in mind by both the Home Secretary and Mr Ferman's successor.

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Evening

Standard

THERE IS no evidence whatsoever that Mr Ferman's desires reflect those of society. Keeping pornographers in a state of insecurity over the legal safety of their business may not make for respectable law. But it is less obnoxious, in many people's view, than putting the trade on a legitimate basis and having a body like the BBFC administer it in the name of public morality. (Alexander Walker)

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The Guardian

FERMAN'S APPROACH makes sense. There is an important difference between violence and sex. Civilised societies should be searching for ways of reinforcing curbs on aggression, not egging it on. Just because researchers have found it difficult detecting links between violence and the media, it does not mean they are not there. Of course, violence has complex causes, but wise policy-makers should work on the common sense assumption that the media plays its part. Sex is different so long as it is not violent or exploitative. Ferman is right to push for a more liberal approach.

TV PROGRAMME OF THE WEEK

Critics on 'Critical Condition', Jon Ronson's documentary about critics

The Daily Mail

THIS WAS a Jon Ronson documentary, so there were no overt attempts at ridiculing the subjects by heavy-handed questioning. Instead he allowed these Fringe denizens to bury themselves. His technique is to act dumb, appear to be on the side of his interviewees and flatter their egos. It's a tactic that never fails to produce unalloyed, and often hilarious, truths. (Steve Nimmo)

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The Sunday Telegraph

CRITICAL CONDITION proved especially welcome - a four-part series looking at how various newspaper critics go about their vile business. The relationship between a critic and his readers is an awkward one, full of angry squalls and tearful reconciliations. This relationship becomes even more awkward when a critic has to review something that's been written or performed by a friend. Do you tell the truth and risk causing terrible offence? Ronson has a peculiarly refined talent for stirring things up. (John Preston)

The Times

RONSON'S modus operandi is to pick a large, aggressive subject and then fling himself in front of it, in the belief that the sight of a Goliath mashing David makes good television, and he'll win on the sympathy vote and liberal points. It's chronically pathetic and it's lousy journalism, pretending to be a feeble wimp when you're backed up by a film crew and the referee of the final edit. (AA Gill)

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The Evening Standard

CHANNEL 4 has a real star in Ronson, whose understated style brings out the worst in everybody, without anyone really suffering in the process. (Victor Lewis Smith)

ANTHEA TURNER

Comments on the photographs of the TV presenter wearing nothing but a python

The Express

APART FROM her bum looking like papaya-tinted cellophane, I take my hat off to Anthea Turner. Not even if my married lover had gone back to his wife and kids, and I was currently without what showbusiness calls a vehicle, would I embrace a python. (Anna Raeburn)

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The Evening standard

THE PHOTO possesses all the sizzle of a cold sausage. No number of raunchy love affairs or spouse-swiping contretemps will make the wholesome Miss Turner anything but "nice" - that is her selling point and her arguable allure. The snake, now that's a different story. (Mimi Spencer)

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The Mirror

SOME CRITICS sneer at the latest photos of Anthea Turner. But she remains a genuine symbol of the girl next door - the image which has made her so popular. For every girl next door has dreams of being seductive and sexy at times. Anthea is no different. Even wearing only a snake, she still looks sensational.

Quotes of the Week

"As I get older, reactionary thoughts cross my mind, such as the Church of England never having been the same since gaiters ceased to be worn."

Sir Roy Strong, former director of the V&A

"We were completely taken by surprise by this feature but so far we haven't actually received any complaints."

Sony spokesperson on their camcorder's ability to render clothes see- through

"If England win at anything, from the World Cup to tiddlywinks, the people are happy."

Alec Stewart, England cricket captain

"Now even the middle classes aren't going."

John Godber, playwright, on his disenchantment with the theatre

"My bad boy days are over."

Tony Curtis, 73, on his marriage to a 28-year-old

"It was like a scene from Jaws."

Adrian Sanders, MP, on the injuries to bathers at beaches in Devon from the shells of razor clams

RELEASED MINK

Reflections on the consequences of the freeing of thousands of mink from their cages to roam the Hampshire countryside

Daily Telegraph

WHAT COULD inspire self-proclaimed animal lovers to bring such misery to the mink themselves and to other animals in the vicinity? This goes beyond naivety or misguided idealism. It is an example of the mentality that has led hunt saboteurs to attack horses. These are not people with principles or compassion, but anarchists, revelling in destruction and the publicity that it has brought them.

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The Mirror

THIS NATION of animal lovers will have universal contempt for the lunatics of the Animal Liberation Front. They released thousands of mink from a New Forest farm with dreadful effects on other animals in the area. You don't have to agree with mink farming - few Britons do - to realise how crazy that was. What they have done at Ringwood will make little difference to the mink. But it will be devastating to other wildlife.

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Evening

Standard

THESE NASTY little brutes richly deserve to be shot, run over, and clubbed to death with spades as quickly as possible. (David Sexton)

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The Daily Mail

ENDING THE worst horrors of mink farming is an issue that ought to be taken seriously by anyone professing to respect animals. But simply letting the poor creatures loose can be more cruel than confining them in cages. Cruel to the mink and to their victims.

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The Express

THEY EVOLVED to be efficient at staying alive and then, thanks to the vanity of those who made their fur desirable, found themselves airlifted into a country with sitting ducks for prey. As for this lot that have just been freed, there won't be a few hundred left by the end of the month. They won't have a clue what to do in the wild. When you've been kept from birth in a one-foot cage, the mink which gets the better of a tawny owl is going to be the exception.

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The Birmingham Post

THE RICHLY varied wildlife which is a feature of the English countryside is not there because nature has been left to its ways, but precisely because it has been so carefully managed for many generations, by those who understand its ways rather than those who have only seen the TV documentaries. It is about to be demonstrated how easily that delicate balance can be destroyed. (Dennis Ellam)

MISCELLANEOUS

Stories from around the world

Gulf Times

United Arab Emirates

HALF THE motorists in Dubai who were fined for traffic violations were speeding. This miserably high proportion means that drivers have still not learnt to slow down while on the road. It is a sad indictment of how people are still driving too fast, and have not paid enough attention to continuing efforts from the various police forces of the UAE to encourage slower driving. Speeding is dangerous. It is simple to say it, but drivers have failed to take this on board.

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Christchurch Press

New Zealand

WHO CAN count themselves as Maori? Almost anyone who wants to, it seems. Nowadays, racial identification depends not so much on blood ties but on choosing whatever affiliation appeals. That has implications for such things as who should receive tribal settlements and, more important, for long-term social policy. If nominating a preferred affiliation avoids the trap of guessing blood percentages, it also throws up a wider problem: to what extent can this country's Maori population properly be measured at all?

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Kuwait Times

THE FORTUNES of disc jockeys in Kuwait, once a little-remembered professional group, are on the rise thanks to a new phenomenon that has found its way in society, specially among the fair sex. Demand for disc jockeys has sharply gone up in Kuwait as they are increasingly called on to play in private parties held at homes. But the rising stars of disc jockeys have been at the expense of another group of performers, mostly folk singers, the traditional players at wedding receptions or birthday parties.

THE BOMBING OF US EMBASSIES IN KENYA AND TANZANIA

Reactions to the attack on two American embassies in East Africa, which left 249 dead