Click here to view this media Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) got her facts confused Sunday while objecting to President Barack Obama’s decision to participate in the military action against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The Minnesota congresswoman told Fox News’ Chris Wallace that NATO airstrikes had killed up to 30,000 civilians in the country. “People should be outraged at the foolishness of the president’s decision,” she said. “He said he wanted to go in for humanitarian purposes and overnight we are hearing that potentially 10 to 30,000 people could have been killed in the strike. Those are some of the reports.” “The NATO strikes killed 10,000 to 30,000 people?” an incredulous Wallace asked. “A report that came out last night from the Tripoli ambassador said that potentially there could be 10,000 to 30,000,” Bachmann insisted. “You mean the Libyans?” Wallace pressed. “Yes,” Bachmann replied. “You think Muammar Gaddafi is a reliable person?” Wallace wondered. “I don’t think anyone thinks that. President Obama, his doctrine was to enter in Libya for humanitarian purposes. The point of what I’m saying is that we are see many, many lives lost. Including innocent civilians’ lives. What will be the ultimate objective and gain? I don’t see it. I think it was a foolish decision to have gotten involved,” Bachmann said. In fact, the tea party-backed lawmaker seemed to be referring to a statement made by U.S. Ambassador to Libya Gene Cretz last week. Cretz had said that U.S. officials believed that 10,000 to 30,000 had been killed by fighting between Gaddafi forces and the rebels, not NATO airstrikes. To his credit, Wallace corrected Bachmann in a later segment. “I just want to clear up, because we looked into what Michele Bachmann had been saying. She quoted the U.S. ambassador to Libya saying 30,000 people had been killed in the NATO strike so far. In fact, what Ambassador Gene Cretz said is that he estimated that 30,000 people had been killed by all sides in the entire conflict. That includes the rebels and the Gaddafi forces. So big difference,” he said.
Continue reading …Grampy “Bomb, bomb, bomb…” McSame is at it again : Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Sunday criticized President Obama for taking a “backseat role” in Libya, and said it was time for the United States to get “back in the fight.” In an appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” McCain argued that Mr. Obama had “withdrawn” from NATO in its actions against Libya, and that NATO forces were subsequently weakened and inadequately supplied. “I would like to remind you that NATO is an organization of 28 countries,” McCain told CBS’ Bob Schieffer. “With Italy there’s now seven of them actually in the fight. They don’t have the assets that the United States of America does. …the United States is NATO. So the British and the French – God bless them and others – they don’t have the assets. They are running out of some of their munitions. “We need to get back into the fight,” McCain urged. “We should be leading. We should not be following.” McCain warned against allowing the conflict to end in a stalemate, an outcome he characterized as “very bad,” and which he said would “open the door to al Qaeda.” “It’s events on the ground that will drive Qaddafi’s desire to leave or not to leave,” McCain said. “Right now in many respects he’s not doing too badly for a third-rate military power.”And while the senator emphasized his opposition to employing ground troops in the Libyan conflict, McCain said the U.S. had to “get its assets back into the air fight” and elsewhere. *Sigh* Notwithstanding my deep, deep disgust that Mr. Perpetual Guest is given another chance to parade his sour grapes undermining of the president on the Sunday show circuit, the question that begs to be posed is if there is any conflict that he wouldn’t break out the pom poms for? Sweet flying spaghetti monster, when deficit spending is on the tongue of every member of the GOP and their enabling buddies in the media, what we need to now is add yet another front in the Middle East to prove our unapologetic imperialism? Of course, the cynic in me thinks that had Obama chose the path McCain advocates (even though it’s a violation of international law, something McCain is frightfully ignorant of–a trait you don’t want to see in the almost POTUS), that he would find himself doing a 180 flip flop to complain about Obama’s imperialism. What is interesting to me is the inconsistency McCain applies to dealing with Syria. He raises the great fear-mongering bogeyman of al Qaeda in Lebanon to justify increased military air presence (despite that pesky Shia/Sunni/Hezbollah conflict making it doubtful), but ignores that Syria has become, by all intelligence reports, a true haven for al Qaeda . Of course, host Bob Schieffer sees no point in asking such questions on consistency and lawfulness.
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The Australian, 71, treated at Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge after being diagnosed in 2010 Clive James, the Australian television presenter and critic, has leukaemia, it has emerged. James, 71, was diagnosed with the illness in January 2010. His wife, Prue Shaw, an academic, said her husband was being treated at Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge. Luke Slattery, editor of the Australian Literary Review, said James had been forced to ration his time to work on several book projects, including a second volume of Cultural Amnesia. James, who has two daughters, has lived in England since leaving Sydney in 1961 and has worked as columnist for The Observer, as well as television critic. Clive James Cancer Health Damien Pearse guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media The Republican Party decided to attack President Obama for the cost of rising gas prices in the United States in their response to the White House’s Weekly Address and it basically amounted to more “drill baby drill” nonsense that we know won’t get us off our dependence on foreign oil and deregulate industry in the name of job creation in the wake of what we saw go on in the Gulf of Mexico. Lankford also fully endorsed the Ryan budget here and did a good job of fearmongering about our deficit and debt, but once again made the mistake of thinking that seniors don’t care what happens to their children or grand children. I guess this guy hasn’t been hosting too many town halls of late because Republicans have been getting hammered for supporting the Ryan budget all over the country. If privatizing Medicare and turning it into a voucher system is really what they want to run on the next election cycle, all I can say is good luck to them on that. As was already noted in my post with Lou Dobbs taking up for Exxon Mobil and the oil industry, those industries are making record profits. I really have a lot of trouble believing that either the GOP’s weekly response or the sort of nonsense we heard out of Dobbs defending these oil companies and coming to their defense is going to resonate much with the voters next election. Somehow, leave the poor oil company executives alone doesn’t sound like a very good campaign slogan to me. Transcript via the LA Times : Hello, my name is James Lankford, and I’m a freshman member of Congress, working for the people of Oklahoma’s 5th Congressional District. When I listen to my constituents about the challenges they face, skyrocketing cost of gasoline is at the top of the list. Prices at the pump have nearly doubled since President Obama took office, making everyday life like driving to work, buying groceries, picking up kids at school and visiting family more expensive. Even worse, the rising price of fuel is costing jobs and hurting our economy. Higher energy prices hit virtually every American product and industry, making it more expensive to manufacture products, more expensive to ship goods, and more expensive for farmers and ranchers. In fact, higher energy costs make everything made in the USA more expensive, and send more good-paying jobs overseas. Americans are looking for leadership to tackle the rising gas prices, but President Obama has only offered a tax increase on energy and the prospect of reduced supply. For more than two years, his administration has knowingly increased energy prices by choking off new sources of traditional American energy and smothering our economy in new energy regulations. His latest proposal — hiking taxes by billions of dollars –- will not lower gas prices and would actually make the problem worse. In my state, and in many other states, thousands of people depend directly on American energy production for their paychecks. The president may think he’s punishing CEOs of big companies, but his plan will hurt the everyday consumer of energy and imperil the jobs of millions of hardworking people in American-based companies. There is a better way. Republicans are focused on expanding all American energy production to help lower costs, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and create millions of American jobs. Next week, the House of Representatives will begin this process by passing legislation to increase the supply of American energy and create jobs. This legislation is part of our American Energy Initiative –- an ongoing effort to lower costs and allow the private sector to create more American jobs. Quite simply, if the president chooses to punt on real long-term solutions for energy and gas prices, we will take the lead. Two weeks ago, I was proud to cast my vote in the House for a budget that promotes economic growth and job creation by putting us on a path to pay down our debt, and preserve Medicaid and Medicare for current retirees and future generations. Our national debt is worse than most people realize. We must solve our budget problem, not just talk about the crisis. The president’s budget proposal fails to offer a credible plan that meets the nation’s challenges in a serious manner. He considers it radical and extreme to balance the budget by doing what every American business and family does in tough times – they reduce spending. We need to be honest with the American people. Washington should not overspend, then go to the American people and demand a tax increase because we cannot make the tough decisions. And, we cannot ignore the fact that tens of millions of baby boomers are beginning to retire while Medicare is already teetering at the brink of insolvency. We must stabilize, and protect Medicare and Medicaid. Let me be clear: The Republican plan would not affect current Medicare beneficiaries, or any American 55 or older. To address Medicare’s looming insolvency though, we put in place a plan to save Medicare for those under 55. We want them to have access to the same kind of medical retirement options that members of Congress and all federal employees benefit from. The president’s proposal protects the status quo: an unsustainable system that will bankrupt Medicare and lead to future deep, painful benefit cuts for seniors, while continuing to pile trillions of dollars of obligation on the backs of future generations. The world is watching to see how we’ll handle our debt. Everyone wants to know if we’ll just pile up more debt with no plan to ever pay it off, or if we will find a way to permanently work on our national debt. The president wants us to raise the debt limit with no real reforms to stop future Washington spending binges. To let Washington borrow even more money from the Chinese and hand the bill to our kids and grandkids. This would be a stark moment in American history, when a president would intentionally declare: ‘times are tough, I think I’ll make life tougher on my kids and grandkids’ generation to make life easier on me and my generation.’ We have responded differently: The American people will not tolerate an increase in the debt limit unless it comes with meaningful steps to cut Washington spending and start working us out of debt. No more blank checks and huge bills on our children so someone in Washington can retain power. On gas prices, the budget and the debt limit, we will continue to offer real solutions to lower gas prices, create jobs, and ensure the next generation still has a shot at the American dream. Our nation’s been through difficult times before. We can do this if we will work together to solve the problems instead of just talking about them. May God bless our families and our great nation. Thank you for listening.
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Deep End was acclaimed by critics. Then it all but sank out of view. Ryan Gilbey on a newly salvaged British classic It’s not uncommon for movies to drop out of circulation and simply disappear, as fans of Deep End will attest. Barely seen since its release in 1971, the film concerns Mike (played by John Moulder-Brown ), a floppy-fringed 15-year-old who becomes dangerously infatuated with Susan ( Jane Asher ), his co-worker at the public baths. What’s unusual about this prolonged absence is that it should have befallen a film so passionately admired. The influential critic Andrew Sarris thought it measured up to the best of Godard, Truffaut and Polanski. The New Yorker’s Penelope Gilliatt called it “a work of peculiar, cock-a-hoop gifts”. If something as venerated as Deep End can sink, what hope for the rest of cinema? After years of being mired in rights issues, this vivid, rapturous film is about to return in a restored print. It’s appropriate that such an elusive picture should transpire to not be quite what it seems. What could have been just another coming-of-age story is transformed by an absurdist sensibility, uninhibited performances and a heightened use of colour. Although considered a defining British work, as well as one of the most acute screen portraits of London, Deep End is actually a US/German co-production, written and directed by a Pole ( Jerzy Skolimowski , best known then for co-scripting Polanski’s Knife in the Water ), and shot largely in Munich. There are glimpses of the capital –
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The artist’s latest project is a giant rusty nail in the centre of the City of London. What will the bankers make of it? There was a time when a 12-metre rusty nail stuck into a City of London pavement might have raised a few eyebrows. Good lord, the bowler-hatted gents would have said, what abomination is this? Modern Art, no doubt! Today, Gavin Turk ‘s sculpture Nail, to be unveiled later this month at One New Change in London’s financial district, is unlikely to appal anyone, for it comes in the wake of a great wave of public art commissions that have changed the appearance of squares, hillsides and city centres across Britain. But which of these sculptures, that range from a bronze statue of the poet John Betjeman at St
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French investigators hope data will solve debate over whether faulty sensors caused 2009 accident A black box flight recorder from an Air France plane that crashed off the coast of Brazil in 2009 , killing 228 people, has been recovered by a deep-sea search team, reviving hopes of understanding what caused the crash. French investigators said one of the plane’s two data recorders had been located by a robot submarine about 3,900 metres (12,800ft) below the Atlantic ocean’s surface. Pictures published on the website of France’s Bureau of Investigation and Analysis (BEA), before the box was pulled on to the deck of the ship Île de Sein, show an orange cylindrical object half-buried in sand. In a statement, BEA confirmed that the device was “in good physical condition”. The discovery comes after months of start-and-stop search efforts on a 15,540 sq km (6,000 sq mile) area of sea-bed off the north-east coast of Brazil. Investigators hope information inside the recorder – expected to include records of cockpit conversations – will settle a dispute over the cause of the crash. The Airbus A330 plane plunged into the Atlantic while on the way to Paris from Rio de Janeiro in June 2009, after the flight hit stormy weather. There were no survivors. Speculation about what caused the accident has focused on the possible icing up of the aircraft’s speed sensors, which seemed to give inconsistent readings before communication was lost. Automatic messages sent by the Airbus A330′s computers showed it was receiving false air speed readings from sensors known as pitot tubes. However, investigators have said the crash was likely to have been caused by a series of problems, and not just sensor error. The recent discovery of chunks of the plane’s wreckage, as well as the chassis of the flight recorder, had rekindled hopes of locating the black boxes and explaining the crash, the worst in Air France’s 75-year history. Plane crashes France Europe Airbus Forensic science Damien Pearse guardian.co.uk
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Feeling nostalgic for the good old Soviet Union? Then head to Lithuania, where several theme parks let visitors feel exactly what it was like – right down to scary, abusive guards ‘Forget your past! Forget your history!” A colossal bullfrog of a guard, in an olive-green uniform with red epaulets, is spitting at us in Russian while a huge alsatian strains at the leash, barking ferociously. “Welcome to the Soviet Union,” snarls the guard. “Here you are nobody!” I can’t say I wasn’t warned: I had just signed a health and safety waiver that included the following clause: “In case of disobedience participants may receive psychological or physical punishments.” This is 1984: Survival Drama in a Soviet Bunker , a three-hour long, quasi-theatrical experience in a genuine Soviet bunker in the middle of the Lithuanian forest; imagine Punchdrunk Theatre Company run by retired KGB officers. While most former Soviet republics have let their memories of the period fade into red mist, 20 years since the Russian tanks rolled out, Lithuania is confronting its communist past head-on. An hour earlier, Ruta Vanagaite, the creator of the Soviet Bunker, was setting the mood. “Someone always faints – our record is five people fainting in one show,” she explained matter-of-factly, re-assuring me that my translator will have smelling salts handy. “But be sure to answer the guards’ questions promptly and clearly. They are mostly actors, but they can get stuck in that time and forget they are actors. We had to fire some of them because they were a little too hard on people. It’s very easy to break people’s will – once you are down there, six metres underground, you feel like you can’t get out.” Just by the Neris river, towards the Belorussian border, a red flag by the side of the road indicates a turning into the forest, down a path towards an anonymous, decrepit building in a small clearing. Inside, Soviet anthems blare out from a creaking old radio, the paint is not so much chipping as crumbling off in blocks, the few striplights that are working are flickering maddeningly, and damp swarms over the walls like triffids. We are given mouldy overcoats that are so damp they’re virtually liquid, and a cup of Soviet coffee – coffee with no coffee in it, made from barley. As we wait for the actors to show up (several of them genuine ex-KGB), the 40 or so participants, mostly Lithuanians in their 20s, laugh at the absurdity of it, smirking at the kitsch costuming. This, it becomes clear, is the fun bit. “Do you guys understand Russian?” asks a Lithuanian comrade. An Australian, Matt, answers for both of us: “I understand people with dogs shouting at me.” Vanagaite chips in to tell us the alsation’s day-job is working in the police’s organised crime squad, digging for corpses. Oh good. The bullfrog-guard enters and gives us our orders: we will answer only in the affirmative or negative; dissent will be punished with beatings and solitary confinement; and we will forget all thoughts other than the glory of the socialist paradise in which we now live. We stand to attention for the Soviet anthem and hoisting of the red flag, and then down we go, into the freezing-cold bunker. For three hours, we are force-marched through icy, virtually pitch-black corridors, barked at (by canine and human alike), humiliated, interrogated, forced to sign false confessions to imagined crimes, shown propaganda, and taught to prepare for a nuclear attack by the imperialist pigs. Each stage is designed to illustrate, with little allowance for subtlety – or health and safety – an aspect of life in the Soviet Union. Having failed to answer a question correctly in Russian, I get it repeated in broken, angry English. The interrogating KGB officer pushes me against a filing cabinet. “Where are y’fRRROM?” England, I say, cowering. He prods me in the chest, hard. “You are English? English spy! English spy!” In another “scene”, a KGB doctor forces me to strip to the waist, in front of the other participants. “Jacket off! Shirt off! Strip to waist! Quick! Quick!” She sits me down on a stool, grabs a clump of cotton wool, douses it in alcohol, and sets it alight. This is then dropped in a glass jar and applied to my bare shoulders: known as “fire cupping”, it was supposed to draw out disease through the skin. Six metres underground, and comprising 3,000 square metres of tunnels and cave-like rooms, the bunker was built in 1984 as an emergency base for Lithuanian state TV transmissions, in case the capital Vilnius came under attack from Nato. It boasts stand-alone heating and sewerage facilities, and communication lines to Moscow, and a roof designed to withstand the impact of a nuclear bomb. Ignes, the young project administrator, thinks it is more of an educational experience than a dramatic one, especially for those, like him, who are too young to remember the parades, the food shortages, the paranoia and the rest. His parents would never even dream of enduring the bunker, he laughs, “but for us, for my generation, we should all come, so we can feel what it was like too”. This isn’t the first time a Lithuanian in their early 20s has used that very physical verb about their Soviet history to me – you have to “feel” it; just reading about it isn’t enough, because it is almost too strange to be believable. “The young people, they don’t understand what it was like,” Vanagaite insists. “They say: ‘How come you couldn’t get out of the country? You just take a train and you leave.’ They think they could just overpower Soviet guards. We try to show them the reality.” Less theatrical, but equally harrowing, is the Museum of Genocide Victims , housed in a former KGB prison in central Vilnius where hundreds were tortured and killed. The exercise yard is adorned with poignant children’s paintings in response to school trips here. “We encourage them to imagine what it was like,” says Remigija Paldauskaite, herself only five years old when the Berlin Wall fell. “The best way to learn it is to feel it.” She mimes a bored child flicking through a text book. “It’s a better way than history lessons.” The final, stunning plank in the trinity of Lithuanian exercises in Soviet memory is Grutas Park , known slightly glibly to some as “Stalin’s World”. It is not exactly a theme park (though there is a playground, and a zoo featuring llamas and bears), but a massive outdoor collection of the country’s Soviet-era statues, as well as log cabins containing thousands of other exhibits, from rugs with Lenin’s face on them to Pioneer drums, communist toys, flags, paintings and Soviet-era calculators. Now celebrating its 10th anniversary, this macabre oasis of socialist realism was built on snail money (the owner Viliumas Malinauskas is a wealthy snail and mushroom farmer), and is situated deep in the tranquil Lithuanian forest. It is a surreal experience, walking for a mile through the tiny village of Grutas, past a solitary fisherman sitting by a lake, to discover a world where Stalin stands quietly gathering cobwebs in a clearing, and Marx and Engels peek out from the shadows. Glimmers of sunlight pass through the cedars, dappling totemic statues to collective farm chiefs and partisan martyrs: it’s both fascinating and oddly beautiful. Malinauskas brought them there at a point when they were facing destruction, either deliberately or via neglect; the only Soviet statues left standing in Vilnius are the socialist-realist figures that adorn the four corners of the famous Green Bridge – and they are frequently doused in green paint by nationalist protesters. But again, perhaps problematically, they are beautiful statues – inspiring, optimistic, and utopian; totems to the radiant future that was always promised, but never quite arrived. “We will never escape our history,” the daughter of a Lithuanian communist chief said, upon visiting her father’s monument in Grutas Park recently – and Lithuanians are rare in recognising that fact. Hungary has a monument park similar to Grutas, and so does Poland – but generally former eastern bloc countries have chosen to remember the cold war by trying to forget it, sweeping their Lenin busts under the carpet and hoping people won’t trip up over them. But then Lithuanians have a number of endearingly eccentric characteristics. This is a country where the capital’s mayor travels everywhere on a Segway and is not ridiculed; beaver and mashed potato is served as a delicacy; and a high-profile monument has been erected to Frank Zappa , even though he never once visited, sung about – or even mentioned – Lithuania. The Zappa statue was audaciously suggested by local artists in 1992, as a slightly flippant test of their country’s newfound democratic freedoms; to their surprise, the authorities called their bluff. There are inevitable differences of opinion about how best to commemorate the Soviet occupation; Grutas Park in particular has attracted criticism for creating a shrine to communism, rather than a mausoleum for it. Vanagaite is dismissive of its softer approach: “What we are doing is the opposite of Grutas Park – you cannot buy anything here, this is not about nostalgia.” She suggests that the extensive gift shop and nostalgia-channelling Soviet-style cafe – featuring “Russian-style sprats” and a minimal “Nostalgija” borsch – make it a “Stalinist amusement park”. Grutas Park is unapologetic about using mockery as a weapon: on special occasions, they employ lookalikes to pose as Lenin, Stalin et al, and put on performances by young actors dressed up as Pioneers. “Now we can laugh at our Soviet past,” announces the park’s audio guide at one point. Vanagaite eventually agrees there is a role for this, as well as shock tactics: “I suppose it’s about finding the right mixture of absurdity and horror.” What they have in common is a recognition that, 20 years on, whether it provokes laughter or terror, the spectre of communism is still haunting certain parts of Europe – and ignoring the ghost is not going to make it go away. Lithuania Vilnius Europe Lithuania Europe Russia Dan Hancox guardian.co.uk
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Yesterday morning, thousands of shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway, one of the world’s most well-regarded companies, flocked to a convention hall in Omaha, Nebraska, for a meeting with their venerated leader, Warren Buffett. Over the course of his long and extremely lucrative career, Buffett has built a reputation for himself as a paragon of integrity and virtue, and the annual meeting of his company’s shareholders has come to resemble a sort of beatification ceremony, if you can imagine a religion in which the same person is beatified year after year. Buffett has called the gathering the “Woodstock of Capitalism,” nicely evoking both the massiveness of the crowd and the blissed-out vibe that pervades it. The vibe going into this year’s convention, however, was different. The trouble began about five months ago, when David Sokol, a top lieutenant in Berkshire Hathaway, persuaded Buffett to take over a chemical-products manufacturer called Lubrizol. Buffett later said that he had initially been cool on the idea, and it’s hard not to wonder if something Sokol told him bothered him on some level, even an unconscious one. At some point in their conversation, Sokol had mentioned that he owned personal stock in Lubrizol (his lawyer says that Buffett was in fact informed of this not once but twice), yet he didn’t say how much he owned or how he’d come to own it. As it turned out, Sokol had come to own the stock only a few weeks before, after learning about Lubrizol through a group of investment bankers who suggested that Berkshire look into buying the company. And as it also turned out, he’d come to own a lot of it — ten million dollars worth, to be exact. In other words, Sokol bought the shares knowing there was a chance he could convince Buffett to take over the company, which would almost certainly make the stocks’ value shoot up. Shoot up, it did. Buffett bought Lubrizol for 9 billion dollars, and Sokol’s 10 million dollars became 13 million. Was this insider trading? Perhaps. The legalities are murky. But as any first-year business student could have told you, it reflected poor ethical judgment on Sokol’s part. Sokol resigned when the full story came out, and is now under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Buffet’s vaunted reputation, meanwhile, took a blow. On Tuesday, an audit committee convened by Berkshire Hathaway released a report that sharply rebuked Sokol for violating the company’s “highest standards of business ethics,” while absolving Buffett and further distancing him from his former presumed successor. According to the report, Sokol first learned of Lubrizol last fall through investment bankers at Citigroup, who’d specifically come to him with the names of companies they thought might interest Buffett. On December 13, a Monday, Sokol asked Citi to introduce him to Lubrizol’s CEO, James Hambrick, and the next day, he made his first purchase of Lubrizol stock, 2,300 shares. That Friday, a Citi representative told Sokol that Hambrick had agreed to convey the news of Bershire’s possible interest to the Lubrizol board, and on Tuesday, Sokol unloaded his stock. But two weeks later, over the course of three days, he bought 96,060 shares for a total of $10 million. On January 14, Hambrick and Sokol agreed to meet, and either that day or the next Sokol made his pitch to Buffett. The report says Buffett was “initially unimpressed,” but asked how Sokol had learned of the company. Sokol “mentioned” that he owned Lubrizol stock but did not say how much he’d bought, or when he’d bought, or anything about his conversations with Citi or Lubrizol that might have caused concern. In fact, the report maintains that Buffett didn’t learn of Citi’s involvement until after Berkshire and Lubrizol announced the signing of the merger agreement in March, when “a Citi representative with whom Berkshire Hathaway did business congratulated Mr. Buffett” and mentioned that Citi investors had played a part. In response to the report, a lawyer for Sokol said Sokol had been “studying Lubrizol for personal investment since the summer of 2010,” and that when he bought the stock, he “had no reason to anticipate that Mr. Buffett would have any interest whatsoever in Lubrizol.” Despite the audit committee’s apparent confidence in Buffett’s blamelessness, Buffett still faces criticism over a letter that he wrote to the media last month, in which he announced Sokol’s resignation while playing down any suggestion that the younger man had done anything wrong. “Neither Dave nor I feel his Lubrizol purchases were in any way unlawful,” he wrote. This seemed surprising coming from a businessman who has constantly exhorted his employees not just to stay within the law but to do what’s ethically right, who famously said, “Lose money for the firm and I will be understanding, lose even a shred of reputation and I will be ruthless.” After his letter came out, questions swirled: What had happened to the valiant hero who’d made that famous vow? Had Buffett grown soft? Had he lost the will or the nerve required to be ruthless? At the meeting yesterday, Buffett was harder on Sokol, and on himself. He called the situation “inexplicable and inexcusable” and said, “”I obviously made a big mistake by not saying, ‘Well when did you buy it?” So why didn’t he? The most obvious and plausible explanation is the one that casts Buffett in the kindest light. Buffett built his company on the principle that the managers under him should be allowed to operate with as much freedom as possible. Had Berkshire Hathaway been an ordinary company, Sokol might have had to report his stock purchases to a legal department, but no one has ever accused Berkshire Hathaway of being a ordinary company. Only 21 people, including Buffett himself, work at the company’s headquarters, which occupy a single floor of an office building in Omaha. Berkshire is often described as “decentralized,” which is another way of saying that it’s centered around Buffett’s trust in his managers. “Trust has gotten Berkshire very far,” said Jeff Matthews, a Berkshire Hathaway shareholder and the author of “Secrets in Plain Sight: Business & Investing Secrets of Warren Buffett.” “It’s worked,” he said. “People do what they’re good at, they do what they love to do. They don’t work for the money, they work for the joy of it. They don’t have some home office MBA telling them how to run a business.” Buffett trusted Sokol. In his 11-year tenure at Berkshire Hathaway, Sokol had proven highly adept at earning Buffett money, and Buffett, in turn, had endowed Sokol with a great amount of responsibility. Most recently, he’d put him in charge of NetJets, a Berkshire subsidiary that offered rentals and fractional ownerships of luxury jets and specialized in causing Buffett distress; it lost $711 million before taxes in 2009. Sokol ordered a gut renovation of NetJets, reducing its debt from 1.9 billion to 1.3 billion, slashing about $100 million in costs, furloughing hundreds of pilots, and sweeping senior management out the door. This turned out to be the right move. Within a year, NetJets was posting profits again, as Buffett triumphantly reported in a letter to shareholders, lauding the “breadth and importance of Dave Sokol’s achievements” just a week before the impropriety of Sokol’s Lubrizol purchase came to light. By giving free reign to Sokol, who many considered to be his top choice for a successor, Buffett opened the way for a breach like this to happen. In other words, the very quality that has arguably made Buffett one of the most admired business leaders in history, never mind the third-richest man in the world, is the same quality that exposed his company to abuse. Which is not to say that Buffett himself is perfect. Far from it. He’s been linked to questionable dealings before, notably in 2004, when General Re, an insurance concern that Buffett had owned since 1998, came under investigation for conducting fraudulent business with American International Group in 2000. Then, as now, Buffett was criticized for granting an executive too much leeway to operate; in that case, the role of Sokol was played by Ronald Ferguson, then the CEO of General Re. In 2008, a jury convicted Ferguson and three other former General Re executives, along with one former AIG executive, on corporate fraud and conspiracy charges, and Ferguson was sentenced to three years in prison. So Buffett’s management style is a gamble, and it’s possible that if he were to adopt a more cautious approach he wouldn’t be nearly as successful as he is. Of course, that still doesn’t answer the question of why he defended Sokol even after the full story of his purchases was disclosed. In the Buffett biography “The Snowball,” Alice Schroeder quotes Buffett telling a group of business school students, “Basically, when you get to my age, you’ll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you do love you. I know people who have a lot of money, and they get testimonial dinners and they get hospitals wings named after them. But the truth is that nobody in the world loves them.” If it’s true that Buffett initially held back from censuring Sokol out of some fear of losing respect or admiration or even love, how ironic that this misstep should cost him so much of those very things. At yesterday’s meeting in Omaha, Buffett took steps to restore them. He discussed the possibility of two acquisitions that would be about the size of the Lubrizol deal, and said that he was considering someone new to step into his shoes. “I would lay a lot of money,” he said, “on him being straight as an arrow.”
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• British heavyweight boxer dies at his son’s home in Surrey • ‘A true warrior and great human being,’ says David Haye Sir Henry Cooper, who will always be remembered for flooring Muhammad Ali, has died aged 76. Cooper, who was knighted in 2000, is best remembered for two famous clashes with Ali in the 1960s. He floored Ali in the fourth round with “Enry’s Ammer” – his trademark left hook – but Ali eventually won the 1963 non-title fight at Wembley. Ali triumphed again when they boxed three years later but Cooper remained a favourite with the British public. Alongside Frank Bruno, Tommy Farr and Lennox Lewis, he is regarded as one of the best all-time British heavyweights. The former British, Commonwealth and European heavyweight champion fought 55 times but never won a world title and retired in 1971 after losing to Joe Bugner. Tributes began to pour in on Sunday night for the London-born Cooper, who died at his son’s house at Oxted, Surrey, two days before his 77th birthday. David Haye, the British WBA world heavyweight champion, tweeted: “One of Britain’s greatest sports man Sir Henry Cooper passed away today. A true warrior and great human being. Rest in Peace.” Robert Smith, the general secretary of the British Boxing Board of Control, described Cooper as “one of the sporting icons, not just for the boxing public but sport in general”. Speaking to Sky Sports News, Smith said: “He fought Muhammad Ali twice, once when he was Cassius Clay and once when he was Muhammad Ali, and he put up wonderful performances. “Ali is possibly the greatest athlete there’s ever been and Henry put up a great performance and just wasn’t quite good enough on both occasions – but he’s not the only one who wasn’t good enough to beat Ali. “Ali was one of the first ‘big’ heavyweights and Henry lost to Joe Bugner, who was 15-odd stone and Henry was 14 – just bigger men. For such a small man, he put up some great performances in a world-class context.” On the affection in which Cooper was held he said: “It’s not just the boxing and your ability, it’s the personality as well. He won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year on two occasions, which is a tremendous feat for a boxer. Everyone called him ‘Our Enry’ and he was much loved, he served boxing wonderfully.” Johnny Nelson, the former WBO cruiserweight world champion, told Sky Sports News: “Henry was a total champion. He was always a gentleman, always straight down the line. He told it how it was. “Ali always showed that bit of respect for Henry Cooper. He was a no-nonsense fighter, the man that almost dethroned one of the greatest fighters in the world, Muhammad Ali. There’s nobody that came across Sir
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