As Britain’s Independent Television News flashed Labor victory after Labor
victory
on the television screens around the bar, the atmosphere
in Pravda became positively tearful.

New Yorker editor Tina Brown parked herself in a corner for most of the
night, telling every journalist who’d listen how “alienated” she’d felt from
Britain all these years, and how at that moment, she was gripped with an
intense feeling of homesickness. Left unsaid, perhaps, was a slight twinge of
unease from the less-than-flattering portrait in her magazine last month of
her new prime minister, written by “Primary Colors” author Joe Klein.

Alongside her was her husband, Random House editor Harold Evans, who acted as
a kind of unofficial celebratory host, making the rounds with a
large Labor-red rosette pinned to his lapel.

“I’ve lived through many elections and always been very independent,” he
said, as if to remind those too young to know that one of the most powerful
U.S. publishers was once one of the most powerful British newspaper editors.
Then, dropping his voice, he confessed that his father, a die-hard Laborite
who’d been a steam-train driver, had been appalled that he’d once voted
Conservative. “Now I feel in touch with my roots more than ever,” Evans said.

Others rediscovering their roots included British comedian and television
actor Robbie Coltrane (“Cracker”) and Harper’s Bazaar editor Elizabeth
Tilberis. Times of
London correspondent James Bone offered a handy tip to the bouncers, anxious
to keep some underage Brits outside in the very-British rain. “Ask them if
they remember the last Labor government,” he said. “If the answer’s yes,
they’re old enough to come in.”

So where were the Tory expats this night?

“There aren’t any,” said Ian Williams, a freelance British journalist in New
York. “At least not that we can find.” He should know: Williams said he and
Vanity Fair writer (and regular Salon contributor) Christopher
Hitchens had spent weeks attempting to organize a televised debate
against Conservatives in the United States. They tried National Review
editor John O’Sullivan, Williams said, but when O’Sullivan
canceled, they ran dry. “We couldn’t find anyone else.”

And what led Lauren Hutton to bounce through the doorway late in the evening,
breaking the little-black-dress code with leggings and a purple blouse? No
one remembered her having a British accent.

Hutton laughed when asked. “Cumbria, you know. Before 1717. Then, we all
wound up in Mississippi, but there are still 27 English hamlets called
Hutton, so I feel connected. Maybe all the bullshit there will end, and
things will be better.” Then, mulling over her British roots, Hutton blew
smoke in my face and added: “I also had two British lovers for a long time
who I’ll love forever … although they took quite some training.”

By the time Tony Blair appeared on screen to declare victory, the air had
totally fogged with cigarette smoke, and two bleary-eyed men slumped against
a door post, one in a red bow tie, toasting the moment with half-empty glasses
of beer.

Shooting a glance at them, Williams said: “I have a dreadful suspicion I’m
going to turn out to be a champagne socialist.”

exit, pursued by cops
With “The World’s Scariest Police Chases,” parts I and II, the Fox Network has transformed high-speed lunacy into an extreme spectator sport — and picked up some 100 mph ratings.

BY G. BEATO

given O.J. Simpson’s killer ratings on the afternoon and early evening of June 17, 1994, it’s a wonder it took almost three years for the normally quick Fox Network to jump on the latest cash cow: the police chase.

Now the network is making up for lost time. “The World’s Scariest Police Chases” first aired on Feb. 2; it scored so well in the Nielsens that Fox reran it just a month later. And when this second showing earned Fox’s highest ratings for the week, besting even “The X-Files,” the network knew it was onto something. Hence, “The World’s Scariest Police Chases II,” which aired last Sunday, and, if history is any indication, will be airing again real soon.

The World’s Scariest shows share a Sunday night time slot on Fox with similar programming: The last few months have brought us “World’s Most Incredible Animal Rescues,” “World’s Funniest Kids Outtakes,” “World’s Funniest Party Disasters,” “World’s Funniest Outtakes No. 5″ and “TV’s Funniest News Outtakes,” among others. Assembled from sound stage and newsroom leftovers, with the occasional contribution from the at-home video chef, these shows are a textbook example of late-’90s media repurposing — they even manage to appropriate material from each other on a regular basis. They’re perfect programs for an age of media overload: cheap, appealing to camcorder buffs, fragmentary and non-linear, offering the illusion of channel-surfing without actually requiring anyone to change the channel. It’s no coincidence that Fox positions the “World’s Whateverest Whatevers” series against Mike Wallace and company: it’s the post-MTV challenger to the standard-bearer of old-fashioned linear television. It’s “60 Seconds” vs. “60 Minutes.”

Even among its low-budget brethren, however, “World’s Scariest Police Chases” stands out as a triumph of economy. While the “Funniest” shows employ a celebrity host and a studio audience to generate laughs and “awwws” and applause on cue, “Police Chases” requires no such trappings. All that’s needed are a few clips of Oregon Sheriff and “Cops” alumnus John Bunnell in front of a patrol car, a few sound bites from various other officers and the car chase clips themselves. An audience and a set would make it only too obvious that the show is selling cheap, voyeuristic thrills, rather than — as its producers like to pretend by having narrator Bunnell mouth vague moral platitudes — providing some form of “public service.”

One of the more entertaining aspects of “Police Chases” is the live commentary from reporters in TV news helicopters. With sweeping aerial shots revealing potential paths of escape and imminent obstacles, the reporters approach the situation as if doing play-by-play for a new extreme sport. Gearing up for their version of the home run call — “Oh, he just broadsided a white Buick!” — they describe various car-chase techniques and subtleties that would otherwise escape the casual viewer. Upon hearing them smoothly toss off obscure car-chase jargon like the “hit maneuver” and “spike strips,” you can’t help but wonder how often these reporters document this sort of thing.

The main attraction, of course, is the car chases themselves. Almost every clip has its own small-scale quirk or innovation — a driver going the wrong way down a highway at 70 mph; frustrated New Zealand cops throwing their night sticks at a car that keeps managing to elude them. And of course there’s the added frisson of their stranger-than-fiction reality: Yes, some kid in a stolen 40-foot motor home actually thought he could outrun the police (and the news copters, which are, in fact, far more tenacious pursuers) by going off-road into the Southern California desert. Where exactly did he think he was going to hide?

Despite their winning singularities, the chases all follow the same inevitable plot: Out-of-control driver endangers pedestrians and other motorists; police officers, often out of control themselves, attempt to run the driver off the road; driver continues his flight even as his tires blow out and his car showers sparks in its wake; driver hits another car, or a tree, or a lamp post; car comes to a violent halt; driver tumbles out of it and continues his improbable escape on foot; a dozen screaming cops jump on him and get in as many subtle whacks as the video cameras will permit. After a dozen scenes like this (the show is an hour long, and the clips run anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes), the dramatic tension begins to fade. Monotony at 100 mph is as boring as monotony at half that speed.

On occasion, however, “Police Chases” takes a more personal look at the captured drivers, and these moments are always fascinating. A man who stole a $100,000 Bentley from a showroom and led a convoy of cops on a long, low-speed chase calmly asks, “Why all the trouble? I was just minding my own business, only going 30 miles per hour.” Another man, who kidnapped a woman and then led the police on a long, dangerous chase, yells out a jury-rigged justification: “Everything I do I treat people with love!” As anyone who’s ever fled from the cops knows, you’ve got to change speeds now and then to keep things interesting.

Two years ago, Patten organized the first democratic elections Hong Kong had ever seen, bringing in a Legislative Council filled with smart, forthright democrats determined to see free speech and open elections endure after China took over. Infuriated Beijing officials screamed betrayal and accused Patten of breaking the Basic Law (or “Basic Flaw,” as some Hong Kongers call it), the document signed by the U.K. and China outlining the transition.

Patten, an up-and-coming Conservative Party official before Prime Minister John Major dispatched him to Hong Kong, has been equally vituperative about the Chinese. Having visited Beijing in 1989 during the student occupation of Tiananmen Square, Patten was determined to see Britain take down its flag with some democratic dignity. If Beijing chose to dismantle that later, at least he’d have done his best.

Patten’s defiance found little echo in Whitehall, where concern with the business opportunities in a bustling China appear to outweigh democratic niceties, but he gained immense street credibility among the locals. According to one recent poll, more Chinese in Guangdong province, just across the border, recognized Chris Patten’s name than their own provincial leader’s.

For all that, Patten’s battle may be in vain. Last week, Tung Chee-hwa announced a radical rollback of civil liberties — including restrictions on freedom to protest and rights of association — once Beijing takes over.

Salon spoke with Gov. Patten at Government House about the future of Hong Kong after he leaves.

Can democracy survive in Hong Kong?

I don’t think that the democratic aspirations of its people can be snuffed out, even if its institutions are substantially changed in the short term. At the moment the Chinese find it difficult to trust Hong Kong. Obviously, some of them are worried about the virus of freedom. I think they should be much more relaxed about letting people in Hong Kong get on with their lives.

Despite their recent actions, do you think the Chinese will let them continue their own way?

China has promised that she’ll do that. Many countries, including the United States, will be watching the way China handles Hong Kong as a test of the way she behaves on the international stage in the next few years.

And if China breaks that promise?

Then people in the region will become much more concerned about whether they can trust China, especially as it becomes economically and militarily more powerful. What happens here will tell us a great deal about what sort of country China will become in the next 25 years.

The Chinese have said it is you who have broken a promise, by contravening the Basic Law.

If people abuse you, it usually means they don’t have any good arguments. Their assertion that what we did (by having an election for a Legislative Council) is in any way a breach of previous undertakings or of Hong Kong’s future is complete baloney. We’ve challenged the Chinese to make a joint submission with us to the International Court of Justice. Naturally they’ve declined to take up the offer.

Other critics have said that you and the British attempted to bring democracy to Hong Kong very late in the game.

That’s a tired old argument. Hong Kong is different from Britain’s other colonies. Everywhere else, we left behind an independent country with all the institutions that go with an independent country. When we talked about doing in Hong Kong what we did in India and Malaysia (establishing an electoral process before leaving), the Chinese objected, saying if you do that you’ll give people in Hong Kong the impression that their destiny is the same as other newly independent countries — but Hong Kong is not going to be independent, it’s returning to China.

What’s next for you?

I’m going to France, where I have a house, to spend six or seven months writing a book on Asia and about the relationship between economic growth and political pluralism. I’ll look at the reasons for Asia’s economic success and whether or not it’ll continue at the same pace. I’ll consider how the rest of the world should treat China, issues that are increasingly coming to the top of the agenda in the world.

You have been in such a high-profile position for the past five years. Have you thought about your own political future?

I’ve thought about it, but I simply don’t know. I think after this I need a bit of time in the decompression chamber. I need to read, garden, walk, get my thoughts in order. We’ll see what the world has to offer after that.

Hong Kong has many streets and places named after previous governors. What do you want named after you?

I think there is going to be — for a short time anyway — gales of political correctness sweeping through Hong Kong, which will discourage anyone naming anything after me. Actually, I’d like to be remembered as someone who didn’t need a street named after him.

Three laws are still up for decision, and are likely to come into effect after the British have gone: no demonstrations without permits; no fund-raising from abroad for political organizations; and extradition to the mainland for “criminals” — i.e. Chinese dissidents like Han Dong-Fang, who could become one of the thorniest test cases for the new Hong Kong.

Han, a tall 33-year-old with lean good looks and a soft voice, was literally frog-marched across the Chinese border into Hong Kong three and a half years ago and tossed into exile for illegally forming a trade union. Born into a dirt-poor family in Beijing, he joined the People’s Liberation Army after high school but was refused Communist Party membership after complaining about the lack of food for the lower ranks.

In 1989, he joined the hundreds of thousands of protesters camped in Tiananmen Square and began organizing workers, finally being spirited out by a group of dissidents on the night of June 9 as soldiers opened fire on the crowd. He never again saw the people who saved his life.

One week later, Han surrendered to security police after seeing his face on “Wanted” posters across Beijing. He spent 22 months in jail, where he contracted tuberculosis in a cell containing 20 other men who “coughed blood every day.”

“I was dying,” Han says. “I weighed 90 pounds and needed help to go to the toilet.” Once released, he was brought by human-rights groups to New York’s Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, where a surgeon removed a lung that “looked like tofu.”

But Han wasn’t finished with his homeland. In 1993, he attempted to sneak back into China from Hong Kong. The police caught him, escorted him back across the border, declared him forever unwelcome and forcibly passed him into the hands of the Hong Kong government.

In just three months, Han will be back in China again, because his home on Hong Kong’s Lamma Island, like the rest of the province, will be in China itself. And presumably Han would be as vulnerable to arrest as if he were in Beijing.

Pro-Beijing politicians here doubt that will happen, because, they say, China intends to stick to its “one country, two systems” agreement with Britain. “Han Dong-Fan won’t be able to do anything after July 1 that he cannot do now,” says Tsang Yok-Sing, chairman of one of Hong Kong’s pro-China parties, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong, and one of China’s advisors during the transition. “Hong Kong will still have the rule of law.”

But as British rule winds down, the game plan is changing. Recently, China declared Hong Kong’s elected Legislative Council defunct and appointed its own chief executive, Tung Chee-Hwa.

Not knowing what will happen next, the few dozen Chinese dissidents living in Hong Kong have agreed to quietly resettle in the United States and Europe during the next few months. The lone exception, apparently, is Han. He insists he will continue living in Hong Kong, editing his paper, the China Labor Bulletin, and shipping it into mainland China.

Salon talked with Han Dong-Fan in Hong Kong.

What is your future after July 1?

It’s difficult to guess about the dangers. I have to prepare for the worst, that they might send me back to jail. That would be really the worst, to have the Public Security Bureau officers come to my home and take me back to China. You know, I am now a husband and a father — my one son is 4 and a half, and the other will be 3 in less than two weeks’ time.

Do you think there will be protection for dissidents like yourself in Hong Kong under Chinese rule?

I don’t think anybody wants to destroy the rule of law in Hong Kong in a very short period of time. Tung Chee-Hwa is a businessman. I don’t think he’s the same kind of person as the Communist Party leaders in Beijing. I believe that slowly, slowly there will be problems in the relationship between them.

But what makes you think China will go easy on human rights in Hong Kong?

I think it will if it wants Hong Kong to continue to be part of the international community. I don’t think it’ll be good for the Chinese government if they arrest me. They just want to take care of business interests.

So, what they decide to do with you will be a real test case of where the new Hong Kong is headed.

I think it’s a test case of the new Hong Kong and the new chief executive. It’ll test the rule of law in Hong Kong, and the notion of one country, two systems. Hong Kong has signed international conventions protecting social and political rights.

Should the West be playing a role in protecting human rights in Hong Kong?

The international community lost its chance to make a deal with China, especially since President Clinton gave Most Favored Nation status to China and said that there was no linkage between trade and human rights. After he said that, between March and May 1994, the Chinese government arrested almost every dissident, even as Clinton was giving MFN status. And since then, its official policy on dissidents has been, “You have two choices — stay in jail or leave the country.”

Why put yourself in that kind of danger? Why not just leave?

I’m a Chinese citizen. I still have a Chinese passport, although the government canceled it after they threw me out of the country. But I still travel the world on it. And I want to keep fighting. I am a trade unionist, and you have to stay close to the people. I always try to tell the Chinese government that I’m not a politician at all. I’m not interested in political power, so I’m not a political challenger to them. Relax, I say. Take it easy.

Zimmerman, 42, who recently moved from Colorado to California to set up a company called Pretty Good Privacy Inc., is something of a maverick among Silicon Valley’s high-tech, Ph.D. crowd. A longtime anti-nuclear activist, Zimmermann sees his knack for coding — a talent he has been perfecting, he says, since he was 10 — as just another political organizing tool.

Earlier this year, the U.S. government dropped a three-year criminal investigation against Zimmermann. But the Commerce Department still tightly restricts the export of encryption programs, and is attempting to push through a “key escrow” plan which would enable government agents to decode all cryptography. The plan, unveiled last October, has angered numerous computer executives (and of course, Zimmermann) who regard it as an attempt to snoop into electronic communications. Next week, U.S. officials are gathering in Paris to try to persuade their European counterparts to adopt similar measures.

Zimmerman, meanwhile, has a new trick up his sleeve which he plans to present Thursday at the Fall Internet World in Manhattan. Called PGPfone, the disk-based encryption software, which is available in beta from an MIT web site, is aimed at foiling government telephone wiretaps.

Salon spoke to Zimmerman at his Pretty Good Privacy, Inc. offices in Redwood Shores, Calif.

PGPFone isn’t the only new encryption software you’re working on.

Right. We’re also developing PGPdisk which will protect your laptop computer or the desktop in the office. Every write is encrypted, every read is decrypted. Lawyers can use either PGPfone or PGPdisk to communicate with their clients. That’s especially important when you’re dealing with criminal law, where the government is the adversary.

Which is why governments can’t stand the idea. It’s understandable that federal agencies don’t want this software in the hands of organized crime. There are reports that various drug cartels are using PGP software.

I do worry about criminals using PGP, but I can’t see a way of making it available to the good guys only. In the early 20th century, there were criminals like Bonnie and Clyde who made use of cars more effectively than other criminals had done. The police had never seen that, and some said cars were perhaps a bad thing. They also pollute the air and increase our dependency on foreign oil. But most people are glad to have them.

Cryptography, like cars, will have a mixed effect on society, but most of it will be good. You have to have encryption to protect on-line commerce. Otherwise, criminals will have a field day intercepting credit cards and breaking into computers.

It’s powerful software. Why do you give it away for free?

When I first started writing PGP, I thought I could sell it. But the Senate introduced legislation allowing the government a back door to read the code in plain text. It looked like PGP would soon be made illegal, and I felt it was important to get it propagated through society. So I abandoned plans to sell it, and began giving it away, even though the bill was ultimately defeated. President Clinton’s new plan is very much like the old plan.

Who is going to win this battle? The government has taken its case to the European encryption meetings in Paris, and seems to be winning over governments there. How can you beat them?

I have a sign on my wall, which reads: “DEPLOYMENT WINS.” If we can deploy a lot of encryption here … We still give it away for free to keep propagating it as widely as possible. We’ve been tinkering with PGPfone quite a bit and are ready to come out with a new version. People are already encrypting their email. At the moment, you have to run a support program to encrypt email, but we’re trying to make PGP integrate seamlessly. Also, many people worked on PGP voluntarily, and the understanding I have with them is that their work would always be available for free.

How did you get started on this road? You’ve been creating secret codes since you were a kid.

I was in fourth grade when I read a children’s book on cryptography. It was called “Codes And Secret Writing” by Herbert S. Zimm. It taught me how to make invisible ink out of lemon juice, that kind of thing. Then there was this Saturday morning monster movie show in Miami where I grew up, and the guy who ran the show would show secret messages. You could send in a couple of bucks and he would decrypt the messages for you. Well, I never sent the money, I just decrypted all the messages myself. In the eighth grade, kids would give me messages to test me. I could break all of them.

How did you get into computers?

I wanted to be an astronomer, I thought perhaps I would go to the moon. I majored in physics but didn’t do that well. So I succumbed to computers, and my grades went up tremendously. I took a lot of graduate courses, and started working as a software engineer.

Did you expect to become the encryption guru?

I’m surprised almost daily by it. It just amazes me. I get mail from around the world from people who are using PGP. That alone was enough to keep me going when I was under criminal investigation.

What’s the government’s attitude towards you now?

I recently asked if I could be on the U.S. delegation to the OECD [Organization of European Cooperation and Development in Paris, which is debating international encryption policies next week]. The U.S. is trying to pursue “key escrow” in Europe, and then come back here and say, they’re doing it in Europe, we should do it here, too. It’s a way of laundering failed domestic policies in countries with more complacent populations.

Scott Charney of the Justice Department, who heads the delegation, said no, I couldn’t be on the delegation. I’m not too popular with the Justice Department. They don’t like how pervasive PGP has become domestically.

Vivienne Walt is a columnist for the Wall Street Journal Interactive edition.

Quote of the day

Jane of Arc

“My life is drama. You get great fantasies of this. It’s the great speech in the third act. It would be easy for me to stand up and shout: ‘I am an artist! How can you do this?’ and let the agency go down in flames.”

– Jane Alexander, beginning her fourth year as chairwoman of the embattled National Endowment for the Arts, acknowledging she is sometimes tempted to simply storm out of her job. (From “Jane Alexander: Pragmatism to Preserve Arts Grants,” in Tuesday’s New York Times)