Australia Battles Amazon, With Populist Defiance
• Thomas Friedman tries to goad General Mattis into standing up to President Trump, writing: “You need to lead McMaster, Tillerson and Kelly (Pompeo is a lost cause) in telling Trump
that if he does not change his ways you will all quit, en masse.”
Joseph Kahn, the managing editor of The Times, is here in Sydney this week, and you’re all invited to try and catch him in person or on the air.
It compared the current moment of globalization and technological change with the Industrial Revolution, and concluded
that in this era, “change is happening 10 times faster and at 300 times the scale, or roughly 3,000 times the impact.”
If that assessment is accurate, the urge to pull inward and protect your own — regardless of your professed politics — starts to make more sense.
Just before I finished my story about Amazon’s arrival in Australia
and its possible impact on the book industry, I started to hear something familiar in the way bookstore owners and authors were talking about their resistance to the giant American retailer.
On Monday at 3 p.m., he’ll be discussing the challenges of running a newsroom in an era of digital disruption
and President Trump at a public event at the University of Sydney with Simon Jackman of United States Studies Center
• editorial board weighs in on the Adani coal mine, arguing that “it’s the opposite of what Australia, India or the rest of the world needs.”
• Miguel Syjuco writes about the way fake news is damaging the Philippines.