Downer and intelligence
From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer today said he was told Bali could be a terrorist target four months before the deadly attacks that killed more than 200 people - but Australia had no intelligence information or specific advice that the Bali attack was likely to occur.

Speaking to reporters in Darwin, Mr Downer said the warning came from an Office of National Assessment (ONA) analyst who was theorising about likely targets for terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah (JI) in the South-East Asian region.

Officers from the ONA met Mr Downer on June 18 and 19 last year and one officer told him Bali, the Indonesian province of Riau, and Singapore would be attractive targets for the JI terrorist network.

"This was hypothesising, it was theorising by one particular analyst; it wasn't based on any (specific) information that he had," Mr Downer said.

"Of course, perceptive as it turned out, ... (because it was) based on theorising by one particular analyst and not based on any hard information, there was no sense among the officials or ONA that we should upgrade our travel advisories.

"Our travel advisory was already warning people about possible terrorist attacks in Indonesia."

I'm glad the foreign minister views intelligence with such a sceptic eye. Now if only he had done the same with the intelligence on the missing WMDs, but somehow when there's a war to justify mere hypothesis seems good enough for the minister.

snark of the week
From the Sydney Morning Herald

The insults have been visceral. "Many in the Labor Party await with bated breath for Mark Latham to do more damage to the Liberal Party than he does to the Labor Party and taxi drivers with his pronouncements," said Beazley in Perth on Thursday, a sly reference to the feisty Member for Werriwa's notorious punch-up with a wayward cabby.

I put that back to Latham on my radio show. "The taxi driver was stealing my property and Kim Beazley's trying to steal the Labor leadership off Simon Crean. I'm happy to tackle them both," he shot back. Solidarity forever, comrades.

I guess it's been a really snarky week or...

A snark is a long time in politics.

NGOwatch on Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch, in a report promoting sexual confusion among students in public schools, recommends groups that promote same-sex marriage, and have been associated with NAMBLA (North American Man Boy Love Association).

Click here here to read more on the Human Rights Watch website.

Human Rights Watch promotes "sexual orientation" rights. "Sexual orientation" encompasses numerous behaviors, including illegal activity.

See Appendix here for a list of sexual orientations from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition.

Human Rights Watch denounces abstinence programs.

Click here here to read more on the Human Rights Watch website.

Human Rights Watch advocates for gays in the military.

Click here here to read more on the Human Rights Watch website.

Human Rights Watch demands release of some detainees at Camp X-Rayin Guant�namo Bay.

Click here here to read more on the Human Rights Watch website.

Note the alleged link to the DSM actually goes to another rightwing thinktank's critique of the DSM.

yet more regime change
The Asia Times reports:

The AEI and another right-wing group, the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, have announced that they are launching a new website (www.NGOWatch.org) to expose the funding, operations and agendas of international NGOs, and particularly their alleged efforts to constrain US freedom of action in international affairs and influence the behavior of corporations abroad.

The organizations are especially alarmed by what they see as the naivete of the Bush administration and corporations that provide NGOs with funding and other support. "In many cases, naive corporate reformers, within corporations and in government, are welcoming them," complained John Entine, an AEI fellow.

To mark the site's launch, AEI, which is funded mainly by major corporations and right-wing foundations, also held an all-day conference called "NGOs: The Growing Power of an Unelected Few" that featured a series of presentations depicting NGOs as a growing and largely unaccountable threat to the Bush administration's foreign-policy goals and free-market capitalism around the world. The conference was co-sponsored by a right-wing Australian think-tank, the Institute of Public Affairs.

I am calling on all like-minded bloggers to attend a conference called 'Ultraright US Thinktanks: The Growing Power of an Unelected Few'.

US meets Taliban
The Asia Times reports:

According to a Pakistani jihadi leader who played a role in setting up the communication, the meeting took place recently between representatives of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and Taliban leaders at the Pakistan Air Force base of Samungli, near Quetta.

The source told Asia Times Online that four conditions were put to the Taliban before any form of reconciliation can take place that could potentially lead to them having a role in the Kabul government, whose present authority is in essence limited to the capital:

Mullah Omar must be removed as supreme leader of the Taliban.
All Pakistani, Arab and other foreign fighters currently engaged in operations against international troops in Afghanistan must be thrown out of the country.
Any US or allied soldiers held captive must be released.
Afghans currently living abroad, notably in the United States and England, must be given a part in the government - through being allowed to contest elections - even though many do not even speak their mother tongue, such as Dari or Pashtu.

If true, this is insane. Perhaps regime change in 2 countries at the same time is not as easy as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz claim after all?

I've been some imagining. Of course I'm a hopeless idealist but what if the great powers had restricted their interventions in the Middle East to cases of international humanitarian intervention? What if Mossadegh had not not been deposed by the CIA? What if the US had not armed Saddam with chemical weapons in order to fight Iran? What if the Soviet Union had not imposed its own guy in Afghanistan?

Given the unhappy record of previous interventions why should we expect Iraq to be any better? What have the war party learned from previous interventions that they are applying in this intervention? So far the only possible answer to the last two questions is nothing and nothing.

The Road to Surfdom and Pandagon blog the same story.

UN push for Mid-East peace

Mr Annan said the introduction of US officials next week to monitor the road map was "a beginning, and it may be enough if the parties are able to break the cycle of violence".

"In the interim, I would like to see an armed peacekeeping force act as a buffer between the Israelis and Palestinians," he said in New York.

Mr Annan disputed the decision by the US and Israel to try to sideline Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat from the peace process, saying he had "not been entirely negative".

The Roadmap is going nowhere. Israel's effort to ensure its own security does no more than incite Palestinian retaliation. The Palestinian government does not have the capacity to provide security. A third party needs to do it.

And (just quietly) wasn't the occupation of Iraq going to guarantee a Middle East peace settlement?

constitutional tunnel vision
We all know the Howard model (if it even makes it to a referendum) will get rejected by the people. The speculation on why Howard is pushing it is fun. Speculating on why labor would support it is sad.

What's sadder is the vacuum the debate is happening in. The states have constitutions. New South Wales sends deadlocked bills to a referendum and empowers the legislative assembly to pass supply without consent of the legislative council. Victoria (roughly) follows the Howard model. Victoria treats supply bills the same way as NSW.

Victoria has also enacted a highly declaratory rule:

Section 16A. The principle of Government mandate
(1) It is the intention of the Parliament that regard should be given to the following principle--


The Council as a House of Review will exercise its powers in recognition of the right and obligation of the current Government to implement--


(a) the Government's specific mandate--the policies, promises and initiatives which were publicly released by or on behalf of the Government during the last election campaign; and
(b) the Government's general mandate--to govern for and on behalf of the people of Victoria.
(2) The principle in sub-section (1) is not to be construed as limiting the powers of the Council, the Assembly or the Parliament.".

Queensland, the ACT and the Northern Territory have taken the more drastic option of not having a second chamber. Why does federal constitutional debate always happen in a vacuum?

Great moments in science

Well, it's something I always wanted to know.

Time drags for stoned rats

Cannabis makes rats lose track of time, robbing them of the ability to discriminate between short and long periods.

This may help explain why human users may be less adept at tasks that require sustained concentration.

For some reason it took me forever to blog this story.

snark of the week
From the Sydney Morning Herald:

But it [the Australian government] refused to acknowledge the inevitability of organised carnage, going so far as to mislead the US about Indonesia's intentions. During the Tampa affair, a momentary failure of communication from the military to the Government laid the basis for a sustained and grotesque political abuse of raw intelligence in the children overboard scandal.

The increasing frequency of leaks and unauthorised briefings from the Washington and London intelligence communities are sure signs they know they're being set up. After all, these guys wrote the manual on dirty tricks. That's why the British papers are suddenly full of unnamed MI6 poobahs complaining about interference by Tony Blair's office. And why a lot of CIA guys have been bitching to The Washington Post about the number of times Vice-President Dick Cheney would loom over their shoulders, cracking his knuckles and choking everybody with warm clouds of Old Spice while he rumbled about how much he was looking forward to kicking Saddam's butt.

Wouldn't you massage the raw intel, just a smidge, just to stop the VP massaging your carotid artery with his knuckledusters?

Bear it in mind the next time someone tries to sell you a blurry picture of a secret missile base, or to convince you of a secret plot to smuggle terrorists into the country via leaky fishy boats. Because, you know, international terrorists just love to travel by leaky fishy boat and they always announce their arrival by twirling a few kids in the air over their heads, before tossing them to the fishes.

The intel says so.

The inevitable carnage in Aceh also seems not to be happening or not to require any Australian action.

Kim goes West
I'm amazed. When the Beasley challenge to labor leader Simon Crean was announced I assumed it would be a cakewalk. A week later I'm shaking my head. Having lost 2 federal elections in a row Kim Beasley chose to run on the one single platform guaranteed to lose him the leadership.

Running on your own charisma would seem poor tactics when you've lost 2 elections. When the said charisma campaign is precisely the way you lost the said elections it seems amazingly poor tactics indeed. When your program was to stand for nothing and compromise on everything it takes amazingly bad political judgment to run for leader on a program of standing for nothing and compromising on everything.

Crean has campaigned on policy and he's done it bravely and effectively. If the labor caucus have a brain between them between them they'll stick with Crean. And that is not something I could have imagined saying a week ago.

Carnage
From the ABC:

Hamas vowed revenge for Israel's helicopter gunship attack of just over 24 hours ago and it has delivered in swift and brutal terms. The militant Palestinian group has claimed responsibility for a bombing on a crowded Jerusalem bus during peak hour, which has killed at least 17 people and wounded more than 60.

Within an hour, Israel hit back with a missile attack on a car in Gaza City, which killed seven people including two senior Hamas members and wounded dozens of bystanders. Then a short time later Israeli helicopter gunships fired more missiles in Gaza killing at least two more Palestinians.

It's one of the worst eruptions of violence in this three-year Intifada and it comes exactly one week after the peace summit in Aqaba in which the Israeli and Palestinian leaders agreed to work toward a peace settlement.

The United States President has again condemned the violence and while the Israeli Government has defended its assassination attacks, both the Palestinian Prime Minister Abu Mazen and Yasser Arafat are now calling on all Palestinian factions to stop their attacks against Israel.

When the Roadmap was first published and agreed to by the parties I expressed scepticism here and there. I was partly wrong, Sharon has gone much further than I expected, but the Roadmap leads nowhere as long as the Palestinian side does not control its extremes and the Israeli side maintains the assassinations policy and the settlements.

It seems to me that the Palestinian authority does not have (if it ever had) the capacity to control Hamas and the others. Perhaps destroying the Palestinian authority's security infrastructure was not Israel's brightest policy initiative. How that capacity can be increased enough to satisfy Israel's demand for security is really the only question and the Roadmap does not address that effectively. Transatlantic phone calls will not suffice. International boots on the ground might and those who supported the Iraq invasion on failed state grounds should ask themselves about the situation in the Occupied Territories.

How not to manage a colony

The pro-war people never really bothered to understand the anti-war argument, lost in their fantasies of Churchill and Munich, 1938. A less apt analogy could not have been drawn. What many anti-war people argued was not that the US would lose the Main Force war against Iraqi units, but would find the second war, the guerrilla war, impossible to win. That Iraq would seem to provide a victory, but that Iraqi history indicated that an armed opposition was likely to explode at some point. The reason you didn't want to tip over Saddam, is that you didn't want to see what he was sitting on.

Well, now we do, and we're bungling it. What reason have we given an Iraqi to be loyal to us? At the end of the day, why should Iraqis endorse any of our plans for their country? The Iraqi people may well decide that the best role for the US is in leaving their country. That hasn't happened yet. But, at the end of the day, are we going to provide a reason for Iraqi cooperation without a tank on every corner to ensure it?

While DailyKOS is always worth reading, this piece is outstanding.

Rumsfeld rediscovers state sovereignty!
Speaking in Germany:

Rumsfeld said that the world must strengthen organizations that allow nations to cooperate against a threat, "we must take care to not damage the core principle that undergirds the international system - the principle of state sovereignty," he said.

The secretary said he sees respect for the principle of sovereignty eroding. "We see it ? in my view ? in the International Criminal Courts claim of authority to try the citizens of countries that have not consented to ICC jurisdiction," he said. "We see it in the new Belgian law purporting to give Belgian courts 'universal jurisdiction' over alleged war crimes anywhere in the world."

I am now doing intensive research to discover which nations the International Criminal Court has invaded and occupied without the authority of the United Nations.

Howard speeches on WMDs
From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Four months ago, on February 4, John Howard made a ministerial statement to Parliament lasting an hour. He began: "My purpose today is to explain why Iraq's defiance of the UN and its possession of chemical and biological weapons and its pursuit of a nuclear capability poses a real threat to the stability and security of our world ..."

On March 12, Howard announced, in a national television address: "The Government has decided to commit forces to action to disarm Iraq. We are determined to join other countries to deprive Iraq of its chemical and biological weapons capable of causing death and destruction on a mammoth scale ..."

On March 20, the day of the US-led invasion of Iraq, Howard told Parliament: "We have made a very strong commitment to disarming Iraq. We have done [so] because we believe it is in Australia's long-term national interest. We do worry about the ultimate and fateful coming together of weapons of mass destruction and international terrorism."

On April 10, the day Baghdad fell, Howard told reporters: "I've said all along we wouldn't expect to get hard evidence of chemical and biological weapons until well after hostilities ceased. They've been obviously passed around and hidden."

Howard told Parliament on May 14: "Australia did the right thing. We brought freedom and liberty to an oppressed people. That is something about which we should always be properly and eternally proud." And Iraq's supposed chemical and biological weapon stockpiles? Howard, amid a brief reference well down in a 40-minute speech: "The hunt for these weapons will not be easy ..."

After a six-week recess Parliament resumed on May 13 for the budget. Iraq remained all-but ignored. Three weeks of sittings were dominated by the Hollingworth serial and Labor's leadership pantomime. Labor's Harry Jenkins (Vic) told the House a week ago: "There has been an eerie silence on Iraq since this Parliament reconvened - only two speeches [by Howard and Simon Crean]. If you compare this to the lengthy debates [before the invasion] you will see how ironic the silence is."

Labor's Kevin Rudd asked the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, the next day about US and British intelligence failures in the assessment of stockpiled Iraqi chemical and biological weapons, now a major issue in London and Washington. Downer replied, stoically: "[Australian intelligence assessments] remain confident in the judgement that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction materials and capability in the lead-up to the war. Over time - we have to be patient - we will get a comprehensive picture of Saddam Hussein's weapons program."

I am glad the federal opposition could find time to put down one (count it) one question on the issue of WMDs.

Howard on WMDs
From Howard's appearance on the ABC last night:

TONY JONES: This leads us, though, anyway to the rationale for the war on Iraq, for joining it in the first place.

Does it matter if no weapons of mass destruction are found in the end?

JOHN HOWARD: I wouldn't say it doesn't matter.

I wouldn't say that at all.

It's too early to make a judgment.

People should be more patient.

TONY JONES: They should be, but people are asking questions now as to where these weapons are.

If none are found, what are the implications?

JOHN HOWARD: I think, Tony, that question should be asked, and I'd be very happy to answer it if after the elapse of a reasonable amount of time such a conclusion is reached.

But it's too early, there are too many sensitive sites, the international team of 1,300 or 1,400 is only now being assembled.

It is altogether too early for people to say, "There definitely haven't been and won't be any evidence found "that Iraq had a WMD capacity before the war started."

Those are issues that obviously I'll be asked about.

If those things happen, then I'll be --

TONY JONES: When will be the appropriate length of time?

When will we know one way or another?

JOHN HOWARD: Certainly some time from now.

I'm just a poor simple blogger but I could swear I heard John Howard tell parliament that WMDs were a matter of certainty. If we now have to wait 'some time from now' to know about WMDs why the hell did we just fight a war over them?

Accepting responsibility

After the Bay of Pigs disaster when the CIA tried to invade Cuba and failed, President John F. Kennedy took personal responsibility and ordered an independent investigation.

In fact, the incompetent invasion had been planned during the Eisenhower administration, so JFK easily could have blamed the mess on his predecessor.

After the Pearl Harbor attack, Franklin Roosevelt established an investigative commission chaired by Justice Owen D. Roberts, a Republican Supreme Court member who had been the prosecutor for the notorious Teapot Dome scandal.

The War on Terror is not a war. It's a rhetorical device. If a nation at war can survive an independent inquiry into Pearl Harbour in the face of World War II it can probably survive an inquiry into 11 September or the missing WMDs. All 3 coalition nations now face mounting pressure for inquiries.

John Howard raised the beginning of a defence last night - we believed what we were told. George Bush and Tony Blair do not have a similar defence available. It's high time all 3 leaders started accepting responsibility.

neoliberalism and the executive
The Senate debate is rolling out along not unpredictable lines. The proposal is electorally dead so naturally labor is thinking of supporting it. I think it's interesting that neoliberal governments seem to believe in the centralisation of power in the executive at all costs.

Conservatives advocate checks and balances. Neither Howard nor Bush have ever seen checks and balances as anything but a road bump on the path to the enactment of their program. Certainly they do not recognise that scrutiny and deliberation are likely to improve any proposal.

The classic was the security laws we had to have after 11 September which were then left unused for months.

Tinker, tailor, spinner, spy

The irony is that the Prime Minister's reluctance to have the truth of all this investigated by an independent inquiry presided over by a judge stretches him on the same sort of rack that he used against Saddam Hussein. In the prologue to the conflict, Ministers asserted, and none more evangelically than Mr Blair himself, that if the Iraqi dictator had nothing to hide, then he would be fully co-operative with the arms inspectors.

That argument is now turned against Mr Blair. If he has genuinely nothing to fear from the truth, then he should be prepared to establish a comprehensive, independent inquiry.

I am surprised by this development. The antiwar majorities disappeared from the polls in Britain and Australia almost as soon as war began. If those majorities now decide that war was based on a lie, that's grim, sad news for Blair and Howard. Howard is already falling back on the predictable defence that he accepted intelligence given to him by the US and UK governments. I am not sure if that argument will run in Australia. It certainly has no traction in Britain.

My guess is that there will be an inquiry and that its findings will have massive impact in Canberra and Washington as well as London. To survive, Blair needs a good explanation for the total absence of a vast arsenal ready to fire in 45 minutes. A couple of contested trailers of mass destruction are no longer enough.

special Queen's Birthday snark of the week
From the London Times:

We cling to the monarchy as an anchor to the past and to the country that we once were as if that was a positive statement in its favour. Yet it is precisely because it is such an anchor that we need to throw it overboard and set ourselves free. Until we rid ourselves of the feudal mania which fixates on the banal preoccupations of an ordinary 18-year-old boy, who happens to have been born into the Royal Family, we will forever remain the class-ridden, class-anchored, class-obsessed society we have too long been.

In all truth I doubt abolishing the monarchy would achieve much of the author's object. The media would just grow a cinematic mania for Hollywood types.

I did not have sexual relations with that intelligence
All right, no-one's actually said it yet, but I'm sure it's coming.

Is Blair lying?

What both men forget, or ignore, is that we live in an age of asymmetric media. The BBC reaches the most educated Americans, the full range of British newspapers from the Sun to the Guardian are now daily reading for Americans. Americans can gain the same understanding of British politics available to Britons and vice versa. The internet has fundamentally changed the way we communicate. So Blair's Question Time is news in the US as it happens. A US Congressional Committee's actions are reported in real time to the UK. Allegations in British newspapers are no longer reported second hand, but read and discussed daily. It takes no more effort to quote from the Guardian than the New York Times and live broadcasts of BBC4 are a browser away.

If the prewar WMD intelligence is shown to have been negligent or dishonest, asymmetric media will cause a few earthquakes in Canberra as well. It's well-known that both US and UK intelligence are leaking an avalanche at the expense of Bush and Blair. The one factor that the DailyKOS does not include is that I would guess the odd French or German intelligence document might well find its way to a backbencher or two in the house of commons.

The Australian Parliament: Time For Reformation

Leaving aside the question of the functions of parliament, and proceeding to the second question: What is wrong with parliament that it needs reform? The implicit answer of the orthodox reformers is that it puts too many difficulties in the way of governments governing, too many limitations on the power of governments to do what they like between elections. This naturally leads to a further question: Why should governments have absolute power between elections? What advantage would we gain by removing parliamentary limitations on government power? Usually the orthodox reformers have no answer. If pressed, they say it is because the country must have certain legislation. Currently it appears that we must have certain media ownership legislation, which is self-evidently good for us. How we are to know that it is good for us without thorough examination through parliamentary processes is not explained. The claim is also made that we must be economically efficient, and we will regress economically if the government does not have unfettered power to do what is economically good for us. The same people, however, tell us that at present, under the current parliamentary system, the economy is doing wonderfully well. Perhaps we could have an even more efficient economy if the government were all-powerful. If asked for an example of an efficient economy, these people usually cite the United States, the country which has the most rigorous institutional and political constraints on the power of the government.

In any event, the argument that powerful government equals economic efficiency has been blown out of the water. The American academic Arend Lijphart conducted a detailed study of stable modern democracies, rating them according to whether they have more majoritarian systems (in which one party wins power with few limitations) or proportional or consensual systems (in which parties are compelled to share power and compromise). He found that, on a range of economic and social indicators, including economic growth, inflation and employment, the proportional/consensual systems clearly outperformed the majoritarian systems. This finding has been supported by a recent comparison of Australia's economic performance with that of the Netherlands, Lijphart's most proportional/consensual country..4 In spite of their only argument having been decisively refuted, the proponents of orthodox "reform" press on. Every so-called reform of parliament turns into a proposal to reduce it to a rubber stamp. We have been provided with a perfect example in recent days. A proposal to change the parliamentary term to four years was floated, probably initially to fill in time between afternoon tea and the cocktails at a party conference. This change is said to be self-evidently necessary for economic efficiency. We were not given time to consider whether, if politicians now are short-term thinkers, incorrigible pursuers of quick political advantage and pork-barrellers, adding a possible extra year to their term would turn them into statespersons and great forward planners. The proposal immediately developed into schemes to nobble the Senate entirely, to allow the government, under various guises, such as joint sittings, to pass any legislation it liked and, as a necessary by-product, to avoid any parliamentary accountability. If these schemes appeared too drastic, perhaps we would buy the old chestnut of 'stopping the Senate blocking supply'. As this usually involves allowing the government to call anything 'supply', the effect would be the same.

Australian government is about modified majoritarianism. By its nature, a federal government always commands a majority in the House. Any bill supported by both government and opposition always passes the Senate. All Howard's reform would really do is lock the opposition out of the process, so naturally the hereditary political geniuses in the federal parliamentary opposition are tempted to support this.

Empire of lies
From the Washington Post:

The latest vogue in Washington is the proposition that it really doesn't matter whether Saddam Hussein maintained an arsenal of unconventional weapons in recent years. American troops may not have uncovered any evidence of the weapons of mass destruction the Bush administration was warning about, the argument goes. But they have found plenty of proof that Iraq suffered under a brutal dictator who slaughtered thousands, perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands of his own people, and that is reason enough to justify the invasion. We disagree. We are as pleased as anyone to see Saddam Hussein removed from power, but the United States cannot now simply erase from the record the Bush administration's dire warnings about the Iraqi weapons threat. The good word of the United States is too central to America's leadership abroad ? and to President Bush's dubious doctrine of pre-emptive warfare ? to be treated so cavalierly.

Like most Americans, we believed the government's repeated warnings that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction threatened the security of the world. The urgent need to disarm Saddam Hussein was the primary reason invoked for going to war in March rather than waiting to see if weapons inspectors could bring Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs under control.

It would still be premature to conclude that Iraq abandoned its efforts to manufacture and stockpile unconventional arms after the first Persian Gulf war in 1991. But after weeks of futile searching by American teams, it seems clear that Iraq was not bristling with horrific arms and that chemical and biological weapons were not readily available to frontline Iraqi forces.

Like most Australians, I shared the expectation of most Americans that WMDs would be found. I thought the war was wrong, for various reasons, but I am astonished that there is no sign of the vast arsenal ready to go on 45 minutes' notice. Even if the outcome for the Iraqi people is desirable that does not excuse those leaders who appear to have shown either duplicity or incompetence in dealing with intelligence issues.

The US is not popular in the world and that popularity is falling dramatically as a direct result of this war. Before we listen too gently to those voices who claim what the hell, we did over an evil tyrant we should ask them about the Congo, about Burma, about Aceh. Without the WMDs what distinguishes those places from Iraq and if liberation is a good and sufficient cause to go to war when will the coalitions of the willing assemble?

Worse than that, the US armed forces are already dramatically over-stretched. We now know that US Defence Secretary Rumsfeld deliberately reduced boots on the ground to prove a point. We now know that prewar estimates of a 250 000 troops to maintain the occupation were not, as the war party claimed at the time, exaggerated.

In his rage and impatience for an easy solution George Bush told the US Congress that the US is not subject to the decisions of others. Because of the over-stretch the US needs allies to maintain the occupation. Those who would promote lying as an act of state should think long and hard. The lies make it difficult to persuade allies to contribute troops. And the lies make it difficult for the Iraqi people to believe anything the coalition tells them. Lying costs.

Howard on Senate deform

And not surprisingly when you look back through the history of constitutional examination you find some nuggets and I found a nugget back in 1959, it was a joint parliamentary committee on constitutional reform and it has impeccable bipartisan credentials. One member of it was the then Member for Werriwa, Edward Gough Whitlam, and the other was Sir Alec, or later to become Sir Alec Downer, that well known South Australian Liberal, the father of our present Foreign Minister, a former Minister in the Menzies Government and former Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. And what that committee essentially recommended was that the Constitution should be altered by referendum to provide that if legislation were rejected on a number of occasions by the Senate in the way described in section 57 now there could be a joint sitting of the two houses called without the necessity to hold a double disillusion. And that if the legislation were passed that joint sitting then it would become law. I think that could offer some years into the future a way of providing a more modern and contemporary and workable method of resolving differences between the two Houses. And it is the Government's intention to prepare and issue for public debate a discussion paper on such a proposal, we have not made a decision as yet to commit ourselves to the holding of a referendum, at this stage we have made decision to commit ourselves to the issuing of a discussion paper and the initiation through it of public debate. We have to find a way which is moderate and non-threatening and which respects the desire of the Australian people often to differentiate their vote between the House of Representatives and the Senate to resolve the deadlocks that we are facing. The proposition that every time a bill that is important to a government that in our case has been elected on three consecutive occasions, the proposition that the only way you, for years into the future, are going to solve that dilemma is by going to the expense of having often a premature double disillusion of Parliament, is I think increasingly unacceptable in the modern Australia in which we now operate. I know that constitutional referendums are notoriously difficult to get passed, we tried to break the nexus between the size of the House of Representatives in the Senate back in 1967, and that was overwhelmingly defeated, even though it had the support of both the Labor Party and the Liberal Party, and we all know the history of more recent constitutional referendums.

But that doesn't absolve me or the Government of the responsibility of trying to find a way around this challenge. Conditions could exist for a double disillusion of the Parliament, in fact technically they exist now, although let me repeat my view that the current parliament ought, absence special circumstances, run its full term. No Prime Minister responsibly forswears his right to call an election if the circumstances are required, but I have the strongest possible view that the Australian people rightly visit electoral judgement on prime ministers and premiers who go expeditiously on an earlier occasion than they might to the polls without a proper reason based on public policy. But double disillusions in the present circumstances would not produce as good an outcome in the Senate for us as would a half Senate held at the normal time towards the end of next year. And they are all the circumstances that I have to take into account. So I take this opportunity my friends of saying to you very frankly that we do need to look at whether the time has come to alter the deadlock provisions of the constitution. And if after that process of three months consultation we thought there was a reasonable prospect of community support the likelihood is that the Government would seek to run the referendum in conjunction with the next general election, whenever that occurs. Now let me repeat this is not a radical proposal. It is a moderate, practical, sensible, long ago thought of idea to resolve what in some circumstances is a legislative nut without the necessity of the constitutional hammer of an expensive and of course inappropriate double disillusion.

This is a radical proposal which would enable the executive to pass any laws it wished. It will be defeated at referendum.

Afterthought
Just to feed my pretensions to run a blog of record, Section 57 of the Constitution reads:

Disagreement between the Houses.
57. If the House of Representatives passes any proposed law, and the Senate rejects or fails to pass it, or passes it with amendments to which the House of Representatives will not agree, and if after an interval of three months the House of Representatives, in the same or the next session, again passes the proposed law with or without any amendments which have been made, suggested, or agreed to by the Senate, and the Senate rejects or fails to pass it, or passes it with amendments to which the House of Representatives will not agree, the Governor-General may dissolve the Senate and the House of Representatives simultaneously. But such dissolution shall not take place within six months before the date of the expiry of the House of Representatives by effluxion of time.

If after such dissolution the House of Representatives again passes the proposed law, with or without any amendments which have been made, suggested, or agreed to by the Senate, and the Senate rejects or fails to pass it, or passes it with amendments to which the House of Representatives will not agree, the Governor-General may convene a joint sitting of the members of the Senate and of the House of Representatives.

The members present at the joint sitting may deliberate and shall vote together upon the proposed law as last proposed by the House of Representatives, and upon amendments, if any, which have been made therein by one House and not agreed to by the other, and any such amendments which are affirmed by an absolute majority of the total number of the members of the Senate and House of Representatives shall be taken to have been carried, and if the proposed law, with the amendments, if any, so carried is affirmed by an absolute majority of the total number of the members of the Senate and House of Representatives, it shall be taken to have been duly passed by both Houses of the Parliament, and shall be presented to the Governor-General for the Queen's assent.

Downsizing in disguise

The streets of Baghdad are a swamp of crime and uncollected garbage. Battered local businesses are going bankrupt, unable to compete with cheap imports. Unemployment is soaring and thousands of laid-off state workers are protesting in the streets.

In other words, Iraq looks like every other country that has undergone rapid-fire "structural adjustments" prescribed by Washington, from Russia's infamous "shock therapy" in the early 1990s to Argentina's disastrous "surgery without anesthetic." Except that Iraq's "reconstruction" makes those wrenching reforms look like spa treatments.

Paul Bremer, the US-appointed governor of Iraq, has already proved something of a flop in the democracy department in his few weeks there, nixing plans for Iraqis to select their own interim government in favor of his own handpicked team of advisers. But Bremer has proved to have something of a gift when it comes to rolling out the red carpet for US multinationals.

This is really not surprising. The Argentines have done almost everything demanded of them under the Washington consensus and their economy is a shambles. The Iraqis, of course, have no choice about accepting the Washington consensus. It's ironic that the Bush administration are happily telling the world that big-F freedom now prevails in Iraq and then wondering why so much of the world regards American-style freedom as a dubious proposition.

Aristotle on Blogs

All the same, as we have said, the causes and principles which they describe are capable of application to the remoter class of websites (topoi tou histou) as well, and indeed are better fitted to these. But as to how there are to be updates, if all that is premissed is the Linked and the Unlinked, and Present and Past, they do not even hint; nor how, without updates and change, there can be generation and destruction, or the activities of the links which traverse the web. And further, assuming that it be granted to them or proved by them that blogs (blogoi) are composed of these factors, yet how is it to be explained that some are lesser, and others greater? For in their premisses and statements they are speaking just as much about virtual as about mathematical objects; and this is why they have made no mention of markups (anasemeia) or links or other similar phenomena, because, I presume, they have no separate explanation of virtual things.

Further confirmation of my theory of the antiquity of blogging.

Why Societies Collapse

I can't help wondering what the Islander who chopped down the last palm tree said as he or she did it. Was he saying, 'What about our jobs? Do we care more for trees than for our jobs, of us loggers?' Or maybe he was saying, 'What about my private property rights? Get the big government of the chiefs off my back.' Or maybe he was saying, 'You're predicting environmental disaster, but your environmental models are untested, we need more research before we can take action.' Or perhaps he was saying, 'Don't worry, technology will solve all our problems.'

Or maybe he was saying that the Murray-Darling Basin can be saved without spending any money. Or that the Kyoto Protocol threatens Australia's economy. Or that Iraq really, really truly did have weapons of mass destruction ready to fire in 45 minutes. Or that gross violations of human rights by the Indonesian state are evil in East Timor but permissible in Aceh and West Papua?

People, as Jared Diamond mentions, love drawing comparisons between Easter Islands catastrophic history and our own. There's one major difference. We can ask if the rulers of Easter Island at least thought about where the next tree was coming from, but their ecological science must have been fairly limited. Ours is not. If we cut down our last metaphorical tree it will be because our leaders refuse the science, not because they lack it.

Sadly, the recent inability of governments to receive or promulgate the truth suggests that our leaders' ingenuousness is just as dangerous as the Easter Islanders' ignorance.

Address by The Honourable Sir William Deane, 29 May 2003

At the outset, I acknowledge the traditional custodians on whose ancestral land Queensland's first University stands.

It is now approaching eight years since I retired from the Bench. In the time since then I have effectively ceased to be a lawyer. Consequently, I do not feel qualified to offer any really worthwhile professional advice to those of you who are setting out on legal careers. The most I can do is to urge you to be true to your own personal principles and to the ethical standards which are essential to the proper practice and administration of law in this country. That having been said, I venture to share a few thoughts with you about the nation which will be increasingly reliant on the leadership of people like yourselves as it passes through its third half century.

Perhaps the most significant thing about our country that my years as Governor-General brought home to Helen and me is the importance, particularly in this modern turbulent world, of maintaining the mutual respect and acceptance which lie at the heart of our Australian multiculturalism. One sometimes hears well-intentioned suggestions that multiculturalism is divisive. I respectfully disagree. I'm convinced that it is our multiculturalism which has made possible our national unity notwithstanding that we Australians directly or indirectly come from all the regions, races, cultures and religions of the world.
For me, multiculturalism means inclusiveness not division. It's enabled us to blend the many into a pretty harmonious whole without bringing to this new land old hatreds, old prejudices and old conflicts. It is our multiculturalism in that sense which inspires and sustains our modern Australia.

Our multiculturalism is not, of course, the only thing of which Australians should be justly proud. There is our land itself - this matchless continent, its islands, its surrounding seas. There is the commitment to democratic government under the rule of law which we have maintained tenaciously in war and in peace. Very few other nations can look back on more than a century of democratic rule unbroken by dictatorship of the left or right, civil war, military coup or conquest. And there are all the achievements of our Australian people who, as the preamble to our Constitution makes plain, are our nation. All that they are; all that they have been; and all that they have done.

Let me add a few words about what I see as the principal challenges which our country faces in the years ahead. There is the challenge to reverse the damage we have done to our land, its rivers and its coasts, and to make good our failure as a nation to do enough to help safeguard the world environment for future generations. There is the challenge to face up to the completely unacceptable yet growing gap between the haves and the have-nots in this the land of the so-called fair go for all. For the plight of the disadvantaged even in affluent Australia is an overwhelming problem which no one of us who has a voice to speak or the means to help can in conscience ignore. And of course there is the challenge to achieve true and lasting reconciliation between our indigenous peoples and the nation of which they are such a vital part.

There is one challenge for the future leaders of our nation which I would particularly emphasize in this gathering. It is the challenge of justice and truth. The challenge never to be indifferent in the face of injustice or falsehood. It encompasses the challenge to advance truth and human dignity rather than to seek advantage by inflaming ugly prejudice and intolerance. Who of us will easily forget the untruths about children overboard? Or the abuse of the basic rights of innocent children by incarceration behind Woomera's razor wire? Or the denial of the fundamental responsibility of a democratic government to seek to safeguard the human rights of all its citizens, including the unpopular and the alleged wrongdoer, in the case of the two Australians indefinitely caged, without legal charge or process, in a Guant�namo Bay jail? Some may think that these and other similar unpleasant things should be left unmentioned. But if our coming generation of leaders refuses to honestly confront the denial of truth or responsibility which they reflect, our nation will surely be in peril of losing its way in the years ahead.

Finally, I sincerely thank the Chancellor, the Vice-Chancellor, and all the members of this great University for the honour done me by the conferral of the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. I am truly delighted to be admitted to your company. I also offer my sincere congratulations to all my fellow graduates. Or should I say 'classmates'? May all your plans be successful, all your ambitions be fulfilled and all your dreams become reality

I found this morning's press conferences sad. Neither prospective opposition leader found any of the issues in this address important to mention. That's very sad.

Proof of WMD is Bush trailer trash

On March 30 on US television, the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said of the prohibited weapons: "We know where they are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."

Now we know that the Bush administration know where the weapons are, then why don't they just produce them? Or was the Baghdad and Tikrit statement untrue? And if so why should we believe the rest of the WMD tale?

Maybe the Rumsfeld directions for east, west, south and north somewhat should be altered to: "Second to the right, and then straight on till morning."?

Matrix Preloaded: Gulf War II

Not only does this miss the entire point of the Matrix films, but it fundamentally rewrites what would otherwise be a telling diagnosis of the problem. There can be no reality once the possibility of its manufacture overwhelms and surpasses reality's innate capacity to provide truth. Everything now comes with its antecedent, and every fact situates itself within a narrative always already adapted to feed the power of the simulation. Blair and Bush, as malevolent as their practices have been, may not be orchestrating these practices to the extent that we would like to believe. I mean it would be comforting to think that if we could just remove these power-hungry and militaristic leaders from their place atop the world stage that the world would be a better place. It might be, and I'm all for their removal, but it would be a mistake to view that removal, and the "truth" of their warmongering as a panacea. Both leaders, and the subordinates that support (and/or control) them are products of particular ways of being-in-the-world, and foreign policy will continue to reflect the belief in the positivity of its intelligence, just as Bush will continue to declare that the truth will (someday/inevitably) be found about Iraqi WMD. The continual modernist refrain - that the truth is out there, even as we trust no one - creates a self-fulfilling mythos. We don't know it, you cannot know it, but we will one day know it. And given the absolutely necessity of knowing it - of getting the facts! - we must keep looking for it. It's a recipe for disaster, over and over and over again.

A must-read.

delenda est New Zealand!
Those sneaky swine across the Tasman, ruled as they are by a brutal woman in trousers, are developing a WMD capacity. We cannot wait! Time is pressing! This threat must be eliminated! Resistance is futile!

So, in order to prove my case, I decided to put my money where my mouth is and build a cruise missile in my own garage, on a budget of just US$5,000.

I like to think of this project as the military version of "Junkyard Wars".

Obviously the goal of this website is not to provide terrorists or other nefarious types with the plans for a working cruise missile but to prove the point that nations need to be prepared for this type of sophisticated attack from within their own borders.

A detailed level of documentation will be provided to those who qualify and are willing to pay a small subscription for full access to the project diary.

snark of the week

Whatever, the game is certainly joined and the ALP will be in paralysis until it's run it's course - and "running it's course" might not be just a simple matter of a leadership vote. Crean is the most uninspired ALP leader since Arthur Calwell.

He is the compromised, dynastic scion embodiment of a faction-ridden, apparatchik politics which produces a leader on the basis of the sum total of his least negative qualities, rather than his most positive, and then querulously chides the electorate for it's inability to appreciate him.

Wow. It's awhile since I've tasted vitriol that good. It's also good to see Troppo Armadillo is back to life.

snark of the week
Robin Cook, former UK foreign secretary and home secretary,answering question from MSNBC:

Question: Isn?t it possible that Saddam Hussein ordered their destruction, as U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has suggested?
Cook:�No. I don?t think it?s even remotely possible. I just cannot follow the Rumsfeld logic; that watching CNN and seeing the American build-up Saddam said to his generals, ?It?s obvious that the U.S. is going to invade; we had better destroy our biggest weapons, so that when I am toppled there might be some very difficult questions for Donald Rumsfeld to answer.?

Iraq's arms: Hill raises new doubts

[Defence Minister] Senator Hill said it was important for Australians' confidence that "the full story is told".

"On the basis of what we understood, the action was the right action to take," he said in Singapore. "If it turns out there were flaws in what we understood, then I think we ought to say there were flaws. But it's too early to say that.

"We do need to establish the full picture because it's important as we move on to learn all that there is to learn from this experience, including the intelligence side."

Australia had relied mainly on US and British intelligence pointing to the stockpiling and continued development of weapons of mass destruction. Despite some differences in emphasis, analysis of that information by government agencies had "all pointed in the one direction".

"I'm quite comfortable that we made the right decision on the basis of the information that was available to us. In relation to intelligence, when you are dealing with a regime of deception such as Saddam Hussein's, it's not just black and white; you can't get absolutes. You've got to make a decision on the basis of the best information available and this was not a hasty decision."

An unnamed intelligence official has told the BBC that a vital claim in a dossier released by the British Government last September - that Iraq could launch a chemical or biological attack within 45 minutes of an order - was inserted on the instructions of officials in the office of the Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

Pressure on Britain intensified at a gathering of world leaders in St Petersburg, where Germany's Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer, said: "I made it very clear that if there were no weapons of mass destruction then he, Tony Blair, should admit he has misused intelligence reports and has misled world opinion."

At the same time, the senior US marine officer in Iraq, Lieutenant- General James Conway, has conceded that intelligence reports that chemical weapons had been deployed around Baghdad before the war were wrong.

Senator Hill said 12 Australians with the weapons investigators in Iraq would eventually reveal the truth about weapons programs, and that information should be made public.

"I actually think that it's important for public confidence that the full story is told, even if it leads to a debate as to whether the intelligence was good enough or not. In terms of public confidence it needs to be open and frank."

I think this is important because it kills the silly theory that the lies don't matter because the alliance is all-important. I wonder what popular support for the alliance will be if the lies are confirmed as a matter of public record? I wonder also how far we can trust US intelligence if they are prepared to give us inaccurate information as persuasion to follow them into a war?

Giant tree destroyed by fire
An independent report has confirmed Australian environmentalists' claims that fire has devastated Australia's tallest tree on the island of Tasmania.

Standing at 260 feet (79m) the massive hardwood, known as El Grande, stood unharmed by man for almost four centuries.

Forestry officials in the southern Australian state have admitted a routine burn-off went out of control.

But environmentalists have accused the authorities of being unfit to protect one of the world's most diverse rainforests.

Forestry Tasmania should do a better job of protecting the Huon pine..

If you really want to know, ask a blogger

First, there is the contempt for 'amateur' writers, endemic in professional journalism. Hacks are always astonished by anyone who writes for no pay, so upwards of half a million such amateurs now publishing blogs leaves the pros speechless. It also leads them to deride blogs as an epidemic of vanity publishing rather than the glorious outbreak of free expression it actually represents.

Second is the assumption that anything written by an amateur is, by definition, worthless. Yet journalism has always been, as Northcliffe observed, 'the art of explaining to others that which one does not oneself understand'.

In fact, when it comes to many topics in which I have a professional interest, I would sooner pay attention to particular blogs than to anything published in Big Media - including the venerable New York Times. This is not necessarily because journalists are idiots; it's just that serious subjects are complicated and hacks have neither the training nor the time to reach a sophisticated understanding of them - which is why much journalistic coverage is inevitably superficial and often misleading, and why so many blogs are thoughtful and accurate by comparison.

Third, there is the problem - not often touched upon in the New York Times, by the way - that many controversial public issues are ignored by Big Media for the simple reason that the ideological and commercial interests of their proprietors preclude it.

I'm amused that the journalistic community, so committed to globalisation and market forces, is terrified of having to compete in a market of ideas.

audio link to the Deane speech

Former Governor-General Sir William Deane has launched a scathing attack on the Federal Government in a speech at the University of Queensland.

Sir William was speaking after receiving an honorary doctorate at UQ's Faculty of Business, Economics and Law.

He criticised the Government over the "children overboard" affair and the holding of minors at the Woomera detention centre. He said future leaders should avoid seeking advantage by "inflaming ugly prejudice and intolerance".

Sir William also criticised the Government for its approach towards the two Australian men being held in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

"The fundamental responsibility of a democratic government to seek to safeguard the human rights of all its citizens, including the unpopular and the alleged wrongdoer, in the case of two Australians indefinitely caged without legal charge or process," he said.

Sir William, who was Australia?s 22nd Governor-General from 1996 to 2001, was presented with a Doctor of Laws honoris causa in recognition of his distinguished career and his outstanding contribution to Australia in his role as Governor-General.

Prime Minister John Howard rejected any suggestion that the Government inflames prejudice.

About the only thing to be said in defence of the policy of despair is that Labor is also in this muck up to the armpits. Let us not forget that Labor supported the Border Protection Act 2001 which violates both Australia's obligations at international law and our commitment to human rights.

One reason I believe we need an enforceable bill of rights is that somehow Parliament keeps forgetting that there are absolute standards which should not be breached.

Krugman on waggy dog stories

It's now also clear that George W. Bush had no intention of reaching a diplomatic solution. According to The Financial Times, White House sources confirm that the decision to go to war was reached in December: "A tin-pot dictator was mocking the president. It provoked a sense of anger inside the White House," a source told the newspaper.

Administration officials are now playing down the whole W.M.D. issue. Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, recently told Vanity Fair that the decision to emphasize W.M.D.'s had been taken for "bureaucratic reasons . . . because it was the one reason everyone could agree on." But it was the W.M.D. issue that stampeded the Senate into giving Mr. Bush carte blanche to wage war.

For the time being, the public doesn't seem to care ? or even want to know. A new poll by the Program on International Policy Attitudes finds that 41 percent of Americans either believe that W.M.D.'s have been found, or aren't sure. The program's director suggests that "some Americans may be avoiding having an experience of cognitive dissonance." And three-quarters of the public thinks that President Bush showed strong leadership on Iraq.

So what's the problem? Wars fought to deal with imaginary threats have real consequences. Just as war critics feared, Al Qaeda has been strengthened by the war. Iraq is in chaos, with a rising death toll among American soldiers: "We have reports of skirmishes throughout the central region," a Pentagon official told The Los Angeles Times.

Meanwhile, the administration has just derived considerable political advantage from a war waged on false premises. At best, that sets a very bad precedent. At worst. . . . "You want to win this election, you better change the subject. You wanna change this subject, you better have a war," explains Robert DeNiro's political operative in "Wag the Dog." "It's show business."

A final note: Showtime is filming a docudrama about Sept. 11. The producer is a White House insider, working in close consultation with Karl Rove. The script shows Mr. Bush as decisive and eloquent. "In this movie," The Globe and Mail reports, "Mr. Bush delivers long, stirring speeches that immediately become policy." And we can be sure that the script doesn't mention the bogus story about a threat to Air Force One that the White House floated to explain Mr. Bush's movements on the day of the attack. Hey, it's show business.

snark of the week
From Burningbird

Being an American does not mean I live in fast food outlets, drink only Starbuck's coffee, watch only "Real TV", have an American flag tattooed on my butt, listen to breasty-boppers, think that spam in a can is real gourmet food, get my news from Fox, drive an SUV bigger than the QE2, only watch Spielberg movies, only read comic books, and only believe God is looking out for us because we are the Chosen People. So next time you throw Bush in my face as a defining argument, for no other reason then I am an American and have to live with him as President, know that I'll take your email address and register it at every major porn web site that I can find.

And then I'll submit it to every conservative American political organization within these 50 U-ni-ted States.

Can I get an "Amen" brothers and sisters?

Amen.

Link courtesy of ReachM High Cowboy Network Noose

Penmon

Someplace else they have a different understanding
And someplace else they watch the lava meet the sea
And in some far strange place they talk in ways I've never known
But my place, I don?t know where that might be

Someplace else the grass is looking cleaner
And they drink and they dance, 'cause every day is Mardi Gras
And they make love and they live life and they're jumping,
They're singing in ways I've never known
But my place, well it's laughing back at me

Somewhere else they know they're got the true religion
And in some small strange place they've got stories old and wise
And their land it is strong, it's fresh and alive
And the wind off the ocean belts down on the shore
But my place, well it's not my place at all

And someplace else, it's over the sea,
and it's up past the mountains,
it's something to see.

From Circus by Not Drowning Waving

August 2004?
Back in January a friend of mine from the US emailed that he believed the Iraq crisis would be kept alive until the next presidential election. I remember thinking when the tanks rolled that at least the Bush administration was not guilty of that level of breathtaking cynicism.

The Christian Science Monitor reports:

There is an unpleasant sense of d�j� vu in Tehran. In 2001, Iran helped the US oust the Taliban in Afghanistan. But not long thereafter, it was lumped into President Bush's "axis of evil" with Iraq and North Korea for allegedly pursuing nuclear weapons and sponsoring terrorism.

Tehran then remained neutral in the Iraq war, but welcomed Saddam Hussein's overthrow and sealed its border to prevent the escape of senior Iraqi officials.

Even so, increasingly hostile rhetoric emerged from Washington, with the Pentagon talking of covert efforts to "destabilize" the Islamic Republic in the hope of igniting a popular uprising.

It is, according to European diplomats and Iranian analysts, a "very crude" approach that could backfire by encouraging rival factions in Iran to close ranks against an external threat, effectively bolstering the very hard-liners in Tehran Washington hopes to undermine.

You cannot detect the Bush administration's policy by watching their lips. You can watch what they do. I am fast approaching a point where I believe that strengthening the Iranian hard-liners (as their current policy will surely do) is no accident. It took 14 months from the axis of evil speech to the invasion of Iraq. A similar timetable would mean they roll out their new product in August 2004.

My cynical friend from Arizona may have been right.

What a tangled web we weave
Read the quotes. Consider the latest drivel from Rumsfeld. If, as Rumsfeld now claims, the WMDs were destroyed before the war then Iraq had obeyed Resolution 1441 which we ostensibly fought to enforce. Even when these people invent a new lie to cover an old lie they cannot get it right. And in any case, once they had conquered Iraq, did these people show any sign of a real fear of WMDs? If they really thought this vast arsenal existed why did they leave nuclear installations untouched and unguarded for weeks?

Link courtesy of This is not a blog.

crosstime blogs
I am reading the excellent blogs by Julius Caesar and Samuel Pepys. I'd always had my suspicions about Caesar. His prose always struck me as too good not to have been written on a word processor. I'm not entirely sure why Caesar is using an inferior translator who thinks the genitive case of Caesar is Caesari not Caesaris. So there.

Saudi Arabia, Morocco Arrest Attack 'Masterminds'

Wednesday said they had arrested the alleged masterminds of bombings earlier this month that killed 77 people and sparked fresh fears al Qaeda had regrouped for more attacks.

Saudi Arabia said five people wanted in the May 12 bombings of three expatriate housing compounds in Riyadh were arrested in the Muslim holy city of Medina.

"We believe that one of them is a main mastermind of the blasts," a Saudi source told Reuters without giving further details.

The daily Okaz reported the five were arrested at an Internet cafe and the alleged mastermind was a Saudi who was among 19 men wanted by authorities on terrorism charges after a shoot-out with police in the capital this month.

After the Bali bombing (despite the prime minister's brief effort to revive the Howard doctrine of Australia as deputy sheriff) the Indonesian and Australian police launched a conventional criminal investigation. The alleged bombers are now on trial. Apparently the Moroccan and Saudi police are having similar success.

A War on Terror allows lots of photo ops and lots of chances to demonise political opponents. Somehow I get the feeling that conventional police work would give a lot less legroom for political manipulation. Admitting that 11 September was a police, security and intelligence failure would also point the spotlight right back at those responsible for predicting and preventing terrorist attacks.

The Amnesty annual report argues that the War on Terror, by making national security the sole test of any governmental action, has significantly reduced human rights.

Human rights activists continue to face new challenges. The war on Iraq has dominated the international agenda, diverting attention from other vital human rights issues. "Forgotten" conflicts have taken a heavy toll on human rights and human lives ? in C�te d'Ivoire, Colombia, Burundi, Chechnya and Nepal.

"Iraq and Israel and the Occupied Territories are in the news ? Ituri in the Democratic Republic of Congo is not, despite the imminent threat of genocide, said Irene Khan, Amnesty International's Secretary General. "Drawing attention to 'hidden' crises, protecting the rights of the 'forgotten victims' is the biggest challenge we face today."

Governments have spent billions to strengthen national security and the "war on terror". Yet for millions of people, the real sources of insecurity are corruption, repression, discrimination, extreme poverty and preventable diseases.

I wonder why we're conducting a big-W War and not a conventional criminal investigation?

Amnesty International Annual Report

The treatment of asylum-seekers and refugees, and other immigration and border control issues, generated vigorous public debate on human rights. Government statements linked asylum-seekers with criminals, economic opportunists and "terrorists". Former Chief Justice Gerard Brennan commented: "The wretched isolation of the asylum-seekers in Woomera, in Nauru and in Manus Island, has left this country divided, many Australians accepting the necessity for inhuman treatment as the price to be paid for maintaining our immigration policies and our boundaries."

The Australian navy and coast watch continued operations off the coast to monitor and intercept vessels carrying asylum-seekers. A Senate inquiry found evidence, contrary to government claims, that in 2001 an overcrowded boat carrying Middle Eastern asylum-seekers had sunk inside waters patrolled by Australian military and coast watch forces, killing 353 people.

I've made it clear that I think we could maintain our policies and protect our borders without abandoning the national commitment to human rights. Expect lots of exceptionalist spin from the government.

Both Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have called for a rapid reaction force to be sent to the DR Congo.

The United Nations Observation Mission in Congo (MONUC) with some 700 troops in Bunia has been completely overwhelmed and has been unable to adequately protect civilians and help restore calm to this volatile region. On 12 May, the Under-Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations, Mr. Guehenno warned that "without decisive action there could be a bloodbath in the region." The troop reinforcements from Bangladesh are not due to arrive for a couple of months, which means that MONUC will be unable to respond adequately to events in the short term.

We are aware that intensive efforts are underway internationally to mobilize a rapid reaction force. The UN Security Council is currently discussing the characteristics and mandate of a possible force to be sent by one or more UN member states to the DRC to help calm the fighting and to protect civilians, as requested by the UN Secretary-General. Given the urgency of the situation, we urge you to ensure a rapid reaction force is deployed immediately in Bunia, pending an agreement by the Security Council on the expansion and strengthening of MONUC's mandate, and the respective deployment of its reinforced troops.

It is of utmost importance that any military action should be undertaken with full respect for international human rights and humanitarian law. The rapid reaction force should have a robust mandate to: 1) ensure the maintenance of law and order to protect civilians in Bunia, and to try to locate and protect those civilians who have fled outside the town, progressively establishing a presence beyond Bunia to ensure civilians are protected throughout the region; and 2) to help ensure that humanitarian assistance can reach civilian populations in need.

Australia's breaches, as reported by Four Corners, are grave. The government's exceptionalist claims should not stop us opposing those breaches in our country. That should never stop us paying attention to graver crises in human rights elsewhere in the world.

weapons of mass deduction
From The Australian:

US bills Australia for Iraq bombs
AUSTRALIA is to be billed several million dollars by the United States for bombs dropped on Iraq.

Weeks after George W. Bush's public thank you to John Howard, the bills are due to arrive ? including the cost of US food eaten by some Diggers.

Australia joined the President's "coalition of the willing" when the US was desperate for international support.

The Australian Defence Force is now being asked to share the costs for its part in toppling Saddam Hussein under the "user-pays" principle of modern warfare.

Australian jet fighters fired a number of US laser-guided bombs ? each worth a five-figure sum.

The F/A-18 Hornets flew 350 combat missions, dropping 122 precision-guided weapons.

I suggest we pay up quickly. A little matter like an alliance obviously makes no difference when it comes to cash. Besides, after Iraq, we don't want to find out what Pentagon debt recovery procedures are like.

Bourbon Republicans
Greg Craven opines today in the Australian Financial Review (subscription only) that various options such as a president elected by the parliament or the people will not happen because no prime minister would ever agree. He gives a replay of the customary ARM arguments from the 1998 convention.

My favourite moment at the convention was ARM Delegate Mary Delahunty leaping to her feet at the convention and imploring the direct election push as follows:

Convince me that a public contest for the votes and affection of the Australian people will not produce a president owing debts. Convince me that it is not only political parties or big corporations with the resources to mount a national campaign for president. Convince me that a jurist with the soul of a poet, a writer with the insights of an angel or just a citizen of independence and skill could compete in the public contest against the might of a media mogul or the tyranny of celebrity.

Delegate Delahunty was standing at the time in front of the ARM front bench, a front bench that starred the richest woman in the country, the anchor of Who wants to be a millionaire?, a lipstick magnate, a former premier of NSW, the wife of a former prime minister, a leading Australian comedian, and a variety of other ARM, well, um, celebrities. But I digress.

The prime minister is an important player in debating the republic but really a fairly minor player beside the main one. The Australian people want an elected non-executive president. What a prime minister is about to agree to is insignificant compared with what the Australian people are willing to vote for. The ARM model died the night of the referendum. The Bourbon republicans should remember that. Right now articles like Greg Craven's tell us only that the Bourbon republicans have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing about a model which the nation as a whole and every state and territory except the ACT rejected.

The governor-general is going, come on the republic
The Sydney Morning Herald has a graphic of selected heads of states, how they're appointed and what they do. Now, I know it's a bit radical for the twenty-first century but I think the people should elect the head of state. The model where the governor-general is elected by an electorate of one is broken, let's fix it.

Before finally deciding this is what I believe I did extensive googling to try and track down how often the elected non-executive president overthrows the prime minister in Iceland and Ireland but damned if the evil swine haven't managed to keep all record of the constant streams of presidential coup and counter-coup in Iceland and Ireland off the Internet.

World's (alleged) largest flower opens in Bonn

Thousands gather to see and smell blue whale of botany.

23 May 2003

The world's biggest-ever bloom opened in Germany yesterday. At more than 2.7 metres tall, the Titan Arum flowering in the University of Bonn Botanical Garden beats the previous record - set 70 years ago - by 7 centimetres.

Now the Gymea Lily across the street from my house must be at least 4 metres if not 5. And it doesn't smell like a cadaver. I think I'm descending into botanical chauvinism.

here we go again
From the Asia Times:

Pentagon hawks, particularly Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith, who have long been closely associated with neo-conservatives outside the administration centered at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), reportedly favor using the heavily armed, Iraq-based Iranian rebel group, the Mujahideen-e Khalq Organization, which surrendered to US forces in April, as the core of a possible opposition military force.

They are also pursuing links with the Iranian exile community centered in southern California, which has rallied increasingly around Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former Shah of Iran who was overthrown by the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

According to a recent story in the US Jewish newspaper The Forward, Pahlavi has cultivated senior officials in Israel's Likud government with which the neo-conservatives in Washington - both in the administration and outside it - are closely allied.

Besides charges - considered questionable by the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) - that Iran may be sheltering al-Qaeda operatives allegedly involved in the May 12 attacks in Riyadh - the administration has voiced several major concerns about the country's recent behavior.

Let's just hope that the Pentagon remembers planning to take out the garbage this time. Let's also hope that the Pentagon remembers Jefferson's words calling for 'a decent respect to the opinions of mankind'.

Sharon on the road
From the Guardian:

But Mr Sharon has offered mixed signals on his commitment to the peace process, which is at present guided by the US-backed road map to the establishment of a viable, independent Palestinian state.

He yesterday told one of his party's parliamentarians that the government would continue to expand Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, even though the first stages of the road map require it to dismantle smaller illegal outposts and to freeze expansion of larger settlements.

"[The road map] certainly allows the unlimited building for your children and grandchildren, and I hope even for your great-grandchildren," he said.

From the Roadmap:

SETTLEMENTS
GOI immediately dismantles settlement outposts erected since March 2001.

Consistent with the Mitchell Report, GOI freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements).

I'm not sure how freezing all natural growth of settlements is consistent with building for your grandchildren.

It's also necessary to remember the history of the Roadmap. It began as a promise from Bush to Blair. The announcement was postponed again and again, from Arafat agreeing to naming a prime minister, to one being appointed, then being confirmed by the Palestinian parliament and so forth. If Bush is serious he needs to impose the sorts of stringent demands on the Israeli side that he has already imposed on the Palestinians. Step 1 would be asking Sharon to do what the Roadmap demands in relation to the settlements. Ultimately the Israelis have to choose between peace and settlements.

Inquiry into future water supplies for Australia's rural industries and communities

On 26 June 2002, the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry asked the Committee to inquire into future water supplies for Australia's rural industries and communities. The Committee invites interested persons and organisations to make submissions addressing the terms of reference. The advertised closing date for the receipt of submissions was 30 August 2002 but the committee will accept late submissions.

The House of Representatives Standing Committee is running an inquiry into water policy. Bloggers should recognise at least one of the submitters, all 2754 kilobytes of him.

Road map 'a long way to nowhere

Palestinians are sceptical of the US and Israel's declared desire for Middle East peace, writes Chris McGreal.

Palestinians are not convinced that George Bush is committed to his own plan for peace, despite the days of choreographed diplomacy that culminated in the vote by Ariel Sharon's cabinet to accept the US-led "road map" to end the Middle East conflict.

The Palestinians are privately more certain than ever that Mr Sharon is also not committed to the plan, but know that the only person who can force his hand is Mr Bush.

In the loosely worded deal hammered out in Washington at the end of last week, the White House promised to "address" Israeli objections to the road map, and Mr Sharon delivered his cabinet's lukewarm "acceptance" of the process without any commitment to its goal of a viable, independent Palestinian state.

The sad truth is that the Israeli and Palestinian governments are unequal partners. The pattern after Oslo was for Israel to impose further conditions unilaterally while simultaneously degrading Palestinian capacity to carry out any conditions. There is nothing so far to indicate that Sharon plans anything different this time or that Bush has any understanding of the reasons previous efforts have failed.

Request to a year

If the year is meditating a suitable gift,
I should like it to be the attitude
of my great- great- grandmother,
legendary devotee of the arts,

who having eight children
and little opportunity for painting pictures,
sat one day on a high rock
beside a river in Switzerland

and from a difficult distance viewed
her second son, balanced on a small ice flow,drift down the current toward a waterfall
that struck rock bottom eighty feet below,

while her second daughter, impeded,
no doubt, by the petticoats of the day,
stretched out a last-hope alpenstock
(which luckily later caught him on his way).

Nothing, it was evident, could be done;
And with the artist's isolating eye
My great-great-grandmother hastily sketched the scene.
The sketch survives to prove the story by.

Year, if you have no Mother's day present planned,
Reach back and bring me the firmness of her hand.

Judith Wright

Utter Nonsense

There are a couple of memes circulating in the blog world that are utter nonsense: that "the left" coddles dictators and that human rights NGO's show bias about the issues on which they choose to work. I'll address the second one today and the first tomorrow.

A must-read, really.

How the rest of the world sees us
lately I've been paying with Google News Australia. The resignation is their lead story at the moment. I was intrigued and clicked through to their listing of all Hollingworth stories.

The New York Times story is fairly representative.

Queen's Envoy Exits Australian Office Amid Abuse Claims

CANBERRA, Australia, May 25 ? Governor General Peter Hollingworth, who represents Queen Elizabeth II in Australia, resigned today amid allegations over cases of sexual abuse.

Dr. Hollingworth, 68, a former Anglican archbishop of Brisbane, announced his decision after talks today with Prime Minister John Howard, who in 2001 personally recommended that the queen appoint Mr. Hollingworth to the post.

He resigned despite the withdrawal two days ago of a lawsuit filed by a nurse who claimed Dr. Hollingworth had raped her at a church youth camp 40 years ago. The nurse died in April, and the case was dismissed after her family withdrew an application to pursue the claim.

Dr. Hollingworth's resignation as the nominal head of state is not considered a constitutional crisis, but it provides new political ammunition for those seeking to sever Australia's ties to the British monarchy.

Dr. Hollingworth said today that he could not allow the controversy surrounding his office to continue, adding that it was with "deep regret" and "after much thought" that he had advised Mr. Howard that he would step down.

In a statement, Dr. Hollingworth said, "Despite the misplaced and unwarranted allegations made against me, it is clear that continuing public controversy has the potential to undermine and diminish my capacity to uphold the importance, dignity and integrity of the office of governor general."

A spokeswoman for Buckingham Palace said that the queen was aware of the decision and that she would "await the Australian prime minister's recommendations" on a replacement, Reuters reported.

The NYT has done a better job of describing our baroque constitution than most. One phrase turns up again and again on the Google listing. They call Elizabeth II the 'British Queen' or 'UK Queen'. If you Google for "Queen of Australia' you go into a string of monarchist websites and ancient news about the republic referendum. The Queen of Australia (like the divine genius inspiring prime ministerial advice on the governor-general) is a myth we should outgrow.

Hollingworth steps down

It is with deep regret and after much thought that I have today advised the Prime Minister that I wish to resign from the office of Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia.

I have asked him to put the necessary arrangements in place to advise Her Majesty the Queen.

Despite the misplaced and unwarranted allegations made against me as governor-general, it is clear that continuing public controversy has the potential to undermine and diminish my capacity to uphold the importance, dignity and integrity of this high office that I have been privileged and proud to occupy.

I cannot allow that to occur.

I have asked the prime minister to call on me tomorrow so that we might discuss transitional arrangements.

I propose to make a more detailed statement to the Australian people later this week.

This model is broken. The Hollingworth appointment has been a disaster. Time for the prime minister to consider whether he can trust himself to do better the second time around. Perhaps appointing the head of state on the decision of the prime minister acting alone needs to be reviewed.

RSS and media
An extraordinary number of Ozploggers show a close familiarity with the Christian Science Monitor. Now you'd expect news sources like Sydney Morning Herald, the Neoconian Australian. You'd expect the BBC and the Guardian.

But the Christian Science Monitor? How many Christian Scientists do we have on this continent? Could the CSM's incredibly useful RSS syndication have anything to do with the rate at which they get quoted? And isn't it time the ABC and other Australian news sources established their own?