Security' has become the leitmotif for a new politics

We should acknowledge that 'security' neatly matches one strand in old Labour, too often ignored by the nostalgists. How many party members - or trade unionists - wanted both a high-spending, security-providing welfare state, and were also anti-immigrant and vehemently rightwing on crime, even including support for the death penalty? Secure jobs, secure pensions, secure streets... the programme of extreme-right parties like the National Front in France is only a distorted caricature of the instincts of many Labour voters.

But it is a caricature. So long as people think their government has a bit of a grip on things, everything can be held in check, and progressive politics moves forward. The danger starts when people feel their own state is powerless or out of touch. Whatever you think of New Labour in power, it is certainly not entirely ineffective: it runs a low-inflation, relatively successful economy and, as Gordon Brown reminded the TUC, Britain has lower unemployment rates than most competitors. At the macro-economic level, they do have a grip.

Much of the developing Labour agenda for the next few years seems designed to reassure insecure voters that the government has a grip elsewhere. Blair now harps on about the asylum figures as they start to come down. Yet more prisons are being built. Blunkett is pushing for ID cards with the latest technology - expensive, controversial, but they would be a visible symbol of the state trying to take more control over an amorphous and hard-to-count population. Belatedly, the government has started to wake up to the huge damage done by collapsing pensions.

The challenge for mainstream Labour supporters is pretty obvious. The politics of security is fundamentally reactionary. It is the politics of fear - fear of the outsider, fear of losing your job, fear of the people at the mosque down the road, fear of youths on the corner, fear of the European superstate, and fear of change. Any government which simply brushes fear aside as a force in politics is foolish. Fear is probably the strongest political force of all, even stronger than hope. But go very far in appeasing or reassuring fearful voters, and you become a reactionary government. So all those ministers coming back for the new session have to ask: how far do we go? When do popular initiatives to make Britain feel more secure become populist ones?

Every issue is a little different and there is a lot of teaching to do: Trevor Phillips, the new boss of the commission for racial equality, hits a good note when he reminds audiences of just how much the NHS they rely on for a sense of security is propped up by Indian and Pakistani doctors, Somali cleaners and Caribbean nurses. Everyone knows that Islamic terrorism is a real and continuing threat; and that there are extremist Islamic groups operating in the UK. So it is a particular duty of politicians to stay close to and publicly support mainstream Muslim leaders; and Blair is good at that.

But the best defence against security politics in its ugly guise is to show that government works. The global market and modern terrorism have this in common: they challenge the relevance of the nation state. Rich political types may be able to lobby supranational bodies, or consider themselves citizens of Europe. But for most people, the nation state is all the democracy they have. Insecurity is caused by a sense of powerlessness; if the state seems powerless (as during the Weimar period), truly evil politics crawls out from under the stone.

Of course the challenge is compounded in Australia because we have a Coalition government claiming the same economic credentials as Labor and an opposition leadership which (under Beasley as well as Crean) has fallen into the trap of security politics. At least, to nostalgists, Howard offers a security politics firmly grounded in their cultural fears.

The only ways to overcome this natural advantage the Coalition enjoys is to craft an economic message that overcomes the cultural fears of Old Labor voters or to engage them with an inclusive cultural message. Labor needs a new leadership that can do that.

Senate Resolution on Sexuality Discrimination

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for the Australian Government to acknowledge that on 6 August 2003, in the case of Young vs Australia, the United Nations Human Rights Committee found that:

(i)the Australian Government's refusal to grant Mr Young a pension on the ground that he does not come within the definition of %u201Cdependant%u201D, for having been in a same-sex relationship, violates his rights under article 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on the basis of his sexual orientation;

(ii)the Australian Government provided no argument on how the distinction between same-sex partners and unmarried heterosexual partners is reasonable and objective, and no evidence which would point to the existence of factors justifying such a distinction was advanced;

(iii)as a victim of a violation of article 26, Mr Young is entitled to an effective remedy, including the reconsideration of his pension application without discrimination based on his sex or sexual orientation, if necessary through an amendment of the law;

(iv)the Australian Government is under an obligation, as a signatory to the First Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to ensure that similar violations of the Covenant do not occur in the future; and

the need for the Australian Government to legislate for partnership recognition of same-sex couples under Commonwealth law.

This passed 32/31. Tasmania has also passed a gay and lesbian law reform. The Howard government will, of couse, do nothing.

Howard's rottweilers still biting at the heels of whistleblower

As recently as Tuesday, in fact, John Howard evasively suggested: 'a remarkable similarity between the material that was the subject of Senator MacDonald's question and the material in the interview with Wilkie in The Bulletin [magazine interview] on 18 March.'

The clear inference to be drawn was that Macdonald was informed only by what Wilkie had publicly said. But yesterday, Defence Minister Robert Hill finally admitted in Senate question time that Macdonald had been briefed on Wilkie's report. In effect, ONA material was used politically to try to discredit Wilkie.

No doubt, if Wilkie himself had made use of the same material he would likely have felt the full force of the law. But the law appears not to fall equally on all.

One of the Howard Government's most enthusiastic media barrackers, Melbourne Herald Sun commentator Andrew Bolt, seems to have the same secret ONA material. Forty-eight days ago, Bolt in a column bagged Wilkie, saying at one point, 'when I go through the only secret report that Wilkie ever wrote about Iraq . . .'

If he is telling the truth, the Opposition notes, he is admitting to a breach of the Crimes Act.

The Federal Police are slowly investigating, but the Prime Minister maintains ONA is not concerned because the Bolt column 'did not specifically quote any intelligence material'.

The cynical might assume the Government has reason to want the leak investigation to fail.

Meanwhile, they continue to slander Wilkie. 'Dishonourable, low, flagrant, outrageous, grandiose, incongruous, inconsistent and unreliable, very unstable, flaky and irrational' were just some of the words used by one government attack dog yesterday.

All because a man followed his conscience.

One can imagine what the Howard wolf pack would have to say if an opposition figure quoted classified material in an article critical of their master.

Asia Times | Terrorism and the battle of wits

Have the intelligence and security agencies and the political leadership of the victim states learnt the right lessons during the first two years of the war against terrorism?To a limited extent, yes; to a large extent, no. The importance of an effective and performing intelligence setup has been recognized, but not much has been done to make it so. The even greater importance of an effective physical security setup, which will deny repeated successes to the terrorists, has also been recognized, but the followup has been poor. The political leadership in many countries, including India, continues to think that it can deal with jihadi terrorism through rhetoric and bravado alone.

Four major terrorist successes with car bombs in Baghdad (3) and Najaf within a few weeks show how poor physical security is there despite the concentration of US troops and their ruthless methods of operations. How merrily the jihadi terrorists have been penetrating into one security establishment after another in J&K by just wearing army or police uniforms does not reflect well on India's physical security. In one instance at Akhnoor, they managed to kill a brigadier in his den, and almost succeeded in killing two lieutenants-general.

If rhetoric and bravado alone can crush terrorism, there should have been no terrorism in India by now. No government in India has indulged in more rhetoric and bravado than the present one, but no government has paid as little attention to improving the nuts and bolts of counter-terrorism management as the present one. Intelligence and security agencies cannot be effective in dealing with terrorism unless there is a political consensus on the necessary nuts and bolts of the job. Such a consensus is all the more necessary since the country has been ruled by a coalition since 1996, and since different parties are in power at New Delhi and the victim-states, but no effort has been made either by the ruling coalition or the opposition to work towards such a consensus. As a result, counter-terrorism has been largely politicized.

I take his point about rhetoric and bravado. As far as I know, no-one in the Indian leadership has bellowed 'Bring 'em on'.

RE-OPENING OF INQUIRY INTO SECURITY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Parliament's Public Accounts and Audit Committee resolved today to reopen its inquiry into the integrity of electronic information held by the Commonwealth. This inquiry will now run in parallel with the Committee�s inquiry into Aviation Security.

Public Accounts and Audit Committee Chairman, Mr Bob Charles MP said: "The security of confidential information on government computers is of ongoing concern for all Australians and critically so when it relates to aviation security.

�The decision to reopen the inquiry has arisen from the Committee�s disappointment at learning about IT security breaches through the media, rather than from government officials who were giving evidence to the Committee.

�On 4th September the Committee took evidence from the Australian Customs Service for the Aviation Security inquiry only to find out, on the following day, that there had been a major theft of IT equipment at a Customs facility adjacent to Sydney Airport.

�At the same hearing, the Committee took evidence from the Department of Transport and Regional Services, only to hear the following week about a computer theft from one of their secure offices in Canberra.

�The Committee will recall officials from both agencies and others so that its Members can receive full briefings on the incidents. The Committee will hold both public and confidential hearings to investigate the matters.

�It becomes a matter of national importance when confidential security related information can be taken from supposedly secure locations.

�As the Parliamentary Committee charged with responsibility for reporting to Parliament on the accountability of the public service and the Executive, we take these matters very seriously.�

Issued by: House of Representatives Liaison & Projects Office, Wednesday 10 September 2003

It's always embarrassing when you get mainframes stolen from your airport security centre. It's even more embarrassing when you forget to tell the parliamentary inquiry into avaiation security about the theft. I wonder if anyone's mentioned this to Messrs Bush and Hu?

The Independent | Facts and figures on world trade:

... AND OF DISCRIMINATION
The more value the poor try to add to their goods, the more the tariffs escalate. Raw cocoa beans can be imported to the EU and US without tax. But if the poor process it themselves into cocoa butter the rate in the EU goes up to more than 10 per cent. If they turn it into cocoa powder it is more than 15 per cent. If they turn it into chocolate it's more than 20 per cent. This explains why Germany processes more cocoa than Ivory Coast, the largest producer; and why Britain grinds more cocoa than Ghana. Developing countries produce 90 per cent of cocoa beans, but less than 5 per cent of chocolate.

TRYING TO BREAK FREE
Brazil estimates that it could earn $10bn more from agricultural exports this year were it not for trade barriers in the West. Lifting restrictions on Mozambique's imports into the EU would boost the country's earnings by almost $100m a year - nearly as much as it receives in European aid.

SUBSIDISING THE RICH
Rich governments now spend $1bn a day on subsidies to farmers - six times what they give in aid to poor countries. These subsidies generate large surpluses of sugar, cotton and other products, which are then dumped on world markets.

This is known as free trade, at least according to the ministry of love types who decide trade policy in the First World.

Doorstop Interview, Parliament House :

PRIME MINISTER:

Yes I am. I'm delighted that sometime in the next little time we'll have in Australia in fairly close proximity not only the President of the United States but also the President of China. It symbolises the diversity of Australia's relationships. It demonstrates that the closeness of our relationship with the United States in no way inhibits our close relationship with countries in Asia, in this case China. We are unapologetic about our relationship with the United States and the world knows that, but it doesn't alter the fact that we have a very close relationship with China and that is to our benefit and it's something that I've worked very hard to bring about.

Thus is going to be interesting, to say the least. I predict heavy googling to determine if Hu Jintao shares George Bush's interest in rugby.

name of blog: Fair and Balanced:

Remember the report last year that not-huge doses of ecstasy gave monkeys brain damage? Well, it turns out that there was a minor flaw in the study. Just a teensy one. They gave the monkeys speed, not pills.

What a suprise. Anti-drug hysteria led to a completely stupid failure of science. Too be fair, it's really hard to test for ecstasy in a pill. It took me at least 15 seconds to enter the phrase 'MDMA test kit' into google to find a whole pile of vendors of kits - most are US$50 or less.

My one reservation on the Carr-as-messiah push is that he has a long history of silly laws on drug matters. The actual facts about drug use have been well-known since 1894 when the Royal Commission into Hemp Drugs reported:

and that the excessive use is comparatively exceptional. The moderate use produces practically no ill effects

The fact that shonky science is still getting churned out a century later should tell us something about the quality of drug policy.

LA Times | Iraq Estimates Were Too Low, U.S. Admits :

Administration officials said President Bush's emergency spending request which would push the U.S. budget deficit above the half-trillion-dollar mark for the first time still left a reconstruction funding gap of as much as $55 billion.

'It is fair to say that the level of decay and underinvestment in the Iraqi infrastructure was worse than almost anybody on the outside anticipated,' said one senior administration official. 'We were all surprised,' said another.

The revised estimates underscored the political challenge facing the president, who asked Americans on Sunday evening to prepare themselves for a longer and costlier engagement in Iraq, and members of Congress, who are being asked to more than double the financial commitment of U.S. taxpayers.

Was any Iraq estimate by the war party accurate or truthful?

Macleans.ca | Top Stories | Essay | 9/11'S LEGACY: UNCERTAINTY:

Two Septembers later, Bush has logged one indisputible victory: except for the anthrax attacks at the end of 2001, whatever they were about, terrorism has not killed one more American on American soil. Everything else is a Klondike of uncertainty. Afghanistan is no longer a coherent regime running interference for al-Qaeda murderers. This is excellent news. But it remains a very nasty neighbourhood.

Iraq's liberators found enough mass graves to ensure Saddam Hussein a place in infamy. But no new weapons of mass destruction. And so much daily grief for the Americans that their president has become a fan of the United Nations again, if it will take some of the load off.

Palestine? No progress. Liberia? A dilemma. Korea? Saddam's denials won him an invasion; Kim Jong Il denies nothing, brags about his nukes, wants more, threatens to use them. In some circles, this kind of behaviour is known as calling a bluff.

Certainty about the world does not make the world more certain. The easiest road to moral clarity is a refusal to learn from complex events. For a few horrible hours two Septembers ago, nobody could claim to know anything. That uncertainy, at least, haunts us still. Or should.

I really, really wish I had written the first sentence of that last paragraph.

Guardian Unlimited Politics | Special Reports | This war on terrorism is bogus:

All of this makes it all the more astonishing - on the war on terrorism perspective - that there was such slow reaction on September 11 itself. The first hijacking was suspected at not later than 8.20am, and the last hijacked aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania at 10.06am. Not a single fighter plane was scrambled to investigate from the US Andrews airforce base, just 10 miles from Washington DC, until after the third plane had hit the Pentagon at 9.38 am. Why not? There were standard FAA intercept procedures for hijacked aircraft before 9/11. Between September 2000 and June 2001 the US military launched fighter aircraft on 67 occasions to chase suspicious aircraft (AP, August 13 2002). It is a US legal requirement that once an aircraft has moved significantly off its flight plan, fighter planes are sent up to investigate.

I read the entire article. While Meagher's facts are accurate, they do not warrant his conclusions. Conspiracies do happen, but they are subject to the same failings as any other human endeavour.

Nothing in the Bush administration's reckless, feckless history of ego, cowardice and incompetence suggests that any explanation is needed beyond the usual - they blew it.

Australian Financial Review - Flatlining Labor looks for jump start:

Speculation about a move to federal politics by NSW Premier Bob Carr has brought an acknowledgement from Labor MPs that the party leadership remains a serious problem.

Opposition Leader Simon Crean and NSW Labor powerbroker John Della Bosca yesterday sought to play down expectations of a move to Canberra by Mr Carr, who had floated a possible move to federal politics after 2007.

But signs that the Carr story was an opening salvo in renewed leadership speculation were confirmed by reports of leaked polling showing Labor continuing to be in dire trouble in Queensland and at risk of losing all its seven seats in the state.

NSW Senator George Campbell said the Labor caucus might have to reconsider Mr Crean's leadership if the polls did not improve.

'This continuing flatlining in the polls obviously is worrying to most members of the federal caucus,' Senator Campbell said.

'At the end of the day if your polls are flatlining in the way they are, the party's got to have a look at what are the causes behind that and obviously one of the issues that will be raised in that context will be leadership.'

Labor backbencher Julia Irwin said federal Labor would perform better if Bob Carr was in federal parliament, and that Mr Carr should consider moving now, rather than after the 2007 NSW election.

'Bob would help save the seats that we hold now and I know in my own heart of hearts, knowing the man the way he is, he would definitely win seats for Labor in NSW,' Ms Irwin told ABC radio.

Sounds to me like things might be happening well before 2007. Labor needs to win the 2004 election, not the 2010 election.

Enough Rope | Helen Thomas: :

Andrew Denton: You've described him as the worst president in all American history. Why?

Helen Thomas: I did that off the record. But I suppose I should have added there's always room for improvement.

LAUGHTER

Helen Thomas: You did it off the record. Nonetheless it was your view. Why is that your view?

Helen Thomas: Well, because I don't believe in war as as the first alternative. I think that everything should be done to avoid it. I don't believe that we should ever become a nation that pre-empts a war, that attacks a nation without... that has done nothing to us.

And I think there are only two rules under the UN charter where you actually go to war in self-defence, which is you were attacked or you have a treaty with an ally and have agreed to come to the aid of this nation, another nation. But this is... For us to attack a nation that has done nothing to us and has been in a stranglehold for 12 years no, sorry, I'll bow out on that one.

Go read the whole interview.

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall | It's everyone's fault but theirs.:

'The terrorists', domestic enemies, cultural declension, the French, perhaps tomorrow the decline of reading, the end of corporal punishment in the schools, permissive parenting, bad posture, rock 'n roll, space aliens. The administration is choking on its own lies and evasions. And we have to bail them out because the ship of state is our ship.

I once thought that Americans were weak at snark. I stand corrected.

SBS - The World News | BOB CARR FOR PM?:

After much speculation in media and political circles, the New South Wales Premier, Bob Carr, has finally admitted not only that he has federal aspirations, but when he is likely to act on those ambitions.

Mr Carr is quoted in a new biography as saying he'd consider switching to federal politics after the 2007 state election.

One of the book's co-authors, Andrew West, says Mr Carr's revelation to him in April was not accidental or off-the-cuff, but quite deliberate and was confirmed in June.

Mr Carr is reported as saying he would like to serve as a minister in a Labor government.

But Mr West says the federal Labor caucus is desperate, and wants to see Mr Carr in Canberra as soon as possible to help Labor win the next election.

'The only practical help he can offer is the leadership. That's not my view, that is the view of a significant portion of the federal Labor caucus. They think that Bob Carr swanning down after the election, perhaps sailing into a seat in the Cabinet, is frankly a bit of an indulgence. They say 'help us with the heavy lifting, Bob, or don't come at all.'

Federal Labor leader Simon Crean has told Sydney commercial radio that he is not surprised by the news.

I have no idea what is going on here. Carr does nothing without a reason and this story was not released by accident. The one thing I do know is that the idea that Carr might enter federal politics in 2007 is too bizarre for words. Carr is now 55. 59 is just a tad old for a first run at federal parliament.

I've thought for a while that Labor's best hope at the next election is neither Beasley nor Crean. The East Coast premiers all enjoy high popularity. Beattie, however, has troubles with One Nation and Bracks is relatively new to the job. Carr enjoys national recognition and could give Howard a run for his money. IN 2004, not 2007.

Christian Science Monitor | Australia scrutinizes influence of nongovernmental groups:

Earlier this year, Prime Minister John Howard offered to investigate all aid agencies working in Indonesia using Australian government funding, following complaints by President Megawati Sukarnoputri. And in a move that critics see as politically motivated, his government has hired a conservative think tank to investigate NGO influence on some government agencies.

'NGOs are becoming very influential today - they sit on various committees and are seen to influence governments and big business. As global players they need to be more transparent,' says Mike Nahan, executive director of the IPA.

IPA is not the only group scrutinizing NGOs. In June, IPA joined with two organizations in the United States - the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), known to be close to the Bush administration, and the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies - to launch NGOWatch. The site will monitor the operations of international NGOs and their relations with corporations and government.

The cyber watchdog is being set up at a time when NGOs are gaining credibility on the world stage for attempting to reform world markets and politics to make them more humane. A study released by the United Nations and SustainAbility, a consulting firm, concludes the groups such as Oxfam International, Greenpeace, and the World Wildlife Fund have become more receptive to market-based solutions to global problems - and in turn, corporations are more keen to work with NGOs.

Let's see. Howard has hired an NGO. They were given the contract, without any competitive bidding, to investigate other NGOs. Howard is doing this at the request of the Indonesian government. And the goal is transparency.

The Asia Times reported on 14 June 2003:

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.

Perhaps the IPA, which has sponsored previous conferences on the 'NGO problem' might begin its transparency campaign by declining the contract until it is subject to an open tendering process.

Le Monde | La proposition am�ricaine ne r�pond pas aux attentes de la France:

Le pr�sident de la R�publique et le chef de la diplomatie fran�aise s'�taient prononc�s la semaine derni�re pour un changement radical de la strat�gie am�ricaine en Irak. 'Le transfert du pouvoir et de la souverainet� aux Irakiens eux m�mes constitue la seule option r�aliste. Il doit �tre mis en oeuvre sans d�lai dans le cadre d'un processus auquel les Nations unies seules sont en mesure de donner toute sa l�gitimit�', avait ainsi d�clar� Jacques Chirac vendredi, lors de la r�union annuelle des ambassadeurs de France � Paris. Paris souhaitait en substance que la fin de l'occupation am�ricano-britannique de l'Irak soit clairement signifi�e et la responsabilit� clairement transf�r�e aux Nations unies et aux Irakiens. Il fallait, disait-on mercredi encore � l'Elys�e, 'br�ler les �tapes', sortir de la phase transitoire actuelle de l'occupation et passer tout de suite � la phase suivante, celle de la souverainet� irakienne, moyennant un calendrier serr� de transfert des responsabilit�s.

The president of the Republic and chief of French diplomacy called last week for a radical change of American strategy in Iraq. 'The transfer of power and of sovereignty to the Iraqis themselves constitutes the only realistic option. It must be begun without delay on the basis of a process to which the United Nations alone is in position to give all its legitimacy', said Jacques Chirac Friday, outside the annual meeting of French ambassadors at Paris. Paris demands in substance that the end of the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq be signalled clealry and the responsibility transferred clearly to the United Nations and to the Iraqis. We must, he said Wednesday at the Elys�e, 'br�ler les �tapes', to end the present transitional stage of the occupation and move quickly to the following stage, that of Iraqi sovereignty, by way of a timeline for the transfer of responsibilities.

The US draft resolution was always dead on arrival. It follows that the White House is merely manouevring for domestic consumption rather than engaging in serious diplomacy. Look forward to further examples of high policy such as renaming even more dishes.

The Fat - Slammin' Sam:

Don't get me wrong, sex should be fun, as long as you get a result. If you're gay, old, infertile or ugly, you're a drain on society and should be spayed, eunuch style, and spend your life serving those more equipped to ensure our future.

If Tasmanian Tiger's took more interest in their survival and less in designer clothes and dance music, they would still be around today. But they ponced themselves to extinction when they had every chance to become the dominant life form on the Apple Isle - if Reggie is any indication it wouldn't take much.

Survival of the Species is paramount and its time we did it for our country so that we can put our own species at twenty metre intervals around the coastline to take pot shots at boat people.

Decent heterosexual people, like myself and Shane Warne, with huge procreation prowess should be venerated. We should be presented with young, ripe mother stock and let loose.

I'm ready to root for Australia, it's the only decent thing to do.

You Know It Makes Sense.

Gay partner of WWII veteran entitled to widows pension: UN

'I started this action because of discrimination before the law, and I firmly believe that anyone who lives in Australia or is an Australian must be treated with equality before the law, no matter what their sexual orientation is,' he said.

Mr Young says while he feels vindicated by the committee finding, the fight is not yet over.

'When the Government eventually changes the discrimination against same-sex couples, that will be the ultimate point,' he said.

The Australian Government has been given 90 days to respond to the decision.

Legal academic Wayne Morgan, who was a consultant on the case, says the significance of the UN decision can not be underestimated.

'Globally, it is the most significant statement that a UN body has ever made about the equality rights of same-sex couples, and in that respect it will have effects all around the world,' he said.

'For us here at home it's even more important because federal law contains a number of definitions very similar to the definition which the [UN] Human Rights Committee has ruled invalid under this decision.'

A spokeswoman for the Veterans Affairs Minister Danna Vale says the Government is considering the committee's finding and will respond in due course.

Tasmanian gay rights advocates have welcomed the ruling.

The Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights Group's Rodney Croome hopes the finding will prompt the Federal Government to act.

'The Prime Minister keeps telling us that we should support the loved ones of service personnel who are serving overseas, and if he's sincere about that then he will sit down with the man who's taken this case, and his lawyers, to discuss what can be done to ensure the memory of one of Australia's service personnel isn't treated with contempt,' he said.

Here is a very simple issue for Prime Minister John Howard, whose enthusiasm for supporting the troops is such a trademark. I hope he did not mean just the heterosexual troops.

Bourbon diplomacy

The US draft resolution is now available. It changes nothing and makes no concessions to international opinion. If you compare it with the East Timor resolution you can see the difference between what is needed and what the Bush administration is proposing.

All the draft speaks about is a vital role for the UN, already covered by Resolution 1483.

There's also the minor problem that the Bush administration has a record of ignoring UN authority at will so there is a special need for any new resolution to speak in clear and unequivocal terms. After all, when the US and UK were advocating Resolution 1441 they gave undertakings there would be no military action without a further resolution.

Talk about learning nothing and forgetting nothing.

Link to new draft courtesy of Whiskey Bar

ABC 7.30 Report | Interview on Abu Bakar Basjir trial:

KERRY O'BRIEN: If what we read in 'Time' magazine a year ago is correct, then Al Qaeda operative, Omar al-Faruq, would also have been able to give evidence linking Abu Bakar Bashir to JI's terrorist agenda.

He's been an American captive since May last year.

Are you aware of any attempt to make him available to Indonesia's prosecutors?

ZACHARY ABUZA: The Indonesian prosecutors made a written request to the US Embassy in Jakarta and were rebuffed.

I think this was a terrible mistake on the part of the Americans.

It really goes back to what is happening in Virginia in a federal court with the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui.

Moussaoui requested the video testimony of the right to question two very senior Al Qaeda operatives, Ramzi ben al-Shaiba and Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

The Government has tried to keep these people from Moussaoui, from appearing in court.

A Federal Court has ruled against the Government and ordered them to allow Moussaoui to question these Al Qaeda suspects and for that reason the Government's probably going to drop the charges against Moussaoui and move him to a military tribunal.

But very clearly the US Government did not want to set any precedent in which a senior Al Qaeda leader in their possession could be made to appear before a court anywhere in the world, let alone an American one or Indonesian one.

Jemaah Islamiyah is the main terrorist organisation, and al-Qa'ida's main ally, in Southeast Asia. Basjir should have been convicted of leading JI. He might have been but for the Bush administration's bizarre approach to the trial of those charged with crimes against humanity.

Amanda Griscom: Bill Moyers Speaks his Mind on Bush-brand Environmental Destruction and More:

Grist: Can you elaborate on their religious and political dogma?

Moyers: They are practically the same. Their god is the market -- every human problem, every human need, will be solved by the market. Their dogma is the literal reading of the creation story in Genesis where humans are to have 'dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the Earth, and over every creeping thing ...' The administration has married that conservative dogma of the religious right to the corporate ethos of profits at any price. And the result is the politics of exploitation with a religious impulse.

Meanwhile, over a billion people have no safe drinking water. We're dumping 500 million tons of hazardous waste into the Earth every year. In the last hundred years alone we've lost over 2 billion hectares of forest, our fisheries are collapsing, our coral reefs are dying because of human activity. These are facts. So what are the administration and Congress doing? They're attacking the cornerstones of environmental law: the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, NEPA [the National Environmental Policy Act]. They are allowing l7,000 power plants to create more pollution. They are opening public lands to exploitation. They're even trying to conceal threats to public health: Just look at the stories this past week about how the White House pressured the EPA not to tell the public about the toxic materials that were released by the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center.

Grist: I'm interested in your explanation of why -- I haven't heard this dogma-based argument before. More often, critics interpret the White House environmental agenda as political pragmatism, as simply an effort to stay in power and pay back corporate contributors.

Moyers: This is stealth war on the environment in the name of ideology. But you're right -- there is a very powerful political process at work here, too. It's payback time for their rich donors. In the 2000 elections, the Republicans outspent the Democrats by $200 million. Bush and Cheney -- who, needless to say, are oilmen who made their fortunes in the energy business -- received over $44 million from the oil, gas, and energy industries. It spills over into Congress too: In the 2002 congressional elections, Republican candidates received almost $15 million from the energy industries, while the Democrats got around $3.7 million. In our democracy, voters can vote but donors decide.

I think this is interesting because it highlights the differences between Howard and Bush. The religious right is insignificant in Australia and if you asked Howard about Genesis he'd probably talk about the band. Despite that, Howard's tactics are almost identical - as with lowering the Medicare rebate in real terms and then expressing surprise when the rate of bulk-billing declines or using the Tampa incident to convince us that refugees from Afghanistan and Iraq were representatives of the regimes they were fleeing.

And apparently the survival of the species matters when the subject is gay marriage but not when the subject is global warming. At least Howard was clever enough to keep us out of a long-term role in the Iraq disaster.

NEO Information Centre Latest News:

The new data have enabled astronomers to refine the orbit of asteroid 2003 QQ47, and so rule out 13 of the 31 potential impacts originally listed on the JPL Current Impact Risk table. Among those 'virtual orbits' to be ruled out was the one for 21 March 2014, which gave the asteroid its Torino 1 rating.

The 18 remaining potential impacts are all rated at zero on the Torino scale and are therefore classed as 'events with no likely consequences'. Once again, the only remaining Torino 1 rated asteroid on the JPL Current Impact Risk table is asteroid 1997 XR2, with 2 potential impacts in June 2101. However, as with 2003 QQ47, the probability of 1997 XR2 impacting Earth is highly unlikely. Estimates suggest this smaller asteroid would impart just one thousandth of the energy that 2003 QQ47 was capable of delivering.

Given how swiftly 2003 QQ47 has been downgraded from a Torino 1, some may question whether the NEO Information Centre should have posted the information about 2003 QQ47 on the website in the first place. However we hope by keeping the public and media informed of this kind of issue, as it is unfolding rather than after the fact, we can promote understanding of the process of asteroid detection, tracking and risk assessment.

Well, we can all breathe easy again. Although George Bush's shift from his Top Gun role to Captain Kirk would have been fun...

Salon.com | Why Dean and Franken are so hot right now:

It's not just his harebrained ideological nostrums for how to reorder America and the world. They hate him and it's personal. They hate his frat-boy smirk, his phony fly-boy act, his cringe-inducing mangling of the language, his born-again sanctimony, even his Texas twang and his godforsaken, tumbleweed ranch where only someone as fence-post-dumb as W. would hole up in August. They hate him like their lives depended on it, lives that will certainly be unbearable if this bumbling extremist is reelected (or elected) in 2004.

Definitely a snark of the week...

Midday | Badr Brigade declares war on al-Qaeda:

Kufah: In the aftermath of Ayatullah Hakim's assassination, the US coalition forces found an unlikely ally in the militant Badr Brigade that declared a war on al-Qaeda yesterday, when the whole of Iraq observed tashiyyee (post-funeral rites) for the slain Shiite leader.

Hakim, along with 82 other people, was killed in a blast soon after the Friday prayers outside the shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf. The blast is widely believed to be the handiwork of al-Qaeda operatives who disapproved of Hakim's collaboration with US forces in Iraq.

The one-lakh-strong [100 000] suicide squads of the Badr Brigade formed by Hakim in his lifetime for uprising against Saddam's regime had come out on the streets of Najaf, flaunting Kalashnikovs and placards bearing photographs of their dead leader.

'It's a death rattle for al-Qaeda and their friends. We will chase the killers of Hakim until our last breath and avenge his killing,' said a Shaikh who was leading the gun-wielding men on the streets.

In fact, when Sayed Ammar Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim, the nephew of Ayatullah Hakim came out to pacify the crowd, the huge mob broke into one chant, 'Intaqaam, intaqaam, ya Ammar (Revenge, revenge we don't want to be shamed).' Ammar was overwhelmed seeing the crowd and broke into tears. Ammar asked the crowd to calm down and told them, 'We are used to death. We don't fear death. Rather this death has proved our love for Iraq more than ever.

Bremer's 100 days have come and gone. Security in Iraq is nil. Basic services have not been restored. The occupation is running out of money. The missing WMDs (remember those?) remain missing. And now the country is fast drifting into civil war. About the only bungle that the Bush administration has not yet managed is inviting the Iraqis to eat cake.

EurasiaNet Eurasia Insight - Weak States Often Follow Strategies of Deception:

A recent comment made by the now-deceased British weapons expert, David Kelly, exemplifies a political tactic often followed by weak states in order to remain secure from outside threats: hyping or obfuscating their defense capabilities in an attempt to dissuade potential aggressors from attack or invasion. This strategy of manufactured uncertainty may have been recently employed by Saddam Hussein in Iraq, in which the deposed leader remained cryptic regarding the possibility of his country possessing nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

David Broucher, a British representative to the United Nations conference on disarmament, testified that in February Kelly told him that his Iraqi contacts feared that if they were to allow full inspections, the United States would become too informed about Baghdad's defense capabilities and therefore Iraq would be more vulnerable to attack. This fear highlights the difficulty that governments find themselves in when they are labeled as a threat by one of the world's only great powers, the United States. In such instances, Washington demands that such states reveal their entire defense capabilities. When states refuse, they are often subjected to harsh United Nations sanctions that can cripple their country's infrastructure and economy. Such states find themselves in a perilous situation, one where their failure to disclose their military potential could either increase or decrease the chances of an attack by the United States.

In the case of Iraq, Saddam Hussein opted against full disclosure and instead remained ambiguous about his possible retaliatory capabilities. Washington called his bluff and effectively removed the leader from power. Despite this success, other states that have earned the negative attention of Washington are also following Saddam's strategy of deception and are attempting to hype or obfuscate their defense capabilities. These states have learned that the more powerful a state is, the less likely an aggressor will attack it. North Korea is the clearest example of a country following this doctrine.

Once the Bush administration began to harshly denounce North Korea, even threatening preemptive action, Pyongyang began to hype its defense capabilities. Indeed, Pyongyang told the Bush administration that it was actively pursuing nuclear weapons despite previous claims to the contrary. The North then backed out of international nuclear agreements and began to take measures toward developing nuclear arms. Occasional anonymous North Korean officials made statements claiming that the North already had nuclear weapons. In effect, North Korea quickly clouded its nuclear program in secrecy as to confuse potential aggressors about its military prowess. It is likely that during this time of secrecy Pyongyang is indeed attempting to develop nuclear arms in order to increase the costs that are associated with attacking a nuclear-armed and military-ready state.

And weak-minded governments often get taken in by these efforts...

Christian Science Monitor | Latest Iraq threat: cash crunch:

The future offers no immediate fiscal relief for the coalition. Iraq's budget for 2004, according an internal document provided by an official in the Coalition Provisional Authority [CPA], 'has inadequate funds for security, electrical, water, sewage, irrigation, housing, education, health, [and] agriculture.' For many middle and working-class Iraqis, basic services like electricity, safe highways, and a living wage have disappeared. In frustration, many Iraqis say, some of those struggling people are joining the resistance movements.

Tuesday, as Shiites buried their assassinated senior cleric in Najaf, a bomb went off at the Baghdad police headquarters, in an apparent attempt to assassinate the police chief. One Iraqi police officer was killed; 15 others were wounded.

The bloodshed, including bombings at the UN headquarters and the Jordanian embassy here last month, are keeping investors and even small businesses away. 'If you cannot get money to fix security, electricity, and infrastructure problems, that will prevent small businesses from wanting to come here to start up, and it keeps foreign investment out,' the CPA official explains. 'How can I run a business if I don't have a guarantee of security?'

Already, the terrorism that Washington once accused Iraq of supporting abroad is now plaguing Iraq at home - and grounding what the Bush administration thought would be a solid take-off for the postwar economy.

Now, the UN, nongovernmental organizations, and other major groups like the Red Cross are scaling back their operations in Iraq after the bombing of the UN headquarters, representing a withdrawal of foreign cash and demand for services that would have been pumped into Iraq.

With several tens of billions of dollars more needed, according to Bremer, the US will need its allies to help foot the bill. A donor conference, to that end, will be held near the end of October. But it is already proving difficult to get countries to foot the reconstruction bill for a war that many of them opposed outright.

The cakewalk has not happened. The Iraq adventure is not going to pay for itself. Is there a single neocon prediction about this war that has proved true? Floating Baby Moses has an excellent piece on why this is so.

Asia Times | Ayatollah's killing: Winners and losers

After Baghdad fell without a fight on April 9, scores of Ba'ath Party cadres took refuge in Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Morocco and Mauritania. The Ba'ath Party has operated cells in these countries since 1968. The idea - brilliant in itself - was to have these cadres rally the Arab masses in these countries to join a jihad against the superpower which dared to occupy sacred Arab land. The masses may not be responding yet - but certainly professional jihadis already have. With the Najaf bombing, the "Saddam network" has scored another big hit: it has managed in one stroke to simultaneously divide the Shi'ites (62 percent of the Iraqi population) and hurl hundreds of thousands of them into the streets chanting anti-US slogans. Ayatollah al-Hakim's brother is a member of the American-imposed interim governing council, which has absolutely no power and is considered a sham by the majority of Iraqis. Al-Hakim's Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) has been vilified by other Shi'ite factions because it is - at least for the moment - against armed resistance. And many Shi'ites also remember very well that SCIRI backed Iran in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.

As Asia Times Online has reported, holy Najaf is at the dead center of what happens next in Iraq. Immediately after the fall of Baghdad, first the imam at Ali's Shrine, Dr Haider Alkelydar, and then Shi'ite cleric Abdul Majid al-Khoei, who returned from exile in London, were assassinated. As chaos takes over, Shi'ites are increasingly in favor of armed resistance against the Americans. But the top de facto religious authority, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, does not want to get drawn into any political wrestling match: he is still adopting a "wait and see" attitude. The one character who has everything to gain from al-Hakim's murder is young Moqtada al-Sadr, extremely respected because he is the son of Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr. Moqtada al-Sadr favors armed struggle - right now - and that's exactly why he would be a useful ally to both the "Saddam network" and the jihadis. Their objective is total confrontation with the Americans - with no space for appeasers like the UN's Vieira de Mello or SCIRI's al-Hakim.

European diplomats are very cynical about the possibility of the neo-conservatives controlling the Bush administration swallowing their pride and turning to the UN for help. Even the UN is facing a no-win situation, and the diplomats in New York and Geneva know it. In the unlikely event blue helmets were deployed in Iraq, it's practically certain they would be regarded by most of the population as the tail end of the US occupying serpent. Especially if Washington insists on not relinquishing one inch of control of the whole, disastrous operation. So this is the gift of Washington's neo-conservatives to the world: instead of a democratic Iraq, a putrid state infected by a guerrilla virus and on the verge of a devastating civil and ethnic war.

After the UN and Najaf bombings it's hard to see why any Iraqi would co-operate with the US. The occupation is legally responsible for security in Iraq. The latest Bush spin, that the evil Saddam tricked them into fighting a war, tells us more about neocon intellectual poverty than anything else.

Comments go phut

Sorry if your comments have evaporated. I've shifted to Blogspeak. Blame Vivienne at Forceful and Moderate.

South Knox Bubba | Stop me if you've heard this one

And, furthermore: It was reported today that at a White House staff meeting last week there was a heated discussion about the health of Vice President Cheney and his angina problem. President Bush interrupted and stated emphatically that men do not have anginas. The president was especially perplexed when a staffer said that Cheney has acute angina.

Why Voters Left the [US] Dems in 1994- by Nathan Newman:

But the other part of the story is why poorer voters not interested in the Christian Right agenda did not turn-out and why even religious voters were more interested in voting on cultural issues than on their economic self-interest. The answer is that Clinton's failure to deliver on health care and a real improvement in the economy for such lower-paid workers disillusioned them. The Democrats demonstrated how limited their party is in delivering benefits to working Americans, so they saw little difference in the parties and voted on cultural divisions rather than
economic divisions.

Interestingly, richer Americans decided the same thing and many more upper-middle class Americans decided the same thing and voted more Democratic than they had under Reagan--probably inspired by opposition to the religious conservatives.

Without a strong economic message for working Americans, voters turn to cultural issues to define their politics. And in an economy that is destroying the standard of living of most Americans, cultural politics becomes more and more racist and xenophobic.

If the Democrats or any progressive party is to have a chance of regaining the allegiance of the population, we need to develop a credible economic message that addresses the needs of working and poor Americans. Otherwise, we seemed doomed to a conservative and increasingly xenophobic politics.

It's a truism that you can't translate research between countries without a few caveats. Australia really has no religious right of significance. The US has not experienced the Hanson phenomenon which allows marginalised voters to vote their cultural message while yelling: 'A plague on both your houses'. Nevertheless, there is a serious message for Labor. Their economic message is just not strong enough for them to be able withstand Hansonism.

The really interesting question is why Labor holds every state and territory government. Partly it's because state politics are inherently economic and lack the cultural issues like Tampa or terrorism. If it's also because Labor is doing better on economics at the state level than the federal party needs to rethink what it's about.

Sleepless in Baghdad:

Words will never describe the relief. We chased around after the looters before I hitched a ride back to the city to file a story. The others went off in different directions, with Burns at one stage getting ahead of the US advance. When he came across a well-armed, menacing group of young men, he opted for the language of the morning. 'Bush good?' he asked. But they snarled back: 'Bush down shoes! America down shoes!' As they spat on the ground, the message was clear - Bush and the US were good enough only for the soles of their shoes, a terrible insult in this part of the world. Burns beat a hasty retreat.

Washington's glee [at taking the city] was obvious. But a Pentagon spin-doctor might have been disappointed with the turnout in the streets of Baghdad when the marines came to town. At first glance, the numbers looked good; but if you put the looters to one side, things became a little dicey. And if you took the foreign press and the marines out of the crowd in Firdos Square as the marines stage-managed the demolition of a towering bronze of Saddam Hussein, then the numbers were disappointing for an army that came here as liberators. For such a momentous occasion in Iraqi history, perhaps only 500 Iraqis watched.

Most of them were so consumed with questions and worries about the future that they didn't even stop to savour the moment, let alone the day. And, in the face of so many imponderables, many simply shrugged their shoulders.

Edited extracts from Paul McGeough's In Baghdad, published this week by Allen & Unwin

Guardian Unlimited | The martyrdom of unsaintly Pauline:

At first this sly submission to Hansonism was condemned by the Labor party, but when Howard's xenophobic campaign against refugees won him the 2001 election, even that opposition was silenced. Nowadays you will be lucky to find a mainstream politician who can talk about Hanson without either tacitly supporting, or silkily sliding around her despicable views.

Politicians are scared of being on the level about this because they do not want to be seen to disrespect the people who support her, a critical group of working-class and lower middle-class swing voters dubbed the 'battlers'. These battlers, viewed as decent, hard-working and traditional salt-of-the-earth Aussies, form the bedrock of John Howard's political support, and Labor is desperate to regain their trust.

Both of the main parties pay lip-service to these battlers by tolerating and stoking racism, terrified that they will appear to be ignoring battler concerns. Neither is prepared to give the same people the true mark of political respect, and listen to them on other issues affecting the country.

Crucially, the battlers' take on economic policy is ignored, as it has been for most of the past 20 years. In the headlong rush of successive Australian governments to embrace free-market reforms, the battlers have been the downsized, low-waged cannon fodder.

John Howard simply took the economic policies of former Labor prime minister Paul Keating and grafted them on to the social policies of Pauline Hanson; the former fuelled battlers' disillusionment, while the latter was seen as its balm.

Perhaps if Labor actually listened to the people on Struggle St, they might have the political authority to deal with Hanson.

Sydney Morning Herald | Sharples to sue Abbott for defamation:

Mr Sharples today said there were three slush funds set up.

And he said he planned to sue Mr Abbott for defamation and release diary entries and tapes showing Mr Abbott was not telling the truth.

'It is correct, whether it happens today or tomorrow or Wednesday I'm not sure,' Mr Sharples told the Nine Network.

'I've got documents that prove that Tony Abbott is not telling the truth.'

He said his records of conversations would show Mr Abbott was saying one thing privately and another publicly.

'It will prove exactly what Tony Abbott was saying to me during this critical two months when we first joined forces, if you want to put it like that, and then he dumped me...,' Mr Sharples said.

'There was a lot of communication, luckily I recorded a reasonable amount of it and it's just totally contrary to what Tony's currently saying publicly.'

Mr Sharples said he could also prove the existence of three anti-Hanson slush funds involving Mr Abbott.

'Yes I can certainly prove that, otherwise I wouldn't have made the statement and in fact the proof is to some degree already in the transcripts of the tape that was heard just recently before Justice (Patsy) Wolfe,' he said.

The saga of Tony Abbot and the Slash Funds of Doom gets curiouser and curiouser. The Road to Surfdom has blogged that it would have been better to win the argument than to use the courts to beat One Nation. That is true, but it's an effort neither major party really tried at the federal level.

The Coalition could not take on One Nation because they were too busy running dog whistle campaigns like Tampa to acquire One Nation voters. Labor could not do it because Labor seems to be incapable of doing anything that might frighten the horses. Both should have taken a leaf from Queensland Premier Peter Beattie's playbook on how to deal with One Nation in and out of parliament.

If Sharples can prove the existence of undisclosed slush funds then I suspect Tony Abbot is history, but the slush funds are not the main game. If the federal opposition really wants to make something of this, they should be asking a very basic question that goes to the heart of the Howard government.

Why was John Howard campaigning for One Nation's vote while his favourite minister and chief headkicker was gunning for their destruction? And what does that say about Howard's real attitude to the battlers, the 'ordinary Australians' on whom he has built his prime ministership?

R. Robot: The first self-writing weblog | John Howard and the terrorists of Oregon's excellent adventure:

In the mind of John Howard, it's always Jenna Bush's fault.

When will John Howard come clean about the way she insults President Bush?

Jazzercized pundits like Joe Conason and others apparently believe the best way to confront Mullah Omar is to invite him over and give him a free crate of uranium.

The bitter adulterers wildly believe that President Bush is a more dangerous sadist than Saddam Hussein.

At some point, when you look around and realize that your co-workers are spiteful and depraved, you have to break rank and become a Republican, if only for the sake of a common sense duty and good hygiene, morally speaking.

Weird, how accurate a self-writing roboblog can be...

ABC Insiders - 31/08/2003: Garrett welcomes first steps to save Murray:

PETER GARRETT, AUSTRALIAN CONSERVATION FOUNDATION PRESIDENT: Good morning.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Let's go to the issue about whether there is a problem with the Murray. How desperate do you regard the situation?

PETER GARRETT: Well Barrie, the Murray's in dire straits and it was very good that PM and State premiers could come into COAG and commit funds to beginning the process of bringing the river back to health. The river is not saved by this decision, it is not a historic decision until they get enough water flowing down the river and spend enough money over the next 10 years, particularly to set the guidelines that are necessary for river health. Yes, it is a good start but the river isn't saved until they spend the money and actually commit themselves to funds over a 10 or 15-year period.

BARRIE CASSIDY: But is $500 million not a good start?

PETER GARRETT: No, it is a good start but it is simply not enough. The Murray Darling Basin Commission, the scientists, CSIRO and river users all generally agree that the river needs a lot more water. That's going to cost a lot of money. The figure that was given to restore it to moderate health was 1,500 gigalitres. This it gives us 350 gigalitres, so we're still away short. The ACF and other conservation groups, environmental groups and interested parties would see this as a first step in a campaign to ramp-up the amount of money that needs to come into this river system and also to ensure that river communities have got some long-term livelihood and some security over their water access.

The 1500 gl figure is an official estimate by the MDBC. Why are we celebrating a 'success' we know will fail?

Paul Krugman | Fistfuls of Dollars:

Still, even the government of a superpower can't simultaneously offer tax cuts equal to 15 percent of revenue, provide all its retirees with prescription drugs and single-handedly take on the world's evildoers %u2014 single-handedly because we've alienated our allies. In fact, given the size of our budget deficit, it's not clear that we can afford to do even one of these things. Someday, when the grown-ups are back in charge, they'll have quite a mess to clean up.

But at least the juveniles ousted from office will have action dolls to play with.

Guardian Unlimited | One river's journey through troubled times:

Huge dams have turned the mighty Euphrates into a fraction of its former self - to the fury of countries downstream

Rising in the Kurdish mountains of eastern Turkey, the Euphrates river meanders for more than 1,700 miles through ancient history and troubled modern politics.

It is mentioned in the Book of Genesis as one of four rivers that bounded the Garden of Eden and its waters sustained great civilisations from the Babylonians to the Abbasids. Fearsome rulers, from Nebuchadnezzar to Saddam Hussein, have built their palaces on its banks.

The name 'Euphrates' is Greek for 'the good and abounding river', but today the water's flow has been reduced to a fraction of what it once was.

To summarise, Turkey and Syria are appropriating too much water and degrading both flow levels and water quality downstream in Iraq. The management problems where a single river basin encompasses competing nations make the rivalries in basins like the Colorado and the Murray-Darling simple.

Independent | Ban fishing in third of all seas, scientists say:

All fishing should be banned in a third of the world's oceans to reverse a catastrophic decline in fish stocks such as cod and tuna, British scientists have warned.

In a new study, they recommend that large areas of ocean, including the North Sea, around the Falklands, and the Gulf of California, should be made into legally protected marine reserves, policed by naval patrols and satellites.

The dramatic proposal - expected to be endorsed by an international conference on wildlife reserves next month - follows mounting alarm about the worldwide collapse of fish, dolphin, whale and turtle populations, and the destruction of ancient coral reefs.

Professor Callum Roberts, a marine biologist at York University and co-author of the study, said the world's oceans were now in crisis. 'We've now reached the terrible and unstable state where we're fishing species so heavily that there are virtually no reproductive fish around,' he said.

Last Thursday, the scale of that crisis was underlined when scientists with the Scottish Fisheries Research Service warned that North Sea cod stocks, now down to about 40,000 tonnes, were 'critical' and called for fishing to be heavily restricted.

That day, Australian and South African fishery protection vessels apprehended a Uruguayan trawler after a three-week chase, for illegally catching the endangered Patagonian toothfish. Known as 'white gold', the fish was thought to be worth $2m (�1.4m) [AU$3.5m] on the black market.

Maybe we need a new breed of chloroneocon who could get all hairy-chested over the urgent need to defend primacy over fishery stocks.

Guardian Unlimited | Life | Earth's neighbour passes by:

People in the south Pacific had the best view at the moment of closest encounter: it was their night, and they were nearest to Mars at the magic moment. British astronomers were hardly so lucky. 'Eleven this morning didn't feel any different from any other time. It was cloudy and Mars was the other side of the Earth,' said Robin Scagell, of the Society for Popular Astronomy and one of the promoters of national astronomy week.

This item has no significance except shameless gloating and southern hemisphere chauvinism. It's probably a good thing for all concerned I started this blog some months after watching last year's total eclipse from Cameron's Corner.

Atlantic Unbound | Politics & Prose | 2003.08.21:

That legitimacy hangs by a thread now, an Iraqi journalist told On Point. The U.S. occupation is too weak to restore order or maintain basic services, he says, yet oppressive enough to kill, injure, and inflame Iraqi civilians. In the months since the war Baghdad has become 'another Beirut,' a blow to Iraqi pride for which Iraqis blame the United States. And the situation is likely to get worse. The Financial Times reports that more than 3,000 Saudi young men have 'gone missing' in the past two months. Many crossed over into Iraq to mount a jihad against the occupation. More suicide bombings can be expected. More U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians will die. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan this week, the Taliban offensive against the Karzai government resulted in the deaths of ninety people, the worst span of violence in Afghanistan since the U.S. war against the Taliban ended, just as this week was the worst in Iraq since the war against Saddam. And yet pundits insist that George W. Bush is unassailable on foreign policy. After such success, what failure?

Also written before the Najaf massacre.

Al-Ahram Weekly | Against the occupation:

The focus on 'loyalists' rather than other possibilities seemed to indicate that the US team did not take seriously the claim of responsibility by the previously unknown 'Armed Vanguards of Mohamed's Second Army', a name suggesting an Islamist rather than a secular Ba'thist background.

The notion that the bombing of the Canal Hotel was an 'inside job' was based on the fact that the device exploded beneath the office of the UN's chief representative Sergio Vieira de Mello, who was killed along with more than 20 other staff members. However, it is just as likely that the bombers simply chose the only route open to the flatbed lorry which delivered the crude device made of a Russian bomb wired to explosives: the paved roadway into the parking lot alongside the UN compound wall. So far, none of the strikes on foreign troops and military facilities and sabotage operations against infrastructure have involved sophisticated intelligence, great military expertise or equipment beyond that available from Iraq's looted army stores.

It would seem that this is true, also, of the 7 August hit on the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad as well as the UN bombing. This means that almost any of the resistance groups now operating in Iraq could have carried out the operation. Since armed resistance began at the time of the regime's collapse in early April, some three dozen groups have either claimed responsibility for attacks on the occupying forces and other targets or issued communiqu�s declaring their determination to take up arms against the occupation.

This was written before the Najaf bombing. Blaming the attacks on loyalists does not cure the problem. Stopping them would. If (as the Bush administration insists) there are enough troops, then it follows that the conduct of the occupation in using those troops must be sadly incompetent. If there are not enough troops then the Bush administration's war planning was ineffectual.

Guardian Unlimited | Shi'ite cleric killed in guerrilla attack:

Paul Bremer, the American leading Iraq's interim administration, pledged the US-British coalition would do 'everything possible' to track down the attackers.

He said: 'The bombing shows again that the enemies of the new Iraq will stop at nothing. Again, they have killed innocent Iraqis. Again, they have violated one of Islam's most sacred places. Again, by their heinous action, they have shown the evil face of terrorism.

'The Iraqi police have our full cooperation in this important investigation. On behalf of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the American people and all friends of Iraq, I express my deepest sympathy to the families of those killed and to the injured and their families.'

There has been considerable unrest among the religious communities in the holy city, which lies 110 miles south-west of Baghdad.

Today's bombing comes one week after a device exploded outside the house of one of Iraqi's most important Shia clerics, killing three guards and injuring 10 others including family members.

A gas cylinder, which had been placed along the outside wall of the home of Mohammed Saeed al-Hakim in Najaf, exploded just after noon prayers July 22.

The Al-Hakims are one of the most influential families in the Shia community in Iraq, and Iraqi newspapers reported two weeks ago that the cleric had received death threats.

This slaughter is incredibly bad news. Bremer's bromides are not going to reassure al-Hakim's followers in SCIRI. The Shi'a have been relatively quiet. SCIRI and al-Dawa, the principal Shi'a parties, both sit in the nongoverning council. THE CPA cannot protect the UN or its Iraqi allies. Perhaps presidential speeches and press conferences are not enough to establish security in Iraq.

More on this here and here.

Sydney Morning Herald | Lost, even with a map:

Australian political life reacted in silence this week as US military deaths in Iraq reached a melancholy milestone. On Tuesday morning a homemade bomb killed an American soldier north of Baghdad and wounded two others. His death, reported The New York Times, meant more US troops had now died keeping 'the peace' in Iraq than had died fighting 'the war'. The soldier was the 139th to die since May 1. That was the day George Bush declared, to orchestrated fanfare, the end of 'major combat operations'. A total of 138 had died in the six preceding weeks of the US/British invasion. Iraq's casualties, dead and wounded, military and civilian, were estimated to exceed 20,000.

Yet Iraq as an issue has all but vanished here. John Howard and Simon Crean, both burnt by flawed judgement, want to keep it that way. I'm not aware a politician anywhere, state or federal, had anything to say about the significance of Tuesday's death. Most newspapers ignored it, too. The seeming indifference says as much about the degradation of the Iraq debate as it does about perceptions of its electoral dangers. Any weapon of mass destruction (apart from US firepower) has still to be found anywhere. A coherent policy stance by Labor remains just as elusive. Howard's duplicity in taking Australia into the war damaged him as much as Crean's confused, man-for-all-seasons rhetoric hurt the Labor leader.

What will each say when Bush, as he surely must, scales back the US military occupation of Iraq - estimated at 120,000 troops, costing $US4 billion ($6.24 billion) a month - in a presidential election year next year? US policy has been no more successful in securing the peace than ever it was in justifying the invasion. As The New York Times editorialised on Wednesday: 'A stable peace in Iraq cannot be won on the cheap or absent foreign partners. With the death count mounting daily, it is time for Bush to stop pretending otherwise.' You'd like to think someone in the political leadership of this country would say something as sensible.

Instead, absolute silence.

What can I add?

The Independent | Blair's U-turn as he admits central role in naming Kelly:

What was decided at the meetings set off the chain of events that was to lead to the public exposure of Dr Kelly to an intense media spotlight, to his appearance before two parliamentary committees and to his death.

Mr Blair told the inquiry that he had been guided by senior civil servants over the affair. But he added:

The responsibility is mine, at the end of the day. I take the decision as Prime Minister, but I wanted to be able to say that we had played it by the book.

Just over five weeks ago, on learning of Dr Kelly's apparent suicide during an official flight from Shanghai to Hong Kong, the Prime Minister had 'categorically' and 'emphatically' denied he had played a part in revealing the scientist's name.

Mr Blair, his ministers and spokesmen had subsequently declared that the Ministry of Defence had been left to handle Dr Kelly after he volunteered the fact that he had discussed last September's Iraq dossier with Mr Gilligan.

Four days after Dr Kelly was discovered dead in an Oxfordshire wood, the Prime Minister's official spokesman was still insisting that the MoD was the 'lead department' in working out the strategy over Dr Kelly and that this had been done under 'normal MoD procedure'.

The fundamental hurdle to calling John Howard to account in the same way is that his formulation would be:

The responsibility is not mine, at the end of the day. I take the decision as Prime Minister, but I wanted to be able to say that we had played it by the book which no-one told me about and I certainly did not read.

Eschaton | Arnie on Gay Marriage:

Gay marriage is something that should be between a man and a woman.

Wow...

Dubious Dossier Fueled Bush Deceits:

Britain's independent investigation, led by Lord Hutton, a respected senior jurist, was launched to answer questions about the death of David Kelly, a British expert on chemical and biological weapons, who helped reporters expose the Blair team's manipulation of intelligence data. But it has turned into a broad examination that is considering information not merely regarding Kelly but the whole question of how Blair and his aides made the case for war.

Last Tuesday, Hutton released copies of e-mails revealing that Blair's chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, cautioned against using the dossier to claim Iraq posed anything akin to 'an imminent threat.' After reviewing the evidence, Powell e-mailed top members of the prime minister's team to argue that the information 'does nothing to demonstrate a threat, let alone an imminent threat from Saddam.'

The prime minister's chief of staff found the evidence on which the dossier was based so thin that he said it would only be 'convincing for those who are prepared to be convinced.'

Blair and his top aides chose to disregard the cautions and hyped the dossier with claims that it confirmed Iraq's WMD program was 'active, detailed and growing.' Even after U.S. intelligence agencies warned that the dossier was of questionable validity, Bush peddled the dubious data.

This week's revelations about the extent to which Blair and his aides massaged and manipulated the intelligence data should suggest to members of the U.S. Congress that it is time for the United States to again follow the lead of Britain. Congress should authorize a full investigation to determine whether, in the midst of a debate about war and peace, Bush and his cohorts chose to deceive Congress and the American people.

Perhaps Australia, as well, should be conducting a slightly more dynamic enquiry than the closed doors exercise in the Parliamentary Joint Committee on ASIO, ASIS and DSD. They might even consider the national security implications of the prime minister's alarming incapacity for getting the memo.

Blog Left: Critical Interventions Warblog | Claims about WMD 'may have been excuse rather than reason for war' :

Here's a British intelligence chief scathingly attacking Blair misuse of intelligence and correctly stating that Bush and Blair were looking for excuses for a war they'd already chosen to carry out, rather than offering reasons for war. He also notes that the war itself in effect began in Fall 2002:

In his note to the committee, written on 2 July, Sir John suggests that the change in the no-fly zone operations from defensive to offensive tactics last autumn was because the US and UK had already decided to 'prepare the battlefield' by removing threats such as Iraq's Silkworm missiles. 'It points to a question that needs to be posed,' he wrote. 'When was the decision taken to go to war? If this thesis bears examination, then the nation was committed to war in the late summer, early autumn of 2002.

Okay, let's all check the dates that the Man of Steel suddenly invented predeployment but promised (cross his heart and spit to die) that predeployment did not mean that we'd decided to join the war.

Link via Bad Attitudes

Salon.com | Joe Conason's Journal:

In the meantime, I will appear on CNN's 'Crossfire' today with guest host Al Franken. Among other things, I hope we can discuss the new slogan I've suggested for Fox News Channel, drawn from the wording of Judge Denny Chin's decision in the network's lawsuit against Franken and his publisher. Instead of 'Fair and Balanced,' why not 'Wholly Without Merit'?

Not quite vitriolic enough to make a snark of the week, but really not too bad.

Sydney Morning Herald | Time came above safety: inquiry head:

The State Rail Authority might have overlooked safety concerns over the Tangara deadman pedal because of concern with 'on-time running and things of that nature', the Waterfall inquiry commissioner, the retired judge Peter McInerney, said yesterday.

Hearing submissions from counsel on the causes of the crash on January 31 that killed seven people, he said he noted that vigilance control devices were now being put on Tangaras operating outside the metropolitan area.

The devices - alarms triggered if controls are not operated within a given time - are being installed as a back-up to deadman system.

Mr McInerney has heard that the authority made on-time running its top priority, disciplining drivers for being late and possibly deciding not to fit Tangaras with vigilance control devices earlier because it would have temporarily taken them out of service.

He said yesterday: 'Now the horse has bolted, they are fitting the devices, so there is no reason for them not to have been fitted in the 1990s.'

Same old, same old. From gungho staff meetings at the SRA to White House idiocies on Iraq and global warming, for some reason unbalanced managerialism produces really bad results. Perhaps we need to be really old-fashioned and fall back to using checks and balances rather than trusting the CEO on everything.

The implicit claim of managerialism is that the moral quality of the leader is the only thing that matters. That is an old, old assertion with surprising roots:

The conscience of a moral personality is a far greater protection against the misuse of an office than is the supervision of parliament or the separation of powers. I know no one who has a stronger conscience, or is more true to his people, than...

Bush's Messiah Complex | February 2003 issue:

There's also the risk that Bush is so convinced that God's on our side that he may commit a blunder of horrifying proportions.

In a democracy, the fateful decisions of war and peace are not supposed to rest in the hands of one man. Today, they do. And what a man to entrust them with. Lacking intellectual curiosity, he boasts of an infallible gut. Desperate not to be trapped by 'the vision thing' that ensnared his father, Bush embraces a huge global mission and couches it in fundamentalist language. And he has assigned the Pentagon the primary role in carrying out this mission.

This is way too much power to give to anyone, and George W. Bush has the arrogance that comes with such power. 'I do not need to explain why I say things,' he told Woodward. 'That's the interesting thing about being the President. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation.'

When his crusade goes terribly wrong, as it is likely to do, Bush will owe a lot of people an explanation. Meanwhile, we must do whatever we can, nonviolently, to oppose this military messianism.

Neoliberalism is morphing into a new Byzantium. Byzantine emperors were regularly acclaimed as 'isapostolikos' and 'cosmocrator' - equal of the apostles and ruler of the world. Because the emperor was Christ-appointed any unsuccessful attempt at his overthrow was not just treason but apostasy. Success meant only that Christ had elected a new emperor. Bush claims to have been appointed by God.

When Margaret Thatcher first declared that there is no alternative to certain policies she laid the intellectual foundation for this nonsense. Bush effectively declares that there is no alternative to one person, himself. Further he ignores traditional Christian authorities such as the Vatican or the leadership of his own church in favour of his own direct relationship with God. That strikes me, apart from being very bad politics, as simple blasphemy.

Link courtesy of Orcinus.

Fundamental breach of ministerial code! Nation in shock!

It now seems that Leader of the House and Minister of Workplace Relations Tony Abbott founded an organisation called Australians for Honest Politics to bring down Pauline Hanson. In a gross breach of the Man of Steel's extraordinary standards for ministerial conduct AHP has not yet issued the required declaration that whatever it was they thought they were doing they certainly did not inform the prime minister.

Canberra insiders expect Abbott's dismissal within the hour. The embattled minister, ever a man of many parts, is reported to be flogging a screenplay based on this exciting saga.

Whether Baz Luhrmann really wants to be produce a sexed up version of the Alexandre Dumas classic is unknown. Abbott, meanwhile, is reportedly confident that The Woman in the Rubber Thongs will prove a worldwide hit.

Sydney Morning Herald | Rein in that Mars frenzy - it's still 55 million kilometres away:

NSW has a wealth of small observatories open to the public.

The astronomy enthusiasts who run them, inundated with inquiries about viewing Mars, are treading a delicate balance between encouraging excitement at the closest approach of the planet in recorded history and providing a realistic view about what people can expect to see down a telescope.

Peter Neilson, manager of Dubbo Observatory, said he made a point of showing people pictures first, so they knew what to look for. In the case of Mars, this was the glow of the polar caps, and the black marking of three volcanoes.

'Any level of interest in astronomy is good. But it's a matter of expectation,' he said.

Well, Peter's observatory and the Mars perigee are my excuse for visiting Dubbo. Peter told me Dubbo has been hit by Mars frenzy. It was great. And the sheep were nervous.

On Line Opinion 25/8/03 | Graham Young argues that Pauline Hanson got off lightly :

Hanson pleaded not guilty but the jury unanimously disagreed. Once the verdict had been reached the only question left to judge Patsy Wolfe was the length of sentence. She determined it should be three years - the length of a parliamentary term.

In making the sentence the judge had reference to four previous judgements. The most comparable was the decision of the Appeal Court in The Queen v Karen Lynn Ehrmann. Ehrmann falsely enrolled 24 people on the state electoral roll with the intention of using them in an internal ALP ballot. Ehrmann pleaded guilty. She was sentenced to three years with a recommendation for early release after nine months.

In terms of proportionality, Hanson's crime was greater. Ehrmann pleaded guilty and showed some remorse, Hanson did neither. You'd have to say that Patsy Wolfe's call was a pretty fair one. She even allowed Hanson's position as a Member of Parliament as a mitigating factor. I would have thought that it should have been the reverse - Hanson should have been held to a higher standard. Hanson's supporters say she should have escaped sentence because she repaid the money. Well, yes, she did, but only when she had been caught. If she hadn't repaid then she may have been sentenced to six years in jail, as in the case of Lockhart (see who misappropriated $390,000.

Hard as it is to argue with Young's opinion on the Hanson sentence the Australian media has succeeded in doing it. For example on the ABC's Insiders last Sunday we heard breathless speculation that if a major party figure had received a similar sentence...

Well, sadly for the researchers at the ABC a major figure has. The same factual bungle has dominated the airwaves since the Hanson sentence was first announced.

Sydney Morning Herald | Don't cry for a sleazy grub:

And for the record, remember that Hanson, when elected to the Federal Parliament in March 1996, did so still as the candidate of the Liberal Party, even though John Howard, in a panic, insisted she be disendorsed after some of her blunt views on Aborigines and Asians surfaced in a local newspaper interview during the campaign. But her expulsion had come too late to affect her official status on the 70,000 ballot papers which already had been printed. And on these she was still listed, on polling day, as the Liberal candidate. The nonsense later that Hanson was elected as an independent has only been just that: nonsense.

The Liberals might have disowned her but she went into the ballot box on polling day as the Liberals' only identified candidate. And that is what got her elected. Thirty-one months later, in the October 1998 general election, Hanson switched from the outer Brisbane seat of Oxley to the nearby seat of Blair under the One Nation banner. It didn't help. She led on primary votes but lost on preferences to the Liberal candidate. In 2001 Hanson ran for a Queensland Senate seat and failed there, too. And in the recent NSW state election she was defeated a third time.

The national convulsion over Hanson's imprisonment shook even the remote fastnesses of the Golden West of New South Wales, where I've been for the last week. The one thing that I suspect has not been said is that if you commit a crime out of sheer idiocy, the forensic tactic is clear - you plead guilty, throw yourself on the mercy of the court, and try to make a case that there are actually people in the world capable of defrauding half a million dollars by mistake.

Hanson always struck me as more a vehicle for disaffection than anything else and the most extraordinary part of the Hanson saga is that the idiocy defence might well have been a true account of events.

Blacking out the mandate of Heaven

From Maxspeak:

The suspicion that the blackout was a karma payoff for the failure to restore electrical service in Iraq may have a more than metaphorical truth to it. Occupied Iraq begins to look like a blueprint for the future of occupied North America under the auspices of "Neo-con Edison" and faith-based transmission systems.

The conventional wisdom seems (rightly in my opinion, to be settling on underinvestment in the US electricity grid as explanation for their blackout. George Bush who (as we know) advocates privatisation is suddenly involved enough in power transmission issues to support measures he has previously opposed. Indeed he's so passionate about political electrical power that he seems to have forgotten that he ever opposed a bill to modernise the grid.

When Sydney had a water contamination crisis in 1998, no-one ever thought of holding the board of directors of Sydney Water responsible. the government dealt with it and Sydney Water did as they were told. It's the great weakness of privatisation, in a crisis public action becomes necessary.

Failing hydraulic works were bad news for the Son of Heaven. Blackouts are bad news for a president appointed by God. The reasons for it being bad news are the same in both examples.