IP overreach

Copyrighting the President

In practice, however, the matter isn't that simple. Because copyright law is so uncertain, and because insurance companies that indemnify films don't much like risk, the practice among auteurs seeking major distribution is to cut any clip for which permission isn't granted - fair use notwithstanding. The costs of defending a fair use right in court - and, more important, the costs if any such defense should fail - make the risk prohibitive for most filmmakers. Defense of fair use could run hundreds of thousands of dollars - several times the budget of a typical documentary. And losing this type of claim could expose the filmmaker to $150,000 in damages for each copyright infringed. In a world in which Fox News sues comedian and author Al Franken for parodying 'fair and balanced,' a cautious director can't be too careful.

Greenwald's struggle demonstrates a more fundamental point. Many are concerned about the ever-expanding reach of copyright law. More are concerned about the ever-increasing concentration of the media. Greenwald's dilemma highlights how the two trends are linked: As media becomes more concentrated, competition to curry favor with politicians only increases. This intensifies during an election cycle. Networks able to signal that they will be 'friendly' - for example, by ensuring that embarrassing moments from interviews won't be made available to others - are more likely to attract candidates for interviews and so on, than networks that don't. Concentration tied to copyright thus gives networks both the motive and the means to protect favored guests.

Media Watch | Politicians in the ABC archive

Not nearly as unorthodox as the ABC's plan to let politicians veto the use of news footage in documentaries.

Robyn Watts tried to convince Media Watch that unless Howard, Ruddock, Reith and Vanstone gave the OK before footage was sold to Judy Rymer �

�the ABC could be exposed to the risk of claims under the Trade Practices Act or pursuant to the tort of Passing Off.
Robyn Watts fax to Media Watch, 23 July 2004

Here's some free legal advice Robyn: that's rubbish.
No one has, no one will rush off to court because some old news clips turn up in a documentary.

Perhaps the ABC could offer its assistance to Iraq's new higher media commission.

Iraqi commission to restrict media coverage

Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has established a new media commission that will impose restrictions on print and broadcast media, the London-based Financial Times reported.

Media advocacy groups are worried that the committee will threaten press freedom in the war-torn country.

The Higher Media Commission will issue a set of restrictions -- called 'red lines -- for Iraqi media. Ibrahim Janabi, who heads the new committee, said the restrictions are not yet final but will include unwarranted criticism of Prime Minister Allawi.

Media groups are criticizing the decision. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) sent an open letter to Allawi on July 29, saying the commission is a potential 'threat to press freedom.' CPJ urged Janabi to to ensure that any actions of the Higher Media Commission comply with international standards of free expression.

'The restrictive media regulations and censorship described by Janabi would undermine the very foundation of a democratic society by restricting the free flow of information,' CPJ Executive Director, Ann J. Cooper, wrote in the letter.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) is also urging Iraqi leaders to abandon plans for new media bodies that might compromise free speech and press freedom.

'Democracy in Iraq will be won by defending human rights and the people's right to know, not by returning to the bad old days of censorship and intimidation of journalists' said IFJ General Secretary, Aidan White.

Just more of the inevitable advance of democracy in the new Iraq. The Iraq Transitional Administrative Law's bill of rights is proving about as effectual as the same lists in other Middle Eastern constitutions, such as the one in Kuwait which has just banned Fahrenheit 911.

No doubt human rights crusader George Bush will shortly be acting on his principles and speaking truth to power about these attacks on the freedom of the press.

Whatever happened to Fay Wray, That delicate satin draped frame

Sadly...

Fay Wray, who played the screaming girl kidnapped by the giant ape in the 1933 film King Kong, has died aged 96.

Coalition of the nation-building

Judge: Warrants issued for Chalabi and nephew

Iraq has issued an arrest warrant for Ahmed Chalabi, a former governing council member, on counterfeiting charges and another for Salem Chalabi, the head of Iraq's special tribunal, on murder charges, Iraq's chief investigating judge said Sunday.

The warrant was a new sign of the fall of Ahmed Chalabi from the centers of power. Chalabi, a longtime exile opposition leader, had been a favorite of many in the Pentagon but fell out with the Americans earlier this year.

His nephew, Salem Chalabi, heads the tribunal that is due to try Saddam on war crimes charges.

"They should be arrested and then questioned and then we will evaluate the evidence, and then if there is enough evidence, they will be sent to trial," said Judge Zuhair al-Maliky.

The warrants, issued Saturday, accused Ahmed Chalabi of counterfeiting old Iraqi dinars -- which had been removed from circulation following the fall of Saddam's regime last year, he said.

Ahmed Chalabi appeared to have been hiding the counterfeit money amid other old money and changing it into new dinars in the street, he said.

Police found the counterfeit money along with old dinars in Ahmed Chalabi's house during a May raid, he said.

Salem Chalabi was named as a suspect in the June killing of the Haithem Fadhil, director general of the finance ministry.

Both men were reportedly out of the country Sunday.

Government shuts down Al-Jazeera offices in Baghdad

Reporters Without Borders today denounced as a "serious blow to press freedom" the Iraqi interim government's order to the pan-Arab satellite TV network Al-Jazeera to close its Baghdad office for a month and called for an immediate explanation.

"We are extremely concerned about persistent episodes of censorship in Iraq," it said, noting that the government has obstructed Al-Jazeera's work before.

Interior minister Falah al-Naqib told the US TV network CNN that the 7 August order was aimed at protecting Iraqis and that the government did not want Al-Jazeera or anyone else endangering civil peace in Iraq. The minister had said a few days earlier that some stations were encouraging kidnapping by showing pictures of hostages under threat of execution.

Reporters Without Borders strongly protested against a month-long ban in February on Al-Jazeera covering the activities of the then transitional Governing Council.

The Council had also shut down the local operations of the satellite TV station Al-Arabiya on 24 November last year until it promised in writing not to encourage terrorism.

Iraq Transitional Administrative Law

Article 13
(A) �Public and private freedoms shall be protected.

(B)� The right of free expression shall be protected.

Not only is Ahmed Chalabi, once the trusted white knight of the coalition, now wanted for counterfeiting, but his nephew, the director of the tribunal to try crimes against humanity, is charged with murder. meanwhile the TAL's guarantee of press freedom is being ignored. All in all, not a terrific few days for the glorious and inevitable progress of democracy in Iraq. And that's without mentioning the recent dead in Najaf.

Full text of the 'truth in government' declaration

We believe a re-elected Howard Government or an elected Latham government must give priority to truth in government. This is fundamental to effective parliamentary democracy. Australians must be able to believe they are being told the truth by our leaders, especially in situations as grave as committing our forces to war.

We are concerned that Australia was committed to join the invasion of Iraq on the basis of false assumptions and the deception of the Australian people.

Saddam Hussein's dictatorial administration has ended, but removing him was not the reason given to the Australian people for going to war. The Prime Minister said in March 2003 that our policy was 'the disarmament of Iraq, not the removal of Saddam'. He added, a few days before the invasion, that if Saddam got rid of his weapons of mass destruction he could remain in power.

It is a matter for regret that the action to combat terrorism after September 11, 2001, launched in Afghanistan, and widely supported, was diverted to the widely opposed invasion of Iraq. The outcome has been destructive, especially for Iraq. The international system has been subjected to enormous stress that still continues.

It is of concern to us that the international prestige of the United States and its presidency has fallen precipitously over the last two years. Because of our Government's unquestioning support for the Bush Administration's policy, Australia has also been adversely affected. Terrorist activity, instead of being contained, has increased. Australia has not become safer by invading and occupying Iraq and now has a higher profile as a terrorist target.

We do not wish to see Australia's alliance with the US endangered. We understand that it can never be an alliance of complete equals because of the disparity in power, but to suggest that an ally is not free to choose if or when it will go to war is to misread the ANZUS Treaty. Within that context, Australian governments should seek to ensure that it is a genuine partnership and not just a rubber stamp for policies decided in Washington. Australian leaders must produce more carefully balanced policies and present them in more sophisticated ways. These should apply to our alliance with the US, our engagement with the neighbouring nations of Asia and the South West Pacific, and our role in multilateral diplomacy, especially at the United Nations.

Above all, it is wrong and dangerous for our elected representatives to mislead the Australian people. If we cannot trust the word of our Government, Australia cannot expect it to be trusted by others. Without that trust, the democratic structure of our society will be undermined and with it our standing and influence in the world.

I'm still hunting for a full list of signatories.

Labor hails former public servants' attack on Howard

The Federal Opposition Leader has accused the Prime Minister of barely being able to 'lie straight in bed', after reported criticism of John Howard by more than 40 Australian military chiefs, departmental heads and diplomats.

The high profile group is expected to release a statement claiming voters were misled over the reasons for going to war in Iraq, and calling for Australia to stop 'rubber stamping' United States policies.

The signatories include former chiefs of the Australian Defence Force, six former department heads and prominent figures in the intelligence and diplomatic communities.

They want 'truth in government' from whichever party wins the election.

Serving officers share concerns: ex-ADF head

A number of serving defence force officers shared the concerns of a group of 43 former defence chiefs and diplomats who wanted a return to truth in government, retired defence chief General Peter Gration said today.

Mr Gration, who headed the Australian Defence Force from 1987 to 1993, said he and the other signatories believed Australia joined the invasion of Iraq on the basis of false assumptions and deception of the Australian people.

'I can tell you that number of serving offices do share these concerns and serving diplomats too, I guess. But quite properly in their present positions, they can't speak out,' he told reporters today.

'Demonstrably, over the last year or two, truth in government has been less than it should be.

Earleir this week the Man of Steel produced 'legal advice' that the Labor amendment on patents could not be drafted. Now he's ready to agree to the undraftable amendment. Perhaps it was noncore legal advice.

The prime minister has rejected the statement 'on its merits' without reading it. That is par for the course for a guy about to pass an amendment he said on Thursday his departmental advisers told him was undraftable.

Evidently it's a tough thing when you got excoriated for noncoring.

Dramatic differences found in matter and antimatter

The international BaBar collaboration working at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in the US has found the most dramatic evidence to date for the difference between matter and antimatter. The experiment has found that the number of decays observed for a class of particles known as B mesons is 13% higher than for their antiparticle equivalents -- anti-B mesons (arXiv.org/abs/hep-ex/0407057). The results could help explain why the universe is dominated by matter, rather than anti-matter, or why it does not contain equal amounts of both.

That's a really, really understated headline...

Free Spin Agreement

Milking the free trade deal for all it's worth

Australia and the United States announced their intention to legislate a bilateral trade deal in February, and at that time Goldman Sachs JBWere asked its company analysts to consider who might be affected.

Like its investment banking competitors, Goldman Were concluded quickly that the economic consequences of the deal in the near and medium term would be muted. And it discovered few specific impacts on listed Australian companies.

Listed beef producer Australian Agricultural Co and Futuris, which owns Elders, would benefit over time from better access to US markets, Goldman Were said, adding that there was another "small positive" for Futuris's vehicle air-conditioning business because residual US tariffs on car parts would go.

It thought also that higher trade volumes and business activity between the two nations would also provide long-term support for transport groups including Qantas, Toll Holdings and Patrick Corporation. One possible casualty of the FTA deal was identified in CSL: the drug and plasma group's exclusive fractionation agreements in Australia will be reviewed between now and January 2007 as part of the FTA deal, and could be opened to competitive tender.

In most cases, however, the investment bank discovered that for listed companies, the FTA simply doesn't matter. Slightly lower barriers to entry to the US would, for example, have "minimal impact" on car-parts maker Ion, which already had secure contracts with US groups. The phasing out of 3 per cent tariffs on US imports of Australian wine would have "immaterial impact" on the short-term earnings of local wine groups, and any impact of the financial sector depended on the outcome of a two-year scoping study under the FTA umbrella.

Writing their own scripts

Ironically, the Government's major argument against accepting Labor's amendment to its free trade legislation to protect against evergreening is that it would inhibit research - an argument which is the reverse of the truth, Henry says.

'As a result [of evergreening], we've had a flattening off of the drug discovery process for many diseases. We're not getting many new drugs. If you look at what manufacturers are making, it's things like new versions of Viagra, which the world doesn't really need.'

An example: no new class of antibiotics has been produced since the 1970s - though some have been tweaked - despite the rapid increase in the number of germs resistant to the old drugs (due in part to the over-prescription of antibiotics and to the fact an estimated 70 per cent of antibiotics are given to farm animals, but that is another story).

'The drug companies don't make as much money from drugs that you only take for five or six days, like antibiotics, compared with antidepressants or Viagra, which people take for 10 years,' Henry says.

Australians pay less for drugs than almost anywhere else in the world - far less than Americans do - and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, which keeps prices down by subsidising only the most effective drugs and acting as a monopoly buyer and provider of them, is the major reason for that. The drug companies hate it, which is the reason they wanted it included in negotiations for the trade deal.

The Government, of course, insists there is nothing in the agreement with the US to worry about. In the words of Dr Ruth Lopert, the senior Health Department official advising on the trade agreement, it neither 'encourages nor prevents' evergreening.

But the deal includes measures placing new obligations on the makers of generic drugs and gives the drug makers greater involvement in the processes of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

More and more the whole thing feels like an exercise in shadow politics where the real costs and benefits of the preferential trade deal disappear in favour of guesswork about what might please the electorate. The economic benefits are nowhere near as great as the thing's supporters say and evergreening is not a significant threat under the deal, although the PBS as a whole may come under US pressure.

There's also the interesting question about whether Labor's amendment on local content can override the text of the treaty itself and the much more interesting question of why a 21st century constitution allows the prime minister to sign and ratify a treaty without parliamentary approval.

No, Prime Minister, you can't see into the future

Sir Humphrey: 'Alas, there are grave problems about circulating papers before they are written.'

John Howard's government, it appears, can do what Jim Hacker's could not. It can not only circulate materials not yet written, but have them legally analysed and rejected as well.

The only conclusion one can draw, following yesterday's parliamentary debate about the threat presented to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme by the trade deal with the US, is that the departments of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Foreign Affairs, Health, Industry and Attorney-General employ large numbers of people who are both lawyers and clairvoyants.

I confess I was not aware of this elite corps of legal parapsychologists until question three in the House of Reps yesterday.

That was when, with considerable flourish, Howard produced what were purported to be legal opinions from all those departments, all concluding there was no way, none at all, absolutely for sure, that the Opposition's proposed amendment to protect the scheme from being rorted by big drug companies would work.

What makes his gambit extraordinary is that no one outside the Labor Party has seen exactly what Labor is proposing.

To suggest that any lawyer could give a firm view on the basis of no document whatsoever is, you would have to say, to make a heroic assumption. All the more so because the lawyers were apparently working off a brief similar to that from which the various government members were, which misrepresented even the limited information the Opposition has provided.

The Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, pushed the issue furthest, claiming that Labor's plan was that 'all patent claim applications [not just those on pharmaceuticals] that are rejected get fined'.

This week's been good fun all round for everyone except perhaps the prime minister. Sadly, ever-greening is not the main problem with the preferential trade agreement and Labor's amendment will not make it into a good deal. The agreement privileges the intellectual property sector where the US has an advantage and does nothing very much at all in the agricultural sector where Australia has the advantage. US agricultural subsidies are untouched. Even after Labor's local content amendment the PTA drives a truck through our efforts at cultural sovereignty.

Canada managed to escape cultural restrictions. Why did the Howard government sign such a bad deal?

President Signs Defense Bill

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

I wish I could clarificate myself that well... But in the kingdom of the blind a gaffe is never a gaffe and a clanger is never a clanger.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush's misstatement 'just shows even the most straightforward and plain-spoken people misspeak'.

'But the American people know this president speaks with clarity and conviction, and the terrorists know by his actions he means it,' McClellan said. ">

If the president speaks with clarity and conviction, it follows he is thinking of new ways to harm his country and his people. On the other hand, if he doesn't want to harm his people and his country then he's not speaking with clarity and conviction. Even in the kingdom of the blind, logic still rules.

Counter-Insurgency on the Cheap

Critically for Bashir, the central pillar of the Sudanese state - a cabal of security officers who have been running the wars in Sudan since 1983 - was still in place. Faced with a revolt that outran the capacity of the country's tired and overstretched army, this small group knew exactly what to do. Several times during the war in the South they had mounted counter-insurgency on the cheap - famine and scorched earth their weapons of choice. Each time, they sought out a local militia, provided it with supplies and armaments, and declared the area of operations an ethics-free zone. The Beni Halba fursan , or 'cavalry', which had been used against the SPLA in 1991, was an obvious instrument to employ in Darfur. The northern camel nomads, including former Islamic legionnaires, were also on hand. Some claim that their name - the Janjawiid - derives from 'G3' (a rifle) and jawad ('horse'), but it is also western Sudanese dialect for 'rabble' or 'outlaws'. Unleashing militias has the added advantage for the security cabal that it may derail the near complete peace process with the SPLA and allow them to retain their extra-budgetary security agencies; it also immunises them against being charged in the future with committing war crimes.

The atrocities carried out by the Janjawiid are aimed at speakers of Fur, Tunjur, Masalit and Zaghawa. They are systematic and sustained; the effect, if not the aim, is grossly disproportionate to the military threat of the rebellion. The mass rape and branding of victims speaks of the deliberate destruction of a community. In Darfur, cutting down fruit trees or destroying irrigation ditches is a way of eradicating farmers' claims to the land and ruining livelihoods. But this is not the genocidal campaign of a government at the height of its ideological hubris, as the 1992 jihad against the Nuba was, or coldly determined to secure natural resources, as when it sought to clear the oilfields of southern Sudan of their troublesome inhabitants. This is the routine cruelty of a security cabal, its humanity withered by years in power: it is genocide by force of habit.

Sheikh Hilal's world, with its stable cosmos and its relaxed reciprocity between farmer and nomad, has disappeared, as he feared it would. Unrelenting poverty has been transformed into violence by misgovernment and imported racisms. What to do now in the face of genocidal massacre and imminent famine? Legal action - trying Musa Hilal and his sponsors as war criminals - is essential to deter such crimes in future. But condemnation is not a solution. The Janjawiid's murderous campaigns must not obscure the fact that Darfur's indigenous bedouins are themselves historic victims.

As they did twenty years ago, the people of Darfur face destitution, hunger and infectious disease. Apocalyptic predictions of mass starvation were made after the 1984 drought - up to a million dead, aid agencies said, if there wasn't food aid. The food didn't come, and many died - around 100,000 - but Darfur society didn't collapse because of the formidable survival skills of its people. They had reserves of food, they travelled huge distances in search of food, work or charity, and above all they gathered wild food from the bush. Today, food reserves and animals have been stolen, and what use is the ability to gather five different kinds of wild grasses, 11 varieties of berry, plus roots and leaves, if leaving a camp means risking rape, mutilation or death? Predictions of up to 300,000 famine deaths must be taken seriously.

A huge aid effort is grinding into gear. But the distances involved mean that food relief is expensive and unlikely to be sufficient. It's tempting to send in the British army to deliver food, but this would be merely symbolic: relief can be flown in more cheaply by civil contractors, and distributed more effectively by relief agencies. The areas controlled by the SLA and JEM contain hundreds of thousands of civilians who are not getting any help. As soon as an intrepid cameraman returns with pictures of this hidden famine, there will be an outcry, and pressure for aid to be delivered across the front lines. There's no reason to wait for the pictures before acting, although it's clear that cross-line aid convoys will need to carry armed guards.

The biggest help would be peace. In theory, there's a ceasefire; in practice, the government and Janjawiid are ignoring it, and the rebels are responding in kind. The government denies that it set up, armed and directed the Janjawiid. It did, but the monster that Khartoum helped create may not always do its bidding: distrust of the capital runs deep among Darfurians, and the Janjawiid leadership knows it cannot be disarmed by force. When President Bashir promised Kofi Annan and Colin Powell that he would disarm the militia, he was making a promise he couldn't keep. The best, and perhaps the only, means of disarmament is that employed by the British seventy-five years ago: establish a working local administration, regulate the ownership of arms, and gradually isolate the outlaws and brigands who refuse to conform. It took a decade then, and it won't be any faster today. Not only are there more weapons now, but the political polarities are much sharper.

In some ways this sounds like Ex-Yugoslavia where members of the national political elite used local ethnic identifications to build up their national power. Milosevic went from being an unknown central banker to the presidency by promising the Kosovo Serbs they would never be beaten again. The ecological fragility gives ethnic cleansing (even with ethic groups that essentially did not exist 20 years ago) a horrific scale. The African Union is considering military intervention with a force of 2000.

BOB on Board

However: if we are to expect airplane captains and flight attendants to make important security decisions, they need to be properly trained. The flight attendant who discovered the airsickness bag didn't react from reason, but from fear. And that fear was transferred to the captain, who made a bad decision.

Fear won't make anyone more secure. It causes overreactions to false alarms. It entices us to spend ever-increasing amounts of money, and give away ever-increasing civil liberties, while receiving no security in return. It blinds us to the real threats.

Speaking about the person who wrote those three fateful letters on the airsickness bag, Transport Minister John Anderson called him 'irresponsible at the least and horrendously selfish and stupid at the worst.' Irresponsible for what? For writing his name? For perpetuating common flight-attendant slang? It wasn't the writer who did anything wrong; it was those who reacted to the writing.

We live in scary times, and it's easy to let fear overtake our powers of reason. But precisely because these are scary times, it's important that we not let them.

Prime Minister John Howard praised the crew for their quick reactions, diligence, and observation skills. I'm sorry, but I see no evidence of any of that. All I see are people who have been thrust into an important security role reacting from fear, because they have not been properly trained in how to sensibly evaluate security situations: the risks, the countermeasures, and the trade-offs. Were cooler and more sensible heads in the cockpit, this story would have had a different ending.

Unfortunately, fear begets more fear, and creates a climate where we terrorise ourselves. Now every wacko in the world knows that all he needs to do to ground an international flight is to write 'BOB' on an airsickness bag. Somehow, I don't think that's the outcome any of us wanted.

The response, especially by Anderson and Howard, is about avoiding blame for future events.

Back in 1973, Mossad, the Israeli security service, adopted The Concept, by which they persuaded themselves Egypt would never attack until it had gained parity in fighters and pilots. This was not expected until 1975. Safe in the Concept , Mossad ignored signs of the Egyptian/Syrian military buildup on its borders. They also ignored a last minute warning from King Hussein of Jordan. Mossad has since devoted considerable resources to not getting caught out again. Their intelligence assessments now always veer towards the red zone.

Stalin rejected ample warning of the German invasion, including warnings from his own spymaster in Tokyo, Richard Sorge.

Human intelligence on al-Qaida is nonexistent. Signal intelligence and measurement/signature intelligence really do not work well. A politico trying to avoid getting caught out may not stop an attack but they can adopt effective strategies to escape blame.

Staying hyperalert and hyperalarmed all the time is not going to achieve much in the way of repelling terrorists. The military experience is that the worst thing you can do to a force-in-being is trying to keep it action-ready at all times. But it does let the prime minister say: "I told you so.'

Voting the AUSFTA up or down

A few people are floating the idea that the Senate can amend or qualify the preferential trade agreement with the US. The Senate committee disagrees. As the inquiry's chair wrote in the preface to their June interim report:

A vote which gives all the relevant bills passage without amendment triggers the Agreement. Any amendment to or rejection of a bill will have the effect of abrogating the whole Agreement.

If Labor decides to pass the beast with amendments that means only that they are trying to spin one past the electorate. If the thing needs changing then the changes must be renegotiated with the US.

Update
The Senate Committee has recommended ratification and Labor will undoubtedly follow that advice. There's a growing mountain of parliamentary reports:

• Voting On Trade
  
• Senate Interim Report
  
• Senate Final Report
  
• Joint Standing Committee on Treaties Report
  

They are all mountainous PDFs and you can make your way through that lot I congratulate you. Voting on Trade is probably the most useful and it's mercifully brief. Recommendation 2 is the most important point in the report.

3.91 The Committee recommends that the government introduce legislation to implement the following process for parliamentary scrutiny and endorsement of proposed trade treaties:

a) Prior to making offers for further market liberalisation under any WTO Agreements, or commencing negotiations for bilateral or regional free trade agreements, the government shall table in both Houses of parliament a document setting out its priorities and objectives, including comprehensive information about the economic, regional, social, cultural, regulatory and environmental impacts which are expected to arise.

b) These documents shall be referred to the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade for examination by public hearing and report to the parliament within 90 days.

c) Both Houses of parliament will then consider the report of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, and then vote on whether to endorse the government's proposal or not.

d) Once parliament has endorsed the proposal, negotiations may begin.

e) Once the negotiation process is complete, the government shall then table in parliament a package including the proposed treaty together with any legislation required to implement the treaty domestically.

f) The treaty and the implementing legislation are then voted on as a package, in an ?up or down? vote, ie, on the basis that the package is either accepted or rejected in its entirety.

The legislation should specify the form in which the government should present its proposal to parliament and require the proposal to set out clearly the objectives of the treaty and the proposed timeline for negotiations.

Labor coudl take some of the sting out of this decision by undertaking to enact Recommendation 2 which mirrors what happens in the US.

Trade deal a free kick for US software racketeers

The outcome for Australia is clear. We are a net importer of software. So software patents, by allowing monopoly profits with monopoly pricing and monopoly standards of quality, can do us a great deal of damage.

A large quantity of the Australian software budget is spent overseas buying such monopoly products. So encouraging the already existing drift towards US-style software patent laws that favour the existing incumbents could result in this expenditure increasing indefinitely.

This is especially sad since there is one area in software where Australia punches well above its weight, and that is in collaborative open source software. In the open source model, when a number of people and companies find they have a need for a software product, they co-operate to create it.

This allows firms and individuals to gain access to the product for significantly less than it might otherwise cost them. Since the cost of replicating software is almost zero, a free licence to use the software is granted to all comers, who are then free to improve it themselves and feed those improvements back to the original users.

Software built on this principle is widely used. It runs most of the internet, most of the world wide web, and provides a vast number of free and open tools for software engineers. It is also used as part of many, many commercial products, such as Apple's OSX operating system, IBM's web products, Sun's java offerings and so on.

Australian software developers excel in this area, and are enthusiastic and frequent participants in world software.

Unfortunately, open source software, and open competition based on open engineering standards, represents a serious threat to those existing software producers who are too inefficient to compete on a level playing field, or who simply want to lock past successes into an indefinite tax on the future.

Like the canal owners of old faced with the threat of railways, some desperate (or greedy) businesses are attempting to use the courts as a substitute for talent.

Already in the US litigation and threats of (often unspecified) patent and copyright violation are used regularly by software giants to either suppress completely, or acquire on favourable terms, smaller and more innovative firms.

Importing this legal circus to Australia could only harm the smaller players in the local industry, both open source developers and independent software companies.

I don't think it is at all clear that either major political party knows what the FTA's impact on the country will be. The current farce of Labor planning to announce its policy as soon after the Senate inquiry reports as the government did after the JSCT reported suggests that it's about spinning the electorate rather than analysing the beast's impact. Tony Windsor told the House of Representatives during the FTA debate:

Independent Member for New England, Mr Tony Windsor has joined with other Independent Members of the House of Representatives Peter Andren (Calare), Bob Katter (Kennedy) and Michael Organ (Cunningham), to oppose the Federal Government�s attempt to push the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the United States of America through the House of Representatives before proper scrutiny has been applied to whether the FTA is in Australia�s best interest.

�This so called �Free� Trade Agreement should not be allowed passage into legislation before it has undergone strong scrutiny and the public should not be fooled by Government attempts at a pretence that proper scrutiny has been carried out.

�I am on record through a question to the Prime Minister in Parliament in February this year when this arrangement was first proposed, as requesting the Prime Minister to hand the agreement to the Productivity Commission for an Independent and thorough review.

�The Joint Standing Committee on Treaties (JSCoT) delivered the first attempt at a report on the FTA yesterday, yet within twenty minutes, the Government has attempted to drive the agreement through the Parliament in the next day,� Mr Windsor said.

The thing is being rushed by both sides and no-on is reading the footnotes.

The US just isn't paying attention

There are those who worry about the fate of society in a nation of wilful non-readers, but I worry about the fate of democracy. The consequences of not paying attention are wide-ranging. In corporate America, it's become a problem that workers do not fully read the key corporate documents employers issue for their benefit. Think 'Enron ethics code'. And in public life, details get missed, wrong impressions formed. Headlines substitute for reading past page one.

Total ignorance, one might argue, is in fact better for democracy than a partial ignorance that masquerades as knowledge. At least the totally ignorant sense their limitations. Skimmers, on the other hand, may well occupy the ranks of power and feel a mastery of the information around them. But in truth they have faulty intelligence. After listening to the 'executive summary' on their drive in to work or on the treadmill, they have a false confidence that they know what they need to know.

Little wonder that there is a call to declassify the one-page summary of Iraq intelligence prepared for President George Bush before the invasion. The sheet reportedly omits qualifiers and nuance, creating a much starker sense of the world situation. The Administration's refusal to release the brief document is based on the grounds that it's irrelevant because the full National Intelligence Estimate was released and, according to one official, 'we expect people to read beyond one page'. But most people at home know that they themselves might have read only the cover sheet. They wonder: did the President or his advisers flip past it, or did they stop after glancing at the Cliffs Notes?

Indeed, even the President's chief opponent, John Kerry, acknowledges that he did not read the admittedly lengthy NIE before voting on whether to grant authority to invade Iraq. Skimming, clearly, is a nonpartisan issue.

Sadly, sometimes it seems we are forced to wonder whether any of our leaders ever read their briefing materials at all. Before we blame them, though, let us look at our own habits, and ask whether we are really reading what is before us.

When Nick Greiner replaced Neville Wran as premier of New South Wales in 1988 he came in with a Harvard MBA and a passion for administrative tinkering. A friend worked in 6 different departments during the Greiner premiership without ever changing his actual job.

Greiner inherited a small equal opportunity unit in the Premier's Office. They drafted regulations, the premier approved them and the public service was bound by the premier's directives. Greiner out-posted EEO to agencies. Everyone suddenly had an EEO co-ordinator who drafted an EEO plan that the agency itself promulgated and theoretically followed. The focus shifted from carrying out the centralised EEo directive to having the best plan. Now 1988 was the techn dark ages so EEO plans only circulated among co-ordinators by sneakernet.

Yesterday I had a long talk with my favourite cousin. They've just been promoted from a Sydney job to policy stuff in Canberra. I muttered about the great sneakernet EEO plan binge of 1988. She muttered about the email driven action plan binge of 2004.

I really wonder if the flood of documentation moving through various public and private bureaucracies ever gets read or acted on.

Australia and its allies have just fought a war over weapons of mass destruction which do not exist and human rights abuses which have been grossly exaggerated in order to defeat an enemy who was not there and who was actually strengthened, not weakened, by the war.

Perhaps if we read things a little more slowly the combined intelligence agencies of the coalition of the willing might have been able to out-perform the blogosphere in deciding what was likely to be happening in Iraq. We are now arguing if the failure of intelligence was getting the state of the world wrong or just skimming the papers. The state of the world matters. Who read or failed to read which footnotes does not.

We need a movement for slow government.

World trade talks reach agreement

"It's good news for the world economy, it's good news for developing countries and it is very good news for Europe because we have always prioritised WTO and multilateral rules- based trade openings as a major objective of EU trade policy," said the European Union's trade commissioner, Pascal Lamy, before the final vote.

Talks had been extended into Saturday after WTO negotiators failed to reach a previous deadline of midnight on Friday.

Developed countries have recognised that agricultural trade with a heavy subsidy component is not free trade.

But even with the latest agreement, the details will still have to be hammered out, and that could take at least another couple of years, says the BBC's John Moylan in Geneva.

"Developed countries have recognised that agricultural trade with a heavy subsidy component is not free trade," said Indian Trade Minister Kamal Nath.

A small group of African countries also claimed a major breakthrough on their key agricultural product of cotton, said our reporter.

After hours of talks, key WTO nations, including the US, the EU, Brazil and Japan, agreed to eliminate export subsidies at a date to be set, to limit other subsidies and lower tariff barriers.

In return, wealthier nations, among them the EU's members, are insisting on better access to markets in developing nations.

The US FTA could suddenly become a good deal less important. Australia's real trade needs are access for primary products and that's precisely what the FTA does not give. On the other hand, if the WTO process suddenly comes alive the FTA looks a lot less like a safe harbour and a lot more like a Free Tampa agreement.

Iron Mark will be making a terrible error if he ratifies the FTA. Rightly or wrongly it will be seen as another small target exercise, but one that permanently trades off cultural sovereignty and the PBS in return for SFA. The FTA is less generous on cultural matters than the Canada/US agreement. The FTa also ties us into a US economy that sooner or later has to start contracting.

From superpower to dinosaur: America's destiny

To stabilise its debt at this level by 2013, US imports from the rest of the world will have to decline by $US90 billion to $US375 billion in today's dollars, depending on various assumptions about future US exports and the value of the American dollar.


The report argues that "it is not possible to construct a plausible scenario in which the US can even sustain s its current levels of imports. Measured in real terms, the extraordinary growth in US imports over the past 12 years clearly will not be repeated".

What this means is that if Australia is banking on expanding its exports to make up for the concessions it has made in areas such as intellectual property rights, rules governing investment and government procurement, it will have to be at the expense of other exporters to the US, such as Canada, Japan and China.

While the Centre for Economic and Policy Research doesn't single out Australia, it states that "for most countries, the costs of such concessions can be expected to exceed any gain they might anticipate from increased access to a shrinking US market for their exports".

The contraction in US imports is unlikely to be smooth or without great cost to the world, especially those tied to the US through free trade agreements.

The Bush Administration has turned Bill Clinton's $US5.6 billion surplus into an unsustainable deficit - before counting the $150 billion a year cost of its unsuccessful occupation of Iraq. And there is a mulish determination to avoid developing an Iraq exit strategy, higher taxes and the other policies necessary to avoid another global recession that could see the US transformed from superpower to dinosaur.

Trade policy really needs to have a hard edge. It does not need to be built on the nebulous desire of the Man of Steel to make himself one with the Great Dubya.

Update
Kick AAS has (as usual) done the hard work of ploughing through the WTO Draft General Council Decision of 31 July 2004, and says:

Great! But hang, on, there is no date set. Does that mean it could take 20, 30 or 50 years? Agreeing to end subsidies without a date is a bit like rich nations deploring subsidies in general (because they offend free trade) but doing nothing about it in practice (ie the situation before these talks started). It is the same problem with the end of cotton subsidies over which African nations claimed a late victory. The end has been agreed but with no date attached. It�s as bit like writing a will with the amount of the legacy left blank.

W are told Augustine of Hippo used to pray: 'Lord, make me chaste, but not yet.

UN resolution on Darfur

The Security Council,

Recalling its Presidential Statement of 25 May 2004 (S/PRST/2004/16) and its resolution 1547 (2004) of 11 June 2004 and its resolution 1502 (2003) of 26 August 2003 on the access of humanitarian workers to populations in need,

Welcoming the leadership role and the engagement of the African Union to address the situation in Darfur and expressing its readiness to support fully these efforts,

Further welcoming the communique of the African Union Peace and Security Council issued 27 July 2004 (S/2004/603),

Reaffirming its commitment to the sovereignty, unity, territorial integrity, and independence of Sudan as consistent with the Machakos Protocol of 20 July 2002 and subsequent agreements based on this protocol as agreed to by the government of Sudan,

Welcoming the joint communique issued by the government of Sudan and the secretary general of the United Nations on 3 July 2004, including the creation of the Joint Implementation Mechanism, and acknowledging steps taken towards improved humanitarian access,

Taking note of the report of the secretary general on Sudan issued 3 June 2004 and welcoming the secretary general's appointment of a special representative for Sudan and his efforts to date,

'Grave concern'

Reiterating its grave concern at the ongoing humanitarian crisis and widespread human rights violations, including continued attacks on civilians that are placing the lives of hundreds of thousands at risk,

Condemning all acts of violence and violations of human rights and international humanitarian law by all parties to the crisis, in particular by the Janjaweed, including indiscriminate attacks on civilians, rapes, forced displacements, and acts of violence especially those with an ethnic dimension, and expressing its utmost concern at the consequences of the conflict in Darfur on the civilian population, including women, children, internally displaced persons, and refugees,

Recalling in this regard that the government of Sudan bears the primary responsibility to respect human rights while maintaining law and order and protecting its population within its territory and that all parties are obliged to respect international humanitarian law,

Urging all the parties to take the necessary steps to prevent and put an end to violations of human rights and international humanitarian law and underlining that there will be no impunity for violators,

Welcoming the commitment by the government of Sudan to investigate the atrocities and prosecute those responsible,

Emphasising the commitment of the government of Sudan to mobilise the armed forces of Sudan immediately to disarm the Janjaweed militias,

Recalling also in this regard its resolutions 1325 (2000) of 31 October 2000 on women, peace and security, 1379 (2001) of 20 November 2001, 1460 (2003) of 30 January 2003, and 1539 (2004) of 22 April 2004 on children in armed conflict, and 1265 (1999) of 17 September 1999 and 1296 (2000) of 19 April 2000 on the protection of civilians in armed conflict,

Expressing concern at reports of violations of the ceasefire agreement signed in N'Djamena on 8 April 2004, and reiterating that all parties to the ceasefire must comply with all of the terms contained therein,

Welcoming the donor consultation held in Geneva in June 2004 as well as subsequent briefings highlighting urgent humanitarian needs in Sudan and Chad and reminding donors of the need to fulfil commitments that have been made,

'Lives at risk'

Recalling that over one million persons are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, that with the onset of the rainy season the provision of assistance has become increasingly difficult, and that without urgent action to address the security, access, logistics, capacity and funding requirements the lives of hundreds of thousands of persons will be at risk,

Expressing its determination to do everything possible to halt a humanitarian catastrophe, including by taking further action if required,

Welcoming the ongoing international diplomatic efforts to address the situation in Darfur,

Stressing that any return of refugees and displaced persons to their homes must take place voluntarily with adequate assistance and with sufficient security,

Noting with grave concern that up to 200,000 refugees have fled to the neighbouring state of Chad, which constitutes a serious burden upon that country, and expressing grave concern at reported cross-border incursions by Janjaweed militias of the Darfur region of Sudan into Chad and also taking note of the agreement between the government of Sudan and Chad to establish a joint mechanism to secure the borders,

Determining that the situation in Sudan constitutes a threat to international peace and security and to stability in the region,

Acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations,

DEMANDS

1. Calls on the government of Sudan to fulfil immediately all of the commitments it made in the 3 July 2004 communique, including particularly by facilitating international relief for the humanitarian disaster by means of a moratorium on all restrictions that might hinder the provision of humanitarian assistance and access to the affected populations, by advancing independent investigation in co-operation with the United Nations of violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, by the establishment of credible security conditions for the protection of the civilian population and humanitarian actors, and by the resumption of political talks with dissident groups from the Darfur region, specifically the Justice and Equality Movement (Jem) and the Sudan Liberation Movement and Sudan Liberation Army (SLM/A) on Darfur;

2. Endorses the deployment of international monitors, including the protection force envisioned by the African Union, to the Darfur region of Sudan under the leadership of the African Union and urges the international community to continue to support these efforts, welcomes the progress made in deploying monitors, including the offers to provide forces by members of the African Union, and stresses the need for the government of Sudan and all involved parties to facilitate the work of the monitors in accordance with the N'Djamena ceasefire agreement and with the Addis Ababa agreement of 28 May 2004 on the modalities of establishing an observer mission to monitor the ceasefire;

3. Urges member states to reinforce the international monitoring team, led by the African Union, including the protection force, by providing personnel and other assistance including financing, supplies, transport, vehicles, command support, communications and headquarters support as needed for the monitoring operation, and welcomes the contributions already made by the European Union and the United States to support the African Union-led operation;

4. Welcomes the work done by the high commissioner for human rights to send human rights observers to Sudan and calls upon the government of Sudan to co-operate with the high commissioner in the deployment of those observers;

5. Urges the parties to the N'Djamena ceasefire agreement of 8 April 2004 to conclude a political agreement without delay, notes with regret the failure of senior rebel leaders to participate in the 15 July talks in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia as unhelpful to the process and calls for renewed talks under the sponsorship of the African Union, and its chief mediator Hamid Algabid, to reach a political solution to the tensions in Darfur and strongly urges rebel groups to respect the ceasefire, end the violence immediately, engage in peace talks without preconditions, and act in a positive and constructive manner to resolve the conflict;

'Measures'

6. Demands that the government of Sudan fulfil its commitments to disarm the Janjaweed militias and apprehend and bring to justice Janjaweed leaders and their associates who have incited and carried out human rights and international humanitarian law violations and other atrocities, and further requests the secretary general to report in 30 days, and monthly thereafter, to the Council on the progress or lack thereof by the government of Sudan on this matter and expresses its intention to consider further actions, including measures as provided for in Article 41 of the Charter of the United Nations on the government of Sudan, in the event of non-compliance;

7. Decides that all states shall take the necessary measures to prevent the sale or supply, to all non-governmental entities and individuals, including the Janjaweed, operating in the states of North Darfur, South Darfur and West Darfur, by their nationals or from their territories or using their flag vessels or aircraft, of arms and related materiel of all types, including weapons and ammunition, military vehicles and equipment, paramilitary equipment, and spare parts for the aforementioned, whether or not originating in their territories;

8. Decides that all states shall take the necessary measures to prevent any provision to the non-governmental entities and individuals identified in paragraph 7 operating in the states of North Darfur, South Darfur and West Darfur by their nationals or from their territories of technical training or assistance related to the provision, manufacture, maintenance or use of the items listed in paragraph 7 above;

9. Decides that the measures imposed by paragraphs 7 and 8 above shall not apply to:

- supplies and related technical training and assistance to monitoring, verification or peace support operations, including such operations led by regional organisations, that are authorised by the United Nations or are operating with the consent of the relevant parties;

- supplies of non-lethal military equipment intended solely for humanitarian, human rights monitoring or protective use, and related technical training and assistance; and

- supplies of protective clothing, including flak jackets and military helmets, for the personal use of United Nations personnel, human rights monitors, representatives of the media and humanitarian and development workers and associated personnel;

10. Expresses its intention to consider the modification or termination of the measures imposed under paragraphs 7 and 8 when it determines that the government of Sudan has fulfilled its commitments described in paragraph 6;

'Constant engagement'

11. Reiterates its support for the Naivasha agreement signed by the government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, and looks forward to effective implementation of the agreement and a peaceful, unified Sudan working in harmony with all other states for the development of Sudan, and calls on the international community to be prepared for constant engagement including necessary funding in support of peace and economic development in Sudan;

12. Urges the international community to make available much needed assistance to mitigate the humanitarian catastrophe now unfolding in the Darfur region and calls upon member states to honour pledges that have been made against needs in Darfur and Chad and underscoring the need to contribute generously towards fulfilling the unmet portion of the United Nations consolidated appeals;

13. Requests the secretary general to activate inter-agency humanitarian mechanisms to consider what additional measures may be needed to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe and to report regularly to the Council on progress made;

14. Encourages the secretary general's special representative for Sudan and the independent expert of the Commission on Human Rights to work closely with the government of Sudan in supporting independent investigation of violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in the Darfur region;

15. Extends the special political mission set out in resolution 1547 for an additional 90 days to 10 December 2004 and requests the secretary general to incorporate into the mission contingency planning for the Darfur region;

16. Expresses its full support for the African Union-led ceasefire commission and monitoring mission in Darfur, and requests the secretary general to assist the African Union with planning and assessments for its mission in Darfur, and in accordance with the joint communique to prepare to support implementation of a future agreement in Darfur in close co-operation with the African Union and requests the secretary general to report to the Security Council on progress;

17. Decides to remain seized of the matter.

Somehow it just doesn't read as all that imminent. If the crude mortality rate in Darfur is 10 000 each day then 30 days is a long time to give the Sudanese government, especially when their complicity with the Janjaweed is now beyond doubt.

Pity the pawns in this paella

Australia has become embroiled in a major diplomatic crisis after the foreign minister, Lord Downer of Baghdad, attacked the governments of Spain and the Philippines for what he described as treachery and cowardice in the war on terrorism.

Commenting on the decision by both countries to withdraw their troops from Iraq, Lord Downer said they had left the way open for Islamic terrorist groups to kill and maim Australians.

'If a bomb goes off in our country it will be Madrid and Manila we can blame,' he said.

'Frankly, the Spaniards have never been worth a pot of burnt paella since Sir Francis Drake sent the Armada packing in 1588. The only time they were a halfway decent lot was when General Franco got them by the scruff of the neck, but sadly that didn't last.'

Employing unusually blunt language, the Foreign Minister was equally critical of the Philippines Government of President Gloria Arroyo, claiming that her unprincipled refusal to allow a Filipino hostage to be beheaded by insurgents in Iraq was 'disappointing, and a grave and dangerous setback to hopes of world peace'.

'What is the life of one truck driver against the imminent victory of the coalition in Iraq?' he asked.

'I don't have to point out to you that there are a lot of people in the Philippines with Spanish-sounding names,' he added. 'I'm afraid that is more than a coincidence.'

Lord Downer said if it came to a choice between an Australian being executed in Iraq or 'cutting and running', then the decision was clear.

'We may lose heads, but we will not lose face with our good friends in Washington,' he said.

It's more than faintly weird that His Lordship seems to feel that the Spanish and Philippine governments should pay more attention to him than to the Spanish and Philippine peoples. Maybe if he worked a little harder at developing a sense of proportion. On a more serious note, go read The Terror Web for what actually happened in Spain.

In Darfur, help is not on the way

Darfur Mortality Update: July 15, 2004

So high are current mortality rates in Darfur, so great is previous human destruction, that the current (and static) UN figure of 10,000 deaths for the entire duration of this massive catastrophe must be regarded as both statistically irrelevant and morally slovenly (it was proffered by the UN in March 2004, without explanation or context). We certainly have no means of ascertaining with any precision what the number is; nor will we ever have a precise figure. But too much extant data and evidence suggest that a reasonable figure is already well in excess of 100,000 dead.

According to data authoritatively assembled by the US Agency for International Development, the present Crude Mortality Rate (CMR) is 7 per day per 10,000 for the affected population. Using as the basis for calculations the most recent UN figure of up to 2 million people "in need of emergency relief" (UN News Centre, July 13, 2004), the daily death toll is now approximately 1,400 human beings---or approximately 10,000 per week ("Projected Mortality Rates in Darfur, 2004-2005, at http://www.usaid.gov/locations/sub-saharan_africa/sudan/cmr_darfur.pdf ).

[The figure here of 2 million is at once lower than the total number of "war-affected" persons (now greater than 2.3 million if we use as a base figure the June 3, 2004 estimate contained in joint UN, US, and European Union communiqu� in Geneva) and higher than the number of Internally Displaced Persons (1.2. million) and the UN World Food Program estimate of Darfur's food-dependent population in June 2004 (1.2 million, though climbing to 2 million for October). The relation of these figures is discussed in a first appendix to this analysis.]

In other words, the current mortality figure offered by the UN for the past 17 months of extreme violence and displacement in Darfur is the equivalent of what US AID data suggest is the death toll for the past week. Such a gross disparity should be the occasion for serious and urgent re-thinking of a reasonable mortality figure for Darfur. Nongovernmental organizations concerned with Darfur should commit the resources necessary to synthesize all data and evidence available. To date there has been no such effort.

PM admits graves claim 'untrue'

Downing Street has admitted to The Observer that repeated claims by Tony Blair that '400,000 bodies had been found in Iraqi mass graves' is untrue, and only about 5,000 corpses have so far been uncovered.

The claims by Blair in November and December of last year, were given widespread credence, quoted by MPs and widely published, including in the introduction to a US government pamphlet on Iraq's mass graves.

In that publication - Iraq's Legacy of Terror: Mass Graves produced by USAID, the US government aid distribution agency, Blair is quoted from 20 November last year: 'We've already discovered, just so far, the remains of 400,000 people in mass graves.'

On 14 December Blair repeated the claim in a statement issued by Downing Street in response to the arrest of Saddam Hussein and posted on the Labour party website that: 'The remains of 400,000 human beings [have] already [been] found in mass graves.'

The admission that the figure has been hugely inflated follows a week in which Blair accepted responsibility for charges in the Butler report over the way in which Downing Street pushed intelligence reports 'to the outer limits' in the case for the threat posed by Iraq.

The missing people-shredder:

Nobody doubts that Saddam was a cruel and ruthless tyrant who murdered many thousands of his own people and that most Iraqis are glad he's gone. But did his regime have a machine that made mincemeat of men? The evidence is far from compelling.

The shredding machine was first mentioned in public by James Mahon, then head of research at Indict, at a meeting in the House of Commons on March 12. Mahon had just returned from northern Iraq, where Indict researchers, along with Clwyd, interviewed Iraqis who had suffered under Saddam. One of them said Iraqis had been fed into a shredder. 'Sometimes they were put in feet first and died screaming. It was horrible. I saw 30 die like this ...' In subsequent interviews and articles, Clwyd said this shredding machine was in Abu Ghraib prison, Saddam's most notorious jail. Indict refuses to tell me the names of the researchers who were in Iraq with Mahon and Clwyd; and, I am told, Mahon, who no longer works at Indict, 'does not want to speak to journalists about his work with us'. But Clwyd tells me: 'We heard it from a victim; we heard it and we believed it.'

The coalition has occupied Abu Ghraib prison since the collapse of the Saddam tyranny. A human shredding machine cannot be a small object and should be easy to identify. Somehow I missed the press conference where coaltion generals showed the thing to a shocked world. Where is it? And if it hasn't been produced did it ever exist?

Darfur: The case for intervention

We often, quite rightly, call the US to account for its expedient abuse of principles, and there are indeed very solid reasons, from Central America to East Timor and Iraq, why we should examine very critically any intervention that the US even hints at. It is indeed a good rule of thumb to doubt Washington's intentions, but sometimes finer measurements, and indeed nuances, are called for.

In this case, Iraq notwithstanding, US Secretary of State Colin Powell does indeed have a point, even if one could suspect that some of the US lobby groups pushing for action are more zealous in the case of Sudan than they would be if they could not characterize the perpetrators as "Arabs".

On the other hand, sadly, there is no shortage of countries that will support a rogue state for reasons of shortsighted or expedient "national interest". Security Council members Algeria and Pakistan, as representatives of Arab and Muslim states, not to mention their own state interests and domestic politics, would find it almost impossible to agree to US-led action against an Arab League member such as Sudan.

We should not be reassured just because some of the members opposing action against Sudan also opposed the war in Iraq. France springs to mind, as the patron of the former Rwandan regime, protector almost up to last moment of the Serbian ethnic cleansers in Bosnia, the defender of Morocco's occupation and repression in Western Sahara - and even if former French foreign minister (now Interior Minister) Dominique de Villepin did make an excellent case against attacking Iraq - previously a thoroughly expedient defender of French oil interests in Iraq. As we said, China and Russia all too often try to armor their domestic behavior behind a cloak of sovereign principle.

As a result of this objective alliance of the expediently supportive and the expediently opposed, it is sadly almost inconceivable that the Security Council or the General Assembly would authorize the robust military operation that would be necessary - or perhaps more usefully, the credible threat of a military operations, which in many such cases, from the Balkans to Rwanda, is all that it would have taken to preempt genocide.

Instead, the US's draft resolution is a tokenistic one reminiscent of the worst days of the Bosnian tragedy in that it pretends to be doing something, but in reality does nothing. It would mandate sanctions and travel restrictions against a motley paramilitary band of Sudanese brigands and militia who are unlikely to have many cosmopolitan world travelers in their ranks. One cannot help suspecting a gesture designed to cover the Bush administration's backside against the "if Iraq, why not Sudan" argument that is denting its already shredded ethical credibility.

So the question of support or opposition for intervention is a genuine quandary, but it is surely important that we do not let people die in Sudan just so we can feel vindicated in our stand against interventions. A credible threat of intervention has to be made soon - but kept within those "precautionary principles".

The United Nations itself is not designed to conduct robust operations that could involve serious fighting, which is why it often "franchises" them. Ideally, the Arab League should act, but it will not. The African Union has made a start, but it is hopelessly under-resourced, and similar regional operations in Sierra Leone and Liberia were much-mitigated successes.

It would be good if some of the stronger Asian powers, even if it involved North Atlantic Treaty Organization and US backup, could get involved, but Pakistan being Muslim - and India not being Muslim - could complicate that. Indeed, Japan and South Korea, not having any dog in the fight at all, as former US secretary of state James Baker once put it, would be ethically preferable, if their militaries were up to it.

Failing that, perhaps in this case, this is a matter on which the European Union could be given the blue-flag franchise, and especially Germany, whose clean credentials on the Iraq war clear it of the Crusader connotations.

But one thing is very clear: the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and other active "coalition" partners should stay in the background, at best offering logistics and funding and the most discreet diplomatic support. And in a few years, maybe they will emerge from probation as good global citizens and be listened to once again.

Statement by the President on 1994 Rwanda Genocide

Ten years ago today, the world witnessed the beginning of one of the most horrific episodes of the twentieth century, the 1994 Rwanda Genocide. A 100-day campaign waged by Hutu extremists tore Rwanda apart and resulted in the murder of at least 800,000 Tutsi men, women, and children, as well as many moderate Hutus. This genocide also included systematic rape and sexual violence against countless Tutsi women and the orphaning of thousands of children.

The United States supports the people of Rwanda as they commemorate this horrific chapter in history. We urge all states, particularly those in the region, to work with Rwanda and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to bring to justice those responsible for the genocide and to repatriate the thousands of displaced Rwandans. We also urge the international community to assist the survivors of that great crime as they continue to heal. The United States will continue to assist Rwanda in the unification of families, the providing of scholarships, the combating of HIV/AIDS, and the promotion of the rule of law.

The United States joins Rwanda and members of the global community in this day of reflection.

Secretary-General Observes International Day of Reflection on 1994 Rwanda Genocide

It is good that we have observed those minutes of silence together.

We must never forget our collective failure to protect at least eight hundred thousand defenceless men, women and children who perished in Rwanda ten years ago.

Such crimes cannot be reversed.

Such failures cannot be repaired.

The dead cannot be brought back to life.

So what can we do?

First, we must all acknowledge our responsibility for not having done more to prevent or stop the genocide.

Neither the United Nations Secretariat, nor the Security Council, nor Member States in general, nor the international media, paid enough attention to the gathering signs of disaster. Still less did we take timely action.

When we recall such events and ask 'why did no one intervene?', we should address the question not only to the United Nations, or even to its Member States. No one can claim ignorance. All who were playing any part in world affairs at that time should ask, 'what more could I have done? How would I react next time -- and what am I doing now to make it less likely there will be a next time?'

Perhaps more than any others, those questions have dominated my thoughts, since I became Secretary-General. If there is one legacy I would most wish to leave to my successors, it is an Organization both better equipped to prevent genocide, and able to act decisively to stop it when prevention fails.

The Darfur genocide began in February 2003. Each and every day that the coalition fought in Iraq on the basis of unfound WMDs, trailers of mass destruction, inflated figures and missing shredders, 10 000 people were dying in Darfur. The next time is now. The people of Darfur do not need a minute of silence any more than they need the year of silence maintained by the United Nations Secretariat, the Security Council, the Member States in general, the international media since the onset of genocide. Why Iraq and not Sudan?

The Poll Bludger - Federal Election Calendar

A House of Representatives election must be held on a Saturday prior to April 16, 2005. However the Prime Minister has strongly indicated it will be held during 2004 and he would be heavily criticised for breaking convention if the Government's term were to extend more than a few weeks beyond its three-year anniversary on November 10. The earliest date on which a normal half-Senate election may be held is August 7. A double dissolution election may be called at any time before August 11 for a date no later than October 16, but this is not anticipated. A House of Representatives election before August 7 and a separate half-Senate election at a later date deserves mention merely as a technical possibility. The announcement of the election must be between 33 and 67 days before it is held, but governments have kept campaign periods short since the Hawke Government performed disappointingly after a seven-week campaign in 1984.

I doubt there'll be a double dissolution. About the only thing I don't doubt is that the general election will be held before the US presidential election.

The Poll Bludger lays it all out, including various trigger dates. Assuming the Man of Steel does not indulge his taste for the crass with a 911 election the most likely dates remain 23 and 30 October.

We really, really need to move to fixed dates for federal elections.

Bone-devouring worms discovered

Two worm species discovered in the dark recesses of the deep sea could rival the macabre beasts of your childhood nightmares. Scientists have named a new genus, Osedax, which is Latin for 'bone devourer', for worms that thrive by excavating the bones of fallen whale carcasses.

The worms contain bacteria that help them digest the fats and oils of the whale skeletons. This type of symbiotic relationship has never been seen before, and may represent a completely new type of metabolism.

Researchers from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in Moss Landing, California, discovered a whale skull that was 'carpeted with worms' while searching for clam beds in the trough of Monterey Canyon, some 3,000 metres deep.

But the worms were like nothing they had ever seen before. The females - roughly the thickness of a pencil and a few centimetres in length - lack eyes, mouths or stomachs. Instead they consist of a balloon-like egg sac, which branches into a greenish root system.

These branching roots grow into the whalebone to extract fats and oils from the marrow. Symbiotic bacteria that live inside the roots break down the lipids, but how nutrients are transferred from the bones to the bacteria and then to the worms is not yet known.

Where's Jerry Bruckheimer when you need him. Actually, considering the mess Bruckheimer invariably makes of the science underlying his flicks, let's feed him to the bone devourers.

Independence of the judiciary at stake, not the Bali bombers' fate

But the implications are more dire for the fragile rule of law that has begun to emerge in Indonesia since Soeharto's fall in 1998. It is easy to imagine a legislature dominated by another dictator issuing, for example, a law for the arrest and imprisonment of political opponents in clear breach of the human rights guarantees in the new Chapter XA of the constitution.

Even if the court later strikes out that law, innocent detainees would still be behind bars, serving out unconstitutional sentences, even for life. Asshiddiqie's position would leave Indonesia without the protection of a judicial check on government. In any case, neutering the Constitutional Court to keep Bashir and the Bali bombers in jail is unnecessary.

First, some of the anti-terrorism charges he now faces apparently relate to events after the introduction of the legislation. These should still be valid.

Second, he and the bombers should immediately be charged with the range of conventional Criminal Code offences they should have faced at the outset - murder, arson, conspiracy, etc. These would not be effected by the ban on retrospectivity, as the code existed at the time of the Bali blasts.

Suyitno Landung, head of police criminal investigations, says they are considering this in respect of Bashir but they should do the same for all the bombers. At the trial they could all raise double jeopardy arguments but they would be weak, and the prosecution would almost certainly prevail.

Bashir and the Bali terrorists would never leave jail and the constitution would not need to be mangled to keep them there. The dilemma Indonesia now faces is that in a frantic effort to keep the Bali bombers behind bars, it risks needlessly jeopardising the introduction of constitutional review.

The Bali bombings were a tragedy. It would be another tragedy if Indonesia's fledgling judicial independence - and thus its hard-won reform process - was destroyed so quickly.

The Coalition and Labor need to make a decision. They support the rule of law in Indonesia or they don't. If they do, they should stop pressing the Constitutional Court to reverse or subvert its own decision. If they don't, they should think about the unintended consequences of supporting the Suharto regime through thick and thin from 1965 to 1997.

No-one wants the Bali bombers released and according to this article they can be prosecuted for regular offences under the Criminal Code.

Yudhoyono Would Win Indonesia�s Run-off

In the Jun. 5 election -- the first ever direct presidential ballot in Indonesia -- Yudhoyono finished in first place with 33.57 per cent of all cast ballots, followed by Megawati with 26.60 per cent. Since no candidate received more than 50 per cent of all votes, a run-off was scheduled for Sept. 20.

Before final first round tallies were published on Jul. 26, Yudhoyono and Megawati were already in talks with other political organizations to secure backing for the run-off. Megawati has reportedly offered eight cabinet posts to members of the Party of the Functional Groups (Golkar) in case she is re-elected.

Polling Data

What candidate would you support in the presidential run-off?

• Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (PDI) 68%
  
• Megawati Sukarnoputri (PDIP) 23%
  
• Undecided / No opinion 9%
  

Source: Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI)
Methodology: Face-to-face interviews with 1,190 Indonesian adults, conducted from Jul. 17 to Jul. 19, 2004. Margin of error is 2.9 per cent.

LSI consistently overrated Yudhoyono before the first round, as did most other polls. Voters in Indonesia do not stick to the party line at all. The Asia Times reported on 16 July that:

However, according to a survey by the Institute for Research, Education, Economic and Social Affairs (LP3ES), a well-respected research company, voters in the July 5 election ignored party lines to vote for candidates of their own choice. According to the survey, conducted on voting day, only 55% of people who voted for Golkar in the legislative election endorsed the party's candidate Wiranto in the July 5 presidential election; the others went to Yudhoyono (31%) and Megawati (8%). Supporters of the PDI-P were divided as well - 74% chose to vote for Megawati, while 13% supported Yudhoyono and 7% backed Wiranto.

Megawati, despite her reformasi credentials, is a very traditional Indonesian politico. Whether Golkar can actually deliver enough votes for seats to stop the Yudhoyono juggernaut is an open question.

This Is Rumor Control | Howard Gets Reward (8)

1=Total Fiction

10=Metaphysical Certainty

The Bush Administration says it rewarded Australian Prime Minister John Howard with a free-trade agreement last week because of his unstinting support for the war on terrorism, but the real reason was to bolster his sagging reelection chances. (8)

I am just shocked, shocked, I tell you.

El ministro australiano de Exteriores rechaza disculparse ante Espa�a

Las pol�micas declaraciones de Downer se produjeron despu�s de que el s�bado pasado un grupo que afirma ser el brazo armado de Al Qaeda en Europa, el Grupo Isl�mico Tawid, amenazara a Australia e Italia con atentados si no retiran sus tropas de Irak.

Downer subray� la importancia de que los pa�ses env�en un fuerte mensaje a los terroristas en el que afirmen que no se dejaran intimidar por ellos. 'Tienes que hacer frente a esta gente, si no, les har�s m�s fuertes', asegur�.

El Ministerio espa�ol de Exteriores convoc� ayer a la embajadora de Australia en Espa�a, Susan Tanner, para expresar el 'firme rechazo del Gobierno espa�ol' a las palabras de Downer, quien ha afirmado que no existe una crisis diplom�tica con Madrid.

'El Gobierno espa�ol, que ha establecido la lucha contra el terrorismo como una clara prioridad de su pol�tica exterior, considera inaceptables estas declaraciones, especialmente viniendo de un pa�s amigo como Australia', a�adi� Exteriores en un comunicado.

Downer dijo que el encuentro entre la embajadora y los funcionarios espa�oles fue �til porque permiti� a Canberra expresar su posici�n. El ministro reconoci� la 'complejidad evidente en lo que ocurri� en realidad en Espa�a en torno' a las elecciones legislativas del 14 de marzo, pero al final (...) los terroristas est�n usando constantemente el ejemplo espa�ol' para intimidar a otros pa�ses.

Por otra parte, el embajador espa�ol en Canberra, Jos� Ram�n Bara�ano Fern�ndez, traslad� ayer, lunes, a las autoridades australianas el malestar por las declaraciones del ministro y les explic� que Madrid 'nunca ha sucumbido' ante los violentos, indic� a Europa Press en una conversaci�n telef�nica.

or:

The inflammatory statements by Downer came out last Saturday after a group which claims to be the armed branch of Al Qaeda in Europe, the Islamic group Tawid, threatened Australia and Italy with attack unless they withdraw their troops from Irak.

Downer underlined the importance of countries sending a strong message to the terrorists that affirms they will not let themselves be intimidated. 'You have to challenge these people, if not, they harass you more strongly', he said.

The Spanish foreign ministry yesterday called in Australia's ambassador in Spain, Susan Tanner, to express the 'firm rejection of the Spanish government' to Downer's words. Downer has affirmed there is no diplomatic crisis with Madrid.

'The government of Spain, which has made the struggle against terror a clear priority of its foreign policy, considers these statements unacceptable, especially coming from a friendly country such as Australia', the ministry noted in a communiqu�.

Downer said the meeting between the ambassador and Spanish officials was useful because it allowed Canberra to express its position. The minister recognised the 'complexity evident in what happened in Spain during' the parliamentary elections of 14 March, but in the end (...) the terrorists are constantly using the Spanish example' to intimidate other countries.

For his part, the Spanish ambassador in Canberra, Jos� Ram�n Bara�ano Fern�ndez, conveyed yesterday, Tuesday, to the Australian authorities the unhappiness of the minister's statements and informed them Madrid 'never has succumbed to violence,' the ambassador told Europa Press by telephone.

Downer's cafuffle is really about domestic politics rather than getting the Spanish or Philippine governments to change their policies. It's also a really bad way to do foreign policy. If Howard is re-elected and finds himself dealing with a Kerry administration Australia is going to find itself needing a new foreign policy fast.

HM Department of Vague Paranoia

In an effort to worry the public and convince them to vote for us again next year, and because George Bush asked us to, this website includes the common sense advice found in the Preparing for Emergencies booklet, and information on what the government is doing to protect the country as a whole. (Hint: we're praying really, really hard.) National editions of the booklet will be available here when we can be arsed to get translators to put them into your crazy moon languages.

From 2nd August, translations of the booklet into 16 languages will be available on this website. They will be in : Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, English, Farsi, French, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Kurdish, Punjabi, Somali, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese and Welsh. In the meantime, just assume that we don't care about you.

You will also be able to order copies of the booklet in audio tape, large print, and Braille formats. We wouldn't have bothered, but Blunkett insisted.

An alert, but not alarmed Boing Boing managed to register this name in the co.uk domain. HM Government are presumably less alert but more alarmed, because they only secured the name in the .com domain.

Fortunately HM Britannic Government has not adopted HM Australian Government's devastating tactic of issuing fridge magnets of mass protection

Coming soon, The Pillow Book of John Winston Howard or How to entertain really disturbing fantasies about the person of the President of the United States. I'd recommend getting in a good supply of ship's biscuit.

The Pillow Book of Sei SHonagon

A blogger named Simon Cozens is translating the classic Japanese text The Pillow Book (Makura no Soshi) by Sei Shonagon into English and republishing it as a blog. It's easy to forget the fact that these words were written in the tenth century, because the results in this format read -- well, rather like a blog. Some dates are fictitous, and some liberties have been taken to produce a coherent narrative stream in blog format -- but the content is purported to be a faithful translation of the original. Since I speak neither contemporary nor classical Japanese, I'll have to take this blogger (or someone wiser)'s word for it. And no, I'm sorry -- Ewan McGregor has nothing to do with this one. Link (Thanks, Andrew)

I'm still ploughing through the Butler report. Meanwhile we get a blog version (blersion? reblogging? blelease?) of the Pillow Book. Japanese literature in the Heian period is written almost exclusively by women, most famously the Genji Monogatari by Lady Murasaki Shikibu. Women were thought too stupid to ever learn Chinese, the language of 'serious' Heian writing. Sadly for the forgotten male authors they wrote either bad Chinese or Sino-Japanese. No-one reads the male authors.

Contact with China was intermittent. Even when regular it ran only to one embassy ship every five years. When China fell into one its periodic disunions, or the Japanese offended the Chinese court the ships would stop for a while. One embassy appeared at Qangan with a letter from the (ahem) Son of Heaven in the Land of the Rising Sun to the Son of Heaven in the Land of the Setting Sun. Yang Di, the second Sui emperor, was more than mildly unimpressed with these pretensions and stopped the embassies. The Japanese state of that time occupied about a third of its current territory and the court language (along with the origins of the ruling dynasty) may have been Korean.

The Heian elite was too small, too remote and too dependent to sustain a literature written in a foreign language. Someone should email the URL to Alexander Downer.

Darfur Destroyed

The government of Sudan is responsible for "ethnic cleansing" and crimes against humanity in Darfur, one of the world's poorest and most inaccessible regions, on Sudan's western border with Chad. The Sudanese government and the Arab "Janjaweed" militias it arms and supports have committed numerous attacks on the civilian populations of the African Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups. Government forces oversaw and directly participated in massacres, summary executions of civilians -- including women and children -- burnings of towns and villages, and the forcible depopulation of wide swathes of land long inhabited by the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa. The Janjaweed militias, Muslim like the African groups they attack, have destroyed mosques, killed Muslim religious leaders, and desecrated Qorans belonging to their enemies.

The government and its Janjaweed allies have killed thousands of Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa-- often in cold blood, raped women, and destroyed villages, food stocks and other supplies essential to the civilian population. They have driven more than one million civilians, mostly farmers, into camps and settlements in Darfur where they live on the very edge of survival, hostage to Janjaweed abuses. More than 110,000 others have fled to neighbouring Chad but the vast majority of war victims remain trapped in Darfur.

This conflict has historical roots but escalated in February 2003, when two rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Army/Movement (SLA/M) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) drawn from members of the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa ethnic groups, demanded an end to chronic economic marginalization and sought power-sharing within the Arab-ruled Sudanese state. They also sought government action to end the abuses of their rivals, Arab pastoralists who were driven onto African farmlands by drought and desertification -- and who had a nomadic tradition of armed militias.

The government has responded to this armed and political threat by targeting the civilian populations from which the rebels were drawn. It brazenly engaged in ethnic manipulation by organizing a military and political partnership with some Arab nomads comprising the Janjaweed; armed, trained, and organized them; and provided effective impunity for all crimes committed.

The government-Janjaweed partnership is characterized by joint attacks on civilians rather than on the rebel forces. These attacks are carried out by members of the Sudanese military and by Janjaweed wearing uniforms that are virtually indistinguishable from those of the army.

Although Janjaweed always outnumber regular soldiers, during attacks the government forces usually arrive first and leave last. In the words of one displaced villager, "They [the soldiers] see everything that the Janjaweed are doing. "They come with them, they fight with them and they leave with them."

The government-Janjaweed attacks are frequently supported by the Sudanese air force. Many assaults have decimated small farming communities, with death tolls sometimes approaching one hundred people. Most are unrecorded.

Darfur is a classic human rights crisis and it will not go away any time soon. The UNSC is debating a resolution to impose sanctions if the Sudanese government does not take action against the Janjaweed shortly. Ultimately, I suspect there will need to be military intervention, preferably by the AU rather than a coalition of the willing. A CoW intervention in another Muslim state is probably impossible after Iraq.