Australia votes 'non'

Howard's neighbourhood watch

Australia's relations with Indonesia are fundamentally different to those we have with any other country - not just better or worse, but with deeper and different consequences. It is Australia's only strategically important neighbour. So when things go well with Indonesia, the consequences for Australia can be very good.

While he was prime minister, Paul Keating observed that 'the event of greatest positive strategic significance to Australia in the postwar years was the election of President Soeharto's new-order government. Had it not been for that cohesive event - if the archipelago was breaking up - we would not be spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence, we would be spending 6 or 7 per cent.'

We often count the cost of things going wrong but seldom the benefit when they go right. If Keating was right, that would be the difference between Australia's defence spending of $17.5 billion budgeted for next year and a notional $52.5 billion. The benefit of a strategically benign Indonesia, in his estimation, was $35 billion a year.

But when things go badly with Indonesia, the risk of injury or death to Australians escalates, more so than in any other relationship we have. As when Australian forces entered East Timor to halt the rampaging Indonesian-led anti-independence militias in 1999, or when 23 Australian troops died facing off against Indonesian forces during the Confrontation in 1963-66, problems in Indonesia are more likely to mean that Australians are placed in harm's way.

Sunk by defence team that didn't rise to the challenge

The decision by the Denpasar District Court to sentence Schapelle Corby to 20 years in jail was not surprising, given the evidence against her.

The prosecution established a prima facie case against her relatively easily. There was no dispute that the cannabis was in her bag when it was opened at Bali's Ngurah Rai Airport. Their witness said Corby had admitted it was hers. She denied this - as might be expected, regardless of whether she was guilty or innocent.

The Indonesian system has enshrined the presumption of innocence in legislation as a human right, but once a prima facie case is established - that is, the minimum required to establish the elements of the charge - the burden effectively shifts to the defence to counter the prosecution case. This is true of almost all legal systems, including, in most cases, our own. Corby's main problem was that her defence team did not rise well to the challenge of countering the prima facie prosecution case by proving her baggage-handler hypothesis.

Her lead Indonesian lawyer, Lily Lubis, is young and relatively inexperienced and this was, reportedly, her first drugs case. She seemed frequently out of her depth and broke down in tears in court. The key evidence she presented was given little weight, as would likely be the case in Australia, because it was either not directly related to Corby's circumstances or was unreliable

Indonesian trial for Australia

There are scores of largely anonymous Australians awaiting trial on drug offences in Asian jails, including 11 more in Bali and two on death row in Singapore. On Wednesday, a Sydney man of Vietnamese origin was given the same sentence as Corby in Vietnam for sending heroin back home through the post; the story barely made the evening news.

So why the obsession with Corby?

She is young, beautiful and charismatic. Her cell is dark, foul-smelling and overcrowded, a forbidding place in a land that few Australians understand. The language swirling around her is impenetrable, the judiciary difficult to comprehend. For many it is a simple case of good against evil, of supporting the underdog, the innocent victim of a corrupt and untrustworthy system. It's black and white.

And there is the crunch. Are Australians, with a predominantly European heritage and Western outlook, letting their latent fear of being swamped by populous Asia rule their emotions over what should have been a routine court verdict?

Opinion polls suggest that the main issue is not Corby's guilt but her perceived inability to get a fair trial in a country that is still associated, in the minds of many Australians, with the excesses of the Suharto era, human-rights abuses in East Timor and West Papua, crooked police and banana-state politics.

One survey, conducted over two days by a radio station in Corby's home state of Queensland, found that almost half of the respondents believed the court verdict was an injustice; yet less than a quarter were convinced of her innocence and believed she should be freed.

Okay, it's a long way from voting 'non' to the European constitution to getting hysterical about the Corby verdict and sentence, but both acts are driven by the same cause. The Indonesia relationship is as important as Hartcher's piece says. Our political elite needs to do a better job of communicating that than they have up till now.

si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait...

2050 - and immortality is within our grasp

Pearson, 44, has formed his mind-boggling vision of the future after graduating in applied mathematics and theoretical physics, spending four years working in missile design and the past 20 years working in optical networks, broadband network evolution and cybernetics in BT's laboratories. He admits his prophecies are both 'very exciting' and 'very scary'.

He believes that today's youngsters may never have to die, and points to the rapid advances in computing power demonstrated last week, when Sony released the first details of its PlayStation 3. It is 35 times more powerful than previous games consoles. 'The new PlayStation is 1 per cent as powerful as a human brain,' he said. 'It is into supercomputer status compared to 10 years ago. PlayStation 5 will probably be as powerful as the human brain.'

The world's fastest computer, IBM's BlueGene, can perform 70.72 trillion calculations per second (teraflops) and is accelerating all the time. But anyone who believes in the uniqueness of consciousness or the soul will find Pearson's next suggestion hard to swallow. 'We're already looking at how you might structure a computer that could possibly become conscious. There are quite a lot of us now who believe it's entirely feasible.

Yikes! A good friend once wrote: 'If yuth knew, if age could...' in French on my birthday cake. I am unsure if I am more alarmed by the idea of decanting the self into a machine or the inevitable alliterative speeches by Peter Costello.

envisioning forgotten cities

The scariest (especially for San Franciscans, is Shadows from another place which maps the bombing of Baghdad onto San Francisco in real time.

A mapping of the first US attack on Baghdad, in March 2003, is superimposed upon San Francisco. The sound heard is from the same event. The longitude and latitude of each bombsite in SF is marked using a GPS device, the same technology used to target site in the Iraki town. These sites are mapped, chronicled and documented with photograph of what's currently at these locations.

In New York they're building a 1609 map of Manhattan Island.

Long before Frank Sinatra sang about making it there, the explorer Henry Hudson did. After three failed attempts to locate the Northwest Passage, in 1609, Hudson became the first European to find New York. And just like most tourists, he was impressed.

"The land is the finest for cultivation that I ever in my life set foot upon, and it also abounds in trees of every description," Hudson gushed in a journal entry.

Today, many agree that New York City abounds in at least one thing – development – thus its moniker, the Concrete Jungle. So, what happened to its wildlife between 1609 and 2005? That's a story arc that landscape ecologist Eric Sanderson, of the Wildlife Conservation Society at New York's Bronx Zoo, is tracing in detail in the Mannahatta Project, a 1609 recreation of Manhattan's landscape. "It's amazing what kinds of things were here," Sanderson says. "Wolves, cougars, elk, beavers. You know, beavers are on the Manhattan city seal. Well, they were here in abundance before."

And lastly, at Byzantium 1200 they're building a website that images the city at the last moment of its glory, before the Fourth Crusade decided destroying a Christian city was what crusades were all about, an event some Orthodox remember with only a little less bitterness than the Muslims recall the Crusades in Palestine.

Baburnama

The Memoirs of Babur

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.

In the month of Ramzan of the year 899 (June 1494) and in the twelfth year of my age, I became ruler in the country of Fergana.

Fergana is situated in the fifth climate and at the limit of settled habitation. On the east it has Kashghar; on the west, Samarkand; on the south, the mountains of the Badakhshan border; on the north, though in former times there must have been towns such as Almaligh, Almatu and Yangi which in books they write Taraz, at the present time all is desolate, no settled population whatever remaining, because of the Moghuls and the Uzbeks.

Fergana is a small country, abounding in grain and fruits. It is girt round by mountains except on the west, i.e. towards Khujand and Samarkand, and in winter an enemy can enter only on that side.

The Saihun River commonly known as the Water of Khujand, comes into the country from the northeast, flows westward through it and after passing along the north of Khujand and the south of Fanakat, now known as Shahrukhiya, turns directly north and goes to Turkistan. It does not join any sea but sinks into the sands, a considerable distance below [the town of] Turkistan.

Fergana has seven separate townships, five on the south and two on the north of the Saihun.

Fergana has seven separate townships, five on the south and two on the north of the Saihun.

One of those on the south is Andijan, which has a central position and is the capital of the Fergana country. It produces much grain, fruits in abundance, excellent grapes and melons. In the melon season, it is not customary to sell them out at the fields. There are no pears better than those of Andijan. After Samarkand and Kesh, the fort of Andijan is the largest in Mawara'u'n-nahr (Transoxiana). It has three gates. Its citadel (ark) is on its south side. Water flows into it by nine channels, but, oddly, flows out by none. Round the outer edge of the ditch runs a gravelled highway; the width of this highway divides the fort from the suburbs surrounding it.

Andijan has good hunting and fowling; its pheasants grow so surprisingly fat that rumour has it four people could not finish one they were eating with its stew.

Andijanis are all Turks; everyone in town or bazar knows Turki.

The speech of the people resembles the literary language; hence the writings of Mir 'Ali-sher Nawa'i, though he was bred and grew up in Hin (Herat), are one with their dialect. Good looks are common amongst them. The famous musician, Khwaja Yusuf, was an Andijani. The climate is malarious; in autumn people generally get fever.

Babur was descended on his father's side from Timur. His mother came from the direct line of Chingiz Khan. Transoxiana was a welter of competing and colliding states, most ruled by Timurid princes. He took and lost Samarqand , the greatest of the Tranoxianian cities and Timur's capital three times, the last in 1501 to the Uzbek khan The Uzbeks also took Fergana Babur reached the age of 22 in 1504 and established himself in Kabul. An expedition into India turned into conquest. At the battle of Panipat he detroyed the Delhi sultanate and founded the Mughal empire. He never saw Fergana or Samarkand again.

Contemporary events bring us these acnient names like Andijan and we only know them for a few weeks. Fergana was famous for its horses, which were said to sweat blood and be the best in the world. The Chinese traded and conquered along the Silk Road for mounts for their cavalry. Alexander's favourite horse, Boukephalos was tribute from a lord of Fergana and Tang courtiers wrote poems about the golden peaches of Samarkand. Andijan had its own history a long time before the Western media turned their attention there for a week.

The torturers have no clothes

An argument that fails the test of civilised society

The unreliability of torture - and its often quite misleading consequence, with further damage to individual citizens - is a practical condemnation of the practice. That is not the main argument, however.

Respect for other people, respect for rights that unfortunately in today's world are too often abused or set aside, is the hallmark of a decent society. There is a golden rule: 'what you do not wish to be done to yourself, do not do to others'.

The moral argument against torture is overwhelming. The fact that today's bans and prohibitions are too much honoured in the breach is not an argument to legalise any aspect or purpose of torture. It is an argument to apply the ban more fiercely, to let the outrage of ordinary people condemn those that practise it or preach it.

I've tried to stay out of the bloginade on torture, because I thought that others were saying all that I had to say. Then along comes Malcolm Fraser, who was not my favourite prime minister when he was in office, and captures it precisely.

The issue of torture is not complex, intellectual or difficult. Torture is just wrong. Torture has no purpose except as a tactic of impunity to try and terrify the Other into submission. Torture degrades those who execute it and those who command it. Strangely, those who command torture always deny giving the command and that alone is enough to tell us the whole moral quality of torture. Torture is just wrong and we should all say that as often as we have to.

to galloway

Blogenlust | Quote of the Week

'To be accused of a lack of moral character by Senator Norm Coleman is a bit like being told to sit up straight by the Hunchback of Notre Dame.' — George Galloway, just now on Hardball

Mr. Galloway Goes to Washington

Then the Brit turned the tables on Coleman and steered the committee's attention toward 'the real Oil for Food scandal.'

'Have a look at the fourteen months you were in charge of Baghdad, the first fourteen months when $8.8 billion of Iraq's wealth went missing on your watch. Have a look at Halliburton and other American corporations that stole not only Iraq's money but the money of the American taxpayer,' Galloway said.

'Have a look at the oil that you didn't even meter, that you were shipping out of the country and selling, the proceeds of which went who knows where. Have a look at the $800 million you gave to American military commanders to hand out around the country without even counting it or weighing it. Have a look at the real scandal breaking in the newspapers today, revealed in the earlier testimony in this committee. That the biggest sanctions busters were not me or Russian politicians or French politicians. The real sanctions busters were your own companies with the connivance of your own Government.'

I think we have another Iraq War verb and I'm sure, after this, the undistinguished senator from Mnnsota would much prefer to have been merely fisked, not gallowayed.

Where there's smoke, there's, well, more smoke

Galloway takes on US oil accusers :

'As a matter of fact, I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions, I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country - a rather better use of two meetings with Saddam Hussein than your own Secretary of State for Defence made of his.

'I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and Americans governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas. I used to demonstrate outside the Iraqi embassy when British and American officials were going in and doing commerce.'

'You will see from the official parliamentary record, Hansard, from the 15th March 1990 onwards, voluminous evidence that I have a rather better record of opposition to Saddam Hussein than you do and than any other member of the British or American governments do.

I suspect quite a lot of time will pass before another British MP is called before a US senate committee. Galloway's opinions are not new, they're a matter of record. Galloway's successful action against the London Telegraph for the same allegations that Republican Norm Coleman tried to revive yesterday is equally a matter of record. It would accord precisely with Galloway's record if Coleman were to find himself defending a libel action.

What's amazing is the way the US media and the blogosphere have recited to a little plain speaking. Westminster systems, by their nature, use more cmbative rheotric. Galloway's impact probably says more about the regrettable rhetorical defrence that prevails in Washington than anything else. Perhaps the US Democrats should study the form, if not the content, of galloway's fulmination. It would have been nice if Galloway had done enough research to make himself aware that Carl Levin the Democrat who attended the eharing, opposed the war. The sleaziest reaction came from Coleman himself:

Coleman said he did not believe Galloway came across as a "credible witness" and warned that his staff would examine his testimony to determine whether he perjured himself. "If in fact he lied to this committee, there will have to be consequences," Coleman told reporters after the hearing.

MPs travel on diplomatic passports. Even the Blair government would have difficulty accepting prosecution of an elected MP for things said in Washington. But there will, f course, be no prosecution. Galloway charged Coleman with the 'mother of all smokescreens'. Coleman answered by blowing smoke.

Not the news...

Click here. It does not take you to a BBC page.

Welcome to Wikiproxy, where any word or phrase that corresponds to a Wikipedia article gets its own hotlink and where the sidebar carries a rip of what the blogosphere is saying about the article's content. And while you're at it you get to watch the video feed of George Galloway's slightly acerbic disquisition before a stunned US Senate committee. The only trouble is that Wikipedia does not yet have an article on Wikiproxy.

El palacio no es infinito

Not quite yet, anyway...

Evidently size does not matter as much

Changes to cut giant solar tower's height

Planned modifications to a proposed green energy solar tower in north-western Victoria might mean the tower will no longer be the world's tallest man-made structure.

The tower - to be built north of Mildura - was to have been one kilometre high, producing enough green energy to power up to 200,000 households.

Enviromission chief executive Roger Davey says two new technologies may mean the tower could be made smaller, but perform better in terms of energy production and economics.

EnviroMission Solar Tower

There’s a joke to be made about giant phallic symbols built on Australian sheep farms, but not before my coffee. The 3,280-foot tall solar tower idea first tossed around a few years ago is on it’s way to actually happening, now that land in the Australian outback has been secured. When finished, the tower will effectively work like a chimney, collecting solar energy to warm air that then rises at speeds of thirty-five mph to spin a series of turbines that generate electricity. So, kind of like a wind farm without the need for consistently good kite weather.

Fortunately for my shattered sense of national ego, RMIT has a fairly cool description of the project:

The Solar Tower concept operates on a simple rule of physics - hot air rises.

An ever present large mass of air under an expansive transparent collector (seven kilometres in diameter) is heated by solar radiation (greenhouse effect) providing a continuous flow of hot air to drive electricity generating turbines located around the base of the one-kilometre tall central tower.

EnviroMission owns the exclusive licence to German designed Solar Tower technology in Australia. The Company's first project will focus on developing this revolutionary technology into the world's first large-scale solar thermal power station.

Solar Tower technology is one of the most exciting renewable energy innovations proposed for development in Australia. Development will lead the way to a renewable energy solution that will deliver positive social, environmental and economic outcomes.

And if I never read another news item headed 'Tower of Power' it will be far too soon.

Ignorance Nation

Physics or be damned! the crisis in science education awareness

In the UK, the engineering and physical science sectors account for 30 per cent of the nation's gross domestic product, 40 per cent of all investment and 75 per cent of all industrial research and development, according to a 2003 report by the UK Science and Technology Policy Research Unit. The analysis confirms the overwhelming importance of the engineering base for many manufacturing activities within the UK. These sectors account for more than 70 per cent of all Value Added Work, Employment, and Investment in plant and machinery in manufacturing. They are of even greater importance in terms of exports, accounting for more than 85 per cent of the total. We could expect similar figures for Australia.

New multidisciplinary issues are challenging science to provide answers to pressing problems. Areas such as energy production, climate change, transportation, crime prevention and detection, biotechnology and healthcare, and communications all have complex aspects that lie outside the traditional boundaries of the established academic disciplines.

Newer disciplines such as nanotechnology, biotechnology and artificial intelligence offer the potential to mitigate some pressing problems. They also offer the prospect of a bonanza to those nations willing to invest in the future of science and technology and as yet unknown applications.

Australia has neglected some areas of international science. For example, nuclear engineering no longer exists as a faculty stream within any Australian tertiary institution. If Australia ever has the need to develop better expertise in such a discipline, it will obviously have to draw on overseas resources, at uncertain cost and security risk.

The luck of the Irish or just good economic management?

But perhaps most depressing is the story of research and development, and science. In one of the nations in question, government, business and academia have forged a spirit of co-operation to engender a culture valuing research and the links between universities and industry. Ireland is now producing more science graduates than any other European nation. And Eire is blessed with more than one respected national institution charged with promoting valuable research and innovation. Enterprise Ireland, Science Foundation Ireland and the National Microelectronics Research Centre have all developed international reputations for the quality of their work and the benefits they bring the Irish economy. Enterprise Ireland, formed just five years ago, is playing an active role in promoting biotech companies in innovative projects.

The Australian Government's most notable contribution to research and development has been to abolish the 150 per cent tax concession, a move that perhaps provides a new definition for 'backward step'.

It is not too late for the Australian Government to take the high technology road that has been so often talked about. If we don't, our Irish friends may be laughing at us for many years to come.

Golgafrincham

The planet Golgafrincham creatively solved the problem of middle managemers: it blasted them in to space.
Golgafrinchan Telephone Sanitisers, Management Consultants and Marketing executives were persuaded that the planet was under threat from an enormous mutant star goat. The useless third of their population was then packed in Ark spaceships and sent to an insignificant planet.

That planet turned out to be Earth, where the arrival of the Golgafrincham B Ark rather disrupted an experiment designed to find the question to the ultimate Answer.

Golgafrincham is also famous for its circling poets.

Australia faces massive problems in adjusting to the peak oil transition, global warming, and salinity. We also have a government that neglects basic research and which thinks voluntary student unionism is a crucial education issue. We have a government of telephone sanitzers.

When food production passes its peak

When the oil is gone

Suburbs will collapse into slums. Farmhand will be a more viable career choice than public relations executive. And avoiding starvation will replace avoiding boredom as the national pastime.

Those are just a few of the predictions that James Howard Kunstler makes in his new book. "The Long Emergency" paints a dystopic view of the United States in the wake of what Kunstler dubs the "cheap oil fiesta." It's a future the author insists is not apocalyptic. Calling it the end of the world would be too easy.

No, Kunstler believes the human race will survive as we slip down the other side of Hubbert's Oil Peak. But the high standard of living we've built by gorging on cheap oil will not. America, as a political entity, will be history too.

Kunstler is apocalyptic, but then so are the consequences of an oil-based world falling over the peak and down the other side. Oil is not, principally, about transport. Oil is about food.

The oil we eat

The common assumption these days is that we muster our weapons to secure oil, not food. There’s a little joke in this. Ever since we ran out of arable land, food is oil. Every single calorie we eat is backed by at least a calorie of oil, more like ten. In 1940 the average farm in the United States produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil energy it used. By 1974 (the last year in which anyone looked closely at this issue), that ratio was 1:1. And this understates the problem, because at the same time that there is more oil in our food there is less oil in our oil. A couple of generations ago we spent a lot less energy drilling, pumping, and distributing than we do now. In the 1940s we got about 100 barrels of oil back for every barrel of oil we spent getting it. Today each barrel invested in the process returns only ten, a calculation that no doubt fails to include the fuel burned by the Hummers and Blackhawks we use to maintain access to the oil in Iraq.

David Pimentel, an expert on food and energy at Cornell University, has estimated that if all of the world ate the way the United States eats, humanity would exhaust all known global fossil-fuel reserves in just over seven years. Pimentel has his detractors. Some have accused him of being off on other calculations by as much as 30 percent. Fine. Make it ten years.

Measuring Food by the Mile

Now researchers in Britain and Germany have started to investigate the composite distances travelled by food, taking into account their ingredients and the materials for their packaging. To produce a small glass jar of strawberry yogurt for sale in Stuttgart, strawberries were being transported from Poland to west Germany and then processed into jam to be sent to southern Germany. Yogurt cultures came from north Germany, corn and wheat flour from the Netherlands, sugar beet from east Germany, and the labels and aluminium covers for the jars were being made over 300 km away. Only the glass jar and the milk were produced locally.

In counting the yogurt's environmental costs, the lorry emerged as the main culprit. contributing to noise, danger and pollution. The study found that to bring one lorry-load of yogurt pots to the south German distribution centre a 'theoretical' lorry must be moved a total of 1005 km, using some 400 litres of diesel fuel.

But there are a whole range of further hidden miles that these calculations ignore. To grow the strawberries for the jam for the yogurt, the farmer uses fossil fuels to plant, spray and harvest the fruit, and the sprays he uses have themselves been manufactured and distributed at some environmentat cost. The aluminium for the yogurt jar lids has come from mines many thousands of miles from the packaging plant. Then there is the machinery used for packaging the yogurt, which had to be brought in from Switzerland, perhaps, or Britain, to say nothing of the transport of the workers in the yogurt processing plant going to and from their homes every day. And the transport of shoppers from their homes to the shops, in order to buy the yogurt.. So the circle widens, at every point adding to the real costs of the yogurt, but which do not get added to the price and instead must be paid for in other ways at other times.

It's hard not to be apocalyptic about the prospect of collapse in the production and distribution of food. It perhaps requires a slightly more dynamic policy approach than foreign invasions or repealing environmental laws.

We do Ukraine, not Uzbekistan

The US and its 'special' dictator

If Orson Welles could remake Citizen Kane (Citizen Karimov?) Uzbekistan's Rosebud would be Khanabad. Khanabad embodies a graphic post-Cold War irony. It used to be the biggest Soviet airbase during the 1980s war in Afghanistan. Now it hosts the Americans — ostensively serving to help the 'war on terror' in Afghanistan.

The Washington-Tashkent 'special relationship' started as early as the mid-1990s, during the Bill Clinton administration. In 1999, Green Berets were actively training Uzbek Special Forces. Khanabad has nothing to do with Afghanistan: Bagram takes care of this. But Khanabad is crucial as one of the key bases surrounding Bush's Greater Middle East, or to put it in the relevant perspective, the Middle East/Caucasus/Central Asia heavenly arc of oil and gas. It's on a seven-year lease to the Pentagon, due to expire in late 2008.

So Karimov in Uzbekistan is as essential a piece in the great oil and gas chessboard as Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan. Inevitably, there will be more uprisings in the impoverished Ferghana Valley that has reached a boiling point. Karimov again will unleash his American-funded army. The White House will be silent. The Kremlin will be silent (or dub it 'green revolution' - by Islamic fundamentalists, as it did with Andijan). Corporate media will be silent: one imagines the furor had Andijan happened in Lebanon when Syrian troops were still in the country. Uzbeks in the Ferghana won't be valued as people legitimately fighting for freedom and democracy: they will be labeled as terrorists. And Rumsfeld will keep cultivating a 'strong relationship' with Karimov's Rosebud.

President Bush discusses freedom in Iraq and the Middle East

Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe -- because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty. As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export. And with the spread of weapons that can bring catastrophic harm to our country and to our friends, it would be reckless to accept the status quo. (Applause.)

Therefore, the United States has adopted a new policy, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East. This strategy requires the same persistence and energy and idealism we have shown before. And it will yield the same results. As in Europe, as in Asia, as in every region of the world, the advance of freedom leads to peace. (Applause)

The Object of Torture is Torture

In January, 2004, the State Department announced that Uzbekistan had not met international human rights standards. In July the United States cut off $18 million in military and economic aid to Uzbekistan. This probably seemed harsh to Uzbekistan, coming as it did, less than two years after its president had been a guest at the White House. It was welcomed by those concerned with human rights.

Tom Malinowski who is a human rights analyst for Human Rights Watch, observed that: "This is the first time that the administration has allowed a lack of progress on human rights to have a significant impact on its relationship with a critical security partner in that part of the world."

The news is of course wonderful. We won't give Uzbekistan any more money until it quits torturing prisoners. The only thing we are presently willing to give it is people. According to a recent report in the New York Times, it is believed that the C.I.A. is sending some of the people it has captured to Uzbekistan. The people it is sending are terror suspects. Estimates are that as many as 150 suspected terrorists have been sent abroad to a number of countries, including Uzbekistan. Asked about the practice one official refused to say whether prisoners went to Uzbekistan but he did say reassuringly that: %"The United States does not engage in or condone torture." That explains why the aid was cut off. It doesn't explain why prisoners get sent there. That is probably none of our business. It should be.

Extract the Melian Dialogue:

Athenians. Since the negotiations are not to go on before the people, in order that we may not be able to speak straight on without interruption, and deceive the ears of the multitude by seductive arguments which would pass without refutation (for we know that this is the meaning of our being brought before the few), what if you who sit there were to pursue a method more cautious still? Make no set speech yourselves, but take us up at whatever you do not like, and settle that before going any farther. And first tell us if this proposition of ours suits you.

The Melian commissioners answered:
Melians. To the fairness of quietly instructing each other as you propose there is nothing to object; but your military preparations are too far advanced to agree with what you say, as we see you are come to be judges in your own cause, and that all we can reasonably expect from this negotiation is war, if we prove to have right on our side and refuse to submit, and in the contrary case, slavery.

Athenians. If you have met to reason about presentiments of the future, or for anything else than to consult for the safety of your state upon the facts that you see before you, we will give over; otherwise we will go on.

Melians. It is natural and excusable for men in our position to turn more ways than one both in thought and utterance. However, the question in this conference is, as you say, the safety of our country; and the discussion, if you please, can proceed in the way which you propose.

Athenians. For ourselves, we shall not trouble you with specious pretences- either of how we have a right to our empire because we overthrew the Mede, or are now attacking you because of wrong that you have done us- and make a long speech which would not be believed; and in return we hope that you, instead of thinking to influence us by saying that you did not join the Lacedaemonians, although their colonists, or that you have done us no wrong, will aim at what is feasible, holding in view the real sentiments of us both; since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they canand the weak suffer what they must.

Apparently the Uzbek color revolution, is a horse of a different colour.

Avez-vous des nouvelles de M le comte de La Pérouse?

Sea hero’s fate revealed after 217 years

A breakthrough came last weekend, when the 2005 expedition discovered an 18th-century brass sextant in 40 ft of water off Vanikoro, which had been aboard La Boussole. This identified la Pérouse's vessel as the one that smashed to pieces on the reef, presumably in a tropical cyclone, leaving no chance of survival. The survivors are assumed to have come from the other wreck, L'Astrolabe, which beached less violently in a coral inlet.

"We are virtually certain that it was La Boussole that broke up on the reef and L'Astrolabe was the one that ran aground," said Alain Conan, a businessman and president of the Solomon Association, who has spent the past 24 years trying to solve the mystery of la Pérouse.

Much of the enigma remains, M Conan acknowledged, but the fate of la Pérouse, an aristocratic captain who was a hero for winning battles against the British Navy in the Hudson Bay in Canada, now seems to have been established. M Conan said that it was also possible that la Perouse could have died before the ships reached the island because of the diseases that ravaged crews in the equatorial area.

Although France and England were competing for the Pacific, relations between the sailors were friendly. La Pérouse dined with Commodore Arthur Philip in Botany Bay, near what is now Sydney, in January 1788. The French ships had sailed in a few days after the British First Fleet landed to settle what was then New Holland. Philip sent la Pérouse's logs back to France for him and Sydney named a suburb after the French navigator.

The 2005 expedition, which ends this week, has failed to find la Pérouse's famed scientific treasures, but it has recovered dozens of artefacts, including a cannon, a wine glass and the foot from a skeleton believed to be that of a young French officer.

Now most Sydneysiders have heard of La Pérouse, if only as the eponymous hero of La Perouse. (There's an acute distinction between the two referents). La Perouse is probably the best place on the planet to sit n your car, eating fish and chips while a southerly buster turns the sea white before your eyes. La Perouse also has Bare Island, a fort built in 1885 to repeal the Russians. What I didn't know until a little intensive googling was at the same time Sydney was building defences to keep out the Russians, the Russians in Kamchatka were keenly aware of the imminent threat of a British descent on their shores.

In the late 17th century, Vladimir Atlasov played a decisive role in the exploration of the central part of the peninsula.

The city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky has its origins in Vitus Bering's second Kamchatka expedition to investigate Avachinskaya Inlet and select a suitable winter berth for the expedition's ships. Expedition member assistant navigator Ivan Fomich Elagin chose a small convenient bay on the east side of the inlet. Shoreline topography that turned the harbor into a natural fortress and nearness to the mouth of the Avacha River, where there was already a known Russian route to Bolsheretsk, the administrative center of Kamchatka, were the key factors in determining the site of the future port.

By the late 18th century, as a result of the Pacific Ocean expeditions of James Cook and Jean-Francois de la Perouse, the Russian government was well aware of the strategic and political importance of the port at Petropavlovsk and attempted to turn the small port settlement into a fortress. It was during this period that the city's boundaries were laid out, which determined its development right up to the 1920s. Major changes in the life of the city occurred in the early 19th century as a result of the expansion of the Russian-American Company and the organization of Russian circumnavigation expeditions, which left their mark in Petropavlovsk's history. A famous Russian "round-the-worlder" gave Russia and the world great geographic discoveries and great names. Even in the early 19th century Avachinskaya Inlet had a reputation as one of the world's finest harbors.

And, why, an astonished world wants to know, did Louis XVI, even passionate about geography as he was, spend the last minutes before his execution asking about La Pérouse?

how to grease the machinery of empire

Indian Mutiny

The Indian soldiers were dissatisfied with their pay as well as with certain changes in regulations, which they interpreted as part of a plot to force them to adopt Christianity. This belief was strengthened when the British furnished the soldiers with cartridges coated with grease made from the fat of cows (sacred to Hindus) and of pigs (anathema to Muslims). The British replaced the cartridges when the mistake was realized; but suspicion persisted, and in Feb., 1857, began a series of incidents in which sepoys refused to use the cartridges.

Afghan riots bode ill for US long-term plans

The biggest anti-US protests since the fall of the Taliban are spreading in Afghanistan, kindled by an unconfirmed report that US interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, desecrated the Muslim holy book, the Koran, to insult Muslim detainees. Several hundred students protested on Thursday in the Afghan capital Kabul. The unrest followed a 2,000-strong protest on Tuesday and riots on Wednesday in Jalalabad, in which four people were killed and the Pakistani consulate, foreign aid agencies, UN buildings, and diplomatic missions were attacked. The riots were triggered by a Newsweek magazine report that said US investigators probing abuse at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay had discovered that interrogators “had placed Korans on toilets, and in at least one case, flushed a holy book down the toilet”. Desecrating the Koran is punishable by execution in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. On Thursday, protests spread to other districts in eastern Afghanistan, as well as to the Pakistani cities of Peshawar and Quetta, close to the Afghan border. Police shot dead two more protestors in Jalalabad and one in the Wardak, a province that borders Kabul. The protesters chanted “Death to America” and called for assurances that the US would not maintain a long-term presence in Afghanistan.

It's about here that Whatsisname's quote comes to mind:

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

reviving the once and future mammal

The last thylacine.

Researchers revive plan to clone the Tassie tiger

The audacious plan to bring the Tasmanian tiger back from the dead through cloning is to be revived by a coalition of academics.

Three months after the Australian Museum said it was shelving plans to clone the tiger - or thylacine - the University of NSW's Dean of Science Mike Archer said the work was being picked up by a group of interested universities and a research institute.

Professor Archer, a former director of the museum, said researchers from NSW and Victoria were likely to take part in the program, which involves recovering DNA from preserved tiger tissue to breed a living specimen.

The University of NSW was likely to take part and the museum would be asked to co-operate.

The on again off again cloning story just seems to keep coming back. Mean while, hopeful souls continue to stagger through the wilds of Tasmanaia hoping for that one flash of stripes in the night.

chilling news on global warming

Britain faces big chill as ocean current slows

CLIMATE change researchers have detected the first signs of a slowdown in the Gulf Stream — the mighty ocean current that keeps Britain and Europe from freezing.

They have found that one of the 'engines' driving the Gulf Stream - the sinking of supercooled water in the Greenland Sea - has weakened to less than a quarter of its former strength.

The weakening, apparently caused by global warming, could herald big changes in the current over the next few years or decades. Paradoxically, it could lead to Britain and northwestern and Europe undergoing a sharp drop in temperatures.

Such a change has long been predicted by scientists but the new research is among the first to show clear experimental evidence of the phenomenon.

Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at Cambridge University, hitched rides under the Arctic ice cap in Royal Navy submarines and used ships to take measurements across the Greenland Sea.

"Until recently we would find giant 'chimneys' in the sea where columns of cold, dense water were sinking from the surface to the seabed 3,000 metres below, but now they have almost disappeared," he said.

"As the water sank it was replaced by warm water flowing in from the south, which kept the circulation going. If that mechanism is slowing, it will mean less heat reaching Europe."

Such a change could have a severe impact on Britain, which lies on the same latitude as Siberia and ought to be much colder. The Gulf Stream transports 27,000 times more heat to British shores than all the nation's power supplies could provide, warming Britain by 5-8C.

Wadhams and his colleagues believe, however, that just such changes could be well under way. They predict that the slowing of the Gulf Stream is likely to be accompanied by other effects, such as the complete summer melting of the Arctic ice cap by as early as 2020 and almost certainly by 2080. This would spell disaster for Arctic wildlife such as the polar bear, which could face extinction.

I am begining to suffer a Ron Cobb vision of George Bush staggring through a blizzard a petrol bowser and nothing to connect it to.

You might very well think that, but I couldn't possibly comment

I am more and more attracted to the theory that the Man of Steel has fallen inextricably in love with Francis Urquhart, and has decided to amuse himself by putting about a bit of stick, mainly in the direction of Peter Costello.

Costello seems to have forgotten that in Australia, succession is a blood sport and no-one gets handed the top job. It may not be pretty to look at, but that's the way it is. It's also something Gordon Brown might like to think about in the UK.

Not all news is bad news

Fastest-evolving genes in humans and chimps revealed

The most comprehensive study to date exploring the genetic divergence of humans and chimpanzees has revealed that the genes most favoured by natural selection are those associated with immunity, tumour suppression, and programmed cell death.

These genes show signs of positive natural selection in both branches of the evolutionary tree and are changing more swiftly than would be expected through random mutation alone. Lead scientist Rasmus Nielsen and colleagues at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, examined the 13,731 chimp genes that have equivalent genes with known functions in humans.

Research in 2003 revealed that genes involved with smell, hearing, digestion, long bone growth, and hairiness are undergoing positive natural selection in chimps and humans. The new study has found that the strongest evidence for selection is related to disease defence and apoptosis - or programmed cell death - which is linked to sperm production.

I decided to post this instead of my latest argument for intelligent design — that the role of the prostate in male homosexual climax proves the existence of a gay-friendly deity.




"

Junking infomania?

I foud my way to Does email really reduce IQ ? via Larvatus Proteo, where the New Scientist report on email gets damned as corporate spin.

I'm not sure the critique is persuasuaive. The Stroop effect has been known since 1935. Scientific American Mind carried a report on The limits of multitasking (subscription requird) that seems to agree with the infomania thesis. I'd write more, but some email came in.

The benediction of peace

The Significance of Pope Benedict XV

I'm puzzled that so little is being said in the media about the historical significance of Cardinal Ratzinger's choice of Benedict XVI as his papal name. As a German, I think we can be fairly sure he is trying to remind the world of the tragic story of his predecessor, and how close he came to bringing World War I to an early conclusion. The story has specical significance for Americans.

In the spring of 1917, Pope Benedict XV called on the warring governments to make a peace of mutual forgiveness and forbearance. As a starting point, the Pontiff proposed the restoration of Belgium, disarmament, arbitration machinery to prevent future wars, and freedom of the seas for all nations.

To the Americans, the timing of the Pope's message seemed almost devilishly unpropitious. In Stockholm, international socialists had convened a peace conference to appeal over the heads of the warring rulers to the workers of the world. In Petrograd, the Bolshevik wing of the Russian revolution had already called for peace on the basis of no annexations and self determination for all peoples, and bullied the so called Provisional Government of Russia into going along with them.

The Germans and the Austro-Hungarians promptly accepted the Pope's proposal, although Berlin avoided specific commitments. The provisional Russian government also welcomed the papal mediation. The leaders of France and Italy, with largely Catholic, extremely war weary populations, were transfixed with alarm. They wanted a fight to the finish but they hesitated to take issue with the Pope. The English, even more determined to go for what Prime Minister Lloyd George called 'a knockout blow,' decided to let Wilson answer for all of them.

At first the president was inclined to say nothing. He seemed angry at the Pope's intrusion into the war. However, as the impact of the pontiff's appeal grew larger, Wilson decided he had to reply. The Pope was saying many of the same things Wilson had said before he opted for war. Now, as British ambassador Cecil Spring-Rice wryly pointed out, the president was doing 'his utmost to kindle a warlike spirit throughout [the] states and to combat pacifists.' No wonder the pope's appeal gave him indigestion.1

Colonel House strongly seconded this presidential decision -- and warned Wilson not to dismiss the Pope's proposals out of hand in his reply. The new Russian ambassador in Washington had informed House that alarming splits were appearing in the revolutionary government, with the call for immediate peace one of the chief issues. A dismissal could lead to the overthrow of Russia's moderate leader, Alexander Kerensky.

House also revealed that the Pope's proposal had evoked a sympathetic response in him. The colonel wondered if it would be a good thing in the long run if 'Germany was beaten to her knees.' That might leave a vacuum in central Europe which the Russians would be eager to fill. Before the declaration of war, Wilson had agreed with this balance of power viewpoint. It was the idea behind his appeal for a peace without victory.2

'Beating Germany to its knees' was not a good thing in the long run. Versailles proved a disaster. The peace plan of Benedict XV came to nothing. Sadly, it took until 1945 to work out that Quixotic idealism is often a lot more realistic than the gibberish spouted by alleged realists.

Now if only Benedict XVI remembers to apply the same principles in his governance of the church...

Except in the universe of discourse

Black holes 'do not exist -- These mysterious objects are dark-energy stars, physicist claims.

Black holes are staples of science fiction and many think astronomers have observed them indirectly. But according to a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, these awesome breaches in space-time do not and indeed cannot exist.

Over the past few years, observations of the motions of galaxies have shown that some 70% the Universe seems to be composed of a strange 'dark energy' that is driving the Universe's accelerating expansion.

George Chapline thinks that the collapse of the massive stars, which was long believed to generate black holes, actually leads to the formation of stars that contain dark energy. 'It's a near certainty that black holes don't exist,' he claims.

Black holes are one of the most celebrated predictions of Einstein's general theory of relativity, which explains gravity as the warping of space-time caused by massive objects. The theory suggests that a sufficiently massive star, when it dies, will collapse under its own gravity to a single point.

But Einstein didn't believe in black holes, Chapline argues. 'Unfortunately', he adds, 'he couldn't articulate why.' At the root of the problem is the other revolutionary theory of twentieth-century physics, which Einstein also helped to formulate: quantum mechanics.

Evidently neither Chapline nor Einstein had ever encounted a an absolutely rock solid, ironclad commitment. And I'd better fight the urge to make dark energy into a second pun.

Gorbachev and wet economics

Water Treaty

Mikhail Gorbachev
Chairman of the Board
Green Cross international

To the People of the World

In spite of numerous conferences, statements and declarations made by various institutions, including the UN Millennium Declaration, words have failed to produce the much-needed water For the 1.1 billion people who cannot reach or afford safe drinking water, for the 2.4 billion who lack access to basic sanitation, this is an everyday reality.

The UN Millennium Development Goals set the target of halving the number of people without access to water services by 2015. There is a danger that this objective will not be met unless drastic changes concerning the way this issue is dealt with occur.

Access to water is literally a question of life and death. I first learned this through my experience as Secretary for Agriculture for the former USSR, when I inherited a crisis caused by the decision to divert the rivers which fed the Aral Sea. Decades later, this decision continues to destroy lives and has left an environmental wasteland. On the other hand, changing water policies for the better can have a positive effect on the environment, public health and education, and give people jobs and the chance to lead fulfilling lives. The world is at a crossroads. This is the moment of truth.

Faced with this reality, Green Cross International urges the international community to take initiative, to assume responsibility and to play their part in the mission enshrined in the Millennium Development Goals.

WATER IS NOT A PRIVILEGE, IT'S A RIGHT! This is the slogan we have chosen for the campaign and I am sure that nobody in their right mind would deny the essence of it.

And yet, the situation is far from simple. The ultimate goal of the campaign is to contribute to halting the water crisis that reduces the daily lives of millions of people to misery, and is fraught with large-scale conflict and instability. We must aim for universal access to water and basic sanitation - anything less is a violation of our civilization, our human rights, and our morality. ...

Mikhail Gorbachev

I think it'd be a lot better to add a right to water to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Constitution of South Africa speaks about the right to water:

27. Everyone has the right to:

(a) health care services, including reproductive health care;

(b) sufficient food and water; and

(c) social security, including, if they are unable to support themselves and their dependants, appropriate social assistance.

(2) The state must take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to achieve the progressive realisation of each of these rights.

(3) No one may be refused emergency medical treatment.

Go sign the petition.

There's food in the pot and pot in the email

'Info-mania' dents IQ more than marijuana

The relentless influx of emails, cellphone calls and instant messages received by modern workers can reduce their IQ by more than smoking marijuana, suggests UK research.

Far from boosting productivity, the constant flow of messages and information can seriously reduce a person's ability to focus on tasks, the study of office workers found.

Eighty volunteers were asked to carry out problem solving tasks, firstly in a quiet environment and then while being bombarded with new emails and phone calls. Although they were told not to respond to any messages, researchers found that their attention was significantly disturbed.

Alarmingly, the average IQ was reduced by 10 points - double the amount seen in studies involving cannabis users. But not everyone was affected by to the same extent - men were twice as distracted as women.

'If left unchecked, 'info-mania' will damage a worker's performance by reducing their mental sharpness,' says Glenn Wilson, a psychiatrist at the University of London, UK, who carried out the study, sponsored by Hewlett-Packard. 'This is a very real and widespread phenomenon.'

Slow Food Manifesto

Our century, which began and has developed under the insignia of industrial civilization, first invented the machine and then took it as its life model.

Slow Food

Long before demonstrators and police battled it out on the streets of Genoa during the G-8 summit, a potentially more influential attempt to guide the direction of globalization was slowly evolving about two hours' drive away in the countryside of the neighboring region of Piedmont in the foothills of the Italian Alps. In the small market town of Bra, in an area known for its red wines and white truffles, is the headquarters of a movement called Slow Food, dedicated to preserving and supporting traditional ways of growing, producing and preparing food. If the French attitude toward globalization is symbolized by farm activist José Bové driving a tractor into a McDonald's, Italy's subtler and more peaceful attitude is embodied in this quirky and intelligent movement, which has taken up the defense of the purple asparagus of Albenga, the black celery of Trevi, the Vesuvian apricot, the long-tailed sheep of Laticauda, a succulent Sienese pig renowned in the courts of medieval Tuscany and a host of endangered handmade cheeses and salamis known now only to a handful of old farmers.

Founded in 1986, in direct response to the opening of a McDonald's restaurant in Rome's famous Piazza di Spagna, the Slow Food Manifesto declares that:

A firm defense of quiet material pleasure is the only way to oppose the universal folly of Fast Life.

In its first years Slow Food, which has adopted the snail as its official symbol, was heavily concentrated on food and wine, and produced what is considered to be Italy's best guides to wine, restaurants and food stores. But in the mid-1990s Slow Food developed a new political dimension, called eco-gastronomy. "We want to extend the kind of attention that environmentalism has dedicated to the panda and the tiger to domesticated plants and animals," says Carlo Petrini, the movement's founder, a tall, handsome bearded man of 54. "A hundred years ago, people ate between one hundred and a hundred and twenty different species of food. Now our diet is made up of at most ten or twelve species."

Worrying about the fate of the Paduan hen might have seemed a quixotic and elitist concern a few years ago, but with the lingering panic over mad cow disease, the recent outbreak of foot and mouth disease, and the debate over genetically modified food, Slow Food--with its emphasis on natural, organic methods--has suddenly acquired a political importance and popularity that has surprised even its own leaders. Since 1995, when it began to defend endangered foods, the organization has grown from 20,000 to 65,000 members in forty-two countries. To press its political concerns, Slow Food has recently opened offices in Brussels, where it lobbies the European Union on agriculture and trade policy, as well as in New York, where it organizes trade fairs and tries to find markets for traditional food producers.

No more dog-eat-dog

The depoliticisation of work must be the most profound and enduring legacy of Thatcherism. She handed business the "right to manage", unaccountable to all but its shareholders. The strategy was to pit everyone against everyone else: competition between companies but also within companies, within departments, within teams. The message was clear: unless you personally and your company are competitive, you are history. Competition was the spur to productivity.

Parts of this legacy simply haven't worked. Our productivity is notoriously poor compared to that in Germany or Scandanavia, countries where (and it may be more than coincidence) the quality of working life has always been high on the political agenda, and governments - in alliance with employers and trade unions - have sponsored experimentation in work organisation and helped spread best practice. Other parts of the Thatcherite legacy were never more than myth and urgently need debunking, such as performance-related pay, which the research shows is based on a false premise - you can't measure an individual's output because it is always dependent on colleagues - and actually damages motivation.

Can you reasonably blog the virtues of the slow life?

How the church was won

Universi Domenici Gregis

75. If the balloting does not result in an election, even after the provisions of No. 74 have been fulfilled, the Cardinal electors shall be invited by the Camerlengo to express an opinion about the manner of proceeding. The election will then proceed in accordance with what the absolute majority of the electors decides.

Nevertheless, there can be no waiving of the requirement that a valid election takes place only by an absolute majority of the votes or else by voting only on the two names which in the ballot immediately preceding have received the greatest number of votes; also in this second case only an absolute majority is required.

76. Should the election take place in a way other than that prescribed in the present Constitution, or should the conditions laid down here not be observed, the election is for this very reason null and void, without any need for a declaration on the matter; consequently, it confers no right on the one elected.

Politics, piety mix during convention-like conclave

The late Father Walter Imbiorski, a man with family roots deep in Chicago ethnic politics, once remarked that 'Dick Daley could wire a conclave in 48 hours.' 'That long?' I replied in feigned surprise. He meant the first Mayor Daley. Not that the current Mayor Daley could not figure out the politics of a conclave that quickly. The conclave, you see, is a political event, arguably the political event par excellence.

Some will think that such a comment approaches the edges of blasphemy. In fact, politics, the art of governing, is according to Aristotle (who ought to know!) the second most honorable art, ranking only after poetry. Politicians are masters of the art not of the perfect but of the possible, of supporting the candidate who can win, and not the best possible candidate, of the broadest possible collation rather than the most admirable. It is through them the Holy Spirit works.
If one is looking for a model to which to compare a conclave, one might choose American political conventions in the old days (as depicted brilliantly by the late Steve Neal in his Happy Days Are Here Again), though in the case of a conclave all the campaigning is done indirectly, behind the scenes, and by subtle hints and conversations, winks, slight nods of the head, and pregnant silences that are typical of both the Roman style and the Irish smoke-filled room.

Liberal cardinals bite bullet and join in show of unity

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the head of English and Welsh Catholics and a sympathiser with the progressive camp, also gave his firm support to Benedict, but appeared to undermine his case with a slip of the tongue.

Asked why the cardinals picked Cardinal Ratzinger to succeed John Paul II, Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor initially said "they chose this man" before correcting himself by saying "we chose this man".

In what some felt was equivocal praise, he said: "We have a good man who will be a good Pope." He argued that Benedict was an intelligent and courteous man who would listen to all points of view and could come up with "a few surprises".

"When Cardinal Ratzinger was the Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he had a particular task to do. Now that he is Pope it is entirely different. Now he is Peter for the whole church.

"I feel very content," Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor said.

Ratzinger was always the man to beat

Marco Politi, writing in La Repubblica, suggested that support had been coalescing around Cardinal Ratzinger as early as Christmas, given the realisation that John Paul's health was seriously declining.

Going into the conclave, Cardinal Ratzinger had active help in mustering votes from powerful cardinals of the Roman curia in charge of important departments, including Dario Castrillon Hoyos, Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, and Julian Herranz, a priest member of the conservative lay group Opus Dei. Giovanni Battista Re, Crescenzio Sepe and Angelo Sodano were also mentioned as his backers, perhaps in the second round.

The tipping point came, Politi wrote, when two crucial Italian cardinals - Camillo Ruini, John Paul's longtime vicar for Rome, and Angelo Scola, the Patriarch of Venice, also mentioned as a candidate - threw their support behind the German.

The prospect of a drawn-out battle - and the message it would send about church unity - scared off the liberal opposition, and their leader, Carlo Maria Martini, sent his votes to Cardinal Ratzinger, Politi suggested. Cardinal Martini may have had an inkling of what might be ahead. A priest who had seen him the previous weekend said in an interview that the Milan cardinal appeared distressed.

Some time late on Tuesday afternoon Cardinal Ratzinger reached the 77 votes needed for election. The cardinals gasped, and then clapped, Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor recounted.

"He couldn't have been unaware," Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor said, "that this was quite likely to happen."

And almost before the electors knew it, the grave atmosphere of the conclave was over, and they were singing Latin songs, eating chicken cordon bleu and toasting the new Pope with spumante.

Groundswell Swept Ratzinger Into Office

The Latin Americans' conquest of turf in Vatican City also meant that many had little interest in decentralization, a priority of U.S. and Central European moderates, he said.

The remnants of resistance to Ratzinger faded during the two ballots Tuesday morning. Glemp, the Polish cardinal, said the consensus resulted from patient discussion.

"Calmly, calmly, without propaganda, we talked and two-thirds thought he was the best," Glemp said.

The shift in allegiance to Ratzinger included prominent members of the reformist camp aligned with Martini, according to several accounts. Marco Politi, the Vatican correspondent for the Rome daily La Repubblica, reported that Martini sealed the outcome when he acquiesced.

At midday Tuesday, "Ratzinger's position had become so strong that it was up to the other electors — if they did not want to give an impression of great disarray, disastrous for the church's international image — to take a step to give their votes to the most prestigious, and finally most unifying, candidate," Politi wrote. "That's what happened with the blessing of Martini."

After the decisive ballot Tuesday afternoon, the cardinals applauded Ratzinger. Sodano, the secretary of state, then asked the ritualistic question: "Do you accept your canonical election as supreme pontiff?"

"Yes, I accept," Ratzinger responded.

Ratzinger then told Sodano he had chosen the name Benedict XVI. Cardinal Joachim Meisner of Germany said the new pope looked "a little forlorn" as he headed into the chapel's Room of Tears, a name that refers to popes who have wept as they donned white vestments.

Pervasive 'non-campaign' fractured rules of secrecy

'Marco finally got it right'
When John Paul began to fail, members of some of the "new movements" began to spread the same ideas to anyone who would listen, providing interpretations for media personnel that contributed to the atmosphere that Ratzinger was both the right candidate and a sure winner when the cardinal electors assembled in Rome.

I emphasize that there was nothing wrong with the behavior. Rather, it was intelligent politics -- and as I have insisted in this series of columns, a conclave is an exercise in politics, the art of government. Only after the pope's funeral and the cardinals' imposition of silence on themselves did the murky business of counting votes begin.

Each day of that week, the Italian media began to publish remarkably detailed lists of electors who had been lined up for the Bavarian cardinal. In the past, such lists had proved wrong. This time, they turned out to be accurate. As someone pointed out to me, "This time, Marco [Marco Poleti, Italy's most famous Vaticanologist] finally got it right."

At this point, two questions must be asked about the "non-campaign." Were cardinals violating the rules of silence they had imposed on themselves and the conclave rules that the late pope had legislated and canvassing for votes? Were cardinals or their aides passing these tallies to local journalists?

If they were, and whatever the ethics of such behavior, the pretense of secrecy had become porous. Behind the scenes, precinct politics were taking place, which, if they did not shape Ratzinger's plurality, certainly publicized it. His candidacy obtained what in American election we call the "big mo" -- momentum. One hears today that after the first (of four ballots), there was almost no doubt about the outcome.

Was it necessary?
In the pragmatics of electioneering, there can be no objection to the canvass of votes, the selection of a winner and even the proclamation of that winner before the voting begins. The rules of secrecy and silence were, however, fractured. I conclude that the rules are a mockery and cannot be sustained in a communications society, the like of which exists in the contemporary world.

We do not know exactly who voted for whom on the first ballot and who contributed to the emerging Ratzinger two-thirds majority -- though the names published in the press could provide excellent hints. Nor do we know who were the campaign managers who orchestrated the events of the final week. The first issue is not especially relevant. The second is important, and perhaps someone will find the answers.

Finally, two more questions: Was the "non-campaign" necessary, and secondly was the Holy Spirit behind the outcome?

Given the absence of an organization and a clear candidate among the progressives and the conservative tilt of the Sacred College, the "non-campaign" may have been exhilarating but unessential.

As to the Holy Spirit -- at the risk of being told by hate mail that I do not deserve to be a priest -- I submit that to claim God's spirit for one's own cause comes dangerously close to idolatry. The spirit blows whither he will. No one can claim his patronage.

As Ratzinger has said, it is wrong to assert that the spirit is responsible for the outcome of a papal election because there have been popes the spirit could not have chosen. Yet we can always pray to the spirit to help and protect Benedict XVI.

None of this, of course, proves that Curia and the new movements succeeded in imposing a candidate on the conclave or makes the result illegitimate. Nor does it say much about what kind of pontiff Pope Benedict XVI will be. There have been too many Gorbachevs, and for that matter too many Nixons in China, to read all that much into the future pontificate from the pope's past record. Nevertheless, it is fairly clear that the new rule allowing election by 1/2+1 after 30 ballots has fundamentally changed the way the conclave works. A determined candidate who can hold his votes together can offer simply to wait until the lower majority kicks in.

We have yet to see how Benedict XVI will answer the challenges facing the church. It will not b enough to assume that challenges like the scandal of clergy abuse are restricted to the 'dying' churches of Europe and North America. Nor will it be enough to assume the shortage of priests only effects the northern churches. Honduras has 5 million people and 400 priests. The Philippines is short by 25000 priests. A sacramental church that cannot administer the sacraments is in trouble whether that happens in the global north or the global south.

Next there'll be an Apostolic Blog

New pope keeps old guard for the moment

For the new pope, a new e-mail address
Got a prayer or a problem for the new pope? Now you can e-mail him.

Showing that Pope Benedict XVI intends to follow in the footsteps of John Paul II's multimedia ministry, the Vatican on Thursday modified its Web site so that users who click on an icon on the home page automatically activate an e-mail composer with his address.

In English, the address is benedictxvi@vatican.va.

Maybe universidomenicigrex.blogspot.com?

What's in a name?

Pope Benedict XV

His pontificate was dominated by the war, which he termed 'the suicide of Europe', and its turbulent aftermath. His early call for a Christmas truce in 1914 was ignored, and though he organised significant humanitarian efforts (establishing a Vatican bureau, for instance, to help prisoners of war from all nations contact their families) and made many unsuccessful attempts to negotiate peace, his effectiveness even in Italy was undermined by his pacifist stance. The best known was the seven-point Papal Peace proposal of August 1917, demanding a cessation of hostilities, a reduction of armaments, guaranteed freedom of the seas, and international arbitration. Only Woodrow Wilson responded directly, declaring that a declaration of peace was premature; in Europe each side saw him as biased in favour of the other and were unwilling to accept the terms he proposed. This resentment resulted in the exclusion of the Vatican from the Paris peace conference of 1919; despite this, he wrote an encyclical pleading for international reconciliation, Pacem Dei munus.

In the post-war period Benedict was involved in developing the Church administration to deal with the new international system that had emerged.

In internal Church affairs, Benedict calmed the excesses of the campaign against 'modernist' scholars within the Church that had characterised the reign of Pius X, though his first encyclical condemned errors in modern philosophical systems and no excommunicated scholars were returned to the faith.

Benedict also promulgated a new Code of Canon Law in 1917 and attempted to improve relations with the anticlerical Republican government of France by canonising the French national heroine Joan of Arc. In the mission territories of the Third World, he emphasised the necessity of training native priests to replace the European missionaries as soon as possible, and established a Coptic college in the Vatican.

In his private spiritual life, Benedict was devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and of all the modern Popes was the most fervent in propagating the wearing of the Brown Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, endorsing the claim that wearing it piously brings 'the singular privilege of protection after death' from eternal damnation, and giving an indulgence for every time it was kissed.

Benedict, 'blessed', is a really interesting choice of name. I'd expected Pope Benedict XVI to name himself John Paul III if elected. The new pope has a grim reputation, but perhaps he is telling us something by taking the name of a pope who moderated the rigours of the pope before him. Hope, I guess, springs eternal.

I'll never say: 'Who goes in a pope, comes out a cardinal' again. (Well, at least until the next conclave)

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to Yellowstone

Anyone watching Supervolcano tonight probably went happily to sleep thinking to themselves that Yellowstone is a long way from Australia. Welcome to Lake Toba

According to the Toba catastrophe theory, modern human evolution was affected by a recent large volcanic event. It was proposed by Stanley H. Ambrose[1] (http://www.anthro.uiuc.edu/faculty/ambrose/), of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Knowledge of human prehistory is largely theoretical, but based in fossil, archaeological, and genetic evidence.

Within the last three to five million years, after human and ape lineages diverged from the hominid stem-line, the human line produced a variety of human species. According to the Toba catastrophe theory, a massive volcanic eruption changed the course of human history by severely reducing the human population (called a 'bottleneck'). Around 75,000 years ago the Toba caldera in Indonesia erupted with a force three thousand times more powerful than Mount St. Helens.

According to Ambrose, this led to a decrease in the average global temperatures by as much as 15°C. This massive environmental change is believed to have created population bottlenecks in the various human species that existed at the time; this in turn accelerated differentiation of the isolated human populations, eventually leading to the end of all the other human species except for the branch that became modern humans (see volcanic winter).

Some geological evidence and computed models support the plausibility of the Toba catastrophe theory, and genetic evidence suggests that all humans alive today, despite their apparent variety, are descended from a very small population (see mitochondrial Eve). Using the average rates of genetic mutation, some geneticists have estimated that this population lived at a time coinciding with the Toba event.

And just to ensure we all sleep sleep soundly at night...

Sleeping giants present the biggest threat of all

Ray Cas, from Monash University's School of Geosciences, said Lake Toba's next blast could be big enough to disrupt the world's climate and send a tsunami surging towards Australia.

Professor Cas said none of the world's 100 or so active super volcanoes had erupted in modern times. However, if one did, it would be 100 to 1000 times more powerful than Krakatoa's 1883 eruption.

He feared the threat was being overlooked, just as the danger posed by Indian Ocean tsunami had been ignored.

"The Boxing Day tsunami was going to happen sooner or later, but there were no warning systems. A super volcano will happen sooner or later, and there are limited warning systems," he said. "We certainly need to be improving our monitoring of super volcanoes. If any of these were to erupt we would see disaster on a magnitude greater than we have ever experienced."

When Lake Toba erupted 73,000 years ago the world's climate was balanced on the edge of an ice age, Professor Cas said.

"The eruption released 1000 cubic kilometres of ash and rock debris into the atmosphere, much of it as fine ash which blocked out solar radiation, kicking the world back into an ice age."

In addition to cooling the world, with devastating results for global agriculture, Lake Toba's next eruption would probably send a pyroclastic flow - a rush of superheated gas and ash - crashing into the sea with enough force to trigger a tsunami.

The volcano was definitely still active, influenced by the same movement of tectonics plates that triggered the December 26 and March 28 earthquakes.

Another super volcano overdue for eruption was Taupo, on New Zealand's North Island. "It has a big eruption every 2000 years and it last erupted about 2000 years ago".

The Lake Toba super eruption measured 8 on the Volcanic Explosivity Scale. Tambora in 1815 measured 7 and Krakatoa in in 1883 was a 6. The 1980 Mt St Helens eruption was a 5.

We will be called...

Why Il Papa's name is a key

Vatican watchers suggest that if the next Pope chose John, that would invoke memories of John XXIII, the reformer who launched the Second Vatican Council in 1962. But Pius - the name that has dominated the past two centuries, with seven Piuses reigning for 125 of the past 183 years - would suggest extreme conservatism, because all have been reactionaries.

Over the centuries, John has been the most popular name, followed by Gregory (16), Benedict (15), Clement (14) and Leo and Innocent (both 13).

Mercurius was the first Pope to take a new name, because he didn't want the pagan associations of his given name to sully his pontificate. Soon it became a tradition. Melbourne theologian William Johnston pointed out in the April issue of the literary magazine Quadrant that no Pope has taken a new name since Lando in 913. Exploring the merits of various names - and the reason why no Pope is likely to follow Pelagius (a heretic), Boniface (arrogance leading to schism in the church) or Julius (overwhelming ego) - Johnston suggests Vatican watchers could be misled. For example, a pope might take John Paul to placate conservatives while planning in fact to be entirely different.

He says that Martin, Urban, Leo or Felix would be both short and memorable, whereas Alexander, Sylvester and Celestine are unlikely. Johnston's own favourite would be Ambrose, after Ambrose of Milan, who died in 397 having "excelled equally as pastor, liturgist, administrator, writer and thinker... An Ambrose in the papacy might summon the courage to begin to apply to the workings of the Catholic Church at every level and in every locale precepts of Christian ethics.

Johnston is critical of John Paul II:

William Johnston: Yes, well here I think the Austrian example is very appropriate. This is where the Austrian bureaucrats would talk one party line and their Jewish critics would point out the hollowness of it, and I wish there were more Jewish critics of this papacy who could satirise this kind of thing, that it’s hollow, and very sad that the authorities can continue to talk about human potential being fulfilled and blossoming through the leadership of this Pope, which is to give one example. Most people contemplating old age today ion the democracies, talk about it as a widening, a broadening, an opening of horizons. This Pontiff modelled exactly the opposite; he narrowed, he constrained himself, he’s the exact opposite of a humanistic process of ageing, and yet we’re being told to celebrate him as a model of the opposite.

If I might, I’d like to read two verses from a poem by the great Australian poet, A.D. Hope, which he wrote on the death of Pius XII in 1958.

Stephen Crittenden: It’s a great poem.

William Johnston: And there are two verses, where having talked about the fire in the trees in New England autumn when the death occurred, he had heard that this Pontiff in his last years, Pius XII in his last years, had been spiritualised.

If to some lives at least, comes a stage

When all the active man now left behind,

They enter on the treasure of old age,

This autumn of the mind.

Then while the heart stands still

Beyond desire,

The dying animal knows a strange serene.

Emerging in its ecstasy of fire,

The burning soul is seen.

Will anyone say that of the last days of John Paul II? Because the ageing of this Pontiff was not about a burning soul going inward and being spiritualised, it was about a control freak exerting power over the leaders of his organisation, he’s, if you will, a bureaucrat to the end. It’s a cruel thing to say but that’s how I see it.

Stephen Crittenden: Will Johnston, thank you very much for being on the program.

William Johnston: Thank you, I enjoyed it.

Stephen Crittenden: Apparently, he was appointing bishops and accepting resignations literally on his deathbed.. William M. Johnston was Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts from 1965 to 1999 and he now teaches at the Yarra Theological Union in Melbourne. His book ‘The Austrian Mind’ is published by University of California Press, and he has an article on the names chosen by the Popes in Quadrant this week.

Johnston appeared on the ABC (no transcript yet) and actually called for a new name, pointing out that 913 was the last time a new name was used. He suggested Paschal for the Easter mystery or Francis for obvious reasons. Before the last conclave it was said the new pope would take a name expressing his regard for all three of his predecessors and be called John John Paul Paul, but fortunately wiser counsel prevailed. I like Paschal and Francis. Patrick would be fine. John XXIV would be wonderful. John Paul III would b a disaster.

BC-STV or preferences across the sea

Australian senator stumps for STV

Any kind of proportional representation is far superior to the single member electorate system, according to Australian Senator Bob Brown.

'Every system has its faults, but no system is as faulty as single member electorate,' said Brown during a speech in Powell River on April 5. 'Any change toward proportional representation is better. But from my point of view, STV (single transferable vote) is a wonderful system.'

Brown, famous for booing United States President George W. Bush when he addressed the Australian Parliament in 2003, was on a three-city tour in BC in support of Green Party leader and candidate in the Powell River-Sunshine Coasting riding Adriane Carr. About 140 attended his speech in the Evergreen Theatre at the Powell River Recreation Complex.

Brown was a family doctor in Australia when he became involved in a campaign to stop the construction of a dam on the Franklin River. That work led to his arrest, along with other protestors, and a decision to run as a Green Party candidate in Tasmania.

He was elected as the first, and only, Green Party MLA in Australia. He has been elected twice to the Tasmanian state House of Assembly and twice to the national Senate.

BC voters have an opportunity to vote on STV in the May 17 provincial election. It is the system recommended by the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform.

British Columbia Citizens Assembly on Electoral Reform

The Citizens Assembly was created by the Government of British Columbia with the unanimous support of the B.C. Legislature. It was an independent, non-partisan assembly of citizens who examined the province's electoral system - that is, how our votes determine who gets elected to sit in the provincial Legislature.

The Citizens Assembly had 160 members, one man and one woman from each of B.C's 79 provincial electoral districts (constituencies) plus two Aboriginal members. They were representative of the province as a whole, and worked for all British Columbians. Members were picked by random draw from a pool that reflected the gender, age and geographical make-up of British Columbia. Assembly chair Jack Blaney was also an additional member, the 161st.

The initiative was unique. Nowhere else in the world had such power been handed to randomly selected citizens.

The people of British Columbia will vote in a referendum on 17 May. The province has a history of disastrously one-sided election results (including governemnts winning landslide legislative majorities with a minority of the popular vote) that BC-STV is designed to cure.

Australia has a similar problem, the republic. A citizens assembly elected by random draw would probbaly be an excellent way to unblock the logjam on the issue. We use random juries for serious questions. British Columbia has used it for electoral reformmbly. South Australia recently used it for a constitutional convention. Why not the republic?

Red faces would be a lot better than tight lips

Beazley tight-lipped on McGuire approach

Federal Opposition Leader Kim Beazley has refused to comment on claims that Labor has approached some high profile media and sporting personalities to help it win the next election.

Several media outlets are reporting that Labor has asked the president of the Collingwood Football Club, Eddie McGuire, to stand at the next election.

Labor officials are also reported to have approached AFL boss Andrew Demetriou, Brisbane Lions coach Leigh Matthews and Essendon's Kevin Sheedy.

The last political movement to place Eddie McGuire in a prominent position was the Australian Republican Movement. They went on to well-deserved defeat in the 1999 republic referendum. It's bad enough that Labor may be chasing celebrities instead of persuasive policies. But Eddie McGuire? Really...