Dogging, or sex under the stars - www.smh.com.au

Voyeurs and exhibitionists drawn to outdoor fun have discovered erotic pleasures in normally placid English parks that have nothing to do with walking the dog.

'Dogging', a term that loosely describes a variety of sex acts performed outdoors or in parked cars in front of strangers (and sometimes with them), has become such a craze that health authorities have warned against its dangers. The term 'dogging' apparently comes from those who claim only to be 'taking the dog for a walk' - but are actually on the prowl for something more.

Web sites have sprung up across Britain extolling the pleasures of sex under the stars and online message boards list the best parks and carparks to watch people express themselves.

An academic who set out to study anti-social behaviour in parks and stumbled on a thriving dogging underworld said dangers were also lurking in the bushes.

Weird.

Howard in retreat on Iraq arsenal - www.smh.com.au

When Mr Howard committed troops to war in March he said Iraq had 'begun renewed production of chemical warfare agents, probably including mustard, sarin, cyclosarin and VX'.

Five months before the war, when Australia was already helping the US plan an invasion, he said: 'There is no doubt on the evidence, on the intelligence material available to us, that not only does Iraq possess chemical and biological weapons, but Iraq also has not abandoned her nuclear aspirations.'

During the war, the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, said: 'I certainly think the chemical, and probably biological, weapons exist. I don't think there's any doubt about that.'

Mr Howard yesterday said he had received credible intelligence on Iraq's 'WMD capability'.

'The intelligence we had at the time about their capability was very credible and very strong and I don't retreat one iota from the decision that we took [to go to war].'

When Howard was confronted with the State Department's questioning of the Iraq war his explanation was that it was only one line in a 66-page report. The ONA director-general threw himself on his sword and said that no-one told the prime minister.

When Howard was confronted with the Nigerien yellowcake fraud his explanation was that no-one told the Prime Minister.

When Howard was confronted with the 14 February JIC report his explanation was that it 'went into the mix' but was not specifically drawn to his attention. No-one has yet told us who it was that had not told the prime minister.

Now we have the ISG draft turning up all over Washington and still, no-one has told the prime minister.

Really, with his failure to keep himself informed on a question of war and peace is it not time the prime minister polished up his management skills? I'm sure there are some basic TAFE courses he could enroll for.

Bush has a battle on his hands

Rather than spurring the creation of a united front, the recurring attacks have seemed to spark infighting among the hawks. After Cheney revived a two-year-old story on a nationally broadcast television news program last Sunday about an alleged meeting between one of the September 11 hijackers and an Iraqi spy in Prague in April 2001, Rumsfeld told reporters three days later he had seen nothing to connect Saddam Hussein to the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, an assessment backed up by Rice and then by Bush himself.

At the same time, neo-conservatives outside the administration and close to Cheney, Wolfowitz and Feith kept up an offensive this week denouncing Rumsfeld's refusal to increase the number of US troops in Iraq to reduce insecurity there. Several neo-cons, including Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, also assailed Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, for allegedly warning Republicans that there must be 'no more wars' for the remainder of Bush's first term. The public nature of this infighting is remarkable in an administration that has obsessed about message management and spin control.

I think this is history's first case of rats trying to stay on a sinking ship.

While they flog a dead horse. But then in the Middle Ages dead horses were catapulted over city walls as a way to spread disease. Perhaps the Iraq Survey Group will find some dead horses of mass destruction somewhere in Iraq.

Don't Blame Bush's Speechwriters

These long months of weirdly combining tough talk with inadequate force have not only stood on its head Theodore Roosevelt's sage advice to 'speak softly and carry a big stick' but also seem almost to dare, taunt, and provoke our enemies into renewed attacks on American and British troops, friendly Jordanian officials, and supportive Iraqi police and religious authorities.

Perhaps, in order to induce other countries to send their troops to serve under an exclusive American command in Iraq, the president should promise to keep quiet. Unfortunately, on Tuesday at the United Nations the president was back at it again, declaring, 'Across the Middle East, people are safer' and proclaiming that the terrorists in Iraq 'will be defeated.' So, do not blame the speechwriters for the president's willful, wishful prevarications. Do not blame the US military for his initial unilateralism and inadequate force. And to our critics in Europe, I have this: Do not blame the American people -- they voted for Gore.

Go read...

Iraqi council backs off foreign ownership

BAGHDAD - Iraq's Governing Council on Wednesday backed off from a pledge by its finance minister to allow 100 percent foreign ownership in most economic sectors here, saying his comments were not 'official.'

A statement issued by the US-installed council distanced it from a key part of a sweeping economic package presented by interim Finance Minister Kamel al-Kilani at the International Monetary Fund meeting in Dubai on Sunday.

The text said only the council president could announce policy, 'and the statements attributed to the finance minister about the law of investment cannot be considered official.'

The minister's announcement that Iraq would be open to 100-percent foreign ownership in all sectors except oil had sparked criticism in Iraqi business circles.

al-Kilani is a Chalabi nominee so his attempt to enact the Washington Cosnensus is not all that unexpected.

Electronic voting: The Empire Strikes Back

Two major fronts have opened up in the battle over the use of potentially vulnerable voting technologies in just the past couple of days. Both of them warrant significant media attention, but seem at present to be going ignored. So we'll document them here in the hopes it will finally surface.

The usual meticulous research from Orcinus.

The hunt for weapons of mass destruction yields - nothing

An intensive six-month search of Iraq for weapons of mass destruction has failed to find a single trace of an illegal arsenal, according to accounts of a report circulated in Washington and London.

A draft of the report, compiled by the CIA-led 1,400-strong Iraq Survey Group (ISG), has been sent to the White House, the Pentagon and Downing Street, a US intelligence source said, and will contain no evidence of Iraqi stockpiles of biological, chemical or nuclear weapons.

'It demonstrates that the main judgments of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) in October 2002, that Saddam had hundreds of tonnes of chemical and biological agents ready, are false,' said the source.

The Security Council was right. The peace movement was right. Howard, Bush and Blair were wrong. The legal case for the Iraq war was built on sand. Australia has fought an unlawful and unjust war. Before the war all three leaders disavowed liberation as a war aim.

Naturally, no-one told the prime minister.

DeadBrain - White House sacks Bush speechwriters after poor UN performance

'We just have to work out the contract details, but we fully expect to have Mr al-Sahaf onboard before next season's campaign against evil-doers begins,' said the official. While no details are available at present there is a growing view in Washington that the US may have to take on a number of other Middle Eastern countries, particularly as it now appears that the Iraq Survey Group's interim report, due to be published next month, will say that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

'OK, so maybe we got the wrong country,' said the official, 'but we know WMDs are out there somewhere, and we'll need a good speechwriter like Mr al-Sahaf to help the President convince the doubting Jacques and Gerhards.'

Ahem...

Guzzlers will pay in drive to save water

Sydney's water-guzzling households will be hit with hefty excess charges under a scheme to be announced by the Carr Government.

The Government also plans to impose tough price penalties on Sydney Water if it takes more from dams than will be replaced naturally.

From 2005, households that consume above the average of 300 kilolitres a year should expect to pay as much as $5 for each additional kilolitre. Water below the threshold will remain relatively cheap at about 98 cents a kilolitre.

Is this what's known as 'soaking the rich'?

More seriously, the top 20% of households use 40% of the water. Conservation is better than straining the Sydney basin with a new dam or importing water from other catchment areas.

Blackbox Voting Scoop

The material suppressed at the instance of Diebold has now been posted by Scoop.co.nz. Diebold can hardly deny the authenticity of the memos they've had suppressed. Their letter of demand asserted copyright in the memos.
Seriously, anyone who thinks electronic voting is a good idea should go read the full article.

More on this at Infernal Press, Seeing the Forest, and The Agonist.

Bush to World: Drop Dead! - The president lays an egg at the U.N. By Fred Kaplan

Has an American president ever delivered such a bafflingly impertinent speech before the General Assembly as the one George W. Bush gave this morning?

Here were the world's foreign ministers and heads of state, anxiously awaiting some sign of an American concession to realism, even the sketchiest outline of a plan to share not just the burden but the power of postwar occupation in Iraq. And Bush gave them nothing, in some ways less than nothing.

In the few seconds he devoted to that subject, he cited only three areas in which the role of the United Nations (or any other nations) should be expanded: writing an Iraqi constitution, training a new corps of civil servants, and supervising elections. None of these notions is new.

Otherwise, Bush's message can be summarized as follows: The U.S.-led occupation authority is doing good work in Iraq; you should come help us; if you don't, you're on the side of the terrorists.

The best summation of Bush's Manichaean nonsense I've seen.

Alleged trouser snake smuggler refused bail

A man has appeared in a Sydney court charged with trying to smuggle snakes into the country in his trousers.

Per Adolfsson, 28, was arrested at Sydney airport on Monday night after he flew in from Thailand.

Customs officers say they found a total of eight snakes - four cobras and four boas - in cardboard packages strapped to his calves, which protected him from being bitten by the cobras.

The boas are being kept at Taronga Park Zoo but the cobras died en route.

Nice to see a man happy in his work...

Not Science Fiction: An Elevator to Space

SANTA FE, NM With advances toward ultrastrong fibers, the concept of building an elevator 60,000 miles high to carry cargo into space is moving from the realm of science fiction to the fringes of reality.

This month, the Los Alamos National Laboratory was a sponsor of a conference to ponder the concept. Yet, the keynote address was by a titan of science fiction, Arthur C. Clarke, speaking via satellite from his home in Sri Lanka. 'I'm happy that people are taking it more and more seriously,' said Mr. Clarke, whose novel 'The Fountains of Paradise' (1978) revolved around such a space elevator.

The discovery in 1991 of nanotubes, cylindrical molecules of carbon with many times the strength of steel, turned the idea from a fantastical impossibility to an intriguing possibility that could be realized in as little as a decade or two.

Proponents say the economic and technological advantages of a space elevator over rockets make it inevitable. They predict it will lower the cost of putting a satellite into space from $10,000 a pound to $100.

'As soon as we can build it, we should build it,' said Dr. Bryan E. Laubscher, a scientist at Los Alamos who organized the conference. Just as the transcontinental railroad opened the West in the late 1800's, 'I feel the space elevator is going to be such a paradigm shift in space access,' Dr. Laubscher said.

Easier economical access to space might also make practical other grandiose projects like solar power satellites that could collect sunlight and beam energy down to Earth.

The conference, a three-day session here, drew 60 people, a mix of scientists and engineers who are working on the concept, space enthusiasts who wanted to hear more and dilettantes from nearby Los Alamos laboratory attracted by curiosity.

The estimate is US$12 billion. That is a lot less than the International Space Station at US$100 billion. The environmental impacts would be radically less than the Shuttle which is also expensive and dangerous. All we need is the polymer/nanotube composite.

Blackbox Voting

NOTICE

Due to a dispute with Diebold, Incorporated, and its wholly owned subsidiary Diebold Election Systems, Inc. (collectively 'Diebold'), which is claiming links to certain materials that do not reside on the blackboxvoting.org website constitute� copyright infringement, blackboxvoting.org has been temporarily disabled.

We regret any inconvenience this may cause visitors and journalists to the blackboxvoting.org site and hope to have this matter resolved shortly.

In the interim, send questions or information requests to admin@blackboxvoting.org.

Link via DailyKOS

Bush isolated as speech to UN falls flat

Both Mr Chirac and the German chancellor Gerhard Schr�der, called for a transition within months, insisting that this was crucial to securing peace. Mr Bush has not laid out a timetable. 'This process must unfold according to the needs of Iraqis - neither hurried nor delayed by the voices of other parties' he said.

I guess George Bush's staff have told him he is an Iraqi, not an other party.

Water report recommends huge flow

Scientists have recommended a massive 1500 Gl extra flow for the Murray River to achieve significantly improved environmental outcomes, in a report leaked to The News.

The recommendation is likely to increase concern among irrigators who are worried they will have to hand over some of their water to achieve the target.

The scientific report also suggests that a total of 3000 Gl, equivalent to almost the whole capacity of Lake Eildon, would be needed to achieve a goal of a 'healthy, working River Murray system'.

The interim report has been prepared for the Murray Darling Basin Commission, which plans to release it in about three weeks.

Community Foodbowl Alliance chairman Peter Schwarz said the report would be viewed with some concern by irrigators because there was no indication yet where the extra water was going to come from.

He repeated earlier calls for the public release of the whole scientific report.

Murray Valley Community Action Group chairman Lester Wheatley said 1500 Gl was a benchmark figure established by the Ministerial Council without proper scientific consultation.

Fit's a pattern really. Reports contrary to the government's opinion don't get published if at all possible. The planned publication date, to coincide with the meeting of the MDB ministerial council, would have been swamped by the usual glowing reports of the ministerial decisions issued by the ministers. The 1500 gigalitre figure is a minimum to restore the river. Until now it was the maximum the MDB council was prepared to consider.

The 3000 gigalitre figure actually has some scientific basis unlike the lower figure decided by a politician standing blindfolded in front of a picture of a donkey.

Kofi Annan's address to the UN

In short, Excellencies, I believe the time is ripe for a hard look at fundamental policy issues, and at the structural changes that may be needed in order to strengthen them.

History is a harsh judge: it will not forgive us if we let this moment pass.

For my part, I intend to establish a High-Level Panel of eminent personalities, to which I will assign four tasks:

First, to examine the current challenges to peace and security;

Second, to consider the contribution which collective action can make in addressing these challenges;

Third, to review the functioning of the major organs of the United Nations and the relationship between them; and

Fourth, to recommend ways of strengthening the United Nations, through reform of its institutions and processes.

The Panel will focus primarily on threats to peace and security. But it will also need to examine other global challenges, in so far as these may influence or connect with those threats.

I will ask the Panel to report back to me before the beginning of the next session of this General Assembly, so that I can make recommendations to you at that session. But only you can take the firm and clear decisions that will be needed.

Those decisions might include far-reaching institutional reforms. Indeed, I hope they will.

But institutional reforms alone will not suffice. Even the most perfect instrument will fail, unless people put it to good use.

The United Nations is by no means a perfect instrument, but it is a precious one. I urge you to seek agreement on ways of improving it, but above all of using it as its founders intended to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, to reestablish the basic conditions for justice and the rule of law, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.

The world may have changed, Excellencies, but those aims are as valid and urgent as ever. We must keep them firmly in our sights.

Okay, in a perfect world the EU would get a single European seat to replace the British and French seats. Latin America, Africa and the Muslim world would get a seat. Brazil, India, Japan and Indonesia have reasonable claims in their own right.

There is just not going to be agreement on the veto staying as it is or on the Big Five keeping an absolute veto while new members get nothing. Let's think about

• restricting the absolute veto to the existing permanent members on Chapter VII matters only
• requiring two permanent members for a veto on anything else
• • making any use of the veto conditional on ratifying and observing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
  • contributing to UN peacekeeping operations
  • complying with the Security Council's resolutions

Bush extends exemption at Area 51

CARSON CITY, Nev. - Invoking national security, President Bush has renewed an exemption allowing the Air Force to keep mum about top-secret operations at a southern Nevada base.

Bush's memorandum said it was of 'paramount interest' to exempt the Groom Lake base about 90 miles north of Las Vegas from disclosing classified information.

Also known as Area 51, the mysterious base sits on a dry lake bed and is heavily patrolled. The area is in a no-fly zone.

The secrecy has fueled speculation about UFOs, aliens and other strange occurrences around Area 51.

Tempted as I am to launch another allegation of Bush conspiracy, I think I may have been scooped on this one.

Salon.com Technology | An open invitation to election fraud

SALON: But one of the problems with optical-scan ballots is that you have to print up a lot of paper -- and, you know, if this election is postponed until March, a lot of the counties are going to have huge bills because they have to print new ballots.

HARRIS: Oh, goodness! I hadn't thought of that. Huge, huge bills, completely wasted.

SALON: So isn't that an argument for touch-screen voting?

HARRIS: I think the touch screens, if they had a paper trail so that we could do a proper audit, they would be my choice. The thing is if you speak Chinese, they can print something in Chinese. There would be no reason for all these combinations of ballots that folks have. It's kind of a nightmare which would be solved with the touch screens that can print.

SALON: Yes, I imagine that's one of the main selling points for touch-screen machines.

HARRIS: I would think so. It's just that they're not auditable. I'm not opposed to it, and I think it has tremendous advantages, but it just needs to be auditable. That's a deal-breaker -- it has to be auditable. And why I've been so down on Diebold is because they're the poster child for why it has to be auditable.

Strangely enough John Stuart Mill gave the solution to this problem in On representative government:

The most serious, in appearance, of the objections may be the most briefly answered; the assumed impossibility of guarding against fraud, or suspicion of fraud, in the operations of the Central Office. Publicity, and complete liberty of inspecting the voting papers after the election, were the securities provided; but these, it is maintained, would be unavailing; because, to check the returns, a voter would have to go over all the work that had been done by the staff of clerks. This would be a very weighty objection, if there were any necessity that the returns should be verified individually by every voter. All that a simple voter could be expected to do in the way of verification would be to check the use made of his own voting paper; for which purpose every paper would be returned, after a proper interval, to the place from whence it came. But what he could not do would be done for him by the unsuccessful candidates and their agents. Those among the defeated who thought that they ought to have been returned would, singly or a number together, employ an agency for verifying the process of the election; and if they detected material error, the documents would be referred to a Committee of the House of Commons, by whom the entire electoral operations of the nation would be examined and verified, at a tenth part the expense of time and money necessary for the scrutiny of a single return before an Election Committee under the system now in force.

All that's needed is to give each voter a certified copy of their ballot that they can carry away. If there's any variance between the official tally and the certified copies it will show up quite quickly. It would even be possible (assuming a unique number with adequate security) to check individual ballots for their accuracy.

The ACT is investigating electronic voting. It's a rah rah project. I suspect Australia will have similar problems sometime soon.

Arctic ice shelf splits

The largest ice shelf in the Arctic has fractured, releasing all the water from the freshwater lake it dammed.

The Ward Hunt Ice Shelf is located on the north coast of Ellesmere Island in Canada's Nunavut territory.

The huge mass of floating ice, which has been in place for at least 3,000 years, is now in two major pieces.

The scientists who report the break-up in the journal Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) say it is further evidence of ongoing and accelerated climate change in the north polar region.

The researchers - Warwick Vincent and Derek Mueller of Laval University in Quebec City, Canada; and Martin Jeffries of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, US - have been studying the shelf onsite and through satellite radar imagery and helicopter overflights.

This is all extremely reassuring. No wonder the White House finds it necessary to redact environmental studies to show the earth is not warming.