CONTENTS / BLOG (18), Just World Campaign

   Related article: Planned US-Israeli Attack on Iran, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=%20CH20050501&articleId=66 , by Michel Chossudovsky.
   Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
   The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) at www.globalresearch.ca grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles in their entirety, or any portions thereof, on community internet sites, as long as the text & title are not modified. The source must be acknowledged and an active URL hyperlink address to the original CRG article must be indicated. The author's copyright note must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor@yahoo.com
   www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner.
   To express your opinion on this article, join the discussion at Global Research's News and Discussion Forum http://globalresearch.ca.myforums.net/index.php . For media inquiries: crgeditor@yahoo.com . © Copyright Michel Chossudovsky, GlobalResearch.ca, 2006

AWB mess symbolic of a wider malaise

 
   The West Australian, by Andre Malan, andre.malan@wanews.com.au , p 14, Thursday, February 2, 2006
The idea of Australia's monopoly wheat exporter, AWB, paying hundreds of millions of dollars in kickbacks to the regime of the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, seems so preposterous that it could almost be the punchline to a joke.
   Yet an insider in the grain industry -- not a person given to exaggeration -- assures me that AWB's involvement in murky deals has been a big talking point in the industry for years. No one even marginally involved in the wheat trade could have failed to be aware of it, he claims.
   The Australian Wheat Board used to be a Federal Government body, but it was transformed into a private company owned by wheat farmers in 1999 and floated on the stock exchange two years later.
   The fact that it continued with dodgy deals long after they became widely known raises the questions of why it has taken so long for the scandal to break, and why the Federal Government, which must also have been aware of the talk, did not intercede a long time ago in the interests of AWB's future and Australia's trading reputation.
   It also prompts the much more serious question of whether lies and corruption are gradually becoming an acceptable part of business and politics.
   Instead of being thought of as immoral and unethical, tactics of the sort AWB is accused of resorting to have become part of the cut and thrust of trade that operators deliberately employ.
   There's certainly plenty of evidence that people in advanced Western countries have become inured to scandal and are losing their sense of outrage. If the Watergate scandal had broken in 2006 rather than in the 1970s, it would probably not have had the same impact -- nor the same consequences.
   President Bill "I did not have sex with that woman" Clinton twisted the truth so often that he was no longer able to recognise it, and the Bush administration has been plagued by so many scandals that the news media have trouble keeping abreast of them.
   Two of the most frequently repeated quotes are "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance" (writer Wendell Phillips) and "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" (Edmund Burke), but the public has become lazy in its vigilance and relies on politicians and the media to tell us what's wrong, and what should be done about it.
   In Australia, John Howard remains our popular and unassailable leader in spite of being the man who took cynicism to new heights by dividing political promises into "core" ones that would be kept, and "non-core" promises that it was OK to break. The distinction, of course, depended entirely on his own discretion.
   Even more shamefully, the Howard Government was never made to pay for its part of the most hideous lie in recent Australian history -- allowing the electorate to believe that refugees had thrown their children overboard in an incident shortly before the 2001 election.
   If you take into account that they come from a culture where politicians distort the truth and where the national obsession seems to be to become obscenely rich, it becomes easier to see how the AWB bosses saw no harm in huge amounts of Australian money being diverted into the pockets of a murderous dictator with whom we would soon be at war.
   But the things that the AWB is accused of are not only immoral, they also turned out to be stupid. On top of AWB shareholders losing a lot of money as their shares plummet over the prospect of their company losing its monopoly rights, there is a strong prospect that some AWB executives will be charged.
   And the Howard Government is not out of it yet. This week it emerged that Australia's Ambassador in the US, Michael Thawley, lobbied US Congress to drop a probe it was conducting into the AWB's payments to Iraq in 2004. The Opposition's reasonable assumption is that the Government was attempting to cover up the scandal before the 2004 Federal election.

Bogyman ban breaks down

 
The Premier shows a dangerous disdain for voter views by putting Brian Burke ally Norm Malborough in Cabinet
   The West Australian, by Robert Taylor, "Inside State" columnist, p 15, Thursday, February 2, 2006
The strangest thing among many strange things in WA politics this week was the spectre of the new Premier defending one of his two new ministers -- Norm Marlborough -- before the Peel MLA had even been sworn into Cabinet let alone got a chance to stuff something up.
   Alan Carpenter's consistent defence against claims that Mr Marlborough is too close to former premier Brian Burke to be allowed into Cabinet has been, in the words of Pete Townshend: "We won't get fooled again."
   "It's a matter of political maturity. One of the good outcomes of today, it's related to the political maturity of Government and the Labor Party in Western Australia," said Mr Carpenter on Tuesday as Mr Marlborough stood beaming behind him.
   "The problems that beset the Labor Party that so many people want to keep talking about are a long time ago. I've moved on, we move on the rest of the State has moved on.
   "We are a mature party, a mature Government, with mature people in Government capable of making the right decisions in the best interests of the people of Western Australia."
   Mr Carpenter said Mr Marlborough understood that "there will be scrutiny" and he dismissed the possibility of Mr Marlborough providing fresh ammunition to a struggling Opposition.
   "The Liberal Party, in particular, have been making an issue of the remnants of WA Inc for a long time and they've lost government. We're in Government," he said.
  [Picture] Alan Carpenter: An early defence.  
   Which is true. Labor has won the last two elections but the electorate voted for Geoff Gallop not Alan Carpenter and one of the reasons it voted for Dr Gallop was his rigid approach to exorcising WA Inc ghosts.
   Dr Gallop was often accused of being paranoid when it came to business. There was none of the "four on the floor" entrepreneur approach about his administration.
  ‘One reason people voted for Dr Gallop was his rigid exorcising of WA Inc ghosts. ’  
   He insisted on a "process driven" government that frustrated the hell out of the Terrace but reassured the average punter that the interaction between business and government was above board.
   He famously banned ministers from contact with Mr Burke, who is not only a powerful figure in the party's factional system but earns his living as a political lobbyist for a range of commercial interests.
   He's not the only one in the field -- there are a number of former politicians including Mr Burke's partner Julian Grill, Labor's John Halden and Megan Anwyl and the Liberals' Barry MacKinnon doing the same kind of work along with plenty of journalists and public relations types.
   But none of them carries the same bogyman image as Mr Burke and none has the same potential to derail the Government merely by association.
   Dr Gallop knew that and he probably also knew he couldn't stop his ministers talking to Mr Burke. But the value of the ban was in the public's perception even if the Opposition did discover the occasional contact and fly into a flap.
   Just last year, after leading Labor to a second election victory, Dr Gallop reportedly put his job on the line when caucus tried to foist Mr Marlborough on him. Caucus backed down. Clearly when it came to a choice between Dr Gallop and Mr Marlborough there was no choice.
   Mr Carpenter, who does not have the authority of an election win behind him, has decided he can live with Mr Marlborough and has settled on the "we've all moved on" argument as his first line of defence.
   The amazing thing is how quickly Dr Gallop's determination to distance Mr Burke broke down once he left the scene, with Mr Marlborough romping into Cabinet and only a handful of left-wing MPs grouped around Burke long-time adversary Jim McGinty putting up resistance.
   One Left MP claimed that the party had "taken it's eye off the ball" in electing Mr Marlborough but most just thought it was time he was finally rewarded with a Cabinet post after 20 years on the back bench.
   If that's true it displays a dangerous disdain of the public's right to get value for its money but maybe it will come in entertainment value. Here's a selection of recent Normisms from Hansard.
   On politics:
   I make it a habit to go down to Lark Hill every second Saturday morning usually from 6am to 8am. I have a talk Johnny Miller, Bobby Maumill and Lenny Pike. That is where I get all my political advice from.
   On Alannah MacTiernan
   If a C.Y. O'Connor medal were to be awarded for planning initiatives and engineering balls, the Minister for Planning and Infrastructure would get it.
   On Mr Burke:
   He is like a good Samaritan; he likes picking up the waifs and strays. That is why he is a friend of mine.
   On the Opposition:
   They are like dead carcasses in the breeze, covered in blowflies. They are right on the nose, and they will continue to be on the nose until somebody cuts them down in pity.
  [Picture] Mr Malborough: Says he gets his political advice at the Lark Hill racetrack.

'What is point of new security law?'

 
   Weekly Telegraph (Britain, Australian edition), BY AMY IGGULDEN, p 2, Wed Feb 8 - Tue Feb 14, 2006
   BRITAIN: IN FIVE weeks' time, Milan Rai is to be prosecuted for organising a remembrance ceremony without a permit He was arrested at the Cenotaph in Whitehall last year with Maya Evans, a fellow anti-war campaigner, under security legislation designed to protect politicians.
   Evans has already been prosecuted, convicted and fined for reading out the names of British soldiers killed in Iraq. But Rai's criminal record has been longer coming, because his organisational role in the peaceful protest was greater, and required the attentions of the Crown Prosecution Service.
   He has been told to appear at Bow Street magistrates' court, central London, on March 16, and faces a three-month prison sentence or a fine.
   This week the campaigners said that the failure of police to arrest protesters who called for murder outside the Danish embassy in London showed serious inconsistencies in security legislation.
   Evans, 26, a vegan chef from Hastings, East Sussex, said: "I think those extremists who were inciting violence should be asked to justify their actions. But the police are left in a very awkward situation if a woman can be arrested for holding a remembrance ceremony while others are rightly allowed their freedom of speech."
  [Picture] Maya Evans: convicted  
   She said the demonstration also illustrated that the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act, introduced last year, is "completely impractical".
   She added: "Part of the Act says that you must apply for permission to hold a demonstration in Westminster, yet 60 people held an unplanned demonstration when the 100th British soldier was killed in Iraq... What is the point of this legislation?"
   Rai, 40, a campaigner for the group Justice Not Vengeance, said: "There is a lot of inconsistency going on and the police are in limbo."
   Mark Wallace, a campaigner with the lobby group The Freedom Association, is less charitable. He was stopped by police under counter-terrorism laws last autumn after asking passers-by to sign a petition against ID cards.
   He was filmed and questioned under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000. "It's astonishing that the police will tolerate people calling for bloodshed... while they are prepared to target someone who is just collecting signatures."

Murky queries about our political system

 
Why would a British lord want to influence an Australian election? 
   The West Australian, THE MORAL MAZE, by HUGH MACKAY, p 18, Saturday, February 11, 2006
This is a column about the dark side of politics. Oh, don't worry: it's not an attack on the Government's notorious capacity for buck-passing; not a diatribe about the lack of integrity in high places; not a lament for the passing of the Westminster system of ministerial accountability.
   No, this is about an issue that's rarely discussed - election campaign funding. The recent release of the names of donors to the parties' war chests for the 2004 Federal election raised a few eyebrows, including mine. It also raised a number of quite murky questions about the morality of our evolving political system.
   Why, for instance, did Lord Ashcroft donate $1 million to the Liberal Party's election campaign funds?
   The obvious answer is that he wanted to help ensure the Libs would win. But why would a British lord so badly want to influence the outcome of an election in another country?
 ‘Is democracy well served by the constant attendance of spin doctors upon our political leaders, so their every public utterance is carefully contrived?’ 
   Was it proper for the party to accept his money? Do we care if a foreigner injects such a vast amount of money into one of our election campaigns?
   Is there any money our political parties wouldn't take? (The Libs accept donations from tobacco companies; Labor used to, but now doesn't.) And what of the companies, foundations and individuals who generously donate to both sides of politics, sometimes in equal amounts?
   Presumably such generous corporate and private donors want to be prominently placed on the political radar screen, regardless of who wins. Or is their motive simply to keep the coffers of both major parties filled so they can run equally well-funded campaigns? Hardly: you could achieve precisely the same result by giving nothing to either side.
   Perhaps they believe a democracy is more robust if the competing parties have big money to spend on their increasingly lavish election campaigns. But how healthy is it for a modern democracy that parties must call on the skills of advertising and public relations practitioners to get their messages across?
   Is politics really just like the marketing of a brand? Is it appropriate for policy discussion to be supported (indeed swamped) by slick slogans, carefully wrought TV commercials and all the other weapons in the armoury of the commercial marketing industry?
   Is democracy well served by the constant attendance of spin doctors upon our political leaders, so their every public utterance is carefully contrived?
   Yes, it happens in most of the democracies we compare ourselves with, but how bad would it be if election campaign advertising were scrapped?
   What if politicians were simply given media time and space to present their policies and to debate them with each other, supplemented by all the activities - including brochures and posters - traditionally associated with personal campaigning in local electorates? Would we be better or worse off?
   If the absence of expensive advertising campaigns would actually improve the integrity of the electoral process, then vast amounts of money could be saved and political parties would no longer be beholden to their sponsors.
   And if huge advertising expenditure could be shown to have had little or no effect on the outcome of an election (a conclusion both sides should have come to after the 2004 result), then why not keep your money in the bank?
   But if the use of commercial advertising techniques is demonstrably effective in influencing the outcome of elections, then we are on a slippery slope in which the biggest and best advertising campaign will have the potential to win an election.
   Then, as in the US, money will become the crucial factor in political campaigning. Does that thought send a chill up your spine? moralmaze@fairfax.com.au

Horror on our doorstep

 
   The Courier Mail (Brisbane, Qld, Australia), www.thecourier mail.news.com. au/common/story_ page/0,5936,1828 6196%5E27197 ,00.html , by David Costello, February 27, 2006
Australia faces tough choices over the bloodshed in Indonesia's Papua province, writes David Costello
   BRISBANE: AT times, the politicians acting in this nation's interest can take it a long way from our core values. This sums up Australia's position not to seriously challenge Indonesia over its appalling treatment of indigenous Melanesians in Papua province.
   There is no doubt that crimes against humanity are being perpetrated on our doorstep. Some believe the policies the Indonesian state is pursuing, through its armed forces (TNI) and police, amount to genocide.
   A 2003 Yale Law School paper found the evidence "suggests that the Indonesian Government has committed proscribed acts with the intent to destroy the West Papuans . . . in violation of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide".
   Jakarta took control of what was the Dutch colony of West New Guinea in 1963 and legitimised the seizure in the 1969 Act of Free Choice, in which Papuan representatives were forced at gunpoint to join Indonesia.
   Since then, the military and police have acted with impunity against the local population.
   Reports compiled by the US State Department, the University of Sydney's Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, Amnesty International and Papuan rights group Els-Ham have documented arbitrary killings, rape and torture as well as forced labour and relocation.
   The Yale study claimed that Indonesian authorities destroyed the property and crops of indigenous people and excluded them from upper levels of government, business and education.
   Els-Ham says the documented death toll is more than 100,000 but many observers say it is higher.
   No one should be surprised at this catalogue of horror. It is a common pattern in "military operations" areas at the mercy of the TNI and its militia groups.
   A recent UN-sanctioned report found up to 180,000 East Timorese died as a result of the Indonesian occupation and that the military used rape and starvation as weapons. Papuan separatists took heart from the events of 1999 when East Timor chose independence in a process started by Australian diplomacy.
   But the violence unleashed by the TNI and the subsequent intervention by an Australian-led UN force has left deep scars in Canberra and Jakarta.
   Sections of Indonesia's elite worry Australia is trying to break up their country and secretly supports Papuan independence.
   That is why the Howard Government and Labor Opposition preface remarks on the area by pledging support for the territorial integrity of Indonesia.
   They say Jakarta should crack down on military excesses and follow up on the 2001 special autonomy package - even though autonomy is a sham and undermined by Jakarta's unconstitutional move to split the province. But the message from Canberra is that Papuans can forget about self-determination - or any independent investigation of human rights.
   This, the major parties believe, is not in Australia's interest. And they are correct. If our leaders were to have a collective brain meltdown and seriously press Jakarta over Papua, the regional fallout would be dramatic.
   Relations with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his government would be frozen and a bilateral security treaty, to be signed this year, aborted.
   Other Asian countries - including China - would accuse Australia of lecturing and interfering in a neighbour's internal affairs and our participation in meetings such as the Asia-Europe Summit would be at risk.
   Washington would not be impressed given that both the US and Australia are resuming links with the TNI with the aim of fighting Islamist terror groups.
   Indonesia views the acquisition of the province as one of its key achievements and has vowed never to let it go. It needs the wealth from projects such as the massive Freeport McMoRan gold and copper mine at Grasberg.
   If pushed to the wall by foreign intervention, TNI would take a terrible revenge and create a refugee crisis which would destabilise Papua New Guinea.
   But for all Australia's caution, the Papua question is erupting again thanks to the 43 asylum seekers who arrived on Cape York in January and are now on Christmas Island. Queensland lobbyists close to the refugees and their leader Herman Wainggai expect the group will get bridging visas allowing them to stay while their cases are assessed.
   Indonesia, which has asked for the return of the asylum seekers, would view such action as an acceptance of their claims of persecution. It would also fear the Papuans would use Australia as a base to further their cause. This concern is well-founded.
   Until now, Papua has been an issue for the minor parties, with Democrat Senator Natasha Stott Despoja and Green senators Bob Brown and Kerry Nettle expressing concern. But after visiting Christmas Island, Queensland National Party Senator Barnaby Joyce said the Papuans' claims of religious and ethnic persecution should be assessed.
   Watching all this are pressure groups, including the Australia West Papua Association.
   Jason McCloud, a Brisbane-based AWPA spokesman, says Australia should investigate reports of atrocities and support an independent review by the UN Commission on Human Rights.
   It should also support observer status for the province at the Pacific Islands Forum.
   He says the Federal Government should acknowledge Australia's role in Papuan history, particularly its support for the flawed Act of Free Choice.
   None of this is going to become mainstream party policy any time soon. But there is a price to pay in the world arena for equivocating when civilians are being slaughtered and starved.
   Australia is likely to be judged adversely when the definitive history of this mess is written. David Costello is The Courier Mail's foreign editor

Classic comment on OBE

 
   Community Newspapers (Suburban papers in Perth, Western Australia), COMMUNITY COMMENT segment, Letter from Bill Plowman, Salter Point, February 28, 2006
   PERTH: IT is more in sorrow than in anger that I respond to the new scientific language prompted by the Minister for Education.
   Austen, Milton, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Dickens, and Orwell will be forgotten.
   For all generations that came after them "their ideas were a father to the thought".
   Now "those with a tongue in their heads and an ear for poetry" ask: Is it a "foregone conclusion" that these works of art are no longer relevant?
   Has education in the 21st century declared "the game is up for such authors" and it's best for them to "clear out bag and baggage"?
   Primary and secondary students will henceforth be given "short shrift" by a system of education that ignored the classics.
   "As good as luck would have it" - when or if students discover these great works- they will feel their education was "without rhyme or reason."
   How long will it be before these timeless authors, whose social commentaries are as relevant today as the day they were written, disappear?
   Can we conclude that without any knowledge of these writings that will be "heard no more" will it be "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing?"
   So if you cannot understand my argument and declare "it's Greek to me", like me you are quoting William Shakespeare.
* Star letter. The writer - who wins a book from The Five Mile Press - should call 6330 9100 to arrange collection of his/her prize.

D’Orazio super rip-off: He’s lying, say staff

 
But Premier stands by his man, saying he believes it was all just an unfortunate mistake
   The West Australian, by GARY ADSHEAD, EXCLUSIVE, Page One, Friday, March 10, 2006
   PERTH (W.A.): The man who managed Police and Justice Minister John D'Orazio's Morley pharmacy yesterday directly contradicted the Minister's statement to Parliament about his superannuation debts, insisting he told Mr D'Orazio several months before November 2005 that staff were complaining about unpaid employer contributions.
   Mr D'Orazio told the Legislative Assembly on Wednesday night that he only became "clearly aware" that staff had not received their superannuation contributions when he was selling the pharmacy in November last year.
   But Saul Sacht told The West Australian yesterday that staff complained to him before May last year about Mr D'Orazio's failure to pay their superannuation entitlements.
   "The girls, ages ago, had spoken about their super funds," Mr Sacht " said. "I mentioned to John that nothing had gone into the girls' super funds and he told me that the superannuation had all been paid. This was ages ago."
   Mr Sacht said he recalled raising the staff's concerns with Mr D'Orazio well before May 2005, which was when at least two complaints about unpaid superannuation were lodged by pharmacy assistants with the Australian Taxation Office.
  [Picture] Head to head: Hayley Sherratt and Stacy Weatherley dispute John D'Orazio's version of events over the superannuation payments affair.  Pictures: lain Gillespie/Greg Burke  
   "It was once when I spoke to John and he said it had all been taken care of," Mr Sacht repeated. "John told me it had all been paid up. I didn't handle the superannuation, he does all the pay."
   Former employee Hayley Sherratt said she had approached Mr D'Orazio before May 2005 about her superannuation. "I know for a fact that I approached him so if he can lie about it between his teeth then so be it," she said. Mr D'Orazio said he could not remember the conversation.
   "I don't remember that conversation, but I don't want to say it did or didn't happen," he said. Alan Carpenter said different versions of one event did not necessarily mean one person was lying. "I'm not saying that that young woman is lying," he said.
   The West Australian has also obtained a copy of a superannuation document and an attached note sent to Mr D'Orazio in August 2005 by a pharmacist he employed. It reads: "Dear John, please pay my super into the above fund. It has been overdue since March."
   Mr D'Orazio said he was unaware of the document when The West Australian showed it to him yesterday. But a copy of a cheque signed by Mr D'Orazio on October 6 last year, which has also been obtained by The West Australian, proves the Minister acted on the pharmacist's complaint - but paid her just $58.05.
   Since then the pharmacist, who asked to remain anonymous, has lodged a complaint with the ATO claiming she is still owed hundreds of dollars by the Minister's former business.
   Other former staff have told The West Australian they received little or no superannuation contributions during their time at Mr D'Orazio's Galleria shopping centre pharmacy and complained about it.
   One pharmacist recalled speaking to Mr D'Orazio with other staff before November last year: "We all caught him downstairs from the pharmacy and he said it's on its way."
THE SUPER AFFAIR 10, 11

WTO Decision Endangers Australia’s GM laws

 
   Social Justice Monitor (Australia), News from Global Trade Watch, p 10, April 2006
A decision during February by the World Trade Organisation's Dispute Resolution panel has put in danger Australia's state laws regulating genetically modified (GM) foods
   The WTO has ruled that the "precautionary" moratoriums on GM crops in place in some European countries are illegal under the WTO's "Sanitary and Phytosanitary" (SPS) Agreement
   In 2004, the United States used the WTO to challenge the European Union's de-facto moratorium on GM crop imports. Last month, the WTO disputes panel finally produced an interim ruling, which, while dismissing most at the US's claims against the EU, found that some elements of European GM laws and regulations were "illegal".
   The WTO panel - made up of three trade lawyers meeting in total secrecy - ruled that bans on GM crops in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Luxembourg were illegal as a result of the EU's obligations under the SPS Agreement. While the WTO ruling did not disallow import bans altogether, it did rule that such bans must be based on a scientific risk assessment.
   Almost every Australian state has a moratorium on some GM crops, put in place because of remaining uncertainties about how safe they are for people and the environment. Australia's bans on GM foods are based on the "Precautionary Principle" - the idea that communities should not proceed with new technologies until they know how dangerous they might be - that is, before there is complete evidence one way or the other.
   But the WTO ruling turns the precautionary principle on its head, making it illegal for governments to ban the development of a GM crop unless they have conclusive risk assessments which demonstrate the dangers of the crop 'before' it is banned.
   Although the GM bans are state-based, under WTO rules the federal government has responsibility for enforcing WTO decisions affected state or local governments. For instance, the WTO can rule against laws [of] Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Luxembourg, even though it's only the EU - the umbrella body for these countries - that is a signatory to WTO rules.
   The WTO ruling gives the US ammunition to challenge Australia's state-based GM moratoriums at the WTO. Following the ruling, US officials said the finding against the EU "sends an important warning to other parts of the world - particularly nations in Africa and Asia - against following the European lead in throwing up bans or partial bans against genetically modified crops"
   Australians will now have to wait and see whether the WTO - an unelected, unaccountable body, which meets in secret and keeps almost no records of what is discussed in its meetings - will provide a forum for US corporations to force changes to Australia's GM laws.
   If you'd like more information about the WTO's ruling, you can download a detailed briefing on it from Friends of the Earth here: Global Trade Watch, PO Box 6014, Collingwood North, VIC 3066, Tel: 03 9853 3228

  TAKE ACTION! Ban the Terminator!  

   Social Justice Monitor (Australia), p 10, April 2006
Terminator seeds are genetically engineered to be sterile. They have been developed by the multinational seed/agrochemical industry and the United States government to prevent farmers from saving and re-planting harvested seed.
   Terminator has been universally condemned because of its serious potential impacts for farmers, indigenous peoples, food security and biodiversity. The technology has no benefits for farmers. Instead, it is designed to transfer wealth from farmers to large agribusiness by preventing farmers from saving and re-using harvested seed.
   Terminator has not yet been commercialized or field-tested but tests are currently being conducted in greenhouses in the United States. The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) currently has a de facto moratorium on field testing and commercial use of Terminator (officially known as Genetic Use Restriction Technologies - or GURTs).
   But the de facto moratorium on Terminator technology is under threat due to the lobbying by the Australian Government. From 20th-31st March 2006, the Terminator moratorium will be up for discussion at the 8th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Brazil. In the lead up meetings, the Australian delegation played an aggressive role lobbying to undermine the defacto ban on Terminator.
   Now is the time to send a clear signal to the Australian Agriculture Minister that Australians support a ban on Terminator Technology. Send an e-mail to Peter McGauran, Australia's agriculture minister, asking him to Ban the Terminator: www.ban terminator. org/take_action/ national_ campaigns/ email_the_ australian_ government

PRESS RELEASE
PUBLIC NOTICE TO CONCERNED CITIZENS OF W.A.
This is part of the WA Constitution that is under question by Mr. Brian Shaw.
Brian Shaw v Bugg / Challenge Supreme Court of W.A, on Thursday April 6^th, 2006 at 10.30am
Constitution Act 1889 WA The following section (73) of the Constitution Act 1889 WA clearly shows that any Bill that effects Sections 2, 3, 4, 50, 51 and 73 Constitution Act 1889 WA is required by Section 73.2 (g) to be presented to the electorate (Referendum) prior to being given Assent in the name of the Queen, and that any Bill that contravenes this section shall be as no effect as an Act
The "Australia Acts Request Act 1985" and the "Australia Act 1986" both amended section 50 & 51 of the Constitution Act 1889 WA at section 14 of the named Acts,, this has never been put to the Electorate in accordance with section 73.2 (g), therefore is Ultra Vires
As it happens Mr. McGinty unlawfully removed references to the Monarch / Crown replacing them with the State by the "Acts Amendment and Repeal (Courts and Legal Practice) Act 2003 WA" without the consent of the Electorate
The above named Act was enacted on the 1st January 2004, as it follows any Act passed by parliament after such date is null and void, inclusive of the "Electoral Amendment and Repeal Act 2005" (One Value One Vote)
This type of activity has gone on in the Federal Constitution as well, and now it is up to all the Electorate to show some PEOPLE POWER and say enough is enough by attending the W.A. Supreme Court to support Brian Shaw in his attempt to charge the Attorney-General Jim McGinty with TREASON on Thursday 6th April 2006 at 10.30am
Ron McLean
President- One Nation WA Inc. office 9361.9388 or mobile 0428.712.017

AquaBits

 
   AquaBits, Various newsitems, (Northern) Spring 2006, E-mailed April 14, 2006
   In this issue:

Corporate Splash at 4th World Water Forum

CALIFORNIA: "Do as I say, not as I do..."

MICHIGAN: Courts limit Nestlé's right to water withdrawal

Follow in These Footsteps

We're Not Making This Up

Canada to Coca-Cola: "Bring It On"

AUSTRALIA: Fighting Back Down Under

Do you Bling?

WATER TIDBITS: The Bad, The Worse, and The Completely Ridiculous
Corporate Splash at the 4th World Water Forum
   MEXICO CITY: Corporate sponsors were in the spotlight as usual at the tri-annual World Water Forum, which took place in Mexico City in mid-March. With private water companies under fire for a series of well-publicized failures of managing water systems around the world, many are on the retreat. But stepping up in their place are bottled water makers who say the "real money" is not in privatizing water systems, but rather, just selling water in bottles.
   Stepping up to the plate as a sponsor at the forum was Coca-Cola, maker of Dasani, and Ethos Water - a new so-called socially responsible brand of bottled water now owned by Starbucks - which promises to donate 5 cents from every sale of bottled water to "helping children and their communities get clean water." It sounds good, but they're still selling water for nearly $2 a bottle, which contributes to the whole cycle of privatized water - which is why many communities can't afford water! Note to Starbucks: Don't contribute to the problem - help us to solve the world water crisis!
CALIFORNIA: "Do as I say, not as I do..."
   A recent article in the Los Angeles Times revealed that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has been using tax dollars to pay for Sparkletts water to be brought into their office. In the last two years, city officials have spent $1 million promoting the safety and top quality of the public water system in Los Angeles; at the same time, city officials spent $88,900 to purchase bottled water. Even more shocking is that the water department alone spent the most on bottled water: $31,160.
   The city of Los Angeles has been known to bottle its own municipal water and pass it out at city events to promote the quality of the water, but little do people know while they are receiving bottles of municipal water the department officials don't drink the water themselves. C'mon folks, you had to know you'd get busted for this one.
MICHIGAN: Courts limit Nestlé's right to water withdrawal
   In 2001 the Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation (MCWC) sued Nestlé Waters North America, the parent company of Ice Mountain, for withdrawing public water sources in Mecosta County. In 2003 Mecosta County Circuit court shut down Nestlé's wells, a decision which was quickly appealed. The Court of Appeals ruled in December that the withdrawal was excessive, but sent the case back to the lower court to set a 'reasonable use balancing' rule because Nestlé's reduced water flows had substantially harmed environment and surrounding landowners.
   MCWC appealed the decision to the Michigan Supreme Court, charging that rules on withdrawal levels sets a slippery precedent, opening the door to further export out of the Great Lakes basin. Meanwhile, the group managed to reduce Nestlé's current withdrawal from 400 gallons per minute to 218 (less during droughts and fish spawning). This limit will stand until the Supreme Court rules in the case. For more information: http://www.savemiwater.org
Follow in These Footsteps
   Louisville, Ky.'s water utility has given away empty reusable sports bottles for eight years with the message: "If you want really great bottled water in our community, all you need is the bottle."
We're Not Making This Up
   Move over vitamins, bottled water has a new "healthy" ingredient. A French company, Microfluid, launched "L'eau Bronzante" (Sun Water) last year, promising that if you drink its water, you can get a tan "orangey brown glow" without the risks of the sun. The company added beta-carotene and tomato extract in its water, along with a mystery ingredient that activates the skin's melanin. Microfluid says drinking its product for nine days will give you a beach-worthy glow. Yuck!
Canada to Coca-Cola: "Bring It On"
   Ottawa is seeking to create its own bottled water industry from its municipal water. Councilor Clive Doucet is proposing that Ottawa create a brand called "Ottawa H2O." He claims that if Coca-Cola can sell municipal tap water and make a profit, then so can Ottawa. Ottawa is facing financial troubles, and is seeking new areas of revenue. Doucet thinks bottled water is the answer, claiming that if people are going to pay to drink bottled municipal water then the city might as well be the ones providing it. Hmmm, sounds like he's contributing to the problem, not helping to resolve it.
AUSTRALIA: Fighting Back Down Under
   Australia is promoting the concept of its citizens using their own water containers filled with tap water instead of buying expensive bottled water. Not only is this much more environmentally sound but uses far less energy than bottled water manufacturing. The popularity of bottled water is rising around the world, and Australia is no exception with consumption rising 10% a year. Like other countries, Australia faces a big recycling problem: Only 35% of water bottles are recycled. Currently plastic bottles take up 38% of the total volume of waste in Australia's landfills. Let's stop this waste!
   In just five years, the United States has almost doubled its consumption of bottled water, from 4.7 billion gallons in 2000, to an estimated 7.3 billion gallons in 2005, according to the Beverage Marketing Corp.
Do you Bling?
   Just when you think bottled water's hype can't get any more ridiculous, here comes the creator of Bling H2O, Kevin G. Boyd, who claims that his new water sensation is "pop culture in a bottle." Boyd launched Bling H2O because he says you can tell a lot about a person by the bottled water they carry, and there was no water with the caliber necessary for the Hollywood scene. Bling H2O comes in frosted glass bottles decked out in Swarovski crystals, and costs $34.95 per bottle! The water itself is nothing special - it's purified water from Dandridge, Tennessee. But it's just another way to profit from our water. Check out the over-the-top ad: www.bling h2o.com .
WATER TIDBITS: The Bad, The Worse, and The Completely Ridiculous
   Think About This: Half of the $100 billion that consumers spend every year on bottled water could provide worldwide clean access to water.
   Can't Buy Me Love: A new company called H2Om, based in Studio City, California, is selling bottled water from Palomar Mountain that has been fortified with, according to its makers, the "vibrational energies" of love or, if you prefer, perfect health. Pullleeaazzee!
   Still Skyrocketing: Sales of bottled water in China jumped by more than 250% between 1999 and 2004. They tripled in India and almost doubled in Indonesia, according to a study by the Earth Policy Institute.
   Bottled Water for Dogs? The K9 Water Co. is now selling vitamin-enriched water for dogs at $7.50 for a four pack.
   Latest Stats: According to an article in The New York Times, 40% of bottled water actually comes from municipal tap water.
   Gas Guzzling: Making bottled water requires more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel some 100,000 US cars for a year.
   Taste Test: In honor of World Water Day on March 22, groups including Corporate Accountability International conducted taste tests of bottled water versus tap water in cities around the U.S. In San Francisco, the group held a blind taste test on the street to see if passersby could tell the difference between popular brands of bottled water and the city's own tap water. Only three out of 32 people could even identify a difference by taste. So, it's not any safer, any cleaner, and doesn't taste any better... why is it that so many people spend more money per gallon on water than gas, then? It's time to reject the marketing hype of bottled water!
   Thanks for staying active and informed! Check out our new blog for all the latest news on the issues you care about: www.foodandwaterwatch.org/blog
   AquaBits, Your Quarterly Newsletter about the Bottled Water Industry, Spring 2006
   Editor's Note: The Water for All Campaign has moved! We are now with a new non-profit organization called Food & Water Watch. Our mission is to challenge the corporate control of our food and water resources by empowering people to take action and by transforming the public consciousness about what we eat and drink.
   For all the latest news about the issues you care about, check out our brand new blog! --Your Water for All Team: Wenonah, Maj, Sara,Victoria, and Jessica water@ fwwatch.org

Crockery maker sheds 65 jobs in Brazil move

 
   The West Australian, by Cathy Bolt, p 4, Tuesday, April 18, 2006
   PERTH: Australia's only remaining maker of commercial crockery, Australian Fine China in Subiaco, will move its local manufacturing to Brazil next month, shedding 65 jobs.
   General manager Simon Carrel confirmed yesterday that the 84-year-old company, whose rich history included the highly collectable Wembley Ware brand, had been forced to join the exodus of Australian manufacturers to countries with cheaper labour and lower costs.
   Mr Carrel said it would continue the same range of china, including the robust cups, plates and other tableware with which it has supplied hotels and restaurants for decades. But it would be imported from Brazil where it has a joint venture with a company which has been making products for its growing export business to Europe and North America.
   "It's a decision I have tried very, very hard to avoid but factors have conspired to make it totally uneconomic," Mr Carrel said.
   "I believe the company has a great future. The only difference is we won't be making in Australia."
   About 45 staff would be kept on in a new warehouse in Kewdale and a design facility in Balcatta, he said.
   About 60 per cent of Australian Fine China's annual sales of $15 million are locally made products.
   It was to have been the first high profile occupant of a new industrial estate being developed by the Armadale Redevelopment Authority at Forrestdale in Planning and Infrastructure Minister Alannah MacTiernan's electorate. But it had abandoned negotiations for a $20 million move from its original Subiaco site, now surrounded by high density housing, because of problems with water, gas and security while the estate was developed, Mr Carrel said.
   Its decision had also been influenced by the jump in the Australian dollar in the past five years, reducing the price of competing imports.
   But the Federal Government had also "failed miserably" to provide a level playing field, with china imports from England having 5 per cent duty while Australian exports to England copped 13 per cent.
   Customs officials also did not enforce true country-of-origin branding on imports.
   Many famous English firms, including Wedgewood and Royal Doulton, were manufacturing in countries like China and Indonesia but not putting it on the underside marks of individual items.
   AFC's Brazilian-made items would be branded Australian Fine China but identified as made in Brazil. #
  [Picture] Packing up: Australian Fine China's Simon Carrel has confirmed the Brazil move.

Scary reality

 
   The Record (Western Australian Roman Catholic newspaper), Letter from Marie Slyth, West Perth, January 19, 2006
   PERTH: Further to the news article in The West Australian, January 14, 2006 regarding the Port Coogee private residential marina, it must be pointed out to the public that the sea-bed was not sold to Australand, the developer, but given as a gift.
   This is a scary scenario, because it opens the literal floodgates to claims by all developers and spells the beginning of real privatisation of what we all have always believed and understood to be our unrestricted access to our coastline beaches. This action signals the internal invasion of our coastline!
   Just why has the Government permitted this? And even more questionable is why would any government even contemplate permitting high-rise residential dwellings to be built on canals 380 metres out into the open ocean, when in New South Wales, the State Government has just brought in (effective from last November) new restrictions controlling high rise coastal devel-opment and is threatening to "fight them (the developers) on the beaches" in order to prevent the building of high-rise residential buildings any closer than 100 metres of the high water mark and any higher than four storeys?
   The inevitable overshadowing on beaches by high rise developments, impairment to public access and erosion of the beaches have made such restrictions imperative.
   Cockburn City's mayor's description of the stretch of land between South Fremantle and Woodman Point as being transformed into a coastal hub with 5-8 storey high-rise canal residences begs the inevitable destruction of Perth's best family swimming beach with the already described ultimate damaging consequences. #

Britain's liberties: The great debate

 
   The Observer (London) , http://politics. guardian.co.uk /labour/story/ 0,,1759515,00. html , by Henry Porter and Tony Blair, Sunday, April 23, 2006
   BRITAIN: Over the past few months Henry Porter has written a series of articles in The Observer criticising what he sees as a sustained government assault on fundamental freedoms. He attacked a range of measures, including legislation on identity cards, new police powers and anti-terror laws. Porter's critique has generated a huge response from the public - and now from the Prime Minister. Here, in this extraordinary email exchange, Tony Blair rejects the criticism - and announces plans to go further
   FROM: HENRY PORTER TO: TONY BLAIR Re: Liberty
Dear Prime Minister,
   Nine years ago, as I watched you arrive at the South Bank on the night when you became Prime Minister, I would never have imagined that I'd come to view you as a serious threat to British democracy. But regrettably I have. Either by accident or design, your 'modernising' Labour government has steadily attacked our rights and freedoms, eroding the Rule of Law and profoundly altering the relationship between authority and the people.
   Successive laws passed by New Labour have pared down our liberty at an astonishing rate. The right to trial by jury, the right to silence, the right not to be punished until a court has decided that the law has been broken, the right to demonstrate and protest, the presumption of innocence, the right to private communication, the right to travel without surveillance and the details of that journey being retained - all have been curtailed by your legislation.
   While hearsay has become admissible in court, free speech is being patrolled by officious use of public order laws. In Parliament Square we now see people parading with blank placards to make the point that they are not allowed to demonstrate within one kilometre of the Square under the new Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (SOCPA). And this in the land once called the Mother of Parliaments.
   For a democrat, this is all profoundly troubling. I hope that you believe you are acting in good faith; that you are simply motivated by the need to respond to the threats of terrorism and organised crime and the nuisance of anti-social behaviour, but I wonder if you have any idea of the cumulative effect of the 15 or so bills which have incrementally removed or compromised our liberties.
   Forgive me, Prime Minister, if I say that the country has faced far greater threats under many of your predecessors and they did not go in for this wholesale assault on the Rule of Law. One of the results of your modernising zeal is that while the state has become invisibly more authoritarian, we all to some extent have become suspects. Under the SOCPA, a person can be arrested for any offence - even dropping litter. Before charges are laid he is fingerprinted, photographed and required to provide a sample of his DNA for indefinite retention by the police database.
   That says a lot about the state's attitude to the individual's innocence before he has been tried, but even more about the state's odd sense of entitlement to the essence of each person. Defenders of this practice say it is justified if a single murderer is prosecuted. With the same reasoning you would ban the use of cars if it saved a single life claimed in road accidents.
   Reasoning is so often the problem with laws hurried through to show that the government is doing something in response to yesterday's headlines. The reasons for the ID card scheme are serially given as a means to combat terrorism, benefit fraud, illegal immigration and identity theft. You will agree the ID card could not have stopped the British bombers of 7 July last year.
   Government figures estimate benefit fraud due to identity theft at between 20-50m per annum, a fraction of the LSE's low cost estimate for the scheme of 10bn. There is no ID system in the world that cannot be breached by determined gangs. And illegal immigrants? Well, a card might make their lives more difficult but it won't stop people-smuggling.
   Set against these 'benefits' are the cost to the tax payer (how many schools or hospitals would 10bn buy?) and the implications of the total surveillance of people's lives, the details of which will be retained in the National Identity Register database for the inspection of joined-up authority. I have nothing to hide, but I fear this scheme beyond any of your measures, for it is the dream of every authoritarian government to be able to monitor its citizens around the clock.
   Just as harassment, anti-social behaviour and terrorism laws have been used to limit free speech and protest, so the ID card scheme will come to control the life of this country in ways that we can barely imagine. I conclude that this is its primary purpose and that your government has shamelessly used the fear of terrorism and the loathing of scroungers and illegal immigrants to attain this goal of total supervision.
   I could be persuaded to put a more benevolent interpretation on so much of what you have done, if it weren't for the fact that parallel to the assault on liberty has been your move against Parliament in favour of giving the Executive more arbitrary powers. You say that you respect Parliament, that you answered more questions than your predecessors and that you are the first Prime Minister to appear before a select committee, but in other ways you seem thoroughly hostile to the idea of scrutiny by elected representatives.
   The Civil Contingency Act, presented as modernising emergency powers for the age of terrorism, allows ministers in an emergency, which they only have to believe is about to occur, to make practically any provision without reference to parliament. The Inquiries Act, in effect, allows ministers to scrutinise their own behaviour, while the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill proposed an extension of law by ministerial decree. There has been a government retreat - or 'clarification' - on this. I pray it is real.
   It is possible that many of your measures have been subject to a law of unintended consequences. That is also my deepest concern. Whatever your motives today, it is clear that by ignoring the ancient traditions of the unwritten British constitution you have provided all the laws that a hard-line leader would need to drive this country into dictatorship. You have offered us a trade-off between freedom and security: I fear we will lose both. Yours sincerely, Henry Porter
   FROM: TONY BLAIR TO: HENRY PORTER Subject: Liberty
Dear Henry Porter,
   Frankly it's difficult to know where to start, given the mishmash of misunderstanding, gross exaggeration and things that are just plain wrong. A few explanatory facts might help.
   You say I have 'pared down our liberty at an astonishing rate', then list a whole lot of fundamental rights, as if these had all been drastically curtailed. We are proposing that the right to trial by jury be changed in one set of circumstances: highly complex serious fraud cases. The reason is simple. The cases last for months, sometimes years - they are incredibly difficult for juries for time and complexity reasons; it is over 30 years since Lord Roskill recommended the change because otherwise such cases often collapse at huge expense and the guilty go free. The estimated number of cases per year is around 20, out of a total of 40,000 jury trials.
   The right to silence was already restricted by the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 (Sections 34-38), which enables a court, if it wishes and in certain circumstances, to draw an adverse inference from a defendant's failure to answer questions on any charge. The only change introduced by this Government was to clarify (in the light of subsequent case law) the circumstances under which inferences can be drawn from silence in cases where the charge is one of causing the death of a child or vulnerable adult. This again is in a tiny number of cases.
   You say people can only have blank placards outside Parliament and can't protest. Go and look at the placards of those camped outside Parliament - they are most certainly not blank and usually contain words not entirely favourable to your correspondent. Outside Downing Street, virtually every day there are protests of one sort or another.
   It's correct that, again in a small number of cases, we have introduced unusual restrictions to combat terrorists. There are 12 control orders in place. But we did suffer the death by terrorism of over 50 of our citizens last July. In common with virtually every major nation in the world, we are tightening our restrictions but there are, in every case, elaborate mechanisms of scrutiny and oversight.
   And, of course, the reason why even these types of restrictions can end up in our courts and be struck down, is that this Government gave British citizens for the first time ever the power to challenge Executive action or legislation, through the incorporation of the European Convention.
   We enter the realm of fantasy with your and others' strictures on the Regulatory Reform Bill. This legislation is proposed for a straight-forward reason. Much regulation becomes redundant over time. It's a real problem for business. It costs money and causes hassle, often in circumstances far removed from its original purpose. The problem is that if it is in primary legislation then only by formal Act of Parliament can it be changed. In a busy schedule where usually the legislation is very arcane, it can take years, if ever, for necessary change to occur.
   The proposal is that in circumstances closely defined and expressly where it doesn't interfere with people's basic rights, ministers can propose removing the regulation by order. But before this can actually happen, first the order is subject to public consultation; second, it is scrutinised by independent committees of both houses of parliament; third, there is then a debate before the order is passed in Parliament, which can naturally refuse to accept it. To describe this as the 'abolition of Parliamentary democracy' - as some critics have - is more than a little far-fetched.
   However, having said all of this, there is a genuine issue of contention between us. I have now read Lord Steyn's Attlee Foundation lecture. I would love to give a more considered intellectual and political response. But for these purposes let me just say: it shows how far out of touch much of the political and legal establishment is today with the reality of people's lives.
   Go and talk to people living on estates blighted by anti-social behaviour. Until the new laws allowed them to put restrictions on offenders, close down houses used for drug dealing, seize dealers' assets, disperse gangs of youths, fine vandals on the spot, the victims had nothing to protect them except the usual process of the criminal law, which was hopelessly inadequate. Recently I visited East Manchester and Camden, where, I am proud to say, Labour councillors had, with the police and local residents used the new laws to put some respect and decency back into their communities.
   When we talk of civil liberties, what about theirs, the law-abiding people; the ones who treat others with courtesy and good manners and expect the same back? Don't theirs count for anything?
   You complain of the DNA database samples being retained. Since we allowed this, over 14,000 offences have been successfully matched to over 8,000 suspects including over 100 murders and 100 rapes - and as far as I am aware, no one is on the database for dropping litter!
   You can't deal with the levels of sophistication in today's organised crime by traditional methods. That's why we are giving the new agency new powers to force suspects to disclose information, to open up their accounts; to ensure that their advisers can't conceal evidence; and to track their movements not just in Britain but abroad. But look at what these people do. They traffic in human beings, often, as I heard for myself a few weeks back, young girls sold into prostitution; they deal in drugs, with levels of violence unimaginable in the past.
   I am sorry to tell you: I want us to go further in all these areas. The alternative is that they, who do not play by our rules or any rules, get away with it.
   The issue of ID cards is a little different, because I think there are very good reasons of practicality why, in today's world, people should be able to protect their identity from fraud or abuse. The figure of 10bn for the cost is ludicrous; and in any event 70 per cent of the cost is because of the move to biometric passports, happening round the western world.
   Ultimately, for me this whole issue is not about whether we care about civil liberties, but how we care for them in the modern world. If the traditional processes were the answer to these crime and law and order problems that are an age away from Dixon of Dock Green and the stable communities of 50 years ago, then we wouldn't be having this debate. But they're not. They've failed. They are leaving the innocent unprotected and the guilty unpunished. That's why we need them changed. Yours sincerely, Tony Blair
   FROM: HENRY PORTER TO: TONY BLAIR Re: Liberty
Dear Prime Minister,
   Thank you for a very revealing reply. My case is that your government has cumulatively attacked the Rule of Law by reducing liberties in many different areas. I believe you confirm that in a way, though you say in mitigation that the numbers of people affected by control orders and who have been tried without a jury are small. True, but a precedent has been set - people are being punished without trial. And they are not allowed to know the evidence against them, or be represented by their own legal team when it is being heard. Lord knows how all this may be abused by future governments which in terms of numbers may be rather more ambitious than yours.
   There are two other points I wish to take you up on. The first is about demonstrations in Parliament Square, which are banned without written permission under SOCPA. The only reason you see placards in Parliament Square today is because the anti-war protester Brian Haw's demonstration preceded the introduction of the act, which is not retrospective. His presence in the square is still being challenged by government lawyers. As to the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights, surely it is the case that British citizens cannot challenge such things as control orders because the courts have no power to 'strike down' measures introduced by primary legislation in a sovereign Parliament.
   The philosophical difference between us is sharp. I don't know whether Lord Steyn is out of touch, though, judging by his evident humanity, I would guess he's not as removed as you suggest. Either way, the job of the law lords is to uphold the law and see that justice is available to every citizen. Fortunately, their authority does not come from being elected. This may be irritating to the government and diminish their importance in your eyes, but part of their purpose is to be less swayed by the convulsions of public opinion than politicians are.
   In the anti-social behaviour legislation you have reacted to an outcry about delinquency - often justified - but you have produced bad law which allows gossip and rumour to be heard before the order is granted. And that hearsay may very well end with a person's imprisonment for an action which is not classed as an offence under British law.
   The broader point is that in these and other laws you have eroded the profoundly important principle of the presumption of innocence. To tamper with the Rule of Law is not the right way for a healthy democracy to meet the modern threats which you describe so vividly. Last week, Lord Steyn quoted Churchill on the dispassionate rights affecting the accused and convicted. 'These are the symbols - remarked your great predecessor - which mark and measure the stored-up strength of a nation, and are a sign and proof of the living virtue in it.' This 'stored-up strength' is what you are ignoring and harming in these laws. I worry when you say you want 'to go further in all these areas.' Can you say how?
   Finally, I don't understand the difference between caring about civil liberties and caring for them. To someone like me - a democrat above any party loyalty - the distinction is false. A nation either protects a body of civil liberties, or it doesn't. I fear that Britain is slipping into the latter category.
   FROM: TONY BLAIR TO: HENRY PORTER Subject: Liberty
Dear Henry Porter,
   We are getting to the heart of the difference between us which, I agree, is of immense importance to the way our country is run and the values that govern it. You are right when you say we have disturbed the normal legal process with the anti-social behaviour laws. You are wrong when you say action is taken under them on the basis of 'gossip and rumour'.
   Please speak to the victims of this menace. They are people whose lives have been turned into a daily hell. Suppose they live next door to someone whose kids are out of control: who play their music loud until 2am; who vilify anyone who asks them to stop; who are often into drugs or alcohol? Or visit a park where children can't play because of needles, used condoms, and hooligans hanging around.
   It is true that, in theory, each of these acts is a crime for which the police could prosecute. In practice, they don't. It would involve in each case a disproportionate amount of time, money and commitment for what would be, for any single act, a low-level sentence. Instead, they can now use an ASBO or a parenting order or other measures that attack not an offence but behaviour that causes harm and distress to people, and impose restrictions on the person doing it, breach of which would mean they go to prison. And yes, because often these thugs terrorise those who challenge them, we allow the police to give the evidence as hearsay. But the result is that where these powers are being used, the law-abiding no longer live in fear of the lawless.
   And yes, I would go further. I would widen the police powers to seize the cash of suspected drug dealers, the cars they drive round in, and require them to prove they came by them, lawfully. I would impose restrictions on those suspected of being involved in organised crime. In fact, I would generally harry, hassle and hound them until they give up or leave the country. I would make it a presumption that those who deal in drugs to young children should go to prison; and I would make breach of a drugs treatment order an arrestable offence. But at the same time, we should increase, as we are doing, the provision and speed of drug treatment.
   The point about the Human Rights Act is that it does allow the courts to strike down the act of our 'sovereign Parliament'. The anti-terrorist legislation was struck down in precisely this way. Take asylum. We have introduced measures which... have allowed us to cut asylum claims dramatically. We are now, for the first time, removing more failed claimants than we are receiving unfounded claims. If we hadn't legislated, the impact would have been felt in deteriorating community relations and in racists exploiting the issue. The reason is that there were real abuses of the system; organised gangs behind bulk claims; shady advisers cooking up scams. If we hadn't acted, even reasonable people would have become unreasonable. Even so it remains, as we have seen, a highly charged problem.
   The same is true as we now try to deport people who are inciting hatred and fomenting extremism in the Muslim community. Again, every step will be fought over in the courts. But again, the reason we are acting is not a desire to be dictatorial but a genuine desire to protect our way of life from those who would destroy it.
   Incidentally, I would never suggest either you or Lord Steyn were anything other than humane. I respect entirely your motives. I just think the practical effect of following the course you set out is a loss of civil liberties for the majority. In fact, a better criticism of the politicians, including myself, is that we need to do more on rehabilitation for prisoners, activities for young people, and community engagement with the disaffected and alienated within our society. But that's another topic.
   FROM: HENRY PORTER TO: TONY BLAIR Re: Liberty
Dear Prime Minister,
   On the evening of 7 July last year I was in a pub in Euston a few hundred yards from where the bus was blown up. The TV was on and you were making a speech which included this statement: 'When they try to intimidate us, we will not be intimidated; when they seek to change our country, our way of life by these methods, we will not be changed.' I admired your staunchness at the end of what must have been a draining week.
   But we have changed. The fear of terrorism has allowed you to bring in laws that a Conservative government would not have dreamed of. I understand that there is a huge constituency out there for this kind of anti-terror and also crime-busting legislation - and it won't do you any harm in the run-up to the local elections to be sounding as tough as you do in this exchange - but it is worrying that nowhere in the paragraph when you describe hounding criminals and drug dealers do you mention a court of law. I am not asking you to be weak on criminals, merely to adhere to the Rule of Law. If there is no respect for its traditions, any government may do what it likes.
   The point about anti-terrorist law is that we do have control orders and this is causing concern in Europe, as the EU report on human rights in the UK makes clear. I don't believe we should rely on Europe to define our rights but I am now certain after this correspondence that the country needs a wider debate, in which the best democratic minds assert the need for government restraint when it comes to personal freedom and the sidelining of Parliament.
   This has been highly illuminating. Thank you for responding so frankly.
   FROM: TONY BLAIR TO: HENRY PORTER Subject: Liberty
Dear Henry Porter,
   Thank you for what you said about 7/7. Londoners responded with extraordinary unity. But that doesn't mean they didn't also want action against those who do such terrible things, precisely to protect those values we both and they share.
   The question for me is: whose civil liberties? Of course the offender has rights; but so has the victim. If the practical effect of the law is that people live in fear because the offender is unafraid of the legal process then, in the name of civil liberties, we are allowing the vulnerable, the decent, the people who show respect and expect it back, to have their essential liberties trampled on.
   This is why I say this is as much an issue of modernity as liberty. We are trying to fight 21st century crime by 19th century means. It hasn't worked. It won't work. The terrorism is different. The street crime is different.
   This new terrorism requires a separate debate. But on anti-social behaviour I agree the causes of this are very deep - to do with shifting communities, dysfunctional families, globalisation and myriad influences, not all benign, to which our young people are subject. And, at the risk of opening another front, the remedies here are quite stark too. The system intervenes once kids are off the rails. This is usually hopeless. We need intervention at an early age.
   I agree with you on one other thing. The politics of this cross left/right lines. Interestingly, in British politics today many Tories, the Lib Dems and a part of Labour (but really only a small part) would agree with you. I truly believe they are out of touch with their own voters. Anti-social behaviour is not a big issue for the Westminster village. Out in the country, it is predominant.
   People aren't naive about it. They know the old days aren't coming back. The age of deference has passed and a good thing too. But people mourn the loss of respect. That is something utterly basic to any society. They want it back; and if, in order to get it back, we have to alter our traditional way of thinking and doing, then people, and I mean wholly reasonable, moderate people, will make a very conscious decision to do just that.
   Anyway, as you say, it is an important debate and thank you for the chance of participating in it with you.
The new laws: right move or wrong?

THE RIGHT -: To be tried by a jury: What happened? Abolished in cases of serious and complex fraud in 2003. Remains for all other crimes. Critics say: Judgment by one's peers is a cornerstone of British law. Labour says: Juries were baffled by complex evidence, trials were prone to collapse.

THE RIGHT -: To protest: What happened? Since 2005, demonstrations outside the House of Commons must be pre-notified to, and approved by, police. Critics say: It's gagging free speech: Labour says: Since August 157 demonstrations have been held.

THE RIGHT -: Not to be convicted on hearsay evidence: What happened? The Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003, targeting low level offending and intimidatory behaviour. Hearsay evidence can be submitted to get an anti-social behaviour order (Asbo). Critics say: Courts are dispensing Asbos at everything from kids wearing hoodies to a farmer whose pigs kept escaping. Breach of Asbo can attract custodial sentence even if the original behaviour couldn't. Labour says: Try living on a sink estate and you'll see why it's needed. Youth Justice Board research found most juveniles jailed for Asbo breaches had committed other serious offences.

THE RIGHT -: To trial: What happened? Under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 the Home Secretary can undertake control orders restricting the liberty of individuals suspected of terrorist involvement - without trial. Critics say: That's internment: it never worked against the IRA. Labour says: The suicide bomber threat is different and requires a different response. Better than jailing people without trial.

THE RIGHT -: To freedom of movement: What happened? The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 gives Cabinet ministers sweeping powers in designated emergencies including quarantine areas, restricting travel, handing control of essential industries to the army. Critics say: These are police state powers. Labour says: They'd only be used in extremis.

THE RIGHT -: To privacy: What happened? DNA samples taken from anyone arrested but acquitted or not prosecuted are now retained on a national database. The Identity Cards Act 2006 introduces (initially) voluntary ID cards with biometric identification. Critics say: ID cards are a Big Brother concept. Labour says: Matching crime scene samples with the database has helped solve murders and rapes. ID cards tackle identity fraud, illegal immigration and terrorism. #

  • Cadbury doesn't own purple, court says as it rules for Darrell Lea  

 
   The West Australian, p 14, Friday, April 28, 2006
   Multinational chocolate maker Cadbury has been told it does not "own" the colour purple, as its attempt to sue a rival was rejected by Australia's Federal Court.
   The company, which uses a dark shade of purple in its global marketing effort, launched legal action in 2003 in a bid to sue Australian-based confectioner Darrell Lea over its use of similar colours.
   Cadbury had objected to Darrell Lea's use of various shades of purple in Darrell Lea's store signage, uniforms and product packaging.
   The court will look at costs at a later date. #

Asylum application delayed

 
   News.com.au , www.news.com. au/story/0,10117, 18986293- 29277,00.html , By Mariza Fiamengo, AAP, May 01, 2006
   AUSTRALIA: A PAPUAN man's application for asylum has been delayed by inquiries into his half-Japanese ethnicity, a court has been told.
   The 29-year-old independence activist is the only one of the 43 refugees who arrived in a traditional canoe on Cape York Peninsula in January, to have his request for asylum still to be decided.
   In an application lodged in the Federal Magistrates Court, the Papuan man's legal team accuse Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone of refusing to decide his visa claim in order "to advance diplomatic relations between Australia and the Republic of Indonesia".
   The lawyer for Ms Vanstone, Charles Gunst QC, denied the delay was caused by orders "from higher up" to stall the asylum application.
   Instead, he told the court, inquiries being made by the department about a Japanese residency visa the man had on his Indonesian passport was behind the delay.
   Mr Gunst said the man's ethnicity was half-Papuan and half-Japanese and he had lived in Japan for some years before coming to Australia.
   "So far, the evidence shows this applicant has not taken any steps whatsoever to avail himself of the apparent right he has to enter and reside in Japan," Mr Gunst told the court.
   Lawyers for the asylum seeker appeared at the court today seeking to have the matter transferred to the Australian Federal Court.
   The man's lawyer, Richard Niall, told the court his client's application for asylum had been held up unlawfully and it should be heard urgently.
   Mr Gunst accused the man's lawyers of attempting to "stampede" the court into forcing a decision to be made before all the relevant facts were known.
   Federal Magistrate Murray McInnis reserved his decision on whether to move the case to the Federal Court until later this week.
   Under immigration law the court is not allowed to identify the man.

Remaining West Papuan asylum seeker should be brought to Melbourne

 
   Greens Media, by Senator Kerry Nettle (New South Wales), May 1, 2006
   AUSTRALIA: Following the further delay in court today in the case of the remaining West Papuan asylum seeker on Christmas Island Australian Greens Senator Kerry Nettle today called for him to be brought to Melbourne, while the Immigration Department and the courts decide whether he is granted a visa.
   "I understand that there is no question that this man is a genuine refugee and it is just technical issues which are being decided in his case," said Senator Nettle.
   "I met this man with the 42 other West Papuans when I visited Christmas Island in January. It is a very remote place and his isolation should end.
   "This man should be brought to Melbourne on the next flight while his case is finalised. He should be with his fellow West Papuans, not isolated on a remote island.
   "He should be able to live in the community with his fellow West Papuans and supporters until his case has been decided.
   "If the government insists on his ongoing detention, then he should still be brought to Melbourne so he can be near his friends and supporters.
   "This man's father died in an Indonesian prison after being jailed for raising the West Papuan flag and yet we continue to treat him like a criminal behind razor wire.

Turkey Refuses U.S. Request To Allow Attack On Iran From Turkish Base

 
   Information Clearing House (USA), www.information clearinghouse.info , Various newsitems, E-mail, May 1, 2006
   Turkey Refuses U.S. Request To Allow Attack On Iran From Turkish Base By YNetNews Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said Sunday that his country refused a request from the United States to attack Iran from its Air Force base in Incirlik, despite the U.S. offer of a nuclear reactor, according to a report in Al Biyan. http://information clearinghouse. info/article 12887.htm
   Time to shut-down the UN By Mike Whitney When the bombing begins in Iran, the UN can finally board-up its doors and send the diplomats home; there'll be no more reason to maintain the pretense. An attack on Iranian facilities will signal a period of global realignment where states either submit to the Washington axis or join the growing resistance. We are quickly moving towards Bush's dream of a world that is divided into "us against them". http://information clearinghouse. info/article 12890.htm
   Robert Fisk: Seen through a Syrian lens, 'unknown Americans' are provoking civil war in Iraq; By Robert Fisk. The Americans, my interlocutor suspected, are trying to provoke an Iraqi civil war so that Sunni Muslim insurgents spend their energies killing their Shia co-religionists rather than soldiers of the Western occupation forces. "I swear to you that we have very good information," my source says, finger stabbing the air in front of him. http://information clearinghouse. info/article 12885.htm
   Failed States; The US Has the Characteristics of A "Failed State," By Stephen Lendman. Having laid out his premises, Chomsky believes the US today exhibits the very features we cite as characteristics of "failed states" - a term we use for nations seen as potential threats to our security which may require our intervention against in self-defense. http://information clearinghouse. info/article 12889.htm
   Praying for Peace or Preying on Peace? By Rev. WILLIAM A. ALBERTS. The United Methodist Church should be bringing disciplinary action against President George Bush for war crimes. Evidence continues to mount that Bush, a United Methodist, deliberately used his religious faith to deceive the American people in the run-up to his administration's pre-meditated war against non-threatening, sanctions-weakened, defenseless Iraq. http://information clearinghouse. info/article 12891.htm
   Bombs, Drive-By Shootings Kill 9 In Iraq: Bombs and drive-by shootings Sunday killed nine people in Iraq, and the bodies of seven Iraqi men who apparently were kidnapped and tortured were found in three areas of the capital. www.wral.com/ apworldnews/ 9115265/ detail.html
   Turkish Armed Forces Strike PKK Camps in N. Iraq : The Northern Iraqi cities of Amedi and Zaho, sheltering Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) militants, were hit with mortar attacks in "Operation Crescent." www.zaman. com/?bl=nation al&alt=&hn= 32593
   Iraq Concerned Over Turkish Invasion: So far, the Turkish military was said to have penetrated 10 kilometers into Iraq in the operation against the Kurdish Workers Party, or PKK www.menews line.com/stories/ 2006/april/04 _30_1.html
   Kurdistan: Dangerous Passage: Could another front be opening in the Iraq war? Over recent weeks, some 200,000 Turkish troops, backed by tanks and helicopter gunships, have massed along the mountainous border with Iraq. Trucks passing from Turkey, ferrying the imported goods and foodstuffs that are the lifeblood of the Kurdish economy, have slowed from 1,000 a day to just a couple of hundred. http://msnbc. msn.com/id/ 12555396/ site/newsweek/
   Iran 'attacks Iraq Kurdish area': raq has accused Iranian forces of entering Iraqi territory and shelling Kurdish rebel positions in the north. Iranian troops bombed border areas near the town of Hajj Umran before crossing into Iraq, the defence ministry in Baghdad said on Sunday. http://information clearinghouse. info/article 12888.htm
   'Don't attack us or else,' Kurdish guerrillas warn Iran: Lodged in northern Iraq in an area flanked by NATO member Turkey and Washington's foe Iran, elements of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) have accused Teheran of attacking their encampments. http://tinyurl. com/geu86
   Powell Says He Urged Bush to Send More Troops to Iraq : Powell, in an interview with Britain's ITV1, says he gave the advice to now-retired General Tommy Franks, who planned the Iraq invasion, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Mr. Bush. www.voanews. com/english/ 2006-04-30- voa11.cfm
   'I Demand a Timetable': Moqtada al-Sadr on war, peace and occupation. msnbc.msn.com/ id/12550915/ site/newsweek
   Bush Warns of 'More Days of Sacrifice': President Bush warned in his weekly radio address of tough fighting to come and "more days of sacrifice and struggle" in Iraq as April drew to a close as the deadliest month for American forces this year. www.kfmb. com/stories/ story.48464. html
   Fallout From U.S. Strikes: In a report to be posted on the IAEA's Web site this week, the agency states that about 1,000 Iraqi men, women and children in a village near the former Tuwaitha nuclear research facility are living inside an area contaminated by radioactive residue and ruin. "I can only guess that a lot of the damage at Tuwaitha was from bombing," www.msnbc. msn.com/id/ 12440710/ site/newsweek
   US urges new aid to Iraq power grid: A senior U.S. official said on Sunday Gulf Arab states and other foreigners should help Iraq build new power stations, as U.S. investment in the electricity sector winds down after three years of reconstruction aid. http://news. yahoo.com/ s/nm/200604 30/pl_nm/iraq_ electricity_dc_1
   Tens of thousands in New York march against the war in Iraq: Tens of thousands of antiwar protesters marched yesterday through Manhattan to demand an immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq just hours after an American soldier died in a roadside explosion in Baghdad -- the 70th US fighter killed in that country this month. http://tinyurl. com/kl2r4
   Iran: 'Maximum' Cooperation Offered To IAEA, Not Security Council : Iran says it could allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to resume snap inspections of its nuclear facilities, but only if the UN Security Council returns Iran's case to the jurisdiction of the UN's nuclear watchdog. The White House has rejected the offer. www.payvand. com/news/06/ apr/1248.html
   Iran says digging in for confrontation over nuclear programme : Iran has said it was digging in for a confrontation with the West over its disputed nuclear programme, vowing that neither UN Security Council resolutions nor US military action could force a climbdown. www.channel newsasia.com/ stories/afp_ world/view/ 205823/1/.html
   'Iran will face music' says Powell: He said the Security Council was only likely to be able to agree on a "quite limited" range of such measures against the regime. http://www.itn. co.uk/news/ index_1167 108.html
   Iran says U.N. sanctions would boost oil prices even higher : The Iranian deputy oil minister said Sunday he did not believe the United Nations would impose sanctions on Iran because that would boost oil prices even higher. www.signons andiego.com/ news/world/ 20060430- 0726-iran- nuclear.html
   Iran holds the trump card in oil game : As the crisis escalates, Washington's diplomatic partners will become gravely worried about their energy supplies. http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=419464
   New oil shock ahead as $100 spike looms : The growing international crisis over Iran's nuclear programme could trigger a catastrophic oil price spike, sending crude prices over $100 a barrel, senior Wall Street analysts are warning. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,1764412,00.html
   China threatens to veto sanctions against Iran : CHINA has threatened to veto any proposal to impose sanctions on Iran if it does not give up its quest for nuclear power. This will split the United Nations as it meets this week to discuss how to handle the standoff. http://tinyurl.com/kbuwd
   A reliable prophet of doom: I believe that George Bush is a prophet. But not just any old prophet. A special kind - one whose actions bring about the very things he claims will happen, albeit without any recognition of his role in causing them to occur. He is, therefore, a self-fulfilling prophet. Let me explain. http://tinyurl.com/jy5ls
   Bush praises Azerbaijan's president, despite spotty record: The meeting demonstrated the difficulty the administration faces as it seeks to maintain U.S. access to oil and gas supplies from countries that may be unstable or unreliable, often because of corruption or human-rights abuses. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002960283_azer29.html
   Thousands Protest Turkish Plans To Build Nuclear Plant : Thousands rallied in Turkey's Black Sea coastal city of Sinop on Saturday to protest government plans to build the country's first nuclear power plant there http://tinyurl.com/gusr5
   Turkey, Israel make undersea connections: Leaders in Israel and Turkey envision a network of four underwater pipelines for transporting Russian oil and natural gas, with feeder lines to Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and Lebanon. http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20060430-010130-7755r.htm
   Haniya: Palestinian president has the right to negotiate with any party: Palestinian Prime Minister Ismael Haniya said on Sunday that his government will not appose any negotiations spearheaded by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas with any party, including Israel. http://www.kuna.net.kw/Home/Story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=861279
   Syria begins national campaign to gather money for Palestinians: Syria began a weeklong campaign on Sunday to collect money for the Palestinians, following a visit by the Palestinian foreign minister 10 days ago. http://tinyurl.com/g8wlt
   Why are the Palestinians expected to take the blame?: How long is a sane man expected to sit on his hands while his enemy slaps him in the face? The Palestinian people have endured a prolonged aggression by a pariah state, and yet the world not only expects them to sit on their hands, the world blames them for it. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=10178
   Sudan agrees to deal on Darfur: The Sudanese government has accepted a peace deal brokered by the African Union (AU) after talks in Nigeria, but the rebels say they still have reservations over the deal. http://tinyurl.com/h55hu
   Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela Reject U.S. Trade: Bolivia's president signed a pact with Cuba and Venezuela on Saturday rejecting U.S.-backed free trade and promising a socialist version of regional commerce and cooperation. http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1905711
   Bolivia Ready to Recover National Resources, Says Evo Morales: In a keynote address, the Bolivian leader noted it is important to free the country's natural resources from foreign domination, assuring that his government is organized and prepared to recover those resources from the oil companies, which have caused great damage to Bolivia. http://www.periodico26.cu/english/news_cuba/evom042906.htm
   April 1965 and the unfinished Dominican revolution : On April 28, 1965, 42,000 U.S. troops poured into the Dominican Republic to put down the beginnings of a democratic revolution in the Caribbean country. That invasion and the repression that followed continue to shape the Dominican people's struggle for true sovereignty. http://tinyurl.com/hp7h8
   Egypt extends emergency law: The Muslim Brotherhood, the strongest opposition force, said there was no justification for extending the law, which Hosni Mubarak, the president, last year promised to substitute with anti-terrorism legislation. http://tinyurl.com/kdp5b
   U.S. trying to halt suit against NSA: It's official: The Bush administration formally said Friday that it will try to halt a lawsuit that accuses AT&T of helping the National Security Agency spy on Americans illegally. http://news.com.com/2061-10789_3-6066688.html
   In leak cases, new pressure on journalists : The Bush administration is putting pressure on the press as never before, and it is operating in a judicial climate that seems increasingly receptive to constraints on journalists. http://tinyurl.com/j2wrq
   Data Show How Patriot Act Used: The FBI issued thousands of subpoenas to banks, phone companies and Internet providers last year, aggressively using a power enhanced under the Patriot Act to monitor the activities of U.S. citizens, Justice Department data released late Friday showed. http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12886.htm
   Congress may consider mandatory ISP snooping: It didn't take long for the idea of forcing Internet providers to retain records of their users' activities to gain traction in the U.S. Congress. http://news. com.com/ Congress%20 may%20consider%20 mandatory%20 ISP%20snooping/ 2100-1028_3- 6066608.html? tag=nefd.top? yousayyouwant arevolution
   William Pfaff: Why Europe should reject U.S. market capitalism : In the United States, the new model of corporate business has evolved toward a form of crony capitalism, in which business and government interests are often corruptly intermingled, the system resistant to reform because of the financial dependence of both major political parties on contributed money. http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/28/opinion/edpfaff.php
   Noam Chomsky: Failed States: We began by considering four critical issues that should rank high on the agenda of those concerned with the prospects for a decent future. Two of them are literally matters of survival: nuclear war and environmental disaster. http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12892.htm
   IRAQ WAR: Number Of Iraqi Civilians Slaughtered In America's War? As Many As 250,000 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11674.htm
   Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In Bush's War 2400 http://icasualties.org/oif/
   The War in Iraq Costs $277,147,958,701 See the cost in your community http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182
   APPOSITE QUOTATIONS: Freedom of expression is the well-spring of our civilization... The history of civilization is in considerable measure the displacement of error which once held sway as official truth by beliefs which in turn have yielded to other truths. Therefore the liberty of man to search for truth ought not to be fettered, no matter what orthodoxies he may challenge.": Felix Frankfurter - (1882-1965) U.S. Supreme Court Justice - Source: Concurring Opinion, Dennis et al. v. U.S. (1951)
   "Freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order." : Justice Robert H. Jackson - (1892-1954), U. S. Supreme Court Justice Source: West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 1943
   He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man...: Samuel Adams
   NOTICES: Read this newsletter online http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/
   RSS FEED http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/rssfeed.xml
   News Syndication: You can include the headlines from this newsletter on your own website free of charge http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/syndicate.htm
   Neil Young: Listen to all 10 cuts of "Living With War," for FREE. http://www.neilyoung.com/
   This web site represents the effort of one person. I need your help to offset the costs associated with site hosting and bandwidth usage. If you find this site informative please help by clicking here www.information clearinghouse. info/support.htm

Guantanamo inmates riot

 
   Sunday Tasmanian, AFP, p 22, May 21, 2006
   WASHINGTON: GUANTANAMO inmates staged a fake suicide bid to lure US guards into a trap and attack them with fan blades and other improvised weapons, the commander of the US detention camp in Cuba said.
   Guards fired rubber bullets and six prisoners suffered minor injuries in what Rear Admiral Harry Harris, commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo, called "the most violent outbreak" at the prison since it was opened in January 2002.
   The ambush was reported on the day a UN panel called on the United States to close the camp for al-Qaeda and Taliban "enemy combatants".
   Australian David Hicks has been held at the camp for more than four years since being arrested in Afghanistan. His father Terry Hicks yesterday said his son would not have been involved in the riot.
   Prison commander Harris said detainees smothered the floor with excrement and soapy water to make it slippery before guards rushed in believing they were saving a man who was seen preparing to hang himself.
   The guards were then attacked with "broken light fixtures, fan blades" and other improvised weapons, Harris said.
   The fighting lasted four to five minutes but it took about an hour to move all the prisoners and clear up the block, Harris said.
   Two real suicide bids were staged before the unrest. Harris said two inmates took an overdose of prescription drugs and were unconscious but in "stable" condition in the main hospital at the US navy base.
   Civilian lawyers who have visited the camp say there is widespread depression among the approximately 460 inmates.
   Harris said about 18 per cent of the inmates had "some form of mental issue" and between eight and 10 per cent had "serious mental issues".
   The UN Committee on Torture, in a report compiled after hearing evidence from senior US officials, yesterday called on the United States to close Guantanamo and any secret prisons it operates around the world.
   But Washington brushed aside charges that Guantanamo inmates were mistreated, insisting that interrogations carried out there were fully within US legal guidelines.
   "It is important to note that everything that is done in terms of questioning detainees is fully within the boundaries of American law," White House spokesman Tony Snow said. #

OUT OF EDEN

 
   The Guardian (Britain), http://politics. guardian.co. uk/foreign affairs/story/ 0,,17850 48,00html , Monday, May 29, 2006
   The Indian Ocean paradise of Diego Garcia was once home to more than a thousand contented British subjects. In 1966, Harold Wilson's government sold it to the US in a secret, illegal deal and terrorised the population into leaving. John Pilger reports on the islanders' long battle for justice
   In long-forgotten archives in London and Mauritius is rare film of a community of contented people. The grainy, flickering images, full of movement of children playing on sandy beaches, and proud young women presenting their newborn for christening, and men setting out to fish, their dogs swimming alongside, are glimpses of a true paradise. There are thriving villages, a school, a hospital, a church, a light railway, set in a phenomenon of natural beauty: strings of coral atolls, floating in the turquoise of the Indian Ocean.
   These were some of the 2,000 people who once lived on the Chagos archipelago, the majority on Diego Garcia, an atoll the shape of a tiny Italy, 14 miles long and six miles wide. Their ancestry went back to the 18th century, when the French brought slaves from Mozambique and Madagascar to work a coconut plantation. After Napoleon's defeat in 1815, the islands passed from French to British rule; about 20 years later, slavery was abolished.
   Chagossian society continued to grow with the arrival of indentured labourers from India in the mid-19th century. By the 20th century they had developed a distinct language that was a lilting variation of French Creole. There were now three copra factories, supplying the coconut oil that lit street lamps in London, and a coaling station for ships en route to and from Australia; by the 1960s, there were plans for tourism. The workers received a small wage or payment in kind with commodities such as rice, oil and milk. They supplemented this by fishing in the abundantly stocked coastal waters, growing tomatoes, chilli, pumpkins and aubergines, and rearing chicken and ducks. As if celebrating a perfect vision of empire in such a place, a Colonial Office film from the 1950s describes the population as "born and brought up ... in conditions most tranquil and benign". The camera pans across a laughing woman hanging out clothes to dry in a coconut grove while her children play around her. This is Charlesia Alexis.
   I met Charlesia recently, 50 years after she was filmed. She was sitting in the shade of her small, sparsely furnished house on the edge of Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius, more than 1,000 miles from her home. I asked her for her fondest memories of Diego Garcia. "Oh, everything!" she replied. "The sense of wellbeing is my fondest souvenir. My family could eat and drink what they liked; we never lacked for anything; we never bought anything, except clothes. Can you imagine that?"
   "Why did you leave?"
   "I left in 1967. My husband was very ill and I decided to take him to Port Louis to get the special treatment he needed. When we were ready to return, we went to Rogers & Company [they ran the boats] and asked for our tickets. They said they had instructions not to let us go back. They said Diego had been sold."
   "Sold?"
   "Yes, that's what they said. We were tricked. Looking back, the day before we left, the administrator told us to take a lot of fruit with us. They tricked us in so many ways, and when this game had run its course, they deported everyone, just like that. I was the fourth generation. Diego was my bird in the sky that was taken from me. I was sent to live in a slum, in rooms previously inhabited by goats and pigs. That's how they saw us."
   What happened in the Chagos Islands was so searing, it may seem barely credible. Indeed La Lutte, as the Chagossians call their struggle for justice and freedom, arose from a crime that allows us to glimpse how great power works behind its respectable, democratic facade and how governments justify their actions with lies.
   During the 1960s and 1970s, British governments, both Labour and Tory, tricked and expelled the entire population of the Chagos, a British colonial dependency, so that their homeland could be given to a foreign power, the United States, as the site for a military base. This "act of mass kidnapping", as one observer describes it, was carried out in high secrecy, along with the conspiracy that preceded it. For almost a decade, neither parliament nor the US Congress knew anything about it, and no journalist revealed it. BBC newsreaders still refer to US aircraft flying out to bomb Afghanistan and Iraq from the "uninhabited" island of Diego Garcia. Not only was the Chagossians' homeland stolen from them, but they were taken out of history. This scandal is unresolved today - even though the high court in London has twice ruled that the islanders' "wholesale removal" was an "abject legal failure".
   The year was 1961. Two men strode up the jetty on Diego Garcia, filmed by missionaries unaware of the significance of their visitors. One was Rear Admiral Grantham of the US Navy, the leader of an American advance survey team whose objective was to find an island suitable for a military base that would allow Washington to dominate the Indian Ocean and beyond. For the next three years, British and American planners and engineers inspected the Chagos group. Finally, they selected the nearby island of Aldabra.
   Their secret decision leaked out to the scientists of the Royal Society in London, who were horrified. Together with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, this formidable establishment body mounted a campaign that saw off the Ministry of Defence and Admiral Grantham. The island's precious wildlife, including the giant land tortoise and the last flightless bird, were safe. The second choice, however, was not. This was Diego Garcia which, although rich in terrestrial and marine life, was not unique enough to excite the collective indignation of naturalists.
   As for the presence of a flourishing human population, this was "not an insurmountable problem", advised the Foreign Office, for people could be "removed" and "the outside world [presented] with a scenario in which there were no permanent inhabitants on the archipelago".
   In February 1964, a secret Anglo-American conference was held in London, at which the final decision was taken. Again, parliament was not informed. The following April, Anthony Greenwood, the colonial secretary in Harold Wilson's Labour government, flew to Mauritius, then a British colony that included the Chagos Islands. Greenwood spelled out the terms for granting independence to Mauritius. Despite United Nations Resolution 1514, which held that all colonial peoples had an inalienable right to independence without conditions, Greenwood offered it with strings. Mauritius could be free as long as Britain could keep the Chagos archipelago. The bribe was a mere 3m, together with a promise to support Mauritian sugar preferences.
   Thus Charlesia's homeland was "sold". On November 8 1965, in the twilight of its colonial era, Britain created a new colony, the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), whose principal territory was the Chagos Islands. It was a ruse of which perhaps only Britain's ancien rgime was capable; for the new colony was a fake, an entity created for the sole purpose of handing it over for the use of the American military. This was made possible by using the archaic powers of the royal prerogative, a throwback to the divine right of kings.
   Although barely reported in the press, word of this manoeuvre reached the United Nations in New York, spurring the General Assembly to pass Resolution 2066, which called on the British government "to take no action which would dismember the territory of Mauritius and violate its territorial integrity". This was ignored.
   In December 1966, Lord Chalfont, a Foreign Office minister, signed a contract in Washington giving the Pentagon a 50-year "lease" on Diego Garcia with an automatic extension of 20 years. Declassified state department documents obtained under the US Freedom of Information Act in 2005 reveal that Washington wanted the entire population expelled; as one official put it, the islands were to be "swept" and "sanitised". This was described in a secret file as "a neat, sensible package".
   In 1974,a joint UK-US question-and-answer "official truth" primer for embassies around the world asked: "Is there a native population on the Chagos Islands?" The reply was "No." A Ministry of Defence spokesman denied this was a lie, in the process uttering perhaps the most amazing lie of all. "There is nothing in our files," he said, "about inhabitants or about an evacuation." It was not until 1975 that the US Senate revealed that the British government had been secretly "compensated" for the Chagos with a discount of $14m off the price of a Polaris nuclear submarine. This itself was illegal, as it was never submitted to Congress for approval; and the document Chalfont signed stated falsely that the US would pay no rent for acquiring "base rights". There was no mention of a population.
   Lizette Talate is also in the Colonial Office film. She was 14 years old at the time and remembers the producer saying to her and her friends, "Keep smiling, girls!" Sitting in her kitchen in Port Louis, she says, "We didn't need to be told. I was a happy child, because my roots were deep in Diego. My great-grandmother was born on Diego, and my grandmother was born there, and my mother was born there, and I was born there. I made six children there. Maybe only the English can make a film that showed we were an established community, then deny their own evidence and invent the lie that we were transient workers. That's why they couldn't legally throw us out of our own homes; they had to terrify us into leaving or force us out."
   "How did they terrify you?" I asked.
   "They tried to starve us. The food ships stopped arriving, and everything was scarce. There was no milk, no dairy products, no oil, no sugar, no salt. When they couldn't starve us out of our homes, they spread rumours that we would be bombed, then they turned on our dogs."
   The Chagossians love their dogs; they are inseparable. The plan to kill all the dogs on the island - with its unsubtle implication that humans might be next - came from Sir Bruce Greatbatch, then Her Majesty's Governor of the Seychelles. "At first they tried poisoned fish balls," said Lizette. "That killed a few and left many in terrible agony. Then they paid a man to walk round with a big stick beating them to death, or trying to. Finally, American soldiers, who had already begun to arrive, gassed them, and the bodies - many still alive - were thrown on to a shelf that usually held the flesh of coconuts as it was cooked ... children listened to the howls of their pets being burned to death."
   Along with 180 others, Lizette and her family were forced on to the vessel Nordvaer, which had plied between the Chagos and Mauritius and the Seychelles, transporting copra and taking supplies back to the islands. The men were herded on to the bridge and had to stand or crouch in very rough weather; the women and children were made to sleep in the hold on a cargo of fertiliser - bird shit. People vomited and suffered diarrhoea; two women miscarried.
   "Even water was scarce," says Lizette. "What I can't forget is the fear and uncertainty for myself and my family. When we got to the Seychelles, the police were waiting for us. They marched us up the hill to a prison, where we were kept in cells until the boat was ready to take us on to Mauritius.
   "I suppose we took some hope in the promise that in Mauritius we would be granted a house, a piece of land, animals and a sum of money. We got nothing."
   The former president of Mauritius, Cassam Uteem, who has championed the Chagossians' rights, told me: "You can't imagine how bewildered and terrified they were ... These were a people who would sing their way through life; and here they were, weeping their way through life, and they are still weeping.
   "I know of one lady who lost two children within two or three months, and she wasn't able even to perform their funerals because she didn't have any money. The children were taken from the hospital straight to the cemetery. That lady is still weeping."
   Lizette is that lady. She lost Jollice, aged eight, and Regis, aged 10 months. Her husband died soon afterwards. "They died of sadness," she tells me. "It is true, because the doctor said he could not treat sadness. Lizette is a wiry, formidably intelligent woman who wears a mask of grief and determination. "I am going home," she says. "I am not to be pitied; I am fighting."
   By 1975, the Chagossians in exile began to die from their imposed poverty. Most were unemployed and penniless and either sharing a slum or sleeping rough. In a letter to an MP, a Foreign Office official wrote: "Although we have no information about deaths, some deaths are bound to have occurred in the normal course of events."
   That was a lie. The Foreign Office had sent a senior official, ARG Prosser, to investigate; he had sent back a graphically detailed report on the islanders' living conditions and advised that "something needs to be done".
   The government's response was to offer a minuscule 650,000 in compensation to the entire population. Even this did not arrive until 1978, five years after the last islander had been deported.
   In 1981, several hundred Chagossian women converged on the British High Commission in Port Louis, sat down and sang, and demanded proper compensation. Thanks to their protest, it appeared that progress was being made on compensation. On March 27 1982, a group of the most impoverished islanders accepted a "full and final" settlement of 4m [?sic] - less than half the estimated minimum that they could survive on. But on what the islanders wanted most - the right to return - there was a deafening silence.
   In the 1990s, the islanders' struggle took a dramatic turn when a treasure trove of declassified official documents was discovered in the National Archives at Kew, in London. This provided the narrative of a conspiracy between two governments to carry out, in the words of Article 7 of the statute of the international criminal court, the "deportation or forcible transfer of a population ... a crime against humanity".
   On July 28 1965, a senior Foreign Office official, TCD Jerrom, wrote to the British representative at the United Nations, FDW Brown, instructing him to lie to the general assembly that the Chagos Islands were "uninhabited when the United Kingdom government first acquired them". This Brown did on November 16 1965. He also misrepresented the population as "labourers from Mauritius and the Seychelles" for whom Britain's obligations under the United Nations Charter "did not apply", and he lied that the "new administrative arrangements" had been "freely worked out with the ... elected representatives of the people concerned".
   In a secret memorandum, a Colonial Office official, KWS MacKenzie, spelt out the truth. "One of the things we would like to do in the new Territory," he wrote, "is to convert all the existing residents into short-term, temporary residents by giving them temporary immigration permits, describing them as inhabitants of Mauritius or the Seychelles."
   Reading the files, it is clear that the British government did as it was told by Washington. Mass deportation, wrote a Foreign Office official, "was made virtually a condition of the agreement [with the Americans] when we negotiated it in 1965".
   What these files also reveal is an imperious attitude of brutality and contempt. On August 24 1966, Sir Paul Gore-Booth, permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office, wrote: "We must surely be very tough about this. The object of the exercise is to get some rocks which will remain ours. There will be no indigenous population except seagulls."
   At the bottom of the page is a postscript handwritten by DA Greenhill, another senior official, who became Baron Greenhill of Harrow.
   "Unfortunately," he wrote, "along with the Birds go some few Tarzans or Men Fridays whose origins are obscure, and who are being hopefully wished on to Mauritius etc. When this has been done, I agree we must be very tough."
   The cover-up went to the very top. On November 5 and 8 1965, the Colonial Secretary, Anthony Greenwood, wrote two secret minutes to Prime Minister Harold Wilson, in which he described the problem of a "population of 1,000 inhabitants" living in the Chagos. He urged that the Queen quickly approve the "order-in-council detaching the islands" so that the new colony could be declared and "we should be able to present the UN with a fait accompli".
   So when Wilson gave the green light to the order-in-council, he was aware he was overriding the legal and human rights of British citizens. He was stealing their country and ignoring the risks of "dumping unemployables in heavily over-populated Mauritius", as one honest Foreign Office official warned, not to mention the incalculable suffering this ensured.
   Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart, a quiet, grey-haired, grandfatherly-looking man, took charge of the deceit. Writing secretly to Wilson on July 25 1968, he proposed that the government lie to the world that there was "no indigenous population", even though he had signed a memorandum circulating in the cabinet which admitted that "there was an indigenous population and the Foreign Office knew it".
   On April 26 1969, Wilson's private secretary wrote to Stewart that the prime minister approved the "plan". Seven successive British governments have - to recall the memorable expression of a Foreign Office legal adviser in 1969 - maintained the fiction.
   In his two autobiographies, Denis Healey, who was defence secretary in the Wilson government and responsible for turning Diego Garcia over to the Pentagon, makes not a single mention of the expulsion of the population. In 2004, I asked Healey for an interview. He replied, "I fear I have no memories of the Chagos archipelago. Sorry."
   On May 6 1969, Healey's private secretary wrote to Downing Street, confirming that the Defence Secretary had read Stewart's plan and "agrees with its recommendations". Healey even queried the cost of expelling the population and sought an assurance that any "excess" above 10m would not be borne by his department.
   The "policy of concealment" (as a Foreign Office file called it) ran almost to the end of the century - until the files at Kew were cracked open. Armed with this extraordinary evidence, Richard Gifford, the tireless lawyer representing the islanders, headed for the courts. In October 2000, Lizette Talate, Charlesia Alexis and others, led by a courageous islander, Olivier Bancoult, flew to London to give evidence in a high court action that challenged the legality of their dispossession.
   The government had feared this, and, prior to the hearing, the Foreign Office mounted a disinformation campaign, led by Peter Hain. "The outer islands," Hain told the House of Commons, "have been uninhabited for 30 years, so any resettlement would present serious problems, both because of the practical feasibility and in relation to our treaty obligations."
   A "treaty" implied an agreement scrutinised by parliament. There was no treaty: only a secret, criminal deal. On November 3 2000, in the high court, Lord Justice Laws and Mr Justice Gibbs stunned the government.
   Citing the Magna Carta, which proscribed "Exile from the Realm" without due process, they unanimously squashed the 1965 ordinance used to deport the islanders as unlawful.
   Lizette and Charlesia at last could go home, it seemed. But the Blair government had other ideas. That afternoon, the Foreign Office published a new immigration ordinance that banned the islanders from returning to Diego Garcia. Once again, "treaty obligations" with Washington were cited.
   In 2003, the islanders were back in the high court, now seeking compensation. But this time they faced a judge who described the case as "unmeritorious" and "hopeless", and awarded the islanders not a penny - a decision "welcomed" by Bill Rammell, the Foreign Office minister responsible for the Chagos.
   The following year, Rammell employed the same sleight of hand that the Wilson government had used to expel the islanders in the 1960s, when he sent an order-in-council to the Queen for her rubber-stamped approval. This overturned the Chagossians' high court victory of 2000 in its entirety and and banned the islanders from ever returning home. The order-in-council appeared on a list of innocuous royal decrees, between an amendment to the royal charter of the College of Optometrists and the appointment of Her Majesty's education inspectors for Scotland. No reason was given; a privy councillor simply read out the fate of thousands of Her Majesty's most vulnerable, abused and wronged subjects.
   Richard Gifford and the islanders refused to accept this and were back in the high court last year.
   On May 11, two judges found unreservedly in their favour, describing the government's behaviour as illegal, repugnant and irrational. The government is considering an appeal, knowing that the Americans, having attacked Iraq and Afghanistan from Diego Garcia, are furious. The bombing of Iran is planned to take place from this British territory. Both governments apparently still believe they can "wear down" the islanders' resolve. They are mistaken, I can assure them.
   This is an edited extract from Freedom Next Time, by John Pilger, published by Bantam Press on June 5. #

A fashionable view of Timor

 
   The West Australian, Opinion, by GERARD HENDERSON, executive director of The Sydney Institute, p 19, Tuesday, June 6, 2006
To rephrase the cliche, it was a bit like deja vu - but for the very first time. The mini-series Answered by Fire (starring David Wenham and Julie Fortin), which concluded on ABC TV on Sunday, ran the fashionable line on East Timor. Namely, that all the violence which took place during the independence referendum in August 1999 was totally caused by Indonesia and that unnamed members of Australia's intelligence services were complicit in the destruction which occurred in East Timor some seven years ago due to their membership of a so-called Indonesia lobby.
   The scenes of circa 1999 were eerily familiar as uncontrolled groups of young men, sometimes armed with machetes, looted and torched Dili and elsewhere. Indeed the actors resembled the Dili-based players of the past few weeks - as if film had morphed into reality television. Except that, this time round, there have been fewer killings and less damage - due primarily to the rapid deployment of the Australian-led, and United Nations-sanctioned, peace maintenance force.
   Answered by Fire provided a convenient reminder of the euphoria which took place in Australia around the time of East Timor's independence, following Australia's leadership of the UN-approved Interfet force which quelled the violence and subdued the militias - some of which were backed by some members of the Indonesian defence force. Partly this was based on goodwill towards a newly independent nation. But, partly, it turned on denial. Few Australians involved in the political debate at the time were prepared to accept that, following Portugal's totally irresponsible junking of its former colony in 1974, there had been a civil war in East Timor - the consequences of which had continued to affect the society.
   Yet this had been acknowledged by Jose Ramos Horta, East Timor's Foreign Minister and Defence Minister. Writing in the Australian Financial Review on January 30, 1999, Mr Ramos Horta acknowledged that "one day the political leadership of my generation will have to answer for its actions and atone for the many senseless killings in the civil war of August 1975". The previous year Mr Ramos Horta had conceded that his group Fretilin made a "tremendous mistake" in willingly allowing itself to be portrayed "as communist". (ABC TV Four Corners, June 15,1998).
   The brutality of the Indonesian occupation of East Timor in 1975 caused understandable concern in Australia, among the Left and Right alike. However, the refusal to believe that East Timorese started killing one another, after Portugal dumped its one-time colony, created the concept of a noble, peaceful people - led by the charismatic rebel icon Xanana Gusmao - who virtually could do no wrong.
   In fact there was clan-based violence in East Timor before the Indonesian army arrived in 1975 and it has continued after the pro-Indonesian militia was dispersed by Interfet in 1999. The International Crisis Group's Sidney Jones, who has an impeccable record in opposing human rights abuses in Indonesia, commented last month that "there were differences" in East Timor "that stemmed from pro and anti-Portuguese positions going back before 1975" (ABC Radio, The World Today, May 25,2006).
  [Picture] Bad memories: The continuing violence in East Timor brings back memories of the horrors of the country's civil war of August 1975.  Picture: Associated Press  
   The current violence on the streets of Dili and elsewhere - between what have been termed the easterners and the westerners - did not suddenly emerge. Such divisions within East Timor have been in existence for generations. They were merely disguised by Portuguese colonialism and the Indonesian occupation. Their existence was denied by those who want to blame anyone but the East Timorese for that society's evident problems.
   In the April 2006 edition of The Monthly, leftist Mark Aarons essentially blames an Australian "Jakarta lobby" for Indonesia's misrule in East Timor. The entity is not defined. Yet names are named. Including such politicians as Labor's
   Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke, Bill Hayden and Gareth Evans (but not Paul Keating) and the coalition's Malcolm Fraser (but not John Howard) - along with several commentators, myself included (but not Paul Kelly). It was an odd selection. As it turned out, none of the names named could defend themselves since The Monthly does not run a Letters page.
   The fact is that virtually no influential politicians or commentators in Australia barracked for Indonesia's repression of East Timor. There was, however, a debate about how the interests of the East Timorese were to be best advanced following Portugal's exit from its colony, the subsequent East Timorese civil war and the Indonesian invasion.
   In July 1994, for example, I advocated that Indonesian president Suharto should step down and that East Timor should be granted wide-ranging autonomy. Yet this was sufficient for me to be branded a member of the "Jakarta lobby". The supporters of Fretilin in Australia were, and remain, uncompromising.
   East Timor would have continued as part of Indonesia were it not for the 1997 Asian economic downturn and the subsequent collapse of the Suharto regime. The Howard Government initially proposed scale autonomy for East Timor. It was the (then) Indonesian president J. B. Habibie who offered the independence option, which was taken up by an overwhelming majority of East Timorese in 1999. As Gen. Peter Cosgrove pointed out in June 2000, "the mission in East Timor was accomplished with the co-operation of the Indonesian armed forces not in spite of them, or in opposition to them".
   The unfashionable fact is that East Timor was not ready for immediate independence - which formally came into effect in 2000. The destruction which followed has now been replicated by East Timor's very own home-grown self-destruction.
   The poorly administered nation - led by the increasingly authoritarian Government headed by the marxist-inclined Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri - is all but a failed state and almost completely dependent on international peacekeepers and international aid. Australia has no option but to support East Timor. Yet it need not have come to this. #

Pentagon plans to axe Geneva rules

 
   The West Australian, p 24, Tuesday, June 6, 2006
   WASHINGTON: The US Defence Department has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that bans "humiliating and degrading treatment".
   It is a step that would mark a potentially permanent shift away from strict adherence to international human rights standards.
   The decision, announced by military officials, will not become final until the Pentagon makes new guidelines public, a step that has been delayed. Defence officials said the State Department fiercely opposed the military's decision to exclude Geneva Convention protections and had been pushing for the Pentagon and White House to reconsider.
   For more than a year, the Pentagon has been redrawing policies on detainees and interrogation. It plans to issue a new Army Field Manual, which, with accompanying directives, represents core instructions to US soldiers worldwide.
   The development comes amid growing worldwide criticism of US detention practices and the conduct of American forces in Iraq.
  [Picture] Abuse scandal: Iraqis wait outside Abu Ghraib jail near Baghdad in 2004 to get information on relatives held inside.
   A senior Defence Department official said the directive on interrogations was being rewritten to create safeguards so that detainees were treated humanely but could still be questioned effectively.
   Critics and supporters of President George Bush have debated if it is possible to prove a direct link between administration declarations that it would not be bound by the Geneva accord and events such as the abuses at Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.
   The detainee directive was due to be released in April with the Army Field Manual on interrogations. But objections from senators on other field manual issues forced a delay. Senators objected to provisions allowing harsher interrogation techniques for unlawful combatants, such as suspected terrorists, as opposed to traditional prisoners of war.
   For decades, it was the official policy of the US military to follow minimum standards for treating detainees as laid out in the Geneva Convention.
   But in 2002 Mr Bush suspended portions of the convention for captured al-Qaida and Taliban fighters. Among the directives being rewritten is one governing US detention operations. Military lawyers and other Defence Department officials wanted the redrawn version of the document to again embrace Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention.
   That provision bans torture and cruel treatment and covers all detainees. The protections in Article 3 also prohibit humiliation - treatment that falls short of cruelty or torture.
   The Pentagon tried to satisfy some of the concerns by including some Article 3 protections but refused to embrace the Geneva standard in the directive it plans to issue.
   One Defence Department official said that Article 3 prohibitions against "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment" could be interpreted as banning well-honed interrogation techniques.
   For example, many intelligence soldiers consider questioning the manhood of male prisoners an effective and humane technique.
   Suggesting to a suspected insurgent that he is "not man enough" to have set an explosive will sometimes elicit a full description, soldiers say. #