Bin Laden unarmed when shot

The Obama Administration’s image has been badly dented by the quick revelation that Osama bin Laden was unarmed when he was shot in the face.  It looks much more like an assassination and it is now hard to picture how he could have been trying to ‘resist’ apprehension – which would of course have been illegal anyway given that it involved US forces operating in Pakistan.

This probably doesn’t worry many people in the US, but believe me it makes the Obama Administration look very bad overseas to have first said ‘shot while resisting’ and then admit that bin Laden was unarmed.

Prominent human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson has put it quite aptly when he says it is an irony that the US has given bin Laden what he craved

The last thing he wanted was to be put on trial, to be convicted and to end his life in a prison farm in upstate New York.

What he wanted was exactly what he got – to be shot in mid-jihad and get a fast track to paradise and the Americans have given him that.

It’s an irony that it’s a win-win situation for both Osama and Obama. The latter gets re-elected as president and the former gets his fast track to paradise.

It’s worth looking at the full story about Geoffrey Roberston’s remarks (linked above), because he draws out clearly how bin Laden would have been discredited by being brought before a court.  But of course, it wasn’t justice being served, it was politics…

MSM neglects climate change update

Around 10 days ago, the UN Environment Program put out a media release about the latest climate science, clearly timed to contribute to the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh.

The media release announced findings from the Climate Change Science Compendium 2009, which reviews 400 major scientific works on earth systems and climate released through peer-reviewed literature or from research institutions over the last three years, since the close of research for consideration by the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, the current global scientific benchmark.

Amazingly, 10 days later, Google shows that there have been only 68 media mentions of the Compendium from the whole world – and some of them are derisory comments from sceptics.

This is amazing because the Compendium shows that the observed reality of climate change is unfolding at or above the most pessimistic projections of the IPCC, and events such as glacier and ice sheet melting are exceeding predictions.

Amongst the significant points:

  • Losses of tropical and temperate mountain glaciers affect perhaps 20 percent to 25 percent of the global human population in terms of drinking water, irrigation and hydro-power.
  • The growth in carbon dioxide emissions from energy and industry has exceeded even the most fossil-fuel intensive scenario developed by the IPCC at the end of the 1990s. Global emissions were growing by 1.1 percent each year from 1990-1999 and this accelerated to 3.5 percent per year from 2000-2007.
  • Growth of the global economy in the early 2000s and an increase in its carbon intensity (emissions per unit of growth), combined with a decrease in the capacity of ecosystems on land and the oceans to act as carbon “sinks”, have led to a rapid increase in the concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This has contributed to sooner-than-expected impacts including faster sea-level rise, ocean acidification, melting Arctic sea ice, warming of polar land masses, freshening of ocean currents and shifts in the circulation patterns of the oceans and atmosphere.
  • Until the summer of 2007, most models projected an ice-free September for the Arctic Ocean towards the end of the current century. Reconsideration based on current trends has led to speculation that this could occur as soon as 2030.

Why has this major scientific summary gained so little attention?

Americans… are strange people but they deserve a really good president.

So does the rest of the world.

My title comes from the concluding lines of a piece in the Sunday version of the Sydney Morning Herald, written by a former left-wing Labor politician who, together with her two activist sisters and five other Australians, are currently volunteer workers for the Obama campaign in New Hampshire.  Her impressions can be read here.
Over here in Australia, we’re geting pretty excited, too.  The latest polling shows that Australians want Obama to win over McCain, 72% to 9%.  The detail shows:

  • 2 in 3 Australians say they have a worse view of the USA after the George W. Bush years;
  • 3 in 5 say US foreign policy during the last 8 years has made the world less safe;
  • 1 in 2 Australians expect the economic conditions in the country to get worse over the next 12 months; and
  • 3 in 4 Australians think that it is important for Australia who wins the US Presidential election.

Not much different to the views of the rest of the world, really!

Friends, truly, the excitement really is building all ’round the world – we can sense what is going to happen on and from Tuesday.  This is going to be a great victory.  Our best wishes for the GOTV effort.  The world wants a landslide for Obama to prove that Americans can redeem themselves!

Saying Sorry, Howard Style

Two Vietnam War era Iroquois helicopters have been disturbing my peace this weekend, flying low over Australia’s national capital multiple times on multiple days as part of the interminable celebration of the fortieth anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan.

Long Tan was so important a battle in Australia’s Vietnam engagement that the anniversary has been adopted as Vietnam Veterans’ Remembrance Day in Australia.  The question of recognition for Vietnam Veterans is as sensitive in Australia as it is in the US, and there has been lingering resentment about the downgrading of bravery awards to soldiers who fought at Long Tan.

This prompted Prime Minister Howard to offer a national apology on Thursday to the soldiers who were “poorly treated” on their return from Vietnam.

Some Australians are celebrating another anniversary this weekend.  
It’s also 40 years since the walk off by Aboriginal workers and their families from Wave Hill cattle station in the Northern Territory.  This symbolic and courageous action taken by Gurindji, Mudbura and Warlpiri families against the oppressive practices of a company owned by Lord Vestey was a major rallying point and contributed to winning equal pay for Indigenous workers in the pastoral industry, national recognition of Aboriginal land rights, and eventual return of the Wave Hill land to Gurindji ownership.

John Howard was all over the Long Tan anniversary celebrations like a rash.  A reception for veterans was held at Parliament House. A memorial service was held at the Vietnam Memorial on Anzac Avenue.  And those damn Iroquois kept flying back and forth in formation about 100 metres over the suburbs.

John Howard was nowhere to be seen in relation to the Wave Hill commemoration.

As Opposition Leader in 1987, John Howard made an issue of growing Asian immigration to Australia.  Since assuming office as Prime Minister in 1996, he has refused to say sorry for the decades-long policy of enforced separation of Aboriginal children from their families (known as the stolen generation) on grounds that it was not he or current generations of Australians who were responsible.  And besides, the argument went, he could not say sorry because it might admit legal liability by the Government.  

If Howard is not a racist himself, then he has certainly played very carefully to cultivate the support of the racist element in the Australian community.  Now we see the flimsy excuse of `legal liability’ being discredited by Howard himself as he says `sorry’ to 50,000 Vietnam veterans.  It’s completely clear that John Howard will only ever say sorry to you if you are white and fit his scheme of promoting militarism and the `good’ bits of Australian history.

Cross-posted at musings of a bureaucrat and European Tribune.

The sad state of Timor-Leste

Violence appeared to be spiralling out of control on Saturday in Dili, the capital of Timor-Leste (East Timor), despite the arrival of more than a thousand troops from Australia, Malaysia and New Zealand since Thursday afternoon.

The present problems have grown from a variety of internal tensions in the new country, which have become more and more openly expressed since the withdrawal of the UN peacekeeping force in the middle of last year.

In the last few days, army loyalists have been fighting rebel soldiers and elements of the police in and around the capital.  At least 20 people, including up to 12 police, were shot dead by loyalist soldiers as unarmed police tried to surrender in a UN-brokered deal on Thursday.  A mother and her four children burned to death when seven homes were torched in a Dili suburb the same day.  It appears that ethnic gangs are fighting each other in the streets.

The current violence has exploded following dissatisfaction within Timor-Leste’s army over alleged regional favouritism in promotions.  In March, 600 of the army’s 1400 soldiers were sacked by the Government when they deserted their barracks.  At the end of April, a rally in support of the sacked troops turned into a riot when security forces fired on the crowd.  Since then, many Dili residents have fled the town.

The clashes have been growing throughout May, to the point where open fighting between rebel and loyalist soldiers and the police has broken out in the last week.

Timor-Leste has had a sad history of violence.  The colonial administration by Portugal broke down in 1974, and East Timor was declared independent by Fretilin (The Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor) in November 1975.  Indonesia invaded East Timor in December 1975, and ran a regime of bloody repression until 1999, when a UN-sanctioned vote on independence was carried on 30 August despite Indonesian intimidation.  Following this vote, Timorese militias organised by Indonesia’s army went on a rampage which left a thousand people dead while Indonesian forces watched from the sidelines.  A staggering 100,000 to 250,000 people are believed to have been killed during the Indonesian occupation, out of an initial population of about 600,000.

Indonesia withdrew its forces and Australia led an international force into East Timor to restore order in September 1999, following which the nation was placed under a UN Transitional Administration.

The Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste became independent on 20 May 2002, with former Falintil (Fretilin’s armed wing) leader Xanana Gusmao as President and Mari Alkatiri as Prime Minister.  The last peacekeeping forces left in the middle of last year, but a sizable UN assistance mission remained.  Many observers have since said that the withdrawal of peacekeeping troops was premature.

Timor-Leste is the world’s poorest country, its population of about one million people having a per capita GDP of about $400.  Much of the population relies on subsistence agriculture, although the country exports coffee and sandalwood.  Agreement with Australia in mid-2005 over revenue sharing from offshore petroleum fields has opened up a substantial revenue flow, although this does little to provide employment.

The divisions currently being exposed in Timor-Leste have a number of origins.  The one million people speak a staggering 15 indigenous languages.  The security forces are composed both of Indonesian-trained staff and former guerrilla fighters.  The governing party, Fretilin, is said to be divided between groups who spent the Indonesian occupation years in Australia or Mozambique, or who remained in Timor.  And the bloodshed of the last few days now appears to have a communal basis, with fighting in Dili’s streets between those who come from the Eastern and the Western ends of the country.  

The Australian media are playing up supposed disagreement between the Prime Minister and the President, who as commander-in-chief has indicated this week that he is assuming direct control of the armed forces.  Prime Minister Alkatiri has spoken several times of a coup.  To me, it looks very sadly like a mixture of many factors, including the fact that unemployment is probably more than 50%.  I am hoping, perhaps unrealistically, that Timor-Leste will not go down the well-travelled post-colonial path which ends in chaos.  The one good point is that this, and the previous deployment from 1999 to 2005, is an example of Australian overseas military intervention which I can actually support.

Cross-posted at European Tribune and Flogging the Simian.

Bush offers cyclone aid to Australia!

I’m trying not to wake the family with my laughter, having just seen Australia’s Prime Minister on TV saying that he has declined George Bush’s offer of aid after Cyclone Larry struck the North Queensland coast early on Monday morning.

I guess Dubya thinks he knows something about hurricanes…

More below the fold
What he doesn’t know is that Australia has a well-organised and well-rehearsed disaster response mechanism, with close cooperation between national and state governments, civil emergency services and the military.

Tropical Cyclone Larry (hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons are regionally-specific names for the same thing) was upgraded from a category 4 to a category 5 cyclone not long before it reached the coast.

Well before that happened, people in affected areas had been warned about appropriate shelter and those living adjacent to the sea were visited by police and state emergency service volunteers and told to evacuate.

Larry crossed the coast south of Cairns, with 290km/h winds damaging the towns of Babinda, Innisfail and Mission Beach.  The Mayor of Innisfail has said that it looks like an atomic bomb has gone off.  [Curiously slate has set out to test this claim, and decided that a category 5 cyclone causes similar damage to a 10-megaton momb at 1.5 miles.]

The fortunate thing is that North Queensland is not very heavily populated – not nearly as much as the US Gulf coast.  Innisfail has a population of about 8,000, while the Cairns region would total about 120,000.  As a result of the preparations, and probably also the fact that building regulations envisage cyclone strikes, there have been few injuries and no reported deaths.

Just over a day after the cyclone struck, army personnel from Townsville have already set up a mobile water purification plant, a field kitchen and field hospital at Innisfail.  The soldiers have begun repairing schools to provide somewhere for emergency workers to sleep.  A thousand state emergency service volunteers have begun cleanup and protection work.  The troops involved have had good experience, having been to Bandar Aceh (Indonesia) in the aftermath of the Tsunami 15 months ago.

The Queensland Premier has declared a state of emergency in order to allow established forms of national government disaster assistance to flow – including cash payments to families.

It seems that destruction of property has been significant – perhaps hundreds of homes totally destroyed and thousands unroofed.  One early estimate of the economic loss is over a billion dollars.  The region is noted for tourism, sugar and banana production.  Some 90 to 95% of Australian banana production has just been destroyed, so I guess they are about to be a luxury item.

Oh, I almost forgot… the Prime Minister and the Queensland Premier, who are from opposing political parties, will together visit the area tomorrow.  The PM was at pains to say he would not go until he could be sure he would not divert resources from emergency work.

Nothing if not street-wise, John Howard.  He shows every sign of being Prime Minister for a further ten years.  And even if Dubya doesn’t know much about hurricanes, John Howard has certainly learnt something from him… and Katrina.

Mixed feelings at Christmas time

Merry Christmas, every one!  It’s 8.30am on Christmas Day here.

Our two girls have fallen asleep again after waking up at 2.57am and 4.30am respectively to see what Santa had left in their stockings.  Lots of excited unwrapping and exclamations of delight later (“Dad, can you believe that Santa gave me a Barbie `laptop'”), they have snuggled down to sleep on the lounge and in a beanbag.  This is very fortunate, as we have a long day ahead.

I’ve just made the mixture for the champagne crepes which will later form the basis for a smoked salmon & crepe `cake’ (recipe provided on demand).  While it rests, I’ve checked the news and weather on the net.  It will be fine and 25 degrees Celsius: rather cool for this time of year.

We’ll have some of my partner’s family here late in the morning and open our gifts to each other before eating lunch.  Perhaps it’s a reflection of the age or of our social milieu that the family connections are a little curious.  There’s my partner’s father and his second wife (the not-so-evil step-mom).  Plus there’s the step mother’s mother and her brother, who’s returned from living in an Indian ashram to spend Christmas in Australia (yes, go figure!).  

We’re also hoping for a visit from a woman who lives nearby and who seems to be spending Christmas alone.  Her marriage to a friend of ours ended tragically earlier this year, and it’s his turn to have their boys.  We feel pretty badly for her, as most of their friends seem to have opted to stick with him and haven’t remained in contact with her.

We’ll telephone other family members in different parts of Australia during the day.  And late in the day we’ll probably see our family best friends who live 500 meters up the street.

So Christmas for us will involve far too much food and drink, excesses in the gift department, and lots of convivial time with family and friends.

My partner talked yesterday about the fact that she hadn’t managed to provide a gift to a local children’s home who said that they didn’t have enough gifts to go around.  It seems that their teenage boys are not well provided for by donors.  

This, and a discussion about our lonely friend, reminded me that I used to get very sad as a child when I thought about all the people in the world who don’t have enough to eat.  Lately I’ve thought a lot about the suffering of children.  Our own adopted daughter prompts me to think about the baby girls abandoned in China due to the one-child policy, economics and social attitudes.  A staggering 100,000 of them each year have no hope of ever having a family life.

When I was younger I was politically active, hoping to correct the injustices of the world.  These days being a parent, and an employee of the reactionary Australian government, means that there isn’t time for political activism, and even if there were it would be detrimental to my employment.  So I mainly just feel powerless and seethe about the problems of the world.  Perhaps my daughters will be able to change it.  Oh, they’ve both woken again, and Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert (my partner’s choice on the CD player to keep the girls asleep) is giving way to Santa Claus is Coming to Town.

What are you doing at Christmas, and how do you feel about the world?

Cross-posted at European Tribune.

Nguyen Tuong Van is about to die [UPDATED]

Two-and-a-half hours after I post this diary, Australian Nguyen Tuong Van will be executed by hanging in Singapore’s Changi Prison.

Van was arrested with 396.2 grams of heroin while transiting through Changi Airport en route from Cambodia to Melbourne on 12 December 2002.

Last year, the Singapore High Court sentenced him to death, a mandatory sentence under Singapore law for a drug offence of this kind.
Van and his twin brother Khoa were born in a refugee camp in Thailand in 1980.  Soon after, the family moved to Australia.

Why Van was carrying the heroin isn’t completely clear.  He’s said that he was trying to raise money to pay debts incurred by his brother.  I’ve also heard from a local journalist that he has a criminal record involving drugs here in Australia.

But that’s not the point of this diary.  I’m up early this morning because I’ve found it hard to sleep these last few days thinking about this case.  The Australian media have faithfully tracked each heartbreaking step in the story as Van’s mother Kim and his brother have flown to Singapore to say goodbye.  Sensation sells, of course, and there’s nothing like a distraught mother facing the hopelessness of knowing her child will die at an appointed time and place.

Australia’s Prime Minister Howard has been his usual calculating self.  Keeping a weather eye to public opinion, he has carefully sent out some sympathetic signals such as raising the case with Singapore’s Prime Minister at the recent Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting.  As Australian lawyers and civil liberties groups raised potential legal avenues to halt the execution, the Australian Government has ‘studied’ these and rejected them as unworkable.  

Taking Singapore to the International Court of Justice and extraditing Van to face charges in Australia have both been rejected.  Our Government has been very clear that it opposes the idea of consumer boycotts against Singapore and that it will not endanger the official bilateral relationship.

I don’t know Nguyen Tuong Van.  He may or may not have a criminal record.  Smuggling heroin isn’t something I support.

But I think capital punishment is barbaric.

And I think it is hopelessly unjust to impose a mandatory death penalty for any offence.  I understand that this is contrary to international law, as it does not allow punishment to be imposed on a case-by-case basis to fit the circumstances and severity of a crime, and also fails to take into account contrition and cooperation by the accused.  Not to mention the fact that you can’t undo the sentence if the wrong person is convicted.

Van has apparently cooperated with Singapore’s authorities and is a genuinely reformed character after reflecting on his crime for several years.  As one of his lawyers said yesterday after a last visit “he is completely rehabilitated, completely reformed, completely focused on doing what is good, and now they’re going to kill him”.  

One of his Melbourne school friends who has flown to see him has spoken movingly of the fact that Van is bravely accepting and facing his fate, and mainly concerned for his mother’s welfare.  

Amongst the hand-wringing ‘actions’ from the Australian Government has been the request that Singapore’s strict prison code be relaxed to allow Kim to hug her son for a last time.  Singapore’s authoritarian Government, which usually does not show any sign of weakness, only relented to the extent of allowing mother and son to hold hands.  Later today, Kim will receive her son’s body and will fly home to Australia with it.

I’m not sure what the moral of this story is, or how to finish the diary.  Perhaps just to say, if you visit Singapore, don’t carry any chewing gum (illegal), don’t have male homosexual relations (also illegal) and most certainly don’t carry any drugs.  You’ve been warned.

Update [2005-12-1 22:23:20 by canberra boy]:
As Oui has kindly commented below, the execution was carried out as scheduled. Immediate political reaction in Australia is summarised here, most notably involving further hand-wringing by John Howard, who criticised Singapore again for denying a final embrace, but not for the execution. Presumably his polling tells him that disengaged outer-suburban swinging voters think that Van got what he deserved. That pretty much sums up Australia today: the politics of self interest. I’ll say more about the politics of capital punishment in the comments. Personally, I’m going to take the advice of Greens Senator Bob Brown (see last link) and hug my family and the friends I see tonight.

Hey andy, about the clock…

I’m afraid there doesn’t seem to be any way I can e-mail andy about a technical matter, so this diary will have to do.  (I didn’t want to e-mail Booman right now on something relatively minor.)

Much of eastern Australia has just gone onto summer (or daylight) time (UTC +11).  So I reset my user preferences for Eastern Aust Daylight time.  Trouble is, this results in the display being an hour behind what it should be.  If I switch it back to Eastern Aust Standard it shows two hours behind.

As I recall, the time is calculated by or from the BT server settings.  I know daylight time has just ended on the US West Coast.  Andy, can you check the server clock and the time zone selected for the server in scoop?  I suspect the problem may be one of those.  This would be confirmed if other people are getting strange readings…

I’m afraid there doesn’t seem to be any way I can e-mail andy about a technical matter, so this diary will have to do.  (I didn’t want to e-mail Booman right now on something relatively minor.)

Much of eastern Australia has just gone onto summer (or daylight) time (UTC +11).  So I reset my user preferences for Eastern Aust Daylight time.  Trouble is, this results in the display being an hour behind what it should be.  If I switch it back to Eastern Aust Standard it shows two hours behind.

As I recall, the time is calculated by or from the BT server settings.  I know daylight time has just ended on the US West Coast.  Andy, can you check the server clock and the time zone selected for the server in scoop?  I suspect the problem may be one of those.  This would be confirmed if other people are getting strange readings…

[UPDATED] soj is alive and blogging

Just out of curiosity I clicked on the Eurotrib blogroll link to Flogging the Simian.  Following her ‘farewell from blogging’ posts in late September, soj took her site down and hasn’t posted here since.

But guess what?  Three weeks later, FTS reappeared (with the monkey and woman changing positions!) and soj has posted some excellent pieces on the manufacturing of an Iran ‘crisis’, on blogging, and a variety of other subjects.

It’s worth checking out.  Guess the writing urge was just too powerful.

Cross-posted at European Tribune.

Update [2005-10-24 7:2:6 by canberra boy]:
Soj has returned to the frontpage at European Tribune with her EuroPDB. Seems I tumbled to her continued on-line existence just as she was about to reveal it!

Just out of curiosity I clicked on the Eurotrib blogroll link to Flogging the Simian.  Following her ‘farewell from blogging’ posts in late September, soj took her site down and hasn’t posted here since.

But guess what?  Three weeks later, FTS reappeared (with the monkey and woman changing positions!) and soj has posted some excellent pieces on the manufacturing of an Iran ‘crisis’, on blogging, and a variety of other subjects.

It’s worth checking out.  Guess the writing urge was just too powerful.

Cross-posted at European Tribune.

Update [2005-10-24 7:2:6 by canberra boy]:
Soj has returned to the frontpage at European Tribune with her EuroPDB. Seems I tumbled to her continued on-line existence just as she was about to reveal it!