Brisbane public meeting: anti-terror laws

Woolly Days attended a public meeting this evening. The meeting theme was "ANTI TERROR LAWS - SILENCING DISSENT AND ATTACKING OUR RIGHTS" and was held at the CPEU headquarters at 41 Peel Street South Brisbane. The meeting was held to commemorate the first anniversary of the passing of Australia’s latest draconian anti-terrorist legislation, the Commonwealth Anti-Terrorism Act 2005(Revised). About 30 to 40 people attended and the following is my notes of what the speakers said. I apologise in advance if I have in any way misrepresented their opinions.

There were four speakers, Michael Cope (president of the Qld Council of Civil Liberties), Sasha Jesperson from Amnesty International Australia, Andrew Bartlett, Qld Democrat senator and Salim Al Beraby (spelling may not be accurate) a Muslim youth activist.

Cope spoke first. He mentioned that not many decisions have yet come to court as a result of the new legislation. But the legislation does not stand up on the basis on constitutional, common and international law. There are inadequate safeguards. Control orders can last for 12 months and then be rolled over. There is no evidence that the previous laws were deficient. The new laws create an unjust system of arbitrary detention and may have precisely the opposite affect as intended. It will increase paranoia and hostility in those who believe the laws are aimed at them and may lead to recruitment to terrorism.

The government has consistently failed to demonstrate the need for the legislation. In the US the odds of dying from terrorism are 1 in 88,000. The chances of a ladder falling on you are 1 in 10,000. Car crashes kill 15 times more Americans that terrorism. The laws are based on fear and the strength of the legislation is not appropriate to the risk. People may be deprived of their liberties on the basis of what they might know. The presumption of innocence does not apply. The laws undermine fairness, reduce the capacity of the right to a proper defence. Convictions can be based on what the accused might know and it is entirely probable that innocent people will be incarcerated.

As well as the detention orders, the act has provision for control orders. Jack Thomas is subject to a control order despite being was cleared of all charges by a court. His contest against the order comes up in the New Year. Victorian Court of Appeals threw out the case against him based on a forced confession. The control order was obtained by Federal Police and ASIO on the balance of probability that Thomas might do something. The orders allow government exclude lawyers seeing prosecution evidence on nebulously defined security grounds.

The Federal law is mirrored in legislation in each of the states. Peter Beattie made an undertaking to parliament and the Council for Civil Liberties that the law would be reviewed this calendar year but that has not happened yet. The Qld legislation is stronger than the Victorian and ACT equivalents in that it allows police to issue a detention order not just a judge. This allows police to act as judge and jury. The law is ambiguously worded and it is not certain whether defendants have the right to cross-examine witnesses. Qld defendants are not entitled to legal aid either. It also requires every conversation between defendant and lawyer to be recorded and monitored by a police officer. The standard of proof should be ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ not ‘balance of probabilities’ as it is now.

The sedition provisions were the subject of an enquiry by the law reform commission. However Attorney-General Philip Ruddock rejected the recommended changes. The law should not criminalise expressions of support for terrorist organisations. Ruddock has also obfuscated on the issue of obtaining evidence under torture and declared sleep deprivation not to be torture.

The English House of Lords declared torture to be illegal in common law as far back as 1628 when the Duke of Buckingham was assassinated by John Felton. Felton was threatened with the rack but King Charles I asked the opinion of the courts who found against torture. Torture spreads like an infectious disease hardening and brutalising its users. The writ of habeas corpus is a touchstone of English legal principles and Howard’s government claims to the inheritor of these principles. When confronted by the UN Declaration of Human Rights article 3 “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person” http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html Ruddock would only accede to the right to life and security but left out the liberty. The UNDHR was written by those fighting Hitler in World War II. These new laws elevate Osama to a status he does not deserve. Cope concluded his speech by saying the price of these laws is the violation of freedom.

Sasha Jesperson from AI spoke next. She stated that AI condemned the new laws and saw them as part of a global pattern of secret detentions, extraordinary renditions and house arrests in many jurisdictions of the world. ASIO has over 40 new powers as a result of recent law changes. There are no safeguards and the control orders amount effectively to house arrest. The laws could be interpreted as including political and industrial action in their gamut. If involved in the training for a terrorist activity it is a 25 year sentence. If the person does not realise the training is for terrorist purposes but acts ‘recklessly’ to continue, it is also a serious offence. The Attorney-General has the power to ban political organisations which disallows people from membership, raising funds and freedom of association. It may be unconstitutional as the High Courts showed when they struck down the ban on the Australian Communist Party. ASIO can hold any person over 16 years without charge for up to seven days. The person cannot reveal ASIO’s involvement for 2 weeks or if an operational matter for 2 years. The person is not entitled to a lawyer of his or her choice, and is subject to change. Jack Thomas, the control order victim is only allowed to use a mobile phone given to him by police and is not allowed to use the internet for 12 months. Human rights laws are not an optional extra during times of international terror.

AI commission Roy Morgan Research who found that 95% of people think that human rights are important but only 31% thought the anti-terror laws affected them. It is not true. The anti-terror hotline gets 300 calls a day that are passed through to ASIO. Jessica Moore, the Wollongong Uni student activist was contacted by police to say she was being investigated as a Hamas supporter after she attended a political meeting about homophobia. Jesperson concluded her speech by saying Moore thought the whole issue was absurd but lawyers are advising her (Moore) to take the matter very seriously.

Andrew Bartlett spoke next. He wanted to put the issue in a political, legal and social context. It is important to note how government behaves to avoid scrutiny of their new powers. There is only one parliamentary committee charged with holding ASIO to account. That is the Joint Standing Committee on intelligence and security. There are no minor party reps on this committee and most of its work is done in camera. However in the two public reports it has produced recently, Labor heavyweight Robert Ray has complained that the committee is not getting the information it needs from either ASIO or the government. There is no justification provided as to why Hezbollah and the PKK (Kurdish party in Turkey) are proscribed organisations. ASIO are not following their own guidelines, a trend which is deeply worrying.

The wider problem is that the precedents in the anti-terrorism act spreads to other legislation. The recent environment law allowed for powers of strip searching and seven day detention without charge. It is aimed at illegal fishing but it done so that the fisheries management act is in line with the migration act. The migration act also has mandatory sentencing provisions. The government are constantly arguing why these types of changes are justified. These are political arguments which are why issues such as due process for David Hicks and Nauru solutions are so important. The visa of US peace activist Scott Parkin was cancelled and he was imprisoned pending deportation. Government officials refused to explain to Parkin or his lawyers the basis for re-assessing his status.

Meanwhile a refugee was detained for five years due to a security assessment that was based on false identity. The refugee was unable to challenge because he was never able to see the evidence against him. The government also practice vilification against Jack Thomas while Ruddock continues to slander David Hicks. They build public support through the media and use labels to great effect including calling indigenous leaders “terrorists” when they respond to issues of black injustice.

Pine Gap protesters have been arrested and charged with obscure 1952 legislation brought in during the Cold War. If found guilty they face seven years’ prison. Then there are the recent changes to the Electoral Act to close the rolls on the day the election is called. This deliberately disenfranchises transient people. There is a link to the new proposed citizenship test which has the rationale of ‘weeding out the undesirables’. Another example of the government squashing dissent was the recent refusal to issue a visa for a member of the Tipton Three when he wanted to come here to promote the film "The Road to Guantanamo". The government is self-serving, dodgy and has shown contempt for due process. They treat the committees with contempt because they can get away with it and there is hardly anything anyone can do about it. Bartlett concluded by saying the only thing people can do is to either vote them out of power or at least restore balance to the Senate.

Salim Al Beraby spoke last. She gave her experiences as Lebanese born Muslim migrant to Australia. She pointed out Health Minister Tony Abbott’s speech about culture shock that Muslim must feel in Australia as well as the uneasiness felt by Australian seen Muslims wearing burqas. Al Beraby said she didn’t encounter culture shock as being Australian meant the freedom to wear what she wanted and if that Abbott was shocked he needs to get out and meet some Muslims to understand why they wear the veil. But since the new laws were enacted she worries about how people view her. She met the Attorney-General and asked him ‘what does terrorism mean to you?’ He got angry when she compared Western soldiers killing Iraqis to the way the law treats people here. She finished by saying it would appear to be ok to kill in Iraq but not in Australia.

Litvinenko enquiry moves to Russia

The Russian branch of Interpol has joined the enquiry into the murder of Alexander Litvinenko. The ex-Russian spy died of suspected polonium-210 poisoning in a London hospital last month. Now Interpol's Moscow office chief Timur Lakhonin said Interpol was providing "speedy exchange of information" between police in Britain, Russia and Germany. Litvinenko himself believed he was poisoned by the Russian government, but the Kremlin has dismissed these suggestions. Now British investigators have travelled to Russia to interview those who met Litvinenko in a London hotel on 1 November, the day he fell ill.

The two key interviewees that British police are interested in are Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun. The two men have other things in common besides meeting Litvinenko on that fateful day. Both men both denied involvement in the crime, both are ex-KGB operatives and both have themselves now come down with radiation sickness. Police interviewed Lugovoi, who is now a businessmen, in a Moscow hospital where he was undergoing medical checks after traces of polonium-210 were found in his body. Then a day later, they interviewed Kovtun who was also hospitalised with radiation poisoning. German detectives are also interested in Kovtun on suspicion of plutonium smuggling into Germany in October. His ex-wife and children in Hamburg are also undergoing tests for possible radiation contamination.

Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko was born in 1962 in the south-western city of Voronezh. After high school he enrolled in the Soviet Army as a private. He rapidly rose through the ranks and graduated from the Interior Forces Military Academy as a lieutenant-colonel. He joined the KGB in 1988. He was soon assigned to a unit which worked closely with Moscow’s police to fight organised crime. In 1991, the KGB was rebadged to the FSB in the newly independent Russian federation. But not much else had changed; the last head of the KGB Sergey Golovko was also the first head of the FSB.

Litvinenko continued to climb the ladder of the new organisation. He rose to become deputy head of a top-secret section responsible for investigating corruption within the service. Later Litvinenko claimed that during this period his superiors ordered him to kill Boris Berezovsky, the billionaire friend of President Yeltsin who was then Secretary of the Security Council. His stellar career came to an abrupt end in 1998. He went public with the Berezovsky claims. The then FSB boss Vladimir Putin was outraged and immediately sacked Litvinenko.

Litvinenko spent the next two years in and out of prison on cooked-up charges that were never proven. After a third arrest in 2000 on charges of faking evidence, a passport-less Litvinenko fled the country. He made it to Turkey where his wife and son joined him. In November that year, the family claimed political asylum in Britain. Here the family was supported by fellow exile Berezovsky and Litvinenko became an open and outspoken of his ex-boss Putin. Putin was now an international player having come from nowhere to claim a stunning victory in the Russian presidential election in 2000. In 2002, Litvinenko published a book “Blowing up Russia: Terror from Within” in which he claimed the FSB, not Chechen separatists, were responsible for the Russian apartment block bombings in 1999 that killed more than 300 people. Russia tried and convicted him in absentia.

Litvinenko continued to be a media-friendly embarrassing thorn in the side of the Russian administration. In 2003 he told Australian SBS TV program Dateline two of the Moscow theatre terrorists were FSB agents. He claimed “FSB agents among Chechens organised the whole thing on FSB orders, and those agents were released." He claimed that the others were all killed to conceal FSB involvement. Then in 2005, Litvinenko told Polish TV the FSB trained the prominent Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Dagestan in the 1990s.

Litvinenko sustained his attack on Putin in 2006. In July he accused him of being a paedophile and claimed a Russian newspaper editor died in aeroplane crash under suspicious circumstances just a week after trying to publishing an article on the subject. His latest project was the murder of high-profile vociferous Putin critic Anna Politkovskaya. Politkovskaya was shot dead outside her home on 8 October. Litvinenko was aware of the threat in advance and he advised Politkovskaya to leave the country immediately. On October 19 Litvinenko was in the audience at a meeting at the Frontline Club for journalists. When the discussion turned to Politkovskaya’s murder 12 days earlier, he openly blamed the Russian government.

On 1 November, he had two notable meetings. Firstly, he had lunch at a sushi restaurant in Piccadilly with a shadowy Italian named Mario Scaramella. Scaramella claimed to have information about the killing of Politkovskaya. He was an investigator for an Italian parliamentary commission to investigate alleged KGB ties to Italian political figures. Then at 4pm he met Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun in a Mayfair hotel for a business meeting. Lugovoi and Kovtun were in London to attend the Champions League game between Arsenal and CSKA Moscow. They arranged to meet again the following day but Litvinenko rang Lugovoi in the morning to say he was ill and wouldn’t attend. Shortly afterwards Litvinenko checked into hospital.

Doctors were initially baffled by the case. Litvinenko’s combination of symptoms including dehydration, heart complications and hair loss led doctors to suspect the heavy metal thallium. But this was ruled out after tests. His condition steadily deteriorated and he died on 23 November with the official cause still unknown. Before he died, Litvinenko had spoken at length to detectives and media and was forthright in his belief that his poisoning was caused by his Russian enemies in the FSB. One day after his death, his autopsy revealed traces of polonium-210, one of the most toxic substances on Earth. It is lethal in tiny doses but also extremely expensive to procure, found only in uranium ores.

The same day his friend Alex Goldfarb issued a posthumous statement on his behalf. Goldfarb, who is also a lawyer for Berezovsky, claimed Litvinenko dictated the letter to him two days before he died. The letter directly accuses Putin of his murder and the final paragraph reads “You may succeed in silencing one man but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life. May God forgive you for what you have done, not only to me but to beloved Russia and its people.” Putin disputed the veracity of the note claiming it was concocted by Goldfarb and others.

Since then the polonium links have spread. On 1 December, Mario Scaramella, already under British police guard, was taken to hospital with traces of the substance. His room at the Ashdown Park Hotel in Sussex has been sealed off due to possible contamination. The British Health Protection Agency also found “barely detectable” quantities at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium where the two Russians Lugovoi and Kovtun attended a game two days after the incident. Seven staff working at the Millennium Hotel bar on the day of Litvinenko's visit have also been contaminated with polonium-210. Meanwhile police are seeking out six Irish people who stayed in the hotel at the time. Traces were found in a fourth-floor room at the hotel, as well as on a cup from the hotel bar.

Tony Blair promised "no diplomatic or political barrier" would be allowed to hamper an investigation into Litvinenko’s death. He said the case was very serious and he would discuss it with Russian President Vladimir Putin in person if necessary. However the allegations surrounding the death have the potential to cause a serious rift between Britain and Russia. Moscow has agreed to help the investigation but at a hefty price. Prosecutor-General Yuri Chaika told the nine British counter-terrorism detectives they would not be allowed to question senior officers of the FSB and said that any trial of Russian suspects must happen in Russia. They have also demanded Britain extradite Berezovsky and Chechen separatist leader Akhmed Zakayev. Britain has yet to respond, but it is possible that a compromise might see FSB officers go to London in exchange for the prizes Moscow wants.

The Lombok Agreement

On 13 November, the foreign ministers of Indonesia and Australia signed a security pact between the two countries. Hassan Wirajuda and Alexander Downer signed the agreement on the resort island of Lombok, which gives its name to the agreement. It is the first formal agreement between the countries since Indonesia tore up the Suharto-Keating agreement of 1995 four years later during the East Timor crisis.

Tensions between the countries were exacerbated earlier this year Australia granted temporary protection visas to 43 Papuan asylum-seekers. Indonesia recalled its ambassador from Canberra in protest at what they saw as interference in an internal matter. Now both countries have pledged not to support any activities which threaten the "stability, sovereignty or territorial activity" of the other. This includes separatist groups operating in their own territories. The Indonesia foreign minister Wirajuda said he didn't want to see Australia become a staging point for secessionist groups. Downer said that any break-up of Indonesia would be a disaster not only for Indonesia but “for the whole region including Australia.”

The seven page treaty took two years to negotiate and codifies a series of memorandums on co-operation in the fields of defence and law enforcement co-operation already in place between the two countries. It covers ten points of mutual interest including cooperation on defence, law enforcement, counter terrorism, intelligence, energy, and emergency aid.

Although Downer said the new pact would not affect the right of individual citizens to support separatist movements, this view was not shared on the Indonesian side. Amris Hassan, deputy head of Indonesia's parliamentary committee on foreign affairs, said: "In future, if there is an asylum-seeker problem, we will now have a legally binding agreement so there can be no more fooling around."

Wirajuda took great pains to stress the Lombok Agreement was not a mutual-defence treaty. Instead he saw it as a framework of cooperation and consultation on security issues that concern both countries. According to Wirajuda, the agreement on security cooperation was based on Indonesia's need to incorporate an agreement containing Australia's recognition of Indonesia's sovereignty and a statement not to support any separatist movement in Indonesia. The Indonesians see the treaty as an enhancement of bilateral relations including the mutual respecting territorial sovereignty, non-interference in domestic affairs and probably most importantly, no support of separatist movements.

Downer told reporters that Australian government was "delighted" to sign the agreement. "What this does is provide a bedrock for the relationship for many years to come." He said. In a media release Downer stated the agreement provides a strong legal framework for encouraging co-operation in areas of defence, law enforcement, counter-terrorism, intelligence, maritime and aviation security, and in relation to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and emergency management and response.

Critics of the new agreement say it is a deliberate attempt to prevent Australia from responding to human rights violations in West Papua. In January this year 43 Papuans landed on the northern Australian shoreline of Cape York peninsula. Jakarta appealed to the Australian Government to send them back. The refugees accused the Indonesian military of genocide in their homeland which was taken over Indonesia in the 1960s after a rigged election. Despite Indonesian protest, Canberra issued visas to the refugees in an act described by Indonesia as an “unfriendly gesture”.

The president of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) in Australia, John Dowd, says there was not enough public debate in Australia about the treaty and serious concerns remain over Indonesia’s handling of its jurisdiction over West Papua. "I can see no basis for a treaty with a country that's not under attack and we're not under attack," he told the ABC. "I think it's a mask for assisting their military." The leader of the Australian Greens Bob Brown said the treaty was an "obsequious concession to Jakarta", which will prevent Australia from helping to bring democracy to the region.

The treaty now needs to be ratified by the parliaments of both countries. That could yet take some considerable time. The 1997 Perth agreement which covered oil rights in the seas between the two countries has not yet been ratified in Indonesia or Australia.

The Passing of Pinochet

The polarising influence of Auguste Pinochet is as evident in his death as in his life. Barely hours after he died, thousands took to the streets of Chile’s capital Santiago both to celebrate and mourn his passing. There was a carnival atmosphere in the centre of town where cheering opponents waved flags and sang celebratory songs. But later, clashes broke out when a group of a thousand people marched towards the city's presidential palace. Police fired water cannon and tear gas, while fires raged along one of Santiago's main avenues. Meanwhile Pinochet’s supporters held a vigil outside the hospital where the 91 year old died. One of his supporters told AFP news "it is very sad, because it is as if we were left orphans”.

Pinochet died after a suffering a heart attack last week. He underwent a procedure to unblock an artery at Santiago Military Hospital. He had appeared to be recovering until yesterday afternoon when he was rushed into intensive care. He died of heart failure at 14:15 local time, Sunday. "He died surrounded by his family," Dr Juan Ignacio Vergara told reporters. Outside the hospital, his supporters lit candles, waved Chilean flags and held photos of the general. The wake and funeral Mass will be held at a Santiago military academy tomorrow before his remains are cremated. By dying Pinochet has cheated court charges to the last.

In the past year, he was charged with crimes related to his 17 year reign of Chile. He was also charged last with evading taxes on $26 million an investigating judge said he hid in foreign bank accounts. Pinochet had denied defrauding the state during his regime. His lawyers denied in court he had any connection to crimes of violence and also said he deposited his life savings in bank accounts abroad to avoid political persecution in Chile.

Augusto Jose Ramon Pinochet Ugarte was born in the port city of Valparaiso in 1915. He was the son of a Breton immigrant who was a Chilean customs official. He was educated in Valparaiso before entering military school aged 18. After four years of study he graduated with the rank of sub-Lieutenant in the Infantry. In 1943 he married Lucía Hiriart Rodríguez. Together they had five children. Pinochet spent most of the forties slowly rising through the ranks of the army.

In 1951 he returned to Military School this time as a teacher. He also became editor of Cien Águilas ("One Hundred Eagles") a magazine for army officers. By 1953, he was becoming important. He was now a major and stationed in Santiago as a professor of Chile’s War Academy. He was stationed in Ecuador, obtained a degree and continued to impress his superiors. In 1968 he was promoted to Brigadier General. He joined the masons and was in the same lodge as Salvador Allende. His fellowship with Allende would prove crucial. Allende was elected president in 1970 and Pinochet became General Chief of Staff of the Army one year later. With the US pulling strings in the background, Allende’s government plunged into crisis in 1973. On the day parliament called for his removal, Allende turned to his Masonic brother and appointed Pinochet Army Commander in Chief. Barely three weeks later Pinochet had betrayed his brother and deposed him in a bloody coup d’etat that cost Allende his life.

Pinochet was suddenly in power, the head of a military junta. But he was there at the behest of the US. A CIA document released in 2000 showed that the agency actively supported the military Junta after the overthrow of Allende. Within a year of the coup CIA was aware of bilateral arrangements between the Pinochet regime and intelligence services to track and kill opponents - an arrangement that developed into Operation Condor.

Pinochet soon consolidated his control of the junta and was proclaimed President in June 1974. The early years of his reign was marked by brutal repression. The socialist, Marxist and other leftist parties that had constituted former President Allende's Popular Unity coalition were all banned. Human rights groups estimate that more than 3,000 people were killed in the first 12 months of the junta’s regime. Santiago's National Stadium was turned into a detention and torture centre. Meanwhile the grim “Caravan of Death” toured the country; it was a euphemism for the mass execution of at least 75 of the junta's highest profile political opponents.

But with the aid of the US, Chile started to prosper economically. Pinochet relied on a group of US trained Chilean economists known as the Chicago Boys. They were market reformers who were trained at the University of Chicago by Milton Friedman. Friedman came down to Chile to preach the values of a free market. But he also told the junta that a free market comes with political freedom. Pinochet ignore that advice, but Chile did push through reforms at a massive price. They privatised the pension system, state industries, and banks, and lowered taxes on income. The country had 30% unemployment but ended up with the fastest growing economy in Latin America.

In 1980, Pinochet approved a new constitution which prescribed a single-candidate presidential plebiscite in 1988, and a return to civilian rule in 1990. Dissatisfied with the long-term promise of democracy, the opposition and trade unions began to organize demonstrations and strikes against the regime in 1983 which provoked a violent response from the government. Pinochet’s leadership survived through the eighties including a failed assassination attempt in 1986 in which five of his bodyguards were killed.

Finally it was time for the long-awaited 1988 plebiscite. In theory this was a rubberstamp vote on a new eight-year presidential term for Pinochet. But a Constitutional Tribunal bravely ruled that the plebiscite should be carried out as stipulated by the Law of Elections. This gave the opposition valuable media space and the President of the Democratic Alliance, Ricardo Lagos, called publicly for Pinochet to account for all the "disappeared" persons. Pinochet lost the plebiscite with 55% voting against him. The result was the beginning of the end for his regime. Pinochet saw that he had no chance of winning an open election and he resigned in 1990. Lagos was appointed president but Pinochet retained his role as the head of the army. He then swore himself in as senator-for-life which offered him immunity from any subsequent prosecution in Chile.

This immunity was put to the test in 1998. An ailing Pinochet travelled to the UK for medical treatment. While he was there, a Spanish judge put out a warrant for his arrest. The charges included 94 counts of torture of Spanish citizens, and one count of conspiracy to commit torture. The government of Chile vehemently opposed his arrest. Pinochet claimed immunity as a former head of state. The case made legal history in the UK going all the way to the House of Lords and making many international law precedents in the process. 16 months later, they decided that extradition could proceed. They decided that former heads of government are not immune from prosecution for crimes committed while in office. The court also affirmed that people accused of crimes such as torture can be prosecuted anywhere in the world But Jack Straw, then Home Secretary made the fateful decision to release him on medical grounds. He returned to Chile and resigned his senatorial seat in 2002, after a Supreme Court ruling that he suffered from "vascular dementia". The ruling was convenient – it meant he could not stand trial for human rights abuses.

Two years later, the Chilean Court of Appeals voted 14 to 9 to revoke Pinochet's dementia status and, consequently, his immunity from prosecution. The decision was confirmed by Chile’s Supreme Court in August this year. But his support at home never eroded until 2005, when undeclared bank accounts held in secret offshore bank accounts containing $US27 million were traced to him and members of his family. But his frail health ultimately came to his rescue. Pinochet died as he lived, untried. Human rights lawyer Hugo Gutierrez told the Chilean newspaper La Tercera Online: "What saddens me is that this criminal has died without having been sentenced and I believe the responsibility the state bears in this has to be considered".

Chikungunya reunion

Malaria remains a scourge of much of the developing world. It kills somewhere between one and five million people a year. Only pneumonia and AIDS kill more people outside the Western World. The World Health Organisation believes that 300 million are infected annually. Closer to the ground, the Kenyan Medical Research Institute says there are actually 515 million cases a year of the deadliest form of malaria alone.

But now some of malaria’s lesser known cousins are now starting to share the limelight. One of the most virulent at the moment is from a bite by Aedes aegypti. Better known in English as the Yellow Fever Mosquito, Aedes aegypti is a tolerable host to a number of fevers that are dangerous to humans. As well as the yellow fever itself, it is home to dengue fever and a new, previously non-fatal disease that is now killing people in the South. It is called chikungunya (“chicken gunya”) Chikungunya is Makonde (a Tanzanian language similar to Swahili) for ‘that which bends up.’ People struck by the disease end up with a hunched back and intense pain.

Chikungunya was never considered fatal, until recently. Acute chikungunya fever typically lasts a few days to a couple of weeks, but similar to other fevers, it can have prolonged fatigue lasting several weeks. One million people a year are infected with chikungunya which is minute compared to malaria. But its recent change of behaviour is cause for alarm. Now it is starting to kill.

On the island of Reunion, an outre-mer department of France in the Indian Ocean chikungunya has killed 315 people since it broke out in March 2005. The French occupied the island in the 17th century and the name Reunion commemorates the union of French revolutionaries from Marseille with the National Guard in Paris in 1792. It is now a busy country with 775,000 people crammed into its two and half thousand square kilometres. It is the 4th densest department of France and only Paris, Martinique and Calais have more feet per foot. Chikungunya was first noticed on Reunion in February 2005. Barely one year later, 50,000 people on the island were infected.

Now over ten percent of the population has Chikungunya. There is a twenty four hour mission every day to spray insecticide with the French Army involved by day and volunteers by night. In the country they are looking for mosquito larvae anywhere they can find standing water. But chikungunya is winning the battle. By March, a local French newspaper reported there was 186,000 cases - a quarter of the island.

Chikungunya started to crop up in other Indian Ocean islands. It moved around from Madagascar and the Comoros, to Mayotte and the Seychelles. Across the islands chikungunya has infected more than 1.3 million people in the last 20 months. By 24 November, half a dozen US states have reported cases of travellers from Asia and East Africa returning to the States with the virus.

One day later, a Sri Lanka health official confirmed the epidemic arrived in the country. Dr Nihal Abeysinghe, director of the state epidemiology department, says it has infected 5 000 people in the island's Tamil controlled far north. The people of Tamil capital Jaffna residents are living on rations shipped in by sea. Medicines and food are in short supply. Local residents said doctors had recommended paracetamol as a fever preventive, but most shops had run out. On the same day, Taiwan reported its first ever case.

No vaccine or specific antiviral treatment for chikungunya fever is available. Unconfirmed reports have stated the US military has a vaccine as of March 2006. But if they have it, they aren’t sharing. The last known trials were in 2000 but were discontinued due to lack of funding. Meanwhile on Reunion, the pain goes on. Islander Louise Maillot has been suffering from intense pain in her legs and depression since chikungunya struck. I'm waiting to die," she told Al Jazeera. "I'm praying for the good Lord to take me."

Somalia about to explode

Somalia stands at the brink of all-out war after pro-government and Islamist forces shelled each other yesterday near the government headquarters in Baidoa. The war is made more complicated by the involvement of Ethiopian forces on the side of the government. A local resident told Reuters government forces and Ethiopian troops were pushed back by Islamist fighters on Friday but returned to the area early on Saturday with 20 pickup trucks mounted with heavy weapons.

The incident comes a week after Ethiopia and Islamic forces exchanged mortar shells in Galkayo where the two forces came within five kilometres of each other. Then two days later, Islamic fighters ambushed an Ethiopian military convoy 35km south of Baidoa. The forces exchanged fire and the Somalis destroyed one truck killing 20 Ethiopian soldiers. The incident led Ethiopia's parliament to vote approval for the government to take "all necessary" steps to rebuff any invasion.

With the situation threatening to escalate into an international war, the UN Security Council stepped in on 6 December. They unanimously authorised a new force with a mandate of six months to be set up by the African Union (AU) and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD). The mission has been charged with protecting the interim government and re-establishing a national security force as well as reinforcing Baidoa and seeking further dialogue between the parties.

Islamic militants have condemned the UN intervention. They suspect American interference in the decision to authorise an African force to protect Somalia’s weak Transitional Federal Government (TFG) government from the superior armed SICC. The SICC has warned war will erupt as a result. Within two days, thousands of Somali protesters poured into Mogadishu’s Konis stadium following Friday prayers to stage a large rally of opposition.

The official government control very little of the country. The seat of government is Baidoa in south-central Somalia approximately 250km northwest of the capital Mogadishu. They control only a small strip of land around Baidoa. Approximately 8,000 Ethiopian troops are now deployed in Somalia to lend support to the government's shallow authority. The largely Christian Ethiopia fears an Islamic state on its borders and has vowed to "crush" the Islamists if they attack Baidoa. However their action has been viewed as an invasion by the radical Islamic militia known as the Somali Islamic Courts Council (SICC) that control the capital Mogadishu under sharia law. “We see the approval of the resolution as nothing but an evil intention," said Abdirahin Ali Mudey, speaking for the Islamic Courts. For its part, Ethiopia says Courts have hosted Ethiopian rebel groups - the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) and Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) since at least March 2005.

The U.S. resolution was co-sponsored by the council's African members who were afraid of the Somalia’s instability spreading throughout the region. The resolution partially lifts an arms embargo on weapons and military equipment and allows for training of security forces. The resolution bans Somalia's neighbours from sending soldiers, which prohibits participation by troops from Ethiopia as well as Eritrea, Djibouti and Kenya. The Islamic courts are backed by Ethiopia’s neighbours Eritrea which has prompted fears that Ethiopia and Eritrea would continue their animosity against either other by engaging in a proxy war in Somalia.

Both sides in the looming conflict paint their confrontation in clichéd ideological terms. The TFG and their Ethiopian allies are calling Somalia the next front in the Global War on Terror in order to gain support from Washington. Members of the Courts have been linked to the murders of Western aid workers, journalists and Somali civil society leaders in Somaliland and Mogadishu. Meanwhile the Courts are seeking sympathy from the Muslim world by portraying themselves as victims of Ethiopian aggression and Western Islamophobia.

The arms embargo was imposed in 1992; a year after warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and turned on each another. The interim government was formed two years ago with UN help but has struggled to assert authority. The Islamic Courts consolidated power in Mogadishu this year. The Ethiopians made the decision to support warlords exiled by the rise of the Islamists in order to oppose an Islamist threat posed to their administration of the Ogaden region.

War is not the only worry for the region. Somalia’s problems are complicated by prolonged flooding which has plagued the Horn of Africa since October. The World Health Organisation’s Dr David Okello said “The floods are expected to continue until at least the end of December if not into early next year." Almost 1.8 million people are at risk of infectious diseases such as cholera, measles, malaria as well as nutritional deficiencies. Dozens have died in flooding in Somalia itself, most drowned, some were eaten by crocodiles. Meanwhile infections are spreading due to a combination of crowding living conditions, lack of clean water, the destruction of sanitation systems, and refugees fleeing the war. The

Squirting guns on Mars

The scientific community is digesting the consequences of yesterday’s discovery of water sources on Mars. NASA’s Mars Exploration Program lead scientist Michael Meyer said the latest evidence appears to reveal recent water flow on the surface of the planet. Scientists examined photos sent by Global Surveyor and compared them with those taken seven years ago in the same spot. They observed water had flowed through the 20 new craters they detected recently. NASA say water may have come up from under the surface and flowed long enough to have left traces. However water would quickly freeze at the surface of the cold planet.

Mars has always excited watchers with the possibility it may contain forms of life. 19th century telescopes allowed for detailed study of the planet. Astronomers saw icecaps at the poles and light that changed colour with the seasons. Some saw the grooves in the planet and imagined they were irrigation channels of liquid water. In 1877 Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli used a new high resolution telescope to produce the first detailed map of Mars. These maps contained features he called canali. The word meant channels but was mistakenly translated into English as canals.

The American self-funded astronomer Percival Lowell was fascinated by Sciaparelli’s theories and spent much of his life studying Mars from his massive observatory at Flagstaff, Arizona. Lowell was convinced the Martian channels were irrigation canals built by a highly intelligent civilisation. His work captured the imagination of the general public and the idea of canals spread under the influence of the science-fiction of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells.

Not everyone was fooled by Lowell’s enthusiasm for the canals. In 1903, the sceptical English astronomer Edward Maunder conducted visual experiments using marked circular disks which led him to the conclusion the canals were an optical illusion. He also said the lack of temperature-equating winds and low mean temperatures meant Mars could not support Earth-like life. It took another sixty years for Maunder to be proved right.

The first flyby by a spacecraft finally dispelled the idea of canals forever. In 1965 Mariner 4 passed over the planet at an altitude of almost 10,000kms above the surface. It took almost eight months to reach its destination and carried a television camera. It returned 22 television pictures which revealed a vast, barren wasteland of craters on a rust-coloured sandy surface. There were no canals. After Mariner 4, scientists accepted the hypothesis that Mars was a dead planet.

Viking 1 was the next Earth expedition to Mars. Launched in 1975, it was planned to land on Mars to celebrate the bicentennial July 4 the following year. However the landing was delayed after the primary site was deemed too rough by NASA. It was followed by Viking 2 three months later. They scooped up samples of the soil and looked for by-products such as oxygen and carbon dioxide. But neither craft found any evidence to support life. However a seismometer aboard Viking 2 did record a marsquake.

Another 20 years would pass before the Pathfinder probe bounced onto the planet with airbags inflated to soften the landing. Aboard the Pathfinder was Mars’ first rover, the Sojourner. Sojourner contained an on-board camera which relay signals back to the base and then on to Earth. It discovered Mars has a crust, mantle, and core, with the heavier elements nearer to the centre. It also encountered evidence of wild weather in the shape of 200 kph winds which had sandblasted rocks.

Meanwhile back on Earth, scientists discovered a Martian meteorite in Antarctica. This rock with the prosaic name of Alan Hills 84001 was scooped off Mars 16 million years ago and after a long trip in space landed on Earth a mere 13,000 years ago. Of most interest were small worm-shaped structures called chondrules the scientists found on the rock. These structures formed billions of years ago when water seeped into the rock. Inside the chondrules were what appeared to be fossilised worms, organic material, and another possibly life-based compound called "magnetite." They declared this might be a form of primitive Martian bacteria, proving life exists on Mars. These findings were later disputed and most scientists now believe the rock has been “contaminated” by its recent life on Earth.

The water discoveries were made by the planet’s most recent visitor. Launched on November 7, 1996, the Mars Global Surveyor is now orbiting Mars. Between 1999 and 2001, it has mapped the entire surface of the planet. It discovered the upper half of the northern hemisphere of Mars was almost entirely flat. Scientists theorised oceans may have flattened it, as the only areas on Earth that are this flat are at the bottoms of deep oceans. In November this year NASA lost contact with the spacecraft after commanding it to adjust its solar panels. The craft’s final gift to NASA was the photos of two craters called Terra Sirenium and Centauri Montes which appear to show the presence of water on Mars within the past seven years.

These images of gullies on Mars show evidence of new flows and deposits. They seem to indicate explosive events in which some form of water burst from crater walls and ran down their slopes. Researchers are talking about a "squirting gun" theory. Mars expert Phil Christensen from Arizona State University said "there is evidence to say, yes, there is subsurface water" but it will take years to prove or disprove”. He went on to say, "ten years ago, Mars scientists were talking about water billions of years ago. Now we can honestly talk about liquid water on the surface today."

Equator Principles

Westpac bank is currently engaging in a high-profile campaign highlighting its environmental credentials. Its ads take great pride in pointing out the fact it is the only major Australian bank to sign up to the Equator Principles. Westpac are clearly seeing the advantage of being seen to be green. But what exactly are these principles and is this something Westpac should be proud of?

The Equator Principles are a set of voluntary environmental and social guidelines for so-called “ethical project finance”. The principles commit the signatory banks and finance companies to avoid financing projects that do not meet the guidelines. The driving force behind the principles was the International Finance Corporation (IFC) which is a subsidiary of the World Bank. The IFC is the largest multilateral source of loan and equity financing for private sector projects in the developing world.

The IFC convened a meeting in London in 2002 of a small group of banks to discuss issues related to environmental and social policies and guidelines. The Banks present decided jointly to try and develop a banking industry framework for addressing environmental and social risks in project financing. This led to the drafting of the first set of Equator Principles by these banks which were then launched in Washington, DC in June 2003.

According to its own website, the principles define a “financial industry benchmark for determining, assessing and managing social & environmental risk in project financing” (though it messes it up somewhat by putting in the definition twice). The key principles provide guidance to project risk assessment based on environmental and social indicators. If a project is defined as medium or high risk, the sponsors must complete an Environmental Assessment report. The report should address environmental issues, applicable laws and treaties, health and safety, pollution, waste management and any other consequential impact. The Equator banks will then manage the risks through a binding 'Environmental Management Plan'. The project threshold was initially set to all projects over $US 50 million.

Westpac was one of nine banks from seven countries that immediately adopted the Principles. Now 43 financial institutions have signed up which cover more than 80% of the global project-financing market. But the initial set of principles were criticised for allowing banks to finance projects that violate the standards, and for a lack of transparency about implementation. Banktrack, a consortium of global NGOs tracking the operations of the private financial sector, released a report in 2004 cited specific projects that contravened multiple standards, such as the $3.6 billion Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea in Azerbaijan to the Mediterranean in Turkey. The report says the bankers failed to insist on minimum standards, do not insist on good design and performance, and did not hold BTC accountable for meeting environmental and social performance standards.

The report also criticised a letter from the Equator bank to the World Bank on environmental grounds. The banks opposed the World Bank proposal to withdraw from lending to coal immediately and to oil by 2008, arguing that these extractive activities provide developing countries with the revenues necessary to alleviate poverty.

Earlier this year, the signatories announced the launch of a revised set of principles. The threshold was lowered to $US 10 million and now cover upgrades to existing projects. The institutions were also charged to report on the Principles’ implementation on an annual basis. Critics have welcomed the tightening up of standards but some say the revised Equator Principles do not go far enough. Banks still do not have to publish information on their risk assessments of specific projects, instead hiding behind commercial confidence considerations.

Another major issue is the lack of involvement of China in the initiative. In October this year, World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz criticised China and its banks for not respecting the Equator Principles and for ignoring human rights and environmental standards when lending to developing countries in Africa. Wolfowitz said his organisation had held frank talks with the Chinese about the issues but implied there had been no meeting of minds. “I hope in time our viewpoints will converge,” he said.

On balance it looks as if Westpac are on the right track although significant issues remain about the rollout of the program. Since they engaged on the program, Westpac say all the projects they have been involved with have achieved a B (medium) rating and they rejected transactions for reasons including “non-compliance with environmental risk consideration”. Though Westpac did not identify any of these transactions, it would be interesting to note if the offending companies eventually sought out and received finance from any of the other non-complying Australian banks.

The rules of the Namibian road

Namibia had a bad case of protocol blues overnight. The local Police force had to determine who had right of way when two VIP motorcades were on an apparent collision course. In the end, they ordered the motorcade of Namibia's current President Hifikepunye Pohamba to pull over in order to give way to his predecessor, Sam Nujoma. Pohamba's vehicles were forced to join a queue of other cars and wait as Namibia's founding president passed by. Police are blaming the clash on a surprise visit of Pohamba to the northern town of Oshakati. Both Pohamba and Nujoma are members of SWAPO, the South West African People's Organisation. SWAPO won 75.1% of about 977,400 registered voters in a population of 1.82 million and 55 out of 78 seats in the most recent election in 2004.

SWAPO had its base among the Ovambo people of northern Namibia. Sam Nujoma became the first President of SWAPO in 1960. In its previous incarnation Namibia was known South West Africa. It was a German colony until the end of World War I. South Africa then ruled it as a League of Nations mandate territory for the British until the end of World War II. After that war, South Africa repeatedly refused to turn the country into a UN trusteeship, or recognise that the UN had a legitimate interest in the region. By the 1960s, SWAPO emerged as the liberation organisation for the Namibian people co-opting groups from other parts of the country.

SWAPO launched a war of independence that lasted twenty years. They were a guerrilla group with Marxist leanings. In 1977 the Western members of the Security Council began negotiations aimed at bringing about the implementation of UN Resolution 435, providing for supervised elections. Progress was very slow, but in 1988, South Africa and Cuba agreed to withdraw their troops from Angola as an essential preparatory step before a Namibia settlement, which quickly followed.

SWAPO has been the dominant political party since independence. Sam Nujoma was quickly elected as Namibia's first President. Nujoma changed the constitution so he could run for a third term in 1999. Finally he stood aside in 2004 and was replaced as the SWAPO presidential candidate by his "hand-picked successor" Hifikepunye Pohamba. Those in Namibia hoping for a generation shift in the leadership were disappointed by this outcome. Nujoma, then 75, was barely six years older than Pohamba.


Hifikepunye Pohamba has been a member of SWAPO for 45 years. He spent much of his youth in African prisons. He was arrested in Namibia for political activity before fleeing to Rhodesia. There he was quickly deported. He then spent another four months in prison in Namibia before spending two years in Ovamboland under house arrest. After he left prison, he went to Luanda to set up Swapo's Angolan office

Angola was a refuge for SWAPO during the South African era. The organisation was headquartered in Angola’s capital Luanda and directed camps in the south from which its militants could infiltrate into Namibia in small units. In 1978, South African forces made their first raid into Angola, attacking SWAPO's main camp at Cassinga. The Lusaka Accord of 1984 provided for a cease-fire as well as South African withdrawal. SWAPO were relocated to monitored camps north of a neutral zone along the Namibian border. South Africa delayed their withdrawal until its own problems forced its troops to pull back.

Namibia has been a stable country since independence with steady economic growth. Traffic protocol notwithstanding, the country has mostly kept out of the news. That was until the phenomenon known as Brangelina arrived there in 2006. This was the year Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie decided to have their baby there. They stayed at the Burning Shores lodge overlooking the Atlantic Ocean and enforced a no-fly zone over the resort and insisted that unwelcome journalists be banished from the country. The Namibian government claimed its decision to comply with the couple’s demands would put the country on the tourist map. Human rights activists in the country were outraged.

Their takeover has been described as ‘celebrity colonialism’. The area was sealed off with security cordons, and armed security personnel have been keeping both local residents and visiting foreigners at bay. Pitt and Jolie reportedly wanted their first child to be born in Namibia because the country is ‘the cradle of human kind’ and it would be a ‘special’ experience. The real reason is more likely to be the exclusive privacy they were able to buy and therefore enhance the price of the photographs of their child. President Pohamba was more than willing to accommodate the arrangement and his wife was happy to pose with the famous family. All the Pohambas now need to do is win over Namibia’s traffic police.

Sinn Fein get a taste for power

Sinn Fein is one of Ireland’s oldest political parties. And after a long spell in the electoral wilderness they are about to taste power, possibly on both sides of the border. As the largest Nationalist party in Northern Ireland, they are expected to take part in power sharing in the Northern Irish assembly in 2007. And now pundits are speculating on the possibility they may be involved in a coalition south of the border after the Republic’s election in 2007.

Current Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern has consistently stated that his Fianna Fail party will not negotiate with Sinn Fein due to their continued links with the IRA. However if the Northern Irish power sharing arrangement holds and the election south of the border produces a hung parliament, then Ahern may be forced to rethink his options. Before Sinn Fein can consider its options in Dublin, it will firstly be concentrating on the Northern Ireland assembly elections to be held on 7 March 2007. That election is part of the St. Andrew's Agreement, published last month by Blair and Ahern to revive power sharing in Northern Ireland.

But there is no guarantee the north’s power sharing is going to go ahead. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader and proposed First Minister Ian Paisley is insisting that Sinn Fein issue a pledge of support for policing and for law and order is in place before then. BBC Northern Ireland political editor Mark Devenport said: "The DUP want Martin McGuinness to swear to support law and order and the PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland) when he is nominated as deputy first minister. However Sinn Fein has so far resisted the pledge until they hold a special party conference to decide their policing policy.

The power sharing arrangement is not without risk for Paisley and the DUP either. Two weeks ago, Ian Paisley said that if all his conditions were fulfilled he would accept the first minister's post after the March election. But he will have to work with Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness who was nominated as his deputy. Not everyone in the loyalist movement is happy about this. Last week uber-Loyalist Michael Stone of the Ulster Freedom Fighters launched an attack on the parliament buildings at Stormont but was foiled by security guards. Stone turned up with a replica pistol and explosive devices with the intention of assassinating McGuinness and Sinn Fein party leader Gerry Adams while they were in the assembly with Paisley. Stone has now been charged with attempted murder. In 1988, Stone killed three mourners at an IRA funeral and served 11 years in prison.

The Northern Ireland assembly is a legacy of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. However the assembly was suspended in 2002 after serious disagreement between the loyalist and nationalist parties. The 2006 negotiations in the Scottish town of St. Andrews centred on the refusal of Sinn Fein to support policing in the province and the Democratic Unionist Party's opposition to joining a power- sharing local government. On 16 November Westminster passed a Northern Ireland bill requiring those elected to the assembly to pledge support for policing and courts in the province. The parties are now in Stormont for a transitional assembly which will wrap up on 30 January prior to the March election.

After these elections are complete, Sinn Fein can turn its attention to the South. There they currently only attract 7% of the vote but that may be enough to be a factor in the next election. Fianna Fail currently rules in coalition with the right-wing Progressive Democrats. Their new leader and Tanaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) Michael McDowell is an implacable foe of Sinn Fein. He has linked Sinn Fein to criminality in Belfast, including the massive Northern Bank heist two years ago and the murder of Robert McCartney. However with the PD’s polling at 4%, Sinn Fein may prove a more attractive coalition partner after the next election.

Labor changes the guard

Australia has a new leader of the Opposition. The 49 year old Queenslander Kevin Rudd replaces veteran ALP leader Kim Beazley after a party room spill called on Friday. This morning, Rudd beat Beazley in the caucus vote by 49-39. Julia Gillard, 45, is the new deputy leader, replacing Jenny Macklin who did not nominate for the position. Kevin Rudd is Labor’s fifth leader in five years. Queensland’s premier Peter Beattie congratulated Mr Rudd on his win. "What I think this will herald is a new period of stability for the party," he said.

Everyone in the Labor movement will echo Beattie’s hope as the party attempts to stop John Howard from winning a fifth successive election which is due in 2007. Howard himself acknowledged Rudd would fare well in the polls for a while on account of public curiosity about him as a new leader. But Howard immediately went on the attack noting that although Rudd had spoken about a new style of leadership, he (Howard) believed the Australian people wanted their politicians to be of substance rather than style.

Kevin Rudd was born in 1957 in the Queensland Sunshine Coast hinterland town of Eumundi. He was the youngest of four children. His father Bert was a share-farmer which meant he worked the land but didn't own it. In 1969 Bert died in a car accident and his mother Margaret was forced to leave the farm. Rudd spent two years as a boarder at Marist Brothers College in Brisbane before returning to Nambour High. There he got involved in theatre which helped his voice and improvisation skills. He became interested in politics at an early age and joined the ALP aged 16. Rudd studied Chinese language and history at the Australian National University in Canberra. After graduating with first-class honours he got married, joined the diplomatic service and was posted to Sweden.

Later, Rudd was posted to the Australian embassy in Beijing where he became a fluent Mandarin speaker. In 1988 with the long-term Queensland National Party government on the ropes, state Labor leader Wayne Goss asked Rudd to become his chief-of-staff. He stayed in the role for the first three years of Goss’s reign. Then Rudd switched tack to head up the Cabinet Office. There his hard-headed attitude earned the nickname Dr Death from bewildered subordinates. Finally he turned his attention to federal politics and was elected into parliament for the Southern Brisbane seat of Griffith in 1998 with a slim margin of 3.3%. In the two subsequent elections he turned it into a safe seat with an 8.8% margin. In 2001 he was named Opposition foreign affairs spokesman, a role he kept until today’s vote.

Rudd’s erstwhile leadership rival, Julia Gillard, will be his deputy. In many ways her career mirrors Rudd's. Gillard was born in the Welsh seaside town of Barry in 1961. Her family emigrated to South Australia five years later. She attended Adelaide University and then the University of Melbourne where she obtained arts and law degrees. She worked in a Werribee law firm specialising in industrial law and eventually rose to become partner in the law firm. After ten years, she quit to become Chief-of-Staff to Victorian Labor Leader, John Brumby. In 1998, she was elected for the safe Labor federal seat of Lalor in Melbourne’s western suburbs. In 2001 she was elected to shadow cabinet with the portfolio of Population and Immigration and two years later she was given the additional portfolios of Reconciliation and Indigenous Affairs. She was promoted to shadow health minister. Her own ambitions were revealed after Beazley regained the party leadership in 2005.

But today has been a bad day all round for Kim Beazley. Within minutes of losing the leadership, he found out that his younger brother David, 53, died. The cause of David Beazley’s death is not yet known and Kim refused to speak about it at a press conference. Instead, he praised his successor. "Kevin is a very able man, a very intelligent man with a very wide base of knowledge and [has] an absolute determination to do the right thing for the Australian people," he said. Beazley had been flagging in opinion polls and made a succession of gaffes which undermined his authority. In recent times he called the Bali drug runner Michelle Leslie “Michelle Lee”, mixed up the two Ian Macfarlanes and then offered his condolences to Bush’s political advisor Karl Rove on the death of the wife of Australian entertainer Rove McManus. The latter mistake proved fatal and the knives were out. Today the knives were sharpened. Beazley is now political history.

Urn's turn to tour

The Adelaide test between Australia and England remains delicately poised after day three. England are making a decent fist of Adelaide after its heavy defeat in Brisbane but need early wickets tomorrow if they are force a win. Australia despite being well behind may declare early in a gamble to win the game. The English are 1-0 down in the defence of the Ashes. Both sides are putting in an enormous amount of effort for a tiny urn. Some of the blame for this has to go back to John Frederick Sackville, 3rd Duke of Dorset. It was he who started cricket’s first international tour as far back as 1789. But Sackville’s choice of location was flawed. France in 1789 was otherwise engaged in Revolution. Sackville only made it as far as Dover.

In the new century that followed teams did get together and call themselves “England”. But it wasn’t until 70 years after Sackville that an England XI finally toured abroad. North America was the destination and George Parr, the “Lion of the North”, led the tour. In the choppy waters of the Atlantic Parr showed he was no sea-lion. He frequently had recourse to gin and water to settle his nerves during heavy weather. Among the other players was fellow bowler John Wisden, who would later found cricket's bible, the Wisden Almanac. The Montreal Cricket Club sponsored the first tour, helped by the proprietors of the St Lawrence Hotel in Montreal. The players were guaranteed 50 pounds plus expenses. The English eleven played five games, all against teams of twenty two players. This format allowed Parr to pick up the impressive figures of 16 wickets for just 25 runs in one innings. They won all their games including a game against USA XXII. The tour was a huge success and they played in front of 25,000 plus crowds in Hoboken, NJ and Philadelphia.

Two years later the colonies of Australia were ready for a cricketing visit from the homeland. The state of Victoria, newly formed from the southern rump of New South Wales, was flush with the wealth of its newfound gold reserves. In 1861 the Melbourne caterers, Spiers and Pond invited Charles Dickens to tour the country to help advertise their wares. Dickens declined the offer and Spiers and Pond desperately looked around for some other means of revenue. Spiers and Pond were the caterers at the Melbourne cricket ground and their customers argued they should invite instead an England cricket team. A mostly Surrey-based team made the long journey.

Again it was 11 men against 22 except for the first game in Melbourne where an England side just off the boat successfully bartered their opposition down to 18. That first game in the suburb of Richmond attracted 15,000 people. They easily won the first game by an innings but did lose 2 of their 12 matches. Spiers and Pond were the real winners and they made so much money from the tour that they graciously allowed the Englishmen to share half the profits from the final game. The “Lion of the North” missed this tour but was back with a stronger team two years later in 1863. This time they won all their games even adding New Zealand to the itinerary.

Nine years elapsed before Dr. W.G. Grace brought out the third touring party. Although strictly an amateur, the good doctor was so sure of his own prowess and fame that he demanded a fee of £1,500 plus expenses. But his team lost 3 games out of 15 and although still playing against 18 players, it was obvious the colonials were improving. Grace justified his match fee by leading from the front. Sometimes however, there were considerable distractions. A local journalist reported from Ballarat, ‘The sun shone infernally, the eleven scored tremendously, we fielded abominably, and all drank excessively’.

Four years on in 1876, the first fully-professional English team came to Australia and established the modern pattern for the tour. The highlight of this tour was to be two games against a Combined Australia XI. These two games later became recognised as the first two Tests. Without Grace, this England team was beatable. And in the first test in March 1877 at the MCG, the Australians won by 45 runs. The English captain James Lillywhite was magnanimous in defeat, saying, "The win was...a feather in their cap and a distinction that no Englishman will begrudge them". The local press went berserk but it received no coverage in the Mother Country. The English gained revenge to win the second test.

An Australian team travelled without success in 1880 but returned again to play one test at the Kennington Oval in London in 1882. But the Australians were well prepared. It was the 29th game of the tour of which they had only lost two games. Fred Spofforth known as the Demon took 14 English wickets for 90 runs. In a low scoring test, Australia won by seven runs in under two days. This defeat did grab press attention. The day after the end of the test was Saturday, September 2nd. On that date the Sporting Times carried the famous mock obituary for English cricket - an epitaph that lingers to this day and ensures posterity for the journalist Reginald Shirley Watkinshaw Brooks.
In Affectionate Remembrance
of
E N G L I S H C R I C K E T,
which died at the Oval
on
29th A U G U S T, 1882,
Deeply lamented by a large circle of sorrowing friends and acquaintances
R.I.P.
N.B. - The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia.

The Nota Bene at the end of Brook’s obituary would give the obituary continuity and ensure that the name stuck. But it needed one further moment of theatre for it to become the label for one of the longest-standing sporting contents in the world. A few weeks later, an English team, captained by Ivo Bligh set off to tour Australia. The side lost the first of three but won the next two to win the series. The result prompted a group of Melbourne ladies to burn one of the bails used in the Third Test, put it a small brown urn, and present it to Bligh. Bligh took the urn back to England. But he also took back one of the Melbourne ladies who burned the bails. In February 1884, Bligh married Miss Florence Rose Morphy of Melbourne. Forty-three years later it was she who bequeathed the Ashes to MCC on the death of her husband.

The urn has stayed in London ever since, regardless of which side subsequently “won the Ashes”. Until 2006 that is. MCC had hoped the urn could return to Australia in 2003 but an X-ray taken at the time revealed several serious cracks, notably in the stem. The urn was repaired and now for the first time since Miss Morphy and her friends burned it, the urn itself is now on tour with the players. At the moment the urn is with the South Australian Museum. The museum hopes that as many as 10,000 people will view what is now cricket's “holy grail” in its 11 day stay.

How Soon is Mao

The UN Security Council (UNSC) has given its imprimatur to an assistance mission to Nepal after a peace agreement between the Government and the Maoist Rebels. In a statement read out by the Security Council President for December, Qatar's Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, the Council welcomed the signing of a comprehensive peace agreement by the Nepalese government and the Communist Party, and the commitment both parties have stated to transforming the existing ceasefire into a permanent peace. All 15 fifteen member of the UNSC have supported the statement.

The ten year conflict killed 15,000 people and displaced over 100,000 others. The two sides signed a UN sponsored agreement on Tuesday outlining out how the insurgents will set aside their weapons. The technical assessment mission will contain an advance team of 35 UN monitors and 25 electoral personnel. On Wednesday, the Secretary-General's Personal Representative in Nepal Ian Martin briefed the UNSC and said that the agreement represents "the most promising opportunity for the establishment of lasting peace and far-reaching reform".

Nepal's government and rebels are still working to finalise an interim constitution as part of the peace process. The constitution will have to be in place before 73 rebels join the proposed 330-seat interim Parliament. Under the pact, tens of thousands of rebel fighters will be confined to seven main camps under UN supervision ahead of elections next year.

The UK drafted the UNSC’s statement. Britain’s ambassador to the UN Emyr Jones Parry said “"What we've mapped out today is a way in which the UN ... should rally behind the positive developments in Nepal”. US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton said the unanimous Council approval shows a desire to do whatever necessary to support Nepal's fragile peace. Reports from Kathmandu on Friday indicated Government and Maoist rebel representatives have failed to meet a deadline to form an interim government. The deal had been delayed until next week. Last April, the Maoists helped lead three weeks of mass protests that forced King Gyanendra to give up absolute power.

Nepal was led for over a hundred years by the Rana Autocracy. Jung Bahadur, a strongly pro-British leader, seized control of the country in 1846. He declared himself prime minister and began the Rana line of rulers. The Rana's monopolised power by making the king a titular figure and paid obeisance to the British to avoid invasion. They ruled until a newly independent India flexed its muscles and installed a Nepal Congress Party government in 1951. In 1994, the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) won the majority of seats. Man Mohan Adhikary was sworn in as prime minister. His government survived two years until it was dissolved by the parliament. Adhikary resigned his position under allegations of corruption. Also that year a radical leftist party called the Nepal Communist Party (Maoist) launched a “people’s war” aimed at overthrowing the government, abolishing the monarchy, and establishing a republic. They were first confined to remote mountain regions but by the late 1990s had spread to more than half the country.

In June 2001 the Maoist insurgency intensified after an astonishing royal massacre. King Birendra, Queen Aiswarya and seven other members of the royal family were fatally shot in the royal palace in Kathmandu, in a drunken rampage by Birendra’s first-born son. Crown Prince Dipendra dispatched his family armed with a machine gun before turning the gun on himself. Dipendra initially survived his wounds but lapsed in a coma. His subsequent death officially made his uncle Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah the new regent of Nepal. An official investigation of the massacre confirmed earlier reports that Dipendra had killed his family members in a drunken rage.

The rebels capitalised on the shootings by claiming it was part of a bigger government conspiracy. They immediately took the uprising to Kathmandu and bombed the home of the Chief Justice who led the investigation into the palace massacre. It was the first time they bombed the capital and they struck at the regime's legislative heart. The new king Gyanendra immediately declared emergency rule, allowing the first large-scale deployment of the 80,000 strong royal army to fight the insurgency. Despite this, the rebels controlled much of western Nepal by 2002. In 2005 Gyanendra dismissed the government and assumed full executive powers in the name of combating the Maoists. The rebels held a three-day nationwide general strike to protest the king's decision.

Gyanendra’s unilateral declaration of power lost him all support among the political parties who threw their support behind the Maoists. By 2006, the population was in open uprising. Finally under foreign pressure, Gyanendra made a declaration to reinstate the parliament. Since it has reassembled Parliament moved quickly to strip the king of his power over the military, abolish his title as the descendent of a Hindu God, and required royalty to pay taxes.

Nepal's new cabinet declared a ceasefire in May. The cabinet also announced that the Maoist rebels were no longer to be considered a terrorist group. The government finally signed a peace deal with the Maoists in November. The 12 point letter of understanding which agreed that “autocratic monarchy is the main hurdle” in realising “democracy, peace, prosperity, social advancement" and "a free and sovereign Nepal”.

Walkley Talkie

“Nothing gets journalists going like a story about journalists”. So writes Margaret Simons in today’s edition of Crikey. Simons was describing the aftermath of last night’s Australian journalism awards night’s biggest sensation, the onstage stoush between Crikey’s founder Stephen Mayne and the News Ltd journalist Glenn Milne. Mayne was presenting an award at the ceremony in Melbourne when a clearly drunken Milne rushed up onto the stage and pushed him off the platform.

The incident was captured on the SBS TV coverage of the night. Milne accused Mayne of being a disgrace to journalism and making things up. He was quickly restrained by the stage manager but broke free again to continue the tirade. Mayne fled the stage a second time as the irate Milne made his case. He was eventually overpowered by security and escorted off the premises. When Mayne finally had the stage to himself, he made an announcement “on behalf of Rupert Murdoch” describing Milne as “the former Sunday Telegraph political correspondent”.

There has been no love lost between Milne and Mayne since Mayne criticised Milne’s reporting of NSW politician John Brogden’s suicide attempt in 2005. Milne hinted that Brogden had called Helena Carr, wife of the former Labor Premier Bob Carr a "mail-order bride", and also sexually harassed two female journalists at a function a month earlier. Mayne argued the public interest was "not particularly strong", and not powerful enough to warrant reporting Brogden's off-the-record remarks.

Nevertheless Mayne’s prediction about the sacking of Milne is unlikely to come true. Crikey’s Jane Nethercote asked Sunday Telegraph editor Neil Breen if Milne’s employment might be threatened as a result. Absolutely not, said Breen. However he "will not be patted on the back for what he did last night". Instead, he will be "disciplined internally.” Milne himself apologised today saying “I lamentably mixed alcohol and migraine medication with shocking consequences”. These “shocking consequences” dominated the rest of the proceedings. It totally overshadowed the rest of the awards including the most coveted prize, the Gold Walkley. That award was won by the Four Corners team of Liz Jackson, Peter Cronau and Lin Buckfield for their investigative report on the arming of a civilian militia in East Timor.

This was the most important of 34 awards across all media categories including new Walkleys for sport reporting and sport feature writing. The veteran Canberra press gallery leader, Michelle Grattan won the Walkley for journalism leadership. She is the political editor for The Age newspaper and is also a political commentator on ABC Radio National. She was praised by journalists and politicians alike for the accuracy of her journalism although Labor leader Kim Beazley also called her a “serial pest”.

This is the 51th anniversary of the award ceremony. The Walkleys were established in 1956, with five categories, by Ampol Petroleum founder Sir William Gaston Walkley. The New Zealand born Walkley appreciated the media's support for his oil exploration efforts. Walkley was a dreamer who envisaged an Australian continent holding 150 million people, especially if the government built highways for settlement and defence, and diverted coastal rivers inland. He became interested in soccer when he realised that so many people from overseas were making their homes in Australia. He was instrumental in Australia joining FIFA in 1963 and he was anointed president of the Oceania region two years later.

Walkley quickly understood the value of publicity. He courted the media and flew journalists around the nation to business and sporting occasions. He great goodwill and confidences with the media. In 1956 he endowed awards that recognised emerging talent in the Australian media. After he died, the awards were bequeathed to the Australian Journalists' Association which is now part of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA). Each October the finalists are named and the awards are presented a month later. The full list of this year’s award winners can be found here.