Netanyahu still favourite to form government in Israel

Likud leader Binyamin (Bibi) Netanyahu is clinging on to his belief that he will be Israel’s next Prime Minister despite Tzipi Livni’s surprisingly good showing in Tuesday’s election. Final results released yesterday defied the opinion polls and confirmed that Livni's Kadima party has a one seat advantage over Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party. Kadima won 28 seats and Likud 27 in the 120-seat parliament leaving both well short of a workable majority. Nevertheless both sides have claimed victory. The Interpreter put the resulting confusion best with its headline of “Tzipi wins, Bibi leads and everybody is in government”.

But one of Tzipi or Bibi must take the spoils. Netanyahu maintains he should be given the first chance to form a government because of the broad right-wing make-up of the new parliament he says would back him ahead of the more centrist Livni. He can rely on the 12 seats of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party while the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party (who finished third with 15 seats) is also likely to back him. Its leader Avigdor Lieberman is angling to become finance minister in a Netanyahu administration. Meanwhile the Likud leader received a boost yesterday when the small Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home) party which gained three seats confirmed they also would support him. President Shimon Peres now has two weeks to decide who will get the chance to lead the horse-trading.

If Netanyahu does win, it will be his second coming as Prime Minister. He succeeded Yitzhak Shamir as Likud leader when the latter retired after his 1993 election loss. Netanyahu immediately cultivated the ultra-right in the aftermath of the Oslo Accords signed by the Labor government. He attended rallies organised by extremist groups where the mob called for the death of the “Oslo criminals” (Labor leaders Rabin and Peres) and compared them to Nazi collaborators by calling them “Judenrat”. Netanyahu played a key role in inciting the rising tide of hatred against Rabin. After one suicide bomb in Tel Aviv, he pinned the blame squarely on the Prime Minister, “I accuse you [Rabin] of direct responsibility for stirring up Arab terror…You are guilty. This blood is on your head”. Netanyahu’s feverish pronouncements led to their inevitable conclusion when a disgruntled right-wing settler assassinated Rabin in November 1995.

The tensions caused by the suicide campaign prevented Labor’s Shimon Peres from capitalising on Rabin’s death. And Netanyahu’s election in 1996 as Prime Minister spelled the end of Israel’s acceptance of the Oslo Accords, though he did not significantly change Israeli policy on the issue. Nor was his government’s stance on the Palestinian question radically different from that of Rabin’s before him or Peres’ and Barak’s after him. Both the Likud and Labor Prime Ministers believed in the imposition of a strong Jewish state dominating a small Palestinian protectorate. Netanyahu’s policy promise was what he called “the three no(s)”: no withdrawal from Golan, no compromise on Jerusalem, no negotiations with the Palestinians. However he broke that last promise in office and signed an accord with Arafat in 1997 to withdraw Israeli forces from Hebron. This was the beginning of the end for Netanyahu and he was defeated by Peres’ Labor Party in 1999.

Netanyahu’s hawkishness was marginalised after Ariel Sharon took power in 2001 and eventually broke away to form Kadima. But as Barry Rubin says, Netanyahu has himself moved towards the centre in recent years. He also states that in Israel he is now more acclaimed for his “brilliant handling of the economy” when he was minister of finance in Sharon’s government between 2003 and 2005. However Rubin concedes that it won’t be easy for Netanyahu to form government and his “ability to corral a half-dozen quarrelling parties is unlikely.”

The least complicated outcome might see Likud and Kadima forming a coalition government. While Lipni may be reluctant to serve under Netanyahu, Ha’aretz considers it a live possibility. The Israeli newspaper quotes a source saying Kadima would demand the key foreign and defence portfolios in a Netanyahu administration. The way might then also be open for Livni to inherit the premiership in a couple of years. Another advantage of this arrangement could see Likud do away with some of its more extreme (and potentially embarrassing) rightist and ultra-Orthodox allies. As a Netanyahu aide admitted to Ha’aretz, "such a government would be hard to govern and very unpopular with the general population.”

Morgan Tsvangirai appointed Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister

In an extraordinary ceremony in Harare yesterday, long-term tyrant Robert Mugabe swore in his biggest enemy Morgan Tsvangirai as Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister. The deal got the go-ahead last week after months of negotiations over power sharing and a disputed presidential election that saw Mugabe steal victory earlier in the year. While many observers believe Tsvangirai is dancing with the devil, the new Prime Minister knows he will have more power to change the system from the inside than from the outside.

The swearing-in ceremony began with the pair shaking hands. Then Tsvangirai raised his right hand and pledged an oath where he promised to be faithful to Zimbabwe, observe its laws and serve it well. The two rival leaders then signed papers and shook hands again to complete a grim-faced encounter. Two deputy prime ministers were also sworn in. They were Thokozani Khupe, Tsvangirai’s deputy and Arthur Mutambara, the leader of a breakaway faction from Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party.

But outwardly Mugabe remains the master and immediately used his power to prevent the new Prime Minister from getting promised air time on Zimbabwean state TV after taking the oath. Nevertheless, the day belonged to Morgan Tsvangirai. After the ceremony was complete, Tsvangirai was quick to thank his supporters. He addressed an ecstatic 10,000 strong crowd at the Harare Agricultural Show Grounds and laid out his priorities for the restoration of democracy. These included the release of political prisoners, tackling the humanitarian crisis, especially the nation’s chronic cholera epidemic, and stabilising an economy that has led to 94 percent unemployment and a worthless national currency worthless. The Zimbabwean people "face many challenges but we are brave and resourceful," he said. "By uniting as a nation and a people we can succeed.”

What Tsvangirai did not mention is what he must have given away to get some power from Mugabe. The British Government is among many who doubt the workability of the new arrangement. The main concern is the extent of Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party control over the machinery of government and the security services. This became immediately apparent in the television incident as Tsvangirai was prevented from doing a national address after taking the oath. Lord Malloch Brown, the foreign office minister responsible for Africa, said "We're sceptical but we've got to try and help this work."

Tsvangirai also felt the need to re-assure the sceptics. On the eve of his swearing-in he said the doubters needed to understand why he accepted the post and what he thought were the challenges of transition. "We have made this decision and we made it without being forced. We want our colleagues in the country and outside the country to approach it from that perspective,” he said. “It is our decision. Let history be the judge of this decision.”

But he also cautioned that it would take time to rebuild the country. His MDC party has been given the key ministries of finance and as well as co-sharing home affairs and health after the four month long haggling over cabinet positions. Geoffrey Hawker, an Africa expert at Macquarie University in Australia, told Al Jazeera he does not expect the gamble to succeed though he admitted Tsvangirai had little choice but to accept the terms. "He's been outside the tent for such a long time ... his supporters are growing very dispirited," Hawker said. "I don't have any doubt at all that Mugabe is going to bide his time and see if he can cut him off, render him powerless ... so that Mugabe remains in control”.

There are also genuine questions whether Mugabe holds the reins of control at all. In June 2008, there were reports that a Joint Operations Command (JOC) had taken de facto power leaving Mugabe to be a figurehead. The most powerful figure in the junta is General Constantine Chiwenga, Zimbabwe's overall military chief. Chiwenga has been suspiciously quiet in the run-up to Tsvangirai’s accession to power. He was last heard from in January when the Angolan press reported him saying his troops would fight off any international peacekeeping force that might be sent to the country.

While Mugabe keeps the outward reins on power, his influence is likely to diminish as new actors take to the Zimbabwean stage. How Tsvangirai deals with the JOC and the unpredictable Chiwenga will prove the key challenge. He will need the full support of his party and key foreign actors including the UK Government. The detractors are right to be sceptical and Mugabe has form. But today's event is a good symbolic start towards the healing of Zimbabwe.

Iran revolution: 30 years on

Tomorrow is the 30th anniversary of the victory of Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979. Thousands marched yesterday in Tehran in celebration of the anniversary chanting anti-US slogans, just as they did 30 years ago. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed the rally and said Iran was prepared to talk to the US to end international sanctions provided the dialogue was based on “mutual respect”. He also praised the revolution saying that “although it started in Iran and is the core of the Iranian nation, it belongs to all nations anywhere in the world.”

If anyone could have been the judge of that statement, it would have been the late Polish writer and journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski. Kapuscinski witnessed 27 revolutions in the third world, including the Iranian one. He believed that although the consciousness of poverty and oppression are the seeds of a revolution, it also needs another factor. What is needed, he wrote in Shah of Shahs (his version of the downfall of the Pahlavi regime), was the conviction that poverty and oppression were not of the world’s natural order. The indispensable catalyst for this mind shift was, he said “the word, the explanatory idea”.

The Shah thought he controlled the explanatory idea. On 8 January, 1978 the pro-government newspaper Etelat published an article attacking Khomeini who was still in Paris. Etelat tried to undermine Khomeini by calling him a foreigner, whose grandfather came from India. The article said the Shah was right to expel him and he was a traitor working together with foreign enemies of the country and a danger to the health of the country.

When news of the article reached the Iranian holy city of Qom, the locals were outraged. Khomeini was the idol and conscience of the people. Rouhollah Mousavi Khomeini was born in 1902 in the small town of Khomein, about 160 kms southwest of Qom. After getting early schooling at a local maktab (religious school) he arrived in Qom in 1923 to become a religious scholar. By 1955 he was the most prominent religious leader in the city. There he denounced the Shah’s secular reform program and growing alliance with the US and he was arrested twice. In 1965 he was exiled to Najaf in Iraq where he continued to attack the Pahlavi regime.

By 1975 his supporters back in Qom rioted on the anniversary of his arrest. Military forces put down the riot harshly as they did three years later in the wake of the Etelat article. The Shah also sought Saddam’s agreement to expel Khomeini from Iraq. After he was refused entry to Kuwait, Khomeini flew to Paris where he became the darling of foreign journalists.

Following the Qom massacre, other towns rose against the regime’s despotism. In Tabriz, a crowd marched in the streets shouting “Death to the Shah”. The army opened fire as they did against demonstrators in Isfahan. But the growing anger forced the Shah to backtrack and he sacked generals involved in the Tabriz massacre and also dumped the head of Savak, his secret police. These latter actions did not help his popularity and only created more enemies within his support network.

Demonstrations and strikes continued through the end of 1978. The Shah declared martial law but was powerless to prevent a two-million strong demonstration in Tehran’s Azadi Square in December. Their demands were simple: the Shah must go and Khomeini must return. The Shah appointed the moderate liberal Shapour Bakhtiar as Prime Minister in a desperate effort to appease his opponents and shore up his own power. But the Shah underestimated him. Though he only lasted 36 days in the job, in the time Bakhtiar dismantled Savak, released all political prisoners and finally demanded that the Shah leave the country. Pahlavi and his wife departed on 16 January 1979 to enormous joy across the country. But Bakhtiar then made his biggest mistake, he allowed Khomeini back into the country.

Khomeini quickly denounced Bakhtiar as a stooge of the Shah and the prime minister was forced to follow his former leader into exile. Khomeini arrived back in Iran on 1 February to be greeted by millions. He immediately made his intentions known to his political enemies saying “I shall kick their teeth in”. Within a week he had won the crucial support of the armed forces. He assuaged Iran’s middle class by installing another moderate Mehdi Bazargan as Prime Minister but the real power stayed with Khomeini and his clerically dominated Revolutionary Council. Bazargan was forced to resign after he opposed the US embassy takeover and the path was clear for the creation of a fully-fledged Islamic Republic.

By 1980 Khomeini has established himself as outright ruler and the darling of the Muslim world. As Time magazine wrote at the time, the revolution was unique in several respects: “a successful, mostly non-violent revolt against a seemingly entrenched dictator, it owed nothing to outside help or even to any Western ideology.” The revolution was ultimately strengthened by the ordeal by fire of the gruelling eight-year war with Iraq.

Most of the 1990s was spent in introspection and rebuilding. Its nuclear power program dates back to the Shah’s era but has gotten increasing emphasis in recent years with the aid of Russia and China. Bushehr I expected to open later this year. In 2002 US concerns that its nuclear program might have a military component led George W Bush to use his infamous State of the Union speech to label Iran as part of an “Axis of Evil” (with its unlikely soul mates of Iraq and North Korea). Relations between the two nations have yet to fully recover from the outcry of this classification.

There are now hopes in both countries that the election of Obama may be the trigger for a more positive relationship. While Obama is still talking tough against a nuclear Iran for a sceptical domestic audience, behind the scenes his administration will be looking to improve matters. Similar while Ahmadinejad spouts the usual anti-American slogans at rallies, his government is making overtures in the background. A foreign ministry spokesman today tried to soften Ahmadinejad’s message. “As President announced, Iran is ready for talks with the United States based on mutual respect and justice,” he said. “We want the opportunity of fundamental and basic changes to be given to Mr Obama so that the world can see what happens in practice, we don’t want to prejudge and to prevent it we must give this opportunity.”

Iraq local elections successful but leaves Kirkuk question unanswered

With 90 percent of the vote counted, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is claiming victory in this weekend’s Iraqi local elections. 51 percent of the population voted in the ballot. Although official results won’t be released until Thursday and full results will take several weeks to process, preliminary results show that al-Maliki’s State of Law coalition has won significant victories in the two biggest cities Baghdad and Basra. The Times claims al-Maliki is “reaping the benefits of successful operations to combat Shia militias in Baghdad and the south.” However the Kurdish-dominated North is a different story with four of the country’s 18 provinces not taking part in the ballot.

Nevertheless, Lebanon’s Daily Star says the vote was a positive sign for Iraqi nationalism and a remarkable recovery from the full-scale civil war that existed barely two years ago. “The Iraqi people who went to the polls last week rejected the paradigm of ethnic and sectarian identity politics that was imposed on them by outsiders and put the interests of the nation above those of their various tribes and sects,” said the Star.

One notable casualty of the election is the extremist religious parties. The Pro-Iranian Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) did not win a single province. They lost their stronghold of Najaf to al-Maliki’s State of Law coalition and also lost significant support in the two big cities. In Baghdad in 2005 it won 54.9 percent of the vote; this time round it got just 5.4 percent. In Basra, it had 48.7 percent in 2005, now it won 11.6 percent. The US site Foreign Policy says ISCI’s links to Iran proved deeply unpopular and is now tarred as a religious party with a rural rump. “The big cities are voting for Iraqi nationalism and centralism,” it said.

The Sunni parties also did well in the election but remain highly fractured. In Anbar province Abu Risha's Awakening Council is hoping to form a Sunni coalition after taking 17 percent of the vote. But there are allegations of vote rigging and both Sunni and Shia groups have disputed the results. The Awakening Council claims they were ahead in the count until the late addition of an extra 100,000 ballot papers swung the results in favour of the Shia Islamic Party. The Islamic Party gained controlled of the local provincial council in 2005 when the Sunnis boycotted the election. They deny Sunni allegations of vote rigging this time round and have threatened court action.

But the troubles in Anbar are the exception to the peaceful rule in the 14 voting provinces. Nevertheless attention will eventually have to be paid to the four provinces that did not vote. Control of these provinces is disputed by the central government in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government which wants to establish an autonomous Kurdish region. The most important of the four is Kirkuk, 250km north of the capital, which has 13 percent of the country’s oil reserves. Kirkuk was a former Kurdish stronghold which was emptied by Saddam in a bout of ethnic cleansing in the 1970s. They returned to the city after Saddam was deposed and are an increasingly strident lobby in the power-sharing council set up by the Americans in 2003.

Now the Kurds want the city recognised as part of Kurdistan and vetoed a 2008 Baghdad decision for continued power sharing in the city. As a result Iraq’s election law was delayed putting the whole provincial election process in jeopardy. After months of negotiation, the parliament passed the law establishing voting quotas in September 2008, but only by setting aside the thorny issue of Kirkuk, which was excluded from the vote. The International Crisis Group has long criticised the Bush administration ‘bystander’ approach to the disputed city and recommends the international community should encourage the Kurds to embrace “peace and stability in a shared Kirkuk”.

The new US administration is also quickly finding out how difficult a problem Kirkuk could be to resolve. Obama sent Joe Biden to the city in mid January on a fact-finding mission. There he attended meetings with al-Maliki’s government and the Kurdish administration. According to one insider, Biden warned both parties that the US would withdraw “billions of dollars” from Iraq in order to address the global financial meltdown and insisted both sides solve their disputes through concessions and compromise. Despite the threats both sides were unmoved. The Kurds repeated their demands that Kirkuk be incorporated into their self-ruled region, while Baghdad insisted the city remain under central government control. While it remains unresolved, the Kirkuk issue may yet be Obama’s biggest difficulty in fully removing US military involvement from Iraq.

Victorian bushfire tragedy: the media reacts

(Photo from Flickr).
The Victorian Government has tonight announced a Royal Commission into the bushfires that have ravaged the state in the last 48 hours with a death toll of 200 and still climbing. Australia’s worst ever natural disaster has left the nation shell-shocked and searching for answers. However, one worrying aspect of that search is likely to be a witch hunt on “arsonists”, a category of criminal that is likely to temporarily replace “child molester” in the national opprobrium. I hope the Royal Commission does not get bogged down in individual guilt because such a reaction is likely to rule out the true cause of the tragedy.

That may be an over optimistic hope on my part. Despite the fact that bushfires are an inevitable occurrence in Australia and have been so for millions of years, Piers Akerman found it fit today to attribute the fires to “home-grown terrorists”. TV was no better. Tonight’s Channel Ten news was typical as it gave the story a human cause over a background splash of “Mass Murder”. A clearly emotional Prime Minister was responsible for that headline as he lashed out at anyone who may have been responsible for lighting the fires saying "There's no words to describe it other than it's mass murder." Sensational copy for sure, but there are other words to describe it. With strong winds, a long drought and almost fifty degree Celsius temperatures, it is likely that Nature not nurture was the cause of most of the devastation. But pity some poor bastard who might be accused of arson. He or she will be pilloried as the enemy of the nation and will be lucky to survive to face trial.

Legal Eagle posited a common opinion when she said “the worst thing about it all is the possibility that at least some of these fires were deliberately lit by arsonists.” Its a possibility for sure, and arson is a terrible crime, but not "the worst thing". At most arson was probably a bit player in the extraordinary events of the last few days. By treating every fire as a crime scene Victoria Police is failing to take into account large causes that cannot be cordoned off behind police tape. This is not really a police problem. What is truly the worst thing is that over the coming years this event is likely to become more ordinary.

Clive Hamilton was one of several to suggest that human causes other than arson were at work in Victoria. He says human-induced climate change is the real culprit. Writing in Crikey he said climate scientists have long been predicting that as conditions in bushfire-prone areas become hotter, drier and windier, the result will be more frequent and severe bushfires. He quoted a report that predicted a two to four-fold increase in the number of extreme fire danger days by 2050 with interior of NSW and Northern Victoria a particular danger. He says we are seeing the future now. Hamilton asks will we face up to it or pretend they are one-off events?

The Rooted blog also blamed the carnage on climate change. It quoted a 2008 report by the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre which says the number of days marked by ‘extreme’ fire danger will grow. As a result, the implications of climate change for bushfires are likely to create substantial economic, social and environmental costs. However the report warned of the difficulty of selling the message. “From a scientific viewpoint climate change needs to be understood at a both a global and regional level.” It said. “This is clearly a complex task, and many questions remain.”

Climate change sceptics will closely monitor this task. Andrew Bolt was quick to accuse Greens Bob Brown leader of “preaching politics” when he (Brown) made the climate change connection. He called Brown’s comments “grossly inappropriate”. Tim Blair also warned that “warmenists” are preparing to use the fires as fodder for climate change action “[j]ust as they used Hurricane Katrina.”

Others found causes out of the dangerous realm of climate change politics. Ben Eltham in New Matilda considers the lack of firestick farming as he examines the claims of those who predicted the carnage. He quotes former weather bureau and CSIRO scientist David Packham who told the ABC Thursday that the weekend would see “the worst bushfire conditions in 50 years”. Eltham said Packham blamed fuel loads that have built up in the past 30 to 40 years. "There has been a total lack of willingness to instigate a proper fuel reduction management program based on the skills and understanding of indigenous people who, after all, for tens of thousands of years were the stewards of our environment,” said Packham.

Over at Larvatus Prodeo Robert Merkel linked to an LA Times article which outlined the difference between Australian and Californian bushfire-fighting tactics. “Americans expect firefighters to protect their lives and property,” said the Times. “Australians in rural communities view that as their own responsibility.” Merkel also offers a note of caution to those that believe that this is a terrible portent of things to come when he said “lives lost in bushfires since Ash Wednesday have been far fewer in number, despite some truly gargantuan fires in the intervening period.”

Nevertheless there is justifiable considerable shock in the wider community at the weekend events, which was reflected in wide-ranging manner it was covered. Gary Hughes’s breathless present tense account in The Australian of how he and his family escaped the St Andrews fire is compelling reading. Down in Melbourne, Guy Beres contemplated on the disaster that was unfolding barely “thirty minutes away”. In a curious action that united the left and right, both Jeremy Sear and Iain Hall felt an unnecessary but understandable need to apologise for light-hearted comments about the weather the previous day before either were aware of the extent of the devastation. Meanwhile, The Inquisitr examined the role of social media in reporting the crisis while Dave Bath at Balneus looked at practical measures for punishing arsonists (beyond lynching) by seizing assets rather than imprisoning them. At Core Economics, Joshua Gans gave an economist’s view as he examined what technologies could be realistically be used to save lives in future bushfires.

But of all the reactions it was surely our Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy who had his finger closest to the pulse today. While a nation was in shock over the death toll, Senator Stephen Conroy blithely announced that tomorrow Australia would be “celebrating” something called “Safer Internet Day”. While Victoria burned, the Minister had something more important to tell us. “Young people around Australia,” Senator Conroy informed us breathlessly, “will participate in activities promoting responsible internet use during Safer Internet Day tomorrow.” Neither a sense of timing nor a grasp on reality appear to be Senator Conroy’s strong points.

Brisbane archbishop sacks rebel St Mary's priest

The Catholic Archbishop of Brisbane John Bathersby has sacked a rebel priest from his unconventional inner suburban church. The priest, Father Peter Kennedy of St Mary's parish in South Brisbane, read out a letter (see full text of letter at the bottom of this post) from the archbishop after 9am Mass this morning which announced that Bathersby will terminate Kennedy's employment on Saturday 21 February unless he resigns beforehand. The bishop questioned the validity of baptisms at the church and attacked the priest’s “instant disclosure” of his letters to the media. To audible groans from the packed congregation, the letter went on to state that he had appointed St Stephen's Cathedral's Dean Ken Howell as interim administrator of St Mary’s Church. The bishop said he would also facilitate Kennedy’s retirement if he so desired, to which the priest responded “I’m too young to retire!”.

The confrontation between the church hierarchy and the parish of St Mary’s has been building over a number of years. The church is known for its commitment to social justice and support of minority groups and its unconventional practices have attracted large congregations. However some conservative Catholics in the area were unhappy with changes to the liturgy, and some non-Catholic artwork in the church. In particular there was furore after a church baptism was loaded onto Youtube causing one Catholic commentator to doubt the baptisms’ validity as they did not follow conventional liturgy.

One disgruntled parishioner took his complaints first to the bishop and then directly to the Vatican. In August 2008 Bathersby delivered an ultimatum to toe the church line or risk being shut down. He said the parish was operating outside practices and policies acceptable to the Roman Catholic Church. He said St Mary’s had “established its own brand of religion” .

Kennedy continued to conduct Masses his way in defiance of the bishop’s orders. He wrote a letter to Bathersby in November stating that parish was in communion with the Catholic Church. The Bishop responded on 22 December saying the parish had not “adequately given proof” of communion and listed five issues it wanted Kennedy to address. It wanted a return to traditional baptismal rites, an end to congregational proclamation of the Eucharist liturgy and a return to traditional priestly vestments, the prevention of sale of a book which doubted Jesus’ divinity, and the instruction of “Trinitarian theology.”

The whole tone of the complaints raised by Bathersby show how completely out of touch the hierarchy is. Today’s packed out Mass at St Mary’s was probably the best attended Catholic rite in Brisbane (even accounting for the media attention about the possible closure). It connects with its people in a way dry divinity and Trinitarian theology simply cannot. The theme of the Mass today was “From little things, big things grow", the Paul Kelly / Kev Carmody protest song about how the Wave Hill Gurindji Strike and its leader Vincent Lingiari sparked off the Aboriginal land right’s movement. The church elders will now be considering how to re-affirm their own land rights in the face of the opposition of Church hierarchy.

The choice of song also shows how deeply embedded the Church is with the local Aboriginal community. Aboriginal activist Sam Watson was instrumental in negotiating a Treaty between the parish and local Aboriginal people last November. This morning Watson also read the welcome to Country at this morning’s Mass and called the church a “very special and sacred place”.

The message would not have been lost on the congregation or the media pack who were there to film the service. Kennedy’s reading from the gospel, Mark 1:29-39 was also appropriate. It did seem today that “the whole city was gathered around the door” of St Mary’s. Yet the future of this thriving parish is very uncertain after the revelation of Bathersby’s menacing and uncompromising letter. What is certain is the desire of the parish to fight the decision. Kennedy's only immediate advice was to "stand strong".

Text of Letter from Bathersby to Kennedy:

Dear Peter,

Thank You for your letter of 12 January with its invitation to further discuss the situation of St Mary’s South Brisbane. I see no reason to do so. I have repeatedly asked for changes but you and the community have not budged an inch. Moreover, South Brisbane’s instant disclosure of my letters and comments in the media give me no reason to enter into discussion. By all means consult the people of St Mary’s as you wish but ultimately you yourself are the shepherd and leader of its decisions. Time and time again I have spelt out a request for changes at St Mary’s Parish if it is to remain in communion with the Archdiocese of Brisbane and the Roman Catholic Church. However time and time again St Mary’s has chosen to go its own way. Therefore reluctantly I make the following decisions.

1. I will terminate your appointment as Administrator of St Mary’s Parish effective Saturday 21, February 2009 unless you were to resign beforehand.

I would like to add, without trying to exert pressure, that if you wish to retire from active service as a priest, the Archdiocese will assist you as it does other Archdiocesan priests who retire.

2. From the 21st February 2009, I will appoint Dean Ken Howell of St Stephen’s Cathedral as Administrator of St Mary’s until a new administrator is appointed.

From Sunday 22 February 2009 regular Masses at 7am and 9am will be celebrated at St Mary’s Church until the matter is reviewed. Other sacraments of the Church will be available and can be arranged with Dean Ken Howell. Church goers attached to St Mary’s are most welcome to continue, as well as those who wish to return to the parish or those who wish to become new parishioners.

3. I sincerely hope that St Mary’s emphasis on social justice will remain. However such matters should be discussed with the new Administrator

4. Because of its name, chosen originally in 1864, I also hope that sound Marian devotion will be promoted at St Mary’s as was normal in the past. I will do whatever I can to facilitate and encourage this devotion.

5. Because there is doubt about the validity of the many baptisms performed at St Mary’s, I will nominate a special day in the near future when baptisms can be performed at St Stephen’s Cathedral and certificates issued to parents concerned about validity, or those who are adult converts. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith made it clear in March 2008 that invalid baptisms cannot be dismissed and forgotten. They must be corrected.

6. Peter, you have already claimed in the media that you may lead people who desire to follow you into a breakaway Christian community elsewhere in South Brisbane. I cannot stop you from doing so. However those who follow you should realise that they will not be in communion with the Roman Catholic Church or the Archdiocese of Brisbane.

Peter, making these decisions gives me no satisfaction whatsoever. The separation of Christians is contrary to all that Christ prayed for. Nor does such division promote the Kingdom of God. You have had ample time to make a considered decision. Please God the division that exists in the present time will be healed in the future, probably not in my time. I ask the priests, deacons, religious and people of the Archdiocese of Brisbane to pray for me and for all who belong to the Archdiocese, especially in the community of St Mary’s in its present situation. In this matter I pray also that Mary the mother of Jesus will be our inspiration and guide as we seek her prayerful support for the healing of the Archdiocese of Brisbane and St Mary’s Parish

Sincerely in Christ
Most Rev John A Bathersby DD
Archbishop of Brisbane

Media and the Culture of Fear

The world is a scary place, apparently. In the last 24 hours, media across the world hammered this home with a litany of fearful events. Across Australia, there were many matters to worry about. Over in Perth people were fretting over casino security guards with batons. The Melbourne Age found fear in pockets (and you had to read well down the article to find out the scary things were isolated areas not holes in your pants). The Sydney Daily Telegraph had their cake and ate it by inventing fears of water restrictions it could then squash. Here in Queensland the Brisbane Courier-Mail had two fears for the price of one when it freaked out about dengue fever's possible impact on Australia's "already troubled tourism industry".

Fear was also in abundance across the Pacific. The New York Times prefaced its story of a genuine Sri Lankan tragedy by saying “fears rise” over what comes next. That hotbed of intrigue, Washington DC, had double worries of social network viruses and presidential scare tactics. Up the road, The Philadelphia Bulletin wrote about fear of military attack (though not from Washington). Meanwhile The LA Times reminded us of FDR’s “fear itself” when it wrote “our reactions to fear can put us in peril.”

Across the world the misuse of fear was much the same. The Indian opposition BJP party is scared of a war with Pakistan (but only because it might hurt their election chances). Northern Irish postal workers are worried about a denial the Royal Mail will axe 16,000 jobs. Al Jazeera ascribes fear to a whole country when it says the United States is worried by Iranian satellites (a bit of metonymy that might be lost on the 99.99 per cent of Americans oblivious to events in Tehran). And pity poor Kenyans "with grey hair” who could become the next victim of witchcraft killers.

These fear stories all have one thing in common: they drag eyeballs to media and hopefully onto advertisers. But should fear be used in this way? Valid fears have their place; they are basic survival mechanisms that cue us to danger. For instance, fear of snakes and spiders was shaped by evolution and stretches back to a time when early mammals had to survive in an environment dominated by reptiles. Certain stimuli are pre-wired in the brain because they have been perennially dangerous to our ancestors.

But false fears only cause hardship. Frenzied public panics usually cause far more damage than whatever fear the panic is reacting to. Panics about crime cause untold amounts of money to be wasted on police investigations, show trials, and unnecessary incarceration. Fears of terrorism led to a war in Iraq that now costs the US $50billion in reconstruction of which $6 billion goes to private security firms. Meanwhile, the US National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) calculates the cost of drug abuse at $100 billion but doesn’t offer an opinion on how much of that is wasted on dragging minor users through the criminal justice system.

NIDA’s own research says that there are at least 14.8 million Americans age 12 or older who used marijuana at least once a month in 2006. Both NIDA and Michael Phelps know well that appearing soft on drugs is not an option in today’s closely watched society. Despite the fact that even anti-drug campaigners admit that death from smoking cannabis is almost unknown, the chances of it being legalised anytime soon in most jurisdictions is slim due to the fear factor.

Psychologists call this phenomenon the availability heuristic. People make judgements based on what they can remember, rather than complete data. So whenever there is a drug death story, it increases fears about all drugs. Because we remember recent experiences or reports, the news has a significant effect on our decisions.

As Barry Glassner, observes in his book The Culture of Fear, we are primed by the news which increases the accessibility of this information. When Harvard Professors Robert Blendon and John Young did a meta-survey of drug abuse surveys between 1978 and 1997, they found eight out ten people said drug abuse has never caused problems in their family yet most were still scared of the consequences. What Blendon and Young discovered was that Americans predominately got their fears from the media not from personal experience. Television was the worst offender.

This is hardly surprising. TV news lives on a diet of fear. If it bleeds, it leads. Drugs, crime and disaster all make good copy – especially if the accompanying vision is compelling. Current Affairs programs lure their audiences in with lurid claims: “A show no parent can afford to miss”, “tune in or you will be the next victim”, “every mother’s nightmare.” And it doesn’t matter how unlikely the problem, current affairs can present distraught sufferers that trump the small risk by saying “whatever the statistics, it is devastating to the victims”. There but for the grace of God go I, we think - and fears are thus heightened. As the master of fear Alfred Hitchcock once observed, “there is no terror in a bang, only in the anticipation of it”.

Andrew Mwenda and Impunity: The hazards of East African journalism

Renowned economist William Easterly has spoken out this week in support of independent Ugandan journalist Andrew Mwenda. In his excellent new blog Aid Watch, Easterly called Mwenda courageous and said he (Mwenda) was finally getting well-deserved recognition. Easterly said the editor of Uganda’s The Independent was a frequent critic of the corruption and poor results of African aid agencies. He also made a broader point about the quality of African media. “A free press is an important way in which we hold our governments accountable in rich democratic countries,” said Easterly. “Why shouldn’t Africans have the right to freedom of the press as well?”

Easterly’s call is valid, though there is a strong and robust press in East Africa. Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (known by their French initials RSF) has called Uganda’s press “pluralist and serious.” Certainly, Mwenda has proven a serious thorn in the side of his own government. The Independent focuses on uncovering official corruption and human rights abuses in Uganda. Since he established the bi-monthly magazine in December 2007, he has faced 20 criminal charges, including sedition, libel, and annoying the person of the president.

He and his staff have been arrested or detained more than a dozen times. In the most extreme event in March 2008, Ugandan military intelligence service raided his offices and threatened to shoot him. Mwenda braved out that threat and later told Parade, “The government can jail me or even kill me, but it cannot jail or kill the values and ideas for which we stand.”

But other journalists in the region have paid the highest price for those values and ideas. Last week police found the body of Kenyan journalist Francis Kainda Nyaruri in woods near Lake Victoria. He was tortured and then decapitated. Police say they are still looking for a motive but perhaps they know more than they are letting on. RSF said Nyaruri was recently threatened by police officers. Nyaruri had written a series of articles for a local weekly newspaper that exposed financial scams and other malpractice by the local police department.

The manner of his death bore similarities to that of New Zealand photographer Trent Keegan. Keegan was found dead in a trench in Nairobi with injuries to the back of the head. Police initially claimed he was killed in a robbery. However suspicions were raised when it was revealed that his laptop was stolen but his wallet containing US$60 was not. Keegan was investigating a land dispute in northern Tanzania between local Masai and a US based safari company at the time of his death. He had told colleagues he was concerned for his safety after the safari company had questioned him about his investigation.

Despite these incidents, Kenya is haven of safety compared to Somalia. Somalia is the deadliest country in Africa for journalists (only Iraq is more dangerous worldwide). This morning Roy Greenslade reported that Said Tahliil Ahmed was the latest Somali journalist to be shot dead. Ahmed was the director of HornAfrik, a radio and television station in Mogadishu, and his Islamist attackers killed him for reporting on the Somali presidential election (which is being held in neighbouring Djibouti for security reasons.) Ahmed is the second Somali journalist to die this year after Hassan Mayow Hassan was gunned down on New Year’s Day. Hassan was covering the conflict between the transitional federal government policy and insurgents in the region.

RSF have charted the grim death toll of Somali journalists. In 2008, eight were killed, four injured, some 50 journalists in exile, 53 arrested and others were force to hide at home after abandoning their work in fear. The press freedom body says the journalists were not only victims of political violence, but also “favourite targets for the transitional authorities, who see them as inconvenient witnesses of the chaos which they are unable to control.” Unfortunately, very little is done to protect them. As RSF said in their continental review in 2006: “In Africa, impunity is not a matter of bad luck, it is the general rule.”

Peter Singer Lecture in Brisbane

This evening I joined several hundred others attending a lecture by the philosopher Peter Singer. Singer was speaking at a Brisbane 2009 Ideas Festival event at the State Library of Queensland. The event was timed to launch his new book "The life you can save: Acting now to end world poverty". The book is about what people in the Western world should be doing about the crisis of the extreme poor.

The 62 year old Australian born Singer is a professor of bioethics at Princeton University's Centre for Human Values. He also lectures at the University of Melbourne's Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics. Introducing him tonight, the Vice Chancellor of Griffith University Professor Ian O’Connor described him as “one of Australia’s greatest thinkers” and someone who in his 25 books has set the agenda in ethics and causes his audience to ponder their own role in the global community. O’Connor said there was a congruence in his material and the way Singer lives his own life and all royalties from the sale of the new book were going to Oxfam.

Singer then took the stage and said he was honoured to speak at the first public event of this year’s ideas festival. He said his contribution would be a discussion of what our obligations are to those people living in extreme poverty. Singer said this was something he had thought about all his professional life. He tackled the subject in one of his earliest articles “Famine, Affluence and Morality” (ppt) which was published in the journal Philosophy and Public Affairs in 1972 and said it was a “novel idea at the time” for philosophers to tackle the issues of the day.

The article was published just twelve months after the crisis in what was then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) which was agitating for independence from the western wing. Millions fled the violence into India which at the time did not have the resources to feed them. The richer nations were not giving nearly enough to sustain them. At the time Singer was living in Oxford and employed by the University. He felt that by giving money to Oxfam, he personally could do something to help the Bangladeshi people who were in “desperate straits”. This began a lifelong commitment of giving to the aid agency.

Meanwhile the 1972 article began to be discussed and its ideas reprinted elsewhere. It kicked off a debate that Singer followed closely. He returned to the topic in his 1979 book Practical Ethics. More recently he realised that the issue had risen in the public consciousness and that given the amount of recent literature he would devote an entire book to the subject. Singer said “the time was right” to bring attention to the matter as the capacity of the developed world to combat poverty had drastically increased in the last 30 years.

Singer then challenged the assumption that think global poverty is always going to be with us and there is not much we can do about it. However the World Bank (which defines extreme poverty as living on $1.25 or less a day) says that in the last 30 years the proportion of the world’s poor has halved from 40 percent of the total population to 20 percent.

These people have no buffer for when things go wrong. All it takes is a poor harvest or an illness in the family to push them over the edge. The most heartbreaking aspect of this poverty, said Singer, is knowing a child is sick and a cure is available but not being able to afford it, or travel to where the cure is available. The lack of a small amount of money can ruin lives. This is where the West can make a difference, says Singer. Everyone he meets in the US or Australia has spare resources. “If you drink bottled water or juice wherever there is a tap, then you are spending money on luxuries,” he said. "We all have the capacity to contribute to organisations that promote sustainable development and help people get out of poverty in their own ways".

Singer then addressed the question of how much money people should donate. Should they donate all of their discretionary spend, or keep going until they themselves are on the poverty line? That would be heroic, he said, “but not something I would do myself”. Singer suggested that those earning up to $105,000 a year should donate one percent of their income. Above that it should be scalable; beginning at five percent while those above $250,000 should donate 10 percent. He said that if this scale was commonplace, it would easily raise the amount economist Jeffrey Sachs said would be needed for the world to meet the UN Millennium Development goals established in 2000 which aimed to halve world poverty by 2015.

Singer urged Australians to go to the website associated with the new book where they could pledge to meet the standard donation based on their income bracket. Singer said a hundred people had already pledged (and there were 149 at the time of writing a few hours later) and he expects this number to grow exponentially as the book is released in the US next month and Europe in the months after. By pledging, Singer said, people will also help change the public standard of what is involved in living an ethical life in a world of great affluence and extreme poverty.

Singer concluded his talk by taking questions from the floor. One person asked why he concentrated on individual donations and not those of governments. Singer responded by saying that while Australia’s aid budget had gone up from 30c to 32c in every $100 under the current government, it was still below the pre-election pledge of 50c, and well below the $1 donated by the likes of Sweden. Government aid is often also tied to conditions or goods and services purchased in the country and is also usually locally directed. Australia, for example, gives hardly any aid to sub-Saharan Africa. By contrast, individual aid to NGOs is usually better targetted.

Another good question related to motivation: why should I donate? Singer said that some people donate because “it is the right thing to do”. Others want to prevent bad things from happening the world. He also cited Henry Sidgwick’s “point of view of the universe” which enables people to lift themselves out of their own perspective. Finally he acknowledged an egoistic element in that helping others gives people’s own lives meaning. Singer called this practice “enlightened self-interest”.

Another questioner asked Singer whether anyone in Australia qualifies in the category of “extreme poverty”. Singer said no, even the poorest here are entitled to financial support. There is a social security net that provides a certain standard of health care, safe drinking water, and shelter. Together these entitlements put them above the extreme poverty line. The extremely poor are mostly in Africa (50 per cent of the total population) and also in the South Asia sub-continent (33 per cent – but largest overall in absolute numbers). The very poor, as UNICEF states, “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world.” Singer is on a mission to change that.

Nation building and cash in a cart: Rudd sells his stimulus package

Kevin Rudd began the hard sell of his economic stimulus package yesterday by inviting political and business leaders to Canberra over the next few days to work through his timetable. The plan will also face a tricky time through the Senate as Malcolm Turnbull announced that the Coalition will vote against the mix of cash handouts and capital proposals. The Australian Treasury predicts that the $42 billion stimulus package will increase growth by 0.5 per cent this year and 0.75 next year.

The Age’s economic correspondent Peter Martin prefers to call it a mini-budget rather than a stimulus package. Martin says the term mini-budget fell out of favour after it acquired a pejorative meaning and became associated with crisis during the Whitlam government. Malcolm Turnbull has attempted to resurrect the label Whitlamite in his criticism of the proposal. It was a theme picked up by Stephen Mayne in Crikey today (the article is unfortunately behind Crikey’s paywall). He says Rudd is imperilling his government “by embarking on an extraordinarily reckless policy prescription which appears to be motivated by the base political considerations of wedging Malcolm Turnbull.”

Rudd has already been very active in selling (and in the case of his article in The Monthly, pre-selling) his package. He struck a sombre note in his address to the nation yesterday as he offered a “stark choice” for Australia: Act now to reduce the impact on the economy, families and jobs. Or fold your arms and allow the free market to run its course.” But the choices were not as stark as the Prime Minister makes them out to be. And there are worse longer-term problems to face than a recession that might last a year or two. But where was the address to the nation when the Garnaut Report was released? Where was the multi-billion dollar package to do serious R&D into non-carbon based energy solutions?

These are rhetorical questions, of course. Governments are just elected for three years and electability is all about what attractive policies you can place in front of your constituency. Large scale environmental action is not yet considered a compulsory part of nation building. Even the Greens acknowledge this when they say they will work with the government and take a “constructive approach” to the legislation. They warn however, it won’t get a straightforward tick of approval. “It would be abrogating of the Senate's responsibility to taxpayers if it were to pass $42 billion worth of legislation with little more than a day's scrutiny,” said the Greens statement today.

But most of the commentariat seemed to accept the package with reservations. The Sydney Morning Herald’s Peter Hartcher said the state is taking over the task of generating economic growth “while capitalism recuperates”. Michelle Grattan in The Age calls the package ‘a diverse mix of so called "nation-building" and cash tossed out of the cart.’ She also said the new package makes the October $10 billion stimulus look modest. But that did have consumer spending effect. Analysis from Hitwise suggests that the winners from October’s package were those in the electronics sector which saw a huge growth in web traffic in Christmas 2008 compared to a year earlier.

The big winner this time round is the insulation industry. The insulation grant was one of the surprising aspects taking out the 10 percent of the total package ($3.7 billion). While on face value, this sounds an environmental friendly scheme. Joshua Gans finds several flaws with the detail of the proposal. Firstly, he believes that high prices in an uncompetitive market will mean most households will reach the $1,600 cap per home. Secondly, the $200 energy saving per year will be marginal, and thirdly the emissions savings may have the opposite effect of relaxing the Emissions Trading Scheme cap. Because it is policy, Gans writes, the social benefit might not actually be realised if emissions increase elsewhere. “So there is more work to be done here to guarantee that this is a socially effective policy intervention,” he concludes. It is certainly effective for the insulation industry itself. CSR’s share price went up 10 percent overnight as they expect a spike in demand for its Bradford batts business.

One of the few commentators to question the responsibility of the package on consumption grounds was Graham Young (interestingly, an avowed climate change sceptic). At Ambit Gambit, Young argues that the whole economic debate is centred on a number of fallacies. Not only are recession and unemployment unavoidable, but Young also questions whether consumer spending is actually a good thing. Young believes that the era of conspicuous consumption must end and the stimulus package merely continues the binge. “We have larger houses, and they are filled with more and better furniture than ever before, with more and better cars sitting in the driveway for their owners to use when they aren't on holidays,” he said. “The government pretends this can continue when it can't.”

But perhaps Young is wrong about where the money is going. The financial market expects gambling companies to do well from the spree with Tabcorp rising 28c to $4.26 and Crown up 13c to $5.57. No one is quite so prepared to put money on whether Rudd’s own gamble will be successful.

Abbas tries to muscle in on Gaza peace talks

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas made a powerplay for Fatah involvement in the Gaza peace talks when met his Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak in Cairo on Monday. He criticised Hamas saying they promoted conflict with Israel and says they must respect his authority as leader of the Palestinian state. He also warned he will not talk with any group that fails to recognise the legitimacy of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Abbas’ party Fatah is the largest faction within the PLO whereas Hamas is not aligned with it.

Abbas’s call comes a week after Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal described the PLO as impotent. Meshaal, who is exiled in Damascus, said the PLO “expresses a state of impotence, abuse and a tool to deepen divisions". Hamas have ruled Gaza alone after defeating Fatah security forces in a five day civil war in 2007. However Gaza's borders have been closed in an 18-month Israeli blockade as revenge for continued Qassam rocket attacks from the Strip. Israel launched a devastating all out attack on Gaza in late December that left 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead (a disparity of a hundred casualties to one). The war ended with on 18 January both sides declaring unilateral ceasefires.

Egypt has been mediating between Israel and Hamas in attempt to avoid further bloodshed as well as end the blockade. Mubarak will now walk a delicate tightrope as he holds separate talks with Israeli officials and Palestinians from both Hamas and now Fatah factions. Relations are at an all-time low between the two groups. Fatah accuses Hamas of killing, torturing and beating up Fatah activists in Gaza while Hamas in turn accuses Fatah of helping the Israeli military to strike Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip during the war. While the talks go on, so do the tit-for-tat attacks between Israel and Gaza. Gaza resumed rocket fire on Israeli border towns shortly after the ceasefire and in response warplanes launched air strikes across Gaza late on Sunday. Yesterday, one Palestinian was killed and four others wounded in an Israeli air strike on a vehicle carrying militants in the southern town of Rafah.

Meanwhile Barack Obama’s new Middle East envoy George Mitchell outlined American priorities for the region. Speaking in Israel last week, he said the new administration wanted to consolidate the truce and immediately address Gaza’s humanitarian needs. His appointment was welcomed by Palestinians who remember his last mission to the Middle East in 2000 when he recommended the Israelis lift the restrictions that prevent the Palestinians building up their economy. But Israeli PM Ehud Olmert told him bluntly that Israel would respond to what he called “every Hamas violation of the cease-fire, be they rocket attacks, strikes along the border fence or smuggling through tunnels.”

Olmert also told Mitchell that Gaza border crossings will not open permanently for the passage of goods unless a deal is reached on kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit. As The Guardian points out, what Mitchell offers is sustained engagement right from the start of the Obama administration. The British daily says George Mitchell is “someone who will stay with it day after day, as he did in Northern Ireland.” This will be necessary as the history of Gaza’s politics is just as intractable as Northern Ireland’s.

Originally part of the British mandate of Palestine, Gaza came under harsh Egyptian military control after the 1948 war. Its citizens were forbidden from entering Egypt itself but in the 1950s its teeming refugee camps were a breeding ground for the Egyptian-founded Muslim Brotherhood network which brought about an which brought about an awakening of political Islam. Some refugees became Palestinian fighters known as “fidayun” and began conducting raids on isolated Jewish settlements near the border. Yasser Arafat emerged as leader of the “fidayun” calling his group The Movement for the Liberation of Palestine (which spelt “fatah” – victory – in reverse).

After the 1967 Six Day War, Israel occupied the Gaza Strip. The crowded Strip held 850,000 of the 1.5 million Palestinians in the occupied territories. A third of these were children and the unemployment rate was around 35 percent. For the next twenty years Gaza suffered a form of apartheid under a new occupier while continuing to be ignored at Arab summits. The failure of the PLO to provide protection against harassment propelled many people into the arms of Islamist groups. In 1987 the people’s frustration turned into the intifada (“shaking off”). This involved throwing stones at soldiers, preventing workers from getting to Israeli crossing points and liberating villages for a few days before the Israeli army returned. In response, the IDF bombarded villages with tear gas, charge in large numbers and used steel bullets wrapped in rubber.

Initially the 1993 Oslo Accords were viewed positively in Gaza. There would be no more curfews, or nightly break-ins or harassment on the roads. However as the Israelis imposed border closures it quickly became apparent that Oslo had turned Gaza into a huge prison. In the mid 1990s Israel encircled Gaza with a huge wall, electric fences and guard towers which effectively sealed off the Strip. The second intifada in October 2000 saw the beginning of primitive rocket attacks across the border into Israel.

In 2005, Israel enacted its unilateral disengagement plan to evict Israelis from 21 settlements in Gaza despite intense criticism from right-wing factions. But hopes that this would lead to a permanent settlement soon died. The locals were far from grateful and voted Hamas to victory in Palestinian government elections a year later. They would eventually muscle Fatah out of the Strip. Israel was left guarding a very hostile prisoner that does even recognise the existence of its jailor. Mitchell will need all his considerable skills of diplomacy to sort out the mess.

Monaco Declaration calls for urgent action on acidic oceans

150 marine scientists from 26 countries have called for immediate action to reduce CO2 emissions sharply so as to avoid severe damage to marine ecosystems from increasing ocean acidification. The researchers voiced their concerns through the "Monaco Declaration" (pdf) which warns that changes in acidity are accelerating. The declaration states that ocean acidification may render most regions chemically inhospitable to coral reefs by 2050. The scientists say there is no antidote and that acidification can be controlled only by limiting future atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide.

The declaration is based on research priorities identified at The Ocean in a High CO2 World symposium held in Monaco in October 2008. It calls for immediate action to save coral reefs which “provide fish habitat, generate billions of dollars annually in tourism, protect shorelines from erosion and flooding, and provide the foundation for tremendous biodiversity, equivalent to that found in tropical rain forests.” Most marine organisms live in the oceans' sunlit surface waters, which are also the waters most vulnerable to CO2-induced acidification over the next century.

Ocean acidification is often called the “other CO2 problem” or “global warming’s evil twin”. While the severity of its impacts to marine ecosystems have been known for some time, scientists hope the declaration will made it more of a public priority. Jeremy B. C. Jackson, a coral expert at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, labelled the acidification of the oceans a critical problem. “Nobody really focused on it because we were all so worried about warming,” he said, “but it is very clear that acid is a major threat.”

The oceans have “subsidised” the effects of climate change by absorbing a substantial portion of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Oceans store about 50 times more carbon dioxide than the atmosphere, and have absorbed a third of the carbon dioxide released by human activity. The downside is that as the gas dissolves to become carbonic acid, seawater is gradually becoming more acidic. The result is a detectable decrease in shellfish, shell weights and interference with the growth of coral skeletons. The rate of acidity is now accelerating so fast it threatens the survival of coral reefs, shellfish and the marine food web generally.

And the speed of change is alarming. According to Science Daily, ocean chemistry is now changing 100 times more rapidly than in the 650,000 years that preceded the modern industrial era. According to the pH scale the lower the measure, the more acidic it is – seawater is considered mildly alkaline with a “natural” pH of about 8.2. However, researchers at Scripps Oceanography have recorded an overall drop in the pH of the oceans from 8.16 to 8.05 in the last 20 years.

The IPCC (pdf) predicts surface ocean pH will decrease by a further 0.4 (give or take 0.1) pH units by 2100. No one can say with certainty what the biological consequences of such a drop will be. The ocean’s pH and carbonate chemistry has been remarkably stable for millions of years. The last time a major natural ocean acidification event occurred was approximately 55 million years ago and that caused mass extinctions of calcareous marine organisms, similar to modern coral.

In July 2008 a paper published in the “Science” journal warned that the ecological and economic consequences of ocean acidification are difficult to predict but possibly calamitous. The researchers of that paper led by Richard Zeebe of the University of Hawaii also said that halting the changes already underway will likely require even steeper cuts in carbon emissions than those currently proposed by international protocols. “If we continue with business as usual and don’t cut carbon dioxide emissions, carbonate reefs will ultimately start to dissolve,” said Zeebe. “This is basic chemistry.”

The Monaco Declaration urges governments to launch four types of initiatives to solve the problem. Firstly, scientists want to promote further research in the field to help improve understanding of impacts of ocean acidification. Secondly, they suggest building links between economists and scientists to evaluate the socioeconomic extent of impacts and costs for action versus inaction. Thirdly, they want to improve communication between policymakers and scientists so that policies are based on current findings and scientific studies are widened to include policy-relevant questions. Lastly and most critically, policymakers need to develop “ambitious, urgent plans to cut emissions drastically” to prevent further ocean damage. This is an unambiguous ultimatum. As James Orr of the Marine Environment Laboratories says, “The questions are now how bad will it be and how soon will it happen.”

Mixed start to Thomas Lubanga’s ICC trial

The first week of evidence in the historic International Criminal Court (ICC) trial of Congolese man Thomas Lubanga has ended with mixed results for the prosecution. Lubanga has pleaded not guilty to recruiting and using child soldiers under age 15 in 2002-2003. After the first witness recanted his evidence he was a child soldier, a second has restored hope to prosecutors by testifying he taught child soldiers in the art of war. He is the first of four Congolese warlords that will face trial. The trial is the first to be heard by the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal since it was created in 2002. But as the Toronto Star editorialises, the real value of the case is that the practice of using child soldiers “will persist until warlords and others understand they can no longer send children to their deaths with impunity.”

For this first case, ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo charged the 48 year old Lubanga with recruiting 30,000 child soldiers to fight in the conflict that raged in north-eastern DRC between 2002 and 2003. Lubanga is the leader of the UPC (Union of Congolese Patriots), a group set up in 2000 that was closely allied to Uganda. The UPC was accused of massacring civilians in 2002 in DRC’s eastern province of Ituri. Ituri is a gold-rich region near the Ugandan border and the Ugandan army took the side of Lubanga’s Hemi ethnic group against the Lendu.

Initially the war here was ignored while peace efforts focussed on more pressing parts of the DRC. Eventually French troops occupied Ituri’s capital Bunia. UN peacekeepers arrested Lubanga in 2005 and transferred him to jail in the DRC capital Kinshasa. A year later he was extradited to the ICC court at The Hague where he was charged with three counts of war crimes for using child soldiers. However it has taken a long process to get him to trial. It was due to begin in June 2008 but immediately stalled when the court ruled that prosecutors had wrongly withheld evidence. The court granted his release a month later but this was delayed pending appeal. In November the suspension was lifted and The British Judge Adrian Fulford announced a start date for the trail of the end of January 2009.

However things went badly for the prosecution on the opening day of the trial last week. Firstly the young star witness flown in from Congo was forced to take his oath three times due to malfunctioning microphones. There was a bigger shock when he finally testified and recanted his earlier testimony that he was a child soldier. Earlier the young man, now a teenager, said he was snatched by Lubanga's militia on his way home from school. However he changed his story in court and denied that he'd ever been a child soldier taken to a military training camp. Instead, the witness claimed his testimony was prompted by an NGO which he did not name. Stunned prosecutors claimed their witness felt unprotected and feared for his safety from the watching Lubanga.

Judge Fulford immediately ordered the witness’s testimony to be adjourned and called for a probe into possible threats against the witness and his family. He also directed the prosecution to examine the risks of self-incrimination faced by witnesses who may face prosecution in the DRC. The court’s "Rule 74" requires that witnesses be fully informed that evidence could possibly incriminate them back home.

Meanwhile the trial continued and prosecutors did better with Friday’s witness. A former militia fighter told the court he trained children to use assault rifles and fought alongside them. The man said he joined Lubanga's militia in 2002 when senior officers threatened to torch his village unless the young people joined up. He had previously served as a child soldier in the Congolese army five years earlier and he was made an instructor because of his experience. He taught recruits the basics of war and how to fire AK47 rifles. He said children often were assigned to officers as armed "bodyguards or escorts," and many fought and died in battle.

The trial is expected to last for six to nine months and is a crucial test for the tribunal's ability to bring war criminals to justice. The ICC is the only permanent tribunal for prosecuting individuals accused of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. Previous war crimes cases have been handled by adhoc tribunals. The ICC was established under the 1998 Rome Statute, a treaty now ratified by 106 states (though the US is a notable absentee). While discussion of ICC membership was studiously avoided during the election campaign, Obama is known to support the court. Bringing the US back into the fold would be an even bigger step towards the ICC’s legitimacy than a Lubanga conviction.