Queensland goes with status quo

The dust has settled in Queensland and nothing much has changed. Peter Beattie, as expected, has won his fourth term as Labor Queensland premier. It was another landslide win to Labor. The Opposition conceded defeat at 8pm local time barely two hours after polling booths closed. The result follows the narrow state election win in 1998 and two landslides in 2001 and 2004. With three-quarters of the vote counted, Labor (with 47% of the primary vote) seems likely to take 58 or 59 seats in the 89-seat parliament, a drop of four or five from the 63 seats won last time out. The four biggest parties (Labor, Liberal, Nationals and Greens) all saw their primary vote increase due to the implosion of post-Pauline Hanson One Nation and the fact that the Democrats seem to be no longer interested in keeping the bastards honest.

Though results are not yet certain, it looks as if only eight seats changed hands. In the Sunshine Coast, fallout from the Traveston Mary River dam project meant that Labor lost Noosa and Kawana to the Liberals, the Doctor Death scandal saw Bundaberg fall to the Nationals and in Brisbane, the Liberals only succeeded in winning the knife-edge marginal seat of Clayfield after a particularly bitter and dirty campaign. On the positive side for Labor was the three seats they won back in the South-East (Chatsworth, Redcliffe and Gaven) having lost all three in bye-elections during the height of the Bundaberg and related health scandals. The eighth to swap hands is the intriguing seat of Gympie in the heart of the dam proposal which the Nats regained from a troubled independent.

Beattie is gaining the reputation of a Teflon premier having improbably survived the fallout of his health and water issues. He is now in the top job for eight years. Only Scottish-born William Forgan Smith has been a longer-term premier on the Labor side. Smith was the depression era state leader from 1932 to 1942. Smith shares many traits in common with Beattie. He too was premier and treasurer. He was pro-development and put the state ahead of Canberra. And like the self-proclaimed ‘media tart’ Beattie, Smith too was an effective media performer and the first politician in Queensland to make effective use of the new medium of radio. Beattie will surpass Smith's time in office if he stays till the end of his fourth term though he has indicated he will pass power to deputy Anna Bligh at some stage.

The Queensland opposition remains in disarray. On the positive side they avoided the spectacle of three-sided contests (Lab, Lib and Nat) in this election and the partners took 38% of the Primary vote. On the negative side, their campaign was poorly run and the leadership issue took pressure away from Labor problems. The parties had an attempt to create a merger spectacularly torpedoed by the Prime Minister earlier this year. The Liberals dumped their previous leader Bob Quinn one week before the election was called. There was tension between new leader Dr Bruce Flegg and National leader Lawrence Springborg as to who would lead the coalition if it was elected into government. The Nationals continue to have the more seats in parliament than Liberal (likely 16 to 10) and therefore maintain the ascendency. However the problem is that the Liberals primary vote now exceeds the Nationals (20% to 18%) and with Brisbane and the Gold Coast now the most populous area in the state and growing immensely, it is likely that the coalition will never again form government with a National majority. Until the two parties accept this reality, they will be out of power in the state for many years to come. On Thursday Springborg indicated he is resigning as party leader after two heavy defeats to Beattie. And now National powerbroker David Russell has put the Coalition merger back on the table, arguing that the Queensland conservative parties must unify or face being unelectable.

Queensland is not an easy state for the smaller parties. It is the only state without an upper house and the Optional Preferential voting system favours the larger parties. The Greens campaigned strongly on water issues and vigorously opposed the Traveston dam development with leader Bob Brown (pictured) joining the protests. They ran in 71 seats and gained 8% of the vote. They subsequently called for proportional representation to be introduced in Queensland before the next State election claiming they would have had six or seven MPs elected under a fairer model. The pentecostalist party Family First made their debut in Queensland elections and received just under 2% of the primary vote. But because they only ran in 26 seats, that represented 7% in each seat they contested. They have shown they will be a force to be reckoned with in the next federal election.

Federal Labor leader Kim Beazley claimed that Beattie’s victory was a strong message to Prime Minister John Howard about his industrial relations changes. Beazley said Labor's campaigning in Queensland emphasised the government's workplace changes. Although Howard predictably rejected this claim, it may have had some merit given Beattie’s own problems with State issues. Within federal polling fairly even, Howard cannot afford to take this threat lightly. The next election is likely to be some time next year though Howard has until 19 January 2008 to call it.

Beattie doesn't have to worry about that now. But if the polls don't change much and they win, Labor may well try to persuade Beattie to make the national jump. That case could also be put if they lost. Beattie himself claims no interest in making the jump into the federal arena. But if Arch Bevis retires in Brisbane, a safe federal seat in his own constituency becomes available.

The major gallops on

"Look at that little fat chap. We'll murder this lot." These were the intemperate words of an English footballer as they took the field at Wembley to play Hungary in 1953. The "little fat chap" was Ferenc Puskas, the Hungarian captain. He was short, stocky, barrel-chested, slightly overweight, could only shoot with his left foot and couldn't head the ball. Despite all these shortcomings, he and his team had the last laugh slaughtering England 6-3 and in the process being the first continental team to win at Wembley. Puskas scored two goals in that game among a remarkable 84 in just 85 games for his country.

Today, Ferenc Puskas is recovering after being taken into intensive care into a Budapest hospital this week. The 79-year-old Puskas has been living in Budapest's Kutvolgyi Hospital with Alzheimer's disease since 2000 and went into intensive care earlier this week. Puskas is idolised in Hungary where has the nickname Ocsi Bacsi “our little brother”. His more famous nickname to the rest of the world is The Galloping Major after his Hungarian army rank at the time he became world famous. Puskas was the captain of Hungary’s “golden team” of the 1950s before going on to great success with Real Madrid winning the first five European cups between 1956 and 1960.

Puskas was born in 1927 in Budapest. He made an early impression making his debut for his father's old team Kispest at the age of 16. At aged 18 he made his first international appearance for Hungary against Austria in 1945. After the war, military teams sprang up all over Eastern Europe under the auspices of the new Soviet masters. In Hungary the authorities took the Kispest club and all their players and turned them into Honved, the team of the Hungarian Army. Because Communist sports teams were technically amateurs, they could compete in the Olympic Games. Puskas was captain of his country when they took the soccer gold medal by defeating Yugoslavia in the final at Helsinki in 1952.

By 1954, Hungary were the hot favourites to win the World Cup in Switzerland. Just to show that their earlier victory over England wasn’t a fluke, they demolished them 7-1 in Budapest. Going into the tournament, the Magical Magyars hadn't lost for four years. They scored 17 goals in their first two games of the finals. They beat South Korea 9-0, and then thrashed Germany 8-3. But this win came at a cost. Their captain and talisman Puskas was injured and missed the quarter-final against Brazil, a brutal game that went down in football history as the Battle of Berne. Hungary won and after the game, the Brazilians invaded the Hungarian dressing room claiming that Puskas had attacked and wounded their centre-half while watching from the touchline. In the ensuing fight, players hit each other with bottles and football boots.

Puskas's damaged ankle kept him out of the semi-final against Uruguay who had never lost a World Cup match. Hungary won 4-2 in extra time. The final was a rematch with West Germany who they had annihilated in the early rounds. Captain Puskas declared himself fit, but it was a controversial decision. According to Brian Glanville in his book, The Story of the World Cup: "Puskas, clearly hampered by his ankle, was unwontedly heavy and slow." Nonetheless, Hungary led 2-0 after just eight minutes with Puskas getting the second goal. The gamble looked like it was paying off. But the Hungarians' game began to go awry. Germany pulled back to 2-2, and then took the lead through Rahn. With minutes to go Puskas broke clear and slid the ball past the German keeper Turek. Welsh linesman Mervyn Griffiths had his flag up. The goal was disallowed for offside. West Germany held on to win 3-2 and caused one of the football upsets of the century to win the World Cup. Hungary, having conquered all before them, had been beaten in the most important game of all.

The 1956 Hungarian uprising changed Puskas’s life forever. He was with the rest of his Honved team-mates playing a European Cup tie in Bilbao, Spain when the revolution took place. Puskas, and two of his team-mates Kocsis and Czibor, defected to the West. The trio were banned for a year. Although Czibor and Kocsis soon found employment with Barcelona, Puskas was less fortunate – as his weight increased his stock fell, with no clubs willing to take a risk on him. Puskas spent a year in neighbouring Austria, but was unable to get a playing permit. He wanted to play in Italy, but he piled on weight as he drifted aimlessly around Europe. Having turned 30 he was considered too old and too fat. He was rescued from ignominy by his old Honved manager Emil Oestreicher, now in charge at Real Madrid. The Spanish team had been turned into a club that dominated Europe by the vision of their president, Santiago Bernabeu. They had won the first European Cup in 1956 and had retained it the following year. Among their star players were centre-forward Alfredo Di Stefano, a naturalised Argentinean, and Francisco Gento, the flying winger.

In 1958, Oestreicher took a gamble on the 31-year-old overweight Puskas. The player rejected by the Italians struck up a sensational partnership with Di Stefano and was four times the leading scorer in the Spanish Championship. They retained the European Cup in 1958 and again a year later. This magnificent Real side climaxed in their fifth straight final in 1960 played in front a European record crowd of 135,000 at Hampden Park, Glasgow. Puskas scored 4 and di Stefano 3 as they trounced Eintracht Frankfurt 7-3 in one of the greatest exhibitions of football ever seen. The young Billy Bremner was at the game and described it thus: "It was awesome; nobody could believe what they were seeing, and at the end there was this incredible indescribable buzz all around, like some unbelievably illustrious people had been allowed to come and visit, like Frank Sinatra had just sung to us personally."

Puskas played in one more European Cup Final against Benfica in 1962. Real were no longer the force of old and Benfica won 5-3 but it was still the 35 year old Puskas who scored all three Real goals. The same year he was picked to play for Spain in the World Cup Finals in Chile. The team was packed with talent. Apart from Gento, there was Luis del Sol and Luis Suarez. It made little difference, Spain won just one of their three matches and finished bottom of their qualifying group. During his time in Spain Puskas was top scorer four times in the league, as Real won six domestic trophies and three European Cups.

Puskas retired in 1966 to concentrate on coaching. He had only mediocre success until 1971 when he took the Greek Champions Panathinaikos to the European Cup Final where they lost 2-0 to Ajax. As well as Greece, he coached in Chile, Paraguay, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Egypt and Australia. It was in Australia where George Best met him. Best said of Puskas "the players he was coaching did not respect him until he put the ball down outside the area and intentionally hit the cross bar ten times in a row.” But the most poignant moment of his later days was in 1993 when he returned home to Hungary. The man who defected to flee the uprising was appointed caretaker manager of the national side during the World Cup qualifiers. The Hungarians failed to qualify but a great national hero was rehabilitated. Hungary renamed their national stadium Stadium Puskás Ferenc in his honour in 2001. The country will be plunged into mourning when the major gallops no more.

The Twisted World of Fred Phelps

Earlier this week, Australian blog Blueberry Fool published a humorous Youtube video of the ABC’s “The Chaser’s War on Everything” take on the American Baptist Minister Fred Phelps. Phelps is notorious in the States for his vehement anti-gay activism. He is the pastor of a small congregation called the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. The church and its tiny congregation of one hundred people (most of who are related to Phelps) base much of its work around the belief that nearly every tragedy in the world is linked to homosexuality. Its slogan and main website is "God hates fags". The group also hosts sites named godhatesamerica.com and more puzzlingly godhatessweden.com where Phelps pleads with God’s elect to “leave Sweden now”.

The 76 year old Phelps and at least 10 of his 13 children are lawyers. This means that any legal challenges to his hate campaigns (and there have been many) is met with an aggressive and litigious response, which has often resulted in large court-awarded penalties to the Church. The Phelps family is quite insistent on their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech. Thanks to their legal prowess, Westboro Church does not accept contributions from outsiders. The church complex on Topeka's southwest side where Phelps and his extended family live contains modest wood houses surrounded by a spacious yard with a swimming pool, running track, tennis and basketball courts, and the playground. Above the compound, an American flag flies upside down, the signal for distress. Above that a Canadian flag flies upside down, Phelps' response to a Canadian law prohibiting picketing at funerals there.

And therein lies the rub of his importance. Phelps and his crackpot church would simply be a matter of mirth to most if it wasn’t for his activism which has inspired law changes in the US and Canada. It started when Phelps organised demonstrations at the funerals of AIDS victims. He then demonstrated at the funeral of Matthew Shepard, a gay man who was murdered in Wyoming. And then for obscure reasons somehow relating to homosexuality, he held protests at the funerals of such luminaries as Frank Sinatra, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan and William Rehnquist. Phelps celebrated the 9/11 attacks as the just desserts of Western decadence. Since 2003, he has been demonstrating at the funerals of U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq to celebrate the deaths of those killed while defending a "fag" nation.

As a result, the US and Canada have passed a number of controversial laws to inhibit Phelps actions. Canada’s custom authorities confiscated the group’s signs and the country has introduced ‘hate crime’ legislation in response to his behaviour. On May 24, 2006, the United States House and Senate passed bills which would ban protests at military funerals in national cemeteries. The Respect for America's Fallen Heroes Act would bar protests within 300 feet of the entrance of a cemetery and within 150 feet of a road into the cemetery from 60 minutes before to 60 minutes after a funeral. Those violating the act would face up to a $100,000 fine and up to a year in prison. At a state level, at least 17 states are either considering bans on protests near funeral sites immediately before and after the ceremonies, or have already banned them. The constitutional validity of these bans has not yet been tested in the courts. In July this year the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) supported a suit in Missouri raised by Phelps supporters challenging the ban on protests at military funerals in that state. They claim the law banning such pickets infringed on the members' religious freedoms and right to free speech. "I told the nation as each state went after these laws that if the day came that they got in our way, that we would sue them," said Phelps' daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper, the lead plaintiff and a spokeswoman for the Topeka-based church. "At this hour, the wrath of God is pouring out on this country." Anthony Rothert, ACLU legal director in St. Louis, said “this law really was made to silence a particular group, and I'm able to see that that's dangerous. It may be a group that I disagree with that the government is trying to silence today, but it could be a group that I agree with tomorrow."

Some suspect that Phelp’s outrageous behaviour is an elaborate act. It is possible he may be a prankster or even an agent provocateur deliberately trying to embarrassment the mainstream Religious Right’s more understated intolerance of homosexuality. An alternate theory is that Phelps and his legal-eagle family try to provoke others into attacking them physically so that they can sue. To this end they deliberately choose high-profile or heart-wrenching cases and picket at extremely emotional times such as funerals.

Breakfast on Barley

More by accident than design, Woolly Days has been movie-going in logical pairs of late. A couple of weeks ago, there was the air trouble double of United 93 followed by Snakes on a Plane. This week it is an Irish pair, a Cillian Murphy two-hander in films that approach the Irish wars from different historical angles, Neil Jordan’s Breakfast on Pluto and Ken Loach’s The Wind that Shakes the Barley.

Breakfast on Pluto is based on a novel by Patrick McCabe that was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1998. It is Jordan’s second adaptation of a McCabe book, having previously filmed The Butcher Boy which was also shortlisted for the Booker. Set in the 1970s in the border area of Ireland (where McCabe himself grew up,) Breakfast on Pluto tells the story of the orphaned and sexually ambiguous Patrick 'Kitten' Braden and his adventures in Ireland and London. Cillian Murphy plays the role of Braden, who prefers to be known as Patricia or better still Kitten. He is a transvestite rebelling in his own way and oblivious to the political turmoil growing around him. His open gayness would have put him beyond the Pale in Ireland of the 1970s and this may explain why he was such a survivor from scrapes with the IRA, the British Army and interrogation and torture at the hands of the London Metropolitan Police. Kitten escapes the drabness and sectarian politics of smalltown Ireland and goes to London to find his mother.

The film is played out in a series of adventures which begin when he hitchhikes with an Irish rock band “Billy Hatchet and the Mohawks.” He gets involved with the band, has a love affair with Billy (Gavin Friday) and joins them onstage in Indian costume as “Running Bear” until the band believes that “the squaw is not working out”. He is forced to leave the country after he destroys an IRA arms cache. In London he is employed as a Womble of Wimbledon before falling under the spell of a magician (Neil Jordan regular Stephen Rea) who employs him as an assistant. He is in a London nightclub when it is bombed and he is arrested afterwards as the chief suspect, an Irish cross-dressing terrorist. He survives the police beatings and is released (unlike the real-life Guildford and Birmingham suspects who were convicted for being Irish in the wrong place at the wrong time). He drifts into prostitution and working in a Soho sex club before returning to Ireland. There his house is firebombed by homophobes and he ends up in London one more time. Kitten’s trusting nature and optimism seem horribly misplaced in a dangerous world. The boyish (girlish?) Murphy doesn’t look his thirty years and somehow makes the whacky world of Braden real and believable, always kicking against the pricks armed with nothing more than his fierce native honesty.

Politics forms the backdrop to Kitten’s adventures, but they always stay at the forefront of Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley. The film is set against the backdrop of the Irish War of Independence and the Civil War that immediately followed it in the years between 1919 and 1923. In 1919, the first Irish parliament – the Dáil - convened illegally in Dublin and called on the "free nations of the world" to recognise Ireland's independence. They used the guerrilla tactics of the Boers, with lightning fast raids usually at night before disappearing into the community. The British responded by deploying the Royal Irish Constabulary Reserve Force (better known by the colour of their initial uniforms the “Black and Tans”.) Their arbitrary reprisals against the civilian population after IRA attacks had the effect of alienating many anti-IRA Irish who found the British response repugnant. The British government eventually realised this was an unwinnable war. The two sides declared a truce in July 1921 and negotiated the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December that year. Under the terms of the treaty, the south of Ireland would have economic independence and become a Free State (similar to Canada and Australia), Northern Ireland would withdraw and Britain would enforce an Oath of Allegiance and keep her navy in three Treaty Ports. The terms of the Treaty were narrowly approved by the Dáil and its opponents continued the old war against the new Free State. The Civil War was a bitter feud that split families and cost the lives of more than had died in the War of Independence that preceded it. It ended in inevitable failure for the revolutionaries who paradoxically won at the ballot box when they formed the Fianna Fail party. Ireland gradually became more independent with its own constitution in 1937 and becoming a fully-fledged republic in 1949.

The Wind That Shakes the Barley takes its name from a 19th century Irish ballad about a rebel leaving his lover to fight against the British. Cillian Murphy has another central role; he plays Damien, a young idealistic doctor who becomes involved in the conflict after witnessing British armed brutality against civilians. His brother Teddy (Padraic Delaney) is already an active IRA member. They form part of a successful West Cork flying squad until an informer betrays their position. Teddy is tortured by thumb screws but they escape prison before he reveals any useful information. The film shows how the men become steadily brutalised by their experiences. Damien is forced to execute one of his own men, a close friend who has become an informer. Eventually they hear the news of the Truce and the brothers split. Teddy is the political realist who supports the Treaty as a stepping stone to full Irish independence. Damien sees it as a betrayal of everything they fought for. They end up on opposite sides of civil conflict that followed with inevitable sad results.

The Wind That Shook the Barley is not a great film by Ken Loach standards. He tries to cover too much political ground in two hours and the film loses much of its emotional impact as a result. However it is still a very important film that takes an even-handed stance to what was a complex part of history. The histrionics shown by some British political commentators (not shared by its movie reviewers) on the release of the film shows how charged the material remains 85 years after the events. Cillian Murphy who hails from the part of Cork where filming of 'Barley' occurred, adds to his growing reputation in both these fine films.

Tonga grapples with democracy and the death of a king

About a third of the way between New Zealand and Hawaii lies the multi-island nation of Tonga. The word means ‘south’ in Tongan. Captain Cook called them the Friendly Islands because he arrived during the ʻinasi festival, the yearly donation of the first fruits to the Tuʻi Tonga. The Tu’i Tonga was the royal lineage - a dynasty which lasted 800 years until abolished in the mid 1800s. The new King of Tonga was established in 1875 and since that time there have been only four monarchs. Yesterday, the fourth of these, Tāufaʻāhau Tupou IV, died aged 88 in a hospital in Auckland. His death came at the end of a long, unspecified illness. His body will be flown to Tonga tomorrow. Preparations in the capital Nuku'alofa are under way for his funeral next Monday, with black and purple cloth being draped on buildings as a mark of respect. The mourning period is expected to last for many months.

His 57-year old-son Crown Prince Tupouto'a was sworn in immediately as the fifth monarch with the name of King George Tupou V. It was announced by proclamation of the Tongan government. In keeping with Tongan tradition, his coronation will be delayed until 2007. Tonga has a population roughly in excess of 100,000 scattered among 170 coral islands and achieved its independence from Britain in 1970. The earliest humans there came from South East Asia 2,800 years ago. They were known as the “Lapita” people for their pottery and they lived and traded in Tonga, Samoa, and Fiji for a thousand years. The Tongans were at the height of their powers in the 12th century.

The Dutch navigators Willem Cornelisz Schouten and Jacob le Maire sailed by the northern islands in 1616. The rest of the archipelago was visited by Abel Tasman in 1643 during the voyage of discovery that also mapped Tasmania, New Zealand and Fiji. Cook visited the islands twice (1773 and 1777) in his second and final antipodean journeys. English missionaries arrived in 1797 and laid the foundations for British political influence. Internal wars in the early 1800s ended with the accession of King George Tupou I who unified Tonga and gave it a constitution (1862), a legal code, and an administrative system. His successor, King George Tupou II (1893–1918) concluded a treaty making Tonga a British protectorate in 1900. Tonga remained self-governing, with the British responsible for foreign affairs and defence. A new treaty in 1968 reduced British control, and Tonga became completely independent on 4 June, 1970.

The end of Tupou IV's reign is likely to aid the push for more democracy in the near-feudal kingdom, where the royal family has ruled with absolute power. Like many Tongans he suffered from obesity for most of his adult life. By 1976 he was listed in the Guinness book of Records as the world’s heaviest monarch at 210 kilos on the Tongan airport scales (the only ones in the country capable of weighing him). When he visited Germany, the German government would commission special chairs to support his weight. The King would take the chairs home, considering them as state presents. However by the 1990s he was a shadow of his former himself. He lost 70 kilos and led his people on a diet and exercise regime in a nation where coconut flesh and mutton flaps are the main staples.

Corruption within the royal family and government remains a problem. In 2001 the country lost $26 million in government funds (40% of its annual revenue) as a result of investment in a Nevada asset management company. Tonga made the money by selling citizenships to Hong Kong Chinese. The King appointed American businessman, Jesse Bogdonoff to manage the money and also made him his court jester. The jester had the last laugh as he and the $26 million disappeared. In 2004, Bogdonoff agreed to pay Tonga a $1 million settlement. A pro-democracy movement rose against the King as he became increasingly autocratic. In May 2005, 10,000 people – one tenth of the population - rallied for constitutional reform. Three months later, 3,000 civil servants went on strike, demanding better pay. This year, pro-democracy leader Fred Sevele became the first elected commoner to serve as the country's prime minister. King George Tupou V will need to show some of his father’s charisma and resilience as well as more humble qualities his father did not have if Tonga is to emerge from its crises with its reputation and finances intact.

The Other September 11

Today is the 33rd anniversary of the Chilean coup that brought military dictator Auguste Pinochet to power. On this day in 1973, a US backed armed uprising overthrew the regime of a democratically elected president. Salvador Allende Gossens was the first socialist to be elected president in South America and he was killed on the day of the coup. A march on the eve of the 33rd anniversary in Santiago ended in clouds of tear gas as police dispersed demonstrators throwing rocks and bottles at government buildings, including the presidential palace.

Allende was born in the port city of Valparaiso in 1908. He graduated in medicine from the University of Chile in Santiago in 1933. That same year he was a co-founder of the Chilean Socialist Party. Five years later, Pedro Aguirre Cerda led a Popular Front government to victory and Allende was appointed Minister for Health. After Cerda died in 1941, Allende returned to his parliamentary career and served as a senator throughout the 1940s and 1950s. In 1952, Allende made his first run for the presidency, finishing well back in fourth. The same year, he was suspended from his party because of his support for the outlawed Communist Party of Chile. He ran for president twice more and failed in 1958 and 1964.

Allende became a person of interest to the Americans after he established a friendship with Fidel Castro. The Nixon administration, newly elected in 1968, feared that US corporations active in Chile might be nationalised by a socialist government and so became openly hostile. Nixon acknowledged that he had given instructions to "do anything short of a Dominican-type action" to keep the democratically elected president of Chile from assuming office. Allende put his name forward for a fourth presidential election in September 1970. Although he only received 36% of the popular vote (down 3% from his 1964 figure), he was 1% ahead of his main rightist opponent. The closeness of the result sent the election to the National Congress for a vote. In the six weeks waiting for this vote to occur, the CIA supported the assassination of General René Schneider Chereau, the armed forces Commander-in-Chief. His murder influenced the congress which voted 153 to 35 in favour of Allende. He was declared president of Chile on 24 October.

In office, Allende pursued a leftist program and his government established diplomatic relations with Cuba. He also moved Chile closer to communist countries such as China, North Korea and North Vietnam. At home, the new regime began to nationalise various industries, several of which had significant U.S. business interests. This line of action quickly cost the president the support of Chile's business community. The Allende government announced it would default on debts owed to international creditors and foreign governments. Allende also froze all prices while raising salaries. By early 1972, United States was working seriously to destabilise the country. It supported the opposition and worked systematically to weaken Chile's economy. Chile’s chief export was copper and prices declined on the international market. As a result, the government began to lose control. In order to control a strike by shopkeepers and truck owners, Allende temporarily brought senior military officers into his cabinet. With inflation out of control and his country becoming polarized between the extreme left and the extreme right, Allende slowly lost his grip.

On 29 June 1973, Colonel Roberto Souper led El Tanquetazo (the tank putsch) against Allende’s government. But his tank-led coup was put down by forces loyal to the regime. But less than three months later it was all over. In August, Chile was lurching towards a constitutional crisis as the Supreme Court complained that Allende could not govern. Early in the morning of 11 September, sections of the Chilean navy seized the port city of Valparaiso, Allende’s home town. The President went to his La Moneda palace when he heard the news. He tried in vain to contact senior military officers and concluded they were all in on the coup. Allende made a radio address "Confirmed reports indicate that a sector of the Navy has rebelled and is occupying Valparaiso. Santiago is normal and [the soldiers are] in their barracks. I'm here defending the government that I represent by the will of the people. Be alert and vigilant...I wait for the soldiers of Chile to respond positively and defend the laws and the Constitution. Workers must go to their workplace and wait for new instructions.”

Then the military junta made its own radio broadcast which called for the immediate resignation of Allende. The broadcast was signed by most of Chile’s leading generals. They offered a plane to take Allende out of the country but he refused. Allende made one last desperate address to the nation by telephone to another radio station which commenced “This will surely be the last time I speak to you”. The military surrounded the presidential palace with tanks. The air force circled the building. Forces loyal to Allende inside the building opened fire and started a fierce gun battle. The jets opened fire on the palace and unleashed twenty minutes of rocket attacks that destroyed the building. The army invade the wrecked palace. Allende was with his supporters on the second floor and ordered them to leave. He committed suicide when alone. General Palacios arrived at the scene of the suicide with his soldiers and ordered them to block the entrance to the room where Allende lay, except to forensic personnel. He then sent the following brief message to the generals assembled at the Ministry of Defence: "Mission accomplished. Moneda taken. President dead."

Some 3,000 people died in this September 11. General Pinochet led the new government and the US moved quickly to support the legitimacy of the new regime. Declassified US government documents showed how in the months and years following the 1973 coup, Henry Kissinger covered up US information about atrocities in Chile and sought to persuade Pinochet that the US did not consider his behavior a major problem.

High Court delivers FOI blow

Australia’s Freedom of Information Laws date to 1982. They were drafted by the then Liberal government of Malcolm Fraser and endorsed by Bob Hawke’s new government. However the efficacy of these laws have been brought sharply into question after the Australian High Court (photo credit: airninja pictures) ruled last week in favour of Peter Costello in the case brought against the government by the Australian newspaper. Reporters Without Borders have now called the laws to be repealed. "It is regrettable in a democracy that a government can so easily reject a journalist's request for access to information that is in the public interest," the press freedom organisation said. "It is even more regrettable that the courts uphold the government's ability to evade the need for transparency."

The Australian High Court in a three ( Hayne, Heydon and Callinan JJ) to two (Gleeson CJ and Kirby J) decision rejected Michael McKinnon's and News Ltd appeal in relation to conclusive certificates issued by Secretary for the Department of Treasury under the FOI Act. The majority decided the issue on a narrow and technical consideration of the requirements for section 58. The majority judges were content only to require that the government demonstrate that any documents covered by a conclusive certificate was supported by reasons that were reasonable and rational as distinct from something that is irrational, absurd or ridiculous.

The ruling is an effective death sentence for the ground-breaking FOI legislation. According to the Sydney Morning Herald the decision is an enormous setback to informed debate, and further tips the scales towards unaccountable ministerial power. The case dates to 2002 when Treasurer Costello refused the requests from The Australian's FOI editor Michael McKinnon to reveal what Treasury officials knew about income tax "bracket creep" and possible rorts in the first-home buyers scheme. Costello's refusal had ample precedent on both sides of federal politics - notably from Paul Keating who, as treasurer, had rejected FOI applications from his then Liberal shadow, John Howard. McKinnnon pursued appeals, with the backing of his publisher, News Corp, and later with the support of John Fairfax, in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, the Federal Court, and now the High Court.

The dissenting Gleeson-Kirby view emphasised that the FOI law asserts a general right to information by Australian citizens, limited only by exceptions necessary to protect vital public interests. In their view, ministers had to provide plausible arguments against a presumption that disclosure was in the public interest. However the majority view gave more weight to the caveats and cautions in the FOI law. They upheld the Administrative Appeals Tribunal decision backing Mr Costello's refusal. The three judges held that the tribunal did not have the power to substitute its opinion for the minister's about whether disclosure would be contrary to the public interest or to assess for itself what the public interest required. This was "a matter as to which a responsible minister has the primary and, as will appear, almost the final judgement by reason of other relevant statutory language". Mr Costello has pointed out FOI laws can be a potential obstacle to public servants giving fearless and candid advice.

The end result is a legal bill of over $1 million for News Ltd, and a large and simple loophole for governments to avoid processing FOI requests. Labor's public accountability spokesman Kelvin Thomson said the court's ruling was a "hammer blow" to accountability. Labor have since pledged to change FOI laws to prevent ministers from hiding sensitive documents. Prime Minister Howard ridiculed this pledge as hypocritical and unbelievable. "When they were in office they were up to their armpits in the use of conclusive certificates and I just don't believe them” he said today.

Rice squeezed between Two Iron Ladies

Last week, Forbes magazine published its annual list of the world’s most powerful women. This year German Chancellor Angela Merkel has replaced US State Secretary Condoleezza Rice who held the ‘title’ for the previous two years. The index is based on visibility in the media as well as economic impact. Merkel did not have any ranking in the Forbes top 100 index in 2005. As well as Rice dropping one place, so too did the number 3 Chinese vice-premier Wu Yi.

Although Merkel was born in Hamburg in West Germany, she grew up in the former DDR. She is therefore not only the first female Chancellor of Germany; she is the first East German chancellor too. Her father was a Lutheran pastor whose parish was 50km north of Berlin. As a student, she was a member of the compulsory communist youth movement Free German Youth. In the 1970s she graduated from the University of Leipzig with a doctorate in physics and worked in quantum chemistry. Her involvement in politics started after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

She joined a new party “Demokratischer Aufbruch” (Democratic Awakening) and she stood in East Germany’s one and only free election in 1990. Lothar de Maizière was elected the country’s first post-communist Prime Minister and held the role for six months until the East was reunited with the West in October 1990. Merkel’s party merged with the Western Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and she was elected into the combined parliament in December 1990. She was appointed Minister for Women and Youth in Helmut Kohl's cabinet. Her background in the former GDR has served her well in post-reunification politics and she speaks English and Russian fluently. When Kohl was defeated in the 1998 election, she was appointed secretary-general of the CDU. She became party chair in 2000 after a finance scandal took the scalp of then-incumbent Wolfgang Schäuble. In the 2002 election, the Opposition was led by CDU’s sister party the Bavarian-based Christian Social Union (CSU) and leader Edmund Stoiber squandered a large poll lead to lose to Gerhard Schröder. After the defeat, Merkel became leader of the conservative opposition in the Bundestag.

In 2003, Merkel attracted criticism in Germany for her support of the US invasion of Iraq. She attracted the label “Iron Lady” alluding to similarities with former British PM Margaret Thatcher. However the comparison is superficial. Merkel is no welfare reformer, plus she is constrained by Germany’s electoral system. Josef Joffe, editor and publisher of the weekly paper Die Zeit, explained why: "Germany is a corporatist construction, with power finely balanced among society's forces. It is consensus-bound and thus veto-driven."

Meanwhile in China, Wu Yi has also attracted the "iron lady" label. She is one of four vice-premiers of the State Council, which is the country’s chief administrative authority. Wu is 67 years old and has been a member of the Chinese Communist party for 44 years. She graduated from the Beijing Petroleum Institute with a degree in petroleum engineering and spent much of her career as a petroleum technician. She was elected deputy mayor of Beijing in 1988 and was in the role at the time of the Tiananmen Square Massacre a year later. It was she who persuaded coal-workers not to strike after some of their colleagues had been among the two to three thousand who were killed when the tanks rolled in to crush the protest on 4 June. Through the nineties she was steadily promoted through the ranks from deputy to full minister and was a member of several key decision making committees. Wu was a protégé of Zhu Rongji and when Rongji became Chinese premier in 1998, he appointed her onto the 50-strong State Council.

There her abilities were quickly recognised. Wu helped hammer out five trade agreements with Russia in 1999 and oversaw delicate negotiations for China's accession to the World Trade Organization. She was appointed Health Minister during the 2003 SARS scare and earned the tag "goddess of transparency" from Time Magazine for her leadership role during the crisis. She remains the only female figure in China's core of political power.

Antarctica feels the heat

A new paper published by the Geophysical Research Letters suggests that Antarctica has been getting gradually warmer for the past 150 years, despite indications that the continent cooled considerably during the 1990s. Geophysical Research Letters is the peer-reviewed publication of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). The AGU is an international organisation despite the name and boasts a membership of 41,000 geophysicists in 130 countries.

The new study sheds light on recent cooling in Antarctica and on the complexities of the icy continent's climate. Scientists collected ice cores from five different areas of the continent. They studied oxygen and hydrogen isotopes in the cores to develop the first reconstruction of Antarctic temperature records for the last 150 years. They show the average Antarctic temperatures have risen about 0.2 degrees Celsius in 150 years. This is despite the 1 full degree cooling that occurred in 1990s. The 1990s cooling is at odds with other evidence emerging from the polar region. In 2005 scientists reported that 90 percent of the glaciers of the Antarctic Peninsula are in retreat and melting into the sea. Two separate studies from climate researchers and the space agency NASA showed the glaciers are flowing into Antarctica's Weddell Sea, freed by the 2002 breakup of the Larsen B ice shelf. In March this year, another study confirmed that the Antarctic ice sheet has lost significant mass in the past three years. The sheet contains 90 percent of the planet's ice and is losing 150 cubic kms of ice annually.

Antarctica snapped off from the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana some 40 to 25 million years ago. Cast off, it drifted southwards towards the pole and its flora succumbed to the cold. The continent became icy in the last 15 million years and lost all its remaining trees. It is now the coldest place on the planet. It is much colder than its cousin in the Arctic due to Antarctica’s height (3km above sea level) and its land surface (the North Pole is in the middle of an ocean). Near the South Pole itself, temperatures reach a minimum of -90 °C in the winter. It is a positively balmy 30 degrees warmer in the summer months.

Politically the continent is governed by the 1959 Antarctic Treaty. The Treaty was signed by 12 countries: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Chile, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, the USSR, the UK and US. The terms of the treaty are that military and nuclear activities are prohibited, scientific co-operation is encouraged and no territorial claims are recognised. Many nations have overlapping claims which are on hold while the Treaty stays in place. The US Marshals Service made history in 1989 by being the first law enforcement agency on the continent. U.S. Marshals now greet all visitors to McMurdo Station with a lecture and a warning that serious crimes committed on the continent by Americans can be prosecuted in the United States.

The biggest immediate threat to Antarctica is not climate change or crime but tourism. The number of people visiting the continent has increased six-fold in the last 15 years. According to the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC), just under 5,000 tourists visited Antarctica in the 1990-91 summer. In 2003-4 the figure rose to 24,000 and is expected to rise to 30,000 this year under the influence of the popular documentary film “March of the Penguins”. And next Summer tourism moves on to a new level. A new US-based cruise ship, The Golden Princess, is 10 times bigger than cruise ships plying Antarctica's waters, and can carry 3,800 passengers and crew. Scientists, worried about the potential for invasive species, are asking the US to carry out an environmental impact assessment before it sails. However, this is unlikely. The ship is registered in Bermuda which is not party to the Antarctic Treaty system. Humanity is starting to exercise its control over the last inhospitable land on the planet.

34 Years since Munich

Today is the 34th anniversary of the Munich massacre. On 6 September 1972, nine Israeli Olympic athletes were killed by Palestinian gunmen. The two-day drama came to a grim end in a botched rescue mission at a military airport. 17 people died in all. They were eleven Israelis (two died in the initial attack), one German policeman and five terrorists.

The Munich Olympics was the first in Germany since Hitler’s Games of 1936. They were intended to present a new, democratic and optimistic Germany to the world. The official motto was "the Happy Games." And for the first ten days, it lived up to its happy hype. The 22 year old US swimmer Mark Spitz won a record seven gold medals in the pool (with seven world records to boot). The young and dwarfish Russian gymnast Olga Korbut charmed television viewers worldwide and came back from a fall in her favourite event to win two gold medals. She was 17 years old. At the time she seemed very young for a major sportsperson.

But it was a country that wasn’t represented at the Olympics that stole the show. The Palestinian group Black September was named for the conflict of that name in Jordan in 1970. That was an Arab on Arab conflict. In September that year the Hashemite King Hussein of Jordan quelled a Palestinian attempt to overthrow the monarchy. The Hashemites go back to pre-Islam times but conveniently trace their ancestry the great-grandfather of the prophet Muhammad. The Palestinian refugees from the devastating loss of the 1967 Six Day War with Israel had become a significant population in Jordan. Fatah militants launched attacks on Israel and Israel retaliated. But with help from the Jordanian army the Israelis were repulsed. Arafat’s PLO claimed the victory. But after a visit to Nixon in Washington, Hussein clamped down on the Palestinians. In September, the PLO attempted to assassinate Hussein and launched a series of aeroplane hijacks. Hussein hit back, declared martial law and ordered his army to quell the camps. They succeeded but at the cost of many dead Palestinians. Black September the organisation was born in memory of the war and their dead.

So September 1972 had anniversary significance to the now two year old group. Israel remained the real bitter enemy ahead even of the Hashemites. What better stage to show the world that the Palestinians meant business than the great carnival of the Olympics. The attack on the Israeli athletes was well planned and easy to carry out. The Olympic Village had a poor excuse for security. By day ten many athletes had finished their work and wanted to party. Munich had plenty of places where people could party till the early hours. Then it was just a simple matter of climbing over the gates to get back to the officially closed village. Jumping over gates was easy for lithe athletes and some unsuspecting American athletes helped eight tracksuit clad Palestinians over the two metre high fence. Inside the Palestinians' duffel bags were guns and grenades. Once inside, they used stolen keys to enter two apartments being used by the Israeli team at 31 Connollystraße. Their attempt to break in was overheard by an Israeli, he shouted in Hebrew for his team-mates to get away. Some escaped thanks to his warning. Two athletes were killed in the ensuing struggle and nine were held captive.

The terrorists made demands. They wanted over 200 prisoners released from Israeli jails and also the freedom of the German terrorists the Red Army Faction’s Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, Israel turned down their part of the offer. Germany turned down Israel’s offer of help. The Germans proceeded to screw it up. Their Special Forces team launched an attack on the building unaware that the world’s TV cameras were beaming the coverage directly onto the TV sets watched by the hijackers. With utterly no hope of surprise (other to themselves) the attack had to be called off.

After two days of fruitless negotiation, the authorities pretended that they had given in to their demands to fly to Cairo. The kidnappers and Israelis were bussed and then taken by helicopter to the obscure military base of Fürstenfeldbruck. The Germans relied on five snipers to kill what they thought were five terrorists (whereas there were eight). Most of the five snipers did not have sharpshooter training and they were strategically placed where they would be in each others crossfire. Nor did they have any radio contact. A dummy jet was placed on the tarmac with another ‘five or six’ (no-one is exactly sure) policemen inside. When the two helicopters that carried the payload landed, the German police in the dummy jet voted to abandon their mission. That just left the five snipers, blissfully unaware of their colleagues’ decision. The Palestinians realised they were duped when they saw the now empty jet and ran back to the helicopters. The Germans opened fire and unleashed instant chaos. Two terrorists and a policeman were killed. The athletes were tied up in the two helicopters and could only sit trussed and watch their fate unfold. After an hour one of the surviving gunmen emptied his machine gun on one of the helicopters. A second gunman took care of the other helicopter. All nine Israelis were dead. The Germans cleaned up a few more Palestinians.

Initial news reports, published live on TV all over the world, indicated that all the hostages were alive, and that all the terrorists had been killed. Eventually an IOC spokesman had to issue the grim understatement: "initial reports were overly optimistic." While the siege was in progress, the Olympics stopped for a day (September 5) but after the midnight massacre, the IOC decided to resume the Games with the support of the Israeli Government - though not the surviving Israeli athletes – they went home immediately. The Egyptians left too, fearing reprisals. The high-profile and Jewish Mark Spitz was sped away by the Americans.

The Germans jailed the three surviving hijackers but conjured up a bizarre plan to get two of them out of the country. On 29 October, six weeks after the incident, hijackers of a German Lufthansa passenger jet demanded the release of the three surviving terrorists who were being held for trial. The three were immediately released by Germany. It was unseemly haste. Germany did not try to negotiate at all. Israel was furious and sent its own Mossad death squads to hunt them down.

Trial by Email

Lucy Gao, a hitherto unknown intern at Citigroup bank in London, is the latest person to learn a painful lesson about the Internet’s awesome powers of schadenfreude. Her apparently innocuous 21st birthday party invitation quickly raced around the virtual world. Two weeks ago Gao, an Oxford University engineering graduate, emailed instructions to about 40 friends who were due to attend her 21st birthday party at the Ritz Hotel that Friday night. But one guest made the mistake of passing it on to a colleague at Citibank. The message quickly circulated among staff. Within days, it was a chain mail that circled the globe.

There was no salacious content in the email. Lucy’s mistake was she gave very rigorous instruction to her guests on what do when they arrived at the Ritz. Probably the single-most important factor in the messages viral qualities was the level of control. Lucy asked her guests to arrive in 15 minute intervals and the email had a roster of suggested arrival times which started with “9:00pm: Lucy, Sophie Sandner, Kajai, Mandeep, Preet, Sanami, Su, Lisa, Kate” and went on until 10pm when all the guests were present. Other than a slightly overbearing demand on a rostered punctuality, the email was not really any stranger than thousands of others of its type. But Lucy’s email took on a life of its own and quickly became a pyramid seller’s dream. Within a week, the story was in the English and overseas press. Lucy Gao was said to be hurt and in hiding. She emailed a friend “"My original email was supposed to be a joke between me and my guests but hey, ppl kinda interpret it wrong once it got fwded to the World and out of control . . . never mind”.

She was not the first person to be a victim of public humiliation in this fashion. Hers is the latest in a line of e-mails which have found their way on to a global stage. Fellow Londoner Claire Swires was one of the earliest victims. Her predicament started in December 2000 when she sent a joke around the office about a man robbing a sperm bank who forces a nurse to swallow the bank’s contents at gunpoint. The punchline has the robber removing the mask and announcing to the nurse “"See honey - it’s not that hard." A guy called Bradley responds directly to Claire alone saying the joke was ‘cute’. Claire then emailed him back to say “lucky I swallow so that wont be happening to me!” After another exchange where Claire compliments him on the quality of his sperm, Bradley then made the fateful decision to share this information with his mates. Within 24 hours, the “Claire Swires” virus has spread worldwide. Swires sent out an exasperated APB a few days later, castigating all the ‘sad bastards’ that sent the email on, and criticising the girls for their hypocrisy.

At least Swires didn’t lose her job. Unlike yet another Londoner Trevor Luxton, dubbed “Claire Swires Mark II” a clerk at Credit Lyonnais, who in 2002 sent an email to five friends giving precise details of how he had sex with a girl while simultaneously talking to his unsuspecting girlfriend on the telephone. Within hours the email was circulating around the hyper-world. Luxton was forced to resign.

It is not only Londoners that want to boast about their sexual exploits. In May 2001 Peter Chung, a 24-year-old Princeton graduate had just started a new job with Carlyle in South Korea and sent an email boasting of his sexual conquests to eleven friends at the New York office of Merrill Lynch where he previously worked. One of these friends passed it on others in Wall St. Soon Chung's private message had done the rounds of the financial world, eventually reaching his bosses at Carlyle. They didn’t see the funny side of it and sacked him.

New Yorker Mary Callahan made the mistake of talking about a prospective date but by pressing ‘reply’ rather than ‘forward’ she sent the email to him rather than the female friend she intended it to go to. Thus the date found out, that because they hadn’t yet slept together “he will of course be trying to impress me and will, therefore, do anything I ask”. The email also revealed how her ex fell asleep during sex. Although amusing, the entire sequence may be a fabrication. Those debunkers of urban legend at Snopes describe the status of the Mary Callahan myth as “undetermined”.

Meanwhile, London was still not learning from its mistakes. Richard Phillips was a City solicitor specialising in computer law and electronic commerce. Phillips, a senior associate with the world's biggest law firm, Baker & McKenzie, was at lunch when a secretary accidentally splashed tomato sauce on his suit trousers. A few days later he sent the secretary, a mother of two in her fifties, a polite but insistent email which read Hi Jenny, I went to a dry cleaners at lunch and they said it would cost £4 to remove the ketchup stains. If you cd let me have the cash today, that wd be much appreciated. Thanks Richard”. Jenny responded to him and copied the 250 people on their office floor in which she said “I apologise for accidentally getting a few splashes of ketchup on your trousers. Obviously your financial need as a senior associate is greater than mine as a mere secretary”. The email exchange quickly whizzed around the City. A prim spokesman for their employers Baker & Mackenzie said: "It is a private matter between two individual members of staff that has clearly got out of hand. The matter is being investigated and we cannot comment further." Phillips eventually quit his job.

Berkshire man Joe Dobbie’s gushing invite to Kate Winsall to a date on 11 July this year also resulted in his global humiliation. Dobbie, described by the BBC as a ‘cyber Romeo’, sent an email to Winsall asking her out for a date after the two had met at party. Unfortunately Winsall - whose smile he said made "time stand still" - sent it on to her sister, who forwarded it to friends. Dobbie has since received hundreds of e-mails and calls from many countries and he has had to change his land and mobile numbers.

Lucy Gao now joins this illustrious company of unwary people outed by the viral power of e-mail. Tim Soutphommasane, an Australian PhD student who happens to be in Ms Gao's old college at Oxford told the Sydney Morning Herald “the phenomenon shows the destructive potential of email as an instrument of social ridicule. If anything I wonder whether email has made it easier for us to become more sadistic, since there's so little effort - and, it seems, responsibility - involved in forwarding an email to someone else."

Man Ray

“Because when they strike it can be that quick that if they're within range, you're dead, you're dead in your tracks.” Steve Irwin was describing crocodiles; animals which have lived on the planet since pre-dinosaur times. Sting Rays have been around a while too, about half the timescale of crocodiles but lack their fearsome reputation. The first fossil record dates the species Dasyatidae from the Upper Cretaceous, about 100 million years ago). But although sting rays have no reputation as killers, most species have at least one long venomous spine or barb on their tails, capable of causing excruciating pain. Rays do not attack aggressively, or even actively defend themselves. When threatened their primary reaction is to swim away. However if a predator attacks, they whip up their tails and mechanically release the barb. It is an evolutionary disappointment. The tactic doesn’t work against their main enemy, their fellow cartilaginous sharks.

Injuries to humans from stingrays usually occur when an unsuspecting person trods on a ray, causing the creature to reflexively strike out with its tail. The stinger apparatus then injects a protein-based toxin into the wound, causing an immediate intense reaction. Resultant wounds produce sharp, shooting, throbbing pain. The toxin can also produce a fall in blood pressure, nausea, vomiting, cardiac failure and muscular paralysis. There is no known antidote; however, death in humans is rare.

It is unlikely that someone as experienced as Irwin would have trod on the ray. If he had, he would have survived (albeit in great agony). Instead he was pierced in the chest and died instantly. Irwin was filming the ray off the Low Islands in the Barrier Reef 15km north-east of Port Douglas. Fellow-Australian wildlife filmmaker David Ireland told Southern Cross Broadcasting radio: "They have one or two barbs in the tails which are not only coated in toxic material but are also like a bayonet, like a bayonet on a rifle. If it hits any vital organs it's as deadly as a bayonet."

Steve Irwin was probably the most famous Australian of his time. He made almost 50 TV documentaries which appeared on the cable channel Animal Planet, attracting a global audience of 200 million. He was born in Melbourne suburb of Essendon in 1962. His father Bob was a successful plumber who caught snakes in his spare time for the Commonwealth Serum Laboratory. But Bob Irwin gave his trade away to follow his passion of reptiles. Steve’s mother Lyn was a nurse who wanted to help native animals hit by cars. So the family moved to the Queensland Sunshine Coast and started the small Beerwah Reptile Park in 1970. Steve eventually took over the premises and turned the tiny zoo into one of Queensland’s major tourist attractions. Through gradual land acquisition he enlarged it 16 times its original size and renamed it Australia Zoo. The zoo now holds a 5,000 seater stadium for crocodile and other animal shows.

His movie Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course opened in the United States up against the might of the summer blockbuster Men in Black II. It took a hefty $10m in its opening weekend. Irwin dedicated the film to his mother who was killed in a car accident during the production. While the production values of the film may not have impressed the critics, there was no denying Irwin’s environmental values. He said “every cent we earn from Crocodile Hunter goes straight back into conservation”. He met his American wife Terri when she arrived at his zoo in 1991. Terri grew up in Oregon where her trucker father regularly brought home injured animals. This instilled an ongoing commitment to saving and rehabilitating wild animals. She worked as a vet and founded a rehabilitation clinic to release mammals back into the wild. She travelled to Australia to visit wildlife rehabilitation facilities and had a whirlwind romance with Steve. They married a year later.

The couple opted to go crocodile trapping for their honeymoon. They invited a camera crew along to film the expedition, which later become the first episode of their hit television show The Crocodile Hunter. His unique style and undoubted passion for crocodiles struck a chord with his viewers. He was described as a “crazed cross between Tarzan and a frat pledge”, but his natural prowess with animals allied to a hyper dinky-di Aussie delivery and trademark khaki suits quickly gained him a cult reputation. But as the Age argued his wild showmanship is one of the smartest fronts in the country. The great wealth that his fame has made him is pumped into conservation. In the times when he was not busy making films, he bought up land to revegetate and to breed endangered species upon. The Irwins have bought 27,200 hectares, most of which is in the Murray-Darling Basin west of Brisbane. He has also bought land in Tasmania and the US. In 2002 he bought 100 hectares of heath land near his zoo complete with its populations of greater gliders, wallabies, snakes and platypuses.

Now there is another generation waiting in the wings. Irwin’s friend and manager John Stainton said today that Steve’s 8-year old daughter Bindi will follow in the footsteps of her famous father "like the true wildlife warrior that she is". The attack occurred while they were filming for her screen debut with her new series to be launched worldwide in early 2007.

Andrew Denton asked Irwin whether Australians found him embarrassing. Irwin’s answer was illuminating: "Yeah, I do. I do. Absolutely. I'm very embarrassing to look at. You know why? Here's why I'm embarrassing. Because there's a little bit of me in everybody. There really is, you know? I'm like the boy that never grew up. Um, I'm very, very passionate about what I do. I mean, I love what I do."

Snakes and Leaders

Woolly Days went to two movies this week that could almost be seen as companion pieces: United 93 and Snakes on a Plane.

A character in Akira Kuresawa's Rashomon says “human life is as transient as the morning dew” and in United 93 and SoaP, human life appears very transient indeed. In the real life fiction of United 93, that happened in the morning with the dew of terrorists. In the fiction of the fiction of SoaP, that happened in the night with the dew of snakes. Many died in both films, though the fiction of fiction demanded survivors. After all, no would believe anyone would sneak an army of snakes onto a plane and make them angry with pheromones to make the plane crash. Whereas everyone now knows planes are good for crashing into things.

Actually some one did believe you could sneak snakes onto a plane. The idea dates back to World War II when brown tree snakes regularly got onto Cargo planes in the Pacific. Some Hollywood scriptwriters charmed millions out of eager producers to make the film based on two sentences and just four words: “Snakes. On a Plane”. And how indeed could it go wrong. Here finally was the culmination of the meeting of two classic claustrophobic genres as horror thriller. Humans in the tightest of spaces, with no control over their destiny, are confronted with their worst phobias: the fear of crashing and CGI Snakes. The guys in painting had a field day. It was a herpetologist’s dream job; describing hundreds of snakes to graphic artists.

But United 93 has its own horrors. Here too there is double terror. The terror of knowing all this, or something like this, actually happened is combined with the slow terror of a convincing narrative. There are several narratives at work in United 93. There is the story of what might have happened on flight United 93 itself. Then there is the story of the air traffic controllers and the Armed Forces. And finally there is the central story; the tale of the Federal Aviation Administration.

President Bush's White House counsel and now Attorney-General Alberto Gonzalez made a post 9/11 speech where he justified going to war without a congressional declaration and the government's decision to imprison US citizens such as dirty bomber Jose Padilla without charging them with a crime or allowing them a lawyer. Gonzalez reminded his audience Bush needed the power to make quick decisions and Congress would take too long. He cited the example of the 9/11 decision to close down US airspace and force commercial and private planes to land or remain grounded. But The person who made that decision without needing government clearance was not George Bush but Ben Sliney. Sliney had been appointed the National Operation Manager for the FAA and September 11, 2001 was his first day in the new job.

Ben Sliney plays himself in the film. Barely minutes into his new job, he is faced with a possible hijack situation. There is a puzzling message on a tape: “we have planes”. Soon enough, aeroplanes go missing off the screen and appear seconds later on CNN. Initial report is a light plane has hit the trade centre. But it’s bigger than that. How many more are out there? There goes the second tower. There goes the Pentagon. What’s next? As it happened there was only one more. Sliney was not to know that and took the courageous decision to bring down every flight in US airspace. The film audience had been following the fourth flight since all its anonymous passengers checked in. From its delayed start time of 8am to the crash was just over two hours, perfect movie length.

The snakes on this particular plane are four men: Three Saudis and their Lebanese leader Ziad Jarrah. It was Jarrah’s responsibility to fly the plane once they overwhelmed the pilots. Jarrah's father told the Wall Street Journal one week after the attack his son always wanted to be a pilot but was discouraged by his family. Jarrah went to Germany to study and learn the language. No-one is sure how he became involved with extremism though he may have known members of the Hamburg Cell. In 1999 he and several friends (including the two world trade centre pilots Atta and al-Shehhi) decided they would fight in Chechnya against the Russians. But Bin Laden asked them instead to train in Afghanistan for a terrorist attack.

Jarrah suddenly appeared very secular. He reported his passport stolen in 2000 and got a duplicate (just as Atta and al-Shehhi did the month before) and travelled in and out of the US many times. He attended combat classes and flight schools and learned how to fly a jet. He got a speeding ticket in Maryland two days before the flight. There is debate whether his final letter is a suicide note or not. It mentions farewells but also has scuba diving instructions.

The film audience catches up with him preparing and praying on the night before. He boarded United 93 with the other three. There was also seven crew and 33 other passengers in a 182-seater Boeing 757. The aircraft was scheduled to depart at 8am, but was delayed 40 minutes due to routine heavy morning Eastern seaboard traffic. 50 minutes into the flight, Jarrah and his team took control after a minute-lomg struggle. At 9:39am, air traffic controllers overheard Jarrah saying "this is the captain. Would like you all to remain seated. There is a bomb on board, and [we] are going back to the airport, and to have our demands [unintelligible]. Please remain quiet."

There were no further transmissions. The plane changed direction and flew towards Washington. 24 minutes later the plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. The film pieces evidence from the 9/11 Commission Report to suggest the passengers and crew, aware of events elsewhere through their phones, fought back and forced the plane to crash-land. The pageant is gripping but exhausting. It is played out in mostly apolitical strict cinema verite style by Paul Greengrass who did a similar job on Belfast’s Bloody Sunday.

Whereas Greengrass’s script was written for him, SoaP had a few more challenges. But it also had a few more supporters. A whole army of bloggers passed it on by word of e-mouth and they also crowdsourced plot devices, some of which were taken up by director David Ellis. The movie also had an established star; Samuel Leroy Jackson would be aboard the flight. There was something strangely comforting in this. Everyone watch the film know that sooner or later he was going to get fed up and “have it” with these muddafuggen snakes on a muddafuggen plane and do something about it. That’s been Samuel L’s style since Pulp Fiction. He even got them to change the title back after the studio started calling it “Pacific Air Flight 121”.

Unlike United 93, the passengers on Pacific Air Flight 121 had a chance with Jackson on board. Despite moments where it veered into dangerous Airport 75 territory, it is quite a funny film. It is also jumpily scary at times. Humans go to war with snakes. And it’s a very dirty war. The movie is sadistic, ruthless and graphic, deliberately turned on to achieve an R Rating in the US. A very large anaconda, rather unnecessarily thrown in for its restricting qualities among the multitude of poisonous snakes almost steals the show in its rare air time by squeezing and eating a particularly pompous Pom. As well as being the most Internet hyped film to date, SoaP is awash in product placement. There may have been some Occupational Health and Safety issues on the shoot. The film did not just rely on computerised serpents, it used 450 live snakes of 25 different species. I assume the anaconda wasn’t one of them.

Anacondas aside, United 93 and SoaP tell the same story of the transience of the morning dew. I don't want to see either any time soon in my in-flight entertainment.

Lawless World

Philippe Sands is a British QC who is Professor of Law at University College London since 2002. He has also taught at Boston College School of Law, Cambridge University and New York University Law School. He was a participant in the negotiation of the 1992 Climate Change Convention and the 1998 Rome statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). He is a practising barrister in English and International courts including the Pinochet case and Guantanamo detainees. He is an author of several books on international law, the most famous of which is his 2005 publication “Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules”.

The book’s dedication quotes the 19th century French writer Honore de Balzac: “Laws, like the spider’s webs, catch the small flies and let the large ones go free”. The book is about the recent innovation of international law and how it is now flouted. Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt were instrumental in the creation of a rules-based system to replace the conflict and chaos that went before. In 1941, they proposed international rules to place limits on the use of force, promoted the protection of human rights, and enshrined free trade. It led to the creation of the UN in 1946.

By the end of the 20th century, the world had changed drastically from the days of Roosevelt and Churchill’s Atlantic Charter. International law had almost stealthily reached into everyday life although few people were aware of its impact. The US, now the sole superpower, was becoming increasingly antagonistic to the revolution it had wrought and its new rulers saw international rules and law undermining its sovereignty. When George W Bush was elected president, the new administration signalled its intent to challenge the new global rules. Even before 9/11, the Bush administration took to its task. It abandoned the Rome Statute on the ICC and it reneged Clinton’s promise on the Kyoto Protocol on Global Warming. However the events of 11 September 2001, took America’s unilateralism to new heights through its attempts to disapply the Geneva Conventions and the disavowal of UN prescriptions on the use of force. Sands argues that US (with its major collaborator Britain) did all this without a proper script. He says no thought was given to the question: what do we replace these rules with?

International law has a growing effect on domestic actions. Europe is used to this through its everyday impact of EU rules and regulations. But America is very uncomfortable with the idea that decisions in far-away countries could impact the US justice system. In 1998 Paraguay took the US to the International Court to stop the impending execution of one of its nationals. The US had breached the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and not offered consular representation to the accused. Clinton apologised and acknowledged the wrongdoing but refused to halt the execution. The International Court ordered an injunction to stop the execution. A spokesman for Sen. Jesse Helms, then Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, declared the Court’s order as an “appalling intrusion by the UN into the affairs of the state of Virginia”. Neither the US Supreme Court nor the Governor of Virginia would suspend the execution and it went ahead on the due date. America was now thumbing its nose at the same treaty that Carter had invoked to secure the release of the Tehran hostages in 1979.

The emergence of a new body of international law has impact on democratic governance and accountability. However most treaties are rarely scrutinised or debated by national assemblies or parliaments. Although Sands sees this as a problem, he argues that international law serves a valid function. We live in a globalised interdependent world. States are no longer free to act as they wish unfettered by international obligation. Bush and Blair have argued that international rules no longer work and need to be changed. Sands disagrees and argues that international rules work “reasonably well”. The politics of international law may have changed. But the rules cannot be wished away.

The Bush administration has been active in its opposition to the ICC. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld gave its reasons in May 2002 when it ‘unsigned’ the Rome Statute: “ the lack of adequate checks and balances on powers of the ICC prosecutors and judges; the dilution of the UN Security Council’s authority over international criminal prosecutions; and the lack of an effective mechanism to prevent political prosecutions of American service members and officials”. Sands says what Rumsfeld really means is that the “rules will not allow the US or other countries to use political power to control the proceedings”. In any case, the ICC scope for “rogue prosecutions” is limited due to the rules internal checks and balances. It has no jurisdiction over the conduct of the Iraq War, for instance. The real problem is that the US was unable to impose a Security Council veto on ICC activities.

Until the 1990s, the US was at the forefront of international efforts to promote global rules for environment protection. As far back as 1864, the US created the World’s first National Park (Yosemite). By 1916, there were 21 national parks. In the 1930s Roosevelt attempted to spread the idea internationally. Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act in 1970, the world’s first comprehensive environmental protection regime. In 1985, the US drove the Ozone Layer protection program and the subsequent Montreal Protocol of 1987. By the 1990s, climate change was the main focus. The Kyoto Protocol of 1997 focussed on getting the 39 most industrialised countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 2012. Countries can jointly work to reduce by permitting emissions trading. It wasn’t a perfect system and it wouldn’t prevent global warming but it was a commitment to take action and would provide the basis for more far-reaching measures which would eventually include developing countries. Clinton hailed the Protocol as a historic agreement. But when Bush was elected, it was immediately repudiated. He used the minority scientific view to claim that there was an absence of consensus on global warming. He described the Protocol as unfair and ineffective. Whether it is ineffective remains to be seen, but not many outside the US would regard it is as unfair that the world’s largest emitters should take the lead.

The events of 9/11 allowed the Bush administration make a broad-scale attack on the Geneva conventions. 650 detainees from 40 countries were held at Guantanamo military base. The base was outside the sovereign territory of the US and thus the detainees had no legal protection either in US constitutional or in international law. They were described as ‘unlawful combatants’ and not entitled to POW status. They had no human rights because they were not on US soil. And in any case, none of the international treaties imposed any additional legal obligations beyond those in US law. Sands argued all three of these reasons were incorrect. The new rules were established by Presidential Orders in 2001 and 2002 which established military commissions to try non-Americans suspected of violating the rules of warfare. Bush described the inmates as dangerous killers, the detainees’ guilt was not in question. In 2004, the US Supreme Court overruled the administration and found that US federal courts did have jurisdiction to determine the legality of non-nationals’ detention at Guantanamo. This judgement is likely to bring the detainees back into the legal fold.

The mood for war in the US has been more or less constant since 9/11. There has been very little internal dissent with the wars in either Afghanistan or Iraq. The UN declares that all members should refrain from war with two exceptions. Firstly Article 51 of the UN Charter allows for self-defence. The US believed that the ambiguous language of Article 51 provides a right for ‘anticipatory self defence’. The second exception is when force has been authorised by the UN Security Council. Until 1990, Cold War vetoes prevented this course of action. But when the Soviet bloc collapsed in 1989, the Iraq invasion of Kuwait was met by a unanimous Security Council vote to authorise force. Since then, it has also been applied in Somalia, the Balkans, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Haiti and East Timor. After the first Iraqi war ended, the ceasefire was adopted in resolution 687 which also obliged Iraq to disarm and destroy chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The UN inspections to enforce this were ended by Iraq in 1998. Bush was committed to an overthrow of Saddam from the time of his election. Two days after 9/11, Rumsfeld was linking Iraq with al-Qaeda. In November 2002, the UN passed Resolution 1441 to give Iraq a ‘final opportunity’ to comply with its disarmament obligations. It warned of serious repercussions of failure to comply. But it did not use the language described when authorising force, the UN code for that is ‘to use all necessary means’. Iraq did not comply. But France and Russia were in no mood to authorise a Security Council invasion. The view of international legal experts is that an invasion was not authorised based on the current resolution. An international group of lawyers wrote to the Guardian (where it was published) and the New York Times (where it wasn’t) outlining their concerns. The British Attorney General argued that the war was valid because of a breach to the original Resolution from 1990 allowed the war to be prosecuted. This legal advice caused a firestorm in Britain and led to the resignation of senior ministers, including the Leader of the House of Commons and (ex-foreign minister) Robin Cook. The US meanwhile had no such scruples. The majority of the Security Council in March 2003 thought that the conditions in Iraq did not justify the use of force. And history and the lack of WMDs have shown them to be right.

Bush and his allies assume that the US can go it alone. Iraq has shown they cannot. The use of military power is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Commerce cannot be dictated to by brute force. The US will find that it will need the international alliances and rules it has so casually discarded. Kyoto and the ICC will outlive the Bush administration. Sands concludes by remarking “tough guys are not enough in international relations. In the 21st century you need rules, and proper lawyers too”. Well, he would say that, he’s a lawyer. But other than a fairly shameless spruiking for his profession, he makes a very valid point in a very important book.