Flooding in Roma

The area of Roma I'm living in is doing a passable imitation of Venice at the moment. At around 5pm yesterday evening the normally trickling Bungil Creek peaked at 7 meters. It was enough to burst the banks and flood over the two bridges near my house. The roads around me became rivers and the gardens turned into swimming pools. So far, it is hasn’t been high enough to get into the houses but the Bureau of Meteorology is saying we are not finished with the rain.

The speed was a bit of a shock to me though the warning signs had been growing all week. We’ve had several decent falls during the week and the creek had been steadily getting higher. The cyclepath along the creek has been impassable since Monday but I still wasn’t expecting the water to get to the road level.

There was another huge downpour late on Thursday night and it was starting to wreak havoc Friday morning. I got up to go to work and had to cross the creek to get to Roma’s town centre. The waters had burst the banks and the bridge was under water. That was what the sign said ‘road under water’ not ‘road closed’. Nevertheless I wasn’t keen to drive across in my 2WD car until I saw someone else do it safely. I cagily followed the car across the bridge without incident.

When I got to the office, it was clear the town had suffered storm water drain damage during the night. The waters had gone down but they left the pavements caked with mud and very slippery. In the height of the downpour, some of the drains started to overflow and spilled water onto the lower side of the street. It was the second time this week that had happened. To be on the safe side I parked on the higher side in case it should happen again.

In the office the news soon came through from the SES they were expecting the floods to be bigger than 1997’s version. I knew immediately it was going to be a big day. A few weeks ago I’d done a retrospective in the paper about Roma floods of the past and the 1997 pics were impressive. As were the ones from the several flood events of the 1980s. Much of inland Australia is on a floodplain and Roma is no different. It has been flooded often enough that it caused a 19th century move of the town centre away from the creek.

I figured I would be taking lots of photos for the 2010 flood event so decided I needed to be dressed appropriately and drove home for a change of clothes. The bridge over the creek was now closed but there was a back way via a second higher bridge. I got past a couple of places where the road was “under water” but it was just safe enough to get through. When I got home, the waters were approaching the gate and my landlady was moving everything upstairs that needed to be kept dry. I grabbed a t-shirt, pair of shorts and thongs (footwear, just in case anyone is wondering) and headed back to town the way I came.

On Bungil St just south of where I lived the creek had also flooded the road. The problem here was that there was no other passable road in for those who lived on this street east of the creek. There was one other way in on foot via the Big Rig and I decided to check that out. The Big Rig celebrates Roma’s oil heritage and there is a kiddie train that goes over a footbridge on the creek. The waters had not risen that high and I crossed the footbridge to get to the east side of Bungil Road. I also had to cross the waterlogged sports grounds but it was easy enough barefoot.

The locals I met all looked happy and seemingly unfazed by the rising waters that were starting to get into their gardens. One owner admitted he did not have flood insurance but the atmosphere was almost party-like as they gathered around to admire the novelty of the rising waters. Only once was my own equanimity challenged when some kid casually asked me (perhaps hoping for a reaction) “had I seen a snake?” I said I hadn’t and he told me he’d only seen a baby one. I guess the waters would be flushing them out a bit.

There was an SES boat on hand to ferry people back to the “mainland” west of the creek but that was only being used by a few people to get to the shops or pick up kids from school. No-one was evacuating here just yet. One guy in his 80s was glued to his radio and swore loudly at the council who “couldn’t effin well tell him when the waters would peak”.

In this little field trip I had a camera but left the note pad in the car. I waded back to the footbridge (now extremely wary for snakes) and decided to go back to the office to download the photos. But before that I decided to check out the creek crossing on the main Brisbane road into town. Here the waters were flowing rapidly but just below the bridge so traffic wasn’t affected. While taking photos from the bridge, another 80 year old man joined me. I'd met him before and he sat down on the barrier next to me and chatted about floods past.

He had a cane which he twirled around to add dramatic effect to the stories he told. However I was worried because the shoulder on the bridge was narrow and I thought he would wave it into oncoming traffic which he had his back turned to. This was particularly dangerous whenever the occasional massive road train would shudder past us at 70kph barely a metre away. When I warned him of the impending danger, he pointed his cane imperiously at the dividing line on the ground and said “they can’t come past that”. True, but I was more worried about his cane in the air than on the ground.

Anyway, neither of us came to harm and I went back to the office. The other journalist had been out taking photos too and we compared notes before I headed back to the Creek. Again I went over the footbridge at the Big Rig and waded across the waterlogged grounds. Immediately I noticed the road had been become more flooded in the hour or so I was away and nearly every garden was inundated. Still the mood was optimistic and no house was yet flooded as far as I could tell. One owner on a side street pointed to the brackish water outside his house and said that meant it had peaked. But a few minutes later the SES guys with the boat told me the waters were still rising.

As the rain returned, I went back to the western side of the creek for some more photos. The Emergency guys there told me the creek was now up to 7m and still rising. As if the sight of roads resembling rivers wasn’t surreal enough, a rainbow rose above the scene. It was another picture to add to a great collection today. Finally around 6pm I decided to get back home on foot. I went over the creek bridge that was not overflowing but by now all the access roads to my house were closed. I had to walk back barefoot on the centre of the road as the water rose to waist level in parts.
At my house the waters had crossed the gate and waterlogged the entire garden. The water level had risen to the first of three steps into the house. Although the waters receded again overnight, they are still predicting rain for the next three days and it won’t take much for the inundation to rise further. One thing I’ve learned over the last few days is to not be surprised what water can do.

Rajapaksa consolidates power after Sri Lankan election win

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa chose the nation’s first independence day since the end of the civil war to call on the Tamils to work with the government but he ruled out self-determination. Rajapaksa spoke in Tamil in Kandy today where he appealed to the ethnic minority to “solve our problems ourselves through discussions”. He said independence day had assumed greater significance as it was the first since the defeat of Tamil Tiger rebels last year."The freedom from colonial rule that we gained 62 years ago is now more meaningful because we have been liberated from the forces of separatist terror that marred our freedom for nearly half that period," he said. The speech was his first public address to the nation since his re-election as president last month. (photo credit: AP/Eranga Jayawardena)

But the international Tamil community is no mood to quickly forgive the Singhalese leader after his brutal suppression of the 25-year uprising last year. The Australasian Federation of Tamil Associations said the Tamil Diaspora continues to mourn Independence Day as it marks the beginning of national oppression. It says when Britain granted independence to Sri Lanka in 1948, it failed to provide a federal arrangement for Tamils and Singhalese to share political power. They say this paved the way for the majority to systematically and consistently discriminate and brutally oppress the Tamils and led to the struggle that followed. “The Sri Lankan state’s genocidal attack on the Tamil people in 1983 lead to a 26 year long armed conflict that ended on 18 May 2009 with the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam,” they said.

Similarly the British Tamils Forum dismissed Rajapaksa's claim to want to resolve ethnic tensions. Suren Surendiran, a senior member of the Forum told Al Jazeera Rajapaksa has been saying that forever. "Mr Rajapaksa has proven to be a very oppressive and discriminating president. The Tamils are not celebrating today as an independence day,” he said. “Rajapaksa was not voted in the north and east, where the Tamils are - it's their land."

And while Rajapaksa was probably appealing in vain to the Tamils in the centre of the country, back in the capital 5,000 supporters of his defeated opponent, former army chief General Sarath Fonseka, took to the streets to protest the results. Rajapaksa has sacked a dozen senior military officers in the aftermath of the election. He accused the officers of breaching military discipline and siding with Fonseka. He also said they were plotting to stage a coup and assassinate him. Some of the officers were arrested after troops surrounded a hotel in Colombo last week claiming there were army deserters inside. Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama said it was a pre-emptive action by Fonseka. “[They were] trying to occupy premises in the city,” he said. “These are not done in a democracy.”

At a news conference on Saturday Fonseka strongly denied the claims of a coup but said a number of army officers had given him inside information during his campaign. “The information given by these officers pertained to efforts by the campaign managers of Mr. Rajapaksa to defame and assassinate me,” he said. Most of the officers forced to resign were closely aligned to him. In the election on 26 January, Rajapaksa defeated him by a large margin 58 to 40 percent.

According to the BBC there were a number of factors that helped Rajapaksa win so easily. They cited his “fiery rhetoric and sure popular touch” as well as his emphasis on the primacy of his role in last year's war victory. There is also little doubt that ordinary people's sense that their streets are safer than they have been for the past 30 years played a major role. But the Tamil minority voted in the main for Fonseka and ethnic tensions remain as strong as ever despite the end of the war.

There are also fears of a crackdown on democracy now that Rajapaksa has the best part of another seven years to rule the country. Media and human rights groups accuse him of closing and blocking news outlets and harassing, assaulting and detaining journalists who it claims were biased towards Fonseka. Human Rights Watch say that since the election authorities have detained and questioned several journalists, blocked news websites, and expelled a foreign journalist. At least one journalist has been assaulted and several have been threatened. HRW Asia Director Brad Adams said he feared the crackdown was just the beginning of a campaign to get rid of critical voices before the parliamentary elections due on 22 April. "Sri Lanka's friends should tell the government that any crackdown on civil society will harm future relations,” he said.

Mad Monckton and the media

Christopher Monckton’s mad-stare eyes should be a giveaway. As they rotate maniacally on high spin cycle, they present to the world a mirror of a tortured soul hell-bent on washing peculiarly dirty demons in public. Monckton is on a mission to show he is right and thousands of scientists are wrong. And the public and media hacks he is speaking to on his current Australian tour are desperate to hear what the “Lord” has to say.

It is no accident that those who flock to hear Monckton are white, elderly and wealthy. They like their life as it is and don’t want any inconvenient truths disturbing their repose. Nor will they be around long enough to face up to the consequences. Monckton’s shtick is a grab-bag of half-truths, innuendo and hints of world government that his troubled audience lap up. The trouble about climate change is once you know it to be true, you are compelled to act on it. Hence the importance of the soothing balm telling people "don’t worry, it doesn’t exist and there is no reason to change what you are currently doing". Monckton is an expert in this field of reassurance towards inertia. The 3rd viscount Monckton of Benchley in Kent is a slick audience operator imbued with the confidence that comes with his deep upper-class pedigree and a colourful history of his own showmanship to back it up.

Appropriately for such a quixotic character, Christopher Walter Monckton was born on St Valentine’s Day in 1952, the first son of Major-General Gilbert Walter Riversdale Monckton 2nd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, CB, OBE, MC, MA, DL. Christopher’s grandfather was a lawyer and politician born plain old Walter Monckton but was wealthy enough to be educated at Harrow and Oxford. After advising Edward VIII in the abdication crisis, and putting out propaganda for Churchill in the war, he was elected to Westminster as a Tory MP in 1951. After serving as a senior government minister for six years he blundered by opposing Eden on Suez and was put out to pasture. His reward was the viscountcy Monckton of Benchley which he held till his death in 1965.

His war hero son Gilbert inherited the honour which entitled him to a seat in the House of Lords. There he spoke up for rural and military interests and left the Tory Party when they started cutting back on military spending. When he lost his lifetime seat in Tony Blair's constitutional reforms during the Hunting Bill, his manifesto for election to the House supported the muzzling of cats to stop the torture of mice. But Gilbert failed to live up to the mad peer stereotype other than occasionally flaunting his habit of wearing Arab dress and preparing his own brew of Arab coffee.

When Gilbert died in 2006, eldest son Christopher became the 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. Like both his forebears he was educated at Harrow but follow his father to Cambridge. Also like his father Christopher failed in his bid to be elected to the House of Lords and did not pick up a single vote in the 2007 by-election he contested. But this was not his first brush with politics. After he left Cambridge in 1974 with an MA he became a journalist and joined the pro-Conservative think tank the Centre for Policy Studies. His paper on the privatisation of council housing attracted the attention of the Thatcher Government and he worked for the Downing St policy unit for four years.

In 1986 he returned to journalism, first at Today then at the Evening Standard. In 1999 Monckton became briefly prominent for his board game called the Eternity Puzzle. 209 irregularly shaped pieces were required to fill the 12-sided puzzle and Monckton offered a prize of £1m to solve it. Although Monckton said he had to sell his £1.5m Aberdeenshire mansion to the eventual winners, he more than recouped this amount thanks to his clever marketing of the game and its reward.

Since he got his peerage in 2006, Monckton has been most closely associated with pushing the line about a global warming conspiracy. He took issue with the Stern Report, the IPCC and the British Labour government all of whom he accused of "creating world government". He claimed the changes in temperature preceded the changes in CO2 levels and said the UN ignored the medieval warm period. He said the Antarctic has cooled and gained ice-mass in the past 30 years. He said the sun caused what little global warming there was. Although there was not a single peer-reviewed scientific paper that backed any of this up, newspapers like the Daily Telegraph lapped it up and gave Monckton credibility and a wider audience.

Monckton is slowly getting the gravitas he has craved despite having a head full of crackpot ideas. Among these is that upon reading Rachel Carson’s A Silent Spring Jackie Kennedy forced her then husband President John F Kennedy to ban DDT which Monckton said “caused the death of 40 million people”. He also got away with telling many hopelessly underprepared Australian journalists he won a Nobel Peace in 2007, a lie he later laughed off as a joke.

But Monckton has turned himself into a walking joke. He revels in the role of poster boy for the far right which cannot accept the truth of global warming because that would mean accepting political opponents were correct. Monckton and his coterie are on an apparent roll. A pessimistic George Monbiot wrote in November: “There is no point in denying it: we’re losing. Climate change denial is spreading like a contagious disease.” But as his Australian trip is proving, Monckton’s contagion is limited to fellow-travellers among the media and the self-funded retirees. Not a single scientist has emerged to back him up. As even the conservative pro-farmer Fairfax publication The Land has realised, he is only preaching to the converted.

Rudd Government issues Intergenerational Report

The Rudd Federal Government has issued its first Intergenerational Report since taking power in 2007. The report assesses the fiscal and economic challenges of an ageing population as well as discussing associated environmental challenges and social sustainability. The tone of the document is set by its first sentence “Australia faces significant intergenerational challenges”. Bernard Keane called it a political document in an election year showing Labor's long-term economic reform agenda and how much of a threat the Coalition is to Australia.

Treasurer Wayne Swan launched the report today with a speech to the National Press Club in Canberra. Swan said the government was deliberately beginning “a big national conversation” on the topic of ageing. “When you're a baby boomer like me – and like many of you in this room – you never read a document with the year 2050 in it without some sober reflection on your own place (more likely, your lack of a place) in it,” Swan said. But Swan would not be alone in his swansong. By 2050 23 percent of all Australians will be over 65 – doubled the current number and 6 percent will be over 85 –quadruple the current number. The author of this blog is chastened to note he will just about fall into the latter category if still alive in 2050.

One in four over 65 means fewer workers to support retirees and young dependants with obvious effects to economic growth and increased demand for government services. The report overview says that a growing population will help manage this problem but at the cost of pressure on our infrastructure, services and environment. It also acknowledges climate change is one of the most significant challenges to long-term economic sustainability and says Australia's ability to meet these future challenges depends on “adjustments” taken now. These include increasing productivity and participation in the workforce, restraining unsustainable spending growth, planning for demographic change and tackling climate change.

The key mantra of the report is “responsible economic management” which at first glance is one of those terribly meaningless statements. After all, who would admit to following irresponsible economic management? But this particular version is informed by the three Ps: productivity, participation and population. Productivity is a walking Labor election platform based on “nation building infrastructure, skills and education” but it is astutely complemented by the traditional Liberal values of “sound monetary and fiscal policies and the microeconomic reform agenda”.

Fiscally that means capping real growth in spending to 2 per cent until the budget returns to surplus. The last budget estimated that it would be at least 2016 before surplus returned so it effectively caps real growth for the foreseeable future. The document blithely says this will “bring structural improvements to the budget, reducing the fiscal pressures of ageing and escalating health costs.” What the document does not say is what will happen to spending if the economy does not grow or there is another recession.

Health Reform and the CPRS were another two key planks of the report. The government said it has set up the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission to assist with reforming the health and hospitals system. However the NHHRC recommendations have not yet been taken to COAG and there is some doubt they will fix the problems of public hospitals if a large central agency continues to tell hospitals how to treat their patients. The CPRS is also problematic not least because the Rudd Government is no closer to getting its legislation through the parliament.

The document forecasts a total population of 36 million in 2050 (currently 22 million). While the increased numbers will benefit the economy, it puts pressure on infrastructure, services and the environment. The report cites the CPRS and water reform as critical success factors in managing this problem. It says that without climate change action there will be an increase in extreme weather events, irrigated agriculture in the Murray-Darling Basin would cease, water supplies will decrease to dangerous levels and national icons such as the Great Barrier Reef will probably be destroyed. This is all true, but it is difficult to see how the Government’s weak CPRS will have much affect despite the backup of the Renewable Energy Target and the $4.5 billion Clean Energy Initiative.

Tax reform is another intriguing aspect of the report. The government plans to release the Australia's Future Tax System Review (commonly known as the Henry Review) early this year which it says “will lay out further steps for reforming the tax and transfer system to make it fairer, simpler and more competitive.” It says tax reform will be a 10-year project “likely to come in waves and will be conducted with extensive consultation.” It also notes drily “reform will not be easy.” Especially with a watching media determined to extract maximum value from judging winners and losers.

The report serves many sometimes conflicting ambitions. On the one side there is the need to continue economic growth but there is no acceptance that economic growth is a leading indicator of global warning. Similarly the difficulties of a rapidly growing population are touched on but it never really explains how the infrastructure challenges are going to be met – again without acknowledging the likely environmental impact. This is not to denigrate the report too much, it is a worthy document demanding of some respect and debate. Writing at the ABC, Stephen Long quoted one economist saying the report was “Thomas Malthus meets John Maynard Keynes.” But perhaps they both should meet James Hansen. Neither Malthus nor Keynes had to worry about living in a world where carbon dioxide emissions are rapidly approaching 400 ppm. That fact is the elephant in the Intergenerational Report.

APT6 at Brisbane GOMA

I took in the APT6 at the Gallery of Modern Art on a whistlestop visit to Brisbane this weekend. APT6 is shorthand for the sixth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art and having been greatly impressed by the last three triennial incarnations (in my ten years or so living in Brisbane), I was looking forward to seeing the latest version. I was not alone in my excitement. The exhibition has attracted 200,000 visitors in the opening six weeks since it began on 5 December.

This level of patronage is not unprecedented. 1.3 million have visited the six exhibitions but numbers really took off with APT5 in 2006 when it moved into the gleaming new GOMA building on Kurilpa Point. First established in 1993, the APT is the Queensland Art Gallery’s flagship international contemporary art event. It is the only major series of exhibitions in the world to focus exclusively on the contemporary art of Asia, the Pacific and Australia.

The 2009 exhibition shows the work of over 100 artists from 25 countries, including a number of artists and artist collaborations never seen in Australia including works by artists from Tibet, North Korea, Turkey, Iran, Cambodia and Burma. According to Queensland Art Gallery director Tony Ellwood, APT6 looks at a number of thematic links, including “the dynamism of collaboration, the power of popular culture to articulate perspectives on contemporary life, the impact of rapid social change on local communities and cultures, and the practice of drawing”. The exhibition continues until 5 April 2010.

Here are some of my favourites from this year's collection.


I was expecting the North Korean art to be showy in a Stalinist way and while they do promote Dear Leader's Juche they are surprisingly touching and endearing. The work from the Mansudae art studio display a heart and affection for their subjects I simply wasn't expecting.

Chen Qiulin's enormous installation is a poignant reminder of what rural life along the Yangtze River was like before Three Gorges Dam hydro-electric project flooded the entire region. If the house is the ghost of Three Gorges past, his video Garden 2007 is a equally fascinating walk through the towns that now exist in the area.

The Funky Buddhas is a work by London-based Tibetan artist Gonkar Gyatso. This work is supposedly for the kids as you get the chance to place colourful stickers all over the buddhas. But although there were no stickers available to put on the Buddhas when I was there, I still enjoyed the humour of the piece and its fantastic location looking out to the new Kurilpa footbridge.

Ah yes, the elk. Impossible to walk past and deservedly gets a room all to itself. The 2.5m taxidermied elk, or to be precise Pixcell Elk#2 is by Japanese sculptor Kohei Nawa. It is covered in glass, acrylic and crystal baubles of varying sizes which magnify and distort the object’s form in different parts to various degrees.

Called "People Holding Flowers" this installation by Zhu Weibing and Ji Wenyu is the signature piece for APT6. The work is made of synthetic polymer paint on resin; velour, steel wire, dacron, lodestone and cotton. There are 400 figures all holding flowers in a deliberate memory of Mao's short-lived 1950s mantra of "let a hundred flowers bloom". An overwhelming response to the Hundred Flowers Campaign led to serious crackdowns on dissent. Arguably nothing much has changed in 50 years in China.

I loved Rudi Mantofani's collection of unplayable guitars. Mantofani is an Indonesian sculptor and painter whose work transforms ordinary objects into strange or absurd "visual parables". Mantofani's guitar sculptures were inspired by a benefit concert he saw in New York. He said, the gap between American philanthropic rhetoric and the harsh effects of its foreign policies in the Muslim world led him to "create a series of distorted guitars, as a means to express such ethical contradictions." I'm not sure I saw those contradictions in the works but I couldn't help loving the guitars.

Sebastian Pinera leads Chile's loaded tilt to the right

Chile’s new billionaire leader has just gotten substantially wealthier after the value of shares soared in the wake of his election victory. Sebastian Pinera won the country’s run-off election last weekend and since then his 25 percent shareholding in Chile’s LAN Airlines SA have increased in value by two fifths giving the company a value of over $1.5 billion. Stock market officials halted trade and triggered an automatic investigation which happens whenever share prices increases by more than 20 per cent in one day's trading. Pinera refused calls to sell the shares before the election.

Outgoing president Michelle Bachelet, who was constitutionally barred from seeking re-election, had raised conflict-of-interest questions over Pinera's LAN stake during the presidential campaign. He did however promise he would divest the shares after the election and he reaffirmed that promise last week. He has also set up a blind trust to manage $500m of his fortune including ownership of the country's four television networks and Chile’s biggest football club Colo-Colo.

The obvious comparison for Pinera is with Italian leader Silvio Berlusconi. Both are right-wing wealthy businessmen who won their countries' elections with the help of their media empires and soccer teams. However Andres Oppenheimer says the comparisons are facile and notes five significant differences. Pinera has a PhD and taught economics at Harvard, he has been a senator for 20 years, his business record is free from scandal, he is a family man married for 36 years and he may be less of a right-winger than many think. Oppenheimer said Pinera opposed Pinochet in the 1980s (though others dispute this) and is liberal on social issues.

But there is no doubting his huge war chest helped him win the election. By last week’s runoff election with former president Eduardo Frei, Pinera had spent at least $13.6 million on the campaign. His victory marked a political shift as candidates of the governing Concertacion coalition had won all four presidential elections since 1989 on pledges of eradicating all traces of Pinochet’s leadership. Although 73 percent of Chileans still despise the former dictator, Pinera won because the coalition was split between two presidential candidates.

In the first vote on 13 December, Pinera took 44 percent of the vote with Frei second on 29 percent. Frei might have expected to pick up the remaining left-wing vote in the second ballot. After all, Concertacion had succeeded in reducing Chile’s poverty rate from over 40 percent to approximately 15 percent, while boasting the region’s most impressive growth rate since 1990. Former president Bachelet left office with an approval rate of over 80 percent. Yet Frei could not galvanise that support and his campaign slogan of “a vote for Pinera is a vote for Pinochet” fell flat. Frei did succeed in closing the gap as the run-off date came closer. But when Chile’s voters went to the polls on 17 January just enough of them decided they wanted to see change. Pinera won by 52 percent to 48.

There is at least one leftwing leader in the region who is unperturbed by Pinera’s win. Bolivian president Evo Morales, who himself was recently re-elected president (after changing the country’s constitution to allow him to stand), saluted the new Chilean leader and said he hopes he can continue the improvement in Bolivian-Chilean relations. Morales said he hoped Pinera will continue the bi-national dialogue started by “compañera” Michelle Bachelet. Relations between the two nations has been historically frosty since Chile won the War of the Pacific against Peru and Bolivia in the late 1800s, taking control of nitrate and mineral-rich lands and forcing Bolivia to lose its access to the Pacific Ocean. Bachelet was the first Chilean leader willing to discuss the issue with Bolivia and Morales hopes Pinera will continue the dialogue.

Fatma Riahi on frontline of Tunisia's war on bloggers and journalists

Blogger Fatma Arabicca has resumed blogging two months after authorities arrested her but the blog remains censored. Fatma joins another high profile Tunisian blogger journalist Sofiene Chourabi on the censorship list in recent times. Fatma’s original blog was deleted in November just before she attracted the unwelcome notice of authorities but a new version (in Arabic) has been posting since 17 January.

Arabicca is the nom de blog of college theatre professor, Fatma Riahi. On 2 November, the 34-year-old Riahi was summoned to appear before a Tunis criminal court where she was questioned about her online activities. The authorities wanted to know whether Riahi was hiding behind the pen-name of Blog de Z, a Tunisian cartoonist blogger whose political satire enraged the government. They released her and summoned her again the next day. Three security officers escorted her to her house in Monastir 160 km from Tunis, to confiscate her PC and conduct a search for evidence. A day later, they escorted her again to Monastir to get her passwords and access her facebook account.

Riahi was detained for a week and denied permission to speak to her lawyer for longing than a few minutes. She was charged with criminal libel that potentially carries a prison term to up to three years in prison. A Free Arabicca campaign blog was been launched by fellow Tunisian bloggers in support for Fatma (though it hasn’t posted since mid November), and there is also a Facebook support page.

While it is not clear what Riahi’s perceived offence was, it didn’t need to be much to rile the sensitive Tunisian government. President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali's government is one of the most repressive in the world as regards Internet usage. Social networking sites such as YouTube and Facebook are often blocked because of content criticising the president's policies and the government also filters emails of human rights activists. The 2008 Reporters Without Borders freedom of the press index ranked Tunisia 143rd out of 173 countries. When the Journaliste Tunisien blog posted the index a day after it was issued, it was blocked by authorities.

Just last week the Committee to Protect Journalists reported an appeals court in Nabeul refused to release Tunisian journalist Zuhair Makhlouf despite his completion of a three-month prison term imposed in October. Makhlouf is a contributor to news Web site Assabil Online and the opposition weekly Al-Mawkif. He was sentenced in October on the charge of “harming and disturbing others through the public communication network.” The sentence ended on January 18 but Tunisian penal code provisions say a prisoner cannot be released before all appeals have been considered. The court designated February 3 as the date for Makhlouf’s initial appeals hearing.

The decision came days before an appeal hearing for Taoufik Ben Brik, a journalist sentenced to six months in prison. Last year Reporters Without Borders (RSF) criticised the detention of Ben Brik and a violent attack on another journalist. In October 2009 Ben Brik was detained on a trumped-up charge of harassing a woman on the street. Reporters Without Borders said the arrest was an effort to muzzle him for his fierce criticism of President Ben Ali. Around the same time, independent journalist Slim Boukhdhir was attacked by a group of men just hours after he gave a critical interview to the BBC. RSF said the behaviour was “befitting of a mafia regime."

The regime is showing no signs of changing its hostile attitude to journalists. Ben Ali has ruled Tunisia since taking over in a bloodless coup in 1987. In 2009 Ben Ali was re-elected for a fifth term with 89 percent of the vote in a rigged election. Although he promised to promote media diversity in 2004, the regime retains a tight control of news and information. According to the RSF, journalists and human rights activists are the target of bureaucratic harassment, police violence and constant surveillance by the intelligence services. The Internet is strictly controlled and foreign journalists are not allowed anywhere without the presence of government officials. But despite a total lack of regard for democratic institutions, RSF says Ben Ali is treated very leniently by international organisation all because he is “an ally of the west in its fight against terrorism.” No one seems to care about the terrorism he inflicts on his own subjects.

Dominican Republic anxious to show difference to Haiti

Haiti’s neighbour on the island of Hispaniola, the Dominican Republic has said its country was undamaged in last week’s massive earthquake and the country is available to offer support to the relief effort “in any way necessary”. A statement released by Ministry of Tourism said “the DR is making available its medical facilities for earthquake victims and is providing international relief organizations access to Haiti through the airport and seaports.” The statement also said the Republic’s transportation systems, communications systems, hotels, resorts, beaches and natural environment suffered no damage, a message designed to tell the world not to cancel its holiday bookings. (photo: Getty Images)

The statement also said the nation’s eight airports were open and receiving flights. However, the New York Times says the relief effort is using three key airports and a roadway in the Dominican Republic’s southern region to ferry supplies through mostly rural areas not frequented by visitors. Millions of Dominicans have donated time, money, supplies and expertise to help Haiti. But crossing the border is not the easiest of tasks.

The border crossing between Haiti and Dominican Republic is supposed to be open between 8am and 6pm. But as this intrepid traveller found in 2007, the reality is somewhat different. “An immigration official passed by and informed us that things opened at 9. By 9:30 more people had congregated, including immigration officials. The immigration people would ask us what we needed but when we would tell them…they just nodded and continued to eat their breakfast outside the locked office. Around 11, two hours after they were supposed to open, the windows opened the process began.” Even then it was a “shoving game” until “lots of stressful Spanish, shoving, yelling, and swatting bugs” got them over the border.

The blog writer also spoke about the trust involved in handing over a passport. This will not always work out for the best as a Trinidadian journalist has just found out. Dale Enoch is now stranded in the Dominican Republic after losing his passport at the border. Enoch came to the island to cover the earthquake for a Trinidad radio station and handed his passport at the border on his way to Haiti by bus. However he was unable to get his passport back when he returned and the bus company refused to take responsibility. “It appears that there is a passport racket going on,” Enoch said. “Once your passport has a US visa in it, it is attractive.”

But despite the corruption, the Dominican Republic is like another world compared to its impoverished neighbour. Michael Den Tandt of the Toronto Sun was also at the border and he noticed a great difference between the two countries. “On the Dominican side there’s grass, palm trees. There are well-paved highways, street signs and telephone poles. There are neat, small but well-kept and painted homes, with tidy yards,” he said. Compare that to Haiti with its “partly flooded gravel track, an impossible tangle of dilapidated little trucks, [and] teeming crowds desperate to get out.”

The Dominican Republic has now established a humanitarian corridor along the route between the two capitals of Santo Domingo and Port-au-Prince. Haitian President Rene Preval accepted a proposal from the Dominican Republic for 150 Dominican military troops to patrol the corridor in cooperation with a contingent of Peruvian troops from the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti. But DR’s foreign minister was forced to deny that Preval had turned down an earlier offer of 800 troops and they had to reach a compromise for a much smaller number. “When you are helping a friend and neighbour, there is no need to negotiate,” he said. “There were no negotiations and no rejection (from Haiti).”

And while relations between the two nations haven’t always been the most cordial, there is little doubt that Santo Domingo has played a crucial role in the earthquake relief effort. Many Haitians have been crossing the border into Jimani for medical attention almost overwhelming the local hospital which is lavish compared to the facilities back in Haiti. The hospital usually has about 30 hospital beds, but over the past week, there have been as many as 150 patients per day. But it is coping thanks to overseas relief and the better quality of DR health care compared to Haiti. As Tallahassee’s WCTV.tv noted, the Dominican Republic also suffered a 7.1 magnitude earthquake in September 2003. But only one person died, which was the result of a trauma induced heart attack. “The difference in death tolls between that quake and Haiti's come down to two factors,” said WCTV.tv. “It was in the middle of the night, and the buildings in the Dominican Republic have a higher code of infrastructure.”

GFC provides temporary relief from rising greenhouse emissions

A new report shows the Global Financial Crisis has had a small dampening affect on greenhouse gas emissions with energy use down in Australia's eastern mainland states in 2009. It also showed that energy use varies radically from state to state. The report by non-profit international body The Climate Group shows that annual emissions were 5.3 million tonnes lower in 2009 than the previous year across Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia. This represents a fall of 1.8 per cent and followed a rise in emissions of 1.3 per cent in 2008.

Now entering its fourth year, The Climate Group's Greenhouse Indicator Annual Report (pdf) tracks the main sources of greenhouse emissions in Australia from coal, natural gas and petroleum. The Climate Group tracks emissions on a weekly basis across the four states and provides useful real time information for policy makers, media and the general public alike. The 2009 annual report shows a decrease from 2008 but it is not uniform across the states. Emissions declined considerably in South Australia (4.2 percent) and NSW (3.1 percent) while barely changing in Queensland (1.1 percent) and Victoria (0.5 percent).

The reason for the decrease differed from state to state too. In Victoria most of the decrease was due to emissions reductions in both gas‐fired electricity generation and use of petroleum. This was counteracted by an increase in emissions from coal‐fired generators. In NSW and Queensland however, the coal-fired generators led the reduction while emissions from gas-fired generators rose a staggering 176 percent due to the commissioning of new stations. In SA it was gas-fired generators that led the reduction.

The use of petroleum decreased across the states except in South Australia. The reductions came despite positive population growth in each of the states, and growth in Gross State Product in each state. Again with petroleum-based products, results were different across the states. Diesel sales were up across all
states except for in Victoria which went down. Petrol sales fell in Victoria and Queensland (where the fuel subsidy ended this year), remained the same in NSW and increased in South Australia. Another Climate Group report shows petroleum emissions declined for the whole of Australia between October 2008 to September 2009.

Electricity use was also down 1.9 percent across the four states. Coal usage was slightly down but still represents a whopping 87.8 percent of all scheduled electricity generation. Gas is responsible for 9.3 percent and renewables is still a disgracefully paltry 2.8 percent (up just 0.1 percent in 12 months). Demand fell 2.0 percent in Victoria and 1.2 percent in NSW. By contrast demand rose 1.5 percent in Queensland and 0.1 percent in SA. Victoria in particular has an unhealthy reliance on higher emitting brown coal which rose 1.1 percent balanced out by the 27 percent decrease in gas-fired station.

Turning to the weather, 2009 was the second warmest year on record in Australia and the years 2000-2009 was the warmest decade on record. As the Bureau of Meteorology said these trends are “consistent with the background of global warming”. Going from causes to effects, the higher temperatures had and good bad aspects. There was less demand for heating over winter but more demand for cooling over summer. Demand across the national electricity market in the winter of 2009 was 3.4 per cent less than the winter of 2008. The summer of 08/09 saw demand increase by 1.7 per cent from 07/08.

The report said that all states recorded a growth in Gross State Product (GSP) over the period despite the GFC. Nevertheless it says “growth rates were reasonably low compared with previous years, and this would certainly have relieved upward pressure on emissions levels.” And so as the economy recovers, emissions are likely to increase substantially in the absence of any meaningful government action to throttle them.

Yanukovich and Tymoshenko to run-off for Ukraine president

Ukraine’s pro-western president Viktor Yushchenko has been defeated in the presidential election leaving opposition leader Viktor Yanukovich and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko to compete in a run-off ballot. Yanukovich led in first round of voting with 36.6 percent of the vote, while Tymoshenko picked up 25.8 percent, according to an exit poll conducted by local television channel Inter. The incumbent got only 5.2 percent leaving him in fifth place behind Sergei Tigipko, a former economy minister, who gained 13.5 percent. About two thirds of Ukraine’s voters turned out to vote. It will be ten days before the Central Election Commission releases official results but there is no doubt who will be in the run-off on 7 February.

Viktor Yushchenko’s crushing defeat was not unexpected after period of legislative deadlock, lagging reforms and economic doldrums. But it represents an end to the Orange Revolution which began in the last presidential election in 2004 when he was poisoned with dioxin. Both Yanukovich and Tymoshenko have signaled a return to pro-Russian politics. Both run-off candidates have also said they will abandon efforts for Ukraine to join NATO.

Russia remains the truculent big brother to which any winner will need to answer to. They curbed natural-gas deliveries to Ukraine three times in the last five years, withheld a new ambassador to Kiev and accused Yushchenko of supplying arms to Georgia during the war with Russia in August 2008. Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs magazine, called the first round result a “win-win situation” for his country. “Whoever becomes the next president will be much less ideological and more businesslike,” he claimed.

At first glance Yulia Tymoshenko does not seem like a natural Russian ally as a close confederate of Yushchenko during the Orange Revolution. Like Yushchenko her power base is in the west of the country. Her election priorities were a fairer society and more government efficiency, and she also pledged innovation-driven economic reform and better welfare provisions. But she has forged a close relationship with Vladimir Putin who personally negotiated an end to last year’s gas cut with her.

Apparently believing herself to be the reincarnation of Eva Peron, Tymoshenko claimed her biggest success during her two year tenure as Prime Minister was leading Ukraine out of financial crisis. She told Ukrainian TV last week the country has come out of the GFC “stronger, not shattered, not in pieces, not devoid of blood, or lost," She said her government had renewed the aviation industry, built a new hydroelectric station, and led the way with agriculture production. “[We] managed to reach leading positions in the agrarian sector in the world...[and] did not let the agrarian sector to drop its production even half a percent,” she said. “We are building what is needed for the Euro 2012.We modernized factories. Yes, it was difficult, but during a crisis, things are difficult."

But despite Tymoshenko’s rhetoric, Viktor Yanukovich remains the favourite to become the next president. He is a two time prime minister taking the role first from 2002-2004. This was the springboard to the presidential campaign of 2004 in which he was backed by Russia and early results gave him a victory. His win was then thrown out by the courts after street protests and he was condemned for fraud and abuse of power. But Yanukovich wasn’t finished as a political force. He bounced back two years later to regain the Prime Ministership in 2006 and is now is benefiting from disappointment with Yushchenko's failure to stop bickering with his supposed allies including Tymoshenko.

Yanukovich draws most of his support from the Russian-speaking areas of the industrial east and the south. He has promised an economic revival, new jobs, pay raises, judicial reforms and tax-free policies for small enterprises for five years. Yanukovich is a Russian speaker with only halting ability in Ukrainian. But he is no longer the Russian lapdog he was five years ago. Since 2004 Ukraine has effectively created a distinct new national consciousness by banning Russian on national television and in university entrance exams.

The runoff election will be tight and the role of third placed Sergei Tigipko will be vital. As well as being an economic minister, Tigipko was a central banker and a former adviser to both Yanukovych and Tymoshenko. Though officially staying neutral for now, he has in the past expressed interest in working as prime minister under either. He will probably be able to name his price to guarantee either candidate victory.

Google has more to lose than China

On 12 January, the official Google blog posted a seemingly innocuous entry called “a new approach to China”. In it Google claimed that serious cyber-attacks in December resulted in the theft of their intellectual property. The post stated the attack was aimed at accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. It also said the accounts of dozens of American, Chinese and European Gmail users who advocate human rights in China “appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties”. Then they dropped the bombshell. As a result of these attacks, Google decided to stop censoring results on Google.cn. “We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China,” concluded post author David Drummond, Google Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer.

There is little doubt that Google made a business decision and dressed it up with noble values. The news was even kept secret from Google’s 700 Chinese staff until it was made publicly available. Techcrunch’s Sarah Lacy offered three reasons why Google made their decision. Lacy claims Google were not doing great business in China (with 30 percent of the market) and could never outdo local leader Baidu (with 63 percent). Secondly Google had already made their decision and the announcement was a “scorched earth” move aimed at buying Google goodwill in the west. Thirdly it is only going to get harder for western firms as cashed-up Chinese tech companies begin infiltrating the US market.

The official Chinese news agency Xinhua has been strangely diffident in its response. Normally it reacts bullishly to any perceived criticism of the Communist regime but an article on 13 January merely suggested China was seeking more information on Google’s stance. They quoted an anonymous high ranking official merely said "It is still hard to say whether Google will quit China or not. Nobody knows.” They also quoted Guo Ke, professor of mass communication at Shanghai International Studies University, who said it was "almost impossible" for Google to quit China and also impossible for the Chinese government to give up its management right over the Internet. "I think Google is just playing cat and mouse, and trying to use netizens' anger or disappointment as leverage,” Guo told Xinhua.

The official Chinese Government response is that companies must follow the law of the land. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said China welcomed foreign Internet companies but that those offering online services must do so “in accordance with the law.” According to the New York Times, another high-ranking official has called for even tighter Internet restrictions. Wang Chen, the information director for the State Council urged Internet companies to increase scrutiny of news or information that might threaten national stability and emphasized the importance of “guiding” online public opinion.

Subsequently Google has hinted it will negotiate with the Communist regime. It may be that Google needs China more than China needs Google. China has by far the world’s largest internet population with estimated 338 million Internet users - 46 million of those were added in the last 12 months alone. The entire network is policed by the Great Firewall of China and the government stepped up efforts to censor the Web during the Beijing Olympics and the Communist regime’s 60th anniversary last year. During the purge, the Chinese government made particular efforts to shut down social media sites such as blogs, online video sites, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.

However, many Chinese users have sophisticated knowledge of the Internet and are able to circumvent the censorship. Locals call it “fanqiang”, or “scaling the wall.” Users connect to an overseas computer via a proxy server which costs $2 a month to share with about two dozen others. Chinese citizens engaged in such practices say the government rarely cracks down on them individually, preferring instead to go after prominent dissidents who publish information about forbidden topics online. Meanwhile non-profit companies have set up censorship-evading tools for users to download in a cat-and-mouse game with authorities.

But as The Hindu puts it, many Chinese online users will be let down by Google’s losing battle with the authorities over censorship issues. They quote Chinese Internet expert Kaiser Kuo, who believes the ordinary Chinese Internet user is being ignored. “But they are also questioning whether the moral point Google is trying to make is worth the price they have to pay,” he said. “The government no longer worries about access to outside information through Web 1.0 sites, but has closed down social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube that allow for the rapid dissemination of information.” The absence of Google will simply tighten the Government’s grip on power in this most closed of kingdoms.

Guinea's wounded coup leader to stay in exile

Hopes of a return to civilian rule in the West African nation of Guinea rose with the news that former leader Moussa Dadis Camara will stay in Burkina Faso. Camara has been in temporary exile since an assassination attempt six weeks ago. Yesterday he signed a deal yesterday with Guinea’s new interim leader General Sekouba Konate agreeing to the establishment of an interim government and elections in six months. The deal bans the military from running in the election and gives Konate time to return the country to civilian rule, with the support of the US and France.

The news came despite calls yesterday from senior Guinean army officials for Camara to return home. Members of the 42-man junta which supported Camara’s ascension to power a year earlier have released a statement rejecting Konate’s concern that Camara’s return would jeopardise the restoration to civilian rule. The statement supported Konate’s call for a rapid transition "but we encourage and ask for the quick return of Capt Moussa Dadis Camara to Conakry,” the statement read. “We are recommending that Gen Sekouba Konate bring him back."

The statement shows that Camara still has powerful friends in Guinea. The army captain seized power in 2008 after the death of long-term dictator Lansana Conté. Initially his rule was mostly greeted with relief as he seemed sure to be better than his deeply corrupt predecessor Conté, who had just died after 25 years in charge. But optimism faded as Camara reneged on promises to hold an election. On 28 September he sent in security forces to smash up a peaceful mass opposition rally in the capital Conakry. The government had banned the protest but it went ahead anyway. When tens of thousands marched into a football stadium, police and soldiers opened fire. At least 157 people died. Eyewitnesses and medical personnel told Human Rights Watch many protesters were riddled with bullet holes. Others had stab wounds from knives and bayonets. Many women were stripped naked and sexually assaulted.

Camara blamed errant officers but the world community was outraged by the attack. The Economic Community of West African States imposed an arms embargo on Guinea. Former colonial power (and still a wielder of great local influence) France also cut military ties. The AU and the EU imposed travel bans and froze bank accounts owned by the 42 members of Camara’s junta. The US also imposed a travel ban but has not frozen accounts. The ICC also began an investigation and had delegates to Guinea at the time of Camara’s shooting.

Exactly what happened on 3 December is shrouded in mystery but it would seem that Camara was shot by his own aide-de-camp. The New York Times quotes communications minister, Idrissa Cherif who said Camara was shot in a confrontation with the commander of the presidential guard, Lt. Abubakar Toumba Diakité. Diakité was also believed to be the top army officer involved in the September atrocity so he may have felt he was about to be sacrificed to the ICC so that his boss could keep his job. Camara survived the attack but was flown to Morocco for treatment. He moved to Burkina Faso last week.

Guinea, resource-rich and desperately poor, has been plagued since independence in 1958 by authoritarian, brutal, and corrupt regimes. The country of ten million is rich in bauxite and gold. The Economist reported in November it is likely to earn $7 billion in return for mineral and oil rights recently granted to a Chinese company. But this money is unlikely to benefit the poor. Instead a clique of elite bureaucratic and military leaders will fight over the right to access the spoils, as they have done since 1958. In November, The Economist feared a civil war may be inevitable due to splits in the junta. The assassination attempt has done little to dash those fears. The next few months will be a test of Sekouba Konate’s strength of character.

Earthquake in Haiti: Port-au-Prince picks up the pieces

No one really knows how many people have died in Haiti’s earthquake; it is far too early to count the bodies. The country's prime minister, Jean-Max Bellerive told CNN the final toll could be well over 100,000. Another senior Haitian politician Youri Latortue told AP the number could be as high as half a million, but both men conceded that nobody really knew. What most people did know was that the impact was utterly devastating. The 7.0 quake that struck 15km southwest of Port-au-Prince yesterday afternoon affected two million people and destroyed most of the capital’s buildings including the presidential palace, the parliament, the cathedral and most critically, all of the city’s hospitals.

Port-au-Prince is struggling to deal with the enormity of the disaster. The Times said the city's central Champs de Mars square resembled a huge open-air refugee camp but one without food, water or medicine. Medicins Sans Frontiers say there are hundreds of thousands of homeless people now sleeping in the streets. One of MSF's senior staff in Haiti, Stefano Zannini, was out for most of the night, assessing the needs in the city and looking at the state of the medical facilities. Zannini said the situation was chaotic. “I visited five medical centres, including a major hospital, and most of them were not functioning,” he said. “Many are damaged and I saw a distressing number of dead bodies.”

The country’s president René Préval said the damage caused by the magnitude 7.0 tremor was "unimaginable". The Huffington Post had a before and after shot that showed the extent of the damage at the presidential palace. But wondering where he would sleep that night was the least of Préval’s problems. “Parliament has collapsed, the tax office has collapsed, schools have collapsed, hospitals have collapsed” Mr. Préval told the Miami Herald. “There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them. All of the hospitals are packed with people. It is a catastrophe.”

The five-storey UN base at the Christopher Hotel was not spared; it also crumbled in the quake. The international body said 16 of its personnel were confirmed dead and between 100 and 150 more workers were still missing, These included UN mission chief Hedi Annabi of Tunisia and his deputy, Luis Carlos da Costa of Brazil. Annabi was meeting a Chinese delegation at the time of the quake. The Chinese are also among the missing. Just about the only good news from Haiti was the fact that most other areas of the country were spared - the capital took the brunt of the quake.

Mashable have listed ways people around the world can help. These include direct donations to organisations in the field such as Care, Direct Relief International and Oxfam, as well as via a site Google has updated to respond to the crisis Google Support Disaster Relief. Meanwhile Haitian hip-hop musician Wyclef Jean has used his Twitter feed to rally people to contribute to his grassroots Yele Haiti fund via text messages which automatically charge $5 to users’ mobile bills. The LA Times said the campaign has raised $400,000 in 24 hours.

Reuters's Lesley Wroughton says Haiti will need a lot more money than that to recover from this catastrophe. The impoverished country was already the poorest in the western hemisphere and it will take a massive, sustained global effort to rebuild the country. Wroughton says Haiti was rebuilding from its failed state status and had gradually impressed donors and investors through economic reforms, efforts to stamp out corruption and improve conditions for the four out of five Haitians who live in poverty. The IMF and World Bank had canceled $1.2 billion of debt, freeing up crucial funds for the government to build roads, bridges and prepare social programs.

Wroughton quoted CARE’s CEO Helene Gayle who said Haiti could no longer survive from crisis to crisis and needed to get on to a path of long-lasting, sustained change. Gayle called it Haiti’s Asian tsunami, and said it was a chance for the world to be generous and commit to helping Haiti beyond the current disaster. "We need to make sure that we're building back in a way that does not only return them to where they were but gives them an opportunity to really get a leg up after this is all over," Gayle said.

News rings management changes as it plans for paywall

News Ltd announced a series of important management changes today affecting their Australian news operation. The most important change was the appointment of News Digital Media chief executive Richard Freudenstein as chief executive of The Australian. Freudenstein keeps his old job and the move was widely seen as a key predecessor to the introduction of online paid-for content which Rupert Murdoch announced for 2010.

The 43 year old Richard Freudenstein joined News Digital Media when it was created 2006. Prior to this he was a key member of the team that launched Foxtel Pay TV in Australia in 1995 and then spent seven years at British Sky Broadcasting. There he was a leading negotiator in Sky's 2004 $2 billion deal for Premiership football. He is also chairman of realestate.com.au Ltd and a director of The Bell Shakespeare Company.

The move also sees The Australian being moved to a new stand alone division within News Corporation Ltd as part of an "aggressive and ambitious growth strategy" for the national broadsheet. Freudenstein will report directly to News Ltd chairman and chief executive, John Hartigan in this role. Up to now, The Australian has been part of Nationwide News, publishers of Sydney's The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph. "This announcement reflects the significant expansion of our ambitions for The Australian," said Hartigan in a statement. "By creating a separate division and deploying more resources, we aim to enter an unprecedented era of growth."

The establishment of a separate division should give The Australian more flexibility when it comes to negotiating its printing and distribution arrangements with News Limited's other state divisions. But this move is not really about sales of the broadsheet. Hartigan hinted as much when he said News Ltd also wanted to expand The Australian's presence online, on mobile phones and on "new platforms". Nick Leeder will follow Freudenstein from NDM into The Australian as deputy chief executive, but unlike his boss he leaves behind his current post as NDM chief operating officer. Chris Mitchell will continue as editor-in-chief of the newspaper, a role he has held since he joined the paper from the Courier-Mail in 2002.

However the news comes on the same day as the result of a survey shown at The Content Makers that showed 70 percent of Australians would not be prepared to pay for Internet content. The survey by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries & Innovation at Swinburne University’s Institute for Social Research is part of the World Internet Project which is the leading international source of research on how people use the internet.

Eight hundred Australian internet users responded to the question “A daily newspaper costs around $1.50. How much would you be prepared to pay to read an online newspaper?” Another surprising result showed that “news junkies” are those least likely to be willing to pay for it. Perhaps not as surprising is that urban dwellers with limit access to quality papers (ie the ones with “Murdoch only” press) were more prepared to pay for content than those living in Sydney, Melbourne or Canberra. Nevertheless, the findings are challenging for the Murdoch empire and lend credence to crankynick’s observation in Larvatus Prodeo that the paywall may well be aimed more at corporate organisations than individuals. Time will soon tell.

Peter Spencer’s shrewd food war

Peter Spencer has entered the 50th day of his hunger strike perched on a wind-monitoring mast on his property near Cooma in NSW. Spencer hasn’t taken any food since 23 November as part of a campaign for a royal commission on land-clearing laws that prevent him from clearing native vegetation on his property. But his campaign is about to be complicated by a sheriff's notice this week ordering him to vacate the property following legal proceedings by family members to sell the property in order to recover an unpaid debt. What happens next is problematic. His position 10m high on the so-called “tower of hope” on the highest part of his property is both symbolic and good media management. But there is also a practical element: it makes it harder for authorities - either police or medical - to forcibly remove him.

The 61-year-old Spencer has survived this long on a diet of water, lemon juice and vitamin tablets. His friends say he is still sound of mind but admit they might be forced to intervene to protect his life. Alastair McRobert, a friend and de facto spokesperson said Spencer’s resolve is as strong as ever and he is in contact with his doctor. "However, when he doesn't know what he's doing, that's when intervention will most likely happen to keep him alive,” McRobert said yesterday. "None of his friends like seeing what Peter is doing to himself but we respect the stand he is making."

Spencer has repeatedly said only one person can respond to that stand. He says he won’t end his hunger strike until Prime Minister Kevin Rudd admits the Australian Government owes farmers like him $100 billion for capturing carbon in their soil. A meeting with Rudd is not sufficient. He is fighting for compensation for not being allowed to clear his property under state-based native vegetation laws which the former Howard Government then used meet Australian Kyoto carbon emission targets.

Spencer is holding Rudd accountable even though it is NSW legislation he is fighting. He said on 7 December “there's no discussion. He [Rudd] can either meet the demands or he can bury me, suit himself.” And in an open letter to Rudd, Spencer declared “you must bear the burden for the theft of the entire Kyoto emission target… from the targeted farmers”.

But the Prime Minister is showing no inclination he is about to be blackmailed by Spencer. A spokesman said the Government sets policy in the national interest and the policy “will not be changed by threats of violence or self harm.” The government says it deals with many people each year who threaten self-harm and is urging Spencer to end his protest and seek medical attention.

Yet it is difficult not to feel some sympathy for Spencer’s plight. He bought his 6,000 hectare property in the 1980s at Shannon’s Flat near the border with the ACT. His time on the property was plagued by bad luck. 60 percent of the property had been cleared in the 1930s. But after Spencer bought it, he was overseas and unable to farm and four-fifths of his property became covered in regrowth. When he returned to Australia, he found he was unable to clear due to new native vegetation laws. Then he set up ponds for trout fishing which failed due to stricter water storage laws. When he tried to set up a fine wool program it was undone by a plague of wild dogs that fled the 2003 Canberra fires and killed hundreds of his sheep. The drought was the last straw but Spencer was unable to claim drought relief because his farm was deemed unviable.

But as the Canberra Times notes, although Spencer looks like lunatic in the climate change circus, he is a resourceful businessman supported by a formidable legal team headed by Sydney barrister and former holder of Malcolm Turnbull’s seat, Peter King. His home resembles a media war room with press releases, newspapers and policies piling up and phones ringing incessantly. Spencer is getting a lot of support in rural areas and has the backing of Agmates and Sydney radio station 2GB.

He also inspired a protest march on Canberra last week with hundreds of farmers calling for a royal commission into property rights and land clearing in Australia. Spencer has made 200 court appearances over the past decade to try and get compensation or else remove the 80 percent unusable land from his rates evaluation. None of the cases went anywhere. “What they kept on doing was just they wouldn't give us a chance to present our evidence, they just moved to strike us out,” he said. The matter remains stalled at the High Court without a hearing awaiting the determination of a related case about water rights.

New test to help crack down on illegal ivory trade

A new test to distinguish antique from modern ivory may help defeat the illegal trade in ivory. The EU allows the sale of antique ivory from before 1947, but once a tusk is carved there is no accurate way of distinguishing it from modern ivory. Until now, the only option has been to send samples to museums where experts tried to work out its age from signs such as how yellow it appeared. However this evidence would not stand up in court. A new method by an Edinburgh Zoo scientist can determine the age of ivory by looking at its level of carbon isotope. Because of nuclear testing which started in the 1950s, modern ivory has double the amount of carbon 14 than those of elephants that lived before the nuclear age. The test will now be rolled out to all European countries. (picture by wwarby)

While Europeans have killed elephants for trade since colonial times, the large-scale exploitation of elephant herds began in the 1970s. Organized gangs of poachers used automatic weapons while corrupt governments turned a blind eye. They laundered tons of elephant tusks through several African countries to destinations in the East and West. At its height, the ivory trade was driving the poaching of an estimated 100,000 African elephants a year for their tusks, as species numbers dropped from 1.3 million to 600,000.

Things improved after the African elephant was listed on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 1989. This banned the ivory trade though it carried on illegally. And only 16 out of 35 African countries complied with the CITES system. The Born Free Foundation says thousands of elephants are still killed every year for their ivory. The British animal welfare group describes the slaughter as “horrifying”, with poachers shooting elephants with automatic weapons and hacking off their tusks with axes and chainsaws.

In November 2009 Tanzania and Zambia submitted a proposal for the relaxation of the ban to allow for the sale of 100 tonnes of stock-piled ivory to China and Japan. The proposal will be examined at an international meeting on wildlife conservation scheduled for March. There is a precedent for this. In 1997 regulations were relaxed for a one-off sale of 60 tonnes of stock-piled ivory. There was a similar sale in 2002. But Kenya has opposed the latest request for a relaxation saying it could lead to increased poaching in the region. It also wants the ban to include rhinos. Kenya’s elephant population dropped from 168,000 in 1969 to only 16,000 in 1989 when the ban was enforced. The population has now risen to 35,000 since the ban but the rhino population has decreased by a third in the same timeframe.

The Chinese market is now driving the demand for ivory. The problem has escalated in recent years as China forges more links with Africa. Chinese entrepreneurs, miners and tourists are coming to the continent in increasing numbers fuelling the illicit trade. Over 35 million tonnes of ivory has been illegally imported into China from Africa in the last 10 years and British-based wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC is working with China to educate travellers about ivory smuggling. But there are concerns the Chinese government is reacting defensively to reports of Chinese people caught in the act. After an Interpol operation seized several tonnes of ivory in November and arrested three Chinese and 62 Africans, China Daily refuted the director of a Kenyan wildlife NGO, who blamed the growing number of Chinese workers in Africa for the rise in elephant poaching in Kenya.

Ominously, ivory trade has been on the rise across the continent since 2004 but increased sharply last year according to TRAFFIC. Their latest report said the surge in 2009 suggest an increased involvement of organized crime syndicates in the trade, connecting African source countries with Asian end markets. According to its analysis of 14,364 ivory seizure records from 85 countries between January 1989 and August 2009, the adjusted trend for illicit ivory trade has risen to over 25 tonnes, the second largest after a peak of 32 tonnes in 1998. CITES will submit the report to the upcoming meeting of member countries.