Toads and Tofu Buildings: Sichuan crumbles in earthquake

The toads were first to realise the danger. On Saturday, residents of the remote Tanmu village in Sichuan woke to find thousands of toads leaving the area. This strange experience was repeated in several other Sichuan towns. In Manzhu, local media reported hundreds of thousands of toads had appeared on the streets. They quoted a local resident as saying he saw countless toads killed by passing vehicles as they crossed roads. He had never seen anything like it. A day earlier, people in Taizhou, Jiangsu province, also said they saw tens of thousands of toads on the city's streets. While scientific evidence is scanty about toads' earthquake sensing abilities, clearly they knew something was up. Unfortunately, no one heeded the toads' warning.

Two days later the region was devastated. A massive near-eight magnitude earthquake struck Sichuan razing entire towns to the ground leaving thousands trapped in the rubble. An estimated 60,000 to 100,000 people are missing and the official death toll is 15,000 and rising fast. 7,700 died in the town of Yingxiu alone, near the epicentre. In toad-less Manzhu, another 2,000 people died.


The 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck at 2.30pm local time Monday in Sichuan province in south-western China. The tremors were felt in faraway Shanghai where China’s tallest building, the Jinmao Tower, was evacuated. The epicentre was in Wenchuan County 90km northwest of the provincial capital Chengdu. All the highways into Wenchuan were damaged, hampering the rescue effort. Thousands of people were trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings. Communications with dozens of communities close to the epicentre of the quake remain cut so the full impact of the damage is not yet known. The city of Mianyang, home to China’s nuclear weapons design industry was hit hard sparking fears of a potential leak of radioactive material.

China has launched a massive relief operation mobilising its air force to help the 100,000 soldiers and police already in the region. The speed of the rescue is hampered by aftershocks and heavy rain. Most of the roads in the area have been cut off by the impact or subsequent landslides forcing rescue efforts to take to the air. Elite troops have parachuted in while the military will also conduct large-scale airdrops of food, clothing and blankets over the worst-hit areas.

A new hazard emerged yesterday when eye witnesses noticed major cracks in Zipingku dam, 30km from the epicentre. Zipingpu is a large water irrigation and water supply project in northwest Dujiangyan. The force of the quake ruined the baluster columns surrounding the dam. With communications cut off, most locals remain unaware of the danger. Xinhua news agency reported 2,000 troops are on their way to seal the cracks. If they fail, the Dujiangyan region could be swamped.

Elsewhere rescue efforts are concentrated on saving those trapped beneath fallen schools, businesses and homes. Two chemical plants collapsed in Shifang, crushing workers and releasing 80 tons of liquid ammonia. Because the quake occurred during school hours, students bore the brunt of the disaster. Several hundreds died in the collapse of Juyuan school. At least 201 students died at Muyu Middle School while many were sleeping. A third school at Wudu, 30km from the epicentre, has 130 dead children and 150 more still buried and feared dead. The Chinese embassy in the US estimated 4.3 million buildings collapsed or sustained major damage in the quake.

Some embittered survivors have already started blaming construction companies and local authorities. Building firms used substandard techniques and materials and corrupt local authorities deliberately ignored the problem. The resulting structures earned the name of "tofu buildings” referring to their softness. "It's nothing but corruption - they must have used sub-standard cement and steel," said one rescuer. Even the state-controlled media are raising questions about unsafe construction of schools. "We cannot afford not to raise uneasy questions about the structural quality of school buildings," the China Daily said in a rare critical commentary.

Environment’s Swansong: Budget fails the 350 test

Writing in yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald, Marian Wilkinson said Labor Treasurer Wayne Swan’s first budget had delivered on its environmental promises. Wilkinson said the budget had committed $2.3 billion over the next four years to boost energy efficiency, water savings and the development of clean energy technology. She cited measures such as low interest loans of up to $10,000 to help pay for solar hot water, PV cells and other energy efficient products. There was also a $500 million renewable energy fund and $12.9 billion on water reform including a major $400 million plan address the over allocation and water inefficiency in the Murray Darling Basin.

However green and activist groups say these measures are not enough to address climate change issues. Getup! described the budget as “an incremental step towards a safe climate future” but cautioned that we did not have the time for such steps. They pointed to the fact that the defence budget was forty times as much as the climate change budget and said the Prime Minister had not grasped the enormity of the problem. Getup! stated that climate cannot afford to wait another year for significant funding for renewable energy.

Greenpeace agreed expressing its disappointment with the lack of budget measures to address climate change. While they welcomed an additional $37 million for the planned Emissions Trading Scheme (which waits on the final Garnaut report due later this year), they said the Budget missed opportunities to invest more money in alternative energy. "The Rudd Government had a golden opportunity to show that it was serious about dealing with climate change," said Greenpeace spokesman Stephen Campbell. "Instead it has let us down by failing to invest heavily in the solutions that we have at our fingertips - renewable energy such as solar, wind and geothermal."

These warnings are backed up by one of the world's leading climate scientists James Hansen. Hansen, head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, has recently released a report for Science magazine which says the world’s developed countries need to urgently rethink carbon dioxide reduction targets in the atmosphere because they have grossly underestimated the scale of the problem. While the EU target of 550 parts per million of C02 is the most stringent in the world, Hansen says they are not strict enough and should be slashed to 350ppm. He says the cut is needed if "humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilisation developed".

Environmentalist and writer Bill McKibben agrees with the 350 target and he launched a passionate defence of Hansen’s work earlier this week. In an article called “Last Chance for Civilisation” he cited some of Hansen’s tipping points such as massive sea level rise and huge changes in rainfall patterns if that target is not reached soon. But McKibben laments that instead of taking action to address these problems we are actually making things worse as reflected in the fact that atmospheric carbon dioxide had jumped 2.4 parts per million last year. He says that “at best” we have a few years to reverse course. By the time the successor to the Kyoto Agreement is signed (no earlier than later 2009 and probably not even then) it may be too late.
McKibben has set up a new organisation called Project 350 to demand urgent action.

Their website 350.org is designed to be an international campaign based on the 350 ppm meme. McKibben wants to “unite the world around the number 350” using the motif in music, art, political demonstrations and anything else he can think of. It is intended to be a grassroots climate change coalition “to rouse the world to a new sense of urgency and of possibility.” The world certainly needs rousing. It was totally absent from the large set of numbers used by Wayne Swan on Tuesday night. “We think 350 is the most important number in the world, and that at the very least everyone deserves to know it,” said McKibben. ”To understand that the world we've spent millennia building lies now in its shadow.”

Media expulsions keep Fiji on the Commonwealth outer

The Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) has decided to continue the suspension of Fiji from its organisation. The 53-nation bloc readmitted Pakistan due to its recently elected government but decided Fiji would remain outside the pale. CMAG made the announcement in London saying it doubted Fiji would honour its intention to hold elections in the next 12 months. According to Commonwealth Secretary General Kamalesh Sharma, said that both judicial independence and freedom of the media were seriously compromised with media personnel being deported in contravention of court orders.

Fijian dictator Frank Bainimarana rebuffed the criticisms of his regime saying CMAG has failed to “recognise the realities in his country”. He said it was “most unfortunate” Fiji was being judged from a distance without taking the on-ground situation into account. Bainimarana lamented the fact that Fiji was not invited to the meeting to explain its position. "There seemed to have been insufficient effort to understand the practical difficulties of the situation in Fiji," Bainimarama said. However he did not explain his heavy-handed treatment of Fijian media including the expulsion of two Australian newspaper editors in three months despite court orders preventing the actions.

The latest Australian to be deported is Evan Hannah, publisher of the News Corp owned Fiji Times. Hannah was forcibly removed from his home in Suva on 1 May and taken to Nadi airport leaving behind his Fijian wife and young son. From Nadi, he was forced to board a plane to Incheon in Korea before finding a flight back to Australia. The extraordinary dogleg diversion was necessary because none of the local airlines would take Hannah aboard due to the court order explicitly forbidding his deportation. Only Korean Airlines were unconcerned by the writ of habeas corpus keeping him in Fiji. Hannah says the deportation order he saw says he breached his work permit but didn’t say why.

Australian foreign minister Stephen Smith expressed his outrage at Hannah’s treatment one day later. Smith said the Australian High Commission made urgent but unsuccessful representations to Bainimarana and his Foreign Minister to seek an explanation for what happened. Smith called it “unconscionable” that Fiji did not provide any notification or explanation to the Australian High Commission for Hannah’s summary detention and expulsion. “Equally outrageous,” continued Smith, “is the fact that the Fiji regime, despite repeated requests, did not allow appropriate consular access to Mr Hannah.”

Undaunted by the Australian rebuke, Bainimarana threatened further expulsions in the wake of Hannah’s forced departure. In a meeting with heads of news media and the Fiji Media Council in Suva, he refused to explain why Hannah was deported and said others were likely to follow. Bainimarana claimed that “the last thing he would want to do” is close down the media. He called on them to work with the government to move the country forward. Media representatives at the meeting wanted better responses from the government on various issues and agreed to meet Bainimarama on a monthly basis to iron out their differences.

The Hannah incident follows less than three months after the deportation of Fiji Sun editor Russell Hunter. Both were deemed a threat to national security and found guilty without trial of attempting to destabilise Bainimarana’s illegal regime. Both men were hustled suddenly out of the country leaving family behind and both deportations defied court orders forbidding the action. Reporters Without Borders condemned both actions saying “it seems that the summary removal of government critics is becoming the norm in Fiji.” But Bainimarana may not be able to shut everyone up; the Fiji Times retaliated a day after Hannah’s expulsion with the headline “we won’t shut up”.

Burma sham referendum takes place in the shadow of Nargis

According to the Bangkok Post, early results from Burma’s charade of a referendum is showing overwhelming support for the new pro-military charter. With widespread heavy intimidation of its citizens, and civil servants ordered to vote yes, the vote is a complete sham. A government source told the Post that almost 100 percent of voters in one Rangoon township have voted for the new constitution while districts in Mandalay and Shan State recorded over 90 percent votes in favour. The military junta rejected calls to delay the vote due to Cyclone Nargis which struck a week ago killing tens of thousands and leaving 1.5 million homeless.

Aid is slowly trickling in. UN aid flights resumed on the weekend, with three planes and a delivery of trucks. This came a day after the UN halted aid flights after the regime seized an initial delivery of high-energy biscuits and relief equipment. An International Red Cross plane also arrived with medical supplies and 35 tonnes of equipment intended to provide prisoners with clean drinking water. The Thai Royal Family also chartered a plane with 18 tonnes of aid. However the Burmese micro-management of the relief effort has stretched to placing aid in boxes plastered with names of top generals. Local TV made a big deal of top General Than Shwe handing out aid packages to survivors at elaborate ceremonies.

Nonetheless Shwe and his confreres refused to countenance delay of the referendum in order to help the cyclone victims. The exiled National League for Democracy was one of the many groups aghast at the government’s appalling insensitivity. Spokesman Soe Aung speaking from Bangkok pleaded in vain with the international community to pressure the regime to defer the referendum in order to address the devastation caused by the cyclone. The only action taken so far is to delay the referendum to 24 May in the Irrawaddy Division and some parts of Rangoon. Meanwhile with the delta region mired in a massive humanitarian tragedy and aid groups kept frustratingly out of the country, the Burmese Government has pressed on in the rest of the country with its change to the constitution aimed at codifying the military’s role as the pre-eminent power in the country.

There is little doubt that the referendum is more important to Burma’s generals than the relief effort. State-run television ran songs from young cheerful women urging citizens to forget the catastrophe and go to the polling stations. "Let's go to cast a vote . . . with sincere thoughts for happy days," the women sang. The government diverted soldiers and military vehicles from relief work to ensure that the referendum went smoothly. Instead of delivering aid, trucks roamed the streets for days, blaring constant messages on loudspeakers telling people to vote.

The generals have much to gain from getting out the vote. Victory will set their power enshrined. Under the new constitution, the military would gain a permanent 25-per-cent share of all seats in the upper and lower houses of parliament - enough to veto any changes to the constitution. No president could be chosen without consulting the military. There is also a clause which bars anyone who has been married to a foreign national from holding political office. This is directly aimed at Aung San Suu Kyi who married a British academic and is therefore disqualified.

In February, Human Rights Watch declared the referendum a sham, calling it “a hollow exercise in the military’s sham political reform process”. HRW said the referendum lacked credibility as it did not have the support of opposition political parties, did not involve public debate and did not allow the media to report on the process of drafting a new constitution. “Burma is a dictatorship that lacks the safeguards needed to ensure a free and fair referendum,” said Brad Adams, HRW’s Asia director. “Unless there is a fundamental change of course by the authorities, a referendum in this environment will have little credibility.” With more than a million citizens on the verge of starvation and disease, Burma’s rulers show no indication this credibility is in any way important to them.

MEAA annual report on state of Australian Press Freedom

Opening Fairfax Media’s new Sydney headquarters on Thursday, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd promised to usher in a new era of press freedom in Australia. Rudd told the gathering that Labor would honour its commitment to reform Freedom of Information (FOI) laws and to promote a "pro-disclosure" culture across government. There will always be argy-bargy between the government and the press, that's the nature of a democracy," he said. "The key is striking the balance between the public's right to know and the confidentiality needed for important decision-making."

Rudd has his work cut out if he is serious about his intent. On the same day as the Sydney speech, the journalists’ union the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA) posted their 2008 annual report into the state of press freedom in Australia. Although it found some promising developments over the past twelve months, the report (pdf) found a litany of faults on a range of issues such as FOI, whistleblower protection, and anti-terror laws that together seriously erode the country’s reputation as a robust democracy.

In his introduction to the report, MEAA Federal Secretary Chris Warren took the school report card metaphor saying Australia “could do better” as he hoped for “marked improvement” next year. However he did point to improvements in high profile media cases and the important formation of the Right to Know Coalition which brought together many of the country’s most high-profile media organisations such as News Ltd, Fairfax, the ABC, SBS and AAP. Their independent audit authored by Irene Moss in November 2007 was a damning finding of the state of free speech in Australia being whittled away by hundreds of laws and suppression orders.

Within a month of the publication of Moss’ findings, the country had its first change of government in 11 years. Much of the MEAA’s optimism for the future is based on the promises of the newly installed Rudd administration. Rudd said he wanted to work towards more open government and pledged to introduce measures to foster press freedom. There was also progress on Shield Laws at a state level. However substantial work will need to be done to combat the raft of anti-terror and sedition laws the Howard Government brought in (mostly with bi-partisan support) since 9/11.

The report says that opposition to anti-terror legislation still exist despite an expensive and costly public-awareness anti-terror campaign mounted by the former Government. As Will Anderson wrote in Leftwrites in February this year, the anti-terror laws have resulted in just one conviction despite all the “lofty rhetoric, national security hotlines, adverts and fridge magnets, hundreds of days in court and millions of dollars of public money spent.” The Press Council agrees the laws are excessive and believe they shield government from scrutiny.

The report also criticised the sedition section of the Anti-Terrorism Act (No 2) 2005. Then Attorney General introduced the law saying it would be reviewed within 12 months. That review never occurred. The Right to Know report identified several serious defects in the wording of the law including the imprecision of the word “urge,” the lack of necessity to prove intention of ill-will, the possibility that verbal support for illegal groups is in scope, and its universal jurisdiction. The report is concerned that the new Labor Government has made no effort to have the sedition upgraded or removed since it assumed power,

Protection of whistleblowers is another area of press freedom weakness. The report documented the 2007 case of Allan Kessing who was sentenced to a nine-month suspended jail term after being found guilty of leaking a confidential report on airport security to The Australian newspaper. During Kessing’s trial, his lawyer argued without success hat his client’s disclosure of two classified reports was in the public interest. Similarly Mohamed Haneef’s lawyer Stephen Keim was harassed by federal police commissioner Mick Keelty after Keim leaked transcripts of Haneef’s interview with federal police that undermined the case against him. The anti-whistleblower culture of the Howard government was such that in four years they spent more than 2,100 police hours and $2 million trying to track them down.

The report has also touched on several other key points related to press freedom. They recommended journalist Shield Laws based on the presumption sources should not be revealed. They commented on the excessive prosecution culture that saw the Chaser satirists charged for the APEC motorcade stunt (since dropped) and the charges against the Daily Telegraph for trespassing at Sydney Airport while doing a story on how easy it was to breach security. The report praised the new uniform defamation laws that stop forum shopping but lamented a new ruling in a Sydney restaurant case that established a new category of “business defamation”.

Freedom of Information, Suppression orders and privacy laws are also obstacles for working journalists. To fix these problems, the MEAA and the Right to Know Coalition are expecting big things of the new government’s plans. Called “Government information: Restoring trust and integrity”, the policy released by Rudd and Joe Ludwig prior to the election pledged to bring together the functions of privacy protection and freedom of information in an Office of the Information Commissioner, to preserve the existing role of the Privacy Commissioner and to appoint a Freedom of Information Commissioner.

But Sydney Morning Herald FOI writer Matthew Moore cautioned about the policy’s lack of detail. “The critical issue is when this policy will be enacted,” he said. “Oppositions are huge fans of tough FOI laws but regularly experience a dramatic change of heart the moment the first government limo turns up.” The pressure is now on Rudd to deliver.

Gray and Fukuyama

Today’s The Australian has a feature on British philosopher John Gray who arrives for the Sydney Writers Festival in a week’s time. Gray is not to be confused with Dr John Gray who writes about men and women as if they come from different planets, neither of which support life. The Sydney-bound Gray has also been accused of not supporting life. His straight talking and profoundly original thinking in books such as “Straw Dogs” has seen him labelled erroneously as a misanthrope. But the reason Gray doesn’t like big ideas because they lead to “big casualties”. Gray is a post-anthropist, recording likely future extinction with scientific insensitivity. He will be in Sydney to promote his new book Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia in four events at the festival between May 19-25.

One of John Gray’s most vehement critics is Francis Fukuyama, still best known for his 1992 work “The End of History and The Last Man”. The book’s elegiac title alone should have endeared Fukuyama to Gray. But Gray had no time for Fukuyama’s theory that the end of the Cold War marked a total victory for the idea of liberal democracy.

Both men have their political contradictions. Gray has in his time supported the Tories, then New Labour and now wishes a plague on both their houses. After establishing his reputation, Fukuyama joined the powerful People for New American Century (PNAC) in the late 1990s. PNAC backed the winning horse (after a protest) in the 2000 election and most of the key positions in the Bush Administration were filled by PNAC members. Behind the scenes, Fukuyama and PNAC were key advocates of linking Iraq to 9/11. Inexplicably, Fukuyama changed course in 2002 and began distancing himself from the neo-cons. By 2006 he was saying that history will not judge the Iraq War or “the ideas animating it” kindly.

Back in 1995, Gray interviewed Fukuyama for the then new “Prospect” magazine. Fukuyama had just released his follow up to The End of History called “Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity”. In that book Fukuyama explored the social factors that created prosperity and how they could be harnessed. Gray called him a “theorist of global economic rivalry and, perhaps, of American decline.” The second-generation Japanese immigrant bristled at the latter prospect.

In his 1999 work “The Great Disruption”, Fukuyama described Gray as an inheritor of the “Burkean critique of the Enlightenment.” Fukuyama described Gray as the logical follower of the 18th century Irish statesman and orator Edmund Burke. Burke was the MP for Bristol at the time of the French Revolution. He was a Whig but as Tory as they come. Burke excoriated the French Revolution as a human disaster. The Revolution, like the Enlightenment that caused it, sought to replace traditional rules with rational ones.

Fukuyama saw these qualities in Gray. Fukuyama said Gray’s reaction to the fall of the Berlin Wall (a pivotal event in his own End of History schema) was that it laid bare the internal contradictions of the Enlightenment. Gray’s 1995 book “Enlightenment’s Wake” said the victory of capitalism in Berlin led to higher crime rates and social disorder in the US. The self-interest of capitalism reinforces the process by placing self-interest ahead of moral obligation and a tragedy of the commons occurs. Society survives only on a limited human capital that is running out and not being replenished.

Himself veering further to the right as the 1990s wore on, Fukuyama disagreed with the assumption that human capital could not replenished. Fukuyama pointed out that both crimes against violence and property were on the wane since 1992, falling dramatically especially in the big cities of New York, Chicago, Detroit and Los Angeles. In New York, crime levels are now at the levels they were at before they exploded in the 1960s. Fukuyama calls the period of the 1960s to the 1990s the “Great Disruption” when society underwent the greatest structural change. He says a new social order is now emerging from the chaos because we are all biologically hardwired to forge bonds.

Gray believes that Fukuyama’s ideas proved irresistible to the right because they painted a seductive picture of capitalism as an unstoppable force of nature. Gray proved better at predicting the course of history than Fukuyama when he said it would quickly resume in the shape of ethnic, religious and resource wars. He knew that a non-ideological approach would be needed to deal with the conflicts to follow the victory of liberal democracy. But in Gray's eyes the Enlightenment was still culprit. He sees Al Qaeda as an inheritor of the same post-Enlightenment revolutionary tradition as communism, Nazism and neo-conservatism. Al Qaeda can mean "the base" but can also mean "the database". Knowledge is indeed power in Gray's book.

Battle for Abkhazia intensifies

Both Russia and Georgia have accused each other of escalating military tensions in the breakaway Caucasus republic of Abkhazia. Extra Russian troops began arriving in the republic last week taking the total number close or possibly beyond the 3,000 limit allowed under a UN-brokered ceasefire agreement signed in 1994. The Russians say their move is necessary to stop a planned Georgian military operation to regain control of the region it lost in the early 1990s. Georgia, in turn, has accused Russia of annexing the territory and plans to add to their own presence in Abkhazia. They point to a Russian defence spokesman who told Agence France Press on the weekend the number of Russian soldiers in Abkhazia is already greater than 3,000.

This was denied today by Russian Ministry of Defence (MOD) who said they remain well under the 3,000 troop limit with 2,542 “peacekeepers” in the region. They warned they would send more but would remain under the limit. The MOD released a statement overnight said the increase in troop numbers “has only one goal – to maintain peace and avoid bloodshed.” They claim the force has “an important stabilising role”. “Today Russian peacekeepers continue to fulfil their tasks, acting in accordance with the mandate of the CIS peacekeeping forces and international norms,” said the statement “They have proven the necessity of their presence in the conflict zone.”

Abkhazia has long been a complex conflict zone. While international maps place Abkhazia within Georgia’s borders, it has been a de facto independent republic since it seceded from the newly created nation of Georgia in 1992. Abkhazia had been part of the Russian Empire since 1810. Originally a separate republic within the Soviet Union, it was forced to join the Georgian Socialist Soviet Republic in 1931 under the orders of Georgian-born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, better known as Stalin. Georgian became the official language and the Abkhaz language and cultural rights were repressed.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, an anti-Georgian resistance movement grew in the capital Sukhumi. Tbilisi sent in troops to enforce Georgian rule. In late 1993, they were driven out amidst fierce fighting in which several thousand people died and Sukhumi bombed. Abkhazia declared independence early in 1994. No other country has recognised Abkhazian independence and major international organisations such as the UN, EU and NATO recognize Abkhazia as an integral part of Georgia. An economic embargo remains in force crippling the local economy while Russia and Georgia nibble away at the edges each hoping to advance their own cause.

In the latest squabble, the US and EU have come down firmly on the side of Georgia. Both have sharply criticised Russia for its actions in bolstering its military force in the mountainous border region with Abkhazia. EU external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner made a deliberate point that Russia should respect “Georgia’s borders”. Meanwhile White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said that the troop increase and the Russian downing of an unmanned, unarmed Georgian spy plane in Georgian air space have “significantly and unnecessarily heightened tensions in the region.”

US National Security Advisor Steve Hadley also weighed into the debate citing his concern about Russia’s growing support for Abkhazia. He said the Bush administration expects to have good relations with newly installed Russian president Dmitri Medvedev (who remains a probable puppet of Putin) but wants Russia “to stop interfering in the internal affairs of Georgia”.

However not everyone sees Abkhazia as an internal affair of Georgia. Abkhazian President Sergei Bagapsh told Spain’s El Pais yesterday he expects his country will eventually achieve international recognition of its independence the same way that Kosovo did in February. But Bagapsh doesn’t merely want the Russians to recognise the country in revenge for US support Kosovo. “We want independence because we have a right to it. Because we have deserved it," he said. He also added that an independent Abkhazia would be a demilitarised country with no weapons or military units, but it would need security guarantees from other countries to achieve this. This was a clear warning to Georgia whom Bagapsh said was "a very aggressive country armed to the teeth by Europe.”

Abkhazia is one of two breakaway republics from Georgia, the other being South Ossetia. Neither has international recognition but both have stepped up their campaigns since Kosovo's declaration of independence. Russia has backed both claims and are particularly interested in Abkhazia 240km shoreline on the Black Sea. But Abkhazia is actually a secondary issue for Russia. What Putin and Medvedev really want is an end to NATO expansion at the expense of Russia. The Kremlin is furious over Georgia’s bid to join NATO and caused the organisation to postpone a decision on Georgia’s membership last month. The New York Times said that Russia having seen the success of their “bullying” on that score, have now decided to up the ante further. As a result, Abkhazia trembles on the poker table.

WA police raid on Sunday Times leaves politicians ducking for cover

In a move that defies credibility, Western Australian Treasurer Eric Ripper denied government involvement in the police raid on a Perth newspaper last week. Yesterday Ripper said he told WA parliament he made one phone call to report a concern that Cabinet confidentiality may have been breached. He then claimed he had no further involvement until told the raid had taken place. Ripper was at the centre of an article in the Sunday Times which suggested he was using taxpayer funds for party advertising.

Ripper’s claim does not explain why a massive force of sixteen police officers raided the newsroom of the Murdoch-owned weekly Wednesday. Major Fraud Squad (MFS) officers were there on behalf of the fraud squad which was trying to find who leaked information about a government decision to spend $16 million. Police say that five officers initially went to the Sunday Times but more were sent when the paper’s management initially refused to co-operate.

Police removed documents, blocked exits at the newspaper's building and searched staff. The search lasted four hours and the paper’s editor Sam Weir was interviewed for over an hour. Story writer Paul Lampathakis was not in the Sunday Times building at the time of the police raid but police removed several items and notes from his desk. Detective Senior Sergeant Dom Blackshaw said documents had been seized during the search as part of an investigation into "potential breaches of the secrecy provisions of the criminal code".

In February the Sunday Times published an article by Lampathakis which said WA’s Treasurer, Eric Ripper in his role as head of the cabinet communication sub-committee, "urgently" asked the expenditure review committee for $5.25 million for the first half of the year and a further $10.75 million to July next year. Lampathakis’s story quoted “government sources” who said the money was to be spent on a strategic advertising campaign to help Labour's bid for re-election later this year.

The government was more offended by the unauthorised disclosure than the misuse of public funds and immediately launched a witch-hunt to identify the culprit. They referred the matter to the Corruption and Crime Commission (CCC). The government dusted down Section 28 of the 2003 CCC Act which read that "certain officers" are obliged to report misconduct. The CCC claims it did not act on the referral because it already has more complaints than it can handle. They in turn referred the matter to the police where it ended up in the hands of the Major Fraud Squad.

While it is possible that the MFS conducted the raid without informing the government, it seems unlikely police senior management would have approved so public a move without some political consultation. Ripper’s claim of non-involvement in Wednesday’s events also flies in the face of a statement released by his boss. The day after the raid, the office of the Western Australian Premier Alan Carpenter (himself a former journalist) admitted it had made the complaint that led to the raid. A department spokesman said they referred allegations of the unauthorised disclosure of a confidential document to the WA police and the CCC.

The Sunday Times editor, Sam Weir was outraged by the raid on his newspaper. He said it was the second time in a month the paper had been raided by police over a Lampathakis story. The earlier Lampathakis story concerned the dumping of computers from Royal Perth Hospital that still contained private medical details of patients. Journalist union MEAA local secretary Michael Sinclair-Jones said the latest search was outrageous. "It's an attack on free speech," he said, "an outrageous attempt to stifle free speech and impede the press.”

Media coalition Australia's Right to Know chief and News Ltd CEO John Hartigan said the raid was a farcical and transparent attempt to punish journalists and whistleblowers. Cowan University journalism lecturer Kayt Davies told Crikey the police have learned an embarrassing lesson from the raid. He said he hopes the MFS now knows “that the media yowls like a pack of angry watchdogs if you squeeze it and so it’s best to use whatever discretion you have up your sleeve and to leave it alone.”

The raid was captured by the Sunday Times website Perth Now's own cameras and posted on Youtube. There is an excellent spot of editing in the piece when a scene showing a policeman claiming the search will not be “intrusive” is immediately followed by a shot of another putting on what looks like surgical gloves!

Cyclone Nargis devastates Burma

The official death toll for Burma’s Cyclone Nargis is likely to triple in the next few days. While current rough estimates are that over 15,000 people are dead, there are still another 30,000 people missing and a million more left homeless. Burma is struggling to cope with the aftermath of the cyclone with serious power shortages, lack of drinking water and the threat of disease all hampering rescue efforts. Large areas of the country are cut off with no communication to the outside world.

The director for the World Food Programme in Burma, Chris Raye, said information about the destruction in the low lying Irrawaddy Delta was still scanty, but it was clear it was a disaster on a very large scale. Raye said that unless the region had quick access to shelter, water and sanitation, the situation would deteriorate further. "We have a major humanitarian catastrophe in our hands,” he said. “The numbers of people in need are still to be determined, but I'm sure we're talking of hundreds and thousands.”

Several coastal villages were completely destroyed by the brunt of the storm and a sea surge. Burmese foreign minister Nyan Win said that 10,000 deaths alone (two thirds of all reported casualties) occurred in the coastal township of Bogolay which bore the brunt of the cyclone’s onslaught. Casualties also numbered in their thousands in nearby Labutta. The coastline was inundated by 3.5 metre waves which swept away most of the houses and gave their residents to chance to flee.

Despite government misgivings about admitting foreign organisations, a massive multinational rescue operation is now underway. International and local Red Cross teams were distributing essential supplies and bringing in more from Malaysia. "We're distributing supplies for those who need shelter, plastic sheeting to cover roofs, water purification tablets,” said a spokesman. “We are currently procuring 5,000 litres of water, cooking items, bednets, blankets and clothes for those in most need."

Their efforts will need reinforcing. The first cyclone of the 2008 season was a devastating one for Burma. Cyclone Nargis made landfall late Friday with sustained winds of up to 210kph and gusts of 240kph, the equivalent of a strong category three hurricane. Nargis came ashore across the Mouths of the Irrawaddy and followed the coastline northeast flooding the entire coastal plain. The fallow agricultural areas were especially hard hit. The capital Rangoon and its population of four million are almost completely surrounded by floods.

Eyewitness accounts at Birma News report that entire communities near Rangoon have been washed away. One resident said rooftops have been blown away and people have nowhere to live and nothing to eat. Another said all the trees have been uprooted, power lines are down and all the pagodas in the city are closed. A third said the uprooted trees have made most city streets impassable. Burmese TV footage on Youtube shows the extent of the damage in the capital:


With telephone lines out of order in the entire Irrawaddy delta region, eye-witness accounts are the only way of assessing the scale of the damage. In the delta township of Day Da Ye, 40km south of the capital, one man reported hundreds of bodies littering the streets. He saw firsthand the bodies of humans and animals along the main road through Day Da Ye while on his way to Rangoon.

The cyclone will have serious impact beyond the immediate region. Food prices in Rangoon and elsewhere have soared by up to 100 per cent since the storm, adding to the burden of millions of the country’s poor. The delta is Burma’s main rice-producing region and large areas of cropland were destroyed. Burma is a key rice exporter and the UN has questioned whether it will now be able to meet commitments to supply the staple to neighbouring Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, warning of "potentially serious effects". The price of rice has trebled across Asia this year, hitting a record $25 per 50 kilos in the week before the storm. Nargis will pile more misery on the poor of Asia.

why are we in Afghanistan.

On the eve of the Labor’s first budget, Professor Hugh White, the head of the Strategic and Defence Studies at the Australian National University (ANU), has called on Labor to review its commitment to Afghanistan. White said today the Rudd government has adopted the policies of the Howard government without examining what it is doing there and what the most cost-effective way of achieving it is. In an era of a so-called “open ended” commitment, White’s question is a valid one. The Afghanistan engagement is costing the Australian taxpayer almost half a billion dollars a year.

With Wayne Swan about to bring down the budget on Tuesday week, the government are not giving away how much Defence will be impacted by the activities of the almost mythical “razor gang”. Defence policy did not get much of a look-in during the election campaign but Kevin Rudd has made two commitments he must look after during his first term in office that will blow out defence spending.

The first of these directly affects the budget: During the high-stakes poker of the election campaign, Rudd matched Howard’s promises of at least three per cent increases in defence spending annually until 2016. With both sides keen to convince us we live in dangerous times, that means putting more than one billion dollars extra each year into Defence coffers.

The second commitment involves troop deployment. Rudd will withdraw some troops from Iraq, but with increase numbers in Afghanistan. The government has said it will withdraw troops from Timor Leste but with Jose Ramos-Horta’s attempted killers still on the loose, the situation could quickly worsen without Australian support. Labor has also committed to continued to support in RAMSI.

Australia will keep some troops in Iraq. The US has pressurised Australia to keep some symbolic presence in the multi-national command centres in Baghdad and Basra. Australia will also keep up naval and air deployments in the Gulf. Those that will be leaving are a thousand combat troops from the Overwatch Battle Group in Dhi Qar to be withdrawn and re-deployed to Afghanistan.

They will be joining an increasingly sticky situation. After an initial dream run of lack of casualties for several years, the Australian death count has been slowly rising in the last 12 months. Last week, Lance Corporal Jason Marks was the fifth Australian to die, killed by gunfire during a shootout with Taliban forces in Uruzgan.

The political commitment for Afghanistan appears to be there for the long haul. Since the election victory, Kevin Rudd has successfully kept up the unchallenged fiction of his “Iraq war bad, Afghanistan war good” argument. Given the sorry state of both countries in the wake of their invasions by the US this century, there seems little a western military force can do except exacerbate hatreds and delay the inevitable political transitions to hardline Islamist states. There is a consensus that without political dialogue only a long, hard war lies ahead. Yet as a puzzled Andrew Bartlett remarked earlier this year, there is very little public debate about it.

The war in Afghanistan is now almost seven years old. When asked why Australia is still there, Rudd responds in terms of the vague need to contain “threats of terrorism”. This argument fails to understand that the genie is well and truly out of that bottle. The London bombers were home-grown and more likely to have visited a Bora Bora disco in Ibiza than a Tora Bora cave in Nangarhar. Terrorism can no more be contained within Afghanistan’s borders than its copious opium crop.

The war itself has largely escaped without scrutiny in the Australian media as has the fact that President Hamid Karzai is these days little more than the mayor of Kabul. Reliant on the dubious support of various warlords, Karzai is also a marked man and cannot even trust the support of his own police and armed forces as last week’s assassination attempt revealed.

Tom Hyland in the Sunday Age has been one of the few Australian journalists on the ground to try and tell a more complete story. Yesterday, he wrote how prisoners captured by Australian and Dutch troops were tortured after they were handed over to Afghanistan. Australia has no facilities to hold prisoners and the Dutch camp is limited so they handed them over to the National Directorate of Security (NDS). The world knows about the problem because a Dutch journalist obtained documents under FOI that had testimony of prisoner ill-treatment at the hands of the NDS.

Such considered verdicts of what is occurring on the ground in Afghanistan are rare. For most it merely expedient to demonise the “Taliban” as an enemy that must be defeated. The fact that the “Taliban” no longer exists as one single, integrated body is not considered. The John Howard argument (inherited fully by Rudd) was that our troops were helping to save democracy, prevent the setting up of a narco-state and stop terrorism. It has failed on all three objectives.

The Afghan government and their laws are no better than the enemy they fight. Kabul residents are already seeing gradual returns to the Islamic law that they endured in the 1990s. The war, meanwhile has increased Afghanistan’s prominence as a drug exporter. And as for sponsoring terrorism, Afghanistan plays second fiddle to neighbour and supposed-ally Pakistan.

The total casualty figure for the war in Afghanistan is not known but likely to be in the hundreds of thousands. The central objective of Operating Enduring Freedom has not been met. Osama Bin Laden was never located. The Australian Defence Force (ADF) has been involved from the outset with bi-partisan support from the main political parties. With a nod and a wink to cricket analogies, the Australian mission is known as “Operation Slipper”.

As of April this year, the ADF has 1,025 personnel in Afghanistan’s slips cordon. Those forces included a national command centre in Kabul, a liaison group at International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters, two task forces in Uruzgan, RAAF surveillance at Kandahar airport and a helicopter group also in Kandahar. There is a small artillery contingent embedded with the British in Helmand. Australia also has federal police and a Secret Intelligence Service station on the ground.

But that is not enough for some politicians. According to then defence minister Brendan Nelson, the 2007 budget handed down an additional $1.3 billion over five years to support the ADF. That massive amount did not include Afghanistan for which another hefty $703 million was found over four years.

Unsurprisingly the Liberals are saying Nelson's replacement Joel Fitzgibbon must protect their defence patch from this year’s cuts. For now Swan has refused to rule out the multi-billion dollar defence budget from being quarantined from the spending reductions. But Rudd's election promise means the Afghan war will be spared the razor.

Who cares about the future of journalism?

“No-one in the Australian media”, seems to be the answer to that question. In the wash-up of an important two day “future of journalism” conference organised in Sydney last week by the Australian’s journalist union MEAA (Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance), there has been almost zero coverage of it in any of the mainstream media. Despite having luminaries such as Philip Meyer, Jay Rosen and Roy Greenslade address the conference on such matters as the funding of quality journalism, the digital challenge, and the future of newspapers, none of the Fairfax or Murdoch dailies has shown the slightest inclination to even acknowledge the issues after the event (the Sydney Morning Herald printed one article beforehand). It is astonishing that very few of the journalists who attended the conference, could be bothered to describe what happened there.

This point was picked up today by the Australian Newsagency Blog which contrasted the very public debate about these matters in the US and UK compared to the dearth of discussion here in Australia. While the newsagency blog is clearly a vested interest, its point is totally valid and a condemnation of the apathy of local journalists towards the future of the industry. “Here,” said the blog, “it appears to be the topic of which we do not speak, certainly not in the mainstream press.”

The newsagency blog did point out a couple of honourable exceptions to the code of omerta that seems to have descended on the conference. The most notable coverage came from Crikey’s ever-excellent media commentator Margaret Simons. Writing in Crikey's daily email on Friday, she reported the conference’s opening speech by ABC boss Mark Scott who discussed impending areas of market failure including the production of local drama and the support of investigative journalism. She also reported on Jay Rosen who spoke to the gathering from New York. Rosen used the metaphor of journalists as migrants to a digital age. According to Simons, Rosen said that like all migrants we need to think carefully about what is really essential to us in our old traditions and culture, and what we should leave behind in the old country.

Simons not only reported on the conference, she was also a participant. In the Thursday afternoon session, she was “in conversation” with British media commentator Roy Greenslade. Greenslade is a former editor of the Daily Mirror and now blogs for the authoritative Guardian Media site. Simons asked Greenslade whether he had any comment on the editorial independence dispute at the Melbourne Age. Greenslade admitted that the Age’s Scottish editor Andrew Jaspan was a friend but wondered “how a man of limited talent had risen so high”.

Greenslade’s own take on the conference was that “Australian journalists are both facing up to the digital challenge" but were "fearing its consequences". He said the key question discussed was how journalism would be funded as both ad revenues and sales decline. He thought that Rosen's injunction to the conference not to care about commercial considerations was “hopelessly idealistic”. Greenslade had no easy answers to the problem but thinks advertising “will still raise a lot of money, enough to fund small staffs.” Perhaps Greenslade needs to look at the explosion of media in the United Arab Emirates and the rise of the new daily The National for a less pessimistic view of the future of print. There it seems that if the advertising dollar is available, it will always seek an audience.

But if these questions are seemingly lost to the Australian press, there was some interest in the blogosphere. The influential Mark Bahnisch did not discuss the event in great detail but generated some debate among his Larvatus Prodeo commentators. He also pointed to Simons’ articles and another by Rachel Hills in New Matilda. Hills quoted Crikey editor Eric Beecher’s prediction that Sydney and Melbourne would soon become one paper towns and Philip Meyer’s arbitrary deadline for the death of newspapers in the 2040s. She saw the three major issues for journalists as: building communities, making connections between macro and micro interests, and role convergence (where journalists write, edit and present the one story). She came out of the conference “excited by the possibilities” for the journalism industry. Despite Hills’ own optimism, she also reported how one depressed attendee told her she felt like stabbing herself during the final debate of the day.

My personal view is that this conference on digital futures was crying out to be blogged about. I would have loved to performed that role myself but with the conference cost set at a prohibitive $660 for non MEAA members, it was clear that only insiders were welcome. And if most of these insiders are seemingly uninterested in the changing face of journalism, then I’m glad to be outside the tent, pissing in. As Greenslade, Rosen, Beecher and others seem to agree on, this tent is about to collapse. But there is little consensus on how the sky will look in the brave new world that replaces it.

The betrayal of the Balibo Five

The Melbourne International Film Festival has announced that Robert Connolly’s new film “Balibo” will be premiered at their 2008 event in July-August. Connolly is the director of “The Bank” and “Three Dollars” and his third film is currently filming in Darwin. Connolly may struggle to meet the festival date as he is finding it difficult to get accommodation for his cast and crew in Darwin’s tourist high season.

The film stars Anthony LaPaglia as Australian journalist Roger East who investigated the murder of five fellow journalists at the border town of Balibo during the Indonesian invasion of Portuguese Timor in 1975. East himself died in Dili at the hands of the Indonesian Army but it is the fate of the Balibo Five he investigated that has had the bigger profile as facts emerged after the event that cast shame on two Australian Governments of the era: Whitlam’s and Fraser’s.

Despite the fact there have been multiple official enquiries about the incident, the most forensic analysis of what actually happened in Timor appears in the book “Death in Balibo: Lies in Canberra” by Desmond Ball and Hamish McDonald. Ball is an intelligence expert with telling insights into the activities of the shadowy Defence Signals Directorate, the Australian government body charged with listening in on Indonesian operations. McDonald meanwhile was at the scene of the crime near the time. His fortune was that he was a Jakarta-based reporter (for the Sydney Morning Herald and the now defunct National Times, among others) so he saw the scene from the winning side.

This was not the case for five men who tried to report the war for Australian TV from the Timorese side. While it may amaze those that watch the rubbish served up by Channels Seven and Nine in the name of news these days, it was reporters from these stations that died while trying to tell the story. Their crews deliberately rushed to the border to report the unfolding story of Indonesia's invasion of East Timor.

It was a complicated story. Timor was a historical curiosity and a hangover from the earliest times of European navigation when Portugal was a major power. Their fall from power can be traced to the independence of Brazil in 1822, but they continued to maintain a scattered empire in the 20th century in places such as Angola, Mozambique, Goa, Macao and Timor. India liberated Goa in 1961 and the rest of the empire fell apart when the long-standing Portuguese dictatorship was overthrown in 1974.

Timorese nationalists felt the winds of change and several liberation groups began to agitate for a role in their own destiny. The largest of these, Fretelin, took their stamp from Mozambique and were steeped in 1970s socialist liberation ideas. Its leaders included the journalist Jose Ramos-Horta and army lieutenant Roque Rodrigues. They sought the earliest possible independence from Portugal.

The second was the Timorese Democratic Union, the UDT, which was favoured by the 25,000 Portuguese-speaking middle class of the island. They were more favourable to Lisbon but also wanted eventually independence with a more cautious timetable of a decade or more. The least influential group of Timorese were the Association for the Integration of Timor with Indonesia which became known as Apodeti. Not only unpopular within Timor, they were mostly ignored by their larger neighbour until about 1974.

While Jakarta adopted a position of a Pan-Indonesian nation when it gained independence after World War II, it was content to set its borders as the old Dutch East Indies colony to begin with. This included West Papua which it annexed in 1961. But it left the Portuguese colony alone until its interest was pique by the fall of the Portuguese dictatorship in the 1974 carnation revolution.

In September that year Indonesian President Suharto’s plans for Timor were boosted by a visit of Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. According to the official Australian record of that trip, Whitlam explicitly stated Portuguese Timor should become part of Indonesia but only with the “properly expressed wishes” of the people of Portuguese Timor. Indonesia knew it could never influence the Marxist-leaning Fretelin, but with the support of Apodesi it could possibly buy off the middle-class UDT.

Meanwhile the Australian government began to assist Indonesia in its ambitions by denying Fretelin all official succour. They refused hospitality to Ramos-Horta in the Dili consulate and would not meet him in Canberra. Portugal was no help either as it dealt with its own internal problems. Throughout the rest of 1974 and into 1975 Jakarta began to launch a military build-up around East Timor. Radio stations blasted pro-Indonesian propaganda across the border claiming that Communist Fretelin were victimising the pro-Indonesian “majority”.

Australia was well aware of the build-up. The Indonesians went as far as briefing the Australian embassy of their plans, cleverly counting on the fact that if the Aussies didn’t complain to begin with, they were complicit in the eventual invasion. But if the Australian Government was compliant, the country’s media was not and was increasingly asking Canberra questions about the fate of Timor.

The trigger for action was the UDT coup of August 1975. In an effort to counter the growing strength of Fretelin, UDT took control of the Timorese capital Dili and sent the small Portuguese force packing. But this backfired when Fretelin overwhelmed them four days later. By September Fretelin had de facto control over East Timor.
The coup sent Australian newspapers and broadcasters scrambling to get people on the ground to report the quickly changing situation. Against a Government ban, then Channel Nine news director Gerald Stone and his boss Kerry Packer hired a fishing trawler to cross to Dili. Stone said Packer took his own arsenal along to enjoy target practise from the back of the boat. Fretelin encouraged journalists to come. Ramos-Horta said later: “it was the only weapon we had in this fighting for influencing, [and] for winning sympathy around the world”.

Channel Seven sent a three man crew to investigate the war. The crew’s reporter was 29 year old Greg Shackleton. Shackleton was keen for a challenge, bored as he was with his Melbourne round of stories on domestic politics, car sales and industrial disputes. With him went 27 year old New Zealand cameraman Gary Cunningham and 21 year old sound recorder Tony Stewart. Shackleton’s boss told him to be careful and avoid “foolhardiness”.

Fresh from the success of their trawler raid into Dili, Nine’s Stone wanted to launch a second expedition to obtain proof of Indonesian incursion into Timor. He sent in a two man team: 28 year old Scottish born reporter Malcolm Rennie and British cameraman Brian Peters who had accompanied Stone and Packer to Dili on the trawler. Stone also warned them against adventurism and told them the object of the trip was to get the story out.

Both crews were on the ground in Dili and working by 10 October 1975. All five men had just four days to live. The Seven crew drove to the Indonesian border accompanied by a Fretelin driver. On the 12th, Melbourne’s Seven news carried Shackleton’s earlier report from Dili of the Indonesian capture of a border village. A day later the two Nine men arrived in Balibo where they met the Seven crew. Balibo was the most forward position held by Falintil, Fretelin’s armed wing. An Indonesian frigate lay close to shore off the Indonesian border town of Motaain. Rennie interviewed Ramos-Horta near the border. Ramos-Horta predicted a “massive attack” and took both crew’s footage back with him to Dili. The Australians settled in an abandoned house they dubbed “the embassy” or occasionally the “Commonwealth Secretariat” to take into account the Brits and Kiwis in their ranks.

The last footage of the men alive was taken by Portuguese TV which was in Balibo on the 15th. Their film showed four of the men drinking beer in the square with their shirts off. It also showed their house with a sign and flag painted “Australia”. Next to it was a slogan “Falintil esta sempre com o povo Maubere” (Falintil is always with the Maubere people). Maubere was the Fretelin word for the East Timorese common man. Before the Portuguese left, the Australians asked them had they any beer or wine as they expected to stay in Balibo a few days.

Both Indonesian and Australian authorities were aware of their presence there. Indonesia was about to get into serious phase of “Operation Flamboyant” – their covert war in Timor. They were not about to let five nosy journalists get in the way of their ambitions and made plans to execute them as a matter of priority once they took Balibo. Their plans to do so were intercepted by the blandly named Defence Signals Directorate (DSD), Australia’s most secret intelligence organisation. The DSD grew out of Australia’s wartime collaboration with British and American forces to intercept radio transmissions and break ciphers.

By the 1970s, the key countries that the DSD were monitoring were Indonesia and China. DSD knew exactly what Operation Flamboyant was all about and also knew that five journalists were in the danger area. They intercepted one message about them that said “we can’t have any witnesses”. Whitlam’s Government knew this too. But with Opposition leader Malcolm Fraser about to instigate the dismissal by pulling the pin on supply, Whitlam’s own tenure was too insecure to worry about five journalists in Timor.


The invasion began at midnight 15 October with sustained mortar attacks on the border towns. By the following mid morning, armed attackers appeared in Balibo. There is conflicting testimony to what exactly happened to the five journalists. However the broad consensus is that Indonesian soldiers fired into the “embassy” before one of the journalists emerged. He was motioned to a back wall where he was killed with a knife in the back.

Another Timorese witness saw three more bodies inside the house slumped in chairs at the table while a fourth body lay against a wall. Others heard orders to “shoot them all”. Later, the Apodesi commander of the raid Tomas Goncalves boasted of having killed two himself with a knife. The Indonesians then burned all five bodies. The DSD intercepted a signal about the journalists which said “we already have them under control”.

Fretelin reported the five men as missing on the 17th. Later that day, Canberra and the embassy in Jakarta were alerted to the DSD intercepted signal. Their reaction was to pass blame to the TV networks for sending their men into a danger area. But to protect the DSD, they could not publicly acknowledge the men were dead. Jakarta wanted to conceal its involvement in what it pretended was a “civil war” while a complicit Canberra didn’t want their knowledge of it exposed.

On 20 October, the Jakarta daily Kompas reported an interview with the UDT leader who said the bodies of “four men” were found in a house in Balibo. This was corroborated by more evidence later in the week that Westerners had died but the numbers were always fuzzy. For three weeks, the Government pleaded ignorance until Whitlam wrote to Suharto asking for confirmation. Suharto never responded and Whitlam was sacked four days later.

A month after their deaths, Indonesian secret police handed Australian ambassador Richard Woolcott a box containing charred human remains, camera gear, notepapers and papers belonging four of the men. The next of kin of the men did not find out until 5 December, the day the remains of the journalists were buried in a Jakarta cemetery. The mourners were embassy staff and spouses, resident Australian journalists and one Indonesian journalist.

By then Indonesian forces had invaded Dili. Roger East was there to see them land. He reported most of the town’s citizens had fled to the hills. He refused pleas by Fretelin to retreat to the back of town. Instead he went to the communication centre where he said Indonesians were in the city, had taken the airport and would be at his building at any moment. This transmission cost him his life. But while the death of six Australian journalists in defence of freedom is a tragedy, it is far less than the one of a million Timorese that gave their life to their country over the next 25 years. The lesson of Balibo is that Canberra’s appeasement of Indonesia was not only cowardly – it was proved wrong by time. Suharto was overthrown in 1997 and Timor Leste became independent three years later. The 1975 graffiti held good: Falintil was always with the Maubere people.

London waits as Labour face massive council election defeat

While counting continues in the London mayoral contest, the ruling Labour Party has suffered a massive defeat elsewhere in council elections in England and Wales. As of midday Friday, British time, the Conservatives had taken 44 per cent of the votes with the Liberal Democrats on 25 per cent and Labour relegated to third place with just 24 per cent. The margin of defeat is significant as it is similar to the watershed defeat of John Major’s Tory Government in the 1995 council elections just two years before he was voted out of office. If these results are repeated in the next general election which must happen by mid 2010, the Conservatives would win a landslide victory of about 150 seats under Britain’s crude first-past-the-post electoral system.

The London mayoral election is one of the few British elections that uses proportional representation and this is the main reason why it is proving so hard to call. Labour maverick Ken Livingstone is seeking a third term in office since he won the resurrected mayoralty in 2000. Livingstone was also mayor of the Greater London Council in the 1980s until it was abolished by Margaret Thatcher. Livingstone has always been to the left of his party and has been a constant thorn in the side of his own national leadership. But he can take credit for the successful congestion charge policy that has cut traffic by a fifth in the capital though has not yet impacted air quality.

Livingstone’s opponent this time is a fellow maverick. He is 43 year old Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, more plainly known as Boris Johnson. Johnson is an MP, a journalist and TV personality with chaotic blond hair and a shambling, jokey image. Educated in the classics at Eton and Oxford, he worked his way through the journalist ranks to become editor of The Spectator in 1999. He was elected Tory MP for Henley-on-Thames in 2001 after the retirement of Michael Heseltine. He became a shadow minister in 2004 but was sacked that same year for lying about a sexual affair. He won a place back in the shadow cabinet a year later and this time held onto it despite allegations of another affair, this time with Times journalist Anna Fazackerley.

Johnson resigned his post in July 2007 when he announced his decision to stand for London Mayor. After comfortably winning the Tory party nomination, he announced in typical flamboyant style that "King Newt's days are numbered," alluding to Livingstone's hobby of keeping newts in a garden pond. Significantly Johnson has dropped his opposition to the congestion charges in an effort for voters to take him seriously as a candidate. He has also concentrated his campaign on London’s more populous outer suburbs while Livingstone prefers to court the more trendy inner suburbs.

Johnson’s gamble may now have paid off with a final exit poll showing he has won a narrow victory. A YouGov survey suggested that Johnson was six percentage points ahead of Livingstone with low profile Liberal Democrat candidate Brian Paddick a distant third. Many analysts had predicted Paddick’s preferences would decide the election but if the YouGov result is accurate, Johnson will win outright. The final result will be announced later today, British time.

The result will be another shattering blow to the tattered regime of Gordon Brown. With results from 100 out of 159 local councils officially announced, the Conservatives had won 45, Labour 14 and the Liberal Democrats six. The remainder were not controlled by any single party. Speaking this morning, Brown blamed his party’s poor performance on the effects of the global credit crunch on Britain. But while his party has been dogged by scandals, poor polls and dissent over tax and anti-terrorism laws, his position as Prime Minister remains safe for now.

Writing on his BBC blog site, Nick Robinson says that despite the results, there is no clamour among Labour MPs for a change of leader. However he says that the Tory’s most successful election result since John Major surprisingly won the 1992 election (despite polls suggesting he would lose to Neil Kinnock’s Labour) means that “something drastic” needs to happen to prevent David Cameron from defeating Brown in the next election. The only advice Robinson has for Brown is: “he will simply have to hope that - in the words of the old election song - things can only get better”. This election song is of little comfort to Brown, and in the context of current worldwide economic conditions, highly unlikely to be sung.

The National: Abu Dhabi English language newspaper's test of independence

The wealthy United Arab Emirate of Abu Dhabi is the home of a brave new experiment in Middle Eastern media: an English language newspaper that promises editorial independence from its royal family owners. The National published its first edition on 17 April to close scrutiny in the Arab world. On Monday, Deputy editor Hassan M. Fattah, told his former employers The New York Times that there would be no government ministers in his office telling him what to write. “Being government-owned does not equal being government-run,” he said.

Some of the paper's early issues seem to back up Fattah’s claim with reports on the city’s accommodation crisis, overcrowded schools and hospitals turning away critically ill patients. However many observers are doubtful the National will be able to maintain its independent stance in a part of the world not renowned for its press freedoms. Until September 2007, journalists who wrote critical stories in the United Arab Emirates could be jailed for defamation, and the country also recently signed on to an Arab League broadcast charter asking media not to offend governments in the region. Neighbouring Qatar-based Al Jazeera hit out at the charter as a “risk to the freedom of expression in the Arab world”.

However the charter does not yet apply to newspapers such as The National. The paper’s owners, the newly formed Abu Dhabi Media Company, is a diversified government-owned media conglomerate with interests in TV, radio, magazines and Arab language newspapers. They unveiled the newspaper in a glittering event at the Emirates Palace Hotel attended by the most important members of the Abu Dhabi royalty that rules the emirate. The chairman of Abu Dhabi Media Company Mohamed Khalaf Al Mazrouei told the elite gathering that The National “was born out of a vision that recognises the key role that a free, professional and enlightened press plays in the national development process."

The newspaper’s first editor-in-chief is Martin Newland, formerly of London’s Daily Telegraph and Canada’s National Post. He sits at the head of 200 journalists mostly ex-Telegraph employees and also from other British and American newspapers and magazines, including The New Yorker. Before the launch, Newland spoke to the Guardian of his thrill to be launching a national newspaper at a late stage in his career. “If truth be told, it is also a late stage of the career of newspapers themselves for an event of this kind to be occurring,” he said. “I cannot imagine many parts of the world where anyone would think of embarking on such a project."

But while newspapers may be in decline elsewhere, The National is at the crest of a wave of new publishing ventures in the United Arab Emirates. There are currently eight English newspapers and five major Arabic newspapers in the UAE and that number is rapidly growing. The National itself reported that the 30-year-old Khaleej Times (Dubai’s English language paper will soon announce a publishing partnership with the New Times Company’s International Herald Tribune. Meanwhile the UK based Financial Times launched a bi-weekly Middle East edition this Tuesday based in Abu Dhabi with a branch office in Dubai. These ventures follow the UAE-based Arab Media Group December 2007 launch of Emirates Business 24/7, the Middle East's first English-language daily dedicated to business and economic news.

The cause of the media explosion in this part of the gulf can be traced to the country’s exponential economic growth in real estate, government and financial sectors. These in turn have generated massive increases in advertising spend. Ad spend in the UAE increased from $869 million in 2005 to $1.3 billion in 2007, the highest in the Middle East, according to the 2007 Advertising Spend Report of Pan Arab Research Centre. Of this around two thirds went to Arabic and English newspapers.

The newspaper growth is part of a drive for Abu Dhabi (the national capital) to come out of the shadow of its flashier Dubai relative and establish itself as a cultural hub of the Middle East. Abu Dhabi's urban planners are determined not to repeat the mistakes of Dubai's unchecked growth and erosion of local heritage and instead are channelling its massive wealth into the creation of a new cultural and entertainment oasis in the desert. Abu Dhabi is set to become home to branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums while the prestigious Sorbonne university is opening a campus. The city is also getting a new opera house.

Editor Martin Newland sees a major role for The National in this cultural shift. He said he wanted the paper to “reflect society, help that society evolve and, perhaps most importantly, promote the bedrock traditions and virtues that must be preserved even in times of change.” A healthy share of the $1.3 billion ad revenues would help Newland’s cause immensely.