Massacre in Guinea: Putting down the bauxite rebellion

Guinean army forces have massacred over 150 unarmed people protesting on Monday against the country’s unelected leader. The head of the military Moussa Dadis Camara seized power in a coup following the death of longtime dictator Lansana Conté in December. Protests broke out in the capital Conakry after it seemed likely Camara would stand as a candidate in a presidential election postponed to January. Opponents are demanding he honour a longstanding pledge to stand aside and transition Guinea to civilian rule (photo of arrest in Conakry by AFP via Al Jazeera).

Though Camara has not formally declared his candidacy, his supporters have been actively promoting his chances. They were allowed a peaceful rally on Saturday in the city of Labe. But when the opposition tried to launch their rally on Monday, all hell broke loose. Political and civil society leaders had called the rally at Conakry’s main football stadium two weeks ago but authorities banned the meeting. Despite the ban, thousands assembled at the 25,000 seater stadium pushing past military to gain entrance to the ground. They carried placards reading “No to Dadis” and “Down with the army in power” before police eventually stopped the crowds from gaining entry. Suddenly soldiers drove into the stadium. They descended from their vehicles and shot first into the air. Then they began to open fire on demonstrators and beat them up.

By the middle of the afternoon Donka Hospital in Conakry had admitted hundreds with bullet wounds and injuries from beatings. A number of women in the demonstration were stripped naked and sexually assaulted by security forces who also went on a looting rampage. The UN, the EU, the AU and the US all expressed condemnation of the massacre but none are likely to act against “a domestic matter”. Of more interest is the attitude of the international mining companies who stand to make large amounts of money in the country.

Guinea has the world’s largest concentration of bauxite (aluminium ore) with 30 percent of the world’s reserves. US giant Alcoa in partnership with Canadian Alcan have exclusive rights to mine bauxite in Guinea’s Sangaredi Plateau. Together they run Cie des Bauxites de Guinée the world’s largest bauxite mine. Bauxite is used in cement, chemicals, face makeup, soda cans, dishwashers, siding for houses, and other aluminium products and is a highly profitable industry for the two multi-nationals.

Guinea’s relationship with the Russian giant UC RUSAL is not so healthy. Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska’s company are in a row with a Guinean court. The court cancelled the sale in 2006 of the Friguia refinery which UC RUSAL bought for $20 million, far below independent valuations of $250 million. Russia is claiming the refinery is now their legitimate property.

Rio Tinto is also in trouble with Guinea. It is challenging a decision the government made last year to take away control of an important iron ore project. Government told Rio its licence to mine has been rescinded. The mine at Simandou is one of the world’s largest undeveloped iron ore deposits, with potential to generate more than $10 billion a year. The mine is crucial to Rio to ward off takeover threats from BHP Billiton and analysts say Guinea’s move is an attempt to get a better bargaining position at a vulnerable time for the buyer.

But the latest protests have made Guinea vulnerable too. Camara is playing for high stakes. Though the country remains an economic basket case, he and his cronies can earn millions in company kickbacks. But he needs the big companies to stay. If he cannot control the streets they will take their mining dollars elsewhere. For Guinea’s millions of desperately poor neither outcome will help them much.

Keeping up with the ipjones: buying an Iphone

I am recovering with a glass of Irish whiskey after a day of technological terror. It’s the fault of a phone.

No doubt subliminally inspired by the weekend’s lamentable isnackery (I can’t believe it’s not beta butter), today I rushed out and bought an iphone. It’s a luxury item that will cost me $1300 or thereabouts to Telstra over two years. But I’d been meaning to buy one for some time so I felt the rushing was justified. It was going to give me more communications options which would become a useful part of my outdoor armoury. The purchase and its aftermath were stressful events, if neither unexpected. I found the whole commercial experience of choosing and then buying a phone very difficult. (pic is either my new phone or that mysterious stone from 2001: A Space Odyssey)

Part of me hates change because it means unlearning old ways of doing things. Not being part of the igeneration, I was happy to hold on to the old phone even though it was well out of contract. Inertia was eventually overcome by the idea of communicating on the run. The ability to send text and pictures to the Internet in near real-time was appealing.

This was my second attempt to buy an iphone. Last time I went to my local Telstra shop they told me there was a four week delay so I didn’t bother. I would have had it by now. But today there was no waiting period. Choice was limited – I wanted a sedate black-backed phone but there were none in that colour. Impatient to wait, I chose a more attention-grabbing white cover.

Technical spec was not as much a big deal for me. Knowing about Moore’s Law and resource-hungry apps I should have gone for the 32 meg phone instead of the 16. But that was going to cost $200 more and I didn’t think it was worth it. I will repent my stinginess at leisure. I paid an extra $10 a month for 150 meg of monthly download time. Time will tell if that amount is too big, sufficient, or too small. I forgot to ask how many megapixels the camera is but found out later it’s two MP.

When I took the phone home I panicked as I couldn’t see my contacts list of telephone numbers anywhere. I shuddered what that would mean if it was gone. I rang the shop who patiently assured me they had copied them across to the new SIM but I would have to import the damn things.

It took me a while to find out how. Neither the “Finger Tips” document nor the Iphone 3GS “Important Product Information Guide” were much use as a user manual (and the text in the latter “important” document was so small, it could have been borrowed from the Rosetta Stone). But with much trial, error, and Saxon swearwords I found the import screen on the phone. My contact list was back, to great relief.

If that all went ok in the end, the same cannot be said for iTunes set-up. The first thing I wanted to do was download the free Twitter and Facebook apps. In order to do that I needed an iTunes account. I went through the longwinded account set-up (including spending forever to decide on my “secret question” – but I’d have to kill you if I told you what that was). Apple asked me for a credit card number which they nicely said they would keep for later transactions. I baulked at this option – I was only there for a free app.

It was a slow process. Accompanied by loud oaths, my tedious attempts at club-footed typing was struggling on a small and unfamiliar keyboard. Several times I misspelt the userid or password or had to go off to another screen to find the underscore or the at-sign. Whenever I made an error, which was common, I’d try and correct but often would accidentally send myself to some other screen and I’d have to start from scratch again. It took me a while to find the “return” key.

Eventually I created my account and found an email in my inbox. I tried clicking on this link from the phone itself but it insisted the link must come from a computer. When I did try on the laptop, the verification email took me to this screen (shown right) which told me I was “just a few steps away” from downloading music, HD TV shows, movies, and more from the iTunes Store.

Just a few steps away? But all I was doing was verifying. Why was this so complex? It didn’t look like a verification screen to me and there was nothing there that said I was verified or needed to do something else. I tried to re-download the Twitter app but no surprise, it was still telling me my account was unverified.

After several repeat attempts (complete with more spelling mistakes and misturns) I decided maybe nothing was happening because I didn’t have iTunes installed.

But when I tried to install it, the windows installer crashed. This was the signal the Gods were against me and I eventually gave up none the wiser as to how to download free apps. I can possibly blame the devil’s own defective code of my Vista operating system for the installer problem. But Apple’s support procedures are poor too. The material sent out with the iphone is abysmal and there is no contact information on the “do not reply” verification email.

I had cursed KafkApple enough and was still anxious to try out Twitter on the phone. I logged onto my twitter homepage via the phone’s Safari brower and typed in a test message. But my fingers were taking some time to get used to the smaller keyboard. So the initial tweet read “testing from ipjone”. Happy that something worked first time, I barely noticed the typo. But others did. Stilgherrian was quickest to respond: “Your ‘ipjone’ seems to be working perfectly,” he reassured me.

If only he knew. Call me Ipjonah. Here’s hoping this technophobe fares better in the morning.

Guinness at 250

Guinness celebrated its 250th anniversary with a party in four countries on the weekend. Festivities peaked in the beer’s spiritual Dublin home on Thursday, but the anniversary was also celebrated with concerts in Lagos, Kuala Lumpur, and New York. The day celebrated 24 September 1759, when Arthur Guinness signed a 9000 year lease on the St James’s Gate brewery in Dublin and began a beer brand that became the best known in the world. The anniversary party kicked off at 5.59 pm (17:59) in Dublin with a toast to Arthur Guinness, before carrying on long into the night in the other cities (photo of McDaids of Dublin: author’s collection).

One reason for Guinness’s worldwide success is the quality and quantity of its advertising. Britain’s First World War government can take some credit. It passed legislation to reduce the alcoholic strength of beers to promote the war effort. Guinness was hurt more than most as it needed the strength to preserve the quality of its extra stout. Guinness consumption decreased so badly by the mid 1920s, the company hired SH Benson advertising agency to turn it around. Benson toured Dublin pubs where most people said they drank it because “Guinness is Good for You”. They also asked British doctors who confirmed the beer was a panacea for every ailment.

The success of the subsequent campaign was legendary, though Guinness’s health claims were argued for years. The company is now careful to make no medical claims for its drinks. It has not been able to use the “Guinness is Good for You” slogan since the 1960s and it has not appeared on a poster since 1937. However 2003 research from the University of Wisconsin found a pint of Guinness at mealtimes is good for the heart, unlike a pint of lager. It found Guinness was full of flavonoids (also found in dark fruits and berries as well as red wine and chocolate) which reduce damage to the lining of arteries.

But Guinness is more than about health. In 2004, a British survey named the Guinness can widget as the greatest technological invention of the last 40 years. It was invented in the 1980s by Guinness brewer Peter Hildebrand who created a jet of foam instead of a jet of air inside a can. The plastic moulded device sits on the top of each can with a small amount of beer and nitrogen, trapped in the widget. When the can is opened, the nitrogen is forced out through the beer, which creates the creamy head. The resulting Draught Guinness in cans saw the brand take off again in Britain and increased pub sales too.

Guinness is now brewed in almost 50 countries, with ten million glasses drunk around the world daily. It is made from four natural ingredients: barley, water, hops and yeast. Its dark colour and distinctive taste come from the roasted barley. The Guinness family have not been directly involved in the management of the company since 1992 although they retain a financial interest in the business. In 1998 Guinness merged with Grand Metropolitan to form Diageo, now the largest drinks company in the world. Among the Diageo brands are Smirnoff, Baileys, Johnny Walker, J&B, Gordon’s, Captain Morgan, Bushmills and Bundaberg Rum.

The background of Arthur Guinness is shrouded in mystery. Although a Protestant, he appropriated the coat of arms from an aristocratic Catholic family named Magennis. Through this sleight of hand, his family inherited the title of Earl of Iveagh which gave later family members great prestige. In 1759 Guinness began brewing several beers and ales at St James Gate in Dublin. On a visit to London he saw porters enjoying a new drink named for their occupation. Porter was a mixture of beer and ale and when introduced to Ireland, Guinness decided to brew his own version. It took decades to establish but he eventually abandoned all his other products to concentrate on the porter he named after himself.

He exported the first shipment of Guinness to England in 1769 but the stout did not travel well. By the 1830s British factories had taken over the bottling and distribution and helped turn it into an international brand. By the 1890s, Guinness insisted all its products had uniform labelling and trademarks. The Guinness brewery in Dublin was the largest in the world, and Arthur Guinness and Sons was floated on the London Stock Exchange. But it wasn’t until 1950 that Guinness gained control of its global export business. They had immediate results and increased sales of its export product from 35,000 barrels to 300,000 barrels in ten years.

The name Guinness remains indelibly linked to Ireland in general, and Dublin in particular (rebel city Cork prefers Murphy’s stout or Beamish). When renowned writer and frequent Guinness drinker Brendan Behan was asked “hasn’t Guinness been good to the people of Dublin?” he supposedly replied “haven’t the people of Dublin been good to Guinness.”

Behan left unanswered the question whether Guinness taste better in Dublin than anywhere else. This writer is one of many who think it does (my favourite Guinness pub is Mulligans of Poolbeg Street). But as Mark Griffiths writes in “Guinness is Guinness”, we are probably wrong. He quotes Guinness Ireland Brand Controller Mark Ody who says it is a myth, up to a point. “A pint in Dublin might not be a week old [whereas] in England it can be two months in the chain,” he said. “It’s pure myth and speculation – but fresh is fresh is fresh”. No matter, wherever you are having a Guinness this weekend, enjoy. Here’s to the next 250 years. Sláinte go léir.

Half way house

I’m half way through an 18 month master’s of journalism at QUT, actually slightly over the exact half-way mark as the mid-term break that arrives next week is strangely week 11 out of 14.. Mine is a three semester course-work degree, so the end result will not be treated as highly as if were a research masters. However a third of my work is thesis. That will be due in late May 2010 and I want that to be treated and examined as if it were a full research thesis. (pic: QUT Kelvin Grove “Education A Block Building” by Derek Barry)

Though I’ve yet to nail down a decent journalism-related research question for the thesis, I have chosen to broadly situate the study within blogs and their place in the world, But whatever the question will eventually be (and I’ll need to get that sorted by the end of this year) it makes sense to discuss it within the context of my own blogging. Reflective analysis means applying an honest blowtorch to my own work prior to making any grand statements about the wider world.

So this post is the first attempt to publicly verbalise the journey. I will be trying to do this on a weekly basis between now and June 2010 (though there might be a few weeks off between semesters). It will be as open and self-critical as I can make it. This won’t be easy – I made the decision to discuss blogs back in February and for reasons I cannot yet easily explain I’ve been dragging my heels on mentioning it in my own blog.

Or blogs plural. I currently spend several hours every day running three blogs (or two and a half to be more accurate). I maintain two versions of Woolly Days. The original started on Blogger in September 2005 and a new one started on WordPress in February this year. The two are almost exactly alike in article content. My third site is Irish I’s which I started in June 2007 to post jokes, pics, and oddball stories I stumble upon on a daily basis. Irish I’s is also on blogger (though is an ideal candidate to move to a newer platform such as Posterous).

Woolly Days is my major preoccupation and I can often spend four to six hours a day putting to a post together. I am persisting with two versions of Woolly Days because I cannot decide which one to go one with. I like the more professional look of WordPress Woolly Days but I’m still fond of Blogger Woolly Days, the Google-owned platform that gave me a voice four years ago. So I put up with double-entry bookkeeping (though typographical errors fixed up subsequently in one are not necessarily retrofitted to the other). If I were unsentimental I should be seriously considering leave the Woolly Days brand behind and start blogging under the label of Derek Barry. This might well happen when I leave Wooloowin (where I’ve lived since 2004).

I don’t think it would greatly matter wherever I publish next because it is the blogging form that matters not the brand. It is as a blogger I think I am establishing an authentic, articulate and unorthodox voice slowly getting recognition in the wider community.

That pleases me because blogging is important. Don’t be deceived by the claims that it is so 2004. The fact early adopters have moved on means is it is a maturing product with tens of millions of active exponents. These people blog because it gives them as a long-form and free platform of communication on the Internet. If democracy could be defined as the freedom to express your opinion widely, then the rise of the blog is a good thing. For me that means over a thousand articles and a million words over four years at a rate of six or more posts a week.

So is anyone listening to this widespread distribution of opinion, is anyone paying attention? Who is reading my million words?

To answer these questions, I need to analyse some audience metrics for my blogs.
After 20 days this month (approx 3 weeks), my sites have received the following number of hits (in brackets number of hits a day)
Woolly Days Blogger 32, 927 = average 1,646 hits a day
Irish I’s 1, 319 = average 66 hits a day
Woolly Days WordPress 378 = average 19 hits a day.
For a grand total of 34, 624 at an average of 1,731 hits a day.

Hits aren’t humans and I don’t have breakdown of hits to visits on a monthly basis. However on a daily basis the number of visits averages between 65 and 90 percent of the hits total. If we go with the lowest figure of 65 percent that would mean 1,125 human visitors come to my blogs every day in September 2009. The actual figure that read my work is higher as Woolly Days blog content is also available to read in Facebook (to 94 people) and all are available as RSS feeds (to 42 subscribers on Google Reader and an unknown number on other RSS readers). But assuming this number is low and adds merely another 75 or so visitors, to give a nice round total number of 1,200.

Four out of every five people come from Google Images (and increasingly Bing). They’ve clicked on the picture and may or may not stay to read the text in the lower pane. I’m reasonably high in a surprising number of Google image searches. The most popular page at the moment on Woolly Days is a 2006 article on Magna Carta. For reasons unknown to me, it is currently number one in Google Images for that search.

I thank Google for their algorithms but it is the one in five that don’t come for the picture that are most likely to pay attention to the words. Half come from Google searches (10 percent of the entire total). These searchers usually do not hang around for long once they found an answer (or a lack of answer) to the question they have asked Google though occasionally are hooked in to explore a bit further.

The last 10 percent are people who come via bookmarks, links, Twitter, Facebook, RSS and other recommendations. It is these 120 or so people who come regularly to the site as part of their regular media consumption who are most likely to be reading what I’m currently writing. Given that most of the posts at Woolly Days break the cardinal rule of short blogging and are often quite dense and political, it is likely that at least two thirds of these will not have the time or inclination to read this far into the post. Let’s assume then that there are just 40 readers left at this stage.

I humbly thank this faithful 40 that have stayed the course and hope that they find the rest of this journey interesting. I would also love to hear back what people think about blogging or what they think might be an interesting research question. I would like this quest to serve as much meaning as I can cram into it. But if it there is no meaning or if none of this matters, I’d like to hear about that too.

Next week I’ll be looking at how much journalism is in my work.

Facebook and the media: Opening the gated community

One guaranteed way to make a newspaper headline writer’s day is to find an event with a tenuous connection to Facebook. If there is a chance that technology can be blamed for something, it will be. In the last few days we have Facebook murders, Facebook crime, Facebook rescues, Facebook bandits, illegal Facebook parties and even “Facebook for the dead”. This is lazy journalism though understandable the media should want to tap into the Internet’s biggest phenomenon. (photo by jurvetson)

Facebook’s growth shows little sign of slowing down. Founder Mark Zuckerberg said he still had big plans for the application when he announced last week Facebook had 300 million users which would make it the fourth largest country in the world. It is not difficult to believe it will soon overtake the US with its 3.1 million citizens to leave only China and India ahead of it. Zuckerberg is so confident, he thinks the company may even make money in 2010.

Zuckerberg says his mission is “to make the world more open and transparent by giving people the power to share information.” But while many have praised Facebook as part of the democratising trend of new media, there is a social exclusion aspect to it also. Facebook is the largest gated community in the world. Author Robert Putnam told fan culture guru Henry Jenkins while engagement with Facebook was primarily a social activity, there is a real “participation divide” that creates varying degrees of Internet engagement. Putnam found Facebookers practice what cultural anthropologists call “gating,” that is, the tendency to build physical/virtual, social, and cultural walls that are exclusive.

Within their own communities social network users are very generous. Zmags’ Joakim Ditlev found Facebook is the most popular sharing tool among digital readers with 38 percent using it to forward content with Twitter well back in second place on 9 percent. Ditley says Facebook’s casual way of communicating “seems to apply well” for sharing digital content.

Facebook’s communication tools are also eating away at time spent on email, instant messaging and discussion groups. Activities that used to be in email, such as posting videos or holiday photos are now migrating to Facebook. As ReadWriteWeb says Gen Yers “don’t even think of email as the place to connect with friends and family – that’s what social networks are for.”

People are leaving an enormous trail of data that could come back to haunt them. While embarrassing photos are an obvious problem, a look at a friend list can also reveal a great deal about the person. An experiment at Boston’s MIT found that simply by looking at a friend list, they could predict whether the person was gay. They did this with a software program that looked at the gender and sexuality of a person’s friends and made a prediction using statistical analysis. As the Boston Globe puts it: “if our friends reveal who we are, that challenges a conception of privacy built on the notion that there are things we tell, and things we don’t.”

In Australia, the notion of privacy has been challenged by a court case against prison officers who used a Facebook group to protest against privatisation of prisons. In October last year, six NSW corrections officers created a private group called “Suggestions to help big RON save a few clams”. But when Big RON – NSW Corrective Services Commissioner Ron Woodham – found out about the suggestions he threatened to fire them for “bullying” and “harassment”.

It did not take long for the media to label them The Facebook Six. Last week the Industrial Relations Commission decided their cases needed to be reheard after concerns of procedural unfairness. The lesson to be learnt about Facebook, as academic David Perlmutter stated recently, is that it is “a particularly dangerous weapon for self-injury because more than with many other social-networking sites, it is so easy to share an embarrassing admission or offensive quip.”

Some believe Facebook makes its users smarter. According to Dr Tracy Alloway from the University of Stirling in Scotland, the soc-med site is doing “wonders for working memory [and] improving…IQ scores”. While it is doubtful that the thousands who sign on every day are doing it to become smarter, its versatility is one of its most attractive features. The downside is that it gives news editors even more things to place next to “Facebook” in their next headline.

One-day strike action affects Qld unis

Industrial action affected three Brisbane universities last week in an education union’s national campaign to seek better terms and conditions for its members. [Photo: Derek Barry]

The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) asked its 3,000 members at the University of Queensland (UQ), Griffith University and Queensland University of Technology (QUT) to join 13 other tertiary institutions across the country in a 24-hour strike last Wednesday.

Union national organiser Michael Evans said agreement was reached with a fourth Queensland university – James Cook University – prior to the action and the NTEU is now “close” to agreement with Griffith University as a result of the strike.

Evans said the union has yet to conclude negotiations with UQ and QUT.

The NTEU is seeking pay rises of between 16 and 18 per cent over three years and also an end to the casualisation of staffing at universities, which Mr Evans says is affecting job security.

One QUT striker who did not wish to be named said the big issue was removing the WorkChoices provisions from the enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA) and ensuring fair workloads for workers, as well as more employment security.

The EBA expired in 2008 but continues to be in effect while negotiations for a replacement continues.

Evans said the union was looking to regain rights it had lost in the last round of EBA changes under the previous federal government including the right to represent staff in disciplinary actions.

UQ executive director of operations Maurie McNarn told the Courier-Mail last week the impact of the strike would be minimal because the NTEU represented only 5 per cent of the workforce.

Evans acknowledged Griffith University and QUT also experienced minimal disruption due to the action.

But he also said there was anecdotal evidence that car parks and campuses were emptier than normal and many classes were cancelled.

“Academics rescheduled classes for other days to ensure that students would not be disadvantaged,” he said.

Evans said the one-day strike was valuable publicity for the union campaign and sent a message to the institutions that members were prepared to forego a day’s pay to show how serious they were about the issues involved.

But Australian Higher Education Industrial Association executive director Ian Argall said Evans was “too optimistic” in his assessment of the industrial action.

He said the strike did not make any difference and that negotiations were likely to drag on for many months to come.

“There has been no agreement with any Australian university beyond 2009 except with New England University,” Argall said.

He denied the workplace changes made during the Howard administration had impacted unions’ rights to represent their members.

Argall said the issue for universities was how to organise the performance management and workload of staff.

“Unions have not been pushed out but don’t have an automatic right to be involved” he said.

***
This story was originally written for the new QUT magazine Sub-Tropic

Dust storm over Brisbane

Brisbane turned positively Martian today and the northern suburbs got an unusual light show.

For example, here is the usual view of the city from McLennon Street, Wooloowin.

This is the same street today:

Mostly without success:

Dust storms are common out west but rarely make it this far east.

What the Kedron Brook bike path would look like if it were on Mars:

But no freakish weather can stop the inexorable march of the Airport Link tunnel interchange at Kedron Emergency Services building.

Or stop the flag from fluttering at the local Anglican church.

Finally, the view is equally red looking down my own street:

Rudd’s robust language is not the problem

Two weeks ago Kevin Rudd got angry with Labor parliamentarians complaining about a drop in salary. They represented a considerable interest group unhappy with the latest cut delivered by the government’s feared “Razor Gang”’. Lower house members were to have their printing allowance cut from $100,000 to $75,000 (a $3,750,000 saving) while senators went down from $16,667 to $12,500 (saving $316, 692). The grand total is a $4 million saving which will go a little to servicing a $58b debt. (photo by Derek Barry)

The rebels, who mostly represented marginal seats, didn’t see it that way and sent a cross section of aggrieved members  to visit Rudd. In attendance were Don Farrell, Bernie Ripoll, David Feeney and Michael Forshaw from the Party’s right, and Carol Brown, Maria Vamvakinou and Sharryn Jackson from the left. Parliamentary secretary Maxine McKew warned the outcome in advance of the meeting. “To anyone who thinks they can’t sell a message on $75,000 a year more than many people earn – then they should go out and argue the case on the 7.30 Report tonight.”

Having had a deputy soften them up, Rudd moved in for the kill when they met. He dismissed them with an imperious “I don’t care what you fuckers think”. The Age’s Misha Schubert reported the meeting though she coyly translated Rudd’s words as “I don’t care what you think, this is going to be done.”

The muckraking (but usually well-informed) Andrew Landeryou quoted one attendee who said Rudd’s performance was “Mount Vesuvius meets Tourette’s Syndrome”. Landeryou thought there was nothing wrong with roughing up the troops a bit when they are straying from the cause of righteousness, but said it made for very ugly listening.

It took the Poison Dwarf of Australian journalism to ensure Rudd’s swearing got the widest audience. In his Sunday Herald-Sun column this week Glenn Milne highlighted it as the most important part of his story about the meeting in his first sentence: “Kevin Rudd has launched another expletive-laden tirade — this time directed at Labor’s factional bosses, including three female MPs!” Milne’s news value on a two-week old event was based on the dubious facts Rudd’s audience was mixed and were “shocked” despite being “hardened operatives”.

It is dangerous to rely on Milne’s unnamed sources – he is not averse to making things up. But amid the manufactured outrage, he does add that Senator David Feeney was at the meeting and his question was the straw that broke the camel’s back. After telling all present they were fuckers whose opinion did not count, Rudd singled out Feeney for personal attention telling him “you can get fucked” and asking, “Don’t you fucking understand?”

Feeney would not confirm or deny anything but Crikey’s Guy Rundle (link is paywalled) says it is credible. Rundle called Feeney the Cartman of Labor politics “bumptious, spherical, and obsessively concerned with the management of his Victorian right-wing microfaction.” Any encounter with Feeney for longer than 15 minutes, he says “would have most people praising the PM’s Christ-like restraint in sticking to verbal abuse and not stabbing him through the eyes with a biro, so as to better mash his frontal lobes.”

Rundle may not think highly of Feeney, but his question is valid: why does a micro-faction running Senator needs a huge mail allowance? This point was lost in the scrabble to report the f-bombs. A quick check of Google News has found 437 stories about Rudd’s coarse language.

Perhaps the attention is richly deserved given Rudd’s micro-media management. And yet for a man given to opaqueness, Rudd made his own views “absolutely clear” on this matter: “these entitlements needed to be cut back, and I make no apology for either the content of my conversation or the robustness with which I expressed my views.” He is right, the robustness is fine – the real problem lies elsewhere in Rudd’s use of English.

It is the sentences where he is devoid of meaning we should watch. At the Major Economic Forum earlier this year, a journalist asked him a question whether there would be any climate change action coming out of the meeting. The response was classic Rudd: “It is highly unlikely that anything will emerge from the MEF in terms of detailed programmatic specificity”. Rudd’s thought the forum was futile but disguised it with gobbledegook in Yes Minister style.

Rudd is a technocrat so providing fodder for a generation of comics is a small price to pay for commanding the message. But here is the problem: the real message got lost in the subterfuge and his ego is too big notice it. Perhaps, like the media, he needs reminding about two inconvenient facts that are the major news stories at the moment: The people he leads are the world’s biggest-carbon polluters and his neighbours in Pacific Islands are drowning.

Instead of these inconvenient truths, we hear him leaking low expectations to hosts about the December climate summit in Copenhagen. But Copenhagen can’t just be pointless like the Major Economic Forum was – it’s time to hear about some detailed specified programs to save the planet. Rudd is talking down the prospect of a victory for renewable energy because he has been captured by carbon storage. Australia remains locked in high carbon solutions after 20 years of climate change talks. That’s not good enough, Mr Rudd, and if you can’t support Kyoto II, then get out of the way. Otherwise we’ll all be as fucked as Senator Feeney.

CPJ report condemns Russia’s treatment of journalists

A new report from a US-based watchdog says Russia’s treatment of journalists is worse now than it was during the Communist era. Seventeen journalists have been murdered since 2000 and just once have the killers been caught and punished. Only Iraq and Algeria are more dangerous for the press. According to the report from the Committee to Protect Journalists this represents “a sorry record for a great and powerful nation that embarked on democratisation after more than 70 years of brutal repression”. (photo credit: Argenberg)

CPJ released the report “Anatomy of Justice: The Unsolved Killings in Russia” last week. It shows secrecy, corruption, lack of accountability, and conflicts of interest routinely thwart justice in the murders of journalists in Russia. While the CPJ continues to appeal to the Russian Government, it says it cannot leave it that. As well as expressing outrage, the report offers guidelines and hard facts for restarting investigations into unsolved murders. “When journalists are threatened, democracy itself is threatened,” warned the report.The report laments the apathy of Russian people unconcerned by the murders. CPJ says the vast majority get only government-filtered news, so outrage is muted. The 17 journalists who died were uncovering the truth in a wide range of topics: organised crime, corporate corruption, bribe-taking among public officials, and unrest in the Northern Caucasus republics. In each case authorities pretended there was some other motive such as robbery or personal grudges as an excuse not to investigate the political element of the killings.

Aleksei Sidorov, editor of Tolyattinskoye Obozreniye was killed in the Volga region city of Tolyatti (which CPJ called “Russia’s Detroit”). Sidorov exposed organised crime and government corruption in the car-manufacturing city as did the editor who preceeded him, Valery Ivanov. Assailants shot dead Ivanov and 18 months later stabbed Sidorov repeatedly with an ice pick. The official version was that Sidorov was killed in a random street brawl after he refused a stranger’s appeals for vodka. Investigators made no efforts to check out his records, interview witnesses, or visit his news organisation.

The Novaya Gazeta newspaper has suffered most for its courage in examining Russia’s underbelly. Three of its best reporters – Igor Domnikov, Yuri Shchekochikhin, and Anna Politkovskaya – have been murdered. In February, three defendants in the Politkovskaya trial were found not guilty after the evidence was skimpy. Though the case is now being retried, no one expects justice to emerge. “Once again, the state had given the masterminds an easy pass,” said the CPJ. “Only the small fry were in the dock.”

CPJ says the failure to achieve justice reflects shortcomings at every level: political, investigative, prosecutorial, and judicial. The poor record of solving journalism-related killings stands in sharp contrast to Russia’s record in solving murders among the general population. One of the country’s top law enforcement officials, Aleksandr Bastrykin, has said the vast majority of murders have been solved in recent years. Bastrykin, however, has acknowledged that discovering who ordered the Politkovskaya murder would be much harder.

The Kremlin must take a large slice of the responsibility for the problem. It has marginalised critical journalists, by barring them from state-controlled national television and obstructing their work through politicised regulations and bureaucratic harassment. Murder investigations have been secretive, marred by conflicts of interest, and frequently influenced by external political forces. Investigators have failed to follow up on journalism-related leads, examine work material, or question professional contacts while police have concealed important evidence without explanation. It is hardly surprising to find many of those murdered have been the harshest critics of the Kremlin.

CPJ have recommended the Prosecutor General should order a thorough re-examination of all 17 cases. It should pursue unchecked leads, track down wanted suspects, and examine professional motives. Where there are conflicts of interest, cases should be reassigned. Investigators and prosecutors should also communicate clearly and regularly with victims’ families. Until this is overturned, the Russia media system will continue to be based on self-censorship leaving many important areas under-investigated or uncovered. CPJ says the international community must hold Russian leaders accountable. Key institutions such as the OSCE and the Council of Europe need to resist Russian claim they should not concern themselves with human rights. The murdered 17 deserve nothing less. As the CPJ says “an undemocratic Russia is a threat to international stability.”

Taliban’s Mullah Omar issues warning to West on Afghan war

The Taliban leader says the West lacks the will to fight in Afghanistan and he may be right. Mullah Omar has issued a statement from his hiding place in Pakistan warning of huge casualties and said the West does not have the stomach for the war. Omar said the more forces the US deploys, the more they will face “unequivocal defeat”. He described the country as a “graveyard for colonial troops” as Taliban-linked rebels intensified use of roadside bombs, particularly in the south. This year more than 350 foreign troops have been killed, making it the deadliest year since fighting began. (picture credit: daviza)

Italy is the latest western country to question its commitment to Afghanistan after six of its troops were killed alongside ten Afghan civilians in a Kabul bomb blast on Thursday. Italy has 2,800 soldiers in Afghanistan and had already started bringing some home before the latest attack which brought its death toll to 20. Now Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is publicly questioning the mission. “We are all convinced it’s best for everybody to get out soon,” he said.

Berlusconi’s statement will not be welcomed by the White House which provides two-thirds of the 100,000 troops in the Nato-led occupation force. With a new administration in the White House, the US has re-examined its motives for fighting the eight-year war. In March President Obama made a pledge to expand the US military presence in Afghanistan. But as the World Politics Review puts it, the question now is not whether the war is winnable, but whether the mission is vital to American national security interests. From this perspective, says the review, the open-ended strategy fails.

The US has acknowledged the new policy raises the stakes by transforming the Afghan War from a limited intervention into a more ambitious and potentially risky counter-insurgency. The statement was made in a Senate Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations released last month. The report stressed the importance of a counter-narcotics policy in winning the war. For years commanders on the ground said that going after drug lords was not part of their mandate. But now the US has targeted drug traffickers who help finance the Taliban as a major priority. The report said tens of millions of drug dollars are helping the Taliban and other insurgent groups to “buy arms, build deadlier roadside bombs and pay fighters.”

Afghanistan’s opium industry supplies 90 percent of the world’s heroin and generates $3 billion in profits. But the UN says production is on the decline for the second year in a row. The Americans have targeted 50 major drug traffickers on a military hit list to be “killed or captured”. It has also set up an intelligence centre to analyse the flow of drug money to the Taliban and corrupt Afghan officials, and an international task force to pursue drug networks in southern Afghanistan. Stopping the flow of drug money will not be easy. Most transactions are conducted in cash and concealed by an ancient and secretive money transfer system. The strategy acknowledges counter-narcotics will not be enough to win the war. The other major aspect of the change of direction relates to farmers. The Obama administration has admitted a program to eradicate poppies is a failure and emphasis will now be on promoting legal crops.

The report raised two important questions that will impact the success of the new direction. Firstly, it asked whether the US Government has the capacity and the will to provide the hundreds more civilians to transform a poppy-dominated economy into one where legitimate agriculture can thrive. It also wondered whether Nato allies can step up when support is waning across the Western world. It also asks the questions that Obama’s team will need to honestly answer if the president is to avoid Afghanistan becoming his Vietnam: Does the American public understand and support the sacrifices that will be required to finish the job? And what is the job anyway? Obama and the other western leaders cannot use the hoary “terrorist safe havens” argument forever. As Mullah Omar reminds us, forever is a very long time.