2003 Archive

2003 Summary

2003 Archive

From 5 December 2003

One hundred years of powered flight; The capture of Saddam; A dark cloud over Constitution Day; Putin the boot in; America's predictable retaliation; A low cost dogfight in Asia; Zimbabwe and the Commonwealth

From 21 November 2003

The Cheap Day return to Baghdad; The Moral Myth; England end 37 year drought; Right cause, wrong approach; the impact of the Istanbul bombings; Concordes' final homes

From 1 November 2003

John Simpson on the BBC and the Iraq War; Thai Air in for a bumpy ride; Being anti-Bush may be fashionable but may miss the point; The truth is out there somewhere (Rupert Murdoch's controlled media); The Unwanted Guest; A right Royal Romp; Oral sex remains an offence in Singapore

From 15 October 2003

My vote - Jeb Bartlett; Don't Blog like Bush !; Rumours and Secrets; Drugs and Sport; Concorde's last flight - the end of an era; The hi-jacking of APEC; Mahathir fans the flames

From 1 October 2003

The first Sinonaut; Something is rotten in English football; Questions too important for the US to ignore; APEC = A pretty expensive conference; California deserves better

From 13 Sept 2003

The distraction of the Hutton enquiry; Wenger's sorry seems to be the hardest word; Now I feel safer!; Why Concorde has to stop flying; Sweden's Euro vote; Two lost years

From 30 August 2003

Two years on from 9-11; One for the people - or political expediency; The view from down under; Starting a week of good news.

From 16 August 2003

Let Freedom Ring...as relevant today as it was 40 years ago. The Inner workings; Why professional golf is so utterly dull; It is time to apologise Mr. Blair; Premiership Predictions; The murky waters of the Hutton Enauiry; A huge cheer for the Episcopal Church

From 2 August 2003

How airlines ruin a vacation; Was the Iraq war justified? (a must read for Gordon!); Toronto - back and booming; the record breaking six years of Tony Blair, The exploitation of Saddam's sons

From 12 July 2003 -

Tung tied, George Bush's too safe safari, Who is the Greatest Briton?

From 2 July 2003 -

Hong Kong's crisis and Beijing's dilemma, The People have Spoken - Hong Kong's truly remarkable protest, Hong Kong's 1 July protest against Article 23 legislation.

From 16 June 2003

Last Orders for Dennis Thatcher, Taking Stock, Same sex marriages in Canada

From 2 June 2003 -

All alone on Fathers day, And So the story goes, Those "Washington Bastards", The gang-rape case in Bangkok, Hong Kong, still not cleaning up its act, One year old.

From 19 May 2003 -

An apology - I was misled; PGA _ Purposeful, grounded Annika; Press-ganged - the role of the right wing press in the government of Britain (a must read): Thailand's less than free media; Good news for babies; Football world cup mess.

From 5 May 2003 -

Free the Guantanamo 600; and the good news from Vancouver

From 14 April 2003

Swimming upstream at Reuters; London - unpleasant and unaffordable; Iraq - this may be a very hollow victory

From 1 April 2003 -

Looking for intelligent life; and now for some good news !

From 24 March 2003

Recommendations for protection from SARS, Hong Kong's flu fears; Canada's misplaced loyalties; Bye bye Anthony Leung; Bye bye CNN; All out of options.

From 1 March 2003

The SCMP shows its true colours; BOCA - a health warning; Hong Kong's shameful tax; The mother of all bombs; All out of options; Bye Bye CNN, Bye Bye Anthony Leung.

From 17 February 2003

Tony Blair - caught between Iraq and a hard place; thoughts from the diplomatic front; Dads Army. The US view - Earning America's Resentment; Tell the truth; Shanghai - brave new world;

Three weeks commencing 27 January 2003

Poor justice in Canada: en support les Francais; No clear and present danger; The Columbia tragedy: The inexplicable and inevitable march to war; clarifying a climb down

week commencing 20 January 2003 -

The entente not so cordial: who is the real villain?: torture debases civilised society; the big freeze; inspired by an ex-colleague; Dragonair's misplaced fire; Hong Kong film critics awards.

two weeks commencing 6 January 2003

Why England should not play cricket in Zimbabwe; Roy Jenkins - a political conscience; Campbell in the soup; war uncertainty in the USA; the Canadian debate over gay marriages; US airline alliances and the trouble with America.

from 25 December 2003

Singapore expected to legalise oral sex

8 January 2004

Singapore Senior Minister for State and Home Affairs has said the the law banning oral sex between men and women is being re-examined as part of a review of the Penal Code and that the review will be completed in two or three months and will give due consideration to social norms.

Of course it would not be Singapore without a few restrictions; the act will have to be between a man and woman (gay people presumably do not have sex in Singapore), in private (pity!!) and by adults over the age of 16.

Take a number - onboard loo queues !

8 January 2004

The most worrying thing about the US security paranoia is just how many people they have sitting around in little cubicles cut off from the real world dreaming up the daftest ideas possible.

The latest directive is for airlines to restrict lavatory queues on all flights into the USA.

Qantas has received a directive from the US Transport and Security Administration that passengers should not be permitted to congregrate in groups on board international flights. The directive includes a ban on passengers queuing to use toilet facilities.

Lets see - the average flight from Australia to the USA must be about 14 hours. There are peak washroom times; after the meal services and before landing. And yes people do queue. They have to. There are only 10 or so washrooms on a 450 passenger 747.

And remember passengers are being told that for their own health reasons they should move around the plane on a long flight to stimulate circulation.

How the USA plans to enforce this latest paranoia is a mystery. Maybe the air marshals can double up as toilet monitors !

Maybe we should all be given an emergency bottle; maybe we should all be chained to our seats as on Con AIr.

Maybe you can use the onboard ife handset (on some carriers!) to signal that you need the washroom and you are given a number and wait your turn !

What will they think of next !

Thaksin is riding high - maybe too high

Philip Bowring IHT
Tuesday, January 6, 2004

HONG KONG "We need a Thaksin" has become a common sentiment in Southeast Asian countries, notably Indonesia and the Philippines, which have weak governments and an uninspiring choice of leaders in upcoming elections. In just three years in office Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand has established himself as the most prominent leader in the region. No one doubts that he will be returned to power in elections a year from now.

Thaksin sees himself as a successor to Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, Suharto of Indonesia and Mahathir bin Mohamad of Malaysia, renowned for their authoritarian tendencies as well as their long periods in office. This makes a large minority of Thais nervous that Thai democracy, which evolved painfully in the 20 years after the 1973 revolt against military strongmen, will be in sustained retreat against the forces of populist authoritarianism, a common enough phenomenon in the region and often accompanied by a large measure of cronyism and bypassing of judicial processes.

But is there really an apt comparison between Thaksin and these others? And is there such a position as "leader" of the region - other perhaps than in the eyes of non-Asian media?

Thaksin owes his pre-eminence to four factors: the passing from the scene of the long-established regional figures; Thailand's new economic boom, which has been attributed to "Thaksinomics" and is seen as regional exemplar; his astute use of constitutional changes and the power of patronage to assure the dominance of his coalition in Parliament, and his own policy activism and self-promotion.

The strength of the economy owes something to government spending and lending by state banks that were at once populist and pro-business. Thaksin has been able to take the credit, however, for the recovery made possible by three years of austerity under his Democrat predecessor, following the Asian financial crisis, plus the stimulation of low global interest rates.

The Thai economy has long been the most open and broad-based in southeast Asia, so a strong recovery was always likely. The danger now is that Thaksin will be carried away by his own ambitions. Not content with 6.5 percent growth in 2003, he is looking for 8 percent in 2004 and 10 percent in 2005, a goal which if achieved would almost certainly be followed by another bust.

His eyes are on the 2005 election, in which he hopes that his Thai Rak Thai party can gain an absolute majority and no longer have to rely on a coalition. Critics fear that if he and his allies get 400 of the 500 seats, Parliament will be powerless to curb his authoritarian instincts. Their fears are justified. A can-do philosophy of "the end justifies the means" was evident in Thaksin's campaign against drugs, in which 2,500 suspected drug dealers were killed extrajudicially. In the short run, methods that bypass corrupt institutions and slow-moving procedures are popular.

The long-established pluralism of Thai politics, however, makes it unlikely that Thaksin can replicate the Malaysian or Singaporean systems of one-party dominance. His party is based on his personality, while the main opposition Democrat Party has an institutional base - and strength in liberal Bangkok, where a governorship election this year will test the depth of support for Thaksin's party.

State powers of patronage are also much less in Thailand than elsewhere in the region and the diversity of business interests has its counterpart in politics. The press has been partly brought to heel by Thaksin's use of commercial pressures, but the Thai news media is seldom cowed for long. Even when the generals ruled, the Thai press was freer than its counterparts in "democratic" Malaysia and Singapore.

Crucially too, it is the king - who has delivered homilies to Thaksin - who is the focus of national identity, rather than the political leader. Even military men have mostly had brief careers as leaders in the roughhouse of Thai politics.

Thailand's geography and economic strength have always given it a key role in southeast Asia. Thaksin has built on that through promoting good relations with both China and the United States, recently by sending troops to Iraq. Despite his nationalist rhetoric he has pushed for the freer trade among the members of Asean, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, from which Thailand particularly benefits. He has promoted regional financial cooperation and made overtures to South Asia.

Thailand has usually thrived, however, on high-quality, low-key diplomacy, not grandstanding. The Vietnamese reckon they are the equal of Thailand and resent Thai assumptions of regional leadership. Indonesians know their nation is by far the most populated and extensive in Southeast Asia.

Thaksin is riding high, but like many a businessman with a long string of successful gambles, overconfidence may be his biggest danger. For good or ill, there are finite limits to his power at home and his influence abroad.

Copyright © 2002 The International Herald Tribune

Air marshals - a modern day necessity?

6 January 2004

The USA is demanding that all foreign airlines flying into the USA or over USA airspace carry air marshals on each flight.

Singapore Airlines looks like leading in compliance. Certain British based carriers are strongly against this requirement.

A spokesman for Thomas Cook Airlines, formerly known as JMC, has criticised the UK government for "rushing in" requirements "without proper consultation".

"Our view is that the skipper of an aircraft must be in overall command," he said. "We have a general concern about guns in aircraft cabins."

British Airways is known to be sceptical and the BALPA (British Airline Pilots Association) is meeting the government's transport secretary.

One thought keeps coming to mind. If there had been air marshals on the flights on September 11, 2001, then the World Trade Center tragedy would probably not have happened. The hijackers were armed with box cutters.

Safe air travel requires multi level security; it requires good intelligence about possible security threats; intelligence that is shared among all relevant authorities; it requires secure airside facilities at airports including secure id checks and background checks on staff who service the airplanes. It requires baggage screening. It requires passenger and hand baggage screening. It requires secure cockpits. It probably now requires greater on board security.

But let's do this properly. Let's consult with the airlines and the pilots. Let's find another name for air marshals, this sounds too much like John Wayne with a six gun riding up and down the aisles. Let's use lower impact bullets that should not pierce the airplane fuselage; lets ensure that "onboard safety officers" receive consistent international training. Lets ensure that crews are fully briefed on the security measures for their flight so that they can co-operate as a team.

Terrorists should not be stopped on the airplane. They should be stopped by painstaking intelligence on the ground and by sensitive and effective security measures.

The USA's aviation market is too big to be ignored. It seems inevitable that the airlines will meet the US demands for onboard security. But bullying the airlines to do this is not the solution. Engaging the airlines to co-operate will provide a far more effective long term solution.

Raise a finger to finger-printing

6 January 2004

Personally I find the US plans to finger print visitors offensive. The USA of course has a sovereign right to take whatever security measures it wishes to try to keep terrorists out of the country.

The Fear of Fingerprints

By Paulo Pontoniere, Pacific News Service
January 5, 2004

Among European foreign correspondents based in the United States there is an uproar. Returning from their homelands after their end-of-the-year vacations, for the first time in history many had the unsavory experience of being asked at the border to provide their fingerprints and their pictures.

Most European countries are among the 28 nations whose citizens are theoretically exempted by the Homeland Security Department from having to comply with U.S.-VISIT, the just-introduced program of finger-scanning and photographing foreign nationals coming to the United States.

When going through customs at John F. Kennedy airport in New York, Enrico Pedemonte, U.S. correspondent for L'Espresso, Italy's leading newsweekly, was curtly asked to put his index finger onto an electronic scanner. Pedemonte then had to turn his head toward a hidden camera to have his mug shot taken.

"I don't have anything to hide and I don't fear any particular retribution from this request. It was, however, very unsettling to have to be fingerprinted like a criminal after life-long honesty and compliance with the laws both in my home country and here in the U.S.," Pedemonte says, when reached at his office in New York. "In addition, wasn't this supposed to be the land of the free speech?"

Pedemonte says he finds it "discriminatory" for the rest of the world that 28 countries are being excluded from the provision. And, he adds, finger-scanning journalists, even if only foreign correspondents, "may be the first step of an initiative directed at muting the freedom of press."

Pedemonte's reaction isn't unique or peculiar. Phones have been ringing off the hook at foreign media offices in the U.S. In the countries in which journalists are represented by trade associations, like in Italy, trade representatives are being asked to put pressure on the State Department to see that the fingerprinting program for foreign journalists is put to an end.

However, the problem isn't only with journalists coming from those 28 countries. Inquiries directed to the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department by some Italian correspondents in the U.S. revealed that other categories of citizens from other countries coming on a visa to the U.S. will be fingerprinted and photographed regardless of their country of origin. This means that scientific researchers, students, businesspeople, as well as journalists – basically anyone who has a visa – coming from those exempted countries will be asked to comply with the new tracking program.

The visa-waiver program only applies to nationals from those countries who come to the United States for less than 90 days on work or as tourists.

"This will affect the ability of the U.S. to keep its leading position in science, business and technology if foreign professionals coming to or dealing with the U.S. have to fear for their welfare," says another European foreign correspondent living in the United States who did not wish to be identified.

Many media professionals, some foreign journalists note, were fingerprinted in Italy and France during the fascist era. That practice led many to self-censor for fear of retaliation if they wrote anything critical of the regime. Some ended up in jail. Others, in a bid to save themselves, turned into the regime's rubber-stampers, or worse, into spies for the fascists. Today, some journalists fear that the new finger-scanning and photographing could have a similar chilling effect.

Paolo Pontoniere is the U.S. correspondent for Focus, Italy's leading monthly magazine.

However, US intelligence is something of an oxymoron. No one can or should trust US security. It has become a bureaucratic budget-hungry monster. And it is beginning to infringe dramatically on individual and civil liberties.

When I was a kid playing cops and robbers we would catch the bad guy, finger print him using the ink pad in the play kit and attach the handcuffs.

Finger-printing is what you do to criminals charged with an offence. There is something disturbing about doing it to ordinary citizens whose only intent is to go to the US for business, vacation or to see family.

Some countries are hitting back. Brazil requires US visitors to be finger printed and photographed. This is only fair. I hope other countries take the same measures.

I know for a fact Michael Moore is Swiss

I wish I had written the following! Many years ago my old company decided to run its global sale operations from Switzerland. It was the beginning of the end. This is about a nation and a people that frankly do not want to take a decision about anything. It is a nation so concerned at not offending anyone while they continue to stock pile their anonymous fortunes that they have forgotten what it means to fight for something that you believe in.

Is Canada going the way of the Swiss. I hope not.

Leaders defend their beliefs. You may not agree with George W Bush; but at least he stuck to what he believed was right and did something about it.

Euan Ferguson
Sunday January 4, 2004
The Observer

I used to wonder why Britain really went to war, back in 1939.

We were then, just as now, a nation not given to snap judgments nor strong beliefs. Best stay out of it, went the mantra. There's another side to every story and the truth, as ever, lies somewhere in between. Judge not lest ye be judged, and what would it be like if everyone did it, and I don't really understand the ins and outs but there's probably a very reasonable explanation, and who do you think you are with your fancy attitudes, and best leave well alone, and I don't think I'd like to try that thank you very much, tea's quite good enough for me; and then, astonishingly and rather wonderfully, the Third Reich was toppled by the kind of people who would drive to the seaside of a weekend to sit in the car in the rain with a hankie on their heads and read the Sunday Express and think it fun.

And almost 60 years later, on Friday, a man died chasing kids who had run through his hedge, because it was his pride and joy and had won awards, and it's hard to believe that the kind of country in which hedges can win awards can ever have won anything (except, obviously, hedge awards); and then, a couple of festive films and one news story later, you remember a couple of crucial factors, which are that a) we had John Mills, and b) the Swiss were, are, a thousand times worse.

The Swiss, cursed with all of Britain's deplorable sense of even-handed fairness but without even the redeeming historical quality of sudden stark yeoman violence when threatened, have just - just on Thursday - decided to pardon citizens who helped Jews to escape the Holocaust. Read that again: the Swiss, with their idiot hearty stews, pigtails, cowbells and greed, fined and jailed and shamed hundreds for having compromised the country's famous neutrality in order to save people's lives, and it's only now that they seem to think that might all have been another Bad Swiss Idea, like that town which fined you for having the wrong colour of chrysanth in your window-box, or just generalised execrable tweeness.

To hell with neutrality, I say. Let's say a fat No to even-handedness and step bravely into this new year with prejudice, passion and a handful of beliefs, no matter how ridiculous, and the strength to stand up for them.

I can still remember, on strike 14 years ago, the disgust I felt for the strike-breakers who refused to justify their actions. There was grudging respect for those who would come to the brazier with a curious mix of shame and dignity to explain why they had to go in because of the third child and the wife's illness; but I still feel volcanic contempt for those who wheedled and mimsied their way past with 'I don't believe in politics' and 'I just want to stay out of this' and the rest of their scabbing Swiss nonsense.

Postmodern relativistic judgments can, frankly, go hang. Some things are just unutterably good things - wolves, socialism, the works of Steely Dan, to name an obvious few; and some - golf, death, the insufferable smugness of Michael Moore and the like - are, and always will be, hell on a pikestaff, and it's time, finally, to learn one lesson from the Swiss, which is to be as different from them as we possibly could be.

Take sides, stand up, and shout, and rant: and the world will be a far better place when we stop coating our arguments with codicils, and cheese, and chocolate.

Terror should not make us illiberal

New Labour must revisit its roots

Leader
Sunday January 4, 2004
The Observer

The grounding of British Airways flights to Washington and Riyadh because of undisclosed terrorist threats dramatises the emerging relationship between citizen and state.

Personal freedom, individual autonomy and maximum access to information have long been seen as desirable ends in themselves. But terrorism is revealing that we cannot expect total autonomy of individual action. Nor can we expect total knowledge. Our security depends on trusting governments to exercise their authority to save lives. Flights are cancelled with little or no explanation because the authorities judge that this is safer. We have no option but to trust them.

This is a rude challenge to the presumption of the age that individual judgments are always and everywhere better than those of government and state. Even the most ardent advocate of personal freedom and a minimal state would find it hard to devise a system where individual judgment should supersede that of the government over, say, the grounding of an aircraft on the basis of intercepted emails or telephone calls. Plainly, the balance of risk demands that the state plays its cards close to its chest.

Yet even against the menace of terrorism, we have to be vigilant that, in protecting its citizens, the state does not arrogate too much unaccountable power to itself. Already it is clear that the politics of the first decade of the twenty-first century will be about tracing the difficult-to-negotiate boundary between individual freedom and safeguarding our security. The year ahead will test our political establishment to the limit.

If the state is to act, to regulate and to enable in this environment, then it has to become better trusted and be seen as more legitimate. This month, the Hutton report will expose, just as other government inquiries such as the Phillips inquiry into BSE have done, how poor the political process and structure of government decision-making actually is. Action is deferred or postponed; information is manipulated; the prejudices of individual civil servants or Ministers, rather than considered appraisal, too often determine policy.

New Labour, before it took office, was an enthusiastic advocate of transparency and accountability. In office, it has converted to the caricature of the British state - that its vocation is to govern the great unwashed as it deems fit. This was never good enough, and will certainly not work today. It is tragic to watch the Lord Chancellor, Charlie Falconer - a smart, modern politician - trying to justify an unelected House of Lords.

In opposition, New Labour was also committed to a modernised British state achieving precisely the complex trade-off between individual freedom and collective security that our times now urgently require. New Labour must return to its roots - and quickly.

Why did so many have to die in Bam?

David Aaronovitch
Tuesday December 30, 2003
The Guardian

The Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei yesterday managed to get to Bam, three days after the earthquake which may have killed 30,000 of his fellow Iranians. The president, Mohammad Khatami, followed soon afterwards. Khamenei had words of dubious comfort for survivors when he told them that "we will rebuild Bam stronger than before". Given the collapse of 80% of the buildings, from the old fortress to the new hospitals, the Iranian government could hardly make the new Bam as weak as the old one.

Some will see this as simply a natural disaster of the kind to which Iran, according to Khatami, is "prone". Four days earlier, however, there had been another earthquake of about the same intensity, this time in California. In which about 0.000001% of the buildings suffered serious structural damage and two people were killed when an old clocktower collapsed. So why the polar disparity between Bam and Paso Robles?

This is not a silly question. True, the Californians are much richer than the Iranians. But if you believed everything you read in the works of M Moore and others, you would anticipate a culture of corporate greed in which safety and regulation came way behind the desire to turn the quick buck. Instead you discover a society in which the protection of citizens from falling masonry seems to be regarded as enormously important.

Whereas in Iran - for all its spiritual solidarity - the authorities don't appear to give a toss. The report in this paper from Teheran yesterday was revealing. It was one thing for the old, mud-walled citadel to fall down, but why the new hospitals? An accountant waiting to give blood at a clinic in the capital told our correspondent that it was a "disgrace that a rich country like ours with all the revenue from oil and other natural resources is not prepared to deal with an earthquake".

The reformist Iran News asked on its website, "How many times have we reminded the ruling establishment that the first structures to fall during a major earthquake would be those dealing with emergency management and relief, such as hospitals, police and fire stations? The officials in charge are either deaf or simply don't care."

Iran had the money to do much of what was needed. After the Kobe earthquake of January 1995 a report concluded that most deaths had been caused by the collapse of housing built in the traditional Japanese manner. This style was based on a post-and-beam system, with tiles or thick mud laid on top. The roofs came down easily, and when they did, they crushed everything beneath. And exactly the same thing seems to have happened in Bam, as much to new as to old buildings. The use of corrugated iron roofs would have been much safer.

So why, despite the loss of 40,000 lives in the Gilan earthquake of 1990, had nothing been done? The same question was being asked back in the queue outside the clinic. Fariba Hemati told the Guardian what she thought of official efforts, "Our government is only preoccupied with slogans: 'Death to America', 'Death to Israel', 'Death to this and that'. We have had three major earthquakes in the past three decades. Thousands of people have died but nothing has been done. Why?"

As she was queueing Jahanbakhsh Khanjani, spokesman for Iran's interior ministry, was denying that a team from Israel was coming to help. "The Islamic Republic of Iran," he told the press, "accepts all kinds of humanitarian aid from all countries and international organisations, with the exception of the Zionist regime." The Israelis, of course, have some reputation for rescue work, but it was ideology rather than humanity that was at stake here.

The answer to Hemati is that, after a quarter of a century, Iran is still being ruled by a useless, incompetent semi-theocracy, which is fatalistic, complacent, unresponsive and often brutal. And such a system does not deliver to its citizens one fraction of what the Great Satan, for all its manifest faults, manages to guarantee to ordinary Americans.

Following the fall of the Berlin wall there was, as the philosopher John Gray put it, a "false dawn" of the New Age of Liberal Democracy, in which all problems everywhere could be expected to be solved by a free market and free elections. But this triumphalism has been replaced, in some quarters at least, by the equally vacuous tropes of the anti-globalisation movement and its demonisation of liberal capitalism.

What, I wonder, has Arundhati Roy to say now about the superiority of traditional building methods over globalised ones? Some Iranians might think that it's a shame there wasn't a McDonald's in Bam. It would have been the safest place in town

Time lapse

30 December 2003

Time magazine as usual got in completely wrong in naming their man of the year! I gave up my subscription in September 2002 depressed by their sabre rattling jingoism.

Now they annoint the American Soldier as their person of the year ! This was their justification:

"They swept across Iraq and conquered it in 21 days. They stand guard on streets pot-holed with skepticism and rancor. They caught Saddam Hussein. They are the face of America, its might and good will, in a region unused to democracy. The U.S. G.I. is TIME's Person of the Year".

Now, forgive me, but just for starters I thought this was meant to be a coalition of nations. This is meant to be an influential international magazine not a recruitment ad for the US military.

Lets think of a few other people perhaps more worthy of the (rather bizarre) title of person of the year:

How about "The Ordinary Iraqi"? He's the one "The American Soldier" is supposed to be fighting for.

Hans Blix: who may well have been right all along.

Though I hate to say it - in terms of his impact on the world in 2003, then George Bush.

Dr. Carlo Urbani, the doctor who discovered SARS. And died after alerting the World Health Organisation.

Just a few thoughts; the American soldier deserves credit; most are surely brave young mean and women a long way from home, doing their best to make sense of their hostile environment and the engagement rules of American imperialism.

Do not feel sorry for Rio Ferdinand

26 December 2003

All the bleating from Manchester United is getting tiresome. Their protests at Rio Ferdinand's eight month's suspension suggest that the club believes that it is bigger than the FA and even bigger than the game itself. Perhaps that is inevitable - after all they are a public listed company, responsible to their shareholders not to those who love and defend the game.

Football is business. The rich clubs (and their shareholders are greedy).

As for Rio Ferdinand; his argument that he simply forgot to submit to his urine test simply does not fly. Ryan Giggs, Nicky Butt and Danny Pugh, all selected at the same time, filled the requisite bottle. Ferdinand meanwhile drove away past two club check points without anyone noticing. And why did he call the doctor soon after missing his drugs test.

Coincidentally in China a Beijing defender tested positive for the stimulant, ephedrine; he claims that it may have been part of an unauthorized flu medication. China's soccer authority is still investigating. But the player has been banned by his club for three months without pay and the coach, manager and team doctor have all been fined. The player has even apologised.

Meanwhile at Manchester United, there is no hint of an apology from either the player, his club or his sponsors. Ferdinand still play on, his salary paid and his sponsors unmoved.

There is much about this story that is not known other than to Ferdinand and the club. But the whole sorry saga smells seriously bad.

If United take this to appeal then do not be surprised if the FA under pressure from FIFA increases the ban and embarrasses the club further.

Huge Grant does Bangkok

25 December 2003

The big news in Bangkok this week was Hugh Grant running out of Tilac Bar in Soi Cowboy chased by a possee (get it !!) of scantily dressed bar girls.

This was reported by that bastion of fine journalism, The Sun, so the story should be taken with a large pinch of festive salt.

Grant is in Bangkok to film the sequel to "Bridget Jones's Diary."

After one beer, and a little ogling, he was recognised by two dancing girls. As the song "One Night in Bangkok" played they jumped from the stage and went straight for him together with other girls. Hugh was reported to cover up his lower region with his hands and to then rush out of the bar.

Now, lets face it Huge Grant is no stranger to hookers ! Remember Divine Brown in Hollywood. So what did he expect in Soi Cowboy; that he would be quietly ignored.

A nation mourns; Corgi mauled

25 December 2003

A national day of mourning will no doubt be called; there may even be a state funeral. Its not the Queen Mum this time; it is one of her corgis. In this remarkably dysfunctional family even the pets are wacky.

This time Princess Anne's dangerously mad bull terrier (the same one that attacked two girls in Windsor Park) decided to maul one of the Queen's corgis, Pharos. The corgi had to be put down.

The Queen was apparently devastated; she regards the corgis as loyal, faithful and cherished. Which makes them rather better companions than most of her family and her other citizens!

The bull terriers are the nearest thing that has been found to weapons of mass destruction! There are as yet no rumours about Prince Charles and the corgis.

from 5 December 2003

100 years of powered flight

17 December 2003

One hundred years ago the Wright brothers flipped a coin to see who would be the first to fly their fragile wood, wire and cloth airplane for 12 seconds at a height of one meter over Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

66 years later we were on the moon. Now the world's only two supersonic passenger aircraft have already been retired.

In a way that ships could never do, airplanes have genuinely made the world a much smaller place.

I can have dinner in Bangkok and be in London for breakfast the next morning or in Vancouver at almost the same time the same day as I left home; albeit after crossing the date line.

But, airplanes have also brought more devastating ways to kill ourselves. They are at the heart of modern warfare; and they can unwittingly spread disease with unrivalled speed.

They do not fly faster; but they do fly more people and more goods further and cheaper, with astonishing reliability.

What's next; the A380 is basically a conventional plane; just bigger. And do not believe all its supposed luxuries. At its price it will need to get as many people in the air as possible.

The Boeing 7X7 Dreamliner will be the size of a Boeing 757 but with wider aisles. Made largely form composites it should fly further and significantly cheaper than existing jets.

But the excitement is not here - it is what military applications can be used to serve a civilian purpose. Maybe not stealth passenger planes. But pilotless planes guided by satellites and grounded controllers; the wider use of satellites for effective management of navigation.

And in time personal airplanes that are affordable to all. In the same way as Ford brought us the Model T someone will surely do the same with airplanes and lives will be revolutionised. There will be family planes, suv planes, go-faster planes and saloons. Just like cars now; but in the air and navigating by gps.

Space flight will resume with new and regular visits to the Moon as a staging post for a Mars probe. Tourists will head for space at affordable prices.

Blood feud ends in the spider hole

The transformation of all-powerful president to cornered wild man is the stuff of parables and will echo forever

Jonathan Freedland
Wednesday December 17, 2003
The Guardian

I know that we are all meant to have moved on, that we are supposed to focus now on high-minded matters of justice and international jurisprudence, but I'm not quite there yet: I am still stuck on the pictures.

The transformation of a man, last glimpsed in a suit or in military uniform, from president into Monty Python hermit is just too shocking to forget. When last we saw him, he was on a presidential platform, waving to the masses below, unsheathing a sword or firing a ceremonial rifle. Now we see him as a wild man, dirty and mangy as a stray dog. And we have to keep reminding ourselves: it is the same person.

It makes sense that the news networks keep playing that footage of his medical examination, over and over in a loop. It remains fascinating each time you see it, prompting new questions. Is Saddam Hussein being pushed and prodded, or is the US military doctor handling him with the gentleness he might show a child or feeble geriatric? What can that experience have been like for the doctor, to touch so intimately a man identified only with wickedness?

But the power of the current crop of images goes rather deeper than that. Taken together - the bearded Saddam and his underground living grave - they are almost mythic, redolent of legends and fables that are hard-wired into the human mind. With this twist, the Saddam story has become a blend of Bible parable, folk tale, Greek and Shakespearean tragedy - and it is unexpectedly powerful.

The tale of a once-mighty leader who evades a conquering army by hiding in a hole certainly has a Biblical ring to it: " ... and the King of Mesopotamia fled unto the city of Tikrit and from there to the village of Ad Dawr which he knew, for nearby was al-Awja where he had been born more than three score years before. And he came to his cook and said: 'Keep me, here,' and it was done. And the King dug a hole eight cubits by six cubits, and there he was tormented by many rats and many mice and his beard grew long ... "

In our own time, dictators do not cower in caves, bedding down with the creatures of the earth. Slobodan Milosevic was taken into custody wearing a blue suit; he testifies in the Hague looking the same as he always did. Saddam and his dugout seem to belong to a much earlier era, the age when David was on the run from Saul, or, many centuries later, the prophet Mohammed was chased out of Mecca - both finding refuge in a cave. (Both men are also said to have been saved by a divinely sent spider, who weaved a web across the cave's entrance: when their pursuers saw the web intact they assumed no one could be inside. How fitting that the US military immediately described Saddam's hideaway as a "spider hole".)

The former dictator's capture should also draw to a close a family feud that is the stuff of Greek drama. Since the first Gulf war in 1990, the stand-off between the US and Iraq has also been a battle of dynasties. Saddam's hatred for George Bush Snr was transferred to the man he called the "son of the viper" or "little Bush". For the American president too, Operation Iraqi Freedom was, in part, a family affair. Last year he reminded an interviewer of Saddam's 1993 assassination attempt on his father: "There's no doubt he can't stand us. After all, this is a guy that tried to kill my dad." Now the Bushes have their revenge: Saddam's sons are slain and he is their captive. As one Bush family associate told the New York Times yesterday: "It's a psychologically nice moment." A theatre full of ancient Greeks would understand that perfectly.

And what would Shakespeare have done with the scene played out on Sunday afternoon in a US military base, when Saddam awoke on his metal army cot to find he had four visitors: opponents, some of whom had paid a desperate price for their dissent, now installed as leaders of the new Iraq? The men had been brought there formally to confirm the identity of the prisoner, but rather than simply peer at him through a window, they demanded the right to see him up close - and confront him.

One, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, had been in Saddam's torture chamber in 1979. Now he faced his persecutor with not a bodyguard between them. He asked what Saddam would say on the day of judgment. How would he account for the lives lost in the Iran-Iraq war, for the gassing at Halabja, for the mass graves? "What are you going to tell God?" Apparently, Saddam's response was defiant and foul-mouthed.

Everything about this story seems designed to endure, even as a parable that future generations might teach their children. What better illustration of the cowardice of the bully than the story of Saddam Hussein, who strutted and threatened - only to surrender meekly? In the end, when there were no henchmen at his side, he showed none of the bravery of the Arab heroes he had so frequently invoked but put his hands in the air and asked to cut a deal. He had a pistol, but did not fire a single shot, neither at his pursuers nor at himself. For months, the Iraqi rumour mill had spoken of a Saddam of seven masks, secretly directing the resistance, disguised sometimes as a Muslim woman, sometimes as a taxi driver, sometimes as a nomad. Peasants would take him in for the night; when they awoke they would find their guest vanished and a vast bundle of cash under the bed. Now, though, we know the truth: Saddam was cowering, saving only his own skin. So listen well, children, and learn the moral of the story.

The combination of all these elements is a potent one. On the Arab street, those few seconds of footage will be humiliating to some, but exhilarating to others, keen to see the back of their own tyrants. In the US, the imagery will be no less powerful. Alongside the shots of President Bush with the Thanksgiving turkey for American troops in Baghdad, these are surely the pictures that will secure Bush's re-election.

Why? Because we are not as sophisticated as we like to think we are. We like to imagine that, in the 21st century, our politics is all about systems and institutions and legal frameworks. But the Saddam episode proves that international relations is still a pretty elemental business: tribes do battle and the battle cannot end until the opposing chief is brought low. This is how we remember wars - the Battle of Hastings was over when, we're told, Harold took an arrow in the eye - and probably how they have always worked. Look at Saddam's wild eyes and scraggy beard and realise: it is still true.

How the powerful fall - the capture of Saddam

15 December 2003

It is almost a sad site to see a powerful leader humbled. And I imagine that there are many in the Arab world who find the humiliation of Saddam distasteful.

A man who built palaces and monuments. A man held in awe and great fear was found in a whole in the ground looking more like a tramp than a feared tyrant,

Care needs to be taken here. A thoughtful and transparent court process is required. My preference would be for a trial under the United Nations following the lines of the Slobodan Milosevic trial. I am less happy with the prospect of a show trial in Iraq.

I also dont want to see the death penalty invoked. The last thing we want is for Saddam to be a martyr.

The surprise is that he allowed himself to be captured alive. There appears to have been no one to protect him and no fight left in him. He was all but deserted.

For all his bravado that neither he or his troops should be taken alive he acquiesced, and was seen on worldwide television being examined for lice and having swabs taken for dna testing.

His capture will not stop the terror attacks in Iraq; but they may lessen in frequency. His shadow loomed large; and maybe it was his capture that truly signalled the end of the war and the beginning of the rebuilding of Iraq.

He will be subject to a lengthy and testing interrogation. It will break him down in time. Maybe we will know at last whether there were or were not weapons of mass destruction and whether Saddam had connections to al-Qaida. Saddam has a lot to say about Iraq's past. His full and uncensored testimony should be heard and published. And that will include revelations about links to and support from the West in pre 1990s Iraq that will cause embarrassment.

A dark cloud over Constitution Day

11 December 2003

Yesterday should have been a day worthy of commemoration in Thailand. It was a holiday for Constitution Day. It was also International Human Rights Day.

The Constitution of Thailand is a wonderful document of which the country is rightly proud. It contains some of the most comprehensive human rights provisions regarding human rights in the world. The responsibility of the government and its people is to live up to those principles.

But at long last the country has woken up and acknowledged that the deaths of over 2,500 people earlier this year in the government's so called war on drugs" needs investigation and accountability.

It is clear that these people had their constitutional rights abrogated and their human rights destroyed.

There was no trial; there was no evidence presented.

The catch here is that for the most part people simply shook their heads and said that these people were doubtful characters and probably got what they deserved. If the government said it was OK then the people accepted that it was OK. There was little public outcry or comment. Even the press was largely quiet.

Until last week that is. In his birthday speech to the nation the King called for further investigations into the deaths. At last the nation's conscience had been heard.

The government is now scrambling to explain how these people died and at whose hands.

How many people died is unknown. Some were clearly on police blacklist; others were killed who had no history of links to the drugs industry.

Constitution Day has been celebrated as a turning point in the history of Thailand. Without a full and impartial investigation and accounting of the anti drugs campaign the country may as well abolish this holiday and tear up its constitution.

America's predictable retaliation

11 December 2003

I have in the past tried to give the USA the benefit of the doubt with respect to its intentions in Iraq. But yesterday's Pentagon announcement was all too predictable and lends ever more evidence to those who believe that the US motives are entirely founded on self interest.

The Pentagon has barred French, German, Canadian and Russian companies from competing for US$18.6 billion in contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq, saying it was acting to protect "the essential interests of the United States."

So if you failed to help in the destruction of Iraq you certainly may note help in its reconstruction. And pray tell what are those essential security interests that are jeopardised by issuing contracts to rebuild electricity, oil and water supplies and to equip the Iraqi army.

This hardly reflects a policy of engagement or co-operation. Internationalising the rebuilding of Iraq would help the US to gain wider support for the rebuilding efforts. It sounds too much like that depressing Bush message that you are either for us or against us.

Putin the boot in

11 December 2003

Democracy was a short lived experiment in Russia. Its demise should be lamented. And the west should be concerned.

Putin was ex KGB. He understands the two fundamentals necessary for absolute control. Control of the media and controlling the political sourcing and use of money. Putinism has all the trappings of Communism without some of communism's almost more appealing ideology.

Putin has an iron fist control of Russia's media, television, radio and the published media. Putin's media stated that this week's elections to the Duma were from a "free, honest, open and democratic process." How does this reconcile with observors' comments on the regression in the democratisation process.

Lets look at Russia for what it is. It is the same old country wearing newer clothes. Its falling population is now only one half of that of the USA. Yet is retains imperialist pretensions and is still a nuclear power!

Putin is popular. He is seen as a strong leader and he can control the message. The democratic process can only work where there can be criticism and credit. And where the people have the means and the information to affect change should they want to.

Concentration of power by a ruling government through the media and through control of money in politics allows a political clique to take long term control. Democracy does best by permitting change and protecting diversity.

A low cost dog fight in Asia

10 December 2003

It is getting hard to keep track of all the serious contenders for low cost airlines in Asia. But one thing is guaranteed; it will be good news for the consumer; and I suspect it will tap into a whole new market of air travelers. The aviation pie gets bigger and it is unlikely that existing businesses will be cannibalised in any significant way.

The existing players are well known and are slowly expanding from domestic to regional businesses.

Malaysia based Air Asia has just started its first international route, from Kuala Lumpur to Phuket. Australian Virgin Blue has started Virgin Pacific to manage flights to New Zealand.

And now the deep pockets of Singapore Air have joined the party. And by its very nature Singapore Air cannot fly domestically so it will be especially interesting to see how this model works across international routes in Asia. The full story is here

In Thailand, Orient Thai's One-Two-Go operation from Bangkok to Chiang Mai is proving popular. Thai Air Asia has been capitalised by Shin Corporation and Air Asia. And Thai International will likely set up its own low cost carrier, perhaps in co-operation with Richard Branson's Virgin Group; although naming an airline Virgin Thai might raise a few eyebrows !

Singapore based Valuair has also announced its plans to start up in 2004 and has commenced recruiting. And it is Valuair that must be most threatened by the new Tiger Air Venture.

Just a thought - but instead of Singapore Girls maybe we will now have Tigresses....

SQ has certainly thought this through. They have the right partners. And it will allow SQ to bring in new single aisle equipment that better suits certain high frequency routes. SQ's smallest plane is now a 777; this is not ideal for 45 or 75 minutes flights to KL and Jakarta respectively. What will probably happen is that SQ will reduce their capacity on the short haul routes; redeploy the 777s on longer and profitable services such as the Australia routes. Then Tiger can add high frequency and fast turnaround no frills flights; probably with A320s and A321s; planes that are familiar to SQ Engineering as they are used by Silkair.

The fare reductions will be very welcome; for instance a flight on SQ or Thai from BKK to SIN will cost around US$200 for discounted economy fares; full fare economy is nearly US$500. There are cheaper fares from the likes of Swiss and Finnair but they fly one round trip a day and are heavily booked by tour groups.

The problems confronting low cost carriers in Asia have not gone away. There are no obvious secondary airports to reduce landing fees and air travel is still regulated through bilateral agreements.

But this is all getting very interesting !

Why Zimbabwe needs the Commonwealth

8 December 2003

Today we should all feel sorry for the people of Zimbabwe.

The club of Commonwealth nations agreed that Zimbabwe should continue to be suspended. Predictably, Zimbabwe's autocratic ruler withdrew his country from the club.

The Commonwealth is a strange group of nations. All (bar England) are or were British colonies; they are and were the subject of absentee rule. It is a curious reminder of what for many countries is an inglorious past; and it brings back many memories of racist divides and deeply undemocratic institutions.

"Has the humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe got worse? What began as a food crisis in Zimbabwe in 2002 has grown into a major humanitarian emergency, with people suffering the effects of a deteriorating economy, HIV/Aids, depleted social services, and policy constraints. The HIV/Aids pandemic is central to the crisis. Recent estimates indicate that around 34% of Zimbabwe's 15-40 age group is infected, and more than 2,500 people die every week of Aids-related causes Malaria, tuberculosis and cholera cases are on the rise. Zimbabweans face a severe food security crisis in 2003-04. An estimated 5.5 million people will require food aid during the coming year. The country has enough food to feed its population for just four to five months."

UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, November 18

But, it is one of few world forums where smaller nations have a significant opportunity to be heard. It is one of few forums that gives African nations a voice. It is a forum where a common agenda can be set. And its basic values of democracy and tolerance are sound.

For Mugabe leaving the Commonwealth is less of a humiliation that continuing suspension. He has tried to drive a wedge between white and black members and between richer and poorer. Incidentally, and rather predictably, the Malaysians bought into this scenario.

The Commonwealth wants respect for democracy. This is the reason for Pakistan's continuing exclusion. Mugabe has rigged elections and violently muzzles critics and opponents. He knows what he needs to do to secure Zimbabwe's re-admission; but it would almost certainly mean the loss of office for him.

For the people of Zimbabwe their exclusion is further bad news. They are in danger of becoming one of Africa's forgotten peoples. Food and fuel shortages, AIDS, uncontrolled inflation all take their toll.

The trouble with suspending a country is that it really does not hurt that country financially. The Commonwealth is of little value. It is too poor to offer Aid on any scale.

What is worrying is that by suspending a nation the Commonwealth simply fails to take on its responsibility to tackle real issues and to try and change the peoples' lives for the better.

There are other Commonwealth nations that show scant or limited regard for Human Rights ( as detailed by Amnesty International in an article reprinted below. But Mugabe's regime stands out for its gross abuse of the institutions of democratic government and its abuses of civil liberties.

The real victims are the oppressed, sick and impoverished people of Zimababwe. Mugabe could have done much for them; instead he has made them more isolated than ever.

The Zimbabwe issue hijacked the Commonwealth conference in Abuja; the Commonwealth needs to find a way to engage the issues that affect all 53 member nations; not to be hijacked by a pariah state; and to move all member countries further down the paths of democracy and tolerance from which a number, including post 9/11 Britain, appear to be retreating.

Why pick on Robert Mugabe?

Human rights are being abused in many Commonwealth countries

Kate Allen
Friday December 5, 2003
The Guardian

The Commonwealth's combined population of 1.7 billion people make up 30% of the world's population. It should be a beacon for the protection of human rights in a globalising world. The Commonwealth took a stand against apartheid in South Africa, and now is not the time to debase this precedent by turning a blind eye to the undermining of basic human rights in many member states.

The spiralling human rights crisis in suspended member Zimbabwe will grab most of the attention of Commonwealth leaders at the heads of government meeting in Nigeria this weekend. This is to be expected when there were more than a thousand reports of torture at the hands of the police and security services last year. President Mugabe must be sent a clear message that arbitrary detention, torture and systematic repression are at odds with the Commonwealth's vision of democracy, the rule of law and good governance.

However, leaders must also look at how other members have trampled on basic freedoms in their rush to join the so-called "war on terror", have attacked the right to seek asylum, and still permit cruel punishments and executions. Is it any wonder that Mugabe has got the message that human rights violations will not be challenged?

It is important that Commonwealth members do not use the "war on terror" as an excuse to erode human rights. Unfortunately, many have introduced legislation allowing them to arrest suspects and detain them without charge, and to deport those they deem a threat. The right to a fair trial has been undermined.

In India, the Prevention of Terrorism Act has granted the police much wider powers of arrest than previously, and allows them to detain "political suspects" for up to six months without charge or trial. Police in Gujarat are using the legislation to arbitrarily arrest and imprison men from the Muslim community. Almost 400 men were detained between March and May, and there are reports of Muslims being held incommunicado, with incontrovertible evidence of torture. The legislation has provided a convenient vehicle for discrimination and persecution.

Our own government made the UK the only country in Europe to derogate from the European convention on human rights in order to rush through the 2001 Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act. It has used it to imprison 14 foreign nationals for up to two years without charging them or bringing them to trial. They face the prospect of remaining in detention indefinitely on the basis of secret evidence that they have not been allowed to see and therefore cannot challenge. These "security measures" are undermining the credibility and viability of basic legal safeguards.

The clampdown on the right to asylum has seen the Australian government's "Pacific solution" set of policies enable it to hold for months scores of people, who have been recognised as refugees, in detention centres - a policy branded by a UN delegation as "offensive to human dignity". Similarly, the new asylum bill in the UK threatens to criminalise those seeking asylum.

Despite all Commonwealth members' theoretical commitment to protect individuals' human rights, member states including Jamaica and the Bahamas hand down death sentences, while Nigeria permits punishments that include stoning and flogging. When I was in Uganda in October, where torture is endemic, I heard about a worrying increase in the use of torture by the police, including battering suspects' knees and elbows, precisely to do long-term damage. A commitment to protecting individuals' rights would see President Museveni using the same leadership to eliminate torture as he has been recognised for showing in tackling the Aids epidemic.

In 1991, members of the Commonwealth signed up to the Harare declaration, which pledged all governments to work for "just and honest government" and to protect "the liberty of the individual under the law [and guarantee] equal rights for all citizens". When the government of Zimbabwe sees the flagrant disregard for basic human rights protection in other countries, the message it gets is that the Commonwealth is not serious about these commitments - and there will be no consequences if you disregard them. The result is that Mugabe believes he is safe to continue his crackdown on all critics of the government.

The heads of government meeting in Abuja must deal honestly with these human rights questions. Leaders should make concrete commitments to draw up human rights action plans. The meeting is a chance for Zimbabwe's closest neighbours, South Africa and Zambia, to commit to putting sustained pressure on Mugabe's government. This is essential if Zimbabwe is to understand that the Commonwealth is serious about what it said in Harare.

· Kate Allen is director of Amnesty International UK

from 21 November 2003

The Cheap Day return to Baghdad

Monday 1 December 2003

"Hey, Donnie, fancy a day-trip to Baghdad," said George; "but I'm not taking you, I want to take Condie, she will be better company on two eleven hour flights!"

The conversation probably started something like that. And like a chapter from a Tom Clancey novel, the US President took his private jet and a few gagged reporters to Baghdad for Thanksgiving supper.

Forget all the cheap comments; The London Independent wrote "The Turkey has landed"; a French paper called it an "Electoral Raid on Baghdad".

This show balls. And there were many other messages as well.

It is only a week since a DHL freighter landing in Baghdad was hit by a ground to air missile; the threat to Air Force One was very clear. The secrecy of the trip was paramount. The execution was remarkable.

But Baghdad is not safe. The President did not leave the confines of the airport. That shows just how far the Americans and Iraqis have to go to achieve a safe and stable city and nation. And it shows just how little success there has been to date.

Was it electioneering. Sure. The TV pictures will have played on national TV in the US just as folks were sitting down to their stuffed birds.

But then; he is also President of the USA and the Commander-in-Chief of the US troops. The reaction of those troops to his presence was entirely unscripted and genuinely warm. Other candidate can campaign 100% of their time. He is both campaigning and running a country. If that means he can do both in one trip then good luck to him.

I don't like him. But I think this trip showed some class. And I love the fact that the media, camped outside Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch were left eating cold turkey and complaing about how they had been misled.

The US media reaction is covered in the following Washington Post commentary.

Some Understand Covert Journey; Others Fear Bad Precedent
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 28, 2003; Page A44

Although the White House lied to much of the press to conceal President Bush's Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad, many journalists and analysts yesterday were willing to give the administration a pass.

"In this case, it's justified," said Bob Schieffer, CBS's chief Washington correspondent. "It was extremely important for the president to demonstrate that he's willing to go where those young men and women he sent over there have gone." If the reporters "were going with a military operation in Baghdad, they'd keep it off the record."

But Philip Taubman, Washington bureau chief of the New York Times, said that "in this day and age, there should have been a way to take more reporters. People are perfectly capable of maintaining a confidence for security reasons. It's a bad precedent." Once White House officials "decided to do a stealth trip, they bought into a whole series of things that are questionable."

Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, criticized the White House correspondents who made the trip without spilling the secret. "That's just not kosher," he said. "Reporters are in the business of telling the truth. They can't decide it's okay to lie sometimes because it serves a larger truth or good cause."

The deception was so complete that White House officials had not only said the president would be spending the holiday in Crawford, Tex., but they also announced a free-range turkey menu. The Associated Press carried a report Wednesday, based on a "senior administration official," that while in Crawford, "President Bush will spend part of his Thanksgiving Day calling soldiers to express his and the nation's gratitude for their service in Iraq."

Although journalists routinely keep secret details of military operations, as they did during the war in Iraq, it is highly unusual for them not to reveal a major presidential trip overseas.

Former White House spokesman Joe Lockhart, who worked for President Bill Clinton, said: "There's no way to do this kind of trip if it's broadcast in advance, for security reasons. My problem with this is not that he misled the press. This is a president who has been unwilling to provide his presence to the families who have suffered but thinks nothing of flying to Baghdad to use the troops there as a prop."

But Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large of National Review Online, called the trip "a political masterstroke," saying: "This wasn't lying about an 18-minute gap on a tape or lying under oath. If they had announced the trip and there were attacks and people had died, everyone would be screaming bloody murder about how Bush put people in harm's way. I'm sure the press corps has their dresses over their head about it, but I sincerely doubt anyone in the real America will have any concern about it whatsoever."

Rosenstiel, however, said the trip "was much bigger news on a slow news day if it was unexpected. What reporters have done by going along with this is to help Bush politically."

The 13 pool correspondents summoned for the trip included Jim Angle of Fox News, the AP's Terence Hunt, Mike Allen of The Washington Post, Richard Keil of Bloomberg News, a Reuters reporter and photographers from Time, Newsweek and three wire services.

The White House uses a rotating system for a pool that includes newspaper, wire-service and television reporters when the president travels, but even news executives were uncertain yesterday whether the standard procedures had been followed.

Mike Abramowitz, The Post's national editor, said Allen did not tell his editors of the Baghdad trip in advance. "I'm glad Mike was on the plane. He had a great file," Abramowitz said. But, he added, "I am concerned that no one on the desk knew where a White House reporter was."

Kim Hume, Fox's Washington bureau chief, who knew that Angle was going, said White House officials "obviously made a decision that this was more important than the flak they were going to take from it." She said the administration took a network pool crew, as it was supposed to, and "we didn't get any competitive advantage from it." Had more journalists been told, Hume said, "the story would have leaked in about two seconds" because "news people are the biggest gossips alive."

Kathryn Kross, CNN's Washington bureau chief, said a two-person crew from her network was dismissed from the White House pool Wednesday, with the understanding that no further news would be made. "We're all for the president boosting the troops however the White House feels is appropriate," she said. "But apparently the White House put together its own group of people to accompany the president on this trip, and we're real interested to learn their reasons for doing that."

The surprise visit produced upbeat, sometimes gushing coverage on the cable networks, which kept rerunning video of Bush with a turkey platter and his pep talk to the troops. "This is a show of power. . . . This has significance in terms of showing the power of the presidency," Fox anchor David Asman said.

Time's Vivian Walt said on CNN that "an electric shock went through the room" and that for Bush, crying and trembling, it was "a taste of victory."

The message, retired Col. Ken Allard said on MSNBC, is that "you underestimate George Bush at your peril. It was a gutsy call, a Hail Mary pass, and he pulled it off."

Past official deceptions have tended to involve military matters. In 1983, then-White House spokesman Larry Speakes told a reporter a day before the United States invaded Grenada that the idea was "preposterous."

Howard Kurtz hosts CNN's weekly media program.

The moral myth

Superpowers act out of self-interest, not morality, and the US in Iraq is no different

George Monbiot
Tuesday November 25, 2003
The Guardian

It is no use telling the hawks that bombing a country in which al-Qaida was not operating was unlikely to rid the world of al-Qaida. It is no use arguing that had the billions spent on the war with Iraq been used instead for intelligence and security, atrocities such as last week's attacks in Istanbul may have been prevented. As soon as one argument for the invasion and occupation of Iraq collapses, they switch to another. Over the past month, almost all the warriors - Bush, Blair and the belligerents in both the conservative and the liberal press - have fallen back on the last line of defence, the argument we know as "the moral case for war".

Challenged in the Commons by Scottish Nationalist MP Pete Wishart last Wednesday over those devilishly uncooperative weapons of mass destruction, for example, Tony Blair dodged the question. "What everyone should realise is that if people like the honourable gentleman had had their way, Saddam Hussein, his sons and his henchmen would still be terrorising people in Iraq. I find it quite extraordinary that he thinks that that would be a preferable state of affairs."

I do believe that there was a moral case for deposing Saddam - who was one of the world's most revolting tyrants - by violent means. I also believe that there was a moral case for not doing so, and that this case was the stronger. That Saddam is no longer president of Iraq is, without question, a good thing. But against this we must weigh the killing or mutilation of thousands of people; the possibility of civil war in Iraq; the anger and resentment the invasion has generated throughout the Muslim world and the creation, as a result, of a more hospitable environment in which terrorists can operate; the reassertion of imperial power; and the vitiation of international law. It seems to me that these costs outweigh the undoubted benefit.

But the key point, overlooked by all those who have made the moral case for war, is this: that a moral case is not the same as a moral reason. Whatever the argument for toppling Saddam on humanitarian grounds may have been, this is not why Bush and Blair went to war.

A superpower does not have moral imperatives. It has strategic imperatives. Its purpose is not to sustain the lives of other people, but to sustain itself. Concern for the rights and feelings of others is an impediment to the pursuit of its objectives. It can make the moral case, but that doesn't mean that it is motivated by the moral case.

Writing in the Observer recently, David Aaronovitch argued in favour of US intervention, while suggesting that it could be improved by means of some policy changes. "Sure, I want them to change. I want more consistency. I want Bush to stop tolerating the nastystans of Central Asia, to tell Ariel where to get off, to treat allies with more respect, to dump the hubristic neo-cons..." So say we all. But the White House is not a branch of Amnesty International. When it suits its purposes to append a moral justification to its actions, it will do so. When it is better served by supporting dictatorships like Uzbekistan's, expansionist governments like Ariel Sharon's and organisations which torture and mutilate and murder, like the Colombian army and (through it) the paramilitary AUC, it will do so.

It armed and funded Saddam when it needed to; it knocked him down when it needed to. In neither case did it act because it cared about the people of his country. It acted because it cared about its own interests. The US, like all superpowers, does have a consistent approach to international affairs. But it is not morally consistent; it is strategically consistent.

It is hard to see why we should expect anything else. All empires work according to the rules of practical advantage, rather than those of kindness and moral decency. In Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, Rubashov, the fallen hero of the revolution, condemns himself for "having followed sentimental impulses, and in so doing to have been led into contradiction with historical necessity. I have lent my ear to the laments of the sacrificed, and thus became deaf to the arguments which proved the necessity to sacrifice them." "Sympathy, conscience, disgust, despair, repentance and atonement", his interrogator reminds him, "are for us repellent debauchery".

Koestler, of course, was describing a different superpower, but these considerations have always held true. During the cold war, the two empires supported whichever indigenous leaders advanced their interests. They helped them to seize and retain power by massacring their own people, then flung them into conflicts in which millions were killed. One of the reasons why the US triumphed was that it possessed the resources to pursue that strategy with more consistency than the Soviet Union could. Today the necessity for mass murder has diminished. But those who imagine that the strategic calculus has somehow been overturned are deceiving themselves.

There were plenty of hard-headed reasons for the United States to go to war with Iraq. As Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defence secretary, has admitted, the occupation of that country permits the US to retain its presence in the Middle East while removing "almost all of our forces from Saudi Arabia". The presence of "crusader forces on the holy land" was, he revealed, becoming ever less sustainable. (Their removal, of course, was Osama bin Laden's first demand: whoever said that terrorism does not work?) Retaining troops in the Middle East permits the US to continue to exercise control over its oil supplies, and thus to hold China, its new economic and political rival, to ransom. The bombing of Iraq was used by Bush to show that his war on terror had not lost momentum. And power, as anyone who possesses it appreciates, is something you use or lose. Unless you flex your muscles, they wither away.

We can't say which of these motives was dominant, but we can say that they are realistic reasons for war. The same cannot be said of a concern for the human rights of foreigners. This is merely the cover under which one has to act in a nominal democracy.

But in debating the war, those of us who opposed it find ourselves drawn into this fairytale. We are obliged to argue about the relative moral merits of leaving Saddam in place or deposing him, while we know, though we are seldom brave enough to say it, that the moral issue is a distraction. The genius of the hawks has been to oblige us to accept a fiction as the reference point for debate.

Of course, it is possible for empires to do the right thing for the wrong reasons, and upon this possibility the hawks may hang their last best hopes of justification. But the wrong reasons, consistently applied, lead at the global level to the wrong results. Let us argue about the moral case for war by all means; but let us do so in the knowledge that it had nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq.

· Monbiot.com

England end 37 year drought

24 November 2003

What a heart-stopper; England has not won a world title of significance since 1966 (yes I was watching that one as well); and England has to do it the hard way - extra time again. As Wilkinson's majestic, scripted, drop goal sealed the win for England you could almost hear Kenneth Wolstenholme calling out - the crowd are on the pitch; they thinks its all over; it is now.

Australians are used to sporting success. England has been starved of it for too long.

Rugby has come a long way; a minority sport, only professional for the last eight years or so, is now truly on the map. A hooligans' game played by gentlemen. Articulate on and off the field and with a code of behaviour that must put their footballing counterparts to shame.

Wonderful !

The right cause; the wrong approach

21 November 2003

The first wave of bombings in Istanbul last Saturday were targeted at the city's Jewish population; yesterday's deadly attacks were on the British; and indiscriminately many Turkish people of diverse faiths.

The predictable rhetoric from Bush and Blair came in reponse. They will "defeat this evil". There is little sign that the "war on terror" is being won by anyone other than the terrorists.

The terrorists can strike almost anywhere; there is no shortage of targets; and there appears to be an unending supply of suicide bombers. That may be at the heart of the issue. What drives a man or woman to be willing to blow themselves to pieces.

Since 9/11 the terrorists have struck in Bali, Djerba, Mombasa, Jakarta, Karachi, Riyadh, Istanbul and of course in Iraq. This is not a weak enemy. This is a well financed and well organised global threat.

Al - Qaida's attacks in Istanbul follow a well established pattern. Istanbul is at the heart of a modern, secular, democratic nation. It is this sort of modern islamic and secular state that the Americans and British would like to see in Iraq and elsewhere. Al - Qaida, through fanning fear and anger, seeks to change this balance; to turn moderates into hard-liners; to turn Muslims against Christians and Jews; to escalate a confrontation between Islam and the West. We should not underestimate how dangerous their intentions are or the potential depth of their support.

An unwaivering battle cannot be the answer. That's like the great war. We will kill them before they kill us. It just becomes a battle of attrition.

There are deeper questions that need to be answered; who is the enemy; what are the causes of their remorseless hatred; can this war genuinely be won; are western policies in the Middle East (Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria etc.) helping or harming this war on terror.

Britain and the US chose to respond by armed confrontation; to match violence with violence. And violence (even organised and ) breeds greater random acts of violence. To many in the Muslim world I fear the aggressive reactions of Bush and Blair and their invasion of Iraq, has given greater legitimacy to the terrorists.

What must be needed is an engagement of mainstream Muslim opinion and a rapid resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

This is a conflict that al - Qaida cannot be allowed to win; the West cannot walk away. Submission to terrorism is not a resolution of this crisis. But to win, the west will have to find new ways to identify the terrorists and to appease (not to win over) the hearts and minds of the moderate muslim world. The west needs to engage the east and to agree a less confrontational and more intelligent approach.

The Threat of Rupert Murdoch

Polly Toynbee in the Guardian

21 November 2003

This week Rupert Murdoch menacingly rattled the prime minister's cage with a bullying warning that he might shift the allegiance of his mighty newspapers to Michael Howard - and disgracefully Tony Blair said nothing. If ever there was a time for all that jaw-jutting pugnacity, this was it. But he said not a word in protest at the arrogance of the man. Here is a clear and present threat to democracy itself, when one magnate controlling 40% of Britain's newspaper readership and an ever greater slice of television plays cat-and-mouse with our elected government. He is a terrorist, too, operating by striking terror into the heart of politicians, forcing them all into craven subservience to his whims.

Universal soldier

Leader
Thursday November 20, 2003
The Guardian

Conscious that he has a bit of catching up to do, George Bush piled on the charm yesterday. The US president lavished praise on Britain, America's "closest friend in the world". He stressed the shared bonds of history, values and belief; the key importance of the transatlantic relationship; and the two countries' common cause in pursuit of global freedom and democracy.

His forceful defence of military action and post-war policy in Iraq and Afghanistan, his support for multilateralism and his recognition of the centrality of the Arab-Israeli conflict will both delight, and give political reinforcement, to Tony Blair. But while Mr Bush's message was rendered palatable, even attra