Not quite like de Botton.....

Just back from overseas, visiting family in London with a side trip with them to Istanbul. All very enjoyable notwithstanding the customary hazards of modern international air travel, notably airport chaos/ inefficiency and the brusqueness of (most) UK border protection officials.

Earlier this year Alain de Botton spent a week in the employ of the British Airports Authority as a writer in residence at Heathrow Terminal Five. He's just published his diary, which is a characteristically fluent distillation of his week, which is one a long way removed from my and, I expect, most other airport users' experiences. That said it's worth reading, if only for the very different perspective he brought to his task. He must have been almost the only person with time to reflect about the terminal: everyone else was of necessity focused on a particular task: travelling (departing or arriving), security, selling (a big, big part of modern airport life) or maintenance.

I may have more to say about this topic later....

20 years on, how much has changed?

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square "incident". Naturally the media, the non-Chinese media that is, has commented on the occasion.

This morning Stephen McDonell reported live from the Square for ABC Radio's AM.

For a video showing how the Chinese authorities muzzled the international media check out this Al Jazeera report.

I visited Tiananmen Square in late 1997. Apart from being impressed with its size I remember thinking how calm everything looked. Perhaps it was the tourists, perhaps the lack of a visible security presence, perhaps the presence of souvenir vendors (from one of whom I bought the kite in the photo above) which made the place look much like so many other global tourist focal points (Trafalgar Square minus Nelson's Column came to mind). Maybe I was just beguiled by the hospitality and friendliness of the people I met. I don't remember asking any questions about 1989. Probably I was content to be the quintessential innocent abroad who believed that because I saw no signs of dissent that all was, if not well, at least on the mend....

Police reaction to Indian student protests damages Australia's reputation

Video of the - to put it mildly - vigorous police response to the protest by Indian international students in Melbourne against race motivated assaults has gone around the world.

Unfortunately the official response from authorities here has been deficient. Last night on ABC TV's Lateline Simon Overland came across more like PC Plod than the Victoria Police Chief Commissioner:

SIMON OVERLAND, CHIEF COMMISSIONER VICTORIA POLICE: There were other people who became involved, most of them weren't Indian, they were there for their own reasons, and I think the whole thing just got hijacked and got out of control.

RAFAEL EPSTEIN: With international attention on his officers, Simon Overland was there this morning and personally entered the crowd.

SIMON OVERLAND: We'd been in discussions with them for a long time. It got to the point where we needed to clear the intersection. So as I say, if they've been injured, I regret that, but in terms of what I saw, the police action was entirely justified and appropriate.

.....

SIMON OVERLAND: They've made their point, they've made it very powerfully. It's a point we already understood, but they've made it to the rest of the community, and I think the rest of the community understands it. If they're not careful they'll overplay their hand and the support for them will quickly evaporate.

Both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition have condemned the attacks which gave rise to the protests but it's taken until tonight for the Foreign Minister to get out of the blocks and announce the establishment of a taskforce to investigate the issue . Commissioner Overland is not a member.

Better late than never but a lot of damage, some of it unnecessary, has been done to Australia's reputation as reports in, for example, The Hindu , Al Jazeera and the BBC attest.
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Overseas contingency operations

The Australian's Cut and Paste section has an interesting take on the US government's redefining of what has hitherto been called "the global war on terror" or "terrorism". The new term is "overseas contingency operations"

A couple of pastes:

New York Post on March 25:

THE Obama administration has ordered an end to use of the phrase "Global War on Terror," a label adopted by the Bush administration shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday. In a memo sent this week from the Defence Department to staffers at the Pentagon, members were told, "this administration prefers to avoid using the term 'Long War' or 'Global War on Terror' (GWOT). Please use 'Overseas Contingency Operation'." A Pentagon spokesman said there was no memo or directive instructing officials to stop using the Global War on Terror phrase but acknowledged that the department has officially adopted Overseas Contingency Operation as the new term for the war.

Craig W. Duehring, the assistant secretary of the Air Force for manpower, also used the term last week. "Key battlefield monetary incentives has allowed the Air Force to meet the demands of overseas contingency operations even as requirements continue to grow," he said in congressional testimony.

Wall Street Journal editorial on Saturday:

THE 9/11 Commission counselled clarity, the new administration is emitting a haze of obfuscation. The Pentagon's preferred term is "overseas contingency operations", a bit of military jargon of which "overseas" is the only part recognisable in plain English, and which obscures the key point that the war -- sorry, the "operations" -- began in earnest only after terrorists attacked American cities. Yet Mr Obama's policies so far have been much more hawkish than his rhetoric as a candidate. He has abandoned his pledge to withdraw immediately from Iraq and has merely reiterated his promise to close Guantanamo. In court, he has hewed closely enough to Mr Bush's positions on secrecy, surveillance and detention to prompt an agonised New York Times editorial. The one foreign policy promise Mr Obama has kept is the one the far Left finds hardest to swallow: a troop surge in Afghanistan. Maybe, then, the President's hope is that the MoveOn types will settle for words in the absence of real change. If so, we suppose the rhetorical smoke is a small price to pay, even if the euphemisms for war and terrorism sound ridiculous.

Premier sticks his nose into international conflict

Premier Rann, on a visit to Cyprus, has, as Adelaide Now tells us, left nobody in any doubt about his opinion:

Mr Rann, on a three-day visit to the island nation, said Australia should take an active involvement in helping to solve the political conflict. He said he would continue "to be an advocate for the cause of human rights, for the cause of international law and also on behalf of those Australian Greek Cypriots who have lost their property and have lost their freedom to partake in that property".

During his visit, Mr Rann met lawyers representing South Australians of Cypriot origin who lost their properties due to the invasion and who have filed cases against Turkey before the European Court of Human Rights with funding from his Government. "We are the only government outside Cyprus that has been prepared to step in . . . what we are seeing is a complete breach of international law," he said.

Many of the 5000 Greek-Cypriot South Australians are among the 200,000 refugees who were driven out at gunpoint from their homes and towns by the Turkish military.

"Turkey wants to join the EU but continues to violate international law. It is not a good start for Turkey in that it is violating laws and occupying a third of Cyprus, including the properties of Greek-Cypriot refugees from South Australia," Mr Rann said.

It concerns me that a state government is funding and "is prepared to step in" to an international situation which appears to be rooted in centuries old antagonism between Greek and Turkish people. The Premier has no, repeat no, power over foreign affairs and should not be, whatever the merits of his case, pretending that he has.

Like, I expect, most South Australians, I'm no authority on the country, but I've checked DFAT's Smart Traveller advice for Cyprus , the relevant part of which says:

The Government of the Republic of Cyprus is the sole internationally recognised authority in Cyprus but its control, in practice, is exercised only in the southern part of the island which is predominantly Greek Cypriot. The northern part of Cyprus is controlled by the so-called 'Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus' (TRNC) which is only recognised by Turkey. There is also Turkish military presence in the north. A United Nations peacekeeping force (UNFICYP) patrols the buffer zone between the two sectors.

There have been occasional violent incidents along the UN Buffer Zone (also known as 'The Green Line').

You should avoid public demonstrations and large public gatherings as they may turn violent, especially around the UN Buffer Zone.

You should exercise caution in discussions in public areas of sensitive issues related to the problems of Cyprus' continued division. [Emphasis added].

If the Premier feels so strongly about the matter he should ask Mr Downer and DFAT to act on his behalf, rather than shooting from the hip as he's done. I'd be more sympathetic to him had he not harrumphed so loudly about how David Hicks should be treated after his release from prison as if everything Donald Rumsfeld had said about him was true, or if he'd not been silent about the detention of refugees and asylum seekers in his state.

Meanwhile back home in SA a storm in a teacup has blown up over remarks made by the MC at a Liberal fundraising function attended by Mr Costello. The joke is non-PC, but it reflects recent stories about Greek property developers making large donations to the ALP and, if not in return then almost concurrently, receiving the green light for major developments.

Alan Johnston

Alan is the BBC journalist who was abducted in Gaza on 12 March this year.

While any abduction gives cause for concern it's a sad time for freedom of speech when journalists such as Alan are punished for trying to report situations, no matter how complex, as they see them.

An online petition, which has to date received more than 82,000 signatures, is here . To find out more , click on the button with Alan's photo.

Who are we to believe?

The 15 British sailors and marines who were detained/ captured/ whatever have been released, for which everyone of sound mind will be grateful. The 15 have, according to the BBC, recanted what they said publicly while they were detained in Iran.

An editorial in today's Australian says "[President] Ahmadinejad turns an act of war into a PR coup", a view which has been echoed around the west. Another BBC report "Mystery shrouds UK sailors' saga" tries to look behind the negotiations which took place, but hasn't, in the immediate aftermath of the incident, yet been able to come up with anything conclusive:

The moral of the tale is that the gap between Iranian claims and what is really going on may be quite great. But do not rely on the British government to have the answer. Relations between Britain and Iran were strained before this crisis and have probably got worse. There isn't always a conspiracy or a backroom deal. Quite often diplomats, like the rest of us, are working in the dark.

Elsewhere in the region there are at least two sides to another story:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai acknowledged for the first time yesterday that he has met with Taliban militants in attempts to bring peace to the country, but offered no details of the talks or sign that a serious dialogue is under way.
reports The Independent

Karzai did not disclose any details of the meetings, when they took place or with whom. Hundreds of former members of the hardline Taliban regime, including a sprinkling of former senior commanders and officials, have reconciled with the government since they were ousted from power in the US-led invasion in 2001. But current rebels leaders have apparently refused to hold talks, and over the past year, thousands more fighters have picked up guns and joined the insurgency, which in 2006 alone left some 4,000 people, mainly militants, dead.

Zabiullah Mujaheed, a purported spokesman for the militants, said that Taliban "do not want to talk to a puppet government."

"Karzai's government has no power and all their policies are designed by America," Mujaheed told The Associated Press by phone, from an undisclosed location. "If the US wants to negotiate with the Taliban, they should first leave our country," he said.

And while these word wars continue, so does the killing. Mr Blair's delight at the return of the 15 has been tempered by news that another four British service personnel have been killed in Iraq, while in Afghanistan, as The Independent story adds, five people were killed in what was apparently a suicide bombing.

UK talks the talk with Iran, but what about walking the walk?

The current stand off, if that's the most appropriate term for it, between the UK and Iran over the latter's detention and "interrogation" of 15 British sailors for allegedly venturing into Iranian territory has, as spiked points out "shown up Britain's impotence on the world stage".

I hope that Leading Seaman (sic) and mother Turney, who has appeared on Iranian TV wearing a headscarf and smoking, not to mention looking very distressed , will soon, preferably with her shipmates, be extricated from the terrible mess they've got into. I also hope, even though this is a much bigger ask, that the much more convoluted mess (or messes) in the region might be sorted out in the not too distant future. That, I know, is most unlikely to happen given the entrenched positions of all the governments involved.

Pig headed Alex

Foreign Minister Downer has, as News.com.au and The Age report, once again resorted to attacking the ALP for what he perceives to be its longstanding foreign policy shortcomings. This is from The Age :

"Australian Labor wants to retreat to fortress Australia," he told the the Young Liberals' federal convention in Melbourne. "Its natural instinct has always been isolationism, and its cut-and-run policy in Iraq is the latest incarnation of that tendency. It is madness to think we can retreat from this crucial battle for civilisation and hope the terrorists will leave us alone."

Arguing Australia could not leave the fight against terrorism to others, Mr Downer warned of dire consequences if the United States retreated to its own borders. "Terrorists in every part of the world, including in our own region, would be emboldened," Mr Downer said. "We would be inviting the violence ever closer to our own homes."

He said that coalition failure in Iraq would be catastrophic, leaving the country to terrorists and insurgents who would try to install a Taliban-style regime, with terrible consequences for Iraq, the region and the world.

In defending the Government's commitment to the war in Iraq, Mr Downer launched a broad attack on the "self-loathing" of the left, which he said argued the West had brought terrorism on itself and which always sought the "seemingly easy option of avoiding conflict, negotiating concessions with the enemy and hoping the threat will disappear".

"Historically the left has always looked for soft options - from appeasement of Hitler, accommodation of Communist expansionism and unilateral disarmament in the Cold War," he said.

This is at best disingenuous, at worst arrant balderdash. Most Australians with any historical knowledge will recall that the best known Australian appeaser was R G "Pig Iron Bob" Menzies, who in the 1930s insisted on selling scrap iron to the expansionist Japanese empire. And who were his most vocal opponents? The waterside workers. And their position on the political spectrum?

Mr Downer is merely President Bush's mouthpiece, except for some limited freedom of action in the South Pacific -Melanesia region: and how stable is that at the moment? All his huffing and puffing about the ALP is simply laying down a smokescreen. Unfortunately for him the winds of change are blowing his smoke away as quickly as he can produce it.

In contrast to Mr Downer's rant, Attorney General Ruddock has, as News.com.au , The Age and the ABC, report refused to ban a radical Islamic group which is, as these sources claim, advocating the establishment of a strict Islamic state with sharia law. It's hard to tell from the reports whether this is intended to be a call to jihad in Australia, or a more general statement of a medium-long term goal. On this occasion I'll follow Mr Ruddock's lead and be alert, but not alarmed.

I wonder what Mr Downer thinks of it all. His department must have provided some advice to the A-G, but has Mr D for his own political purposes (or whatever) disregarded this and blamed the ALP?

Nothing to offer but blood, spice and broccoli...

During President Bush's recent visit to Indonesia a gentleman coyly described by CBS News as a "Voodoo Practitioner" prepared and drank a potion, thereby casting a jinx over the President.

The recipe appears to have been taken from the cookbook of the witches in Macbeth, with some input from Jamie Oliver:

Ki Gendeng Pamungkas slit the throat of a goat, a small snake and stabbed a black crow in the chest, stirred their blood with spice and broccoli before drank the "potion" and smeared some on his face.

The broccoli has your fingerprints on it, Jamie, but I'd like to know for how long it was stirred in the blood.

While sceptics might dismiss all the jinx talk as superstition there have been, according to US blogger Boozhy , some interesting developments since the ceremony:

It seems Bush has fallen out of the roll of God's Favorite, as the curse seems to have worked due to the fact that chaos has certainly ensued following Mr. Pamungka's curse. First, daughter Barbara had her purse burgled right out from under her cute perky little nose, while the Secret Service looked on. Second, two motorcycles in Bush's motorcade crashed yesterday, leaving three officers injured and one in serious condition and finally, top White House official and acting Director of the White House Travel office, Greg Pitts, was beaten and burgled yesterday outside of a Honolulu night club.

Australians " totally uncivilised"

Also posted at Nudges and Deflections

The Australian team, notably Messrs Ponting and Martyn, have been described by Sharad Powar, the head of the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India) as "totally uncivilised" for their behaviour at the Champions trophy presentation.

I know from personal experience that Indian people set great store by ceremonial protocol: at most functions there is a hierarchy of guests, with the chief guest, in this instance Mr Powar, being the most important. Ceremonies with each guest, beginning with the least important, being acknowledged, and usually invited to speak. Nothing should disturb this. In my only appearance at such a ceremony (not, alas, related to any performance on a cricket field) I was speaking when the power failed. The show nevertheless went on: fortunately I was speaking off the cuff and was able to finish quickly and allow the next speaker their turn (half way through which the lights came back on).

Acording to Cricinfo Cricket Australia is trying to hose the matter down, though to my mind CEO James Sutherland's comments seem a bit bland for an Indian audience, however well they may go down in Australia:

James Sutherland, Cricket Australia CEO had said yesterday that the relations between both boards were absolutely fine. "It's unfortunate that there has been an interpretation of disrespect from that. I know that no disrespect was intended by the Australian players; I have spoken to Ricky about it. Perhaps sometimes these things can happen between different cultures."

For a sample of Indian opinion see these pieces from Hindustan Times , Times of India and The Hindu. Here's an extract from the latter:

We respect the way Australia runs its cricket and we respect the way Australia plays its cricket, which is probably why half the Australian team strides around on Indian television hawking stuff. (We certainly don't respect our board president getting pushed around).

But in Australia, respect for Indian cricket is grudging, if at all. The talking-down, slightly supercilious tone that some use (which we got for years from the English and still do in some places) bothers me.

Culture shock

It bothers me also that this is what you often read about India in Australian sports pages. Chaotic. Noisy. Dirty. Cracked pavements. Delhi-belly. Yawn. It's true, but it's also all so 1980s about a country that's changing every day. It's intriguing, too, that culture shock only occurs going from West to East.

Presumably this shock explains why few write about how well Australia's players are treated in India.

I'm not being precious, I'm just plain bored. And wondering, is there nothing in pulsating, economically powerful, rapidly changing, complex India, which is interesting (and I'm not talking about elephants on the street and the maharajas).

India may not be big news in Australia but it is elsewhere in the world, and by resorting to lazy stereotypes some cricket writers, who are the primary messengers, are not being entirely accurate messengers. Writers in Australia such as Peter Roebuck, Greg Baum and Chloe Saltau, and former cricketers like Ian Chappell, do a fine, thoughtful job, but I find them lonely voices. After all, if anyone wants to know about India, all they have to do is ask: we love talking.