I was somewhat surprised to see the U.S and Australia indicating that they’ll sign the Kyoto protocol, as they announced their “New Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate”:

“The Kyoto Protocol could do with a bit of complementarities with other initiatives”

Alexander Downer – Australian Foreign Minister

“We view this as a complement, not an alternative [to the Kyoto treaty]”

Robert Zoellick – U.S Secretary of State

Waiting for your signatures guys!

After all, your new little club can only complement the Kyoto protocol if you sign both. You ####### idiots!

I’d be pretty sceptical of this “initiative” even if we had signed Kyoto. There’s nothing to indicate it’s anything more than a PR stunt to try and hide the fact that our governments are doing jack shit all about climate change.

We’ll continue hearing about “clean” coal and “next generation” Nukula technology, but not much is gonna change while these prats are at the wheel.

More here from the right-leaning Fin Review, and a bit of background.

I was pretty shocked when I first heard about the execution of Jean Charles de Menezes.

Eventhough the Police may have thought they were saving numerous people by killing him, for them to shoot him 7 times in the head is pretty extreme.

The original story was:

He emerged from a house that was under surveillance, was wearing a thick coat on a hot day and that when challenged he ran from Police and jumped the ticket barrier, he was then chased down and shot dead. His shooting was described as being “directly linked” to the attepmted London bombings.

It’s now looking more like:

He emerged from an apartment block in which one apartment was under surveillance, possibly wasn’t wearing a thick coat (even so it was between 12° and 16° that day), the Police may not have properly identifed themselves, he may not have jumped the ticket barrier, and he was innocent.

It seems the only part of the story that hasn’t changed is the actual shooting, obviously much to Mr Menezes’ detriment.

I’m afraid I don’t really buy the “we had to shoot him or he might have blown himself up” argument. Not least because shooting him could have just as easily triggered the bomb, had he’d been using a Dead man’s switch.

It’s not an easy problem, and I pity the Policeman who’s faced with the next potential bomber, but shooting people just isn’t much of a strategy.

Sigh.

Wikipedia, as always, have a good write-up, including lots of references.

Being less hungover than usual on Sunday, I took the opportunity to ride up Mt Majura.

I rode up it once before, in March or April – I forget. That time I went up the south western side, on the dirt trails, and spent most of the “ride” walking my bike because it’s so step.

Not a bad old day.

This time I headed north up the highway, then along Majura road and finally up the bitumen road which goes up the back of Mt Majura. Then I rode down the crazy-steep dirt tracks.

For the doubters, a pic from the very top.

It’s still pretty steep even on the bitumen. First gear for most of the climb for me.

Vital statistics were:

Ahem. Pretty piss-weak really, especially if you’ve been watching Le Tour as I have.

As a comparison (ha!), some interesting historical stats on the Tour here. Here’s a graph of average speed over time:

As you can see, on the most recent Tour Lance Armstrong averaged 41.654 Km/h over the 3,608 Km length of the Tour. That’s graph’s not quite the whole story, for some of those years the total distance was much longer, but still an impressive trend.

It’s sort of sad to see Armstrong retire, he certainly doesn’t seem like he’s starting to fade. If anything he was more dominant in this Tour than previous ones. On the other hand next year’s Tour will be the most exciting in years, because there’s no clear favourite.

It was nice to see the S.L.A.P.P filed by Gunns against the Wilderness Society, Our Bob and others, dealt a set-back last week.

The ruling by Justice Bongiorno is a great read. It’s obviously written in very heavy leagalese, but that’s sort of its beauty – it’s very well reasoned, almost relaxed, yet it tears Gunns’ claims to shreds with barely concealed disdain.

The case has not been thrown out however. Gunns have the opportunity to rewrite their statement of claims, due by August 15th, so it’s not over yet.

As a bit of background, this article in the Age is a good start: “The Gunns writ is an attack on democracy”. I don’t care if you’re a right wing nut job (and a lot of you are) you still have a right to protest, and the Gunns suit is a direct attack on that right. So I expect all you young Liberals to be out there protesting against Gunns’ lawsuit, even if you support their wanton destruction of Tasmania’s old growth forests.

The accused have a website, and there’s also Mc Gunns. Let’s hope the suit ends up being as disasterous for Gunns as McLibel was for McDonalds.

ps. I am a member of the Wilderness Society.

Next time someone tells you the ABC has a left-wing bias punch them in the face get them to explain this (via the daily flute):

STEPHANIE KENNEDY: Do any Australian agencies, federal or State have a similar shoot-to-kill policy as the British authorities?

JOHN HOWARD: We have appropriate policies.

STEPHANIE KENNEDY: So is there a shoot-to-kill policy?

JOHN HOWARD: We have appropriate policies.

STEPHANIE KENNEDY: The British intelligence agencies …

I’m sorry? Is that it? Perhaps the ABC need to run this checklist past their interviewers, in particular point 7:

Silence is golden. … When you start asking those provocative questions, the answers most likely will be short, useless or carefully worded. You may not get an answer at all. If this occurs, look your source in the eye and don’t say a word.

But then I guess Howard would boycott AM if they started demanding actual answers rather than sound bites. Gotta love this democracy thing, keeping our leaders accountable and all that good stuff.

It was embarassing to watch, quite frankly, when John Howard visited Louise Barry in a London Hospital last week:

LOUISE BARRY: What do you think about all this sort of stuff then? Do you reckon because everyone says that it’s all about because of the Iraq War. Do you reckon?

JOHN HOWARD: No, I don’t. But, you know, different people have different views. I don’t. I mean, they had a go at us and they had a go at other people before Iraq started.

I won’t even grace that reponse with the L word. I just can’t belive Howard thinks he can fool us with this so called “argument” ie. “A happened before B, therefore B has no relation to C”. But of course he can fool us, or at least enough of us.

Although he’s not referring to Howard directly, Juan Cole sums it up well in this interesting piece:

No one is alleging that all the instances of radical Muslim terrorism can be traced to the Iraq War.

What is being argued is that the Iraq War provided the already-existing terror networks with an enormous propaganda and recruiting windfall.

And even if it’s only helped them recruit 4 more suicide bombers, that’s 4 too many.

Let’s not forgot Johnny, Muslims can count too, and last I checked there were somewhere between 22 and 100 thousand reasons for them to be pissed off with Britain, the U.S and us.

Update 2005-07-26: Jack Straw has backed away from his earlier assertions that there is no relationship between the War on Iraq and the London bombings. Alas I doubt Our Leader will be so sensible.

In an effort to counter some of the drivel coming from formerly respectable politicians, here are some links to interesting thinking on what’s going on in the world.

Global Guerrillas

The slightly buzz-word-laden Global Guerrillas, has some interesting articles.

Emergent Communities is an interesting piece about the London bombings (sorry, the 7/7 London bombings), and the type of organisation they may or may not be part of.

I particularly like a comment to that article by David Kafri:

If Iraq at first looked like a bear, it now resembles a swamp full of stinging insects; and while every single sting is no more than painfull, the total is much more than painful.

You cannot fight bees the same way you would fight a bear.

Contrary to the “clash of civilisations” view which our leaders seem keen on, this is a well-reasoned and much less alarmist take on the objectives of the London bombers. More of his thoughts here.

As an Open Source Software fan and programmer, I’m slightly uncomfortable with his use of the term “Open Source Warfare”. After all it’s been claimed before that Open Source Software promotes Terrorism¹.

On the other hand perhaps we can start doing up stickers, “al Qaeda – Powered by Open Source”.

But seriously, his analysis is quite persuasive, even if his terminology is a little dicey.

Call to arms

This sad, yet excellent post at billmon.org sums up a lot my thoughts recently on the political landscape, both here and in the U.S (which billmon is writing about).

He’s talking about how the “progressive” side of politics should react to the nomination of John Roberts for the U.S Supreme Court.

Some have suggested the “left” should hold back and wait to see what Roberts is really like before passing judgement.

The Wikipedia write-up is pretty good. But in short, all indications are that he’ll be a loyal servant to the Bush regime, and as he replaces the relatively moderate (and that’s really not saying much) Sandra Day O’Connor the balance of the court could tip to the right.

But all that’s just a bit of background to this quote from the billmon piece:

… withholding fire on Roberts out of some high-minded sense of “fairness”, or a desire to consider all the facts — well, I think it should be obvious that we don’t live in that kind of country any more.

(my emphasis)

Which is similar to the way I feel about Australian politics these days. The Coalition have broken every unwritten “rule” in the last 10 years, willing it seems to stop at nothing to retain power.

And now they’re about to get control of all three branches of government, I can’t wait.

Labor meantime are left standing around like a bunch of dicks saying “You can’t do that … Oh! You just did”, again and again. If they’re ever going to get back in power they’re going to have to adopt some of the tactics so skillfully exercised by the Coalition.

And it’s not like they’d be much of an improvement anyway.

1. Well, claimed by the pack of nut-cases known as the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, funded by your friendly Monopoly.

Now that I’ve got that off my chest …

Spent the weekend scrubbing fridges, well two, and moving furniture. Sarah and Nick have got a gorgeous little place in town and funnily enough she wanted all her furniture back! It’s actually left the lounge looking better, it was a tad crowded before.

Gilby brought his dad’s (?) trailer, which he towed with the newly purchased (from Sarah) Big Red Beamer, ’tis a nice piece of machinery, pity it chugs so much oil or I’d love one.

Wednesday night Jess was in town, back from Vanuatu, and we headed to see Sarah Blasko at ANU. I missed most of 78 Saab which was a pity, I haven’t seen them for years.

Ms Blasko put on a top show, I didn’t really know many of her songs, but she’s got some really good ones. I particularly liked a few she did with just an acoustic guitar.

In other music news I’ve been consumed the last few days by “Frances the Mute” from The Mars Volta.

It’s a bit prog-jazz-funk-rock I guess, a bit of a breath of fresh air after the last few years’ selection of minimalist rock, Grinspoon it ain’t. I never really got into At the Drive-In, which was the precursor to The Mars Volta, but I’ll have to look them up now.

I’ll certainly be grabbing a copy sometime of the MV’s first album, De-Loused in the Comatorium.

I’m also loving Ani DiFranco’s latest, Knuckle Down, it’s one of her best I think, although it’s not like she’s ever done a bad album, so it’s probably just enough to say it’s an Ani DiFranco album – buy it.

I’ve been trying not to let loose a rant about the national ID card “debate”, but then I stumbled over this transcript and I can hold back no longer.

Barrie Cassidy asks Peter Beattie about his recycled proposal for a national ID card. Peter’s response distilled into point form, with my equally lucid responses in red:

1. The world has changed since the original Australia Card debate.

   
   Well yes, that would seem to go without saying Peter.
   

2. September 11 changed the world.

   
   And September 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, … January 3rd .. February 8th .. November 10th ..
   

3. September 11 has changed how we think.

   
   Um, are you alright Peter, you seem to be repeating yourself.
   

4. The world has changed.

   
   No really, you already said that Peter. Are you feeling ok?
   

5. Cornelia Rau was locked up by mistake.

   
   Lots of people are locked up not by mistake, I think they call that “on purpose”, perhaps that’s something we need to think about.
   

6. People have their credit cards stolen and lose their money.

   
   Riiiight, so we should give them another card they can lose?
   

7. The debate simply won’t go away.

   
   I was going to say this isn’t actually a debate, but as Wikipedia points out a “Debate is a formalized system of (usually) logical argument”, so I guess this does qualify after all.
   

8. Peter can’t cope with having lots of EFTPOS, ATM, bus & train cards, so we should have a national bus ID card.

   
   Now here’s an idea, why don’t we not use money at all? Then people couldn’t lose it, they wouldn’t need an EFTPOS card or a bus card. We could pay for everything with chickens, we could have a national chicken card!
   

9. This is where the world is going.

   
   I think you’ll find the world also known as the Earth, is a big lump of rock and the only place it “goes” is around the freakin’ sun!
   

10. That is where we are going.

    
    There you go again repeating yourself. I’m really starting to worry about you.
    

11. This is just where the world is going.

    
    Peter! Wake up, you’re babbling incoherently.
    

Now I’m not really of the tin-foil-hat-wearing crowd. As it stands we have essentially no privacy, from either the government or the private sector. But that doesn’t really bother me, it seems to work ok most of the time. Although I guess I’ll probably be half way through saying that one day when they finally lock me …

My problem is that at some point in my obviously wayward upbringing, I was led to believe that politicians, and in fact decision makers in general, were expected to use some process of “logic” to justify their decisions.

So, please, can someone tell me how the #### a national ID card is going to help in the “fight against terror”?!

Let’s see, would they have helped stop …

September 11? Hmm, not that I can see. After all, several of the hijackers lived in Germany which has a national ID card.

Bali? Doesn’t look like it.

Madrid? Er, nope. Actually, isn’t that funny, Spain has national ID cards. And would you look at that, one of the Madrid plotters used an ID card stolen directly from the mint.

London? Bit early to tell I guess, but it seems the bombers were carrying ID anyway.

Despite all the talk about “not letting Terrorism change our way of life”, all of the responses so far do exactly that. Having spent 50 years fighting the Commies, the West seems destined to remake itself in its former enemy’s image.

This piece from Janes quotes an offical as saying “commitees will be formed to train, reinforce and reconstruct Iraqi military forces and artillery”.

Well, boring? Until you read who said it, “Iranian Minister of Defence Admiral Ali Shamkhani”.

The Septics will be thrilled. Or maybe they will be?