Thursday, September 30, 2010
Tunnel vision: Sydney movie maker stopped from listing free BitTorrent film
Glenda Kwek
September 29, 2010 - 5:40PM
A top movie website has rejected a thriller about a TV crew being hunted in tunnels - and the producers, including Andrew Denton, believe it's because they want to give it away free.
Sydney independent film producer Enzo Tedeschi said he tried five times since June to get the film, The Tunnel listed on the Internet Movie Database, IMDb.com.
But each time it has been rejected and Mr Tedeschi - who has had other films accepted - believes it is because he wants to distribute it through BitTorrent - which is best known for the illegal sharing of movies and music.
Getting listed on IMDb is important to a producer, as the site is considered the premier database used by industry professionals, including those in Hollywood.
"Some people think that by releasing our film legitimately on peer-to-peer networks that we are condoning piracy," said Tedeschi, who has worked in television and film for a decade.
"But we are not. We are just trying to make legitimate use of a very large distribution network which is ripe for use by independent film-makers."
Tedeschi said the production team is raising money to give away the film for free by selling single frames from the movie at $1 each online.
In six weeks, they managed to raise almost $12,000, and hope to sell a total of 135,000 frames.
He said this experiment at raising money online was inspired by musicians such as Nine Inch Nails, who have released some of their songs on the internet for free.
Tedeschi said applications to add productions to IMDb are made online.
Detailed information about a film or television program has to be provided before anything gets listed, and the whole approval process takes at most a few weeks.
So IMDb's refusal to list the film seemed all the more unusual, he said.
"I've had plenty of other projects that I have worked on listed on IMDb far more easily and with far less information then we have provided IMDb about The Tunnel," he said.
"It's not like we are nobodies.
"We have a respectable production company associated with it.
"Everyone involved with the project has their histories well-documented, even on IMDb, so you would think it would be a no-brainer for them to list this project."
Tedeschi and production partner Julian Harvey have written an open letter to IMDb on the film's website, after failing to contact the site's owners about the rejections.
IMDb had 25.6 million unique visitors in August, the Associated Press reported.
Its British founder and chief executive, Col Needham, told AP his site has 100 million monthly visitors worldwide.
It was bought over by Amazon.com in 1998.
Comment is being sought from Amazon.
* BitTorrent works by sharing files through computers connected through the internet. When a user downloads a file, it is drawn from the different computers that host the files. The amount of bandwidth used to transfer the file is thus reduced.
Users download files via a peer-to-peer file-sharing programs such as uTorrent and Transmission and through torrent search engines such as Demonoid and Mininova.
----------------------
Torrent of data not enough to get Aussie movie on IMDb
Glenda Kwek
September 30, 2010 - 3:11PM
Top movie website IMDb has denied rejecting a Sydney film because of its producers' plan to distribute it for free on BitTorrent, saying it does not matter how a project is released.
The Sydney producers of The Tunnel, which is in post-production, believed it was barred from being listed on the Internet Movie Database because its distribution method, BitTorrent, is often used for the illegal sharing of movies and music.
IMDb's head of public relations and marketing said the company would "review this specific case", but brushed off the producers' claims of bias.
The filming of The Tunnel at St Georges Heights.
The filming of The Tunnel at St Georges Heights. Photo: Steve Christo
"To the contrary, we already list many titles that were initially or solely distributed online and/or via BitTorrent," Emily Glassman wrote in an email from Seattle, where the company is based.
"As a pioneering internet company - we are celebrating our 20th anniversary on 17 October! - we are fully aware of and totally embrace digital distribution."
Glassman cited a range of recent titles, including 2009 films The Yes Men Fix the World and Blank, and 2008 films Pentagon and Emperor, that have been distributed through BitTorrent and listed on IMDb.
"We will look at and review this specific case but as a general rule we always include all films that are submitted to us as long as we can verify that they fulfil our eligibility requirements."
Glassman said the database's requirements were stringent because it had to maintain its credibility, and that "more substantial burden of proof is required to accept titles that are still in production".
"Titles are rejected ... due to the lack of critical information such as a release date, specific and detailed production status, distribution information, details about festival submissions or screenings.
"The lack of this data is what may prompt our editors to err on the side of caution and wait until this information becomes available or until the film has actually been screened and released."
But one of The Tunnel's producers, Enzo Tedeschi, said he and his colleagues fulfilled all of IMDb's requests for information, and even described in detail their responses on the film's website.
"It's unusual for a movie that's not from a major studio to be listed at an early stage," Tedeschi told smh.com.au yesterday.
"But once it's a real project, you would think you would have an easier time verifying its existence. Not to mention all the publicity that we got in the trade magazines, which was something that they requested specifically.
"We gave them so many things, we had articles in the Herald, in the Telegraph, in The Australian, in film magazines and it still wasn't enough to verify the film's existence."
September 29, 2010 - 5:40PM
A top movie website has rejected a thriller about a TV crew being hunted in tunnels - and the producers, including Andrew Denton, believe it's because they want to give it away free.
Sydney independent film producer Enzo Tedeschi said he tried five times since June to get the film, The Tunnel listed on the Internet Movie Database, IMDb.com.
But each time it has been rejected and Mr Tedeschi - who has had other films accepted - believes it is because he wants to distribute it through BitTorrent - which is best known for the illegal sharing of movies and music.
Getting listed on IMDb is important to a producer, as the site is considered the premier database used by industry professionals, including those in Hollywood.
"Some people think that by releasing our film legitimately on peer-to-peer networks that we are condoning piracy," said Tedeschi, who has worked in television and film for a decade.
"But we are not. We are just trying to make legitimate use of a very large distribution network which is ripe for use by independent film-makers."
Tedeschi said the production team is raising money to give away the film for free by selling single frames from the movie at $1 each online.
In six weeks, they managed to raise almost $12,000, and hope to sell a total of 135,000 frames.
He said this experiment at raising money online was inspired by musicians such as Nine Inch Nails, who have released some of their songs on the internet for free.
Tedeschi said applications to add productions to IMDb are made online.
Detailed information about a film or television program has to be provided before anything gets listed, and the whole approval process takes at most a few weeks.
So IMDb's refusal to list the film seemed all the more unusual, he said.
"I've had plenty of other projects that I have worked on listed on IMDb far more easily and with far less information then we have provided IMDb about The Tunnel," he said.
"It's not like we are nobodies.
"We have a respectable production company associated with it.
"Everyone involved with the project has their histories well-documented, even on IMDb, so you would think it would be a no-brainer for them to list this project."
Tedeschi and production partner Julian Harvey have written an open letter to IMDb on the film's website, after failing to contact the site's owners about the rejections.
IMDb had 25.6 million unique visitors in August, the Associated Press reported.
Its British founder and chief executive, Col Needham, told AP his site has 100 million monthly visitors worldwide.
It was bought over by Amazon.com in 1998.
Comment is being sought from Amazon.
* BitTorrent works by sharing files through computers connected through the internet. When a user downloads a file, it is drawn from the different computers that host the files. The amount of bandwidth used to transfer the file is thus reduced.
Users download files via a peer-to-peer file-sharing programs such as uTorrent and Transmission and through torrent search engines such as Demonoid and Mininova.
----------------------
Torrent of data not enough to get Aussie movie on IMDb
Glenda Kwek
September 30, 2010 - 3:11PM
Top movie website IMDb has denied rejecting a Sydney film because of its producers' plan to distribute it for free on BitTorrent, saying it does not matter how a project is released.
The Sydney producers of The Tunnel, which is in post-production, believed it was barred from being listed on the Internet Movie Database because its distribution method, BitTorrent, is often used for the illegal sharing of movies and music.
IMDb's head of public relations and marketing said the company would "review this specific case", but brushed off the producers' claims of bias.
The filming of The Tunnel at St Georges Heights.
The filming of The Tunnel at St Georges Heights. Photo: Steve Christo
"To the contrary, we already list many titles that were initially or solely distributed online and/or via BitTorrent," Emily Glassman wrote in an email from Seattle, where the company is based.
"As a pioneering internet company - we are celebrating our 20th anniversary on 17 October! - we are fully aware of and totally embrace digital distribution."
Glassman cited a range of recent titles, including 2009 films The Yes Men Fix the World and Blank, and 2008 films Pentagon and Emperor, that have been distributed through BitTorrent and listed on IMDb.
"We will look at and review this specific case but as a general rule we always include all films that are submitted to us as long as we can verify that they fulfil our eligibility requirements."
Glassman said the database's requirements were stringent because it had to maintain its credibility, and that "more substantial burden of proof is required to accept titles that are still in production".
"Titles are rejected ... due to the lack of critical information such as a release date, specific and detailed production status, distribution information, details about festival submissions or screenings.
"The lack of this data is what may prompt our editors to err on the side of caution and wait until this information becomes available or until the film has actually been screened and released."
But one of The Tunnel's producers, Enzo Tedeschi, said he and his colleagues fulfilled all of IMDb's requests for information, and even described in detail their responses on the film's website.
"It's unusual for a movie that's not from a major studio to be listed at an early stage," Tedeschi told smh.com.au yesterday.
"But once it's a real project, you would think you would have an easier time verifying its existence. Not to mention all the publicity that we got in the trade magazines, which was something that they requested specifically.
"We gave them so many things, we had articles in the Herald, in the Telegraph, in The Australian, in film magazines and it still wasn't enough to verify the film's existence."
Robbing hood holds up Kmart with bow
September 30, 2010 - 9:42AM
A man armed with a bow and arrow and wearing a hood has teamed up with two other outlaws to rob a Kmart store on the NSW south coast today.
The men, one of whom was also armed with a rifle, entered the 24-hour store inside a Nowra shopping centre just after 3am (AEST) and threatened workers with their weapons.
They called out the manager, forced him to open the safe, grabbed cash and fled.
Police say the robbers escaped in a stolen silver Toyota Camry station wagon which was later found abandoned south of the town.
The car is being examined by forensic specialists.
Police say the three robbers were all wearing hooded jumpers, and all concealed their faces with bandanas and sunglasses.
AAP
A man armed with a bow and arrow and wearing a hood has teamed up with two other outlaws to rob a Kmart store on the NSW south coast today.
The men, one of whom was also armed with a rifle, entered the 24-hour store inside a Nowra shopping centre just after 3am (AEST) and threatened workers with their weapons.
They called out the manager, forced him to open the safe, grabbed cash and fled.
Police say the robbers escaped in a stolen silver Toyota Camry station wagon which was later found abandoned south of the town.
The car is being examined by forensic specialists.
Police say the three robbers were all wearing hooded jumpers, and all concealed their faces with bandanas and sunglasses.
AAP
Found: a planet we might survive on
September 30, 2010 - 10:08AM
US astronomers have discovered an Earth-sized planet that they think might be habitable.
It is orbiting a nearby star, and the astronomers believe there could be many more planets like it.
The planet, found by astronomers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington, is orbiting in the middle of the "habitable zone" of the red dwarf star Gliese 581, which means it could have water on its surface.
Liquid water and an atmosphere are necessary for a planet to possibly sustain life, even it it might not be a great place to live, the scientists said.
The scientists determined that the planet, which they have called Gliese 581g, has a mass three to four times that of Earth and an orbital period of just under 37 days.
Its mass indicates that it is probably a rocky planet and has enough gravity to hold on to an atmosphere, according to Steven Vogt, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and one of the leaders of the team that discovered the planet.
If Gliese 581g has a rocky composition similar to Earth's, its diameter would be about 1.2 to 1.4 times that of the Earth, the researchers said.
The surface gravity would be about the same or slightly higher than Earth's, so that a person could easily walk upright on the planet, Vogt said.
Gliese 581g was discovered by scientists working on the Lick-Carnegie Exoplanet Survey, during 11 years of observing the red dwarf star Gliese 581, which is only 20 light years from Earth.
For astronomers, eleven years of observation is considered a short time and 20 light years, which is roughly 117.5 trillion miles, rather close. The sun is around eight and a half light minutes from Earth.
"The fact that we were able to detect this planet so quickly and so nearby tells us that planets like this must be really common," said Vogt.
The planet is tidally locked to its star, meaning that one side is always facing the star and basking in perpetual daylight, and the other is in perpetual darkness because it faces away from the star.
With surface temperatures decreasing the further one goes toward the dark side of the planet and increasing as one goes into the light side, the most habitable part of the new planet would be the line between darkness and light, which is known as the "terminator".
The researchers estimate that the average surface temperature of the planet would be between -24 and 10 degrees Fahrenheit (-31 to -12 degrees Celsius).
But actual temperatures would range from "blazing hot on the side facing the star to freezing cold on the dark side," they said.
The findings, which will be published in the Astrophysical Journal and posted online at arXiv.org, "offer a very compelling case for a potentially habitable planet," said Vogt.
"Any emerging life forms on the new planet would have a wide range of stable climates to choose from and to evolve around, depending on their longitude," Vogt said.
In their report, the scientists in fact announce the discovery of two new planets around Gliese 581, bringing the total number of known planets around this star to six.
That is the most yet discovered in a planetary system other than Earth's solar system.
Like planet's in Earth's solar system, the planets around Gliese 581 have nearly circular orbits.
Two previously detected planets around Gliese lie at the edges of the habitable zone, one on the hot side and one on the cold side of the star, and are probably not habitable.
The newly discovered planet g, however, lies right in the middle of the habitable zone.
"We had planets on both sides of the habitable zone -- one too hot and one too cold -- and now we have one in the middle that's just right," Vogt said, recalling the porridge that Goldilocks found in the children's story "The Three Bears."
AFP
US astronomers have discovered an Earth-sized planet that they think might be habitable.
It is orbiting a nearby star, and the astronomers believe there could be many more planets like it.
The planet, found by astronomers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington, is orbiting in the middle of the "habitable zone" of the red dwarf star Gliese 581, which means it could have water on its surface.
Liquid water and an atmosphere are necessary for a planet to possibly sustain life, even it it might not be a great place to live, the scientists said.
The scientists determined that the planet, which they have called Gliese 581g, has a mass three to four times that of Earth and an orbital period of just under 37 days.
Its mass indicates that it is probably a rocky planet and has enough gravity to hold on to an atmosphere, according to Steven Vogt, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and one of the leaders of the team that discovered the planet.
If Gliese 581g has a rocky composition similar to Earth's, its diameter would be about 1.2 to 1.4 times that of the Earth, the researchers said.
The surface gravity would be about the same or slightly higher than Earth's, so that a person could easily walk upright on the planet, Vogt said.
Gliese 581g was discovered by scientists working on the Lick-Carnegie Exoplanet Survey, during 11 years of observing the red dwarf star Gliese 581, which is only 20 light years from Earth.
For astronomers, eleven years of observation is considered a short time and 20 light years, which is roughly 117.5 trillion miles, rather close. The sun is around eight and a half light minutes from Earth.
"The fact that we were able to detect this planet so quickly and so nearby tells us that planets like this must be really common," said Vogt.
The planet is tidally locked to its star, meaning that one side is always facing the star and basking in perpetual daylight, and the other is in perpetual darkness because it faces away from the star.
With surface temperatures decreasing the further one goes toward the dark side of the planet and increasing as one goes into the light side, the most habitable part of the new planet would be the line between darkness and light, which is known as the "terminator".
The researchers estimate that the average surface temperature of the planet would be between -24 and 10 degrees Fahrenheit (-31 to -12 degrees Celsius).
But actual temperatures would range from "blazing hot on the side facing the star to freezing cold on the dark side," they said.
The findings, which will be published in the Astrophysical Journal and posted online at arXiv.org, "offer a very compelling case for a potentially habitable planet," said Vogt.
"Any emerging life forms on the new planet would have a wide range of stable climates to choose from and to evolve around, depending on their longitude," Vogt said.
In their report, the scientists in fact announce the discovery of two new planets around Gliese 581, bringing the total number of known planets around this star to six.
That is the most yet discovered in a planetary system other than Earth's solar system.
Like planet's in Earth's solar system, the planets around Gliese 581 have nearly circular orbits.
Two previously detected planets around Gliese lie at the edges of the habitable zone, one on the hot side and one on the cold side of the star, and are probably not habitable.
The newly discovered planet g, however, lies right in the middle of the habitable zone.
"We had planets on both sides of the habitable zone -- one too hot and one too cold -- and now we have one in the middle that's just right," Vogt said, recalling the porridge that Goldilocks found in the children's story "The Three Bears."
AFP
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Medvedev sacks Moscow's veteran mayor
September 29, 2010
MOSCOW: The Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, has sacked Moscow's long-serving mayor, Yury Luzhkov, paving the way for him to install his own man to run the city that accounts for a quarter of the national economy.
Mr Medvedev had ''lost confidence'' in Yury Luzhkov, a Kremlin spokeswoman told reporters in Shanghai. ''Now he's just a citizen.''
Mr Medvedev named Mr Luzhkov's deputy, Vladimir Resin, as acting mayor. Both men are 74.
The departure of Mr Luzhkov after more than 18 years as mayor comes as Russia prepares for parliamentary elections next year followed, in 2012, by a presidential contest in which the Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, may seek a return to the Kremlin at the expense of Mr Medvedev.
Mr Luzhkov, a co-founder of the United Russia party that dominates parliament and is headed by Mr Putin, resisted mounting pressure to resign in the weeks leading up to his firing. National television channels controlled by the Kremlin aired increasingly critical programs about Mr Luzhkov, accusing him of corruption and favouritism towards his billionaire wife, Yelena Baturina. The couple denied wrongdoing.
Mr Resin, a long-time Luzhkov ally, is expected to run the city until Mr Medvedev names a permanent replacement.
Mr Luzhkov, a former chemical engineer appointed by the late president Boris Yeltsin to replace Gavriil Popov in 1992, established ''absolute financial and administrative power'' in Moscow, said Nikolai Zlobin of the World Security Institute.
''He was a good mayor when he succeeded Popov,'' Mr Zlobin said in Moscow. ''But a monopoly on power corrupts even good men.''
The sacking was an ''epochal event'' that could undermine stability in the capital because Mr Luzhkov's successor will have to grapple with a system built over two decades, Mr Zlobin said.
The successor will inherit a city with a budget of 1000 billion roubles ($34 billion) that accounted for 24 per cent of Russia's gross domestic product in 2008.
National media have focused on a handful of possible candidates, including a deputy prime minister, Sergei Sobyanin, and the Emergency Situations Minister, Sergei Shoigu.
Mr Luzhkov ''revived'' Moscow after the economic collapse that accompanied the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, said Alexander Khinshtein, a United Russia MP in the lower house.
''He isn't a saint or an angel,'' said Mr Khinshtein, who described himself as ''close'' to the mayor. ''But I wouldn't wish the task of replacing Luzhkov on anyone, because they'll always be compared with him. He's a rare national politician who has maintained the luxury of having his own position.''
Mr Luzhkov entered city government in 1987 and held several posts in the Soviet era. As mayor he won re-election three times. He was appointed to a new four-year term in 2007 that was scheduled to end next June.
Moscow, like St Petersburg, is one of the country's federal administrative units. The mayor has the same status as a governor or regional leader, and serves at the pleasure of the president.
Mr Luzhkov oversaw a construction boom that transformed Moscow with new highways and a proliferation of high-rise office and residential buildings. He also faced accusations of destroying its architectural heritage.
Bloomberg
MOSCOW: The Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, has sacked Moscow's long-serving mayor, Yury Luzhkov, paving the way for him to install his own man to run the city that accounts for a quarter of the national economy.
Mr Medvedev had ''lost confidence'' in Yury Luzhkov, a Kremlin spokeswoman told reporters in Shanghai. ''Now he's just a citizen.''
Mr Medvedev named Mr Luzhkov's deputy, Vladimir Resin, as acting mayor. Both men are 74.
The departure of Mr Luzhkov after more than 18 years as mayor comes as Russia prepares for parliamentary elections next year followed, in 2012, by a presidential contest in which the Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, may seek a return to the Kremlin at the expense of Mr Medvedev.
Mr Luzhkov, a co-founder of the United Russia party that dominates parliament and is headed by Mr Putin, resisted mounting pressure to resign in the weeks leading up to his firing. National television channels controlled by the Kremlin aired increasingly critical programs about Mr Luzhkov, accusing him of corruption and favouritism towards his billionaire wife, Yelena Baturina. The couple denied wrongdoing.
Mr Resin, a long-time Luzhkov ally, is expected to run the city until Mr Medvedev names a permanent replacement.
Mr Luzhkov, a former chemical engineer appointed by the late president Boris Yeltsin to replace Gavriil Popov in 1992, established ''absolute financial and administrative power'' in Moscow, said Nikolai Zlobin of the World Security Institute.
''He was a good mayor when he succeeded Popov,'' Mr Zlobin said in Moscow. ''But a monopoly on power corrupts even good men.''
The sacking was an ''epochal event'' that could undermine stability in the capital because Mr Luzhkov's successor will have to grapple with a system built over two decades, Mr Zlobin said.
The successor will inherit a city with a budget of 1000 billion roubles ($34 billion) that accounted for 24 per cent of Russia's gross domestic product in 2008.
National media have focused on a handful of possible candidates, including a deputy prime minister, Sergei Sobyanin, and the Emergency Situations Minister, Sergei Shoigu.
Mr Luzhkov ''revived'' Moscow after the economic collapse that accompanied the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, said Alexander Khinshtein, a United Russia MP in the lower house.
''He isn't a saint or an angel,'' said Mr Khinshtein, who described himself as ''close'' to the mayor. ''But I wouldn't wish the task of replacing Luzhkov on anyone, because they'll always be compared with him. He's a rare national politician who has maintained the luxury of having his own position.''
Mr Luzhkov entered city government in 1987 and held several posts in the Soviet era. As mayor he won re-election three times. He was appointed to a new four-year term in 2007 that was scheduled to end next June.
Moscow, like St Petersburg, is one of the country's federal administrative units. The mayor has the same status as a governor or regional leader, and serves at the pleasure of the president.
Mr Luzhkov oversaw a construction boom that transformed Moscow with new highways and a proliferation of high-rise office and residential buildings. He also faced accusations of destroying its architectural heritage.
Bloomberg
US envoy tries to save peace talks
September 29, 2010
JERUSALEM: The US envoy, George Mitchell, was due to arrive in the Middle East last night to try to rescue peace talks as the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, demanded the renewal of a moratorium on Israeli settlements.
''We demand a moratorium for as long as there are negotiations, because for as long as there are negotiations there is hope,'' Mr Abbas told a French radio station yesterday during a visit to Paris.
''We don't want to stop these negotiations but if settlement building continues, we will be obliged to stop,'' he said.
He added that the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, ''should understand that peace is more important than settlement building''.
The negotiations were on the brink of collapse after a 10-month moratorium on the building of new settler homes in the West Bank expired on Sunday.
Mr Abbas said he would not officially respond to the move until he met the Palestinian leadership this week and Arab foreign ministers on Monday.
Agence France-Presse
JERUSALEM: The US envoy, George Mitchell, was due to arrive in the Middle East last night to try to rescue peace talks as the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, demanded the renewal of a moratorium on Israeli settlements.
''We demand a moratorium for as long as there are negotiations, because for as long as there are negotiations there is hope,'' Mr Abbas told a French radio station yesterday during a visit to Paris.
''We don't want to stop these negotiations but if settlement building continues, we will be obliged to stop,'' he said.
He added that the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, ''should understand that peace is more important than settlement building''.
The negotiations were on the brink of collapse after a 10-month moratorium on the building of new settler homes in the West Bank expired on Sunday.
Mr Abbas said he would not officially respond to the move until he met the Palestinian leadership this week and Arab foreign ministers on Monday.
Agence France-Presse
Atheists beat the faithful in knowledge of religion
Mitchell Landsberg
September 29, 2010
LOS ANGELES: If you want to know about God, you might want to talk to an atheist.
Heresy? Perhaps. But a survey that measured Americans' knowledge of religion found that atheists and agnostics knew more, on average, than followers of most major faiths.
In fact, the gaps in knowledge among some of the faithful may give new meaning to the term ''blind faith''.
A majority of Protestants, for instance, could not identify Martin Luther as the driving force behind the Protestant Reformation, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life survey. Four in 10 Catholics misunderstood the meaning of their church's central ritual, incorrectly saying the bread and wine used in Holy Communion are intended to merely symbolise the body and blood of Christ, not actually become them.
Atheists and agnostics - those who believe there is no God or who are unsure - were more likely to answer the survey's questions correctly. Jews and Mormons ranked just below them in the survey's measurement of religious knowledge - so close as to be statistically tied.
So why would an atheist know more about religion than a Christian?
American atheists and agnostics tend to be people who grew up in a religious tradition and consciously gave it up, often after a great deal of reflection and study, said Alan Cooperman, associate director for research at the Pew Forum. ''These are people who thought a lot about religion,'' he said. ''They're not indifferent. They care about it.''
Atheists and agnostics also tend to be relatively well educated and the survey found, not surprisingly, that the most knowledgeable people were also the best educated.
However, it said atheists and agnostics also out-performed believers who had a similar level of education.
The groups at the top of the US Religious Knowledge Survey were followed, in order, by white evangelical Protestants, white Catholics, white mainline Protestants, people who were not affiliated with any faith, black Protestants and Latino Catholics.
Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists were included in the survey, but their numbers were too small to be broken out as statistically significant groups.
Stephen Prothero, a professor of religion at Boston University and author of Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know - And Doesn't, served as an adviser on the survey.
''I think in general the survey confirms what I argued in the book, which is that we know almost nothing about our own religions and even less about the religions of other people,'' he said.
He said he found it significant that Mormons, who are not considered Christian by many fundamentalists, showed greater knowledge of the Bible than even evangelical Christians.
Los Angeles Times
September 29, 2010
LOS ANGELES: If you want to know about God, you might want to talk to an atheist.
Heresy? Perhaps. But a survey that measured Americans' knowledge of religion found that atheists and agnostics knew more, on average, than followers of most major faiths.
In fact, the gaps in knowledge among some of the faithful may give new meaning to the term ''blind faith''.
A majority of Protestants, for instance, could not identify Martin Luther as the driving force behind the Protestant Reformation, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life survey. Four in 10 Catholics misunderstood the meaning of their church's central ritual, incorrectly saying the bread and wine used in Holy Communion are intended to merely symbolise the body and blood of Christ, not actually become them.
Atheists and agnostics - those who believe there is no God or who are unsure - were more likely to answer the survey's questions correctly. Jews and Mormons ranked just below them in the survey's measurement of religious knowledge - so close as to be statistically tied.
So why would an atheist know more about religion than a Christian?
American atheists and agnostics tend to be people who grew up in a religious tradition and consciously gave it up, often after a great deal of reflection and study, said Alan Cooperman, associate director for research at the Pew Forum. ''These are people who thought a lot about religion,'' he said. ''They're not indifferent. They care about it.''
Atheists and agnostics also tend to be relatively well educated and the survey found, not surprisingly, that the most knowledgeable people were also the best educated.
However, it said atheists and agnostics also out-performed believers who had a similar level of education.
The groups at the top of the US Religious Knowledge Survey were followed, in order, by white evangelical Protestants, white Catholics, white mainline Protestants, people who were not affiliated with any faith, black Protestants and Latino Catholics.
Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists were included in the survey, but their numbers were too small to be broken out as statistically significant groups.
Stephen Prothero, a professor of religion at Boston University and author of Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know - And Doesn't, served as an adviser on the survey.
''I think in general the survey confirms what I argued in the book, which is that we know almost nothing about our own religions and even less about the religions of other people,'' he said.
He said he found it significant that Mormons, who are not considered Christian by many fundamentalists, showed greater knowledge of the Bible than even evangelical Christians.
Los Angeles Times
Holding Pope responsible for abuses is not too dangerous
Rick Feneley
September 29, 2010
OUR first question in the interrogation of Geoffrey Robertson, QC: is prosecuting the Pope for the sins of child-molesting priests a dangerous idea - so dangerous that we must dismiss it as a hypothetical?
The human rights lawyer clasps his hands, the courtly gesture he made famous on Geoffrey Robertson's Hypotheticals, and replies: ''I don't think it's dangerous at all.''
Mr Robertson is in his Sydney hotel near the Opera House where, on Saturday, he will be the headline act in the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. He will debate Alan Dershowitz, the renowned American criminal lawyer who has represented Mike Tyson and O. J. Simpson, in a session titled ''The sins of the fathers: should the Pope be held to account?''
Mr Robertson, unlike his atheist friends Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, does not want the 83-year-old Pope put on trial for what he calls a ''human rights atrocity''.
The Australian lawyer, who lives in London, worried that his message became lost in sensation under British tabloid headlines such as ''Put Pope in the dock'' and ''Plot to have the Pope arrested''.
''I don't want to prosecute him,'' Mr Robertson says. ''I want something done to end this epidemic of child abuse.''
So he proffers this warning to the Pope and the Vatican - that they could be legally liable for the crimes of thousands of priests, not as a dangerous idea but a ''useful'' one that might spur them into action. In his latest book, The Case of the Pope: Vatican Accountability for Human Rights Abuse, Mr Robertson decries as many as 100,000 cases of Catholic clerical child abuse around the world since 1981. The church, he writes, has harboured priests and covered up their crimes by refusing to hand them over to police and insisting they be tried secretly under canon law.
While victims are silenced, priests are told to pray for them as penance, then are ''trafficked'' to other parishes or countries where they are free to molest again.
This is perpetuated, Mr Robertson writes, by the ''pseudo state'' of the Holy See that was created in 1929 in a deal between Mussolini and the pro-fascist Pope Pius XI, and which the Vatican describes as an ''absolute monarchy''. As its head of state, the Pope is immune from prosecution, to which Mr Robertson says he has no rightful claim.
''In law, a state must have people, but there are no Vaticanians,'' Mr Robertson said yesterday. ''It's the size of a golf course, a small enclave in Rome with a few hundred Catholic officials. No one is born in the Vatican, other than by unfortunate accident.''
Mr Robertson argues that abuses have occurred for 30 years under the watch of the pontiff, as the Pope and as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. While prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the body that deals with clerical abuse, he ''preferred not to defrock paedophiles who have gone on to rape and molest others''. In 2001 he instructed bishops to maintain canonical secrecy and, in July, he refused to amend canon law to require bishops to report abusive priests to police.
''I was very pleased that last week he described child abuse in the Catholic Church as an unspeakable crime,'' he says. ''But then he went on to say it was a disease. He still doesn't grasp that most of the molestation isn't done by people who are in the grip of disease. The problem is, he hesitates. He still refuses to do what is absolutely necessary.''
September 29, 2010
OUR first question in the interrogation of Geoffrey Robertson, QC: is prosecuting the Pope for the sins of child-molesting priests a dangerous idea - so dangerous that we must dismiss it as a hypothetical?
The human rights lawyer clasps his hands, the courtly gesture he made famous on Geoffrey Robertson's Hypotheticals, and replies: ''I don't think it's dangerous at all.''
Mr Robertson is in his Sydney hotel near the Opera House where, on Saturday, he will be the headline act in the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. He will debate Alan Dershowitz, the renowned American criminal lawyer who has represented Mike Tyson and O. J. Simpson, in a session titled ''The sins of the fathers: should the Pope be held to account?''
Mr Robertson, unlike his atheist friends Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, does not want the 83-year-old Pope put on trial for what he calls a ''human rights atrocity''.
The Australian lawyer, who lives in London, worried that his message became lost in sensation under British tabloid headlines such as ''Put Pope in the dock'' and ''Plot to have the Pope arrested''.
''I don't want to prosecute him,'' Mr Robertson says. ''I want something done to end this epidemic of child abuse.''
So he proffers this warning to the Pope and the Vatican - that they could be legally liable for the crimes of thousands of priests, not as a dangerous idea but a ''useful'' one that might spur them into action. In his latest book, The Case of the Pope: Vatican Accountability for Human Rights Abuse, Mr Robertson decries as many as 100,000 cases of Catholic clerical child abuse around the world since 1981. The church, he writes, has harboured priests and covered up their crimes by refusing to hand them over to police and insisting they be tried secretly under canon law.
While victims are silenced, priests are told to pray for them as penance, then are ''trafficked'' to other parishes or countries where they are free to molest again.
This is perpetuated, Mr Robertson writes, by the ''pseudo state'' of the Holy See that was created in 1929 in a deal between Mussolini and the pro-fascist Pope Pius XI, and which the Vatican describes as an ''absolute monarchy''. As its head of state, the Pope is immune from prosecution, to which Mr Robertson says he has no rightful claim.
''In law, a state must have people, but there are no Vaticanians,'' Mr Robertson said yesterday. ''It's the size of a golf course, a small enclave in Rome with a few hundred Catholic officials. No one is born in the Vatican, other than by unfortunate accident.''
Mr Robertson argues that abuses have occurred for 30 years under the watch of the pontiff, as the Pope and as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. While prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the body that deals with clerical abuse, he ''preferred not to defrock paedophiles who have gone on to rape and molest others''. In 2001 he instructed bishops to maintain canonical secrecy and, in July, he refused to amend canon law to require bishops to report abusive priests to police.
''I was very pleased that last week he described child abuse in the Catholic Church as an unspeakable crime,'' he says. ''But then he went on to say it was a disease. He still doesn't grasp that most of the molestation isn't done by people who are in the grip of disease. The problem is, he hesitates. He still refuses to do what is absolutely necessary.''
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Developing nations leaving rich ones behind
Edward J. Blakely
September 28, 2010 - 6:03AM
Developing countries such as China, India and Brazil are becoming rich by following what developed countries used to do - they make things.
Poverty has been in the news recently. In the US 14 per cent, or one in eight Americans, fell below the nations' poverty line. These are the worst American statistics since the Great Depression. Not only are more American poor but almost 50 million have no health insurance in the richest country in the world.
On the other side of the globe, more people in Asia and Africa rose from crippling poverty to enter the labour forces of growing economies in India, China and South Africa. While the UN Millennium Goals of lifting the world's population out of extreme poverty, where many subsist on less than $US1 a day, will not be met by 2015, a lot of progress is being made. The reasons for this are that China, India, Russia, Brazil, South Africa and other nations, heretofore trapped in desperate poverty, are becoming economic powerhouses while the US and Western Europe are faltering.
These rising economies are starting to trade with one another, since they see their counterpart developing nations as better markets than Europe or the US. Interestingly enough, these nations are growing because they are mimicking the way the US and Europe got big and strong. They are making things. They are manufacturing and educating their population to be more productive and they are consuming locally, creating internal markets for their goods as well as exporting good to the US, Europe and Australia.
Americans would like to blame the US government for not protecting jobs and letting US jobs go overseas. The truth of the matter is that these countries are competing well for US jobs because the nations such as India, China and Korea have made massive investments in basic infrastructure and education.
China, for example, is building a high-speed rail system that will add 1-1.5 per cent to its GDP annually by delivering goods to Russia and Europe by 2015 by rail. It is also expanding its infrastructure building to Africa where they are building hundreds of factories, schools and roads to facilitate new commerce. Korea has totally revamped its economy into a lower-energy consuming, higher production economy in less than a decade.
While the US let its infrastructure erode to the point that bridges are collapsing and levees like those in New Orleans failed, the developing nations have been building and not complaining.
Not only are these nations growing, they are embracing sustainable low-carbon techniques and technologies.Why? Because they have to. Brazil uses bio-fuels because they have sugar cane to use. China is reducing its coal-based power because it does not want to be energy dependent like the US. India is coming up with a plethora of new technologies such as a new small smart car that can be powered by several renewable fuels because they have few other alternatives.
What this means is that the world can grow out of poverty using sustainable technologies. But it also means Americans and Australians will have to make massive investments in infrastructure just to keep up with the developing world. It means America, Europe and Australia need to re-build national infrastructure if we are not going to trade places with Asia, Africa, Russia and Latin America and be their poor neighbours.
Here in Australia, our current debates over the national broadband network and lack of any real discussions of fast rail or smarter transport systems means we face the bleak prospect of being a dark deep coal mine with no capacity to compete with a better educated, more environmentally sound and well connected global economy.
The lessons here are clear — compete or become poor; don't just complain about the people who are building a better world.
Professor Edward J Blakely is author with William Goldsmith of Separate Societies: Poverty and Inequality in US Cities (Temple University Press, 2010). He is an Australian-American professor of urban policy at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney and an internationally recognised expert on urban planning and development.
September 28, 2010 - 6:03AM
Developing countries such as China, India and Brazil are becoming rich by following what developed countries used to do - they make things.
Poverty has been in the news recently. In the US 14 per cent, or one in eight Americans, fell below the nations' poverty line. These are the worst American statistics since the Great Depression. Not only are more American poor but almost 50 million have no health insurance in the richest country in the world.
On the other side of the globe, more people in Asia and Africa rose from crippling poverty to enter the labour forces of growing economies in India, China and South Africa. While the UN Millennium Goals of lifting the world's population out of extreme poverty, where many subsist on less than $US1 a day, will not be met by 2015, a lot of progress is being made. The reasons for this are that China, India, Russia, Brazil, South Africa and other nations, heretofore trapped in desperate poverty, are becoming economic powerhouses while the US and Western Europe are faltering.
These rising economies are starting to trade with one another, since they see their counterpart developing nations as better markets than Europe or the US. Interestingly enough, these nations are growing because they are mimicking the way the US and Europe got big and strong. They are making things. They are manufacturing and educating their population to be more productive and they are consuming locally, creating internal markets for their goods as well as exporting good to the US, Europe and Australia.
Americans would like to blame the US government for not protecting jobs and letting US jobs go overseas. The truth of the matter is that these countries are competing well for US jobs because the nations such as India, China and Korea have made massive investments in basic infrastructure and education.
China, for example, is building a high-speed rail system that will add 1-1.5 per cent to its GDP annually by delivering goods to Russia and Europe by 2015 by rail. It is also expanding its infrastructure building to Africa where they are building hundreds of factories, schools and roads to facilitate new commerce. Korea has totally revamped its economy into a lower-energy consuming, higher production economy in less than a decade.
While the US let its infrastructure erode to the point that bridges are collapsing and levees like those in New Orleans failed, the developing nations have been building and not complaining.
Not only are these nations growing, they are embracing sustainable low-carbon techniques and technologies.Why? Because they have to. Brazil uses bio-fuels because they have sugar cane to use. China is reducing its coal-based power because it does not want to be energy dependent like the US. India is coming up with a plethora of new technologies such as a new small smart car that can be powered by several renewable fuels because they have few other alternatives.
What this means is that the world can grow out of poverty using sustainable technologies. But it also means Americans and Australians will have to make massive investments in infrastructure just to keep up with the developing world. It means America, Europe and Australia need to re-build national infrastructure if we are not going to trade places with Asia, Africa, Russia and Latin America and be their poor neighbours.
Here in Australia, our current debates over the national broadband network and lack of any real discussions of fast rail or smarter transport systems means we face the bleak prospect of being a dark deep coal mine with no capacity to compete with a better educated, more environmentally sound and well connected global economy.
The lessons here are clear — compete or become poor; don't just complain about the people who are building a better world.
Professor Edward J Blakely is author with William Goldsmith of Separate Societies: Poverty and Inequality in US Cities (Temple University Press, 2010). He is an Australian-American professor of urban policy at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney and an internationally recognised expert on urban planning and development.
Scare over rare-earth minerals underlines fear of a rising China
September 28, 2010
For a panicked moment last week, it seemed China had decided to cut off exports to Japan of a little-known, yet vital, ingredient in everything from iPhones to cruise missiles and wind turbines.
The report by London's Industrial Metals magazine, taken up by The New York Times, was quickly proved false. But the scare riveted much attention on China's quiet near-monopolisation of the raw material for the high-tech industries - rare-earth elements.
China controls 97 per cent of the global output, according to the US Government Accountability Office. Rare-earth minerals are 17 metals whose magnetic properties allow the manufacture of light-weight, super-miniaturised components. They are essential for gadgets such as iPods and digital cameras, flat-screen TVs and smartphones.
They are key to military hardware such as the laser guidance systems in the US F-22 Raptor fighter jet, and are indispensable in renewable energy technologies such as batteries for electric cars, wind turbines and high-efficiency light bulbs.
A Chinese stockbroking analyst, Min Li of Yuanta Securities, was quoted by Reuters as saying: "Rare earth for China is like oil to the Middle East." Except China's rare-earth dominance makes the OPEC cartel, controlling 40 per cent of global oil, look like a wide-aisle 24/7 supermarket by comparison.
The Pentagon is studying potential US military vulnerability. According to The Wall Street Journal, a US military research analyst has written in the Joint Force Quarterly that "China appears to be holding an unlikely trump card". A US Congressional committee is holding an inquiry of its own.
Although China is not blackbanning Japan, it is tightening its shipments of rare-earth ores. It has gradually limited exports since 2005, and last month it cut export quotas for 2010 by 40 per cent because, it said, its domestic industries needed them.
A scary example of the sinister side of China's gathering power? Three quick points.
First, rare earths are not especially rare. Some are more plentiful in the ground than tin. They were named because, before World War II, there was no known method for mass extraction. When scientists worked it out, they put europium in TV sets to give us red. Colour TV was born.
Second, China has a near-monopoly of output, but not of reserves. China has 59 per cent share of known reserves, but the rest is under the ground in Australia, Canada, the US and India, among others.
Australia has Arafura Resources (25 per cent owned by a Chinese state-controlled company) and, until the mid-1980s the world's dominant producer was a US mine at Mountain Pass in California, which closed down years ago.
It's just that China is the country doing the most digging. Why? Price. This is the third point. China is the lowest-cost producer. It flooded the world market with cheap rare earths. From 1990 to 2008, it boosted exports by an extraordinary 1000 per cent, and this pushed down export prices by 60 per cent. Mines elsewhere shut down, points out an Australian expert on mining and energy, Mike Komesaroff.
One of the reasons China is such a low-cost producer? It's a filthy process, and China has been lax with environmental policing. Large tracts of land have been ruined by toxic tailings laced with radioactive waste. Many workers have been harmed.
As global demand grows and Chinese supply tightens, other mines in other countries will become profitable. The market will supply a solution. The owner of Mountain Pass, Molycorp Inc, has plans to reopen by 2012. In other words, don't panic.
Beijing's real cleverness is not in cornering the rare-earths market. That's standard, old-fashioned predatory pricing. It has paid a serious environmental and human price for a temporary advantage. It's not even a big trade, worth only $US1.5 billion ($1.56 billion) a year at current prices.
The truly smart Chinese move is how it has put this advantage to use as a lure to encourage foreign companies to move manufacturing to China.
With tax rebates and other mechanisms, the authorities have made rare-earth elements 31 per cent cheaper to a foreign company that makes, say, wind turbines, in China instead of at home.
That, plus China's $US150 billion investment in wind turbines, means it is rapidly becoming the world leader in a renewable energy industry with tremendous growth potential. Likewise, its rare-earth advantage plus a $US29 billion investment in research supporting electric cars will help cement its lead in another growth sector.
America's General Motors was once the leader in making rare-earth batteries for electric cars. With the Pentagon, it perfected the technique used in Toyota's Prius. But GM saw no future for it, and sold the factory to China.
In 2002, the new owner rebuilt it in China. "Not only did the US lose its rare-earth production capacity, it also threw away its technological lead," Komesaroff says. This is the real lesson. China is an adaptive learner, combining multiple elements of policy to pursue a technological, commercial and economic advantage. It uses state-owned firms but also tax policy, research and development policy, the banking system and much more, the octopus-like arms of a centralised strategy.
What's missing? Beijing is not relying on cheap labour. China's success has already pushed its factory wages way above those of Vietnam and others.
Should we be worried?
China wants what Australia, Japan, the US and others already have - a rich country with high living standards. There's nothing sinister about that.
The open question is how China will deploy its wealth. China has developed under the rubric of "peaceful rise". What happens when it is risen?
Peter Hartcher is the Sydney Morning Herald's international editor.
For a panicked moment last week, it seemed China had decided to cut off exports to Japan of a little-known, yet vital, ingredient in everything from iPhones to cruise missiles and wind turbines.
The report by London's Industrial Metals magazine, taken up by The New York Times, was quickly proved false. But the scare riveted much attention on China's quiet near-monopolisation of the raw material for the high-tech industries - rare-earth elements.
China controls 97 per cent of the global output, according to the US Government Accountability Office. Rare-earth minerals are 17 metals whose magnetic properties allow the manufacture of light-weight, super-miniaturised components. They are essential for gadgets such as iPods and digital cameras, flat-screen TVs and smartphones.
They are key to military hardware such as the laser guidance systems in the US F-22 Raptor fighter jet, and are indispensable in renewable energy technologies such as batteries for electric cars, wind turbines and high-efficiency light bulbs.
A Chinese stockbroking analyst, Min Li of Yuanta Securities, was quoted by Reuters as saying: "Rare earth for China is like oil to the Middle East." Except China's rare-earth dominance makes the OPEC cartel, controlling 40 per cent of global oil, look like a wide-aisle 24/7 supermarket by comparison.
The Pentagon is studying potential US military vulnerability. According to The Wall Street Journal, a US military research analyst has written in the Joint Force Quarterly that "China appears to be holding an unlikely trump card". A US Congressional committee is holding an inquiry of its own.
Although China is not blackbanning Japan, it is tightening its shipments of rare-earth ores. It has gradually limited exports since 2005, and last month it cut export quotas for 2010 by 40 per cent because, it said, its domestic industries needed them.
A scary example of the sinister side of China's gathering power? Three quick points.
First, rare earths are not especially rare. Some are more plentiful in the ground than tin. They were named because, before World War II, there was no known method for mass extraction. When scientists worked it out, they put europium in TV sets to give us red. Colour TV was born.
Second, China has a near-monopoly of output, but not of reserves. China has 59 per cent share of known reserves, but the rest is under the ground in Australia, Canada, the US and India, among others.
Australia has Arafura Resources (25 per cent owned by a Chinese state-controlled company) and, until the mid-1980s the world's dominant producer was a US mine at Mountain Pass in California, which closed down years ago.
It's just that China is the country doing the most digging. Why? Price. This is the third point. China is the lowest-cost producer. It flooded the world market with cheap rare earths. From 1990 to 2008, it boosted exports by an extraordinary 1000 per cent, and this pushed down export prices by 60 per cent. Mines elsewhere shut down, points out an Australian expert on mining and energy, Mike Komesaroff.
One of the reasons China is such a low-cost producer? It's a filthy process, and China has been lax with environmental policing. Large tracts of land have been ruined by toxic tailings laced with radioactive waste. Many workers have been harmed.
As global demand grows and Chinese supply tightens, other mines in other countries will become profitable. The market will supply a solution. The owner of Mountain Pass, Molycorp Inc, has plans to reopen by 2012. In other words, don't panic.
Beijing's real cleverness is not in cornering the rare-earths market. That's standard, old-fashioned predatory pricing. It has paid a serious environmental and human price for a temporary advantage. It's not even a big trade, worth only $US1.5 billion ($1.56 billion) a year at current prices.
The truly smart Chinese move is how it has put this advantage to use as a lure to encourage foreign companies to move manufacturing to China.
With tax rebates and other mechanisms, the authorities have made rare-earth elements 31 per cent cheaper to a foreign company that makes, say, wind turbines, in China instead of at home.
That, plus China's $US150 billion investment in wind turbines, means it is rapidly becoming the world leader in a renewable energy industry with tremendous growth potential. Likewise, its rare-earth advantage plus a $US29 billion investment in research supporting electric cars will help cement its lead in another growth sector.
America's General Motors was once the leader in making rare-earth batteries for electric cars. With the Pentagon, it perfected the technique used in Toyota's Prius. But GM saw no future for it, and sold the factory to China.
In 2002, the new owner rebuilt it in China. "Not only did the US lose its rare-earth production capacity, it also threw away its technological lead," Komesaroff says. This is the real lesson. China is an adaptive learner, combining multiple elements of policy to pursue a technological, commercial and economic advantage. It uses state-owned firms but also tax policy, research and development policy, the banking system and much more, the octopus-like arms of a centralised strategy.
What's missing? Beijing is not relying on cheap labour. China's success has already pushed its factory wages way above those of Vietnam and others.
Should we be worried?
China wants what Australia, Japan, the US and others already have - a rich country with high living standards. There's nothing sinister about that.
The open question is how China will deploy its wealth. China has developed under the rubric of "peaceful rise". What happens when it is risen?
Peter Hartcher is the Sydney Morning Herald's international editor.
Gillard ups the ante on carbon charge
Phillip Coorey
September 28, 2010
Carbon tax within sight
Australia could have a carbon tax within two years as Julia Gillard announced a new climate change committee.
Video feedbackVideo settings
The Prime Minister has wiped the slate clean on climate change policy and launched a new approach in which business, unions, green groups and other interested parties will have a stake.
Julia Gillard did not discount putting a new policy to the Parliament before the next election, or taking it to the people at the election to seek a mandate.
She named the multi-party climate change committee, which she negotiated with the Greens, to replace the much-derided citizens' assembly promised before the election to develop a community consensus for a price on carbon emissions.
The committee will help develop a consensus but its main role is to establish a mechanism for putting a price on carbon. This could be an emissions trading scheme, a carbon tax, or a combination of both.
Ms Gillard promised before the election that there would be no carbon tax but said again yesterday that the hung parliament and unanticipated support for a price on carbon from sections of business and industry had created a ''new environment''.
Ms Gillard will chair the committee. The Treasurer, Wayne Swan, and the deputy Greens leader, Christine Milne, will be the deputy chairman and chairwoman of the committee. The Greens leader, Bob Brown, will also sit on the committee, as will the Climate Change Minister, Greg Combet, and the independent MP Tony Windsor.
The government has offered the Coalition two spots but the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, has banned any of his MPs from joining because the Coalition does not support a carbon price.
There will be four outsiders - Ross Garnaut, who helped design the emissions trading scheme for the Rudd government, the climate expert Will Steffen, the energy expert Rod Sims, and the social policy expert Patricia Faulkner.
For a deal to be crunched, one side will have to compromise. The government said its target to cut emissions by 5 to 25 per cent by 2020 still stood while the Greens said they stood by their target of 25 to 40 per cent.
Ms Gillard stressed the government would make the ultimate decision on policy detail.
Mr Swan, Mr Combet and three other cabinet ministers will be involved in two new round tables to provide advice - one with business, mining and energy representatives, the other with unions, environmental groups and non-government organisations.
The final recommendations of the committee are expected by the end of next year.
Mr Abbott told the joint party room meeting yesterday that the government was ''fatally hamstrung by its alliance with the Greens''.
September 28, 2010
Carbon tax within sight
Australia could have a carbon tax within two years as Julia Gillard announced a new climate change committee.
Video feedbackVideo settings
The Prime Minister has wiped the slate clean on climate change policy and launched a new approach in which business, unions, green groups and other interested parties will have a stake.
Julia Gillard did not discount putting a new policy to the Parliament before the next election, or taking it to the people at the election to seek a mandate.
She named the multi-party climate change committee, which she negotiated with the Greens, to replace the much-derided citizens' assembly promised before the election to develop a community consensus for a price on carbon emissions.
The committee will help develop a consensus but its main role is to establish a mechanism for putting a price on carbon. This could be an emissions trading scheme, a carbon tax, or a combination of both.
Ms Gillard promised before the election that there would be no carbon tax but said again yesterday that the hung parliament and unanticipated support for a price on carbon from sections of business and industry had created a ''new environment''.
Ms Gillard will chair the committee. The Treasurer, Wayne Swan, and the deputy Greens leader, Christine Milne, will be the deputy chairman and chairwoman of the committee. The Greens leader, Bob Brown, will also sit on the committee, as will the Climate Change Minister, Greg Combet, and the independent MP Tony Windsor.
The government has offered the Coalition two spots but the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, has banned any of his MPs from joining because the Coalition does not support a carbon price.
There will be four outsiders - Ross Garnaut, who helped design the emissions trading scheme for the Rudd government, the climate expert Will Steffen, the energy expert Rod Sims, and the social policy expert Patricia Faulkner.
For a deal to be crunched, one side will have to compromise. The government said its target to cut emissions by 5 to 25 per cent by 2020 still stood while the Greens said they stood by their target of 25 to 40 per cent.
Ms Gillard stressed the government would make the ultimate decision on policy detail.
Mr Swan, Mr Combet and three other cabinet ministers will be involved in two new round tables to provide advice - one with business, mining and energy representatives, the other with unions, environmental groups and non-government organisations.
The final recommendations of the committee are expected by the end of next year.
Mr Abbott told the joint party room meeting yesterday that the government was ''fatally hamstrung by its alliance with the Greens''.
We can't know everything
Some questions may be too taxing for mankind, argues physicist Russell Stannard.
It is the hubris of other scientists that bothers Russell Stannard, emeritus professor of physics at the Open University. Claims such as that made recently by his fellow physicist Stephen Hawking - that we're close to a theory of everything - get short shrift.
Stannard, a high-energy nuclear physicist, believes we may be approaching the boundaries of the knowable; such is the message of his new book, The End of Discovery. But that is not because we'll have figured everything out - it is because we're incapable of doing so.
In the 19th century, claims were made, in the wake of Newton and Maxwell, that there weren't likely to be any further significant advances in scientific understanding. Clearly that was premature, but will there be a point at which we say, that's it, we know it all?
I think there's going to come a time when our descendants have discovered everything about the world that is open for us to understand. Whether they will know that they've come to the end is another matter because they'll be faced with many questions, as we are today, and just as we hope to be able to answer some of those questions, so will they, but there's no way of proving that a question will have no answer.
So I don't think there'll be a triumphal end when everyone says: ''OK, that's it, we've wrapped it up!'' I think science will go out with a whimper rather than a bang. You'll get into a situation where for a very, very, very long time nothing interesting happens and people start to think, well, becoming a research scientist is probably not a good career move.
What practical limits are there to our knowledge?
Physicists today have a favourite theory - string theory - which is associated with M-theory, which Stephen Hawking has been talking about recently, where the assumption is that the ultimate constituents of matter are not tiny bits of dirt, they're actually vibrating strings. It's a very attractive theory. The trouble is that one expects these strings are going to be so tiny that you would need a large hadron collider [as at CERN in Geneva] the size of a galaxy in order to be able to see them.
So, for purely practical reasons, one is not going to be able to verify that they're there. These strings are supposed to be vibrating in 10 spatial dimensions, too. But we have evidence for only three.
Also, M-theory postulates the existence of many other universes; by definition, you're not going to be able to detect them, otherwise they'd be part of this universe. So already it begins to look as though we might be foiled in a complete theory of everything simply from practical considerations. On top of that, there are the possible limitations of the human brain.
Your point being that we didn't evolve to deal with these profound questions about our place in the universe?
Yes, it was a question of avoiding predators, finding food and shelter, finding a mate and passing on your genes. Well, already we have managed somehow to go a long way further than that. Knowing about DNA, or the Big Bang, doesn't necessarily help you to survive to a point where you can mate. But we have to be very careful not to get carried away in thinking that the brain is capable of understanding absolutely everything.
But we have technology - we outsource problems to computers. Aren't we already involved in some form of directed evolution?
Certainly computers are able to help us with calculations that take us, unaided, much, much longer. But computers can do only what we, namely our brains, tell them to do. If you're doing fundamental science, what you're trying to do all the time is to come up with new thoughts. And I can't see how a computer is going to be able to come up with some absolutely fresh way of looking at things unless it's been programmed to do that.
Are some questions simply beyond the reach of science?
The finest minds have been taxed by the questions of consciousness and of free will and determinism for a long time now, but there has been little progress. There's something about the quality of those questions that make one suspect we're barking up the wrong tree; we're not going to be able to get an answer. I cannot see how qualities like love, pain and fear will ever be quantified and find themselves in an equation. I can't see how you're ever going to get a simple, single way of looking at things that encapsulates everything we know about what it is to be human.
So when Stephen Hawking announces that M-theory is ''the only candidate for a complete theory of the universe'', he's wrong?
That philosophy of Hawking's is precisely the one that I'm trying to counter. His views, as have been reported, are a perfect example of what is called scientism: that science is the only route to knowledge and that, ultimately, we'll have a complete understanding of everything. That is nonsense, and I think it's dangerous nonsense, because it makes scientists sound exceedingly arrogant. It's all very well saying the universe came about as a result of spontaneous creation due to M-theory. But that raises the question: where did M-theory come from? Why are there intelligible physical laws?
And it isn't even the only game in town …
It hasn't even formulated yet! Ask these people: ''Please write down the equation.'' I can write down Schroedinger's equation of quantum mechanics, I can write down Newton's law of gravitation. ''You write down the equation which is M-theory.'' They can't. Because they haven't got one.
Usually, one thinks of science as an endeavour in which you don't have to believe anything unless it can be experimentally proved, but among certain scientists you're beginning to get the view that perhaps it's very inconvenient that we can't verify our theory, but it's so aesthetically pleasing that it simply has to be true, therefore we will make an exception and bring into science this idea that we know in our guts to be right. It's a very smug attitude: we know best because it's beautiful. But the history of physics is littered with theories that at the time were considered beautiful - and which everyone hoped to be the right ones - and they turned out not to be.
But surely physics has had a good track record in the past 150 years?
Yes, it's been a golden age. And the majority of questions that we face will be answered. But there will be some with which we're stuck. You must not expect that science is going to be able to explain absolutely everything.
Are you religious?
Yes. I didn't think I'd bring God into this book. But if you don't believe in God, you might want to read it to get a more balanced perspective as to what science itself is like and what it's done in the past, very much to its credit, and what it's capable of doing, but also what its limitations are.
Observer
The End of Discovery (Oxford University Press) will be published in Australia in November.
It is the hubris of other scientists that bothers Russell Stannard, emeritus professor of physics at the Open University. Claims such as that made recently by his fellow physicist Stephen Hawking - that we're close to a theory of everything - get short shrift.
Stannard, a high-energy nuclear physicist, believes we may be approaching the boundaries of the knowable; such is the message of his new book, The End of Discovery. But that is not because we'll have figured everything out - it is because we're incapable of doing so.
In the 19th century, claims were made, in the wake of Newton and Maxwell, that there weren't likely to be any further significant advances in scientific understanding. Clearly that was premature, but will there be a point at which we say, that's it, we know it all?
I think there's going to come a time when our descendants have discovered everything about the world that is open for us to understand. Whether they will know that they've come to the end is another matter because they'll be faced with many questions, as we are today, and just as we hope to be able to answer some of those questions, so will they, but there's no way of proving that a question will have no answer.
So I don't think there'll be a triumphal end when everyone says: ''OK, that's it, we've wrapped it up!'' I think science will go out with a whimper rather than a bang. You'll get into a situation where for a very, very, very long time nothing interesting happens and people start to think, well, becoming a research scientist is probably not a good career move.
What practical limits are there to our knowledge?
Physicists today have a favourite theory - string theory - which is associated with M-theory, which Stephen Hawking has been talking about recently, where the assumption is that the ultimate constituents of matter are not tiny bits of dirt, they're actually vibrating strings. It's a very attractive theory. The trouble is that one expects these strings are going to be so tiny that you would need a large hadron collider [as at CERN in Geneva] the size of a galaxy in order to be able to see them.
So, for purely practical reasons, one is not going to be able to verify that they're there. These strings are supposed to be vibrating in 10 spatial dimensions, too. But we have evidence for only three.
Also, M-theory postulates the existence of many other universes; by definition, you're not going to be able to detect them, otherwise they'd be part of this universe. So already it begins to look as though we might be foiled in a complete theory of everything simply from practical considerations. On top of that, there are the possible limitations of the human brain.
Your point being that we didn't evolve to deal with these profound questions about our place in the universe?
Yes, it was a question of avoiding predators, finding food and shelter, finding a mate and passing on your genes. Well, already we have managed somehow to go a long way further than that. Knowing about DNA, or the Big Bang, doesn't necessarily help you to survive to a point where you can mate. But we have to be very careful not to get carried away in thinking that the brain is capable of understanding absolutely everything.
But we have technology - we outsource problems to computers. Aren't we already involved in some form of directed evolution?
Certainly computers are able to help us with calculations that take us, unaided, much, much longer. But computers can do only what we, namely our brains, tell them to do. If you're doing fundamental science, what you're trying to do all the time is to come up with new thoughts. And I can't see how a computer is going to be able to come up with some absolutely fresh way of looking at things unless it's been programmed to do that.
Are some questions simply beyond the reach of science?
The finest minds have been taxed by the questions of consciousness and of free will and determinism for a long time now, but there has been little progress. There's something about the quality of those questions that make one suspect we're barking up the wrong tree; we're not going to be able to get an answer. I cannot see how qualities like love, pain and fear will ever be quantified and find themselves in an equation. I can't see how you're ever going to get a simple, single way of looking at things that encapsulates everything we know about what it is to be human.
So when Stephen Hawking announces that M-theory is ''the only candidate for a complete theory of the universe'', he's wrong?
That philosophy of Hawking's is precisely the one that I'm trying to counter. His views, as have been reported, are a perfect example of what is called scientism: that science is the only route to knowledge and that, ultimately, we'll have a complete understanding of everything. That is nonsense, and I think it's dangerous nonsense, because it makes scientists sound exceedingly arrogant. It's all very well saying the universe came about as a result of spontaneous creation due to M-theory. But that raises the question: where did M-theory come from? Why are there intelligible physical laws?
And it isn't even the only game in town …
It hasn't even formulated yet! Ask these people: ''Please write down the equation.'' I can write down Schroedinger's equation of quantum mechanics, I can write down Newton's law of gravitation. ''You write down the equation which is M-theory.'' They can't. Because they haven't got one.
Usually, one thinks of science as an endeavour in which you don't have to believe anything unless it can be experimentally proved, but among certain scientists you're beginning to get the view that perhaps it's very inconvenient that we can't verify our theory, but it's so aesthetically pleasing that it simply has to be true, therefore we will make an exception and bring into science this idea that we know in our guts to be right. It's a very smug attitude: we know best because it's beautiful. But the history of physics is littered with theories that at the time were considered beautiful - and which everyone hoped to be the right ones - and they turned out not to be.
But surely physics has had a good track record in the past 150 years?
Yes, it's been a golden age. And the majority of questions that we face will be answered. But there will be some with which we're stuck. You must not expect that science is going to be able to explain absolutely everything.
Are you religious?
Yes. I didn't think I'd bring God into this book. But if you don't believe in God, you might want to read it to get a more balanced perspective as to what science itself is like and what it's done in the past, very much to its credit, and what it's capable of doing, but also what its limitations are.
Observer
The End of Discovery (Oxford University Press) will be published in Australia in November.
Mammoths heading a roaring trade in ivory
Andrew Osborn
September 28, 2010
A stuffed woolly mammoth.
MOSCOW: Russia is mining the remains of its long-extinct woolly mammoths to meet a growing demand for ethical ivory.
Taking advantage of a global ban on the trade in elephant ivory, Russia is gambling that ivory lovers around the world will pay a premium for ethically sourced mammoth goods instead.
The US first lady, Michelle Obama, has been photographed wearing jewellery crafted from mammoth ivory.
Russia is exporting 60 tonnes of mammoth ivory to China, the world's biggest ivory market, each year, and scientists estimate that there are huge reserves that are as yet untapped.
They believe there could be as many as 150 million dead mammoths frozen beneath the Siberian tundra.
''Every year, from mid-June, when the tundra melts, until mid-September, hundreds if not thousands of mostly local people scour the tundra in northern Siberia looking for mammoth tusks,'' a new report found.
Woolly mammoths are thought to have appeared about 4.8 million years ago and become extinct at least 3600 years ago.
As more of the permafrost beneath the tundra melts as a consequence of global warming, well-preserved remains are surfacing with growing frequency.
Russian businessmen have been quick to utilise the resource, as mammoth ivory can command a much higher price than elephant ivory.
Conservationists are hoping mammoth ivory will end the illegal trade in elephant tusks.
''The large quantities of mammoth tusks imported into Hong Kong, which are mostly sent to the Chinese mainland for carving, probably reduce demand for elephant ivory from Africa,'' the report, in Pachyderm, a specialist journal, concluded.
The Daily Telegraph
September 28, 2010
A stuffed woolly mammoth.
MOSCOW: Russia is mining the remains of its long-extinct woolly mammoths to meet a growing demand for ethical ivory.
Taking advantage of a global ban on the trade in elephant ivory, Russia is gambling that ivory lovers around the world will pay a premium for ethically sourced mammoth goods instead.
The US first lady, Michelle Obama, has been photographed wearing jewellery crafted from mammoth ivory.
Russia is exporting 60 tonnes of mammoth ivory to China, the world's biggest ivory market, each year, and scientists estimate that there are huge reserves that are as yet untapped.
They believe there could be as many as 150 million dead mammoths frozen beneath the Siberian tundra.
''Every year, from mid-June, when the tundra melts, until mid-September, hundreds if not thousands of mostly local people scour the tundra in northern Siberia looking for mammoth tusks,'' a new report found.
Woolly mammoths are thought to have appeared about 4.8 million years ago and become extinct at least 3600 years ago.
As more of the permafrost beneath the tundra melts as a consequence of global warming, well-preserved remains are surfacing with growing frequency.
Russian businessmen have been quick to utilise the resource, as mammoth ivory can command a much higher price than elephant ivory.
Conservationists are hoping mammoth ivory will end the illegal trade in elephant tusks.
''The large quantities of mammoth tusks imported into Hong Kong, which are mostly sent to the Chinese mainland for carving, probably reduce demand for elephant ivory from Africa,'' the report, in Pachyderm, a specialist journal, concluded.
The Daily Telegraph
Anger as commandos face manslaughter charge
Dan Oakes and Rafael Epstein
September 28, 2010
Five-year-old Shuri Noor was injured in the attack. Photo: SBS
Australian commandos have lashed out the military prosecutor's decision to level a charge of manslaughter over the killing of six civilians during a botched night-time raid in Afghanistan.
As foreshadowed in the Herald, three commandos will face a charges over the deaths of four children and two adults in a compound. It is believed to be the first time Australian troops have been charged with killing civilians in a combat situation.
The Herald reported in early June that a reservist commando and his section commander were likely to be charged, along with their commanding officer, a lieutenant-colonel.
The reservist will be charged with manslaughter or dangerous conduct and the section leader with failing to comply with a lawful general order or prejudicial conduct. A third man, believed to be the lieutenant-colonel, is overseas and will be charged on his return.
Two of the soldiers released a statement yesterday saying they were ''deeply disappointed'' by the decision of the Director of Military Prosecutions, Brigadier Lyn McDade, to prosecute.
The soldiers said they were sure that when the circumstances of the incident became public, people would understand why they acted as they did.
''Words will never adequately express our regret that women and children were killed and injured during the incident on 12 February, 2009. These were people we were risking our lives to protect,'' said the soldiers, identified as A and B.
''However, it should not be forgotten that the casualties were ultimately caused by the callous and reckless act of an insurgent who chose to repeatedly fire upon us at extreme close range from within a room he knew contained women and children.
''This forced us to make split-second decisions, under fire, which almost certainly saved the lives of our fellow Australian and Afghan soldiers.''
It is understood that the Chief of Army, Ken Gillespie, wrote to Brigadier McDade recently expressing his concern at the prospect of charges. Soldiers have also said there is widespread anger at the treatment of the commandos, and a belief that they will never be convicted.
An Australian Defence Association spokesman, Neil James, said yesterday that it was in the commandos' interests for the charges to be heard at courts martial. ''It's not only fairer for the Diggers, it's better for the reputation of the army and of Australia,'' he said.
The family of the six people killed have said that Australian troops burst into their compound in the early hours of the morning and attacked using machine-guns and grenades.
They accused the Australians - from 1 Commando Regiment, which includes many reservists - of shooting without identifying targets and then admitting they were in the wrong compound.
The soldiers say they exchanged fire for an extended time with an Afghan man, who was killed.
Those close to the soldiers are adamant that grenades were necessary because the soldiers were under fire and the shots ceased after only a second grenade was thrown.
September 28, 2010
Five-year-old Shuri Noor was injured in the attack. Photo: SBS
Australian commandos have lashed out the military prosecutor's decision to level a charge of manslaughter over the killing of six civilians during a botched night-time raid in Afghanistan.
As foreshadowed in the Herald, three commandos will face a charges over the deaths of four children and two adults in a compound. It is believed to be the first time Australian troops have been charged with killing civilians in a combat situation.
The Herald reported in early June that a reservist commando and his section commander were likely to be charged, along with their commanding officer, a lieutenant-colonel.
The reservist will be charged with manslaughter or dangerous conduct and the section leader with failing to comply with a lawful general order or prejudicial conduct. A third man, believed to be the lieutenant-colonel, is overseas and will be charged on his return.
Two of the soldiers released a statement yesterday saying they were ''deeply disappointed'' by the decision of the Director of Military Prosecutions, Brigadier Lyn McDade, to prosecute.
The soldiers said they were sure that when the circumstances of the incident became public, people would understand why they acted as they did.
''Words will never adequately express our regret that women and children were killed and injured during the incident on 12 February, 2009. These were people we were risking our lives to protect,'' said the soldiers, identified as A and B.
''However, it should not be forgotten that the casualties were ultimately caused by the callous and reckless act of an insurgent who chose to repeatedly fire upon us at extreme close range from within a room he knew contained women and children.
''This forced us to make split-second decisions, under fire, which almost certainly saved the lives of our fellow Australian and Afghan soldiers.''
It is understood that the Chief of Army, Ken Gillespie, wrote to Brigadier McDade recently expressing his concern at the prospect of charges. Soldiers have also said there is widespread anger at the treatment of the commandos, and a belief that they will never be convicted.
An Australian Defence Association spokesman, Neil James, said yesterday that it was in the commandos' interests for the charges to be heard at courts martial. ''It's not only fairer for the Diggers, it's better for the reputation of the army and of Australia,'' he said.
The family of the six people killed have said that Australian troops burst into their compound in the early hours of the morning and attacked using machine-guns and grenades.
They accused the Australians - from 1 Commando Regiment, which includes many reservists - of shooting without identifying targets and then admitting they were in the wrong compound.
The soldiers say they exchanged fire for an extended time with an Afghan man, who was killed.
Those close to the soldiers are adamant that grenades were necessary because the soldiers were under fire and the shots ceased after only a second grenade was thrown.
Segway millionaire drove machine over cliff: police
September 28, 2010 - 6:10AM
A British millionaire businessman whose company builds and markets the Segway upright scooter died when he apparently rode one of them over a cliff and into a river.
West Yorkshire police said Jimi Heselden, 62, was found in the River Wharfe, at Boston Spa, near Wetherby, on Sunday.
"The incident is not believed to be suspicious and the coroner has been informed," a police spokesman said.
Jimi Heselden and, inset, a model of the Segway that he made and marketed.
Heselden made his fortune when his Leeds-based firm Hesco Bastion developed the "blast wall" basket, which protect soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, as a replacement for traditional sandbags.
Last year he led a British team which bought the US-based Segway firm that makes and distributes the distinctive two-wheeled self-balancing scooters.
The chief executive of Leeds City Council, Tom Riordan, said councillors were "devastated and saddened" to learn of Heselden's death.
"Jimi was an amazing man who, apart from being a wonderful success story for Leeds due to his business acumen, was also remarkably selfless and generous, giving millions to local charities to help people in his home city," Riordan said.
"As a council we enjoyed great success with Jimi and Hesco Bastion, working together with them to achieve a historic gold medal for the city at this year's Chelsea Flower Show, and everyone who knew him will remember his quiet manner, good nature and tremendous pride in being from Leeds."
PA
A British millionaire businessman whose company builds and markets the Segway upright scooter died when he apparently rode one of them over a cliff and into a river.
West Yorkshire police said Jimi Heselden, 62, was found in the River Wharfe, at Boston Spa, near Wetherby, on Sunday.
"The incident is not believed to be suspicious and the coroner has been informed," a police spokesman said.
Jimi Heselden and, inset, a model of the Segway that he made and marketed.
Heselden made his fortune when his Leeds-based firm Hesco Bastion developed the "blast wall" basket, which protect soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, as a replacement for traditional sandbags.
Last year he led a British team which bought the US-based Segway firm that makes and distributes the distinctive two-wheeled self-balancing scooters.
The chief executive of Leeds City Council, Tom Riordan, said councillors were "devastated and saddened" to learn of Heselden's death.
"Jimi was an amazing man who, apart from being a wonderful success story for Leeds due to his business acumen, was also remarkably selfless and generous, giving millions to local charities to help people in his home city," Riordan said.
"As a council we enjoyed great success with Jimi and Hesco Bastion, working together with them to achieve a historic gold medal for the city at this year's Chelsea Flower Show, and everyone who knew him will remember his quiet manner, good nature and tremendous pride in being from Leeds."
PA
Oops: ex-minister Rachida Dati confuses oral sex for inflation
September 28, 2010 - 7:33AM
Rachida Dati ... plotted against Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. Photo: Getty Images
France's glamorous former justice minister Rachida Dati confused oral sex with rising prices as she launched an attack on foreign investment funds.
"When I see some of them (funds) looking for returns of 20 or 25 percent, at a time when fellatio is almost non-existent...," she said during an interview on Europe 1 radio on Sunday.
In French the word is "fellation," which shares some syllables with inflation, which in French is the same as in English.
Dati was dropped from the French government last year after her penchant for designer dresses and appearing on the covers of celebrity magazines prompted criticism that a senior minister should not engage in such frivolity.
She is now a member of the European parliament.
AFP
Rachida Dati ... plotted against Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. Photo: Getty Images
France's glamorous former justice minister Rachida Dati confused oral sex with rising prices as she launched an attack on foreign investment funds.
"When I see some of them (funds) looking for returns of 20 or 25 percent, at a time when fellatio is almost non-existent...," she said during an interview on Europe 1 radio on Sunday.
In French the word is "fellation," which shares some syllables with inflation, which in French is the same as in English.
Dati was dropped from the French government last year after her penchant for designer dresses and appearing on the covers of celebrity magazines prompted criticism that a senior minister should not engage in such frivolity.
She is now a member of the European parliament.
AFP
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Wind could have split Red Sea, scientist says
Josephine Tovey
September 22, 2010
Natural forces ... Charlton Heston as Moses.
The parting of the Red Sea is one of the many miracles described in the Bible and a spectacular feat of early special effects in the 1956 Hollywood epic The Ten Commandments.
But now a Christian engineer claims to have proved the phenomenon has a basis in science.
Carl Drews, from the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, used computer modelling techniques to show that a strong east wind could have pushed the waters in Egypt back far enough to create a land bridge, as is described in the Book of Exodus.
According to the Bible, Moses and the Israelites were able to escape Egypt from the pursuing Pharaoh's army after the Red Sea, or Sea of Reeds, miraculously parts before them.
The research paper, published in the peer-reviewed online journal Public Library of Science, found that when strong winds of about 63km/h blew on a specific body of water for an extended period, it could theoretically cause the water to tilt and recede from the original shoreline, leaving exposed mud flats on the bottom.
"The simulations match fairly closely with the account in Exodus," Mr Drews said.
"The parting of the waters can be understood through fluid dynamics. The wind moves the water in a way that's in accordance with physical laws, creating a safe passage with water on two sides and then abruptly allowing the water to rush back in."
On his website, www.theistic-evolution.com, Mr Drews says he is a "Christian who accepts the scientific theory of evolution" and "miracles recorded by the Bible", including the Red Sea, "seem to have a natural component."
September 22, 2010
Natural forces ... Charlton Heston as Moses.
The parting of the Red Sea is one of the many miracles described in the Bible and a spectacular feat of early special effects in the 1956 Hollywood epic The Ten Commandments.
But now a Christian engineer claims to have proved the phenomenon has a basis in science.
Carl Drews, from the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, used computer modelling techniques to show that a strong east wind could have pushed the waters in Egypt back far enough to create a land bridge, as is described in the Book of Exodus.
According to the Bible, Moses and the Israelites were able to escape Egypt from the pursuing Pharaoh's army after the Red Sea, or Sea of Reeds, miraculously parts before them.
The research paper, published in the peer-reviewed online journal Public Library of Science, found that when strong winds of about 63km/h blew on a specific body of water for an extended period, it could theoretically cause the water to tilt and recede from the original shoreline, leaving exposed mud flats on the bottom.
"The simulations match fairly closely with the account in Exodus," Mr Drews said.
"The parting of the waters can be understood through fluid dynamics. The wind moves the water in a way that's in accordance with physical laws, creating a safe passage with water on two sides and then abruptly allowing the water to rush back in."
On his website, www.theistic-evolution.com, Mr Drews says he is a "Christian who accepts the scientific theory of evolution" and "miracles recorded by the Bible", including the Red Sea, "seem to have a natural component."
New rooftop protest at Villawood as hunger strikers treated
Glenda Kwek
September 22, 2010 - 11:30AM
Nine people, including a pregnant woman, have climbed on to the roof of a building at Sydney's Villawood detention centre, just hours after 11 other detainees ended their 30-hour protest on another roof.
The Chinese nationals climbed onto the roofs of one of the centre's buildings about 8am this morning, an immigration department spokesman said.
Ian Rintoul of the Refugee Action Coalition said the Chinese nationals were held in the same area where Fijian Josefa Rauluni, 36, fell to his death on Monday.
He said he did not know the immigration status of the 10, but believed that some of them had lodged refugee claims.
The detainees get onto the roofs from within the buildings, Mr Rintoul said.
He said they would climb into the roof cavity above the second-floor rooms and remove the tiles to get access to the roof.
An immigration department said the latest protesters were not "illegal maritime arrivals" but would not comment on their immigration status.
He reiterated that their protest would not alter the department's processing of their cases and that if they engaged in criminal activity, they would be referred to the police.
But the spokesman added the contract between the immigration department and private security company Serco "provides for sanctions and fines if it is established that these sorts of incidents resulted from lax work practices or incompetence".
Yesterday, eight Sri Lankan Tamils came off the roof just after 7.15pm following an agreement that they would get to speak with representatives of the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR.
Earlier, three other protesters, an Iraqi, an Iranian and another Tamil, climbed down after negotiations with the immigration department.
Sixteen Iranian and Kurdish asylum seekers are also staging a hunger strike at the centre to protest against their possible deportation.
A spokeswoman for Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital said three of the men, who were admitted four days after they stopped eating, were in a stable condition this morning.
This morning, Mr Bowen told ABC Radio he had "absolutely not" cut a deal with yesterday's rooftop protesters.
He conceded Australian detention centres were under pressure but stressed protests were not about conditions inside the facilities, but rather the claims process itself.
"I'd like to see claims processed more quickly," he said.
"There are a number of matters which have led to the pressure on our detention centres: it's not only the increased number of boat arrivals, it's also the increased rejection rate."
More rejections means people stay in detention longer as they try and appeal the decision, and the government has also suspended the processing of refugee claims from Afghan asylum seekers, meaning they have to languish in centres until that changes.
Mr Bowen defended the claims assessment processes in place.
"I understand that emotions run very high when it comes to asylum claims, but it is down to our officials and our tribunals to determine the cases on all the facts before them."
with AAP
September 22, 2010 - 11:30AM
Nine people, including a pregnant woman, have climbed on to the roof of a building at Sydney's Villawood detention centre, just hours after 11 other detainees ended their 30-hour protest on another roof.
The Chinese nationals climbed onto the roofs of one of the centre's buildings about 8am this morning, an immigration department spokesman said.
Ian Rintoul of the Refugee Action Coalition said the Chinese nationals were held in the same area where Fijian Josefa Rauluni, 36, fell to his death on Monday.
He said he did not know the immigration status of the 10, but believed that some of them had lodged refugee claims.
The detainees get onto the roofs from within the buildings, Mr Rintoul said.
He said they would climb into the roof cavity above the second-floor rooms and remove the tiles to get access to the roof.
An immigration department said the latest protesters were not "illegal maritime arrivals" but would not comment on their immigration status.
He reiterated that their protest would not alter the department's processing of their cases and that if they engaged in criminal activity, they would be referred to the police.
But the spokesman added the contract between the immigration department and private security company Serco "provides for sanctions and fines if it is established that these sorts of incidents resulted from lax work practices or incompetence".
Yesterday, eight Sri Lankan Tamils came off the roof just after 7.15pm following an agreement that they would get to speak with representatives of the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR.
Earlier, three other protesters, an Iraqi, an Iranian and another Tamil, climbed down after negotiations with the immigration department.
Sixteen Iranian and Kurdish asylum seekers are also staging a hunger strike at the centre to protest against their possible deportation.
A spokeswoman for Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital said three of the men, who were admitted four days after they stopped eating, were in a stable condition this morning.
This morning, Mr Bowen told ABC Radio he had "absolutely not" cut a deal with yesterday's rooftop protesters.
He conceded Australian detention centres were under pressure but stressed protests were not about conditions inside the facilities, but rather the claims process itself.
"I'd like to see claims processed more quickly," he said.
"There are a number of matters which have led to the pressure on our detention centres: it's not only the increased number of boat arrivals, it's also the increased rejection rate."
More rejections means people stay in detention longer as they try and appeal the decision, and the government has also suspended the processing of refugee claims from Afghan asylum seekers, meaning they have to languish in centres until that changes.
Mr Bowen defended the claims assessment processes in place.
"I understand that emotions run very high when it comes to asylum claims, but it is down to our officials and our tribunals to determine the cases on all the facts before them."
with AAP
SuperMax.com: inmates find freedom on Facebook
Paul Tatnell
September 22, 2010
Prisoners in NSW's SuperMax prison are using Facebook to keep in touch with the outside world, including fellow gang members - and to request contact with women - in what appears to be a major security breach.
Prison authorities have admitted they are powerless to stop inmates appearing on social networking sites such as Facebook and called for new legislation.
It is understood associates of the inmates have been updating the profiles, sometimes with letters and photos smuggled out of prison.
One prisoner profile this website found includes postings attributed to the serial killer Ivan Milat, the murderer and alleged drug dealer Bassam Hamzy, and the convicted triple murderer Konstantinos Georgiou.
All three are at Goulburn Prison's SuperMax division, also known as the high-risk management unit. It is home to 38 of the state's worst prisoners. Contact among prisoners is minimal and the cells are bare.
We are also aware of lower-risk inmates having online profiles, including pictures, which are believed to be updated by Sydney bikies. Internet use is banned in NSW prisons and there is no suggestion inmates are updating their profiles.
But this website understands that Corrective Services NSW has become aware that information about SuperMax, including dealings with security guards, an alleged fire in a cell and the possible release of photos taken inside the jail, has appeared online and is being investigated.
The Facebook profile of Georgiou, a former Rebel bikie convicted of killing three members of the Bandidos gang, has featured a photo of the inmate working out which might have been taken inside prison. The photo has since been deleted.
Georgiou, who has 166 online friends, writes about his life in SuperMax, including run-ins with guards and his life as a bikie before his arrest.
He flaunts the newfound freedom social networking allows. ''It gives me a lot of strength, knowing that I can once again be in contact with all my brother's [sic], for the last 7 years here in SuperMax they have done everything in their power to cut me off from all my brother's but now with this new tool called face book they can no longer ke…ep me suppressed, love and respect from a born Rebel,'' he writes. Several Rebel members post messages to Georgiou, who writes about an alleged stint in solitary confinement after what he claims was a fire in his cell.
Georgiou's profile includes posts supposedly written by Ivan Milat and Bassam Hamzy. A Corrective Services spokesman, Bob Stapleton, said it was aware of the posts. They might be genuine but the agency could not be sure.
The quotes attributed to Hamzy, who is accused of running a drug ring from jail, are almost incoherent. He promises ''revenge at all costs'' before saying ''murder [is] on my mind''. Hamzy, whom Georgiou claims is becoming a psychopath, also alleges that the mobile phone he used to run his drug ring from jail was given to him by a guard.
Mr Stapleton said he was unaware of this allegation.
In another post, Milat claims he was framed for the seven murders he was found guilty of committing and, like Hamzy, speaks of his dislike for the Corrective Services commissioner, Ron Woodham.
An appeal for women to write to the murderer Michael Heron, who is serving 14 years, is also posted on Georgiou's site. Included in the request are a picture of Heron, which appears to have been taken inside prison, and his prisoner number and postal address.
Mr Stapleton said the department was deeply concerned about inmates' use of social media and was investigating potential security breaches.
But he said the department was powerless to stop the general public creating and organising online profiles for prisoners.
''We certainly are concerned, deeply concerned, but we have no control,'' he said. ''We have sought legal advice and the commissioner is very concerned about it … but there would need to be more legislation in place for us to have control.''
He said it was possible pictures were taken with Corrective Services' permission, as inmates were sometimes allowed to have their photos taken by an official.
This website sent emails seeking comment from the person updating Georgiou's profile, but did not receive a response.
September 22, 2010
Prisoners in NSW's SuperMax prison are using Facebook to keep in touch with the outside world, including fellow gang members - and to request contact with women - in what appears to be a major security breach.
Prison authorities have admitted they are powerless to stop inmates appearing on social networking sites such as Facebook and called for new legislation.
It is understood associates of the inmates have been updating the profiles, sometimes with letters and photos smuggled out of prison.
One prisoner profile this website found includes postings attributed to the serial killer Ivan Milat, the murderer and alleged drug dealer Bassam Hamzy, and the convicted triple murderer Konstantinos Georgiou.
All three are at Goulburn Prison's SuperMax division, also known as the high-risk management unit. It is home to 38 of the state's worst prisoners. Contact among prisoners is minimal and the cells are bare.
We are also aware of lower-risk inmates having online profiles, including pictures, which are believed to be updated by Sydney bikies. Internet use is banned in NSW prisons and there is no suggestion inmates are updating their profiles.
But this website understands that Corrective Services NSW has become aware that information about SuperMax, including dealings with security guards, an alleged fire in a cell and the possible release of photos taken inside the jail, has appeared online and is being investigated.
The Facebook profile of Georgiou, a former Rebel bikie convicted of killing three members of the Bandidos gang, has featured a photo of the inmate working out which might have been taken inside prison. The photo has since been deleted.
Georgiou, who has 166 online friends, writes about his life in SuperMax, including run-ins with guards and his life as a bikie before his arrest.
He flaunts the newfound freedom social networking allows. ''It gives me a lot of strength, knowing that I can once again be in contact with all my brother's [sic], for the last 7 years here in SuperMax they have done everything in their power to cut me off from all my brother's but now with this new tool called face book they can no longer ke…ep me suppressed, love and respect from a born Rebel,'' he writes. Several Rebel members post messages to Georgiou, who writes about an alleged stint in solitary confinement after what he claims was a fire in his cell.
Georgiou's profile includes posts supposedly written by Ivan Milat and Bassam Hamzy. A Corrective Services spokesman, Bob Stapleton, said it was aware of the posts. They might be genuine but the agency could not be sure.
The quotes attributed to Hamzy, who is accused of running a drug ring from jail, are almost incoherent. He promises ''revenge at all costs'' before saying ''murder [is] on my mind''. Hamzy, whom Georgiou claims is becoming a psychopath, also alleges that the mobile phone he used to run his drug ring from jail was given to him by a guard.
Mr Stapleton said he was unaware of this allegation.
In another post, Milat claims he was framed for the seven murders he was found guilty of committing and, like Hamzy, speaks of his dislike for the Corrective Services commissioner, Ron Woodham.
An appeal for women to write to the murderer Michael Heron, who is serving 14 years, is also posted on Georgiou's site. Included in the request are a picture of Heron, which appears to have been taken inside prison, and his prisoner number and postal address.
Mr Stapleton said the department was deeply concerned about inmates' use of social media and was investigating potential security breaches.
But he said the department was powerless to stop the general public creating and organising online profiles for prisoners.
''We certainly are concerned, deeply concerned, but we have no control,'' he said. ''We have sought legal advice and the commissioner is very concerned about it … but there would need to be more legislation in place for us to have control.''
He said it was possible pictures were taken with Corrective Services' permission, as inmates were sometimes allowed to have their photos taken by an official.
This website sent emails seeking comment from the person updating Georgiou's profile, but did not receive a response.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
New era as China's rise brings reign of Europe to an end
Japan is sometimes described as the northern anchor of the US alliance structure in the Pacific, and Australia the southern. After 60 years, they might seem rusted into place.
But serious voices in each country are calling for the captains to consider weighing anchor and shifting moorings. As China rises, it is prompting the beginnings of a reappraisal of the fundamentals of Asia-Pacific security.
In Japan, the man who last week challenged for the prime ministership, Ichiro Ozawa, is urging his country to shake off its postwar attachment to the US. After decades of allowing Washington to set Tokyo's foreign policy and its strategic policy, Ozawa wants Japan to ''recover its full sovereignty'' and become a ''normal nation''.
As part of a more independent stance, he advocates that Japan adopt a closer strategic relationship with China. At the moment, Tokyo and Beijing are in an uneasy and unstable coexistence.
In Australia, a former deputy secretary of Defence, Hugh White, has called for Australia to rethink its US alliance: ''It has been easy to believe American power would continue indefinitely to keep Asia peaceful and Australia safe. That has been a cardinal mistake,'' he writes in the current Quarterly Essay.
We all know that China is rising, but White, a professor at the Australian National University who used to write Australia's defence policy, thinks we fail to grasp the real meaning of this moment. China's continued rise ''may mark the passing of the epoch of Western dominance in Asia that began five centuries ago, in 1498, when Vasco da Gama brought Portuguese naval power to India.
''America's role today is simply the latest episode of what scholars call the Vasco da Gama epoch. It could also be the last. If China successfully contests American primacy over the next few decades, Western power will no longer hold strategic sway and Asia will be master of its own affairs once more.''
Though Ozawa and White are utterly different people in completely different positions in very different countries, they have three things in common.
First, both are pragmatists. Neither approaches strategy from any sort of anti-American or left-wing ideological view of the world. Sure, Ozawa got US media attention recently for saying Americans were ''monocellular'' and ''a bit simple-minded'', but he is also an avowed fan of American democracy and a committed advocate of the US alliance. He does not want to harm the alliance; he does want to recover Japan's strategic autonomy. He is a nationalist, not an anti-American.
After a meeting with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last year, he said: ''Both sides must be on an equal footing and one should not be subordinated to the other.'' Far from being any sort of leftist, he was the single most powerful figure in Japan's conservative Liberal Democratic Party in the days of the LDP's unchallenged monopoly on power.
In those times, Japan's political structure was sometimes called a ''one-and-a-half party system''. The conservative LDP was the one, and the Socialists, in perpetual opposition, formed the half-party.
Almost singlehandedly, Ozawa restructured Japanese politics. He made a decisive break with the LDP in 1993, leading a chunk of MPs to form a new opposition party.
This challenger party eventually broke the LDP's monopoly. It is now in power as the Democratic Party of Japan. Ozawa created a two-party system. He is fighting corruption allegations. In Japan's system of ''money politics'', Ozawa has been able to master more money than any of his rivals. His career is a long parade of financial scandals.
This is his greatest vulnerability and a key reason that he is electorally toxic. But it's also one of the sources of his power. Such characters usually remain backroom powerbrokers.
But Ozawa considers his job half done. He has changed the political system but wants to change Japanese policy, too.
That's a chief reason he challenged his leader for the prime ministership last week. He failed. But for a corrupt and unpopular powerbroker, he came reasonably close.
He may never become prime minister. He may well end his career in jail. But his ideas have potency. The incumbent Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, opposed Ozawa's proposal that Japan should intervene in the market to suppress the yen's rise.
But within a couple of days of winning last week, Kan ordered the foreign exchange intervention, Japan's first in six years.
Similarly, Hugh White is no leftie. The head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University is a former defence adviser to two of the most pro-American members of Labor Right, Bob Hawke and Kim Beazley. He is a hard-headed strategic thinker known and respected in Washington.
Second, Ozawa and White are not naive about American power. Both are knowledgeable about the US and its defence systems. Third, neither is a particular fan of China. Both men approach strategy with their country's national interest as their guide.
It's striking that both men are advancing their arguments while their countries are relatively unpressured by Beijing. China's economy is still only one-third the size of America's. It has plans for a serious navy but certainly doesn't have one at the moment.
White sees that he's an outlier: ''Despite the clear trends, it is simply too difficult for us to conceive that Australia might no longer be able to rely for protection on the world's richest and strongest country.''
Julia Gillard, asked about White's essay urging that Australia rethink the alliance, told the Herald in an interview on Friday: ''I'll certainly read it but I don't think I'm going to find myself in agreement. There is no rethinking our alliance with the US.'' Yet it's a question that will keep coming back so long as China continues its rise.
Peter Hartcher is the Sydney Morning Herald's international editor.
But serious voices in each country are calling for the captains to consider weighing anchor and shifting moorings. As China rises, it is prompting the beginnings of a reappraisal of the fundamentals of Asia-Pacific security.
In Japan, the man who last week challenged for the prime ministership, Ichiro Ozawa, is urging his country to shake off its postwar attachment to the US. After decades of allowing Washington to set Tokyo's foreign policy and its strategic policy, Ozawa wants Japan to ''recover its full sovereignty'' and become a ''normal nation''.
As part of a more independent stance, he advocates that Japan adopt a closer strategic relationship with China. At the moment, Tokyo and Beijing are in an uneasy and unstable coexistence.
In Australia, a former deputy secretary of Defence, Hugh White, has called for Australia to rethink its US alliance: ''It has been easy to believe American power would continue indefinitely to keep Asia peaceful and Australia safe. That has been a cardinal mistake,'' he writes in the current Quarterly Essay.
We all know that China is rising, but White, a professor at the Australian National University who used to write Australia's defence policy, thinks we fail to grasp the real meaning of this moment. China's continued rise ''may mark the passing of the epoch of Western dominance in Asia that began five centuries ago, in 1498, when Vasco da Gama brought Portuguese naval power to India.
''America's role today is simply the latest episode of what scholars call the Vasco da Gama epoch. It could also be the last. If China successfully contests American primacy over the next few decades, Western power will no longer hold strategic sway and Asia will be master of its own affairs once more.''
Though Ozawa and White are utterly different people in completely different positions in very different countries, they have three things in common.
First, both are pragmatists. Neither approaches strategy from any sort of anti-American or left-wing ideological view of the world. Sure, Ozawa got US media attention recently for saying Americans were ''monocellular'' and ''a bit simple-minded'', but he is also an avowed fan of American democracy and a committed advocate of the US alliance. He does not want to harm the alliance; he does want to recover Japan's strategic autonomy. He is a nationalist, not an anti-American.
After a meeting with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last year, he said: ''Both sides must be on an equal footing and one should not be subordinated to the other.'' Far from being any sort of leftist, he was the single most powerful figure in Japan's conservative Liberal Democratic Party in the days of the LDP's unchallenged monopoly on power.
In those times, Japan's political structure was sometimes called a ''one-and-a-half party system''. The conservative LDP was the one, and the Socialists, in perpetual opposition, formed the half-party.
Almost singlehandedly, Ozawa restructured Japanese politics. He made a decisive break with the LDP in 1993, leading a chunk of MPs to form a new opposition party.
This challenger party eventually broke the LDP's monopoly. It is now in power as the Democratic Party of Japan. Ozawa created a two-party system. He is fighting corruption allegations. In Japan's system of ''money politics'', Ozawa has been able to master more money than any of his rivals. His career is a long parade of financial scandals.
This is his greatest vulnerability and a key reason that he is electorally toxic. But it's also one of the sources of his power. Such characters usually remain backroom powerbrokers.
But Ozawa considers his job half done. He has changed the political system but wants to change Japanese policy, too.
That's a chief reason he challenged his leader for the prime ministership last week. He failed. But for a corrupt and unpopular powerbroker, he came reasonably close.
He may never become prime minister. He may well end his career in jail. But his ideas have potency. The incumbent Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, opposed Ozawa's proposal that Japan should intervene in the market to suppress the yen's rise.
But within a couple of days of winning last week, Kan ordered the foreign exchange intervention, Japan's first in six years.
Similarly, Hugh White is no leftie. The head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University is a former defence adviser to two of the most pro-American members of Labor Right, Bob Hawke and Kim Beazley. He is a hard-headed strategic thinker known and respected in Washington.
Second, Ozawa and White are not naive about American power. Both are knowledgeable about the US and its defence systems. Third, neither is a particular fan of China. Both men approach strategy with their country's national interest as their guide.
It's striking that both men are advancing their arguments while their countries are relatively unpressured by Beijing. China's economy is still only one-third the size of America's. It has plans for a serious navy but certainly doesn't have one at the moment.
White sees that he's an outlier: ''Despite the clear trends, it is simply too difficult for us to conceive that Australia might no longer be able to rely for protection on the world's richest and strongest country.''
Julia Gillard, asked about White's essay urging that Australia rethink the alliance, told the Herald in an interview on Friday: ''I'll certainly read it but I don't think I'm going to find myself in agreement. There is no rethinking our alliance with the US.'' Yet it's a question that will keep coming back so long as China continues its rise.
Peter Hartcher is the Sydney Morning Herald's international editor.
No catch in an empty sea
As former Fisheries Minister Tony Burke shifts focus in his new role as Environment Minister, his impending decision on the export of the iconic southern bluefin tuna will signal his approach to tough resource versus biodiversity decisions.
Last time the export of this critically endangered Australian sashimi fish came up for consideration early in 2008, the then environment minister Peter Garrett gave the nod for continued export to Burke, who was fisheries minister.
This time with a new approval imminent, Burke has to make the decision with every sign that this fish's plight is worsening.
Southern bluefin is claimed as the best raw-eating fish in the world. Its top specimens traditionally sell in Japan for tens of thousands of dollars.
Trade in the fish brings Port Lincoln ranchers, who net wild fish live and grow them on in sea cages, about $162 million in exports, according to Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
But since the last Australian export approval was given, the international regulator, the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna, has further cut total catches by 20 per cent, to 9449 tonnes.
The commission said last October it was "gravely concerned" about the fish's status and estimated its spawning biomass — the total breeding fish — to be as little as 3 per cent of its original size. The commission also foreshadowed ambitions to make further cuts.
Human nature being what it is, the pressure to catch such high-priced fish, even unlawfully, is great. In 2006, Australian officials exposed a widescale fraudulent trade in which Japan had taken upwards of $5 billion worth of undeclared southern bluefin over many years.
Lately, and worryingly for a fish that breeds exclusively in the tropical Indian Ocean north-west of Australia, Indonesian fishers are now catching southern bluefin in numbers. Fishers from New Zealand, Korea, Taiwan and South Africa also chase it.
For years, green groups have argued for this majestic fish to be given a break. The Australian Marine Conservation Society points out flatly what an International Union for the Conservation of Nature critically endangered listing means. "This means it 'faces an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild'."
The fish taken now are more likely to be immature. "Targeting large numbers of young fish flatlines any chances of recovery and robs the ocean of future generations of this species," marine conservation society director Darren Kindleysides said.
Multiple attempts have been made by Humane Society International to have southern bluefin listed as critically endangered under Australian legislation — a move that would allow a trade ban.
So far though, Australian governments have preferred to take the trade-control route — that is, trying to manage the existing fishery as best we can, rather than stop it.
Some others feel the time has come for prohibition. When the question of the equally troubled northern bluefin tuna trade came up earlier this year, the US and European Union backed a global ban. The Rudd government did not.
There are some signs that our national regulator, the Australian Fisheries Management Authority, under Tony Burke, has played down the crisis southern bluefin faces. In the authority's most recent annual assessment, the "grave concern" that the southern bluefin conservation commission expressed was described by the authority as simply "concern". Anyone who hears a police view of a missing person knows the difference between the two.
The Fisheries Management's assessment backed continued fishing of bluefin, unsurprisingly. Burke's challenge is to forget that this report was prepared when he was the minister responsible for the authority.
He is not acting for the fishery any more. He is acting for the fish.
Andrew Darby is Age and Sydney Morning Herald Hobart correspondent.
Last time the export of this critically endangered Australian sashimi fish came up for consideration early in 2008, the then environment minister Peter Garrett gave the nod for continued export to Burke, who was fisheries minister.
This time with a new approval imminent, Burke has to make the decision with every sign that this fish's plight is worsening.
Southern bluefin is claimed as the best raw-eating fish in the world. Its top specimens traditionally sell in Japan for tens of thousands of dollars.
Trade in the fish brings Port Lincoln ranchers, who net wild fish live and grow them on in sea cages, about $162 million in exports, according to Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
But since the last Australian export approval was given, the international regulator, the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna, has further cut total catches by 20 per cent, to 9449 tonnes.
The commission said last October it was "gravely concerned" about the fish's status and estimated its spawning biomass — the total breeding fish — to be as little as 3 per cent of its original size. The commission also foreshadowed ambitions to make further cuts.
Human nature being what it is, the pressure to catch such high-priced fish, even unlawfully, is great. In 2006, Australian officials exposed a widescale fraudulent trade in which Japan had taken upwards of $5 billion worth of undeclared southern bluefin over many years.
Lately, and worryingly for a fish that breeds exclusively in the tropical Indian Ocean north-west of Australia, Indonesian fishers are now catching southern bluefin in numbers. Fishers from New Zealand, Korea, Taiwan and South Africa also chase it.
For years, green groups have argued for this majestic fish to be given a break. The Australian Marine Conservation Society points out flatly what an International Union for the Conservation of Nature critically endangered listing means. "This means it 'faces an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild'."
The fish taken now are more likely to be immature. "Targeting large numbers of young fish flatlines any chances of recovery and robs the ocean of future generations of this species," marine conservation society director Darren Kindleysides said.
Multiple attempts have been made by Humane Society International to have southern bluefin listed as critically endangered under Australian legislation — a move that would allow a trade ban.
So far though, Australian governments have preferred to take the trade-control route — that is, trying to manage the existing fishery as best we can, rather than stop it.
Some others feel the time has come for prohibition. When the question of the equally troubled northern bluefin tuna trade came up earlier this year, the US and European Union backed a global ban. The Rudd government did not.
There are some signs that our national regulator, the Australian Fisheries Management Authority, under Tony Burke, has played down the crisis southern bluefin faces. In the authority's most recent annual assessment, the "grave concern" that the southern bluefin conservation commission expressed was described by the authority as simply "concern". Anyone who hears a police view of a missing person knows the difference between the two.
The Fisheries Management's assessment backed continued fishing of bluefin, unsurprisingly. Burke's challenge is to forget that this report was prepared when he was the minister responsible for the authority.
He is not acting for the fishery any more. He is acting for the fish.
Andrew Darby is Age and Sydney Morning Herald Hobart correspondent.
Roses by any other name will be pruned
Juliette Jowit
September 21, 2010
LONDON: More than 600,000 plant species have been deleted from the dictionary of life after the most comprehensive assessment carried out by scientists.
For centuries, botanists have been collecting ''new'' plants without realising many were the same. For example, the tomato boasts 790 different names, while there are 600 monikers for the oak tree and its varieties.
The result was a list of more than 1 million flowering species. Although experts have long known it included many duplicates, no one was sure how many. Later this year, the study team, led by British and US scientists, will announce that the real number of species around the world is closer to 400,000.
The project - which has taken nearly three years - was the number one request made by the 193 government members of the Convention on Biological Diversity at their meeting in 2002. There were concerns that without this work, it would be impossible to work out how many plants were under threat and how successful conservationists were in saving them.
The information will also be vital for any organisation or researcher looking at ''economically important'' plants, such as those for food and nutrition or medicine, said Alan Paton, assistant keeper of the herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London, one of the four leading partners in the project.
''One plant might have between two and three names, which doesn't sound a great deal, but if you're trying to find information on a plant, you might not find all [of it] because you're only looking at one name,'' he said.
In one example, researchers calculated that for the six most-used species of Plectranthus, a relative of the basil plant, a researcher would miss 80 per cent of information available if they looked under only the most commonly used name.
''By going for one name, we missed the majority of information mankind knows about that plant, which isn't too clever,'' Dr Paton said. ''What's really a breakthrough is we have a place which allows people to search through all the names used.''
Kew Gardens joined up nearly three years ago with Missouri Botanical Garden in the US, and experts on two of the biggest and most valuable plant families: legumes, or peas and beans, and Compositae, which include asters, daisies and sunflowers.
They have since attempted to search existing plant lists and work out an ''accepted'' name for each species, and then list all known variations.
The full results of the study will not be published until the end of the year, but so far the researchers have found 301,000 accepted species, 480,000 alternative names, and have 240,000 left to assess.
Although work will continue to assess smaller plant groups in more detail and check for missed duplications, Dr Paton said they believe that the true number of plant species will be ''400,000 or just over''.
Guardian News & Media
September 21, 2010
LONDON: More than 600,000 plant species have been deleted from the dictionary of life after the most comprehensive assessment carried out by scientists.
For centuries, botanists have been collecting ''new'' plants without realising many were the same. For example, the tomato boasts 790 different names, while there are 600 monikers for the oak tree and its varieties.
The result was a list of more than 1 million flowering species. Although experts have long known it included many duplicates, no one was sure how many. Later this year, the study team, led by British and US scientists, will announce that the real number of species around the world is closer to 400,000.
The project - which has taken nearly three years - was the number one request made by the 193 government members of the Convention on Biological Diversity at their meeting in 2002. There were concerns that without this work, it would be impossible to work out how many plants were under threat and how successful conservationists were in saving them.
The information will also be vital for any organisation or researcher looking at ''economically important'' plants, such as those for food and nutrition or medicine, said Alan Paton, assistant keeper of the herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London, one of the four leading partners in the project.
''One plant might have between two and three names, which doesn't sound a great deal, but if you're trying to find information on a plant, you might not find all [of it] because you're only looking at one name,'' he said.
In one example, researchers calculated that for the six most-used species of Plectranthus, a relative of the basil plant, a researcher would miss 80 per cent of information available if they looked under only the most commonly used name.
''By going for one name, we missed the majority of information mankind knows about that plant, which isn't too clever,'' Dr Paton said. ''What's really a breakthrough is we have a place which allows people to search through all the names used.''
Kew Gardens joined up nearly three years ago with Missouri Botanical Garden in the US, and experts on two of the biggest and most valuable plant families: legumes, or peas and beans, and Compositae, which include asters, daisies and sunflowers.
They have since attempted to search existing plant lists and work out an ''accepted'' name for each species, and then list all known variations.
The full results of the study will not be published until the end of the year, but so far the researchers have found 301,000 accepted species, 480,000 alternative names, and have 240,000 left to assess.
Although work will continue to assess smaller plant groups in more detail and check for missed duplications, Dr Paton said they believe that the true number of plant species will be ''400,000 or just over''.
Guardian News & Media
Palin clone in Narnia riding wave of passion
Christine O'Donnell is in a fantasy world. Literally. The pretty Palin Mini-Me identifies with the women of Middle Earth, comparing herself to the female characters in the Lord of the Rings novels by J.R.R. Tolkien.
"Look at the significance that he gives to Eowyn, the Lady of Rohan," O'Donnell said on C-Span in 2003. "She was a warrior spirit and, to me, that's who I love. I mean, I aspire to be soft and gentle like Arwen, but realistically, I'm a fighter, like Eowyn."
O'Donnell said she liked Tolkien's outlook on gender: "On the one hand, there's the attitude that's normally on the conservative side - as a conservative woman, I feel I can say this - that stifles women. There's almost the stereotypical attitude of, to be a true woman, you have to stay at home. And I've actually had people say to me, 'Why do you choose a career over marriage?' Honestly, I've had only a few significant relationships, and they've broken up with me. And one of the things I've been told is, 'If you weren't so strong, you'd be married by now."'
This anti-abortion, anti-masturbation, anti-premarital sex, anti-stem-cells, anti-gay marriage, dubious-about-evolution Christian conservative has rocked politics by snatching the Delaware Republican nomination for the Senate away from the seemingly sure-thing moderate Mike Castle.
At the Values Voter Summit on Friday, the 41-year-old O'Donnell cited another fantasy world to conjure up a Christ-like image for the Tea Party.
"We're rowdy, we're passionate," she told the enraptured crowd. "It reminds me of the C.S. Lewis Narnia books, where the little girl asks someone about Aslan the lion, who represents God, and she says with a little concern over such a fearsome lion, 'Is he safe?' And her friend says, 'Safe? Who said anything about safe? Of course he isn't safe. But he's good."'
She's right that there's an untamed beast rampaging through politics. But this beast does not seem blessed; rather it has loosed a kind of ugliness and wildness in the land.
Karl Rove dismissed O'Donnell as an absurd choice with a sketchy background and dubious character. He alluded to facts in The Weekly Standard that chronicled her lawsuit against her former employer, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a conservative non-profit outfit based in Delaware.
Although O'Donnell said in 1998 that wives should "graciously submit" to their husbands, her 2005 suit charged that she suffered "mental anguish" after being demoted and fired because the institute's conservative philosophy deemed that women must be subordinate.
We, the people in the ruling class elites think she comes across as alarmingly loopy. But maybe she's smart as a fox in doing a single-white-female, Fox anchor make-over to look more like her queen-maker, Sarah Palin. She's also clever to think of politics in terms of passion and myth. Those are the two elements Barack Obama summoned during his campaign that are sorely missing from his presidency.
His bloodless rationality has helped spawn the right's bloodletting of irrationality. His ivory tower approach to the nation's anxieties about the economy gave rise to a tower of angry babble. The Tea Party is basically a big tent for anger. The President's struggle to connect and inspire passion is a dispiriting contrast to, as Yeats said, the worst, full of passionate intensity.
The first African-American president, who wrote in his memoir that he trained himself as a young man not to let his anger show in a suspicious white society, now faces anger on an unprecedented scale from a mostly white movement. He seems weary of crisis management, conveying the attitude of the hero in The Incredibles who has to keep saving the world: "Sometimes I just want it to stay saved!"
The President seems put upon and impatient with reality while his foes seem happy to embrace fantasy. Obama can connect with policy. He just can't connect with the objects of policy.
He has never shaken off that slight patronising attitude towards the working-class voters he is losing now, the ones he dubbed "bitter" during his campaign. There is no premium in trying to save people's jobs and lift them up and give them healthcare if they feel that you can't relate to them.
The insane have achieved political respectability while the sane act too good for it all. The irrational celebrate while the rational act bored and above-it-all.
Maureen Dowd is a columnist with The New York Times.
"Look at the significance that he gives to Eowyn, the Lady of Rohan," O'Donnell said on C-Span in 2003. "She was a warrior spirit and, to me, that's who I love. I mean, I aspire to be soft and gentle like Arwen, but realistically, I'm a fighter, like Eowyn."
O'Donnell said she liked Tolkien's outlook on gender: "On the one hand, there's the attitude that's normally on the conservative side - as a conservative woman, I feel I can say this - that stifles women. There's almost the stereotypical attitude of, to be a true woman, you have to stay at home. And I've actually had people say to me, 'Why do you choose a career over marriage?' Honestly, I've had only a few significant relationships, and they've broken up with me. And one of the things I've been told is, 'If you weren't so strong, you'd be married by now."'
This anti-abortion, anti-masturbation, anti-premarital sex, anti-stem-cells, anti-gay marriage, dubious-about-evolution Christian conservative has rocked politics by snatching the Delaware Republican nomination for the Senate away from the seemingly sure-thing moderate Mike Castle.
At the Values Voter Summit on Friday, the 41-year-old O'Donnell cited another fantasy world to conjure up a Christ-like image for the Tea Party.
"We're rowdy, we're passionate," she told the enraptured crowd. "It reminds me of the C.S. Lewis Narnia books, where the little girl asks someone about Aslan the lion, who represents God, and she says with a little concern over such a fearsome lion, 'Is he safe?' And her friend says, 'Safe? Who said anything about safe? Of course he isn't safe. But he's good."'
She's right that there's an untamed beast rampaging through politics. But this beast does not seem blessed; rather it has loosed a kind of ugliness and wildness in the land.
Karl Rove dismissed O'Donnell as an absurd choice with a sketchy background and dubious character. He alluded to facts in The Weekly Standard that chronicled her lawsuit against her former employer, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a conservative non-profit outfit based in Delaware.
Although O'Donnell said in 1998 that wives should "graciously submit" to their husbands, her 2005 suit charged that she suffered "mental anguish" after being demoted and fired because the institute's conservative philosophy deemed that women must be subordinate.
We, the people in the ruling class elites think she comes across as alarmingly loopy. But maybe she's smart as a fox in doing a single-white-female, Fox anchor make-over to look more like her queen-maker, Sarah Palin. She's also clever to think of politics in terms of passion and myth. Those are the two elements Barack Obama summoned during his campaign that are sorely missing from his presidency.
His bloodless rationality has helped spawn the right's bloodletting of irrationality. His ivory tower approach to the nation's anxieties about the economy gave rise to a tower of angry babble. The Tea Party is basically a big tent for anger. The President's struggle to connect and inspire passion is a dispiriting contrast to, as Yeats said, the worst, full of passionate intensity.
The first African-American president, who wrote in his memoir that he trained himself as a young man not to let his anger show in a suspicious white society, now faces anger on an unprecedented scale from a mostly white movement. He seems weary of crisis management, conveying the attitude of the hero in The Incredibles who has to keep saving the world: "Sometimes I just want it to stay saved!"
The President seems put upon and impatient with reality while his foes seem happy to embrace fantasy. Obama can connect with policy. He just can't connect with the objects of policy.
He has never shaken off that slight patronising attitude towards the working-class voters he is losing now, the ones he dubbed "bitter" during his campaign. There is no premium in trying to save people's jobs and lift them up and give them healthcare if they feel that you can't relate to them.
The insane have achieved political respectability while the sane act too good for it all. The irrational celebrate while the rational act bored and above-it-all.
Maureen Dowd is a columnist with The New York Times.
China's row with Japan threatens to escalate
John Garnaut HERALD CORRESPONDENT
September 21, 2010
BEIJING: The stand-off between China and Japan over an incident in the East China Sea has flared into a nationalistic campaign, with commentators calling for China to conduct military drills in the area and drive up the Japanese currency to inflict economic pain.
The Chinese government's call for ''strong counter-measures'' against Japan was splashed across newspaper front pages and featured on Chinese net forums.
Chinese government media and schools deliberately stoke Chinese nationalism in such ways as highlighting Japanese brutality during World War II.
But Beijing can find itself accused of being weak.
''If the Chinese government continues to simply declare the Diaoyu Islands are Chinese territory while avoiding substantive action then I feel the islands are drifting further and further away from us,'' Li Nan, at the China Federation of Defending the Diaoyu Islands, told the Herald yesterday.
''China should send patrol ships from the PLA Navy, like Japan, and establish Diaoyu Islands as a shooting range.''
The latest escalation comes after Japanese authorities on Sunday renewed the detention of a Chinese fisherman whose vessel collided with a Japanese coast guard boat on September 7 near the islands, which are called Senkaku in Japanese. China has summoned the Japanese ambassador six times since September 8 and otherwise broken off high-level contact.
''If the Japanese side clings obstinately to its course, making mistake upon mistake, then China will take strong countermeasures and Japan will bear all the consequences,'' said a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, adding that relations had been ''seriously damaged''.
Japanese commentators and politicians are responding in kind to China's increased maritime assertiveness, after China's rolling conflicts with the United States and south-east Asian nations over control of the South China and Yellow seas. Japan's Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, said the islands were an ''integral part of Japanese territory''.
The Global Times, an official Chinese tabloid, led its front page yesterday by interviewing military figures and scholars on what China's ''severe countermeasures'' against Japan should comprise.
''We should send regular battle-capable fisheries vessels to the Diaoyu area to protect navigation,'' said General Peng Guangqian, an analyst at the Chinese Academy of Military Science.
An accompanying online survey found a sizeable proportion of respondents backed a plan to hurt the Japanese economy by buying Japanese government bonds and sending the yen higher. Japan had been seeking talks with Beijing over its purchases of Japanese bonds, which last week helped to push the yen to a 15-year high against the US dollar.
Not all Chinese bloggers are angry about the islands, preferring to focus on China's many disputes at home. ''When the leaders express condemnation, it means that you're allowed to express condemnation,'' wrote Han Han, perhaps the world's most popular blogger, in a post that was mostly deleted from the internet. ''When the leaders express regret, it means your time for expressing condemnation is over.''
Source: The Age
September 21, 2010
BEIJING: The stand-off between China and Japan over an incident in the East China Sea has flared into a nationalistic campaign, with commentators calling for China to conduct military drills in the area and drive up the Japanese currency to inflict economic pain.
The Chinese government's call for ''strong counter-measures'' against Japan was splashed across newspaper front pages and featured on Chinese net forums.
Chinese government media and schools deliberately stoke Chinese nationalism in such ways as highlighting Japanese brutality during World War II.
But Beijing can find itself accused of being weak.
''If the Chinese government continues to simply declare the Diaoyu Islands are Chinese territory while avoiding substantive action then I feel the islands are drifting further and further away from us,'' Li Nan, at the China Federation of Defending the Diaoyu Islands, told the Herald yesterday.
''China should send patrol ships from the PLA Navy, like Japan, and establish Diaoyu Islands as a shooting range.''
The latest escalation comes after Japanese authorities on Sunday renewed the detention of a Chinese fisherman whose vessel collided with a Japanese coast guard boat on September 7 near the islands, which are called Senkaku in Japanese. China has summoned the Japanese ambassador six times since September 8 and otherwise broken off high-level contact.
''If the Japanese side clings obstinately to its course, making mistake upon mistake, then China will take strong countermeasures and Japan will bear all the consequences,'' said a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, adding that relations had been ''seriously damaged''.
Japanese commentators and politicians are responding in kind to China's increased maritime assertiveness, after China's rolling conflicts with the United States and south-east Asian nations over control of the South China and Yellow seas. Japan's Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, said the islands were an ''integral part of Japanese territory''.
The Global Times, an official Chinese tabloid, led its front page yesterday by interviewing military figures and scholars on what China's ''severe countermeasures'' against Japan should comprise.
''We should send regular battle-capable fisheries vessels to the Diaoyu area to protect navigation,'' said General Peng Guangqian, an analyst at the Chinese Academy of Military Science.
An accompanying online survey found a sizeable proportion of respondents backed a plan to hurt the Japanese economy by buying Japanese government bonds and sending the yen higher. Japan had been seeking talks with Beijing over its purchases of Japanese bonds, which last week helped to push the yen to a 15-year high against the US dollar.
Not all Chinese bloggers are angry about the islands, preferring to focus on China's many disputes at home. ''When the leaders express condemnation, it means that you're allowed to express condemnation,'' wrote Han Han, perhaps the world's most popular blogger, in a post that was mostly deleted from the internet. ''When the leaders express regret, it means your time for expressing condemnation is over.''
Source: The Age
Couple to swim 500km to North Sea with pet ducks
Two Germans have set out on an unusual summer holiday, beginning a 500-kilometre swim down a river from central Germany to the North Sea with seven pet ducks.
Starting in the town of Kassel, Pia Marie Witt, 33, Wilfried Arnold, 58, and their companions will swim down the Fulda and Weser rivers, hoping to reach the North Sea port of Bremerhaven by mid-September.
The pair say that the journey is about self-fulfilment.
"It's our version of the pilgrimage to Santiago," Arnold told German radio network Hessische Rundfunk.
He was referring to the annual walk by tens of thousands of pilgrims to the Spanish town of Santiago de Compostela, where it is believed the remains of the apostle St James are buried.
Witt and Arnold aim to swim 10 to 15 kilometres a day - an order too tall for the ducks, who will swim for about 20 minutes a day, following by car or boat when exhaustion kicks in.
Reuters
Starting in the town of Kassel, Pia Marie Witt, 33, Wilfried Arnold, 58, and their companions will swim down the Fulda and Weser rivers, hoping to reach the North Sea port of Bremerhaven by mid-September.
The pair say that the journey is about self-fulfilment.
"It's our version of the pilgrimage to Santiago," Arnold told German radio network Hessische Rundfunk.
He was referring to the annual walk by tens of thousands of pilgrims to the Spanish town of Santiago de Compostela, where it is believed the remains of the apostle St James are buried.
Witt and Arnold aim to swim 10 to 15 kilometres a day - an order too tall for the ducks, who will swim for about 20 minutes a day, following by car or boat when exhaustion kicks in.
Reuters
Atheist Hitchens skipping prayer day in his honor
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Stricken with cancer and fragile from chemotherapy, author and outspoken atheist Christopher Hitchens sits in an armchair before an audience and waits for the only question that can come first at such a time.
"How's your health?" asks Larry Taunton, a friend who heads an Alabama-based group dedicated to defending Christianity.
"Well, I'm dying, since you asked, but so are you. I'm only doing it more rapidly," replies Hitchens, his grin faint and his voice weak and raspy. Only wisps of his dark hair remain; clothes hang on his frame.
The writer best known to believers for his 2007 book "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" has esophageal cancer, the same disease that killed his father. He is fighting it, but the 62-year-old Hitchens is realistic: At the very best, he says, his life will be shortened.
For some of his critics, it might be satisfying to see a man who has made a career of skewering organized religion switch sides near the end of his life and pray silently for help fighting a ravaging disease.
He has an opportunity: Monday has been informally proclaimed "Everybody Pray for Hitchens Day."
Christopher Hitchens won't be bowing his head, even on a day set aside just for him.
"I shall not be participating," he said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Hitchens was diagnosed with cancer in June, forcing him to cancel a tour to promote his new book, "Hitch-22: A Memoir." He took time off from work as chemo treatments began but recently published the first of what is intended to be a series of essays in Vanity Fair magazine about his diagnosis.
On Sept. 7, he visited Birmingham for his first public appearance since the diagnosis, a debate against David Berlinski, author of "The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions." They argued over the implications of a purely secular society before a crowd of about 1,200 in an event sponsored by Fixed Point Foundation, the Christian apologetics group headed by Taunton.
Taunton is devoutly Christian yet has developed a fast friendship with Hitchens, who appeared at a similar debate sponsored by the organization last year. Taunton is among those praying for Hitchens, and Hitchens takes no offense.
The way the English-born Hitchens sees it, the people praying for him break down into three basic groups: those who seem genuinely glad he's suffering and dying from cancer; those who want him to become a believer in their religious faith; and those who are asking God to heal him.
Hitchens has no use for that first group. "'To hell with you' is the response to the ones who pray for me to go to hell," Hitchens told AP.
He's ruling out the idea of a deathbed change of heart: "'Thanks but no thanks' is the reply to those who want me to convert and recognize a divinity or deity."
It's that third group — people who are asking God for Hitchens' healing — that causes Hitchens to choose his words even more carefully than normal. Are those prayers OK? Are they helpful?
"I say it's fine by me, I think of it as a nice gesture. And it may well make them feel better, which is a good thing in itself," says Hitchens.
But prayers for his healing don't make him feel better.
"Well, not any more than very large numbers of very kind, thoughtful letters from nonbelievers, some of whom know me, some of whom don't, asking me to know that they are on my side," Hitchens said. "That cheers me up, yes."
Hitchens doesn't know exactly how "Everybody Pray for Hitchens Day" began, other than that it's one of those things that appears on the Internet and goes viral. He declined an invitation to appear at a rabbi's prayer service in Washington that day, and he doesn't see any point in the exercise.
"I'm perfectly sure that there is nothing to be gained from it in point of my health, but perhaps I shouldn't even say that. If it would do something for my morale possibly it would do something for my health. We all know that morale is an element in recovery," he said. "But incantations, I don't think, have any effect on the material world."
The National Cancer Institute says esophageal cancer affects about 16,500 Americans each year, almost 80 percent of them men. Smoking and drinking alcohol regularly increase the risk of the disease; Hitchens does both.
The cancer that began in Hitchens' esophagus already has spread into the lymph nodes in his neck, and he fears it has reached a lung. He's visibly tired after a book signing and luncheon appearance and says he needs to rest, even though resting seems like such a waste of time when so little time may be left.
Already into his fourth round of chemotherapy, which he is receiving every three weeks, Hitchens says it's difficult to gauge his eventual legacy. He hopes to be remembered with affection by some; with passion by others; and hopefully as a good father by his three children.
As for his work, Hitchens says he would be happy to be recalled simply as one of those "who are attempting to uphold reason and science against superstition."
"I'd be proud to have my contribution at that," Hitchens said. "This is a very long, long, long story. It's humanity's oldest argument. If I played a small part in keeping it going that would be enough for me."
"How's your health?" asks Larry Taunton, a friend who heads an Alabama-based group dedicated to defending Christianity.
"Well, I'm dying, since you asked, but so are you. I'm only doing it more rapidly," replies Hitchens, his grin faint and his voice weak and raspy. Only wisps of his dark hair remain; clothes hang on his frame.
The writer best known to believers for his 2007 book "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" has esophageal cancer, the same disease that killed his father. He is fighting it, but the 62-year-old Hitchens is realistic: At the very best, he says, his life will be shortened.
For some of his critics, it might be satisfying to see a man who has made a career of skewering organized religion switch sides near the end of his life and pray silently for help fighting a ravaging disease.
He has an opportunity: Monday has been informally proclaimed "Everybody Pray for Hitchens Day."
Christopher Hitchens won't be bowing his head, even on a day set aside just for him.
"I shall not be participating," he said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Hitchens was diagnosed with cancer in June, forcing him to cancel a tour to promote his new book, "Hitch-22: A Memoir." He took time off from work as chemo treatments began but recently published the first of what is intended to be a series of essays in Vanity Fair magazine about his diagnosis.
On Sept. 7, he visited Birmingham for his first public appearance since the diagnosis, a debate against David Berlinski, author of "The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions." They argued over the implications of a purely secular society before a crowd of about 1,200 in an event sponsored by Fixed Point Foundation, the Christian apologetics group headed by Taunton.
Taunton is devoutly Christian yet has developed a fast friendship with Hitchens, who appeared at a similar debate sponsored by the organization last year. Taunton is among those praying for Hitchens, and Hitchens takes no offense.
The way the English-born Hitchens sees it, the people praying for him break down into three basic groups: those who seem genuinely glad he's suffering and dying from cancer; those who want him to become a believer in their religious faith; and those who are asking God to heal him.
Hitchens has no use for that first group. "'To hell with you' is the response to the ones who pray for me to go to hell," Hitchens told AP.
He's ruling out the idea of a deathbed change of heart: "'Thanks but no thanks' is the reply to those who want me to convert and recognize a divinity or deity."
It's that third group — people who are asking God for Hitchens' healing — that causes Hitchens to choose his words even more carefully than normal. Are those prayers OK? Are they helpful?
"I say it's fine by me, I think of it as a nice gesture. And it may well make them feel better, which is a good thing in itself," says Hitchens.
But prayers for his healing don't make him feel better.
"Well, not any more than very large numbers of very kind, thoughtful letters from nonbelievers, some of whom know me, some of whom don't, asking me to know that they are on my side," Hitchens said. "That cheers me up, yes."
Hitchens doesn't know exactly how "Everybody Pray for Hitchens Day" began, other than that it's one of those things that appears on the Internet and goes viral. He declined an invitation to appear at a rabbi's prayer service in Washington that day, and he doesn't see any point in the exercise.
"I'm perfectly sure that there is nothing to be gained from it in point of my health, but perhaps I shouldn't even say that. If it would do something for my morale possibly it would do something for my health. We all know that morale is an element in recovery," he said. "But incantations, I don't think, have any effect on the material world."
The National Cancer Institute says esophageal cancer affects about 16,500 Americans each year, almost 80 percent of them men. Smoking and drinking alcohol regularly increase the risk of the disease; Hitchens does both.
The cancer that began in Hitchens' esophagus already has spread into the lymph nodes in his neck, and he fears it has reached a lung. He's visibly tired after a book signing and luncheon appearance and says he needs to rest, even though resting seems like such a waste of time when so little time may be left.
Already into his fourth round of chemotherapy, which he is receiving every three weeks, Hitchens says it's difficult to gauge his eventual legacy. He hopes to be remembered with affection by some; with passion by others; and hopefully as a good father by his three children.
As for his work, Hitchens says he would be happy to be recalled simply as one of those "who are attempting to uphold reason and science against superstition."
"I'd be proud to have my contribution at that," Hitchens said. "This is a very long, long, long story. It's humanity's oldest argument. If I played a small part in keeping it going that would be enough for me."
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