Refugee Convention assaulted by Australia and Israel

Refugee Action protest 27 July 2013 Melbourne (Photo credit: Takver)

Although the issue of refugees and asylum seekers has been the subject of furious - and often intemperate and ignorant - debate the world over only now is the actual Refugee Convention under serious threat.

In the run up to Australia's election something happened which caused a collective gawp for the sizable Australian minority who haven't lost their minds about refugee boat arrivals.

The then Labor government proposed a new policy of shipping boat arrivals to Papua New Guinea (PNG) and refusing them asylum in Australia, thus abrogating a basic principle of the Refugee Convention, which almost all nations are signed up to, either the 1951 Convention and/or the 1967 Protocol.

Australian policy towards asylum seekers is described by politicians as "harsh". 'Vindictive' and 'cruel' would be more apt. The place in PNG where boat arrivals are being sent (and only them, not those claiming asylum at an airport, logic has nothing to do with this politics) is a dump, on a tropical island, where rape and torture has been uncovered as ocurring - the government tried to cover that up. They are sending children there. The 'PNG option' came from strong arming and aid threats. Locals to the camp, on Manus Island, say they are being shut out of jobs and get no benefit from it. They say they would welcome the asylum seekers living in their community.

This was sold to Australians as "humanitarian" because it would 'stop the boats' coming from Indonesia as some of them sink and over 1000 are thought to have drowned since 2001. But another investigation found more cover up of a failure to stop boats at risk of sinking and aid them - another two-finger salute to international law, in that case the international law of the sea which demands mutual aid on the high seas.

In the dead of night on 17 December 2011, an asylum seeker boat called the Barokah left the coast of Java with around 250 men, women and children on board. One of them was ethnic Hazara man, Esmat Adine. The boat was so crowded, Adine couldn't even find a place to sit. The Barokah was just 40 nautical miles from Indonesia when it fell apart.

'At first I couldn't believe that our boat has sank,' Adine recalls. 'But I saw a toy is coming from the inside of the boat; it is coming by water. When it comes close to me, I realised that no, that was not a toy. That was a kid. That was a kid named Daniel. Daniel was with his mother; they were sitting in front of me, next to me, while we came by bus. When I saw Daniel's body, I realised that our boat has sank, and there is no further hope for us to be alive. '

Eight hours later, at 3 o'clock that afternoon, a passing fishing boat found around a hundred people in high seas, desperately clinging to debris. It was only able to rescue 34 people. Adine shouted to the people in the water, 'Be patient—we will bring you more boats, and they will rescue you.'

In Canberra that evening, Australian agencies became aware the Barokah had sunk. They told Indonesian authorities, because the boat was in their search and rescue zone.

Months later, customs officials would tell a Senate Estimates hearing that Indonesia had initially declined Australia's offer to help with the search and rescue.

But the official incident timeline, which Fairfax obtained under freedom information laws, revealed that BASARNAS, Indonesia's search and rescue agency, had asked AMSA to coordinate the rescue response—AMSA refused.

For two days, while men, women and children struggled to survive in waves up to six metres high, Indonesia and Australia did nothing.

Finally, on December 19, BASARNAS asked again for help. This time, AMSA agreed, and dispatched naval and Customs assets to the scene.

But it was too late. Two hundred and one people were dead.

(I should note there have been similar criticisms of the Italian and Greek's border protection services and the EU.)

Australia actually wanted the Refugee Convention to be changed to suit them. Fortunately they were rebuffed but who knows if either the new Australian government or some other governments peaked by the Australian effort will try again.

The Convention was drawn up in the wake of World War Two, during that period when most of the world worked together to draw up the basic laws which make up a decent, peaceful world. It was a reaction to the shameful way Jews attempting to flee Nazi Germany had been treated in the 1930s, as well as the immediate needs of those fleeing communism.

The latter is why Israel's abrogation of the Convention is causing such consternation as it acts much as Australia is doing. In Israel's case, I kid you not, trading refugees for weapons with Uganda.

Writes Natasha Roth for +972 Magazine:

That this is a war on asylum seekers and human rights is self-evident. But it is also a war on dignity and an assault on human memory and conscience. Whether or not the deal goes through, the fact remains that the Israeli government has seriously considered forcibly dispatching thousands of Africans, to a country not of their choosing, as part of a trade agreement. This brings up a historical recollection of such offensiveness that it is difficult to address it directly. Furthermore, the overlooked “commodity” in this proposed deal is space – for that is what the Israeli government will receive for its part in the potential bargain. This reported agreement is nothing more than a chapter in Israel’s playbook for ‘making room’ and homogenizing; it is persecution as ‘preservation.’ Doubtless one of Netanyahu’s spokespersons will find an appropriate moniker to try and lend some legitimacy to the proceedings (when the Serbs did the same thing in the 1990s, they dubbed it “ethnic cleansing”).

The Israelis characterise the refugees as "infiltrators". The Australians insist they're all "economic migrants".

The ones in Israel are all black, mostly Sudanese and Eritrean. The ones arriving in Australia by boat are mostly Muslim, Afghans, Iranians and Iraqis.

Makarere University Security Studies Professor Paul Omach told allAfrica.com that Israel's actions are 'just another example of a richer nation paying a poorer one to solve its problems'.

Israel looks at these immigrants, mostly Africans really, as unwanted in its country. So if somebody can take it and you can just sign the checks, and you get somebody who is itching for money, that is definitely what they will do.

The co-founder of the International Refugee Rights Initiative in Kampala, Dismas Nkunda, told allAfrica.com that the deal would completely undermine the Refugee Convention:

What happens to them, certainly that is going to be a very big legal problem, because on what basis are they being admitted in Uganda? They have not sought refugee status in Uganda, they have not sought asylum in Uganda. They sought first asylum in the first country they thought of, which was Israel. Actually, you might say that they might end up becoming stateless.

If Australia gets away with it and Israel gets away with it who will be next? If they want to do this just unsign and stop pretending to be 'humanitarian'. Why are there no consequences for those who sign up and then ignore the rules?

As Laissez Passer points out, Kenya's courts are doing a better job of defending international law than Israel's - you could say much the same of Australia's courts. And Kenya hosts hundreds of thousands of refugees. Israel 55000 and Australia far, far less.

Jerome Connolly and Joan Roddy write that:

An unwritten assumption underlying the Convention is that States Parties would not be faced with unmanageable flows of asylum seekers. But experience has belied that assumption on a number of occasions and shown how, in practice, this and other assumptions on which the smooth running of the Convention depends can be invalidated. Asylum determination procedures may be overwhelmed or made irrelevant by mass movements engendered by political violence, especially when conflict spills over frontiers. There may be an associated breakdown of political authority or alternatively borders may be closed as an emergency measure to protect the authority and resources of the host country. This may deny asylum to many refugees or lead to greatly diminished protection for them.

But neither Israel nor Australia are "overwhelmed" except by rhetoric saying they are "overwhelmed". Their actions go far beyond criticism you could make of the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers by Greece or the UK or Turkey, they undercut the basic concepts agreed on for years.

And this is happening when many are worried that growing conflicts and problems like climate change and water shortages will also test the Convention, that protections need strengthening not weakening.

Music · Mohammed Assaf · Two songs

I have only ever watched shows like Pop Idol when forced to. I find the manipulative staging off putting, for one thing. It's like they moved the wizard pulling the levers in front of the curtain.

So when I read of the dramatic story of Mohammed Assaf,  the Palestinian winner of the Arabic Pop Idol (make that legendary, how he climbed a wall and sang in the queue and sang at the Egyptian guards at the Gazan border .. almost a cliché), I thought I'd have a look at some video and wow. I have no idea what he is singing about but don't need to, his voice is just stunning.

Reem Kelani, a Palestinian singer, musician and broadcaster, explains:

As I quickly realized, Assaf’s musical talents are many and prodigious. Within the context of Arabic music, Assaf has perfect pitch vocals. The Egyptian musician Hassan El Shafei, by far the most professional of the four Arab Idol judges, described Assaf’s vocals to be as “precise as a ruler.”

Assaf has mastered the singing of maqamat or Arabic modes, and seemingly has the ability to travel effortlessly from one maqam to another (known as “modulation”).

Many Western listeners may not have known that the microtones which make up Arabic music vary in pitch from one country to the other. Thus, Assaf’s ability to sing songs from across the Arab world was all the more remarkable, encompassing linguistic and musical dialects.

Sounds good to me.

Assaf’s ability to employ long melismatic phrases — singing a single syllable in four or five notes — is exceptional, with his vocals at times sounding more like the refined Persian bolbol technique of nightingale-like trills.

His rich and yet measured use of vocal decorations, known as urab, is exemplary. All Arab singers are occasionally guilty of overuse of urab. Assaf’s precise use of them is a lesson to us all.

Trills? Yep, trills.

Assaf exudes an inner spirit, which some may call charisma, and others, stage presence. To Arabs, it’s the ability to create a state of tarab, which is similar to the Spanish duende, which the poet Federico García Lorca defined as something that “surges up, inside, from the soles of the feet … it’s not a question of skill, but of a style that’s truly alive.”

Sadly, Assaf’s duende was sometimes obscured by a hyperactive audience who constantly emitted wolf whistles, dissonant shouts and contrived sighs of praise.

It is a little off putting.

Kelani suggests that the Arab Idol people "re-learn how tarab should be celebrated."

As Lorca reminds us, “In all Arabic music, dance, song or elegy, the arrival of duende is greeted with vigorous cries of ‘Allah! Allah!’ so close to the ‘Olé!’ of the bullfight, and who knows whether they are not the same?”"

Of course he's Palestinian so there was the undignified sight of him being embraced by a slew of old men, one even leaping on stage after his victory. Kelani explains more about those who would manipulate the kid. Kelani says that Hamas had detained him several times before. Now the street has forced them to embrace/leave him alone. In this reaction show on Al-Jazeera a Palestinian Authority spokesperson is extremely careful not to over politicise Assaf. Assaf in interviews has been a proud Palestinian and managed to avoid sectarian politics and stick to an 'art bringing people together' type message.

There has been some mixed Israeli reaction. Avi Issacharoff in the Times of Israel said he was "moved", that Assaf's voice "managed to make its way into my soul." Then there were the complaints about a song's lyrics about longing to return to Haifa and other towns now in Israel. Netanyahu even complained to John Kerry, of all people.

These struck me as a bit hypocritical and hyper-sensitive and also insensitive. Assaf's grandmother was driven out of the town of Bayt Daras during Operation Lightning whose aim in 1948 was "to compel the Arab inhabitants of the area to 'move' and by striking one or more population centres to cause an exodus."

I'm not getting into the never ending weeds of that but the kid obviously feels a familial pull, whoever you want to blame for his familial history. Singing about the fact of something lost is a pretty long tradition in all cultures.

Two songs after the jump. The first one is gobsmacking but I couldn't work back from the Arabic description to an English title, did try, please feel free to inform me. The second is the anthemic Alli al-keffiyeh (Raise the keffiyeh, which upset some sensitive souls).

One shot two kills

From "the most moral army in the world":

A T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription "Better use Durex," next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him. A sharpshooter's T-shirt from the Givati Brigade's Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, "1 shot, 2 kills." A "graduation" shirt for those who have completed another snipers course depicts a Palestinian baby, who grows into a combative boy and then an armed adult, with the inscription, "No matter how it begins, we'll put an end to it."

Haaretz has been reporting on the crimes committed by - and witnessed by - soldiers in Gaza. The New York Times reports today on one reason why this is happening: rabbis turning a secular war into a religious one.

What is the idea behind the shirt from July 2007, which has an image of a child with the slogan "Smaller - harder!"?

"It's a kid, so you've got a little more of a problem, morally, and also the target is smaller."

I have always had the most basic of problems with not just the words "the most moral army in the world" but also the implicit endorsement of them by people like our Foreign Ministers through their silence: because they imply that armies like ours aren't 'moral'.

War may be immoral, full stop, but fact is there has been far more outrage and many more prosecutions regarding the British army's conduct (such as in Iraq) than the Israeli's over years. And for the Israelis to carry on repeating ''... in the world' should be felt like a slap in the face to their foreign supporters, but it's not.

Funny that.

• Citizen journalism: the reality of occupation in Hebron

BBC out of touch with Israelis over Gaza appeal

The BBC's decision not to broadcast a charities appeal for Gaza is being, rightly, condemned from left and right.

The Observer today suggests that the BBC might think the Disasters Emergency Committee's appeal "other than a genuine humanitarian appeal". But:

An alternative interpretation, and one that is ultimately much more damaging to the BBC's reputation, is that any humanitarian intervention in Gaza, by definition, expresses a political position in the long-running conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. In other words, collecting charity for Palestinians is a kind of hostility to Israel.

But if this were the case, why would Israelis themselves be collecting aid?

A student from a college near Sderot, the small town repeatedly hit by Hamas missiles, has over the past week collected 10 truckloads of basic supplies.

Hadas Balas, says she felt she had to take action when she heard the sound of bombs exploding in Gaza and the sound of sirens in Sderot.

"I realized there were people getting killed who had no food and nothing to drink, and that caused me a lot of pain."

"We are working beyond the rules, with the common goal of ensuring the right to live to those who are alive."

She sent off emails which reached human rights organizations, yielding more donations than initially anticipated.

"I thought we might get two truckloads. I wasn't expecting ten."

A few non-profit organizations volunteered to help collect clothes, blankets and basic supplies.

The Jerusalem branch of Hashomer Hatzair, the Zionist youth movement's organization, helped collect the supplies along with the Greek Catholic Church's Beit Hachesed in Haifa.

Kibbutz Kfar Aza, which has seen countless Palestinian missiles slam into its premises, volunteered a warehouse to house all the donated supplies before they get shipped out to the Strip.

People seeking to donate clothes and other supplies continue to arrive to the warehouse in Kfar Aza.

The women's Jerusalem facility has run out of room, and their Tel Aviv storage space is also almost full.

The two women have also opened an Internet site whereby surfers can donate money to purchase food. Their appeal has exploded across the Israeli and Jewish blogosphere.

"We have a lot of money now, which we are going to use to buy food to get into Gaza," Balas said.

This isn't an Israeli propaganda operation, it's come from ordinary Israelis who, as her friend and co-organiser, Lee Ziv, puts it

"Just see an immediate need for blankets for people who have nothing to cover them at night and milk for infants who have nothing to eat.”

I think their efforts puts the BBC's weasel words into an even sharper and more shameful light.

Citizen journalism: the reality of occupation in Hebron

Here's a fascinating 22-minute video of Hebron, the history-rich ancient city in the West Bank that is now a source of conflict between Palestinians and Israeli settlers, with Israeli security forces placed squarely in the middle.

Serving as tour guide is Mikhael Manekin, co-founder of Breaking the Silence, a human rights group made up of former Israeli soldiers who participated in the occupation.

The documentary short offers a fascinating glimpse into the obstacles that many Palestinians face in their day-to-day lives under Israeli occupation.

This is part 2 of a 2-part series. The first is A drive through the occupied territories.

Hat-tip: JD Lasica

It's about more than white phosphorus in Gaza

Seems like it's finally over in Gaza. After bombing a hospital, several schools and a food warehouse. Over 300 children are dead and for what? Certainly not 'victory'.

Trying to hide a smile and a sense of self-satisfaction Prime Minister Ehud Olmert faced the cameras at the Defense Ministry and declared to the Israeli public, "We won."

But Hamas' gains cannot be ignored: It has won international legitimacy and sympathy, and its forces still control the Gaza Strip.

T'was weapons testing according to a Human Rights Watch investigator quoted in Haaretz (an Israeli newspaper).

Since the first day of the Israeli aerial attack, people have been giving exact descriptions of the side effects of the bombing, and claiming that Israel is using weapons and ammunition that they have not seen during the past eight years.

[Marc Garlasco, the HRW investigator] can only guess or make assumptions in some cases. But even from afar, he has no doubt: Israel is using white phosphorus bombs [the sort which hit the UN food and fuel warehouses]. That was immediately clear to him while he stood last week on a hill facing the Gaza Strip and observed the Israel Defense Forces' bombings for several hours.

The moment the bomb blows up and the phosphorus comes in contact with oxygen - it ignites. This is what creates the "fireworks" and billows of jellyfish-shaped smoke. The fallout covers a wide area and the danger of fires and harm to civilians is enormous. The phosphorus burns glass, and immediately ignites paper, trees, wood - anything that is dry. The burning wafers causes terrible injury to anyone who comes in contact with them. The irony is that tear gas is included in the Chemical Weapons Convention and is subject to all kinds of restrictions, whereas phosphorus is not.

Another new weapon that has forced itself upon Gazans is the GPS-guided mortar - a system equipped with satellite navigation, developed in Israel in late 2006-early 2007, in the wake of the Second Lebanon War. According to local military sources, it was this kind of mortar that missed its target by 30 meters and erroneously hit a United Nations Relief and Works Agency school last week; according to the UN report, 30 people were killed immediately and others died later of their injuries. "It really boggles my mind," Garlasco comments. "According to the literature, it has 3 meters' error - not 30." It is a mortar that is launched in an arc toward an unseen target, he explains, with the intention of being precise and to some extent minimize civilian casualties.

Garlasco says this is the first time the weapon has been used in any military conflict: "The Palestinians say, 'Oh, they use it on us, experiment with it for the Americans.' Experimenting has a different meaning for Americans. We think animal experimenting, but it is indeed a field test."

Only last September did the United States grant Israel's request to supply it with 1,000 bombs of a new type, the GBU-39 [aka DIME]. They arrived at the beginning of December, and inhabitants of Rafah have witnessed their use - without knowing what they were - since the first day of the aerial attacks on the tunnels there.

'Shake 'n' Bake'

Boeing makes them. It :

"Strikes a very small area, 10 to 20 meters, and the fire it ignites burns out very quickly; if it hits us now, we will die, but no one around us will be hurt. The problem is that when you are killed - you are ripped to shreds and there is nothing left."

In Al-Awda Hospital in the Jabalya refugee camp about 90 percent of the wounded were brought in with at least one limb missing. Is it the DIME that is causing the severe injuries being reported by the medical staff?

Another new weapon that he believes is now in use is the Spike:

"It is very new, [from] 2005-2006, a special missile that is made to make very high-speed turns, so if you have a target that is moving and running away from you, you can chase him with the weapon. It was developed by the U.S. Navy jointly with Rafael [the Israel Armament Development Authority]. Rafael is the manufacturer."

Also, the much quoted drones are an Israeli, world-leading 'product':

And America is learning a lot from it

Garlasco is not prepared to accept without question the Israeli claim that Hamas hides behind civilians and makes use of civilians.

Israelis are very quick to say they are doing it, but very short on proof. By keeping the independent people out, they leave doubt in people's minds.

It's worth noting the following: the Israeli Supreme Court has ruled against the use of Human Shields by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) in 2005. This ruling was appealed.

And it's still happening: Israel Uses Gazans as Human Shields.

"I am terrorised"

A journalist in Gaza for Al-Jazeera English speaks:



Paramedics risking their lives amid war in Gaza...



White phosphorus is being used in Gaza. It is a chemical weapon which destroys flesh to the skin.

Dispersal looks like this.



And does this.



A voice from British Jewry:

"She wondered if she could resign from being Jewish. Her despair is not new but it is spreading."

Sderot stands on the site of an ethnically cleansed Palestinian village — former Sderot.

Postscript: Hamas hits the web

I said yesterday that

You cannot look at endless (18 minutes) pictures of dead children and not be affected - and not be politically affected. I'm sure - I know - there are some diehards out there but I sincerely doubt they're actually seeing these pictures.

And here are those diehards:



January 11 rally in front of the Israeli consulate in midtown New York.

"Wipe them all out".

The people of Gaza are a "cancer".

Etc.

Israel Uses Gazans as Human Shields

Hamas hits the web

Of course Hamas is already on the web, but, as with B'tselem's videos of the reality of occupation, this communication - a parade of dead children- is on another level to mere online words on their own version of YouTube.



Point being that you cannot look at endless (18 minutes) pictures of dead children and not be affected - and not be politically affected. I'm sure - I know - there are some diehards out there but I sincerely doubt they're actually seeing these pictures.

See the actual dead children then formulate a reason for killing them.

I have zero time for Hamas. As a gay man how can I? But more than that they are a dead end as a resistance. I'm Ghandiist on that score.

But I also have zero time for a hypocrisy which carries on extending its occupation of another's land.

Dead children does not = 'victory over evil terrorists'. Never. Watch the video and - I hope - weep.

Advice to btselem

Footage filmed by Jamal Abu-Sa'ifan, a Palestinian resident of Hebron, documenting a settler shooting two members of his family. The event occures following the eviction of the new settlment in Hebron. Settlers attacked the nearby house of the Abu-Se'ifan family, and during ensuing clashes, a settler fired his handgun at Hosni Abu-Se'ifan (40), who was hit in the chest and is in stable condition, and his father, 'Abd al-Hai Abu-Sa'ifan (65) who was moderately wounded in his arm. the two were taken to a Hebron hospital. The video shows other members of the family manage to overcome the shooter, then a security guard from the nearby settlement Kiryat Arba arrives and the scene, and fires his weapon in the air.

The Israeli organisation Btselem has done a good thing in distributing 100 small video cameras, bringing the reality of the occupation's effects on Palestinians to Israeli TV screens amongst other things.

But if you visit their site, the video page uses a terribly old hat and clumsy method (though you can download them) and - most importantly - doesn't connect with the sort of viral tools that have become de rigueur with other campaigners such as Amnesty as well as, obviously, clued-up politicians.

Btselem have a YouTube channel but they don't promote it. Once I saw this video, I had to hunt for it to bring it to you (and thereby increasing the viewership for Btselem) because - of course - papers like The Guardian and others insist on turning it into 'their own' copy and it's unebeddable.

They should just embed the YouTube copies on their website as well as adding download links to them and also include the YouTube logo linking to the channel, promoting subscriptions.

Postscript: Scary Americans

From Leah Rabin's obituary in The Independent:

When young peace campaigners went to her Tel Aviv flat to comfort her after the murder, she asked them accusingly why they hadn't come during the long months when Rabin's abusers picketed them there every weekend. She shunned the Likud leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, who had spoken at a Jerusalem rally in which demonstrators brandished photo- montages of Rabin in Nazi uniform.

Hours after Rabin's state funeral, Leah told an Israeli television interviewer: "There definitely was incitement which was strongly absorbed and which found itself a murderer, who did this because he had the support of a broad public." Earlier, when Rabin's coffin was lying in state, she frostily told an opposition leader who came to pay his respects, "It's too late."

HT: M.J. Rosenberg

Notes

Barry in Hawaii.

When Barry visited London, Cameron gave him a box of CDs including albums by the Smiths, Radiohead and Lily Allen. Er, this is not Obama's taste. (Head. Hands ... )

Interesting ... The BBC's crap US election coverage last week had Hillary Clinton atop its list of possible 'Obama running mates'. Now it's flipped to Joe Biden atop and Hillary a-bottom.

Shameless.

As you may have noticed I'm a bit interested in the US election. So the coming week in Denver at the Democrat national convention has especially drawn my interest, in particular what Hillary and her fans will do. Maureen Dowd thinks she'll shit stir and I think she may be right - given that she's yet to slap down her more rabid supporters, aka PUMAs ('party unity, my ass'), and despite them being very few in number and turning into a Roveite Republican black-op.

The reason she lost has been analysed and the internal memos leaked: it was an incredibly badly run campaign.

Dowd's killer quote:

“A woman who wildly mismanages and bankrupts a quarter-of-a-billion-dollar campaign operation, and then blames sexism in society, will dampen the dreams of our daughters.”

Biden has a mouth on him. See Huffpost's video highlights.

According to this article in Africa Confidential, most of the Mugabe regime's ill-gotten gains are being ferreted out of Zimbabwe via UK and South African banks, ending up in either Malaysia or China.

It is this outflow of capital that is more than anything else destroying Zimbabwe's economy. Zimbabwe's capital exporters have intensified their operations as political and economic conditions have deteriorated, promoting a cycle of decline.

Regarding the talks, Zimbabweans have just 'a small measure of weariness and a massive dose of wariness'

Meanwhile, Mugabe's supporters latest tactic is poisoning.

In Haiti people are eating mud cakes.

Israeli civic organisation B'tselem has been giving out camcorders to people in the West Bank to record attacks by settlers and the IDF. Says more than a thousand words and some have already had play on Israeli TV with subsequent slaps on the wrist to soldiers shooting people in the foot and the like.

Here's one. 'Settlers attack shepherds in Southern Hebron Hills'.



Salon's Glenn Greenwald has been the best source on the really odd story about the so-called anthrax attacker. This is ongoing.

UPDATE: Nature, the preeminent journal of science, has an Editorial today (headlined: "Case Not Closed") echoing Sen. Grassley's demand for "a full congressional or independent enquiry into this case"; arguing that "the absence of such a full disclosure can only feed suspicions that the FBI has again targeted an innocent man in this case";

How much public money is a gold medal worth?

In Beijing, each gold medal has cost Australia at least $50 million, says Kevin Norton, a professor of exercise science at the University of South Australia. Or, to put it another way, $12 million came out of the public purse for each medal of any colour. Now we're told these sums are a pittance compared with what is needed to maintain our ranking in London.

What is it with Liverpool? The only big UK city not to host a gay pride and, says, one councillor "homophobia is endemic". This comes in the wake of a underreported killing of a gay teen where the killers got bail.

This story perked me up. I'm out of touch with the state of HIV drugs but according to The Indie cocktails are such now that takers can expect something approaching a normal life expectancy. This isn't everyone and like many of my generation who lived through the worst I fear for the young who are seroconverting in record numbers. But this is progress.

Aw yeah. We can destroy the world and we can be funky whilst doing it!



Quote of the moment:

'It is one thing, and a good thing, to arrest the man, Karadzic,' [Fikret Alic] says. 'He was the big war criminal, the man with the idea for all that happened. But it is another thing to arrest the idea. Karadzic's ideas live on in the existence of Republika Srpska, and if this is all about joining the European Union, for the Republika Srpska to join the EU would be like Europe admitting a part of Germany that still agreed with Hitler, just because it is in Europe. I have rebuilt the house you are staying in now, but in 1992 it was burned while my grandmother was inside - she is one of the 3,205 people still missing - and I was taken to Omarska. No one has ever said sorry for what they did, no one has ever helped us to return and the authorities oppose outright any monument in Omarska to what they did.'

And on a much lighter note when asked 'How do you relax?' sez Dizee Rascal 'A blow job relaxes me'.

Der Untermensch lives on

I was talking to a blind friend today and she told me that, following my suggestion, she'd given a speech to our local Holocaust memorial day about what the Nazis did to the disabled.

Basically, the disabled were the 'practice run' for the ensuing holocaust.

She needed to do the speech to remind people of what the holocaust was really about.

Last week an appalling thing happened around these issues, this memory.

Israel Gutman of the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem said that the Nazis only targeted German gay men, and that they were the victims of political battles within Hitler's National Socialist Party rather than a campaign of homophobia.

(This is an old slander).

Talking about the newly opened memorial to gay victims in Berlin, close to the Jewish memorial, he told Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita, "the location was particularly poorly chosen for this monument,"

"If visitors have the impression that there was not a great difference between the suffering of Jews and those of homosexuals, it's a scandal."

Gutman speaks to the two different definitions of the Holocaust: Simon Wiesenthal's one that includes 5 million gentile victims of the Nazis along with the 6 million Jews, and Elie Wiesel's one that restricts the term Holocaust to Jews only. The latter definition is called by Berenbaum the Judeo-centric one.

When I spoke to our local memorial day last year ('Remembering Sachsenhausen') at the top of my conscientiousness was that I would have to remind people that gays were at the bottom, that jews (and communists and others) participated in this order. I could not have been more, well, relieved, with the reception I received.

It is history which is very difficult to talk about but all the more important to talk about. It was not only that I could put myself personally into the 'pit' those queers were in but also that I know virtually no-one survived to tell this history. It must be retold.

Much has been lost, or lost in practice. Poles and other slavs were and were to be exterminated. Britain and America sent many hundreds of thousands to their deaths by the hands of the Soviet secret police at war's end. After 1945 Buchenwald survived as a Soviet extermination camp. This is also 'lost'.

People with disabilities were first but there were also assorted political opponents of the Nazis exterminated, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Roma, the latter being the victims of the Nazis' other attempted genocide. There were black victims too.

And then there were the homosexuals. The ones who wore the pink triangles in the death camps, after being offered a choice of castration or imprisonment. The ones subjected to hideous medical experiments. The ones deemed illegal under the infamous Paragraph 175 of the Nazi penal code - a provision that stayed in force in West Germany until 1969. The surivivors, some of whom, after liberation, were forced to serve out their prison sentences for homosexuality under the Allied Military Government of Germany.

Gays, too, were Holocaust victims. Yes, the Nazi policy was never one of blanket extermination in their case - how would they be identified? Yes, far fewer of them perished in the camps than did Jews - many were shot on the Eastern Front as drafted German soldiers. But surely we cannot make our moral judgements solely on the basis of numbers.

Hence a modest monument to the gay victims of the Holocaust has just been erected in Berlin. But it's being protested - by Israel Gutman of the Yad Vashem Institute (Holocaust memorial) in Jerusalem. "A sense of proportion must be maintained," says Gutman.

Fuck you Gutman.

Here's a very Jewish joke from Christopher Isherwood, in conversation with two producers in Hollywood.

"You may forget but Hitler killed 600,000 homosexuals." said Isherwood.
"Sure, but he killed 6 million Jews." said one of the producers.
"What are you, in real estate?" replied the incredulous Isherwood.

Later edit: A reader corrected me:

It's Untermensch - unter = under; Mensch = person e.g. sub-human; "inferior person"

Great moments from the campaign trail

Micah Sifry looks at Obama's problems with the jewish vote and found this video from Boca Raton, Florida.



He says:

I learned two things from watching this. One, that Obama seems to have won over his audience pretty effectively, judging from the loud applause and standing ovation he gets at the end. Two, he has a very funny way of disarming people who have been getting those viral emails claiming that he is a Muslim. At about the 6:00 mark in the video, he asks them "If you get an email from a Nigerian who says you can make a lot of money is you send him a $1000, don't send your money." The crowd starts to laugh knowingly. They roar as he continues, "We don't believe stuff when there are advertisements that say we can enhance your ... then why would you believe an email that says stuff about me?

On this other video, which was taped by someone who recorded part of the live TV coverage of Obama's appearance, it's interesting to see that the audience actually applauds appreciatively when he explains that his name, Barack, actually comes from the same root and has the same meaning of the Hebrew name, "Baruch," which means blessed. Corny, but effective, perhaps.

This is pretty neat too, Obama dancing in the streets in Peurto Rico

But the highlight thus far was watching the Democratic National Committee (DNC) meeting today in Washington DC to determine the fate of the contested Florida and Michigan delegates. Sounds terribly boring but it was actually all about the highest drama.

I could watch it live as it was streamed and the stream was offered to anyone as embeddable by the DNC. Great stuff and very practical politics as on the DNC site the stream was only getting 1700 viewers but this was magnified by also being available on many other very popular blogs and websites - real edemocracy in action.

Americans: don't look to BBC for unbiased election coverage

I've posted before examining the pretty shameless ignorance and bias in the BBC's coverage of the presidential election. It is clear that all the the BBC Washington-based reporters Matt Frei and Justin Webb are doing, and have been doing for months, is regurgitating what the US Networks decide is important.

There are a couple of current major stories which those networks are deliberately ignoring and which Frei and Webb therefore ignore as well. I think both British license fee payers and Americans need to forget the idea - which is especially popular with Democrat Americans - that the BBC is somehow superior to the justifiably maligned US media in covering US politics, when in reality they have been reduced to being just another part of the 'beltway' circus.

[Here's their main elections page]

On April 20th, the New York Times published an expose of how the Bush administration had a program of paid-by-the-government, Pentagon-approved "military analysts" to appear on TV to help sell the invasion of Iraq, and then put a positive spin on the occupation. Propagandists in other words.

"Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse - an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks," the newspaper said.

This is a good video excerpt.



Due to their refusal to comment, there's reason to believe the TV Networks were actually in on it. The analysts were sold as objective but were far from it. Not for nothing has the expose of this major propaganda operation been compared to the release of the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War.

Hillary Clinton said it raises questions of "credibility and trust at the Pentagon", Barack Obama was "deeply disturbed" that the administration "sought to manipulate the public's trust." A Senate investigation has started.

Needless to say the story got absolutely no mention anywhere on those same networks, Fox News, CNN, NBC, CBS, and ABC, nor in newspapers.

Nor on the BBC.

As Arianna Huffington put it;

This near-complete blackout imposed by the culpable news organizations is a despicable abdication of their central role in our society.

Said Glenn Greenwald at Salon:

Whatever one's views are on the media's proper role and its obligations to its viewers and readers (if any), this is a major story by any measure. These media outlets were either duped by the Bush administration and their own sources into feeding government war propaganda to their audience, or were knowingly complicit in doing that.

The fact that they simply refuse to account for their behavior -- hiding behind "no comment" walls of obfuscation or issuing cursory, empty statements -- demonstrates rather conclusively that they are in the business of doing everything except revealing relevant news to their audience. It's really the height of hubris, and unmistakable proof of their core corruption, that not even a front-page, lengthy NYT expose can cause them to address their central, ongoing role in uncritically disseminating government propaganda about the weightiest of matters.

Do I need to spell out how the use of propaganda in relation to misrepresenting the 'surge' might be of interest to the BBC's UK audience, given our Iraq presence and how tied it is to American actions?

The next campaign issue ignored by the BBC is the endless recycling of the Rev. Wright story and how this will affect the selection of the next American President - again, not something irrelevant to UK license fee payers - Vs. the complete silence over McCain's own "crazy preachers". There are several of them. You will have heard and seen Rev. Wright's "god damn America" on the BBC. You won't have seen either Rev. Falwell or Rev. Pat Robertson blaming 9/11 on America's "sins" or the others Reverands.

One is Rev. Hagee, a truly loony fundamentalist whose endorsement McCain sought, was "glad to have" and has refused to disown.

• Hagee thinks poor people should be left to "starve".
• Hagee thinks the Catholic Church is "The Great Whore".
• Hagee thinks "New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that."
• Hagee thinks "The End Times - Rapture - is imminent and the U.S. Government must do what it can to hasten it, which at minimum requires: (a) a war with Iran and (b) undying, absolute support for a unified Israel, including all Occupied Territories."

McCain needs, and therefore owes these people, to support his campaign, to send their flocks out to vote for him. That's why he actively sought Hagee's endorsement.

Here's a Montage of McCain's Reverends.



None of this is being replayed endlessly on US TV news. Therefore the BBC isn't telling us about Hagee et al. Most shockingly, even when McCain was, finally, asked about Hagee's attacks on catholics (because they'd understandably kicked up a fuss) on Network news - he's keeping the endorsement - the BBC didn't mention it.

The difference with Rev. Wright? These are white preachers who don't throw their arms around and yell in a way which the likes of the BBC's Justin Webb admit to having difficulty 'relating' to and which the American media is refusing to focus on, whilst Wright has now been a huge story for two months.

As Frank Rich explains in today's New York Times, there is a word for the sort of hypocritical double-standards we're seeing in US media coverage of the election - it's racism. And the BBC is unquestioningly bringing it to you.

The kids are alllrreight

'Social Citizens' is a really fascinating paper from the Social Citizens project, sponsored by the Case Foundation. It's about young people (Millennials’) and how they are using online tools to connect to, initiate and run causes — the flip-side of the MSMs obsession with the negatives about the young and the Internet:

In October 2007, Thomas Friedman wrote in The New York Times that young people are members of Generation Q. He meant “Q” for quiet, and inactive, on the important social questions of the day. The celebrated American globalist could not have been more wrong. This generation is making noise, whether adults can hear it or not.

You may have read echoes of this attitude in the tabloids (the 'hoodie' image above features prominently in the Daily Express).

The authors are very impressed with the scale and depth of youth engagement with change using the new technology in what they report on - just think of their impact on corporate behaviour. They go so far to compare them to the 'greatest generation' who fought WW2, and I don't think that's over the top given what we face with climate change:

One example of Millennials’ online activism is Causes on Facebook. In the spring of 2007, Project Agape posted its “Causes” application on Facebook. Within six months, more than 30,000 Causes were created on the social networking site, supporting over 12,000 existing nonprofit organizations. A brief survey of Causes on Facebook reveals an array of mainstream, apple-pie efforts, typical of Millennial activism. They are more practical than poetic, more passionate and less ideological in their activism efforts. Few could argue with the worthiness of helping orphans in China, trying to find a cure for AIDS and ALS, eradicating breast cancer, and helping underprivileged children learn to read.

However, the Causes application is different from traditional approaches because users are drawn to the cause first, then the institution (or group of volunteers if no formal institution exists). Joe Green, CEO of Causes on Face-book, describes the network interaction for causes this way: “There could be 1,000 causes aiming to help SaveDarfur.org with lots of different leaders and networks and lots of people reaching out in many ways.”

The paper documents a stack of other examples; 'Invisible Children' is one, which grew from four young guys' visit to Northern Uganda.

Preview:



[55' Movie on Google. 'In the spring of 2003, three young Americans traveled to Africa in search of such as story. What they found was a tragedy that disgusted and inspired them. A story where children are weapons and children are the victims. The "Invisible Children: rough cut" film exposes the effects of a 20 year-long war on the children of Northern Uganda. These children live in fear of abduction by rebel soldiers, and are being forced to fight as a part of violent army. This wonderfully reckless documentary is fast paced, with an MTV beat, and is something truly unique. To see Africa through young eyes is humorous and heart breaking, quick and informative - all in the very same breath. See this film, you will be forever changed.']



This is one of the most moving documentaries I've seen in years.

The authors see a flip side though, and speculate that this mightn't all be good:

Specific policy outcomes are not a significant component for most Millennial activist efforts. Social capital is the new commerce and the end result of many cause-related efforts spearheaded by young people.

Social action is a safe place to express a personal identity, and is much safer and easier than in the political arena with its inherent conflict and most often less-than-lofty outcomes. Danah Boyd (UofC Berkeley) explains, “We are living in a time of the elongation of childhood where kids are kept out of public life and only glimpse it through the mass media. Their lives are so heavily regulated and controlled, they don’t see a public world outside of the celebritization of political candidates.”

Is it possible to envision a very large generation of citizens who lead their lives at a great distance from government, even lives infused with causes, volunteering and a hopeful outlook about the world. Can government really be irrelevant to their lives, and, if so, is this a good thing for society? Is it important that young people are engaged in public policy advocacy? Is our tendency to connect only with like-minded people using our on line and on land social networks a good thing for activism or a critical bottleneck to the effective scaling for causes? Are social change institutions critical to the future of Social Citizens and their causes or are they becoming old-century anachronisms of top-down hierarchies that can’t survive much longer?

What draws their involvement? Conflicts like Israel/Palestine get less attention from this group as they're less clear, more grey, than ones like Darfur.

But one thing the authors don't do in discussing negative disengagement from 'government' is make the connections with the Obama campaign — perhaps because it's partisan or just because the campaign's happening now — which exists because of a/the Internet and b/the same sort of new bottom-up/shared/devolved organisations which young people are establishing. This has seen an enormous increase in active political engagement by young people - and voting - though what will happen to 'the movement' once he's elected President is a moot point.

What they do have is some ideas:

Political participation can and should be more meaningful than political campaigns, such as the possibility of careers in public service and policymaking, including serving on committees and task forces for local government efforts.

A major cautionary note for anyone interested in engaging young people in conversations about the role of government and policy issues is that these conversations must be authentic and spin-free, or youth will quickly tune out.

Now there's a big take-away for the oldies. And don't think this is just America. Most UK young people use social networks.

Go here for a bigger view than below

Read this doc on Scribd: Social Citizens Discussion Paper

NB: scribd embed script is not Blogger friendly!

Zimbabwe and Israeli tekkies

There's an interesting story on Global Voices about how Tendai Biti, secretary general of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) , told journalists in Harare that an Israeli company, Cogniview was offering technical support to the Zimbabwean dictatorship and that:

“Mugabe and his cronies intend to steal this election through the use of sophisticated software provided by the Israeli company with Mossad (Israeli intelligence agency) connections.”

Cogniview make an Open Source PDF converter and 'somehow' this was linked to Zimbabwe's elections.

Yoav Ezer, from Cogniview explains that:

The voter-roles that were provided to the MDC by Zimbabwean officials were in PDF format and had a link to Cogniview’s website.

My guess is that the people at the MDC wanted to get the voter data in a format they could easily handle (like Excel) and instead got it in a PDF file (that was produced by our converter). They got (justifiably) angry and concocted a story about the Israeli Mossad and my company (this part isn’t justifiable).

Tekkie to tekkie, this all makes sense. What amazed me was how they couldn't understand why the MDC might suspect something was up. Are they not aware of history, which is of Israeli support for South Africa under apartheid and of selling riot control vehicles to Mugabe?

Nelson Mandela:

Following his release from prison in 1990, Mandela said, "Almost every country in the world -- except Israel" had invited him to visit.

Israel's invitation came only in 1994, but then the peace process did not make a visit politic. However, he now decided to show a spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation.

"To the many people who have questioned why I came, I say: Israel worked very closely with the apartheid regime. I say: I've made peace with many men who slaughtered our people like animals. Israel cooperated with the apartheid regime, but it did not participate in any atrocities."

No wonder that a - yes - paranoid, but hardly unsurprisingly so given how Mugabe operates, MDC official might suspect support for Mugabe by Israelis (even given Mugabe's comparison of himself with Hitler).

As I have often noted, tech companies aren't brilliant at PR.

~~~~~~

From the blogosphere (best source for real news, although the BBC is doing well - except for who it's linking to) one amusing story from Zim:

One other development during the past two weeks has been the ludicrous sight of defeated Zanu-PF candidates trying to recover the bribes and inducements they distributed to voters before the election in an attempt to buy support.

One such is Elias Musakwa, the Zanu-PF losing candidate for Bikita West constituency, who is believed to have been successful in recovering some computers he gave to schools and training centres. But in the villages he met problems.

One villager, Cleopas Moyo, told me: "During the campaign he gave us ploughs, harrows, cultivators, computers, maize-meal, furniture, sewing machines, money, cooking oil, clothes and other things. We ate all the food, and some of the equipment we sold. But now he wants everything back."

Asked for a comment, Musakwa came up with a unique excuse: "I made it clear that when I gave them the goods it was for them to use for a specific time. I never intended to give them permanently."

Blogs:

• This is Zimbabwe
• Zimbabwe Independent
• Zimbabwe Today
• Bearded Man
• Global Voices
• Comrade Fatso
• FCO: Zimbabwe Embassy
  

More great Zapiro cartoons

Americans views of British influence: what the heck is going on?

The annual review by the BBC World Service of world opinion of country's influence headlines improving views of the United States, but I noticed a nugget in it which seems to have been missed: Americans dislike UK 'influence' more than almost anyone - and that's increasing.

Positive views of Britain have slipped considerably in the United States (45%, down from 67%) while negative views have increased significantly (42%, up from 18%).

In the graph image to the right the US view of Britain is second from the top.

Overall, says the report:

Views of Britain remain largely positive and have grown more positive over the last year. Among those countries polled in both years, on average positive views have grown from 46 per cent to 50 per cent, while negative views have fallen from 29 per cent to 24 per cent. Views improved significantly in 13 countries and worsened in three.

Out of 23 countries that evaluated Britain in 2007 and 2008, 16 have most saying their view is mainly positive, while in four the most common view is mainly negative (down from six in 2007) and three are divided.

Notable increases in positive views of Britain have occurred in predominantly Muslim publics, including the UAE (54%, up from 31%), Turkey (36%, up from 21%), and Lebanon (39%, up from 32%). Views of Britain are also considerably more favourable among South Koreans (77%, up from 61%) and the Chinese (56%, up from 49%).

Positive views are up considerably in France (54%, up from 44%) while negative views are down (21%, falling from 42%) so that now a majority says they view Britain positively. Italians also show marked improvement in their views of Britain (70%, up from 56%), as do Australians (72%, up from 60%) and Kenyans (85%, up from 74%).

Positive views have also fallen in Russia (43%, down from 55%), Portugal (56%, down from 65%), and in India (22%, down from 37%), but the overall view of Britain’s influence remains positive.

Among publics polled for the first time this year, views of Britain are largely positive, with this being the most common view in Ghana (69%), Israel (67%), Spain (55%), Japan (39%), and publics of Central America (31%).

What da heck is going on, Mr Milliband?

• Report (PDF 3.5mb)

World eGov survey · UK 5th

Equatorial Guinea eGov bests France, Japan, Italy and former colonists Spain.


PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University], July 24, 2007 — Asian countries continue to dominate international e-government ratings, taking three of the top four spots in a global e-government study undertaken by researchers at Brown University. South Korea earned the top rank, followed by Singapore, Taiwan, the United States, Great Britain and Canada. The study shows that 28 percent of government agencies around the world are offering online services, about the same as in 2006.

• Report [Pdf 700kb]

Global e-Government: 198 Countries Ranked

Rankings from 1 to 50

RANK COUNTRY RATING 1. (1) South Korea 74.9 (60.3) 2. (3) Singapore 54.0 (47.5) 3. (2) Taiwan 51.1 (49.8) 4. (4) United States 49.4 (47.4) 5. (6) Great Britain 44.3 (42.6) 6. (5) Canada 44.1 (43.5) 7. (48) Portugal 43.8 (31.3) 8. (12) Australia 43.5 (39.9) 8. (27) Turkey 43.5 (33.7) 10. (8) Germany 42.9 (41.5) 11. (7) Ireland 42.4 (41.9) 12. (16) Switzerland 42.3 (36.9) 13. (38) Brazil 41.1 (32.1) 14. (11) Dominica 41.0 (40.0) 15. (65) Bahrain 40.3 (29.6) 16. (40) Equator. Guinea 40.0 (32.0) 16. (32) Liechtenstein 40.0 (33.0) 18. (133) Andorra 39.0 (24.0) 19. (14) New Zealand 38.4 (37.6) 20. (35) Italy 38.0 (32.9) 21. (10) Spain 37.7 (40.6) 22. (20) Hong Kong 37.5 (35.4) 23. (19) Finland 37.3 (35.6) 24. (30) Vatican 37.0 (33.5) 25. (36) Malaysia 36.9 (32.7)

RANK COUNTRY RATING 26. (15) Netherlands 36.8 (37.4) 27. (46) Czech Rep. 36.7 (31.7) 28. (106) Brunei 36.5 (26.8) 29. (84) Cyprus (Rep.) 36.4 (28.3) 30. (40) Liberia 36.0 (24.0) 30. (56) Austria 36.0 (30.6) 30. (17) Azerbaijan 36.0 (36.0) 30. (143) Sierra Leone 36.0 (24.0) 30. (39) Bhutan 36.0 (32.0) 30. (175) Costa Rica 36.0 (20.0) 30. (73) Eritrea 36.0 (29.0) 30. (166) Ethiopia 36.0 (22.0) 30. (137) Gabon 36.0 (24.0) 30. (17) North Korea 36.0 (36.0) 40. (9) Japan 35.9 (41.5) 41. (28) Malta 35.8 (33.6) 42. (23) France 35.6 (34.7) 42. (24) Qatar 35.6 (34.5) 44. (67) Israel 35.5 (29.4) 45. (88) Croatia 35.0 (28.0) 46. (51) Iceland 34.6 (31.1) 47. (77) India 34.2 (28.7) 48. (54) Peru 34.0 (30.8) 48. (150) Zambia 34.0 (23.5) 50. (68) Mexico 33.9 (29.3)

According to Wikipedia, the PM website is the closest to a Japanese national government portal.


Common services include voter registration, visa application, passport application/renewal, job listings and online application, and requests for statistical reports.

Online tax filing was very prevalent, and was found on the Belgian Portal Site, the Pakistani Customs site, the Philippine Portal, and the French Economic Ministry.

Many departments offer online complaint forms. For example, the Malaysian Portal site has links to many of these forms. The Netherlands has a dedicated site for their Ombudsman, which accepts online complaint submissions. The New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs lets you complain about the presence of “objectionable material”. Several Philippine sites, such as the Portal page, Armed Forces, and Public Works have complaint forms. The South African Public Protector has an online complaint form.

Applying for and renewing licenses and permits is another common area where services are offered. The Mauritius Portal lets you apply for work permits and learner’s licenses and the New Zealand Economic Development website lets you renew an electrical workers or radio license. Many departments allow you to apply for government jobs online, including the New Zealand Portal.

Many sites allow you to order publications, including the Slovenia Tourism Board, South African Department of Environment & Tourism, Australian Portal site, Slovakia Industrial Property site, and the Swiss Intellectual Property Institute.

Several sites allow users to apply for grants online, including the New Zealand portal and U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Various websites allow for electronic document filing. The New Zealand portal lets you file various corporate documents (including annual returns). The Slovakia Industrial Property uses a digital signature system to enable its e-filling of documents. The Swiss Intellectual Property Institute offers the ability to file trademark applications through “e-Trademark” The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has the EDGAR Service, which allows for the online filing of 116 different forms.

Several sites are unique in their attempt to encourage electronic government.

The Swiss Intellectual Property Institute offers the “e-Trademark” service to help file trademark applications, and the fees for electronic filing are less than those for submitting paper copies. The Slovakia Industrial Property also offers online filing of documents for reduced fees online.

Several countries offered unique online services. The Republic of Congo offers a means to send SMS text messages from its site, for a fee. The New Zealand Portal and Conservation site allow online booking of huts and campsites in national parks. The Australian Toilet Map found at the National Continence Management Strategy lets you browse and pinpoint public toilets throughout Australia and see toilets along a planned route. Visitors can suggest additions to the toilet database.



Uluru .. There are 5 nearby toilets:

The Philippine Portal offers a link to an online betting site for basketball games run by the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation. The Luxembourg Education Ministry has a link to its mySchool Portal where students can take online classes and tests and receive help with homework.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Administration allows users to search the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System database for case studies of injuries to people by consumer products. Mexico’s Ministry of the Economy site has an online “conversation forum” available to visitors where you can have an instant message conversation with agency officials.

Colombia’s Ministry of Education allows users to elect to erase all cookies placed on their hard drive periodically as they log in with their username and password. Guatemala’s Ministry of Agriculture site has a webshots.com page embedded in their government web page that shows albums documenting the programs they put on and their service projects.



NUEVO - Fotos Proyectos

Turkey’s Portal has webcams of streets and squares all around the country on a live feed via the internet. Peru’s Portal site has an interactive online video that shows a mouse clicking on different things and what each click would accomplish plus a tutorial showing how to navigate pages while a voiceover explains the different services.

Ecuador’s President site has a youtube.com website with videos and an entire user profile for the President of the country. Czech Republic’s Portal site has a new “Did you know?” fact at the top of each page. The page contains a unique “conversation bubble” theme that allows for links to interesting services and a “quick review” that gives current time and date, weather, and exchange information at a glance.

India’s Department of Commerce site holds regular online chat sessions, with pre-designated topics either a few times a week or daily for one hour. They broadcast the topics and their schedule on a scrolling banner at the top of the webpage for every visitor to see.

OnLine Chat Date : 20 Nov 2006

On 'Special Economic Zones Policy' on every working day between 17.00 - 18.00 Hrs | "Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs)" on Monday, Tuesday between 11 AM and 12 Noon | "WTO(Doha Round of Negotiations)" on Thursday, Friday between 11 AM and 12 Noon

One feature that has slowed the development of online services has been an inability to use credit cards and digital signatures on financial transactions. On commercial sites, it is becoming a more common practice to offer goods and services online for purchase through the use of credit cards.

However, of the government websites analyzed, only 5 percent accept credit cards and 1 percent allowed digital signatures for financial transactions, similar to last year.

For our test, we used the Priority Level One standard and evaluated each government agency regarding whether it complies with the W3C guidelines. Sites are judged to be either in compliance or not in compliance based on the results of this test. According to our Bobby [sic] analysis, 23 percent of government websites are accessible to the disabled, the same as last year.

Disability Access
2004 2005 2006 2007
14% 19% 23% 23%

The most basic means to ensure accessibility is to maintain compliance with WWC standards. However, there now exist other ways to aid accessibility. Many sites how allow users to change the size on the text, to accommodate those with poor eyesight. Other pages have applications that will read the entire page to the user. The most extreme example of this trend can be seen on the Swedish Government Portal (
http://www.sweden.gov.se/), which not only will read to page to you, but lets you
customize the text size, spacing, and coloring. Advances in technology have made these types of aids possible, and government website should begin implementing them In order to improve electronic government, the report suggests that governments take several steps to reach their full potential in terms of accessibility and effectiveness. The ultimate goal of e-government is to provide citizens with services, information, and interactive features. To this end, sites need to be well-designed, easy to navigate, and accessible to a wide variety of users.

The researchers suggest the following steps be undertaken:

• standardize templates with consistent navigation;
• have accessibility aids;
• list when pages are updated;
• organize pages by user type;
• create “most popular” lists;
• have an online services menu;
  
• have interactive technical assistance;
• make it interesting!
• avoid commercial advertising;
• fix faulty links;
• improve language accessibility;
• do not sell domain names; and
  
• have a secure and stable server.