Category Archives: Writing

Writing

Did the Australian Government Commit a War Crime ?

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In 1995 the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court was written into Australian Law, and section 268.76 of the Australian Criminal Code 1995 defines “War crime – denying a fair trial“, where:

(1) A person (the perpetrator) commits an offence if: (a) the perpetrator deprives one or more persons of a fair and regular trial by denying to the person any of the judicial guarantees referred to in paragraph (b); and (b) the judicial guarantees are those defined in articles 84, 99 and 105 of the Third Geneva Convention and articles 66 and 71 of the Fourth Geneva Convention; and (c) the person or persons are protected under one or more of the Geneva Conventions or under Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions; and (d) the perpetrator knows of, or is reckless as to, the factual circumstances that establish that the person or persons are so protected; and (e) the perpetrator’s conduct takes place in the context of, and is associated with, an international armed conflict.

The penalty for such a war crime is 10 years imprisonment.

In November 2006 a panel of lawyers (( The accompanying press release says “The Opinion has been signed by The Hon Alastair Nicholson AO RFD QC (Former Judge Advocate General of the ADF, Honorary Professorial Fellow, Department of Criminology, University of Melbourne); Peter Vickery QC (Special Rapporteur, International Commission of Jurists, Victoria); Professor Hilary Charlesworth (Professor of International Law and Human Rights, ANU); Professor Andrew Byrnes (Professor of International Law, Faculty of Law, UNSW); and Gavan Griffith AO QC (Solicitor-General of Australia 1984 – 97); and Professor Tim McCormack (Australian Red Cross Professor of International Humanitarian Law, University of Melbourne).” )) wrote a 30 page legal opinion (there is also a four page summary) titled “David Hicks – Military Commissions Act 2006 – Compliance with Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, the Hamdan Decision and Australian Law” on the first and second military tribunals created by the US government and concluded:

Further, the Replacement Military Commission will contravene the standards for a fair trial under Australian law provided for in the Australian Criminal Code, and counselling or urging a trial to take place before any such Military Commission with the requisite knowledge and intention would constitute a war crime under Division 268 of the Code.

This opinion was delivered by the Law Council of Australia to the Attorney General, Philip Ruddock, to inform him of the nature of the crime that was being committed by the government. To date no action to rectify this appears to have been taken.

Thanks to Tim for the pointer to the letter to the editor of The Age newspaper from one of the reports authors, the Hon Alastair Nicholson AO RFD QC, former Chief Justice of the Family Court of Australia and former Judge Advocate General of the Australian Defence Force.

EMI+Apple to sell “premium” tracks without DRM

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A very interesting development courtesy of the BBC:

EMI said every song in its catalogue will be available in the “premium” format. It said the tracks without locks will cost more and be of higher quality than those it offers now.

These DRM free tracks will cost 99 pence on iTunes, but apparently that’s only for single tracks, you will be able to buy an entire album DRM free for the same cost as one with DRM. Steve Jobs said:

The right thing to do is to tear down walls that precluded interoperability by going DRM-free and that starts here today.

Solomon Islands Earthquake Activity

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According to the USGS maps for the Solomons and PNG there have been 22 quakes greater than mag 4.8 in the 15 hours or so since the mag 8.0, here’s a quick graph of magnitude versus time after the first quake (click for a larger version)..

Solomon Island Earthquakes, 2007/04/02

This graph was brought to you by cat, awk, tac and OpenOffice.org Calc and Draw.

Tsunami Alert Cancelled for East Coast of Australia (QLD, NSW, TAS) (Update 10)

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There has been a magnitude 7.6 8.0 quake near the Solomon Islands. The ABC is reporting that the Bureau of Met has issued a tsunami alert for the Australian Barrier Reef and Willis Islands and that the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre has also issued an alert.

The centre said it had no confirmed information a tsunami was generated but said authorities should take appropriate action in response to the possibility.

Update 1: The BoM’s tsunami alert says:

Based on the magnitude and location of this earthquake, tsunami could start affecting these locations at the following local time: Willis Island from 0832am 02/04/2007

The Bureau is seeking confirmation that tsunami have been generated. Tsunami Warnings will be issued, if necessary, by the Regional Offices of the Bureau in affected States. People in coastal areas in threatened regions should then listen for further advice from state emergency service authorities.

Update 2: BoM has confirmed that a tsunami was generated, but the only measured height so far was at Honiara in the Solomon Islands with a 15cm zero-to-peak at 7:13am EST.

The Bureau of Met has its own Tsunami Alert Site and the alert now says:

TSUNAMI THREAT TO EASTERN AUSTRALIA and Willis and Barrier Reef Islands, Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands.

Update 3: The Tsunami alert now includes Tasmania.

TOP PRIORITY
TASMANIA TSUNAMI WARNING
Issued at 9:16am on Monday the 2nd of April 2007
For people in eastern coastal areas of Tasmania.
An earthquake of preliminary magnitude 8.1 occurred at 06:40 am EST near the Solomon islands [8.1S 157.2E] generating a tsunami.
A series of waves associated with this tsunami will impact Eastern Australia today, reaching the Eastern Tasmanian coastline from about 12:30 pm.
Dangerous waves and currents may affect beaches, harbours and rivers for several hours from the time of impact and low-lying coastal areas could be flooded.
The waves can be separated in time by between ten to sixty minutes and the first wave of the series may not be the largest.
People should keep listening to the local media for updated information and
advice and follow instructions and advice from emergency services
This warning will be updated by 11:00 am.

There is also an ABC news report about the tsunami alert that confirms that the Solomon Islands has been hit, though details of any damage are sketchy.

Update 4: There are now alerts online at BoM for NSW, TAS and QLD. The QLD one is encouraging, it now says:

Willis Island Meteorological station reported NO noticable affect of waves at 9am by which time the Tsunami should have passed. They are checking to see if there has been any affect to beaches.

Update 5: The BoM’s reports for QLD are looking better again, Cooktown isn’t showing signs of a destructive tsunami meaning the overall chance of a destructive tsunami is lessened. The NSW warning is still fairly general though.

Update 6: The quake has been revised up to magnitude 8.0.

Update 7: It looks like the Solomon Islands may not have been this lucky, according to the BBC.

“There was 10ft of water rushing through town,” – Harry Wickham, Gizo

Update 8: The USGS has reported mag 5.8, mag 6.4 and mag 6.7 quakes, amongst others, also in the Solomons Island region (though north-west of the 8.0 quake).

Update 9: The QLD alert now says:

TSUNAMI THREAT TO QUEENSLAND and Willis and Barrier Reef Islands has eased. No destructive Tsunami is expected. […] No reports of significant sea level rises have been received from the Northern Tropical Coast of Queensland. Some rises of about 20 to 30cm have been observed.

Update 10: As of 1350 EST the BoM is now saying that the tsunami alert has been cancelled.

Small surges in sea level height and minor abnormal currents have been detected along the Queensland coast.

It’s not as good news in the Solomon Islands though.

The quake, with a magnitude of 8.1 on the Richter scale, levelled buildings and damaged a hospital on Gizo Island, north-west of the Solomons capital Honiara, while a tsunami sucked homes into the sea as thousands of panicked residents fled for higher ground.

Google Toilet ISP (beta) (Updated)

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Chalk up another great Google April Fool.. 🙂

Google TiSP (BETA) is a fully functional, end-to-end system that provides in-home wireless access by connecting your commode-based TiSP wireless router to one of thousands of TiSP Access Nodes via fiber-optic cable strung through your local municipal sewage lines.

Google Toilet ISP - Going with the Flow

Google – turning the fear that the Internet is a sewer into reality. 🙂

Update: Google have another, which is Google Paper. This one found via Wikipedia’s list of April Fools for 2007.

Ribena In NZ Court (Updated)

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It would have worked, if it hadn’t been for those pesky kids.. 🙂

The global drugs giant GlaxoSmithKline faces a court case tomorrow over misleading advertising, after two 14-year-olds found its popular drink Ribena contained almost no vitamin C.

Ribena advertises itself as having lots of vitamin C:

In fact, each serving of Ribena Blackcurrant fruit juice provides the full Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) of vitamin C

Apparently not!

But it now faces 15 charges related to misleading advertising in an Auckland court, risking potential fines of up to NZ$3 million ($2.1 million).

Update:

So GSK ‘fessed up to the 15 counts and copped a fine which was probably small change to them:

The judge fined the company a total NZ$227,500 ($163,700) for misleading advertising.

A Hopeful Sign

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The ABC is reporting that “Northern Ireland parties agree to power-sharing government“. Ian Paisley said:

We must not allow our justified loathing of the horrors and tragedies of the past to become a barrier to creating a better and more stable future

Gerry Adams said:

The discussions and the agreement between our parties shows the potential of what can now be achieved

Well here’s hoping, there’s been enough fear, loathing and killing in NI for long enough.

C, Safety and Sanity

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On the Beowulf list the semi-mythical RGB wrote an interesting digression on getting started in parallel programming:

C is like an M-1 tank armed with pocket nukes and with a built in levitation system and antimatter propulsion system — misuse it and you can blow up whole worlds, but it can solve lots of problems very quickly. Safe is a kiddy bike with training wheels — not fast, not powerful, but if you pedal long enough you can get where you want to go.

Unless you get run over by a tank, that is.

Talking about parallel programming, André Pang has a nice blog post quoting Edward A. Lee’s essay “The Problem with Threads” which investigates the problems with concurrency and non-determinism in parallel programming. Edward Lee talks about non-determinism he gives a two analogies, the best of which is the one that André picked up on:

To offer a third analogy, a folk definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and to expect the results to be different. By this definition, we in fact require that programmers of multithreaded systems be insane. Were they sane, they could not understand their programs.

I’m glad I’m not a parallel programmer.. 🙂

VPAC & Linux Users Victoria off the air – all RMIT networks down (Update: RMIT back)

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RMIT came back online at around 09:30, hopefully it will last!

VPAC systems are unreachable from the outside world as it appears that all RMIT networks failed at around 8am.

This means that the Linux Users of Victoria (LUV) server is also down as it is hosted at VPAC, so no LUV email or website for the moment.

The systems themselves are still functioning normally, just needs the RMIT ITS networks folks to track down the problem and fix it (good luck people!).