Today, September 17, has been declared a Global Day of Action for Darfur. dayfordarfur.org tells us that the day “was originally conceived by a group of NGOs working on Darfur and concerned about the slow response of the international community to the crisis”.

It’s also the first anniversary of the signing of the 2005 UN World Summit Outcome Document. Of particular relevance here are paragraphs 138 and 139:

Responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity

138. Each individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This
responsibility entails the prevention of such crimes, including their incitement, through appropriate and necessary means. We accept that responsibility and will act in accordance with it. The international community should, as appropriate, encourage and help States to exercise this responsibility and support the United Nations in establishing an early warning capability.

139. The international community, through the United Nations, also has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, in accordance with Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter, to help to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. In this context, we are prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the Charter, including Chapter VII, on a case-by-case basis and in cooperation with relevant regional organizations as appropriate, should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. We stress the need for the General Assembly to continue consideration of the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and its implications, bearing in mind the principles of the Charter and international law. We also intend to commit ourselves, as necessary and appropriate, to helping States build capacity to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and to assisting those which are under stress before crises and conflicts break out.

So what are we doing about it? Damn little. An obscenely small amount. Mary Liddell in today’s Observer summarises the situation:

The African Union’s 7,000 peacekeepers, feeble, underfunded and unwelcome, are leaving in a fortnight. Sudan’s leader, Omar al-Bashir, refuses to accept the 20,000 replacement force mandated by the United Nations. The resulting security vacuum would force out aid workers, condemning to death many of the 2.5 million who depend on them. It would also let Bashir unleash a military solution to a three-year conflict that has killed 300,000 people and left 2 million homeless; 10,000 Sudanese troops are massing to take on the rebels.

A good centralised resource page for information and action about the situation in Darfur can be found at the excellent International Crisis Group website.

As for John Winston Howard, he still registers a nil return for mentions of “Darfur” either in Hansard or in transcripts available on the Prime Ministerial website. But then, he never was big on humanitarian issues, was he?

I’ll post about the Australian political activity in relation to Darfur in a separate item. I’ll finish this post with a prayer, published by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, on Friday:

Heavenly Father,

We pray for those whose lives are lived on the margins of nations and suffer from the wars that others fight around them. We pray for the warring factions, that they may see themselves under the gaze of God and those who suffer for their cause. We pray for the peoples of Darfur who are haunted by fear of violence, hunger and hopelessness, that they may continue to be fed, visited and defended. We pray for the work of peacekeepers, negotiators and the humanitarian organisations that security may prevail. We pray for the Government of Sudan and for her unity. We pray for peace in the name of him who is the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

I always thought CNN Headline News was set us as a wall-to-wall headlines bulletin channel to complement the main CNN channel. Now, it seems they have ratings-chasing O’Reillyesque attack dogs who hound people not just to their graves, but beyond.

If the Naomi Robson episode in West Papua is high farce, the Nancy Grace interview with Melinda Duckett, aired deliberately and unapologetically after Duckett’s suicide, is an outrage.

I’ll let the blogosphere pick up the story.

September 16, 1956: Channel Nine begins transmission with station manager Bruce Gyngell (long before his pretty in pink days) uttering that profound line:

Hello, and welcome to television.

Well it seems that it was actually Janet Gaynor who was the first face on Australian television, during laboratory tests in the 1934. The Ipswich City Council website documents it in detail, but of course we know never to let the facts get in the way of a good anniversary.

But there can be no better way to celebrate the half-century of commercial TV in Australia than that concocted by the people behind Naomi Robson. Summed up succinctly on the editorial page of today’s Sydney Morning Herald:

Naomi Robson, a glamorous and determined reporter, is on her way to save Wa-Wa, a boy marked, perhaps, for consumption by his cannibal tribe. She falls into an elaborate trap set by a fiendishly cunning Indonesian immigration official: she is asked for her visa. Not having a valid one, she and her crew are entombed alive in a three-star hotel. Using only their corporate credit cards, they cut their way to freedom and ratings success.

It’s still 48 hours away from the next episode of Media Watch, but until then we can follow the reportage from the Sydney Morning Herald, the Daily Telegraph and the ABC. (Where is Boris Johnson when you need him?)

Special 72-and-a-bit-years of Australian television celebratory link: the best of Naomi Robson on Youtube.

“More than 9,000 Palestinians are in Israeli jails nowadays; it is a nightmarish number. Anyone who knows the Shin Bet security service and the military justice system can safely assume a significant proportion of them are imprisoned for no reason. Israeli society doesn’t even ask why so many are jailed.”
- Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz, 10.9.06

The English language edition of Ha’aretz has become one of my must-read online newspapers every day. Uncompromisingly critical of Israeli government policy where it is deserved, and the closest thing I have seen to a “balanced” coverage of the Middle East troubles. A comparison with the Jerusalem Post, for example, is an eye-opening experience.

Levy, one of Ha’aretz’s most trenchant columnists, alludes in today’s piece to the hypocrisy over the Israeli government’s reaction to the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit et al, while they at the same time capture dozens of democratically elected Palestinian parliamentarians and have an enormous number of Palestinian citizens behind bars.

Reading Ha’aretz enables me to restore my faith in the goodwill of the Israeli populace. Now if only they could elect a government that could display the same humanity…

September 11, 1906: Indian-born lawyer and South African resident Mohandas Gandhi spoke in Johannesburg calling for non-violent resistance to racial discrimination, in particular Transvaal’s Asiatic Laws. This week is the centenary of Gandhi’s first satyagraha.

It’s a pity that the date of September 11 has become associated with an audacious act of mass murder. With both events in mind, the Mahatma’s grandson, Arun Gandhi, has submitted that September 11 be observed as a Day of Prayer for Peace and Harmony. There’s more information at the Gandhi Institute, including a PDF document of Arun’s paper “The Duality of September 11“.

Rather more fitting, I think, than the Bushite proclamation of September 11 as Patriot Day.

“Outraged scientists stormed out of a government-sponsored climate change conference dinner in Canberra last night, after the strippers booked as entertainment left them all hot and bothered.”
- Climate conference strip show storm, smh.com.au, 7.9.06

The main entertainment at the official dinner of the 17th Australia New Zealand Climate Forum (run by the Australian National University, and whose event page has expired) was a female burlesque act.

Symbolism for a vanishing ecosystem? Or living proof that science is still a boy’s club?

Congratulations to a former colleague of mine, Alex Balfour, on his appointment as Head of New Media for the London 2012 Organising Committee - the body which is responsible for staging the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012.

Alex, whom I worked alongside (in a cyberspace manner of speaking) with CricInfo between 1996 and 2001, will be responsible for London2012.com, according to the LOCOG press release issued last Friday. Answering to the LOCOG Director of Communications and Public Affairs, Alex will lead the creation, development and management of online structures and facilities for London 2012 over the next six years.

I am sure Alex will excel in his new role and I wish him all the best. Nonetheless, I should draw attention to a factual howler that appears in the LOCOG press release and has found its way into the headings of a few reports on the appointment:

As co-founder and Chairman of CricInfo Alex built one of the world’s largest sports websites from scratch with 20 million customers.

By no stretch of the imagination can Alex be considered a “co-founder” of CricInfo. Alex first became involved with CricInfo in 1995 as a volunteer, a few months before I did, at which time it already had an established presence on the internet as a gopher database hosted on a server at the University of Oregon. CricInfo was founded by Dr Simon King in 1993, and while a number of US-based Indian expats came on board in those formative days of IRC, telnet and gopher, Alex’s involvement was still two years away.

Alex was, however, a foundation member of CricInfo’s board of directors when it became a corporation towards the end of 1999, when he was employed by us as Head of Business Development. (Does this make him a “co-founder” of CricInfo? I’m probably one too, having been one of 53 foundation shareholders in the business when it was corporatised.) He became chairman of CricInfo Ltd towards the end of 2001, after a financial near-death experience saw the departure of Dr King from the company and the retrenchment of a large number of its staff, including me.

A tribute to another of the industrialised world’s finest telecommunication institutions, the United Arab Emirates’ Etisalat.

(Here’s some further reading on the subject.)

Pluto’s fate as a planet will be decided this week at the 26th General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union in Prague.

The official website of the general assembly, astronomy2006.com, will be following the action this week. Monday’s Guardian has an opinion piece by the director of Harvard University’s Minor Planets Unit, arguing so it seems for the poaching of Pluto for his own organisation.

On the other hand, the current issue of Harvard’s daily newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, contains a passionate defence of Pluto’s planetary status.
Where, however, does this leave the real Pluto himself?

Before you buy that beach house, check out Thursday’s press release from the University of Texas Austin concerning the acceleration of the melting of Greenland’s ice cap.