Even though 2004 was a pretty awful year, there was at least some good news. At the global level, Europe has continued to give an example of a path towards spreading democracy that is not carried on the end of bayonets. The peaceful resolution of the crisis in the Ukraine and the election of a government committed to integration with Europe was one instance, as was the decision to open negotiations with Turkey, which has made great progress in the last few years towards providing a model of an Islamic democracy. As a couple of commentators have already pointed out, there are big challenges ahead and the whole enterprise may fail. Still such challenges have been overcome in the past as the admission of ten new members shows.

Russia’s decision to ratify the Kyoto protocol was another hopeful development. But we’re going to need more than Kyoto and it seems unlikely we’ll get it as long as Bush is in the White House.

At a local level, it’s worth remembering that the loss of life from even the worst disasters that have affected Australia is tiny by comparison with the continuing carnage from road crashes. In this respect, at least, we are making progress. New South Wales recorded its lowest toll in 55 years in 2004, and Victoria its second-lowest

Finally, there is some hope that the response to the tsunami disaster may go beyond the usual short-lived outpouring of sympathy and half-delivered promises of aid. Criticism of the stinginess of the initial response struck a chord, and focused attention on the weakness of the rich world’s aid effort, a weakness made more striking by the willingness to spend hundreds of billions on war. If we must have international rivalry, a race to see who can give most to help others seems like a good outcome.

Update An important piece of good news I forgot to mention was the signing of a peace settlement between the Sudanese government and the southern rebels. Assuming it holds, this will bring to an end a war that has lasted for decades and cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Unfortunately, the fighting in Darfur (in the western part of Sudan) which began more recently is still going on. The world’s attention to this problem has been fitful and inadequate, but perhaps we’ll see something better in 2005.

It didn’t take long for the government’s FTA chicken’s to come home to roost. Not surprisingly, the US government repeated its earlier statementthat it had serious problems with the amendments introduced by Labor to stop ‘evergreening’ of pharmaceuticals (a device to extend effect patent life using trivial variations on existing patents)[1].

More interesting is that Big Pharma is already acting as if the agreement is set in concrete, heavying the Howard government over its own election promises. All of this is as I predicted, using the arguments of Christopher Pearson. Following Pearson’s summary of the arguments Big Pharma could use against the Labor amendments, I observed

What’s critical to note here is that these points have nothing to do with the specific content of Labor’s amendments. They apply to any legislation concerning the PBS that an Australian government might seek to introduce in the future and, arguably, to any administrative decisions made by Ministers. If Pearson is correct1, the FTA gives the Americans an effective veto power over anything we might attempt to do to improve the functioning of the PBS. It’s notable that Pearson’s points are almost identical to those that have previously been made by critics of the deal, and pooh-poohed by the government.

If there was ever a time for Howard to earn the “Man of Steel” moniker hung on him by George Bush. He should demand an exchange of letters from the US side making it clear that we can take whatever action we deem necessary to protect the PBS. If this isn’t forthcoming, he should walk away from the deal and see what he can get out of the next US Administration, or the one after that if necessary.

fn1. After some hamfisted interventions on other issues, the US did the right thing in waiting until after the election to raise these concerns.

Scott Wickstein notes the second anniversary of the Bali bomb attack, with some personal memories.

I was checking my MT Activity logs, and was stunned to see how much comment spam I’m blocking with MT Blacklist. This got me thinking about spam in general, and led me to this article in the Kansas City Star which details the activity of a spammer selling various kinds of insurance. The money quote (literally) is

Completed forms, in turn, are sold to agents of legitimate companies, such as IndyMac Bank, ADT Security and MEGA Life and Health Insurance. The agents say they pay $3 to $7 for each referral. (emphasis added)

I can’t see anything legitimate about a company that employs criminal methods in its business, while pretending to be at arms length from the whole thing. It seems pretty clear that the way to make this kind of spam uneconomical is to make the employers of spammers liable for civil action. While I think estimates of $2000/employee, mentioned in the story, are over the top, the economic damage done by spammers is immense – more than enough to put firms like those mentioned[1] out of business if they were forced to bear their share of the bill.

Of course, this wouldn’t work so well against the purveyors of generic viagra, penis enlargement and so on, where the businesses are just as fly-by-night as the spammers. But every little helps.

UpdateCoincidentally, the NYT reports that dozens of spammers have been charged with a variety of offences

fn1. I’ve emailed one of them (IndyMac Bank) to see if they have a response to the KC Star story. If I get one, I’ll report it.

Service was interrrupted for a few hours just now, but for a fairly pleasing reason. My bandwidth limit of 2GB/month, which was ample when the blog started, has been exceeded, as a result of higher readership, so the server automatically cut me off. I now have a 10GB limit which should last a fair while.

I got interviewed about blogging again today, this time for Internet.au and it was a good time to talk about blogging. This has been one of the best weeks I’ve seen in Ozplogistan. Bloggers have provided blanket coverage of the debates and political chicanery over the proposed Free Trade Agreement with the US. In quality, breadth and depth, it’s been far superior to the coverage in the “quality press”, not to mention the soundbites provided by TV. Most of the debate has taken place on leftish blogs, and has been generated by posts ranging from mildly sceptical to overtly hostile to the FTA. But commenters have provided plenty of arguments in support of the FTA, and have done a much better job than the media opinion elite, most of which has backed the FTA for the weakest of reasons.

I’ll no doubt miss some people out, but I’ll still note some important contributions. Tim Dunlop provides a very balanced overview of the issues; a good starting point for those new to the debate. Chris Sheil has kept up a running commentary, focusing mainly on the political twists and turns. Brian Bahnisch had his say in the SMH Webdiary; an impressive critique. Kim Weatherall gave excellent coverage of the IP issues, including ‘evergreening’Gary Sauer-Thompson offered an illustrated version Geoff Honnor David Tiley and Rank and Vilewere also good.

Update In the comments thread, Stephen Kirchner points to pro-FTA comments from Peter Gallagher and analysis of public opinion from Andrew Norton at Catallaxy. Also at Catallaxy, Jason Soon weighs in on ‘evergreening’

As I say, I’m sure I’ve forgotten to mention some bloggers and missed others altogether. But if you compare this feast of comment and analysis with the thin and identikit offerings of the mainstream media you’ll see why I think blogging is going to be big news in the future.

Following on the question of whether Alan Woods’ description of me as “quite bright” was high or faint praise (Henry Farrell at Crooked Timber discusses the US-UK division on this), I have another question.

I’ve noticed that the New York Times uses the word “debtor” interchangeably to mean either “person who owes money”, as in this story which refers to debtors in bankruptcy or “person who is owed money”, as in this story on Iraq and this on Mike Tyson.

Is this standard US usage, or just bad subediting?

For those who think the Free Trade Agreement will do no harm to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, it’s worth reading this NYT piece, which focuses on impacts in the US>.

By the way, although we may pay more for medicine, we are the way to a cure for the dread affliction of linkrot. The NYT has provided weblog-safe links using its RSS feed. Thanks to Jack Strocchi for alerting me to this.

I’m reading How Democracies Lose Small Wars by Gil Merom. The main thesis is that domestic unwillingness to countenance brutality has caused democracies to lose small wars against militarily inferior insurgent movements since 1945. To make the argument, it’s necessary to show that, when these pressures weren’t so severe, victory in war generally went to the stronger party.

Merom presents a number of examples including the Athenian destruction of Melos, Cromwell’s war in Ireland, the Roman suppression of the Jewish revolt, German operations in SW Africa, Saddam vs the Kurds and Shiites, China and Tibet, Indonesia and East Timor and the Germans and Japanese in World War II. Merom argues that, in all these cases, unscrupulous brutality proved successful.

Yet in every case cited by Merom, a long-term view yields the opposite outcome. The Athenians lost the war and their hegemonic power, as of course did the Germans and Japanese in World War II. Ireland, East Timor and Israel are independent states, identifying in each case with the side described by Merom as the losers – Tibet isn’t yet, but I’m happy to predict it will become so. And then, of course, there’s Saddam.
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I just attended an interesting seminar at the UQ Law School on the interim Iraqi constitution, a topic that’s been discussed at length by Alan at Southerly Buster, and more briefly by Ken Parish . I learned some interesting things. For example, the Kurds are supposed to be descended from the Biblical Medes [1].
However, there was no discussion of the topic that really interested me.

This is the interregnum between the ‘handover’ of power to an Iraqi interim government, due on June 30, and elections due by January 2005. There is then supposed to be a further interim stage before the adoption of a final constitution, but my problems start well before that.

To begin with, I don’t even know for sure who gets to pick the interim government in the first place. My understanding, supported by things like this article in Time had been that Bremer controlled this, but in discussion with the seminar speaker, Suri Ratnapala, he suggested (or at least I understood him to suggest) that the current Governing Council could make this decision. And since the legal status of the occupation depends on UN Security Council resolutions, it’s at least arguable that the UNSC has the right to nominate the new government. To add to my confusion, I thought I saw a report saying the US was going back to the UNSC to seek a new resolution, but I now can’t find it. Even the excellent Juan Cole doesn’t fully clarify the situation for me.

The next problem relates to the claim that UNSC Resolution 1511 permits US forces to maintain military control of Iraq. It seems clear that this interpretation will prevail from June 30, regardless of its legality. But it’s hard to believe that it can survive the advent of an elected Iraqi government, presumably dominated by the supporters of Ayatollah Sistani. And even with a US-nominated government, there’s every possibility of trouble. It’s hard to believe, for example, that US forces can go on arbitrarily arresting people and detaining them with no right of appeal to Iraqi courts, at least not without discrediting the supposedly sovereign interim government.

At the bottom of all this is my belief that the Bush Administration will never allow large numbers of US troops to be under the authority of anyone else. If this belief is right, I can’t see how a handover can be anything other than a mess whenever it takes place.

fn1. it’s easy enough to Google this once you know to look, but I’d never thought about it.