It was a very busy weekend on Global Dashboard. So in case you missed it:
Prepare yourself for a bad-tempered row over UK attempts to censor Wikipedia. The reason? Virgin Killer – a 1970s album from German heavy metal band, Scorpions. The result: Wikipedia is now shut to (anonymous) edits for large swathes of the British population.
The album cover features a picture of a prepubescent girl and was banned in many countries – though you can still buy it (with the original cover art) on amazon.co.uk. The Wikipedia page discussing the album, and the controversy around its cover, has now been blacklisted by the Internet Watch Foundation, a quasi-official body that censors “images of child sexual abuse hosted anywhere in the world”.
IWF’s blacklisting has led to six ISPs blocking the page – something they’ve done by filtering all traffic through two proxy servers (if this reminds you of the Great Firewall of China – it should).
Unfortunately, the result of this is to make it seem as if vast swathes of the British population are visiting Wikipedia from the same IP address. That makes stopping abusive edits more or less impossible – so Wikipedia has had to ban all these users from anonymous editing:
Wikipedia has been added to an Internet Watch Foundation UK website blacklist, and your Internet service provider has decided to block part of your access. Unfortunately, the method they are using makes it impossible for us to differentiate between legitimate users and those abusing the site. As a result, we have been forced to block several IP addresses from editing Wikipedia.
Reports that all 1970s heavy metal are to be removed from the Internet on the grounds of musical taste, meanwhile, have been denied by the Internet Watch Foundation…
News is emerging this morning of a militant attack on NATO supply containers in Pakistan, where they were awaiting onward shipment to Afghanistan. CNN has details:
A security guard was killed and two employees were wounded in the attack on the Faisalal terminal just outside of the city of Peshawar, according to officials. Companies hired by NATO to drive fuel, food and other supplies to troops fighting the Taliban use the terminal to park containers waiting for convoys across the border into Afghanistan. The fire started by the attackers destroyed 62 containers, according to Peshawar Senior Police Superintendent Kashif Alam.
This latest attack follows another a week ago, and plenty more in the preceding months. It’s still only a few weeks since Pakistan’s army chief did a big presentation in Brussels vowing to keep NATO’s supply lines to Afghanistan open:
“We will do whatever is possible, whatever is within our power to ensure that this line of supply is open,” Kayani told top officers in Brussels, according to Admiral Giampaolo Di Paola, head of NATO’s military committee. “We understand how critical it is to Afghanistan … and because we want Afghanistan to succeed we would harm ourselves if we did not do our best to ensure that,” Di Paola quoted Kayani as saying.
But can he deliver? AP flags up the key statistic: “up to 75 percent of the supplies for Western forces in [Afghanistan] pass through Pakistan after being unloaded from ships at the Arabian sea port of Karachi”.
According to John Robb a Hollow State has:
The trappings of a modern nation-state but it lacks any of the legitimacy, services, and control of its historical counter-part. It is merely a shell that has some influence over the spoils of the economy. The real power rests in the hands of corporations and criminal/guerrilla groups that vie with each other for control of sectors of wealth production. For the individual living within this state, life goes on, but it is debased in a myriad of ways.
A good example of a Hollow State is Zimbabwe where the Government under Mugabe no longer has legitimacy. Government systems are either in a state of collapse (witness the looting of food carried out by the Army) or are non existent (the health system). State infrastructure is broken (water) and the population has to rely on other sources, from charities or private citizens.
Zimbabwe has been spiralling out of control for years, and it’s only recently that the international community has had sufficient leverage over the Mugabe regime to bring about change, but the results have been limited. The failure by the international community to intervene both early on and with force (not necessarily hard power) has allowed Mugabe to operate with only a few (in some cases meaningless) constraints.
The widely reported cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe seems to have motivated the international community to speak out once again. Today Gordon Brown argued that:
“This is now an international rather than a national emergency. International because disease crosses borders. International because the systems of government in Zimbabwe are now broken. There is no state capable or willing of protecting its people. International because – not least in the week of the 60th anniversary of the universal declaration of human rights – we must stand together to defend human rights and democracy, to say firmly to Mugabe that enough is enough.”
But let’s be realistic. We can ramp up the rhetoric to the nth degree but without firm action, under a UN mandate, Mugabe and his horrifc regime isn’t going to disappear. Unless an individual or organisation takes the initiative this tragedy will continue to unfold.
Update: The arguments for not doing anything with Mugabe are numerous. Two arguments stand out: first the lack of an international mandate; second, a deficeincy in our collective moral responsibility. But I notice in today’s Observer online that the Archbishop of York is calling for President Robert Mugabe to be toppled from power and face trial for crimes against humanity. Could this be the moral outcry that creates the environment for a Chapter 7 intervention?
The climate talks in Poznan were never going to be a dazzling success – but, away from the nitty gritty of text, three big things need to happen for a reasonable result to be achieved.
First, the Europeans have to set out their stall (again) – but this time show that they can match aspirational targets with domestic delivery. Second, the Americans need to be begin the process of re-engaging: some sense has to emerge of what the post-Bush era should look like. And finally, we desperately need the emerging economies to begin to talk openly about where they think they fit into climate control. What does a good deal look like for them – not just between now and 2020, but over the next generation or two?
Unfortunately, the news doesn’t look good on any of these fronts. The Europeans – staggeringly, unbelievably – have allowed squabbles over their own climate package to spill over into the broader international negotiation. How’s this for showing united leadership to the rest of the world?
French President Nicolas Sarkozy failed to end deadlock with ex-communist European Union states on an EU climate package on Saturday but predicted a deal would be reached by a December 11-12 summit.
“Things are moving in a good way … I am convinced we will arrive at a positive conclusion,” Sarkozy, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, said after meeting Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and eight other east European leaders.
Poland, which relies on high-polluting coal for more than 90 percent of its electricity, has threatened to veto an EU plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 unless Warsaw wins fossil fuel concessions.
“There is still a lot of work ahead of us” before the summit, Tusk said after the talks in the Polish port of Gdansk.
Poland argues it needs until 2020 to curb carbon emissions, for example by using more efficient boilers and carbon-scrubbing equipment and possibly building its first nuclear plant.
Tusk said Sarkozy and the EU Commission agreed to extend a period limiting mandatory purchases of greenhouse gas emissions permits for east European coal plants, in an offer which would need the backing of all EU leaders.
And Tusk hinted at a willingness to compromise at the summit. “At the very end, maybe at the very last minute, we may decide this is a solution we may accept,” Tusk said.
Meanwhile, the American negotiating team appear not to have even talked to the Obama transition team (h/t Andrew Kneale). If true, this is worse than stupid:
As I’m sure the Obama Administration transition team is aware, Poznan, Poland is currently hosting a very important UN-sponsored climate change conference. At stake is nothing less than the next round of emissions reduction commitments (a Kyoto successor) — which Barack Obama has said he wants the U.S. to participate in.
If they haven’t already, the Obama folks need to make contact with the U.S. delegation in Poznan immediately. One would think that the U.S. Del. would take the initiative itself, but I’m getting word that they feel that the ball is in Obama’s court.
Apparently, current U.S. delegation members — mostly career people with honorable intentions and a willingness to continue to serve (with some notable exceptions) — are waiting for the call. This is no time to fight about protocol, or who is supposed to call who. It’s time to start turning the ship around.
Things are going to slow down for the weekend and then pick up again on Tuesday. The framework that comes out of this week can still be quite ambitious and, at the same time, workable in the U.S. and in the Senate. The Obama people have from now until Tuesday to make their goals for Poznan clear, but the sooner, the better.
Finally, as I posted a few days ago, developing countries seem resistant to even talking about the long-term – even though they have the most to lose through lots of itsy bitsy short term deals…
Happy days.
(For more, see all GD’s Poznan posts, our broader coverage on climate, follow the #poznan feed on Twitter or check out benkamorvan’s list of Poznan related blogs and other sites.)
