Sovereignty, of the people or the scum on the top?

Whether it's Sudan, Zimbabwe, Burma, Uzbekistan . . .
It doesn't matter which country, the situation's the same. The recognition of the sovereign right of whichever elite runs the nation and rules the people within its borders is a matter for that elite.

Thus, today Salah Sarrar at Reuters reports:

"Neighbors Sudan and Chad pledged to redouble efforts to end border violence being fueled by Darfur's conflict, concluding their third agreement in 12 months to end hostilities and respect each other's sovereignty . . ."The governments of both countries are committed to respect the sovereignty of one another and not to interfere in the internal affairs of the other country, and refrain from any hostile activity against one another, and to work for full normalization of their relations," the statement said."

Non-interference in internal affairs. This is the way that China likes to put it, and the reason that the recent UN resolution on Burma failed, given that China is the new world leader and nations like South Africa prefer to vote with China than to follow a moral imperative that one would think was natural to them, but which has become embarrassingly, laughably 'Western' (and why should high-flying morals be laughed at less in the UN than they are in Washington, Canberra, London?).

The Chinese message to dictators and despots is as welcome as the US's has always been, but China's is refreshingly lacking in hypocritical cant. China is making deals and forging partnerships around the world at a rate that has made the US irrelevant (as for Europe, it's been irrelevant for years). Non-interference in internal affairs no matter what when it comes to their own country, is, come to think of it, the way that the great majority of world leaders like the status quo to be, and if I scratch your human rights violations, you scratch mine.

"Respect for each country's sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs are universally recognized principles of international law."
- Human Rights in China - Chinese government 'Whitepaper')

"In carrying out its responsibility in maintaining international peace and security, be it peacekeeping, preventive diplomacy, post-conflict peace-building or activities in other related areas, the United Nations should always follow the fundamental principles of respect for state sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs"
- China on UN Peacekeeping Operations - People's Daily

"Burma’s Foreign Minister Nyan Win made the country’s first address to the 60th UN General Assembly on Friday afternoon in New York, using the occasion to highlight the organization’s policy of non-interference in internal affairs."
- Burmese FM stresses non-interference in UN address - Burmanet News

"For a number of reasons, the United States decided that the ICC had unacceptable consequences for our national sovereignty."
- The United States and the International Criminal Court - US Department of State
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

May 2008 update
- Burma: The Dark Side of Sovereignty - IntLawGrrls

- Zimbabwe: I Refuse to Be Silent - Maxwell B. Madzikanga, Fahamu

"Less talk and more action" - Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, August 2000

"UN chief Ban Ki-moon flew to army-ruled Myanmar's remote new capital on Friday, for a rare audience with junta supremo Than Shwe to press him to accept more aid for 2.4 million people left destitute by Cyclone ..." - Patrick Worsnip YANGON (Reuters) - U.N. chief to press Myanmar junta boss on aid 23 May 2008

"As a citizen of Burma and an elected representative, I want to stress that, pursuing diplomatic options to convince an intransigent regime like the Burma generals, is like waiting for people to die and time is something that the people of Burma do not have." - Sein Win, the prime minister in exile of Burma,
No Time Left for Diplomatic Options: Sein Win by Lalit K Jha, irrawaddy.org

I told you wrong a bug back

My life as a spreader of false information hasn't started a war yet, so I can't look forward to a city-stopping tour as guest of an allied nation, but it does bother me that I told you one thing only to find, weeks later, that I told you wrong.

Not only didn't I pay attention to the middle of a creature's back. I let myself be dazzled (blame the creature!) till I didn't pay attention to its mouth. If a person doesn't notice a creature's mouthparts and doesn't care whether that creature sucks or chews, that person shouldn't be trying to identify insects. That person should be forced to eat, televised, a bowl of periwinkles in their shells, the only tableware being a silver soup spoon.

If only I didn't have to try to identify, but could just tell you what I see. (If only I looked to see!)

But everyone wants identification, and I have been too impatient to show and tell. And not only that — if it's something like the "Common Brown Butterfly", horrors! Thousands of these made December 2005 a wondrous month here. If only they weren't "common", for no matter how mysterious their lives, no matter that most people on earth have never seen one, well, it's not the same as if I'd told you they were Painted Ladies, is it?

Yet, perhaps you think this is getting away from the main event. Too right!

Revisiting my shame:
The original sin laid naked (7 February), now covered with a brief forward:
Jewel beetles vs. 'bugs' . . . (later) er, vs. my misidentification,
leading to my further parading of ignorance on the 16th, as of today bearing a coat of information at least as impervious to criticism as some I couldn't possibly identify:
What would you call a gathering of Buprestids? *especially if they weren't

Read everything by Célestine Hitiura Vaite

and you'll wish there were more, but until then, you'll want to read these again.

The Materena Mahi trilogy:

Breadfruit: The Drunken Marriage Proposal and Everything that Happened Next

Frangipani: The Mother Whose Daughter Amazed Her and Everything that Happened Next

Tiare: The Husband Who Didn't Deserve His Wife and Everything that Happened Next

in quite a few editions and a growing number of languages.

Go!

In praise of (pocket-size) books as companions

This delightful book is no bigger than my hand. Its type size is perfectly legible — 9 point, well leaded. It fits a pocket, as all magical companions should be able to.

It might not be good body armour, however. Is the breastplate size of current fiction and the vehicle-armor size of current non-fiction a reflection of the paranoia of our times?

What do you think about the size of books? Is small effete? Is super-size just right to go with the house and the car? Or, non-pejoratively, just right because it's more comfortable for what you want a book to be and do?

Where do you read, and how? How do you store your books, if you do?

As to type size and leading, should books be printed as if they're for the vision impaired; and if so, what do you think about newspapers and legal documents?

Frontier earth, for unlimited unexplored wonders

This was found on a forest floor today.

Every day everywhere, there are frontiers that haven't been entered — all on our planet, and many, at our feet.

I've got the proof of intelligent design, but what or whom was it made for?

Found on a beach and kept in this case, the proof exhibits sophisticated use of tools (waves, abrasive surfaces), and nipples.

It is cleverly constructed from a sea urchin's exoskeleton, though whether the urchin was struck dead to furnish the art material or whether this is recycling of trash, is something that others might debate.

This object couldn't randomly be produced.

Taking the pledge to drink recycled sewage

"More than three-quarters of Australians say they would drink recycled sewage water. The Sydney Morning Herald/ACNielsen poll taken at the weekend shows that 78 per cent of Australians (80 per cent in NSW) would support the introduction of recycled water."
- We'll drink recycled sewage, say eight in 10, Mark Metherell, Sydney Morning Herald, 12 February 2007

As long as it's sold in a bottle.

Who drinks water from the tap any more? Certainly an increasing number of Australians don't. We're so socially aware about the superiority of bottled water that we suck it up from the limitless French and Italian sources to less costly but perhaps more lucrative flows pristine. Our supermarkets sell water that is bottled in China,

*We're now so used to water being a beverage to buy, not water to quench thirst, that water fountains are as archaic as a working public phone. We're so used to having a slug from the bottle at all times and all places that the thought of waiting till the court adjourns or the press conference is over, is — unthinkable. Indeed, not drinking bottled water or, in a long meeting, asking for glasses and a pitcher filled with water from the tap, might be considered ratbaggery.

WHO IS DRINKING BOTTLED WATER?

Consumer research suggests that bottled water is consumed by people of varying age groups and occupations. The large majority however tend to be young singles and couples, in particular females aged between 14-35 years.

Generally bottled water consumers can be described as being more health conscious, contemporary and socially aware.
- bottledwater.org "The Australian Bottled Water Institute"

*We is untrue. Not all of us drink bottled water, but enough and growing. The Age reported last year, "Clean, safe drinking water is vital for human health. While for most Australians this is simply a turn-of-the-tap away, increasingly people are buying their water in bottles. Bottled water consumption has doubled over the past six years. Global consumption of bottled water was 154 billion litres in 2004 - a growth of 57 per cent over five years. Australians consumed 550 million litres of bottled water in the last financial year - an increase of about 10 per cent. Demand for bottled water has even grown to include pets."
- Vikki Leone, Danger: Bottlenecks looming, The Age, 6 March 2006

All this prelude is an excuse to direct you to this gloriously splenetic, drunkenly truthful rave by Roger Scruton (who isn't against bottled beverages):

Bottled water is the greatest fraud in the whole history of food fetishism, The New Statesman, 1 December 2003

A closeup of yesterday's meeting

What would you call a gathering of Buprestids? *(especially if they weren't)

* (27 Feb 2007) Thanks first to George Hangay and Pavel German's excellent Insects of Australia that I found in the local library yesterday, I can now tell you that I have been terribly wrong in my identification of the beautiful insects on this posting. I thought they were those much prized insects, the Buprestids, otherwise known as jewel beetles. They are, in fact, jewel bugs — also called metallic shield bugs, and this species pictured here is always properly called Scutiphora pedicellata — a very big difference to a beetle of any stripe. As the Chew family's excellent and most humble (they call themselves "the non-professionals") Brisbane Insects and Spiders (with topnotch photos) says about the Scutiphora pedicellata:

This bug is in the Shield-backed bug family. Shield-backed bugs are plant suckers. They can be distinguished from other shield bugs by their scutellum completely covered the whole abdomen and wings. This is why sometimes they are miss-recognized as beetle. They are easily distinguished from beetles by having sucking mouthparts and the shield on the back is continuous, not the divided wings cover with separation at the middle.

Well, rot my boots, of course! Anyone can see the sucking mouthparts here (anyone who looks!), and the fact that the shield on the back is not divided wings, meeting in the middle.

So, now to the other difference between beetles and bugs. Bugs are usually reviled. Insects of Australia says this about the S. pedicellata: Contrary to its common name, it is a scutellerid, or jewel bug. Often it can be seen in groups as they converge on the fresh shoots of shrubs. They suck the sap, causing the shoots to wither.

Oh, my. They eat plants! And here, I thought I had been privileged to see a nectar eater, especially since its behaviour seemed perfectly innocent, and the buprestid I thought this was, is a nectar eater.

True bugs have an unfortunate reputation no matter how beautiful they are, because of bugs like another spectacular metallic jewel bug, Tectoris diophthalmus, otherwise known as the cotton harlequin bug.

Beetles can be plant eaters, too, even some of our beloved Australian Christmas beetles. Here's what Hangay and German have a pretty picture of a roudy crowd feasting on eucalypt leaves. They say about Boisduval's Christmas beetle (Anaoplognathus boisduvalii) —

This large Christmas beetle can be found on Eucalyptus teretricornis and E. platyphylla. It favours the young shoots of these trees and sometimes occurs in large numbers, causing significant damage to forests.

A letter in the Sydney Morning Herald earlier this summer commented on the fact that there are no butterflies to be seen in Sydney any more. Why should there be? They are only the next stage in the life of a leaf-eating caterpillar.

There are plenty of butterflies out here three hours south of Sydney — but here, there are hardly any people.

This diversion doesn't excuse my miss. But I feel more embarrassed to be somewhat disappointed that they are bugs and not beetles than I am at displaying my ignorance in public.

Prostanthera lasianthos, the dog-Latin name for the Victorian Christmas Bush

This is usually a bush, but in this case a nondescript tree, easily overlooked. The Prostanthera lasianthos is the largest of the 'native mint' bushes in Australia. Crush the leaves and you'll smell at first, a savory, not quite foody bouquet of pennyroyal, oregano, and thyme. The scent is unusual in that it increases in complexity after a few minutes, finishing with a lovely depth of sage.

The flowers are the size of a human baby's finger joint.

'The next morning I was woken more pleasantly. A young round-faced Indonesian man was peering down at me. "Sabran" he said, pointing to his chest . . . Talking to him was not easy for I still had not acquired much conversational Indonesian, but he and I soon evolved a pidgin of our own which served our particular requirements. One morning as we were steaming slowly up river, he called me and pointed excitedly to a tree on the bank.
"Burung ada,'" he said. That I understood. There had been a bird there.
"Apa?" I said, meaning — what kind of bird?
His answer to that, however, defeated me. He repeated me. he repeated it several times but I was baffled.
Then he said "Irena puella puella." And that I understood immediately. It had been a fairy bluebird. Sabran knew the scientific name from his time as a zoo collector and I from my study of the field guide to the birds of South-east Asia. I was delighted by the thought that he, who had never left his native Borneo, and I, a stranger from England, should have been able to make ourselves mutually understood by speaking the dog-Latin that European scholars had used during the eighteenth century.'
— David Attenborough, Life on Air: Memoirs of a Broadcaster, BBC Books, 2002, London