Freedom of Information culture in Australia is seriously lacking in transparency and accountability.  Here’s my latest article on New Matilda that takes a look at my recent experience with FOI’s, and the slapstick attempt at reform introduced into parliament last week:

 

One of the things that went largely unnoticed last week, drowned out by the screams coming from the Opposition’s party room, was the Government’s introduction of its new freedom of information reforms.

But looking at the bills presented to Federal Parliament by Senator Joe Ludwig last Thursday, I was sadly underwhelmed. As my recent attempt to use FoI procedures to get access to Federal Government documents showed in the most demoralising way, these reform bills won’t do anything like enough to fix our dysfunctional freedom of information culture.

“Freedom of information” in government agencies is the ultimate misnomer. My freedom of information application cost money, took up time and was seriously lacking in transparency. It was to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. After I sent them the envelope containing my request, it took them four weeks just to reply letting me know that my application had been received.

Leaving aside the irony of describing it as “freedom of information” when I had just received a $1500 estimate of costs (which was later waived on grounds of financial hardship, but what freelance journalist has $1500 to spare anyway?), at first I felt optimistic that I was engaged in a process that could help in holding the powerful to account.

But soon I began to lose that optimism. Every week I would call Canberra to speak with someone there who would bleat the same old line: my application was always “a week off” or would be ready at the “end of next week at the latest”. I was told time and time again over the weeks that they were “consulting with other government agencies on some of the documents”. I began to wonder if I was going crazy. Was I stuck in some sort of time warp? No, time was in fact still passing, as usual. The problem did not lie with me, but rather with a government agency I was coming to regard with growing suspicion.

As the weeks passed I began to fall into a kind of daze on the matter. The only thing that kept me going was a hope that it would be concluded by the mysterious department identity known as the “decision maker”. This was an apparently mythic figure somewhat like the Wizard of Oz, spoken of with awe by their colleagues for their awesome powers of, well … decision making.

Finally on 17 September, almost two months after my initial request, I received a letter advising that:

“Due to the delay in receiving relevant documents from post and competing operational requirements we were unable to finalise the processing of your request by the 30-day statutory deadline under the FoI Act, for this request, which was 9 September 2009. This letter is to advise you that we are working with the appointed decision maker and are endeavouring to finalise your request as soon as possible.”

The most frustrating thing about all this was that there was nothing I could do. Despite the fact that DFAT had breached their statutory obligations by failing to provide an outcome within 30 days of my request, my options for redress were very limited. Had I gone to the Commonwealth Ombudsman, I would be placed at the rear end of an already lengthy queue of FoI complaints. If I approached the Administrative Appeals Tribunal not only would I have had to pay even more money, but it was likely the tribunal would simply say that there was no matter in dispute here, because the documents were clearly in the works. In one of the many highly repetitive conversations I had with Peter Truswell, the director of the FoI section in DFAT, he said “It’s not uncommon for us [DFAT] not to meet the 30-day period”.

Earlier in the year had I attended the annual MEAA public affairs conference and heard Joan Sheedy, assistant secretary for privacy and FoI policy branch at the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, discussing the changes to FoI laws. Her rhetoric was full of optimistic homilies about how the changes were going to inspire better relationships with journalists and allow the pubic to see that government departments weren’t just huge piles of red tape. She insisted that these reforms were encouraging a “pro-disclosure culture” of freedom of information.

I remembered these claims after Ludwig introduced the Government’s package of reforms, and decided to have a look at what they had to offer. One change is the creation of the new role of Information Commissioner, which establishes another avenue of appeal for FoIs and will also function as a complaint mechanism. But there is still little indication about how much the Information Commissioner will realistically be able to intervene. While the Commissioner is obliged to investigate the handling of an FoI if a complaint has been lodged, the high level of delays in FoIs currently could create a flood of complaints that will back up the commissioner for months.

The bills are also vague about what will actually be done to change the “culture” of freedom of information. The information commissioner has the role of “promoting awareness and understanding of the freedom of information act”, but beyond five-year reviews of departmental procedures it is unclear how this cultural shift is expected to occur.

From my examination of these bills, little will be done to prevent the system from repeating the result I got.

Finally, on 25 October, 90 days after my initial request, a parcel arrived in the mail from DFAT. Hands trembling, I opened the envelope to find … an utter whitewash. Whole pages were stripped bare of their content, great pencil slashes across the pages citing exemption after exemption.

A “culture of pro-disclosure”? Hardly. One of the most bizarre aspects of the exemptions is a little section known as 22(1)(a)(ii) of the Freedom of Information Act, which states that documents that are “reasonably regarded as irrelevant” to the request can be exempt. What’s strange is that the documents did relate to my request, but this section was used to block out subsequent paragraphs in the same documents. Perhaps DFAT’s FoI department head did not receive the minister’s letters about this new pro-disclosure culture? It’s disheartening that this section is retained in the current Reform Bill. Had I made this application a year from now under the Government’s new laws, the result may well have been the same.

I’m far from the only one with an experience like this — there are plenty of other people lost in administrative limbo, or left with a hefty bill and very little actual information to show for it. A few weeks ago, the Australian ran a piece showing how a woman seeking documents regarding the deaths of two yachtsmen 30 years ago had been stalled for months by DFAT. More recently, the NSW Ombusman criticised the Board of Studies, the Roads and Traffic Authority and a number of other agencies for their handling of FoI requests.

When I speak to fellow journalists about my experience I get a sympathetic look and a commiserating nod. A study by the Australian Press Council several years ago revealed that most journalists simply didn’t bother with FoI requests because of the lengthy bureaucratic battles that had to be fought.

In short, despite the introduction of these reform bills, there is little in the changes that would have made my experience any better. After three months waiting for a pile of mostly censored documents, it is very clear to me that there’s something deeply wrong with freedom of information culture in Australia.

Trying to get documents via FOI requests is incredibly difficult, as I found out earlier in the year when I put in an application to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.  Here’s the entire official correspondance of the tedious process:

Paul Farrell 24 July FOI app

DFAT 5 August response to app:

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DFAT 25 August response:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/44858836@N06/4121626068/in/set-72157622845765386/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/44858836@N06/4120853621/in/set-72157622845765386/

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/44858836@N06/4121626762/in/set-72157622845765386/

Paul Farrell 27 August correspondance:

Paul Farrell August 27 financial hardship docs

DFAT 28 August Correspondance:

DFAT August 28 Re Financial Hardship

DFAT September 17 Correspondance:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/44858836@N06/4120851253/in/set-72157622845765386/

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DFAT October 22 Correspondance:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/44858836@N06/4120852533/in/set-72157622845765386/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/44858836@N06/4120852853/in/set-72157622845765386/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/44858836@N06/4121625684/in/set-72157622845765386/

Example of Exempt Parts of Documents:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/44858836@N06/4120851849/in/set-72157622845765386/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/44858836@N06/4121624650/in/set-72157622845765386/

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Politicians need to be more open about their use of social media tools and who is actually writing in their name.  Here’s another blog post I wrote for media140 that examines the case of Malcolm Turnbull and his socmedia indiscretions:

It took Barack Obama only 25 characters to shock most of his 2,677, 720 followers to the core. “I have never used Twitter” confessed the leader of the Free World, when pressed on new technology by Chinese students in Shanghai. But, hang on a minute. Wasn’t this the first Social Media Presidency? One of the very first Twitter accounts to be verified? And if Barack says he really is all thumbs, just who is it who is doing all his tweeting?

Australian Federal Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull also got himself into something of a Social Media mess last week, when the Liberal leader’s Twitterer in chief, Tom Tudehope, quit in the wake of a dodgy YouTube video row. Here, Paul Farrell examines the case of @TurnbullMalcolm and wonders whether or not politicians are actually ill-advised to leave Social Media to their advisors.

Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull appeared at ease during the Sydney Media 140 conference in discussion with broadcaster Fran Kelly, leaning comfortably back in his chair. But little did he know that only a few days later, he would looking for a new social media advisor, after his chief on-line strategist, Thomas Tudehope, was revealed to be linked to a version of the popular spoof Hitler “Downfall” video lampooning besieged Liberal politician, Alex Hawke.

The admission that “Tommy Tudehope helps with a lot of it” [Turnbull's tweeting] during the Media140 interview may well have contributed to the startling resignation. But I believe that what these events may reveal is a key danger of the burgeoning use of social media: politicians leaping on the bandwagon and the consequent use of new media tools for more complex political tricks.

What is strange about the entire Tudehope affair is the number of questions which remain unanswered. While the Sydney Morning Herald did report that the email exchange regarding the clip “names a number of other right-wing figures and their private responses to the clip”, they did not publish any of these responses or identify other Liberal members linked to the video.

The newspaper was apparently also content to note that, despite resigning, Mr Tudehope said he “had no involvement in the production or dissemination of the video.”

Mr Turnbull remained unusually quiet for the few days of coverage of the story, and even desisted from Tweeting – although perhaps this was simply because his head ghost Tweeter had just resigned?

One of the key ideas which emerged from the Sydney Media140 event’s Tips for Social Media panel was that users of Twitter and other social media tools needed to be honest. Perhaps, too. the most important thing is to establish a dialogue of trust with your audience. Yet does it inspire trust in audiences when one of Mr Turnbull’s advisors is linked with the Alex Hawke Hitler video? Hardly.

Another curious fact to emerge from the on-stage discussion with Fran Kelly was that Mr Turnbull did not compose all of his own tweets – an admission highlighted by President Obama’s shock admission during his recent China visit that he had “never used Twitter”.

Surely, this raises another series of questions about the use of social media by politicians? Is it still strictly honest to have someone else twittering for Mr Turnbull, when it is the latter’s large, grinning face plastered all over his Twitter background?

Wendy Bacon, the head of the University of Technology Sydney journalism faculty, posted on Twitter that she had: “Tweeted Turnbull questions; had he seen that video? Just yesterday Turnbull chatted about close working relationship with social media staff”.

This is a particularly interesting question, and one to which Mr Turnbull has so far not responded. Mr Turnbull told the Media140 audience that he uses Twitter “as a tool of political communication”, but in the light of his “I use a ghost” confession, the “communication” appears to be some thing of a monologue.

Rather than showing how Twitter and YouTube are being used to communicate with the electorate and encourage debate, the events of last week have exposed how these tools can be used as extra political weapons in an already vast arsenal.

If Mr Turnbull is serious about using social media tools honestly, perhaps he should reply to Wendy Bacon? He might also deign to reply to the questions posed in this post, should it by chance come to his attention, perhaps via Twitter? I am sure many of his 17,000 followers have been asking similar questions and would appreciate his response.

This is, however, not just about Malcolm Turnbull. This is about every politician who decides to broaden his or her appeal, by signing up to Twitter or using other social media devices like YouTube or Facebook. There is no wonder that President Obama’s Twitter admission during an interview with a group of students in Shanghai rocked the blogosphere; his account has over two million followers.

The rules of engagement are changing fundamentally and swiftly in the new media age and, with these changes comes the acutely heightened risk that the new tools will be used to further distort or spin the message. We ought to demand more transparency from politicians, about who really has the log-in and passwords to their myriad online accounts.

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This was the unusual question posed by Paul Cutler, SBS Director of News, at the Media140 conference on Thursday, and my response for the Media 140 blog to a question that isn’t as simple as it might first appear:

There was an audible gasp from the auditorium when Paul Cutler mentioned the Holocaust on stage at Media140 in Sydney. Here, indefatigable guest blogger, Paul Farrell re-examines the question and gives his own thought-provoking analysis of this controversial “What if?”

“How would history have recorded the holocaust if there had been I-phones in the concentration camps?”

This was the unusual question that Paul Cutler, SBS director of news and current affairs, posed in his on stage tweet during the panel discussion about the use of new technology in getting coverage of events. While the answer seems quite simple to start with, the presence of new media in a conflict zone doesn’t always guarantee widespread coverage.

The recent war in Sri Lanka demonstrated that a crisis of horrific proportions, which many believe is tantamount to genocide, has not been given anywhere near the coverage it should warrant. There are also 300 000 Sri Lankan in internment camps, and yet this too has received a dismal amount of coverage.

Video footage from a mobile phone was recently placed online that claimed to show Sri Lankan military executing people in the war zone. Despite this, stories both in Australia and further abroad of the conflict are few and far between.

It’s very easy to praise the democratization of information, but without a combination of new and old media, the message will not get across. At the end of the day, a news editor still has to make a decision about whether to run a story or not, and the same rules can still apply. Stories about the situation in Sri Lanka have failed to generate much currency in media organisations around the world, presumably for this reason.

Tools like I-phones are great new journalistic adjuncts, but without platform and editorial support, they simply don’t equate to coverage. There are many more factors to enter into the equation, and this is one of the main points that came through from the speakers at both days of the conference.

Riyaad Minty, head of social media at Al Jazeera, spoke at length on this subject with regards to reporting in Gaza, and how social media tools can be used effectively in conjunction with broadcast journalism.

So would the Holocaust have been recorded differently if there had been I-phones inside the camps? Differently yes, but whether they would have driven the atrocities being committed into the headlines, sadly, may not have been the case, as the case of Sri Lanka shows.

New media tools do allow for direct access to information, but are still dependent on old media platforms for widespread distribution. Unfortunately, we can’t always rely on these platforms to provide coverage where it is due.

 

Please do comment your thoughts on this question – most interesting idea wins a prize!

The second day of Media140 in Sydney proved to be as exciting and engaging as the second, despite the collective hangovers clearly being felt throughout the audience.  After a few cups of coffee, here were my thoughts for Media 140 on the Skype conference with Jay Rosen, Professor of Journalism at New York University:

Much anticipation in Sydney ahead of the day two keynote, live from New York, courtesy of Skype from respected commentator Jay Rosen. Guest live blogger Paul Farrell managed to post this lively summary and analysis of what was, by any criteria, a powerful and thought-provoking speech. Oh -& the tech all worked beautifully too!

Professor of journalism at New York University Jay Rosen, delivered a powerful talk on the way that new media was transforming the news system.  His main initial point was that “the audience isn’t atomized any more, it’s connected horizontally”, and his discussion painted a bright picture about the democratization of information online.  The very nature of the way that Jay’s talk was conducted, via webcam, seemed to prove the essence of his point.

But one topic of discussion that proved to be hard to swallow for the audience as they tweeted away was on the topic on filtering, and how “we have to get much better at creating intelligent filters” for information distribution across social media platforms.  As soon as the word “filters” was thrown around, the bloggers in the audience collectively raised their hackles.

Jay went on to say that  “we can build filters that are much more personalized”, and this tied into one of his other ideas that “transparency is the new objectivity”.  New media is credible because of its honesty, and Jay says this is how people gain audiences and responses.

But what are the implications of this?  What will happen when filters become more sophisticated and the ways that people view information with social media changes?  It seems that this could have some potentially disastrous impacts for the democratization of information on the web.

Media140 was a great place for bloggers and journalists alike to get some great advice on how to engage with social media.  Below is another live blog I wrote from Thursday for Media140 on some of these handy tips:

 

The last few panels of a big event such as Media140 Sydney pose challenges to panellists and audience alike. Paul Farrell, guest blogger, explains how the final pow-wow managed to hold the attention of the auditorium.

This panel presented the most informative and practical advice for bloggers and journalists on how to use social media effectively. Tips came from practitioners in all fields of the Australian media world, and ranged from tweeting the facts to checking tiny URL’s before posting (you never know what you might be linking to…) to keeping up to date with your Twitter followers’ tweets.

Dave Earley, online editor from channel 7 Brisbane and Wolf Cocklin, from ABC digital, spoke about the benefits of alternative Twitter programs like Tweetgrid and Tweetdeck, and how effective they are at allowing people to stay involved.  All the speakers gave examples of how they had used Twitter in the field.  Wolf talked about his tweeting of the Victorian bushfires, and how effective it was to communicate the situation in real time.  He not only communicated with his own followers but also with the ABC newsroom via Twitter.

Twitter dominated the discussion, and the speakers all agreed on one big point; tweet about everything.  It’s about establishing your own identity online, and that’s how readers begin to trust you.  As Renai Lemay, news editor at ZDNet says: “it helps for your audience to see you as a person, and not an anonymous journalist in a newsroom.”

Twitter is not just about links and pictures, and sometimes the everyday activities and thoughts of a Twitterer are just as important.  As Andrew Davies, producer of ABC’s Future Tense, also says, it’s becoming an important way to meet people as well, which is why it’s so important to stay involved and engaged.

I’ve spent the last two days at the Media140 conference in Sydney live blogging for the event.  This is one of the entries (many more to come hopefully) on Riyaad Minty, director of digital media at Al Jazeera, and his talk on reporting in Gaza earlier this year:

Riyaad Minty, Head of Social Media at Al Jazeera was the next keynote speaker, and delivered a case study about reporting on the recent Israeli offensive in Gaza.  His insights into the professional practice of journalism and how social media was used is a fascinating insight into the way social media can be used effectively in conflict reporting.

His discussion did not just focus on Twitter, but other online tools like Ushudhi as well, which was used to create maps about the conflict areas in real time. Al Jazeera created ‘Your Media’ when the offensive began, which allowed for people to contribute their own stories directly to the site, and according to Riyaad worked effectively for a few days until the Israeli military clamped down on communications.

The war was also micro reported via the Twitter account @AJGaza.  Al Jazeera also permits creative commons for all their raw footage, to allow democratic access to their footage.  Looking at all of these new ways of engaging with new media meant that this talk was as much a case study of  Al Jazeera itself as it was of reporting in Gaza.

Listening to Riyaad, it’s not hard to see why Al Jazeera is one of the most credible and engaging news organizations on the planet.  As Riyaad says, “its about trust, and openness within your organization”.  With people like Riyaad leading the way in engaging with social media, it shows how the old professional practice of journalism can be combined with these technologies, to provide us with a comprehensive vision of events going on around the world.

But Riyaad also gave a warning about social media and that “ at the end of the day it’s a technology, and it’s a tool”.  This was a welcome caution about the supposedly revolutionary nature of these online tools.  Its not the tools that define what journalism is, it’s the ever-present desire to expose the truth and hold the powerful to account.

 

Several more posts to come on the conference, including a wrap of the two days and some of the more interesting questions posed.

Because I was lazy and didn’t blog much today, here’s the cheeky little things that I wanted to write about, but failed dismally to:

• A great new index from Global Voices on threatened journalists and bloggers that outlines in real time the plight of journalists across the globe.

• The weird and wonderful world of the CIA – Plots ranging from Kittens with microphones and ear pieces, plans to bomb US targets in the 60s and then blame it on Cuba and pigeons as missile guidance systems. Is it any wonder that Obama is trying to scale back the funding of these maniacs?

• New protests occurring in Iran

• A fascinating history into the relationship between Abdullah and Karzai – It’s great to actually get a little more background on these characters rather than the token remarks usually seen

• A disappointing find by the US house of representatives with regards to the Goldstone report – why are they pursuing war crimes issues in Sri Lanka, but not in Israel? I guess this shows the inherent contradictions in the human rights dimension of American foreign policy

• And finally, another brilliant claymation of Peter Garrett. I wish the SMH just did claymation news, it would be so much better

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The United States has been making some positive steps in holding to account the Sri Lankan Government for alleged war crimes in its brutal war earlier this year, as the Guardian reports:

 

Sri Lanka today objected to attempts by the US to question the chief of its army over allegations of war crimes during the final stages of the conflict with the Tamil Tigers.

US immigration authorities told General Sarath Fonseka, who is currently visiting his daughters in Oklahoma, that they would like to interview him before renewing his green card.

The Sri Lankan government said it was “worried” about the questions he might have to face because the US state department had made “allegations of crimes committed by the Sri Lankan armed forces”.

Officials in Colombo are concerned that the US could also seek to ask the army chief about the involvement of the defence secretary, Gotabaya Rajapaksa – the brother of the Sri Lankan president and a US citizen – in the war.

The Sri Lankan embassy in Washington has retained lawyers from Patton Boggs, a leading law firm, to make the case that Sri Lanka could resist US attempts to question Fonseka over the defence secretary’s conduct.

Fonseka and Rajapaksa are seen as the brains behind the government’s bloody victory in May, which saw the Tamil Tiger leadership wiped out on the Indian Ocean island’s north-eastern beaches.

Tamil groups have long urged the US to prosecute both the general and the defence secretary for what they describe as “genocide”.

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The sacking of a senior scientist that advises the British Government on drug policy this weekend is as good an opportunity as ever to reintroduce the subject of drug decriminalization in Australia.

In a speech and pamphlet for the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, Professor David Nutt criticized the Government’s policy of harsher penalties for cannabis related offences, and was sacked this Saturday.  Professor Nutt is the head of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and is an expert in various drug related fields.

But despite his credentials, Prime Minister Gordon Brown found his views to be politically unpalatable.  A home office spokesperson said to the Guardian:  “the home secretary expressed surprise and disappointment over professor Nutt’s comments which damage efforts to give the public clear messages about the dangers of drugs”.  Professor Nutt said that Prime Minister Gordon Brown was using drugs for political capital and was “devaluing and distorting” scientific evidence.

The sacking of Professor Nutt is raising the eyebrows of the scientific community in the UK, but should be making Australians think about what has happened to the drug debate in this country.  The accusation from Professor Nutt in the UK that Gordon Brown is using drug criminalisation for political reasons would be met in Australia with no surprise.  Politicians are more than happy to use drugs as being synonymous with their ‘tough on crime’ stance, particularly in NSW.  A lethal blow for the NSW Greens in the last election was the misleading smear campaign led by the Labor Party that the Greens wanted to legalise ice and make it available for sale.  Who could also forget the bizarre election stunt from political wildcard Fred Nile, who not only accused Greens candidates of being drug users but then took a random drug test at a press conference.

But despite drugs remaining as a point of discussion of law and order, the real question is rarely asked; what is the best way to respond to the use and sale of drugs, and is the current approach working?  There is an increasing amount of evidence that suggests that the criminalization of drugs is not the solution, and decriminalization is a viable option.  The calls from Professor Nutt are the tip of the iceberg, with increased calls across the globe for a review of how drug use and access are managed.

While I support the decriminalisation of some drugs, I also accept that there are risks to drug use, and that these risks vary for different drugs.  But I do not believe that the most effective way to mitigate these risks is to throw people in a cell.  This approach is demonstrably failing, and drug use and access in major world cities like Sydney have never been higher.  All the criminalisation of drugs will do is put more people in jail, and support and fund the criminal elements that run the drug traffic trade.

In a strange twist of fate, around the time Professor Nutt was sacked I was at a pub talking to a friend who was recently arrested for possessing several amphetamines on a night out in Kings Cross.  While he may be somewhat foolish at times, he is by means an individual predisposed to criminal activity.

But bizarrely enough, the police initially pushed to charge him with supply of a small quantity as well, a more serious offence that would have likely led to jail time with a maximum sentence of two years.  The maximum jail time he could have served for these two combined offences is four years in prison.  While the supply charge was dropped and the judge took into account a serious of mitigating factors that meant he did not receive any jail time, experiences like these are sobering.  In a city like Sydney almost all of us will know people that are regular drug users.  Is the end game of policing drug use to lock them all up?

This is why it’s time for a serious debate on the issue of drug criminalization in Australia.  The longer we wait the more harm will be done to the community, and the more likely it will be that someone you know who uses drugs will end up in jail.

The conditions of detention centre in Indonesia are appalling, as Angela Dewan from New Matilda reports.  We can only hope that the so called Indonesia solution collapses from under Prime Minister Rudd:

 

In response to questions from newmatilda.com, the Directorate of Correctional Institutions said abuse did occur in the nation’s facilities, but rejected that it was wide-scale. The head of the Directorate’s human rights department, Chandran Lestyono, admitted that the department had no data on abuse cases and that no one was looking into it.

Lestyono said that overcrowding was a major contributor to the problem. “In Jakarta’s Cipinang prison, there is a capacity of 1500, but on average, we have around 3000 inmates,” he told newmatilda.com. Much of the time, Cipinang holds far more than twice its capacity. A cell that should hold four to seven people will often have 20 to 30 sleeping on the floor.

And overcrowding in Indonesian jails is worsening each year. In 2006, the nation’s prisons were 36,194 inmates, or 47 per cent, over capacity. This year, they are 58 per cent over.

“It’s a funding issue,” Lestyono said. “Every year, we ask the Government for more money. The costs to run the facilities are always rising. And of course, with overcrowding, inmates are more vulnerable to abuse.”

But according to Ricky Gunawan, it is not overcrowding that is responsible for the majority of the violence in Indonesian jails — it’s corruption. “If an inmate wants a friend or relative to visit them, the visitor has to pay the guard,” he told newmatilda.com. And if they don’t pay up, the prisoner pays for it in other ways.

Indonesia’s jails and detention centres operate within the context of a justice system that is just as corrupt. Transparency International pegs Indonesia as the 48th most corrupt country on its corruption perceptions index of 180 nations — on par with Libya, Uganda and Honduras. Last year, TI found the Immigration Office to be the third-most corrupt public institution, after the National Police and Customs. The judiciary came in eighth.

If the Sri Lankan asylum seekers step onto Indonesian land without speaking to the UNHCR first, their fate will lie in the hands of these corrupt institutions.

An interesting article by Nichlas Kristof in the New York Times that shows just how costly the war in Afghanistan really is, and what some of that money could be used for:

Dispatching more troops to Afghanistan would be a monumental bet and probably a bad one, most likely a waste of lives and resources that might simply empower the Taliban. In particular, one of the most compelling arguments against more troops rests on this stunning trade-off: For the cost of a single additional soldier stationed in Afghanistan for one year, we could build roughly 20 schools there.

It’s hard to do the calculation precisely, but for the cost of 40,000 troops over a few years — well, we could just about turn every Afghan into a Ph.D.

The hawks respond: It’s naïve to think that you can sprinkle a bit of education on a war-torn society. It’s impossible to build schools now because the Taliban will blow them up.

In fact, it’s still quite possible to operate schools in Afghanistan — particularly when there’s a strong “buy-in” from the local community.

Greg Mortenson, author of “Three Cups of Tea,” has now built 39 schools in Afghanistan and 92 in Pakistan — and not one has been burned down or closed. The aid organization CARE has 295 schools educating 50,000 girls in Afghanistan, and not a single one has been closed or burned by the Taliban. The Afghan Institute of Learning, another aid group, has 32 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with none closed by the Taliban (although local communities have temporarily suspended three for security reasons).

In short, there is still vast scope for greater investment in education, health and agriculture in Afghanistan. These are extraordinarily cheap and have a better record at stabilizing societies than military solutions, which, in fact, have a pretty dismal record.

Whats next Glen? Your own line of action figures? I would most definitely buy a wind up glenn beck that said “GET OFF MY PHOOOONEEEE!!!” when I pulled the string.

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