What is legal for one country appears to be illegal in another

“March 20 2003

At around 2:00 pm today the first missiles fell on Baghdad, it appears from the news reports that it was an attempt at a surgical strike aimed at killing Saddam Hussein and several leaders of the Iraqi government.

There was an admission from the Australian Foreign Minister, that such an attack would be considered illegal if undertaken by Australia, but nonetheless he supported the action.

The betting has always been that if an opportunity presented itself to remove Saddam Hussein then it should taken rather than involve the country in a war. Equally, given the scenario, it would not come as a great surprise to find that someone is likely to make an attempt at killing one of the leaders of the “coalition of the willing”.

The TV was saturated with coverage which eventually gave way to normal programming when it was realised that no additional attacks would happen and there was thus nothing of importance to report.”

There are reports of other illegal assassinations undertaken by American forces on behalf of the state for example in:
"ASSASSINATION AND DISPLAY IN IRAQ:
THE KILLINGS OF UDAY AND QUSAI HUSSEIN IN INTERNATIONAL LAW" by
Professor Marjorie Cohn Thomas Jefferson School of Law JURIST Contributing Editor at
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forum/forumnew121.php

Another example being:
"Assassination ban 'no shield' for al-Qaida"
By SHAUN WATERMAN UPI Homeland and National Security Editor at: http://www.upi.com/inc/view.php?StoryID=20050324-075226-2917r

What is the world coming to when states that we normally admire can not only get away with violating the law but when no one takes any notice?

It's THAT time again . . .

I am delighted to be in a position to wish everyone a Happy New Year. I hope and trust that 2006 will be a healthy and happy year for everyone who has been keeping an eye on these pages.

I have to apologise to those of my readers who have been missing my pages in recent times however I have been in a position where I have returned to work full time and I do mean full time.

I have been involved in contract management recently - as subject that I have had very little previous experience with and which has required a very vertical learning curve. The trauma is not yet over as I will actually have to go back to work in between Christmas and the new year break to finalise matters and so am spending what little time I have available to wish everyone a healthy and happy new year.

I hope that in the new year I will have a little more time available to write in this blog and to comment on the events of the day.

For all those who have followed my missives in the last year or so I say thank you and hope that you will be available to follow my commentary in the next year.

While on the subject of communications . . .

I wonder how many people are currently cursing the fact that they have email at work?

Are you receiving so many emails from so many people that you find it hard to cope?

If you are there is a solution, but unfortunately as with most good ideas it requires some effort to realise its benefits.

Ask yourself and your work colleagues the following question:

Is there any time when I am sending or receiving an email at work when I do not want someone else to DO something or I am being asked by someone to DO something?

The answer is of course yes! When you want someone to have access to information then you send them an email with the "FYI" header. In this way the person KNOWS for a certainty that the information in the email which is attached is just that, a piece of information which they can read at their leisure.

What I suspect most people will find is that all the rest of the emails which clutter up our in trays are actually about things that people want is to DO something about.

They may want us to attend a meeting, prepare a report, obtain some information, actually DO something in other words. What is generally unclear in an email is how urgent the matter is and what priority or importance the other person is attaching to the request. What is worse when we send out a note to someone wanting them to do something for us, we also do not put out priority on this request nor necessarily a time frame within which we want a response or the action to be completed and of course we can easily forget that we asked someone to do something because we usually do not place the email into some reminder box.

All this could change if people realised that they can and indeed SHOULD send no more emails to people at work but use the TO DO functionality of either Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes or whatever corporate tool suite they are using for communications.

By doing so - the following can be achieved:

1. there is a reduction in email
2. the is an increase in targeted instructions to others about things they need to do for you
3. there is a priority allocated to the request
4. there is a due date allocated to the request
5. there is means by which the person on the receiving end can come back and tell you whether or not they can comply with your request
6. there is an audit trail that enables you to follow up your requests so that you do not lose sight of the work you are undertaking and asking others to undertake for you.
7. there is a greater ability for people in the work place to manage their work instead of their work managing them

Try this solution among some work colleagues who are willing to go along with you and then show others the benefits that can be obtained. You may well be starting a new revolution in the work place.

UP and DOWN the ORGANISATION

Once upon a time a man by the name of Tom Plaizier developed a game called 'Up and Down the Organisation'.

He managed in just one quick game to demonstrate that if you have an organisational hierarchy in which communications are restricted to just up and down the organisation and are so formal that people are required to only communicate in writing that the rigour effectively blocks communication to such an extent that no work can be done.

These days, I am afraid that I see something slightly different emerging in the work place. With the advent of e-mail most people can send things to virtually anyone both inside and outside an organisation quickly and efficiently.

However, it is the very ease and speed of the exchange that should provide us with some tingling sense of warning.

It is far too easy these days to think nothing of putting fingers to the keyboard and creating a document which is then sent to someone else and MAY in fact be a corporate record. If it is then what most people forget is that the record is kept (or at least should be) on a corporate file. In other words those scatterbrained ideas, comments etc. suddenly appear on a virtually public document and are stored for years if not decades and hence available to anyone.

Pushing the wrong button on a key board has been the downfall of many a person recently. The funny note you wanted to send to your friend suddenly ends up with the wrong person - simply because you got the wrong email address and pressed the send button before you could stop yourself.

Those sardonic remarks that you would make in a confidential whisper in a bar or when passing someone in the corridor end up being not only broadcast to all and sundry but may well be something that is then kept on a file for years for everyone to see, especially auditors and others who you may NOT want to see such things!

In the 'old days' there were standards of communication among people and there were things called 'style sheets' that enabled people to see what was proper form and terms of addressing people. These days all that has gone out the window for the sake of efficiency and effectiveness and all we have left are often ill considered words on some electronic format that may or may not last through time.

My advice to the modern bureaucrat?

THINK before you commit yourself to an email and ask whether or not you would want to make the information public so that it can be seen by anyone. If not re-write it into something you are happy to be made public before you send it!

Mexico City is drinking itself into the ground

In the BBC News there is the following:

Mention a sinking city and it is a fair bet that Venice is the place which comes to mind, yet parts of the centre of Mexico City are sinking at an even faster rate than that of the fabled Italian lagoon city.

Pete's Points:

Apparently the fact that there are now over 20 million people living in this city is partly what is responsible for this phenomenon.

Australians need not worry, unlike Mexico city it is unlikely that Australia will also sink into the abyss.

Mexico city is built on a lake bed. As the people in the city grow in number they are drinking the aquifer that is underneath them dry and this of course causes subsidence.

For the first time in history it is possible to say that a group of people are literally drinking themselves into the ground and this time with water!

What's Old is New Again

Guardian Unlimited Money | Special_reports | Pension age could rise to 68: "The state retirement age could rise to 68 by 2050 under proposals outlined by the Pensions Commission today.

Delivering his long-awaited report on the reform of the UK pensions system, Lord Turner said the UK faced a choice: pensioners will get poorer, 'or we should expect a relentlessly means tested system; or public expenditure on pensions must rise as a percentage of national income; or the state pension age must rise'."

Pete's Points:

When I was younger we were told that the world was there for our taking, future opportunities unlimited and just waiting for us to take advantage of them. We were also told that with the development of technology we would be able to have a greater amount of free time and would be able to work less to produce more as labour saving devices took the stress out of the work place.

Hands up those who KNOW now that we were sold a pup?