World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk

China's manufacturing at 18-month high – live
Queensland’s new anti-bikie laws ‘a recipe for tyranny’, David Simon says
Germany may ask Edward Snowden to be witness in NSA inquiry
David Simon: bikies, wiretaps and the American dream – video
Chinese reporter pioneers crowdfunded investigative journalism
No more arms to Iraq, Obama | Haifa Zangana
The week in wildlife - in pictures
Labor is right: it should not help Tony Abbott dismantle its credible scheme
Climate scientists want business leader to apologise for 'serious slur'
Delegates frustrated as talks to create huge Antarctic marine reserves fail
Searching for global solidarity in the age of inequality
From the archive: 20 years since the Maastricht treaty
Advocacy and divestment: the power to hold business to account
Drug seizures drop in England and Wales: falls in cannabis, cocaine and heroin
Sex assaults at Manus Island centre appear likely to go unpunished
The Red Cross needs to reclaim its hijacked neutrality | Simon Jenkins
Federico Fellini, giant of film, dies: From the archive, 01 November 1993
Labor party signals carbon standoff by demanding emissions trading scheme
For Australia, small business is beautiful
Clive Palmer claims to have proof of Queensland government corruption
Adelaide grows up: ambitious plan to bring back trams to build 'creative city'
China blames East Turkestan Islamic Movement for Beijing attack
Car industry crunch time a defining moment for Tony Abbott
Muslim women can be forced to show faces under new West Australian law
Texas abortion restrictions reinstated by appeals court ruling

China's manufacturing at 18-month high – live

Posted: 01 Nov 2013 01:34 AM PDT

Chinese manufacturing grew at its fastest pace for 18 months in September

Queensland’s new anti-bikie laws ‘a recipe for tyranny’, David Simon says

Posted: 01 Nov 2013 01:30 AM PDT

Screenwriter, in Australia for Festival of Dangerous Ideas, says compelling suspects to answer questions ‘stinks of McCarthyism’

Oliver Laughland

Germany may ask Edward Snowden to be witness in NSA inquiry

Posted: 01 Nov 2013 01:25 AM PDT

Green politician meets US whistleblower in Moscow to discuss possibility of helping parliamentary investigation into US spying

Edward Snowden may be invited to Germany as a witness against the US National Security Agency.

Action is under way in the Bundestag to commission a parliamentary investigation into US intelligence service spying and a German politician met Snowden in Moscow on Thursday to discuss the matter.

Hans-Christian Ströbele, the veteran Green party candidate for Berlin's Kreuzberg district, reported that the US whistleblower was prepared in principle to assist a parliamentary inquiry.

But Ströbele warned of the legal complications that would come with Snowden leaving Russia, where he has been granted asylum after leaking documents on mass NSA surveillance. Witnesses to parliamentary enquiries are usually given the financial support and legal protection required for them to travel to Germany.

During the meeting, Snowden handed Ströbele a letter addressed to the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, which will be read out publicly on Friday afternoon.

The latest developments will encourage those who hope Germany may eventually grant political asylum to Snowden. In June, his application for asylum there was rejected by the foreign ministry because, legally, he had to apply for asylum in person and on German soil. If Snowden was brought to Germany as a witness, he could meet these requirements.

Activists are said to be considering other means of getting Snowden to Germany. Under paragraph 22 of the German residence law, Snowden could be granted a residence permit "if the interior ministry declares it to be in Germany's political interest". After reports of Merkel's mobile phone being hacked by the NSA, such conditions could be said to apply.

A number of German politicians and newspaper columnists have backed calls for Snowden to be invited as a witness. The justice minister, Sabine Leuheusser-Schnarrenberger, told the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper: "If the allegations build up and lead to an investigation, one could think about calling in Snowden as a witness".

Thomas Oppermann, of the Social Democrats, said: "Snowden's claims appear to be credible, while the US government has blatantly lied to us on this matter. That's why Snowden could be an important witness, also in clearing up the surveillance of the chancellor's mobile."

In Süddeutsche Zeitung, the columnist Heribert Prantl wrote: "Granting asylum to Snowden could be a way of restoring Germany's damaged sovereignty".

The Bundestag will hold a special session to discuss NSA spying on 18 November. The Green party and the leftwing Die Linke have been leading calls for that session to result in a parliamentary investigation. Latest reports indicate that the Social Democratic party will support such a move, which would mean it would most likely go ahead.

Philip Oltermann

David Simon: bikies, wiretaps and the American dream – video

Posted: 01 Nov 2013 01:21 AM PDT

Writer, former journalist and creator of the acclaimed TV series The Wire opens up on Australia's war on bikies and the stagnation of the capitalist system

Chinese reporter pioneers crowdfunded investigative journalism

Posted: 01 Nov 2013 01:20 AM PDT

He risks clampdown by Chinese authorities

Roy Greenslade

No more arms to Iraq, Obama | Haifa Zangana

Posted: 01 Nov 2013 01:00 AM PDT

Nouri al-Maliki is meeting Barack Obama to ask for help 'fighting terrorism' .But it's the regime's own militias that Iraqis fear

Barack Obama is meeting Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, today in Washington. According to the official Iraqi story, they are to discuss Maliki's plea to train and equip Iraqi forces with advanced weapons to fight terrorism. If this is heeded, it will add to the crimes committed by the US against Iraqis since the invasion of 2003, as weapons and equipment made available to the regime have, to date, been used only against Iraqi people.

The Maliki regime blames all terrorist acts (frequent car explosions, often in markets, cafes and mosques) on al-Qaida, selectively choosing not to mention the regime's own militias: Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, Iraqi Hezbollah, factions of the Mahdi army, the Badr brigades and the Mokhtar army.

A common belief among Iraqis is that only agents connected to the nearly 1 million strong army and security forces, and especially to the Special Forces (inherited from the occupation, trained by the US and now attached directly to Maliki's office) could carry out such sustained and widespread campaign of terror.

Why is it that so many come to the conclusion that most atrocities blamed on al-Qaida are actually the work of the regime, its factional fighters, and regional actors with links to security services? It is because the regime is the embodiment of the sectarian divide entrenched by the occupation. Its constitution and political process, nurtured by the US and UK, has spawned a kleptocracy of warlords, charlatans, and merchants of religion. Yes, al-Qaida is a presence. But the sectarian political parties that mushroomed after the invasion are also fighting each other, killing thousands of civilians in the process. Almost 3,000 people were killed in acts of violence between July and September this year alone with three times that number wounded. Many of those wounded often die due to lack of medical services. Acts of violence are presented daily on Iraqi TV like the weather forecast in Britain. They are destroying the very fabric of society and pushing people who have been living together for centuries to speak and act about "them" and "us".

Transparency International has described the link between kleptocracy and violence as follows: "Massive embezzlement, procurement scams, money laundering, oil smuggling and widespread bureaucratic bribery … have fuelled political violence and hampered effective state building and service delivery."

Every week, an estimated $800 million is said to be unlawfully transferred out of the country, while Iraqis are left deprived of basic needs.

A climate of fear has been manufactured to allow militias and mafia-like gangs to control daily life while unprecedented campaigns of arrests, detention, torture and executions force dissenting voices to flee the country. In Baghdad, Falluja, southern Nasiriya and other cities, protesters are faced by threats and imprisonment while in Hawija, north of Baghdad, 51 demonstrators were killed and many wounded when security forces and the army attacked a protest camp on 23 April. Three journalists were shot dead in October alone. Iraq is a country where the murders of journalists go unpunished.

Human Rights Watch reports give a stark picture of how fear and terror have been institutionalised: "Forces controlled by the defence, interior, and justice ministries, as well as elite forces reporting directly to the prime minister's office, continued arbitrary detentions of a broad spectrum of detainees, including in secret prisons outside the purview of the interior and justice ministries."

Forty-two prisoners, who included a woman, were executed earlier this month in an act denounced by the UN human rights chief, as "obscene and inhuman". Under current Iraqi law, 48 offences are subject to the death penalty.

No wonder that Iraqis see no way out under the current regime. Even fiercely nationalist organisations like the Association of Muslim Scholars calls for international actions to help Iraq retain its integrity and security.

While Iraqis are struggling relentlessly to achieve that and fight terrorism at the same time, we should also call on the American and British people to take action. They should press their elected governments prohibit security aid, especially arms, to oppressive regimes. Maliki's included.

Haifa Zangana

The week in wildlife - in pictures

Posted: 01 Nov 2013 01:00 AM PDT

A crocodile-elephant stand-off, a stunning chrysalis emerging and a dawn egret are among the pick of this week's images from the natural world

Labor is right: it should not help Tony Abbott dismantle its credible scheme

Posted: 01 Nov 2013 12:59 AM PDT

Guardian Australia: The government it will have to show how Direct Action can deliver, how much it will cost and how it can work in the long term

Lenore Taylor

Climate scientists want business leader to apologise for 'serious slur'

Posted: 01 Nov 2013 12:14 AM PDT

Guardian Australia: David Murray tells ABC interviewer there has been a 'breakdown in integrity' in the science of climate change

Graham Readfearn

Delegates frustrated as talks to create huge Antarctic marine reserves fail

Posted: 01 Nov 2013 12:13 AM PDT

Russia, Ukraine and China scupper plans to protect 'last intact ocean ecosystem on earth'

Talks to create the world's two largest marine reserves in the Antarctic have broken down, with conservationists branding Russia a "repeat offender" for blocking an international agreement.

Delegates from 24 nations and the European Union have been locked in talks in Hobart for the past 10 days at the annual meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR).

But the negotiations have ended in frustration for the nations, including Australia and the US, that proposed vast protected zones around Antarctica, with Russia, Ukraine and China refusing to back the plans.

The US and New Zealand had proposed a 1.3m square kilometre protected area in the Ross Sea. A separate plan put forward by Australia, France and the EU would have kept 1.6m square kilometres of East Antarctica off-limits to fishing. Consensus among the nations was required to ratify the plans.

The failure of the talks is the third time in the past year that the proposals for protected zones have failed to find agreement among the commission's nations. Previously, Russia and Ukraine questioned the legal status of the protected areas.

Andrea Kavanagh, the director of The Pew Charitable Trusts' Southern Ocean sanctuaries project, told Guardian Australia that the failure of the talks was "incredibly disappointing".

"It's a bad day, not just for Antarctica but for the world's oceans, because so many fisheries are over-exploited and this was the one place we could create a reserve," she said. "The fact it can be blocked by a few nations with interests in fishing is very hard to take.

"Russia and Ukraine filibustered until the end. They wanted to open up more areas for fishing and set a time limit of 10 years. Given that it has taken that amount of time to draw up the protected zones, we would've spent more time planning this than protecting it, which is ridiculous.

"I think conservation-minded countries need to take a stand and tell Russia this is unacceptable. There's no reason why fishing nations such as Australia can put up protected zones only for other fishing nations to block them."

The Antarctic waters are home to more than 10,000 unique species, including most of the world's penguins and the rare toothfish.

The region is considered by scientists as vital to the health of the world's marine life. It is estimated that three-quarters of all aquatic life is sustained by the nutrient-rich waters of the Southern Ocean, which are transported by an enormous current into the northern hemisphere.

The commission will reconvene in Hobart again in October 2014, although conservationists aren't hopeful of a better result.

"What we have witnessed over the past few years is the steady erosion of the spirit and mandate of CCAMLR to conserve the last intact ocean ecosystem remaining on earth," said Farah Obaidullah, Greenpeace International oceans campaigner.

"This year's failure denigrates the reputation of CCAMLR and is symptomatic of a dangerous global trend where corporate and political interests override any genuine efforts to protect the oceans for the sake of future generations."

Oliver Milman

Searching for global solidarity in the age of inequality

Posted: 01 Nov 2013 12:00 AM PDT

Internationalism's goal to secure basic needs for all remains relevant, but we must move away from being sensationalist

The first New Internationalist magazine rolled off the presses in 1973. Put together with a tin of Cow gum and Letraset, and priced 25p, it featured an interview with Kenneth Kaunda, the first president of independent Zambia.

The 1970s was a time of optimism: more African states had gained independence, idealistic leaders were demanding change, UK living standards were rising. A new global economic order was seen as right and just, even by the political establishment.

In those days, internationalism meant a commitment to securing "basic needs for all" – it was believed that clean water, sufficient food and seeing your children grow into adulthood should not be the preserve of the prosperous north. For our magazine, it also meant educating developed countries about the true causes of global poverty. Inequalities were not, as Kaunda and several other leaders were keen to stress, a historical accident but the consequence of a set of economic relationships rigged to the north's advantage.

In some ways, our mission has not changed much; but the balance of power has. The global south has its own rapacious elites – Oxfam reports that 5% of Indians own 50% of the country's wealth. But the gap between the richest and poorest countries has grown; and the excluded – those without political power, the isolated and discriminated against – continue to lose out. It prompted New Internationalist's founder, Peter Adamson, to describe the 21st century as the age of inequality and call for greater focus on the poorest 20%.

What do these changes mean for those who hold internationalism dear? Our 40th anniversary blogging series threw up some big ideas. One bugbear is the very idea of development. The term is such a semantic muddle that it can also mean multinationals seizing land from women farmers in Mozambique, or real estate growth in China. Many of those who understand development as the route to more resources and rights for the poor want to ditch the term altogether.

Nick Dearden is director of World Development Movement (WDM), which aims to tackle the root causes of world poverty. The organisation is another child of the 1970s. He says the organisation is planning a name change and also lambasts the habit of conflating solidarity with charity. This reduces the internationalist to doing good while leaving the poverty producing architecture intact. Without the grounding of mutual respect and common cause, aid recipients remain distant victims.

This is a pernicious problem. One worker from an international NGO recounted how a supporter called to say that after seeing beneficiaries with mobile phones they would no longer donate. The implication is that we like our Africans supine, not people taking charge.

Senegalese entrepreneur Mariéme Jamme is so fed up with Comic Relief's grim parade of African suffering that she has called for it to be banned. Humiliating representations of poor people are often cited by majority world spokespeople who reject aid, despite chronic need in their home country.

Even Avaaz, the formidable online campaign group, is at fault. It has helped to internationalise local causes with impressive results. But its recent push to end child labour in India featured a weeping, wretched child, which, if you downloaded it, retained its glib title of "crying kid". There are dignified ways to portray harsh realities; those of us in the business of global solidarity must do better.

Solidarity stripped of history is another no-go. It leads to campaigns such as US NGO Invisible Children's Kony 2012, whose slick video crusade against the brutal Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) leader, Joseph Kony, went viral. A classic case of motivate over educate, it appalled Ugandans for its oversimplification of the conflict and for casting the US as would-be saviours.

When global solidarity so often misses the mark, it's no surprise that New Internationalist and WDM are not the only ones suffering an identity crisis. The Sheffield Institute for International Development has decided to reframe its area of study as "global justice". In her blog, Professor Jean Grugel makes a compelling case for the urgent need to catch injustice at source, by focusing back to the structural political and economic changes needed to make a fairer world.

A sharper focus on justice helps to focus the internationalist mind. Ever-growing inequality and the rollicking wealth of the 1% should bring it home to the British public that solidarity applies within and across borders.

We can draw on Britain's radical history here. Don Flynn from the Migrants Rights Network, recalls leafleting Liverpool dockers to agitate against Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood speech. He sees the same spirit of solidarity rising again in the interconnected world of new generations.

It is time to line up behind an internationalism that is properly informed and compassionate, not sentimental and sensationalist. This means embracing complexity, not oversimplifying. In the UK, it may also mean fanning the flames of your local Bonfire of Austerity on 5 November.

Hazel Healy is co-editor of the New Internationalist

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

From the archive: 20 years since the Maastricht treaty

Posted: 01 Nov 2013 12:00 AM PDT

20 years since the Maastricht treaty came into force, we take a look at some of the key moments and how the Guardian reported them

It's 20 years since the much-maligned Maastricht Treaty came into force on 1 November 1993, signalling the end of the European Community and the arrival of the European Union.

The event was met with little fanfare in Brussels, or indeed anywhere else. As the Guardian's former European editor John Palmer wrote at the time, there was "no tape-cutting or flag-waving."

In Britain there was even less chance of any flag-waving or tape-cutting. The new Union earned only a small square of the Guardian's front page, with Ed Pilkington highlighting the "deafening silence" that welcomed its arrival.

A very small sample of public opinion was featured in the Guardian on 29 May 1993, when inhabitants of Mastrick, Aberdeen were asked for their view. The majority were less than enthusiastic.

Since its anti-climatic birth, the EU has provided consistent background noise of Tory party discontent. Disputes have spanned topics ranging from agricultural policy to economic skullduggery and, most contentiously, chocolate. In 2000, MEPs finally voted to allow British chocolate to be sold on European soil, ending a 27-year dispute over cocoa content.

Fifteen years after Maastricht left the majority of Brits non-plussed, the Lisbon Treaty was signed with similar levels of enthusiasm back home. In typical EU style, there was a distinct lack of flair. As Guardian columnist Timothy Garton Ash put it at the time, the treaty read "more like a manual for a forklift truck" than an inspiring political constitution.

Gordon Brown managed to steal the headlines by turning up three hours after other leaders and signing the Treaty alone, prompting some particularly harsh words from the Guardian in this editorial dated 13 December 2007.

Phil Lewis

Advocacy and divestment: the power to hold business to account

Posted: 01 Nov 2013 12:00 AM PDT

Shareholders' use of advocacy and divestment to engage businesses is increasingly pushing companies to look beyond legal boundaries and consider ethical boundaries too

When the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust (UK) decided to divest from Reed Elsevier after having tried to convince the company to sell its arms fairs division, it couldn't have imagined that its action would have such a significant impact.

The Quaker-based trust's decision became not the end of the two-year shareholder engagement process but the tipping point. While all the letter writing and C-level meetings did not change the company's standpoint that its business was legal, publicised divestment resulted in public opinion turning against the company, and made Reed Elsevier switch from focusing on a strictly legal approach to more of a stakeholder approach.

While an exit – a shareholder selling all the shares held in a company – might be perceived as an end to the engagement process with the management of a company, it seems that threatening divestment, or divesting itself, actually forms part of an ongoing process for socially-engaged shareholders. Investors concerned about the social and environmental impact of companies are increasingly choosing to use voice – or advocacy – over exit as a strategy.

A recent publication in the Journal of Business Ethics by business schools ESADE, Audencia and the International Interfaith Investment Group 3iG argued that engagement with companies is a dynamic process during which the shareholder may switch between private and public action: private dialogue with company representatives combined with public statements around divesting. The active shareholder also remains active as an ex-shareholder, and may well reinvest if the company corrects the issue of concern.

Much engagement remains offline, according to the chairman of the Church of England Ethical Investment Advisory Group, who explained that ''most of what we do is confidential and goes on with a company with a very constructive relationship''. Nevertheless, The Church of England saw divestment as the last line of attack in a dispute about the human rights stance of mining company Vedanta in India. ''The impact of our disinvestment… was part of the process, it has prompted the company to start potentially changing its behaviour,'' the church says. Since the divestment, Vendanta has made senior appointments in CSR and governance and its standards, and while it might not have gone as far as the church would have liked, it shows some positive outcome to shareholder engagement.

The chair of the Quaker Trust investment committee, referring to its divestment in Reed Elsevier, said: ''Selling our shares was the most effective thing we've done because it brought this campaign into the headlines of the press and invigorated the other people like the doctors and the lawyers, and the NGOs."

Engagement does not happen in a vacuum. Three stages from the perspective of the shareholder are distinguished in the process of engagement: issue-raising, information search and change-seeking activities. Poor company response can lead to a public exit, which can trigger a new company response with the potential of reattracting the shareholders money if the response is satisfactory.

Interestingly, the number of shares held is not critical to a company's response. The research showed that religious organisations can increase their impact when publically announcing divestment. Indeed, the divestment from the Quakers in the Reed Elsevier case was regarded by them as a successful engagement. The media attention led to more campaigning and, later that year, the arms division was sold and the Quakers reinvested in the company. The combination of public advocacy and exit led to the desired outcome and a satisfactory response.

While arms fairs continue to exist, the net slowly narrows around the potential suppliers. Engagement by social shareholders, such as the religious organisations, is increasingly challenging listed companies to think beyond the legal boundaries of their businesses. They have to set ethical values, be transparent and act on them.

But not only are the companies themselves confronted to define their ethical boundaries; also the investor groups, whether pension funds, religious organisations or financial services providers, can no longer hide behind "the client/member is king" approach. They have to articulate their values and live up to them. Members or clients can choose to remain part of their organisation or not. They can also use the dynamics of voice and exit to influence their church, pension fund or bank.

Katinka van Cranenburgh is secretary general of the International Interfaith Investment Group, which conducts research among religious organisations in partnership with business schools and universities

This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. Become GSB member to get more stories like this direct to your inbox

Drug seizures drop in England and Wales: falls in cannabis, cocaine and heroin

Posted: 01 Nov 2013 12:00 AM PDT

The number of drug seizures has dropped on the previous year. Why has there been a fall? And is it crack, cocaine, heroin or cannabis being seized the most?

• Get the data

Drug seizures in England and Wales appear to have begun to fall again with the 193,980 recorded in 2012 representing a drop of 17,000 on the previous year, according to data released by the Home Office.

Although this cannot be confirmed due to insufficient data from Surrey and Hampshire there has been an overall drop of 8% in the number of drug seizures when those two forces are excluded from the totals for 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 .

If that drop rate applied to Surrey and Hampshire's numbers as well, then last year would have seen the lowest rate of drug seizures in England and Wales since 2006.

There has been a huge rise in drug seizures over the past decade with the number doubling from 112,000 in 2004 to 240,000 in 2008. Since then, there has been a steady fall but the total number of seizures rose again in 2011.

Seizures are down for three of the big four Class A drugs: heroin, crack and cocaine. Although the number of ecstasy incidents went up slightly, the quantity of ecstasy seized actually dropped by 34% between 2011-12 and 2012-13 from 655,000 doses to 434,000 doses.

Soberingly, the number of cocaine incidents at 16,000 in 2012 remains at more than double the 7,200 in 2003. This means cocaine remains the most-seized Class A drug in England and Wales.

Only a few drugs registered rises in the quantity seized in 2012-13 compared to the previous year: anabolic steroids, amphetamines and ketamine.

Cannabis: Britain's most seized upon drug

The drug seized in the highest quantities by the police and the UK Border Agency is cannabis. Although it is unclear whether the overall figures of cannabis seizures have gone down since 2010, due to the incomplete data from Surrey and Hampshire, there has been a considerable drop on the previous year when those forces are excluded from the totals.

There was a marked decline in the number of times seizures involved cannabis resin, the sticky brown substance that is taken off unfertilised buds when the plant has matured.

The falls in cannabis were a lot more stark when it came to quantity seized. There was a 42% drop in herbal cannabis from 22,206 kg to 12,267 kg and a 45% drop in the quantity of cannabis resin from 19,473 kg to 11,320 kg. 507,401 cannabis plants were seized, which was a fall of 19% on the previous year.

Local drugs seizures

Although the UK Border Agency has a lower number of seizures for almost every major drug besides crack and cannabis plants it is seizing a larger quantity than all UK police forces combined.

80% of cocaine, 69% of Ecstasy, 59% of heroin, 69% of herbal cannabis and 63% of cannabis resin was seized by the UKBA last year.

Obviously, however, police forces seize a much higher number of cannabis plants: 507, 396 to the UK Border Agency's five.

The Metropolitan's police's 49,832 drug seizures made it the force with the highest number in England and Wales, followed by Greater Manchester police with 9214.

When you divide the number of seizures in each police force area by the population it covers then the top ten locations for drug seizures in the UK are relatively surprising.

Dyfed-Powys, which polices Ceredigion, Carmarthenshire, Pembrokeshire and Powys in Wales had a rate of 6,521 seizures for every million in the population. This gives it the highest concentration of drug seizures for any police force in England and Wales besides the anomalous City of London police.

Get the numbers and get involved

Download the full spreadsheet
Contact us at data@theguardian.com
Follow us on Twitter

George Arnett

Sex assaults at Manus Island centre appear likely to go unpunished

Posted: 31 Oct 2013 11:39 PM PDT

Review suggests that while some charges have been laid, detainees have been transferred and cannot be prosecuted

Paul Farrell

Oliver Laughland

The Red Cross needs to reclaim its hijacked neutrality | Simon Jenkins

Posted: 31 Oct 2013 11:30 PM PDT

As it turns 150, the ICRC must work to reassert its reputation – undermined by Blair's wars and political adventurism

Polio has broken out in Syria. What are we going to do about it? There are refugees starving in the Sahara and drowning off Italy. Shias are being massacred in Iraq, Congolese are being raped, Egyptians tortured, Roma trafficked, Pashtun villagers drone-bombed. You can't stand idly by. Do something.

This week is the 150th anniversary of the forming of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), in 1863. Four years earlier a Swiss businessman, Henry Dunant, was passing through the Italian village of Castiglione and found it swamped by soldiers from the battle of Solferino. The armies had departed, leaving 40,000 dead and wounded on the battlefield. Dunant desperately rallied the villagers to bring water and dress wounds on both sides. For him the task was straightforward. He had arrived after the event and needed simply to clear up the mess. His principle of impartiality held. Even during two world wars, the red cross symbolised neutrality, humanity's simple protest against the orgy of suffering.

Today that is not so easy. There are hundreds of similar charities round the world, each with overlapping ambitions. I remember a colleague returning from Ethiopia during the 1983-85 famine dismayed at the chaos of the refugee camps, with charity and NGO tents pitched like rival armies across the field of misery. Each craved publicity for fundraising back home. There was no co-ordination.

These things are better organised today by the UN and disaster relief committees. The ICRC has itself sprouted national societies and Red Crescent affiliates. But after the catastrophes in Ethiopia and Yugoslavia a spell was broken. The suffering was seen as politically engendered and complex. These were acts not of God but of men. Why pour aid into Ethiopia when it was either stolen or assisted mass relocation? The charitable prerogative was complicated by politics and diplomacy. Soon it was corrupted by a military embrace. Linda Polman wrote a book, War Games, arguing that aid was furthering war rather than countering it.

Tony Blair's famous (or infamous) Chicago speech of April 1999, instigating the Kosovan war, was trumpeted by him as signalling "the first of a new generation of liberal humanitarian wars". From then on, liberal interventionism was identified not with Red Cross neutrality but with bombs falling and guns blazing "to save little children".

Noam Chomsky pointed to the irony of the emergent concept of "a new military humanism" and to the obscenity of using the least humanitarian weapon, the air-dropped bomb, in its cause. Even Henry Kissinger called Blair's approach "irresponsible", and Bill Clinton's White House complained of Blair having "too much adrenaline on his cornflakes".

A severe toll was inflicted on the Red Cross. Though its work extends to relieving natural disasters and supplementing healthcare, its classic purpose remains impartial relief in time of war, notably where civilians are caught in crossfire. It struggles to sustain an image of neutrality. In Afghanistan this has worked. The Red Crescent has access to prisoners held by the Taliban and trains Taliban first-aid workers, whereas other aid organisations are seen as in collusion with the Nato occupation.

But even the ICRC cannot avoid the taint of association with western interventionism. The attack on its Baghdad headquarters in 2003 suggested its impartiality was no longer universally acknowledged. Red Cross staff have been in killed in Chechnya, Sri Lanka, Congo and Syria and the tempo of such attacks, as on aid workers of all persuasions, has increased.

In 2005 the ICRC commissioned a report on its neutrality which concluded emphatically that "military force … as an instrument for gaining peace is for the Red Cross not applicable". That seems ever more like spitting in the wind. Humanitarian agencies spring up by the week, often in the lucrative baggage train of the military-industrial complex. As a result, foreign intervention in today's "wars among the peoples" risks not just being seen as aiding one side but as actually doing so. This is particularly the case when, as often, western military invasion and occupation have been justified as humanitarian. Like "peacekeeping" of old, the parlance of modern war can be contradictory.

As a result, "doing something" has come to imply something political, if not military. On Thursday the former British foreign secretary and champion of Blair's wars, David Miliband, visited the BBC to promote his International Rescue Committee's efforts to get polio vaccine to Syria. He could not resist confusing humanitarian relief with more partisan intervention. He demanded "a humanitarian ceasefire" in Syria and a "rallying of a sense of outrage and also a determination to do something".

The Red Cross may protest its humanitarian purity, but its mission has been hijacked and compromised by political and military adventurism. How can a British NGO be safely neutral in Syria when Britain's prime minister has called for war against the Damascus government? It is dreadful but perhaps not surprising that doctors are targeted at checkpoints for delivering aid "to the wrong side".

The urge to relieve human suffering is profound, even if it means interfering in another country's affairs. It may seem sanitised by being called intervention, but interference it remains. To be lawful, it must be utterly divorced from politics and diplomacy and, above all, it cannot seem to give moral purchase to war. War has its own logic, its own morality. Charity's business is not to end war but to relieve war's consequences.

Of all Blair's legacies, the most outrageous is the jeering accusation that non-violent humanitarianism is "standing idly by", is doing nothing. Blair's wars undermined Dunant's concept of impartial neutrality. Somehow, the ICRC desperately needs to reassert it.

Simon Jenkins

Federico Fellini, giant of film, dies: From the archive, 01 November 1993

Posted: 31 Oct 2013 11:30 PM PDT

Italy leads the world of cinema in mourning a man whose films were a blend of reality, wit, fantasy and brazen self-indulgence

The renowned film director Federico Fellini died at midday yesterday, ending a 90-day struggle for health and later for life, and closing an era in both 20th century Italian culture and world cinema.

On the day after his 50th wedding anniversary, Fellini's heart finally gave way under the stress of a haemorrhage which had crippled his left side.

He died, aged 73, in the Umberto I Polyclinic hospital in Rome, although he first fell ill in his home town of Rimini on August 3. Fellini insisted on leaving the Rome hospital as late as October 17 for the evening to take his wife, Giulietta Masina, to dinner. He went into the coma soon afterwards.'Fifty years ago,' said Ms Masina, 'I realised that this was a man for me. Now I have no will but to follow him.'

Fellini had left his own inimitable mark on cinema with his films which were a blend of reality, wit, fantasy and brazen self-indulgence. Among the films considered his masterpieces were: La Strada, La Dolce Vita, Roma, Amarcord, 8½, and latterly, Ginger and Fred. He won Oscars for five of his films and a special Oscar this year for his services to cinema.

Fellini was one of the four giants of Italian cinema in the post-war years. With two others - Rossellini and Visconti - already dead, the sole survivor is Michelangelo Antonioni.

One of the first of hundreds of tributes to be delivered yesterday was from Francesco Rosi, one of the generation of Italian film directors which followed that of Fellini.

'He was a genius,' said Mr Rosi, 'of a greatness which is irreplaceable; a greatness for Italy, for the world and for art. Dear Federico, I am already missing you a great deal.'

President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro arrived to pay his respects and later released a statement saying, 'the voice of this artist lives on in Italy and the world. It is a voice of life that knows no sunset.'

The prime minister, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, said Italy 'revered Fellini as one of its great national poets.'

The actress Sophia Loren, who presented Fellini with his life achievement Oscar earlier this year, commented: 'A great light has gone out and now we are all in the dark.'

Ed Vulliamy

Labor party signals carbon standoff by demanding emissions trading scheme

Posted: 31 Oct 2013 11:23 PM PDT

Guardian Australia: Bill Shorten says Labor 'won’t be bullied by Tony Abbott because he doesn’t accept the science of climate change'

Katharine Murphy

For Australia, small business is beautiful

Posted: 31 Oct 2013 11:08 PM PDT

Lyn Goodear: Small enterprises are the backbone of the country – and if Abbott's government gets one thing right, it will be to support them

Lyn Goodear

Clive Palmer claims to have proof of Queensland government corruption

Posted: 31 Oct 2013 10:43 PM PDT

Mining magnate declares he has 'direct evidence' as he is officially declared winner of Fairfax recount

Mining magnate Clive Palmer used the occasion of the official declaration of his winning of a federal parliamentary seat to say he will produce proof that the Queensland state government is corrupt.

Palmer won the Sunshine Coast seat of Fairfax with 53 more votes than his closest contender, the Liberal National party candidate Ted O'Brien.

The Australian Electoral Commission officially declared the victory on Friday after a recount and Palmer took the opportunity to put the boot into the state government.

He had declared them corrupt on Thursday night on ABC's 7.30 Report and at the victory declaration said the Queensland government was favouring particular private companies and he had "direct evidence".

"We'll be revealing that information soon so people can see that," he said.

Palmer also praised the AEC workers who had spent the past two months counting and recounting the votes, despite being a vocal critic of the commission.

"Today is not about a celebration of a party, it's about a triumph of democracy," he said.

"The AEC plays a critical role in an important moment to protect the rights that we've all got as Australians."

Palmer said he would push for reform of the electoral system so voters would never again have to wait so long for a result – it took almost two months after the election for Palmer to be declared the winner.

"Should this election be decided two months after we stopped voting? The Electoral Act of 1918 may be different from the Electoral Act of 2014. It would be great if we could get the result on the night of election so that so many people wouldn't have to spend so long counting votes," he said.

Bridie Jabour