Description:
Eco, Social and Legal Justice
Contents:
Better ideas than Doha
Kevin Gallagher thinks that Doha isn’t quite worth the effort at the moment, suggests a break and has five steps to more meaningful trade negotiations. Reminds me of Collier’s suggestion in Bottom Billion to start all WTO rounds with concessions from rich countries that won’t come into effect until the round is complete. ShareThis 
Religion and Development
Aid agencies are rightly a bit worried about religious groups getting involved in helping people. There has been a history of bad outcomes associated with people not understanding how good development/emergency help works (eg. ‘adopting’ children after the Tsunami). That said, as this post points out ignoring religion means agencies are missing out on what could be a terrific help. The Church, for example, is virtually everywhere, commands the respect of people and provides a network of relationships that aren’t readily available by other means.ShareThis 
Paying people not to get STDs
MarginalRevolution points out this study where the World Bank is paying 3,000 Tanzanians $45 if they test negative to STDs. It will be interesting to see if this works - some good comments on the post too.ShareThis 
The WTO and Stare Decisis
Good quote from Anon200 on IELP Blog, on the recent US - Stainless Steel Appellate Body report criticising the Panel for failing to follow past AB reports.
Here is how I interpret what the AB did here:
MEMO
To: Future Panels
From: The Appellate Body
You really, really should follow prior Appellate Body decisions. It would be quite bad for the system if you do not. But if you’ve got what you think are compelling reasons for not doing so, we understand if you feel you have to go your own way. Bearing in mind, of course, that if you do, we will almost certainly reverse you on appeal. You may think your reasons are pretty good, but if they were really that persuasive we would have gone that way ourselves, hence they are not, in fact, “cogent”.
more from OJ ShareThis 
ICTR distances itself from Human Rights Watch
Strange news from the ICTR, the Prosecutor has distanced itself from Human Rights Watch claiming that HRW sources are “inadmissible and not very reliable. This is because of the HRW resisting ICTR attempts to move trials to Rwandan courts to fulfil its completion strategy and ignores the fact that the Prosecutor has used HRW sources in virtually all trials.ShareThis 
Ugandan Rice Trade Barriers
Zachary argues in Foreign Policy that Uganda has recently revitalised it’s rice industry by “Ignoring decades of bad Western advice” and imposing restrictions on rice imports. ShareThis 
Where’s all the water?
Great graphic over at Aguanomics on where the world’s water is. 97.5% in the oceans, 68.7% of freshwater in glaciers. Eegads! The geographic location/ownership of world water resources would be interesting too.ShareThis 
2,000 Wikipedias every year
This speech by Clay Shirky is probably one of the most important things I’ve read for a while. In it he answers that question I get asked all to often - “Where do you find the time?”. He estimates that the time Americans watch TV every year is equivalent to 2,000 Wikipedias! In fact, the time watching advertisements is 1 Wikipedia every weekend. Crazy stuff.ShareThis 
How to use Google Scholar with Melbourne University Subscriptions
It’s that time of semester again, essays due, exams coming. Here’s a quick hint to make your research a smidgen easier (if you’re at the University of Melbourne that is).
While we all love SuperSearch and being able to search all the big databases at once, store our finds for later use, etc. Sometimes it is just a bit easier to use Google Scholar to get those hard to find sources and keep all your research sorted.
The hard part is clicking through the Google Scholar search results and needing a subscription to view the articles. Of course we have a subscription through UniMelb, but Google Scholar doesn’t know that. The good news is that the uni uses EzProxy which means it’s actually pretty easy to construct URLs to link you into the subscription services.
You just add http://ezproxy.lib.unimelb.edu.au/login?url= to the start of the URL you get from Google Scholar and if the uni has a subscription to the Journal/Database you can login and connect to the source.
To make things easier, I made a ‘bookmarklet’ that you can add to your bookmark toolbar in your browser. You just click it and it automatically adds the URL to the start of the page you are on. To use it just drag the link below to your toolbar, or add it to your bookmarks, then just click it when you need it.
UniMelb EzProxy Bookmarklet
I probably haven’t explained this very well, so if you need more info ask in the comments.
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Gans on admissible evidence in Australia
Jeremy Gans is hilarious as always when reflecting on the approach of judges to evidence in Australia:He said that he would have done the usual Australian judicial thing in relation to the question of excluding the evidence: letting it in on the grounds that the police didn’t kill anyone and Darby is a nasty moustache-twirling villain.
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