The International Criminal Court (ICC) is a worthy successor to the mess that was the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, as anyone could have predicted:
The trial had been scheduled to start on 23 June, but judges postponed it following complaints from the defence that prosecutors had not handed over about 200 documents.
The papers included "a significant body of exculpatory evidence", the judges said in their ruling, which was released on Monday.
"The trial process has been ruptured to such a degree that it is now impossible to piece together the constituent elements of a fair trial," the judgement stated.
They will meet on 24 June to decide whether Mr Lubanga should be freed and the case against him halted.
Halting it is probably the only way to avoid the defendant dying from old age during the trial, which was what happened to Milosevic (and which I predicted back in 2004!).
In 1993, novelist Michael Crichton riled the news business with a Wired magazine essay titled "Mediasaurus," in which he prophesied the death of the mass media—specifically the New York Times and the commercial networks. "Vanished, without a trace," he wrote.
The mediasaurs had about a decade to live, he wrote, before technological advances—"artificial intelligence agents roaming the databases, downloading stuff I am interested in, and assembling for me a front page"—swept them under. Shedding no tears, Crichton wrote that the shoddy mass media deserved its deadly fate.
In 2003, I suspect a lot of mass media people were laughing when looking back to this prediction. I doubt they laugh now.
I am not so sure Crichton is right that people will self-organise their news gathering, neither that programmed, automated agents will do it for them. I think, in the foreseeable future, human news filters will still have a great influence on what people watch and read. The sources may be more diversified, but the first business that cracks the code to the future of mass media is going to become huge. It will become the Google of news media (it may even be Google, but I doubt that).
Signs are emerging that Iraq has reached a turning point. Violence is down, armed extremists are in disarray, government confidence is rising and sectarian communities are gearing up for a battle at the polls rather than slaughter in the streets.
Those positive signs are attracting little attention in the United States, where the war-weary public is focused on the American presidential contest and skeptical of talk of success after so many years of unfounded optimism by the war's supporters.
Obviously, amid the good news, there is more than enough bad omens for the future. The military successes have so far not been followed up by political progress. Sectarian violence is way down, but sectarian distrust is very deep and, judging by places like Northern Ireland or Yugoslavia, will not heal very soon. Like in every third world country, corruption and misgovernment are endemic, and the people don't see the windfall of record oil prices.
Ultimately, the Iraqis will have to win the Iraq war. Their willingness and ability to do so may well decide the future security policies in the US and other western countries for decades to come.
