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"We need to understand different cultures and perspectives as part of how we do business and relate," says Mr Campbell. "So there's actually a public good in all of this."

The hunt for evidence against Japan in its "scientific hunt" for whales became highly contentious when the crew of the environmental crusader ship Sea Shepherd was accused of piracy and violence after activists threw bottles of "acid" and boarded a Japanese whaling ship.

Tokyo wants to ensure Mr Rudd's first trip to Japan as Prime Minister is positive and concentrates on climate change and potential joint regional aid projects rather than whaling and the perceived snub in his failure to include Japan on last month's 17-day world trip, which included four days in China.

In December, Australia issued a demarche, or formal diplomatic protest, on behalf of numerous nations over Japan's plans to cull about 900 minke whales and 50 fin whales.

It is estimated that Australia's "evidence gathering" to form a case against Japanese whalers in an international court, which included the voyage of the Oceanic Viking and aerial surveillance, cost taxpayers more than $1 million. The Rudd Government has been "considering" the evidence for three months and has still not made a decision.

pro-Chinese to the point of being anti-Japanese.

"agree to disagree on whaling".

The Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister have signalled they want an end to the diplomatic row with Japan although they still vigorously oppose whaling.

Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Andrew Robb said yesterday Mr Rudd had to calm relations between Australian and Japan. Mr Robb said Mr Rudd's perceived "China bias" had caused concerns in Indonesia, Japan and India.

Mr Robb said the Prime Minister had sent a "gun boat" after Japanese whaling ships without picking up the phone to Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda.

Germany, it turns out, exports nearly a billion euros worth of military goods each year ($1.55 billion) to developing countries.

That makes Germany the European Union's biggest military goods exporter, and worldwide it's behind only the US and Russia,

The BICC's annual report, guest-authored by former UN Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix, focused on the rise of military spending all over the world, a development that the end of the Cold War was supposed to reverse. Instead, global spending on weapons and armies rose by 15 percent between 2001 and 2006. Today it tops €650 billion ($1.1 trillion). A third of that is spent by the US.

"We see a revival of Cold War politics without the Cold War -- a Cold Peace, if you will."

"Apart from America there are a number of fast-growing countries -- like China, India, Indonesia and Pakistan, not to mention Russia -- where the global trend towards militarization is showing itself most clearly,"

Hence Apple -- like Amazon -- reserves the right to remotely meddle with your iPhone at any time and without the consent of the user, in order to delete objectionable applications. All with the best of intentions, of course

A shift to tethered applicances also entails a sea change in the regulability of the Internet" (author's emphasis). The "dangers of excess" will no longer come from viruses or hackers anymore, "but from the much more predictable interventions by regulators

We will need to get used to the fact that these "curious technological hybrids" will never fully belong to us -- even if we have paid a lot of money for them.

Last week, three Chinese directors withdrew films, with two denying they were forced to do so by Chinese authorities. Director Tang Xiaobai, who withdrew her film Perfect Life after being phoned by the Chinese Foreign Ministry and the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, said it was her decision to boycott the festival."I do not want to see my film screened on the same platform as a film about Kadeer," Tang told the official English-language newspaper China Daily.

What has Ji been charged with? For wanting to protest? For being a regime critic? For seeking to harm China's national image at a time -- the Beijing Olympics -- when preserving its image was paramount?

It also exposes how naïve and deceitful it was for the IOC to have claimed that China would open itself up for the Olympic Games, and that the games would open up China.

In fact, it is so laughable that one could almost presume that the IOC was in league with the government and party leadership in Beijing from the start and consistently kept both eyes tightly shut

They had no case. No crime had been committed, not even a minor offence

Loach's

The role of political actors, and the nation state in particular, in the film industry is enormous.

the film appears as the product of an individual visionary. This view of filmmaking is about as realistic as the standard Hollywood happy ending. The reality is that films are rarely, if ever, the personal, unadulterated vision of a director. They are influenced or, depending on your point of view, compromised from the start by those who bankroll the films.

what gets far less attention is the extensive role played by political actors in the filmmaking process.

In some respects, the most surprising thing about these kerfuffles is not that they have happened, but that they don't happen more often. While most of us think of film festivals as cultural events, the truth is that they are also deeply political events.

most films would not be made were it not for generous state subsidies.

And in spite of nice-sounding claims about facilitating cultural dialogue, nation states don't fund films because they love a good story. They do so because film can be a highly effective means of spreading influence. Since they're footing the bill, it's understandable that they want a say in the content of the film and how it is positioned.

films and film festivals are the continuation of politics by other means. It shouldn't be imagined that this applies only to authoritarian states such as China or political organisations with clear political objectives. Nearly every Australian film is made with some public money, and so filmmakers are subject to similar, if far more sophisticated and subtle, forms of state influence.

China has miscalculated the extent of its reach and, in the process, provided both the Kadeer documentary and the film festival an avalanche of publicity. And Ken Loach, in remarkably poor political judgment, has effectively silenced himself by withdrawing his film.

The controversy brought a wave of local and international publicity. MIFF has been a fixture in the news pages and on the radio. The overseas coverage included mentions in The New Yorker, a live interview with CNN and coverage on the BBC. The attention, Mr Moore hopes, might have a flow-on effect, a reminder to people that this is an important festival. The festival had already become the subject of news stories when director Ken Loach withdrew his feature film, Looking for Eric, because of MIFF sponsorship by the Israeli Government.

"It's a very, very concerted and pointed attack," Mr Moore said. "Everyone's watching this - it's totally global." The email provides instructions for loading tickets into "shopping carts" from the festival's website, and Chinese are being urged to teach others how to "purchase" MIFF tickets online.

The online economy is about the size of the German economy. And it's based on a default price of zero. Most things online are available in a free form. We have never seen an economy this big with a default price of zero. I realized that we needed an economic model to explain how an economy could be based on "free." And we need to understand the psychology of that. We have the psychology of free, we're drawn to it, but we feel cheated by it. If something used to be paid for and then it becomes free, we think the quality is lower. But if something has always been free, and remains free, we don't think that.

The Google idea is fantastic. But you can only do so much with text. It's very good for transactions, but it is very poor for brands.

there had been a drop in inquiries from prospective students in India, but interest from China, Australia's No. 1 source of international students, remained strong.

The West often accuses Egypt of being a breeding ground for fanatics, but in actuality we are getting extremists from Europe.

Agents treat the foreign students who are arrested terribly." He says this has an adverse effect. "This way you create an enemy you might not have had before."

Ashraf, a 26-year-old Dutchman of Moroccan descent, came to Cairo a year ago. "To learn Arabic," he says, "the language of my religion."

"We aren't hurting anyone," says Ashraf, whose apartment was recently searched. "We only come to study and pray."

"Religious fanatics want to be taken seriously," says Walid al-Gohari, founder and director of the Al-Fajr institute, one of the many language schools in Nasr City. "But Salafists who don't even know Arabic are not considered credible."

The Egyptian security service is concerned about the situation. It therefore keeps a close eye on fundamentalist visitors with a European passport.

As a precaution, the security service picked up hundreds of foreign students in a few days time, among them a few from the Netherlands.