Mission & Justice

Stephen Fitzpatrick; 12/6/08

Controvesial former East Timorese defence minister Roque Rodriguez is to be dismissed from his role as security consultant to President Jose Ramos Horta, after a flurry of high-level cables between Dili and New York over the UN appointment. The sacking comes as senior security analysts in the country warn of a dangerous lurch back towards anarchy, even as the UN prepares for the “expedited” withdrawal of its international police force. Mr Rodriguez, implicated in the weapons distribution scandal that led to former interior minister Rogerio Lobato being jailed for seven years last year, signed a substantial deal several weeks ago, understood to have been for up to 12 months, to help advise on security sector reform. This was despite a commission of inquiry in 2006 recommending that he face criminal charges over the violence earlier that year, in which dozens died.

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Ruth Pollard;12/4/08

After the Twin Towers fell, Susan Faludi saw conservative commentators open a second front, against women, in the war on terrorism. “I haven’t been called morally deranged,” Susan Faludi says. “At least, not to my face.” The feminist author and journalist, who has been chronicling what she calls the war against women for the best part of two decades, has dodged many a verbal bullet. But what she observed as the Twin Towers crumpled in New York on September 11 defied belief. Almost immediately, the women’s movement was labelled “an unaffordable luxury”, the terrorist assault “a blow to feminism”, and the new climate of danger threatening enough to “quiet the anti-male agitation we’ve endured for so long”.

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