By Craig Cormick
Based on highly reliable international contacts, leaked documents and horoscopes from several TV magazines, Nostradamus' Media Watch presents a highly accurate forecast of political events across the globe.
Foreign minister arrested for lewd behaviour
Australia's high-profile foreign minister, Gareth Evans, is arrested at the United Nations on a charge of "lewd behaviour".
A UN Moral Policeman, doing the rounds of the building after hours, is said to have noticed Evans stepping into an electric mail delivery cart with the representatives of both France and Indonesia.
He reveals that he followed the mail cart down several corridors until he approached it and discovered Evans and the two others in an "uncompromisingly lewd position".
While the UN's official definition of "lewd" behaviour is wide, encompassing prostitution of principles, bondage (of others), receiving stolen property and unbearable pomposity, it is not known which form Evans is alleged to have conducted — or indeed whether it was all of them at once.
Mantiri in as Indonesian ambassador
In a surprise move, the Indonesian government fills its empty ambassador's position in Canberra by reappointing Lieutenant General Herman Mantiri. He is promptly welcomed by the Australian government and sworn in.
Foreign minister Gareth Evans reveals that the government had in fact only been willing to accept Mantiri's appointment all along if he personally apologised for the East Timor massacre of 1991 — and he also says that he knew all along that Mantiri was going to apologise.
"I asked him personally if he was sorry, back in June, and now he says he is", Gareth says in August, in an impromptu press conference outside the International Court of Justice, where he is waiting to have his own "lewd" conduct case heard.
Mantiri holds his own press conference, by invitation only, at which he tells seven journalists from the Australian that he had originally been misquoted.
He says, "When I defended the Indonesian troops who shot at civilians in Dili, what I meant was that defence can sometimes mean self-defence and this was a case of self-defence in shooting — or to put it another way — I regret that the acts of self-defence led to these actions — or in defending the military's right to self defence you sometimes need to fire bullets at civilians — um — can we stop this press conference?
International Court changes verdict format
After Australia's claims that the International Court of Justice found in its favour over the Timor Gap decision, when in fact the case was dismissed on a procedural matter, the court announces that it will issue future verdicts in a new format.
From now on, it announces, all verdicts will be issued on lined paper, with the verdict only on every third line. Thus, if governments wish to read between the lines for things that are not there, they can more clearly see what is not there. Or if they invent meanings between the lines, they can at least fill them in themselves.