A.LOEWENSTEIN ONLINE NEWLETTER

NOVANEWS

The occupation is having a field dayPosted: 09 May 2010 06:40 PM PDT 

What “settlement freeze” in the West Bank?
The colonists aren’t worried at all.

Hey Elton! Your music isn’t apolitical in IsraelPosted: 09 May 2010 06:25 PM PDT 

Will Elton John hear the message?
Why did the Australian government help Colombo in its vicious war?Posted: 09 May 2010 07:14 AM PDT 

A few months ago a number of Tamils in Australia walked free after pleading guilty to terrorism charges. It was a comprehensive disaster for the Australian government and highlighted a disturbing tendency to do the bidding of the Sri Lankan authorities in its “war against terror” and the Tamil people.
One of those released, Arumugam Rajeevan, speaks this week to ABC Radio and gives a moving explanation of his life and the ongoing challenges suffered by Tamils and the Diaspora. The struggle for freedom will go on:

Monica Attard: Can we just talk about the time before you came here to Australia in 1986. What had you experienced of the civil war in Sri Lanka?
Arumugam Rajeevan: I came in 1986 as a 17 year old student. Prior to that I was in Jaffna which was the cultural centre of the Tamils in Sri Lanka to some extent and it’s also centre of activities as far as political demonstrations and campaigns for human rights and so on. Naturally that created a lot of military operation and activities….
Monica Attard: Which you witnessed?
Arumugam Rajeevan: Absolutely. I have seen a lot of atrocities including the burning of the Jaffna library in 1981.
Monica Attard: But because you were very young, I assume that you were never actively involved in any fighting.
Arumugam Rajeevan: No, not at all – we were students. But we were affected in a sense that we were not able to go to schools on a regular basis because there were curfews and the military roundups and so on where the young people were taken-up in busses. So my parents were very worried about that situation and sometimes there is a tension in the town centre, you know they will not send me to school. So in that context I was impacted by it, but I never got actively involved in any of that.
Monica Attard: Ok, can I ask you, the charge against you of being a member of a terrorist organisation was dropped…
Arumugam Rajeevan: That’s right.
Monica Attard: ….when it became clear difficult to sustain. Nonetheless, the AFP [Australian Federal Police] did go to Sri Lanka didn’t it to investigate – to collect evidence. What do you make of that?
Arumugam Rajeevan: AFP is an important institution in Australia in terms of maintaining our national security and national interest and so on. You know at this particular instance I believe there was a political agenda and unfortunately I believe that in a lot of occasions the AFP was serving the interests of a third party; in this case the interests of Sri Lanka as opposed to serving the national interests of Australia.
Monica Attard: So do you think the AFP was naive perhaps in this instance?
Arumugam Rajeevan: Mistakes were made but it is history now. In general terms I have learned to forget things and forgive things and move on in life.
Monica Attard: But many commentators also believe that the AFP might have actually been guilty of meddling in the affairs of another country, particularly one that was in civil strife.
Arumugam Rajeevan: As far as I’m concerned, the AFP’s role should be protecting the national interest of Australia.
Monica Attard: And has the episode dented your belief in the police in this country?
Arumugam Rajeevan: As I said, mistakes can be made but overall I believe the justice system in Australia is a very objective system and we have full faith and trust in that system.
Monica Attard: So you have full faith that the justice system will protect you from whatever mistakes the police might make?
Arumugam Rajeevan: Absolutely and that is where the justice system is as an overseeing body and basically you know look at things in a very objective manner and to make their own assessment and removed from agendas and biasness and so on from one way or another.

The crime of killing Rachel Corrie needs to be resolvedPosted: 09 May 2010 06:04 AM PDT 

An instructive example of how the Zionist state attempts to shield its crimes from the world and how long it takes any form of (possible) justice to emerge:

Seven years after the American activist Rachel Corrie was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza, evidence has emerged which appears to implicate Israel’s Gaza commander at the time, in an attempt to obstruct the official investigation into her death.
The alleged intervention of Major-General Doron Almog [ed: a man who barely escaped arrest in the UK in 2005], then head of Israel’s southern command, is documented in testimony taken by Israeli military police a day after Ms Corrie was killed on March 16, 2003. The hand written affidavit, seen by The Independent, was submitted as evidence during a civil law suit being pursued by the Corrie family against the state of Israel.
Ms Corrie, who was 23 when she died, was critically wounded when a bulldozer buried her with sandy soil near the border between Gaza and Egypt. The American, wearing a fluorescent orange jacket and carrying a megaphone, was among a group of volunteers from the anti-occupation International Solidarity Movement who over a period of three hours on that day had sought to block the demolition by Israel of Palestinian homes.
The Israeli military has maintained that its troops were not to blame for the killing of Ms Corrie and that the driver of the bulldozer had not seen her. It accused Ms Corrie and the ISM of behaviour that was “illegal, irresponsible and dangerous”. Three days after Ms Corrie’s death, the US state department announced that the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had promised the US President George Bush that the Israeli government would undertake a “thorough, credible and transparent investigation”.
But according to a military police investigator’s report which has now emerged, the “commander” of the D-9 bulldozer was giving testimony when an army colonel dispatched by Major-General Almog interrupted proceedings and cut short his evidence. The military police investigator wrote: “At 18:12 reserve Colonel Baruch Kirhatu entered the room and informed the witness that he should not convey anything and should not write anything and this at the order of the general of southern command.”
The commander was a reservist named Edward Valermov. He was in the bulldozer with its driver. In his testimony before he was ordered to stop, he told military police investigators that he had not seen Ms Corrie before she was wounded. Alice Coy, a former ISM volunteer activist who was near Ms Corrie during the incident said in an affidavit to the court that “to the best of my knowledge the bulldozer driver could see Rachel while pushing earth over her body.”
Hussein Abu Hussein, a lawyer for the Corrie family, said Major-General Almog’s alleged intervention blocked the possible emergence of evidence that could have determined whether Mr Valermov’s assertion that he did not see Ms Corrie was reasonable. “Do I believe him? Of course not. There is no doubt this was manslaughter,” Mr Abu Hussein said. “First of all we claim the state is responsible for the death of Rachel. And secondly we claim that the investigation was not professional.”

A real writer’s job isn’t to be popularPosted: 09 May 2010 02:57 AM PDT 

How famed Indian writer Arundhati Roy fights her own war against terror and defends the rights of the silenced in her country.

Bring Auschwitz into the Israel debate and take a back seatPosted: 09 May 2010 02:36 AM PDT 

Why oh why do so many Zionists only write in apocalyptic language? Because that’s all they know. Victimhood is too appealing.
Here’s Sarah Honig:

Obama’s endgame is to debilitate, demoralize and destabilize Israel. All he offers Israelis is a choice of how his inimical goal will be achieved. This may be via allowing Iran the weaponry with which to intimidate Israel or by shrinking Israel into the Auschwitz borders (as ultra-dove Abba Eban called the 1949 armistice lines into which Obama schemes to squeeze us).
We can avoid Iranian nukes by opting for the Auschwitz borders or we can avoid the Auschwitz borders but be bullied by Iranian nukes. The unspoken signal from Washington is: Either way, you’re dead. Yet we are somehow supposed to refrain from saying so lest we upset Obama even more.

Can Australia please not hate refugees for five minutes?Posted: 09 May 2010 02:32 AM PDT 

Here’s Australia’s Liberal Party, the main Opposition, with its election-style ad. Note the brief section on refugees, red lines indicating an invasion of “illegals” from countries such as Iran, Sri Lanka, Iraq etc.
Not racist at all. No chance:
A lone Tamil politician urges Sri Lanka to look deep into its heartPosted: 08 May 2010 08:23 PM PDT 

Sivagnanam Sritharan is a newly elected Tamil politician in Sri Lanka.
The following is his maiden speech to Parliament on 8 May:

Honourable speaker, respectable members, on behalf of my people who have sent me as their representative and my self I wish to express my congratulations and greetings to you all.
I stand here on the ashes of my destructed nation with the bones of my relatives kissing my feet, in the hope and faith that our peoples just rights will be granted with the assent of the people, for the Tamils who had been doing penance and struggling for the freedom which they cherish more than their dear life.
Standing in the building gifted by the nation, which at the end of the second world war was completely vanquished and annihilated by the destruction of the nuclear bombardment, of which it has not completely recovered from the radiation, but now shining as an economic power, I am glad to make my maiden speech with great faith in the future.
There are ample examples in history showing that all those who are over run have not lost for ever, nor are all those who were destroyed not destroyed for ever.
Rome was destroyed time and again by Turkish Empire and other European nations to rubbles. Using the very same rubbles it produced cement to rise as a leading nation. The sad songs carved on those stones have changed into songs of awakening.
Japanese and Romans have proved to the whole world that when a nation or a race when conquered by military might, and faced with great destruction, will find another path to rise again.
We were crowned as terrorist. World powers and regional powers destroyed our army and our progeny in the pretext of eliminating the terrorist. In the pretext of fighting the tigers they unleashed a war against the Tamil people.
Many thousands of Tamils were killed. Many others were maimed. The missing persons tally is yet complete. Property worth many millions were looted and destroyed. The number of Tamils who have lost all there wealth and confined within barbed wire fences has exceeded hundred thousand.
The Ceylon government was aided and abetted openly and in the sly to do this atrocity by World super powers and regional powers. Today these very same superpowers are pointing their fingers at us for war crimes and human rights violation. They are stretching their hands to choke our throats. The very same people who rendered their shoulders to destroy us, now wants to use us to enslave you.
Our worthy brothers! Should we follow in the path laid by those who set you against us and us against you, so that they could enslave us all?
There was time when we were recognized as two separate races of one nation. Should we not safe guard us and our nation? You should have realised now the need for understanding and respect between the two races. A wrong notion might have been forced upon you to use our destroyed military strength, and our crushed struggle for freedom, thereby our position of weakness to force upon us a unity.
It is time for you to realise the truth that this kind of attitudes and the thoughts raised from the roots of such attitudes has caused sixty years of struggle and thirty years of armed struggle for freedom. Please throw off far away from your mind these thoughts that cause to spill blood from your mind.
There is no evidence in history that there was unity between the oppressor and the oppressed. There is no example of peace. Allow us to continue as we are and you as you are and join to build our nation.
Let not your hand choke our throat. Let not our teeth scar your hands. You have a traditional land, language, economy and unique culture. Accept we too have all these.
Beloved! While we the Sri Lankan were facing great losses, foreign armed business men brokers robbed us in millions with great profit. Not only this, during the war and after they applied immense pressure on us and robed us of our natural resources and human labour.
The limonite deposit from Pulmottai is being robed. India has already drawn plans to rob the lime deposits and oil resources from the north. On the other side Russia has already signed agreement to rob oil resource. By Sethu ocean development plan resource of living creatures of the ocean is destroyed. It has gone to the American hands. Under the pretext of attracting foreign investment in the free trade zone our people’s labour is exploited with low wages.
The tourist industry have thrived to the extent of advertising Ceylon as a ‘women’s paradise’ at the expense of our cultural heritage and degrading our women. More than fourteen thousand juvenile boys and girls are used in the sex trade and thus loose their future.
Yes, our natural resources and human labour has been exploited and the nation is pushed to poverty. To deliver us from this great danger we must unite with freedom and wake up. There is no majority or minority should not become a vain slogan but a reality. In future there should be no oppressor nor oppressed is our deep desire.
Further, in this environment I realise it is our main responsibility to dispel the suffering of the people of Killinochi and Mullaithivu district, who have faced the evils of this war and its aftermath.
We have faced the war directly. In this war planes dropped bombs directly on us and missiles pierced our bodies. Gun bullets pierced us. While death pursuing us we ran from one place to another. Not knowing where to go we took shelters on the tents by the side of the highways. Yet we could not avoid deaths. We could not avoid loosing our body parts.
We ran without a way to burry the dead. We lack food and drinking water. We had no place to even attend to the call of nature. We were not sure of our life next moment. More then three hundred and fifty thousand of us were cornered at Mullaivaikal.
The actions taken to show the world as good culture and humanitarian pushed us into death hole. Leaving the dead behind others crossed the Nanthikkadal. Our life was curbed inside refugee camps in Vavunia. We who made the Vanni land as a warehouse of food and fed others were reduced to stand in line for a palm full of food provision. Today some of us with six metal sheets and relief food for six months were resettled. Others are still in the camps.
More than a year has passed since the war. How many years we will have to get rid of our suffering is the prime question among our selves. Still thousands are suffering in the detention camps under the pretext of terrorist. Parents are standing in rain and sun for hours to se their children. Yet many are roaming far and near not knowing where the children and women are. Everyday there are notices put out to find the fate of the wounded that were taken on helicopters.
Honourable members of the assembly! In a democratic nation this is our life. We have to rise again from this. We are waiting to join you to protect our natural resources and human resources pilfering by foreign nations. But you must realise that this is possible only if we are living as human beings.
Try to appreciate the words of our honourable president that we are all humans of this nation. How can one who is denied of rights and the one who deny the rights live as brothers? Our brothers, on behalf of our people I appeal to you to allow us to restart our lives.
In this mango shaped island nation on the revolving globe I request you to forget what happened before Christ was born, and start focussing on solving the racial problems of the twenty-first century with modern thought. With the mind set that Singhalese people and Tamil people are joint owners of this land a new political government must be formed.
At present Singhalese have an attitude that they have conquered the Tamils and the Tamils have an attitude of pain and hate. Consider how proclaiming that this is one nation and then go on to celebrate the Poonakari victory festival, Killinochi victory festival and in the coming days from May 12th to 18th to celebrate Army victory celebration is going to break and destroy the hearts of Tamils.
By a large army the island may appear to be united, however in heart the island in still divided. Singhalese people are aware how Lord Buddha performed penance to attain nirvana. The time has come for the Singhalese brothers and the people of the world at large to aware of the fact that the Tamils after loosing more than two hundred and fifty thousand people are observing penance to achieve their rights.
Not willing to share the power with their own brothers, the governments of the past went around begging from other nations. I do not know how long it will take to realise by this action our Island Ceylon has gone under feet of other nations.
A race that subjugates another race cannot live in peace itself. That country too can never achieve liberation. Further by the actions taken to subjugate, they will be enslaved by other nations. If Sri Lanka wants to build a nation of freedom and wealth it should begin with recognition of other races and preparedness to share the power with them. Today’s question is whether the present government has the courage, foresight and conviction to implement it.
In the leadership of the elder politician and our party Mr. Sambanthar we are ready to offer this opportunity. This government should make use of this historical opportunity and provide a solution acceptable to the Tamils and build a new Sri Lanka. If this opportunity is let go, then history will direct in another direction it desires.
The government has the responsibility to understand minds of the Tamils who were destroyed by Tsunami and war share their grief and respect their individuality and come up with a fair and just suitable solution. I conclude my maiden speech appealing all of us to join as two independent races and build our nation.

Asylum seekers in the pursuit of humanityPosted: 08 May 2010 08:17 PM PDT 

I went to this yesterday in Sydney. The Australian government (and dog-whistling Opposition) will not get away with demonising refugees in the pursuit of power:

Onlookers stared and tourists took photographs as protesters formed a giant ring representing a lifebuoy on Bondi Beach yesterday to send a political message about the treatment of asylum seekers.
The protest, which attracted about 300 people wearing the lifesaver colours of red and yellow and was repeated in Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide, was organised by Amnesty International Australia.
Amnesty national director Claire Mallinson said the organisation was renewing its focus on refugees because of several backward steps taken by the Rudd government.
“Recent policy changes by the government, including the processing suspension on applications from Afghan and Sri Lankan asylum seekers, the reopening of Curtin detention centre and the opposition’s proposed policies of turning back boats and reintroducing temporary protection visas, all undermine the human rights of people seeking protection from violence and persecution,” Ms Mallinson said.
Representatives from refugee communities, GetUp!, the Refugee Council and church bodies also took part.
See: www.antonyloewenstein.net

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