A. Loewenstein Online Newsletter

Zionism exports death globally (and the occupation comes on top)

03 Jul 2011

Is there any nation on earth the Jewish state won’t sell weapons to? Unlikely:

Israel’s defense industry racked an unprecedented $7.2 billion in exports in 2010, up on the $6.9 billion achieved in 2009.
That put the Jewish state among the world’s top four arms exporters but declining military budgets around the world are likely to reduce sales over the coming years.
“We recognize the challenges but we’re working hard to maintain the level we’re currently at and even to increase it,” said Reserve Brig. Gen. Shmaya Avieli, head of the Defense Ministry’s Foreign Defense Assistance and Defense Export Department.
The Israelis are hoping to secure big-ticket deals at the Paris Air Show, a major international defense industry showcase next week at the Le Bourget exhibition center.
Government figures indicate Israeli defense companies sold military hardware worth $9.6 billion in 2010, $2.4 billion of it to Israel’s military.
But meantime, China, once a promising market for Israeli weapons and electronic systems, remains off-limits, largely because of Israel’s ally, the United States.

Serco begins PR push to win even more privatised business

03 Jul 2011

Not that most governments seemingly need more convincing to make services more “efficient” (which is code for a lack of accountability):

Serco, the multinational company that makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year running outsourced government services, will today launch an advertising campaign aimed at boosting its public image in WA as it prepares to take on lucrative new local contracts.
The company has received negative publicity from its role managing Australia’s immigration detention centres and has been targeted by the WA branch of United Voice, formerly the Miscellaneous Workers Union, which is campaigning against privatisation of backroom services at Fiona Stanley Hospital, due to open in 2014.
Serco is the Barnett Government’s preferred tenderer for the huge Fiona Stanley contract and last month it won the $210 million prisoner transport and custodial services security job from rival contracting group G4S.
The company is understood to be setting up a Perth office and the advertising campaign is being rolled out in part to lay the groundwork for a big recruiting drive to fill hundreds of jobs at Fiona Stanley.
The campaign tries to humanise Serco by focusing on employees who deliver frontline services with the tagline: “Living, thinking and acting locally.”
It features a YouTube video with a Serco employee, Catherine, who tells how she helped a female Transperth customer who telephoned the Serco-run call centre after she missed a late-night bus.
Serco Australia chief executive David Campbell said the campaign was “an opportunity for the WA community to get to know the real Serco”.
“We have a proud 16-year history of successfully delivering essential services to West Australians,” he said. “We are already providing services in transport, justice, defence and immigration in WA and soon hope to sign a contract with the Government for the provision of non-clinical services at Fiona Stanley Hospital.”
Serco was last month praised by the inspector of custodial services for its management of WA’s only private prison Acacia. The firm also runs the Indian Pacific train.
However, it has attracted a lot of criticism over its management of detention centres after riots at Christmas Island and Villawood.
It also ran a British detention juvenile centre that was the scene of the suicide death of a 14-year-old inmate and was recently cited for breaches of cleanliness at a Scottish hospital.

Assange, Goodman and Žižek speak in UK about Wikileaks

03 Jul 2011

 

Watch live streaming video from democracynow at livestream.com

Australians talk from Europe about Gaza Flotilla 2

03 Jul 2011

How our good friends Saudi Arabia back terrorism

02 Jul 2011

The elephant in the room for decades. We sell them weapons, indulge their fundamentalism and allow gender apartheid without comment. The moral bankruptcy of Western foreign policy could almost be summarised through its relationship with Saudi Arabia alone.
Here’s a fascinating new feature in Vanity Fair about the regime’s ties to the 9/11 hijackers:

In spite of the fact that it had almost immediately become known that 15 of those implicated in the attacks had been Saudis, President George W. Bush did not hold Saudi Arabia’s official representative in Washington at arm’s length. As early as the evening of September 13, he kept a scheduled appointment to receive Prince Bandar at the White House. The two men had known each other for years. They reportedly greeted each other with a friendly embrace, smoked cigars on the Truman Balcony, and conversed with Vice President Dick Cheney and National-Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
There is a photograph of the meeting, which has been published in the past. This year, however, when the authors asked the George W. Bush presidential library for a copy, the library responded in an e-mail that the former president’s office was “not inclined to release the image from the balcony at this time.”
It would soon become evident that, far from confronting the Saudis, the Bush administration wanted rapprochement. The president would invite Crown Prince Abdullah to visit the United States, press him to come when he hesitated, and—when he accepted—welcome him to his Texas ranch in early 2002. Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice were there, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell and First Lady Laura Bush.
It seems that 9/11 barely came up during the discussions. Speaking with the press afterward, the president cut off one reporter when he began to raise the subject.

Israel bans use of words that start with “b”, “o” and “z”

02 Jul 2011

Richard Silverstein has the exclusive:

Israel, which recently threatened to ban for ten years any foreign journalist joining the Gaza flotilla, has announced that it also plans to ban the following words and phrases for ten years: Audacity, Hope, liberation, Tahrir, Nakba, Naksa, Al Quds, Occupation, BDS, boycott, divestment, sanctions, targeted assassination. It is also considering a ten year ban on any living organisms found on the Flotilla ships including various bacteria, rodents, barnacles, etc.