A. Loewenstein Online Newsletter

Private companies doing rather well in anti-immigration wave moving across world

Posted: 21 Aug 2011

Disaster capitalists look for ways to make money from misery, crisis or fear.
The growing wave of anti-immigration sentiment sweeping the world suits such companies just fine. It’s an area I’m investigating for a forthcoming book and this New York Times piece perfectly captures the mood in Britain; the dangerous nexus between government rhetoric, firms claiming to “solve” the problem and profitability. And who really benefits from all this? Some governments with short-term political gain and corporations that convince officials that only they can “efficiently” manage the issue:

The boy was 13 when a dawn immigrationraid abruptly ended his father’s four-year quest for political asylum in Britain. By nightfall of that day in 2005, father and son were hundreds of miles from home, locked in the privately run Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Center here, scheduled for deportation to their native Angola in the morning.
Instead, shortly after midnight, the despondent father, Manuel Bravo, 35, walked to a stairwell with a bed sheet and hanged himself. The note he left said why: so that his orphaned boy could stay in Britain.
Indeed, the law did not allow immigration authorities to deport an orphan who had no one waiting for him. A British family the Bravos knew through church took the boy, Antonio, home to Armley, the working-class suburb of Leeds where they had settled in 2001.
Antonio, now 19, is an apprentice electrician who aspires to be an engineer. Not far from his father’s hilltop grave, he shares a century-old house with five British roommates and regularly visits the family who raised him. “I want to make my dad proud and not feel like he gave his life away for no reason,” he said.
But next month, Antonio faces the threat of deportation all over again. Under changing laws, instead of qualifying for citizenship this year, as he expected, he is not eligible to apply. His temporary residence permit, granted on humanitarian grounds, is expiring with no clear path to renewal.
Antonio’s story is emblematic of one nation’s escalating efforts to repel unwanted migration, through an enforcement system partly run by private contractors.
…
The Bravos had entered the world of outsourced immigration enforcement. In effect, they were in the custody of the Anglo-Danish company now known as G4S.
Its guards drove them past the brick villas and open fields of Bedfordshire to an old military base where the Yarl’s Wood detention center, developed by the company in 2001, lies behind barbed wire.
Contractors now run 7 of Britain’s 11 immigration detention centers, where capacity has grown 75 percent since 2001. Mr. Bravo’s one day in custody is documented in rare detail in inquest records. What still haunts Antonio is the moment when G4S transport guards discovered a brand-new clothesline in his father’s bag. They took the rope from Mr. Bravo, who was under treatment for depression, but never alerted Yarl’s Wood. G4S declined to comment for this article on its operations, either in general or with regard to the Bravo case.
A nurse at Yarl’s Wood, employed by another subcontractor, confiscated Mr. Bravo’s antidepressants and did not ask if he was suicidal — for fear, she testified, of putting the idea in his head. Official inquiries concluded that these lapses made no difference.
Father and son were escorted through eight locked doors to their room, where Antonio waited while Mr. Bravo made last-ditch phone calls.
One was to the vicar, who had been unable to reach government officials. “He was really struggling,” Mr. Kaye said. “He was terrified of going back.”
When Mr. Bravo returned to their room, Antonio said, he brought bad news: their deportation was set for 10:30 a.m. “He said, ‘Whatever happens, be brave and strong and I’m proud of you.’ ”
Antonio was sleeping when security cameras recorded his father’s suicide. The ombudsman’s 2006 report complains that for hours no one accepted responsibility for waking the boy to tell him his father was dead, and later, no one explained that he would not be deported alone.

Jews have a choice over Palestine and silence equals complicity

Posted: 20 Aug 2011

Roger Cohen has been writing in the New York Times for some time about the responsibility of Jews not to remain silent in the face of Zionist occupation and violence. It’s a rare voice in the American mainstream.
His latest missive, while dismissing boycotts as apparently morphing into anti-Semitism which ignores the failure of the political process to end the occupation, is nonetheless a strong challenge to the Jewish mainstream:

Where then should a Jew in Britain who wants to speak up stand? Not with the Knesset members who have met in Israel with European rightists like Filip Dewinter of Belgium in the grotesque belief that they are Israel’s allies because they hate Muslims. Not with the likes of the Jewish writer Melanie Phillips, whose book “Londonistan” is a reference for the Islamophobes. Nor with those who, ignoring sinister historical echoes, propose ostracizing Israeli academics and embrace an anti-Zionism that flirts with anti-Semitism.
Perhaps a good starting point is a parallel pointed out to me by Maleiha Malik, a professor of law at King’s College London. A century ago, during the Sidney Street siege of 1911, it was the Jews of London’s East End who, cast as Bolsheviks, were said to be “alien extremists.” Winston Churchill, no less, argued in 1920 that Jews were part of a “worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development.”
The lesson is clear: Jews, with their history, cannot become the systematic oppressors of another people. They must be vociferous in their insistence that continued colonization of Palestinians in the West Bank will increase Israel’s isolation and ultimately its vulnerability.

Breaking news; Afghan Hazaras are human beings still being oppressed in their country

Posted: 20 Aug 2011

I’ve just received this message from a refugee activist in Perth, Western Australia. It’s a release from the Coordination of Hazara Refugees in Curtin immigration detention centre, a remote camp away from public view. 

Freedom
It is known to all and history has also proven that Hazaras have always and systemically been target of national, religious and ethnic oppression and cruelty and yet thousands of people including women and children have lost their life and thousands of families have lost their guardian and thousands of children are now orphan, who do not just have access to education but also experiencing a horrible and miserable life.
Taliban, predominant Pashtuns are the very actual face of national, religious and significantly ethnic oppression and cruelty who have taken the annihilation of Hazaras serious and have declared that killing of Hazaras is according to rules and regulations of Islam and hence mandatory.
Looting Hazara’s properties is same as their worship therefore consider it a gift from God and continue to their systematic oppression and harassment of Hazaras at any corner of Afghanistan with their barbaric attacks, counting it as their daily pray for god.The media has always been reporting about the barbaric attacks of marauder Taliban which have cost several lives and demolitions for Hazaras.
By passing each day , the situation for these people (Hazaras) is deteriorating . These people whose way of living is becoming harder tried to continue life and along with their families they have left their birthplace and sought refuge from other countries to just survive from the barbaric attacks of Pashtuns/Talibs. Hazaras , as seen in majority of European countries and even Canada have been seen to have requested for refuge and are now living in peace.
For the last three years that Australia has again opened the gate for asylum seekers, Hazaras traveling thousands of miles and going through 100% serious risks have escaped death to request protection from Australia and yet not every individual has conquered this deathly journey and even tens of people have lost their lives . Most of these people have sacrificed their life and are now spending in Malaysia’s appalling prisons with plenty of calamities and agony, a huge number is jailed in Indonesia and sadly a considerable number of them while carrying lots of hopes on this journey lost their life in depth of the ocean just like Boat SIEV 221 in a very sorrowful , painful and horrible way while sailing across Malaysia, Indonesia and Australian waters and turned into sea animals’ meal.
Luckily after spending three to eleven months of imprisonment in Malaysia and Indonesia, when we arrived in Australia, we thought Australia would embrace us and listen to our stories and treat our long time grief by granting protection, therefore we thought ourselves lucky and fortunate.
Since we deserved to be granted protection, we requested for protection from Australian Government. But, after a while in contrary to its prior policy, Australia granted protection visa to a very few number and rejected most of us saying that : The living condition for Hazaras in Afghanistan is fine now. While we had already explained the serious risks we are facing during our Immigration interviews.
We need to know that :
1. Is Australia not aware of how we (Hazaras) are being targeted in the most atrocious ways in Afghanistan?
2. Does Australia really don’t know that Qarabagh-Jaghuri Express way is still blocked to Hazaras and traveling on this destination equals to death for us ?
3. Does Australia really don’t know that every day our children’s faces are fogged with misery, deprivation and orphanhood?
4. Does Australia really don’t know why Pashtun gave birth to Taliban and what was their target?
5. Does Australia really don’t know that few moths ago Taliban beheaded a number of Hazaras just like sheep?
6. Does Australia really don’t know how Hazaras are being targeted in Quetta of Pakistan just for being Shia and Hazara.
And Does…. ? Does…. ? Does…. ? Does….?
Considering all these issues , how Australia could not grant us protection ? This matter has turned into enigma for us which is never solvable.
The only good news we have been given by Immigration Department is that we may have more chances of granting protection visa in second stage called IMR ( Independent Merits Review).
As we have escaped death from Afghanistan and returning to Afghanistan is just like suicide for us, we don’t have any alternate choice but to suffer in detention centers. Now that we have spent considerable amount of time taken from 3 to 20 months in detention centers, we still suffer from the amount of time and only God knows how much more time we have to spend here for no reason and without destiny. The only reason which can be applicable is that we have sought protection from Australian Government and the only reason we have requested for protection is that we did not have any other remedy but to die in Afghanistan just for being Hazara.
We thought and still believe that Australia is a real humanitarian nation and really gives value to human rights but, things are upside down here in detention centers specially in Curtin IDC. With much grievance, we want to say that these people in detention center are going through a very serious condition which has caused both psychological and mental problems such as depression, insomnia, lack of endurance, self-harming, horrible nightmares and much more of other traumas.By passing each day the condition is getting worse , as few months before number of people here tried suicide attempts and only two of them could succeed, one of them by hanging up himself and the other one died of the sever depression and lost their dear life and luckily the other one who jumped off the window of his room survived and is now in Perth Hospital and much more of these deathly incidents are happening weekly in Curtin IDC.
We need to know that how long do we have to consume depression tablets and other depression medicines and how long do we have to line up before mental heath department here ? How long do we have to consume Dethop 25 and Dethop 75 mg, Mirtazapine 30 and 45 mg, Axit 15 and 30 mg and other tricyclic antidepressant and MAOI ? Why do we have to suffer from the side effect of these medicines such as unusual and disturbing dreams, thinking abnormal and much more other mental difficulties ? Its obvious how long it takes us to recover from this condition. As a matter of fact in Curtin, we are more familiar to the mental doctors than to our Case Managers.
This policy of Immigration Department is creating hate and disgust in the heart of these people and the only way to wash out this hate is to end up to our mandatory detention, give us hope, and let us join our families, let us feel that we are also human beings.
We are calling for your help and humanitarian assistance because we are experiencing a bleak situation this time here in Curtin IDC. We are requesting you to please contemplate and be more compassionate about us cause this time there is huge chance of human catastrophe, since predicament and chaos itself bring catastrophe where no one would be able to predict and prevention of such catastrophe will be impossible.
We once again point out that the problems and frustrating situation we are dealing with is not tolerable for any human being in normal status, therefore how can you accept that our families struggle with loneliness without guardian and we remain behind razors deprived from human rights, liberty and no destiny?
Hereby, we request from Australian Government specifically from Immigration Department to please being amendments to its ongoing policy and end up to our sufferings and free us from the detention centers like free pigeons.
We need this assistance and help from United Nations, Independent Organizations in Australia, Human Rights Commission of Australia, Red Cross, Refugee Rights Actions Network, Medias in Australia, Refugee Action Collective, Refugee Council, Act Now,Asylum Seeker Resource Center,Indymedia and any awaken human not just from Australia but from around the world.
Specially from you
FREEDOM IS WHAT WE ARE YELLING FOR !
WE ARE ONE OF YOUR KIND SO, PLEASE HELP US.

30 years of “peace” between Egypt and Israel a sham

Posted: 20 Aug 2011

History is turning and proves that when a dictatorship makes “peace” with a Zionist state it breeds nothing more than resentment:

On August 20, 2011 Egyptians mobilized for a demonstration in front of the Israeli Embassy demanding the removal of the flag and for the ambassador to leave.
After hours of flag-burning trials. A man called “Ahmed El-Shahat” managed to climb the embassy building and remove the Israeli flag and replace it with the Egyptian one.

Privacy and censorship in the online world are foreign concepts?

Posted: 20 Aug 2011

I was recently spoke in Sydney at the University of New South Wales at the conference of the Australian Law Students’ Association on the issues of privacy and censorship in Australia and globally. Here’s extracts from that event (though my comments here are very brief and rest assured I said many other things, including citizens treating web companies such as Google with necessary caution, as their influence in the corners of the globe often involves complicity with repressive regimes):
 

Tamil women still suffering in “peaceful” Sri Lanka

Posted: 20 Aug 2011