A. Loewenstein Online Newsletter

Who really needs a transparent legal system anyway?

Posted: 20 Oct 2011

Welcome to Britain:

Secret justice looks set to be a regular feature of British courts and tribunals when the intelligence services want to protect their sources of information.

Civil courts, immigration panels and even coroner’s inquests would go into secret session if the Government rules that hearing evidence in public could be a threat to national security.

The proposals, which run counter to a centuries-old British tradition of open justice, were introduced to a sparsely attended House of Commons yesterday by the Justice Secretary, Ken Clarke – and met almost no opposition. The planned changes to the British justice system follow lobbying of the Government by the CIA.

Civil rights groups warned a serious potential threat to individual liberty lurked behind the all-party consensus.

Mr Clarke is seeking to protect the Government from a repeat of a fiasco which has cost tens of millions of pounds and led to a breakdown in co-operation between British intelligence and an enraged CIA.

The best-known case involved Binyam Mohamed, a British resident who was held in Guantanamo Bay for five years, and started a claim for damages from the UK Government, which he accused of complicity in torture.

The Court of Appeal released a summary of CIA intelligence which supported Mr Mohamed’s claim that British intelligence officers knew about the torture of suspected terrorists.

The CIA was furious and halted the flow of information from its headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and other US agencies apart from in the most serious cases. MI6 and the Foreign Office also received complaints from a number of other allied states anxious that information provided on a confidential basis would leak into the public domain.

Faced with irate colleagues at Langley, the British Government paid out to 16 terrorist suspects, to prevent further damage to US-UK relations. Yesterday, Mr Clarke let slip that the cases had already cost around £20m. Another 30 are in prospect because, he told MPs, “it is becoming fashionable” to challenge the Government in court.

Officials have privately complained that they cannot defend these cases without compromising sensitive intelligence, which means suspected terrorists have been able to use the civil courts as a “cashpoint”.

On Utoya book on Norway and terror nears global release

Posted: 20 Oct 2011

The following press release was sent to all media today:

On Utøya: Anders Breivik, right terror, racism and Europe

Edited by Elizabeth Humphrys, Guy Rundle and Tad Tietze

with essays by Anindya Bhattacharyya, Antony Loewenstein, Lizzie O’Shea, Richard Seymour, Jeff Sparrow, and the editors.

LAUNCH: On Utøya will be launched by Senator Lee Rhiannon and Antony Loewenstein on 6.30pm, Wednesday October 26, at the Norfolk Hotel, Cleveland Street, Surry Hills, Sydney.

In a challenging new book, a range of Australian and UK writers respond to the terrorist attack by Anders Breivik in July 2011, and attempts by the Right to depoliticise it.

On July 22, Anders Breivik, a right-wing writer and activist, killed more than sixty young members of the Norwegian Labour Party on Utøya Island, having already set off a bomb in central Oslo to distract authorities. Captured alive, Breivik was more than willing to explain his actions as a ‘necessary atrocity’ designed to ‘wake up’ Europe to its betrayal by the left, and its impending destruction through immigration.

Breivik’s beliefs — expressed at length in a manifesto ’2083′ — were part of a huge volume of right-wing alarmism and xenophobia that had arisen in the last decade. Yet Breivik, we were told by the Right, was simply a madman — so mad, in fact, that he had actually believed what the Right said: that Europe was in imminent danger of destruction, and extreme action was required.

On Utøya is a response to this attempt to deny responsibility, and any connection of Breivik’s act to a rising cult of violence, racism, and apocalyptic language. The editors and authors shine a light on Breivik’s actions, and argue that they cannot be understood abstracted from the social and political conditions in which it emerged. The rise in far Right, racist and Islamophobic commentary, websites and organisations provide an essential context in which Breivik’s ideas developed and his actions were planned. It concludes with an examination of the manufacture of hate and fear in Australia, and considers what is needed in a Left strategy to deal with the growing threat of far Right organising.

Organised, written and produced within three months of the killings, On Utøya is a challenge to anyone who would seek to portray this event as anything other than it is — a violent mass assassination, directed against the left, to terrorise people into silence and submission to a far-right agenda. Published as an eBook, it takes advantage of the new world of online publishing to respond rapidly, forthrightly and comprehensively to current events. It is both an acute analysis of contemporary politics, and an act of solidarity with all those targeted by the violent political fantasies of the Right.

Interviews: Editors Elizabeth Humphrys and Tad Tietze, and contributors Antony Loewenstein, Lizzie O’Shea, Richard Seymour and Jeff Sparrow, are available for interview.

Publication date: 26 October 2011. Price $6.99. Publisher: Elguta

Inquiries: Elizabeth Humphrys Tel: +61 402 424 973, lizhumphrys@me.com

WEBSITE

CHAPTER OUTLINE

The Wire on Gilad Shalit release and Israeli kidnapping of Palestinians

Posted: 19 Oct 2011

There’s so much blather in the mainstream press about the Gilad Shalit deal this week. Mostly written by the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

I was invited onto current affairs show The Wire yesterday to offer a different perspective and argue that the press humanises one man, Shalit, while Arabs are largely invisible and faceless:

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

War on Terror Inc; private companies loving endless conflict (and profits have nothing to do with it, of course)

Posted: 19 Oct 2011

One:

The U.S. military has launched miniature kamikaze drones against Taliban targets and plans to deploy more next year for U.S. special operating forces, according to documents and an Army official.

The tube-launched “Switchblade” drone, made by Monrovia, California-based Aerovironment Inc. (AVAV), was secretly sent to Afghanistan for the first time last year. “Under a dozen” were fired, said Army Deputy Product Director William Nichols.

“It’s been used in Afghanistan by military personnel” and “shown to be effective,” Nichols said. The drone’s GPS guidance is made by Rockwell Collins Inc. (COL) and the warhead by Alliant Techsystems Inc. (ATK)

Disclosure of the Switchblade’s use in Afghanistan highlights the Pentagon’s expanding range of missions for remotely piloted aircraft. The fleet also includes broad-area surveillance aircraft such as the Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC) Global Hawk, the missile-firing General Atomics Co. Predator and Reaper drones, and hand-launched short-range surveillance models, such as the Aerovironment Raven.

Nichols declined to detail the Switchblade’s targets. He said the drone’s “designed for open threats, something that’s on top of a building but you can’t hit it” with regular artillery or mortars for fear of collateral damage.

The drone is less than 24 inches long and weighs about six pounds.

“It’s a ‘flying shotgun,’” Nichols said, not a “hit-to- kill” weapon that explodes on impact.

Two:

It’s known as IBISS, the acronym for the Integrated Building Interior Surveillance System. Like its name suggests, it can see through the walls of buildings and sketch out images of what’s inside.

Until this year, IBISS was a classified system, a piece of high-tech wizardry the military used to fight the war on terrorism. The contractor that made the system, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), couldn’t talk about it in public, but that’s changing. IBISS is one of the new products SAIC is hoping to sell to local police stations and fire departments as the defense contractor explores what is known in the industry as “adjacent markets.”

Adjacent markets can mean anything from foreign militaries to the Department of Homeland Security for the industry that makes the computer systems, software, remote sensors, radar and ground stations that comprise Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) for the military.

For the first decade of the war on terrorism, the ISR industry thrived, and companies like SAIC, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin made big profits. Those days are coming to an end though.

On Monday at the annual industry trade conference known as GEOINT, James Clapper, the director of nationa lintelligence, broke the news to the assembled contractors: “We are all going to have to share in the pain.” Clapper said, as his office submitted billions of dollars in cuts to the Office of Management and Budget over the next 10 years. The overall annual intelligence budget is about $80 billion annually; most of the details of those budgets however are secret.

How the Zionist lobby corrupts the heart of British government

Posted: 19 Oct 2011

The influence of Likud-style, extreme Zionism at the heart of the British government is becoming clearer by the day.

Such moves are prevalent in most Western democracies and usually remain unquestioned. They should not.

This news emerged only by chance recently due to a political scandal:

Adam Werritty was at a meeting between the former defence secretary Dr Liam Fox and the Israeli secret service, Whitehall sources have disclosed.

The meeting between Dr Fox, Mr Werritty and the head of Mossad will raise further concerns about Mr Werritty’s role and his connections to the Ministry of Defence.

It has emerged that Mr Werritty has met several Iranian and Israeli figures in recent years, but his meeting with the secretive head of Mossad will increase concerns about the sensitive information available to Mr Werritty.

It casts doubt on the assertion of Sir Gus O’ Donnell that there was “nothing in the evidence” to suggest that Mr Werritty had access to classified information.

Mr Werritty has visited Iran on several occasions and met Iranian opposition groups in Washington and London over the past few years.

In May 2009, Mr Werritty arranged a meeting in Portcullis House between Dr Fox and an Iranian lobbyist with close links to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s regime.

In February this year, Mr Werritty arranged a dinner with Dr Fox, Matthew Gould, Britain’s ambassador to Israel, and senior political figures – understood to include Israeli intelligence agents – during an Israeli security conference in Herzliya. Iranian sanctions are understood to have been discussed at this meeting.

Mr Werritty also attended the Herzliya conference two years earlier, in February 2009, as an “expert” on Iran.

On that occasion, the British Israel Communications and Research Centre (Bicom), a pro-Israeli lobbying organisation, paid for his flight and hotel.

Despite Mr Werritty having no official MoD capacity, it is understood that the Israelis believed that Mr Werritty was regarded as Dr Fox’s chief of staff.

The chairman of Bicom is Poju Zabloudowicz, a billionaire whose companies have donated money to the Conservative Partyand.

A spokesman said: “For many years, Poju Zabloudowicz has helped fund not-for-profit organisations, not individuals, due to his passion for the promotion of peace and understanding between peoples in the United States, Europe and the Middle East.”