A. Loewenstein Online Newsletter

Welcome to the Zionist Taliban

Posted: 23 Oct 2011

Israeli “democracy” 2011:

About 100 female soldiers left the main celebration sponsored by the Israel Defense Forces marking the end of the Simhat Torah holiday on Thursday after they were asked to move to a separate women’s section.

The traditional “Hakafot Shniyot” event, which comes after the holiday’s formal conclusion and includes dancing with the Torah, was held in the Eshkol regional council area in the south. The commanders of the women soldiers decided to have the women board buses and leave after some objected to their being directed to a separate area cut off from the main event.

The separate women’s section was set off by cloth sheeting, but according to one of those present “it was very hard to feel connected to the event there.” The event was attended by about 500 people, including a mix of civilians and soldiers, among them, about 100 women soldiers. Those in attendance said before the request was made for them to move, the women had been dancing at one side, separately from the men and also separated by a long table. The women soldiers were then ordered by an officer from the military rabbinate to go to a separate, closed area about 50 meters away, following complaints over the initial setup.

Orthodox Jewish religious authorities call for separation of men and women in certain circumstances. For many observant Jews in Israel, however, it is the custom for men and women at Hakafot Shniyot to dance separately but without the women being relegated to another designated area. The IDF’s chief rabbi, Rafi Peretz, as well as the commander for the IDF’s Gaza division, Yossi Bachar, were present but did not intervene in the matter. The rabbinate has been under pressure recently to adopt strict interpretations of halakha, Jewish religious law.

Tightening screws on the dysfunctional Murdoch family

Posted: 22 Oct 2011

Another day and more Serco violence in Australia

Posted: 22 Oct 2011

ABC reports:

Three people have been treated in hospital after a riot involving more than 100 people at the Scherger Immigration Detention Centre at Weipa on the Cape York Peninsula.

The violence broke out yesterday afternoon, causing property damage at the facility.

The Immigration Department says two detainees and an officer were injured and taken to hospital, but the Serco Australia officer has since been released.

Ian Rintoul from the Refugee Action Collective says he has been told a guard broke the nose and teeth of a Tamil man from Sri Lanka.

“Asylum seekers are not criminals and Serco guards are not prison officers and in any case there’s no place for that kind of behaviour,” he said.

“We want that Serco guard out of the compound while a thorough investigation takes place.”

A Department of Immigration spokesman says the cause is being investigated.

More details from Pamela Curr, Campaign Coordinator of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre:

Early this afternoon, a Sri Lankan man went to the computer room to get his 30 minutes online. A Serco guard punched him in the face. According to witnesses, ” The client just asked for his time, the guard punched him in the face, the client was bleeding and fell down, like unconscious”. Other detainees came to his help and surrounded the client so that he could not be dragged away. They are asking for the police to come urgently to investigate.

Some detainees became angry and distressed and broke a few windows.  The guard was withdrawn.

There are problems getting staff in Scherger. The bulk of workers are flyin/flyout, working 6 days a week, 12 hours a day, one week nights and one week days until their contract is up and then they go home for one weeks leave. They are paid $2,100 per week. The shifts are long but as most are untrained, unskilled people, this is the best money they have ever earned in their lives.

Local people  would rather work for COMALCO mining bauxite where conditions are much better. However SERCO has a deal with Centrelink to pick up the unemployed people in WEIPA.

Locals told me in July that WEIPA is a town with no to little unemployment becasue of the mine and need for services. Even the wives are working driving the trucks. Locals said that only the “unemployable in town work for SERCO and that many of those are people with drug and alcohol problems”. Locals also said that the SERCO guards start before the police checks are done because many have been to prison and so subsequently fail these checks after working for 6 to 12 weeks. Locals do not get the high wages as they are not flyin/ flyout so the incentive to work the impossible hours is low.

Right now the call is urgent for police intervention. Scherger is 40 minutes plus on a rough dirt road from Weipa and the nearest police station.

Mocking Europe, neo-liberals, shouldn’t make you feel good

Posted: 22 Oct 2011

Guy Rundle explains in Melbourne’s Sunday Age:

For the right in the US and here, ”Europe” is more than a continent. It is a condition – one of failure and stagnation, a cautionary tale. With Greece in flames and Italy and Spain in serious difficulty, there has been plenty of scope to make that case in the US. Yet it is not these states that are the targets of their ire. Instead what they take to represent ”decadence” is northern Europe and France – the countries where state economic planning, collective benefits and a social welfare system have become entrenched.

This assessment, widespread in the US and Britain, is remarkable. Not only do those countries have a far from glittering record, but the assessment of Europe is the reverse of the truth. While the Anglosphere has spent three decades cultivating rising inequality and living costs, industrial decline, and an increasingly precarious existence, northern Europe has steadily reinvested in its own society and economic base.

While Britain swapped its manufacturing sector for financial ”services”, and the US swapped production for consumption, Germany, Sweden and others used manufacturing as a base to develop high-tech industry, value-added by free higher education.

The results are obvious – exports account for up to a third of national output for such countries, while Britain and the US run trade deficits that average 5 per cent of GDP.

Poverty rates in these parts of Europe range from 5 to 11 per cent, whereas they are north of 20 per cent in Britain and the US. Household savings rates are stable, at about 12 per cent, more than triple that of the Anglosphere, which is dependent on breakneck consumer spending to keep the wheels moving. Medical coverage is universal, affordable public housing is widespread, yet budgets are -balanced (save for Germany’s, whose deficit is nevertheless a fifth the size of the US).

When the neoliberal cheer-squad in the Anglosphere have no choice but to acknowledge these facts, they often claim that such conditions have negative effects. It’s often suggested that social democracies lack an appetite for risk. That’s usually suggested while the commentator is sitting at an IKEA desk, typing on a Linux-driven computer, having driven to the office in a Volvo.