A. Loewenstein Online Newsletter

A letter to the Australian government in support of Julian Assange

Posted: 18 Dec 2011

 
I’m proud to sign this letter:

This is an open letter to Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd and Attorney-General Nicola Roxon. It calls on the Australian government to take steps to ensure Julian Assange’s human rights are protected. It will be delivered on 19 December 2011, but we encourage members of the public to sign the letter below by adding their full name in the comments section, together with any comment they may wish to make. Please feel free to spread the word about the letter to others who may be interested.
Bernard Keane and Elizabeth O’Shea
The Hon Kevin Rudd
Minister for Foreign Affairs
Parliament House ACT 2600
Dear Minister
We write to express our concern about the plight of Julian Assange.
To date, no charges have been laid against Mr Assange by Swedish authorities. Nonetheless, we understand that should he be sent to Sweden, he will be held on remand, incommunicado. We note your comments last year about the need for Mr Assange to receive appropriate consular support. We trust that this consular support is being provided and will continue.
We are concerned that should Mr Assange be placed in Swedish custody, he will be subject to the process of “temporary surrender”, enabling his removal to the United States without the appropriate legal processes that accompany normal extradition cases. We urge you to convey to the Swedish government Australia’s expectation that Mr Assange will be provided with the same rights of appeal and review that any standard extradition request would entail.
Any prosecution of Mr Assange in the United States will be on the basis of his activities as a journalist and editor (Mr Assange’s status as such has been recently confirmed by the High Court in England). Such a prosecution will be a serious assault on freedom of speech and the need for an unfettered, independent media.
Further, the chances of Mr Assange receiving a fair trial in the United States appear remote. A number of prominent political figures have called for him to be assassinated, and the Vice-President has called him a “high-tech terrorist”. Given the atmosphere of hostility in relation to Mr Assange, we hold serious concerns about his safety once in US custody. We note that Mr Assange is an Australian citizen, whose journalistic activities were undertaken entirely outside of US territory.
Mr Assange is entitled to the best endeavours of his government to ensure he is treated fairly. He is entitled to expect that his government will not remain silent while his liberty and safety are placed at risk by a government embarrassed by his journalism. Australians also expect that their government will speak out against efforts to silence the media and intimidate those who wish to hold governments to account.
We ask that you convey clearly to the United States government Australia’s concerns about any effort to manufacture charges against Mr Assange, or to use an unrelated criminal investigation as the basis for what may effectively be rendition. We also urge the government to publicly affirm that Mr Assange is welcome to return to Australia once proceedings against him in Sweden are concluded, and that the government will fully protect his rights as an Australian citizen once here.
We have copied this letter to your colleague, the Attorney-General.
Yours sincerely
Phillip Adams AO
Adam Bandt MP
Wendy Bacon
Greg Barns
Susan Benn
Senator Bob Brown
Dr Scott Burchill
Julian Burnside QC
Dr Leslie Cannold
Mike Carlton
Professor Noam Chomsky
David Collins
Lieutenant Colonel (ret) Lance Collins, Australian Intelligence Corps
Eva Cox
Sophie Cunningham
Roy David
Andrew Denton
Senator Richard Di Natale
Peter Fitzsimons
Rt Hon Malcolm Fraser AC CH
Anna Funder
Professor Raimond Gaita
David Gilmour and Polly Samson
Kara Greiner
Senator Sarah Hanson-Young
Liz Humphrys
Professor Sarah Joseph
Bernard Keane
Professor John Keane
Stephen Keim SC
Steve Killelea
Andrew Knight
Mary Kostakidis
Professor Theo van Leeuwen
Ken Loach
Antony Loewenstein
Senator Scott Ludlam
Associate Professor Jake Lynch
Professor Robert Manne
Dr Ken Macnab
David Lyle
Alex Miller
Senator Christine Milne
Alex Mitchell
Reg Mombassa
Gordon Morris
Jane Morris
Julian Morrow
The Hon Alastair Nicholson AO RFD QC
Nicolé Nolan
Rebecca O’Brien
Elizabeth O’Shea
Michael Pearce SC
John Pilger
Justin Randle
Senator Lee Rhiannon
Guy Rundle
Angus Sampson
Senator Rachel Siewert
Marius Smith
Jeff Sparrow
Professor Stuart Rees AM
Rob Stary
Stephen Thompson
Dr Tad Tietze
Mike Unger
Dale Vince
Brian Walters SC
Rachel Ward
Senator Larissa Waters
Tracy Worcester, Marchioness of Worcester
Senator Penny Wright
Spencer Zifcak

How Fox News serves us daily a whole heap of goodness

Posted: 17 Dec 2011

 
2011 has been a Fox News year with a Muslim American President, socialism in the class room, terrorists in the White House and:

Elie Wiesel, Mr Murdoch, is a Holocaust survivor but he has used his fame to care about all kinds of causes (including,according to Norman Finkelstein, exploiting groups and firms involved in the genocide) and caring little about the Palestinians.
His supposed love and affection for humanity has its limits.

New Libyan government shows true colours; mercenaries welcome

Posted: 17 Dec 2011

 
Sigh:

As rival militias in postwar Libya wage turf wars in Tripoli and the interim government struggles to form a national army, Western mercenaries are moving in to fill the security vacuum in the oil-rich North African state.
Under the circumstances, it’s not surprising that the executive bureau of the National Transitional Council, striving to govern a country wracked by gunfire and political feuding, is giving these companies the time of day.
Western oil companies and other business groups hustling to get a piece of Libya’s oil and natural gas wealth want protection before they start investing large amounts of money in the new Libya following the defeat and ignominious death of leader Moammar Gadhafi in an eight-month civil war.
“Compared to former Finance Minister Ali Tarhouni’s rather hostile attitude, Libya’s new leadership is showing greater openness toward foreign private security companies,” observed the Intelligence Online newsletter, which has headquarters in Paris.
…
Several weeks ago, London’s HIS security consultancy was reporting that the NTC was unwilling to allow private security firms into the country. This, it said, “is acting as a brake on the country’s resurgent oil production.” That, however, appears to have changed as security slumped.
Leading the pack is Britain’s Blue Mountain Group, which has been operating with Western companies in Libya for several months. It has received a no-objection certificate from the new Libyan authorities, Intelligence Online reports.
Foreign companies cannot work in Libya without a no-objection document, particularly with the state-run National Oil Co. and its joint ventures with Western oil companies.
The oil industry is a key sector for the security contractors. Many oil fields and facilities are in remote desert regions and are still prey to marauding Gadhafi loyalists and freelance gangs.
Blue Mountain took a major step forward in November by joining forces with a local outfit, the Eclipse Group.

US and Israeli backed Egyptian state thugs causing mayhem 17 December

Posted: 17 Dec 2011

 
Washington and Tel Aviv must be so proud:
 

John Pilger rightly salutes the vital importance of Wikileaks

Posted: 17 Dec 2011

 
DID YOU HAVE ANY IDEA? – with John PILGER from CaTV on Vimeo.

United Nations should regulate people smuggling industry?

Posted: 17 Dec 2011

 
Australian human rights organisation Project Safecom releases a timely and important press release today that won’t receive the serious consideration it deserves:

“Ultimately the United Nations has no choice but to regulate the international informal travel broker industry in order to minimise deaths at sea and in order to separate fly-by-night opportunistic profiteers from the family-based and ethnically-based small networks or other professional operators that assist asylum seekers to reach shelter in destination countries,” WA Human Rights group Project SafeCom said this morning.
“We join with others in acknowledging with regret the massive loss of life at sea as news emerges of the shipwreck of a vessel 90 kilometers off the coast of Java after its departure from West Java’s coastal capital of Cilapak, but we don’t join with those who once again just throw around worn-out statements about “evil people smugglers”, even while it seems clear that the boat was overloaded to ridiculous levels,” spokesman Jack H Smit said.
“The UN has already ‘painted itself into a corner’ with the establishment of the 2001 UN People Smuggling Protocol. Even so, it needs to realise that if the world community (and more particularly those countries that are signatories to the UN Refugee Convention) is unwilling to pro-actively assist to prevent the need to have unregulated people movements around the globe – a phenomenon that we expect to only increase as climate change and local unrest increases – by opening its borders to asylum seekers – that the informal travel movement is here to stay,” spokesman Jack H Smit said.

“If Australia is unwilling to increase UNHCR resources in Indonesia by a factor of ten or twenty or thirty, and if it is unwilling to fiercely lobby ASEAN countries for resettlement with full civil rights of asylum seekers BEFORE they board boats, the situation will remain the same. As long as Australia is ignoring its dramatic regional shortfall in service provision and as long as it refuses to assist asylum seekers in Indonesia, Australia’s inaction will be the most important factor in people jumping on boats to seek out protection under the UN Charter.”