A. Loewenstein Online Newsletter

The invaluable Slavoj Zizek at #OccupyWallStreet

Posted: 12 Oct 2011

Spot on:

So what are we doing here? Let me tell you a wonderful, old joke from Communist times. A guy was sent from East Germany to work in Siberia. He knew his mail would be read by censors, so he told his friends: “Let’s establish a code. If a letter you get from me is written in blue ink, it is true what I say. If it is written in red ink, it is false.” After a month, his friends get the first letter. Everything is in blue. It says, this letter: “Everything is wonderful here. Stores are full of good food. Movie theatres show good films from the west. Apartments are large and luxurious. The only thing you cannot buy is red ink.” This is how we live. We have all the freedoms we want. But what we are missing is red ink: the language to articulate our non-freedom. The way we are taught to speak about freedom— war on terror and so on—falsifies freedom. And this is what you are doing here. You are giving all of us red ink…

What do we perceive today as possible? Just follow the media. On the one hand, in technology and sexuality, everything seems to be possible. You can travel to the moon, you can become immortal by biogenetics, you can have sex with animals or whatever, but look at the field of society and economy. There, almost everything is considered impossible. You want to raise taxes by little bit for the rich. They tell you it’s impossible. We lose competitivity. You want more money for health care, they tell you, “Impossible, this means totalitarian state.” There’s something wrong in the world, where you are promised to be immortal but cannot spend a little bit more for healthcare.

Bill O’Reilly, Tavis Smiley And Cornel West on #OccupyWallStreet and poverty

Posted: 12 Oct 2011

Independent Australian Jewish Voices newsletter just out

Posted: 12 Oct 2011

The following was sent yesterday:

Dear friends,

We are sending out our occasional newsletter and we would like to express our gratitude for the support we have received. In particular, we are grateful to various generous benefactors without whom our activities would not be possible.

We have recently joined the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN), which “has been formed by civil society groups to give a national voice to the Palestinian experience, with the aim of bringing balance and truth to the public debate in Australia about the Israel-Palestine conflict.” APAN “was officially established as an Incorporated Association in May 2011 and its founding membership base includes representatives of Palestinian groups, unions, churches, existing Palestinian solidarity organisations, and Jewish groups.” Peter Slezak is on the Executive, and we are encouraging both individuals and organisations to join. Please visit www.apan.org.au for more information.

Miko Peled, the grandson of one of the signers of Israel’s Declaration of Independence and the son of a general in the 1967 war, visited Australia recently for a number of talks and public events, sponsored by the Melbourne-based Australian for Palestine (AFP). Peter Slezak joined him and others for a Parliamentary dinner at the NSW Parliament. There is a good interview with Peled here.

The Leichhardt Friends of Hebron sponsored a forum recently on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Speakers included Peter Slezak  Samah Sabawi (from Australians for Palestine) and Joseph Wakim (founder of the Arabic Australian Council). The forum was moderated by Peter Manning, senior lecturer at Monash University.

Also on the topic of the BDS movement, late last year Marrickville council in Sydney endorsed the BDS as a policy. There followed months of intense public debate, political attacks and misinformation about the BDS movement and the alleged costs to the council. In April of this year the council met to discuss whether to rescind their support for BDS. Antony Loewenstein and Peter Slezak, among others, spoke at the council meeting in support of BDS and the council’s decision of December 2010. Here is the the video of Antony’s speech. The council decided at the meeting to revoke their earlier decision to support BDS. For more information about the BDS movement, visit their website: www.bdsmovement.net

In May, the annual Jewish Limmud-Oz festival held at the University of New South Wales cancelled two speakers from their program following complaints that the two supported Marrickville council and BDS. The two speakers were Vivienne Porzsolt (from Jews Against the Occupation) and Peter Slezak. Here’s a Sydney Morning Herald article with more details of what happened, and here’s an article by Peter Slezak in which he discusses his removal from the Limmud-Oz program.

A forthcoming book may be of interest. It is edited by Avigail Abarbanel and called ‘Beyond Tribal Loyalties: Stories of Jewish Activists’ (in the Cambridge Scholars series), with a Foreword by Harvard’s Sara Roy and including chapters by Ilan Pappe, Jeff Halper, Anna Baltzer, and Peter Slezak and Vivienne Porszolt among others.

Here is an article by Antony discussing Palestine’s bid for UN statehood, and this piece, published on September 11, examines the Israeli/American relationship since 9/11.

In a significant development towards enhancing our efforts, we have hired Eran Asoulin as a part time executive officer to supplement the work he has been doing on a volunteer basis.

Among current plans, we hope to support Peter Slezak’s inclusion in the 2012 APHEDA tour of the Palestinian territories to report back in the form of public lectures, blogs and articles. APHEDA is the overseas humanitarian aid agency of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU).

Finally, IAJV now has a facebook page and a twitter page, “like” or follow us if you use those services. We will be increasing our online presence with regular updates on many relevant issues, so please visit our website.

As always, we are grateful for funding support which has allowed us to undertake our various activities. To make a contribution you may either use the “Donate” button on our website or use the following bank details for making an electronic transfer:

Unicom Credit Union
BSB: 802-396
Name: IAJV
Account Number: 26241843

Thank you in advance.

Best wishes for now,

—

Independent Australian Jewish Voices
Peter Slezak
James Levy
Antony Loewenstein
Eran Asoulin
http://www.iajv.org/

Who says you can’t buy New York’s finest?

Posted: 11 Oct 2011

Yet more evidence of the pernicious effect of private interests corrupting the public sector (via Counterpunch):

Videos are springing up across the internet showing uniformed members of the New York Police Department in white shirts (as opposed to the typical NYPD blue uniforms) pepper spraying and brutalizing peaceful, nonthreatening protestors attempting to take part in the Occupy Wall Street marches.  Corporate media are reporting that these white shirts are police supervisors as opposed to rank and file.  Recently discovered documents suggest something else may be at work.

If you’re a Wall Street behemoth, there are endless opportunities to privatize profits and socialize losses beyond collecting trillions of dollars in bailouts from taxpayers.  One of the ingenious methods that has remained below the public’s radar was started by the Rudy Giuliani administration in New York City in 1998.  It’s called the Paid Detail Unit and it allows the New York Stock Exchange and Wall Street corporations, including those repeatedly charged with crimes, to order up a flank of New York’s finest with the ease of dialing the deli for a pastrami on rye.

The corporations pay an average of $37 an hour (no medical, no pension benefit, no overtime pay) for a member of the NYPD, with gun, handcuffs and the ability to arrest.  The officer is indemnified by the taxpayer, not the corporation.

New York City gets a 10 percent administrative fee on top of the $37 per hour paid to the police.  The City’s 2011 budget called for $1,184,000 in Paid Detail fees, meaning private corporations were paying  wages of $11.8 million to police participating in the Paid Detail Unit.  The program has more than doubled in revenue to the city since 2002.

The taxpayer has paid for the training of the rent-a-cop, his uniform and gun, and will pick up the legal tab for lawsuits stemming from the police personnel following illegal instructions from its corporate master.  Lawsuits have already sprung up from the program.

When the program was first rolled out, one insightful member of the NYPD posted the following on a forum: “… regarding the officer working for, and being paid by, some of the richest people and organizations in the City, if not the world, enforcing the mandates of the private employer, and in effect, allowing the officer to become the Praetorian Guard of the elite of the City. And now corruption is no longer a problem. Who are they kidding?”

CHOGM perfect place to hold Sri Lankan war criminals to account

Posted: 11 Oct 2011

My following piece appears in today’s ABC The Drum:

In late September, the government of Sri Lanka released 1,800 former Tamil Tiger fighters.

Colombo claimed they had been rehabilitated as President Mahinda Rajapaksa told them at a ceremony in the capital:

“I hope you will work for peace and ethnic harmony in this nation of ours. We must not dwell on the bitter past, but look to a prosperous future.”

Many other former fighters remain incommunicado, housed in secret camps away from international inspection or human rights protection.

This is occurring in “democratic” Sri Lanka, a nation still deeply divided along racial and political lines.

The over two years since the official end of the country’s brutal civil war has seen an attempted re-branding exercise by the Rajapaksa regime, including the encouragement of a vibrant tourist sector.

Despite the fact that the government murdered at least 40,000 Tamil civilians during the last period of the war (a figure confirmed by then UN spokesman in Colombo, Gordon Weiss), the international community has been reluctant to hold officials to account.

A thorough UN-led investigation found overwhelming evidence of war crimes committed by both sides during the conflict and Ban Ki-Moon recently submitted this report to the UN Human Rights Council for investigation. The move was condemned by Colombo.

After a 10-month investigation, the UN found that “most civilian casualties in the final phases of the war were caused by government shelling”. Furthermore, it made accusations that Sri Lankan troops had shelled civilians in the “no-fire zone” and targeted hospitals in its desire to crush the Tamil Tigers.

A recently released WikiLeaks cable revealed that when Ban Ki-Moon visited the country in 2009 he witnessed “complete destruction” when he flew over the former “no-fire zone”. He described the conditions of Manik Farm refugee camp as worse than anything he had ever seen before.

This background is essential to understand as we approach the next Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), being held in Perth in late October. Sri Lanka President Rajapaksa will be attending and Sri Lanka is scheduled to host CHOGM in 2013. Serious questions are now being asked by human rights groups in Australia and globally, Tamil organisations and some brave politicians; why is Sri Lanka being indulged at the expense of justice for its countless victims?

In September a letter was sent to the Commonwealth foreign ministers that was signed by the world’s leading human rights groups.

It read in part:

“We are gravely concerned about the ongoing discussions on holding the 2013 CHOGM in Sri Lanka. At the 2009 CHOGM, Sri Lanka’s candidature for hosting the meeting was deferred from 2011 to2013 because of concerns about human rights abuses by the Sri Lankan government. While war-time abuses have ended, the situation in Sri Lanka continues to be characterised by serious human rights violations, including assault on democratic institutions, such as the media and trade unions. The Panel of Experts appointed by the UN Secretary-General to advise him on the status of allegations of war crimes during the last weeks of the conflict in Sri Lanka has concluded that serious abuses were committed by the government and by the LTTE, and warrant an international investigation.”

The statement called on Sri Lanka to implement numerous changes before it would be awarded hosting honours in 2013. Furthermore, Sri Lanka is keen to host the Commonwealth Games in 2018 and the Commonwealth itself, never known to be overly pro-active against human rights abusers, is being asked to not consider Colombo’s application.

Federal Greens MP Lee Rhiannon has been one of the most consistent Australian politicians keeping the issue of war crimes in Sri Lanka in the public arena. Although her party failed to convince the Labor and Liberal parties to support a Senate motion to suspend Sri Lanka from the Councils of the Commonwealth, she pledged to continue pressuring the Federal Government to convince Colombo to establish an independent war crimes commission.

Rhiannon hosted a roundtable of experts in the Federal Parliament in September that called for Sri Lanka’s suspensionof the Commonwealth. She said:

“With CHOGM shortly to be held in Perth, the Australian government needs to add its voice and ensure that all Commonwealth nations uphold principles of human rights and the rule of law.”

Unsurprisingly, Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner in Canberra, Admiral Thisara Samarasinghe (a man with a troubling past) rejected the roundtable’s recommendation, issuing the following Orwellian statement:

The [Sri Lanka] government had to take military action to defeat the terrorists to save the civilians.

In other words, we had to destroy the population in order to save it.

Intriguingly, conservative Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, one of the world’s strongest backers of Israel,recently announced that he intended “to make clear to my fellow leaders at the Commonwealth that if we do not see progress in Sri Lanka in terms of human rights… I will not as prime minister be attending that Commonwealth summit [in 2013].”. Harper also strongly backed calls for an independent investigation of alleged war crimes during the war.

The British Tory government, at times critical of Colombo’s behaviour, is currently embroiled in a scandal involving the Defence Secretary Liam Fox. He is accused of both being far too close to the Sri Lankan government and backing its war against the Tamils.

Although Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd has also called for an investigation, the Labor government remains desperate for Colombo to assist its flailing asylum seeker policy. Canberra has praised the Rajapaksa regime for stopping boats of Tamils fleeing the nation, a move rightly slammed by John Dowd, president of the International Commission of Jurists.

“It is likely these asylum seekers will be treated harshly when all they have done is exercise a legal right,” Dowd said. “People who are desperate to get away from Sri Lanka know that it is a dangerous enterprise coming by sea. We Australians praise ourselves as great humanitarians – this is hardly an example of compassion.”

Australia’s high commissioner to Sri Lanka, Kathy Klugman, recently told the state’s Sunday Times newspaper that, “close to 100 Sri Lankans have been returned from Australia in the past few years”. The fate of returned Tamils at the hands of government thugs is often brutal, according to investigations by human rights organisation.

Klugman was also recently publicly attacked for handing out certificates to alleged Tamil rebels after the alleged “rehabilitation” program, legitimising a program that is both secretive and unproven. Rehabilitation can take many forms post conflict.

For the Australian Government, in the midst of a refugee drama it has no idea how to manage politically or legally, war crimes in Sri Lanka is far less important than stopping refugee boats.

The status of Sri Lanka in the 21st century is of a political elite triumphantly thriving on racial supremacy ideology.

The recent discovery of gas deposits in its waters will only strengthen the fears that a resource curse will benefit the Sinhalese majority against the Tamil minority.

The international community has a moral and legal responsibility to hold Sri Lanka to account. Failing this basic task will merely encourage other states engaged in a “war on terror”, from America to Israel and Yemen to Afghanistan, to act with impunity against civilians.

CHOGM is the perfect opportunity to challenge Rajapaksa over his government’s wilful murder of Tamils under the guise of defeating terrorism. It is arguable whether he should even be allowed into the country but if he arrives in Perth he should be made to realise that he has the blood of innocents on his hands.

Antony Loewenstein is an Australian independent journalist who sits on the advisory council of the UK-based Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice.

Afghan war failure opens door to predatory firms looking to make killing

Posted: 11 Oct 2011

Afghanistan Today writes:

Exploding bombs and gunfights will harm the economy of any city, either by causing direct damage or through the wider impact on trade and services. But for security equipment companies working the market in Kabul, business is, for want of a better word, booming.

That war means big business is a lamentable fact of life. In Kabul, a vast security equipment sector is consequently thriving as the armed conflict enters its tenth year, while other areas of the market are feeling the pinch.

“Increasing insecurity and instability means the price of our equipment goes up, as does the number of customers,” said Qais Ayoubi, sales manager at the Kabul-based company Grand Security Suppliers, which like most in the sector has a broad list of products: “We deal in everything from small security devices like cameras to armoured vehicles.”

Add to these items others that are readily sought these days, like razor wire, reinforced doors, blast walls and blast-proof glass, alarm systems, metal detectors, body armour, uniforms and walkie-talkies, to name a few, and you have a billion-dollar industry.

And as in any line of goods, security items are varyingly priced for a wide spending bracket.

In Kabul, a passenger vehicle that has been specially armoured to withstand gunfire and blasts can cost between 65,000 and 120,000 US dollars, and security cameras from 700 to 6,000 dollars.

But contrary to possible expectations, each successive attack – and there have been several major ones in the Afghan capital in recent weeks, does not necessarily precipitate a deluge of orders.

Business is increasing steadily, say the firms. But it also shows a peculiar elasticity, a general ebb and flow of orders that makes turnover hard to predict.

“Our revenue figures also depend on customer needs of course,” Ayoubi added. “We can average at a turnover of 10,000 dollars a month for a while, and then this can spike to a million dollars or more. [So] it’s not always the case that security threats increase our sales. Usually sales are done through contracts with companies and organizations.”

What privatisation does to immigration detention

Posted: 11 Oct 2011

This is almost comical but sadly true (via the Canberra Times):

The Commonwealth Government is suing its former immigration detention operators for failing to protect it against lawsuits lodged by people kept in detention facilities.

The case will be heard in the South Australian Supreme Court on November 21.

It is part of a long-running case launched by former asylum-seeker Abdul Amir Hamidi, who won a confidential settlement against the Federal Government after almost five years in detention.

As The Canberra Times revealed on Saturday, Mr Hamidi’s lawyers predict that the confidential settlement will spark dozens more claims for damages.

In a case to be heard on November 21, the Commonwealth will claim its former detention centre operators – GSL and Australasian Correctional Services – breached their contracts by exposing the Government to the legal action.

The Commonwealth will argue both companies agreed to indemnify it against damages based on their running of Australian detention centres.

Australasian Correctional Services operated Australia’s mainland immigration detention facilities until early 2004.

Group 4 Falck Global Solutions Pty Ltd (which later changed its name to Global Solutions Limited, or GSL) commenced management of the centres in late 2003.

Both companies will fight the claim, with ACS arguing it had insufficient time to respond to the allegations and the terms of its agreement included dispute resolution measures.

GSL says it is not responsible for indemnifying the Commonwealth for any ”negligent, wilful, reckless or unlawful acts or omissions of the Commonwealth, its employees, officers or agents”.

Between 2000 and March 2010, detainees in Australian immigration detention centres were paid more than $12.3million in compensation for personal injury or unlawful detention.