A. Loewenstein Online Newsletter

NOVANEWS

Serco making money from the noble act of volunteering

Posted: 04 Aug 2011

A privatised future that gives us all a chill, writes Zoe Williams in the Guardian:

It is pointless at this stage to pretend to be surprised that charities are facing £100m worth of cuts to their local authority funding, although it is ironic that the sector most flattered by “big society” rhetoric should be the one to take such an immediate and, in many cases, fatal kicking. As policy it’s hypocritical and short-sighted, but it might, in the interests of brevity, be time to start reporting only when that isn’t the case. More pressingly, where is this situation heading?
For more than a decade, Professor Ian Bruce of the Cass Business School explains, “there has been a significant shift from grant aid supporting charities doing very vital work to them being contracted to do that work on behalf of statutory organisations”. This was put in place by the last government, but only under the coalition has the potential for negative consequence really shown itself. Councils, in a bid to save money, have cut the amount they’re prepared to pay per “service hour”; smaller charities can’t tender for the contracts so they end up going to vast organisations, which often aren’t even not-for-profit.
Last month it was announced that 90% of the 40 contracts in the Work Programme had gone to corporations including Ingeus Deloitte, A4e, Serco and G4S. Lord Freud gave a speech last month in which he congratulated his government for the reach of its vision on unemployment: these service providers, should they manage to find work for someone persistently unemployed, could get as much as £14,000. This is probably greater than the salary of the person they’ve just found work for. Philanthrocapitalism often looks a lot more like capitalism than it does philanthropy.

Israeli paper sorry it publicly stated its dislike for racial diversity

Posted: 04 Aug 2011

Just after the massacre in Norway, the pro-settler Jerusalem Post wrote an editorial that appeared to blame multiculturalism for the crimes of Anders Behring Breivik. What the world needs is ethnically pure nations (like Israel?). The paper has now issued an “apology”. The message? We’re so sorry that readers would think we hate Muslims:

A Jerusalem Post editorial published July 25 on the massacre in Norway three days earlier triggered an avalanche of critical talkbacks and letters to the editor.
Anders Behring Breivik confessed to detonating a car bomb outside Oslo’s government headquarters that claimed eight victims and then shooting dead 69 people, many of them teenagers, at a summer camp on nearby Utoeya Island exactly two weeks ago.
The editorial squarely condemned the attack, saying that “as Israelis, a people that is sadly all too familiar with the horrors of indiscriminate, murderous terrorism, our hearts go out with empathy to the Norwegian people.”
However, it also, inappropriately, raised issues that were not directly pertinent, such as the dangers of multiculturalism, European immigration policies and even the Oslo peace process.
“Your editorial, while insistently condemning the violence in Norway, shockingly and shamelessly attempts to offer justification for his extremist violent act of terror,” wrote Esam Omeish in one of many letters to the editor, several of which were published in the paper.
Steve Linde, the editor-in-chief, immediately posted the following statement on our website, JPost.com: “As a newspaper, The Jerusalem Post strongly denounces all acts of violence against innocent civilians. This editorial is not aimed at deflecting attention from the horrific massacre perpetuated in Norway, nor the need to take greater precautions against extremists from all sides.”
As Senior Contributing Editor Caroline B. Glick suggested in her column last Friday, the fact that Breivik’s warped mind cited a group of conservative thinkers including herself as having influenced his thinking in no way reflects on them.
“As a rule, liberal democracies reject the resort to violence as a means of winning an argument. This is why, for liberal democracies, terrorism in all forms is absolutely unacceptable,” she wrote. “Whether or not one agrees with the ideological self-justifications of a terrorist, as a member of a liberal democratic society, one is expected to abhor his act of terrorism. Because by resorting to violence to achieve his aims, the terrorist is acting in a manner that fundamentally undermines the liberal democratic order.”
It later emerged that Breivik, a Christian radical, had posted on the Internet an extremely anti-Muslim manifesto that supported far-right nationalism and Zionism.
He apparently feared that a “Muslim colonization” of Europe would destroy Norway.
This is certainly not the kind of support Israel needs. It is the type of Islamophobia that is all too reminiscent of the Nazis’ attitude toward the Jews. Jews, Muslims and Christians in Israel and around the world should be standing together against such hate crimes.
Israel, it should be stressed, swiftly and strongly condemned the attack in Norway. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu issued a statement saying that Jerusalem identified with the “deep pain and grief” of the Norwegian people.
The Foreign Ministry said that Israel “expresses its shock at the revolting terror attacks in Oslo, which have taken the lives of innocent victims.”
“Nothing at all can justify such wanton violence, and we condemn this brutal action with the utmost gravity,” the Foreign Ministry statement said. “We stand in solidarity with the people and government of Norway in this hour of trial, and trust Norwegian authorities to bring to justice those responsible for this heinous crime.”
President Shimon Peres telephoned Norway’s King Harald V to express Israel’s condolences.
“Your country is a symbol of peace and freedom. In Israel, we followed the events… in Norway and the attack on innocent civilians broke our hearts. It is a painful tragedy that touches every human being,” Peres said. “We send our condolences to the families that lost their loved ones and a speedy recovery to the wounded. Israel is willing to assist in whatever is needed.”
In today’s paper, we are publishing an opinion piece by Norway’s deputy foreign minister, Espen Barth Eide, in which he thanks Israeli leaders “for their kind and comforting words” but expresses dismay over comments made by two Jerusalem Post columnists.
At the same time, he titles his column, “A time to heal.”
We echo his wish, and hope that the Norwegian government and people will accept the Post’s apology and forgive us for any offense or hurt caused by our editorial and columnists at this sensitive time.

The long arm of Saudi attitude (and Robert Fisk now knows)

Posted: 04 Aug 2011

Mmm:

Saudi Arabia’s interior minister yesterday accepted undisclosed damages from a British newspaper for a false story claiming that he had ordered police chiefs in the kingdom “to shoot and kill unarmed demonstrators without mercy”.
The Independent newspaper and its Middle East correspondent, Robert Fisk, offered “sincere apologies” at the high court in London to Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud.
It was announced in court that the “substantial” damages being paid to Prince Nayef would be handed over to charities.
Rupert Earle, the prince’s barrister, told Justice Nicola Davies that the bogus claim arose from internet stories in March about Shiite activists in Saudi Arabia trying to organise a protest march.
Several websites, said Mr Earle, claimed that Prince Nayef had told police chiefs in each of Saudi Arabia’s provinces that demonstrators “should be shown no mercy, should be struck with iron fists, and that it was permitted for all officers and personnel to use live rounds”. Although there was no truth in the claim, the barrister said, The Independent repeated it in an article in April in which Mr Fisk suggested that Prince Nayef was “worthy of investigation by the International Criminal Court at The Hague”.
Prince Nayef had not been given an opportunity to deny issuing the order and the article was reproduced on various websites and paraphrased in numerous stories carried by leading Arabic-language media, Mr Earle said.

The Blogging Revolution updated post the Arab revolutions

Posted: 04 Aug 2011