Antony Loewenstein

With the British government massively cutting public spending, expect reliance on the private sector to grow. And little accountability. Just how both sides want it:

The scale of the country’s reliance on private companies to power the state is revealed today as the government takes the historic step of publishing its accounts for the first time.

The disclosure of the majority of payments made by government departments over the first five months after the election reveals Whitehall’s struggle to wean itself off high-cost contracts – and a burgeoning industry emerging around the coalition’s reforms.

It also reveals the lingering waste in the government machine, with civil servants sent on chocolate-themed awaydays, training for civil servants in how to have “difficult conversations”, and nightclubs rented for official meetings. Downing Street spent £55,000 renovating David Cameron’s offices after his election.

The data includes 194,000 individual payments made by every government department between May and September this year. It shows everything from the student loan bill to the Whitehall phone bill, giving an extraordinary insight into the government’s books. Eton was paid £40,000 of taxpayers’ money to work with state schools, £1.17m went on in-cell TV for prisoners who have earned the privilege, and £6.6m on free coal for ex-miners.

Publication of spending data was at the heart of the coalition’s promise to make government more transparent but today is the first time it has released figures relating to its own period in government. Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, said publication would force civil servants to re-evaluate their spending and encourage companies to undercut their rivals to reduce costs further.

But as the files were made available to journalists last night the government was feeling the first glimpse of the reality of its transparency project, with some officials unable to explain items of spending, the Ministry of Defence forced to redact entries to protect national security, and a furious spat between the government and Labour over who was to blame for individual items of spending.

“A lot of this stuff we inherited and had to continue,” a Downing Street source said. “The government needs to start taking responsibility for itself,” a senior Labour source responded.

Maude, writing for the Guardian’s Comment is Free, says: “When you are forced to account for the money you spend, you spend it more wisely. This government should be held to account for every penny it spends and I believe that with the weight of public interest on their shoulders, greater transparency will drive departments to make the right decisions about how they spend taxpayer’s money.”

Key revelations from the spending data released include:

• The scale of the payments to the biggest private suppliers dwarfs the budgets for some government departments. Capita, the single largest outsourcing firm working for the government, received £3.3bn over the period – including the processing and payment of teachers’ pensions – more than the Department of Energy and Climate Change receives in a year.

• £1.43bn was spent on PFI projects for schools and £1.25bn on other PFI deals.

• The challenge facing the government as it attempts to renegotiate its colossal IT bill is laid bare. It paid £271m to one firm alone, Aspire, which oversees the IT system for Revenue & Customs.

The rise of the far right in Europe and its love for Israel is a connection that many in the Zionist community would rather ignore. So why do we think far-right fascists like Israel so much these days? Not because they’re Jewish but the killing and occupation of Muslims is terribly appealing.

Max Blumenthal reports from Europe where this issue is hot:

The pro-Israel position of the new breed of European far-rightists has to be recognized as much more than a convenient political tactic. Of course, saying you “stand with Israel,” as [Gert] Wilders so often does, is an easy way to insulate yourself from charges of anti-Semitism. But the extreme right is also attracted to Israel because the country represents its highest ideals. While some critics see Israel as a racist apartheid state, people like Wilders see Israel as a racist apartheid state — and they like it. They richly enjoy when Israel mows down Arab Muslims by the dozens and tells the world to go to hell; they admire Israel’s settler culture; and most of all, they yearn to live in a land like Israel that privileges its ethnic majority above all others to the point that it systematically humiliates and dispossesses the swarthy racial outclass. The endgame of the far-right is to make Europe less tolerant and more Israeli.

There will be growing pressure towards the Greens to take on BDS in its arsenal to pressure Israel to abide by international law. Some are yet to get the message:

Addressing an issue that is not likely to come up at other Victorian election debates, The Greens candidate in Caulfield encouraged more trade with Israel. Responding to a question about whether The Greens support a global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against the Jewish State, Philip Walker gave a visual response.

The candidate took off his shoe, showing the audience it was an Israeli-made Naot clog, adding, “best shoes in the world, I’ve got about five pairs”.

The party has come under fire for favouring a full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and the settlements and the dismantling of the security barrier. However, long-time Greens member Walker said the party has no explicit policy on BDS.

“There is no support for boycotts at all,” he said. “We have no endorsement of boycotts.”

He went even further: “I believe there is a lot Israel can teach Australia.

“I would be in favour of stronger trade links,” he said.

The comments were made as part of a joint Jewish Community Council of Victoria (JCCV) and Blake Street Hebrew Congregation election debate.

Labor candidate for Caulfield Heather Abramson, Liberal candidate for Caulfield David Southwick and Walker all appeared before an audience of more than 100 people on Sunday evening. They addressed issues from the closure of Hazlewood power station to supporting children with disabilities.

All three candidates committed to lobbying for a Victoria Police hate crimes unit to investigate racially-motivated incidents.

“I will be doing everything possible to get a hate crimes unit,” Southwick said, a statement that was echoed by Walker and Abramson.

There were also a few curly ethical questions asked.

The Liberal candidate said no to both same-sex marriage and euthanasia.

The Labor candidate said she was uncomfortable with the word “marriage”, but said she supports equal rights.

The Greens candidate spoke in support of euthanasia, the right to die with dignity, and added he fully agrees with same-sex marriage.

Fox News head Roger Ailes displays his charming side (for which he later apologised):

They [National Public Radio] are, of course, Nazis. They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism. These guys don’t want any other point of view. They don’t even feel guilty using tax dollars to spout their propaganda. They are basically Air America with government funding to keep them alive.

What a false choice. True humanists don’t need to worry about “delegitimising” Israel because anything to do with the colonies is doing that for them. By not totally opposing the occupation is only leading to the Jewish state’s demise:

Residents of the arid West Bank town of Ariel got a taste last week of Paris.

Defying left-wing calls for an actors’ boycott, the Beersheba theater group inaugurated a new cultural center with a moving performance of “Piaf,” a musical tribute to the undisputed doyenne of the French chanson.

The very staging of the show went to the heart of a bitter argument between left and right over which side can claim to be today’s true Zionists. Each accuses the other of betraying the Zionist heritage and giving succor to a rising tide of delegitimization that calls for Israel’s dismantlement or at least questions its right to exist.

For the left-wingers, the tricky dilemma is how to criticize the government and the occupation without providing ammunition for Israel’s foes.

Right-wingers argue that sharp left-wing attacks on the settler project, like calling for a cultural boycott of the settlements, play into the hands of would-be delegitimizers, who also use the boycott weapon. Left-wingers retort that only by ending the occupation, the target of virtually all their criticism, will Israel finally be able to put to rest the growing rumblings against its international legitimacy.

In the run-up to the Piaf performance, left-wing actors, directors, authors and academics wrote letters calling for a boycott of the Ariel cultural center to make crystal clear their opposition to the ongoing settlement enterprise.

“It was essential to remind Israeli public opinion that there is no consensus on the legitimacy of the settlements,” playwright Yehoshua Sobol, one of the leaders of the  protest, told JTA. “It’s a case of Ariel or Israel. Ariel will destroy Israel if it goes on like this.”

Israeli Culture Minister Limor Livnat responded with two proposals, both of which enraged the left: that government financing for theater groups be dependent on prior agreement to perform anywhere under Israeli control, and that a prize be created for “Zionist” work.

Outraged left-wingers argued that it would be wrong to attach government strings of any kind to creative work. Moreover, they asked, who would define what was or was not “Zionist”?

“There is a semantic confusion here,” Gadi Baltiansky, director of the Geneva Initiative, a 2003 blueprint for peace with the Palestinians, said in an interview with JTA. “When Culture Minister Limor Livnat says her answer to those who don’t want to perform in Ariel is to give a prize to a ‘Zionist’ work, she is turning things upside down. The true Zionists are the people who don’t want to keep the West Bank, and those who do are the ones undermining the legitimacy of the Zionist enterprise.”

Investigative journalist John Pilger interviews fellow reporter Wilfred Burchett in 1983. Dissident writing up close:

The Outsiders: Wilfred Burchett from John Pilger on Vimeo.

While corporate politicians mostly talk about increasing prison numbers and locking more people away, public opinion over the issue is far more complex (if tabloid hysteria is ignored).

However, in an increasingly privatised world, this recent NPR story in the US speaks volumes about an unhealthy relationship between a cash-strapped government and private interest:

Last year, two men showed up in Benson, Ariz., a small desert town 60 miles from the Mexico border, offering a deal.

Glenn Nichols, the Benson city manager, remembers the pitch.

“The gentleman that’s the main thrust of this thing has a huge turquoise ring on his finger,” Nichols said. “He’s a great big huge guy and I equated him to a car salesman.”

What he was selling was a prison for women and children who were illegal immigrants.

“They talk [about] how positive this was going to be for the community,” Nichols said, “the amount of money that we would realize from each prisoner on a daily rate.”

But Nichols wasn’t buying. He asked them how would they possibly keep a prison full for years — decades even — with illegal immigrants?

“They talked like they didn’t have any doubt they could fill it,” Nichols said.

That’s because prison companies like this one had a plan — a new business model to lock up illegal immigrants. And the plan became Arizona’s immigration law.

The law is being challenged in the courts. But if it’s upheld, it requires police to lock up anyone they stop who cannot show proof they entered the country legally.

When it was passed in April, it ignited a fire storm. Protesters chanted about racial profiling. Businesses threatened to boycott the state.

Supporters were equally passionate, calling it a bold positive step to curb illegal immigration.

But while the debate raged, few people were aware of how the law came about.

NPR spent the past several months analyzing hundreds of pages of campaign finance reports, lobbying documents and corporate records. What they show is a quiet, behind-the-scenes effort to help draft and pass Arizona Senate Bill 1070 by an industry that stands to benefit from it: the private prison industry.

I recently interviewed leading American Jewish dissident and writer Norman Finkelstein at an inter-faith event in Sydney organised by Father Dave:

Apartheid is a complex business to manage:

Though a Defense Ministry unit was set up five years ago to oversee checkpoints between Israel and the West Bank, these checkpoints are still run by no fewer than six different agencies, and no single body coordinates their work, Haaretz has found.

The agencies running the checkpoints include the Israel Defense Forces, the Defense Ministry’s Crossing Administration, the Border Police and the regular police. In addition, staff work is carried out by the Counterterrorism Bureau, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, the Crossing Administration and the IDF Central Command. Haaretz found that none of these organizations were certain who has overall responsibility for these checkpoints.

The new rulers of the world:

One hundred fifty of the world’s most powerful people in the fields of politics, banking, business, and media met this past weekend at an exclusive Swiss resort for the 54th annual invitation-only summit where they show each other their penises. This year’s meeting was chaired by a committee that included Rupert Murdoch, former U.S. national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, oil heir David H. Koch, and Japanese finance minister Yoshihiko Noda, all of whom presided over the traditional penis-showing ceremony that has for decades been a banner event for the most influential international power brokers.