Antony Loewenstein

Sure, Australia already sells the stuff to countless nations around the world but are there any limits to what privatised companies will be allowed to do here?

Australian Greens Senator for Western Australia Scott Ludlam has slammed provocative plans by Canadian uranium mining company Cameco to truck uranium through several WA cities and towns.

The Cameco planned course will see up to 3,600 tonnes of uranium oxide concentrate from the Kintyre project trucked past Port Headland and though Newman, Meekatharra, Mount Magnet, Leonora and a number of other towns en route to the proposed Parkeston travel hub outside Kalgoorlie each year. If the hub is not completed by 2013, the uranium will be transported though Kalgoorlie itself.

“There are a significant number of freight truck accidents in Western Australia each year, but that’s just part of the concern. This is a project that goes wrong at every turn, planned by a company with an appalling history,” said Senator Ludlam.

“The mine itself is proposed for a site right next to Rudall River, alongside the Karlamilyi National Park. The site of the uranium deposit was originally part of the park and was excised in 1994, so as you can imagine it is a pristine natural area and it has environmentally sensitive wetlands in the vicinity,” said Senator Ludlam.

This is what Australia has created. A militarised and privatised system to house asylum seekers. Christmas Island remains in a state of heightened tension.

The Australian offers a little more information about the state of dysfunction between the federal government and British multinational Serco:

While private security firm Serco has come under scrutiny for understaffing that left the centre vulnerable, The Australian has been told the AFP officers were posted to the detention centre after a brawl there between Afghan and Sri Lankan asylum-seekers in November 2009. They worked closely with Serco’s sole intelligence analyst, training him in how to predict and prevent riots.

After a period of calm, the AFP officers were withdrawn from the centre and the island. Soon after, the intelligence analyst also left his job. His replacements have not had the benefit of on-the-job training or assistance from AFP officers with experience in riots and other public order issues.

Since the upheaval, Christmas Island residents have sought assurances the AFP presence on the island would be boosted.

AFP operational commander Chris Lines told residents on Saturday that the number of police was yet to be determined.

“The assurance I can give you is that we will have people here,” he said.

Yesterday, the AFP said the matter was under consideration.

Not much, no. In fact, what’s remarkable about the Western intervention is the complete lack of understanding who is fighting for what and why. Calling for democracy is essential, of course, but what else? Barack Obama’s recent speech backing the war was all about protecting civilians and America not willing to watch massacres take place. Tell that to the people of Pakistan, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Congo and the list goes on. Who takes this man really seriously?

The New Yorker’s Jon Lee Anderson has spent the last weeks in Libya and files this revealing report:

Three of the world’s great armies have suddenly conspired to support a group of people in the coastal cities and towns of Libya, known, vaguely, as “the rebels.” Last month, Muammar Qaddafi, who combines a phantasmagorical sense of reality with an unbounded capacity for terror, appeared on television to say that the rebels were nothing more than Al Qaeda extremists, addled by hallucinogens slipped into their milk and Nescafé. President Obama, who is torn between the imperatives of rescuing Libyan innocents from slaughter and not falling into yet another prolonged war, described the same rebels rather differently: “people who are seeking a better way of life.”

During weeks of reporting in Benghazi and along the chaotic, shifting front line, I’ve spent a great deal of time with these volunteers. The hard core of the fighters has been the shabab—the young people whose protests in mid-February sparked the uprising. They range from street toughs to university students (many in computer science, engineering, or medicine), and have been joined by unemployed hipsters and middle-aged mechanics, merchants, and storekeepers. There is a contingent of workers for foreign companies: oil and maritime engineers, construction supervisors, translators. There are former soldiers, their gunstocks painted red, green, and black—the suddenly ubiquitous colors of the pre-Qaddafi Libyan flag.

And there are a few bearded religious men, more disciplined than the others, who appear intent on fighting at the dangerous tip of the advancing lines. It seems unlikely, however, that they represent Al Qaeda. I saw prayers being held on the front line at Ras Lanuf, but most of the fighters did not attend. One zealous-looking fighter at Brega acknowledged that he was a jihadi—a veteran of the Iraq war—but said that he welcomed U.S. involvement in Libya, because Qaddafi was a kafir, an unbeliever.

…

Some things are clear, though. In Benghazi, an influential businessman named Sami Bubtaina expressed a common sentiment: “We want democracy. We want good schools, we want a free media, an end to corruption, a private sector that can help build this nation, and a parliament to get rid of whoever, whenever, we want.” These are honorable aims. But to expect that they will be achieved easily is to deny the cost of decades of insanity, terror, and the deliberate eradication of civil society.

Such news barely registers in the West, it’s such a normal occurrence:

The board of Hebrew University summoned representatives of the university’s Hadash Party to a hearing before the Dean of Students last week. The hearing was for Hadash’s screening of the film Jenin, Jenin, and is yet another act by Hebrew University in actively collaborating in Israel’s repression of the Palestinian people.

The students will be disciplined for screening the film Jenin, Jenin, directed by Mohammed Bakri, during one of their meetings. The university currently has a ban on the film.

As punishment, the students might be suspended from organizing party activities, and there is even a possibility that all organized meetings of the Hadash party at the university could be canceled. The university is expected to release their sentence soon.

The film was screened by members of the group to show solidarity with the filmmaker Mohammed Bakri, who attended the event, despite the opposition of the university. Towards the end of the screening, university security guards stopped the film.

Shameful:

In October 2010 ChilOut was told – women at the ASTI have been waiting 6 months for  knickers- yes underwear. Many women had only one pair of pants – the one they came off the boat wearing. Many times advocates asked – why can’t you walk them 5 minutes down the road to the k-mart and let them choose 6 pairs of knickers. No, SERCO have some central “cheap” supply somewhere which took six months to provide. Ten days ago the women were given- wait for it- YES 3 KNICKERS EACH. oh the generosity- the largesse!

The women at the ASTI are required to go to the office and line up and ask for SANITARY NAPKINS on the day that they start to bleed- not before. They are then given 6 napkins- not a packet but 6. They can ask for more as needed. At night only male officers are on duty so if the need them during the evening shift they must ask these men.

ChilOut’s Jessica wrote to her MP Tanya Plibersek, and she recieved this response from the Minister. It basically says that he asked Serco if they were doing their job, and they said “sure we are!” And the Minister has taken that at face value. Hmmm. Not sure about the quality of that investigation.

Middle East brutality brought to you by good old capitalism:

As Middle East regimes try to stifle dissent by censoring the Internet, the U.S. faces an uncomfortable reality: American companies provide much of the technology used to block websites.

McAfee Inc., acquired last month by Intel Corp., has provided content-filtering software used by Internet-service providers in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, according to interviews with buyers and a regional reseller. Blue Coat Systems Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif., has sold hardware and technology in Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar that has been used in conjunction with McAfee’s Web-filtering software and sometimes to block websites on its own, according to interviews with people working at or with ISPs in the region.

A regulator in Bahrain, which uses McAfee’s SmartFilter product, says the government is planning to switch soon to technology from U.S.-based Palo Alto Networks Inc. It promises to give Bahrain more blocking options and make it harder for people to circumvent censoring.

Netsweeper Inc. of Canada has landed deals in the UAE, Qatar and Yemen, according to a company document.

Websense Inc. of San Diego, Calif., has a policy that states it “does not sell to governments or Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that are engaged in government-imposed censorship.” But it has sold its Web-filtering technology in Yemen, where it has been used to block online tools that let people disguise their identities from government monitors, according to Harvard University and University of Toronto researchers.

Websense’s general counsel said in a 2009 statement about the incident: “On rare occasion things can slip through the cracks.”

Executive Editor Bill Keller, writing in his paper, argues that his glorious newspaper is the best humans can create, an impartial collection of stories that tell us about the world. No agendas.

It’s embarrassing that a supposedly senior editor will write such nonsense in 2011. Everybody has opinions and agendas; the challenge is what you do with them. And when a paper such as the NYT is often little more than a publication that allows anonymous “US officials” the chance to spout administration propaganda, you have become a mouthpiece for the Obama administration.

I read the Times to get a sense what the US State Department is thinking. With notable exceptions, the paper doesn’t try to offer seriously provocative perspectives.

Here’s Keller:

Has anyone actually seen James O’Keefe and Julian Assange together? Are we quite sure that the right-wing prankster who brought down the leadership of National Public Radio and the anarchic leaker aren’t split personalities of the same guy — sent by fate to mess with the heads of mainstream journalists?

Sure, one shoots from the left, the other from the right. One deals in genuine (albeit purloined) secrets; the other in “Candid Camera” stunts, most recently arranging for fake potential donors to entrap a foolish NPR executive into disclosing his scorn for Republicans and the Tea Party. Assange aims to enlist the media; O’Keefe aims to discredit us. But each, in his own guerrilla way, has sown his share of public doubt about whether the press can be trusted as an impartial bearer of news.

I don’t intend this occasional essay to become the Editor’s Pulpit, but right now — when we are buffeted between those on the right who think we are agents of liberalism and those on the left who think we should be, and when we are asking devoted readers to pay for us online — it seems like a good time to pause and review some first principles.

…

In short, our mission is not to tell you what we think or what you are supposed to think, and it is certainly not to pander to your prejudices. It is to supply to you, as best we can, the basis to make up your own minds.

As partisan “news” sites have proliferated and the country has grown more polarized, there is sometimes pressure on journalists to abandon the effort to be impartial, to openly take a side and to write accordingly. Some of our critics insist that objectivity is unattainable — or boring ­— so why try? To me that is like saying that because much of our children’s future is ordained by genetics, we should abandon the effort to be good parents. Impartial journalism, like child-rearing, is an aspiration, but it is a worthy one.

SBS Dateline reports on the side of Israel routinely ignored in the West:

Professor John Sheehan, an Australian authority on native title compensation, certainly thinks he could be. He’s currently helping Nuri in his struggle to reclaim land taken from his family by the Israeli authorities 60 years ago.

Despite living in the Negev Desert for hundreds of years, long before modern-day Israel was even formed, Bedouin who want to live on their ancestral land are being accused by Israel of ‘trespassing’.

Video journalist Amos Roberts travels with Nuri to the edge of the disputed land where he was born and which he’s not even allowed to set foot on. Nearby, Amos witnesses a village being bulldozed by Israeli authorities, then rebuilt by defiant locals – for the seventh time.

The Israeli government says the Bedouin do not qualify as indigenous people, and it’s just enforcing laws it inherited from the British and the Ottomans.

But Israeli geographer Professor Oren Yiftachel, who learned about the Aboriginal land rights struggle when he lived in Perth, accuses the government of declaring ‘terra nullius in reverse’.

All previous Bedouin land claims have failed, but Nuri and his legal team hope that this will be their ‘Mabo moment’.

This is the kind of vital shift in Israeli Jewish society that is taking place under the nose of the authorities and they hate it. Why should Jews be treated better than Arabs? Why should the Jewish state spend every day finding new ways to discriminate against Palestinians? And why should the democratic world – that funds, aids and backs Israel – stay silent. Zionist groups are worried but have no real response to Israel’s ever-expanding occupation.

Here’s Mya Guarnieri, a Tel Aviv-based journalist and writer:

Leehee Rothschild, 26, is one of the scores of Israelis who have answered the 2005 Palestinian call for BDS. Recently her Tel Aviv apartment was raided. While the police did this under the pretense of searching for drugs, she was taken to the station for a brief interrogation that focused entirely on politics.

“The person who came to release me [from interrogation] was an intelligence officer who said that he is in charge of monitoring political activity in the Tel Aviv area,” Rothschild says. It was this officer who had requested the search warrant.

Since Operation Cast Lead, Israeli activists have reported increasing pressure from the police as well as General Security Services – known by their Hebrew acronym, Shabak.

The latter’s mandate includes, among other things, the goal of maintaining Israel as a Jewish state, making those who advocate for democracy a target.

House raids, such as the one Rothschild was subjected to, are not uncommon, nor are phone calls from the Shabak.

“Obviously [the pressure] is nothing compared to what Palestinians are going through,” Rothschild says. “But I think we’re touching a nerve.”

When asked about the proposed Boycott Law, Rothschild comments: “If the bill goes through, it will peel off, a little more, Israel’s mask of democracy.”

Tough love

As for her involvement in BDS, Rothschild remarks that she was not aware of the movement until it became a serious topic of discussion within Israel’s radical left, which she was already active in. And even after she heard about it, she did not jump onboard right away.

“I had reservations about [BDS],” Rothschild recalls. “I thought about it for a very long time and I debated it with myself and my friends.

“The main reservation I had was that the economic [aspects] would first harm the weak people in the society – the poor people – the people who have the least effect on what’s going on. But I think that the occupation is harming these people much more than the divestments can.”

Rothschild points out that state funds that are poured into “security and defence and oppressing the Palestinian people” could be better used in Israel to help those in the low socioeconomic strata.

“Another reservation I have had is that it might make the Israeli public more extremist, more fundamentalist,” Rothschild adds. “But I have to say that the road it has to go to be more extreme is very short right now.”

As an Israeli, Rothschild considers joining the BDS movement to be an act of caring. It is tough love for the country she was born and raised in.

“I hope that, for some people, it will be a slap in their face and they will wake up and see what’s going on,” Rothschild says, adding that the oppressor is oppressed, as well.

“The Israeli people are also oppressed by the occupation – they are living inside a society that is militant; that is violent; that is racist.”

‘Renouncing my privileges’

Ronnie Barkan, 34, explains that he took his first step towards the boycott 15 years ago, when he refused to complete his mandatory military service.

“There’s a lot of social pressure [in Israel],” Barkan says. “We’re raised to be soldiers from kindergarten. We’re taught that it’s our duty [to serve in the army] and you’re a parasite or traitor if you don’t want to serve.”

“What is even worse is that people are raised to be deeply racist,” he adds. “Everything is targeted at supporting [Jewish] privilege as the masters of the land. Supporting BDS means renouncing my privileges in this land and insisting on equality for all.”

Barkan likens his joining of the boycott movement to the “whites who denounced their apartheid privileges and joined the black struggle in South Africa”.

When I cringe at the “a-word,” apartheid, Barkan counters: “Israel clearly falls under the legal definition of the ‘crime of apartheid’ as defined in the Rome Statute.”

Here’s how the Australian media sometimes report on asylum seekers. There’s no doubt that the country’s refugee policy is out of control, privatised forces (namely Serco) run the system with few checks or balances and journalists often simply ignore the bigger picture but can sensitivity towards vulnerable people not be ignored?

Asylum seekers awaiting processing are staying in a caravan park in Perth’s eastern suburbs.

The Immigration Department confirmed yesterday that about 20 people, including families, were staying at the Banksia Tourist Caravan Park in Hazelmere.

A spokesman for the department said the caravan park, 18km from the city, had been used to house asylum seekers for the past year.

The asylum seekers, believed to come from a range of countries including Afghanistan, include recent arrivals to Australia and others closer to being settled into the community.

“There are a bit over 20 people in there at the moment,” an Immigration Department spokesman said. “They are people who are waiting for processing to be finished. They are families.

“There is probably a mix there. Some might have arrived recently, some might have been there quite a while.”

The development comes a day after it was revealed that asylum-seeker families were being housed in dongas at a remote roadhouse in the Kimberley.

The group had stayed near the Willare Bridge Roadhouse, 50km south of Derby, earlier this week until they were transferred to permanent accommodation in Brisbane.

Dubbed a “tranquil traveller’s paradise”, the Banksia Tourist Caravan Park is on 6.9ha “surrounded by a splendid array of WA wildflowers and native birds”, the park’s website says.

It also says: “Just imagine relaxing in this wildflower and wildlife retreat enjoying WA fine wines from the Swan Valley, which is only 10 minutes away.

“Feel like you are in the country when you are only 18km from the centre of Perth and 10 minutes from both the domestic and international airports.”

Prices range from $835 a week, or $170 a day, for a deluxe family chalet to $675 a week, or $117 a day, for a cabin with an ensuite. Children cost an extra $15 a day.

Powered tent sites cost up to $325 a week, or $48 each day, at the caravan park.

A refugee activist in Western Australia tells me:

The 20 folks at this rather shabby caravan park are the most vulnerable of the vulnerable. Survivors of the Christmas Island boat crash still recovering from injuries, mum whose child has cancer, amputees etc. They send those with the most serious medical conditions or post operative people to Banksia. Most are transferred over from other centres, and even there as usual 4 or 6 to a room.

Impossible to verify any of this – could it be faked? – but it seems to show a horrible face of a brutal dictatorship: