Antony Loewenstein

This move has all the hallmarks of attempting to keep real people out of the media spotlight. Humanising refugees is the last thing this government and Serco wants:

The company running the country’s immigration detention centres has upgraded how seriously it takes the unauthorised presence of media, putting it on par with a bomb threat or an escape.

The Serco document says “unauthorised” media presence at a detention centre is now considered “critical” – the highest possible threat level.

There has been an intense focus on the detention system over recent months after a number of protests and riots.

The Government says it is a serious issue if the media tries to gain unauthorised entry to a detention centre.

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen says it is important that people’s asylum claims are not compromised and they not be filmed.

He says the heightened alert is a matter for Serco.

“There is a media protocol in detention centres, and on those very rare occasions that media do not say they are media or attempt to gain unauthorised entry, that is a serious matter,” Mr Bowen said.

The Immigration Department says new classifications for incidents within detention centres only relate to how they are reported to the Government.

A department spokesman says the document only deals with the timeframe for reporting issues to the Government and has no bearing on how they are dealt with.

Very narrowly:

Discussing a draft declaration from South American and Arab State leaders, a United States government operative lists a series of “anti-American digs” against the US and Israel that were later excluded from the text.

What is considered anti-American is stunning and revealing. This quiet, unassuming cable shows a bizarre and expansive US foreign policy agenda in 2005.

Among statements considered to be anti-American:

• Reaffirming the necessity of resolving all conflicts non-violently;
• Emphasizing the importance of respecting the unity, sovereignty, and independence of Iraq, and not interfering in its internal processes;
• Committing to implementing all UN resolutions non-selectively;
• Recognizing the need for protection of intellectual property, but not when it affects national development, especially in terms of national health policies;
• Emphasizing the need to eliminate distortions (subsidies) in agriculture, which impede developed nations from exploiting comparative advantages;
• Welcoming the recent entry into force of the Kyoto Agreement, and calling on the international community to better protect the global climate.

The cable also described aspirations for a nuclear weapons-free Middle East as “anti-Israeli sentiment”.

An unusually clear window into a USG operatives’s worldview at the time.

Palestinians protesting their dispossession is a legitimate right, something denied by far too many in the West.

Australian film-maker Inka Stafrace is working on a film project in Palestine (and she has a record of fine work). Here’s her latest:

Any serious draw-down of US troops from Afghanistan will affect the massive industry that’s expanded post 9/11; private military contractors. Joshua Frost on PBS contemplates the future and the likely push by major interests to maintain the occupation in the war-ravaged land; business will be negatively affected if things change too radically:

Very few who are pushing for immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan contemplate the economic consequences of ending the war. The economy can probably handle 100,000 underemployed war contractors, but it will take some adjustment. It’s not just the psychological cost of seeing the Taliban use equipment we leave behind to crack jokes about us. The war in Afghanistan is more than just the troops and contractors who are deployed: there is a vast ecosystem of small, medium and large companies back here that support those deployed workers. Without a hundred billion dollars in war costs every year, those companies will struggle to stay in business.

An executive at a small defense contractor recently joked to me, “Afghanistan is our business plan.” I asked him what he would do if the war ended. He stared at me for a moment and said, “Well, then I hope we invade Libya.”

This executive wasn’t actually hoping to occupy Tripoli. But he was expressing a worry many in the defense industry have about how they will run their companies and employ their workers once the wars are over. Ten years of war have established a discrete class of entrepreneurs, mid-level workers and administrators who are completely reliant upon the U.S. being at war to stay employed.

What has happened to my people? Zionism has polluted the mind and ruined the soul. Here’s Harriet Sherwood in the Guardian:

I was sent a link this week to a piece published in the Jewish Chronicle by historian Geoffrey Alderman, the opening sentence of which I found pretty shocking.

Under the headline This Was No Peace Activist, Alderman wrote:

“Few events – not even the execution of Osama bin Laden – have caused me greater pleasure in recent weeks than news of the death of the Italian so-called ‘peace activist’ Vittorio Arrigoni.”

Arrigoni, an activist with the International Solidarity Movement, was murdered in Gaza last month after being abducted by Islamic extremists. He was strangled with a plastic cord. Hamas subsequently killed those responsible for Arrigoni’s death.

His murder, wrote Alderman, “was immediately pounced upon by the western media as an affront to the civilised world”. This is indeed the case; many newspapers – including the Guardian – ran stories and profiles describing Arrigoni’s commitment to the Palestinian cause and the extremist stance of those who killed him.

But, wrote Alderman, “the truth is very different. Vittorio Arrigoni, a disciple of the International Solidarity Movement, had travelled to Gaza to assist in the breaking of the Israeli naval blockade. As a supporter of Hamas he was a consummate Jew-hater.”

He said Arrigoni’s Facebook page – in Italian – contained “explicit anti-Jewish imagery”.

I asked Alderman – who has occasionally contributed to the Guardian – whether he regretted recording his “pleasure” at Arrigoni’s death. “It’s still my view,” he told me on the phone from London. “He was a Jew-hater like Adolf Hitler. Yes, he deserved to die for being a Jew-hater. I rejoiced in the death of a Jew-hater. I have no regrets.”

Jeff Halper, an Israeli activist and academic, who knew Arrigoni well, said Alderman’s charges against him were “outrageous”.

“Sometimes things are so outrageous there simply isn’t a response. Vik [Arrigoni] was unique. He was political and he had strong opinions. But the idea that he would differentiate between someone Jewish and someone non-Jewish – there has never been a hint of that.”

Stephen Pollard, the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, told me he had no qualms about publishing the piece. “I have no problem at all with publishing it. I don’t agree with [Alderman], it’s not my view – it’s his.”

He rejected the description of Arrigoni as a “peace activist”. “He was a member of the ISM, for God’s sake. That’s not peace activism, that’s hard core Palestinian terror.”

Neta Golan, an Israeli founder of the ISM, denied the organisation supported terror attacks or backed Hamas. “The ISM supports the avenue of non-violent and popular resistance,” she told me. “It is a grassroots group, and we will work with anyone who wants to organise non-violent resistance. The ISM does not have a position on internal Palestinian politics.”

She also rejected suggestions that Arrigoni was anti-Semitic. “It was so obvious he wasn’t a racist. Absolutely he was not anti-Semitic.”

I never met Arrigoni and I don’t know what his views (if any) on Jews, as opposed to his views on Israel, were. Attempts to conflate opposition to Israeli policies with anti-Semitism are not new.

Scenes of Palestinian militants handing out sweets to celebrate suicide bombings or other deadly attacks are familiar – and sickening.

Now Alderman’s rejoicing in the death of a pro-Palestinian activist seems to me a new and repugnant development.

Even New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman sounds sick of Israel (though he advocates no course of US action that may place even a little pressure on the Zionist state to end its occupation).

Haaretz is unequivocal and rightly so. Some in Israel see the writing on the wall:

These stories are tragic and reflect the almost inevitable result of privatising detention centres; costs and corners are cut. ABC reports today:

Detainees at Sydney’s Villawood detention centre say an inadequate response from guards forced them to use a cigarette lighter to try to save the life of a man who had attempted suicide.

Detainees say they tried to burn through the rope 41-year-old Ahmed Al Akabi had used to take his own life.

They say they have borne witness to a string of suicides at the centre in the past year, including that of Iraqi-born teacher Mr Akabi.

The detainees, mostly of Kurdish origin, relayed numerous concerns over their indefinite detention, with several afflicted by illnesses related to stress and depression.

Tensions at the centre came to a head last month when riot police were called in during a night of rioting that saw several buildings destroyed by fire.

One of the men who found Mr Akabi says guards employed by Villawood’s privately owned operator, Serco, were ill-equipped and not adequately trained to respond appropriately to the suicide attempt.

The man says the guards did not have a sharp instrument available to cut Mr Akabi down and did not know how to respond.

The detainee, who did not want to be identified, says he and others tried to hold Mr Akabi aloft in a bid to save him from suffocation until help arrived.

He says they were forced to use the cigarette lighter to try to save the father of three, but were too late; he was pronounced dead a short time later.

Serco declined to comment on specific allegations, but in a statement to the ABC said it runs a comprehensive staff training program that goes beyond its contractual obligations.

“Serco is committed to doing everything we can to prevent those in our care from coming to harm,” the statement said.

“Our staff take this commitment extremely seriously and work hard to keep those in our care safe and secure.”

A spokesman for the Immigration Department told the ABC that no comment could be made about the incident while a coronial inquiry was ongoing.

The coronial inquiry into Mr Akabi’s death is due to be held from June 27 until July 1, but the findings will not be released publicly because it was a suicide.

Mr Akabi is understood to have fled Iraq after death threats from the feared Shiite militia commanded by anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

As the Arab Spring comes to Palestine (massive non-violent protests against Israeli occupation and apartheid), some truths are being spoken by the very people who are behind the oppression:

Transgressions by the Israeli army in the occupied Palestinian territories will be disclosed by a group of former soldiers in an internet campaign aimed at raising public awareness of military violations.

Video testimonies by around two dozen ex-soldiers – some of whom are identifying themselves for the first time – will be posted on YouTube. The campaign by Breaking the Silence, an organisation of former soldiers committed to speaking out on military practices, launches with English subtitles on Monday.

Some of the former soldiers describe the “neighbour procedure”, a term for the use of Palestinian civilians, often children, as human shields to protect soldiers from suspected booby traps or attacks by militants. The procedure was ruled illegal by Israel‘s high court in 2005.

Others speak of routine harassment of civilians at checkpoints, arbitrary intimidation and collective punishment.

Idan Barir, who served in the artillery corps, describes in his testimony how an officer forced Palestinian civilians to crawl in a “race” towards a checkpoint near Jenin in the West Bank during the 2000 olive harvest. Only the first three out of “teams” of eight were allowed to pass.

Another, Itamar Schwarz, says Palestinian homes were routinely ransacked in search operations. He describes the day of the World Cup final in 2002, when soldiers confined a Palestinian woman and child in the kitchen of their home for two hours while the unit watched the game in the middle of an operation.

Arnon Degani, who served in the Golani brigade, describes the distress of a young woman who tearfully pleaded to be allowed to pass through a Jenin checkpoint in order to sit an important exam. He gradually came to understand, he says, that the Israeli army’s intention was “to enforce tyranny on people who you know are regular civilians” and to “make it clear who’s in control here”.

“Part of the silence of Israeli society is to believe these are isolated and exceptional incidents. But these are the most routine, day-to-day, banal stories,” said Yehuda Shaul, of Breaking the Silence.

Identification of the ex-soldiers willing to speak out was important, he said, “so that Israelis understand that there are people behind these stories, that in a sense we’re all involved”.

The former soldiers were aware of the potential legal and social consequences of going public, Shaul added. “They understand that they risk being prosecuted for what they’re saying. But they’re doing it because it needs to be done.”

The Zionist establishment is worried about global moves against it but note no mention, or even consideration, of ending the occupation. Presumably they’ll simply spend more on PR:

Israel’s current status at the United Nations is at an all-time low, Israel’s former UN ambassador, Prof. Gabriela Shalev, said yesterday at a session of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. Also speaking at the meeting, former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy said that peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians are currently impossible.

“Israel has no chance of dealing with the Palestinian move in the General Assembly,” Shalev said, discussing the Palestinians’ expected declaration of statehood after a UN vote this September. “The United States is not interested in vetoing the UN’s recognition of a Palestinian state.” Shalev added that the UN is today the foremost place for activity against Israel.

Former Mossad chief Halevy said Israel’s “maneuvering space is growing narrower,” while the ability of the Quartet – the U.S., Russia, UN and European Union – to “affect the peace talks is diminishing.

“The existing situation is a non-starter,” he added, saying that what Israel has wanted for the last two years can’t now come to fruition: “We can’t reach a permanent peace deal because the person who would sign the deal is not the same person who would need to carry it out,” Halevy said.

Committee chairman MK Shaul Mofaz warned that Sunday’s Nakba Day clashes are a precursor to the events expected in September, when the Palestinian Authority intends to unilaterally declare a state in the UN.

“Israel’s government is hiding its head in the sand,” Mofaz said. “Without a peace initiative, events like the one on the Syrian border will recur in September.

“The changes here are tectonic,” he added. “The events are a precursor to the September events, which could come in waves against Israel’s population.”

Mofaz said Israel should not have waited for Sunday’s clashes to understand that the reality in the Middle East has changed.

“The present government, headed by Netanyahu, isn’t initiating anything,” Mofaz said, adding that the Israeli government must be prepared for any situation come September.

Confirmation:

Of the 251,287 WikiLeaks documents McClatchy obtained, 23,927 of them — nearly one in 10 — reference oil. Gazprom alone is mentioned in 1,789.

In the cables, U.S. diplomats can be found plotting ways to prevent state entities such as Gazprom from taking control of key petroleum facilities, pressing oil companies to adjust their policies to match U.S. foreign policy goals, helping U.S.-based oil companies arrange deals on favorable terms and pressing foreign governments to assist companies that are willing to do the U.S.’s bidding.