Antony Loewenstein

It takes a certain kind of chutzpah for corporatised leaders to continue praising “democratic” Israel.

Today in the Australian parliament the following was put on the record.

Leader of the Opposition in the Senate (Liberal Senator Eric Abetz): To move—That the Senate—

(a) notes:

(i) its decision on 23 March 2011 to acknowledge that Israel is a legitimate and democratic state and a good friend of Australia and to denounce the Israeli boycott by Marrickville Council and condemn any expansion of it,

(ii) the response by the Leader of the Australian Greens, Senator Bob Brown, to this decision of the Senate, which
was to ask that the Australian Greens’ opposition to this motion be recorded,

(iii) subsequent statements by Senator Brown that it was a mistake for the New South Wales Greens to advocate this policy and that it was neither the Federal Greens, nor his policy to boycott Israel, and

(iv) Marrickville Council’s decision on 19 April 2011 to rescind its Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)
policy against Israel;

(b) rejects the policy of the New South Wales Greens which calls on all Australians and the Australian Government to boycott Israeli goods, trading and military arrangements, and sporting, cultural and academic events;

(c) notes with concern:

(i) the resolution carried at the 2010 Regional Conference of the Queensland Branch of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) to support the BDS campaign against Israel,

(ii) initial support for the support for the BDS campaign against Israel by four Labor councillors on Marrickville
Council,

(iii) the decision by the New South Wales ALP to preference Greens candidate and Marrickville Mayor, Fiona
Byrne, in the seat of Marrickville at the New South Wales state election, and

(iv) reports that Mr David Forde, Convenor of Labor 4A Just Palestine, who supports the BDS campaign, is a
frontrunner for ALP preselection for the Queensland state seat of Stretton;

(d) denounces support lent to the BDS campaign against Israel by the: Victorian Trades Hall Council; Geelong
Trades Hall Council; Newcastle Trades Hall Council; South Coast Labour Council; Queensland Council of Unions; UnionsACT and branches of the Australian Services Union; Teachers’ Union; Liquor, Hospitality and
Miscellaneous Workers Union; Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union; Maritime Union of Australia;
Australian Manufacturing Workers Union; Communications, Electrical, Plumbing Union; Electrical Trades Union; Finance Sector Union; Health and Community Services Union; and Rail, Tram and Bus Union;

(e) calls on the Australian Council of Trade Unions to oppose this campaign; and

(f) in light of events and information available to the Senate since 23 March 2011, reaffirms its decision that Israel is a legitimate and democratic state and a good friend of Australia.

and

PRIVATE MEMBERS’ BUSINESS

Notices for Wednesday, 11 May 2011

*1 MS Julie. BISHOP [Liberal MP]: To move—That this House:

(1) restates its support for the motion moved by the then Prime Minister and passed by this House on the sixtieth anniversary of the State of Israel, and in particular:

(a) acknowledges the unique relationship which exists between Australia and Israel, a bond highlighted by the commitment of both societies to the rights and liberty of our citizens and to cultural diversity;

(b) commends the State of Israel’s commitment to democracy, the rule of law and pluralism; and

(c) reiterates Australia’s commitment to Israel’s right to exist in peace and security, and our continued support for a peaceful two-state resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian issue; and

(2) notes with concern the fraying of the traditionally bipartisan support amongst Australia’s political parties for the State of Israel, and in particular the:

(a) resolution by Greens councillors on Marrickville Council for a boycott of Israel, supported by Labor councillors;

(b) policy adopted by the NSW Greens for an Israel boycott;

(c) decision by the NSW Labor Party to preference the Greens candidate for Marrickville ahead of other candidates who did not support an Israel boycott; and

(d) decision by Labor and Greens councillors on Moreland City Council, Melbourne, to allow the anti-semitic group Hizb ut-Tahrir to use Council premises in August 2010 despite

Hizb ut-Tahrir publicly calling for the slaughter of Jewish people, and its enthusiasm for Osama bin Laden. (Notice given 10 May 2011.)

Only craven politicians feel the need to continually praise a nation that occupies another people. What does it say that there are no mainstream politicians (apart from a few Greens) who oppose this slavishness?

Apartheid Israel continues on its merry way.

Of course they would say this but note the warning to Israel. The essential Anthony Shadid in the New York Times:

Syria’s ruling elite, a tight-knit circle at the nexus of absolute power, loyalty to family and a visceral instinct for survival, will fight to the end in a struggle that could cast the Middle East into turmoil and even war, warned Syria’s most powerful businessman, a confidant and cousin of President Bashar al-Assad.

The frank comments by Rami Makhlouf, a tycoon who has emerged in the two-month uprising as a magnet for anger at the privilege that power brings, offered an exceedingly rare insight into the thinking of an opaque government, the prism through which it sees Syria, and the way it reaches decisions.

Troubled by the greatest threat to its four decades of rule, the ruling family, he suggested, has conflated its survival with the existence of the minority sect that views the protests not as legitimate demands for change but rather as the seeds of civil war.

“If there is no stability here, there’s no way there will be stability in Israel,” he said in an interview Monday that lasted more than three hours. “No way, and nobody can guarantee what will happen after, God forbid, anything happens to this regime.”

Asked if it was a warning or a threat, Mr. Makhlouf demurred. “I didn’t say war,” he said. “What I’m saying is don’t let us suffer, don’t put a lot of pressure on the president, don’t push Syria to do anything it is not happy to do.”

His words cast into the starkest terms a sentiment the government has sought to cultivate — us or chaos — and it underlined the tactics of a ruling elite that has manipulated the ups and downs of a tumultuous region to sustain an overriding goal: its own survival.

…

Mr. Makhlouf suggested that economic reform would stay primary.

“This is a priority for Syrians,” he said. “We have to ask for economic reform before speaking about political reform.” He acknowledged that change had come late and limited. “But if there is some delay,” he added, “it’s not the end of the world.”

He warned the alternative — led by what he described as Salafists, the government’s name for Islamists — would mean war at home and perhaps abroad.

“We won’t accept it,” he said. “People will fight against them. Do you know what this means? It means catastrophe. And we have a lot of fighters.”

Last night in Britain Julian Assange won the Sydney Peace Foundation award for his commitment to democracy and human rights:

Video streaming by Ustream

Peter Chambers gives a convincing argument:

By all accounts, Serco probably was the least worst choice; what we are dealing with here is the political equivalent of Steven Bradbury’s win in the 2002 Winter Olympics. It’s not so much that Serco won the contract, it’s that there were no other viable contenders. This connects to the de facto situation in Canberra surrounding tender processes like this one. In practice, the leading contenders are those corporations large and wealthy enough to afford highly skilled, well-connected lobbyists capable of gaining access to and maintaining good relationships with their key counterparts in the government.

This is effectively Serco’s business model with governments around the world: aggressive lobbying, savvy corporate communications, underbidding, cost-cutting, sub-sub-sub-sub contracting, and a willingness to provide ‘support services’ for all those things governments cannot or will no longer do. Its workers – often inadequately trained and prepared for their tasks, as a recent 7.30 report detailed ­– do the dirty, dangerous, difficult, repetitive, boring, traumatic work of dealing with things and caring for people that we would rather not think about.

Serco’s yellow-vest-wearing grunts are the frontline workers of the latest wave if the privatisation boom.

Welcome to Zionist “democracy”:

Israel has used a covert procedure to cancel the residency status of 140,000 West Bank Palestinians between 1967 and 1994, the legal advisor for the Judea and Samaria Justice Ministry’s office admits, in a new document obtained by Haaretz. The document was written after the Center for the Defense of the Individual filed a request under the Freedom of Information Law.

The document states that the procedure was used on Palestinian residents of the West Bank who traveled abroad between 1967 and 1994. From the occupation of the West Bank until the signing of the Oslo Accords, Palestinians who wished to travel abroad via Jordan were ordered to leave their ID cards at the Allenby Bridge border crossing.

Sri Lanka remains a country talking about recovery after decades of war and yet Colombo refuses to accept responsibility for the crimes committed during the conflict.

This recently Wikileaks document from May 2009 gives an insight into the final days of the civil war, when the lives of civilians were irrelevant to government forces (and many Tamil Tigers, too):

SUMMARY: May 16-17 marked a watershed day in Sri Lanka´s conflict with the LTTE, as an estimated 72,000 civilians escaped the safe zone. Remnants of the LTTE continued to mount resistance in an area of less than one square kilometer in the government´s unilaterally declared “no fire zone.” President Rajapaksa is expected to announce the end of fighting in Parliament on May 19. The Defense Secretary announced publicly on May 17 that there were no civilians remaining in the conflict zone. However, a Tamil member of Parliament and [TEXT REMOVED BY AFTENPOSTEN] separately contacted Embassy to report that tens of thousands of civilians were still in the conflict area and at grave risk. Ambassador contacted senior GSL officials throughout the day, including Secretary of Defense Gothabaya Rajapaksa and Foreign Minister Bogollagama, to urge acceptance of a mediated surrender of the remaining Tigers and maximum restraint on the part of the military to avoid further civilian casualties, particularly after the reports from the Bishop of Mannar of continued high numbers of civilians in the safe zone. Rajapaksa refused to accept mediated surrender on the grounds that the fighting was all but over, but said troops had been instructed to accept anyone who wishes to surrender. Ambassador spoke to Presidential Advisor Basil Rajapaksa to request access for the ICRC to evacuate dead and wounded. Rajapaksa refused, contending the GSL could manage on its own. Four government of Sri Lanka doctors and an Additional Government Agent escaped from the conflict zone on May 16 and were taken into custody by the military. One doctor with serious wounds was airlifted to Colombo, two or three other doctors were held for interrogation at Omanthai, and the Additional Government Agent was taken to an IDP camp. UNSYG Chief of Staff Nambiar, now in Colombo, was promised access to live UAV footage of the safe zone. He also has requested to visit the safe zone and the camps in Vavuniya.

Bloody well deserved:

Julian Assange, the founder of whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, has been awarded an award “for exceptional courage in pursuit of human rights”.

Mr Assange was given the Sydney Peace Medal at a ceremony at the Frontline Club in central London today.

The Sydney Peace Foundation said that it was making the award to recognise Mr in recognition of the need “for greater transparency and accountability of governments”.

Professor Stuart Rees, director of the foundation, said: “By challenging centuries old practices of government secrecy and by championing people’s right to know, WikiLeaks and Julian Assange have created the potential for a new order in journalism and in the free flow of information.”

Speaking at the event, Mr Assange referred to whistleblowers as “heroes” and said it appeared the website had played a “significant role” in the recent Arab uprisings in north Africa by releasing US diplomatic cables in December that were later translated into Arabic and French.

He said WikiLeaks was part of England’s historic “free speech traditions, these go back in the UK to the time of the English Civil War of the 1640s”. He said: “The real value of this award, and the Sydney Peace Foundation is that it makes explicit the link between peace and justice.

“It does not take the safe feel good option of shunning controversy by uttering platitudes. Instead it goes into difficult terrain by identifying organisations and individuals who are directly engaged in struggles of one kind or another.

“With WikiLeaks we are all engaged in a struggle, a generational struggle for a proposition that citizens have a right and a duty to scrutinise the state.”

Asking questions about the Western obsession with Osama Bin Laden brings spluttering from certain areas of the elite class (indeed, so does saying anything against the glorious Zionist state, as a blogger in today’s Murdoch Australian says I’m polluting the ABC with anti-Israel material. Thank God standing up for Palestinians receives this bile).

The real story:

The most expensive public enemy in American history died Sunday from two bullets.

As we mark Osama bin Laden’s death, what’s striking is how much he cost our nation—and how little we’ve gained from our fight against him. By conservative estimates, bin Laden cost the United States at least $3 trillion over the past 15 years, counting the disruptions he wrought on the domestic economy, the wars and heightened security triggered by the terrorist attacks he engineered, and the direct efforts to hunt him down.

Who says that pro-Palestinian campaigning can’t result in better outcomes for those living under Zionist occupation? The Financial Times reports:

Deutsche Bahn, the German railway operator, has pulled out of an Israeli project that cuts through the occupied Palestinian West Bank, after pressure from activists and Berlin.

The move marks a victory for pro-Palestinian groups and their so-called boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign, which tries to use economic pressure on Israel to help the Palestinian cause.

Campaigners were angered by the activities of Deutsche Bahn’s international consulting arm, which provided advice on the electrification of the new track linking Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The high-speed line, due to be completed by 2017, has attracted sharp criticism from Palestinian officials because a 6-km stretch cuts through the West Bank.

Opponents said the project was illegal because it used occupied Palestinian territory for a project that would be used primarily, or solely, by Israeli citizens. They also argued that the new line could have easily been built on Israeli territory alone, making land confiscations in the West Bank unnecessary.

Deutsche Bahn, which is state-owned, declined to comment on the reasons for the pull-out but said: “We told Israel Railways in February that we would not provide further services for this particular project.”

The operator added that the involvement in the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem line had been “modest” and that DB International, its consulting subsidiary, would continue to provide services to the Israeli rail operator elsewhere.

According to a letter sent by Germany’s ministry for transport to a member of parliament, the operator faced criticism for its involvement from the government itself: “The federal government pointed out [to Deutsche Bahn] that the project of the Israeli state railway is problematic from a foreign policy point of view and potentially breaches international law,” it said. The letter added that the German operator confirmed “in writing” that there would be no further involvement of its international subsidiary in “this politically very sensitive project”.

The document, dated March 11, was published on Monday on the website of Change.org, a campaign group.

Merav Emir, an activist with Who Profits, the campaign group that leads the lobbying effort against the rail project, welcomed the decision. “I want to congratulate the German government for making such a clear and bold statement about the illegality of this train route under international law,” she said. “We call on other European governments to follow suit in making sure that companies in their countries abide by international law.”

The Israeli transport ministry did not return calls for comment.

Another day and yet another example of the British multinational unable to manage the job (and good on the Australian’s Paige Taylor for reporting on this running sore):

There are now tensions among guards as well as detainees on Christmas Island.

Up to 100 untrained casual detention workers at the centre claim they are doing the same work as qualified security officers but are paid about $800 a week less.

Serco, the company chosen to run Australia’s immigration detention centres, is battling a shortage of workers on the remote island and has grown concerned by recent resignations and dissatisfaction among the lower-paid workforce employed by subcontractor MSS.

Serco has begun recruiting MSS workers in a bid to quell disquiet and prevent further resignations, The Australian has been told. “We’re the ones doing all the work while Serco workers get the good pay,” one MSS worker told The Australian.

“Some Serco officers are sympathetic but some just lord it over you because you haven’t done the Serco course. We’re not even supposed to have contact with the clients (detainees) and we’re running the place.”

Under Australian law, detention centre officers who interact with asylum-seekers in detention must complete a training course that usually takes six weeks.

The paper published a long feature yesterday that detailed what Serco has become and why so many officials find them so appealing. And yet despite the company’s troubling record, it doesn’t seem to stop them receiving more and more contracts. That’s the genius of unquestioned privatisation; transferring the problems of the state to others:

Serco, the company that has attracted headlines by operating Australia’s troubled immigration detention centres, says that unlike some US contracting firms it is not interested in providing armed forces.

It does, however, provide a wide array of defence support services. Serco’s expansion from a small cinema company into today’s multi-tasking giant with a £4.3 billion ($6.6bn) annual turnover began with a 1962 contract to build and support a missile early warning system at a Royal Air Force base.

Its military work now gives it a role on every defence base in Australia and includes training RAF pilots and helping to manage the Atomic Weapons Establishment that provides and maintains Britain’s nuclear warheads.

At the same time it has moved into everything from administration services to education, transport and healthcare. It is one of the largest air traffic control operators in the world and is Britain’s largest employer of scientists.

With the Cameron government determined to outsource more services and Serco’s foreign earnings growing rapidly to 40 per cent of its revenues the company has become a blue-chip darling of London stock analysts, with many of its operations not just recession-proof but benefiting from an era of government cutbacks.

…

n 2005 the Chief Inspector of Prisons reported that Serco’s Doncaster prison was run with an “institutional meanness” that was reflected in “the physical conditions in which many prisoners lived, which in some cases were squalid”. “Many prisoners lacked pillows, adequate mattresses [and] toilet seats,” the inspector said.

One person familiar with the prison at that time tells The Australian part of the problem was that a private company’s duties had to be encapsulated in a contract. “In that case the contract said the company had to maintain proper toilets but it didn’t say anything about toilet seats, and it said there had to be decent bedding but it didn’t mention pillows.”

The next inspection in 2008 found things had improved at Doncaster although some “two-person cells had been turned into three-person cells by placing a bed in the shared toilet [cubicle].”

David Ramsbotham, chief inspector of prisons from 1995 to 2001, believes private firms cut costs in a worrying way.

“The thing that worries me most about the private sector prisons is that frankly because obviously they are trying to make a profit they have got to decide where they can afford to cut corners and the corners they cut are usually to do with staffing and staff numbers,” he says.

Fracking is happening in Australia, using highly toxic chemicals to extract coal seam gas.

Governments have been enthusiastic backers of the practice with little caution for environmental or health concerns.

And now this: