Antony Loewenstein

What exactly will it take for Western governments to realise that the profit motive is the worst argument for outsourcing essential human services?

Separate investigations into three deaths in immigration removal centres (IRC) in the past month have been launched by the police, amid growing concern about the treatment of detainees.

The spate of deaths has caused alarm among critics of the government’s detention policy, who warn that the system is at “breaking point” with poor healthcare putting people’s lives at risk.

Two men died from suspected heart attacks at Colnbrook near Heathrow airport and the third killed himself at the Campsfield House detention centre in Oxfordshire on Tuesday.

John McDonnell, Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington, who has two detention centres including Colnbrook in his constituency, said he feared there would be more deaths as the system struggled to cope with the number of people being detained.

“The government is now detaining people on such a scale that the existing services are swamped,” he said. “It is inevitable if we put the services under such relentless strain that there will be more deaths as a result … we are dealing with people who are extremely stressed and extremely vulnerable and the services are not able to cope and not able to guarantee their safety.”

The first man who died was Muhammad Shukat, 47, a Pakistani immigration detainee who collapsed at around 6am on 2 July. His roommate Abdul Khan says that in the hours before he died Shukat was groaning in agony, had very bad chest pains and was sweating profusely.

Khan, 19, from Afghanistan, said he began raising the alarm around 6am and pressed the emergency button in the room 10 times in a frantic effort to get help.

Khan claimed that on three occasions members of the centre’s nursing team entered the room and found Shukat on the floor where he had collapsed. Khan said they put him back into bed, took his temperature and some medicine was administered, but did not call emergency assistance immediately. According to Khan, the nurses initially said that Shukat could go to see the centre’s doctor at 8am.

According to the London Ambulance Service, Colnbrook staff called an ambulance just before 7.20am. Attempts were made to resuscitate Shukat, but he was pronounced dead on arrival at Hillingdon Hospital.

A postmortem found the provisional cause of death to be coronary heart disease. Shukat’s body has been returned to Pakistan and his family are understood to have no concerns about the medical treatment he received.

The second man to die at Colnbrook has not yet been named. According to the Metropolitan police he was 35 and was found dead in his cell at 10.30am last Sunday. London Ambulance Service officials pronounced him dead at the scene.

“A postmortem held on 1 August found the cause of death to be a ruptured aorta. The death is being treated as unexplained,” said a police spokesman.

Colnbrook IRC is managed by Serco. In a statement to detainees about Shukat’s death, deputy director at Colnbrook, Jenni Halliday, described her “deep regret” and extended her condolences.

In a statement to detainees about the second Colnbrook death, Serco’s contract manager, Michael Guy, informed detainees that a resident in the short-term holding facility had died and that the death was thought to be from natural causes.

Sigh:

A top-secret document revealing how MI6 and MI5 officers were allowed to extract information from prisoners being illegally tortured overseas has been seen by the Guardian.

The interrogation policy – details of which are believed to be too sensitive to be publicly released at the government inquiry into the UK’s role in torture and rendition – instructed senior intelligence officers to weigh the importance of the information being sought against the amount of pain they expected a prisoner to suffer. It was operated by the British government for almost a decade.

A copy of the secret policy showed senior intelligence officers and ministers feared the British public could be at greater risk of a terrorist attack if Islamists became aware of its existence.

One section states: “If the possibility exists that information will be or has been obtained through the mistreatment of detainees, the negative consequences may include any potential adverse effects on national security if the fact of the agency seeking or accepting information in those circumstances were to be publicly revealed.

“For instance, it is possible that in some circumstances such a revelation could result in further radicalisation, leading to an increase in the threat from terrorism.”

The policy adds that such a disclosure “could result in damage to the reputation of the agencies”, and that this could undermine their effectiveness.

The fact that the interrogation policy document and other similar papers may not be made public during the inquiry into British complicity in torture and rendition has led to human rights groups and lawyers refusing to give evidence or attend any meetings with the inquiry team because it does not have “credibility or transparency”.

The decision by 10 groups – including Liberty, Reprieve and Amnesty International – follows the publication of the inquiry’s protocols, which show the final decision on whether material uncovered by the inquiry, led by Sir Peter Gibson, can be made public will rest with the cabinet secretary.

The inquiry will begin after a police investigation into torture allegations has been completed.

Some have criticised the appointment of Gibson, a retired judge, to head the inquiry because he previously served as the intelligence services commissioner, overseeing government ministers’ use of a controversial power that permits them to “disapply” UK criminal and civil law in order to offer a degree of protection to British intelligence officers committing crimes overseas. The government denies there is a conflict of interest.

The protocols also stated that former detainees and their lawyers will not be able to question intelligence officials and that all evidence from current or former members of the security and intelligence agencies, below the level of head, will be heard in private.

The document seen by the Guardian shows how the secret interrogation policy operated until it was rewritten on the orders of the coalition government last July.

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.

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.

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.

In 2008 my second book, The Blogging Revolution, was released. It told the story of the internet in repressive regimes.

Now, post the Arab uprisings, I’ve updated the title and it’s been released globally this week as an e-book via Melbourne University Press:

Dimi Reider, an Israeli journalist and photographer and Aziz Abu Sarah, a Palestinian columnist with the newspaper Al Quds, write in the New York Times about the profound myopia of the current massive protests in Israel:

There are profound and institutionalized economic disparities between Arabs and Jews in Israel. But when it comes to housing prices, an Israeli Arab who makes $1,000 a month and pays $500 in rent can still find common ground with an Israeli Jew making $2,000 and giving $1,000 to the landlord.

On Saturday, approximately 150,000 people flocked to the streets of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Beersheba and many small suburbs and towns to protest the rising cost of living. It was Israel’s largest demonstration on any issue in over a decade, and organizers are calling for an even larger protest this weekend, mimicking the snowballing weekly rallies of the Arab Spring.

The protests that are paralyzing Israel began on July 14, when a few professionals in their 20s decided they could no longer tolerate the city’s uncontrolled rents, and pitched six tents at the top of the city’s most elegant street, Rothschild Boulevard. Three weeks later, the six tents have swelled to over 400, and more than 40 similar encampments have spread across the country, forming unlikely alliances between gay activists and yeshiva students, corporate lawyers and the homeless and ultra-Orthodox Jews and Israeli Arabs.

So far, the protesters have managed to remain apolitical, refusing to declare support for any leader or to be hijacked by any political party. But there is one issue conspicuously missing from the protests: Israel’s 44-year occupation of the Palestinian territories, which exacts a heavy price on the state budget and is directly related to the lack of affordable housing within Israel proper.

According to a report published by the activist group Peace Now, the Israeli government is using over 15 percent of its public construction budget to expand West Bank settlements, which house only 4 percent of Israeli citizens. According to the Adva Center, a research institute, Israel spends twice as much on a settlement resident as it spends on other Israelis.

Indeed, much of the lack of affordable housing in Israeli cities can be traced back to the 1990s, when the availability of public housing in Israel was severely curtailed while subsidies in the settlements increased, driving many lower-middle-class and working-class Israelis into the West Bank and Gaza Strip — along with many new immigrants.

Israel today is facing the consequences of a policy that favors sustaining the occupation and expanding settlements over protecting the interests of the broader population. The annual cost of maintaining control over Palestinian land is estimated at over $700 million.

Had the protesters begun by hoisting signs against the occupation, they would most likely still be just a few people in tents. By removing the single most divisive issue in Israeli politics, the protesters have created a safe space for Israelis of all ethnic, national and class identities to act together. And by decidedly placing the occupation outside of the debate, the protesters have neutralized much of the fear-mongering traditionally employed in Israel to silence discussions of social issues.

But even as they call for the strengthening of Israel’s once-robust welfare state, the protesters are disregarding the fact that it is alive and well in the West Bank. Although some of their demands can be met without addressing the settlements (like heavier taxes on landlords’ rental income to discourage rent increases), Israel will never become the progressive social democracy the protesters envision until it sheds the moral stain and economic burden of the occupation.

Just what the Australian Jewish community needs. A leading Jewish American, Zionist lobbyist – David Harris is the Executive Director of the the American Jewish Committee – comes here and talks about how weak Jews are and how the world hates Jews/Israel/democracy. Make people scared. Keep them ignorant. Don’t explain why growing numbers of people globally don’t accept the never-ending occupation of Palestinian land. It’s all about anti-Semitism. Why, of course, why hadn’t I thought of that?

This is what Harris told Sydney (occupation? What occupation?)

Harris brought the meeting sharply into the focus of today’s world saying: “As we face the risks and the dangers today in the new vocabulary including words like delegitimisation, demonisation of Israel, UDI – Unilateral declaration of Independence for Palestinian, BDS – Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions, lawfare and all the other elements of the new lexicon of the enemies of the State of Israel who wish to deny the Jewish people the right to self-determination which has been ours for over 3000 years.

We need to stand up need to stand tall need to stand proud need to stand unafraid

This is the moment for each of to stand up to the moment and dig deep into that reservoir of courage and commitment which has been an essential part of the Jewish people for over 3000 years.”

He continued: “We have defied all the odds at every stage of our  history and we will continue to defy the odds because we are here to stay. Israel is here to stay. Our presence is permanent.”

Stating that “our job is unfinished”, Harris said that our job is not simply surviving or of proving our enemies wrong  but “to try and repair a broken world”.

Far too many and who really cares?

A United Arab Emirates-based logistics contractor billed Defense Department authorities in Iraq for parts at prices marked up as high as 5,000 percent and 12,000 percent, according to a quarterly report released Saturday by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.

A review of a $119 million reconstruction and logistics contract with Anham LLC questioned almost 40 percent of its costs, including:

• $900 for a control switch valued at $7.05 (a 12,666 percent increase);
• $80 for a small segment of drainpipe valued at $1.41 (a 5,574 percent increase);
• $75 for a different piece of plumbing equipment also valued at $1.41 (a 5,219 percent increase);
• $3,000 for a circuit breaker valued at $94.47 (a 3,076 percent increase);
• $4,500 for another kind of circuit breaker valued at $183.30 (a 2,355 percent increase).

Because of what it called weak oversight, SIGIR formally questioned the contract’s costs and recommended reviews of billing practices in all of Anham’s U.S. government contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, which total about $3.9 billion.