Antony Loewenstein

A government that truly believes in transparency would behave in the opposite way, reducing the increasingly secretive nature of officialdom. Obama fail:

By executive order, President Obama will instruct federal agencies today to better safeguard their classified secrets, to set up internal audit systems, and to make sure that reluctance to share critical intelligence in the aftermath of the Wikileaks exposure does not hamper collaboration across agencies.

The so-called “Wikileaks” executive order has been long awaited by the national security establishment and by the privacy and civil liberties communities. It was provided by the White House to National Journal. The order creates a government-wide steering committee to create and assess information sharing policies across the government, as well as a mechanism to determine whether internal auditing procedures work properly.

PFC. Bradley Manning, who the government believes provided Wikileaks with most of the classified cables and reports it released, was able to access State Department cables that were not germane to his work as a forward-deployed intelligence analyst in Iraq without being detected.

A new Insider Threat Task Force led by the Attorney General will develop a government-wide strategy to see whether agencies that handle classified information can weed out the malcontents and people whose behavior suggests they cannot handle sensitive information appropriately.

The result will be a beefing up of federal counter-intelligence programs.

The intelligence community has worried about an over-reaction, reasoning that analysts who want more access to classified information to solve a problem will second-guess their own efforts because they don’t want to trigger an investigation. The order does not specify how agencies ought to strike this balance, but suggests that each agency should establish policies that incorporate their own internal cultures, bearing in mind that the larger goal is to prevent the unauthorized disclosure of classified information.

Obama’s executive order makes agencies primarily responsible for the information they obtain and share.

It also creates a Classified Information Sharing and Safeguarding Office to develop institutional knowledge about best practices across the government. This office will provide staff for the inter-agency steering committee, according to a White House fact sheet.

The executive order is the result of several months worth of a deliberation by a high-level task force formed after of the Wikileaks disclosure. The government has taken several steps to prevent Wikileaks-like incidents from happening again, including limiting the number of people with access to removable flash drives in classified environments and commencing a government-wide survey of existing internal auditing procedures.

Feral Jundi explains:

What is interesting about this is that DoS has been getting some pressure from folks in Congress as to how many security contractors will be on the ground in Iraq in the near future. So this number is coming directly from DoS as a projection for 2012. That number is 5,000 security contractors, which is the equivalent to a brigade in the military. Although that number does not include the logistics folks and other contractor types in country, but at least this gives some perspective as to the size of just the security element.

Now of course this is not new if anyone has been following along. June of last year, State said they would need between 6,000 and 7,000 security contractors for Iraq.  And I guess if you were to add the requirements of the OSC, 5,000 would be modified to be closer to the 6,000 figure. But who knows, and those numbers are not out there yet.

This is also significant, because our industry is giving State the ability to safely operate and perform their duties in Iraq. The troops are going to be gone, and instead of the Marines being ‘last out’, it will be contractors. lol (the Marine in me is not laughing though…lol)

More here.

Noam Chomsky tells RT:

For 35 years, the US and Israel have been rejecting a political settlement that is supported virtually by the entire world. A couple of months ago, there was a meeting of the oligarchs — people who pretty much run the economy [of Israel], and they warned the government that it better accept something like this resolution, because otherwise, Israel will be, as they put it, South Africanized: even more isolated, with boycotts, refusal to load ships, and their economy will collapse.

Or is it?

Bowing to pressure from religious subscribers, the Ashdod-based Israel Andalusian Orchestra has removed a concert from its subscription series featuring a female singer.

In an announcement to subscribers regarding the new concert season, the orchestra management said it was aware that there are members of the public who refrain from listening to women sing, and are therefore offering the concert featuring a woman singer as a separate option for those who are interested.

Many observant Orthodox Jewish men refrain from listening to women sing, as a violation of Jewish religious law, halakha. Haaretz has learned that the orchestra received complaints from concertgoers who threatened to cancel their subscriptions over the woman singer featured in the subscription series.

The concert that engendered the controversy is scheduled for January and features three women: Morocco-based singer Francoise Atlan, cellist Rali Margalit and conductor Eti Tevel.

It is the only one with a female singer on the program.

It seems I’ve upset a man who rather likes Zionist occupation and dislikes my recent ABC piece on the UN Palestine bid and BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions] against Israel.

In this week’s conservative Spectator magazine, a column by Rowan Dean, headlined, “Three words you’ll never hear from Loewenstein and his BDS pals”, rehashes every Israeli Foreign Ministry talking point of the last 20 years. Terrorism! Hamas! Terrorism! Hizbollah! Iran! Ahmadinejad! Terrorism!

It’s comical to read such pieces, such is their distance from reality. Israel can continue hanging onto the illegally occupied territories, but it will cease to be a Jewish majority state. Soon. Something people who truly believe in democracy should welcome.

Here’s Dean’s piece:

Sigh:

The new president of the Tunisian Internet Agency (ATI), Moez Chakchouk, told participants at the Arab Bloggers Meeting [in Tunisia] today that western companies offered significant discounts on use of censorship software to the Tunisian government in exchange for testing and bug-tracking. He said confidentiality contracts preclude him from naming the companies, but said the Internet Agency has extracted itself from these partnerships and thus can no longer afford to censor, even if they wished to (he says they don’t anymore).

Thanks to the change in leadership of the government agency previously charged with censorship and surveillance, Chakchouk is now encouraging bloggers and activists to push for better regulation and constitutional protections for online free speech.

Today’s Murdoch-owned Daily Telegraph in Sydney leads with this “exclusive”, deliberately designed to make readers angry towards these supposedly greedy refugees:

Buying cigarettes and tobacco for immigration detainees is costing taxpayers more than $1.4 million a year. While the federal government spends millions on anti-smoking campaigns, the cost of keeping up detainees’ habits costs about $4000 a day.

The Opposition accused the government of providing its own “mini-stimulus” package for the tobacco industry.

Detainees earn points in the immigration detention system worth up to $50 a week by participating in education and activity programs. They then use points to purchase items, including cigarettes and tobacco products or phone cards.

The tobacco costs were released in an answer provided by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship to a question asked by Liberal senator Michaelia Cash in senate estimates hearings.

It revealed the company that manages the detention centres, Serco, has spent on average $1.4 million a year on tobacco products for detainees since the 2009-10 financial year when the number of detainees began to steadily increase. It provided a list of the favourite brands of cigarettes preferred by detainees.

They included Winfield Red and Blue, Peter Jackson Original, Marlboro, Longbeach, Champion, Gudang Garam, Ventti rolling papers and filters and tube machines.

“The products stocked at each facility vary slightly depending on the cohort of people detained at that facility,” the department said.

“It is important to remember that immigration detention is administrative, not punitive. People in immigration care are not being punished and have access to everyday items that are available to the public. Quit information and support products are available.”

Yes, clearly the most important story of the day.

Meanwhile, a real newspaper, like the UK Guardian, highlights the consistent failures of privatised “care” in Britain:

A police investigation has been launched into an alleged assault on a Nigerian asylum seeker in front of her three young children on a plane bound for Italy.

The alleged incident occurred just two weeks after the launch of the government’s new family-friendly removal policy. The family are one of the first to be detained under the new arrangements.

The woman, Faith, 39, said six of the eight escorts on the flight beat her on the arms and legs, twisted her hand and put hands around her neck. She said she was left spitting blood and had still not recovered.

Her claims have raised concerns among human rights campaigners about the treatment of asylum seeker families during the revamped removals process.

Faith and her three children, aged four, six and eight, were taken by surprise when they were arrested by a group of 10 to 12 uniformed officers in a 5.30am raid at their home in Birmingham on 19 September and driven to the government’s new secure pre-departure accommodation at Pease Pottage near Crawley, West Sussex – an experience which Faith said terrified them all.

“I feel so bad. Why have all these things happened to me?” said Faith, who has asked for her surname not to be revealed. “When they came to arrest us at 5.30am at our home in Birmingham, they kept banging on the door. The children were very upset and were crying. They wouldn’t even allow me any privacy to wash myself in the bathroom before we left.”

…

Reliance took over the contract to escort immigration detainees from G4S in May of this year. The company declined to comment. Its website states: “Reliance will oversee the safe custody and welfare of detainees.”

A new Iranian film, Asghar Farhadi’s Nader and Simin: A Separation, captures the painful moment:

The grim irony at the heart of Farhadi’s film is that the angst and perplexity are the fruit of a “sacred” republic of ideals. Here is the signal failure of the ideological state that Ayatollah Khomeini set up thirty-two years ago, promising truth and redemption for all, but whose children are still waiting for these things, trembling and alone.

6.30pm – Wednesday 26 October 2011 – Upstairs at the Norfolk Hotel in Sydney
305 Cleveland Street. Cnr of Cleveland and Walker Streets.
See a map of the location here.

We are appreciative that the book will be launched by:

Lee Rhiannon, Greens Senator, Australian Parliament
Antony Loewenstein, Independent freelance journalist and author of My Israel Question

Edited by:

Elizabeth Humphrys (Left Flank blog and Sydney based writer)
Guy Rundle (columnist for Crikey and regular contributor to the Sunday Age)
Tad Tietze (Left Flank blog and writer on ABC’s The Drum)

Contributors to the e-Book:

Antony Loewenstein (Independent freelance journalist and author of My Israel Question)
Anindya Bhattacharyya (London based writer and activist)
Jeff Sparrow (Editor of ‘Overland Journal’ and author of Killing: Misadventures in Violence)
Lizzie O’Shea (public interest litigator)
Richard Seymour (author of The Liberal Defence of Murder and creator of the blog Lenin’s Tomb)
Elizabeth Humphrys
Guy Rundle
Tad Tietze

ABOUT ON UTOYA…

Anders Behring Breivik’s murderous rampage on Utoya Island cannot be understood abstracted from the social and political conjuncture in which it emerged. The rise in far Right, racist and Islamophobic commentary, websites and organisations provide an essential context in which Brevik’s ideas developed and his actions were planned. On Utoya: Anders Breivik, right terror, Islamophobia and Europe looks at this social context, the reaction to the event by far Right commentators, and what is needed in a Left strategy to deal with the growing threat of far Right organising.

More details about this exciting new book soon.

My chapter (and speech) will be about the growing alliance between the Right and Zionism in Europe and beyond.

Feeling the need to kill for fun in war zones where privatised thugs are order the day? This game is for you. Funnily enough, the players will be tasked with protecting UN principals: