Antony Loewenstein

Yet more evidence of the pernicious effect of private interests corrupting the public sector (via Counterpunch):

Videos are springing up across the internet showing uniformed members of the New York Police Department in white shirts (as opposed to the typical NYPD blue uniforms) pepper spraying and brutalizing peaceful, nonthreatening protestors attempting to take part in the Occupy Wall Street marches.  Corporate media are reporting that these white shirts are police supervisors as opposed to rank and file.  Recently discovered documents suggest something else may be at work.

If you’re a Wall Street behemoth, there are endless opportunities to privatize profits and socialize losses beyond collecting trillions of dollars in bailouts from taxpayers.  One of the ingenious methods that has remained below the public’s radar was started by the Rudy Giuliani administration in New York City in 1998.  It’s called the Paid Detail Unit and it allows the New York Stock Exchange and Wall Street corporations, including those repeatedly charged with crimes, to order up a flank of New York’s finest with the ease of dialing the deli for a pastrami on rye.

The corporations pay an average of $37 an hour (no medical, no pension benefit, no overtime pay) for a member of the NYPD, with gun, handcuffs and the ability to arrest.  The officer is indemnified by the taxpayer, not the corporation.

New York City gets a 10 percent administrative fee on top of the $37 per hour paid to the police.  The City’s 2011 budget called for $1,184,000 in Paid Detail fees, meaning private corporations were paying  wages of $11.8 million to police participating in the Paid Detail Unit.  The program has more than doubled in revenue to the city since 2002.

The taxpayer has paid for the training of the rent-a-cop, his uniform and gun, and will pick up the legal tab for lawsuits stemming from the police personnel following illegal instructions from its corporate master.  Lawsuits have already sprung up from the program.

When the program was first rolled out, one insightful member of the NYPD posted the following on a forum: “… regarding the officer working for, and being paid by, some of the richest people and organizations in the City, if not the world, enforcing the mandates of the private employer, and in effect, allowing the officer to become the Praetorian Guard of the elite of the City. And now corruption is no longer a problem. Who are they kidding?”

My following piece appears in today’s ABC The Drum:

In late September, the government of Sri Lanka released 1,800 former Tamil Tiger fighters.

Colombo claimed they had been rehabilitated as President Mahinda Rajapaksa told them at a ceremony in the capital:

“I hope you will work for peace and ethnic harmony in this nation of ours. We must not dwell on the bitter past, but look to a prosperous future.”

Many other former fighters remain incommunicado, housed in secret camps away from international inspection or human rights protection.

This is occurring in “democratic” Sri Lanka, a nation still deeply divided along racial and political lines.

The over two years since the official end of the country’s brutal civil war has seen an attempted re-branding exercise by the Rajapaksa regime, including the encouragement of a vibrant tourist sector.

Despite the fact that the government murdered at least 40,000 Tamil civilians during the last period of the war (a figure confirmed by then UN spokesman in Colombo, Gordon Weiss), the international community has been reluctant to hold officials to account.

A thorough UN-led investigation found overwhelming evidence of war crimes committed by both sides during the conflict and Ban Ki-Moon recently submitted this report to the UN Human Rights Council for investigation. The move was condemned by Colombo.

After a 10-month investigation, the UN found that “most civilian casualties in the final phases of the war were caused by government shelling”. Furthermore, it made accusations that Sri Lankan troops had shelled civilians in the “no-fire zone” and targeted hospitals in its desire to crush the Tamil Tigers.

A recently released WikiLeaks cable revealed that when Ban Ki-Moon visited the country in 2009 he witnessed “complete destruction” when he flew over the former “no-fire zone”. He described the conditions of Manik Farm refugee camp as worse than anything he had ever seen before.

This background is essential to understand as we approach the next Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), being held in Perth in late October. Sri Lanka President Rajapaksa will be attending and Sri Lanka is scheduled to host CHOGM in 2013. Serious questions are now being asked by human rights groups in Australia and globally, Tamil organisations and some brave politicians; why is Sri Lanka being indulged at the expense of justice for its countless victims?

In September a letter was sent to the Commonwealth foreign ministers that was signed by the world’s leading human rights groups.

It read in part:

“We are gravely concerned about the ongoing discussions on holding the 2013 CHOGM in Sri Lanka. At the 2009 CHOGM, Sri Lanka’s candidature for hosting the meeting was deferred from 2011 to2013 because of concerns about human rights abuses by the Sri Lankan government. While war-time abuses have ended, the situation in Sri Lanka continues to be characterised by serious human rights violations, including assault on democratic institutions, such as the media and trade unions. The Panel of Experts appointed by the UN Secretary-General to advise him on the status of allegations of war crimes during the last weeks of the conflict in Sri Lanka has concluded that serious abuses were committed by the government and by the LTTE, and warrant an international investigation.”

The statement called on Sri Lanka to implement numerous changes before it would be awarded hosting honours in 2013. Furthermore, Sri Lanka is keen to host the Commonwealth Games in 2018 and the Commonwealth itself, never known to be overly pro-active against human rights abusers, is being asked to not consider Colombo’s application.

Federal Greens MP Lee Rhiannon has been one of the most consistent Australian politicians keeping the issue of war crimes in Sri Lanka in the public arena. Although her party failed to convince the Labor and Liberal parties to support a Senate motion to suspend Sri Lanka from the Councils of the Commonwealth, she pledged to continue pressuring the Federal Government to convince Colombo to establish an independent war crimes commission.

Rhiannon hosted a roundtable of experts in the Federal Parliament in September that called for Sri Lanka’s suspension of the Commonwealth. She said:

“With CHOGM shortly to be held in Perth, the Australian government needs to add its voice and ensure that all Commonwealth nations uphold principles of human rights and the rule of law.”

Unsurprisingly, Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner in Canberra, Admiral Thisara Samarasinghe (a man with a troubling past) rejected the roundtable’s recommendation, issuing the following Orwellian statement:

The [Sri Lanka] government had to take military action to defeat the terrorists to save the civilians.

In other words, we had to destroy the population in order to save it.

Intriguingly, conservative Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, one of the world’s strongest backers of Israel, recently announced that he intended “to make clear to my fellow leaders at the Commonwealth that if we do not see progress in Sri Lanka in terms of human rights… I will not as prime minister be attending that Commonwealth summit [in 2013].”. Harper also strongly backed calls for an independent investigation of alleged war crimes during the war.

The British Tory government, at times critical of Colombo’s behaviour, is currently embroiled in a scandal involving the Defence Secretary Liam Fox. He is accused of both being far too close to the Sri Lankan government and backing its war against the Tamils.

Although Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd has also called for an investigation, the Labor government remains desperate for Colombo to assist its flailing asylum seeker policy. Canberra has praised the Rajapaksa regime for stopping boats of Tamils fleeing the nation, a move rightly slammed by John Dowd, president of the International Commission of Jurists.

“It is likely these asylum seekers will be treated harshly when all they have done is exercise a legal right,” Dowd said. “People who are desperate to get away from Sri Lanka know that it is a dangerous enterprise coming by sea. We Australians praise ourselves as great humanitarians – this is hardly an example of compassion.”

Australia’s high commissioner to Sri Lanka, Kathy Klugman, recently told the state’s Sunday Times newspaper that, “close to 100 Sri Lankans have been returned from Australia in the past few years”. The fate of returned Tamils at the hands of government thugs is often brutal, according to investigations by human rights organisation.

Klugman was also recently publicly attacked for handing out certificates to alleged Tamil rebels after the alleged “rehabilitation” program, legitimising a program that is both secretive and unproven. Rehabilitation can take many forms post conflict.

For the Australian Government, in the midst of a refugee drama it has no idea how to manage politically or legally, war crimes in Sri Lanka is far less important than stopping refugee boats.

The status of Sri Lanka in the 21st century is of a political elite triumphantly thriving on racial supremacy ideology.

The recent discovery of gas deposits in its waters will only strengthen the fears that a resource curse will benefit the Sinhalese majority against the Tamil minority.

The international community has a moral and legal responsibility to hold Sri Lanka to account. Failing this basic task will merely encourage other states engaged in a “war on terror”, from America to Israel and Yemen to Afghanistan, to act with impunity against civilians.

CHOGM is the perfect opportunity to challenge Rajapaksa over his government’s wilful murder of Tamils under the guise of defeating terrorism. It is arguable whether he should even be allowed into the country but if he arrives in Perth he should be made to realise that he has the blood of innocents on his hands.

Antony Loewenstein is an Australian independent journalist who sits on the advisory council of the UK-based Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice.

Afghanistan Today writes:

Exploding bombs and gunfights will harm the economy of any city, either by causing direct damage or through the wider impact on trade and services. But for security equipment companies working the market in Kabul, business is, for want of a better word, booming.

That war means big business is a lamentable fact of life. In Kabul, a vast security equipment sector is consequently thriving as the armed conflict enters its tenth year, while other areas of the market are feeling the pinch.

“Increasing insecurity and instability means the price of our equipment goes up, as does the number of customers,” said Qais Ayoubi, sales manager at the Kabul-based company Grand Security Suppliers, which like most in the sector has a broad list of products: “We deal in everything from small security devices like cameras to armoured vehicles.”

Add to these items others that are readily sought these days, like razor wire, reinforced doors, blast walls and blast-proof glass, alarm systems, metal detectors, body armour, uniforms and walkie-talkies, to name a few, and you have a billion-dollar industry.

And as in any line of goods, security items are varyingly priced for a wide spending bracket.

In Kabul, a passenger vehicle that has been specially armoured to withstand gunfire and blasts can cost between 65,000 and 120,000 US dollars, and security cameras from 700 to 6,000 dollars.

But contrary to possible expectations, each successive attack – and there have been several major ones in the Afghan capital in recent weeks, does not necessarily precipitate a deluge of orders.

Business is increasing steadily, say the firms. But it also shows a peculiar elasticity, a general ebb and flow of orders that makes turnover hard to predict.

“Our revenue figures also depend on customer needs of course,” Ayoubi added. “We can average at a turnover of 10,000 dollars a month for a while, and then this can spike to a million dollars or more. [So] it’s not always the case that security threats increase our sales. Usually sales are done through contracts with companies and organizations.”

This is almost comical but sadly true (via the Canberra Times):

The Commonwealth Government is suing its former immigration detention operators for failing to protect it against lawsuits lodged by people kept in detention facilities.

The case will be heard in the South Australian Supreme Court on November 21.

It is part of a long-running case launched by former asylum-seeker Abdul Amir Hamidi, who won a confidential settlement against the Federal Government after almost five years in detention.

As The Canberra Times revealed on Saturday, Mr Hamidi’s lawyers predict that the confidential settlement will spark dozens more claims for damages.

In a case to be heard on November 21, the Commonwealth will claim its former detention centre operators – GSL and Australasian Correctional Services – breached their contracts by exposing the Government to the legal action.

The Commonwealth will argue both companies agreed to indemnify it against damages based on their running of Australian detention centres.

Australasian Correctional Services operated Australia’s mainland immigration detention facilities until early 2004.

Group 4 Falck Global Solutions Pty Ltd (which later changed its name to Global Solutions Limited, or GSL) commenced management of the centres in late 2003.

Both companies will fight the claim, with ACS arguing it had insufficient time to respond to the allegations and the terms of its agreement included dispute resolution measures.

GSL says it is not responsible for indemnifying the Commonwealth for any ”negligent, wilful, reckless or unlawful acts or omissions of the Commonwealth, its employees, officers or agents”.

Between 2000 and March 2010, detainees in Australian immigration detention centres were paid more than $12.3million in compensation for personal injury or unlawful detention.

The details of the Australian immigration system are often kept secret, not least the activities of British multinational Serco running the detention facilities.

The Australian’s Paige Taylor is that rare mainstream journalist who has been pursuing the story for years. Her feature in yesterday’s paper documented the absurd restrictions on finding out accurate information on what has now become a quasi prison island, Christmas Island:

…The real struggle for journalists reporting on boatpeople is with a department that guards facts. It gleefully excoriates reporters for not knowing the full story, yet has not once allowed media cameras inside an operational detention centre.

The department has a media unit of 13 staff who respond courteously and promptly to queries. But the responses, called lines or talking points, are rarely what anyone would call answers. The department is regarded by journalists as secretive. In turn, I am known colloquially in there as “F . . king Paige”.

Perhaps the best demonstration of this paranoia is in the department’s own contract with the security firm that runs Australia’s immigration detention centres, the British global services company Serco. In it, the department stipulates that “unauthorised media presence” is a “critical incident”, which is the same status afforded a death, a bomb or a hostage situation.

This hostility has forced journalists to get better at what they do. If a department spokesman will not tell you when a boat is arriving, why not cultivate someone who might? And why wait for the department’s sanitised version of an all-in brawl? When adolescent male asylum-seekers come to blows with the parents of the girls they tried to crack on to, the best accounts are from the people throwing the punches and the workers who dealt with the chaos.

It is not an easy gig on Christmas Island. It is hot and humid, fresh food is hard to come by, internet is neither fast nor reliable and the accommodation crisis has to be experienced to be believed. There were days when I spent a couple of hours just trying to find somewhere to sleep that night.

The ongoing blind establishment embrace of Israel and condemnation of BDS as akin to Nazi Germany shows no sign of abating in Australia.

Yesterday’s ABC Radio National Breakfast featured a story on the issue and included a brief interview with me explaining the growing alliances between the fascist right and Israel; a mutual hatred of Islam is joining these forces.

Note the comments by Zionist lobbyist Danny Lamm, President of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, who denies there is even an occupation of Palestinian lands and demands Palestinians be grateful for Israel bringing universities to the occupied Arabs. Such is warped Zionist “logic”:

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What’s that about an Israeli media bubble? You say there’s nothing to worry about? Sorry what? Occupying Palestinians is fine? Rising racism against Arabs best avoided? Yes, of course it is. Guy Bechor writes in Yediot, the country’s biggest paper, that Israel is now emerging from a down-turn and even falsely claims Australia has outlawed BDS. Welcome to paradise, Zionists:

Israelis were the first ones of all people to raise the de-legitimization argument: Israel would turn into the new South Africa as result of its isolation in the Western world, they said. They inflated this claim, which almost turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy. However, there was never much substance to this argument, and even if there was, it was curbed in the past year.

…

Why did it happen? Because we are not talking about the establishment of a Palestinian state. Israel has agreed to it. We are now talking about the conditions for establishing such state, and here the Palestinians went back to their rejectionist role. A world premised on dialogues and talks is unwilling to accept a unilateral Palestinian dictate that has no peace, no recognition and no security.

…

Australia currently heads the states that decided to put an end to the racism festival. After an emotional debate in parliament, officials decided to make all protests and boycotts against Israeli businesses a criminal offense. Minister for Consumer Affairs Michael O’Brien said that “To think you are going to influence the policies of the government of Israel by attacking a business running in this state is just appalling.”

…

The change is already being felt in campuses worldwide. Dozens of Jewish and Israeli groups are being set up. They present the Israeli case and enjoy positive resonance. The universities are no longer reckless, as used to be the case in the past, even though some of them are still dominated by confused liberal discourse. Here’s an example of this change: Columbia University, which last year received Ahmadinejad with great honor, forbade him from visiting this year. This is a precedent that shall affect other global academic institutions.

In case anybody still had any illusions about the obsession of the Obama administration to pursue whistle-blowers or anybody who seriously embarrasses them, read on (via the Wall Street Journal):

The U.S. government has obtained a controversial type of secret court order to force GoogleInc. and small Internet provider Sonic.net Inc. to turn over information from the email accounts of WikiLeaks volunteer Jacob Appelbaum, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Under-trained. Under-staffed. Traumatised. And that’s just the employees of disaster capitalist companies, loved by governments, to add “efficiency” to a straining refugee system.

Paige Taylor reports in today’s Australian:

An English backpacker on a tourist visa, Australians straight from high school and overseas students are among hundreds of casual workers earning up to $450 a day as “officers” in immigration detention centres.

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen has used his special powers under the Migration Act to turn the casual workers into guards authorised to deal with asylum-seekers and respond to incidents such as riots and suicide attempts, The Australian has confirmed.

They are allowed to perform almost all of the same duties as guards from contractor Serco, who are required, under the strict terms of a contract with the Immigration Department, to complete training that covers cultural awareness and cross-cultural communication, suicide awareness and the government’s detention values.

Mr Bowen used his “instrument of authorisation” to empower workers from subcontractor MSS in May last year and from Wilson Security in October last year. Each holds a Certificate II in Security Operations, according to Serco. Industry-wide, the course can take five to 10 days to complete.

“Some of them are just hopeless,” one MSS worker said yesterday.

“You get ones who aren’t fit for work or who are too young to handle what you see in there . . . that includes Serco people.”

There are 62 MSS workers on Christmas Island and a similar number of Serco guards.

The debate about the qualifications and training of all guards began in March during mass walkouts, scuffles with detainees and rioting. This month an inquest into the suicide at Sydney’s Villawood detention centre of Fijian asylum-seeker Josefa Rauluni was told that two officers who dealt with him before his death were trained in the use of force, but not in Australia, nor to the specifications in Serco’s contract.

Serco has rigorously defended its training regime. Its own employees complete a four-week induction that begins off site and finishes in the workplace, a Serco spokesman said.

Serco began using subcontractors to supply guards last year when the number of people in detention rocketed as a result of the government’s decision to suspend processing asylum claims for boatpeople from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan.

Serco maintains that its subcontractors are suitably trained. “(They) hold licences to act as security officers including a level II in Security Operations. Regular checks are undertaken to verify this is the case,” a Serco spokesman said.

An MSS worker who lasted less than a week on Christmas Island is among at least three flown home for medical reasons this year. He had severe and long-term health problems associated with obesity and diabetes.

One 18-year-old woman said she had no idea what to do when she was placed inside the Christmas Island detention centre as a “rover” among more than 2400 men.

“I was shitting myself the whole time,” she said.

So this is where our supposed civilised world is heading. A disturbing piece in the weekend’s New York Times:

At the Zhuhai air show in southeastern China last November, Chinese companies startled some Americans by unveiling 25 different models of remotely controlled aircraft and showing video animation of a missile-armed drone taking out an armored vehicle and attacking a United States aircraft carrier.

The presentation appeared to be more marketing hype than military threat; the event is China’s biggest aviation market, drawing both Chinese and foreign military buyers. But it was stark evidence that the United States’ near monopoly on armed drones was coming to an end, with far-reaching consequences for American security, international law and the future of warfare.

Eventually, the United States will face a military adversary or terrorist group armed with drones, military analysts say. But what the short-run hazard experts foresee is not an attack on the United States, which faces no enemies with significant combat drone capabilities, but the political and legal challenges posed when another country follows the American example. The Bush administration, and even more aggressively the Obama administration, embraced an extraordinary principle: that the United States can send this robotic weapon over borders to kill perceived enemies, even American citizens, who are viewed as a threat.

“Is this the world we want to live in?” asks Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Because we’re creating it.”

…

So far, the United States has a huge lead in the number and sophistication of unmanned aerial vehicles (about 7,000, by one official’s estimate, mostly unarmed). The Air Force prefers to call them not U.A.V.’s but R.P.A.’s, or remotely piloted aircraft, in acknowledgment of the human role; Air Force officials should know, since their service is now training more pilots to operate drones than fighters and bombers.

Philip Finnegan, director of corporate analysis for the Teal Group, a company that tracks defense and aerospace markets, says global spending on research and procurement of drones over the next decade is expected to total more than $94 billion, including $9 billion on remotely piloted combat aircraft.

Israel and China are aggressively developing and marketing drones, and Russia, Iran, India, Pakistan and several other countries are not far behind. The Defense Security Service, which protects the Pentagon and its contractors from espionage, warned in a report last year that American drone technology had become a prime target for foreign spies.

Debate around Palestinian statehood is becoming increasingly polarised, but necessarily so. While Israel continues to build illegal settlements in the West Bank, a two-state solution is dead and buried. That only leaves eternal apartheid or a one-state solution, my favoured option, a truly democratic state.

Last week I was extensively interviewed by ABC radio on these very subjects:

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