Antony Loewenstein

Herald Sun senior editor Alan Howe loathes Muslims, Arabs, Palestinians and anybody who doesn’t embrace US foreign policy.

Today he takes his hatred even further. “Journalism”, Murdoch style:

There was some truth told last week, and the usual suspects – devious and untrustworthy – found it most uncomfortable.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, not for the first time, acted out another UN farce and voted to grant membership to Palestine.

Not enough people in Palestine know much about science, or education, or culture, so on the surface it might look a good idea.

The truth is that it is a dangerous ploy by the Palestinians to try to get the UN to grant them nationhood.

Palestine is not yet a nation – it rejected that opportunity in a generous offer made by Israel 11 years ago – and so should not be part of any UN body. It’s the United Nations.

In all, 107 nations voted away their souls on the Palestine issue. They predictably included Russia, China, Austria and South Africa. Oh, and France, of course; there’s a country that never passes up an opportunity to display how contemptibly weak it is.

The noble nations that told the truth – just 14 of them – included Australia, the US, Canada, Israel and Sweden, while 52 nations, only slightly to the north of the French when it comes to courage, abstained.

There was pressure on Julia Gillard for Australia to abstain. Instead, she told the truth.

The recent release of the e-book On Utoya about the Norway massacre and Right racism continues to generate necessary discussion about the highly political act of murdering dozens of Left activists. My chapter is about Israel and the far Right.

This morning I was interviewed on ABC Radio National’s The Book Show alongside Overland editor Jeff Sparrow on the reasons behind the book – not least challenging the mainstreaming of anti-Muslim hate – and the rise of e-books in general:

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The growing connection between the Far Right and Zionism is highlighted in my essay in the recently released e-book On Utoya.

This story in Haaretz is therefore fascinating, and makes me wonder if the “acceptable” face of the racist Right is viewed as a prospective ally of Israel because of the mutual loathing of Muslims:

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Ron Prosor, said over the weekend that his attendance at a luncheon for Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s extreme right-wing party National Front and presidential candidate, at the UN Headquarters in New York on Thursday was a “mistake”.

“It was an event that I wasn’t supposed to be at to begin with, and I got there by accident. When I realized my mistake, I immediately left the event,” Prosor said after the event.

Marine Le Pen is the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the National Front party.

French media outlets reported widely on Prosor’s attendance at the UN event organized in Le Pen’s honor. French media noted that the Israeli ambassador shook Le Pen’s hand and remained at the event for 20 minutes. French newspapers also published a photograph of Prosor and Le Pen standing together.

Ambassador Prosor denied the contents of the French reports in a conversation with Haaretz. “After I saw Marine Le Pen there, I immediately realized that I had no place being there, and I left the room,” said Prosor.

The ambassador also said that no conversation took place between himself and Le Pen. “I didn’t remain there and I didn’t hear her briefing,” he said.

Prosor’s version of the events contradicts comments he made to reporters outside the event. Before he entered the hall, Prosor was asked by a French journalist if he is the “number one” Israeli diplomat at the United Nations. According to Prosor’s own recollection, he responded, “I replied to him that I am not a number, but a free man.”

When Prosor left the event, he was filmed by television cameras saying, “We spoke about Europe and other topics and I very much enjoyed the conversation.”

Le Pen herself was quoted by French news agencies on Saturday, saying that the Israeli ambassador’s presence at the event “was not an error.” According to Le Pen, “Please, no one actually imagines that the ambassador burst through the wrong door.”

The National Front leader added, “It is impossible to converse with Marine Le Pen for 20 minutes without knowing who she is.” According to Le Pen, “There was nothing unclear or ambiguous about our meeting.”

Last week I was invited down to Canberra to give the keynote speech at the Independent Scholars Association of Australia 2011 Conference. It was held at the National Library to an appreciative audience. The following are my notes:

-       Quote from Julian Assange, The UnAuthorised Autobiography, p. 119/120 + 168

-        What is modern journalism if not mostly collection of sanctioned leaks from the powerful to lazy media? Take the MSM media on any day, ABC, Fairfax or News Ltd, and see how much so-called news are rehashed press releases.

-       Personal favourite lead ABC news radio story early in 2011: “Abbott says Gillard lying over carbon tax.”

-       If this is the crisis in MSM, then hard to shed any tears.

-       Wikileaks offers an alternative, a prospect for a different, more collaborative kind of media.

-       Wikileaks; more leaks in 5 years than all corporate press combined over last 30 years.

-       Brief history of Wikileaks from 2006.

-       Response of Western governments to Wikileaks; criticism, defensive, hurt, aggressive, leading US politicians calling for Assange execution.

-       PM Julia Gillard, late 2010 after Cablegate release, said Assange/Wikileaks had broken Australian laws but subsequent investigation found no laws had been broken.

-       Real threat is embarrassment and insight into how our governments are a) craven towards Washington and b) increasingly finding new ways to restrict freedoms in the name of providing “security”.

-       Wikileaks challenges insider culture/journalism and asks; why didn’t you get these stories?

-       MSM narrative, pushed by Lowy Institute’s Michael Fullilove, was that Wikileaks released nothing new, this is how power works and it needs to be secret and important. International affairs framed as complicated. In reality, as Noam Chomsky says, it rarely rises above child’s play.

-       Some Wikileaks revelations:- US spying on the UN;

• Israel/Egypt relationship over Gaza;
• US/Australia scuttling cluster bomb treaty;
• US firms colluding with repressive states to benefit US businesses such as Shell in Nigeria;
• Ongoing US efforts to undermine democratically elected Chavez in Venezuela; and
• Extreme closeness between the ALP and America

-       Wikileaks provides opportunity for power to be more democratic. Lessening/removing unnecessary secrets in the public domain. We the public have responsibility to demand transparency. Can’t rely on mainstream media.

-       Wikileaks-style spin-offs, such as Greenleaks.

-       MSM either adapts or faces irrelevance. Secure drop-boxes of information essential but not the WSJ/Murdoch version (full of holes).

-       MSM fearful of losing power and influence, enjoys being gate-keeper.

-       Robert Fisk concern of Wikileaks (journalists will simply wait for stories to fall in their lap via the computer).

-       What about politicians and bureaucracy? Wikileaks shows over-classification is rife.

-       Rise of national security state, close to one million Americans have top-secret clearance. Wikileaks can and must challenge this.

Well, this is very interesting:

In recent years, Greg Mankiw noticed that the students who took his economics class at Harvard seemed overly concerned about preparing for their careers. That appeared to change this week.

On Wednesday, about 70 of his students walked out of Economics 10, the introductory class he teaches, to protest what they said was a bias towards a destructive brand of free-market economics.

“We found a course that espouses a specific – and limited – view of economics that we believe perpetuates problematic and inefficient systems of economic inequality in our society today … There is no justification for presenting Adam Smith’s economic theories as more fundamental or basic than, for example, Keynesian theory,” organisers said in an open letter to the professor, Mr Mankiw.

Mr Mankiw, who served as chairman of George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers and is an adviser to Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential contender, acknowledged that his résumé probably contributed to the decision to target his class, which at 700 students has the highest enrolment of any undergraduate course.

The course, commonly knows as Ec 10, is a requirement for several undergraduate majors and carries a pedigree that is influential even by Harvard standards. Mr Mankiw’s predecessor was Martin Feldstein, who served as chief economic adviser to Ronald Reagan. Larry Summers, the former Treasury secretary and economics adviser to President Barack Obama, acted as a teaching fellow for the course in the 1970s.

The student protesters themselves emphasised the course’s influence, writing that “Harvard graduates play major roles in the financial institutions and in shaping public policy around the world”.

Mr Mankiw told the Financial Times that while he disagreed with the protesters, he had “significant respect” for their activism. “Over recent years, I’ve seen Harvard students becoming increasingly pre-professional. That they are sitting back and thinking broadly about social issues … those are good questions for students to be asking, and to the extent that Occupy Wall Street sparks debate, that’s good.”

Extraordinarily beautiful:

Afghanistan – touch down in flight from Augustin Pictures on Vimeo.

It’s not enough to simply talk about inequality and play within a system designed and rigged by the usual political players. The real Left must get far more imaginative. This is a good piece in Le Monde Diplomatique that demands more:

The Occupy Wall Street protests in the US are also directed against the Street’s representatives in the Democratic Party and the White House. The protesters probably don’t know that Socialists in France still consider Barack Obama exemplary, since, unlike President Sarkozy, he had the foresight to take action against banks. Is there a misunderstanding? Those who are unwilling or unable to attack the pillars of the neoliberal order (financialisation, globalisation of movements of capital and goods) are tempted to personalise the disaster, to attribute the crisis in capitalism to poor planning or mismanagement by their political opponents. In France it’s Sarkozy, in Italy Berlusconi, in Germany Merkel, who are to blame. And elsewhere?

Elsewhere, and not only in the US, political leaders long considered as models by the moderate left also face angry crowds. In Greece, the president of the Socialist International, George Papandreou, is pursuing a policy of extreme austerity: privatisations, cuts in the civil service, and delivering economic and social sovereignty to a ultra-neoliberal “troika” (1). The conduct of the Spanish, Portuguese and Slovenian governments reminds us that the term “left” is now so debased that it is no longer associated with any specific political content.

The current French Socialist Party spokesman explains the impossible situation of European social democracy very clearly: in his new book Tourner la page, Benoît Hamon writes: “In the European Union, the European Socialist Party is historically associated, through the compromise linking it with Christian democracy, with the strategy of liberalising the internal market and the implications for social rights and public services. Socialist governments negotiated the austerity measures that the European Union and the International Monetary Fund wanted. In Spain, Portugal and Greece, opposition to the austerity measures is naturally directed against the IMF and the European Commission, but also against the socialist governments … Part of the European left no longer denies that it is necessary, like the European right, to sacrifice the welfare state in order to balance the budget and please the markets. … We have blocked the march of progress in several parts of the world. I cannot resign myself to this” (2).

…

The republic of the centre has institutions and media behind it, but it is tottering. The race is on between tough neoliberal authoritarianism and a break with capitalism. These still seem a long way off. But when the people cease to believe in a political game in which the dice are loaded, when they see that governments are stripped of their sovereignty, when they demand that banks be brought into line, when they mobilise without knowing where their anger will lead then the left is still very much alive.

We are being warned in report after report and yet governments and corporations see private security as the ideal way to enforce and protect assets. And now the reality:

A UN expert group warned of an alarming resurgence in the use of mercenaries and a major expansion in military and security companies operating without regulation or accountability.

The five-member working group on the use of mercenaries said in a report to the UN General Assembly that mercenary forces in Libya and Ivory Coast reportedly were involved in committing serious human rights violations – as were some contractors for military and security companies working in Iraq and elsewhere.

Faiza Patel, who heads the working group, told a news conference on Tuesday that states should cooperate to eliminate the use of mercenaries and regulate the activities of military and security companies.

“Recent events in Africa clearly demonstrate that problems posed by mercenaries are still a live issue,” she said, adding that these hired foreign fighters are being used in new and novel ways.

Patel said there is considerable evidence that former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo used some 4,500 Liberian mercenaries to avoid leaving office after losing a 2010 election.

In Libya, she said, there were widespread reports that foreign fighters allegedly recruited from neighbouring African countries and Eastern Europe by Muammar Gaddafi’s government were used to crack down on demonstrations earlier this year.

“Mercenaries continue to be recruited and active in several parts of the world,” the report said. “Mercenary activities often constitute threats to national and even regional peace and security. They also have a serious impact on the right of peoples to self-determination and the enjoyment of human rights.”

Take this as an example of why we should be very concerned of unaccountable forces (often with immunity) running around post-conflict societies:

Oil companies in Iraq still need to factor in a security cost overhead as part of doing business in the country in order to protect their people and assets. John McCaffery, Managing Director of British private security firm Erinys, gives his guide to choosing the right provider.

The securing of personnel and assets is a complex amalgam of procedural, technical and physical methods that establishes layered security “architecture” with multiple zones.

If one considers the client and a project as the core of an onion then layers of skin that surround the core would represent the security “zones” that protect the client.

In relation to the cost of security, there is an old saying: “if you have a five dollar head, then wear a five dollar helmet” – in other words, if you value what you have you are willing to pay to protect it.

Away from all the bluster of a non-existent “peace process” between Israel and the Palestinians, this is what matters; a brutal Zionist state:

Medical professionals in Israel are being accused of failing to document and report injuries caused by the ill-treatment and torture of detainees by security personnel in violation of their ethical code.

A report by two Israeli human rights organisations, the Public Committee Against Torture (PCAT) and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), claims that medical staff are also failing to report suspicion of torture and ill-treatment, returning detainees to their interrogators and passing medical information to interrogators.

The report, Doctoring the Evidence, Abandoning the Victim, to be published later this month, is based on 100 cases of Palestinian detainees brought to PCAT since 2007. It says: “This report reveals significant evidence arousing the suspicion that many doctors ignore the complaints of their patients; that they allow Israeli Security Agency interrogators to use torture; approve the use of forbidden interrogation methods and the ill-treatment of helpless detainees; and conceal information, thereby allowing total immunity for the torturers.”

Alleged ill-treatment of detainees, some of whose cases are detailed in the 61-page report, includes beatings, being held for long periods in stress positions, hands being tightly tied with plastic cuffs, sleep deprivation and threats. Israel denies torturing or ill-treating prisoners.

Doctors are failing to keep proper medical records of injuries caused during interrogations. The report cites “countless cases wherein individuals testified to injuries inflicted upon them during detention or in interrogation, and yet the medical record from the hospital or the prison service makes no mention of it.”

Without such evidence, the report says, it is very difficult to obtain legal redress for ill-treatment. “Effective documentation of the injury can be a decisive factor in initiating an investigation, in bringing the perpetrators to trial and in ensuring that justice is carried out.”

A medical report should include a description and photograph of the injury, the victim’s account of events and a record of treatment, the report says.

Among the cases it cites is “BA”, arrested in November 2010. In an affidavit he alleged he was beaten, held in stress positions and deprived of sleep. He said he told doctors of his ill-treatment and said he was suffering from severe arm, leg and back pain. His medical record shows that he was seen by doctors but the only comment noted is that the patient had no complaints and was in good overall condition.

This is what our society is becoming; unaccountable forces that will push an aggressive agenda in the name of “efficiency”. Why not just privatise everything?

Foley residents will call a private security company when they need nonemergency help, starting in January.

On Tuesday, Foley City Council members unanimously approved hiring a private security company to provide 24-hour service to the city. The city will enter a six-month contract with General Security Services Corp. for $98,500.

Mayor Gary Gruba said Foley is the first city he’s heard of that has used a private security company. But he said he has heard other cities are looking at the option to save costs.

Since 2003, the city has paid Benton County to have three deputies patrol the city for 17.1 hours a day. The council voted earlier this month to reject a new contract from the county to provide police services for 2012.

The county had proposed a contract for 2012 that would cost $23,426 a month for three deputies. This year the city is paying $24,694 a month.

Cuts in Local Government Aid mean the city has to look at all areas to make cuts, council member Dean Weber said.

The company will start providing staffing eight hours a day in December and full time in January. The county’s contract expires at the end of December.

Council members and staff will work on a plan to educate the public about the change. Emergency calls should still be made to 911 and a deputy will respond.

The security company guards will patrol the area and can make citizen arrests. They cannot investigate crimes or do traffic stops.

Recently there was the global launch of the new e-book On Utøya: Anders Breivik, right terror, racism and Europe (my chapter is about the nexus between Israel and the Right).

The book was launched in Sydney in late October. I spoke alongside Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon. Film-maker Reuben Brand filmed and edited the following footage (forgive the low light and difficult sound):

O-SPAN Classic: CIA Accidentally Overthrows Costa Rica