As Australians, we should not be importing overseas conflicts onto the streets of Sydney.  But there is a tragedy today, and it is that when the Jewish world accepted the State of Israel as decreed by the UN 64 years ago, the Arab world did not do the same. If it had, we would be celebrating a state of Palestine today which was 64 years old, just as Israel is. Isn’t it time we all moved on and explored ways to advance peace instead of dwelling on the past?

The offensiveness of such a statement is clear. I suppose he wouldn’t mind if non-Jews tell Jews to stop dwelling on the Holocaust and just move on? As if.

Here’s the full story in today’s Daily Telegraph:

A bid to stop a pro-Palestinian demonstration was rejected by a Supreme Court justice because it should be treated just like Anzac Day or Australia Day.

In allowing last night’s Sydney CBD march to go ahead, Justice Christine Adamson said freedom of speech and history was more important than the risk of commuters being inconvenienced.

Police had sought a court order to stop the demonstration, held to mark Nakba Day, when Palestinians were dispossessed from areas that now form part of the state of Israel, from going ahead.

Authorities had objected because the march, involving about 200 people, had been due to start at Sydney Town Hall at 5.30pm, when the area is “frequented by tens of thousands of commuters”.

After an urgent hearing on Monday night, Justice Adamson published her reasons yesterday, saying freedom of speech trumped commuter disruption – and the event could not be moved to another day because of its historical significance.

“Nakba Day ought to be regarded as a day which, like Anzac Day, Christmas Day or Australia Day, is referable to a particular date which is not movable,” she said in her judgment. “I do not regard it as reasonable to expect persons commemorating a particular date to defer or bring forward its commemoration so that it can be commemorated on a weekend. The date is the product of history.”

The police argued in court that because the protest was likely to result in “significant interference with commuters’ passage home” it may lead to “frustration and unintended outbreaks of violence”.

Justice Adamson noted that inconvenience was likely to be experienced, saying “if one’s purpose were to disrupt commuter traffic, one could hardly choose a better time or place”, but said to refuse the protest “would be inhibiting … the right to freedom of expression and assembly”.

“It will present a significant challenge to police officers to keep the peace and ensure the public assembly does not cause a breach of the peace or that the consequences of any such breaches is minimised,” she said. “Public facilities are to be shared. It is the nature of a protest that others will be affected and their routines will be interrupted.”

In its submission to the court, the al-Nakba planning committee, which changed the time of the march to 7pm to minimise disruption, highlighted other protests that had been staged near Town Hall.

Louisiana is the world’s prison capital. The state imprisons more of its people, per head, than any of its U.S. counterparts. First among Americans means first in the world. Louisiana’s incarceration rate is nearly triple Iran’s, seven times China’s and 10 times Germany’s.

The hidden engine behind the state’s well-oiled prison machine is cold, hard cash. A majority of Louisiana inmates are housed in for-profit facilities, which must be supplied with a constant influx of human beings or a $182 million industry will go bankrupt.

Several homegrown private prison companies command a slice of the market. But in a uniquely Louisiana twist, most prison entrepreneurs are rural sheriffs, who hold tremendous sway in remote parishes like Madison, Avoyelles, East Carroll and Concordia. A good portion of Louisiana law enforcement is financed with dollars legally skimmed off the top of prison operations.

If the inmate count dips, sheriffs bleed money. Their constituents lose jobs. The prison lobby ensures this does not happen by thwarting nearly every reform that could result in fewer people behind bars.

Meanwhile, inmates subsist in bare-bones conditions with few programs to give them a better shot at becoming productive citizens. Each inmate is worth $24.39 a day in state money, and sheriffs trade them like horses, unloading a few extras on a colleague who has openings. A prison system that leased its convicts as plantation labor in the 1800s has come full circle and is again a nexus for profit.

In the past two decades, Louisiana’s prison population has doubled, costing taxpayers billions while New Orleans continues to lead the nation in homicides.

Foreign Policy’s Steve Walt addresses it:

I gave a lecture last night at the Cape Ann Forum, on the topic of America’s changing position in the world and what it might (should) mean for U.S. grand strategy. My hosts were gracious and the crowd asked plenty of good questions, which is what I’ve come to expect when I speak to non-academic groups. Indeed, I’m often impressed by how sensible many “ordinary” Americans are about international affairs in general and U.S. foreign policy in particular. And so it was last night.

One of the attendees was iconoclastic journalist Christopher Lydon, who’s been a friend for some years now. Chris asked a great question: Why is there so little accountability in contemporary U.S. policy-making, and especially regarding foreign policy? To be more specific: He wanted to know why some of the same people who got us into the Iraq debacle, mismanaged the Afghanistan war, and now clamor for war with Iran are still treated as respected experts, welcomed as pundits, and recruited to advise Presidential campaigns?

I didn’t have a particularly good answer for him, but I thought about it more as I drove home. I’m not sure why there seems to be so little accountability in the American establishment these days (though it is true that if you lose $2 billion dollars, it does affect your job security), but here are a few thoughts.

Part of the problem is institutionalized amnesia. The United States is busy all around the world, and if the short-term results of some action look okay then we tend to move on and forget about what we’ve left behind. We fought a proxy war in Nicaragua in the 1980s, and it was a controversial issue at the time, with 40,000 or so Nicaraguan perishing as a result. But eventually the war ended, and we moved on with nary a backward glance. We intervened in the Bosnian civil war, patched together a Rube Goldberg-like structure to govern the place, gave ourselves high-fives, and spend the next fifteen years telling ourselves what a success it was. Except that it wasn’t. Really. Last year we helped topple the Gaddafi regime in Libya, rejoiced at the fall of a despised and brutal dictator, and then moved on again, even as Libya descends into chaos. But it’s not our problem anymore, unless a contraband MANPAD eventually finds its way to some unfortunate civilian airline somewhere. And if that airliner doesn’t have Americans on board, we won’t worry about it very much.

…

A second reason is the incestuous clubbiness of the foreign policy establishment. Mainstream foreign policy organizations like the Council on Foreign Relations thrive by being inclusive: It’s not clear what a member in good standing would have to do in order not to be welcome there. This is actually a smart principle up to a point: Because none of us is infallible, you wouldn’t want to live in a society where being wrong rendered anyone a pariah for life. But neither does one want a system where conceiving and selling a disastrous war has no consequences at all.

Third, the incestuous relationship between mainstream journalists, policy wonks, and politicos reinforces this problem. All three groups live in a symbiotic relationship with each other, and you wouldn’t expect to see many people in this world donning their brass knuckles and saying what they really think about other members of the club. And because their livelihoods and well-being aren’t directly affected by catastrophes that happen Far Away, why should they worry about holding people accountable and conducting their relations in a more adversarial fashion? Bad for business, man….

Thaer Halahleh wrote a letter to his wife Shireen from an Israeli jail in February: “My detention has been renewed seven times and they still haven’t charged me. I can’t take it any more.” Then the 34-year-old began a hunger strike, as did Bilal Diab. That was 77 days ago. Both are Palestinians, fathers, whose young daughters are strip searched and terrified when they visit. David Rose, an exceptional investigative journalist and Jewish himself, recently publicised their stories. Eight others have been on the same, silent, self-wasting, wasted protest. Halahleh’s eyes were bleeding, blood instead of tears. He, Diab and others may well be dead by the time you read this. Last Friday, Supreme Court judges in this hubristic democracy turned down an application from civil rights groups to have the men moved to civilian hospitals. They didn’t want, perhaps, their own citizens to witness such stuff. What would that do to the image of the plucky little nation, surrounded by real and imagined threats?