Antony Loewenstein

This looks fascinating. Now that I’m working on a documentary about disaster capitalism (which has nothing to do with wild musicals), I’m very interested in the use and abuse of style in the service of a bigger aim. Here’s the just released trailer for a new Australian short film and a little background to the project.

Placing tortured asylum seekers into immigration detention in Britain – where private companies “take care” of aspects of this process – is shameful. Britain’s Channel 4 has the story:

Meanwhile, in Australia Serco is loving the increase in asylum boats. The more the merrier. Yesterday’s Australian records the screams of joy from the Serco board-room:

The private contracting company that runs Australia’s immigration detention centres has reported record profits, as the number of asylum-seekers rises to levels not seen in more than a decade.

New figures show Serco’s revenues reached $692 million last year, up from $369m in the previous calendar year.

While many companies in Australia are doing it tough, Serco reported a $59m profit after tax, close to a 50 per cent increase on its $40.5m profit in 2010.

Serco Australia is part of the global Serco Group, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange.

The company renegotiated its contract with the Department of Immigration late last year after an increase in the number of detention centres.

It signed a $370m five-year contract in June 2009 to manage seven immigration detention centres and provide transport services.

There are now more than 20 centres and Serco’s contract is worth $1 billion.

With reports yesterday that the number of asylum-seekers was returning to the levels last seen in 2001, Serco is likely to further profit from the surge in arrivals.

Rivalling the $1bn detention centre contract is Serco’s $1.3bn contract with the West Australian Department of Health to provide services to the Fiona Stanley Hospital in Perth.

The company employs 3564 people and as well as running immigration detention centres also provides “systems engineering work and related services” and “equity investment management”. It has $81m in cash and cash equivalents on its books, borrowings of just $7.6m and net assets of $157m.

Serco also has a five-year contract with the Queensland Department of Corrective Services managing the new South Queensland Correctional Centre in Gatton. Serco values that particular deal at $100m.

The company also has a $500m contract with the Royal Australian Navy.

During last week’s Sydney Writer’s Festival, before my PEN lecture on free speech, I was interviewed by ABC TV News about the growing threat to our freedoms in the West, as governments and private companies monitor and collect our digital details:

A book I co-edited with Jeff Sparrow, Left Turn, is about to launch.

One of the contributors, Rodney Croome, a strong advocate of gay marriage, has written a powerful piece in ABC’s The Drum about this issue:

The American civil rights movement was a colourful but hollow distraction from the far more important issue of America’s war in Vietnam, and that is why presidents Kennedy and Johnson supported it.

If you find this statement trite, offensive and wrong then you may react the same way when you read John Pilger’s analysis of Barack Obama’s support for same-sex marriage.

Pilger believes the Obama administration is attempting to divert attention from wars abroad and wealth disparity at home, and raise more money from Hollywood, by endorsing marriage equality.

He has no evidence for these links. His analysis also doesn’t explain why Obama took so long to “evolve” on the issue and seems to have been moved to act by an unscripted endorsement of the issue by Joe Biden. 

Nor does Pilger allow for the fact that a cause can be right even if the motives of some of its supporters are less than pure, or just not the same as his.

Pilger would probably respond by saying my comparison between black civil rights and same-sex marriage is unfair because, in his words, the latter is about “lifestyle liberalism”.

Such a casual dismissal of marriage equality is not just because Pilger doesn’t believe marriage matters much. He believes marriage is part of the problem: “The rights historically associated with marriage are those of property: capitalism itself,” he writes.

“Bourgeois acceptability is not yet a human right.”

Pilger’s same-sex marriage blind spot is not uncommon among left-wingers his age. Many older lefties retain an outdated view of marriage as an instrument of male domination over women, the middle class’s domination over workers, and God’s domination over us all.

They refuse to see that the institution has been reformed, at least in the West, so that women, workers and non-believers now have much more autonomy to decide how, when and if they wed, how they conduct their marriage (including whether or not they have kids), and if and when their marriage will end.

They refuse to acknowledge that it is precisely this change which has made same-sex marriage an issue: now that marriage is a choice for the majority, it makes sense to ask why it isn’t a choice for the minority.

…

Why can’t John Pilger see any of this? Is it just his distaste for marriage?

In his use of the phrases like “lifestyle liberalism” and “bourgeois acceptability”, I hear echoes of the old left’s suspicion of homosexuals. To those who held this suspicion, gays were too prone to being flippant sentimentalists, fawning courtiers, and fascist closet-cases. We were too soft, too easily co-opted or just too different to be part of a movement that demanded solidarity. 

Suspicion of gays paralleled a similar, older suspicion of Jews, and it saw members of both groups being accepted within the Left only if they showed extraordinary commitment (Pilger’s WikiLeaking hero, Bradley Manning, being a case in point). 

…

Rodney Croome AM is the campaign director of Australian Marriage Equality and the co-author of Why v Why: gay marriage. He has contributed an essay on the Left and marriage equality to ‘Left Turn: Political Essays for the New Left’, edited by Antony Loewenstein and Jeff Sparrow (MUP), out June 1.

More here.

A new BBC poll finds popularity of Israel at a welcome low globally.

These numbers in Australia reveal the profound disconnect between political elite opinion and the general public:

In the EU countries surveyed, views of Israeli influence have hardened in Spain (74% negative ratings, up 8 points) and in France (65%, up 9 points) — while positive ratings remain low and steady. Negative ratings from the Germans and the British remain very high and stable (69% and 68%, respectively). In other Anglo-Saxon countries, views have worsened in Australia (65% negative ratings, up 7 points) and in Canada (59%, up 7 points).

And what do most Israelis think? A new review in the New York Review of Books by David Shulman, discussing Peter Beinart’s book The Crisis of Zionism, argues this:

How did we reach this point? Why do Israelis cling to a policy so evidently irrational, indeed suicidal? The simple—too simple—answer is: we’re afraid. We’ve been so traumatized, first by our whole history and then by the history of this conflict, that we want at least an illusion of security, like the kind that comes from holding on to a few more rocky hills. Never mind that every inch of Israel is within range of tens of thousands of missiles currently stationed in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza, not to mention Iran, and that a few more square kilometers make no difference to that threat. We’ll still take over those West Bank hills, and we’ll even put a few rickety caravans on them for anyone crazy enough to want to live there, and we’ll station a few dozen bored soldiers on top of each of them and all around them, and we’ll connect them to the Israeli electricity grid and the water system, and we’ll build a big perimeter fence to enclose the new settlement and to provide land for it to grow on (usually many times the size of the settlement itself). The land happens to belong to Palestinians, but that, clearly, is a consideration of no relevance here.

The fears of Israelis are no doubt real enough, and a generous interpretation of Israeli policy over the last four decades would give them due emphasis. As Ali Abu Awwad, one of the leaders of the new generation of Palestinian nonviolent resisters, often says: “The Jews are not my enemy; their fear is my enemy. We must help them to stop being so afraid—their whole history has terrified them—but I refuse to be a victim of Jewish fear anymore.” He’s right to refuse. But I think the reality we inhabit and have largely created by our own actions has more to do with the story we Israelis tell ourselves about who we are—a powerfully dramatic story that, like many such mythic stories, has a way of perpetuating itself, at continually escalating cost to those who tell it. This story more and more coincides with the primitive Netanyahu narrative I mentioned earlier.

To get away from it, we need to recognize certain primary facts, however uncomfortable they may be for some of us. As has been the case in the past, there are always easily available diversions and distractions that mask the true basis of the ongoing struggle; in Israel today, the main such diversion is called “Iran.” Along with such distractions we have the Israeli refusal to see the present Palestinian leadership in Ramallah for what it is, a more than adequate partner for Israel. Those who don’t agree should be thinking about men such as Marwan Barghouti, still biding his time in an Israeli jail. He’s no saint, to be sure, but he enjoys enormous authority among Palestinians, and he knows very well what is required to strike a deal. There is good reason to believe that he wants such a deal, along the lines that are by now recognized as reasonable by a majority on both sides of the conflict and, indeed, by most other nations. He has recently published a strong statement calling for mass nonviolent resistance in the territories and an end to the farce of a negotiating “process” that has allowed Israel to stall endlessly—and to hide its deeply rooted hostility to the very idea of coming to some form of agreement with the Palestinian national movement.

…

To prolong the occupation is to ensure the emergence of a single polity west of the Jordan; every passing day makes a South African trajectory more likely, including the eventual, necessary progression to a system of one person, one vote. Thus the likelihood must be faced that unless the Occupation ends, there will also, in the not so distant future, be no Jewish state.

This really shouldn’t even be a story. Of course, the Zionist lobby (who should be called the Israeli propagandist lobby) don’t think Palestinians should be heard at all. Here’s Vic Alhadeff, a paid lobbyist who simply repeats everything spoken by the Netanyahu government (anti-intellectualism has a new name), condemning Sydney-siders who want to commemorate the Nakba:

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.

You have to laugh. Or you’ll cry.

Has Murdoch’s Australian gone mad? Has it dared speak honestly about Israeli repression in Palestine? The Zionist lobby is outraged. Er, well, Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan – a man who has enjoyed countless free Zionist lobby trips to Israel, all for research purposes, of course – is having none of it today:

Many readers were surprised, as I was, to read a headline in The Weekend Australian: Living under the cloud of Israel’s cruel apartheid. The headline did an injustice to the story, which only used the word apartheid in reporting the comments of one person who was interviewed. The editor of this august journal has confirmed to me that the headline was a mistake, the sort that creeps into newspapers where staff are always battling the pressure of deadlines. The Australian believes, and certainly I personally believe, the word apartheid has no application to Israel, which is a democracy in good standing, which extends basic rights to all its citizens, whatever their race or creed. Too often the misuse of such a word is designed to demonise Israel, wholly unjustly. In this case, it was just a mistake.

Tragically, many Australian Jews take comfort from this same delusion, almost enjoying imagining it’s 1933. All the time.

This piece from a South African newspaper highlights the dilemma and hopes for a much better future:

Of all the studies conducted on the position of the Jewish establishment during apartheid, perhaps the most authoritative has been Gideon Shimoni’s Community and Conscience: The Jews in Apartheid South Africa. Published in 2003, the text argues that while individual Jews protested the laws of the National Party regime in numbers disproportionate to the relative size of the community—Jews, after all, never made up more than 4% of the white minority—the semi-official leadership tacitly accepted the policies of race-based discrimination.

…

There are some Jews in South Africa who, while fully supporting the principles on which the Jewish state was formed, do not support the Netanyahu administration “right or wrong”. Unfortunately, this is not a minority that is growing nearly as fast as the Beinart faction in America, and most evidence would suggest it is not growing at all. Young South African Jews appear either to be turning to religion (where old ways of thinking predominate), are failing to respond to the Israel question with an updated set of facts (for instance, the fact that the Netanyahu administration is once again offering Israelis incentives for settling in the territories), or are abandoning the debate altogether.

So the South African Jewish community, given its compromised history, may have greater need of a voice like Peter Beinart’s than the Jews of the United States. A cause for hope is that South African Jewry can also claim a list of names that spoke against the mainstream when the consequences were more severe than excommunication.

The only people really benefitting from the steady stream of asylum seekers to Australia are the heads of multinational Serco. Sydney’s Sun Herald reports:

A surge in asylum seeker boats has delivered an explosion in profits for the private company operating Australia’s detention centres.

Serco Australia, a division of a British multinational, enjoyed a 45 per cent rise in net profits to $59 million last year.

The revenue of the company, which has the mandate to run the immigration detention services on behalf of the federal government, almost doubled from $369 million to $693 million.

Serco Australia’s compliance with local laws on reporting financial statements has been less impressive. Once again, in contravention of the Corporations Act, its financial statements were filed late this year.

And the disclosure in its accounts, according to a leading academic in the field of accounting and regulation, failed to comply with Australian accounting standards.

”Rules are rules,” said Jeffrey Knapp, a senior lecturer at the University of NSW. ”Serco has broken them. Serco Australia Pty Ltd is a reporting entity and should do a general purpose financial report like BHP or Telstra, including full disclosures of related-party transactions and balances.”

Serco’s high cash flow, low debt levels and 35 per cent profit margins would make it the envy of the corporate elite. Few of Australia’s top 100 companies matched the profit rises or margins of Serco when they last reported. Serco’s profits had also doubled the year before.

The rise in the number of asylum seekers since the breakdown of the government’s Malaysia plan has led to an increase in detention centres from 12 to 20 across the mainland, Tasmania and Christmas Island. In the 2010-11 financial year, a total of 8874 people were taken into detention. It has also meant a lucrative new $1 billion contract for Serco, in a deal renegotiated with the government last December. A contract to manage the immigration residential housing program had blown out from $44.5 million to $85.6 million.

It is difficult to tell from Serco Australia’s financial statements how profitable is the outsourcing of immigration detention.