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…
Showing all posts tagged Britain
British government happy to redraft law to protect Israeli war criminals
Electronic Intifada reports: Legal mechanisms developed after the end of the Second World War to more easily prosecute war criminals are now being taken off the books to preserve Israeli impunity from… accountability. In the aftermath of the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes an outraged international community demanded justice — a demand that resulted in the…
Australia is world leader in terrorising refugees with Serco
This feature in the New York Times yesterday is devastating; a thorough examination of the realities in Australia, America and Britain of using unaccountably thuggish firms, such as Serco, to imprison asylum seekers while governments get “tough” for a public allegedly baying for blood and secure borders. It’s all a sham, of course, with no…
Cultural BDS against Israel exploding everywhere
Yes: Film directors Mike Leigh and Ken Loach, theatre director Michael Attenborough and actress Dame Harriet Walter are among the 117 signatories to a letter of protest over the “harsh” punishment. They claim that artists should be allowed to express themselves freely “without fear of financial or professional retribution”. The four musicians – Tom Eisner,…
Roll up to find your deadly weapon of choice
The arms industry is a massive global market of Western nations, willing dictatorships and heaps of money. New Statesman reports on the world’s largest arms fair recently held in London: The two main exhibition halls have previously hosted concerts by Roxy Music, Alice Cooper and UB40. But today they are crammed with around 1300 exhibits,…
Britain’s capitulation to Israeli desires to remain above the law
The Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights releases a timely statement that reminds the world that justice for Israeli crimes won’t be forgotten: On Thursday, 15 September 2011, the United Kingdom modified its universal jurisdiction legislation as a direct result of political pressure exerted by the Government of Israel, following the issue of arrest warrants…
Talking about the role of Serco negatively affecting public freedom
It’s a discussion that rarely occurs in Western countries where Serco (and other corporations) are increasingly intruding on our lives. As citizens we are meant to silently accept the influence of these unaccountable firms. Privatisation will set us free, apparently. Resistance is most certainly not futile. Take this recent piece by Zoe Williams in the…
Duty to hold Sri Lanka to account for war crimes but Australia embraces the thugs
In some countries, such as Britain, there is continued public pressure on Colombo to hold those accused of war crimes to account. And rightly so. The Australian government has a rather different view: Several of the Tamil asylum seekers caught trying to flee Sri Lanka for Australia this week are being held in detention camps…
Capitalism in crisis but rulers of the world whistling in the wind
Will Hutton in the London Observer: Eighty years ago, faced with today’s economic events, nobody would have been in any doubt: we would obviously be living through a crisis in capitalism. Instead, there is a collective unwillingness to call a spade a spade. This is variously a crisis of the European Union, a crisis of…