Obama success; US more hated in Arab world than during Bush

Published on 14 July 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

What does Washington expect when Israel is allowed to brutalise the Palestinians, drone attacks are killing countless civilians and Arab dictatorships are warmly embraced?

The hope that the Arab world had not long ago put in the United States and President Obama has all but evaporated.

Two and a half years after Obama came to office, raising expectations for change among many in the Arab world, favorable ratings of the United States have plummeted in the Middle East, according to a new poll conducted by Zogby International for the Arab American Institute Foundation.

In most countries surveyed, favorable attitudes toward the United States dropped to levels lower than they were during the last year of the Bush administration. The killing of Osama bin Laden also worsened attitudes toward the United States.

In Saudi Arabia, for instance, 30 percent of respondents said they had a favorable view of the United States (compared with 41 percent in 2009), while roughly 5 percent said the same in Egypt (compared with 30 percent in 2009).

“The very high expectations that were created in 2009 – there’s been a letdown since then,” said James Zogby, the president and founder of the Arab American Institute, of which the foundation is an affiliate.

Fewer than 10 percent of respondents described themselves as having a favorable view of Obama. The president’s ratings were the lowest on “the Palestinian issue” and “engagement with the Muslim world,” as the categories were described in the survey.

The poll was conducted over the course of a month among 4,000 respondents in six countries: Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco. Pollsters began their work shortly after a major speech Obama gave on the Middle East, in which he spoke broadly of his vision in the Middle East and pressed Israel, in unusually frank terms, to reach a final peace agreement with the Palestinians.

The findings are largely in line with those of a poll conducted in the spring of 2010 by the Pew Research Center, which also found favorable views of the United States and Obama slipping. As with the new poll, Obama got his worst ratings for dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Zogby said he saw the president about a month ago and mentioned that he was conducting another poll of views in the Arab world. The president, Zogby said, predicted that views of the United States would remain unfavorable because of the intractable nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Two Australian activists make history in Israel

Published on 14 July 2011 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Bravo:

According to various news reports, two ‘air flotilla’ activists who arrived in Israel last Friday have been allowed to remain in Israel (and travel to the West Bank freely) on the condition that they ‘refrain from disrupting the peace.’ The activists were part of the ‘Welcome to Palestine’ campaign which sent hundreds of European tourists to Israel last week with the intention to freely and openly visit the West Bank.

The two activists, former Australian Green MP Sylvia Hale and New Zealand national Vivienne Porzsolt, were brought before an Israeli district court this morning. There are conflicting reports as to where these woman were detained. Ynet is reporting that they were detained after after reportedly yelling “free Gaza” during passport inspection at Ben Gurion International airport. Organizers of the “Welcome to Palestine” movement claim that the two woman were detained trying to enter Bethlehem after successfully entering Israel on Friday.

Regardless of where they were detained, the ruling that they are allowed to remain in Israel after openly stating their intention to travel to the West Bank sets a new legal precedent for traveling to the occupied Palestinian territories. There are still over 40 ‘air flotilla’ passengers in Israeli detention waiting deportation and/or hearings on their status in Israel.

Australian cricket team should not visit Sri Lanka

Published on 13 July 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

When a country such as Sri Lanka proudly flaunts its human rights abuses against the Tamils and refuses to investigate war crimes, the world has a responsibility to act.

The Australian cricket team is soon to travel to the country and voices are growing that such a trip should be cancelled, to send a strong message to Colombo that it is not welcomed into the civilised world unless it changes its ways.

Leading Australian cricket writer Peter Roebuck has written two recent pieces outlining the issues and bravely stating that sport is never just about entertainment. Politics is central to everything. And Sri Lanka will be made to understand that it’s a pariah.

Here’s Roebuck:

The recent expose´ of the systematic execution, rape and abuse of Tamils in the closing stages of the civil war in Sri Lanka has provoked deep consternation among cricketers. One prominent player has been having nightmares since Four Corners aired the Channel 4 report this week, and the Players Association has been asked to intervene. Australia is due to visit Sri Lanka in August.

When it comes to making a stand, sport has mostly preferred to bury its head in the sand. Claiming it was none of its business, it ignored the state-sponsored slaughter of the Tamils in Sri Lanka and of the Ndebele in Zimbabwe in the 1980s. Few condemned the West Indies’ refusal to appoint a black captain, a policy that lasted deep into the 1950s. People preferred to talk about the lbw rule. Patronising images were conveyed of happy-go-lucky West Indians and hospitable Sri Lankans. The truth is always more complex.

It’s not good enough. Sportsmen and women can no longer pretend lack of knowledge. Facebook, YouTube and so forth have denied them that luxury. Sport is not a trivial distraction but part of our daily lives, not an escape but an embrace. Cricket, especially, has an opportunity to advance racial and religious tolerance. Have not these causes united all great men and women? Teams from Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Christian heritages reached the semi-finals of the recent World Cup. Sport has an obligation to help different peoples cross the bridge.

Not that any game ought to involve itself in local matters. Legitimate politics provides a choice between legitimate parties. Sovereign nations are entitled to determine their own fates. Tyranny is another matter.

…

Cricket is obliged to confront another matter that reaches far beyond its ordinary jurisdiction. Already the former England cricket captain, Michael Atherton, has urged his country to consider its position before undertaking its tour to Sri Lanka next year. Atherton described the Channel 4 footage as the most shocking seen on television since the Ethiopian food crisis. Evidently the ruling regime carried out these atrocities, chased away reporters and now blocks the United Nations’ attempts to establish the facts.

Clearly the Australian players are entitled to have as much information as possible before making any decision to visit any country. In this case, it is not a straightforward matter because the government appears to have popular support. After decades of civil war, the country is ostensibly at peace. And let’s not pretend the Tamil Tigers were saints. On the other hand, the leader of the opposition is behind bars and a small family clique around the presidency seems intent on controlling the economic and political levers.

It’s hard to know where sporting boycotts ought to start and stop. Iraqi civilians have suffered terribly from bombs dropped in an illegal war. Are the perpetrators to be isolated? If not, why not? Perhaps the difference lies between wicked actions and evil systems. That is poor consolation to the victims.

And more Roebuck:

Following a devastating documentary, recently aired in Australia, Michael Atherton wrote that England ought to consider its position before undertaking its tour to Sri Lanka. Footage was shown of soldiers executing Tamils, prisoners of war and civilians alike. Women were raped, children abused, hospitals bombed, and no questions asked.

The former England captain described the sights as the most shocking seen on television since the Ethiopian food crisis.

The regime in Colombo carried out these atrocities, chased away reporters and blocked the UN’s attempts to investigate. Sri Lanka is dangerous for journalists. Not so long ago a friend of mine, the editor of The Sunday Leader, was assassinated.

Atherton compares the Sri Lankan regime to that of Robert Mugabe and challenges his community to reflect upon its differing responses. Inconsistency is widespread. My African contingent includes a Congolese student who saw soldiers burning alive defeated opponents. Yet his country mostly escapes scrutiny.

Now Sri Lanka is in the spotlight. The next step is to insist upon an independent inquiry. It is vital to establish the facts. Clearly the Australian players are entitled to have as much information as possible at their disposal before making any decision to visit any country. They are scheduled to tour Sri Lanka next month. I will be going to Sri Lanka because that is the job of journalists.

Already one leading player has said the documentary made him feel sick and that he had been having nightmares since. Another observer has raised the issue of a boycott.

It’s not a straightforward matter because the government appears to have been legitimately elected. After decades of civil war the country is ostensibly at peace.

The Guardian’s Nick Davies on the complicit police with Murdoch

Published on 13 July 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Why cultural boycott is legitimate weapon in face of repression

Published on 12 July 2011 in General and Israel. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , .

What weapons for an occupied people? A population facing repression? Cultural, academic and economic boycotts are important tools and must be utilised. I argued this in a recent essay in Overland in relation to Sri Lanka and Palestine.

This post on Mondoweiss shows that the debate is global and opponents of boycotts have fewer arguments by the day. In Sri Lanka, Tamils face a Colombo regime that discriminate based on ethnic background. In Israel, Palestinians are second class citizens simply because they’re not Jewish. BDS now:

On the eve of the passing of the anti-boycott bill in the Israeli Knesset today by a majority of 47 to 38, a debate on cultural boycott was held at the London Literature Festival in the Southbank Centre, initiated by Naomi Foyle of British Writers in Support of Palestine (BWISP). The debate motion was: “Where basic freedoms are denied and democratic remedies blocked off, cultural boycott by world civil society is a viable and effective political strategy; indeed a moral imperative.”

Supporting the motion, Omar Barghouti, founding member of PACBI, and Seni Seneviratne, British-Sri Lankan poet and performer; opposing, Jonathan Freedland, columnist for The Guardian and the Jewish Chronicle, and Carol Gould, expatriate American author, film maker, and ‘a vocal critic of what she sees as increasing anti-Americanism and antisemitism in Britain’.

Although the chair referred to the Palestinian call to boycott Israel as a ‘model boycott’, the debate was in theory not specific to I/P. Seneviratne, who is very knowledgeable about the South African experience, opened with a poem of Brecht’s, “When evil-doing comes like falling rain”, and addressed the history of cultural boycott, arguing that it is up to the oppressed people to decide what they can, and cannot, endure. She emphasised that the Israeli state strategy to co-opt culture showed it understood art was not beyond politics, the same way other countries have feared and murdered intellectuals and banned the work of cultural producers. Otherwise the debate was entirely focused on I/P.

As expected from those opposing the motion, there was much ‘whataboutery’: “look at Syria, Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia”, as well as misrepresentation: “you will be shunning the dissenters, individual artists, writers, scholars”, and outright lies: “there was not a consensus in Palestinian society on BDS.” Perpetrating the myths of liberal Zionism was Freedland, who began smugly as the Voice of Cultural Sensitivity, Dialogue & Coexistence and ended up tetchy and defensive in the face of polite demands from the other side for moral consistency and the reminder that no state committing the crimes of Israel is “welcome in the Western club of democracies”.

Given that Freedland is still under the intentional illusion that this a conflict between two nations, rather than a case of settler colonialism, his empty rhetoric was not surprising. He might have wished for someone less morally compromising on his team, however. Carol Gould ‘judaized the debate’ as Barghouti put it, and to a repulsive degree. One particularly shocking statement of hers was that Israel’s industry ‘emerged from the ashes of the Holocaust’. She concluded with an extraordinary defense of ‘dovish’ Israeli president Shimon Peres’s order to shell the UN compound in Qana, Lebanon in 1996, which resulted in the deaths of over 100 civilians.

Barghouti and Seneviratne made a strong team and while their approaches to the subject matter were different, the message was the same: ‘We will never convince the colonial masters to give up their privileges’, so boycott is a legitimate tactic.

Pro-boycotters were in the majority that night, and the motion passed easily.

How many corporate journalists really challenge power in society?

Published on 12 July 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Very few. Because they know their bosses won’t allow it. Or they’ll be shunned by business or government interests. This is across the Murdoch empire and beyond. Truly independent reporting is a rare beast, indeed.

Former Labour minister in Britain Peter Mandelson acknowledges his government never challenged the Murdoch empire. Why? “We simply chose to be cowed because we were too fearful to do otherwise.”

George Monbiot demands changes:

Is Murdoch now finished in the UK? As the pursuit of Gordon Brown by the Sunday Times and the Sun blows the ¬hacking scandal into new corners of the old man’s empire, this story begins to feel like the crumbling of the Berlin Wall. The naked ¬attempt to destroy Brown by any means, including hacking the medical files of his sick baby son, means that there is no obvious limit to the story’s ¬ramifications(1).

The scandal radically changes public perceptions of how politics works, the danger corporate power presents to democracy, and the extent to which it has compromised and corrupted the Metropolitan police, who have now been dragged in so deep they are beginning to look like ¬Murdoch’s private army. It has electrified a dozy parliament and subjected the least accountable and most corrupt profession in Britain – journalism – to belated public scrutiny.

The cracks are appearing in the most unexpected places. Look at the remarkable admission by the rightwing columnist Janet Daley in this week’s Sunday Telegraph. “British political journalism is basically a club to which politicians and journalists both belong,” she wrote. “It is this familiarity, this intimacy, this set of shared assumptions … which is the real corruptor of political life. The self-limiting spectrum of what can and cannot be said … the self-reinforcing cowardice which takes for granted that certain vested interests are too powerful to be worth confronting. All of these things are constant dangers in the political life of any democracy.”(2)

Most national journalists are embedded: immersed in the society, beliefs and culture of the people they are meant to hold to account. They are fascinated by power struggles among the elite but have little interest in the conflict between the elite and those they dominate. They celebrate those with agency and ignore those without. But this is just part of the problem. Daley stopped short of naming the most persuasive force: the interests of the owner and the corporate class to which he belongs. The proprietor appoints editors in his own image, who in turn impress their views on their staff.

…

So what can be done? Because of the peculiar threat they present to democracy, there’s a case to be made for breaking up all majority interests in media companies, and for a board of governors, appointed perhaps by Commons committee, to act as a counterweight to the shareholders’ business interests. But even if that’s a workable idea, it’s a long way off. For now, the best hope might be to mobilise readers to demand that journalists answer to them, not just their proprietors. One means of doing this is to lobby journalists to commit themselves to a kind of Hippocratic Oath. Here’s a rough stab at a first draft. I hope others can improve it. Ideally, I’d like to see the National Union of Journalists encouraging its members to sign.

‘Our primary task is to hold power to account. We will prioritise those stories and issues which expose the interests of power. We will be wary of the relationships we form with the rich and powerful, and ensure that we don’t become embedded in their society. We will not curry favour with politicians, businesses or other dominant groups by withholding scrutiny of their affairs, or twisting a story to suit their interests.

“We will stand up to the interests of the businesses we work for, and the advertisers which fund them. We will never take money for promulgating a particular opinion.

“We will recognise and understand the power we wield and how it originates. We will challenge ourselves and our perception of the world as much as we challenge other people. When we turn out to be wrong, we will say so.”

Clearly the MSM don’t think that massive military exercises between US and Australia is news

Published on 12 July 2011 in General. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

Apart from a few small stories (here and here), we have to rely on a Chinese government service to tell us what’s happening in our own country. Have media companies been asked not to report details about the exercise and agreed? Does the general public have a right to know what the US is planning to expand here? Is depleted uranium being used? How much money is being spent on private contractors to assist this glorious display of manhood?

Australia’s largest joint military training exercise with U.S. begins on Monday, with about 14,000 U.S. and 8500 Australian troops participating in the training in real world scenarios on land, air and sea until July 29.

These personnel will take part in simulated battles at Shoalwater Bay near Rockhampton, and other sites in Queensland and the Northern Territory. There will also be 30 warships in the Coral Sea. Joint Task Force Commander, Vice Admiral Scott Van Buskirk, Commander of the U.S. 7th Fleet, said the exercise was important for Australia and the U.S. to maintain close military ties.

“By exercising together we will increase interoperability, flexibility and readiness which will help us maintain peace and stability in the Pacific,” Vice Admiral Van Buskirk said in a statement released on Monday.

“We’re continuing to work together to protect our interests, provide humanitarian assistance and share information.”

The U.S. Ambassador to Australia, Jeffrey Bleich, said there is a possibility of a greater U.S. military involvement in Australia.

Bleich, who is visiting central Queensland for the start of the exercise, said military issues were discussed in recent talks between U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and the Australian federal government.

“One possibility would be to have more equipment stored here, the chance to do more exercises like Talisman Sabre,” he told ABC News on Monday.

“We’re looking at all of those as serious options and certainly the Northern Territory and other parts of Australia are in the mix. “

Australian Defense Force also said the Talisman Sabre exercise is Australia ‘s largest joint military training exercise, and it is important to the security of the region.

This year’s Talisman Sabre exercise involves a number of non-military organizations, so that they can try to make the exercises as realistic as they possibly can.

Real democracies don’t censor dissent but Israel isn’t a real democracy

Published on 12 July 2011 in Israel. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

Evidence for the prosecution:

The Israeli parliament has passed a law in effect banning citizens from calling for academic, consumer or cultural boycotts of Israel in a move denounced by its opponents as anti-democratic.

The “‘Law for Prevention of Damage to the State of Israel through Boycott” won a majority of 47 to 38, despite strong opposition and an attempt to filibuster the six-hour debate. Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu did not take part in the vote.

Under the terms of the new law, an individual or organisation proposing a boycott may be sued for compensation by any individual or institution claiming that it could be damaged by such a call. Evidence of actual damage is not be required.

The new law aims to protect individuals and institutions in both Israel and the Palestinian territory it has occupied illegally under international law since 1967. It in effect bans calls for consumer boycotts of goods produced in West Bank settlements, or of cultural or academic institutions in settlements. It also prevents the government doing business with companies that comply with boycotts.

A coalition of Israeli human rights groups immediately issued a letter of protest over the new law.

Hassan Jabareen of Adalah, a legal centre for Israeli-Arab citizens, said: “Defining boycott as a civil wrong suggests that all Israelis have a legal responsibility to promote the economic advancement of the settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. This means that Israeli organisations opposing the settlements as a matter of principle are in a trap: any settler can now constantly harass them, challenging them to publicly declare their position on the boycott of settlements and threatening them with heavy compensation costs if they support it.”

Targeting the contracting leeches in the “war on terror”

Published on 12 July 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Since 9/11 countless corporations are making a killing in Iraq, Afghanistan, the US and beyond. It’s a privatised dream, as the US war machine now couldn’t survive without outsourcing help (including, according to a new report, Pentagon contractors writing their own contracts).

Hackers and trouble-makers Anonymous have attacked Booz Allen Hamilton (a company with quite a background in supporting American imperialism) and released the following statement:

Hello Thar!

Today we want to turn our attention to Booz Allen Hamilton, whose core business is contractual work completed on behalf of the US federal government, foremost on defense and homeland security matters, and limited engagements of foreign governments specific to U.S. military assistance programs.

…

For the Lazy we have assembled some facts about Booz Allen. First let’s take a quick look of who these guys are. Some key personnel:

* John Michael “Mike” McConnell, Executive Vice President of Booz Allen and former Director of the National Security Agency (NSA) and former Director of National Intelligence.

* James R. Clapper, Jr., current Director of National Intelligence, former Director of Defense Intelligence.

* Robert James Woolsey Jr, former Director of National Intelligence and head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

* Melissa Hathaway, Current Acting Senior Director for Cyberspace for the National Security and Homeland Security Councils

Now let’s check out what these guys have been doing:

* Questionable involvement in the U.S. government’s SWIFT surveillance program; acting as auditors of a government program, when that contractor is heavily involved with those same agencies on other contracts. Beyond that, the implication was also made that Booz Allen may be complicit in a program (electronic surveillance of SWIFT) that may be deemed illegal by the EC.

Don’t be seduced by Israeli car company’s occupation friendly stance

Published on 12 July 2011 in Israel. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

Better Place is an Israeli company, with an Australian office, that is delivering electric cars for an enviro-friendly future. Sounds nice in theory but in reality the company, as I have written for a while, operates in the occupied West Bank and should therefore be shunned.

Yet anther mainstream story, this time in the Guardian, glosses over this detail. Don’t believe the hype:

One work-around that seemingly nullifies the concerns over range and charging is the brain child of the world’s most prominent electric car advocate, Shai Agassi. In his native Israel last year, he launched a startup called Better Place that allows electric-car users to swap their drained battery for a new fully charged one at a network of “switch stations” at the same time as it would take to fill a car with petrol. And because Better Place owns the batteries, the owner of the car need not worry about the deteriorating condition or high price of the battery.

If the idea gains traction – Agassi is already in talks with the Chinese government, which promised last year to invest $15bn in seed money to kickstart its own electric car industry – then it could seriously challenge not just our perception of electric cars, but also the interests of oil companies with their vast global network of petrol stations.

So Murdoch will close down his own rogue outlets, yes?

Published on 12 July 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

If consistency is his thing:

Medical records disclosing that Gordon Brown’s infant son had cystic fibrosis were illegally obtained by The Sun newspaper as part of a News International campaign against him and his family, friends of the former prime minister claims.

Mr Brown was a repeated target for investigators working for the tabloid and its sister newspapers, The Sunday Times and the News of the World, it was alleged.

The newspapers obtained highly personal medical and financial information about him and his family.

The most emotive claim relates to Mr Brown’s son, Fraser, diagnosed with cystic fibrosis in 2006, soon after his birth. His condition was disclosed on The Sun’s website in November 2006, when he was four months old.

Mr Brown and his wife, Sarah, had only recently learned of their son’s condition, which often leads to a shortened lifespan. They were dismayed the paper had details of his illness.

Mrs Brown said she was sad to learn about the alleged invasions of her family’s privacy. She wrote on Twitter: “It is very personal and really hurtful if all true.”

How to beautifully capture the spirit of democracy in Malaysia

Published on 11 July 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , .

NINTH OF JULY TWO THOUSAND ELEVEN TEASER from PIXELATE PICTURES on Vimeo.

As if firing News of the World journalists is enough to save Murdoch’s credibility

Published on 11 July 2011 in General. 1 Comment Tags: , .

In his nightmares:

Rupert Murdoch’s takeover of BSkyB appeared to be dead in the water last night after proof emerged that executives at his British newspaper empire mounted a cover-up of the full scale of alleged criminal wrongdoing at the News of the World.

In another extraordinary day in the phone-hacking scandal, Downing Street sources confirmed that Government lawyers were drawing up a strategy to halt the £9bn deal which looked a certainty only a week ago.

As Nick Clegg threatened to split the Coalition by siding with a Labour plan to block the takeover, a senior Government source said last night: “We are working on a plan to suspend the deal while the police investigation is taking place. But we have to ensure it doesn’t get thrown out by judicial review.”

The U-turn came after one of News International’s own papers revealed that an internal report carried out in 2007, after the News of the World’s royal editor Clive Goodman was jailed, had found evidence that illegally accessing voicemails was more widespread at the paper – and that payments had been made to police officers.

An anonymous executive was quoted as saying that the report had been like a “ticking time bomb”. The report suggests there was a deliberate cover-up by unidentified executives at News International, which had told Parliamentary inquiries in 2007 and 2009 there was no evidence journalists other than Goodman had been involved in phone hacking, nor that it had attempted to suppress evidence of illegality.

Serco damages worker’s lives but government wants more privatised staff

Published on 11 July 2011 in General. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

Two stories today that highlight the pernicious effect of British multinational Serco in Australia.

One from today’s Australian (to its credit, the only serious newspaper tackling this question regularly):

The company running Australia’s immigration detention centres has acknowledged the work is traumatic for staff following the death of a young guard troubled by the hanging of a teenage asylum-seeker.

Kieran Webb died while holidaying with his family last Wednesday after working for six months as a security officer at the Curtin immigration detention centre in Western Australia’s far north, according to a memo to all staff from government contractor Serco last Friday.

There were no suspicious circumstances, Serco Immigration Services managing director Chris Manning wrote in the memo.

“If you feel the need for emotional support arising from the work you do, please consider speaking to someone,” he said.

“It is important we acknowledge that our line of work can at times place us in difficult and traumatic situations as we manage vulnerable people in our care.”
Five detainees have killed themselves in immigration detention centres since last September. Self-harm and threats of self-harm occur daily, and a psychologist is employed full-time by Serco to help guards deal with the fallout of acts such as lip-sewing, slashing and attempted hangings.

The Australian has been told detainees are taking increasingly dramatic steps to draw attention to their grievances. On Christmas Island last Thursday, a detainee sewed his lips together and had a friend tie him to the compound fence in a crucifix position.

On March 28, Mr Webb was among guards who cut down a 19-year-old Afghan detainee who hanged himself in his room.

Mr Webb was deeply affected by the death and by the unrest that followed, according to guards who worked alongside him at the time.

Two from United Voice, a union that represents workers:

A month after Villawood Detention Centre was burned to the ground, Serco was pushing to reduce staffing on key shifts.

The company wants to cut numbers on some shifts by as much as 50 percent.

United Voice members say the move would wreck their family lives, and reduce their ability to build relationships with detainees that could head off future trouble.

More than 120 Villawood members responded to a Union survey, panning proposed changes as family unfriendly, impractical and a health and safety risk.

Officers, predominantly working 12-hour shifts, currently get seven days off every 21 days. Under the revamp, they would have to wait 35 or 42 days for their long breaks.

United Voice assistant secretary, Peter Campise, says extending the qualifying period would be a blow to morale.

“Anything that hurts morale at the centre is a problem for our members and the whole immigration detention regime,” he said.

“United Voice rejects any changes that expose our members to increased risk.”

Meanwhile, Villawood officers are buoyed by Serco’s retreat from attempts to slash overtime rates for people required to work more than 14 hours.

Serco reduced double time payments to time and a half early in the New Year but agreed to “revert to the previous interpretation of the clause” after it became apparent member would pursue the issue..

Peter says securing back pay is now the issue.

Robert Fisk on why he left Murdoch’s Times (blind Zionism is the crime)

Published on 11 July 2011 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

The veteran reporter rightly couldn’t tolerate an owner who put his love for Israel above the truth (which is something we still see in Murdoch titles across the world):

Oddly, he [Murdoch] never appeared the ogre of evil, darkness and poison that he’s been made out to be these past few days. Maybe it’s because his editors and sub-editors and reporters repeatedly second-guessed what Murdoch would say. Murdoch was owner of The Times when I covered the blood-soaked Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon in 1982. Not a line was removed from my reports, however critical they were of Israel. After the invasion, Douglas-Home and Murdoch were invited by the Israelis to take a military helicopter trip into Lebanon. The Israelis tried to rubbish my reporting; Douglas-Home said he stood up for me. On the flight back to London, Douglas-Home and Murdoch sat together. “I knew Rupert was interested in what I was writing,” he told me later. “He sort of waited for me to tell him what it was, although he didn’t demand it. I didn’t show it to him.”

But things changed. Before he was editor, Douglas-Home would write for the Arabic-language Al-Majella magazine, often deeply critical of Israel. Now his Times editorials took an optimistic view of the Israeli invasion. He stated that “there is now no worthy Palestinian to whom the world can talk” and – for heaven’s sake – that “perhaps at last the Palestinians on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip will stop hoping that stage-strutters like Mr Arafat can rescue them miraculously from doing business with the Israelis.”

All of which, of course, was official Israeli government policy at the time.

Then, in the spring of 1983, another change. I had, with Douglas-Home’s full agreement, spent months investigating the death of seven Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners of the Israelis in Sidon. It was obvious, I concluded, that the men had been murdered – the grave-digger even told me that their corpses had been brought to him, hands tied behind their backs, showing marks of bruising. But now Douglas-Home couldn’t see how we would be “justified” in running a report “so long after the event”.

In other words, the very system of investigative journalism – of fact-checking and months of interviews – became self-defeating. When we got the facts, too much time had passed to print them. I asked the Israelis if they would carry out a military inquiry and, anxious to show how humanitarian they were, they duly told us there would be an official investigation. The Israeli “inquiry” was, I suspected, a fiction. But it was enough to “justify” publishing my long and detailed report. Once the Israelis could look like good guys, Douglas-Home’s concerns evaporated.

…

These past two weeks, I have been thinking of what it was like to work for Murdoch, what was wrong about it, about the use of power by proxy. For Murdoch could never be blamed. Murdoch was more caliph than ever, no more responsible for an editorial or a “news” story than a president of Syria is for a massacre – the latter would be carried out on the orders of governors who could always be tried or sacked or sent off as adviser to a prime minister – and the leader would invariably anoint his son as his successor. Think of Hafez and Bashar Assad or Hosni and Gamal Mubarak or Rupert and James. In the Middle East, Arab journalists knew what their masters wanted, and helped to create a journalistic desert without the water of freedom, an utterly skewed version of reality. So, too, within the Murdoch empire.

This is what we call Israeli democracy (and why we laugh)

Published on 11 July 2011 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

George Galloway: “Rupert Murdoch was hacking the phones of our dead soldiers”

Published on 11 July 2011 in General. 1 Comment Tags: , .

Murdoch empire made of rock, cheese and bullets

Published on 11 July 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Al-Jazeera’s Listening Post on Syria media restrictions

Published on 10 July 2011 in General, Interviews and Video. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

The struggle for democracy in Syria has continued for most of this year. The media has been largely locked out of the country, so independent reporting has been very difficult (though local bloggers have remained essential).

Al Jazeera’s Listening Post discusses the crackdown and I was asked to comment (my last appearance on the show was in February on the Egyptian revolution). My comment is at 9.26:

Israel, you have a PR problem (hint; you can’t give up oppressing Arabs)

Published on 10 July 2011 in Israel. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

And these wonderfully inventive stunts will only increase:

Israel is being confronted by what observers call an increasingly formidable form of pro-Palestinian activism – foreign nationals staging non-violent publicity stunts.

Israel’s reaction to these international incidents, critics said, have played into the hands of activists, who blitzed news organisations to cover their protests.

The latest protest, organised through social-networking websites and e-mails, featured American and European activists planning to fly to Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport during the weekend and declare their intention to visit “Palestine”.

Israel responded by deploying hundreds of security personnel to the airport to help deport arriving activists and pressuring European carriers to hand over passenger manifests and prevent suspected activists from flying into the country.

The activists’ plans were quashed, with more than 120 detained at the airport and many more denied boarding their Tel Aviv-bound flights.

Those held at the airport would be deported within the next “24 to 48 hours”, a police spokesman said last night.

Only weeks earlier, Israel faced another news frenzy surrounding hundreds of foreign activists who tried, and eventually failed, to sail into the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip from Greece. The participants were branded by Israel’s military as radicals possibly carrying lethal chemical agents on their ships.

Flotilla organisers, calling themselves peaceful, replied with headline-grabbing accusations that Israel had sabotaged their boats.

Writing in Israel’s Yediot Ahronot daily last week, Haim Zisovitch, the head of the communication unit at Bar Ilan University’s School of Communication, compared Israel’s response to a wayward “child who was late to come home at night, and in order not to alert his sleeping parents used drums and trumpets to cover up the sound of his steps”.