Not since Nazi Germany marched its jackboots into the Sudetanland has there been such an abject disregard for the rule of international and national law. The Nazi’s advance resulted in the illegal imprisonment and mass murder of, firstly, many political dissidents, the mentally ill, homosexuals, and later and on a much larger scale, Jews and the Roma (gypsies) in Europe. The major international law breakers immediately prior to, and at that time, were Germany, Italy with its adventures into Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) and Japan with its false-flag Muckden Incident and subsequent invasion of Manchuria. Despite a pretense by the West and Israel to uphold human rights, they are today’s worst offenders against state sovereignty and the Geneva Convention. Israel, for example, is continuing to expand its illegal settlements into the West Bank, carrying out frequent incursions into Gaza, and threatening to add to its two recent bombings in Syria. What Hitler did was wrong. What the US and Israel are doing is wrong. People who criticized Hitler were disposed of, and people who criticize Israel and the US are disposed of by, what can accurately be termed, extra-judicial killings.

During the illegal invasion and incursion into Iraq in 2003, the only journalists who were relatively safe were the “embedded journalists” whose investigative powers had been removed and wrote what the military told them to write. The braver journalists who wanted to report the truth were an embarrassment to the cowardly military who may even have killed some of them to prevent the truth from emerging. Between 2003-4 there were 58 journalists (and media workers) killed in Iraq: only 18 fewer than the number of UK soldiers killed in the same period. All deaths from war are needless. Wars being waged today, as those of the past, are about stealing land, labor and resources, for which young men must needlessly die. Few people are speaking out against this abominable situation, just as few Germans spoke out about Hitler’s illegal invasions and persecutions.

In the US, the rule of law is being trampled under the jackboots of Congress and no longer has any substance. As with Nazi Germany, concentration camps are set up in foreign lands, together with maximum security prisons on home turf, and torture is rife in both. Drone warfare allows extra-judicial murder and imprisonment in predominantly Islamic countries, with all the targets being Muslim. Take the case of Abdulelah Haider Shaye, a journalist working in Yemen. In a recent News Junkie Post article, I noted that the US had finally admitted to killing its own citizens with drone strikes. Shaye had managed several times to interview Anwar al Awlaki, a US citizen who was later assassinated as the extra-judicial target of a drone strike. In some hard-hitting questions from a journalist not cowed into sheltering under the umbrella of military protection, Shaye strongly questioned al Awlaki’s ties to terrorism . When asked by Shaye about the suspected passenger-plane plot by Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab on Christmas Day 2009, Anwar al Awlaki associated himself with Abdulmuttalab as being his student and, although he did not sanction the plot itself, said he approved of it in the same way “America supports Israel’s killing of Palestinians, and its killing of civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

In January 2011 Shaye was imprisoned in Yemen on anti-terrorism charges. The Yemeni government, presumably in an attempt to curry favor from the US, or possibly because of promises of aid, told the world media that it had killed Anwar al Awlaki and three other US citizens not under suspicion of terrorism, one being a sixteen-year-old boy. However, Shaye discovered at the site of the drone killing materials that were not in the Yemeni arsenal, including fragments from a US tomahawk missile and cluster bombs, which he photographed and distributed to the press; he also reported that the victims of the drone attack had included 14 women and 21 children.

A personal telephone call from President Obama kept Shaye imprisoned when he was due to be released in February 2011. Back then, the US was not admitting that it had carried out drone attacks that killed four of its nationals. Shaye’s knowledge that the US had killed al Awlaki did not fit in with the US government line, so another innocent man, and journalist, was locked up. Now that this information is out in the open, there is no longer any reason to keep Abdulelah Haider Shaye in prison. As with the Jews in German concentration camps, and those cleared for release from Guantanamo, Shaye should not have been imprisoned from the start. There is a petition for his release.

Nearer to home, the Boston bombings saw the arrests of several suspects. One of those questioned by the FBI in his own home was Ibragim Todashev, who apparently knew the Tsarnaev brothers. Todashev would not leave his home again alive. With six bullets to his body and one to the head, it was another US extra-judicial killing, this time on American soil. Why? Will the world ever know? What happens when a young man is held in custody and does not come out alive? Why was this story not more prominent in the news? His grieving father says that he was unarmed and wants to know what happened to him. The world wants to know. There is an obligation to protect the lives of those taken into custody. How many FBI agents were involved in this killing? Was there an attempt to torture Todashev into a false confession? What is happening in the world? So many questions, but no answers. Today, mock democracies serve as fronts to gross acts of extra-judicial murder.

Editor’s Note: Photographs one, two, four, five, six and seven by Active Stills.

By Imtiaz Akhtar

“If there is no water in the dam…. Should we urinate into it?” – Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister, Ajit Pawar.

In the last few years, India has attracted considerable attention from the world for its “growth story.” India is being celebrated by every single cheerleader of neo-imperialist policy whose sole motive is: profit. Despite this growth, India figures below sub-Saharan Africa when it comes to general undernourishment. “About half of all Indian children are, it appears, chronically undernourished and more than half of all adult women suffer from anemia,” notes Amartya Sen.[1] India is the only country in the world which, despite having the largest unused stock of food, is forced to experience such massive undernourishment. “It is hard to explain it by the presumption of mere insensitivity — it looks more and more like insanity. What could be the perceived rationale of all this?” asks Sen.[2]

The economic policies pursued by right-wing political parties like Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and other regional parties under pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank have resulted in a massive crisis in India’s agricultural sector, which is considered to be the backbone of the economy. About 87,567 farmers committed suicide in the period between 2001 and 2006 alone. This means that a farmer died every 30 minutes. This does not include women farmers, as most of the land is, by custom, held by men in India. So those who do not formally hold land do not qualify as being farmers. A debt crisis forced most farmers to take their own lives. After the so-called liberalization of the economy, the government-owned seed distribution companies were forced to shut down. The seed price per acre, which in 1991 was about Rs. 70 ($1.25), rose to Rs. 1000 ($17.90): an increase of over 1400 percent.[3]

About one year ago, the Planning Commission, which is headed by Oxbridge’s suave Montek Singh Alluwalia, in an attempt to reduce poverty, brought down the economic indicator that defines poverty. Accordingly, any person in urban India who earned less than Rs. 28.35 (about $0.50) a day would be considered poor. What is this if not an indicator of class assault? Even by the government’s own committee (Arjun Sengupta committee, 2006), over 394.9 million workers (more than 85 percent of the working population and more than 78 percent of the workers in the unorganized sector) live with an income lower than Rs. 20 ($0.36) a day.

India won its independence after a long, tortuous struggle against the British. The famous Karachi resolution (1931) that was passed by the Indian National Congress promised to its citizens a set of rights. These are known as Fundamental Rights under the Indian Constitution. As per the law, any violation of these rights can only be challenged either in a High Court or in the Supreme Court. There are now a total number of 1382 Judges available to enforce these rights, although the population of India has already reached one billion. This might sound ridiculous, but then again it is as hard as a fact from a lawyer (The figures are from the department of law and justice, Government of India’s website.).[4] This means that even these civil liberties in most cases are nothing but paper-tiger promises.

How can one explain this? A vast majority is simply excluded by virtue of being poor; most cannot afford the exorbitant fees of lawyers. Therefore, barring a few super-rich, these rights have no meaning for the vast majority. Most of the states in India live under the shadows of some of the most anti-democratic laws like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) that allows warrantless searches and arrests, and even extra-judicial killings, by the army in areas that are declared to be “disturbed.” One wonders: had Gandhi been alive today what would he have done? Perhaps organize a massive non-cooperation action that would shake the very foundations of this corrupt state.

References

1. The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity. By Amartya Sen, Penguin Books India, 2012, p. 212 (originally published in 2005 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

2. Ibid, p. 213.

3. P. Sainath http://www.hindu.com/2005/06/30/stories/2005063004691100.htm

4. http://doj.gov.in/?q=node/90

Editor’s Notes: Imtiaz Akhtar has a law degree and is pursuing a master’s degree in comparative literature at Jadavpur University in Kolkata (Calcutta) India. He has worked as a journalist, as a lawyer and as an editor for a law journal. He lives in Kolkata, India. All photographs by Dey.

“He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.” – Albert Einstein

The invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan by the United States cannot be considered to spread freedom and liberty any more than kidnapping and repeated rape can be considered to spread love. Neither of these countries threatened or attacked the US. The occupation and murder of Iraqi and Afghan citizens, or resistance fighters, is not an act of patriotism; it is a criminal act of aggression. Joining a military that you know will command you to commit these crimes does not absolve the individual.

Big business and politicians alike, banging the drums and waving flags, are leading the cheers as soldiers march to their deaths, and they watch their profits and approval ratings sore. Presidential approval ratings explode when they invade a country or assassinate someone. Look at the ‘bump’ Obama got for assassinating Bin Laden. Oil and mining interests, along with private military contractors, rake in the spoils of war while Americans send their children, their brothers and sisters, and their husbands and wives, off to battle to die or be changed forever.

More than one in ten American soldiers lose a limb. More than six in ten suffer from post-traumatic shock syndrome (PTSD) or traumatic brain injury. If they survive their tour of duty and subsequent stop-loss redeployments, they are more likely to end up struggling for assistance from their government, or marketing themselves as mercenaries to Erik Prince and his companies (Blackwater, Xe, Reflex Responses R2) of paid killers, than getting a quality education. Over 920,000 people, mostly civilians, have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over 1,700,00 more have been injured.

For what? Because Iraq and Afghanistan are now so much better off than before the invasion? Ask an Afghan or Iraqi citizen, or an honest American soldier, they’ll tell you different. Can Americans now claim they are safer? Quite the opposite, US aggression has resulted in a much greater risk by providing many with what may be considered a new righteous justification for harming the US and its citizens. Is this national defense? Is this spreading freedom and democracy? Why are empire and blood-lust being allowed to masquerade as patriotism?

Have Americans become the modern Romans? Has the spectacle of the arena been safely moved to other peoples’ countries? Have the stone benches in the coliseum been traded for the comfort of a Barcalounger and big-screen TV? Have we dehumanized our victims to such a point that we can cheer their deaths despite their innocence and honor the ‘heroes’ who slaughter them? Is being something other than a US citizen a capital crime?

Modern gladiators are paid a wage, promised an education, armed to the teeth, and sent out to kill on command. Those who try to defend themselves are called the enemy, and their attempts to save themselves are used to justify the violence against them. The US military is nothing more than the muscle behind Big-Oil, Big-Finance, Big-Business, Big-Pharma et al. National security gave way to economic expansionism and neocolonialism a long time ago.

The Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns are no less abhorrent than Vietnam, but the public reaction has changed. Americans have either become desensitized to the horrors they export, or they have accepted this brutal substitution for patriotism that their politicians and media have sold them. Or, they truly are a country full of blood-thirsty misanthropes that place no value on the lives and nations they destroy as long as they remain fat and happy behind the wheel of an SUV.

Being paid to wear a uniform does not justify murder. Murdering people in other countries does not make a hero. Sacrificing life or limb for an unjust war does not make you a hero; it makes you a victim. Convincing the youth that the invasion of other countries that never threatened or attacked their own, and the murder of innocent civilians and all that dare resist, somehow equals patriotism, tears the very fabric of society.

The crimes perpetrated by those in positions of power and influence have robbed the members of the armed forces the right to be called patriots and heroes. Those who have served unwittingly are their victims, just as much as the ‘foreigners’ they’ve been instructed to kill. Those who serve knowingly can be afforded no absolution. To give control purposefully over one’s actions to a murderous enterprise is to assume equal culpability. To volunteer to have someone instruct you to commit a wrongful act is precisely that: wrong.

The only ones who have benefited from American aggression, and the crimes committed against all the people around the world, from Vietnam to Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan, and on and on through America’s decades of endless wars, are the power brokers and profiteers that picked the fights in the first place. To join a military that we all now know is involved in illegal wars and occupations is an act against humanity.

On this Memorial Day, remember the reality of the US’ wars, not the romanticized fiction that the propaganda mills spew out. Remember all those who have lost their lives, not just your compatriots who died or lost limbs while trying to kill others. The information is out there. The facts are accessible. Soldiers are no longer misinformed, victimized, heroic, patriots… they are accessories. The denial of reality does not make the carnage acceptable.  The blood cannot be wiped from your hands with the flag.

Consider the following two “criminals”:

Abu Qatada

Let us assume for a moment that Abu Qatada has committed crimes in Jordan, though much evidence suggests otherwise. Mr. Qatada has committed no crime in the United Kingdom. So, even if he was a criminal abroad, he fits the Christian example of a reformed character and, providing he continues to live lawfully, should be forgiven. What appears to irritate Mrs. May as much as anything is that Mr. Qatada has called for the release of Muslims held in United States prisons and Guantanamo Bay, which gets him labeled a preacher of hatred. Most of the prisoners for whom he advocates have been held for 11 years without charge, never mind without trial. I too, together with many others in the UK, have called for the release of these prisoners. So why have I not been arrested? I would suggest that what makes my case different is that I am a white Christian and consequently fall outside of Mrs. May’s racist profile.

Abu Qatada is a family man. His family has been subjected to racist abuse from right-wing extremists, but his children are model pupils, and his family is respected elsewhere. When they were abused, due largely to a media campaign against Qatada, no authorities intervened to protect them. The family suffered silently for a long time before getting an injunction to stop the abuse. All this has resulted from slanderous accusations made in support of the war on Islam by previous governments and, more recently and fervently, by Theresa May in pushing forward her fixation to send Abu Qatada to Jordan to face trial. Jordan is reputed for torture, and Mr. Qatada belonged to an opposition party before the present dictatorship; he also has no great excess of money.

Now if Qatada were as wealthy as a United Arab Emirates’ oil-sheikh, the racism against him would probably be kept in check. The nipple through which money flows is the one at which the authorities suck, and while the cash keeps flowing in, it matters little whether the breast is black, brown or white. Thus criminal oligarchs from Russia, former Soviet states and elsewhere, may bring their filthy lucre to the UK and get it washed free from stains at the laundry of the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street. The world’s mafia can afford to buy off accusations of wrongdoing, and Mrs. May, being married to a banker, can only empathize. The divide is not about rich and poor, so much as the gaping crevice between a white alleged criminal settler such as Shaun Patrick Breach and a Palestinian like Abu Qatada — who is derogatorily called a radical Islamic cleric. It is also about how differently the Home Secretary and her authorities treat each man.

Shaun Patrick Breach

It is hard not to go looking in the Dictionary of Abusive Slang to find a fitting epithet to describe Shaun Patrick Breach with any degree of accuracy. Before coming to the UK from South Africa, Breach had allegedly been a mercenary for the notorious Executive Outcomes, though this is denied by the former controllers of this corporation. Before its demise, Executive Outcomes had at its helm right-wing fixers like Tony Buckingham, Simon Mann and Tim Spicer, whose former antics in Africa and, in the case of Buckingham and Spicer, current ones in oil-rich countries destabilized by NATO, were sketched in a recent article. Breach is different altogether. While most of the top men have kept their nefarious activities under cover, Breach seems to wallow in his crimes, and he appears to be, or thinks himself as being, untouchable.

Shaun Patrick Breach is an alleged serial wife-beater. He has been accused of trying to knife journalist Simon Tomlin, who was and might still be investigating his activities. Despite repeated requests, and despite the attack on Tomlin being monitored by CCTV cameras, the Nottinghamshire police has refused to stop and search Breach for weapons. He appears to be able to commit crimes with impunity, provoking the question: why? What information does Breach hold to render him above the law? He lives in Nottingham, a place that some might describe as England’s equivalent to the Chicago of the 1930s. Nottingham is reputed to be a gangster-ridden, drug-running, gun-toting place, with some of the police allegedly being in cahoots with the gangsters. What is even more astounding is that many of the locals seem to know who the bent coppers are.

Despite being arrested in the UK more than 40 times for crimes ranging from witness intimidation to death-threats — including racist attacks — Breach has usually been released without charge and never been imprisoned. Simon Tomlin believes that Breach has been protected by the police and security services as a useful asset. This could be right, since no mainstream journalist has covered this story of police cover up, and if Shaun Patrick Breach is an asset, the mainstream media would not be allowed to go public with this information. Thus Simon Tomlin seems to be taking on Nottinghamshire police almost single handedly, and recordings suggest that Tomlin’s account of Breach’s psychotic knife attack is correct. So what is an alleged South African criminal with British Nationalist Party leanings doing in the UK, given Theresa May’s policy of returning suspected criminals to their homelands, or to countries where they are wanted for allegedly breaking the law?

One cannot help but conclude that Theresa May is racist. She has targeted Abu Qatada, who has committed no crime in the UK, but not Shaun Patrick Breach, who has probably committed many. Breach was protected by the law and police, whereas Qatada and his family were not. There is no evidence that Qatada has been anything but a good family man; by contrast, Breach has been accused of beating all three wives he has had, and other women too. Why doesn’t the Home Secretary do Breach’s current wife a favor and send the self-acclaimed mercenary back to South Africa, and stop picking on Qatada? Of course the above interpretation of what has been seen and read could be wrong. If so, perhaps Mrs. May could explain how these allegations are false.

Editor’s Note: All photographs by UK Home Office.

By Dady Chery and Gilbert Mercier

The expression “Time is money” was coined by Benjamin Franklin. It is a relatively new saying, among countless others, that represents the rot that started to eat at the core of our global social edifice during the industrial revolution. With the exchange of clock hours for money began the notion of time as being an entity independent of any natural phenomenon. Such a concept is still absent from some cultures like that of the Amondawa, a rare Amazonian tribe that had the luck to remain isolated from modernity. Of course, the Amondawa understand the idea of meeting somebody at sunset, or tomorrow, but time as something with a value per hour that may be traded for goods and services is unknown to them.

Once the capitalist equation “time = money” kicked in as a social golden rule, life progressively turned into death on an installment plan. For thousands of years before this, human societies, independently of their locations, closely followed the rhythms of nature with immense respect. One did not clock in, but one was aware of the sunrise, sunset, and phase of the moon. The seasons guided the kind of work to be done, and factors such as the tides, atmospheric conditions, actions of other living things, determined the day’s agenda. This delicate harmony with our natural world has been put in jeopardy by the arrogance and stupidity of our anthropocentric tunnel vision: the notion that the Earth and its other inhabitants exist to serve us. The idea of putting a price tag on nature’s services, for example, based on the time that is saved by humans, is an insane concept that belongs distinctly to our age. We have lost our compass. Global capitalism has uprooted us and time from nature to make of us slaves who chase after immortality in the form of money: a morbid illusion.

Money is the ultimate addiction. If alcoholics and drug addicts can seek help and are often obliged to do so by the courts, the addicts to money accumulation are revered and put on a pedestal. For global capitalism, only “money talks,” and it does so with the astounding power of a giant bullhorn. The likes of Warren Buffet and George Soros are the deus ex-machina of the money worshipers. These two titans of global investment are regarded as geniuses, yet their only talent is to make money with money. Do they produce tangible goods and services? No. Do they genuinely dedicate their energies to the improvement of the overall human condition? No.

In fact, the super-rich are those who raise the disease of miserliness to a high art. In his book The Art of Being, published posthumously to avoid misunderstandings, psychologist Erich Fromm introduced the notion of the rich miser and described this pathology in its details. A notorious example was the automobile manufacturer Henry Ford, who is reputed to have worn each pair of his socks continuously until they were so tattered, they could no longer be mended. Overall, rich misers, despite their sometimes impressive demonstrations of philanthropy as an image for public consumption, suffer from an inability to let go of things such as their energies, thoughts, words, and quite commonly their semen and stools. Yet they, with their impotence and constipation, successfully manage to persuade countless disciples that nothing is valuable if it is not expensively bought or sold.

By the above analysis, dear reader, this article is of no value because you did not buy it in a glossy magazine. More insidious than this, the values of rich misers are continually imposed on the world through the adoption of parameters such as GDP growth, which measures the increased flow of money through an economy, as being the definition of wealth.  Thus real wealth becomes confused with money, and as people get more alienated from each other and the natural world, they become defined by what they have rather than what they are. Any society may be viewed as being terminally ill when money assets come to define the value of a person.

While those few who hold vast sums of money may be heard through countless channels and leverage their influence on public discourse into power, the vast majority of humans scramble for survival and go unheard. Currently the mega-rich and their banks such as the IMF and World Bank casually impose their diktats on individuals and nations alike. Cyprus has caved in; soon it will be Egypt, which is on the verge of insolvency. Where political power runs amok in its permanent quest for profit, extreme money concentration induces a systemic disaster. Those who do the bidding for the rich race like rats spinning in a wheel who are bent on powering the implement for their destruction. “I can’t quit the rat race, because I have kids to feed and a mortgage to pay,” they say. But this is a cop out, and the rat race is relayed from one generation to the next. As this complex game of chess between rich and poor is played out, pawns, king and queen risk winding up in the same box.

The Cree Indian proverb “When the last tree has died, the last river has been poisoned, and the last fish has been caught, we will realize that we cannot eat money” provides a wiser perspective on the grim reality that widespread greed is creating for us. This Cree scenario of doom will be on our horizon probably within two decades, partly because those of us who say that we wish to “Save the Planet” are as arrogant as those who are bent on destroying the environment for their short-term gains. The planet has seen several mass extinctions; new species will spring up, quite without us. Realistically put, our goal at best is to save human kind from becoming an index species: the sort that enjoys tremendous success, but over such a brief period that its fossils ultimately serve to mark a geological era. To save ourselves, we must understand with a devoutness stronger than for any organized religion, that we exist at the pleasure of the other living beings on Earth. We must appreciate that we subsist, not because of our cleverness as an isolated species but our membership in a delicately-balanced living ensemble.

Editor’s Note: All photographs by ‘Tax Credits’.

Orwell’s nightmarish utopia 1984 became strangely real on September 11, 2001. Earlier signs were present since the explosion of the Internet in the 1990s, but the information superhighway was regarded mainly as a great tool for data dissemination and free access to knowledge, not as an instrument to spread disinformation. The Internet symbolized the pre-9/11 world paradox: the potential for complete freedom and empowerment due to access to free knowledge by everyone, versus the unlimited power of corporate governance’s Big Brother to oppress and spy on the rest of us. September 11, 2001 was not Big Brother’s birthday but his coming of age. The events gave oppression and casus belli their raison d’etre, and this became a permanent “raison d’etat” to justify the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the never-ending “global war on terror.” September 11, 2001 further became a global primal-fear event: a moment so traumatic that its impact cannot be erased. Constant war has become the new normal. If soldiers return from today’s killing fields, the fear that has kept burning into their guts for months becomes a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Our society at large is suffering from PTSD, and the original trauma feeding the fear and paranoia occurred on that fateful day in September 2001.

March 2003 marked the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The name alone is Orwellian. It sounds warm and motherly, with words like  “homeland”, but in reality it is creepy. The term “security” also gives a sense of a father-state figure to the children-citizens that we are supposed to be. The Big Brothers of the DHS and their affiliates at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) are supposed to keep us safe from all the real or imagined dangers lurking everywhere. The DHS should be called the DFP, for Department of Fear and Paranoia, because these are its psychological impacts on the collective consciousness. The assignment of generic names to the enemies of this repressive global order is a hallmark of this fear and paranoia strategy.

“Terrorist” and “other extremist” can mean anything and its opposite for different people and in different contexts. An example of this was a 2012 post-US election report that the Occupy movement, or more accurately the US Day of Rage movement, had been under FBI surveillance and treated potentially as a homegrown terrorist movement. The effect of circulating this information through some of the big voices of the US media’s left was to amplify the fear and paranoia by implicitly carrying the message that protest is barely tolerated. Further, media and social media combined convey mostly a sense of despair and alienation, as if some are being used for the purpose of psych ops.  The Big Brothers on top of the global order of corporate governance expect their workers-consumers to be predictable, and above all compliant, even on their final trip to the slaughterhouse.

In our global Orwellian totalitarian state, life appears almost pleasant at times. Obey, stay in line, and rewards can be expected from conformity. Rebellious behavior, on the other hand, is no longer tolerated. The US is a prison nation, and incarceration has become the school system of the oppressed. During the McCarthy era, communists or people suspected of  “anti-American” activities were prosecuted in the US, but now anywhere in the world a person suspected of being a  “terrorist” or “other extremist” can be blown to smithereens by a drone. Never mind due process. Collateral damage: who cares? Vaguely defined enemies of convenience are killed anywhere, at any time. The anonymous Big Brother has become judge and executioner, and the killing is done remotely with machines. The cowardly war of the drones is not the war of the future, it is that of today. But what can be done to overcome this apparatus with which the powerful exercise control over us through fear and paranoia? Although Orwell’s warnings were not heard in time, throwing in the towel and giving up the fight is not an option.

“Writing a book is a horrible exhausting struggle, like a bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist or understand,” wrote Orwell. During five long years, from 1939 to 1945, the world was taken by some demons; perhaps Orwell’s 1984 was also an effort to understand them and make sure they would not rise again. What is astounding is that the “utopia in the form of a novel” written by a dying man more than 63 years ago has turned into our dystopian reality. It is as if Orwell’s closeness to death gave him this incredible foresight. But Orwell’s intention might have been to give us a warning. Instead, we have followed the premises of 1984 like a blueprint for what we are on the way to become: the little people under the thumb of a universal Big Brother. We have been enslaved by our own fears and paranoia for the benefit of corporate global capitalism. The ultimate form of capitalism is slavery, and our history is in the process of regressing to this. The turning point might be when a large majority of people have nothing to lose. Perhaps then, we can reverse the tide, return to a sense of ownership over our own destiny, and embrace the deep belief that the human spirit cannot be kept permanently shackled and will triumph against all odds.

Editor’s Note: Photographs one and five by Trey Ratcliff. Photograph two by Russ Allison Loar and composites four and six by Mark Rain.

Theresa May’s father was the Reverend Hugh Brasier, an Oxfordshire vicar who died in a car-crash shortly after his daughter graduated. Mrs. May claims to be an Anglican herself, and this should also make her a Christian, but her political actions and aspirations call into question the type of Christianity that might be being taught and practiced in Oxfordshire. Certainly in the broader sense of loving one’s neighbor, the Christianity she claims to espouse would be extended to countries within the European community and, more importantly, to countries outside of Europe. Laying aside a chosen few rich states like the US, Israel and former commonwealth countries, May’s actions show absolutely no love for any country or anybody unless they are rich and powerful. This includes rich and powerful Muslims.

“Blessed are the poor!” Theresa May is calling for the UK no longer to accede to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).[2] If this notion comes to law, it would be analogous to the US not recognizing the International Criminal Court (ICC). Her policies match those of Enoch Powell, though there are big differences. Powell’s actions did not result in discrimination based on race and religious grounds but, rather, attacks on all poor non-whites. What is more, he could string sentences together in a coherent and dramatic manner, as in his so-called “rivers of blood” speech. The venom he spat out, though almost as despicable and almost as Tory as the current home secretary’s, was streaked with figurative oratory and articulated with a certain degree of parliamentary rhetoric which May lacks in abundance. Without a script or auto-cue, she would be lost. Her policies against Muslims are without parallel in their racism. Although she is careful not to target Muslims directly in her speech, those she particularly wants to deport are Muslims. Her record speaks for itself.

Theresa May at the despatch box is odium at the podium. At the Conservative Party Conference in 2011 the home secretary said “the ille – the illegal immigrant . . . who cannot be deported, because – and I am not making this up – because he had a pet cat… and that is why I am of the view the Human Rights’ Act has to go.” She was making it up, as Andrew Neil got her to confirm.[3] Conservative head office has groomed May and other spokespeople never to mention that Islam is the target. Thus the terminology is “illegal immigrants”, “foreigners”, “foreign criminals”, “asylum-seekers” and such general terms. The anti-Islamic message is banged home, however, by accompanying images usually of Muslims. This is an attempt to create an enemy that did not exist before NATO’s illegal wars to steal natural resources from defeated countries. “Thou shalt not steal.”

Even worse was May’s extradition of five Muslims to US Supermax prisons last year. She showed no compassion for the poet Talha Ahsan, an Asberger sufferer and one of the five sent to the US in an agreement done behind the scenes with officials of the European Court of Human Rights. Before Talha Ahsan’s extradition to the US, he had already spent six years in prison in the UK without being charged with a crime. In Ahsan’s case, like that of Babar Ahmad, habeas corpus was ignored. Instead of focusing on this blatant contravention of one of the pillars of the English judicial system, the media concentrated on Muslim cleric Abu Hamza (the man with the hook), who is alleged to be a preacher of hatred.[4]

The slur on Islam has gone on for more than a decade. It is a miracle and a great credit to Muslim communities that there have not been countless acts of retaliation against NATO aggression abroad and anti-Islamic rhetoric at home. In a further attempt to denigrate Muslims and perpetuate the war on Islam, UK police have issued a radio advertisement that is so often repeated, one cannot switch on the radio without hearing it. The advertisement warns people to be watchful against terrorism and tells them that if they “notice something suspicious … chances are, it is probably nothing…” But what if it is? It then gives a hotline number and concludes with the message: “Your call could save lives”. A similar campaign was run during the Second World War, when German infiltrators were called “the enemy within” and were supposed to be ubiquitous. Slogans like “walls have ears” and “careless words cost lives” were bandied about all over the country. Today, it is not just “probably nothing”, it is certainly nothing.

What causes most people to think of Muslims whenever this advertisement runs? At the start of the advertising campaign three men from Small Heath, Birmingham, had just been found guilty of planning terrorist activities. Mr Justice Henriques told the men “It’s clear that you were planning a terrorist outrage in Birmingham.”[5] Tom Whitehead, Security Editor of the Telegraph, put out the headline that three Muslims had been found guilty of plotting the “worst ever terrorist attack in Britain.”[6] This was supported by other reporting which followed the guilty verdict. Undoubtedly these men fantasized about a terror plot, but they appear to have just had big mouths, since nobody really planning an attack would be bragging about it beforehand like they did.  The headline was in quotation marks. So who actually said that these men were planning “the worst ever terrorist attack”? Within the same article Whitehead claimed “Police believe had they been successful it would have been the largest terrorist atrocity on home soil.”[7] What police? The local bobby at Whitehead’s pub? Thus, as far as it is possible to ascertain, the Telegraph’s anti-Muslim hype in quotation marks was generated by Whitehead himself and picked up by bloggers by mistake and the disreputable press. “Thou shalt not bear false witness.”

To get five Muslims, including Talha Ahsan and Babar Ahmad, to the United States it appears that two of the judges, Lech Garlicki and Nicolas Bratza, who sat in judgment at Strasbourg had been to a closed-door meeting in Washington at a conference on judicial process a month before judgment was passed. To extradite the “Strasbourg five” was an act of defiance that goes against the exceedingly good reputation Strasbourg had previously built up in protecting the rights of nationals when faced with dubious renditions, extraditions and incarcerations abroad.[8]  What also points to a done deal before the court even sat is the fact that the same day the verdict was announced the five Muslims, who have already faced many years in UK prisons without charge, were on planes to the US. Such things take time to arrange.

The Home Secretary’s ongoing battle to get Abu Qatada extradited to Jordan, where he may face torture, is the latest manifestation of her hatred of impoverished Muslims.[9] Theresa May is married to a banker. What if Abu Qatada had been wealthy? Ahmed Chalabi, for example, is wanted in Jordan for robbing the poor investors of the Petra Bank he set up. A 22-year prison sentence awaits him, which was awarded in absentia. Worse still, he supplied false information to George W. Bush and Tony Blair to justify the war in Iraq. He is now an enemy to most people in the west, to hear them speak, but he spent most of his life in the US and UK, before re-establishing himself in Iraq. Now, here is a criminal of the most despicable kind. Where were the previous home secretaries when Chalabi fled Jordan and was living in Mayfair? Who was shouting for extradition then?

There has been a blatant, sinister and creeping tirade on impoverished Muslims from successive UK governments, but Theresa May’s current personal “war on Islam” has hit rock bottom. Two men were divested of their English identities by Home Secretary Theresa May while out of the country and subsequently killed by US drone strikes. One of the men phoned his wife to learn that he had just become a father. Shortly afterwards, thanks to the cowards who remotely operate drone killings, his wife became a widow and his newborn child an orphan. Theresa May’s version of Christianity in practice is not what is taught in most Anglican or other Christian churches. That message is: “thou shalt not kill.” Unfortunately some messages fall on stony ground.

Editor’s Note: Photographs from two to eight by UK Home Office.

References

[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/british-terror-suspects-quietly-stripped-of-citizenship-then-killed-by-drones-8513858.html

[2] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2287183/A-great-day-British-justice-Theresa-May-vows-UK-European-Court-Human-Rights.html

[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXM7DzeMLe4

[4] http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/02/impossible-injustice-talha-ahsan%E2%80%99s-extradition-and-detention

[5] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/9877193/Suicide-bomb-gang-guilty-of-plotting-worst-ever-terror-attack-in-Britain.html

[6] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/9877193/Suicide-bomb-gang-guilty-of-plotting-worst-ever-terror-attack-in-Britain.html

[7] ibid.

[8] http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/02/impossible-injustice-talha-ahsan%E2%80%99s-extradition-and-detention

[9] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/11/abu-qatada-deprtation-theresa-may-appeal

Michael Diamond was a general practice lawyer in Union County, New Jersey, before a brief career change in 1981 when the newly-created Division of Water Resources in the  New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) was looking for an Enforcement Administrator and Chief Regulatory Officer. Diamond accepted the position and was effective at applying his legal skills to create new enforcement techniques for the department. Having received no formal training from the DEP or its overseers at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Diamond realized that he was surrounded by other lawyers and engineers but no scientists or health officials. He began to ask why there were no microbiologists, botanists and professional health people there to study the connection between environmental exposure and illness. After a year, Diamond was cycled out of the position and returned to his law practice. This time, he applied what he had learned at the NJDEP to his law studies and began looking for a remedy that would bring Americans back to health and sustainability to the Earth. On study of the Constitution of the United States, he realized that the wording of The Domestic Violence Clause, in Article IV, Section 4, could apply to environmental issues. Diamond has written several essays and a book titled If You Can Keep It: A Constitutional Roadmap to Environmental Security on the topic of this overlooked constitutional clause. I had the privilege of meeting Michael Diamond last year and learned about his crusade firsthand. We recently sat down together for an interview.

Andrea Egizi: Why do you think the EPA and DEP did not hire health professionals to research the effects of the environment on the very people they were trying to protect? How could they have made decisions about risks, let’s say concerning pollutants in potable water from a well?

Michael Diamond: Exactly. The closest they came to assessing risk was to search the published literature and determine whether any of the contaminants caused cancer.

A.E. And you found that disquieting because…?

M.D. Because there are an array of illnesses caused by exposures that don’t lead to cancer but are nevertheless damaging. And to make matters worse, the engineers were unable to assess the amount of exposure that might be harmful to children.

A.E. So, it’s fair to say that they were flying blind?

M.D. Without question. But don’t get me wrong, the engineers were wonderful, hard working people. It was just that the system had been set up to overlook the real health effects of exposures in the country. And the system wasn’t just wrong, it was Kafkaesque. The engineers would say that certain chemicals were okay to be in the drinking water because they were not carcinogenic; they were only mutagenic.

A.E. Stop me if I’m wrong, but if a chemical is mutagenic, doesn’t that mean that it’s dangerous in that it creates mutations that can be harmful?

M.D. Absolutely. Exposures to a mutagenic chemical can create birth defects, damage DNA, and end up causing cancer. But there’s something even more troubling about reliance being principally on published scientific journals to determine whether a particular exposure caused cancer or not. The scientific journals themselves were and remain biased in favor of the producers and users of chemicals. You see, scientific research, to the delight of the corporations, requires that each contaminant be shown, by itself, to cause cancer. And environmental laws in the United States have codified that requirement. In effect, chemicals have been treated as though they are individuals presumed to be innocent unless and until proven guilty by rigorous scientific research.

A.E. Now, that doesn’t accord with reality because…?

M.D. Chemicals are never experienced by people individually. There are multitudes of them within all of us. We’ve been inundated by exposures since the mid 1940s. In fact, chemicals interact with one another, and that interaction can and does augment the harms that they do to us. In addition, each of us is unique. What may be insignificant to one person can be a tipping point into disease for another. To treat chemicals as innocent until proven guilty, as if they were individuals with due process rights is wrong and dangerous. And the worst part is that children are so very vulnerable. If there had been even one microbiologist present, he or she certainly would have been able to express the truth that exposures during critical developmental times, even though slight, should have been considered harmful and dangerous. A minute exposure in utero, for example, could easily cripple a developing immune system. And a similar minute exposure at a critical juncture in the development of a young growing brain could readily condemn a child to difficulties in learning and impulse control.

A.E. But certainly, in the 30 years that have passed, hasn’t the environmental regulatory system caught up to the reality of current environmental threats?

M.D. In a word: No. Researchers, for example, in a futile effort to find the alleged single cause of autism, remain stuck in the stupid maze created by our environmental laws. They’re not likely to find one single cause for the disease because the causes are multiple, interacting, and may be occurring in a flash of tiny exposures during a particularly susceptible span of moments in a child’s early development. Autism used to occur once in some ten thousand births. Now, in some states, it’s occurring once in less than every forty births.

A.E. And other diseases?

M.D. Cancer used to be rare in adults and even rarer in children. Now, it’s showing up in roughly half of the American population. And cancer in children is now so common that there are pediatric oncology units in major hospitals. Babies, eighteen months of age, are being diagnosed with brain tumors. But cancer and autism are not the only rising diseases. Asthma is showing exponential growth, and food allergies are threatening children’s lives in a manner that has never happened before. At present, schools have to be prepared to administer a life-saving antidote when an allergic child is exposed to peanut butter.

A.E. Talking about children, I can’t help thinking about whether we’re leaving to them a world that will not be sustainable.

M.D. Yes, I’m with you there. Global climate changes are real and observable. Acidification is undermining food chains in the oceans, and that’s occurring as we speak. Unless we get to changing things fast, this planet will begin a cycle downward toward being uninhabitable. Wars for declining resources have already begun and are destabilizing large populations.

A.E. So tell me, what solution do you think will work?

M.D. When I left the state environmental department, I began searching for a remedy that would bring Americans back to health and bring sustainability to the Earth. One of the documents that I studied was the Constitution of the United States. I studied the Constitution in law school, but that clause was never mentioned. Most lawyers never heard of it. There hasn’t been a major legal case on that provision for over a hundred years. So, it doesn’t make its way into case-oriented legal textbooks. But when I started to look at that provision, I realized that it was the ideal remedy for us because the Supreme Court has repeatedly held it to be a people’s clause. All this meaning that if and when we ever get to the point where we are harming ourselves and each other in significant ways that are beyond the police powers of the states to handle, then it’s the responsibility of the federal government to step in.

A.E. How is it that American industry was allowed to conduct a massive chemical assault upon us and our children with outrageous consequences?

M.D. The year 1945 should have been the beginning of a better life for everyone on this Earth. Instead, on the death of Roosevelt, his then Vice President was Harry Truman. Truman, instead of respecting the Russian war effort that was the prime reason for the military defeat of Hitler’s Germany, declared America’s undying opposition to communism and demanded its defeat whenever and wherever it surfaced in the world. Thus began the Cold War in which Truman tapped the American business community to be our avatars in the fight to bring goods and services to a world in need. Our manufacturing know how and technical competency were to bring an end to poverty and ignorance. And by doing that, Truman believed, we would bring an end to what he described as Godless and evil communism, forever. Now, relating this to the environment, neither Truman, nor the presidents to follow him had a mindset to regulate industry. Industry was our newly knighted warrior. Manufacturing was going to enrich, not bring harm, to the world. And that was the mindset that kept the American government from doing what governments were supposed to do: protect the people from harms, both internal and external.

A.E. Corporate power at this time must, in fact, be confronted in order to assure survival. Is that what you are saying?

M.D. Exactly, and the person who said it best a long time ago was Supreme Court Justice, Louis Brandeis. In a 1933 case, Liggett v. Lee, he said that it had been a mistake to give corporations the rights of citizens. They were anything but citizens. Their sole purpose was to bring financial returns to shareholders. In the process of accomplishing that, they would limit freedoms and diminish human happiness. Brandeis called them “Frankenstein monsters.”

A.E. How could the domestic violence clause limit corporate power?

M.D. The domestic violence clause contains war powers. Let me repeat. That provision contains war powers to be used in peacetime to assure our survival. War powers can be used to revoke and revise corporate rights and prerogatives. The domestic violence clause, because it entails war powers, can require that corporations abide by strict requirements that are necessary in an emergency.

A.E. An example?

M.D. Certainly. It didn’t matter if you were the biggest automobile company in the world in 1944. The American government at war directed you to make trucks and tanks, and that’s what you did. Every corporation in the United States was commandeered. Indeed, the entire economy was commandeered by the federal government under emergency war making powers in the Constitution until there was victory. The domestic violence clause entails the same powers.

A.E. Alright, so what could the federal government do now, using the powers of the domestic violence clause, to safeguard people?

M.D. All of the things that must be done to assure our survival. Expenditures for war must end. All of our resources must be used to heal the sick and stop the exposures. Agriculture has to be made organic, with crops coming from family farms again, instead of from feedlots and corporate monocultures. Our healthcare system would be commandeered to change the focus to preventive actions and intensive work with those of us who have been affected by exposures. Insurance companies will need to be taken out of healthcare and their personnel be trained and put to work elsewhere in a new health-delivery system. The stranglehold that pharmaceutical companies now have on health choices will be stopped and broken. Enormous efforts will need to be put into education so that our children are no longer burdened by the consequences of exposures and can get back to performance levels preceding the 1970s. That’s just a small glimpse of what can be done.

A.E. So how could this clause be put into action?

M.D. We create a movement and a new political party, if necessary, by telling Americans who are suffering from diseases and disabilities as never before that their plight and the plight of their children and grandchildren is not a matter of bad luck, bad genes, or God’s will. Our ill health is the result of harms we have brought down upon ourselves, beginning with the chemical age that we created at the end of the Second World War.

E.A. And Americans will listen to this message?

M.D. As never before. That’s the one benefit to experiencing a total defeat. Corporate America has overplayed its hand. Not satisfied with efforts to own all seeds through genetic engineering, they are now producing genetically modified fish. People are beginning to think of that nasty experiment as Frankenfish, a product conceived and made by Justice Brandeis’s Frankenstein monsters. In short, Americans are health conscious and are ready to hear that we’ve been duped. Americans understand now, as never before, that all of our institution, from financial, through business and manufacturing, need to be reconfigured to serve the needs of the people and not just those whose purpose in life is to engorge themselves with power and money.

E.A. So a political effort begins how?

M.D. By contacting our state government representatives, members of the fifty state legislatures. Families suffering from cancer, asthma, autism, and the host of learning and attention deficits need to contact those representatives and do it regularly. The state legislators should be asked to tell the federal government that a condition of domestic violence exists in all of our states and it requires the federal government to bring us back to health and assure our survival.

E.A. And, as I understand your essays, you have a special job for our elders, do you not?

M.D. Yes. Those of us who were born before 1940 remember a time when cancer was rare and no one knew anyone who suffered from autism. Learning was easier then, and civility was the rule. I think we ought to call upon those of us who were born back then to testify as witnesses that the modern diseases and disabilities were brought about as a result of trading health for corporate profits.

A.E. Well, I get the sense that what you’re saying can happen.

M.D. I’d say it’s worth a try? Andrea, thanks so very much for listening to all of this. I so very much appreciate your attitude of respect for new ideas.

Editor’s Note: All composite photographs  by Mark Rain.

In the Middle Ages, when courtly love (romantic love) started, this notion had no correlation with material issues. Courtly love was a paradoxical experience of erotic desire and spiritual connection between lovers which today seems to be in complete opposition. Courtly love was a study in complexity and contrast, but not a futile exercise in contradiction. On one hand, on the erotic side it was often about breaking taboos, drifting into the irrational passion of lust without caring about humiliation and social stigma. On the other hand, it was pure, altruistic, of the highest moral order and almost transcendent. Romantic love was always dangerous, often secret and socially outside the norm.

Romantic love was never a meat-and-potatoes dinner; it was a feast reserved for the aristocracy. Marriage at the time, and one could argue that few things have changed, was mainly a business transaction. Within the aristocracy and amongst the European royal families, marriages were not about love but about wealth management and consolidation and political alliances between kingdoms. The same logic was applied all the way down the social food chain. In India, until very recently marriages were arranged by parents with almost no say from the future bride and groom in the matter.

In our time obsessed with money and social status, little has changed as far as marriages being essentially business arrangements where carnal lust serves as lure — at least for one of the partners — at the initiation and then as a cement with a short life span if the lust element is the primary bond to the relationship. Currently, around 50 percent of all marriages in the Western world, where women can divorce freely, end up in divorce. Typically, couples fight and part over money and intimacy issues. Since the economic crash of 2008, the ratio of marriages ending in divorces has improved slightly. This is certainly not because couples with problems are going massively for couple counseling — as they should — but rather because economically they cannot afford a separation, even less a divorce. Instead, they must often live with the enemy under the same roof.

Real love (romantic love) is rare. It is harder to find than a needle in a hay stack. It is never about money or gain in social status. It is not to be confused with physical attraction either. Both aspects, material gain and lust, have finite life spans. For real love, which is neither lust nor a material arrangement, to last the bond has to be deeper than what most people call love. It has to be based mainly on a strong connection between two individuals, as if they were spiritually tied by an invisible umbilical cord. Only this type of love, unlike ordinary love, can transcend trivial notions such as money, lust and practicality. This said, most people settle for less, a lot less, because what they call love is only a crutch against loneliness.

Editor’s Note: All photographs by Gilbert Mercier.

By John Goss, Rafik Saley and Okoth Osowe

When the complicity of Sweden’s Ambassador to Australia Sven-Olof Petersson in illegal rendition and torture, plus Sweden’s obsequiousness towards CIA demands of extraordinary rendition, were exposed in News Junkie Post in December 2012, it seemed unthinkable that the Australian government would knowingly entertain an ambassador of such questionable credentials. Australia’s Foreign Minister and Senator Bob Carr had joined in the chorus when Sven Olof Petersson, instructed Julian Assange, an Australian citizen, to go to Sweden. We wrote to Senator Carr to inform him of our findings about Ambassador Petersson.

For the attention of Senator the Hon Bob Carr, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Parliament of Australia
cc Clive Stafford Smith, human rights’ lawyer
cc Paul Stephens, Australian Ambassador to Sweden

Dear Senator the Hon Bob Carr,

They say people are judged by the company they keep. In December last year the following article was published regarding former activities of Sweden’s Ambassador to Australia, Sven-Olof Petersson.

http://newsjunkiepost.com/2012/12/19/how-sweden-collaborated-with-cia-on-renditions-and-framing-of-assange/

In the light of revelations that Sven-Olof Petersson was complicit in the rendition of several refugees, including Egyptian nationals Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad al-Zery, who were picked up by the CIA and severely tortured in Egypt, will you Mr Carr disassociate yourself from the Swedish ambassador’s persecution of Julian Assange? Both you and Mr Petersson have urged Assange to go to Sweden in an expression that he would be treated fairly, whereas many suspect the Wikileaks founder would be picked up by the CIA as soon as he stepped foot in Sweden.

Julian Assange has had to seek refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy because the Australian Embassy and Australian government have refused him sanctuary even though he is an Australian citizen. In what increasingly looks like a trumped-up case, in which the prosecuting firm in Sweden, of Borgström & Bodström, has been specifically chosen by the Swedish government to press charges on the flimsiest of allegations, allegations of which Assange has already been acquitted without charge, is it not an uncomfortable position in which you find yourself?

We would point out that Thomas Bodström was Minister for Justice in Sweden, when Sven-Olof Petersson was Director General at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Both knew of and approved of the rendition of Mr Agiza and Mr al-Zery. We do not want to believe that you share these values too.

People are judged by the company they keep. So we respectfully ask if you will disassociate yourself from Mr Petersson and question his suitability as an ambassador to Australia and other Australasian countries? Please also pledge that Australia will start giving Julian Assange the support he is entitled to as an Australian citizen. We await your response.

John Goss, B Soc Sc (International Studies plus Hons),
Rafik Saley, General Secretary – African Committee For Development – Sweden
Okoth Osowe, Author and Journalist – Sweden

We posed three questions in all (highlighted here in bold type). The first and third questions are similar except that the latter asks additionally if Senator Carr will question Mr Petersson’s suitability as an ambassador. Does the following reply from Carr’s office address any of our questions?

Dear Mr Goss

Thank you for your letter dated 13 January 2013 regarding the case of Mr Julian Assange. I have been asked to reply on behalf of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator the Hon Bob Carr.

The matters you have raised in regard to the Swedish legal system and the Swedish Ambassador to Australia would be more appropriately raised with Swedish authorities.

The Australian Government continues to offer Mr Assange consular assistance and our officials have been in regular contact with him or his representatives since legal processes were initiated in 2010. The Government is monitoring legal developments in both the UK and Sweden to ensure that due process is followed.

Thank you for bringing your views to the attention of the Minister.

Yours sincerely,

Claire McCormish
Acting Assistant Secretary
Consular Operations Branch

It is commonplace for politicians to avoid questions; but this letter is especially abstruse in that it only addresses the support which it claims the Australian government has been offering to Julian Assange. Christine Assange does not believe that her son has been getting appropriate consular support. In August 2012, she told Samaya Chanthaphavong that:

“Julian has had no consular assistance whatsoever since 2010. All the government has done is to book seats at hearings and collect evidence and scurry back to whoever. We know that a lot of evidence has been sent back to the US in regards to Wikileaks. They don’t acknowledge Julian’s presence in the courtroom, they do not offer any assistance, they do not offer advice or feedback.”[1]

The letter from Senator Carr’s office bears out the claims made by Christine Assange. Perhaps Carr thinks he has answered our letter. Perhaps he genuinely believes that Julian Assange has had consular support. If this is the case, then we would respectfully question what he smokes. Mr Carr has joined a known supporter of torture and rendition in urging Julian Assange to go to Sweden. This is the kind of support being offered by the Australian Foreign Office and Government.

The reply to our letter answers none of the three questions asked. It is like going into a greengrocer’s, asking for three cabbages, and being thrown a coconut. What we really wanted to know from Australia was whether Bob Carr would disassociate himself from the Swedish ambassador because of his track-record on extradition and torture. If Senator Carr was prepared to disassociate himself from Ambassador Sven-Olof Petersson, would he not have said so? We are forced to assume that he agrees with rendition and torture and the handing over of innocent subjects to the CIA.

Sweden’s record speaks for itself. It allowed, and the government probably even sanctioned, the recent rendition of two Swedes of Somalian extraction, Ali Yasin Ahmed and Mohamed Yusuf, who were picked up in Djibouti and rendered by the United States together with a British subject also of Somalian extraction.[2] The British man, Mahdi Hashi, was stripped of his British citizenship for alleged terrorist activity, even though he had not been tried.[3] Where was Mr Hashi after his disappearance from England? Was he interrogated aboard a US navy vessel.[4] Theresa May’s racist anti-Islamist actions are well documented.

Senator Carr has shown little sympathy for his fellow-countryman and Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange. On the other hand he has been happy to entertain and encourage the Swedish ambassador with whom he planted a mixture of pines and maples on the campus of Canberra University in November 2012.[5] At this event, he unveiled a plaque in memory of Raoul Wallenberg. Ironically he used an epithet ascribed to Edmund Burke, which incidentally Burke never actually said or wrote, but many think he did:

“All that is required for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.”

In response to our request, Senator Carr, who may well be a good man for all we know, chose to do nothing.

Editor’s Notes: John Goss is a writer and researcher, United Kingdom; Rafik Saley is general secretary of the African Committee for Development in Stockholm, Sweden; Okoth Osewe is a journalist and author, he writes for Kenya Stockholm Blog. Photographs two, three, four, five, six and seven by Takver and photograph one by John Blower.

References

1. http://rightnow.org.au/topics/asylum-seekers/interview-with-christine-assange/
2. http://www.thelocal.se/45252/20121224 and http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/01/02/obamas-embrace-of-rendition-the-appearance-of-three-men-with-somali-roots-in-federal-court/
3. http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/12/22/missing-british-somali-man-reappears-in-new-york-court/
4. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/07/world/africa/07detain.html?_r=1
5. http://newsjunkiepost.com/2012/12/27/is-a-zionist-connection-at-play-to-frame-wikileaks-assange-in-sweden/ and http://www.jwire.com.au/news/wallenberg-memorialised/30208