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ADC Webwatch
17 May 2010
Volume 3 No. 19 |
Grandmaster of dissidence, Garry Kasparov
"To stop Iran, you must bring down Putin." |
Unless America is truly ready to take on some of these oligarchal heavyweights, says Kasparov, brow furrowed now, speaking still faster and with still more passion, “just don’t tell me you want to stop the Iranian nuclear program. Iran will not stop unless Russia is ready to join the sanctions, because apart from the nuclear technology and anti-missile defense systems, Russia is a main energy supplier. It seems the [Obama] administration is ready to attack Goldman Sachs,” he says witheringly, “but it is not ready to attack Putin’s financial interests. Which means that Iran feels safe, and rightly so.”
How is one to “attack” the Putin “family”? On what basis?
Kasparov looks at me a little pityingly. “I think there’s enough,” he says after a pause, and rapidly cites a sequence of tax-evasion and money laundering allegations that he believes could be successfully pursued, were there sufficient will. “I’m sure there are many options” for international law enforcement. “If you believe that the Iranian nuclear bomb is an imminent threat, not only to Israel but also to the interests of the United States and the Western world, you act,” he says flatly. “If you don’t believe it, you can find thousands of excuses [not to act] – as the Western powers found 75 years ago when not acting against the rise of Nazi Germany.” David Horovitz, Jerusalem Post, 14 May 2010 |
TV show teaches Aboriginal language to kids
Allow kids to talk to their grandparents |
A TELEVISION channel is broadcasting the first lessons in an Aboriginal language aimed at young children, in a bid to stem an alarming decline that wiped out hundreds of native dialects. "Waabiny Time," for three to six-year-olds, teaches "yes," "no" and other basic terms in the Noongar language, which is spoken in the southwestern region around Perth. The show, broadcast daily and repeated Saturdays, started last month with 13 half-hour episodes and proved so popular the entire series is now being screened again.
"I realized while working with Aboriginal communities that kids weren't talking with their grandparents in their language," producer Cath Trimboli said. "It is disappearing; kids are not encouraged to talk in this language. So I wanted to work on this." Noongar is one of about 60 indigenous languages still spoken in Australia, compared with about 250 - and up to 700 dialects - in circulation at the time of white settlement in 1788. Of 13 Noongar dialects, just five now remain. The Australian, 10 May 2010 |
Cost of Christmas Island blows out to almost $1b
Asylum seekers challenge budget |
The Rudd government has outlayed more than $1 billion to boost border protection as it continues to deal with a flood of asylum seekers heading for Australia. The budget papers also show the cost of housing asylum seekers at Christmas Island has blown out to close to $1 billion. More than $790 million has been allocated over the next four years in offshore detention measures, including $358 million in 2010/11 alone.
However, the budget papers show the number of arrivals is expected to decline with just $156 million for offshore management in 2011/12. The cost of housing asylum seekers at Christmas Island this financial year has also been revised up, to $183.3 million, taking the total over the five years to 2013/14 to more than $973.6 million. Sydney Morning Herald, 11 May 2010 |
New laws crackdown on people smugglers
People smuggling or political posturing |
PEOPLE smugglers will find it harder to ply their trade after parliament approved tough new laws. The Federal Government's Bill, supported by the opposition, creates two new people smuggling crimes.
Smuggling ventures to Australia that involve exploitation or the danger of serious harm or death will carry a maximum jail term of 20 years.
The other new offence, with a maximum 10 year jail term, targets people who provide material support for smuggling activities. That will include assistance such as cash, false documents and transport, but won't apply to people who pay a smuggler for their or a relative's passage. |Intelligence and law enforcement agencies will get new phone tapping and surveillance powers too.The Australian, 13 May 2010 |
'Klan' teacher Graeme Frederick McNeil jailed for murder cover-up
White supremists show their standards |
A QUEENSLAND teacher who confessed to being a senior Ku Klux Klan official was yesterday jailed for eight years after helping a teenage student to dump the murdered body of his older brother, who had threatened to expose the links to the racist organisation. Graeme Frederick McNeil, 46, pleaded guilty in the Queensland Supreme Court in Toowoomba to being an accessory after the fact of murder and to lying to police over helping his Year 11 student, Anthony Rowlingson, try to cover up the killing, which has shocked the quiet rural community.
In July 2007, Rowlingson, then 16, approached his 19-year-old brother, Robert, from behind and shot him twice in the head with a heavy-calibre .243 rifle. The shooting occurred on the family farm after Robert had discovered KKK material in Anthony's room and on a laptop computer lent to the troubled student by his science teacher and counsellor, McNeil. Tony Koch, The Australian , 14 May 2010 |
British neo-nazi jailed for 10 years for preparing acts of terrorism
Neo-Nazi pleads guilty to making chemical weapons |
A white supremacist who dismissed other extreme groups as weak and gutless was jailed for 10 years today after becoming the first Briton to be convicted for producing a chemical weapon. Ian Davison, 42, whose Aryan Strike Force idolised Hitler and flew swastika flags on secret training days in Cumbria, was castigated by a judge for recruiting his teenage son Nicky, a part-time milkman and would-be soldier, who was given two years' detention for possessing material useful to commit acts of terror. A sentencing hearing at Newcastle crown court heard that other alleged members of the ASF, which recruited some 350 people worldwide online, will face trial later this year.
The group's antics appeared bizarre, jurors were told at an earlier trial, and Ian Davison's barrister called him a "superwimp with a fragile ego". But police were seriously concerned about their intentions and the threat they posed. Condemning Ian Davison's "appalling" behaviour, Judge John Milford expressed surprise that The Anarchists' Cookbook and The Poor Man's James Bond, whose bombmaking advice was circulated by the pair, were still available on Amazon. Possession and circulation of such material was part of the case against Nicky Davison, 19, who was convicted last month. His father earlier pleaded guilty to producing a chemical weapon, preparing acts of terrorism, three counts of possessing material useful to commit acts of terror and possessing a prohibited weapon. Martin Wainwright, The Guardian, 14 May 2010 |
Nazis draws violent counter-protest
Unambigous response to white supremacist provocation |
A rally of about 40 white supremacists Saturday on the lawn of Los Angeles City Hall drew hundreds of counter-protesters, sparked brawls in which two people were severely beaten and ended with crowds of demonstrators hurling rocks and bottles at police and departing supremacists. The rally, conducted by the National Socialist Movement, prompted the Los Angeles Police Department to go on tactical alert as counter-protesters from throughout the region flooded into downtown L.A. They included a wide assortment of African American, Jewish, Latino, immigrants-rights and anarchist groups.
While some counter-protesters said they had heard about the event through social media such as Twitter and had come to urge peace in the face of the group's hateful message, others had clearly come for a fight. At least five of them were arrested by the end of the demonstration for throwing eggs and rocks. Before members of the white supremacist group had arrived, a bare-chested middle-aged man with Nazi insignias tattooed on his chest and back walked into a crowd of hundreds of counter-protesters gathered near 1st and Spring streets. Surrounded, the man mockingly bobbed his head to the rhythm of demonstrators chanting "Nazi scum." Robert Faturechi and Richard Winton, Los Angeles Times, 28 Apr 2010
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Merkel calls fight against antisemitism one of her key priorities
Antisemitism is a challenge for the whole of society |
Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that the fight against anti-Semitism as well as remembering the Holocaust are permanent duties for German society as a whole. "Fighting anti-Semitism at its root is a challenge for the whole of society, even if the vast majority of people do not think in an anti-Semitic way," she said in a full-page interview with the leading newspaper ‘Süddeutsche Zeitung’.
Merkel vowed that she would "always" fight against anti-Semitism even if that led to "insulting letters about being a 'puppet of the Jewish conspiracy' and worse". She encouraged Germans to talk unflinchingly about World War II and the Holocaust: "It is essential for the understanding of our identity and of our future to talk about Nazism and the extermination of the Jews," Merkel said.Merkel also spoke about how Israel impressed her when she first visited the country as a government minister in 1991. WJC, 9 May 2010 |
Collusion marrs Doomadgee case
No closure for family of Palm Island victim |
THE investigation into the 2004 death in custody of Palm Island man Mulrunji Doomadgee was stripped of credibility because of a "perception of collusion" between local detectives and the policeman who caused the Aborigine's fatal injuries. But Queensland Deputy Chief Magistrate Brian Hine, delivering the findings of the third coronial inquest into the affair, found yesterday there was no evidence that Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley had meant to inflict the injuries that killed Doomadgee. The open finding on whether his death was accidental or deliberately caused by Sergeant Hurley dashed the family's professed hopes to finally secure "closure".
Doomadgee, 36, died after he was arrested while drunk on Palm Island, off Townsville, on November 19, 2004, creating such outrage in the community that people rioted a week later. The original inquest was abandoned when Queensland State Coroner Michael Barnes stood down to avoid a perception of bias while the findings of the second inquiry, blaming Sergeant Hurley, were quashed after he was acquitted of charges of manslaughter and assault. Mr Hine reported yesterday that Sergeant Hurley had been tipped off about crucial witness accounts by the police who carried out the initial investigation into the death in custody, creating the perception of collusion. Jamie Walker, The Australian, 15 May 2010 |
Why 'balance of terror' feels safer than the peace process
Impractical plans set the stage for violence |
Khaled Abu Toameh, 47, who writes for The Jerusalem Post and has a rare insight into both sides of the conflict, told Herald editors this week the so-called "proximity talks" are likely doomed to failure and could even prompt a third intifada, or Palestinian uprising. "The proximity talks are just going to increase real tensions, forcing the two sides to discuss very sensitive issues . . . It will create a bad feeling when once again another peace process has collapsed," he said during a visit sponsored by the the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies. ''Many Jews and Arabs say 'we miss the good old days' before peace or Oslo,'' he joked.
An Israeli citizen and Arab Muslim, one of 1.4 million Arabs in Israel, Toameh first worked for the Palestine Liberation Organisation newspaper Al-Fajr, where he said editors waited for instructions from Yasser Arafat about how big his picture should be and what should be on the front page. Wanting to be a ''real journalist'', he went on to work for foreign news organisations, such as BBC and CNN, where his high-level contacts on both sides and courageous independence provided invaluable insight. He says the principles of the Oslo accords - the 1993 negotiations between Arafat and Israel's Yitzhak Rabin, brokered by Bill Clinton - setting out the two-state solution architecture were ''wonderful'' but impractical, and set the stage for the second intifada. Miranda Devine, Sydney Morning Herald, 13 May 2010 |
Only truth will set Palestine free
Blind support results in hatred and corruption |
"When I write about corruption and bad government in Palestine it's because I care about the people and not because I support the occupation. I'm more pro-Palestinian than Mr Kazak because I'm demanding reform and democracy and good government for my people while he is sitting here in the comfort of Australia, preaching to us what's good and what's bad and spewing hatred. I don't receive threats from Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. I receive threats from people like Mr Kazak. When he calls me a traitor he is actually sending a message to extremists that they need to kill me simply because I am demanding reform and democracy."
"Hamas, Fatah, they know I am writing the truth. They just say to me, 'Why do you have to air the dirty linen in public?' But he refuses to be silent, saying he does more for Palestinian human rights and freedom of speech than Kazak, and that Palestinians in the diaspora who live cut off from the reality of life in the West Bank and Gaza do nothing to help Palestinians. They live in a parallel universe of leftist, radical ideology. They are much more hostile towards me than Palestinians living in Gaza or Ramallah." Rebecca Weisser, The Australian, 15-May-2010 | |
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ABOUT ADC WEBWATCH
Welcome to ADC Webwatch, a weekly update on what the public is hearing about issues of race, tolerance and human rights. Skim the newsletter to stay abreast of the issues or click on the hyperlinks for more information.
ADC Webwatch is published by the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission, a community organisation dedicated to opposing antisemitism and racism and promoting respect and tolerance.
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Antisemitism 
