Israel is constructing a massive refugee camp to hold up to 10,000 humans who arrive each year seeking asylum, before ejecting them to the countries they're fleeing.
The detention centre is to be built at or near the site of a former prison camp for Palestinians in the southern Negev desert, near Israel’s border with Egypt. It will be run by the prison service, and detainees will not be allowed to work. People could languish in the refugee camp for an extended period, even years, without work or education. It is in violation of the 1951 United Nations convention on refugees, to which Israel is a signatory and which states that the country the refugee arrives in is responsible for his or her welfare, health and rights. These rights include freedom of movement, access to documents and the right to work.
An anti-migrant xenophobia is normalized by PM Netanyahu, saying: “The wave of infiltrators must be stopped. The wave is increasing and is threatening Israeli jobs. We will not stop war refugees. But we must stop the mass entry of illegal migrants because of the harsh implications for Israel’s character”.
Continuing:
Physicians for Human Rights said, “To incarcerate victims of torture, rape, war and murder without time limits, without judicial review and in contravention of international conventions for the protection of refugees will be a mark of Cain on the State of Israel.”
The group said that the plan would not only not stop the refugees coming via Egypt, it would worsen their physical and psychological health.
A senior government official in Jerusalem said that Israel was ready to renew its offer to pay millions of dollars to any African or Western country willing to absorb the influx of migrants attempting to infiltrate Israel.
Of course, as Canadians may remember, "none is too many".
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel and the Hotline for Migrant Workers yesterday made an urgent appeal to the prime minister after his bureau announced the plan, saying that Israel continues to breach its obligations to asylum-seekers.
"This is another and very shocking level of continuing disregard by the government of Israel for its moral and legal obligations both to refugees and asylum seekers and to children - both groups of which receive the greatest protection in international law, law in various countries and in Israeli law," wrote attorneys Oded Feller and Osnat Cohen-Lifshitz, lawyers for the two organizations wrote.
The survival of [Berlusconi's] rightwing government was greeted by widespread disturbances in Rome where hooded and helmeted protesters set up flaming barricades, attacked police with sticks and bars, smashed the windows of shops and banks, and set alight cars, police vans and local authority vehicles. Police responded with baton charges, teargas and, in some cases reported by witnesses, indiscriminate beatings. []
Opponents of the government, including trade unionists and revolutionary socialists carrying red flags, were joined by students demonstrating against a recently approved university reform bill and people left homeless by the L'Aquila earthquake last year. The marchers filled the broad, long avenue that runs from the Colosseum through Rome's ancient forums. []
In the broad Piazza del Popolo, the scene of some of the most violent clashes, two thick pillars of smoke rose from the remains of a barricade and mingled with teargas fired to disperse the protesters. Student demonstrations were also held in several other cities, including Milan where they briefly occupied the stock exchange.
Despite repeated pleas and tears (I am no courageous protester, I discovered), the police refused to let me go – for seven hours. I could not help but be shocked at my situation and at this police strategy. It was also clear from a number of conversations with officers that many of the frontline did not approve of this strategy either. Several told me they sympathised and blamed their senior officers. This is no survey but they could clearly see that most of us on that side of the square, now in an orderly queue stretching from Westminster Abbey to parliament and waiting to leave, were not causing disorder. []
Nevertheless, people joining an orderly queue can hardly be described as "disorderly". And after standing for over an hour in that queue only to be told they were not to be released a startling number of people did go over to the other side of the square, possibly to join in the vandalism of the Treasury. If so, then the decision not to release people, who were peacefully trying to leave, inflamed the situation, which is the key criticism of this strategy.[]
There remains, however, another key protagonist in protest: the media. On getting home last night I was stunned to see journalists had not told the whole story of the protest that I witnessed. Instead, the focus on the attack on the royals and the Treasury, shocking though they are, have allowed for sensationalist coverage and tough talk. This seems to have left little room for debate about the appropriateness of these tactics, particularly against children.
The city of Berkeley [] is considering a resolution to declare alleged WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning a hero.
According to a resolution being considered for vote, the imprisoned Army private suspected of providing WikiLeaks with its most significant U.S. releases should be released from prison and praised for his “courage in bringing truth to the American people and the people of the world.”
“If he did what he’s accused of doing, he’s a patriot and should get a medal,” Bob Meola, author of the resolution told the San Francisco Chronicle. “I think the war criminals should be the ones prosecuted, not the whistle-blowers.”
Meola is a member of the city’s Peace and Justice Commission, which advises the city council and school board on peace and social justice issues. The commission passed the resolution by a vote of 7-3. It will be up for a City Council vote on Dec. 14.
By month's end, 588 stores in 27 states will be participating in the program. A short video featuring Napolitano will appear on TV screens at select checkout lanes, asking Wal-Mart shoppers to contact local law enforcement to report suspicious activity.
"If you see something suspicious in the parking lot or in the store, say something immediately," [Homeland Security Secretary] Napolitano said in the video. "Report suspicious activity to your local police or sheriff. If you need help ask a Wal-Mart manager for assistance."
“Homeland security starts with hometown security, and each of us plays a critical role in keeping our country and communities safe,” she said. "This partnership will help millions of shoppers across the nation identify and report indicators of terrorism, crime and other threats to law enforcement authorities.”
Toronto police want to keep 52 of the 77 surveillance cameras they temporarily purchased for the G20 summit, more than tripling the force’s stock of CCTV equipment.
They would buy them back at half price from the federal government, which is footing the bill for G20 security.
The police also plan to buy back 400 of 5,200 sets of tactical safety gear, including helmets, gas masks and eye shields, as well as the three sound-cannon LRADs police acquired leading up to the summit.
These temporary mega events are commonly exploited to purchase expensive and controversial military weaponry and surveillance equipment that may otherwise not be permitted by the public and local budgets. It is understandable that these groups would be reluctant to return these devices and or dismantle new surveillance networks.
Stephen Graham discusses this in Cities Under Siege, the key book of military urbanism.
The Ontario Ombudsman report has also been released, condemning the the summit's mass civil rights violations. It is available here.
In a reluctant post on Wikileaks, Peter Hemminger relates the events to Foucault's belief that "the only way to confront the hidden power structures in society is to force them to act in a way that reveals their existence":
Any ideas that people had about free expression on the internet, about the value of a free press, about transparency and accountability, about unbiased educational standards, are all being called into question. Political figures who endorsed the value — and the necessity — of journalists pushing through government censorship are now calling for their government to censor journalists.
But this is what I mean. Five-hundred words in, and I still haven’t listed a day’s worth of facts, or addressed the content of the Wikileaks documents, or done much more than amass a collection of links. The only coherent picture I can make out of it all is exceedingly cynical about governments, media and corporate institutions, and overly idealistic about the people donating to Wikileaks, finding ways to circumvent the restrictions that the dominant power structures are imposing and becoming vocal about their dissatisfaction with a system that prizes largely pointless secrecy over truth and accountability.
In fact, the main reason I’m posting this is that the first time I thought about posting about it, I actually questioned whether doing so was in some way dangerous. And the fact that the atmosphere out there is such that it dissuades people from even entering a discussion — that the rhetoric from the government and politicians is having a legitimate chilling effect on the debate — is reason enough to get involved, even in a minor way.
This reaction by obscured or hidden power structures sees to be have been anticipated by Assange beforehand, described in essays from 2006.
The fear and passivity that the transborder state-corporate response is instilling among the public is visible -- not least in the above post, but even among my own friends. Some are quite concerned that they've donated in the past to Wikileaks, an organization that, so far, has been charged with no crime, is responsible for no deaths and is cooperating with major media corporations, but has troublingly exposed an obscured arrangement of violent global power. These events and reactions also expose the other side of the obscured power arrangement: an overwhelmingly passive and intimidated public, deeply worried about upsetting the normalcy of their everyday.
An impressive and beautiful video for The Avett Brothers' "Head Full of Doubt / Road Full of Promise". Made from a painting gradually altered 2600 times, it shows the evolution and decay of an urban space.
A rather unusual late-2009 ad from Cisco promoting their urban surveillance technologies. Features the Canadian actress Ellen Page in an attempt to humanize and make "ordinary" the military-urban complex.
