as posted here
The United Nations report on the Gaza conflict has proved ASIO is motivated by politics
and not intelligence gathering, says Asem Judeh, long time human rights activist. He says
ASIO’s claims have been undermined by the 575-page UN Fact Finding Mission on the
Gaza Conflict (the Goldstone Report).
"The Goldstone report demonstrates the absurdity and hypocrisy of condemning Hamas'
Brigades as a terrorist organization, while completely ignoring the extreme terrorism and
provocation by Israel. Remember, the Palestinians are a people without a country, being
constantly subjected to violence, humiliation and the theft of their land."
"Is ASIO an intelligence organization or a political tool?" he asks. "Many of ASIO’s
supposed ‘facts’ are based on the internet sources, which cannot be relied upon." This is not
intelligence, it is politics. ASIO has an important role to get accurate facts to advise the
Attorney-General and Parliament on important issues on security and safety that should
concern all Australians.
"It is not supposed to be affected by politics. It is supposed to analyse politics. But it is clear
that ASIO has been influenced. Consequently we have the absurdity of Hamas's Brigades
being declared a terrorist organization, but the use of extreme forms of terror against civilian
populations in Gaza by Israel, including the use of phosphorous bombs, is ignored. It is the
kind of attitude that gives Israel an excuse to kill Palestinian civilians, destroy their property
and ruin the civilian infrastructure."
Judeh says the Palestinians in Gaza are still suffering from the deprivations and humiliations
of Israel’s collective punitive sanctions imposed in June 2007, which have denied the
Palestinians almost all basic household staples, construction materials to rebuild destroyed
homes and medicines to relieve the pain and suffering of the thousands injured as well as the
acutely and chronically ill. "It is a classic tactic of terrorism: deprive people of their safety and
dignity in order to achieve a political end."
He says the report confirms this. It states that there is evidence of Israel’s intent "to punish,
humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity
both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of
dependency and vulnerability."
"Who are the terrorists?" asks Judeh. "No evidence was found of Hamas using its own
people as human shields, but there were numerous incidents cited of Palestinians being
used as human shields by Israeli soldiers."
Judeh says the Goldstone report provides a legal basis for applying the Geneva Conventions
to Israel’s behavior. He says Australia has an obligation to demand that claims of war crimes
against Israel be heard before the International Criminal Court of Justice. "Maybe ASIO can
stop turning a blind eye, start behaving like an intelligence organisaton, and pay attention
to the facts," he says.
as posted here
public news and things I spy ..
Saturday 24 October 2009
Europe looks Down Under for answers
as posted here
Greg Sheridan, Foreign editor | October 24, 2009
Article from: The Australian
UNCONTROLLED Muslim immigration into Europe has been a public policy failure, if not an outright disaster. This is the view of most Europeans, as measured by opinion polls, and of a large number of European officials and politicians. Having just spent a month in Europe, talking to dozens of officials, politicians and immigrants, it is a view I reluctantly share.
This is given sharp relief by the illegal immigration crisis Australia is experiencing to its north.
For across Europe there is great admiration for the success and durability of the Australian immigration program.
The elements of the program which European officials most admire are that Australia selects which immigrants it takes, in skills, family reunion and refugee categories, and that the program enjoys public support.
When proponents of open borders in Australia dismiss the numbers coming illegally by boat in the north as trivial, and compare it with the huge numbers coming into Europe, they are wrong on two counts.
If the illegal route to Australia in our north gets established the numbers will radically increase. Second, almost every European nation is taking increasing steps to control Europe's borders at the same time as internal European politics is increasingly polarised over Muslim immigration.
Australia stands at perhaps a pivotal moment. Misdirected sentimentalism about illegal immigrants could easily swing us towards losing control of our immigration program. This could lead to European-style failure and the erosion of support for our big and successful immigration program. This in turn would see the official program cut back and the result would be fewer immigrants, and fewer refugees. The posturing vanity of ostentatious compassion would once again have had damaging human consequences.
Director of Immigration Francis Etienne in Paris spoke about reforms to the French bureaucracy dealing with immigration. One was the creation of a new super department called the Ministry of Immigration, Integration, National Identity and Mutually Supportive Development (it sounds better in French).
"There was an assumption, with the new President (Sarkozy) that assimilation had failed. We were looking at trends around the world and we needed a policy. We stopped having immigration to France for work purposes back in 1974," he said.
"We assumed that those who came for work back in the 1950s and '60s would go back. Of course they didn't, they wanted to stay. So we needed a new vision. We looked a lot to Australia, and to other countries where immigration has always been a tradition. We want to go back to the early 1970s and ask how they worked it."
Etienne is adamant that France is not interested in replicating multiculturalism. France does not want any official stress on the group identities of immigrants. However, there are other features of Australian policy he says French policymakers find very helpful: "Your points system (for selecting immigrants) is very attractive. We get inspiration from you. Saying to immigrants that you have skills, you can make a contribution, your coming here works for us as well, that is a very attractive approach."
Australians should mark these words well. Many French officials say France is trying its level best to regain control of its borders. This is made harder by the free movement of people within Europe itself. No French policymaker I spoke to wants to reverse that. But they are trying to reassert European control of European borders.
Maxime Tandonnet, Sarkozy's chief immigration adviser, said that "each European country has deployed considerable resources" to re-establish control of Europe's borders.
Thierry Mariani, a centre-right French politician very close to Sarkozy, said: "Australia is protected by being an island, and it has controlled its borders. (But) 25 per cent of (Muslim immigrants to France) don't speak French, especially women from the Maghreb (north Africa). The wives can't help children with their homework, the kids don't get good grades, so they don't get good jobs, so there is the immediate risk of delinquency. There is a set of measures now designed individually for young people to help them integrate, but we have lost 15 years."
Professor Antonio Missiroli of the European Policy Centre in Brussels said the number of Muslims in EU countries was estimated by some to be 15 million.
"They are concentrated in urban areas. There were two opposite models, France and The Netherlands. The Netherlands was most liberal but now the mood against Muslims is most bad there. France was the most conservative. But both models failed. (Muslim immigrants) don't get jobs. They are discriminated against. Boys 15 to 25 years of age are aggressive.
"The sources of Muslim immigration are not just Turkey and the Maghreb, but also now sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, Pakistan and Afghanistan."
Are things getting worse?
"There are some indicators - London bombings, riots in Paris, attitudes in The Netherlands, the media suggest it is getting worse."
A lot of Australian politicians and media commentators tend to think our happy immigration experience is just a natural outcome of a good society welcoming lots of new people. In fact it is because successive Australian governments have been very careful to craft and sell a particular program, not to inflict it on people against their will.
Central to this has been government agencies choosing which immigrants come to Australia. Within that choice, emphasis is on the economic and other contribution immigrants can make to Australia.
This does not preclude compassion. Australia has a very big refugee intake. But nothing would sour this more quickly than a rapid inflow of Muslim immigrants who have not been chosen by the government but simply turned up in boats.
The spike now in boat arrivals involves Sri Lankans, but this is primarily a route that would be used by Muslim illegal immigrants. There is nothing wrong with Muslim immigration. It goes without saying that the vast majority of Muslim immigrants are good Australians and perfectly law-abiding citizens. However, it is simply denying reality to pretend that the cultural distinctiveness and assertiveness of Islam, and the propensity for a small but distinctively substantial minority to be attracted to extremism, does not pose problems.
The sentimental windbaggery of those opposed to tough enforcement measures in the waters to our north threatens the integrity, and therefore the sustainability, of our immigration system.
Further, the numbers are not trivial. Attorney-General Robert McClelland said there had been more than 80 "disruptions", by the Indonesians, of planned people-smuggling operations into Australia. These involved another 1500 people. If those had been added to the nearly 2000 who have arrived by boat in the past year, that would give you 3500.
If that number were successfully reaching Australia every year, and if the Indonesians were not intercepting and disrupting them, you can be absolutely assured the people-smuggling business would boom beyond anything we have recently seen.
Australia is living on Indonesian goodwill. Of course Australia pays a lot of money, and makes a lot of effort, to sustain that goodwill.
The Australian Federal Police have been rightly praised for their intimate counter-terrorism co-operation with the Indonesians.
But the AFP in Indonesia also devote an enormous effort to helping the Indonesians identify and capture people-smugglers. So, in its own way, does the Australian Secret Intelligence Service.
The Rudd government understands all this very well, but its rhetoric in the second half of the week, as it tried to hurt the opposition, tended to obscure this. The government sends two conflicting messages - one, that it is, as Rudd said clearly and correctly, tough on illegal immigration, and two, that it is compassionate to asylum-seekers.
While of course there is an absolute obligation on Australia to observe and respect the human rights of anybody who comes under its jurisdiction, in truth these messages are in conflict. There is only one form of compassion asylum-seekers want, and that is permanent settlement in Australia.
If this becomes the norm, then the Australian government will have lost control of its borders.
This, the government does not want. Immigration Minister Chris Evans said this week: "A lot of people in this debate are basically open-borders people. That's not this government's view. We actually know we've got to maintain strong borders and control who comes into this country."
Australia is an immigration success story, while Europe has had a much more troubled experience. Many people this week bizarrely want to put us on the path to European failure.
as posted here
Greg Sheridan, Foreign editor | October 24, 2009
Article from: The Australian
UNCONTROLLED Muslim immigration into Europe has been a public policy failure, if not an outright disaster. This is the view of most Europeans, as measured by opinion polls, and of a large number of European officials and politicians. Having just spent a month in Europe, talking to dozens of officials, politicians and immigrants, it is a view I reluctantly share.
This is given sharp relief by the illegal immigration crisis Australia is experiencing to its north.
For across Europe there is great admiration for the success and durability of the Australian immigration program.
The elements of the program which European officials most admire are that Australia selects which immigrants it takes, in skills, family reunion and refugee categories, and that the program enjoys public support.
When proponents of open borders in Australia dismiss the numbers coming illegally by boat in the north as trivial, and compare it with the huge numbers coming into Europe, they are wrong on two counts.
If the illegal route to Australia in our north gets established the numbers will radically increase. Second, almost every European nation is taking increasing steps to control Europe's borders at the same time as internal European politics is increasingly polarised over Muslim immigration.
Australia stands at perhaps a pivotal moment. Misdirected sentimentalism about illegal immigrants could easily swing us towards losing control of our immigration program. This could lead to European-style failure and the erosion of support for our big and successful immigration program. This in turn would see the official program cut back and the result would be fewer immigrants, and fewer refugees. The posturing vanity of ostentatious compassion would once again have had damaging human consequences.
Director of Immigration Francis Etienne in Paris spoke about reforms to the French bureaucracy dealing with immigration. One was the creation of a new super department called the Ministry of Immigration, Integration, National Identity and Mutually Supportive Development (it sounds better in French).
"There was an assumption, with the new President (Sarkozy) that assimilation had failed. We were looking at trends around the world and we needed a policy. We stopped having immigration to France for work purposes back in 1974," he said.
"We assumed that those who came for work back in the 1950s and '60s would go back. Of course they didn't, they wanted to stay. So we needed a new vision. We looked a lot to Australia, and to other countries where immigration has always been a tradition. We want to go back to the early 1970s and ask how they worked it."
Etienne is adamant that France is not interested in replicating multiculturalism. France does not want any official stress on the group identities of immigrants. However, there are other features of Australian policy he says French policymakers find very helpful: "Your points system (for selecting immigrants) is very attractive. We get inspiration from you. Saying to immigrants that you have skills, you can make a contribution, your coming here works for us as well, that is a very attractive approach."
Australians should mark these words well. Many French officials say France is trying its level best to regain control of its borders. This is made harder by the free movement of people within Europe itself. No French policymaker I spoke to wants to reverse that. But they are trying to reassert European control of European borders.
Maxime Tandonnet, Sarkozy's chief immigration adviser, said that "each European country has deployed considerable resources" to re-establish control of Europe's borders.
Thierry Mariani, a centre-right French politician very close to Sarkozy, said: "Australia is protected by being an island, and it has controlled its borders. (But) 25 per cent of (Muslim immigrants to France) don't speak French, especially women from the Maghreb (north Africa). The wives can't help children with their homework, the kids don't get good grades, so they don't get good jobs, so there is the immediate risk of delinquency. There is a set of measures now designed individually for young people to help them integrate, but we have lost 15 years."
Professor Antonio Missiroli of the European Policy Centre in Brussels said the number of Muslims in EU countries was estimated by some to be 15 million.
"They are concentrated in urban areas. There were two opposite models, France and The Netherlands. The Netherlands was most liberal but now the mood against Muslims is most bad there. France was the most conservative. But both models failed. (Muslim immigrants) don't get jobs. They are discriminated against. Boys 15 to 25 years of age are aggressive.
"The sources of Muslim immigration are not just Turkey and the Maghreb, but also now sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, Pakistan and Afghanistan."
Are things getting worse?
"There are some indicators - London bombings, riots in Paris, attitudes in The Netherlands, the media suggest it is getting worse."
A lot of Australian politicians and media commentators tend to think our happy immigration experience is just a natural outcome of a good society welcoming lots of new people. In fact it is because successive Australian governments have been very careful to craft and sell a particular program, not to inflict it on people against their will.
Central to this has been government agencies choosing which immigrants come to Australia. Within that choice, emphasis is on the economic and other contribution immigrants can make to Australia.
This does not preclude compassion. Australia has a very big refugee intake. But nothing would sour this more quickly than a rapid inflow of Muslim immigrants who have not been chosen by the government but simply turned up in boats.
The spike now in boat arrivals involves Sri Lankans, but this is primarily a route that would be used by Muslim illegal immigrants. There is nothing wrong with Muslim immigration. It goes without saying that the vast majority of Muslim immigrants are good Australians and perfectly law-abiding citizens. However, it is simply denying reality to pretend that the cultural distinctiveness and assertiveness of Islam, and the propensity for a small but distinctively substantial minority to be attracted to extremism, does not pose problems.
The sentimental windbaggery of those opposed to tough enforcement measures in the waters to our north threatens the integrity, and therefore the sustainability, of our immigration system.
Further, the numbers are not trivial. Attorney-General Robert McClelland said there had been more than 80 "disruptions", by the Indonesians, of planned people-smuggling operations into Australia. These involved another 1500 people. If those had been added to the nearly 2000 who have arrived by boat in the past year, that would give you 3500.
If that number were successfully reaching Australia every year, and if the Indonesians were not intercepting and disrupting them, you can be absolutely assured the people-smuggling business would boom beyond anything we have recently seen.
Australia is living on Indonesian goodwill. Of course Australia pays a lot of money, and makes a lot of effort, to sustain that goodwill.
The Australian Federal Police have been rightly praised for their intimate counter-terrorism co-operation with the Indonesians.
But the AFP in Indonesia also devote an enormous effort to helping the Indonesians identify and capture people-smugglers. So, in its own way, does the Australian Secret Intelligence Service.
The Rudd government understands all this very well, but its rhetoric in the second half of the week, as it tried to hurt the opposition, tended to obscure this. The government sends two conflicting messages - one, that it is, as Rudd said clearly and correctly, tough on illegal immigration, and two, that it is compassionate to asylum-seekers.
While of course there is an absolute obligation on Australia to observe and respect the human rights of anybody who comes under its jurisdiction, in truth these messages are in conflict. There is only one form of compassion asylum-seekers want, and that is permanent settlement in Australia.
If this becomes the norm, then the Australian government will have lost control of its borders.
This, the government does not want. Immigration Minister Chris Evans said this week: "A lot of people in this debate are basically open-borders people. That's not this government's view. We actually know we've got to maintain strong borders and control who comes into this country."
Australia is an immigration success story, while Europe has had a much more troubled experience. Many people this week bizarrely want to put us on the path to European failure.
as posted here
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