NEW YORKERS AGAINST THE CORNELL-TECHNION PARTNERSHIP

This article is from Mondoweiss by email on 18 NOVEMBER 2013:

‘New Yorkers Against the Cornell-Technion Partnership’ oppose Technion’s role in

U.S. militarization and domestic spying

Nov 17, 2013 
New Yorkers Against the Cornell-Technion Partnership

The paper below, a revised transcript, was authored by Anna Calcutt and presented by her on behalf of New Yorkers Against the Cornell-Technion Partnership (NYACT) at Judson Memorial Church on October 23, 2013 as part of a panel discussion hosted by NYACT, entitled “Militarization, Domestic Spying, and the Boycott of Israel,” and including additional participants from Adalah-NY: The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel; Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM); and RootsAction.

Introduction

In December 2010, New York City Mayor Bloomberg announced a competition to build a 2.1 million square foot applied sciences and engineering graduate school in Manhattan.  He offered $100 million in New York taxpayer money and free land.^[1]  Various universities made bids, including Stanford, which were frontrunners until close to the end; however, Cornell University and the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology won the competition.^[2]

Behind close doors, Cornell and Technion had come to an agreement to enter the competition as a partnership.^[3]  This was decided without consulting staff, faculty, or students at Cornell, which is in violation of Cornell’s own by-laws.^[4]  It was done with as little information as possible being given out about Technion, the two universities waiting until 10 days before the city’s deadline for proposals before revealing their union publicly.  The winning bid was announced in December 2011 and is now known as “Cornell NYC Tech,” or just “Cornell Tech.”  Since then, reporting on the campus has scarcely mentioned the involvement of Technion, despite Cornell claiming that it was the inclusion of Technion which enabled them to win the competition.

The proposed campus is to be built on prime real estate on Roosevelt Island in the East River between the Upper East Side of Manhattan and Queens.  It will take about 25 years to construct, and entails the demolition of Goldwater Hospital, a long-term care facility on the Island.  The proposed site will include space for private companies on campus.

Since December 2012, this shameful collaboration now includes Google, which has donated free office space in its Chelsea building to house Cornell Tech until 2017, when the first new academic building on Roosevelt Island is scheduled for completion.^[5]

New Yorkers Against the Cornell-Technion Partnership, or NYACT, formed in February 2012, to oppose the collaboration of Cornell and Technion.  We formed in response to the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions, and in particular to the Palestinian call for an academic boycott of Israel.^[6,7]

We oppose any collaboration with Israeli academic or cultural institutions on the grounds that we do not support the whitewashing of Israeli apartheid.  While most Israeli universities are involved in one way or another in supporting Israeli Apartheid and the Occupation, Technion is an extreme example and is the most notorious and prestigious academic institution that cooperates with the Israeli military.  Quoting a New York Times article earlier this year, Yossi Vardi, who has founded or helped build more than 60 companies in Israel and has five degrees from the Technion states: “I can say without exaggeration that Israel could not have been built without the Technion…. There is a Technion graduate behind practically every highway, desalinization plant, new missile technology and start-up company in the country.”^[8]

Why do we oppose Technion coming to New York City?

• Technion’s links with surveillance operations

The American Technion Society, which is a New York City-based fundraising/public relations outlet for Technion, states in a YouTube video: “The world often turns to Israel for anti-terror and surveillance technology. But where does Israel turn? The Technion.”  For example the Technion’s Faculty of Electrical Engineering has developed de-hazing technologies used to improve surveillance images obtained by unmanned airborne drones.^[9]

Technion works with a large number of companies in Israel and worldwide.  This includes forging collaborations between academic departments and the private sector to develop specific technologies, having students work in partnership with companies on projects, training Technion graduates who go on to comprise the workforce including engineers, vice presidents and CEOs of businesses, and inviting companies to take part in graduate recruitment fairs on campus.^[10]

There is already a visiting assistant professor from Technion teaching at Cornell Tech in Google’s offices.  His department, Technion’s Computer Science department, lists among its industrial partners and affiliates Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, Elbit Systems, and Google, as well as some less well known companies such as Comverse, Amdocs, and Check Point.^{[11, 12]}  Technion also has close links with Verint, and NICE systems.  These less well-known companies are worth knowing about.
NICE systems, Comverse, and Check Point are three of Israel’s largest high-tech companies, and they are influenced by technology developed by Unit 8200 – Israel’s version of the NSA which is involved in the surveillance of Palestinian phone and internet traffic.^{[13, 14, 15]}

Check Point and NICE were founded by Unit 8200 alumni, and one of Comverse’s main products is based on the Unit’s technology.  Comverse develops and markets telecommunications software used, among other things, to direct airborne drones.^[16] And Check Point is an international provider of software and hardware products for IT security.  The ironically named NICE systems specializes in telephone voice recording, data security, and surveillance, as well as systems that analyze this recorded data.^[17]  NICE lists among its leading customers the New York Police Department and the Miami Police Department.^[18]

Verint, which acquired Comverse in February of this year, is considered the world leader in “electronic interception,” and Amdocs is the world’s largest billing service for telecommunications.  Both companies are based in Israel and are heavily funded by the Israeli government, with connections to the Israeli military and intelligence, and both have major contracts with the US government.  Verint and Amdocs form part of the backbone of the US government’s domestic intelligence surveillance technology.  Verint was one of the companies (the other being Narus) to which Verizon and AT&T outsourced their mass wiretapping of US citizens as orchestrated by the NSA since 2001. Amdocs has also been accused of wiretapping, for which it was investigated by the FBI.^{[19, 20, 21]}

Since 2006 Verint has worked with the US State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs to carry out a mass telephone surveillance system in Mexico.  According to Verint’s Mexico website: “Police forces, national security, intelligence and other government agencies can use these solutions …. as part of a large-scale system designed to generate evidence and intelligence….”^[22]

Verint is now headquartered on Long Island, and its President and CEO, a Technion graduate, stated his enthusiastic support for the partnership of Technion with Cornell at a 2012 Israel Day event at the New York Stock Exchange.^[23]

•  Technion’s involvement in military R+D

Technion is also heavily involved in research and development of military equipment.  Specialists at Technion developed the remote controlled capabilities of the Caterpillar D-9 tractor, the notorious armored bulldozer which is an essential weapon of Israel’s occupation, enabling the Israeli army to demolish approximately25,000 Palestinian homes since 1967.^[24] This bulldozer “performed remarkably during operation Cast Lead” – to quote an IDF Officer and is used by the Israeli military to destroy Palestinian homes, olive groves, and tunnels without any risk to its operators.^[25]

The first modern drone was developed in Israel in 1973, and Israel has gone on to become the single largest exporter of drones in the world,^{[26, 27]} as well as using drones to kill over 800 Palestinians between 2006 and 2011 alone.  Technion developed a program specifically for the research and development of drone technology, and includes in its achievements a weaponized, bomb-carrying “Stealth drone,” and the 9-inch wingspan surveillance “Dragonfly drone.”^[28]

Technion has deep relations with two major military companies in Israel; Rafael Advanced Defense Systems which is one of Israel’s largest government-sponsored weapons manufacturers, and Elbit Systems which is one of Israel’s biggest private weapons research companies.

Rafael is famous for its “advanced hybrid armour protection system,” which is used on the IDFs Merkava Mk 4 main battle tank.^{[29, 30]}  Since 2001, Technion has had an MBA program tailored specifically for Rafael managers.^[31]

Elbit is one of two main providers of the electronic detection fence, a key component of Israel’s separation Wall in the West Bank, which was ruled illegal by the the International Court of Justice, the principal judicial organ of the United Nations.^{[32, 33]}  Elbit also participated in the design of, and provided surveillance technology for, the US/Mexico border wall.^{[34, 35, 36]}

 Numerous agencies have divested from Elbit due to its violation of human rights, including Norway’s Finance Ministry, Denmark’s largest financial institution, and Sweden’s largest pension funds.^{[37, 38, 39]} In contrast, Technion established a center for the development of electro-optics in complete partnership with Elbit.^[40]

Furthermore, Technion practices institutional discrimination against Palestinian students by severely restricting their freedom of speech and assembly, and rewarding those Jewish students who, unlike most Palestinians, perform compulsory military service in Israel.^{[41, 42, 43]}

• How would Technion impact the New York City campus (and beyond)?

It’s worth noting some of the plans outlined for the New York City campus.  According to the Cornell Tech website, instead of traditional departments, programs at the new Cornell Tech campus will be organized around “hubs,” which will allow them to focus on generating technology to serve particular industry sectors.  Another unique aspect of the Cornell Tech program is that every student will have an industry mentor. ^[44]
Technion will formally be involved in the campus through the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Innovation Institute (JTCII) which will be directed by Craig Gotsman, another Technion computer science professor.  The institute will be responsible for a third of the academic activity on campus. The hope is to build an ecosystem like that of Haifa (the Israeli city in which Technion is located), where industry and academics feed off each other.

Their plan is to have “[i]nteraction with industry facilitated through industrial liaisons, who will forge and cultivate relationships between academic staff and the technology sector. These relationships will result in joint projects, sponsored research, and technology transfer from the campus to local industry. Industry mentors, entrepreneurs, and members of the venture capital community will be present on campus to help guide and shape students’ industrial projects, some of which may lead to independent spinoffs.”^[45]

This makes it clear that the affect of Cornell Tech would be much more wide-ranging than the confines of the proposed campus itself.  Furthermore, this is the first time an Israeli institute has been involved in building a campus on US soil.  I don’t think we can overstate the significance of Technion’s plans to build in New York City, being as it is a global hub of international business and commerce.

The Acting Consul General of Israel in New York stated “This is of strategic importance in terms of positioning Israel not only in America, but all over the world, as a bastion of creativity and innovation.”  Technion’s senior executive vice president has said, “The relationships established will make it easier for Israeli entrepreneurs to gain access to US markets.”^[46]

• Academic boycott of Israel

Academic boycott of Israeli institutions is morally justified.  When people ask about academic freedom, we have to ask not only whose freedom, but also why academic freedom should be elevated above basic human rights.  Crucially, the boycott is strategically sound.  Israel actively attempts to cover up its crimes by promoting its academic and technological achievements, and Israeli academic institutes, including Technion, rely on foreign investment.

In 2011, the University of Johannesburg in South Africa became the first to implement academic boycott of Israel when it severed its links with Ben Gurion University, ending a 25-year relationship.^[47]

 In April of this year, the general membership of the Association for Asian American Studies as well as the Teachers Union of Ireland both unanimously voted to support the boycott of Israeli universities, becoming respectively the first scholarly institution in the United States, and the first academic union in Europe, to do so.^{[48, 49]}

 In June, the Federation of French-speaking Students in Belgium, representing some 100,000 students from 25 institutions, voted to “freeze relations with Israeli universities.”^[50]

Many world-renowned scholars have come out in favor of the boycott, including in June of this year Professor Stephen Hawking, who courageously boycotted Israel’s Presidential Conference, and about which an editorial in the Boston Globe reported, “The movement that Hawking has signed on to aims to place pressure on Israel through peaceful means.”^{[51, 52]}

To see such a statement in a mainstream US broadsheet shows how far things have come. The tide is turning—and these are just a handful of the victories being achieved on campus.

We’re not against education, jobs, science, and progress.  We’re against oppression, apartheid, discrimination, and the destruction of lives and homes. New York City desperately needs jobs and education facilities, but surely these don’t have to come at such a high price.

• Our campaign / next steps

Our campaign ultimately aims to get New York City and Cornell University to end their collaboration with Technion.  We need your help.  We need to continue to raise awareness, as most people in New York still don’t know the truth about Technion and the impact its presence would have here.

Most people would not support $100 million of their taxes going towards an institute that develops drones and practices discrimination on its home campus.  We may not have the financial resources to stand up to New York City, but we have the truth on our side, and in time, with enough support, we will make a difference.

So how can you help?  There are many ways.  Come and join us at our protests outside Cornell Tech’s temporary offices at Google; we’re there every 2 weeks in Chelsea holding signs, handing out leaflets, and talking with the public.  If you’re concerned about this issue, write a letter to your local paper, your student newsletter, church paper, community blog, or any other group you’re involved with.

Write to your elected officials to see what they have to say about it.  If you’re involved in activism, let your activist friends know about this.  As I hope has been made clear this evening, the issue of Technion coming to New York is of significant interest to anyone concerned about militarization and surveillance as well as Israel/Palestine.

Talk with your local community, your mosque, temple, church.  If you would like help with this, get in touch with us or look up the resources on our website, which includes fully referenced reports (we will be adding a transcript of this talk on there soon along with the video recording of this evening’s event).

If you would like to subscribe to our Announcements e-mail list, you can e-mail us at nyact@riseup.net asking to be added.  That way we can keep you informed of our protests and other events and news.

You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter (@NYACTechnion).
We will be outside Google again this semester every other Tuesday from 5:00-7:00 PM until December 10.  Please come and join us!  You are welcome even if you just want to talk to us and find out more about what we’re doing.

Finally, on behalf of NYACT, I would like to thank everyone who has come this evening, and all of the speakers for making this such an interesting event—and to say what an honour it is to be holding the event at Judson Memorial Church which, as I’m sure many of you know, is more than a venue.  The Judson has a long history of working for social justice issues, and we’re glad to have held this discussion here.

REFERENCES:

1.  Anne Ju, “’Game-changing’ tech campus goes to Cornell, Technion,” Cornell Chronicle, 19 Dec 2011: link to www.news.cornell.edu
2.  Ilya Marritz, “Mayor Bloomberg Answers Stanford U Critics,” WNYC, 8 May 2012: http://www.wnyc.org/blogs/empire/2012/may/08/mayor-bloomberg-answers-stanford-u-critics/
3.  Richard Pérez-Peña, “Alliance Formed Secretly to Win Deal for Campus,” The New York Times, 25 Dec 2011: link to www.nytimes.com
4.  Article XIII, Section 2, of the Cornell bylaws states that: “The functions of the University Faculty shall be to consider questions of educational policy which concern more than one college, school or separate academic unit, or are general in nature”: https://trustees.cornell.edu/docs/012112-cu-bylaws.pdf 
5.  Patrick McGeehan, “Cornell’s High-Tech Campus Will Have a Temporary Home at Google,” The New York Times, 21 May 2012: link to cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com
6.  The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) was launched in Ramallah in 2004 by a group of Palestinian academics and intellectuals.  For more information see: link to pacbi.org
7.  “An Appeal for Action: End Cornell University Collaboration with Technion,” PACBI website, 4 March 2012: link to www.pacbi.org
8.  Danna Harman, “The Technion: Israel’s Hard Drive,” The New York Times, 12 April 2013: link to www.nytimes.com
9.  The American Technion Society, “Israel’s Source for Anti-Terror and Surveillance Technology: The Technion,” YouTube, uploaded on 3 Dec 2013: link to www.youtube.com
10.  The Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Admissions/Careers website: link to www1.technion.ac.il
11.  The Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Computer Science Department Industrial Affiliates website: link to www.cs.technion.ac.il
12.  The Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Computer Science Department Industrial Partners website: link to www.million.co.il
13.  James Bamford, “Shady Companies with Ties to Israel Wiretap the U.S. for the NSA,” WIRED, 3 Apr 2012: link to www.wired.com
14.  Jimmy Johnson, “Israeli Firm Helps NSA Spy on Americans and Mexicans,” The Electronic Intifada, 15 Jun 2013: link to electronicintifada.net
15.  Gil Kerbs, “The Unit,” Forbes, 8 Feb 2007: link to www.forbes.com
16. Terri Ginsberg, “New York tech university evasive about Israeli partner’s role in arms industry,” The Electronic Intifada, 9 Sept 2013: link to electronicintifada.net
17.  NICE Systems, Wikipedia: link to en.wikipedia.org
18.  NICE Systems, Company Overview website: link to www.nice.com
19. Johnson op cit.
20.  Christopher Ketcham, “An Israeli Trojan Horse,” Counterpunch, 27 Sep 2008: link to www.counterpunch.org
21.  TheMarker, “What was the Israeli Involvement in Collecting U.S. Communications Intel for NSA?” Haaretz, 8 Jun 2013: link to www.haaretz.com
22.  Verint Mexico Solutions Communications Research and Intelligence website: link to www.verint.com
23.  The American Technion Society, “Alum Rings in Trading Day,” Technion Alumni eNews, 5 Feb 2013: link to www.ats.org
24.  The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions website: link to www.icahd.org
25.  Yaakov Katz, “‘Black Thunder’ Unmanned Dozers to Play Greater Role in IDF,” The Jerusalem Post, 30 Mar 2009: link to www.jpost.com
26.  Israeli Air Force website, “The First UAV Squadron”: link to www.iaf.org.il
27.  Jefferson Morley, “Israel’s Drone Dominance,” Salon, 15 May 2012: http://www.salon.com/2012/05/15/israels_drone_dominance/singleton/ 
And figures based on data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) arms transfers database at: link to www.sipri.org
28.  Kevin Hattori, “Stealth UAV, Lunar Elevator Among Student-Developed Projects,” American Technion Society, 24 Feb 2010: link to www.ats.org
29.  Robert Mahoney, “Israeli Army Decision Endangers Journalists in Gaza,” Committee to Protect Journalists, 14 Aug 2008: link to cpj.org
30.  Nidal al-Mughrabi, “Reuters Cameraman Killed in Gaza,”Reuters, 16 Apr 2008: link to www.reuters.com
31. Technion Press Release, “Technion MBA Program Delivered In-House to 40 Rafael Managers,” 7 Jan 2001: link to pard.technion.ac.il
32.  Who Profits – The Israeli Occupation Industry: link to www.whoprofits.org
33.  International Court of Justice Press Release, “Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” 9 Jul 2004: link to www.icj-cij.org
34.  Yaakov Katz, “Elbit to help US secure Mexican border,” The Jerusalem Post, 25 Sep 2006: link to www.jpost.com
35.  Jimmy Johnson, “A Palestine-Mexico Border,” North American Congress on Latin America blog, 29 Jun 2012: link to nacla.org
36.  Elbit. WeDivest.org website: https://wedivest.org/c/53/elbit#.Un-36ZTF0eU
37.  Elizabeth Adams, “Norway’s Pension Fund Drops Israel’s Elbit,” The Wall Street Journal online, 3 Sep 2009: link to online.wsj.com
38. “Danske Bank Divests from Elbit and Africa-Israel,” BDS Movement News, 26 Jan 2010: link to www.bdsmovement.net
39. Benjamin Joffe-Walt, “Swedish Pension Giant Divests from Elbit,” The Jerusalem Post, 31 Mar 2010: link to www.jpost.com
40. “Out of Sight,” Technion Focus, Nov 2008: link to www.focus.technion.ac.il
41. Anhel Pfeffer, “New ‘bill of rights’ for student reservists,” Haaretz, 24 Dec 2003: link to www.haaretz.com
42.  Uri Dekel (Technion Student Association Chairman, 2009), “Update for Reservists – Suite Of Solutions Following Operation Cast Lead,” Technion Student Union, 21 Jan 2009: link to forums.asat.org.il
43.  “Arrest of 8 demonstrators at the entrance of ‘Technion’ Haifa,” Panet, 2 June 2010: link to www.panet.co.il
44.  Cornell University College of Engineering, Cornell Tech Update: link to www.engineering.cornell.edu
45.  Cornell NYC Tech website: link to tech.cornell.edu
46.  Julie Wiener, “Israeli School’s ‘Strategic’ Move,” The Jewish Week, 20 Dec 2011: link to www.thejewishweek.com
47.  Stuart Graham, “UJ Cuts Ties with Israeli University,” Independent Online News, 23 Mar 2011: link to www.iol.co.za
48.  Elizabeth Redden, “A First for the Israel Boycott?” Inside Higher Ed, 24 Apr 2013: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/04/24/asian-american-studies-association-endorses-boycott-israeli-universities
49.  Adam Horowitz, “Teachers’ Union of Ireland Endorses Academic Boycott of Israel in Unanimous Vote,” Mondoweiss, 5 Apr 2013: link to mondoweiss.net
50.  “The FEF (Belgian French-Speaking Students Federation) Calls for a Freeze of All Academic Partnerships with Israel!” Comité Palestine Louvain, 25 Apr 2013: link to comite-palestine.be
51.  Hilary Rose and Steven Rose, “Stephen Hawking’s Boycott Hits Israel Where it Hurts: Science,” The Guardian, 13 May 2013: link to www.theguardian.com
52.  Editorial, “Stephen Hawking Makes a Peaceful Protest,” The Boston Globe, 11 May 2013: link to www.bostonglobe.com

POWERHOUSE MUSEUM SYDNEY - AIDS QUILT PROJECT UPDATE

21 NOVEMBER 2013

The following information has been received from Anni Turnbull of the PowerHouse Museum in Sydney:

"All of the 97 Australian AIDS Memorial Quilts we have acquired are now on line and can be viewed here
Australian AIDS Memorial Quilts


The Museum's fabulous team of volunteers have also been documenting (as much as we can ) information on the individual

panels and are up to Quilt 88 so by early next year (2014) the panel information will be up in detail.
I also developed an exhibition last year HIV & AIDS 30 years on: the Australian story
HIV and AIDS 30 years on:

the Australian story"

A WEB HISTORY – GAY, LESBIAN, TRANSGENDER, HIV/AIDS

This is a presentation to the AUSTRALIAN LESBIAN AND GAY ARCHIVES 2013 Australian Homosexual Histories Conference at Melbourne University on 15 November 2013. Because of the limited time available for each presentation, only segments were able to be presented. This is what the content of the whole presentation would have been:
          

 A WEB HISTORY – GAY, LESBIAN, TRANSGENDER, HIV/AIDS

                       “Oh, what a tangled web………………!”

                   OR “THE WEB IS MIGHTIER THAN OBAMA!”

……..and if this sounds like a gross exaggeration, to which I am prone, just think about Snowden, Manning, Assange and others like them who have shown what the web can do!

The book illustrating what the web is capable of in collective political terms was published in 2013 is called “Hacking Politics – How Geeks, Progressives, the Tea Party, Gamers, Anarchists and Suits Teamed Up to Defeat SOPA and Save the Internet” EDITED BY DAVID MOON, PATRICK RUFFINI AND DAVID SEGAL.

SOPA is Stop Online Piracy Act

An Internet blackout occurred on 18 January 2012.

We would like to acknowledge the Wurundjeri people who are the Traditional Custodians of this Land. We would also like to pay respect to the Elders both past and present of the Kulin Nation and extend that respect to other Indigenous Australians present.

             Computer illustrating talk to the ALGA Homosexual Histories Conference on 15 November 2013 - Session C2 – 4.00pm to 4.30pm

Extract from article I wrote for Overland online magazine published on 15 April 2013

“I am now 86 and this is a story of a voyage of discovery over the last 25 years. I had known I was gay from early on in my marriage, but family requirements kept me maintaining a home base until the family was grown up and independent. My marriage ended after 31 years in 1985, and in 1986 I became politically active. I joined socialist groups and started learning about activism and the politics of change, started selling our group’s newspaper and got involved in diverse organisational issues.
On one demonstration in 1988 we ended up in the Domain in Sydney and some people were holding a banner and handing out leaflets about a demonstration outside the British Consulate at Circular Quay a few days later. The demonstration was to protest Margaret Thatcher’s introduction of clause 28, one of the most homophobic pieces of legislation perpetrated by a so-called democratic state. I was 61 years old and trying to come out as a gay man – fairly daunting at that age after a life-time living as a heterosexual in a heteronormative world.
At the demonstration in April 1988 I was invited to attend a meeting of the group at that time called Gay Solidarity at the home of one of the members. Being a gay activist group without means to afford premises for meetings, these were always held at the homes of group members. The person whose home the meeting was in was Peter Collard who was also known as Sister Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, (MMQC) one of the Sisters of the Order of Perpetual Indulgence. He remained a close friend until his untimely death in 2011 at the age of 58.
My activist path increased in leaps and bounds from 1988 onwards, and the politics of the left and gay issues were predominant in my steep learning curve. A major issue during this period was homophobia, leading in many instances to gay, lesbian, transgender and HIV/AIDS (GLTH) hate crimes involving abuse, assault and murder.
We had demonstrations against the series of gay murders in and around Oxford Street, Bondi, Tamarama and other areas around Sydney, and the brutal attitude of the police relating to assaults and murders and their unwillingness to fully investigate and prosecute those guilty of the crimes. It may well be argued that homophobic police were themselves involved in some of these crimes.
In 1999 the web was just becoming available and, with the help of Sister MMQC, I established an online presence with emails and a website. My knowledge was rudimentary, to say the least, and MMQC was patient and helpful in establishing webpages documenting issues with which we were involved.
When we moved to Melbourne in 2001 and help was far away in Sydney, MMQC assisted me – by phone from Sydney for at least an hour  – to learn how to operate the web, and with the help of another Sydney friend – Barry McKay who moved to Melbourne soon afterwards, I started to set up a variety of web pages which showed our political interests in a large variety of activist issues.
Among the web pages I started assembling were those on homophobia and GLTH hate crimes, both in Australia and around the world. The amount of material that became available was staggering and it was a big task to be able to put everything on web pages that were required to be there to inform the world of the horrors of homophobia and hate crimes.
What I tried to do on the hate crimes pages was to assemble information in a chronological order, although under certain circumstances that became difficult. If a murder was committed, say, in 1992, and the person who committed the crime only appeared in court some few years later, the report of the court story had to be recorded under the year in which the crime was committed, so the chronology method was not altogether satisfactory.
All of this background is leading up to a series of emails I received last year.
The first email, in early November 2012, was from a journalist/writer, who had seen our hate crimes pages and said the web pages were of great interest and help. He was investigating a death in 1988 of a young gay man who was studying in Sydney but who came from the USA. His name was Scott Johnson and he was found dead at the foot of cliffs in Manly, naked and with his clothes folded neatly at the top of the cliff. The police verdict was suicide.
If Scott’s death were recorded as suicide, we would not have recorded it because ostensibly it wasn’t a hate crime.
The journalist, whose name is Daniel Glick, sent us an article he had written which had appeared in the Weekend Australian some while ago and told the story of Scott Johnson leading up to his death. Scott’s brother Steve in the USA had long doubted the police verdict of suicide and asked Daniel Glick if he would be prepared to carry out further investigations to determine whether Scott’s death was a murder and a hate crime, because at the time suicide seemed a very unlikely scenario for a young man in his late 20s who had just completed a doctorate in Mathematics from a Sydney university.
There was also an article by a local writer and journalist, Garry Wotherspoon, which told much the same story as Daniel Glick had uncovered.
The results of further enquiries and investigations between Dan Glick and Scott’s brother Steve resulted in the original verdict of suicide being overturned and an open verdict provided. This opened the door for new police investigations and the offer of a reward of about $100,000 for further information leading to a conclusion in the search for the truth of what happened to Scott Johnson.
On 11 February 2013 the Australian Broadcasting Corporation featured Scott Johnson in an episode of Australian Story, a half hour program of people and events in Australia. This episode, ‘On the Precipice’, featured the story of Scott Johnson and those he was involved with and also told the story of his brother Steve’s search for the truth.
Steve attended the 2013 Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade in Sydney in March and there is a short video of his visit and an interview he gave at the time.
The journalist involved, Dan Glick, wanted to know whether there were other hate crimes committed around that time north of Sydney Harbour, because there were records of murders taking place between Bondi and Tamarama beach in the 1980s and 1990s and the police involvement in finding the perpetrators of those terrible crimes, but there didn’t seem to be the same records of hate murders and hate crimes north of Sydney Harbour.
Journalists and writers wrote articles and books about these homophobic crimes and many of the perpetrators are still walking around, having not been apprehended and tried for the murders.
Police homophobia over the years – and still ongoing – hasn’t helped get to the bottom of these crimes and it seems that many were happening north of Sydney Harbour in the same way they were happening south of the Harbour.
There have been a few policemen who were not satisfied with the investigations and have since persevered to establish task forces to investigate many of the murders which are now cold cases.
This whole story is, unfortunately, a work in progress and as long as homophobia is propagated by religions and the state, hate crimes will continue in Australia and around the world.
While I am still able to, I will continue to document such events on our web pages so that everybody will know about these heinous crimes, aided and abetted by the societies we live in in the twenty-first century. I am now 86 and my partner is 90 (we have been together for 20 years) and we both still endeavour to draw attention to the iniquities perpetrated against the GLTH and the wider communities.”

POINTS FOR DISCUSSION:

1)    cost of running web pages – estimated to be about $1400 per year.

2)    items of interest relevant to GLTH communities:

a) Gay Solidarity/Lesbian and Gay Solidarity newsletters

          b) Sydney Park AIDS Memorial Groves

c)     Homophobia

      d) GLTH Hate Crimes  - Australian and international

 e) Local governments and homophobia – formation of InterSection

 f) Ageing issues for the LGTH communities

 g) Activism and actions

  h) ALGA and Gary and Nick submitting our web pages to NLA Pandora and being accepted for archiving!

  i) International Organisations such as ILGA and IGLHRC

  j) HIV/AIDS and activism with ACT UP film documentaries reviews by Mark Pendleton in red pepper

3) Resurrection of lost web pages from the Wayback Machine of GLTH concern such as:
              a) Gay and Lesbian Holocaust Memorial Project
              b) Australian AIDS Quilt Project 

LINKS TO OUR WEB PAGES:
www.josken.net

and

www.red-jos.net

and

red-jos.blogspot.com

There was a young person named Bradley
Who later did call herself Chelsea
Obama was scared
About info she shared
So Snowden fled over the sea

TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP UPDATE ON 13 NOVEMBER 2013

Popular Resistance Newsletter ( 13 November 2013) by email

Recently Wikileaks offered a reward for the text of the secret Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). A people's hero must have stepped forward because today Wikileaks released the full text of the chapter on Intellectual Property Rights. Click here to see their report (http://wikileaks.org/tpp/) .

The TPP has been kept secret by the Obama Administration for nearly 4 years because they know that if people find out what is in it, they will strongly oppose it. Their worst fears have been confirmed today with the release of the text, as have our suspicions that the TPP was a huge power grab by transnational corporations. The texts reveal that the United States is isolated in bullying other countries to go against the health and desires of their people and that those countries have been pushing back.

The TPP has been negotiated with the assistance of more than 600 corporate advisers while Congress has been largely excluded from the process. The President is pushing Congress to give him Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority so he can sign the agreement before Congress has a chance to vote on it. Under Fast Track, Congress would have limited time to review and debate the TPP and would not have the power to amend it, only to vote up or down on it.

The Obama Administration hoped to have the TPP signed into law by the end of the year, but momentum is building to keep that from happening. This month, two resolutions were passed in Wisconsin opposing the TPP and other local governments are in the process of doing the same.This week, letters were sent by coalitions of members from both parties in Congress opposing the President's request that they give up their responsibility to oversee commerce and fully review the contents of the TPP. Last night, actions were held in a dozen cities across the country to shine a light on the TPP. In less than a month, on December 3 (http://www.flushthetpp.org/call-to-action-december-3-international-day-of-action-against-toxic-trade-agreements/) , people all around the world are planning actions to oppose the World trade Organization and toxic trade agreements.

We are winning this battle against corporations that put their profits before people and the planet, that are willing to exploit and destroy to amass more treasure. The opportunity is here to insist that trade is fair, just and sustainable. We ask you to help us reach the tipping point by forcing the corporate media to cover the TPP (there has been a virtual blackout on this topic). We can do this by widely exposing the leaked TPP text in the citizen media. As word spreads about this, the corporate media will have to get on board or lose credibility for missing one of the hottest stories today.


** Please join us in sharing the news of the released TPP text in your social media networks.
------------------------------------------------------------
1. Share this meme on your Facebook page and other social media. Change your status to say that you insist on transparency and democracy. Release the text of the TPP and no Fast Track. Link to the text at http://www.wikileaks.org/tpp.

2. Tweet about the newly-released text to the corporate media and ask why they aren't reporting on it. Add corporate media handles listed below. Sample tweet:

BREAKING: Wikileaks releases full chapter of secret #TPP (https://twitter.com/search?q=%23TPP) . Huge corporate power grab. http://wikileaks.org/tpp/ What's your analysis?

3. Call in to talk radio shows and ask about it. Blog about it. Send letters to the editor. You will find articles about the TPP under the News section (http://www.flushthetpp.org/news/) of FlushtheTPP.org (http://www.flushthetpp.org/) and talking points and other resources on the Tools page (http://www.flushthetpp.org/tools/) .

Together, let's turn the tide on this toxic trade agreement! It's time to Flush the TPP!

Please share this email with others.

DOUG IRELAND OBITUARY - RADICAL GAY SOCIALIST

This obituary was published by the Jacobin online journal/blog from the USA on 10 NOVEMBER 2013

 

Doug Ireland (1946 – 2013)

by Thomas Harrison

Thomas Harrison on the death of radical journalist and LGBTQ activist Doug Ireland.

 

 

Doug Ireland, radical journalist, blogger, passionate human rights and queer activist, and relentless scourge of the LGBT establishment, died in his East Village home on Oct. 26. Doug had lived with chronic pain for many years, suffering from diabetes, kidney disease, sciatica, and the debilitating effects of childhood polio. In recent years he was so ill that he was virtually confined to his apartment. Towards the end, even writing, his calling, had become extremely difficult.

Once, Doug’s writing – in US publications like the Nation, the Village Voice, New York magazine, his blog Direland, and in France’s Libération and the news website Bakchich – was easy to find. But in recent years, his voice was rarely heard outside of New York’s Gay City News, for which he continued to contribute reportage as international editor and political commentary until this year, and few younger radicals are likely to know about him.

This is a pity, because Doug’s voice – his scathing polemical style, the vast breadth of his knowledge – was exceptional. Doug was a tireless champion of the oppressed of all kinds, but especially of those who are punished for loving members of their own sex, wherever they might be. With his uncompromising internationalism and refusal to allow cultural differences to stand as an excuse for denying LGBT people their human rights, there are few on the Left quite like him.

Doug was always a libertarian socialist, who nevertheless had long-standing ties to progressives in the Democratic Party – going back to Allard Lowenstein, George McGovern and Bella Abzug, for whom he worked as a campaign manager, Doug hoped progressives might transform the party (a hope I didn’t share). But he was never an apologist for mainstream Democrats, including Obama; he never pulled punches in attacking their cynical amoralism. Ed Koch, he once wrote, was not a closet gay, but a “closet human being.”

Doug had a special loathing for Clinton. One of his last published pieces was “Should We Forgive Bill Clinton?” in Gay City News in March, after the former President wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post against the Defense of Marriage Act that he had signed into law in 1996.
Noting that the Post piece was timed to prepare for the kickoff of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign a week later, Doug wrote: “The truth is that an old and predatory libertine like Bill couldn’t have cared less if a guy or a gal wanted to marry a Volkswagen. He wasn’t a bigot himself — he just surfed on the bigotry of others like the opportunist he’s always been. And it is that opportunism that led him to write his op-ed piece against DOMA on behalf of his wife’s candidacy.”

Doug reminded his readers that “there is a long list of vicious actions by President Clinton and his administration for which he owes LGBT people an unadulterated apology.” One of the items on this list was the Clinton administration’s use of “aid and trade blackmail targeting Third World countries to stop them from buying or manufacturing cheaper, generic versions of the AIDS-fighting drugs needed to prolong life… How many thousands died because Clinton, in his subservience to the greed of Big Pharma, engaged in this shameful arm-breaking? We’ll never know for sure – but their blood, too, is on Bill’s hands.”

Doug was a friend of the Campaign for Peace and Democracy (CPD), an antiwar and human rights advocacy group committed to radical democracy from below where I serve as co-director, and to the socialist journal New Politics, where I sit on the editorial board. In 1988, at a time when the CPD was heavily involved in defending democratic dissidents in the Soviet bloc, Doug reported for the Campaign’s newsletter on the persecution of gays in Eastern Europe:

Of all the taboos in Eastern Europe, none has been more cruel or dehumanizing than the official attitude toward homosexuality. If one of the very first acts of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution was to abolish the laws making homosexuality a crime, . . . Stalinism recriminalized homosexuality, and the theory that “fags are a product of capitalist decadence” has reigned malignantly in the Eastern bloc ever since, with anti-gay persecutions a favorite weapon of the political police throughout the bloc.

Doug’s understanding of Stalinism’s crimes, and of the whole history of the Left’s troubled relationship to alternative sexualities, was brilliantly expounded in his piece “Socialism and Gay Liberation: Back to the Future.” In it, he paid tribute to the courageous gay socialist pioneers – John Addington Symonds, Edward Carpenter, Oscar Wilde, and Magnus Hirschfeld. But he also described the vicious bigotry that was made official in the Stalin-era Communist movement and persisted long after Stalin’s death.

The great turning point, of course, was the birth of the post-Stonewall radical gay liberation movement in the United States – a movement, in Doug’s words, that was “against the State, which made us criminals; against the medical and psychiatric professions, which declared us sick; and against the cultural heterotyranny, which made us the target of disdain, ridicule, opprobrium, hate and violence.” He quoted the German filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim: “It is not the homosexual who is perverse, but the society in which he lives.” Like Doug, gay liberation saw itself as an integral, but never subordinate, part of all liberation struggles – feminist, antiwar, civil rights.

Doug’s broad vision of gay liberation contrasted sharply with the narrowly parochial LGBT organizations of today, which support and shower dollars on any politician of either party who is “good on gay issues,” no matter how reactionary he or she is on anything else. Since the late 1990s, the gay movement has become tamed and institutionalized, symbolized preeminently by the corporate-oriented Human Rights Campaign.

Doug never ceased railing against the established LGBT leadership for its political conservatism and for turning the movement into just another interest group, but he was especially critical of its near-indifference to the persecution of LGBT people in other countries. Doug called for the aggressive defense of gays under attack in Uganda, Russia, and Iraq, where they were being murdered by Shia death squads after a death-to-gays fatwa by Grand Ayatollah Sistani; the gay establishment was largely unmoved.

Doug’s reporting on the persecution of gays in Iran, including the public execution of men and boys, elicited criticism from several quarters, including the director of the LGBT Rights Program of Human Rights Watch. Critics objected that he was improperly imputing a Western-style “gay identity” to same-sexers in Muslim countries, and some insinuated he was providing political fodder for U.S. intervention against Iran.

But Doug continued to expose the homophobic criminality of Ahmadinejad and the Iranian theocrats. I don’t know if Doug would have seen it this way, but to me he was working in the great universalist tradition of the historic left, based on a single norm of human freedom and flourishing – a norm that justifies criticism of cultural traditions, wherever they might be, that support such practices as female subordination, racial and religious discrimination, and homophobia.

As Paul Schindler, the editor of Gay City News put it in an editorial defending Doug’s reporting, “Cultural sensitivity is of course an absolute requirement for effective human rights advocacy. But absolute cultural relativism is a recipe for inertia and defeat.”

In his New Politics piece, Doug insisted on the need “to begin a serious and radical rethinking of homosexualities and gender identities so as to understand at a deeper level why the fear and loathing of same-sex love and gender variants are so deeply engrained in society and culture.” Writing in 2009, he sensed “a hunger for a return to some of the earlier principles of sexual liberation for all with which our movement began, not just here but abroad.”

Doug is no longer with us, no longer able to make his own contribution to the revival of these principles. Let us hope, nevertheless, that they can be revived, for the sake of a truly liberated future.

JOURNALIST REVIEW OF "GOLIATH: LIFE AND LOATHING IN GREATER ISRAEL" BY MAX BLUMENTHAL

This article was published in Mondoweiss on 5 November 2013. If you really want to know what is happening in Israel/Palestine, "Goliath" is a must-read book:



Israel is a ‘corpse’ — Hedges on Blumenthal’s ‘Goliath’
Nov 05, 2013 12:37 pm | Annie Robbins and Phil Weiss

Max Blumenthal

Yesterday Max Blumenthal’s new book on Israel, Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, got the emphatic endorsement of two influential journalists, Chris Hedges and Andrew Sullivan.

First, here’s Hedges at Truthdig, hammer and tongs in an inspiring Old Testament manner: Zionism is a racist ideology, Israel is poisoned by the psychosis of war, and liberal American Jews deny this so as to fetishize the myth and themselves, but Blumenthal reveals the truth, Israel is a corpse.

Israel has been poisoned by the psychosis of permanent war. It has been morally bankrupted by the sanctification of victimhood, which it uses to justify an occupation that rivals the brutality and racism of apartheid South Africa. Its democracy—which was always exclusively for Jews—has been hijacked by extremists who are pushing the country toward fascism. Many of Israel’s most enlightened and educated citizens—1 million of them—have left the country. Its most courageous human rights campaigners, intellectuals and journalists—Israeli and Palestinian—are subject to constant state surveillance, arbitrary arrests and government-run smear campaigns. Its educational system, starting in primary school, has become an indoctrination machine for the military…

And yet, the hard truths about Israel remain largely unspoken. Liberal supporters of Israel decry its excesses. They wring their hands over the tragic necessity of airstrikes on Gaza or Lebanon or the demolition of Palestinian homes. They assure us that they respect human rights and want peace. But they react in inchoate fury when the reality of Israel is held up before them. This reality implodes the myth of the Jewish state…. Liberal Jewish critics inside and outside Israel, however, desperately need the myth, not only to fetishize Israel but also to fetishize themselves. Strike at the myth and you unleash a savage vitriol, which in its fury exposes the self-adulation and latent racism that lie at the core of modern Zionism.

There are very few intellectuals or writers who have the tenacity and courage to confront this reality. This is what makes Max Blumenthal’s “Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel” one of the most fearless and honest books ever written about Israel. Blumenthal burrows deep into the dark heart of Israel. The American journalist binds himself to the beleaguered and shunned activists, radical journalists and human rights campaigners who are the conscience of the nation, as well as Palestinian families in the West Bank struggling in vain to hold back Israel’s ceaseless theft of their land. Blumenthal, in chapter after chapter, methodically rips down the facade. And what he exposes, in the end, is a corpse.

I spent seven years in the Middle East as a correspondent, including months in Gaza and the West Bank. I lived for two years in Jerusalem. Many of the closest friends I made during my two decades overseas are Israeli. Most of them are among the Israeli outcasts that Blumenthal writes about, men and women whose innate decency and courage he honors throughout his book. They are those who, unlike the Israeli leadership and a population inculcated with racial hatred, sincerely want to end occupation, restore the rule of law and banish an ideology that creates moral hierarchies with Arabs hovering at the level of animal as Jews—especially Jews of European descent—are elevated to the status of demigods. It is a measure of Blumenthal’s astuteness as a reporter that he viewed Israel through the eyes of these outcasts, as well as the Palestinians, and stood with them as they were arrested, tear-gassed and fired upon by Israeli soldiers. There is no other honest way to tell the story about Israel. And this is a very honest book.

And here is Andrew Sullivan, much more engaged by the swordplay between Blumenthal and Eric Alterman, and saying that Alterman committed a lazy hatchet job. But Sullivan lands where it matters, on Blumenthal’s excellent encounter with David Grossman, and all that demonstrated about the flaccidity of Zionist ideals:
one reason to pick [Goliath] up is the lazy hatchet job performed on it by one of the more egregiously nasty writers in America, Eric Alterman. Alterman’s critique can be read here, titled “The ‘I Hate Israel’ Handbook”, and here. I urge you to read both…. The reason I urge you to read it all is because it’s essential background for Blumenthal’s response. It’s always a joy to see a smear artist exposed, trick by trick, con by con – and Max is relentless. To wit:
‘Alterman carps about the titles of several chapters in my book, claiming they were “titled to imply an equivalence between Israel and Nazi Germany.” He did not bother address the substance of the chapters, which explains the titles.

The chapter titled, “How To Kill Goyim and Influence People” detailed a Jerusalem conference of prominent state-funded Israeli rabbis who had gathered to defend the publication of Torat Ha’Melech, a book published by their rabbinical colleagues that the Israeli paper Maariv described as “230 pages on the laws concerning the killing of non-Jews, a kind of guidebook for anyone who ponders the question of if and when it is permissible to take the life of a non-Jew.” (Among the book’s lowlights: “There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us…”)’My chapters titled “The Night of Broken Glass” and “The Concentration Camp” detail the officially sanctioned campaign of racist incitement and violence against Israel’s population of non-Jewish African asylum seekers. The former chapter described events leading up to the night of May 23, 2012, when, after an anti-African rally headlined by leading officials from the ruling Likud Party, in which Africans were described from the stage as “a cancer,” hundreds of Jewish Israelis rampaged through African-inhabited areas of South Tel Aviv, attacking their homes and cars and literally smashing the glass of their storefront windows. “I am as afraid to live in the Israel of 2012 as any right-minded German should have been in 1938,” Aliyana Traison, the deputy editor of Haaretz, wrote at the time.’

[Sullivan again] For good measure, Alterman concedes that the book is “mostly technically accurate.” I hate the bullying tactics of those suppressing a discussion of difficult subjects, so am glad to note that Blumenthal himself is not the only one shocked by the shoddiness of Alterman’s smear:
‘Other writers have already carefully deconstructed his tangled mess of factual errors and deceptive claims: Phan Nguyen, Corey Robin, Ali Gharib, Ira Glunts and Charles Manekin.’

I’d particularly recommend Corey Robin’s dissection of Alterman’s account of Blumenthal’s conversation with David Grossman, the legendary liberal Zionist. It’s both a thorough debunking of Alterman but also a disturbing revelation about what has happened to Israel, and why it matters.

TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP - WHAT IS IT?

TPP – WHAT IS IT?

                                                                                                  

Before we even start to find out what TPP is, what it stands for, what it does, or will do, it is necessary to examine where it came from and what it means.

Copyright and censorship – particularly internet censorship – are the issues which affect the major organisations around the world, and we need to bear in mind that these issues arise in the United States of America.

Before TPP there were SOPA, PIPA, CISPA, NAFTA, and also on the horizon a recent discussion involving Europe with something similar to TPP, the TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP.

According to the US government, “On January 1, 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Canada, and Mexico (NAFTA) came into force. All remaining duties and quantitative restrictions were eliminated, as scheduled, on January 1, 2008.

NAFTA created the world's largest free trade area, which now links 450 million people producing $17 trillion worth of goods and services. Trade between the United States and its NAFTA partners has soared since the agreement entered into force.

With NAFTA U.S. goods and services trade  totaled $1.6 trillion in 2009 (latest data available for goods and services trade combined).  Exports totaled $397 billion. Imports totaled $438 billion.  The U.S. goods and services trade deficit with NAFTA was $41 billion in 2009.

The United States has $918 billion in total (two ways) goods trade with NAFTA countries (Canada and Mexico) during 2010.  Goods exports totaled $412 billion; Goods imports totaled $506 billion.  The U.S. goods trade deficit with NAFTA was $95 billion in 2010.

Trade in services with NAFTA (exports and imports) totaled $99 billion in 2009 (latest data available for services trade).  Services exports were $63.8 billion. Services imports were $35.5 billion.  The U.S. services trade surplus with NAFTA was $28.3 billion in 2009.”

Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act   - CISPA[1]

If you read the introductory paragraphs of the following article from PC mag you will get the gist of what the US governments is trying to do and the consequences for all of us:

According to Chloe Albanesius of PC magazine “A controversial cyber-security bill known as CISPA is once again in the news. The US House approved the bill last week, and it now moves to the Senate, but opponents of the measure are not going down without a fight. Today, in fact, hacker collective Anonymous is calling on websites to go dark in protest of CISPA as they did last year against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA).”

Why is CISPA being compared to SOPA and PIPA?

What is CISPA? CISPA stands for Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act. It would allow for voluntary information sharing between private companies and the government in the event of a cyber attack. If the government detects a cyber attack that might take down Facebook or Google, for example, they could notify those companies. At the same time, Facebook or Google could inform the feds if they notice unusual activity on their networks that might suggest a cyber attack,” Albanesius says.

To understand how the US government is trying to control the whole world, look at all the web sites you can lay your hands on, and be afraid – very afraid![2]

http://www.cispaisback.org/

From CISPA, we have had SOPA and PIPA and these on their own are grim and frightening, but we should also examine COICA. Here’s where we start:

COICA is the Combatting Online Infringement and Counterfeiting Act.

SOPA is Stop Online Piracy Act

PIPA is Protect IP Act.

On 18 January 2012 an internet blackout occurred after dramatic international collaboration between individuals and organisations who saw the dangers of these draconian bills being passed by the US Congress.

The history of this event is captured in a book called “HACKING POLITICS” which tells the story of how Geeks, Progressives, The Tea Party, Gamers, Anarchists and Suits Teamed Up to Defeat SOPA and save the Internet”. [3]

A young man Aaron Swartz, who was involved with this campaign and who was an initiator of REDDIT, (reddit is a source for what's new and popular on the web. What does the name "reddit" mean?It's (sort of) a play on words -- i.e., "I read it on reddit.") and who committed suicide in January 2013 because the US legal authorities of the Federal government had indicted him for alleged overuse of an online cataloguing service called JSTOR stated after the SOAP/PIPA victory that the US government and Congress will not give up and they will work on something which will make the earlier bills seem like child’s play in comparison.
Welcome to the world of TPP, the Trans –Pacific Partnership.

Australia’s Choice Magazine’s Madison Cartwright reported: Choice recently attended the 18th round of negotiations for the Transpacific Partnership (TPP) in Malaysia and raised concerns the agreement may include provisions that will harm Australian consumers, particularly in the areas of intellectual property and food and health labelling.[4]

The notoriously secretive TPP has been holding its negotiations behind closed doors – the only information available about the TPP have come from leaked drafts.

The TPP currently includes 12 countries – Japan, Brunei, Chile, Canada, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the US, Vietnam and Australia.

Of real concern for Australians will be the possibility of Internet censorship, restrictions on pharmaceuticals – affecting thousands in Australia and elsewhere because generics may be a thing of the past, and so many other issues about which we are not able to know anything because it is all so secretive and the media are involved in this conspiracy of silence.

There are a few media exceptions but they do not allow us to find out what is involved in the negotiations and who is doing the negotiations on our behalf.

Those locally who have written about TPP are Antony Loewenstein (published in theguardian.com 9 October 2013) and Peter Martin, (Article published in The Age 23 September 2013)  Economics correspondent for Fairfax Media.

Our web pages provide many articles from Australia and overseas, including Loewenstein’s and Martin’s, and these can be found on:

http://www.josken.net/tpp.htm

http://www.josken.net/freetr.htm

http://www.red-jos.blogspot.com

---

[1] “What is CISPA and Why Should You Care?” http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2417993,00.asp

[2] http://www.cispaisback.org

[3] HACKING POLITICS edited by David Moon,Patrick Ruffini and David Segal, published by OR Books, 2013

[4] TALKING TRADE Item in Choice Magazine, September 2013