PRIME MINISTERIAL HYPOCRISY SPILLS OUT YET AGAIN!

How much longer are Australians going to be prepared to put up with the hypocrisy of the politicians whose rantings and ravings get worse and worse every day?

Today, Sunday 28 January 2018, we have the current prime minister raving on about the Holocaust, while his government locks the indigenous people in prisons and areas around the country which are worse than prisons and concentration camps , does the same with asylum seekers who are treated worse than animals - they treat their pets better than the human beings in Papua New Guinea and Nauru - and pontificates abut human rights and what needs to be done in Australia and around the world.

One really needs to carry one's vomit bucket around with one where ever one goes, and to be careful to spill it only on politicians.

ADDAMEER PRISONER SUPPORT AND HUMAN RIGHTS ASSOCIATION, PALESTINE

REPORT FROM ADDAMEER ON 30 APRIL 2017 - PALESTINIAN PRISONERS ON HUNGER STRIKES IN ISRAELI CONCENTRATION CAMPS.

An estimated 1500 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli prisons and detention centers have declared the beginning of an open hunger strike on 17 April 2017. The call for hunger strike came amidst resentment of Israeli’s cruel policies towards political prisoners and detainees. The hunger striking prisoners’ demands include: family visits, proper medical care, an end to Israel’s practice of detaining Palestinians without charge or trial in so-called administrative detention and stopping the use of isolation. Here are some facts on Palestinian hunger strikes: 

What is the History of Palestinian Hunger Strikes? Hunger strikes have long been used in different geographical areas as means to protest and demand basic rights, including the right to vote, the right to be free from torture and the right to self-determination. The long history of Palestinian prisoners in mass and individual hunger strikes, reveals the lack of trust in any judicial process and the lack of fair trial guarantees they face under the military and civil court systems of the Israeli occupation. Palestinian prisoners and detainees have resorted to hunger strikes as early as 1968 as a legitimate peaceful protest to Israeli detention policies and cruel detention conditions including the use of solitary confinement, denial of family visits, inadequate medical treatment and torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

What are the Medical Risks of Hunger Strikes? Hunger strikes have associated health risks that can cause physical damage to the prisoner or detainee, including severe loss of weight, weakness, tiredness, inability to sleep, hearing loss, blindness, strokes, kidney failure as well as other organ failures, cardiac arrest, and heart attack. However, despite these medical risks, through hunger strikes, Palestinians have been able to obtain basic and fundamental rights and to improve their detention conditions through hunger strikes.

How do Israeli Authorities Deal with Hunger Strikes? Hunger strikes are often met with violent and coercive repression by Israeli Prison Service and special units, as well as medical personnel to push detainees to end their hunger strikes. Following hunger strikes, Addameer has documented several cases of raids on prison cells, transfers of hunger strikers to isolation cells, threats of indefinite detention, banning family visitation, reduction of money spent in the canteen.

What were other coercive measures taken? In response to the use of hunger strikes by Palestinian prisoners and detainees, Israeli authorities practiced force-feeding during the 1980s. It was subsequently ceased by order from the Israeli High Court following several deaths of Palestinian prisoners resulting from force-feeding. At the time of earlier hunger strikes, Israel practiced force-feeding of hunger-strikers in order to coerce detainees to end to their hunger strikes without any legislation to regulate this measure. Several Palestinian prisoners have died as a result of being subjected to force-feeding. These include Abdul-Qader Abu al-Fahm who had died on 11 May 1970 during a hunger strike in Ashkelon prison, Rasem Halawah and Ali al-Ja'fari, who died following the insertion of the feeding tubes into their lungs instead of their stomachs in July 1980 during a hunger strike in Nafha prison, and Ishaq Maragha, who died in Beersheba prison in 1983. Recently, a proposal for a legislation by the Israeli minister of Public Security Gilad Erdan was initiated in response to the mass hunger strike of 2012 with the purpose of putting an end to future hunger-strikes and depriving Palestinian detainees and prisoners of their fundamental right to peaceful protest. The bill was approved by the Israeli Knesset on the 30th of July 2015.

Since when have Hunger Strikes been used in Protest of Administrative Detention? At least since the 1990s, Palestinian prisoners have resorted to hunger strikes as means to protest Israeli arbitrary use of administrative detention. Administrative detention is a procedure that allows the Israeli military to hold prisoners indefinitely on secret information without charging them or allowing them to stand trial. There are an estimated 750 Palestinians placed under administrative detention, including women, children, and Palestinian Legislative Council members.

In recent years, Palestinian prisoners and detainees have resorted to hunger strike to protest and increasing and systematic use of administrative detention by the occupation authorities. For example, in 2012, Palestinian prisoners and detainees declared a mass hunger strike, which involved nearly 2000 hunger strikers demanding the end of administrative detention, denial of family visitations to Gaza prisoners, isolation and other punitive measures. The 2012 hunger strike ended with Israel’s temporality limiting the use of administrative detention. However, few years later, the occupation authorities increased the use of administrative detention leading to another hunger strike in 2014 by over 80 administrative detainees asking for an end to the use of the arbitrary policy. The hunger strike ended after 63 days without forcing the Israeli government to limit the use of administrative detention.

Additionally, several Palestinian administrative detainees embarked on individual hunger strikes in protest of replacing them under administrative detention without charge or trial of several times. These individual hunger strikes included Mohammad Al Qeeq, Khader Adnan, Hana Shalabi, Thaer Halahleh and Bilal Kayed.  

Why do Palestinians Resort to Hunger Strikes? Palestinian prisoners and detainees resort to hunger strike in order to protest and have their voices heard outside an unfair legal system which administers their arbitrary detention and the repression of their voices. However, Israeli occupation authorities have not managed to break the will of Palestinian hunger strikers who continue to use their bodies, in the absence of any adequate judicial remedies, to practice legitimate disobedience. Hunger strikers defy disciplinary power of control and domination; the body of the hunger striker thereby constitutes a medium through which power is shifted and recreated. The prisoners and detainees refuse to comply with the prison’s structured system of constrain and privation where they do not have full autonomy over their bodies. Thus, through hunger strikes, these prisoners and detainees re-gain sovereignty over their bodies through becoming decision makers over the prison authorities.

What Are Our Demands?  Addameer Prisoner Support urges supporters of justice around the world to take action to support the Palestinian prisoners whose bodies and lives are on the line for freedom and dignity. Addameer urges all people to organize events in solidarity with the struggle of hunger-striking prisoners and detainees. 2017 marks 100 years of the Balfour declaration; 70 years of Palestinian Catastrophe (al-Nakba); 50 years of brutal military occupation. This is also the year to hold the Israeli occupation accountable for its actions and to demand the immediate release of all Palestinian political prisoners!

Addameer further calls upon the international community to demand that the Israeli government to respect the will of hunger strikers who use their bodies as a legitimate means of protest, which has been recognized by the World Medical Association (WMA) Declaration of Malta on Hunger Strikes as “often a form of protest by people who lack other ways of making their demands known.” 

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Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association

P. O. Box: 17338, Jerusalem

3 Edward Said Street
Sebat Bldg.
1st Floor, Suite 2
Ramallah, Palestine

Tel: +972 (0)2 296 0446 / 297 0136
Fax: +972 (0)2 296 0447

Email: info@addameer.ps
Website: www.addameer.org
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RACISM, NATIONALISM, HATE SPEECH AND SELECTIVE GROUPS TO LOVE AND TO HATE

Gillian Triggs has been disgustingly treated by the current federal government and nothing will excuse their current behaviour in relation to "getting rid of her". But certain members of the government have behaved more appallingly than others, if possible.

The latest abuses relate to the Lebanese communities in Australia - the usual smear where the vast majority are blamed for the misdeeds of the few, typically.

In contrast, explore the stories of Jews, zionists, anti-semites and related stories in the media in Australia, the handling by politicians of Jewish interests and Jewish affairs, the differences between young zionists being allowed to fight for Israel against the Palestinians but the selective rage against other young people who go overseas to fight in support of other countries and get slandered perpetually for what they have done.

Then we mustn't forget that although most politicians who are not Jewish support Israel against the Palestinians, there are two reasons for this support. The first is that they would like all Jews to get out of Australia and go and live in Israel, and the second is that their political parties in Australia receive vasts amount of funding by Jewish groups in Australia.

Hypocrisy, oh hypocrisy, it never ends!

Nationalism and racist rear their ugly heads everywhere and it is all encouraged by the politicians around the country who are racist to the core. Just think of the treatment of the Aboriginal communities around the country and how appallingly they are treated everywhere, by the police who are racists, by the governments who are as well, by the incarceration rates, by the employment or non employment and job opportunities - or not - everywhere, by the health neglect and lack of care by governments, the list continues.

Then also there is the ABC and what the governments are doing to it to decimate it and ruin its programmes by starving it of funds and appointing government toadies to run it and disallow legitimate discussion about the politics of the country - we have to be fair and give both sides of every argument - by closing off contrary arguments which are against government policies.

AUSTRALIA IS THE DOORMAT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Successive Australian governments have, for at least the last 40 years, slavishly followed the United States of America into every adventure it has perpetrated in the name of democracy and world order.

Need one mention Iraq, Afghanistan, the middle east in general  and Palestine/Israel in particular?

As wars in these countries have "progressed from strength to strength" (irony intended!), human rights have continued to be disregarded more and more.

Think of Julian Assange, Bradley - now Chelsea Manning, Guantanamo Bay, torture, rendition, drones and everything illegal according to the International Criminal Court legislation, and think of the war horrors all these countries continue to be subjected to.

Think also of the foot soldiers who carry the burdens of the irresponsibilities of all our governments and think of the people we end up with as citizens - broke and destroyed and prone to suicide on an alarming basis day by day.

Then, while you are sitting and weeping and in despair, read the following items from "Courage to Resist" in the United States and ask yourselves why there aren't more organisations such as this around the world including Australia!

COURAGE TO RESIST

Free Chelsea Manning

DEMOCRACY NOW INTERVIEW ABOUT PALESTINIANS VISITING ICC HUMAN RIGHTS

Palestinians visit ICC about Human Rights

PELL, RINEHART, MURDOCH, ABBOTT - THE GOVERNMENT OF AUSTRALIA IN 2014?

If the quartet, whose members are Pell, Rinehart, Murdoch and Abbott, win government on 14 September 2013, Australia and Australians may fear the worst in every respect of government, social issues, freedom of the media, health, education and everything else that people anticipate from their governments.

All people on welfare benefits will suffer, religious fanatics will enforce their god-driven beliefs on the population at large, and human rights, which are already fairly low on the horizon, will sink without trace and we will be left with a theocracy such as we would never believe could exist in Australia, similar to the xenophobic religious zionist Israeli bigot models so admired by all our politicians.

EUTHANASIA - A SON'S ACT OF MERCY DIVIDES A FAMILY

Article in the Sunday Age:

A son's act of mercy divides a family

By Peter Munro

January 15, 2012

Sean Davison in court.

THE blue mortar and pestle had gathered dust on his mother's Welsh dresser, before he used it to crush a dozen morphine pills in her kitchen. The powdered drugs dyed the water murky brown in the glass he held to her lips. She smiled gently after drinking, holding his hand.

''You are a wonderful son,'' she said. But Sean Davison's decision to help his mother die exposed a fault-line that has since torn at his family - and sparked claims his own sister in Melbourne betrayed him to police.

Late last November, New Zealand's High Court sentenced Davison, whom the judge described as an ''exceptionally devoted and loving son'', to five months' home detention for ''counselling and procuring'' his mother's suicide. He spoke to The Sunday Age last week from his three-bedroom confines, about the death that has come to define his life.

Sean Davison and mother Patricia at her home near Dunedin.

''I've had enough, this is not life,'' his mother, Patricia, 85, had said repeatedly from her sickbed. Cancer had spread to her lungs, liver and brain. She half-joked for someone to throw her into Otago Harbour, which she could see from her home near Dunedin, on New Zealand's South Island.

Davison, who lives in South Africa, had come home to nurse her. Patricia - a former GP and psychiatrist who loved painting, dancing and cathedral music - was desperate to die, he says, but feared a failed overdose might leave her alive and brain damaged. She started a hunger strike, hoping to hasten her demise but was still alive 33 days later, on October 25, 2006. Her body was rotting, she could no longer hold a glass of water to take the morphine she had instructed her youngest child to stockpile.

''I always kept trying to keep her alive … I was her caregiver. I would read to her and put CDs on to make her life as enjoyable as possible. It was only after some agonising that I conceded I had no choice,'' says Davison, 50, his soft voice shuddering on Skype. ''I had doubts all the way leading up to that moment … If she had told me at that last minute, 'No, don't do it,' I would have been relieved.''

Plea for help: Patricia Davison

He is lean with wispy hair and a square jaw. His home and own family - his partner Raine Pan and their boys, Flynn, 3, and Finnian, 18 months - are far away in Cape Town. Davison, head of the forensic DNA laboratory at the University of West Cape, was ordered to serve detention in a friend's house in Dunedin. ''I don't regret what I did, I regret being in a situation where I had to do what I did,'' he says.

''Once I told her I was going to help her, she was so relieved. I helped her to drink, then we waited and talked and I held her hand, and we chatted about family things … I felt great relief when she died. I was happy. I hugged her. It was only the next morning I started to think about the ramifications of what I had done.''

Davison's memoir of that time, Before We Say Goodbye, published in June 2009, omitted his role in the death on the request of his publisher's lawyers. But by then an earlier draft, which detailed his mother's overdose, had been given to police. The incriminating manuscript was separately sent to a New Zealand newspaper anonymously in late June.

As in Australia, euthanasia is illegal in New Zealand - despite two parliamentary attempts to pass ''death with dignity'' laws. Davison was visiting friends in Dunedin in September 2010 when he was arrested and charged, initially with attempted murder. He recalls the moment an officer placed the damning manuscript in front of him - it was then he saw it was the same copy he had given his older sister, Mary, a gerontologist and consultant in cognitive dementia at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.

''I felt shock,'' he says now. ''My instant reaction was the police had taken it from her when they interviewed her. Subsequently I learnt she wasn't interviewed … and then it became very obvious.'' Mary had twice taken legal action to stop publication, arguing Davison's book was libellous and breached her family's privacy (some of her identifying details were removed subsequently).

Davison had sent about a dozen manuscripts to family and friends. But on the front of Mary's copy he specially glued a photograph of their mother's self-portrait, to encourage his sister's sympathy. What he believes to be that same portrait stared at him in the police station. ''I try to see the best side of her, that her sole goal was to try to stop publication and maybe she went too far and she wasn't intending it to end up like this,'' he says now. ''I don't seek revenge if it was her … I am hoping she regrets doing it and regrets what's happened to me.''
Mary Davison, though, strongly rejects the allegation. ''I deny it. I don't have a motive for it either. He is entitled to believe that. It didn't come through me … I wouldn't do it. I love my brother,'' she tells The Sunday Age in Melbourne. She declines to comment further, except to say her mother was a very private person and that she cannot explain why the police had the self-portrait copy. ''I didn't write the book, I didn't hand the article to the police and I wasn't there when my mother died.''

Neither Sean nor his other two siblings have questioned Mary directly about the manuscript. ''I think she couldn't see beyond the fact that this [issue] was bigger than our family,'' says sister Jo Bennett, 51, a high school English teacher in Christchurch. ''I think in most cases it doesn't split families. I don't think Mary's anger had anything to do with Sean euthanising Mum.''

She praises Sean for his ''bravery''. ''He was closest to her. I think he probably felt he was the one who couldn't refuse her,'' she says. ''My mother asked me, she asked all of us. She said: 'Please, please, please, if you care about me please end it for me.' I felt very brutal in my reply. I said: 'Mum, it's a murder rap and I have children to look after.' I was choosing my life as a mother over hers.''

Eldest sibling Fergus, 60, a biomedical scientist in London, says Sean felt trapped into helping their mother. ''I don't condemn my brother for what he did - if I was there at the time and had a lot of courage I might have been prepared to do the same.'' He questions, though, his brother's decision to publish his diary. ''If he had been very quiet about it none of this would have happened … Obviously I wish it hadn't happened to him. In some ways he has dug his own ditch.''

Sean Davison is now marking off his days in home detention on the wall. ''I phone home by Skype but … I find it very upsetting to see my children and not being able to be with them,'' he says.

His mother's death has transformed him into a campaigner for the legalisation of euthanasia. ''I think it is an individual's right to choose the time of their death, especially when they're terminally ill and there is no pleasure in life,'' he says. ''I started to feel if I didn't take a stand it would have been cowardly, because I knew what I had done was right and I knew a law change was right, and to not stand up … would have been cowardly.''