TDB Top 5 International Stories: Wednesday 14th September 2016
5: Refugee Detention Has Cost Australian Taxpayers Nearly $10 Billion Since 2013
While it’s long been known that offshore detention takes a psychological toll on refugees, it’s also taken a financial one on Australian taxpayers—to the tune of almost $10 billion. According to a new report released today by Save the Children and UNICEF Australia, our current asylum seeker policies have cost us $9.6 billion since 2013, and will cost a further $5.7 billion over the next four years.
The report, At What Cost?, compares the human and economic costs of Australia’s immigration policies to proposed cheaper and more humane methods. It takes into account all the information the government has published in relation to the costs of running the offshore processing centre on Manus Island and Nauru since 2013, as well as the cost of boat turn backs, and the cost of onshore detention facilities.
Speaking to VICE, Save the Children CEO Paul Ronalds said the report demonstrates not only the huge price that Australians pay to deter refugees from coming here, but also how unnecessary this outlay is. “This report lays out for the first time really the full human, economic, and strategic costs of Australia’s current deterrent model of immigration,” he says.
Vice News
4: Edward Snowden makes ‘moral’ case for presidential pardon
Edward Snowden has set out the case for Barack Obama granting him a pardon before the US president leaves office in January, arguing that the disclosure of the scale of surveillance by US and British intelligence agencies was not only morally right but had left citizens better off.
The US whistleblower’s comments, made in an interview with the Guardian, came as supporters, including his US lawyer, stepped up a campaign for a presidential pardon. Snowden is wanted in the US, where he is accused of violating the Espionage Act and faces at least 30 years in jail.
Speaking on Monday via a video link from Moscow, where he is in exile, Snowden said any evaluation of the consequences of his leak of tens of thousands of National Security Agency and GCHQ documents in 2013 would show clearly that people had benefited.
“Yes, there are laws on the books that say one thing, but that is perhaps why the pardon power exists – for the exceptions, for the things that may seem unlawful in letters on a page but when we look at them morally, when we look at them ethically, when we look at the results, it seems these were necessary things, these were vital things,” he said.
The Guardian
3: I WAS A CIA WHISTLEBLOWER. NOW I’M A BLACK INMATE. HERE’S HOW I SEE AMERICAN RACISM.
I DO NOT like prison. No one should.
It is a strenuous, unceasing effort to cope with the ordeal of being incarcerated at a federal prison. I find myself identifying with the title character from Shakespeare’s “Richard II” when he laments his own effort to adjust to confinement by wondering, “I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world.” I do my best to resist the thought that prison is a reflection of our society, but the comparisons are unavoidable. Unlike “Richard II,” my “studying” has not been so much a comparison as an unhappy realization.
From the moment I crossed the threshold from freedom to incarceration because I was charged with, and a jury convicted me of, leaking classified information to a New York Times reporter, I needed no reminder that I was no longer an individual. Prison, with its “one size fits all” structure, is not set up to recognize a person’s worth; the emphasis is removal and categorization. Inmates are not people; we are our offenses. In this particular prison where I live, there are S-Os (sex offenders), Cho-Mos (child molesters), and gun and drug offenders, among others. Considering the charges and conviction that brought me here, I’m not exactly sure to which category I belong. No matter. There is an overriding category to which I do belong, and it is this prison reality that I sadly “compare unto the world”: I’m not just an inmate, I’m a black inmate.
The Intercept
2: Turkey asks US to arrest Gulen for ‘ordering’ coup bid
Turkey has asked Washington to arrest a US-based religious leader and businessman for allegedly masterminding a failed attempt to overthrow the government, according to state media.
The Turkish justice ministry formally demanded that US authorities arrest Fethullah Gulen on charges of “ordering and commanding the attempted coup”, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported on Tuesday.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other top Turkish officials have repeatedly appealed to the US government to extradite Gulen, sending them documents which allegedly show evidence of his involvement in the failed coup attempt on July 15.
Gulen has denied any involvement in the coup bid.
Aljazeera
We speak with Chase Strangio, lawyer for imprisoned Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning, about the hunger strike she launched Friday to protest her prison conditions. In a statement, Manning said she would only consume water and medication until she’s provided “minimum standards of dignity, respect, and humanity.” She’s demanding a written promise from the Army that she will receive medically prescribed recommendations for her gender dysphoria. Manning is serving a 35-year sentence in the disciplinary barracks in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. She has been subjected to long stretches of solitary confinement and denied medical treatment related to her gender identity. Strangio is a staff attorney at the ACLU who represents Chelsea Manning in a lawsuit against the Department of Defense.
Democracy Now!
Turkey is fast becoming the Middle East’s first truly Muslim fascist state in its resemblance to Nazi Germany