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Last night here in Sydney I helped launch – MC really alongside author Andrew Fowler and journalist Kerry O’Brien – a wonderful new book on Wikileaks and Julian Assange, The Most Dangerous Man in the World. Go buy immediately!
What was clear during the discussion was the significance of Wikileaks challenging the media class in general, forcing them to question (well, the good ones, anyway) how they relate to those in positions of power. Skepticism should be order of the day but alas often is not.
In a new interview with Assange published in India’s The Hindu, the Wikileaks founder discusses the world that exists away from the embedded media mindset:
There is a basic structure to geopolitics, which is not often mentioned. One way to think about it is that every country that is not very isolated has to sign up to one provider of intelligence or another. And there are a number of providers in the market. The U.S. is the market leader. And then you have really Russia and China and the U.K. providing a little bit. If you don’t sign up to one of these, then you can’t see what’s happening around you in your borders — because you don’t have geo-spatial intelligence. Information about individuals who may be coming into your territory or conspiring, you do not have; and that’s something that military groups and intelligence groups in various countries want to have. It increases their relative power within their own nations.
That doesn’t mean the nation needs it but rather that, for Indian intelligence, they can, for example, tremendously increase their influence within India by being signed up to all that intelligence product that the United States produces. Similarly, the Indian military can increase its power by having all these relationships with the U.S. military. And those relationships are not just pushed by the U.S. military or by the U.S. intelligence services. Nowadays, most of the economic activity involving intelligence and military in the United States occurs in private companies.
So there’s a blurring out in the United States between what is part of government and what is part of private industry. And these private industry groups, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and so on, and many thousands of smaller companies, lobby and push the U.S. State Department, Congress, and other countries directly to sign up as part of this system — so they can get more power and influence within the United States and have a greater ability to suck money out of the U.S. tax base and out of the tax bases of other countries.
While the West is focused on bombing Libya, Wikileaks’ cables are convulsing the world’s largest democracy:
The Wikileaks’ expose on the cash-for-votes issue paralysed proceedings in Parliament on Tuesday with the Opposition demanding immediate discussion on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s statement on the matter.
The Rajya Sabha witnessed three adjournments and the Lok Sabha one as an aggressive Opposition insisted on taking up the debate straightaway notwithstanding the government’s plea that Finance Bill be taken up first in the Lok Sabha.
Speaker Meira Kumar told Leader of the Opposition Sushma Swaraj that her notice of Breach of Privilege against the Prime Minister was being examined by her.
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said the U.S. need not preach to India on human rights in the wake of its concerns on this issue in his State as reflected in leaked diplomatic cables from an American Consul, accessed by The Hindu through WikiLeaks.
Mr. Modi at the same time noted that the cables had also spoken of him being “incorruptible” and Gujarat being a “progressive” State.
He also said that the Central government should address the issue of U.S. “interference” in the internal affairs of India.
“(Michael) Owen had discussed Gujarat..I looked into his eyes and said America should not give us advice on human rights,” Mr. Modi recalled. Michael. S. Owen was U.S. Consul General in Mumbai when he had a meeting with Mr. Modi in 2006.
“This America should not give us advice on human rights. I am son of India and I know what human rights violations you have done. Good that dialogue is faithfully reproduced,” he told reporters on Tuesday.
It’s important to remember that the image of Washington as a meddling and destructive force is constant through Cablegate. America isn’t a stabilising force but a reckless and bullying one. Goodbye, empire (slowly but surely).
Here’s Julian Assange discussing the Indian case:
India’s The Hindu has the exclusive documents that show the role played by New Delhi during Colombo’s brutal war against the Tamils that ended in May 2009. Nearly two years on, justice is denied to the victims:
In the final stages of the war with the LTTE, New Delhi played all sides but discouraged international attempts to halt the operations.
India played a key role in warding off international pressure on Sri Lanka to halt military operations and hold talks with the LTTE in the dramatic final days and weeks of the war in 2009, confidential U.S. Embassy cables accessed by The Hindu through WikiLeaks showed.
The cables reveal that while India conveyed its concern to Sri Lanka several times about the “perilous” situation that civilians caught in the fighting faced, it was not opposed to the anti-LTTE operation.
They also show that India worried about the Sri Lankan President’s “post-conflict intentions,” though it believed that there was a better chance of persuading him to offer Sri Lankan Tamils an inclusive political settlement after the fighting ended.
After its efforts to halt the operation failed, the international community resigned itself to playing a post-conflict role by using its economic leverage, acknowledging that it had to rope in India for this.
In the closing stages of the war, New Delhi played all sides, always sharing the concern of the international community over the humanitarian situation and alleged civilian casualties in the Sri Lankan military campaign, but discouraging any move by the West to halt the operations.
My following article is published by leading Indian magazine Tehelka:
The Middle East is the region where global empires lavishly exercise their chequebook. Since the Second World War, America has bribed, cajoled and backed autocratic regimes in the name of stability.
Israel, self-described as the only democracy in the area, has been insulated from the vagaries of democratic politics by simply colluding with dictatorships across its various borders.
Zionism has thrived due to Arab leader corruption and silence in the face of occupation against Palestinian lands.
But the mass uprisings across Egypt are threatening these cosy arrangements.
The Israeli mainstream is fearful of what Arab democracy may mean, but for the majority in Egypt decades of repression may be coming to an end.
The resignation of President Hosni Mubarak is the first necessary step in restoring dignity to the Egyptian political process, though it is only the beginning.
The millions of demonstrators won’t tolerate a military coup simply replacing one tyrant with another.
We can marvel at the success of a peaceful protest movement and wonder which other western-backed thugs may be next.
Today, the Muslim world sees what is possible with weeks of determined protest; America and Israel no longer control the agenda of who rules the Arab street.
Tel Aviv is already fearful of what true democracy may mean for its position.
While there is no unified message of the protesters for the future, a few key demands are clear; free and fair elections, an orderly transition, an end to torture, better employment opportunities and an end to being manipulated by foreign powers.
Sadly and predictably, many neo-conservative and Jewish commentators in America are whipping up fear of an Islamist take-over of Egypt while the situation remains incredibly fluid.
Besides, the western world has consistently refused to accept to its own detriment the legitimate positions of many Muslims since 11 September 2001 who wants their religion integrated into a democratic system.
Turkey is a model here, an imperfect example of an Islamic democracy.
Former Egyptian President Mubarak, wholly supported by Washington and Tel Aviv for three decades and much of the US corporate press, has shaped a state that routinely tortured its own citizens as well as suspects in the American-led “war on terror.”
New Vice-President Omar Suleiman is implicated in a range of crimes committed since 9/11, including overseeing torture himself against alleged terror suspects.
The New Yorker’s Jane Meyer wrote last week:
“Technically, U.S. law required the C.I.A. to seek “assurances” from Egypt that rendered suspects wouldn’t face torture. But under Suleiman’s reign at the intelligence service, such assurances were considered close to worthless.
As Michael Scheuer, a former C.I.A. officer who helped set up the practice of rendition, later testified before Congress, even if such “assurances” were written in indelible ink, “they weren’t worth a bucket of warm spit.””
In the last weeks, Egyptians authorities blocked Internet access and mobile phone services in an attempt to stop information getting out to the world.
It failed spectacularly but far too many western commentators were quick to jump to conclusions and claim this was a Facebook revolution or Twitter revolution.
But, despite Facebook playing a key role in initially organising outrage, the vast majority of Egyptians didn’t need a website to register their anger.
It was pleasing to read Google and Twitter joining forces to launch SpeaktoTweet, a service allowing Egyptians to call an international number and record a voice message that would then be tweeted from a Twitter account.
It is increasingly difficult to silence the masses in a globalised age, though we shouldn’t be seduced by the false belief that free Internet access automatically brings western-style democracy.
The western reaction to the Egyptian protests has been a mixture of awe and confusion.
The internal logic of many westerners is contradictory and hypocritical.
Backing the US-led invasion of Iraq, currently run as a Tehran-friendly police state, was seen as a noble gesture to liberate the oppressed masses but when the citizens agitate themselves without our help they’re lectured about remaining ‘moderate’.
Famed Slavoj Zizek wrote last week in the UK Guardian that the West so rarely sees a revolutionary spirit in its own countries that there is automatic suspicion when it occurs somewhere else, such as Egypt.
Ironically, post 9/11 paranoia about Islamic fundamentalism is due to its presence in nations the West has supposedly ‘liberated’, namely Iraq and Afghanistan.
Neither nation has a long history of religious extremism; foreign meddling has allowed these forces to incubate.
Dictatorships in the Arab world don’t just materialise, they are created and sustained over decades.
Washington funds Cairo to the tunes of billions annually (second only to Israel) and yet the results are clear to see; stagnation and political corruption on a vast scale.
This arrangement suits America, Israel and the West just fine; client states aren’t independent thinkers and that’s how their funders like it.
Take former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who told CNN that Mubarak had been ‘immensely courageous and a force for good’ in the Middle East over the Israel-Palestine ‘peace process’.
Blair was merely echoing the standard post 9/11 view of the region; political Islam must never be engaged, even if parties win legitimate elections (witness Hamas after its victory in Palestine in 2006).
But what comes after Mubarak? His infrastructure of terror must be dismantled but this can’t happen unless Western policy fundamentally reviews its attitude toward the Middle East.
Why should only Israeli Jews be allowed freedom in the region? Must Arabs be suppressed for the pleasure of the Zionist state?
Sixty years is more than enough of this paradigm. And Arab people-power has loudly announced that it won’t tolerate decades more living under autocracy.
Egypt provides salutary lessons for other nations, including India.
Mubarak created a highly centralised state of control allowing him to crush potential rivals. But the voice of the people has been bubbling beneath the surface for years – I witnessed it during various visits there, from bloggers, union members and dissidents.
Cairo, however, refused to listen, believing brute force would allow the status-quo to survive.
Responsive, democratic governments work best when the interests of the people, especially minorities, aren’t ignored but acted upon.
Blocking the Internet in a large country is almost impossible in the 21st century due to the economy’s reliance on it but Egypt joins an increasingly long list of nations attempting to shut out modernity (including Myanmar and North Korea).
Although the central government in New Delhi is unlikely to administer such a draconian plan, leaders should be open to robust debate on the most controversial subjects, including Kashmir and the Naxalites.
Mature democracies are ones that welcome disagreement and don’t threaten prosecution for those who dare challenge the mainstream view.
There are disturbing signs in many western nations of overzealous officials wanting to regulate the openness of the Internet in the fight against ‘terrorism’.
This must be resisted.
Likewise in India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would be well advised to listen to dissent due to the decentralised nature of his country; ignoring such difficult questions is not the sign of a leader who consults but a man who relies on harsh counter-terrorism techniques to quash dissent.
Hosni Mubarak could inform him of the dangers of this path.
Australian journalist and author Antony Loewenstein, 36, has published a best-selling book on the Israel/Palestine conflict, My Israel Question, and has spent time working and travelling across the Middle East and beyond. His book, The Blogging Revolution, examines the role of the internet in repressive regimes, including Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and China. He has written for publications such as the Guardian, Haaretz and the BBC World and regularly appears in the local and global media discussing human rights and politics.
When we released this statement over Sri Lanka recently, I would never have imagined its global impact.
What does it show? That a strongly-worded statement can have an effect and raise uncomfortable and necessary questions for an event that is far too keen to avoid the realities in dictatorship Sri Lanka.
South African award-winning novelist and playwright Damon Galgut has boycotted a literary festival in Sri Lanka because of concerns over the country’s rights record, organisers said Thursday.
Galgut, a winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 2003 for “The Good Doctor”, set in post-apartheid South Africa, declined to take part in the Galle Literary Festival despite arriving in Sri Lanka this week, organisers said.
“We are sorry to announce that Damon Galgut has decided to lend his support to the ongoing international campaign by rights activists to highlight shortfalls in human rights here,” Shyam Selvadurai, the festival curator said.
“It’s an unfortunate situation for us that Damon heeded this ridiculous campaign,” Selvadurai told reporters. “But the festival will go on, with over 60 writers participating.”
Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and a Sri Lankan right group last week asked foreign writers to boycott the five-day Galle festival because of alleged rights abuses in Sri Lanka.
Galgut, whose latest novel, “In a Strange Room,” is shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize, was not immediately available for comment.
RSF said Wednesday that “hundreds” of Internet users had signed a boycott petition led by Noam Chomsky, Arundathi Roy, Ken Loach, Antony Loewenstein, Tariq Ali, Dave Rampton and R Cheran.
Nobel laureate Turkish-born Orhan Pamuk and his partner, fellow writer Kiran Desai, last week pulled out of the festival.
Pamuk’s agent in India declined to give a reason while festival organisers said their absence was unrelated to the RSF campaign.
Pamuk, author of “Snow” and “The Black Book,” attended the Jaipur Literary Festival in India last week.
Despite the international campaign, hundreds of local and foreign book lovers flocked to the festival that is held inside a colonial-era sea-front fort in Galle, 72 miles (115 kilometres) south of Colombo.
Visa issues? Human rights a concern? Indian government ineptitude?
Suffice to say, I’m very pleased that the statement we released this week that outlined the gross human rights abuses in Sri Lanka continues to resonate and launch a much-needed discussion worldwide (including here in Jaipur, India, where many people seem uncomfortable even hearing the compromises we all make when attending writer’s festivals due to sponsorship).
All cultural events have a political component and participants shouldn’t ignore them.
Thank you, Wikileaks.
One:
US officials had evidence of widespread torture by Indian police and security forces and were secretly briefed by Red Cross staff about the systematic abuse of detainees in Kashmir, according to leaked diplomatic cables released tonight.
The dispatches, obtained by website WikiLeaks, reveal that US diplomats in Delhi were briefed in 2005 by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) about the use of electrocution, beatings and sexual humiliation against hundreds of detainees.
Other cables show that as recently as 2007 American diplomats were concerned about widespread human rights abuses by Indian security forces, who they said relied on torture for confessions.
The revelations will be intensely embarrassing for Delhi, which takes pride in its status as the world’s biggest democracy, and come at a time of heightened sensitivity in Kashmir after renewed protests and violence this year.
Two:
Liam Fox, the defence secretary, was tonight forced to abandon a private visit to Sri Lanka this weekend after a row with William Hague, who feared that he would upset Britain’s carefully balanced approach to Colombo.
Fox announced his change of heart as US embassy cables leaked tonight provided fresh allegations of the Sri Lankan government’s complicity with paramilitary groups in last year’s offensive against the Tamil Tigers.
Labour accused the government of adopting a “chaotic” approach to diplomacy when Fox announced that he would instead make an official visit to the country in the new year.
Fox’s decision came after talks with Hague, the foreign secretary, and a warning by the British Tamils Forum that his trip would send mixed messages to President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who is facing strong international pressure for an investigation into allegations that Sri Lanka forces committed war crimes.
The Ministry of Defence blamed the delay on the need for Fox to extend a visit to the Gulf. A spokesman for the defence secretary said: “Dr Fox has postponed his private visit to Sri Lanka due to an extension to his scheduled official visit to the Gulf. He intends to carry out an official visit to Sri Lanka next year, during which he proposes to fulfil the speaking engagement that he had planned.”
The move by Fox came as the latest batch of US embassy cables to be published by WikiLeaks show that:
• US officials expressed concerns that the Sri Lankan government was complicit with paramilitary groups. One cable, sent in May 2007 by the then US ambassador, Robert Blake, details abductions, extortion, forced prostitution and conscription of child soldiers.
• Five Sri Lankan doctors were coerced by the Sri Lankan government to recant on casualty figures they gave to journalists in the last months of the civil war.
• The Tamil Tigers (LTTE) were guilty of human rights abuses and demanded a cut of international NGOs’ spending in the areas they controlled.
• The US ambassador to Colombo, Patricia Butenis, said on 15 January that one of the reasons there was such little progress towards a genuine Sri Lankan inquiry into the killings was that President Rajapaksa, and the former army commander, Sarath Fonseka, were largely responsible. “There are no examples we know of a regime undertaking wholesale investigations of its own troops or senior officials for war crimes while that regime or government remained in power,” Butenis noted.
It is understood that Fox, who held a private meeting with the president in London two weeks ago, abandoned his private visit after intense pressure from Hague. Foreign Office sources said that Fox’s private visit could have jeopardised Britain’s nuanced approach to Sri Lanka, in which ministers put pressure on Colombo to agree to an investigation into last year’s offensive against the Tamil Tigers while acknowledging the Tigers were responsible for terrorism.
One Whitehall source said: “William has said to Liam: ‘This is the Foreign Office line, Liam.’ In brackets William will have said: ‘You have needed my support in the past.’”
Fox still plans to deliver the Lakshman Kadirgamar memorial lecture after being invited by the widow of the late foreign minister who was murdered by a Tamil Tiger sniper in 2005. But he will do this as part of his official visit next year.
Yvette Cooper, the shadow foreign secretary, said: “Chaotic diplomacy like this does no good for the government’s standing on such a significant issue. It also raises serious questions about the defence secretary’s judgment.
“What on earth has he been doing holding ‘private’ meetings with the Sri Lankan president while refusing to say if he has pressed for the war crimes investigation we need or supported the foreign secretary’s position? William Hague must be spitting mad.”
President Rajapaksa, who won a second term in January following the military victory over the separatists last year, has repeatedly denied any involvement in or knowledge of human rights abuses.
But the latest cables published by WikiLeaks highlight human rights abuses committed by the LTTE, against whom the paramilitaries and the government forces were engaged. Sources told representatives of the US embassy to Sri Lanka that the LTTE regularly demanded a cut of international NGOs’ spending in the areas they controlled. Other sources described a harsh regime of compulsory conscription into fighting forces. “If they fail to report, they are taken forcibly, often at night,” one said. Cables from early this year referred to “progress” by the Government of Sri Lanka on a range of human rights issues in recent months.
“There has been a dramatic improvement in the treatment of IDPs and their living conditions … [and] numbers of disappearances have experienced a steady and significant decline across the island since the end of the war,” one dispatch said.
Another affirmed that “child soldiers affiliated with the [paramilitaries] have been significantly reduced over the past year, with just five reportedly remaining at the end of 2009.”
One senior journalist had been released from detention, the cable added, and diplomats were “not aware of any additional physical attacks on journalists since June [2009]“.
There was even some tentative steps” on “accountability” for human rights abuses during the civil war, Washington was told.
“Accountability for alleged crimes committed by [government of Sri lanka] troops and officials during the war is the most difficult issue on our bilateral agenda, and the one we believe has the lowest prospect for forward movement,” a cable sent in late January said. “In Sri Lanka this is further complicated by the fact that responsibility for many of the alleged crimes rests with the country’s senior civilian and military leadership, including President Rajapaksa and his brothers and opposition candidate [and former military commander] General Fonseka.”
Arundhati Roy in the New York Times powerfully expresses the conflict in Kashmir, America’s willful impotence and the mood of resistance:
A week before he was elected in 2008, President Obama said that solving the dispute over Kashmir’s struggle for self-determination — which has led to three wars between India and Pakistan since 1947 — would be among his “critical tasks.” His remarks were greeted with consternation in India, and he has said almost nothing about Kashmir since then.
But on Monday, during his visit here, he pleased his hosts immensely by saying the United States would not intervene in Kashmir and announcing his support for India’s seat on the United Nations Security Council. While he spoke eloquently about threats of terrorism, he kept quiet about human rights abuses in Kashmir.
Whether Mr. Obama decides to change his position on Kashmir again depends on several factors: how the war in Afghanistan is going, how much help the United States needs from Pakistan and whether the government of India goes aircraft shopping this winter. (An order for 10 Boeing C-17 Globemaster III aircraft, worth $5.8 billion, among other huge business deals in the pipeline, may ensure the president’s silence.) But neither Mr. Obama’s silence nor his intervention is likely to make the people in Kashmir drop the stones in their hands.
I was in Kashmir 10 days ago, in that beautiful valley on the Pakistani border, home to three great civilizations — Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist. It’s a valley of myth and history. Some believe that Jesus died there; others that Moses went there to find the lost tribe. Millions worship at the Hazratbal shrine, where a few days a year a hair of the Prophet Muhammad is displayed to believers.
Now Kashmir, caught between the influence of militant Islam from Pakistan and Afghanistan, America’s interests in the region and Indian nationalism (which is becoming increasingly aggressive and “Hinduized”), is considered a nuclear flash point. It is patrolled by more than half a million soldiers and has become the most highly militarized zone in the world.
The atmosphere on the highway between Kashmir’s capital, Srinagar, and my destination, the little apple town of Shopian in the south, was tense. Groups of soldiers were deployed along the highway, in the orchards, in the fields, on the rooftops and outside shops in the little market squares. Despite months of curfew, the “stone pelters” calling for “azadi” (freedom), inspired by the Palestinian intifada, were out again. Some stretches of the highway were covered with so many of these stones that you needed an S.U.V. to drive over them.
Fortunately the friends I was with knew alternative routes down the back lanes and village roads. The “longcut” gave me the time to listen to their stories of this year’s uprising. The youngest, still a boy, told us that when three of his friends were arrested for throwing stones, the police pulled out their fingernails — every nail, on both hands.
For three years in a row now, Kashmiris have been in the streets, protesting what they see as India’s violent occupation.
The growing friendship between Israel and India.
In a post-US century, the Jewish state can’t simply rely on Washington for backing.
The stance of a brave human rights believer, writer and journalist:
For her talk on Kashmir, writer Arundhati Roy has come under the threat of “sedition” charges in India. These speeches are currently being analyzed by Delhi police. Her response to the threat is below and was issued from Srinagar:
I write this from Srinagar, Kashmir. This morning’s papers say that I may be arrested on charges of sedition for what I have said at recent public meetings on Kashmir. I said what millions of people here say every day. I said what I, as well as other commentators have written and said for years. Anybody who cares to read the transcripts of my speeches will see that they were fundamentally a call for justice. I spoke about justice for the people of Kashmir who live under one of the most brutal military occupations in the world; for Kashmiri Pandits who live out the tragedy of having been driven out of their homeland; for Dalit soldiers killed in Kashmir whose graves I visited on garbage heaps in their villages in Cuddalore; for the Indian poor who pay the price of this occupation in material ways and who are now learning to live in the terror of what is becoming a police state.
Yesterday I traveled to Shopian, the apple-town in South Kashmir which had remained closed for 47 days last year in protest against the brutal rape and murder of Asiya and Nilofer, the young women whose bodies were found in a shallow stream near their homes and whose murderers have still not been brought to justice. I met Shakeel, who is Nilofer’s husband and Asiya’s brother. We sat in a circle of people crazed with grief and anger who had lost hope that they would ever get ‘insaf’—justice—from India, and now believed that Azadi—freedom— was their only hope. I met young stone pelters who had been shot through their eyes. I traveled with a young man who told me how three of his friends, teenagers in Anantnag district, had been taken into custody and had their finger-nails pulled out as punishment for throwing stones.
In the papers some have accused me of giving ‘hate-speeches’, of wanting India to break up. On the contrary, what I say comes from love and pride. It comes from not wanting people to be killed, raped, imprisoned or have their finger-nails pulled out in order to force them to say they are Indians. It comes from wanting to live in a society that is striving to be a just one. Pity the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds. Pity the nation that needs to jail those who ask for justice, while communal killers, mass murderers, corporate scamsters, looters, rapists, and those who prey on the poorest of the poor, roam free.
Arundhati Roy
October 26 2010
A new Indian film, Crook – It’s Good to be Bad, that examines the racial violence against Indian students in Australia. If many in Australia remain in denial about the problem, don’t be surprised that many in India will react accordingly:
Just what the world needs; an invigorated, more interventionist British empire:
William Hague has outlined the Government’s vision of Britain’s role in the world, promising a sweeping overhaul of foreign policy aimed at expanding the country’s influence to every inhabited continent.
In his first major speech as Foreign Secretary Mr Hague stressed that while he wanted to maintain the strong relationship with the United States, it should “solid not slavish”. There was a need for greater influence inside the EU and especially for closer alliances with its smaller, often overlooked member states. He stressed the importance of forming closer ties with “new and emerging powers” like India, China and Brazil and seeking new relationships with countries in Latin America.
How famed Indian writer Arundhati Roy fights her own war against terror and defends the rights of the silenced in her country.