Tag Archive for 'blogging'

The threat of internal critics over war and conflict

Published on 24 June 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Now we know the Bush administration wanted personal information on leading Iraq war critic Juan Cole (who knew that writing a popular blog was such a threat to the US government?)

The former CIA agent who revealed this information, Glenn Carle, tells Democracy Now! why he was deeply concerned by the White House request and the obvious question remains; how many other dissidents of the “war on terror” have been followed, harassed or violated (in the US and also here in Australia)?

AMY GOODMAN: Why Professor Juan Cole? There were so many and are so many critics of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why were they singling out him? Or, should I say, were they singling out him? Were you requested to do this on a regular basis?

GLENN CARLE: Yeah, well, that’s—it’s a question that comes to mind, of course, and people have asked me before. I only know what I know. And I don’t mean to quote Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, or paraphrase him. I know the facts concerning Professor Cole, and the instances that have been reported, they are accurate. That’s what I experienced. I don’t know of any other specific person.

I do know the context of tension and hostility between the Bush administration and the intelligence community, and more broadly, any critic of their policies. And the context at the time was intensely—well, it was extremely tense and quite partisan. The politics, we try to stay out of; in the intelligence community, of course, we cannot. And this was happening at a time when there was the whole Valerie Plame incident, Joe Wilson. One of my colleagues on the National Intelligence Council totally, without any intention or desire on his part, became embroiled in the presidential reelection campaign, when an offhand—not offhand, an off-the-record innocuous remark he made was seized by the administration as proof that the intelligence community was trying to undermine its policies. Nothing was further from the truth. He had been asked simply, “Didn’t the intelligence community know that there would be or assess there would be ethnic sectarian strife in Iraq in the event of an invasion?” And essentially, his answer was, “Well, yes.” But that was viewed as treasonous. So that was the larger context.

Some question and answers about responsibility of writers

Published on 16 June 2011 in General and Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Following my essay in the latest edition of literary journal Overland on cultural boycotts, politics, Palestine and Sri Lanka, the magazine interviewed me on various matters:

Passionate and outspoken about Israel/Palestine, among other things, Antony Loewenstein is a freelance independent journalist based in Sydney. Author of My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution, he is a denizen of the Twittersphere. Antony speaks regularly at literary festivals around the world and his essay ‘Boycotts and Literary Festivals’ is published in the 203 edition of Overland.

What was your pathway to becoming a speaker at literary festivals?

I wrote a book and many festivals in Australia invited me. It was My Israel Question, first published in 2006, and told the story of a dissident Jew challenging Zionist power in the West and the realities of occupation for Palestinians. Many Jews hated it, smeared me and tried to shut down the debate. It was typical Zionist behaviour. Thankfully, they failed miserably, despite continuing to try, and even today literary festival directors tell me that the Zionist lobby still tries to pressure them to not invite me to speak on the Middle East, or anything really. This is what Zionism has done to my people, convince them that victimhood is a natural state of affairs and that honest discussion about Israel/Palestine is too threatening to be heard by non-Jews.

The audiences at my literary festival events, since the beginning, have been largely supportive of my stance – though I don’t just speak about Israel/Palestine, also Wikileaks, freedom of speech, web censorship and disaster capitalism – and curiously the strongest Zionist supporters of Israel rarely raise their voices at literary festivals. Instead, they’ll later go into print arguing that festivals were biased against Israel (as happened recently by the Zionist lobby in Australia, condemning my supposedly extremist views on Israel during the Sydney Writer’s Festival). As I say, victimhood comes so naturally to some Jews.

I often have mixed feelings about attending writers’ festivals. I rarely reject an invitation – and have been lucky to speak at events in Australia, India and Indonesia – but it’s often a cozy club that shuns controversy. I like to provoke, not merely for the sake of it, but I know the middle-class audience will not generally hear such thoughts in events about ‘the art of the novel’ or ‘where is the US in 2011?’ I guess if I wrote about knitting or frogs, it may be harder to stir debates.

What is the purpose of a literary festival?

It should be to entertain, challenge and dissect contemporary life. As books sell less in our societies, attendance at literary festivals has increased. People crave intelligent discussion. They generally aren’t receiving that in the corporate media. To see massive audiences in Sydney, Ubud or Jaipur sitting or standing to hear robust debates on the ways of the world can only be a good thing. But there is an important caveat. Do these events too often provide comfort for the listener, a warm glow about themselves and their existence and all-too-rarely tackle the real effects of, say, government policies or the civilian murders in our various wars in the Muslim world?

I argue for a far more politicised literary scene, where intellectuals aren’t so keen to be loved and embraced by an audience but the art of discomfort is raised as an art form. This is why I argue for boycotts in my Overland piece, relating to Palestine and Sri Lanka. Surely our responsibility as artists is not to kow-tow to the powerful but challenge them? And surely our duty is to make people think about the role of non-violent resistance to situations in which we in the West have a role? Literary festivals are a unique opportunity to capture a large audience and throw around some ideas, thoughts which may percolate. If a reader can digest this, still buy a book and ponder something they hadn’t pondered before, my job here is done.

Writer discomfort, to being feted at literary festivals, is my natural state of being. I welcome it.

As a writer, what inspires you?

Passion, direct action, living life in a way that doesn’t ignore the hypocrisy of our realities, lived experiences, detailed journalism, inspiring tales of heroism (that don’t involve women giving up everything and living in Italy for a few months) and voices that struggle to be heard. I’ve always seen my job as a writer as to highlight and brighten the silenced voices in our society. It may be a Tamil or Palestinian, somebody living under occupation or the worker of a multinational who gets shafted for simply doing her job. This may sound pompous or self-important but frankly most journalists say they believe these things but then spend most of their lives dying to be insulated within the power structures of society.

The recent debate in Sydney over Marrickville council embracing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) over Israel was a rare example of government seeing injustice and trying to do something about it. The faux controversy concocted by the Murdoch press, Zionist lobby and Jewish establishment proved just how toxic the occupation of Palestinian lands has become. As a writer, I savoured the few brave individuals who stood up in the face of overwhelming bullying and spoke eloquently for Palestinian rights and real peace with justice in the Middle East. This position is not something that will be taught on a Zionist lobby trip to Israel (something undertaken by most politicians in Australia and many journalists) but real investigation. There are times, though, when I nearly despair, such as my recent visit to New York and attendance at the Celebrate Israel parade.

I think anger is an under-valued attribute in a good writer.

Where are you now, with your writing practice?

I know far more today than when I started my professional career in 2003. In some ways my anger is far more targeted and my writing has improved because of it. I’m pleased that both my current books, My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution, are currently being updated and translated in various countries around the world. I’m working on a book about the modern Left and another about disaster capitalism in Australia and the world. And that’s just for starters. I’m rather busy. I constantly struggle with the sheer volume of information that exists out there. The internet is a blessing and a curse. Taking time away from this device would be just lovely but I’m not too sure how to do it. Feeling connected as a writer is one of the most pleasing aspects of my job. From a schoolgirl who uses my work in her classes to an Iranian dissident who reaches out to raise the brutal nature of the Ahmadinejad regime.

Our society is infected with writers who seem to see their role as robots, spokespeople for a predictable cause, afraid to offend or provoke. Being on the road as a writer is a humbling experience, hearing people’s stories, but it can also be lonely. Being challenged on my positions, as I often am over an issue like Palestine, can (usually) only make my work better. The ignorance and cowardly behaviour of our media and political elites over such questions – Wikileaks, Palestine or refugee policies – is indicative of a wider societal malaise and sometimes I’m not surprised that I have so few friends in the media. It’s not a loss. Who wouldn’t want to breathlessly report on the latest press release by the Gillard government? Sigh.

If anything, I hope my Overland piece stimulates thought over the far-too-comfortable and insulated work of the literary and arts scenes in the West. Self-congratulatory back-slaps may feel good at the time but history ain’t being written by time-keepers.

The Net Delusion is alive and well

Published on 6 June 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

My following book review appeared in Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald:

THE NET DELUSION
Evgeny Morozov
Allen Lane,
408pp, $29.95

As people in the Middle East have been protesting in the streets against Western-backed dictators and using social media to connect and circumvent state repression, it would be easy to dismiss The Net Delusion as almost irrelevant.

Born in Belarus, Evgeny Morozov collects mountains of evidence to claim the internet isn’t able to bring freedom, democracy and liberalism.

Sceptics would tell him to watch Al-Jazeera and see the power of the Facebook generation in action.

In fact, it is a dangerous fantasy to believe, he argues, because countless regimes are using the same tools as activists – Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and email – to monitor and catch dissidents.

He writes that “the only space where the West (especially the United States) is still unabashedly eager to promote democracy is in cyberspace. The Freedom Agenda is out; the Twitter Agenda is in.”

Morozov condemns “cyber-utopians” for wanting to build a world where borders are no more. Instead, he says these well-meaning people “did not predict how useful it would prove for propaganda purposes, how masterfully dictators would learn to use it for surveillance” and the increasingly sophisticated methods of web censorship.

Furthermore, Google, Yahoo, Cisco, Nokia and web security firms have all willingly colluded with a range of brutal states to turn a profit.

The Western media are largely to blame for creating the illusion of web-inspired democracy. During the Iranian uprisings in June 2009, many journalists dubbed it the Twitter Revolution, closely following countless tweets from the streets of Tehran. However, it was soon discovered that many of the tweets originated in California and not the Islamic republic. The myth had already been born.

None of these facts is designed to lessen the bravery of demonstrators against autocracies – and Morozov praises countless dissidents in China, the Arab world and beyond – but lazy journalists seemingly crave easy and often inaccurate narratives of nimble young keyboard warriors against sluggish old men in golden palaces.

The New York Times’s Roger Cohen was right when he wrote in January that “the internet’s impact has been to expose the great delusion that has led Western governments to buttress Arab autocrats; that the only alternative to them was Islamic jihadists”.

But most protesters in the streets of Egypt had no access to the internet or any use for it and the main gripes were economic rather than ideological. However, it is undeniable that many of the young organised through online networks and clearly surprised the former Mubarak regime with their ability to harness a mainstream call for change.

Morozov, hailing from a country that knows about disappearances and suppression, urges the West to “stop glorifying those living in authoritarian governments”.

One of the Western fallacies of web usage in non-democratic nations is the belief that people are all looking for political content as a way to cope with repression. In fact, as Morozov proves with research, an experiment in 2007 with strangers in autocratic regimes found that instead of looking for dissenting material they “searched for nude pictures of Gwen Stefani and photos of a panty-less Britney Spears”.

I noted similar trends in China when researching my book The Blogging Revolution and found most Chinese youth were interested in downloading movies and music and meeting boys and girls. Politics was the furthest thing from their minds.

This would change only if economic conditions worsened. A wise government would pre-empt these problems by allowing citizens to let off steam; Beijing has undoubtedly opened up online debate in the past decade, though there are certainly set boundaries and red lines not to cross.

Morozov sometimes underestimates the importance of people in repressive states feeling less alone and mixing with like-minded individuals. Witness the persecuted gay community in Iran, the websites connecting this beleaguered population and the space to discuss an identity denied by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Ultimately, The Net Delusion is necessary because it challenges comfortable Western thinking about the modern nature of authoritarianism.

This year we have already been left to ponder the irony of the US State Department deploying its resources to pressure Arab regimes not to block communications and social media while the stated agenda of Washington is a matrix of control across the region.

These policies are clearly contradictory and a person in US-backed Saudi Arabia and Bahrain won’t be fooled into believing Western benevolence if they can merely use Twitter every day.

My book news for those who still like to read anything longer than an article

Published on 30 April 2011 in General and Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

My first book, the best-selling My Israel Question, has just been released as an e-book and is available via the Kindle, iBook and other formats. The title is currently being updated and translated into Arabic and Indonesian and will be released in various nations over the coming 12 months. My second book, The Blogging Revolution, is also being updated, in light of the Arab revolutions, and will be released in Australia, India and globally later this year.

Just how many Western “security” firms helping repressive regimes?

Published on 29 April 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

In my book The Blogging Revolution I document a range of companies that sell equipment and software to dictatorships to help them monitor mobile phone calls, text messages and web traffic. I’m currently updating the book in light of the recent Arab revolutions – it’ll be released in Australia and a new overseas edition later in the year – and this topic keeps on appearing.

The UK Guardian has now discovered this:

A British company offered to sell a program to the Egyptian security services that experts say could infect computers, hack into web-based email and communications tools such as Skype and even take control of other groups’ systems remotely, according to documents seen by the Guardian.

Two Egyptian human rights activists found the documents amid hundreds of batons and torture equipment when they broke into the headquarters of the regime’s State Security Investigations service (SSI) last month.

One of the papers, in English and headed Finfisher Proposal: Commercial Offer, contained an offer dated 29 June 2010 to provide “FinSpy” software, hardware, installation and training to the SSI for €287,000 (£255,000). The name on the invoice, dated Tuesday 29 June 2010, was Gamma International UK Limited.

Other documents, written in Arabic and marked “ultimately confidential”, state that after being offered a “free trial version” of Gamma’s Finfisher software to test its ability to hack into email accounts, the SSI concluded it was “a high-level security system” that could get into email accounts of Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo, as well as allowing “full control” of the computers of “targeted elements”. It went on to describe the software’s “success in breaking through personal accounts on Skype network, which is considered the most secure method of communication used by members of the elements of the harmful activity because it is encrypted”.

The find throws a spotlight on western companies that provide software to security services and agents of oppressive regimes to spy on, censor and block the websites with which activists communicate. Last month a report by OpenNet Initiative said nine countries across the Middle East and North Africa used US and Canadian technology to impede access to online content, including sites with political, social and religious material.

Mostafa Hussein, a Cairo blogger and physician who took the documents, said they formed important evidence against the SSI’s activities. “This proposal was sent to a department well known for torture, for abuse of human rights, for spying on political campaigners. This company, Gamma, should be exposed as collaborators in the crimes of trying to invade our privacy and arrest activists.”

Hussein posted the documents online and passed a copy to the Guardian.

A Gamma International website called “Finfisher IT Intrusion” describes its software as allowing “remote monitoring and infection” that can provide “full access to stored information with the ability to take control of the target”. It is advertised as capable of “capturing encrypted data and communications” and allowing a “government agency to remotely infect target systems”.

The documents found in the SSI HQ, one dated 1 January 2011, said that the proposal from Gamma International had come via a subsidiary company, Modern Communications System. Following a “free” five-month trial, SSI described the software as like “planting a comprehensive spying system in the location where the targeted computer exists”. The software could record voice and audio calls, movements through video and audio where the computer was located, and hack into all the computers in the same network.

Why Israelis can’t just lie back and think of Arab democracy

Published on 30 March 2011 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

From a young age, the vast majority of Israeli Jews are taught that Judaism is a superior religion and treating Arabs badly is a necessary price to survive in the Middle East. Hence a nearly 45 year old military occupation of Palestine.

Here’s an interesting perspective from Eyal Press:

Shortly after the democratic uprising began in Egypt, a group of young Israelis led by freelance journalist Dimi Reider launched Kav Hutz (“Outside Line”), a Hebrew-language blog devoted to covering the events across the border. Unable to enter Egypt on short notice with his Israeli passport—a predicament all Israeli correspondents faced—Reider chronicled the insurrection by posting minute-by-minute updates culled from an array of online sources on the ground: Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Egyptian bloggers. The tone of Reider’s blog was reportorial, but hardly detached. “Good luck,” he wrote on the eve of the huge “Day of Departure” rally in Tahrir Square—a sentiment rarely voiced in Israel’s mainstream media, which stressed the danger of a takeover by the Muslim Brotherhood if the protesters prevailed. By the time Egyptians had succeeded in overthrowing Hosni Mubarak, Kav Hutz was getting up to 12,000 visitors a day and had been singled out in Haaretz for leaving the rest of the Israeli press “in the dust.”

As the story suggests, Egypt’s uprising managed to inspire not only countless young Arabs but also some young Israelis. A contributor to +972, an Israel-based online magazine that features commentary and reporting by mostly young progressives—it is named after the area code shared by Israel and the Palestinian territories—Reider was deeply moved by the courage of the protesters in Cairo and dismayed by the patronizing reaction of many Israelis. “The line the establishment took was that it’s all very nice but they’re going to end up like Iran,” he recalls. “I didn’t take that line because I bothered to read stuff by Egyptians and it quickly became apparent that the Muslim Brotherhood was just one player. It also felt distasteful to me to judge the extraordinary risks Egyptians were taking solely by our profit—by how it would affect Israeli security and the policy of a government I don’t support anyway.”

For observers troubled by Israel’s alarming recent shift to the right, the emergence of Internet-savvy liberal voices like Reider’s may seem heartening. But while such bloggers appear more capable of reaching a younger demographic than Haaretz—the venerable leftist newspaper whose aging readership seems likely to shrink in the years to come—it’s not clear how many of their contemporaries are listening to them. One reason is apathy. Increasingly cynical about politics and the prospects of peace, not a few young Israelis I’ve met in recent years have told me they’ve stopped following the news. When they go online, it’s to chat with friends, not to check out sites like +972.

There are also growing numbers of young Israelis who simply don’t share Reider’s views. Against the 12,000 readers of Kav Hutz were countless others who didn’t question the alarmist tone of their country’s mass-circulation tabloids when the revolt in Egypt began, as NPR discovered when it aired a segment on what Israeli youth thought of the uprising. “For us it is better to have Mubarak,” one young Israeli said. “I kind of feel sad for President Mubarak,” said another.

“For the last two or three years, we’ve been seeing a very consistent trend of younger Israelis becoming increasingly right-wing,” Dahlia Scheindlin, a public opinion analyst who also contributes to +972, told me. Last year, Scheindlin carried out a survey on behalf of the Kulanana Shared Citizenship Initiative that showed eroding support for democratic values among Israeli youth, at least insofar as the rights of non-Jews go. One question in the survey asked whether there should be “Equal access to state resources, equal opportunities [for] all citizens.” Among Jewish respondents between the ages of 16-29, a mere 43 percent agreed.

Internet freedom globally isn’t coming and never was

Published on 23 March 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Brilliant (the animation, that is, and I partially agree with the message, too, something I’m contemplating as I’m currently updating my second book, The Blogging Revolution, for an Australian and international publisher. Just how influential is the internet during the current Arab revolutions?):

The “we must do something in Libya” brigade too keen to launch war

Published on 21 March 2011 in General. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

They’re everywhere at the moment. Hawks and so-called doves eager to show that butcher Gaddafi a lesson. How dare you massacre your own people (er, with Western-supplied weapons, but let’s not focus on such details)?

Tonight’s ABC TV Q & A program featured five guests who all backed war against Libya. They all spoke in generalities and had absolutely no idea who the West was backing over there or the real purpose of the conflict. Putting aside the fact that the show didn’t feature even one critical perspective on the conflict, it’s a sad reflection on public debate that both conservatives and a leading Greens MP all mouth from the same song-sheet; attack now and ask questions later.

To be sure, military intervention isn’t a black and white question (Monday’s Guardian editorial outlines the issues) but the speed with which even the “liberal” press (here’s Britain’s Independent editorial) are endorsing the supposedly humanitarian reasons behind the war are revealing. This is really about Libyan civilians? Or geo-strategic posturing at a time when Western influence in the Muslim world is declining? Or securing oil reserves? Perhaps it’s really all about Bosnia. And American hypocrisy is startling (but unsurprising). And what about the lack of US Congressional approval? Is Barack Obama simply a king who issues order?

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown explains in the Independent the kind of ethical, moral and political decisions behind the new Arab war:

Arab bloggers are totally sceptical and some furious that the UN and Arab League has validated what is an oil grab by interested, over-armed nations. It is all to do with fuel security – nothing, they say, NOTHING to do with human rights and safeguarding civilians. I believe there is some honourable intent in the battle against Gaddafi but behind that only big, big greed. My ambiguity thus only multiplies.

Look also at who are the people most excited, nay delirious, as the skies over Libya turn black and orange? Worse than tabloid cowboys waving their patriotic guns are fanatical “liberal imperialists” – excitable journalists, think-tank warriors wanting action, Foreign Office wonks, horribly hubristic commentators – jumping at any chance to catch a conflict and bend it to Western will and control. The failure of Iraq, instead of chastening them, has made them frantic for one that will bring glorious victory. M. Junaid Levesque-Alam, an astute observer of the modern Muslim world, blogs: “Some Western pundits have started exercising their shoulders to once again take up the White Man’s Burden.” Read the well-honed thoughts of ex- British diplomat Robert Cooper and you understand how they long to return to a colonial world order with a modern twist.

Israeli blogger documenting his country’s descent into fascism

Published on 5 March 2011 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Haaretz reports:

“It’s important for me to say that personally I love this country,” Shaltiel says. “I would not be doing all this if I didn’t love it.” But the erosion of the foundations of democracy here is gathering momentum, he says, a process he naturally feels more intensely since he started to collect information.

“I call it the ‘inflation’ of the slope,” he says. “If I were to star each post in terms of how ‘slope-y’ it is, Chomsky would have once received five stars, but today he wouldn’t get two.

“At bottom, what’s most important is for American Jews to read the blog, because they don’t have a clue. The American liberal left is liberal toward everything in the world other than Israel, and I think they need a push. In Israel I would like Labor or Kadima voters – people who consider themselves sane and normal, people who love this country – to see which bills their party voted for in the Knesset, and to see what the IDF is doing in their name in the territories. I would like them to just enter every day, and try to explain it to themselves.”

Here’s the blog in English.

Hypocrisy trumps policy in Western alliance with Libya

Published on 3 March 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

My following article appears today on ABC’s The Drum:

The latest BBC interview with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, situated in a fancy restaurant on the Mediterranean, was painful to watch. Clearly delusional and blaming drug-addled youth and al-Qaeda for the ongoing revolution in his country (which he claimed he didn’t lead, the “masses” were in charge), the Western media have labelled him “mad” and “dangerous to know”.

This is not a defence of Gaddafi or the countless crimes against his own people or outsiders. He should be held to account for all violations of international law. The crimes are multiple and must be punished.

Events in Libya are moving fast and I won’t try to cover all the latest developments here. Al-Jazeera English’s daily Libya blog is one of the best places to read all the news.

But it’s remarkable to watch how quickly Western leaders and commentators, many of whom have celebrated the increasing ties between them and Gaddafi, are suddenly calling for his departure.

It was seemingly only yesterday that a newfound, supposedly reliable ally in the “war on terror” had come in from the cold, rejected terrorism, ditched a nuclear program, given information about Pakistan’s covert nuclear program under AQ Khan and perhaps most importantly opened up Libya for Western businesses. The EU was only recently so keen to sell arms to Tripoli.

In the last years the West embraced Gaddafi and his children because he was the kind of dictator we could deal with. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has visited Libya a number of times as an employee of J.P. Morgan, who pays him millions of pounds annually, to push for banking opportunities.

Newly released documents indicate the Blair government wanted to provide weapons to Tripoli and train some of its military.

The current British government of David Cameron has at least acknowledged the moral bankruptcy of backing autocrats in the Middle East and not believing Arabs can rule themselves freely but his message was contradicted by travelling across the Middle East with arms dealers in tow to sell weapons to “democratic” Kuwait.

Why am I bringing all this sordid history up now? Because it shows the hypocrisy at the heart of Western political and media elites and how language is abused and selectively applied to the “good” and “evil”.

Gaddafi is clearly “mad” while western presidents or prime ministers, who have caused far worse carnage in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Palestine, are still given respectful interviews in our media. It is inconceivable that an ABC or Murdoch journalist would openly call Tony Blair, Barack Obama, David Cameron or Nicholas Sarkozy a “war criminal”, even after they leave office. “We” are always better than “them”, a spurious democratic imprimatur that protects officialdom in our system. Killing literally hundreds of thousands of civilians – far in excess of anything Gaddafi could imagine – is ignored to maintain access to the powerful.

I’m reminded of the former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice interview with CNN’s Piers Morgan in January. Aside from a few questions about the Iraq war, the two laughed about Condi’s piano playing. There was nothing about her authorising torture against terror suspects after 9/11 or the huge civilian death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Western commentators will show respect to a person such as Rice because she seems reasonable, calm and doesn’t dress in overly colourful garb like Gaddafi. This elaborate dance, an old tradition to protect a fellow powerful figure you’re likely to see at a cocktail party or media event in the weeks or month ahead, is what allows Rice to escape scrutiny, mockery or justice while somebody like Gaddafi is thrown to the wolves when he’s no longer useful. Piers Morgan is unlikely to catch him in Hollywood anytime soon.

This is despite the fact that she has unarguably caused far greater trauma to far more people than Gaddafi or Mubarak. Journalism all too often reflects and defends the government line because reporters inhabit a world where that is their only logical perspective.

As Salon’s Glenn Greenwald recently wrote:

“…’The American press’ generally and ‘senior American national security journalists’ in particular operate with a glaring, overwhelming bias that determines what they do and do not report:  namely, the desire to advance U.S. interests… America’s “establishment media” is properly described as such precisely because their overarching objective is to promote and defend establishment interests in what they report to – and conceal from – their readers.”

When it comes to Libya, how many Western media services even irregularly published voices from inside the country – bloggers, dissidents etc – that questioned how ordinary Libyans felt about the ever-increasing Western largesse being showered on Tripoli? US foreign policy, post the 2003 Iraq war, dictated a friendlier face towards “mad dog” Gaddafi and many Western writers bought this spin and transmitted it to their readers and viewers (“Gaddafi has a terrible record but in a remarkable transformation has ditched his nuclear program and embraced Tony Blair…”).

While the situation on the ground in Libya is dire and the border with Tunisia, reports Robert Fisk from the scene, is a seething mass of bodies, it seems everybody is now an expert on Libya. Foreign military intervention is being openly discussed, despite many Libyans being openly opposed to it and The Los Angeles Times editorialising against imposing a no-fly zone.

It’s time to put Libya into some perspective. Gaddafi may be a brute and autocrat but this didn’t suddenly occur in the last weeks. Good journalism has a responsibility to treat its subjects equally, not to the whims of US foreign policy (and therefore Australian foreign policy). Unfortunately, too many in the West view our behaviour as central to any radical change in the world; independence is unimagined.

The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman wrote this week that the Arab revolutionaries were inspired by Obama’s Cairo speech in 2009. The “Arab” youth in his head said:

“Hmmm, let’s see. He’s young. I’m young. He’s dark-skinned. I’m dark-skinned. His middle name is Hussein. My name is Hussein. His grandfather is a Muslim. My grandfather is a Muslim. He is president of the United States. And I’m an unemployed young Arab with no vote and no voice in my future.”

Even though he was in Cairo during the uprising against Mubarak, Friedman clearly missed the deep anger at Washington’s funding and backing of the Egyptian dictator. Friedman is a “serious” writer, regularly re-published in the Fairfax press here, who argued Israel, the Beijing Olympics, Google Earth and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad were the main causes of the Arab protests. Seriously.

Finally, some ground rules for decent journalism in the Middle East in the midst of the new Arab world:

1)     Not every story is about Israel and its “security” (do Palestinians not have security concerns, too?). Base yourself somewhere other than Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. Try the West Bank, Beirut, Cairo or Tunis.

2)     “Moderate” Arab regimes are anything but so don’t simply repeat State Department lines about “stability” in the region.

3)     Libya’s Gaddafi is a delusional thug but he’s an easy target. So is Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Don’t ignore such regimes but remember our own responsibility for backing Arab autocrats in the name of “stability”.

4)     Locate and cultivate local sources in multiple countries that send reliable information, therefore reducing the need to send in white correspondents for a few days, with no real knowledge of a nation, on the frontline of a battle they don’t really understand.

5)     Don’t fear everybody who talks about Islamic democracy or democracy with an Islamic hue.

6)     Don’t continually quote or interview Western officials who have spent a lifetime implementing failed and Israel-centric policies in the Middle East and frame them as “experts”. I’m talking about people such as neo-conservative, former George W Bush official and Barack Obama adviser Elliot Abrams and former US ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk. Their time has past. Move on.

Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist and author of My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution

They aren’t Facebook/Twitter revolutions, repeat after me

Published on 2 March 2011 in General. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

The paranoia of unelected Chinese men

Published on 21 February 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Although it remains unclear exactly how paranoid the Chinese authorities remain over possible Egyptian-inspired, democratic protests, this insider view would suggest that Beijing isn’t taking too many chances:

On Saturday, February 12, the day after Hosni Mubarak resigned in Egypt, some of the members of the politburo of the Communist Party of China held a special meeting in Beijing to discuss the events in the Middle East. News of this meeting came via a democracy activist in Beijing, who said that a secretary who was present had leaked a summary of its contents. The democracy activist is a person who is well positioned to judge the authenticity of such a report.

On February 18, the summary of the Politburo meeting was also posted publicly on Boxun (“rich information”), an independent Chinese language news web site. It reads:

The agenda for the meeting was “to adjust foreign policy” and the main purpose was to decide on tactics to counter the current wave of democratization in the Middle East. The meeting set revised targets for the police and the military, but the primary emphasis was on propaganda. The meeting called upon the Propaganda Department and its subsidiary organs to do the following:

—Halt all independent reports, commentaries, and discussions (including Internet threads), whether in the print media or the Internet, on the situations in Egypt and similar places;
—Strengthen work in filtering and managing blogs, microblogs, and discussion forums;
—Assure that media in all locations uniformly adhere to the standard texts of the New China News Agency in any report or commentary on the Middle East.

The meeting decided, as well, that all of the major newspapers under the Propaganda Department must strengthen their guidance of public opinion and stress the theme that the current turmoil “is plotted by the United States behind the scenes.” At the same time, efforts to criticize and control microblogs must be sharply increased, and advance measures should be taken to prepare for the possibility that part of the Internet will be shut down. Following the meeting, propaganda chiefs across the country were given an additional instruction to “reduce reporting on any sensitive incident that might occur in your locale.”

What online culture has brought to Egypt (and didn’t start yesterday)

Published on 11 February 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

The internet has certainly played a role in bringing Egypt to this moment. It started years ago – something I documented in my book The Blogging Revolution – and hasn’t just appeared in the last two weeks. Instant Facebook Revolution, indeed.

I like this:

As one secularist blogger put it in commenting on the protocols of online engagement: “The atheists reign in their contempt for religion, while the religious bloggers—who would not even accept the existence of non-believers in the first place—can now see some shared values.”

A little taste of what kind of democracy Egypt deserves

Published on 11 February 2011 in General and Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

My following analysis appears on ABC Unleashed/The Drum today:

An Egyptian blogger displayed characteristic humour when news broke overnight that president Hosni Mubarak would not be stepping down:

Mubarak (n.): a psychotic ex-girlfriend who fails 2 understand it’s over.

If Mubarak and his new deputy Omar Suleiman thought their speeches would placate the protesters, they were sorely mistaken. Local bloggers and activists reacted with anger and determination.

Indeed, one wonders, with recent WikiLeaks revelations about the close relationship between Israel, America and Suleiman if their announcements weren’t coordinated with Washington.

The Obama administration is seemingly incapable of categorically siding with the protestors because America’s matrix of repression across the Middle East requires dictatorships to remain in place. Arab democracy has been a contradiction in terms for the US and Zionism for decades.

Tel Aviv and Washington have long seen Suleiman as a steady pair of hands, a brute all-too-keen to allegedly keep the Islamist beast at bay, suppress Hamas, manage the border with Gaza and maintain the siege and torture “terror” suspects brought from America, Europe or the Middle East.

Indeed, Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib, who spoke exclusively to me last night, knows this reality well.

While in Egypt in 2001 he was personally visited by Suleiman, threatened and physically abused. Habib’s book, My Story, goes into detail about the kinds of psychological and physical pressure applied to him. The Australian Government recently implicitly acknowledged the validity of his claims by paying him an undisclosed amount of compensation.

Habib told me that he wanted the Australian government to assist bringing Suleiman to trial in an international court.

The Egyptian people will not go back to the past, something even acknowledged by president Obama’s latest statement. And yet a democratic façade, with Mubarak and/or Suleiman leading the country, is no change at all.

Sober analysis therefore brings only one conclusion; the Arab street is expendable so long as Israel and its Zionist backers are satisfied. Inside the US itself, there is little diplomatic pressure on Washington to encourage democratic change in Egypt but there is massive paranoia from Tel Aviv that freedom would challenges its “Middle East’s Only Democracy” tag.

This comment in last week’s New York Times, by former Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy, is symptomatic of the problem:

The Israelis are saying, après Mubarak, le deluge…It really can be distilled down to one thing, and that’s Israel.

Mubarak may have been inspired by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s snubbing of America when calling for a settlement freeze in the West Bank. The tactics were clear. Rally American domestic support against the move. Claim that relinquishing land would bring chaos, instability and a rise in Islamist terror. Talk about a belief in the peace process. Deepen and harden your position. Watch America never threaten the billions of dollars in annual aid. Remain a trusted client state.

Netanyahu and Mubarak are both playing America very skilfully though the Obama administration is well aware of the game.

Many in the Western press are suddenly fascinated with the Muslim Brotherhood, asking simplistic questions about inspiration from the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Tragically, 10 years after September 11, 2001, Islamist politics are routinely misunderstood in the West, often wilfully so. For many pundits, Islamism means Al Qaeda or Wahabi fanaticism. In reality, there are millions of Islamists across the Middle East who don’t loathe the West for its values; they often just want freedom from our meddling.

In fact, as Noam Chomsky correctly states, Western elites aren’t worried about Islamism; independence from the Western axis is the real threat:

A common refrain among pundits is that fear of radical Islam requires (reluctant) opposition to democracy on pragmatic grounds. While not without some merit, the formulation is misleading. The general threat has always been independence. The US and its allies have regularly supported radical Islamists, sometimes to prevent the threat of secular nationalism.

Talking about a truly independent Middle East requires an imagination solely lacking in establishment political circles.

Latin America in the last 10 years is analogous as far as seeing how the US reacts when countries chose to reject the Washington consensus. WikiLeaks has shown the tactics by which successive American administrations tried to tackle Venezuela under Hugo Chavez, a task ably assisted by many in the US media. Human rights concerns were an irrelevance; nationalising key resources was the perceived problem.

The protesters being beaten and tortured in Egypt are unlikely to receive tangible solidarity from Western governments. Instead, anybody across the world can provide solidarity and backing for the disparate masses longing for the kind of freedoms that we can take for granted. Without the huge uprisings in the last weeks across the Arab world, Canberra, London and Washington would have been very happy to continue business as usual.

That tells us all we need to know about who are the real democrats in the 21st century.

Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist and the author of My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution.

Habib: my torture at hands of Egypt’s new de facto leader

Published on 11 February 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

My following article appears in today’s edition of Crikey:

According to Sameh Shoukry, the Egyptian ambassador to the US, Hosni Mubarak has now transferred all powers to his recently appointed Vice-President Omar Suleiman.

Despite a barrage of speculation that Mubarak was going to step down overnight — including comments from head of the CIA, which makes one wonder the current power America has over the Egyptian President — the President is staying put.

Egyptian bloggers and protesters on the streets in Egypt reacted with fury and pledged their determination to continue the movement.

Suleiman, the feared head of Egypt’s intelligence services, is a long-time friend of America and Israel.

But an Australian citizen, former Guantanamo Bay inmate Mamdouh Habib, has an intimate knowledge of Suleiman; he met him personally while Habib was illegally rendered to Egypt in 2001 and tortured.

Crikey spoke exclusively to Habib last night in Sydney and he reiterated his belief that the Australian government’s recent deal with him vindicated his allegations of serious mistreatment against Canberra, Washington and Cairo.

In his book, My Story, Habib outlines the ways in which Suleiman threatened him in an Egyptian torture prison — key extracts here — and today Habib is calling for the arrest and trial of Suleiman himself. Habib told me the following:

“People in Egypt know who Omar Suleiman is. They’re protesting against Mubarak and Suleiman. I’m not in Egypt but I’m sending a message to the world that Suleiman is an agent for the CIA, Mossad or anybody who is paying money.

“I knew about Suleiman before I was rendered to Egypt, every Egyptian did, but I had never seen him before. To talk about September 11 and kidnapping is that rendition had been happening for years [before 9/11].

“Australia, America and Britain are now supporting Suleiman even though the Australian government now admits they were mistaken and they did wrong [by backing my rendition in 2001]. Australia now has to ask for this man [Suleiman] to be arrested and in jail. He’s a criminal.

“I have a statement from somebody in the agency in Egypt, the Mukabarat [secret police], I’ve been in contact with him and some lawyer in Egypt and some lawyer overseas, and he’s given evidence about what happened inside the building with Omar Suleiman. I have this statement and this makes me settle the case with the Australian government. I have more evidence.

“I want to put my case in an international court to put Suleiman and Mubarak and the Americans who were involved in my rendition [on trial]. I know every single person involved in my rendition; the Australian ambassador in Islamabad, the CIA, Suleiman and some Pakistanis. I’ve got evidence and witnesses.

“Rendition still happens now. I can’t tell you much about the details because people inside Egypt give information but if I give news about cases people may be in serious trouble. One hour ago I heard about people being kidnapped from America and Britain and Kuwait [and rendered to Egypt].

“If America supports Suleiman again then Obama is a criminal and he’ll have big hatred from the Egyptian people. I’m telling the world to open their eyes about Suleiman.

“Only deal I have with the Australian government I’m not going to say how much I’ve been paid for the crimes been done to me, that’s all, but anything else I’m free to talk. I asked the Australian government to help me take Suleiman and the Australians to court to be charged.”

The Obama administration remains divided over the best way to manage the Egyptian uprisings but New York Times columnist Nick Kristof, who has been in Cairo with the protesters, writes that America had a choice to side with the demonstrators or back the regime. Washington’s choice was clear. Canberra has simply followed America’s position.

*Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist and author of My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution

Egyptian blogger/activist Hossam El-Hamalawy on strength of protests

Published on 10 February 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Portrait of an Egyptian hero

Published on 3 February 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

He’s just one fine man. I met and spent time with Hossam elHamalawy in Cairo during the research for my book The Blogging Revolution. Thinking about this over the last week, I’m proud to have documented the then small but growing movement of web dissent in the US and Israeli-backed dictatorship. It was those seeds that lead to the current explosion.

The Washington Post profiles this moment:

From the center of Tahrir Square, Hossam elHamalawy surveyed the sea of people around him.

He could feel it, he said. Victory was close.

“I’ve dreamed of this for a very long time, and it’s finally happening,” the well-known blogger and activist said. He stood completely still in the center of the hundreds of thousands of people who flooded into this downtown square from every direction. “No words can describe it.”

For so many, this fight had started just eight days ago. But Hamalawy, 33, has been fighting against a feared ruler for 13 years.

Hamalawy, a socialist, began his political activism in the late 1990s. No one dared to speak out when the Egyptian regime was brutally cracking down on Islamists, arresting men with long beards and often torturing them in prison, Hamalawy said. Sometimes at small demonstrations, Hamalawy would chant against the iron-fisted rule of President Hosni Mubarak – and behind him people would scatter in fear.

“The people were not courageous enough,” he said, dressed in a pinstripe blazer and jeans. “They were not confident enough to chant against the government, and they would never open their mouth against Mubarak.”

But that didn’t stop him. On Oct. 8, 2000, he was detained after pulling down a U.S. flag from the top of a building at the American University of Cairo, where he was a student.

It was a protest against what he calls the hypocritical policies of the United States, which has supported Mubarak despite his autocratic rule.

Hamalawy was stripped naked, his hands were tied behind his back, and he was beaten for days, he said. State security interrogated him and threatened him with rape. After four days, he was released.

The flag was not replaced.

“I’m still proud of that,” he said.

Journalists, don’t be afraid to rely on Arabs to tell you Egyptian truth

Published on 31 January 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Here’s an idea for a Western newspaper trying to report in Egypt. Rather than sending your own correspondent who doesn’t get anywhere near the action – or know any of the important writers, bloggers, Tweeters etc – you actually rely on other, perhaps indigenous sources, who are seeing the real action on the streets.

Not the Australian’s finest hour:

What do you do when the man who’s just checked you into your hotel is out the front looking up the street with an iron bar in his hand?

A gang was heading our way as the largest Arab city in the world descended into anarchy.

Iron bars have become the only tool of law and order in the chaos that is Cairo at night.

By day the Egyptian capital is the centre of a revolt that is shaking the Arab world.

But the mood of hope for political reform darkened into violent lawlessness yesterday as police abandoned the streets and soldiers largely watched the chaos from a distance.

That split left the Indiana Hotel part Fawlty Towers and part Once Were Warriors.

Safe hotels near Tahrir Square had become unreachable. “Too dangerous,” a driver said. “I take you to another hotel that is safe.”

I checked into the Indiana, although we could hear gunfire in the distance.

From a balcony an hour later I saw the receptionist, along with about 15 other men, holding metal bars, saws and metal poles with hooks at the end. Weapons in one hand, mobile phones in the other.

Staff in the hotel frantically hid valuables and moved furniture across the door to shore us up. They brought out the fire hose.

They explained that gangs of looters were roaming the wealthier neighbourhoods, storming hotels and other buildings.

Soon after dark, shouts erupted at the front of the hotel. Several people ran inside.

Then a gunshot.

More shouting. No room service here tonight.

Wikileaks shows that Egypt/US cuddling achieved little positive

Published on 30 January 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Wikileaks cables released this week show the real relationship between Washington and Cairo, a toxic brew of money, slight pressure, fear of Islamism and reliability.

Who needed whom more?

US diplomats and their masters never imagined a different Egypt because they never wanted it to happen. It suited America just fine. The real rights of the Egyptian people were almost irrelevant. Who knows where things are going but people power has already made history:

It was Hillary Rodham Clinton’s first meeting as secretary of state with President Hosni Mubarak, in March 2009, and the Egyptians had an odd request: Mrs. Clinton should not thank Mr. Mubarak for releasing an opposition leader from prison because he was ill.

In fact, a confidential diplomatic cable signed by the American ambassador to Egypt, Margaret Scobey, advised Mrs. Clinton to avoid even mentioning the name of the man, Ayman Nour, even though his imprisonment in 2005 had been condemned worldwide, not least by the Bush administration.

The cable is among a trove of dispatches made public by the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks that paint a vivid picture of the delicate dealings between the United States and Egypt, its staunchest Arab ally. They show in detail how diplomats repeatedly raised concerns with Egyptian officials about jailed dissidents and bloggers, and kept tabs on reports of torture by the police.

But they also reveal that relations with Mr. Mubarak warmed up because President Obama played down the public “name and shame” approach of the Bush administration. A cable prepared for a visit by Gen. David H. Petraeus in 2009 said the United States, while blunt in private, now avoided “the public confrontations that had become routine over the past several years.”

…

The cables, which cover the first year of the Obama presidency, leave little doubt about how valuable an ally Mr. Mubarak has been, detailing how he backed the United States in its confrontation with Iran, played mediator between Israel and the Palestinians and supported Iraq’s fledgling government, despite his opposition to the American-led war.

…

Like other Arab leaders, Mr. Mubarak is depicted in the cables as obsessed with Iran, which he told American diplomats was extending its tentacles from “the Gulf to Morocco” through proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah. He views these groups — particularly Hamas, a “brother” of Egypt’s banned Muslim Brotherhood — as a direct threat to his own rule.

In a meeting with General Petraeus on June 29, 2009, Mr. Mubarak said the Iranian government wanted to establish “pockets” of influence inside Egypt, according to a cable. General Petraeus told him the United States was responding to similar fears among Persian Gulf states by deploying more Patriot missiles and upgrading its F-16 fighter jets stationed in the region.

Despite obvious American sympathy for Mr. Mubarak’s security concerns, there is little evidence that the diplomats believed the president, now 82, was at risk of losing his grip on power. The May 2009 cable noted that riots over bread prices had broken out in Egypt in 2008 for the first time since 1977. And it said the growing influence of the Muslim Brotherhood had prompted the government to resort to “heavy-handed tactics against individuals and groups.”

But the cable, again signed by Ambassador Scobey, portrayed Mr. Mubarak as the ultimate survivor, a “tried and true realist” who would rather “let a few individuals suffer than risk chaos for society as a whole.”

“During his 28-year rule,” the cable said, “he survived at least three assassination attempts, maintained peace with Israel, weathered two wars in Iraq and post-2003 regional instability, intermittent economic downturns, and a manageable but chronic internal terrorist threat.”

Another cable, dated March 2009, offered a pessimistic analysis of the prospects for the “April 6 Movement,” a Facebook-based group of mostly young Egyptians that has received wide attention for its lively political debate and helped mobilize the protests that have swept Egypt in the last two days. Leaders of the group had been jailed and tortured by the police. There were also signs of internal divisions between secular and Islamist factions, it said.

The United States has defended bloggers with little success. When Ambassador Scobey raised several arrests with the interior minister, he replied that Egypt did not infringe on freedom of the press, but that it must respond when “people are offended by blogs.” An aide to the minister told the ambassador that The New York Times, which has reported on the treatment of bloggers in Egypt, was “exaggerating the blogger issue,” according to the cable.

Google opens its heart a little in the Islamic Republic

Published on 21 January 2011 in General. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , .

During research for my book The Blogging Revolution, a great deal of time was spent examining just what companies such as Google actually do in Iran.

The company has posted the latest information:

During the protests that erupted in Iran following the disputed Presidential election in June 2009, the central government in Tehran deported all foreign journalists, shut down traditional media outlets, closed off print journalism and disrupted cell phone lines. The government also infiltrated networks, posing as activists and using false identities to round up dissidents. In spite of this, the sharing of information using the Internet prevailed. YouTube and Twitter were cited by journalists, activists and bloggers as the best source for firsthand accounts and on-the-scene footage of the protests and violence across the country. At the time, though, U.S. export controls and sanctions programs prohibited software downloads to Iran.

Some of those export restrictions have now been lifted and today, for the first time, we’re making Google Earth, Picasa and Chrome available for download in Iran. We’re committed to full compliance with U.S. export controls and sanctions programs and, as a condition of our export licenses from the Treasury Department, we will continue to block IP addresses associated with the Iranian government.

Our products are specifically designed to help people create, communicate, share opinions and find information. And we believe that more available products means more choice, more freedom, and ultimately more power for individuals in Iran and across the globe.

Posted by Neil Martin, Export Compliance Programs Manager