Antony Loewenstein

Does anybody serious believe American officials when they talk about supporting human rights?

Hillary Clinton recently said this at a UN Secretary Council debate on the Arab Spring:

… we reject any equivalence between premeditated murders by a government’s military machine and the actions of civilians under siege driven to self-defense.

Such a statement requires a response and leading Australian academic Scott Burchill gives one:

The most telling aspect of this speech is that the US Secretary of State could make such a statement (about Syria) with the full confidence that no-one in the media would even ask whether this principle also applied elsewhere in the region (say to the Israel-Palestine conflict?). It could be safely assumed that no-one would point out that only a few hundred kilometres away, the United States is actually supplying a “government’s military machine” with the means to commit “premeditated murders” against “civilians under siege driven to self-defence” (in Gaza as she was actually speaking). The right to self-defence does not extend to official enemies, who can be brutally crushed with our moral and material support.

The US and its allies never intend to kill anyone, of course, when they target B-52 raids on villages in densely populated areas (Vietnam), or something equally horrific with drones (Pakistan) or helicopter gunships (Gaza). Civilians, especially children, should know to keep away from their homes. If they don’t get out of the way and subsequently die or a seriously injured, it is their own fault.

This speaks for itself (via the Guardian):

Politicians and journalists have had an unhealthily close relationship to one another, according to Chris Blackhurst, editor of The Independent

He told a Bath literature festival audience that MPs and reporters formed “a giant club” at Westminster.

Successive governments had courted newspaper proprietors, said Blackhurst, and told of his time at the Daily Express where he was deputy editor to Rosie Boycott.

They were appointed by Lord Hollick, a Labour peer, and the paper was moved away from its traditional Conservative support.

Blackhurst said: “We were trying to turn the paper into a more liberal and upmarket paper but management lost its nerve. They sold the paper toRichard Desmond…

“Within a fortnight, the heavy bulk of the Labour cabinet was fawning over Desmond. We were really shocked by it.”

…

Two other panellists, Labour MP Tristram Hunt and Lib-Dem MP Don Foster, also referred to the political-media nexus.

Hunt said a “symbiotic relationship between the press and politics” had always existed.

But Foster said the relationship between Westminster and the media should be regulated. “Politicians are trying to manipulate the media and the media is trying to sell papers… It’s got to change.”

…

A fourth panelist, the former Guardian staffer Malcolm Dean, pointed out that those “newspapers with the lowest level of trust have the highest circulation and papers with the highest level of trust have the lowest circulation”.

Another tragedy in Afghanistan. And what do most of the corporate media focus on? How will this affect NATO strategy? What will US troops do? Will Obama’s supposed counter-insurgency tactics be derailed?

What about wondering about the Afghans themselves?

Here’s FAIR:

The news that a U.S. Army sergeant killed 16 civilians, most of them children, in southern Afghanistan early Sunday morning was treated by many media outlets primarily as a PR challenge for continued war and occupation of that country.

“Afghanistan, once the must-fight war for America, is becoming a public relations headache for the nation’s leaders, especially for President Barack Obama,” explained an Associated Press analysis piece (3/12/12). Reuters(3/12/12) called it “the latest American public relations disaster in Afghanistan.”

On the NBC Today show (3/11/12) the question was posed this way: “Could this reignite a new anti-American backlash in the unstable region?” The answer: “This is not going to bode well for the U.S. and NATO here in Afghanistan,” explained reporter Atia Abawi. “Obviously people here very fearful as to what’s going to happen next, what protests will come about throughout different parts of Afghanistan, and how the Taliban are going to use this to their advantage.” “People,” as used here, would not seem to include Afghans, who are presumably less frightened by protests against a massacre of children than they are by the massacre itself.

The front-page headline at USA Today (3/12/12) read, “Killings Threaten Afghan Mission.” The story warned that the allegations “threaten to test U.S. strategy to end the conflict.” In the New York Times (3/12/12), the massacre was seen as “igniting fears of a new wave of anti-American hostility.” The paper went on to portray occupation forces as victims:

“The possibility of a violent reaction to the killings added to a feeling of siege here among Western personnel. Officials described growing concern over a cascade of missteps and offenses that has cast doubt on the ability of NATO personnel to carry out their mission and has left troops and trainers increasingly vulnerable to violence by Afghans seeking revenge.”

The fact that the massacres occurred two days after a NATO helicopter strike killed four civilians was “adding to the sense of concern.”

This morning’s ABC Radio AM fit perfectly into the mould, playing quotes from Western leaders and White House flaks:

TONY EASTLEY: There are fears that the shooting rampage by a lone US soldier may derail the Afghan peace process and undo months if not years of work.

The Afghan army is on a higher alert after the American soldier killed 16 Afghan civilians and burnt their bodies. Nine of the dead were children.

The Afghan parliament has passed a resolution demanding the soldier face a public trial in Afghanistan, and already talks on a new strategic partnership between Kabul and Washington look like being put on ice.

Emily Bourke reports.

EMILY BOURKE: The deaths of 16 Afghan civilians at the hands of a rogue US soldier continues to outrage and worry world leaders, especially as the Taliban is now promising to strike back. 

The British prime minister David Cameron. 

DAVID CAMERON: Really is an absolutely appalling thing that has taken place and of course it will have its impact, but we must do everything we can to make sure that it doesn’t in any way derail the very good work that American and British and other ISAF forces are doing in Afghanistan. 

And it is worth remembering why we’re in Afghanistan – we’re there to train up the Afghan army and the police so that that country is able to look after its own security 

EMILY BOURKE: The Taliban has described the Americans as terrorists and barbarians, but White House spokesman Jay Carney says the US led mission will continue. 

JAY CARNEY: I’m sure there will be discussions ongoing between US military leaders as well as civilian leaders in Afghanistan and the Afghan government in the wake of this incident, but our strategic objectives have not changed and they will not change. 

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While some in the corporate media, such as this article in the LA Times, question how the US has any idea about Iran’s actual nuclear program, the bigger question is how journalists report the information given by military and government sources. Do they become, like in Iraq in 2002 and 2003, propagandists for war?

The New York Times’ Public Editor asks some questions (which virtually no other MSM outlets are doing) even though I personally disagree with his findings (being far too soft on his superiors over war-mongering):

“We talk about generals fighting the last war,” said Tim McNulty, who served as foreign editor for The Chicago Tribune during the Iraq war. “I think journalists also do.”

Nine years after the start of the Iraq war, the scene has shifted to Iran, and Mr. McNulty has a more detached view of events, as co-director of the National Security Journalism Initiative at Northwestern University. Now he cautions journalists against falling again for a kind of siren song: “the narrative of war.”

“The narrative of war, or anticipating war, is a much stronger narrative than the doubters have,” he said. “It is an easier story to write than the question of, well, is it really necessary?”

In recent months I have heard from many readers concerned that The New York Times is falling for this siren song, the narrative of war, in its coverage of Iran’s nuclear program. Not infrequently, readers and critics invoke Judith Miller’s now-discredited coverage in The Times of Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction, as if to say it is all happening again.

Among the criticisms are that The Times has given too much space to Israeli proponents of an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities; has failed to mention often enough that Israel itself has nuclear arms; has sometimes overstated the findings of the International Atomic Energy Agency; has repeated the questionable assertion that Iran’s leaders seek the eradication of Israel; has failed to analyze the Iranian supreme leader’s statement that nuclear weapons are a “sin”; and has published misleading headlines.

William O. Beeman, author of “The ‘Great Satan’ vs. the ‘Mad Mullahs’: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other,” told me he believes The Times’s coverage has contributed to a dangerous public misunderstanding of the situation.

“The conventional wisdom with regard to Iran is that Iran has a nuclear weapons program and that they are going to attack Israel and going to attack the United States,” said Mr. Beeman, who is chairman of the anthropology department at the University of Minnesota. “But all these things are tendentious and highly questionable.”

Mr. Beeman faulted The Times for mischaracterizing I.A.E.A. reports and for a “disconnect between headline and the actual material in the stories that really affects public opinion,” saying these problems raised a question about the “civic responsibility of The Times.”

This bill of particulars against The Times’s coverage weighs heavily, but it is clear to me that this is not a replay of the Judith Miller episode. I do find examples that support the complaints mentioned above, but also see a pattern of coverage that gives due credence to the counternarrative — not of war but of uncertainty and caution.

Jill Abramson, executive editor of The Times, told me the paper is “certainly mindful that some readers may see an echo of the paper’s flawed coverage of Iraq,” but she also noted distinct differences. This time, she said, the United States government is expressing doubts about weapons of mass destruction, not leading the drumbeat for war. And there is no question that Iran has a nuclear program; it’s just unclear whether it is for civilian or military use.

Times journalists “are mindful of our responsibility to be vigilant, skeptical and fair,” she said. “Last month, when the calls for striking Iran began to grow louder, we brought together the foreign and Washington desks and came up with a run of stories designed to examine closely the statements made by those on both sides of the argument, especially the rising calls for a military strike.”

…

Hooman Majd, an Iranian-American journalist who spent much of 2011 in Iran, observed that news coverage has left Americans with a caricatured understanding not only of Iran’s leaders but of its people “as being completely oppressed or completely lunatic.”

“Neither is accurate,” said Mr. Majd, author of “The Ayatollah Begs to Differ” and “The Ayatollahs’ Democracy.”

What is needed from The Times, he added, is more effort not only to get ordinary Iranian voices into the coverage but also to reach across the cultural divide to fully understand significant statements from the Iranian leadership, like the fatwa against nuclear weapons by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader.

I share this view and believe the West’s inability to understand the other side’s leadership may have a parallel with the run-up to the Iraq war. Once again, the stakes are high for all involved, including The Times, which has an opportunity to get it right this time.

My following book review appears in today’s Sydney Morning Herald:

A journalist with access to a superpower’s military machine refuses to toe the line.

“I went into journalism to do journalism, not advertising,” independent American journalist Michael Hastings told The Huffington Post in 2010. ”My views are critical but that shouldn’t be mistaken for hostile – I’m just not a stenographer.”

Such a mindset is what makes this book a compelling read and ensures its status as one of the most devastating and incisive works on the Afghanistan war since Washington and its allies invaded in 2001.

Hastings concludes, after spending extensive time with generals and military advisers, as well as reporters who hang on their every word, that the conflict was lost years ago. The warped logic of the war, the author states, is that, ”we’re there because we’re there. And because we’re there, we’re there some more.”

Afghanistan today has nothing to do with September 11, 2001, ”terrorist havens” or al-Qaeda. ”It didn’t matter that in Afghanistan, the US military had come up short again and again,” Hastings argues. ”What mattered is that they tried. The simple and terrifying reality, forbidden from discussion in America [and mostly in the mainstream media in Australia], was that despite spending $600 billion a year on the military, despite having the best fighting force the world had ever known, they were getting their asses kicked by illiterate peasants who made bombs out of manure and wood.”

Hastings is that rare journalist who doesn’t believe in venerating military figures who give him access in Washington and American war zones. A key aspect of his investigation is its brutal excoriation of embedded media and the lack of accountability in the pundit class. His staccato writing feels immediate in today’s war debate.

He cites a meeting with a German reporter in Berlin in 2010, where the man says he backs the Afghanistan war and acknowledges fears it may not work out. Hastings is stunned: ”Julian was prepared to take ownership of the position he took and the consequences of it. I’d rarely heard an American journalist express any such regrets or take responsibility for the politics they promoted. Maybe it was a European thing.”

Hastings was commissioned in 2010 to write a profile for Rolling Stone, where he’s now a contributing editor, of Stanley McChrystal, the lauded then-commanding general of international and US forces in Afghanistan. The journalist was given nearly full access to the general and his staff as they travelled across Europe attempting to sell their counter-insurgency plan.

What Hastings found both shocked and pleased him. Though he loved the buzz of being close to McChrystal and quickly felt like a trusted member of the team – the allure of ”access” is what makes most corporate journalists little better than transcribers – he quickly remembered he was a reporter there to write a story. Despite being asked by senior military staff to exclude details of drunken adventures in European bars and meeting rooms, disparaging comments about President Barack Obama’s team are openly expressed and Hastings knew his aim: ”The access I’d gotten was unprecedented. But what do you do with it? Bury the story? Write a puff piece to ensure further access? Or write what actually happened?”

Hastings was under no illusion about how McChrystal and his team saw him. ”They weren’t talking to me because they liked me or because I impressed them; they were talking to me because they wanted the cover of Rolling Stone.” The magazine chose Lady Gaga for this coveted position, damaging the general’s desire to impress a younger generation with his prowess.

Hastings’s scoop was seen as shocking not because he was an anti-war activist but because he had seen the human cost of Iraq and Afghanistan on soldiers and civilians and refused to provide cover for those responsible.

The story was explosive and McChrystal was forced to resign. He was replaced by General David Petraeus (now CIA director), a man Obama believed could help salvage the failing Afghanistan war through an innovative counter-insurgency strategy. It failed spectacularly and Hastings explains why by quoting a former UN official in Kabul. ”There has never been a strategy to get rid of the warlords, who are the key problem,” John Matisonn says. ”The average Afghan hates them, whether they’re backed by the Taliban or the Americans. They see them as criminals. They know that the warlords are fundamentally undermining the rule of law.”

The Rolling Stone feature was expanded into this book and Hastings retains high-level access to a military and political establishment that often can’t speak for itself against misguided policies. Like Julian Assange and his WikiLeaks, Hastings believes in full transparency for our political class. The American and Australian mainstream media continue giving air time to people such as Petraeus and Australian counter-insurgency ”expert” David Kilcullen – who now runs the Caerus Associates consultancy firm in Washington DC – despite their disastrous records in Iraq and Afghanistan. In both nations, foreign forces merely empowered one group of thugs over another, with money and guns, and now the results are clear to see.

Hastings, whose first book, I Lost My Love in Baghdad, details his war reporting in post-2003 Iraq and the murder of his partner by a suicide bomber, doesn’t drink the Kool-Aid enjoyed by many of the ”national security” correspondents who populate our media landscape. For them, the ”war on terror” has been a wild decade of conflict. Private chats with generals and their minions constitute much journalism, while the public wonders why ”our” boys continue being killed by an effective insurgency. Afghan deaths and voices are largely invisible.

Hastings’s article about McChrystal was instructive, he writes, ”as the political and media class saw the story as a threat to their schmoozy relationship – their very existence and social life”.

After a decade observing the US in conflict, a superpower both uninterested in understanding its opponents and confused when being beaten by smarter forces, Hastings concludes that our leaders lie about the real purpose of the ”war on terror”. Embedded journalists must take their share of the blame for perpetuating the delusion.

Antony Loewenstein is a freelance journalist working on a book about disaster capitalism.

THE OPERATORS

Michael Hastings

Orion, 432pp, $35

Famed New York Times journalist Anthony Shadid died tragically in February in Syria while reporting the war there. He was one of the finest reporters of his generation, spending years in the Arab world explaining its twists and turns. He proved that insightful, punchy and beautifully written journalism still matters in the modern age.

Now his widow, New York Times reporter Nada Bakri, speaks to Democracy Now! in a moving interview about Shadid, love, life and journalism itself:

AMY GOODMAN: He was captured for almost a week in Libya with three other colleagues, and they were beaten, threatened, not clear if they would survive that. Can you talk about that period and coming home, and then his decision to go to Syria? Clearly, extremely dangerous for those who live there and also for reporters trying to get in.

NADA BAKRI: You know, when he called me, when they allowed him to call family members when they were being—when they were still captured in Libya, he called, and the first thing he said was how sorry he was, you know, for all his family members about the pain that he—that, you know, the capture must have caused them. And then he came home. And, you know, he saw his family members, repeated again how sorry he was that they had to go through this for him. And then, you know, he went back to work.

And again, it was not about, “I’m going to be in a dangerous place, and maybe I should not go there because it’s dangerous.” You know, of course he thought about it, because he has two kids and he has a family who loved him so much, but it was more of a commitment, you know? I think it might be hard for a lot of people to understand this, but it was just a pure commitment to journalism. I have never seen anything like it. You know, after I had my son, my priorities shifted, and I did not want to be—you know, to take any risks anymore. But then again, I’m not—or I realize I’m not as committed to journalism as he is. He was just truly, genuinely committed to journalism, to covering the Middle East, in particular.

As one of Australia’s richest and most influential men, Frank Lowy deserves far more scrutiny than the political or media elites give him.

The Power Index profiles him and features some quotes from yours truly:

It’s no surprise Lowy is a passionate supporter of Israel, telling the NSW parliamentary inquiry into the Orange Grove affair in 2004 that, “the state of Israel, to which I am fully committed, is more important for me than to do a job.”

The shopping centre magnate was explaining to parliament why he had spent one of his two meetings with Bob Carr talking to the NSW premier about Middle East politics, and drawing his attention to a paper dealing with Israel, rather than talking about his business rivals.

Despite his passion for the Promised Land, few would accuse Lowy of being a rabid Zionist. He does not barrack for illegal Jewish West Bank settlers, as Joe Gutnick regularly does. And his Lowy Institute, which is run by a 12-person board that includes him and his three sons, is generally regarded as moderate. It also studies plenty of things apart from Middle East politics.

Nevertheless, Frank founded and still chairs Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, which, according to journalist Antony Loewenstein, author of My Israel Question, “produces research that pushes a hardline, Zionist line on the Israel/Palestine conflict”. 

According to Loewenstein, the INSS advocates “refusing to give up illegally-occupied territories in Palestine due to ‘security’ concerns,” and “warms to the idea of an Israeli military strike against Iran”.

The INSS, Lowy Institute and (Lowy-linked) Brookings Institution in Washington also support an American role in the Middle East and advocate close ties with Washington, Loewenstein tells The Power Index.

So has Lowy used his money and power to shape the political debate? Almost certainly, yes.

Robert Fisk is typically provocative (and accurate) in today’s Independent column:

It took a lot of courage to get into Homs; Sky News, then the BBC, then a few brave men and women who went to tell the world of the city’s anguish and, in at least two cases, suffered themselves. I could only reflect this week, however, how well we got to know the name of the indomitable and wounded British photographer Paul Conroy, and yet how little we know about the 13 Syrian volunteers who were apparently killed by snipers and shellfire while rescuing him. No fault of Conroy, of course. But I wonder if we know the names of these martyrs – or whether we intend to discover their names?

Many mainstream journalists love conflict. Gives them the opportunity to hang with military types in war zones and feel important. Truth be damned. Repeating official talking points is par for the course.

History has shown that far too many blindly (wilfully?) spread propaganda. The next target is Iran. Why? Because Israel and Washington tell them so.

Here’s Medialens:

On Channel 4 News, the famed ‘pinko-liberal’ news presenter Jon ‘Six Pilgers’ Snow intoned ominously:

‘It is still not a nuclear weapon, but an upgrading of Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium ostensibly for its nuclear power plant.’ (C4 News headlines, February 15, 2012)

‘Still’ not a nuclear weapon – not yet? – but the primary focus is absolutely on an alleged military threat that does not actually exist. Foreign correspondent Jonathan Miller added:

‘This development does not bring Iran any closer to building a bomb… But if Tehran is trying to convince the world that its purpose is peaceful, no-one’s buying it…’ (C4 News, ‘Iran reveals its latest step in nuclear arms’, February 15, 2012)

That is not quite true, as we will see below. Miller added:

‘This may look like the set of a 70s Bond movie, but this is the Natanz reactor…’

The reference is telling – much media reporting does seem to be inspired by a Bond movie vision of the world. Token balance was provided:

‘There’s no evidence that Iran is intending to construct a nuclear weapon.’

This put Snow’s opening comment in perspective. A more accurate version would have been: ‘It is still not evidence that Iran has plans to build a nuclear weapon.’

Instead, the required propaganda pitch was clear. Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was defiantly sticking ‘two fingers up to the UN and a hostile world’. As ever, it is ‘us’ (the ‘world’) versus ‘them’. Miller continued:

‘The 74 million people of the Islamic republic are paying a high price for their leader’s defiance.’

As in Iraq, the Bad Guys, not the West, are responsible for any suffering caused. No question that Israel, the US and its allies bear any responsibility for the tension, or the lethal effects of sanctions. Miller added:

‘Their nation is isolated, they’re suffering from sanctions – prices are rising, credit tightening, currency plummeting. The Tehran regime thinks its brinkmanship gives it leverage – it has written to the EU offering to resume stalled nuclear talks.’

In media Newspeak, ‘isolated’ means ‘bad’. Likewise, ‘secretive’ and ‘hermit’. When North Korea is described as ‘the secretive, hermit state’ that is ‘increasingly isolated’, it means North Korea is Bad! Bad! Bad!

Meanwhile, on the BBC’s News at Ten, Huw Edwards presented the headlines:

‘The Iranians delight in the latest advances in their nuclear programme.’

Little wrong with that. But moments later, when the actual news report was introduced, ‘nuclear programme’ had mysteriously morphed into ‘nuclear weapons programme’. Edwards told the watching millions:

‘Iran has announced new developments in its nuclear weapons programme. State television reported that for the first time Iranian-made nuclear fuel rods have been loaded into a research reactor in Tehran. The event was attended by President Ahmadinejad.’

Behind a veneer of polite impartiality, the BBC – like Channel 4 News and the rest of the media – presents official enemies as Bond villains: grandiose, dangerous and absurd. Thus James Reynolds began his report:

‘Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a PhD in traffic management. But he often likes to play the part of nuclear physicist. This afternoon Iran’s president inspected new home-made fuel rods for a research reactor in Tehran, all made without any help from the West.’

Here’s FAIR:

Claims that Iran has a nuclear weapons program are allegations, not facts (Extra!, 1/12)—but are treated as established background material in the corporate media: “The president, as you know, has been trying to force Iran to give up its nuclear weapons program,” explainsCBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley (2/6/12). The Washington Post editorializes (1/11/12) that Iran’s “drive for nuclear weapons continues.”

At the end of January, another provocative claim emerged: Iran was ready to unleash terrorism against the United States.

ABC World News (1/31/12) featured a blatantly propagandistic report on the Iranian threat. “America’s top spy warns that Iran is willing to launch a terrorist strike inside the U.S.,” announced anchor Diane Sawyer at the top of the program. “We’ll tell you his evidence.”

The ABC report was actually very light on evidence, but heavy on incendiary allegations from government officials—without the skeptical scrutiny that should be journalism’s primary function. The report was pegged to that day’s Senate testimony by James Clapper, director of national intelligence, who told lawmakers that the U.S. intelligence community believes that Iran may be “now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime.”

Sawyer amplified Clapper’s allegation by setting up the report with the assertion that Iran is “more determined than ever to launch an attack on U.S. soil.” Correspondent Martha Raddatz, claiming that the “the saber-rattling coming from Iran has been constant,” told viewers that Clapper delivered “a new bracing warning…. Iran may be more ready than ever to launch terror attacks inside the United States.”

The British Guardian is a paper with a fine reporting record albeit with blind spots incorporated (including Wikileaks and war).

They’ve just released a startling new ad that aims to showcase its “open journalism” style:

Back in 1996, this is how the newspaper last promoted itself:

Sometimes it’s time to talk about issues apart from politics (even for me).

I was the guest on yesterday’s ABC Radio National’s Common Knowledge:

What’s behind the kooky ad campaign featuring two delivery girls on a tandem bicycle and with golden plaits and the faces of bearded men? Who is it targeting and what is the surreal imagery signalling?

Alcohol marketing has come a long way since glory days of John Meillon’s velvet tones and the ‘matter-of-fact-I’ve-got-it-now’ Victoria Bitter ads.

And why are beards so prevalent on younger, fashion-conscious men? Is this extreme retro trend harking back to Ned Kelly chic? Or just bone-idle laziness?

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