Antony Loewenstein

George W. Bush gave a speech in November 2003 at the 20th Anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy at the United States Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C. He discussed freedom and democracy in the Middle East and beyond:

“We’ve witnessed, in little over a generation, the swiftest advance of freedom in the 2,500 year story of democracy. Historians in the future will offer their own explanations for why this happened. Yet we already know some of the reasons they will cite. It is no accident that the rise of so many democracies took place in a time when the world’s most influential nation was itself a democracy.”

“The United States made military and moral commitments in Europe and Asia, which protected free nations from aggression, and created the conditions in which new democracies could flourish. As we provided security for whole nations, we also provided inspiration for oppressed peoples. In prison camps, in banned union meetings, in clandestine churches, men and women knew that the whole world was not sharing their own nightmare. They knew of at least one place – a bright and hopeful land – where freedom was valued and secure. And they prayed that America would not forget them, or forget the mission to promote liberty around the world.”

Praying for American help may be enough to convince conservative campaigners that the “world’s most influential nation” can bring democracy, but a report out this week by the New York based Arms Trade Resource Center challenges the underpinnings of such a naive assertion:

“…a majority of U.S. arms sales to the developing world go to regimes defined as undemocratic by our own State Department. Furthermore, U.S.-supplied arms are involved in a majority of the world’s active conflicts.”

Democracy for all the world’s citizens? Not quite.

“In 2003, the last year for which full information is available, the United States transferred weaponry to 18 of the 25 countries involved in active conflicts. From Angola, Chad and Ethiopia, to Colombia, Pakistan, Israel and the Philippines, transfers through the two largest U.S. arms sales programs (Foreign Military Sales and Commercial Sales) to these conflict nations totaled nearly $1 billion in 2003.”

“In 2003, more than half of the top 25 recipients of U.S. arms transfers in the developing world (13 of 25) were defined as undemocratic by the U.S. State Department’s Human Rights Report: in the sense that “citizens do not have the right to change their own government.” These 13 nations received over $2.7 billion in U.S. arms transfers in 2003, with the top recipients including Saudi Arabia ($1.1 billion), Egypt ($1.0 billion), Kuwait ($153 million), the United Arab Emirates ($110 million) and Uzbekistan ($33 million).”

American responses to charges of gross hypocrisy are telling. Frida Berrigan, the report’s co-author, says that the sales are, “often justified on the basis of their purported benefits, from securing access to overseas military facilities to rewarding coalition partners [but] these alleged benefits often come at a high price.”

Countries benefiting from America’s largesse are routinely engaged in human rights abuses. Extremism breeds in such a toxic environment. Recruiters for al-Qaeda are given a gift with such revelations.

We are faced once again with a realisation that American, and therefore British and Australian, definitions of democracy are only for those who deserve it, whose resources we need or whose military we can defeat.

Amnesty International’s 2005 Report paints a depressing picture of human rights abuses across the world, including America, Britain and Australia. Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty, writes in the foreward of the report:

“The US government has gone to great lengths to restrict the application of the Geneva Conventions and to “re-define” torture. It has sought to justify the use of coercive interrogation techniques, the practice of holding “ghost detainees” (people in unacknowledged incommunicado detention) and the “rendering” or handing over of prisoners to third countries known to practise torture. The detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has become the gulag of our times, entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law. Trials by military commissions have made a mockery of justice and due process.”

We expect abuses in despotic countries such as Sudan, Nigeria and Uzbekistan. We are now receiving information daily that American breaches make a mockery of its claim of spreading democracy. Today’s New York Times reports: “Newly released documents show that detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, complained repeatedly to F.B.I. agents about disrespectful handling of the Koran by military personnel and, in one case in 2002, said they had flushed a Koran down a toilet.”

The only people seriously swayed by Bush’s delusional rhetoric (echoed in Australia by our foppish Foreign Minister Alexander Downer) are those so convinced by the rightness of “our” mission in the Middle East, that human rights abuses are merely dismissed as an inconvenience. We will be paying the price for such cultural arrogance in the years to come.

Here is my review from last Sunday’s Sun Herald of Suad Amiry’s “Sharon And My Mother-In-Law: Ramallah Diaries.” Amiry is a guest of this year’s Sydney Writer’s Festival and will undoubtedly talk about life under Israeli military occupation.

Ominous news from Bahrain:

“Three Bahraini bloggers are facing criminal charges, including defaming the king, for running a web forum that allows free political debate.”

The expression, “fighting a battle they will never win”, comes to mind.

“The government said bloggers had to register with the ministry of information – and has even proposed a bill to regulate the use of Bluetooth technology on mobile phones.”

In more positive news from the Middle East comes this interesting piece of blog writing on the bankruptcy of Syria’s Ba’ath Party:

“It does not mean anything like a political party or any political or organizational entity. It just exists around us and between us like that black-cloud of pollution on top of Damascus and Banias, like the sewage stink, or like the Mukhabarat’s Peugeot white cars.”

President Bashar Assad will not be pleased.

Condoleezza Rice was key speaker at the pro-Zionist American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIJAC) Annual Policy Conference on May 23:

“Let me begin by saying that Israel has no greater friend and no stronger supporter than the United States of America. (Applause.) For over half a century, AIPAC has strengthened the religious, cultural and political bonds that unite our two great nations, and I thank you for that. (Applause.)”

And America is touted as an honest broker in the Israel/Palestine conflict?

Rice: “The United States and Israel share much in common. We both affirm the innate freedom and dignity of every human life, not as prizes that people confer to one another, but as divine gifts of the Almighty.”

The sheer hypocrisy of such a statement is breathtaking. Indeed, many in the Arab world recognise this. Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and American forces abuse of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo, along with so-called “rendition” of “terror” suspects to dictatorships for torture, shows the world the real face of Bush’s much touted freedom and democracy. Rice continues:

“Some in the Arab media have even asked why the only real democracies in the Middle East are found in the “occupied lands” of Iraq and the Palestinian territories. What an incredible thought. Today, citizens in the region are demanding that their governments respond to this simple, audacious question.”

Freedom of speech is indeed missing from most of the Middle East but to legitimise two illegal occupations, and suggest that only through occupation can truly open expression occur, is classic imperial thinking: only “we” can bring what “they” want.

I spent some time today with cultural critic and political thinker, Tariq Ali, in Sydney for the Writer’s Festival. His eloquence on the Israel/Palestine question reminded me of the lack of real debate on this matter in Australia. In the West, he told me, many official organs are only capable of seeing issues as what serves Western interests. In the Middle East, for example, Islamist parties could well win government in many countries if true democracy would be allowed to flower. This, of course, would be totally against American interests and is therefore unacceptable. Take the Bush rhetoric on democracy with this in mind.

Scribe Publishing recently released a collection of Ali’s talks called “Speaking on Empire and Resistance.” Many issues are discussed, but on Israel and America’s role towards the Middle East’s Jewish “democracy”, he has this to say:

“In the US, they [Israel] don’t need to worry, because the House and the Senate essentially passed a blank cheque of support for Israel. It’s unheard of – they don’t give that sort of support to their own government, but they’re prepared to give that support to Israel. There is an Israeli offensive against dissent, abroad and at home…the Palestinians have become the indirect victims of the Judeocide of the Second World War.”

“Professional journalism relies heavily on official sources. Reporters have to talk to the PM’s official spokesperson, the White House press secretary, the business association, the army general. What those people say is news. Their perspectives are automatically legitimate…This is precisely the opposite of what a functioning democracy needs, which is a ruthless accounting of the powers that be.”

(Robert McChesney, professor of communications, University of Illinois)

I’ve deliberately avoided commenting on the Schapelle Corby case for a variety of reasons. Some in the blogosphere, such as Weezil, have thrown themselves into fighting for her freedom. All well and good for a woman seemingly set for a long prison term in Indonesia. Personally, the case against Corby has always seemed highly questionable, to say the least.

Believing her innocence is one thing, slamming Indonesian justice is another. Last night’s ABC Media Watch revealed a presenter on Sydney’s 2GB Radio, Malcolm T. Elliot, making some utterly unacceptable racist jibes against our northern neighbour. Some “highlights”:

“I believe right now Bambam Yodhoyono is sitting up there and his hands are tied because it’s a legal matter. Wham Bam Thank You Mam Yiddi-yono is going to be called into all of these — well, that’s what he is, isn’t he — have you ever seen them? Whoa, give them a banana and away they go …”

“I have total disrespect for our neighbouring nation my friend. Total disrespect. And then we get this joke of a trial, and it’s nothing more than a joke. An absolute joke the way they sit there. And they do look like the three wise monkeys, I’ll say it. They don’t speak English, they read books, they don’t listen to her. They show us absolutely no respect those judges.”

“What about that little midget woman who was up there, what was her name? Midget. Who was the president? Megawati. Megawati midget, yeah. Goodness.”

The emotion charged proceedings, and foreign surroundings of the Indonesian justice system, has brought up the sadly familiar Australian trait of mocking a foreign culture. If an Indonesian radio presenter made similiar statements about the Australian legal fraternity, rest assured Ray Martin, Channel 9 and the pack of media hounds would be demanding an official apology. But it’s silence when directed elsewhere.

Professor Tim Lindsay, a specialist in Indonesia law and society and Director of the University of Melbourne’s Asian Law Centre, argues that the Indonesian legal system has been woefully misrepresented over the past months. Take this exchange from a recent ABC World Today interview:

ELEANOR HALL: “Is it the case that the Indonesian legal system is based on the presumption of guilt?”

TIM LINDSAY: “No, that is completely false. As a matter of fact it is completely the opposite. The system in Indonesia is the same as the system in Australia, and our Commonwealth system. Article 66 of the Criminal Procedure Code specifically states that the burden of proof to prove guilt in a criminal case lies with the prosecution. In other words, that unless the prosecution can prove guilt, the person is innocent. So the common furphy that is being circulated in Australia in the media at the moment that people in the Indonesian system are presumed guilty until proven innocent is totally false.”

Presenting these facts is no justification for the myriad of failures at the heart of the Corby case, not least of which was the absence of fingerprinting the suspect’s bag of marijuana. My point simply lies in not presenting this case as a prime example of a debauched system up north and a perfect, more fair and equitable arrangement in Australia, one clearly more likely, in the eyes of critic, to return a not-guilty verdict.

On the other hand, many in the Australian media have prejudiced the case beyond belief, making assumptions and claims that would be completely unacceptable if the case was running here. Last weekend’s Australian carried a remarkable headline: “Meet the Corbys – a dad with a drug record, a brother in jail, a former bankrupt who wants 50 per cent of the action.” ABC’s Tony Jones asked Attorney General Phillip Ruddock last night if such behaviour was prejudicial:

RUDDOCK: “Oh, look, I think if it was run in an Australian court, it would be seen as very prejudicial and unhelpful and wouldn’t be run in the media. But you still have to look at these matters in the context of how, right from the beginning, these matters have been addressed by the defence using the media.”

TONY JONES: “Yes, but this is a case of the media apparently making up its mind about a family and putting out a headline which suggests the family essentially have criminal connections, at a time, just a week away from the actual verdict. Now, given the Internet, given satellite broadcasting, given the judges may actually read that headline, could it be prejudicial to the trial in Indonesia?”

RUDDOCK: “Well, I think you made the point right at the beginning that people have been barracking for both sides. It seems to me that’s been part of the barracking that’s occurred on both sides, and I’ve made the point that I consider it very unhelpful.”

Today’s Sydney Telegraph reveals the Australian pastor who baptised Corby behind bars and her snap decision to embrace God. Media organisations are struggling to find new angles only days before the verdict. Nothing surprising there, that’s what journalists should be doing.

Unacceptable is the denigration of a country, its legal system and people simply because one woman may well be innocent. Indonesia has a history of avoiding taking responsibility for past crimes (including those behind the 1999 massacres in East Timor) but this should not be carte blanche to express cultural superiority.

Racism is never far away in the Corby debate.

The New York Times published an article on May 21 that should have been on the front page of Australia’s leading broadsheets. It told the real face behind America’s “War on Terror” (WOT):

“For many Muslims, Guantánamo stands as a confirmation of the low regard in which they believe the United States holds them. For many non-Muslims, regardless of their feelings toward the United States, it has emerged as a symbol of American hypocrisy. “The cages, the orange suits, the shackles – it’s as if they’re dealing with something that’s like a germ they don’t want to touch,” said Daoud Kuttab, director of the Institute of Modern Media at Al Quds University in Ramallah, in the West Bank. “That’s the nastiness of it.”

Expressing skepticism towards America is healthy, especially in light of so many scandals involving US forces around the world. Showing contempt, however, is a more worrying trend. Being against the policies of George W. Bush is one thing but harboring deep-seated hatred for what America now stands for suggests a world community fundamentally at odds with the radical agenda of Bush’s neo-cons. The long-term effects of such sentiments are patently clear.

Human Rights Watch released a report last week that revealed the smokescreen of the Newsweek scandal:

“U.S. forces in Afghanistan were involved in killings, torture and other abuses of prisoners even before the Iraq war started. These crimes, known to senior officials in the military and Central Intelligence Agency, have not still been adequately investigated or prosecuted.”

Blind defenders of American and Australian foreign policy, and tacit acceptance of abuses by the US military and their bureaucratic masters, are contributing to a rising hatred of all things American. How can the US be taken seriously in world affairs when it refuses to fully investigate systemic issues at the core of the WOT?

Let it be understood that I am not defending American government policy. Far from it. I’m not a believer in America being the only superpower able to implement positive change. I’m constantly amazed at the cultural amnesia in our mainstream society on this matter. Take today’s editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald. The issue is America’s relationship with the Uzbek dictator and the contradiction between Bush’s stated belief in freedom and democracy and reality in the Central Asian country. The final line is priceless: “Mr Bush’s own claim to global moral leadership is at stake.” Implicit in such a statement is that America under Bush is capable of delivering on such lofty promises, despite vast evidence suggesting otherwise. This delusion, common in much allegedly progressive commentary, is part of a simliar problem with viewing America’s role in the world. Is it not time to assume that America is simply incapable of delivering moral leadership on any issue? Blood stains its hands in virtually every corner of the globe.

Attitudes towards the US in the Muslim world are becoming so toxic that issues like Guantanamo Bay are proving to be the ultimate recruitment tool for extremists. And guess whom we have to blame?

Morgan Spurlock, agent provocateur of anti-McDonalds documentary, Super Size Me, returns with a book called “Don’t Eat This Book”, exclusively extracted in yesterday’s Independent on Sunday. Adults clearly bear much responsibility for the kind of food their children are consuming, but as Spurlock suggests, “they’re going up against billions and billions of dollars spent every year in corporate marketing, all aimed at teaching kids to make exactly the opposite sorts of choices.”

“…McDonald’s marketing genius M Lawrence Light – the guy who rolled out the ‘I’m lovin’ it’ campaign – wants to surround the youth of the world with McDonald’s brand images. ‘Light wants to turn everything he can into an ad for McDonald’s,’ wrote Business Week magazine in July 2004. “He’s pushing the Oak Brook chain to open clothing shops so kids will walk around in T-shirts with the Golden Arches logo, just as they already do with Old Navy or Disney. He envisions a deal with the National Basketball Association to play the five-note tagline of the ‘I’m lovin’ it’ ad in the stadium every time a player shoots a three-pointer. He’s even toying with making the jingle available over the internet so it could be downloaded as a mobile phone ring tone.”

Some may argue that McDonalds has the right to advertise to whomever it chooses. True enough in our economic system, but surely there is a need for debate around the ways in which young children are being sold a message of “consume and be happy”.

It’d be a pleasant thought indeed to see companies like McDonalds sued by concerned parents who argue that their children are not happy after consuming a Big Mac. False advertising?

For us men, sometimes less than adept in the culinary department, get ready for a revolution. The BBQ Boys have arrived, “helping guys with the basics of barbecuing. Simple stuff to help you relax, have some fun and enjoy grilling for a change. No fancy-schmancy recipes here.”

The just released DVD isn’t yet available in Australia, but I’m reliably informed that this will change shortly. Find the perfect meat before the next religiously appropriate holiday.

A leading Australian conservative proves incapable or unwilling to criticise the Howard government. “Most on the right support the Howard government”, he says. Nothing to complain about? No issues? No questions? Forgotten your role as a journalist to question official perspectives, rather than simply channeling them?

On Iraq: “Either you believe democracy can be introduced, or you don’t.” Supporting the war is one thing, discussing the numerous failures since March 2003 is another. Prisoner abuse scandals, torture in American-run prisons, inability to establish functioning infrastructure for the majority of Iraqis and heavy-handed anti-insurgency attacks leading to civilian casualties. The list goes on and on. But, our Court Reporter insists, it’s about democracy, it’s about democracy, it’s about democracy…and hammering the Left into submission.

John Howard must be so proud of his disciple. This is not journalism, it’s propaganda.

In today’s Guardian, Seymour Hersh explains the lack of accountability at the top levels of the Bush administration:

“It’s been over a year since I published a series of articles in the New Yorker outlining the abuses at Abu Ghraib. There have been at least 10 official military investigations since then – none of which has challenged the official Bush administration line that there was no high-level policy condoning or overlooking such abuse. The buck always stops with the handful of enlisted army reservists from the 372nd Military Police Company whose images fill the iconic Abu Ghraib photos with their inappropriate smiles and sadistic posing of the prisoners.”

“There is no evidence that President Bush, upon learning of the devastating conduct at Abu Ghraib, asked any hard questions of Rumsfeld and his own aides in the White House; no evidence that they took any significant steps, upon learning in mid-January of the abuses, to review and modify the military’s policy toward prisoners. I was told by a high-level former intelligence official that within days of the first reports the judicial system was programmed to begin prosecuting the enlisted men and women in the photos and to go no further up the chain of command.”

But we shouldn’t be surprised. With the lack of a real opposition in America, Britain or Australia, speaking truth to power is left to figures such as British MP George Galloway, saluted here by Scott Ritter:

“Galloway has…had the courage to stand up to unjust charges and an unjust war – and that is the only way that opinion will shift. Two years ago I wrote that the accusations of corruption against Galloway were too convenient, designed to silence one of the Iraq war’s harshest critics. The honourable member for Bethnal Green and Bow has entered the lair of a conservative American political body to confront it head-on about a war and occupation that many on both sides of the Atlantic, politicians and public alike, seem only too willing to sweep under the carpet. So, Mr Galloway, please accept from this American three cheers for a job well done.”

Independent American journalist Dahr Jamail, a regular visitor to Iraq without major news organisation backing, explains “living in two worlds”, between an American public not being told the truth about Iraq and average Iraqis struggling to understand a country blighted by violence.

Meanwhile, back on planet Bush, pictures of Saddam Hussein, published in Murdoch’s Sun in the UK, have further enraged the American administration. Once again, more concern is expressed about an American solider (presumably) leaking photos than actual abuses in Iraqi jails and beyond. The “mother of all smokescreens”, as Galloway said earlier in the week.

Bill Moyers was a PBS radio personality and outspoken critic of media consolidation. During a recent media conference on reform in St Louis, Missouri, Moyers unloaded on the challenges ahead for independent media and the institutional acceptance of many in the mainstream media that it isn’t news unless an official says so. Sound familiar?

Some highlights:

In a recent essay, media commentator Jonathan Mermin discussed the failures of the mainstream media to fully understand its role, especially in time of war.

“Mermin quotes David Ignatius of the Washington Post on why the deep interests of the American public are so poorly served by beltway journalism. The “rules of our game,” says Ignatius, “make it hard for us to tee up an issue…without a news peg.” He offers a case in point: the debacle of America’s occupation of Iraq. “If Senator so and so hasn’t criticized post-war planning for Iraq,” says Ignatius, “then it’s hard for a reporter to write a story about that.”

“Mermin also quotes public television’s Jim Lehrer acknowledging that unless an official says something is so, it isn’t news. Why were journalists not discussing the occupation of Iraq? Because, says Lehrer, “the word occupation…was never mentioned in the run-up to the war.” Washington talked about the invasion as “a war of liberation, not a war of occupation, so as a consequence, “those of us in journalism never even looked at the issue of occupation.”

“In other words,” says Jonathan Mermin, “if the government isn’t talking about it, we don’t report it.” He concludes, “[Lehrer’s] somewhat jarring declaration, one of many recent admissions by journalists that their reporting failed to prepare the public for the calamitous occupation that has followed the ‘liberation’ of Iraq, reveals just how far the actual practice of American journalism has deviated from the First Amendment ideal of a press that is independent of the government.”

“Take the example (also cited by Mermin) of Charles J. Hanley. Hanley is a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for the Associated Press, whose fall 2003 story on the torture of Iraqis in American prisons – before a U.S. Army report and photographs documenting the abuse surfaced – was ignored by major American newspapers. Hanley attributes this lack of interest to the fact that “It was not an officially sanctioned story that begins with a handout from an official source.” Furthermore, Iraqis recounting their own personal experience of Abu Ghraib simply did not have the credibility with beltway journalists of American officials denying that such things happened. Judith Miller of The New York Times, among others, relied on the credibility of official but unnamed sources when she served essentially as the government stenographer for claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.”

We are increasingly fed government sanctioned leaks as “news”. In Australia, and the intimacy of the establishment press, taking a risk on a story requires more than just a hunch and a great lead. Progressives need to better engage with the wider public and convince people that stories like this (a suggestion by outgoing ASIO director-general, Dennis Richardson that “ASIO’s powers to question and detain those suspected of being involved with terrorists or having information about them should be permanently enshrined in legislation”) are simply another unacceptable step in interfering with our lives. Besides, like the torture debate, to give power to institutions that have become so politicised under the Howard reign, would be folly in the extreme.

As Crikey reported this week, we are likely to see before year’s end a major overhaul of the country’s cross media laws. Christian Kerr’s report should be required reading for anyone arguing greater diversity will be the result of the changes.