Antony Loewenstein

Being a war blogger (and getting everything wrong.)

My following article appears in the Amnesty International Australia’s Uncensor campaign about human rights in China:

The nationalistic genie has escaped the Chinese bottle. Citizens across the world have reacted strongly to the perceived anti-Chinese political and media elite in the West. Protests have mushroomed throughout China against what demonstrators view as a slight against benevolent rule in Tibet. The government is clearly behind much of the reaction.

The internet, mobile phones and chat rooms have become the new meeting place for such activities. More than twenty million people have signed a petition against the French retailer Carrefour because of the failure of authorities in Paris to protect the Olympic torch. Conspiracy theories abound in the Chinese blogosphere about these events.

Student Zhu Xiaomeng made comments to the New York Times that reminded me of similar sentiments I heard in China last year. “Tibet is our country’s territory. You have no right to interfere in our interior affairs.” Microsoft’s China homepage has become a natural home for this kind of venting.

“Love Our China” is a familiar refrain of the protestors. The relationship between the West and China is inevitably being affected, with both sides seemingly incapable or unwilling to engage rationally with the other. Surely now is the time to reach out to Chinese people and try and explain why many Westerners are upset with Beijing’s role in Tibet.

I’ve even tried to contact a few Chinese friends in China to gauge their perspective, and many of them have oscillated between damning the violence on both sides and not fully understanding why pro-Tibetan activists in London, Paris and San Francisco were so vehemently critical of their regime. Evidence that now proves Chinese regime meddling in San Francisco’s pro-China protests reveals the level of paranoia in Beijing.

A recent study found that a majority of Australians wanted the Olympic sponsors to speak out strongly about China’s human rights record. This is unsurprising considering the fact that Amnesty International and Chinese human rights activists have found China falling short of the commitments it made when negotiating the 2008 Games. Arresting a leading Tibetan performer, writer and blogger only reinforces this belief. Equally problematic is a forthcoming museum in Beijing dedicated to the “official” version of Tibetan history.

One prominent, former Chinese diplomat turned spy novelist has argued that pro-China protests will only inflame racial tensions. I was more encouraged to see a recently released Beijing-based news researcher for the New York Times call this week for greater press freedom.

However, the ongoing controversy over China’s human rights record is not just about the Beijing Olympic Games. As the West wrestles with the notion of an “after-America” world, despotic regimes are increasingly turning to China for moral, military and diplomatic assistance. Recent evidence suggests that China is providing arms and troops to save Robert Mugabe’s embattled Zimbabwean dictatorship.

London’s Independent warned that after years of complaining about Washington’s support of barbaric regimes, it’s time to worry about the dawning of a new age:

“As for Mr Mugabe, he marked Zimbabwean Independence Day yesterday by complaining of neo-colonialism and how Britain wants to retake control of Zimbabwe. He and other African leaders should think more carefully. There is a danger of their countries becoming a victim of a re-colonisation. But the threat is not from the West. It comes from the East.”

While it’s never healthy to romanticise the Tibetan cause or the Dalai Lama and the history often paints a contradictory picture, one can hope that the Olympic Games provides international attention to an occupation that is largely forgotten in the Western media.

The supposed doyen of the New York Times, Thomas Friedman – a man whose message to the Iraqi people in early 2003 was “suck. on. this” – received a surprise at Brown University:

Not everyone agrees with Friedman’s vision that innovation is the path to climate and energy salvation. Just seconds into his speech, he was interrupted by two environmental activists, who stormed the stage shortly after Friedman stepped up to the microphone, tossing two paper plates loaded with shamrock-colored whipped cream at him. Friedman ducked, and was left with only minor streams of the sugary green goo on his black pants and turtleneck.

I’m sure he can afford the dry-cleaning bill.

The internet is not universal:

Some 80 per cent of European Union web surfers now have fast-speed broadband connections, but nearly 40 percent of all EU citizens still do not use the internet at all, an EU study published Friday found.

The percentage of internet illiterates ranges from 69 per ent in Romania to 13 percent in Denmark and The Netherlands.

Here’s to a celebration of Chinese human rights:

Known among schoolmates for his spirited antics and ability to make light of almost any situation, classroom jokester Wei Xiang, 11, was put to death by the Chinese government for drawing a mustache on an image of Education Minister Zhou Ji in one of his textbooks, sources reported Monday. “An enemy of the state has been dealt with accordingly,” government spokesman Xu Qi said following Wei’s execution by firing squad. “Let this be a lesson to other children considering wising off or otherwise wasting valuable class time.” The fifth-grader previously served a six-month term in solitary confinement at Qincheng Prison after referring to the Tang Dynasty as “the Stank Dynasty” during a history lesson in 2007.

On more serious matters, sponsors of the Beijing Games are increasingly being targeted.

Leon Hadar, The American Conservative, April 21:

…It seems to me that what [William] Kristol and other leading neoconservatives have been promoting hasn’t been Zionism (whatever that means) but their own very unique Zionist agenda in which Israel assumes the role of a crusader Jewish state in the Middle East that will never make peace with its neighbors and whose survival will always been dependent on the patronage of an American hegemon that maintains its dominant position in the Middle East.

The growing global interest in the Middle East has allowed an Iranian graffiti artist such as A1one to gain prominence. He has to work covertly in the Islamic Republic but his blog provides ample examples of his fine work:

US Vice President Dick Cheney issues a typically bellicose pronouncement about the “war on terror”:

An ideological struggle is underway and in that struggle we can be confident we are doing the right thing. We are confronting the violence, protecting the innocent, liberating the oppressed, and aiding the rise of freedom and democracy as America has done so many times in the past.

The reality of “liberating the oppressed” is actually utterly removed from Cheney’s lies. The divide and conquer Iraqi strategy and the “surge” is in fact inspired by Israeli tactics:

The explosion of walls and enclaves reinforced by aerial violence across Iraq suggest that the primary counterinsurgency lessons being followed by the U.S. military in Iraq today derive less from the lessons of “Lawrence of Arabia” than from Israel’s experiences in the Occupied Palestinian Territories over the past decade.

Welcome to Saudi Arabia, a key US ally in the Middle East (thanks to a rare report on the country by Human Rights Watch):

The authorities essentially treat adult women like legal minors who are not entitled to authority over their lives and well-being. Saudi women are similarly denied the legal right to make even trivial decisions for their children. Women cannot open bank accounts for children, enroll them in school, obtain school files, or travel with their children without written permission from the child’s father.

Saudi women are prevented from accessing government agencies that have not established female sections unless they have a male representative. The need to establish separate office spaces for women is a disincentive to hiring female employees, and female students are often relegated to unequal facilities with unequal academic opportunities.

Amnesty International’s new campaign against water-boarding:

The following letter appears in this week’s Australian Jewish News:

Just like the constant advances in computer technology, political events and attitudes are changing with great rapidity.

A few years ago it was considered a serious sacrilege to offer even the mildest criticism of the Israeli Government. Today, the situation has changed.

The publication of My Israel Question by Antony Loewenstein, and the Modern Middle East and the Israeli Palestine Question and other books covering similar topics by Israeli professor of history, Ilan Pappe, furnishes ample evidence to sustain this contention.

These books, by both authors, should interest all serious-minded persons who want to extend their knowledge concerning the history of the conflict that has prevailed since the Balfour Declaration in 1917.

BERNARD ROSEN
Strathfield, NSW

As usual, the global public are far smarter than the political and media elite, according to a new study:

World Publics Say Oil Needs to Be Replaced as Energy Source.