Antony Loewenstein

Welcome to our legacy in the Middle East:

A grim picture of the US and Britain’s legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes.

Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the Guardian and a number of other international media organisations via the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

The electronic archive is believed to emanate from the same dissident US army intelligence analyst who earlier this year is alleged to have leaked a smaller tranche of 90,000 logs chronicling bloody encounters and civilian killings in the Afghan war.

The new logs detail how:

• US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.

• A US helicopter gunship involved in a notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after they tried to surrender.

• More than 15,000 civilians died in previously unknown incidents. US and UK officials have insisted that no official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081 non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.

The numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks. Six reports end with a detainee’s apparent death.

As recently as December the Americans were passed a video apparently showing Iraqi army officers executing a prisoner in Tal Afar, northern Iraq. The log states: “The footage shows approximately 12 Iraqi army soldiers. Ten IA soldiers were talking to one another while two soldiers held the detainee. The detainee had his hands bound … The footage shows the IA soldiers moving the detainee into the street, pushing him to the ground, punching him and shooting him.”

The report named at least one perpetrator and was passed to coalition forces. But the logs reveal that the coalition has a formal policy of ignoring such allegations. They record “no investigation is necessary” and simply pass reports to the same Iraqi units implicated in the violence. By contrast all allegations involving coalition forces are subject to formal inquiries. Some cases of alleged abuse by UK and US troops are also detailed in the logs.

Behold a rarity.

An Australian commentator, Richard Ackland, visits Syria and writes sympathetically about Iraqi and Palestinian refugees.

Who can blame the Afghan government, as corrupt as it is, resisting the onslaught of unaccountable private military contractors, teams increasingly relied upon by Western states in their futile battle against an indigenous “enemy”?

The Afghan president on Wednesday rejected pleas from the international community to reverse his order to disband all private security companies, saying money spent on those firms should be invested in the national police force instead.

President Hamid Karzai ordered Afghan and international security companies — which protect everything from development projects and NATO supply convoys to private houses — to disband by the end of the year. The decision has drawn criticism from the U.S. and others who worry the Afghan security forces are not ready to assume the burden.

But Karzai told reporters he was tired of hearing complaints from embassies about the order, and said his decision to shut them down was final.

“We hope that our international friends will not get back to us or try to put pressure on us or talk about it in the media because none of these are going to work,” he said. “These companies are closed — that is it.”

A country striving for peace?

As US-sponsored peace talks have stalled over the issue of settlements, Israel’s national police force has revealed that it is turning to the very same illegal communities in its first-ever drive to recruit officers from among the settlers.

The special officer training course, which is chiefly aimed at discharged combat soldiers, includes seven months of religious studies in an extremist settlement in the occupied West Bank.

The program has provoked widespread concern among Israel’s 1.3 million Palestinian citizens, a fifth of the population.

“The police have already repeatedly demonstrated their hostility to Palestinian citizens, but this move proves that the authorities want to extend and deepen our oppression,” said Jafar Farah, the director of Mossawa, an advocacy center for the Palestinian minority.

“Is it really credible that these religious extremists who have been educated to hate Palestinians in the West Bank are going to behave differently when they police our communities inside Israel?”

The first 35 cadets in the officer-training program — known as “Believe in the police” — are to start their studies next month. More than 300 settlers are reported to have expressed an interest in the course so far.

My following article appears today in ABC’s The Drum Unleashed:

A Western journalist visits the Sudanese capital Khartoum to interview President Omar al-Bashir. The reporter, after calling him “controversial” due to his “bloody” record in fighting terrorism, gives the leader a platform to explain his views and tactics. The only other voice featured in the piece is a commentator who backs the government wholeheartedly. The fact that Bashir has been charged in 2010 by the International Criminal Court for genocide in Darfur is glossed over in the story.

This piece would be rightly called propaganda, the lack of enquiry revealing an inability to understand the reasons Bashir wanted to speak to a Westerner. Bashir is undoubtedly a legitimate person to interview but the skill is painting an entire picture of the people suffering under his rule, not least the minorities and those in Darfur.

Sadly, The Australian’s Rowan Callick was easily seduced by the allure of an exclusive chat with Sri Lanka’s Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa and this week published a number of articles from his lightning visit. His trip was “not paid for by the Sri Lanka government or by anybody in any way associated with Sri Lanka”, Callick told me but it appears he engaged with nobody other than officials while in the country.

Amazingly, Callick didn’t even mention that Gotabaya has consistently said that no civilians were killed by the Sri Lankan government in the final phases of its brutal war against the Tamil Tigers despite every major human rights group in the world detailing a litany of war crimes against the top echelons of the Colombo regime. Up to 40,000 Tamil civilians were murdered, according to former UN official in Colombo, Gordon Weiss. Britain is now calling for a fully independent war crimes investigation into the serious allegations.

Callick published a story that claimed Sri Lanka was again safe for all its citizens and Australia should “get tough” on Tamil asylum seekers. Singapore based terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna, a Sinhalese like Sri Lanka’s leadership, claimed without evidence that “70 per cent of Tamils granted asylum in Australia and Canada had returned to Sri Lanka for a visit.”

The article concluded with this curious paragraph:

“The government has invited opinion leaders of that Diaspora to visit Sri Lanka as it emerges from the war, and to visit centres of past conflict. Those who had gone, including some from Australia, had ‘returned pleased.’”

In other words, Callick was happy to be shown around parts of Sri Lanka the government wanted him to see.

This fit perfectly with the regime’s enthusiasm to restore its battered image. In the UK, public relations firm Bell Pottinger has been hired to “counter the Tamil Diaspora campaign work” and white-wash alleged crimes committed by the Rajapaksa authorities.

I asked Callick by email about his trip and he said that he was “briefly in Colombo” to “interview the country’s second most powerful figure… His views [Gotabaya] are clearly of considerable interest.” The Murdoch journalist told me that his paper “has covered a range of views on Sri Lanka issues” over time and this is certainly true.

Despite the newspaper featuring stories over the last years about the Sri Lankan government’s Israeli-style blitzkrieg on the Tamil population, this is utterly irrelevant to the impression this week’s stories have falsely created in the public mind. Letters to The Australian in the last days show readers are outraged that 70 per cent of Tamil refugees granted protection are supposedly returning to Sri Lanka within a year of arriving here. Yet there is no documented evidence that this is true.

Callick’s full-page feature of his time with Gotabaya merely added insult to injury. Titled, “Brothers who tamed the Tigers”, the article again only featured two voices, Gotabaya and Gunaratna. Claims about protecting civilians were accepted without challenge. No mention of the extensive reports by Human Rights Watch, the UN and Amnesty International that found alleged crimes against humanity by the Sri Lankan forces towards both Tamil civilians and the Tamil Tigers (who also stand accused of committing war crimes). Callick accepted Gotabaya’s claims without hesitation or challenge.

Callick followed up his series of stories with a more balanced piece the next day but this also barely mentioned Sri Lanka’s slide into authoritarianism.

The International Crisis Group, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International recently declined an offer from Colombo to appear before a sham commission to investigate any alleged abuses during the country’s war with the Tamil Tigers. The letter to the commission read in part:

“While we would welcome the opportunity to appear before a genuine, credible effort to pursue accountability and reconciliation in Sri Lanka, the LLRC [Sri Lanka's Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission] falls far short of such an effort. It not only fails to meet basic international standards for independent and impartial inquiries, but it is proceeding against a backdrop of government failure to address impunity and continuing human rights abuses.

Our three organizations believe that the persistence of these and other destructive trends indicates that currently Sri Lanka’s government and justice system cannot or will not uphold the rule of law and respect basic rights.”

Sri Lanka’s External Affairs Minister Prof. G.L. Peiris called the refusal of the groups reminiscent of an “attitude that is almost colonial, patronizing and condescending“.

Colombo is following the Israeli model, dismissive of international opinion towards its crimes and excesses and relying on the largesse, military backing and diplomatic cover of a handful of major powers.

Another fundamental flaw with the Callick articles was his reliance on Rohan Gunaratna, the ubiquitous terrorism expert. The Singapore-based analyst’s disturbing ability to blur academic studies and political opinions has been challenged for years but the mainstream media continues seeking his views. Gunaratna’s understanding of Asia’s Islamist threat has often be inaccurate and excessive and his use of unsourced and unproven intelligence leaves open the possibility of distortions. A number of terrorism experts told me that very few, if any, serious terrorism experts take his claims seriously.

I asked Callick about his use of Gunaratna and the questions around his credibility. He responded that his “views are often interesting and well informed. That he has a close connection to governments does not necessarily undermine those elements.”

It would be like solely using a former Israeli intelligence officer and expecting him to speak frankly and honestly about the role of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. His former association would cloud his view unavoidably.

The Australian has used Gunaratna as its only source on Sri Lanka and Tamil refugee issues for months. He is always guaranteed to issue apocalyptic predictions of doom about the prospects of a re-formed Tamil Tigers in Australia and Canada despite no evidence to back the claims.

Gunaratna told me via email that he had “no financial relationship whatsoever” with the Sri Lankan intelligence services or the Sri Lankan government. He railed against “disinformation produced by the LTTE front and sympathetic organisations overseas including in Australia”. The implication was that any allegation of government-led war crimes by Tamils was suspect by definition despite the overwhelming eyewitness testimony of Sri Lanka forces firing on hospitals and civilian areas during the war.

He acknowledged that there was, like in Iraq and Afghanistan, “civilian deaths and injuries” and encouraged an “investigation… No life is cheap. It is a son or a daughter, a mother or a father, brother or a sister of someone.”

When challenged on Colombo’s holding of 11,500 former Tamil Tigers suspects in detention – condemned by Human Rights Watch as a prison without international monitoring or investigation – Gunaratna denied that Sri Lanka was holding Tamils “without access to international bodies. It is a lie spread by the LTTE and its supporters and sympathisers. There are 11,500 LTTE terrorists in custody. They are undergoing rehabilitation before they are released.”

This is the same logic deployed by America and Israel with its illegal holding of countless prisoners without trial or judicial process. Terrorists are simply called terrorists because a government says so.

Gunaratna told me that he had “personally interviewed several thousand detainees” – a claim that stretches credibility – and praised the Sri Lankan “rehabilitation program as one of the best terrorist rehabilitation programs in the world… [that] should be emulated by other governments.”

Despite no independent monitoring to assess the claim, he said that authorities “treat detainees with respect, promote moderation, toleration and co-existence and given a second chance to start a life.”

Such unbelievable claims are by the man who is often the main source of expertise in The Australian‘s coverage of Sri Lanka.

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

All praise this rarity. A story in the Australian media (yesterday’s Australian) on Serco. Short but oh so sweet:

A security company contracted by Serco is being investigated over claims it used unlicensed guards at police detention centres.

Serco is responsible for running Australia’s rapidly expanding network of immigration detention centres.

Northern Territory Licensing, Regulation and Alcohol Strategy executive director Micheil Brodie confirmed that investigators from the Department of Justice had visited the Darwin offices of MSS Security yesterday.

The visit was in response to claims that the firm was using unlicensed security guards.

“The visit was productive and the firm is co-operating fully,” Mr Brodie said.

“It would be premature to form any conclusions at this stage.”

In June 2000, Serco won a five-year contract worth $370 million to run Australia’s detention network.

It has come under periodic fire over its management of the centres, following a number of escapes.

A spokeswoman for Serco confirmed that MSS was one of its subcontractors, but declined to answer further questions. MSS Security also declined to discuss the claims.

A spokesman for the Immigration Department said Canberra was aware of the ongoing investigation.

The news of the investigation came as a Senate estimates committee heard that up to 44 countries may be included in the definition of the government’s proposed regional processing centre.

During a late-night hearing on Tuesday, the head of the Immigration Department, Andrew Metcalfe, said although negotiations for a regional processing centre were ongoing, the region would largely be defined by the member countries of the Bali Process, which works to combat people-smuggling.

“I think there are 44 . . . As I have said, we are largely talking about countries where displaced persons are travelling through, so, of course, we would include Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, other countries in Indochina, but the Bali Process incorporates a number of other countries as well,” Mr Metcalfe said.

Deputy Leader of the Opposition Julie Bishop called on the government to “immediately define” what countries would be included in the region.

“Ms Gillard has promised to stop the boats with a ‘regional’ processing centre, and yet cannot define what constitutes the ‘region’,” Ms Bishop said. “This will create an enormous magnet. “I think we’ve come across a real Achilles heel of this plan.”

This is officially pathetic. So here’s a Zionist Australian, Alan Gold, arguing that because multiculturalism has supposedly failed in Germany, proponents of the BDS movement and one-state solution are misguided. We should just really embrace partition and separation and apartheid. Because that’s working so well for Israel right now. No mention of the occupation, of course:

If ever a lesson should be learned about the impossibility of a one-state solution imposed by the Arab nations and their collegial “useful idiots” in the West upon Israel, one need look no further than Germany today.

In a speech given to the youth division of her Christian Democratic Union party at Potsdam last weekend, Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has conceded that her nation’s attempts to create a multicultural society in which people from different cultural backgrounds live together peacefully, has failed.

Multikulti was a concept touted by German sociologists and academics as the best way for the post-Hitler nation to bond its different factions together. Multiculturalism gained speed with the vast influx of Turkish workers into the rapidly expanding German economy, at the same time as which Germany was dealing with massive problems caused by the integration of East and West Germans following the dismantling of the Iron Curtain.

Indeed, Merkel’s colleague, Horst Seehofer, the leader of the CDU’s sister party in Bavaria, told the same meeting that Germany was committed to a dominant German culture and opposed to a multicultural one.

At a recent meeting between Merkel and Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the two leaders pledged to do more to improve the poor integration record of Germany’s two and a half million strong Turkish community.

Which makes one have to look very closely and question the reasoning behind the upsurge in support for the international Union movement’s support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel, a transparent device to force a one-state solution on Israel by collapsing the Israeli economy.

Even the most cursory investigation of the Palestinian problem shows that Israeli Arabs have more rights, a better standard of living and greater equity, than any other general Arab population (excluding, of course, the ruling potentates and oil plutocrats). Where Germany and France have so patently failed in their multiculturalism, against all odds, and despite the voices screaming ‘apartheid’, Israel’s integration of its diverse populations, seems to have succeeded. How? Because it was a process of consensus and cooperation, and not one imposed from outside.

Multiculturalism, and the successful melding of disparate units into one, can only succeed given willingness and time. Which is why the BDS program is destined to backfire on itself.

Because of the cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians on the West Bank, the Palestinian economy (though not obviously that of Gaza) is going ahead in leaps and bounds. Any BDS success will have the effect of strengthening Israeli resistance to a settlement, and of ruining the Palestinian economy.

So will the Unions, and universities, running the BDS campaign, now turn their focus against Germany, where it has admitted that its multicultural program is not working? Presumably not, because despite the fact that there are so many immoral dictatorships, repressive regimes, one party governments and totalitarian rulers who seem to escape the notice of Union leaders and academics, they have shown themselves to be concerned only with Israel.

Merkel’s statement, especially in light of vast sums of money spent over decades in attempting to make Germany into a multicultural nation, needs closer attention than just its admission of failure. For there is a growing mood in the West, including many Jews, that Zionism and Israel are a 19^th century anachronism, and that the only proper solution to the hatreds, is a one-state solution; one in which Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Muslims and Christians, will live in some sort of utopian harmony.

This nonsense might have appeal in some academic sociological paper, propounded by such usual suspects as Tony Judt, Noam Chomsky or Australia’s hairy-chested Antony Loewenstein, Peter Slezak and Peter Singer, but their eyes, shielded from reality, have probably not looked at the mess German society is in today. And should they look at other European nations, they might also examine France, whose recent Islamic demonstrations caused terrible ructions in the French disposition, or the UK which is a new breeding ground for violent Islamism.

Israel’s proposal of a two-state solution, with an border that enables trade, security and humanitarian exchanges, very much like the border between the USA and Canada, or France and Germany, has always been the most logical way to end this interminable conflict.

One can only hope it arrives with this series of negotiations. Because if it doesn’t, and Israel is forced to accept an imposed solution, there will be no Israel.

This is how Israel shows its love for apartheid; entrenching it:

Israeli settlers have begun building new homes at a quick pace since the government lifted its moratorium on West Bank housing starts – almost 550 in three weeks, more than four times faster than the last two years.

I‘ve written before about the massive US arms deal to Saudi Arabia (US$60 billion).

Now it’s been officially approved by the powers that be in Washington, so see how the State Department defends the weapons to one of the most brutal regimes in the world.

No Shock Doctrine in the UK.

Britain has embraced rampant capitalism and the effects, writes The Independent’s Johann Hari, will be severe:

Margaret Thatcher is lying sick in a private hospital bed in Belgravia but her political children have just pushed her agenda further and harder and deeper than she ever dreamed of. When was the last time Britain’s public spending was slashed by more than 20 per cent? Not in my mother’s lifetime. Not even in my grandmother’s lifetime. No, it was in 1918, when a Conservative-Liberal coalition said the best response to a global economic crisis was to rapidly pay off this country’s debts. The result? Unemployment soared from 6 per cent to 19 per cent, and the country’s economy collapsed so severely that they lost all ability to pay their bills and the debt actually rose from 114 per cent to 180 per cent. “History doesn’t repeat itself,” Mark Twain said, “but it does rhyme.”

George Osborne has just gambled your future on an extreme economic theory that has failed whenever and wherever it has been tried. In the Great Depression, we learned some basic principles. When an economy falters, ordinary people – perfectly sensibly – cut back their spending and try to pay down their debts. This causes a further fall in demand, and makes the economy worse. If the government cuts back at the same time, then there is no demand at all, and the economy goes into freefall. That’s why virtually every country in the world reacted to the Great Crash of 2008 – caused entirely by deregulated bankers – by increasing spending, funded by temporary debt. Better a deficit we repay in the good times than an endless depression. The countries that stimulated hardest, like South Korea, came out of recession first.

David Cameron and George Osborne have ignored all this. They have ignored the warnings of the Financial Times, the newspaper most critical of their strategy. They have dismissed the warnings of Nobel economics laureates like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, who have consistently been proved right in this crisis. They have refused to learn from the fact that the country they held up as a model for how to deal with a recession – “Look and learn from across the Irish Sea,” Osborne said – has suffered the worst collapse in the developed world. They have instead blindly obeyed the ideological precepts they learned as baby Thatcherites: slash the state, and make the poor pay most.