Antony Loewenstein

You can smell the fear in this Haartez editorial. Israel is a democratic state that should be saved? Who thinks this? Palestinians living under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza?

Yes:

Robert Stary, Assange’s Melbourne-based lawyer, thinks his client’s defense should be pretty straightforward, because he considers Assange to be a journalist, protected by U.S. First Amendment guarantees of free speech.

But Stary is worried about some possibilities: “Our main concern is really the possible extradition to the U.S. We’ve been troubled by the sort of rhetoric that has come out of various commentators and principally Republican politicians — Sarah Palin and the like — saying Mr. Assange should be executed, assassinated.”

On her Facebook page, Palin suggests that Assange should be “pursued with the same urgency as al-Qaida and Taliban leaders.”

Anyone who incites others to commit violence against his client, even outside Australia, Stary says, is violating Australian law, and can be held accountable for it.

“Certainly if Sarah Palin or any of those other politicians come to Australia, for whatever purpose, then we can initiate a private prosecution, and that’s what we intend to do,” Stary said.

Today I chaired a session here in Jaipur, India at the literature festival with three men who know something about war and conflict. Brit Rory Stewart, New Yorker’s Jon Lee Anderson and the Washington Post’s David Finkel.

We faced a packed audience – hundreds in an outdoor tent with overflowing crowds hanging out as far as the eye could see – to hear a robust discussion about a variety of occupations – Sri Lanka in the north and east, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Yemen. What is the responsibility of the writer when examining occupation and why is even raising the issue of occupation so rare in the West (instead these problems are “liberations” or “freedom struggles”)?

I pushed all of them to question their own position towards occupation reporting. What should readers gain from their insights? Why are so many in the West ignorant about life for those under occupation?

Anderson talked about Sri Lanka and his recent trip there for his magazine. In a post-conflict environment, the Rajapaksa regime maintains an “occupation” of the north and east, with Tamils clearly discriminated against. He spent time with Defence Secretary Gotabaya and observed to me that the man is delusional with a massive touch of hubris. It’s an arrogance helped by a supposed victory over terrorism. Alas, the “peace” is now one of repression and outright racism. No wonder the Israelis and others admire the Colombo regime so much; they’d behave the same way if the world was more understanding.

We all reflected on the power of the pen and how it should be used; responsibly. When I brought up Wikileaks and its ability to challenge the inherent cosiness of the mainstream media, Finkel told the story of the Collateral Murder video. All three seemed to be very wary towards Wikileaks and its release of countless documents. They believed that journalists still had a role – on this I agree – but revealing the scientific details of a story is surely vital to increase public trust. The audience regularly cheered when I said the mainstream media often doesn’t tell the truth about events. Credibility is clearly a problem that isn’t being addressed.

It was a great session because all of us addressed problems and crimes committed by us, the West. It’s not just a problem about “them”.

So what to do about it…

Visa issues? Human rights a concern? Indian government ineptitude?

Suffice to say, I’m very pleased that the statement we released this week that outlined the gross human rights abuses in Sri Lanka continues to resonate and launch a much-needed discussion worldwide (including here in Jaipur, India, where many people seem uncomfortable even hearing the compromises we all make when attending writer’s festivals due to sponsorship).

All cultural events have a political component and participants shouldn’t ignore them.

So the US government is caught out lying about the supposed threat posed by Wikileaks. In many ways, the damage to Washington is more far-reaching. Maybe not in a practical sense but it’s image around the world. Suffice to say, it’s worsening.

For example:

Confidential US diplomatic cables from 2005 and 2006 released this week by WikiLeaks reveal Washington’s well-known obsession to keep exiled former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of Haiti and Haitian affairs. (On Thursday, Aristide issued a public letter in which he reiterated “my readiness to leave today, tomorrow, at any time” from South Africa for Haiti, because the Haitian people “have never stopped calling for my return” and “for medical reasons”, concerning his eyes.)

In a 8 June 2005 meeting of US Ambassador to Brazil John Danilovich, joined by his political counsellor (usually, the local CIA station chief), with then President Lula da Silva’s international affairs adviser Marco Aurelio Garcia, we learn that:

“Ambassador and PolCouns … stressed continued US G[overnment] insistence that all efforts must be made to keep Aristide from returning to Haiti or influencing the political process … [and that Washington was] increasingly concerned about a major deterioration in security, especially in Port au Prince.”

The ambassador and his adviser were also anxious about “reestablishing [the] credibility” of the UN Mission to Stabilise Haiti (Minustah), as the UN occupation troops are called. The Americans reminded Garcia that then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had called “for firm Minustah action and the possibility that the US may be asked to send troops at some point”.

Careful reading between the lines of the cable shows that Garcia was a bit taken aback by the Americans’ “insistence”; he reassured the duo “that security is a critical component, but must move in tandem with”, among other things, “an inclusive political process”. Garcia also noted that “some elements of Lavalas [Aristide's political party] are willing to become involved in a constructive dialogue and should be encouraged”, although there was “continued Brazilian resolve to keep Aristide from returning to the country or exerting political influence”.

Aristide “does not fit in with a democratic political future” in Haiti, Garcia is quoted as saying. However, he was “cautious on the issue of introduction of US forces” into Haiti, and “would not be drawn into discussion”.

After the first day at the Jaipur Literature Festival here in India, one of the highlights for me was hearing New Yorker journalist John Lee Anderson talk about the politics of insurgency. Listening to Orhan Pamuk (Nobel Prize winner) and Jung Chang and Jon Halliday (author of the recent book on Mao) was fascinating but Anderson explained how even the most atheist militant groups found a way to imbue religious symbolism into the sacrifice of dying. Spirituality was essential, he said, for insurgents to continue the struggle, to believe that what they were doing was important for the bigger cause at hand.

The idea of pushing for a belief – Palestine, Tamil Eelam etc – often supersedes all other beliefs.

Another government, post Wikileaks, shown to have lied post 9/11:

Slowly but surely the entire shameful truth is coming out about Shannon airport, CIA renditions, and the lengths the Irish government went to avoid the evidence. One of the first Dublin embassy cables from Wikileaks confirmed that the Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern knew about the CIA’s use of Shannon for its renditions. The latest Dublin cable (full text below) shows that they knew this meant they were in violation of torture conventions. Yet they did nothing to uphold their legal and moral responsibilities, preferring instead to avoid political difficulty.

According to a cable released by Wikileaks on 14 January, an unnamed individual who met with the U.S. embassy’s deputy chief of mission (DCM) in Dublin told the embassy

“were a plane to include Shannon in an itinerary that also included transporting prisoners, GOI [government of Ireland] lawyers might be forced to conclude that the GOI itself was in violation of torture conventions”.

So an Irish government minister was quite convinced that at least three flights involving renditions had refueled at Shannon Airport before or after conducting renditions. The government’s lawyers were telling them they were likely to be in violation of the legally binding Convention Against Torture. But what did our government do? They vehemently denied any involvement of Shannon in the CIA’s renditions programme, and they went to the U.S. embassy to make sure they were not found out. Or as the cable puts it, their main concern was that what they were saying would not be found “to have holes in it”.

So this is getting big.

Following a call by a handful of writers this week, including yours truly, to highlight the gross human rights abuses in Sri Lanka and the Galle Literary Festival’s relationship/relative silence about it, the story has truly taken off.

Here’s the AFP story, Hindustan Times and Indian Express.

And the big news of the day:

Nobel-winning Turkish author Orhan Pamuk and fellow writer Kiran Desai have pulled out of Sri Lanka’s main literary festival, Pamuk’s publisher said on Friday, following pressure from press freedom groups.

Reporters Without Borders and a Sri Lankan rights group had targeted foreign writers in a campaign that called on them to boycott the Galle Literary Festival because of restrictions on free speech in Sri Lanka.

The campaign said that attending the event later this month would “give legitimacy to the Sri Lankan government’s suppression of free speech.”

Pamuk and his partner Kiran Desai, a Booker Prize-winning author, are attending the Jaipur Literary Festival in northern India and had planned to travel on to Sri Lanka for the Galle event that starts on January 26.

“They won’t be attending the Galle festival,” Hemali Sodhi from Pamuk’s publisher in India, Penguin, told AFP by telephone. “They won’t be commenting on this any further.”

Pamuk had declined to take questions from journalists while speaking at an event in Jaipur earlier in the day.

The Galle boycott campaign has been backed by Noam Chomsky, Arundhati Roy, Ken Loach, Antony Loewenstein and Tariq Ali.

The Middle East’s Glorious Only Democracy Inc:

Three weeks after the publication of a petition calling on Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar to take action against racism spreading within schools and the general public, teachers told Ynet about the harsh reality they are forced to face daily.

In one case, a 12th grade student of a northern Israeli school wrote “Death to the Arabs” on a test in civics class. In another case, a high school student from Tel Aviv stood up during class, and to the horror of his teacher declared that his dream is to volunteer for the Border Guard, “so that I can spray Arabs to death.” His friends welcomed the announcement with applause.

Moreover, civics teachers around the country have been finding graffiti on the walls of their classrooms, bearing slogans ranging from “Kahane was right” to “A good Arab is a dead Arab.” Other statements incite against the ultra-Orthodox sector and against refugees.

According to an Education Ministry source, the recent incidents reflect an escalation in racism among Israeli students. He primarily blamed politicians for encouraging hatred.

“We’re not talking about a minority, or children from families that have extreme political views, but about normal children who are afflicted with ignorance,” he said. “The political discourse in recent years has given them the legitimacy to be prejudiced.”

The source also noted that the student who wrote “Death to Arabs” on his test is an honors student who is proficient in the material – a fact that raises a red flag.

Wow:

China’s online population rose to 457 million in 2010 as use of mobile phones to surf the Web spread rapidly, an industry group reported Wednesday.

China’s population of Internet users – a group more than 50 per cent larger than the whole U.S. population – grew 19 per cent in 2010 over the previous year, said the state-sanctioned China Internet Network Information Center.

The number of people surfing the Web by mobile phone jumped 29.6 per cent over 2009 to 303 million, the group said.