Antony Loewenstein

Independent journalism in Cairo by Australian reporter Austin G. Mackell:

The following article by Kate Ausburn appears in Green Left Weekly:

Popular uprisings in the Arab world have challenged a political landscape dominated by undemocratic regimes and fronted by dictators, a panel of academics and journalists said at a Sydney University forum on February 15.

Speakers discussed the regional and international ramifications of the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt as part of the forum on people’s power and change in the Arab world.

During the uprising in Egypt the secular nature of the protests was noted and praised in much of the international coverage. Less acknowledged, but similarly noteworthy, was the role women played in the demonstrations.

Women are “not new in [Egypt's] political arena”, but the treatment of women taking part in demonstrations is certainly improving, said Dr Lucia Sorbera from the University of Sydney.

Dr Sorbera specifically pointed to last year’s International Women’s Day demonstrations in Cairo where many women were “beaten and harassed”. However, “today they feel safe, free to be there and they claim the right to feel safe in the public arena”.

“A lot of young women will tell you, for the first time they feel they are not objectified as sexual objects in this space, this is the first time in a very long time that women have been in the streets without any danger of harassment,” she said.

Tahrir Square in Cairo has become “synonymous with freedom, emancipation and liberty”, said Farid Farid from the University of Western Sydney.

Farid spoke about the response of the people of Egypt to living under the Mubarak dictatorship: “After 30 years of repression you develop a sense of humour, a sense of mockery — it’s the only form of resistance.”

This repression was supported by foreign governments who assisted in sustaining regimes like Muburak’s — now widely considered to be corrupt, said Farid.

“Agitation for democracy has always been tangled with the politics of empires.

“Remember the last leader to meet with Mubarak was Netanyahu, but before that it was Kevin Rudd — in terms of Australian politics and trade relations, they are heavily entangled.

“Let’s not discount Australia’s role.”

University of Sydney academic Tara Povey said: “This intimate relationship between Hosni Mubarak and the US has meant an active policy of demobilising and repressing movements for change in the Arab world.”

Independent journalist and author Antony Loewenstein similarly noted the financial complicity of foreign governments: “The US sends to Egypt $1.2 billion annually.”

Loewenstein also pointed out the role of multinationals in assisting regimes, particularly with media and communications censorship.

“The reality is that much of the infrastructure that these regimes are using to censor the internet is coming from the West,” he said.

“In Iran for example, it emerged very soon after the uprising in June 2009 that Nokia sold Tehran — six months before the uprising — a very sophisticated monitoring system to be able to determine phone calls, internet, text messages.

“In Egypt, Vodafone, who many of us use, were involved with the Egyptian regime in censoring mobile phone messages and setting up propaganda for the regime when the phone system came back on.”

Speaking on the Western media’s representation of the uprisings in the Arab world, and pointing to a number of areas given undue legitimacy outside of Egypt, Loewenstein pointed out: “One of the other things that comes up is the fear of political Islam.

“The idea that we shouldn’t engage with Hamas, Hezbollah, the Brotherhood etc … They represent a lot of people, and may not be a majority, say the Brotherhood, how much support it has in Egypt is unsure, 10%, 20%, whatever, that’s still 20%.

“It’s vital to understand the idea that political Islam is not by definition a threat. Not all political Islam is Bin Laden in a cave in Afghanistan.

Acknowledging laughter from the audience, he continued: “People laugh when I say that, but if you look at much of the American mainstream coverage in the last three weeks, that is exactly how it is framed.”

Loewenstein said too that the weight given by much Western media to the future of peace treaty negotiations with Israel, which he said was redundant, as “there actually is no peace process”.

“One of the things that also comes has been a mantra of many in the Western press over the last three weeks is what’s Cairo going to do with the peace treaty with Israel … as if that’s the main concern on the streets of Cairo,” he said.

“A peace process is a term that has been used and abused by many in the press, the political elite, to give the impression of negotiations, when in fact all that is happening is the colonisation of Palestinian land in the West Bank. The siege on Gaza continues.”

Loewenstein concluded: “What the West and Israel fear is not Islam, but independence.”

The forum offered an insight into the social forces and strategic political relationships at play in the Arab world as people continue to rise up against dictatorial regimes throughout the region.

They are calling for democracy and radically changing the face of the Middle East and North African social and political sphere.

Wonderful and accurate quote from 2007:

By think tanks I mean the people who are paid to think by the makers of tanks.

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri on challenging racist stereotypes of what popular revolt can achieve. No wonder so many “experts” are confused; “stability” in the Middle East has helped their careers:

One challenge facing observers of the uprisings spreading across north Africa and the Middle East is to read them as not so many repetitions of the past but as original experiments that open new political possibilities, relevant well beyond the region, for freedom and democracy. Indeed, our hope is that through this cycle of struggles the Arab world becomes for the next decade what Latin America was for the last – that is, a laboratory of political experimentation between powerful social movements and progressive governments from Argentina to Venezuela, and from Brazil to Bolivia.

These revolts have immediately performed a kind of ideological house-cleaning, sweeping away the racist conceptions of a clash of civilisations that consign Arab politics to the past. The multitudes in Tunis, Cairo and Benghazi shatter the political stereotypes that Arabs are constrained to the choice between secular dictatorships and fanatical theocracies, or that Muslims are somehow incapable of freedom and democracy. Even calling these struggles “revolutions” seems to mislead commentators who assume the progression of events must obey the logic of 1789 or 1917, or some other past European rebellion against kings and czars.

Who knew that millions of global citizens, who campaign against Israeli occupation and apartheid, are in the pocket of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

Smell the Zionist desperation. The Electronic Intifada reports:

The Israeli military establishment is once again on the offensive, but instead of high-tech weaponry and missiles, it is using computer screens, keyboards and rapid wireless connections to fight what Israeli military representatives are dubbing a “new media war.”

In early February, military spokesperson Avi Benayahu announced that approximately $1.6 million would be invested to train more than a hundred Israeli “media warriors,” who would use social media tools to disseminate Israeli propaganda to audiences around the world.

“We need to ensure the confidence of the public, and assist the minister of foreign affairs to obtain that legitimization which is required for an army like ours to effect a military operation, whether it’s in the north or the south,” said Benayahu of this new media campaign during the 11th annual Herzliya security conference in early February.

Held at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya near Tel Aviv, the Herzliya Conference is a largely right-wing, neo-conservative gathering that brings together mainly Israeli and American government, business and academic figures to discuss Israeli policy and regional and global issues. This year’s conference, which was covered by this reporter, was held under the theme “The Balance of Israel’s National Strength and Security.”

Speaking on a panel called “New Media as a Strategic Weapon,” Benayahu told the audience in Herzliya that Israeli soldiers are now forced to be more aware of the fact that new media users can be documenting their actions at all times.

“[There is] an unprecedented responsibility to the commanders,” he said. “They have to think if the civilian across from them or the child on the second floor above them is a combatant or a new generation media person.”

According to Benayahu, the Israeli military has prioritized the field of new media in order to combat “pro-Iranian factors” which use the Internet to “delegitimize Israel.”

“It is orchestrated and timed and financed by all the pro-Iranian factors,” he stated. “They know how to flood us with media and information. They are also nurturing all these pro-radical organizations. The Palestinian Diaspora [is] conducting this [work] in universities, in the [United Nations] institutions, in the human rights institutions, and in the new media,” he added.

Leading American investigative journalist Michael Hastings – previous work here on challenging pro-war propaganda in the US – has an amazing new feature for Rolling Stone:

The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in “psychological operations” to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war, Rolling Stone has learned – and when an officer tried to stop the operation, he was railroaded by military investigators.

…

The list of targeted visitors was long, according to interviews with members of the IO team and internal documents obtained by Rolling Stone. Those singled out in the campaign included senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Jack Reed, Al Franken and Carl Levin; Rep. Steve Israel of the House Appropriations Committee; Adm. Mike Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Czech ambassador to Afghanistan; the German interior minister, and a host of influential think-tank analysts.

The incident offers an indication of just how desperate the U.S. command in Afghanistan is to spin American civilian leaders into supporting an increasingly unpopular war. According to the Defense Department’s own definition, psy-ops – the use of propaganda and psychological tactics to influence emotions and behaviors – are supposed to be used exclusively on “hostile foreign groups.” Federal law forbids the military from practicing psy-ops on Americans, and each defense authorization bill comes with a “propaganda rider” that also prohibits such manipulation. “Everyone in the psy-ops, intel, and IO community knows you’re not supposed to target Americans,” says a veteran member of another psy-ops team who has run operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. “It’s what you learn on day one.”

How many Western governments are offering financial incentives for these leeches to sell death? Most of them:

As Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi ordered attacks on his own people this week, thousands of arms sellers from the United States and other countries hawked their aircraft, riot gear and rifles to Middle Eastern buyers at the Persian Gulf’s preeminent arms show.

The decisions by Britain and France to suspend weapons sales to Libya and Bahrain, where security forces also fired live ammunition at protesters, did little to dampen the fervor of the vendors packing the sprawling Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Center for the biannual convention, known as IDEX.

The business-as-usual, big-ticket fighter jets and armored vehicles on display drew plenty of attention. But interest also appeared to be up this year in less dazzling “non-lethal armaments” of the kind put to overwhelming use recently in Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and elsewhere.

A sales representative for a Beijing-based maker of anti-riot gear noted that all her wares were attracting more attention – especially a fire-resistant police uniform.

Condor, a Brazilian company, displayed tear-gas grenades alongside rubber-coated bullets but was gun-shy about speaking to the media. “I can talk to you about soccer, Rio De Janeiro or carnival,” a company executive said apologetically. “But not this.”

Amid all the change sweeping the region, the multibillion-dollar business of arms sales to the Middle East may remain the one constant. The rich Persian Gulf states – particularly the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia – are scooping up as much weaponry as they can. Some of it could, in theory, be turned on their own populations. But diplomats and defense industry representatives say the goal is to defend against Iran and to secure energy infrastructure that has become even more valuable with oil at $113 a barrel.

The potential profit is enormous: The UAE alone is planning to spend $6 billion on defense over the next eight years. The United States sells more than a third of its arms to the Middle East, and increasing numbers of manufacturers want a piece of the sales: This year’s arms show is 30 percent larger than the previous one.

Really:

The number of private security contractors working for the Defense Department in Afghanistan has more than tripled to about 19,000 since June 2009, according to a new congressional study.

The study found a steady increase in private security contractors — most of whom are Afghans — since the DOD started tracking the data in September 2007.

That trend accelerated markedly once President Obama took office, and the number of security contractors has increased at a faster rate even than the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi, whose new piece in Rolling Stone outlines the complete lack of accountability for Wall Street crooks, tells Democracy Now!,

Every single former investigator or current investigator that I talked to said the same thing: Madoff went to jail because the wrong people suffered. You know, it was famous actors. It was, you know, the glitterati in New York. If these were teachers and firemen and all the usual suspects—you know, look at the—we have a million people in foreclosure in this country right now, and a lot of them are there because of predatory lending and because of this fraud scheme, but there are no criminal prosecutions. I think that’s the reality now, is that we don’t see anybody being criminally targeted unless their victims were powerful people themselves.

We have two-and-a-half million people in jail this country, you know, more than a million who are in jail for nonviolent crimes. And yet, we couldn’t find a single person on Wall Street to do even a day in jail for losing 40 percent of the world’s wealth in a criminal fraud scheme? And that tells you that we have—this goes beyond the cliché that rich people have better lawyers and they have an advantage. This is a step beyond that. This is a situation where the system is completely corrupted, and it’s true regulatory capture. The SEC and the Justice Department are essentially subsidiaries of Wall Street.