Antony Loewenstein

Yes:

Chinese authorities cracked down on activists as a call circulated for people to gather in more than a dozen cities Sunday for a “Jasmine Revolution.”

The source of the call was not known, but authorities moved to halt its spread online. Searches for the word “jasmine” were blocked Saturday on China’s largest Twitter-like microblog, and the website where the request first appeared said it was hit by an attack.

Activists seemed not to know what to make of the call to protest, even as they passed it on. They said they were unaware of any known group being involved in the request for citizens to gather in 13 cities and shout “We want food, we want work, we want housing, we want fairness.”

Some even wondered whether the call was “performance art” instead of a serious move in the footsteps of recent protests in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen, Algeria and Libya.

China has limited reporting on the protests in the Middle East and quickly shuts down most protests at home.

Authorities appeared to be treating the protest call seriously. Families and friends reported the detention or harassment of several activists, and some said they had been warned not to participate Sunday.

Police pulled Beijing lawyer Jiang Tianyong into a car and drove away, his wife, Jin Bianling, said. She told The Associated Press by phone she was still waiting for more information Saturday night.

Su Yutong, an activist who now lives in Germany, said that even if Chinese authorities suspect the call to protest wasn’t serious, Saturday’s actions showed they still feared it.

“If they act this way, they’ll push this performance art into the real thing,” she said in an e-mail.

In a Twitter post, Su listed at least 14 people who had been taken away and called that count incomplete.

The Palestinian non-violent movement is gathering in strength every day.

Yet now we read in the Jerusalem Post – a pro-colonisation paper – that Israel worries the Egyptian uprisings may come to the West Bank.

Concerned by the prospect of the Palestinians replicating Egypt-style mass demonstrations with dozens of simultaneous marches and protests in the West Bank, the IDF is beginning to build rapid-response forces and to identify vantage points throughout the territories that could be used to contain such protests.

The IDF’s Central Command assesses that the Palestinians could resort to so-called nonviolent resistance, on a scale previously unknown to Israel, in the absence of peace negotiations.

While there is deemed to be some possibility that such demonstrations will take place in the near future in the spirit of Egypt, Tunisia and Iran, a senior officer said it was more likely that the Palestinian Authority would prevent this from happening until after elections in September.

One senior officer said commanders were discussing ways to counter and contain large demonstrations launched simultaneously in different parts of the West Bank.

“We are preparing different responses for different scenarios to think about what we will do if there are, for example, 30 marches of several thousand people each,” the officer said. “This is something we have yet to encounter.”

One step the IDF is taking is to set up rapid-response teams that can quickly maneuver throughout the West Bank and arrive at the scene of a demonstration in its early stages in an attempt to contain it. During the summer, the Border Police are expected to establish a new command in the West Bank after the Arava District is dismantled.

In addition, the IDF is locating strategic hilltops that can be used as vantage points from which the military could deploy reconnaissance and surveillance teams to track developments inside Palestinian towns and cities.

The concern is that in the event of multiple large-scale demonstrations, the IDF will not know how to effectively respond and contain the protests, which could lead to a high number of casualties. As a result, commanders have been instructed to prepare their soldiers mentally for how to respond in such scenarios.

Israel has been keeping a close eye on Palestinian cities in recent weeks since the revolution in Egypt, to ensure that the violence does not spread to the West Bank.

And who will be helping to keep the Palestinians under control? The Palestinian Authority; collaborators with the Israeli occupation. Abbas and his cronies should be worried by the democratic moves across the Middle East. They may be next (and should be).

The recent campaign against the Galle Literary Festival in Sri Lanka, of which I was involved, was related to highlighting the gross human rights abuses in the country. It caused global discussion and forced both Colombo and the festival organisers on the defensive. “What? Us? Backing war crimes? Never!”

Here’s Sri Lankan born writer and artist Roma Tearne explaining why boycotting the event was so important to make a statement; an individual can raise their voice and not be complicit in the silencing:

I am often asked why I do not go to this festival even though I have been invited. Why I chose to attend the Jaipur literary festival but not Galle. Let me make this clear. I long to go. I long to see my home once more. But the terrible injustice that was done to Sri Lanka’s ordinary people on both sides of the ethnic divide needs to be highlighted. Because the dead have no voice, because their memory is still not honoured or talked about. Because those who speak out are still being silenced. Because I am not so misguided as to imagine any real or serious discourse in the manicured atmosphere of Galle is possible under the current government. Of what will these writers actually speak? Thus far no writer going to Sri Lanka has said anything that addresses the real problem.

And even if I have got it completely wrong, even if all those visitors who come to Galle to sit in hallowed silence under ceiling fans, to hear the UK-returned writers speak, are right and the conversations taking place are about life and literature, what good will this do? What has the internationally ‘acclaimed’ Sri Lankan writer got to offer the poor and the displaced, the bereft and the victims of Sri Lanka’s war? Will their discourse give the lost generation of children a different life? Will the government suddenly become transparent and admit to the killing sprees they went on in order to gain power? Will the broken woman who came this year to Galle, in search of her journalist husband, (disappeared on January 28th) have him returned to her? Let us not be so naïve as to believe so. Nothing will change other than perhaps the level of our suntan.

Today’s UK Observer editorial urges Britain not to sell weapons to autocrats. Good advice but no mention of course of the seemingly never-ending sale of deadly munitions to Israel in its daily war against the Palestinians:

Another fascinating Al-Jazeera feature on Empire about the role of the internet in the Arab uprisings:

Carl Bernstein, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist; Amy Goodman, the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!; Professor Emily Bell, the director of digital journalism at Columbia University; Evgeny Morozov, the author of The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom; Professor Clay Shirky, the author of Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age.

Apart from the fact that it would have been important to have somebody with a deep connection to the Middle East, the ideas under discussion include the consistent failure of the mainstream media to normally give voice to the activists and non-state players in repressive regimes. Being too close to power happens in the US and beyond:

Hossam el-Hamalawy has been campaigning against the Mubarak regime for years (and appears in my book The Blogging Revolution).

In this Associated Press profile he outlines the oft-forgotten in the West supporters of the Egyptian revolution (away from Twitter and Facebook); the workers:

“The job is unfinished, we got rid of (Hosni) Mubarak but we didn’t get rid of his dictatorship, we didn’t get rid of the state security police,” he told The Associated Press while sipping strong Arabic coffee in a traditional downtown cafe that weeks before had been the scene of street battles.

The activism career of el-Hamalawy typifies the long, and highly improbable, trajectory of the mass revolt that ousted Mubarak, Egypt’s long-entrenched leader. Once a dreamer organizing more or less on his own, el-Hamalawy’s dreams suddenly hardened into reality. The next step, he says, is the Egyptian people must press their advantage.

“This is phase two of the revolution,” said el-Hamalawy, who works as a journalist for an English-language online Egyptian paper and runs the Arabawy blog, a clearing house for information on the country’s fledgling independent labor movement — a campaign that has become increasingly assertive since the fall of the old government.

For years, activists in Egypt planted seeds — sometimes separately, sometimes in coordination — building networks and pushing campaigns on specific causes. They fought lonely fights: anti-war protests here, labor strikes there, an effort to raise awareness about police abuse, another to organize “Keep Our City Clean” trash collection.

Then one day in late January, it all came together for them. They were part of a movement, hundreds of thousands strong.

For three weeks, el-Hamalawy fought regime supporters and manned the barricades in Tahrir Square, but unlike the youth leaders who have come to prominence in the aftermath of the uprising, he refuses to talk to the generals now ruling Egypt and fears the uprising’s momentum is being lost as everyone waits for the military to transition the country to a new government.

“Activists can take some rest from the protest and go back to their well-paying jobs for six months, waiting for the military to give us salvation, but the worker can’t go back to his factory and still get paid 250 pounds,” he said, referring to the wave of labor unrest sweeping the country as workers protest their abysmal wages.

“The strikes now will continue, that’s our only hope at the moment, the mission is not accomplished,” el-Hamalawy said, sardonically echoing the triumphant tweet of one youth leader when Mubarak stepped down.

Only on Al-Jazeera.

The wonderful show Empire – a news service that actually acknowledges what Washington is – discusses the changing role of the US in the Arab world in light of the various uprisings. Honest about Israeli actions and America’s real intentions in the Middle East – loving Israel to death and oil – this is the kind of debate the Western press so rarely conducts.

Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University; Seymour Hersh, a Pulitzer-winning author; and Thomas Pickering, the former US under secretary of state.

Wikileaks strikes again:

Paraguay president Fernando Lugo, a center-left politician who was elected to office in April 2008, was seen as a potential ally to the U.S. by the U.S. embassy in Asuncion, so long as he had “more than just a little help from ’upstairs’ to govern as president” which Lugo was apparently willing to accept. “(S)o far, his signals to the United States Embassy have been clear — he is grateful for our offers of assistance and wants a close relationship,” wrote U.S. ambassador James Cason to Washington on June 2, 2008, adding: “If you can’t believe a priest, who can you believe?”

Today’s Murdoch press features this “world exclusive“:

The commando raiding party approaches the mud-walled qala, or compound, after a long night march from the helicopter insertion point.

As they move in with their infra-red laser sights beaming and their alien-like night vision “eyes” switched on, all hell breaks loose.

Gunfire rages within the qala as the Diggers from the Sydney-based 2nd Commando Regiment assault the building.

As a soldier pulls back the blanket covering the doorway, a young girl cowers on the floor.

Other troops move in and one yells a command in the local Pashto language.

For the first time since Australian special forces troops arrived in Afghanistan in late 2001, video footage of their missions – filmed by the soldiers themselves – has been obtained by The Daily Telegraph.

…

SAS raiding parties try to avoid firefights. Unlike the commandos, who adopt a more aggressive posture, the SAS men consider it bad form if they get into a gunfight. The former trooper said if a raid was planned and executed properly, there should be no shots and no casualties on either side – sadly, that doesn’t always happen and three reserve commandos from the Melbourne-based 1st Commando Regiment face serious charges over a night raid similar to the one in the leaked footage.

The key problem with such “reporting” is that Afghans are simply invisible. All we see and hear is the Australian perspective (as if the Murdoch tabloids would run video by the Taliban or insurgents somewhere else). Night-raids, so gloriously portrayed in the story above, have a notorious record of causing civilian deaths and convincing the locals that foreigners are murderous thugs.

And here’s the rub; resisting foreign occupation, as the vast bulk of the Afghan resistance is doing, isn’t illegitimate. It’s both legal and necessary.

This is the front page story of today’s Sydney Daily Telegraph (surprised the lead isn’t about Lady Gaga or welfare mothers on crack robbing homeless men):

Dozens of asylum seekers are on the run, with fears they are being supported by underground networks.

Of the 47 people to have escaped last year, 12 had been located by the security firm contracted to run the Immigration Department’s detention centres but officials have no idea where the remaining 35 are.

They include one detainee who escaped while on an escorted trip to a bowling alley, and another on an excursion to a suburban aquarium.

That followed only weeks after three Chinese nationals broke out of Sydney’s Villawood detention centre. None of them have been seen again.

The numbers also include six more people who escaped Villawood in May 2010, and a lone man who broke custody while on a trip to a bowling alley in August.

The situation has become almost embarrassing for the company contracted to run the detention facilities, Serco, with the number of excursions doubling last year to 4016.

The Immigration Department has issued fines to Serco for several escapes, claiming the breakouts had been a breach of the contract conditions. It also noted that in 2001 there had been 157 escapes.

As if this story would even exist if the refugees were nice, white people from England.

Besides, my sources inside Villawood say that there is an ongoing theatre between the Immigration Department and Serco, both needing the other and yet publicly sometimes expressing frustration with the other.

What privatised detention is doing to Australia.

Last year I was approached by the National Library of Australia and asked if I would agree to have my website archived by Pandora, an ever-growing system that documents this country’s digital history.

It’s now live with regular archiving in the future.

Thanks for the opportunity.