Antony Loewenstein

Real democracies function properly when the most serious issues are debated fully and legally.

That’s not what has happened with the US and Libya.

Andrew Sullivan offers the insights:

“In the case of Libya, they just threw out their playbook. The fact that Obama pivoted on a dime shows that the White House is flying without a strategy and that we have a reactive presidency right now and not a strategic one,” – Steve Clemons, NAF.

In the same piece, we find out the following:

“Congress was not broadly consulted on the decision to intervene in Libya, except in a Thursday afternoon classified briefing where administration officials explained the diplomatic and military plan. Rice was already deep in negotiations in New York.”

You don’t get a more classic example of an imperial presidency than that. The Congress might as well not exist. And a country goes to war on a dime – even against the wishes and judgment of the secretary of defense.

Hillary Clinton is pushing for a war with absolutely no clue what may happen.

Shame on all the Western journalists and commentators cheering on the no-fly zone with an understanding that goes no further than “we must do something“. If you want to be in the military, get in uniform and fight a war. If not, settle down.

Here’s how the New York Times explains the role of the White House in backing a no-fly zone over Libya. Cute how the paper completely ignores all wider context for intervention; energy resources and oil in the country. All completely irrelevant, of course:

In a Paris hotel room on Tuesday night, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton found herself juggling the inconsistencies of American foreign policy in a turbulent Middle East. She criticized the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates for sending troops to quash protests in Bahrain even as she pressed him to send planes to intervene in Libya.

Only the day before, Mrs. Clinton — along with her boss, President Obama — was a skeptic on whether the United States should take military action in Libya. But that night, with Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces turning back the rebellion that threatened his rule, Mrs. Clinton changed course, forming an unlikely alliance with a handful of top administration aides who had been arguing for intervention.

Within hours, Mrs. Clinton and the aides had convinced Mr. Obama that the United States had to act, and the president ordered up military plans, which Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, hand-delivered to the White House the next day. On Thursday, during an hour-and-a -half meeting, Mr. Obama signed off on allowing American pilots to join Europeans and Arabs in military strikes against the Libyan government.

The president had a caveat, though. The American involvement in military action in Libya should be limited — no ground troops — and finite. “Days, not weeks,” a senior White House official recalled him saying.

The shift in the administration’s position — from strong words against Libya to action — was forced largely by the events beyond its control: the crumbling of the uprising raised the prospect that Colonel Qaddafi would remain in power to kill “many thousands,” as Mr. Obama said at the White House on Friday.

The change became possible, though, only after Mrs. Clinton joined Samantha Power, a senior aide at the National Security Council, and Susan Rice, Mr. Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, who had been pressing the case for military action, according to senior administration officials speaking only on condition of anonymity. Ms. Power is a former journalist and human rights advocate; Ms. Rice was an Africa adviser to President Clinton when the United States failed to intervene to stop the Rwanda genocide, which Mr. Clinton has called his biggest regret.

Now, the three women were pushing for American intervention to stop a looming humanitarian catastrophe in Libya.

Gaza-based journalist Rami Almeghari on a story that happens all-too-often; the Zionist state simply steals a person. And Zionists wonder why Israel is viewed so negatively across the world:

In mid-January Derar Abu Sisi, 42, the operations director of Gaza’s sole electricity-generating plant, left the Gaza Strip for Ukraine where he was applying for citizenship, along with his Ukrainian wife Veronika. Several weeks later, Abu Sisi disappeared from Ukraine, and reemerged apparently as a prisoner in an Israeli jail. How he got there remains a mystery, and a source of anguish for his family in Gaza who believe he was kidnapped by Mossad, Israel’s international agency for spying and carrying out assassinations.

“We in the family are baffled as to why my brother Derar was kidnapped and then imprisoned in an Israeli jail,” Suzan Abu Sisi told The Electronic Intifada at her home in Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp.

Derar Abu Sisi has lived in Gaza with his wife for 12 years, and they have six children.

“Derar left Gaza on 16 January and on his way to Ukraine he visited family members in Jordan,” Suzan said. “Later, after two weeks, his wife returned alone to Gaza, while Derar remained in Ukraine. One week after her return, she received a phone call from family members and friends over there, informing her that Derar had not been seen or heard from. She went back to Ukraine right away, in order to complain to local authorities about the absence of her husband, my brother.”

Then on 25 February, Suzan said, an Israeli lawyer phoned the family, informing them that Derar was being held at Ashkelon prison in southern Israel. “The lawyer who phoned us didn’t give details, saying that the Israeli government did not reveal any information about his detention,” Suzan said.

In Israel the case is under a court-imposed gag order, but HaMoked, an Israeli human rights organization, has confirmed with Israeli authorities that Abu Sisi has been in Israeli custody since 19 February and was being held at Shikma prison near Ashkelon, just north of Gaza, according to media reports.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to CNN and lies by saying his country lifted all the restrictions on Gaza (truth here) and the left is now working with radical Islamists to bring down the Zionist state. Ah, Bibi, I’m sure the Zionist lobby still loves you but nobody else accepts your delusions and occupying mindset. You’re actively contributing to the end of Israel, a handy method of delegitimising yourself out of existence.

Meanwhile, back in reality, Gaza expert Sara Roy writes that the revolutions sweeping the Arab world will come to Palestine and Gaza won’t be immune:

For the U.S. government and media, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been treated as a stepchild of sorts to the revolutionary events sweeping the Middle East. This was clarified to me recently by a prominent American journalist who confided he was unable to report on Israel/Palestine because “they’re just too far from the news right now.”

Gaza certainly continues to be ignored. Yet on the evening of March 14–one day earlier than planned–2,000 Palestinian youth and numerous civil society organizations gathered in a square in the middle of Gaza City calling on Hamas and Fatah to end their divisions and restore democracy in Palestine. Yesterday, March 15, thousands of people protested on the streets of Gaza, including young Hamas supporters, small groups loyal to Fatah and other small Palestinian factions, as well as Facebook activists. In Ramallah, some 8,000 demonstrators, the majority of whom were university students and young people, marched through Al Manara Square demanding national unity. Gazans are seeing their protests move to cities in the West Bank, creating a coordinated and strengthened movement.

More importantly, given the changing political landscape in neighboring Egypt, Gaza’s strategic importance may become even more vital for regional security. There are emerging indications in policy circles that the Egypt-Gaza relationship and how it may evolve are far more worrisome to the U.S. and Israel than is publicly acknowledged.

Gaza’s importance was already strikingly demonstrated in a December 2007 Wikileaks cable written and classified by then US Ambassador to Egypt, Francis J. Ricciardone. Entitled “Repairing Egyptian-Israeli Communications,” it reveals: “[T]he Egyptians continue to offer excuses for the problem they face: the need to ‘squeeze’ Hamas, while avoiding being seen as complicit in Israel’s ‘siege’ of Gaza. Egyptian General Intelligence Chief Omar Soliman told us Egypt wants Gaza to go ‘hungry’ but not ‘starve.’”

…

Although Arabs waging revolutions may not now be protesting Palestinian conditions, their subjugation shall remain at the center of the discourse despite the preferences of U.S. policymakers and journalists. Israel’s occupation may seem exceptional to current events but this will not last because the struggle for democracy in the Arab world will not stop at Gaza’s (or Israel’s) border.

There is no doubt that the same Arab people who are fighting for freedom in their own countries will challenge the immoral situation in Palestine, especially in Gaza, and ask: How can a predominantly young population, desperately willing and able to work, be made dependent on handouts? And there is equally no doubt that Palestinians will no longer accept their continued impoverishment and decline.

Although popular demands for reconciliation, democracy and ultimately an end to occupation will depend for their success on support from the Hamas and Fayyad governments, the role of the international community is absolutely crucial: it must facilitate an end to the crippling siege of Gaza — citizens from all around the world will again attempt this May to break the blockade with the next Gaza freedom flotilla — and meaningfully work toward the creation of a Palestinian unity government.

The power balance in the region is slowly but inexorably shifting in a manner that does not favor US-Israel dominance (with its acceptance and legitimizing of Israeli occupation and Palestinian dispossession). It is the Arab people — not their regimes — who have always supported Palestinian rights, and they may soon be in a position to insist on them. So, too, will Palestinians.

Following my story in yesterday’s Crikey about Sydney’s Marrickville council embracing BDS against Israel and the role of Federal Labor Minister Anthony Albanese, this appears in today’s Crikey:

What is Anthony Albanese’s position on the Palestinian issue? Albo in opposition went on a PLO-funded “study tour” of the West Bank and Gaza with Ali Kazak, the then-PLO rep in Australia. He’s supported the pro-Palestinian position of the ALP Left for decades. But he and Carmel Tebbutt oppose the Israel boycott established by Marrickville Council. The two positions aren’t mutually exclusive, of course, but one wonders what Albo might do to ensure Ms Tebbutt [his wife] hangs on against the Greens in a very tough fight in Marrickville.

Times are changing, Jewish neo-cons are furious and the long overdue conversation inside the American Jewish community is happening; do they back illegal colonies in the West Bank and if not what are they going to do about it?

As the Jewish community struggles to combat efforts to delegitimize Israel and still retain a “big-tent” strategy, a mainstream consensus appears to have taken shape in recent weeks that boils down to this: one can support a targeted boycott of Israeli settlements and even a cultural ban against the West Bank settlement of Ariel — as long as one also supports Israel as a democratic Jewish state.

Helping to crystallize the issue was the Oakland, Calif.-based organization Jewish Voice for Peace, which last week was rebuffed by the Hillel chapter at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. Hillel’s board voted to reject the group’s application to come under its umbrella of Jewish organizations because JVP’s support of a boycott of Israeli settlement goods runs counter to a position adopted by it and its parent, Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life.

Although the boycott issue was sufficient to place JVP beyond the pale for Hillel, that alone would not have been sufficient for most other Jewish groups, according to Martin Raffel, who is overseeing a multimillion-dollar Jewish communal effort (dubbed the Israel Action Network) to counter Israel delegitimization efforts.

…

Raffel’s thinking on the issue of “settlements-only” boycotts seems to have evolved since the Israel Action Network was formed in December. At the time, he told The Jewish Week, “I don’t know that a consensus has crystallized on this subject.

“If a person believes that Israel ought to do more to achieve peace based on a two-state formula, the question is, will boycotting a settlement advance the day that there will be peace? I’d argue that no, it will only harden positions and be counterproductive,” he said in December, “but being misguided in one’s policies doesn’t mean one necessarily has become part of the ranks of the delegitimizers.”

This week Raffel cited Meretz USA as a group that, though it might fit his earlier description of “misguided,” is safely in the tent, so to speak. The group supports the targeted boycott of Israeli settlement products and the cultural boycott of Ariel, but, Raffel said, “it is fully supportive of the Jewish state and it repudiates the BDS movement.”

So the West is about to launch another war, this time against Libya. Who exactly is the West backing? Who are the rebels? What do they represent? Are we providing arms to groups who may turn against the Libyan people?

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Egypt is sending arms to the Libyan rebels, with US backing.

Intervention is a tough decision, to be sure. It’s impossible to view supposed Western care for Libya in the context of history and not see our constant support for Gaddafi’s brutality. Yes, Libyan rebels have been calling for help but our meddling in the Arab world has arguably only brought misery, occupation, dictatorship and death.

This move has an uncertain future and may not conclude in a nice and neat way imagined by its backers. UN Security Council backing for a no-fly zone is important – this isn’t a unilateral US decision – but it’s remarkable how little debate occurs when Western forces begin another war. Is this the CNN effect on foreign policy?

And the Libyans should be cynical, as this New York Times piece explains. Our moves have nothing to do with human rights and are all about “interests” and resources:

There once was no American institution more hostile to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s pariah government than the Central Intelligence Agency, which had lost its deputy Beirut station chief when Libyan intelligence operatives blew up Pan Am Flight 103 above Scotland in 1988.

But with the Sept. 11 attacks came a new group of enemies. In recent years, the C.I.A. has been closely tethered to Colonel Qaddafi’s intelligence service as it hunts for information about operatives of Al Qaeda in North Africa.

Now, the uprising against the Libyan leader, along with the revolts that drove out the presidents of Tunisia and Egypt and threaten other rulers, have cast a harsh light on the cozy relationships between America’s intelligence agencies and autocratic, often brutal Arab governments. The C.I.A. faces questions about whether such ties blinded it to undercurrents of dissent and may now damage America’s standing with emerging democratic governments.

Top American officials say that the C.I.A.’s close ties to Libya brought important benefits: the dismantling of Colonel Qaddafi’s nascent nuclear weapons program, and a partnership to track terrorist cells in the country.

But Dennis C. Blair, the former top American intelligence official, said that while spy services in places like Libya and Egypt were cooperating with the United States against Al Qaeda, they were “aggressively and sometimes brutally suppressing dissent in their own countries.”

“Not only did these intelligence relationships interfere with our ability to understand opposition forces, but in the eyes of the citizens of those countries they often identified the United States with the tools of oppression,” said Mr. Blair, who served until last May as President Obama’s director of national intelligence. He added that the recent uprisings offer an opportunity to “align our intelligence relationships with our national values.”

The seeming collision of American interests was evident in 2009, when the State Department’s human rights report on Libya was a gruesome inventory of disappearances and torture. Months earlier, however, a diplomatic cable, obtained by WikiLeaks, called the Qaddafi government a “strong partner in the war against terrorism” and declared the relationship with Libya’s spy service “excellent.”

Video from this week’s massive Sydney Wikileaks event with John Pilger, Andrew Wilkie MP and Julian Burnside:

Breaking Australia’s silence: WikiLeaks and freedom from John Pilger on Vimeo.

Seriously:

The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.

A Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with United States Central Command (Centcom), which oversees US armed operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, to develop what is described as an “online persona management service” that will allow one US serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities based all over the world.

The project has been likened by web experts to China’s attempts to control and restrict free speech on the internet. Critics are likely to complain that it will allow the US military to create a false consensus in online conversations, crowd out unwelcome opinions and smother commentaries or reports that do not correspond with its own objectives.

The discovery that the US military is developing false online personalities – known to users of social media as “sock puppets” – could also encourage other governments, private companies and non-government organisations to do the same.

The Centcom contract stipulates that each fake online persona must have a convincing background, history and supporting details, and that up to 50 US-based controllers should be able to operate false identities from their workstations “without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries”.

Centcom spokesman Commander Bill Speaks said: “The technology supports classified blogging activities on foreign-language websites to enable Centcom to counter violent extremist and enemy propaganda outside the US.”

He said none of the interventions would be in English, as it would be unlawful to “address US audiences” with such technology, and any English-language use of social media by Centcom was always clearly attributed. The languages in which the interventions are conducted include Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and Pashto.

India’s The Hindu has the exclusive documents that show the role played by New Delhi during Colombo’s brutal war against the Tamils that ended in May 2009. Nearly two years on, justice is denied to the victims:

In the final stages of the war with the LTTE, New Delhi played all sides but discouraged international attempts to halt the operations.

India played a key role in warding off international pressure on Sri Lanka to halt military operations and hold talks with the LTTE in the dramatic final days and weeks of the war in 2009, confidential U.S. Embassy cables accessed by The Hindu through WikiLeaks showed.

The cables reveal that while India conveyed its concern to Sri Lanka several times about the “perilous” situation that civilians caught in the fighting faced, it was not opposed to the anti-LTTE operation.

They also show that India worried about the Sri Lankan President’s “post-conflict intentions,” though it believed that there was a better chance of persuading him to offer Sri Lankan Tamils an inclusive political settlement after the fighting ended.

After its efforts to halt the operation failed, the international community resigned itself to playing a post-conflict role by using its economic leverage, acknowledging that it had to rope in India for this.

In the closing stages of the war, New Delhi played all sides, always sharing the concern of the international community over the humanitarian situation and alleged civilian casualties in the Sri Lankan military campaign, but discouraging any move by the West to halt the operations.

After the controversy over holding a literary festival in Sri Lanka in January – white-washing war crimes? – the issue continues to resonate. Here’s an event organised by English PEN in London on 10 April:

Should writers boycott festivals in countries with poor records on free speech and human rights? Or is it always better to engage with regimes, however unpleasant? At a time when literary festivals are appearing all over the world, authors increasingly face such complex ethical dilemmas. Rachel Holmes, Director of Literature and Spoken Word at London’s South Bank Centre, Sri Lankan author Romesh Gunesekera and South African writer and President of English PEN, Gillian Slovo debate with PEN International President John Ralston Saul the increasingly blurry boundary in writers’ lives between politics and aesthetics.

Let’s hope the speakers honesty address the ways in which writers and artists are routinely used by regimes to legitimise their rule.

Last night’s large event in Sydney to support the right of Wikileaks to publish material was a huge success. Thousands turned up to hear speakers chastise the Australian government for shamefully bowing down to America’s wishes over Julian Assange.

Wikileaks enjoys majority community support:

A high-profile human rights lawyer claims Julian Assange’s only crime is embarrassing the US government and if America doesn’t want to be embarrassed it should “stop doing embarrassing things”.

Supporters of the WikiLeaks founder packed Sydney’s Town Hall last night to hear Julian Burnside QC and others denounce the treatment of the whistleblower website and the Australian-born Assange at the hands of the Australian and US governments.

A panel which included journalist John Pilger and federal MP Andrew Wilkie, a former intelligence analyst and Iraq war whistleblower, said the saga has followed a narrative similar to that of former Guantanamo detainee David Hicks.

“Like Julian Assange, he’s a courageous Australian citizen who was denied the help of his government,” Pilger said of Hicks, who attended the event.

Wilkie expanded on the theme, comparing Assange to Mamdouh Habib, another ex-Guantanamo inmate, and Allan Kessing, who blew the whistle about inadequate security practices at Sydney Airport.

Wilkie described the heavy price he said he paid for challenging the Howard government over their case for war with Iraq in 2003.

“Julian Assange is going through the whistleblower grinder … and my experience is that when you stand up and try to speak the truth to power it is tough. “For my efforts you were told that I was mad,” said Wilkie, adding that whistleblowers commit suicide at a higher rate than the rest of the Australian population.

Burnside said a successful prosecution of the accused WikiLeaker Bradley Manning, a US Army private, is unlikely to have any impact on whistleblowers coming forward in the future.

“The First Amendment right of free speech in the US means that the publication would not be an offence, even though the leaking was an offence and the only exception to that … is if the leaking creates a real and present danger and there’s no suggestion of that in this case,” said Burnside, responding to a question from ninemsn.

The panelists and moderator, former SBS presenter Mary Kostakidis, were all adamant in their view that WikiLeaks has a role to play in an open and democratic society.