Ali Abunimah digs up a document from 1988 that reminds us how the US government was as reluctant to impose serious sanctions on South Africa as they are today against apartheid Israel.
Here’s a comment by John C. Whitehead, then Deputy Secretary of State:
Sanctions are the wrong tool because South Africa has the resources to resist an economic siege and has been preparing for such a contingency for many years.
A cautionary tale of hubris from a man who should be facing war crimes charges in the Hague (here’s why):
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has said there is no truth in the perception that he is building a family dynasty and referred to the Kennedys, Bushes and the Gandhis in politics as an example.
In an interview to the Singapore-based Strait Times, Mr. Rajapaksa in response to a question on the oft-heard complaint that there are too many Rajapaksas in his regime has said, “But for that matter how many Kennedys were there in administration. Or Bushes. Or the Gandhis. I have only two brothers in administration.”
…
To a question on the LTTE [Tamil Tigers], Mr. Rajapaksa has said there are sleeping cadres and there are interested parties, especially outside Sri Lanka.
“It has been just nine months since the war ended… Just because the leaders were eliminated, it is not over. The movement will take some more time.
There are sleeping cadres, trained suicide bombers. They were a factory of suicide bombers”.
Asked how he would like to be remembered, Mr. Rajapaksa has said, “As a man who loved his country and his people, and did my best to serve them.”
Iranian dissidents clearly need more global support but surely backing from the US government is sending the completely wrong message?
At a time when the Obama administration is pressing for harsher sanctions against Iran for its nuclear program, democracy advocates in Iran have been celebrating the recent decision by the United States to lift sanctions on various online services, which they say only helped Tehran to suppress the opposition.
But it is still a long way from the activists’ goal of lifting all restrictions on trade in Internet services, which opposition leaders say is vital to maintaining the open communications that have underpinned the protests that erupted last summer after the disputed presidential election. In recent months the government has carried out cyberwarfare against the opposition, eliminating virtually all sources of independent news and information and shutting down social networking services.
The sanctions against online services — provided through free software like Google Chat or Yahoo Messenger — were intended to restrict Iran’s ability to develop nuclear technology, but democracy advocates say they ended up helping the government repress its people. “The policies were contradictory,” said Ali Akbar Moussavi Khoini, a former member of Parliament who now lives in Washington, where he pressed for the change.
The new measure will enable users in Iran to download the latest circumvention software to help defeat the government’s efforts to block Web sites, and to stop relying on pirated copies that can be far more easily hacked by the government.
But the government’s opponents say they need still more help in getting around the government’s information roadblocks.
“The Islamic Republic is very efficient in limiting people’s access to these sources, and Iranian people need major help,” said Mehdi Yahyanejad, the founder of one of the largest Persian-language social networking Web sites, the United States-based Balatarin. “We need some 50 percent of people to be able to access independent news sources other than the state-controlled media.”
How much more sordid can this tale become?
Tony Blair’s secret links to Gulf oil giants were revealed today as fresh details emerged of his “carte blanche” support for George Bush’s Iraq war.
The former prime minister has been in the pay of the Kuwaiti government and a South Korean oil firm for up to 18 months, a parliamentary watchdog has revealed.
But the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments allowed Mr Blair to keep his contracts secret because of “market sensitivities” and because the Kuwaitis requested confidentiality.
In a further revelation, a classified memo from Mr Blair to President Bush showed the full extent of his support for the toppling of Saddam Hussein.
The personal note — which has been seen by the Chilcot Inquiry but not released by the Government — shows that Mr Blair wrote: “You know, George, whatever you decide to do, I’m with you.”
The contents of the memo, which is buried in Andrew Rawnsley’s book The End Of The Party, confirm the exact words Mr Blair used to offer his strong backing for Bush in July 2002, eight months before the invasion.
The Chilcot committee was barred from quizzing Mr Blair publicly about the private notes to the US president when he gave evidence in January. Downing Street has refused permission to release the secret documents.
Rawnsley’s book shows that Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain’s ambassador to the US, reacted with astonishment when he saw the note.
He phoned Mr Blair’s foreign policy adviser Sir David Manning, saying: “Why in God’s name has he said that again?”
Sir David replied: “We tried to stop him… but he wouldn’t listen.”
The Iraq war started seven years ago. It has caused unbelievable civilian suffering, something largely ignored by the corporate press.
Lest we forget:
Democracy Now! this week interviewed Yanar Mohammed, president of the Baghdad-based Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq:
…the economic agenda in Iraq, the privatization, the heavy privatization, that’s happened in Iraq in the last two years, where tens of thousands of workers have been laid off, with no work to go to, with no social insurance to support them, while in the same time there is an economic agenda of supporting foreign investment in a way where there is protection for foreign investment, but there is no labor law, no unemployment insurance for people. And in the same time, we are being surprised by the Ministry of Finance telling the Iraqis that we need to have a loan from the World Bank, which will put the Iraq policies under such pressure, and it is a surprise to everybody because the revenues of oil are so high that we do not really need a loan from the World Bank. So, economically, it’s a rollercoaster here in Iraq—privatization, no security for the working class, much investment for multinational countries, and, in the same time, a democracy which has brought forward groups which are transformations of the first political forces that started off with militias, but now they are politicians and they are sitting in the Green Zone.
Jon Stewart takes on Fox News’ Glenn Beck, a dribbling fool that has captured many hearts in the US:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Intro – Progressivism Is Cancer | ||||
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| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
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A surprisingly progressive decision in Britain and a healthy precedent for other civil conflicts around the world:
Members of a banned terrorist organisation can claim asylum in Britain, the Supreme Court has ruled.
The court ruled that being a member of the Tamil Tigers, which has been designated as a terrorist organisation by the government, should not prevent an individual claiming asylum.
Their ruling was made in the case of “R” who joined the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 1992, at the age of 10.
The Tamil Tigers, or Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, have been involved in a bloody struggle in Sri Lanka, that stretches back 30 years.
“R” occupied various positions until, at the age of 18, he was appointed to lead a mobile unit transporting members of the intelligence division through the jungles to Colombo.
He also acted as chief security guard to the leader of the intelligence division and second in command of the combat unit of the intelligence division.
In October 2006 he was sent under cover to Colombo to await further instructions but two months later he discovered that the Sri Lankan government was aware of his presence in the capital.
He fled to Britain and claimed asylum on the basis that if he returned to Sri Lanka he would face mistreatment due to his race and LTTE membership.
The application was refused, saying that there were grounds for considering that he had committed war crimes.
It said the Tamil Tigers had been “responsible for widespread and systemic war crimes and crimes against humanity” and that his membership of an extremist group could be presumed to amount to “personal and knowing participation, or at least acquiescence amounting to complicity, in the crimes in question.”
The decision was quashed by the Court of Appeal which said the government was wrong to assume that the individual, as a member of the LTTE, was guilty of knowing participation in such crimes and that the government should have considered whether there was evidence that he had made a significant contribution to the commission of such crimes.
The Home Secretary appealed against the decision but on Wednesday that was turned down.
Rupert Murdoch makes friends everywhere he goes (having lots of money helps). His recent speech in Abu Dhabi urged more transparency in the Middle East (a worthy goal) but clearly many in the region are rightly worried about his real agenda:
The tie-up between Arab entertainment giant Rotana and pro-Israel media mogul Rupert Murdoch is viewed in Egypt not only with suspicion but as signalling the decline of Arab film and art heritage.
In a country where film and television attract some of the largest audiences across the Arab world, the tycoon’s foray into the Middle East is widely seen in cultural circles as a ruse to benefit Israel.
Murdoch’s News Corp last month acquired a 9.09-percent holding in the Rotana Group of Saudi royal and business tycoon Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, with an 18-month option to double the stake.
Rotana is one of the largest film producers in Egypt and also owns the rights to hundreds of Egyptian motion pictures.
In Egypt, which signed a 1979 peace treaty with Israel but has resisted a warming of cultural ties, there has been wide suspicion that the tie-up with Rotana is part of a Murdoch scheme to thaw frosty Arab views of Israel.
“Murdoch will enter every Arab home to impose normalisation” of ties with Israel, said Egyptian film critic Ola al-Shafei.
The partnership amounts to “a defeat for the Arab film and art heritage,” she added.
Scriptwriter Osama Anwar Okasha wrote that Murdoch’s stake in Rotana was a “Trojan horse” designed to stealthily penetrate Arab culture.
Dahr Jamail reminds us that the American occupation will continue for many years to come, certainly well past the end of Barack Obama’s term in office.
The undeniable power of the Wikileaks website – releasing supposedly classified documents to allow transparency in the public domain – now makes a rather comical story in the New York Times:
To the list of the enemies threatening the security of the United States, the Pentagon has added WikiLeaks.org, a tiny online source of information and documents that governments and corporations around the world would prefer to keep secret.
The Pentagon assessed the danger WikiLeaks.org posed to the Army in a report marked “unauthorized disclosure subject to criminal sanctions.” It concluded that “WikiLeaks.org represents a potential force protection, counterintelligence, OPSEC and INFOSEC threat to the U.S. Army” — or, in plain English, a threat to Army operations and information.
WikiLeaks, true to its mission to publish materials that expose secrets of all kinds, published the 2008 Pentagon report about itself on Monday.
Lt. Col. Lee Packnett, an Army spokesman, confirmed that the report was real. Julian Assange, the editor of WikiLeaks, said the concerns the report raised were hypothetical.
“It did not point to anything that has actually happened as a result of the release,” Mr. Assange said. “It contains the analyst’s best guesses as to how the information could be used to harm the Army but no concrete examples of any real harm being done.”
WikiLeaks, a nonprofit organization, has rankled governments and companies around the world with its publication of materials intended to be kept secret. For instance, the Army’s report says that in 2008, access to the Web site in the United States was cut off by court order after Bank Julius Baer, a Swiss financial institution, sued it for publishing documents implicating Baer in money laundering, grand larceny and tax evasion. Access was restored after two weeks, when the bank dropped its case.
Governments, including those of North Korea and Thailand, also have tried to prevent access to the site and complained about its release of materials critical of their governments and policies.
The Army’s interest in WikiLeaks appears to have been spurred by, among other things, its publication and analysis of classified and unclassified Army documents containing information about military equipment, units, operations and “nearly the entire order of battle” for American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan in April 2007.
WikiLeaks also published an outdated, unclassified copy of the “standard operating procedures” at the military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. WikiLeaks said the document revealed methods by which the military prevented prisoners from meeting with the International Red Cross and the use of “extreme psychological stress” as a means of torture.
The Army’s report on WikiLeaks does not say whether WikiLeaks’ analysis of that document was accurate. It does charge that some of WikiLeaks’s other interpretation of information is flawed but does not say specifically in what way.
The report also airs the Pentagon’s concern over some 2,000 pages of documents WikiLeaks released on equipment used by coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pentagon concluded that such information could be used by foreign intelligence services, terrorist groups and others to identify vulnerabilities, plan attacks and build new devices.
WikiLeaks, which won Amnesty International’s new media award in 2009, almost closed this year because it was broke and still operates at less than its full capacity. It relies on donations from humans rights groups, journalists, technology buffs and individuals, and Mr. Assange said it had raised just two-thirds of the $600,000 needed for its budget this year and thus was not publishing everything it had.
Perhaps the most amusing aspect of the Army’s report, to Mr. Assange, was its speculation that WikiLeaks is supported by the Central Intelligence Agency. “I only wish they would step forward with a check if that’s the case,” he said.
A wonderful new Iranian film, No One Knows About Persian Cats, that proves the reliance of the resistance in that tortured country:
Here’s the Mumbrella report from this week’s Sydney Battle of Big Thinking (where the audience voted me last in my section but I was against a very compelling blind man!):
Yesterday saw the APG’s Battle of Big Thinking. The second session covered big storytelling ideas.
Speaker: Antony Loewenstein, Writer
Topic: Why the western press is failing to use alternative voices
Quote: “A lot of people in the corporate press are not so much afraid as unimaginative.”
His argument:
He told the audience how when he worked at Fairfax he talked to one of the foreign editors. He said: “The Iraq war had just started and I remember asking why there had never been Iraqi voices in the paper. She said ‘I never thought of that’.
“If you are a media organisation you would think about publishing articles from voices you never hear. In my view bloggers can fill that gap. It seems so obvious and yet it’s not happening.
“It does not require big budgets and more money. It’s easy to speak to individuals in their own countries and hear their voices.
“In the vast majority of world events, to find out what goes on, the last place to look is the corporate media.”
My take: He’s right. It’s a simple source that papers should make more use of. But some do already. Famously The Guardian used blogger Salam Pax as an Iraqi voice during that conflict.
Speaker: Tim Noonan, Vocal Branding Australia
Topic: The importance of the voice
Quote: “When you look at something you are looking at reflections from the surface but when you hear something then what you are doing is hearing things from the inside.”
His argument:
Noonan introduced himself to the audience as “a blind dude”, which he indeed is, before setting out the relationship between the human voice and persuasion.
My take: It was a fascinating argument in favour of simply listening.
Speaker: Tim Dick, Opinion editor, Sydney Morning Herald
Topic: Why the SBS should be closed and the money spent on funding more journalism
Quote: “We should use the SBS slush fund to uncover unknown stories”
His argument:
He told the audience that he believed that the original purpose of SBS – to bring foreign language news to first generation Australians otherwise unable to hear it – was now superfluous because of the internet.
He said: “We can now tune into Italian radio online, we can read Indian newspapers before Indians thanks to the time advantage. $200m is a lot of money and I think it should be for generating news. There’s a better way to use the money we give to SBS.”
He argued for what he described as “another form of state sponsorship of media” to fund news-gathering via journalist-employing not profit organisations, where the market is failing to provide it.
My take: Nice idea, but it ain’t gonna happen
My vote: Tim Dick
The voting result: First Tim Noonan (54%); second Tim Dick; third Antony Loewenstein
Washington is still the greatest rogue in the village:
Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden will never face trial in the United States because he will not be captured alive, Attorney General Eric Holder told lawmakers on Tuesday.
During a heated exchange with Republican congressmen, Holder predicted that “we will be reading Miranda rights to the corpse of Osama bin Laden” rather than to the US public enemy number one in captivity.
“Let’s deal with reality,” the attorney general added. Bin Laden “will never appear in an American courtroom.”
Holder reacted angrily to Republican critics who say the attorney general’s proposal to try terror suspects in US federal civilian courts would put Americans at risk.
“They have the same rights that a Charles Manson would have, any other kind of mass murderer,” he told a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing.
The charming behaviour of a reliable American ally:
A Saudi man who was arrested in January on charges of homosexuality, a “general security” offence, and impersonation of a police officer has been sentenced to 1,000 lashes, plus a fine of 5,000 rials (US $1,333) and a year in prison.
Authorities say their attention was drawn to his behaviour after a video he made was circulated locally via SMS, and later uploaded to YouTube. In the lighthearted video, the man is in a car, dressed as a Saudi police officer. He is seen dancing to club music, rubbing his chest, and flirting with the man holding the camera.
The video has since been blocked in Saudi Arabia.
An article in the New York Observer titled, “The Gay Terrorist”:
It’s been more than eight years since 9/11, but the fallout continues to reverberate throughout today’s New York. The Obama administration’s waffling over how to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the attack’s mastermind, and the continuous, embarrassing delay in rebuilding the towers downtown have kept 9/11 more in the headlines than usual.
Now, as those political battles roll on, a new story about the run-up to 9/11 has emerged—a previously undisclosed, covert C.I.A. effort to recruit a spy to penetrate Al Qaeda a year and a half before the planes crashed into the towers.
The development is intriguing in part because the informant they were after was thought to be secretly gay—a fact that gave intelligence agents leverage in their efforts to turn him against his conservative Islamist circle. But the case may also help answer one of the long-standing mysteries of the 9/11 narrative: why a terrorist known to one part of the U.S. government wasn’t captured by other parts before he boarded a plane and helped carry out the most devastating attacks on the country.
Intelligence officials tell The Observer that the character at the center of the intrigue was an enigmatic but jovial man named Ahmad Hikmat Shakir, or “Shakir el Iraqi.” “He was tall as a mushroom, fat and gay,” one source familiar with the case told The Observer, “and the idea was to exploit him as an agent against Al Qaeda.”
Waste, futile spending and over-blown excess is routine in the arms world (see this recent Sydney Morning Herald report that outlined the vast problems with the Australian Defence Department). And now this:
The United States scored last in a new study that examined how 33 major militaries spend funds on weapon systems – while potential U.S. rival Russia ranked third.
In a study due out March 15, consulting firm McKinsey & Co. examined how efficiently 33 nations that account for 90 percent of worldwide defense expenditures perform a range of functions. The study looked at how these militaries go about doing certain tasks in three key areas: personnel, maintenance and weapon buying.
“The United States and Australia are the lowest performing countries with regard to equipment output for every dollar spent,” McKinsey concludes.
I know it’s futile to say this, but couldn’t the obscene amounts of money spent on arms be better used on other important services?
Speaking of “journalists” who love Israel like an old wine; juicy if you know where to lick but corrupt to the core. Over to you, Murdoch columnist Greg Sheridan:
The Australia-Israel relationship, normally a byword for geostrategic stability and enduring human warmth, has had some stormy passages lately.
The use of Australian passports by the agents, presumably from Mossad, who assassinated a Hamas terrorist in Dubai led to unusually strong criticism of Israel from Kevin Rudd and Stephen Smith. Australia changed its vote from oppose to abstain at the UN on a resolution requiring Israel and Hamas to investigate alleged war crimes as demanded in the widely discredited Goldstone report. This was a clear if unstated punishment of Israel for the passports breach.
Then there were needlessly energetic comments by Foreign Minister Smith condemning Israel over the recent announcement of 1600 new housing units to be built in East Jerusalem, on which more later.
This makes it all the more remarkable, and reassuring, that Smith yesterday hosted a bipartisan ceremony to accept a report – prepared by the Australia Israel Leadership Forum, founded by Melbourne businessman Albert Dadon – with recommendations for enhancing the Australia-Israel relationship.
The forum, in which I have participated, brings together a range of Israelis and Australians for annual strategic dialogue in the broadest sense. The Australian delegation in its two meetings has been led by Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote a letter endorsing the work of the forum and saying he will consider its recommendations.
The report makes four important suggestions.
The first is that Australian military staff colleges should host Israeli officers. This is a brilliant idea. Our staff colleges routinely host Arab officers and this is all to the good. We deploy a lot of Australian forces in and around the Middle East and, as a result, we have developed effective working relations with a number of Arab militaries. But we are a strategic and political ally of Israel. The absence of Israelis from these courses is a serious gap and has a small but ongoing effect on our military culture.
Arab and Israeli officers routinely attend US staff colleges together. It’s good for both of them. They have to put up with each other if they want the benefit of American military staff colleges. It helps dialogue all around and it gives expression to the true nature of the US-Israel relationship. There is absolutely no reason Australia should not do this.
I would add a recommendation the report leaves out. Australia should have an annual or biennial full strategic dialogue with Israel. We do have very high level intelligence exchanges but, given the depth of our investment in the Middle East, we should also exchange deep and wide strategic views. We could learn something, and perhaps we could teach something. Our military work in Afghanistan is overwhelmingly among civilian populations, just as is most of Israel’s military involvement. Operationally, ethically, in every way we have things to talk about.
Recommendation No 2 is for a free trade agreement. This is also a brilliant idea. Australian trade with Israel is small, just about $1 billion a year. But Israel is a world leader in innovation and commercialisation. We could and should do much more together.
Third, Israel’s experience with improving Bedouin health and Australia’s struggle to do the same with Aboriginal health ought to be the basis for co-operation, comparison and mutual teaching.
Finally, the report recommends auditing and giving life to the plethora of bilateral agreements that have become moribund through the years. This is a practical and very useful document.
Smith reiterated at its launch that despite recent controversies there has been no change in Australia’s deep friendship with and commitment to Israel.
Smith did the right thing by accepting the report, committing the government to considering it seriously and reiterating Australia’s support for Israel.
And Opposition Deputy Leader Julie Bishop supported him on behalf of the Coalition.
Overall, the Rudd government displays only marginally less solidarity with Israel than the Howard government did. It has changed a couple of Australian votes at the UN, but not many. No one seriously doubts that this is an attempt, almost certainly forlorn, to curry favour with the Arab League in our quixotic and pointless quest for a non-permanent UN Security Council seat. This worthless bid is distorting our foreign policy, but so far mainly at the margins.
Similar considerations probably animate Smith’s overreaction to the 1600 Israeli apartments to be built, in three years, in East Jerusalem. This is in some eerie ways a minor imitation of the Obama administration’s gross overreaction. Whereas the Rudd government is courting votes for a tawdry UN election, Barack Obama plainly sees the quest to redefine the US relationship with the Muslim world as central to his historic mission, and part of this involves dumping on the Israelis.
Thus the Palestinian Authority for 12 months refused to negotiate with Israel; that was fine. It then named a square after a female suicide bomber who killed 37 civilians, including 13 children. No hint of a US rebuke there. But Israel announcing the apartments is apparently the end of Middle East peace as we know it.
Don’t get me wrong. I think the Israeli government was extremely stupid to announce the apartments while US Vice-President Joe Biden was visiting Israel. But Netanyahu’s temporary freeze on building in the West Bank never included East Jerusalem. There are Jewish parts of East Jerusalem that every serious player knows will stay with Israel in any peace deal. They were staying with Israel under the Bill Clinton mandated offer to the Palestinians in 2000, and under the even more generous plan put by Ehud Olmert in 2008.
In other words, as usual, Israel got the public relations and political management wrong but the substance right. The Obama administration was notably unmoved by rape and murder as a political tactic in Iran; is offering endless concessions to Syria, which treats Washington with studied contempt; and will never criticise the Palestinian Authority. It is developing a very bad tendency to constantly flatter its enemies in the fantastical hope of engaging and converting them, while abusing its friends, to show its even-handedness.
Canberra has no need to go down that same road.
This useful report helps it choose a better road instead.
These comments seem incredibly suspicious, considering the ongoing human rights abuses in Sri Lanka:
Tens of thousands of refugees, who belong to the minority Tamil ethnicity, have lived in camps across India’s Tamil Nadu state for more than two decades and have assimilated into local communities. But many yearn to return and rebuild their lives in their homeland, aid workers say.
“The ultimate reason for being a refugee has diminished,” said Christian Aid’s Gordon Shannon. “Now, more than any other time during the 25-year-old war, is the most positive time…to start preparations for the refugees to go back.”
I’ve written extensively over the years about Iranian web censorship.
My following piece was commissioned by BBC Persian on the role of the web in Iran’s current political troubles (yes, it’s in Farsi).
Here’s the English version:
The face of murdered Iranian woman Neda Agha Soltan by a sniper’s bullet echoed around the world. Murdered in June 2009 during the upheaval after the disputed presidential election that saw a new term for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the vast majority of iconic images seen outside the Islamic Republic were shot by citizens on mobile phones or digital cameras. They were raw, brutal, confused and powerful. Their aim was to document events and let historians and journalists find order in the chaos.
A society was challenged in a way that rocked the foundations of the state.
Neda’s boyfriend, Caspian Makan, who fled the country soon after her death, told the Guardian in November 2009 that Neda’s death forced him to become political and speak out against the regime. “As I left Tehran”, he said, “I was looking around at the good people of Iran, who are kind and patient. They looked so weighed down.”
This is exactly the sentiment I found in Iran during my visit there in 2007 during research for my book, The Blogging Revolution. I spoke to countless bloggers, editors and dissidents to determine the effect of the internet on civil society. It was both profound and frustrating. The last years have undoubtedly seen a growth in countless websites dedicated to the discussion of once-hidden subjects, from gay emancipation to dating. But despite the often-liberating nature of the technology, nobody talked about using the web alone to bring democracy.
Besides, many Iranians don’t use the internet and have other issues on their minds, such as regular work and decent housing. The liberal Iranian elite largely despises Ahmadinejad’s conservative brand of Shia doctrine and wishes for change but the President has large swatches of support across the country, especially in the poorer regions. Far too many Western journalists visit Tehran and only thrive in the northern parts of the city, believing that more tolerant views towards gender and politics reflect the will of the entire nation.
After an initially slow acknowledgement of the power of the web to shape public opinion, the conservative clerics appropriated the medium with ruthless efficiency. Numerous reports have emerged over the last months of an Iranian Cyber Army hacking numerous websites critical of the mullahs and threatening stronger action. One message read: “U.S.A. Think They Controlling And Managing Internet By Their Access, But They Don’t, We Control And Manage Internet By Our Power.”
A fundamental misreading of last year’s public protests in Iran led many in the West to conclude that a Twitter Revolution was brewing and would inevitably bring down the state. A journalist from the Atlantic visited the holy city of Qom a few months after the June uprising and found little evidence of tension. In fact, he found “the happy docility of a one-party state.”
This is not to diminish the undeniable resistance to authoritarian rule in the Islamic Republic. I found an impatience either expressed by leaving the country for better opportunities or venting anonymously on blogs and online forums. There was fear of being caught by authorities but also a growing bravery in flouting the “red lines” in society. Criticism of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was largely impossible – though the last months have seen public protests with shouts of “Death to the Dictator” – but his infallibility was no longer sacred.
The New York Times tried to capture the mood on the streets during the June 2009 uprising. Reluctant to call events the Twitter Revolution – a hesitancy unwisely not shown by countless Western news networks, including many interviewers who wanted me to explain why Twitter was about to bring down the mullahs – the paper offered six lessons of the technology. “Twitter is self-correcting but a misleading gauge”, it wrote. It went on: “Twitter is a very poor tool for judging popular sentiment in Iran and trying to assess who won the presidential election.” The most tech-savvy web users were largely critical of Ahmadinejad and used Twitter to mobilise citizens on the streets. This didn’t mean the majority of the population backed these moves.
Too much of the Western press coverage of Iran reflects the projected wishes of the American political elite, namely “regime change” or at least a radical shift in policy. The nuclear enrichment issue hangs over virtually every discussion with Iran. Bloggers both inside and outside the country try to understand the seemingly impenetrable moves of Ahmadinejad and the mullahs. But the prospect of tighter sanctions against Tehran will likely only result in greater internal repression.
The most appropriate ways to support movements against the regime, according to New York Times columnist Roger Cohen, is to back the US State Department’s request for issuing a general license that “would authorise downloads of free mass-market software by companies such as Microsoft and Google to Iran necessary for the exchange of personal communications and/or sharing of information over the internet such as instant messaging, chat and email and social networking.” How many Iranians trust the interests of the State Department is another question entirely.
Harvard University’s Ethan Zuckerman argues that the US government doesn’t fully the ramifications of potentially providing a proxy service for users in, say, Iran or China, to circumvent all censored content. Furthermore, domestically blocked content is not included in this proposed system, the material likely to be used by most web surfers.
But the key question remains: how central is the internet in Iran to challenging the Ahmadinejad regime? Web commentator Evgeny Morozov wrote in Prospect in January that it was unwise to see online social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others) as central to the so-called Green Revolution. He argued that the Iranian government “has not only survived but has in fact become even more authoritarian”, utilising the same tools of the protestors to entrap and monitor their every move. “What do we really gain”, he posed, “if the ability to organise protests is matched (and perhaps even dwarfed) by the ability to provoke, identity and arrest the protestors?”
The Wall Street Journal outlined in December 2009 the myriad of ways that Iran was now monitoring dissenters outside its borders and interrogated some who arrived in Tehran and demanded Facebook accounts be examined at the Imam Khomeini International Airport.
Turning the tools of revolution on the revolutionaries.
The ascendency of the Revolutionary Guard to a ruling position is ominous for the foreseeable future in the country. The simple truth is that brutal regimes can block the use of text messages, email (Google’s Gmail was recently censored) and imprison, torture and kill opponents. There is little dissidents can do in the short-term to counter these overwhelming factors, as we have seen in Burma and China.
I’ve heard from various sources that many once-active bloggers have gone underground for fear of arrest. The online voices from Iran we are reading today are therefore either strongly backing Ahmadinejad or the forces against him but the latter are at a distinct disadvantage without the apparatus of the state behind them. But they have achieved hugely through people power and innovative use of online tools.
Iran’s future will not be written in London or Washington. We should be cautious of any Western player claiming to know what the Iranian people want. Exaggerating the influence of the internet on Iranian society is dangerous but so is excluding its potentially liberating effect.
I remember speaking to many Iranians in the country who couldn’t imagine life without the ability to communicate with friends, lovers and students and share stories that were once only whispered. Predicting the demise of the Islamic Republic is a fool’s game. But we can listen to the thoughts and requests of Iranians who long for a brighter future, both those online and the millions of others who dream of the day when their country’s poverty is alleviated.
