A report in the Israeli press says that Israel is looking to push United States to apply the ‘Cuban model’ to Iran.
Tag Archive for 'Cuba'
On the ground reports from Iran are hard to obtain these days. Western journalists are largely writing stories about the political chaos in the country.
So I’m publishing this exclusive report from a friend currently in Tehran. He’s an Australian traveling around the country. Names and identifiable places have been removed to protect all concerned:
Been a bit out of touch with the world the last couple of weeks while here in Iran. I don’t have satellite TV where I’m staying (although most of *** relatives do have it) and internet access isn’t always easily accessible especially given the proxies are so unreliable. Did you know the government has satellite jamming equipment from Panasonic? That’s what I heard from *** cousin anyway. I don’t know how he knows. I’ll have to look into that one.
Anyway, it’s been an amazing experience so far. I was in Tehran for one week, took a short trip to Mashad and Esfahan, and now I’m back in Tehran staying at *** grandmothers house. Iranian hospitality is awesome. *** family have been so kind and generous towards me. I literally haven’t spent a cent while here! They don’t let me pay for anything. In fact, I think I’ve made money with all the gifts of gold I’ve received! There is a feast everyday. I usually have two dinners. Unbelievable.
This house is never quite. There is always someone stopping by – auntys, uncles, cousins, friends – with whom I’ve been having incredibly interesting and varied conversations with about life here. *** seems to have the whole political spectrum of opinion covered within her family! Ahmadinejad supporters, Mousavi supporters, critics of the whole Islamic regime, religious, secular, low-middle class, highly educated upper class, old and conservative, young and party going… everything! One of her cousins is even in the basijis! (well kind of anyway).
Actually, that’s an interesting story. This cousin of *** is in her early 20s and is no supporter of the regime, but she’s part of this sports club which is owned by the basijis and in order to participate and compete you’re forced to sign up with them. If at anytime you don’t comply with their orders you lose your membership. During the pro-government demonstrations a couple of weeks ago, she got a call ordering her to attend the protest. She managed to wiggle her way out of it, but most of her friends went and they told her they were all given batons and pepper spray to “protect” them from reformists who might attack them. Of course, they never collected the weapons from them after the demonstration. So all her girlfriends went home with batons and pepper spray for souvenirs!
The whole demonstration was a farce of course. Schools were closed down and universities had their fire alarms ring just as the procession was passing by so they were forced to spill out onto the street. Those who had government jobs were given the day off if they attended. There was free food and drink and many other incentives to attend. These are just a few of the ways the government conjured up the impression of a great and popular pro-government protest. Some people here did buy it hook line and sinker like one of *** uncle’s I was talking to. But many others saw it for what it was.
There are little untold expressions of dissent that happen all the time and go unreported. Just last week *** cousin was at one of the azad (private) universities where the students got wind of a planned pro-government demonstration that was to take place on the university grounds by the basij. They quickly organised a counter demonstration, cunningly got the police to block off the street by telling them they wanted to have a pro-government demonstration of their own, and chanted very religious slogans. When the 50-60 basij members arrived, they couldn’t do anything. In other words they stole their thunder.
One of *** Uncles and his wife are very well respected university professors at Amir Kabir University (you might have seen the you tube video of the students ripping the gate down there?). *** uncle said that many of his students were arrested and the rest refused to sit their exams as a sign of protest. His wife said a little while ago that she along with many other professors were asked to sign a letter of support for the government. She was called for 12 days straight from some department very high up in the government pestering her to sign. She managed to wiggle her way out of it with a bit of luck, but every time you refuse requests such as these you get a cross next to your name. Next time you apply for a new government job or promotion, you’ve got no chance. Even one of *** cousins who just finished her teaching degree can’t get a job because she failed to convince her employers in the interview that she was “religious” enough. Religiosity of course has nothing to do with it. *** aunty I was just speaking of is VERY religious. She wears a complete black chador by choice. It’s political attitudes they screen for.
Luckily I haven’t had any intense encounters with the authorities yet. I kind of blend in here. We saw three basij last night at a pizza restaurant where young people hang out – they were just watching us. Apparently, the night before, *** friend was pulled over by the basij and his car completely stripped and searched. He wasn’t doing anything wrong – it was just pure intimidation. The other week we were at the park for a picnic and a police car rocked up because they saw one of *** cousins dancing. It’s moharam now and the whole county is supposed to be in mourning (which really sucks for me coz there’s no X-party’s happening and I’m dying to check one out!). Somehow they overheard we were from overseas and they asked what religion we were. Luckily *** dad spoke to them and reassured them we were all faithful and law abiding muslims. It’s such a stifling environment. Kind of like Cuba in that you can always feel the government watching you.
***
Just an update…. I spoke to *** cousin last night about the satellite jamming. He said he had a friend who used to work as some kind of engineer; designing geo-stationary satellites for the government’s communications department (his exact occupation got lost in translation). Anyway, he had told him that the government had bought jamming equipment from Panasonic (Japan) about 4-5 years ago. Had you heard of this before? Apparently it’s not public knowledge.
Coincidentally, *** cousin actually owns a small internet company here selling high speed internet to businesses. He is also studying and he has a project coming up about how the internet is filtered in Iran! Anyway, one other interesting point – he hasn’t sent an sms in 6 months as a sign of protest to the government who keeps disconnecting the service whenever it suits them. He said many of his friends are doing the same.
My following article is published on US website Mondoweiss:
It is easy to frame the conflict in Israel and Palestine as inherently unique. In many ways it is – decades-old occupation, US-supported racial discrimination and failure of Western journalism to hold the powerful to account – but other struggles have eerie similarities.
This year Sri Lanka militarily defeated the Tamil Tigers, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). It was a brutal war, killed close to 100,000 people over a three-decade period and resulted in a humanitarian crisis of around 300,000 displaced Tamils. Both sides committed war crimes but the regime in Colombo was accused of shelling hospitals and civilian areas in the closing months of the war. My partner’s father was under the bombs in the north-east of the country and he tells of aerial bombardment on make-shift medical centres. It was hell on earth. Up to 50,000 Tamils were murdered.
The Elders, including Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela, condemned the atrocities and were predictably smeared by the government.
Sri Lanka was an early adopter of George W. Bush’s “war on terror” architecture and placed its struggle against the Tamil insurgency as a noble war against ruthless killers. Colombo received arms and backing from India, China, Israel and unleashed overwhelming miliary firepower against the LTTE. The result was unsurprising, though the EU and Washington condemned the brutal tactics employed.
But this feigned Western concern for Tamil human rights must be seen in the context of political influence. Analyst Sergei DeSilva-Ranasinghe writes in The Diplomat that the, “conflict also shed light on a bitter geopolitical struggle taking place against the backdrop of the declining influence of the West and the emerging influence of India and China”.
Enter Zionism.
In early December the Jerusalem Post published an article that advocated Israel follow the lead of Sri Lanka to eradicate its “terrorism” problem:
“The Tamil Tigers , sometimes referred to by its full name, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), resembled Middle East terror groups. Actually, it is more correct to say that Middle East terror groups resemble the Tamil Tigers, as the Tigers introduced many of the techniques subsequently used by Israel’s enemies. They invented the suicide belt and perfected the suicide bombing attack, turning it into a tactical device. They were the first to use women and children in these attacks. And they have been accused of using their own innocent civilians as human shields. They are a vicious crowd, and were implicated in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi of India in 1991. As we all know, the Palestinians have imitated these tactics with devastating brutality.
“The Sri Lankans had more or less lived with this horror since 1983. Then 9/11 happened and a new dynamic, promoted by president George W. Bush and the United States, gave the Sri Lankans a new outlook. With a new administration elected on the promise of stopping the LTTE permanently, the country embarked on a full-scale military assault. It sent its army, much stronger than the Tamil tigers, into Tamil-occupied territory and began to take back town by town, going street to street in some cases, and killing anyone who resisted.
“Jehan Perera of the Sri Lankan Peace Council said, ‘This government has taken the position that virtually any price is worth paying to rid the country of terrorism.’
“The price paid was indeed a heavy one. Many innocent people died. The Sri Lankan government deeply regrets the killing of innocent civilians, but most government officials believe they made a conscious choice to pay that price, and that the alternative status quo was simply no longer acceptable.”
The writer goes on to explain that Israel should cease “political correctness” and destroy the Palestinians once and for all:
“The time has come to admit that there might not be a solution to the Palestinian problem, but there is a way to end it. The next time terror forces Israel to take military action, this option should be considered. Israel must realize that there will be no peace with an intransigent enemy that refuses to act in good faith. Palestinian rejectionism and Iranian-backed Hizbullah threats to our existence will never be placated; they will not stop until Israel is destroyed. Once the population realizes this unfortunate reality, there is only one way to change it. Israel must take the Sri Lankan initiative and move into these areas one by one, cornering, enveloping and killing off all armed resistance.
“Bending over backward to make peace with the Palestinians has proven fruitless. It’s time to make the choice of a better life for all. More than 60 years of living with this is enough. When we have completely wiped out this enemy, a new dynamic will rise. Without the Muslim thugs holding their own people back, there will be nothing to stop them from negotiating genuine peace. There might be a Palestinian, a Lebanese, a Syrian, maybe even an Iranian peace partner which will transform the Middle East from a charnel house of hatred and bloodshed to a prosperous community of nations working together to make the daily lives of all their citizens better.”
This neo-conservative worldview dictates advocating genocide in the deluded hope that Arabs will feel so defeated that they simply accept Israeli rule. It’s a position also shared by Daniel Pipes:
“The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.”
A closer examination of Sri Lanka’s methods reveals a disregard for civilian casualties far greater than the IDF crimes during the 2008/2009 Gaza war. There are serious allegations of Tamil Tigers surrendering under a white flag and being mowed down by soldiers. A forthcoming “People’s Permanent Tribunal” meeting in Dublin will investigate a range of alleged crimes during the conflict and feature testimony from eyewitnesses, the UN and EU.
Colombo’s clear policy during the war was a masterful exercise in avoidance and remarkably similar to Israel’s tactics during the Gaza onslaught. Journalists, most human rights workers and independent observers were barred from the combat zone. Any criticism of Sri Lanka’s behaviour was labelled as supporting “terrorism.”
When the roughly 300,000 Tamils were interned in concentration camps after the war and held against their will – most were conditionally released last week though with restricted freedom of movement and ongoing monitoring of their lives – new friends Iran and China remained silent, while South Africa praised the Sri Lanka’s supposed commitment to human rights.
Even Washington, in a just released report, urges a more conciliatory approach. “US policy towards Sri Lanka cannot be dominated by a single agenda”, it reads. “It is not effective at delivering real reform, and it short-changes US geo-strategic interests in the region”.
Less than six months after the end of the conflict, the London Times reported this week that a re-branded insurgency is brewing (assuming, of course, this isn’t a black ops story planted by the government):
“A Marxist group of Tamil militants with connections to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and Cuba is preparing to mount a new insurgency in Sri Lanka six months after the Government declared an end to the 26-year-old war there.
“The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was founded in eastern Sri Lanka four months ago and has vowed to launch attacks against government and military targets unless its demands for a separate Tamil homeland are met.
“’This war isn’t over yet,’ Commander Kones, head of the PLA’s Eastern District military command, told The Times during a night meeting in a safe house in the east of the country last week.
“’There has been no solution for Tamils since the destruction of the LTTE [Tamil Tigers] in May. So we have built and organised the PLA and are ready to act soon. Our aim is a democratic socialist liberation of the northeast for a Tamil Eelam [the desired Tamil state].’”
A disenfranchised people will continue to strive for independence and self-determination. The Tamils have been wishing for a homeland for decades due to the government’s ongoing discrimination against them. The Palestinians have also been denied natural justice since 1947.
Advocating the Sri Lanka model as an effective way of fighting terrorism is an attractive prospect for those who believe in obliterating the concepts of human rights and proportionality in international law. Israel is unwilling to negotiate in good faith with her opponents, guaranteeing ongoing resistance. The Tamils have fewer global friends but their struggle is just as necessary.
Sri Lanka, like Israel, should be shunned until it acknowledges the rights of its minority to equal rights before the law.
Antony Loewenstein is a Sydney based journalist and author of My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution. He is on the advisory council of the UK-based Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice.
Human rights in Cuba are grim. But as I discovered in The Blogging Revolution, bloggers are starting to challenge the government’s strangehold on information.
We should therefore welcome news of the Bloggers Cuba group one year anniversary with optimism. Here’s Zorphdark:
A couple of hours after the boring midday of May, I received the only e-mail that I have ever marked with a star in GMail. It was an invite from BC to belong to their community. It has been more than six months from that heavy breathing, and I still cannot believe it. “I am not worth it” –I thought; “what should I write about?” –I still wonder. I arrive at the meeting point, an unforgettable party, and I meet many people that have influenced my life directly since then: people who I admire profoundly, people who make me feel wonderful, people who I can talk to for tens of hours. VIP human beings, full of imagination, youth and Cuban-ness.
When a government uses overwhelming military force and simply ignores the wishes of the people being murdered, expect an insurgency that will change its face but remain determined to achieve set goals. Sri Lanka, you have been warned:
A Marxist group of Tamil militants with connections to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and Cuba is preparing to mount a new insurgency in Sri Lanka six months after the Government declared an end to the 26-year-old war there.
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was founded in eastern Sri Lanka four months ago and has vowed to launch attacks against government and military targets unless its demands for a separate Tamil homeland are met.
“This war isn’t over yet,” Commander Kones, head of the PLA’s Eastern District military command, told The Times during a night meeting in a safe house in the east of the country last week.
“There has been no solution for Tamils since the destruction of the LTTE [Tamil Tigers] in May. So we have built and organised the PLA and are ready to act soon. Our aim is a democratic socialist liberation of the northeast for a Tamil Eelam [the desired Tamil state].”
Kones, a nom de guerre, claimed that the PLA had 300 active members and expected to recruit 5,000 volunteers from the 280,000 Tamil civilians recently freed from detention camps.
He said that the PLA, commanded by a ten-man committee, was an entirely separate organisation from the LTTE, but said that former LTTE cadres would be able to join the organisation provided that they swore their allegiance to the PLA’s political aims.
Sydney University’s Jake Lynch, a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause, writes in his weekly column about Sri Lanka and the need to continue pressure over its appalling treatment of the Tamils:
The news that the Government of Sri Lanka is to close the internment camps where thousands of Tamils were illegally detained, following the end of the country’s civil war against the Tamil Tiger rebels six months ago, is testimony to the effect of international pressure. The European Union backed the call by Judge Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, for an independent, international investigation of war crimes allegations. And it threatened to withdraw Sri Lanka’s coveted membership of ‘GSP-plus’: the Generalised System of Preferences scheme that gives developing countries privileged trading access to EU member states.
The US State Department produced a lengthy report, detailing attacks on civilians during the war including some 158 incidents of shelling or bombing that could only have come from the government side: a record that is, the authors noted, likely to represent only a cross-section of the full picture since many will have gone unreported to the outside world. When the International Monetary Fund voted on a package of soft loans to Sri Lanka, worth US$2 billion, earlier this year, the US took the unusual step of declaring publicly that it had abstained (voting is held in secret). The agreement is subject to quarterly review, so there are further opportunities for leverage.
In Australia, by contrast, official hand-wringing has been accompanied by a notable pusillanimity in following through with any form of action. Canberra has one of the two directorships for an Asia-Pacific group of countries on the IMF board, representing 3.4% of the vote; it kept shtum about how it was used, so we must assume it voted in favour. And Foreign Minister Stephen Smith went cap in hand to Colombo to ask for help in deterring Tamils from seeking refuge in Australia, after the arrival of a few boats had triggered the usual barrage of hysteria from right-wing politicians and media. Instead of governmental action, pressure has been applied through campaigning and lobbying from civil society, keeping a focus on so-called “push factors” that have seen asylum claims, from Tamils who have managed to reach Australia, being approved, at a rate of 95%, in recent months.
More obvious guilty parties include Cuba, which sponsored the motion at the UN Human Rights Council, congratulating the Government of Sri Lanka for its ‘victory’; a move that probably emboldened the Colombo authorities to believe they could get away with keeping the detainees for far longer than they otherwise would. The move dismayed many supporters of Cuba’s socialist government, including some in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Amarantha Visalakshi, an author and translator of books about Latin America, issued this response:
“We here in Tamil Nadu celebrated the 80th birthday of Comrade Fidel by releasing eight books on Cuba’s achievements in various fields…and are in the midst of our preparation for the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution…
“We are struck dumb and rendered disheartened and disillusioned by this act [the HRC resolution] by those countries of Latin America on which we have pinned our hopes for the future – Socialism of the 21st century.
“Why do these countries wish for wiping out the Tamils from the Sri Lankan soil where they rightfully belong? What are the sources of information for these Latin American countries to decide against the Tamils and in favour of the racist Sri Lankan government in the UN Human Rights Council?”
…
The Tamil community in Sri Lanka must be allowed to elect credible leaders who can negotiate meaningfully on political arrangements for a shared future of justice and equality. So they must be allowed to speak and organise freely, with full access to International NGOs and – in the case of alleged Tamil Tigers now being arrested – to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The human rights situation in Cuba – something I examined in my book The Blogging Revolution – remains dire. Some prominent bloggers on the island were recently abused for simply speaking out.
Now, according to Human Rights Watch, the regime continues to oppress its people:
The Cuban president, Raúl Castro, has crushed dissent and continued repression in the country since taking over from his brother Fidel, according to a Human Rights Watch report published today.
The government has extended use of an “Orwellian” law that allows the state to punish people before they commit a crime on suspicion they may do so, a tactic designed to cow actual and potential opponents, it said.
The report, New Castro, Same Cuba, paints a near-dystopian image of an island where those who step out of line risk being beaten and jailed in horrific conditions which verge on torture.
Since taking over from Fidel in July 2006 Raúl has kept up repression and kept scores of political prisoners locked up, it said. “Raúl Castro’s government has used draconian laws and sham trials to incarcerate scores more who have dared to exercise their fundamental freedoms,” said the report.
The New York-based group said its report was based on a clandestine fact-finding mission in June and July that conducted dozens of in-depth interviews in seven of Cuba’s 14 provinces. It spoke to human rights activists, journalists, clerics, trade unionists and former political prisoners and their relatives.
The report was scathing about the international community’s policies towards Cuba. The decades-old US economic embargo gave Havana a pretext to crack down on dissenters as US-backed saboteurs, it said, and should be abandoned.
Yoani Sanchez is one of Cuba’s most famous bloggers. She faces constant harassment for simply writing and being critical.
Here’s the latest example of Castro’s goons attacking Sanchez and her friends.
As the UN voted today to endorse the Goldstone report on Gaza – note the countries that sided with Israel, the US and Australia: how many client states can you count? – William Blum in his regular Killing Hope newsletter reminds us how isolated the US and Israel remain on another key human rights issue:
For years American political leaders and media were fond of labeling Cuba an “international pariah”. We don’t hear much of that any more. Perhaps one reason is the annual vote in the General Assembly on the resolution, which reads: “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba”. This is how the vote has gone:
| Year | Votes (Yes-No) | No Votes |
|---|---|---|
| 1992 | 59-2 | US, Israel |
| 1993 | 88-4 | US, Israel, Albania, Paraguay |
| 1994 | 101-2 | US, Israel, Uzbekistan |
| 1995 | 117-3 | US, Israel, Uzbekistan |
| 1996 | 138-3 | US, Israel, Uzbekistan |
| 1997 | 143-3 | US, Israel |
| 1998 | 157-2 | US, Israel |
| 1999 | 155-2 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands |
| 2000 | 167-3 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands |
| 2001 | 167-3 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands |
| 2002 | 167-3 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands |
| 2003 | 173-3 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau |
| 2004 | 179-3 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau |
| 2005 | 182-4 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau |
| 2006 | 183-4 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau |
| 2007 | 184-4 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau |
| 2008 | 185-3 | US, Israel, Palau |
| 2009 | 187-3 | US, Israel, Palau |
My following article is published in the Huffington Post:
In a collection of just released work by Acehnese writer Azhari, Nutmeg Woman, we are brought into a world before the devastating 2004 tsunami that killed over 220,000 Indonesians. Civil war wracked the province. Indonesian occupation was brutal and fought against the Free Aceh Movement (GAM). Like the Papuans and East Timorese, the Acehnese wanted to be an independent nation.
Azhari — who wore a t-shirt with the word “iBoobs’ under the Apple logo when I saw him — often writes in riddles, demanding the reader understand the struggles of a people that no colonial power has ever controlled. Outsiders and eccentrics are treated with suspicion. Strong women counter the absence of men, many of whom have disappeared after generations of fighting. Jakarta still refuses to fully investigate this legacy.
During my recent visit to the area — as a guest of the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival — I found unconventional attributes of an Islamic state and fierce resistance to orthodox interpretations of the Koran. Aceh is not Saudi Arabia, Iran or Gaza, all places I have witnessed creeping Islamization and brave men and women challenging its implementation.
Aceh remains a traumatized province despite a 2005 peace deal that ended the decades-old, violent conflict. Sharia law is now implemented with homosexuality and adultery punishable by stoning. Poverty is rife — the smell of rubbish is everywhere and dirty water runs across some streets — while women mostly wear headscarves and sit separately from men at public events.
There are no cinemas. Entertainment options are limited. Religion often fills the breach, but I met many young people who thrived on satellite television and the Internet. Facebook was a common thread, an obsession and window to the world. Everybody under the age of 30 asked if I had a Facebook account and if I’d accept their friend request.
Nindy Silvie, Raisa Kamila and Mifta Sugesty, three schoolgirls who were my translators, regularly watch The Simpsons, Family Guy, BBC and CNN. Nindy spoke with an American accent, had a South Park tune as her ring-tone, didn’t wear a veil and read Noam Chomsky, Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens. I couldn’t believe my ears. Here I was in Aceh, talking about the “fundamentalist atheism” of Hitchens and his hatred of religion. She thought he went too far, though she was hardly a devout Muslim.
Although Aceh is no longer under occupation, tourism is virtually non-existent. International NGOs invaded after the 2004 tsunami and huge re-development dots the landscape. A new airport, large German-backed hospital and tsunami museum are tangible signs of modernity.
It was surreal seeing Jewish gravestones, in Hebrew, in the Dutch-era cemetery in the shadow of the tsunami museum. Writer Fozan Santa, with black, greasy shoulder-length hair, told me that there was no hatred towards these monuments and generations of Acehnese had protected them. “People here don’t hate Jews”, he said, “they hate the Israeli occupation of Palestine.”
I met many young men under 20 who said they had wanted to fight against Israel during its bombardment of Gaza in December and January. “For our fellow Muslims”, one said. Many had never met a Jew before and were amazed that I expressed deep disquiet towards Israeli behaviour in Palestine.
Fozan showed me the bookshop he ran near the heart of Banda Aceh, the capital. Most books were in the local language, including titles about Marx, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the power of the Israel lobby in America.
Politics flowed through the veins of many activists, a leftist perspective on the world. During a public forum, I was asked what I thought about the “real terrorism…the issue of globalization and free trade. How do we overcome that?” I replied, slightly unsure what angle to take, that the post-1945 world order was in desperate need of reform and the Muslim world’s time would surely come. Indonesia, the world’s biggest Muslim country, is talking about assuming a more powerful position on the global stage, not least towards the Israel/Palestine conflict.
The election of US President Barack Obama was welcomed warmly across the province. People like his rhetoric and his apparent change in attitude towards the Muslim world, but their patience is limited. Wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Palestine continue with no signs of closure. The relationship to American power is contradictory. Washington’s influence on their lives is minimal but its ability to bring peace doubtful. The idea of a benevolent America was appealing but images on satellite television from the Arab world dispelled those myths very quickly.
Acehnese identity is intimately related to Indonesia’s wish for integration and historical desires for independence. Many craved true freedom but realized it was impossible at the present time. The cataclysmic tsunami wiped out entire families and communities but brought a desperately needed resolution to civil strife.
History can have a cruel sense of humor.
The following interview is published this week in the literary journal, Quill:
SYDNEY-BASED ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN is the author of the best-selling book, My Israel Question, a controversial discussion of one of the most important issues of our time, as well as The Blogging Revolution, a searching examination of the ways the internet is threatening the rule of some of the planet’s most repressive governments. He actively seeks news on the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine, two countries everyone knows about but seldom chooses to engage.
Loewenstein’s interest in writing goes back a long time, including being an editor of his university newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, in 1997. He says, “I often liked the idea of provoking and challenging readers, especially about supposedly accepted ‘truths.’ For me, journalism should always be about shining light in the darkness and challenging the establishment, no matter who runs the joint.” This led him to becoming a journalist in 2003 and he has used various media, including the revolutionary transparent media of blogging, to get his reports out there.
“When I first started my blog in 2005,” he recalls, “it was primarily a space to discuss issues related to Israel and Palestine that wasn’t getting adequate mainstream media coverage, namely Israeli aggression in the Palestinian territories and the gradual shifts in Jewish opinion around the world. These days, my site has become an important space to air views and news that should receive far more traction.” His blog has become so popular that he has lost count of the number of emails he has received. He takes his blogging very seriously, making sure his reports are credible. As in journalism, his idea of a reliable blogger is one who has “reliable sources, transparency in their methods” and is “not being a propagandist for one side or the other.”
With an endless archive of information, the World Wide Web is chaotic and unpredictable, but Loewenstein celebrates this. “Information overload happens to me all the time but it’s a generally pleasurable experience. The best journalists and writers are always the ones with the most facts and figures at their fingertips,” he states, and believes that readers can learn how to discern reliable and nonsensical web resources. “This is something that one learns over time, though this is no different to trusting certain newspapers and not others.” If in doubt, The Blogging Revolution makes a good reference.
Loewenstein thinks that the biggest misconception about the type of journalism he does is objectivity. He says, “Truth matters. When writing about Israel or Palestine, for example, the reality hits you in the face and you have to report it. Israel is an apartheid state that must be condemned (like any other country that oppresses people). This is not just my view, but the position of virtually every human rights group in the world, the United Nations, leading activists and citizens.”
Aside from backing Israel, Loewenstein feels the West has also fallen short in being a reliable source of news. “One of the great myths of the Western world, of course, is that our media is free and people can and do write whatever they want,” he says, before referring to Noam Chomsky who once stated “the media serve the interests of state and corporate power, which are closely interlinked, framing their reporting and analysis in a manner supportive of established privilege and limiting debate and discussion accordingly.”
However, the West also has its advantages. Although outspoken journalists aren’t always popular, they can escape repressive regimes found in persecuting nations. “Find Western allies to cause a noise if you are arrested or intimidated. Remember that your readers value transparency and honesty,” Loewenstein advices.
Constantly fighting against mainstream media has its setbacks and this is all familiar to Loewenstein. “Anybody who dares challenge Israeli policies should expect a barrage of abuse from the usual suspects but the internet has provided an essential portal for more global citizens to witness the reality of brutal Israeli policies against the Palestinians.” He calls himself “an atheist Jew.” He doesn’t practise Judaism, but culturally he is Jewish. As the Israel-Palestinian war has often been viewed as a Jewish-Muslim struggle, Loewenstein receives hate-mail and the occasional death threats. This fuels him though, so much so that even editors fail in censoring his work. And to him, terrorism is any violence against civilians; the only acceptable violence is “resistance to occupation is both legitimate and necessary, from Palestine to Sri Lanka.”
For his research, Loewenstein travels regularly overseas because “far too many journalists and bloggers pontificate from their offices, not realising that often they’re only having their prejudices confirmed, not challenged. Being on the ground is essential to understanding different cultures.” For My Israel Question, he spent two months in Lebanon, Israel and Palestine for research; and for The Blogging Revolution, his research on the web in repressive regimes took him to Cuba, Egypt, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and China.
Being a worldly journalist has certainly taught Loewenstein how to assess the state of affairs in a country. He can guess the motives of media coverage or silence. “I am opposed to media censorship. One can tell a great deal about a country from the ways in which its government treats the media. Censoring information shows a profound contempt for the general public. The internet is one way of challenging this, by publishing blogs, despite the often deep risks in doing so.”
With a multicultural background and being well aware of issues going on in other nations, what ishis ideal nation? “No country is perfect, but I think, with all its faults, of which there are many—not least an underlying distaste of complexity, atrocious treatment of the indigenous peoples and occasional bursts of racist fervour—Australia’s lifestyle is pretty decent.”
TAN MAY LEE graduated from the University of Leeds, United Kingdom, where she was awarded the Bonamy Dobree Scholarship for International Students to do her Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Language. She also trained as a Master Practitioner in Neuro-Semantics Neuro-Linguistic Programming. She is the editor of Quillmagazine. Her story, “From the Roof,” was recently anthologised inUrban Odysseys: KL Stories (MPH Group Publishing, February 2009).
Reproduced from the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival 2009 issue of Quill magazine
The following article by Katrin Figge is published today in one of Indonesia’s largest English newspapers, The Jakarta Globe:
For a person who gets hate mail and death threats on a regular basis, Antony Loewenstein remains surprisingly cheerful.
The Jewish-Australian journalist, activist, blogger and author, who is based in Sydney, has stirred up plenty of controversy with his book “My Israel Question.” First published in 2006 and reprinted in a third edition several weeks ago, the book takes a critical look at the conflict between Israel and Palestine. As a self-proclaimed anti-Zionist and a supporter of the Palestinian cause, Loewenstein has been accused of anti-Semitism by many fellow Jews.
Ben Cubby of the Sydney Morning Herald wrote in a July review of “My Israel Question”: “To his critics, he is a ‘pro-Hezbollah cheerleader’ and ‘smouldering teen idol’ who is ‘working for the destruction of Israel’ through his ‘rabidly anti-Zionist agenda.’ ” He continued, “For a young writer whose first book has barely hit the shelves, Antony Loewenstein is quickly honing a reputation for getting under people’s skin.”
“I don’t want to suggest that I feel that my life is in jeopardy, I don’t want to exaggerate, but unfortunately, yes, I get a lot of attacks from Jewish people,” Loewenstein said during a phone interview last week, shortly before he set off for Bali and the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, which kicks off on Wednesday. It is his second visit to Bali. Loewenstein’s first time on the island was for a vacation.
“I was in Bali in March for a couple of weeks, but it was for a holiday,” Loewenstein said. “I loved it, and I am glad I am coming back and have the chance to see a bit more of the country.”
After the festival, he will visit several other cities, including Yogyakarta and Aceh, as part of a book tour. He plans to talk about the Middle East, the role of the United States in the region, Jewish identity and Palestinian nationalism.
“One of the interesting things for me about coming to the Ubud festival is to try to bridge the profound gap that exists between the English-speaking and the non-English speaking world,” he said.
He said he didn’t have much knowledge of Indonesian writers, not because he wasn’t interested, but mainly because of the language barrier.
“In the Western world, the literature of the non-English speaking countries is maybe not ignored, but certainly not highlighted as much as it should be,” he said. “I hope that in time this will change, especially with the help of a multilingual Internet.”
Loewenstein also published “The Blogging Revolution” in 2008.
“The main reason behind the book was a dissatisfaction with how the Western media reported on the rest of the world,” he said. “It started during and right after the Iraq war in 2003. It seemed to me extraordinary that in Australia and many parts of the West, there were very few Iraqi voices talking about the war.”
Internet blogs were one way for Loewenstein to get inside Iraq. He then decided to visit Cuba, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia and China — countries that he said are repressive but still have a vibrant and diverse Internet culture.
“There’s a great deal of online dissent in these countries,” Loewenstein said. “One of the things I wanted to talk about in the book was that the Internet on its own does not bring democracy, but what it does do in many countries, for example in Egypt, Iraq and China, is to bring issues to public attention.”
He talked to a number of people about why and how they were blogging, and especially about how they dealt with the censorship that exists in some of those countries.
“In places like China, for example, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo actually help the government to censor the Internet,” Loewenstein said. “To me, that is something profoundly disturbing that needed to be examined, while overall, I was trying to show how in the West we are willfully ignoring many voices that we could be listening to.”
He recently traveled to Israel and Palestine.
“I am very critical of the way Israel treats Palestinians, and I guess I just wanted to go there again and see it with my own eyes,” he said.
“It was despairing. The situation in Israel itself [is that] the country has moved very much to the right. In Palestine there is not much optimism despite Barack Obama coming in and talking about peace. Nothing has changed, nothing has been rebuilt.”
As someone who is Jewish, Loewenstein said, he felt profound shame about what his people were doing. This is one of the things he wants to speak about at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival.
“For many people, especially in the Muslim world, there is a need to hear Jews speaking critically of Israel,” Loewenstein said. “What Israel does in Palestine is unconscionable and has to be condemned.”
Antony Loewenstein will be speaking at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival this week.
Antony Loewenstein at the festivalOctober 9 2:15 – 3:30 p.m. Writing in the New World: Obama and Dissent, with Fatima Bhutto, Antony Loewenstein and Jamal Mahjoub Chair: Michael Vatikiotis
October 11 9 – 10 a.m. In Conversation: Antony Loewenstein Chair: Dominique Schwartz 4 – 5:30 p.m. A New Frontier: Blogging, Dissent and Solidarity, with Doel CP Allisah, Dian Hartati, Antony Loewenstein and Ng Yi-Sheng Chair: Angela Meyer
My latest New Matilda column, co-written with Independent Australian Jewish Voices blogger Michael Brull, responds to predictable charges of political bias by the Zionist lobby:
Labor MP Michael Danby’s accusation of antisemitism against two Jewish writers is a false and dangerous misuse of that term, write the accused, Michael Brull and Antony Loewenstein
Sometimes, people make malicious slurs that are worth refuting. Sometimes, people make frivolous, silly accusations that are worth ridiculing. Jewish Federal Labor MP Michael Danby and the so-called “Anti-Defamation Commission” (“ADC”) have done both. Having been jointly targeted by this duo, we felt obliged to jointly respond. We apologise in advance for our failure to capture the seriousness of the accusations against us. We can only promise that we’re not making this up.
So what exactly did they say? Let us start with Michael Danby. He basically thinks that “Brull, Loewenstein et al.”, with their “broadly similar views”, are guilty of “sloppy journalism”, or antisemitism. He rules out sloppy journalism, because he thinks we are guilty of demonising Israel, delegitimising it, and double standards. Therefore, we are both antisemites. Jewish antisemites.
If that was the end of the story, we could stop writing here. It could almost fit into a long headline: “Michael Danby erodes his credibility by accusing two Jews of antisemitism because they don’t agree with him on Israel”. We should add a personal interest — Danby has been vociferously criticising one of us for years, and attempted to stop publication of My Israel Question.
However, the story does not end there. Danby’s article does not only smear us as antisemites. Fellow travellers include newmatilda.com and Crikey.
At first, it seemed as though he would have been happy just to say they were “biased” and “partisan”. Danby gave an example of this “bias”: a Crikey contributor suggested Israel had moved to the Right in its last elections. Not so, says Danby — Kadima won more votes than anyone else. Kadima, founded by Ariel Sharon, is according to Danby, “centre-Left”. This was in an election that produced a Likud Prime Minister; where Avigdor Lieberman was the “kingmaker” courted by all sides, after being ridiculed by Labor’s Ehud Barak for not having shot any Arabs personally. According to Danby, that’s a move to the Left — and if you don’t think so, if you disagree that Avigdor Lieberman is an Arab-loving socialist, then you’re well on the way to being antisemitic in his book.
However, it is not just Danby’s accusations of bias and antisemitism that were incredible. Danby reveals that the B’nai B’rith “Anti-Defamation Commission (sic)” wrote a letter to newmatilda.com on the subject of the comments after the articles, and (one suspects, the important thing), the “partisan opinion” featured in the articles.
What’s that? The “Anti-Defamation Commission (sic again)” wrote to a magazine complaining about partisan coverage of Israel? Why did it do that? Suppose newmatilda.com ran articles criticising Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians every single day — why would that bother a supposedly anti-racist organisation?
In June 2009, the “ADC” group published a public notice on their site about newmatilda.com. However, according to Danby, they had privately written to the site’s editors about their “concerns” in April. Neither of us was informed of our alleged antisemitism by newmatilda.com or by the “ADC”. Indeed, if Danby is correct, it seems that the “ADC” has quietly, behind the scenes, pressured a magazine to stop printing “partisan” articles about Israel. The “ADC” apparently holds that criticising the Israeli Government is antisemitic, and no magazine or journal in Australia should engage in such activity.
We wondered if they had a different understanding of antisemitism to that accepted by most of society, so we had a look at the “ADC” website. They explain that antisemitism can take many forms. One “manifestation” is “attacks on the State of Israel”. Another manifestation is using the terms Zionist and Jew “interchangeably”. However, somehow they consider it confirmed that “antisemitism and anti-Zionism are one and the same.”
But if they consider all Jews to be Zionists, it seems the “ADC” is in danger of meeting its own criteria for being antisemitic. In fact, there are even stronger grounds than this for charging the “ADC” with antisemitism. Modern Zionism is a relatively recent phenomenon and took time to become established among Jewish communities. As these communities were not yet predominantly Zionist, the “ADC” should therefore consider most Jews 100 years ago to have been antisemitic.
Indeed, it seems that the “ADC” is involved in a conspiracy of antisemitism. According to them, it is antisemitic to talk of a “Jewish lobby”. To do so, they say, is to subscribe to an antisemitic conspiracy theory — the wacky view that “Jews use bullying and pressure behind the scenes to censor adverse opinions”.
Right. So an organisation supposedly devoted to fighting antisemitism and racism considers it antisemitic to suggest that the Jewish lobbies bully and “pressure behind the scenes to censor adverse opinions”. And in pursuit of this mandate to fight antisemitism, they did clearly pressure newmatilda.com behind the scenes, so that they would curtail their habit of publishing “adverse opinions”.
Our problem is that if we suggest the “ADC” has therefore done exactly the kind of thing that they deny happens, we will no doubt be guilty of even more antisemitism.
So let us return to our old friend Michael Danby. He suggests that a telltale sign of antisemitism is the three “D”s — “demonisation, delegitimation, and double standards”. Plainly, he has demonised and sought to delegitimise both of us. Is he guilty of any double standards? Yes, and they are glaring. Firstly, he complains regularly that people keep criticising Israel when there are lots of other democracies in the world we could be criticising. Okay, suppose we accept that Israel actually is a liberal democracy. Doesn’t he display this so-called double standard when he keeps praising it? What about democracy in Sweden? Or Norway? More seriously, what about Rudd’s “new friend” — the United Arab Emirates? Will Danby criticise the UAE’s dreadful suppression of human rights? Or Saudi Arabia’s? Will he help end Australian complicity in Indonesia’s crimes in West Papua? Does he support the US plan to install a former US ambassador as un-elected dictator of Afghanistan? Does he think Australia should be part of a war to colonise Afghanistan? If anyone is guilty of Danby’s definition of a double standard it is himself.
We consider it our duty to delegitimise all governments, everywhere, especially those who act in our name. That includes Rudd’s Government, which has supported Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians. It also includes the US, with whom we are in a military alliance. However, we have also criticised oppressive regimes elsewhere. One of us has written a book, The Blogging Revolution, about repression in China, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Iran, Egypt and Syria. In short, we “demonise” all governments, everywhere, and urge everyone to do likewise (full disclosure: one of us wrote an undergraduate thesis on anarchism).
But when it comes to Danby’s own beloved Holy State, he prefers to take the Walter Duranty approach. That is why he describes critics of Israel’s Government as “partisan” and “biased”, whereas on the other side he does not seem to think it a valid criticism to call Greg Sheridan an “Israeli propagandist”. Danby is so committed to a double standard in principle that he ridiculed Loewenstein’s suggestion that Jewish groups should condemn all forms of racism, not just antisemitism. Indeed, at the time of writing this, the Australian Jewish News has online interviews, on the subject: “What would you say to Jews who don’t think Israel should exist?” The first person says “I would feed you to the Arabs.” Danby and the “ADC” do not even notice this racism. Perhaps they have yet to discover that Arabs are humans too.
So, since he’s guilty of the three “D”s, should we conclude that Danby is the real antisemite? Of course not. The problem is that Danby and the “ADC” ignore the real dangers of racial hatred in their desire to use the charge of “antisemitism” as a political weapon. Danby and the “ADC”’s quarrel is not with double standards — their quarrel is with all criticisms of Israel, which they choose to call antisemitic. This is their way of preventing critical discussion of Israel’s actions, such as its most recent onslaught on Gaza, or its savage siege.
Sadly, this problem is not unique to Danby and the “ADC”. The problem is more widespread. As we have written in the past, the major organisations which identify as Jewish — not Zionist — nevertheless see it as their duty to uncritically support almost everything the Israeli Government does. A consensus has emerged within these organisations (across much of the political spectrum), that those who hold the wrong opinions on Israel or Zionism are to be labelled antisemitic.
As we’ve said, when Israel apologists treat antisemitism in this frivolous manner, the danger is that they trivialise real hatred towards Jewish people. We strongly believe antisemitism needs to be taken seriously. It would be good if Michael Danby and the “ADC” thought so too.
The following review of my book The Blogging Revolution appears in the latest edition of Harvard University’s Nieman Reports:
An Australian blogger interviews dissident bloggers worldwide, and in his book he explains why what they do matters and who is trying to stop them.
By Danny Schechter
I am a blogger, a media critic, and a human rights-oriented journalist. I am also a fan of Australian blogger, freelance writer, and author Antony Loewenstein, because even as he profiles brave online journalists and writers in his “The Blogging Revolution,” he doesn’t leave his voice in the background. Nor does he avoid the deeper media crisis that creates all of the reasons anyone needs for appreciating the value and importance of the proliferating blogosphere.
When I started my News Dissector blog 10 years ago, blogging was an emerging media form. No longer, and here are U.S. stats that offer a glimpse at the profound changes that have taken place (with more added every day):
* Now more than 12 million American adults maintain a blog.
*More than 147 million American adults use the Internet; 57 million read blogs. More than one-third of today’s blog readers started reading them in 2005 or 2006.
*More than 120,000 blogs are created each day: Nine percent of Internet users claim to have created one, and included among these people are six percent of the U.S. adult population.
*Among bloggers, 1.7 million Americans list making money as one of the reasons they blog. Of companies surveyed, 89 percent indicate that blogs will be more important to their business during the next five years. A bit more than half of blog readers shop online.
*Technorati tracks more than 70 million blogs.
*Nearly one quarter of the Web’s 100 most popular sites are blogs. There are more than 1.4 million new blog posts made each day.
*Blog readers average 23 hours online each week.
Whew. With the emergence of so many people expressing themselves so vigorously as part of the Web’s daily media stream, the relationship between their engagement and the established media’s decline becomes abundantly apparent.
The revolution brought about by blogging—which Loewenstein dedicates his book to exploring—focuses on how blogs are being used by “the imprisoned dissidents everywhere.” He is clearly driven in writing this book by the mission of calling our attention to the struggle many dissidents face in countries where it is difficult—and dangerous—to try to get heard in these repressive environments. Governments would not crack down on the Internet and suppress its voices, if bloggers are not articulating messages and information that they find offensive or feel threatened by.
At the same time, Loewenstein is not unmindful of the challenges facing scribblers like himself who live in places where speech is not harassed. As he writes about our changing media, he speaks to issues of corporate consolidation and the economic decline that have led to deep cutbacks of reporters and the dumbing down of news outlets. Given these connections Loewenstein is making about the role blogging now plays throughout the world, it is significant that many news organizations that initially criticized bloggers as not being “real journalists” have now opened their pages to their staff blogs in a mode of “if you can’t fight them, join them.”
At the same time, what real journalism is remains unresolved—as if it ever could be fully defined. In the opening paragraph of his book, Loewenstein offers a quote from the now offline and in-exile Iraqi blogger Riverbend, with whom I’ve corresponded. (Disclosure: This blogger wrote a blurb on one of my books and is quoted in “When News Lies.”) She is quoted as saying:
Bloggers are not exactly journalists, which is a mistake many people make. They expect us to be dispassionate and unemotional about topics such as occupation and war. That objective lack of emotion is impossible because a blog in itself stems from passion.
There isn’t one way to commit journalism. We know that in countries other than ours, reporters are expected to bring their personal perspectives to coverage. Nor is the AP Stylebook a universal guide.
The writers, diarists, commentators, artists and activists Lowenstein invites us to visit in his good read of a “blog around the world” book are a diverse lot, though each of them is challenging government and pushing back against orthodox ideas. He wasn’t content to work from secondary sources. As he traveled to meet bloggers in Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Cuba, he found an engaged, talented, sometimes tenacious decentralized tribe of committed and caring people, who speak in many tongues as they confront common enemies in the form of authorities who want them to disappear.
The remarkable diversity among these bloggers is what makes reading about them so interesting. It isn’t possible to boil down their words into sound bites. Each confronts a specific situation, and Loewenstein spends enough time with each to profile them within their circumstance’s context—and thereby offers readers memorable moments and close observations about the culture and their experiences as well as their aspirations. It also helps that Loewenstein writes so well and knows how to tell a good story.
Restricting Online Content
Closer to home, Loewenstein explains how big U.S.-based technology companies have been complicit in helping governments monitor and restrict online content, especially in China, where its Great Wall is now the government’s firewall. His discussion about how American-made software—he names Google, Yahoo!, Cisco Systems, and Microsoft in this vein—has assisted with police prosecution of bloggers highlights the controversial intersection of business interests vs. the bedrock American principle of protecting freedom of speech.
All too often, such corporate practices are not the focus of human rights advocates, such as the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders, who tend to be more concerned about government actions. In these cases, however, these organizations published detailed accounts from this cyber battleground and sent out action alerts to urge people to channel their outrage into action on behalf of bloggers facing persecution and jail. This is sadly a familiar story, even if an ongoing one.
On occasion, courageous bloggers are given awards for their work. Yet when this does happen, few U.S. news organizations send reporters to interview them or link to their blogs on their own Web sites. Rather than collaborate with them as colleagues, they and their words are marginalized even as crippling cuts in foreign reporting are happening at newspapers and television stations. At the same time, newsroom managers are not acting to make their international coverage more inclusive and decentralized, given the amazing resources that now exist online. There is one news outlet, GlobalVoicesonline.org, where international bloggers’ words are being published and, when necessary, translated into English.
“The Blogging Revolution” is not a guide on how to blog nor does it explain why so many people read blogs and write comments on them. Had Loewenstein done so, there would have been plenty of challenges and dilemmas for him to explore—difficulties that go with maintaining a blog and marketing it to find an audience in what’s become a very, very crowded arena. Instead, Loewenstein took on an original topic and did so as a global journalist with a focus squarely on some of the big issues of our time. In short, he has written a book that tells us why blogs matter.
News Dissector Danny Schechter, a 1978 Nieman Fellow, blogs on Mediachannel.org. His book “Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal” was published by Cosimo Books in 2008 and reviewed in the Spring 2009 issue of Nieman Reports. He can be reached at dissector@mediachannel.org.
Dawn is Pakistan’s leading English language paper. Today it publishes a review by Mustafa Qadri of my book, The Blogging Revolution:
Hot on the heels of his last book, My Israel Question (a history of the Israeli occupation of Palestine from the perspective of an anti-Zionist Jewish Australian), freelance journalist Antony Loewenstein delves into the ‘Blogging Revolution’ with a book of the same title.
The greatest virtue of this book is that it is written not from the distant comforts of the West but on the ground in six fascinating and misunderstood countries. In Iran, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and China, the reader is taken on a journey through the lives of a variety of people, including but not limited to activists, seeking to engage their society in a social debate on a range of topics from sex to religion and popular culture.
It is a pioneering work on a topic that is rarely discussed by the mainstream media despite the now ubiquitous presence of every major news source on the World Wide Web. The Blogging Revolution should resonate well with us in Pakistan given our own experience with internet censorship. It was only a few years ago that former president Musharraf banned the popular youtube.com and blogger websites in an attempt to crack down on political dissent. One wonders how an independent observer like Loewenstein would view the state of our media.
Loewenstein catalogues the liberating features of the internet, such as the free access of information and perspectives not available from traditional media or the government. But he cautions against any easy conclusions that the web automatically creates a freer society.
He notes, for example, the astounding statistic from the Committee to Protect Journalists that 40 per cent of journalists jailed around the world are web-based reporters. And in China internet technology has been used to crack down on descent, often with the collusion of western multinationals like Google and Yahoo!. In the case of Yahoo! it included colluding with Chinese authorities in the arrest of a number of journalists critical of the government.
China has cracked down on internet dissent more systematically than any other country. Every new internet user has to register with the police within a month of opening an account while 40,000 bureaucrats monitor internet usage daily.
However the country’s response to the internet boom, and the free flow of information and opinions it promises, is far from monolithic. One out of every 30 Chinese is a blogger — internet-speak for one who keeps an online diary — and with close to 230 million internet users, many foreign news websites are available.
Often censorship is a process of negotiation, as is the case for Todou, China’s largest online video site. Authorities contact the company at least once a week to complain about content, but sometimes Todou manages to negotiate partial censorship. Even so, economic freedom has progressed inordinately faster than social ones. ‘Money is the new God,’ an advertising executive in Shanghai explains, ‘as long as political content was generally avoided.’
As one author tells him in Shanghai, for most Chinese internet censorship is not the most pressing concern. The internet, Loewenstein nevertheless concludes, has enabled an unprecedented level of democratisation in China.
There are a few surprises in the book. Contrary to what many may have guessed, Iran’s online communities are the most robust in the Middle East, even if restrictions on freedom of speech there also remain robust. But perhaps we ought not to be surprised. Literacy in Iran is 90 per cent and more than half of university graduates are women.
There are one million bloggers in Iran and Technorati, a popular search engine, lists Farsi as one of the top five languages on the internet. He meets bloggers and newspaper editors both secular and religious.
Even religious hardliners have created blogs. So too has former Iranian vice-president under Mohammad Khatamei, Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a noted reformist. He reminds the author, and the reader, that Iranians do not want ‘western-style’ reforms but change on their own terms even if leaves room for much inconsistency on social reforms, particularly with respect to the role of women in public life.
The recent conviction of an Iranian-American journalist for spying is a reminder of the existing risks to journalists in the country. The editor of the student magazine Chelcheragh, for example, explains that they receive a weekly fax from the ministry of culture noting what cannot be discussed — things like protests by teachers or women, or police brutality. Internet service providers also self-censor by filtering many words deemed subversive or pornographic.
Even so, Iranians continue to debate some of the more controversial and hence relevant topics in ‘code’. Revealingly, not one of the Iranians mentioned speak lovingly of the regime created following the 1979 revolution.
Political discourse in Syria is not as robust as in neighbouring Iran. Nor is the internet infrastructure, or filtering for that matter, although censorship and other government restrictions on criticism of the regime remain strong. That may have more to do with the government’s relative ignorance of the new technology — as evidenced by the story of a Syrian minister who asked if he needed to drive his car to a new government website.
There is an incredible lack of internet facility in Cuba. In no other country visited is internet usage and infrastructure as poor as it is here.
Bloggers, though few in number, give voice to a populace frustrated by a regime’s failure to address crippling poverty and unemployment.
The internet is one of the few outlets for Saudis to freely engage with one another and the opposite sex, the outside world, and politics. Twenty per cent of them are online. But social and political expression on the internet isn’t without its risks — Fould Al Farhan, for instance, whom Loewenstein meets in Jeddah, was jailed for five months for allegedly campaigning for the release of activists.
In Egypt, we learn that the Muslim Brotherhood has become a measure of the level and nature of discontent — contrary to what most western commentary asserts, political Islam in this country is a bulwark of the pro-democracy movement.
Ironically the repressive Mubarak regime, which routinely imprisons bloggers, journalists, and political activists, may well create the conditions for its violent overthrow by more radical religious activists.
Yet there are more progressive voices too, and their equally violent crackdown by the government belies the moderate tag given to the country.
There are several messages in this book. One of is that blogs and other independent sources of information and opinion on the internet cannot replace the mainstream media with their resources and global reach.
But, collectively, they can give unparalleled access to our increasingly globalised world. With virtual unanimity, the people featured in the book express the view that greater rule of law and freedom will come to their country in spite of the West rather than because of it.
Through the journeys described in the book one is left with a quiet sense of hope — that despite the barriers between peoples, aspirations remain largely the same everywhere. ‘Technology,’ the author concludes, ‘never brings true reform, only people ever do.’
Sadly, many of the countries below that repress bloggers are the same nations I feature in my book, The Blogging Revolution:
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has just released a list of the ten worst countries in which to blog. Topping the list is Burma, followed closely by Iran, Syria, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Tunisia, China, Turkmenistan, and Egypt.
The UN’s anti-racism conference continues in Geneva but it’s hard to see how this event will achieve anything other than an even greater split between the West and the rest.
The Australian media has covered the event in a fairly predictable way (and only the public, through letter writing, has allowed the debate to flourish).
For mainstream Jewish groups, their suffering is all that matters, their pain, their issues, their oppression. The Palestinians may be under Israeli occupation, largely supported by the Jewish Diaspora, but Arabs should really just stop whinging about it.
Here’s the latest.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who allegedly excised the worst form of Holocaust denial from his speech, has been barred from speaking at a Swiss University due to Zionist pressure. Frankly, the man should be allowed to speak, so he can be challenged strongly, not least encouraged to read some history books about World War II. Let’s not forget, though, that Iran is far more pragmatic than her critics ever want to admit.
A number of pro-Ahmadinejad bloggers praised his speech, however:
Madreseh Ma (”Our School”) says [fa] that the Durban conference became Ahmadinejad’s conference. “What Ahmadinejad did can not be wiped off history’s memory. Now the West is afraid of Iran participating in any conference on racism.”
Paberhnegan (”Bare Foot People”) writes [fa] that Ahmadinejad’s performance in Geneva mad the Iranian people rejoiced. “He does not need to do any publicity for his electoral campaign. What he does is the best publicity.”
Israeli bloggers were less supportive.
The Israeli press is reporting that the Foreign Ministry is pleased with the shambles of Durban (thanks in no small part to Ahmadinejad).
A progressive pro-Israel lobbyist in the US, MJ Rosenberg, seems to have missed the point of the Iranian leader’s speech. The fact that many Western diplomats walked out of his speech didn’t mean the world regarded him as a “boob”. In fact, the vast majority of the delegates sat in their seats and didn’t move an inch. Ahmadinejad is seen as a hero to many precisely because so many in the West refuse to even hear him speak. Short-term grabs for TV are not a substitute for robust policy towards the Islamic Republic.
It’s also interesting to note that the Orthodox anti-Zionists Neturei Karta protested in Jerusalem yesterday, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, and claimed “Zionists cynically abuse the Holocaust for their own purposes”. It’s hard to disagree with this assessment. Although Darfur has become the issue du jour for many Zionist fanatics (not because they care about the people there but because it takes the spotlight away from Palestine), too many Jews continue to rant and rave about the uniqueness of the Jewish Holocaust while at the same denying or ignoring the crimes being committed by Israel in Palestine. Witness a piece in today’s Melbourne Age on this very point. This shows a very selective concern for human rights.
The purpose of Durban remains essential, namely finding ways to address genuine human rights issues across the globe. Israel should not be protected from criticism or abuse. It’s a normal country, like any other. This is not 1939 Berlin. We are constantly told by Zionists that Israel is a strong and robust democracy…yet the world’s leading body, the UN, is apparently not allowed to even talk about abuses in Palestine.
Nobody in their right mind would suggest that Libya, Iran or Cuba should lecture the world on human rights, but neither should the US, Britain or Israel. Everybody’s hands are dirty.
At least most of the world can understand the reasons the West is in the dock; its ongoing support for dictatorships and occupations everywhere.
Israel’s brutal military occupation of Palestine – with no end in sight – is a legitimate subject of mature discussion. Who’s afraid of that?
My following article appears today in Online Opinion:
As a journalist who spends the vast majority of my life online, the seemingly never-ending debates about the future of the media and newspapers can be exhausting and predictable.
The same mantras are heard over and over again. Where will the news come from when newsprint dies? Our democracy is in jeopardy if more people don’t engage with the news of the day. Bloggers are parasites. Young people have less interest in investigative, time-consuming reporting. What kinds of jobs will be available for the journalism students of tomorrow? The old business model of almost solely relying on advertising is dying a painful death.
All of these questions are relevant and necessary but ultimately circular and indulgent. It’s hard to disagree with the recent conclusion of Washington Post columnist Michael Kinsley: “If General Motors goes under, there will still be cars. And if the New York Times disappears, there will still be news.”
But what kinds of news?
For the vast majority of the world, relying on Western news service is rarely considered because of the narrow focus and parochialism of their global coverage. I remember hearing Middle East correspondent for the Independent, Robert Fisk, telling me that he would dine in the evening with senior reporters from the Washington Post, New York Times and other leading American publications and hear compelling stories and honest discussions about the realities of the Middle East. By the next morning, however, the same journalists had published articles that avoided tackling the key issues in the region. Bravery was saved for private conversations over glasses of expensive wine.
With notable exceptions, the American mainstream media shies away from examining the brutal reality of Palestine. The Israeli occupation is almost invisible. The influence of the Zionist lobby on the political and media elite deemed to be conspiratorial.
Witness the recent case of Charles Freeman to chair the National Intelligence Council, forced to resign after extreme pressure from the Israel lobby. But it was only online through blogs that the issue publicly existed. The majors, such as the New York Times, only registered the case after Freeman pulled out. Big media was deliberately asleep at the wheel.
The question in the Freeman wasn’t so much a lack of resources to report the facts – after all, the story didn’t require overseas travel, as all the players were in the US – but a lack of will. Much of the debate about the crisis in old media (and news about the closure of institutions like the Boston Globe is certainly concerning) overly focuses on a belief that simply keeping newspapers alive will continue to guarantee democracy and transparency. In my view, it will not. Debates over “public trust” journalism are therefore essential. New models are already emerging.
In fact, what we should be asking is whether the old models are adequate to sustain reporting in the modern age. As Salon’s Glenn Greenwald recently wrote, far too many journalists play by the rules of anonymity, allowing the corporate, media and governmental elite the luxury of sanctioned links. Democracy isn’t served by far too many journalists seeing their role as integral to the establishment set.
For these reasons alone, we shouldn’t be grieving for the death of newspapers, as the vast majority of reporters working there have long viewed themselves as players, desperate to be liked and feted by colleagues, editors, politicians and media advisers.
Greenwald, speaking last week on the PBS program hosted by Bill Moyers, explained the problems with this arrangement in the US:
It’s actually the fact that reporters and media stars and corporate and establishment journalists are so embedded into the establishment as a cultural and sociological matter. That they’re so completely insular and out of touch from what public opinion actually is. And polls show that huge numbers of issues and positions that are held by large numbers of Americans are ones that are virtually never heard in our media discussions.
This situation is not something that we should worry about losing. If this is the bulk of the mainstream media in 2009, alternatives are surely needed.
Of course, bloggers can be co-opted as easily as corporate journalists and a growing number are. But independence in the modern age can stand for something other than exclusion from press conferences and parties. It can mean integrity, accountability and trust, all factors sorely lacking in the public’s attitude towards the mainstream press. It’s difficult to feel sorry for old media companies that failed to adapt quickly to the internet age, a time where asking what the readers want, rather than just the publisher and journalist, is central. Perhaps non-profit organisations are the way forward.
Israel/Palestine is one issue that demands a new media approach: likewise many other conflicts around the world. Indigenous voices remain hidden. When was the last time we read articles in our newspapers written by Iraqis, Afghanis, Pakistanis, Palestinians or Tamils? Hardly ever. It’s as if Westerners, most often men, have to visit a country for a perspective to be heard. This is an issue I examine more deeply in my book, The Blogging Revolution.
One of the key reasons I wrote the work was to highlight the vast gaps in Western media knowledge when it comes to countries such as Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Syria and Egypt. Blogs were one of the ways to understand a culture largely hidden behind the iron curtains of “repression”, “dictatorship” or enemy of Washington.
For many years now, the best sources on the Middle East have largely not been the Western establishment press. A US blog such as Mondoweiss gives daily information about Israel/Palestine and Jewish identity lacking from most mainstream papers. Israeli paper Haaretz shows that honest reporting on the West Bank occupation and Gaza is possible (and the Zionist lobby therefore recognises the paper as a threat). Any number of other bloggers – such as this Israeli detailing the devastating effects of checkpoints on Palestinians – have almost replaced the old sources by necessity. If corporate reporters won’t report the truth – because of fear, bias, intimidation, gutlessness or owner’s rules – then blogs will fill the space.
The last ten years have seen an information revolution of unparalleled proportions. The coming decade is guaranteed to be as challenging. Rather than worrying about journalistic practice, less reporters doing more work and diminished democracy, we should be celebrating what’s possible.
And create our own media today.
Like so many issues, the American public is far ahead of the vast majority of the political and media elite (despite Obama’s recent, tentative overtures towards Cuba):
A majority of Americans feel that it is time to try a new approach to Cuba, according to a national poll by WorldPublicOpinion.org. More specifically, the public favors lifting the ban on travel to Cuba for Americans and re-establishing diplomatic relations as well as other changes. By a wide margin the American public believes that increasing trade and travel will lead Cuba to become more open and democratic rather than having the effect of strengthening the Communist regime…
A majority (59%) of the American public endorses the view that it is “time to try a new approach to Cuba, because Cuba may be ready for a change”. Thirty-nine percent of Americans endorsed the opposing position on this issue, that “the Communist Party is still in control; therefore the US should continue to isolate Cuba.”