Antony Loewenstein

This is classic mainstream “journalism” in the Washington Post. America has the right to intervene anywhere, haven’t you heard?

The CIA is expected to maintain a large clandestine presence in Iraq and Afghanistan long after the departure of conventional U.S. troops as part of a plan by the Obama administration to rely on a combination of spies and Special Operations forces to protect U.S. interests in the two longtime war zones, U.S. officials said.

U.S. officials said that the CIA’s stations in Kabul and Baghdad will probably remain the agency’s largest overseas outposts for years, even if they shrink from record staffing levels set at the height of American efforts in those nations to fend off insurgencies and install capable governments.

The withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq in December has moved the CIA’s emphasis there toward more traditional espionage — monitoring developments in the increasingly antagonistic government, seeking to suppress al-Qaeda’s affiliate in the country and countering the influence of Iran.

In Afghanistan, the CIA is expected to have a more aggressively operational role. U.S. officials said the agency’s paramilitary capabilities are seen as tools for keeping the Taliban off balance, protecting the government in Kabul and preserving access to Afghan airstrips that enable armed CIA drones to hunt al-Qaeda remnants in Pakistan.

As President Obama seeks to end a decade of large-scale conflict, the emerging assignments for the CIA suggest it will play a significant part in the administration’s search for ways to exert U.S. power in more streamlined and surgical ways.

As a result, the CIA station in Kabul — which at one point had responsibility for as many as 1,000 agency employees in Afghanistan — is expected to expand its collaboration with Special Operations forces when the drawdown of conventional troops begins.

Navy Adm. William McRaven, the Special Operations commander who directed the raid that killed Osama bin Laden last year, signaled the transition during remarks Tuesday in Washington. “I have no doubt that Special Operations will be the last to leave Afghanistan,” McRaven said.

The CIA declined to comment. But current and former intelligence officials quibbled with the accuracy of McRaven’s assertion.

“I would say the agency will be the last to leave,” said a CIA veteran with extensive experience in Afghanistan and Pakistan. “We were the first to get there” after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the former official said.

Interesting comment here, and undeniably true, in the UK Press Gazette. There are so few truly courageous journalists from the Murdoch stable who would know this to be true but refuse to speak out; gotta pay the mortgage on that charming 4 bedroom place, remember?

Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre yesterday said other Fleet Street editors are not given freedom to edit and that Britain could not have invaded Iraq without the support of News International proprietor Rupert Murdoch.

Dacre revealed that he has turned down opportunities to edit The Times and the Telegraph because he believes that other proprietors would not have given him the freedom that Daily Mail and General Trustowner Lord Rothermere has.

He said: “Rupert Murdoch has been a very great proprietor in his time, but I don’t think he would have given me the freedom I wished to have as an editor…

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that he had strong views which he communicated to his editors and expected them to be followed. The classic case is the Iraq War.

“I’m not sure that the Blair government or Tony Blair would have been able to take the British people to war if it hadn’t been for the implacable support provided by the Murdoch papers. There’s no doubt that came from Mr Murdoch himself.”

In written evidence, Dacre expanded on the theme of editorial independence:

“In my time I have turned down editorships of The Times and The Telegraph. One reason I did so is that at the Mail I enjoy total freedom from proprietorial and managerial interference, a freedom that is not necessarily found in other newspaper groups.

This isn’t me. Really. Truly:

Nir Rosen, one of the finest independent journalists around, sends the following message to the essential Angry Arab:

so media accounts of yesterday’s fighting in Homs are not exactly accurate. they make it seem as if this is Hama in 1982 all over again and Homs has fallen. In fact the armed opposition controls more territory in Homs than ever before and yesterday’s attack did not result in any loss of territory. Yesterday opposition fighters defeated the regime checkpoint at the Qahira roundabout and they seized a tank or armored personnel carrier. This followed similar successes against the Bab Dreib checkpoint and the Bustan al Diwan checkpoint. In response to this last provocation yesterday the regime started shelling with mortars from the Qalaa on the high ground and the State Security headquarters in Ghota. a couple of stray mortars also fell in the Qusur neighborhood. shelling started at 8:30 PM and lasted until 4 AM. There was no fighting in Homs, just shelling from these safe locations (from the point of view of the regime), suggesting they are unable to actually attack Khaldiyeh with regime fighters. its an interesting new phase. also, no opposition fighters were killed in the attack. and up to 130 people in Khaldiyeh were killed and 800 wounded (like i said not fighters). now thats a lot of people but if you were watching the news yesterday you would think that Homs was destroyed while in fact this attack can also be seen as a sign of the regime’s weakness in the city. i have never seen a conflict covered as poorly as this one, with less interest in empirically collected data and more reliance on hysteria and manipulation and rumor.

Mainstream support for Wikileaks is often far removed from the daily news cycle. Many journalists seem to feel uncomfortable backing Wikileaks (and Julian Assange) because of his ongoing legal issues, forgetting the key miracle behind the site; the profound challenges to the established information order and exposing the sycophancy between journalists and corporate power.

I was asked, alongside a number of other people including John Pilger, Noam Chomsky and Greens Senator Scott Ludlam, to speak about what Wikileaks means for me, as part of a global series called Did You Have Any Idea?

DID YOU HAVE ANY IDEA? – with Antony LOEWNSTEIN (Part 2) from CaTV on Vimeo.

Fox News style TV brought to you by billionaires. That’s real “democracy” (and the inspiration is that glorious lover of free debate, Rupert Murdoch):

Michael Hastings, author of the stunning new book The Operators, talks to Harpers:

4. Your book pays at least as much attention to the Pentagon press corps and its relationship with power as it does to Stanley McChrystal and his team, and you write that after your article ran, you found that you had few problems dealing with military and political figures, but your relations with many of your fellow journalists had been poisoned. Why?

The original article contained an implicit criticism of a few of my colleagues, so I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised by the backlash. They would have ignored the implicit criticisms if they could have, but the story garnered too much attention. All of a sudden Jon Stewart is on the Daily Show saying,“Hey, you other guys suck.” I think that embarrassed a number of folks who weren’t used to being embarrassed. They are accustomed to being the unquestioned journalistic authorities of these wars. And, as a general rule, war correspondents are a competitive and catty breed. Put ten war reporters at a dinner table and one of them leaves the room, seven others at the table will tell you the guy is a dick, she misbehaves with sources, he’s a sketchy womanizer, he can’t be trusted, he makes stuff up, she doesn’t deserve this or that. Usually—it’s such a small, tight-knit community—that kind of dirty laundry is kept secret among the “luckless tribe,” as one reporter once described us. That’s the micro level.

On the macro level, there was something much larger than myself, or Rolling Stone, or McChrystal. It had to do with how the media, as a whole, had been covering these wars. And despite the best efforts of a number of excellent journalists, on stories from WMDs to the escalation in Afghanistan, we’ve done a pretty spotty job, I think. I also came to consider the Pentagon press corps not as a watchdog of the Pentagon, but an extension of the Pentagon. This was a critical insight for me.

Robert Fisk explains (and mainstream journalists, including on ABC Radio’s AM this morning, who continually repeat White House and Tel Aviv propaganda against Tehran, should take note):

Turning round a story is one of the most difficult tasks in journalism – and rarely more so than in the case of Iran. Iran, the dark revolutionary Islamist menace. Shia Iran, protector and manipulator of World Terror, of Syria and Lebanon and Hamas and Hezbollah. Ahmadinejad, the Mad Caliph. And, of course, Nuclear Iran, preparing to destroy Israel in a mushroom cloud of anti-Semitic hatred, ready to close the Strait of Hormuz – the moment the West’s (or Israel’s) forces attack.

This morning I was interviewed on Radio Adelaide about the limits (if any) of free speech in Australia:

It’s festival season, the Fringe, Adelaide Festival, WOMAD – and we’re all picking out which events we’ll go to – but what about the neo-Nazi aligned Hammered festival?

It’s to be held in Queensland– unsurprisingly it will be heavy metal music.

The festival is organised by the Southern Cross Hammerskins and ‘white resistance’ group, Blood and Honour Australia, which states it’s mission is to “secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”

The event be on April 21 – suspiciously close to Hitler’s birthday.

There have been calls to have it banned but the Labor government has refused to, saying it can’t stop ‘morons’ gathering but it will step in if anyone in attendance incites violence or commits racial vilification.

Tim Brunero spoke to Antony Loewenstein, a blogger, activist, author whose works include My Israel Question and online media contributor for New Matilda and Crikey about the controversy surrounding the event.

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The recent murder of an Iranian nuclear scientist by (probably) Israel or America was a huge international story but most of the Western media coverage refused to call the killing by its rightful name, murder.

I was asked by Al Jazeera’s The Listening Post to comment about this press issue (my comment appears around 8:53):

Last night I appeared on ABCTV’s The Drum (video here) alongside Joe Stella and The Punch editor Tory Maguire.

We talked about the faltering global economy – why oh why is the IMF treated with such respect after years of failed forecasts and neo-liberal “reforms” that have only caused misery for millions globally? – and the proposed preamble for the Australian constitution that recognises the First Australians. Despite the fact that both major sides of politics support the racist Northern Territory Intervention (under the guise of “helping Aborigines”) the preamble should be backed as one small step towards equality before the law.

The question of racism in Australia is a live one and I argued that deep-seated mistrust of Muslims and minorities was rampant. Any more than other countries globally? Hard to say but it’s foolish to deny that media players and politicians regularly play the race card to draw votes. The Murdoch press are some of the worst offenders in this area, routinely demonising the poor and disadvantaged.

The main discussion was around Iran and its alleged nuclear weapon’s program (of which there is no evidence). I stated that most of the mainstream media, the Zionist lobby, Israel-firsters, many politicians and commentators are now leading us to yet another Middle East conflict. Few questions are being asked and White House and Zionist spin (both with a history of lies) are taken at face value. The regime in Tehran is a dictatorial outrage but military strikes against the country would be illegal, immoral, counter-productive and have nothing to do with nuclear weapons but to ensure the American/Israeli/Gulf state hegemony in the Middle East.

Amazing and revealing (via JTA):

 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s two greatest enemies are The New York Times and Haaretz, the editor of The Jerusalem Post said in a speech.

Steve Linde, addressing a conference in Tel Aviv of the Women’s International Zionist Organization, said Wednesday that Netanyahu made the remark to him about the newspapers at a private meeting “a couple of weeks ago” at the prime minister’s office in Tel Aviv.

“He said, ‘You know, Steve, we have two main enemies,’ ” Linde said, according to a recording of the WIZO speech provided to JTA. “And I thought he was going to talk about, you know, Iran, maybe Hamas. He said, ‘It’s The New York Times and Haaretz.’ He said, ‘They set the agenda for an anti-Israel campaign all over the world. Journalists read them every morning and base their news stories … on what they read in The New York Times and Haaretz.’ ”

Linde said he and other participants at the meeting asked Netanyahu whether he really thought that the media had that strong a role in shaping world opinion on Israel, and the prime minister replied, “Absolutely.”

The Prime Minister’s Office could not be reached immediately for comment.