Antony Loewenstein

Who killed crusading Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya?

(More on this remarkable woman here.)

This week is the second anniversary of the assassination of crusading Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. Reactions have been fraught with anger. Major questions remain over her death, not least the likely involvement of senior political figures.

Hundreds of people gathered in central Moscow to remember her work and life.

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and my interview covered many areas, not least the reasons behind her writings, the dangers she faced in doing so and the kind of journalism she strived to achieve.

Fearless reporting inspired me deeply.

My following essay appears in the Guardian today:

The United States, protector of the civilised world:

The Bush administration is pushing through a broad array of foreign weapons deals as it seeks to rearm Iraq, Afghanistan, contain North Korea and Iran, and solidify ties with onetime Russian allies. and

From tanks, helicopters and fighter jets to missiles, remotely piloted aircraft and even warships, the Department of Defense has agreed so far this fiscal year to sell or transfer more than $32 billion in weapons and other military equipment to foreign governments, compared with $12 billion in 2005.

The trend, which started in 2006, is most pronounced in the Middle East, but it reaches into northern Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe and even Canada, through dozens of deals that senior Bush administration officials say they are confident will both tighten military alliances and combat terrorism.

“This is not about being gunrunners,” said Bruce S. Lemkin, the Air Force deputy under secretary who is helping to coordinate many of the biggest sales. “This is about building a more secure world.”

The kind of “secure world” that suspects Washington or Israel may have been behind 9/11 and an Afghani population that deeply resents being killed by NATO in the name of “freedom.”

Despite many regimes actively filtering the internet – issues I cover extensively in my new book – a Russian minister has suggested that it’s futile:

There will be no censorship in the Internet, Russian Communications and Information Technology Minister Igor Shchyogolev told students of the Moscow State University’s Journalism Department on Monday.

As state regulation of the Internet is problematic technically, it is necessary to promote self-regulation, the minister said.

Despite this apparently positive comment, freedom of speech and the press in Russia is declining at a worrying rate.

The industry of death can always find new friends:

Russian arms exports may reach at least $6.1 billion by the end of 2008, a senior official at Rosoboronexport, Russia’s largest state arms exporter, said on Friday.

Russia has doubled annual arms exports since 2000 to $7 billion last year, becoming the world’s second-largest exporter of conventional weapons after the United States.

Ali Abunimah, Bitterlemons International, September 4:

In the wake of Russia’s counterattack against the Georgian invasion of the breakaway region of South Ossetia last month, Turkish President Abdullah Gul observed that the era when the United States alone could set the world agenda had ended. “I don’t think you can control all the world from one center,” he said, “There are big nations. There are huge populations. There is unbelievable economic development in some parts of the world.” Instead of “unilateral actions,” Gul called for states to “act all together, make common decisions and have consultations with the world. A new world order . . . should emerge.” Even if the US remains the world’s most powerful country, it is a diminished force and time is not on its side.

These developments have major implications for Israelis, Palestinians and the broader region. For Israel, Georgia represents another in a series of setbacks and embarrassments. Israel attempted to downplay its involvement for fear that Russia would step up support to Israel’s adversaries in retaliation. In recent years, hundreds of millions of dollars of Israeli weapons and training had poured into Georgia–where the US has major energy and “strategic” interests–along with over two billion dollars of American military support. Israel played a similar role during the Cold War, arming at America’s behest the apartheid regime in South Africa and the extreme right-wing US-backed regimes in Central America. In order to shore up its own American support, as well as for economic gain, Israel always does its part to help its patron.

My latest column for New Matilda is about the ways in which the web can challenge dictatorships around the globe and the complicity of Western firms in assisting repression:

With the Beijing Olympics now a distant memory — and commentators wondering whether the event will herald greater openness in the Communist nation — local internet users are already reporting increased online censorship. As lawyer and legal blogger Liu Xiaoyuan recounted last week:

“Yesterday, I was interviewed by some foreign media; they wanted me to talk about issues of press freedom and freedom of speech during the Olympics. During the Olympics, authorities stopped blocking foreign media websites, and we were free to browse them, this is definitely a big step forward. But, controls on internet speech are tighter than they were before, and many things cannot be talked about; even posts like this one will be deleted. What I didn’t expect is that now that the Olympics are over, internet speech still hasn’t [been] let go.”

There has also been extensive online chatter about China’s medal haul in Beijing and the inevitable comparison with the US, including a pithy challenge to America’s obesity culture. Despite China now having the world’s largest online community — 250 million and growing at around six million new users per month — the Communist Party has started to recognise the potential health dangers of new technology (and not just the increased weight of users): late last week a leading Chinese legislator announced that about four million Chinese youngsters were addicted to the internet, attracted by “unhealthy” online games.

Meanwhile, the recent war between Georgia and Russia — in many ways a proxy battle between the Russia and the West — proved the effectiveness of bloggers in deconstructing the realities behind the headlines. Russian bloggers regularly use LiveJournal, a social networking blogging tool, and during the conflict we were treated to a relatively unfiltered perspective, radically different to the pro-Kremlin line in the Russian state media.

All sides issued exaggerated propaganda, but some Russians, despite the vast majority of the country supporting President Dimitri Medvedev’s offensive, were more considered. Journalist Michael Idov wrote, “Russia is a society of conspiracy theorists. In fact, the notion that politics is mere theatre and policy is determined via backroom collusion is so central to the Russian worldview that ‘theorist’ is perhaps too weak a word. Russia is a society of conspiracy axiomists.” Georgian bloggers were desperate to be heard, too.

In Turkey, over 450 websites recently joined in solidarity to protest the state’s increasing censorship of mainstream sites, such as YouTube (again available after being temporarily banned for allegedly insulting Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the modern Turkish state).

A public prosecution’s office in Egypt announced in late August () that a blogger held in Cairo’s Tora prison for a month should be released immediately. Police accused the blogger, 21-year-old mass communications student Mohamed Refaat Bayyoumy, of being a member of the banned Muslim Brotherhood, and charged him with possession of literature promoting the organisation. In a separate case, a blogger imprisoned for four years for allegedly insulting the prophet Mohammed and President Hosni Mubarak is facing increased harassment.

There is no co-ordinated worldwide campaign against web filtering and oppression but bloggers and activists in various countries are starting to realise the power of organising locally and globally.

The proliferation of blogs giving air to indigenous voices in countries deemed “enemies” or “allies” is a challenge to the Western-centric media attitudes we are familiar with. As I argue in my new book, it is essential to hear alternative voices from a place such as Iran, where the latest reports suggest that a US military strike is imminent. During my visit to Iran last year, there was constant fear of an aggressive move by Washington or Israel.

What most dissidents, bloggers and journalists couldn’t understand — and these were people who mostly opposed the regime — was how the political planners expected a bombing run to lessen the control of the state. If anything, it would only increase it. And as I argued on the Lowy Institute blog last week, the current Western posturing is actually more about protecting the Jewish state’s supremacy than worrying about Iran’s supposed nuclear capabilities.

While the challenges new media presents for old media may be a key issue in the Western media context, in the vast majority of other countries, the presence of a technology which can express ideas usually kept between friends and family is an inherently liberating force. Ultimately, in much of the non-Western world, the blogosphere is the only source of reliable information, as state run media is guaranteed to be shameless propaganda.

In surveying the activities of bloggers and online activists, however, it’s essential to note the largely silent influence of Western multinationals. The role of companies such as Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Cisco, Adidas, Coke and McDonald’s, among many others, has been to complicity assist some of the worst authoritarian regimes on the planet, such as China’s. Internet firms, many of whom we rely on every day for our information needs, are actively involved in the restriction of freedom for others in non-democratic nations.

Days before the start of the Beijing Olympics, Canadian writer Naomi Klein argued that “Police State 2.0″ was being born:

“The games have been billed as China’s ‘coming out party’ to the world. They are far more significant than that. These Olympics are the coming out party for a disturbingly efficient way of organising society, one that China has perfected over the past three decades, and is finally ready to show off. It is a potent hybrid of the most powerful political tools of authoritarianism communism — central planning, merciless repression, constant surveillance — harnessed to advance the goals of global capitalism. Some call it ‘authoritarian capitalism’, others ‘market Stalinism’ — personally I prefer ‘McCommunism’.”

It isn’t hard to imagine a dystopian future in which the skills learned by Western firms in a place like China may be transported back to our own societies, or simply used in other countries desperate to control the online flow of information.

What is the internet and satellite television doing to the increasingly authoritarian Russian state?

Who was responsible for dropping cluster bombs during the recent war between Russia and Georgia?

What really happened between Georgia and Russia in early August?

The tale of a Russian cyberwarrior who wanted to know how much damage he could create on the Georgian side.