Antony Loewenstein

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The Indian edition of my book The Blogging Revolution was recently released. Here’s a just published review in The Telegraph from Calcutta:

The Blogging Revolution: How the newest media is changing politics, business and culture in India, China, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Cuba and Saudi Arabia By Antony Loewenstein, Jaico, Rs 350

Antony Loewenstein’s book is an intelligent examination of the dichotomous character of the internet, a force that can be both “liberating and restrictive”. Political analysts have often excitedly pointed at the arms of the new media — Facebook, Twitter, blogs — as catalysts for the Arab Spring that toppled several autocratic regimes in the Muslim world. As proof, they refer to the spark that was lit in Tunisia. When a street vendor immolated himself to protest against harassment by authorities, irate local people posted the video of his death on Facebook. Al-Jazeera distributed the video on its network, starting a fire that singed despotic regimes in the region. Loewenstein’s journeys across Iran, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and China and his interactions with online dissenters have given him the leverage to posit a caveat in this respect. The internet, he argues, has crystallized into a critical platform for disseminating information among dissidents. But it remains only one of the many arrows in the quiver in the battle for democracy.

Loewenstein bolsters his argument by citing the failure of the ‘Green Revolution’ in Iran. All the factors needed for yet another revolution inspired by the ‘web’ was in place: a repressive regime, tech-savvy youth, YouTube videos of State violence, and so on. Yet Ahmadinejad could not be dislodged from his throne. If anything, the tables have been turned on anonymous dissidents by regimes in China, Russia and Iran that are covertly colluding with technology companies to root out online dissent. Loewenstein’s research reveals that Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are competing to design effective deterrents to curb freedom in cyberspace. Significantly, the institutional backlash against online dissidence has borrowed heavily from the rule-book of dissenters. Iran, for instance, has assisted in the formation of individual religious blogs to counter ‘revolutionary propaganda’.

The Blogging Revolution dismantles several other half-truths. In mainstream media, dissidence is often glorified, but journalists seldom pay attention to the forlornness of the enterprise. Here, we come across an Egyptian dissident who confides that his battle against the State has left him terribly lonely. He seems to echo the pain of the Cuban woman activist who confesses her estrangement from her son on account of her opposition to Castro.

Loewenstein also punctures the claim that cyber dissent has helped forge a pan-Arab nationalism. He unearths the ethnic tensions that continue to brew in Syria over the question of Iraqi refugees, thereby exposing new faultliness that are eroding old ties based on identity.

Online campaigns are not only about democracy. For the women respondents, the war is also against regressive norms and their proponents. An Iranian artist complains that she cannot exhibit her work in Iran; an Egyptian blogger reveals that she finds the views of the Muslim Brotherhood extreme. It is heartening to see Loewenstein address the question of women’s empowerment to suggest that the battle against tyranny is complex and layered, and that political change is meaningless without social transition.

Loewenstein should also be thanked for his attempt to democratize information. He is aware that the debased culture of contemporary reportage often prioritizes Western hegemony and interests. His unembedded travels help liberate voices that are seldom accommodated in the mainstream Western media. A Saudi blogger insists that change can never be imposed from the outside on the Muslim world. He could have been speaking for nearly every other dissident. Their views offer compelling evidence for the West to temper its campaign to project the new media as a tool to engineer revolution in the Muslim world.

Loewenstein’s book would also be of use to Indian readers and journalists. The latter, who often succumb to the lure of sensationalism, will find in it a template for objective reporting. Loewenstein’s sympathies may lie with the oppressed but he does not allow his sentiments to cloud his broader objectives. His prose thus remains dispassionate, economical, and nearly always enquiring. As for Indian readers, this book will perhaps make them value their freedom of expression and remind them not to take that right for granted. It will also make them wary of seemingly innocuous developments such as the minister for human resources directing social networking sites to remove ‘objectionable’ content or the judiciary mulling over guidelines for the media in India.

But what of the future, both in the real and cyber world? Even after revolutions — whether or not aided by the social media— things may remain unchanged. In Egypt, recently freed from the shadow of Mubarak, a blogger was imprisoned for criticizing the military. Loewenstein reminds us that it is imperative for dissident bloggers to remain engaged with the injustices that are perpetrated not just in repressive states but also in the free world.

An Iranian blogger had once written that every light that remains switched on in Teheran at night showed that “somebody is sitting behind [sic] a computer, driving through [sic] information road; and that is in fact a storehouse of gun powder that, if ignited, will start a great firework in the capital of the revolutionary Islam”. That light, Loewenstein urges, should never be turned off.

UDDALAK MUKHERJEE

The latest report by Reporters Without Borders finds the ever-increasing numbers of journalists being murdered around the world.

It is therefore the responsibility of reporters who work in challenging environments – and that includes me, who’s just returned from Pakistan and Afghanistan and needs to become more familiar with protecting sources who work in dangerous conditions – to remember who we are dealing with; repressive states. A timely investigation by Matthieu Atkins in the Columbia Journalism Review:

Last fall, “Kardokh,” a 25-year-old dissident and computer expert in the Syrian capital of Damascus, met with British journalist and filmmaker Sean McAllister. (Kardokh is his online pseudonym, used at his request.) McAllister, who’s made award-winning films in conflict zones like Yemen and Iraq, explained that he was shooting a documentary for Britain’s Channel 4 about underground activists in Syria, and asked if Kardokh would help him.

At the time, the situation in Syria was deteriorating rapidly, as protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s repressive regime turned violent following a vicious crackdown by security forces. The Syrian government had drastically curtailed visits by foreign journalists, but McAllister had managed to get in undercover. Kardokh was grateful for a chance to tell his story. “Any journalist who was making the effort to show the world what was happening, that was a very important thing for us,” he told me in February.

At the time, Kardokh was providing computer expertise and secure communications to the resistance. He agreed to be interviewed about his work on camera by McAllister, who filmed his face, telling Kardokh that he would blur it out before publishing the footage. McAllister also asked Kardokh to put him in touch with other activists.

But some of McAllister’s practices made him uneasy, Kardokh said. He worried that the filmmaker didn’t realize how aggressive and pervasive the regime’s surveillance was. Kardokh and his fellow activists took elaborate measures with their digital security, encrypting their communications and using special software to hide their identities online. “I started to feel that Sean was careless,” Kardokh told me. He said he had urged McAllister to take more precautions in his communications and to encrypt his footage. “He was using his mobile and SMS, without any protections.”

Then, in October, McAllister was arrested by Syrian security agents. He wasn’t harmed, but was held for five days and said that he could hear the cries of prisoners being tortured in nearby rooms. Eventually, he was released and returned to the UK. “I didn’t realize exactly what they were risking until I went into that experience,” McAllister said in an interview on Channel 4 after his release.

The Syrians had interrogated McAllister about his activities, and seized his laptop, mobile phone, camera, and footage. All of McAllister’s research was now at the disposal of Syrian intelligence. When Kardokh heard that McAllister had been arrested, he didn’t hesitate—he turned off his mobile phone, packed his bag, and fled Damascus, staying with relatives in a nearby town before escaping to Lebanon. He said that other activists who had been in touch with McAllister fled the country as well, and several of those who didn’t were arrested. “I was happy that I hadn’t put him in contact with more people,” Kardokh said.

…

It’s easy to argue that McAllister should have taken stronger precautions, but what, exactly? How many reporters are familiar enough with the technical aspects of digital security that they could protect their computers and phones from the Syrian intelligence service? The fact that McAllister, an experienced and committed journalist, jeopardized his sources with inadequate digital precautions is indicative of a broader problem in journalism today: We haven’t kept pace with technological advancements that have revolutionized both information-gathering and surveillance.

After researching the subject of digital security, I realized that there have been occasions in my own work as a freelancer covering the conflicts in Libya and Afghanistan when I’ve exposed myself and my sources by carrying unencrypted data or e-mailing sensitive information over insecure channels. It’s unclear what, if anything, major news organizations are doing about it.When CJR’s Alysia Santo recently tried asking outlets like The New York Times, she got a firm “no comment.” Curious, I e-mailed an informal survey to journalist friends and colleagues, and several who’ve worked as senior correspondents in Afghanistan for major US news outlets said they’d had little-to-no formal training or assistance from their organizations in digital security.

A brave first call. Julian Assange speaks to Hassan Nasrallah and doesn’t take the position, as so much of the corporate media, that he’s one of the world’s greatest terrorists (which he clearly is not). They discuss Syria, Assad, Israel, Palestine, religion, God, technology, Wikileaks and the US. Assange could be more forceful with his questioning but it’s an encouraging start. And frankly, Nasrallah hasn’t done a Western interview for years so it’s a real coup:

Tariq Ali nails it:

The German writer Gunter Grass (The Tin Drum) had already predicted the response to his poem in SdZ. There is no reason to be surprised, but there is every reason to be disgusted. Within Germany both the elite and a layer of the population by their words and actions appear to have accepted the disgraceful Goldhagen thesis whereby all German were guilty for the crimes of the Third Reich. This thesis has now been developed further: all Germans are guilty for eternity for the crimes of the Third Reich.

Behind this thinking is the Zionist and Zionophile argument that the crime against the Jews of Europe was unique in the annals of history. This was true as far as the method of extermination was concerned, but not in any other way. The Belgians massacred the Congolese in greater numbers: over 10 million according to the historian Adam Hochschild. The killing of Armenians during the First World War was systematic and we could go on and discuss the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but comparing one massacre or genocide to another is a futile exercise. Raul Hilberg the most authoritative historian of the Judeocide was angered by the uses that were being made of that crime today.

Some members of the extreme-right government and Lieberman in particular, that rules Israel today have used proto-fascist language against the Palestinian Arabs. Are we not allowed to point that out? That the Israeli government pushed the Bush administration to make war on Iraq is hardly a secret. Nor is the statement of the Israeli Ambassador to the US the day after the fall of Baghdad: “Don’t stop. Move on to Damascus and Teheran.’ Are we not allowed to rebuke him? The targeting and killing of young Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere is fine, is it?

Gunter Grass was very mild in his criticisms. He concentrated on Israeli warmongering in relation to Iran. He could have said a lot more. The fact that it needs political courage to say even what he did in Germany or France is a sad reflection on the political culture of both these countries. As for the attacks on Grass for his wartime activities, these are beneath contempt. The Israelis were delighted when the former Italian minister, Gianfranco Fini, whose party is in lineal descent from Mussolini, went to Israel and praised the Wall. He was forgiven his party’s past. So the past only matters if a person is critical of Israel. The former Nazis in various positions in the postwar Federal republic who pushed through reparations and backed Israel, they were never criticized either.

German citizens should ponder the following: it was not the Palestinians who were responsible for the murder of millions of Jews during the Second World War. Yet they, the Palestinians, have become the indirect victims of the Judeocide. Those to whom evil is done, do evil in return to others. So why no sympathy for the Palestinians?

This is almost comical. After years of occupation, mass killings and utter American criminality and incompetence, Foreign Policy reports that Washington just can’t get any love or support:

The first major test of U.S. post-war influence in Iraq is now raging over efforts to stop Iran from funneling arms to Syria through Iraqi airspace, but the Iraqis are either unwilling or unable to assure the United States the shipments will cease.

Last week, the Washington Times reported that the Iraqi government was refusing to halt Iranian cargo flights to Syria that fly over Iraqi airspace, despite the fact that U.S. officials believe the flights carry massive and illegal shipments of arms to aid President Bashar al-Assad‘s regime, which is murdering civilians by the thousands in its struggle to keep power. Publicly, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has stated the shipments contain “humanitarian goods, not weapons.” However, U.S. officials aren’t buying that excuse, and have been repeatedly pressing Maliki behind the scenes to make Iran halt the arms shipments, with limited if any success.

One U.S. official told The Cable that there have been 10 to 20 flights from Iran to Syria with suspected illicit weapons stores on board. Another U.S. official said the resupplies take place via the use of Syrian Air Ilyushin 76 strategic airlifters, similar in size to the Boeing C-17, and that U.S. intelligence reports suspect that the planes are carrying mortar rounds, small arms, ammunition, rockets, and light anti-aircraft guns, which can also be used to fire on people.

Iran’s interest in bolstering the Assad regime — its most important ally in the Arab world — is clear. CENTCOM commander Gen. James Mattis told Congress earlier this month that the downfall of the Assad regime would be “the biggest strategic setback for Iran in 25 years.”

Yet more fascinating insights from the recently released Wikileaks documents of Stratfor, published by Lebanon’s Al Akhbar.

One:

US government officials requested that an American private security firm contact Syrian opposition figures in Turkey to see “how they can help in regime change,” the CEO of one of these firms told Stratfor in a company email obtained by WikiLeaks and Al-Akhbar.

James F. Smith, former director of Blackwater, is currently the Chief Executive of SCG International, a private security firm with experience in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. In what appears to be his first email to Stratfor, Smith stated that his “background is CIA” and his company is comprised of “former DOD [Department of Defense], CIA and former law enforcement personnel.”

“We provide services for those same groups in the form of training, security and information collection,” he explained to Stratfor. (doc-id5441475)

In a 13 December 2011 email to Stratfor’s VP for counter-terrorism Fred Burton, which Burton shared with Stratfor’s briefers, Smith claimed that “[he] and Walid Phares were getting air cover from Congresswoman [Sue] Myrick to engage Syrian opposition in Turkey (non-MB and non-Qatari) on a fact finding mission for Congress.”

Walid Phares, named by the source as part of the “fact finding team,” is a Lebanese-American citizen and currently co-chairs Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s Middle East advisory group.

…

During his involvement with Stratfor, Smith provided intelligence on missing surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) (doc-id 5321612) and allegedly “took part” in the killing of former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. (doc-id 3980511)

Two:

An Israeli intelligence agent claimed that contrary to common belief the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad was “not assassinating people that easy.” He would add that the Mossad embraced false accounts of its successes because they bolstered the Mossad’s reputation as “an assassins organization that terrorists should be afraid of.” These statements came in an email exchange between David Dafinoiu, president of NorAm Intelligence, and Fred Burton, Stratfor’s VP of counter-intelligence, which were part of the Global Intelligence Files released by WikiLeaks.

The “confirmed Israeli intelligence agent” who is “suspected of being an agent of influence,” as Burton attributes to the FBI (doc-id 5362917), claimed that the Mossad was never involved in the death of one of the founders of the Popular Front of the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in 1978, Wadie Haddad (known as Abu Hani). Dafinoiu added that the death of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a senior Hamas member killed in Dubai by the Mossad two years ago, was merely an “accident” as the Israelis intended to kidnap al-Mabhouh in order “to exchange him with the Israeli soldier in Iranian custody.”

The emails dated 15 June 2011 between Fred Burton and David Virgil Dafinoiu, who is also chairman of the Homeland Security Committee at the Texas-Israel Chamber of Commerce, discuss the fates of Haddad, al-Mabhouh, and Carlos the Jackal.

The email exchanges began with Burton asking Dafinoiu if he could confirm that Haddad was assassinated by the Mossad by means of poisoned chocolates and to clarify why the Mossad had not eliminated Carlos the Jackal during that time period as well.

The assassination-by-chocolate scenario appeared in a book published in 2006 by Aharon Klein, an American journalist, and was propagated by various Western news agencies.

…

Later that same night, Dafinoiu sent a follow up email in which he said “contrary to what many people believe, Mossad is not assassinating people that easy. Even the most recent incident in Dubai was an accident, they tried to bring the victim [Mahmoud al-Mabhouh] to Israel and exchange him with the Israeli soldier in Iranian’s custody.” (doc-id 383433)

Al-Mabhouh’s assassination was considered a success by the Mossad despite the fact that Emirati police were able to blow the cover of 26 Israeli agents involved in the operation.

Does anybody serious believe American officials when they talk about supporting human rights?

Hillary Clinton recently said this at a UN Secretary Council debate on the Arab Spring:

… we reject any equivalence between premeditated murders by a government’s military machine and the actions of civilians under siege driven to self-defense.

Such a statement requires a response and leading Australian academic Scott Burchill gives one:

The most telling aspect of this speech is that the US Secretary of State could make such a statement (about Syria) with the full confidence that no-one in the media would even ask whether this principle also applied elsewhere in the region (say to the Israel-Palestine conflict?). It could be safely assumed that no-one would point out that only a few hundred kilometres away, the United States is actually supplying a “government’s military machine” with the means to commit “premeditated murders” against “civilians under siege driven to self-defence” (in Gaza as she was actually speaking). The right to self-defence does not extend to official enemies, who can be brutally crushed with our moral and material support.

The US and its allies never intend to kill anyone, of course, when they target B-52 raids on villages in densely populated areas (Vietnam), or something equally horrific with drones (Pakistan) or helicopter gunships (Gaza). Civilians, especially children, should know to keep away from their homes. If they don’t get out of the way and subsequently die or a seriously injured, it is their own fault.

Here’s some free advice to the Zionist state; placing Shimon Peres, the father of the colonies and defender of anti-democratic moves inside Israel, in a woeful video talking about “peace” will be about as effective as Assad in Syria riffing about non-violent resistance:

Famed New York Times journalist Anthony Shadid died tragically in February in Syria while reporting the war there. He was one of the finest reporters of his generation, spending years in the Arab world explaining its twists and turns. He proved that insightful, punchy and beautifully written journalism still matters in the modern age.

Now his widow, New York Times reporter Nada Bakri, speaks to Democracy Now! in a moving interview about Shadid, love, life and journalism itself:

AMY GOODMAN: He was captured for almost a week in Libya with three other colleagues, and they were beaten, threatened, not clear if they would survive that. Can you talk about that period and coming home, and then his decision to go to Syria? Clearly, extremely dangerous for those who live there and also for reporters trying to get in.

NADA BAKRI: You know, when he called me, when they allowed him to call family members when they were being—when they were still captured in Libya, he called, and the first thing he said was how sorry he was, you know, for all his family members about the pain that he—that, you know, the capture must have caused them. And then he came home. And, you know, he saw his family members, repeated again how sorry he was that they had to go through this for him. And then, you know, he went back to work.

And again, it was not about, “I’m going to be in a dangerous place, and maybe I should not go there because it’s dangerous.” You know, of course he thought about it, because he has two kids and he has a family who loved him so much, but it was more of a commitment, you know? I think it might be hard for a lot of people to understand this, but it was just a pure commitment to journalism. I have never seen anything like it. You know, after I had my son, my priorities shifted, and I did not want to be—you know, to take any risks anymore. But then again, I’m not—or I realize I’m not as committed to journalism as he is. He was just truly, genuinely committed to journalism, to covering the Middle East, in particular.

Last night I appeared on ABCTV’s The Drum (video here) discussing both domestic and international affairs.

The key part of the show began when this week’s meeting between Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu was discussed. The New York Times tells the world that, “Israel should not doubt this president’s mettle. Neither should Iran.” Netanyahu, speaking at the Zionist lobby AIPAC conference, used the Holocaust analogy to argue that, “Never again will … the Jewish people be powerless and supplicants for our fate and our very survival. Never again.”

I argued that a military strike against Iran would be illegal, counter-productive and unsuccessful. Most importantly, there’s no hard evidence that Tehran is actually building a nuclear weapon. This is the assessment of America’s intelligence agencies rather than the clueless rantings of neo-conservatives, mad Zionists and the Israelis.

Too much of the public debate around this issue involves arguing when Israel would have the right to attack a sovereign nation such as Iran. It’s vital to re-frame the discussion and question who is seriously threatening whom. Obama apparently wants to avoid direct military contact. For now, anyway. But what a sight, I said, for the mainstream Jewish community to back Israel in yet another military adventure in the Middle East. This is how us Jews are seen; constantly desperate for war.

The debate then shifted to Syria. The humanitarian situation there remains dire, to be sure, but foreign military intervention is a mistake. Too many people are keen to be seen to “do something”. Let’s not forget that Libya, the latest so-called noble war, has turned into a conflict between brutal militias.

Too much talk about foreign affairs ignores the locals directly affected. Leave the Middle East alone for a while, I stated, haven’t we caused enough mayhem over the last decades?