Assange interviews Tunisia’s first post-revolution leader

Following two weeks of intriguing interviews, this week’s episode of The World Tomorrow features… Moncef Marzouki. The role of democracy in post-dictatorships is raised and how to transform a nation after years living under repression. The fact that such a man is rarely seen or heard in the Western media shames us all, considering Tunisia was…

Name and shame Western firms helping autocrats monitor own citizens

When I wrote The Blogging Revolution in 2007 and 2008, I couldn’t imagine the ever-increasing focus on Western “security” firms working alongside repressive states to censor and spy on their people. I investigated this in the book (and the latest 2011 edition, just published in India, examines the reality during the Arab revolutions). Bloomberg has…

Condi Rice reassures world; Bush made space for Arab Spring

Yes, and Iraq is a liberated nation with peace and tranquility. Delusional: “The demise of repressive governments in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere during this year’s “Arab spring,” she says, stemmed in part from Bush’s “freedom agenda,” which promoted democracy in the Middle East. “The change in the conversation about the Middle East, where people now…

Of course Western IT firms want to test repressive web techniques

Sigh: The new president of the Tunisian Internet Agency (ATI), Moez Chakchouk, told participants at the Arab Bloggers Meeting [in Tunisia] today that western companies offered significant discounts on use of censorship software to the Tunisian government in exchange for testing and bug-tracking. He said confidentiality contracts preclude him from naming the companies, but said…

Anyone can make a revolution (or can they?)

The upcoming Festival of Dangerous Ideas is taking place at the Sydney Opera House in October. Feel threatened. I’m involved in the following event on 2 October at 6pm: In Egypt and Tunisia we have seen ordinary people come together to claim democracy and human rights in the face of oppressive regimes, with Twitter and…

Orwellian name of the week: Middle East Transitions office

Let me get this straight. Washington spends the last decades backing any dictator who could be bought or bribed. Its image in the Muslim world couldn’t be lower. And now it wants to “help” the move towards democracy (via The Cable)? The State Department has opened a brand-new office to manage U.S. policy toward countries…

9/11 legacy is an Israeli/American catastrophe

My following essay is published today on ABC online: The 9/11 attacks had barely happened and the smouldering wreckage in New York and Washington was still shocking America and the world. Israel already saw an opportunity. Then former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked to express his feelings about the terrorist action in the immediate…

Wikileaks contributed to the Arab Spring?

Julian Assange says it played a factor in the US being less able to back dictators in the region: So, Cablegate as a whole caused these elites that prop each other up into region within the Arab speaking countries, and, within, between Europe and these countries and between the United States and these countries, to…

Washington strongly backs brutal Saudi regime

Because selling deadly weapons is the best way to show America’s real commitment to democracy in the Arab world: On the same day President Obama pressed again for peace in the Middle East, the Associated Press reminded us that the United States cannot help itself from flooding the region with the instruments of war, reporting…

Text and images ©2024 Antony Loewenstein. All rights reserved.

Site by Common