A.LOEWENSTEIN ONLINE NEWSLETTER

In January 2010, national leaders in ecology, sustainable business, and the larger environmental movement gathered in Washington to grapple with the problem of building “The New Green Economy.” Hosted by the government-funded National Council for Science and the Environment, the event was a prestigious one.
But one of the invited speakers was hardly an environmentalist.
Roy Beck, who participated in a panel entitled “Perverse Incentives, Subsidies, and Tax Code Impediments to a Sustainable Economy,” is the head of NumbersUSA, an anti-immigration group that was largely responsible for sinking a comprehensive immigration reform bill in 2007. Beck has spent nearly 20 years relentlessly attacking American immigration policies, even editing tracts like The Immigration Invasion, a book so raw in its nativism that Canadian authorities banned it as hate literature. More to the point, perhaps, purported environmentalist Beck’s group not long ago paid nearly half a million dollars to a far-right news service— an outfit that has described global warming as a “religion” that is “impervious to evidence” and has pilloried conservationists as “anti-mankind.”
So what was Beck doing talking about “greening the tax code”?
Roy Beck is part of a sweeping, renewed attempt by immigration restrictionists in America to convince environmentalists that they, too, must oppose immigration if they are to save the environment from the ravages of a growing population. Because such efforts typically have been organized by anti-immigration activists whose leading concern is not the environment — men and women who attempt to recruit conservationists and other “progressives” to their cause, sometimes even while simultaneously working with nakedly anti-environmental forces — this strategy has come to be known as “greenwashing.”

He kept a tight rein on the state’s MPs. Julia Irwin, then the Member for Fowler, says he responded to a speech she gave on the rights of Palestinians by ordering her to take a trip to Israel and asking her to submit further speeches on the Middle East to him for clearance. She refused and the demands were not followed up. Arbib has denied asking her to travel to Israel.

About a fortnight ago, some friends of the Palestinian people alerted the production company Human Film that the 2010 Melbourne International Film Festival lists the state of Israel as a cultural partner and therefore official sponsor of the festival. Their award-winning Iraqi film Son of Babylon was due to screen on Wednesday the 28th of July and Friday the 30th of July.
On behalf of Human Film, the Director Mohamed Al-Daradji, the Producer Isabelle Stead and the Producer Atia Al-Daradji wrote on Sunday the 25th of July to the Executive Director of MIFF, Richard Moore, stressing that Son of Babylon is a Palestinian co-production and that as they, as filmmakers, are ‘wholeheartedly against the Israeli governments’ actions against the Palestinian people and as such cannot screen our film at Melbourne IFF whilst there is Israeli government support involved’.
The signatories stressed that they are not against the Israeli people or Israeli filmmakers but ‘against the Israeli government actions against Palestine’ and that they refused to have any association with the state of Israel until it respected the human rights of the Palestinian people. They repeated their request to withdraw the film.
[MIFF head] Richard Moore responded by agreeing to disagree on the political aspect of the matter and, complaining of the logistical impossibility of withdrawing the film on the eve of screening, informed the signatories that the Monday screening would be shown but that he is prepared to countenance financial compensation for the Wednesday the 28th screening.
Isabelle Stead, the main producer of SON OF BABYLON, writing on behalf of Human Film, responded that she really hoped that he, Richard Moore, had respected their wishes and withdrawn the film from the festival, entirely. This isn’t about politics, she wrote, this is about humanity.
She made the point that it had only just been brought to their attention that MIF festival was supported by the state of Israel, and that upon receiving this information, they acted as promptly as they could. Isabelle was surprised that Melbourne IFF had not informed filmmakers whom have a Palestinian element/connection to their film that the state of Israel are involved in funding the festival. She pointed out that the festival was informed in enough time to stop the screening – as in 2009 when Ken Loach withdrew his film on the eve of its screening. MIFF should not underestimate Human Film’s resolve to ensure that their film is not associated with the state of Israel as long as it continues its illegal crimes against humanity.
Richard Moore refused to acknowledge that he had any obligation to inform a Palestinian co-production about Israeli sponsorship, instead claiming that revocation of permission to withdraw the film and to take action against the festival if it does not withdraw the film was a ‘divisive act’ that contravenes the film company’s ethos of breaking down cultural barriers.
Isabelle Stead repeated her willingness to reimburse the festival and repeated her point that the festival must hold some responsibility in not informing a Palestinian co-production that it was being supported by the state of Israel. She reminded Moore that in the 1980s Mr Rod Webb, The Sydney Film Festival Director, refused to accepted any sponsorship or screen films from apartheid South Africa. When Israel is no longer an apartheid state, she wrote, we will of course be proud to screen our films in conjunction with them. In the interim she would be happy to help Richard Moore find alternative sponsorship that is independent of Israel’s support for Melbourne IFF in the future.
She welcomed Moore’s allusion to their mission statement and pointed out it was still in full force and effect, since they were ‘acting from a humanitarian stance’. She asked that Richard Moore respect their wishes not to screen Son of Babylon and wanted to be informed if the film had been screened at the festival.
Richard Moore then revealed his hand by declaring, against the common wisdom of Jimmy Carter and Desdmond Tutu, that the comparison of Israel with an apartheid state was ‘odious’. He now claimed that Human Film had not taken the issue of compensation seriously, and, to rub salt into the wound, smugly talked of how much the patrons had enjoyed the screening and that he hoped the film scored well in audience awards.
Isabelle Stead now accused Richard Moore of petulance, and was clearly upset that he had disregarded the multiple requests of Human Film not to have any screenings of their film at the festival. Isabelle wrote that she had spoken to the producer of Looking for Eric – who informed her that they were not requested to pay the festival any monies for pulling the film in 2009. She reiterated that she had made a fair offer to reimburse the festival for the shipment costs along with any monies paid to their sales company to screen the film. She reiterated that any permissions granted to Melbourne IFF to screen SON OF BABYLON had been revoked.
Isabelle. in a later correspondence, suggested that she was disgusted with the behaviour of the festival towards Human Film, and very saddened that Moore couldn’t see past the politics to the real heart of the issue. Human Film would now prefer to offer the proceeds of the admissions for the screening of Son of Babylon to a charity of their choice.
The second screening of Son of Babylon on Wednesday went ahead without any signal that this was against the express wishes of Human Film. One can safely draw the conclusion that just as MIFF and Richard Moore failed in their ethical obligation to inform international film makers of Israeli sponsorship of the festival, they have also engaged in a conspiracy of silence to prevent you knowing about the principled ethical objections of Human Film to screen Son of Babylon.
The public can make up their own mind but audiences of the MIFF 2010 and the wider public have a right to know about the way in which Richard Moore himself is deliberately politicizing the festival.

Yesterday Crikey published the full email correspondence between MIFF and the film-makers.

We have clearly stated motives, but they are not antiwar motives. We are not pacifists. We are transparency activists who understand that transparent government tends to produce just government. And that is our sort of modus operandi behind our whole organization, is to get out suppressed information into the public, where the press and the public and our nation’s politics can work on it to produce better outcomes.

The most concerning part of this week’s Wikileaks was the American media’s reluctance to expose the full extent of the revelations:

The possibility that the leaked documents might lead to more discussion of civilian casualties was frequently raised as a concern in U.S. media. The Washington Post editorial tried to minimize the documents’ revelations on this issue: “The British newspaper in turn highlights what it says are 144 reported incidents in which Afghan civilians were killed or wounded by coalition forces. But the 195 deaths it counts in those episodes, though regrettable, do not constitute a shocking total for a four-year period.” That point of view was echoed on CBS Evening News by correspondent Lara Logan:

“Well, the issue of civilian casualties is a major one. And the U.S. has taken a lot of criticism because of this. However, what’s interesting to note is that according to the documents, 195 Afghan civilians have been killed. But also according to the documents, 2,000 Afghan civilians have been killed by the Taliban, which is more than 10 times the number said to be killed by U.S. and NATO forces. And very little is being made of that. If the coverage would indicate that it’s more of an issue for the U.S. to kill Afghan civilians than it is for the Taliban to do so.”

The suggestion that this tally of 195 Afghan civilian deaths is comprehensive is absurd on its face, given that the WikiLeaksGuardian noted, that number “is likely to be an underestimate as many disputed incidents are omitted from the daily snapshots reported by troops on the ground and then collated, sometimes erratically, by military intelligence analysts.” Estimates of civilian casualties vary, but several thousand noncombatant Afghans were killed by U.S. and coalition forces during these years of the war. As for Logan’s point about who bears more responsibility for civilian killings, there have been various attempts to make such determinations. In 2008, for instance, U.N. monitors counted over 2,000 civilian casualties; when responsibility could be determined, 41 percent of the deaths were attributed to U.S./NATO forces.