A.LOEWENSTEIN ONLINE NEWSLETTER

More Tamil exclusion in Sri Lanka

Posted: 12 Dec 2010 04:02 PM PST

And the world mostly says nothing:

The first cabinet meeting convened by Sri Lanka president Mahinda Rajapaksa after returning from London decided to abolish the Tamil version of Sri Lanka’s national anthem, Sunday Times reports. The ‘shortcoming’ of having two national anthems should be rectified and in no other country was the national anthem used in more than one language, Mahinda Rajapaksa told his cabinet Wednesday. The Tamil version of the national anthem of Ceylon and later Sri Lanka was adopted in 1948 at the time of the so-called independence. It was an exact translation of the Sinhala original, sung in the same tune. Supporting Rajapaksa, minister Wimal Weerawansa said that even in neighbouring India, where around 300 languages were used, the national anthem was only in Hindi. But the SL minister was ignorant of the fact that the national anthem of India is in Bengali.

We pay drug dealers in Afghanistan

Posted: 12 Dec 2010 03:55 PM PST

This is what the glorious “war on terror” is all about:

When Hajji Juma Khan was arrested and transported to New York to face charges under a new American narco-terrorism law in 2008, federal prosecutors described him as perhaps the biggest and most dangerous drug lord in Afghanistan, a shadowy figure who had helped keep the Taliban in business with a steady stream of money and weapons.

But what the government did not say was that Mr. Juma Khan was also a longtime American informer, who provided information about the Taliban, Afghan corruption and other drug traffickers. Central Intelligence Agency officers and Drug Enforcement Administration agents relied on him as a valued source for years, even as he was building one of Afghanistan’s biggest drug operations after the United States-led invasion of the country, according to current and former American officials. Along the way, he was also paid a large amount of cash by the United States.

At the height of his power, Mr. Juma Khan was secretly flown to Washington for a series of clandestine meetings with C.I.A. and D.E.A. officials in 2006. Even then, the United States was receiving reports that he was on his way to becoming Afghanistan’s most important narcotics trafficker by taking over the drug operations of his rivals and paying off Taliban leaders and corrupt politicians in President Hamid Karzai’s government.

In a series of videotaped meetings in Washington hotels, Mr. Juma Khan offered tantalizing leads to the C.I.A. and D.E.A., in return for what he hoped would be protected status as an American asset, according to American officials. And then, before he left the United States, he took a side trip to New York to see the sights and do some shopping, according to two people briefed on the case.

The relationship between the United States government and Mr. Juma Khan is another illustration of how the war on drugs and the war on terrorism have sometimes collided, particularly in Afghanistan, where drug dealing, the insurgency and the government often overlap.

Don’t tell us that Australia is an honest broker in the Middle East

Posted: 12 Dec 2010 02:58 PM PST

This is the not the behaviour of an ally; it’s the actions of a country utterly incapable of viewing the human rights of Arabs as equal to Israelis:

The Israeli ambassador to Australia found Kevin Rudd to be “very pro-Israel” and senior Australian diplomats warned the former prime minister that his condemnation of Iran risked retaliation against Australia’s embassy in Tehran, according to leaked US diplomatic cables.

The secret cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and provided exclusively to the Herald, reveal the Israeli ambassador, Yuval Rotem, was pleased with Mr Rudd’s “very supportive” attitude towards Israel’s position in the Middle East peace process and his strong attacks on the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The revelation of Mr Rotem’s description of Mr Rudd last year comes as the Foreign Minister wraps up a visit to Cairo where he expressed concern that ”no real progress” has been made in the US-brokered Middle East peace process.

Following a weekend meeting with the Egyptian Foreign Minister, Ahmed Abul Gheit, Mr Rudd said Israeli settlements on Palestinian land were ”destroying” the chances of peace. He said he would visit Israel this week and reiterate his position, but added Israel had security fears that needed to be taken into account.

The leaked cables reveal that Israeli diplomats saw Mr Rudd as an important ally.

Mr Rotem told US officials in July 2008 that during his first meeting with Mr Rudd after the 2007 federal election, the newly elected prime minister had described Mr Ahmedinejad as a ”loathsome individual on every level” and that his anti-Semitism ”turns my stomach”.

The US embassy noted that while opposition leader, Mr Rudd had taken a “very strong stance” on Iran, including calling for Mr Ahmadinejad to be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court for his calls for the destruction of Israel.

The Israeli ambassador said that the secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Michael l’Estrange, and the director-general of the Office of National Assessments, Peter Varghese, had “met several times to convince the PM to think through the consequences of his rhetoric on Iran”.

“The Israeli ambassador believes PM Rudd is very concerned about the Iranian nuclear program and firm in his desire to do whatever possible to signal Australia’s opposition to Tehran’s nuclear ambitions,” the embassy reported. “The Israelis believe Rudd is very firm in his overall support for Israel.”

Asked by the US embassy about whether Mr Rudd’s views on Iran had elicited any response, Mr Rotem said the Iranian government had reacted to the prime minister’s statements by taking ”retaliatory measures” against the Australian embassy in Tehran.

“These measures make it harder for the embassy to conduct its day-to-day business,” Mr Rotem observed.

The Australian government has never publicly acknowledged any Iranian response to Mr Rudd’s public criticism of Iran and its President.

Mr Rotem went on to tell the US embassy that Israel saw Australia “as playing an important role in the ‘global PR battle’ on Iran because PM Rudd is viewed favourably by the ‘European Left’, many of whom are sceptical about taking a tough line towards Tehran”.

The ambassador said Israeli officials would normally have been concerned at the prospect of a Labor government: “However, this was not the case because Rudd had long gone out of his way to stress his strong commitment to Israel and appreciation for its security concerns.”

”Commenting that DFAT officials are very frank in expressing their annoyance with the PM’s micromanaging of foreign policy issues, Rotem laughingly said that ‘while I understand their point of view, how can I complain about having that kind of attention from the PM’.”

The Israeli ambassador’s enthusiasm for the Labor government extended to the deputy prime minister, Julia Gillard, with the US embassy reporting in January last year that Mr Rotem was “very satisfied” with the Australian response to Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.

“Rotem said he had been impressed with acting PM Julia Gillard, who has taken the lead in co-ordinating the [Australian government] public and private response to the Gaza fighting … Rotem said that Gillard and [national security adviser Duncan] Lewis have been very understanding of Israel’s military action, while stressing the need to minimise civilian casualties and address humanitarian concerns.”

Mr Rotem said Ms Gillard’s public statements surprised many Israeli embassy contacts as being “far more supportive than they had expected”.

Mr Rotem told his US counterparts that several senior Labor Party contacts had told him privately that Mr Rudd had been “a bit jealous of the attention garnered by Gillard” and that this led him to speak to the Gaza issue later in January 2009.

The ambassador added that he would be “playing to Rudd’s vanity” to encourage him to pay an early visit to Israel and continue to speak out in support of a hard line against Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

And fears that the Zionist state isn’t a rational player:

Australian intelligence agencies fear that Israel might launch military strikes against Iran and that Tehran’s pursuit of nuclear capabilities could draw the US and Australia into a potential nuclear war in the Middle East.

Australia’s top intelligence agency has also privately undercut the hardline stance towards Tehran of the United States, Israeli and Australian governments, saying that Iran’s nuclear program is intended to deter attack and that it is a mistake to regard Iran as a ”rogue state”.

The warnings about the dangers of nuclear conflict in the Middle East are given in a secret US embassy cable obtained by WikiLeaks and provided exclusively to the Herald. They reflect views obtained by US intelligence liaison officers in Canberra from across the range of Australian intelligence agencies.

“The AIC’s [Australian intelligence community’s] leading concerns with respect to Iran’s nuclear ambitions centre on understanding the time frame of a possible weapons capability, and working with the United States to prevent Israel from independently launching unco-ordinated military strikes against Iran,” the US embassy in Canberra reported to Washington in March last year.

“They are immediately concerned that Iran’s pursuit of nuclear capabilities would lead to a conventional war – or even nuclear exchange – in the Middle East involving the United States that would draw Australia into a conflict.”

Keeping Assange away from Obama’s gaza

Posted: 12 Dec 2010 02:27 PM PST

Via JeuxJeuxJeux.fr

Why should Palin actually speak to real Haitian people?

Posted: 12 Dec 2010 03:40 AM PST

Tragedy as a media back-drop (assisted by the kind folk at Fox News):

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin began a tightly stage-managed visit to Haiti on Saturday in which she visited cholera clinics while avoiding crowds and the press.

The 2008 vice presidential candidate was a guest of Rev. Franklin Graham, whose aid group works in the impoverished country. Haiti is facing a brutal cholera epidemic while struggling with an electoral crisis and reconstruction from the January earthquake.

Palin, who traveled in part by helicopter, provided access on her tour solely to the U.S. cable network Fox News.

Graham’s organization, Samaritan’s Purse, refused to discuss Palin’s itinerary with other media and asked Haitian and American reporters to leave its compounds, citing a “security lockdown.”

“I’ve really enjoyed meeting this community. They are so full of joy,” Palin was quoted as saying on the organization’s website. “We are so fortunate in America, and we are responsible for helping those less fortunate.”

Associated Press television journalists saw Palin talking with foreign aid workers. She wore cargo pants, a T-shirt and designer sunglasses on her first trip outside the United States since speaking to investors in Hong Kong last year. That speech was also closed to the media.

Samaritan’s Purse posted pictures online of Palin touring a post-quake shelter, touching the hand of a Haitian child and laughing with Graham and Fox News host Greta van Susteren.

Palin’s visit comes amid a cholera outbreak that has killed more than 2,000 people and sickened more than 96,000 others.

Telling Fox News that Assange’s Australian rights must be protected

Posted: 12 Dec 2010 02:55 AM PST

Fox News broadcasts yet another person who says Julian Assange should be murdered. Nice work, Murdoch.

Get Up!’s Brett Solomon injects some sanity:

US looks for ways to silence Wikileaks (but failure is likely outcome)

Posted: 12 Dec 2010 02:10 AM PST

The US doesn’t have any laws to seriously prosecute Wikileaks? Why not make a few new ones up?

Anger at Julian Assange continues to consume much of Washington this weekend, and a first formal hearing on Capitol Hill over options for prosecuting him could come as early as next week. Yet a claim made by one of the WikiLeaks founder’s lawyers, that the US was preparing to file charges against him “imminently”, was dismissed by an official at the Justice Department.

That Washington would like to take legal action against him and as quickly as possible can hardly be in doubt. But building a case solid enough to allow Eric Holder, the US Attorney General, to seek Assange’s extradition from Britain, if that is where he still is at the time, or – possibly more problematically – from Sweden, may not be easy. The most obvious first stop might be the 1917 Espionage Act. But when the US government tried to use it to punish The New York Times for publishing the Pentagon Papers in the 1970s, it failed.

It is for that reason that some US politicians are introducing draft legislation to expand existing US laws to make it easier for Mr Holder to do his job. The so-called Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful Dissemination (Shield) Bill was thus introduced by Congressman Peter King, a Republican from New York who will become chairman of the House Intelligence Committee when the new House of Representatives with a Republican majority convenes in January. The Bill would make it illegal to publish the names of military or intelligence community informants.

Friedman fears a nation with equal rights for all

Posted: 12 Dec 2010 02:01 AM PST

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is a little worried that a one-state solution may be coming to the Middle East because both Israel and Palestine supposedly aren’t serious about building a two-state solution. Now whose fault would that be? Perhaps a US government (and Zionist lobby) who have indulged Zionist violence and settlements for decades:

I understand the problem: Israeli and Palestinian leaders cannot end the conflict between each other without having a civil war within their respective communities. Netanyahu would have to take on the settlers and Abbas would have to take on Hamas and the Fatah radicals. Both men have silent majorities that would back them if they did, but neither man feels so uncomfortable with his present situation to risk that civil war inside to make peace outside. There are no Abe Lincolns out there.

What this means, argues the Hebrew University philosopher Moshe Halbertal, is that the window for a two-state solution is rapidly closing. Israel will end up permanently occupying the West Bank with its 2.5 million Palestinians. We will have a one-state solution. Israel will have inside its belly 2.5 million Palestinians without the rights of citizenship, along with 1.5 million Israeli Arabs. “Then the only question will be what will be the nature of this one state — it will either be apartheid or Lebanon,” said Halbertal. “We will be confronted by two horrors.”

What makes Assange tick from somebody who should know

Posted: 12 Dec 2010 01:55 AM PST

Suelette Dreyfus collaborated with Julian Assange to write Underground, a 1997 book about hackers in Australia and across the world.

She writes today in the Australian media about the motivations behind Wikileaks and gets inside the mind of Assange himself:

If you want to improve the lot of the poorest, most oppressed people in the world, you can go to a destitute, corrupt African country and work in a community-aid program. It is a noble and self-sacrificing choice. But it only saves one village. Therefore, although it works towards greater justice (in this case economic justice) it is not optimal. A computer geek would consider it sub-optimal. To be optimal, it must be on a much larger scale. Larger than one village, larger than one country, even than one continent. The only way to do that is to use information which can be replicated endlessly – and cheaply – to promote change for the better. But it must be good information, not trashy information or PR spin. It must be the kind of information that plucks at those little threads of curiousity we all have in one measure or another.

It must be the kind of information news media organisations would publish for their readers.

Not everyone wants change, however. Tin-pot dictators like to steal money from their countries.

Average people may think they are happy in their ordinary lives: they don’t want change. Yet imagine if there was a secret world these average people did not know about. What could be in that world? It could be a world of classified logs from the front line of a war. It could also be a world of secret diplomatic cables that tell the truth about what really happens behind the mahogany doors of power. The average people might actually want that information – if someone revealed it to them.

WikiLeaks has taught people to “long for the endless immensity of the seas”. Who wants to go back to their cramped dog-box apartment now that they have tasted the salty air and seen the ocean’s infinite horizon?