A.LOEWENSTEIN ONLINE NEWSLETTER

• Freedom isn’t just a slogan on a coffee cup
• Dalai Lama too keen to avoid agitation with China?
• American figure defends Wikileaks
• New York Times no chance of getting award for bravery
• Daniel Ellsberg backs Aussie group for Assange
• Soon Israel will be surrounded by walls on all sides
• “Sweet smell” of (partial) liberation
• Assange freedom
• Just watched Pilger’s The War You Don’t See
• Don’t forget Bradley Manning

Freedom isn’t just a slogan on a coffee cup Posted: 16 Dec 2010 05:30 PM PST Following the appearance in the New York Times of an ad sponsored by Australian activist group Get Up!, Ralph Nader speaks in support of Wikileaks and the importance of transparency in democracy. Bravo.

Dalai Lama too keen to avoid agitation with China?Posted: 16 Dec 2010 04:47 PM PST Are these the kinds of comments that only an exiled leader would make? Perhaps and it’ll be certainly harden the views of many Tibetans that the Dalai Lama’s political skills have been less than stellar. Decades of talking and where has it got his people? The Dalai Lama told US diplomats last year that the international community should focus on climate change rather than politics in Tibet because environmental problems were more urgent, secret American cables reveal. The exiled Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader told Timothy Roemer, the US ambassador to India, that the “political agenda should be sidelined for five to 10 years and the international community should shift its focus to climate change on the Tibetan plateau” during a meeting in Delhi last August. “Melting glaciers, deforestation and increasingly polluted water from mining projects were problems that ‘cannot wait’, but the Tibetans could wait five to 10 years for a political solution,” he was reported as saying. Though the Dalai Lama has frequently raised environmental issues, he has never publicly suggested that political questions take second place, nor spoken of any timescale with such precision. Roemer speculated, in his cable to Washington reporting the meeting, that “the Dalai Lama’s message may signal a broader shift in strategy to reframe the Tibet issue as an environmental concern”. In their meeting, the ambassador reported, the Dalai Lama criticised China‘s energy policy, saying dam construction in Tibet had displaced thousands of people and left temples and monasteries underwater. He recommended that the Chinese authorities compensate Tibetans for disrupting their nomadic lifestyle with vocational training, such as weaving, and said there were “three poles” in danger of melting – the north pole, the south pole, and “the glaciers at the pole of Tibet”. The cables also reveal the desperate appeals made by the Dalai Lama for intervention by the US during unrest in Tibet during spring 2008. As a heavy crackdown followed demonstrations and rioting, he pleaded with US officials to take action that would “make an impact” in Beijing. At the end of one 30-minute meeting, a cable reports that the Dalai Lama embraced the embassy’s officials and “made a final plea”. “Tibet is a dying nation. We need America’s help,” he was reported as saying. Other cables reveal US fears that the influence of the 75-year-old Dalai Lama over the Tibetan community in exile might be waning or that a succession to his leadership could pose problems. In June 2008, officials reported that their visit to six Tibetan refugee settlements across north and north-eastern India “underscores concerns that frustrated and dissatisfied Tibetan youth … could pose serious problems”. “A widening generational divide finds Tibetan leaders unable to resolve growing dissatisfaction among younger Tibetans,” the officials said.

American figure defends WikileaksPosted: 16 Dec 2010 04:33 PM PST A major US politician not calling for a drone strike against Julian Assange? How very quaint (and welcome): The chairman of the House judiciary committee defended Wikileaks on Thursday, arguing that the controversial actions of the anti-secrecy outlet are protected under free speech. Speaking at a hearing to explore whether Wikileaks violated the Espionage Act — which the Obama administration claims its editor-in-chief violated — Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) said that “America was founded on the belief that speech is sacrosanct” and dismissed calls for censorship of media outlets publishing leaked documents. “As an initial matter, there is no doubt that WikiLeaks is very unpopular right now. Many feel that the WikiLeaks publication was offensive,” Conyers said, according to prepared remarks. “But being unpopular is not a crime, and publishing offensive information is not either. And the repeated calls from politicians, journalists, and other so-called experts crying out for criminal prosecutions or other extreme measures make me very uncomfortable.”

New York Times no chance of getting award for braveryPosted: 16 Dec 2010 04:29 PM PST So NYTimes editor throws Assange under a bus? Of course, the Times is a Serious paper that helped the US invade Iraq so everybody should take that publication very seriously, indeed: Is WikiLeaks a media organization, or is it something else? It’s a question with important implications, given the special protections afforded the press, but it’s one that even New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, whose newspaper has been the most prominent showcase for WikiLeaks’ document dumps, can’t seem to make up his mind about. “I think a news organization like mine should be a little humble about trying to define who’s entitled to be called a journalist,” Keller said this afternoon at a forum on “Secrecy and Journalism in the Media Age,” hosted by Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab. “Personally, I’d advocate a fairly expansive definition.” Asked point-blank whether that definition should be so expansive as to include Julian Assange, WikiLeaks’ recently-released-on-bail frontman, however, Keller hedged.”I don’t regard Julian Assange as a kindred spirit,” he said. “If he’s a journalist, he’s not the kind of journalist that I am.” Keller did allow that WikiLeaks “has moved more in the direction of behaving like a journalistic organization. They have gone from an absolutist view of transparency with an at least suggested motive of embarrassing or bringing down bad governments to an organization that has been leaking out the documents in a more journalistic fashion, [including] redacting them. I don’t think they’ve become my kind of news organization, but they have evolved.” But Keller was very clear that he was not treating WikiLeaks as a fellow news entity in using their material. Whereas he described The Guardian, which supplied the Times with the most recent batch of WikiLeaks material after Assange cut the paper off, as “a partner in this,” Keller would not say the same of WikiLeaks itself. “Throughout this experience, we have regarded Julian Assange and his merry band of provocateurs and hackers as a source,” he said. “I will not say a source pure and simple, because, as any reporter or editor can attest, sources are rarely pure or simple.” Keller said he would be disturbed to see the government attempt to prosecute Assange under the Espionage Act, but not necessarily because he’d view it as an attack on press freedom. “Legality aside, it would send up a bit of an alarm signal to me,” he said. “As an editor, I find the Espionage Act a kind of scary thing in the wrong hands. It’s an abusable law.”

Daniel Ellsberg backs Aussie group for AssangePosted: 16 Dec 2010 04:24 PM PST

Soon Israel will be surrounded by walls on all sidesPosted: 16 Dec 2010 04:14 PM PST Because Israel isn’t enough of a ghetto already. Any lessons from history, Zionists? After the separation barrier against Palestinian territories, Israel has begun to build a new wall, this one to keep migrants from Africa out. The new wall is coming up on the Egyptian border, and with Egyptian support. The Israeli government approved plans late last month to build a detention camp near its border with Egypt to house illegal African immigrants. Local activists decried the move, which they say flies in the face of internationally accepted human rights norms. “The idea of a prison built expressly for African immigrants is not only racist, it also contravenes basic tenets of international law,” said Hafez Abu Saeda, president of the Cairo-based Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights. On November 28, Israel’s cabinet approved construction of a camp to temporarily accommodate undocumented African immigrants that enter Israel from neighbouring Egypt. According to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who provided little else by way of detail, the project comes within the context of a wider plan to halt the “wave of illegal immigrants” entering the country in search of employment.  Israel claims that within recent years tens of thousands of African migrants have illicitly crossed the Egypt-Israel border into its territory. Once inside the country, these migrants are often hired as manual labourers – at relatively low wages – by Israeli farms and in settlements.

“Sweet smell” of (partial) liberationPosted: 16 Dec 2010 02:46 PM PST

Assange freedomPosted: 16 Dec 2010 12:11 PM PST He’s out, on bail, and gave the following speech on the steps outside the British court: It’s great to smell the fresh air of London again. First, some thank yous. To all the people around the world who have had faith in me, who have supported my team while I have been away. To my lawyers, who have put up a brave and ultimately successful fight, to our sureties and people who have provided money in the face of great difficulty and aversion. And to members of the press who are not all taken in and considered to look deeper in their work. And I guess finally, to the British justice system itself, where if justice is not always the outcome at least it is not dead yet. During my time in solitary confinement in the bottom of a Victorian prison I had time to reflect on the conditions of those people around the world also in solitary confinement, also on remand, in conditions that are more difficult than those faced by me. Those people also need your attention and support. And with that I hope to continue my work and continue to protest my innocence in this matter and to reveal, as we get it, which we have not yet, the evidence from these allegations. Thank you.

Just watched Pilger’s The War You Don’t See Posted: 16 Dec 2010 06:39 AM PST It’s a powerful indictment of journalists keen to sell war. Many reporters and officials admit they were propagandists for conflict and occupation, defending the state to get close to power and good access. Pilger weaves devastation of Iraq/Afghanistan/Palestine with reporters who embed with the state to sell the message. Little shame there. New interview with Julian Assange talking about Wikileaks and why the media is often failing to hold the powerful to account. Whistle-blowing websites have to fill the void.

Don’t forget Bradley Manning Posted: 16 Dec 2010 04:24 AM PST The alleged Wikileaks leaker Bradley Manning is in solitary confinement in the US under torture conditions. He has been charged with no crime but has remained in isolation for months on end. In the supposedly most democratic nation on earth. Reading back over his online conversations with hacker Adrian Lamo from earlier in the year it’s clear Manning was deeply affected by what he saw as US crimes in the Middle East and beyond. And he wanted the world to know: i want people to see the truth… regardless of who they are… because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.