A. Loewenstein Online Newsletter

Wikileaks claims Tamils want justice but autocratic state making that impossible

Posted: 02 Sep 2011

As Sri Lanka continues to face justified international pressure over war crimes against Tamils committed during the country’s civil war, a recently released Wikileaks cable alleges the Tamil population inside the country fears even raising accountability issues. That’s quite some democracy:

In a comment dated 15.01.2010, US ambassador Patricia Butenis noted the Tamils in Sri Lanka and overseas are divided on the issue of accountabiliy and war crimes, according to just leaked Wikileaks cables.

She said while the Tamils in Sri Lanka saw accountability as unrealistic and counterproductive, the Diaspora saw it as a priotity.

Here is the comment by Ambassador Butenis:

Accountability is clearly an issue of importance for the ultimate political and moral health of Sri Lankan society. There is an obvious split, however, between the Tamil diaspora and Tamils in Sri Lanka on how and when to address the issue. While we understand the former would like to see the issue as an immediate top-priority issue, most Tamils in Sri Lanka appear to think it is both unrealistic and counter-productive to push the issue too aggressively now. While Tamil leaders are very vocal and committed to national reconciliation and creating a political system more equitable to all ethnic communities, they believe themselves vulnerable to political or even physical attack if they raise the issue of accountability publicly, and common Tamils appear focused on more immediate economic and social concerns. A few have suggested to us that while they cannot address the issue, they would like to see the international community push it. Such an approach, however, would seem to play into the super-heated campaign rhetoric of Rajapaksa and his allies that there is an international conspiracy against Sri Lanka and its ‘war heroes.’

Beethovians for Boycotting Israel

Posted: 02 Sep 2011

They’re alive and they’ve stuck at the heart of the British establishment, interrupting the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra during the Proms:

The morally corrupt Israeli political elite

Posted: 02 Sep 2011

A truly brilliant piece of art featuring the right-wing racist, main opposition leader, war monger, settler and Prime Minister (and yes, they all love each other):

Guess who was helping Gaddafi stay in power?

Posted: 01 Sep 2011

The role of Western companies helping repressive regimes monitoring their citizens is only getting worse, as I document in my book The Blogging Revolution.

This week the Wall Street Journal secured a cracking exclusive about Libya and the fine, upstanding people helping Gaddafi remain thuggish:

On the ground floor of a six-story building here, agents working for Moammar Gadhafi sat in an open room, spying on emails and chat messages with the help of technology Libya acquired from the West.

The recently abandoned room is lined with posters and English-language training manuals stamped with the name Amesys, a unit of French technology firm Bull SA, which installed the monitoring center. A warning by the door bears the Amesys logo. The sign reads: “Help keep our classified business secret. Don’t discuss classified information out of the HQ.”

The room, explored Monday by The Wall Street Journal, provides clear new evidence of foreign companies’ cooperation in the repression of Libyans under Col. Gadhafi’s almost 42-year rule. The surveillance files found here include emails written as recently as February, after the Libyan uprising had begun.

One file, logged on Feb. 26, includes a 16-minute Yahoo chat between a man and a young woman. He sometimes flirts, declaring that her soul is meant for him, but also worries that his opposition to Col. Gadhafi has made him a target.

“I’m wanted,” he says. “The Gadhafi forces … are writing lists of names.” He says he’s going into hiding and will call her from a new phone number—and urges her to keep his plans secret.

“Don’t forget me,” she says.

This kind of spying became a top priority for Libya as the region’s Arab Spring revolutions blossomed in recent months. Earlier this year, Libyan officials held talks with Amesys and several other companies including Boeing Co.’s Narus, a maker of high-tech Internet traffic-monitoring products, as they looked to add sophisticated Internet-filtering capabilities to Libya’s existing monitoring operation, people familiar with the matter said.

Libya sought advanced tools to control the encrypted online-phone service Skype, censor YouTube videos and block Libyans from disguising their online activities by using “proxy” servers, according to documents reviewed by the Journal and people familiar with the matter. Libya’s civil war stalled the talks.

“Narus does not comment on potential business ventures,” a Narus spokeswoman said in a statement. “There have been no sales or deployments of Narus technology in Libya.” A Bull official declined to comment.

The sale of technology used to intercept communications is generally permissible by law, although manufacturers in some countries, including the U.S., must first obtain special approval to export high-tech interception devices.

Libya is one of several Middle Eastern and North African states to use sophisticated technologies acquired abroad to crack down on dissidents. Tech firms from the U.S., Canada, Europe, China and elsewhere have, in the pursuit of profits, helped regimes block websites, intercept emails and eavesdrop on conversations.

The Tripoli Internet monitoring center was a major part of a broad surveillance apparatus built by Col. Gadhafi to keep tabs on his enemies. Amesys in 2009 equipped the center with “deep packet inspection” technology, one of the most intrusive techniques for snooping on people’s online activities, according to people familiar with the matter.

Members of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s family were reported Monday to have arrived in Algeria, a neighbor Libyan rebels have accused of supporting the ousted regime. Jeff Grocott has details on The News Hub.

Chinese telecom company ZTE Corp. also provided technology for Libya’s monitoring operation, people familiar with the matter said. Amesys and ZTE had deals with different arms of Col. Gadhafi’s security service, the people said. A ZTE spokeswoman declined to comment.

Of course Muslim hatred would help fund Zionist extremism

Posted: 01 Sep 2011

Sigh:

A colouring book about the events of 9/11, complete with pictures of the burning twin towers and the execution of a cowering Osama bin Laden for children to fill in, has provoked outrage among American Muslims.

We Shall Never Forget 9/11: The Kids’ Book of Freedom has just been released by the Missouri-based publisher Really Big Coloring Books, which says it is “designed to be a tool that parents can use to help teach children about the facts surrounding 9/11″. Showing scenes from 9/11 for children to colour in and telling the story of the attacks and the subsequent hunt for Osama bin Laden, “the book was created with honesty, integrity, reverence, respect and does not shy away from the truth”, according to its publisher, which says that it has sold out of its first print run of 10,000 copies.

One page of the $6.99 book, which has been given a PG rating, shows Bin Laden hiding behind a hijab-wearing woman as he is shot by a Navy SEAL. “Being the elusive character that he was, and after hiding out with his terrorist buddies in Pakistan and Afghanistan, American soldiers finally locate the terrorist leader Osama bin Laden,” runs the text accompanying the picture. “Children, the truth is, these terrorist acts were done by freedom-hating radical Islamic Muslim extremists. These crazy people hate the American way of life because we are FREE and our society is FREE.”

…

Really Big Coloring Books, which also published a colouring book teaching children about the Tea Party last year, has said that it will donate a portion of its proceeds from sales of the book to Bridges for Peace, “a Jerusalem-based, Bible-believing Christian organisation supporting Israel and building relationships between Christians and Jews worldwide through education and practical deeds expressing God’s love and mercy”.

Fighting back against those raping the Earth

Posted: 01 September 2011

It’s encouraging that growing numbers of communities globally are challenging the right of unaccountable corporate raidersto pillage the natural resources of the world. This is the definition of the resource curse and it’s vital that indigenous peoples challenge the outrage.

This recent piece in the UK Guardian by Melody Kemp highlights the trend:

Have you noticed that mining is increasingly getting up people’s noses? Globally, more communities are fighting it. Gaggles of poor villagers are taking on well-connected, cashed-up companies representing the brutish but powerful foundation of the globalised free market system. You have to admire their style.

Take Sumba, eastern Indonesia, which is currently pocked with the telltale signs of gold exploration. Its seams, Australian Hillgrove Resources says, are rich and promising. The local people’s response? Consistent riots and outrage. As they see it, gold mining threatens their land, water, culture – their very being. It usually takes about 691,000 litres (almost 700 cubic meters) of water to produce one kilo of glitter. In the necklace of dry eastern Indonesian islands that hang delicately above Australia, water is more precious than gold. Australian behemoth BHP, which recently posted a A$22.5bn (£15bn) profit, ceded the licence after local protests showed no sign of abating. Hillgrove cannot say it wasn’t warned.

On Palawan, a glistening gem of an island in the Philippines, a story all too familiar in Asia is also unfolding. A rich and powerful Forbes-listed airline magnate, Lucio Tan, in partnership with a UK mining giant Toledo Nickel, wants to mine one of Asia’s last significant old growth forests (thus reducing significant carbon sequestration potential) to take advantage of record prices for the nickel needed to run hybrid cars and satisfy our addiction to gadgets. But the tech-savvy indigenous people would rather have trees. On the Philippine island of Luzon, mining companies with names like health resorts, Oceana and Oxiana, are both facing opposition from the locals.

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The environment is one of the last of the global commons, and the sociocultural consequences and environmental costs of mining are increasingly unacceptable. This is especially so on small islands where water and arable land are limited. Papua New Guinea’s minister for mines Byron Chan recently announced that he was changing the law to “hand ownership from the government to land owners”. Greg Anderson, of the Australian chamber of mines and petroleum, choked on his tie when asked to respond. Obstacles and community shareholders are clearly not his thing.

So now we know who has been talking to the US covertly

Posted: 01 Sep 2011

Philip Dorling writes in Fairfax in Australia that there are serious questions about who holds vital information, who releases it, who should horde it and where responsibility lies in an age where Wikileaks (rightly) forces governments and journalists to own up to their own culpability in human rights abuses and cover-ups:

Confirmation that the full WikiLeaks archive of United States diplomatic cables has been leaked on the internet is bad news for US diplomacy – but potentially much worse for many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people who have talked confidentially with US diplomats.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and The Guardian, one of a handful of newspapers that began publishing redacted cables in co-operation with WikiLeaks last November, are now trading ever more sharp accusations about responsibility for the massive security breach.

More important, however, is the breach itself.

More here and here.

Why the Murdoch empire in Australia threatens democracy

Posted: 01 Sep 2011

Melbourne academic Robert Manne rightly calls for a neutering of Murdoch empire power in Australia:

The company’s domination of our newspaper market poses a real and present danger to the health of Australian democracy

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That’s a relief; Greens Senator isn’t anti-Semitic

Posted: 01 Sep 2011

The fact that Lee Rhiannon has to write this letter to Murdoch’s Australian shows the debased nature of the “debate” in this country:

David Syme’s accusation that I am anti-Semitic is false (Letters, 30/8). On many occasions I have condemned anti-Semitism.

I regularly speak out in support of multiculturalism and human rights and oppose racism and bigotry. The allegation against me has been made with no proof because there is none.

My criticism of the Israeli government and military for abuses against Palestinian families cannot be construed as anti-Semitic.

I find that people who make accusations about me being anti-Semitic are attempting to silence criticism of Israel’s human rights abuses such as the blockade of Gaza.

Lee Rhiannon, Sydney, NSW