Category Archives: democracy

The thrill and fear of freedom

When a brutal regime is struggling to survive it turns to desperate measures.

Even as low-flying Egyptian air force Lockheed F-16s are currently attempting to shake fear into the hundreds of thousands of people gathered now in the center of Cairo, the people are showing their increasing defiance. And even now the Obama administration remains afraid of taking a strong stand in support of the Egyptian people.

We cannot honor the revolution in Egypt as impartial observers, uncertain about its outcome or its virtue. To believe in the revolution is to hold the unshakable conviction that human beings have the capacity to govern themselves and the right to live in freedom.

Egypt exposes the divide between those who fearlessly feel the thrill of freedom and those for whom freedom has become an object of fear.

As freedom spreads across the Middle East the greatest test will be faced in Israel.

Let’s be absolutely clear that the timidity with which the United States government has at this time responded to the prospect of Egyptians’ freedom, is a measure of the extent to which the freedom of 80 million people appears to pose a possible threat to the security of seven million Israelis.

Many Israelis and Americans have come to accept an unspoken and inhuman proposition: that one person’s safety can be secured at the expense of another person’s liberty. This forced exchange is an assault on human freedom.

At the same time, many others, swept up in the spirit of this moment, will be tempted to declare, “We are all Egyptians now,” but we are not.

The giddiness of freedom is the reward for those who have risen above their fears.

For those who remain the hostage of their own fears, freedom itself is another source of danger.

Under the rule of the West’s national security states we have been indoctrinated to believe that the remedy for fear is safety.

It is not. Indeed, those who cling to the fiction of high security, merely compound their own fears.

If we are to rediscover the nobility and dignity of our common humanity it will only be by defying fear with courage.

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Lessons from Egypt

In its complacency, America views the democratic aspirations of others as the desire to possess what we already enjoy. Little do we imagine that these aspirations reveal what we have discarded or perhaps never even possessed.

President Obama packages what has driven Egyptians onto the streets within the banal phrase “the desire for a better life” — as though the world is captive to a vision of life in suburbia in which material comfort is the sum of human fulfillment.

We misinterpret the significance of the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt if we look at these through the narrow prisms of dictatorial rule or economic hardship, because in truth they provide lessons about what it means to be human.

We are complex creatures and have advanced beyond the level of survival. Our needs go beyond material sufficiency.

Egyptians did not take to the streets today in order to fill their stomachs but in order to express their hearts. They were reclaiming their dignity by refusing to continue being the subjects of oppression.

But where is our dignity in accepting the fact that we have political representatives who do not represent our interests? Where is our dignity in having turned ourselves from citizens into consumers and having abandoned the idea of government by the people?

On the streets across Egypt today the single most important message from the people was this: we are not afraid.

Is this not a message that should shame the average American? Having spent a decade accepting the proposition that no expense should be spared to guard us against every imaginable fear, can we even imagine what it means to face danger yet not be afraid?

This perhaps more than anything else is the measure through which the bugaboo of 9/11 became the altar on which we sacrificed our dignity.

And should we pause to consider what the possible consequences are of empowering a national security state in the name of defense against terrorism, we could do no better than look at the example of the Mubarak regime.

*

One of the prevailing narratives in Washington has been that the US must tread a delicate line so that it does not undermine the flowering of democracy by providing unwelcome American support — as though the average Egyptian gives a damn about America’s position.

Egypt’s destiny is being determined by its people — not the Obama administration, which in its timidity and duplicity refuses to actually acknowledge the simple demand that is on the table: that Mubarak go.

And when from America we watch the Egyptian people assert their power, we should only imagine: what might this look like in America if we were not a nation filled with people so thoroughly convinced of our impotence?

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Egypt opposition arrive late to the revolution

There’s a thin line between well-organized and over-organized. On the one hand, the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood will be joining tomorrow’s regime-crushing demonstrations in Egypt looks likely to bring mass mobilization to a level that even an authoritarian government lacks the power to stop. At the same time, the fact that the Islamist movement has waited this long to join the action calls into question its capacity to lead the revolution and dominate a new government.

The Financial Times reports:

After decades of political apathy in this society of 80m people where few bothered to vote and protests usually drew tiny numbers, the explosion of anger has also taken the country’s opposition politicians by surprise.

Although the demonstrations are essentially leaderless, organised by youth activists on the internet, the opposition is now scrambling to use the opportunity to press for an end to the Mubarak era.

Politicians in Cairo say the National Association for Change headed by Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel laureate and former chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency who was due to land in Cairo last night, will emerge from the Egyptian “intifada”, or uprising, with enhanced credibility. But whether the regime will allow Mr ElBaradei to assume a leadership role remains to be seen.

The national association comprises several leading political figures and intellectuals, youth groups like April 6 which has been instrumental in mobilising demonstrations through the internet and a few political parties, including representatives from the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Islamist group is considered the movement with the largest grassroots support in the country but has always been reluctant to provoke the regime. It gave only timid support to the youth activists’ call for a “day of wrath” on Tuesday, though it is calling for participation in the rallies that are planned on Friday.

Opposition leaders say Mr ElBaradei, in particular, has played a crucial role in encouraging young Egyptians in their activism. He returned to Egypt a year ago, after living abroad for three decades, amid activists’ calls on him to run against Mr Mubarak in the September presidential elections.

His response was that he would heed the calls if the constitution was changed to allow independent candidates. Recent amendments to the constitution, as it stands today, give the ruling National Democratic party of Mr Mubarak control over the presidential election process.

Mr ElBaradei’s contribution, say opposition leaders, was to articulate the calls for reform and demonstrate that there are alternatives to Mr Mubarak. “No one can claim this wave . . . but what ElBaradei said and did helped light the flame,” said Osama el-Ghazali Harb of the Democratic Front party, which is part of Mr ElBaradei’s National Association. “He put forward the demands of the opposition and he gave them international attention.”

Issam el-Erian, a brotherhood leader, concurs. “El Baradei had a big role in starting this wave,” he says. “The system was always saying there is no alternative and the only one is the Ikhwan (Brotherhood), but he offered an alternative, and he has a Nobel prize, so he’s a respectable alternative.”

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Obama supports reform not democracy in Egypt

“The United States of America stands with the people of Tunisia, and supports the democratic aspirations of all people,” President Obama said on Tuesday, but he could not say the US stands with the people of Egypt, even though they are currently making their democratic aspirations crystal clear.

What the people of Egypt know, as do the citizens living under every US-backed autocratic ruler in the Middle East, is that if they are to win the prize of democratic freedom, they must surmount the obstacles that the US government throws in their way.

The Obama administration has made it perfectly evident that in spite of the pro-democracy platitudes it reluctantly espouses, it’s preeminent loyalties are with its undemocratic allies — thus Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s reluctance to even utter the word “democracy.”

Instead of backing democracy in Egypt, the administration supports reform and it claims that Hosni Mubarak is capable of bringing about the necessary changes.

At the State Department yesterday, a Middle Eastern reporter challenged Clinton, saying:

[Y]ou seem to imply that the Egyptian Government is capable of reforming itself and meeting the expectation of the people. Yet the mood in the streets of Cairo today contrasts that, and people are demanding for radical change, removal of the government and President Mubarak not to nominate himself for another term. Are you unsure of what’s happening in Cairo?

Clinton responded:

I do think it’s possible for there to be reforms, and that is what we are urging and calling for. And it is something that I think everyone knows must be on the agenda of the government as they not just respond to the protest, but as they look beyond as to what needs to be done economically, socially, politically. And there are a lot of very well informed, active civil society leaders in Egypt who have put forward specific ideas for reform, and we are encouraging and urging the Egyptian Government to be responsive to that.

The message from Egypt is simple: the Egyptian people want democratic freedom and an end to dictatorship. They want an end to a brutal regime that still retains Washington’s support. The demonstrators are not calling on Mubarak to implement reforms; they are demanding that he go — and that is a demand that, so far, the Obama administration refuses to acknowledge.

When the status quo becomes untenable, people take to the streets in order to force political change. But Mubarak’s friends in Washington and Jerusalem are not ready to see him go — their preeminent interest is in stability.

As the Jerusalem Post reports:

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has met repeatedly since coming to power in March 2009 with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and has said on a number of occasions that he has great respect for Mubarak as a statesman, and as a leader with vast experience and knowledge. Earlier this month he characterized the Egyptian-Israeli peace agreement as a “foundation for regional stability.”

There is not a prevalent sense among Egypt watchers in Jerusalem that the disturbances pose a threat to Mubarak’s regime. Rather, the concern is what comes after the 82-year-old Mubarak, and whether his successor – whether his son or someone else – will have the same authority and command the same degree of allegiance.

The sense in Jerusalem is that it would be a mistake to look at the events in Egypt and see an extension of what happened in Tunisia.

“This is not a Tunisian domino effect,” one official said.

Egypt, it was pointed out, is not as closed as Tunisia was under ousted president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali – it has a different political culture, with more organized opposition and more outlets for letting off steam than existed in Tunisia.

Most importantly, the army is considered loyal to the government, whereas the commander of the Tunisian army determined that it would not face down the protestors there.

Labor MK Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who is close to Mubarak and met on Tuesday with a senior Egyptian official, said Mubarak’s regime was strong and stable. He said there was no Egyptian who was serious enough competition for Mubarak to lead an effort against him.

“I don’t think it is possible [for there to be a revolution in Egypt],” Ben-Eliezer told Army Radio. “I see things calming down soon.

“Israel cannot do anything about what is happening there. All we can do is express our support for Mubarak and hope the riots pass quietly.”

Likewise, in an interview with Al Jazeera‘s Shihab Rattansi [see video below], State Department spokesman PJ Crowley said:

We want to see restraint on both sides. We want to see the Egyptian people have the opportunity to engage their government, to make clear what their aspirations of [sic], and we want to see that government respond in a meaningful way to meet those aspirations. That is our goal. That is the advice we are giving Egypt. We hope that Egypt will allow its people to protest peacefully but also open up the door for meaningful reforms.

Al Jazeera: Right, but we’re not talking in general terms here. Egypt is not letting its people protest peacefully. It’s deploying the full ranks of its US-backed $1.3 billion-backed security forces to beat up those protesters. Isn’t it time perhaps to be a little firmer with President Mubarak?

Crowley: We are giving Egypt advice publicly and privately. We have concerns about what is happening on the street. We are watching the situation carefully. We are in touch with the Egyptian government and we’re making clear that Egypt should allow its citizens to peacefully protest.

AJ: And if it doesn’t, is that funding — is that US support in jeopardy?

Crowley: We don’t see this as an either/or proposition. Egypt is an ally and friend of the United States. It’s an anchor of stability in the Middle East. It is helping us to pursue comprehensive peace in the Middle East.

But what every Egyptian knows today is that the United States government is not a friend of Egypt, it is a friend and ally of the Mubarak regime — a regime that does not represent the Egyptian people, nor should even be afforded the political shorthand of being referred to as “Egypt.”

Democracy is not the United State’s gift to the world and it will not be acquired under American tutelage. Real democrats don’t bankroll dictatorships.

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How to resist the will of the people

How can you placate the frustrations of a disenfranchised population without giving them real political power?

The answers to this question describe the common ground that unites Western leaders with their authoritarian counterparts in the Middle East. The game is to come up with political formulae that will make a potentially rebellious population feel heard just enough so that the fire of revolution can be dampened.*

Egyptian Armed Forces Chief-of-Staff Sami Annan, along with a delegation from the Egyptian Army, happen to be visiting Washington this week. I doubt that their counterparts in the Pentagon will be advising them on the fastest way to prepare Egypt for democracy.

Issandr El Amrani comments on al-Sayed Badawi, the president of the Wafd party (the most established of Egypt’s legal opposition parties) who appeared on Al Jazeera, demanding the formation of a new national unity government, the dissolution of parliament, and new elections under a proportional representation system.

My gut reaction: this is either a significant break with the Wafd’s behavior for over 30 years, or he is making this announcement on behalf of the regime. Why the conspiracy theory? Because he doesn’t mention the question of the presidency, a chief demand of the protestors. Perhaps he should be given the benefit of the doubt.

Meanwhile, the National Association for Change has made its own demands, including asking Mubarak to step down and [his son] Gamal to be disqualified from the presidency, as well as the dissolution of the parliament. Other groups have other demands, including a new minimum wage and the firing of the interior minister.

These people should be coordinating — and remember they are not the ones who protested tonight.

The cautiousness of some of the Egyptian opposition leaders demonstrates exactly why an authoritarian regime provides space for an opposition to operate: so that at a moment such as this, opposition leaders will not place themselves at the vanguard of revolutionary change and that by holding back, they will undermine the popular will.

*Am I implying that any Western countries harbor the seeds of revolution? Far from it. The “success” of Western democracy has been to depoliticize populations through the anesthetizing power of consumerism. People don’t care too much if government by the people is a fiction, so long as they can get their hands on the latest iPhone. Once the anesthetic is applied sufficiently widely and sufficiently frequently, there ceases to be such a thing as the will of the people.

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Islamists and the democratization of the Middle East

Olivier Roy notes that there was no visible Islamist dimension to the uprising in Tunisia.

Instead, the protesters were calling for freedom, democracy and multi-party elections. Put more simply, they just wanted to get rid of the kleptocratic ruling family.

At the end, when the real “Islamist” leaders returned from exile in the West (yes they were in the West, not in Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia), they, like Rached Ghannouchi, spoke of elections, coalition government and stability, all the while keeping a low profile.

Have the Islamists disappeared?

No. But in North Africa, at least, most of them have become democrats. True, fringe groups have followed the path of a nomadic global jihad and are roaming the Sahel in search of hostages, but they have no real support in the population. That is why they went to the desert.

Nevertheless, these highway robbers are still branded as a strategic threat by Western governments at a loss to design a long-term policy. Other Islamists have just given up politics and closed their door, pursuing a pious, conservative, but apolitical way of life. They put a burqa on their lives as well as on their wives.

But the bulk of the former Islamists have come to the same conclusion of the generation that founded the Justice and Development Party in Turkey: There is no third way between democracy and dictatorship. There is just dictatorship and democracy.

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In the Middle East, no one thinks Obama is serious about democracy

In Washington, when a cabinet level official is facing calls for his resignation, he is likely to take cover behind that regal phrase, “I serve at the president’s pleasure.” Most of the Arab world’s autocratic leaders could use the same expression since most would find their positions untenable without American support.

Last Wednesday, when Hillary Clinton said “we are not taking sides,” as demonstrators clashed with Tunisian security forces, she could have dispensed with protocol and said with more honesty, “we are no longer taking sides.”

Up until that moment the United States had unequivocally taken sides with Tunisia’s dictatorial ruler, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, but thereafter he knew he was on his own. He rapidly lost his grip on power.

The Obama administration’s relationship with the Tunisian regime was mirrored on a smaller scale by that of the Washington Media Group, a consulting firm that severed its contract with the Tunisian government on January 6.

“We felt on principle that we could not work for a government that was shooting its own citizens and violating their civil rights with such abuse,” said WMG’s President Gregory L. Vistica. Was he claiming that his client’s record had suddenly taken a turn for the worse, or that his firm had only just discovered it had principles?

The point is that WMG, just like the US government, prefers to blur the distinction between statements of principle and actions of self-interest.

On Friday, when President Obama said, “I applaud the courage and dignity of the Tunisian people,” observers across the region might have appreciated the sentiment yet seen no reason to attach much gravity to his words. After, Ben Ali had already fled.

“No one thinks Obama is serious about democracy,” says Shadi Hamid from Brookings Doha Center. “In some ways they have given up hope. And that I think is one of the key post-Cairo Speech stories: that after a lot of optimism about Obama’s election, people realized that when it comes to the issue of democracy-promotion in the Arab world — and that is a very important one for many Arabs — Obama’s really not on board.”

What more damning an indictment could be made against an American president than to say that he does not support democracy?

Hamid is joined in conversation with fellow Middle East analyst Issandr El Amrani from The Arabist, for a fascinating discussion on the implications on the people’s uprising in Tunisia.

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Will Tunisia be a turning point for Arab democracy?

Michael Hanna writes:

For observers throughout the Arab world, the significance of the Tunisian uprising is near-impossible to understate. During this era of retrenchment by aging descendants of revolutionary regimes, the prospect of democratic change had long-ago vanished as a believable possibility. The closest point of reference to the civil unrest in Tunisia is the protest movement that erupted in Iran following the contested presidential elections of June 2009. But the significance of Iran’s post-election events has been minimal in the Arab world, reflecting the Arab-Iranian cultural chasm and the ingrained sense of Arab chauvinism that guides Arab perceptions of international affairs. The Shiite theocracy established in the wake of the 1979 Iranian revolution has always been something of a curiosity for the Arab world and its heavily Sunni population. While the chimerical dreams of Arabism are long gone, events within the Arabic-speaking world – such as Tunisia’s protests – carry special resonance. Since Arab nationalism’s heyday under the 1950s and ’60s stewardship of Egyptian president Gamal ‘Abd al-Nasser, that collective identity has remained, held together by shared media and culture. The role once played by the radio broadcasts of Sawt al-‘Arab (Voice of the Arabs), the Egyptian-run radio station established during the Nasser era, is now filled by the saturation coverage of such Arab satellite stations as al-Jazeera and al-‘Arabiyya. The networks often focus on intra-Arab issues. The protests on the streets of Tunisia were seen far and wide, in real time, by millions of Arabs, with no need for translation or cultural filtering.

With Tunisia’s reputation as something of a stable but sleepy backwater, the events of recent weeks have come as a complete surprise to the world. The uprising remains in flux, its ultimate outcome unclear, and there is no certainty that the country is on its way to a democratic transition, let alone a smooth one. However, the demonstration effect of this uprising is likely not lost on the region’s aging autocrats. A pilot who refused to fly Ben Ali’s family out of Tunisia, interviewed on live television, explained that they were “war criminals.” As the region’s other autocratic rulers retire to bed, this forthright message will be a chilling reminder that their people’s quiescence is not guaranteed, nor is it the same thing as legitimacy. If nothing else, the protests have demonstrated that an Arab head-of-state can be toppled from below and, for leaders as well as activists, have expanded popular notions of the possible. While the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the protests of the “green movement” in Iran have had far-ranging regional ramifications, when it comes to promoting Arab democracy, Tunisia’s 2011 uprising may eclipse them both.

As much as democracy poses a threat to the Arab world’s autocratic leaders, it also threatens Israel. If a day ever comes that the Jewish state is surrounded by democracies, its real identity as a racist ethnocracy will be fully exposed.

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‘The Left has nowhere to go’

Chris Hedges writes:

Ralph Nader in a CNN poll a few days before the 2008 presidential election had an estimated 3 percent of the electorate, or about 4 million people, behind his candidacy. But once the votes were counted, his support dwindled to a little over 700,000. Nader believes that many of his supporters entered the polling booth and could not bring themselves to challenge the Democrats and Barack Obama. I suspect Nader is right. And this retreat is another example of the lack of nerve we must overcome if we are going to battle back against the corporate state. A vote for Nader or Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney in 2008 was an act of defiance. A vote for Obama and the Democrats was an act of submission. We cannot afford to be submissive anymore.

“The more outrageous the Republicans become, the weaker the left becomes,” Nader said when I reached him at his home in Connecticut on Sunday. “The more outrageous they become, the more the left has to accept the slightly less outrageous corporate Democrats.”

Nader fears a repeat of the left’s cowardice in the next election, a cowardice that has further empowered the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party, maintained the role of the Democratic Party as a lackey for corporations, and accelerated the reconfiguration of the country into a neo-feudalist state. Either we begin to practice a fierce moral autonomy and rise up in multiple acts of physical defiance that have no discernable short-term benefit, or we accept the inevitability of corporate slavery. The choice is that grim. The age of the practical is over. It is the impractical, those who stand fast around core moral imperatives, figures like Nader or groups such as Veterans for Peace, which organized the recent anti-war rally in Lafayette Park in Washington, which give us hope. If you were one of the millions who backed down in the voting booth in 2008, don’t do it again. If you were one of those who thought about joining the Washington protests against the war where 131 of us were arrested and did not, don’t fail us next time. The closure of the mechanisms within the power system that once made democratic reform possible means we stand together as the last thin line of defense between a civil society and its disintegration. If we do not engage in open acts of defiance, we will empower a radical right-wing opposition that will replicate the violence and paranoia of the state. To refuse to defy in every way possible the corporate state is to be complicit in our strangulation.

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2011: A Brave New Dystopia

Chris Hedges writes:

The two greatest visions of a future dystopia were George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” The debate, between those who watched our descent towards corporate totalitarianism, was who was right. Would we be, as Orwell wrote, dominated by a repressive surveillance and security state that used crude and violent forms of control? Or would we be, as Huxley envisioned, entranced by entertainment and spectacle, captivated by technology and seduced by profligate consumption to embrace our own oppression? It turns out Orwell and Huxley were both right. Huxley saw the first stage of our enslavement. Orwell saw the second.

We have been gradually disempowered by a corporate state that, as Huxley foresaw, seduced and manipulated us through sensual gratification, cheap mass-produced goods, boundless credit, political theater and amusement. While we were entertained, the regulations that once kept predatory corporate power in check were dismantled, the laws that once protected us were rewritten and we were impoverished. Now that credit is drying up, good jobs for the working class are gone forever and mass-produced goods are unaffordable, we find ourselves transported from “Brave New World” to “1984.” The state, crippled by massive deficits, endless war and corporate malfeasance, is sliding toward bankruptcy. It is time for Big Brother to take over from Huxley’s feelies, the orgy-porgy and the centrifugal bumble-puppy. We are moving from a society where we are skillfully manipulated by lies and illusions to one where we are overtly controlled.

Orwell warned of a world where books were banned. Huxley warned of a world where no one wanted to read books. Orwell warned of a state of permanent war and fear. Huxley warned of a culture diverted by mindless pleasure. Orwell warned of a state where every conversation and thought was monitored and dissent was brutally punished. Huxley warned of a state where a population, preoccupied by trivia and gossip, no longer cared about truth or information. Orwell saw us frightened into submission. Huxley saw us seduced into submission. But Huxley, we are discovering, was merely the prelude to Orwell. Huxley understood the process by which we would be complicit in our own enslavement. Orwell understood the enslavement. Now that the corporate coup is over, we stand naked and defenseless. We are beginning to understand, as Karl Marx knew, that unfettered and unregulated capitalism is a brutal and revolutionary force that exploits human beings and the natural world until exhaustion or collapse.

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Your right to protest is under threat

Johann Hari writes:

So now we know. When our politicians complained over the past few decades, in a low, sad tone, that our young people were “too apathetic” and “disengaged”, it was a lie. A great flaring re-engagement of the young has take place this year. With overwhelmingly peaceful tactics, they are demanding policies that are supported by the majority of the British people – and our rulers are trying to truncheon, kettle and intimidate them back into apathy.

Here’s one example of the intimidation of peaceful protest by the young that is happening all over Britain. Nicky Wishart is a 12-year-old self-described “maths geek” who lives in the heart of David Cameron’s constituency. He was gutted when he found out his youth club was being shut down as part of the cuts: there’s nowhere else to hang out in his village. He was particularly outraged when he discovered online that Cameron had said, before the election, that he was “committed” to keeping youth clubs open. So he did the right thing. He organized a totally peaceful protest on Facebook outside Cameron’s constituency surgery. A few days later, the police arrived at his school. They hauled him out of his lessons, told him the anti-terrorism squad was monitoring him and threatened him with arrest.

The message to Nicky Wishart and his generation is very clear: don’t get any fancy ideas about being an engaged citizen. Go back to your X-Box and X-Factor, and leave politics to the millionaires in charge.

This slow constriction of the right to protest has been happening for decades now. Under New Labour, protesters outside parliament started to have to ask permission and suddenly found themselves prosecuted for “anti-social behaviour.” In 2009, a man who had committed no violence or threats at all died after being attacked by a police officer on the streets of London at a protest – and nobody has ever been punished. Now the Metropolitan Police’s instinctive response to any group of protesters is to surround them and ‘kettle’ – that is, arbitrarily imprison – them for up to ten hours in the freezing cold, with no food, water, or toilets. It doesn’t matter how peaceful you were. You are trapped.

In the past few weeks police officers have been caught responding to a disabled young man with cerebral palsy – who was protesting because his 16 year old brother is now too scared of debt to go to university – by hauling him out of his wheelchair and throwing him to the ground. They even tried to block a severely injured protester in need of brain surgery from being treated at the nearest hospital, on the grounds that police officers were being treated there too and it was ‘upsetting’ to have injured protesters in the same place. Now Sir Paul Stephenson, head of the Met, says a total ban on protests by students is “one of the tactics we will look at.”

These protesters are not defying the will of the British people; they are expressing it.

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Too much freedom in America

There’s too much freedom, a few constitutional amendments need tossing out and the government needs greater powers — this would seem to sum up the views of the majority of Americans… if the latest polling is reliable.

The American public is highly critical of the recent release of confidential U.S. diplomatic cables on the WikiLeaks Web site and would support the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange by U.S. authorities, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds.

Most of those polled – 68 percent – say the WikiLeaks’ exposure of government documents about the State Department and U.S. diplomacy harms the public interest. Nearly as many – 59 percent – say the U.S. government should arrest Assange and charge him with a crime for releasing the diplomatic cables.

Assange was scheduled to appear in a London courtroom Tuesday to formally contest an extradition order on sexual assault charges in Sweden. U.S. federal authorities are reportedly investigating whether Assange could be charged with violating the Espionage Act by releasing the documents, but his potential extradition to Sweden could significantly complicate any U.S. attempt to quickly try him.

A generational gap was evident among those polled, with younger Americans raised in the Internet age expressing distinct views on the matter. Nearly a third of those ages 18 to 29 say the release of the U.S. diplomatic cables serves the public interest, double the proportion of those older than 50 saying so. When it comes to Assange, these younger adults are evenly split: Forty-five percent say he should be arrested by the United States; 46 percent say it is not a criminal matter. By contrast, those age 30 and older say he should be arrested by a whopping 37-point margin.

As always, the polling information is frustrating as much because of what it doesn’t show as by what it reveals. The answers to these follow-up questions might have helped clarify who was dumber — the pollsters or those being polled:
1. If you believe the release of the cables damaged the public interest, can you list the top five most damaging revelations?
2. If you believe the release of the cables damaged the public interest, can you explain whether you see any distinction between the interests of the American people and the interests of the US government?
3. If you would like to see Julian Assange arrested, can you explain what crime you think he committed?
4. If you think he committed a crime, do you believe that the same charges should be brought against the editors of the New York Times and other newspapers that published the cables?
5. The First Amendment protects freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Can you explain your understanding of these freedoms and do you believe that the US Constitution can be set aside whenever the government says that national security is at stake?

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PEN International statement on WikiLeaks

International PEN, the worldwide association of writers, has released a statement in support of WikiLeaks:

PEN International champions the essential role played by freedom of expression in healthy societies and the rights of citizens to transparency, information and knowledge.

The Wikileaks issue marks a significant turning point in the evolution of the media and the sometimes conflicting principles of freedom of expression and privacy and security concerns. The culture of increasing secrecy in governments and the rise of new technology will inevitably lead to an increasing number of transparency issues of this sort. PEN International believes it is important to acknowledge that while the leaking of government documents is a crime under U.S laws, the publication of documents by Wikileaks is not a crime. Wikileaks is doing what the media has historically done, the only difference being that the documents have not been edited.

PEN International urges those voicing opinions regarding the Wikileaks debate to adopt a responsible tone, and not to play to the more extreme sections of society. In a world where journalists are regularly physically attacked, imprisoned and killed with impunity, calling for the death of a journalist is irresponsible and deplorable.

PEN International is also concerned by reports that some web sites, fearing repercussions, have stopped carrying Wikileaks, and that individuals, under threat of legal action, have been warned against reading information provided by the organization. PEN International condemns such acts and calls upon corporations and states to avoid breaches of the right to free expression. Governments cannot call for unlimited internet freedom in other parts of the world if they do not respect this freedom themselves.

The Wikileaks matter is a dynamic issue which we shall continue to monitor closely and on which we will refine our position as the situation requires. We welcome this debate and look forward to further discussion with the worldwide PEN membership.

WL Central adds this note:

The statement that “the documents have not been edited” is incorrect. All Cablegate documents published by WikiLeaks on its website have been redacted by the media partners. Please see this report by the Associated Press on the redaction process. Please also see our report on the redaction of the Afghanistan and Iraq war logs.

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The end of hypocrisy

Carne Ross has provided one of the most concise and cogent analyses of the impact of the WikiLeaks cables release and concludes that the challenge this event has thrown up can only be met with one solution: “that governments must close the divide between what they say, and what they do.”

A knee-jerk response to the prospect that diplomacy might not enjoy the confidentiality that it supposedly requires has been the assertion that this confidentiality is the basis of trust. Confidentiality, we are told, fosters candor. Behind closed doors, everyone becomes honest. Right.

On the contrary, what the cables actually reveal is what one might expect: that absent the political accountability that comes from publicly declaring ones objectives, confidentiality provides space for adventurism and for the promotion of policies that might be disowned if ever made public.

The cables reveal leaders across the Middle East — leaders all of whom have been blessed by the United States as “moderates” — whose overriding interest is the protection of their own autocratic power in the name of American-backed “regional stability.”

Even when it comes to candid assessments delivered by diplomats to their own government, such honesty often comes loaded with bias. Consider, for instance, this cable from Ambassador James Jeffrey while he served in Ankara. Referring to the foreign policy objectives outlined by Turkey’s foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu representing the ruling AKP, Jeffrey writes sourly:

[T]he AKP’s constant harping on its unique understanding of the region, and outreach to populations over the heads of conservative, pro-US governments, have led to accusations of “neo-Ottomanism.” Rather than deny, Davutoglu has embraced this accusation. Himself the grandson of an Ottoman soldier who fought in Gaza, Davutoglu summed up the Davutoglu/AKP philosophy in an extraordinary speech in Sarajevo in late 2009 (REF A). His thesis: the Balkans, Caucasus, and Middle East were all better off when under Ottoman control or influence; peace and progress prevailed. Alas the region has been ravaged by division and war ever since. (He was too clever to explicitly blame all that on the imperialist western powers, but came close). However, now Turkey is back, ready to lead — or even unite. (Davutoglu: “We will re-establish this (Ottoman) Balkan”).

If Hillary Clinton did not rely on her ambassador’s confidential opinion but actually read Davutoglu’s speech, she might have come to a different conclusion.

The Turkish foreign minister said: “We want to have a new Balkan region, based on political dialogue, economic interdependency and cooperation, integration and cultural harmony and tolerance.”

The thrust of his argument was that the Balkans had thrived not by virtue of Ottoman rule per se, but because of the dynamism fostered by “multicultural coexistence.” Likewise, he portrayed contemporary Turkey’s strength as being multicultural: “Turkey is a small Balkan, a small Middle East, a small Caucasus. We have more Bosnians living in Turkey than in Bosnia, more Albanians living in Turkey than in Albania, more Chechens living in Turkey than in Chechnya, more Abkhazians living in Turkey than in Abkhazia, and we have Kurds, Arabs, Turks together.”

Is this the perspective of a man enthralled by a romanticized Ottoman golden age, or is Davutoglu offering a glimpse at the kind of multicultural future on which the region and the world surely depends?

But enough of my preamble — here’s what Ross writes:

It will take a long time, perhaps many years, for the full impact of the WikiLeaks disclosure of thousands of US diplomatic cables to become known. Make no mistake: this is an event of historic importance — for all governments, and not only the US.

As politicians of all sides bellow their condemnation of WikiLeaks, governments are with some desperation trying to pretend that it’s business as usual. But the truth is that something very dramatic in the world of diplomacy has just taken place, and thus indeed in the way that the world runs its business. History may now be dated pre- or post-WikiLeaks.

The mainstream press has as usual missed the story, with their obsession with Iran or Qaddafi’s voluptuous nurse or Karzai’s corruption — which, incidentally, is reported by US diplomats in excruciating detail. But this event carries a much deeper significance than merely the highly-embarrassing and in some cases dangerous revelations in the enormous trove of documents. No one, and neither the US State Department nor WikiLeaks, can say with any confidence whether the effects of this massive disclosure will be good or bad, for in truth no one can know. There will be many and long-lasting consequences. That is all that can be known with any certainty at this point.

The presumption that governments can conduct their business in secret with one another, out of sight of the populations they represent, died this week. Diplomats and officials around the world are slowly realizing that anything they say may now be one day published on the Internet. Governments are now frantically rushing to secure their data and hold it more tightly than ever, but the horse has bolted. If a government as technically sophisticated and well protected as the US can suffer a breach of this magnitude, no government is safe. Politicians can demand the prosecution of Julian Assange or — absurdly — that WikiLeaks be designated as a terrorist organization, but the bellows of anger are tacit admission that government’s monopoly on its own information is now a thing of the past.

Hillary Clinton has described the WikiLeaks disclosures as an attack on the “international community.” But in truth this is something else: an attack on the governments that make up the current international system of diplomacy. The deep-seated assumption, both among the public and political classes, that governments have business that they should conduct in secret with one another has been shattered. Pause, incidentally, to observe the politicians and commentators declaring the need for governments to operate in secrecy, when they don’t even know what government is keeping secret. From this day forward, it will be ever more difficult for governments to claim one thing, and do another. For in making such claims, they are making themselves vulnerable to WikiLeaks of their own.

Why? Because the most damaging thing about the WikiLeaks disclosures is not the fact that they happened (though this is bad enough for the US government) but the revelation, long suspected but now proven, of the yawning discrepancy between US words and actions in that most contested area, the Middle East. Cable after cable details the extraordinarily intimate and co-dependent relations between the US and various despotic and unpleasant Arab regimes. One Arab intelligence chief plots with American officials to target Iranian groups, or confront Hezbollah. Another undemocratic Arab leader invites US bombers to attack targets in his own territory. It is this discrepancy — between word and deed — that will keep the wind in WikiLeaks’ sails, and others like them, for long to come.

Governments around the world are this week telling each other that nothing has really changed and that if they restrict the circulation of those really sensitive telegrams and glue up all the USB slots in their computers, that this won’t happen to them. But it will. There will be more such revelations, not about the US (which so far has been the main target of WikiLeaks’ somewhat arbitrary attentions), but others — British, Chinese? — for the reality is that electronic data is formidably difficult to protect.

The reason is simple. In order to be effective as organizations, governments and foreign offices are required to circulate sensitive data, so that their officials and diplomats actually know what’s going on. One reason why the UN is ineffective as an organization is because nothing is secret there, and as a result no one circulates anything sensitive. Don’t buy the argument that the really important stuff is kept Top Secret and hasn’t been compromised. Even a cursory perusal of the WikiLeaks archive reveals cables that are the very meat and drink of diplomacy — what foreign leaders and governments really think, and what they really want in their relations with the US.

Governments are therefore confronted with an insoluble conundrum. If they restrict and protect the data, and perhaps even stop recording the most delicate information (as no doubt some diplomats are now considering), they will inevitably reduce their operational effectiveness. If they circulate the data widely, as the US did before WikiLeaks, they will risk compromise on this devastating scale.

There is in fact only one enduring solution to the WikiLeaks problem and this is perhaps the goal of WikiLeaks, though this is sometimes hard to discern. That is that governments must close the divide between what they say, and what they do. It is this divide that provokes WikiLeaks; it is this divide that will provide ample embarrassment for future leakers to exploit. The only way for governments to save their credibility is to end that divide and at last to do what they say, and vice versa, with the assumption that nothing they may do will remain secret for long. The implications of this shift are profound, and indeed historic.

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The age of political apathy is ending

“Off with their heads,” shouted demonstrators crowding round the Rolls Royce carrying Prince Charles and his wife Camilla to a West End theater last night. Even if he didn’t fear for his life, Britain’s heir to the throne was reminded of the fate of his namesake, Charles I, last time Britons violently upturned the established order. And even if to Americans the British monarchy has the appearance of a quaint anachronism, the incident serves as a reminder that there are never any institutional seats of power that can perfectly protect themselves from the wrath of a population that forcefully demands to be heard.

For much of the last two decades, the West’s cynical democratic leaders have comforted themselves with the knowledge that governmental power rarely requires popular support. With election strategies that hinge on securing a 51% majority — a minority from a largely apathetic electorate — the only constituencies that have demanded and been rewarded with loyal service are those who pay handsomely to have their interests represented.

No more. The new British government recently volunteered to test the theory that austerity measures are not only a panacea for the economic travails of these times, but that a docile population will buckle under when forced to swallow bitter medicine. Unless the government is forced to change course, this will make higher education unfordable for most of a generation.

On the streets of London, Britain’s young people are now demonstrating that their character has been misjudged. None has done so more articulately than Barnably, a 15 year-old speaking at the Coalition of Resistance national conference in London on November 27.

Aaron Porter writes:

The last 30 days have shaken the coalition. Together with UCU, the lecturers’ union, we brought 50,000 to the streets of London on 10 November for the biggest student demonstration in a generation. It has sparked a new wave of activism that has involved tens of thousands of students, parents, pupils and teachers in creative, nonviolent protests and direct action.

By piling pressure on MPs with dozens of spontaneous demonstrations, scores of occupations and hundreds of thousands taking action around the country, we have come together to defend education and fight for our future. A generation has found its voice.

In its founding statement, the Coalition of Resistance declared:

It is time to organise a broad movement of active resistance to the Con-Dem government’s budget intentions. They plan the most savage spending cuts since the 1930s, which will wreck the lives of millions by devastating our jobs, pay, pensions, NHS, education, transport, postal and other services.

The government claims the cuts are unavoidable because the welfare state has been too generous. This is nonsense. Ordinary people are being forced to pay for the bankers’ profligacy.

The £11bn welfare cuts, rise in VAT to 20%, and 25% reductions across government departments target the most vulnerable – disabled people, single parents, those on housing benefit, black and other ethnic minority communities, students, migrant workers, LGBT people and pensioners.

Women are expected to bear 75% of the burden. The poorest will be hit six times harder than the richest. Internal Treasury documents estimate 1.3 million job losses in public and private sectors.

We reject this malicious vandalism and resolve to campaign for a radical alternative, with the level of determination shown by trade unionists and social movements in Greece and other European countries.

This government of millionaires says “we’re all in it together” and “there is no alternative”. But, for the wealthy, corporation tax is being cut, the bank levy is a pittance, and top salaries and bonuses have already been restored to pre-crash levels.

An alternative budget would place the banks under democratic control, and raise revenue by increasing tax for the rich, plugging tax loopholes, withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, abolishing the nuclear “deterrent” by cancelling the Trident replacement.

An alternative strategy could use these resources to: support welfare; develop homes, schools, and hospitals; and foster a green approach to public spending – investing in renewable energy and public transport, thereby creating a million jobs.

In another address to the national conference, the rapper, Lowkey, pointed out that the Liberal Democrats have not only reversed themselves on the issue of university tuition fees but also abandoned their proposal of an arms embargo on Israel. He also noted the irony that even during the rule of a Tory government, the Conservative Party headquarters in London has less protection than the Israeli embassy.

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The war on free speech

John Naughton writes:

‘Never waste a good crisis” used to be the catchphrase of the Obama team in the runup to the presidential election. In that spirit, let us see what we can learn from official reactions to the WikiLeaks revelations.

The most obvious lesson is that it represents the first really sustained confrontation between the established order and the culture of the internet. There have been skirmishes before, but this is the real thing.

And as the backlash unfolds – first with deniable attacks on internet service providers hosting WikiLeaks, later with companies like Amazon and eBay and PayPal suddenly “discovering” that their terms and conditions preclude them from offering services to WikiLeaks, and then with the US government attempting to intimidate Columbia students posting updates about WikiLeaks on Facebook – the intolerance of the old order is emerging from the rosy mist in which it has hitherto been obscured. The response has been vicious, co-ordinated and potentially comprehensive, and it contains hard lessons for everyone who cares about democracy and about the future of the net.

There is a delicious irony in the fact that it is now the so-called liberal democracies that are clamouring to shut WikiLeaks down.

Consider, for instance, how the views of the US administration have changed in just a year. On 21 January, secretary of state Hillary Clinton made a landmark speech about internet freedom, in Washington DC, which many people welcomed and most interpreted as a rebuke to China for its alleged cyberattack on Google. “Information has never been so free,” declared Clinton. “Even in authoritarian countries, information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable.”

She went on to relate how, during his visit to China in November 2009, Barack Obama had “defended the right of people to freely access information, and said that the more freely information flows the stronger societies become. He spoke about how access to information helps citizens to hold their governments accountable, generates new ideas, and encourages creativity.” Given what we now know, that Clinton speech reads like a satirical masterpiece.

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