Clive Stafford Smith on the outrageous case of Shaker Aamer who has been detained for 12 years without charge and tortured systematically. Guantanamo, he argues, is in many ways worse than death row or Soviet gulags.
Author: Idrees Ahmad
I am a Lecturer in Digital Journalism at the University of Stirling and a former research fellow at the University of Denver’s Center for Middle East Studies. I am the author of The Road to Iraq: The Making of a Neoconservative War (Edinburgh University Press, 2014). I write for The Observer, The Nation, The Daily Beast, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Atlantic, The New Republic, Al Jazeera, Dissent, The National, VICE News, Huffington Post, In These Times, Le Monde Diplomatique, Die Tageszeitung (TAZ), Adbusters, Guernica, London Review of Books (Blog), The New Arab, Bella Caledonia, Asia Times, IPS News, Medium, Political Insight, The Drouth, Canadian Dimension, Tanqeed, Variant, etc. I have appeared as an on-air analyst on Al Jazeera, the BBC, TRT World, RAI TV, Radio Open Source with Christopher Lydon, Alternative Radio with David Barsamian and several Pacifica Radio channels.
The solutionist impulse and digital theology
My review of Evgeny Morozov’s To Save Everything, Click Here, published in The National.
In her celebrated January 2010 statement on “internet freedom”, Hillary Clinton chided countries such as China, Tunisia, Uzbekistan and Egypt for placing restrictions on internet access. The then-US secretary of state affirmed her government’s conviction that “the more freely information flows, the stronger societies become”, because “access to information helps citizens hold their own governments accountable, generates new ideas, encourages creativity and entrepreneurship”.
Not long after, the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks obtained a trove of information revealing US military and diplomatic conduct in Iraq, Afghanistan and the rest of the world. Information flowed freely. But the US government appeared somewhat less convinced of its capacity for strengthening society. Access to WikiLeaks was restricted in many government agencies; Amazon, MasterCard, Visa and PayPal were persuaded to withdraw their services; and students and government employees were discouraged from sharing Wikileaks information on pain of jeopardising career prospects.
Internet freedom, it turned out, was not a sacrosanct principle. It failed to resist the intrusion of profane political concerns. As an analytical category independent of political and social constraints, the internet produced stirring rhetoric, but shorn of its obfuscating theology, it proved subject to the imperatives of power as much in the United States as in Uzbekistan.
This disconnect between the reality of the internet – the physical infrastructure, with its platforms, protocols and utilities; its promises, perils and limitations – and the idea of “the internet” – as a fixed, coherent and unproblematic phenomenon that is open, public and collaborative – enables two dangerous tendencies that are the subject of Evgeny Morozov’s To Save Everything, Click Here: Technology, Solutionism, and the Urge to Fix Problems That Don’t Exist.
The first he calls “solutionism” – a preoccupation with spectacular and narrow solutions to complex social and political problems. The second is “internet-centrism” – a conviction that “the internet” heralds a revolutionary era, a time of profound change in which old truths have become obsolete.
You can read the rest here.
Binyavanga Wainaina: Rewriting Africa
Among other things, Binyavanga Wainaina is author of ‘How to write about Africa‘, a biting satire on Western writings on Africa. (See video below the fold.)
It is time to change our image of Africa. Critics say that for too long now, aid organisations, foreign diplomats, politicians and journalists have been stuck looking at this vast continent as a convenient photo-opportunity to illustrate victimhood and desperation. And few men are more forceful in advocating a change in how we perceive Africa than Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina. Talk to Al Jazeera sat down with one of the continent’s most influential young authors to explore why the world is still not understanding Africa, and how to break the lens of media distortion.
Foreign policy and Fuzzy Maths on the Scott Horton Show
I was on the Scott Horton Show yesterday to discuss my recent article on the dubious numbers that have been used to conceal the real scale of Iraq’s tragedy.
Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, a sociologist and editor of Pulsemedia.org, discusses the highly contested estimated number of Iraqi deaths due to the 2003 US invasion; why Iraq Body Count (the media’s go-to source) vastly under-reports casualties; how “excess death” statistical studies work; and how low-balling the costs of war – in terms of blood and treasure – distorts the public debate.
True costs of Iraq War whitewashed by fuzzy maths
This article appears in The National. (Also see my earlier article on the causes of the war)
‘So many’, wrote TS Eliot, reflecting on the waste land left by the First World War. “I had not thought death had undone so many.”
This notion is unlikely to cross the minds of those surveying the devastation left by the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The most frequently quoted fatality figure – about 115,000 Iraqis killed – is shocking. But compared to major conflicts of the past century, it is a relatively modest toll. The Battle of the Somme alone killed three times as many. More were killed by a single bomb dropped on Hiroshima during the Second World War.
Former British prime minster Tony Blair, and then-US vice president Dick Cheney, were perhaps conscious of this when they expressed “no regrets” on the 10th anniversary of the war last month.
That the perpetrators of an aggressive war should accept the lowest costs for their folly is unsurprising. What is less explicable is why so many supposed critics of the war are crediting the same estimate. Brown University’s Costs of War project and the Centre for American Progress’s Iraq War Ledger use it as their main source.
You can read the rest here.
An opposition divided
Pulse editor Robin Yassin-Kassab discusses Syria on Al Jazeera’s Inside Syria.
We look at the internal divisions inside the Syrian National Coalition as they wrestle for legitimacy. To understand the reasons behind internal divisions inside the Syrian opposition, Inside Syria with presenter Hazem Sika discusses with guests: Najib Ghadbian; a representative of the National Coalition of Revolution and Opposition Forces in the UN; Robin Yassin-Kassab, a novelist and commentator; and in Athens-Ohio, Amr al-Azm, a professor of Middle East history and anthropology at Shawnee State University.
Agony in Aleppo: a city abandoned by the world?
From Channel 4: In the first of a Channel 4 News series charting Syria’s descent in the face of civil war, German filmmaker Marcel Mettelsiefen’s spends several weeks in Aleppo witnessing a civilian population isolated and under siege. (Caution: contains highly distressing scenes of war including images of children who have been wounded and killed)
Al Khatib: victory for Syrian revolution will break chain of oppression for all Arabs
A very fine speech at the Arab League summit by Syrian opposition leader Moaz al Khatib, which ends with a call to all the gathered Arabs to release their detainees and end oppression and injustice. (English subtitles included)
In the Name of God the Most Merciful…
God’s peace and blessings be upon you all. This blessing comes from a people one quarter of whose population are now homeless, one hundred thousand are imprisoned. They have paid a heavy price for the freedom they seek, with over 100,000 martyrs and a destroyed infrastructure, at the hands of a savage oppressor.Peace and blessings upon you, from a people who are being slaughtered under the watchful eye of the world for two years, and have been bombarded with a variety of heavy weapons and ballistic missiles, while many governments continue to shake their heads and wonder what they should do.
Peace and blessings upon you, from the only people in the world where warplanes bomb bakeries, and the dough is blended with the blood of children and women.
Peace and blessings upon you, from the widows and orphans, the tortured, the wounded and the disabled, the prisoners and the detainees, the refugees and displaced, the rebels and the fighters, and the martyrs that flutter around this wretched world.
Peace and blessings upon you, from a people who will follow the path to freedom, and who posses a will that can destabilize the greatest idol, and a love that fills the world with tranquility, warmth and compassion.
Tennessee, Papa, and the evolving idea of Manhood
Christopher Lydon is the worthiest personality to have graced American radio. His skills as a host are admired by every listener to Radio Open Source. But you’ll have to hear the following conversation to appreciate how even as a guest he has few equals. Our friendship was formed over our shared devotion for ideas of the late Tony Judt. But I’m happy to discover that we also have in common a deep love for Hemingway’s prose. Here is Chris discussing Hemingway and Tennessee Williams on Boston Public Radio with Jim Braude and Margery Egan. Don’t miss it because radio does not get any better than this
Cyprus: What the world’s media has missed
The Tax Justice Network‘s latest TaxCast is out. In this month’s show: the crisis in Cyprus and the risk tax havens pose to the global economy, a surprise earthquake for UK-affiliated tax havens and a frustrated corporate tax inspector speaks out on the corrupting of the tax system.
Now also available on iTunes: bit.ly/Y8UOfQ
Produced by @Naomi_Fowler
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