Wikileaks and 21st Century Statecraft

Have 250,000 leaks sunk the State Department’s ‘Internet Freedom’ policy?

by Roy Revie

As the fallout of Cablegate continues to consume column inches, gigabytes, and cabinet meetings across the world, the realisation that this is about more than one man, one organization, and one massive leak seems to be slowly sinking in. While some argue that stories and comment focusing on the process of the leak and the fallout for the organisation only distract from the stories contained within the cables themselves, it is clear that this element is as vital (in the short term at least) as the contents of the cables.  We find ourselves in the middle of an unprecedented public debate on Internet freedom and the role of the state online.  In this debate much has been written about the motives and background of Wikileaks (some bad, some excellent) while other parties involved have avoided the same scrutiny.  Of particular interest in the current discussion is the role of the State Department which under Hillary Clinton’s leadership has played an important and contradictory role in the debate on Internet freedom.

Back in more innocent times, in January of this year, Hillary Clinton gave a speech at the Newseum (a 250,000-square foot monument to media complacency) in which she introduced the concept of “21st Century Statecraft” – a term referring to the recent State Department push for the use of social and new media for diplomatic and geopolitical ends.  In this speech she affirmed the US’s commitment to the “principles of internet freedom”, a new Human Right for the 21st Century.  Clinton waxed lyrical about the ethical, financial, political and practical reasons why freedom of access and use of the internet should be considered an absolute right – noting that America “stand[s] for a single internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas”.  The State Department, it seemed, was committed to a comprehensive and open approach to online freedom and engagement, a new stance for a government which had hitherto tended towards a more iterative approach to interaction with the modern world.

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Pakistan’s Elephantine Corruption

by Tariq Ali

The Wikileaks confirm what we already know about Af-Pak. Pakistan is a US satrapy: its military and political leaders constitute a venal elite happy to kill and maim its people at the behest of a foreign power. The US proconsul in Islamabad, Anne Patterson, emerges as a shrewd diplomat, repeatedly warning her country of the consequences in Pakistan if they carry on as before. Amusing but hardly a surprise is Zardari reassuring the US that if he were assassinated his sister, Faryal Talpur, would replace him and all would continue as before. Always nice to know that the country is regarded by its ruler as a personal fiefdom.

Then we have the country’s military boss, General Kayani, sweetly suggesting that the Pushtun leader Asfandyar Wali Khan, a beneficiary of US funds, might be a possible president: confirmation, if any were needed, that the uniformed ones are the real power in the land, sharing it at the moment with the US Embassy.

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Shylock, Fagin, and Finkler: Howard Jacobson’s The Finkler Question

by Jeremiah Haber

Fink – “an unpleasant, contemptible person”; “a strikebreaker”; “an informer”. The slang word is an Americanism, which may have Germanic roots, and is not common in England.

Move over Shylock and Fagin -there is a new star in the firmament of negative Jewish characters in English Literature, the anti-Zionist Jew of Howard Jacobson’s new novel, The Finkler Question. While he is in his anti-Zionist phase, Samuel Finkler has only two positive character traits: Like Shylock, he is concerned with the pursuit of justice (though not for his own people); like Fagin he is faithful to his friends (but not to his people, or his wife.) Until Finkler becomes disenchanted with anti-Zionism he is an odious fellow; selfish, arrogant, hypocritical. A professional philosopher specializing in ethics (since he is an amoralist he can rationalize cheating on his wife), Finkler relishes his role as public intellectual, talking head, and household name. He gladly accepts an invitation to appear on the BBC program Desert Island Discs, despite the fact that he knows little and cares less about music; for him the appearance is a “career move.” And when Finkler announces on the show that he is ashamed of being a Jew because of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians (after duly noting about how important Judaism is to him), he joins a club of “ASHamed Jews” — not because he has serious ideological affinities with the members but because some of them are quasi-celebs who admire his “courage” for speaking out. In the company of Jews who are ashamed about Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, Finkler finds his Jewish métier; indeed, only as a self-hating anti-Zionist Jew can Finkler be truly Jewish. As his wife, a convert to Judaism, puts it,

Have you forgotten that you don’t like Jews? You shun the company of Jews. You have publically proclaimed yourself disgusted by Jews because they throw their weight around and then tell you they believe in a compassionate God. And now because a few mediocre half household-name Jews have decided to come out and agree with you, you’re mad for them. Was that all it ever needed? Would you have been the goodest of all good Jewish boys if only the other Jewish boys had loved you earlier? I don’t get it. It makes no sense. Becoming an enthusiastic Jew again in order to turn on them…Remember what it is you really want, Samuel…Sam! And what you really want isn’t the attention of Jews. There aren’t enough of them.

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The Truth Will Always Win

by Julian Assange

In 1958 a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide’s The News, wrote: “In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win.”

His observation perhaps reflected his father Keith Murdoch’s expose that Australian troops were being needlessly sacrificed by incompetent British commanders on the shores of Gallipoli. The British tried to shut him up but Keith Murdoch would not be silenced and his efforts led to the termination of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.

Nearly a century later, WikiLeaks is also fearlessly publishing facts that need to be made public.

I grew up in a Queensland country town where people spoke their minds bluntly. They distrusted big government as something that could be corrupted if not watched carefully. The dark days of corruption in the Queensland government before the Fitzgerald inquiry are testimony to what happens when the politicians gag the media from reporting the truth.

These things have stayed with me. WikiLeaks was created around these core values. The idea, conceived in Australia, was to use internet technologies in new ways to report the truth.

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BBC charity committed to promoting UK Government propaganda in Afghanistan

by Tom Mills

In August the right-wing pressure group the Tax Payers’ Alliance revealed that the charitable wing of the BBC World Service, the BBC World Service Trust, had received £205,000 under the Foreign Office’s counter-terrorism programme.  The money was provided to fund the Trust’s Afghan Woman’s Hour programme, which is broadcast every week in Dari and Pashto.  Naturally the Tax Payers’ Alliance took this as evidence of wasteful government expenditure.  What it overlooked though is the more worrying fact that a charity closely affiliated to the BBC was knowingly participating in a government propaganda project.

The BBC World Service Trust was set up in 1997 to train journalists and other media workers in the developing world and the former Soviet Union.  It launched Afghan Woman’s Hour in January 2005 with the stated intention of empowering Afghan women and promoting their participation in Afghan society.  The project was headed by Rachel Ellison, the BBC’s then International Project Director, who received an MBE for her work.  Ellison now runs a Corporate Coaching and Media Consultancy with clients including HSBC, the Foreign Office and the investment bank Goldman Sachs which funds business training programmes for Afghan women.

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J.M. Coetzee on his fiction

J.M. Coetzee is notoriously private, so it’s a treat to find this video of him talking about his fiction, even if it’s from 8 November 2001.

Whatever Happened to AIDS?

Lady Gaga

PULSE readers may not have noticed but Lady Gaga is dead. Justin Timberlake is dead. So are Alicia Keys, Elijah Wood and a host of other celebrities. Well not literally dead – ‘digital death’ is what they call it. This past Wednesday, on World AIDS Day, all of these people have seized communication with the outside world through their Twitter and Facebook accounts. (Some lower-caste people too have joined the invitation to commit digital suicide.) The basic aim is to raise money for Alicia Keys’ Keep a Child Alive charity. Only after fans have donated one million dollars to the cause, will the celebrities revive their digital lives.

It’s a great bargain. For as little as $10 not only will you not have to suffer the void in your everyday life of not “knowing where they are, what they had for dinner, or what interesting things are happening in their lives”, at the same time you buy yourself into a community that saves millions of lives and “give[s] millions of real people the care, love and hope they deserve”.

Do “what you always do”, says Keys, and save a few Africans.

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Some Unvarnished Truths About the US and Israel

by M. Shahid Alam

Was there ever a time when a leading organ of the US media could speak the unvarnished truth about the links between the United States and Israel?

Consider this quote from Time magazine of January 1952, embedded in an article that explained its choice of Mohammed Mossadegh as its Person of the Year for 1951. It had no compliments for Mossadegh, the man who was spearheading his country’s bid to take back its oil resources from the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. No surprise there.

Surprising, however, is Time’s candor on Israel. It minces no words. US support for the creation of Israel had alienated the Middle East: it had been a costly error, motivated not by national interest but petty considerations of presidential politics. Truman had supported the creation of Israel in order to court American Jewish votes. This was the plain truth: a US President had placed his electoral chances ahead of a vital national interest. Apparently, in those days, Time could write the plain truth without worrying about the tide of flak from the American Jewish community.

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