How
will the outcome of the November 3 presidential election affect Iran’s
relations with the United States? If incumbent President Donald Trump gets
re-elected, will Tehran be forced to return to the negotiating table and accept
whatever deal he offers, as he often claims? Or does Joe Biden, who recently
called for the easing of economic sanctions on Iran, have a better chance of
securing a new deal with the country?
Most
Western analysts expect Iran to start a new round of negotiations with the US
in the new year regardless of who wins the election. This prediction has some
merit, as Iran’s economy has been in dire straits since Trump’s controversial
2018 decision to withdraw the US from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
(JCPOA, commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal) and impose a new round of
sanctions on the country.
This
severely damaged the Iranian economy, which was already suffering from years of
mismanagement, poor governance and corruption. The COVID-19 pandemic also added
to Iran’s economic woes, and led to stagflation – a combination of rising
inflation and slowing growth. The Islamic Parliament Research Center of Iran
predicted that if the state fails to change the direction of the economy swiftly,
57 million Iranian citizens, or some 70 percent of the population, will soon be
pushed below the poverty line.
While
it would indeed be beneficial for Iran to break the impasse in its relations
with the US, analysts who predict a post-election return to negotiations seem
to be ignoring one crucial factor in the equation: Iran’s internal dynamics and
the transformation its regime went through since the signing of the JCPOA in
2015.
Iranians
themselves will elect a new president in less than eight months, and many
expect the new Iranian leader to be someone closely affiliated with the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the regime’s ideological army. In the past,
even mentioning an IRGC member’s possible participation in elections was taboo,
but today, many Iranian political analysts are publicly discussing the
possibility of a guard member becoming the country’s next president.
While
it is hard to predict whether the IRGC will be successful in its bid to take
over the executive branch in 2021, the fact that this is a very real – and
openly discussed – possibility in itself signals the gradual securitisation and
“IRGCisation” of the country’s political arena
This
is why, if we want to understand what US-Iran relations will look like after
the US presidential election, beyond analysing Trump and Biden’s foreign policy
proposals, we should also explore the IRGC’s views on negotiating with the US
and the two American presidential contenders.
As
the guardian of Iran’s regime and its core security force, the IRGC is highly
suspicious of Washington’s intentions.
The
IRGC leadership believes that the US is waging a “hybrid war” against Iran
that aims to instigate internal unrest and topple its regime through economic
attacks and propaganda campaigns that are designed to turn the Iranian
population against their leaders.
According
to Brigadier General Yadollah Javani, the head of the political bureau of the
IRGC, the strategic goals of the US are to prevent Iran’s progress, instil
despair and hopelessness in the population, and sway the younger generation
from the path of the Islamic revolution.
Due
to its perception of the US as a dishonest and aggressive enemy that is
determined to destroy the Iranian regime at any cost, as well as its
anti-American and anti-imperialist ideological foundations, the IRGC is
staunchly against engaging in any negotiations with Washington, regardless of
who is occupying the White House.
For
the IRGC, Washington’s unilateral withdrawal from the JCPOA proved beyond any
doubt that the US is not a trustworthy adversary. As Javani has openly stated,
the entire JCPOA saga convinced the guard that they “should not think of any
negotiations with the United States any longer”.
Moreover,
the leaders of the IRGC do not see much difference between Democrats and
Republicans when it comes to their policies on Iran. They believe, as Javani
recently warned, a Democratic victory in November should not be seen as an
opportunity to return to negotiations, as both political parties are trying to
achieve the same result, albeit through different means.
Perhaps
even more crucially, as an ideological military force tasked with protecting
the regime, the IRGC’s raison d’être is to oppose American imperialism.
Ideological indoctrination makes up more than half of the required training to
become a member of the guard. And a quick look at the IRGC’s
Ideological-Political Training textbook demonstrates how its members view the
US: an evil regime hellbent on world domination. In this world view, where Iran
is on the side of everything good (jebeh-e Hagh) and the US is the
representation of all that is evil (jebeh Boatel), there is no space for
negotiations, and the conflict between the two nations will continue until one
of them falls.
Participating
in, or even appearing supportive of, negotiations with the Americans would
undermine the IRGC’s ideological foundations and may be perceived as a betrayal
of the revolution by its supporters at home and abroad. Anti-Americanism is the
central component of the IRGC’s ideology and the source of Iranian Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Khamenei’s political appeal. It cannot be eroded.
In
the eyes of the IRGC, normalising relations with the US is not an overall
recipe for resolving Iran’s myriad of economic troubles either. The guard believes,
as they state in their propaganda materials targeting the domestic market, that
the main culprit behind Iran’s economic devastation is not Washington’s
economic sanctions, but the Iranian liberal elites and technocrats who
currently dominate the country’s decision-making bodies and engender widespread
corruption and inequality.
For
the IRGC, negotiations with the US are useless in solving Iran’s multifaceted
problems, and, said problems can only be remedied through the establishment of
a young “Hezbollahi” (more conservative and religious) government. The
“rejuvenation of the regime” was also a central principle Khamenei’s February
2019 manifesto outlining his plans for the country’s future, entitled “The
Second Phase of the Revolution”.
Moreover,
the IRGC did not forget or forgive the January 3 assassination of IRGC Quds
Force commander Qassem Soleimani by the US. The demise of Soleimani, who was a
charismatic and influential leader, has tactically weakened the IRGC Quds Force
and its missions in the region. Mirroring Khamenei, who declared “the regime
will never forget the assassination of Soleimani”, IRGC chief Major General
Hossein Salami recently emphasised that the guard will do everything in its
power to avenge the death of the commander.
In
short, the IRGC has little reason or motivation to push for a new round of
negotiations with the US. The IRGC is not waiting for a new, more amenable
president to move into the White House and restart diplomatic efforts to
resolve the problems between Iran and the US. Instead, it is working tirelessly
to end the domination of the US in the Middle East and beyond. General Javani
made this clear in a recent interview where he said “America is like a
cancerous growth that needs to be shrunk and eradicated”, later clarifying that
their aim is not to “disappear America from the face of the earth” but rather
destroy its capitalist system, which has harmed many other nations as well as
Iran.
The
IRGC is rapidly expanding its political influence in Iran, and next year’s
election may result in the military force also gaining control of the
presidency. In terms of foreign policy, this would mean the Quds Force becoming
even more active in the region, continuing its resistance to the US and its
allies. And in terms of bilateral relations with the US, it means the
possibility of a post-election rapprochement, or even a new line of dialogue,
is almost non-existent – regardless of who ends up occupying the White House in
the new year.
Meanwhile,
as Hong Kong heads down the path of decolonization, a sector needing the most
urgent attention is its judicial system. The horsehair wigs so proudly worn by
judges, Justice Department officials and lawyers are the perfect symbol of the
territory’s judiciary — anachronistic, neocolonial and entirely inappropriate
in Asian climes.
Moreover, there is a problem of political allegiance.
At a time when the US-led West is unprecedentedly hostile towards China, the
Wigs’ ranks are riddled with pro-West Sinoskeptics and outright China-haters.
In their judgments since the outbreak of Hong Kong’s Black Terror last year,
they have blatantly favored “pro-democracy” offenders. Such bias is all too
visible to open-minded onlookers.
Amazingly,
all 32 of the Chinese Special Administrative Region’s most senior judges are
foreign nationals, all from the 5 Eyes Anglophone nations. At the height of the
Black Terror, the local High Court even declared “unconstitutional” an
anti-mask law passed by the SAR government under colonial-era Emergency
Regulations. The ER had been approved by the Chinese National People’s
Congress, the country’s highest legal authority and symbol of sovereignty.
Even
so, Hong Kong’s legal cabal continues to operate in their black box, impervious
to growing public disbelief and dismay. Complaints are brushed aside with the
perennial reminder about Hong Kong’s proud tradition of “judicial
independence.”
Recently,
the Wigs even doubled down on their self-indulgence. Obliged by public
pressure, they investigated two judges accused of political bias — and
predictably found them innocent. The outgoing chief justice is reportedly
considering recommending his wife for a coveted place in the SAR’s supreme
Court of Final Appeal (CFA).
Under
Hong Kong’s neocolonial system, successive government Chief Executives have
treated the Wigs like the high priesthood of some rarefied cult, whose
ministrations are beyond the understanding of mere mortals. Under the new
National Security Law (NSL), Beijing gave incumbent CE Carrie Lam additional
powers over the judiciary — on top of her existing authority as the head of an
“executive-led government.” But Lam continues to be the Wigs’ chief defender
and protector, recently urging the public not to criticize their Horsehair
Highnesses.
The
judicial racket may be nearing a tipping point, however. As public anger
builds, retired CFA judge Henry Litton recently became the top insider to
question scathingly the judiciary’s self-defeating Sinophobia and lack of forward-looking
vision. Litton’s criticism was commended by the People’s Daily. Beijing’s
authoritative newspaper warned the Wigs not to be like “lost sheep that twist
the Basic Law, and distort and even trample on HK laws.” They must “stop being
defenders of street violence.” For their “own political ends,” the PD added,
the Wigs were “seeking to control the narrative on Hong Kong’s political
system.”
In
Hong Kong itself, legislator and lawyer Junius Ho is spearheading a drive to
push judiciary reform. His recommendations include: Lessening dependence on
judges from the 5 Eyes by appointing replacements from other common-law
jurisdictions, such as Singapore and Malaysia – their experiences in those
countries should enable them to understand HK and its mores better than Western
judges; train and groom more and younger Hong Kong judges to fill top posts;
establish a committee to set benchmarks for punishments for specific crimes —
as per Britain, Australia and other common-law jurisdictions; simplify the
arcane language used in courts, so ordinary citizens could better understand
what goes on in the courts. It would also boost their knowledge of civic
affairs and the rule of law.
Following
enactment of the National Security Law, UK Supreme Court President (and HK CFA
judge) Robert Reed said that British and other foreign judges might no longer
serve in the Chinese SAR, depending on how the NSL was implemented. That seems
the perfect opening for Hong Kong to implement its own overdue rectification of
the judiciary.
The Listening Post: Debates over free speech and secularism
PALESTINA
"In a move that has further legitimized Israel’s
illegal settlement activity in the occupied Palestinian territory, the US and
Israel have expanded a number of existing scientific cooperation agreements to
now include Israeli institutions in the occupied West Bank and the Golan
Heights.
The new agreement, signed on Wednesday between Israeli
Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman,
amended three existing scientific cooperation agreements between the two
countries.
According to the original agreements, which were
created back in the 1970’s, cooperative projects between the US and Israel “may
not be conducted in geographical areas which came under the administration of
the State of Israel after June 5, 1967, and may not relate to subjects
primarily pertinent to such areas.”
The new amendments will now for the first time allow
US taxpayer money to be spent in Israeli settlements, which are illegal under
international law.
The US Embassy in Israel said in a statement that
amendment “further strengthens the special bilateral relationship”
between the two countries, and that “these geographic restrictions are no
longer consistent with U.S. policy.”
The Trump administration broke with decades of US and
international policy last year when it announced that the US would no longer
consider Israeli settlements to be illegal.
Wednesday’s signing ceremony took place in the mega
settlement of Ariel, which lies in the heart of the occupied West Bank — the
municipal boundaries of which contain several enclaves of privately owned Palestinian land
that were seized by the Israeli state back in 1978, when the settlement was
established.
Ariel is one of the largest settlements in the West
Bank, and is home to some 20,000 Israeli settlers, and boasts a university,
shopping center, industrial zone, hospital, and medical school.
Ariel University, where the signing ceremony took
place, is the only Israeli institution of its kind in the West Bank, and unlike
other Isralei universities, has been barred from receiving funds not only from
the US, but from the EU and the German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific
Research and Development.
The university has been the subject of a number of academic
boycotts by international and Israeli academics, in protest of ongoing
settlement expansion and Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank.
Prime Minister Netanyahu said Wednesday’s events were
a message to “those malevolent boycotters,” that
“you are wrong and you will fail, because we are resolved to build our lives
and our ancestral homeland and to never be uprooted from here again.”
“This is an important victory over everyone who seeks
to delegitimize anything Israeli over ’67 lines,” Netanyahu said, adding that
the agreements being signed at Ariel University were of “huge significance.”
Other Israeli politicians hailed the agreement as
another step in the right direction towards Israel’s plain for annexation in
the West Bank, with Israeli higher education minister Zeev Elkin telling Axios reporter Barak Ravid that Wednesday’s events
were “a big achievement for Israel’s sovereignty” in the West Bank and
“another step towards international recognition of our rights” there.
Palestinian leaders and activists criticized the move
as another attempt by the US administration to whitewash Israel’s occupation,
and further pave the way for Israel to illegally annex more Palestinian
land.
Hanan Ashrawi, Executive Committee member of the PLO
called the agreement a “blatant unlawful act,” in a statement.
“Extending US funding to the occupied West Bank,
including illegal Israeli settlements, is a clear recognition of Israel´s
annexation of Palestinian territory,” she said, adding “this upgrades the Trump
administration’s involvement in Israeli war crimes to active and willful
participation.”
Ashrawi criticized the timing of the agreement, which
she said was “a mad rush” made in the eleventh hour to “provide Israel with
deliverables before January 2021, including normalization, economic benefits,
and endorsement of annexation.”
The timing of the amendment, which was made just a
week before the US elections, was criticized by many as an attempt to further
as many of Trump and Netanyahu’s policies in the region as possible, in the
event that Trump is not reelected on November 3rd.
Critics pointed to reports that, while the charge for
the amendment was led by Friedman, it was reportedly pushed heavily by American
billionaire Sheldon Adelson who is a major donor to both Ariel University and
President Donald Trump.
Haaretz quoted sources as saying that Adelson “pressured
the American administration to hold the ceremony ahead of the U.S. election on
Tuesday.”
In addition to the timing of the announcement, the
amendment is significant not only for its essential recognition of Israeli
annexation, but for the fact that because it was made as a diplomatic
agreement, it cannot be unilaterally reversed by a subsequent American
administration, should Trump lose the upcoming election.
Palestinians have also expressed concerns that the
agreement could result in pressure on the EU — the source of the majority of
foreign funding for Israel’s scientific institutions — to follow suit.
“This must be a wake-up call to the European Union and
individual European States. Instead of contemplating an upgrade in EU-Israeli
cooperation as a reward for a blatant lie, the European Union must show moral
and legal leadership and hold Israel accountable for its crimes,” Hanan Ashrawi
said." Yumna Patel
After hearing four weeks
of “evidence” in the extradition trial of Julian Assange, District Judge
Vanessa Baraitser announced earlier this month she will pronounce judgement on
January 4.
The WikiLeaks founder’s
trial in London’s Central Criminal Court, also known as the Old Bailey, started
on September 7.
Australian-born
Assange has been charged under the US’s 1917 Espionage Act for “unlawfully
obtaining and disclosing classified documents related to the national defence”.
The
case marks the first time in United States history that publishing information
is being charged under the Espionage Act.
Assange,
49, has been indicted on 17 spying charges and one charge of computer hacking
regarding the publication of secret military documents.
The
hacking charge was included recently – meaning that the defence had no witness
to appropriately deal with the hacking allegations.
Meanwhile, the silence of journalists in Britain, in the US, and in the
mainstream media in general over the extradition proceedings against
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is making them complicit in the
criminalisation of newsgathering by the American government.
In
an Old Bailey courtroom in London over the past four weeks, lawyers for the US
government have sought the extradition of Assange to the US to face 17 charges
under the Espionage Act of 1917 and one charge of computer misuse. At the heart
of their case is the accusation that in leaking a trove of classified US
diplomatic and military cables in 2010, Assange and WikiLeaks endanger the
lives of US agents and informants.
One
of the many peculiarities in this strange case is that the evidence for any
such thing is non-existent. The
Pentagon has admitted that it failed to find a single
person covertly working for the US who had been killed as a result of the
WikiLeaks disclosures. This failure was not for lack of trying: The
Pentagon had set up a special military task force, deploying 120
counter-intelligence officers, to find at least one death that could be blamed
on Assange and his colleagues but had found nothing.
Other
allegations against Assange put forward by the lawyers for the US government
are similarly flimsy or demonstrably false, yet he is still in real danger of
being sent to a maximum security prison in the US after the court makes its
ruling on 4 January. Once there he faces a sentence of up to 175 years and,
whatever the length of his incarceration, he is likely to spend it in solitary
confinement in a tiny cell.
The
Assange case creates a precedent that mortally threatens freedom of the press
in Britain. If Assange is extradited then any journalist who publishes
information that the American authorities deem to be classified, however
well-known or harmless it may be, will risk being extradited to face trial in
America. The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, says that non-Americans like
Assange do not enjoy First Amendment rights to free expression.
The
outcome of the Assange extradition hearing is a crucial tipping point which
will tell if Britain and the US go further down the same path towards
“illiberal democracy” as Turkey, Hungary, Brasil, India and the Philippines.
What Julian Assange and WikiLeaks did – obtaining important information about
the deeds and misdeeds of the US government and giving that information to the
public – is exactly what all journalists ought to do.
Journalism
is all about disclosing important news to people so they can judge what is
happening in the world – and the actions of their government in particular. The
WikiLeaks disclosures in 2010 only differed from other great journalistic
scoops in that they were bigger – 251,287 diplomatic cables, more than 400,000
classified army reports from the Iraq War and 90,000 from the Afghan War – and
they were more important. [Full disclosure: I gave a statement read out in
court this week seeking to explain the significance of the Wikileaks
revelations.]
Astonishingly,
British and American commentators are in a state of denial when it comes to
seeing that what happens to Assange could happen to them. They argue bizarrely
that he is not a journalist, though the Trump administration implicitly accepts
that he is one, since it is pursuing him for journalistic activities. The
motive is openly political, one of the absurdities of the hearing being the
pretence that Trump-appointed officials provide a reliable and objective guide
to the threat to the US posed by the WikiLeaks revelations.
Why
has the British media been so mute about the grim precedent being established
for themselves, were they to investigate the doings of a US government that
makes no secret of its hostility to critical journalism. Ten years
ago, The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Der
Spiegel, and El Pais published extracts from the WikiLeak documents
on their front pages for days on end, but they long ago distanced themselves
from its founder. Yet, however much they may wish the contrary, their future is
wrapped up in his fate.
Alan
Rusbridger, the former Guardian editor under whom the cables and war
logs were printed, made this clear in an interview, saying that he had no doubt
about the damage being done to freedom of the press. “Whatever we think of
Assange,” he said, “what he is being targeted for is the same or similar [to
what] many journalists have done, then it’s surprising to me that more people
can’t see that this case has worrying implications for all journalists.”
The
danger to a genuinely free press is, indeed, so glaring that it is a mystery
why the media has, by and large, ignored the issue. Coronavirus is a
contributory reason, but treating Julian Assange and WikiLeaks as pariahs long
predates the epidemic. Pundits wonder if he is a journalist at all, though he
is clearly a journalist of the electronic age, publishing raw information in a
different way from traditional newspapers, radio and television. His politics
are unashamedly radical, which further alienates many commentators.
Far
more important, however, in converting Julian Assange from being portrayed as a
heroic fighter against state secrecy into a figure beyond the pale, were the
allegations of rape made against him in Sweden in 2010. This led to a
Swedish prosecutorial investigation that continued for nine years, was dropped
three times and three times restarted, before being finally abandoned last year
as the statute of limitations approached. Assange was never charged with
anything and none of this has anything to do with the extradition hearings, but
it helps explain why so much of the media has ignored or downplayed the Old
Bailey hearings. Many on the political right always believed that Assange
belonged in jail and many progressives felt that the rape allegations alone made
him anathema.
Daniel
Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon papers to the media in 1971, gave evidence to
the court that he had leaked the secret history of the Vietnam War to show the
public that the war was continuing though its perpetrators knew it could not be
won. He said that Julian Assange had done much the same, this time in relation
to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Pentagon Papers and the WikiLeaks
disclosures were similar in every way.
The
saga of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks is now so long and complicated that it is
worth reminding oneself of the piercing light they cast on the US government’s
activities in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. I myself first used the material
from the disclosures in the summer of 2010 to explain why the Afghan
government, supported by 90,000 US troops, was not winning a war that
Washington claimed was in defence of democracy.
I
quoted a report from an American civil affairs official in Gardez, Afghanistan,
in 2007, who said that he had been bluntly informed by a member of the Afghan
provincial council in the town that “the general view of the Afghans is that
the current government is worse than the Taliban”. The US official lamented
that this was all too true. Why this was so was explained by another US report dated
22 October 2009, this time from Balkh in northern Afghanistan, which described
how Afghan soldiers and police were mistreating local civilians who refused to
cooperate in a search. I wrote how the official US report said that “a
district police chief raped a 16-year-old girl and when a civilian protested
the police chief ordered his bodyguard to shoot him. The bodyguard refused and
was himself killed by the police chief.”
Such
revelations explain why the Afghan war is still going on and tens of thousands
more people have died – and why the US government is so keen to put Julian
Assange in jail for the rest of his life.
“Faced with a barrage of
criticism from some of his followers, George Monbiot, the Guardian’s supposedly
fearless, leftwing columnist, offered up two extraordinarily feeble excuses for
failing to provide more than cursory support for Julian Assange over the past
month, as the Wikileaks founder has endured extradition hearings in a London
courtroom.
The
Trump administration wants Assange brought to the United States to face
espionage charges that could see him locked away in a super-max prison on
“special administrative measures”, unable to have meaningful contact with any
other human being for the rest of his life. And that fate awaits him only
because he embarrassed the US by
exposing its war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq in the pages of newspapers like
the New York Times and Guardian – and because Washington fears that Assange, if
left free, would publish more disturbing truths about US actions around the
globe.
But
there is much more at stake than simply Assange’s rights being trampled on. He
is not simply the western equivalent of Ai Weiwei, the Chinese artist and
dissident who notably offered his own support to Assange during the hearings.
Weiwei covered his mouth outside the Old Bailey courtroom in protest at the
media’s blanket silence over the crimes being perpetrated against Assange.
Assange
faces a terrifying new kind of extraordinary rendition – one conducted not
covertly by US security services but in the full glare of publicity and, if the
London court approves, with the consent of the British judiciary. If
extradition is authorised, a precedent will be set that allows the US to seize
and jail any journalist who exposes its crimes. Inevitably, that will have a
severe chilling effect on all journalists investigating the world’s only super-power.
It will not only be the death of journalism’s already enfeebled role as a
watchdog on power but a death blow against our societies’ commitment to the
principles of freedom and openness.
This
should be reason enough for anyone to be deeply concerned about Assange’s
extradition hearing, most especially journalists. And even more so a journalist
like Monbiot, whose work’s lifeblood is the investigation of unaccountable
power and its corrosive effects. If any British journalist ought to be shouting
from the rooftops against Assange’s extradition, it is Monbiot.
And
yet, he has failed to write a single column in the Guardian
on Assange, and in response to mounting criticism from followers pointed to
three retweets backing Assange during the past four weeks of extradition
hearings. All three, we should note, were of articles published in his own
newspaper, the Guardian, that broke with its hostile coverage and could be
considered vaguely sympathetic to Assange.
This
was the barest minimum that Monbiot could afford to be seen doing. After all,
positioned as the Guardian’s leftwing conscience, it would have been strange
indeed had he not retweeted the rare instances, in a sea of Guardian articles ridiculing and
vilifying Assange, of the paper making a nod to its
more leftwing readers.
But
notably, Monbiot failed to retweet any of the daily articles posted by former UK
ambassador Craig Murray that detailed the horrifying abuses of legal process
against Assange during the extradition hearings as well as evidence from expert
witness after expert witness that demolished the central claims of the US case.
Monbiot did not retweet any of the articles or comments by the renowned
investigative journalist John Pilger, who has been a stalwart defender of
Assange.
He
did not retweet the testimony of Noam Chomsky, the celebrated linguist and
political analyst, that the US charges against Assange are entirely political in nature and
therefore void the US extradition request. Monbiot has similarly ignored the comments of
Nils Melzer, the United Nations’ expert on torture, that Assange is already
being psychologically
tortured by the combined actions of the UK and US to
keep him locked up in extreme isolation and in a prolonged state of chronic fear
for his future.
Monbiot
also did not retweet the astounding evidence last week from a former employee
of the Spanish company that provided security at the Ecuadorian embassy, where
Assange spent seven years in political asylum. The whistleblower testified that
under CIA direction the company broke the law by surveilling Assange, even in
the toilet block, and listened in to his privileged conversations with his
lawyers. This fact alone should have been enough to force the presiding judge,
Vanessa Baraitser, to rule against the US extradition request.
No,
Monbiot told his followers about none of these developments or about much more
that has emerged over the past four weeks. Instead he offered two cowardly
excuses for why he has remained so mealymouthed at the worst assault on press
freedom in living memory.
The
first was that the Assange extradition hearing apparently isn’t important
enough. It is simply “one of hundreds of crucial issues” and “compared to say,
soil loss, it’s way down my list”.
No
one can doubt that Monbiot rightly takes environmental issues extremely
seriously. But he doesn’t just tweet and write about the environment. There are
many others issues, entirely unconnected to the environment and of which he
appears to know almost nothing, that he regularly writes about.
One
will suffice as illustrative. For the past two years Monbiot has dedicated a
great deal of time and energy – time and energy he has refused to expend on
defending Assange and press freedom – to attack those who have questioned
claims by the US and UK intelligence services that the Syrian government under
Bashar Assad carried out a chemical weapons attack in Douma in April 2018. The
supposed attack provided the pretext for the US to launch a bombing attack on
Syria – an example of a supreme international crime, according to the Nuremberg
principles.
Monbiot has tried to
intimidate into silence those, including whistleblowers from the Organisation
for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), who have suggested that in fact
the evidence points to jihadist groups being responsible for what happened in
Douma. Those jihadists – labelled “terrorists” by the western media in all
countries other than Syria – have been explicitly financed by western allies
like Saudi Arabia, and more covertly by the west itself. Nonetheless, Monbiot
has smeared anyone sceptical of the official western narrative about Douma as
an “Assad apologist”, including by implication the distinguished Middle East
reporter Robert Fisk, who, unlike Monbiot, actually visited Douma.
Monbiot has no expertise
on the Middle East, and presumably has drawn his conclusions from reading the
Syria coverage of the Guardian, whose positions he precisely echoes. It is bad
enough that he has used his platform to go on the offensive against those
taking a critical position on the events in Douma. But worse still, he has
swept up in his smear campaign whistleblowers from the OPCW, the United
Nations’ chemical weapons watchdog body, who have been warning that the
OPCW is no longer independent but has become a deeply politicised body that
tampered with the inspectors’ findings in the Douma case to bolster
Washington’s self-serving agenda in Syria.
The
whistleblowers’ claims are hardly out of line with the wider picture of the
OPCW. The organisation has been falling under Washington’s thumb for nearly two
decades. The previous head of the OPCW, Jose Bustani, was forced out by the
Bush administration after he sought to negotiate further weapons inspections of
Iraq to deprive the US of a pretext to launch its illegal invasion in 2003.
Angry that US plans for regime change might be disrupted, John Bolton, the
warmongering US ambassador to the UN, even threatened Bustani: “We
know where your kids live.”
At
least three members of the OPCW team that investigated the Douma events have
tried to warn that the evidence blaming Assad was doctored by the organisation’s
officials and that their own research showed that the most likely culprit were
jihadist groups – who presumably hoped to engineer a pretext for more direct
western intervention in Syria to help them bring down the Syrian government.
Misinformation
around the Douma events has grown so dire that Bustani himself recently tried
to intervene on behalf of the whistleblowers at the Security Council. He noted
in testimony blocked by the US and UK: “At great risk to themselves, they [the
whistleblowers] have dared to speak out against possible irregular behaviour in
your Organisation [the OPCW].” He added: “Hearing what your own inspectors have
to say would be an important first step in mending the Organisation’s damaged
reputation.”
There
are plenty of reasons, therefore, to criticise Monbiot for his smearing of the
Douma sceptics and the OPCW whistleblowers. But I am not
interested here in revisiting the Douma episode. The point I am making relates
to Assange.
In asserting that he doesn’t have time to defend
Assange, Monbiot is implicitly arguing that opposing the current all-out war by
the US on journalism is a lower priority than his smearing of the OPCW
whistleblowers; that bullying and silencing Douma sceptics is one of those “hundreds
of crucial issues” more important than preventing Assange from spending the
rest of his life in jail, and more important than saving investigative
journalism from this gravest of assaults by the US.
To understand how absurd Monbiot’s argument is, let us
note that the only way we can ever properly settle the Douma case – without
regurgitating claims by the US and UK intelligence services, as Monbiot has
been doing – is if someone manages to leak the classified communications on
Douma between the US administration and the OPCW leadership. That would let us
know whether it is the OPCW whistleblowers telling the truth or the suits
in head office. The whistleblowers have already stated that US officials turned
up at an OPCW meeting unannounced and in violation of the body’s independent
status in a bid to lean on staff.
The
only way we will learn the truth with any certainty is if there is a leak of
documents – to an organisation like Assange’s group Wikileaks.
The
war on Assange has not only been a war on journalism. It is also a war on the
whistleblowers who have assisted journalists and Wikileaks in arriving at the
truth. Hanging on the outcome of Assange’s case is not only his personal fate,
but journalism’s very ability to tap into sources close to the centres of
power. In abandoning Assange, we abandon any hope of finding out the truth on a
whole range of the most pressing issues facing us.
If
Monbiot hopes to be able to campaign more effectively on “hundreds of crucial
issues” like soil loss and other environmental concerns, he needs Assange and
Wikileaks as vigorous as possible, not Assange locked away in a dark cell and
Wikileaks a shadow of the organisation it once was.
Monbiot,
of course, does not need me to tell him all this. He understands it already.
Which is why his behaviour needs explaining – a matter we will get to in a
minute.
Monbiot
claims he cannot add anything “original” to what has been said already about
the Assange case and that “It’s not about ticking boxes” but about “expanding
the field”.
Let
us set aside the obvious lacuna in this argument: that Monbiot has been ticking
every box imaginable on the Douma incident. He added precisely nothing to the
debate apart from his own smears of the whistleblowers. All he did was echo the
intelligence services’ talking points, which had already been given an
extensive and uncritical airing in the Guardian.
So
Monbiot is quite clearly capable of being highly unoriginal when he chooses to
be.
But
there are, of course, lots of original things Monbiot could contribute to the
coverage of the Assange case in his own newspaper, the Guardian, given that the
only people speaking up for Assange – apart from one article by Patrick
Cockburn in the Independent – have been outside the “mainstream”, without a platform
in the corporate media.
Monbiot could have
served as a counterweight to the relentless maligning of Assange in the
Guardian’s pages by pointing out how these smears were unfounded. Instead he
has either echoed those smears, or equivocated on them, or remained silent. He
could have, for example, observed that there were very good grounds for Assange
to seek political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy, as the extradition hearings
have confirmed, in contrast to the constant claims in the
Guardian that Assange was “fleeing rape charges” – charges that existed only in
the imagination of newspaper editors – or that he was paranoid and arrogant.
Or
Monbiot could have pointed out that the Guardian fabricated an easily disproved
smear story that a Trump aide, Paul Manafort, and unnamed “Russians” had
supposedly visited Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in secret three times –
without leaving any evidence, even though the embassy was the most heavily
surveilled building in London, both inside and out.
The
story, presumably provided to the Guardian on an unattributable basis by one of
the security services involved, was published to ensnare Assange in evidence-free
Russiagate claims and thereby alienate liberals so that they would not oppose
the US extradition case. Monbiot could have added that the Guardian was wrong
not to apologise for the deceitful, malicious report and retract it.*Or Monbiot could tell
his readers that the Guardian is not declaring a glaring conflict of interest
in its coverage of the Assange hearings. Rather than being a neutral
observer of developments, the paper is in fact deeply implicated in the very
charges levelled by the US against Assange. Its former investigations editor
David Leigh was the one who recklessly published the password to
a critically important trove of secret documents held by Wikileaks, giving every
security service in the world access to them. Eventually, in a damage
limitation operation, Wikileaks was forced to publish the files unredacted to
let anyone named know they were in danger.
If
anyone should be on trial for endangering US informants – no one should be, and
no informants were harmed – it is not Assange but Leigh and other senior
Guardian editors.
All
of these would be highly “original” things for Monbiot to write about that
would undoubtedly “expand the field”. But I am not really suggesting that
he go so far as to be honest about the vile role played by his employer in
selling out Assange. I am worldly enough to know how things work. He has a
good, mainstream platform that weekly publishes his articles – and he does not
want to jeopardise that by criticising his own newspaper.
But
of course Monbiot does not need to criticise the Guardian to support Assange.
There are plenty of other, important things to write about if he chooses to.
The point is he chooses not to. The real question, once his
pathetic excuses are stripped away, is why.
And
that, sadly, is because Monbiot is not the free thinker, the fearless
investigator of difficult truths, the leftwing conscience he claims to be. It
is not really his fault. It is in the nature of the function he serves at the
Guardian – and with which I am only too familiar myself from my years working
there.
The
Guardian is the main outlet of the Guardian Media Group, which depends on
advertising to survive. It is a corporate venture premised on exploiting the
Guardian’s market share to the greatest extent possible, just as the Daily
Mail, the Sun and the Times do with their own markets. In this regard,
newspapers are no different from supermarkets. If they fail to corner
their section of the market, another corporation better suited to do so will
step in and seize it from them.
Assange
understood this only too well, as he explained in an interview back in 2011
after learning that the Guardian had been breaking its agreements with
Wikileaks and sharing confidential files with others. He observed:
“What drives a paper
like the Guardian or New York Times is not their inner moral values. It is
simply that they have a market. In the UK, there is a market called ‘educated
liberals’. Educated liberals want to buy a newspaper like the Guardian and
therefore an institution arises to fulfil that market.”
Most
of the Guardian’s writers pander squarely to the general “educated liberals”
market. But some, like Monbiot, are there with a more specific purpose: to mop
up sections of the population that might otherwise stray from the Guardian
fold.
Owen
Jones is there to mop up leftwing supporters of the Labour party to persuade
them that the Guardian is their friend, as he continued to do even while the
paper was helping to destroy the party’s elected leader, Jeremy Corbyn.
Jonathan Freedland is there, in part, to reassure liberal Jews that the
Guardian is on their side, which he did by playing up the evidence-free smears
that Labour had an especial antisemitism problem under Corbyn. Hadley Freeman
is there, as are others like Suzanne Moore, to represent liberal women deeply
invested in identity politics and to make sure they keep them away from class
politics.
The
point is that the Guardian is a corporate endeavour that makes sure its
columnists cover as many liberal-left bases as possible without allowing any
really subversive voices a platform from which they can challenge or disrupt
the neoliberal status quo.
Monbiot,
therefore, treads the finest line of all the Guardian’s columnists. His
position is the most absurd, the one plagued with the biggest internal
contradiction: he must sell extreme environmental concern from within a
newspaper that is entirely embedded in the economic logic of the very
neoliberal system that is destroying the planet.
The
Guardian understands its own urgent need to greenwash too. Its market, educated
liberals, are increasingly frightened by the multiple environmental threats we
face, which is why very belatedly – decades late, in fact – the paper has been
prioritising this issue above all others.
But
of course, given the logic of its corporate, money-making, advertiser-driven
agenda, the Guardian is not just highlighting the threat to the environment to
win over more educated liberals. It is also monetising this threat for itself
as aggressively as it can. It did so again this week as its editor, Kath Viner,
appealed to educated liberals to make a subscription donation to the paper
based on the claim that it will campaign to protect the environment better than
any other UK newspaper. That, of course, is a remarkably low bar it has set for
itself.
Monbiot
is trapped in this same logic: campaigning for the environment from within an
organisation whose economic imperatives are designed to trash the planet.
He
treads this very fine line by deviating as little as necessary from the
Guardian’s own narrow, status quo-hugging agenda. He enjoys the freedom to
speak out loudly on the dangers of environmental destruction, but that freedom
comes at a price – that he closely adhere to the technocratic, liberal
consensus on other issues. The paradox is that on foreign policy matters
we have Monbiot effectively colluding in the propaganda of the west’s war
industries – the most polluting on the planet – as he professes his
environmental credentials to the Guardian’s liberal readers.
This
stance is not imposed on him. He does not receive orders from Guardian editors
to smear OPCW whistleblowers or to restrain himself from tweeting forthright
support for Assange. Instead he has imbibed the corporate culture of the
Guardian – as I once did, as most of us do in our daily lives – as a sanity
survival strategy, as way to placate the cognitive dissonance that would
overwhelm him if he did not.
Paradoxically,
the two excuses he offered justifying his lack of support for Assange followed
a tweet in which he had just castigated the left – as he is wont to do when
confronted with evidence he would rather not hear – for preferring conformity
over solidarity.
I’m
no psychologist, but this sounds suspiciously like projection to me. Monbiot
was immediately and rightly pulled up by followers who pointed out that, in his
abandonment of Assange, he had once again shown a high degree of conformity to
official, intelligence agency-serving narratives, as well as to those of his
employer, the Guardian. He had also shown a very low degree of solidarity with
a man who has almost single-handedly taken on the western power establishment
in the hope of helping us finally to hold it to account.
Ultimately,
the problem lies not with Monbiot. He is just serving the market, attracting
socially responsible liberals to the Guardian, rationalising the paper’s
reformist agenda within a suicidal, global, neoliberal economy, and preventing
leftwingers from straying too far, to the point where they might contemplate a
more revolutionary form of politics.
The
problem lies not with Monbiot. It lies with us. We continue to ignore the fact
that we are being played by the system, that we are being placated by pale
offerings like Monbiot, that our consent is needed and that we keep finding
reasons to give it rather than withdraw it. Neither Monbiot nor the Guardian is
going to liberate our minds. Only we can do that. »
In theory, Europe and
the United States stand on completely opposite sides when it comes to the
Israeli occupation of Palestine. While the US government has fully embraced the
tragic status quo created by 53 years of Israeli military occupation, the
EU continues to advocate a negotiated
settlement that is predicated on respect for international law.
In practice, however,
despite the seeming rift between Washington and Brussels, the outcome is,
essentially, the same. The US and Europe are Israel’s largest trade partners,
weapon suppliers and political advocates.
One of the reasons
that the illusion of an even-handed Europe has been maintained for so long lies
partly in the Palestinian leadership itself. Politically and financially abandoned by Washington, the Palestinian
Authority of Mahmoud Abbas has turned to the European Union as its only
possible saviour.
“Europe believes in
the two-state solution,” PA Prime Minister, Mohammad Shtayyeh, said during a video discussion with the
European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs on October 12. Unlike the
US, Europe’s continued advocacy of the defunct two-state
solution qualifies it to fill the massive gap created by Washington’s absence.
Shtayyeh called on EU
leaders to “recognize the State of Palestine in order for us, and you, to break
the status quo.”
However, there are
already 139 countries that recognize the State of Palestine. While
that recognition is a clear indication that the world remains firmly
pro-Palestinian, recognizing Palestine as a State changes little on the ground.
What is needed are concerted efforts to hold Israel accountable for its violent
occupation as well as real action to support the struggle of Palestinians.
Not only has the EU
failed at this, it is, in fact, doing the exact opposite: funding Israel,
arming its military and silencing its critics.
Listening to Shtayyeh’s
words, one gets the impression that the top Palestinian official is addressing
a conference of Arab, Muslim or socialist countries. “I call upon your
Parliament and your distinguished Members of this Parliament, that Europe not
wait for the American President to come up with ideas … We need a third party
who can really remedy the imbalance in the relationship between an occupied
people and an occupier country, that is Israel,” he said.
But is the EU
qualified to be that ‘third party’? No. For decades,
European governments have been an integral part of the US-Israel party. Just
because the Donald Trump administration has, recently, taken a sharp turn in
favour of Israel should not automatically transform Europe’s historical
pro-Israel bias to be mistaken for pro-Palestinian solidarity.
Last
June, more than 1,000 European parliamentarians representing various political
parties issued a
statement expressing “serious concerns” about Trump’s so-called Deal of the Century and
opposing Israeli annexation of
nearly a third of the West Bank. However, the pro-Israel US Democratic Party,
including some traditionally staunch supporters of Israel, were equally
critical of Israel’s plan because, in their minds, annexation means that a
two-state solution would be made impossible.
While
US Democrats made it
clear that a Joe Biden administration would not reverse any of Trump’s actions
should Biden be elected, European governments have also made it clear that they
will not take a single action to dissuade – let alone punish – Israel for its
repeated violations of international law.
Lip
service is all that Palestinians have obtained from Europe, as well as much
money, which was largely pocketed by loyalists of Abbas in the name of
‘State-building’ and other fantasies. Tellingly, much of the imaginary
Palestinian State infrastructure that was subsidized by
Europe in recent years has been blown up, demolished or construction ceased by
the Israeli military during its various wars and raids. Yet, neither did the EU
punish Israel, nor did the PA cease from asking for more money to continue
funding a non-existent State.
Not only did the EU
fail to hold Israel accountable for its ongoing occupation and human rights
violations, it is practically financing Israel, as well. According to Defence
News, a quarter of all of Israel’s military export contracts (totaling $7.2
billion in 2019 alone) is allocated to European countries.
Moreover, Europe is
Israel’s largest trading partner, absorbing one-third of Israel’s total
exports and shipping to Israel nearly 40% of its
total import. These numbers also include products made in illegal Jewish
settlements.
Additionally, the EU
labours to incorporate Israel into the European way of life through cultural
and music contests, sports competitions and in a myriad other ways. While the
EU possesses powerful tools that can be used to exact political concessions and
enforce respect for international law, it opts to simply do very little.
Compare this with
the recent ultimatum the EU has given the
Palestinian leadership, linking EU aid to the PA’s financial ties with
Israel. Last May, Abbas took the extraordinary step of
considering all agreements with Israel and the US to be null and void.
Effectively, this means that the PA would no longer be accountable for the
stifling status quo that was created by the Oslo Accords, which was repeatedly
violated by Tel Aviv and Washington. Severing ties with Israel also meant that
the PA would refuse to accept nearly $150 million in
tax revenues that Israel collects on behalf of the PA. This Palestinian step,
while long overdue, was necessary.
Instead of supporting
Abbas’ move, the EU criticized it, refusing to provide additional aid for
Palestinians until Abbas restores ties with Israel and accepts the tax money.
According to Axios news portal, Germany, France, the
UK and even Norway are leading the charge.
Germany, in
particular, has been relentless in its support for Israel. For months, it has advocated on behalf of Israel to
spare Tel Aviv a war crimes investigation by the International Criminal Court
(ICC). It has placed activists, who advocate the
boycott of Israel, on trial. Recently, it has confirmed the shipment of missile boats
and other military hardware to ensure the superiority of the Israeli navy in a
potential war against Arab enemies. Germany is not alone. Israel and most
European countries are closing ranks in terms of their unprecedented military
cooperation and trade ties, including natural gas deals.
Continuing to make
references to the unachievable two-state solution, while arming, funding and
doing more business with Israel is the very definition of hypocrisy. The truth
is that Europe should be held as accountable as the US in emboldening and
sustaining the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Yet, while Washington
is openly pro-Israel, the EU has played a more clever game: selling Palestinians
empty words while selling Israel lethal weapons.
