Off to the Solomon Islands: Australia’s Civilizers Get Busy

 

BY BINOY KAMPMARK

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A small riot.  Unrest.  Risk of collapse.  All given a ballooning effect and inflated for policy makers across the ocean. Before much time elapses, Australian security forces are skirting off to restore order in their vast watery neighbourhood.  It is a reminder that such relations in the Pacific region are a mixture of intervention, forcible charitable guidance and, at times, plain scolding.

In the Solomon Islands, Australian interventionism was originally cloaked in shining dress, justified as humanitarian and utterly noble.  By the time some 2,000 troops, police officers and support personnel, mostly Australian, were deployed in 2003, the country had already mounted regional interventions in Bougainville in Papua New Guinea (1997) and East Timor, the latter as part of a UN-mandated mission.

The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) was given a rhetorical flourish of preventing a “failed state” while easing Australian anxieties in a region marked by a supposed “arc of instability”.  In a conscious nod to making sure the mission would be seen benevolently, the PR pen pushers came up with the pidgin named Operation Helpem Fren.

At the time, Prime Minister Allan Kemakeza had to address certain concerns: Would his country simply become yet another staging post for other powers, or, worse, slide into the role of Australian puppet state?  “This country belongs to all of us,” he promised.  “It’s our country.”  This was only after a fashion.  The RAMSI mission only concluded in 2017 but it came with a new security treaty signed between Canberra and Honiara permitting the easy deployment of Australian force, defence and civilian personnel in the event of a national emergency.

In an environment psychically shaped by the collapse of the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001 and the grotesquely named “Global War on Terror”, Australian policy makers came to see terrorism everywhere and unstable, indigent states as incubators for the next enterprising bomb maker.  This was the kind of torturous, and quite frankly criminal reasoning, that had justified the fictional links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

The new breed of Pacific Islander terrorists were reasoned like the Reds of Old, only these might be lurking behind coconut trees with heavy weaponry or found laundering money.  In the case of the Solomons Islands, such outfits as the Guadalcanal Liberation Army and the Malaita Eagle Force fit the bill, even if that fit was forced and awkward.    “We know that a failed state in our region, on our doorstep,” warned Australian Prime Minister John Howard in an address to the Sydney Institute in July 2003, “will jeopardise our own security.  The best thing we can do is to take remedial action and take it now”.

But it was not always so.  In January 2003, the Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, at a rare lucid moment, stated that, “Sending in Australian troops to occupy the Solomon Islands would be folly in the extreme.”  The Australian taxpayer would be unconvinced by such need; the exit strategy would be unclear and problematic and, perhaps most tellingly, foreigners did “not have the answers for the deep-seated problems affecting the Solomon Islands.”

Within a matter of months, Australia found itself in an illegal assault led by the United States on Iraqi sovereignty and jauntily committing troops to the islands.  Howard flew into Honiara to boast that Australian forces had secured the surrender of Harold Keke, who had been given the elevated historical standing of a warlord, and the netting of 3,000 weapons as part of an amnesty.  He stressed all those characteristics architects of empire should keep in mind: rebuilding the local police forces; “attack” corruption; improve living standards; and prosecute criminal, destabilising elements – according to the rule of law, naturally.

This month, the political classes in Canberra were again wondering what to do with the Solomon Islands.  Protests calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare had led to civil unrest in the nation’s capital. A police station and building within the parliamentary compound were set ablaze; instances of looting and property damage were reported.  Schools were closed.  Again, the divide between poorer Malaita and wealthier Guadalcanal, was spoken of.  Again, the politics of the provinces were being stirred by the politics of the central government in Honiara.

In this case, there was an added dimension.  The Solomon Islands had made a decision in 2019 to cease recognising Taiwan and switch its allegiance to Beijing.  The Premier of Malaita Province, Daniel Suidani, had been unimpressed with the decision taken by the national government.  An unsettled Sogavare, wishing to shore up his own sinking position, put in the call for Australian assistance.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison was not wasting any time in citing the security treaty to deploy Australian Defence Force and Australian Federal Police personnel. “We have been watching the ongoing protests in Honiara with concern,” he stated in a press release. “We continue to call for calm, for an end to further violence and emphasise the importance of resolving tensions peacefully.” At a press conference on November 25, Morrison rather unpersuasively declared that it was “not the Australian Government’s intention in any way to intervene in the internal affairs of the Solomon Islands”.  The Australian presence did “not indicate any position on the internal issues” of the country.

In such interventions, complex local factors behind agitation and unrest tend to be ignored as too complex for the briefing rooms in Pacific capitals and Canberra.  The obsession with security rather than dealing with specifically local issues, such as lack of opportunity, inequality and various local grievances, encourage the use of the police baton or the military rifle.  Generalisations become the norm, and, as Aiden Craney points out, propel narratives about the area being an “arc of instability”.

Some digging is required before coming to a franker overview of such instances of meddling.  Joanne Wallis, writing in 2015, simply takes it as fact that Australia, “the resident superpower in the South Pacific”, and also allied to the United States (its “closest ally”) has been given the role of responsibility “for the South Pacific.”

In such attitudes civilization’s burdens are borne with Kiplingesque gravity, even if given the gilding of security. Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden: The United States and The Philippine Islands” (1899) was yet another urging in the imperial argot, this time to the United States, to assume burdens and responsibilities in the Pacific.  Theodore Roosevelt, ever supping from the cup of imperial sentiment, was unimpressed by the language but entirely convinced by the purpose.  In copying the poem to his friend Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, he remarked that it was all “rather poor poetry, but good sense from the expansion point of view.”

Responsibility has often meant sticking your nose in the affairs of those swarthy barbarians whose understanding of civic institutions might be a bit sketchy.  It’s all done because they hardly know any better, and you have the self-interested answers in making sure such people are sorted.  “Australia,” writes Wallis, “has been expected to maintain regional political, social and economic order, and ensure that no hostile power establishes a strategic foothold in the region from which to attack Australia and threaten allied access to air and sea lines of communication.”  That’s more like it: an honest statement of vulgar realpolitik.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com   

  https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/11/29/off-to-the-solomon-islands-australias-civilizers-get-busy/

India’s Farmers Win on Many Fronts, Media Fails on All

 

BY P. SAINATH

Illustration: Antara Raman.

What the media can never openly admit is that the largest peaceful democratic protest the world has seen in years – certainly the greatest organised at the height of the pandemic – has won a mighty victory.

A victory that carries forward a legacy. Farmers of all kinds, men and women – including from Adivasi and Dalit communities – played a crucial role in this country’s struggle for freedom. And in the 75th year of our Independence, the farmers at Delhi’s gates reiterated the spirit of that great struggle.

Prime Minister Modi has announced he is backing off and repealing the farm laws in the upcoming winter session of Parliament starting on the 29th of this month. He says he is doing so after failing to persuade ‘a section of farmers despite best efforts’.  Just a section, mind you, that he could not convince to accept that the three discredited farm laws were really good for them. Not a word on, or for, the over 600 farmers who have died in the course of this historic struggle. His failure, he makes it clear, is only in his skills of persuasion, in not getting that ‘section of farmers’ to see the light. No failure attaches to the laws themselves or to how his government rammed them through right in the middle of a pandemic.

Well, the Khalistanis, anti-nationals, bogus activists masquerading as farmers, have graduated to being ‘a section of farmers’ who declined to be persuaded by Mr. Modi’s chilling charms. Refused to be persuaded? What was the manner and method of persuasion? By denying them entry to the capital city to explain their grievances? By blocking them with trenches and barbed wire? By hitting them with water cannons? By converting their camps into little gulags? By having crony media vilify the farmers every day? By running them over with vehicles – allegedly owned by a union minister or his son? That’s this government’s idea of persuasion? If those were its ‘best efforts’ we’d hate to see its worst ones.

PHOTO • Q. NAQVI

PHOTO • SHADAB FAROOQ

The Prime Minister made at least seven visits overseas this year alone (like the latest one for CoP26). But never once found the time to just drive down a few kilometres from his residence to visit tens of thousands of farmers at Delhi’s gates, whose agony touched so many people everywhere in the country. Would that not have been a genuine effort at persuasion?

From the first month of the present protests, I was barraged with questions from media and others about how long could they possibly hold out ? The farmers have answered that question. But they also know that this fantastic victory of theirs is a first step. That the repeal means getting the corporate foot off the cultivator’s neck for now – but a raft of other problems from MSP and procurement, to much larger issues of economic policies, still demand resolution.

The anchors on television tell us – as if it is a stunning revelation – that this backing off by the government must have something to do with the upcoming Assembly elections in five states next February.

The same media failed to tell you anything about the significance of the bypoll results in 29 Assembly and 3 Parliamentary constituencies announced on November 3. Read the editorials around that time – see what passed for analysis on television. They spoke of ruling parties usually winning bypolls, of some anger locally – and not just with the BJP and more such blah. Few editorials had a word to say about two factors influencing those poll results – the farmers’ protests and Covid-19 mismanagement.

PHOTO • ALMAAS MASOOD

PHOTO • SMITA KHATOR

PHOTO • SHRADDHA AGARWAL

The protests, whose agony touched so many people everywhere in the country, were held not only at Delhi’s borders but also in Karnataka (left), West Bengal (middle), Maharashtra (right), and in other states.

Mr. Modi’s announcement today shows that he at least, and at last, has wisely understood the importance of both those factors. He knows that some huge defeats have taken place in states where the farmers’ agitation is intense. States like Rajasthan and Himachal – but which a media, parroting to its audiences that it was all Punjab and Haryana, could not factor into their analyses.

When last did we see the BJP or any sangh parivar formation come third and fourth in two constituencies in Rajasthan? Or take the pasting they got in Himachal where they lost all three Assembly and one Parliament seat?

In Haryana, as the protestors put it, “the entire government from CM to DM” was there campaigning for the BJP; where the Congress foolishly put up a candidate against Abhay Chautala, who had resigned on the farmers’ issue; where union ministers pitched in with great strength – the BJP  still lost. The Congress candidate lost his deposit but managed to shave a bit off Chautala’s margin – he still won by over 6,000 votes.

All three states felt the impact of the farmers’ protests – and unlike the corpo-crawlers, the Prime Minister has understood that. With the impact of those protests in western Uttar Pradesh, to which was added the self-inflicted damage of the appalling murders at Lakhimpur Kheri, and with elections to come in that state in perhaps 90 days from now, he saw the light.

In three months’ time, the BJP government will have to answer the question – if the opposition has the sense to raise it – of whatever happened to the doubling of farmers’ incomes by 2022? The 77th round of the NSS (National Sample Survey, 2018-19) shows a fall in the share of income from crop cultivation for farmers – forget a doubling of farmer incomes overall. It also shows an absolute decline in real income from crop cultivation.

The farmers have actually done much more than achieve that resolute demand for the repeal of the laws. Their struggle has profoundly impacted the politics of this country. As did their distress in the 2004 general elections.

This is not at all the end of the agrarian crisis. It is the beginning of a new phase of the battle on the larger issues of that crisis. Farmer protests have been on for a long time now. And particularly strongly since 2018, when the Adivasi farmers of Maharashtra electrified the nation with their astonishing 182-km march on foot from Nashik to Mumbai. Then too, it began with their being dismissed as ‘urban naxals’, as not real farmers, and the rest of the blah. Their march routed their vilifiers.

There are many victories here today. Not the least of which is the one the farmers have scored over corporate media. On the farm issue (as on so many others), that media functioned as extra power AAA batteries (Amplifying Ambani Adani +).

Between December and next April, we will mark 200 years of the launch of two great journals (both by Raja Rammohan Roy) that could be said to have been the beginning of a truly Indian (owned and felt) press. One of which – Mirat-ul-Akhbar – brilliantly exposed the angrezi administration over the killing of Pratap Narayan Das from a whipping ordered by a judge in Comilla (now in Chittagong, Bangladesh). Roy’s powerful editorial resulted in the judge being hauled up and tried by the highest court of the time.

PHOTO • SHRADDHA AGARWAL

PHOTO • RIYA BEHL

Farmers of all kinds, men and women – including from Adivasi and Dalit communities – played a crucial role in this country’s struggle for freedom. And in the 75th year of our Independence, the farmers at Delhi’s gates have reiterated the spirit of that great struggle. 

The Governor General reacted to this by terrorising the press. Promulgating a draconian new Press Ordinance, he sought to bring them to heel. Refusing to submit to this, Roy announced he was shutting down Mirat-ul-Akhbar rather than submit to what he called degrading and humiliating laws and circumstances. (And went on to take his battle to and through other journals!)

That was journalism of courage. Not the journalism of crony courage and capitulation we’ve seen on the farm issue. Pursued with a veneer of ‘concern’ for the farmers in unsigned editorials while slamming them on the op-ed pages as wealthy farmers ‘seeking socialism for the rich.’

The Indian Express , the Times of India , almost the whole spectrum of newspapers – would say, essentially, that these were rural yokels who only needed to be spoken to sweetly. The edits invariably ended on the appeal: but do not withdraw these laws, they’re really good. Ditto for much of the rest of the media.

Did any of these publications once tell their readers – on the standoff between farmers and corporates – that Mukesh Ambani’s personal wealth of 84.5 billion dollars ( Forbes2021) was closing in very fast on the GSDP of the state of Punjab (about 85.5 billion)? Did they once tell you that the wealth of Ambani and Adani (who clocked $50.5 billion) together was greater than the GSDP of either Punjab or Haryana?

PHOTO • SHRADDHA AGARWAL

PHOTO • ANUSTUP ROY

The farmers have done much more than achieve that resolute demand for the repeal of the laws. Their struggle has profoundly impacted the politics of this country 

Well, there are extenuating circumstances. Ambani is the biggest owner of media in India. And in those media that he does not own, probably the greatest advertiser. The wealth of these two corporate barons can be and is often written about – generally in a celebratory tone. This is the journalism of corpo-crawl.

Already there is bleating about how this cunning strategy – the backing off – will have significant impact in the Punjab Assembly polls. That Amarinder Singh has projected this as a victory he engineered by resigning from the Congress and negotiating with Modi. That this will alter the poll picture there.

But the hundreds of thousands of people in that state who have participated in that struggle know whose victory it is. The hearts of the people of Punjab are with those in the protest camps who have endured one of Delhi’s worst winters in decades, a scorching summer, rains thereafter, and miserable treatment from Mr. Modi and his captive media.

And perhaps the most important thing the protestors have achieved is this: to inspire resistance in other spheres as well, to a government that simply throws its detractors into prison or otherwise hounds and harasses them. That freely arrests citizens, including journalists, under the UAPA, and cracks down on independent media for ‘economic offences’. This day isn’t just a win for the farmers. It’s a win for the battle for civil liberties and human rights. A win for Indian democracy.

\

This essay was first published by the People’s Archive of Rural India.

P Sainath is the founder and editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India. He has been a rural reporter for decades and is the author of ‘Everybody Loves a Good Drought.’ You can contact the author here: @PSainath_org

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/11/29/indias-farmers-win-on-many-fronts-media-fails-on-all/

Omicron Shows Corporate Media Critics of China's Zero-Covid Strategy Are Way Off the Mark

 

Instead of being viewed as an inefficient outcome of authoritarian rule, perhaps China's zero-Covid strategy should then be seen for what it is: a highly effective, if often ham-fisted, response to what so far is the biggest global crisis of the 21st-century.

DANIEL ALAN BEY

November 29, 2021

As the new Omicron variant of Covid-19 threatens to eviscerate the false sense of security that political elites in many rich countries have felt since vaccines were rolled out at the beginning of the year, critics of China's zero-Covid strategy may want to carefully reflect on why they have been so quick to dismiss Beijing's stringent containment measures.

Covid-19 has always been more than a public health crisis. It is an economic and political crisis; an environmental and social crisis; a crisis of information and a crisis of trust.

An opinion piece published in the Financial Times earlier this month took aim at Beijing's approach to stamping out the virus, calling it a "global concern." At the end of October, the New York Times published an article warning China's zero-Covid strategy risks isolating the country, both diplomatically and economically. Around the same time, the Guardian published a similar story while CNN also reported on how China is being left behind as its regional neighbors "learn to live" with the virus. Similar sentiments have been echoed across the corporate media, from Time and the Washington Post to the Economist and ABC.

Many of these reports share the assumption that we've already seen the worst of the pandemic, and that Beijing's strong-arm approach to governance means it is unable to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances. But this is way off the mark. Covid-19 has always been more than a public health crisis. It is an economic and political crisis; an environmental and social crisis; a crisis of information and a crisis of trust. In other words, it is a crisis that goes to the heart of the global system, holding up a mirror to individual societies and peeling away all the old pretenses. Big Pharma's monopoly on vaccines mean the risk of new variants emerging and causing havoc could continue well into the future, according to the WHO, as an intellectual property regime backed by the likes of the UK and Germany perpetuates structural health inequalities rooted in much longer histories of imperialism and dependency. Economic inequalities mean shutdowns of the type favored by European governments have always been a pipe dream in the underdeveloped world, where restrictions on work and travel have proven especially deadly. The wealth of the super-rich has spiked since the beginning of the pandemic, but hundreds of millions across the world have been plunged into new and dangerous forms of poverty, overturning even the most basic and rudimentary gains in global development. Such precarity can only increase desperation, pushing vulnerable individuals and groups back into work even as the virus mutates and takes on potentially more dangerous forms.

Instead of being viewed as an inefficient outcome of authoritarian rule, perhaps China's zero-Covid strategy should then be seen for what it is: a highly effective, if often ham-fisted, response to what so far is the biggest global crisis of the 21st-century. New research by mathematicians at Peking University warns a loosening of restrictions in China could unleash upwards of 600,000 infections a day, overloading the healthcare system. Earlier this month, Zhong Nanshan, the country's leading respiratory disease expert, warned of the costs of ending its zero-Covid policy. Gao Fu, the head of the Chinese CDC, has also called for the strategy to be maintained. When the highly popular virologist Zhang Wenhong suggested China needs to learn to "live with the virus" back in August, the state-media backlash reflected not only the depth of feeling within the Chinese leadership but also very real insecurities about the potentially catastrophic consequences of adopting alternative approaches to epidemic control. 

What many of the critics of Beijing's zero-Covid strategy ignore are the tremendous regional and urban/rural inequalities that structure reform-era Chinese society. Simplistic narratives of the country's historic rise have been internalized both inside and outside the country, reflected across political divides in the West: the right pushing "China threat" narratives, as certain segments of the left fantasize about how China's growing superpower status promises a better future for all. The glittering skylines of Beijing, Shenzhen and Shanghai tend to muddle and confuse, proving effective antidotes at concealing the country's stark socio-economic differences. While the urban middle-class in coastal centers have access to genuinely world-class hospitals, villagers are sometimes denied even rudimentary healthcare. Many rural migrants go without due to a hukou system that reduces hundreds of millions to effective second-class citizenship in the places they live and work. In a study of nearly 350 cities conducted last year, researchers found 98 had no top-class hospitals, whereas 93 had only one. In comparison, Beijing and Guangzhou each had more than 50. Scrape beneath the surface still, and the numbers are even more staggering. A report by the WHO from a few years ago shows how China's public health spending per capita was around half that of Algeria and Brazil and nearly one-third that of Panama, with the figures starker still when compared to those of advanced economies.

When the opinion pages of the Financial Times accuse Beijing of damaging international business by sticking to its zero-Covid strategy, they speak to and for global capitalist interests.

Few are more aware of the tremendous dislocations and inequities in China's domestic economy caused by four-decades of integrating into the global capitalist economy than China's political elite. Last year, Premier Li Keqiang publicly acknowledged that 600-million Chinese people remain poor. Since Hu Jintao and Wen Jiaobao came to power in 2003, genuine efforts have been made to rebalance growth and reduce rural/urban inequalities after the early decades of reform saw a general collapse in rural welfare and unprecedented levels of social unrest. As part of efforts to modernize rural areas by building a "new socialist countryside," the Hu-Wen government abolished agricultural taxes, expanded health insurance, increased educational services for rural children and introduced new forms of social welfare targeted at alleviating poverty. Similar policies have continued in the era of Xi Jinping, as Beijing announced an end to "extreme poverty"last year. The relaxing of some hukou restrictions, the revival of the Mao-era slogan "common prosperity"and the announcement of China's new "principle contradiction"in 2017—"between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people's ever-growing needs for a better life"—must also be understood within this context. 

Yet so too must China's approach to Covid-19. Beijing's capacity to mobilize the entire apparatus of the state to stamp out sporadic outbreaks is arguably the system's greatest strength. But as Chuan have brilliantly articulated, it also responds to a fundamental weakness. When the opinion pages of the Financial Times accuse Beijing of damaging international business by sticking to its zero-Covid strategy, they speak to and for global capitalist interests. Lacking sensitivity to the uneven nature of Chinese development, the potential human catastrophe that Chinese researchers warn of does not feature in their calculations. To combat such hubris, the left must remain sensitive to the distortions and injustices of forty years of reform. This is not to deny the country's remarkable socio-economic achievements. But for millions of Chinese people still struggling to live a decent life, it is to say that if livelihoods are to continue improving, it will be because of, not in spite of, Beijing's relentless effort to eliminate infections whenever and wherever they arise.

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https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/11/29/omicron-shows-corporate-media-critics-chinas-zero-covid-strategy-are-way-mark

DANIEL ALAN BEY

Daniel Alan Bey is a graduate student based in Suzhou, China, where he studies Chinese politics and history. He has nearly a decade of experience working as a journalist in Germany, Ecuador, the UK and China. Follow him on Twitter: @dabcule

Britain and Israel to sign 10-year trade and defence deal

 The deal comes amid mounting allegations that Israeli spyware was used to hack foreign officials and journalists

The trade and defence pact was declared by Britain and Israel after the UK declared Hamas a 'terrorist' organisation (AFP)

By 

MEE and agencies

Published date: 29 November 2021 07:57 UTC | Last update: 7 hours 29 mins ago

 

Britain is set to sign a 10-year trade and defence pact with Israel on Monday in which they will cooperate on cybersecurity and commit to stopping Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons on the eve of new talks. 

The deal comes amid mounting evidence that Israeli spyware was used to attack Middle East Eye and spy on British lawyers advising Princess Haya, the ex-wife of the ruler of Dubai.

UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and her Israeli counterpart Yair Lapid announced the memorandum of understanding on Monday in a joint article for the Telegraph newspaper. 

Both ministers said the pact would "spur technological breakthroughs" and that "Israel will officially become a tier-one cyber partner for the UK" with this deal.

The UK and Israel will begin talks on a full trade deal early in 2022, Truss and Lapid said. Trade between the countries currently is worth $5bn. 

The pact also doubled down on Britain's commitment to stamping down on antisemitism by condemning protests against Israel's ambassador Tzipi Hotovely, outside the London School of Economics and supporting the UK's decision to proscribe Hamas as a terrorist group. 

"There is no place for anti-Semitism around the world. That is why the UK has moved decisively to support Israel in this fight by proscribing Hamas in its entirety," the pair wrote.

They highlighted UK support for the recent normalisation agreements between several Arab states and Israel, overturning decades in which ties were kept under wraps. 

"The UK was one of the first countries to publicly celebrate this historic step towards normalisation in the Middle East led by Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco and mediated by the United States," they wrote. "One year on, the UK is continuing to play its part in supporting Israel as it works more closely with partners in the region." 

Lapid arrived in London on Sunday for a two-day trip to the UK and France, a day before nuclear talks with Iran will resume. 

The Israeli foreign minister is expected to sign the deal with Truss on Monday before meeting with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, where they will both give speeches. 

Israeli Channel 13 reported that Lapid's visit aimed to ensure banking sanctions were not lifted during talks with Iran. 

UK silence on Israeli spyware

Earlier this month, the UK government refused to say whether it has or will complain to Israel following reports that MEE was among targets of an alleged cyber-attack linked to Candiru, a Tel Aviv spyware firm sanctioned in the United States. 

The alleged attack, which a cybersecurity firm said has "strong links" to Candiru, a highly secretive Israeli firm that only sells its spyware to governments, follows earlier reports that the NSO Group's Pegasus software was used to target phones in the UK. 

Britain's High Court also found that Fiona Shackleton and Nick Manners, the lawyers advising Princess Haya during her court hearing, was hacked using software from Israeli spyware firm Pegasus. 

The court believes the Pegasus hack on Princess Haya and her lawyers was ordered by Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed who denies the claim. 

The military and defence pact comes as the UK has strengthened military ties with Israel under Prime Minister Boris Johnson, with a $137m contract between the British military and Israel drone technology company Elbit Systems to supply remote targeting systems agreed in January.

The RAF also took part in a training exercise with the Israeli air force over the Negev Desert in October, a first since 1948, according to The Times.

The pact comes as the international community enters talks with Iran to restart nuclear talks after a five-month gap in Vienna. 

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/britain-and-israel-sign-historic-ten-year-trade-and-defence-deal

As Russians take on British disinformation, there's a double standard at play

 

30 Nov, 2021 07:48

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By Paul Robinson, a professor at the University of Ottawa. He writes

 about Russian and Soviet history, military history and military ethics, and is author 

of the Irrussianality blog. He tweets at @Irrussianality.

Responsible journalism is a delicate balance. Reporters need to expose misdeeds, but avoid unjust accusations. A high-profile case involving a British reporter and a Russian billionaire shows the press doesn’t always get it right.

Psychologists sometimes speak of a “fundamental attribution error.” It works like this: if I do something wrong, I attribute it to forces beyond my control – it was an accident, I didn’t have all the right information, I was misled. But if somebody else does something wrong, I attribute it to them – they were incompetent, negligent, or just plain evil.

One can observe this phenomenon at work in the world of international affairs: the invasion of Iraq was a “mistake”, the “annexation” of Crimea “aggression.” If the Russian press says something incorrect about the West, it’s a deliberate act of disinformation. But if the Western press says something false about Russia, it’s an unfortunate error, but one that it was reasonable for people to have made in the circumstances – or just goes entirely uncorrected.

READ MORE: Is everyone a Russian agent now?

READ MORE

Kremlin outlines who it believes is behind ‘hysteria’ around possible Ukraine invasion

A case in point is an ongoing libel trial in the United Kingdom involving Russian business tycoon Roman Abramovich and the Rosneft oil company, on the one hand, and journalist Catherine Belton and her Rupert Murdoch-owned publisher, HarperCollins, on the other. At issue is Belton’s book ‘Putin’s People’, which Abramovich and Rosneft claim defamed them.

Abramovich and Rosneft aren’t the only ones to have made such a complaint. Previously, Belton and HarperCollins settled out of court after being sued by Russian businessmen Mikhail Fridman and Pyotr Aven. The defendants admitted they lacked evidence to support various allegations Belton made about the two Russians, apologised to them, and agreed to amend the book to remove the offending passages. 

Belton and HarperCollins have not settled with Abramovich and Rosneft, who figure more prominently in the work, meaning their cases have moved onto the British courts. Last week, Mrs Justice Tipples, the presiding judge, issued an important ruling: nine statements in Belton’s book about Abramovich, and one about Rosneft, were defamatory, she said.

Belton had claimed the statements in question were opinions, not fact. Mrs Justice Tipples disagreed, stating that readers would interpret them as being fact. She did not make a judgment as to the truthfulness of the words in question, but her ruling was still a definite setback for the defendants.

It remains to be seen how Belton and HarperCollins will fight the case hereafter. They have the option to argue that the statements were true. This may be difficult, given the lack of corroborating evidence provided in the book and that Belton had previously said they were opinions not facts. One suspects the defendants will instead argue that, even if Belton can’t prove the veracity of what she wrote, it was reasonable for her to have believed it was in the public interest to hear it.

This is the line being taken in another case by Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr, who is being sued for libel by British businessman Arron Banks in response to allegations that he funnelled money from the Russian government to the Leave campaign in the UK’s Brexit referendum. A year ago, Cadwalladr withdrew her defence of ‘truth’, but she is continuing to fight Banks’s suit using the ‘public interest’ argument.

In essence, what’s being said here is something along the lines of ‘Sure, I got it wrong, but it wasn’t malicious – it was a justifiable error given what I knew, and it was reasonable for me to think it was in the public interest to publish the story.’

READ MORE: Putin, riddled with cancer & suffering from Parkinson’s, preparing to step down – claims conspiracy-loving Western media

Whether this will work remains to be determined. One wouldn’t want a world in which journalists fail to print important stories for fear of being sued. British libel law is notorious for favouring claimants and for being abused by the rich and powerful to silence opponents. In this sense, the public-interest defence has some value.

That said, it has to be balanced against the duty not to blacken people’s reputations for no good reason. Belton and HarperCollins have to show they got this balance right. While some reviewers, many of them perhaps showing media "solidarity," have praised Belton’s book, others have slammed what they believe is its poor methodology, including its heavy reliance on anonymous sources and the testimony of exiled Russian millionaire Sergey Pugachev, who Belton admits in her book was “found to have given false evidence” to a British court. Pugachev has since distanced himself from what he told the reporter. 

In the cases of Fridman and Aven, the author has in effect admitted she couldn’t verify her allegations against them. Journalistic freedom goes hand in hand with journalistic responsibility. Making serious charges of the type Belton has made against Abramovich and Rosneft requires serious evidence. If she cannot provide it, then it’s hard to see how her work can be defended.

Nevertheless, the journalistic community has rushed to do so. In the process, it hasn’t covered itself in glory, failing to provide its audience with key evidence to put the case in context. The Guardian, for instance, ran a story about the recent judgment in which it described Belton’s book as “widely acclaimed” while ignoring the more negative comments the work has received. 

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It also mentioned that two “oligarchs” (i.e. Fridman and Aven) had “settled their legal actions”, but failed to point out the details of the settlements – details that don’t make Belton and HarperCollins look desperately good. The article gives the impression that everyone thinks ‘Putin’s People’ is a wonderful book and that other lawsuits against it have been dismissed. This is misleading.

So, too, is a statement issued last week by the organisation Index on Censorship. Signed by 19 international journalistic bodies, it likens Abramovich’s lawsuit to “a form of legal harassment used by wealthy and powerful entities to silence journalists and other public watchdogs”. But it makes no reference to what wealthy people are meant to do if journalists defame them.

Index on Censorship adds that, “Five separate claims were initially filed against Belton and HarperCollins, but three have since been resolved without the need for costs or damages being awarded to the claimants.” This is true, but also highly disingenuous, as the wording suggests that Belton and HarperCollins came out on top in their fight against these other claims, when in fact the opposite is the case.

All of which makes one wonder: if RT were to publish a series of defamatory articles about British businessmen, would The Guardian, Index on Censorship and the rest of the journalistic community rush to its defence? Or would there be screams of ‘Russian disinformation’? I think you know the answer.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.