• Wikileaks Iraq War Diaries (main page)
• Diary Dig (Browse the diaries and make complex searches)
• War Logs (Browse the diaries, rate and comment the reports)
• Raw files, download as a torrent from Pirate Bay

Wikileaks teamed up with several news organizations, more this time than with the Afghan War Diary. You can find each organization’s dedicated pages below (Le Monde, at the time of writing, appeared to be the only one not to have a special Iraq War logs section), ranked in order of descending preference:

• The Bureau of Investigative Journalism—Iraq War Logs
• Al Jazeera—The Secret Iraq Files
• The Guardian—Iraq: The War Logs
• Der Spiegel Online International—Iraq War Logs
• The New York Times—The War Logs (includes Afghanistan)
• Channel 4 News (UK)—Iraq Secret War Files
• Iraq Body Count
• Le Monde—“Irak : l’horreur ordinaire révélée par Wikileaks”

Since the media partners with an inside edge on analyzing the original documents will likely retain the monopoly in terms of most meaningful and useful reports, here are some of the first ones to be released that we recommend:

1. Iraq Body Count: “Iraq War Logs: What the numbers reveal”
2. Iraq Body Count: “Iraq War Logs: The truth is in the details”
3. Iraq Body Count: “Iraq War Logs: Context”
4. BBC News: “Huge Wikileaks release shows US ‘ignored Iraq torture’”
5. Der Spiegel: “The WikiLeaks Iraq War Logs: Greatest Data Leak in US Military History”
6. Der Spiegel: “The WikiLeaks Disclosures: New Dimensions in the Iraq War”
7. CNN: “WikiLeaks redacted more information in latest documents release”
8. BIJ: “Pentagon response to publication of the war logs”
9. BIJ: “US soldier fires shots for fun”
10. BIJ: “US Apache guns down surrendering insurgents”
11. BIJ: “US troops ordered not to investigate Iraqi torture”
12. BIJ: “Hundreds of civilians gunned down at checkpoints”
13. BIJ: “Obama administration handed over detainees despite reports of torture”
14. BIJ: “Iraqi civilians used as minesweepers by a US soldier”

Evgeny Morozov’s forthcoming book, The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, argues instead that “we must stop thinking of the Internet and social media as inherently liberating and why ambitious and seemingly noble initiatives like the promotion of ‘Internet freedom’ might have disastrous implications for the future of democracy as a whole.” Though the book is still being prepared, two chapter excepts are being made available online: chapter 1 and chapter 7.

“Australian spies ‘may have tracked’ WikiLeaks founder,” says a report from AFP: “Australian spy agencies may have helped trace the movements of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.” What is not revealed is with which intelligence services of other states the information was shared.

As the next big Wikileaks release came due, we read: “Pentagon bracing for release of 400,000 secret Iraq reports.” In addition, the remaining 15,000 Afghan war documents, promised to be released since the end of August, are also supposedly due to come out. This is one list kept by a reporter detailing anticipated releases, what Wikileaks will publish, and when (especially given that the site has been down for weeks).

Two of the other main stories that attracted attention were:

(1) “WikiLeaks says funding has been blocked after government blacklisting” – “Founder Julian Assange hits out at decision by Moneybookers, which collects the whistleblowing website’s donations,” where we read that Moneybookers has clearly been pressed into terminating its business relationship with WL since WL was placed on a blacklist and watchlist by the governments of Australia and the U.S.

(2) An explosive article in the Los Angeles Times, “WikiLeaks and 9/11: What if?,” by Coleen Rowley (who was a special agent/legal counsel at the FBI) and Federal Air Marshal Bogdan Dzakovic (who once co-led the Federal Aviation Administration’s Red Team to probe for vulnerabilities in airport security). If 9/11 was not an “inside job” it certainly does not meant that the events happened with the aid of an inexplicable amount of criminal negligence on the part of knowledgeable U.S. authorities, with the facts formally excluded from the 9/11 Commission report.

Hopefully some academic(s) will write papers or books about how the Venezuelan governing party has made effective and sophisticated use of social media, in a way that is probably quite distinctive outside of the U.S. Besides Chávez’s blog, and very active Twitter account (which he uses to rally supporters in Twitter, and for exchanging public tweets with other Latin American presidents), the

To have a look at some of the competing social media campaigns by the PSUV’s rivals, see Primero Justicia (barely starting in Twitter) and Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT) (also in Twitter)

"Oh no! Not the Twaleban!"

“The Taliban in recent months has developed increasingly sophisticated and nimble propaganda tactics that have alarmed U.S. officials struggling to curb the militant group’s growing influence across Afghanistan. U.S. officials and Afghan analysts say the Taliban has become adept at portraying the West as being on the brink of defeat, at exploiting rifts between Washington and Kabul and at disparaging the administration of President Hamid Karzai as a ‘puppet’ state with little reach outside the capital….

“As the radical Islamist movement steps up conventional grass-roots propaganda efforts and polishes its online presence – going so as far as to provide Facebook and Twitter icons online that allow readers to disseminate press releases – the U.S.-led coalition finds itself on the defensive in the media war…. ‘It’s been getting better,’ a U.S. intelligence official in Kabul said of the Taliban’s media strategy. ‘It’s become increasingly complex. It’s definitively something we worry about’.

“‘They are not fighting a war that involves military victories…Everything they do is to create a perception that the government can’t win’.”

The U.S. military, and its media mouthpieces in the U.S. such as the Washington Post (see this very funny piece from which the quotes above came: “U.S. struggles to counter Taliban propaganda”) have become increasingly post-modern: there is no real reality outside one’s mind, and victory or loss is purely a function of labeling and spin, there are no objective and concrete developments on the ground to which we can all refer. NATO and the U.S. are winning, if you have the correct mindset—and they are losing if you are a victim of Taleban spin.

Indeed, the Taleban’s spin machine is so complex now that they have Twitter and Facebook buttons! And how do we know it’s propaganda? Simple: it repeats the exact same things said about the Karzai administration that have been said by Washington, that it is corrupt and lacks popular support—because the reality is that Karzai’s regime is pristine, and wildly popular across all of…oh wait.

In the meantime, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan website, which is more often than not the target of jamming that prevents it loading, gets virtually no mention in Twitter, ever. Indeed, few seem to know the Taleban have a website (if it’s up), or may doubt that it is really their site. Their YouTube channel is virtually dead. As for their Twitter and Facebook buttons…I am not seeing any.

Clearly, the U.S. and NATO would have had this war in the bag by now, were it not for all those Twitter and Facebook buttons getting in the way. Is there anything to cheer NATO up? Yes, as the story indicates…the U.S. successfully mounted the Aisha hoax that won over…Americans, the target constituency of the Taleban? If it doesn’t make any sense, not to worry: it’s not supposed to.

Where do we find the effects of the Taleban’s slick media campaign? The assumptions, and implications, are to say the least damning. Major General Jim Molan, Australia’s highest ranking officer deployed to Iraq had this to say about “Taleban propaganda” a truly remarkable statement of fantasy motivated by an obvious attempt to smear and diminish:

“I think they’ve been remarkably successful in the western world because they have a very slick propaganda and media operations network and they’re very good at that. So the picture that we see through the media and through commentators is a lot different to what’s actually happening on the ground in Afghanistan.”

In other words, Molan is suggesting that Western media are in the back pocket of the Taleban, their sway being so immense, ubiquitous, and irresistible. Of course, it also suggests that by reporting any of the “bad” news, that Western media are doing the enemy’s propaganda work…just one inch away from calling the Western media the enemy.

As for Twitter, according to this article from the Annenberg School of Communication, “The Unused Weapon In Afghanistan? Twitter” (which with rapid ease labels the Taleban “terrorists”) it doesn’t seem like having a Twitter campaign would do anything for the Taleban. Besides, they are too busy kicking real ass in meatspace to think about polishing up their MySpace profile or creating Facebook groups. Indeed, contrary to the propaganda above, the Annenberg propaganda concludes: “The terrorists don’t seem to [sic] up-to-date on the newest social media technology.” No really? Taleb don’t Twitter?

Image via Wikipedia

The Congressional Research Service in the U.S. says that the publication by Wikileaks of the Afghan War Diaries is not “criminal.” It was not unlawful to publish the information, according to the report (which can be downloaded from here). The CRS report concludes: “although unlawful acquisition of information might be subject to criminal prosecution, the publication of that information remains protected.”

In Australia, Attorney General Robert McClelland (who is apparently unaware that Julian Assange is in the UK and not Sweden) said that Australia may pressure Sweden to prosecute Julian Assange or others linked to his whistleblower website WikiLeaks if planned releases of military documents outlining the Iraq and Afghanistan wars pose a risk to serving forces. Interestingly, the Attorney General would not comment on whether Australia had already assisted “other countries” in “pursuing” Wikileaks. It would also be interesting to see the authorities try to prove that troops were endangered, and if troop safety is the high water mark for public debate, why Australia chose to endanger its troops by sending them to Afghanistan, a country that never attacked nor threatened Australia, an act which is itself a violation of international law. The Attorney General, acting as war propagandist, claimed that Australian and other troops are “placing their personal safety at risk in the interests of defending their nations [and] promoting international security,” without explaining how the Afghan mission has anything at all to do with either goal.

An independent journalist has dedicated himself to questioning, and then exposing the apparent fabrication by Jeanne Whalen of the Wall Street Journal of a supposed letter sent to Wikileaks by five human rights organizations—a letter which Wikileaks itself affirmed it never received. It appears that a few of the signatories are neither human rights organizations, nor represented by persons entitled to speak for such organizations. The WSJ refuses to provide a copy of the original letter. For more see these two articles: first, “Why is Jeanne Whalen Stonewalling Me on Her WikiLeaks Story?,” then the latest, “More Errors Found in WSJ WikiLeaks Article.”

Also interesting and informative is coverage of Julian Assange’s London press conference on 30 September 2010, which without a live feed was tweeted by the audience and tracked and then analyzed on GeorgieBC’s blog: “The City University Debate ‘Too Much Information?’”

Related Articles

• Australia could charge WikiLeaks over US document release (theage.com.au)
• UK defence chiefs silent on Afghan civilian deaths revealed by WikiLeaks (guardian.co.uk)
• WikiLeaks chief lashes out at media during debate (foxnews.com)

Demonstration against Internet censorship in Helsinki, Finland, 2008: Image via Wikipedia

“U.S. Tries to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet,” by Charlie Savage in The New York Times speaks of Federal law enforcement and national security officials who “are preparing to seek sweeping new regulations for the Internet” that would enable all Web communication services to be wiretapped. This surveillance bill is being marshaled by the Obama administration—seeking a transparent population ruled by a secretive government.

“The bill, which the Obama administration plans to submit to lawmakers next year, raises fresh questions about how to balance security needs with protecting privacy and fostering innovation. And because security services around the world face the same problem, it could set an example that is copied globally.”

The government is seeking the following:

• Communications services that encrypt messages must have a way to unscramble them.
• Foreign-based providers that do business inside the United States must install a domestic office capable of performing intercepts.
• Developers of software that enables peer-to-peer communication must redesign their service to allow interception.

“Censorship of the Internet Takes Center Stage in ‘Online Infringement’ Bill,” by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), critically analyzes the “Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act” (COICA) introduced in the U.S. Senate which,

“would allow the Attorney General and the Department of Justice to break the Internet one domain at a time — by requiring domain registrars/registries, ISPs, DNS providers, and others to block Internet users from reaching certain websites. The bill would also create two Internet blacklists. The first is a list of all the websites hit with a censorship court order from the Attorney General. The second, more worrying, blacklist is a list of domain names that the Department of Justice determines — without judicial review — are ‘dedicated to infringing activities’.”

The EFF describes it as a censorship bill, broad in its scope of “infringing activities” and broad in its “solution,” which is to block entire domain names. The U.S. already blocks over 60 foreign websites, as indicated in the previous EE report. The EFF argues that COICA,

“sends the world the message that the United States approves of unilateral Internet censorship. Which governments deny their citizens access to parts of the Internet? For now, it is mostly totalitarian, profoundly anti-democratic regimes that keep their citizens from seeing the whole Internet. With this bill, the United States risks telling countries throughout the world, ‘Unilateral censorship of websites that the government doesn’t like is okay — and this is how you do it’.”

COICA would allow the government “to suppress truthful speech and could block access to a wealth of non-infringing speech,” in the name of protecting copyright, on behalf of an industry that the EFF argues only tried to break the Internet.

Related Articles

• Tell Your Senator: No Website Blacklists, No Internet Censorship! (eff.org)
• Censorship of the Internet Takes Center Stage in “Online Infringement” Bill (eff.org)
• Online IP Protection Bill Sparks Outrage (pcworld.com)
• David Segal: Stop the Internet Blacklist (huffingtonpost.com)
• US Bill With Internet Censorship Implications Delayed Until After Elections (thenextweb.com)
• Victory: Internet Censorship Bill is Delayed, For Now (Tim Jones/Electronic Frontier Foundation) (techmeme.com)
• How The Attempted Censorship Of File Sharing Sites Avoids Due Process (techdirt.com)
• Victory: Internet Censorship Bill is Delayed, For Now (eff.org)
• Copyright, Censorship, and Domain Name Blacklists at Home in the U.S. (freedom-to-tinker.com)

Image via Wikipedia

One may suspect that a lot of confusion might be avoided in debates such as those listed at the bottom if those participating in the debates chose to compare like with like. Digital activism is a communication activity. Digital activism is really about spreading messages, consciousness raising, and other communication activities. Its counterpart in “traditional activism” would consist of activities such as posting flyers, making posters, producing newsletters, circulating petitions, giving radio interviews, community television, speeches and petitions…not street protests, sit ins, blockades, pelting stones and Molotov cocktails, getting beaten and arrested by the police. (Perhaps the two might be confused because of the number of “digital activists” in the Middle East who have been imprisoned and beaten for their online information campaigns.) Hacking and other forms of cyber warfare might be the digital counterpart of street protests, but this is not considered in the debates linked to below.

Also left out of the debates is any focused discussion on why “activism” is being separated out from other oppositional activities, such as armed revolution, only to lament that activism (usually represented as the classic street protest) often fails to produce the changes sought (just like digital activism, which for some reason is more readily likened to slacktivism). Yes, it is very easy to merely click “like” in Facebook; likewise, it is just as easy to merely wear a button or patch on one’s jacket. It is difficult to understand why signing a paper petition is less “slacktivist” than signing an electronic petition.

At some point, when we get past the intellectual cul-de-sacs brought on by technological faddism, we might have a discussion that is just focused on activism, less obsessed with the medium or having to apologize for using electronic media.

• Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker, “Twitter, Facebook, and social activism.”
• “The False Poles of Digital and Traditional Activism,” by Jillian C. York
• “Information: Can you social network your way to revolution?” The Economist
• “Your (Brilliant) Responses to Gladwell on Social Media and Activism,” compiled by Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic
• Will social networks boost good political change? | Marginal Revolution

Related Articles

• Does social media help or hurt activism? (impact.webershandwick.com)
• Social Media and Social Activism: Four Reasons Why Malcolm Gladwell is Wrong (gauravonomics.com)
• Malcolm Gladwell Is Dead Wrong (leighhimel.blogspot.com)
• Online Revolutions Are Not Just A Lazy Protestor’s Form Of Activism (businessinsider.com)
• Can The Internet Support or Even Inspire Political Revolution? (psychologytoday.com)
• Twitter’s Weak Ties May Not Be So Weak (wired.com)
• Why the revolution will not be tweeted (3quarksdaily.com)
• Social Media for Good and Evil, Strong and Weak Ties, Online/Offline,and Orgs and Networks (bethkanter.org)

“To say ‘I want complete democracy now’ is not good for anyone. Throwing open the political process too abruptly will only leave Islamists running the show.” – Sheik Mohammed Bin Ateyatalla Al-Khalifa, president of the Royal Court and a powerful member of the kingdom’s royal family.

Bahrain is a dictatorship ruled by an ethnic and religious minority, that has toyed with some liberalization, and now moved back to smashing any opposition.

According to Mohamed ElGohary on Global Voices: Advocacy Ali Abdulemam, a leading Bahraini blogger and Global Voices Advocacy author, was arrested on 05 September 2010 by the Bahraini authorities for allegedly spreading “false news” on the BahrainOnline.org portal, “one of the most popular pro-democracy outlets in Bahrain, amidst the worst sectarian crackdown by the government in years, and accusations of a supposed ‘terror network’ involving several political and human rights activists.”

Bahrain’s ruling regime has accused opposition activists of a “terror campaign” (Al Jazeera: “Bahrain dissidents face charges,” 05 September 2010; BBC: “Bahrain accuses Shia activists of ‘terror campaign’” 04 September 2010). The accusation, given that the majority of the nation is Shia, that the opposition is somehow allied with Iran and doing its bidding, seeking to overthrow the regime by force and engaging in “propaganda.” Human rights activists imprisoned by the regime have allegedly suffered torture. The Bahrain Center for Human Rights is also reporting that the state has cracked down on dozens of websites. In a country where the local media self-censors, and reporters from Al Jazeera are banned, these sites are the only sources of alternative news and information. The BCHR has issued the following demands:

Thus, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights demands the following from the Bahraini government:

• To lift the ban and blockage against all public affairs, cultural, social, legal, political and religious websites.
• The withdrawal of all actions that would restrict freedom of opinion and expression, or prevent the transmission of information.
• To commit to its international obligations and respect all forms of freedom of expression as enshrined in international conventions and treaties.
• To amend the Press Law No. 47 of 2002 and make it in line with international standards of human rights.

Visit http://freeabdulemam.wordpress.com/

See also: http://freeali.blogspot.com/

See Ali Abdulemam’s blog: http://abdulemam.blogspot.com/

If you are a blogger and value freedom of expression and the right to dissent, post your support for Ali Abdulemam on your blog. It could be as simple as just posting the YouTube video above, and a link to http://freeabdulemam.wordpress.com/.

For more background, read “The Internet in Bahrain: breaking the monopoly of information,” by Fahad Desmukh, who is a Karachi-based journalist and former Bahraini blogger.

Ali Abdulemam has been imprisoned for political reasons before, as this report from the Wall Street Journal from 11 May 2005 explains—see “After High Hopes, Democracy Project In Bahrain Falters — Gulf Kingdom Reverses Course As Calls for Change Swell; Lessons for the Middle East — A Web Site Rallies Opposition.” Abdulemam is a member of the al-Wifaq Islamic Society, Bahrain’s largest opposition movement. The U.S., unsurprisingly, has been equivocal about supporting democratization in Bahrain, even while touting it for Iraq:

“For the U.S., Bahrain presents a quandary. Construction crews are building new facilities at the headquarters of the Fifth Fleet near the capital Manama. The Pentagon is pressing for port dredging that would allow U.S. aircraft carriers to dock, not just anchor off the coast.

“But even as the Bush administration cheers the idea of democratization here, some U.S. officials privately share the royal family’s concern that Islamists might hijack the political process. They also worry that Iran might expand its influence over a key strategic stronghold.”

The George W. Bush administration had declared Bahrain “an important example of a nation making the transition to democracy.” In 2002, the U.S. gave it the official status of a “major non-North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally” and started negotiating a bilateral free-trade agreement, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Related Links:

• Sami Ben Gharbia, “Free Blogger Ali Abdulemam”
• Anas Qtiesh, “Freedom for Ali Abdulemam”
• Committee to Protect Bloggers, “Free Blogger Ali Abdulemam”
• Jillian C. York, “Free Ali Abdulemam”

“As technological expertise has become progressively more specialized, the gap between user knowledge and producer knowledge becomes increasingly wider — to a point where for the vast majority of people, every piece of technology upon which we depend operates in ways utterly beyond our understanding.

“Whereas the ability to understand how things work once formed many strands of common knowledge, we now share common ignorance. We pursue knowledge down much narrower tracks and on this basis repeatedly make naive assumptions about expertise whose quality we are unqualified to assess.”

For more on the Haystack fiasco, see:

• “The Great Internet Freedom Bluff of Digital Imperialism: Thoughts on Cyber Diplomacy, Cargo Cult Digital Activism… and Haystack,” at Cultural Bytes— “Projects like Haystack reveal so much more about our own fears of the world. But the bottom line is that Haystack was blown out of proportion from the very beginning for something that it wasn’t. The Haystack Affair, however, is not an isolated incident; it is a continuation of projects coming from Westerners who place their own narratives on people and situations they really don’t fully understand….” A great post for its useful notes on “digital imperialism;”
• A great article from Jillian C. York, “Haystack and Media Irresponsibility” : “What I don’t think has been raised loudly enough is an objection to the manner in which the media handled the nascent tool….” –her dissection of the ample flaws and gullibility of the media is methodical, comprehensive, and appropriately devastating. Her conclusions? “I certainly blame Heap and his partners–for making outlandish claims about their product without it ever being subjected to an independent security review, and for all of the media whoring they’ve done over the past year. But I also firmly place blame on the media, which elevated the status of a person who, at best was just trying to help, and a tool which very well could have been a great thing, to the level of a kid genius and his silver bullet, without so much as a call to circumvention experts;”
• Evgeny Morozov, “Were Haystack’s Iranian testers at risk?” at Foreign Policy; “Haystack is the Internet’s equivalent of the Bay of Pigs Invasion. It is the epitome of everything that is wrong with Washington’s push to promote Internet Freedom without thinking through the consequences and risks involved…” – and this interesting quote from a member of the Censorship Research Center that is behind Haystack, relating U.S. foreign policy to software production, revealing a public-private cyberactivism industry: “I know that circumvention tool projects, commercial or non-profit, are by in large dependent on the government funding. The government funding is highly policy driven. If Iran’ss nuclear issue is on the top of the news, this translates to various sorts of ‘democracy funds’ and some of those funds end up in the hand of circumvention community. There is pretty much no other easy way of funding these projects for their service to countries like Iran.”
• Evgeny Morozov, “The Great Internet Freedom Fraud: How Haystack endangered the Iranian dissidents it was supposed to protect,” at Slate; “It’s not surprising that the discourse about America in Iran would be infected by conspiracy theories. But this is what happens when you make an unthinking push to liberate the world one tweet and one Google search at a time. Buzzwords like ‘21st-century statecraft’ and ‘Internet freedom’ sound good in PowerPoint presentations, but the State Department can’t just snap its fingers and fix everything for Iranians by creating a free Internet. The reality is that ‘digital diplomacy’ requires just as much oversight and consideration as any other kind of diplomacy;”
• Evgeny Morozov, “One Week Inside the Haystack,” at Foreign Policy;
• “Cryptography, Iran and America—Worse than useless: An American government attempt to help Iranian dissidents backfires,” at The Economist;
• “Needles in a Haystack: A 20-something named Austin Heap has found the perfect disguise for dissidents in their cyberwar against the world’s dictators,” at Newsweek, containing (among other items worthy of note) a simple yet often missed admission: “democratizing technologies were supposed to lead to democracy. They didn’t. Only later did people realize that the technology was just a tool; what mattered was how it was used” ;

(Heap once declared: “Don’t piss off hackers who will have their way with you. A mischievous kid will show you how the Internet works.” YAWN. Here’s a ZA memo to the self-empowered, tech-addicted, twenty-something gurus who slay dragons on World of Warcraft and say “game on” to real world opponents: um, n00b, you just got pwned.)

Internet Freedom?

Sami Ben Gharbia authored an extensive article, receiving a lot of positive commentary, titled “The Internet Freedom Fallacy and Arab Digital Activism.” This is a must read. The focus of his article is “grassroots digital activism in the Arab world and the risks of what seems to be an inevitable collusion with U.S foreign policy and interests.” He is especially concerned about the “Internet Freedom” mantra emanating from the U.S. State Department, and how Arab digital activism could become coopted and thus defeated as an adjunct of U.S. foreign policy. He notes that “none of the most successful digital activism campaigns and initiatives that have marked this field with innovative and creative approaches in dealing with sensitive topics have been funded by any of the Western governments, institutions, or donors.” Of especial importance is the article’s spotlight on the revolving door between social media corporations and the U.S. government, and U.S. State Department funded research at Harvard that we might call “Internet Terrain Mapping.” Is the U.S. interested in “internet freedom,” or is it just interested in such freedom when it comes to Iran and China?

Gharbia notes in this vein the ideology behind the anti-censorship software:

“While Haystack and Freegate are the kind of ‘ideological circumvention tools’ openly targeting specific countries, mainly China and Iran (like many NGOs that have been created in the West since the 2009 post-election protest), it’s overwhelming clear that other circumvention tools providers and promoters, who claim to address Internet filtering globally, have their attention drawn towards almost the same countries. Sesawe, that presents itself as ‘a global alliance dedicated to bringing the benefits of uncensored access to information to Internet users around the world,’ has followed its counterparts’ pattern in giving a preferential attention to Iran and China in disregard with what’s going on in other countries ‘where Sesawe matters.’ Psiphon, the award winning anti-censorship technology, is giving much attention in the form of tweets to Iran and China too and has been promoting Psiphon proxy nodes via Twitter.”

He summarizes, “there are many other reasons to be skeptical about the prospects of the US involvement in support of Internet freedom under authoritarian regimes that can cause a huge damage to that same freedom, thereby achieving the opposite results than the ‘well-intentioned’ and proclaimed ones.” He examines the work of several U.S. think tanks and U.S. funded “dissident” projects, and calls for Middle East activists to remain independent and apart from such efforts.

“Internet Freedom,” we might note, is rich in hypocrisy when mouthed by U.S. officials, given the fact that the U.S. itself engages in Web censorship, with at least 60 websites on the U.S. SDN list that have been shut down. The U.S.’ persistent jamming of the Taleban’s English-language website—lest we might, as supposedly independent and free citizens, learn something—shows how Internet freedom is anathema to U.S. strategic interests, even if it means keeping its own citizens uninformed and in the dark.