Ali Abunimah is a Palestinian who resides in Chicago. As the co-founder of the essential Electronic Intifada website, his goal is to give voice to the Palestinian cause and challenge the dominant Zionist narrative of our time. Leading Jewish blogger Phil Weiss writes that people like Ali should be seriously considered as a major figure in the American debate, yet he remains marginalised. Why? Read more »
My following article appears in today’s edition of Crikey:
Antony Loewenstein, author of My Israel Question, writes: Read more »
Democracy is craved, but not at the barrel of a gun (such as the recent call for an invasion of Burma): Read more »
Nearly half of all internet users would support a voluntary code of conduct for bloggers and online commentators, according to research.
A survey by legal firm DLA Piper said 46% of web users think bloggers should sign up to a code that reflected the laws on defamation, intellectual property and incitement, with 15% ambivalent and 4% strongly opposed.
Around 34% of bloggers opposed the idea but 32% supported it. Read more »
My following article appears in the Amnesty International Australia’s Uncensor campaign about human rights in China:
China’s rapid growth is often forgotten when analysing the country’s human rights record, but these issues should not be ignored in the rush for super-power status, writes Antony Loewenstein. Read more »
Professional journalists, your days are numbered:
User-generated content has been buzzed about in magazine circles for a few years, but editors—save for a select few—have largely been reluctant to turn over pages from their shrinking folios to readers. Now, a magazine is taking the concept to its extreme: a 100-percent user-generated issue. Read more »
If You are Not Muslim in Iraq, You are Trash.
A compelling essay co-written by friend and author of American Torture, Mike Otterman.
Ali Abunimah, Sydney Morning Herald, May 13:
Israeli leaders understand what they are up against; the Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, said last November: “If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, then, as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished.” Read more »
China, the Beijing Olympics, Tibet and corporate sponsorship are a toxic mix.
So where to from here, a Chinese blogger asks?
A moving description of life as a woman in Saudi Arabia.
Myths on Who’s Really ‘Pro-Israel’ (by the co-founder of the new moderate Israel lobby, J-Street.)
Palestine Think Tank is a new site dedicated to critically examining the Israel/Palestine conflict and debunking Zionism.
This recent article, Israel Foreign Affairs Ministry: Lies are Truth, is worth reading.
540 million: Number of mobile phone users in China, with an increase of 44 million in the past six months.
30: The number of different animal penises on the menu at Guolizhuang, Beijing’s ‘penis emporium’. A yak’s costs about £15, while a tiger’s (which must be pre-ordered) will set you back £3,000. Read more »
The mainstream media, the internet and blogs being parasitic. Where to from here?
The democracy deficit in Kuwait.
How things have changed in China. The following article was written by the Daily Telegraph correspondent in Beijing in 1982:
An official Chinese newspaper yesterday published a letter from an irate railway worker complaining that too many advertisements featured attractive women with outstanding figures. Such “titillating illustrations” were very unsuitable, the worker said. Read more »
In the past seven years, Louisville-based Papa John’s International Inc. has made a lot of dough from online ordering - more than $1 billion to be exact.
Republican presidential nominee John McCain has friends who want to see Islam destroyed. Yes, he’s a moderate man:
My following article appears in today’s ABC Unleashed:
The fifth anniversary in March of the Iraq war should have given the political and media elite time to reflect on their actions since 2003. Virtually ignored by the mainstream media were stories such as life in Fallujah, where citizens remain mired in poverty and resentment. Read more »
Barack Obama now appears likely to clinch the Democratic Party nomination. Hillary Clinton is hanging on for dear life but her hopes are probably futile. I can’t say I’m upset about this, despite my serious doubts about Obama’s ability or interest in seriously changing America’s foreign policy. Read more »
The war against bloggers continues:
A prominent Malaysian blogger was charged Tuesday with sedition for allegedly implying the deputy prime minister was involved in the sensational killing of a young Mongolian woman.
Raja Petra Raja Kamaruddin, who has not denied that he linked Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak to the slaying, pleaded innocent to the charge, telling reporters that he should have the right to hold the powerful accountable for wrongdoing. Read more »
First Google willingly signs up to assist the Chinese regime to censor the internet. Now, it’s possibly breached national security:
China is to investigate Google and other websites for allegedly breaching state secrecy laws and showing “illegal” maps of the country. Read more »
My following article appears in the Amnesty International Australia’s Uncensor campaign about human rights in China:
There are small signs that Chinese nationalism is being tempered by more thoughtful analysis of the motherland, writes Antony Loewenstein. Read more »
The latest news from Burmese bloggers on devastating Cyclone Nargis:
After years of propagating lies about Iraq and its alleged threat to the world, the New York Times continues to publish Bush administration talking points, this time outlining the supposed menace of Iran.
Critical thinking? Don’t expect that from the “paper of record.” Read more »
I was recently interviewed by Peshawa Muhammed of the Kurdistani Nwe Newspaper, the publication of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in Iraqi Kurdistan (Noam Chomsky was also interviewed recently.) The article ran on May 4:
Peshawa Muhammed: Five years on, how do you assess the current US policy in Iraq? Which option do you think can finally put an end to the ongoing fiasco; partition or keeping Iraq united? Read more »
A Chinese student’s interview with the Dalai Lama.
Raw Story provides necessary context to the latest missive from US Vice President Dick Cheney:
George W. Bush has made the world a more hopeful place.
This from Vice President Dick Cheney, who spoke to a crowd of Oklahoma Republicans Friday evening. Read more »
I’m working on Amnesty International Australia’s Uncensor campaign about China and its human rights abuses in the year of the Beijing Olympic Games. Now, Amnesty in the UK has launched the first of a series of videos highlighting the Communist regime’s use of torture: Read more »
Al-Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj, held without charge in Guantanamo Bay for over six years, speaks out after his release from the American gulag: Read more »
Iranian blogger Omid Memarian, currently living in California, explains to his readers the apparent appeal of the current presidential race: Read more »
A new global study by WorldPublicOpinion.org proves that a majority of people support the concept of press freedom and object to government interference with the internet: Read more »
A large collection of British Jews published the following letter in yesterday’s Guardian newspaper: Read more »
I sent the following (unpublished) letter to the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday:
Israel’s 60th birthday is being celebrated by Jews the world over but a growing number of global citizens share the view of South African liberation hero Desmond Tutu who said after returning from the Holy Land: “It reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa”. In other words, apartheid. Read more »
Just who many Israeli spies are residing in the US?
Peter Manning, Sydney Morning Herald, April 29:
Australia’s a remarkable country. Cambodian, Yugoslav and Vietnamese Australians who once shot at each other now live in the same city, sometimes the same suburb. The same goes for Arab and Jewish Australians. There are Jewish fighters from 1948 who successfully established the state of Israel and there are Palestinian refugees living in Sydney who were driven from their homes. Read more »
My following article appears in today’s ABC Unleashed: Read more »
Ahmadinejad and wiping Israel off the Map, A Persian Perspective.
Reveal “state secrets” and watch out:
A soldier serving in the IDF’s elite 8200 military intelligence unit was sentenced to 19 days in prison on Wednesday for uploading a picture onto the Facebook social networking site.
Abuse the Palestinians and human rights group are forced to challenge the rules: Read more »
Saudi blogger Fouad Al Farhan has been released from prison after more than four months away from family and friends.
He is a friend and colleague (more on Fouad here.) Read more »
(It’s a shame, therefore, that the company collaborates with the Chinese dictatorship, though it appears to be making progress towards protecting human rights): Read more »
Non-violent resistance to Israeli occupation lives: Read more »
Stephen Kinzer, Guardian Comment is Free, April 23:
Trying to figure out who won the Iraq war is a challenging parlour game. Nearly every faction, group and nation has lost. The only evident victors are Iran, the Kurds and a handful of giant American corporations. Read more »
Being a war blogger (and getting everything wrong.)
The supposed doyen of the New York Times, Thomas Friedman - a man whose message to the Iraqi people in early 2003 was “suck. on. this” - received a surprise at Brown University: Read more »
US Vice President Dick Cheney issues a typically bellicose pronouncement about the “war on terror”:
An ideological struggle is underway and in that struggle we can be confident we are doing the right thing. We are confronting the violence, protecting the innocent, liberating the oppressed, and aiding the rise of freedom and democracy as America has done so many times in the past. Read more »
Amnesty International’s new campaign against water-boarding: Read more »
As usual, the global public are far smarter than the political and media elite, according to a new study:
World Publics Say Oil Needs to Be Replaced as Energy Source.
My following book review appeared in the Melbourne Age on April 19: Read more »
Google has been chosen as the world’s most powerful brand.
(Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Chinese arm has been happily drumming up nationalistic fervour.)
The Israeli ’settler’ serving in Italy’s parliament.
Robert Fisk, in the Palestine Chronicle, discusses the similarities and differences between the war against Iraq and the 1990s battle in Bosnia: Read more »
A group of former Israeli soldiers describe their experiences in the occupied town of Hebron.
Apartheid, violence and abuse.
Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa writes what many foreigners feel about the Jewish state’s inhumanity: Read more »