Antony Loewenstein

This is what Jewish, Zionist fundamentalism looks like.

Former CIA agent “Werther” explains what a likely Obama victory would do to the usual suspects in the US political and media establishment:

The American political system also perceives cases of countries “testing” or “challenging” the United States in many instances where the country in question has a perfect right to pursue its own policies as an expression of political sovereignty. The Washington Consensus is inextricably linked with globalized financialism; it is an implicit assumption of the Consensus that other nations must accept the requirements of globalized financialism; otherwise, they will be treated as troublemakers, if not rogues. Typically, being a nation in good standing involves allowing its financial sector to be controlled from New York or London; privatization of local utilities and transport; giving multinational corporations favorable terms to exploit the country’s mineral resources; and subjection to International Monetary Fund austerity policies. Those who do not play ball, whether tiny Ecuador or mighty Russia, are “challenging” the United States and, accordingly are “testing” a new president.

All that having been stipulated, yes, it is true that Pearl Harbors do happen. But their rarity no less than their catastrophic nature should impel us to be more discriminating about perceiving real “threats” and “challenges” and “tests” from the background events of ordinary international conduct. Evo Morales in Bolivia is not testing anything other than his domestic popularity, no matter how much American energy companies may dislike him.

It is to be expected as a matter of course that should Obama be elected president, the noise machine of the Murdoch press will jump on every remote terrorist attack in Indonesia, every diplomatic incident or cross-border incursion anywhere in the world, every friction in the workings of the international system as a deliberate action on the part of sinister forces to test the President of the United States. Should an incident occur on Obama’s watch like that of the Chinese internment of a U.S. EP-3 spy plane as happened early in the Bush presidency, we can only imagine how the Kristols, Krauthammers, and Victor Davis Hansons would work themselves into a demented fury about the president’s manifest unfitness to be commander in chief.

How an Egyptian blog is lifting the veil on Arab marriage traditions.

Jean-Paul Sartre, The Sleepwalkers, Les Temps Modernes, April 1962:

“… For seven years, France has been a mad dog dragging a saucepan tied to its tail, every day unaware that we have ruined, starved and massacred a nation of poor people to bring them to their knees. They remained standing. But at what a price! While the delegations were putting an end to the business, 2,400,000 Algerians remained in the slow death camps; we have killed more than a million of them ….”

Just what the Americans have done to Iraq.

Will the financial crisis generate anti-Semitism?

Andrew Sullivan, despite being a blogger evangelist, like myself, knows trouble when he sees it:

The latest data are more than worrying. These declines in circulation have come during one of the most riveting campaign stories in modern times. If the news of the last twelve months cannot sell papers, nothing can. And online advertizing is also flattening. One looks at the looming depression and wonders if the media landscape will survive in any recognizable form by the end of it. And I take no pleasure in this: we need papers for the kind of reporting every democracy requires to survive.

Is blogging dead? (asks a bemused BBC writer.)

Of course it’s not; it’s simply adapting to new frontiers.

Journalism is being forced to better report the news and not rely on the outdated language of producing an article.

The solution? I agree with Jeff Jarvis, writing in the Guardian, who advocates for a more inclusive form of news-gathering:

I want a page, a site, a something that is created, curated, edited and discussed. It will include articles. But it’s also a blog that treats a topic as an ongoing and cumulative process of learning, digging, correcting, asking, answering. It’s a wiki that keeps a snapshot of the latest knowledge and background. It’s an aggregator that provides curated and annotated links to experts, coverage from elsewhere, a mix of opinion and source material. Finally, it’s a discussion that doesn’t just blather but tries to add value. It’s collaborative and distributed and open but organised.

Think of it as being inside a beat reporter’s head, while also sitting at a table with all the experts who inform that reporter. Everyone there can hear and answer questions asked from the rest of the room – and in front of them all are links to more and ever-better information.

How could the human body adjust itself to the design of products?

Artist Marcia Nolte imagines such a development, including, below, an extended shoulder for holding a phone:

Marrying a pirate is every Somali girl’s dream. He has power, money, immunity, the weapons to defend the tribe and funds to give to the militias in civil war.

Those feisty terrorists dare to use new technology to further their aims?

Could Twitter become terrorists’ newest killer app? A draft Army intelligence report, making its way through spy circles, thinks the miniature messaging software could be used as an effective tool for coordinating militant attacks.

Is the war in Iraq coming to a close but hardly “on the terms of those who initiated it?”

Never forget the first rule of Western political life: any association with the Palestinian cause will automatically connect you with “extremism” and “terrorism”. Take this example from an increasingly desperate right-wing blogger:

The LA Times is holding a video that shows Barack Obama celebrating with a group of Palestinians who are openly hostile towards Israel. Barack Obama even gives a toast to a former PLO operative at this celebration. If the American public saw this side of Barack Obama he would never be elected president.

Yes, Obama hates Jews and wants to destroy Israel. You heard it here first.