Democracy is on the march in Iraq, we’re constantly told, except blogger Suadad Al-Salhy writes from inside the parliament and finds:
It seems like 70% of the Iraqi MP’s have no idea what is in the [status of forces] agreement. This is clear from the complaints and criticisms that I hear when I am listening to their questions in the press room of the parliament building, and on the television coverage when I get home.
How so many in the Western mainstream media defend the use of torture in the “war on terror” and create euphemisms to disguise its horror.
Perhaps it would be best if actor Alex Baldwin stuck to acting:
Sitting less than ten feet from Hillary Clinton at an RFK Memorial event in New York this week, I was overwhelmed by the presence and power the woman carries with her wherever she goes.
Do the Western powers learn anything from history when dealing with Afghanistan?
Robert Fisk answers in the only way possible.
A warning to all search engines: your dealing with suspect companies will eventually become public:
CCTV reported that Baidu, referred to as China’s Google, had accepted money from illegal medical companies and placed their Web links on top of search results. Baidu’s marketing employees were also reported to have the knowledge of these.The service is called page-rank bid and accounts for more than 80% of the company’s revenue. The company’s business model, “which inserts ads in the natural search result without notice, has long been criticized for destroying the integrity of the search engine,” adds China Daily.On previous milk scandal, Baidu was said to have censored news in exchange for payment from dairy companies, said ChinaSmack.
New York Federal Reserve president Timothy Geithner has been selected to become US Treasury Secretary amid the global financial crisis.
The man’s background (largely ignored by the mainstream media here in the US, still in thrall to Obama’s “post-partisanship” postures)?
Between 1986 and 1989, U.S. Treasury Secretary Designate Timothy Geithner was employed at Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, and Lawrence Eagleburger’s Kissinger Associates influence-peddling firm, which also employed George W. Bush’s former special envoy to Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, during the early 1990s. A leading candidate for Commerce Secretary, Bill Richardson, also is a former employee of Kissinger Associates.
Just what the Middle East needs:
There is possibly no person President-elect Barack Obama considered for secretary of state who is more reliably pro-Israel than Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), the woman to whom he appears likely to give the job sometime after Thanksgiving.
Internet censorship grows in even the smallest nations on earth:
In the African nation of Mauritania, the military dictatorship has used Cyber War techniques to shut down two opposition web sites that provide the most information on what is going on inside the country. The generals apparently hired several botnets (networks of illegally controlled PCs, yours might be one of them and you wouldn’t know it) to smother the anti-dictatorship websites with phony visitors (a “DDOS attack”). The botnets (tens, or hundreds of thousands of hijacked PCs) are run by criminals who rent them out for sending spam, DDOS attacks or several other types of Internet based scams.
After years of talking in Australia and overseas about the Israel/Palestine conflict and internet repression, I’m about to commence a US speaking tour.
My first presentation early next week, at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government/Centre for Middle Eastern Studies, is on “The Shifting Sands of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: An Australian Perspective“:
A critical examination of the Israel/Palestine conflict from an Australian perspective. How is the conflict reported in Australia? What is the position of successive Australian governments and why? What is the role of the Jewish and Arab communities in the debate? Loewenstein will also discuss the current direction of the conflict itself, not least the growth of a fundamentalist Jewish minority who threaten peace far more than Palestinian militants. What does this mean for the future direction of the Jewish state? With the declining power of the US in world affairs, where does this leave Israel and its supporters?
The following day I’ll be speaking at Harvard University’s Berkman Centre on “The Blogging Revolution: Going online in repressive regimes“:
The post 9/11 Western media have done a terrible job of accurately reporting the majority of the globe. In 2007, Australian journalist, author and blogger Antony Loewenstein traveled to Egypt, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and China to investigate how the net was challenging authoritarian regimes, the role of Western multinationals such as Google in the assistance of web filtering and how misinformed we are in the West towards states considered “enemies” or “allies”. The result is his acclaimed new book, The Blogging Revolution.
I’ll also be giving a number of talks in New York city and meeting numerous individuals from the media, political and academic communities across the country.
I’ll post anything relevant on this site.
Time to gauge the mood in one of the most fascinating yet frustrating nations on earth.
Does King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia drink wine?
The idea of some of the world’s most repressive regimes taking over the US car industry is ironic in the extreme (not least because many of these dictators are wholly backed by Washington):
The United States has asked four Gulf states for close to 300 billion dollars to help it curb the global financial meltdown, Kuwait’s daily Al-Seyassah reported Thursday.
Quoting “highly informed” sources, the daily said Washington has asked Saudi Arabia for 120 billion dollars, the United Arab Emirates for 70 billion dollars, Qatar for 60 billion dollars and was seeking 40 billion dollars from Kuwait.
Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, perfectly skewers the profound failures of the Israeli left:
The Israeli peace camp was born in sin and died because of a lie: It was born as the legitimate son of the sin of occupation, and died the illegitimate son of the lie that “there is no partner” with whom to negotiate on the other side. Between September 1967 and October 2000, it spent 33 years waging the brave and determined struggle of a minority against a majority, “traitors” against “patriots,” “defilers of Israel” against “lovers of Israel,” David against Goliath. Today, we must painfully admit that it was struggle that did not produce much.
Only international pressure will end the conflict.
