Antony Loewenstein

The British broadcaster is both gutless and clearly petrified of the pernicious Zionist lobby:

The BBC has refused to broadcast a national humanitarian appeal for Gaza, leaving aid agencies with a potential shortfall of millions of pounds in donations.

The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), an umbrella group for 13 aid charities, launched its appeal yesterday saying the devastation in Gaza was “so huge British aid agencies were compelled to act”.

But the BBC made a rare breach of an agreement dating to 1963, saying it would not give free airtime to the appeal. Other broadcasters followed suit. Previously, broadcasters had agreed on the video and script to be used with the DEC, to be shown after primetime news bulletins.

The BBC, which has been criticised in the past over alleged bias in its coverage of the Middle East, said it did not want to risk public confidence in its impartiality. A BBC spokesperson said: “The decision was made because of question marks about the delivery of aid in a volatile situation and also to avoid any risk of compromising public confidence in the BBC’s impartiality in the context of [a] news story.”

A radical break from the past is desperately needed:

Twenty-nine years ago, President Jimmy Carter adopted the radical and dangerous policy of using military force to ensure U.S. access to Middle Eastern oil. “Let our position be absolutely he clear,” he said in his State of the Union address on January 23, 1980.  “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region [and thereby endanger the flow of oil] will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”

This principle – known ever since as the Carter Doctrine – led to U.S. involvement in three major wars and now risks further military entanglement in the greater Gulf area.   It’s time to repudiate this doctrine and satisfy U.S. energy needs without reliance on military intervention.

Just how pro-Israel is the vast majority of the Australian media?

Saudi Arabia is a brutal dictatorship run by crooks.

Despite this, however, it remains a close friend of the US and “ally” of Israel.

The recent war against Gaza may have changed all that, writes Prince Turki, chairman of King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh. He has also been director of Saudi intelligence, ambassador to the UK and Ireland and ambassador to the US:

Last week, President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad of Iran wrote a letter to King Abdullah, explicitly recognising Saudi Arabia as the leader of the Arab and Muslim worlds and calling on him to take a more confrontational role over “this obvious atrocity and killing of your own children” in Gaza. The communiqué is significant because the de facto recognition of the kingdom’s primacy from one of its most ardent foes reveals the extent that the war has united an entire region, both Shia and Sunni. Further, Mr Ahmadi-Nejad’s call for Saudi Arabia to lead a jihad against Israel would, if pursued, create unprecedented chaos and bloodshed in the region.

So far, the kingdom has resisted these calls, but every day this restraint becomes more difficult to maintain. When Israel deliberately kills Palestinians, appropriates their lands, destroys their homes, uproots their farms and imposes an inhuman blockade on them; and as the world laments once again the suffering of the Palestinians, people of conscience from every corner of the world are clamouring for action. Eventually, the kingdom will not be able to prevent its citizens from joining the worldwide revolt against Israel.

The US and Israeli obsession with refusing negotiations with “extremists” has led nowhere. Hamas and other Islamist forces must be engaged, otherwise there is zero chance of the Middle East moving forward.

Of course, Israel rather likes being in conflict with “terrorists” everywhere.

Soon, though, it will have no friends left.

Sari Nusseibeh, President of Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, said last year that, “we are running out of time for a two-state solution.”

During the recent war between Israel and Hamas, he became even more pessimistic, arguing that the “moderates” in the Palestinian camp have been made “irrelevant” by Zionist actions.

Extremism wins the day.

Yet another amazing Murdoch scoop (no doubt fed to the eager reporter by a happy British “defense” official):

Anti-terror bosses last night hailed their latest ally in the war on terror — the Black Death.

At least 40 al-Qaeda fanatics died horribly after being struck down with the disease that devastated Europe in the Middle Ages.

The killer bug, also known as the plague, swept through insurgents training at a forest camp in Algeria, North Africa. It came to light when security forces found a body by a roadside.

How did we turn from a “villa in the jungle,” as Ehud Barak once characterized Israel, to just another animal in the jungle? How did it come to be that we informed the world that “we’ve gone mad,” and then were surprised to be treated as madmen? How did Israel shift from being the spiritual center of Ehad Ha’am and Ben Gurion’s light unto the nations to the “neighborhood bully?” How did it all happen without us noticing it?

The following news story, by Peter Hackney, appeared in leading gay publication SX on January 21:

With the mandatory internet filtering trial to begin any day now, Peter Hackney explores what it might mean for our community.

The words ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ are hardly offensive. They merely describe a sexual orientation. But as any journalist working for the queer press can tell you, if you send an email to a Federal Government department these days containing either word, you’ll more often than not find it bouncing back to you, or simply not received at the other end.

The Federal Government has evidently decided that its employees need protection from the debauchery of homosexuality. Our mere existence is apparently offensive.

But ‘protecting’ its employees is one thing. Protecting its citizens is another. What will the Federal Government deem offensive to the average Australian when its mandatory internet censorship trial begins this month?

That question is to be answered any day now, when the Federal Government’s mandatory internet censorship trial begins.

Originally due to begin on December 24, it was delayed due to “technical issues”, with commencement pushed back to mid January.

As SX went to press on Tuesday, January 20, the office of Federal Communications Minister Stephen Conroy was still unable to advise when the trial would start.

But start it will – and soon. So how will the GLBT community be affected by a censorship regime ostensibly created to combat illegal online pornography and violence?

ACON  President Mark Orr is concerned that one of the effects will be to limit the reach of its HIV-prevention and education campaigns. To that end, the organisation has taken the unusual step of censuring the Federal Government over the net filter, public supporting the ‘Save The Net’ campaign run by political lobby group GetUp!

“ACON is supporting GetUp!’s Save The Net campaign because we’re concerned that the Federal Government’s proposed mandatory ‘clean feed internet system’ will severely limit the effectiveness of our internet-based HIV-prevention and education campaigns, by restricting access to culturally appropriate information,” Orr tells SX.

In other words, it is very possible that mention of anal sex, oral sex, ejaculation, rimming, fisting and the like – all of which is essential when discussing sexual practices, and how to conduct them safely – will cause the relevant web pages to be blocked by the ‘great firewall of Australia’, as the mandatory filter has been dubbed.

“ACON is absolutely supportive of measures to protect children from pornography [but] we believe that the current proposal will significantly inhibit our ability to achieve good public health outcomes,” says Orr.

Others opine that all Australians – gay, lesbian or otherwise – should be concerned because the Federal Government has embarked on a slippery slope with the unprecedented censorship regime.

Sydney-based political activist, author and blogger Antony Loewenstein finds the precedent of internet censorship disturbing.

“Perhaps the most important factor in this whole debate is the precedent being set,” he tells SX. “Child pornography and violent website today – but what will they deem dangerous tomorrow? Sites that promote terrorism, perhaps? And what will the definition of ‘terrorism’ be? Who will decide? What other things could the government deem offensive or dangerous in the future?”

Who can say? But according to Loewenstein, one thing’s for sure: “We should always be suspicious of governments that tell its citizens what it can and cannot see or hear. A cursory glance at modern history shows you why.”

Visit www.getup.org.au to sign the petition against mandatory internet censorship in Australia.

Gideon Levy, Haaretz, January 22:

On the morrow of the return of the last Israeli soldier from Gaza, we can determine with certainty that they had all gone out there in vain. This war ended in utter failure for Israel.

What seemed like a predestined loss to only a handful of people at the onset of the war will gradually emerge as such to many others, once the victorious trumpeting subsides.

Leading Amerian Zionist leader Abe Foxman on news that George Mitchell may be appointed Obama’s Mid-East envoy:

“Sen. Mitchell is fair. He’s been meticulously even-handed,” said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. “But the fact is, American policy in the Middle East hasn’t been ‘even handed’ — it has been supportive of Israel when it felt Israel needed critical U.S. support.”

“So I’m concerned,” Foxman continued. “I’m not sure the situation requires that kind of approach in the Middle East.”

Is that clear? The Zionist lobby wants America to be wholly supportive of Israel and treat Palestinians as second-class citizens.

“As far as the international arena is concerned, Israel is entering what is probably its darkest era,” a Jerusalem source told Yedioth Ahronoth. “The Palestinian and their friends will try to make Israel look like a leper, like China looked after the Tiananmen Square massacre (of 1989), or like Serbia did under (former President Slobodan) Milosevic.

Dr. Marie-Pierre Allié, President of the French section of Médecins Sans Frontières, January 16:

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has been present during armed conflicts for nearly four decades. It is difficult to recall a comparable slaughter of civilians in so little time. Whether Mogadishu, Somalia, or Kivu, in the eastern Congo, Sri Lanka or even Darfur – none of these wars has involved operations that produced so many deaths by direct violence in such a short period of time.