Antony Loewenstein

From the weekly Bil’in demo in mid-July:

(The original Cellcom ad, a racist piece of Zionist propaganda).

Raimond Gaita is a leading Jewish, Australian intellectual.

Like so many of them, he expresses profound ignorance and intolerance towards the Palestinian narrative and the recent Gaza war.

Truth is forgotten when it comes to backing the Jewish state. The moral blind-spot is revealed yet again.

Independent Australian Jewish Voices writer Michael Brull investigates.

UPDATE: I am informed that Gaita is not Jewish, so let the record be corrected.

Noah Efron wonders in Foreign Policy about the Jewish state’s ability to eat itself from the inside:

Orthodox and secular Israelis are locked in a macabre pas de deux that serves each group as it tries to negotiate its own depressing reality. For ultra-Orthodox and secular Israelis, decrying loudly the vicious vice of the other is one of the few ways each can still locate virtue in themselves.

The crusading website Wikileaks scores another win:

Today Chief Justice Gordon Ward lifted a gag order which had prevented publishers and broadcasters from mentioning ‘corruption report’ and ‘WikiLeaks’ in the same sentence.

The order, first issued on Saturday against 11 media companies, and reissued last night, has lead to bizarre press coverage, where WikiLeaks was not named, but referred to instead using Orwellian terms such as ‘a multi-jurisdictional website’.

The injuncted media companies today argued before the Supreme Court of the Turks & Caicos Islands (a British Overseas Territory and tax haven), that the popularity of WikiLeaks meant that the corruption report is effectively in the public domain anyway.

The Guardian newspaper found itself in same position earlier this year, when a High Court judge ordered it not to tell its readers that documents exposing a multi-billion dollar Barclay’s bank tax avoidance scam were available on WikiLeaks.

Leading Australian journalist Sally Neighbour investigates the presumed mastermind behind last week’s hotel bombings in Jakarta, Noordin Mohammed Top:

Top is known not only as a master of disguise and skilled escape artist who has eluded an Indonesian police dragnet for seven years. He is also a logistical and technical mastermind and, even more troubling, a charismatic recruiter of young would-be martyrs who is known to have volunteers in the wings waiting to set off more bombs.

He also harbours a visceral hatred of Australia, which he has pinpointed repeatedly in his diatribes and is bound to target again in future attacks unless he is captured or killed.

So who is the ruthless technocrat who has defied the leadership of his organisation, Jemaah Islamiah, to carry on the murderous campaign for an Indonesian Islamic state?

…

Top mesmerises his young acolytes with tales of the suffering and death of Muslims in Palestine and Afghanistan and the heroic struggle being waged on their behalf.

A Chinese man tweets his detention.

Roger Cohen in the New York Times on the Iranian paradox:

A succession struggle of sorts has begun in Iran. Rafsanjani, 74, is challenging Khamenei, 70. So is Mohammad Khatami, the reformist former president who called Sunday for a referendum on the legitimacy of the election. They are saying Iran is a great and proud nation: open the prisons, free the press, allow debate, do not make a laughingstock of our institutions. That, they insist, is the only form of loyalty to the Revolution.

It’s also the only action worthy of a millennial nation. The joke has been too foul to stand.

The Gaza war continues to reverberate in the strangest of places:

Veteran Sri Lankan diplomat Dayan Jayatilleka has been sacked triggering speculation that his protest against Israeli incursion into Gaza could have prompted the move.

Jayatilleka, Sri Lanka’s permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva, said he hadn’t the “foggiest notion” why he was terminated as it was not contained in his letter of dismissal.

Official sources confirmed that Mr. Jayatilleka has been told to “relinquish his duties”.

The diplomat is a strong advocate of devolution of powers to provinces, including those with majority Tamil population, and favours strong ties with India.

“The news item which quoted a Foreign Ministry source, though not explicitly giving a reason has made reference to a statement made by the irrepressible Ambassador (Jayatilleka) when he gave vent to his feelings over the cruel bombing of Gaza,” the Island Newspaper said in an article on Monday.

Glenn Greenwald interviews Harper’s Ken Silverstein:

A couple of weeks ago, Politico’s Mike Allen exposed The Washington Post’s plans to charge lobbyists and corporations large amounts of money to meet — at the home of The Post’s publisher — with various Post reporters and senior Obama officials.  Shortly thereafter, however,Harper’s Washington Editor, Ken Silverstein, uncovered several events organized by Politico that raise similar (albeit less blatant) questions as the ones raised by The Post’s events.  Silverstein often reports on the sleazy, corrupting intersection of money, influence and media in Washington.

The crackdown continues:

Iranian riot police detained dozens of pro-reform protesters in central Tehran today, a witness said.

The witness said the protesters were chanting slogans against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the government, including: “Ahmadinejad – resign, resign” and “Death to the dictator”.

The witness added: “Riot police are taking dozens of protesters into their cars and they are taking them away.”

Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News tells me that Barack Obama is “destroying capitalism” over his proposed health care plan. That sounds like good news to me, but tell me more, Rupert:

Foreign Policy in Focus posits the question most don’t want to ask:

In the past month, two seemingly unrelated events have turned Central Asia into a potential flashpoint: an aggressively expanding North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and a nascent strategic alliance between Russia and China.

At stake is nothing less than who holds the future high ground in the competition for the world’s energy resources.

How much more discussion of spreading freedom and democracy must be endure? Energy is at the heart of the current world’s troubles.