Antony Loewenstein

Does the web need a bill of rights?

Jeff Jarvis writes in the Guardian that Google’s recent move in China is significant:

Google’s business strategy is dead simple: the more we use the internet, the more Google makes. If governments are allowed and enabled to restrict freedom on the internet to a lowest common denominator (as the UK’s libel tourism does for publishing), and if we worry that our data in the cloud is not secure, and if citizens of totalitarian states fear the internet will be used to jail them, then we will trust and use it less. Google loses. We all lose.

What the BBC needs to do more often:

“Find someone to articulately tell James Murdoch to fuck off.”

This week the Robin Hood Tax campaign launches in Australia.

Here’s the global campaign video:

And the aim?

The Robin Hood Tax is a tiny tax on banks, hedge funds and other finance institutions that would raise billions to tackle poverty and climate change, at home and abroad.

It can start as low as 0.005 per cent – and average 0.05 per cent. But when levied on the billions of dollars moving round the global finance system daily through transactions like as foreign exchange, derivatives  and share deals, it could raise hundreds of billions of dollars annually.

That can provide for vital investment in crucial public services like healthcare and schools, aid the fight against global poverty and climate change, and ask the banks to play their part in helping shape the future of our world.

The tax would not be levied on everyday banking transactions conducted by individuals.

2009 was the year that journalism took a (healthy) turn towards more a collaborative future:

Up until now, journalism has been devoted to verified facts – but the crowdsourced approach is generally not about using previously trusted sources. Instead of checking each contribution and verifying it individually, this was the start of a new statistical approach.

…

In terms of journalistic coverage of last year, crowd-sourced journalism had a finger in most of the bigger pies.

It’s hard to tell if this remains simply a lover’s tiff (with no real consequence for the offending party, Israel) or something more. Certainly a war of words has erupted, and it’s rather fun to watch:

Israel‘s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, tried to smooth over a breach in relations with the US today, speaking out against unnamed confidants who described Barack Obama as pro-Palestinian and Israel’s “greatest disaster”.

Netanyahu made his first public comments after a fraught visit to Washington last week, where he held a long but low-key meeting with Obama that ended with significant disagreement.

Israeli reports said the US was pressing Israel to freeze settlement construction in East Jerusalem and to extend a temporary, partial curb on West Bank settlement building. But so far Netanyahu has shown no sign that he will bow to pressure from Washington. One of his most senior cabinet ministers was reported today as saying the US demands were unacceptable and there would be no compromise.

The Yedioth Ahronoth, an Israeli newspaper, sparked the premier’s anger when it quoted unnamed Netanyahu confidants delivering extraordinary criticisms of the US administration. One said Obama and Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, had “adopted a patently Palestinian line”.

“We’re talking about something that is diseased and insane,” the confidant told the paper. “The situation is catastrophic. We have a problem with a very, very hostile administration. There’s never been anything like this before. This president wants to establish the Palestinian state and he wants to give them Jerusalem … You could say Obama is the greatest disaster for Israel, a strategic disaster.”

An interesting Al-Jazeera English report that explains how the American use of pilotless drones in the “war on terror” has no legal framework. Good to know the world’s only super-power operates illegally:

While Gideon Levy in Haaretz hopes and prays Barack Obama keeps up his pressure on Israel:

Obama is asking Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and through him every Israeli, to finally speak the truth. He’s asking Netanyahu and the rest of us: What on earth do you actually want? Enough with the misleading answers; the moment of truth is here. Enough with the tricks – a neighborhood here, a settlement expansion there. Just tell us: Where are you heading? Do you want to go on receiving unprecedented aid from the United States, do you want to become part of the Middle East, do you want to achieve peace?

If you do, please start behaving accordingly, including halting all construction in all settlements, everywhere, for all time, and begin evacuating them instead. Any action by Israel would be reminiscent of the three no’s of Khartoum: No to ending the occupation, no to peace, no to friendship with America.

The US President is pushing up a steep hill (presuming, of course, he actually wants to truly end the occupation, a highly debatable point):

Two opinion polls suggest many Israelis want their government to continue building settlements in East Jerusalem, even if it brings a rift with the Americans.

Is it even conceivable that Australian politicians (or Israelis) would ever say this publicly?

MPs today urged the government to adopt a more hard-headed approach towards the US and avoid the phrase “the special relationship” as Britain’s influence over America was likely to diminish.

The 14-member cross-party foreign affairs committee said that the phrase coined by Winston Churchill more than 60 years ago no longer reflects political reality and should be dropped.

A helpful word from Ralph Nader:

On July 10, 1996, at a Joint Session of the United States Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received a standing ovation for these words: “With America’s help, Israel has grown to be a powerful, modern state. …But I believe there can be no greater tribute to America’s long-standing economic aid to Israel than for us to be able to say: we are going to achieve economic independence. We are going to do it. In the next four years, we will begin the long-term process of gradually reducing the level of your generous economic assistance to Israel.”

Since 1996, the American taxpayers are still sending Israel $3 billion a year and providing assorted loan guarantees, waivers, rich technology transfers and other indirect assistance. Before George W. Bush left office a memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Israel stipulated an assistance package of $30 billion over the next ten years to be transferred in a lump sum at the beginning of every fiscal year. Israel’s wars and colonies still receive U.S. taxpayer monies.

What happened to Mr. Netanyahu’s solemn pledge to the Congress? The short answer is that Congress never called in the pledge.

Today is the beginning of the Jewish holiday Passover, so here’s fundamentalist West Bank Jews Women in Green making a statement to the world:

Dear Friends,

As we prepare for Pessach, the People of Israel put to rest Eliraz Peretz and Ilan Saviatovsky, two soldiers who fell in battle with Arab terrorists. As the mother of Eliraz, who 12 years ago lost another son in battle, said:  ”My son didn’t go in order to die, but he went so that the people of Israel could live in their land. Our sons died so that we could live here and walk here proudly.”

The battle for the freedom of the Jewish People, as a people in their Biblical homeland, started when Israel left Egypt, from slavery to freedom, and continues until today.

Tomorrow, Monday night, millions of Jews worldwide will certainly upset people like president Obama and other anti-Israeli leaders, when we will declare, loud and clear, at the end of the seder, what Jews have been saying for thousands of years:

“NEXT YEAR IN REBUILT JERUSALEM!”

Let it be clear to all: when we say “Jerusalem”, we mean not only united, undivided Jerusalem, east and west, but we also mean all of Judea and Samaria. Jerusalem is the heart. A heart cannot beat without the main arteries providing the heart all it needs. These arteries are Judea and Samaria, Israel’s G-d given Biblical Heartland.

Women in Green want to wish all friends of Israel, in Israel and abroad, a happy Pessach. May we all merit to live and expand in rebuilt Jerusalem and Erets Israel and witness the Geula shleima.

We must add that the holiday can only be complete when our brother Jonathan Pollard and the soldiers missing in action will return home from their captivity. At the seder table we will put a chair for Jonathan and pledge to continue to demand his immediate release.

The People of Israel are blessed with the most beautiful land in the world. Especially at this time of the year, with the blossoming of the flowers and the trees, one of the ways to claim the land is with our feet, by walking and hiking everywhere, and especially in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, making a clear statement: The land of Israel belongs to the People of Israel for eternity.

Chag Kasher veSameah, a happy and kosher Pessach to all,

With love for Israel,

Nadia Matar and Yehudit Katsover

I’ve written for years about the invaluable website Wikileaks. It currently faces an unprecedented attack by Western governments and dictatorships across the world to shut down and not release supposedly important “secrets”.

Glenn Greenwald explains the importance of the site and why it matters to fight.

An intriguing and rather pathetic attempt to slam Naomi Klein, by the Zionist think-tank Reut Institute, claiming she is really working (implicitly, of course) with Hamas and Hizbollah to destroy Israel. Yes, it’s that sophisticated and utterly ignores any human rights abuses in Palestine:

“Kleinists” seem to have concluded that one-sided criticism of Israel is the best way to promote peace, and that pressurizing the state with all available means, including BDS, is both legitimate and effective.

As a result, Israel’s branding as a violent, aggressive and discriminatory state is increasingly gaining traction. Consequently, the entire political model of Israel as a Jewish state is framed as inherently immoral. Israel is compared with South Africa’s apartheid regime with such persistence and intensity that many seem not to be concerned by the fundamental differences between the two cases, and call for a one-state solution based on the South African formula of “one man, one vote.”

This dynamic is well exploited by the “network of resistance” – primarily Iran and its clients Hezbollah and Hamas, which have adopted a strategy that targets Israel’s political and economic standing. In recent years, these groups seem to have inverted their position toward the Israeli occupation, coming to view it as a strategic asset, believing that continued Israeli control over the Palestinian population will create an “overstretch” between the Jewish identity of the state, its democratic values, its territory, and demographic trends, all of which will lead to Israel’s implosion. Therefore, these groups have consistently sabotaged the political process via terrorism and thwarted Israeli attempts to unilaterally separate from the Palestinians.