The crackdowns in Iran continue. But online activists across the world are playing their part in showing solidarity with dissidents: Non-Iranian geeks and activists worldwide are offering substantial technical support to help thousands of Iranians get around government Internet filters and to get unfettered access to information online. And Iranians within Iran are responding. Many…
Showing all posts tagged human rights
Fighting on the side of justice
I was just sent the following information: International Women’s Peace Service in Palestine (IWPS-Palestine) is a team of human rights workers, who provide international accompaniment to Palestinian civilians, document and non-violently intervene in human rights abuses, support acts of non-violent resistance to end the illegal Israeli occupation and building of the apartheid wall. IWPS-Palestine is…
I’m Jewish and critical, so sue me
An interesting new Australian blog, Jew on This, discusses politics, Palestine and pondering. A recent post looks at the reasons more Jews are turning away from Israel: Something that interests me is that most of my Jewish friends who are not Zionists were once Zionists. We went to Zionist Jewish schools, some went to Zionist…
Jews only, please
The London Guardian reports on a sad tale of Jewish exclusivity and wanting to maintain the ghetto: The Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, issued a rallying cry for Jews today to defend their schools from English law after the court of appeal decided that admission on the basis of a parent’s Jewish status was discriminatory.…
‘If You Don’t Agree With Us You’re Antisemitic’
My latest New Matilda column, co-written with Independent Australian Jewish Voices blogger Michael Brull, responds to predictable charges of political bias by the Zionist lobby: Labor MP Michael Danby’s accusation of antisemitism against two Jewish writers is a false and dangerous misuse of that term, write the accused, Michael Brull and Antony Loewenstein Sometimes, people…
Robert Strange McNamara is dead
Robert McNamara, the architect of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War, died today at the age of 93. The Fog of War is an eerie documentary about the war criminal: American leaders and generals who prosecuted the Iraq war will one day be seen as the war criminals that they are. History isn’t too kind…
Blogging the lower classes
ActionAid Australia has a new program that sends bloggers to developing countries “to give poverty a voice.” Blogging can’t just be written by the elite for the elite; others have to get a look in.
Breaking the Gaza siege, again
Back in March, George Galloway led a convoy of aid into Gaza. He’s going back: In another attempt to break the crippling Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip, a group of ‘Viva Palestina’ activists has arrived in Egypt on a humanitarian mission. About 100 US activists with tons of medical supplies arrived in Egypt on…
Women in Gaza take note
Are such moves made with the consent of the Gazan people? Hamas security forces detained a Gazan journalist at a beach over the weekend because she was not wearing a headscarf. Asma al-Ghul, who writes for the Palestinian daily Al-Ayam, said she was at the beach near the Shati refugee camp with a mixed group…
Welcome to Israel’s mad future
Australian journalist Anne Barker explains being attacked by a riotous crowd of ultra-Orthodox Jews protesting the opening of a carpark on the Sabbath: … I was aware that earlier protests had erupted into violence on previous weekends – Orthodox Jews throwing rocks at police, or setting rubbish bins alight, even throwing dirty nappies or rotting…