Sigh (via the Guardian): Iran… is clamping down heavily on web users before parliamentary elections in March with draconian rules on cybercafes and preparations to launch a national… internet. Tests for a countrywide network aimed at substituting services run through the world wide web have been carried out by Iran’s ministry of information and communication technology, according…
Showing all posts tagged Iran
Being “wrong” about war isn’t merely a mistake; it’s a deliberate decision
As the drumbeat for war against Iran grows louder by the day – cheered by the same neo-conservatives, extreme Zionists and hacks who led us into conflict with Iraq – it’s vital to hold to account the commentators who never take responsibility for their war-mongering. A fine piece in Jadaliyya: This is not another article…
Name and shame Western firms helping autocrats monitor own citizens
When I wrote The Blogging Revolution in 2007 and 2008, I couldn’t imagine the ever-increasing focus on Western “security” firms working alongside repressive states to censor and spy on their people. I investigated this in the book (and the latest 2011 edition, just published in India, examines the reality during the Arab revolutions). Bloomberg has…
How French Jews are embracing an anti-Muslim, French bigot named Marine Le Pen
Tablet reports on how blind love for Zionism and hatred of Islam has become a toxic mix: Since its inception in the 1970s, the Front National has wrapped itself in the repellent rags of traditional French anti-Semitism. The series of outrageous… dérapages, or verbal slips, of the movement’s founder and longtime leader Jean-Marie Le Pen—Marine’s father—are…
Supporting BDS and Palestinian rights as a Jew
An open and frank debate about BDS against Israel in Australia is long overdue. Crikey blog This Blog Harms invited five people to write 1000 words on the issue. This is my contribution: The logic of… boycott, divestment and sanctions… (BDS) didn’t appear to me immediately. When my first book,… My Israel Question, was released in 2006, the…
The Blogging Revolution updated and released in India
My 2008 book The Blogging Revolution detailed the role of internet censorship in non-democratic nations and Western firms assisting repressive regimes monitor the web. It was released in an updated e-book edition in August and focused primarily on the Arab revolutions. I’m proud to announce it’s now being released in an updated print edition in…
What Australia is doing to refugees in the middle of the steamy desert
My following investigation appeared in Crikey this week: The drive from Broome in Western Australia to Derby, the town closest to the remote Curtin detention centre in the Kimberley, is two-and-a-half hours through endless, surprisingly green desert. Mobile phone reception soon dies after the journey begins and from there you see few people or cars…
Guess how many Israelis really think there’s equality between Jews and Arabs?
Interesting figures about the Israeli and Palestinian communities (via IPS) that prove how few Jews living there actually have any interest in true equality between the peoples: A clear majority of Israeli Jews would support a nuclear weapons-free Middle East, even if it meant that Israel too would have to give up its stockpile of…