The Islamists speak

We regularly now read Iranian bloggers to gain an insight into the more moderate voices within the country. But conservative and Islamist voices are also growing in strength. Hamid Tehrani, an Iranian blogger now living in the Diaspora, has published a fascinating report into these relatively unknown forces: Iranian Islamist blogs probably provide one of…

How about us, Mahmoud?

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is unhappy that many Arab nations are participating in tomorrow’s “peace”conference in Annapolis – with one leading analyst suggesting that the real agenda item will not be Israel/Palestine, but isolating Iran – though internal dissent is growing in the Islamic Republic: When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, wanted to create a…

Videos about fluffy dogs should stay

This is surely the right decision by YouTube: Video sharing website YouTube is refusing to filter out threatening material, despite calls for more restrictions in the wake of the school shooting in Finland. Pekka-Eric Auvinen, 18, used YouTube to publicise his plans to attack his high school in Tuusula, hours before he killed eight people…

Doctors who torture

In times of war, medical practitioners are regularly asked to perform illegal acts. Most refuse. Some, tragically, do not: The Australian Psychological Society (APS) recently announced its position on members’ involvement in the use, participation or provision of advice about torture and other injurious practices.…  Unlike their American counterparts, Australian psychologists have rejected any involvement…

To Irving or not to Irving

Yet more free speech troubles, this time at Oxford: The head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission asked Oxford University’s debating society on Sunday to review its decision to invite holocaust denier David Irving to speak at a free speech forum. Historian Irving will be a speaker at Monday’s event, which has been organised…

The thief refuses to return

Gideon Levy, Haaretz, November 25: The public discourse in Israel has momentarily awoken from its slumber. “To give or not to give,” that is the Shakespearean question – “to make concessions” or “not to make concessions.” It is good that initial signs of life in the Israeli public have emerged. It was worth going to…

The Jew meets the anti-Semite

Free speech has its limits, especially in Germany: An interview with one of Germany’s most notorious neo-Nazis has landed Vanity Fair magazine in a heap of trouble. Arno Lustiger, a Jewish historian and Holocaust survivor, has started proceedings to sue the magazine’s German edition for publishing an interview with Horst Mahler, the former left-wing extremist…

Lower your expectations

Tony Karon, Rootless Cosmopolitan, November 23: At best, Annapolis and the year that follows is going to be more process, but certainly no peace. U.S. power in the region has continued ebb, sharply, and the basis for believing that a bilateral process between Israel and the PA can achieve a two-state solution today appears hopelessly…

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