Famed Saudi Arabian blogger Fouad Al Farhan – who features in my book, The Blogging Revolution, and with whom I spent time in 2007 before his brief stint in prison – offers a challenge to authoritarian states: If they did not want us to dream and speak and express our ideas and aspirations in dialogues…
Showing all posts in June 2019
A complete lack of feeling
A slice of daily life in Palestine under the Israeli jackboot (written by one of the finest journalists in that country, Gideon Levy): Nothing helped. Not the pleas, not the cries of the woman in labor, not the father’s explanations in excellent Hebrew, nor the blood that flowed in the car. The commander of the…
A debate lost in rhetoric
Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denies any hostility towards the Israeli people, only Zionists. It’s an interesting and important distinction that would have far greater significance if he also didn’t deny the Holocaust.
Jewish dissent gets a louder voice
The following book review of the Verso release, A Time to Speak Out (in which I have a chapter), appears in the leading Jewish publication in Britain, the Jewish Chronicle: Michael Pinto-Duschinsky September 19, 2008 Edited by Anne Karpf, Brian Klug, Jacqueline Rose, Barbara Rosenbaum Verso, …£9.99 In February 2007, more than 100 “Independent Jewish…
Censorship is good business
What are the reasons that Google’s YouTube removes videos from the video-sharing service?
Shame about that censorship side
The behemoth grows: In just 10 years, it has spawned a verb, revolutionised the media and made billionaires of its founders. Now Google has broken into the definitive list of the 10 most valuable global brands. What would the Chinese think, suffering under Google-assited web filtering?
Yes, it’s a dictatorship
Don’t be under any illusion about China’s post Olympic Games attitude to human rights: While the start of this week marked the beginning of the month of Ramadan for Xinjiang’s Uighur Muslims, China’s Communist authorities are reportedly cracking down on Muslim religious activity. The Web site for the town of Yingmaili currently lists nine rules…
How much power should Google have over the web?
Influential enough to ban certain kinds of advertising?
How to define real anger
Hatred of any race, religion or creed is abhorrent, but it seems Europe has a problem: Antisemitism and Islamophobia are on the rise across Europe, according to a survey of global opinion released yesterday. In contrast to the US and Britain where unfavourable opinion of Jews has been stable and low for several years at…
The spin cycle
What’s the difference between propaganda and valuable information? If it’s from the US government, it’s unlikely to be the latter: After several months offline, former U.S. Foreign Service officer John Brown has reactivated his “Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review,” which summarizes current news about public relations efforts by the United States and other countries.…