Have we seen the future?

Corporate journalism is (thankfully) dying, spending more of its time writing “stories” like this. It’s not reporting; it’s public relations spin. The alternative? Over the last two years, some of this [San Diego’s] darkest secrets have been dragged into the light — city officials with conflicts of interest and hidden pay raises, affordable housing that…

Slam God and pay a price

Internet censorship is an insidious practice, better suited to dictatorships. Welcome Thailand: Reporters Without Borders condemns the Thai information ministry’s decision at the start of the month to spend up to 12 million euros on creating an Internet firewall to filter out websites deemed guilty of lese-majeste. “The Thai government’s desire to control online content…

Line them up in the dock

One of Britain’s most authoritative judicial figures last night delivered a blistering attack on the invasion of Iraq, describing it as a serious violation of international law, and accusing Britain and the US of acting like a “world vigilante”.

Media monitors

Sydney PEN, an affiliate of International PEN, is an association of writers devoted to freedom of expression in Australia and in the world at large. In accordance with the PEN Charter it uses its influence on behalf of writers anywhere who are silenced by persecution, exile or imprisonment and acts as an authoritative source on… matters…

How to show solidarity with good Jews

A Jewish peace activist, writing for the US-based Jewish Voice for Peace, recalls a comical yet tragic encounter: Several weeks ago, while on a solidarity visit with Ta’ayush in the South Hebron hills region of the West Bank, we were stopped by a makeshift Israeli Army roadblock and told that we could not pass into…

Should we believe?

Slavoj Žižek, London Review of Books, November 14: Noam Chomsky called for people to vote for Obama ”˜without illusions’. I fully share Chomsky’s doubts about the real consequences of Obama’s victory: from a pragmatic perspective, it is quite possible that Obama will make only some minor improvements, turning out to be ”˜Bush with a human…

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