Fundamentalism is on the rise in Israel, of the Jewish kind: Police in Israel are investigating the burning of hundreds of New Testaments in a city near Tel Aviv, an incident that has alarmed advocates of religious freedom. Investigators plan to review photographs and footage showing “a fairly large” number of New Testaments being torched…
Showing all posts tagged blogging
Let the bile run free
Should a mainstream news organisation be providing a platform for these views? Richard Barnbrook, the British National party’s London Assembly member, has used a blog on the Daily Telegraph’s website to blame immigrants and their sons for knife and gun crime among young people in the capital after a spate of murders. Under the headline…
Trouble in the Communist “paradise”
My following article appears in the Amnesty International Australia’s Uncensor campaign about human rights in China: The suffering of earthquake victims should not mask the authoritarian tendencies of the ruling elite, writes Antony Loewenstein. The ongoing humanitarian catastrophe after the Sichuan earthquake has revealed a side of China that is rarely glimpsed. After months of…
Taking the low road to jail
Arresting a blogger in Singapore for calling somebody a “stupid Malay.” Welcome to the land of thought crimes.
Don’t let the women be heard
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s repression and paranoia continues to worsen: Iranian authorities have blocked access to several websites and blogs of women’s rights advocates and journalists critical of the government, a press report said on Tuesday. The move follows a new directive sent out by a committee tasked with identifying illegal websites to Internet service providers, the…
Praying for Obama
At least one Palestinian, living in Gaza, believes that Barack Obama will help solve the Middle East crisis.
Three questions: Antony Loewenstein
The following interview appears in today’s Sydney Morning Herald: Which writer, alive or dead, would you most like to see at a writers’ festival? George Orwell. We need somebody to skewer the imperial ambitions of the right and the self-righteousness of the left. He could regale audiences with tales of war and hopefully convince any…
Earthquakes, Twitter and compassion
My following article appears in the Amnesty International Australia’s Uncensor campaign about human rights in China: The horrific Chinese earthquake has focused the world’s attention on human suffering, but censorship issues were never far from the surface, writes Antony Loewenstein. The devastating earthquake in Sichuan Province last week shifted the global focus away from the…
The small details matter
The wonders of Twitter (a technology that I’ve generally thought of as fairly irrelevant to the pursuit of journalism.) Jeff Jarvis explains why I may be wrong: We online citizens are living in public, revealing small details of our lives with our updates and our content. It’s in the smallness of this personal news that…
The personal cost of our war
The endless violence in Iraq continues. One recent victim was Iraqi blogger Ahmed from BlogIraq. His friend Abu Aya writes: Yes. Ahmed (BlogIraq) is dead. He was killed in Baghdad on April 11th, 2008. He went back to Baghdad to take his family out, but he did not have enough time to do so. He…