Ben White reveals Israel’s newest best friends: Faced with the increasingly difficult task of ”˜selling’ Israeli policies to the UK public, Israel’s supporters in this country are cementing relationships with some strange bed-fellows. Israeli embassy officials are happy working with groups like ”˜Mordechai Voice’, a new addition to the Christian Zionist scene in the UK.…
Showing all posts tagged Britain
Voices rising against Serco’s power
Very few journalists in the corporate press seem interested in the ever-expanding role of unaccountable Serco, the British multinational. Privatisation is accepted as gospel by both major sides of politics and the mainstream media. To its credit, Green Left Weekly publishes today the following important part of the story: British-based multinational corporation Serco Group is…
Wikileaks has shown us a world we need to know
Wikileaks has its share of critics – the organisation is too centred around Julian Assange and a personality-type cult exists – but surely the vast bulk of information the group has released since 2006 makes it a major force for good (not least because it’s forced governments and many journalists on the defensive about their…
Who or what really caused the London riots?
Finally, hopefully, some answers: The causes and consequences of the English riots last month, the most serious bout of civil unrest in a generation, will be examined in a study by the Guardian and the London School of Economics. Researchers will interview hundreds of people who were involved, in the first empirical study into the…
Beethovians for Boycotting Israel
They’re alive and they’ve stuck at the heart of the British establishment, interrupting the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra during the Proms:
Lesson from London riots; don’t trust governments to react rationally online
Evidence for the prosecution: Analysis of more than 2.5m Twitter messages relating to the riots in England has cast doubt on the rationale behind government proposals to ban people from social networks or shut down their websites in times of civil unrest. A preliminary study of a database of riot-related tweets, compiled by the Guardian,…
If you thought Murdoch couldn’t corrupt the British political process any further…
He could: The Electoral Commission is to be urged to hold an investigation into whether Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper empire was covertly funding the Conservative Party while David Cameron was leader of the opposition. The call from the Labour MP Tom Watson, who has played the lead role in uncovering the telephone-hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch’s…
Should we trust tech companies talking about censoring speech?
The complete lack of transparency with telecommunication firms deciding with the assistance of government if and when calls or web connections should be stopped or censored is highly disturbing. Who wants a faceless firm making such decisions? From yesterday’s UK Observer: After the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and this summer’s looting in England,…
Private companies doing rather well in anti-immigration wave moving across world
Disaster capitalists look for ways to make money from misery, crisis or fear. The growing wave of anti-immigration sentiment sweeping the world suits such companies just fine. It’s an area I’m investigating for a forthcoming book and this New York Times piece perfectly captures the mood in Britain; the dangerous nexus between government rhetoric, firms…