My following article appears in the Asia-Pacific Magazine The Diplomat: Our writer argues that his young tech-savvy peers, celebrity fixations aside, are increasingly engaged in global issues like this summer’s riots in Tehran. The violent June uprisings in Iran ricocheted around the world. While young, old, conservative and liberal Iranians protested the stolen election win…
Showing all posts tagged China
Naomi Klein is doing something right
Naomi Klein, one of the world’s leading Jewish critics of Israel, is attacked in Canada’s National Post for an essay she wrote as a student and others crimes of humanity: As a college student in 1990, Klein wrote an editorial (see here) for the University of Toronto’s student newspaper The Varsity, entitled “Victim to victimizer.”…
Sri Lanka will pay a price for killing Tamils
The litany of abuses occurring in Sri Lanka are shocking. The Economist reports on one way the West can pressure the criminal state: Rarely has a government soiled its reputation as dramatically as Sri Lanka’s. In recent months President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s regime has won a war and lost the love of many allies. Its alleged…
In China, nudity, politics and corruption collide
China’s internet culture is both thriving and repressed. These contradictions are examined in my book, The Blogging Revolution. This story below perfectly explains the power of the web, the inability of rural people to be heard in the country and sad gender politics: Recently, “Yunnan Naked Girl” has become one of the hottest topic in…
Iraq’s oil is attractive to all
It’s long been argued that oil was a key reason behind the Iraq war. Western multinationals are central in this campaign but, as the New York Times reports today, we shouldn’t forget the role of the leading Communist nation: When China’s biggest oil company signed the first post-invasion oil field development contract in Iraq last…
At what point does one take a stand on apartheid?
When film-maker Ken Loach recently called for the Melbourne International Film Festival to refuse Israeli government funding, the response was electric. Now, the director of the festival has fully responded (and I’m informed Loach has responded to this response by Richard Moore): To allow the personal politics of one filmmaker to proscribe a festival position…
The crimes of a rogue, Communist state
The trafficking of organs in China receives an unexpected revelation: In a rare admission of the extent to which this takes place, China Daily – citing unnamed experts – said on Wednesday that more than 65% of organ donations come from death row prisoners. China executes more people than any other country. Amnesty International said…
How the media brings war against Iran to a TV near you
The drive against Iran’s supposed nuclear weapons program is fraught with leaks and Israeli disinformation. Inter Press Service outlines the black ops: Western officials leaked stories to the Associated Press and Reuters last week aimed at pressuring the outgoing chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, to include a summary of intelligence alleging…
China can’t stop the web movement
In my book The Blogging Revolution I examine the central role of the web in China. A new work, Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online, expands the conversation: Since the mid-1990s, the Internet has revolutionized popular expression in China, enabling users to organize, protest, and influence public opinion in unprecedented ways. Despite…
The truth warrior
My following essay is published in Sydney Ideas Quarterly magazine: John Mearsheimer, a leading US scholar on international relations, has strong views on political issues from the Middle East to Iraq but until now, the establishment has been slow to listen. He spoke to Antony Loewenstein During this year’s Iranian uprising, which followed the disputed…