The Baha’i faith is mercilessly persecuted in Iran. Since the 1979 Revolution, the mullahs have attempted to destroy the religion, without success (I recently met a Baha’i woman here in Sydney who had just returned from a pilgrimage from Haifa, Israel, the true home of their religion.) The following is taken from the acclaimed film,…
Showing all posts tagged Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
The Blogging Revolution lands
My following essay appears in today’s Weekend Australian newspaper: The young online tribe is more interested in discussing sex, drugs and rock’n’roll than political revolution, writes Antony Loewenstein Early last month, some Iranian members of parliament voted to debate a draft bill that aimed to “toughen punishment for disturbing mental security in society” by adding…
What sensible Jews should support
Following the worldwide release last week of a Jewish petition opposing a military strike against Iran – signed by any number of Jews from across the world, including Noam Chomsky and yours truly – now this from the neo-con Commentary blog: Speaking of useful idiots, last week activist website The Struggle published an appeal in…
The ugliness within
The dark reality of Ahmadinejad’s Iran: Repression against labour activists in Iran is intensifying. In recent weeks, there have been numerous cases of arrests and jailings. Most shocking perhaps was the sentencing of two women labour activists (Sousan Razani and Shiva Kheirabadi) to 15 lashes and four months in prison — for the “crime” of…
Studying for real
The only-in-Iran story of the politician, the bogus Oxford degree and internet censorship.
Jewish international opposition statement against attack on Iran
I am a signatory, along with Noam Chomsky and a number of other Jews around the world, to the following petition, currently being spread far and wide: Efforts to beat the drums of war for an attack on Iran’s nuclear reactor facilities are promoted in both the USA and Israel scenes. … The recent New York…
How not to be yourself
Be Like Others is an amazing documentary on a hidden world in Iran: In a country where homosexuality is punishable by death, the state has discovered a ”˜cure’. Welcome to Iran, where male is male and female is female – with nothing in between; where a 1979 fatwa authorised sex-change operations for ”˜diagnosed transsexuals’ and…
The image can lie
Errol Morris, New York Times, July 13: We don’t need advanced digital tools to mislead, to misdirect or to confuse. All we need is a willingness to uncritically believe. Don’t believe everything you see.
Raging against rising internet repression
My following article appears in the US magazine The Nation on the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit and the issue of web repression: During the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2008–sponsored by Harvard University and Google in Budapest, Hungary, in late June, and attended by over 200 bloggers, human rights activists, writers, journalists, hackers and…
Israel’s faulty plan
Gideon Levy, Haaretz, July 7: So what is the “great plan”? As things look now, this is the way Israel is planning its future: Every time some Middle Eastern country tries to obtain nuclear weapons, Israel will bomb it. Bomb – and bombard. Beyond the problematic assumption that we are allowed to do what others…