Jack Shafer in Slate wants to know why Judaism isn’t more respected in the New York Times. Please, the Times couldn’t be friendlier to the Jewish religion and its moral blind spot over Israel: One would think that Jews, toughened by 4,000 years of hardship, would get a little more respect for their tenacity from…
Showing all posts tagged New York Times
Washington’s Big Brother is watching us
Talking about internet censorship in a nation like Iran is necessary and chilling. But, correctly writes the New York Times in an editorial today, how much do we know about the American government’s meddling in the online world? The government is increasingly monitoring Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites for tax delinquents, copyright infringers…
Palestinian prisoners are irrelevant in the Jewish state
Captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit may soon be released in a prisoner swap with Hamas. The significance for the Israelis? The New York Times provides a revealing quote: Rabbi Weiman-Kelman of Jerusalem said that the controversy over Sergeant Shalit was precisely what made life so different in Israel from his native United States and to…
Analysis must not be a war casualty
My following article appears on ABC’s Unleashed: The Iraq war has virtually dropped off the media radar. The country remains far more dangerous than Afghanistan and yet Barack Obama’s “surge” against the Taliban and al-Qaeda is the biggest international story of the day. Even leading neo-conservative William Kristol writes in The Washington Post that Obama…
Wow, Obama asked me to sit next to him, says reporter
The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman – he who can’t understand why Muslims aren’t more appreciative of being bombed to freedom – was recently invited to an exclusive audience with Barack Obama at the White House. Another present was the Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder (a man who loves getting close to any official source he…
The state of the peace process in 2009
Overland is one of Australia’s finest literary journals. Punchy, provocative, topical, relevant and interesting, the magazine re-launched its website this week and is currently running a Subscriberthon. Do it for yourself and the country. Get into it! I was asked to write an original piece for the festivities: Antony Loewenstein is a prominent blogger, and…
Anti-war voices are virtually invisible in corporate media
Democracy Now! reports on a new study about the US media: As Obama prepares to unveil his plan, the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has put out a study analyzing how the issue of war escalation has been discussed in the opinion papers of the two leading newspapers in the country, the…
Bill Clinton reads Friedman and thinks Palestinians love being bombed
Need evidence that Bill Clinton is part of the problem and not the solution, utterly disconnected from facts on the ground in the Middle East? This Foreign Policy interview will only confirm the bankrupt ideas that marinate in the American political elite (and are merely copied around the empire, including Australia): I still think there…
America loves you by killing you, argues Thomas Friedman
The New York Times bubble has helped Thomas Friedman for a very long time (like here). But his latest pronouncement from the mount maybe takes the cake: Yes, after two decades in which U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny — in Bosnia, Darfur,…
The world wants no more settlements and Israel doesn’t give a damn
The New York Times writes a typically soft editorial on the Middle East – Israel, the Palestinians and Washington are all at fault, it claims, ignoring the profound power imbalances in the region – and Haaretz reports on how the Israeli government really views the occupation (more, please): Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Thursday ordered…