An important letter sent by Reporters Without Borders: The Hon Kevin Michael Rudd Prime Minister Parliament House Canberra ACT 2600 Australia Paris, 18 December 2009 Dear Prime Minister, Reporters Without Borders, an organisation that defends free expression worldwide, would like to share with you its concern about your government’s plan to introduce a mandatory Internet…
Showing all posts tagged Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia loves the smell of burning flesh in the morning
It isn’t only the Israelis and Americans who use banned weapons (and boast about it): Houthi fighters say Saudi forces have intensified their attacks on northern Yemen, using unconventional weapons against civilians in residential areas. According to the fighters, Saudis use toxic materials including white phosphorous bombs against civilians in north Yemen, Arabic-language Sa’ada Online…
Israel is falling apart; most Jews don’t want to know
Finally, the Americans are starting to tire of the Middle East conflict (even if they blame both sides for the impasse, oblivious to the clear power imbalance between Israelis and Palestinians). Here’s Thomas Friedman in the New York Times: Today, the Arabs, Israel and the Palestinians are clearly not feeling enough pain to do anything…
The Jewish background of Aceh
My following article is published in Crikey: In the shadow of Aceh’s tsunami memorial museum sits a colonial, Dutch-era cemetery. Framed by overgrown grass and red flowers, graves lie disjoined, the result, I was told by writer Fozan Santa, of time and the tsunami’s raging water. At the back of the space, behind ornate statues…
The truth of the matter in journalism
The following interview is published this week in the literary journal, Quill: SYDNEY-BASED ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN is the author of the best-selling book,… My Israel Question, a controversial discussion of one of the most important issues of our time, as well as… The Blogging Revolution, a searching examination of the ways the internet is threatening the rule of…
Washington is not the future over oil
Robert Fisk on a new brave world: In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and…
”˜Anti-Zionist’ Jew: author of ”˜My Israel Question’ heads for Bali
The following article by Katrin Figge is published today in one of Indonesia’s largest English newspapers, The Jakarta Globe: For a person who gets hate mail and death threats on a regular basis, Antony Loewenstein remains surprisingly cheerful. The Jewish-Australian journalist, activist, blogger and author, who is based in Sydney, has stirred up plenty of…
What the Muslim world needs from Israel
Saudi Arabia, despotic and a US ally, is a key player in the Middle East, mainly due to its oil reserves. In the New York Times, Prince Turki al-Faisal, former director of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence services and ambassador to the United States, writes that until Israel gives up its colonial addiction to land, the Arab…
Twitter is vulnerable everywhere
Although there are signs that Saudi Arabia is ever-so-slowly liberalising, here’s the reality for anybody who speaks out: Saudi Arabia’s Communications and Information Technology Commission has recently blocked access to Twitter accounts of two Saudi human rights activists because the authorities didn’t like the human rights angle of theit Twittering.
Imagining a Middle East that doesn’t exist
Laura Rozen writes in Foreign Policy on the likely moves by the Obama administration towards Middle East “peace”: Aaron David Miller, a veteran Middle East peace negotiator for six secretaries of state, said Sunday that the Obama administration is planning to produce, “in late September or October,” either a conference or an announcement of a…