Comedy gold from a deluded former Virginia governor: America is addicted to oil. What an elitist point of view. Americans are not addicted to oil. Americans are addicted to freedom — the freedom and liberty to move where and when we want. No, it’s perfectly healthy to be raping the energy reserves of the planet’s…
Showing all posts tagged Saudi Arabia
Palin, Wahhabist
American Bedu is an American woman who married a Saudi Arabian man and they both live in the Kingdom (she features in my book The Blogging Revolution). Here she offers a unique perspective on Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin: I think there are likely Saudi women who would be much better qualified as a Vice…
SBS Radio Arabic on blogging
I was interviewed last week on SBS Radio Arabic program about The Blogging Revolution and the ways in which the Middle East in particular is shifting radically due to the internet.
Beating the western drum
My following essay appears in the Guardian today: During the recent war between Georgia and Russia, bloggers on both sides of the conflict provided searing accounts of atrocities and manoeuvres unseen by western journalists. In a country such as Russia the space for alternative and critical views are rare. The war showed an authoritarian regime’s…
Holidays in blogging hell
The following post is by Phil Gomes on one of Australia’s most popular blog sites Larvatus Prodeo: In The Blogging Revolution Antony Loewenstein takes us on a personal journey through some of the more difficult places in the world to blog. Iran, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and China. It’s a timely book on the…
Murder the TV moguls
Saudi Arabia’s highest judicial authority proves why his country is the home of religious fundamentalism and a perversion of Islam (wholly backed by the vast majority of the Western world for its black gold): A Saudi scholar… has issued a religious decree saying… it is… permissible to kill… the owners of television networks broadcasting “depravation and debauchery”. “It is…
Bloggers lead revolution
The following article by Matthew Ricketson appears in today’s Melbourne Age: Blogging is an inelegant term for an often inelegant activity. It is easy to be turned off by bloggers for whom civil discourse equates to personal insult — anonymously delivered — but this undersells the vast range of blogging swirling through cyberspace. Antony Loewenstein…
Sunday Night Safran on blogging
Sunday Night Safran is a great weekly show on ABC youth radio Triple J. I was interviewed last night about The Blogging Revolution, the role of Western multinationals in repressive regimes and how the American relationship to the internet should be viewed in the non-Western world.
Fearful of the modern age
More madness in Saudi Arabia (just a typical US client state): When Hala al-Masaad invited her girlfriends over to celebrate her 18th birthday with cake and juice, the high school student was stepping into an unusual public debate. Is celebrating birthdays un-Islamic? Saudi Arabia’s most senior Muslim cleric recently denounced birthday parties as an unwanted…
The Fourth Estate on blogging
The Fourth Estate is a great weekly radio program on one of Sydney’s finest independent radio stations, 2ser. In a wide-ranging interview, host Daz Chandler and I talked about the role of Western multinationals in authoritarian regimes, the seeming lack of understanding of online privacy in the West and the issues in The Blogging Revolution.