Until now, the blogospheric fuss over former TNR diarist Scott Beauchamp has been notable only for the amount of attention paid to disputing utterly trivial anecdotes. But the Beauchamp saga has suddenly and surprisingly collided with the reality of war in Iraq, as Moon of Alabama explains.

A bizarre set of results today from Westpoll, the headline figure showing Labor leading 54-46 on two-party preferred from primary vote figures of Labor 42 per cent, Liberal 35 per cent, Nationals 7 per cent and Greens 10 per cent. Alan Carpenter leads Colin Barnett as preferred leader 51 per cent to 28 per cent. [...]

Is the internet ignoring the important details in life?

Internet mapping is wiping the rich geography and history of Britain off the map, Britain’s most senior cartographer warned yesterday.

Churches, cathedrals, stately homes, battlefields, ancient woodlands, rivers, eccentric landmarks and many more features which make up the tapestry of the British landscape are not being represented in online maps, which focus on merely providing driving directions, said Mary Spence, President of the British Cartographical Society.

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An open thread, where at your weekend leisure, you can discuss anything you like.

Obama has accepted the Democratic nomination. The full text (as prepared) should include a hat tip to Kevin Rudd - yep, the working families have made an appearance. For what it’s worth, there are some strange tropes in American politics, even if the broad sentiments are things most of us would endorse. For instance, [...]

The following book review of The Blogging Revolution, in Adelaide’s Independent Weekly, was published by Kate Lockett on August 29:

Did you know that Iran has around one million bloggers, that Farsi is in the top five languages used on the internet or that 20 per cent of Saudi Arabians are now online? Australian journalist and blogger Antony Loewenstein explains that blogging is not the sole domain of pornographers or Hollywood gossips and that a previously voiceless Saudi Arabian female can now, by blogging, explain the realities of her life and culture with readers in Sydney. He argues that bloggers are being referred to increasingly by journalists and the curious alike to find out what is really happening in hot spots around the globe because it is a legitimate form of “stand alone journalism, almost completely self-sufficient and able to reach readers directly without any unnecessary filters”.

Loewenstein travels to Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Cuba and China to meet bloggers who are often risking their lives in order to share their views on their country’s rulers and their opinions on Western democracy, the US in particular. He is at pains to point out that he’s not calling for regime change in the countries he visited, nor an increase in US involvement, but for the right of all citizens to access, distribute and discuss information without persecution. He notes with interest that in homes where men and women go to great lengths to socialise away from the eyes of the authorities, the last thing they wanted to discuss was politics: “It was time to escape the daily need to assume a public role, to be what society, and especially families, expected.”

He meets a variety of journalists, writers, bloggers and partygoers and allows the reader to learn more about life in what we tend to view as repressed or backward countries. As one Iranian journo puts it, “Western media agencies only want to know about nuclear problems and al-Qaeda”. Loewenstein’s intelligence and humanity shine through and have made this reader, at least, keen to investigate blogs that discuss things other than Lindsay Lohan’s new girlfriend.

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Who was responsible for dropping cluster bombs during the recent war between Russia and Georgia?

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I discuss in my new book, The Blogging Revolution, about the political and social realities in Cuba, and gradual liberalisation of the country under new President Raul Castro. And then this:

Cuba has ordered jailed punk rocker Gorki Aguila, an outspoken critic of Fidel Castro and the communist government, to stand trial on Friday for “social dangerousness,” a charge that could carry up to four years in prison.

Authorities arrested the 39-year-old lead singer of Porno para Ricardo at his Havana home on Monday, shortly after the band had completed work on a new album. Cuban law defines “social dangerousness” as behaviour contrary to “communist morality,” and police use it to detain offenders before they have a chance to commit a crime.

Performing songs with angry lyrics that poke fun at or openly insult Fidel Castro and his brother Raul, who became Cuba’s president in February, Porno para Ricardo is banned from official Cuban airwaves.

This is the sign of a weak and insecure regime.

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What, all Muslims aren’t terrorists who hate the West?

Contrary to the common assumption that Muslims view globalization as a threat to their society, a new poll of Muslim countries finds that globalization is generally viewed positively. The poll was conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org in six nations with predominantly Muslim populations in different regions of the world including Egypt, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iran, Indonesia, and the Palestinian Territories, plus the Muslim population of Nigeria.

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The MSM is full of reports and commentaries praising Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard for taking on the teacher unions with their proposals for “a new national system of school transparency” based on publication of information and ranking of the performances of schools and those who work in them. This proposal, and the prospect of a [...]

I’ve only been to a couple of events at the Melbourne Writers Festival so far[1], but already this statement from Nobel Prize winner Peter Doherty has been worth the trip for me. Responding to a rant against Darwinism as religious orthodoxy, coming not from a creationist but from a neo-Lamarckian viewpoint[2], Doherty said:

Science is revolutionary, which is why George W. Bush and John Howard hate it so much

Well said!

I’ll be talking about blogging and gatekeepers at the BMW Edge, Federation Square this evening at 5:30 and on Parched, the Politics of Water tomorrow (nearly sold out, so hurry if you’re interested). More details here.

fn1. I had to go to a climate change symposium in Canberra en route which made for a hectic trip, but also allows meant I could do the Canberra gig while minimising extra CO2 emissions.

Earlier this week at New Matilda, I explored the growing problem of the media’s fascination with corporate-backed reports and surveys. There’s already been plenty of discussion here about the BCA report into emissions trading, and my colleage Ben Pobije put a satirical skewer through Bernard Salt’s pop demography. I want to specifically have a look [...]

So, Barry O’Farrell and the Coalition rained on Morris Iemma’s privatisation parade. Now, the Dilemmster announces that he can still privatise the retailers and generation sites without parliamentary approval. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t Iemma’s original argument some high sounding blather about the sovereignty of the people’s representatives in Parliament assembled and governing in [...]

Sadegh Zibakalam, Bitterlemons International, August 28:

Iranian support for the newly established Iraqi regime was quite reasonable and to be expected. The Iranians fought eight long years to witness a Shi’ite-dominated government in Iraq. Iran lost a million of its people in that war, its economy was shattered and the Islamic republic lost nearly all the international support it had achieved during the early days of its revolution. Yet by the end of that bitter and tragic war, Iran had failed to achieve any of its objectives.

“Allah helps Islam in mysterious ways,” explained a highly respected senior clergyman to a group of Iranian mothers and wives who had lost their loved ones in the war with Iraq due to Saddam’s use of chemical weapons. “Who would have thought that the man who poisoned your sons, fathers and husbands while the so-called civilized world stood by and did nothing would fall from power so disgracefully.” The view that the fall of Saddam was a “provident action” was indeed shared by many pious Iranians, particularly those who had lost their loved ones in the war.

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Club Troppo’s Don Arthur and I started a correspondence by email about some of the issues I raised in my post the other day about neo-liberalism and thinktanks, and the very rapid Blairisation of the Rudd/Gillard agenda (which has certainly become even more evident in the interim with the latest instalment in the “education revolution” [...]

Crikey’s Eric Beecher was quoted in this Sally Jackson piece as saying online media will not be able to bridge the quality gap that’s being created by the long emergency we’re seeing in the usual MSM outlets. Mr Beecher warned that Fairfax’s decision this week to sack staff at its flagship broadsheet newspapers — The Sydney [...]

My following post was written for Khaldoun, the blog recently started by Macquarie University’s Centre for Middle East and North African Studies, where I’m a board member:

Robustly debating Zionism has existed for as long as its existence. Jews, historically a persecuted people, were unafraid to discuss the merits or otherwise of the plan to establish a Jewish state in Palestine.

Tragically, something has changed and left many elements of mainstream Judaism and its cheer-squad paranoid about even acknowledging faults may exist within the Zionist ideal. Presumably occupation and bombing refugee camps are traditional Jewish traits.

The recent attacks by right-wing attack dog Andrew Bolt - and the subsequent response by Macquarie University’s Middle East and North African Studies Centre, of which I am a board member - is systematic of this profound failing and insecurity.

Now we have the unedifying spectacle of a leading Australian politician writing to the Federal Education Minister concerned about Khaldoun’s “hate-filled and provocative attacks against Israel, the Jewish people and others who are friends of Israel.” The aim? To close this site down permanently, or at least force its contributors to subscribe to a more “pro-Israel” position.

As a Jewish author and journalist who has written about Israel/Palestine for years, published a best-selling book about it, My Israel Question, and argued regularly with the self-appointed guardians of the Jewish community, this latest ham-fisted attempt is nothing more than a desperate attempt to silence public debate about a conflict that increasingly embarrasses Israel. And for good reason.

Just this week leading Israeli peace group Peace Now announced that the illegal occupation of Palestinian land is growing at a worrying rate. Again. A recent report released by the Israel Bar at Hadarim Detention Centre and Hasharon Prison found widespread use of torture and intimidation, especially against the Palestinians, in the Israeli prison system.

Video cameras are increasingly capturing the barbarity of Jewish settlers in the West Bank, men, women and children who live without sanction for abusing Palestinians on a daily basis. A study last year by The Association for Civil Rights in Israel found that 50% of Israelis taking part said they would not live in the same building as Arabs, would not befriend, or let their children befriend Arabs and would not let Arabs into their homes.

I’ll no doubt be accused of being “anti-Israel” for daring to state such facts but this is the reality of the Jewish state today. Yes, the Palestinians commit crimes, including Hamas and Fatah, and I condemn them unequivocally, but this is not my focus. The Jewish state is racially discriminatory and destined, in my opinion, not to survive for another 60 years.

Over the years I’ve witnessed in Australia but especially in America a campaign of unrelenting pressure by the Zionist lobby against anybody, Jewish or otherwise, who doesn’t speak the “official line” on Israel.

Articulating an alternative Jewish identity and publicly calling for the separation of Zionism and Judaism quickly resulted for me in learning the “rules” of the game imposed by the Zionist establishment. All Jews must support the Jewish State. Any action carried out by the state is defensible, justified and moral. Any public criticism of Israel will be assumed to be anti-Semitic. If Israel is to be criticized, it should only be in hushed tones and in private. Dare to challenge these “rules”, and expect to be bombarded, invariably from fellow Jews, with hate mail, death-threats and public abuse.

Despite these realities, the Jewish state finds itself in a precarious position, addicted to colonisation of Palestinian territory. Ironically for Israel, its inability to remove settlements from occupied land has now made a two-state solution impossible. The alternative? A one-state environment, with Jews as a minority. Equal rights for all citizens is the only answer to Israel/Palestine conflict. “Zionism — contemporary Jewish nationalism — is unlikely to bring Israel peace, because of its failure, or inability, to accord full equality to the claims of others”, wrote New York Jewish blogger, Tony Karon, on Israel’s 60th anniversary.

A year before my Middle East book was released, in 2005, the then only Jewish Federal Member of Parliament, Michael Danby, publicly called for my publisher, Melbourne University Press, not to proceed. He supposedly worried the work would be an extremist text. Since the Zionist lobby aren’t particularly media savvy, this kind of slander, and the subsequent campaign by various Jewish groups, assisted the book becoming a best-seller that recently moved to a 5th reprint. More importantly, however, was the wider community being able to see the kinds of tactics utilised by certain elements of the Zionist mafia, so insecure in their love for Israel that any alternative views must be stopped. Sadly for them, they failed miserably (similar tactics were attempted last year when I co-founded Independent Australian Jewish Voices.)

The current campaign to silence Khaldoun is in the same sordid tradition. For decades after Israel’s formation, the heroic Zionist narrative was the primary version heard in the Western world. The Palestinians were unpeople, ignored and demonised. Today, the situation is different. Arabs are still routinely shunned and their political aspirations crushed - usually by US-backed dictatorships in the Middle East - but new voices are being heard, critical of Israel, Zionism, occupation and US policies in the region. This scares the Zionist community, hence regular attempts to try and throw the “anti-Semitic” tag against anybody who challenges mainstream Zionist thinking.

Andrew Bolt’s understanding of the Middle East is determining how many more countries the West should invade to bring “liberation” to the backward Arabs. Politicians who share this view and have campaigned against this site will inevitably fail because they’re doing the bidding of powerful forces that are using them for their own censorious ends. Is this what the Australian people believe should happen in a democracy?

A story told to me by a good friend perfectly illustrates the fundamental problem within the mainstream Zionist community. A friend of his went to Israel and Poland on the Birthright program, aimed to instil in young Jews a love of the Jewish state. After visiting Auschwitz and waving the Israeli flag in the holy place - an almost grotesque example of Holocaust porn - the men and women were shown around Israel. One night they were in the Jordan Valley and as the sun was setting one of their guides decided to role-play as a Palestinian from the West Bank (the group had not visited the Palestinian territories nor spoken to any Arabs on the trip.)

The guide, playing a Palestinian, told of certain hardships in the West Bank due to the occupation but said he understood why Israel had to implement such a tough “security” regime because his brother was a “terrorist” who wanted to kill Jews.

That’s right. The only “interaction” with Palestinians for these young Jews was with an Israeli Jew who was role-playing. After the experience, the friend said he “better understood” what the Palestinians were going through under occupation.

I can’t think of a better example of the kind of supreme delusion within mainstream Zionism towards the Palestinians. The other side simply doesn’t exist, shouldn’t exist and can’t exist for the Zionist “dream” to survive. The other side are never ready for peace and their leaders are never compliant enough.

The fear of allowing alternative voices to be heard on the Israel/Palestine conflict is really a display of deep weakness. Accusing critics of being “anti-Israel” or “anti-Semitic” is the perfect way to mask this disease.

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“The best advertising doesn’t look like advertising.”

Perhaps, but it’s still advertising and it’s not news. Sadly, more and more media companies are discovering that advertorials are far easier to produce than timely and resource-hungry investigative journalism.

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Does the world need a digital bill of rights?

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Poor old Morris. He can’t take a trick. After cunningly switching the introduction of the electricity privatisation bills to the Upper House (to avoid the chance of a symbolic defeat in the House that actually determines government and presumably to unleash the persuasive charm of Michael Costa), now he’s finding to his surprise that his [...]