A.LOEWENSTEIN ONLINE NEWSLETTER

• We’re supposed to believe Zionist groups care about Islamophobia?
• Are urban slums the future?
• Castro tells Ahmadinejad to respect the Jews
• Decency to the stranger hasn’t gone out of fashion
• Come bow down to the Murdoch King
• John Mearsheimer and co on the futile “peace process”

We’re supposed to believe Zionist groups care about Islamophobia? Posted: 08 Sep 2010 When the Jewish press in the US writes that Jewish groups there are working to combat anti-Muslim sentiment, it’s hard to take it seriously. The amount of Zionist racism and violence directed at Palestinians and Arabs in general is largely ignored, if not supported, by the Zionist lobby. Hypocrisy is their middle name.

Are urban slums the future? Posted: 08 Sep 2010 Dhaka, in bustling Bangladesh, is a megacity growing at an incredible rate. And it’s part of a massive global shift: The earth’s countryside is emptying out, more quickly all the time. It took about 10,000 years for the human population to become 3 percent urban — a period extending roughly from the dawn of human settlement until 1800. A century later, Earth was still just 14 percent urban. But in 2007, the United Nations announced we’d crossed a monumental threshold. For the first time, more than 50 percent of the world lived in cities rather than rural villages and farms. By 2030, some projections say more than 80 percent of humanity will be urban, with many inhabiting the slum-choked cities of the developing world. The shift is “a watershed in human history, comparable to the Neolithic or Industrial revolutions,” urban theorist Mike Davis wrote in his book “Planet of Slums.” In the simplest sense, this transformation has a dual cause: Masses of migrants are abandoning the countryside, and they keep having babies after coming to town. By some accounts, fertility is a larger slice of the pie. “It’s roughly a 40/60 split,” said Deborah Balk, an urbanization specialist with the CUNY Institute for Demographic Research in New York City. “We have more large concentrations of people than we’ve ever had before. That is new. And those concentrations themselves, they have momentum.”

Castro tells Ahmadinejad to respect the Jews Posted: 08 Sep 2010 Atlantic reporter Jeffrey Goldberg – a man fond of war, Israel and conflict with Iran – is invited to Havana to meet and converse with Fidel Castro. There is much to digest but this is especially interesting: He said the Iranian government should understand the consequences of theological anti-Semitism. “This went on for maybe two thousand years,” he said. “I don’t think anyone has been slandered more than the Jews. I would say much more than the Muslims. They have been slandered much more than the Muslims because they are blamed and slandered for everything. No one blames the Muslims for anything.” The Iranian government should understand that the Jews “were expelled from their land, persecuted and mistreated all over the world, as the ones who killed God. In my judgment here’s what happened to them: Reverse selection. What’s reverse selection? Over 2,000 years they were subjected to terrible persecution and then to the pogroms. One might have assumed that they would have disappeared; I think their culture and religion kept them together as a nation.” He continued: “The Jews have lived an existence that is much harder than ours. There is nothing that compares to the Holocaust.” I asked him if he would tell Ahmadinejad what he was telling me. “I am saying this so you can communicate it,” he answered.

Decency to the stranger hasn’t gone out of fashion Posted: 08 Sep 2010 On the one hand, many of us are compassionate: A third of the world’s population has given money to charity in the past month, the largest study ever carried out into global social conscience reveals today. The “World Giving Index” used Gallup surveys of 195,000 people in 153 nations and asked people whether they had volunteered or given money or help in the last month. It also asked respondents to rank how happy they are with life. It found that a fifth of the world’s population had volunteered, almost a third had given money to charity, and 45% had been “good samaritans” and helped a stranger. The UK came eighth on the index overall and finished joint third, alongside Thailand, in terms of giving money, with 73% of the population having donated to charity. However Australia, New Zealand and the United States were far more charitable overall. In Europe, only Switzerland and Holland fared better than Britain. Rich countries dominated the top positions – yet around half of the top 20 places were taken up by developing nations including Guinea, Guyana and Turkmenistan. Strikingly, India ranked at 134 and China at 147 – with Chinese people among the least likely on the planet to volunteer. Only 4% said they had done. And yet here in Australia, demonising asylum seekers has become a national sport. What kind of country do we want to be?

Come bow down to the Murdoch King Posted: 08 Sep 2010 Who ya Daddy? They are unlikely to lay on a private jet to whisk him to the Med, but David Miliband has been given the seal of approval by the Murdoch empire after being invited to dinner next week by the media baron’s son James. Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News International, is also due to attend the dinner on 17 September. Rupert Murdoch summoned David Cameron for talks on his yacht before the Tory leader became prime minister. A private jet owned by Matthew Freud, Murdoch’s son-in-law, flew him to Greece. Tony Blair flew to Australia for a private Murdoch conference in 1995. The Miliband dinner will be a more low key affair in London. David Miliband has still not decided whether to attend because his violinist wife Louise Shackelton is playing that night. But a source said it was right for Miliband to sup with Murdoch: “That is what you do when you are trying to persuade people that Labour is a strong and effective opposition party.” Ed is not being left out. He is to have lunch next Wednesday with Dominic Mohan, editor of the Sun, and possibly Brooks.

John Mearsheimer and co on the futile “peace process” Posted: 08 Sep 2010 Only Al-Jazeera English would host a discussion on the Middle East that actually tells things how they are. Unafraid to discuss the power of the Zionist lobby, Israeli colonisation and Greater Israel: