A.LOEWENSTEIN ONLINE NEWSLETTER

• In transit from Indonesia to Australia
• News Corp embraces its inner Iran
• Livni hopes that the noble Zionist state will still inspire

In transit from Indonesia to Australia 10 Oct 2010 Just about to leave Bali and head back to Sydney so normal programming will resume in the next 24 hours. The dream is over, real life beckons again. In the meantime, check out these pieces here and here.

News Corp embraces its inner Iran 10 Oct 2010 Who says Rupert Murdoch doesn’t love the Islamic Republic? The News Corp-backed network Farsi1 offers Fox favorites and Telenovelas, and has quickly become the most watched in Iran. Reza Aslan on why Ahmadinejad’s government is worried. Farsi1, a Persian language satellite station partly owned by Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp, has become the most popular entertainment network in Iran, with nearly half of the country’s population (some 35 million people) tuning in daily to keep up with dubbed episodes of Fox favorites like 24 and How I Met Your Mother. However, the real draw of the network is its dubbed versions of Latin American Telenovelas, which have most of the country in their melodramatic grip. One Telenovela in particular, Second Chance, has become such a national obsession in Iran that it has inspired a hairstyle for women called “the Isabel,” named after the show’s heroine. he truth is that the Iranian government is fairly blasé about the satellite dishes, perhaps recognizing that it may be able to get away with denying basic rights and freedoms to its citizens, but if it tried to take away their right to find out what happened to Victoria (the title character of one of Iran’s most popular Telenovelas) after her husband left her for a younger woman… well, that’s enough to stir up a revolution.

Livni hopes that the noble Zionist state will still inspire 10 Oct 2010 In case any readers think that Israel’s opposition leader, Tzipi Livni, is a “moderate” leader who would bring peace to the Middle East, think again. Apart from the fact that the Tablet writer seems to be upset that American Jews don’t understand (enjoy?) military service and the apparently necessary role of killing Arabs, it is as if the occupation doesn’t exist.