A.LOEWENSTEIN ONLINE NEWSLETTER

• Will the brave reporters please stand up?
• A Zionist awakening at Bil’in
• This is just the beginning of the pressure Rajapaksa will feel
• So that’s who Israel is trying to emulate
• Looking for a mercenary in your area?
• Israeli academics grow a backbone, ever so briefly
• 0.8% of Cablegate in the public domain
• Just another story of bitterness and white power in the US
• Asylum seekers not out of sight or out of mind
• America’s Left far too blinded by inaction and fear

Will the brave reporters please stand up?Posted: 09 Jan 2011 02:58 PM PST What a sad state of affairs. The vast bulk of American journalists show themselves to be cowards, simply unwilling to defend the importance of what Wikileaks is doing. Too afraid to seriously challenge the Washington line. Shameful: Not so long ago, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange could count on American journalists to support his campaign to publish secret documents that banks and governments didn’t want the world to see. But just three years after a major court confrontation in which many of America’s most important journalism organizations file briefs on WikiLeaks’ behalf, much of the U.S. journalistic community has shunned Assange – even as reporters write scores of stories based on WikiLeaks’ trove of leaked State Department cables. Some say he is responsible for what’s arguably one of the biggest U.S. national security breaches ever. Others say a man who calls for government transparency has been too opaque about how he obtained the documents. The freedom of the press committee of the Overseas Press Club of America in New York City declared him “not one of us.” The Associated Press, which once filed legal briefs on Assange’s behalf, refuses to comment about him. And the National Press Club in Washington, the venue less than a year ago for an Assange news conference, has decided not to speak out about the possibility that he’ll be charged with a crime. With a few notable exceptions, it’s been left to foreign journalism organizations to offer the loudest calls for the U.S. to recognize WikiLeaks’ and Assange’s right to publish under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. Assange supporters see U.S. journalists’ ambivalence as inviting other government efforts that could lead one day to the prosecution of journalists for doing something that happens fairly routinely now – writing news stories based on leaked government documents. “Bob Woodward has probably become one of the richest journalists in history by publishing classified documents in book after book. And yet no one would suggest that Bob Woodward be prosecuted because Woodward is accepted in the halls of Washington,” said Glenn Greenwald, a lawyer and media critic who writes for the online journal Salon.com. “There is no way of prosecuting Julian Assange without harming investigative journalism.” Woodward, who rose to fame by exposing the Watergate conspiracy in the Nixon administration, told a Yale University law school audience in November that WikiLeaks’ “willy-nilly” release of documents was “madness” and would be “fuel for those who oppose disclosure.” But that appearance came before U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder launched a criminal investigation of Assange. Woodward didn’t respond to e-mails seeking comment.

A Zionist awakening at Bil’inPosted: 09 Jan 2011 02:46 PM PST Jews are opening their eyes to what Israel has become.

This is just the beginning of the pressure Rajapaksa will feelPosted: 09 Jan 2011 02:41 PM PST The poor war criminals are under threat: Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa charged that certain elements are trying to portray a picture that country was going towards a totalitarian rule and said that these reactionary elements wanted to take him to the electric chair on war crimes allegations. President Mahinda Rajapaksa speaking at an opening ceremony of Public Library in Colombo district said that those with vested interest carry out this malicious propaganda in English web sites to convince the international community that Sri Lanka is a failed state and the rulers are uncivilized and violate international conventions. Citing an example the President said that certain English web site publish news to the effect the President has scolded the Chief Justice of the superior court. This was an attempt by certain elements to create a rift between the President and the Chief Justice he said “I did not meet the Chief Justice since my inauguration ceremony for the second term in office on November 19th, so how could I have possibly scolded him? President Rajapaksa asked. “All these are a calculated move to discredit the rulers of the country before the international community to portray a bad picture of Sri Lanka” President declared He appealed not to engage in this miserable mud slinging campaign as it would do much harm to the country and its people.

So that’s who Israel is trying to emulatePosted: 09 Jan 2011 02:38 PM PST Zvi Bar’el, Haaretz: The Knesset does not want to look like the parliaments in the Arab countries, but it does not want to give up the authority to act like them. It wants to act as if there is a law against receiving contributions from foreigners without actually having to legislate it and make a mockery of itself.

Looking for a mercenary in your area?Posted: 09 Jan 2011 02:05 AM PST War is Business blog is here to help.

Israeli academics grow a backbone, ever so brieflyPosted: 09 Jan 2011 01:56 AM PST Finally: Some 155 university and college faculty members have signed a petition calling for an academic boycott of the Ariel University Center. In the petition, the lecturers state their “unwillingness to take part in any type of academic activity taking place in the college operating in the settlement of Ariel.” Furthermore, the petition states that “Ariel is not part of the sovereign state of Israel, and therefore it is impossible to require us to appear there.” Among the signatories are three Israel Prize laureates – professors Yehoshua Kolodny of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Benjamin Isaac of Tel Aviv University and Itamar Procaccia of the Weizmann Institute of Science. “We, academics from a variety of fields and from all the institutions of higher learning in Israel, herein express publicly our opposition to the continued occupation and the establishment of settlements,” the petition states. “Ariel was built on occupied land. Only a few kilometers away from flourishing Ariel, Palestinians live in villages and refugee camps under unbearably harsh conditions and without basic human rights. Not only do they not have access to higher education, some do not even have running water. These are two different realities that create a policy of apartheid,” the petition also says. The signatories state that Ariel was an illegal settlement whose existence contravened international law and the Geneva Convention. “It was established for the sole purpose of preventing the Palestinians from creating an independent state and thus preventing us, citizens of Israel, from having the chance to ever live in peace in this region.” The petition was initiated and organized by Nir Gov of the Weizmann Institute’s Department of Chemical Physics. Unlike other such initiatives, over a third of the list’s signatories are from the natural and exact sciences. Gov, who started organizing the petition a few weeks ago, said it was important to show that not only people known from other petitions support a boycott of Ariel, and therefore this petition has among its signatories many scholars who are not from the social sciences and the humanities. “Israeli academia must differentiate itself from the ‘settlement’ academia,” said Gov. “Only significant differentiation can help our supporters abroad who are working against an academic boycott of Israel. This assistance is important, but all in all it is secondary to the principled stand that the goal of the establishment of the college at Ariel was not teaching and academic research, but political. It may be too late, but we felt a need to state in the clearest language that Israeli academia must not be involved in the settlement project,” Gov also said. Gov said he encountered some colleagues who agreed with the message of the petition but were afraid to sign. He said such fear, “in the current atmosphere, is understandable, tangible. Even if there is no official action against the signatories, we may pay some sort of price.” About three weeks ago, the Council For Higher Education issued a public statement against calls by Israeli academics for an academic boycott of Israel. The council, which is headed by Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar, said such calls “undermine the foundations of the higher education system.” However, Gov said there is no contradiction between the council’s statement and the petition. “The council says rightly that there is a danger of delegitimization of the academic system in Israel. We say the source of this danger is Ariel and the settlements.” Yigal Cohen-Orgad, chairman of the Ariel college’s executive committee, said: “A tiny and bizarre minority of some 150 lecturers is behind the petition, out of 7,000 faculty members. The cooperation between the Ariel University Center and many hundreds of scholars from universities in Israel and many hundreds more from 40 universities abroad, is the response to this petition. We know the heads of the universities oppose the call for a boycott and all it entails. I am sure that academia will continue to cooperate with us.”

0.8% of Cablegate in the public domainPosted: 08 Jan 2011 10:36 PM PST The slice below shows cables released, 2017, or 0.8% of the total collection (via Cryptome):

Just another story of bitterness and white power in the USPosted: 08 Jan 2011 10:00 PM PST Max Blumenthal tells a revealing story about the kind of extremism long visible in Arizona. Vehemently anti-immigration and racist, backed by many leading Republicans, it’s the kind of atmosphere that reveals why America’s land of the brave is increasingly angry and bigoted.

Asylum seekers not out of sight or out of mindPosted: 08 Jan 2011 09:48 PM PST     From Australian refugee advocate Sara Nathan: It is sad that people who seek asylum are locked in extremely crowded cell 24 hours a day 7 days a week for several months and sometimes years. This is cruelty. Let’s all pause a moment to look at the photos and see what we can possibly do for them. Crowded immigration detention cell in Bankok, Thailand. 128 Tamil asylum seekers were detained in October 2010. This includes 36 children (18 of them are under 4), women and men. They are asylum seekers, but treated worse than criminals and worse than animals!   This includes a photo of a little boy sleeping next to his father in the Bankok Immigration detention cell. His crime? – being born a Tamil and his family having had the guts to flee a genocidal regime.   As these photos were taken of the men’s cell, there are no pictures of the women or more kids as the kids would be with their mothers.   Let’s take a few minutes to consider their plight! Hope Ms Gillard understands what an Asian or Pacific solution will result in. Let’s think about how each of us can do something little to make a difference.

America’s Left far too blinded by inaction and fearPosted: 08 Jan 2011 09:43 PM PST Ralph Nader hits the nail on the head time and time again: The more outrageous the Republicans become, the weaker the left becomes. The more outrageous they become, the more the left has to accept the slightly less outrageous corporate Democrats… The left has nowhere to go. Obama knows it. The corporate Democrats know it. There will be criticism by the left of Obama this year and then next year they will all close ranks and say ‘Do you want Mitt Romney? Do you want Sarah Palin? Do you want Newt Gingrich?’ It’s very predictable. There will be a year of criticism and then it will all be muted. They don’t understand that even if they do not have any place to go, they ought to fake it. They should fake going somewhere else or staying home to increase the receptivity to their demands. But because they do not make any demands, they are complicit with corporate power. Corporate power makes demands all the time. It pulls on the Democrats and the Republicans in one direction. By having this nowhere-to-go mentality and without insisting on demands as the price of your vote, or energy to get out the vote, they have reduced themselves to a cipher. They vote. The vote totals up. But it means nothing.