A.LOEWENSTEIN ONLINE NEWSLETTER

• Not telling us how the web content arrives
• Why would a man leak to Wikileaks?
• Iraq may be like Lebanon, if US and Israel have their way
• Obama’s ongoing gulag at Gitmo
• Jews who hate gay people
• When we back our own form of terrorism every day
• How an Australian unionist fell in love with occupation Israel
• Judt could see past Zionist tribalism
• Somebody talks to Hamas, hold the front page!

Not telling us how the web content arrives Posted: 09 Aug 2010 Looks like we’ll have to fight for a truly free internet: So Google and Verizon went public today with their “policy framework” — better known as the pact to end the Internet as we know it. News of this deal broke this week, sparking a public outcry that’s seen hundreds of thousands of Internet users calling on Google to live up to its “Don’t Be Evil” pledge. But cut through the platitudes the two companies (Googizon, anyone?) offered on today’s press call, and you’ll find this deal is even worse than advertised. The proposal is one massive loophole that sets the stage for the corporate takeover of the Internet. Real Net Neutrality means that Internet service providers can’t discriminate between different kinds of online content and applications. It guarantees a level playing field for all Web sites and Internet technologies. It’s what makes sure the next Google, out there in a garage somewhere, has just as good a chance as any giant corporate behemoth to find its audience and thrive online. What Google and Verizon are proposing is fake Net Neutrality. You can read their framework for yourself here or go here to see Google twisting itself in knots about this suddenly “thorny issue.” But here are the basics of what the two companies are proposing: 1. Under their proposal, there would be no Net Neutrality on wireless networks — meaning anything goes, from blocking websites and applications to pay-for-priority treatment. 2. Their proposed standard for “non-discrimination” on wired networks is so weak that actions like Comcast’s widely denounced blocking of BitTorrent would be allowed. 3. The deal would let ISPs like Verizon — instead of Internet users like you — decide which applications deserve the best quality of service. That’s not the way the Internet has ever worked,and it threatens to close the door on tomorrow’s innovative applications. (If Real Player had been favored a few years ago, would we ever have gotten YouTube?) 4. The deal would allow ISPs to effectively split the Internet into “two pipes” – one of which would be reserved for “managed services,” a pay-for-pay platform for content and applications. This is the proverbial toll road on the information superhighway, a fast lane reserved for the select few, while the rest of us are stuck on the cyber-equivalent of a winding dirt road. 5. The pact proposes to turn the Federal Communications Commission a toothless watchdog, left fruitlessly chasing consumer complaints but unable to make rules of its own. Instead, it would leave it up to unaccountable (and almost surely industry-controlled) third parties to deicide what the rules should be.

Why would a man leak to Wikileaks? Posted: 09 Aug 2010 The alleged leaker of information to Wiklieaks, American Bradley Manning, is given a profile in the New York Times. He’s portrayed as lonely, confused, gay, anxious and desperate for attention: And as he faces the possibility of a lifetime in prison, some of Private Manning’s remarks now seem somewhat prophetic. “I wouldn’t mind going to prison for the rest of my life, or being executed so much,” he wrote, “if it wasn’t for the possibility of having pictures of me plastered all over the world press.”

Iraq may be like Lebanon, if US and Israel have their way Posted: 09 Aug 2010 When failure is your middle name, why not copy the masters? The US may be using Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon as a model for its supposed draw-down in Iraq. In other words, expect America to hassle and monitor Iraq for years to come, violating Iraqi sovereignty. Like Israel does in Lebanon.

Obama’s ongoing gulag at Gitmo Posted: 09 Aug 2010 A journalist from the UK Independent writes about arriving in Guantanamo Bay for the trial of Omar Khadr. I like this quote from Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of the London-based human rights group Reprieve: I have met Omar at Guantanamo – he was a child and still had the scars from the injuries he suffered during the fighting. The worst they can say about him is that he was with his father’s friends when he was caught up in an attack by American soldiers. Prosecuting him is like holding a major crimes trial for a member of the Hitler Youth while ignoring the cases against the Nazi leaders. Never mind the fact that the whole process is illegal in the first place.

Jews who hate gay people Posted: 09 Aug 2010 Israel’s increasingly creating its own Taliban, religious Jews who shun modernity and human rights for all. The Middle East’s only democracy, indeed.

When we back our own form of terrorism every day Posted: 09 Aug 2010 When was the last time the Western press honestly discussed the real reasons behind terrorism?

How an Australian unionist fell in love with occupation Israel Posted: 08 Aug 2010 Australian unionist, close to the Labor party and rabid Zionist Paul Howes has a long history of embracing everything about Israel – its occupation, murder of opponents etc – and seems to place himself as a new Australian spokesperson for the glories of the Holy Land. It’s utterly embarrassing and believed by fewer people every year but Howes won’t give up. He knows where his bread is buttered. His latest piece in Saturday’s Australian is headlined, “‘Aussie Israel’ a model that should inspire“. Some choice quotes below: Way back in time, in the 1930s, the Kimberley region was for a short period conceived of as a possible Jewish state, in the Australian desert. It was an idealistic project. It foundered largely because of the outbreak of war and the Depression immediately before it. It is now one of those “what if” questions. One wonders what could have happened had the refuge and safe haven, a homeland away from home for a restless, troubled, brilliant, exiled people using their passionate ingenuity, which created a great flowering in the Negev Desert, instead been concentrated on our great spread of sand in the Australian west. A wilderness was to be tamed and turned into farms and orchards and pastures and factories, with secondary industries such as tanning, tinned fruits, jams, leather products, mats and bricks, with a dam across the Ord river and hydro-electricity, all done by 75,000 Jewish settlers. The WA government issued its Pilbara cities report 18 months ago. It called for the development of a Pilbara high-rise, high-density urban centre to provide affordable housing and opportunities for Australian families wanting to work in this resource region. So I believe there is an opportunity now, thanks to the mineral resources rent tax deal, to think of building desert settlements and to look at opportunities to create new enterprises in what may seem unpropitious places, by finding new ways of working the land. For such a task we have the model of what was created by Israel in the Negev Desert and the city of Beersheba. I will be making a pilgrimage to this extraordinary place, the crucible of three great religions, at the end of the year, to see how much can be done with unpromising beginnings in these hot, harsh places, and what we in our much vaster deserts might now do, in the Pilbara in particular. Beersheba, with its long biblical connection to the Jewish people, is the modern-day capital of the Negev, with a flourishing economy built around electronics, chemical, pharmaceutical and high-tech industries. I think if we were to decentralise and build a similar size city in the Pilbara or elsewhere — a city a little larger than, say, Townsville or Cairns — then we have much to learn from the modern-day development of Beersheba. The Palestinians are invisible.

Judt could see past Zionist tribalism Posted: 08 Aug 2010 The death of Tony Judt is a monumental loss and the New York Times obituary provides a wonderful quote that beautifully captures his inspiring journey: His views on Israel made Mr. Judt an increasingly polarizing figure. He placed himself in the midst of a bitter debate when, in 2003, he outlined a one-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian problem in The New York Review of Books, proposing that Israel accept a future as a secular, bi-national state in which Jews and Arabs enjoyed equal status. In 2006, a scheduled talk at the Polish Consulate in Manhattan was abruptly canceled for reasons later hotly disputed, but apparently under pressure, explicit or implicit, from the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee. Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, told The New York Observer at the time that Mr. Judt, on Israel, “has become precisely the kind of intellectual whom his intellectual heroes would have despised.” Mr. Judt’s name had been removed from the masthead of the magazine, where he had been a contributing editor, after his article on the one-state solution. Mr. Judt expressed some surprise that he should be defined by his position on one issue and expressed distaste for public controversy, while showing an unmistakable relish for the cut and thrust of public debate. “Today I’m regarded outside New York University as a looney-tunes leftie self-hating Jewish communist; inside the university I’m regarded as a typical old-fashioned white male liberal elitist,” he told The Guardian of London in January 2010. “I like that. I’m on the edge of both, it makes me feel comfortable.”

Somebody talks to Hamas, hold the front page! Posted: 08 Aug 2010 The Australian Murdoch press is so clueless. This story, appearing on page 2 of today’s Australian newspaper, is a supposed scoop: A senior East Timorese government minister wanted to advise the Palestinian militant group Hamas while employed by the World Bank. Based in the West Bank in 2006, Emilia Pires, a dual Australian citizen, now East Timor’s Finance Minister, wrote to a friend saying she wanted to help Palestinians including by meeting Hamas ministers to give them “some real advice”. Details of Ms Pires’s attempts to contact Hamas are contained in an email dated December 18, 2006, a copy of which was obtained by The Australian. Attempts to call Ms Pires were unsuccessful, although an aide in Dili did not deny the email’s authenticity. It reveals Ms Pires’s hopes of a promotion and another lucrative UN job and expresses her frustration at not being able to meet Hamas ministers. “Unfortunately I am not accessing Hamas ministers, but I sure wish I could,” she writes. “I could give them some real advice, I think — but maybe it’s not the time yet.” Perhaps the journalist would like to be reminded that Hamas won a democratic election in 2006 and engagement with them makes sense then and now. It’s called accepting the will of the Palestinian people.