A.Loewnstein Online Newsletter

Opening of the Perth Writer’s Festival

04 Mar 2011

Last night I attended the opening of the Perth Writer’s Festival at the University of Western Australia. It was rather spectacular.

 

Rabid Zionist in Jerusalem: so much easier to just annihilate Arabs

04 Mar 2011

Israeli citizen Joseph Dana and American, Jewish journalist Max Blumenthal are out to document Jewish nationalism (some background here). It’s mainstream, racist, loathes Palestinians, denies occupation is even occupation and speaks for a sizable percentage of the Jewish population of Israel.It’s about time the world starts to see what Zionism has become:

America is a land that increasingly loathes Islam

04 Mar 2011  

US Senate furthers call for taking Colombo to court over mass killings

Posted: 04 Mar 2011 01:06 AM PST

The following news is undoubtedly positive as a first step to holding the Sri Lankan government accountable for war crimes during its war against the Tamil people but is this really about payback against China for becoming too close to Colombo?

The US government has passed a resolution calling upon Colombo, the international community and the UN set up an international mechanism to look into war crimes allegations. The US Senate also called up President Barack Obama to formulate a Lanka policy that would reflect Washington views on human rights, democracy besides economic and security interests.
The Senate called on Lanka to allow humanitarian organisations, aid agencies, journalists, and international human rights groups’ greater freedom of movement, including internally-displaced persons camps.

 

Surely the most complete take-down of Scientology imaginable

Posted: 04 Mar 2011 12:53 AM PST

During my five hour flight from Sydney to Perth, while thinking about the lack of internet access and ability to focus more on reading, I read this extraordinary recent feature by Lawrence Wright in the New Yorker about Scientology, film-maker Paul Haggis and the toxic culture inside cults.It’s truly one of the finest pieces of journalism I’ve read in ages.
Read it.

 

Israel’s Dubai hit taught them nothing

04 Mar 2011

 Jewish, American blogger Richard Silverstein uncovers what sounds like yet another Zionist violation of sovereignty in a foreign land:

The wife of a Palestinian engineer has accused the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad of abducting her husband. Derar Abu Sisi went missing five days ago while visiting his Ukrainian wife in her home country.
The Ukraine-based Al Raed Press said that Mr. Abu Sisi is the head of operations at the only power station in the Gaza Strip and was on a visit to Ukraine when he disappeared during a train journey on 18 February. Mrs. Abu Sisi accused Mossad of kidnapping her husband…She stressed that her husband is a governmental employee in Gaza but is not involved in any political activities and is not a member of any political party or movement.

 

Britain’s Murdochcracy (just got worse)

04 Mar 2011

Money buys power, again:

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation empire was yesterday given Government approval to take full control of BSkyB, a decision that was derided as a “whitewash” by media rivals and “cavalier” by political opponents.
Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt had previously said he was minded to refer the proposed £8bn deal to the competition authorities, but changed his mind after News Corp offered to spin off Sky News into an independent company to appease concerns over a lack of media plurality. Mr Hunt claimed the spin-off, which will see the news channel being given its own independent chairman and board to guarantee its editorial integrity, was a “welcome step forward”.
He told MPs: “Throughout this process I have been very aware of the potential controversy surrounding this merger. Nothing is more precious to me than the free and independent press for which this country is famous the world over.”
But this cut little ice with Mr Murdoch’s commercial rivals, who claimed that the Sky News arrangement was “pure window dressing”. An alliance of companies that includes the publishers of The Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror and The Guardian said: “It has been well-documented by former Murdoch editors that arrangements of this kind, including those put in place to protect the independence of The Sunday Times and The Times, have proved wholly ineffective.”
Ivan Lewis, the Shadow Culture Secretary, linked the approval of the deal to the recent choice of the former Conservative Party chairman Lord Patten as the next chairman of the BBC, BSkyB’s broadcasting rival. “This process has exposed an arrogant government, cavalier about its responsibility to be impartial and contemptuous of the importance of transparency in circumstances where there is a high level of public mistrust,” he said.

The Independent editorialises about what the Tory government has just done; endorsed unfettered corporate media power and shoddy “journalism”. How many more wars can we support today, daddy Rupert?

Promises of good behaviour from some media organisations might be credible. But we should remember the nature of Mr Murdoch’s empire. The News of the World appears to have been at the centre of a massive and illegal phone-hacking operation. According to the Labour MP Tom Watson, speaking in the Commons yesterday, journalists employed at other Murdoch titles might have been involved in this, too. Fox News, the Murdoch-owned US channel, is a virulently right-wing broadcaster that has contributed to the disastrous polarisation of the political discourse across the Atlantic. News Corp simply does not merit the benefit of the doubt.
The proposed arrangement also ignores the primary objection to the bid: the power in respect of advertising sales that it will afford News Corp across its range of different media platforms, giving the company a market position that can only be regarded as anti-competitive. At a time when the newspaper industry in particular is experiencing unprecedented pressure on revenues, it could have a catastrophic impact on other publications. Furthermore, News Corp will be able to “bundle” online subscriptions to its newspapers in special offers when BSkyB customers renew their satellite packages – and there would also be scope for intensive cross-promotion of News Corp titles. It all adds up to an advantage for Mr Murdoch’s media empire that verges on the monopolistic.
It does not require a conspiracy theorist to detect something fishy about this meeting of minds between News Corp and the Government. In opposition, Mr Hunt enthusiastically praised Mr Murdoch’s entrepreneurial skills. David Cameron hired a disgraced former News Corp editor, Andy Coulson, to be his director of communications. And Mr Murdoch’s newspapers all threw their weight behind the Conservatives in last year’s election. Mr Hunt’s agreement to allow News Corp to skip past regulatory hurdles as it accrues still greater market power looks uncomfortably like political payback.