Like I report in my book, The Blogging Revolution, the Islamic Republic is a truly repressive web nation: Authorities in Iran have banned popular social-networking site Facebook until after the Islamic Republic’s presidential election in mid-June. Iranian media has reported that the ban comes as a result of the success President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad opponent Mir-Hossein…
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Sydney Writer’s Festival 2009
I’ll be appearing tomorrow at the Sydney Writer’s Festival. The first one, at 10am, is described thus: James Maskalyk’s and Christian Lander’s books found their genesis in the new and powerful form of journalism, the blogosphere. Antony Loewenstein’s The Blogging Revolution is about the global tribe of bloggers who live and write under repressive regimes.…
Screwing with their minds
The power of Google is something that should worry us all, despite its relevance in our daily lives. It’s therefore hard not to enjoy any attempt to challenge the company’s online dominance: On the same day it was revealed that users of YouTube, the world’s largest video-sharing site, were uploading more than 20 hours of…
You can’t do this without dealing with the occupation
What exactly is an ecomonic peace for the Palestinians?
Palestine, Israel and freedom of speech: striking at the heart of liberal democracies
My following piece appears in today’s edition of Crikey: Echoing the discredited and contemptible Holocaust-denier David Irving, Australian Frederick Toben, who happily accepted an invitation to the 2006 Holocaust denial conference in Tehran, was back in the news last week after being found in contempt by a Federal Court for refusing to remove material from…
What we do is right because we say so
Salon’s Glenn Greenwald celebrates the release in Iran of journalist Roxana Saberi but highlights the American media’s blindness in the face of Washington’s even more extreme treatment of reporters: Many people scoff at the notion that the American media propagandizes the American citizenry, but here one sees the vivid essence of that process. … Our…
Fear in the lobby
My latest column for New Matilda is about the Zionist lobby and its hopefully stunted plans for the Middle East: Public and private noises from the Obama administration have the Israel lobby spooked. Now they’re getting ready for the fight of their lives, writes Antony Loewenstein Last week in Washington 7000 delegates from America’s most…
Do you want a hot story with that?
Food for thought in a chaotic media age: How about an interview with that latte? Several coffee shops set to open next month in the Czech Republic plan to offer more than the usual array of cafe services. As they sip their drinks, visitors will also be able to surf the Web, get help in…
We should be so proud of our liberation
Iraq remains in dire shape, despite what many in the media are saying. Take the ever-increasing stories of religiously-decreed rulings against homosexuals. One Iraqi human rights activist says: Iraqi militias are deploying an unprecedented new form of torture against homosexuals, which involves inserting a particularly strong adhesive into the anus (of the victim) and sealing…
Power of the people
Dawn is Pakistan’s leading English language paper. Today it publishes a review by Mustafa Qadri of my book, The Blogging Revolution: Hot on the heels of his last book, My Israel Question (a history of the Israeli occupation of Palestine from the perspective of an anti-Zionist Jewish Australian), freelance journalist Antony Loewenstein delves into the…