The Indian edition of my book The Blogging Revolution was recently released. Here’s a just published review in The Telegraph from Calcutta: The Blogging Revolution: How the newest media is changing politics, business and culture in India, China, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Cuba and Saudi Arabia By Antony Loewenstein, Jaico, Rs 350 Antony Loewenstein’s book is…
Showing all posts tagged Saudi Arabia
Private militias polluting Pakistan
My following investigation is the lead story on Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar English: The past decade has seen a significant increase in foreign investments in the private security market around the Middle East. Pakistan is one of the countries that attracted the most attention in this global mercenary business. The American killing of Osama bin Laden last…
Brutal regimes will always find PR friends
If there is money to be made for defending rogue states (take Burma, Israel or Saudi Arabia), some Western hacks will line up for the job. Pro Publica explains just one: Earlier this month, a group of three young Bahrainis arrived in Washington to talk about reform in the small Persian Gulf nation, which has…
What the internet can (and cannot) do to hasten revolutions
My book The Blogging Revolution was recently released in India in an updated edition.… Here’s a pretty good review of it by J Jagannath in a leading Indian newspaper, Business Standard: The little spark that the Tunisian fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi ignited in December 2010 to torch himself in retaliation against corruption has engulfed the…
What’s a senior Murdoch editor to do apart from slam Muslims?
Another week and another column by a Melbourne Herald Sun editor Alan Howe on just how dysfunctional is the Middle East, Arabs, Muslims, Palestinians, Islamists etc. The man has form. Yes, this is what countless Zionist lobby trips to Israel do to a Murdoch man. Hatred Inc: In Arab lands, like-minded, militant Islamists abound. Some…
In Likud heart-land, aka the Washington Post, questioning aid to Israel
Walter Pincus dares to go there: As the country reviews its spending on defense and foreign assistance, it is time to examine the funding the United States provides to Israel. Let me put it another way: Nine days ago, the Israeli cabinet reacted to months of demonstrations against the high cost of living there and…
Washington happy to arm thugs, despots and crooks (yet still talk democracy)
Really: American arms merchants enjoyed a dominant year in 2010 as the United States was responsible for selling more than half of all weapons worldwide. Although U.S. arms exports actually declined last year, compared to 2009, the dramatic drop in global arms deals resulted in American suppliers controlling 53% of the market (up from 35%…
Witness the necessary passing of US power in Mid-East
The New York Times documents the shift in the Arab world at a time when Washington is largely viewed as siding with occupiers (Israel) and brutes (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain etc): A last-ditch American effort to head off a Palestinian bid for membership in the United Nations faltered. President Obamatried to qualify his own call, just…
Roll up to find your deadly weapon of choice
The arms industry is a massive global market of Western nations, willing dictatorships and heaps of money. New Statesman reports on the world’s largest arms fair recently held in London: The two main exhibition halls have previously hosted concerts by Roxy Music, Alice Cooper and UB40. But today they are crammed with around 1300 exhibits,…
We cannot forget ongoing trauma in Bahrain
While Washington and much of the West turns away, citizens must continue raising their voices. Anthony Shadid writes in the New York Times: Activists trade stories of colleagues forced to eat feces in prison and high-ranking Shiite bureaucrats compelled to crawl in their offices like infants. Human rights groups say 43 Shiite mosques and religious…