Spot the interesting phrase:
"These four anniversaries [31/10/17 Beersheba; 2/11/17 Balfour; 29/11/47 Partition; Sadat in Jerusalem 19/11/77] outline an amazing story - perhaps the 20th century's most successful and inspiring story of self-determination and an ethnic people building a thriving new nation-state." (Out of the Great War was born a great new democracy, Colin Rubenstein, The Australian, 29/11/17)
IOW, providing one accepts, against all the evidence, the Zionist claim that Jews are an ethnic group, Israel is an ethnocracy. If, however, one insists, correctly, that Jews are a religious group, then Israel should be defined as a theocracy. Either way, its polity is completely at odds with our own multi-ethnic and multi-religious conception of the state, a matter our Israel-loving politicians seek to gloss over at every turn.
***
In any case, while googling the term 'ethnic group', I noted this downright peculiar definition on Wikipedia: "An ethnic group is a group of people who are considered to be the same in some... ways. They may all have the same ancestors, speak the same language, or have the same religion."
The same Wikipedia entry also goes on to refer to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1976), and specifically Article 27, as "ensuring the rights of ethnic groups." One may be forgiven, therefore, for assuming that Article 27 of the ICOCAPR supports Wikipedia's definition of 'ethnic group' as including religion.
If, however, we look up Article 27, we read: "In those states in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist... " As can be seen, ethnic minorities and religious minorities are clearly separate categories.
The question arises, therefore: has this particular Wikipedia entry been the subject of a Zionist makeover? (Note too, Rubenstein's reference to "self-determination." This fundamental political right (routinely denied the Palestinians) is the thrust of ICOCAPR's Article I(1): "All peoples have the right of self-determination.")
Finally, compare the Wikipedia definition with that of the Encyclopedia Britannica: "Ethnic group, a social group or category of the population that, in a larger society, is set apart and bound together by common ties of race, language, nationality, or culture." (britanicca.com)
Religion is nowhere to be found.
FYI: See my 11/3/17 post Wikipedia Warning.
Showing posts with label Wikipedia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wikipedia. Show all posts
Saturday, December 2, 2017
Saturday, April 22, 2017
Wikipedia's Wild Goose Chase
A cautionary tale...
On April 20, The Australian featured, on its front page, a feel-good story on Yazidi refugees now settled in the NSW town of Wagga Wagga - Yazidi survivors ring in new year, new life (Simon Benson).
An information box titled 'The Yazidis' accompanied the story. Under the sub-heading 'Religion', were these words: "Yazidism, combining elements of Islam, Christianity and Judaism."
Intrigued at the reference to Judaism, I thought, What's this, another lost tribe?
So I started digging. First port of call: Wikipedia. Under 'Yazidis', I read as follows: "The Yazidis are an ethnically Kurdish religious community or an ethno-religious group indigenous to northern Mesopotamia who are strictly endogamous. Their religion, Yazidism is linked to ancient Mesopotamian religions and combines aspects of Zoroastrianism, Islam, Christianity and Judaism. [27][28][29][30][31]"
These words, I concluded, would seem to have been the source for The Australian's "combining elements of Islam, Christianity and Judaism."
Next port of call: Wikipedia's footnotes - 27-31.
27 took me to a book called The Ethnically Diverse City, which, on the face of it, had everything to do with urban planning, not Yazidis.
28 took me to a mere heading, Yezidism in Europe... and that was it.
29 took me to The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Religion & Social Justice. No reference to Yazidis! Still, I persevered, and googled the book online.This is all it had to say on Yazidi religion: "The Yazidi Kurds have been tied to the 'sevener' sect [of Shi'ism], but also represent an ancient heterodox religious sect linked to Zoroastrianism and Sufism." (p 404)
30 took me to a Guardian backgrounder Background: The Yezidi by Fred Attewill & agencies, which claimed that "Their religion, whose origins are shrouded in eastern prehistory, is highly syncretic... It combines elements of Zoroastrian, Manichean, Jewish, Nestorian Christian and Islamic faith." Jewish! Eureka! So I looked up Fred. Was he, perhaps, an authority on obscure Middle Eastern faiths? Alas, no, merely an editor at Agence France-Presse.
31 took me to Who, What, Why: Who are the Yazidis? which said merely that they "revere both the Bible and Koran," that their faith is "linked to Zoroastrianism," and that they "share many elements with Christianity and Islam."
Burning questions:
1) Seriously, would you trust Wikipedia as far as you could throw it?
2) Who slipped "Judaism" into the Wikipedia entry, and why?
3) Where did Fred get his "Jewish" from?
See my last post on Wikipedia, Wikipedia Warning (11/3/17)
On April 20, The Australian featured, on its front page, a feel-good story on Yazidi refugees now settled in the NSW town of Wagga Wagga - Yazidi survivors ring in new year, new life (Simon Benson).
An information box titled 'The Yazidis' accompanied the story. Under the sub-heading 'Religion', were these words: "Yazidism, combining elements of Islam, Christianity and Judaism."
Intrigued at the reference to Judaism, I thought, What's this, another lost tribe?
So I started digging. First port of call: Wikipedia. Under 'Yazidis', I read as follows: "The Yazidis are an ethnically Kurdish religious community or an ethno-religious group indigenous to northern Mesopotamia who are strictly endogamous. Their religion, Yazidism is linked to ancient Mesopotamian religions and combines aspects of Zoroastrianism, Islam, Christianity and Judaism. [27][28][29][30][31]"
These words, I concluded, would seem to have been the source for The Australian's "combining elements of Islam, Christianity and Judaism."
Next port of call: Wikipedia's footnotes - 27-31.
27 took me to a book called The Ethnically Diverse City, which, on the face of it, had everything to do with urban planning, not Yazidis.
28 took me to a mere heading, Yezidism in Europe... and that was it.
29 took me to The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Religion & Social Justice. No reference to Yazidis! Still, I persevered, and googled the book online.This is all it had to say on Yazidi religion: "The Yazidi Kurds have been tied to the 'sevener' sect [of Shi'ism], but also represent an ancient heterodox religious sect linked to Zoroastrianism and Sufism." (p 404)
30 took me to a Guardian backgrounder Background: The Yezidi by Fred Attewill & agencies, which claimed that "Their religion, whose origins are shrouded in eastern prehistory, is highly syncretic... It combines elements of Zoroastrian, Manichean, Jewish, Nestorian Christian and Islamic faith." Jewish! Eureka! So I looked up Fred. Was he, perhaps, an authority on obscure Middle Eastern faiths? Alas, no, merely an editor at Agence France-Presse.
31 took me to Who, What, Why: Who are the Yazidis? which said merely that they "revere both the Bible and Koran," that their faith is "linked to Zoroastrianism," and that they "share many elements with Christianity and Islam."
Burning questions:
1) Seriously, would you trust Wikipedia as far as you could throw it?
2) Who slipped "Judaism" into the Wikipedia entry, and why?
3) Where did Fred get his "Jewish" from?
See my last post on Wikipedia, Wikipedia Warning (11/3/17)
Saturday, March 11, 2017
Wikipedia Warning
"Yesterday, I was checking. I can report that there has been a clear, organised effort to insert Zionist lies and fabrications into entries about the Arab-Israeli conflict on Wikipedia. Even historical matters are altered and edited, and then they cite the work of polemicists like Alan Dershowitz. It must be coming from the Israeli foreign ministry or the propaganda arm of the occupation regime in Tel Aviv." (Wikipedia entries on Arab-Israeli conflict, The Angry Arab News Service, 9/2/17)
Friday, October 28, 2016
Wikipoo
Most interesting:
"Public servants and political staffers appear to have made tens of thousands of anonymous changes to Wikipedia that insult a world leader and a former prime minister, scrub embarrassing information and even claim the Holocaust was 'justified'. The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet has ordered the heads of the Defence, Foreign Affairs & Trade, Health, Agriculture and Parliamentary Services departments to investigate possible breaches of government IT policy and report back in a week." (Wiki mischief: public servants changing encyclopaedia entries, James Massola, Sydney Morning Herald, 27/10/16)
As for the aforementioned "world leader," here are the gory details:
"Someone from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade editing the Hassan Rouhani page so it stated the Iranian President 'is diagnosed with Acute Flatulence Disorder (AFD), causing him to constanty [sic] expel gasses and making it difficult for world leaders to be in his presence'. Another edit stated he was born 'to a family of pumpkin farmers' and that his surname meant 'flatulent' or 'farty'."
Question arising: Is this the handiwork of a beyond juvenile (and overpaid) Canberra brat culture (along the lines of the 'Budgie Nine' brats of recent 'fame'), or is it, in the case of the doctored Rouhani Wikipedia page, a tad more ziopolitical?
After all:
"A pro-Israel pressure group [CAMERA] is orchestrating a secret, long-term campaign to infiltrate the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia to rewrite Palestinian history, pass off crude propaganda as fact, and take over Wikipedia administrative structures to ensure these changes go either undetected or unchallenged." (EI exclusive: a pro-Israel group's plan to rewrite history on Wikipedia, Maureen Clare Murphy, electronicintifada.net, 12/1/12)
"Public servants and political staffers appear to have made tens of thousands of anonymous changes to Wikipedia that insult a world leader and a former prime minister, scrub embarrassing information and even claim the Holocaust was 'justified'. The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet has ordered the heads of the Defence, Foreign Affairs & Trade, Health, Agriculture and Parliamentary Services departments to investigate possible breaches of government IT policy and report back in a week." (Wiki mischief: public servants changing encyclopaedia entries, James Massola, Sydney Morning Herald, 27/10/16)
As for the aforementioned "world leader," here are the gory details:
"Someone from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade editing the Hassan Rouhani page so it stated the Iranian President 'is diagnosed with Acute Flatulence Disorder (AFD), causing him to constanty [sic] expel gasses and making it difficult for world leaders to be in his presence'. Another edit stated he was born 'to a family of pumpkin farmers' and that his surname meant 'flatulent' or 'farty'."
Question arising: Is this the handiwork of a beyond juvenile (and overpaid) Canberra brat culture (along the lines of the 'Budgie Nine' brats of recent 'fame'), or is it, in the case of the doctored Rouhani Wikipedia page, a tad more ziopolitical?
After all:
"A pro-Israel pressure group [CAMERA] is orchestrating a secret, long-term campaign to infiltrate the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia to rewrite Palestinian history, pass off crude propaganda as fact, and take over Wikipedia administrative structures to ensure these changes go either undetected or unchallenged." (EI exclusive: a pro-Israel group's plan to rewrite history on Wikipedia, Maureen Clare Murphy, electronicintifada.net, 12/1/12)
Sunday, December 1, 2013
The 'Dauntingly Clever' Greg Hunt
Australia's environment minister, Greg Hunt, is now famous for his admission that Wikipedia is the go-to site for all things environmental, as in:
"'I looked up what Wikipedia said just to see what the rest of the world thought,' he advised the BBC... when put on the spot about whether there might be a link between Australia's latest bushfires and climate change. 'It opened with the fact that, 'bushfires in Australia are frequently occurring events during the hotter months of the year due to Australia's mostly hot, dry, climate'." (Wikipedia's verdict on Greg Hunt: 'terrible at his job', Tony Wright, Sydney Morning Herald, 25/10/13)
Killer quotes such as the one above notwithstanding, a feature on Hunt in yesterday's Fairfax magazine, Good Weekend, assures us that Hunt is no fool - at least academically:
"Dauntingly clever, Hunt graduated from Melbourne University with first-class honours in law, and won a Fulbright scholarship to Yale, where he completed a masters in international relations. He... did a stint as an intern with the United Nations Centre for Human Rights in Geneva..." (The weather vane, Frank Robson)
At which point I can't help but ask: How can anyone with at least 25 years of formal education under his belt - with a focus on international relations and human rights to boot - get something like Palestine wrong? (OK, so why do I raise the issue of Palestine here? Only because Robson references it twice in his Good Weekend piece).
Here's the first:
"What... does he make of Immigration Minister Scott Morrison's insistence that all asylum seekers arriving here by boat should now be called 'illegals'? At first, Hunt toes the expected line, saying it's refugees encamped in places like Cambodia, east Africa and Gaza who are 'missing out because those that are better off are able to take a flight to Jakarta and pay people smugglers to bring them to Australia'."
OK, he's got that Gaza's chockas with refugees - and that's an advance on fellow Liberals such as NSW MLC Peter Phelps, who thinks that the population of the Gaza Strip (aka Mordor) is composed of Orcs and Trolls* - but does he seriously think that Palestinian refugees, in Gaza or anywhere else, have been sitting around all these years dreaming of Australian visas, as opposed to one day returning to their stolen homes and lands in 'Israel'?
Now here's the second, even more telling reference:
"When he was 18, Hunt spent a year living on a kibbutz in Israel... The overseas adventure was... carefully planned, with help from a Jewish MP in Victoria who persuaded the kibbutz organisers to let Hunt stay, telling them, 'You never know, in 25 years' time this guy may do something with the government here'."
The very fact that Hunt volunteered this little anecdote as some kind of positive, commendable element in his life's trajectory speaks volumes about him. It's a bit like admitting that you formed your views on the Middle East conflict by reading Leon Uris' Exodus as a raw youth and have had no occasion since to revise them.
Add to that the fact that he clearly sees nothing wrong with the import of the anonymous Jewish MP's statement.
Now top that with the fact that Hunt's kibbutz 'experience' came in the immediate wake of Israel's brutal invasion of Lebanon in 1982, culminating in the massacre of Palestinian refugees in West Beirut's Sabra and Shatila camps in September of that year.
So here we have a 48-year-old who's spent over half his life in formal education, with a focus on human rights, who just doesn't get Palestine.
Astonishing!
Quite frankly, if he can't get something as simple as Palestine right, should we be surprised if he gets his take on climate science from a Wikipedia entry?
[*See my 20/8/12 post Frodos Gaze Upon Mordor.]
"'I looked up what Wikipedia said just to see what the rest of the world thought,' he advised the BBC... when put on the spot about whether there might be a link between Australia's latest bushfires and climate change. 'It opened with the fact that, 'bushfires in Australia are frequently occurring events during the hotter months of the year due to Australia's mostly hot, dry, climate'." (Wikipedia's verdict on Greg Hunt: 'terrible at his job', Tony Wright, Sydney Morning Herald, 25/10/13)
Killer quotes such as the one above notwithstanding, a feature on Hunt in yesterday's Fairfax magazine, Good Weekend, assures us that Hunt is no fool - at least academically:
"Dauntingly clever, Hunt graduated from Melbourne University with first-class honours in law, and won a Fulbright scholarship to Yale, where he completed a masters in international relations. He... did a stint as an intern with the United Nations Centre for Human Rights in Geneva..." (The weather vane, Frank Robson)
At which point I can't help but ask: How can anyone with at least 25 years of formal education under his belt - with a focus on international relations and human rights to boot - get something like Palestine wrong? (OK, so why do I raise the issue of Palestine here? Only because Robson references it twice in his Good Weekend piece).
Here's the first:
"What... does he make of Immigration Minister Scott Morrison's insistence that all asylum seekers arriving here by boat should now be called 'illegals'? At first, Hunt toes the expected line, saying it's refugees encamped in places like Cambodia, east Africa and Gaza who are 'missing out because those that are better off are able to take a flight to Jakarta and pay people smugglers to bring them to Australia'."
OK, he's got that Gaza's chockas with refugees - and that's an advance on fellow Liberals such as NSW MLC Peter Phelps, who thinks that the population of the Gaza Strip (aka Mordor) is composed of Orcs and Trolls* - but does he seriously think that Palestinian refugees, in Gaza or anywhere else, have been sitting around all these years dreaming of Australian visas, as opposed to one day returning to their stolen homes and lands in 'Israel'?
Now here's the second, even more telling reference:
"When he was 18, Hunt spent a year living on a kibbutz in Israel... The overseas adventure was... carefully planned, with help from a Jewish MP in Victoria who persuaded the kibbutz organisers to let Hunt stay, telling them, 'You never know, in 25 years' time this guy may do something with the government here'."
The very fact that Hunt volunteered this little anecdote as some kind of positive, commendable element in his life's trajectory speaks volumes about him. It's a bit like admitting that you formed your views on the Middle East conflict by reading Leon Uris' Exodus as a raw youth and have had no occasion since to revise them.
Add to that the fact that he clearly sees nothing wrong with the import of the anonymous Jewish MP's statement.
Now top that with the fact that Hunt's kibbutz 'experience' came in the immediate wake of Israel's brutal invasion of Lebanon in 1982, culminating in the massacre of Palestinian refugees in West Beirut's Sabra and Shatila camps in September of that year.
So here we have a 48-year-old who's spent over half his life in formal education, with a focus on human rights, who just doesn't get Palestine.
Astonishing!
Quite frankly, if he can't get something as simple as Palestine right, should we be surprised if he gets his take on climate science from a Wikipedia entry?
[*See my 20/8/12 post Frodos Gaze Upon Mordor.]
Monday, March 16, 2009
Oh Dear!
I'd never heard of Aaron Klein until ABC Radio National's Rachael Kohn interviewed him on The Spirit of Things last year. So 'impressed' was I that I devoted 2 posts to the interview: Schmoozing with Aaron Klein! 1 & 2, 2-3/7/08.
Klein, Jerusalem Bureau Chief for worldnetdaily.com, had just authored a book titled Schmoozing with Terrorists: From Hollywood to the Holy Land, Jihadists Reveal their Global Plans - to a Jew! His book was about Palestinian 'terrorists' and their wicked ways, and his message was essentially that, whatever the label (Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Hamas, or Islamic Jihad), they're all "pure evil" and killing is "what they do." However, these Spawn of Satan had one, terrible weakness: they simply could not get enough of him. So by cunningly exploiting this fatal weakness, schmoozing with them, and living to tell the tale, Klein was able to reach his counter-intuitive conclusion that 'You gotta talk to the terrorists to know that you can't talk to terrorists'.
Rachael, it seems, couldn't get enough of him either, variously describing him as "exceptional," "intrepid," "courageous," and "frank."
So what's this then? Klein was quietly going about his business at the WorldNetDaily site, sticking pins in an Obama doll and muttering to himself, when all of a sudden he happened to find himself on Fox News courageously and frankly denouncing Wikipedia for censoring the efforts of a certain Jerusalem21, who had been unsuccessfully trying to edit into Obama's Wiki entry information about his alleged links with pastor Jeremiah Wright and 'Weatherman terrorist' Bill Ayers, as well as an allegation that he was ineligible to serve as prez because there is no proof he was born in the US. The Wikipedia administrator had knocked back Jerusalem21's allegations as 'fringe' theories and Klein was angry on his behalf. But all was not quite as it seemed:-
"Klein did not identify who owned the Jerusalem21 account but futher digging by the ConWebWatch blog discovered that the only entry the user had tried to edit other than Obama's was Klein's. Jerusalem21 had created Klein's entry and edited it 37 times, adding several links and pictures. Claims that Jerusalem21 was Klein himself are backed up by discussions by Wikipedia administrators on the talk page attached to Klein's entry. 'It reads as a total puff piece and was obviously heavily influenced by Klein himself and cronies/sockpuppets at WND', one wrote. Further, when questions were raised about the identity of Jerusalem21, Klein edited his original story to remove references to Jerusalem21, replacing them with 'one Wikipedia user'. Eventually, in response to emailed questions from Wired News, Klein admitted that he had a hand in engineering the facts used to stand up his scandal. But he blamed the Jerusalem21 edits on his researcher. 'I am not 'Jerusalem21', but I do know the Wikipedia user (he works with me and does research for me), and I worked with him on this story', Klein said." (Obama Wiki fiddler caught red-handed, Asher Moses, The Age, 11/3/09)
Oh dear!
Klein, Jerusalem Bureau Chief for worldnetdaily.com, had just authored a book titled Schmoozing with Terrorists: From Hollywood to the Holy Land, Jihadists Reveal their Global Plans - to a Jew! His book was about Palestinian 'terrorists' and their wicked ways, and his message was essentially that, whatever the label (Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Hamas, or Islamic Jihad), they're all "pure evil" and killing is "what they do." However, these Spawn of Satan had one, terrible weakness: they simply could not get enough of him. So by cunningly exploiting this fatal weakness, schmoozing with them, and living to tell the tale, Klein was able to reach his counter-intuitive conclusion that 'You gotta talk to the terrorists to know that you can't talk to terrorists'.
Rachael, it seems, couldn't get enough of him either, variously describing him as "exceptional," "intrepid," "courageous," and "frank."
So what's this then? Klein was quietly going about his business at the WorldNetDaily site, sticking pins in an Obama doll and muttering to himself, when all of a sudden he happened to find himself on Fox News courageously and frankly denouncing Wikipedia for censoring the efforts of a certain Jerusalem21, who had been unsuccessfully trying to edit into Obama's Wiki entry information about his alleged links with pastor Jeremiah Wright and 'Weatherman terrorist' Bill Ayers, as well as an allegation that he was ineligible to serve as prez because there is no proof he was born in the US. The Wikipedia administrator had knocked back Jerusalem21's allegations as 'fringe' theories and Klein was angry on his behalf. But all was not quite as it seemed:-
"Klein did not identify who owned the Jerusalem21 account but futher digging by the ConWebWatch blog discovered that the only entry the user had tried to edit other than Obama's was Klein's. Jerusalem21 had created Klein's entry and edited it 37 times, adding several links and pictures. Claims that Jerusalem21 was Klein himself are backed up by discussions by Wikipedia administrators on the talk page attached to Klein's entry. 'It reads as a total puff piece and was obviously heavily influenced by Klein himself and cronies/sockpuppets at WND', one wrote. Further, when questions were raised about the identity of Jerusalem21, Klein edited his original story to remove references to Jerusalem21, replacing them with 'one Wikipedia user'. Eventually, in response to emailed questions from Wired News, Klein admitted that he had a hand in engineering the facts used to stand up his scandal. But he blamed the Jerusalem21 edits on his researcher. 'I am not 'Jerusalem21', but I do know the Wikipedia user (he works with me and does research for me), and I worked with him on this story', Klein said." (Obama Wiki fiddler caught red-handed, Asher Moses, The Age, 11/3/09)
Oh dear!
Saturday, April 26, 2008
On Taking Begging Bowls to Repressive Regimes
"Griffith University vice-chancellor Ian O'Connor has admitted lifting information straight from online encyclopedia Wikipedia and confusing strands of Islam as he struggled to defend his institution's decision to ask the repressive Saudi Arabian Government for funding." (Uni chief lifted Islam text from Wikipedia)
That was front page news in The Australian of 26/4/08. Murdoch's self-styled Heart of the Nation was waging another of its journalistic jihads "after it was revealed [last week] that Griffith had asked the Saudi embassy in Australia for a $1.37 million grant for its Islamic Research Unit."
The Australian's bloodhound, dedicated to sniffing out Muslims under the bed, Richard Kerbaj, had reported accusations, emanating from Clive Wall, a Queensland District Court judge and deputy judge advocate-general in the Australian Defence Forces, that Griffith University was akin to Pakistani "madrassas" [sic: madrasas] and an "agent" of the Saudi regime engaged in "propagating Wahabbism [sic: wahhabism], a hardline brand of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia and followed by al-Qa'ida." (Uni defends Saudi grant, 24/4/08) It was Professor O'Connor's "response to The Australian's revelations... published as an opinion article in the newspaper on Thursday [which] contained whole passages of text 'cut and pasted' from Wikipedia." To top it off, The Australian couldn't resist editorialising about how Professor O'Connor "has yet to justify his taking the begging bowl to a repressive regime that punishes by stoning, beheading and amputation, and bars women from driving and most forms of normal life." But more of that later.
Cutting and pasting Wikipedia, eh? If The Australian really wanted to run with a Wikipedia story, how about this one: "A pro-Israel pressure group is orchestrating a secret, long-term campaign to infiltrate the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia to rewrite Palestinian history, pass off crude propaganda as fact, and take over Wikipedia administrative structures to ensure these changes go either undetected or unchallenged." The "pro-Israel pressure group" referred to is CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) and the full report, from The Electronic Intifada, 21/4/08, can be accessed at http://www.electronicintifada.net/.
And if The Australian really wanted to chase up a story on universities receiving external funding for the propagation of extremist Middle-Eastern ideologies, it could perhaps investigate the phenomenon of Israel studies - what some may well perceive as an attempt to propagate political Zionism, a hardline brand of nationalism/tribalism practised in Israel and promoted by Israel lobbies in western countries.
Maybe this Jerusalem Post story would be a good place for Mr Kerbaj to start: "A coalition of 31 American Jewish organizations want to bring Israel studies to US campuses... Such a[n Israel studies] program, it is hoped, will help tell Israel's story on American college campuses." (Jewish organizations want to bring Israel studies to US campuses, 2/5/07)
Or maybe he could follow up on Mearsheimer & Walt: "To further counter perceived anti-Israel bias in academia, a number of philanthropists have established Israel studies programs at US universities (in addition to the roughly 130 Jewish studies programs that already exist), so as to increase the number of 'Israel-friendly' scholars on campus. NYU announced the establishment of the Taub Center for Israel Studies on May 1, 2003, and similar programs have been established at other schools, including Berkely, Brandeis, and Emory. Academic administrators emphasize the pedagogical value of these programs, but they are also intended to promote Israel's image on campus. Fred Lafer, the head of the Taub Foundation, makes clear that his foundation funded the NYU center to help counter the 'Arabic [sic] point of view' that he thinks is prevalent in NYU's Middle East programs." (The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy, 2007 p 181)
Israel studies has in fact already made it to these shores, without the Murdoch press showing a flicker of interest: "Monash University's Vice-Chancellor, Professor Richard Larkins, today announced the appointment of Professor Fania Oz-Salzberger to the Leon Liberman Chair of Modern Israel Studies in the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilization... Mr Liberman said: 'The Chair... will provide an opportunity to advance a rounded and multi-dimensional discourse with the Modern State of Israel... The Acting Director of the Centre for Jewish Civilization, Professor David Copolov, said that the appointment of Professor Oz-Salzberger would help strengthen Monash's reputation as a trusted source of expert, dispassionate commentary on key issues of contemporary international relevance." (Monash appoints Chair of Modern Israel Studies, 18/4/07, http://www.monash.edu.au/.) For Oz-Salzberger see my February 12 post Rotem's Revenge.
However, to fully appreciate the consummate HYPOCRISY of the Murdoch press taking Professor Ian O'Connor to task for "taking his begging bowl to a repressive regime," one had the happy option of turning to Murdoch's rival, Fairfax's Sydney Morning Herald of 25/4/08, and reading George Monbiot's wonderful essay, Strange case of Murdoch's lost empire.
Monbiot told the story of how, after buying up Hong Kong's satellite broadcaster Star TV and making a speech in 1993 about how satellite broadcasting constituted a threat to "totalitarian regimes" because it allowed "information-hungry residents of many closed societies to bypass state-controlled television channels," which provoked the Chinese to ban satellite dishes from China, "Murdoch spent the next 10 years grovelling. Within 6 months of [the] ban, Murdoch dropped the BBC from Star's China signal. His publishing company, HarperCollins, paid a fortune for a tedious biography of Deng Xiaoping, written by Deng's daughter. He built a website for the regime's propaganda sheet, the People's Daily. In 1997 he made another speech in which he tried to undo the damage he had caused 4 years before. 'China', he said, 'is a distinctive market with distinctive social and moral values that Western companies must learn to abide by'. His minions, Dover [Murdoch's former vice-president in China & author of Rupert's Adventures in China] reveals, ensured 'every relevant Chinese government official received a copy'. He described the Dalai Lama as a 'very political old monk shuffling around in Gucci shoes'. His son James said that the Western media 'were painting a falsely negative portrayal of China through their focus on controversial issues such as human rights'. Rupert employed his unsalaried gofer, Tony Blair, to give him special access: in 1999 Blair placed him next to the then Chinese president...at a Downing Street lunch. To secure limited cable rights in southern China, News Corporation agreed to carry a Chinese government channel... on Fox and Sky. Murdoch promised to 'further strengthen co-operative ties with the Chinese media, and explore new areas with an even more positive attitude'. Most notoriously, he instructed HarperCollins not to publish the book it had bought from the former governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten."
That was front page news in The Australian of 26/4/08. Murdoch's self-styled Heart of the Nation was waging another of its journalistic jihads "after it was revealed [last week] that Griffith had asked the Saudi embassy in Australia for a $1.37 million grant for its Islamic Research Unit."
The Australian's bloodhound, dedicated to sniffing out Muslims under the bed, Richard Kerbaj, had reported accusations, emanating from Clive Wall, a Queensland District Court judge and deputy judge advocate-general in the Australian Defence Forces, that Griffith University was akin to Pakistani "madrassas" [sic: madrasas] and an "agent" of the Saudi regime engaged in "propagating Wahabbism [sic: wahhabism], a hardline brand of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia and followed by al-Qa'ida." (Uni defends Saudi grant, 24/4/08) It was Professor O'Connor's "response to The Australian's revelations... published as an opinion article in the newspaper on Thursday [which] contained whole passages of text 'cut and pasted' from Wikipedia." To top it off, The Australian couldn't resist editorialising about how Professor O'Connor "has yet to justify his taking the begging bowl to a repressive regime that punishes by stoning, beheading and amputation, and bars women from driving and most forms of normal life." But more of that later.
Cutting and pasting Wikipedia, eh? If The Australian really wanted to run with a Wikipedia story, how about this one: "A pro-Israel pressure group is orchestrating a secret, long-term campaign to infiltrate the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia to rewrite Palestinian history, pass off crude propaganda as fact, and take over Wikipedia administrative structures to ensure these changes go either undetected or unchallenged." The "pro-Israel pressure group" referred to is CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) and the full report, from The Electronic Intifada, 21/4/08, can be accessed at http://www.electronicintifada.net/.
And if The Australian really wanted to chase up a story on universities receiving external funding for the propagation of extremist Middle-Eastern ideologies, it could perhaps investigate the phenomenon of Israel studies - what some may well perceive as an attempt to propagate political Zionism, a hardline brand of nationalism/tribalism practised in Israel and promoted by Israel lobbies in western countries.
Maybe this Jerusalem Post story would be a good place for Mr Kerbaj to start: "A coalition of 31 American Jewish organizations want to bring Israel studies to US campuses... Such a[n Israel studies] program, it is hoped, will help tell Israel's story on American college campuses." (Jewish organizations want to bring Israel studies to US campuses, 2/5/07)
Or maybe he could follow up on Mearsheimer & Walt: "To further counter perceived anti-Israel bias in academia, a number of philanthropists have established Israel studies programs at US universities (in addition to the roughly 130 Jewish studies programs that already exist), so as to increase the number of 'Israel-friendly' scholars on campus. NYU announced the establishment of the Taub Center for Israel Studies on May 1, 2003, and similar programs have been established at other schools, including Berkely, Brandeis, and Emory. Academic administrators emphasize the pedagogical value of these programs, but they are also intended to promote Israel's image on campus. Fred Lafer, the head of the Taub Foundation, makes clear that his foundation funded the NYU center to help counter the 'Arabic [sic] point of view' that he thinks is prevalent in NYU's Middle East programs." (The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy, 2007 p 181)
Israel studies has in fact already made it to these shores, without the Murdoch press showing a flicker of interest: "Monash University's Vice-Chancellor, Professor Richard Larkins, today announced the appointment of Professor Fania Oz-Salzberger to the Leon Liberman Chair of Modern Israel Studies in the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilization... Mr Liberman said: 'The Chair... will provide an opportunity to advance a rounded and multi-dimensional discourse with the Modern State of Israel... The Acting Director of the Centre for Jewish Civilization, Professor David Copolov, said that the appointment of Professor Oz-Salzberger would help strengthen Monash's reputation as a trusted source of expert, dispassionate commentary on key issues of contemporary international relevance." (Monash appoints Chair of Modern Israel Studies, 18/4/07, http://www.monash.edu.au/.) For Oz-Salzberger see my February 12 post Rotem's Revenge.
However, to fully appreciate the consummate HYPOCRISY of the Murdoch press taking Professor Ian O'Connor to task for "taking his begging bowl to a repressive regime," one had the happy option of turning to Murdoch's rival, Fairfax's Sydney Morning Herald of 25/4/08, and reading George Monbiot's wonderful essay, Strange case of Murdoch's lost empire.
Monbiot told the story of how, after buying up Hong Kong's satellite broadcaster Star TV and making a speech in 1993 about how satellite broadcasting constituted a threat to "totalitarian regimes" because it allowed "information-hungry residents of many closed societies to bypass state-controlled television channels," which provoked the Chinese to ban satellite dishes from China, "Murdoch spent the next 10 years grovelling. Within 6 months of [the] ban, Murdoch dropped the BBC from Star's China signal. His publishing company, HarperCollins, paid a fortune for a tedious biography of Deng Xiaoping, written by Deng's daughter. He built a website for the regime's propaganda sheet, the People's Daily. In 1997 he made another speech in which he tried to undo the damage he had caused 4 years before. 'China', he said, 'is a distinctive market with distinctive social and moral values that Western companies must learn to abide by'. His minions, Dover [Murdoch's former vice-president in China & author of Rupert's Adventures in China] reveals, ensured 'every relevant Chinese government official received a copy'. He described the Dalai Lama as a 'very political old monk shuffling around in Gucci shoes'. His son James said that the Western media 'were painting a falsely negative portrayal of China through their focus on controversial issues such as human rights'. Rupert employed his unsalaried gofer, Tony Blair, to give him special access: in 1999 Blair placed him next to the then Chinese president...at a Downing Street lunch. To secure limited cable rights in southern China, News Corporation agreed to carry a Chinese government channel... on Fox and Sky. Murdoch promised to 'further strengthen co-operative ties with the Chinese media, and explore new areas with an even more positive attitude'. Most notoriously, he instructed HarperCollins not to publish the book it had bought from the former governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten."
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