Interesting Links for 14-06-2012

[andrewducker]

• Coventry launches electric bus services
  (tags: uk buses electricity )
• Goodfellas mobster Henry Hill dies aged 69
  (tags: movies mafia )
• The BBC block UK access to some pages produced by BBC Worldwide. What the fucking fuck?
  (tags: uk bbc EpicFail )
• Some interesting discussion/analysis of the new top level domain applications.
  (tags: internet google amazon )
• An editor explains how ebook licensing works, and why you can only buy most ebooks in some countries.
  (tags: publishing ebooks )
• Is the Guardian the most bigoted newspaper in Britain?
  (tags: uk media guardian bigotry palestine israel )
• What happens when the DRM on digital projectors kicks in (a terrible tool-chain)
  (tags: drm copyright movies digital )
• 35mm Film is About to Die – Studios Plan to Go With All Digital Projection by 2014
  (tags: digital cinema )
• The govt’s work programmes are pure exploitation: here’s the evidence (anyone got some counter-evidence?)
  (tags: welfare work uk politics )
• Skype to feature massive in-call ads. Microsoft tries to sell this as a _good_ thing.
  (tags: skype microsoft advertising )
• Chinese mindfulness meditation improves brain white matter and mood.
  (tags: psychology emotion brains meditation )
• Windows Phone market share expected to surpass Apple's iOS in 2016 (expected, in this case, by analysts on crack)
  (tags: windows microsoft mobile_phones apple )

Comments

[andrewducker]

There's a difference between banning people from speaking, and actively giving them a forum for their views.

I'm all for (for instance) Neo-Nazis being allowed to print leaflets. I am not in favour of my local newspaper giving them a page to talk about themselves.

[andlosers.livejournal.com]

I think this is very different. Whatever their views, Hamas are more significant than a local neo-Nazi group. They're a major political force that is usually not given a voice in the western world. I'm with Sven's implied point here.

That article is, in itself, wildly biased in the other direction. Separately, via MetaFilter, I read a pretty biased interview with Noam Chomsky on the subject, which made me sad. It's really hard to find objective perspectives on Israel. I do think Judaism and "the Jews" needs to be left out of it on both sides though: Israel is a nation, and dealing with it in any other terms does the issue a disservice.

[andlosers.livejournal.com]

Pet peeve, for example: being in favour of a Palestinian state and simultaneously not in favour of the Israeli government's policies on the issue does not make one an anti-semite. I know plenty of people of Jewish descent that sit in that camp, and would happily discuss it over Seder.

Ethnicities and cultures are not exactly equivalent with nations. I'd argue that making that equivalence is in itself racism.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

I think that one problem there is that being critical of Israeli government policies, or of Zionism, is too often then taken as being anti-Semitic. It's seeing things in binary black/white, either/or terms rather than as a continuum or shades of grey.

[andrewducker]

It's very hard to leave Judaism out of it, when it's so heavily intertwined with Israel's history, and even now with some of its laws.

Which doesn't make objecting to Israel's policies anti-Semite, of course.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Absolutely this. The article in The Commentator was ludicrously biased -- I think the writer hoped that you'd read that and not actually look at the Guardian piece. The article in the guardian was polemic sure.

[andrewducker]

"Hamas are more significant than a local neo-Nazi group. They're a major political force that is usually not given a voice in the western world. I'm with Sven's implied point here."

I didn't mean a local one, I was thinking more of groups like the Far Right political organisations in France, Germany, etc. Or the BNP. I believe in free speech for the BNP, but I wouldn't let them have a post on my blog to put their side forward.

I also agree that Hamas aren't the BNP. They're closer to Sinn Fein before the ceasefire, where the ridiculous system of not allowing their voices to be heard was a mockery.

[andlosers.livejournal.com]

Totally agree with the Sinn Fein comparison. Not a group I'd ever want to support, but not giving them a voice is counter-productive at best.

[andrewducker]

Agreed. I mean, if The Guardian was producing an article on Palestine/Israel then I'd expect there to be information/statements from Hamas in there, because it's an important part of the story, and they represent a lot of the people involved. I'd also expect them to have statements from the Israeli government, of course, to hear their side.

(The perfect rebuttal to the post would, of course, be to link to The Guardian hosting an article from Israel talking about their wish to make peace.)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I suspect some of the anti-Israel sentiment comes from people who (subconsciously) think of Israel as a modern western nation and anti-semitism as a thing of the past, and then get horrified when they realise what Israel's done. And also, Israel got a lot of uncritical acceptence from the west on the grounds of (a) being a sort of anti-holocaust and (b) being more like western nations in several respects, and I think there's a subsconscious feeling of "everyone knows all that, so to balance it up, we just have to keep pointing out that israel's done awful things, everyone knows anti-semitism is bad, it's not like we'll be anti-semitic by accident, oh oops, fuck"... :)

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

A lot of anti-Israeli (while not anti-Semitic) sentiment seems to be based around the nigh-unconditional acceptance of whatever Israel does by the United States, be it war crimes, criminal occupation, the ghettoisation of Palestinians, the current discussion around immigration and foreigners and the treatment of certain ethnic groups. Given that the politics and media of the US have such a massive global reach and influennce on the Western world, people can see it as important to voice their feelings if they aren't pro-Israel or neutral since Israel has the backing of a superpower.

Unfortunately, this can often lead to them voicing the same issues as actual anti-Semities, but for more valid reasons (ie reasons unrelated to Judaism or simple bigotry) or simply being cast as anti-Semites by the pro-Israel lobby as a simple way to discount their views without needing to argue against them. Also, due to the spectre of anti-Semitism in even reasoned political debate, some are afraid to talk about Israeli-related issues for fear of being labelled as such.

It is ironic that some outspoken Israeli politicians have more in common with European far right parties than the (real or supposedly) anti-Semitic detractors of Israel do.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was thinking of that, although I wasn't sure if the comparison would be welcomed or not. I assumed that there's been a lot more death more recently than in Ireland (although I don't know for certain), but it's another case of a terrorist organisation that also has a reasonable (but far from perfect) representation of the people.