Hong Kong’s Memory Hole
Posted: November 21, 2015 Filed under: Asia, Censorship, China, Economics, Global | Tags: 2016 Summer Olympics, Academy Award, Advocate General, Amazon.com, Asia, EUROPE, European Commission, European Union, Facebook, FIBA Asia, Germany, Google, Hong Kong, Hong Kong dollar, Mainland China, Palestine Leave a commentThe right to privacy is usurping the public right to know in Asia’s financial hub.
Financial hubs depend on the free flow of information, and nowhere more so than in Hong Kong, gateway to the opaque China market. So a recent case in which an appeals board upheld the censorship of a court judgment to protect the supposed privacy rights of the litigants sets a bad precedent. The territory is following Europe’s lead toward extreme privacy protection at the expense of access to information.
“The right to be forgotten affects more than media freedom. It prevents investors and entrepreneurs from conducting due diligence and managing business risks, and helps people hide from public scrutiny. That may be good for the reputations of the rich and powerful, but it will hurt Hong Kong’s reputation for transparency.”
Luciana Wong Wai-lan, who now serves on several government advisory panels, participated in a matrimonial case in the early 2000s. In 2010 Ms. Wong requested that the court remove the judgments from its online reference system. The court made them anonymous, but hyperlinks to the judgments placed on the website of local shareholder activist David Webb still revealed her name.
[Read the full story here, at WSJ]
Ms. Wong wrote to Hong Kong’s privacy commissioner for personal data in 2013, and the commissioner ordered Mr. Webb to remove the links pursuant to Data Protection Principle 3 (DPP3) of the Personal Data Privacy Ordinance. Read the rest of this entry »
Report: Iran Transfers Millions to Hamas for Reconstruction of Tunnels
Posted: April 5, 2015 Filed under: Global, War Room | Tags: Hamas, Islamism, Israel, Jerusalem, Jerusalem Post, media, Militant islam, news, Palestine Leave a commentCartoon of the Day
Posted: February 25, 2015 Filed under: Art & Culture, Comics, War Room | Tags: Beheadings, Charlie Hebdo, Christian, Christianity, Geonicide, Germany, Holocaust, ISIS, Islamic Extemism, Islamic fundamentalism, Islamism, Israel, Jew, Jihadism, Middle East, murder, Nazi, Palestine, satire, Terrorism Leave a commentKatherine Timpf: ‘Social Media Slacktivists Aim to End Middle East Conflict by Posting Selfies with Hummus’
Posted: August 6, 2014 Filed under: Humor, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Chickpea, Facebook, Facebook features, Gaza, Hummus, Hummus Initiative, Israel, Katherine Timpf, Middle East, New York City, Palestine, Palestinian people 4 Comments“In the Middle-East, everyone loves hummus, regardless of their religion, origin or nation.”
I grabbed this because I love the headline. Besides being a great hangout, they do great headlines. Above is a screen cap of the Facebook page, click the image to follow the link. Or don’t. Just say you did. Imagine whirled chickpeas.
From The Corner, Katherine Timpf reports:
Supporters of a social-media campaign called “The Hummus Initiative” are aiming to achieve peace in the Middle East by posting pictures of themselves with hummus….(read more)
A Soldier of Israel Frees a Mentally Ill Man Hamas Chained to a Building to be a Casualty
Posted: July 30, 2014 Filed under: Global, Mediasphere, Politics, War Room | Tags: Benjamin Netanyahu, Gaza, Gaza Strip, Hama, Hamas, Israel, Palestine, Palestinian people, Twitter, West Bank 1 CommentA soldier of #Israel frees a mentally ill man #Hamas chained to a building to be a casualty when they fired rockets. pic.twitter.com/5lqhCiYPrz
— Bob Owens (@bob_owens) July 31, 2014
[VIDEO] ‘For the sake of Palestine and its children, allow me to burn this filthy flag of the Zionist entity for the whole world to see”
Posted: July 25, 2014 Filed under: Breaking News, Mediasphere, War Room | Tags: Flag of Israel, Gaza, Israel, Jordan, Middle East Media Research Institute, Palestine, YouTube, Zionism, Zionist, Zionist entity Leave a commentGLOBAL PANIC OF JULY 2014 TELEVISED IN JORDAN
“We must demand that all Arab peoples expel them from their countries, starting with Jordan…I spit on this flag!”
For Breitbart.com, Nick Hallett reports: In a clip posted to YouTube by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Zoher Al-Azzeh burned the flag on Jordan’s 7 Stars TV while also calling for the US embassy in Jordan to be shut down, accusing America of using it as a “centre for spying”.
Describing the Israelis as “occupiers”, Al-Azzeh apologised to viewers for earlier having shown them graphic images of injured Palestinians, and then said: “For the sake of Palestine and its children, allow me to burn this filthy flag of the Zionist entity for the whole world to see”, before holding what appears to be an A4 paper print-off of the Israeli flag and setting light to it with a cigarette lighter…(read more)
Jordanian TV Host Burns Israeli Flag Live on Air
Reality Check: Israel vs. Hamas
Posted: July 12, 2014 Filed under: Mediasphere, Politics, War Room | Tags: Caliphate, Civilians, Combatants, Defense, Hamas, Islamic extremism, Islamism, Israel, Palestine, Peace Talks, Terrorism 7 CommentsVia Gay, Conservative, and Proud…
Reality Check: Is Israel an Apartheid State?
Posted: March 27, 2014 Filed under: Education, Global, History, Politics | Tags: Apartheid, Arabia, Bejamin Porgund, college, Democracy, Education, Israel, Leftist Propaganda, Marxism, Palestine, Progressive Secularism, race, religion, South Africa, University 1 CommentAmerican Studies Association Boycott of Israel is a Travesty
Posted: December 18, 2013 Filed under: Global, Mediasphere, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: academic boycott israel, ASA, Israel, Judith Butler, Leon Wieseltier, Palestine, Ramallah, United States 1 CommentLeon Wieseltier writes: One has to start somewhere, explained Curtis Marez, an associate professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, San Diego, and a member of the National Council of the American Studies Association (ASA), which had just announced an academic boycott of Israel. He was responding to a reporter’s sensible query about the justice of singling out Israel for punishment when many countries in this heartless world have human rights records that are significantly worse, and his chillingly casual words are a measure of the moral and intellectual vapidity of what the ASA proudly described as “an ethical stance.” In a supporting document called “Answering Questions About the ASA Boycott from Department Chairs, Deans, Administrators,” the ASA instructs its members that its mission is to “make a positive contribution to human understanding” and “support diversity and equity” and “contribute to solving world problems” (there is no mention of scholarship, of course: these people long ago obliterated the distinction between academia and activism), but in truth only one “world problem,” only one problem of “human understanding,” exercises it, and it is the problem of the Palestinians. They and they alone are the universal touchstone of decency. A few hours away from Palestine six million people are refugees in their own country, where they are being bombed by their government, and starving in the snow, and fighting polio; but never mind them, they are not Israel’s victims, and it is the turpitude of the Jewish state, not the actually existing misery in the region and the world, that offends the ASA. Compared with Aleppo, Ramallah is San Diego. But one has to start somewhere.
It is true that one cannot care equally about everything, that an ethical action is always concrete and therefore selective. But the ethical quality of one’s action must be measured by one’s standard for selection; and if that standard is not first and foremost determined by an impartial assessment of suffering and need, so that one selects as the beneficiaries of one’s ethical energies not those who are most wretched but those whose wretchedness confirms one’s prior ideological and political preferences, then the halo is a fake. Reading the ASA materials on its decision, I am immediately struck by the decidedly extra-ethical origins of its boycott. In another helpful document called “ASA Academic Boycott Resolution Frequently Asked Questions”—if the resolution is so clear in its reasons and its virtues, why is the ASA producing these agitprop crib sheets for its members?—I read that “Israeli academic institutions are part of the ideological and institutional scaffolding of the Zionist settler-colonial project.” That is not anti-occupation, it is anti-Zionist; it is the foul diction of delegitimation, the old vocabulary of anti-Israel propaganda. (It also ignores the fact that Israeli universities are where criticism of the occupation flourishes.) In the “Council Statement on the Academic Boycott of Israel,” I read that “in the last several decades, the ASA has welcomed scholarship that critically analyzes the U.S. state, its role domestically and abroad”: so this is not just the usual anti-Zionism, it is also the usual anti-Americanism. Of course Pakistan is also an ally of the United States whose military we support, and the Pakistani army is complicit in savagery beyond anything that any Palestinian is enduring—but terrorism (and certainly Muslim terrorism) does not interest such progressives. They are not empirically minded in their ethical commitments. They answer to higher promptings. I also read, in the National Council’s statement, that “the ASA also has a history of critical engagement with the field of Native American and indigenous studies that has increasingly come to shape and influence the field.” What on earth has this to do with Israel and Palestine? The answer is, everything.