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Ex-Israeli PM gets additional eight months in prison for graft

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Tel Aviv: Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday was sentenced to an additional eight months in prison following his recent conviction in a Jerusalem court for corruption.

The new prison term will be added to another one of six years, which Olmert received in another graft case, and is set to start within 45 days, as per reported.

Olmert’s lawyers said they would appeal the latest verdict.

Olmert was convicted in the “Talansky Affair” case in March on charges of fraud, breach of trust and aggravated fraud, after the state decided to retry the case.

Olmert had been acquitted from the affair in July 2012, but new testimony by his former aide, Shula Zaken, allowed the prosecution to retry the case.

The former prime minister was also meted a fine of $25,000 during his sentencing on Monday.

Olmert was convicted of receiving envelopes full of cash from American businessman Morris Talansky in exchange for political favours.

In 2014, Olmert was sentenced to six years in prison by the Tel Aviv District Court for his role in a real estate project in Jerusalem. Olmert was found guilty of taking bribes as then mayor of Jerusalem in exchange for expediting construction procedures.

Olmert, who served as prime minister between 2006 and 2009, announced his resignation in late 2008 as corruption allegations started to surface against him.

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Lockdowns in China Force Urban Communities to Defy Censorship and Vent Frustration Online

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Anyip Mobile Proxies

Shanghai’s rich middle class is leading a wave of online dissent over the strict and prolonged lockdowns imposed in various parts of the country. Chinese internet censorship is struggling as patience is wearing thin in many urban centers, coming up with creative forms of online protests.

Social Media Posts Revealing Lockdown Tension in Shanghai

Drawn-out lockdowns are nothing new in China as authorities insist with the nation’s zero-Covid policy since the start of the pandemic. Currently over This time around, however, metropolitan areas like Shanghai are increasingly difficult to keep quiet, given that its more than 25 million residents have seen weeks of total isolation along with food shortages and many other service interruptions.

Dozens of towns and reportedly over 300 million Chinese citizens have been affected by lockdowns of different severity. As expected, urban netizens have been most outspoken over their difficulties by finding creative ways to get around state censorship and bans placed on topics, news comments and spontaneous campaigns.

Shanghai residents have been using mobile proxies and hijacking seemingly unrelated hashtags to talk about healthcare issues, delivery failures and the overall severity of their situation. The “positive energy” that the Chinese government wants to transmit during the recent prolonged series of lockdowns does not come naturally to those counting food supplies and online censors are working hard to filter words, trending topics and undesired social media sharing.

WeChat groups and message threads are under constant monitoring. Posts questioning the zero-Covid approach have been quickly deleted, including by leading Chinese health experts like Dr. Zhong Nanshan. Video footage is soon censored and protests and investigations are quickly made to disappear.

Where this has not worked, officials have exposed banners with warnings and outright threats like “watch your own mouth or face punishment”, while drones have been patrolling the city skies. Yet, if anything, this has led to further tensions and unspoken confrontation with Shanghai’s educated and affluent middle class.

Creative Online Solutions Harnessing Civic Energy

Announcements by Chinese social media that they would be publishing the IP addresses of users who “spread rumors” have not helped either. Tech industry research has shown that much of Asia’s tech-savvy population has a habit of using mobile proxies and other privacy tools, quickly finding workarounds to browse the internet freely and talk to the world about the hottest topics.

The sheer volume of forbidden posts is already a challenge for the very censorship system, experts explain. Unable to track all trending hashtags, state workers overlook topics that speak about the US, Ukraine or other popular news. Linking human rights elsewhere to their situation, Chinese online dissidents establish their informal channels and “hijack” the conversation to share personal or publicly relevant information about the Covid suppression in their town.

Sarcastic and satirical posts still dominate. Others hope to evade the censors by replacing words from famous poems or the national anthem. One thing is certain – social media, when harnessed with the right creativity, has proven its ability to mount pressure on the government in even some of the most strictly controlled tech environments like China.

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