Showing all posts in June 2019
Drone killings; justice must be done soon
This is Barack Obama’s legacy (via the Guardian): The US policy of using aerial drones to carry out targeted killings presents a major challenge to the system of international law that has endured since the second world war, a… United Nations… investigator has said. Christof Heyns, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, summary or arbitrary executions,…
Our privatised world grows with barely any media or political protest
One (via the Guardian): Private companies will be running large parts of the UK’s… police… service within five years, according to the world’s biggest security firm. David Taylor-Smith, the head of… G4S… for the UK and Africa, said he expected police forces across the country to sign up to similar deals to those on the table in the… West Midlands…
Melbourne Triple R radio on PEN lecture and freedom of speech
This week I gave the 2012 Free Voices PEN lecture in Melbourne. I was interviewed about the issues on Melbourne’s … Triple RRR Spoke program:
Remember #Kony2012? US massively expands private contractors in Africa to find him
The Washington Post recently published this fascinating report on Washington’s huge reliance on private contractors in Africa for a range of unaccountable tasks. 21st century war: Four small, white passenger planes sit outside a hangar here under a blazing sun, with no exterior markings save for U.S. registration numbers painted on the tails. A few…
Writer Alice Walker refuses to be published by Israeli publisher
The following letter was sent by Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker to Israel’s Yediot Books: … June 9, 2012 Dear Publishers at Yediot Books, Thank you so much for wishing to publish my novel THE COLOR PURPLE.… It isn’t possible for me to permit this at this time for the following reason:… As you may…
Long #LeftTurn review in Online Opinion
Here’s a review by Melbourne-based academic Marko Beljac published in Online Opinion: The meltdown in global financial markets had some commentators, most prominently Robert Manne, advance the view that neoliberalism was finished. The dominant economically rationalist strand of liberal ideology, which coloured policy making in the preceding 30 odd years, was revealed to be intellectually…
Come to the West Bank and shoot Ayrab “terrorists”
Celebrating colonisation, demonising Arabs and making money in the process? Welcome to Israel 2012 (via Ynet): Like a frozen turkey plunged into boiling oil, a group of American tourists descend from an air-conditioned van into the scorching heat of the West Bank. Flashing smiles all around, they march into Caliber 3, a local shooting range.…
#LeftTurn photos from Canberra and Sydney events
Last week there were two events for #LeftTurn. One in Canberra, with co-editor Jeff Sparrow and Wendy Bacon and the other in Sydney, with Jeff, Larissa Behrendt and Tad Tietze. Here are the Canberra photos and the Sydney ones. Both events were interesting debates about the Left and what it means to expand its reach…
Our web future is censored unless we fight our own government’s secret demands
The sooner we adjust our thinking to understand that growing number of so-called democracies rather like the idea of censoring the internet, the better (via the Guardian): There has been an alarming rise in the number of times governments attempted to censor the… internet… in last six months, according to a report from Google. Since the search…