We know too little about US drone attacks

My weekly Guardian column: The news that the US had killed two Australian “militants” in a drone strike was… announced… in mid-April.… Christopher Havard… and “Muslim bin John”, who… also held… New Zealand citizenship, were allegedly killed by a CIA-led airstrike in eastern Yemen in November last year. Readers were given little concrete information, apart from a “counter-terrorism source” who claimed…

The NSA wants to spy on everything and everybody

Former head of the NSA Keith Alexander (a man who proudly designed a system, with full political backing, to spy on citizens in America and globally) is interviewed by John Oliver in a witty and revealing way; yes, he wants you to feel comfortable with mass surveillance:

Thank you Zionist lobby for helping grow BDS profile

Interesting article in yesterday’s Australian explaining how typically ham-fisted, bullying and clueless media attacks by the Israel lobby is helping to draw public attention to the rise of boycotts against Israel. No kidding: A Jewish association has branded the racial discrimination case against University of Sydney’s Jake Lynch counter-productive, saying it has only raised the…

Remembering historical and present war wrongs

My weekly Guardian column: The Australian government recently… successfully blocked the release… of sensitive documents that would have revealed the complicity of Indonesian forces in massive abuses during their… occupation of East Timor. Canberra directed the National Archives to refuse the request of University of NSW associate professor Clinton Fernandes to see internal Australian files on Indonesian military…

Making a killing from climate change

My following book review appeared in the Melbourne Age/Sydney Morning Herald last weekend: Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming…  MCKENZIE FUNK…  PENGUIN PRESS, $29.99 Who says global warming is bad for the world? The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report found widespread and consequential effects on food systems and ecosystems, with detrimental ramifications…

Why the Pulitzer for the Snowden stories is a no-brainer

Yes, to all of this, by Amy Davidson in The New Yorker: Awarding the Pulitzer for public service to the… Guardian… and the Washington… Post… should go down as about the easiest call the prize committee has ever had to make. It would have been a scandal, this year, if there had been… no… Pulitzer related to the documents that Edward…

Why Wall Street thugs get away with stealing billions

One of the best investigative journalists around, Matt Taibbi, has a new book out, The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap.… He explains the how and why of successive US administrations turning a blind eye to Wall Street criminality. It’s vulture capitalism on a massive scale. Here’s Taibbi’s interview with Democracy Now!:

The real significance of Bob Carr's comments on Israel lobby

Much of the media has dismissed former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr’s diaries as being obsessed with irrelevance, diets and exercise. In fact, the diaries are fascinating and focus on a range of international events (see my Guardian column this week on the Zionist lobby sections). I saw Carr last night at Sydney University and…

Why we need to discuss unhealthy power of Zionist lobby part 44225

My weekly Guardian column: To have a prominent political figure challenging the power and message of the Israel lobby is almost unheard of in most western nations – which is precisely what makes the… just released diaries… of former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr all the more remarkable. Across 500 pages, Carr catalogues his intense exercise regime,…

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