US outlet Alternet reviews my book, Pills, Powder and Smoke: Inside the Bloody War on Drugs. The review is by Phillip Smith: America shows signs of emerging from the century-long shadow of drug prohibition, with marijuana leading the way and a psychedelic decriminalization movement rapidly gaining steam. It also seems as if the mass incarceration fever…
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Blackwater founder Erik Prince making moves to exploit minerals in conflict zones
My story in US publication Foreign Policy: The founder of the military contractor Blackwater, Erik Prince, has a new project. He’s aiming to raise $500 million to invest in the discovery, exploitation, and delivery of resources required to produce electric car batteries. Minerals such as cobalt, lithium, and copper are mostly found in conflict zones…
Australian asylum policies inspiring the globe
My investigation in US magazine The Nation: Soon after President Trump assumed office in January 2017, he had a phone call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. The transcript of the conversation, leaked in August, revealed that the new US president admired his Australian counterpart because Turnbull was “worse than I am” on asylum seekers.…
Australia's ambition to become global arms dealer
My major investigation in the Melbourne Age/Sydney Morning Herald on Australia’s surging defence industry: This year’s Avalon Air Show in Geelong was the first chance for the public to see the long-delayed Joint Strike Fighter in action. At a cost of at least $100 million per aircraft, Canberra is slated to spend $17 billion on…
Never-ending traumas in South Sudan
My book review in the Los Angeles Review of Books: Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead:… War And Survival in South Sudan By Nick Turse Published 05.03.2016 Haymarket Books 220 Pages South Sudan is a country that almost everybody shamefully forgets. Declared independent in 2011, and still the world’s newest nation, it was engulfed…
South Sudan's death spiral
My feature in the Australian literary journal Overland: Flying into Bentiu, a town in northern South Sudan, is unnerving. The front of a broken plane, cockpit windows smashed, sits close to the dusty airstrip; long green grass sprouts around the cracked fuselage. Soldiers of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), a former guerrilla movement and…
Ongoing failures to hold South Sudanese war criminals to account
My article in Foreign Policy: In the middle of a hot, clear day on Aug. 21, roughly 2,000 people packed around the John Garang Mausoleum in downtown Juba to shout down the latest deal to end South Sudan’s nearly two-year-long war. Organized by the government, it was an event for true believers, those somehow insulated…
Civilians in South Sudan bearing brunt of cruel war
My feature in Foreign Policy: BENTIU, South Sudan — Every day, some 200 people stream into Bentiu, the site of South Sudan’s largest camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs). Women trudge past armed U.N. peacekeepers while carrying large pots and bags on their heads and tiny children in their arms. They sit on the cracked…
Too little to celebrate in South Sudan
My article in Le Monde Diplomatique English: The UN Security Council recently imposed new sanctions on South Sudan including travel bans on six South Sudanese citizens. Samantha Power, US ambassador to the UN, praised the move saying: “The Security Council took strong action in support of a peaceful end to the conflict in South Sudan…
Land grabbing becomes global phenomenon
My investigation in Australian publication New Matilda: International aid often comes with big strings attached. Antony Loewenstein is in South Sudan researching his explosive new book. Ethiopia’s Omo Valley is one of the most culturally diverse places on the planet. Industrial-size sugar plantations and a soon to open dam are strangling indigenous communities over more…