My following investigation appears in Australian publication Crikey today: The Pakistani city of Peshawar is situated an hour from Afghanistan. Driving there from Islamabad, the landscape was mostly lush green fields, poor villages and mud houses. After being stopped at five checkpoints along the way, an attempt to intercept foreigners and militants entering the sensitive…
Articles in Crikey
Civil strife serious possibility in PNG due to vulture capitalism
My following investigation appears in Crikey today: The story led the business pages in Papua New Guinea’s… Post-Courier… in early February. “Analyst: PNG on verge of change” screamed the headline. British-based market analysts Bdaily Business Network praised the $US17.3 billion Exxon-Mobil led LNG project. “[It] is the most important single development in the history of PNG”, it…
What the resource curse is doing to Bougainville in Papua New Guinea
My following investigation appears in Crikey today: The rusted air vent is deafening and a whoosh echoes around the pit. Copper-polluted water sits in a pool nearby and trees are starting to take over the graded hillside. Rocky, uneven ground is where locals pan for gold, hoping to find a few grams to make some…
Supporting BDS and Palestinian rights as a Jew
An open and frank debate about BDS against Israel in Australia is long overdue. Crikey blog This Blog Harms invited five people to write 1000 words on the issue. This is my contribution: The logic of… boycott, divestment and sanctions… (BDS) didn’t appear to me immediately. When my first book,… My Israel Question, was released in 2006, the…
Serco-run prison on isolated Australian island
My following investigation appeared in Crikey this week: It was a Saturday night community event and could have been in any small Australian town. A fund-raiser was being held for the Thai floods victims and proceedings began with local boys and girls playing short classical pieces on an electric piano. The room was colourful with…
What Australia is doing to refugees in the middle of the steamy desert
My following investigation appeared in Crikey this week: The drive from Broome in Western Australia to Derby, the town closest to the remote Curtin detention centre in the Kimberley, is two-and-a-half hours through endless, surprisingly green desert. Mobile phone reception soon dies after the journey begins and from there you see few people or cars…
Woodside in the Kimberley; Exploitation Inc
My following investigation appears in today’s Crikey: When West Australian Premier Colin Barnett said recently that he welcomed the announcement of a permanent US military presence in northern Australia, his words were worth considering in a wider context. “We have a large open expanse in northern Australia, we are near one of the most troubled…
Strange bedfellows: new nexus between Israel and far Right
My following essay appears in today’s Crikey: Amid the acres of commentary on the exchange of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit and more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners, one comment stands out: “Let the WORLD know about Israel’s humanity and the terrorists’ inhumanity”‰—”‰SHARE this one with EVERYONE you know, friends!” What makes it noteworthy is that…
Contracting in Afghanistan is turning that country into a deformed beast
My following investigation appears today in Crikey: In the 10 years since 9/11, millions of people have been killed but countless firms have benefited from the explosion in Western defence spending. Brian Michael Jenkins, senior adviser to the president at Rand Corporation, recently told National Defence that “the war on terrorism cost $3.8 trillion in…
Where are the Arab voices in Aussie BDS debate?
My following story appears in today’s edition of Crikey: A few weeks after the start of the Iraq war in 2003, I talked to a senior editor at The Sydney Morning Herald and asked her why there were basically no Iraqi voices in the paper, either for or against the conflict. “I never thought of…