Why do so many Australians embrace spying?

My weekly Guardian column: Australians feel… very comfortable… with spying on our friends and enemies. During his visit to Canada this week, Tony Abbott, the prime minister,… backed… the Five Eyes intelligence sharing structure between America, New Zealand, Britain, Canada and Australia, saying “our intelligence gathering has got to be done in a way that is decent and fair…

Murdoch press kindly protects Israel from Nazism, fascism and Maoism

What would a day be without lies, slander and mad exaggeration from the Murdoch media about Israel and its critics? After running one article this week, by Stuart Rees, that explained how BDS isn’t the work of the devil, the paper is back to its usual hyperbolic self. The clear tactic is to charge anybody…

So this is how the Iraq war could have started

A fascinating insight from the British mercenary Simon Mann in Vice magazine about what the Bush administration were really like; criminals on a war mission: Weren’t you also asked to help kick start the Iraq War in 2002? Yes. Someone who said he was friends with the American neocons asked me to come up with…

My #LeftTurn chapter on media complicity in war post 9/11

This appears in Crikey’s Pure Poison blog today: Following is an extract from “Media War Junkies Unite”, an essay by Antony Loewenstein from… Left Turn: Political essays for the new Left… which is edited by Loewenstein and Jeff Sparrow, and which was released last week. *** The decade since 11 September 2001 has seen a litany of…

What Israeli attack on Iran may bring

Gideon Levy in Haaretz on the real consequences of an Israeli strike against Iran (a message to be given to the litany of neo-cons and Zionist fanatics itching for war): Even the strongest supporters of an attack – whose numbers, scarily, are increasing – admit there is no chance that Iran will sit idly by,…

ABCTV News24’s The Drum on Israel/US/Iran and Syria

Last night I appeared on ABCTV’s The Drum (video here) discussing both domestic and international affairs. The key part of the show began when this week’s meeting between Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu was discussed. The New York Times tells the world that, “Israel should not doubt this president’s mettle. Neither should Iran.” Netanyahu, speaking…

Would Iraq, still under Saddam, have embraced the Arab Spring?

With over one million Iraqis dead and millions displaced since the 2003 invasion, it’s a fascinating question asked in Foreign Policy… (though the idea of US military intervention is hardly an answer to anything, as history always shows): In a tumultuous year that witnessed the fall of Arab tyrants and the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, proponents…

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