Imprisoning refugees remains big business

In January, my book, Disaster Capitalism: Making A Killing Out Of Catastrophe, was published globally in a paperback edition by Verso.…  I wrote a piece for my publisher’s popular blog this week on the ever-growing industry of privatised immigration: The unaccountability of privatised immigration had rarely been so brazen. Australia is the only country in…

What Palestine Ltd tells us about disaster capitalism in Palestine/Israel

My following review appears in the US publication Mondoweiss: Palestine Ltd: Neoliberalism and Nationalism in the Occupied Territory… (I.B. Taurus), by… Toufic Haddad The Israeli media barely covers Palestine. Although many local, corporate outlets have “Arab affairs” correspondents, a faintly colonial position that reeks of paternalism, 99.9 percent of Jewish journalists live in Israel proper (or the…

One man's remarkable escape from ISIS

Every day we’re reading new stories about the ferocity and barbarism of ISIS in Iraq and Syria (see here, here and here). This powerful New York Times short film tells the story of an Iraqi man who barely escaped ISIS:

The mess in Libya is deep warning to "humanitarian interventionists"

My weekly Guardian column: Libya was sold as a glorious, liberating war. London’s Tory mayor Boris Johnson… wrote… in March 2011 that the overthrow of dictator Muammar Gaddafi was “of course ”¦ a good idea”. He was cautiously optimistic that a Western-led military campaign would not be a “disaster” like Iraq in 2003. “What kind of democracy…

Detention centre owners making a killing

My following feature appears in the January edition of Britain’s New Internationalist magazine: Outsourcing detention to private companies is a recipe for a disaster, says… Antony Loewenstein. Imprisoning immigrants is good for business. In the… US… it’s common for lobbyists hired by leading prison companies to magically convince officials to write legislation that benefits their bottom… line. US… magazine… The Nation… revealed…

A new year and BDS already challenging heart of Zionism

Strong piece in this weekend’s New York Times by Palestinian Omar Barghouti on the logic and increasing power of BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions] against Israel: The… landslide vote… by the American Studies Association in December to endorse an academic boycott of Israel, coming on the heels of a similar decision by the… Association for Asian-American… Studies, among others,…

What robust journalism should look like in 2014

My weekly Guardian column is published today: 2013 was the year of Edward Snowden. The former NSA contractor, voted the Guardian’s… person of the year… (after Chelsea Manning the year before), unleashed a vital global debate on the extent of mass surveillance in the modern age. “Among the casualties”,… writes one reporter, “is the assumption that some of…

Slowly but surely US intellectuals challenge Israeli violence

As Israel continues its strangulation of the West Bank and Gaza, the Jewish state is starting to realise such actions come with a price (like South Africa during apartheid). This news is big and important (and ignore the typical and utterly tiresome accusations of anti-Semitism) and signals a growing shift to tackle Israel where it…

Global trends of fleeing asylum seekers

Desperate refugees looking for a new, safer life. The stories span the globe. This latest article in the New York Times highlights the ongoing suffering in Syria: Fifty miles off the southeastern coast of Sicily, the refugee boat first appeared as a gray spot on the horizon, rising up or dipping away with the churn…

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