Yet another insight from this week’s Wikileaks information dump (via Rolling Stone): As Occupy Wall Street spread across the nation last fall, sparking protests in more than 70 cities, the Department of Homeland Security began keeping tabs on the movement. An internal DHS report entitled “SPECIAL COVERAGE: Occupy Wall Street,” dated October of last year,…
Showing all posts in June 2019
Shock! Horror! Iranians are human beings
What a sad story. At a time when armed conflict between Iran and Israel is increasingly likely, the reality remains that neither people know much about the other. This article is a window into that (via Associated Press): Israeli newspapers warn daily of the Iranian nuclear threat, but for the past week and a half,…
Brutal regimes will always find PR friends
If there is money to be made for defending rogue states (take Burma, Israel or Saudi Arabia), some Western hacks will line up for the job. Pro Publica explains just one: Earlier this month, a group of three young Bahrainis arrived in Washington to talk about reform in the small Persian Gulf nation, which has…
What Wikileaks tells us about corporate and government power (you can’t trust them)
So finally we learn, via the Sydney Morning Herald, that the Obama administration wants to crush Julian Assange and Wikileaks for the “crime” of revealing a litany of wrongs committed by Washington. And here’s the irony; after demanding answers from governments in America, Britain, Australia and elsewhere about the legal status of Assange, it takes…
Jeremy Scahill rightly challenges calls for (yet another) Western intervention in Syria
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Equality for all between Israelis and Palestinians threatens Zionist identity
This weekend’s One State Solution conference at Harvard University has already caused consternation in the usual Zionist circles. One of the organisers, Ahmed Moor, co-editor with me on a forthcoming book After Zionism, issued the following statement to… Inside Higher Ed… for critics who won’t understand why advocates can’t find love for Israel in their hearts: In…
Murdoch loves education, wants to make money from it and hopes British government will help
Stunning report in the Guardian that details the ongoing relationship between Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation; a mutual belief in reducing public funding for education and reducing opportunities for the most disadvantaged: On a freezing November day in 2010, the education secretary,… Michael Gove, turned out in east London to inspect a desolate stretch of dockside…
Wikileaks unloads with the Global Intelligence Files
The role of private companies in spying, monitoring and controlling public (and private) policy and debate sorely needs investigation. It’s not just about Western firms assisting repressive states censor the internet. Today Wikileaks launches the Global Intelligence Files: Today, Monday 27 February, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files – more than five million emails…
ABC Radio National on beards, cider and extreme retro
Sometimes it’s time to talk about issues apart from politics (even for me). I was the guest on yesterday’s ABC Radio National’s Common Knowledge: What’s behind the… kooky ad campaign… featuring two delivery girls on a tandem bicycle and with golden plaits and the faces of bearded men? Who is it targeting and what is the surreal…