My book review appears in today’s Sydney Morning Herald: Days after the Boston marathon bombings in April, the surviving suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, reportedly told authorities that he and his brother, Tamerlan, watched online the sermons of Anwar al-Awlaki, the US-born cleric who was killed by an American drone in Yemen in 2011. It was just…
Showing all posts in June 2019
Missing the biting wit of George Carlin skewering US men loving war
We need such comedians today, people unafraid to call bullshit on futile wars:
Right Now radio interview on Profits of Doom
The human rights group Right Now has strongly covered my new book Profits of Doom. I was interviewed on their radio station on Melbourne 3RRR on vulture capitalism and the dangers of outsourcing asylum seekers to private corporations:
Questioning an ever-increasing and corporatised aid budget
My following article appears in the Guardian today: I couldn’t believe my ears. I was in Papua New Guinea’s capital, Port Moresby,… in 2012 and a local Oxfam employee told me that he wished Australia would again take control of his country. He argued that in the nearly four decades since independence, the state had not…
Right Now positively reviews Profits of Doom
The great publication Right Now (they recently published an extract from my new book, Profits of Doom, on Christmas Island) today publishes a strong book review by… Maya Chanthaphavong: The drive by governments to privatise what are usually key governmental functions, such as refugee processing and detention, reform and prison, and health care is one that…
Here we go again; another Western-led war in the Middle East
The Guardian’s Seumas Milne on the seemingly inevitable war against Syria: All the signs are they’re going to do it again. The attack on Syria now being planned by the US and its allies will be the ninth direct western military intervention in an Arab or Muslim country in 15 years. Depending how you cut…
Australian Jewish heads love Zionist colonies, conservatism and remain lost cause
Australia has a federal election on 7 September. We’re looking at a change of government to Liberal leader Tony Abbott; a period of neo-conservatism awaits us. I agree with Wikileaks head Julian Assange who argues that one of the key issues is liberating ourselves from genuflecting towards Washington on every issue. Israel/Palestine has barely featured…
Weekly reminder to assist my documentary on disaster capitalism
A week after launching my Kickstarter campaign to raise $20,000 for my documentary with New York colleague Thor Neureiter, on the subject of disaster capitalism and Profits of Doom, we’re close to 30% of our target with many more pledges still to come, I’m told. Thanks for all your support thus far. But we have…
On the dangers of militant atheism
One of the themes in my recent book For God’s Sake is tackling the role of extremism in all its guises, including atheism. I was interviewed this week by Jenna Price in The Canberra Times: Australian journalist and atheist Antony Loewenstein, co-author of… For God’s Sake,… says evangelical atheism, or what is now called “new atheism”, is…
Perth Indymedia interview on Profits of Doom
I was interviewed last night by Perth Indymedia on my new book, Profits of Doom, and we discussed privatised detention centres, privatised war in Afghanistan and Iraq and resistance in the form of the #Occupy movement. Listen here.