Here’s my weekly Guardian column published today: What if China was beating the US at its own super-power game in the Pacific and we didn’t even notice? While Washington distracts itself with… shutdown shenanigans… and failed attempts to control the situation in the Middle East, president Obama’s “pivot to Asia”… looks increasingly shaky. Beijing is… quietly filling the gap,…
Showing all posts in June 2019
On the fallacies, toughness, bias and challenges of war journalism
Reporting from a conflict zone is messy and complicated, rarely as smooth as journalists try to convey. Britain’s Patrick Cockburn, writer for The Independent, is one of the finest chroniclers of post 9/11 madness. His essay in Counterpunch outlines what we should know: The four wars fought in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria over the…
How BDS against fossil fuel companies grows in power
Interesting results and instructive of how similar tactics are increasingly used by critics of Israel through the BDS movement. The Guardian reports: A campaign to persuade investors to take their money out of the fossil fuel sector is growing faster than any previous divestment campaign and could cause significant damage to coal, oil and gas…
What happens when you cross mad Zionists, Rwanda's Paul Kagame and Elie Wiesel?
Whole lotta mess. Here’s a great The Real News report by Max Blumenthal and Alex Kane about a recent event in New York (background here and here):
Vice interview about Ben Zygier, Israeli spying and Western acceptance
I was recently interviewed by Lily Jovic for Vice magazine: Last month, Israel struck a 1.2 million dollar deal with the parents of Melbourne-born Mossad agent Ben Zygier, as compensation for his death in prison 3 years ago. The payout seemingly marks the end of the… Prisoner X case, a case which despite having serious national…
Glenn Greenwald challenges puerile pro-government BBC questioning
The Guardian reporter shows how it’s done. Note how virtually every BBC “question” could have been written by the British government in relation to intelligence and Edward Snowden. Welcome to mainstream journalism (just as bad as this infamous interview with Julian Assange in 2012):
Australian Book Review tackles Profits of Doom
The following review… of my book Profits of Doom is written by Virginia Lloyd: One of the literary legacies of the financial crisis is a type of travel writing focused on the local social, economic, and environmental effects of unfettered global capitalism. There are two types of such books. Michael Lewis is perhaps the best known…
How do we know right from wrong
My recent book, For God’s Sake, continues to generate interest in debates over the ethics and actions of daily life.… Here’s an extract published in ABC Religion and Ethics: Jane Caro, Antony Loewenstein, Simon Smart and Rachel Woodlock wrestle with their own traditions and each other over the question of how to determine what is…
What asylum seekers are facing on the ground and why support is desperately needed
My weekly Guardian column is published today (here’s my archive): Blind compassion is killing the asylum seeker debate. While Tony Abbott entangles his new government in megaphone diplomacy with Indonesia,upsetting our biggest neighbour… in the process,… refugees… are struggling to survive closer to home. Vast swaths of the Australian public remain hostile towards asylum seekers, and the advocacy…
3AW Melbourne radio interview on Profits of Doom
3AW is one of Melbourne’s biggest radio stations. I was interviewed by… Alan-Pearsall last weekend on his overnight program about my new book, Profits of Doom, and we mostly discussed privatised detention centres for refugees and war contracting in Afghanistan: