Category General
#LeftTurn tackled by Socialist Alternative
The following review of #LeftTurn appears in Socialist Alternative by Tom O’Lincoln: Review:… Left Turn: political essays for the new left.Antony Loewenstein and Jeff Sparrow (eds), Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2012 Capitalism is complicated, and so are the challenges to it. So a book like… Left Turn, offering an array of agenda-setting arguments, is bound to be…
Repeat after me; Blackwater never dies
San Diego Reader on a company that has thrived, despite major controversies, since 9/11. Almost the definition of disaster capitalism: … Last week, Gail Collins, an op-ed columnist for the New York Times, wrote a story about privatization. In the… article, Collins describes privatization efforts that haven’t gone so well. Some examples she listed were privatizing prisons,…
My 2012 PEN Free Voices lecture on free speech and why it matters
The following is published today as the lead piece by ABC’s The Drum: The two-hour drive from Islamabad to Peshawar is along a surprisingly smooth road. Mud-brick homes sit amongst lush, green fields. Police checkpoints are set up routinely to stop unwanted visitors. I am asked why I want to see the troubled Pakistani town…
How private prison operators game the system and demand longer sentences
The apocalyptic future is here (via Justice Policy Institute): Over the past 15 years, the number of people held in all prisons in the United States has increased by 49.6 percent, while private prison populations have increased by 353.7 percent, according to recent federal statistics. Meanwhile, in 2010 alone, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA)…
ABCTV News 24’s The Drum on refugees and media troubles
I appeared last night on ABC TV’s The Drum (video here) alongside former Howard government minister Peter Reith and 2UE host John Stanley. The main issues were asylum seekers – I argued that neither major side of politics in Australia has any desire to alleviate suffering and seemingly prefer ways to privatise the system and…
#LeftTurn Sydney launch video
14 June saw the Sydney event for #LeftTurn with co-editor Jeff Sparrow and contributors Tad Tietze and Larissa Behrendt. Green Left TV came along:
#LeftTurn on Triple J’s Sunday Night Safran
I was interviewed last weekend, with my #LeftTurn co-editor Jeff Sparrow, on ABC Triple J’s Sunday Night Safran,… … on the book, Iraq, war, Israel, Palestine and pirates:
What’s some tortured Iraqis between friends?
Britain, spreading freedom across the world (via the Daily Mail): The Mail on Sunday can today reveal devastating new claims of abuse by British soldiers carried out at a secret network of illegal prisons in the Iraqi desert. One innocent civilian victim is said to have died after being assaulted aboard an RAF helicopter, while… …
Hands up who thinks Saddam had WMD in 2003?
Words fail (via Jim Lobe at IPS): Yes, it’s apparently true: 63% of Republicans still believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded it in 2003. That, according to a… remarkable new survey… on foreign policy attitudes of self-identified Republicans, Democrats, and independents that was noted by… Dan Drezner… in his blog today and released…