This was inevitable. Take a former speechwriter for Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, current columnist for the Australian and constant public advocate for more right-wing policies that are rejected time and time again at the ballot box and your insights are inevitably tres deep. But hey, maybe failure will be rewarded? It certainly has in…
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Talking #LeftTurn on Radio Adelaide
This morning I appeared on Radio Adelaide discussing the main issues in #LeftTurn: What are your thoughts on global warming? Serious concern? Doesnt exist? Or perhaps you maintain a blissful state of confusion? ”˜Left Turn: Political Essays for the New Left’ is a new book that offers passionate and challenging accounts from politicans, journalists and…
How Obama maintained torture and rendition, clearly inspired by Bush’s legacy
A startling if unsurprising extract from a new book by James Mann, The Obamians: The Struggle Inside the White House to Redefine American Power: On December 9, little more than a month after Election Day, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency gave President-elect Barack Obama a rather astonishing demonstration. The CIA director, a bald-headed,…
Solidarity reviews #LeftTurn
The following review appears in this month’s edition: Left Turn: Political Essays for the New Left Edited by Antony Loewenstein and Jeff Sparrow Melbourne University Publishing $27.99 Left Turn, according to editors Antony Loewenstein and Jeff Sparrow, aims to, “argue for positions that don’t often get heard in Australian public life.” The book gives a…
ABC Triple J Hack on Syria, social media and not trusting what we see
The conflict in Syria continues to worsen. I was interviewed on Wednesday’s ABC Triple J Hack program about the role of social media, especially related to the war zone: Children being placed on tanks and used as human shields, that’s happening in Syria according to the United Nations. With the viral nature of social media…
America’s drone war is both counter-productive and brutal
My following article appears in Lebanon’s Al Akhbar: America’s drone war has countless silent victims. Since President Barack Obama massively expanded his reliance on the weapon from 2009, the number of civilians killed in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen have sky-rocketed, but we rarely hear about these murders. The Western corporate media is content rehashing…
What ideological and opinion limits on our ABC?
I appeared on ABC TV’s The Drum on Monday night. Refugees, politics, my book #LeftTurn and Obama’s “kill list” were all discussed. The show aired and the show finished. End of story. And then this happened yesterday: The ABC last night aired an apology to federal opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison over comments made by…
Talking #LeftTurn on ABC 702 Sydney
Last Friday I featured on ABC 702 Sydney’s Afternoon program with James Valentine and ABC Radio National’s Jonathan Green. We talked about my new book with Jeff Sparrow,… #LeftTurn, what being Left means in 2012 and responsibility of the people to hold power to account in relation to war, media and the economy:
Assange deepens interview with cypherpunks
Following last week’s first part of his The World Tomorrow interview with cypherpunks, this episode continues the conversation and discusses the growth of the military industrial complex and using the web’s architecture to keep the free flow of information alive:
ABCTV News24’s The Drum on refugees, #LeftTurn and Obama’s “kill list”
I appeared last night on ABC TV News24’s The Drum (video here) alongside ABC’s Stephen Long and The Australian’s… Adam Creighton. We talked about asylum seekers – I argued that keeping refugees for longer in detention will only benefit the private contractor Serco and worsen the mental health of both staff and detainees. Regarding austerity in…