With the release of my recent book, Profits of Doom, I’ve been doing many public events discussing the issues. This was a great one, organised by the wonderful NGO Aid Watch on 19 August: A major concern with the Australian aid program is that it favours commercial interests in aid delivery. The commercialisation of aid…
Category General
Unquestioning aid is worst kind of support for the world
My following article appears today in ABC Religion and Ethics: Cholera is killing Haitian men, women and children. For three years the United Nations has refused to take full responsibility for its Nepalese peace-keepers bringing the deadly disease to a nation they were tasked to protect. More than 8,300 people have died and more than…
Fortress Australia keeping out persecuted Hazaras from Afghanistan
It’s a shameful irony that can’t be forgotten. Australia has had troops in Afghanistan since 2001, supposedly to fight terrorism and the Taliban. The Hazaras are constantly under attack by extremists and many of them must flee for a safer life. Australia may be trying to convince Hazaras not to leave but the terrible facts…
Mineral Policy Institute reviews Profits of Doom
The following review, by Charles Roche, is published by… this NGO: Prolific author, blogger and commentator… Antony Loewenstein… has targeted disaster capitalism in his new book,… Profits of Doom.… … It’s an ambitious book seeking to not only build on… Naomi Klein’s… work from the… The Shock Doctrine… but to ”˜generate a global debate’. A wide ranging text; part philosophy, part travelogue, built on a…
ABC Radio National's Religion and Ethics Report interview on Profits of Doom
The ethics of foreign aid is a major issue in my book Profits of Doom. This interview is one of the most thorough of my work and thesis thus far: Prime Minister Tony Abbott has abolished AusAID as a free-standing agency and folded it into the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. He has also…
Breaking news; privatisation and resource exploitation don't bring prosperity
A key theme in my book Profits of Doom is how an agenda of privatisation never brings the prosperity that its proponents push. New information, from the World Bank of all places, confirms this so listen up: The World Bank is admitting that so-called economic growth in Africa, rooted in privatization and resource extraction by…
US mass surveillance in the Pacific
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,…
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…