I’m currently on a seemingly never-ending book tour for Profits of Doom and this week I spoke at a packed event at Stanton Library in North Sydney (the audio is here for 24 September). It was a great opportunity to engage with people, many of whom were over 60, on issues that too rarely receive…
Category General
The Wire interview on Profits of Doom and poor Serco care
A theme in my book Profits of Doom is the role of multinationals in running Australia’s detention centres for asylum seekers. I was interviewed by The Wire… radio program on these matters:
Guardian editor on how Orwell would be turning in his grave over NSA spying
A sad state of affairs that a serious media (which most of the corporate press is not, too keen to wine and dine with the powerful) would vehemently oppose (via the Guardian): The potential of the… surveillance… state goes way beyond anything in George Orwell‘s 1984,… Alan Rusbridger,… the Guardian‘s editor-in-chief, told an audience in New York on Monday.…
How much $ are US prison profiteers making?
Image compliments of Top Criminal Justice Degrees More here from Top Criminal Justice Degrees.
Eagles Waves Radio interview on For God's Sake
Issues of religious and cultural identity are endlessly discussed in society. My recent book, For God’s Sake, touches on these issues (as does my… Guardian column this week). I recently appeared on Eagle Waves Radio – a small outlet in the heart of Sydney – alongside my co-writers Jane Caro and Simon Smart. We were interviewed…
ABC Radio Triple J's Sunday Night Safran interview on Profits of Doom
This was enjoyable. On Sunday an extended interview with John Safran and Father Bob, hosts of Triple J’s Sunday Night Safran, was aired and we discussed detention centres, Serco, Palestine, Haiti, Afghanistan, private war, BDS, democracy and human rights:
How I became a German citizen (while maintaining the Australian passport)
My following article is published today by the Guardian (where I’m now a weekly columnist): It was hard to forgive the Nazis. The “1,000 year Reich” lasted a mere 12 years, and the German state was crushed under the weight of bloody streets, genocidal concentration camps and despotism. For this to happen in the heart…
US soldiers weep in Afghanistan at loss of KFC
With the war thoroughly lost years ago, American troops had to entertain themselves in the time-honoured, imperial tradition of completely ignoring local customs. Good story by McClatchy: There is nothing quite like coming off a patrol, your body-armor-shaped sweat stains still drying and ears ringing from grenades, only to have the hostess at T.G.I. Friday’s…
Congratulations America; you just love imprisoning your citizens by the millions
That’s quite a record (via Alternet): The United States imprisons almost three times as many Black people than were jailed in South Africa during Apartheid,… Rep. Spencer Bachus said Thursday… [3]… during a subcommittee oversight hearing on the Federal Bureau of Prisons. While games of comparison are rarely productive, the American prison industrial complex has seen cries of…
Why Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four is my favourite work of fiction
I was asked to write a short column… on Australian novelist Annabel’s Smith’s website: ”¦in which I invite someone bookish to share one of their all-time favourite works of fiction and what it means to them. This week’s Friday Fave comes from journalist and political writer Antony Loewenstein. I remember first reading Orwell’s masterpiece many years…