The issue of Australia outsourcing troubles to its neighbour Papua New Guinea (PNG) remains in the news after Canberra aims to send all asylum seekers arriving by boat to this poor nation. Let’s not forget that private companies are making huge money from the mess, a topic related to my new book, Profits of Doom.…
Category General
“The Act of Killing” documentary challenges history, reality, genocide
How we remember history and the violence within it is one of the great challenges of our age. From the Holocaust to Cambodia and Rwanda to Palestine, we are all haunted by holding power to account. Last night I watched one of the most remarkable documentaries I’ve ever seen, Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing:…
Education is key to fighting disaster capitalism
Henry Rollins is a passionate and cluey American who has spent years fighting the corporate take-over of the state. Here’s his 2012 talk on education being the key in tackling disaster capitalism. A great way to introduce my new book, Profits of Doom:
China’s gargantuan web filtering system
There has never been anything like it in human history. Then again, the internet is the perfect tool for officials to monitor and censor material. Disturbing piece in the New York Review of Books by Perry Link: Every day in China, hundreds of messages are sent from government offices to website editors around the country…
South Korean radio interview on transparency in journalism
Last week I published a piece in the Guardian on the necessity of journalists being far more transparent in their dealings and allegiances, including a call for them to declare for whom they vote. It caused a stir. To the point where I was interviewed on South Korea’s Busan English Broadcasting:
Australia’s behaviour towards Papua New Guinea akin to vulture capitalism
My following article appears today in the Guardian: The Australian government’s decision to… send all refugee boat arrivals… to Papua New Guinea (PNG) is a… political earthquake. It has nothing to do with alleviating the suffering of asylum seekers – if Canberra cared about it, a regional solution would allow processing of claims in Indonesia – and will…
Memo to media damning Latin America over Snowden and Assange
Never let facts get in the way of a good story. Here’s an important corrective, by a range of Latin American scholars, to a gullible and pro-US media that prefers playing the man than the issues: The supposed “irony” of whistle-blower Edward Snowden seeking asylum in countries such as Ecuador and Venezuela has become a…
Let’s be clear, Britain sells weapons to thugs globally
A belief in human rights? Preaching to others about improving accountability? It’s all empty rhetoric by most/all Western governments, including Britain. Evidence for the prosecution (via Independent): The Government has issued more than 3,000 export licences for military and intelligence equipment worth a total of …£12.3bn to countries which… are on its own official list…
US surveillance state isn’t new but its scope is
Perhaps the most startling few words about the revelations related to Edward Snowden appeared in the Washington Post this week (via Glenn Greenwald): The Washington Post this morning has… a long profile of Gen. Keith Alexander, director the… NSA, and it highlights the crux – the heart and soul – of the NSA stories, the reason Edward…
Transparency required in journalism yet sorely lacking today
My following article appears in the Guardian today: Are mainstream journalists dedicated to journalism? This may seem like a strange question, especially since I’m a journalist myself, though independent and not tied to a corporate news organisation. We are bombarded with details that claim to inform us about the world. From war and peace to…