Now and then, voices appear in the mainstream media that challenge the overly comfortable blabber that passes for news. This morning on Channel 7’s Weekend Sunrise US army veteran Vince Emanuele spoke on Iraq, Afghanistan, drones, the war on terror and Australian gutlessness towards Washington:
Category General
The Age/Sydney Morning Herald reviews For God’s Sake
The following review by James Grieve appears today: FOR GOD’S SAKE By Jane Caro, Anthony Loewenstein, Simon Smart and Rachel Woodlock. Macmillan. 314pp. $32.99. Here is the latest contribution to the debate on organised religion and the existence of God, started about seven years ago by the so-called new atheists, notably Richard Dawkins and Christopher…
G4S and Serco act fraudulently in UK but more contracts flowing
A key issue in my forthcoming book, Profits of Doom, is the role of multinationals in turning huge profits from warehousing the most vulnerable people in our societies, including asylum seekers. These revelations in Britain (via The Independent) are interesting but sadly history suggests that like vampires these corporations continue scoring contracts because neo-liberal politicians…
Untangling the murky energy war between US and China
Far too often the media covers conflicts in terms of good guys and bad guys, ignoring the never-ending power dynamics over energy and oil. Fascinating piece by Pepe Escobar in Asia Times that describes who really runs the world: Beijing has clearly interpreted the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s “liberation” of Libya – now reverted into…
Life as a freelance journalist in the Syrian war
This is a remarkable story, one of the finest pieces of writing about journalism I’ve read in ages. It’s by Francesca Borri and appears in the Columbia Journalism Review. Read the whole thing: He finally wrote to me. After more than a year of freelancing for him, during which I contracted typhoid fever and was…
Julian Assange on fighting reach of the superpower
Typically tough piece by Julian Assange, published in the Guardian, that outlines the risks faced by every citizen around the world and why trusting state power is a fool’s game: The original cypherpunks were mostly Californian libertarians. I was from a different tradition but we all sought to protect individual freedom from state tyranny. Cryptography…
Why truth about Sri Lankan brutality scares the perpetrators
The powerful documentary, No Fire Zone, tells the harrowing story of the final days of the Sri Lankan civil war in 2009, where war crimes were committed by all sides. But the Colombo government refuses to take any responsibility for the murder of tens of thousands of Tamil civilians. The film-maker, Callum Macrae, recently visited…