Category General
The last thing Syria needs, or the Middle East, is more Western “engagement”
Stunning Simon Jenkins piece in The Guardian that explains why Western imperialists, of the liberal and conservative kind, just need to butt out of the Middle East: There could no more dreadful idea than to pour more armaments into the sectarian war now consuming Syria.… Yet that is precisely what Britain’s coalition government wants to do.…
How privatisation infects Australia
My following piece is published today in the Guardian Australia: The racism was raw. In 2011, John worked inside the Villawood detention centre in Sydney, and had little time for asylum seekers and their plight. He believed they had more rights than he and his co-workers had been given. John was employed by MSS Security,…
Looking for the Left, please apply at the door
In 2012, I published with Jeff Sparrow an edited collection called Left Turn,… essays designed to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the global and Australian Left. Here’s a sobering piece by Jeffrey St. Clair in Counterpunch about the US Left and its failings: Is there a Left in America today? There is, of course, a…
Full transcript of my interview with Jeremy Scahill
Australian publication New Matilda published my interview with journalist and author Jeremy Scahill yesterday.… Our recent conversation covered many areas so I’m publishing below a full transcript of the interview conducted by phone on 15th May: Where are the main places US is using armed drones outside Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia? One area that…
I’m looking at you, liberal/imperial interventionists
Handy lessons that should be observed by all before advocating the bombing of Iran/Syria/Libya/anywhere. Foreign Policy’s Steve Walt: #1:… You frequently find yourself advocating that the United States send troops, drones, weapons, Special Forces, or combat air patrols to some country that you have never visited, whose language(s) you don’t speak, and that you never paid…
Talking to Jeremy Scahill on war, drones and Wikileaks
My following interview appears in today’s New Matilda: Journalist Jeremy Scahill has spent his life exposing the dark recesses of US foreign policy. He talks independent media, drones and terror in this exclusive interview with Antony Loewenstein The Weekly Standard is the neo-conservative bible that backed the US wars against Iraq and Afghanistan and today…
What have we wrought in Haiti?
Nations prone to natural and man-made disasters receive far too little media coverage or scrutiny. Haiti is such a place. I visited there last year and it features heavily in my upcoming book, Profits of Doom. This great review by Pooja Bhatia, in the London Review of Books, covers similar issues, namely the lack of…