The face of America’s never-ending “war on terror” is increasingly privatised. This Washington Post article explains just one example of this trend but doesn’t examine the lack of accountability of the practice, something I’m doing in my 2013 book and film on disaster capitalism: The rapid collapse of a U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya exposed…
Category General
Campaigning for the boycott of Sri Lankan cricket team
I’m honoured to be asked to be a public face of this campaign (via Tamil Guardian): Renowned Australian author Thomas Keneally has spoken out against Australia playing cricket with Sri Lanka and called for a break of sporting ties, as calls to boycott Sri Lankan cricket continue to grow. Writing to Keneally, the Tamil Refugee…
Criminal UN negligence in Haiti over cholera crisis
During my recent visit to Haiti, working on a book and film about disaster capitalism, the issue of UN incompetence/criminality over causing the outbreak of cholera was a primary concern of many and rightly so. This Al-Jazeera documentary takes a critical look at the UN’s response: Here’s the latest New York Times feature on the…
ABC Radio National on pop culture in 2012
What a relief to be able to speak on ABC Radio National’s Common Knowledge about my popular culture highlights of 2012 that include Breaking Bad, #Destroythejoint and Louis Theroux:
The trauma suffered by an American drone operator
The life of an American drone pilot is rarely examined. This story in Der Spiegel… reveals the human cost of America’s supposedly clean war (oh, apart from the countless civilians murdered): A soldier sets out to graduate at the top of his class. He succeeds, and he becomes a drone pilot working with a special unit…
How Murdoch and his cabal corrupts democracy part 974224
One of the team behind the Watergate story, Carl Bernstein, unloads: So now we have it: what appears to be hard, irrefutable evidence of… Rupert Murdoch‘s ultimate and most audacious attempt – thwarted, thankfully, by circumstance – to hijack America’s democratic institutions on a scale equal to his success in kidnapping and corrupting the essential democratic…
In conversation with evocative photographer Teru Kuwayama
Australian clothing brand Saxony recently invited American photographer… Teru Kuwayama to Australia. He’s spent much of the last decade documenting life and war in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Kashmir: I spent time with Kuwayama in Sydney and he is a humane man who has seen the reality of catastrophic Western policies in countries that need more than…
This is not the Syria your mainstream media outlet is selling you
The intrepid Patrick Cockburn, one of the finest reporters around, travels to Syria and offers an alternative view in The Independent: It is one of the most horrifying videos of the war in Syria. It shows two men being beheaded by Syrian rebels, one of them by a child. He hacks with a machete at…