My weekly Guardian column is here: Australia has an identity crisis that has never been resolved. Are we a US client state, happy to host any number of… American troops… and… spying assets, or a fully integrated part of Asia? Do we crave true independence, or are we happy to remain America’s ‘deputy sheriff‘ in the Pacific region?…
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Hold the champagne, but nuclear deal with Iran (probably) avoids war
Robert Fisk on the winners and those who are pissed that a war against Tehran may not now happen: It marks a victory for the Shia in their growing conflict with the Sunni Muslim Middle East. It gives substantial hope to Bashar al-Assad that he will be left in power in Syria. It isolates Israel.…
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Humiliating Palestinians as Israeli policy
Amira Hass is a leading journalist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Two recent columns show the direct and daily assault on Palestinian lives that too rarely appears in the Western press. The Israeli agency that oppresses Palestinians ‘for their own good’: And this month’s George Orwell Prize for excellence in misleading language, for rose-colored ink…
SBS News interview on Serco and G4S behaving badly in Australia and Britain
A section of my recent book Profits of Doom examines the pernicious role of British multinationals Serco and G4S. Both companies are currently being investigated for fraud in the UK and SBS TV and Radio interviewed me about both the local and global ramifications of the scandal:
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How to be a clueless fashion magazine in one easy step
How to be a vacuous and morally void magazine is far too simple. Here’s Human Rights Watch’s Iain Levine with the story: What were they thinking?… Someone, somewhere in the depths of luxury magazine Elle thought it was a good idea to feature “North Korea chic” in September’s edition of the magazine (the page… was subsequently…
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What a humanist, progressive, pro-Palestinian Jewish Rabbi looks like
Brant Rosen is that rare breed, an American Jewish Rabbi who remains outspoken about Israeli crimes against the Palestinians. He’s been profiled in the New York Jewish Forward newspaper: It was on December 28, 2008, soon after Israel launched its punishing military campaign in Gaza, known as Operation Cast Lead, that Rabbi Brant Rosen hit…
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The heartbreaking journey taken by asylum seekers
Understanding the mentality, background and reason for asylum seekers coming to Australia is vital to humanise their stories. The New York Times magazine has an incredible feature in its magazine this week, written by Luke Mogelson (background to the story here) and photographed by Joel Van Houdt, that stunningly captures the challenges, heartache and uncertainty…
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David Hicks deserves justice, an apology and compensation
My weekly Guardian column is published today: It’s hard to think of an Australian individual since 9/11 who has experienced more humiliation and abandonment by the federal government than… David Hicks. Julian Assange, who declared he felt abandoned by the Australian government, perhaps… comes close. As they both found out, an Australian passport is no guarantee of…
ABCTV News24's The Drum on Sri Lankan abuses, asylum seekers and Kevin Rudd
I appeared last Friday on ABCTV News24’s The Drum and we discussed vast human rights abuses in Sri Lanka, highlighted by the Commonwealth meeting in Colombo, and Australia under Prime Minister Tony Abbott turning a blind eye to Sri Lankan torture and abuse in the name of stopping people getting onto refugee boats. With the…