The wonderful US independent journalist Alexa O’Brien is currently in Australia (she appeared this week at the Sydney Opera House with Julian Assange, Glenn Greenwald and others). I spoke to her at a public event in Sydney about her coverage of the Chelsea Manning trial, dissent in America, Barack Obama’s war on whistle-blowers and threats…
Calling US Middle East "peace process" the farce that it is
Great piece by Bill Van Esveld, a Middle East researcher at Human Rights Watch based in Jerusalem, published in The Hill: Twenty years ago, Israeli and Palestinian leaders signed the Oslo accords on the White House lawn, opening the “peace process” that the US is trying to reinvigorate. Yet the Obama administration has failed to…
Earth to New York Times; you don't have a monopoly on stories
The Guardian recently published a stunning story, via Edward Snowden, of overly close intelligence sharing between America and Israel. The New York Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan reveals a shocking lack of news judgement by the paper and a sense that unless big stories are found and broken by them, well, don’t bother looking to…
ABC Sunday Nights interview on For God's Sake
My recent book, For God’s Sake, tackles religion, faith and politics. Last Sunday all the contributors were interviewed by ABC Radio’s… Sunday Night: Sunday Nights takes on the world’s biggest religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam and, what some refer to as a kind of religion, Atheism. A recent book, For God’s Sake, features representatives from each of…
Assange, Greenwald, Coombs, O'Brien, Manne and Keane on mass surveillance
Last night at the Sydney Opera House I witnessed a truly unique event. 1.5 hour discussion with Wikileaks’ Julian Assange, The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald, indy reporter and key documenter of the Chelsea Manning trial Alexa O’Brien (with whom I did an event tonight… on Manning and dissent), Manning lawyer David Coombs, academic Robert Manne and moderator…
The eternal paradox at the heart of Zionism
The always insightful Israeli historian Ilan Pappe … (who endorsed my first book, My Israel Question) on where to from here for Israel and Palestine: The recent attempt to revive the peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians is not likely to produce more meaningful results than that of any of the previous attempts. It comes…
ABCTV News 24's The Drum on asylum seekers and Indonesia
I appeared last Friday on ABCTV News 24’s The Drum (video here) talking principally about the reality of asylum seekers and why Australia’s policy towards them is based on cruelty and not compassion. In summary, I’ve long argued that Australia, as a rich nation, is making a choice to punish refugees in remote detention camps…
America happy to share raw intel with fellow occupier Israel
A killer story (and yet more evidence that the revelations from Edward Snowden are undeniably in the public interest). This is by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Ewen MacAskill in The Guardian: The National Security Agency routinely shares raw intelligence data withIsrael… without first sifting it to remove information about US citizens,… a top-secret document provided to…
Where to now for the Australian Left?
My following column appears in the Guardian today: Treating voters with contempt is the perfect way for the left to guarantee itself permanent exile from the political scene. On election night, Melbourne writer Catherine Deveny… tweeted: “This is win for racists, morons, homophobes, fuckheads, jumped up bogans, misogynists, billionaires, haters, comedians.” Such sentiments might momentarily make…