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…
Getting the dissenting Jewish message into the Muslim world
My first book, My Israel Question, was updated and released in an Arabic edition early this year. I can now happily report that the first reviews and coverage are coming in and positive. Here’s one leading review (yes, in Arabic, use the less-than-perfect Google Translate) and a short piece here. One of the key reasons…
Tell me it ain’t so, a fair piece in Murdoch’s outlet on Palestine
Following what feels like years of comical attacks on anybody who dares breath any criticism of the sanctioned Zionist state, today’s Murdoch’s Australian publishes a response to the endless lies and explains that BDS against Israel isn’t akin to Nazism. Well, who knew? The author, Stuart Rees, sent me his original article yesterday and I…
Steady successes of BDS against Israel due to morality of cause
Omar Barghouti writes in The National: Rooted in a decades-long tradition of Palestinian Arab popular resistance against settler colonialism, and inspired by the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, the BDS movement for Palestinian rights takes to heart the words of Archbishop Tutu: “We do not want our chains comfortable. We want them removed.” By…
Vulture capitalism month is coming
In August, I’ll be releasing through Melbourne University Press my new book, Profits of Doom: How Vulture Capitalism is Swallowing the World. In the same month in Sydney (and hopefully Melbourne and overseas after that), there will be this below. Many more details in the coming while:
What’s happening at Guantanamo Bay is daily torture
Independent journalist Jason Leopold just visited Guantanamo Bay and sent this report and photos (see this link): Last week, thanks to the generous support of the Freedom of Press Foundation, I traveled to Guantanamo during the height of a mass hunger strike to tour the detention facility, along with four other members of the media.…
Obama’s war on terror could last for decades
The open-ended nature of this “war”, plus a plethora of global targets, should make us concerned. Resistance is vital. Here’s Charlie Savage in the New York Times: A top Pentagon official said Thursday that the evolving war against… Al Qaeda… was likely to continue “at least 10 to 20 years” and urged Congress not to modify the…
Our online tolerance for brutality in war
Barely a day passes when another horrific video doesn’t emerge from Syria, showing either the “rebels” or government forces engaged in some act of terrorism/death/flesh eating. The New Yorker’s Jon Lee Anderson: I first heard about the Syrian rebel who was supposed to have eaten a heart on Monday, when a friend who lives in…
The sounds from below; Omar Musa is rare Australian voice
A dear friend, performance poet, political activist, slam artist, rapper and unique Australian man. Here’s his stunning recent performance at the Sydney Opera House for TedxSydney which received a standing ovation:
Lessons in real journalism from Jeremy Scahill
The author of the New York Times best-seller Dirty Wars explains to PBS’s Tavis Smiley on what important journalism means and why it’s far too rare: Tavis:… Let me start before I get into the text, just as we’re talking about this, where it is that this commitment to being a truth-teller comes from. What in…