An interesting development that brings a necessary discussion about how the media should report a conflict. Surely it’s vital for a readership to know what’s happening inside Syria. The question is how those details are gained. Via the UK Press Gazette: A British war photographer has been told not to submit his pictures from the…
Find me a country that isn’t complicit in US rendition
Damning new report (via Open Society) reveals the extent of nations desperate to help Washington break laws and morality post 9/11. When our leaders speak about believing in human rights, the best response is to laugh in their faces. Via the Guardian: The full extent of the… CIA‘s extraordinary… rendition… programme has been laid bare with the publication…
US doctrine: “stability means conformity to US orders”
Noam Chomsky, still as compelling and profound as ever, in an extract from a new collection of conversations with… David Barsamian: Right after the assassination of Osama bin Laden, amid all the cheers and applause, there were a few critical comments questioning the legality of the act. Centuries ago, there used to be something called presumption…
Endorsement of new book, Making Australian Foreign Policy on Israel-Palestine
Melbourne University Press has just released a new book by Dr Halim Rane and Dr Eulalia Han,… Making Australian Foreign Policy on Israel-Palestine: This book examines the domestic factors that shape Australia…’s foreign policy on the Israel-Palestine conflict. These domestic factors, which include the mass media, public opinion, lobby groups and business groups are analysed using…
How #ZeroDarkThirty seduces viewers into supporting torture
Days after seeing Zero Dark Thirty I’m still thinking about its normalisation of torture. Rolling Stone’s great writer Matt Taibbi concurs in a stinging piece: Back to the “enhanced interrogation” in the first scene: conducted by chameleonic Australian actor Jason Clarke’s “Dan” character while Oscar nominee Jessica Chastain’s Maya character looks on, it’s shocking, horrific,…
Australia reinforces vulture capitalism on compliant Pacific island
Australia, like so many other Western countries, increasingly believes it should outsource government services to private companies under the guise of “efficiency”. It’s nothing of the sort and merely removes a key level of accountability. In my forthcoming book on disaster capitalism I examine the ways in which multinationals are making a fortune from asylum…
“We’re talking about the potential for a second Holocaust here”
Brooklyn College is hosting an event about BDS and a general discussion over Israel and Palestine. Freedom of speech. Academic freedom. And yet (via the New York Times): Brooklyn College, in the Midwood neighborhood, would seem an unlikely place for Jewish students to feel besieged. Nearly a fifth of the undergraduate population is Jewish, and…
If you don’t think the Israel lobby has deformed Washington, you’re delusional
This brief clip from the confirmation hearings of Chuck Hagel for Defence Secretary shows all you need to know about what can and cannot be said even in elite circles over Israel: More here.
Reflections on #ZeroDarkThirty
Last night I saw the Oscar-nominated film, Zero Dark Thirty. It’s a brilliantly made work, brutal, passionate, eerie, exciting and compelling. It’s also a shameless piece of CIA propaganda. It opens on 9/11 and frames many of the successful and failed terror attacks since then as part of one, big al-Qaeda plot, which is dishonest.…