We all know the Zionist colonies are illegal so get a bloody move on taking action against them and Israel (via the Independent): European governments, including Britain’s, have received legal opinion from a leading international counsel who argues they would be fully within their rights to ban trade with Israeli settlements in the occupied West…
My name is the US-led Afghan war and I am a farce
Via The Navy Times: The Pentagon has retained its top propaganda contractor in Afghanistan for $60 million over the next year even as the company remains under criminal investigation by the military’s inspector general and its co-owner has been suspended from receiving military contracts. The military has maintained its ties to Leonie because the company…
Yes, it is apartheid in Palestine
Gideon Levy in Haaretz: … Avi is an inspection coordinator for the “Civil Administration” – the occupation regime, to speak without euphemisms. Presumably Avi likes his job. Maybe he’s even proud of it. He doesn’t bother mentioning his last name in the forms he signs. Why should he? His ornate “Avi” signature is sufficient to carry…
ABC Radio National on free online culture
I appeared on ABC’s Radio National’s Common Knowledge program this week talking about the concept of free music and online culture: …There’s been an online debate burbling way… in the music scene, unleashed by 20 year-old Emily White who recently completed an internship at the American radio network, National Public Radio. She’d been working on the…
Wikileaks reveals; US PR firm tells Assad regime how to improve image
Via Foreign Policy: The lobbying firm that brought you a… Vogue… story featuring the Syrian first lady was still trying to help the Syrian… regime improve its image abroad two months after the notoriously ill-timed article was published and then scrubbed, as the country descended into violence, according to a document revealed by Wikileaks. The international firm Brown…
What does “development” really mean for Haiti?
Tragically, often the true definition of disaster capitalism, such as this industrial park which is already causing controversy, and rightly so. The New York Times have produced a stunning report and short film about the project. This isn’t progress:
Private eyes are watching all of us
The idea that repression only happens “over there” is a myth that needs to be constantly challenged (my recent PEN lecture tackled this). Take this (via Pro Publica): Cellphone companies hold onto your location information for years and routinely provide it to police and, in anonymized form, to outside companies. As they note in their…
There is no Middle East “peace process”, then or now
Ben White in Al Jazeera kills it: Simply put, the “peace process” is used as a substitute for international law, rather than as a means to secure its implementation. Thus… accountability… for war crimes in Gaza is seen as a threat to the peace process, while for the Palestinians to go to the UN (putting aside that…
State Department admits it’s hypocritical over Palestine
Wonderful find via Mondoweiss. Speaks for itself: … VICTORIA NULAND, spokesperson for State Department: Listen, before we leave Syria, I just want to take the opportunity, if you didn’t see it, to draw your attention to the Human Rights Watch report that was released today that identifies some 27 detention centers that Human Rights Watch says…
When “stopping the boats” is the worst refugee solution
Mark Goudkamp, from the Refugee Action Coalition, speaks to CNN and talks sense about asylum seekers: