I appeared last night on ABC TV News24’s The Drum (video here) alongside ABC’s Stephen Long and The Australian’s… Adam Creighton. We talked about asylum seekers – I argued that keeping refugees for longer in detention will only benefit the private contractor Serco and worsen the mental health of both staff and detainees. Regarding austerity in…
Canberra Times review #LeftTurn
Co-editors of the book, Jeff Sparrow and yours truly, will be speaking Wednesday night at the Australian National University in an event co-sponsored by the Canberra Times. Contributor Wendy Bacon will be joining us. On Thursday night Jeff and I will be appearing at Gleebooks in Sydney along Tad Tietze and Larissa Behrendt. Next week…
Classic example of how not to undermine serious human rights reporting
The role of the mainstream media in reporting hard news while also taking compromising advertising is an intriguing one. The Guardian recently discovered this and mis-fired badly. To its credit, they’ve now run this strong piece by Chris Elliot, the Readers Editor: Sri Lanka‘s civil war, in which tens of thousands of people were killed…
Saudis can show talent (but without music, women or soul)
America must be so proud of its dutiful client state, Saudi Arabia (via Yahoo! News): A… Saudi city… known for its ultra-conservatism has created its own version of the “Arabs Got Talent”… television reality… show, but with no music and women banned from taking part. Instead, competitors will be permitted to perform religious chants, recite poems and engage in…
Canberra not exactly building a Blackwater army (is it?)
This is an interesting story in Melbourne’s Herald Sun but is the Australian government really hiring foreign mercenaries, men who operate beyond the law? Australia is boosting its ranks with foreign soldiers by offering cash bonuses of up to $200,000 and fast-tracked citizenship. Veterans have hit out at hiring “mercenaries” from countries such as America,…
Is following officials into the toilet too close for reporters to go to get the “story”?
Since 9/11, and certainly long before, there’s been a dangerous tendency for many in the corporate media to be psychologically embedded with governments to report sympathetically on matters of war. It’s an issue I discuss in #LeftTurn. There’s a great column by Salon’s Glenn Greenwald in the Guardian that highlights similar questions: Over the past…
America’s drone war is all about creating illusion of global power
Patrick Cockburn in the Independent: As the US and its allies ponder what to do about Syria, one suggestion advanced by the protagonists of armed intervention is to use unmanned drones to attack Syrian government targets. The proposal is a measure of the extraordinary success of the White House, CIA and Defense Department in selling…
Shock! Horror! Arabs may get the same rights as Jews
True democracy for all Palestinians and Israelis is a threat to Zionism. Don’t take my word for it, read this: Former Shin Bet chief Yaakov Peri is warning that deadlocked peace talks could open the door for a new intifada or a terror wave. Speaking at a cultural event in Kfar Saba on Saturday, Peri…
