The Middle East is changing before our very eyes and this of course worries the Western powers that have become used to dictating terms to Arab dictatorships. The New York Times has the official view. Can you feel the loss of power and prestige? While the popular uprisings of the Arab Spring created new opportunities…
Capitalism in crisis but rulers of the world whistling in the wind
Will Hutton in the London Observer: Eighty years ago, faced with today’s economic events, nobody would have been in any doubt: we would obviously be living through a crisis in capitalism. Instead, there is a collective unwillingness to call a spade a spade. This is variously a crisis of the European Union, a crisis of…
Australian liberal Zionists in turmoil over BDS and morality
The issue of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) continues to dominate the media agenda (with the Israeli occupation largely ignored). Today’s Melbourne Sunday Age has a feature on the issue and once again shows the Zionist establishment echoing anti-Semitic illusions: John Searle, president of the Jewish Community Council of Victoria, takes issue with the language…
Our world is outsourced and who cares if benefits few and far between?
The Western world is now infested with privatisation as the supposed ideal of society. In reality, the opposite is true. Take the recent report by the US-based Project on Government Oversight: Federal government employees were less expensive than contractors in 33 of the 35 occupational classifications POGO reviewed. In one instance, contractor billing rates were…
Palestine burns, Israel occupies and Zionists look to the sky over UN vote
This week (probably) sees the Palestinian Authority (PA) go to the UN and ask for something resembling statehood. It’s all so vague and so deeply troubling that too many in the Western world have blindly supported it (such as today’s UK Observer). Others, such as Gideon Levy in Haaretz, can’t understand why Barack Obama isn’t…
We cannot forget ongoing trauma in Bahrain
While Washington and much of the West turns away, citizens must continue raising their voices. Anthony Shadid writes in the New York Times: Activists trade stories of colleagues forced to eat feces in prison and high-ranking Shiite bureaucrats compelled to crawl in their offices like infants. Human rights groups say 43 Shiite mosques and religious…
How to represent the post 9/11 American decade
I’ve spent the last days at Australia’s first investigative journalism conference organised by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism, where I’m an Honorary Associate. It was called Back to the Source and I spoke on the effect of Wikileaks on modern journalism (short version; it’s major, it’s profound and the mainstream press are nervous about…
When friends are limited, Zionists make out with Christian Right
Ben White reveals Israel’s newest best friends: Faced with the increasingly difficult task of ”˜selling’ Israeli policies to the UK public, Israel’s supporters in this country are cementing relationships with some strange bed-fellows. Israeli embassy officials are happy working with groups like ”˜Mordechai Voice’, a new addition to the Christian Zionist scene in the UK.…
The silent horrors of Sri Lanka still resonate
My following book review appears in today’s Sydney Morning Herald: An insider reveals the tortuous history of Sri Lanka’s conflict. The United Nations recently released a report into war crimes committed in Sri Lanka in the final stages of that country’s brutal civil war between the Tamil Tigers and the Colombo regime that ended in…