I appeared on ABCTV News 24’s The Drum last night (video here) talking refugees and the mass killings in Norway. I argued that the Australian government’s refugee swap deal with Malaysia was nothing more than an attempted political fix to allow Julia Gillard to say she’s stopped the boats. But the human rights conditions in…
Sick Zionists find way to damn Muslims and racial diversity in wake of Norwegian tragedy
This Jerusalem Post editorial on the massacre in Norway takes a revealing line; multiculturalism has failed, Muslims are a problem and only ethically-pure states (like Israel) are the way to go. Welcome to mainstream Zionist thinking: Europe’s fringe right-wing extremists present a real danger to society. But Oslo’s devastating tragedy should not be allowed to…
US wastes billions on dodgy contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan
The future of Western warfare is corporations making billions on the suffering of citizens under occupation: The United States has wasted some $34 billion on service contracts with the private sector in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a study being finalized for Congress. The findings by a bipartisan congressional commission were confirmed…
Hacking is moving into industrial scale
Leaking is not the same as hacking. And they’re not all created equal. Bradley Manning allegedly leaked hundreds of thousands of US documents to Wikileaks showing a litany of criminality in the “war on terror”. His act, should it be proven true, was a noble attempt to alert the world of wrong-doing and violence. Cyber…
Poor little Murdoch hacks don’t like being challenged
Get used to it. Wendy Bacon, professor of journalism at the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism at the University of Technology, Sydney, writes today that the empire is feeling real pressure for the first time in living memory: On Thursday, with News Corporation awash in allegations of criminality and failed corporate governance, I sent an…
The Guardian’s Nick Davies on how Murdoch punishes friends and enemies
Speaking on Democracy Now!: JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Nick Davies, many of us here in the United States who watched the hearings this week were really surprised at the extent to which the members of Parliament really were dogged in their questioning and fairly confrontational in their questioning. Could you explain to us the degree of…
So this is the culture inside News Limited
As the Australian Murdoch empire begin a comical defence of its glorious and ethical journalistic traditions – “What? Us? With an agenda? We’re just here to hold governments to account!” – a far more honest account of life inside the empire by Michael Williams, Senior Lecturer Print and Online Journalism at the University of Central…
This is what Iraqis have been given; unaccountable mercenaries
Sigh: By January 2012, the State Department will do something it’s never done before: command a mercenary army the size of a heavy combat brigade. That’s the plan to provide security for its diplomats in Iraq once the U.S. military withdraws. And no one outside State knows anything more, as the department has gone to…
The glorious Afghan war is money down the drain (into the pockets of thugs)
This is what US/Australian/British liberation looks like: A lack of U.S. coordination compounded by Afghan foot-dragging has stymied efforts to track billions of aid dollars poured into Afghanistan’s economy in the past decade, providing potential opportunities to launder money and finance the insurgency, according to Afghan officials and a new U.S. government audit. The audit,…