I appeared last night on ABCTV News 24’s The Drum alongside ABC journalist Marius Benson and lobbyist Sue Cato (video here). While China, we learn via Wikileaks, ignores Australia’s supposed concerns for human rights, I asked if Prime Minister Julia Gillard actually cared about human rights as there had been no public comments from her…
Orwell is alive and well in Washington DC over Gitmo
Really: Anyone surfing the Internet this week is free to read leaked documents about the prisoners held by the American military at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to print them out or e-mail them to friends. Except, that is, for the lawyers who represent the prisoners. On Monday, hours after WikiLeaks, The New York Times and other…
Lock them up in Gaza and don’t be surprised with the brutality
The recent murder in Gaza of Italian human rights activist Vittorio Arrigoni was a shock to all of us. He was killed by a self-proclaimed Salafi jihadi group. The isolation of Gaza almost guarantees some extremism, writes Jared Malsin in Foreign Policy: Beyond the tragic events of the story itself, however, Arrigoni’s death highlights a…
UN knows war crimes committed in Sri Lanka so act already
The UN-led report on the country’s civil war is clear. Death and destruction on a massive scale. Former UN spokesman Gordon Weiss in Colombo says that the UN kept quiet during the last months of the war instead of speaking honestly about what they knew was happening in the north of the country: ALI MOORE:…
Assange defended by world
Damn right: A 24-country poll found that most people believe WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange is not a criminal and should not be charged by the U.S. government for releasing thousands of secret U.S. documents. The poll by Ipsos found 79 percent of people were aware of WikiLeaks and two-thirds of those believed Assange should not…
Where is media accountability for years repeating US lies over “terrorism”?
Many in the Western media and political elites have spent years since 9/11 smearing a litany of Muslim “terrorists” because the US leaked selective information to friendly journalists and leaders. Serious questions were dismissed. The Murdoch press globally loved to hype bogus US claims about the “worst of the worst” at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere.…
Marrickville, BDS and Palestine in eyes of The Jerusalem Post
One week after Sydney’s Marrickville BDS vote, the issue continues to resonate globally. I was interviewed late last week by the pro-settler and conservative Jerusalem Post newspaper. The journalist was friendly enough but it was clear I speaking to a man who didn’t see the West Bank as occupied but merely Judea and Samaria (the…
Let’s not be surprised that al-Qaeda works with British intelligence
Oops: An al-Qaida operative accused of bombing two Christian churches and a luxury hotel in Pakistan in 2002 was at the same time working for British intelligence, according to secret files on detainees who were shipped to the US military’s Guantánamo Bay prison camp. Adil Hadi al Jazairi Bin Hamlili, an Algerian citizen described as…
Canberra wants to look tough on refugees while privatised care dehumanises all
It’s a sad sight seeing Immigration Minister Chris Bowen talking about punishing asylum seekers for his own government’s mistakes. Any chance he’d like to examine why so many refugees are suffering prolonged mental trauma under his care? Of course not. With an ongoing protest around Curtin detention centre in Western Australia, activists on the ground…