Columnist Thomas Friedman – whose understanding of the Muslim world involves staying at very expensive hotels and then speaking to the doorman to sense the “Arab street” – writes yet another article that shows how little he gets about the region. Want to speak to people who aren’t just in the elites, Friedman? When I…
We dismiss Wikileaks at our intellectual peril
Last night here in Sydney I helped launch – MC really alongside author Andrew Fowler and journalist Kerry O’Brien – a wonderful new book on Wikileaks and Julian Assange, The Most Dangerous Man in the World. Go buy immediately! What was clear during the discussion was the significance of Wikileaks challenging the media class in…
America’s “love” for Middle East democracy
Completely non-existent: “No leniency [1].” That was the warning from Bahrain’s crown prince last week as government forces continued cracking down on protesters, activists, journalists and doctors. It was issued alongside yet another promise of reform by the Bahraini government. The warning was also met with silence from the United States. The U.S., which has…
How Wikileaks has opened our eyes to the world
My following review appeared in this week’s Sydney Sun Herald: Underground Suelette Dreyfus and Julian Assange (Random House, $24.95) Inside Wikileaks Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Scribe, $29.95) During a rare public appearance in March, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange told a packed audience at Cambridge University that the internet is the “greatest spying machine the world has ever…
How many times does a corporate reporter need to visit Israel to repeat its talking points?
Here we go again. A little game; how many Western “journalists” and politicians continually visit Israel on a propaganda tour? Answer; most of them. In 2009 I wrote about the Sydney Morning Herald’s international editor Peter Hartcher visiting the Zionist state and being more than happy to speak to a very select collection of people,…
Assange challenges Aussie journalist that Wikileaks has had no impact
Last night on ABC TV’s 7.30: LEIGH SALES: Commentators have noted that in terms of what the cables revealed about American diplomacy, it didn’t show anything particularly scandalous, if anything it showed that there was quite a bit of consistency between America’s public positions and their private positions, although in private of course they are…
Thinking very carefully before visiting Sri Lanka
Travelling isn’t an ethics-free zone. The places we visit are imbued with political and social meaning. Tourism in repressive states should be carefully navigated to avoid giving support to the regime (as much as possible). Sri Lanka, still in the grip of a political culture that refuses to acknowledge its massacre of Tamils and ongoing…