As the Arab world erupts in revolution, I was interviewed today by Australia’s Podcast Network about what’s really happening in the Middle East and what the Western press is missing. My last interview with this wonderful website was in 2009 during Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.
Liberation for everybody (except Palestinians)
What a wonderfully mature way to support the Palestinians under occupation. Sigh: The Greens candidate tipped to take the once-safe Labor seat of Marrickville from the Deputy Premier, Carmel Tebbutt, in the state election has been targeted in a mural over her council’s decision to boycott Israel. Marrickville Council’s support for the global Boycott, Divestment…
Villawood: asbestos still present despite government claims
My following investigation appears in today’s edition of Crikey: Sydney’s Villawood detention centre contains asbestos years after the federal government claims it was managed, according to a whistle-blower working at the site. A guard hired by MSS Security, the firm contracted by British multinational Serco to manage security at Villawood, told Crikey about the lack…
Sell everything to private interests, says historian who loves war
Niall Ferguson: Privatization—a policy that has been a huge success nearly everywhere it’s been tried.
Tripoli gets privatised mercenaries at bargain prices
Really: Khamis Gaddafi, a son of Libya ruler Moammar Gaddafi, recruited French-speaking Sub-Saharan African mercenaries to shoot live rounds at pro-democracy protestors, reported Al Arabiya, citing sources in the city of Benghazi. These sources claim this knowledge because they’ve captured some of the mercenaries, who confessed their identity and the fact that Khamis Gaddafi hired…
Britain suddenly discovers that democracy is a jolly good idea?
Sure, British Prime Minister David Cameron is traveling the Middle East selling weapons of death and yet he’s also giving this curious speech about allegedly backing democracy. So I presume he’ll be calling for immediate engagement with Hamas and Hizbollah, then? Britain has been guilty of a prejudice bordering on racism for believing that Muslims…
A non-controversial proposal; Arabs have right to vote for whomever they want
Here’s to small blessings. A rather good editorial in today’s Sydney Morning Herald that calls for a re-thinking of years of imperial attitudes in the Arab world and an opening to Islamists who get elected. Bravo: The patronising orientalism that the Arabs or even Muslims in general are somehow culturally conditioned to political slavery is…
West has rather liked Gaddafi for quite some time
These were the good old days; 2005: As it struggles to combat Islamic terrorist networks, the Bush administration has quietly built an intelligence alliance with Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi, a onetime bitter enemy the U.S. had tried for years to isolate, topple or kill. Kadafi has helped the U.S. pursue Al Qaeda’s network in North…
CNN reports from inside Libya
CNN’s Ben Wedeman reports from eastern Libya, reportedly the first Western TV reporter to enter the country during the current revolution: “Your passports please,” said the young man in civilian clothing toting an AK-47 at the Libyan border. “For what?” responded our driver, Saleh, a burly, bearded man who had picked us up just moments…