The future has arrived. Another installment in the stunning Washington Post series, Top Secret America called Monitoring America, on the bleeding of the “war on terror” into mainstream US life. Often privatised, mostly secret. This is the creation of a truly all-seeing police state in a so-called democracy: The months-long investigation, based on nearly 100…
ABC TV News 24 on refugees and government failures
I was invited back on ABC TV News24’s The Drum tonight with host Waleed Aly and guests Jo Stella and ABC journalist Gillian Bradford (video here). We talked mostly about domestic politics especially asylum seekers and the parlous state of refugee policy on both major sides of parliament. I argued that Labor has spent the…
News flash: FT questions privatisation
Hold the phone. Here’s a very astute piece in the Financial Times arguing against unquestioned privatisation of everything, including Heathrow Airport. Challenging the religion of privatising the entire country is a debate too rarely had: For the world’s rising states, international airports – and indeed their national airlines (Turkish Airlines beats BA hands down on…
Bradley Manning is a hero
It takes a faux journalist to expose the deception at the heart of the US: The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c March to Keep Fear Alive
Damaged Palestinian property is never investigated
Apartheid: The Yesh Din human rights group said that in cases of settlers’ violence against Palestinians, 90-92 percent are closed, mostly because the perpetrators are not found. These figures are based on 700 cases opened after claims of violence. In cases of vandalizing or destroying property, no charges are pressed in 100 percent of the…
Assange: “What we released has moves towards a more just State”
The latest interview with Julian Assange that allows him to refute some of the almost comical allegations flying around the internet – I’ve lost count with the number of people sending me emails with “evidence” that Wikileaks is helping Israel improve its image – and outline his vision for the Wikileaks empire: Anarchist or messiah,…
Zionist violence isn’t violence at all, jokes Rudd
An editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald today that highlights an amazing recent comment by Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd showing the inherent racism of Western backers of Zionism: Rudd made a distasteful joke about Menachem Begin carrying out ”some interior redesign” of Jerusalem’s King David Hotel – referring to a terrorist bombing in 1946…
Wikileaks comes to the Murdoch bosom
From David Leigh, Guardian’s investigation’s editor: The #guardian published too many leaks for #Assange ‘s liking, it seems. So now he’s signed up “exclusively” with #Murdoch‘s Times. Gosh. UPDATE: Times journalist confirms Assange has merely provided his paper with an interview, no more.
Fatah keen for occupier to murder Hamas
What do you call Palestinians who urge Israel to bomb fellow Palestinians? Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas wanted unprecedented help from Israel in attacking Hamas during the clashes just prior to the militant group’s bloody coup of the Gaza Strip, according to a classified cable leaked by WikiLeaks on Monday. In a cable dated June 13,…
Here’s to a return to Saddam days!
This is what the US has brought Iraqis? Dozens of Iraqi writers and poets took to the streets of Baghdad Friday to protest at the closure of social clubs that serve alcohol in the capital, arguing that it harkened back to Saddam-era repression. Holding up placards with the phrases “Freedom first” and “Baghdad will not…