Kenneth Davidson in the Age gets it right: As former Liberal prime minister John Gorton said in the 1960s, too many Australian politicians and bureaucrats are infected by the puppy dog syndrome: roll over and get your tummy tickled. Not much has changed. We are seen as a loyal ally. In Washington this gives Australian…
Alliances in the name of fighting a bigger enemy
Julian Assange is currently living in Britain under the roof of one Vaughan Smith, a man who believes in a free press. More on him here: Veteran BBC correspondent Loyn, who has known Smith for almost 20 years and worked with him in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq, said Assange and Smith met “relatively recently” when…
US elites don’t want to hear about failings of US elites
This is what passes for serious commentary in the US mainstream media. Dana Milbank in the Washington Post, after smearing Julian Assange and Wikileaks – “I confess I’d like to throw a cream pie in his face myself” – doesn’t like to be told that his beloved US may not be such a fan of…
Rove and Sweden make sweet passionate love
Sweden is not an independent nation: Karl Rove’s help for Sweden as it assists the Obama administration’s prosecution against WikiLeaks could be the latest example of the adage, “Politics makes strange bedfellows.” Rove has advised Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt for the past two years after resigning as Bush White House political advisor in mid-2007.…
Leaking is a noble profession
Will Julian Assange regret being one of the key whistle-blower enablers? If history is any guide – thinking of Daniel Ellsberg and Philip Agee – don’t count on it.
Zionist separation is in the state’s bloodstream
The actions of an apartheid state with the full backing of the so-called civilised world: Israeli policies in the West Bank harshly discriminate against Palestinian residents, depriving them of basic necessities while providing lavish amenities for Jewish settlements, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The report identifies discriminatory practices that have no…
China’s black sites used and abused by private firms
The massive expansion of a privatised and largely secret world is enveloping the West. Take military contracting and detention centres as two key examples. This recent feature in the Sydney Morning Herald highlights the foul stench of unaccountable thugs outsourced by the state in China: …In Tangshan city, a middle-class woman called Liu Yuhong told…
Shut down the web or face a Wikileaks inspired future
A wonderful piece by John Naughton in the Guardian from early December that perfectly captures this Wikileaks moment: What WikiLeaks is really exposing is the extent to which the western democratic system has been hollowed out. In the last decade its political elites have been shown to be incompetent (Ireland, the US and UK in…
Finding ways to dismiss leakers in the US
A reader sent me this disturbing move from the US Senate to supposedly protect whistle-blowers but in fact is the complete opposite. Wikileaks is causing worries across the political establishment: On December 10, 2010, the Senate passed the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (S. 372) by unanimous consent. After a careful review of S. 372, the…