A newly released Wikileaks cable from early 2007 shows how the US was allegedly worried about Colombo’s attitude towards Tamils from years ago and yet during its brutal civil war against the minority tacitly backed the bogus “war on terror” that saw tens of thousands of Tamils murdered. If only Sri Lanka had oil, like…
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The tangled web of so-called freedom in Libya
So here’s how it works. Find a dictator, love him then hate him, bomb him to smithereens and look for unique business opportunities. Asia Times: Think of the new Libya as the latest spectacular chapter in the Disaster Capitalism series. Instead of weapons of mass destruction, we had R2P (“responsibility to protect”). Instead of neo-conservatives,…
Hacking is moving into industrial scale
Leaking is not the same as hacking. And they’re not all created equal. Bradley Manning allegedly leaked hundreds of thousands of US documents to Wikileaks showing a litany of criminality in the “war on terror”. His act, should it be proven true, was a noble attempt to alert the world of wrong-doing and violence. Cyber…
How corporate media aims to protect Murdoch empire
A serious media and political culture would always oppose concentration of corporate interests. Alas, that does not happen and hence the Murdoch empire has accumulated ridiculous amounts of power over the last decades. It should be challenged, including here in Australia. So it’s unsurprising that the corporate press, which lives and thrives by maintaining a…
The betrayal of whistle-blower hero Bradley Manning
An interesting feature in New York magazine about the alleged leaker to Wikileaks of countless US documents. Manning is a hero because he saw American illegality in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond and wanted to act. Not remain silent. He was bullied in the US military as a gay man. A troubled soul who has changed…
Of course the war against Libya is about securing oil
And yet most in the corporate press prattle about human rights and “humanitarian intervention”. Yes, Gaddafi is a brute but that’s nothing new. “Saving civilians” is the catch-cry of those backing NATO action. But a close examination of Wikileaks documents and more honest reporting shows that Libyan oil nationalism was deeply worrying Western governments and…
Understanding cyber warfare from the other side
The US is unsurprisingly worried about cyber attacks from hackers, Russia, China or even a friendly nation. The future of warfare may well be fought in a different space altogether. But this report proves how unprepared America is for the inevitable attempts to understand its inner workings. The problem lies in how hackers are viewed.…
Some question and answers about responsibility of writers
Following my essay in the latest edition of literary journal Overland on cultural boycotts, politics, Palestine and Sri Lanka, the magazine interviewed me on various matters: Passionate and outspoken about Israel/Palestine, among other things, Antony Loewenstein is a freelance independent journalist based in Sydney. Author of My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution, he is…
On literary boycotts, Palestine, Sri Lanka and the politics of dissent
My following essay appears in the latest edition of literary journal Overland (a shorter version is published on ABC online): ”˜For thirty years the country [Sri Lanka] went through a kind of hell and endured untold economic and cultural deprivation. Now, with things looking up, we need all the friendly input we can get from…
US and West pushed dodgy election in Haiti
Wikileaks has the story, again: The United States, the European Union and the United Nations decided to support Haiti’s recent presidential and parliamentary elections despite believing that the country’s electoral body, “almost certainly in conjunction with President Preval,” had “emasculated the opposition” by unwisely and unjustly excluding the country’s largest party, according to a secret…