Today a Muslim, Christian and (very small) Jewish audience watched the documentary about Norman Finkelstein, American Radical, and then I interviewed Finkelstein himself via Skype. It was all organised by Father Dave and held in his wonderful church in inner Sydney. Full video is coming soon of the event but Finkelstein remains a staunch backer…
Australia misses the Wikileaks story entirely
So the Australian government is not interested in investigating any potential war crimes in Iraq but the messenger who brought the news. Don’t be surprised: Defence Minister Stephen Smith says the release of almost 400,000 US documents about the Iraq War could create a security risk for Australia. The whistleblowing website WikiLeaks has published classified…
What Iraq looked like for Iraqis in 2006
The UK Guardian unpacks the latest Wikileaks Iraq logs, interactively: 17 October 2006 was a typical day in one of the bloodiest years of the Iraq conflict – 136 dead Iraqis, 10 dead Americans and hundreds of violent incidents. Watch the 24 hours of carnage unfold, log by log, minute by minute.
Don’t see Iran as freedom fighters
While Hugo Chavez shamefully embraces Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and utterly ignores Tehran’s horrific human rights record, Nasrin Alavi highlights the struggles inside Iran that deserve global support: The Iranian state has to come to terms with the reality that, a generation after the revolution, no hardline Islamic student group is (or has been) able…
Wikileaks Iraq logs show our damned contempt for Arabs
Welcome to our legacy in the Middle East: A grim picture of the US and Britain’s legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes. Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the Guardian and a number of…
How easy was that? Visit Syria and see for yourself
Behold a rarity. An Australian commentator, Richard Ackland, visits Syria and writes sympathetically about Iraqi and Palestinian refugees.
Not allowing private firms to run our brutal wars
Who can blame the Afghan government, as corrupt as it is, resisting the onslaught of unaccountable private military contractors, teams increasingly relied upon by Western states in their futile battle against an indigenous “enemy”? The Afghan president on Wednesday rejected pleas from the international community to reverse his order to disband all private security companies,…
Settlers making up crack force of Zionist racism
A country striving for peace? As US-sponsored peace talks have stalled over the issue of settlements, Israel’s national police force has revealed that it is turning to the very same illegal communities in its first-ever drive to recruit officers from among the settlers. The special officer training course, which is chiefly aimed at discharged combat…
A one-eyed view of Sri Lanka
My following article appears today in ABC’s The Drum Unleashed: A Western journalist visits the Sudanese capital Khartoum to interview President Omar al-Bashir. The reporter, after calling him “controversial” due to his “bloody” record in fighting terrorism, gives the leader a platform to explain his views and tactics. The only other voice featured in the…