I appeared on ABCTV News24’s The Drum on Friday night (video here). We discussed the foul use of vulnerable asylum seekers as a political tool in Australia, claiming those coming from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Sri Lanka or elsewhere are just economic refugees. The facts are the complete opposite. I strongly defended the importance of NSA…
Showing all posts tagged Afghanistan
Tony Abbott’s foreign policy would be as clueless as George W. Bush
My following article appears today in the Guardian: In April 2010, as the war in Afghanistan was raging and US president Barack Obama… “surged” 30,000 more troops… into the country, Australian opposition leader Tony Abbott suggested that under his leadership, a Coalition government would have considered increasing involvement. “The government should explain why it’s apparently right that…
News flash: Afghan war about India and Pakistan
The kind of perspective far too rarely heard in the West; William Dalrymple writes in the Guardian with an extract from his recent paper,… A Deadly Triangle: Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India: The hostility between India and Pakistan, ongoing for more than 60 years, lies at the heart of the current war in Afghanistan. Most observers in…
Definition of insanity; dumping billions of $ in Afghanistan
The West lost the war in Afghanistan years ago; now it’s just about saving face and thinking through the best way to spin disaster into a win. Better hire more PR hacks for the job. The Afghan people are an afterthought. The Washington Post on just one example of madness: Facing a tight… withdrawal… deadline and tough…
Remembering the late, great Michael Hastings, friend and fine journalist
Yesterday the world was greeted with the tragic news that 33 year old, US investigative journalist Michael Hastings died in a car crash in LA. Apart from being a fearless reporter, he was also a friend. I’m still in shock. We weren’t overly close but met years ago at a writer’s festival in Brisbane and…
First positive review of my upcoming book, Profits of Doom
In August I’ll be releasing, through Melbourne University Press, my new solo book, Profits of Doom: How Vulture Capitalism is Swallowing the World. The first (very early) review has appeared in Bookseller + Publisher,… Australia’s leading publication on the book industry:
The last thing Syria needs, or the Middle East, is more Western “engagement”
Stunning Simon Jenkins piece in The Guardian that explains why Western imperialists, of the liberal and conservative kind, just need to butt out of the Middle East: There could no more dreadful idea than to pour more armaments into the sectarian war now consuming Syria.… Yet that is precisely what Britain’s coalition government wants to do.…
Full transcript of my interview with Jeremy Scahill
Australian publication New Matilda published my interview with journalist and author Jeremy Scahill yesterday.… Our recent conversation covered many areas so I’m publishing below a full transcript of the interview conducted by phone on 15th May: Where are the main places US is using armed drones outside Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia? One area that…
Talking to Jeremy Scahill on war, drones and Wikileaks
My following interview appears in today’s New Matilda: Journalist Jeremy Scahill has spent his life exposing the dark recesses of US foreign policy. He talks independent media, drones and terror in this exclusive interview with Antony Loewenstein The Weekly Standard is the neo-conservative bible that backed the US wars against Iraq and Afghanistan and today…
Vulture capitalism month is coming
In August, I’ll be releasing through Melbourne University Press my new book, Profits of Doom: How Vulture Capitalism is Swallowing the World. In the same month in Sydney (and hopefully Melbourne and overseas after that), there will be this below. Many more details in the coming while: