The issue of Australia’s immigration detention centres is routinely misreported/ignored by corporate media. British multinational Serco runs all the country’s centres – not that you’d know that by reading most media reporting – and here’s just a few latest examples of where this information routinely lies (ie. a black hole): One: Hundreds of asylum seekers…
Showing all posts tagged Afghanistan
War crimes are the secrets nobody discusses
Sick of corporate journalists simply repeating government talking points? Are we “winning” the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? The embedded mindset is alive and well. Dahr Jamail is a notable exception, independent reporter for years. Some choice comments from his recent interview with Truthout: A3N: How do they [mainstream media] address the argument that exposing…
Wikileaks shows up reporters over Afghan war
Once again, Wikileaks is doing the job that supposedly serious journalists should be doing; questioning a nation’s war mission: The publication now over 3,000 cables sent by US diplomats in The Hague to Washington is no coincidence, Julian Assange of the Wikileaks organisation, told Nos tv on Sunday. Dutch journalists approached Wikileaks looking for information…
Notes from today’s speech in Sydney to support Wikileaks
Today’s rally in Sydney was a good event, attracting around 1000 people, all of whom wanted to show solidarity with what Wikileaks stands for; transparency and real free speech. My speech addressed the often complicity of the mainstream media in keeping government secrets away from the public. They want to be gate-keepers, close to power.…
What’s dead Afghans in the bigger picture of Afghan “liberation”?
The colonial mindset is a shocking thing to see. Here’s Paula Broadwell, a research associate at the Harvard Center for Public Leadership (her new book is All In: The Education of General David Petraeus) writing glowingly of American fire-power in Afghanistan. A “Destroying the village in order to save it” mentality. The West deserves to…
Why Wikileaks is so dangerous for the ruling class
Julian Assange speaks exclusively to John Pilger in this week’s New Statesman: I think what’s emerging in the mainstream media is the awareness that if I can be indicted, other journalists can, too. Even the New York Times is worried. This used not to be the case. If a whistleblower was prosecuted, publishers and reporters…
Killing Afghans should not be cost free
This is what can happen to a privatised mercenary in a war zone. Brutal sentence in a tough land but why should we be so shocked? If we believe in accountability, then justice must be served. Allowing foreigners to escape local laws is one of the major reasons so many Iraqis and Afghans hate the…
Two pictures of criminal US adventures in the Middle East
One: Roads, canals and schools built in Afghanistan as part of a special U.S. military program are crumbling under Afghan stewardship, despite steps imposed over the past year to ensure that reconstruction money is not being wasted, according to government reports and interviews with military and civilian personnel. U.S. troops in Afghanistan have spent $2…
Here’s an idea; let’s get mercenaries from Iraq and send them to another war
Just what the world needs; another privatised war with unaccountable players: Somalia’s transitional government is using private security firms and Arab governments to train and fund a paramilitary force to battle pirates in the region that have threatened international shipping. A lawyer representing Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG) said on Tuesday that a security contractor,…