I was a guest on last night’s ABCTV News 24’s The Drum alongside Sue Cato and the Daily Telegraph’s Joe Hilderbrand (video here). One of the main areas of discussion was the Egyptian revolution and just how good it felt. I argued that it was vital for us in the West to understand that Egypt’s…
Showing all posts tagged al-Qaeda
Exclusive: Mamdouh Habib interview on new US/Israeli Egyptian pet Omar Suleiman
Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib was captured and tortured in the years after September 11 in both Egypt and Guantanamo Bay. For years, “war on terror” supporters defamed Habib and claimed he was lying about his allegations of mistreatment. However last year in just one case against the Australian Murdoch press, he won a small victory:…
If we had a serious debate about Afghanistan
This would be front-page news: The central justification of the U.S.-NATO war against the Afghan Taliban – that the Taliban would allow al Qaeda to return to Afghanistan – has been challenged by new historical evidence of offers by the Taliban leadership to reconcile with the Hamid Karzai government after the fall of the Taliban…
Yes, Murdoch paper makes up stories
What a shock: The Sun has owned up to what I guess we in the journalism trade realised the moment we saw it – its splash about the pre-Christmas live episode Coronation Street being targeted by al-Qaeda was false.
David Hicks shows us what we became after 9/11
My following book review appeared in yesterday’s Sydney’s Sun Herald newspaper: AUTOBIOGRAPHY Guantanamo: My Journey David Hicks (William Heinemann, $49.95) Reviewed by Antony Loewenstein Almost 10 years after the Bush administration launched the ”˜”˜war on terror’’, the victims of the policy remain largely voiceless. The unknown number of civilians murdered by Western bombs have no…
So that’s why many resent Wikileaks
Glorious understatement by David Rieff: …The back-story of Wikileaks is not that American diplomacy is threatened or that Al Qaeda has been strengthened but that American diplomats have lost face, and American policy intellectuals have been confronted by an existential threat to their priestly monopoly on inside information. Oh, the pity of it!
A disaster aka Afghanistan
The kind of letter that Western leaders need to read and appreciate. As the war in Afghanistan fails tragically, blood is on their hands for continuing to pursue imperial policies in a broken land: To the President of the United States: Mr. President, We have been engaged and working inside Afghanistan, some of us for…
How dare anybody accuse Australia of acting illegally in war?
Following my lead story in Crikey yesterday on the role of Australian troops in US-led assassination squads, the following responses appear today. For the record, a number of people have contacted me since publication and confirmed the allegations in the story. Much more in the coming years: Neil James, Executive Director, Australia Defence Association: As…
Australian unions, Paul Howes, BDS and loving Israel
My following investigation appears in today’s edition of Crikey: The Middle East “quagmire” is largely “the fault of Israel”, according to Paul Howes, national secretary of the Australian Workers Union (AWU). In an interview with Crikey, the author of Confessions of a Faceless Man said that he was a “critical friend of Israel” and the…
Western politicians prefer to ignore Israel’s inherent racism
My following article appears in today’s Sydney Morning Herald: Imagine a mainstream Australian politician saying that Aborigines should be banned from leading tourists around Uluru because they might “present anti-Australian positions” to visitors. The outcry would be furious. But a bill is currently before the Israeli Knesset, led by a parliamentarian from the “moderate” Kadima…