Saluting Green Left Weekly’s 20th anniversary

Such alternative press is vital in an age where the mainstream media largely speaks for corporate interests: One of the despairs of our time is a corporate media that speaks for authority and power, rarely for its readers and viewers. One of the excitements of our time is the means by which we can now…

New Assange interview on Australian TV

Here’s the interview on SBS Dateline just aired in Australia. And here’s the gist of what Julian Assange said: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange says the whistleblowing website’s influence on events in Tunisia was the “example” for the political upheaval in Egypt. The material leaked by WikiLeaks which was then published through a Lebanese newspaper, Al…

What Australia knew about the Habib case (hint: everything)

Finally the mainstream media catches onto the important case of tortured Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib (who I exclusively interviewed last week): Damning evidence from an Egyptian intelligence officer that names an Australian official who witnessed the torture of Sydney man Mamdouh Habib in Guantanamo Bay has been revealed as the trigger for a hushed-up government…

Suleiman adds another victim to his list

Australian Mamdouh Habib was tortured by the US and Israeli favourite and now information of another poor soul: Omar Suleiman – spymaster, CIA ally and heir apparent to Egypt’s throne – has been accused in the interrogation of a Canadian citizen tortured overseas. The allegation appears in the federal findings from a former Canadian Supreme…

A little taste of what kind of democracy Egypt deserves

My following analysis appears on ABC Unleashed/The Drum today: An Egyptian blogger displayed characteristic humour when news broke overnight that president Hosni Mubarak would not be stepping down: Mubarak (n.): a psychotic ex-girlfriend who fails 2 understand it’s over. If Mubarak and his new deputy Omar Suleiman thought their speeches would placate the protesters, they…

Habib: my torture at hands of Egypt’s new de facto leader

My following article appears in today’s edition of Crikey: According to Sameh Shoukry, the Egyptian ambassador to the US, Hosni Mubarak has now transferred all powers to his recently appointed Vice-President Omar Suleiman. Despite a barrage of speculation that Mubarak was going to step down overnight”‰—”‰including comments from head of the CIA, which makes one…

Australia has no idea how to handle a few thousand refugees

We are led by cowards and fools, governments and oppositions afraid to treat asylum seekers as human beings. Instead of processing the relatively few people quickly and carefully, they are housed away in privatised prisons run by a British multinational, Serco, with no accountability. This feature in today’s Melbourne Age shows the disgrace: Today over…

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