With the current Western war in Mali (in simple terms, blowback from our intervention in Libya), who and what exactly is the West supporting in the Muslim world? Patrick Cockburn writes in Counterpunch that hypocrisy is name of the game: It is a ferocious war waged by assassination, massacre, imprisonment and persecution that has killed…
Showing all posts tagged human rights
Toxic mix of American “justice” and war on drugs
I’m currently writing the introduction of my disaster capitalism book (the vast bulk of the manuscript is written and being edited by my publisher) and looking into the role of privatised prisons in the US and how the “war on drugs” has deformed the society. This short film is deeply powerful:
Documenting the unaccountable war on terror
Laura Poitras is a remarkable American film-maker who has faced constant harassment by US officials for simply doing her job of documenting the countless abuses against innocents since 9/11. Here are two short films, made for the New York Times, that are beautiful, moving and rage-inducing. This is the true face of America in the…
Former Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks details US torture post 9/11
Moving testimony on the 11th anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo Bay, a gulag that remains open to this day. Justice is yet to be done:
What blind Zionism looks like; Palestinians invisible on Birthright
Great The Real News story by Max Blumenthal and Lia Tarachansky:
ABCTV News24’s The Drum on sexism, Syria and divestment
I appeared tonight on ABCTV News24’s The Drum (video here), alongside Rowan Dean and Jacqueline Maley, talking about a range of political issues. I argued that it was legitimate for pension funds to divest from organisations or companies that go against people’s morality such as big tobacco, the thuggish Murdoch empire or fossil fuels (quoting…
Fighting the Obama administration’s war on whistle-blowers
The failure of many journalists to challenge the great war against individuals who speak out against illegality is startling and revealing of the mindset that most mainstream hacks have towards establishment power; they’d much rather embrace it than oppose it:
Al Jazeera’s Sami al-Hajj, imprisoned for six years at Gitmo, speaks out
Post 9/11 America implemented a draconian system of torture, imprisonment and illegality that continues today under Barack Obama. The story of Al Jazeera cameraman… Sami al-Hajj is shocking, a man who disappeared into a legal and moral black hole for years and now speaks exclusively to Democracy Now! in Qatar. This is what the “war on…
What the poppy trade has done to Afghanistan
During my time in Afghanistan last year I spent time with opium addicts on the outskirts of Kabul. It was a brief insight into the massive drug problems facing the country. This new book, Poppy – Trails of Afghan Heroin, looks fascinating: