Indonesia is the world’s biggest Muslim country and strongly pro-Palestine. However, very few critical Jewish voices are heard there so during my various visits I often speak about the long history of Jewish dissent over Israel/Palestine (this featured in a Jakarta Post article in late 2023). Today the same columnist, Julia Suryakusuma, has written a…
Showing all posts tagged Indonesia
Talking Israel/Palestine post 7 October in Bali, Indonesia
I was recently a guest at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali, Indonesia. One of my sessions, to a packed house, was discussing Israel/Palestine post 7 October. Here’s the official description: Hear from Middle East experts Michael Vatikiotis and Antony Loewenstein as they shed light on a relentless and deadly conflict that has…
The Jakarta Post on the Palestine lab
In late October, a columnist for The Jakarta Post newspaper in Indonesia, Julia Suryakusuma, wrote a column about my new book, The Palestine Laboratory, while I was in Ubud, Bali for the writer’s festival. In the world’s biggest Muslim country, the book has wide resonance including around Indonesia’s use of Israeli surveillance equipment (detailed in…
CNBC Indonesia examines the Palestine lab
I was recently in Bali, Indonesia for the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival speaking on a range of issues from AI to Palestine and authoritarianism to Chinese literature. Just before I arrived, this story appeared in CNBC Indonesia by Arrijal Rachman on Israel’s occupation of Palestine and my book, The Palestine Laboratory. Read the whole…
Ubud Writer’s Festival event on Pills, Powder and Smoke
I was invited to this year’s Ubud Writer’s Festival in Bali, Indonesia, one of the best literary festivals in the world. I attended twice more than a decade ago (and had extraordinary experiences in the Muslim-majority province, Aceh). This year, now run online, is a session about my drug war book, Pills, Powder and Smoke: Inside the Bloody War on Drugs, in conversation with…
Why Western leaders love dictatorships
My weekly Guardian column: Western-friendly dictators can die in peace, knowing they’ll be lauded as soon as they stop breathing. So it was for Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew, who recently passed away at the age of 91. Tributes poured in from across the globe. Barack Obama called him “visionary” while Australian prime minister…
Gough Whitlam was a giant but Timor is a shameful blindspot
My weekly Guardian column: After yesterday’s state memorial service, the beatification of former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam is complete. His domestic policies were rightly praised for dragging the country into a more enlightened age (although the project is far from complete) but since his death in October there’s been curiously little written about his foreign…
ABCTV New24's The Drum on ISIS, terrorism and Gough Whitlam
Last night I appeared on ABCTV News24’s The Drum talking about ISIS, terrorism and Gough Whitlam’s collusion in the occupation of East Timor:
How US/Australia intelligence collusion rightly concerns Asia
My weekly Guardian column is here: Australia has an identity crisis that has never been resolved. Are we a US client state, happy to host any number of… American troops… and… spying assets, or a fully integrated part of Asia? Do we crave true independence, or are we happy to remain America’s ‘deputy sheriff‘ in the Pacific region?…
Why tackling fossil fuel corporations is vital for the planet
My weekly Guardian column is published today: The viability of a fossil fuel future is rarely connected to the human rights abuses required to sustain it. How often do we think about where oil and gas is obtained? Are the Europeans or Americans any more aware? This deliberate depoliticisation of our energy present, by the…