In January, my book, Disaster Capitalism: Making A Killing Out Of Catastrophe, was published globally in a paperback edition by Verso.… I wrote a piece for my publisher’s popular blog this week on the ever-growing industry of privatised immigration: The unaccountability of privatised immigration had rarely been so brazen. Australia is the only country in…
Showing all posts tagged Iraq
Arms dealers making a killing from the European refugee crisis
My essay in UAE newspaper The National: The defence industry has never been happier. With sales at unprecedented levels – US$65 billion (Dh 238bn) in 2015, according to the… Global Defence Trade Report… – France, the United States, Canada and Britain have become global leaders in arms exports. The Middle East is the largest importing region and…
How drugs have always perverted human wars
My Guardian book review appears this weekend: In October 2015 a Saudi prince was arrested at Beirut international airport accused of trying to smuggle… nearly two tonnes… of the… amphetamine drug Captagon… through the country. Two months later, Lebanese officials claimed to have confiscated 12 million Captagon pills heading to the Gulf. The synthetic drug, invented in 1961, has…
Why I was asked to join Australians for War Powers Reform
Before the 2003 Iraq war, I feared the seemingly inevitable conflict would be a disaster. Based in Sydney at the time, I watched as the general public massively opposed the impending invasion while most politicians and many in the media celebrated the prospect of “shock and awe”. The last 15 years have seen untold bloodshed…
Middle East in Focus radio on disaster capitalism
My new book, Disaster Capitalism: Making A Killing Out Of Catastrophe, is now out and last week I was interviewed by the great Californian radio show, Middle East in Focus. We talked about war contractors making money in Afghanistan, privatised immigration centres in America and beyond:
How little we know about the Western war against ISIS
My story in the Guardian: We don’t know whether the Australian military has killed or injured civilians in Iraq, and if so, how many. Since Canberra joined the US-led mission against the… Islamic State (Isis) on 8 October 2014, the Australian Defence Force (ADF) has provided barely any information about its operations. So the new report…
What South Sudan faces on a daily basis
My Guardian column: The creaking Russian helicopter lands in an open field in remote Wai, a town in South Sudan’s Jonglei state. The sky is perfectly clear; the temperature reaches 45 degrees. Women wave the South Sudanese flag to welcome the UN’s top humanitarian official, Valerie Amos, who arrives with Unesco peace envoy and American…
UN head Valerie Amos backs arms embargo on South Sudan
My following story appears in today’s Guardian (I’m currently based in Juba, South Sudan): Valerie Amos has joined calls for an arms embargo against South Sudan, the most senior UN official to back growing international demands for action against the country as it enters a second year of civil war. “Anything that takes weapons off…
The ongoing importance of Wikileaks
My weekly Guardian column: The secret CIA files appeared just before Christmas. One detailed how CIA operatives could maintain cover, using fake IDs, when travelling through foreign airports. Israel’s Ben Gurion airport was said to be one of the… hardest to trick. The other document, from 2009, was an assessment of the CIA’s assassination program. It…
US Senate report on torture shows state violence goes unpunished
My weekly Guardian column: The details shocked. Shackled prisoners were treated like cattle, watched by their CIA interrogators. Testimony from one observer stated that men blindfolded and tied “were made to run down a steep hill, at the bottom of which were three throws of concertina barbed wire. The first row would hit them across…