My weekly Guardian column: Back in July, Australian Opposition Leader Bill Shorten delivered a speech… at the Australian American Leadership Dialogue at the New York academy of sciences. It was full of motherhood statements – “We are bonded, we are blood cousins” – praise for Israel’s “innovation” (no mention of the Palestinians) and clichéd rhetoric about…
Showing all posts tagged Iraq
ABCTV Big Ideas on a reporter's focus since 9/11
During the recent Byron Bay Writer’s Festival this event, broadcast by ABCTV1’s Big Ideas, was a robust discussion on the rights, responsibilities and pressures of conflict reporting in a post 9/11 world: In this session writers Abbas El-Zein, Antony Loewenstein and Washington Post journalist David Finkel deliver strikingly different perspectives on the Iraqi and Afghan…
One man's remarkable escape from ISIS
Every day we’re reading new stories about the ferocity and barbarism of ISIS in Iraq and Syria (see here, here and here). This powerful New York Times short film tells the story of an Iraqi man who barely escaped ISIS:
Inside the mind of ISIS
I’m currently in America, investigating disaster capitalism in privatised immigration detention for my 2015 Verso book. I’ve been watching a lot of cable TV (lord knows why but I’m a masochist) and it’s been ISIS day and night (apart from mostly awful coverage of the killing of Michael Brown and white blindness on racism). Fox…
Public talk on From Iraq to Gaza: The Politics of Fear
Last Friday I gave the following speech at Sydney’s… Lebanese Muslim Association forum on terrorism, Gaza, ISIS and Western governments spreading fear and anger towards the Islamic faith. Labor MP Tony Burke and Liberal MP Craig Laundy both pledged to bring harmony to the community and yet both their parties have flamed bigotry. Government surveillance is…
News flash; debating Israel and Islam is healthy sign of democracy
This Friday the Lebanese Muslim Association has organised an event titled, “From Iraq to Gaza: The Politics of Fear”. I’ll be speaking alongside many others. Daring to be critical of the dominant narrative over Palestine or terrorism has upset Rupert Murdoch’s resident race-baiter Andrew Bolt. There’s also a “story” in today’s Murdoch Australian that features…
Don't mention the Iraqi oil
Perceptive Steve Coll in The New Yorker: Obama’s advisers explained to reporters that Erbil holds an American consulate, and that “thousands” of Americans live there. The city has to be defended, they continued, lest… ISIS… overrun it and threaten American lives. Fair enough, but why are thousands of Americans in Erbil these days? It is not to…
The mess in Libya is deep warning to "humanitarian interventionists"
My weekly Guardian column: Libya was sold as a glorious, liberating war. London’s Tory mayor Boris Johnson… wrote… in March 2011 that the overthrow of dictator Muammar Gaddafi was “of course ”¦ a good idea”. He was cautiously optimistic that a Western-led military campaign would not be a “disaster” like Iraq in 2003. “What kind of democracy…
How the West has always backed brutal Sri Lanka
My weekly Guardian column: The Sri Lankan Navy band was busy last week, learning the tune to Waltzing Matilda. They played it to welcome Scott Morrison, the Australian immigration minister, who was visiting to launch two patrol boats donated by the Australian government. A photo of the moment,tweeted… by journalist Jason Koutsoukis, showed Morrison sitting alongside…
Listening to Iraqi voices when hearing about Iraq
My weekly Guardian column: Since last week’s… victories… by the militant group Isis against a weak, US-backed, Iraqi government, the same, failed protagonists from the 2003 invasion have come out of the woodwork to advocate another… military intervention. Although some journalists, like The Independent’s… prescient… Patrick Cockburn, have been warning about the… growing power… of Isis, voices on the ground are few…