Oh thank you, Bill McGowan: It’s one thing for journalists to challenge the government, to serve as a check on its power. It’s another to assume a knee-jerk oppositionalism that’s out of touch with the middle register of the country and with wartime exigencies. Far from being rooted in responsibility and idealism about how our…
Showing all posts tagged United States
Cuba ain’t no paradise and the US diplomat there is pernicious
These stories, via Wikileaks, if true are rather curious for a few key players. Western states are proven once again to largely ignore human rights (money is the key factor). And Michael Moore, for a film that certainly glorified the Cuban health system, is looking a little sheepish. One: Australia, Canada and several European countries…
This is how America treats people with a conscience
The alleged Wikileaks leaker Bradley Manning is being tortured while in US custody. Home of the free, indeed: The last time Bradley Manning saw the world outside of a jail, most Americans had never heard of WikiLeaks. On Friday, Manning, the man whose alleged unauthorized release of hundreds of thousands of classified documents put the…
And nothing will ever be the same again…
Very perceptive and largely fair editorial in yesterday’s UK Guardian on the legacy of Wikileaks and the reasons for its importance: The sight of Julian Assange giving a stream of television interviews from the grounds of an 18th-century country house on the Norfolk-Suffolk borders was, at the very least, a confusion of the cinematic genre…
Prosecute Wikileaks and put reporting in jeopardy
Glenn Greenwald signals the fight: …It is impossible to invent theories to indict them without simultaneously criminalizing much of investigative journalism. … Bob… Woodward’s whole purpose in life at this point is to cajole, pressure and even manipulate government officials to disclose classified information to him for him to publish in his books, which he routinely…
Assange: “It’s not the beginning of the end but the end of the beginning”
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Our wars are being controlled by somebody else
The massive expansion of privatised military forces since 9/11 is largely unreported. Death squads paid for by tax dollars. American journalist Tim Shorrock examines this huge expansion in the age of Obama. It’s a world that is so bloated and so reliant on endless American wars that it’s no wonder the arms and defence industries…
Note to US; Australia is ruled by right-wing people
The Australian media have been plowing through the Wikileaks cables related to our country. Many interesting bits but this caught my eye: ACTIONS WORKING WELL TOGETHER 3. (SBU) One senior figure told us the factions have “never worked as well together”. He opined that the end of the Cold War had played a big part…
Freedom isn’t just a slogan on a coffee cup
Following the appearance in the New York Times of an ad sponsored by Australian activist group Get Up!, Ralph Nader speaks in support of Wikileaks and the importance of transparency in democracy. Bravo.
Dalai Lama too keen to avoid agitation with China?
Are these the kinds of comments that only an exiled leader would make? Perhaps and it’ll be certainly harden the views of many Tibetans that the Dalai Lama’s political skills have been less than stellar. Decades of talking and where has it got his people? The Dalai Lama told US diplomats last year that the…