Strong piece in this weekend’s New York Times by Palestinian Omar Barghouti on the logic and increasing power of BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions] against Israel: The… landslide vote… by the American Studies Association in December to endorse an academic boycott of Israel, coming on the heels of a similar decision by the… Association for Asian-American… Studies, among others,…
Showing all posts tagged United States
Why it's time for UN sanctions against Australia
My weekly Guardian column is published today: This month, the United Nations accused Canberra of… potentially breaking international law… by forcibly repelling refugee boats back to Indonesia.… Adrian Edwards, spokesman for the UN high commissioner for refugees,… said… that the international body was “concerned by any policy or practice that involved pushing asylum-seeker boats back at sea without a proper…
Why Obama embraces NSA spying
After watching the awful CBS show this morning in New York, Face the Nation, with laughable coverage of the NSA and establishment figures backing its secrecy and illegality, here’s Glenn Greenwald with a reality check on the need to push back against state intelligence gathering: In response to political scandal and public outrage, official Washington…
US media largely ignores world; citizens remain insular
The role of corporate media is to serve powerful business interest and advertisers; serving the public good ain’t really a serious consideration. New data from the US is both disturbing and unsurprising and shows even more reason why alternative and indy media must grow in power (via IPS): If people outside the United States are…
Why the Wikileaks Party visit to Syria was so delusional
My weekly Guardian column is published below: The sight of Australian citizens associated with the WikiLeaks party… sitting and chatting… with Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad… during their… recent… “solidarity… mission”, along with their comments about the regime, is a damning indictment on a party that ran a… dismal election campaign… in 2013 and has never bothered to explain… its subsequent collapse. For WikiLeaks supporters…
America's special-ops reach into every corner of the planet
Nick Turse is one of America’s most concise chroniclers of empire. His latest essay in TomDispatch attempts to gain information about the real number of US special operation forces operating across the globe. It’s a tough task but goes to the heart of what America has become: This year, Special Operations Command has plans to…
How the NSA can monitor literally every keystroke we make
An important end of year discussion on Democracy Now!, following revelations in Der Spiegel about NSA hacking into networks around the world, featuring Glenn Greenwald and the ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer:
How Israeli abuses splinters Jewish identity
Any thinking Jew (and/or human being) has major issues with the ways in which Israel occupies the Palestinians. It’s something I’ve written about and struggled with for years. Al-Jazeera journalist Matthew Cassel (a visitor to Australia in 2011 and we shared a stage talking about the Arab revolutions) has produced a moving, telling, revealing and…
Edward Snowden, in Moscow, speaks calmly about earthquake he created
2013 is undeniably the year that former NSA contractor Edward Snowden released documents to challenge the fundamentals of the surveillance state. He’s remained relatively out of the media but in this exclusive Washington Post interview he eloquently explains the importance of a free society and what unaccountable power looks like (and why it must stopped):…