Salon reports: “Optics!” hissed the NATO summit staffer. “Jesus Christ, optics!” He was right to panic. It was Sunday evening, 6 sharp, the end of the first day of the NATO summit in Chicago. A swarm of global press was gathered around the convention hall’s lone display, a slick industry-sponsored video exhibit of NATO’s ballistic…
Showing all posts tagged United States
American politicians question whether Palestinian refugees are even refugees
Yet more evidence that the American Congress is a) divorced from Middle East reality and b) damn keen to do the bidding of the most extreme Zionist and racist ideas by the Israel lobby (via The Cable): Thirty U.S. senators… will vote today over whether there really are 5 million Palestinian “refugees” or just around 30,000…
Memo to media; still life and death in Iraq
Niqash reports: Iraqi maternity hospitals are seeing a new born trend: children given “neutral” names that don’t reveal their family’s religious or political affiliations. Because in Iraq, having the wrong name in the wrong place can still get you killed. On a Tuesday in mid-May the office at the entrance to the Salam Hospital in…
Future warfare will be brought to you by a multinational
Wired reports: Sure, it took an extra year or so, but Northrop Grumman has finally penciled in the first flight of the giant surveillance airship it’s building for the U.S. Army. The… Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle… —… a football-field-size, helium-filled robot blimp fitted with sensors and data-links — should take to the air over Lakehurst, New Jersey, the…
ABC TV News interview about freedom of speech in West and beyond
During last week’s Sydney Writer’s Festival, before my PEN lecture on free speech, I was interviewed by ABC TV News about the growing threat to our freedoms in the West, as governments and private companies monitor and collect our digital details: [video… ogg=”/cms/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/586444_20120517-Sydney-Writers_video2.ogg” mp4=”/cms/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/586444_20120517-Sydney-Writers_video2.m4v” width=”400″ height=”224″]
Assange interviews President of Ecuador Rafael Correa
His show, The World Tomorrow (past episodes here), is one of the most fascinating shows around at the moment (Salon’s Glenn Greenwald is spot-on). It provides a worldview largely missing from the corporate media. This week’s interview covers #Occupy, US hegemony and a changing Latin America:
What real war coverage should look like
This is remarkable. Returned US army vets giving back their medals of honour near this week’s NATO conference in Chicago. Powerful, poignant and the kind of voices almost never heard in the mainstream media. Much easier and safer to interview generals (hello ABC TV’s 7.30 last night) about a war in Afghanistan that they’ve ruined…
Thank you Saudi Arabia for expanding drone war in Yemen
That’s what a good, autocratic ally does for America; remain dictatorial while “fighting terrorism”. The New York Review of Books: The United States is quietly being drawn into an escalating conflict in Yemen. Following the discovery earlier this month of a new bomb plot aimed at American airliners, the US government has been aiming drones…