The failure of many journalists to challenge the great war against individuals who speak out against illegality is startling and revealing of the mindset that most mainstream hacks have towards establishment power; they’d much rather embrace it than oppose it:
Showing all posts tagged war on terror
Al Jazeera’s Sami al-Hajj, imprisoned for six years at Gitmo, speaks out
Post 9/11 America implemented a draconian system of torture, imprisonment and illegality that continues today under Barack Obama. The story of Al Jazeera cameraman… Sami al-Hajj is shocking, a man who disappeared into a legal and moral black hole for years and now speaks exclusively to Democracy Now! in Qatar. This is what the “war on…
How Obama treats Americans who dare challenge the “war on terror”
During my recent trip to Washington I met former CIA officer… John C. Kiriakou. He was friendly and generous and aware that he was facing time in jail. It’s both ironic and outrageous that the Obama administration, who has pursued whistle-blowers more than any US government in history, is happy to send this man to jail…
America’s wars are outsourced so there’s much money to be made
The face of America’s never-ending “war on terror” is increasingly privatised. This Washington Post article explains just one example of this trend but doesn’t examine the lack of accountability of the practice, something I’m doing in my 2013 book and film on disaster capitalism: The rapid collapse of a U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya exposed…
The trauma suffered by an American drone operator
The life of an American drone pilot is rarely examined. This story in Der Spiegel… reveals the human cost of America’s supposedly clean war (oh, apart from the countless civilians murdered): A soldier sets out to graduate at the top of his class. He succeeds, and he becomes a drone pilot working with a special unit…
What unaccountable US torture looks like
Stunning post by Darryl Li at the Middle East Research and Information Project: Two of today’s headlines together provide a good example of the work of imperial forgetting. On the front page of theNew York Times, a… story… about the depiction of torture in the forthcoming national revenge flick… Zero Dark Thirty… shows how little debates have advanced over…
Teaching Murdoch’s The Australian about ethics and morality over Palestine part 65322
This week Rupert Murdoch’s Australian newspaper has been running countless page one stories about Dr Jake Lynch, the head of Sydney University’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, for abiding by BDS and refusing to assist an Israeli academic associated with an Israeli university. Here’s the background. Today the obsession continues with heaps more coverage.…
My Q&A with Federal Senators about Australia’s future in Afghanistan
On 4 December I went to Canberra to give testimony at the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee on Australia’s overseas development programs in Afghanistan (here’s my opening statement with links). The following transcript is the Hansard record of my statement and questions from the Senators… (they were Greens MP Lee Rhiannon, Liberal MP Helen…