My Guardian book review appears this weekend: In October 2015 a Saudi prince was arrested at Beirut international airport accused of trying to smuggle… nearly two tonnes… of the… amphetamine drug Captagon… through the country. Two months later, Lebanese officials claimed to have confiscated 12 million Captagon pills heading to the Gulf. The synthetic drug, invented in 1961, has…
Please support the Disaster Capitalism fund-raising campaign
For the last five years I’ve been working on the documentary, Disaster Capitalism, partly inspired by my book of the same name released last year. I’m working with film-maker Thor Neureiter and co-producers Media Stockade. It’s a truly international team; I’m based in East Jerusalem, Thor is in New York and Media Stockade are in…
Why I was asked to join Australians for War Powers Reform
Before the 2003 Iraq war, I feared the seemingly inevitable conflict would be a disaster. Based in Sydney at the time, I watched as the general public massively opposed the impending invasion while most politicians and many in the media celebrated the prospect of “shock and awe”. The last 15 years have seen untold bloodshed…
When politicians in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea attack critics (including me)
Over the last years I’ve visited the province of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea (PNG) to investigate how a polluting Rio Tinto mine caused a brutal civil war in the 1980s and 1990s. It’s a major feature of my recent book, Disaster Capitalism, and film in progress of the same name. Locals oppose re-opening of…
Oppose Israeli occupation, face Zionist lobby tears
Australian Zionist lobby group AIJAC have been attacking me for over a decade for daring to challenge the Israeli occupation of Palestine and questioning their blind and obedient support for Israeli violence. Years ago they consistently tried to bully editors and publishers against publishing my work. It was a spectacular failure. The pro-occupation organisation is…
Remembering Australian Greens MP John Kaye
A man who died too young. John Kaye was a New South Wales Greens MP and friend. I was asked to comment about him by Wendy Bacon in online magazine New Matilda: “John was a friend, a trusted, funny, witty and principled man who also happened to be a politician. It’s hard to find that…
American radio program The Gary Null Show on disaster capitalism
I was recently interviewed from Jerusalem on this American radio program, broadcast via the Progressive Radio Network, about my book Disaster Capitalism, poverty in Haiti and the role of the Clinton Foundation.
Palestinian NGO wants to break free of foreign funding
My feature in US magazine Mondoweiss: Palestinians in Jerusalem, and the state of the city itself, are routinely ignored in much international press coverage of the Israel/Palestine conflict. While the rise in Jewish, religious fundamentalism is central to understanding the current state of Israel – a recent… Reuters report… on religious Zionism within governmental and military ranks…
How occupation truths about Palestine often hidden by politicians and reporters
My column in the Guardian: New South Wales Premier Mike Baird… recently visited Israel… and Palestine, the first for a sitting leader of the Australian state. After travelling to the occupied West Bank and seeing the Aida refugee camp, Baird… wrote on Facebook… that the situation was “heartbreaking.” He continued: “I don’t know where the cycle of thousands of…
South Sudan's death spiral
My feature in the Australian literary journal Overland: Flying into Bentiu, a town in northern South Sudan, is unnerving. The front of a broken plane, cockpit windows smashed, sits close to the dusty airstrip; long green grass sprouts around the cracked fuselage. Soldiers of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), a former guerrilla movement and…