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…
Thanks for all the support and long may it continue
To all my readers, supporters, friends and interlocutors, thanks for all your ongoing support of my work and I look forward to continuing the relationship in 2014 and beyond. Many plans and projects on the way. Long live independent journalism.
Wikileaks Party meets Syria's Assad and ignores reality of country
It’s the first day of 2014 and what a way to begin the new year. Today’s Australian newspaper features this story on page one by Jared Owens and Rick Morton. As a Wikileaks supporter since 2006, right from the beginning… (and I remain a public backer of the organisation), it’s tragic to see the Wikileaks Party…
How Western-backed Saudi fundamentalism is causing chaos
One of the great unspoken truths of the 21st century. After this week’s shocking terrorist acts in Russia, it’s possible (though impossible to know) that Saudi Arabia may be behind the carnage (they threatened as much a few months ago). The venerable Patrick Cockburn, writing in the UK Independent, on the ominous signs of sectarian…
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…
What robust journalism should look like in 2014
My weekly Guardian column is published today: 2013 was the year of Edward Snowden. The former NSA contractor, voted the Guardian’s… person of the year… (after Chelsea Manning the year before), unleashed a vital global debate on the extent of mass surveillance in the modern age. “Among the casualties”,… writes one reporter, “is the assumption that some of…
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):…