In a new report by the US Studies Centre at Sydney University titled, Australia, the US, and the Vietnam and Iraq Wars: “Hound Dog, not Lapdog”, the findings are interesting: In this article, Maquarie University’s Lloyd Cox and the US Studies Centre’s associate professor in American politics Brendon O’Connor refute the portrayal of Australia as…
Showing all posts tagged Iraq
Why Wikileaks and Julian Assange are essential for functioning of real democracy
Patrick Cockburn in the Independent is spot-on with his comments about Wikileaks. Many in the corporate media have degraded themselves with petty criticisms and jealousy: As Julian Assange evades arrest by taking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in Knightsbridge to escape extradition to Sweden, and possibly the US, British commentators have targeted him with shrill…
The clueless American war in Afghanistan
An extract from a new book by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan, author of the … startling book about the disastrous Iraq invasion, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: When Richard Holbrooke became the Obama administration’s Afghanistan point man in January 2009, Summer Coish was keen to join his civilian…
#LeftTurn tackled by Socialist Alternative
The following review of #LeftTurn appears in Socialist Alternative by Tom O’Lincoln: Review:… Left Turn: political essays for the new left.Antony Loewenstein and Jeff Sparrow (eds), Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2012 Capitalism is complicated, and so are the challenges to it. So a book like… Left Turn, offering an array of agenda-setting arguments, is bound to be…
My 2012 PEN Free Voices lecture on free speech and why it matters
The following is published today as the lead piece by ABC’s The Drum: The two-hour drive from Islamabad to Peshawar is along a surprisingly smooth road. Mud-brick homes sit amongst lush, green fields. Police checkpoints are set up routinely to stop unwanted visitors. I am asked why I want to see the troubled Pakistani town…
ABCTV News 24’s The Drum on refugees and media troubles
I appeared last night on ABC TV’s The Drum (video here) alongside former Howard government minister Peter Reith and 2UE host John Stanley. The main issues were asylum seekers – I argued that neither major side of politics in Australia has any desire to alleviate suffering and seemingly prefer ways to privatise the system and…
#LeftTurn on Triple J’s Sunday Night Safran
I was interviewed last weekend, with my #LeftTurn co-editor Jeff Sparrow, on ABC Triple J’s Sunday Night Safran,… … on the book, Iraq, war, Israel, Palestine and pirates:
What’s some tortured Iraqis between friends?
Britain, spreading freedom across the world (via the Daily Mail): The Mail on Sunday can today reveal devastating new claims of abuse by British soldiers carried out at a secret network of illegal prisons in the Iraqi desert. One innocent civilian victim is said to have died after being assaulted aboard an RAF helicopter, while… …
Hands up who thinks Saddam had WMD in 2003?
Words fail (via Jim Lobe at IPS): Yes, it’s apparently true: 63% of Republicans still believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded it in 2003. That, according to a… remarkable new survey… on foreign policy attitudes of self-identified Republicans, Democrats, and independents that was noted by… Dan Drezner… in his blog today and released…
America’s drone war is all about creating illusion of global power
Patrick Cockburn in the Independent: As the US and its allies ponder what to do about Syria, one suggestion advanced by the protagonists of armed intervention is to use unmanned drones to attack Syrian government targets. The proposal is a measure of the extraordinary success of the White House, CIA and Defense Department in selling…