The future has arrived. Another installment in the stunning Washington Post series, Top Secret America called Monitoring America, on the bleeding of the “war on terror” into mainstream US life. Often privatised, mostly secret. This is the creation of a truly all-seeing police state in a so-called democracy: The months-long investigation, based on nearly 100…
Showing all posts tagged Iraq
ABC TV News 24 on refugees and government failures
I was invited back on ABC TV News24’s The Drum tonight with host Waleed Aly and guests Jo Stella and ABC journalist Gillian Bradford (video here). We talked mostly about domestic politics especially asylum seekers and the parlous state of refugee policy on both major sides of parliament. I argued that Labor has spent the…
Here’s to a return to Saddam days!
This is what the US has brought Iraqis? Dozens of Iraqi writers and poets took to the streets of Baghdad Friday to protest at the closure of social clubs that serve alcohol in the capital, arguing that it harkened back to Saddam-era repression. Holding up placards with the phrases “Freedom first” and “Baghdad will not…
Are journalists leaders or followers over war?
Lesson number one; never trust the corporate press to accurately report our illegal wars. The latest figures from the US media are depressing and reflect the unhealthy tendency to base coverage of war zones around Washington’s dictates. Obama says the Iraq war is winding down (even though the occupation continues) so we better move to…
David Hicks shows us what we became after 9/11
My following book review appeared in yesterday’s Sydney’s Sun Herald newspaper: AUTOBIOGRAPHY Guantanamo: My Journey David Hicks (William Heinemann, $49.95) Reviewed by Antony Loewenstein Almost 10 years after the Bush administration launched the ”˜”˜war on terror’’, the victims of the policy remain largely voiceless. The unknown number of civilians murdered by Western bombs have no…
Our wars are being controlled by somebody else
The massive expansion of privatised military forces since 9/11 is largely unreported. Death squads paid for by tax dollars. American journalist Tim Shorrock examines this huge expansion in the age of Obama. It’s a world that is so bloated and so reliant on endless American wars that it’s no wonder the arms and defence industries…
New York Times no chance of getting award for bravery
So NYTimes editor throws Assange under a bus? Of course, the Times is a Serious paper that helped the US invade Iraq so everybody should take that publication very seriously, indeed: Is WikiLeaks a media organization, or is it something else? It’s a question with important implications, given the special protections afforded the press, but…
Just watched Pilger’s The War You Don’t See
It’s a powerful indictment of journalists keen to sell war. Many reporters and officials admit they were propagandists for conflict and occupation, defending the state to get close to power and good access. Pilger weaves devastation of Iraq/Afghanistan/Palestine with reporters who embed with the state to sell the message. Little shame there. New interview with…
Greens demand Murdoch hack get a clue and fired
The following letter by Greens leader Bob Brown was sent to Murdoch’s Herald Sun newspaper: Dear Editor, Andrew Bolt has blood on his hands. He stridently insisted on the invasion and killings in Iraq which led to millions fleeing. Some of those millions ended up in the ocean off Christmas Island on Wednesday. Andrew Bolt’s…
The dirty footprints of Chalabi via Wikileaks
The role of Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi has fascinated me for years. The corporate press used him as a key source over Iraq’s alleged WMDs. Oops. Wikileaks delivers a little more: For Iraq-watchers, a tiny but enticing tidbit surfaced in a WikiLeaks cable from February 2004, 11 months after the U.S.-led invasion. It involved Ahmad…