My #MarchinMay speech to thousands in Sydney

Yesterday thousands of Australians marched around the country to reject the extremism of Tony Abbott’s government. I was asked to speak in Sydney to a crowd of around 10,000 people (some great photos by Jaroslaw L Gasiorek here). This video features 15 minutes of highlights (I appear at 7.24): A slightly expanded version of my…

ABCTV News 24's The Drum on asylum seekers and Indonesia

I appeared last Friday on ABCTV News 24’s The Drum (video here) talking principally about the reality of asylum seekers and why Australia’s policy towards them is based on cruelty and not compassion. In summary, I’ve long argued that Australia, as a rich nation, is making a choice to punish refugees in remote detention camps…

Welcome to the remote Curtin detention centre

The following extract from my book Profits of Doom appears in The Melbourne Review: In this extract from his recently-released… Profits of Doom, Antony Loewenstein visits the remote and jealously guarded Curtin Immigration Detention Centre.…  It’s a 30-minute drive through the desert from Derby to the Curtin Air Base. A number of signs warn us to…

What is vulture capitalism doing to our world?

My follow article appears today in The Conversation: The story in last weekend’s Sydney’s… Daily Telegraph… was stark: “[Prime Minister] Kevin Rudd will warn people smugglers he stands ready to create an island from hell in Papua New Guinea housing 10,000 asylum seekers.” The message, an “exclusive” by News Corp Australia journalist Samantha Maiden, was to inform…

Tony Abbott’s foreign policy would be as clueless as George W. Bush

My following article appears today in the Guardian: In April 2010, as the war in Afghanistan was raging and US president Barack Obama… “surged” 30,000 more troops… into the country, Australian opposition leader Tony Abbott suggested that under his leadership, a Coalition government would have considered increasing involvement. “The government should explain why it’s apparently right that…