Jane Mayer in the New Yorker teases out the issues: There are some disturbing similarities between the Obama white paper and the Bush torture memos. Both use slippery legal language to parse dark government programs. Both have been deliberately hidden from public and even congressional oversight. And both involve the blurring of C.I.A. and military…
Showing all posts tagged war on terror
Life today in blighted Iraq
Australian film-maker David Bradbury and Australian writer and activist Donna Mulhearn are currently in Iraq witnessing the devastation that the West has bought in the last decade. Here’s a message from Bradbury in the city of Fallujah: Met two very interesting women doctors today. Dr Samira is the doctor at the frontline of birth defects…
ABC AM Radio challenging incestuous relationship between Israel and Australia
I was interviewed by ABC AM Radio this morning (which has already generated some hate mail, so thank you Australian Jewry): ELIZABETH JACKSON: The revelation this week by the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent program that Melbourne man Ben Zygier was Israel’s “prisoner X” have thrown light on some of the most secretive workings of the Jewish…
The normalisation of Israeli criminality
The latest developments in the case of Prisoner X continues to reverberate around the world (though as many Palestinians are rightly say, where’s the equal attention on the countless Palestinians held for years illegally in Israel’s administrative detention system?) Some of the latest on Prisoner X here, here and here. The New York Times: The…
Reuters TV on prisoner x, Mossad spies and Israeli intelligence
Here’s my interview (it was much longer in reality but the magic of editing!) on Reuters TV (via the Guardian) talking about the unhealthily close relationship between Israel, America and Australia and the often illegal and covert activities in which they engage:
Countless CIA prisoners still missing
The Obama administration may talk about resetting America’s behaviour after the extremism of the Bush years but there’s copious evidence to the contrary. Take this from Pro Publica: In one of President Barack Obama first acts in the White House, he ordered the closure of the CIA’s so-called “black-site” prisons, where terror suspects had been…
How war language has infected Afghanistan
Moving story by Habib Zahori, a reporter for The New York Times’s Kabul bureau. During my visit to the country last year I constantly heard how the war consumed the lives of most Afghans, though I deeply respected the individuals who tried and not let it control their lives: It is a cliché anymore to…
Resisting America’s endless war should be key task of the Left
The general failure of the Left to oppose Barack Obama’s endless war policies, including the use of drones, shows how tribal and fickle much of the progressive side of politics really is. MSNBC’s Chris Hayes is a notable exception: Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy So is The Nation’s…
Obama admin as secretive as Bush admin over legal reasons for killing “enemies”
Good editorial by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that challenges the dictatorial style of government in Washington that provides little or no reason why America has the right to murder its own citizens by drone strike: Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy