Showing all posts tagged war on terror
America’s wars are outsourced so there’s much money to be made
The face of America’s never-ending “war on terror” is increasingly privatised. This Washington Post article explains just one example of this trend but doesn’t examine the lack of accountability of the practice, something I’m doing in my 2013 book and film on disaster capitalism: The rapid collapse of a U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya exposed…
The trauma suffered by an American drone operator
The life of an American drone pilot is rarely examined. This story in Der Spiegel… reveals the human cost of America’s supposedly clean war (oh, apart from the countless civilians murdered): A soldier sets out to graduate at the top of his class. He succeeds, and he becomes a drone pilot working with a special unit…
What unaccountable US torture looks like
Stunning post by Darryl Li at the Middle East Research and Information Project: Two of today’s headlines together provide a good example of the work of imperial forgetting. On the front page of theNew York Times, a… story… about the depiction of torture in the forthcoming national revenge flick… Zero Dark Thirty… shows how little debates have advanced over…
Teaching Murdoch’s The Australian about ethics and morality over Palestine part 65322
This week Rupert Murdoch’s Australian newspaper has been running countless page one stories about Dr Jake Lynch, the head of Sydney University’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, for abiding by BDS and refusing to assist an Israeli academic associated with an Israeli university. Here’s the background. Today the obsession continues with heaps more coverage.…
My Q&A with Federal Senators about Australia’s future in Afghanistan
On 4 December I went to Canberra to give testimony at the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee on Australia’s overseas development programs in Afghanistan (here’s my opening statement with links). The following transcript is the Hansard record of my statement and questions from the Senators… (they were Greens MP Lee Rhiannon, Liberal MP Helen…
My evidence at the Senate committee on Australia’s overseas development programs in Afghanistan
On 4 December I gave testimony in Parliament House in Canberra at a Senate committee on Australia’s role and responsibilities in Afghanistan after the vast bulk of Western forces leave in 2014. I submitted a short statement to the committee back in September and was then invited to travel to Canberra for a more thorough…
Everybody in the US is under surveillance now
NSA whistleblower… William Binney explains how the surveillance state is now so vast and unaccountable that every piece of communication is searchable and available to authorities. Privacy and secrecy is so very yesterday:
The American horror inflicted on Bradley Manning
If anybody doubts the brutality of the US “justice system” and the ways in which anybody deeply associated with Wikileaks is deemed an enemy of the state, the treatment of Bradley Manning is nothing less than torture. The reality of a tattered super-power. The Guardian reports: Shortly before… Bradley Manning… was arrested in Iraq under suspicion of…