Blowing the Whistle at Facebook
The only surprise was that it did not come sooner. Big Tech whistleblowers are not exactly running out of the offices of Silicon Valley, so it was with some excitement…
Dr Binoy Kampmark
Trump, Twitter and the Digital Town Hall
The merits are hard to stomach for partisans long jaundiced by presumption and dislike, but the cheer at the deplatforming of Donald Trump by a range of social media platforms…
Britannia Turns Back The Boats
Pushing people back across borders; turning asylum seekers away from shores. When such tactics were openly adopted and used with impunity by Australia’s navy and border force, it caused outrage…
Murderous Fantasies: The US Intelligence Effort Against Assange
If there was any reason to halt a farcical train of legal proceedings, then the case against Julian Assange would have to be the standard bearing example. Since last year,…
Trumpism with a Biden Face: US Haitian Policy
With that orange haired brute of a president supposedly ushered out of the White House with moralising delight, the Biden administration was all keen to turn over a new leaf. …
The Right to Clean Air in Jakarta
It seems utterly beyond debate but acknowledging legal rights to clean hair has assumed the makings of a slow march over the years. The 1956 Clean Air Act in Britain…
Bitcoin the Messiah: El Salvador Goes Crypto
In a particular deli store in South Melbourne, a tongue-and-cheek message is attached to the cash register. “Bitcoin accepted there,” it proclaims brightly. Naturally, it is nothing of the sort,…
Messianic Failure: Pursuing the GWOT Jabberwock
Anniversaries can provide occasions for reflection and deep consideration. Past errors and misjudgements can be considered soberly; historical distance provides perspective. Mature reflections may be permitted. But they can also…
Paul Wolfowitz: Deluded and At Liberty
It was all marvellous for Paul Wolfowitz to get on Australian television (why bother?) to brusquely discuss those attacks on US soil in September 2001 and criticism of the invasion…
Patriotic Snitch: Bob Hawke as US Informant
Larrikin is a word often, and inaccurately used, in Australian political lingo. Australia’s longest serving Labor Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, was known as one such figure. He was praised as…
Blinken Says No to Greenland Real Estate
In May, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a visit to Greenland. In a rather unedifying way, he was called ‘Tony’ by his hosts, a disarming point that was…
Droning Disasters: A US Strike on Kabul
No more profoundly disturbing statement was needed. In the dying days of the official US departure from Kabul, a US drone etched its butcher’s legacy with a strike supposedly intended…
The Neocons Speak: Afghanistan as Political Real Estate
When the tears dry, it is worth considering why there is so much upset about the fall of Kabul (or reconquest) by the Taliban and the messy withdrawal of US-led…
Amazon’s Drive Into Africa
Since 2004, Amazon has been building a foothold on the African continent. In Cape Town, it already employs thousands in a global call centre and a range of data hubs. …
Reluctant Acceptance: Responding to Afghanistan’s Refugees
Do not for a minute think that this is a kind, heart-felt thing in the aftermath of Kabul’s fall. True, a number of Afghans will find their way to Germany,…
Wounded Paternalism: Biden and the US Imperial Complex
Civilisation has tended to be seen like a gift by those claiming to grant it. It is done, in the sense Rudyard Kipling intended it, with solemn duty. It is…
The Taliban take Kabul
It unfolded as a story of fleeing. The Afghan president Ashraf Ghani, taking flight to Tajikistan, giving little clue of his intentions to colleagues. The fleeing of the infamous Abdul…
A Taste of Panic: The Taliban Continues its Advance
The historical vectors are moving with conviction and purpose; the weak and lacking in conviction are in retreat and the gun is doing the talking. The government of Afghan President…
Targeting the Medical Evidence: The US Challenge on Assange’s Health
The desperate attempt by the US imperium to nab Julian Assange was elevated to another level on August 11 in a preliminary hearing before the UK High Court. The central…
Sanitising Censorship: The Twitter-AP-Reuters News Partnership
This week, Twitter was keen to share the news about its new arrangement with The Associated Press and Reuters “to expand our efforts to identify and elevate credible information” on…
Fighting Malta’s Rule of the Jungle: The Daphne Caruana Galizia Inquiry
The Public Inquiry into the murder of the resourceful journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia handed down its findings on July 29. Firm aim was taken at the Maltese State, which had…
Rio Tinto in Serbia: The Jadar Lithium Project
The company has been looking forward to this for some time. For an outfit found wanting in dealing with inhabitants of a land whose culture it eviscerated in a matter…
Papers Instead of Human Lives: The Sentencing of Daniel Hale
In May 2019, the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, that famous bastion of anti-whistleblowing fervour, unsealed an indictment charging former intelligence analyst Daniel Everett Hale with…
Afghanistan, Failure and Second Thoughts
It is a country other powers simply cannot leave alone. Even after abandoning its Kabul post in ignominy, tail tucked between their legs, Australia is now wondering if it should…
Greenwashing the Tokyo Olympic Games
“The gap between rhetoric and reality is a persistent one when looking at the sustainability of commitments of Olympic Games hosts”. Martin Müller, European Urban and Regional Studies, 2015 The…
Pegasus Rides Again: The NSO Group, Spyware and Human Rights
They keep insisting they don’t do it. But companies such as the Israeli NSO Group are global vendors for regimes, whatever stripe or colour, for surveillance tools to spy on…
Infectious Follies: Britain’s Freedom Day
He can scant resist a slogan, but UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s insistence on describing Britain’s exit from lockdown as Freedom Day came with its usual kitschy quality. All would…
When Football Did Not Come Home
They were in with a shot. The English team, deliriously floating on chants of Football’s Coming Home, had made it to their first major tournament final since 1966. The UEFA…
Australia’s Hermit Nation Strategy Unravels
Australia, like other island states, has had spells of isolationist fancy and hermit dispositions. Protected by geography, distant and vast, the country’s first bit of legislation in 1901 was the…
The US Appeals the Assange Ruling
It took over half a year, but the US government’s case against Julian Assange continues its draining grind. Even the Biden administration, which claims to tolerate a free press and…
Thordarson’s Fabrications: Another Hole in the Julian Assange Prosecution
The tyrannical, brutal cynicism of keeping Julian Assange in Belmarsh prison remains one of the more inglorious marks of the British legal system and, it should be said, its sponsors…
Leaving Bagram Airbase: The Day the US Imperium Turned Tail
From the Bagram Airbase they left, leaving behind a piece of the New York World Trade Centre that collapsed with such graphic horror on September 11, 2001. As with previous…
The Known Knowns of Donald Rumsfeld
“On the morning of September 11, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld ran to the fire at the Pentagon to assist the wounded and ensure the safety of survivors,” expressed a mournful George…
Let the Vandalism Begin: Adani Strikes Coal
He began on RN Breakfast by claiming that he, and his company, would be open and transparent about mining operations. But Lucas Dow, chief executive of Adani’s Australian operations, soon…
The Insurgency Against Big Oil
While Australian politicians languish in a world blotched by climate change scepticism and fossil fuel love-ins, global oil and gas companies have been shaken. Three titans of oil fame –…
The Great Barrier Reef Wars
To float over such an aqueous body is to find a majestic creature unparalleled in beauty and expanse, stretching at 2,300km. There are other stunning formations on the planet, but…
Vaccine Failings: The European Commission and AstraZeneca
In the messy, underhanded world of global health responses to COVID-19 it was only appropriate that lawyers should find themselves enriched on respective sides of a dispute about vaccine supply. …
Publicity and Exploitation: Fortress Australia and the Family from Biloela
Australian officials and paper mad types are running out of ideas as to how to be cruel towards refugees. We need to give them some credit: for years they have…
Vague Alternatives and G7 Summitry: The Build Back Better World Initiative
Summits often feature grand statements and needless fripperies. In Cornwall, the leaders of the G7 countries were trying to position and promote their relevance as the vanguard of democratic good…
Less Freedom, More Money: Tony Blair’s Vaccine Passport
Sincere Tony is again on the stump, promoting his vision of how best to return to a lovely, unruffled world of capitalist endeavour, circuit lecturing and summit meetings that no…
ET, You Bore Me: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena and the Pentagon
Those of you drawing sustenance and stimulation from the traditional acronym UFO best brace yourselves. The less exciting and dull term accepted by the defence clerks – unidentified aerial phenomena…
Denmark Offshores the Right to Asylum
This has been a fantasy of Danish governments for some time. There have been gazes of admiration towards countries like Australia, where processing refugees and asylum-seekers is a task offloaded,…
Of Plagues and Rodents: Australia’s War Against Mice
Not a day goes by these days without a casual remark about animal extermination in Australia. Mice have moved to the front of the queue in terms of animal species…
Suicidal Games: Tokyo’s Coronavirus Olympics
A pandemic crisis. A state of emergency. Overwhelming public opinion bristling with alarm. Notwithstanding these factors, Tokyo is still on track to host the Olympics that was cancelled last year…
How It All Went Wrong: The Global Response to COVID-19
The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response was never likely to hand down a rosy report with gobbets of praise. Organised by the World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom…
The Gilt Comes Off: Singapore Goes Into Lockdown
A clean, technology driven dystopia. A representation of our techno future. These were the introductory descriptions to a piece by science fiction author William Gibson on Singapore for Wired in…
Elbowed and Hustled: Australia’s Yellow Peril Problem
With the babble about Cold War paranoia becoming a routine matter in Canberra, the treacherous ground for war with China is being bedded down and readied. The Yellow Peril image…
Held to Ransom: Colonial Pipeline and the Vulnerabilities of Critical Infrastructure
It should be making officials in the White House tremble. Critical infrastructure supplying 45% of the East Coast’s diesel, gasoline and jet fuel, left at the mercy of a ransomware…
Spending More On Nukes: STRATCOM’s Nuclear Death Wish
Being sufficiently able at your job is a good thing. But beware the trappings of zeal. When it comes to the business of retaining an inventory for humanity’s annihilation, the…
Going to Court: The EU Sues AstraZeneca
It has been a relationship of characterised by bitterness and misunderstanding. It began with a poorly negotiated agreement – poor, that is, from the European Union perspective – between Brussels…
Quibbling Over Cruelties: Human Rights Watch, Israel and Apartheid
Criticism of Israel’s policies towards Palestinians has always induced a defensive rage from its defenders and advocates. A Threshold Crossed, a report by Human Rights Watch, lit several fires of…
Forgetting Citizenship: Australia Suspends Flights from India
As India is being devastated by COVID-19 cases that have now passed a daily rate of 400,000, affluent and callous Australia has taken the decision to suspend all flights coming…
Joe Biden, Recognition and the Armenian Genocide
Attributing names to the brutal acts humans are capable of inflicting upon each other is never without problems. There are gradations of terror, hierarchies of atrocity and cruelty. In these,…
Ethnic Engineering: Denmark’s Ghetto Policy
The very word is chilling, but has become normalised political currency in Denmark. Since 2010, the Danish government has resorted to generating “ghetto lists” marking out areas as socially problematic…
Greed and the European Super League
Suffocating the grassroots. Mocking the working class origins of the game. World football, and primarily European club football, has long done away with loyalties in favour of cash and contract. …
Coronavirus Strikes Papua New Guinea
There was a time when it seemed Papua New Guinea had managed to dodge a bullet. Instances of SARS-CoV-2 were minimal, along with its disease, COVID-19. Through 2020, the country…
Exiting Afghanistan: Biden Sets the Date
It had to be symbolic, and was represented as such. Forces of the United States will be leaving Afghanistan on September 11 after two decades of violent occupation, though for…
Beautiful Plots: Israel Sabotages the Natanz Nuclear Facility
Over the weekend, Iran marked National Nuclear Technology Day. The stars of the show were going to be new advanced centrifuges at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant. Unfortunately, the stars…
Nimble Failure: The Australian COVID-19 Vaccination Program
“I am not going to be talking about numbers today,” Australia’s Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly told Australia’s Radio National on April 12. This echoed suggestions from the Australian Prime…
Fatuous Defence: Australia’s Guided Missile Plans
Even in times of pandemic crises, some things never change. While Australia gurgles and bumbles slowly with its COVID-19 vaccine rollout, there are other priorities at stake. Threat inflators are…
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