East Timor

Kissinger behind 3 million civilian deaths – report

RT | May 24, 2023 Henry Kissinger, the foreign policy eminence grise who has advised half a dozen presidents, has caused the deaths of over 3 million people, according to an Intercept report published Tuesday in observation of the realpolitik strategist’s 100th birthday. While critics of the Nixon-era secretary of state and national security adviser […]

Whistleblower Relief: Dropping the Collaery Case

The Anglo-Australian legal system has much to answer for.  While robed lawyers and solemn justices proclaim an adherence to the rule of law, the rule remains a creature in state, more fetish than reality.  Had the farcical prosecution of former ACT Attorney General Bernard Collaery gone on, all suspicions about a legal system slanted in […]
The post Whistleblower Relief: Dropping the Collaery Case first appeared on Dissident Voice.

Manufacturing Savagery: US Military Training in West Africa and Beyond

On January 24th, Burkina Faso bore witness to its third destabilizing coup in less than a decade. It also marked the eighth successful putsch American soldiers launched in multiple West African countries since 2008. The Intercept reports that Ouagadougou’s new leader, Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, took part in many United States led AFRICOM (Africa Command) […]

The Conviction and Sentencing of Witness K

After tormenting the man for years, it became clear that the Australian authorities were willing to, for want of a better word, compromise.  The more accurate word would be compromising.  Instead of banishing former spy turned bean spiller Witness K to a cell and throwing away the key, there was preference for a softer, more […]
The post The Conviction and Sentencing of Witness K first appeared on Dissident Voice.

A mainstream outlet accepted my pitch on what media refuses to say about US empire – then refused to let me say it

A mainstream academic outlet called The Conversation green-lighted my article on foreign policy issues Western media refuses to discuss. With the piece ready to go live, everything went horribly wrong. This is a story about how the media works. Specifically, it’s about my failed attempt to publish an article with the mainstream media about some of the things that news outlets consistently avoid when they cover US/UK foreign policy. You’re maybe thinking, “That’s your own fault – why would you […]

Wasteful, Secret and Vicious: The Absurd Prosecution of Witness K and Bernard Collaery

This week has not been a good one for the Australian legal system.  For those who feel that an open justice process requires abuses of power to be exposed and held to account, it was particularly awful.  It began with the Q&A program on the national broadcaster, the ABC, which supposedly gives an airing to the vox populi.

Secret Trials Down Under: Witness J, Witness K and Bernard Collaery

There are few more spiteful things in political life than a security establishment attempting to punish a leaker or whistleblower for having exposed an impropriety.  Such a tendency has no ideological stripe or colouring: it is common to all political systems.  In Australia, it has become clear that secret trials are all the rage.  The disclosure of their existence tends to be accidental, and trials held partly in secret are also matters considered necessary by the current attorney general.

Timor-Leste and Australia: A Loveless Affair at Twenty

Cringe worthy, a touch molesting in sentiment: this was the celebratory occasion of the gathering of Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison with his East Timorese counterparts.  During the course of its history, the state has been pillaged and bombed, its residents massacred and its politicians spied upon.  The exposure of that seedy little matter of espionage came in December 2013, when it was revealed that an Australian intelligence officer known as Witness K had spilled the beans on how his masters were attempting to undercut the East Timorese in their 2004 negotiations for a maritime