Phil Shannon

  • Western terrorists' destruction and murder

    The 20th anniversary edition of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior by journalist David Robie, who spent ten weeks on the Rainbow Warrior during its last voyage, revisits the shameful story of state terrorism in the service of nuclear violence and colonialism in the Pacific.

  • Voluntary euthanasia and the hypocrisy of the religious right

    "May I wish Mr Kevin Andrews a long and excruciatingly painful life" was the response of a letter writer to the Sydney Morning Herald at the federal parliament's passing of a bill by then Liberal Party backbencher Kevin Andrews, which overturned the Northern Territory's voluntary euthanasia legislation in 1997.

  • Science without social responsibility

    The Radioactive Boy Scout: The True Story of a Boy and his Backyard Nuclear ReactorBy Ken SilversteinFourth Estate, 2004$29.95 (pb) David Hahn could have been taken for a typical US teenager in the 1990s. He loved driving

  • 'Guernica': a universal symbol against war

    "If cities are destroyed by flames, if women and children are victims of suffocating gases, if the population in open cities far from the front perish due to bombs dropped from planes, it will be impossible for the enemy to continue the war". This was German Nazi military strategist MK Dertzen's theory.

  • How Washington's 'well-trained dogs' sold the Iraq war

    Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell YouBy Norman Soloman and Reese ErlichContext Books, 2003188 pages, $31 (pb)"Circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks his whip", wrote George Orwell of journalists under dictatorships,

  • Profits fuel the 'highway arms race'

    High and Mighty: SUVs — the World's Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That WayBy Keith BradsherPublic Affairs Press, 2002468 pages, $62 hbExplorer, Patrol, Land Cruiser, Discovery, Range Rover, Jackaroo — the names say

  • There, but for my union, go I

    Thirty per cent of the US working class earn less than US$8 per hour and Barbara Ehrenreich wanted to know how these "working poor" managed to survive.

  • How racism destroyed a great cricketer

    Only one bowler has ever knocked the bat out of the hands of Don Bradman, cricket's greatest batter: Eddie Gilbert. Only 15 bowlers have ever dismissed Bradman without a run to his name. Eddie Gilbert was one of them. Yet, whilst Bradman played test cricket for Australia for two decades, Gilbert was never selected to play at the sport's highest level.

  • DHA staff endorse union-negotiated agreement

    CANBERRA &#151 By the close of voting on October 23, 93% of staff in the federal Department of Health and Ageing (DHA) had voted in favour of the department's next certified agreement. This overwhelming endorsement followed a

  • Finkelstein exposes the Zionism's misuse of the Holocaust

    The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish SufferingBy Norman G. FinkelsteinVerso, 2001182 pages, $29.95 (pb)One of the great ironies (if that isn't too kind a word for it) of the Middle East conflict is

  • Another triumph of outsourcing

    CANBERRA — Payroll services, including the production and delivery of fortnightly payslips, for staff in the Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care have been outsourced during the previous year to a private company. In

  • 'Ideological gunfighters' for the poor

    BanditsBy Eric HobsbawmWeidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000226 pages, $40 (hb)Thirteenth-century peasants are rarely the objects of Hollywood's attention. The notable exception, of course, is Robin Hood. The celluloid homage paid to Robin