Best-selling journalist Antony Loewenstein trav­els across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Haiti, Papua New Guinea, the United States, Britain, Greece, and Australia to witness the reality of disaster capitalism. He discovers how companies such as G4S, Serco, and Halliburton cash in on or­ganized misery in a hidden world of privatized detention centers, militarized private security, aid profiteering, and destructive mining.

Disaster has become big business. Talking to immigrants stuck in limbo in Britain or visiting immigration centers in America, Loewenstein maps the secret networks formed to help cor­porations bleed what profits they can from economic crisis. He debates with Western contractors in Afghanistan, meets the locals in post-earthquake Haiti, and in Greece finds a country at the mercy of vulture profiteers. In Papua New Guinea, he sees a local commu­nity forced to rebel against predatory resource companies and NGOs.

What emerges through Loewenstein’s re­porting is a dark history of multinational corpo­rations that, with the aid of media and political elites, have grown more powerful than national governments. In the twenty-first century, the vulnerable have become the world’s most valu­able commodity. Disaster Capitalism is published by Verso in 2015.

Profits_of_doom_cover_350Vulture capitalism has seen the corporation become more powerful than the state, and yet its work is often done by stealth, supported by political and media elites. The result is privatised wars and outsourced detention centres, mining companies pillaging precious land in developing countries and struggling nations invaded by NGOs and the corporate dollar. Best-selling journalist Antony Loewenstein travels to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Haiti, Papua New Guinea and across Australia to witness the reality of this largely hidden world of privatised detention centres, outsourced aid, destructive resource wars and militarized private security. Who is involved and why? Can it be stopped? What are the alternatives in a globalised world? Profits of Doom, published in 2013 and released in an updated edition in 2014, challenges the fundamentals of our unsustainable way of life and the money-making imperatives driving it. It is released in an updated edition in 2014.
forgodssakecover Four Australian thinkers come together to ask and answer the big questions, such as: What is the nature of the universe? Doesn't religion cause most of the conflict in the world? And Where do we find hope?   We are introduced to different belief systems – Judaism, Christianity, Islam – and to the argument that atheism, like organised religion, has its own compelling logic. And we gain insight into the life events that led each author to their current position.   Jane Caro flirted briefly with spiritual belief, inspired by 19th century literary heroines such as Elizabeth Gaskell and the Bronte sisters. Antony Loewenstein is proudly culturally, yet unconventionally, Jewish. Simon Smart is firmly and resolutely a Christian, but one who has had some of his most profound spiritual moments while surfing. Rachel Woodlock grew up in the alternative embrace of Baha'i belief but became entranced by its older parent religion, Islam.   Provocative, informative and passionately argued, For God's Sake, published in 2013, encourages us to accept religious differences, but to also challenge more vigorously the beliefs that create discord.  
After Zionism, published in 2012 and 2013 with co-editor Ahmed Moor, brings together some of the world s leading thinkers on the Middle East question to dissect the century-long conflict between Zionism and the Palestinians, and to explore possible forms of a one-state solution. Time has run out for the two-state solution because of the unending and permanent Jewish colonization of Palestinian land. Although deep mistrust exists on both sides of the conflict, growing numbers of Palestinians and Israelis, Jews and Arabs are working together to forge a different, unified future. Progressive and realist ideas are at last gaining a foothold in the discourse, while those influenced by the colonial era have been discredited or abandoned. Whatever the political solution may be, Palestinian and Israeli lives are intertwined, enmeshed, irrevocably. This daring and timely collection includes essays by Omar Barghouti, Jonathan Cook, Joseph Dana, Jeremiah Haber, Jeff Halper, Ghada Karmi, Antony Loewenstein, Saree Makdisi, John Mearsheimer, Ahmed Moor, Ilan Pappe, Sara Roy and Phil Weiss.
The 2008 financial crisis opened the door for a bold, progressive social movement. But despite widespread revulsion at economic inequity and political opportunism, after the crash very little has changed. Has the Left failed? What agenda should progressives pursue? And what alternatives do they dare to imagine? Left Turn, published by Melbourne University Press in 2012 and co-edited with Jeff Sparrow, is aimed at the many Australians disillusioned with the political process. It includes passionate and challenging contributions by a diverse range of writers, thinkers and politicians, from Larissa Berendht and Christos Tsiolkas to Guy Rundle and Lee Rhiannon. These essays offer perspectives largely excluded from the mainstream. They offer possibilities for resistance and for a renewed struggle for change.
The Blogging Revolution, released by Melbourne University Press in 2008, is a colourful and revelatory account of bloggers around the globe why live and write under repressive regimes - many of them risking their lives in doing so. Antony Loewenstein's travels take him to private parties in Iran and Egypt, internet cafes in Saudi Arabia and Damascus, to the homes of Cuban dissidents and into newspaper offices in Beijing, where he discovers the ways in which the internet is threatening the ruld of governments. Through first-hand investigations, he reveals the complicity of Western multinationals in assisting the restriction of information in these countries and how bloggers are leading the charge for change. The blogging revolution is a superb examination about the nature of repression in the twenty-first century and the power of brave individuals to overcome it. It was released in an updated edition in 2011, post the Arab revolutions, and an updated Indian print version in 2011.
The best-selling book on the Israel/Palestine conflict, My Israel Question - on Jewish identity, the Zionist lobby, reporting from Palestine and future Middle East directions - was released by Melbourne University Press in 2006. A new, updated edition was released in 2007 (and reprinted again in 2008). The book was short-listed for the 2007 NSW Premier's Literary Award. Another fully updated, third edition was published in 2009. It was released in all e-book formats in 2011. An updated and translated edition was published in Arabic in 2012.

Israeli writes to South Sudan’s President about use of deadly weapons

Eitay Mack is an Israeli lawyer who campaigns publicly against his country’s weapon’s industry. In recent times he’s focused on South Sudan and its use and abuse of Israeli arms. The connection between Israel and South Sudan is shown in this recent photo during South Sudan’s 4th anniversary “celebration” in Israel. This story in Haaretz (use Google Translate) explains the moral vacuum in which this relationship operates. 

Today Mack sent the following letter to South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir:

August 9 2015

Mr. Salva Kiir

President of South Sudan

Re: Israeli defense exports to South Sudan

Greetings

  1. I am a human rights advocate working to increase the transparency and public oversight of Israel’s defense export.
  2. In May of this year, Knesset Member Tamar Zandberg of the Meretz party wrote to the Minister of Defense demanding that permits for the Israeli defense export to south Sudan be cancelled or frozen, for fear that it would be used in or abet the perpetration of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the civil war in your country. A legal opinion which I wrote was attached to Ms. Zandberg’s letter. Documents cited in that opinion make it unambiguously clear that actors in the civil war, including your government, are committing war crimes, crimes against humanity and grave violations of human rights.
  3. Recently, a new round of conciliation talks has begun in Addis Ababa under the auspices of IGAD. Previous attempts to achieve peace have failed, because of the vain belief of both your government and the leaders of the opposition that the struggle can be won on the battlefield. These beliefs have failed to prove themselves during the 19 months of ongoing, bloody warfare. Frustration over the inability to achieve victory on the battlefield has led both your government and the leaders of the opposition to adopt an alternative strategy of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity against civilians identified with the enemy side.
  4. The international community has set August 17 2015 as the deadline for the attainment of a political compromise. Much is at stake in the current round of talks: The future of South Sudan, which is on the brink of reaching the point of no return in the descent into becoming a failed state; the future of millions of suffering citizens whose tribulations are a matter of indifference to their leaders; the famine spread with the onset of the rainy season; the sanctions that can be expected to be imposed on South Sudan if the talks fail.
  5. As is known, Israel is among the few states that have continued to extend military aid to your government, despite the crimes it is committing against its citizens. There are reasons for the lack of transparency in Israel’s involvement in South Sudan, and why it does not boast about it: It is clear to the government of Benjamin Netanyahu that the exposure of its role would cause Israel a great deal of embarrassment and elicit condemnation from its closest allies. This is especially so in the light of the embargo imposed by the European Union and the cessation of American military assistance to your government.
  6. As an Israeli citizen, I am hereby warning your government that it will not be worth its while to rely on the continued supply of military exports from Israel. Despite the efforts of the Netanyahu government to silence the public discussion of the matter in Israel, the majority of the Israeli public is opposed to the export of weapons during a civil war to a government that is perpetrating war crimes and crimes against humanity. Since Israel is a democracy, and the continued supply of arms to your government goes against the will of the Israeli citizenry, the future of that supply is now in doubt, and will presumably come to an end sooner or later. The demonstrations that Israeli citizens have held outside the home of your government’s ambassador and outside the arms exhibit in Tel Aviv at which a South Sudanese military delegation was invited, were only the preliminaries to public and political pressure that is likely to increase against the continued supply of Israeli military exports to your government.
  7. In view of the above, allow me to suggest that as part of your considerations over whether to reach a political compromise in the Addis Ababa talks, that you should take into account that your government cannot rely anymore on the continued supply of military exports from Israel.
  8. It is clear to all that the only possible solution to the civil war in South Sudan is negotiation, and that continuing the fighting will not give the young nation any hope for its future. Of course, any political solution will have to include prosecution with the full force of the law of those responsible for the crimes committed by both of the warring sides, as well as those countries and actors who abetted the crimes by supplying military exports to your government and the opposition forces.

Sincerely,

Eitay Mack, Advocate.

CC.: Ms. Tsippi Hotobely, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs

Lt.-Gen. (Res.) Moshe Ayalon, Minister of Defense

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August 10th, 2015 in Israel