Last March 13-16 some 250 American veterans of the Iraq and Afghan occupations gathered at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, MD for the “Winter Soldier – Iraq and Afghanistan” conference, a replica of a similar event which took place in Detroit in 1971, during the Vietnam War. This recent weekend was devoted to the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans’ first-hand testimonies regarding the events which they both witnessed and participated in during their tours of duty in those two countries, events which included abuses and atrocities from the destruction of homes to the cold-blooded murder of innocent civilians. Continue reading →
Journalist Pepe Escobar is one of those remarkable Brazilians like the film director Fernando Meirelles or the photographer Sebastiao Salgado, rich in both human and professional qualities. In fact, all three of them are related to Sao Paulo. The first two were born in that city and Salgado studied economics at the university there.
Escobar was one of the first journalists to reach Kabul after the Taliban’s retreat, and more recently he has explored and reported from Iraq, Iran, Central Asia, US and China. He currently writes a column called The Roving Eye for Asia Times Online and is a correspondent and news analyst for The Real News Network. Escobar is the author of two books, Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad During the Surge (Nimble Books, 2007).
On August 30, 2001, less than two weeks before September 11, he wrote a prophetic column for Asia Times Online entitled: “Get Osama! Now! Or Else…”
Here’s a link to the best of Escobar’s columns in Asia Times Online. There’s lots of excellent reporting here dating back to July, 2004. Continue reading →
In a bombshell article published yesterday in the NY Times, entitled “Behind Military Analysts, the Pentagon’s Hidden Hand,” investigative journalist David Barstow reveals a continuing Pentagon psychological operations (PSYOP) maneuver to disinform the American public through the manipulation of retired senior military officers employed by the media as news analysts. Barstow says, “Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance…”
The 14-page article was based on smoking-gun official Pentagon documentation–8,000 pages of e-mail messages, transcripts and records describing years of private briefings, trips to Iraq and Guantánamo and an extensive Pentagon talking points operation–obtained by the NY Times after suing the Defense Department to gain access.Continue reading →
Is this left-wing journalism? Founder Paul Jay says no, it’s just journalism. He also says, “Most people are aware that politicians are not speaking to them honestly, openly, and sincerely. But the news media is reporting on them as if they were.”
Which leaves us wondering what adjectives to attach to conventional journalism.
I’ve been an unconditional admirer of Lewis Lapham ever since I discovered Harper’s Magazine many years ago. Lapham was the editor of Harper’s for 30 years, from 1976 to 2006. His current title is “editor emeritus,” which is not to say he’s retired. He still writes his regular Notebook feature for Harper’s and he’s embarked on a new history-journal project called Lapham’s Quarterly. The journal’s interest goes beyond its excellent content, for the three media it employs simultaneously: online, print and radio. Not to drag this introduction out, I just want to offer you some of Lapham’s comments on YouTube. There are a couple of hour-long interviews, along with some shorter features. All of them are worth spending your time. Lewis Lapham is a singular American. If there were 100 like him it would be a different country. Continue reading →
For most of my adult lifetime the New York Times, the American newspaper of record, was practically an object of reverence for me. “All the news that’s fit to print…” proclaimed the masthead, and still does. I still read it online even though, over the years, it has lost some of its luster. To begin with, it’s take on the Iraq war seemed to me driven by the mass hysteria which gripped the less critical elements in the U.S.A. from the beginning. I really didn’t expect my beloved Times to go along with the baying crowd.
Recently I began to receive regular email publicity blurbs from the Times, plumping their most viewed feature stories over the previous week. Here’s the one which arrived a couple of days ago:
Top 5 Viewed Features on NTTimes.com (Between Wednesday, Feb. 6-Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2008
The British reporter, Robert Fisk, was not only a valuable source for me in researching and writing The You of My Song, but a significant moral support, as well, when it came to writing not just with honesty, but with conviction. Now, after spending more than three decades covering the most conflictive areas of Europe and the Middle East, always in the vanguard, Robert Fisk has announced his retirement in an interview on New Zealand Television’s ‘Campbell Live’. In the interview, which you can see here:
Fisk gives the reasons for his decision to leave active duty, and describes his sense of despair at how little positive impact he feels his work has had.What has made Fisk’s journalism unique is his personalized, combative reporting style, along with a notable disregard for personal danger. When he was in Pakistan covering the first days of the American attack on Afghanistan in 2001, he was beaten nearly to death by a crowd of Afghan refugees.The next article he wrote included these lines: “I couldn’t blame them for what they were doing…” and their “brutality was entirely the product of others, of us — of we who had armed their struggle against the Russians and ignored their pain and laughed at their civil war and then armed and paid them again for the ‘War for Civilisation’ just a few miles away and then bombed their homes and ripped up their families and called them ‘collateral damage.’”
American actor John Malkovich precipitated an international incident when he declared in 2002 at the British Cambridge Union Society, when asked whom he would most like to “fight to the death,” he replied that he would “rather just shoot” journalist Robert Fisk. Fisk’s reply to Malkovich, (published here: http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles77.htm) was eloquent and all inclusive.Continue reading →
Most of us agree that free access to reliable information is essential for democratic societies. Until recently most of our information came from books, magazines, newspapers and radio and television news. Most of this news arrives late, in bits and pieces, and comes straight from “official spokespersons” via the mainstream media. Not only that, we only get it one day, and then it’s gone. It’s practically impossible to go back and find anything we’ve read or seen or heard. We’ve already wrapped the garbage in it and thrown it out.
The World Wide Web has changed all that, both for professional researchers and concerned citizens. I am convinced that, if anything is going to be done to rectify the current world situation, the Web will play a determinant role. It already does, but I think that role will become increasingly important. We need only look at the Web’s unique characteristics to see why:
It functions day and night, every day of the year.
It’s present in almost everyone’s homes.
It’s instantaneous. Just connect and you’re off.
It’s constantly updated, every minute of every hour of every day.
It’s permanent. It’s there waiting for you when you need it.
It presents all shades of opinion, so you can contrast them and make up your own mind.
It’s searchable, so you lose no time in getting to the topic you’re interested in.
It’s content comes in text, audio and video, making the information both more accessible and more convincing.
It’s interactive. You can even contribute your own content to the Web. Continue reading →
I want to mention another honest, independent journalist, one whom some consider to be the finest investigative reporter of our time, and point you to a revealing video interview where you can very quickly take the measure of the man. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million. Pulitzer Prize winner, Seymour Hersh, contributes regularly to The New Yorkerthese days, but he has been researching and writing his muckraking books and articles for more than 30 years. Hersh was the reporter who, as a 30-year-old freelancer, uncovered the Mai Lai massacre and the ensuing Nixon-administration cover up in 1969. It was also Hersh who exposed the mistreatment of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in 2004. His most recent work deals with the Bush administration’s plans to bomb Iran using nuclear weapons, a revelation which he first published in 2006. Continue reading →
Last March 13-16 some 250 American veterans of the Iraq and Afghan occupations gathered at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, MD for the “Winter Soldier – Iraq and Afghanistan” conference, a replica of a similar event which took place in Detroit in 1971, during the Vietnam War. This recent weekend was devoted to the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans’ first-hand testimonies regarding the events which they both witnessed and participated in during their tours of duty in those two countries, events which included abuses and atrocities from the destruction of homes to the cold-blooded murder of innocent civilians. Continue reading 
Mike Booth: The Gringo Chronicles 