Welcome to the Afghan War Diaries

Welcome to Afghanistan, originally uploaded by Teacher Dude's BBQ.

At long last the Afghan War Diaries has brought to the attention of those countries that have forces stationed in Afghanistan what exactly are the real consequences of waging a nine year war. We no longer have the fig leaf of ignorance to hide the fact that we who live and vote in these nations also are culpable in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, the majority of whom were guilty of nothing more than being poor and powerless.

For years we have all placidly sat by and lapped up the white washed "news", neatly sanitised for our own protection that has come out of Afghanistan. Murderous attacks on unarmed villagers have regularly been mutated into glorious battles between the forces of democracy and supporters of a barbarous ideology whose way of life threatens us all.

It's hard not to see the echo of high imperial thinking in such rhetoric, especially when it comes from the UK press whose ancestors were quite happy to forgive any "mistakes" by the guardians of Empire, safe in the knowledge that The gift of Civilisation to the heathen was worth the sacrifice of lives in the long run.

On the other side of the Atlantic the US media has been not just willing but positively enthusiastic about "supporting out troops" in their war on darkness, happy to burnish the military's view that the best way to save the people of Afghanistan is slaughter them in ever larger numbers. The lessons of Vietnam have been condemned the dustbin of history, seemingly no more relevent to today's world than the speeches of Cicero or buggy cabs.

For years publications such as Time have been running stories on how US soldiers have run mission after mission to thwart insurgents and win the hearts and minds of locals who wish to live in peace. The message being that any group that opposes such goals has to, be definition be either fanatical or evil, preferably both. So stories of widespread abuse of human rights, summary executions, death squads and thousands of deaths "by mistake" cannot be made part of the media landscape, they make no sense and so contradict the perceived consensus that they are either ignored or downgraded in importance.

One has has just to look at these two magazine covers to understand how little has changed in the way the majority of the US mainstream media deals with conflicts that involve their own soldiers. Despite a gulf of nearly four decades the media has learnt little and once again is more than willing to acquiesce in any act of moral appeasement in the name of patrotism and access.

Life magazine Vietnam 1967

Time magazine Afghanistan 2004

Yesterday's conference on blogging and journalism - Thessaloniki, Greece

Today's conference on blogging and journalism - Thessaloniki, Greece, originally uploaded by Teacher Dude's BBQ.

At the conference on blogging and journalism here at the Olympion cinema – first presentation was research on how Greek internet users view blogs in general and a source of news in particular. It seems that those on the internet (70+%) visit blogs regularly and many of them just under ¾ a reasonably accurate source of news.

Looks like the idea of anonymity will be discussed again, the idea that putting your name on a story is automatically better than remaining anonymous, the argument being that newspapers and other media are constantly faced by the threat of being sued for writing something that maybe be considered untrue.

However, there has been a number of cases in which newspapers and TV stations have quite happily spashed the images and names the six people arrested, allegedly involved in recent terrorist attacks. Defying the country's established codes of ethics the names and pictures of the detainees have been shown repeatedly on the country's TV screens and newspapers. Reporters have even dispensed with words such as “alleged” and “suspects” and simply referred to them as “terrorists”. Without trial, in some cases without even being charged the major TV channels had already decided that those detained were indeed guilty.

The overage has been so one sided that according to the Active media blog many journalist are demanding the Greek Press Council condemn these practices.

The mainstream media has simply broadcast, without any form of critical analysis the police's official reports or leaks concerning the case. In the UK or USA such coverage would be deemed enough to cause a mistrial as any kind of competent trial lawyer would argue that his/her clients would not receive a fair trial.

Thomas is speaking in defence of blogs, his main argument is that while many blog are indeed full of inaccuracies and groundless rumours the mainstream media is rife with such “news items”. If their beef with blogs is their level of professionalism and attention to details they are skating on thin ice. One only has to recall the case of the “visit” of Turkish PM to Greece last year. Despite the fact that the visit was called off on a Friday the Sunday newspapers Vima, Ethnos etc covered the event in great detail in their Sunday editions complete with pictures, quotes and analysis.

On the other hand we have Wikileaks, which Thomas is talking about now, as an example of how anonymity is sometimes necessary to cover stories governments and large, powerful organisations want to keep secret.

According to Thomas the most important thing is credibility in that just because a story or accusation appears on a blog means nothing unless that site has established itself as a credible source. He also argues in many respect TV news has lost ground in that it has ceased to be a trustworthy news source, at least according to the survey with just 1% of internet users considering TV the most reliable medium.

Once again none in the audience, myself excepted, seemed to be utlising any form of technology invented after the ball point pen. Instead they all just scribbled down notes on paper and seemed to havea particular weakness for any kind of stat.

Update

I enjoyd the debate even f I didn't agree with much of what was said, though saying that the criticism made by the panel were well thought out and not just knee - jerk reactions to change. Unfortunately, I can not say the same of the Q&A session which followed. The questions pitched ranged from the inane to the incoherent. It seemed many of those budding journalists present had a hard time putting together a coherent utterence, god knows how they're going to cope with whole paragraphs.

Bloggers who write anonymously were even compared with masked hoodies who attack and firebomb banks in that they wished to hide their identity, which gives a pretty good idea of how low the intellectual content of much of the audience's contribution. It was a shame as there are plenty of serious issues concerning the changing role of the media and The People Formerly Known as the Audience.

It's a brave new world forming on the internet but anyone who believes that the sins and faults of the past will magically disappear with the advent of mass participation in the creation of the news is likely to be disappointed.

Wikileaks video struggles to get airing on US TV

Yesterday Wikileaks released a decoded video showing the killing of a dozen people, including a Reuters news agency photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen and his driver, Saeed Chmagh in Baghdad in 2007. The footage, which is harrowing not only in what it depicts but also the attitude of the Apache attack helicopter crew to those who were shot to death, spread across the internet, driven by Twitter users who were quick to pick up the story.

On the other hand the mainstream press in the US has been more reticent about the incident and for a period yesterday MSNBC blocked all search attempts using the term "wikileaks". Even as I write this CNN is not showing the whole video but rather a truncated version which has scenes from the start of the video and not footage which shows the helicopter crew a firing upon a civilian van which had drawn up to help the Reuters driver who was injured in the initial attack and resulted in the serious injury to two young children inside.

The video is also at odds with the account by the Washington Post published at the time where those who took part in the operation stated that the chopper, code named Crazy Horse was responding to insurgent fire and that every effort had been made to deal humanely with the dead and wounded. As Capt. James Hall, a chaplain with the 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division, who arrived on the scene minutes after the incident said to the Post, July 13, 2007.

"We pulled up and stopped, and I could hear them over the intercom say they couldn't drive the Bradleys in because there were too many bodies and didn't want to drive over them,"

On the other hand the transcript taken from the Apache's radio traffic just after the attack (see here for the transcript on the Wikileaks site) reveals a different story.

"I think they just ran over the body,"

"Ha, ha."

"Yeah"

"Maybe it was just a visual illusion, but it looked like it."

"Well, they're dead, so."

Greek general strike 2010 - Thessaloniki

Greek general strike 2010 - Thessaloniki, originally uploaded by Teacher Dude's BBQ.

Thousands of Greeks have taken to the streets to show their rejection of the government's proposed austerity measures, which are supposed to right the country's flailing economy. Our Observer in Thessaloniki was in the middle of the protest there, along with his camera.

Craig Wherlock is a British expat based in Thessaloniki. He's a teacher at a private school.

I think there were between eight and nine thousand people in the streets [7,000 according to the police]. Unlike in Athens however, there were no clashes here.
The marchers were mainly public sector workers as their unions, like the PAME [communist], are the most active. But there were also employees from the private sector amongst them. Everybody's worried about the wage freeze, cuts to social benefits, an increase in VAT (from 19% to 21%) and the changing of the legal retirement age (currently 60 for women, 65 for men, but could be set at 67 for all).

People are really angry and feeling desperate. Most shop workers and even small factory employees aren't registered and therefore have no social security. They work up to 50 or 60 hours per week for only 600 euros a month [Read Craig's previous post on the high costs and low wages in Greece].

So they're wondering how the country managed to amount 300 billion euros of debt - what was that money spent on? Certainly not, they say, on public services or roads. The protestors have the impression that politicians robbed the country blind. With the former government, there was a corruption scandal every two months. So talk of wasted money is still rife. The former health minister ordered 16 million doses of the H1N1 flu vaccine, but only 400,000 were needed in the end.

I saw the slogan ‘plutocracy should pay for the crisis' - which pretty much sums up the feelings of the protestors."

http://observers.france24.com/en/content/20100224-greek-demonstrators-say-plutocracy-should-pay-crisis-austerity-plan