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THE HANDSTAND |
OCTOBER 2003 |
.Journalists and  journalism. War on Free Press Gaining Momentum By Ramzy Baroud* September 10, 2003 http://www.palestinechronicle. com/evolution/story.php? sid=20030909174204107 Those leading a war on the press have claimed yet another victory with the arrest of one of today's most prominent war reporters, Aljazeera's Taysir Alouni. Spanish police detained Alouni, recognized for his outstanding war coverage from Afghanistan during the US war on that country two years ago, as he spent a quiet vacation with his family in the Spanish city of Granada. The Syrian journalist is also a Spanish citizen. Alouni worked as Aljazeera's correspondent in Afghanistan and then in Iraq, and was in the process of setting up an office for the famed pan-Arab news agency in Madrid. Prior to his work with Aljazeera, he worked as a translator for Spain's EFE news agency. This indisputably politically motivated arrest is nothing out of the ordinary for the veteran journalist. His daring missions in the past have evoked more than angry words from top American and other officials, ever resentful to having the uncontrolled press meddle in their war business. Just hours after the Taliban defeat and departure from Kabul, US warplanes bombed Aljazeera's offices, shortly after Alouni left, miraculously unharmed. When US missiles rained in and around Aljazeera's offices, this time in Baghdad during the March invasion, Alouni was still in the building, conducting a live interview. I remember watching him on television in his black, dusty coat while hauling the body of his dead colleague, Tariq, who was not lucky enough to escape by another miracle. One of the last a few decisions made by the ousted Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein was deporting Alouni out of the country. He reported the war with dignity that made every authority unhappy with him, all but the Arab masses, and masses around the world, who found in him and his colleagues a few honest voices in dishonest wars. After the disastrous experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, where military options failed short from achieving their declared objectives and where war pretexts were found fallacious, the so called "collation" is seeking to silence the only honest voices remaining. Osama bin Laden is still on the run, al-Qaeda regrouping, Taliban is back full-speed ahead, Afghanistan is in shambles, no weapons of mass destruction were uncovered in Iraq, Iraqis are occupied, and bitterness is growing everywhere in the supposedly liberated Arab country. And since neither the US budget can cover the cost of war, nor the British and Spanish governments, the best way out is to hush those who are stubbornly pointing the finger at the travesty. Aljazeera is one of them. The arrest of Alouni will hardly bring peace to those leading a crusade against the world, seeking strategic control and hefty contracts for big companies. It is, in fact, just another pathetic attempt to silence the truth that is no longer a hidden secret. Unlike other countries that supported the US war, but ironically requested to keep their names anonymous, the conservative cabinet of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar is a staunch supporter of the US war, going as far as sending troops to Iraq, some were already killed and others wounded. And like the situation in the United States and Britain, Aznar also lied about the bogus pretexts that led him to fight the unjust war. He told the mostly discontented Spanish people through a televised speech last February, "You can be sure that I am telling you the truth. The Iraqi regime has weapons of mass destruction." Well, according to one of Spain's most respected newspapers EI Pais, last June, citing the country's CNI intelligence service, the Spanish leadership also forged its way into the war. There are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, nor is there a link between the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda, CNI revealed. Aznar's government is little interested in seeing Alouni reporting from Madrid, at a time when the right wing government had a great deal of lies and distortion to hide. While the so-called war on terror has been used to fight unjustifiable wars throughout the globe, the same pretext was used to justify Alouni's arrest. Alouni is held under anti-terrorist legislation as a terrorism suspect without access to lawyers or family. If journalists ought to stand trail for interviewing individuals suspected of terrorism or war crimes, then hundreds of American and European journalists should also line up in courts, and we might as well throw the bit about "the freedom of the press" out the window. But many of us already know that Alouni did his job with unparalleled journalistic integrity. He put his life on the line on many occasions, so that we can be informed of a reality that otherwise would've remained veiled for decades. Journalists continue to be a target, not a random target however. Silencing the messenger is the best way to block the message altogether. But Alouni's message has already made it to the world. Even in his arrest there is a lesson to be learned. Indeed, such a shameful action by the Spanish authorities shall open more eyes to the disturbing trend, led by the US government and mimicked by others. The hope is that Alouni will soon be released. But even if such awaited freedom takes place, one is certain that the war on honest journalism is still on. It has already claimed 15 lives in Iraq, mostly killed in "unfortunate mistakes" that demanded no punishment.  The Spanish people, who stood vigorously against their government war quest, must also stand up for Alouni and the principals he represents. This is not a war on journalists alone, but a war on all of us, on our right to think freely, our right to be free from controlled information, disseminated carefully by the same individuals who want us to believe that slaughter and massacres are synonyms for democracy and liberty. If truth shall set us free, then silencing the free press and the courageous voices like that of Taysir Alouni shall keep us in the chains of corporate media deception and government treachery forever. Spanish protest april2003 *Ramzy Baroud is a Palestinian-American journalist and editor-in-chief of The Palestine Chronicle online newspaper. He is the editor of the anthology: "Searching Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion." UPDATE sEPT.18TH Investigative magistrate Baltasar Garzon indicted a total of 35 people for terrorist activities connected to bin Laden's al-Qaida organization. Spain served ``as a place or base for resting, preparation, indoctrinating, support and financing'' of al-Qaida, Garzon said in a nearly 700-page document. Garzon said terrorism is one of the crimes included in Spain's universal justice legislation, under which some offenses, such as crimes against humanity, can be tried here even if they were committed elsewhere. Garzon has used this law to try to prosecute abuses under military rule in Chile and Argentina. The list of indicted suspects includes Tayssir Alouni, the Al-Jazeera journalist arrested Sept. 8 in Spain, and Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, who was accused of leading an al-Qaida cell in Spain and was arrested in Madrid in November 2001. .POSITIVELY BLACK  . by Junious Ricardo Stanton Persona Non Grata, Anyone Who Tells The Truth...... "The national pastime in this country is not sex and it's not baseball. It's lying."-Dick Gregory The other night I received a call from a young lady who identified herself as the new editor of Scoop USA a community newspaper I have contributed to weekly, without pay, for thirteen years. She said she liked my style, the content of my columns that she was going to publish a piece I had written on Bush's lies but that they (the paper) were going to go in another direction. She said they liked me telling what was going on in the world but they wanted to focus on what she called "call to action" type pieces. She said people were getting all riled up about what I was writing but they wanted pieces that offered solutions. She said they also needed to boost advertising and my columns might alienate potential advertisers. The next day I called the publisher who I knew fairly well and he verified what she said. Keep in mind this was a community paper that at one time was a bar or nightlife publication that over the years had, with my help transformed itself into a credible community newspaper. I can't take all the credit, when I first started writing for them they also had Mumia Abu Jamal and Del Jones the War Correspondent two real heavy hitters. Over the years the publisher droped both of them. It seems that in AmeriKKKa people who tell the truth or who refuse to go for the okie-doke become persona non grata. The irony is during the last week several people approached me to express appreciation for the column and offer encouragement. I guess they should have offered it to the publisher. Another paper I've written for for several years, The Black Suburban Journal stopped publishing my Op-Ed pieces. I guess they were too hot. Three years ago I was dropped by a black owned commercial talk radio station WHAT 1340 AM, after ten years of doing a program called Positively Black for free. I anticipated changes once the station changed ownership, but the reason they used to "fire" me was so lame it was pathetic. I resurfaced on the cutting edge medium of Internet radio on the Black World Today's talk channel. I was the most prolific producer on their Internet radio talk channel presenting interesting guests like Anthony Browder, Farai Chideya, Wayne Chandler, James Clingman to name a few. I did interviews and series of commentaries covering a wide range of issues from the indiscriminate prescription of retalin to black children, the co-opting and gobbling up of black media and health topics. For some reason the commentaries weren't posted that often. I suspect it was because of their content. Subsequently I was dropped from The Black World Today regular Website after having been a regular contributor for several years once their Internet radio station went into hiatus. I resurfaced producing and hosting an expanded Internet program on www.NewBlackCity.com The Digital Underground. I 've had the pleasure of having people like Dr. Leonard Jefferies, Runoko Rashidi, Neely Fuller, Jamie Walker, Boyd Graves, Dick Gregory, Dr. Nathan and Dr. Julia Hare as guests. I've kept writing and I've found new venues for my work none of which pays me which is fine with me because I'm not motivated by money. About three weeks ago the Webmaster of a Website I have been a regular contributor to for several months sent me an E-mail saying he appreciated my latest piece on the Iraqi War but he'd rather I had commented on Bush's Goree Island speech. I replied Bush didn't write that speech and I was more impressed with what people did, as opposed to what they said in speeches and photo ops. We E-mailed back and forth exchanging ideas but his subsequent E-mails became more and more antagonistic because I didn't agree with his philosophy. A week or so later I sent him a non- political, tame and harmless feature story as part of a general distribution of the piece, he declined to post it. I noticed he has cleared most of my archived postings from the Website except for a piece he asked me to write in conjunction for a project he was involved in. Following 9-11, I wrote a series of columns about how we were not being told the truth, examining AmeriKKKa's recent intrigues and its bloody incursions around the world. I was subsequently dropped as a contributing writer by the NNPA a trade association of over 200 "black" newspapers, after being one of their more popular writers for about five years. Dropping me was their prerogative however a few individual papers still carry the column. For every door that closes at least another window opens. I have had opportunities to contribute to several newspapers, E-groups and Websites that fearlessly keep African people abreast of the key issues confronting us during these times of universal deceit and fascism. If you are reading this it is probably on an E-group, newspapers like The Palm Beach Gazette or The Black Star or the more conscious Websites like www.Afrikan.net or www.thetalkingdrum.com I'll keep writing and doing my thing on the radio as long as there are sites and papers willing to publish me. If that fails perhaps I'll start my own. As Martin Luther King Jr said there comes a time when silence is betrayal. I will not betray the ancestors or our people! Power of the media - . By Azmat RasulŠSept.26.2003 The so-called war against terrorism has proved that the media exercises powerful influence on the minds of the people. The nations having a powerful media can cultivate those realities in the minds of the people, which they want to project. The influence of the media has been immense on institutions, conduct of affairs and the way people think and act politically. The mass media and mass politics have inspired, reflected and shaped each other. It would be a mistake to believe that the press and broadcasting simply reflect contemporary political forces. In the first place, some stronger groups with better access are always able to secure more attention than others. Secondly, the media does have some political autonomy. Thus the radical press was relatively strong in 1860 in England when the labour movement was divided and defeated. Just before the First World War, on the other hand, a comparatively militant middle class had few radical newspapers in the Sub-Continent. In contrast, there have been other times when developments in the media have been more closely related to social moods. During the 1960s, a new boldness in television seemed to be connected with a rapid change in public mores. The relationship between the media and society has varied. Indeed this variety is the source of the power which the press and broadcasting may wield. If the media merely mirrored events, then they would have little effect on them. The media is not a force in itself. Editors and producers are blamed for many things like race riots, dress fashions, teenage delinquency and the fall of governments. With the extension of the franchise, the role of the press changed. Arguably the popular press, together with the mass membership party, helped to produce a predictable electorate. Much more recently television has brought political information to a new section of the population. Yet broadcasting has been obliged to balance political views. As broadcasting became the dominant source of political knowledge, these constraints must have affected popular understanding and involvement in politics. Now, with the growth of video, cable, and satellite technologies, the convention of scheduling programmes is becoming redundant. The capacity of broadcasting to attract a mass audience regularly for any particular program, or indeed any kind of program, is fast disappearing. Every previous change in the pattern of communications has important political consequences. The press was the arena of a major political struggle during the nineteenth century. Different classes contended not only for the right to express their own causes and interests but also to suppress other views. The battle was political. Yet in the end economic pressures were far more effective in limiting the variety of expression than any direct censorship. The market promoted some interests, but at the expense of others. The control of broadcasting in the developed world is not decided by political confrontation. In all countries, the state determines who can broadcast. The conditions of this right vary enormously. In some liberal democracies broadcasting has been directly controlled, either by government or by a coalition of political parties. The first objective of the media has always been to attract an audience. Hence press and broadcasting have sought to provide instantly appreciable material that is loosely described as 'entertainment'. Some people have regarded entertainment as of little social or political importance. Others have accorded it a sinister role: as a device to numb the public into political acquiescence. The assumptions, which underlie the conduct of the press and broadcasting also, need to be reassessed. Thus it is widely believed that press freedom exists because anyone who does not find his views expressed has the right to start his own newspaper. In practice very few can exercise this right. It might be argued that the same is true of political parties. However, while it may not be practical for an individual or minority group to start a new mass political organization, it is possible to enter and influence existing parties to a far greater extent than is the case with newspapers. In the same way broadcasting authorities today are less confident than in the past of asserting their omniscient appreciation of the public good. Rather they argue that they reflect competing interests. Indeed accuracy, precision, and veracity should not be confused with independence. It is rarely indicated to the public that objectivity is different from the competition between selected opponents. There is one common view that the role of the media has always been the same. The press and broadcasting have always exaggerated, distorted, and suppressed. Thus, they have had little effect on the political life. Arguably the power of the media has increased remarkably in the last fifty years. There are a few alternative sources of information. The control of the media has become concentrated in fewer hands. The press and broadcasting in developed nations have become less accountable. The public monitoring is wholly incapable of coping with growth and technological changes in complex industries. The war on terrorism has proved that the press and broadcasting exercise a massive power. from Mona Sarawat .Journal axes gene research on Jews and Palestinians  john b moore www.3guys.com/sfun/genes.gif Robin McKie, science editor Sunday November 25, 2001 The Observer http://observer.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4307083-102275,00.html A keynote research paper showing that Middle Eastern Jews and Palestinians are genetically almost identical has been pulled from a leading journal. Such a drastic act of self-censorship is unprecedented in research publishing and has created widespread disquiet, generating fears that it may involve the suppression of scientific work that questions Biblical dogma. 'I have authored several hundred scientific papers, some for Nature and Science, and this has never happened to me before,' said the article's lead author, Spanish geneticist Professor Antonio Arnaiz-Villena, of Complutense University in Madrid. 'I am stunned.' British geneticist Sir Walter Bodmer added: 'If the journal didn't like the paper, they shouldn't have published it in the first place. Why wait until it has appeared before acting like this?' The journal's editor, Nicole Sucio-Foca, of Columbia University, New York, claims the article provoked such a welter of complaints over its extreme political writing that she was forced to repudiate it. Arnaiz-Villena has been sacked from the journal's editorial board. Dolly Tyan, president of the American Society of Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics, which runs the journal, told subscribers that the society is 'offended and embarrassed'. The paper, 'The Origin of Palestinians and their Genetic Relatedness with other Mediterranean Populations', involved studying genetic variations in immune system genes among people in the Middle East. In common with earlier studies, the team found no data to support the idea that Jewish people were genetically distinct from other people in the region. In doing so, the team's research challenges claims that Jews are a special, chosen people and that Judaism can only be inherited. Jews and Palestinians in the Middle East share a very similar gene pool and must be considered closely related and not genetically separate, the authors state. Rivalry between the two races is therefore based 'in cultural and religious, but not in genetic differences', they conclude. Arnaiz-Villena says he has not seen a single one of the accusations made against him, despite being  promised the
opportunity to look at the letters sent to the
journal. He accepts he used terms in the article that
laid him open to criticism. There is one reference to
Jewish 'colonists' living in the Gaza strip, and
another that refers to Palestinian people living in
'concentration' camps. 'Perhaps I should have used
the words settlers instead of colonists, but really,
what is the difference?' he said. 'And clearly, I
should have said refugee, not concentration, camps,
but given that I was referring to settlements outside
of Israel - in Syria and Lebanon - that scarcely
makes me anti-Jewish. References to the history of
the region, the ones that are supposed to be
politically offensive, were taken from the
Encyclopaedia Britannica, and other text books.' In the wake of the journal's actions, and claims of mass protests about the article, several scientists have now written to the society to support Arnaiz-Villena and to protest about their heavy-handedness. Excerpts from Guardian Unlimited Š Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003 Ban the Sun - The strange case  of two Afghanistan
editors and their now-closed critical paperBy Ben Ehrenreich LA Weekly Writer Fri, Sep 12, 2003 Nearly a year has passed since the Bush administration began bombing Afghanistan (news - web sites), claiming to be motivated not only by vengeance but by a sincere desire to free the Afghan people from the barbarity of the fundamentalist Taliban regime. The Taliban fled Kabul, but for all the joyous early accounts of discarded burkas, crowded barbershops, and the blare of pop music in the bazaars, the threat of fundamentalist repression never went away. There is perhaps no better illustration of that continuing threat, and of the institutional instability, factional infighting, lawlessness and generalized confusion that characterize Afghanistan today than the case of Sayeed Mir Hussein Mahdavi and Ali Payam Sistany, the editor and deputy editor of the now-banned newspaper once called Aftab, or the Sun. Arrested in June for blasphemy on the orders of the Karzai government, Mahdavi and Sistany are now in hiding. Depending on whom you ask, they are either heroes or fools, and have been either condemned to death or not yet charged. Even officials close to them with access to high levels of the Afghan government seem unsure of the true status of their case. The haze surrounding the Aftab matter extends well beyond the closed doors of the newspaper office and encompasses an entire country caught in limbo, awaiting a decisive confrontation between fundamentalists and Western-oriented reformers at the constitutional assembly scheduled for this fall, and the national elections planned for next June. The events leading up to Mahdavis and Sistanys arrests on June 17 : Earlier this year, Aftab began publishing articles severely critical of men in very high places: fundamentalist former mujahedeen and Northern Alliance leaders who retain a great deal of power and, in some cases, with private armies, men like Vice President and Minister of Defense Mohammed Qasim Fahim, Minister of Education Younis Qanooni, Vice President Karim Khalili, former Afghan President Burnahuddin Rabbani, and the Pashtun Islamist Abdul Rabb al-Rasul Sayyaf. The articles called the fundamentalists to account for current alleged abuses and for atrocities committed during the factional fighting of the early 1990s. Perhaps just as dangerously, they called explicitly for a secular Afghanistan. Even some of their supporters thought the Aftab editors outspokenness foolhardy. It is too soon. You cannot write these things in Afghanistan, one Afghan journalist told me. In April, the death threats began. Following an article attacking Sayyaf, Mahdavi told a Human Rights Watch investigator that an anonymous caller told him, You have got to pay for this act. We will see you in Paghman. [Sayyaf is based in Paghman, about an hours drive from Kabul.] It is easy for us to kidnap you. A commander from the Afghan intelligence service dropped by the newspaper office and pointedly advised Mahdavi that he would not be able to protect him. A week later, Mahdavi told Human Rights Watch, another call came in the middle of the night. We follow you like a shadow. We can kill you without any problems, the caller told him. More calls and further visits occurred. Although frightened, Mahdavi did not back down. I am ready to be killed for this, he told Rahimullah Samander, an Afghan journalist for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting shortly before his arrest. In the June 11 issue of Aftab, Mahdavi published an article titled Sacred Fascism. In its third paragraph, the article asked, If Islam is really the last religion sent by God to guide its followers in the right path, then why are its followers wicked and immoral? This alone was enough to get him in trouble. Even relative moderates were angered. Mohammed Fahim Dashty, the editor of Kabul Weekly, one of Kabuls largest papers, told me, He attacked all Muslims. There is no if in Islam. About 200 madrasah students held a rally in front of the Aftab office, calling for Mahdavis and Sistanys deaths. But Mahdavis point was not so much religious as political. The real issue is that we get our religious lessons from unworthy sources, not from Islam itself, he went on. For instance, the Afghan nation will not find the heavens with Sayyafs interpretation of Islam . . . I don't know with what courage Rabbani, Sayyaf . . . and other noblemen announce they are the commentators of the religion and the prominent faces in Islam while they are the ones who betrayed our homeland and disgraced our nation while washing their sacred hands with the nations blood. In another article, titled Religion + Government = Oppression, Aftab laid out the case for a secular constitution while attacking the fundamentalist chief justice of the Supreme Court, Fazel Hadi Shinwari, an ally of Sayyaf. Before a week had gone by, Aftabs offices were closed. Mahdavi and Sistani were arrested depending on whom you ask, on the orders of either the attorney general, who is close to Shinwari, or of the minister of information and culture, with President Hamid Karzai's knowledge and consent. .Intelligence officers confiscated copies of the offending issue from shops. (Aftab originally sold for 5 afghanis, about 10 cents; the few remaining copies of the final issue now go for about 150 afghanis.) The arrests were reported in the foreign press, and, responding to international pressure, less than a week later Karzai ordered the editors released pending trial. What happened after that is less clear. Mahdavi and Sistany, fearing for their lives, went into hiding. The Supreme Court, headed by the same Shinwari whom Aftab had repeatedly attacked, announced that Mahdavi and Sistany would be tried for insulting Islam. The journalists then apparently got caught up in an internal power struggle, which some sources regarded as a sort of practice round for the confrontation between fundamentalists and reformers that will inevitably emerge at the constitutional assembly later this year. Karzai removed the case from the Supreme Courts jurisdiction and handed it over to a lower court. Shinwari responded by asking the Supreme Courts fatwa department a council of 13 Islamic scholars with no legal basis in either Afghanistans 1964 constitution or the 2002 Bonn Agreement that established the interim government to issue a decision on the case. In early August, the mullahs issued a 10-page document composed mainly of Koranic citations, ending with the demand: The Islamic Transitional Government of Afghanistan is obliged to give the death penalty to the people who have abused or made fun of Islam, and also to the ones who cause public disruption. Beside the mullahs signatures was Shinwaris, along with a sentence in his hand approving the decision. The fatwa department refused to release the document, but the departments head, Mawlawi Abdul Qadir Waris, allowed Samander of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting to copy sections by hand. He told Samander that the departments shaky constitutional standing does not matter, because its decisions are made through the Islamic Shariat, which overrules all the laws. .Soon after the fatwa departments ruling, a number of international journalists-rights organizations, including Reporters Without Borders, PEN International and the International Federation of Journalists, condemned the Aftab editors death sentence. Most sources I interviewed in Kabul, though, insisted that Mahdavi and Sistany had not been sentenced at all, and that the lower court, pending an investigation, had not even issued any charges. Some, including Said Tayeb Jawad, President Karzais chief of staff, denied not only that the fatwa department had made a decision, but that the fatwa department exists at all. This is likely political wishful thinking, but for the time being, it is as unclear what the effect of the fatwa will be on the Aftab case as it is what legal role Islam will ultimately have in Afghan society. The document itself has been filed with the lower court, and it will likely be difficult for that court to ignore it altogether. In the meantime, the lower court has announced that if Mahdavi and Sistany fail to respond to three successive summonses, the case will be investigated and decided without them. Kabul Weekly editor Dashty speculated that no decision will be forthcoming until the messier constitutional issues are sorted out. If they decide on the basis of Islamic law, they should announce that those people will die. On the other hand, there are human-rights issues and freedom of speech. They are not able to decide. Eman Parmach translated the Aftab articles for this story.
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