The Norwegian Martyr And The Belief In Western Journalism
January 15th, 2008 by Torstein Schiøtz Worren
Few Norwegians die in conflicts or attacks abroad, and when it happens the attention to the events rival those of the martyr tradition of more martial cultures elsewhere. In an attack on the luxury Serena Hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Monday, the Norwegian journalist Carsten Thomassen was killed when exiting the elevator in the lobby as four attackers made their way into the building, blasting everyone in their way. Another Norwegian, a diplomat, was injured in the incident. Considering that Norway has had forces stationed in the country since just after the invasion, it is quite surprising that the country and its inhabitants act as confused and angry as they are doing at the moment in the aftermath of the attack.
That a country covers episodes that involve its own citizens is nothing new. However, news from Afghanistan rarely make headlines anymore despite the numbers of Afghans and others killed in both terror attacks and military skirmishes. As with most conflicts that have been going on for a while, people loose interest and think of it as something bad happening far away in a country inhabited by people who are unable to live in peace, unlike ourselves. Should a Norwegian soldier, participating in a civil war, be killed, however, it becomes personal and terms like “terrorism” and “freedom” are scattered all over the headlines. Few people stop to think about what the role of the soldiers is and that even in this time and day war means deaths, even for the good guys.
The killing of a non-combatant, though, who travelled to a war zone, stayed in the most high-profile target in the whole country, and followed the entourage of the foreign minister of one of the warring parties, leads to his elevation to martyrdom. Thomessen was an outstanding journalist and was doing an important job when he was killed, but he was no martyr. He knew the risks and is only one of scores of journalists killed every year in Afghanistan. Plastering his face and life story on every front page and every news broadcast only amplifies Norwegian ignorance of what the country is involved in and our disrespect for the other casualties of the conflict. On the news broadcasts the evening he was killed, there was no mention of who the other victims were other than the implication that they, of course, were Afghan security forces (who, incidentally, were sacrificing their lives for very little pay to protect sightseeing politicians from abroad). The Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenberg was quoted as saying that the journalist ‘died in the service of freedom.’
Naturally, journalists, at least from our Western perspective where journalists are supposedly objective and only live to serve the truth, should never ever be targeted in conflicts. Their job is to report back what is happening and in many conflicts, therefore, few journalists are killed with intent as they are the voice of the oppressed and dying. However, this is not always how it looks from the other side in a conflict that is perceived to be between cultures, religions or civilisations. This perception is not helped when journalists effectively become part of the enemy when they ‘embed’ themselves with the enemy forces or travel with politicians who surprisingly enough are referred to as ‘civilians’ when they are targeted by the bad guys.
What kind of journalism are we talking about anyway? Thomessen was part of a big contingent of journalists travelling together to report directly from the source. I do not know what they were planning to do, but imagine the slant to the story when ten journalists in flak jackets descend on a local village protected by fifty soldiers to interview the ‘natives’ and portray ‘reality’ for us back home. What kind of reality will they be reporting and who do they have access to in their mortal fear of terrorists? The news are only reliable if they are reported by a Norwegian, I suppose. The local journalists can only be trusted to help out and maybe translate what the ‘natives’ are saying, as long as the ‘natives’ are talking about a reality that we recognise, where the bad guys are evil and our guys are doing an excellent job serving democracy and freedom. This is why we rarely see reports bought from al-Jazeera or other news channels that have access to people and stories that Western journalists would never dare approach: they don’t use a discourse that is recognisable for us because the reality we are fed is so distant from the discourse of the locals and the enemy.
Thankfully, both local and freelance journalists still travel the world in search of the alternative stories and truths that compete against the Western perception of good and bad, black and white, freedom and oppression. When they die, their names are rarely spoken. But, sometimes, their stories reach a few people who believe there must be more to a story than what is said on CNN.
A Stranger in her own City
December 12th, 2007 by Torstein Schiøtz Worren
Last week I saw the crazies and most outrageous documentary (by Yemeni standards) I have ever seen from Yemen. The 30-minute film by Khadija as-Salami follows a 13 year old girl who refuses to wear the veil and is so cheeky, quick-witted, and happy that she somehow gets away with it, at least for a while.
Unfortunately, only the first ten minutes are available online and it’s really hard to find the whole thing anywhere. I will get my hands on the whole thing in a while, but in the meantime, you can watch the first third on YouTube here.
More pictures from Yemen
December 4th, 2007 by Torstein Schiøtz Worren
Have added a new gallery with a mix of pictures from Yemen from July to October:
http://torstein.worren.info/images/travel/2007-yemen_various/index.html
Somalia – counter-narrative
December 4th, 2007 by Torstein Schiøtz Worren
Although they are sometimes as simple as the stereotypical views they seek to challenge, counter narratives are interesting in that they portray issues and events in a way that makes us think twice about representations we take for granted. This one about Somalia, for example, challenges the official view that Islamists in power should be fought at any cost. Yet another victim in the ‘War on Terror’:
From Global Research
U.S-Instigated War Brings Mass Death to Somalia
by Glen Ford
Global Research, December 2, 2007
Black Agenda Radio Report
“If the rulers of the United States were searching for a plan that would kill hundreds of thousands of Africans, they have found it.”
American foreign policy is the direct cause of the humanitarian crisis in Somalia - the worst in all of Africa, according to United Nations officials. That’s why, until recent days, U.S. corporate media said little or nothing about the hundreds of thousands of Somalis - now numbering at least half a million - who face death by starvation and disease because of a war instigated and facilitated by Washington. The corporate press methodically avoid - and thereby, cover up - stories that contradict the mythical American narrative: that the U.S. means to do good in the world, and only does wrong by mistake.
The horrific wrong inflicted on Somalia was absolutely premeditated, an integral aspect of American plans to bring the bogus “war on terror” to Africa, as a cover to dominate the continent and its wealth. Ever since the end of formal European colonialism in Africa, U.S. policy has been to spread chaos wherever Washington failed to impose rule by its own favored strongmen. When Muslim groups early last year subdued the warlords of Somalia - a nation that is 99 percent Muslim - a semblance of peace and at least some hope for the future took root. By all accounts, life was getting back to something like “normal” for a people that had known only brutal warfare since 1991. Such a peace was unacceptable to George Bush’s crew, who whipped up an hysteria in the United States, claiming Al Qaida was establishing a base in Somalia, and urged the regime in neighboring Ethiopia, Somalia’s historical rival, to attack last December.
“U.S. policy has been to spread chaos wherever Washington failed to impose rule by its own favored strongmen.”
The U.S. worked hand in hand with the Ethiopian invaders at every level of the Ethiopian military, while U.S. jets relentlessly wreaked terror from the air. Once the Ethiopians had planted themselves and their puppet Somali “government” in the capital, Mogadishu, the Americans sent their other African proxies, the Ugandan military, to make up most of the puny African “peacekeeping” force in Somalia. The Somali resistance to the Ethiopian invasion consider the African peacekeepers in Mogadishu to be agents of the U.S. - and, regarding the Ugandans, they are right.
If there were ever a formula for bloody and protracted war in Somalia, it is Ethiopian occupation, which is already unifying diverse elements of the Somali population in resistance. The war will also destabilize Ethiopia, which is more than a third Muslim and home to many peoples that oppose the dictatorial regime in Addis Ababa. If the rulers of the United States were searching for a plan that would kill hundreds of thousands of Africans, they have found it. This time, however, as in Iraq, Washington has created more chaos than it can handle.
The United Nations found it necessary to arrange trips for American journalists to witness the carnage that the Americans have wrought in Somalia - the same Americans that claim to care so much for the people of Darfur, and who promise that the new U.S. Africa Command will bring peace to the continent.
The Americans, like the Europeans before them, bring only the peace of the dead.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com
Gearing up for war III, this time WW3?
October 25th, 2007 by Torstein Schiøtz Worren
Referring to president Bush’ statement that allowing Iran to have nuclear weapons might lead to world war 3, Dennis Kucinich, congressman from Ohio said: ‘the White House rodeo cowboy has gone dangerously too far and precipitously too close to igniting the war he claims to be trying to avoid.’
You might have noticed a small news item two days ago mentioning that 70 air force personnel have been relieved of their duties following an ‘incident’ where six nuclear weapons went ‘missing’ for 36 hours. None of the major news agencies seem to be asking any critical questions or questioning the incoherent information they get from the US armed forces. Other sources, however, claim that the only reason this story is being released to the media in the first place, is to cover up a much larger scandal.
When this incident took place, Wayne Madsen reported that the weapons were intended for the Middle East and a possible attack on Iran, possibly scheduled to coincide with the unexplained Israeli attack in Syria in the beginning of September. However, personnel within the airforce, upon learning why the weapons had been loaded onto a B-52 bomber against regulations, sabotaged the move from within. Dick Chenney has been pushing for a war for some time now and it should come as no surprise that nuclear weapons could be used in a coming war with Iran as they have been included in plans to hit the deep bunkers where the Iranians are allegedly hiding their weapons programmes.
These are only speculations of course, but the details are interesting:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7147
Meanwhile, the whole case about the supposed Syrian nuclear programme is continuing, still without a single proof of evidence. The story is being spun further and further by the media, building on still-unconfirmed evidence from either Israel og the US, both of which were supposed to know about the programme before the strike. It is interesting how speculation becomes ‘fact’ once it has been repeated enough times and enough time has passed.
The latest ‘news’ now identifies a possible North Korea-style nuclear reaction that probably was the target of the strike, showing a ‘big, rectuangular box structure’ with what appears to be a pump house on the Euphrates river.
Anyone remember those pictures of Iraqi trucks transporting WMDs prior to the invasion in 2003?
Of course, drumming up support for a war against Iran is already complete as we all now believe that Iran is months away from launching devastating attacks on the world as they’re all religious nutcases who only look forward to their next lives in paradise. Oh, and they are ’state sponsonsors of terrorism’ because of the mess in Iraq and because they support Hizbollah, a group that has never launched an attack outside of Lebanon (and none after the civil war that have been proven anyway) (if one disregards Israel, its one and only declared enemy.
No wonder they have to be bombed back to the stone age.
—-EDIT—-
Oops, the building is gone. Nuclear or not, it points to suspicious activities…
http://www.isis-online.org/publications/SyriaUpdate25October2007.pdf
_
Gearing up for war II
October 9th, 2007 by Torstein Schiøtz Worren
From Syriacomment
“Policy Brief” by Alistair Crooke, circulated by the U.S./Middle East Project, of which Henry Siegman is the Director
TICKING CLOCKS AND ‘ACCIDENTAL’ WAR
BY ALASTAIR CROOKE *
9 October 2007
Editor: Robert Malley
In an article in Salon.com on 19 September, Steven Clemons describes a debate at a recent Washington dinner party attended by eighteen persons at which “Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft squared off across the table over whether President Bush will bomb Iran.”
Brzezinski, former national security advisor to President Carter, Clemons writes, said he believed Bush’s team had laid a track leading to a single course of action: a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Scowcroft, who was national security advisor to President Ford and the first President Bush, held out hope that the current President Bush would hold fire, and not make an already disastrous situation for the U.S. in the Middle East even worse.
The 18 people at the party, including former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, then voted with a show of hands for either Brzezinski’s or Snowcroft’s position. Snowcroft got only two votes, including his own. Everyone else at the table shared Brzezinski’s fear that a U.S. strike against Iran is around the corner.
Clemons, who moderated the debate, argues that the case presented in terms of a ‘binary decision’ – to bomb or not to bomb – is unlikely to lead to the decision to bomb Iran, for various reasons, resting mainly on the U.S. military’s known opposition to conflict with Iran. In his final paragraph, Clemons suggests that “we should also worry about the kind of scenario David Wurmser has floated, meaning an engineered provocation. An ‘accidental war’ would escalate quickly and ‘end run,’ as Wurmser put it, the president’s diplomatic, intelligence and military decision-making apparatus.”
The view from those most likely to be affected by an “accidental” war, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas, all share the conclusion both that war is imminent and that any one of a number of “ticking clocks” may be “engineered” as a provocation that would by-pass the Pentagon chiefs of staff arguments against expanded conflict and trigger war. All of these actors have been preparing flat-out for the coming conflict.
They see the circumstances of the Middle East as one of hair-trigger instability and escalating tensions. Equally significantly, there is a heightened inter-linkage between events that suggests that, as in 1912-14 in Europe, some unexpected and relatively insignificant event – a Sarajevo moment – could ignite currents and dynamics over which major states and movements would have little influence.
Iran (from where I have just returned) as well as leaders such as Hassan Nasrallah and Khaled Mesha’al see the signs of preparations for conflict taking place in Israel. These are the signs they see: Israel conducting low level overflights in Lebanon to create sonic booms; Israel, whose prime minister had been volubly warning of the risks of some misunderstanding leading to war between Israel and Syria, then launching an aerial incursion into Syria. And all of this as the international community remained silent.
The Syrians saw on their radars the four fighters that penetrated into Northern Syria from the Mediterranean; but they also saw the much larger numbers of Israeli aircraft that were flying in a holding position close to Cyprus. The Syrians were not about to disclose their anti-aircraft missile capacities to Israel; and the intruders dropped the munitions and their long-range fuel tanks without pressing any attack, but returned to join the larger group still flying a holding pattern off Cyprus before all returned to Israel as a single formation.
The Israeli objective remains a matter of speculation, but the general conclusion is that Israel was only ready to run such a risk against unknown air defenses either as a proving run or, given the size of the numbers of aircraft off Cyprus, to destroy some target that for whatever reason they were unable to engage. Either way, the mission seems related to future conflict……
This is only one among a series of ticking clocks:
(i) Lebanon: ……
(ii) Syria ….