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The United States has elected a new president, but hundreds of thousands of troops and contractors are still on the ground, Iraq is occupied and in ruins, and questions remain about how the new President Elect will move forward after he is inaugurated.
With over 1 million Iraqi dead, 4 million refugees, 4,000 dead American soldiers and a total cost of 1-4 trillion dollars, the war in Iraq remains the most important fact of American politics, but it has faded from the headlines. The scraps of television coverage that still make the news don’t go far beyond U.S. military press releases and Iraqi politicians interviewed inside the Green Zone. Most mainstream media journalists either cannot or will not leave the confines of an embed or the Green Zone to report on what is actually happening on the ground.
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We are pleased to announce the launch of a new and improved website for Dahr Jamail’s Mideast Dispatches. Come take a look at http://dahrjamailiraq.com. You will notice many changes, not least of which is the completely new design with easier navigation.
The new website’s features include:
* Dynamic pages, which allow you to see the newest content
* A comments feature, so you can respond to and discuss Dahr’s writing
* A much-improved search engine, integrated across all content types
* Social bookmarking features, which will help you send Dahr’s writings to your friends or share them on popular websites
Though the frontend changes are dramatic, just as big are the improvements behind the scenes, which make the site much easier for editors to use.
We’re confident these changes will make our site as a more effective outreach tool as well as a better browsing experience for our current readers.
P.S. The new site was developed by WebRoot Solutions, a small company that specializes in internet services for people and groups making social change. You can find them on the web at http://mywebroot.com.
From the Portland Oregonian:
I had a good conversation today with a journalist I admire, Dahr Jamail, who has zigged where other journalists have zagged, traveling to Iraq to work an unembedded freelancer, committed to telling stories through the eyes of ordinary Iraqis. You can keep up with his reporting at his web site, where you can subscribe, as I do, to his emailed dispatches.
Read the rest of the piece here.
“Iraq: Not our country to Return to” for Inter Press Service, by Maki al-Nazzal and Dahr Jamail, voted #1 most censored story of 2008 by Project Censored.
More information about the story:
#1. Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by US Occupation
in Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009
Sources:
After Downing Street, July 6, 2007
Title: “Is the United States Killing 10,000 Iraqis Every Month? Or Is It More?”
Author: Michael Schwartz
AlterNet, September 17, 2007
Title: “Iraq death toll rivals Rwanda genocide, Cambodian killing fields”
Author: Joshua Holland
AlterNet, January 7, 2008
Title: “Iraq conflict has killed a million, says survey”
Author: Luke Baker
Inter Press Service, March 3, 2008
Title: “Iraq: Not our country to Return to”
Authors: Maki al-Nazzal and Dahr Jamail
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by D.Tyhacz, for JournalismNow
Dahr Jamail is an award-winning freelance journalist. His reporting from Iraq has earned him numerous awards, including the prestigious 2008 Martha Gellhorn Award for Journalism, the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, the Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage, and four Project Censored awards. His stories have been published with The Nation, The Sunday Herald in Scotland, DemocracyNow.com, Al-Jazeera, and The Guardian to name a few, and he’s appeared on NPR and is a special correspondent for Flashpoints. He has spent a total of 8 months in Iraq, and in the Middle East, and he’s reported from Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, as well as the region for 5 years. He has a new book out called Beyond the Green Zone which is a chronological collection of his dispatches from Iraq. His reporting is un-apologetic, and he isn’t afraid to go where the story is. We contacted him through his website, and here’s our conversation:
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Reporters share Gellhorn prize
The Guardian
by: Caitlin Fitzsimmons
Monday May 19 2008
Read full article at original posting here
Two freelance journalists have jointly won this year’s Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism for their reports from the Middle East.
The prize is to be shared by the American Dahr Jamail for his work as an unembedded journalist in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria; and the Palestinian Mohammed Omer for dispatches from his native Gaza. Both journalists work without the backing of news organisations.
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Read Original IPS press release, with photos, here
IPS is delighted to announce that Mohammed Omer (Gaza) and Dahr Jamail (Iraq) have won the influential Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism.
Mohammed reports for IPS on the plight of surviving in Gaza. Much of his work arises from the personal experience of living in an extremely traumatic situation. Since 2004, Dahr has seen much of what has happened in Iraq after the invasion. Together with local writers, he has been able to bring out the street voice and the experiences of people beyond anything official or only political.
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For immediate release
The prestigious Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism 2008 has been won by Dahr Jamail and Mohammed Omer.
In the spirit of the great war reporter Martha Gellhorn, these two extraordinary journalists – Dahr Jamail is American and Mohammed Omer is Palestinian — share the Prize for their courageous, insightful and, above all, independent reporting. Neither winner has enjoyed the backing of news organisations. Working alone in extremely difficult and often dangerous circumstances, they have reported unpalatable truths, validated by powerful facts that expose establishment propaganda, or “official drivel”, as Martha Gellhorn called it. This the essence of the Martha Gellhorn Prize.
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The following is testimony presented to Congress by Kristofer Shawn Goldsmith on May 15, 2008. While there were several powerful testimonies by several Iraq veterans, all worth watching, this one in particular provides a taste of what is actually happening in Iraq, and what soldiers of conscience face upon their return home.
You can view his previous testimony at Winter Soldier here
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The story that isn’t being told
Rageh Omaar
The Guardian
March 17 2008
There was also an extraordinary diversity of views about the war and the occupation: independent bloggers such as the excellent Arab-American writer Dahr Jamail operated alongside reporters from the New York Times, ITV and al-Jazeera. But as insecurity, violence and political instability became inexorably worse from the end of 2004, the media’s ability to tell all sides of the story began to close down.
Read full article here
