The Guarani Project

My article about President Jammeh’s ‘back to the land’ policy was published today by The Samosa: Back to the land with nothing to eat.

I spent a couple of weeks in The Gambia in October 2009. I left deeply saddened. The Gambia is a tiny, beautiful country nestled within Senegal in West Africa. Largely forgotten by the rest of the world, this small nation is slowly collapsing in on itself like a pack of cards. It’s not dramatic and it will go largely unnoticed by the rest of the world. Certainly the rest of the international media.

15 years into his reign, President Jammeh has implemented a series of policy that line his pockets and do little for the people. This is couple with a terrifying press freedom record and its accompanying propaganda barrage that leaves the population with little information, opinion or ability to chance either. One Gambian journalist I spoke to said of the situation, “Human development is stagnant. Jammeh keeps them just stupid enough.”

My article published in The Samosa was noticed by The Guardian Weekly. A real compliment!

Weekly Web Watch: February 5, 2010

Guardianweekly.co.uk editor Mark King on some web highlights from the last week including an illuminating chat with film director Tim Burton and a sobering look at schools and sex abuse in Sierra Leone

Today’s breaking news is that three Labour MPs and one Tory peer are facing expenses abuse charges – the latter, Lord Hanningford, is reported to have resigned as Conservative business spokesman in the House of Lords and has had the Tory whip suspended. The scandal continues.

The Samosa has published Annabel Symington’s investigation into schools and sex abuse in Sierra Leone, finding that instances of sexual abuse and unwanted pregnancies, which are euphemistically called “girl-child pregnancies”, are forcing girls to leave school early, creating yet another lost generation in the West African nation, which is still getting back on its feet after an 11-year civil war.

Everyone should be joining Michael Rosenblum’s venomous attack of 60 Minutes’ latest self-congratulatory funfair.

Media budget cuts are effecting the coverage of foreign news. But then in walks CBS and blows a huge sum on producing a flaccid piece about Afghanistan. This comes out at the same time as the whistleblowing website, Wikileaks is begging for financial support so that they can continue exposing the truth around the world.

The big new corporations need to get their priorities straight and should be reminded of the huge responsibility they have on their shoulders as they inform huge audiences about the realities of the world we live in.

No of us should accept this kind of propagandistic, congratulatory drivel. We should all be up in arms about it.

60 Minutes is a Pile of Crap by Michael Rosenblum on February 1, 2010 – 6:33 am

CBS News ‘correspondent’ Lara Logan posing as a reporter…

A few days ago we ran a clip from Newswipe, a BBC parody of ‘news programs’.

It was funny.

But last night 60 Minutes ran a segment on the war in Afghanistan that was more parody than Newswipe.

Alas, it was far from funny.

The segment, the first on the show, was entitled The Quiet Professionals, and it was a profile of the highly trained green beret units in Afghanistan by ‘correspondent’ Lara Logan.

In the end, it didn’t say a whole lot about the Green Berets or Afghanistan but it said reams about the death of journalism on 60 Minutes.

Apparently, the 60 Minutes crew spent 2 months in Afghanistan filming this 7 minute report. From what they have aired, most of that time was spent getting Ms. Logan made up. There are long, languid shots of her in cover-girl pose – extreme close up – as she awaits answers to hard hitting questions like ‘that must be very hard’.

Tough stuff.

We are informed that many of the Green Berets are undercover, so CBS News ‘disguised’ them with Rayban sun glasses.

Great disguise!!

Most of the piece was just a pure softball love fest about how great a job the awesome Green Berets were doing, even if none of it was working. Still, they have beards and wear sun glasses and walk are all in great shape – let’s see them lift some weights! Yes! Sexy stuff and sexy Ms. Logan.

Then, at the end of the story, seemingly by accident – some real action (as opposed to the training exercises we have been watching). A ‘mysterious’ van approaches our hero Green Beret – the guy with the sexy beard and raybans – and our hero opens up on them! From a distance (you never know in Afghanistan). Two ‘warning shots’.

The van, it turns out, is filled with Afghan civilians. What a surprise.

But wait!! Our cool hero Green Beret in the raybans shot!!! two of the civilians in the back of the van!

Two kids!

And they are bleeding all over the van.

One is shot in the leg. The other has been shot in the chest.

Jesus Christ allmighty. You moron!

You absolute idiot!!

A chopper comes in to medivac the two wounded kids to medical care.

Now this is really a story. One that Ms. Logan and her crew have come upon entirely by accident, but what a story.

Do you wanna know why the Taliban are so popular in Afghanistan? It’s because we send thousands of idiots like this guy to parade all over their country killing their children at random and then going ‘oops!’

Does Ms. Logan pick up on this?

Not at all. The story line remains the same. Our hero sexy Green Beret is still our hero! Bad things happen sometimes but he’s still doing his dangerous job. (Dangerous to the locals!!)

More languid shots of Ms. Logan hair blowing in the wind. Make up looking good.

I was personally so astonished at this piece that I went to the 60 Minutes website and posted the very first comment. I said there what I said above.

Remarkably, 10 minutes after I posted my comment, I returned to the 60 Minutes site to see that it had been removed.

Astonishing.

I then tweeted the whole experience and an unnamed producer from 60 Minutes responded that Lara Logan indeed was a mindless piece of fluff. That he used to write every word that came out of her mouth, and that she had gotten hired, much to everyone’s ’shock’ at CBS News following a ‘dinner’ (his quotes) with Dan Rather.

You know, the media takes a lot of the responsibility for the debacle in Iraq because they simply refused to report.

60 Minutes is doing the same thing in Afghanistan now.

And it’s not like the truth is not out there.

It is.

Raul Gallegos, a Videojournalist for the Associate Press has been in Afghanistan for years, reporting the real story.

He is a far better journalist than Ms. Logan will ever be, he costs a whole lot less than the 60 Minutes crew does, and for two months, he gets a whole lot better product.

Here’s a small example of his work:

Compare this to the pure crap that 60 Minutes puts on the air – not to mention the propaganda feel of their ‘reporting’ and you will see why American journalism is in such serious trouble.

Lara, you looked great!

Entering The Gambia as a journalist is ill-advised.

This tiny West African country, nestled within Senegal, a may be inconspicuous on the map but it is a world leader on abuses of press freedom.

During President Jammeh’s 15 year reign he has executed a carefully crafted attack on freedom of expression.

I was recently in The Gambia, and I went to speak to some journalists at The Point, the leading oppositon newspaper. The paper was noticed by the international media in 2004 when its editor-in-chief and joint-founder, Deydra Hydara, was assassinated on the eve of the newspaper’s 13th anniversary. His murder has yet to be solved. In December 2006 the paper was awarded an International Press Freedom Award in Germany.

The opposition journalists, while being very pleased to see me, were very guarded in what they said to me. We spoke a lot about my experiences as a journalist in the UK, and as they decided that I was who I said I was, they began to open up.

They spoke of the difficult conditions under which they work: the ambiguous media laws that can be used to silence them at President Jammeh’s whim. The other newspapers published in The Gambia exacerbate the problem. Mostly government owned, the newspapers act as a mouth-pieces for pro-Jammeh propaganda. Editorials, titled “Another positive move”, praise Jammeh in hyperbole, and letters titled “Congraluations, Mr President” applaud Jammeh with such sycophantic words that it is hard to understand how anyone could believe it.

But people do. Talk to most Gambians and they will be full of praise of their president, who has provided them with 3 roads in his 15 years in power. “Because human development is stagnant,” one of The Point’s editors told me. Though a carefully orchestrated suppression of the opposition, a healthy propaganda mill and the prohibitive taxes on telecommunications that prevent any company from setting up decent internet, Jammeh is keeping the population of that tiny West African nation just stupid enough to prevent revolution.

I spent 2 weeks in The Gambia, and was left with the distinct impression that it was slowly going to collapse in on itself, not dramatically, but quietly, like a house of cards. And, suppression of free speech will be one of the biggest contributing factors to the collapse.

Jammeh’s propaganda is far-reaching
A billboard welcoming Lybia’s President Gadhafi: “Welcome brother leader Moamar Gadhafi leader of the revolution & chairman of the african union & king of kings of Africa”

CNN’s Anderson Cooper stepped in to save a Haitian boy who have got caught up in violent looting in Port-au-Prince. While no one could undermine the courageous action Anderson took, where is the line? When should journalists intervene and when should they just observe?

Please let me know what you think via twitter (@belsymington) or by leaving a comment at the bottom of the page.

According to Evgeny Morozov in his post Doubting the Sincerety of Google’s Threat Google are playing the innocent card:

Here is my very crude and cynical (Eastern European) reading of the situation: Google was in need of some positive PR to correct its worsening image (especially in Europe, where concerns about privacy are mounting on a daily basis). Google.cn is the goat that would be sacrificed, for it will generate most positive headlines and may not result in devastating losses to Google’s business (Google.cn holds roughly 30 percent of the Chinese market).

Jeff Jarvis responded in his post What Google Should Do?, saying that 30 per cent of the Chinese market is no bad thing:

Name one other company that finally said “enough!” and put ethic, morals, and company standards over its lust for the Chinese market. Not Yahoo. Not Cisco. Not Nokia. Not Siemens. Not The New York Times Company. Google has.

And he goes on to say:

I can well be accused of being a Google fanboy; I wrote the book. But I have been consistent in my criticism of Google’s actions in China. And so now I have not choice but to become even more of a fanboy. I applaud Google for finally standing up to the Chinese dictatorship and for free speech.

Charlie Beckett, in his post Google and China: cynical ploy or a principled stand?, says that Google was naive “because it doesn’t make 100% sense either as an idealistic gesture or a cynical ploy to exit a difficult market.”

Larry Dignan points out that “there may be a regulatory payoff” to Google’s exit from China. In his post, Assessing Google’s showdown with China: Does it make sense?, Dignan points out:

Google needs a lot of government approval on many fronts. Google has to worry about antitrust regulators meddling in little purchases such as the search giant’s acquisition of AdMob. European Union watchdogs are increasingly eyeing Google. Taking a hard line against China can win over a lot of fans in Washington D.C. It’s hard not to like a company taking a stand against China—especially since the U.S. government can’t right now (China is our banker).”

James Fallows at The Atlantic decsribed Google’s decision as “significant”, and continued to liken the Chinese government to Bush and Cheney:

In a strange and striking way there is an inversion of recent Chinese and U.S. roles. In the switch from George W. Bush to Barack Obama, the U.S. went from a president much of the world saw as deliberately antagonizing them to a president whose Nobel Prize reflected (perhaps desperate) gratitude at his efforts at conciliation. China, by contrast, seems to be entering its Bush-Cheney era. For Chinese readers, let me emphasize again my argument that China is not a “threat” and that its development is good news for mankind. But its government is on a path at the moment that courts resistance around the world. To me, that is what Google’s decision signifies.

The New York Times pointed out that while Google’s departure from China may have many of us up in arms (on one side or the other of the opinion spectrum), that Google’s decision is having very little impact in China itself. Why? Because China has heavily censored the news within its borders.

AP took Google’s stance as a “rare show of defiance”.

The response on Twitter has been mostly positive:

Google’s decision to pull out of China has provoked a mixed reaction across Twitter, the Blogoshere and in the mainstream media.

Some people are heralding Google’s decision as a brave response to China’s systematic censorship of the internet. Others, are applauding Google for finally sticking to their “Don’t be Evil” moto. The rest are saying that Google’s sudden about turn in their attitude towards China’s censorship policy has nothing to do with anyone’s, least of all Google’s, ethical conscience over China’s suppression of free speech, but that the decision is the result of hackers attacking google.

According to Wikileaks, the gossip inside Google is that is Chinese government hackers were found to be infiltrating Google’s source code repository. (The gmail attacks that a number of mainstream media outlets have comments on, are an old issue, says Wikileaks.) And that this was the real motivation behind Google’s pull out.

Late last year, WikiLeaks began lobbying the Icelandic parliament to consider a series of bills, which if passed would transform Iceland into a journalistic haven.

The new laws would be modeled on the kind of shady tax laws that tax havens offer the rich. Under the WikiLeaks’ proposal, Iceland would offer sources and journalists a strong package of legal protections thereby establishing itself as a sanctuary for free speech.

Wikileaks’ proposed laws are based on a pick-a-mix approach to the freedom of speech laws around the world: “So we could just say we’re taking the source protection laws from Sweden … the First Amendment from the United States, (and) Belgium’s protection laws for journalists,” said WikiLeaks’ Daniel Schmitt at the Chaos Communication Congress (26C3) that took place last week in Berlin.

If Iceland passes Wikileaks’ laws they will be setting a precedent for press freedom in a time of tumultuous debates about the rights of bloggers and the role of the internet in journalism. They will also further legitimise WikiLeaks’ position within that debate, and guarantee them a prominent place within the future of journalists.