[Lightstalkers] 2006 'Most Savage' Year

2006 'Most Savage' Year

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 12:55:48 +0000

Hi there... I just wanted to share this info...Nobody said a word about it... Unfortunately the world still remains the same sh..hole where money, hipocrisy and power rules...nothing new... The International Press Institute (IPI) says 2006 was the most brutal year for journalists across the world. 100!!! "By far the most dangerous [place] is Iraq, where 46 journalists were killed last year," Michael Kudlak, a press freedom adviser for the Vienna-based IPI, said. ............................................ "Most of those were Iraqi journalists, who were targeted BECAUSE they worked for Western on U.S.-supported media organizations." ............................................almost 50% .... The second most deadly country for journalists was the Philippines with 10 media staffers being killed. Seven journalists died in Mexico; five in Sri Lanka; four in Paki ETC ETc,......etc....and almost all the killings were carried out with impunity. IPI says that apart from the killings, many countries continued to silence or censor journalists. Any coments?...

Re: 2006 'Most Savage' Year

Fri, 04 May 2007 06:18:05 +0000

I'm not sure if there's anything else to say - these words speak for themselves.

Re: 2006 'Most Savage' Year

Fri, 04 May 2007 07:35:59 +0000

When in 2004 Polish war correspondent Waldemar Milewicz was killed in Iraq.. i couldn't understand how somebody can use a gun against journalist (he was in car with big inscryption PRESS)... he went there to show TWO sides of this conflict, he was not enemy!... when you are writing now about 46 journalist, Zara is right these words speak for themselves

Re: 2006 'Most Savage' Year

Fri, 04 May 2007 11:28:46 +0000

Thanks Alain, I had missed that, again IPI says it all And have you all seen the "LAPD footage":http://www.myfoxla.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail?contentId=3086223&version=2&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=VSTY&pageId=1.1.1 on Fox News, just shows you don't have to go to a designated conflict zone! !!

Re: 2006 'Most Savage' Year

Fri, 04 May 2007 18:51:00 +0000

It's too sad that no one (Lightstalkers) from US has any coments for this post... Any ideas why? Why no coments and why so many iraqi journalist dead...etc... I wasn't expecting the succes of "Somebody please tell a joke..." or "So You Think You Are A Photographer !?" but at least something more.....more. Not trying to hurt feelings here... Al.

Re: 2006 'Most Savage' Year

Sat, 05 May 2007 01:29:28 +0000

Dear Alain, I can't say why other LS have not replied to you but I can only answer for myself. I am embarrassed. I am embarrassed about the war, I am embarrassed to be an American. I am embarrassed that it has become so dangerous for journalists in Iraq that we will never see the true story,that we are left with visions of George W. Bush standing on board an aircraft carrier declaring four years ago "we have won"..... I am afraid that that picture that is worth a thousand words will never be taken in Iraq, and if it is we may never see it. Peace. Sarah Hoskins

Re: 2006 'Most Savage' Year

Sat, 05 May 2007 06:26:40 +0000

Alain, from what I have learned after two trips to Iraq, one that just ended yesterday, is this: One, there is violence everywhere. Combat, car-bombs, assainations and several groups pitted against one another. Sunni against Shia, Sunni against Sunni, Al queda agiainst both, and everyone against the US. By sheer amount of violence and confusion, Iraq is the most deadly place anywhere right now, so you are going to have a higher percentage of dead journalists. Also like you mentioned, many Iraqi's (including journalists) are killed because they work for a western company, (the wires use many Iraqi stingers for example) they are seen as helping the enemey I guess, anything western, American, French, English, what-ever. But of course there are very few jobs - work for the western press, in the green zone or for the I Police, Army or contracting firm -or work for the so called insurgants. Many Iraqi journalists (working for western press or Iraqi press) have been also been killed covering news, again, deadly country, deadly situations. Many Iraqi journalists (and many other other Iraqi non journos) have been killed approaching US and IP, IA checkpoints. I personally know two who died that way. My feeling is that the young soldiers are scared to death of suicide car-bombers (and very rightly so - many caheckpoints manned by both US and Iraqi police have been bombed resulting in multiple deaths and dismemberment) many times, I imagine, the people manning checkpoints shoot first, ask questions later - that cuopled with the fact that many Iraqi drivers don't take enough caution around nervous young men with heavy weapons results in many deaths. I think the bottom line is this: Very dangerous war, many deaths all the way around. It is a very bad situation.

Re: 2006 'Most Savage' Year

Sat, 05 May 2007 14:53:37 +0000

Alain, following on Eros' exacting post, i'll offer something too.... the world is a vilonent mess, a tumult of fear and craving and most of the world has cut itself off from that, from the acknowledgement around and inside. My wife and I were speaking about this the other night, as she's been reading the book "blowing up russia" by Alexander Litvinenko (former fsb agent killed in london by radiocative poisoning) and Yuri Felshtinsky (book is banned in russia) about the "terrorist bombings" in moscow and in russia proported to be by chetniyians...in the end, states are controlled and run by the same basic principle, the will to power and even this, more and more, eclipsed by mercanary agenices (wealth) and that Iraq is a uncontestably and horrifying now a desert of death, all around, and that most of america (and elsewhere) fails or refuses to understand the grip and the vein of that (and the consequences in its own life) is a function Alain of a more simple (and no less invidious) truth. journalists die because the world is a slaughter house, an abbatoir, and most of us are served by the not-knowing and I do not know how to rid this calulus....in iraq, it is a panoply of fear (young men and women killing other men and women (around all sides, as Eros as rightly pointed out)) and death and it shall not yet pass. My own, very simple and private hope, is that at some point the world recongizes that it is responsible. I personally voted twice against bush, and this is an irrelevancy, for before bushII there were other riotious years and one year has not monarchy over death and destruction, only increasingly the world is jumping around over each other to see and broadcast and condemn and to villify and yet it doesn not end. in the end Alain, the truth is much simpler and more complex than we (the journalists, the writers, the photographers, the politicians) care to aknowledge....right now i am typing, safely, on a computer into a post awaiting my wife and son to return from their morning run while there is, there and elsewhere, another father who is huddled and grieving around fear wondering if today, this bright and wide-clipped may day, will be the day when he or one of his loved one's is killed and eclipsed by that which he cannot know nor control nor stop. This, this very disconnect, as driven home by the excecution of our fellow-ls member ajmal's, is the more (for me) important one: we are still disconnected and becoming so increasingly....iraq, like all places of war, is a breaking and wrestling through madness, and those most responsible (not only the bush administration, but more far reaching) mostly likely want it this way, for a tenure in term is an irrelevancy compared with the length of the rope of power that continues, long after the pomp and circumstance hymn has been song. We do not want to know, so we satiate ourselves on you tube and facebook and tv: we read less, talk less, walk less, sit in silence less.....we destroy and we disappear....a dangeous year for journalists?....an annus horribilis for people, the world over, and it doesn't end... we must tell more and do more and try, rather than accumulate numbers, understand more. we're a species prone to numbers (and the accumulation of that) over thinking..... we stopped counting numbers (deaths or the amount of possessions we accumulate) and start listening and looking around.... as for the may protest in la, im not surprised (my thoughts of living in la for 4 years are that: nights punctuated by the drone of the night dragonflies (lapd helicopters) unceasingly), for fear begets we and people, in their homes, grave fear for it comforts them in their swallowing and gated lives....the same (intimidation of power) happens everywhere.... irag is not about bush, but about us, in each and every home and country...... bob