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Robert Fisk on Daniel peral killing.
Robert Fisk, a 20+ veternan of middle east reporting, often on KPFA an Deomocracy, and who was almost beat to death in Pakistan a couple months ago speaks out on what the Daniel Pearl killing means for journalism.
Robert Fisk:
Journalists are now targets - but who is to blame for this?
23 February 2002
The murder of Daniel Pearl of The Wall Street Journals was as revolting as it was outrageous.
But why was he killed? Because he was a Westerner, a "Kaffir"? Because he was an American?
Or because he was a journalist? And if he was killed because he was a reporter what has happened to the protection which we in our craft used to enjoy? In Pakistan and Afghanistan, we can be seen as Kaffirs, as unbelievers. Our faces, our hair, even our spectacles, mark us out as Westerners. The Muslim cleric who wished to talk to me in an Afghan refugee village outside Peshawar last October was stopped by a man who pointed at me and asked: "Why are you taking this Kaffir into our mosque?'' Weeks later, a crowd of Afghan refugees, grief-stricken at the slaughter of their relatives in a US B-52 bomber air raid, tried to kill me because they thought I was an American. But over the past quarter century I have witnessed the slow, painful, dangerous erosion of respect for our work. We used to risk our lives in wars - we still do - but journalists were rarely deliberate targets. We were impartial witnesses to conflict, often the only witnesses, the first writers of history. Even the nastiest militias understood this. "Protect him, look after him, he is a journalist,'' I recall a Palestinian guerrilla ordering his men when I entered the burning Lebanese town of Bhamdoun in 1983.
But in Lebanon, in Algeria and then in Bosnia, the protection began to disintegrate. Reporters in Beirut were taken hostage - the Associated Press's Terry Anderson disappeared for almost seven years - while Algerian journalists were hunted down and beheaded by Islamist groups throughout the Nineties. Olivier Quemener, a French cameraman, was cruelly shot down in the Casbah area of Algiers as his wounded colleague lay weeping by his side. Pasting "TV" stickers on your car in Sarajevo was as much an invitation to the Serb snipers above the city to shoot at journalists as it was a protection.
Where did we go wrong? I suspect the rot started in Vietnam. Reporters have identified themselves with armies for decades. In both World Wars, journalists worked in uniform. Dropping behind enemy lines with US commandos did not spare an AP reporter from a Nazi firing squad. But these were countries in open conflict, reporters whose nations had officially declared war. Wearing a uniform enabled journalists to claim the protection of the Geneva Convention; in civilian clothes they could be shot as spies. It was in Vietnam that reporters started wearing uniforms and carrying weapons - and shooting those weapons at America's enemies - even though their country was not officially at war and even when they could have carried out their duties without wearing soldiers' clothes. In Vietnam, reporters were murdered because they were reporters.
This odd habit of journalists to be part of the story, to play an almost theatrical role in wars, slowly took hold. When the Palestinians evacuated Beirut in 1982, I noticed that several French reporters were hearing Palestiniankuffiah scarves. Israeli reporters turned up in occupied southern Lebanon with pistols. Then in
the 1991 Gulf war, American and British television reporters started dressing up in military costumes, appearing on screen - complete with helmets and military camouflage fatigues - as if they were members of the 82nd Airborne or the Hussars. One American journalist even arrived in boots camouflaged with painted leaves although a glance at any desert suggests that this would not have served much purpose. In the Kurdish flight into the mountains of northern Iraq more reporters could be found wearing Kurdish
clothes. In Pakistan and Afghanistan last year, the same phenomenon occurred, Reporters in Peshawar could be seen wearing Pushtun hats. Why? No one could ever supply me with an explanation. What on earth was CNN's Walter Rodgers doing in US Marine costume at the American camp outside Kandahar? Mercifully, someone told him to take it off after his first broadcast. Then Geraldo Rivera of Fox News arrived in Jalalabad with a gun. He fully intended, he said, to kill Osama bin Laden. It was the last straw. The reporter had now become combatant. Perhaps we no longer care about our profession. Maybe we're all to quick to demean our own jobs, to sneer at each other, to adopt the ridiculous title of "hacks" when we should regard the job as foreign correspondent as a decent, honourable profession. I was astounded
last December when an American newspaper headline announced that I had deserved the beating I received at the hands of that Afghan crowd. I had almost died but the article, by Mark Steyn, carried a headline that a "multiculturalist (me) gets his due''. My sin, of course, was to explain that the crowd had lost relatives in America's B-52 raids, that I would have done the same in their place. That shameful,
unethical headline, I should add, appeared in Daniel Pearl's own newspaper, The Wall Street Journal.
Can we do better? I think so. It's not that reporters in military costume - Rodgers in his silly Marine helmet, Rivera clowning around with a gun, or even me in my gas cape a decade ago - helped to kill Daniel Pearl. He was murdered by vicious men. But we are all of us - dressing up in combatant's clothes or adopting the national dress of people - helping to erode the shield of neutrality and decency which saved our lives in the past. If we don't stop now, how can we protest when next our colleagues are seized by ruthless men who claim we are spies?
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=139
Journalists are now targets - but who is to blame for this?
23 February 2002
The murder of Daniel Pearl of The Wall Street Journals was as revolting as it was outrageous.
But why was he killed? Because he was a Westerner, a "Kaffir"? Because he was an American?
Or because he was a journalist? And if he was killed because he was a reporter what has happened to the protection which we in our craft used to enjoy? In Pakistan and Afghanistan, we can be seen as Kaffirs, as unbelievers. Our faces, our hair, even our spectacles, mark us out as Westerners. The Muslim cleric who wished to talk to me in an Afghan refugee village outside Peshawar last October was stopped by a man who pointed at me and asked: "Why are you taking this Kaffir into our mosque?'' Weeks later, a crowd of Afghan refugees, grief-stricken at the slaughter of their relatives in a US B-52 bomber air raid, tried to kill me because they thought I was an American. But over the past quarter century I have witnessed the slow, painful, dangerous erosion of respect for our work. We used to risk our lives in wars - we still do - but journalists were rarely deliberate targets. We were impartial witnesses to conflict, often the only witnesses, the first writers of history. Even the nastiest militias understood this. "Protect him, look after him, he is a journalist,'' I recall a Palestinian guerrilla ordering his men when I entered the burning Lebanese town of Bhamdoun in 1983.
But in Lebanon, in Algeria and then in Bosnia, the protection began to disintegrate. Reporters in Beirut were taken hostage - the Associated Press's Terry Anderson disappeared for almost seven years - while Algerian journalists were hunted down and beheaded by Islamist groups throughout the Nineties. Olivier Quemener, a French cameraman, was cruelly shot down in the Casbah area of Algiers as his wounded colleague lay weeping by his side. Pasting "TV" stickers on your car in Sarajevo was as much an invitation to the Serb snipers above the city to shoot at journalists as it was a protection.
Where did we go wrong? I suspect the rot started in Vietnam. Reporters have identified themselves with armies for decades. In both World Wars, journalists worked in uniform. Dropping behind enemy lines with US commandos did not spare an AP reporter from a Nazi firing squad. But these were countries in open conflict, reporters whose nations had officially declared war. Wearing a uniform enabled journalists to claim the protection of the Geneva Convention; in civilian clothes they could be shot as spies. It was in Vietnam that reporters started wearing uniforms and carrying weapons - and shooting those weapons at America's enemies - even though their country was not officially at war and even when they could have carried out their duties without wearing soldiers' clothes. In Vietnam, reporters were murdered because they were reporters.
This odd habit of journalists to be part of the story, to play an almost theatrical role in wars, slowly took hold. When the Palestinians evacuated Beirut in 1982, I noticed that several French reporters were hearing Palestiniankuffiah scarves. Israeli reporters turned up in occupied southern Lebanon with pistols. Then in
the 1991 Gulf war, American and British television reporters started dressing up in military costumes, appearing on screen - complete with helmets and military camouflage fatigues - as if they were members of the 82nd Airborne or the Hussars. One American journalist even arrived in boots camouflaged with painted leaves although a glance at any desert suggests that this would not have served much purpose. In the Kurdish flight into the mountains of northern Iraq more reporters could be found wearing Kurdish
clothes. In Pakistan and Afghanistan last year, the same phenomenon occurred, Reporters in Peshawar could be seen wearing Pushtun hats. Why? No one could ever supply me with an explanation. What on earth was CNN's Walter Rodgers doing in US Marine costume at the American camp outside Kandahar? Mercifully, someone told him to take it off after his first broadcast. Then Geraldo Rivera of Fox News arrived in Jalalabad with a gun. He fully intended, he said, to kill Osama bin Laden. It was the last straw. The reporter had now become combatant. Perhaps we no longer care about our profession. Maybe we're all to quick to demean our own jobs, to sneer at each other, to adopt the ridiculous title of "hacks" when we should regard the job as foreign correspondent as a decent, honourable profession. I was astounded
last December when an American newspaper headline announced that I had deserved the beating I received at the hands of that Afghan crowd. I had almost died but the article, by Mark Steyn, carried a headline that a "multiculturalist (me) gets his due''. My sin, of course, was to explain that the crowd had lost relatives in America's B-52 raids, that I would have done the same in their place. That shameful,
unethical headline, I should add, appeared in Daniel Pearl's own newspaper, The Wall Street Journal.
Can we do better? I think so. It's not that reporters in military costume - Rodgers in his silly Marine helmet, Rivera clowning around with a gun, or even me in my gas cape a decade ago - helped to kill Daniel Pearl. He was murdered by vicious men. But we are all of us - dressing up in combatant's clothes or adopting the national dress of people - helping to erode the shield of neutrality and decency which saved our lives in the past. If we don't stop now, how can we protest when next our colleagues are seized by ruthless men who claim we are spies?
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=139
For more information:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_c...
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Do all of you still mourn for the death of this *Zionist*?
We mourn for the 10 to 100 million indigenous people of the Americas who died to fulfill the greed of elite white European males. We mourn for the 12 to 50 million Africans and African-Americans who died to fulfill the greed of elite white European and American males.
We mourn the lack of real democracy that would empower you and I to determine the course of our lives.
Give me a break, Mr. sensitive-serious guy.
Oh, and by the way, Pearl was killed (and his captors admitted this) solely because he was a Jew. Now what is this talk about anti-zionism not being ant-jew? Apparently his captors disagree.
You seem very intent on being so politically correct that you must mention the deaths of Afghans (oh, and what statistics are YOU reading?), the deaths of Iraqi children each month due to Saddam's refusal to allow weapons inspectors into his elite kingdom (again, stats would be useful-- these numbers are very suspect to most all researchers)-- but what about the 3,000+ children who die every month in the United States? Don't you mourn them? I mean, you should be more respectful and "P.C."!!!
Unbiased Source:
http://www.aap.org/policy/re9921.html
In short, I am your worst enemy. In your most raving paranoid and racist fantasy, you hate so called "Zionists" white oppressors like me because I am responsible for what works in America. You live in this nation and enjoy freedom and comfort because of people like me, not despite my existence.
Don't mourn for me. I know you assholes cheer at the death of Daniel Pearl because he represents another American kike you can spit upon. So fuck you. Why not live in a Hopi village for awhile, or try farming in Zimbabwe (unless you're a white devil, then Mugabe will kill you).
Start demonstrating remorse all y'all toxic little patriots.