Coming
Soon!
From Common Courage Press
Recent
Stories
June
24, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Supreme Indemnity
Holocaust Denial at the High Court
Roya
Monajem
A Message from Tehran: Is It Worth
It to Risk One's Life?
John
Chuckman
The Real Clash of Civilizations
David Lindorff
WMD Damage Control at the Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/24
June
23, 2003
Marc
Pritzke
Washington Lied: an Interview with
Ray McGovern
Conn
Hallinan
The Consistency of Sharon
Wayne Madsen
Commercials, Disney & Amistad
Edward
Said
The Meaning of Rachel Corrie
Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/23
June
21 / 22, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
My Life as a Rabbi
William
A. Cook
The Scourge of Hopelessness
Standard
Schaefer
The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor
Ron Jacobs
US Prisons as Strategic Hamlets
Harry
Browne
The Pitstop Ploughshares
Lawrence
Magnuson
WMD: The Most Dangerous Game
Harold
Gould
Saddam and the WMD Mystery
David Krieger
10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Avia
Pasternak
The Unholy Alliance in the Occupied Territories
CounterPunch
Summer Reading:
Our Favorite Novels
Todd Chretien
Return to Sender: Todd Gitlin, the Duke of Condescension
Maria
Tomchick
Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
Adam Engel
The Fat Man in Little Boy
Poets'
Basement
Guthrie, Albert & Hamod
June 20, 2003
Walter
Brasch
Down on Our Knees
Robert
Meeropol
The Son of the Rosenbergs on His Parents Death and Bush's America
Russell
Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Grannies and Baby Bells
Norman
Madarasz
Pierre Bourgault: the Life of a
Quebec Radical
Gary
Leupp
Bush on "Revisionist Historians"
Steve
Perry
Bush's Lies
Marathon: the Finale
June
19, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Bush Plays the Racial Profiling Card:
It's a Smokescreen
Brian
Cloughley
Punch-and-Judy in the West Wing:
The Powell-Rice Show
David Lindorff
What's Next?
Mark
Jacobs
A Serious Conversation: a Former Foreign Service Officer on Diplomacy
in the Age of Bush
Alfredo
Castro
Bloodbath in Colombia: The Army and the Death Squads
Saul
Landau
Lying, Flag Waving and Redefining
Conservative Values
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log, 6/19
June
18, 2003
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
Elaine
Cassel
Dark Star Chambers: Secret Trials,
Nameless Defendents, Veiled Threats to Defense Lawyers
Col.
Daniel Smith
Iraq's WMDs: Integrity, Ethics and
Intelligence
Chris
Fagen
Ignoring the World's Bloodiest War
Rick
Fantasia and Kim Voss
Bush's Low Intensity War on Labor
Sam
Hamod
Theater of Deception: Bush, Sharon,
Abbas
M.
Shahid Alam
Illuminating Tom Friedman
Jon
Brown
Greens & Dems: a Reply to Publius
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log, 6/18
June
17, 2003
Dr.
Susan Block
Sex, Lies and WMDs
Elaine
Cassel
Scalia, the Rumsfeld of the Supremes
Roger Burbach
Brazil Under Lula
Dan
Bacher
The WTO's War on Salmon
Peter
Phillips and Jason Spencer
Entertainment Media 2003
Nuclear
Age Peace Foundation
The Challenge of Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century
Wayne Madsen
Outting Ashcroft's Latest Hypocrisy
Larry
Kearney
Starlight
Steve
Perry
The Bush Administration
Lies Marathon, Day 3
June
16, 2003
Frida
Berrigan
Death in Aceh: US Weapon Aid the
Repression
Publius
Candidate Dem and Citizen Green
Tarif
Abboushi
Roadmap or Roadkill?
Rep. John
Conyers
Bush's Deceptions about Iraq Threaten Democracy at Home
Julian
Samuel
A Review of Pilger's The New Rulers of the World
Uri
Avnery
The Children of Death
Steve
Perry
Bush's Lies,
Part 2
June
14 / 15, 2003
Edward
Said
A Roadmap to What and Where?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Pryor Unrestraint: Killer Bill Pryor's
Mad Quest for the Federal Bench
David Lindorff
Rumsfeld v. Belgium
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Suicide's Most Willing Accomplice
Lee Sustar
US Tax System: Rigged for the Rich
Ben
Tripp
Of Dissidents and Dissonance
William
S. Lind
Lies, Damned Lies and Military Intelligence
Joanne
Mariner
Rebellious Judges
Gila Svirsky
A Macabre Alliance
Mickey
Z.
Where We Are
Chris Floyd
Metaphysics as a Guide to Murder
Noah
Leavitt
Peru as Our Crystal Ball?
Yves Engler
and Bianca Mugyenyi
The G8 and Africa
Dr.
Gerry Lower
Dear Rudy, Let's Get Those Damned Liberals
Ted Dace
A Review of Kovel's The Enemy of Nature
Adam
Engel
Midnight at the Apocalyptic Pancake
Poets'
Basement
Smith, Greeder, Albert, and O'Hayer
Website
of the Weekend
AEI: Starts Wars; Creates
Poverty
June
13, 2003
David
Vest
Bush
Roadmap to What?
Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Reloaded?
John
Chuckman
The Man Who Wasn't There
Jason Leopold
Six Months Before War White House Silenced Critics of WMD Intelligence
Michael
Leon
Missing Weapons, Shrinking Bush and the Media
Negar Azimi
Ashcroft's Cruel Version of America
Saul
Landau
Shiite Happens
Hammond
Guthrie
Then and Now
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/13
June
12, 2003
Gary
Leupp
The Intel-gate Row in Britain: a Chronology
Ahmad Faruqui
The Tragic Legacy of the Six Day
War
Wayne
Madsen
Unfit for Office: Time for Rumsfeld to Resign
Laura Carlsen
Hunger and Security
Tarif
Abboushi
Warm and Fuzzy in Aqaba
Ray
McGovern
Deceived into War: Reflections of
a Former CIA Analyst
Steve
Perry
Counting Bush's
Lies, part 2
Hot Stories
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
Victory
at Little Big Horn Day
June 25, 2003
William Nessen is Safe
But
Indonesia's War on Reporters Continues
By
DAVID LINDORFF
Good news came Tuesday from Indonesia, where American
journalist William Nessen was successfully allowed to leave rebel
territory in oil-rich Aceh, where he had been covering the struggle
by Aceh rebels to win independence from Indonesia and to resist
a major assault by Indonesian troops.
Nessen had been overtly threatened with
arrest and even death by notoriously brutal Indonesian military
officers, and a major campaign had been mounted by the Committee
to Protect Journalists and other organizations to protect him
and negotiate an agreement for his safe return from the jungle.
In the end, after considerable pressure
on an initially indifferent U.S. embassy and State Department,
an arrangement was reportedly negotiated whereby Nessen was able
to cross over into Indonesian military-controlled territory in
the presence of an officer from the U.S. Embassy in Indonesia
and the chief information officer of the Indonesian  military. Nessen, an accredited
journalist who was writing from Indonesia for the Boston Globe
and the San Francisco Chronicle, agreed as part of the deal to
be questioned by military personnel in the presence of a U.S.
embassy official.
Nessen's "crime"--and the reason
his life was in danger in recent days--is that he had failed
to abide by the Indonesian military's restraints on journalists
covering the counter-insurgency campaign in Aceh. The Indonesian
army had recently taken a page from the Pentagon, and had "embedded"
journalists with its troops, making that the only way for journalists
to cover the campaign legally. Nessen, following the old rules
of reporting, had simply gone off on his own to cover the story,
walking into rebel territory. Nessen had also filed reports from
the war zone via cell phone, in which he accused the Indonesian
military of committing attrocities, including bombing villages
and deliberately causing starvation. (His mention of the role
of U.S. military equipment in the campaign, including F-16 fighter-bombers
probably didn't endear him with American diplomats in Jakarta
or Washington, either.)
His harrowing experience--he was caught
in one fire-fight and had to abandon his camera and video equipment,
which were subsequently found and impounded by the Indonesian
army--raises an interesting question: How would the Pentagon
handle a reporter who was as daring and enterprising as Nessen
these days?
I am afraid the answer is not pretty
to contemplate.
One good example is provided by the current
war in Iraq (yeah, I know, Bush says it's been over since May
1, but does anyone really believe that?).
Those journalists who didn't listen when,
on the eve of America's invasion of Iraq, the president urged
them to flee Baghdad, found themselves subject to attack by bombers,
in the case of Al Jazeera's office, and tanks, in the case of
the hotel where all other foreign journalists were quartered.
Several of these courageous journalists who stayed on in Baghdad
paid for their pluck with their lives.
Several other journalists in southern
Iraq who went off on their own during the early days of battle
were also slain, though the circumstances there are less clear.
And what about that other war--the so-called
war on terrorism? One can only imagine how the Ashcroft "Justice"
Department would treat any reporter who managed to get inside
the Al Qaeda operation to follow it's side of the battle.
Armed with the power to secretly arrest
and imprison anyone, and to hold her or him incommunicado indefinitely
as an "enemy combatant," it's possible we wouldn't
even know about such a reporter's exploits. Like Jose Padilla,
an native-born American citizen who has been held without charge
and without access to a lawyer (or even a family member) now
in a South Carolina military brig for over a year, they could
simply disappear along with their stories. (For all we know,
given the level of secrecy imposed by the Bush Administration
in this case, Padilla was just a freelance journalist trying
to get a story!)
Given this kind of threat, it is perhaps
understandable that there has been so little aggressive reporting
being done by mainstream journalists regarding America's new
wars. That is a tragedy.
We need more William Nessens out there.
For now though, we can at least celebrate
Nessen's escape from the Indonesian Army, and look forward to
reading about his experiences with Aceh independence fighters.
Postscript
The good news regarding Nessen was tempered
with word on Thursday that despite promises to U.S. diplomatic
officials that he would not be charged with anything, subsequent
to his voluntarily turning himself in to Indonesian military
authorities in Aceh, he was arrested and charged with violating
two sections of Indonesia's immigration law. One section requires
foreigners to state their intentions for living in Indonesia;
a second requires foreign visitors to notify military or police
authorities if traveling to conflict areas.
Nessen, who was in Indonesia on a journalist's
visa, had gone to Aceh before the military declared martial law
in the province and began requiring special permission to visit
the troubled province.
Under the law, he can now be held in
police custody for 20 days, followed by a possible extension
of 40 days. At the end of those three months, authorities could
decide to prosecute him.
Lin Neumann, Asia consultant with the
Committee to Protect Journalists, who had been involved in negotiations
to win safe conduct across military lines for Nessen, expressed
surprise at the latest turn of events, saying, "The spirit
of talks with the Indonesian authorities was that Nessen would
be allowed to leave the country if he turned himself in, and
we think that should be honored."
U.S. embassy officials in Jakarta also
expressed surprise at the detention and charges leveled against
Nessen.
Those seeking more information about
Nessen's case, or about how they can help, should go to the CPJ
website
Dave Lindorff
is the author of Killing
Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
A collection of Lindorff's stories can be found here: http://www.nwuphilly.org/dave.html
Weekend
Edition Features
Alexander
Cockburn
My Life as a Rabbi
William
A. Cook
The Scourge of Hopelessness
Standard
Schaefer
The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor
Ron Jacobs
US Prisons as Strategic Hamlets
Harry
Browne
The Pitstop Ploughshares
Lawrence
Magnuson
WMD: The Most Dangerous Game
Harold
Gould
Saddam and the WMD Mystery
David Krieger
10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Avia
Pasternak
The Unholy Alliance in the Occupied Territories
CounterPunch
Summer Reading:
Our Favorite Novels
Todd Chretien
Return to Sender: Todd Gitlin, the Duke of Condescension
Maria
Tomchick
Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
Adam Engel
The Fat Man in Little Boy
Poets'
Basement
Guthrie, Albert & Hamod
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|