Author and journalist, Dahr Jamail, will be speaking at the University of Alaska Anchorage Monday evening. Here's the campus newsletter announcement:Monday, Nov. 16, 7 p.m.
Social Sciences Building, Room 118
Dahr Jamil's new book is called "The Will to Resist," and a book signing will follow his talk. Jamail's visit is sponsored by the Gene Sharp Lectureship on Nonviolent Action, UAA Political Science Department and the UAA Campus Bookstore. For more information, contact Rachel Epstein at (907) 786-4782.
Last weekend, in a post titled Senate Homeland Security Committee Head Lieberman Wants to Investigate "The Worst Terrorist Attack Since 9-11", I posted a transcript I made of part of Dahr Jamail's interview nine days ago with Shannyn Moore on KBYR-AM. I also linked to Steve Heimel's Talk of Alaska segment with Jamail earlier the same week.
Jamail's two books are:
- The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. 2009. Haymarket Books.
- Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq. 2007. Haymarket Books.
This will be an important talk and I recommend it highly. Here is Dahr Jamail last week, being interviewed by Thom Hartmann:
In an article today by Turkana at DailyKos, about the huge percentage of infants being born in Falluja with birth defects - 15 times the Iraqi average - is covered in detail. Dahr Jamail is quoted extensively, as he covered both Fallujah battles, perhaps better than any other journalist alive:
The U.S. military has used poison gas and other non-conventional weapons against civilians in Fallujah, eyewitnesses report.
"Poisonous gases have been used in Fallujah," 35-year-old trader from Fallujah Abu Hammad told IPS. "They used everything — tanks, artillery, infantry, poison gas. Fallujah has been bombed to the ground."...
"They used these weird bombs that put up smoke like a mushroom cloud," Abu Sabah, another Fallujah refugee from the Julan area told IPS. "Then small pieces fall from the air with long tails of smoke behind them."
He said pieces of these bombs exploded into large fires that burnt the skin even when water was thrown on the burns. Phosphorous weapons as well as napalm are known to cause such effects. "People suffered so much from these," he said.
I'm looking forward to meeting Dahr tomorrow.
Update - 8:30 p.m: A video on the increasing birth defects in Falluja, by The Guardian:
Firedoglake has more.
6 comments:
Dahr Jamail - liar, propagandist, anti-American...hero of the American Left.
Judging by Jamail's debunked "stories" about American "atrocities"
in Fallujah (strangely the Al Qeada torture houses are not given much coverage) and his lamentable "reporting" on the Fort Hood Jihadist murders (Hassan was suffering from the world's first case of second hand Post Traumatic Stress, apparently)his appearance at Alaska will be an excuse for "progressive" Alaskans to indulge in more breast-beating about the vile country they are forced to live in.
To see what most serving military men and women think of Jamail, try reading a few Milblogs....or this letter to Jamail on the Huffington Post by another liberal reporter based in Iraq....
"I still don't think we should be here. But that debate became passé six years ago. Now it's a question of how soon the U.S. gets out and what happens before and after it does. I've met too many good and decent people here to write this place off, smart and hard working Iraqis that want and deserve a first-world existence….
As a journalist, criticizing military policy without talking to the military is completely incompetent. But with you, it goes deeper. You hide behind political artifice to lob your mines of pre-conclusion, like a craven wretch. And really, I think that goes to the solid core of the dregs of the problem. You're not a coward merely because you're afraid to seek the truth when it might not conform to your views ... rather your chickenshit views are shaped by the fact you're a coward….
Nearly every American soldier on the ground--no matter how misguided vis-à-vis the underlying motivations that brought the U.S. to Iraq--is here because of a sincere and genuine desire to help; none of them, I wager, have come to further an empire. Whether it be to fight against terrorism so people back home feel a little safer in skyscrapers, or to relieve a weary Iraqi population of a dictator, they're here for honorable reasons; just as is the case with the majority of those Iraqi soldiers (who still have targets on their foreheads). Which makes your fink agenda a slap in the face to about a million people who have fought and died and lost legs, brothers, and lots of blood in the hope of making something as simple as a secure place to live"
Almost two years ago Dahr Jamail was the most effective promoter of the fraudulent Jesse MacBeth video that charged the U.S. Army Rangers with mass executions of civilians that never happened. On May 21, 2006, Jamail promoted the video extenseively on his website and in his e-mail alerts, writing:
"This 20 minute interview will change how you view the U.S. occupation of Iraq forever. I cannot possibly recommend this more highly. An Iraq war veteran tells of atrocities he and other fellow-soldiers committed regularly while in Iraq. I have never seen this level of honesty from a U.S. soldier who directly participated in the slaughtering of Iraqis."
May 21, 2006
Three days later, by which time IVAW’s MacBeth had been exposed as a fraud, Jamail sought to hide his own promotion of the false atrocity charges by laying the blame for what he had been doing on others.
Jamail has another co-authored piece (with Ali al-Fadhily) at IPS entitled IRAQ: Fever Named After Blackwater.
"With his usual standard of fact checking demonstrated so aptly with his MacBeth promotion (see Jesse MacBeth to Winter Soldier: Exposing Dahr Jamail), Jamail and his partner write of a form of malaria:
" What Iraqis now call Blackwater fever is really a well-known medical condition, and while it has nothing to do with Blackwater Worldwide, Iraqis in al-Anbar province have decided to make the connection between the disease and the lethal U.S.-based company which has been responsible for the death of countless Iraqis. "
Jules Crittenden calls Jamail on it, pointing out that falciparum malaria has been called Blackwater Fever since the 19th century! Crittenden also points out that a ten second Google search by the intrepid independent reporter would have shown the term being used as such in 1991.
Durruti,
I'll ask Dahr about your comments tomorrow.
How do you think we should account for the high increase of birth defects in these kids in Falluja?
Duruuti...you just infuriated me. Who do you think you are?
No such thing as "second hand ptsd??" Where did you glean this inaccurate information?
I can tell you as a Social Worker who has been posted to some northern communities where atrocities not even close to war events take place...it most definitely is possible. I have it...I am being treated for it, and nobody...and I mean nobody in the medical professional community in Canada disavows it.
This man most certainly have ptsd. You have no right to say he doesn't. It does not mean he is not accountable....but please don't lie to make your point.
Laurie-Ann,
aren't all you lefties "recovering" from one thing or another?
You have enough conversations with those like you and it will come up at some point..."I'm a recovering (name that problem).
*laughing*
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