amanda rivkin, photographer

Two weeks from today, on May 14, the Eurovision Song Contest will take place in Dusseldorf, Germany after last year’s German contestant, Lena, won in Oslo, Norway with her song “Satellite“. More than just a Eurotrash version of American idol, a kitsch showcase, and an evening of Europe at its most fabulous, Eurovision embodies all the finer qualities of true geopolitics: ambition, scale, scope, grandeur, and the embrace of the superficial and culturally symbolic. Quite simply, Eurovision is that Saturday night a cultural kitsch observer waits year round for.

While English is the unofficial language of the contest, many contestants still choose to sing in their native languages risking the ire of other competing countries – possibly with competing nationalisms. There is a “Slavic bloc” to speak of when the text message voting comes around at the final stage of the competition. With most Balkan countries putting forth respectably kitschy enough candidates to make it to the finals, usually under the tutelage of grand masters such as Goran Bregovic, the old fault lines of tensions there come shining through the text message vote as well. Because the Brits, the Germans, the French and the Swiss pay for the hugely expensive concerts, their candidates make it to the finals no matter how terrible they are or how many years in a row they consistently rank last in the text message vote. It is a sort of swan song to the final vestiges of colonial dominance over trade on the continent because everyone knows that when it comes to kitschy Europop extravaganzas, you cannot compete with the East. And if you cannot wait until May 14 to get your Europop on (or feel an urge to relive some of the finer aspects of the Cold War), the American Embassy in Baku is sponsoring a little May Day rock and roll diplomacy with a band called “The Loaded Ladas”.

With significant oil wealth and little support from the “Slavic bloc” of Eurovision viewers and voters, Azerbaijan has done extraordinarily well most years in the contest by prioritizing the role the contest could play in the making of the future of Azerbaijan, should the country win and play host to the concert spectacular. The Azeri Eurovision contestants of the last two years, photographed in July 2010 in Baku, Azerbaijan:

Aysel Teymurzadegi, who performed as Azerbaijan’s contestant in the Eurovision song contest in 2009 and currently stars in Azeri commercials, with a friend and colleague, Zaur Darab-Zadeh (left), director of an internet radio station, on the rooftop of the Landmark Hotel in central Baku, Azerbaijan on July 3, 2010. In an effort at public promotion and demonstrating European aspirations, the Azeri government spends untold amount which one consultant estimated at 15 million in an effort to win the Eurovision song contest.

Safura Alizade, Azerbaijan’s Eurovision contestant in 2010, performs her single “Drip Drop” at the opening ceremony of the International Wrestling Final Golden Grand Prix at the Heydar Aliyev Concert Complex in Baku, Azerbaijan on July 16, 2010. One goal of the current President Ilham Aliyev is to win Eurovision investing huge amounts of Azerbaijan’s vast oil wealth in the effort, which some estimate at $20 million, and would result in hosting the European pop song contest in the Azeri capital Baku in an effort to show off the country’s European qualities.

After the Chris Hondros Memorial Service on April 27, 2011 in Brooklyn. It was nice what the priest said, how we do not live unless we live for others.

I am still at a loss for the enormous quantity of injuries to photojournalism in recent months, beginning for this generation with Emilio Morenatti of The Associated Press on August 12, 2009. An Associated Press account of the bomb “planted in the open desert terrain,” according to the American military, left Morenatti without his foot as he traveled in southern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border with AP Television News videographer Andi Jatmiko and a unit of the 5th Stryker Brigade. Again in southern Afghanistan, Joao Silva one of the four founding members of the famous group of South African photographers covering the end of apartheid known as “the Bang Bang club,” was hit by a mine and lost both legs, as reported October 23, 2010 by his employer The New York Times. This spring came the awful and surreal detentions of well known and intrepid New York Times conflict photographers Lynsey Addario and Tyler Hicks alongside reporters Anthony Shadid and Stephen Farrell in Libya. Then obviously and most recently came the tragic deaths a whole bunch of years way too soon of Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington in Misrata, Libya on April 20, 2011.

There are a few other days in the history of photojournalism that resonate a tragic loss of such magnitude: February 10, 1971 when four photojournalists at work covering the American military intervention in Vietnam, Larry Burrows, Henry Huet, Kent Potter, and Keisaburo Shimamoto, went down over Laos; and May 1954 when Magnum Photo Agency lost Robert Capa and Werner Bischof. There are, of course, and have been many, many others along the way. Ernie Pyle in the Second World War. The list goes on to too many any one with the good sense to wish to keep working in this profession would like to count. It is not glorious or heroic, but sad, frustrating and to those who know those afflicted by the pain and suffering caused by conflict as Chris, Tim and the others on this unfortunate list know, impractical to think you will not be touched eventually by the pain and suffering caused by conflict.

I did not know Chris or Tim nor was I their friend. What I was was something else, a haunted public, a curious admirer, and deeply dedicated to similar principles, not of bang bang, infinite risk until things are terribly, tragically finite, but instead of a need to go where many people will not and tell stories that would otherwise go overlooked. This sounds simple but ask anyone who has tried to make a living at it, it is not. We criticize the media as much as awards are given in recognition of members of the media. There is too much glory in photojournalism. There is not enough glory in photojournalism. What to say? There is no need for heroics when there is much left undone and unsaid and at the end of the day heroics does minimal to shed light on the complex layers of humanity that these two men, just this week gave their lives for.

I met Chris once in late 2007 between time in Iraq when he answered a message I sent after a mutual acquaintance suggested I be in touch. He allowed me for the better part of two hours to ask him a great many questions and be challenged by his thoughts on conflict journalism, at that time, as Iraq was deeply unsettled and the cauldron in Afghanistan had yet to be stirred again. I will not lend deeper meaning to an encounter three and a half years old now at a Brooklyn bar seldom thought about since then; the advice was so good I need not hear it repeated nor think twice about it. Some of the conversation in retrospect appears like a prophetic if not profoundly honest and unofficial welcome to the world of photojournalism. He said do not expect to be in a bubble, the consequences of war are not something that will evade you or your friends and you will lose people along the way. Be sure you know what you want. Know when you think it is time to quit, for the day, for awhile, for when you need to.

I have spent my time since then honoring this gesture the best way I know how, with a gesture at the memory not of him as a person, of which others have a much greater wealth than me, but to the work he gave his life for. I have combed his archives quite literally “tumbling” through them and posting my favorite images, as I find them (“Getty Images” water mark and all) on my photo journal blog, a Tumblr blog I established to keep my creative head about me as I endured a brutal academic semester at Georgetown cramming as much conflict literature and theory of media war reporting and military public affairs management while simultaneously preparing for theoretical comprehensive exams. Sometimes the things that give us life are quite literally also capable of taking it from us.

My friend Temo Bardzimashvili, a Georgian photographer based in Tbilisi who I met last summer after we were introduced by a mutual acquaintance, sent me a link to a series of images he had created that held striking resemblance not to famous images but instead to images by famous photographers that held resonance for him. The blog post entitled “Similarities” came to mind in the days since April 20 as I have continued through the Chris Hondros archive on the Getty site in reverse chronology. This evening I reached a natural breaking point, which like for my friend Temo is “natural” only to me insofar as it is the moment when I held a camera with an eye toward the profession for the first time in early 2007. I have always admired a Chris Hondros image when I have seen one in the paper. In the last few days, I have discovered precisely how much. Some similarities:

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TUCSON, AZ – APRIL 06: Bakers measure out freshly-mixed bread dough into portions to prepare for baking at Small Planet Bakery April 6, 2008 in Tucson, Arizona. The cost of staple foods has jumped in the past few years with the price of bread increasing by nearly 30 percent per pound since 2006, according to the Consumer Price Index. A slowing economy combined with continued pricing increases has prompted Americans to be cautious in their consumer spending practices. (Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images)

CHICAGO – Robert Yanushpolskiy, the owner of the Argo Georgian Bakery on West Devon Avenue in Chicago, Ill. places baked goods in the oven while Basil Ushveridze, a Georgian immigrant and baker, prepares the dough for traditional Georgian bread on May 7, 2008.

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GORI, GEORGIA – AUGUST 16: Women walk past a statue of Josef Stalin August 16, 2008 in Gori, Georgia. Gori is the birthplace of Josef Stalin, and has several statues of him and a museum dedicated to his memory. Russia signed a cease-fire agreement with Georgia on August 16 but continued their grip on the city of Gori, where many inhabitants haven’t had access to much food since hostilities broke out a week ago. (Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images)

GORI, GEORGIA – A woman walks passed a statue of Josef Stalin outside the Josef Stalin Museum in the center of Gori, Georgia, Stalin’s hometown, on July 30, 2010.

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PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI – JANUARY 27: Earthquake-displaced Haitians stand by their tents as the sun sets January 27, 2010 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Aid groups entreated international donors for tents in the aftermath of the massive earthquake, which has left hundreds of thousands of Haitians homeless. (Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images)

HAVANA, CUBA – A cuban woman waits for a friend outside the Linea y L Store in the Vedado neighborhood of Havana, Cuba on March 9, 2010.

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PORT AU PRINCE, HAITI – JANUARY 20: Hundreds of Haitians stand on the shore and on a crowded ship docked off the coast January 20, 2010 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Thousands of earthquake-displaced Haitians have taken refuge on ships in Haiti’s damaged port inlets, waiting for boats to help them escape from the squalid, destroyed capital. Aid has started trickling out to Haitians devastated by last weeks earthquake that ravaged the country, though many fear not enough will reach desparate citizens in time to prevent humanitarian catastrophe. (Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images)

GOLOVASI, TURKEY – Fisherman get ready to leave for the afternoon to lay their nets at the port in the village of Golovasi, Turkey, the first coastal village beside the Ceyhan Marine Terminal, on August 17, 2010. Fisherman in Golovasi complain about depleted stocks and a 50-meter forbidden zone around the Ceyhan Marine Terminal docks where the best fish can often be found, ongoing harassment from the Coast Guard, and the need to now fish in deeper waters.

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RAMBAZI, KANDAHAR PROVINCE – JUNE 06: An Afghan girl runs across the desert as the mountains bordering Kandahar valley loom in the background on June 6, 2010 in Rambazi, a village south of Kandahar, Afghanistan. Soldiers of the 1st Squadron, 71st Cavalry Regiment of the 10th Mountain Division have fanned out in the vast hinterlands south of Kandahar, part of a counterinsurgency strategy aimed at protecting Afghan civilians and legitimizing the government of Afghanistan in the minds of the rural local populace. (Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images)

MEDVEDIA PRI TVRDOSINE, SLOVAKIA – A woman tends to her garden late in the afternoon as a passing motorist glances over in Medvedia Pri Tvrdosine, Slovakia on June 8, 2010.

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My friend, Finnish photographer Mikko Takkunen is doing a fantastic job of keeping his Photojournalism Links blog updated with an ongoing series of links and tributes to both Hondros and Hetherington at an “In Memoriam” page.

Finally, some praise for my instructors who continue to walk, live and create some of the amazing, searing and beautiful imagery that populates our saturated media world with a little bit of richness who, like Chris Hondros, provided a little bit of light, instruction, advice and an occasional place to live, some editing guidance, and other forms of help and assistance too vast and numerous to name. For those who will invariably criticize the amount of attention lavished upon men once they were gone, here is a little praise and a song for those who have done this work, continue to do this work and have helped build up another generation to come after along the way. You know who you are; let’s celebrate the life and work of Chris and Tim now, however.

Yesterday, I won a Fulbright (!!!) student scholarship to Azerbaijan. Today I began to reflect on what this might mean and began to think of some images, among many other things, that united me to Azeris and other people in the region. Peculiarly, the first thing that came to mind was this quote from my U.S. passport that anyone who has seen it from Bratislava to Baku (if you were a “Seinfeld” fan you must surely remember, “It’s been a long journey from Milan to Minsk…”) cannot help but memorize, recite and possibly even begin to call me “young man”. One friend sent a note when I received the Fulbright, “Go east, young man,” no doubt a tribute to the Horace Greeley quote in the latest U.S. passport design:

“Go west, young man, and grow up with the country.” – Horace Greeley

Additionally, I combed through some old images to find a few that united east, and west in some interesting form:

Alexanderplatz, a symbol of communist East Berlin, is today home to several multinational fast food chains and shops. September 20, 2007.

El Lissitzky and Sergei Sen’kin’s “The Task of the Press is the Education of the Masses,” on exhibit at “Foto: Modernity in Central Europe, 1918-1945,” at the Guggenheim in New York on October 20, 2007.

The guide in the manor house museum, a classic mess of a Slovak museum, in Oponice, Slovakia on June 17, 2010 beside the remains of an airplane that, according to locals, dismantled over the skies of Oponice before an American parachute brigade landed in the town during the Second World War. Other exhibits in the museum include a room that is in tribute to a hometown hero and fascist sympathizer, Queen Geraldine of Albania, a hunting trophy room, and a room replete with priestly frocks.

Grant Newburger, 50, a supporter of Bob Avakian’s Revolutionary Communist Party, in his apartment at a Cabrini Green high rise building on the northeast corner of Halsted and Division streets in Chicago on December 18, 2007. There are red portraits of Mao and Stalin on the walls.

A coke machine stands at the entrance to the United Electrical Workers Western Region Union Hall in Chicago, Ill. on February 26, 2009, a day after Serious Materials of Sunnyvale, California announced plans to buy the Republic Windows and Doors Factory whose closure led to a 6-day sit-in strike last December and rehire the old workers.

Two young Cuban girls study the doll in which messages were hidden by Ernesto Che Guevara and his companeros to deliver messages to the frontline of their guerilla war against the Cuban state headed by Fulgencio Batista at that time in the Museum of the Revolution during a tour with their grandather in Havana, Cuba on March 7, 2010. One of the girls is wearing a Miley Cyrus purse.

(It is the 50th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs, celebrated as a triumph at the Museum of the Revolution and in Cuba. Raul Castro suggested for the first time the imposition of a limit of two, five-year terms for all politicians, including himself, a remarkable gesture in a country ruled for 52 years by Fidel Castro and now, as of late, his brother Raul.)

(Plagiarizers, be forewarned mine is already officially submitted to the Georgetown Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and yours will only be an imitation at best and at worst get you in really, really big trouble with the man either now or later in life. See: former German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg.)

Bill Mauldin’s Army: Bill Mauldin’s Greatest World War II Cartoons, p. 378.

Photojournalists like to create what are called “gear posts” whereby they empty the contents of their backpack and dutifully record each and every item down to the essence and origin of even the lint in the lining (“specially made in Nepal” or “hair from a lamb we slaughtered in Sudan”). I have no intention of doing any such thing, because I imagine most of you would probably be correct to assume that I wear a scarf with a bit of perfume on it (protective against offensive odors), and carry a whole bunch of lenses and batteries (for making pictures and ensuring I do not run out of power in the process), and other things too like cameras, notebooks, water. With that accomplished in less than 150 words, I will turn now to how to write a graduate thesis on media-military relations for the Georgetown University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Security Studies Program. Essential ingredients:

- 8 tins of Lavazza espresso; begin with medium roast, slowly escalating intensity of aroma and flavor
- a place to drive to that requires at least eight hours on the road to “let the lead out”; if you are a Zeppelin fan, you may “let the Led out”
- the infinite patience of your friends and family
- the infinite patience of your thesis adviser and graduate program’s director
- a friendly dentist to visit when a tooth is in need of a shaving “like a boy coming home from the front” and starts causing crippling pain hours before thesis must be submitted
- a friendly U.S. marine to number your pages when you cannot figure Word out for yourself; Sebastian Junger describes such skills as “man knowledge,” defined as “everything a man needs to know to get by in this world” (and as an example lists knowing where to kick a generator to get it going again); in Washingtonia, a very real land of bureaucrats and policy makers, knowing Word fits the definition (PowerPoint becomes necessary only in time)
- a penchant for finding humor in the absurd

Many of these things cannot be illustrated, neither with words or pictures. The cartoons of Bill Mauldin at a certain point struck a deep chord and prompted some cartoon renderings of my own, a favorite showing two classrooms with students studying two maps of the world side by side, the first in 1953 with hammers and sickles on every continent encroaching slowly on our own and the second in 2003 with AQ just about everywhere but the arctic.

Otherwise for those of you who care much more about the topic than about my marginalia, here is the bibliography as submitted based upon the works I found included in the contents of my paper, “Dance or Duel: Three Case Studies of Evolutionary Experimentation in Military-Media Relations in the United States”. If the title sounds familiar, borrowed, in tribute to something, it is. The finest academic text I have ever read is Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution by Richard Stites, a professor at Georgetown University until his death in the spring of last year. Sadly, I never had Stites as a professor, but I deeply wish I had. I was previously admitted to Georgetown’s Russia and East European Studies Program for the fall of 2006 but deferred to go to journalism school and eventually enrolled in the Security Studies Program when a significant scholarship was forthcoming. I had hoped to have at least one encounter with Professor Stites at Georgetown; unfortunately that came at his memorial service last spring.

Without further ado, the bibliography:

Media Perspective: Covering Conflict

Aukofer, Frank and Lawrence, William P. (1995). America’s Team, The Odd Couple: A Report on the Relationship Between the Military and the Media. Freedom Forum First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University; Nashville, Tennessee.

Carruthers, Susan (2000). The Media at War: Communication and Conflict in the Twentieth Century. St. Martin’s Press; New York.

Gowing, Nik (1994). Real Time Television Coverage of Armed Conflicts and Diplomatic Crises: Does it Pressure or Distort Foreign Policy Decisions. Spring; Working Paper #1994-1. Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, Harvard University; Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Hedges, Chris (2003). War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. Anchor Books; New York.

Hunt, W. Ben (1997). Getting to War: Predicting International Conflict with Mass Media Indicators. University of Michigan Press; Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Knightley, Philip (2004). The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero and Mythmaker from the Crimea to Iraq. The Johns Hopkins University Press; Baltimore and London.

Livingston, Steven (1997). Clarifying the CNN Effect: An Examination of Media Effects According to Type of Military Intervention. Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University; Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Osgood, Kenneth and Frank, Andrew [Eds.] (2010). Selling War in a Media Age: The Presidency and Public Opinion in the American Century. University Press of Florida.

Spencer, Graham (2005). The Media and Peace: From Vietnam to the ‘War on Terror’. Palgrave Macmillan; London.

Strobel, William (1996). “The CNN Effect,” American Journalism Review. May. Available [online] http://www.ajr.org/article.asp?id=3572.

Sweeney, Michael (2006). The Military and the Press: An Uneasy Truce. Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University Press; Evanston, Illinois.

Uko, Ndaeyo (2004). Romancing the Gun: The Press as a Promoter of Military Rule. Africa World Press, Inc.; Trenton, New Jersey and Asmara, Eritrea.

Young, Peter (1997). The Media and the Military: From Crimea to Desert Strike. Palgrave Macmillan.

Military Perspective: Public Affairs

Braestrup, Peter (1985). Battle Lines: Report of the Twentieth Century Fund Task Force on the Military and the Media (background paper). Priority Press Publications; New York.

Der Derian, James (2001). Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network. Westview Press; Boulder, Colorado.

Deutsch, Karl Wolfgang (1963). The Nerves of Government: Models of Political Communication and Control. Free Press of Glencoe; New York.

Deutsch, Karl Wolfgang (1974). Politics and Government: How People Decide Their Fate. Houghton Mifflin; Boston.

Edelman, Murray (1971). Politics as Symbolic Action: Mass Arousal and Quiescence. Academic Press; New York.

Edelman, Murray (1988). Constructing the Political Spectacle. University of Chicago Press; Chicago.

Edelman, Murray (2001). The Politics of Misinformation. Cambridge University Press; New York.

Huntington, Samuel. The Soldier and the State.

Kennedy, William (1993). The Military and the Media: Why the Press Cannot Be Trusted to Cover a War. Praeger Publishers; Westport, Connecticut.

Lasswell, Harold D. (1997). Essays on the Garrison State. Transaction Publishers; New Brunswick, NJ.

Rid, Thomas (2008). War and Media Operations: The U.S. Military and the Press from Vietnam to Iraq. Routledge.

Human Rights Culture and Evolution

Moyn, Samuel (2010). The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Nash, Kate (2009). The Cultural Politics of Human Rights: Comparing the US and the UK. Cambridge University Press; Cambridge and New York.

Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (1975). “Helsinki Final Act.”

Shay, Jonathan (1994). Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. Atheneum; New York.

Stacy, Helen (2009). Human Rights for the 21st Century: Sovereignty, Civil Society, Culture. Stanford University Press; Stanford, California.

Wilson, Richard [Ed.] (1997). “Human Rights, Culture and Context: An Introduction,” Richard A. Wilson; “Liberalism, Socio-economic Rights and the Politics of Identity: From Moral Economy to Indigenous Rights,” John Gledhill; “On Torture, or Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment,” Talal Asad and “Representing Human Rights Violations: Social Contexts and Subjectivities,” by Richard A. Wilson, Human Rights, Culture and Context: Anthropological Perspectives. Pluto Press; London and Chicago.

Case Study: World War II

Bourke-White, Margaret (1944). They Called It “Purple Heart Valley”. Simon and Schuster; New York.

Braverman, Jordan (1995). “Introduction,” “The Home Front: An Overview,” “Publications: The Books We Read,” and “World War II: A Turning Point,” To Hasten the Homecoming: How Americans Fought World War II Through the Media. Madison Books; Lanham, Maryland.

Laurence, William (1945). “Atomic Bomb on Nagasaki,” The New York Times. September 9.

Liebling, A.J. (2008). A.J. Liebling: World War II Writings. Library of America.

Mauldin, Bill (1983). Bill Mauldin’s Army: Bill Mauldin’s World War II Cartoons. Presidio Press.

Pyle, Ernie (2001). Brave Men. University of Nebraska Press; Lincoln, Nebraska.

Pyle, Ernie (2004). Here is Your War: Story of G.I. Joe. University of Nebraska Press; Lincoln, Nebraska.

Stoler, Mark A. (2010). “Selling Different Kinds of War: Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Public Opinion During World War II,” Selling War in a Media Age: The Presidency and Public Opinion in the American Century. [Eds] Osgood, Kenneth and Frank, Andrew. University Press of Florida; Gainesville, Florida.

Case Study: Vietnam

Adams, Eddie (2008). Vietnam. Umbrage Editions; Brooklyn, New York.

Burrows, Larry (2002). Vietnam. Alfred A. Knopf; New York.

Ellsberg, Daniel (2003). Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. Penguin Books; New York.

FitzGerald, Frances (1972). Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam. Little, Brown and Company; Boston.

Halberstam, David (1964). The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam During the Kennedy Era. Alfred A. Knopf; New York.

Halberstam, David (1993). The Best and the Brightest. Ballantine Books; New York.

Hammond, William (1996). Public Affairs: The Military and the Media, 1968-1973. Center of Military History, United States Army; Washington, D.C.

Herr, Michael (2009). Dispatches. Alfred A. Knopf; New York.

Jones Griffiths, Philip (2001). Vietnam Inc. Phaidon Press; London and New York.

Kennedy, William V. (1993). The Military and the Media: Why the Press Cannot Be Trusted to Cover a War.

Manning, Robert (1986). The Vietnam Experience: Images of War. Boston Publishing Company.

Mills, Nick B. (1983). The Vietnam Experience: Combat Photographer. Boston Publishing Company.

Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (1975). “Helsinki Final Act.”

Shay, Jonathan (1994). Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. Atheneum; New York.

Sheehan, Neil (1988). A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam. Random House; New York.

Case Study Three: Post-September 11th Conflicts

Abdul-Ahad, Ghaith; Alford, Kael; Anderson, Thorne and Leistner, Rita (2005). Unembedded: Four Independent Photojournalists on the War in Iraq. Chelsea Green Publishing Company; White River Junction, Vermont.

Boal, Mark (2011). “The Kill Team,” Rolling Stone. March 27.

Filkins, Dexter (2008). The Forever War. Vintage Books; New York.

Gordon, Michael R. and Miller, Judith (2002). “U.S. Says Hussein Intensified Quest for A-Bomb Parts,” The New York Times. September 8.

Hastings, Michael (2010). “The Runaway General,” Rolling Stone. June 22.

Hersh, Seymour (2004). “Torture at Abu Ghraib,” The New Yorker. May 10.

Junger, Sebastian (2010). War. Hachette Book Group; New York.

Kamber, Michael (advance proof from author, 2010). Uncensored: A Photojournalists’ Oral History of the Iraq War.

Packer, George (2005). The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux; New York.

Ricks, Thomas (2006). Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. Penguin Press; New York.

Ricks, Thomas (2010). “You Can Go Strangle Yourself With That Yellow Ribbon, Or, Here Is What I Want You To Do Instead of Shaking My Hand,” Foreign Policy. December 8.

Rosen, Nir (2006). The Triumph of the Martyrs: A Reporter’s Journey into Occupied Iraq. Free Press; New York.

Rubin, Elizabeth (2008). “Battle Company Is Out There,” The New York Times Magazine. February 24.

Rubin, Elizabeth (2010). “Lynsey Addario at War,” Aperture. No. 201; Winter.

Saba, Marcel (2003). Witness Iraq: A War Journal February-April 2003. PowerHouse Books; New York.

Scahill, Jeremy (2007). Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. Nation Books; New York.

Van Baarda, Th. A. and Verwelj, D.E.M. [Eds.] (2009). The Moral Dimension of Asymmetrical Warfare: Counter-terrorism, Democratic Values and Military Ethics. Martinus Nijhoff; Leiden and Boston.

Wilkinson, Paul (2006). Terrorism Versus Democracy: The Liberal State Response. Routledge; London and New York.

Finally for the gear-aholics, some parting pictures of the last 120 days in Lavazza:

Lavazza in the refrigerator door, March 30, 2011.

Lavazza with wish bone over the kitchen sink, March 31, 2011.

Lavazza pyramid beside first prize and award from third annual bacon party, April 8, 2011.

GEAR NOTE: Lavazza is merely the best bang for the buck at my local grocery; please substitute local, organic, fair trade (my mother’s favorite culinary advertising word is “oven roasted”; they mean “baked,” she says, as “in the oven”), etc. blend of your choice and moral determination. They did not pay me to write about them, however if they would like to, I ask a pretty penny.

(This post updates an earlier post, “Thesis Bibliography: The Relationship Between the Military and Media in a Time of War – Three Case Studies (Second World War, Vietnam, Post-September 11 Conflicts) of America in Multi-Year Conflicts,” of January 7, 2011.)

This week I hand in my thesis on media-military relations to my adviser, the Georgetown University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Proquest, and hopefully a few people who will be generous enough to edit it before then. As is often the case when you write something longer than 700-800 words, getting people to read something closer to 10,000 words can be a bit tricky. I am not suggesting tools of deception, “psych-ops,” or anything so ordinary as blackmail. Rather, humor and a little prodding.

Inspired by the magnanimous work of Bill Mauldin, Second World War cartoonist with the U.S. Army, I created a few cartoons, one of which I am sharing here. Without further ado, some scenes from the war room (gentlemen, no fighting…):

“The more things change…”

In the past two years as a student in the security studies program at Georgetown, I have learned to adjust my own pedagogical background in various ways to a culture where the military dominates. One aspect of this has involved adjusting to methods I never quite understood, such as Power Point. Yet in two years, I have managed to produce only one – the content of which I sent to my thesis adviser:

“This is not a Power Point slide.”

He responded in the same medium:

“Less humor. More thesis.”

Now, back to work on the thesis. Inspiration to write about post-9/11 era to flow from this actually real enough COIN (counterinsurgency) flow chart to be pilloried by Stephen Colbert in a hilarious segment “Afghandyland” (“Where you can’t win and you can’t quit”):

International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) counterinsurgency (COIN) flow chart. General Stanley McChrystal said, “When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war.” McChrystal is gone; the war goes on.

Here is the battleplan for tackling the media-military relations puzzle in American provided to me by my thesis adviser:

An Azeri friend saw this and commented, “adore that guy.” Ah, the post-Soviet mind.

I so seldom have occasion to comment on commenting on official comments. Today is an exception. Inspired by Bob Dylan’s very simple yet eloquent statement that “When something is not right, it’s wrong,” I did something I never do. I commented on a news article, “Updated: Northwestern explains Protess decision, accuses professor of lying, doctoring emails,” in the online comments section. When something is not right, it’s wrong.

For the past several months, Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism professor David Protess and the university have triangulated the blame over a series of accusations made as the result of a subpoena against the professor and the program by the State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez. Alvarez charges Protess bolstered students’ grades if their reporting on Anthony McKinney, accused and convicted of killing a security guard in Harvey, Illinois in 1978, revealed prosecutors’ misconduct and reversed his conviction. Later, charges surfaced as well of withholding documents from her office. Among other things, Alvarez sought student grades and notes, otherwise and previously fully protected under an Illinois “reporter shield” law. But the strength of the law, like most things, is only as great as its performance under stress. The tests do not count; this is the real thing.

The relationship or natural instincts when someone perceives to be under legal assault from the state is to wish to withhold as much as possible; similarly, those acting on behalf of the state will want to obtain as much information as possible to assist in building a successful case. These tensions are natural, normal even. In this case, I believe both Protess and Alvarez are in fact acting in a way they each find to be honorable, moral even.

Let me be forthcoming. I have known Protess my entire life and more than anything about him, I have long appreciated and learned from his keen understanding of two of the most important layers of American society – the media and the judicial system. He has been successful because of his skill and agility in a third, academia, and has always been motivated to work within the system to better the system itself rather than outside it or above it in an effort to subvert it. The latter serves selfish means, individual power, whereas the former strengthens the protections of all individuals within and under the system. What we have might be broken, but it is not bad. It is the house that human intentions built, so therefore it is imperfect. Protess appreciates and has acknowledged a few along the way.

Today, the mud between Northwestern and its former star feels somewhat dirtier. By dirtier, I do mean more public and with one side standing down as the other throws an enormous hunk. The university claims:

In the days after Northwestern officials removed Medill Prof. David Protess as the professor of his popular Investigative Journalism course last month, members of the NU community demanded an explanation.

The University delivered one Wednesday, accusing the 29-year professor of lying and doctoring emails to avoid turning over documents to prosecutors who had accused Protess and his students of crossing ethical boundaries in investigating the murder conviction of Anthony McKinney.

“In sum, Protess knowingly misrepresented the facts and his actions to the University, its attorneys and the dean of Medill on many documented occasions,” University spokesman Al Cubbage wrote in a statement distributed after a Medill faculty meeting in which University Provost Dan Linzer and Medill Dean John Lavine released the findings of a review of the high-profile professor.

The five-month review, which centered on examinations of the hard drives of Protess’s work and private computers, “uncovered considerable evidence” of misleading and altered e-mail messages, according to Cubbage’s statement.

And Protess counters:

Protess, the founder of the Medill Innocence Project, called the statement “blatantly false” and “malicious.” If he made any misleading statements, Protess said, it was because attorneys asked him to remember specific emails sent five years earlier and while his wife was undergoing treatment for breast cancer. He added that misunderstandings were exacerbated by the “imprecise” nature of email communication.

Protess accused the University of “scapegoating” him to protect its reputation and cover up missteps by other officials attempting to respond to the a [sic] subpoena about the Medill Innocence Project’s three-year investigation of the McKinney case.

“The truth of the matter is that there is a lot of blame to go around here, and I share it…but as in all complicated situations involving Northwestern University, when there is negative media attention, typically one person is assigned blame,” said Protess, referring in part to a February controversy over a sex-toy demonstration in psychology Prof. John Michael Bailey’s Human Sexuality class. “No matter how loyal I am, they will be disloyal to me as soon as things don’t go right public relations-wise.”

And now for the most shameful part of this whole affair, I write in the comments section of The Daily Northwestern article my comment on the official comment:

The fact is the Innocence Project and Protess’ investigations and his students have turned up cases where everything went wrong and the right man is still behind bars. In the face of a really malicious assault on him and his credibility, Protess has stood up by admitting fault when and where he has been wrong, protecting those around him, and rising to the occasion with real dignity and respect for an institution that has shown much less in return recently. The strength of an individual can however though only be as strong as the institution’s [sic] behind him, and in this case it is Medill not Protess that has come up short. Faculty sabbatical requests in the wake of Medill’s handling of this matter will no doubt measure the real climate at Medill and the confidence faculty have in an institution that at its best (or most utilitarian) is in some fashion responsible for upholding civilian values as a guardian and in its watch dog capacity as the Fourth Estate.

Heavy stuff at stake here, far more than just a man and his reputation, a school and its reputation, a prosecutor and her reputation. Kissinger once said that in academia the competition was so fierce because the stakes were so low. Michael Miner of The Chicago Reader reminds us not only of why independent weeklies still matter but why this case in particular does despite “Recent breathless headlines—Northwestern accuses Protess, strips Protess of class; Protess takes leave, plans independent program“. Miner is right about a larger point. We “shouldn’t turn our eye from what matters most here,” namely “the wretchedly compromised fate of Anthony McKinney.”

MORE:

“‘About the Most Airtight Case of Innocence’: How a legal storm capsized a petition to free a man who’s been imprisoned for three decades,” Michael Miner for The Chicago Reader.

“Northwestern Accuses Protess of of [sic] Rank Deceptions,” Michael Miner for The Chicago Reader.

“Updated: Northwestern explains Protess decision, accuses professor of lying, doctoring emails,” The Daily Northwestern.

“Protess: NU Statement Untrue, A ‘Smear Campaign,’” Nick Castele for North by Northwestern.

“Pour que David Protess ne soit pas joué par Richard Gere au cinéma,” bored, precocious French teenagers on Facebook. (Hilarious, especially after Google Translate. For the record, I am less convinced that this is a good idea.)

And lastly, better days shining through: an image of Protess hugging Anthony Porter on his release from prison in 1999 after serving more than 16 years on death row for a 1982 double murder conviction, a crime he did not commit.

Amanda Rivkin in Hungary: Toxic Red Sludge
Bag News Notes
April 6, 2011

The rupture in the toxic red aluminum sludge reservoir as seen from the top of a remaining piece of the reservoir’s wall at the MAL Zrt plant in Ajka, Hungary. November 22, 2010.

This week marks the first anniversary of the Upper Big Branch mine disaster in West Virginia which killed 29 coal miners. BagNews has been tracking mountaintop removal there with our series Dragline: Mountaintop Mining Watch. On the other side of the Atlantic, it has been six months since a similar accident with fatal consequences in Eastern Europe. Photographer Amanda Rivkin reports:

For sixty-three year old Geza Csenki, living in the small village of Devecser in western Hungary, last October 4 was the day the world folded. A torrent of toxic red sludge from a nearby industrial plant owned by MAL Zrt (Magyar Alumínium Termelő és Kereskedelmi) burst and flooded the town. Ten people died, including a 14-month old baby and hundreds were hurt and hospitalized. Csenki lost his home.

The collapse of the reservoir wall in Ajka wasn’t a freak accident nor was it an isolated incident. Remaining portions of the wall are not secure and while much of the sludge has emptied into the surrounding countryside, the rain and elements will determine how much more continues to leak out.

Clean up crews work to hose down contaminated trees in the castle park that schoolchildren used for play. November 20, 2010.

Geza Csenki outside the entrance of his ruined and uninhabitable home. November 25, 2010.

“I have a brother in North Carolina; I would have emigrated to join him had this happened 10 years ago, but now I have no idea what to do,” Csenki said between tears. Ironically, his troubles are compounded by the real possibility that he may have to close his children’s clothing store due to a lack of business – as donations to the community started arriving after the disaster.

Dora Jazmin Juhasz, 3, watches television as her father, Zoltan Juhasz, 33, sleeps in their temporary home. November 23, 2010. Despite nearly drowning in the sludge, Dora survived without injury, but her 14-month old younger sister, Angyalka, was the youngest victim killed. Zoltan has burns that cover 67% of his body.

The pace of life in the two villages at the base of the reservoir, Devecser and Kolontar, has not returned to anything resembling normal. It is a post-disaster sort of normal, with a portable soup kitchen in a military tent still providing sustenance every day for many families. Many people have been forced to live with family members or take up in abandoned buildings. Some live in their place of work.

Csenki’s organizing efforts to protest the government’s crisis management have been met so far with half measures. They have won some concessions, such as the right to remain in their village and avoid having it labeled a toxic wasteland, even though many houses remain covered in sludge. In turn, Csenki has vowed not to block the main road with demonstrators. He has become aware of his own power as a victim of the tragedy.

A mysterious light captures what is likely toxic dumping into the river alongside the M8 highway. November 25, 2010. While nobody would disclose what they were doing, they allowed for photos believing that a foreign photographer could not understand or ask questions.

The government has also promised to build new homes by the middle of the next year for Csenki, his wife and others like them who survived the catastrophe. The battle for compensation continues and they wonder why they can’t be given money to rebuild themselves rather than rely on a system that has so wronged them.

The accident is part of a larger, looming problem concerning the state of post-Soviet industries in the region. Privatization during the early 1990s forced the regulatory burden from the state onto the private sector. So for the residents of Devecser and Ajka, unfulfilled promises to revise industrial inspection codes in the future bring little comfort.

The feet of Laszlo Markos, 61, who was severely burned in the accident. November 23, 2010.

Zoltan Bakonyi, the largest shareholder of MAL Zrt, was briefly arrested. He appeared on television to say the aluminum sludge might not be so harmful after all. His father Arpad Bakonyi was a key player in the privatization of the Hungarian aluminum industry.

“How can they say this?” asked Iren Istvanne Nemeth, 71, a survivor of the accident. Nemeth removed her shoes and socks and showed off burns and blisters that she said covered half of her body. Her son Istvan was killed.

Nemeth had been released from the hospital after six weeks. At the time of the disaster, she was forced to wade in the toxic sludge until emergency rescue workers arrived. Since the accident occurred during the middle of the day, it was mainly the shut-in elderly and those who lacked upstairs floors who had nowhere they could run to safety.

“I have had a difficult life,” Nemeth concluded, the same day she was supposed to move into a shelter for the displaced.

Melinda Lehmann, 28, sits in her car outside her family’s bar in Kolontar, Hungary on November 22, 2010.

–Amanda Rivkin

PHOTOGRAPHS by AMANDA RIVKIN

From Bill Mauldin’s Army: Bill Mauldin’s Greatest World War II Cartoons: