Politics
Posted on | April 30, 2009 | No Comments
From Chicago-based journalist Robert Koehler. His full essay on torture as treason. It’s an eloquent argument (maybe the best I’ve seen yet and I’ve read everything published in the media on torture for the last two months).
Politics as we practice it these days - as the Democrats practice it, I should say - is just another form of market-based consumerism. It is trend-focused and desirous most of all of not offending. While the Republicans are masters at creating wedge issues and harnessing hatred in order to govern, the Dems lack the skill to harness the opposite force, compassion and empathy, so they govern without clarity or fervor. In the words of Michael Dukakis, they aspire to “manage.”
US Abuses Immigrants
Posted on | March 30, 2009 | No Comments
Immigration Detention story. I’m sending you to Free Speech Radio News which took my story and paid me–the first time I earned money on an assignment!
This story opened my eyes to our countries treatment of prisoners. Read “Hellhole” in the New Yorker on solitary confinement. Its torture and we know without a doubt why its torture. Yet the number of supermax prisons have grown to a pandamonium since the 1980s. Atul Gawande writes that its a cultural phenomenon that is related to our acceptance of torture and our willingness to discard the Geneva Convention. There’s no doubt it’s also related to our willingness to mistreat foreigners because they are not us. They are the other.
Journalism and Accountability
Posted on | February 28, 2009 | No Comments
Glen Greenwald writes about the split in journalism known as Cacooning, where only those with sympathetic views to a particular source will be allowed to talk to them. I couldn’t help but feeling that is the way objective journalism would have it, don’t challenge the source, just ask the easy questions to let them say what they want to say. Or worse, (and it’s easy to do) get them to say what the journalist wants them to say.
Now, I am working on the “accountability” project for Link TV, amassing all of the articles and debates on torture, detention and presidential power in a single place to serve as a reference and comprehensive source.
Check it out at: Link TV Accountability
Also, the best piece I’ve seen so far about how Obama’s DoJ is doing much the same as W. is from Gleen Greenwald today.
On The Torture Beat
Posted on | February 17, 2009 | 1 Comment
For three weeks now I have been covering stories related to torture. With little time and no leads on sources, I did a good job with a story on Obama and the rendition program. Rendition, a Human Rights Watch director told me, means different things to different people. John Hamilton and I spent over an over editing my piece to get the slippery language of rendition tacked down. After hearing Amy Goodman cover rendition later in the week and use one of my same sources, he felt my story was spot-on. Just before my story we ran a piece on investigating Cheney and trying to release justifications for torture.
2/2 Audio: Obama and Rendition
Because of that piece, they sent me to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, one beneath the Supreme Court, to cover a high profile rendition case involving the ACLU’s clients Mohamed and five other victims of rendition and torture and the DOJ defending the private firm Jeppeson Dataplane, a subsidiary of Boeing based in San Jose. On the way into the court room I met a John Schwartz, a reporter from the New York Times. His article appeared on page A12.
(This story I don’t have the anchor’s intro for. We had aired several things about Obama that night and then the anchor gives background on the case. Mohamed et al vs. Jeppeson Dataplane. Obama says he would end torture.)
2/9 Audio: Jeppeson Case at Ninth Circuit
Yesterday, the assignment editor set up an interview for me (very nice! made my day easy) with the only member of the International Commission on Jurists panel that was not in Europe or traveling. I have the anchor introducing the story in this audio. When I checked the BBC website, this was one of the top three stories. Cool. Goldman gave me a twenty minute interview–twice what I spend with someone on a regular story with 3 or 4 interviews.
2/16 Audio: ICJ Report on Terrorism Policy
Critiques and criticism are always welcome. If you want more info, email me at jared@jareducation.com.
My name is ethan
Posted on | February 11, 2009 | No Comments
This is the non-narrative piece that I did for KPFA over the last few weeks. It will air on our station at some point, maybe soon, and with any luck will be featured on a national broadcast in March for a homelessness day. The idea for this assignment was to develop or try to replicate the Studs Terkel/This American Life model of making everyday people’s stories really interesting by editing and condensing them. Our assignment was to find someone who had lost their home and interview them, which you can imagine makes you feel like an intruder to ask personal questions about bitter or sorrowful events upon first meeting the person.
Ethan, as you will hear, has had a long life at the age of 23. With just over an hour of tape, many of his stories had to get cut even though I was trying to squeeze them all in. He is intelligent and well-read. He could not talk about many of his experiences, especially those in the military. Our facists, make no mistake, don’t want the “public” to know what they have going on in their conquests. We have talked off the microphone in a friendly setting since the interview. From that and trying to edit my tape, I realized in how many ways I am a poor interviewer, at least on this kind of topic. His language and articulation and storytelling are so much fuller when I don’t have him recounting ten years of his life in an hour. Had I slowed the pace and asked the right questions, I would have more vivid tape. All said though, I am satisfied with the project considering it is a first attempt at this kind of work.
I hope he feels I did it justice.
Digital Transition in Oakland
Posted on | January 27, 2009 | No Comments
ACORN working in West Oakland
Posted on | January 20, 2009 | No Comments
Anchor:
More front doors in West Oakland are being boarded up because of the housing crisis. But some housing rights organizations are fighting to keep their communities in tact. This Martin Luther King Holiday, the national reform group ACORN went house to house today educating people about their rights as homeowners and tenants. Jared Marchildon has the story.
Story
Humanity of Palestinians
Posted on | January 15, 2009 | No Comments
I just wrote a long article on Gaza in response to the ongoing conversation with Josh Bull and Jonathan Harper. After I wrote it I came across this article by Tariq Ali written in the Guardian, where he echoes this theme of humanity.
He also argues for a one-state solution, which I have at times been of mind to think is much better, but that’s for another day.
From the Ashes of Gaza, Tariq Ali.
Response to Alan Dershowitz
Posted on | January 15, 2009 | No Comments
For background: Josh Bull sent me this article. I reference it several times.
A much fairer treatment is found here: Hamas compromising, not hell-bent on Israeli destruciton, and here. Dig around on that site, counterpunch.org, for some really-well informed, rational articles, especially in relation to Israel, Hamas and Palestine. Its not the same vinegary spoonful of Zionism cloaked as objectivity found in the mainstream.
Until we speak of an anti-Arabism should we speak so much of anti-Semitism? The Nazis killed millions of Jews, and denying it is a form of politically motivated willful ignorance. But it is also true that the Jews massacre and ethnically cleansed the Palestinians from the “Holy Land.” Read more
SEIU Labor Story
Posted on | January 13, 2009 | No Comments
I had the pleasure of doing a follow-up story on the SEIU. Because of the nature of the day, I was able to spend time conversing with experts about the larger picture of unions, and not just focus narrowly on one news item. Steve Early, a labor journalist whom I read and interviewed, began my interview by defining where we intended to take the conversation for fear we could end up in a desert of obscure information, esoteric to those not intimate with the labor beat.
Last Thursday, the SEIU said it would make a decision on local United Health Care West. Based in Oakland, some media have called this union feisty–it is one of the most successful unions in the United States. Why? Mostly because it’s militant. They elected a militant leader Sal Rosselli and they are engaged and active. SEIU president praise Andy Stern has gotten, mostly from the establishment (New York Times, Business, whatever). The fact is he is building a giant union. Historically and presently, big unions tend or maybe by definition are less progressive. They cozy up to business leaders, become passive in their demands and sometimes even grow regressive.
For example, Stern’s SEIU recently intervened in the State of California to prevent UHW-West from making its own set of demands. In Illinois, it was in bed with Rod Blagejovich. A recent bargain in Washington garanteed the vested interests that SEIU could protest but not demand certain things (I don’t remember just what they were, but they were elemental union demands and important to workers) in return for the ability to negociate. In other words, they made concessions, just to negociate.
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