Last Thursday I published this short post about the new website IraqSlogger. I noted that while some of the site’s content seemed interesting, other portions did not… But more importantly, I expressed strong concern about the plans of the parent company– which somewhat pretentiously and certainly misleadingly is named “Praedict”– to establish a business that would openly mix the practice of online journalism with the provision of for-pay, intelligence type of information.
I also complained about the lack of transparency on the site, including on its “About us” page, and about some other, less important shortcomings including the annoying flashing of an element just below the main headline and a silly mistake they’d made in titling one front-page piece there.
Within a couple of hours of me publishing that post, the publishers of IraqSlogger had corrected the incorrect headline, added the names of the owners of “Praedict” onto the “About us” page for the first time, and taken out the fclaim they had prominently made there that the people running the site included some from an “intelligence” background.
Oh, and Praedict president Robert Young Pelton had put a comment onto my post in which he said, “I … have no interest in intrigue and am easily the most ‘open source’ conflict author and filmmaker that I know of.” He also made this interesting comment about Praedict CEO Eason Jordan and himself:
- Eason and I know the media, intel and communications business very well. He was on the inside, I was on the outside…
Intelligence is actually a compliment not an insult in my world 🙂
I don’t know, either the guy is very stupid or he thinks the rest of us are very stupid?
Later that day, the “About us” page got further revised. They removed all mentions of the word “intelligence” except in these two sentences:
- Stay tuned for the announcement of our limited offer of 300 customer slots available… for much less than the price of a single seasoned intelligence analyst.
Praedict delivers the information not currently available from traditional open source or even intellgence sources…
So yes, they clearly do see their for-pay service as being in the “intelligence” world. I guess the (free) online news-publishing part of their business is supposed to act as free publicity– a sort of come-on to customers whom they will tempt to cross over onto the fee-paying (intel) side.
Personally, I don’t know why any reputable journalists would work with such a dank and sleazy operation.
Plus, they didn’t even fix that flashing thingy at the top of each page. Migraine sufferers and epileptics of the world are not happy about such wanton disregard of their (our) reading comfort.
Sooooo – Nir! Dude! – ummmmmmm…………What the hell are YOU doing there?!
Helena,
Personally, I don’t know why any reputable journalists would work with such a dank and sleazy operation.
Helena, again another Arabic saying for you, hope you understand what its mean..
شَـــبيه الشـــيءِ مُنجَبـــذ إليهِ
So Shirin here we go your friend take off his mask ….”The Doggy Follow the Doggiest”
Otherwise Nir will be laong time ago will be end like these folks jornalist or these
Tsk tsk Helena…”dank and sleazy” and you remind posters to be “courteous”.:)
Adios
INTO THE ABYSS Reporting Iraq 2003-2006, An Oral History
“Slogger”. Interesting choice of name, that. As in long haul, long slog.
Which is by way of saying, here’s what this “development” says to me: the United States isn’t leaving Iraq any time soon.
(Or at least a lot of the American “players” in this Great Game think it won’t be leaving any time soon. Quite a few Iraqis, needless to say, have other plans for the Cheneyite “last year in Iraq and this year in Iraq and next year in Iraq and the year after that in Iraq and, hell, forever in Iraq” wet dream. They’re going to blow the f_ _ _ _r up. Humvee by humvee. “Contractor” by contractor. Plans that are already in train.)
And of course the the corollary of the U.S. isn’t leaving Iraq anytime soon is: the Iraqis aren’t going to be standing up any time soon.
(But as per the above parenthetical, it depends which Iraqis you’re talking about of course. Looks to me like the Iraqis who have been “breaking ever such a lot of “eggs” for the “omlette” of “liberating” their country from the foreign invaders – military and civilian [and you can include in “civilian” the Iraqislogger mob] – are already pretty good at “standing up”. That’s if the Pentagon’s just released report – Iraq Violence at Record High – is anything to go by.)
(Breaking eggs, breaking Feith…it may not look like it, but it’s all part of the same continuum. You know, picking up some crappy little country (or crappy little neocon) – and slamming it (him) against the wall every few years just to show that the Law of Action and Reaction means business.)
It says that for all the obvious reasons:
1) were the U.S. military and its civillian “sidecar” – talk about an avatar of the military-industrial complex! – who are they gonna sell their “intelligence” to? Iraqis?
And 2) if these guys’ “contacts” and “connections” are as good as they claim…well, why go to all the trouble and expense of getting this show on the road if their “contacts” and “connections” are telling them it’s going to be lift-off from the embassy roof one of these days.
Nir Rosen
Freelance writer
Do you need me not say he is doggy lier and ……. more
can he tell us what he did to the Iraqi kids they are not in his age why he stick with them!!!!
I vaguely recall that in an earlier war (Kosovo?) there was a scandle around the planting of psyops experts at CNN by the Pentagon. I wonder if this is related to Jordan’s connection to intelligence.
Iraqslogger sounds a bit like the Stratfor website.
Also– I think after 911 there was controversial memo from Rumsfeld suggesting that journalists be enlisted to gather intelligence.
Helena and Co.
The words “to cut and run” need to be added to the followinig para…so it should read:
1) were the U.S. military and its civillian “sidecar” – talk about an avatar of the military-industrial complex! – to cut and run who are they gonna sell their “intelligence” to? Iraqis?
It’s 20 lashes for my proofreader!
Tnx.
BfB
Salah, I cannot see anything wrong, let alone sinister, in what Nir Rosen did as he described in what you quoted.
“…can he tell us what he did to the Iraqi kids they are not in his age why he stick with them!!!!”
Probably the same things I “do to” the Pakistani and the Omani and the Egyptian, and the Romanian and the (fill in the blank) “kids” I spend my time with during my visits to those places. I seek out and interact with children, with adults younger than I am, older than I am, and similar to my age. I talk with them, joke with them, laugh with them, play with them, sing with them, and sometimes cry with them. Before going to Pakistan I spent some time (not nearly enough) learning Urdu, and asked them to help me learn something of their dialect, Panjabi. In Oman I tried to learn what I could of the Omani dialect, which is different from any dialect I have known. When in Egypt, I encorporate as much Egyptian dialect as i can into my speech. I do this in order to be able to communicate with the people I meet there.
Why? Because I see no point in going to another country without “sticking with” the people of that country, so for the most part I avoid tourists and ex-pats and “stick with” the people who are of the country. I want to become, as much as I can an “insider”. My time in Pakistan was incredible mainly because I stayed in the home of a friend’s family, and became virtually a family member.
It seems to me that if one is a journalist or other kind of writer who wishes to write about a place it only makes sense to be able to communicate, and to “stick with” the people of that place. It seems obvious to me that one of the things that is most wrong with the reporting and most of the writing about Iraq, the people, and the events there is that it is written by outsiders standing on the outside. I think it’s great, and very courageous for Nir to become as much of an “insider” as he did in Iraq, and I don’t see that he did a bit of harm in it.
PS I am not sure what “lies” you think he told. He IS from Iranian roots, in case you did not know.
Transparency? Publish your income tax returns Helena so we can see if your funding comes from Hizbulla or straight from Iran.
Chickenhawks? When have you been to Iraq? How about another trip to Gaza these days to see if your sad why can’t we all get along will bring the masked Palestinians to some meditation sessions instead of AK47 and RPGs.
Go talk to them about conflict resolution. Iraq and Palestine, and you expect thoise that kill each other rather than compromise to ever live in peace with their adversaries. Not anymore than Helena with her ex-husband.
Since my reading runs in many directions, including the designer “adventure” magazine Outside, Robert Young Pelton is a familiar name to me. He specializes in butch posturing in dangerous places. See for example this article. Can someone with these attitudes deliver “information” about a place where entertainment is out of the questiion, even perhaps vile to contemplate? I don’t know.
Shirin,
With all due respect for your view I would put these points:
1- Iraq in 2003 was in the hand of US and playing as a spy and all sort of this doggy things is just looking wearied to me and to any reliable person who think him doing good job.
2- If you go deeper in what he wrote “joined a local gym, mostly Shia neighborhood kids this really embarrassing matter from western point view and even Iraqi point view some on in his age in the gym with the kids!!, Shirin I believe you are US originally and you knew how sensitive matter of dealing kids specially from strangers, its obvious Shirin don’t defend your friend more, when you saying about yourself in Pakistan or any region this different you are woman Shirin….. He is different he is a man with kids.
3- Some one do what he did by hiding and snaking between Iraq what you call what he doing? Did he lie? Oh come shirin please give me a brake.
He IS from Iranian roots, in case you did not know.
I knew that very well, this the point I think he can use all his snaky skills and go to Iran and uncover the Nuclear secretes from Iranian’s Kids in the gym!!!!
As intriguing as Nir’s gym outings and Helena’s relationship with the IRS are, I am astonished that no one has yet commented in this space on the larger significance of Praedict.
During the Spanish Civil War, journalists and writers came from far and wide to fight against fascism and Franco. Hemingway, Philby, Gellhorn, the list goes on. George Orwell, Mr. 1984 himself, was among them — and he was later approached by British intelligence, and helped blacklist some buddies with pinko-commie leanings. (This information is all available open-source, off Wikipedia, the Guardian, etc.) Clearly, the ethical and ideological moorings of these folks was diverse and littered with the internal inconsistencies and hedgings of human nature — but they shared a sense that they were seeing something real and deadly worth seeing; they were fighting for humanity, on the side of humanity.
There are no hordes of great writers volunteering to fight this civilizational war we’re told we’re engaged in. Those Americans who pull a Nir, for the most part, are lucky to end up like Jill Carroll (alive and out of Iraq, that is — though I can’t wait to see her writing career blossom as it clearly will). A Westerner in Iraq is a dead man, because we were not standing on the side of humanity in going there and staying there in the first place.
The ultimate significance of Praedict is that, if we were the good guys, if we stood a chance of winning the conflict in Iraq, if it were in fact a conflict worth or capable of being won — Praedict would be redundant in its raison-d’etre, and it would not exist.
Katelyn,
because we were not standing on the side of humanity in going there and staying there in the first place.
Indeed Katelyn, agreed well put, that’s my core argument here.
Those who paint themselves as a heroes for Iraqis and humanity while they living and experiencing disastrous situations and living on the ground , using them to tell bits of “Honey” mix it with “Poisons” as Nir did in most of his writing.
I did long time I mentioned my personal experiences with my families in Iraq after the shock & Awe war, almost two years during that period, while we specking to them many times, I feel their inside and their minds are disturbed and some thing not right, they got better and better through the time, but what we ending now its Republic of Fear as one put it in old days now it’s a Land of Fear for all Iraqis.
Its all selfishness and personal desire to be under the light, get big and noticed and all the rest of that, that’s may make Helena asked here question “Personally, I don’t know why any reputable journalists would work with such a dank and sleazy operation
IPI DEATH WATCH 2006
Iraq (45)
Salah, I understand that you are suspicious of Nir’s motives. So far I have not seen anything that makes me suspicious, though I have not agreed with everything he has written. So, for now at least we simply do not agree on this point. However, I really do not see how he has presented himself as a hero for Iraqis or for humanity.
It seems to me he has done a great deal more to give readers a sense of reality than those so-called journalists who sit in the Green Zone reporting mainly, if not exclusively, what they are told by the Americans. And he has taken a lot of personal risks to do it. Whatever his flaws may be, I have to give him credit for that.
And he has taken a lot of personal risks to do it.
BTW, There is no risk early days when writes in 2003, till mid or junk 2004 when Iraq felt their country their assets and their doggy CPA billions spending bring nothing in matter of their public services and daily needs.
I admit I was spoke to my sister in law at one occasion she told us that American doing good, the repaired the school and panted, but just few months in the new that US contractor who did the painting have billed 20 Millions of dollars for paint only!! You know how the labour in Iraq cheep right now, so he charges for very expensive US paint then.
I listen to Paul Bremer I don’t have the link now I will put it latter he proud he set four justices structures in Iraq for first time one of them the corruptions court or some what like it, just yesterday in the news that Iraqi Minster of Electricity Ayham Alsamoraie (I know him from the university) was freed by force by American they went to the prison and take him out despite he convicted and prisoned for frauds charges and he still waiting more to come.
So what Paul Bremer set and he is proud to tell his US audiences, is ignored by his folks and what left for Iraqi to enjoy, till me Shirin?
فرار وزير سابق مدان بالفساد من سجنه في المنطقة الخضراء في بغداد
http://www.aawsat.com/details.asp?section=4&issue=10248&article=397611
Ayham al-Samaraie
In telephone interviews Tuesday with both the Chicago Tribune and The New York Times, Ayham al-Samaraie said a “multinational” group helped him escape Sunday from a police station inside Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone.
He also sent an e-mail to the Chicago Sun-Times and others Tuesday, saying, “Hi, I am OK and out of their reach.”
what an enormous amount of time dedicated to my sexual proclivities. i was 26 years old when i got to iraq, and i was younger than most of the men at the gym in fact. my use of the word kids was colloquial, as in young guys, it was an interview, so i spoke it. had i written it i would have chosen a different word perhaps, so as not to let salah’s fantasies run wild. moreover, while iraqslogger is a work in progress, i view the attempt to establish a website dedicated to information about iraq and the american occupation as an important endeavor and you will find that i have tried to get iraqis to tell their stories and tried to tell their stories myself, while also writing the occasional analysis of developments there. i’ve been published by the new yorker magazine and the new york times magazine and i dont think anybody would criticize me for writing for them merely because they disapproved of some article they published, and i have appeared on fox and cnn, both networks which i believe provide more disinformation than real information, and yet i am not criticized for that, so whats the difference?
so as not to let salah’s fantasies run wild. moreover, while iraqslogger is a work in progress, i view the attempt to establish a website dedicated to information about iraq and the american occupation as an important endeavor and you will find that i have tried to get iraqis to tell their stories and tried to tell their stories myself,
So bravery work well done…what’s wrong with Iraqis they talking about their stores for years No … No… From 1991 when they are under the sanction imposed by your masters, they are poor can specks and tell the rights things or their stores but when you put you stores they full of trustiness…. common…. White Thinking never changes whatsoever Kill the Man and Come to His Ceremony to but him in his grave….