Dahr Jamail (born 1968) is an American journalist who was one of the few unembedded journalists to report extensively from Iraq during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He spent eight months in Iraq, between 2003 and 2005, and presented his stories on his website, entitled "Dahr Jamail's MidEast Dispatches." Jamail has been a reporter for Truthout [1] and has also written for Al Jazeera. [2] He has been a frequent guest on Democracy Now! , and is the recipient of the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. [3] In 2018, the Izzy Award of the Park Center for Independent Media was awarded to Jamail, and shared by investigative reporters Lee Fang, Sharon Lerner, and author Todd Miller. [4]
Jamail is a fourth-generation Lebanese American, who was born and raised in Houston, Texas. He graduated from Texas A&M University and later moved to Alaska. In October 2007, his first book, Beyond the Green Zone, was published by Haymarket Books. Jamail embarked on a national speaking tour the same month that the book was released, first in New York City, [5] where he and journalist Jeremy Scahill discussed the Afghan and Iraq wars. In 2007, he was awarded the Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage. [6]
Jamail's second book, The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, was published in 2009.
His next book, The Mass Destruction of Iraq; The Disintegration of a Nation: Why It Is Happening, and Who Is Responsible, was co-authored in 2014 with William Rivers Pitt.
Dahr Jamail writes for Truthout about climate change issues. In January 2019, he published the book, The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption, about his mountaineering adventures where he witnessed glaciers melting, expressing despair at the future catastrophe of global warming.
Iraq Body Count project (IBC) is a web-based effort to record civilian deaths resulting from the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. Included are deaths attributable to coalition and insurgent military action, sectarian violence and criminal violence, which refers to excess civilian deaths caused by criminal action resulting from the breakdown in law and order which followed the coalition invasion. As of February 2019, the IBC has recorded 183,249 – 205,785 civilian deaths. The IBC has a media-centered approach to counting and documenting the deaths. Other sources have provided differing estimates of deaths, some much higher. See Casualties of the Iraq War.
William Rivers Pitt was an American author, editor, and liberal political activist.
Giuliana Sgrena is an Italian journalist who works for the Italian communist newspaper il manifesto and the German weekly Die Zeit. While working in Iraq, she was kidnapped by insurgents on 4 February 2005. After her release on 4 March, Sgrena and the two Italian intelligence officers who had helped secure her release came under fire from U.S. forces while on their way to Baghdad International Airport. Nicola Calipari, a major general in the Italian Military Intelligence and Security Service (SISMI) was killed, and Sgrena and one other officer were wounded in the incident. The event caused an international outcry.
The United States bombardment of Fallujah began in April 2003, one month after the beginning of the invasion of Iraq. In April 2003 United States forces fired on a group of demonstrators who were protesting against the US presence. US forces alleged they were fired at first, but Human Rights Watch, who visited the site of the protests, concluded that physical evidence did not corroborate US allegations and confirmed the residents' accusations that the US forces fired indiscriminately at the crowd with no provocation. 17 people were killed and 70 were wounded. In a later incident, US soldiers fired on protesters again; Fallujah's mayor, Taha Bedaiwi al-Alwani, said that two people were killed and 14 wounded. Iraqi insurgents were able to claim the city a year later, before they were ousted by a siege and two assaults by US forces. These events caused widespread destruction and a humanitarian crisis in the city and surrounding areas. As of 2004, the city was largely ruined, with 60% of buildings damaged or destroyed, and the population at 30%–50% of pre-war levels.
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad is an Iraqi journalist who began working after the U.S. invasion. Abdul-Ahad has written for The Guardian and The Washington Post and published photographs in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Times (London), and other media outlets. Besides reporting from his native Iraq, he has also reported from Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria.
Truthout is a non-profit news organization which describes itself as "dedicated to providing independent reporting and commentary on a diverse range of social justice issues". Truthout reports news from a left-wing perspective, with its main areas of focus including mass incarceration and prison abolition advocacy, social justice, climate change, militarism, economics and labor, U.S. LGBTQIA rights and reproductive justice.
Dexter Price Filkins is an American journalist known primarily for his coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for The New York Times. He was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for his dispatches from Afghanistan, and won a Pulitzer in 2009 as part of a team of Times reporters for their dispatches from Pakistan and Afghanistan. He has been called "the premier combat journalist of his generation". He currently writes for The New Yorker.
The Roy H. Park School of Communications is one of five schools at Ithaca College, in Ithaca, New York, United States. The school is named after media executive Roy H. Park, who lived in Ithaca and who served on the board of trustees at Ithaca College for many years.
Gareth Porter is an American historian, investigative journalist, author and policy analyst specializing in U.S. national security issues. He was an anti-war activist during the Vietnam War and has written about the potential for peaceful conflict resolution in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. In the late 1970s Porter was a defender of the Khmer Rouge (KR) against charges that the KR was pursuing genocidal policies against the Cambodian people. Porter's books include Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam (2005), his explanation of the United States involvement in the Vietnam War.
Aaron Glantz is a Peabody Award-winning radio, print and television journalist who produces public interest stories. His reporting has sparked more than a dozen Congressional hearings, a raft of federal legislation and led to criminal probes by the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI and the Federal Trade Commission. Because of his reporting, 500,000 fewer U.S. military veterans face long waits for disability compensation, while 100,000 fewer veterans are prescribed highly addictive narcotics by the government.
Jeremy Scahill is an American activist, author and investigative journalist. He is a founding editor of the online news publication The Intercept and author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army (2007), which won the George Polk Book Award. His book Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield (2013) was adapted into a documentary film which premiered at the Sundance and was nominated for the 2014 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Michael Otterman is a freelance journalist and documentary filmmaker based in New York City and Sydney. He graduated from Boston University, with a BSc in Journalism, and from the University of Sydney with a MLitt (PACS) where he is a visiting scholar at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPACS).
The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, named for the war correspondent, Martha Gellhorn, was established in 1999 by the Martha Gellhorn Trust. The Trust is a UK-registered charity. The award is founded on the following principles:
The award will be for the kind of reporting that distinguished Martha: in her own words "the view from the ground". This is essentially a human story that penetrates the established version of events and illuminates an urgent issue buried by prevailing fashions of what makes news. We would expect the winner to tell an unpalatable truth, validated by powerful facts, that exposes establishment conduct and its propaganda, or "official drivel", as Martha called it. The subjects can be based in this country or abroad.
Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan was an event at which more than 200 U.S. military veterans and active duty soldiers, as well as Iraqi and Afghan civilians, provided accounts of their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. The event was inspired by the Winter Soldier Investigation of 1971. It was organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War, and held from March 13 to March 16, 2008, timed for the fifth anniversary of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Ahmed Mansour is an Egyptian journalist, television presenter, television host, and interviewer on Al Jazeera since 1997, and writer. He is one of Al Jazeera's prominent journalists. He presents Bela Hodod, an Arab live television talk show from Cairo since 1999, which airs on Al Jazeera Channel weekly. He also presents the program Shahed Ala Al-Asr. In 2009, he published the book Inside Fallujah: the Unembedded Story.
The Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage is presented annually by The Shafeek Nader Trust for the Community Interest. The Callaway Award "recognizes individuals who take a public stance to advance truth and justice, at some personal risk". The award was established by in 1990 by Joe Callaway to recognize "individuals in any area of endeavor who, with integrity and at some personal risk, take a public stance to advance truth and justice, and who challenged prevailing conditions in pursuit of the common good."
Tara Sutton is a Canadian journalist and filmmaker whose work in conflict zones has received many awards. She was one of the first international television correspondents to both produce and shoot their own reports and is a pioneer in the field of "video journalism".
The War You Don't See is a 2010 British documentary film written, produced and directed by John Pilger with Alan Lowery, which challenges the media for the role they played in the Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel/Palestine conflicts. The film, which went on nationwide general release on 13 December 2010, had its premiere at the Barbican and was aired through Britain's ITV1 on 14 December 2010 and later through Australia's SBS One on 10 April 2011.
Lee Hu Fang is an American journalist. He was previously an investigative reporter at The Intercept, a contributing writer at The Nation, and a writer at progressive outlet the Republic Report. He began his career as an investigative blogger for ThinkProgress. Fang shared the 2018 Izzy Award of the Park Center for Independent Media with fellow Intercept reporter Sharon Lerner, investigative reporter Dahr Jamail, and author Todd Miller.
Al-Yarmouk Teaching Hospital is one of the Iraqi hospitals. Located in Baghdad, Al-Karkh, Al-Yarmouk city, besides Al-Mustansiriya medical college. The hospital was established in 1964 and now represents the second largest Iraqi hospital after Baghdad medical city. It is also the largest emergency facility in the country. It has an emergency department and an outpatient clinic besides the medical, surgical, obstetrical, oncology section and gynecological wards. ِAlso associated with the hospital highly sophisticated teaching laboratories, radiology ward, blood bank, the national center of haematology and cancer research center. Collectively with the Central Pediatric Teaching Hospital run by Yarmouk Directorate of Health. The hospital has about 700 beds.