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MORE GREAT JOURNALISM
Year
Zero Click here or on image above to download Year Zero Karaoke
Night In Bush's America
Know it makes me a dinosaur, but I still think there is much to be learned
in America’s small neighborhood taverns. I call it my “learning
through drinking” program. Here are some things I have learned
at Burt’s Westside Tavern: Click here or on image to download Karaoke Night in Bush's America
War
Of Words Click here or on image above to download Ego And Ink Seven
Days In New York City Members
of the Human Race of every size, shape, color, gender, odor, stance,
agenda and world view, came together in September in New York demanding
to be – at lon-n-n-n-ng last – HEARD – despite being
muzzled, repressed, marginalized, demonized, ignored, misrepresented
and demeaned by the pimp media, whose bread is spread thick with oleo
of an entirely different nature. Click here or on image to download Seven Days In New York City
Driving
On The Bones Of God Click here or on image to download Driving On The Bones Of God Slepwalking
To Babylon Click here or on image to download Sleepwalking To Babylon
Death
In Africa EXCLUSIVE - A 50-Page e-book. Fred Bridgland, then a young Reuters correspondent, won his 15 minutes of fame in 1975 when he exclusively revealed the secret South African military invasion of Angola, backed by the CIA, MI6, the French Secret Service and Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda. Bridgland subsequently wrote a highly controversial biography of Jonas Savimbi, leader of an Angolan liberation movement and a friend of Che Guevara. Savimbi’s brilliant young deputy, Tito Chingunji, helped Bridgland research the book and became his closest African friend. But, after the book was published, Savimbi executed Chingunji, his wife and children, parents and his entire extended family. He also threatened Bridgland with death. ColdType’s 50-page essay is a treatment Bridgland has completed as a proposal for new book on his friend Chingunji’s murder and telling the true story of the madness that gripped Savimbi and his guerrilla movement. Click here or on image above to download Death in Africa Is
The President Nuts? And, If So, Does It Matter? Click here or on image to download Is The President Nuts? John
Ashcroft: Keep Your Mouth Off My Wife Click here or on image to download John Ashcroft: Keep Your Hands Off My Wife
The
Most Dangerous Man In The World Click here or on image above to download The Most Dangerous Man In The World 
Truth
Against Truth Click here or on image above to download Truth Against Truth 
Target
Iraq: What The News Media Didn't Tell You Click here or on image above to download Target Iraq Two More Essays From Joe Bageant
Son Of A Laboring God My home town is one of those slowly rotting East Coast burgs that makes passers-through think to themselves: “What the hell is this? Mayberry USA on crack?” The town’s 250-year old core is a blighted clot of ramshackle houses carved into apartments and cheesy businesses. Its outer rim is the typical ugly gash of commercial hell, a assortment of mindlessly jammed-together tire dealers, grim asphalt, slurp and burps, and car dealerships of the type that make the U.S. one of the ugliest nations on earth. A sign in the median strip of this gash proclaims Winchester an official “All-American Town.”To its credit however, the town does have that special kind of seediness found only in the U.S. South. It might even be considered weirdly colorful in an America studies sort of way, with its hard-faced characters straight out of Grapes of Wrath and spooky and well-scrubbed Bible thumpers. Beauty being in the eye of the beholder, our local Chamber of Commerce calls it “Historic Winchester, Virginia.”But many of us who grew up here call it Dickville; if you were born and raised here you were probably dicked from the beginning. Faced with life in such a town, there is only one solution. Beer. Click here or on image above to download Son Of A Laboring God The Dominion Of The Leash Lynndie England never had a chance. Abu Ghraib, or maybe something even worse (an RPG up the shorts, for instance) was always her destiny. Nearly half of the 800 Americans killed in Iraq to date came from small towns like hers, like mine. Forty-six percent of the American dead in Iraq came from towns of less than 40,000. Yet these towns make up only 25% of our population. Most of the young soldiers were fleeing economically depressed places, or dead end jobs like Lynndie had at the chicken processing plant.These so-called volunteers are part of this nation’s de facto draft – economic conscription. Money is always the best whip to use on the laboring clasess. Thirteen hundred a month, a signing bonus and free room and board sure beats the hell out of yanking guts through a chicken’s ass. And there are those big bucks for college later. Up to $65,000. Lynndie was supposedly going to college after her enlistment to become a “storm chaser,” like in the Helen Hunt movie “Twister.” Click here or on image above to download The Dominion Of The Leash
Covert
Kingdom Washington writer Joe Bageant looks into the strange world of the Christian Right, driving force behind the Bush presidency. This strange American fundamentalism is alive and well and thriving just a few miles outside the country’s major cities . . . . Click here or on image above to download Covert Kingdom
Letters
from Iraq We’ve pulled together all of Jo Wilding’s insightful eye-witness essays from Iraq, where she chronicled the lives of civilians caught up in the battle for Falluja. Our 77-page e-book includes the six essays we’ve already published, plus five more . . . . Click here or on image above to download Letters From Iraq A
book excerpt and an essay
The
New Economy of Terror In this 36-page extract from her new book, Loretta Napoleoni maps out the arteries of an international economic system that feeds armed groups the world over with an endless supply of cash. Chasing terror money, she takes the reader from the CIA headquarters to the smuggling routes of the Far East, from the back rooms of Wall Street to Hawala exchanges in the Middle East. The new economy of terror is made up of illegal businesses such as arms and narcotics trading, oil and diamond smuggling, as well as charitable donations and proceeds from legal businesses. Click
here or on image above to download The New Economy
of Terror Chronicle
of a War Foretold The
war in Iraq has become the most important chapter in the ‘war on
terror’. According to President Bush’s allies, coalition forces
are fighting a vicious guerrilla war against ‘Islamist terrorists’
and ‘Saddam’s loyalists’, which confirms the soundness
of the motivation to go to war in the first place: to prevent Saddam
Hussein from supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorist organizations
such as Al Qaeda. To date, however, no link between Saddam and Osama
has been established; no weapons of mass destruction have been found;
no major victory in the ‘war on terror’ has been achieved.
Instead public officials, UN inspectors, former members of cabinets,
counter-terrorist experts and security officers, have unveiled a long
stream of lies which go back to the first Gulf War, fabricated to promote
a ‘US-friendly’ military coup in Iraq. Their tale is the chronicle
of a war foretold. Click here or on image above to download Chronicle of a War Foretold
Arrest
& Interrogation By Hugh Lewin Forty years ago, South African journalist Hugh Lewin was arrested by security police for being a member of the African Resistance Movement (ARM) responsible for acts of sabotage against the nation’s apartheid government. After serving seven years as a political prisoner, Lewin went into exile in Britain where he wrote his acclaimed book, Bandiet: Seven Years in a South African Prison. Our 48-page excerpt from the recent republished version of the book – BANDIET Out of Jail – contains the first chapter of the original book, plus a new chapter and two of his prison poems, including the evocative TOUCH. Click here or on image above to download Arrest & Interrogation 
Caught
in the Matrix By David Miller Political debate in the mainstream in the US and UK increasingly resembles the vision encapsulated in the film the Matrix. Here the reality of human bondage to the system is disguised by a sophisticated virtual reality – the matrix – from which it is difficult, to break free.– In matrix world, Iraq had and may still have Weapons of Mass Destruction. In the real world it did not. – In matrix world there were links between Iraq and Al- Qaeda. In the real world there were not . . .. Click here or on image above to download Caught in the Matrix
The
New York Times on the Yugoslav Tribunal By Edward S, Herman & David Peterson While the concept of a “party line ”is usually associated with totalitarian parties and their offshoots, controlled by a state that imposes a politically serviceable version of history on its underlings and agents, it is very common for something like a party line to emerge in the U.S.mainstream media as they deal with a demonized target accused of misbehavior. In such cases the media quickly jump onto a bandwagon that takes the official and politically convenient view as obvious truth,and they then devote their efforts to elaborating on that truth. In this special report, Herman and Peterson examine the work of Marlise Simons in her coverage of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY, or simply Tribunal) for the New York Times. Click here or on image above to download The NY Times on the Yugoslav Tribunal
Bringing Hell To Haiti By David Edwards Have you ever noticed how stupid you sometimes feel when you watch the news? Hands up anyone who understands what's going on in haiti? The media is good at repeatedly broadcasting footage of armed gangs roaming in trucks, and at quoting senior oofficials. But the absense of meaningful context and informed qanalysis - and above all the unwillingness to question the official version of events - means that it is often literally impossible for viewers to make sense of what is happening. For all their satellite communications and computer-equipped studios, the news media often do not give us the news at all - they give us noise. Click here or on image above to download Bringing Hell to Haiti Four
great essays take the lid off
1.
The War Against The BBC It was the week British Prime Minister Tony Blair looked political death in the face and escaped in a manner which would have put Houdini to shame; the week that the BBC lost its bitter battle with the government and looked in danger of imploding; the week when, at last, senior American officials admitted that reports of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction could prove unfounded. At the root of the war between the government and the BBC was this: Blair insisted that he had irrefutable evidence from intelligence sources that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and could deploy them within 45 minutes to endanger British interests. The BBC, instead of simply reporting that assertion in the manner of a Pathe Newsreel, allowed Andrew Gilligan to seek the views of the foremost expert on Iraq’s WMD programme, Dr David Kelly. Kelly suggested to the BBC Today journalist that the intelligence dossier had been exaggerated (not fabricated) to improve its chances of selling the war. Click here or on image above to download THE WAR AGAINST THE BBC Click here to download James Cusick's 8-page essay - TONY BLAIR'S LONGEST DAY - also from the Sunday Herald 2.
Go Find Me A Way To Do This Sometimes it really is possible to fail to see the wood for the trees. We need to be clear that Tony Blair is claiming that the threat of Iraqi WMD justified a massive war against Iraq. We are to believe that after a major conflict in which 88,500 tons of bombs were dropped in 1991, after eight years of inspections, and after more than a decade of continuous bombing raids, and of crippling sanctions imposed under the most intensive and sophisticated surveillance operation in history, both Blair and Bush received intelligence suggesting that Iraq was a “serious and current threat”. As we now know, this alleged intelligence is said to have been related to WMD and links with al-Qaeda that did not exist. We are to believe, then, that a rush of terrifying information relating to non-existent perils – a rush so overwhelming that long-standing policy was abandoned – suddenly emerged to lead Bush and Blair to believe that nothing less than war was required to avert the danger. Click here or on image above to download GO FIND ME A WAY TO DO THIS 3.
The Lying Game What did the media tell us in the run up to war on Iraq? Was it all true? Where are the weapons of mass destruction? This book is for everyone who is appalled by the duplicity and misinformation churned out by the media in the lead up to war with Iraq, and is a scathing indictment of the media's role in creating public support for a war which threatens to create further instability and resentment of the US throughout the Middle East. Click here or on image above to download THE LYING GAME 4.
Information Dominance The concept of ‘information dominance’ is the key to understanding US and UK propaganda strategy and a central component of the US aim of ‘total spectrum dominance’. It redefines our notions of spin and propaganda and the role of the media in capitalist society. To say that it is about total propaganda control is to force the English language into contortions that the term propaganda simply cannot handle. Information dominance is not about the success of propaganda in the conventional sense with which we are all familiar. It is not about all those phrases ‘winning hearts and minds’, about truth being ‘the first casualty’ about ‘media manipulation’ about ‘opinion control’ or about ‘information war’. Or, to be more exact - it is about these things but none of them can quite stretch to accommodate the integrated conception of media and communication encapsulated in the phrase information dominance. Click here or on image above to download INFORMATION DOMINANCE Don't
miss our FREE
The
Best of ColdType Each month, ColdType reprints commentary and opinion from four of the world’s top columnists: George Monbiot (London Calling) of the London Guardian; Michael I. Niman (Getting A Grip), professor of Journalism and Media Studies in the Communication Department at Buffalo State College; John Pilger (Words Against War), who writes for many newspapers and magazine including Britain’s New Statesman, Daily Mirror and Independent; and Norman Solomon (Media Beat), executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, whose columns appear in newspapers across North America. This e-book contains one column from each month of 2003 from each of these writers (10 from Niman), selected by ColdType editor Tony Sutton. Click here or on the image above to download the book (1,000k) A
major excerpt from
Paying The Price If you wonder why the Iraqi people didn’t welcome the American forces as liberators at the end of the second Gulf war, it may be enlightening to read this excerpt from John Pilger’s book, The New Rulers Of The World, written and published before war began. Pilger describes the terrible suffering of the people of Iraq under the West’s – specifically the United States and Britain – decade-long embargo of that country, vicious sanctions that saw hundreds of thousands of children die because of lack of medical treatment as the richest country in the Middle East was brought to its knees because of supposed – but still undiscovered – weapons of mass destruction. In the first part of this excerpt, Pilger reports from Iraq on the murderous effects of these sanctions on the most vulnerable section of Iraq society; in the second, he travels to the United States, where he has an enlightening interview with Madelaine Albright’s Assistant Secretary of State James Rubin. Pilger concludes, “A prosecutor [at the International Criminal Court] might ask who has killed the most innocent people in Iraq: Saddam Hussein, or British and American policy-makers? The answer may well put the murderous tyrant in second place.” Click here or on image above to download PAYING THE PRICE (530k) Click here to download JOHN PILGER's previous ColdType essay, The Betrayal of Afghanistan Click here to download JOHN PILGER's columns for The Guardian, the Daily Mirror and New Statesman A
writer's journey into
White Man Walking A
60-page ColdType Modern Classic All
I knew of Durban’s Cato Manor was that its record of riot, razing
and broken heads is several lengths longer than
any other township in South Africa, which is saying a bit. A mega-effort
to straighten it out has now been made and is drawing to a close.
The straighteners, Cato Manor Development Association, commissioned
a bucketload of academic and professional reports on the results. They
decided also to include one wild-side report, which they called “The
View From the Street”. They wanted the impressions of a total outsider,
uncluttered by prior baggage. Click here or on image above to download WHITE MAN WALKING (500k) Click here to download Beckett's previous ColdType book, THE ROAD STOPS AT NOWHERE (512k) Newspaper
journalism right
Don't miss Africawoman, a monthly newspaper published by 80 very brave women journalists from Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and Nigeria. We've got the whole archive on line. Click here to go to the Africawoman download page The
fifth of our excerpts
Always Happy. Never Sad A 28-page excerpt from Hard Work, Life in Low-Pay Britain by acclaimed Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee Could you live on the minimum wage? The Guardian's Polly Toynbee took up the challenge; living on one of the worst council housing estates in Britain and taking whatever was on offer at the job centre. What she discovered shocked her. In telesales and cake factories, as a hospital porter and as a school dinner lady, she worked at a breakneck pace for cut-rate wages, alongside working mothers and struggling retirees. The service sector in Britain is now administered by seedy agencies, offering no prospects, no screening and no commitment. And, perhaps most damning of all, Toynbee found that, despite the optimism of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s New Deal, the poorly-paid effectively earn less than they did 30 years ago. In ColdType’s excerpt from Hard Work, the author takes a job working as a dinner lady, preparing and serving lunches to children in a school canteen . . . Click here or on image above to download ALWAYS HAPPY. NEVER SAD Another
perceptive essay
The Media War Comes Home During the 60’s, some elements of the anti-war movement believed that it was time to bring the war home. The idea — give America a taste of what Vietnam was suffering by launching an armed resistance. Their “blows against the empire” were misguided and self-destructive, as even most of the surviving wannabe guerrilla warriors now agree. Oddly enough, the Bush Administration has become obsessed with that 60’s notion and is applying its tactics to achieve opposite results. They are bringing the war home — by using wartime methods to manage domestic media during the elections, and turn American hearts and minds in favor of their war. Click here or on image above to Download Danny Schechter's essay A
unique photo-essay
Castles of the North By prize-winning
English photographer Click here or on image above to Download CASTLES OF THE NORTH Exposed
- One of the great
40-page ColdType Modern Classic IN THE JUNGLE By Top
South African Author Rian Malan Click here or on image above to Download IN THE JUNGLE John Pilger looks for the truth behind the headlines
THE
BETRAYAL Don't miss this new essay from John Pilger on the Betrayal of Afghanistan, written to accompany his superb new TV documentary, 'Breaking the Silence: Truth and lies in the war on terror', broadcast in Britain on September 22. Click here or on image to download JOHN PILGER's essay, The Betrayal of Afghanistan Two
essays for 9/11
HOW
MEDIA HAS CHANGED SINCE THE DAY THAT 'CHANGED EVERYTHING' 9/11: PROPAGANDA HOLLYWOOD-STYLE AN ESSAY BY DANNY SCHECHTER In an age when actor Arnold Schwarzenegger embodies a growing convergence between the worlds of movies and politics in one hulking frame, entertainment-oriented media once again manifests their power to influence what we think. There was a good reason that Time magazine described the coverage of the war on Iraq as “militainment,” and there is a good reason that the Bush Administration is turning to Hollywood to embellish the president’s declining popularity. Their latest preemptive strike takes form of a movie packaged to remake the historical record on the 9/11 attacks and reelect Bush at the same time. Click here or on image above to Download Danny Schechter's essay Don't
miss our four
1. Small Towns, Small Minds (From
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy) Before taking up the pen for Britain’s Observer and Guardian newspapers, Los Angeles-born Greg Palast traveled the globe as expert investigator of corporate fraud and racketeering. Palast won Britain’s highest journalism honors for his 1998 undercover investigation of influence peddling within Tony Blair’s cabinet – by Enron and other US corporations. He then turned his sleuthing skills on to the Bush money trail: uncovering for BBC and The Observer the uncomfortable truths of how the Bush Administration quashed investigations of Saudi financing of terror – and Poppy Bush’s extraordinary methods for stuffing his bank account and his son’s campaign coffers. In this excerpt from “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy” Palast turns his spotlight on the culture of McDonald’s and the “frightening Americanization of America.” . Click
here to download our 20-page excerpt from 2. Haunted By War (From
War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning) Veteran war columnist for The New York Times, Chris Hedges has survived ambushes in Central America, imprisonment in Sudan, and a beating by Saudi military police. He has even seen children murdered for sport in Gaza and petty thugs elevated to war heroes in the Balkans. Hedges has seen war at its worst and knows only too well that to those who have been through it, war can be exhilarating and even addictive. “It gives us purpose, meaning, a reason for living.” Drawing on his own experience and on the literature of combat from Homer to Michael Herr, Hedges shows how war seduces not just those on the front lines but entire societies, corrupting politics, destroying culture, and perverting basic human desires. Click
here to download our 20-page excerpt from 3. Global Mutation (From
The Age Of Dissent: Acclaimed
columnist for The London Guardian, George Monbiott wonders Click
here to download our 20-page excerpt from 4.
Embedded: Weapons (The
first full-length book on the war on Iraq) Click
here to download a 22-page sample from Check
out our two FREE
Silencing
Dissent Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times foreign correspondent Chris Hedges made headlines after being booed from the stage as he tried to deliver an anti-war commencement day speech at Rockford College in Illinois on May 20. According to one report, "his microphone was unplugged within three minutes. Voices of protest and the sound of foghorns grew. Some graduates and audience members turned their backs to the speaker in silent protest. Others rushed up the aisle to vocally protest the remarks, and one student tossed his cap and gown to the stage before leaving.” What did
Hedges say (or, rather, try to say) that was so inflamatory? ColdType's
special 14-page report reprints Hedge's speech, together with the transcript
of a radio interview with Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman and an introduction
by Danny Schechter, editor of Mediachannel.org. Six
Essays on Press Freedom May 3 has
been designated World Press Freedom Day to recognise the sacrifices
made in the struggle for freedom of the press and to put pressure on
the numerous countries that continue to deny their citizens this basic
human right. This day marks the anniversary of the Declaration of Windhoek,
a statement of principles drawn up by African journalists calling for
a free, independent and pluralistic media on that continent and throughout
the world. The Declaration affirms that a free press is essential to
the existence of democracy. Revisit
ColdType's top columnists for 2003
Media Diary / Danny Schechter DANNY
SCHECHTER is a television producer and independent filmmaker who
also writes about media issues. The author of “Media Wars: News
At A Time of Terror (2002) “The More You Watch, The Less You Know”
(Seven Stories Press) and “News Dissector: Passions, Pieces and
Polemics” (Electron Press), he is executive editor of MediaChannel.org.
He has produced and directed many TV specials and documentary films
and, with Springstein guitarist Little Steven Van Zandt, he produced
SUN CITY, the hit record and video featuring 54 top artists speaking
out against apartheid. He was a producer on the Nelson Mandela concert
in London in l990. He also writes the daily Media Dissector's Weblog
for mediachannel.org, of which we will be publishing edited highlights
each day. Words Against War / John Pilger
JOHN PILGER is one of the world's most renowned and
distinguished investigative journalists and documentary film-makers.
Twice a winner of Britain's highest honour, that of Journalist of the
Year, he writes for The Daily Mirror and Independent on Sunday newspapers
and New Statesman magazine. Dateline Baghdad / Robert Fisk ROBERT
FISK, of London's Independent newspaper, is one
of the world's top foreign correspondents. His reports from Baghdad,
target of thousands of missiles and bombs launched by US and British
warplanes and ships, provide a strong counterpoint to the official version
of events provided by 'embedded' reporters. London Calling / George Monbiot GEORGE MONBIOT , acclaimed author of "Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain", and the investigative travel books "Poisoned Arrows", "Amazon Watershed" and "No Man’s Land" writes a hard-hitting commentary column each week in the London-based British national newspaper, The Guardian. Now these columns each week on coldtype.net as a multi-page pdf download. We have also designed a four-colour cover (above) to accompany the pdfs, which fit in a 8.5" by 11" loose-leaf binder. Click here or on the image to go to the LONDON CALLING download page Getting A Grip / Michael I. Niman MICHAEL I. NIMAN’s weekly columns offer a critique of consumerist culture, corporate globalization, resource wars, ongoing environmental crises and the role of the mainstream press as the propaganda arm for a self-destructive status quo. Getting A Grip appears each week on coldtype.net as a multi-page pdf download. We have also designed a four-colour cover (above) to accompany the pdfs, which fit in a 8.5" by 11" loose-leaf binder. Click here or on the image to go to the GETTING A GRIP download page MediaBeat '03 / Norman Solomon NORMAN SOLOMON has been heralded as one of North America's most important media critics of the past decade. His weekly MediaBeat column has been a mainstay of the Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) web site for many years. Now MediaBeat appears each week on coldtype.net as a pdf download. And there's a four-colour cover (above) to accompany the pdfs, which also fit in a loose-leaf binder. Click here or on the image to go to the MEDIABEAT download page Another ColdType exclusive
Wapping '86 - a new photoessay The
strike that broke Britain's newspaper unions On January 24, 1986, 6,000 employees went on strike after months of protracted negotiations at the London national newspapers owned by media magnate Rupert Murdoch. The company’s management had ostensibly been seeking a labour agreement at their new plant in Wapping, but it had long since determined not to settle and instead sought to provoke a strike. Then, when industrial action was announced by the unions, dismissal notices were served on all those taking part. NIC OATRIDGE tells, in 20 pages of words and photographs, how Murdoch confronted and beat the unions, with the assistance of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's tough new labour laws and a police force that could hardly be described as impartial . . . Click here or on the image above to go to the PHOTO-ESSAY download page Download
these
Are
Americans getting a balanced picture of events that seem to be leading
their country headlong into a new war in the Gulf? No, says NORMAN
SOLOMON, the country's foremost media critic, in this hard-hitting
collection of his recent MediaBeat columns. Click here to go to download page
Return
To Kandahar The
Road Stops At Nowhere Click here to go to download page Finally,
two great
GOOD & EVIL: South Africa's Truth & Reconciliation Commission. By JILLIAN EDELSTEIN OMAGH – August 15, 1998: - Devastation of an Irish town. By JACKIE SLOAN Click here to go to our PHOTO-ESSAY download page Click here to go to NineOnTen Magazine Click here to return to Home Page Please Note: The downloads on this web site have all been saved in Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF). If you don't have a PDF Reader, download one from the Adobe web site (click on icon below)
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