kurdistan
GRITtv: Esther Kaplan: New Evidence on Detained Iran Hikers
Since their arrest last July by Iranian forces near the Iraq border, three Americans — Shane Bauer, Josh Fattal and Sarah Shourd— have been at the center of a diplomatic struggle between Tehran and Washington. Esther Kaplan is Editor at the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute and has worked closely with Shane Bauer in the past. This week, the Investigative Fund and The Nation broke the story that the detained hikers were most likely arrested in Iraqi territory, not in Iran. Esther gives us her thoughts on the ongoing fight to win the hikers' freedom and the role of investigative journalism in the matter.
Email this pageGRITtv: Got Docs? Zhinan: Architects of the New Iraq
In the Kurdish region of Iraq, the people faced horrendous atrocities under Saddam Hussein, including in some villages the murder of nearly all men and boys. The Kurdish women, however, have been rebuilding and redefining their roles. This film by Mary Ann Smothers Bruni looks at three women who are working to strengthen their region and their nation.
GRITtv: The F Word: Real News Pales Next to Palin
Palin Palin all the time, and never a peep of complaint. That's the long and short of the news cycle these past few days, but there are just a few stories on which I'd like to see some follow up. Take the one about Peter W. Galbraith, a former UN ambassador who advocated tirelessly for Kurdish independence through scores of op-ed pieces for the New York Times and other outlets, while never disclosing to readers -- or apparently, to editors -- that he stood to benefit, financially, from Kurdish independence. Now it turns out he had ties to a Norwegian oil company that scored an enormous stake in at least one of Kurdistan's oil fields -- a stake made possible by independence -- and worth something like $100 million to Galbraith. Or how about the story about Afghanistan, heroin and the CIA. Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president, apparently gets regular payments from the CIA and has for much of the past eight years. The story that hung around for a day or two, then poof. It's disappeared. We participated ourselves, so no one's innocent, but think you can leave reporting to fend for itself? You can't.
