So when the great Iona Craig dons a black abaya and niqab, inserts her “brown tinted contact lenses to cover [her] green foreigner eyes,” and blows the lid off a botched U.S. Navy SEAL raid in Yemen that killed at least six women and 10 children, she does it with the aid of fixer-friends.  

By Nick Turse  Tom Dispatch  October 05, 2017

Read Ann Jones introduction here.

We were already roaring down the road when the young man called to me over his shoulder. There was a woman seated between us on the motorbike and with the distance, his accent, the rushing air, and the engine noise, it took a moment for me to decipher what he had just said: We might have enough gas to get to Bamurye and back.

I had spent the previous hour attempting to convince someone to take me on this ride while simultaneously weighing the ethics of the expedition, putting together a makeshift security plan, and negotiating a price.  Other motorbike drivers warned that it would be a one-way trip. “If you go, you don’t come back,” more than one of them told me. I insisted we turn around immediately.

Once, I believed journalists roamed the world reporting stories on their own.  Presumably, somebody edited the articles, but a lone byline meant that the foreign correspondent was the sole author of the reporting.  Then I became a journalist and quickly learned the truth.  Foreign correspondents are almost never alone in our work.  We’re almost always dependent on locals, often many of them, if we want to have any hope of getting the story.  It was never truer for me than on that day when I was attempting to cover an ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign in South Sudan.

Read more »

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch.

---

Media for the people!  Learn more about Rise Up Times and how to sustain
People Supported News.

---

Follow RiseUpTimes on Twitter RiseUpTimes @touchpeace

---

No Peace! No Justice!  Please share this post.

The contents of Rise Up Times do not necessarily reflect the views of the editor.