{"id":404955,"date":"2010-03-08T19:06:08","date_gmt":"2010-03-09T00:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/?p=71734"},"modified":"2010-03-08T19:06:08","modified_gmt":"2010-03-09T00:06:08","slug":"welcoming-new-afghanistan-blogging-fellow-josh-mull-to-the-seminal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/404955","title":{"rendered":"Welcoming New Afghanistan Blogging Fellow Josh Mull to The Seminal"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"100209-M-2934T-0224\"<\/p>\n

Marines fight insurgents on road to Marjeh, Helmand Province, Afghanistan (photo: DVIDSHUB via Flickr)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

When we at The Seminal and Brave New Films decided to solicit applications to replace the wonderful Derrick Crowe and find a new Afghanistan Blogging, we had no idea if we’d even get any applications. We were very, very wrong.<\/p>\n

Over 40 immensely qualified people applied. Men and women, Americans and Afghans, bloggers and journalists. We had people apply who are diarists here at The Seminal, people who write for nationally-known offline publications, people who appear on TV regularly, people who’ve spent years in Afghanistan – the works. It was a tough process to narrow down the applicants, but in the end we’ve come up with someone who can help move the debate about the war in Afghanistan into the national and political consciousness.<\/p>\n

Josh Mull, who is starting today as our newest Afghanistan Blogging Fellow, has deep experience blogging, reporting, and making political change. He’s been deeply involved in the Alive in Baghdad<\/a> and Alive in Afghanistan<\/a> projects, which have coordinated amazing on the ground reporting from citizen journalists up to and during the elections in Iraq and Afghanistan. He’s covered domestic politics for TheUptake.org<\/a>, and he currently reports at Small World News<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This experience lends itself directly to the cause of opposing escalation in Afghanistan and bringing this overly costly war to a close.<\/p>\n

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From Josh’s application:<\/p>\n

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All of my reporting experience, from live monitoring of police brutality at the Republican National Convention to editing eyewitness reports from government crackdowns in Iran and Honduras, has provided me ample evidence that violence and warfare are completely unworkable solutions to our problems, and the NATO occupation of Afghanistan is no exception. Regardless of the political and national security justifications provided by the Obama administration, or its predecessor, American military force in Afghanistan will not succeed at even the modest stated goals (security, governance, human services) much less the more lofty objectives of creating a stable, democratic international partner for the United States.<\/p>\n

That does not mean the US is without options in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

Through election monitoring with Alive in Afghanistan and our partner Pajhwok Afghan News, I have seen the power of media at providing transparency and accountability to both Afghan and US affairs, be it publishing evidence of fraudulent campaigning by Afghan politicians or eyewitness reports of civilian casualties caused by reckless ISAF operations. I have also seen how the American and western community can be engaged in foreign policy, through our interactive reporting with Alive in Gaza, which allowed people from the around the world to submit questions directly to Palestinians living in Gaza. This personal connection to the subject of US policy provided a moral and human lens through which the Internet audience could better understand the conflict.<\/p>\n

Additionally, Small World News is currently working with IREX and the Enough Project on new projects in Ethiopia and Sudan respectively, giving me first-hand experience with state funded initiatives on human rights, development, and governance which could very easily be applied to the situation in Afghanistan. While these non-violent options aren’t revolutionary in and of themselves, I find that they are almost entirely absent from the American debate on Afghanistan policy. The case against US aggression in Afghanistan is extremely important, but I also believe that citizens should be informed of the alternatives to military power, to show that an anti-war stance does not imply naked rejectionism, but that concerns over security, human rights, and international affairs can still be addressed through reasonable, already-available solutions. Put bluntly, opposition to US involvement in Afghanistan comes from an abundance of compassion, not a lack of it, and Americans should be made aware of the other options available to them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’m looking forward to working with Josh to put those other options on the table and make politicians understand what the American people already know – more war in Afghanistan isn’t in our interest, nor is it in Afghanistan’s interest.<\/p>\n

We’re proud to have Josh on board as our blogging fellow, and his first piece will be published here (and on Rethink Afghanistan<\/a>) shortly. Stay tuned, and give him a warm welcome!<\/p>\n

Tags: Brave New World<\/a><\/p>\n

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Marines fight insurgents on road to Marjeh, Helmand Province, Afghanistan (photo: DVIDSHUB via Flickr) When we at The Seminal and Brave New Films decided to solicit applications to replace the wonderful Derrick Crowe and find a new Afghanistan Blogging, we had no idea if we’d even get any applications. We were very, very wrong. Over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4753,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-404955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4753"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404955\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}