Jimmy Massey, Ron Harris and Ambush Journalism

By STAN GOFF
Reposted from Counterpunch

When I wrote Hideous Dream, a memoir about the 1994 US invasion of Haiti, I noted a book by Bob Shacochis entitled The Immaculate Invasion, that I only read after I’d completed my own book. In my introduction I praised Shacochis for his engaging rococo prose describing the places he’d been in Haiti for the first few months of that occupation. I also took him to the woodshed for over-identifying with the troops he ate and slept with in Special Forces; because behind his lively writing was a piece of pure military hagiography. Shacochis was an embedded reporter before we knew what embedded reporters were. By living with these troops, and on a few occasions depending upon them for his physical security, he had set himself up to fall in love with them.

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Hugo Chávez was in fine form this morning at the football (soccer)
stadium counter-rally in Mar del Plata, quoting Rosa Luxembourg,
preaching socialism for the XXIst Century and generally kicking the ass
of the ruling class while a mile away the other heads of state of the
hemisphere (minus one little island whose leader wasn’t invited cause
even now after four and a half decades the mere thought of his beard
makes the Yankees wet their pants) were trying to come up with a plan to
upstage Chavez’s coup: at the stadium he had Maradonna seated at his
right hand.

Green Party leaders condemned
a court decision upholding the removal of Elaine
Brown from the ballot and from voter rolls in the
November 8 election for Mayor of Brunswick,
Georgia, and charged that Ms. Brown’s
disqualification by challengers in an attempt to
crush the right of Brunswick’s African American
voters to vote for someone who represents their
interests.

“Those who suffer from conspiracy phobia are fond of saying: ‘Do you actually think there’s a group of people sitting around in a room plotting things?’ For some reason that image is assumed to be so patently absurd as to invite only disclaimers. But where else would people of power get together – on park benches or carousels? Indeed, they meet in rooms: corporate boardrooms, Pentagon command rooms, at the Bohemian Grove, in the choice dining rooms at the best restaurants, resorts, hotels, and estates, in the many conference rooms at the White House, the NSA, the CIA, or wherever. And, yes, they consciously plot – though they call it ‘planning’ and ‘strategizing’ – and they do so in great secrecy, often resisting all efforts at public disclosure. No one confabulates and plans more than political and corporate elites and their hired specialists.”

-Michael Parenti, Dirty Truths, City Lights Books, 1996