Andrew Gumbel

America's one-eyed view of war: Stars, stripes, and the Star of David

Andrew Gumbel — 2006-08-15T14:53:33Z

There are two sides to every conflict - unless you rely on the US media for information about the battle in Lebanon. Viewers have been fed a diet of partisan coverage which treats Israel as the good guys and their Hizbollah enemy as the incarnation of evil. Andrew Gumbel reports from Los Angeles

If these were normal times, the American view of the conflict in Lebanon might look something like the street scenes that have electrified the suburbs of Detroit for the past four weeks.

In Dearborn, home to the Ford Motor Company and also the highest concentration of Arab Americans in the country, up to 1000 people have turned out day after day to express their outrage at the Israeli military campaign and mourn the loss of civilian life in Lebanon. At one protest in late July, 15,000 people - almost half of the local Arab American population - showed up in a sea of Lebanese flags, along with anti-Israeli and anti-Bush slogans. (...)

- / Independent

Satirical paper loses the President's seal of approval

Andrew Gumbel — 2005-10-28T11:00:00Z

The Bush White House is not only losing the battle for the hearts and minds of the American people. It also appears to be losing its sense of humour.

The administration has just written a cease-and-desist letter to the satirical newspaper The Onion, urging it to stop using the presidential seal on its website. (...)

- / Independent

America has 2,000 young offenders serving life terms in jail

Andrew Gumbel — 2005-10-12T14:50:00Z

Two leading human rights organisations have accused the United States of in effect throwing away the lives of more than 2,000 juvenile offenders sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole - a punishment out of step with international law but one increasingly popular with tough-on-crime US legislators.

According to a report being published today by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the United States is the only country to punish juveniles so severely on a routine basis. They counted 2,225 child offenders locked up for life across 42 American states. In the rest of the world, they found only a dozen other cases, restricted to three countries - Israel, South Africa and Tanzania. (...)

- / Independent

After Katrina: The toxic timebomb

Rupert Cornwell, Andrew Gumbel — 2005-09-07T12:18:00Z

The devastation of Hurricane Katrina has created a vast toxic soup that stretches across south-eastern Louisiana and Mississippi, and portends the arrival of an environmental disaster to rival the awe-inspiring destruction of property and human life over the past week.

Toxicologists and public health experts warned yesterday that pumping billions of gallons of contaminated water from the streets of New Orleans back into the Gulf of Mexico - the only viable option if the city is ever to return to even a semblance of its former self -would have a crippling effect on marine and animal life, compromise the wetlands that form the first line of resistance to future hurricanes, and carry deleterious consequences for human health throughout the region.

The full extent of the danger is unknown and unknowable, but the polluted waters are known to contain human and animal waste, the bodies of people and animals, household effluence, and chemical and petrochemical toxins from the refineries that dot the Gulf coast in and around New Orleans. (...)

- / Independent

All I did was say they can't run a fair election

Andrew Gumbel — 2005-08-29T13:20:00Z

I've got bad news for anyone already made queasy by the marathon length of American presidential elections. Not only is the 2008 race already concentrating political minds, it is becoming ever clearer the country has not recovered from the infamous mano a mano between Al Gore and George W Bush in Florida in 2000. In fact, in many important - and depressing - ways, the battle over Florida is still raging.

I've learned this the hard way, by becoming part of the battle myself. This past week, a posse of internet screamers who clearly don't like the idea of an uppity Brit questioning the legitimacy of George W Bush's first election took it upon themselves to denounce me as a "conspiracy journalist", a "left-wing hack" and a bare-faced liar. (...)

- / Independent

US 'may stay in Iraq for four years'

Andrew Gumbel — 2005-08-22T12:13:00Z

A senior army commander has said the US might have to keep more than 100,000 troops in Iraq for the next four years, a scenario that apparently contradicts recent White House noises about a gradual pull-out.

General Peter Schoomaker, the Army's Chief of Staff, said such a protracted troop deployment was a "worst-case scenario" but that he and other planners were already considering their options up to 2009. (...)

- / Independent

High ranking US soldier pleads guilty to Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse

Andrew Gumbel — 2004-10-21T12:05:00Z

The Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, which had all but disappeared from the US presidential election campaign, returned to the headlines yesterday after the highest-ranking soldier involved in the mistreatment of Iraqis pleaded guilty to five charges in a court-martial hearing in Baghdad. (...) -

Under siege: the wonders of the West

Andrew Gumbel — 2004-10-19T13:16:00Z

George Bush's environmental record is the worst in recent US history. Now the red-rock canyons of Utah, some of America's most treasured landscapes, are in danger. Andrew Gumbel reports from Moab - / Independent

International monitors to observe US election for first time

Andrew Buncombe, Andrew Gumbel — 2004-08-10T13:09:00Z

This November's presidential election will be observed by international monitors amid growing concerns that faulty machines and the manipulation of voter registration lists could lead to a repeat of the Florida fiasco of 2000. (...) -

'Fahrenheit 9/11' tops box office and puts heat on the President

Andrew Gumbel — 2004-06-29T12:47:34Z

The number one film in the United States yesterday was Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore's relentlessly publicised counterblast against the Bush administration. Sell-out crowds across the country broke box-office records for a political documentary.

Much as evangelical churches packed cinemas a few months ago to help turn Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christinto a religion-themed hit, political organisations campaigning to boot President George Bush out of office used the internet to send hundreds of thousands of supporters to the Moore film on its opening weekend. (...)

Activists cry foul in electronic voting furore

Andrew Gumbel — 2004-06-28T01:37:29Z

US voting activists who fear an "electoral train wreck" worse than Florida 2000 if electronic ballot machines are allowed to determine the outcome of November's presidential election, are claiming a breakthrough victory after the scandal-ridden resignation of one of the country's most outspoken e-voting apologists.

After years denying theevidence that touchscreen voting machines were unreliable and prone to tampering, the registrar of voters in Riverside County, California, Mischelle Townsend, suddenly announced her retirement - supposedly to spend more time with her family. (...)

Korea is stunned after Iraqi militants behead hostage

Patrick Cockburn, Andrew Gumbel — 2004-06-23T17:27:27Z

A South Korean translator held hostage in Iraq was beheaded yesterday and his body found dumped between Baghdad and Fallujah, dashing 11th-hour hopes that his life might be spared and ratcheting up pressure on the South Korean government to cancel its planned deployment of 3,000 troops to Iraq this summer.

A videotape of the killing was sent to the al-Jazeera satellite network, which broadcast only an initial snippet showing Kim Sun-Il, 33, kneeling and blindfolded as his captors say they are about the carry out their threat. "We warned you and you ignored [the warning]," one of a group of gunmen standing over him tells the camera. "Enough lies. Your army is not here for the sake of Iraqis but for the sake of cursed America." (...)

Militants claim Saudi security helped killers

Andrew Gumbel — 2004-06-21T14:28:41Z

The grieving family of Paul Johnson, the US military contractor beheaded by Saudi extremists last week, was still awaiting word on the whereabouts of his body yesterday even as Saudi security forces claimed a major victory against al-Qa'ida with the killing of four of Mr Johnson's alleged abductors.

A number of troubling questions have begun to surface about the events surrounding Mr Johnson's grotesque killing last Friday. Where was the body, which Saudi authorities claimed his abductors were in the process of dumping when they were ambushed and shot dead shortly after the murder? (...)

US air strike on Fallujah poses new threat to Iraqi handover

Andrew Gumbel — 2004-06-20T11:02:11Z

The handover of power in Iraq - now a mere 10 days away - appeared to be in a state of renewed crisis yesterday after a US air strike on homes in Fallujah brought to an end a week in which large-scale violence once again boiled to the surface.

Around 20 civilians, including eight women and children, are said to have died in the attack, which follows Thursday's devastating car bomb outside a Baghdad army recruitment centre. (...)

Latest horror could destroy President of divided nation

Andrew Gumbel — 2004-06-19T13:42:06Z

Is this the horror that will finally undo George Bush's presidency? First Nicholas Berg, now Paul Johnson: in two months and in two different countries, two US civilians have been kidnapped and beheaded by their al-Qa'ida-affiliated captors, becoming not only pawns in a deadly geopolitical game but also symbols of the complicated feelings of revulsion unleashed by the Bush administration's "war on terror".
It is hard not to think back to earlier acts of defiance against the might of the (...) -