Frontline Club bloggers
Beaten activists sentenced for two months while investigation goes on
On 10 July 2009, a session of Sabail District Court of Baku, chaired by Justice Rauf Ahmedov, has sentenced two civil society activists – Emin Abdullayev (Milli) and Adnan Hajizada to two months of pre-trial investigation detention. Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizada are accused of ‘domestic group hooliganism’ according to Article 221.2 of Criminal Code […]
Gambling for Sudan
I’m generally in favour of celebrities getting involved in awareness raising campaigns for Africa’s miserable assortment of wars. And, while destroying children’s toys for Darfur appeared to show a slight misunderstanding of the nature of kids’ playthings in this part of the world, I wasn’t going to get too pedantic about cultural disconnects and so […]
Beaten youth activists to stand trial for hooliganism
As I reported in my previous post, two prominent civil society activists and leading figures of youth movement in Azerbaijan – Emin Milli (Abdullayev) and Adnan Hajizada have been attacked while dining at a downtown restaurant and got severely beaten. Moreover, when they tried to complain to police, they were detained as suspects in ‘hooliganism’ […]
The front line in Afghanistan
The BBC’s Ian Pannell and cameraman Fred Scott are on the front line in Helmand. The British troops they film are taking part in Operation Panther’s Claw, which has cost the lives of seven British soldiers in the last week. I picked this up via Dr Ken Payne on the Kings of War blog, […]
Civil society and youth activists beaten and detained in downtown Baku
Two prominent Azeri civil society and youth activists – Emin Milli, one of the founders of Alumni Network, a grassroots youth movement and Adnan Haji-zadeh, a video-blogger from OL! Youth Movement have been attacked by unidentified persons while dining with a group of fellow activists in a restaurant in downtown Baku. According to witnesses, two suspicious ‘sportsmen’ entered the […]
How can they protect us?
The Red Cross and the UK Foreign Office launched a campaign this week looking at the Geneva Conventions some 60 years on. Of particular interest to Frontline Club members and blog readers is the question of how to protect of journalists, It is important that the media are able to report the true picture of […]
Help Amanda Lindhout and Nigel Brennan
Freelance journalists Amanda Lindhout and Nigel Brennan remain hostages in Somalia almost one year since they were nabbed on the outskirts of Mogadishu in August, 2008. Despite reports of them both being in a very bad health and of Lindhout reportedly being pregnant, it appears the Australian and Canadian governments refuse to cough up the, […]
If you want a different take…
…on the recent deaths of British Army soldiers, Lt Col Rupert Thorneloe and Tpr Joshua Hammond, in Afghanistan then head over to Defence of the Realm. The author, Richard North, believes the BBC missed the point about the weaknesses of the Viking that the soldiers were travelling in when it was hit by an Improvised […]
Cross of honour and debate
Four soldiers have received Germany’s new medal for bravery for their actions in Afghanistan – the first German military decorations awarded for bravery on the battlefield since WWII. It’s known as the Ehrenkreuz der Bundeswehr für Tapferkeit or Cross of Honour for Bravery. Yes it does bear a similar shape to the Iron Cross (Eisernes […]
Former captive warns of reporting risks on return to Beirut
Terry Anderson, former hostage and AP bureau chief in Beirut, returned to Lebanon this week to give a talk on the ‘global hazards of reporting’ at the Issam Fares Centre. Anderson, who was kidnapped in 1985 and held for six years and nine months, spoke eloquently for over an hour about his kidnapping, the dangers […]
Moldy cheese, medieval instruments, and just enough beer…
Walking through his hometown of Gyumri, Armenia’s second largest city, 26-year-old Narek Barseghyan still attracts looks from fellow residents for his unruly hair and an earring worn in what still remains a noticeably traditional and conservative society. Gyumri is slightly different from the rest of the country, however, and is not only suffering from a […]
What’s really happening
Ex-SAS man and best selling novelist Andy McNabb had some nice things to say about the Frontline Club website and the bloggers who blog here in the latest edition of New Media Age this week. Thanks to Club member Peter Moore for pointing this out to us on Twitter and uploading the above snap […]
US Army uses wikis to update field manuals
The Small Wars Journal informs us that the US Army is converting the contents of their field manuals into wiki format allowing soldiers to update military doctrine. (It’s wikipedia for the Army.) Lt Gen William Caldwell, a leader in the use of social media in the US military, writes: "By converting manuals into wikis, the […]
The Calais rules
Frontline Club founding member Tira Shubart sees her new BBC TV comedy series, Taking the flak, start next week. The series takes a wry look at the world of foreign correspondents reporting a fictitious African war and was originally entitled "The Calais Rules"… read on if these rules are new to you. In what might […]
Money from Mexican migrants to Mexico continues to fall
The money that Mexicans living abroad send home to their families here in Mexico fell again in May, in what the Associated Press calls the biggest monthly decline on record. "Money sent home by Mexicans working abroad fell by 19.9 percent in May, the biggest monthly decline on record as the U.S. recession slashed jobs. […]
Time for a Change
It’s almost five years since I arrived to live and work in Kenya. Gradually the feelings of excitement and adventure have given way to a sense of deja vu as the same stories come around again and again. Every year there are warnings of famine in Ethiopia. Every two years there is drought in […]
State-run clinic for transsexuals opens in Sao Paulo
“Since I was a child of seven years old I felt I was different, I did not like women and liked watching the boys on TV”, says Claudia, a transvestite who lives in the centre of Sao Paulo. “I started taking hormones when I was 18, I had already left home. Nowadays I am completely […]
Death-Threat E-mail from an Islamic Extremist
by DAVID AXE Ever wondered what an Islamic extremist’s death threat to an "infidel" might look like? Now you can know. Two weeks ago, Somali journalist Ahmed Omar Hashi, aka Ahmed "Tajir," pictured, survived an assassination attempt, by extremists, that killed his colleague Moqtar Hirabe. Readers donated funds to help Hashi escape to another country. […]
Truth: The first casualty of the Russo-Georgia War
Today, I’ve been multi-tasking: spending some time spying (with permission, I should add) on the BBC’s news operation, keeping one eye on the tennis, and reading a very interesting paper on the media and the Russian invasion of Georgia. I can’t really talk too much about the former (yet) and I don’t suppose many of […]
Foreign ramifications of local drug wars
In a world in which the production of everything from clothes to coffee has become globalized and is outsourced to every corner of the globe, why should cocaine be any different? Although the problem of the illegal drug trade is a huge one, it is based on the principals of demand and supply.
Frontline Club events broadcast on Livestation
The Frontline Club is now broadcasting events from the forum in Paddington live on the Internet with Livestation.com. We’ve been testing the service quietly for the past few weeks and have found the video and audio quality are excellent. You’ll need to download some software to your PC/Mac and once you have you can tune […]
Get back alive
Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times has "been around the block a few times" and is offering advice to would be foreign correspondents on how to report on a global crisis for YouTube’s Reporters Center. The centre aims to give advice to newbies and non-journalists, The YouTube Reporters’ Center is a new resource to […]
Video: “Tracing Aleida” director on making the film and Mexico’s “dirty war”
We mentioned the documentary “Tracing Aleida” back in May, which follows a woman’s search for her brother, from whom she was separated during Mexico’s “dirty war”. Since then, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Christiane Burkhard, who filmed and directed the documentary, in her Mexico City home. The interview was for the Los […]
Kirchners On the Ropes
I waited and waited and waited last night for Argentine strong-man Nestor Kirchner to speak. Just after midnight, I joined the general flow of people towards the door. All was quiet at campaign HQ. That boded ill for the country’s ruling party. Things, obviously, had not gone well at the mid-term polls. The scene couldn’t […]
Nagorno Karabakh: Tragedy in the South Caucasus
The last time I visited Nagorno Karabakh was in 2006. Well, the intention had not been to visit Karabakh itself, but rather the strategic town of Lachin situated within what the international community considers sovereign Azerbaijani territory under Armenian control. However, despite years of working on a long-term photographic project in the town, I was […]
Breaking news EXPLAINED
Say no more… found via Frontline blogger Mike Hills who is in Beirut and blogs with us here.
Roll With It
Aid workers in Dadaab – the world’s largest refugee camp, set up in 1991 to cater for Somalis fleeing civil war – tell me that families always ask for cylindrical jerry cans rather than ones with square edges. The reason is simple. Five-year-old daughters cannot carry a can filled with 20l of water. But they […]
Strategic Communications: New Media
Here in the bunker – it is a rather swish conference room but there’s a serious shortage of natural light – we’ve been looking at new media and strategic communications. In a moment, three themes from the session and the morning’s discussion. But if you want a frankly more interesting general overview of what the […]
Strategic Communications: Day 2
If you were following the blog yesterday I decided to enjoy the sunshine… Here’s a photo of Alastair Campbell addressing the conference yesterday. After a question and answer session with Campbell on various topics including Iraq, Kosovo and Afghanistan, we moved onto a panel discussion on how to make a communications strategy work in places […]
Somali Journo, Assassination Survivor, Flees Country
by DAVID AXE Two weeks ago, unidentified gunmen targeted Somali radio reporter Ahmed Omar Hashi, aka Ahmed "Tajir," as he was walking in Mogadishu’s Bakara Market with Moqtar Hirabe, his director. Hirabe died, on the spot; Hashi’s friends rushed him to Medina Hospital, pictured, with wounds to his arm and stomach. The attack was the […]
