Frontline Club bloggers
End Times at The New York Times
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c End Times thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Newt Gingrich Unedited Interview The Daily Show take a tour of the offices of the New York Times. If you want to know what’s black and white and red all over… watch the […]
The ‘Obama effect’ and Hezbollah’s election tactics
Newsflash: It is possible that people can make up their minds without help from Barack Obama. Especially in the Middle East. So it’s particularly odd that after Lebanon went to the polls and reelected the ruling March 14 coalition, analysts in the UK and US are heaping praise on the American president for seeing off […]
That’s all I can say
Amanda Lindhout, the Canadian freelance journalist kidnapped in Somalia along with fellow freelace Nigel Brennan, has reportedly telephoned the CTV national newsroom in Canada. In what appears to be an almost identical statement to the one telephoned through to the AFP last month, the 27 year old says she is being held in a windowless […]
Brazil to lend $10 billion to the IMF
The President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced today that Brazil will lend 10 billion dollars to the International Monetary Fund. The money is part of a $1.1 trillion package agreed at the end of the G20 summit in April to boost international financial institutions, international trade and economies that are struggling with the economic […]
Save to Rename Itself Dave and Return to Darfur
Three expelled charities are still in talks to go back into Darfur, according to Reuters. I find this whole thing ridiculous, as I’ve posted before. The three agencies are Mercy Corps, Care and Save the Children (US). There are good reasons for returning of course: the agencies can gain much-needed publicity and funding. With 10 […]
Few left to tell the story
These past few days have been littered with tales of misery coming out of Somalia. On June 7, a Radio Shabelle journalist shot dead, the fifth journalist killed this year. Ahmed Omar Hashi, was also shot but survived. Hashi called Frontline blogger David Axe from his hospital bed asking for help. David is trying to […]
“A small price to pay for good relations”
Population-centric approaches to counterinsurgency warfare emphasise the importance of protecting the local people rather than killing the enemy. When war takes place among the people, using military force is problematic so the priority is to win the support of the local population by providing security and services and building relationships with village elders. That’s (a […]
Why milbloggers blog from the front line
‘Afghan Kush‘ is a U.S. Infantry soldier currently deployed in Zabul province, Afghanistan. His unit, 1-4 Infantry, have been involved in some fighting recently around two forward operating bases. In a recent post, Afghan Kush writes about his front line involvement in a day-long engagement with guerrilla forces. Or rather he writes about his dissatisfaction […]
Help Rescue a Somali Reporter, Targeted for Assassination
On Sunday gunmen shot and killed Muktar Hirabe, director of Radio Shabelle in Mogadishu, making him the fifth Somali reporter to die this year, in a country where being a journalist is one of the most dangerous jobs there is. With Hirabe was Ahmed Omar Hashi (at right in the photo), a Shabelle senior producer […]
Jem’s Mobile Media Centre
The war in Darfur is being fought with pickups loaded with Dushka anti-aircraft guns, rocket propelled grenades and a Toyota LandCruiser kitted out as a mobile media centre. Deep in North Darfur, along the border with Chad, Khalid Mohamed Ahmed produces a newsletter for the troops, updates sudanjem.com and even sends videos to YouTube. "Our […]
Indigenous get day in court
Clashes in the Amazon jungle. Indians armed with wooden spears. Bodies found with their throats slit. It sounds like a chapter from the blood-soaked chronicles of Pedro Pizarro, the sixteenth-century conquistador. But this is modern day Peru. Protests in the country’s indigenous-majority north-eastern region were put down by armed police late last week. At least […]
Those White Arab Horsemen At It Again…
Here’s how one UN official apparently summed up the Darfur conflict to an unnamed celebrity passing through N’Djamena recently… Un-named UN figure: (enthusiastically) “Yes, basically the janjaweed are the Arabs, you know the ‘white’ Arab horsemen who carried out the killings against black African tribes in Darfur” The full, rather comical exchange is posted on Celeste Hicks’ blog. […]
Frontline Broadsheet is coming
The quarterly Frontline Broadsheet is coming. It’s high quality. It’s printed – and yes I do mean on paper, we’re doing this the old fashioned way – and it’s subscription only. To find out more send an email to broadsheet@frontlineclub.com with the word BROADSHEET in the subject header. For blog readers and Twitter followers, here’s […]
MoD and digital media: “We haven’t gripped it, but we’re getting there”
"I could not write about the past week without mentioning the tragic death of Rifleman Adrian Sheldon. Shelly was a much loved member of the Fire Support Platoon here at FOB [Forward Operating Base] Inkerman and his loss has been extremely hard to come to terms with." In among the stories about political meltdown you […]
Tweeting and fixing with the BBC
Relations between estranged neighbours Armenia and Turkey is big news at present, and not least since the August war between Russia and Georgia last year and Obama taking the presidency in the United States. That’s also good news for yours truly because in addition to fixing for Al Jazeera English covering the story, […]
Video: American design duo launches arts and culture mag in Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s culture, arts and music scene is the focus of a new magazine launched by two American designers living in the country’s capital, Managua. Hecho, which means "done" or "made" in Spanish, is the project of Christopher Sataua, 27, from San Diego and Oliver Best, 31, from Oregon. I caught up with them from Mexico […]
Sharek961: Lebanon monitors its own elections
With just three days to go before the elections here, Beirut’s airport has been busy receiving observers from across the world – the most high profile of them being former US President Jimmy Carter. But one new project is hoping to reinforce the teams from the US, the EU and the Arab League by enlisting […]
Picture perfect this morning – Chapultepec lake
I was walking through Chapultepec park this morning on my usual route to the office and I had my stills camera with me for the first time in a while – I’ve been focusing more on video recently. The clouds were picture perfect, the lake’s almost too-green waters still as glass. Clouds reflected in one […]
The whole world in an airplane
The disaster of the Air France Airbus A330 is with no doubt an event that will remain in history. Today, after over 24 hours of search operations by the air forces of three countries, the first pieces of wreckage were found. The story will go on for weeks before all the questions are answered. One […]
WRL: Twitter and the Global Media Forum
A few war reporting links to keep you moderately entertained while I put together a hopefully more enlightening post. (I was hoping to have it for today, but there’s been a slight delay.) 1. Hello, Twitter: Goodbye, McKiernan. The US military has launched an Afghanistan Twitter feed. Just recently the feed has been providing updates […]
I can’t talk about these things…
Dutch video journalist Ruud Elmendorp spent almost a week in Mogadishu, the embattled Capital of Somalia, at the end May. The insurgents led by the Al Shabab and Al Hizbul movements are trying to topple the internationally recognized government of president Sheik Sharif Ahmed. In this guest post for the Frontline Club, Ruud reports from […]
Dodging Antonovs in Darfur
It wasn’t much more than a speck. A tiny, white fleck in the wide blue sky above us. Our 4×4 lurched to a halt as Yahia, the driver, peered through the 10 inches of windscreen scraped clean of the mud that camouflaged the rest of the vehicle. Then we were off again, lurching over the […]
On Bruce Riedel
By now Bruce Riedel is pretty well-known, so I’ll spare you the CV: intimately involved in US foreign affairs in this general area (Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Central Asia etc) he helped run one of the reviews of Afghan policy that Obama requested at the beginning of the year. Nowadays he’s still quite active; writing, advising […]
Meanwhile in Somalia…
Another very powerful slideshow of images from Mogadishu in the Boston Globe’s Big Picture section this week. The caption for the image above by Mohamed Dahir reads, 31 Local journalists take pictures at the scene of the killing of a Somali government soldier near Mogadishu stadium, on May 11, 2009. Remains of dead soldiers littered […]
Armenian opposition: Down, but not out?
Roads into Yerevan were reportedly blocked yesterday ahead of the first opposition rally staged after Sunday’s muncipal election, the first to indirectly determine the mayor of the capital in 15 years. Even so, that shouldn’t have made much of a difference in terms of attendance figures in a city with a population of well over a million and with […]
Waiting five years for a five-minute chance
This recent blog post by an Iranian blogger “cautiously speaking from inside Iran” sounded to me so familiar that I wanted to share it with you: As you might know, private television channels are forbidden by the law in Iran. In general, power-holders are really touchy about any media that could challenge their authority. […] […]
Mexico City museums ask for help after influenza
Visits to some of Mexico City’s museums have fallen by as much as 90% since the outbreak of the H1N1 virus last month that prompted a near shutdown of numerous facilities, according to reports in the local media. Owners of some of the privately owned museums in the capital are seeking financial help from the government and […]
Video: Training Day
Deborah Bonello reporting for MexicoReporter.com My breath is tearing out of my lungs and my leg muscles are screaming for a reprieve. I just scaled a 60-degree hill coated in thorny brambles and poisonous plants whilst being pounded by rain. In the dark. I thought it couldn’t get any worse, but it did. Later […]
Update: Who is who in Iran’s elections?
Well, two days ago, when I wrote a post about upcoming presidential elections in Iran, I should have guessed it – I was stepping into a mine field 🙂 Ethnicity was always a very sensitive issue in Iran, and my speculations about ethnic background of Iranian presidential candidates received some feedback from my Iranian readers […]
Opposition ready to rock Yerevan following disputed municipal vote?
An opposition supporter friend and blogger calls it a travesty of democracy, but many of us are instead resigned to elections being business as usual in Armenia. Indeed, Josef Stalin summed up the situation perfectly. "Those who vote decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything," he reportedly said, and after speaking to an American […]
