Frontline Club bloggers
How an ethanol company hired degrading labour
A recent article published by the excellent investigative organization Reporter Brasil exposed details of the way slave labour is organized in the ethanol industry. The journalist Maurício Hashizume obtained hard evidence that the company Brenco – Companhia Brasileira de Energia Renovável, a multimillion-dollar company that runs ethanol projects in Brazil aiming at the international markets, […]
Election time in Iran
I admit there are two things in Iran that we, Northern Azeris envy – the first is cheap petrol and the second is free an fair elections. No joke! Yesterday, American news magazine Time started one of its articles with this paragraph: The presidential candidate was greeted last Monday at the airport by a jubilant […]
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 […]
Mexican journalists put through their survival paces
Journalists in Mexico can have a pretty hard time doing their jobs, especially those who cover Mexico’s narco-trafficking and organized crime problems. A couple of non-profits who work on press freedom and protection issues here in Mexico, the Rory Peck Trust and Article 19, got together and ran a course just outside Mexico City […]
Georgia Wins Fashion Battle
Benetton clothing shops in Georgia have been closed for several days in protest against Benetton Turkey’s announcement that it was planning to open a store in Sukhumi, the capital of the disputed region of Abkhazia. "Protest Against Opening of Benetton Shop in Sukhumi" read signs hung in the shops’ windows in Tbilisi this week. The […]
Azerbaijan marks anniversary of its first republic
On 28th of May, Azerbaijan marked 91th anniversary of its first republic. Azerbaijan Democratic Republic or ADR as known by its initials is considered the first democratic republic in Muslim East with a functional parliament and clean record of human rights. As I wrote in my post last year, Proclaimed on 28 May, 1918 and […]
Remembering ’85’s earthquake
We had an earthquake last Friday. It was the second in a month also blighted by a new strain of influenza and economic recession – but that’s what life’s currently like here in Mexico. I was in the office when the quake struck, eating lunch (Mexican time – just before 230pm) with Lupita, the office […]
Mobile reporting from Yerevan municipal election rally
Finally a real opportunity to put the Nokia N82 to the test. Deciding to quickly pass by Yerevan’s manuscript museum to see if the 13th Century replica ship blocking the entrance to the main venue for the opposition to stage its rallies had been removed, I wandered into what can only be described as a swarm […]
Quote of the Day: Alexander Cockburn
I’m reading Kaplan’s Soldiers of God at the moment, and came across this nice little gem: "In the January 20, 1980, issue of the Village Voice, the left-wing writer Alexander Cockburn employed such a rationale to justify the Soviet invasion of the month before: ‘We all have to go one day, but pray God let […]
Food on the Frontline
Assida is a thick porridge made from ground millet and is one of the main staples of Darfur. It’s eaten by plunging your fingers into the stodgy mound, scooping out a scalding-hot lump and mopping up some of the sauce. For most of my five days with rebels of the Justice and Equality Movement it […]
Our man gets a mention
This has nothing to do with Mexico. But it DOES have something to do with MexicoReporter.com- and that’s the recognition of co-founderMike Butcher as one of "The 10 Men a UK Female Internet Entrepreneur Should Know when Starting and Growing a Business," according to the Next Woman business magazine. "Mike Butcher truly is journalist extraordinaire […]
Fourth journalist killed in Somalia in 2009
Another journalist died in Somalia today bringing the 2009 tally of journalist deaths in the East African nation to four. Nur Muse Hussein, a 56 year old radio journalist working with the Radio Voice of Holy Quran in Mogadishu, was shot in Beledweyne city in the Hiran region of Central Somalia in late April. The National Union of Somali Journalists […]
Mapping conflict
Using Google Earth (or Maps) as a news tool isn’t exactly new. But mapping all the coalition casualties during the military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq is a monumental effort. It’s the work of Sean Askay, a Google employee. He used the company’s 20% programme (allowing employees to spend one day a week on their […]
All hands on deck: Yerevan sails into election week
If British folk-rock legends Jethro Tull materializing in the country last week — with the Armenian prime minister going hell for leather in his return from Kazakhstan so he could catch his favourite band perform live in Yerevan — was bizarre enough, then nothing could prepare anyone for the latest surreal development in post Soviet […]
Somalia kidnap victims speak
The AFP says one of their Mogadishu based reporters spoke with the two kidnap victims, Amanda Lindhout and Nigel Brennan, in Somalia fro five minutes on Sunday. Lindhout in particular sounds to be in a very poor way, if this reported phone call is to be believed, "I have been sick for months. Unless my […]
Coffee on the Frontline
Just returning from five days with rebels of the Justice and Equality Movement in Darfur. The trip was a chance to get under their skin and explore their programme for a chapter of my book (Saving Darfur: Everyone’s Favourite African War). I’ll be posting more about the trip in the days to come but […]
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 […]
Too old to rock ‘n’ roll? Jethro Tull perform in Armenia
Living in Armenia can be nothing if not bizarre, and just when you thought you’ve seen it all, something happens to remind you that in a former Soviet republic it’s always best to expect the unexpected. Who would have thought, for example, that the Armenian prime minister, Tigran Sargsyan, would be such a huge fan […]
Poverty and access to health care in Armenia
Sometimes I really hate my job. Having first been inspired some 27 years ago by the potential for photojournalism to effect change, the situation in regions such as the South Caucasus can instead be depressing. While there have been some successes such as managing to get the Armenian government to finally admit there was a homeless problem […]
Journalist shot dead in Somalia
A journalist working with Radio Shabelle was shot dead near Bakara Market in the Somali capital Mogadishu this morning. Abdirisak Warsameh Mohamed was reportedly on his way to work when he was caught in crossfire and shot in the chest. There has been an upsurge in violence in the capital in recent weeks between government […]
Media140: Tweeting from the field
Media140 brought together twitterers (and maybe some people who aren’t on Twitter) to talk about the impact of everyone’s favourite 140 character tool on news journalism. Using Twitter to do journalism We learnt what most people know if they’ve been using Twitter to do any sort of journalism. Twitter is pretty darn useful for monitoring […]
“Completely stopped and broken”
In an email to 630 CHED News / iNews 880 Daud Abdi Daud, of The Somali Journalists Rights Agency, says that the recent increase in fighting in and around the Somali capital Mogadishu has stopped negotiations to release Amanda Lindhout and Nigel Brennan, the two freelance journalists held captive since August, 2008, The savage fighting […]
Mexico City writer inspires Saldamando in California
Japanese – Mexican American artist Shizu Saldamando was inspired by Mexico City-based writer (and former Los Angeles Times journalist) Daniel Hernandez during a recent trip to this sprawling metropolis. A photo the artist took of Hernandez and fashion designer Uriel Urban ended up as a painting on the walls of Space 47 as […]
Kindle in Kandahar
As you should be able to make out from the photo, Kindle has come to Kandahar. I imagine there are are fair few being used by foreign military forces members at the PRT inside town and on KAF, the big military base miles outside town, but that doesn’t temper my excitement. Since I last wrote, […]
Frontline bloggers at Media140
Tomorrow, I’ll be heading along to Media140. It’s a conference that will look at the impact of Twitter and other social media tools on news coverage and journalistic practice. I seem to be pretty interested in this sort of stuff. After all, I’ve written a few things on Twitter – its use as a reporting […]
Sri Lanka: 25 years of war
As the government of Sri Lanka declares an end to the civil war that has lasted 25 years, The Guardian newspaper looks back over the conflict in a series of 31 images.
‘Black Hole’ in South Ossetia?
After the war with Georgia last year, Russia recognised the tiny, impoverished rural region of South Ossetia as an independent state. Moscow has now deployed border guards to police the frontlines and is in the process of establishing military bases there to defend against what it describes as potential Georgian "aggression" in the future. Russia […]
Africa Handshake, Part Ten: Smart Power’s Long History
With two expensive land wars draining the treasury, the Pentagon wants to prevent future conflicts without spending a lot of money. Two years ago the Navy launched its first, roughly annual Africa Partnership Station, sending ships on solo cruises up the West African coast to deliver training and humanitarian aid. The idea: to win new […]
Military era impunity ‘leads to police violence’
Here’s a good insight into the importance of punishing the crimes committed by the military during the dictatorial period (1964-1985). In a recent interview in Brazilian website Opera Mundi, prosecutor Marlon Alberto Weichert argued that the lack of proper punishment to crimes against opposition members – including violent assaults, illegal detentions, torture, murders – has […]
‘Brave’ Amanda Lindhout
Abdifatah Mohammed Elmi, the Somali fixer who was kidnapped alongside Canadian freelance Amanda Lindhout and Australian photographer Nigel Brennan in Somalia in August 2008, has been talking about the ordeal. Elmi says he was threatened before his release and told to keep quiet about the condition and whereabouts of Lindhout and Brennan. However, he broke […]
