Frontline Club bloggers
Credit Crunch Journalism
Africa is a big continent. The road network is not good. The rail network is non-existent. Getting from A to B can be very expensive. Last week one of my newspapers asked me to go to Tanzania. They gave me the name of the village, but no, they had no other idea where it was. […]
Gabon: Poverty amid Plenty
Due to the global recession, the six-nation Central African Economic and Monetary Community — Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo Republic, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon — is anticipating economic expansion of just 2.8 percent in 2009, versus 4.4 percent last year. That’s not bad, considering Germany could contract by as much as 7 percent, […]
Panoscope and the TB Partnership
Now a little bit about the Programme that brought me here. The newsletter Panoscope, which I am helping to edit at the conference, is produced by the Panos Global AIDS Pogramme with funding from the Stop TB Partnership. The initiative has brought 9 journalists from different nations to cover the conference and report back to […]
Rio Conference: fight against TB too slow
The world has been too slow in fighting tuberculosis – this seems to be the main conclusion of the 3rd Stop TB Partners’ Forum in Rio de Janeiro. I am attending the conference as subeditor of the official newsletter, and must say that new data revealed today are not very encouraging. According to the 2009 […]
Guadalajara Film Festival: ‘El Enemigo’ examines the morality of revenge
"El Enemigo" (The Enemy) is one of the movies competing for the Guadalajara International Film Festival‘s Best Ibero-American Fiction Feature Film this year. The feature film by Venezuelan director Luis Alberto Lamata is a harsh, realistic take on the relations between the poor and the law in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas. Most of the drama unfolds […]
NATO must ‘plug in’ to the global conversation
A military officer assigned to NATO says the organisation needs to engage with the new media landscape. In a guest post for Mountain Runner, Tom Brouns argues that NATO’s relevance on the Internet will play an increasingly important role in the extent of success or failure in Afghanistan. He notes that according to some observers […]
Insurance Without Borders from Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders announced an insurance plan for journalists working in war zones yesterday. The scheme, called Insurance Without Borders, is aimed at journalists who often travel at a moment’s notice. The insurance can be put into effect within 48 hours and does not require a medical questionnaire, To mark the anniversary of the War […]
Book Preview: Fifth-Generation War in Africa
Daniel Abbott over at tdaxp is editing a new book on fifth-generation warfare, to be published by Nimble Books. I’m writing a chapter addressing Somalia, piracy (pictured), human security and 5GW in Africa. Here’s a brief sample: The “fourth generation” of war entailed irregular combatants fighting for an ideological cause, seeking to remake society […]
Video: Mexico’s butterfly reserve alights in the soul
They first catch the eye as tiny, ghost-like flashes. It takes a moment to fix the flitting shapes, reports Ken Ellingwood. You have come to these highland woods to see a natural marvel. The sparse, darting forms are not quite that. But they silently summon you deeper with the suggestion that this is just the […]
Secret special effects of ‘Hellboy’ and ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ revealed
Guillermo del Toro’s imagination is a fascinating abyss full of the kind of monsters that inhabit both our dreams and our nightmares. The Mexican mastermind behind films such as “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “Hellboy” has created worlds full of the kind of fantastical creatures that amuse and terrify, often at the same time.
The most dangerous places for journalists
Iraq, Sierra Leone and Somalia are the most dangerous place for journalists according to the 2009 Imupunity index released by the Committee to Protect Journalists today. However, the report entitled Getting Away With Murder 2009, highlights worrying trends in South Asia, particularly in Sri Lanka and Pakistan, “We’re distressed to see justice worsen in […]
Somali-American Jihadist has “Change of Heart”
Last week Osama bin Laden exhorted Somalis to rise up in jihad against new president Shariff Sheikh Ahmed, a call that even Somali insurgent leaders rejected. Earlier, as many as two dozen Somalis living in the U.S. sneaked into Somalia to join Islamic fighters combating the U.S.-, U.N.- and A.U.-backed government. One recruit (pictured) […]
War in South Ossetia – The Movie
This is the trailer for Olympus Inferno, a propaganda action movie about last year’s war in South Ossetia that’s due to be shown on Russian television later this month. According to Reuters: "The fictional account tells of a U.S.-based entomologist and a female Russian journalist who unintentionally capture evidence that Georgia started the conflict using […]
Azerbaijan passing through referendum
On 18th March in a nationwide referendum aimed at amending country’s constitution Azerbaijan went to ballot box to decide whether to remove two-term limit imposed for holders of the Presidential office. The referendum, especially changes proposed for lifting presidential term limits from constitution stirred much controversy from the very beginning. In January, in my Frontline […]
Blogging military blogging
I came across a blog called Soldiers in the blogosphere recently. It’s run by an active duty US Army Major, Jakob Bruhl, and is part of his graduation requirement from the Air Command and Staff College. Maj Bruhl discusses whether soldiers should be encouraged to write blogs and over the last few weeks he has […]
Robbed in São Paulo
Even though I live in one of the most violent cities in Latin America, I had never been robbed – until today. But there is a first time for anything. And unfortunately being robbed is part of the day-by-day in São Paulo, a city of 10-million inhabitants. Some people even carry extra money – say […]
Video: Narcocorridos inspire Mexico City mural
The music of Mexico’s drug trade has taken a beating lately. As we reported from Tijuana last year, some radio stations south of the border have stopped playing the songs and promoters have banned the music from many public events. Nightclub owners ask bands to turn down narcocorrido requests. Richard Marosi wrote: Narcocorridos still draw […]
Video: Be an illegal immigrant for a day
In El Alberto, a small village over 1000km from the border between Mexico and the US, tourists can pay to experience what it’s like being an illegal migrant. MexicoReporter.com accompanied the Guardian’s Jo Tuckman to film the video for her piece on the fake border crossing, where participants try to enter "America".
U.S. journalists detained in North Korea
Two U.S. journalists working on North Korean border with China near the Yalu river, on the western border, have been detained by North Korean military officials. The South Korean television station YTN quoted government officials as saying the two journalists were warned to stop filiming by North Korean guards. When these warnings were ignored, the […]
Taliban threaten to kill Beverly Geisbrecht
According to reports coming out of Pakistan the Taliban have threatened to kill Beverly Geisbrecht, the Canadian freelance journalist kidnapped in November 2008, if ransom demands are not met by March 30. Earlier this month a ransom demand of $375,000 was reportedly made. In a video taped message sent to the Miranshah Press Club earlier […]
Fixing the foreign correspondent web
How does the Internet affect the work of a foreign correspondent? That’s the question Andrew Stroehlein, a journalist and Communications Director for the International Crisis Group, discusses on the Reuters AlertNet blog. Andrew draws together a lot of current thinking and makes the point that it’s often impractical for a foreign correspondent to work effectively […]
What makes a good reporter?
– I mean, a reporter working in a traumatic situation? Are there psychological predispositions or skills to be developed – that would make a journalist more effective in working with traumas? This topic I started discussing with my students at the Moscow State University. And my smart kids gave me some interesting answers. They said you […]
Gael Garcia Bernal to be recognized for contributions to film
Gael Garcia Bernal, one of Mexico’s most bankable film stars and a favorite in Hollywood, is to be honored at the upcoming International Film Festival in Guadalajara for his contributions to cinema.
Leaving Khartoum
This trip was a bit of a punt. We knew the ICC decision was coming, but no-one knew when. George Clooney and Nick Kristof took a gamble and were a week or so too early. Others in Nairobi left it too late and couldn’t get a visa in time. My advantage was that I came […]
Former president to run for Yerevan Mayor
Following the recent announcement that the next rally to be staged by the extra-parliamentary opposition will be held just weeks before a crucial municipal election to decide the capital’s mayor, it perhaps comes as no surprise that the Armenian National Congress (ANC) will contest the vote. However, news that its leader, former President Levon Ter-Petrossian, […]
Osservatorio Caucaso: The Armenian Dram collapses
Following on from a previous Frontline Club post on the recent collapse of the Armenian dram, my article on the same is now available on Osservatorio Caucaso. There will be more articles on various topics, including on the controversial subject of gender, coming over the next few weeks and months, but for now, this first article […]
The BBC “failed” Kate Peyton
Kate Peyton was gunned down outside the Sahafi hotel in Mogadishu in November, 2005. An inquest into her death was held in November, 2008. Charles Peyton, the brother of Kate, has asked us to publish this from him. The views contained below do not represent those of the Frontline Club, The BBC failed my sister, […]
Vatican criticizes excommunication
Finally the Vatican took a sensible stance on the case of the 9-year-old girl who had an abortion done in Recife, Brazil, in the beginning of March. It’s not an official statement – but then again, I suppose it’s the closest they’ll get to an offcial statement on such a polemic issue. Archbishop Rino Fisichellam, […]
Evo Morales and the coca leaf
Last week the president of Bolivia Evo Morales chewed coca leaves at the UN drug summit in Vienna. “This is chewing”, he said defiantly. “It doesn’t hurt anyone. Ingesting it does not make me a drug addict. If it were so, Mr. Costa (the top U.N. counter-narcotics official) would have to arrest me". His attitude […]
Doctors Without Boundaries
So you’re a paediatrician who volunteers for MSF. You go to Darfur and … Beyond his work as a healer, Erlich was able to help document the genocide by providing children in the camps with paper and crayons they used to make drawings and smuggling them out of the camps. Over 150 of these children’s […]
