Frontline Club bloggers
Anyone for Poland?
Club regular Charles Glass emails to tell us about a Kania Lodge in Poland run by war correspondent John Borrell. John’s happy to give club members a discount if you fancy a stay. Sounds like a fantastic place for a good break or a bit of book writing according to Charles. "Kania Lodge near the […]
Apologies
I must apologize to Frontline Club website readers due to my extended absence. During the past week, I’ve suffered from LRE (lesion for repetitive effort) due to my frenenic typewriting. In the meantime, an entire medical crew was excommunicated by the Brazilian catholic church for conducting a legal abortion on a 9-year-old girl who had […]
$375,000 ransom demand for Beverly Giesbrecht
The Globe & Mail reports that a ransom demand of $375,000 has been made by the Taliban kidnappers of Beverly Giesbrecht who has been held hostage since November 2008. The paper says the demand came during an interview with a man calling himself Qari on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border who said only money would secure her […]
Student anti-corruption protest raises eyebrows
Conversation in Yerevan was ablaze this week with talk of an anti-corruption protest that bore all the hall-marks of a coloured revolutionary youth movement at work. On the walls and other structures close to many universities and colleges, the names and photographs of lecturers or other administrative staff alleged to be on the take were posted […]
Escalation is Never the Best Policy
Back into another wait and see phase here in Khartoum. We had the ICC, followed by the expulsions of 13 international NGOs and action against three local agencies. President Bashir made speech after speech, and was rarely off the TV. Things were building day by day. More expulsions expected. Then nothing. A planned trip to […]
Stealth Fighters to Darfur?
U.N. officials and aid workers are gathering in eastern Chad to discuss preparations for an alarming contingency. With the recent arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Bashir and his subsequent ejection of foreign aid groups from Darfur, the U.N. and Chad’s humanitarian community are worried that thousands of Darfuri refugees currently living in camps in […]
U.S. Army’s “Sim Refugee”
U.N. officials are scrambling to prepare for the prospect of tens of thousands of refugees pouring into eastern Chad from Darfur to escape escalating tensions in Sudan. An mass movement of displaced peoples will pose major challenges to the European Union peacekeeping force in Chad and Chadian government troops, considering that combatants in the Darfur […]
Photojournalism show explains 2008 in Mexico
Mexico City’s Museo de la Ciudad is playing host to a photojournalism exhibition — Expofotoperiodismo — that features nearly 50 photos from 2008. You can see some of the images featured in the show in the above slide show.
All images appear courtesy of the Museum de la Ciudad, and the show runs until April 19th.
Trial by Press Conference
The strangest of press conferences was broadcast live on Al-Iraqiya today. In what looks like a reaction to the terrible incident in Abu Ghraib in which more than 30 people were killed Ministry of Interior spokesman Abdul-Karim Khalaf, paraded two alleged Qaeda members in front of Iraqi journalists. He sat them beside him and […]
Javed Yazamy killed in Kandahar
Javed Yazamy, a freelance camerman and fixer working in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, was killed yesterday in a drive by shooting. He worked for Canadian news outlets mainly CTV News and went also went by the name of Javed Ahmed and the nickname of JoJo. The Committe to Protect Journalists sent out this statement, […]
Two Iraqi journalists killed in suicide attack west of Baghdad
Iraqi television channel al-Baghdadiya says that two of it’s journalists were amongst the 33 Iraqis killed in a suicide attack today. They were covering reconciliation meeting taking place in Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad. Al-Iraqiya, the state funded Iraqi television channel says one of its correspondents has been seriously injured in that attack as well. […]
Diplomatic Games in Khartoum
So we’ve already had one round of punch and counter punch with the ICC’s decision to issue an arrest warrant for Omar al-Bashir followed by his (and I’m told it came directly from the president) expulsion of 13 international charities. Now we are into round two. Even as wiser heads counselled against further action, the […]
Ministry of Defence blog rumbling forward
The Ministry of Defence has been rather slow on the uptake in the social media world. Partly because they’ve just been slow – it happens in large bureaucratic organisations and partly because there are a lot of difficulties working out how best to play the communication game when lives are at stake and sensitive issues […]
Tbilisi Awaits ‘Hot Spring’
Georgia’s fractious opposition isn’t united, and probably never will be, but the various parties and factions seem to have come closer to a collective action plan to oust President Mikheil Saakashvili through street protests – in other words, they basically want another Georgian ‘revolution’, starting next month. Their strategies for what happens if Saakashvili goes, however, are […]
Reconstructing bodies and lives
Sometimes stories just bump into you. On the flight to Nigeria my co-trainer colleague Christopher met a medical team of German surgeons and nurses who were also on their way to Kano. Their goal – to offer free operations to as many people as they can manage in a fortnight. The team is drawn from […]
Royal carpet in Sth America?
South Americans don’t quite know what to make of the British royal family. I suspect most are mildly suspicious. Monarchs are bad in the books of most independent Republics. But I think there’s also a soft spot for Queen Liz and her brood. Certainly Princess Diana (“Laydee Dee” in the phonetic) was a big star […]
High-ranking prisoners in Azerbaijan
Republic of Azerbaijan gained its independence from Soviet Union in 1991, but many of its ruling elite had enough time to pass through country’s penal system. RFE/Radio Liberty’s Azerbaijani section reports that two presidents, two parliament speakers, two prime ministers, one prosecutor general and two state counselors in Azerbaijan either were imprisoned, or fled the […]
Burying the Red Apple
Armenia today celebrated International Women’s Day in pretty much the same way it always does. As a patriarchal society, women are expected to dress up and men present them with flowers. Forget talk about women’s rights and equality, although one small group of activists from Armenia and the Diaspora had other ideas. Instead of observing […]
If You Bend Over Far Enough…
The fallout from Sudan’s decision to expel 13 international charities and shut down four local ones continues. Millions of people will be without water, food and medicine unless or until the agencies who remain in Darfur can step in. That is a big negative when the only entry in the plus column is […]
Legal graffiti hits the walls of Mexico City
In a country with such a rich artistic heritage of mural-ism, graffiti is a popular past-time for many of Mexico´s youth.
Last week, Henry Chalfont – a photographer and filmmaker who has focused his career on documenting the form of street art — paid a visit to el Faro, a community arts center in the working class neighborhood of Iztapalapa, Mexico City. The event was organized by Graffitarte, a Mexico City-based arts group.
In a country with such a rich artistic heritage of mural-ism, graffiti is a popular past-time for many of Mexico´s youth.
Last week, Henry Chalfont – a photographer and filmmaker who has focused his career on documenting the form of street art — paid a visit to el Faro, a community arts center in the working class neighborhood of Iztapalapa, Mexico City. The event was organized by Graffitarte, a Mexico City-based arts group.
US military revisits blogging
The US military remains at the forefront of social media and military policy but recently new questions about the value of blogging have been raised. There has been plenty of debate in particular on the US Army Combined Arms Center site about the role of blogs as a means of strategic communication. Apparently, ‘the US […]
Rosenblum’s Renegades
Michael Rosenblum and his Concentra-backed DNA conference put their money where their mouths are.A hefty 10,000 Euros prize for best video journalist of the year and hardware for best breaking news vj. 4 of the 8 finalists work for newspapers and the big winner was Alexandra Garcia of the Washington Post for her feature on […]
Camp Services Shut Down
Aid officials in Sudan used to tell me their humanitarian operation was suffering death by a thousand cuts. They struggled to get personnel and equipment into the country, local staff were expected to inform on their employers, and NGOs were routinely smeared in the media. But still they managed to get aid to more […]
Islamists, New Somali President Sign Peace Deal
In late January, Ethiopia withdrew its last soldiers from Somalia after more than two years of bloody occupation and insurgency. Their departure immediately catalyzed a dramatic chain of events. The Transitional Federal Government (TFG) that had been backed by Ethiopia, the U.S. and the U.N. fled to Djibouti and, in apparent desperation, signed a peace […]
The Eye Camera
Ready for this? Canadian documentary maker Rob Spence who lost his eye in a shooting accident when he was 10 now waiting for his prototype eye camera to be implanted. Second day keynote conversation at the Digital News Association conference in Brussels. Pretty surrealistic discussion about ethical issues for a journalist whose eye is […]
Exhibition: Child Welfare in Kutaisi and Georgia
After undertaking some photographic work for the London-based Children’s Charity EveryChild in the Republic of Georgia in 2006, I visited the country’s second largest city of Kutaisi early the following year to further document social work and the reintegration of socially vulnerable children back into their biological families or with foster parents. It’s been a […]
The Who will pay for journalism?
Hard times breed new journalism models. Donation driven journalism is nothing new. Christopher Albritton was something of a pioneer at the beginning of the second Gulf War. Sandeep Junnarkar used donations to fund a long form journalism project – Lives in Focus – on AIDS patients and access to medicine in India. He continues along […]
Bashir Reacts
Only about one par made it into The Times story today so the whole thing is posted below. There may be more NGOs on way out. Diplomats also braced for expulsions today – they take longer to arrange. And what about the peace v justice debate? I’ll post on that later, but it seems for now that […]
Buyer Beware: 419 Real Estate at Your Service
Maybe there’s a house-sitting problem in Kano? I stared hard at the sign painted on this house wondering if it was just a bit of rough English. Apparently not. It means exactly what it says. Locals in Kano reckon if you leave your house, say during a holiday, you may return to find that […]
The Armenian dram collapses
As if two closed borders and an economy based on the oligarchal control of imports of goods mainly paid for by remittances from abroad wasn’t enough, the Central Bank of Armenia (CBA) yesterday devalued the national currency, the Armenian dram, as the global economic crisis finally hit the country. During Sunday’s opposition rally to mark […]
