Frontline Club bloggers
Twitter’s quicker
“Just heard a big blast near badi chowpak. Donno what it was.”Not much of a quote, but it was enough to get the story out. Sandil Srinivasan, or 2s as he is known on the microblogging service Twitter, was in Jaipur on 13 May when the first of a series of nine synchronized bombs exploded […]
The gorilla wades in
YouTube is launching Citizen News (from RWW) The CitizenNews channel is where we’ll be highlighting some of the best news content on YouTube. If you see examples of great journalism and reporting being done by your fellow YouTubers, let me know! So that’s that, then. Well, maybe. Until now, anybody with a newsworthy video could […]
U.N. Blue Berets Bump Ethiopians in Somalia?
Last week the U.N. Security Council approved a peacekeeping operation for Somalia. It’s the first step to actually deploying troops to the region. There are huge hurdles, of course. The last time the U.N. tried to intervene in the mostly ungoverned country, 18 U.S. soldiers and hundreds of Somalis died in the Battle of Mogadishu. […]
The need for a niche
There’s something genuinely touching about Michael Rosemblum’s testimony to Ken Krushel. Together they devised CitizeNews, and launched it last summer: Then we went out to try and raise money for it. It was not easy. We were late. After Youtube and just as newspapers were starting to migrate into video. We talked to everyone in […]
Video: Shakira aims to help poor kids
[video:bliptv:919899] Last Thursday, Colombian popstar Shakira got a group of Latin American stars and businessmen together in the Mexican capital to launch ALAS (meaning “WINGS”), a Latin American initiative aimed at aiding the development of young children in the region. Shakira, who recently got together with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Robert Zoellick, president […]
Iraqi blogger killed in Baghdad
Ahmed, the author of BlogIraq, has been killed in Baghdad. A post written on his blog by a friend, Mohammed Alani, describes how Ahmed was due to meet another man in Mansour District on 11 April. The man was supposed to be giving Ahmed some documents about his investigations into a USAID office in Baghdad. […]
31 very interesting things. 4: Cardiff’s Somali Community
The Guardian put together a great interactive map of Britain a couple of years ago showing the location of different ethnic minorities. I’d love to know why Greeks were attracted to Guildford. The Irish in Cheltenham is pretty obvious. And then there’s the Somalis in Cardiff. They first arrived there to work on the docks […]
31 very interesting things: 3. Still or Sparkling
[video:youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71v5IYY0Vyk] Funniest moment in a recent British sitcom, surely. Right up there with Del Boy falling through the bar. And look closely and you might spot a miserable bird who bears a familial resemblance to me.
It’s not all Glamour You Know
It’s difficult to know exactly what my interviewee thought as I broke off from a question about Prince William’s attire with a quick “Uh I’m going to be sick” before vomiting into a wastepaper bin. But it would have taken a glass-half-full type of chap to conclude she hadn’t noticed anything amiss. The only saving […]
Getting into Burma
Saigon based photographer Kevin German was in Bangkok hanging outside the Myanmar Embassy with some other… tourists waiting to see whether their visas would arrive or not. Obviously there are jour——s there. Brave jour——s. It is becoming more and more dangerous for them to work there. The imagery is finally beginning to show the desperate […]
U.N. to Somalia?
It’s about time: The Security Council unanimously approved a resolution on Thursday calling for a U.N. political presence in conflict-wracked Somalia for the first time in years and setting conditions for the deployment of U.N. peacekeepers. The resolution urged the United Nations to move its Somalia political office from Kenya to the Horn of Africa […]
31 very interesting things: 2. Warchild
[video:youtube:ekigsvTDJXo] Emmanuel Jal was eight when he was handed an AK-47 and told to fight for the southern Sudanese rebels of the SPLA. He escaped Sudan in a bag, smuggled out by Emma McCune, a British aid worker, on a UN flight. Now he is one of Africa’s hottest rappers. His new album is due […]
31 very interesting things: 1. Deutscher Girls
[video:youtube:9fmg3JKHAcM] So Graham Holliday in his noodlepie guise has invited me to join him in his 31 very interesting things challenge. This is of course right up my street, as the sort of very tedious person who might ask you over the starter to name your top 3 records of all time. It’ll be a […]
Reds in Africa III
Fred is a Manchester United supporter After a flurry of sightings, the Garibaldi Red has not been much in evidence on the continent of Africa recently. Junior Agogo’s exploits at the African Cup of Nations and our promotion last week had led me to believe that it would be a good period for spotting Reds […]
So, what is the future for news?
I have no idea… Well, I have some ideas, but I’m not blogging about them just yet. However, our very own Daniel Bennett puts together a useful future of news primer on his personal blog Mediating Conflict. One of the folks Daniel highlights is Adam Timworth, ‘If you were to ask a group of people […]
Good News? Security Improving at Mogadishu’s Bakara Market Battleground?
Last week’s bloody food riots in Mogadishu, Somalia, were a sad setback for a part of the city that is vital to Somalia’s future. The riots, a spasm of the growing global food crisis, were centered on the central Bakara Market. Several people died when soldiers opened fire on protesters. Prior to the late-2006 Ethiopian […]
Islamist insurgent warlords for dummies
Rob takes on a ride through the 21st century dictionary for confused journalists dumped into Middle eastern lexical hell. Don’t know your insurgents form your islamists? Your war lords from your al Qaeda operatives? You soon will with Rob’s handy tip sheet. And while we’re on the topic… Just when did the term insurgent become […]
Some frontline views from the US milblogs
Here’s a selection of recent posts from the US milblogging community about life on the frontline. 1. Compassion Fatigue – Capt Beau Cleland in Iraq: ‘I’ve come to the conclusion that this place has so much suffering, so many problems, that if I internalize them I’m just going to mess myself up mentally and emotionally.’ […]
How to Tell Your Islamist from Your Warlord
Somalia’s problems are deep-seated and complex. Reporting on its conflicts, rivalries and politics is difficult. There are many pitfalls for the unwary reporter. The death of Aden Hashi Ayro a couple of weeks ago showed how easy it was for even illustrious names to slip up (you know who you are), confusing militia leaders for […]
Lebanon is Not the Issue
Discussion on Al-Jazeera regarding the various ways Lebanon’s problems – as being played out in armed conflict today – are not Lebanese problems, but rather offshoots (“90%” in the words of one contributor to the discussion) of international and regional conflicts. Travelling to Beirut today (circuitously via Jordan and Syria on account of the airport […]
Sunday Times article
You can read my article in yesterday’s Sunday Times here, although I’m not especially happy about parts of how it was edited. Can’t write too much about it now, but let me just say that the phrase, “with hatred in their hearts,” from the first paragraph is not mine.
No. 2 police officer gunned down in Juarez: police death count rising
The attacks on police officers, detailed here, continued over the weekend. The No. 2 police officer in this border city across from El Paso was shot to death Saturday, the latest high-ranking official killed in an onslaught of attacks blamed on gangs resisting a crackdown on drug trafficking. Associated Press.
Khartoum’s Pregnable Fortress
The Khartoum government has an iron grip on its capital. Machine gun emplacements guard every bridge, major artery and government building. So how did rebels from the Justice and Equality Movement drive into Omdurman, no more than a stone’s throw across the Nile from the capital itself? One of my good contacts in Khartoum said […]
The Sun City Rockers
It’s great to see the Sudanese rapper Emmanuel Jal included in the line-up for Nelson Mandela’s birthday concert in June. His life story – child soldier smuggled out of Sudan in a bag – is almost as inspiring as Mandela’s. And his music is hot. Too often these sorts of things are dominated by western […]
David Axe joins Frontline
David Axe joins the From the Frontline blog ranks this week. David is the author of Army 101 and War Fix. He also writes for the Wired Magazine Danger Room blog, keeps a personal blog called War is boring and uploads his cartoons to Flickr. Staying with the ‘boring’ theme, David has called his Frontline […]
Guns on buses and slain police officers
HONORING THEIR OWN: Federal police officers salute three slain colleagues, including acting chief Edgar Millan Gomez, in Mexico City. Authorities suspect he was betrayed by someone who knew his movements, according to Mexican media reports. Gregory Bull for the Associated Press via The Los Angeles Times. This week, Mexico City has been living up to […]
Leaving Nairobi…but going elsewhere
Have decided to cancel my second trip to Somalia as the situation there has become too difficult to work. About 3 days ago the senior Shabab spokesman said that their group would start specifically targetting foreigners (i.e. white guys, not Ethiopians) in town, and I didn’t really fancy shelling out several thousand US dollars to […]
Frontline Club Journalism Awards 2007
Right from the very beginning the Frontline Club broke all conventions. From cameraman Vaughan Smith’s late 80’s visions of flying over the Afghan frontline in a Microlite to shacking up in Osama Bin Laden’s residence in Kabul. The founders of the Frontline Club didn’t just shirk convention, they booted it out the door. With those […]
Frontline Club Journalism Awards
Right from the very beginning the Frontline Club broke all conventions. From cameraman Vaughan Smith’s late 80’s visions of flying over the Afghan frontline in a Microlite to shacking up in Osama Bin Laden’s residence in Kabul. The founders of the Frontline Club didn’t just shirk convention, they booted it out the door. With those […]
Video: Leonora Carrington, Paseo de Reforma, Mexico City – Los Angeles Times
Phantoms come, phantoms go. They swirl around Leonora Carrington, a tiny woman of 91 with a tart intellect and a posh British accent, as she sips Earl Grey tea at her kitchen table. They rise like black vapors from the pavement of Avenue Reforma in the Mexican capital, where a menagerie of Carrington’s nightmarishly enigmatic […]
