Frontline Club bloggers
Absolut Fallout
It’s been a full week since the eruption of fury over the Absolut advertising campaign that ran in Mexico. Since we broke the story it has gone international, appearing on the Los Angeles Times, Reuters, AP , the Drudge Report, The UK’s Independent, Radio Five Live and other major media outlets, as well as thousands […]
Absolut fallout
It’s been a full week since the eruption of fury over the Absolut advertising campaign that ran in Mexico. Since we broke the story it has gone international, appearing on the Los Angeles Times, Reuters, AP , the Drudge Report, The UK’s Independent, Radio Five Live and other major media outlets, not to mention thousands […]
See the world
It must be a remarkable thing to grow up in rural Nepal, join the army, fight a guerilla insurgency in your own Himalayan backyard, and then be given a blue hat and deployed to militia-ridden, gold-rich Ituri, north-east Congo. Since few Nepalese soldiers speak French, let alone Swahili, they have to rely on local interpreters. […]
No Football Please, We’re Janjaweed
Sileia’s football pitch Sileia in West Darfur was snatched by rebels of the Justice and Equality Movement (Jem) last year. It was recaptured by the Government of Sudan in February, using Antonov bombers and the Janjaweed to do most of the work. It is a dusty, broken-down town reached by a bone-crunching three-hour drive along […]
Rob’s Safari Soundtrack IV
It’s been a while (largely thanks to the inability of Kenyan politicians to agree on anything) but now that I’m back on the road it’s time to dip back into the Safari Soundtrack. For the uninitiated, it’s my attempt to match Africa’s vast landscapes with the perfect music. It means big, bold and epic. For […]
In Event of Attack First Remove Tie
This post is a couple of days old, for reasons I may explain once I am out of Darfur with no possible risk of arrest… “So should we be worried?” I asked the man sitting across the table from me at the Humanitarian Aid Commission in El Fasher, North Darfur. He didn’t answer. Instead, he […]
Spoofs of Absolut’s spoof…
Following, Absolut’s controversial Mexico advertising campaign, here are some spoofs that have sprung up over the last 48 hours:
Sparks continue to fly over Absolut ad
Since the publication of the Absolut Mexican ad campaign story, the comments have been flooding in and controversy around the campaign has been growing. You can see MexicoReporter.com’s 130+ comments here and comments on the La Plaza post, which have pushed past the 7000 mark, here. Here’s an update on La Plaza with some more […]
LATimes.com Blog: Absolut campaign ruffles feathers in el norte
The latest advertising campaign in Mexico from Swedish vodka maker Absolut promises to push all the right buttons south of the U.S. border, but it could ruffle a few feathers in El Norte. Please go to the blog post here to read the complete version.
Boycotts and Brickbats
The Liberal Democrats – never ones to fail to jump on a bandwagon just as everyone else is realising that it is a pointless exercise – have written to Gordon Brown asking him to boycott the Olympics opening ceremony. They have joined the clamour for action to be taken over Tibet, Darfur and China’s generally […]
Reluctant Departure or Prudent Pull-Out?
Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe 03 April 2008 Time to go. Accompanied by the son of a dear friend I walk along Livingstone Way to the border crossing and, passport stamped, smiles exchanged, from there along the spray-showered bridge over the Batoka Gorge, past a group of excited bungee-jumpers, to the Zambian side. A blue taxi takes […]
Rocket Chicken
Day nine waiting for my permit to travel to Darfur. This is usual. No need to panic just yet. Although a pal from Nairobi is in town and approaching day 21. So to pass the time Al Siir and I went to one of his favourite lunch venues, the Albawad Tourism Restaurant which is famous […]
California reclaimed by Mexico? That’s the Absolut truth
Your humble correspondent was tickled to see this poster advertising campaign running across Mexico City this week. Absolut’s global advertising agency TBWA, and in this case their Mexican branch TERAN\TBWA, came up with an excellent, geographically specific angle. The agency makes a play on Mexico’s ambiguous, love/hate relationship with its northern neighbour the United States. […]
Parties Postponed in Khartoum
An open-air bathroom showroom Khartoum is a different place to the one I visited last year. Diplomatic staff are picked up each morning in armoured cars, embassy social events have been cancelled or are happening at random times and “wives” (not spouses, my mole tells me) have been warned to vary their daily routine, presumably […]
Back to the fray
I spent Tuesday evening catching up with the state of political speculation. At last Morgan Tsvangirai has spoken out in public – for the first time since Saturday’s election – to affirm that he has won Zimbabwe’s presidential election outright. Interestingly he denied reports that had been circulating all day that he (or his representatives) […]
Killing time
From Tuesday April 1: Victoria Falls, Harare The rumoured developments don’t happen. There’s no premature announcement of a Mugabe victory… just a further drip, drip, drip of parliamentary results and I suspect they mean to drag this out until everybody is bored with it, in the hope that people lose any will to protest. This […]
On the radio
You can hear me and my fellow Frontline Club bloggers Anita in Zimbabwe and Kyle talking about what we blog about. dslkdflksdjfslkdjfsdjf;sjdf;lsdj Podcast Notes: Emo’s attacked, Zimbabwe and AC Milan’s Tech. Click here to listen to the podcast of the show in which I was interviewed about the persecution of Emos in Mexico. If you […]
On the radio
Just stepping in for AJ here – You can hear AJ talking about the Zimbabwe election as a guest on the BBC Radio 5 Live’s Pods and Blogs show. Deborah and Kyle, who also blog at From the frontline, are also interviewed for the show. It’s a great and varied listen. I recommend. Cross posted […]
Frontline bloggers talk
Live from Zimbabwe, live from Mexico and live from the Frontline club clubroom three of our From the frontline bloggers – Anita, Deborah and Kyle – talk about what they blog about on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Pods and Blogs show. It’s a great and varied listen. I recommend.
Hwange – Sinking hearts
The mood has changed. When I left Harare this morning, there was impatience and frustration that the results were not being released but still optimism that victory for the opposition was so overwhelming it would be impossible to hide. By the time I got into Matabeleland, the texts reaching my cellphone were getting more sombre […]
10 things we can say about citizen journalism…
Or more precisely, 10 personal reflections on the interface between CJ and the mainstream media. 1) When you turn on the user-generated tap, you risk getting drowned in content. 2) Most of this content will be crap. Putting a badge on it doesn’t make it less crap. 3) A small percentage of UGC has real […]
Mexican Human Rights Commission to investigate attacks against emos
Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission is to investigate all of the reported cases of aggression against the emo youth subculture in Mexico, following a spate of violence and hostility across the country directed at the group. According to El Universal, the Commission called for tolerance yesterday and voiced concern that attacks against emos violate the […]
Only in Khartoum
Al Siir, Khartoum’s best fixer Al Siir is something of a legend among journalists visiting Khartoum. He has been imprisoned alongside a Financial Times reporter and been the subject of a feature in Newsweek. As far as I am concerned he is the best fixer by far in a city where few taxi drivers speak […]
Anita Coulson blogs from Zimbabwe
Now blogging with us at From the frontline is Anita Coulson. She’s ex-BBC and an Africa specialist. She is in Zimbabwe to cover the elections and blog what she sees and hears on the streets of Harare and beyond. It’s a fascinating read and blogged in difficult circumstances. The internet connection in Zimbabwe is too […]
Exiting Harare for Matabeleland
We woke early on the promise that the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) would be starting to announce the official results as of 6am. In fact it announced one parliamentary seat, Mutasa South which went in favour of the Tsvangirai faction of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T) by more than 8,000 votes to 3,000 and […]
Unrest around ’emos’ continues in Mexico
The peace rally organised by the Mexico City government last week to try and settle differences between emos and what is thought are other youth groups seems to have failed. As covered by Daniel Hernandez here on his blog, which has provided excellent coverage of the disturbances, a march for tolerance which took place yesterday […]
“MDC is telling truth when it says it has won with a landslide.”
Since breakfast time we have been criss-crossing the city, looking at the results posted on each polling station wall and talking to people who have been getting results from elsewhere in calls and text messages sent by relatives. It’s becoming clear that the MDC has won a landslide victory in Harare and indeed in many […]
Live from Zimbabwe election day 2
At 7am we went to check the results posted on the wall of the tent that served as the Chishawasha Junction polling station. Only 236 votes had been cast (they had expected 300, so 64 ballot papers were unused) and 138 of them were for Morgan Tsvangirai, against just 53 for Robert Mugabe and 43 […]
A Load of Rooibos
The No1 Ladies’ Detective Agency is not my cup of tea, Rooibos or otherwise. And it seems most British TV critics felt much the same way. As Stephen Pile in The Telegraph put it… The whole production was generous to a fault and the fault was this: it was like a blacked-up Vicar of Dibley. […]
Live from Zimbabwe election day
7am – Umwinsidale, Harare Arrived at the polling station, a large marquee in a field between the Redale petrol station and the local police outpost, just after 7am to find a short queue of about 10 people waiting to vote. Loitering outside was a chap wearing a yellow jerkin which read Regional Faith Observer but […]
