News
Money from Mexican migrants to Mexico continues to fall
The money that Mexicans living abroad send home to their families here in Mexico fell again in May, in what the Associated Press calls the biggest monthly decline on record. "Money sent home by Mexicans working abroad fell by 19.9 percent in May, the biggest monthly decline on record as the U.S. recession slashed jobs. […]
Time for a Change
It’s almost five years since I arrived to live and work in Kenya. Gradually the feelings of excitement and adventure have given way to a sense of deja vu as the same stories come around again and again. Every year there are warnings of famine in Ethiopia. Every two years there is drought in […]
State-run clinic for transsexuals opens in Sao Paulo
“Since I was a child of seven years old I felt I was different, I did not like women and liked watching the boys on TV”, says Claudia, a transvestite who lives in the centre of Sao Paulo. “I started taking hormones when I was 18, I had already left home. Nowadays I am completely […]
Death-Threat E-mail from an Islamic Extremist
by DAVID AXE Ever wondered what an Islamic extremist’s death threat to an "infidel" might look like? Now you can know. Two weeks ago, Somali journalist Ahmed Omar Hashi, aka Ahmed "Tajir," pictured, survived an assassination attempt, by extremists, that killed his colleague Moqtar Hirabe. Readers donated funds to help Hashi escape to another country. […]
Truth: The first casualty of the Russo-Georgia War
Today, I’ve been multi-tasking: spending some time spying (with permission, I should add) on the BBC’s news operation, keeping one eye on the tennis, and reading a very interesting paper on the media and the Russian invasion of Georgia. I can’t really talk too much about the former (yet) and I don’t suppose many of […]
Foreign ramifications of local drug wars
In a world in which the production of everything from clothes to coffee has become globalized and is outsourced to every corner of the globe, why should cocaine be any different? Although the problem of the illegal drug trade is a huge one, it is based on the principals of demand and supply.
Frontline Club events broadcast on Livestation
The Frontline Club is now broadcasting events from the forum in Paddington live on the Internet with Livestation.com. We’ve been testing the service quietly for the past few weeks and have found the video and audio quality are excellent. You’ll need to download some software to your PC/Mac and once you have you can tune […]
Get back alive
Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times has "been around the block a few times" and is offering advice to would be foreign correspondents on how to report on a global crisis for YouTube’s Reporters Center. The centre aims to give advice to newbies and non-journalists, The YouTube Reporters’ Center is a new resource to […]
Video: “Tracing Aleida” director on making the film and Mexico’s “dirty war”
We mentioned the documentary “Tracing Aleida” back in May, which follows a woman’s search for her brother, from whom she was separated during Mexico’s “dirty war”. Since then, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Christiane Burkhard, who filmed and directed the documentary, in her Mexico City home. The interview was for the Los […]
Kirchners On the Ropes
I waited and waited and waited last night for Argentine strong-man Nestor Kirchner to speak. Just after midnight, I joined the general flow of people towards the door. All was quiet at campaign HQ. That boded ill for the country’s ruling party. Things, obviously, had not gone well at the mid-term polls. The scene couldn’t […]
Nagorno Karabakh: Tragedy in the South Caucasus
The last time I visited Nagorno Karabakh was in 2006. Well, the intention had not been to visit Karabakh itself, but rather the strategic town of Lachin situated within what the international community considers sovereign Azerbaijani territory under Armenian control. However, despite years of working on a long-term photographic project in the town, I was […]
Breaking news EXPLAINED
Say no more… found via Frontline blogger Mike Hills who is in Beirut and blogs with us here.
Roll With It
Aid workers in Dadaab – the world’s largest refugee camp, set up in 1991 to cater for Somalis fleeing civil war – tell me that families always ask for cylindrical jerry cans rather than ones with square edges. The reason is simple. Five-year-old daughters cannot carry a can filled with 20l of water. But they […]
Strategic Communications: New Media
Here in the bunker – it is a rather swish conference room but there’s a serious shortage of natural light – we’ve been looking at new media and strategic communications. In a moment, three themes from the session and the morning’s discussion. But if you want a frankly more interesting general overview of what the […]
Strategic Communications: Day 2
If you were following the blog yesterday I decided to enjoy the sunshine… Here’s a photo of Alastair Campbell addressing the conference yesterday. After a question and answer session with Campbell on various topics including Iraq, Kosovo and Afghanistan, we moved onto a panel discussion on how to make a communications strategy work in places […]
Somali Journo, Assassination Survivor, Flees Country
by DAVID AXE Two weeks ago, unidentified gunmen targeted Somali radio reporter Ahmed Omar Hashi, aka Ahmed "Tajir," as he was walking in Mogadishu’s Bakara Market with Moqtar Hirabe, his director. Hirabe died, on the spot; Hashi’s friends rushed him to Medina Hospital, pictured, with wounds to his arm and stomach. The attack was the […]
Strategic Communications: Morning session summary
…so there’s been a bit of a delay getting the necessary wireless access, but we’re good to go now. We’re also under the Chatham House Rule so observations will be general rather than specific. This morning we’ve been hearing about how the new media landscape has profound implications for the area of strategic […]
Strategic communications in post-conflict countries
I’ll soon be heading into London for a two-day conference where participants will be discussing strategic communications from various organisational perspectives – military, international, humanitarian, and media. On today’s agenda we have: – A key note from Nik Gowing on the ‘new tyranny of shifting information power in crises‘. – A discussion between General Sir […]
From Baku to Strasbourg: 40,000-euro-worth idiosyncrasies
According to Azeri Press Agency, Heydar Aliyev Foundation, named after a former KGB strongman and communist party chief turned president, and which operates in and from the Republic of Azerbaijan, a secular Shia state, has donated €40,000 to Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg. The foundation is headed by the First Lady of Azerbaijan who […]
Armenia: Political prisoners freed, reported live via mobile
It was for times such as this that I decided to follow the example of fellow Frontline Club blogger Guy Degen by getting myself a Nokia N82. After sitting at the Yerevan Opera uploading images taken with a Nikon DSLR, but transferred to my phone’s memory card so I could ftp them via free wi-fi at […]
Who’s Got Your Back?
Newspapers are going to the wall and freelancers in all industries are struggling as the ranks of the self-employed are swollen by the newly de-salaried. Not a good time to be a freelance journalist. There seems to be more and more competition at a time when newsdesks have less and less money to spend on […]
Presidential wrestling in UB
Shouldn’t all presidential inauguration celebrations include a wrestling competition? Last Thursday Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj was sworn in as Mongolia’s new President. Along with a military parade in Ulan Bator’s Sukhbaatar Square opposite Parliament, there was a concert staged at the Cultural Palace. But sports fans in Mongolia were not disappointed. A wrestling competition to mark the […]
Narco wars season starts this week
The Frontline Club starts the Narco Wars season on the War on Drugs on June 23rd. The season is packed with films, discussions and events focussed on the topic of drugs from Colombia to Afghanistan and into South East Asia. Here’s what’s coming up, – June 23 – Photojournalist Jason P. Howe talks drugs in […]
Maziar Bahari arrested in Tehran
Maziar Bahari envoyé par Khanjar. – Explorez des lieux exotiques en vidéo. Newsweek reporter, film maker and Frontline Club regular Maziar Bahari has been detained in Tehran. Maziar has been living in the Islamic Republic for the past ten years. Foreign media have been barred from covering the post election protests and many journalists, including […]
Rising Confusion in Pakistan
The news rang on the cell phone of a beat reporter – Security agencies had notified police headquarters that more than one hundred buildings in Lahore were under security threat. A friend, who also works as the bureau chief for another news channel, and I were both sipping our evening chai at a cozy lounge […]
Cafe Tacuba Uncut
For the hardcore Cafe Tacuba fans out there, here is the uncut material from the 15-minute interview that I did with two of the band members – Emmanuel "Meme" del Real Díaz and Enrique ‘Quique’ Rangel Arroyo – last Saturday night, just before they played a sold-out gig to more than 55,000 fans. […]
Rumours are not confined to Twitter
The Washington Post appears to have inaccurately reported that "the Twitter interface does not support the use of Farsi". The ‘fact’ that Twitter didn’t support Farsi was news to me because I have been watching tweets come into my Twitter feed in Farsi. (Fairly useless from my point of view because I can’t read them, […]
An Afghan fixer in Sweden
Naqeebulla Sherzad is an Afghan fixer. He worked with Ajmal Naskhbandi, the fixer beheaded by the Taliban in 2007, and who inspired the formation of the Frontline Fixer’s Fund – 100% of funds raised are given to the families of fixers killed or injured while working with international media – After being told his name […]
Meanwhile in Mongolia…
It had to be exactly 12:06 pm. Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj set the time of his swearing-in ceremony to become the fourth President of Mongolia in a symbolic nod to the year Genghis Khan was proclaimed ruler of the Mongol Empire. Dressed in a gold-coloured traditional deel, Elbegdorj took the oath of office today at Parliament in […]
Going beyond the hashtag to follow Iran
Over on Slate Jack Shafer is concerned that his "cognitive colander isn’t big enough to strain out Iran information" on Twitter. For the last couple of days I’ve been tracking what has been going on in Iran and suffering from a similar problem. But hopefully this post might help. To begin with I fired up […]
