News
Quote of the Day: Alexander Cockburn
I’m reading Kaplan’s Soldiers of God at the moment, and came across this nice little gem: "In the January 20, 1980, issue of the Village Voice, the left-wing writer Alexander Cockburn employed such a rationale to justify the Soviet invasion of the month before: ‘We all have to go one day, but pray God let […]
Food on the Frontline
Assida is a thick porridge made from ground millet and is one of the main staples of Darfur. It’s eaten by plunging your fingers into the stodgy mound, scooping out a scalding-hot lump and mopping up some of the sauce. For most of my five days with rebels of the Justice and Equality Movement it […]
Our man gets a mention
This has nothing to do with Mexico. But it DOES have something to do with MexicoReporter.com- and that’s the recognition of co-founderMike Butcher as one of "The 10 Men a UK Female Internet Entrepreneur Should Know when Starting and Growing a Business," according to the Next Woman business magazine. "Mike Butcher truly is journalist extraordinaire […]
Fourth journalist killed in Somalia in 2009
Another journalist died in Somalia today bringing the 2009 tally of journalist deaths in the East African nation to four. Nur Muse Hussein, a 56 year old radio journalist working with the Radio Voice of Holy Quran in Mogadishu, was shot in Beledweyne city in the Hiran region of Central Somalia in late April. The National Union of Somali Journalists […]
Mapping conflict
Using Google Earth (or Maps) as a news tool isn’t exactly new. But mapping all the coalition casualties during the military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq is a monumental effort. It’s the work of Sean Askay, a Google employee. He used the company’s 20% programme (allowing employees to spend one day a week on their […]
All hands on deck: Yerevan sails into election week
If British folk-rock legends Jethro Tull materializing in the country last week — with the Armenian prime minister going hell for leather in his return from Kazakhstan so he could catch his favourite band perform live in Yerevan — was bizarre enough, then nothing could prepare anyone for the latest surreal development in post Soviet […]
Somalia kidnap victims speak
The AFP says one of their Mogadishu based reporters spoke with the two kidnap victims, Amanda Lindhout and Nigel Brennan, in Somalia fro five minutes on Sunday. Lindhout in particular sounds to be in a very poor way, if this reported phone call is to be believed, "I have been sick for months. Unless my […]
Coffee on the Frontline
Just returning from five days with rebels of the Justice and Equality Movement in Darfur. The trip was a chance to get under their skin and explore their programme for a chapter of my book (Saving Darfur: Everyone’s Favourite African War). I’ll be posting more about the trip in the days to come but […]
Magnanimous Mahinda and the Foreign Media Mob
Some little man in a Colombo cafe started shouting abuse at me the other day. I don’t know him, and I don’t know why. That sort of thing is very rare here, but perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised, given the current "you’re either with us or against us" climate. The vast majority of the Sri […]
On Bruce Riedel
By now Bruce Riedel is pretty well-known, so I’ll spare you the CV: intimately involved in US foreign affairs in this general area (Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Central Asia etc) he helped run one of the reviews of Afghan policy that Obama requested at the beginning of the year. Nowadays he’s still quite active; writing, advising […]
Too old to rock ‘n’ roll? Jethro Tull perform in Armenia
Living in Armenia can be nothing if not bizarre, and just when you thought you’ve seen it all, something happens to remind you that in a former Soviet republic it’s always best to expect the unexpected. Who would have thought, for example, that the Armenian prime minister, Tigran Sargsyan, would be such a huge fan […]
Poverty and access to health care in Armenia
Sometimes I really hate my job. Having first been inspired some 27 years ago by the potential for photojournalism to effect change, the situation in regions such as the South Caucasus can instead be depressing. While there have been some successes such as managing to get the Armenian government to finally admit there was a homeless problem […]
Journalist shot dead in Somalia
A journalist working with Radio Shabelle was shot dead near Bakara Market in the Somali capital Mogadishu this morning. Abdirisak Warsameh Mohamed was reportedly on his way to work when he was caught in crossfire and shot in the chest. There has been an upsurge in violence in the capital in recent weeks between government […]
Media140: Tweeting from the field
Media140 brought together twitterers (and maybe some people who aren’t on Twitter) to talk about the impact of everyone’s favourite 140 character tool on news journalism. Using Twitter to do journalism We learnt what most people know if they’ve been using Twitter to do any sort of journalism. Twitter is pretty darn useful for monitoring […]
“Completely stopped and broken”
In an email to 630 CHED News / iNews 880 Daud Abdi Daud, of The Somali Journalists Rights Agency, says that the recent increase in fighting in and around the Somali capital Mogadishu has stopped negotiations to release Amanda Lindhout and Nigel Brennan, the two freelance journalists held captive since August, 2008, The savage fighting […]
Mexico City writer inspires Saldamando in California
Japanese – Mexican American artist Shizu Saldamando was inspired by Mexico City-based writer (and former Los Angeles Times journalist) Daniel Hernandez during a recent trip to this sprawling metropolis. A photo the artist took of Hernandez and fashion designer Uriel Urban ended up as a painting on the walls of Space 47 as […]
Kindle in Kandahar
As you should be able to make out from the photo, Kindle has come to Kandahar. I imagine there are are fair few being used by foreign military forces members at the PRT inside town and on KAF, the big military base miles outside town, but that doesn’t temper my excitement. Since I last wrote, […]
Frontline bloggers at Media140
Tomorrow, I’ll be heading along to Media140. It’s a conference that will look at the impact of Twitter and other social media tools on news coverage and journalistic practice. I seem to be pretty interested in this sort of stuff. After all, I’ve written a few things on Twitter – its use as a reporting […]
Sri Lanka: 25 years of war
As the government of Sri Lanka declares an end to the civil war that has lasted 25 years, The Guardian newspaper looks back over the conflict in a series of 31 images.
‘Black Hole’ in South Ossetia?
After the war with Georgia last year, Russia recognised the tiny, impoverished rural region of South Ossetia as an independent state. Moscow has now deployed border guards to police the frontlines and is in the process of establishing military bases there to defend against what it describes as potential Georgian "aggression" in the future. Russia […]
Africa Handshake, Part Ten: Smart Power’s Long History
With two expensive land wars draining the treasury, the Pentagon wants to prevent future conflicts without spending a lot of money. Two years ago the Navy launched its first, roughly annual Africa Partnership Station, sending ships on solo cruises up the West African coast to deliver training and humanitarian aid. The idea: to win new […]
Military era impunity ‘leads to police violence’
Here’s a good insight into the importance of punishing the crimes committed by the military during the dictatorial period (1964-1985). In a recent interview in Brazilian website Opera Mundi, prosecutor Marlon Alberto Weichert argued that the lack of proper punishment to crimes against opposition members – including violent assaults, illegal detentions, torture, murders – has […]
‘Brave’ Amanda Lindhout
Abdifatah Mohammed Elmi, the Somali fixer who was kidnapped alongside Canadian freelance Amanda Lindhout and Australian photographer Nigel Brennan in Somalia in August 2008, has been talking about the ordeal. Elmi says he was threatened before his release and told to keep quiet about the condition and whereabouts of Lindhout and Brennan. However, he broke […]
Ethnic rivalry wins over kitsch in the Caucasus
Foreign Policy magazine called the Eurovision Song Contest the "giddiest, stupidest, campiest, silliest international competition of them all," but don’t tell that to anyone in the South Caucasus. Here, many take it very seriously indeed. With the opportunity on hand to perpetuate decades of animosity and years of ethnic hate, if Eurovision was meant to bring nations together, in this […]
The Shanghai Car Park
It’s good to know that when I stop off for lunch at my favourite Chadian Chinese restaurant, the Shanghai in Abeche, our armed friends are asked to leave their rocket propelled grenades in the car park. Tension is being racheted up between Chad and Sudan. First Chadian rebels, backed by Sudan, launched an attack […]
Africa Handshake, Part Nine: Skeptics
With two expensive land wars draining the treasury, the Pentagon wants to prevent future conflicts without spending a lot of money. Two years ago the Navy launched its first, roughly annual Africa Partnership Station, sending ships on solo cruises up the West African coast to deliver training and humanitarian aid. The idea: to win new […]
Cartoon pokes fun at Subcomandante Marcos’ signature ski mask
Subcomandante Marcos, Mexico’s masked rebel figure who was one of the frontmen of the short-lived Zapatista uprising in the Mexican state of Chiapas in 1994, is famous for always wearing a black ski mask. The aim of the mask, allegedly, was anonymity, and an expression of the principle that "todos somos Marcos" — which […]
Film chronicles woman’s search for identity after Mexico’s ‘dirty war’
This week saw the cinema premiere here in Mexico of a film documenting the real-life story of Aleida Gallangos Vargas, the child of political activists who disappeared during the country’s "dirty war." "Trazando Aleida" (the translation is "Tracing Aleida") is a documentary by German filmmaker Christiane Burkhard about Gallangos’ search for her brother, from […]
Held hostage by the Taliban
Dutch journalist Joanie de Rijke was held hostage by the Taliban for six days in November, 2008. She was in Afghanistan reporting on the ambush that killed ten French soldiers. She has written a book about her experience (in Dutch only) called Held by the Taliban. She talked with Radio Netherlands Worldwide about the experience […]
Twitter, blogs, social media define youth protests in #baku, #azerbaijan
Defying earlier warnings, a group of youth activists last Sunday staged an action to protest the government’s failure to declare a national day of mourning after 13 people were killed in a shooting spree at a Baku university on 30 April. The tragedy shocked many both inside and outside Azerbaijan, but only a few took […]
