Latest From the Frontline

The Global Voices Advocacy group points our attention to the case of Syrian blogger Tariq Baiasi The blogger, who has been in prison for almost one year, has been sentenced to three years for leaving a comment on “suspicious websites",

The State Security Court in Damascus has sentenced Tariq to three years after lessening it from six years to three years (originally, Tariq received three years for each of the following charges):

1- Dwindling the national feeling.

2-Weakening the national ethos.

The militarily security arrested Tariq on 7-7-2007 for leaving a comment on websites considered “suspicious” by the Syrian government. link

There is a Free Tariq group and a facebook group (membership required) campaigning for his release. The Global Voices Advocacy group also has an excellent guide on how to blog anonymously.

Part 1 in an occasional series of posts live and direct from the bounteous Frontline Club restaurant sweet trolley. This is a chocolate brownie with some ice cream. It’s a cocosolids-sugarstacked slice of somewhere sweeter than planet earth. Tread carefully, one too many and you may turn…

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 part of the lexicon? Since the start of the Afghanistan war after 911? Or did the old freedom fighter/terrorist disagreements tax the media too much before then? Some cluess from the interthoughtnet,

First up from Wisegeek we have this,

Americans who fought in the Revolutionary War for the US were insurgents. However, US textbooks tend not to refer to these individuals as insurgents. Instead they may be called patriots or rebels. However, their act of defying the laws of the British monarchy constitutes insurgency. Currently the US defines people rebelling against the newly established government of Iraq as insurgents. However, these people do not define themselves as such. link

Next, in amid the discussion on Yahoo Answers we have this,

an insurgent is a word the media uses to describe the terrorists in Iraq and the Middle East they don’t actually say people because hey we might realize we’re killing people over there think about all the soldier deaths you hear about now we have more guns and firepower so if those many U.S. soldiers are dying think about how many “insurgents” are dying. link

The BBCs Rory Cellan-Jones wonders whether Twitter has come of age with the earthquake that struck Sichuan province in China this morning,

Let’s see, as this story unfolds, whether this is the moment when Twitter comes of age as a platform which can bring faster coverage of a major news event than traditional media, while allowing participants and onlookers to share their experiences. link

I didn’t know anything about the earthquake until I picked up on a (private) tweet from Rebecca Mackinnon in Hong Kong. A quick blast through Twitter using Tweetscan and it soon became clear the Tweetsphere was abuzz with chatter and information sharing about the earthquake. It also became clear news was coming out quicker on Twitter than by more established means. Some pictures appeared on Flickr within an hour of the quake. Meanwhile Robin Hamman points me to a tool that automatically translates what Chinese Twitterers are saying about the earthquake.

There’ll no doubt be plenty more pondering about the value of the microblogging tool Twitter. But, what with breaking the news of the Chinese earthquake before the mainstream media and with the likes of Andrew Heavens providing updates as they happen from the streets of Khartoum, maybe the time for debate is over. If it’s speed you want, Twitter delivers - which is one of the many reasons I put together the social media news tracking course for the Frontline Club in the first place.

CNNs man in Myanmar, Dan Rivers, left the cyclone stricken country last Friday after being pursued by Burmese authorities. He credits his ability to evade capture upon the incompetence of those in hot pursuit. He defaced his passport, hid under a blanket and thinks he may have finally escaped due to the impatience of a stewardess,

“I was amazed at the lengths they apparently went just to catch me,” Rivers told The Associated Press by telephone from Thailand on Saturday…

During reporting on Thursday, an immigration official stopped Rivers’ group. He took the passports of two crew members and compared them to a picture of Rivers taken from a CNN screen. During the two hours before they were waved on, Rivers said he went to a restaurant and walked the streets, “trying not to look like a white guy with long hair, which was difficult.”

The authorities didn’t discover the men were from CNN. Knowing his picture was being circulated, Rivers hid under a blanket in the van the next time police checked.

He later resumed reporting away from their van until an official told them to return to their van, where police would be waiting. It was a tough walk.

“There were a lot of things going through our minds then about what we would find at the end of that journey,” he said. “At one point I was thinking, ‘what if they just shot us and threw us into the river and said it was an accident?’” link via feral beast

“BBC Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen has come under fire whilst reporting in Lebanon.
Jeremy Bowen and his team are now safely back in Beirut.” link. Click the image above to see Jeremy in Lebanon

Ian Ellery Brodie, a British foreign correspondent who covered Vietnam and worked out of Moscow before moving to the United States in 1975, has died of a stroke aged 72. The Daily Telegraph, a paper Brodie worked for, has an obituary and the Washington Post remembers an incident involving Brodie and Dan Quayle,

In October 1989, Mr. Brodie, then the Washington correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, was accompanying Vice President Dan Quayle to Southern California when a major earthquake struck San Francisco. As Quayle’s aides dithered about heading back to Washington, Mr. Brodie intervened.

“Home?” he asked incredulously, according to a Washington Post magazine story. “Your man has to go up there! Do you want him high-tailing it out of California just a couple of hours after he was posing for pictures with San Francisco police who are now digging people out of the rubble?”

“He’s going home,” Quayle’s aide said doggedly.

“You’re out of your mind, all of you,” Mr. Brodie replied. “Is he a national leader or is he not a national leader?” Then he threw down his best British gauntlet by invoking the name of the administration’s favorite foreign leader. “Mrs. Thatcher wouldn’t be asking questions. Mrs. Thatcher would be up there in a minute.”

Quayle took his advice. Mr. Brodie went with him, and he scooped the world with a helicopter tour of the devastated area. link

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 blog Africa is Boring. Here’s the RSS feed. You can see David’s name added to the banner above and in the right hand sidebar and below he explains the name,

Africa is big, beautiful and diverse. Africa teems with commercial, artistic and – to the West – strategic potential. But Africa is troubled by war, hunger, bad politics and foreign meddling. Africa’s story is exciting, but writing that story mostly involves long, hot days; endless, potholed roads across interminable landscape; and hour after hour sitting, waiting and watching Africa seethe all around you. In short, AFRICA IS BORING. link

Last year we did a Q&A with David as he was about to set off for Mogadishu. Welcome to the blog David.

Andrew Heavens blogs from Khartoum in Sudan, that the Darfur rebel group the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) launched an attack a few miles north of the capital city. However, being on the ground doesn’t make it any easier to report, especially when the mobile networks are down,

Being close to the action doesn’t always give you a particularly clear picture of what is going on. The country’s main mobile network was not working – either overloaded or shut down. Our internet connection was still up but the people I really needed to contact were offline. The only thing to do was watch the helicopters circling ahead and listen to the bombardments that seemed to drift closer and further away, depending on the wind…

Khartoum has always managed to stay insulated from most of the really horrific stuff going on in the country, particularly in Darfur. When we first arrived, I lost count of the number of people who assured us that is was “the safest city in Africa”. That reputation has taken a hit in recent months with the worries about an upsurge in terrorist activity. After today, that reputation is dead and buried. For the first time, Darfur has come to Khartoum.link

Reuters have this report. When I read Andrew’s initial post, it reminded me of a video I spotted on Youtube a year ago. Click above to see another kind of storm over Khartoum.

UPDATE: Andrew’s using Twitter to keep people updated on events in the capital.

Photographer Alexandra Boulat and her father Pierre, a Life magazine photographer, are to be remembered with an annual award created by VII the photo agency. The Pierre and Alexandra Boulat Grant was announced this week and will help fund projects that need to be told,

The annual grant will be made to a photographer whose “story must be told but that cannot find support from within the media.” The Association will also support the education of young photographers. The Association’s board consists of Annie Boulat, the widow of Pierre Boulat and Alexandra’s mother, who is the founder of the picture agency Cosmos in Paris; Gary Knight, of VII Agency; Antoinette Boulat; and Jean-Francois Leroy. link

The Pierre and Alexandra Association will administer the award,

The first Grant will be awarded at Visa pour L’Image in Perpignan 2008 as it was an event
very close to the hearts of Alexandra and Pierre Boulat.

The photographer should submit, no later than July Ist each calendar year, a one page proposal with a portfolio of 20 pictures to prove competency. A first committee would make a pre-selection in Paris and the final decision should be made in Perpignan with a jury of 7 or 9 people chosen among the most important photo editors at Visa pour L’image.

Submissions to: The Alexandra and Pierre Boulat Association Grant Cosmos, 56, Bld Latour Maubourg, Paris 75007 France link