News: June 2007 Archives
Watch this MySpace
The message "So and so has added you as a friend on Facebook" is about as common as offers for Viagra in email inboxes nowadays. Until September last year Facebook was restricted to people with .edu email addresses but they......more
Inside Out - July 07
I started writing this en-route to Frontline's first event in Kiev amid rumours that Alan Johnston would finally be released. The nightmare for the Johnston family, his loved ones and colleagues looked set to end. At the same the staff......more
Bosnia's Reckoning
There exists that constituency of people for whom the advent of July is less an occasion to relish summer than to cast the mind's eye back to what Judge Fouad Riyad at the war crimes tribunal in The Hague called......more
Sand Cafe
There are funny moments in Neil MacFarquhar's spoof of foreign correspondents holed up in Dhahran during the Kuwait War of 1991, but the greatest fun is working out who the characters might be:Thea, exotic female love interest, cable television reporter......more
Blood River
In 1992, I sat on the banks of the great Zaire River and watched Congolese cannibalise their capital, Kinshasa, looting shops, destroying buildings and ripping copper wire from telephone lines. As drunken looters drove brand new cars out of showrooms......more
Reporter's diary
Lungi International Airport is a sight better than it was. It's not long since livestock wandered across the runway. Now it has its international airlines back: BA three times a week. An independent called Astraeus operates an excellent service out......more
Kitbag: John Coghill
John Coghill is a marketing consultant, freelance copywriter and photographer. He set up Projector Media four years ago to provide marketing services to publishers and extend brands through video and events. Before that he worked in marketing and business development......more
Inside Out - June 07
How about this for a stunning statistic? In February, more than a third (37%) of US internet users visited MySpace.com. When Rupert Murdoch -that mogul of moguls of old media - purchased MySpace in 2003 for $580 million he grabbed......more
Rumsfeld: An American disaster
Donald Rumsfeld, Andrew Cockburn remarks in this critical biography, is "one of history's greatest courtiers." Rumsfeld's sly performance at the courts of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and the Searle family (who helped him make his financial fortune) prepared him for......more
Bomber Boys: Fighting back 1940-1945
Night after night and at great risk, the daring young men of RAF Bomber Command rained indiscriminate death and destruction on Nazi Germany.They scored bulls-eyes on industrial and military targets. They also slaughtered innocents. "It's a fair assumption that when......more