The Forum Blog
#FCBBCA Part 2: Women of the Revolution
by Ivana Davidovic Maryam Al-Khawaja from the Bahrain Center for Human Rights comes from a family of activists, many of whom have been on the receiving end of the police brutality in the Kingdom. So much so that she joked that “Bahrain should adopt family cells in prisons, so family members could spend some time […]
Part 1: Democratic Republic of Congo: Presidential elections and blood minerals
Download this episode View in iTunes Watch the event here. By Natricia Duncan As we see landmark election in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the discussion at the Frontline Club turned to the way forward for this troubled nation. Chaired by Mary Harper, Africa Editor at the BBC World Service, who opened by asking: “Why a […]
Frontline watches the rise and fall of Yugoslavian film in Cinema Komunisto
By William Turvill The end of the Frontline Club’s screening season was marked, on Sunday 27 November, with the showing of Cinema Komunisto, featuring a subsequent question and answer discussion led by one of the film’s producers, Iva Plemic. The film, created by a group of young filmmakers from Serbia, documents the creation and collapse […]
Kashmir: South Asia’s Palestine?
View in iTunes Watch the even here. By Marise Jeyarajah The club hosted an animated discussion last night on the controversial issues surrounding the future of Kashmir. Chaired by author and broadcaster Victoria Schofield. Kashmiri born Mirza Waheed, BBC Urdu journalist and author of The Collaborator, opened the event by giving his account of the ‘turning point’ events […]
ToryBoy visits the Frontline Club
By William Turvill The Frontline Club, on Monday 21 November, screened the critically acclaimed ToryBoy The Movie, followed by a question-and-answer session with the film’s creators, John Walsh and John Cowen. Dubbed the “documentary of the year” by The Guardian, this film follows the campaign trail of Walsh, a “disillusioned Labour Boy gone stray”, […]
Cairo and the super rich
By Alan Selby Forty percent of Egyptians live on less than $2 a day, and Egypt receives an average of $2 billion a year in foreign aid. Yet millions of people are preparing to migrate away from the centre of Cairo and into newly constructed suburbs for the super rich. Jason Larkin, a photojournalist, and […]
El Problema – The true story of Western Sahara
By Paaras Abbas “We know that somebody is watching us. We don’t know where.” How many of us have a full realisation of the torture the people of Western Sahara endure on a daily basis? It’s a story that has simply not been heard. It is this fact that made last night’s screening of El […]
Reporting conflict: competition, pressure and risks
View in iTunes Watch the event here. By Helena Williams In a year where 100 journalists have been killed so far while trying to tell the story, and as the media’s coverage of events rocking the Middle East have been brought into sharp relief, it seems high time to examine the delicate relationship between ensuring the […]
Shedding light in darkness: Kate Brooks and capturing the Middle East
Last night’s Frontline Club event – In the Picture: Kate Brooks: A decade on the front line – shed some light on the motives behind Brooks’ incredible life: beautiful photography, capturing every shade of human emotion, from hope and happiness, to despair, and everything in between.
A decade of wrong decisions and damaging policies
Watch the event here. By Sara Elizabeth Williams The West’s reaction to 9/11 was excessive and misguided, wrongly influenced by hubris, hysteria and ignorance. Ten years on, we are still mired in a mess largely of our own making. Last night’s First Wednesday Special: Changing world – conflict, culture and terrorism in the 21st century, which […]
Paul Mason on the art of telling stories and capturing the “unadorned truth”
Watch live streaming video from frontlineclub at livestream.com By Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi Paul Mason, the music teacher turned Newsnight economics editor, shared some trade secrets at the Frontline Club last night as part of its Reflection series in association with the BBC College of Journalism. Mason, whose first live report for the BBC was on 9/11 […]
Phone hacking – ethics and tabloid journalism
View in iTunes Watch the event here. By Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi Rupert Murdoch’s positive contributions to the British press as well as the negative effects of his influence were discussed by a Frontline Club panel on phone hacking last night. Although some of the panelists concluded that the positives might even outweigh them, the negatives are “awfully […]
David House on Bradley Manning, secret WikiLeaks Grand Jury, and US Surveillance
On the eve of the extradition hearing for WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange in London, US broadcaster Democracy Now! spent an exclusive hour with David House, who co-founded the Bradley Manning Support Network after US Army Private Manning was arrested for allegedly releasing classified U.S. military documents to WikiLeaks. (See video below.) House refused to testify […]
Kidnapped: Life as a Somali pirate hostage
Watch the event here. By Helena Williams When Colin Freeman, a Daily Telegraph correspondent, was kidnapped by Somali pirates along with his photographer Jose Cendron, he did not know when he would be free again – if ever. But during last night’s Frontline Club event, Freeman – who is now the chief foreign correspondent for […]
In pictures: Assange, Žižek and Goodman
Download this episode View in iTunes On Saturday, Frontline Club hosted an "in conversation" talk with WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek and award-winning investigative journalist Amy Goodman. Below are a few photographs from the event, taken by Frontline’s Charlotte Cook… […]
My life as a Somali pirate hostage
In late 2008, Daily Telegraph correspondent Colin Freeman travelled to Somalia to investigate a spate of piracy attacks that were terrorising shipping in the Gulf of Aden. Along with a Spanish photographer, Jose Cendon, his aim was to track down some of the pirates and secure an exclusive interview. But the pair were double crossed […]
Part II: WikiLeaks pushed Arab unrest, Assange says
By Gianluca Mezzofiore WikiLeaks had a prominent role in the Arab Spring, acting as a catalyst and pushing global information to a point where the US and other Western countries could not prop up Arab dictatorships anymore, according to WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange. Speaking at a Frontline Club event in East London, alongside renowned Slovenian […]
Video: Assange, Žižek and Goodman in conversation
Download this episode View in iTunes On Saturday 2 July at 4pm GMT (11am EST; 8pm AEST), Frontline Club hosted a special event featuring WikiLeaks editor-and-chief Julian Assange, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek and Democracy Now!‘s Amy Goodman. Full unedited video of the event, which focused on WikiLeaks-related issues, can be found here. A series of […]
Slavoj Žižek: the corporate rule of cyberspace
Renowned Slovenian philospher Slovoj Žižek will this Saturday (2 July) take part in a special Frontline Club "in conversation" event alongside WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange and award-winning investigative journalist Amy Goodman. As part of the build up to the event, which will focus on the ethics and philosophy behind WIkiLeaks, Frontline Club has this week […]
Julian Assange on Facebook, ‘cable cooking’ and ignorance
In this May 2011 interview with Russia Today, WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange discusses change taking place in Egypt and explains why he believes Facebook is "the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented". Assange, who will be appearing this Satuday at a Frontline Club "in conversation" event (details below), also explains during the […]
Žižek on why Americans are ‘digging their own grave’
In this 2008 interview, renowned Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek shares his thoughts on the legacy of 1968 and the state of US politics with Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman. He also discusses Barack Obama, and explains why he believes America would be better off if Americans could not vote in their own elections. Žižek will appear […]
Julian Assange: conspiracy as governance
This Saturday (2 July) will see Julian Assange, editor-in-chief of whistleblower website WikiLeaks, take part in a Frontline Club "in conversation" event alongside Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek and award-winning investigative journalist Amy Goodman. As part of the build up to the event, which will focus on the ethics and philosophy behind WIkiLeaks, Frontline Club will […]
Defusing Human Bombs
The shouts and laughter of boys playing games fills up the hidden away in a remote valley near Swat Pakistan. With their green and red school uniforms, these boys and seem like any other school children. But there is no other school quite like this in the world, where most of its pupils were expected […]
Slavoj Žižek: From the end of capitalism to WikiLeaks changing the world
If you want to get a measure of what you can expect from renowned philosopher Slavoj Žižek on Saturday, then take a look at the video above, which shows his talk at the RSA last year. The Slovenian, who is widely held as one of the most influential living philosophers, will be speaking with WikiLeaks […]
Israel vs. Israel: Why some Israeli activists represent hope
By Helena WIlliams The first ever UK screening of Swedish Director Terje Carlsson’s film ‘Israel vs. Israel’ was shown at the Frontline Club yesterday evening. Responding to half an hour of questions from the audience, Carlsson emphasised the importance of peaceful co-existence between Israelis and Palestinians, saying that the four activists he focuses on in […]
On the Media: Celebrities, Super Injunctions and Phone Hacking
View in iTunes Watch the event here. By Millie Cartwright Last night Frontline Club was host to a panel of experts discussing celebrities, super injunctions and phone hacking. The panel comprised of David Aaronovitch, writer, broadcaster and regular columnist for The Times; William Bennet, a barrister at 5RB chambers who specialises in defamation and […]
Enough is Enough! A plea for peace
In recent weeks we have been posting some of the best content from the last two years of the Frontline broadsheet, including an outstanding photoessay from each edition (see here, here and here for more). Today we bring you John Morris‘s piece from Winter 2010 — an impassioned plea for a world free of nuclear […]
Internships: opportunity or cheap labour?
View in iTunes Watch the event here. By Gianluca Mezzofiore Controversial internships were the subject of a heated debate at the Frontline Club last night. Chaired by Martin Bright, political editor of The Jewish Chronicle and founder of New Deal of the Mind, an organisation which aims to boost employment in Britain’s creative industries, […]
Plunder of the oceans – The rise of pirate fishing, impacts and solutions
By Shyamalie Satkunanadnan With more than one billion of the world’s population reliant on fish as their main source of protein and up to 90 per cent of fish disappearing in some parts of the oceans, the impact of illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing operations – known as ‘pirate fishing’ – has never been greater. […]
Why internships can be valuable
By Elizabeth Davies There’s no doubt that I would not be in the position I’m in today if it weren’t for the internships I’ve done. The first two were as a bored 17-year-old trying to find something useful to do while spending the summer with my family in upstate New York while my parents […]