Lebanon
Lebanon is Not the Issue
Discussion on Al-Jazeera regarding the various ways Lebanon’s problems – as being played out in armed conflict today – are not Lebanese problems, but rather offshoots (“90%” in the words of one contributor to the discussion) of international and regional conflicts. Travelling to Beirut today (circuitously via Jordan and Syria on account of the airport […]
Jeremy Bowen comes under fire in Lebanon
“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
Leaving Nairobi…but going elsewhere
Have decided to cancel my second trip to Somalia as the situation there has become too difficult to work. About 3 days ago the senior Shabab spokesman said that their group would start specifically targetting foreigners (i.e. white guys, not Ethiopians) in town, and I didn’t really fancy shelling out several thousand US dollars to […]
Pre-emptive war reporting
Syria and Israel are at war. Well… they’re not exactly, but if conflict commences – the Iranian media will have it covered. In fact, they’ll also have have it covered if it’s Lebanon at war with Israel, according to the Iranian news agency ‘A’sr Iran. 20 Iranian TV and radio reporters are going through a […]
Wanna be a Hizballah Fighter?
Writing on the TIME blog reporter Andrew Lee Butters tells how his assistant, Rami Aysha, spoke to a few Hizballah fighters from his neighbourhood to find out how you go about becoming a Hizballah Fighter, Two important themes stick out: from the beginning, the training stresses the path to martyrdom, which is achieved through honesty, […]
Bearers of bad tidings
French TV journalist Wissam Sharaf is leaving France and heading back to his native Lebanon. But, he’s not heading there for some ‘get back to my root’s’ goodness. He thinks Lebabon is “gonna move” And he’s not alone. The Los Angeles Times reports on how journalists are seen as the harbingers of doom by the […]
Kevin Sites in Haifa
Kevin Sites latest HotZone report is up. This time the roving multimedia reporter, who spent a year covering conflicts around the world for Yahoo, is in Northern Israel reporting from Haifa where residents were on the receiving end of Hezbollah rockets in summer 2006. You can also watch a short interview with Sites about the […]
The day I became a journalist
As BBC foreign correspondet Kim Ghattas prepares to move to a new posting in Washigton D.C. On BBC radio’s From Our Own Correspondent show she talks about her upbringing in Lebanon during the civil war and of how, at thirteen years old, she decided to become a journalist, I still remember the day I decided […]
Cobra Gold
My heart sank when confronted with this book. Ever since Andy McNab (not his real name) made it big with his SAS tales, a plethora of former SAS veterans has published fictional accounts of their lives and times in Afghanistan/Iraq/Oman/you-name-it. Like celebrity biographies, their tomes dominate shelf space in the lower-end bookshops. I have nothing […]
Strange games and bridges
Jocelyne Saab started out as a war reporter in 1975 before turning her hand to fiction and feature films in 1985 with her first film, Suspended Life. She talks with NewIndPress at the International Film Festival of Kerala about her work as a war reporter and her more recent artistic endeavours with “Strange Games and […]
Check the register
Sherif Samaha, the manager of the “popular postwar hang-out for journalists” – the Mayflower Hotel in Beirut – is suing The Independent newspaper over an article by Robert Fisk, After Samaha’s initial complaint, the reference to the hotel was removed from the story published on its website, Secret armies pose sinister new threat to Lebanon. […]
Feet in both camps (1)
In the July war in Lebanon we could never see the danger coming from the Israeli warplanes or know when they might suddenly strike. It made for apprehension, moments of terror and lots of black humour. There was the constant roar overhead day and night. Then there was the constant buzz of the drones. Like […]