Wednesday, February 22, 2012 6:01 PM EST
Covering war a struggle between risk and reward
Patrick Martin
A photographer friend called me in Gaza to tell me about the deaths of Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik in Homs. These days, Gaza seems positively civilized compared to Homs and several other places in Syria.
My photographer friend was quite naturally saddened by the deaths of colleagues, though she knew neither of them personally. More than sad, though, she sounded almost guilty that she wasn’t there with them, working in the fraternity that war correspondents form in situations like this, helping each other. I don’t feel that way.
My friend distinguished herself in Libya with award-winning work in some of the most dangerous conditions imaginable, but has been haunted almost every day lately about whether she should join the cluster of journalists who have snuck into Homs province from the north of Lebanon. Mostly television and photo journalists, the first to enter late last month left after a few days – there was limited return to telling the same story again and again as shelling went on and on, and the risk was very high.
Link to this post
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 3:25 PM EST
Colvin’s death highlights risk of bearing witness to war
Sonia Verma
On Tuesday, family and friends gathered in Beirut to bury Anthony Shadid, an award-winning journalist who died last week in Syria at the age of 43.
Less than twenty-four hours later we would learn of two more journalists killed. Marie Colvin, a veteran foreign correspondent from Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper and Remi Ochlik, an award-winning photographer from France were killed in a mortar strike in Homs, Syria, Wednesday morning.
Their deaths highlight the continued suffering of the Syrian people and the dangers encountered by journalists seeking to cover the story.
Mr. Shadid collapsed and died from an apparent asthma attack on his way back to Turkey after a week of reporting covertly from the country. Ms. Colvin and Mr. Ochlik also entered Homs on a smuggling route, without permission from Syrian authorities.
“I entered Homs on a smugglers’ route, which I promised not to reveal, climbing over walls in the dark and slipping into muddy trenches. Arriving in the darkened city in the early hours, I was met by a welcoming party keen for foreign journalists to reveal the city’s plight to the world,” she wrote in her last dispatch.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 12:47 PM EST
Strauss-Kahn faces heat in sex-ring investigation
Doug Saunders
In the years before Dominique Strauss-Kahn was forced to quit as head of the International Monetary Fund in a sex scandal, his life was a whirl of meetings with some of the world’s most powerful people.
It now appears, if allegations in the French media are to be believed, that he was also spending much of those days having meetings with some very different people, with names like “Dodo Brine” and “Text-Message Man.”
They were some of the organizers of an alleged prostitution ring based at the expensive Carlton hotel in Lille, France that prosecutors claim was organizing sex orgies for powerful people – notably for Mr. Struass-Kahn, who allegedly partook of their services in Brussels, Paris, Washington and elsewhere during his off hours between bailout negotiations.
Mr. Strauss-Kahn was taken into custody in Lille on Tuesday. He had expected to be questioned as a witness in the sex-ring investigation, but was told upon arrival that he’d be a suspect.
If Lille prosecutors are correct – their allegations have not been heard in court – then a circle of northern French businessmen were paying to organize what the French media discreetly call “une soirée libertine” – a sex party with prostitutes – in order to win influence with a man who many believed would soon be President of the Republic. Those orgies were allegedly paid out of funds from the corporations the men worked for.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 2:34 PM EST
Romney appears stuck in second gear
KONRAD YAKABUSKI
It’s not just Mitt Romney’s fault that he has been unable to effectively wrap up the Republican presidential nomination by now.
Two big differences from four years ago – a less compressed primary calendar and the proportional allocation of delegates – make it impossible for any GOP frontrunner to build an insurmountable lead over his rivals before at least late April.
Yet, that a candidate with Mr. Romney’s money, organization and establishment backing has been unable to make short shrift of such flawed rivals as a beyond-the-mainstream Rick Santorum and a beyond-the-pale Newt Gingrich is giving party bigwigs heartburn.
The fear is that Mr. Romney’s inability to suppress the current insurgency of Mr. Santorum, and his past and potentially future problems with Mr. Gingrich, presage his weakness as a general election candidate against a far more formidable Barack Obama.
Establishment whispers of drafting a consensus candidate in advance of the August GOP convention is back on the front burner this week as polls show Mr. Romney fighting to regain his advantage over Mr. Santorum in his home state of Michigan.
If Mr. Romney were to lose next Tuesday’s Michigan primary, or only pull off a narrow victory, those whispers would turn into cries of desperation.
Mr. Romney has displayed astonishing tone deafness in his failure to speak the concerns of working-class voters, many of whom have been victims of the kind of clinical corporate restructuring the ex-Bain Capital chief considers his life’s work.
What’s more, the central conceit of Mr. Romney’s candidacy – that he is the turnaround expert needed to get the economy moving – is undermined by Mr. Obama’s new pitch that “America is back” and that old-fashioned manufacturing is leading the way.
Mr. Obama may be whistling past the graveyard given the truly daunting challenges still facing the American economy as it struggles to come to terms with a bloated public debt, aging population and workforce ill-adapted to the needs of the 21st century.
But as long as he can rely on employment statistics showing positive monthly growth averaging 200,000 jobs or more, it may be enough to get him a second term in November if he faces opposition of the likes of Mr. Romney.
No wonder the whispers in GOP ranks are getting louder.
In the political equivalent of Fantasy Football, Republican pundits and establishment types are still dreaming about Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie or former Florida governor Jeb Bush at the top of the GOP ticket.
All three have publicly demurred, despite their obvious ambition.
But while each of them is a better politician than Mr. Romney, all of them have their flaws and it is far from clear they would have an easier time winning over the GOP base, much less beating Mr. Obama in November.
Mr. Daniels famously called for a “truce” on social issues, a declaration that all but makes his candidacy a non-starter with the evangelical voters fueling Mr. Santorum’s rise.
Mr. Christie is similarly distrusted by social conservatives, despite his vetoing last week of a gay marriage bill that passed the New Jersey legislature.
Mr. Bush would be the strongest candidate of them all, despite his dynastic lineage, which is still a net negative among voters. He is popular with all wings of the Republican Party and, unlike any of the others, has built bridges with Hispanic voters.
But Mr. Bush, who has refused to endorse Mr. Romney, has his eyes on the prize in 2016. So does Mr. Christie, who has vigorously endorsed the ex-Massachusetts governor.
So, in all likelihood, Mr. Obama will face either Mr. Romney or Mr. Santorum in the fall.
And the odds still overwhelmingly favour Mr. Romney over the ex-Pennsylvania senator.
All the rest is about as meaningful as Fantasy Football.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 2:33 PM EST
In Afghanistan, troops’ respect for the Koran is a matter of self-preservation
Graeme Smith
Foreign troops usually take pains to avoid any impression of trampling on religious values in Afghanistan. I have seen Canadian troops burst into suspected Taliban hideouts, searching every corner of the compounds – except the shelf where the family’s most treasured possession, the Koran, sits wrapped in cloth.
This is a matter of doing what’s right, and also self-preservation. Afghans have a history of violent backlashes against real or perceived threats against the sanctity of their beliefs. This goes back to the days before Islam in the country: it took the Arabs more than two centuries of warfare, on and off, before they fully conquered the territory now called Afghanistan in the year 870, and the Arab invasions were often thwarted by the rebellious locals who resisted the outsiders and their new ideas.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 8:49 AM EST
Remarkable reconciliation effort borne from tragic West Bank traffic accident
PATRICK MARTIN
A tragic traffic accident last week has led to a remarkable effort at reconciliation between the families of the victims of the crash and the driver believed to be responsible for the accident.
Five Palestinian kindergarten children and their teacher were killed Thursday when the school bus in which they were riding was hit head-on by a truck that crossed into the oncoming lane. Another 20 children and adults were injured, several of them critically with loss of limbs and severe burns.
The children, residents of the Palestinian neighbourhood of Shuafat in the northern part of greater Jerusalem, were on a school outing in the West Bank when the accident happened, just beyond the concrete security barrier that separates the Jerusalem area from the Palestinian territories.
Israeli military personnel, police and ambulances responded to the emergency along with Palestinian paramedics. The children and injured adults were taken to both Israeli and Palestinian hospitals.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 8:49 AM EST
Jeremy Lin asks Taiwan media to give his family space
Mark MacKinnon
After another dominant night on the basketball court that added to his growing legend – and his legion of fans – on both sides of the Pacific Ocean, Jeremy Lin had a message for the media in Taiwan: cool it.
Next up for a talking-to might be the official media across the Taiwan Strait in mainland China, who have been trying to claim a chunk of New York Knicks star for the People’s Republic. “Linsanity” – which has generated something close to pure joy among Asian-Americans and Asian-Canadians – now threatens to get pulled into old arguments about nationhood and identity in the land of his ancestors.
That Mr. Lin, a 23-year-old who has relatives in Taiwan but grew up in Northern California, needs to worry about the media an ocean away only speaks to how far and how fast “linfengkuang” – as Linsanity is pronounced here – has travelled since he was first inserted into the Knicks’ starting lineup eight magical games ago.
“The special request I have is for the media back in Taiwan to give [my family] space, because they can’t even go to work without being bombarded, without people following them,” Mr. Lin said after sinking 28 points and adding 14 assists to lead the Knicks over the visiting Dallas Mavericks. “I want people to respect their privacy.”
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 1:31 PM EST
Memories of a Jewish ‘Avenger’
Patrick Martin
She had me at the photo.
Something about the pose the young woman struck – she’s the one on the right – conveyed that quiet, intense, world-weary romantic look of the partisan resistance fighter that was found in France, Spain and Greece, staging hit-and-run attacks on the Nazis and Fascists in the 1930s and 40s.
In her case, the battle was fought mostly in Lithuania, and she was Jewish. She died Wednesday at 92.
Vitka Kovner (nee Kempner) fled her native Poland in 1939 when the German army marched in, and she took refuge in the then-unoccupied Lithuanian capital of Vilna (known now as Vilnius). A member of the largely Communist Hashomer Hatzair Jewish youth movement, Vitka, then only 19, found comrades in the capital’s Jewish ghetto.
When Russia occupied Lithuania in 1940, Vitka fled again, returning to the city in June 1941, when Germany occupied the area. That was when Vitka and her young colleagues decided to stay and fight.
Friday, February 17, 2012 3:20 PM EST
Q&A: What happens next for the Saudi blogger awaiting trial over Prophet Mohammed tweets?
AFFAN CHOWDHRY
It only took three tweets about the Prophet Mohammed, in which a young Saudi blogger engaged in an imaginary conversation with the founder of the Islamic faith, to launch a virtual lynch mob.
“I was sitting with my friends and one of them checked Twitter on his mobile phone,” he told a U.S.-based human right activist. “Suddenly there were thousands of tweets of people calling to kill me because they said I’m against religion,” he recalled.
One of the tweets, all of which he deleted and later apologized for, read: “I have loved things about you and I have hated things about you and there is a lot I don’t understand about you.”
“I will not pray for you,” he added, in his tweets about Prophet Mohammed.
In the 24 hours that followed, there were over 30,000 tweets about his original Twitter comments, most of them negative and calling for his execution.
“I never expected this. It was a huge surprise. My friends are writers and bloggers and now their lives are in danger too,” Mr. Kashgari said, as he fled Saudi Arabia, only to be later detained in Malaysia and returned to his home country.
Christoph Wilcke is a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch and has been following Mr. Kashgari’s case closely. Earlier this week he spoke to the Globe and Mail about the implications of the case:
Friday, February 17, 2012 9:33 AM EST
How do you revive a city? Calcutta tries blue paint – and lots of it
Stephanie Nolen
Most often, when someone sets out to paint a town, the colour of choice is red.
But red has some nasty associations for Mamata Banerjee, chief minister of the Indian state of West Bengal (or as it is meant to be known, Poschim Bongo). Ms. Banerjee came to power last year, after decades spent trying to oust the Marxists who ruled the state for 34 years – and left plenty of red in their wake.
Thus the new chief minister has apparently decided her capital city, Calcutta, needs a makeover – and only blue will do.
“Our leader Mamata Banerjee has decided that the theme colour of the city will be sky blue because the motto of the new government is ‘the sky is the limit’,” Firhad Hakim, the state’s urban development minister, told reporters.
A battalion of workers has been deployed on the paint job in this metropolis of 15 million people. Some overpasses and railings have already received their coat of pale blue; city workers have taken their brushes to the trunks of trees on the famed street called Red Road.
Connect with us
Follow The Globe and Mail's foreign correspondents for breaking news and analysis from around the world.
Worldview Contributors
Affan Chowdhry
Affan Chowdhry is the Globe’s multimedia reporter specializing in foreign news. Prior to joining the Globe, he worked at the BBC World Service in London creating international news and current affairs programs and online content for a global audience.
Read more from Affan and follow him on Twitter @AffanChowdhry
Paul Koring
Paul Koring, the Globe’s Washington-based International Affairs and Security Correspondent, has covered conflicts and crises from the Cold War to Afghanistan, reporting from Europe, the Middle East, South Asia and Africa.
Read more from Paul and follow him on Twitter @PaulKoring
Mark MacKinnon
Based in Beijing, Mark was previously Middle East correspondent and before that Moscow correspondent for The Globe and Mail.
Read more from Mark and follow him on Twitter @MarkMacKinnon
Patrick Martin
Covering the region since 2008, this is Patrick’s second tour as Middle East correspondent. His first assignment was from 1991-95. In between, he served as The Globe’s Foreign Editor and as Comment Editor.
Read more from Patrick and follow him on Twitter @globepmartin
Stephanie Nolen
Stephanie Nolen is the Globe's South Asia correspondent. She has reported from more than 40 countries and is a five-time winner of the National Newspaper Award for coverage that has taken her from war zones to AIDS clinics to camel races, and a four-time winner of the Amnesty International Media Award.
Read more from Stephanie and follow her on Twitter @snolen
Doug Saunders
Doug Saunders is the chief of the Globe and Mail's London-based European Bureau, writes the weekly Reckoning column in the Focus section as well as daily reports and weekly features on European issues and international social and political trends.
Read more from Doug and follow him on Twitter @DougSaunders
Graeme Smith
Graeme Smith is a foreign correspondent for The Globe and Mail. Based in Istanbul, he has recently focused on Libya, Pakistan, and Afghanistan
Read more from Graeme and follow him on Twitter @smithjournalist
Sonia Verma
Sonia Verma writes about foreign affairs for The Globe and Mail. Based in Toronto, she has recently covered economic change in Latin America, revolution in Egypt, and elections in Haiti.
Read more from Sonia and follow her on Twitter @SoniaVerma
Konrad Yakabuski
Konrad Yakabuski is The Globe and Mail's chief U.S. political writer, based in Washington. He covers all aspects of the American political scene, including relevant social and cultural issues.
Read more from Konrad and follow him on Twitter @KonradYakabuski
Geoffrey York
Geoffrey York is The Globe and Mail's Africa correspondent. He has been a foreign correspondent for the newspaper since 1994, including seven years as the Moscow bureau chief and seven years as the Beijing bureau chief.
Read more from Geoffrey and follow him on Twitter @GeoffreyYork
