Global News Journal

from Photographers Blog:

Perceptions of North Korea

Landing at North Korea's Pyongyang International Airport to cover the two-day visit by the New York Philharmonic, we did not know what to expect. Myself, and Reuters TV cameraman Anil Ekmecic, had never been to Korea before, and what must be a fairly unusual experience, we could now say we traveled to Korea via the reclusive North first.

As we touched down, both Anil and I, along with text journalist Jon Herskovitz, the feeling was of intense anticipation of the unknown in a visual sense. The first sight was a welcoming party, consisting of some 10 uniformed North Korean soldiers and more than 60 well-attired officials. All looking tense. Then what happened next must have been a rather unusual sight for North Korea - a media scrum. The traveling press of which we were a part of, consisted of approximately 60 journalists, 20 television cameraman and 10 photographers. But then what we hadn't counted on was the local media, who appeared from nowhere, and were definitely not used to having to worry about getting in other people's viewfinders, let alone being told to "get outta the way, Man".

from FaithWorld:

Turkey’s covered women fed up with politics over their headscarves

It started as a women's protest for the right to wear Muslim headscarves at university, in this case at Marmara University in Istanbul. Then the men showed up with their banners and megaphones, lined up in front of the cameras and began speaking in place of the women. That left the ladies standing demurely on the sidelines or in the crowd, all decked out with their bright silk scarves with nothing to do but clap at what the men said.

It was just another case of what women here often complain about -- that the headscarf has been hijacked by politics for decades, leaving ordinary women to suffer the consequences. Some have sacrificed an education for their faith, preferring not to go to university if it means uncovering, and they feel like little more than a political football in this very masculine power struggle.

Check out our video from Marmara University, especially the protester who says "We want freedom to wear headscarves!" Hmmm ... do you think he'll ever wear one?

Turkish politics is deeply divided over whether women should be allowed to wear the headscarf at university and elsewhere in public life. Secularists, who fear that pious Turks are bent on curbing their right to live as they please, are trying to protect Turkey's official secularism so fiercely that they are accused of restricting religious freedom. Pious Muslims are clamouring for a change in the strict ban on headscarves as a human right. And, as in the video, it's the men who do most of the talking.

"Some are trying to win votes by banning the headscarf, others by allowing it, and we're stuck in the middle. For years they have been making politics over me and my headscarf," one angry young woman told me at Marmara this week.

Turkey's parliament in Ankara, dominated by the religious-leaning AK Party, has lifted a ban on the use of the headscarf at university. But the secularist establishment is rebelling. The reform has been challenged in court while some rectors refuse to let covered women into class until another law is passed. Secularist students have also protested against the reform, as in the photo to the right. The placard reads "The headscarf cannot liberate women."

Dear Leader misses the show

By Jon Herskovitz

Being the leader of one of the world ’s most paranoid states can make a person, well,  paranoid. So when guests to the New York Philharmonic ’s concert in Pyongyang arrived to very little security, it was obvious that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il wouldn’t be attending.

Foreign aid workers based in Pyongyang said that when they have attended an event where  the Dear Leader, as he is called in state media, does appear, the North ’s massive security is  very evident. Guards check all people attending, make sure no one has cameras or gets anywhere near the world’s first communist dynastic ruler unless they have been  vetted well in advance.

The audience made up of Pyongyang ’s elite last night seemed to genuinely enjoy the show. And the New York Philharmonic members said afterwards they could feel the energy coming from the crowd.

Many of the North Koreans were tapping their feet along to the music. 

On the road in Pyongyang

By Jon Herskovitz 

What a way to start my first full day in Pyongyang. Our breakfast spread was amazing. It was a lavish affair with ice sculptures, more types of cereal than can be found at Kellogg’s, two fancy espresso makers and a lot of North Koreans hovering nearby. I had myself a ham omelet and a nice cup of coffee. There wasn’t a Starbucks in sight!

 Yesterday, we took the first of the trilogy. A plane. Today, it was trains and automobiles. I spotted this car sputtering through the streets of Pyongyang. It looks like it hails back to the Soviet era.

We were also taken for a ride on the Pyongyang subway. It was for one stop, and we were told it cost one euro. Strangely, none of the locals seemed to be carrying any euros! One of the carriages carried portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il.

Jon Herskovitz is a Reuters correspondent based in Seoul.

North Korea: No killing devices, exciters and poison, please

By Jon Herskovitz, on the road with the New York Philharmonic

Welcome to North Korea. Do you have any killing devices?

I do not, but North Koreans certainly want to know. It’s on the customs form. Visitors to one of the world’s most isolated states are asked to tick a box if they are carrying: weapons, ammunition, explosives, and killing devices. Other no-nos include “exciters” and poison.

Oh yes, and mobile phones. Your mobile phone is collected before stepping on the plane to North Korea and returned once you’ve left the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, as the North prefers to call itself. That rule puts visitors on an equal footing with locals for most of whom these are also illicit possessions.

Also, please do not bring in “historical or cultural wealth”. I wonder if anybody in the New York Philharmonic checked that box?

Arriving at Pyongyang airport is chaotic. People stepping off the 747 that took about 350 people from Beijing to Pyongyang were more interested in snapping photos than forming orderly groups. North Korean minders searched through the crowd to try to find the people they were assigned to look after for the next few days. The orchestra eventually posed for a group picture in front of the plane. Ten minutes should have been enough to arrange it. In the end, it took almost an hour.

Fancy dining in Pyongyang

By John Herskovitz 

North Korea may be suffering from a chronic food shortage but that did not stop the impoverished state from throwing a lavish dinner reception for the New York Philharmonic for their first night in Pyongyang.

When visitors arrived at the banquet hall, they saw tables were covered in fancy dishes, bottles of booze and even a chocolate cake that had the word “opera” written in the icing. The main dish was a selection of cold meats and baby corn that was described as a “floral basket-shaped turkey”. 

Waiters in white dinner jackets and bow ties served dishes that included roast salmon, roast mutton, lady crab au gratin, a peasant’s soup and fried rice.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Going after al Qaeda in Pakistan

Reports last week in the New York Times and the Washington Post about CIA operations against al Qaeda inside Pakistan -- with or without the permission of the Pakistan government -- have got everybody asking what exactly is going on. Let's rewind and look at what the United States asked for immediately after 9/11 when it demanded President Pervez Musharraf's cooperation in hunting down al Qaeda.

In his book "In the Line of Fire", Musharraf says the Americans presented him with a list of demands on Sept. 13, 2001 which included a requirement Pakistan "provide the United States with blanket overflight and landing rights to conduct all neccessary military and intelligence operations". Musharraf says that though he agreed to cooperate with the United States, this particular request was turned down.

That begs the question of just how the Americans responded to the rejection. Did the world's sole superpower, who in Musharraf's own words had just threatened to bomb Pakistan "back to the Stone Age" if it did not cooperate, simply say "Ok fine. Sorry to trouble you" or words to that effect? Or did the Americans think even then that al Qaeda and Taliban militants would flee from Afghanistan into Pakistan and extract a promise to let the CIA go after them? In other words who knew what, when?

The question is interesting in the context of the U.S. presidential election, with Barack Obama saying he would be willing to go after al Qaeda inside Pakistan and John McCain accusing him of inexperience for threatening to invade a U.S. ally -- comments that are attracting a fierce debate among U.S. bloggers.

A blog called World War 4 Report calls Obama's comments "alarmingly bellicose". On the other side of the debate, Juan Cole challenges McCain's own record on U.S. Pakistan policy, accusing him of being an enthusiastic supporter of the Islamist mujahideen who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s - a movement that spawned al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Commenting on the reports of CIA operations inside Pakistan, the Seminal asks how Americans would feel if Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, set up shop in the United States and struck a secret deal with George W. Bush allowing them to target suspected Islamists there. A Pakistani who commented on my last post on U.S. policy towards Pakistan was more sanguine. Writing about Obama's threat to go after al Qaeda in Pakistan, he wrote: "Here is a guy who is truthful and is playing no games. We in Pakistan can live joyfully with the likes of him. No double-speak and therefore no contradictions."

Lots of questions then. Should America be going after al Qaeda aggressively inside Pakistan? Is Obama just being honest, stating a policy that is already being carried out by the CIA, albeit in secret? Have your say by posting a comment here.

Kim Jong-il: Will he or won’t he go to concert?

    Reuters correspondent Jon Herskovitz goes behind the scenes to look at the greatest U.S. show ever to hit one of the world’s most isolated countries, North Korea.

    North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, according to state media, rarely misses a chance to see Russian dancing girls when they make their rare trips to his reclusive country. But will he be interested in seeing the oldest U.S. orchestra?

    One of the biggest questions surrounding the unprecedented concert on Tuesday by the New York Philharmonic is whether the portly leader — portrayed in state propaganda as a masterful composer of revolutionary opera — will take a chair to listen the music of Gershwin, Dvorak and Wagner.

    Philharmonic spokesman Eric Latzky says no formal invitation has been extended by the orchestra to Kim.

    The North’s official media is likely to portray the concert as an overture by arch-enemy the United States to pay homage to Kim instead of as a mission to promote goodwill, analysts say.

    “It’s kind of a win-win for Kim Jong-il. If he attends, they are playing for him. If he stays away, then he is snubbing them. If he turns up late, he could have it both ways,” says Brian Myers, a specialist in the workings of the North’s propaganda.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Pakistan: Can America square the circle?

Scanning the U.S. media for reaction to the Pakistan election, two themes stand out.  One is a U.S. desire to reach out to the newly elected political leaders in Pakistan and bolster a return to civilian-led democracy. The other is the U.S. need to shore up the battle against al Qaeda and the Taliban -- even if it means pursuing them aggressively inside Pakistan's lawless tribal areas.  One may turn out to contradict the other.

The New York Times says in an op-ed that the United States must invest in Pakistan's people -- its schools, courts and political parties -- to build popular support for tackling al Qaeda and the Taliban.  Reuters Washington-based Asia Correspondent Paul Eckert quotes Barack Obama, among others, as saying a democratic Pakistan will make "a better ally in the fight against terror and extremism."

Compare that to a piece in the Washington Post about a missile strike by a CIA-operated Predator drone that killed a senior al Qaeda commander inside Pakistan last month.  "Having requested the Pakistani government's official permission for such strikes on previous occasions, only to be put off or turned down, this time the U.S. spy agency did not seek approval," it says. Significantly, it adds that  this could be a model for future U.S. operations.

Attacks by Predator drones are already highly controversial in Pakistan. So how does the United States build ties with democratically elected allies in Pakistan if it is also launching missile strikes on Pakistani soil without asking permission from those same allies? It seems hard to believe that either the government or the army would welcome unilateral U.S. action. So how will Washington square the circle? 

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Pakistan election – what next for Musharraf?

President Pervez Musharraf could hardly have found a better way of convincing the world about his commitment to holding a "free and fair" election in Pakistan -- by letting his own allies in the Pakistan Muslim League (Q) be defeated at the polls.

Commentators are already trying to work out whether the opposition Pakistan People's Party (PPP)  of the late Benazir Bhutto and the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif  -- ousted by Musharraf in a 1999 coup -- can muster enough seats between them in parliament for the two-thirds majority needed to impeach him.

Yet if the early results, which indicate a strong showing for the opposition and a trouncing of Musharraf's allies, are confirmed, I am left with an unanswered question. Is the election the beginning of the end for the retired army general? Or was it on his part an act of daring born out of his days as an army commando?

Did he gamble that even if his own supporters lost, he would still gain by proving his commitment to a free election to the international community? And in that gamble, was there an assumption that the opposition parties would squabble too much amongst themselves to form an effective coalition against him? It would be an interesting question to ask him.

In the coming days and weeks, it will become clearer whether that gamble was made. And if it paid off.

In my previous entry, and in the comments section, you can find links to some of the blogs and websites which are tracking the election results. If I have missed good sites, let me know. Or have your say here, by posting a comment.