By Johnny
When I sat down with Guinean presidential candidate Alpha Conde in March he mentioned off-handedly that I should come to Conakry for the elections. Then he paused and said maybe after the elections would be better. He may have been thinking of the frenzy of activity leading up to the polls. But, it’s easy to [...]
By Johnny
A guy stopped me on my last day in Trinidad to pay a compliment to my boots, which were, incidentally, Clark’s. I like Clark’s. They’re not fancy, but aren’t sneakers. And they can take a beating. Apparently, as my new acquaintance explained, they’re popular in the West Indies. So much so that a reggae artist [...]
By Johnny
I’m just going to mention this. A great, somewhat confusing piece in today’s New York Times. I wont summarize it, but I will point out that in discussing how a Department of Defense website program went off the rails into “Jason Bourne”-territory, the paper had to make the following admission: From December 2008 to mid-June [...]
By Johnny
Christians and Muslims fighting. A familiar story. Or is it? Nigeria, Guinea and, this week, Liberia–in towns in northwestern Lofa County. The Daily Observer reports: Information coming in to the Daily Observer from Lofa County indicates that it all began on Tuesday when a 14-year-old girl of the Mandingo ethnic group was found dead near [...]
By Johnny
This is my idea of fun. Tonight, David McCraw, assistant general counsel for the New York Times, gave a presentation on the latest and greatest in Freedom of Information strategies. McCraw went through the highlight reel of some recent Times stories involving Freedom of Information queries that he had a hand in, including a few Pulitzers. [...]
By Johnny
A little scrap from Charles Taylor’s redirect this week that I thought worth yanking out of the court transcript. Charles Taylor discussing the origins of his honorific “Dah Kpannah,” (which translates roughly to “first among elders”): This brought to mind a wonderful piece in the Christian Science Monitor that my friend Glenna had a hand [...]
By Johnny
A strange drama unfolding in Guinea. Over the weekend violence broke out in Nzerekore, in the southeastern portion of the country. Initial reports indicated religious tensions between Muslims and Christians left three dead and more than three dozen wounded. Mobs armed with machetes took to the streets prompting the military and police to intervene. All [...]
By Johnny
Some election news coming out of West Africa. Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf reversed a campaign promise and announced she would seek reelection in 2011. At first glance, this may appear to be a power grab, yanked from the playbook of the African big men that preceded Johnson-Sirleaf. The last two leaders elected in Liberia, Taylor [...]
By Johnny
A few years ago, on a rainy Sunday morning, I covered a horrifying story for the Daily News. A toddler accidentally hung himself from the top bunk of a bunk bed. I was extraordinarily pissed off by an inaccurate quote shoe-horned into the headline by an editor. But, perhaps that was what caught Wyclef Jean’s [...]