Abu Toggle

Panel at East-West Center's International Media Conference

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Panel at East-West Center's International Media Conference:

I spoke at a panel in Seoul about my favorite topic: online journalism. I was joined by Ana Marie Pamintuan, editor in chief of The Philippine Star; Kang Bing, deputy editor of China Daily; and Felix Soh, an editor for several Malay and English newspapers owned by Singapore Press Holdings.

In 2006, C.J. Chivers and Joao Silva were embedded with Second...

Wed, 16 May 2012 15:22:33 -0400

In 2006, C.J. Chivers and Joao Silva were embedded with Second Battalion, Eighth Marines in Iraq’s Anbar Province. Speaking to Chris via his sat phone, I compiled a series of audio slide shows to accompany their reports. The chapters titled “The Medic” and “Recovery” tell the story of Dustin Kirby.

cjchivers:

Todd Heisler and the Cost of War.

Earlier this month I visited Dustin Kirby and his family in rural Georgia, catching up to a friend from one of the walks in Iraq after his medical retirement from the Navy. (Dusty was shot through the mouth on Christmas Day, 2006, and has been recovering since.)

This blog had a quick post about Dusty and his paternal grandfather, who was wounded in World War Two, and the strangely undocumented and unexplored tendency of the same American families to produce, over and again, sons and daughters who go to war.

Shortly after that post published I opened one of the email accounts to find the top photo, above, along with a string of notes from Todd Heisler, a photographer who has chronicled the experiences of American military families.

Todd received the Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for a series of photographs in The Rocky Mountain News documenting the remains of American service members returning home. Among them was the second photo, above.

That run of work did more than receive a Pulitzer. It was so resonant, so enduring, so memorable, and so eminently sensitive and well conceived that there is a quick story here.

This:

As it happened, days before Todd was in touch by email I had been having an off-record conversation with a senior military officer in Virginia. We were talking Afghanistan and a few other things. And then, that officer, unprompted, mentioned Todd’s photographs. He remembered them as one of the great journalistic artifacts of these recent wars.

Of course he was right.

Two or three days later Todd landed in the in-box. Why? He had joined The New York Times staff a few years back, and had made a set of images of Dustin Kirby and Colin Smith, which ran with this article in early 2007. The fresh blog post from Georgia had reminded him of his own trip there, and of a remarkable family — the Kirby’s. So he wrote to say so.

To see Todd’s slide show of the Kirby and Smith families as they first dealt with the wounding of their sons, go to that link, look for the Multimedia tab on the left side and hit the “Audio & Photos” box. Then listen as Dusty and Colin’s father, Bob Smith, talk you through the experience of a wounded vet coming home. Todd’s photographs roll by as the audio streams.

Follow Todd on Twitter at @heislerphoto. And thank him for his work, documenting an all-too-often hidden aspect of more than a decade of American war.

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHS

By Todd Heisler. Top, The New York Times, 2007. Dusty and his grandfather, two wounded American vets. Bottom, The Rocky Mountain News, 2005. The body of Second Lieutenant James Cathey, USMC, arrives at the Reno Airport.

A new role

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 12:00:00 -0400

I’m beginning a new assignment for DealBook, working with Andrew Ross Sorkin, Jeffrey Cane and a talented group of reporters to cover the world of mergers and acquisitions.

The Gossip Machine, Churning Out Cash

Sun, 22 May 2011 12:00:00 -0400

The Gossip Machine, Churning Out Cash:

Stars and dimmer lights deal in a world of dirt and money, not always unwillingly. (Photo: David Mcnew/Getty Images)

Hasan Askari Rizvi, a leading political and military analyst in...

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Hasan Askari Rizvi, a leading political and military analyst in Pakistan, said his female students at Lahore University of Management Sciences are far ahead of their male counterparts.

Mr. Rizvi said that in contrast to the open atmosphere found at LUMS, many young Pakistanis are becoming more conservative. He traced the shift to the rule of Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, the military dictator who used religion in public education to unify his support in the 1980s.

Today, even many of the educated middle class supported the assassination in January of a politician who spoke out against Pakistan’s strict blasphemy laws.

Jamaat-e-Islami operates a madrassa in Lahore. JEI is...

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Jamaat-e-Islami operates a madrassa in Lahore. JEI is Paksitan’s oldest Islamic political party and until recently had supported the Taliban. The party still espouses an anti-Western rhetoric and its media-friendly leaders have gained support from millions of highly-educated Pakistanis.

JEI sponsors a student group, Islami Jamiat Talaba, that has been linked to violence and intimidation on the campus of Pakistan’s largest university.

“The university’s plight encapsulates Pakistan’s predicament: an intolerant, aggressive minority terrorizes a more open-minded, peaceful majority, while an opportunistic political class dithers, benefiting from alliances with the aggressors.” - Sabrina Tavernise

A flag-bearer salutes the founder of Pakistan during the highly...

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 18:43:00 -0400

A flag-bearer salutes the founder of Pakistan during the highly ritualized border-closure ceremony in Wagah. The daily display of shouts and marching is part of a colonial tradition and a non-violent outlet for protesting India.

Badshahi Mosque, a/k/a/ The ‘King’s Mosque,’...

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 13:00:00 -0400

Badshahi Mosque, a/k/a/ The ‘King’s Mosque,’ in Lahore was commissioned by Aurangzeb, the last great Mughal emperor, and completed in 1674. Nearly three centuries later, The New York Times quoted one Pakistani expert who described Aurangzeb as “the only man in the royal Mogul family who had a clear conscience.”

As an example of the Mughal’s architectural brilliance, it is said to be second only to the Taj Majal. The courtyard, which can hold more than 100,000 worshipers, is four inches from a perfect square.

Its magnificent red and pink sandstone gives the mosque a more solemn presence than the modern glass walls of the larger Faisal Mosque in Islamabad. Westerners who associate Lahore with Rudyard Kipling will recognize many of the attractions here.

There are few historic sites as impressive as the 50-acre,...

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 12:00:00 -0400

There are few historic sites as impressive as the 50-acre, fortified complex that sits atop the northern edge of Pakistan’s second-largest city.

Lahore Fort has been built, destroyed by conquerors and rebuilt many times through the centuries. The latest version was constructed by the Mughal’s emperor Akbar in the 1500s and later enlarged by other leaders including a Sikh who ruled the city in the 18th century. In 1846, the British took control and demolished parts of the structure. Bottom left is the entrance of the elephants.

Outside Lahore. There is a vast cultural divide between the...

Sat, 16 Apr 2011 16:00:00 -0400

Outside Lahore. There is a vast cultural divide between the urban and urbane city and its rural countryside. The most glaring change is the near absence of women in public.

Outside Lahore. Although many rural women have traditionally not...

Sat, 16 Apr 2011 15:00:00 -0400

Outside Lahore. Although many rural women have traditionally not had a role in public life, pockets of Pakistan are slowly changing.

“In a large slice of the world, girls are uneducated and women marginalized, and it’s not an accident that those same countries are disproportionately mired in poverty and riven by fundamentalism and chaos.” - Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn

Children in Bheer, a slum outside Lahore, raise pigeons....

Sat, 16 Apr 2011 14:00:00 -0400

Children in Bheer, a slum outside Lahore, raise pigeons. Pigeon-racing is a popular sport here. The winner of an annual race in Lahore receives a prize worth the equivalent of $30,000 from Bahrain.

Last year, one notorious bird was seized in neighboring India and accused of being a spy.

Families in Bheer, a slum outside Lahore. The writing on the...

Sat, 16 Apr 2011 13:00:00 -0400

Families in Bheer, a slum outside Lahore. The writing on the building above reads “Naya Din School.” The English translation is “New Day” and the name indicates that the school was founded by a Lahore-based nonprofit called GODH, or Grass Root Organization for Human Development.

Near a small village outside Lahore, manure will be used a...

Sat, 16 Apr 2011 12:00:00 -0400

Near a small village outside Lahore, manure will be used a source of fuel. After being piled into patties, the manure is stuck onto the walls of the family home. Once it dries, the manure falls off and is ready to be burned.

Muslim Hands sponsors a school for Pakistani children who have...

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 12:00:00 -0400

Muslim Hands sponsors a school for Pakistani children who have lost a parent. A child without a father is considered an orphan. Flooding last summer killed about 1,800 people, and affected more than 20 million people, or around 14 percent of the population.

Faisal Mosque in Islamabad. Pakistan’s largest mosque,...

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 20:00:00 -0400

Faisal Mosque in Islamabad. Pakistan’s largest mosque, designed by a Turkish architect and funded by Saudi Arabia, was completed in 1986. The mosque and its surrounding grounds has room for more than 274,000 worshippers.

On the campus of Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad. Students...

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 14:00:00 -0400

On the campus of Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad. Students from FATA and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The women said they had known victims of the violence committed by both the Haqqani network and Central Intelligence Agency’s drones.

On the campus of Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad. Students...

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 13:00:00 -0400

On the campus of Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad. Students from FATA and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

One young man asked me to “say hello to Raymond Davis for us.” Asked about the United States, the students said they were angered by the use drones and the violence committed by militants in the northwestern Pakistan.

Members of Parliament. Clockwise from top left, Farzana Raja...

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 12:00:00 -0400

Members of Parliament. Clockwise from top left, Farzana Raja of Pakistan People’s Party, Mohammad Azam Khan Swati of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazal, Faisal Karim Kundi the deputy speaker and member of the P.P.P., Engineer Khurram Dastgir Khan of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, and Jahangir Khan Tareen of Pakistan Muslim League-Functional.

Mr. Tareen has been the focus of media attention for his effort to put taxes on the public agenda. Fewer than 2 percent of more than 170 million Pakistanis pay income tax.

Salman Bashir, Pakistan’s foreign secretary. Asked about...

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 13:00:00 -0400

Salman Bashir, Pakistan’s foreign secretary. Asked about relations with the United States, he said, “You don’t bomb friends’ territory.”

Cooperation between the U.S. and Pakistan appears to be collapsing amid the fallout from the arrest of a Central Intelligence Agency officer who killed two men in January. Pakistan is directing the anger from the episode at C.I.A. drone strikes in northwest Pakistan. A drone attack in March killed tribal leaders meeting with Taliban mediators in a market in Datta Khel, in North Waziristan.