Archives for August 2016

Episode 122: Clarissa Ward

clarissa wardClarissa Ward is an award winning journalist who has covered conflict for over a decade, mostly in the Middle East. She is now with CNN and earlier this year she and a small crew snuck into rebel held territory in Syria, including the city of Aleppo from where she filed several intense and harrowing stories.

In August, Clarissa was invited to a special meeting of the Security Council about the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo. We kick off discussing her Security Council briefing and latest reporting trip to Syria.

Clarissa was born and raised in London, New York and Hong Kong and is a true polyglot. She discusses how and why she was drawn to journalism and how early experiences of covering conflict in Gaza and Lebanon shaped her later reporting covering the conflict in Syria.

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An Insane Drug War in the Philippines

TRIAD CONNECTION. President Rodrigo R. Duterte shows a copy of a diagram showing the connection of high level drug syndicates operating in the country during a press conference at Malacañang on July 7, 2016. KING RODRIGUEZ/Presidential Photographers Division

TRIAD CONNECTION. President Rodrigo R. Duterte shows a copy of a diagram showing the connection of high level drug syndicates operating in the country during a press conference at Malacañang on July 7, 2016. KING RODRIGUEZ/Presidential Photographers Division

The new bombastic and brash president of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte is undertaking a war on drugs like no other country on earth. In the last few months, hundreds of alleged drug offenders have been killed on the streets, many by vigilante groups empowered by the government. Meanwhile, Duterte has released a list of hundreds of public officials that he claims are involved in the drugs trade.

It’s a human rights disaster unfolding in real time and another indication that Duterte is a singularly unique–and some may say threatening — individual in global affairs.

My guest today, Dr. Tom Smith of the University of Portsmouth at the Royal Airforce College Cranwell, describes how Duterte, a long serving mayor of the city of Davao, unexpectedly emerged as president of the Philippines in elections this year, and how he is applying harsh anti-crime tactics honed at the municipal level on a national scale.
This is a war on drugs like no other on earth.

Episode 121: Greg Stanton

Greg Stanton has spent a career researching and fighting genocide. He speaks candidly about the psychological toll of this line of work and managing the PTSD which he confronts to this day.

Stanton is a descendent of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and as you’ll learn from this conversation, the human rights gene runs strong in this family. His father was a liberal preacher and civil rights activist, and Greg tells me the most dangerous place he’s ever worked, to this day, was registering black voters in Mississippi in the 1960s.

Greg is the founder of the NGO Genocide watch. His career as a genocide scholar and activist began in the 1980s as an humanitarian worker in Cambodia, and he recounts collecting evidence of war crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge. Greg served for many years in the State Department as well, including in Rwanda to help establish the war crimes tribunal following the 1994 genocide. We kick off discussing an ongoing genocide against the Yazidi people in Iraq and Syria.

The subject matter of this episode is pretty heavy and I just want to thank Greg for being so open and honest about the emotional challenges he’s faced throughout his career.

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Here’s the Strategic Logic of Why Fighters Are Inflicting Such Misery on the People of Aleppo

There is a catastrophe underway in the Syrian city  of  Aleppo. The city has been at the center of fighting since the civil war broke out in 2011, but in recent weeks the battle for Aleppo has become much more intense. And caught in the middle are 2 million people. Food is scarce. Hospitals have been bombed. Humanitarian aid has not been able to reach the city. And earlier this week, the UN warned that water supply has been cut off for about a week.

On the line with me to discuss the situation in Aleppo is Dave DesRoches, a professor at National Defense University. We discuss the strategic significance of Aleppo in the context of the civil war, that is, why fighting for control of the city of Aleppo is so consequential to the trajectory of the entire conflict; he describes the various fighting forces that are converging on Aleppo to participate in this fight, their disparate motives;  the role of the United States and Russia, and of course the dire humanitarian consequences of this particularly brutal fight.