GroundTruth

A blog devoted to on-the-ground reporting around the world.

Sounds of spring and resistance for China's dissidents

Virtuoso violinist Lynn Chang played at a benefit for Amnesty this weekend, but the stale taste of Chinese oppression was palpable during a tribute to Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo.

Charles M. SennottMay 8, 2012 10:20

Violinist Lynn Chang plays a tribute to imprisoned Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo in Oslo in 2010. (Screengrab)

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts – The Chinese folk melody, ‘Jasmine Flower,’ hung in the air with all the sweetness and sense of longing of springtime.

It was played as a solo by the virtuoso violinist Lynn Chang in honor of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo and other prisoners of conscience in China, and was part of a beautiful benefit for Amnesty International USA Sunday night.

The ground war on global poverty. And what you can do about it.

An international campaign called Live Below the Line challenges individuals to trying living on $1.50 a day to raise awareness for the issue of extreme poverty.

Charles M. SennottApril 27, 2012 18:01

Live Below the Line is aiming to raise money and awareness to end global poverty in line with the UN's millenium development goals. (Screengrab)

BROOKLYN – More than 1.4 billion in the world live on less than $1.50 a day.

Across Africa, Asia, as close to home as Haiti and in so many remote corners of the world, there is a huge population – more than four times the population of the United States – living every day in extreme poverty.

Could you handle that? Could you live on as little as $1.50 for one day? Could you do it for five days?

Police killing of Cambodian environment activist called 'cold-blooded murder'

Chut Wutty was escorting two journalists to an illegal logging site.

Kevin Douglas GrantApril 27, 2012 12:38

Cambodian villagers with their faces painted to resemble the forest people from the film 'Avatar' pray during a rally against the destruction of the Prey Lang forest in front of the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh on August 18, 2011. With their faces painted blue and green and donning hats made of leaves, the demonstrators called for an end to the exploitation and deforestation of the the largest lowland evergreen forest remaining in Southeast Asia. (Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP/Getty Images)

Cambodian environmental activist Chut Wutty was killed by military police Wednesday as he returned from taking two journalists to a protected site where he hoped to stop "large-scale forest destruction and illegal rosewood smuggling."

A Cambodian rights group, the Center for Cambodian Civic Education, called it "cold-blooded murder."

"The List" premiers to favorable reviews at Tribeca Film Festival

During the Iraq war, tens of thousands of Iraqis worked alongside American troops. The new film, The List, shows the plight of these people as they struggle for asylum in America.

Charles M. SennottApril 24, 2012 08:12

(Principle Pictures/Courtesy)

NEW YORK – The list of Iraqi men and women who worked alongside Americans as translators and advisors during the U.S.-led war in Iraq is long, and goes well into the tens of thousands.

Now that the U.S. troops have pulled out of Iraq, these people and their families face death threats from Al Qaeda-affiliated groups and Iraqi insurgents who see them as collaborators with the enemy.

RISC trains journalists in basic battlefield safety

To mark the anniversary of the deaths of Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, journalists from around the world gather in New York for a three-day first aid training course called RISC - Reporters Instructed in Saving Colleagues.

Charles M. SennottApril 20, 2012 14:34

GlobalPost correspondents Tim Grucza, Beth Murphy and Jim Foley pose together at the first three-day session of RISC at the Bronx Documentary Center in New York. (Giuliana Mackler/Courtesy)

NEW YORK — It was one year ago today that we received the devastating news that two photojournalists, Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, were killed by a mortar attack while covering the conflict in Libya.

Their deaths – and the subsequent deaths of New York Times correspondent Anthony Shadid and The Sunday Times’ Marie Colvin in Syria, as well as South African photographer Anton Hammerl in Libya and too many others – served to underscore the dangers that journalists face every day covering the Arab Spring and conflicts around the world.

Happy tax day: Your tax dollars are funding the Taliban

Douglas A. Wissing has a new book titled "Funding the Enemy: How US Taxpayers Bankroll the Taliban," that details how your money pays for both sides of the war.

Charles M. SennottApril 19, 2012 17:23

In this picture taken on November 2, 2011 and cleared on December 20,2011 by the US Army , US Marines, through a haze of fine dust kicked up by the helicopter's rotor blades, carry a wounded comrade who was hit by an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) to a medevac helicopter of the US Army's Task Force Lift 'Dust Off', Charlie Company 1-171 Aviation Regiment in Helmand province. The Marine lost his right leg from the knee in the blast. (BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/Getty Images)

BOSTON — Thank God tax day is behind us.

Did you blow deadline, as we say in the news business, and take the extension? Are you getting any returns? Were you up all night filing?

No matter what your status with the IRS, one outrageous fact will keep you up at night and should evoke more fury than a full-blown audit: US taxpayers are bankrolling the Taliban.

We’ll say that again: US taxpayers are bankrolling the Taliban.

'The Reckoning': Challenging America's stubborn dream

After two decades of acting as though American hegemony was a permanent state of affairs, America is struggling to adjust to new realities. Michael Moran explores the country's great dilemma in his new book.

Michael MoranApril 18, 2012 11:49

The cover of Michael Moran's, "The Reckoning: Debt, Democracy and the Future of American Power," published in April 2012. (Courtesy)

this story is part of globalpost's continuing coverage of world business. for more visit our new business page.

The following is an excerpt from “The Reckoning: Debt, Democracy and the Future of American Power,” by GlobalPost foreign affairs columnist Michael Moran and published this month by Palgrave Macmillan.

Iran needs diplomacy, not more failed sanctions

Fear mongering has done nothing but add to the "drums of war" but there is still time for productive negotiation.

Charles M. SennottApril 16, 2012 09:27

President Barack Obama speaks during the AIPAC Policy Conference at the Washington Convention Center on March 4, 2012 in Washington, DC. Obama reaffirmed his strong backing for key ally Israel, warning Iran that he would not hesitate to use force, if required, to stop it developing a nuclear weapon. But Obama must step up diplomacy, not fiery rhetoric. (JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images)

In the dangerous diplomatic dance with Iran, it looks like we have another side step.

The meeting in Istanbul this weekend which brought together an Iranian delegation with diplomats from six world powers will keep the dance marathon going.

But at the end of the day, it merely postponed to next month the need for real action on getting Iran to live up to the international community’s demand to allow UN inspectors free and unfettered access to the country’s nuclear program.

[Re]Building Port-au-Prince

Despite Haiti's messy bureaucracy, innovative building projects are underway. NGOs focus on architecture and infrastructure in the struggle to get a grand city back on its feet.

Dan WeissmanApril 13, 2012 10:51

Much of the rubble still lingers in Port-au-Prince, but soon many of the demolished homes will be replaced with seismically safe, eco-friendly dwellings. (Dan Weissman/Courtesy)

Dan Weissman is a Master of Design Studies candidate at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD) and an architect by training. Since February 2011 he has been involved in a series of reconstruction projects that are a collaboration between the GSD, MIT’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning, and various NGOs, government agencies and corporate entities throughout the Port-au-Prince region.

Truce brokered in Syria, but can it hold?

Widespread doubt remains that Assad will live up to his word.

Charles M. SennottApril 12, 2012 08:43

A Syrian man reads the local 'Baath' newspaper in Damascus on April 12, 2012, as a UN-backed ceasefire went into effect. Forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad shot dead a civilian in the central province of Hama, a monitoring group said, hours after a deadline to implement a ceasefire aimed to end 13 months of bloodshed. (LOUAI BESHARA/AFP/Getty Images)

UNITED NATIONS – A proposed truce in Syria came with the sunrise today, but there are many skeptics who do not expect the guns to remain silent for long, if at all.

Under a ceasefire agreement brokered by the former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, fighting was to stop at 6 A.M. Thursday and, according to the Associated Press, the first hours passed without any reports of major fighting.

ABOUT THIS BLOG

This blog is all about "ground truth." The observations, analysis, notes and musings posted here are based on facts gathered in the field from Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas. We highlight the work of GlobalPost’s team of correspondents and other journalists, bloggers, photographers and videographers around the globe who are out there getting at the “ground truth.”

The term is actually a scientific concept defined by NASA as part of the calibration process of satellite imagery. When NASA measures something with a satellite, an employee on the ground takes the same measurement. That human measurement is known as “ground truth.” If the results differ, the "ground truth" has greater credibility than the satellite does.

In the digital age, as we are bombarded with so much information from afar, GlobalPost takes a similar approach in its journalism, valuing the idea that being there on the ground and calibrating events in human terms is the key to getting it right. We believe in “ground truth.” And this blog is dedicated to that belief.

Read the GroundTruth archive.

Correspondents

Charles M. Sennott

GlobalPost's Founding Editor and Chief Correspondent. read more

Kevin Douglas Grant

GlobalPost's Deputy Editor for Special Reports. read more