tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71185657074155692862011-12-20T09:29:49.352-08:00This blog contains musings about places I have visited and people I have met. I also follow topical issues in the craft of journalism . . . This site is rated as one of the "Top 50 Freelance Writing Blogs" by the Journalism Journeyman.Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.comBlogger571100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-48344922100646926812011-08-08T21:37:00.000-07:002011-08-10T11:01:02.053-07:00

By Claude Adams In the early 90s, while covering the Yugoslav civil war for Christian Science Monitor TV, my crew and I decided to pose for a snapshot with a group of Croatian soldiers near the front line. As you can see from the photo above, we were disturbed by sniper fire overhead just as the photographer snapped the shutter. You might say it was our Robert Capa moment, except we survived

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-72157408638302757782011-07-29T12:32:00.000-07:002011-07-31T12:28:33.821-07:00

Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission is overseeing something called the Missing Children Project--a bold attempt to track and record the fate of every indigenous child who passed through the notorious residential school system. It's a kind of census of calamity. What follows is the framework of one story. I'd like to collect many more. If you have personal knowledge of a child who

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-30236875909602716742011-07-11T13:45:00.001-07:002011-08-22T10:13:45.959-07:00

See a version of this story in Vancouver magazine By Claude Adams July 11, 2011 This is a story about a dog who died and then came back to life and ended my career in local television news. When I put it that way, it’s funny. People can’t help giggling when they hear it. And I often end up laughing too, that edgy scratchy laughter that comes at one’s own expense and leaves little welts on the

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com84tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-8749179240285255312011-06-25T12:58:00.000-07:002011-07-04T10:06:03.295-07:00

By Claude AdamsEditor's NoteFebruary 4, 2009. At his home in West Vancouver, Glen Cooper is fast sleep. The phone rings. “Hello?” It’s a bad connection from the other side of the world. “Hello?” It takes a few seconds, but then Cooper hears the broken English, the sharp hectoring voice. “Damn it,” he snarls, “it’s the middle of the night”—but the caller has launched into the familiar harangue:

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-28397783041487697062011-06-18T02:43:00.000-07:002011-07-04T10:19:40.999-07:00

By Claude AdamsThe Nathan Kotylaks of the world I can understand. It’s the bystanders I have trouble with. Nathan is a 17-year-old Maple Ridge kid who tried to blow up a police car in Vancouver’s Stanley Cup riot, and blew up a promising life instead. Son of a prosperous family, a prospective future Olympian, he was caught on camera trying to set fire to the car in front of hundreds of

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-43435683908105482182011-05-15T17:00:00.000-07:002011-05-15T17:03:13.922-07:00

By Claude AdamsJudy Jackson is a veteran documentary filmmaker on Salt Spring Island who knows as much about war-related trauma as anyone working in journalism. While she was making War in the Mind, her new film about combat trauma, she was also deeply engaged in the rehabilitation of a Somali photojournalist, Salah Abdulle. Abdulle was severely traumatized when the car he was driving in was

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-2850555643925650972011-05-09T16:10:00.000-07:002011-05-09T16:19:37.727-07:00

By Claude AdamsEarly in the pages of The End of Iceland’s Innocence, Daniel Chartier fires a familiar rocket at the print media; that journalists often hype, spin, magnify and sensationalize “the facts . . . creating an ethos to make the news more appealing to readers.”He’s about to tell us that the banking crisis in Iceland in 2008 was a media narrative. Yes, the banks failed, and yes, there was

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-33016178321984938032011-03-18T23:21:00.000-07:002011-03-19T13:24:43.255-07:00

Also published March 18, 2010, in J-Source magazine.By Claude Adams Trauma wasn’t a big issue for journalists 32 years ago when Unit 2 of the Three Mile Island nuclear facility in Pennsylvania suffered a partial core meltdown. As I remember it, we were “spooked” by the fact that if we were accidentally radiated, we’d never know it until our hair started to fall out weeks later. That produced its

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-84883176751023959132011-02-25T15:01:00.000-08:002011-02-25T15:31:24.065-08:00

Published in J-Source on Feb. 25, 2010By Claude Adams Last night (Feb. 24) after a tumultuous day in Libya, all three Canadian networks--CBC, CTV and Global-- decided that the prime story of the day was NOT an African people's brave and bloody struggle for freedom, but rather how that revolution is inconveniencing Canadians. CTV led with higher gasoline prices at the pump: CBC and Global opened

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-81506115759371398602011-02-04T11:23:00.000-08:002011-02-27T20:50:20.915-08:00

Feb. 4, 2011The polarizerI find it curious that the Globe’s editorial board would urge the continued exile of former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, even as it applauds the efforts of the Egyptian people to determine their own political future (Return Of A Polarizer – Feb. 3). You call him “unwelcome.” Surely not to the Haitian people, who elected him twice in a democratic vote. But you

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-82273533189815642102011-01-11T20:22:00.000-08:002011-01-18T08:56:00.734-08:00

Another version of this story was published in J-Source on Jan. 11, 2011, and in The TyeeBy Claude Adams In her final hostage video, in March 2009, Bev Giesbrecht of West Vancouver, her voice breaking, says this: “Either the Pakistani government or my own country, somebody’s got to move now, because my life is going to be over . . . Responsibility of this will be clearly on somebody’s shoulder. I

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-9430901535791624042010-12-11T17:28:00.000-08:002010-12-12T21:48:24.491-08:00

Published in J-Source on Dec. 11, 2010By Claude AdamsIt’s a delectable thesis: That if we would only put as much imagination into the delights of sharing food as we do in killing one another, the world would be a much happier place. That’s the underlying theme of reporter Anna Badkhen’s Peace Meals, the only book of war memoirs I’ve ever seen that contains recipes for baba ghanouj and boiled

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-15668154215526975352010-12-04T11:03:00.000-08:002011-03-06T09:28:16.545-08:00

By Claude AdamsDecember, 2010--Visiting Steve Fonyo, in jail, once again, I see the “docile body” that philosopher Michel Foucault describes in his famous analysis of discipline, punishment and the prison system. Steve is wearing a shapeless red T-shirt and red sweatpants (mandatory jailhouse gear), his complexion is pale (awful jailhouse diet), his hair close-cropped (loss of aesthetic

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-2543188983527407792010-12-01T09:49:00.000-08:002010-12-01T09:55:40.511-08:00

Letter to the editor/ Globe and Mail, Dec. 1, 2010Putting Haiti under UN trusteeship for four years is another way of saying: Let’s just take the country, fix it, and then give it back when we’re done (letters – Nov. 30). The international community, including Canada, did exactly that when it removed the democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in 2004, and then sent in 10,000

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-55385802895204152862010-11-18T12:08:00.000-08:002010-11-29T08:49:31.033-08:00

Published in J-Source on Nov. 18, 2010 Another version appeared in The Tyee on Nov. 29. On a fall evening, after dark, you might find Luis Horacio Najera in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, peering down the desolate alleyways with a small Canon digital camera in his hand. He’s wearing a red ski jacket, and he’s uncommonly alert, a trained observer. He might be photographing a surreptitious

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-27340205422515360362010-10-19T21:24:00.000-07:002010-10-22T10:12:15.574-07:00

Published in J-Source on Oct. 20, 2010By Claude AdamsFor the Chilean miners, as for the reporters who covered the story, the common theme of the 70-day drama in the desert was entrapment. The miners were trapped underground. The reporters were trapped in their narrow narrative: all human interest, all the time. The miners found deliverance when they made it to the surface. The media,

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-71678821305918930272010-10-09T15:16:00.000-07:002010-10-12T09:49:11.133-07:00

(Published in J-Source, Oct. 12, 2010)By Claude Adams To the many legacies of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, you can add one more: The Journalism of Outrage. The natural disaster that nearly obliterated New Orleans five years ago made it okay, no, even fitting, for reporters to let loose that righteous indignation that lurks in all of us when we are witnesses to needless death and devastation,

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-51098679558035526312010-09-01T16:04:00.000-07:002010-09-01T16:34:29.245-07:00

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-62371609305580342232010-08-23T16:40:00.000-07:002010-08-27T22:56:20.642-07:00

Published Aug. 24, 2010, in J-SourceBy Claude AdamsIn November, 1985, the CBC sent me with a TV crew to the town of Armero in Colombia, scene of an horrific mudslide that buried the town and 20,000 of its inhabitants. In the remorseless media hierarchy of human events, Armero was a middle-of-the-show disaster. An aerial shot, some failed rescues, a few anguished interviews with survivors, a

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-66041662980292364772010-07-20T12:08:00.000-07:002010-08-09T11:12:47.254-07:00

Vancouver Province, July 20, 2010By Claude Adams Twice in less than a year, Steve Fonyo has learned a harsh lesson about the limits of Canadian compassion. The first time came back in December when he heard, while in jail, that he’d been summarily stripped of his Order of Canada—awarded 25 years ago for his epic run across Canada for cancer research. The second time came last week, when

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-24224627647182659292010-05-21T12:59:00.000-07:002010-05-22T11:07:35.599-07:00

(A slightly altered version of this story was published in the June, 2010, issue of Reader's Digest Canada. That's Dale Myra on the left, and Phillip Gatensby, right. )By Claude Adams The adjudicator spoke softly, but the questions struck Dale Myra at his core. Myra and his lawyer had prepared months for this session, rehearsing the words, going over his testimony. A Cree native in his early 40s

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-47992646108483040612010-04-07T10:43:00.000-07:002010-04-07T10:53:04.397-07:00

Last year, while researching a project on restorative justice, I met Debbie, an Abbotsford, BC, woman. She had a remarkable story to tell. Fifteen years earlier, her stepson Kristian Warsing had strangled Debbie’s two young children, and tried to kill her during what appeared to be a psychotic rampage. For a long time, Debbie wished that Kris, convicted of murder, would “rot in hell.” But then

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-10578428798693039202010-03-31T10:35:00.000-07:002010-04-19T11:29:11.107-07:00

Broadcast on CBC's The CurrentANNA FONYO (STEVE'S MOM) 3:09 “Boxes and boxes, here I can show you . . . 3:22 Here, DRAWERS FULL OF DOCUMENTS AND PAPERS, Yes, it’s all pictures, and here something PHOTO ALBUMS lots of things here 3:40 SO THESE HAVE BEEN HERE FOR 25 YEARS That’s right . . . 4:37 Well, it’s a good memory, some of it, but . . . it’s all gone (laughs.)”SUZANNE FONYO 3:55 “What he

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-52082604662520377882010-03-10T01:32:00.000-08:002010-03-23T09:07:42.741-07:00

By Claude AdamsJ-SourcePeter C Newman was probably thinking of the likes of Norman Bethune, Pierre Trudeau and Terry Fox when he wrote, mischievously, that the one thing all Canadian heroes have in common, is that they are dead. Newman was wrong. Ken Taylor, a certifiable hero in most Canadians’ estimation, is still very much alive, and we are reminded of that in Robert Wright’s recent book, Our

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-32226095704399058542010-03-02T14:50:00.000-08:002010-03-05T22:26:40.332-08:00

J-SourceMarch 2, 2010In case you don’t know it yet, the future of journalism is eyeballs. Eyeballs are everything. Tomorrow’s successful journalist is an eyeball accumulator. It’s a simple formula, really. Each time your headline, photo or lede provokes the Internet surfer to hit the enter key, your story gets one eyeball. (To be optically correct, it should be two eyeballs per reader, but never

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-21111446000230324482010-02-28T22:54:00.000-08:002010-03-20T09:07:46.518-07:00

Letter to the EditorGlobe and MailSunday, Feb. 28, 2010 Why do medals matter? Do they make us healthier, wiser, more caring? Do we become better citizens? What values do we invest in those pieces of gold, silver and bronze?What does it say about us that we need these expensive distractions, which showcase a very small number of privileged athletes who play games extremely well? Does it speak to

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-75107630347430607132010-02-05T15:46:00.000-08:002010-02-05T19:44:56.387-08:00

By Claude AdamsThree years after the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, a Utah furniture dealer was meeting with a group of visiting businesspeople representing the Vancouver Board of Trade. They had come to learn more about how a community can benefit from a world-class event like the Olympics. When the visitors asked him if having the Games in his state helped his business, the dealer grinned

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-86433733579565372042010-01-24T21:32:00.000-08:002010-01-27T09:42:47.093-08:00

A new book called Our Man in Tehran purports to “break” the story, after 30 years, that Ken Taylor agreed to gather information for the CIA in Tehran during the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979-80. In fact, the essentials of the story are 30 years old. They were published in the bestselling book The Canadian Caper, co-authored by Jean Pelletier and me, and published by Macmillan of Canada, and

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-31562909650155381602010-01-14T13:58:00.000-08:002010-02-06T00:35:01.393-08:00

Make plans. Watch them fall apart. Improvise. And embrace the unexpected. That’s my credo for reporting from Haiti. It’s never failed me, in nearly a dozen visits since 1987.Port au Prince is the ultimate testing ground for foreign correspondents. It’s where you learn what to do when telephones fail, the lights go out, the air conditioner malfunctions at 36 degrees C, your rented car breaks down,

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-26389911273815798342010-01-05T21:42:00.000-08:002010-01-05T21:55:38.658-08:00

Vancouver—Wine, said Dr. Samuel Johnson, makes a man mistake words for thoughts. He could have been talking about an entire country. An epidemic of oenophilia seems to have seized the nation, like the vapors of spring. Last week, Canada’s most popular radio show had a segment on the sound of grapes fermenting. (They sound like raindrops in an echo chamber.) British Columbia’s most important

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-49177683825249532602009-10-09T08:17:00.000-07:002009-10-11T08:58:20.930-07:00

Twenty-five years ago, Haiti produced almost all of the world’s baseballs. Women would stand in the factories all day, hand-stitching the cowhide, 108 stitches per ball. It cost about nine cents to produce a baseball, and one woman could stitch three dozen per day. Few if any of the stitchers ever saw a baseball game, which is alien to Haiti. Even if they wanted to they could never afford a

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-1802221117393742892009-08-13T10:40:00.000-07:002010-02-06T17:28:26.279-08:00

The Tyee, August 11, 2009"We are only as sick as our secrets." If the people of Alkali Lake needed a slogan (and they don't), this would serve. I found it on a piece of paper pinned to the wall of the Pow-Wow Arbor, a wooden open-air structure where, every year for the past 33 years, the natives of Alkali Lake, B.C. have hosted an Alcoholics Anonymous Roundup.Here, along with alcoholics from

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-14032911649189595892009-06-19T20:54:00.000-07:002010-02-06T11:25:05.244-08:00

July/August 2009Beyond EvilThank you for Alice Mukarurinda’s story of tragedy and reconciliation in Rwanda (“No Small Mercy,” May). It is perfectly understandable that she should tell her children that “the devil came to Rwanda,” but there is nothing supernatural about what happened fifteen years ago in Central Africa. It was less a story of divine good versus evil than a story of very human

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-64303797978783101602009-06-07T13:31:00.000-07:002010-02-06T11:35:09.849-08:00

Think about this:On Page 2 of Nicholson Baker's profoundly counter-intuitive book "Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization" we find this, the opening lines of a pacifist play, Jeremiah, by Stefan Zweig:"I had recognized the foe that I was to fight--fake heroism that prefers to send others to suffering and death, the cheap optimism of the conscienceless prophets, both

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-41023392603772307242009-05-21T12:03:00.000-07:002009-08-01T22:07:46.761-07:00

OK, so I'm not on the breadline. Yet. But I wanted to get your attention. I don't stand in line for free bread. I still buy my peasant bread for $12 a loaf from Floran, my Transylvanian baker in Kitsilano. But I ration myself to one slice a day. Things are getting tough. I'm into my sixth month of unemployment. My allotment of UI cheques runs out next month. I'm down to my last 8K in savings.

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-45497261943242043472009-03-10T16:56:00.000-07:002010-02-06T17:37:00.267-08:00

Christopher Pauchay, the Saskatchewan man who left his two young children to freeze to death on a native reserve in 2008, begins a three-year penitentiary term this month. That makes him a “criminal” under Canadian law, subject to all the sanctions that come with this label. But to a small group of people close to him, and to a growing number of Canadians who believe in restorative

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-45752437828961875172009-02-16T23:49:00.000-08:002010-02-06T17:33:02.954-08:00

Cpl. Kevin Megeney, a 25-year-old reservist from Stellarton, Nova Scotia, died two years ago, of a gunshot wound in the chest, in a medical tent at Kandahar Airport, in Afghanistan. More than 60 other Canadian servicemen have died in combat since then, but we still don’t know the full circumstances of Cpl. Megeney’s death. We don’t know why he died. But we know how, in a description of graphic

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-26993232114607793982009-02-16T23:32:00.000-08:002009-06-07T15:34:56.563-07:00

Late last year, while most of us were obsessing about Barack Obama and the collapsing housing market, tens of thousands of traditional Catholics around the world were spending hours at prayer. Over the course of a month, in fact, they tallied up 1.7 million “rosaries”—those 55 little glass beads on a string, each of which represent a “Hail Mary” or an “Our Father.” It was a tsunami of

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-72374288827372467022008-10-02T10:30:00.000-07:002010-02-08T16:13:08.561-08:00

Produced, written and narrated by Claude AdamsCo-producer and cameraman: Reed LindsayAired: September 28, 2008, on Our World with Brian StewartStanley Desmoulins should be a model for Haiti’s future. He’s young, politically active, an electronics engineer who speaks three languages.Stanley lives in a nice apartment overlooking Port au Prince, and drives a late-model SUV. He earns $1000 US a month

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-79453895773628185442008-05-22T17:42:00.001-07:002008-12-11T08:26:10.422-08:00

“I and the public knowWhat all schoolchildren learnThose to whom evil is doneDo evil in return.” W. H. Auden “September 1, 1939”For 14 years, there has been no history taught in Rwandan schools. In a sense, the 1994 genocide that wiped out more than 800,000 people also effectively erased the available records (or at least, scrambled the prevailing notions) of a people’s past. The genocide

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-48391671689804472052008-02-23T10:59:00.000-08:002008-12-11T08:26:11.415-08:00

THE NEW YORK TIMESJune 25, 2000MUST-BLEED TV; The Limits of RealityTo the Editor:Several years ago I worked as a contract videographer for a segment of ''Trauma: Life in the E.R,'' a show mentioned by Craig Tomashoff in his June 11 article [''When the Reality Is Inside the Body'']. What surprised me more than anything else was how readily accident victims allowed their private pain to be

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-81669254622523553422008-02-22T23:09:00.000-08:002008-12-11T08:26:11.594-08:00

                                          Thanks to Mother Jones MagazineHavana—Mixing tourism and politics is rarely a good idea. The traveler usually doesn’t have the language, the cultural sensitivity, or the familiarity with a country’s history, to make value judgments about how a society should be run. So better to stay on the beach, and out of the barrio, and leave revolution to the

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-87397700957377947302008-02-19T17:26:00.000-08:002008-12-11T08:26:11.862-08:00

                                                     Photo by Kim IvesFour years ago this month, Canada supported a discreditable act of regime-change in Haiti – a chain of events that ended with the removal of a legitimate head of state. It’s a useful incident to remember as politicians and military men put on their most earnest faces to justify Canadians dying for freedom and democracy in

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-51876124095508787032008-02-02T19:37:00.000-08:002010-02-08T16:15:48.186-08:00

       Photo By: James Nachtway Last spring, after a five-week visit to Rwanda, I produced two television news pieces for the CBC. Together, the stories challenged the prevailing view about healing and reconciliation in that Central African country, 13 years after the genocide. The stories were anecdotal. They featured two Tutsi women and one Tutsi man who survived the slaughter, and one Hutu man

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-69783698974426728202007-12-11T23:43:00.000-08:002008-12-11T08:26:12.296-08:00

December 10, 2007In October, 1998, Belgian journalist Peter Verlinden spent three hours interviewing an African-born Belgian rancher, Marcel Gerin, and his Mexican-born wife Gloria Martinez. The couple managed the Mpanga Ranch in southeastern Rwanda, a popular tourist stop near the southern extremity of Akagera National Park.Gerin and Martinez were witnesses to (and almost consumed in) a little

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-40033081522591508332007-10-21T12:17:00.000-07:002008-12-11T08:26:12.548-08:00

“Your guilt is our power.” Shelby Steele, research fellow at the Hoover Institution and Harvard University.Oct. 21, 2007In four decades of journalism, I’ve been called of a lot of things. But no one has ever accused me of harboring genocidal tendencies. Until now.A Rwandan man who lives in Kigali and who calls himself a teacher and newspaper columnist posted a message on a U.S. Christian

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-72636425713699039182007-09-13T17:31:00.003-07:002007-09-13T17:31:27.285-07:00

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-66595524044417831412007-08-28T13:37:00.000-07:002011-08-16T09:51:50.734-07:00

(Published in The Tyee, Sept. 5, 2007) Earlier this month, John Honderich, the former publisher of Canada’s biggest paper, the Toronto Star, wrote an impassioned opinion piece in the Star about the sorry state of press freedom in Rwanda. Honderich was upset with Rwandan president Paul Kagame. It seems that last month, Kagame ordered the sacking of an editor at the New Times, Rwanda’s only daily

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-46351114849972779452007-06-28T18:06:00.000-07:002008-12-11T08:26:13.436-08:00

June 28, 2007 (Published in the Guelph Mercury on July 3, 2007)Umberto Eco says a real hero is always a hero by mistake, that he dreams of being an honest coward like everyone else. It’s an aphorism that Paul Rusesabagina may soon take to heart. Heroism for the world’s most high-profile Rwandan is fast becoming a burden, with every humanitarian medal he receives, and with every lecture he

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-64229487233335812592007-06-22T18:05:00.000-07:002010-02-08T16:18:55.721-08:00

June 22, 2007"Rwanda's key dilemma is how to build a democracy that can incorporate a guilty majority alongside an aggrieved and fearful minority in a single political community."--Mahmood Mamdani, "When Victims Become Killers""In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-25784084691450849762007-05-16T10:43:00.000-07:002010-02-08T16:21:37.882-08:00

May 15, 2007You may leave Rwanda, but it doesn’t leave you. I’m back in Canada with Emmanuel’s genocide story in my head. And Theogene’s take on the process of forgiveness. And Emmy on the difficulties of practicing journalism in Rwanda. And the light in Jean-Bosco’s eyes when he talked about how his TV story helped fix the potholes on Kigali streets.They were four of my students and I like to

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-73758813509610354992007-04-27T10:56:00.000-07:002008-12-11T08:26:14.414-08:00

April 27, 2007The Sufi poet Rumi has a wonderful poem about learning to fly by falling. You grow wings because you have to.This week, I threw my 4th year journalism and communications class over a cliff. “Your final assignment,” I told them, “is to produce a television documentary.” I held up a newspaper headline that talked about how they, the students at the National University of Rwanda, live

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-87818212909415857982007-04-22T13:10:00.000-07:002008-12-11T08:26:14.568-08:00

April 22, 2007All my life, I’ve been struggling against Traveler’s Myopia. It’s a common ailment. We think that globetrotting makes us smart; then, we land in a so-called “exotic” place, and we are surprised to find that the people are so very much like us, with many of the same impulses, dreams, dilemmas and sensitivities.Last week, I returned from lunch to my classroom at the National

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-63556567634916055172007-04-18T10:44:00.000-07:002008-12-11T08:26:14.812-08:00

April 18, 2007“Tell me a story. Dites moi une histoire.”I am hoping this will be the icebreaker in my opening class of a weeklong broadcast writing seminar. But the eight 4th-year journalism and communication students at the National University of Rwanda shift uneasily. They are not yet ready for that level of intimacy, even though we are crammed into a tiny classroom with barely enough room for

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-49930380044802029312007-04-13T19:06:00.000-07:002008-12-11T08:26:15.079-08:00

April 13, 2007My dining companion at the La Fiesta Mexican restaurant, in the Kimihurura district of Kigali, was visibly agitated, and her distress had nothing to do with the food. I asked her what was wrong. She said: “Can’t you hear the music?” I could. It was a mariachi band. “Should I tell the owner to turn it down?” I offered.My companion, a Rwandan woman, shook her head. “Doesn’t he realize

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-20362052609120680632007-04-09T22:05:00.000-07:002008-12-11T08:26:15.448-08:00

April 8, 2007A genocide anniversary ceremony, at least in Rwanda, is more than a solemn act of national remembering and self-reflection. Here, it’s also a deeply political act, a shout to the world.It’s early Saturday morning, April 7, and I’m on the road to Murambi. It’s a name that may someday resonate with Rwandans in the same way that Auschwitz and Buchenwald resonate with the Jews. My driver

Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-2657339190442279352007-04-04T21:54:00.000-07:002008-12-11T08:26:15.589-08:00

April 4, 2007Thirteen years ago, while scouring through the carnage of the Nyarubuye massacre site in eastern Rwanda, I picked up a scrap of yellowing paper bearing 12 names—a father, mother and 10 children. The youngest child was one, the eldest 23. It was some kind of parish record, torn at the edges, with what looked like a child’s doodle in the centre--a figure eight scratched with a

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