The Frontline Club

Little is known about Kim Jong-il’s youngest son Kim Jong Un but his promotion to North Korea’s powerful defence commission is being interpreted as a clear sign that he is being groomed to be his father’s heir.

If Kim Jong-il is paving the way for a handover of power to a third generation of his faimily, what does this mean for the future of the communist dynasty and its economic and foreign polices?

With so much of what goes on inside North Korea veiled in secrecy we will be discussing what recent developments mean for North Korea and its relationships with its neighbours and the world beyond.

With North Korea’s nuclear threat said to have reached an "alarming level" we will turn to the issue of nuclear proliferation and assess the dangers posed not only by North Korea, but also Libya Iran and the South Asia region. An opportunity to ask questions and discuss with experts.

With:

Aidan Foster-Carter, Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Sociology & Modern Korea at Leeds University;

Charles Scanlon, BBC correspondent in Japan and South Korea from 2000 to 2007, currently an editor at BBC World Service news;

Tim Tate, investigative journalist and film maker, director of Dirty Little Secrets;

Mark Fitzpatrick, director of Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Programme at International Institute for Strategic Studies;

More to be confirmed shortly.

Hosted by Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House, October’s First Wednesday discussion will be another opportunity to join in a lively public meeting which brings together experts and commentators and mix their views with contributions from our audience.

When the Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic was ousted from power it brought to an end a 13-year rule that had seen the country torn apart by bloody conflict, with thousands of people killed.

The man who had been feted by world leaders at the height of his powers as Serbian President in 1995 was forced out of office amid street protests and a general strike after losing the September 2000 election and later faced trial in the Hague for war crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Kosovo.

Ten years after the October 5th revolution we will be bringing together journalists, fillmmakers and experts who were there to discuss these remarkable events and their impact. What was the legacy of the former President who died in his cell in 2006?

Chaired by Bill Neely, International Editor for ITV News.

With:

Steve Crawshaw, international advocacy director, Amnesty International and co-author of Small Acts of Resistance How courage, tenacity and ingenuity can change the world;

Norma Percy, co-executive producer (with Brian Lapping) of the BBC series, The Fall of Milosevic;

Allan Little, BBC News special correspondent and programme presenter;

Maggie O’Kane, editorial director of GuardianFilms and former foreign correspondent with the newspaper, she has covered most of the world’s major conflicts over the last decade.

What would you do if someone handed you 90,000 unfiltered documents and asked you to make a story out of it?

Managing large amounts of data is one of the key skills of the modern, digitally-minded journalist. So how do top data-driven journalists collate, analyse and present vast amounts of facts and figures into interactive graphics, searchable databases and fascinating charts.

Experts include:

— Simon Rogers, news editor (data) at The Guardian and editor of Guardian.co.uk’s Datablog. Simon played a key role in turning some of the 90,000 documents given to Wikileaks into graphics and interactive charts. Read this fascinating article by Simon on how he did it.

— David McCandless, writer, designer and author of Information is Beautiful, which "explores the potential of data visualisation as a new direction for journalist and story-telling."

— Julian Burgess, programmer and editorial developer at The Times, who will talk about using data in a practical newsroom environment and how journalists can add a real-time dimension to their work.

— Michael Blastland, journalist and creator of BBC Radio 4’s More or Less programme. Michael will talk about how to use official sources and data and make sure you’re getting the real story behind the figures.

The Frontline Club’s On the Media series of events is produced in association with the BBC College of Journalism.

As the US midterm elections approach we will be discussing their significance for Barack Obama’s Presidency.

What are the prospects of the Democrats losing their Senate majority altogether after the 2 November polls? What impact will it have on the remainder of President Obama’s term in office if his party loses control of the legislative branch to the Republicans?

Join us at the Frontline Club where we will be looking ahead to the midterm elections and the next two years for President Obama’s in the White House with congressional scholar, Professor Thomas Mann, an expert on campaigns, elections and the effectiveness of Congress.

Chaired by Michael Goldfarb, London correspondent for globalpost.com

With:

Bill Barnard, chair of Democrats Abroad UK;

Dr Thomas D. Grant, chair of Republicans Abroad UK;

Professor Robert McKeever, Dean of the Faculty of Law Governance and International Relations, London Metropolitan University, and author of Raw Judicial Power? The Supreme Court and American Society, The United States Supreme Court: A Political and Legal Analysis and lead author of (with Professor Philip Davies) of the major textbook Politics USA: third edition due out in 2011.

What will be the impact of climate change on the world’s poorest people? Floods, droughts, hurricanes, sea-level rise, and seasonal unpredictability, have all linked to excessive carbon emissions. The resulting failed harvests, destroyed homes, water scarcity, and deepening health crises are undermining millions of peoples rights to life, security, food, water, health and shelter.

The relationship between the enjoyment of these basic human rights and the quality of the human environment was first recognised by the UN General Assembly in the late 1960s.

As the formal UN Review Meeting of the Millennium Development Goals approaches, join us at the Frontline Club discuss the impact of climate change on them being realised.

At this third and final event in a series in association with Communications INC we will also be discussing whether climate change rights violations can be remedied in courts of law and if human rights principles should be put at the heart of international climate change policy.

Chaired by Julian Rush, Channel 4 News science correspondent

With:

Lawrence McGinty, health and science editor ITV news

Colm Ó Cuanacháin, Senior Director of Campaigns at Amnesty International

Christoph Schwarte, Staff Lawyer, Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development (FIELD)

Marine Destrez, researcher at Leadership for Environment and Development International (LEAD)

How do photographers establish themselves in the competitive world of photojournalism? If you’re not represented by an agency what’s the best way to secure stories and promote your work? Go it alone and try and make a name for yourself in the dog-eat-dog photography business? Or form a collective?

Documentography is a group of photographers who collaborate internationally covering documentary, reportage, portraiture and fine art. Since 2000 this collection of five very different and equally talented photographers has worked together to promote their work and share their success. They combine forces to produce a quarterly web magazine, ISSUE.

Two members of Documentography, Guilhem Alandry and Anna Kåri, will be at the Frontline Club to discuss their collective and their varied techniques, including their innovative joint project about a shanty town built on a rubbish tip in Sierra Leone commissioned by Save the Children.

The event will be moderated by Jennifer Pollard, a Senior Lecturer in History & Theory of Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at London College of Communication. She specialises in the history of photojournalism and documentary, trauma, and globalized visual culture.

Guilhem Alandry is a videographer, photographer and multimedia producer. His use of 360-degree documentary technique has won him awards and has been used in print, interactive projects, exhibitions and TV. He won the Olympus Digital Elements Award 2003 and the Olympus Digital Photographer of the Year in the Observer Hodge Award 2004.

Anna Kåri’s specialties are humanitarian issues of migration, refugees, identity and human rights. The Danish photographer has worked extensively in the Balkans, Ethiopia, Southern Sudan and West Africa. Her 5-year long project “The Roma refugees from Kosovo” won a Metro young photographers bursary award, The Tom Webster Award and was a runner up in the Ian Parry Awards. In 2005, Kåri was selected for the World Press Masterclass.

The West’s perception of Arab women has become increasingly associated with the victim, oppression and the veil. As a poet, writer and journalist Joumana Haddad has fought against such simplistic stereotyping of the Arab woman. She will be at the Frontline Club in conversation with BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen to discuss this and her new book I Killed Scheherazade: Confessions of an Angry Arab Woman.

In 2008 Joumana Haddad caused a media storm and outraged the Middle East’s conservative population when she launched the controversial Arabic magazine Jasad (The Body). There were calls for the magazine to be banned and Haddad received a number of death threats.

In her new book I Killed Scheherazade: Confessions of an Angry Arab Woman Joumana Haddad tells the story of her own intellectual development and the impact of literature on her life. She challenges the notion of the oppressed Arab woman so frequently depicted by the West and explores what it means to be an Arab woman today

The floods Pakistan took place against a backdrop of an internal security crisis and mounting political tension internationally: With some 14 million people displaced, the country is suffering a disaster of an unprecedented scale – but what impact is the political turmoil having on the unfolding crisis?

UK Prime Minister David Cameron recently accused Pakistan of "looking both ways" when it comes to supporting or rooting out Islamic terrorists. Within the country more than 3,000 people were killed in 2009 in terrorist attacks.

So which is the real Pakistan? And what impact has the west’s unease over terrorism on the Af-Pak border had on the aid relief effort? Joining us to discuss these questions, the prospects for recovery and what he future holds for Pakistan will be:

— Brice de le Vingne, Médecins Sans Frontières operation manager for Pakistan

— Asif Durrani, Pakistan’s Deputy High Commissioner in the UK

— Karen Pierce, Foreign Office director for Afghanistan and South Asia

— Mustafa Qadri, independent journalist based in Pakistan writing regularly for The Guardian, The Australian (newspaper) and the-diplomat.com

Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House will be in the chair as the Fronline Club’s monthly First Wednesday topical discussions return after a summer break. These lively public meetings bring together experts and commentators and mix their views with contributions from our audience.

Saturation bombing, worldwide protests, napalm, agent orange and an estimated two million lives lost.

Has any war since had such an impact on the public psyche? Why was the reaction to the carnage in Vietnam so strong? Was it because of a lack of conviction in the cause the US was fighting for? Or was it because of these reporters and photographers and their work that so poignantly captured the brutality of war?

Jon Swain was the only British journalist in Phnom Penh when it fell to the Khmer Rouge in April 1975. His coverage of these events and their aftermath won him the British Press Award for Journalist of the Year. His story was retold in the Oscar-winning film, The Killing Fields and his bestselling book River of Time. Swain wrote an article about covering Vietnam in his early 20s in the most recent issue of Frontline: A Broadsheet.

French war photographer Patrick Chauvel was only 18 when he started covering the Vietnam war. In the years that followed he has covered over 20 wars and in 1995 won the World Press Photo award for Spot News. He is the author of two books in French, Rapporteur de Guerre and Sky.

John Laurence, author of the prize-winning memoir The Cat from Hue, covered the war for CBS News from 1965 to 1970 and made the multi-award winning documentary The World of Charlie Company. He also covered 15 other wars in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe.

This special event will be moderated by Michael Nicholson OBE, former senior foreign correspondent for ITN. Nicholson reported for over 25 years from 15 conflicts, including Vietnam. The film Welcome to Sarajevo and his book Natasha’s Story were both based on his experiences covering the war in Bosnia.

En route to Edinburgh Literary Festival Gideon Levy will be joining us at the Frontline Club in conversation with Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow. He will be discussing recent developments in the Middle East and his book The Punishment of Gaza. In which he documents Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza and charts the events leading up to the assault of 2009.

Gideon Levy is a prominent Israeli journalist. For over twenty years he has covered the Israel–Palestine conflict, in particular the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz in his column “Twilight Zone.”