The Frontline Club

Recent events in the Caucasus have highlighted the growing self-confidence of a newly resurgent Russia, that appears to be seeking to revive much of the old Soviet influence at home and abroad.

In recent months, Russia – backed by increasing oil and gas revenues – has paid off debts to international banks and organisations; announced that it is seeking to modernise its military and resumed its long-range projection of military force; intervened militarily in support of separatist movements in the Caucasus; and made clear its objections to Nato expansion and the US missile defense plans.

Should the West accept that Russia will continue to dominate in its sphere of influence or does it pose a renewed threat to Nato and its allies? And does the West have double-standards when it comes to dealing with Russia?

Join us as we debate all these issues and more with Edward Lucas – author of The New Cold War and Alexei Pankin, a respected Russian journalist.

Edward Lucas is the Central and Eastern Europe correspondent for The Economist and has been covering the region for more than 20 years. He’s witnessed the final years of the Cold War, the fall of the Iron Curtain and the collapse of the Soviet empire as well as Boris Yeltsin’s downfall and Vladimir Putin’s rise to power. From 1992 to 1994, he was the managing editor of The Baltic Independent, a weekly English-language newspaper published in Tallinn. He is the author of The New Cold War.

Alexei Pankin is a Russian political and media analyst. Currently he is Editor-in-Chief of the IFRA-GIPP Magazine, an ePaper monthly for publishing business professionals, and columnist for a number of news outlets including Novosti – a Russian News and Information agency, and The Moscow Times. Between 1992 and 1996 he organised national elections media coverage, monitoring missions in post-Communist countries ranging from Estonia to former Yugoslavia, and from Russia to South Caucasus. He was founding editor of the Op-Ed page at the leading Russian national daily Izvestia.

Bridget Kendall has been the BBC’s Defence and Diplomatic Correspondent since 1998. She has made several documentaries for BBC television including profiles of Vladimir Putin, Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as a documentary on the rise of Russian nationalism. During 2006, she travelled to Russia to chair and present three hour-long debates on Russia’s future, as well as conduct a two-and-a-quarter hour interactive interview with President Putin, live from inside the Kremlin, which was broadcast worldwide – her second interview with the Russian leader.

Dubbed as India’s 9/11, the recent attacks in Mumbai left almost 200 dead and the world reeling. While criticism has been levelled at India’s government for their slow response to the attacks as well as their failure to act on intelligence, Lashkar-e-Toiba – a Kashmiri extremist group based in Pakistan – are being blamed for carrying them out.

What will these attacks mean for the ongoing "war on terror" and will India now be seen as a soft target? Will deteriorating relations between Pakistan and India be brought closer by a new co-operation to work together in the aftermath of the attacks and a joint desire to bring the perpetrators to justice? Or will these attacks simply fuel the existing tensions between these two nuclear powers?

David Loyn is the BBC’s International Development correspondent, and formerly their Delhi correspondent.

Vikram Dodd writes for The Guardian and was in Mumbai shortly before the attacks took place, and returned there the following day to report on them.

Edna Fernandes is a British Indian journalist who was born in Nairobi and grew up in London. She is a former foreign correspondent for the Financial Times in New Delhi as well as political and international business correspondent for Reuters and Dow Jones in London. Her first book Holy Warriors: A Journey into the Heart of Indian Fundamentalism was shortlisted for the UK’s Index on Censorship TR Fyvel prize and nominated for India’s Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Best Book Award. Most recently, Edna has written about the fallout from India’s 9/11 on her website.

Owen Bennett-Jones is presenter and correspondent for the BBC and former Islamabad correspondent. Owen’s coverage of the events in Pakistan in 2007 and 2008 included interviews with Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif and President Musharraf, reporting on the country’s corruption, Benazir Bhutto’s return and on the aftermath of her assassination. In 2003 he wrote Pakistan: Eye Of The Storm, a modern history of the country, and he is currently working on a second edition.

Dubbed as India’s 9/11, the recent attacks in Mumbai left almost 200 dead and the world reeling. While criticism has been levelled at India’s government for their slow response to the attacks as well as their failure to act on intelligence, Lashkar-e-Toiba – a Kashmiri extremist group based in Pakistan – are being blamed for carrying them out.

What will these attacks mean for the ongoing "war on terror" and will India now be seen as a soft target? Will deteriorating relations between Pakistan and India be brought closer by a new co-operation to work together in the aftermath of the attacks and a joint desire to bring the perpetrators to justice? Or will these attacks simply fuel the existing tensions between these two nuclear powers?

David Loyn is the BBC’s International Development correspondent, and formerly their Delhi correspondent.

Vikram Dodd writes for The Guardian and was in Mumbai shortly before the attacks took place, and returned there the following day to report on them.

Edna Fernandes is a British Indian journalist who was born in Nairobi and grew up in London. She is a former foreign correspondent for the Financial Times in New Delhi as well as political and international business correspondent for Reuters and Dow Jones in London. Her first book Holy Warriors: A Journey into the Heart of Indian Fundamentalism was shortlisted for the UK’s Index on Censorship TR Fyvel prize and nominated for India’s Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Best Book Award. Most recently, Edna has written about the fallout from India’s 9/11 on her website.

Owen Bennett-Jones is presenter and correspondent for the BBC and former Islamabad correspondent. Owen’s coverage of the events in Pakistan in 2007 and 2008 included interviews with Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif and President Musharraf, reporting on the country’s corruption, Benazir Bhutto’s return and on the aftermath of her assassination. In 2003 he wrote Pakistan: Eye Of The Storm, a modern history of the country, and he is currently working on a second edition.

Richard Bourne’s Lula of Brazil is an objective study of one man set against the contemporary history of a major emerging power. From climate change to inequality, Lula and his country are grappling with the greatest challenges facing the modern world.

President Lula of Brazil has a life that reads like a film script. The child of a dysfunctional family, his early life was one of poverty and chaos. In the 1970s, at a time when his country and continent were ruled by right-wing dictators, he switched from football-mad metalworker to militant trade union leader.

Dissatisfied with the power of existing parties to bring about change, he founded the Partido dos Trabalhadores, the Workers Party. He was elected as president in 2002 and again in 2006. As a progressive leader in a globalizing world, he has walked a difficult tightrope in international relations with the US, Africa and the Middle East; and in trying to improve the lot of poor and black Brazilians at home.

Richard Bourne is the author of numerous other books on Latin America and first visited Brazil in 1965 as a journalist. He later founded the Commonwealth Policy Studies Unit at London University’s Institute of Commonwealth Studies.

Rogerio Simoes is head of the BBC Brazilian Service

Richard Bourne’s Lula of Brazil is an objective study of one man set against the contemporary history of a major emerging power. From climate change to inequality, Lula and his country are grappling with the greatest challenges facing the modern world.

President Lula of Brazil has a life that reads like a film script. The child of a dysfunctional family, his early life was one of poverty and chaos. In the 1970s, at a time when his country and continent were ruled by right-wing dictators, he switched from football-mad metalworker to militant trade union leader.

Dissatisfied with the power of existing parties to bring about change, he founded the Partido dos Trabalhadores, the Workers Party. He was elected as president in 2002 and again in 2006. As a progressive leader in a globalizing world, he has walked a difficult tightrope in international relations with the US, Africa and the Middle East; and in trying to improve the lot of poor and black Brazilians at home.

Richard Bourne is the author of numerous other books on Latin America and first visited Brazil in 1965 as a journalist. He later founded the Commonwealth Policy Studies Unit at London University’s Institute of Commonwealth Studies.

Rogerio Simoes is head of the BBC Brazilian Service

In recent weeks, increasing criticism has been leveled at the media over failure to provide adequate warning of the impending economic turmoil, as well as accusations of sensationalist coverage. Did the media fail in its scrutiny? Or are the workings of international finance now so complex and secretive that the media can no longer provide effective oversight?

We ask some of the journalists and commentators who have been credited with providing early warning of the collapse of the markets for their assessment of where the global economy will be in twelve months as well as asking them to reflect on the media’s role in the crisis.

Paul Lashmar is an investigative journalist and is currently undertaking a research project into the reporting in the UK of the sub-prime market prior to August 2007 for publication in Journalism Practice. He writes for various newspapers including the Independent on Sunday, The Guardian and The Evening Standard, and his specialist areas include terrorism, intelligence, organised crime, offshore crime, business fraud and the Cold War.

Gillian Tett is an assistant editor of the Financial Times and oversees the global coverage of the financial markets. In 2007 she was awarded the Wincott prize, the premier British award for financial journalism, for her capital markets coverage. She was named British Business Journalist of the Year in 2008.

Ann Pettifor Ann Pettifor is a political economist and author of The Coming First World Debt Crisis (Palgrave, 2006) and editor of The Real World Economic Outlook (Palgrave, 2003). She is a fellow of the new economics foundation (nef) in London and director of Advocacy International.

Michael Blastland is a freelance writer and broadcaster and co-author of The Numbers Game: The Commonsense Guide to Understanding Numbers in the News, in Politics, and In Life. A journalist all his professional life, he started on weekly newspapers before moving to the BBC where he made current affairs programmes for Radio 4, such as Analysis and More or Less.

Paul Mason is Newsnight’s Economics Editor with a brief to cover an agenda that he sums up as: "profit, people and planet". He is also the author of Meltdown – The End of the Age of Greed which will be published in Spring 2009 by Verso.

In recent weeks, increasing criticism has been leveled at the media over failure to provide adequate warning of the impending economic turmoil, as well as accusations of sensationalist coverage. Did the media fail in its scrutiny? Or are the workings of international finance now so complex and secretive that the media can no longer provide effective oversight?

We ask some of the journalists and commentators who have been credited with providing early warning of the collapse of the markets for their assessment of where the global economy will be in twelve months as well as asking them to reflect on the media’s role in the crisis.

Paul Lashmar is an investigative journalist and is currently undertaking a research project into the reporting in the UK of the sub-prime market prior to August 2007 for publication in Journalism Practice. He writes for various newspapers including the Independent on Sunday, The Guardian and The Evening Standard, and his specialist areas include terrorism, intelligence, organised crime, offshore crime, business fraud and the Cold War.

Gillian Tett is an assistant editor of the Financial Times and oversees the global coverage of the financial markets. In 2007 she was awarded the Wincott prize, the premier British award for financial journalism, for her capital markets coverage. She was named British Business Journalist of the Year in 2008.

Ann Pettifor Ann Pettifor is a political economist and author of The Coming First World Debt Crisis (Palgrave, 2006) and editor of The Real World Economic Outlook (Palgrave, 2003). She is a fellow of the new economics foundation (nef) in London and director of Advocacy International.

Michael Blastland is a freelance writer and broadcaster and co-author of The Numbers Game: The Commonsense Guide to Understanding Numbers in the News, in Politics, and In Life. A journalist all his professional life, he started on weekly newspapers before moving to the BBC where he made current affairs programmes for Radio 4, such as Analysis and More or Less.

Paul Mason is Newsnight’s Economics Editor with a brief to cover an agenda that he sums up as: "profit, people and planet". He is also the author of Meltdown – The End of the Age of Greed which will be published in Spring 2009 by Verso.

In this revealing memoir, newspaper editor Abdul Bari Atwan recounts with humour and honesty his journey from Palestinian refugee camps to the front page. He depicts both the horror of camp massacres and the unexpected consequences of Britain’s involvement in the region.

Atwan shares his many extraordinary encounters, including tea with Margaret Thatcher, a weekend with Osama bin Laden, intimate meetings with Yasser Arafat, and the row between Colonel Gaddafi and the Shah of Iran that earned him his first journalistic break.

Abdul Bari Atwan was born in Gaza in 1950, left aged seventeen and has since become one of the world’s foremost commentators on the Middle East, for the last twenty years editing the independent Arabic daily, London-based al-Quds al-Arabi.

Ian Black is the Middle Eastern editor for The Guardian.

In this revealing memoir, newspaper editor Abdul Bari Atwan recounts with humour and honesty his journey from Palestinian refugee camps to the front page. He depicts both the horror of camp massacres and the unexpected consequences of Britain’s involvement in the region.

Atwan shares his many extraordinary encounters, including tea with Margaret Thatcher, a weekend with Osama bin Laden, intimate meetings with Yasser Arafat, and the row between Colonel Gaddafi and the Shah of Iran that earned him his first journalistic break.

Abdul Bari Atwan was born in Gaza in 1950, left aged seventeen and has since become one of the world’s foremost commentators on the Middle East, for the last twenty years editing the independent Arabic daily, London-based al-Quds al-Arabi.

Ian Black is the Middle Eastern editor for The Guardian.

Pulitzer winning photographer Liu Heung Shing is a renowned Chinese photographer and a former foreign correspondent. In a career spanning over 20 years he covered China, India, Korea, the US and former USSR for all the major publications.

China: Portrait of a Country is the new photography volume edited by Liu and brings together a vast selection of images by Chinese photographers since 1949, giving readers a visual journey across the great People’s Republic.

Via work by 88 Chinese photographers, this collection of images including some never seen before, shows how the Chinese people have blossomed in spite of enduring previous decades of extraordinary hardship.

China: Portrait of a Country is published by Taschen and will be on sale after the event for the special price of £25