North Korea Won’t Be Liberated in a Day

The writer, an idealist, discovers how difficult it is to figure out how to help with human rights issues in North Korea:

“Blaine Harden, author of the book about escaped prisoner Shin Dong-hyuk, has said before that North Korea’s diplomats ‘”go nuts” and leave the room’ when the subject of the camps in broached in any discussion of human rights. But Hawk says it’s essential, particularly since negotiations on nukes have been set back by North Korea’s nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009. ‘The idea that you would keep human rights off of the agenda for 20-30 years while [North Korea] does economic development and allow the present prison population to die off is, to me, extraordinary.’ Harden estimates that up to 400,000 people have already died in the North Korean gulag.

“‘Few people outside of the pro-apartheid figures in South Africa argued to ignore apartheid for a generation until the economic situation of the South African population improved,’ Hawk said, sounding genuinely moved and outraged. I asked him what I could do to help. The best thing, he said, was to encourage my government—to send a letter urging my foreign minister to support U.N. resolutions on North Korean human rights.

“I’ll admit I was hoping he’d tell me to jump on a flight to Seoul tomorrow, decked out in camouflage gear with a knife between my teeth. Wasn’t writing letters to the government the kind of thing done by old people and crack-ups? Anyway, hadn’t those people heard of email?”

Published: Nov 14, 2012
Length: 19 minutes (4,905 words)

Longreads Member Exclusive: The Creature Beyond the Mountains

(Subscribe to Longreads to receive this and other weekly exclusives.) A look at the giant sturgeon in the Pacific Northwest—one, named Herman, weighs nearly 500 pounds—and about our relationship with them. Doyle is editor of Portland Magazine and writes frequently for Orion‘s print edition and blog. His piece won the John Burroughs Award and was listed as “Notable” by both Best Science and Nature Writing 2012 and Best American Essays 2012.

“There are fish in the rivers of Cascadia that are bigger and heavier than the biggest bears. To haul these fish out of the Columbia River, men once used horses and oxen. These creatures are so enormous and so protected by bony armor that no one picks on them, so they grow to be more than a hundred years old, maybe two hundred years old; no one knows. Sometimes in winter they gather in immense roiling balls in the river, maybe for heat, maybe for town meetings, maybe for wild sex; no one knows. A ball of more than sixty thousand of them recently rolled up against the bottom of a dam in the Columbia, causing a nervous United States Army Corps of Engineers to send a small submarine down to check on the dam. They eat fish, clams, rocks, fishing reels, shoes, snails, beer bottles, lamprey, eggs, insects, fishing lures, cannonballs, cats, ducks, crabs, basketballs, squirrels, and many younger members of their species; essentially they eat whatever they want. People have fished for them using whole chickens as bait, with hooks the size of your hand.”

Source: Orion Magazine
Published: Jan 1, 2011
Length: 13 minutes (3,250 words)

A Mormon Reporter On The Romney Bus

How the Mitt Romney campaign, its supporters and the media addressed the candidate’s Mormon faith:

“On the night of the South Carolina Republican primary in January, I sat near the front of a dark campaign press bus and listened to reporters talk about Mitt Romney’s underwear.

“Earlier in the day, one of them had happened upon the candidate and his wife doing laundry in the basement of our Columbia, South Carolina, hotel, and a small cluster of colleagues had now gathered to listen to him relate the anecdote, lapping up every mundane detail of this rare interaction with the closed-off couple.
Finally, another reporter interrupted.

“‘Did you see their underwear?’ she asked, grinning mischievously as though she had just said something naughty.”

Source: BuzzFeed
Published: Nov 13, 2012
Length: 15 minutes (3,838 words)

‘Silly, Funny Stories About Really Serious Things’: A Chat With Writer Jon Ronson

An interview with the journalist (see his recent stories) about what makes a good story:

“I spent three months and I just couldn’t do it. And the reason was because I kept on meeting people who worked in the credit industry and they were really boring. I couldn’t make them light up the page. And, as I said in The Psychopath Test, if you want to get away with wielding true malevolent power, be boring. Journalists hate writing about boring people, because we want to look good, you know? So that was the most depressing one. To the extent that I would like get up in the morning—I’ve never really told this to anyone, but I’d get up in the morning, I’d go downstairs to breakfast and I’d, like, look at my cereal and burst into tears. And then I’d think, it’s only like nine hours until I can sit down and watch TV. After three months of that, I was thinking, I’m actually getting depressed here. So I abandoned it. My editor in New York keeps reminding me that, if I’d carried on with the credit-card book, it would have come out exactly when the banks collapsed and everyone would have turned to me. But I just couldn’t do it.”

Source: The Awl
Published: Nov 12, 2012
Length: 10 minutes (2,654 words)

Mexico: Risking Life for Truth

Dozens of reporters have been killed in Mexico over the last 12 years by drug traffickers, and very little has been done to investigate their deaths and bring the murderers to justice:

“Let us say that you are a Mexican reporter working for peanuts at a local television station somewhere in the provinces—the state of Durango, for example—and that one day you get a friendly invitation from a powerful drug-trafficking group. Imagine that it is the Zetas, and that thanks to their efforts in your city several dozen people have recently perished in various unspeakable ways, while justice turned a blind eye. Among the dead is one of your colleagues. Now consider the invitation, which is to a press conference to be held punctually on the following Friday, at a not particularly out of the way spot just outside of town. You were, perhaps, considering going instead to a movie? Keep in mind, the invitation notes, that attendance will be taken by the Zetas.

“Imagine now that you arrive on the appointed day at the stated location, and that you are greeted by several expensively dressed, highly amiable men. Once the greetings are over, they have something to say, and the tone changes. We would like you, they say, to be considerate of us in your coverage. We have seen or heard certain articles or news reports that are unfair and, dare we say, displeasing to us. Displeasing. We have our eye on you. We would like you to consider the consequences of offending us further. We know you would not look forward to the result. We give warning, but we give no quarter. You are dismissed.”

Published: Nov 13, 2012
Length: 16 minutes (4,079 words)

Up the Hill

A Chattanooga man dedicates his life to cleaning up an abandoned cemetery for African Americans founded in the 1890s:

“Cemeteries aren’t built for the dead; they’re built for the living.

“Those inscriptions on the tombstones—’In Memory,’ ‘Rest in Peace’—are as much wishes for the departed as they are implied contracts with those left behind. But promises etched in stone can still be broken. “Gone but not Forgotten,” some of the headstones say, and at times David feels like he’s the only reason that’s still true. The more he clears, though, the more he sees fresh flowers, or at least fresh silk flowers, left on graves. That means people are coming, that they’re finding what, or who, they’re looking for. They are paying their respects, making their peace.”

Published: Nov 12, 2012
Length: 15 minutes (3,963 words)

The Innocent Man, Part Two

The second part of Texas Monthly’s series on Michael Morton’s wrongful conviction for the murder of his wife (read part one here):

“It was this sense of certainty that appeared to have blinded investigators to what was surely the most incredible missed clue in the entire case: a handwritten phone message for Wood reporting that Christine’s credit card had apparently been used at a store in San Antonio two days after her murder. ‘Larry Miller can ID the woman,’ stated the message, which included a number to call. Wood did not appear to have ever investigated the lead.

“As he sifted through the papers, Michael felt ‘no anger, just bewilderment,’ he told me. ‘By that time, I had been pummeled with so much, for so long, that I recall just staring at the pages, stunned.’ For the first time in almost 25 years, he began to have a sense of clarity about what had happened. Michael carefully turned the pages and came across an eight-page transcript of a phone call that had taken place between Wood and Michael’s mother-in-law, Rita Kirkpatrick, less than two weeks after Christine’s murder. As he studied each typewritten word, Michael could feel his throat tightening.”

Source: Texas Monthly
Published: Nov 13, 2012
Length: 61 minutes (15,322 words)

The Hazing Death of Florida A&M Drum Major Robert Champion

A college marching band’s hazing ritual claims the life of a star clarinet player:

“The young man stood at the front of Bus C, his ribs rising and falling with each breath. Before him stood about 20 members of one of the best marching bands in the world, Florida A&M’s Marching 100, which had performed for presidents and before a televised Super Bowl audience of 106 million, and now, on a Saturday night last fall, was gathered in the dark inside Bus C, parked behind the Rosen Plaza Hotel off International Drive in Orlando, not far from Pizza Hut and T.G.I. Friday’s. The doors of Bus C were closed and the lights were out, and at the rear of the bus sat two panting people who had been beaten about the torso and were now trying to recover. The man was about to vomit and the woman would later tell detectives that she had been hit and kicked until she was unconscious. The young man waiting at the front of the bus was Robert Champion.

“He played the clarinet, played it so well that he had rocketed through the ranks of the band and had been appointed drum major, one of six students who wore white uniforms and carried batons and led the band, high-stepping, onto the field. He was in line to become head drum major the following year, the equivalent to a starting quarterback on a world-famous team of 350.”

Source: Tampa Bay Times
Published: Nov 12, 2012
Length: 10 minutes (2,664 words)

The Problem with the Red Cross

Why the Red Cross hasn’t been as effective as small community groups when it has come to disaster relief post-Sandy:

“The real problem with the Red Cross was not that it was stretched thin, but rather that it was simply too big, and its people too inexperienced in disaster recovery, to be able to respond nimbly to Sandy. Eventually, after a week or two, it will lumber in to affected areas and take over from the ad-hoc groups who provided desperately-needed aid in the early days. It’s reasonably good at that. But that’s clearly not good enough, and it’s certainly nowhere near flawless.

“Of course, the Red Cross is burdened with massive expectations. If you’re stuck in a remote part of Staten Island without power or communication for days on end, no one’s going to blame Doctors Without Borders or Occupy Wall Street if you get no help — but they are going to blame the Red Cross.

“With $117 million in donations comes an expectation that the Red Cross can and should be everywhere it’s needed, when it’s needed, rather than in a handful of places, a week later, offering food but no shelter or blankets or power or lights. But probably those expectations are unrealistic. The US is fortunate in that it’s not a permanent disaster zone: it’s not a country where Red Cross volunteers are ever going to be experienced in responding to such things. And mobilizing thousands of volunteers and tens of millions of dollars to provide food and shelter in areas without electricity or pharmacies or heat — that’s a logistical nightmare.”

Source: Reuters
Published: Nov 12, 2012
Length: 9 minutes (2,288 words)

Hard Lessons in Modern Lending

After the financial crisis, banks reduced risk not just by eliminating those who weren’t paying—they also were saying goodbye to scores of small businesses that had otherwise been responsible:

“It didn’t matter that JBC’s business had recovered; the decision had been made months before. The men recognized the irony. Under different circumstances, ‘we’d be aggressively pursuing you as a customer,’ one of them told Bliss. But JBC had been deemed, in the oblique vocabulary of Charter One and its parent companies, Citizens Bank and the Royal Bank of Scotland, noncore.

“The problem was not Bliss’s company but his industry and region–both of which, in an effort to stem future losses, his bank had essentially written off. Charter One, like other banks across the country, was using a sort of predictive math to sever ties with struggling borrowers before they stopped making payments. In the process, banks were abandoning businesses that were recovering, too. ‘It was a bizarre situation,’ Bliss says. ‘We were successful. It was so frustrating.'”

Author: Burt Helm
Source: Inc.
Published: Nov 8, 2012
Length: 14 minutes (3,579 words)