My Father, the Good Nazi

A man struggles to accept his father’s criminal past:

“The more I pushed, the more Horst insisted on varnished truth. Wächter was a father. He saved Jews. He had responsibilities to others. He followed orders and an oath (to Hitler). He had to provide for the family. He was an idealist. He was honourable. He believed the system could be improved. In a court these arguments would be hopeless. Yet Horst maintained that Wächter was ‘very much against the criminal system’ even if hard put to offer any convincing examples.”

Source: Financial Times
Published: May 3, 2013
Length: 15 minutes (3,770 words)

Writers’ Second Thoughts

Authors revisit and annotate their own famous work:

“J.K. Rowling had only agreed to annotate a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone on condition that it was a genuine first edition, from the first print run in 1997 of only 500 copies, 300 of which had gone to libraries. Gekoski had to find one of the remaining 200. ‘So she was quite surprised,’ he said cheerfully, ‘that two days later, I came up with a copy and said, “Let’s go ahead.”‘

“It had cost him £20,000 (he will be reimbursed after the sale). But now, “freely annotated” by its author, with more than a thousand words “on the process of writing, editorial decisions and sources of inspiration …” along with 22 illustrations, it is likely to go for a great deal more.

“Sotheby’s has released a short paragraph to give a flavour of what’s inside – though what she describes is so familiar, it’s already part of JKR mythology. ‘I wrote the book … in snatched hours, in clattering cafés or in the dead of night … The story of how I wrote Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is written invisibly on every page, legible only to me. Sixteen years after it was published, the memories are as vivid as ever as I turn these pages.'”

Author: Liz Jobey
Source: Financial Times
Published: Apr 26, 2013
Length: 13 minutes (3,460 words)

Second Coming

A profile of California Gov. Jerry Brown, who just turned 75 and is ready to address the state’s problems:

“Unemployment in California is still higher than the national average and the state has billions of dollars of unfunded pension liabilities. He says there are some public workers in the state who can retire at 50 ‘and I think they’re going to live until they’re 100. So we have to pay for them for 50 years and they only work for 30 … how’s that going to work?’ He has other projects – ‘big ideas’, such as changing the distribution of new tax money to schools to help children who may not speak English as a first language, and developing a bullet train in the face of considerable opposition and a rising price tag. ‘You can’t be a great country without a big idea and without being able to have faith that the people who come after you will continue,’ he says, emphatically. ‘Otherwise it’s just shifting sands.'”

Source: Financial Times
Published: Apr 5, 2013
Length: 14 minutes (3,574 words)

Death in Singapore

An American electronics engineer is found dead in Singapore. Police told the family it was a suicide, but they believe their son was murdered:

“Shane had died a week before he was to return to the US. The police said he had drilled holes into his bathroom wall, bolted in a pulley, then slipped a black strap through the pulley and wrapped it around the toilet several times. He then tethered the strap to his neck and jumped from a chair. Shane, 6ft 1in and nearly 200lb, hanged himself from the bathroom door, the autopsy report said.

“So the Todds, along with two of Shane’s younger brothers, John and Dylan, were unnerved by what they didn’t see as they crossed the threshold. The front door was unlocked and there was no sign of an investigation – no crime-scene tape, no smudges from fingerprint searches. ‘The first thing I did was make a beeline for the bathroom,’ Mrs Todd recalled. She wanted to see exactly how Shane had died – and she saw nothing that fitted the police description. The marble bathroom walls had no holes in them. Nor were there any bolts or screws. The toilet was not where the police had said.”

Source: Financial Times
Published: Feb 15, 2013
Length: 21 minutes (5,470 words)

Four Hours With John McAfee

A reporter meets with John McAfee, the eponymous creator of the McAfee antivirus software who has been on the run from authorities in Belize for the past several months:

“The obvious question was, why run at all? After all, the police had said that there were no charges against McAfee yet. ‘He is still just a person of interest’ in the investigation, Raphael Martinez, a police spokesperson, told me. ‘We are still looking for him.’ (Asked why they had not found him, Martinez said, ‘It beats the hell out of me.’)

“Besides, McAfee insisted that he had nothing to do with Faull’s murder and that in spite of being neighbours – their houses were about 300 yards apart – he barely even knew the man. ‘He drank and I don’t hang with people who drink,’ he said. He also reminded me that Belize was not as safe as people thought. I had already checked the statistics: according to United Nations figures, the country’s murder rate has risen rapidly, from about 16 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2000 to more than 41 in 2010.

“For many people, the answer was that McAfee was paranoid. Or as Dean Barrow, Belize’s prime minister, suggested a couple of weeks ago in statements made in Belize City to a local reporter, McAfee might simply be ‘bonkers’.”

Source: Financial Times
Published: Dec 7, 2012
Length: 14 minutes (3,749 words)

Rio: The Fight for the Favelas

In 2009, Brazil introduced “one of the boldest experiments in policing ever witnessed in the democratic world”—the Unidade de Polícia Pacificadora, or UPP—to rid its poorest neighborhoods from the grip of drug traffickers and violent militias before the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics:

“‘Everybody in Rio knew – every taxi driver, every senator, every sociologist and every journalist,’ he says with a hint of controlled anger. ‘They all knew that Rio was a divided city. But for 40 years, nobody did a single thing about it.’

“The favelas, Beltrame argues, were islands from which the state had just decided to absent itself. Their residents were forgotten and ignored, stewing in a toxic juice of extreme poverty, domestic violence and, from the late 1980s onwards, the omnipotence of Uzi-wielding drug cartels or their vigilante alter-egos, the militias, who specialise in blackmailing entire communities. Regular police raids peppered by arbitrary killings and extortion ensured that favela residents regarded the state not as an ally, but perhaps as their worst enemy.

“Appalled by this collective inaction and the stain on the city’s reputation, Beltrame decided to do something about it. In times past, he would have struggled to receive the backing from the governor of Rio state to divert public funds into the favelas. But with the World Cup and Olympics looming, the moment for the UPP had come.”

Source: Financial Times
Published: Nov 2, 2012
Length: 16 minutes (4,088 words)

The Whistleblowers Club

A look at WBUK, an organization created in the United Kingdom to provide support for whistleblowers who often lose their jobs, families, reputations and mental health witnessing illicit activity and going public:

“Beyond them sit about two dozen people whose lives, like those of Foxley and Gardiner, have been transformed because they refused to look the other way. They have come together to create a network to offer advice, legal counsel and psychological care to future whistleblowers, as well as campaign for their shared cause. The anger, hurt and frustration of their debate makes evident that WBUK also serves as a support mechanism for its participants.

“Ian Foxley compared the very first meeting of the group, in March 2011, to ‘the site of a plane crash where the survivors were just getting to grips with their own injuries and those of their fellow passengers’. But today, the room is more like the ward of a hospital, full of ‘doctors and patients’, as Foxley puts it. Which side you belong to is determined by how far you have progressed along the arc of the life of a whistleblower.”

Source: Financial Times
Published: Sep 14, 2012
Length: 16 minutes (4,038 words)

Starting Over

In 1972, Uganda’s President Idi Amin exiled Ugandan Asians from the country, who left behind most of their belongings and lives for new ones in other countries—particularly Great Britain:

“Dr. Mumtaz Kassam was only 16 when, stateless, she arrived at a reception centre in Leamington Spa – one of several across the country. Her parents and siblings were shunted elsewhere before being admitted to Britain. Yugoslavia, Norway, Malta and South Carolina were some of the stopovers for such ‘shuttlecock Asians’. Kassam became a lawyer in the early 1980s and in 1998, with Museveni’s blessing, set up a practice in Uganda to work for repossession of assets and compensation for the departed Asians. As deputy high commissioner for Uganda, she now represents the nation that rejected her.

“Broken lives were restored with extraordinary determination, says Kassam: ‘They worked hard, maintained their dignity, educated their children, never gave up.’ The Tory MP Shailesh Vara, whose father migrated from Uganda in the early 1960s, concurs: ‘Rather than looking at their expulsion as life-destroying, they saw it as a setback. They didn’t stay downcast, got up, and started over again.’ I remember Ugandan Asian men laughing because English businesses closed at 5pm, had weekends off even. They opened shops that never shut and transformed consumer expectations across Britain.”

Source: Financial Times
Published: Aug 24, 2012
Length: 13 minutes (3,309 words)

Valley of God

Faith, technology and Christianity in Silicon Valley:

“The internet and social media present a conundrum for Chuck DeGroat, the pastor at City Church. With a congregation of hip modern professionals, from architects and financial advisers to programmers and venture capitalists, he can’t afford not to have a Facebook page, Twitter handle, or website. And yet, the social media channels that dominate so many of their lives conflict with various Christian principles he hopes they will live by.

“‘We follow people on Twitter,’ he says to a half-full church on a recent Sunday. ‘We follow news stories. We follow celebrities. We check boxes to say ‘I’m a fan of this.’ But what does it really mean to follow?’ He launches into a text from Corinthians 1, telling of a city whose people are obsessed with reputation, who boast of their prominent roles in the community. He draws a parallel to today and people’s obsession with how they present themselves online. ‘God is not impressed with your status update,’ he says. ‘He’s impressed with what’s beneath the pretence.'”

Source: Financial Times
Published: Aug 10, 2012
Length: 12 minutes (3,197 words)

A Man Walks into a Bank

A man receives a non-negotiable junk mail check for $95,093.35 in the mail, and decides to deposit it in his bank account as a joke. It actually clears his account:

“The first friend I phoned informed me that it was no mistake at all. Just standard bank policy, crediting my account with the dollar amount but putting a hold on all the funds until the cheque bounced. I couldn’t touch the money and my bank balance would be embarrassing again in three days.

“But seven long days later the lottery-like amount was still there and I visited the bank where an employee told me that the funds were now all available for cash withdrawal. All $95,093.35 was mine for the taking. All I had to do was ask. Windfall money begs us to take it and run. But I restrained myself. And gave the bank another two excruciatingly long weeks to do their job, catch up with their mistake, and bounce the cheque. But at the end of three hellish weeks, during which I hourly resisted the urge to take the money and run to Mexico, where it would be worth twice as much, I was told by my branch manager, ‘You’re safe to start spending the money, Mr Combs. A cheque cannot bounce after 10 days. You’re protected by the law.'”

Source: Financial Times
Published: Aug 3, 2012
Length: 9 minutes (2,344 words)