Search Results for: Rolling Stone

Top 5 #Longreads of the Week: Michael Hastings, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Paul Ford, VICE, fiction from The New Yorker, plus a guest pick from Matt Cardin.

In 2009, Private First Class Bowe Bergdahl was captured in Afghanistan after deciding to walk off his base. A look at why he left, and the complications surrounding his rescue:

Within an hour, two F-18s were circling overhead. Afghan forces passed along intelligence that a U.S. soldier had been captured by the Taliban. By that evening, two F-15s – call sign DUDE-21 – had joined the search. A few minutes later, according­ to files obtained by WikiLeaks, a radio transmission intercepted by U.S. forces stated that the Taliban had captured­ three civilians and one U.S. soldier. The battalion leading the manhunt entered and searched three compounds in the area, but found nothing significant to report.

The next morning, more than 24 hours after Bowe had vanished, U.S. intelligence intercepted a conversation between two Taliban fighters:

“‘I SWEAR THAT I HAVE NOT HEARD ANYTHING YET. WHAT HAPPENED. IS THAT TRUE THAT THEY CAPTURED AN AMERICAN GUY?’

‘YES THEY DID. HE IS ALIVE. THERE IS NO WHERE HE CAN GO (LOL)’ ‘IS HE STILL ALIVE?’

‘YES HE IS ALIVE. BUT I DONT HAVE THE WHOLE STORY. DONT KNOW IF THEY WERE FIGHTING. ALL I KNOW IF THEY WERE FIGHTING. ALL I KNOW THAT THEY CAPTURE HIM ALIVE AND THEY ARE WITH HIM RIGHT NOW.’

“America’s Last Prisoner of War.” — Michael Hastings, Rolling Stone

More from Hastings

The lead singer of Against Me!, married with a child, is now Laura Jane Grace. She speaks out about gender dysphoria, which left her uncomfortable in a male body for as long as she can remember:

In retrospect, the lyrics are almost shockingly direct: If I could have chosen I would have been born a woman / My mother once told me she would have named me Laura / I would grow up to be strong and beautiful like her / One day I’d find an honest man to make my husband

“Gabel says he thought he was ‘completely outing himself’ with a lyric like that. He expected to be confronted – a part of him even craved it. But if anyone suspected anything, no one brought it up. ‘When we did that song, I was like, “What is that about?”’ says Butch Vig, who produced Against Me!’s last two albums. ‘He just kind of laughed it off. He said, “I was stoned and dreaming about what life can be.”’

“The Secret Life of Transgender Rocker Tom Gabel.” — Josh Eells, Rolling Stone

More from Eells

The many ways to dismantle a law: How the 2,300-page Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act has been attacked and weakened since its passage in 2010:

The fate of Dodd-Frank over the past two years is an object lesson in the government’s inability to institute even the simplest and most obvious reforms, especially if those reforms happen to clash with powerful financial interests. From the moment it was signed into law, lobbyists and lawyers have fought regulators over every line in the rulemaking process. Congressmen and presidents may be able to get a law passed once in a while – but they can no longer make sure it stays passed. You win the modern financial-regulation game by filing the most motions, attending the most hearings, giving the most money to the most politicians and, above all, by keeping at it, day after day, year after fiscal year, until stealing is legal again. ‘It’s like a scorched-earth policy,’ says Michael Greenberger, a former regulator who was heavily involved with the drafting of Dodd-Frank. ‘It requires constant combat. And it never, ever ends.’

“How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform.” — Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

More from Taibbi

How the U.S. drone program became central to the Obama administration’s counterterrorism efforts. The president has presided over 268 covert drone strikes, five times what George W. Bush ordered:

But the implications of drones go far beyond a single combat unit or civilian agency. On a broader scale, the remote-control nature of unmanned missions enables politicians to wage war while claiming we’re not at war – as the United States is currently doing in Pakistan. What’s more, the Pentagon and the CIA can now launch military strikes or order assassinations without putting a single boot on the ground – and without worrying about a public backlash over U.S. soldiers coming home in body bags. The immediacy and secrecy of drones make it easier than ever for leaders to unleash America’s military might – and harder than ever to evaluate the consequences of such clandestine attacks.

‘Drones have really become the counterterrorism weapon of choice for the Obama administration,’ says Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown law professor who helped establish a new Pentagon office devoted to legal and humanitarian policy. ‘What I don’t think has happened enough is taking a big step back and asking, “Are we creating more terrorists than we’re killing? Are we fostering militarism and extremism in the very places we’re trying to attack it?” A great deal about the drone strikes is still shrouded in secrecy. It’s very difficult to evaluate from the outside how serious of a threat the targeted people pose.’

“The Rise of the Killer Drones: How America Goes to War in Secret.” — Michael Hastings, Rolling Stone

See also: “Predators and Robots at War.” — Christian Caryl, New York Review of Books, Sept. 20, 2011

Featured: James Droske’s #longreads page. See his story picks from Grantland, GQ magazine, Rolling Stone, plus more.

The 2012 National Magazine Award Finalists

Longreads Pick

See a collection of longreads from the 2012 Ellies, including stories from GQ, Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, plus fiction from The Atlantic, VQR and more.

Published:

Top 5 #Longreads of the Week: The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, The New Inquiry, The London Review of Books, a fiction pick, plus a guest pick from Nicholas Jackson.

A former Dartmouth College fraternity member speaks out about rampant hazing and alcohol abuse at the Ivy League school. But reforming the frat culture might be too much for just one whistleblower: 

On January 25th, Andrew Lohse took a major detour from the winning streak he’d been on for most of his life when, breaking with the Dartmouth code of omertà, he detailed some of the choicest bits of his college experience in an op-ed for the student paper The Dartmouth. ‘I was a member of a fraternity that asked pledges, in order to become a brother, to: swim in a kiddie pool of vomit, urine, fecal matter, semen and rotten food products; eat omelets made of vomit; chug cups of vinegar, which in one case caused a pledge to vomit blood; drink beer poured down fellow pledges’ ass cracks… among other abuses,’ he wrote. He accused Dartmouth’s storied Greek system – 17 fraternities, 11 sororities and three coed houses, to which roughly half of the student body belongs – of perpetuating a culture of ‘pervasive hazing, substance abuse and sexual assault,’ as well as an ‘intoxicating nihilism’ that dominates campus social life. ‘One of the things I’ve learned at Dartmouth – one thing that sets a psychological precedent for many Dartmouth men – is that good people can do awful things to one another for absolutely no reason,’ he said. ‘Fraternity life is at the core of the college’s human and cultural dysfunctions.’ Lohse concluded by recommending that Dartmouth overhaul its Greek system, and perhaps get rid of fraternities entirely.

“Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy: Inside Dartmouth’s Hazing Abuses.” — Janet Reitman, Rolling Stone

See also: “Confessions of an Opium Seeker.” — Nick Tosches, Vanity Fair, Sept. 1, 2000

Featured Longreader: Martin Eiermann, managing editor at The European Magazine. See his story picks from Rolling Stone, GQ, More Intelligent Life, plus more on his #longreads page.