“I did have an interesting (unattributable, of course) briefing from someone very senior in one West Coast mega-corporation who conceded that neither he nor the CEO of his company had security clearance to know what arrangements his own organization had reached with the US government. ‘So, it’s like a company within a company?’ I asked. He waved his hand dismissively: ‘I know the guy, I trust him.’”
…
“Do MPs and congressmen have any more sophisticated idea of what technology is now capable of? Could they, as supposed regulators, also decipher such documents? A couple of weeks ago I asked the question of another very senior member of the British cabinet who had followed the Snowden stories only hazily and whose main experience of intelligence seemed to date back to the 1970s. ‘The trouble with MPs,’ he admitted, ‘is most of us don’t really understand the Internet.’”
–Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, in New York Review of Books, on who we trust and what we know when it comes to technology and spying. Read more on spying.
***
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
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Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger on what we’ve learned so far about the Edward Snowden leaks, our privacy, and the way our government, press and commercial Internet companies have handled it. In many cases, it can come down to people who aren’t quite sure what’s going on trusting the people who do know:
But I did have an interesting (unattributable, of course) briefing from someone very senior in one West Coast mega-corporation who conceded that neither he nor the CEO of his company had security clearance to know what arrangements his own organization had reached with the US government. “So, it’s like a company within a company?” I asked. He waved his hand dismissively: “I know the guy, I trust him.”
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Published: Oct 30, 2013
Length: 20 minutes (5,084 words)
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In 1862, the Prince of Wales and future King Edward VII fled a sex scandal and took a trip to the Middle East. At the last minute, he was joined by a photographer named Francis Bedford, who proceeded to capture some of the earliest images of the Egyptian ruins. His work is featured in the new book Cairo to Constantinople:
“The royal journey’s motive, too, may have been more complex than suggested. Ostensibly it was a private, informal expedition. It was urged by Queen Victoria for her son’s education (pretty much a lost cause, according to his guardian) and she ordered that the Prince go incognito, with no ceremonial encounters. But the itinerary seems to have been planned above all by the Prince Consort Albert, as a diplomatic initiation for the young man and to foster goodwill.”
(via @dougcoulson)
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Published: Jul 6, 2013
Length: 6 minutes (1,646 words)
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A brief history of the political cartoonist, whose job is endangered in the digital age:
Martin Rowson in particular seems to revel in mixing allusions to obscure literary texts with lashings of excrement. A cartoon he drew last month for the Morning Star features a ‘fivearsed pig’, shitting turds emblazoned with the logos of London 2012 sponsors through sphincters coloured like the Olympic rings.
Occasionally, the digestive obsession becomes a bit too much even for left-wing papers. Rowson tells me that his fellow Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell always files as late as possible to make the staff grateful that the picture has arrived at all. ‘There’s a wonderful story about Georgina Henry, when she was deputy editor, going past the comment desk at about eight o’clock one evening and Steve’s cartoon had just come in,’ he says. ‘It was a wonderful one of [George W] Bush as a monkey, squatting on the side of a broken toilet, wiping his arse with the UN Charter. And there’s all this shit splattered on the wall behind it, and she looks and says, “Oh God, no.” [Alan] Rusbridger had put down this edict saying less shit in the cartoons, please – you know, the editor’s prerogative – and she and Steve had this eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation.’ What happened? ‘He finally caved in. In one of the greatest betrayals of freedom of speech since Galileo, he tippexed out three of the turds.’
“Ink-Stained Assassins.” — Helen Lewis, New Statesman
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A brief history of the political cartoonist, whose job is endangered in the digital age:
“Martin Rowson in particular seems to revel in mixing allusions to obscure literary texts with lashings of excrement. A cartoon he drew last month for the Morning Star features a ‘fivearsed pig’, shitting turds emblazoned with the logos of London 2012 sponsors through sphincters coloured like the Olympic rings.
“Occasionally, the digestive obsession becomes a bit too much even for left-wing papers. Rowson tells me that his fellow Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell always files as late as possible to make the staff grateful that the picture has arrived at all. ‘There’s a wonderful story about Georgina Henry, when she was deputy editor, going past the comment desk at about eight o’clock one evening and Steve’s cartoon had just come in,’ he says. ‘It was a wonderful one of [George W] Bush as a monkey, squatting on the side of a broken toilet, wiping his arse with the UN Charter. And there’s all this shit splattered on the wall behind it, and she looks and says, “Oh God, no.” [Alan] Rusbridger had put down this edict saying less shit in the cartoons, please – you know, the editor’s prerogative – and she and Steve had this eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation.’ What happened? ‘He finally caved in. In one of the greatest betrayals of freedom of speech since Galileo, he tippexed out three of the turds.'”
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Published: Aug 23, 2012
Length: 24 minutes (6,057 words)
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Memories of an early pioneer in New York public access television:
By all accounts, public access television is dead, or dying, or just living an anonymous existence in the lesser-trolled channels of cable. But despite its decrepit state, I became mildly obsessed with, and then fully addicted to, The Grube Tube—a live talk show on Time Warner Cable New York’s channel 35. The show followed a simple and well-known format: a number was displayed on the bottom of the screen, and callers were instructed to dial in. The host answered these calls from a landline phone on his desk. The caller, who was now being broadcast live on air, could say anything he or she pleased. It was the host’s decision to converse with said caller or hang up. That host was Steve Gruberg. The callers were a mix of eccentric Manhattanites, adolescents with an unusual fondness for the c-word, and longtime viewers who refused to let the program lose relevance. I fell somewhere in between.
“Steve Gruberg and the ‘Grube Tube’.” — Jeremy Elias, VICE
See also: “Live Television Is ‘a High-Wire Act with No Safety Net’.” — Jon Henley, Guardian, Sept. 3, 2011
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Shin In Geun was born into Camp 14, a prison for political enemies of North Korea. His first memories were of executions, and he had come to hate the parents that gave birth to him knowing that their son would also remain a prisoner:
The guards taught the children they were prisoners because of the “sins” of their parents but that they could “wash away” their inherent sinfulness by working hard, obeying the guards and informing on their parents.
One day, Shin joined his mother at work, planting rice. When she fell behind, a guard made her kneel in the hot sun with her arms in the air until she passed out. Shin did not know what to say to her, so he said nothing.
“How One Man Escaped from a North Korean Prison Camp.” — Blaine Harden, Guardian
See more #longreads about North Korea
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Judt’s widow Jennifer Homans reflects on her husband’s life and the making of his last book:
I lived with him and our two children as he faced the terror of ALS, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. It was a two-year ordeal, from his diagnosis in 2008 to his death in 2010, and during it Tony managed against all human odds to write three books. The last, following “Ill Fares the Land” and “The Memory Chalet,” was “Thinking the Twentieth Century,” based on conversations with Timothy Snyder. He started work on the book soon after he was diagnosed; within months he was quadriplegic and on a breathing machine, but he kept working nonetheless. He and Tim finished the book a month before he died. It accompanied his illness; it was part of his illness, and part of his dying.
“Tony Judt: A Final Victory.” — Jennifer Homans, New York Review of Books
See also: “The Forgiveness Machine.” — Tim Adams, Guardian, April 10 2011
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The art of writing romance novels:
The romance heroine, though possessed of heart, intelligence and beauty, is at the mercy of her own self-criticism most of the time. As the story begins, she is scared and isolated, poor, or abandoned, or lonely. Not infrequently, the book opens with her having just suffered some terrible loss; her husband has just died in a plane crash, or her parents or beloved guardians have died, and now she is forced to work as a paid companion to a rich and disagreeable widow, maybe, or she’s just come to Australia from England to live with her grandfather, who is mean as a snake. Then she runs into an unusual and interesting man who openly demonstrates his dislike for her, or else pretty much ignores her entirely.
Difficulties will multiply. And almost always, as the tension builds, the heroine is beset with doubts about her own competence, attractiveness and worth.
That’s just how I feel! the reader cries inwardly.
“Romance Novels, The Last Great Bastion Of Underground Writing.” — Maria Bustillos, The Awl
See more #longreads by Maria Bustillos
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The art of writing romance novels:
“The romance heroine, though possessed of heart, intelligence and beauty, is at the mercy of her own self-criticism most of the time. As the story begins, she is scared and isolated, poor, or abandoned, or lonely. Not infrequently, the book opens with her having just suffered some terrible loss; her husband has just died in a plane crash, or her parents or beloved guardians have died, and now she is forced to work as a paid companion to a rich and disagreeable widow, maybe, or she’s just come to Australia from England to live with her grandfather, who is mean as a snake. Then she runs into an unusual and interesting man who openly demonstrates his dislike for her, or else pretty much ignores her entirely.
“Difficulties will multiply. And almost always, as the tension builds, the heroine is beset with doubts about her own competence, attractiveness and worth.
“That’s just how I feel! the reader cries inwardly.”
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Published: Feb 15, 2012
Length: 16 minutes (4,043 words)
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