‘Let’s enlist universities directly in the war effort.’ Our video pick of the day is this 2008 talk (1 hr.) by entrepreneur and Stanford professor Steve Blank about how the defense industry first shaped Silicon Valley—starting with Stanford, which after World War II “became a full partner in the military-industrial complex.” For a connection between […]
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Reading List: Interviews with Awesome Women Authors
The best interviews with authors make you want to read—not just their work, but read in general, and read all the time, and read with a new fervor. * * * 1. “The Art of Not Belonging: Dwyer Murphy Interviews Edwidge Danticat.” (Guernica, September 2013) Danticat gives a beautiful interview, discussing her book Claire of […]
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The Problem with War Reporting
“In reality, war isn’t much foggier than peace.” Why “war reporting” often fails to shed proper light on what’s really happening: “It wasn’t that reporters were factually incorrect in their descriptions of what they had seen. But the very term ‘war reporter’, though not often used by journalists themselves, helps explain what went wrong. Leaving […]
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‘Why Did You Shoot Me? I Was Reading a Book’
An excerpt from Radley Balko’s new book Rise of the Warrior Cop, on the militarization of U.S. police forces and the reasons SWAT teams have been able to conduct raids for seemingly minor alleged crimes: “In 2007 a Dallas SWAT team actually raided a Veterans of Foreign Wars outpost for hosting charity poker games. Players […]
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The Rock ‘n’ Roll Casualty Who Became a War Hero
Jason Everman was kicked out of both Nirvana and Soundgarden, before the bands went on to sell millions of albums. He then decided to do something completely different: “So in 1993, while living in a group house in San Francisco with the guys in Mindfunk, Everman slipped out to meet with recruiters; the Army offered […]
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The Thin Red Line
Inside the debate over what the U.S. should do about Syria: “He walked back to his desk and sat down. ‘The Syria I have just drawn for you—I call it the Sinkhole,’ he said. ‘I think there is an appreciation, even at the highest levels, of how this is getting steadily worse. This is the […]
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A Drug War Informer in No Man’s Land
Luis Octavio López Vega, who worked for both the Mexican military and as an informant to the DEA, is now in hiding: “The reserved, unpretentious husband and father of three has been a fugitive ever since, on the run from his native country and abandoned by his adopted home. For more than a decade, he […]
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Honor Betrayed
A two-part series on sexual abuse and homelessness among female veterans in the U.S.: “In response to the growing outcry over sexual violence, the Pentagon last year ordered that charging decisions in sexual assault cases be determined by more senior commanders than in the past, but the directive stopped short of taking the decision out […]
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The Rape of Petty Officer Blumer
A Navy intelligence analyst reports a rape and finds herself ostracized. She’s not the only one, and the U.S. military still has not taken serious steps to address a culture that condones sex abuse: “The scandal of rape in the U.S. Armed Forces, across all of its uniformed services, has become inescapable. Last year saw […]
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How to Start a Battalion (in Five Easy Lessons)
“If there is one thing we appreciate it is a faction that splinters into smaller factions.” A report from inside Syria: “We in the Middle East have always had a strong appetite for factionalism. Some attribute it to individualism, others blame the nature of our political development or our tribalism. Some even blame the weather. […]
