February 2012
8 posts
“War reporting is still dominated by men. Marie stood out as a woman who could do...”
– Sarah Topol pays tribute to Marie Colvin, the trenchant and talented Sunday Times correspondent killed in Syria this morning after a shell hit the house she was in. Read Marie’s final report, a searing dispatch from the besieged enclave of Baba Amr in Homs, and this passionate address she...
“Reflexively, her hands slapped her face. They clawed, until her nails drew...”
– The unmatched, the incandescent Anthony Shadid, who died in Syria today. “Restoring Names to War’s Unknown Casualties.” The New York Times, Aug. 30, 2010.
WatchOne of the most important films I’ve ever watched, The Interrupters, aired on FRONTLINE Tuesday night. Ameena, Eddie and Cobe are simply transcendent. You should let them into your life.
If you missed the broadcast, it’s online now, with more to explore by yours truly.
“I ask the competent authorities in Iraq to open an embassy in Washington,...”
– Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who has steadfastly railed against American influence in Iraq and whose militia fought the American military, in a statement posted on his website. The New York Times. (View photos of the $750 million U.S. Embassy in Iraq, the largest of its kind in the world.)
January 2012
5 posts
1 tag
What You Didn't Read about Drones in Iraq
The New York Times has many talking today about the State Department’s controversial plans to operate unarmed surveillance drones in Iraq, and for good reason.
News of the drone program’s existence has sparked strong backlash among some Iraqi officials, who are outraged they weren’t informed of it by American officials. “Our sky is our sky, not the U.S.A.’s sky,” was...
WatchA ravishing trailer for “Buzkashi Boys,” a narrative short film shot entirely on location in Afghanistan.
The film was produced by the Afghan Film Project, a “non-profit foundation formed to tell uniquely Afghan stories while building the capacity of Afghanistan’s fledgling film industry.” You can learn more and support them with their KickStarter campaign here.
WatchSpend an incandescent two minutes in Lahore, Pakistan in this short film by Nushmia Khan.
Music by Basheer & the Pied Pipers.
More of Nushmia’s fantastic work.
What Santorum Said in a Small Town Hall... →
I went to a “Faith, Family & Freedom” town hall in Salem, N.H. earlier this week, where Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum very confidently made a bold claim about an obscure part of Islam. He essentially suggested that Iran would nuke the world in order to hasten the return of a revered messiah and an apocalyptic “end-of-times” scenario…
Most...
December 2011
2 posts
1 tag
November 2011
3 posts
October 2011
7 posts
Bureau Chief vs. Army Chief
Much to Pakistan’s ire last June, The New York Times’ bureau chief in Pakistan reported that the country’s army chief was “clinging to his job.”
Today, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani still holds his position. The reporter is headed to China for the paper.
Funny how that worked out.
“I’ve had a bunch of people stop by my locker and say, ‘Wow, your...”
– Nola Storey, 11, tells The New York Times in what is arguably the most numskulled, asinine article I’ve read in a very long time. Honestly. This is A1 news?
“We send people on missions, without really knowing why; we understand even less...”
– Amy Davidson nails the big picture in the case of Raymond Davis, the CIA spy freed by Pakistan after shooting two men dead in Lahore, only to be charged with assault in Denver for a fight over a parking spot.
You Aren't Hearing about Pakistan's Biggest... →
September 2011
4 posts
1 tag
America and Muslims: By the Numbers →
Ten years after 9/11, there’s an abundance of research on the makeup and attitudes of America’s Muslims. Drawing from a number of recent studies, polls and research, I break down the data.
“Azmat Khan interviews Steven Grey about a US military “capture/kill”...”
– Andrew Sullivan calls out the big JSOC find from my interview with Stephen Grey. This just made my day.
“The rise of the Internet dovetailed with this tribalism. You could pass a decade...”
– Zadie Smith on “this whole, unlovely decade” since 9/11, in the New Yorker.
August 2011
2 posts
2 tags
Balochistan: Pakistan's Dirty War
For the past 18 months, dozens of tortured, bullet-riddled bodies have mysteriously turned up in Pakistan’s southwestern province of Balochistan. They were journalists, lawyers, students, teachers and farm workers somehow caught up in the Baloch insurgency, an ethnic nationalist rebellion the Pakistani Army has for decades gone to great lengths to suppress and that rights groups have long...
“One lesson I’ve learned from this is as a society we must teach our young women...”
– Noreen Iqbal, the cousin of Nazish Noorani, who was killed by her husband in New Jersey last week. “Staying in an Abusive Marriage” — The New York Times
July 2011
9 posts
3 tags
How Do You Solve a Problem like (a Dead) Ahmed...
Uncertainty plagues Southern Afghanistan.
Today Ahmed Wali Karzai — the half-brother of President Hamid Karzai and the main strongman of Southern Afghanistan — was shot twice in the head and killed in his house in central Kandahar. Though the Taliban originally claimed responsibility for the murder, reports suggest he was killed by a close confidante, a man named Sardar Mohammed, in...
4 tags
What Adm. Mullen Really Said about Pakistan
Islamabad is furious with Washington, again. At the heart of this particular furor is the implication that Pakistan was involved in the brutal kidnapping, torture and murder of Asia Times Online journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad. Days before he went missing, Shahzad had penned a searing report asserting that an attack on Pakistan’s primary naval base was carried out in retaliation for ...
3 tags
"The Bluest Eye" and #Fiction5
The New York Times’ new #Fiction5 Twitter hashtag got me thinking about the most affecting of my fictional favorites, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. It’s a heavy, intensely melancholic read, but it radically transformed how I conceive beauty, and the ways I look at others and myself. Read it and maybe you’ll also never look in the...
Impact Journalism: The Invisible Army
Very proud of the talented Sarah Stillman, whose brilliant New Yorker investigation into the treatment of T.C.N.s on U.S. military bases spurred this amendment to the DoD Appropriations Bill in the House yesterday.
She documents the widespread mistreatment by subcontractors — including human trafficking and sexual assault — of foreigners recruited to work for the American military...
June 2011
5 posts
3 tags
3 tags
How one TV reporter tried to reveal the underbelly...
From Slate, an incisive — and very meta — portrait of the Pakistani media:
“They looked in the mirror and saw what they looked like,” says Jan. “Then they decided to break the mirrors instead of washing their own faces.”
April 2011
1 post
March 2011
1 post
February 2011
1 post
3 tags
December 2010
2 posts
3 tags
A Modern-Day Don Quixote
In a way, Gary Faulkner captured American hearts and minds when he was captured in Pakistan this summer with a broadsword on quest to kill Binny Boy, I mean, Osama Bin Laden. In this GQ profile, the new face of Quixotic ambition is further complicated by hang gliders, hot-wiring and the other relentless pursuits of a man who dared to dream.