Archive for the ‘Shoptalk’ Category
An ode to Harper’s Magazine, and a plea to help save it
When I was growing up in West Virginia, pretty much the greatest weekend possible was convincing a parent to go on — or, at blessed 16, picking up my best friend and driving ourselves — an hour-plus trek to a Real City, with all the great suburban box store trappings we didn’t have. The most [...]
Are state “secrets” really so malleable?
From the Christian Science Monitor, I got this tidbit about the coming prosecution of Jeffrey Sterling, accused of leaking classified information to a reporter. The tidbit is this: In 2003, the courts said Sterling couldn’t pursue a discrimination case against the CIA because the case would expose state secrets. Now, to prosecute him for the [...]
Worth your bandwidth
I’ve spent a few days catching up on one of my favorite podcasts, “How We Got Here.” The podcast is the brainchild of Jeb Sharp, a reporter with The World, a BBC-NPR collaboration based in Boston. Sharp has done some phenomenal reporting from Congo and shepherded a great series called “How Wars End.” She’s definitely [...]
Is development a (Waltian) “bad idea”?
If you haven’t seen it yet, Stephen Walt’s piece, “Where Do Bad Ideas Come From?”, in the new issue of Foreign Policy demands a read. He starts with the obvious — that we never learn from our mistakes — but asks, when it comes to our policy decisions about the world, why? The possibilities are [...]
Coda: Making myths about conflict zones
One more thing I want to pull up from the comments on my Cote d’Ivoire post, from Rebecca: On the streets here, especially during the day, it seems almost normal. Tense, but normal. The radar traffic cops are back to writing speeding tickets even. I can freely travel all over the city without problem, and [...]
What’s new in my world, and a year-end thanks
I’ve been terrible about posting my new work in the last three or four months; by the time it’s published, I’m buried deep in something else, and sometimes I miss its entry to the world entirely. So here’s a quick roundup of what I’ve done lately that you might be interested in: A news feature [...]
I am a freelance journalist and multimedia producer who covers human rights, Africa and foreign affairs. [