Articles by The New Yorker
We found 79 results.
The Haditha Massacre Photos That the US Military Didn’t Want the World to See
Madeleine Baran | The New Yorker - TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Sep 2024
27 Aug 2024 – When U.S. Marines killed twenty-four people in an Iraqi town, they also recorded the aftermath of their actions. For years, the military tried to keep these photos from the public.
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Operation Amazon
Jon Lee Anderson | The New Yorker – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Apr 2024
3 Apr 2024 – As miners ravage Yanomami lands, combat-trained environmentalists work to root them out.
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The Extreme Ambitions of West Bank Settlers
Isaac Chotiner | The New Yorker - TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Nov 2023
11 Nov 2023 – A leader of the settlement movement on expanding into Gaza, and her vision for the Jewish state. For decades, Daniella Weiss has been one of the leaders of Israel’s settlement movement. She became involved in settlement politics in the wake of the 1967 war.
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Voting, Democracy, Solutions
The New Yorker - TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Sep 2023
Really?
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The Race to Save the World’s DNA
Matthew Hutson | The New Yorker - TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Aug 2023
9 Aug 2023 – A scientific rescue mission aims to analyze every plant, animal, and fungus before it’s too late.
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Allen Ginsberg’s Self-Recording Sessions
Kathryn Winner | The New Yorker – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Jan 2023
6 Jan 2023 – In the late sixties, Ginsberg began taping many of his public appearances, as well as his casual and private conversations. He used the recordings to compose his greatest work.
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Biden’s Global Democracy Summit Raises an Awkward Question: Can Ours Endure?
Sue Halpern | The New Yorker – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Dec 2021
30 Nov 2021 – In the past year, the prospects for improving American democracy have dimmed considerably. In the months since Joe Biden took office, nineteen states have enacted thirty-three laws that make it more difficult for citizens to vote.
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History: The Massacre at My Lai, Vietnam
Seymour M. Hersh | The New Yorker - TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 May 2021
14 Jan 1972 – A U.S. Army mass killing and the massacre’s coverup.
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The Erasure of Islam from the Poetry of Rumi
Rozina Ali | The New Yorker - TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Jul 2020
Rumi was born in the early thirteenth century, in what is now Afghanistan and later settled in Konya, in present-day Turkey, with his family. His father was a preacher and religious scholar, and he introduced Rumi to Sufism. Rumi’s works reflected a broader push and pull between religious spirituality and institutionalized faith—though with a wit that was unmatched. “Historically speaking, no text has shaped the imagination of Muslims—other than the Koran—as the poetry of Rumi.”
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[Satire] Now Is the Time to Cherish the Little Things, by Jeff Bezos
Jeremy Beiler | The New Yorker - TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 May 2020
13 May 2020 – If you’re still going a little stir-crazy, why not stay in a different one of your houses every night of the week? We’ve all got to get creative here. Though it’s true that the pandemic has brought the world to its knees, it also has the power to bring us together, and in little, unseen ways it can even make us billions more dollars than we were making before.
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The Trouble with Donald Trump’s Clemencies and Pardons
Jeffrey Toobin – The New Yorker,
2 Mar 2020
19 Feb 2020 – Authoritarianism is usually associated with a punitive spirit—a leader who prosecutes and incarcerates his enemies. Authoritarians also dispense largesse, but they do it by their own whims, rather than pursuant to any system or legal rule. The former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, whose fourteen-year prison sentence was commuted, was a contestant on Trump’s TV show “Celebrity Apprentice.”
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The Unimaginable Reality of American Concentration Camps
Masha Gessen – The New Yorker,
6 Jan 2020
Like many arguments, the fight over the term “concentration camp” is mostly an argument about something entirely different. It is not about terminology. Almost refreshingly, it is not an argument about facts. This argument is about imagination, and it may be a deeper, more important conversation than it seems.
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Trump Offers Freed ISIS Fighters a Group Rate at Trump Doral Miami Resort
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker,
21 Oct 2019
18 Oct 2019 — Calling it a “once-in-a-lifetime incredible deal,” Donald Trump today offered recently-escaped ISIS fighters a group rate at his Trump National Doral Miami Resort.
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The Kentucky Derby, as Told by the Horses
John Kenney – The New Yorker,
27 May 2019
Everyone was running, so I ran. I assumed it was a fire alarm. Also, there was a small man clinging to my back. I don’t know why.
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Is Noise Pollution the Next Big Public-Health Crisis?
David Owen – The New Yorker,
13 May 2019
6 May 2019 – Research shows that loud sound can have a significant impact on human health, as well as doing devastating damage to ecosystems.
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The Renegade Nuns Who Took On a Pipeline
Eliza Griswold – The New Yorker,
22 Apr 2019
10 Apr 2019 – The nuns see protecting the earth as part of their religious duty, which separates them from much historical Catholic teaching. Christians, drawing on wording from the Book of Genesis, have traditionally seen man as having “dominion” over the earth: all other living things were created for his use. The Adorers are calling for an end to the theology of human supremacy, and for a deeper understanding of creation’s interdependency.
→ read full articleScientists: Earth Endangered by New Strain of Fact-Resistant Humans
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker,
25 Mar 2019
Scientists have discovered a powerful new strain of fact-resistant humans who are threatening life on Earth. The research, conducted by the University of Minnesota, identifies a virulent strain of humans who are virtually immune to any form of verifiable knowledge, leaving scientists at a loss as to how to combat them.
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Trump TV: The Making of the Fox News White House
Jane Mayer – The New Yorker,
11 Mar 2019
Fox—which, as the most watched cable news network, generates about $2.7 billion a year for its parent company, 21st Century Fox—acts as a force multiplier for Trump, solidifying his hold over the Republican Party and intensifying his support. “Fox is not just taking the temperature of the base—it’s raising the temperature,” she says. “It’s a radicalization model.” For both Trump and Fox, “fear is a business strategy—it keeps people watching.” As the President has been beset by scandals, congressional hearings, and even talk of impeachment, Fox has been both his shield and his sword.
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Does Journalism Have a Future?
Jill Lepore – The New Yorker,
28 Jan 2019
28 Jan 2019 – In an era of social media and fake news, journalists who have survived the print plunge have new foes to face.
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How Bill Browder Became Russia’s Most Wanted Man
Joshua Yaffa – The New Yorker,
28 Jan 2019
The hedge-fund manager has offered a fable for why the West should confront Putin.
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Scientists: Earth Endangered by New Strain of Fact-Resistant Humans
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker,
5 Nov 2018
Scientists have discovered a powerful new strain of fact-resistant humans who are threatening life on Earth. The research, conducted by the University of Minnesota, identifies a virulent strain of humans who are virtually immune to any form of verifiable knowledge, leaving scientists at a loss as to how to combat them.
→ read full articleWhite House Rejects Supremacist Label: “No One Has Done More than Trump to Prove White People Are Not Superior”
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker,
24 Sep 2018
“It’s grossly unfair that Ms. Hill sought to portray Donald Trump as an upholder of white supremacy, when everything he says or does directly undermines that whole concept,” White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders said. “Anyone who thinks that Donald Trump is on some mission to make white people look good hasn’t been paying attention.”
→ read full articleTrump Considering Pulling U.S. Out of Constitution
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker,
20 Jun 2018
“I’ve seen a lot of bad deals in my life, but this Constitution is a total mess,” Trump said. “We need to tear it up and start over.” He also called the First Amendment “something that really has to go. No one in his right mind would put something like that in a Constitution. Russia doesn’t have it. North Korea doesn’t have it. All the best countries don’t have it. But we’re going to keep the Second Amendment,” he said, “and definitely the Fifth.”
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N.R.A. Proposes Having Second Armed Teacher in Every Classroom to Stop First Armed Teacher from Misfiring
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker,
19 Mar 2018
“The only thing that stops a bad teacher with a gun is a good teacher with a gun,” Wayne LaPierre said.
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Vladimir Putin Outwitted Megyn Kelly by Weaponizing Incompetence
Masha Gessen – The New Yorker,
19 Mar 2018
13 Mar 2018 – Over the weekend, NBC released a nearly hour-long interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin that the reporter Megyn Kelly conducted over two days, earlier in March. At the same time, the Kremlin dropped its own version of the conversation, an apparently unedited video that came in at nearly an hour and a half.
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“Fox & Friends” Putting Finishing Touches on Trump’s State of the Union Address
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker,
5 Feb 2018
Trump reportedly has had input on the speech text from other sources, including the Fox News anchor Sean Hannity, the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and several neo-Nazi Twitter accounts.
→ read full articleTillerson Caught Under Trump’s Desk Disconnecting Button
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker,
8 Jan 2018
3 Jan 2018 – Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was caught crouching under Donald J. Trump’s Oval Office desk on Wednesday, in an attempt to disconnect Trump’s newly installed nuclear button. The button, reportedly measuring a massive eight inches in diameter, has been a subject of considerable alarm for Trump’s national-security team.
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Beastly – The Root of All Cruelty?
Paul Bloom – The New Yorker,
18 Dec 2017
Perpetrators of violence, we’re told, dehumanize their victims. The truth is worse.
→ read full articleWhat Happened to Myanmar’s (Nobel Peace Laureate] Human-Rights Icon?
Hannah Beech – The New Yorker,
2 Oct 2017
The ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya reveals what the world didn’t understand about Aung San Suu Kyi.
→ read full articleWhite House Rejects Supremacist Label: “No One Has Done More than Trump to Prove White People Are Not Superior”
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker,
25 Sep 2017
“It’s grossly unfair that Ms. Hill sought to portray Donald Trump as an upholder of white supremacy, when everything he says or does directly undermines that whole concept,” Sanders said. “Anyone who thinks that Donald Trump is on some mission to make white people look good hasn’t been paying attention.”
→ read full articleNation Favors Travel Ban on Person Who Has Recently Visited Muslim Country
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker,
22 May 2017
A broad majority of poll respondents said that if such a person were to remain outside the borders of the U.S. forever, they would “sleep better at night.”
→ read full articleJared Kushner Calls Kim Jong-un “Totally Unqualified Person” Who Got Job only through Nepotism
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker,
24 Apr 2017
“Here you have a guy who has no government experience, and he’s in charge of the whole thing,” Kushner said, in an interview with Fox News. “It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard of.”
→ read full articleTrump, Putin, and the New Cold War
Evan Osnos, David Remnick and Joshua Yaffa – The New Yorker,
6 Mar 2017
What lay behind Russia’s interference in the 2016 election—and what lies ahead?
→ read full articlePalestine in the Age of Trump
Rashid Khalidi – The New Yorker,
30 Jan 2017
19 Jan 2017 – With the advent in Washington of an Administration with radical new priorities regarding Israel, and a disdain for Palestinian rights, Palestine is facing a daunting reality.
→ read full articleQueen Offers to Restore British Rule Over United States
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker,
31 Oct 2016
In an unexpected televised address on Saturday [29 Oct 2016], Queen Elizabeth II offered to restore British rule over the United States of America. Addressing the American people from her office in Buckingham Palace, the Queen said that she was making the offer “in recognition of the desperate situation you now find yourselves in.”
→ read full articleA Pipeline Fight and America’s Dark Past
Bill McKibben – The New Yorker,
12 Sep 2016
6 Sep 2016 – This week, thousands of Native Americans, from more than a hundred tribes, have camped out on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, which straddles the border between the Dakotas, along the Missouri River. What began as a slow trickle of people a month ago is now an increasingly angry flood. They’re there to protest plans for a proposed oil pipeline that they say would contaminate the reservation’s water; in fact, they’re calling themselves protectors, not protesters.
→ read full articleDoes Henry Kissinger Have a Conscience?
Jon Lee Anderson – The New Yorker,
22 Aug 2016
Latest revelations show Kissinger as the ruthless, active co-conspirator of Latin American military regimes engaged in war crimes [Operation Condor]. In evidence that emerged from previous declassifications of documents, Kissinger was shown not only to have been aware of what the military was doing but to have actively encouraged it.
→ read full articleBritish Lose Right to Claim That Americans Are Dumber
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker,
27 Jun 2016
Luxuriating in the superiority of their intellect over Americans’ has long been a favorite pastime in Britain, surpassing in popularity such games as cricket, darts, and snooker. But, according to a pub owner in North London, British voters have done irreparable damage to the “most enjoyable sport this nation has ever known: namely, treating Americans like idiots. But I hold out hope that, come November, Americans could become dumber than us once more.”
→ read full articleCruel Optimism – The Daunting Ambition of Anohni
Hua Hsu – The New Yorker,
23 May 2016
The strangest thing about “Drone Bomb Me,” the first track on Anohni’s début solo album, “Hopelessness,” isn’t the fact that it’s written from the perspective of a young Afghan girl, looking up at the sky, waiting for death… As the girl awaits her executioner, she scrambles our sense of who’s zooming in on whom. “Let me be the one,” she sings, part dare and part demand. “The one that you choose from above.”
→ read full articleTrump’s Plan to Randomly Shoot People Lacks Details, Random Shooters Say
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker,
25 Jan 2016
“To anyone in the random-shooting world, Trump’s plan fails on so many levels,” a leader of the nation’s random shooters commented.
→ read full articleWhy a Climate Deal Is the Best Hope for Peace
Jason Box and Naomi Klein – The New Yorker,
30 Nov 2015
The last time atmospheric CO2 was this high, global sea levels were at least six metres higher. We find ourselves confronted with ice-sheet disintegration that, in some susceptible areas, already appears unstoppable. In the currently overloaded CO2 climate, it’s just a matter of time until hundreds of millions of people will be displaced from coastal regions, their agricultural lands and groundwater destroyed by saltwater intrusion from sea rise.
→ read full articleThe View from the Doctors Without Borders Hospital
Amy Davidson – The New Yorker,
9 Nov 2015
The night of the attack there were a hundred and five patients in the hospital. Three or four were members of the Afghan government forces, another twenty or so were affiliated with the Taliban, and about eighty belonged to neither force. The most troubling call might have been one that the group got on Thursday, October 1st, from a person the report describes as “a US government official in Washington, D.C.”
→ read full articleGeorge W. Bush Enjoying New Status as Smarter Bush
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker,
12 Oct 2015
Speaking to reporters at his home in Dallas, Bush said he was deriving “quiet satisfaction” from a new poll showing that ninety-one per cent of the American people now consider him the smarter Bush.
→ read full articleWhat Exxon Knew about Climate Change
Bill McKibben – The New Yorker,
21 Sep 2015
New documents and interviews show that Exxon, now ExxonMobil, knew its main product would heat up the planet disastrously, but it did not prevent it from spending decades to organize the campaigns of disinformation and denial that have slowed – perhaps fatally – the planet’s response to global warming.
→ read full articleOur High-Priced Mercenaries in Syria
Robin Wright – The New Yorker,
21 Sep 2015
The U.S. campaign to create a new ground force to fight the Islamic State appears to be a flop. The program, designed to train some fifteen thousand Syrians in the course of three years-at a cost of five hundred million dollars-has … ‘We’re talking four or five,’ General Lloyd J. Austin III told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday [16 Sep].
→ read full articleScientists: Earth Endangered by New Strain of Fact-Resistant Humans
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker,
18 May 2015
The research, conducted by the University of Minnesota, identifies a virulent strain of humans who are virtually immune to any form of verifiable knowledge, leaving scientists at a loss as to how to combat them.
→ read full articleIran Offers to Mediate Talks between Republicans and Obama
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker,
16 Mar 2015
Stating that “their continuing hostilities are a threat to world peace,” Iran has offered to mediate talks between congressional Republicans and President Obama.
→ read full articleWhy French Law Treats Dieudonné and Charlie Hebdo Differently
Alexander Stille – The New Yorker,
19 Jan 2015
The juxtaposition of the two events—the celebration of a magazine that routinely publishes cartoons considered blasphemous and offensive by many of the world’s Muslims and the muscular prosecution [on the same day] of a relentlessly provocative black comedian—has immediately exposed France to charges of hypocrisy and double standards.
→ read full articleUnmournable Bodies
Teju Cole – The New Yorker,
12 Jan 2015
We mourn with France. But it is also true that violence from “our” side continues unabated. By this time next month, in all likelihood, many more “young men of military age” and many others, neither young nor male, will have been killed by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere. If past strikes are anything to go by, many of these people will be innocent of wrongdoing.
→ read full articleCitigroup to Move Headquarters to U.S. Capitol Building
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker,
15 Dec 2014
13 Dec 2014 – Tracy Klugian, a spokesperson for Citi, said that the company had leased thirty thousand square feet of prime real estate on the floor of the House of Representatives and would be interviewing “world-class architects” to redesign the space to suit its needs.
→ read full articleCheney Calls for International Ban on Torture Reports
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker,
15 Dec 2014
Former Vice-President Dick Cheney on Tuesday [9 Dec 2014] called upon the nations of the world to “once and for all ban the despicable and heinous practice of publishing torture reports. This is not who we are, ” Cheney said.
→ read full articleG20 Ends Abruptly as Obama Calls Putin a Jackass
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker,
17 Nov 2014
Hopes for a positive G20 summit crumbled today as President Obama blurted to Russia’s Vladimir Putin at a joint press appearance, “Everyone here thinks you’re a jackass.”
→ read full articleSome Fear Ebola Outbreak Could Make Nation Turn to Science
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker,
20 Oct 2014
“It’s a very human reaction. If you put them under enough stress, perfectly rational people will panic and start believing in science.” Additionally, he worries about a “slippery slope” situation, “in which a belief in science leads to a belief in math, which in turn fosters a dangerous dependence on facts.”
→ read full articleGrowing Pressure on Obama to Do Something Stupid
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker,
8 Sep 2014
“Instead of reacting to these events with the haste and recklessness they deserve, the President has chosen to waste valuable time thinking Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz) said. “This goes against the most fundamental principles of American foreign policy.”
→ read full articleNation Debates Extremely Complex Issue of Children Firing Military Weapons
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker,
1 Sep 2014
Much like the long-running national debates about jumping off a roof, licking electrical sockets, and gargling with thumbtacks, the vexing question of whether children should fire military weapons does not appear headed for a swift resolution.
→ read full articleCops Should Be Cops—Not Combat Troops
John Cassidy – The New Yorker,
18 Aug 2014
14 Aug 2014 -“The militarization of American policing has occurred with almost no oversight, and it is time to shine a bright light on the policies, practices, and weaponry that have turned too many of our neighborhoods into war zones.” Cops should be cops—not combat troops.
→ read full articleFleeing Iraqis Relieved That Cheney Has No Regrets about War
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker,
21 Jul 2014
Just days after former Vice-President Dick Cheney said that he had no regrets about the invasion of Iraq, people fleeing their homes across that war-torn nation expressed tremendous relief that he was at peace with his decision.
→ read full articlePolar Bears, Grizzlies to Merge
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker,
24 Feb 2014
Speaking at a packed press conference in New York accompanied by their investment bankers from Goldman Sachs, the jubilant bears gave their spin on the unprecedented deal. “For years, we’ve admired the way polar bears have dismembered hikers who’ve encroached on their territory. To be on the same team with talent like that—whoa. It’s a dream come true,” said a spokesman for the grizzlies. The merger is not expected to face regulatory hurdles.
→ read full articleFOX: Obama to Force All Americans to Buy Pot
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker,
3 Feb 2014
President Obama is about to issue an executive order that would force all Americans to purchase a monthly supply of marijuana, the Fox News Channel reported today.
→ read full articleKim Jong-un: Bieber Just a Few Arrests from Being My Friend
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker,
27 Jan 2014
The mercurial Kim said that he would seek Mr. Bieber’s aid in boosting North Korea’s slumping pop-music industry, which has failed to generate any hits comparable to South Korea’s ‘Gangnam Style.’ “Justin Bieber could be our Minister of Culture,” he said.
→ read full articleA Major Victory for Snowden and N.S.A. Reformers
Ryan Lizza – The New Yorker,
20 Jan 2014
Politically, this speech was a major boost for people like Pat Leahy and James Sensenbrenner, who have written the leading reform bills in their respective chambers, and a rebuke to intelligence officials like the N.S.A. director Keith Alexander and politicians like Diane Feinstein, who have fought to preserve the status quo.
→ read full articlePolar Vortex Causes Hundreds of Injuries as People Making Snide Remarks about Climate Change Are Punched in Face
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker,
13 Jan 2014
Authorities in several states said that residents who had made ignorant comments erroneously citing the brutally cold temperatures as proof that climate change did not exist were reporting a sharp increase in injuries to the face and head regions.
→ read full articleN.S.A. Promises to Stop Getting Caught Spying on Allies
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker,
4 Nov 2013
“There are two important jobs for every spy agency: spying on people and avoiding detection,” said the N.S.A. chief General Keith Alexander. “Unfortunately, at the N.S.A. we have only done the first job well. We have abused the trust of some of our closest allies,” he said. “And none of this would have happened if they hadn’t found out.”
→ read full articleScalia Forms Search Committee for New Pope
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker,
23 Sep 2013
Justice Scalia said he had “no other alternative” but to pick a new Pope himself after reading what he called a “disturbing” interview with Pope Francis today [19 Sep 2013]: “The Pope said he doesn’t want to speak out against abortion and gay marriage. Well, sorry, my friend, but that’s the entire job description. You should have thought of that before you let them blow that white smoke in Rome.”
→ read full articleThe Bitcoin Boom
Maria Bustillos – The New Yorker,
19 Aug 2013
Contrary to hysterical media reports, the Bitcoin-software community is loosely governed not by wild-eyed kids camping out in half-deserted lofts but by a rational and sober group of adult administrators who run the Bitcoin Foundation. This organization was modelled on the Linux Foundation, according to Gavin Andresen, who is currently the Bitcoin Foundation’s chief scientist.
→ read full article[Political Satire] U.S. Promises Smooth Transfer of Quagmire from Afghanistan to Syria
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker,
24 Jun 2013
Supporters of the US twelve-year quagmire in Afghanistan cheered the news that the U.S. would strive to achieve a seamless transfer of that quagmire to Syria, effective immediately. “I can tell you, right here and right now, that the U.S. is every bit as determined to engage in an ill-defined, ill-advised and seemingly interminable mission in Syria as we were in Afghanistan,” Gen. Dempsey said. “All that’s changing is the Zip Code.”
→ read full articleWhale-War Fugitive: Q. & A. with Paul Watson
Raffi Khatchadourian – The New Yorker,
17 Jun 2013
Nine ships went head-to-head in the Southern Ocean, and Sea Shepherd began its campaign against the Japanese fleet with a few surprises—among them the secret whereabouts of its founder, Paul Watson, who evaded house arrest in Germany, and joined the campaign as a fugitive.
→ read full articleSo Are We Living in 1984?
Ian Crouch – The New Yorker,
17 Jun 2013
Since last week’s revelations of US domestic surveillance, George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” which was published 64 years ago on Sat. 8 June 2013, has enjoyed a massive spike in sales. It has been invoked by voices as disparate as Nicholas Kristof and Glenn Beck. Even Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old leaker, sounded like he’d been guided by Orwell’s pen.
→ read full articleWhy Is Nepal Cracking Down on Tibetan Refugees?
Jon Krakauer – The New Yorker,
2 Jan 2012
According to an informal arrangement hammered out twenty-two years ago between the government of Nepal and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (U.N.H.C.R.), Kathmandu pledged to allow Tibetans to travel through Nepal en route to India, and to facilitate their transit. Lately, however, this established protocol has been ignored with increasing frequency. Nepalese police have been apprehending Tibetans far inside Nepal, robbing them, and then returning them to Tibet at gunpoint, where they are typically imprisoned and not uncommonly tortured by the Chinese.
→ read full articleTaking It to the Streets
Jane Mayer – The New Yorker,
28 Nov 2011
James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and one of the country’s foremost climate scientists says if the Keystone XL oil pipeline were built, “Essentially, it’s game over for the planet.” But at Middlebury College, in Vermont, Bill McKibben, a scholar-in-residence, concluded that the pipeline couldn’t be stopped by conventional political means. “It’s time to stop letting corporate power make the most important decisions our planet faces. We don’t have the money to compete … but we do have our bodies.” Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
→ read full articleWe Are the One Per Cent
John Kenney – The New Yorker,
28 Nov 2011
We, too, have mobilized. We come from near and far, by any means necessary, some on private jets, others on extremely large private jets. But you will not find us sleeping in a park and waiting in line at a Burger King to urinate. Don’t bother trying to Google Earth us, though, because we have proprietary military software that prevents you from doing so.
→ read full articleIran and the I.A.E.A.
Seymour M. Hersh – The New Yorker,
21 Nov 2011
“I’ve been reporting on Iran and the bomb for The New Yorker for the past decade, with a focus on the repeatedly inability of the best and the brightest of the Joint Special Operations Command to find definitive evidence of a nuclear-weapons production program in Iran.”
→ read full articleCorzine’s Downfall
Nick Paumgarten – The New Yorker,
14 Nov 2011
The collapse this week of the broker-dealer MF Global and the comeuppance of its chief executive Jon Corzine, who resigned Friday [4 Nov 2011], have been and will be put to many political and rhetorical purposes. It doesn’t much matter, in these Zuccotti Park days, whether you’re too sanguine or too sly. Either way, you’re considered a crook. But if the firm did indeed use hundreds of millions of dollars of its customers’ money to prop up its own liquidity, in its waning hours, someone, perhaps even the former C.E.O. of Goldman Sachs and Governor of New Jersey, could wind up in jail.
→ read full articleWhat Facebook Really Wants
Nicholas Thompson – The New Yorker,
3 Oct 2011
The more our online lives take place on Facebook, the more we depend on the choices of the people who run the company – what they think about privacy, how they think we should be able to organize our friends, what they tell advertisers (and governments) about what we do and what we buy. We’ll rely on whom they choose as partners to give us news and music. Real issues are at stake, in other words – not just the size of photos and whether you can poke.
→ read full articleOsama bin Laden’s Death: Celebrating the Celebrations
Peter Maass – The New Yorker,
9 May 2011
Photos were featured on newspaper front pages and websites this week of jubilant college students celebrating Osama bin Laden’s death, which weren’t so different from images of young Muslims elsewhere burning our flag and shouting ‘Death to America!’ Yet both those burning the American flag and the flag-wrapped college kids do not represent their societies’ majority views. These images could be just as inflammatory as the photo of bin Laden President Obama refuses to release.
→ read full articleBurial Lessons: From Che to bin Laden
Jon Lee Anderson – The New Yorker,
9 May 2011
There are some uncanny analogies between the story of Osama bin Laden’s life and death and that of another charismatic political outlaw who, once upon a time, “declared war” on the United States. Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the Argentine-Cuban revolutionary, was no terrorist, but a Communist ideologue who espoused violent political change through guerrilla wars around the world—to create “one, two, three, many Vietnams.” There are those who persist, vainly, in denying that it was really Che’s body that was found in Bolivia—as if that alone would somehow diminish the power of his legacy, which remains, for all the silly T-shirts, uniquely potent.
→ read full articleThe “Kill Team” Photographs
Seymour M. Hersh – The New Yorker,
28 Mar 2011
It’s the smile. In photographs released by the German weekly Der Spiegel, an American soldier is looking directly at the camera with a wide grin. His hand is on the body of an Afghan whom he and his fellow soldiers appear to have just killed, allegedly for sport… There are also reports of suspected Taliban sympathizers we turn over to Afghan police and soldiers being tortured or worse. This will be a long haul; revenge in Afghan society does not have to come immediately. We could end up not knowing who hit us, or why, a decade or two from now.
→ read full articleThe Apostate
Lawrence Wright – The New Yorker,
14 Feb 2011
Paul Haggis vs. the Church of Scientology. Haggis was prominent in both Scientology and Hollywood, two communities that often converge. Although he is less famous than certain other Scientologists, such as Tom Cruise and John Travolta, he had been in the organization for nearly thirty-five years. Haggis wrote the screenplay for “Million Dollar Baby,” which won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2004, and he wrote and directed “Crash,” which won Best Picture the next year—the only time in Academy history that that has happened.
→ read full articleGuantánamo’s Child-Soldier Trial
Amy Davidson - The New Yorker,
16 Aug 2010
“Where are our concerns about the rehabilitation of child soldiers when one falls into our own hands?”
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