Posts by author
Mark Follman
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“The White House Wants to Get Him”
I’m still stunned from reading this story on the front page of yesterday ’s New York Times. Officials in George W. Bush’s White House, James Risen reports, directed the Central Intelligence Agency to dig up damaging personal information on Juan…
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Bookending bin Laden
Mother Jones’s Michael Mechanic has pulled together how eight newspapers captured the defining moments of Osama bin Laden’s mortal entanglement with America. From the Gray Lady to the tabloids, it’s interesting to look through these juxtaposed front pages and reflect…
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Vancouver’s Bold War on Drugs
For many years Vancouver has had a serious heroin addiction. So it’s heartening to see that one of the city’s boldest strategies for confronting the problem, launched eight years ago, is continuing to meet with serious success: Vancouver’s government-backed “supervised…
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How USA Today Tiptoed Away From the GE Tax Hoax
Last Wednesday, USA Today editor Doug Stanglin reported about the Associated Press’s hugely embarrassing misfire-of-a-story on General Electric. In a blog post headlined “AP falls for prank report that GE is giving back a $3.2B tax refund,” Stanglin quoted from…
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Hacking the Middle East
Simplistic pronouncements about the role of social media in stirring uprisings and toppling dictators have by now, thankfully, seemed to die down. That Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other digital tools have been important to the historic upheaval in the Middle…
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Wisconsin Gov. Walker’s War on Labor
The showdown continues in Wisconsin pitting public-sector labor unions against Republican governor Scott Walker, who aims to eviscerate collective bargaining rights. As of this writing the state’s Democratic lawmakers apparently are still MIA. Days of large protests in Madison and…
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CIA Response to WikiLeaks: “WTF”
A report from the Washington Post on Wednesday describes an effort by the CIA to assess the impact of WikiLeaks on U.S. national security. The effort is known as the WikiLeaks Task Force. Apparently it’s also commonly referred to as…
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Love in the Time of Terror Babies
“My parents, with admirable foresight, had their first child while they were on fellowships in the United States. My mother was in public health, and my father in a library-science program. Having an American baby was, my mother once said,…
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The Rise of WikiLeaks
No matter where you come down on the veracity, morality or impact of WikiLeaks’ mountainous Afghan “war diary,” its release has been a fascinating event. It prompted me to reread Raffi Khatchadourian’s first-rate New Yorker profile of WikiLeaks founder Julian…
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The Deep Dark Shades of BP’s Gulf Oil Spill
The oil-drenched marine life preparing to testify on Barry Blitt’s June 7 New Yorker cover did not make me smile in the slightest. (I doubt humor, even the dark kind, was Blitt’s core intent.) It’s an effectively painful riff on…
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Mark Bowden Battles The Bloggers
The esteemed journalist Mark Bowden is back with another thought-provoking article on the digital media revolution. It is at once deeply reported, crisply written — and strangely myopic in its conclusions.
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The spirit of Haida Gwaii
(Editor’s note, all photos in this post are the author’s and are copyrighted) In late August I returned to the archipelago of Haida Gwaii, a place whose ancient, complex culture and astonishing natural beauty are inextricable. Earlier this week, in…