Manning and Lamo, Wikileaks, and the Public Interest
In 2007, an American Apache helicopter operating in Iraq killed 12 Iraqi citizens, including two Reuters journalists. The event was kept from the American public for months, the film footage…
Politics
1281 posts
Writing on politics at The Rumpus!
“Until quite recently, to be Irish meant to be not-English.”
“My march to the bookies, my filling out the docket and handing it over the counter with my cash: this was going to be my post-post-colonial moment. I’d sit through…
Your Conflict iPhone
“An ugly paradox of the 21st century is that some of our elegant symbols of modernity — smartphones, laptops and digital cameras — are built from minerals that seem to…
Jessa Crispin on Wisdom
“But there’s a difference between admiring wisdom and emulating it. That’s perhaps the best illustration of the difference between knowledge and wisdom: We know the value of wisdom. We know…
The Reptilian Brain
“We’re playing to the reptilian brain rather than the logic centers, so we look for key words and images to leverage the intense rage and anxiety of white working-class conservatives.…
The Spill and Melville
“But much like the modern petroleum industry — which began in the late 1850s, making it only slightly younger than Melville’s novel — whaling quickly came up against the limits…
Tortured Confessions: The Rumpus Interview with Justine Sharrock
In her book Tortured: When Good Soldiers Do Bad Things, journalist Justine Sharrock takes a close look at low-ranking soldiers who engaged in acts of torture.
Michael Chabon on Mavi Marmara
“This is why, to a Jew, it always comes as a shock to encounter stupid Jews. Philip Roth derived a major theme of Goodbye, Columbus from the uncanny experience. The…
BPGlobalPR
“Safety is our primary concern. Well, profits, then safety. Oh, no- profits, image, then safety, but still- it’s right up there.” “You don’t go drilling 5000 feet underwater with the…
bodies at rest
Sarah Fran Wisby responds to San Francisco’s Sit/Lie proposition criminalizing homelessness. ** I come not to bury the sponsors of the proposed Sit/Lie aka Civil Sidewalks ordinance, but to praise…
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,…