I reviewed it for The Daily.
Click to read.
29 January 2012 • 1:13 pm 0
Cullen Murphy’s new book on the Inquisition
27 January 2012 • 4:32 pm 0
Death of a Poseur
Jonathan “Jack” Idema, the pseudo-mercenary who was jailed after being convicted of operating a private prison in Kabul, died of AIDS in Mexico last week.
For the International Herald Tribune, I visited his semi-abandoned office building in Fayetteville, N.C., and found chains on the doors. Idema’s adjoining apartment, where he allegedly conducted his assignations, had a poster for the Broadway musical Urinetown on the wall and a single cowboy spur rusting in the grass outside.
Filed under: International Herald Tribune, Afghanistan, Mexico, military
1 January 2012 • 5:09 pm 0
Freed Press
Late last year, USAID hired me to teach a seminar about journalism to Libyan journalists. I wrote about the experience in the current Atlantic.
Filed under: Atlantic Monthly, Libya, Middle East
1 January 2012 • 4:43 pm 0
A Turkish Assad?
Which is scarier: a government that hunts down and kills dozens in cold blood, or a government that hunts down and kills dozens by accident?
Read more at the IHT.
Filed under: International Herald Tribune, Turkey
18 December 2011 • 4:28 pm 0
Arms and the Men
A review of Andrew Feinstein’s The Shadow World.
Originally appeared in The Daily.
The premise of Andrew Feinstein’s book “The Shadow World” is that humanity owes much of its war and misery to a dark cabal of arms dealers, corrupt politicians and defense contractors. This cabal runs on money (lots of it), cocaine and influence. Its major players are total amoralists, millionaires virtually to a man, and responsible for looting the treasury of nearly every developed country and spilling the innocent blood of every undeveloped one. Law enforcement nips at the feet of these men, yet most of them remain not only free to enjoy their network of mansions and kept women, but also toasted as statesmen and royalty. Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: Daily
16 December 2011 • 5:06 pm 0
Mercenary Hires Self, Has Fool for a Client
I reviewed Simon Mann’s memoir, Cry Havoc, for The National.
John Blake Publishing Ltd
Dh51
Everyone’s favourite kind of coup d’état is the bloodless one: El Presidente is surprised in his pyjamas, or while shopping in London, his trusted military aides turn out to be snakes, and he ends up, along with his loyalists, either under house arrest or in exile – padded at first, then increasingly threadbare as the secret accounts are frozen, one by one. Meanwhile, if you are an average citizen of his beleaguered country, not much changes. The money flows to anyone but you: meet the new Presidente, same as the old Presidente.
Simon Mann, one of the most famous living mercenaries, set out in 2004 to manage what he insisted would be a bloodless coup to topple Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, president of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea. But the Wonga Coup was so bloodless that it barely got started. Mann chartered a Boeing 727 full of armed men and planned to fly into the capital of Malabo, where an advance team led by the South African mercenary Nick du Toit intended to take over the airport. Mann hoped to install Severo Moto, the leader of a government-in-exile headquartered in Spain, as president, and in return reap millions in oil revenues.
