Category: Writing
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As Americans vote, a need for patience.
In the darker corners of campaign headquarters, in the holding areas where both candidates take deep breaths before mounting another stage, shaking another hand, one has to believe the sense of melancholy —of promises impossibly proffered— must be overwhelming. If 2008 was the year for change, 2012 is certainly the year for patience
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Developing: M23 Rebels move on Goma, DRC.
While the details are still hazy, some sources are reporting that M23 rebels have captured Goma, home to United Nations peacekeepers currently deployed in the DRC. With “the heaviest fighting in Eastern Congo” since a 2008 rebel offensive in the same region, the rapidly escalating violence has been lost amidst today’s coverage of the crisis…
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Challenging Pirates in Tempestuous Seas
In keeping with the “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” argument, most countries have a non-engagement policy with pirates: paying a ransom is seen to incentivize the illegal activity — to give rise to a new wave of open-sea scoundrels eager to exploit the lucrative shadow world of transnational crime. But as the tactics used by…
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How Short History
An interesting Atlantic piece published today analyzes the failure of then-British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Loyd to foresee the failings of British “empire” and the African independence movement throughout the 1960s and 70s. More important than the colloquial and racial undertones in Loyd’s analysis, is a lesson of punditry, political-prognostication and the bias of the present.…
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The Power of Pirates
More than two years ago, I spent six months studying piracy off the coast of Somalia. The problem then, as it is today, is that piracy is one of the most trying “tragedy of the commons” challenges facing the east coast of Africa’s horn and the Gulf of Aden. This most trafficked shipping way has…
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Silent in Somalia
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been looking at the changing footprint of American forces in the Horn of Africa. The piece, hopefully completed by the end of the month, will tackle questions of Africom’s [Africa Command] future (a topic oft-ignored in the discussion of Obama’s drone warfare in a increasingly hostile Middle East) and…
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One journalist’s take on another’s folly: The Jonah Lehrer Conundrum
A writer’s integrity serves as both flak jacket and silver bullet. Without it, what’s left?
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Inexcusable Consequences
First it was a whirring drone that seemed to circle from above. Then, there were a series of explosions, each one louder than the last. Finally, there were great cracks —the ripping of splintering wood— accented with a loud thump and the flurry of birds forced into flight.
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Inside the Green Jacket
At the time, I found Sean Foley buried in the small office adjacent a garage full of golf carts at Glen Abbey Golf Club in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. From a space he shared with his boss and mentor, Tom Jackson, Foley would often emerge from the drab cubby with his signature close-cropped hair, quick —almost…
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Springtime for Mugabe
Get set for the African spring. With the recent arrest of six Zimbabwean citizens for watching news international news coverage of the Arab Spring revolutions, the stage is set for a violent uprising against the government of Robert Mugabe. And it can’t come a minute too soon. The charges laid against the six individuals last…
Adam McCauley 