Blog

This is my newest article, in the June issue of Outside; a profile of Tomaz Humar, an amazing dude. For an easy-to-read text version, go here.

From the front page of today’s Los Angeles Times:

The White House and Congress are trumpeting their determination to bring economic opportunity to the people of Africa. But first, a few million sub-Saharan farmers will have to suffer.

The Bush administration has been busy extending special ...  (Read more)

That’s the message, though with greater complexity and shading, of a new book, “Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam,” by Gilles Kepel. Although the author is a French ...  (Read more)

Anyone checked out ChristopherHitchens.com lately?

Today’s Washington Post has a detailed reconstruction of the March battle in which seven American soldiers were killed during Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan. An excellent story.

It’s hard to believe, but ten years ago to this day I filed my first story about the war in Bosnia. Feels like yesterday, and a lifetime ago.

When I was an intern at The Washington Post, the foreign editor was Jim Hoagland, a Francophile who treated me well, perhaps because I lived in Paris for a year and he assumed I loved the French as much as he did (I did not). Hoagland is now the Post’s principal foreign affairs columnist, ...  (Read more)

One of the delights of reporting in Pakistan—or India, for that matter—is that English-language newspapers are prevalent and important and, in many cases, enjoyable reads (both the truth and the English language are stretched in exciting ways). The crisis between Pakistan and India has led me ...  (Read more)

Ed Vulliamy, who filed the first eyewitness dispatches about Serb-run prison camps in Bosnia, writes in The Observer that journalists should testify at war crimes trials. “I believe there are times in history–as ...  (Read more)

Why can’t Thomas Friedman say “I was wrong”? His column on Sunday argues, rightly, that President Bush’s war on terrorism fails to embrace non-military strategies that would help ensure America’s security. ...  (Read more)