I need to learn and write more about this newest target of the Espionage Act, but for today I’m boosting the signal from Courage to Resist, as ever the first to publicly support a dissenting servicemember. The link above also has a petition, urging that charges be dropped. (Full disclosure: the latter organization is alsoContinue reading “Should Reality Winner be spending this holiday in federal prison?”
Category Archives: human rights
The road to revolution via…Julia Davis?
The TV cameras are gone now. So are most of the veterans I was tracking and wrote about for Guernica, upon the request of the Standing Rock elders. Everyone knows that last week’s decision was only a battle won, and that the struggle continues: the drilling below Sioux land isn’t even completely stopped, the companyContinue reading “The road to revolution via…Julia Davis?”
The sins we carry: Eric Fair’s CONSEQUENCE
http://www.npr.org/player/embed/472964974/473004679 I pre-ordered this book after seeing an op-ed by its author, and spent the past day and a half tearing through it. The name of his former employer, CACI,had long since been for me code for “detainee abuse,” and I had tried to write an article based on the company’s misdeeds when applying forContinue reading “The sins we carry: Eric Fair’s CONSEQUENCE”
TheWarHorse.org is taking on the hardest questions
I think I’ve mentioned it before, but this ambitious, mostly soldier-driven journalistic project is already going some unexpected places. (Full disclosure: I hope to write for them sometime on a freelance basis. I can take NO credit for the thorough, startling work they’ve already produced.) Talk about testing what new ways nonfiction storytelling can go.Continue reading “TheWarHorse.org is taking on the hardest questions”
Happy 45th Anniversary, Daniel Ellsberg — or why he belongs in my book
today, almost exactly 45 years after a Marine Corps vet finally rocked the world, here it is. Now you know why I tried, and why my fantastic ex-colleague Judith Ehrlich followed her landmark CO movie with one about Ellsberg.
Dear Mr. Snowden
It felt irresponsible for me not to TRY to touch base with you before I finished writing narrative that includes you.
news: the Monday dozen
I know I haven’t posted one of these in a few days, but that’s not because there wasn’t much to note. Below is a full baker’s dozen, though some are echoes of stories already on our radar. The Toronto Star offers an elegant PTSD history, showing how “soldier’s heart” became “shell shock” became “combat fatigue” becameContinue reading “news: the Monday dozen”
News mix: a house of cards
As ever, my not-quite-daily roundup of items that caught my attention, and still might yours. In Winona, MN, a veteran artist enacts war’s suffering by lying on a bed of nails. 160 retired Israeli defense officials speak out against PM Netanyahu’s address today to the US Congress. The group reminds me a little of the Vietnam-eraContinue reading “News mix: a house of cards”
Friday news dump, belated
As what one writer has called “this insult of a month” comes to an end, a baker’s half-dozen to keep us warm: Famous Veteran: Leonard Nimoy. As many of us mourn the guy who made smart cool, IVAW’s Geoff Millard points out this Military.com Q&A in which Nimoy offered vets tips on making their dreamsContinue reading “Friday news dump, belated”
Moral injury in real time
There’s a reason why one of my chapters is tentatively titled “The Moral Injury of the Long War.” The great Jonathan Shay may have coined the term, based on the accumulated grief of Vietnam, but this generation has claimed it as they try to parse what honor means when it also means killing for uncertainContinue reading “Moral injury in real time”
I Ain't Marching Anymore 