April 2012
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Primer: Profits and Punishment
Here’s a primer for my latest episode of Fault Lines. It’s about for-profit immigration detention facilities in the US. This was put together by the show’s producer, Anjali Kamat.
For more on why undocumented migration from Mexico is at an all-time low see: http://is.gd/QXq5Pk & http://is.gd/xH0qNO
@DetentionWatch has a useful map of all the #immigration #detention ctrs in...
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ASK ME (not really me) ANYTHING! →
Naz, who is featured in my latest episode of Fault Lines (see previous post for video), is on Reddit right now doing an Ask Me Anything.
He was detained and held in a for-profit detention center in Pearsall, Texas, for ten months without bail. A few days after our interview with him he was surprisingly released. Go ask him a question!
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Fault Lines: Profits & Punishment →
My next episode of Fault Lines premieres tonight. We investigate the booming business of private immigration detainee facilities in the US. It debuts at 6:30 pm EST. If you don’t get Al Jazeera English on your cable system, then you can watch it live stream for free on YouTube. I’ll be tweeting during the episode and will take questions via Twitter immediately following the show.
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I'm on @reddit right now doing an 'IAmA' if anyone... →
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We Just Won a Peabody Award! →
March 2012
3 posts
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The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy... →
Here’s What I’m Reading Today. It’s a fascinating look into the massive data storage center the NSA is building in a remote part of Utah. It will be able to store all of our private phone conversations, emails, text messages, chats, credit card purchases, bank info, the list goes on and on. The article’s author, James Bamford, describes the site as Big Love meets Big...
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Steve Jobs
So I just finished reading Jobs’ biography. I highly recommend it. I actually read the entire thing on a Blackberry. I felt it helped my objectivity; however, life has a funny way of effing with me. As soon as I finished reading umpteen hundred pages on my Blackberry Curve, which displays about a paragraph at a time, my IT department switched my phone to an iPhone. I’ve always...
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What I'm Reading Today →
@NewYorker: I hate your firewall.
Friends, sorry, today’s selection of my reading again comes from the New Yorker. You can read the abstract on their site. If you have a subscription, you should be able to see it online. If not, sneak into a doctor’s office and ‘borrow’ their copy.
The story profiles Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. You may remember the movie Lord of...
February 2012
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We Die Alone
Here’s my must-read-now recommendation of the week:
We Die Alone is the incredible, true story of one man’s survival during a World War II, special operations mission in Arctic Norway. I don’t want to tell you any more about the story than that, so I don’t spoil anything. In fact, skip the preface by Stephen Ambrose. His high praise serves the book well, but what he...
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With All Due Respect →
I’m really frustrated by this, the article I want to share with you today is stuck behind the New Yorker’s pay wall. If you have older (Jan. 9, 2012) copies of the mag laying around and missed this article, or if you have a subscription to their site, it’s worth going back and reading. The piece profiles Jake Adelstein, an odd-duck reporter from Missouri who has become one of the...
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Often it's the little things in life that do us... →
(From the Washington Post) When U.S. special agent Jaime Zapata was shot dead one year ago on a notorious stretch of highway in central Mexico, he was driving a $160,000 armored Chevy Suburban, built to exacting government standards, designed to defeat high-velocity gunfire, fragmentation grenades and land mines.
But the vehicle had a basic, fatal flaw.
Forced off the road in a...
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The Woman Who Fell To Earth →
What an incredible story. Makes me want to watch the doc even though I don’t speak German…
On Christmas Eve 1971, only hours after her high school graduation ceremony, 17-year-old Juliane and her mother boarded a plane that was to cross the Peruvian rain forest. They were heading home to celebrate Christmas with her father. The plane flew into a volatile thunderstorm and was...
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How Companies Learn Your Secrets →
Your shopping habits reveal even the most personal information — like when you’re going to have a baby.
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WatchI’m crazy for this right now.
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January 2012
12 posts
batman--girl asked: Dear Josh Rushing, We are seniors from Northern Valley Regional High School in Demarest located in northern New Jersey. We are part of our school's AP world history class. While learning about the Iraq- American War, we watched the film Control Room. Through watching this film we were able to gain a greater understanding of what has occurred from both view points.
womenandwar asked: If you throw a little recreational drug use into your embedding stories, you might just make one up on the fame of H.S. Thompson. Great reportage.
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Fault Lines: On the Pulse of the Pentagon
The US announced a new military strategy today at a Pentagon briefing. Much of the discussion concerned what could be read as predictable—and cyclic—budget cuts of a post-war drawdown. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta also took pains to mention what wouldn’t feel the fiscal pinch: offensive and defensive cyber security and unmanned systems.
We at Fault Lines have covered and...
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DAILY BEAST: 31 Ways To Get Smarter in 2012 →
Check out #4!
Or I’ll save you the trouble: it’s watch Al Jazeera.
I couldn’t agree more.
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December 2011
13 posts
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WatchWe won the duPont Award! I’m insanely jealous that it was for an episode of Fault Lines, Haiti: Six Months On, filmed by my colleagues: Sebastian Walker, Andrea Schmidt and Snorre Wik. You can see their deserving work here.
It feels great to be recognized for our work, but this represents something else as well. Not that long ago, US media awards would never honor Al Jazeera. For years...
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After much deliberation, we finally decided on a... →
Am I the only one who thinks it’s odd that Katie Couric named her new puppy “Cooper”? She says it’s like Mini Cooper. Oh, so it’s not like the name of your day-time talk show rival Anderson Cooper. Good, ‘cause that would be weird…
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Go Vote! →
Artists Wanted is running a really cool photo competition called Exposure. I’ve submitted my series Baghdad: A Model City. It’s a great site for portfolios. Check it out.
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In Search of Meaning: Hitchens, Whitman & War
Yesterday was a heavy day.
I was saddened to learn this morning that Christopher Hitchens died last night. Hitch was my first interview at Al Jazeera for a pilot show that never aired. I was nervous, he was buzzed. I was earnest, overly so; he was generous, predictably so. I was naive, but trying to hide it; he was erudite, and couldn’t hide it if he tried. Thankfully, he...
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November 2011
18 posts
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American Journalists detained in Cairo
Just learned Jehane Noujaim, director of the film Control Room, has been detained in Egypt. She’s being charged as I write this. Follow her story on twitter AND RT at #freejehane.
another female american journalist @monaeltahawy has just been released after 12 hours and is recounting physical and sexual assault via twitter.
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