Confessions of a Cartel Hit Man
Three targets, two 17-year-old partners, and $15,000 in getaway cash: the story of the author’s first assassination for Ramón Arellano Félix’s Tijuana cartel.
Three targets, two 17-year-old partners, and $15,000 in getaway cash: the story of the author’s first assassination for Ramón Arellano Félix’s Tijuana cartel.
Martin Corona Men's Journal Jun 2017 20min Permalink
Fourteen people connected to resistance of Vladimir Putin have died on British soil. Every case has been closed, the deaths deemed of natural causes. American intelligence believes they were all assassinated by the Kremlin.
Heidi Blake, Tom Warren, Richard Holmes, Jason Leopold, Jane Bradley, Alex Campbell Buzzfeed Jun 2017 1h Permalink
An anatomy of a failure.
Benjamin Wallace-Wells Rolling Stone Dec 2007 1h Permalink
A bullfighter’s comeback after a brutal goring.
Karen Russell GQ Oct 2012 30min Permalink
After their mother was deported to Mexico, the Marin siblings faced an impossible choice: Stay or go.
Lizzie Presser California Sunday Jun 2017 30min Permalink
One morning in mid-December, a group of soldiers banged on the door of a house in eastern Aleppo. A male voice responded from inside: “Who are you?” A soldier answered: “We’re the Syrian Arab Army. It’s O.K., you can come out. They’re all gone.” The door opened. A middle-aged man appeared. He had a gaunt, distinguished face, but his clothes were threadbare and his teeth looked brown and rotted. At the soldiers’ encouragement, he stepped hesitantly forward into the street. He explained to them, a little apologetically, that he had not crossed his threshold in four and a half years.
Robert F. Worth New York Times Magazine May 2017 35min Permalink
A talk from the re:publica conference in Berlin:
The good part about naming a talk in 2017 ‘Notes from an Emergency’ is that there are so many directions to take it. The emergency I want to talk about is the rise of a vigorous ethnic nationalism in Europe and America. This nationalism makes skillful use of online tools, tools that we believed inherently promoted freedom, to advance an authoritarian agenda.
Maciej Ceglowski Idle Words May 2017 20min Permalink
Bangalore was once the icon of a globalized, high tech, utopian future. Now it’s a sign of global catastrophe.
Samanth Subramanian Wired May 2017 15min Permalink
To support their families back home, women from the Philippines have found work and a new way of life in Israel. But at what price?
Ruth Margalit New York Times Magazine May 2017 20min Permalink
How did an obscure artist who survived the Cultural Revolution become a viral sensation and suddenly the surreal, sexy center of Fashion Week?
Michael Paterniti GQ Mar 2017 15min Permalink
From the Translator’s Note:
Just over two weeks ago, on April 3, the renowned Mexican writer and investigative journalist Sergio González Rodríguez unexpectedly passed away from a heart attack at age 67. [His book] Bones in the Desert is a far-reaching investigation into the still-unsolved murders of hundreds of women and girls in the communities surrounding Mexico’s Ciudad Júarez, on the US border with El Paso, Texas. In the years since its publication in 2002, Bones in the Desert has left an indelible imprint on the modern literature of the Americas, both through its own merits and its foundational influence on Roberto Bolaño’s 2666. In crafting a fictionalized version of Ciudad Júarez, Bolaño collaborated directly with González Rodríguez, relying on him for substantial “technical help” in answering questions about the nature of the murders, and eventually including him as a character in the novel.
An excess of people and an excess of desert.
The hallmarks that would come to characterize the official narrative surrounding the serial murders were already being established.
Sergio González Rodríguez n+1 Jan 2002 Permalink
To be mentally ill in Ghana.
Brian Goldstone Harper's Apr 2017 30min Permalink
The diary of a Scranton, PA National Guardsmen tasked with guarding the highest profile prisoner in U.S history: a surprisingly amiable Saddam Hussein.
Lisa DePaulo GQ Jun 2005 25min Permalink
In the fall of 2015, Germany designated Sumte, population 102, as a sanctuary for nearly 800 refugees. What followed was a living experiment in the country’s principles.
Ben Mauk Virginia Quarterly Review Apr 2017 45min Permalink
A primer.
Richard Beck n+1 Apr 2017 25min Permalink
Every year, thousands of teenagers from one city in Nigeria risk death and endure forced labor and sex work on the long route to Europe.
Ben Taub New Yorker Apr 2017 45min Permalink
“Brace Belden can’t remember exactly when he decided to give up his life as a punk-rocker turned florist turned boxing-gym manager in San Francisco, buy a plane ticket to Iraq, sneak across the border into Syria, and take up arms against the Islamic State. But as with many major life decisions, Belden, who is 27 — “a true idiot’s age,” in his estimation — says it happened gradually and then all at once.”
Reeves Wiedeman New York Apr 2017 25min Permalink
The annual tradition in the grape-growing country of South Africa’s Western Cape was that locals could gather fruit before it rotted on the vine. But this season produced a body amongst the rows.
Christopher Clark Roads and Kingdoms Mar 2017 20min Permalink
In Sweden, hundreds of refugee children have fallen unconscious after being informed that their families will be expelled from the country. The patients, doctors say, seem to have lost the will to live.
Rachel Aviv New Yorker Mar 2017 25min Permalink
The city’s radical pro-democracy movement faces a stiff test from Mainland China.
Howard W French The Guardian Mar 2017 20min Permalink
As a right-wing terrorist cell went on a seven-year killing spree, did authorities look the other way?
Jacob Kushner Foreign Policy Mar 2017 30min Permalink
How $100 million in diamonds, gold, and jewelry disappeared from Antwerp Diamond Center’s super-secure vault.
Joshua Davis Wired Mar 2009 30min Permalink
Ahmed Naji’s novel was not overtly political, but the “protagonist performs cunnilingus, rolls hash joints and gulps from bottles of vodka” which led a lawyer to press charges against him for causing a fluctuation in his blood pressure when the novel was excerpted in a Cairo newspaper, even though it had been approved by censors.
Jonathan Guyer Rolling Stone Feb 2017 20min Permalink
On what lay behind Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and what lies ahead.
Evan Osnos, David Remnick, Joshua Yaffa New Yorker Feb 2017 50min Permalink
Half a century ago, an American commando vanished in the jungles of Laos. In 2008, he reappeared in Vietnam, reportedly alive and well. But nothing was what it seemed.
Matthew Shaer The Atavist Magazine Feb 2017 35min Permalink