Mike Pilewski writes about life, politics and culture in the United States
The Pentagon announced yesterday that its special forces had killed Abu Sayyaf, a top Islamic State commander in Syria. There’d been a firefight at his compound. The special forces seized a substantial amount of useful information. Four years and two weeks ago, we were told the same things about Osama bin Laden. There were some serious holes in that story, … >>
“You two are going to be in a room alone with Kim [Jong-un], and the CIA would love it if you could take him out.” “Hm?” “Take him out.” “For coffee? Dinner? For kimchi?” “No, uh, take him out.” “You want us to kill the leader of North Korea?” “Yes.” In a nutshell, this dialogue with a CIA agent (played … >>
The recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, have played out in a way that only Quentin Tarantino could have imagined. Tarantino’s films, which are very violent, often tell their story from more than one perspective. Scenes are not shown in the usual order. Key information is presented after the fact, reversing whatever conclusions one may have drawn up to that point. … >>
Marion Stokes died in December 2012, but the full story of her life took almost a year to come out. According to her obituary in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Stokes was a librarian during the 1950s and a political protester in the ’60s. From 1967 to 1969, she co-produced a local TV talk show. In the 1980s, she invested in Apple … >>
Yesterday’s news in the publishing business met with shock and horror. One of America’s most respected newspapers, The Washington Post, was being sold. Newspapers and publishing houses tend to be started by individuals, then handed down to their descendants. So to someone in the business, selling such a company would be like selling one of his own children. The natural … >>
I’m sure you’ve heard that on Monday afternoon, local time, horrible things happened in Boston. Near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, two bombs went off, killing three people and hitting perhaps 200 more with shrapnel. Doctors have said they “had to finish the work of the bombs”, performing amputations on a number of the injured. Horrible, horrible stuff. … >>
Ten years ago today, the United States invaded Iraq — a country that had not threatened the US and that had no means of attacking it. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed; two million became refugees. A total of 4,475 American soldiers were killed, and another 32,221 suffered significant injury, disfigurement or amputation. Many more suffered traumatic brain injuries … >>
Can you throw away books? Many of us can’t. Good books are like old friends. We appreciate the amount of time someone took to write these stories and set them on paper. We want to make sure our books are taken care of. If there’s no more room on our shelves (because we’ve made new friends), we go looking for … >>
At some point, it happens to all of us. The computer fails to save that important document we’ve been working on so long. A computer crash, a faulty hard drive, a USB stick pulled out too quickly, or just plain human error: the reason hardly matters when you’ve just seen your data disappear. For journalists, this is a particular hazard. … >>
The cold, wet weather that lasted into the early part of August didn’t provide much of an incentive to go outdoors. Fortunately, however, this year has offered some very interesting reality TV. In January and February I found myself watching what I call the Egypt show, a touching soap opera that was on every night. That series ended with a … >>