From The New Yorker, an article on the decades-long battle to catch international arms broker Monzer al-Kassar. Nanjing by the Numbers: A new report on the 1937-1938 massacre doesn't settle the contested issue of how many people died — but it points to a much more significant new consensus between Japan and China. A review of The Hollywood Economist: The Hidden Financial Reality Behind the Movies by Edward Jay Epstein. From The Loop 21, an article on ethnic media’s unprecedented access in the age of Obama; and maybe we need a little class warfare. Basically, it's over: A parable about how one nation came to financial ruin. If we look at cocaine as a social hieroglyph — not as a thing, but as a complex relation between networks and organizations of people, as well as between states and bureaucracies — we may glimpse some of the distinguishing features of the contemporary world. The first chapter from The Message Matters: The Economy and Presidential Campaigns by Lynn Vavreck. Poison and Progress: Modern science's race to stay ahead of global terrorists and political assassins began with some devious poisoners in the 19th and early 20th centuries. From Vice, Seamus McGraw on the Battle of Lazy Dog Hill: Even a multimillion-dollar gas company can’t just kill a man’s coonhound and expect to get way with it; an interview with Ted Bafaloukos, the man who taught us everything we know about Jamaica; it’s no secret that tik — a cheap and dirty form of crystal meth smoked through light bulbs — is ripping apart the Cape Flats like nobody’s business; and Hamilton Morris on the Icelandic skin-disease mushroom fashion fiasco. From The Activist, an interview with Doug Henwood of Left Business Observer.
