I know we’ve been hearing about evil Erik Prince and his name-swapping mercenaries for years (Blackwater, Xe, my personal favorite Academi, and the latest, Greystone). But I only recently discovered how close all of this is to my hometown. Hell, from their “idyllic Dutch hamlet” in Holland (Michigan) the Prince family has formed and backed some of the biggest and […]
“Sometimes I wonder: Will God ever forgive us for what we’ve done to each other?” says Leonardo DiCaprio, sullen and bleary-eyed, stoically staring just off camera. “… I look around and I realize…” pause for emotion, “God left this place a long time ago.” DiCaprio, as the white African “soldier of fortune,” leans back in […]
I recently ask students in a graduate class I teach on ‘media, culture and international affairs’ to do an experiment: take a camera, go outside (really downstairs on the New School ‘campus’) and test people’s knowledge of Darfur and Eastern Congo. Quick context: We had been reading and discussing Mahmood Mamdani’s Saviors and Survivors as […]
