Hoy nos vamos a Nigeria, la Antártida, a Niger. A Israel. A New jersey y Ohio. A los suburbios de Washington DC. Y a Moscú. Historias de fraudes, guerras, soldados, estafadores y mucha NBA. Enjoy.

– Trabajo en equipo de varios periodistas del NYT: “An Endless War’: Why 4 U.S. Soldiers Died in a Remote African Desert”.  More than 16 years after 9/11 spurred a broad fight against terrorism, some Americans say it’s time to look at how the country is deploying its forces. Reporting from the desert of Niger to a small town in Georgia, The New York Times reconstructed how four American soldiers lost their lives — and why they were in Africa to begin with.

– Esto tenéis que leerlo con calma. David Grann en The New Yorker: “The White Darkness“. A solitary journey across Antarctica

– Brutal esto de Ronen Bergman en The New York Times Magazine: “How Arafat Eluded Israel’s Assassination Machine“.  The nation’s security forces tried for decades to kill the P.L.O. leader. Now, former officials tell the story of how they failed — and how far they almost went to succeed.

– Rachel Monroe cuenta un historión en The Atlantic: “The Perfect Man Who Wasn’t“. For years he used fake identities to charm women out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Then his victims banded together to take him down. Vía Droblo.

– Un tipo que vive en medio de la nada en Ohio y hace todo lo humanamente posible por no saber nada. Lo cuenta Sam Dolnick en The New York Times: “The Man Who Knew Too Little“.  The most ignorant man in America knows that Donald Trump is president — but that’s about it. Living a liberal fantasy is complicated.

– Andre Rice en The Guardian:  “The fight for the right to be a Muslim in America“.A bitter legal row over a mosque in an affluent New Jersey town shows the new face of Islamophobia in the age of Trump.

–  Inside Atomwaffen As It Celebrates a Member for Allegedly Killing a Gay Jewish College Student ProPublica obtained the chat logs of Atomwaffen, a notorious white supremacist group. When Samuel Woodward was charged with killing 19-year-old Blaze Bernstein last month in California, other Atomwaffen members cheered the death, concerned only that the group’s cover might have been blown.

– Tim McDonnel en Bloomberg.  “How Nigerians Beat Bitcoin Scams“. Un fraude de 2015 se llevó por delante el dinero de más de tres millones de nigerianos incautos. Pero también preparó a muchos para lo que vendría después. The country’s embrace of the cryptocurrency has led to some old-school precautions against fraud.

– Shaun Walker deja Moscú tras una década de corresponsal para The Guardian. Y escribe un ensayo de despedida.  “Putin’s quest for lost glory. “As our correspondent prepares to leave Russia, he argues that the Russian leader’s rule has been dedicated to restoring pride lost in the collapse of the Soviet Union”.

– Una reseña de John Gray, con saña, en The New Statesman: “Unenlightened thinking: Steven Pinker’s embarrassing new book is a feeble sermon for rattled liberals“.  To think of this book as any kind of scholarly exercise is a category mistake. The purpose of Pinker’s laborious work is to reassure liberals that they are on “the right side of history”.

– En The Players Tribune, Steve Francis sobre Steve Francis como sólo podría Steve Francis: “I got a Story to tell“, De una esquina vendiendo droga a la NBA.

– Andrew Sharp en Sport Illustrated: “Coming to America“. Every year more than 100 players travel across continents to play in the NBA. What did that experience look like 30 years ago? Who helps players navigate the adjustment? How has it changed over the years? And how has it changed the NBA?

Muy buen domingo a todos.

– Joseph Goldstein en el NYT: La rehabilitazión de un neonazi. Aquí en inglés, y recomiendo encarecidamente hacerlo en inglés, la versión española…

– Domenico Quirico en La Stampa:“Sono diventato jihadista nelle carceri italiane. Ecco come ci reclutano”. Vía Marco Emergi.

– Linda Rodríguez MCRobbie en The Guardian: “Total recall: the people who never forget“. An extremely rare condition may transform our understanding of memory. Vía Mariangela Paone.

– Lauren Larson en GQ: “The Man Who Cleans Up After Plane Crashes“. Vía Droblo

–  Adam Entous y Devlin Barrett en The Wall Street Journal: The Last Diplomat. As Robin Raphel worked for the State Department in Pakistan, her brand of traditional diplomacy ran into the new realities of covert surveillance. The collision turned her life upside down. Una funcionaria con contactos increíbles y opiniones polémicas o una espía y traidora al servicio de Islamabad?

– Graeme Wood en The Atlantic: The American Leader in the Islamic State. John Georgelas was a military brat, a drug enthusiast, a precocious underachiever born in Texas. Now he is a prominent figure within the Islamic State. Here’s the never-before-reported story of his long and troubling journey.

– C. J. Chivers en The New York Times: The Fighter: A U.S. Marine’s long journey, from the war in Afghanistan to an Illinois prison.  The Marine Corps taught Sam Siatta how to shoot. The war in Afghanistan taught him how to kill. Nobody taught him how to come home. Una larga historia de un caso en realidad bastante simple. Un chico introvertido que fue a la guerra y descubrió que disparar se le daba muy bien. Volvió, pero traumatizado. Y un día cometió un error estando borracho. La Justicia fue durísima. El periodista (ex marine como él y claramente implicado) acaba cambiando su vida, con una intervención (y ahora un artículo) que seguramente va más allá de los limites del propio periódico.

– Matt Wolfe en The New Republic: The Last Unknown Man. He appeared out of nowhere. He had no name, no memory, no past. He was the only person the FBI ever listed as missing even though they knew where he was. How could B.K. Doe remain anonymous in the modern age’s matrix of observation?

– Bryan Denton en TNYT: ISIS Sent Four Car Bombs. The Last One Hit Me.El relato de un fotógrafo norteamericano que acampañaba a una unidad de élite del ejército iraquí durante la operación para la liberación de Mosul. Una comitiva de vehículos y la tensión de ir los primeros, siendo atacados una y otra vez. El cuarto coche bomba, al final, se acerca lo suficiente. Por suerte, Denton y un soldado iraquí sólo tienen heridas superficiales.

– Robert Sapolsky en Nautilus Magazine: My Personal Hero: Robert Sapolsky on Rudolf Virchow. Otra vida extraordinaria: When the 19C German physician Rudolf Virchow was not otherwise engaged leading a radical left-wing political party and sparring with Bismarck in the Reichstag, he “basically founded modern pathology”. He also published a “monumental cell biology text” which first named and described conditions including spina bifida and leukemia; accompanied Heinrich Schliemann on archaeology expeditions; and founded Germany’s first anthropological society. “Plus, he had one great beard”.

– Michelle Dean en Buzzfeed: The Murder of Munchausen. Dee Dee Wanted Her Daughter To Be Sick, Gypsy Wanted Her Mom To Be Murdered.  Dee Dee Blancharde was a model parent: a tireless single mom taking care of her gravely ill child. But after Dee Dee was killed, it turned out things weren’t as they appeared — and her daughter Gypsy had never been sick at all.

– Daphne Merkin en Bookforum: The Trauma of the Gifted Child.The memoirs of Holocaust survivor Saul Friedländer. Una larga reseña de las memorias y de la vida de Friedländer, nacido en Checoslovaquia, criado y escondido en Francia, separado de sus padres (que murieron en Auschwitz), educado en Harvard y uno de los primeros historiadores del Holocausto.

– Christopher de Bellaigue: Eton and the making of a modern elite. The world’s most famous school aspires to become an agent of social change; but, as old boy Christopher de Bellaigue learns when he goes back, it is also an increasingly effective way for the global elite to give its offspring an expensive leg up in life

– Y uno más ligero para terminar. David Coward en el TLS: On the trail of the Man in the Iron Mask. No, la másacara no podía ser de acero. Y no, seguramente no era el hermano gemelo del rey, pese a Dumas.

– Amanda Gefter en Nautilus: The Man Who Tried to Redeem the World with Logic. Walter Pitts rose from the streets to MIT, but couldn’t escape himself.

– Ta-Nehisi Coates en The Atlantic: My President Was Black. A history of the first African American White House—and of what came next. Un largo ensayo. Siempre he tenido muchos problemas para apreciar los artículos de Coates, pese al enorme prestigio que tiene entre gente a la que leo y respeto. Pero éste artículo es fácil de entender y de apreciar. Y la importancia del tema, también.

– Reeves Wiedmand en The New York Magazine: “The Sandy Hook Hoax“. Lenny Pozner used to believe in conspiracy theories. Until his son’s death became one. Tristísima historia, dolorosa. La crueldad de los conspiranoicos, los mensajes y acusaciones a familias destrozadas y vulnerables, a las que piden que abran las tumbas para demostrarles que alguna vez tuvieron hijos. Larry era uno de ellos, hasta que si hijo fue asesinado y lo vivió de primera mano.

– Cass Sunstein y Richard Thaler: The Two Friends Who Changed How We Think About How We Think. Sobre Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman y el libro de Michael Lewis. No entiendo cómo no he leído aún el libro de Lewis. Qué ganas.

– Eric Schlosse en The New Yorker con una historia y un montón de datos para no dormir: World War Three, by Mistake. Harsh political rhetoric, combined with the vulnerability of the nuclear command-and-control system, has made the risk of global catastrophe greater than ever. Si tienen problemas de imsomnio quizás no sea la mejor lectura de todas. Y tras lo de ayer de Pakistán e Israel, más.

– T. Christian Miller, ProPublica y Ken Armstrong: An unbelievable story of rape. An 18-year-old said she was attacked at knifepoint. Then she said she made it up. That’s where our story begins. Un historión, un articulazo y una enorme investigación. Brutal .

– Alex Spence en Politico Magazine: A split second on Oxford Street.Tom Kearney’s one-man crusade for bus safety is politics at its most personal. En 2009, un ejecutivo de Enron fue golpeando por un autobús en Londres. Casi lo mata. Desde entonces tiene una  cruzada contra los atropellos y su impunidad.

– Lunch with the FT: Nobel economist Angus Deaton on a year of political earthquakes. Over trout in Princeton, the laureate says he’s glad the Clinton era is over and it isn’t only Trump voters who feel ‘excluded

– William Easterly en Foreing Policy: Democracy Is Dying as Technocrats Watch. Assaults on democracy are working because our current political elites have no idea how to defend it. Wasterly en mi equipo, siempre.

– Sergey Ponomarev y Tim Arango en el NYT: For Liberated Iraqi Christians, Still a Bleak Christmas.

Muy feliz Navidad a todos