Sponsored by Royal Collection Trust

Today in The New York Review of Books: Mark O’Connell on Alex Karp’s fellowship of war profiteers; E. Tammy Kim on the legacy of the WTO protests in Seattle; Joshua Craze on how Western powers have enabled a dictatorship in South Sudan; Ilija Trojanow on life in exile; and, from the archives, Mark Danner on the perpetual state of exception inaugurated by September 11.

Mark O’Connell
The War App

Silicon Valley has reversed its longtime resistance to working in defense and security technology, with the CEO of the data analytics software company Palantir leading the charge.

E. Tammy Kim
When Trade Was at a Crossroads

In 1999 the World Trade Organization gathered in Seattle to celebrate free trade. The protest that followed offers a blueprint for effective resistance to globalization at a time of renewed urgency.

Joshua Craze
South Sudan’s Democratic Mirage

The billions of dollars that the West has poured into the country have not made it richer or more peaceful, but they have enabled a dictatorship.

Ilija Trojanow, translated by Ambika Athreya
After Flight

Having lost the organic link to his past, the refugee contrives for himself a room to which only he has the keys.

Free from the Archives

Today is the twenty-fourth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and United Airlines Flight 93. “To Americans,” wrote Mark Danner on the tenth anniversary, “those terrible moments stand as a brightly lit portal through which we were all compelled to step, together, into a different world…. Before the War on Terror, official torture was illegal and anathema; today it is a policy choice.”

Mark Danner
After September 11: Our State of Exception

“Call it, then, the state of exception: these years during which, in the name of security, some of our accustomed rights and freedoms are circumscribed or set aside, the years during which we live in a different time. This different time of ours has now extended ten years—the longest by far in American history—with little sense of an ending. Indeed, the very endlessness of this state of exception—a quality emphasized even as it was imposed—and the broad acceptance of that endlessness, the state of exception’s increasing normalization, are among its distinguishing marks.”

Special Offer
Subscribe for just $1 an issue

Get the deal

Politics   Literature   Arts   Ideas

You are receiving this message because you signed up
for email newsletters from The New York Review.

Update your address or preferences

View this newsletter online

The New York Review of Books
207 East 32nd Street, New York, NY 10016-6305