American Supplicants: What to Expect from the State Department as a U.S. Expat
The U.S. has enough money to bomb faraway places in sneak attacks - Iran being the most recent example - and yet doesn’t seem to have the money to fund, or at least administer, what it calls American Citizen Services i.e. ACS. ACS is part of the…
Crossing Into Belarus, Europe’s Last Dictatorship
It wasn’t until we crossed into Belarus that anyone in the car spoke. It could have been 1986, not 2026, in terms of how Soviet it all felt. Here’s the scene: Four strangers in a Volvo SUV, who had been in the car together for the better part of…
Dark Clouds Over the Rainbow Nation: South Africa Today
After spending upwards of a year on the ground here in South Africa and having read quite a bit of the history on the place (it’s a never-ending wormhole, let me tell you) I’ve come to believe that the following quote from Rian Malan,…