The Atlantic

Remote-Control Terrorists and Butterfly Tattoos: The Week in Global-Affairs Writing

The highlights from seven days of reading about the world
Source: Vadim Braydov / AP

James Fenton | “There are two chief kinds of carnage taking place here, these wet Manila nights. There is the ‘buy-bust’ operation, in which the targeted criminal attempts to buy some drugs, only to find that he is dealing with undercover police. He panics and reaches for a weapon, a pistol perhaps or a kind of homemade shotgun. Before he can use it (so the familiar script reads) the police shoot him dead. There have been around two thousand of these buy-bust killings since the war on drugs under President Rodrigo Duterte

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Atlantic

The Atlantic8 min readAmerican Government
The Return of the John Birch Society
Michael Smart chuckled as he thought back to their banishment. Truthfully he couldn’t say for sure what the problem had been, why it was that in 2012, the John Birch Society—the far-right organization historically steeped in conspiracism and oppositi
The Atlantic17 min read
How America Became Addicted to Therapy
A few months ago, as I was absent-mindedly mending a pillow, I thought, I should quit therapy. Then I quickly suppressed the heresy. Among many people I know, therapy is like regular exercise or taking vitamin D: something a sensible person does rout
The Atlantic7 min readAmerican Government
The Americans Who Need Chaos
This is Work in Progress, a newsletter about work, technology, and how to solve some of America’s biggest problems. Sign up here. Several years ago, the political scientist Michael Bang Petersen, who is based in Denmark, wanted to understand why peop

Related Books & Audiobooks