Selected Articles

War In The Land of Smiles

War In The Land of Smiles

Good Weekend (Sydney Morning Herald)
6 October 2007

Up close, you don’t hear explosions. You feel them. There was a flash, and then what felt like a baseball bat, swung with full force, struck my head. Everything went silent, but as I stumbled from the scene I thought I heard rain. It was the sound of hundreds of bits of blood-smeared road returning to earth.

The War The World Forgot

The War The World Forgot

The Sunday Times Magazine
25 March 2007

They are barely old enough to remember the cold war. They are dedicated to the overthrow of world capitalism and U.S. hegemony. Deep in the jungles and mountains of the Philippines, thousands of young communists fight a battle begun by their grandfathers.

An Armed America Is A Polite America

An Armed America Is A Polite America

The Glasgow Herald Magazine
10 February 2007

Ralph Passonno is a plump, jovial man with a white beard and a Colt AR15 semi-automatic. He’s like Santa Claus, but better armed. Welcome to Knob Creek, Kentucky, the world’s largest gathering of machine-gun owners, where a nation at war celebrates the deadliest firearms civilians can buy.

Faith Factories

Faith Factories

The Telegraph Magazine
15 April 2006

Modern missionaries carry satellite phones and global positioning systems, and are better equipped than ever to serve on what they call “the frontlines of God’s war against sin.” But is their work stoking anti-Western sentiment and exposing indigenous Christian communities to greater persecution?

The People’s Paradise

The People’s Paradise

TIME magazine
15 August 2005

It’s Thailand’s Riviera. No, it’s Sin City, Sodom-on-Sea, the Gomorrah of Tomorrah. Love it or loathe it, Pattaya is where Asia’s mass tourism started

Stone Age

Stone Age

TIME magazine
19 April 2004

Poverty, fear, the remorseless persecution of the best and the brightest, the slow extinguishing of hope: what was once unimaginably bad in Burma grows worse with each passing year. The military has proved false an age-old Burmese saying, “The night cannot get darker after midnight.”

Young Blood

Young Blood

TIME magazine
26 May 2003

Khairurrazi died young, but not nearly as young the others massacred with him. Eight male villagers, aged 20 to just 11, were shot in the head at close range that day. The Indonesian army claimed they were rebels killed in a shoot-out. The terrified villagers told me a very different story.

Dividing Lines

Dividing Lines

TIME magazine
19 August 2002

Strife has long been synonymous with the subcontinent. The British built the railway line from Chaman to Quetta to carry soldiers and munitions to defend the Empire’s wild western frontier. A 5,000-kilometer train journey across Pakistan and India, from the moonscape of the Baluchistan desert to the tropics of the Indian northeast.