1. "Understanding War"
My first "Chelsea Recommends" is the website http://www.understandingwar.org/
Why? It is a refreshingly bipartisan research organization that works towards educating civilian leaders in military intelligence and the military operations in both Afghanistan and Iraq. The Afghanistan Project's current focus for instance is to "monitor and analyze the effectiveness of Afghan and Coalition operations to disrupt enemy networks and secure the population." It doesn't just give opinions and dumbed-down summaries of events but gives quantitative information - what a novel idea!
It not only publishes reports and articles by visiting scholars but also provides maps, charts and summaries of current and past military operations. Still not sold? Don't worry, it also highlights approved articles by your trusty American news agencies, such as CSPAN, CNN, etc. (I can't promise any Fox articles for the obvious reasons)
2. "Humanitarian News and Analysis"
My second "Chelsea Recommends" is the news website
IRIN was launched in 1995, in response to the gap in humanitarian reporting exposed by the Rwandan genocide and its aftermath. IRIN is an award-winning humanitarian news and analysis service covering the parts of the world often under-reported, misunderstood or ignored. It reports from the frontlines of humanitarian action to over a million online readers. According to a 2008 survey by the global marketing research company ACNielsen, IRIN is the premier online humanitarian news source for people who describe themselves as having a "strong impact on humanitarian issues".
3. "Out of Captivity"
The first book to make my list is Out of Captivity. Those who have been around me lately know that I have barely been able to put it down since I started reading it last week (don't be fooled... its quite a long book). What is it about? On February 13, 2003, three American civilian contractors were taken hostage by the Columbian FARC when their plane malfunctioned and they had to make a crash landing. This book, as you may have guessed, is a collaborative effort by the three men, detailing their 1,967 days spent imprisoned deep in the jungles of Columbia. While obviously having been written by ghost writers (unless high school graduates/ex army grunt men miraculously learned to write novels while in the jungle), this novel is truly fascinating and refrains from being overly morose, gruesome or self-pitying. Definitely worth a read.
4. New York Times journalist, Nick Kristof
In 1990 Mr. Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, then also a Times journalist, won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of China's Tiananmen Square democracy movement. They were the first married couple to win a Pulitzer for journalism. Mr. Kristof won a second Pulitzer in 2006, for commentary for what the judges called "his graphic, deeply reported columns that, at personal risk, focused attention on genocide in Darfur and that gave voice to the voiceless in other parts of the world." He has also won other prizes including the George Polk Award, the Overseas Press Club award, the Michael Kelly award, the Online News Association award and the American Society of Newspaper Editors award. Mr. Kristof has taken a special interest in Web journalism and was the first blogger on The New York Times Web site; he also twitters and has a Facebook fan pageand a channel on YouTube. A documentary about him, "Reporter," aired on HBO in 2010.
In his column, Mr. Kristof was an early opponent of the Iraq war, and among the first to warn that we were losing ground to the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. He was among the first to raise doubts about WMD in Iraq, he was the first to report that President Bush's State of the Union claim about Iraq seeking uranium from Africa was contradicted by the administration's own investigation. He has visited the Darfur region more than 10 times. His columns have often focused on global health and poverty and he has also written often about human trafficking.
