FOREVER WARS X NETFLIX
I'm in a new streaming documentary, 'Turning Point: Generation 9/11'; and here's an animation for NO ONE ESCAPES THE DIALECTIC
Edited by Sam Thielman
JUST A QUICK one today. I've just gotten back from a family trip to Michigan and I'm swamped. I'm spinning several plates in the air, journalistically, but none are ready in time for this edition. This whole month is going to be punishing, honestly. [But a bargain for you, especially if you’re a subscriber and stalwart supporter of independent journalism!—Sam.]
Meanwhile: The U.S. has bombed a wedding in Kuhestak as the Iran War re-accelerates; so much for Economic D-Day. ICE has arrested 2,100 people in New York while our socialist mayor says nothing. Here's a Newsweek report about more than 148 internal allegations of "misconduct and potential criminal wrongdoing, including sexual assault, bribery and drug smuggling" within ICE, while today's Times confirms what was obvious about the ICE hiring surge. Over 400 people caged inside ICE's West Tennessee for-profit detention camp are on hunger strike. In Israel, today National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir reportedly unveiled a plan for what sounds like the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, which he called "realistic." But American universities that boycott Israel will lose their federal funding, if a House of Representatives bill that today passed by a vote of 237-169 becomes law.
I've filed a 9/11 25th Anniversary column to Zeteo that you should see soon. Go subscribe to Mehdi Hasan and the gang and you'll see it first. Subscribe to FOREVER WARS and you, the paying subscriber, will get the column in your inboxes the very next day.
Yesterday, Netflix released Turning Point: Generation 9/11, a documentary reflecting on 9/11 and the War on Terror. I'm interviewed in it. I haven't seen it yet, and I'm curious how much of the radicalism-slash-common-sense I delivered to camera in a pitch-black Williamsburg studio this spring made it into the final product. But I was impressed by the producers' prompts and questions.
My five-year old asked to see her dad on video when she overheard me telling her mother the documentary was released. I was initially eager to show her, but then I remembered she would be watching the deaths of nearly 3,000 people before my head starts talking on screen. Maybe the 30th anniversary will be a more appropriate time to show her this.
Perhaps you would like to hear me talk about the War on Terror 25 Years Later outside the framework of a documentary? Well, during the afternoon of Tuesday, Sept. 8, I'll be at Princeton University for a panel discussion, along with Colin Clarke of the Soufan Center and the former State Department Counterterrorism Coordinator Amb. Elizabeth Richard. It'll be livestreamed if you, for some reason, won't be on the Princeton University campus that day.
But that's not all. On the big day itself, I'll be over at my old boss Peter Beinart's livestream. It's been five years since my last livestream with Peter, and that was one of my favorite conversations about REIGN OF TERROR, the wars, and both of our intellectual trajectories. Make sure you're subscribed to the Beinart Notebook.
And finally for now, pre-orders are open for my and artist Antonio Fuso's Boom! Studios comic-book series NO ONE ESCAPES THE DIALECTIC. Remember: if you add the book to your pull list, I will comp you for a year of FOREVER WARS! "Final order cutoff," the last date a comic book store is guaranteed to get you your copy of our first issue, is September 21, so tell your store you want to pull the series by then! If you're not yet convinced, check out this animation that Boom! put together:
NO ONE ESCAPES THE DIALECTIC #1 comes out on November 3. If you like my journalism, you'll love this comic book.
MATT BORS is back like he never left—with a new series of Toxic Avenger! This time, the goated political cartoonist turned comics writer pairs with the excellent artist Felipe Sobriero for Toxic Avenger vs. Noxious Offender, whose first issue drops October 7—but because of the dysfunctional way the comics market operates, you should right now let the friendly staff of your local comics shop know that you want it!
Connor Goldsmith, the telepath behind the Cerebro podcast (and one-half of The Kibitz), makes his comic debut with DID YOU HEAR ABOUT MIMI GREEN?, a fantastic thriller meditating on fame, social media and body horror! You have to read this!
WALLER VS. WILDSTORM, the superhero spy thriller I co-wrote with my friend Evan Narcisse and which the masterful Jesús Merino illustrated, is available for purchase in a hardcover edition! If you don't have single issues of WVW and you want a four-issue set signed by me, they're going fast at Bulletproof Comics! Bulletproof is also selling signed copies of my IRON MAN run with Julius Ohta, so if you want those, buy them from Flatbush's finest! IRON MAN VOL. 1: THE STARK-ROXXON WAR, the first five issues, is now collected in trade paperback! Signed copies of that are at Bulletproof, too! And IRON MAN VOL. 2: THE INSURGENT IRON MAN is available here!
No one is prouder of WVW than her older sibling, REIGN OF TERROR: HOW THE 9/11 ERA DESTABILIZED AMERICA AND PRODUCED TRUMP, which is available now in hardcover, softcover, audiobook and Kindle edition. And on the way is a new addition to the family: THE DISAPPEARED: A FATHER, A SON AND THE WAR ON TERROR.