By Philip C. Winslow | In February 2021, Myanmar’s long-dominant military overthrew the elected government and set about to crush the shoots of democracy once and for all. Some years before that, I traveled parts of the country: across Yangon, Bago and Mandalay divisions, through northern Kachin and the Shan states; through the plains, down south through Kayin and Mon states and back again. This was initial research for a planned book on the Irrawaddy River, which I was not able to finish. Read more →

By Philip C. Winslow | Sierra Leone’s civil war ran from 1991 to 2002. I reported it occasionally, in 1994 and 1995, mainly about a group of South African mercenaries hired by the Freetown government. (The same mercenaries had also worked in Angola.) In 1999-2000, I worked there again, not as a journalist, but with UNAMSIL, the United Nations peacekeeping mission, with 17,500 troops then the world’s largest. Read more →

By Philip C. Winslow | I reported from Angola 1993-1995 as the Southern Africa radio correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, and later on my own. The war took a terrible toll on civilians, mostly through the use of landmines, but also through murder and various forms of coercion. For a time, the civil war, extravagantly fueled by the US and the Soviet Union, with help from South Africa and Cuba, was known as “the worst war in the world.” Although that title has passed to other conflicts, Angola’s forty-one years of war remain a distinct chapter in the annals of human destruction. Read more →

By Philip C. Winslow | Shortly after a teenage gunman murdered seventeen people and wounded seventeen others at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018, I thought back over some American history and my own familiarity with guns, and wrote here on Beacon Broadside that “In 1970, historian Richard Hofstadter popularized the term ‘gun culture’ in writing about how Americans’ resolute possession of firearms dated back to colonial days, when farmer-settlers lived on a wild frontier . . . Read more →

By Philip C. Winslow A Palestinian throws a rock in response to Israel's intervention during a protest, organized to mark 70th anniversary of Nakba. Photo by Jordi Bernabeu Farrus (Creative Commons License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/r) Last Monday’s opening of the American Embassy... Read more →

By Philip C. Winslow: On a hot summer morning in 1954, when I was eleven years old, I saw my first human death by gunshot. The victim was a boy about my age. He had been playing with a .22 caliber rifle thought not to be loaded, I was told. The gun discharged, the bullet passed through his neck, rupturing the left carotid artery, and he bled out. I saw him only afterward. I never knew his name, the circumstances, nor anything about him or his family. But sixty-four years later, I clearly recall the stillness in death, his ashen face, the color of his hair, and the small entry wound in the left side of his neck. The death was ruled accidental, or, as they say these days, unintentional. Shaken, that night I had a long discussion with my mother about the unfairness of death, and about the consequences of the negligent handling of firearms. Read more →

Between 2009 and 2011, journalist Philip Winslow offered us a half dozen of his insightful “Observation Posts,” pieces which opened our eyes to international issues with original reporting. We’re delighted to welcome him back with this remarkable remembrance of one of the most significant events of the past decades: the fall of the Berlin Wall. Read more →

Philip C. Winslow writes about the recent assassination of a West Bank theater artist. Read more →

A look at recent evictions in a neighborhood in East Jerusalem, and Israeli efforts to "Judaize" the city. Read more →

In a multi-media post, Philip C. Winslow reflects on Angola's horrific war and its still-lingering effects. Read more →

Philip C. Winslow examines the problem of Israeli settlements and outposts in Palestinian territory. Read more →

Philip C. Winslow reflects on the lives of soldiers around the world. Read more →

Philip C. Winslow examines the persistent dangers cluster munitions pose for civilians during and long after the wars in which they are used. Read more →

In his second piece for his Observation Post series, Philip C. Winslow discusses two recent attacks on the arts in Jenin. Read more →

Philip Winslow, in the first dispatch for his new Observation Post column for Beacon Broadside, remembers his experiences in Sierra Leone as sentences are handed down for three war criminals. Read more →