"Three Cups of Deceit"

[rydra_wong]

the_future_modernes suggested I cross-post this here:

Jon Krakauer has just devoted 89 pages (free for download from here until the 20th) to making the case that Greg "Three Cups of Tea" Mortenson is a lying liar who lies, whose inventions include an entirely fictional story of being abducted by the Taliban, and who's engaged in massive financial malpractice:

Many CAI schools that actually did get built, moreover, were later abandoned due to lack of CAI support. “Ghost schools,” they’re called by the disillusioned residents of Baltistan, where at least eighteen CAI buildings now stand empty. No one, not even Mortenson, knows exactly how many CAI projects exist as ghost schools, or simply never existed in the first place, because he has repeatedly subverted efforts by his Montana-based staff to track effectively how many schools have been built, how much each school actually costs, and how many schools are up and running. For the CAI staff to gather such crucial information, Mortenson would have to accurately account for how he spends CAI funds—something he has never been willing to do.

There's some dubious stuff here -- a couple of Krakauer's witnesses have histories of fraud themselves -- but a lot seems very unambiguous indeed. And there is a metric fuckton to analyse here about the degree to which the What These People Need Is A Honky narrative prevents people from taking too close a look at things.

ETA a couple of commentaries:

'Three cups of sincerity' by Nosheen Ali
'Greg Mortenson and the Business of Redemption' by Laila Lalami

ETA2, via cofax7:

Savage Minds: Three Cups of Orientalism
zunguzungu: L’Affaire Mortenson, reactions and commentary

And Good Intentions Are Not Enough seems to have taken up the linkspam banner (109 links and counting):

Collecting 'Three Cups of Tea' posts

Comments

[the_future_modernes]

Thanks so much for all these links.

[rydra_wong]

Credit is due to mme_hardy and cofax7 for finding most of them.