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The Biggest News Stories of 2014, in Photos

by JacquieSpencer Posted on December 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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It’s been a tumultuous year marked by civil war in Syria and Ukraine, the spread of the Islamic State in the Middle East, massive protests against police violence in the United States, air disasters for Southeast Asian airlines, a spirited campaign for control of Congress, and major policy announcements via executive order by President Obama. Here a look back at some of the best images from the year’s major news stories.

January 25: A protester hurls a Molotov cocktail during a clash with police in Kiev, Ukraine. Sergei Grits/AP

January 31: Palestinians line up for food in Yarmouk, a refugee camp in Damascus, Syria. UNRWA/AP

March 22: Relatives of passengers on Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 shouted their demands at reporters after Malaysian government representatives left a briefing in Beijing. The airplane has still not been found. Ng Han Guan/AP

April 3: A Spanish officer assists a migrant who fainted atop a fence that divides Morocco from the Spanish enclave of Melilla. Thousands of sub-Saharan migrants live illegally in Morocco, and regularly try to enter Melilla in the hope of later making it to the Spanish mainland. Santi Palacios/AP

April 12: Supporters of rancher Cliven Bundy fly the American flag in celebration after the US Bureau of Land Management released the family’s cattle onto public land near Bunkerville, Nevada. Armed backers of rancher Bundy lived along a state highway in southern Nevada for almost three weeks following an armed standoff with the BLM, which had rounded up the cattle saying Bundy owed $1.1 million in grazing fees and penalties. Jason Bean/Las Vegas Review-Journal/AP

April 16: A South Korean rescue team and fishing boats try to rescue passengers of the sinking ferry Sewol off the country’s southern coast. The ferry capsized with 476 people aboard, many of them students—and 307 died. South Korea Coast Guard/Yonhap/AP

May 9: Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a parade marking Russia’s forcible annexation, two months earlier, of much of Crimea, previously Ukrainian territory. Ukraine and NATO quickly condemned the victory lap. Ivan Sekretarev/AP

May 12: This image from a video by Nigeria’s Boko Haram terrorist network shows missing girls the group abducted from the northeastern town of Chibok. More than 200 schoolgirls were kidnapped by Boko Haran in April. They were forced to convert to Islam and married off to the group’s members. AP

May 16: Supporters write congratulatory messages for India’s Prime Minister-elect Narendra Modi at his party’s headquarters in New Delhi. Modi’s victory, the most decisive in more than a quarter century, swept the long-dominant Congress party from power. Manish Swarup/AP

May 24: Richard Martinez, whose son Christopher was killed in a mass shooting in Isla Vista, California, lashed out at the NRA and politicians who support the group. The previous day, 22-year-old Elliot Rodger killed six people and wounded 13 before killing himself. Jae C. Hong/AP

June 15: A helicopter circles over the Shirley Fire near Lake Isabella, California. The fire ultimately burned 2,645 acres and caused more than $12 million in damage. It was just one of 5,597 wildfires that altogether burned more than 90,000 acres, according to Cal Fire. Stuart Palley/ZUMA

June 18: Immigrant children who crossed the US/Mexico border without a parent sleep in a holding cell at a Customs and Border Protection processing facility in Brownsville, Texas. Eric Gay, Pool/AP

July 8: Brazil midfielder Fernandinho reacts after Germany scores its third goal during the World Cup semifinals. Germany humiliated the host nation with a 7-1 victory before eliminating Argentina in the final to win its fourth World Cup title. Natacha Pisarenko/AP

July 14: Palestinians who fled their homes under heavy bombardment by Israel take refuge at a UN-run school in Gaza City. Many such schools came under attack during the seven weeks of fighting between Israel and Hamas. Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto/ZUMA

July 17: NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo restrains Eric Garner with a chokehold in this still from an eyewitness video. Garner died shortly afterward, and a grand jury decision not to indict the officer sparked massive protests across the nation. YouTube

July 19: Emergency workers carry a body bag from the site of a Malaysia Airlines crash near the eastern Ukrainian village of Hrabove. Ukraine accused Russian separatist rebels of shooting down the plane, a charge the rebels deny. Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

July 29: Israeli soldiers, family, and friends mourn Sgt. Sagi Erez, killed in combat after militants used a tunnel to sneak into Israel from Gaza. Ariel Schalit/AP

August 13: A demonstrator throws a teargas container back at riot police in Ferguson, Missouri, where the killing of an unarmed black man by a police officer set off weeks of street protests. Robert Cohen/St Louis Post-Dispatch/TNS/ZUMA

August 14: US servicemen discuss the deconstruction of a command operation center in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province. On October 26, after 13 years, America, Britain, and Australia formerly ended Afghan combat operations. Cpl. John A. Martinez Jr./U.S. Marine Corps

August 26: A pro-Russian rebel patrols through the rubble of a market damaged by shelling in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine. Mstislav Chernov/AP

August 28: A worker prepares to remove the corpse of an Ebola victim in Unification Town, Liberia, part of the most severe outbreak since the virus was discovered. Kieran Kesner/Rex /ZUMA

Mid-September: Businessman Jon Gamble near Dunblane on the eve of a Scottish independence referendum. On September 18, a majority of the voters chose to remain part of the United Kingdom. Andrew Milligan/PA Wire/AP

September 23: Air Force Maj. Gena Fedoruk and 1st Lt. Marcel Trott take off in a KC-135 Stratotanker as part of a mission to conduct airstrikes on Islamic State positions in Syria. Senior Airman Matthew Bruch/U.S. Air Force

September 27: Riot police use pepper spray on pro-democracy activists who forced their way into Hong Kong government headquarters, challenging Beijing’s decision to backpedal on promised democratic reforms. Apple Daily/AP

October 20: An airstrike by a US-led coalition in Kobani, Syria, as seen from a hilltop near the Turkey-Syria border. Kobani and the surrounding areas has been under assault by Islamic State extremists since mid-September. Lefteris Pitarakis/AP

November 4: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell casts his ballot at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky. He easily won a sixth term. J. Scott Applewhite/AP

December 8: Protesters rallying against police violence and the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner at the hands of police, stop traffic on Interstate 80 in Berkeley, California. Noah Berger/AP

December 20: In Havana, members of the so-called Cuban Five celebrate a recent exchange of imprisoned spies, part of a historic agreement to restore relations between the United States and Cuba. Ramon Espinosa/AP

December 26: A protester in Mexico City displays painted hands and the number 43, signifying the number of students taken from a rural teachers college and handed over to a drug gang to be killed, according to an investigation by Mexican government authorities. Marce Ugarte/AP

December 27: The casket of NYPD officer Rafael Ramos is carried from a church in Queens after funeral services. Ramos and his partner, Officer Wenjian Liu, were shot to death in Brooklyn on December 20 by a man, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who said it was in retaliation for the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Brinsley later killed himself. Julio Cortez/AP

December 29: Indonesian Air Force officials study a map during search and rescue efforts for the missing AirAsia flight QZ8501. Wreckage from the plane, along with dozens of floating bodies, were found in the Java Sea on December 30. Sijori Images/ZUMA

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The Biggest News Stories of 2014, in Photos

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Here’s What Democrats Got Out of the Cromnibus

by TNJNoellaswhkn Posted on December 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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The worst part of the “cromnibus” spending bill was the provision that guts a small piece of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill and allows banks to get back into the custom swaps business. So why did Democratic negotiators agree to this? In a long tick-tock published yesterday, Politico tells us:

During [] negotiations with House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), his Senate counterpart, agreed to keep the provision in exchange for more funding for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to aides.

OK. Democrats have been ambivalent about this particular provision of Dodd-Frank from the start, and therefore they were willing to cut a deal that allowed Republicans to repeal it. But what about the rest of the spending bill? Republicans got a bunch of venal little favors inserted, but what did Democrats get? Here’s retiring Rep. Jim Moran:

In 20 years of being on the appropriations bill, I haven’t seen a better compromise in terms of Democratic priorities. Implementing the Affordable Care Act, there’s a lot more money for early-childhood development — the only priority that got cut was the EPA but we gave them more money than the administration asked for….There were 26 riders that were extreme and would have devastated the Environmental Protection Agency in terms of the Clean Water and Clean Air Act administration; all of those were dropped. There were only two that were kept and they wouldn’t have been implemented this fiscal year. So, we got virtually everything that the Democrats tried to get.

And here is President Obama:

The Administration appreciates the bipartisan effort to include full-year appropriations legislation for most Government functions that allows for planning and provides certainty, while making progress toward appropriately investing in economic growth and opportunity, and adequately funding national security requirements. The Administration also appreciates the authorities and funding provided to enhance the U.S. Government’s response to the Ebola epidemic, and to implement the Administration’s strategy to counter the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, as well as investments for the President’s early education agenda, Pell Grants, the bipartisan Manufacturing Institutes initiative, and extension of the Trade Adjustment Assistance program.

What’s the point of posting this laundry list? Curiosity. Last night a reader sent a tweet to me: “Honest question: what do progressives get out of this? ‘Govt not shutting down’ not enough.” I was stumped. I really had no idea whether Democrats had gotten anything in this bill, or if they were just caving in to a whole bunch of obnoxious Republican demands merely in exchange for keeping the government funded.

But as it turns out, Democrats did get a bunch of stuff they wanted. And of course, that’s in addition to getting the government funded before Republicans take over Congress in January, which is worthwhile all by itself. We can each decide for ourselves whether Democrats got enough, or if they should have held out for a better deal, but they weren’t left empty-handed.

So what I’m curious about is this: why are virtually no Democrats talking about this? As near as I can tell, there was literally no attempt to sell this compromise to the base, or to anyone else. As a result, the general feeling among progressives is simple: this bill was an unqualified cave-in from gutless Democrats who, once again, refused to fight back against Republican hostage taking. And as usual, Republicans won.

I understand that trying to defend a messy, backroom bill that trades some dull but responsible victories for a bunch of horrible little giveaways isn’t very appealing to anyone. And who knows? Maybe Democrats were afraid that if they crowed too much about the concessions they’d won it would just provoke the tea party wing of the Republican party and scuttle the bill. The tea partiers were already plenty pissed off about the cromnibus, after all.

Still, shouldn’t someone have been in charge of quietly making the progressive case for this bill? It wouldn’t have convinced everyone, but it might have reduced the grumbling within the base a little bit. Why was that not worth doing?

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Here’s What Democrats Got Out of the Cromnibus

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Good News From Iraq: Baghdad Finally Cuts a Deal With the Kurds

by GeorgiannaChewi Posted on December 2, 2014

Mother Jones

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Politically, the primary challenge facing Iraq’s new Shiite leaders is forging a government that includes significant participation from the Sunni minority and slowly regains their trust in a unified state. It’s been Job 1 from the start. That said, building a political accommodation with the northern Kurds is a close second, and today brought some good news on that front:

In a far-reaching deal with the potential to unite Iraq in the face of a Sunni insurgency, the government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi agreed on Tuesday to a long-term pact with the autonomous Kurdish region over how to divide the country’s oil wealth and cooperate on fighting Islamic State extremists.

The deal unites Baghdad and Erbil, the Kurdish capital in the north, over the issue of oil revenues and budget payments, and is likely to halt a drive — at least in the short term — by the Kurds for an independent state. It includes payments from the central government for the salaries of Kurdish security forces, known as the pesh merga, and also will allow the flow of weapons to the Kurds from the United States, with the government in Baghdad as intermediary.

….The reconciliation between Baghdad and the Kurdish region also appeared to validate one element of President Obama’s strategy in confronting the Islamic State: pushing for a new, more inclusive leader of Iraq. When the extremists swept into Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, in June, Mr. Obama decided that Mr. Maliki had to go before the United States would ramp up its military efforts against the Islamic State.

A deal with the Kurds was always going to be easier than regaining the participation of the Sunnis. Kurdistan has long had de facto autonomy from Baghdad, and negotiating over oil wealth is a fairly straightforward bit of dealmaking. An accommodation has been possible all along whenever Baghdad was willing to compromise—and the ISIS threat gave the new government there plenty of motivation to do just that.

The same can’t be said of accommodation with the Sunnis. The Sunni-Shia divide in the Arab regions of Iraq is deeper and more fundamental, and there’s no single, well-defined Sunni region with established leadership and relatively clear demands that can be negotiated with cleanly. There are just years—or decades or centuries, depending on how you want to count—of mistrust and bad blood. Combine that with nearly a decade of rampant corruption and tribal jingoism under Nouri al-Maliki’s Shiite government and you don’t have a problem that can be solved either quickly or easily.

Still, the Kurdish deal suggests that Haider al-Abadi may be genuinely willing to do the work necessary to rein in tensions and provide the Sunni minority with the representation and influence it wants. Maybe. As always, it’s not wise to read too much into this. But it’s a good sign.

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Good News From Iraq: Baghdad Finally Cuts a Deal With the Kurds

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Sunni Awakening 2.0? Don’t Hold Your Breath.

by BrittneCCPE Posted on November 17, 2014

Mother Jones

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Back in 2007, the military success of the famous “surge” in Iraq was due largely to the fact that many Sunni tribal leaders finally turned against al-Qaeda and began cooperating with the American army. This so-called Sunni Awakening was a key part of the tenuous peace achieved a year later.

It was a fragile peace, however, and eventually it broke down thanks to the lack of a serious political effort to include Sunnis in the central government. By last year, the Sunni areas of Iraq had once again begun to rebel, and ISIS took advantage of this to storm into Iraq and take control of a huge swath of territory. If we want to regain this ground from ISIS, the first step is to once again persuade Sunni tribal leaders to cooperate with us, but it looks an awful lot like that particular playbook isn’t going to work a second time:

Officials admit little success in wooing new Sunni allies, beyond their fitful efforts to arm and supply the tribes who were already fighting the Islamic State — and mostly losing. So far, distrust of the Baghdad government’s intentions and its ability to protect the tribes has won out.

….Much of the Islamic State’s success at holding Sunni areas comes from its deft manipulation of tribal dynamics. Portraying itself as a defender of Sunnis who for years have been abused by Iraq’s Shiite-majority government, the Islamic State has offered cash and arms to tribal leaders and fighters, often allowing them local autonomy as long as they remain loyal.

At the same time, as it has expanded into new towns, the Islamic State has immediately identified potential government supporters for death. Residents of areas overrun by the Islamic State say its fighters often carry names of soldiers and police officers. If those people have already fled, the jihadists blow up their homes to make sure they do not return. At checkpoints, its men sometimes run names through computerized databases, dragging off those who have worked for the government.

“They come in with a list of names and are more organized than state intelligence,” said Sheikh Naim al-Gaood, a leader of the Albu Nimr tribe. The most brutal treatment is often of tribes who cooperated with the United States against Al Qaeda in Iraq in past years, mostly through the so-called Sunni Awakening movement supported by the Americans.

Obviously ISIS may overplay its hand here, or simply overextend itself. They aren’t supermen. At the same time, it’s obvious that ISIS is well aware of how the original Sunni Awakening played out, and they’re doing an effective job of making sure it doesn’t play out that way again. Sunni leaders are already distrustful of Americans, having been promised a greater role in governance in 2007 and then seeing that promise evaporate, and ISIS leaders are adding a brutal element of revenge to make sure that no one thinks about believing similar promises this time around.

All this is not to say that things are hopeless. But a replay of the Sunni Awakening isn’t going to be easy. Sunni leaders have already been burned once and were unlikely from the start to be easily persuaded to give reconciliation another chance. ISIS is reinforcing this with both deft politics and brutal retaliation against collaborators. It’s not going to be an easy dynamic to break.

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Sunni Awakening 2.0? Don’t Hold Your Breath.

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Americans Hold Wide Range of Opinions on Various Subjects

by CortezEdmundlaT Posted on October 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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Ashley Parker apparently drew the short straw at the New York Times and got assigned to write that hoariest of old chestnuts: a trip through the heartland of America to check the pulse of the public.

So how’s the public feeling these days? Here’s Heather Lopez, a church worker in Terre Haute, Indiana:

“Instead of being a country that’s leading from behind, I would like to see us spearhead an all-out assault on ISIS,” she said, referring to the Islamic State, the Sunni militant group that controls large portions of Iraq and Syria and has claimed responsibility for the beheadings of two American journalists. “I would like to see every one of them dead within 30 days. And after we’ve killed every member of ISIS, kill their pet goat.”

Roger that. You will be unsurprised to learn later that Ms. Lopez “said she got much of her information from Fox News.” Where else would she? We’re in the heartland, folks! And not by coincidence. Parker’s trip was deliberately designed to take her nowhere else. Because, as we all know, real people can be found only in small towns and cities in middle America.

Not that it matters. Also unsurprisingly, Parker ran into people with a wide range of opinions. It turns out that America contains lots of people and they think lots of different stuff. It’s remarkable.

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Americans Hold Wide Range of Opinions on Various Subjects

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The Right’s Newest Obama Conspiracy: He Made Up a "New" Terrorist Group to Defeat

by KristofPatteson Posted on September 25, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Monday night, the US military bombed ISIS, the radical group taking over chunks of Iraq and Syria. As a “last-minute add-on,” as NBC put it, the US also targeted an organization called the Khorasan Group, a shadowy outfit composed of Al Qaeda veterans. After the bombing, the White House and the Pentagon noted that the Khorasan Group was in the “execution phase” of planning attacks on the West.

But some conservatives made sure not to give President Obama any credit for possibly thwarting a terrorist threat. Instead, they hatched yet another anti-Obama conspiracy theory: The president had concocted a supposedly new terrorist organization to destroy. That is, he and his aides were calling this new target the Khorasan Group, and not Al Qaeda, so they would not have to acknowledge that Al Qaeda—which the president in 2012 said was “on the run”—was still a threat.

“From what I understand, the Obama regime has given this group a new name in order for Obama to be able to continue to say he wiped Al Qaeda out,” Rush Limbaugh said on Wednesday. “So you come up with a new name for Al Qaeda, the Kardashians, or Khorasans, or whatever they are, and either way it’s defeating…So this new group is essentially just Al Qaeda renamed.”

Glenn Beck came to a similar conclusion: “What is Khorasan? Director of National Intelligence James Clapper mentioned Khorasan for the first time last week. What is it? It’s an Al Qaeda splinter group. Notice they’re not saying ‘Al Qaeda Khorasan.’ They’re just calling it Khorasan. Why? The Pentagon claimed they have been watching Khorasan for a very long time, but it wasn’t too long ago that this administration said Al Qaeda was decimated and on the run. But now they’re an imminent threat? It doesn’t add up, does it?”

Right-wing bloggers jumped on the bandwagon. Sweetness and Light (the Conservative Political Action Conference’s blog of the year in 2009), claimed, “There are dozens of Al Qaeda subsets, and we have never bothered to call them by their specific tribal names before—but now all of a sudden we have to call Al Qaeda ‘the Khorasan Group’ in order to help save Obama’s ass face.”

Sarah Noble of the Independent Sentinel wrote, “Khorasan IS Al Qaeda…They have been dangerous since 2009 and they have been unremittingly dangerous.”

The Gateway Pundit noted: “The Obama administration can’t say they bombed al-Qaeda because they said they defeated al-Qaeda. So, now they spin lies about core al-Qaeda being defeated and how they bombed the ‘Khorasan Group’ instead of al-Qaeda. It’s just more lies.”

But if the Obama administration wants to hide the Khorasan Group’s connection to Al Qaeda, it has done a poor job. The administration and US officials have been open about Khorasan’s affiliation with Al Qaeda—especially the ties of its leader Muhsin al-Fadhli, a close ally of Osama bin Laden—since disclosing details about the group this week before the strikes. Obama referred to the Khorasan Group as “seasoned Al Qaeda veterans” in a statement on Tuesday morning. US officials told the Associated Press earlier this month that the group of about 50 Al Qaeda veterans, mostly from Afghanistan and Pakistan, set up shop in Syria on the orders of Al Qaeda top dog Ayman al-Zawahari in order to attract recruits.

Because the Obama administration has not revealed any intelligence showing that the Khorasan Group was indeed close to executing plots against the United States and other Western nations, it’s hard for pundits and citizens to evaluate the claim that a direct and imminent threat was addressed by these air strikes. If administration officials can be taken at their word, then Obama has scored a hit in the battle against Islamic jihadists aiming to harm the United States. But that might be too difficult for conservatives to concede.

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The Right’s Newest Obama Conspiracy: He Made Up a "New" Terrorist Group to Defeat

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The ISIS Speech: Obama and the Dogs of War

by EugeniaScholz Posted on September 11, 2014

Mother Jones

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Here is President Barack Obama’s challenge: how to unleash the dogs of war without having them run wild.

This dilemma applies to both the political and policy considerations Obama faces, as he expands US military action in Iraq (and possibly Syria) to counter ISIS, the militant and murderous outfit that now calls itself the Islamic State and controls territory in northern Iraq and eastern Syria. In a speech from the White House on Wednesday night, Obama announced what was expected: the United States would widen its air strikes against ISIS in Iraq, “take action” of some sort against ISIS in Syria, ramp up military assistance for the Syrian opposition, keep sending advisers to assist the Iraqi military’s on-the-ground-campaign against ISIS, and maintain pressure on Iraqi politicians to produce a national government that can represent and work with Sunnis and, consequently, undercut ISIS’s support and appeal in Sunni-dominated areas of the country—all while assembling a coalition of Western nations and regional allies. (He gave no details about the membership of this under-construction alliance.) The goal: to “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS. There were no surprises in the speech, and this strategy of expanded-but-limited military intervention—Obama referred to it as a “counter-terrorism campaign” different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—has a fair amount of support from the politerati and the policy wonks within Washington and beyond, as well as from the public, per recent polling. But whatever he calls it, the president is attempting a difficult feat: waging a nuanced war.

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The ISIS Speech: Obama and the Dogs of War

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Lindsey Graham Lays Down a Terrorism Marker

by JuliaPage Posted on August 11, 2014

Mother Jones

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Lindsey Graham says that if we don’t attack “ISIS, ISIL, whatever you guys want to call it”—and attack them right now—they’ll be attacking us on American soil before long. “This is about our homeland,” he said yesterday. Steve Benen correctly interprets Graham’s remarks:

In this case, Graham seems to be laying down a marker: if members of the Islamic State, at some point in the future, execute some kind of terror strike on Americans, Lindsey Graham wants us to blame President Obama — because the president didn’t stick to the playbook written by hawks and neocons.

I don’t think anyone is actively hoping for a terrorist attack on American soil. Just as I don’t think anyone was actively hoping to keep the American economy in ruins back in 2009. Still, these are cases where ideology and politics line up nicely: if something bad does happen, Republicans want to lay down a marker making sure that everyone knows whose fault it is.

Sometimes this doesn’t work: Republicans confidently predicted doom in 1993 when Bill Clinton raised taxes, for example. But wrong predictions are quickly forgotten. Occasionally, however, predictions are right, and then they can be milked forever. When Ronald Reagan insisted that tax cuts would supercharge the economy, and the economy then dutifully improved, his reputation was cemented forever—even though tax cuts played only a modest role in the economic recovery of the 80s.

Another major terrorist attack on the American homeland is bound to happen sometime. Who knows? It might even happen within the next year. And make no mistake: if it does happen, Lindsey Graham wants to make sure you know who to blame. If it doesn’t happen, well—look! Gay climate Obamacare!

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Lindsey Graham Lays Down a Terrorism Marker

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Can Obama Weather the Current Geopolitical Shitstorm?

by NickiBaine Posted on July 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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Being president can be a bitch.

Barack Obama is in charge of the world’s most consequential superpower (when you combine economic might and military force) at a time when the world seems to be cracking up more than usual. A Malaysian airliner is shot down—presumably by Russian-armed separatists in Ukraine. The too-extreme-for-Al-Qaeda Islamic State, a Sunni force once allied with Washington-backed Syrian rebels fighting the Russian-supported Assad regime, has taken control of a swath of territory in Syria and Iraq and set up an Islamic fundamentalist state that is waging war against the Shiite-dominated government of Iraq, which is supported by Russia-allied Iran and Washington. Meanwhile, US-backed Israel has sent military forces into Gaza to quash Hamas, a Sunni-dominated outfit that receives support from Shiite Iran (a US foe) and Sunni Saudi Arabia (a US ally). And at the same time, the United States—as part of the P5+1, which includes Russia, China, England, France, and Germany (a key trading partner of Iran and a US ally that is pissed off at Washington for spying on it)—is trying to arrange the extension of nuclear talks with Iran, as the negotiations hit the deadline. Obviously, the United States needs Russia—which Obama just hit with tougher sanctions (before Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 was blasted out of the sky)—to lean on Iran for these talks to succeed.

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Can Obama Weather the Current Geopolitical Shitstorm?

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Was Iraq’s Top Terrorist Radicalized at a US-Run Prison?

by HildegaVigil Posted on July 11, 2014

Mother Jones

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In early July, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of the jihadist terror group now known as the Islamic State—formerly the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS—preached on high in Mosul and declared himself the “Caliph Ibrahim” of a new fundamentalist Sunni state stretching from western and northern Iraq to northern Syria. This announcement came after months of fighting over territory and skirmishes with Iraqi forces, as ISIS invaded and captured dozens of Iraqi cities including Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown.

In short order, Baghdadi has become Iraq’s most prominent extremist leader. But for much of his adult life, Baghdadi did not have a reputations as a fiery, jihadist trailblazer. According to the Telegraph, members of his local mosque in Tobchi (a neighborhood in Baghdad) who knew him from around 1989 until 2004 (when he was between the ages of 18 and 33) considered Baghdadi a quiet, studious fellow and a talented soccer player. When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Baghdadi was earning a degree in Islamic studies in Baghdad.

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Was Iraq’s Top Terrorist Radicalized at a US-Run Prison?

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