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ISIS Kills 10 People in Istanbul Suicide Bombing

by Amelie29J029 Posted on January 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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One day after ISIS claimed responsibility for a major attack on a mall in Baghdad, a suspected member of the terrorist group killed 10 people in a suicide bombing in the heart of Istanbul’s most famous tourist area on Tuesday.

The identity of the bomber has not yet been revealed—President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄ&#159;an said the bomber was a 28-year-old Syrian, while Turkey’s DHA news agency claimed the attacker was a Saudi named Nabil Fadli—but government officials have placed the blame squarely on ISIS. “We have determined that the perpetrator of the attack is a foreigner who is a member of Daesh,” said Prime Minister Ahmet DavutoÄ&#159;lu in a televised address, using a derogatory Arabic name for ISIS.

The attack took place in Sultanahmet Square, a short distance from the Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque, and other major historical sites. Turkish officials told the media that nine of the victims were Germans, and Prime Minister Ahmet DavutoÄ&#159;lu confirmed in a televised address that most of the dead were Germans, but did not specify a number. The 10th victim was a Peruvian tourist, according to Peru’s foreign ministry.

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ISIS Kills 10 People in Istanbul Suicide Bombing

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100-Plus Photographers Capture 49 Cities

by HassanJDVefvwac Posted on December 6, 2014

Mother Jones

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Take a quick look at The World Atlas of Street Photography and you’ll see right away that editor Jackie Higgins worked from a rather loose definition of the genre. Which isn’t not necessarily a bad thing for a book billing itself as a “World Atlas.” You want to give readers a full range of what exists under a broad definition of street photography, right?

Like any compilation work, though, the book is a mixed bag. A follow-up to The World Atlas of Street Art and Graffiti, it pulls together work by living photographers who do street photography in one form or other. Some you’ve undoubtedly heard of, but there are plenty you haven’t, and a number of notable street photographers whose work isn’t included. That’s where the “World Atlas” thing causes a bit of trouble. No Robert Frank? No Anders Petersen or Morten Andersen? No Jacob Aue Sobol? Bruce Davidson? Maybe these people didn’t want to take part. Or maybe the editors didn’t feel they should be included. And really, anyone familiar with the genre would come up with an entirely different lineup. Such is the nature of these sorts of books. Let’s be honest: Part of the draw is the chance to nit pick.

From “A City Refracted,” 2012–2014. Graeme Williams

Mumbai, India, 2007–2013. Maciej Dakowicz


The book is broken down by location, and Higgins makes a valiant effort to truly make it a worldwide survey. With more than 100 photographers shooting in 49 cities, there’s a great geographic and stylistic distribution. You have Martin Parr in Dubai, Wim Wenders in Houston, Pieter Hugo in Lagos, Trent Parke and Narelle Autio in Sydney, Alex Webb shooting Istanbul, David Goldblatt in his native South Africa, and much more.

All of the work is from existing, if not previously published, projects, such as Luc Delahaye’s L’Autre (a series of candid portraits from the Paris Metro), Nikki S. Lee’s performance art “Projects” series masquerading as street photography, and Michael Wolf’s Transparent City project.

From “Ramos,” Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2009–2012. Julio Bittencourt

Fenchurch Street, 11 a.m., from “London’s Square Mile,” 2006–2013.
Polly Braden

A few bodies of work feel imitative, or leave you with that feeling of “Hell, I can take photos at least as good!” It’s a refrain you often hear from people who have been to an exhibit of Garry Winogrand, or of any street photographer, for that matter. I wouldn’t say that about Winogrand, but there are enough projects in this book that make me think, “Why was this included?” to leave me with an uneven feeling about the book.

At the same time, some of the work truly inspires. Alex Webb’s groundbreaking juxtapositions and Daido Moriyama’s contrasty explosions of black and white expand the boundaries of the street photography genre. Then there are photographers who push the envelope of what is even considered street photography, like work from Doug Rickard’s “A New American Picture,” a series of images lifted from Google Street View.

Appold Street, 6 p.m., from “London’s Square Mile,” 2006-2013. Polly Braden

The Wall Street Guy, New York City, 2008 (from “Stolen Moments,” 2008–present).
Yasmine Chatila

Shanghai, China, March 2011. Ying Tang

All that said, there’s a lot of amazing photography within these 400 pages. And the brief history of street photography for different cities is a great touch. Some of the best work, however, seems overly familiar—though to a nonphotographer it may not. Aside from that, the range of photographers represented seem to tilt more heavily toward the museum or ArtForum set: fine-art type photography that just happens to be set in the streets. And that’s not really my bag. But there’s also a lot that is totally up my alley. Like I said: mixed bag.

Even if I wasn’t overly wowed by the broad overview, I can understand what the book is trying to accomplish. Like most surveys, it’s a fine enough introduction to the current state of street photography in all its forms. The write-ups offer a quick background on each photographer and their included body of work, enough to provide a great starting point.

But if you’re seeking a deeper dive into the masters of the genre, you might want to check out the truly excellent Bystander: A History of Street Photography, by Joel Meyerowitz and Colin Westerbeck; Leo Rubinfien’s recent, massive Garry Winogrand book; the new Robert Frank book; and the reissue of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s monumental Decisive Moment.

Moorgate Station, London, UK, 2005. Matt Stuart

From “Rio: Entre Morros,” Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2010. Claudia Jaguaribe

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100-Plus Photographers Capture 49 Cities

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We Hate Each Other, We Really Hate Each Other

by TobyZ21jnpos Posted on June 13, 2014

Mother Jones

Pew has released a gigantic survey report on political polarization in America, and everyone will find fascinating nuggets throughout. The most consistent takeaways are these:

Polarization has increased considerably over the past few decades.
Both sides have moved away from the center, but conservatives have moved further.
Both sides tend to be more cocooned than in the past, but more conservatives live in a bubble than liberals.
Conservatives vote a helluva lot more than liberals. But you already knew that.

Here are three of my favorite charts from the report, picked semi-randomly. First up is one that I choose to interpret as supporting my view of Fox News as the primary source of the most toxic Gingrichian tendencies in the Republican Party. Take a look at the right side of this chart. Among consistent liberals, their dislike of the Republican Party goes down in the late 90s, then up in the aughts, then down again after 2010. This seems reasonably explainable by a growing antipathy whenever a Republican is president.

Now look at the left side. There’s no such trend. Among consistent conservatives, dislike of the Democratic Party just goes up and up and up. These are the most rabid Fox watchers, and I’d submit that this is the most likely explanation for their skyrocketing hatred of Democrats.

Second, here’s what people do and don’t like. As every liberal has insisted forever, and as every conservative has vociferously denied just as long, conservatives are much more likely to be open racists. The more conservative you are, the more likely you are to be unhappy if a family member marries someone of another race. This is in the year 2014.

In the spirit of equal time, you see exactly the same dismay among liberals at the prospect of a family member marrying a gun owner. In fairness, however, gun ownership is an active personal choice that informs a person’s character, so this is more defensible.

Third, here’s yet more confirmation that atheists are still the most distrusted people in the country. An astounding 73 percent of consistent conservatives would be unhappy if a family member married a conservative. Hell, even 24 percent of consistent liberals would be unhappy at the prospect. Jeebus.

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We Hate Each Other, We Really Hate Each Other

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Can You Guess When Violent Crime in Our Schools Peaked?

by Burt Bollman Posted on June 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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Via Tim Lee, here’s a pretty interesting chart from a newly released report on crime in schools. It shows the rate of violent crime committed on campus: rape, robbery, assault, and sexual assault.1 And it sure looks pretty familiar, doesn’t it? It peaks in 1993, about 18 years after leaded gasoline started being phased out in 1975, then turned down and continued declining for the next 20 years.

Since the oldest students in our schools are 18 years old, the crime rate should start to flatten out approximately 18 years after the final elimination of leaded gasoline in 1995. That would be 2013. And so far, it looks like that’s about what’s happening.

All the usual caveats apply. This isn’t proof, it’s just a data point. But it’s a pretty compelling data point, isn’t it?

1Homicide isn’t included, but the homicide rate in schools is so low that it doesn’t affect these figures noticeably.

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Can You Guess When Violent Crime in Our Schools Peaked?

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No, Staying in Iraq Wouldn’t Have Changed Anything

by Kyung Wilhoite Posted on June 11, 2014

Mother Jones

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Iraq is close to being overthrown by a small Sunni insurgent force:

Sunni militants who overran the northern Iraqi city of Mosul as government forces crumbled in disarray extended their reach in a lightning advance on Wednesday, pressing south toward Baghdad….By late Wednesday there were unconfirmed reports that the Sunni militants, many aligned with the radical Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, were battling loyalist forces at the northern entrance to the city of Samarra, about 70 miles north of Baghdad.

So how did this happen?

Iraqi officials told the Guardian that two divisions of Iraqi soldiers — roughly 30,000 men — simply turned and ran in the face of the assault by an insurgent force of just 800 fighters. Isis extremists roamed freely on Wednesday through the streets of Mosul, openly surprised at the ease with which they took Iraq’s second largest city after three days of sporadic fighting.

Senior government officials in Baghdad were equally shocked, accusing the army of betrayal and claiming the sacking of the city was a strategic disaster that would imperil Iraq’s borders.

The developments seriously undermine US claims to have established a unified and competent military after more than a decade of training. The US invasion and occupation cost Washington close to a trillion dollars and the lives of more than 4,500 of its soldiers. It is also thought to have killed at least 100,000 Iraqis.

This is one of those Rorschach developments, where all of us are going to claim vindication for our previously-held points of view. The hawks will claim this is all the fault of President Obama, who was unable to negotiate a continuing presence of US troops after our withdrawal three years ago. Critics of the war will claim that this shows Iraq was never stable enough to defend regardless of the size of the residual American presence.

And sure enough, I’m going to play to type. I find it fantastical that anyone could read about what’s happening and continue to believe that a small US presence in Iraq could ever have been more than a Band-Aid. I mean, just read the report. Two divisions of Iraqi soldiers turned tail in the face of 800 insurgents. That’s what we got after a decade of American training. How can you possibly believe that another few years would have made more than a paper-thin difference? Like it or not, the plain fact is that Iraq is too fundamentally unstable to be rebuilt by American military force. We could put fingers in the dikes, but not much more.

Max Boot, of course, believes just the opposite, and I might as well just quote myself from a few weeks ago on that score:

I’m endlessly flummoxed by the attitude of guys like Boot. After ten years—ten years!—of postwar “peacekeeping” in Iraq, does he still seriously think that keeping a few thousand American advisors in Baghdad for yet another few years would have made a serious difference there? In Kosovo there was a peace to keep. It was fragile, sure, but it was there. In Iraq it wasn’t. The ethnic fault lines hadn’t changed a whit, and American influence over Nouri al-Maliki had shrunk to virtually nothing. We had spent a decade trying to change the fundamentals of Iraqi politics and we couldn’t do it. An endless succession of counterterrorism initiatives didn’t do it; hundreds of billions of dollars in civil aid didn’t do it; and despite some mythologizing to the contrary, the surge didn’t do it either. The truth is that we couldn’t even make a dent. What sort of grand delusion would persuade anyone that yet another decade might do the trick?

If we committed US troops to every major trouble spot in the Mideast, we’d have troops in Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Lots of troops. The hawks won’t admit this outright, but that’s what their rhetoric implies. They simply refuse to believe the obvious: that America doesn’t have that much leverage over what’s happening in the region. Small commitments of trainers and arms won’t make more than a speck of difference. Big commitments are unsustainable. And the US military still doesn’t know how to successfully fight a counterinsurgency. (That’s no knock on the Pentagon, really. No one else knows how to fight a counterinsurgency either.)

This is painfully hard for Americans to accept, but sometimes you can’t just send in the Marines. Iraq may not have been Vietnam 2.0, but there was certainly one similarity: military success against an insurgent force has a chance of succeeding only if we’re partnered with a stable, competent, popular, legitimate national government. We didn’t have that in Vietnam, and that made victory impossible. We don’t have it anywhere in the Mideast either. For better or worse, the opposing sides there are going to have to fight things out on their own. This isn’t cynicism or fatalism. It’s just reality.

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No, Staying in Iraq Wouldn’t Have Changed Anything

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Housekeeping Note — Font Edition

by ErnestinaWrenn Posted on June 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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By the way: to all the people who wrote asking why the body font on the blog has changed, I don’t know. I was as surprised as you when I saw it after our weekly site update Thursday night. However, web designers, like God, move in mysterious ways, and I’m sure there were some deeply-considered aesthetic reasons for making the change. Unfortunately, I don’t know what those reasons are, since for excellent and obvious reasons,1 I’m not consulted about this stuff. Perhaps some member of our design team will see this and let us know in comments.

1Principally that I have approximately the artistic taste of a seven-year-old.

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Housekeeping Note — Font Edition

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