Tag Archives: photos

New Document Cache Shows the Real Roots of ISIS Are as Much Secular as Religious

by DollyMoris Posted on April 21, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Spiegel has quite a fascinating report this week about the origins and growth of ISIS. It’s a great counterpoint to Graeme Wood’s Atlantic piece from February that focused on the Islamic and theological roots of ISIS and the territorial ambitions of its self-appointed caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

But it turns out that this is far from the whole story. According to Christopher Reuter, a recently discovered cache of documents shows that the founding architect of ISIS was actually Haji Bakr, the pseudonym of Samir Abd Muhammad al-Khlifawi, a former colonel in the intelligence service of Saddam Hussein’s air defense force. Bakr, who lost his job and his power in 2003 when Paul Bremer made the decision to disband the Iraqi army, was the real mastermind behind ISIS. In dozens of detailed pages written in 2012, he laid out an organizational plan for the kind of pervasive, brutally efficient spy state he knew best:

It seemed as if George Orwell had been the model for this spawn of paranoid surveillance. But it was much simpler than that. Bakr was merely modifying what he had learned in the past: Saddam Hussein’s omnipresent security apparatus, in which no one, not even generals in the intelligence service, could be certain they weren’t being spied on.

….There is a simple reason why there is no mention in Bakr’s writings of prophecies relating to the establishment of an Islamic State allegedly ordained by God: He believed that fanatical religious convictions alone were not enough to achieve victory. But he did believe that the faith of others could be exploited. In 2010, Bakr and a small group of former Iraqi intelligence officers made Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the emir and later “caliph,” the official leader of the Islamic State. They reasoned that Baghdadi, an educated cleric, would give the group a religious face.

So the roots of ISIS are purely pragmatic: Bakr wanted to build an organization that could retake Iraq, and he calculated that this could best be done by combining the secular mechanisms of Saddam Hussein with the religious fanaticism of an Al Qaeda. The whole piece is well worth a read.

From:

New Document Cache Shows the Real Roots of ISIS Are as Much Secular as Religious

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on New Document Cache Shows the Real Roots of ISIS Are as Much Secular as Religious

Chart of the Day: Obamacare Is Popular!

by Zeniarwpzz Posted on April 21, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Guess what? Obamacare’s popularity has been rising slowly but steadily for the past two years, and in April it hit a milestone. According to Kaiser, it is now more popular than unpopular. Not by much, but at least it’s making progress.

Source: 

Chart of the Day: Obamacare Is Popular!

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Chart of the Day: Obamacare Is Popular!

Tales From City of Hope #1: The Buzzcut Has Landed

by GeriW74lnjka Posted on April 20, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Well, I’m here at City of Hope. On Tuesday at 7 am the final round of chemotherapy begins.

I’m staying in a little studio apartment in Parsons Village, which is on the grounds of the City of Hope campus. The picture on the right provides a glimpse of it. Also, as you can see, it provides a glimpse of the new me. As of yesterday I still had quite a bit of hair left, but it was falling out and I was shedding around the house like a Persian cat from hell. So I figured it was time to just shave it off. It’s all coming out eventually anyway.

So what do I remind you of? Kiefer Sutherland in Stand By Me? One of the drones from Apple’s 1984 commercial? Y’all can decide in comments.

I visited my sister and my mother yesterday, and I’m happy to report that Hilbert and Hopper are in fine fettle. I set up my sister with Skype on her iPad, so now she can call at night and show me the little furballs in real time. Technology FTW.

And don’t forget our Spring fundraiser! I’m still hoping you guys contribute generously to the cause. Remember what they say: Every dollar you give helps one of my hairs grow back.

Donate by credit card here.

Donate by PayPal here.

Read More: 

Tales From City of Hope #1: The Buzzcut Has Landed

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Tales From City of Hope #1: The Buzzcut Has Landed

We Didn’t Learn Anything From Deepwater Horizon—And We’re Going to Pay For It

by IleneEganldsfpl Posted on April 20, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Today is the fifth anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, an event that triggered the nation’s worst-ever oil spill. The well leaked for three months and dumped over 200 million gallons of oil into the sea. The explosion itself killed eleven men; the resulting pollution killed a stupefying amount of wildlife, including 800,000 some birds. And despite billions paid out by BP in fines and restoration costs, the economic impact of the disaster remains wide-reaching and ongoing.

But possibly even more outrageous than the spill itself is how little has been done by government to prevent a similar disaster. The oil and gas industry has stayed active in Washington, and managed to fend off serious efforts to curb drilling: Congress has passed zero new laws—not one—to restrict offshore drilling or force it to be safer. The Obama administration has approved over 1,500 offshore drilling permits since the spill. And back in January the administration announced a plan to open new areas in the Atlantic and Arctic for offshore drilling. As my colleague Tim Murphy noted today, Louisiana’s oversight of the oil industry is rife with ludicrous conflicts of interest that raise serious doubts about the state’s ability to make drilling safer.

In other words, the wounds from BP are scarcely healed, but we’re pushing deeper and deeper into offshore drilling.

In fact, well construction in the Gulf is literally pushing into deeper water, where the risks of a spill are even greater. From an AP investigation pegged to the anniversary:

A review of offshore well data by the AP shows the average ocean depth of all wells started since 2010 has increased to 1,757 feet, 40 percent deeper than the average well drilled in the five years before that…

Drillers are exploring a “golden zone” of oil and natural gas that lies roughly 20,000 feet beneath the sea floor, through a 10,000-foot thick layer of prehistoric salt…

Technology now allows engineers to see the huge reservoirs beneath the previously opaque salt, but the layer is still harder to see through than rock. And it’s prone to hiding pockets of oil and gas that raise the potential for a blowout.

Drilling in the Gulf makes up less than one-fifth of US crude oil production, and an even smaller share of total oil production if you count unconventional oil from fracking. So it wouldn’t be a crippling blow to our energy supply to consider putting the brakes on offshore drilling—if not forever, at least until we feel secure that we’ve done enough to prevent another Deepwater Horizon.

Meanwhile, our expansion into deeper and riskier drilling is happening even though there are still an average of two offshore drilling accidents every day.

Read more: 

We Didn’t Learn Anything From Deepwater Horizon—And We’re Going to Pay For It

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Safer, The Atlantic, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on We Didn’t Learn Anything From Deepwater Horizon—And We’re Going to Pay For It

Friday Catblogging – April 17 2015

by cfg2nx26 Posted on April 17, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Friday catblogging is, of course, a core tradition around these parts. And as the blog welcomes new names and faces while Kevin concentrates on getting better, who said they all have be human? The door’s always open for Hilbert and Hopper to drop in, but we’re going to round out the feline mix with a smattering of cats who are blessed to have a Mother Jones staff member as their human companion.

First up? The Oakland-based menagerie of creative director Ivylise Simones, who oversees all of MoJo‘s lovely art and photography.

On the right is seven-year-old Inspector Picklejuice, a shelter acquisition picked up by Ivylise when she was living in Brooklyn. On the left you’ll find Frankie the Cat. This affectionate two-year-old also came from a shelter, joining the Simones household in 2014.

I’m told these two get along splendidly. Sure looks like it!

If you recognize Picklejuice’s handsome features, it may be from his widely acclaimed Instagram feed, or perhaps from his star turn in our September/October 2014 issue: click through to see him—he’s the looker playing in the box on the far right. (How’d he end up in a magazine illustration? I’ll just say that it helps to have friends in the right places.)

Here’s another of the good Inspector, keeping a close eye on happenings from a favored perch high in the loft. It’s an ideal spot to partake in two of his favorite hobbies: sleeping, and sitting around while awake.

It takes a good five foot vertical hop over open space to get up there. Impressive!

Link to original: 

Friday Catblogging – April 17 2015

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Friday Catblogging – April 17 2015

Why the Euro Is a Selfish Jerk

by DeclanHSUlbce Posted on April 17, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

While Kevin Drum is focused on getting better, we’ve invited some of the remarkable writers and thinkers who have traded links and ideas with him from Blogosphere 1.0 through today to pitch in posts and keep the conversation going. Here’s a contribution from Keith Humphreys, a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University whose sharp insights on addiction, drug policy, and many other topics have helped make the Reality-Based Community group blog a must read.

The Euro is the Windows 8 of the economic policy design world: In both cases, it’s very hard to understand how putatively smart people worked so hard to create a product so ill-suited to the needs of those who were supposed to rely on it. At this point, this isn’t much of a secret: as Kevin Drum pointed out back in 2011, a common currency deprives markets and nations of tools that normally ameliorate the effects of capital flow imbalances, inflation spikes, and crushing debt payments. Kevin and other people who understand fiscal policy better than I ever will (e.g., Matt O’Brien and Paul Krugman) convinced me long ago that the Euro was designed with a lack of understanding of (or an unwillingness to grapple with) basic lessons of economics.

But speaking as a psychologist, the common currency’s fundamental design flaws don’t end there: the Euro creators should have thought harder about what social scientists have learned about how compassion and cultural identity interact.

In asking nations to entrust their economic fate to the Euro, its designers were assuming that Europeans have a reservoir of goodwill among them. That goodwill was supposed to ensure, for example, that no prospective member had to worry that a powerful member would use its Euro-derived leverage to turn the screws on a weaker member which was—to pick an example out of thin air—wracked by colossal levels of debt, unemployment and economic misery.

But that’s exactly what the Germans have done to the Greeks. Why aren’t the Germans overcome with sympathy for the Greeks? It’s not that Germans are selfish or hard-hearted: after all, they have spent ten times the current GDP of Greece helping the economically struggling people of the former East Germany.

Social psychology researchers have identified a powerful in group bias in willingness to help others, whether it’s hiring someone for a job or supporting social welfare programs for the poor. Human beings are, in short, more inclined to help other people whom we perceive as being a member of our tribe.

Human psychology wouldn’t cause as many problems for the Euro if there was a strong European identity, if a West German was as likely to consider an East German a tribe member as they would a Greek or a Spaniard or an Italian. But when most Germans and Greeks look at each other, they fundamentally see someone who speaks a different language and hails from a different culture with a different history—and for that matter was a military enemy within living memory.

With no shared sense of tribe comes a sharp reduction in compassion and attendant willingness to help. The elites who designed the Euro may genuinely have believed and even felt a sense that Europe is all about “us”, but the currency’s recent struggles show that for too many Europeans, it’s more about us and them.

See original article here – 

Why the Euro Is a Selfish Jerk

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Why the Euro Is a Selfish Jerk

Bonus Friday Cat Blogging – 17 April 2015

by CeciliaPlate Posted on April 17, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

My sister has given me loads of catblogging photos to choose from, and this week I’m choosing this one. I understand that Hilbert contested Hopper’s right to this spot for a bit, but Hopper defended herself and is now queen of the chair. She has quite the regal presence.

In the meantime, padded coat hangers have been dragged downstairs, temporary window coverings have turned into cat toys, and someone is apparently pulling blue masking tape down from somewhere. On the brighter side, both cats have decided that jumping up on the couch and snoozing next to Karen while she reads or watches TV is really not a bad alternative to whoever those folks were who used to provide laps and cat food.

I understand more cat blogging will be coming later. Keep your eyes peeled.

Follow this link:

Bonus Friday Cat Blogging – 17 April 2015

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Bonus Friday Cat Blogging – 17 April 2015

Senate’s Iran Bill Probably Not a Bad Idea After All

by CathleeWRR Posted on April 15, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

President Obama has said that he’s willing to sign the latest Senate version of a bill that gives Congress a say in any nuclear deal with Iran. I’m glad to hear to that because, oddly enough, I’m pretty much in favor of the current bill. Here’s why:

Congress should be involved in major arms treaties, regardless of whether my preferred party happens to control Congress.
The current bill requires Congress to vote on a final deal within 30 days. No one expects a treaty to get implemented any sooner than that anyway, so it’s not much of a roadblock.
If Congress disapproves the deal, the president can issue a veto. It would then take two-thirds of the Senate to override the veto and kill the treaty.

I don’t see much of a downside to this. If Obama can’t get even one-third of the Senate to go along with his Iran deal, then it probably doesn’t deserve to be approved. And the threat of a suspicious and recalcitrant Congress going over the treaty language word by word might actually motivate Iran to agree to more straightforward language in the final document. It certainly shouldn’t doom the negotiations or anything like that.

A lot of this is political theater, and a lot of it is pure Israel-lobby muscle at work. Still, I suspect it does little harm and might even do a little good. And setting out the parameters of the Senate vote beforehand is probably all for the good. This isn’t a bad bill.

Original post: 

Senate’s Iran Bill Probably Not a Bad Idea After All

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Senate’s Iran Bill Probably Not a Bad Idea After All

Today’s Republican Dilemma: Who Do They Hate More, Barack Obama or Vladimir Putin?

by ThereseDelprat Posted on April 14, 2015

Mother Jones

Here’s the latest from our pal in Russia:

President Vladimir V. Putin on Monday approved the delivery of a sophisticated air defense missile system to Iran, potentially complicating negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear program and further straining ties with Washington.

The sale could also undermine the Obama administration’s efforts to sell Congress and foreign allies on the nuclear deal, which Iran and the United States are still struggling to complete. It might also reduce the United States’ leverage in the talks by making it much harder for the United States or Israel to mount airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure if the country ignored such an agreement.

Well, there you have it: Putin is eager to undermine any possibility of a US nuclear deal with Iran. This gives Republicans a choice: they can side with Putin or they can side with Barack Obama.

Decisions, decisions. I wonder what they’ll choose?

See the original article here: 

Today’s Republican Dilemma: Who Do They Hate More, Barack Obama or Vladimir Putin?

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Today’s Republican Dilemma: Who Do They Hate More, Barack Obama or Vladimir Putin?

Why Do Progressive States Have Regressive Tax Codes?

by LettiePulido Posted on April 13, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

A lot of people think the federal tax code should be more progressive, but it looks downright socialist compared to the typical state tax code. A chart released last week by Citizens for Tax Justice puts it in context, showing how the wealthy typically pay lower state tax rates:

Citizens for Tax Justice

This problem isn’t limited to conservative states: According to a recent report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), every state places a higher effective tax rate on the poor than it does on the rich. In fact, several of the nation’s most politically progressive states count among the worst when it comes to shoveling the tax burden onto low-income people and the middle class.

The nation’s most regressive tax code belongs to Washington, a state that was ranked by The Hill last year as the bluest in the country based on its voting patterns and Democratic dominance. The poorest 20 percent of Washingtonians pay an effective state tax rate of 16.8 percent, while the wealthiest 1 percent effectively pay just 2.4 percent of their income in taxes.

There’s a clear explanation for that: Washington has no income tax and thus heavily relies on a sales tax that disproportionately affects the poor. What’s harder to grasp is why Washington’s liberals put up with it.

Structural conditions help explain why regressive taxes endure in Washington and many other states. Some states require supermajorities to raise taxes or have constitutions that mandate a flat tax. In Washington’s case, voters approved a personal income tax in 1932 by a two to one margin but were overruled the following year by the state Supreme Court, which decided that a constitutionally mandated 1 percent cap on property taxes also applied to income. An income tax bill passed by the state legislature a few years later was likewise struck down.

But the courts, weirdly, are no longer the biggest obstacle to a fairer tax code in Washington; over the years, they’ve gradually overturned most of the legal precedents that had been used to invalidate an income tax, and most experts believe such a tax would become law today if passed. The bigger problem is voters. In 2010, Washingtonians rejected by a whopping 30-point margin a proposal to establish an income tax that would only have applied to people earning more than $200,000 a year.

How do you square this with California, where, just two years later, a similar tax hike on the wealthy easily sailed through? Or with Oregon, Washington’s political cousin, which has long had a progressive income tax?

I asked John Burbank, the executive director of the Seattle-based Economic Opportunity Institute and an architect of Washington’s failed 2010 income tax measure, why he thought the measure had failed to pass. At first, he cited the off-year election and opposition scare tactics. But when pressed, he offered a third explanation that I think makes more sense: “There is almost like a cultural prohibition that exists.”

In other words people, liberal or conservative, who live in states with low or no income taxes get used to paying little. They may differ on protecting the environment, legalizing weed, or raising the minimum wage, but when you start to mess with the system on which they’ve built their personal finances, they get scared and balk. This is why changing the tax code is so hard, even in states where people may in their hearts believe it’s the right thing to do.

View article: 

Why Do Progressive States Have Regressive Tax Codes?

Posted in alo, Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Why Do Progressive States Have Regressive Tax Codes?