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Are Chemical Weapons Reason Enough to Go to War?

by Abraham Lowe Posted on August 30, 2013

Mother Jones

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The Obama administration has moved a fifth destroyer containing cruise missiles into the Mediterranean Sea and seems prepared to take limited punitive military action against Syria for the Bashar al-Assad regime’s presumed use of chemical weapons. The White House is expected to declassify evidence today that will show that Assad’s forces launched a poisonous gas attack against civilians earlier this month, killing as many as 1,300. A year ago, President Obama set a “red line,” noting that the use of chemical weapons would be unacceptable in the Syrian civil war that has raged for over two years and killed over 100,000 people. But with Britain refusing to lend support for a retaliatory strike, some members of Congress are wondering whether the use of chemical weapons is an automatic rationale for America to go to war. Here’s a backgrounder on these nasty weapons, who has them, what they do to the body, and how the United States has in the past responded to their use.

What is a chemical weapon?

Experts generally categorize chemical weapons based on their biological effects. According to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, chemical weapons include nerve agents, choking agents, blister agents such as mustard gas, blood agents, chemicals that cause psychotic disorders, and riot-control agents, such as tear gas. Also included are defoliants such as Agent Orange, which was used by the United States in Vietnam.

Under the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention (more on that below), it’s perfectly fine for countries to deploy tear gas against domestic protesters so long as it’s not used as a weapon of war. But as Slate points out, riot-control agents can still be deadly in enclosed spaces. According to Physicians for Human Rights, the main chemical weapons doctors watch out for these days are VX, sarin, and tabun—all nerve agents—and BZ and mustard gas.

What do these chemicals do to people?
Chemical weapons wreak havoc on the body, but are not always lethal. Nerve and choking agents hit hardest. When you inhale a choking agent—such as chlorine gas, which was used extensively during World War I—it forces fluid into your lungs, and that basically drowns you. Nerve agents can kill within minutes (in the case of VX), and cause twitching and seizures prior to death. Symptoms of mustard gas include skin blistering, burning eyes, abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting, and swelling of the respiratory tract that can seal the victim’s airway. They take two to 24 hours to appear and are not usually lethal if adequate healthcare is available.

Which chemical agent was used in Syria?
Sarin, allegedly. When absorbed through the skin, sarin attacks the nervous system and can kill a person in 5 to 10 minutes. It was developed in 1938 in Nazi Germany and was allegedly tested on people in concentration camps. Sarin was the gas used a deadly 1995 attack on the Tokyo subway by an extremist cult. (See timeline below.)

How are survivors of the Syrian attack being treated?
Tim Shenk, a spokesman for Doctors Without Borders, which operates six hospitals and four health centers in the north of Syria, says that the main drug used to treat neurotoxic symptoms is atropine. The group sent approximately 1,600 vials of the drug to field hospitals in Damascus about six months ago. Those were used in the recent incident, and Doctors Without Borders is now sending 15,000 additional vials to facilities in that area. If atropine is injected within one hour of exposure, it can be highly effective—but in Syria, there wasn’t enough atropine to treat everyone, and not all patients made it to the hospital in time.

Why are chemical weapons considered worse than, say, bombing women and children?

“Unfortunately, there are no international laws against war itself,” Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, tells Mother Jones. “But there are rules about how wars can and cannot be conducted…Holding the line against further chemical weapons use is in the interests of the United States and international security, because chemical weapons produce horrible, indiscriminate effects, especially against civilians, and because the erosion of the taboo against chemical weapons can lead to further, more significant use of these or other mass destruction weapons in the future.” Chemical weapons also evoke the horrors of World War I and the Holocaust.

But writer Paul Waldman sees international hypocrisy on the subject. “Getting killed by mustard gas is surely awful,” he writes in The American Prospect. “But so is getting blown up by a bomb. Using one against your enemies gets you branded a war criminal, but using the other doesn’t.” Steve Johnson, a visiting fellow at the UK’s Cranfield University and an expert on chemical warfare, said in an interview, “I can understand why chemical warfare feels emotive to us—it is insidious, there is no shelter, it is particularly effective on the young, elderly, and frail, and can be a violent and excruciating death.” He adds, “When one breaks it down ethically though, it seems impossible to say that it is more acceptable to kill 100 people with explosives than with nerve agent.”

Does the United States usually intervene when chemical weapons are used?
Far from it. “As far as I know,” the Arms Control Association’s Kimball says, “this would be among the first instances when a state’s use of chemical weapons would have prompted military action by the US or by others.” And Foreign Policy reported this week that unearthed CIA documents show that the United States gave the location of Iranian troops to Iraq in 1988, fully aware that Saddam Hussein’s regime was planning to attack Iran with chemical weapons—including sarin.

Here are some of the most notable recent uses of chemical weapons by governments and terrorist groups.

1st Lt. Matthew Chau, commander of Border Team 3, 25th Infantry Division, patrols Halabja, Iraq. Buried in the village cemetery are many victims of the 1988 chemical weapons attack, ordered by Saddam Hussein. Wikimedia

1980s, Iran: During the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam Hussein’s regime uses nerve gas, including sarin, and mustard gas in Iran, killing up to 20,000 soldiers. The United States was complicit, according to recently released CIA documents.

1988, Halabja, Iraq: Saddam Hussein’s regime unleashed mustard gas on a town overtaken by Kurdish rebels at the end of the Iran-Iraq war, killing about 5,000 civilians.

1989, Tbilisi, Georgia: Russian security agents allegedly use a World War I-era gas against protesters. About 4,000 people seek hospitalization.

1994, Matsumoto, Japan: Aum Shinrikyo, a cult obsessed with the idea of apocalypse, released sarin at several sites, killing seven people and injuring more than 200.

1995, Tokyo, Japan: Aum Shinrikyo released sarin gas on the subway, killing at least 12 people and injuring more than 5,500.

Are chemical weapons allowed under international law?
Nope. In 1925, following the large-scale use of nerve gas, tear gas and other deadly agents during World War I, countries signed a Geneva protocol prohibiting the use of gas as a method of warfare on the grounds that it has been “justly condemned by the general opinion of the civilized world.” Using chemical weapons is a war crime under the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). A legally binding arms-control treaty on chemical weapons, the Chemical Weapons Convention, was drafted in 1992. Its signatories agreed to not use or produce chemical weapons, and to destroy their remaining stockpiles. Since 1997, when the treaty went into effect, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has inspected more than 2,600 chemical weapons sites declared under the treaty. Here’s a map showing which countries have not yet signed and/or ratified the treaty, or ratified it only in the last five years:

Who still has chemical weapons?
As of February 2013, Albania, India, Iraq, Libya, the Russian Federation, and the United States still have declared chemical weapons stockpiles. (This doesn’t count the 5 countries that have not signed nor ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention, or nations that may have secret stockpiles.) Since 1997, at least 80 percent of the world’s stockpiles have been destroyed—the United States and Russia have been dragging their feet, according to Cranefield University’s Steve Johnson. Thirteen countries, including China, the UK, the United States, Iraq, and France also have declared existing chemical weapons production facilities—but of those 70 total declared facilities, 64 have been destroyed or converted for peaceful purposes. All have been inactivated.

Which nations support US military intervention on the basis of a chemical weapons attack?

British Prime Minister David Cameron pledged his support for a US strike against Syria, but he was rebuffed by Parliament, including members of his own Conservative Party. The UN Security Council meeting on the topic ended in a stalemate, without authorization for military intervention. Russia passionately opposes intervention, as it blames Syrian rebels for the chemical attacks. France could turn out to be the crucial backer for Obama, as President Francois Hollande has expressed his support, and is not bound by parliament’s vote.

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Are Chemical Weapons Reason Enough to Go to War?

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7 More National Parks Threatened by Fire

by xf0ks040u Posted on August 30, 2013

Mother Jones

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California’s massive Rim Fire has now charred more than 192,000 acres, including 45,000 acres in Yosemite National Park. But Yosemite isn’t the only national park facing the threat of wildfires. Across the western US, rising temperatures, past fire suppression policies, and invasive species are increasing the fire risk—meaning some of country’s greatest natural treasures could one day go up in smoke.

Here are seven beautiful parks where the danger is very real.

Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks

Yellowstone National Park. And_Ant/Shutterstock

America’s first national park is also one of the most threatened by fire. Anthony Westerling, a wildfire expert at the University of California, Merced’s school of engineering, says that large blazes were once relatively infrequent in the northern Rocky Mountains but that climate change could dramatically increase fire activity in the Yellowstone area.

In 2011, Westerling and his colleagues found that continued warming “could completely transform” fire activity in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, which includes the Yellowstone and Grand Teton parks. In fact, by the middle of this century, both the frequency of fires and the area burned could be greater than at any time in the past 10,000 years. The researchers concluded that these changes would result in a “real likelihood of Yellowstone’s forests being converted to nonforest vegetation during the mid-21st century” because new trees wouldn’t have a chance to grow between the increasingly frequent fires.

Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks

Giant sequoias in Sequoia National Park. Galyna Andrushko/Shutterstock

These Sierra Nevada parks, roughly 100 miles south of Yosemite, are facing severe drought and “extreme” fire danger. Right now, “we’re in the ‘holy cow, things are dry’ stage,” says park official Deb Schweizer, explaining that Sequoia and Kings are currently operating under their highest level of campfire restrictions.

The parks are best known for their giant sequoias—the same type of ancient trees that firefighters have been scrambling to protect in Yosemite. Giant sequoias are a “fire-adapted” species that typically benefits from low-intensity ground fires—the trees’ thick bark protects them from flames, and the heat helps release their seeds. But massive blazes like the one in Yosemite could be a different story.

Patrick Gonzalez, a climate change scientist with the National Park Service, has been working with a team of researchers to analyze the vulnerability of the parks’ giant sequoias to a potential increase in fire due to climate change. Gonzalez said in an email that “it is not yet possible to say that climate change has increased fire danger” in Sequoia. Still, he says, park officials are “considering how to adapt their fire management practices” based on the research.

Glacier National Park

Saint Mary Lake in Glacier National Park. e X p o s e/Shutterstock

It’s well known that this park’s iconic glaciers are threatened by climate change. But officials at the park—in Montana’s northern Rockies, along the Canadian border— are also concerned about the potential for increasing fires. According to a park service publication, temperatures in the Glacier area increasing nearly twice as fast as the global average. The heat, combined with decreased snowfall and other factors, could cause an “increase in frequency, size, and intensity of wildfires.” Glacier officials are worried that warmer weather is worsening insect infestations—which in turn might weaken trees and make them more vulnerable to fire. According to a recent Government Accountability Office report:

Park staff said additional funding could be used to address increased western spruce budworm infestations. This insect normally infests trees for 3 years, but due to temperature increases, its infestation period has lengthened to 7 to 15-year cycles, according to park managers. As a result, hundreds of forested acres of Glacier National Park have been weakened, which could increase their susceptibility to fires.

Saguaro National Park

Saguaro cacti in Saguaro National Park. SNEHIT/Shutterstock

This desert park’s namesake, the saguaro cactus, is “severely threatened” by a highly flammable invasive plant called buffelgrass, according to the National Park Service.

Julio Betancourt, a scientist with the US Geological Survey, thinks it’s likely that warmer temperatures are playing a role in spreading buffelgrass. He explains that beginning in the 1980s and ’90s, buffelgrass “exploded across the landscape,” filling the Sonoran Desert with fuel for small, intense fires that can transform the landscape. “These fires burn hot,” says Betancourt, “this is not something Saguaros are going to survive.”

After a fire, the buffelgrass regrows quickly, often thicker than before. But saguaros—as well as other species native to the park—grow very slowly and simply can’t compete with the fire-adapted grass. According to the park service, “Many scientists believe that local extinctions of saguaros will occur and the Sonoran Desert vegetation and wildlife will be changed forever.”

Joshua Tree National Park

Joshua trees in Joshua Tree National Park. agap/Shutterstock

Located in the California desert, Joshua Tree faces a similar threat from invasive grasses—in this case, from red brome and cheatgrass. According to the park service, these plants “made a major assault on the park” beginning in the 1990s and are fundamentally altering the ecosystem:

Formerly when lightning struck a Joshua tree or juniper, it would consume that plant then burn out. Now the grasses covering the ground carry the fire from the ignited plant on to others.

Desert plants are not adapted to fire; plant seeds do not require fire to break dormancy, nor do many of the plants resprout after fire. We believe that larger fires do occur in deserts, but historically only every century or so. Due to exotic grasses, we are now seeing large fires, such as the Juniper Complex fire that burned 14,000 acres in 1999, every five to 30 years in the Mojave.

As the threat of grass fires increases, says Betancourt, “Joshua Tree National Park could very well become ‘Red Brome National Park.'”

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7 More National Parks Threatened by Fire

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Why Are Some States Trying to Ban LEED Green Building Standards?

by Michele Merritt Posted on August 30, 2013

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the Atlantic Cities website and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The amendments and executive orders never actually mention LEED by name. They ban new construction built with public money from seeking (or requiring) any green building certification that’s not recognized by something called the American National Standards Institute, or that doesn’t treat all certifications for wood products equally. But that’s really just a mouthful meant to ensure no more LEED-certified courthouses or state offices or libraries.

Behind the bans are a group of industries—primarily conventional timber, plastics and chemicals – unhappy that much of their product goes unrecognized by the LEED standard created by the US Green Building Council. LEED now certifies a million and a half square feet of real estate a day, affixing a “green” label onto public buildings, commercial offices and private homes that rack up points on a 100-point scale and rewards things like locally sourced materials and energy-efficient design.

Using lumber clear-cut from the side of a sensitive stream half a continent away does not, in short, get you anything.

“Certain things haven’t made the cut,” says Lane Burt, USGBC’s policy director. “As a result we’ve seen some political agitation, basically a much more threatening posture saying ‘if you don’t change this about LEED, or give us more points, we’ll use our constitutional rights to petition government to take LEED away.'”

Mississippi was the most recent state to do this, with an amendment just tacked on to a transportation and housing appropriations bill. Alabama and Georgia have done the same through executive order. An industry coalition is also trying to push similar language through Congress that would cover new construction from the largest property manager in the country, the federal government. (Treehugger has a good long-running history of all of this).

The industry objections have grown in direct proportion to LEED’s prominence. Thirty-four states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have policies either requiring LEED construction or establishing strong incentives for it in public buildings. The federal government does, too. The industries that now oppose LEED—even as they remain members of the USGBC voting on changes to the certification—aren’t out to ban green building, per se. Rather, they’ve come up with their own standards for what counts as “green.”

Instead of LEED, they’ve got something called Green Globes. Instead of the “Forest Stewardship Council” certification (which LEED recognizes for wood products), they’ve created the Sustainable Forestry Initiative program. Suffice it to say, these certifications have laxer standards.

To environmental groups, the sleight-of-hand tactic is actually more insidious than if industry were trying to politicize green building all together.

“What they’re trying to do,” Sierra Club activist Jason Grant says of the timber industry, “is protect their core business model, which largely relies on large-scale clear cutting and replanting.” The Forest Stewardship Council demands costlier and more sustainable practices. “The conservation community is united in opposition to the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, not because it doesn’t have any merit, but because it is trying to pass off fundamentally status quo, barely legal forestry practices as green and sustainable. Look at the name—the Sustainable Forestry Initiative. That is what is at the heart of the conflict.”

The industry-led American High-Performance Buildings Coalition (URL: betterbuildingstandards.com) puts it a little differently. LEED, they argue, lacks transparency, “shuts out stakeholders,” isn’t built on “consensus.”

LEED’s own defenders (including Grant) acknowledge that the system isn’t infallible. The entire exercise of rating green buildings is inevitably fraught; environmentalists themselves don’t agree on many items in the certification. The latest version of LEED passed this summer with 86 percent of the vote of the USGBC’s 13,000 members. That would count as a sweeping victory in a democracy. But if “consensus” means everybody, it obviously isn’t that.

The entire dispute over the forestry practices behind the lumber that goes into these buildings actually revolves around a single point in the 100-point LEED system. And a building receives that point if just half of its permanently installed wood is FSC certified. A LEED building can contain any kind of wood under the sun. It just may not get that point. (For comparison’s sake, if you use locally sourced but less sustainable wood, that counts toward two points.)

All of this means that one industry with a vested interest in the smallest sliver of an entire green-building rating system has so far been successful in undermining the whole model in a few states. And the standards set by government construction have the potential to cascade into the private market, too.

For LEED, this battle is a perverse sign of its expanding influence. But it’s unclear if the many proponents of green building—including all the businesses that have grown up around it—are ready yet to mount the kind of defense that could keep LEED from becoming another wedge between red states and blue ones.

“I think we are at an inflection point,” Burt says. “The green building industry has grown to 45 percent of the marketplace in new construction. That’s significant growth. It’s become a real industry. And if these political attacks from certain sub-components, certain special interests are going to continue, the green building industry needs to get a lot more politically savvy.”

He doesn’t mean that the non-profit USGBC needs to become a political heavyweight. “There’s no nonprofit,” he says, “that’s going to match the lobbying clout of the timber industry.”

The USGBC, he says, is content to compete with other certifications. But that’s not the scenario these state laws would create. Instead, they would effectively ban LEED. “That’s a huge escalation,” Burt says.

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Why Are Some States Trying to Ban LEED Green Building Standards?

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Morgan Spurlock’s One Direction Documentary Is a Threat To Democracy And Safety

by Justin Thomas Posted on August 30, 2013

Mother Jones

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One Direction: This Is Us
TriStar Pictures
92 minutes

It’s upon us.

One Direction, the English/Irish boy band sensation that is worth roughly a billion dollars, has a new documentary in theaters. The 3D film examines the five members‘ lives on and off the arena stage, portraying them as normal, down-to-earth people who love their families and are bemused by bowls of Japanese food. It’s produced by Simon Cowell and directed by Morgan Spurlock, the same guy who did Super Size Me, made a documentary on The Simpsons and failed to track down Osama bin Laden in this critically tarred mess of a movie.

One Direction has sold 30 million records and the boys have been invited to the White House by First Lady Michelle Obama (they couldn’t make it, though). But the really important thing about One Direction is that they are venerated by a violent, ravenous international cult of adolescents.

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Morgan Spurlock’s One Direction Documentary Is a Threat To Democracy And Safety

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More Good News on Health Care: Medicare Costs Are Down, Down, Down

by Dave Max Posted on August 30, 2013

Mother Jones

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I’ve written before about my belief that health care costs in the United States have been trending downward for a long time. Not just during the aughts (which everyone seems to agree about), but since the early ’80s. Click here for a refresher.

Last week brought some confirmation of this from the Congressional Budget Office. Michael Levine and Melinda Buntin took a look at Medicare spending per beneficiary over the past three decades and came to a very similar conclusion: “Growth in spending per beneficiary in the fee-for-service portion of Medicare has slowed substantially in recent years. The slowdown has been widespread, extending across all of the major service categories, groups of beneficiaries that receive very different amounts of medical care, and all major regions.”

Their basic chart is below. It starts in 1980, but I think it’s better to omit 1980-82. Inflation was very high in those years, which makes Medicare spending growth look artificially high and the subsequent decline artificially steep. However, consumer inflation has been pretty low and steady since then (at around 2 to 3 percent), so inflation doesn’t muddy the picture much after 1983. I’ve drawn an eyeball regression line starting then and it still tells much the same story:

This is good news, but in fact, it’s even better news than it seems at first glance. There are two reasons for this. First, Medicare plays a big role in setting rates and spending priorities for the entire health care industry. So the fact that Medicare spending growth is slowing down suggests that spending growth in the broad health care industry should slow down too.

The second reason is more intriguing. Levine and Buntin note that there have been two previous major declines in Medicare spending, and in both cases they were driven by legislative changes. But over the past decade, we’ve seen another steady decline with nothing to explain it:

The current slowdown cannot be so easily ascribed to a set of changes in payment policy or program structure. As described above, legislation governing payment rates probably did slightly less to restrain growth in the second part of the decade than it did earlier on.

The financial crisis and economic downturn … do not appear to explain much of the slowdown. First…from 2000 to 2005, the growth in the average payment rate programwide was similar to growth in the CPI-U. Second, we did not find evidence to suggest that beneficiaries’ considerable loss of wealth and reduced income growth significantly affected their collective demand for care. Third, it is not clear whether the recession played a role in reducing the rate at which providers purchased new, cost-increasing technologies. Finally, and in contrast, some evidence suggests that high unemployment during the recession boosted providers’ incentives to deliver services to Medicare beneficiaries by reducing the demand for care in the private sector, though we could not empirically confirm the mechanisms by which unemployment might have had such an effect.

The lack of a single big legislative explanation suggests that there’s something more organic going on. And with Obamacare’s cost controls set to kick in over the next decade, we could be entering a virtuous circle of reined-in health care spending for years to come.

Levine and Buntin acknowledge that there’s considerable uncertainty in their analysis. There are a lot of moving parts here, and the truth is that a decade isn’t really a very long time frame to hang your hat on. (Remember all those economic models that assumed housing prices could never fall because they were based on the previous decade’s worth of data?) And it’s worth keeping in mind that even if spending per beneficiary stabilizes, Medicare is still going to have a lot more beneficiaries over the next half century as baby boomers retire and our population ages.

Nonetheless, evidence is mounting all over the place that the spiraling growth of health care costs, which has been a serious bogeyman for the past few decades, might finally be receding. Since health care costs are by far the biggest component of future concerns over federal spending and federal deficits, this suggests that our future may be brighter than we think.

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More Good News on Health Care: Medicare Costs Are Down, Down, Down

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Memo: Justice Department Won’t Meddle With States That Legalize Marijuana

by Betty Miller Posted on August 29, 2013

Mother Jones

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Mary Jane made a new friend today: an old bearded hippie named Uncle Sam.

In a memo released this afternoon, the Department of Justice signaled that it will not meddle with state efforts to legalize and regulate the consumption and sale of pot. “Basically what it says is that the federal government is waving a white flag,” says Dan Riffle, the director of federal policies for the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP). “Today’s announcement is a major historic step toward ending marijuana prohibition.”

The federal government typically hasn’t prosecuted individual pot smokers, but the memo breaks new ground by applying a similarly permissive approach to marijuana dispensaries, which have often been the targets of federal raids. Under the new policy, the DOJ will leave recreational and medical pot dispensaries alone in states that it believes are regulating them adequately.

Prosecutors “should continue to review marijuana cases on a case-by-case basis,” the memo says, “and weigh all available information and evidence, including, but not limited to, whether the operation is demonstrably in compliance with a strong and effective state regulatory system.”

The DOJ signaled that it will allow Colorado and Washington to proceed with legalizing and regulating the sale and recreational consumption of marijuana so long as they can prevent:

Cannabis from being sold to minors
Pot revenue from going to criminal enterprises
Legally purchased marijuana from being diverted to states where it’s illegal
State-authorized pot businesses from being used as legal cover for drug trafficking
Violence related to drug cultivation
Stoned driving
The cultivation of marijuana on public lands
Marijuana possession on federal property

“Those are all reasons we’ve cited for why we should tax and regulate marijuana,” the MPP’s Riffle points out.

But other pro-marijuana activists are concerned that the memo gives federal prosecutors too much leeway. In particular, it’s not clear whether the feds will stop prosecuting pot dispensaries in California. Unlike Colorado and Washington, California provides little state-level oversight of its medical pot industry, relying instead on a patchwork of local laws.

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Memo: Justice Department Won’t Meddle With States That Legalize Marijuana

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Behind the Saga to Bring a Giant RoboCop Statue to Detroit

by Aigneis Gaskill Posted on August 29, 2013

Mother Jones

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Detroit, Michigan, is finally getting its monument to RoboCop.

Last May, photos began circulating online of a giant statue made in honor of the legendary cyborg law enforcer. It’s the result of a Kickstarter campaign by the Imagination Station, a Detroit nonprofit specializing in art and renovation. Three months later, the statue has finally reached Detroit soil.

The model, assembled at Across the Board Creations in British Colombia, arrived Wednesday afternoon in a crate. “Slow and steady wins the race,” Brandon Walley, director of development at the Imagination Station, wrote me earlier this week. But the statue’s journey began long before this summer. The story of how this RoboCop duplicate came into being is a complex two-year saga involving Hollywood executives, political division, gonzo art—and the actual star of RoboCop.

The statue’s origin is, in fact, entirely political. In early 2011, the Democratic Mayor of Detroit and retired NBA Hall of Famer Dave Bing was promoting the Detroit Works Project, an initiative that called for community input to create a “strategic framework plan” for the city. He got the word out on Twitter, which earned him some thoughtful response—and the standard jest. One of the tweeted suggestions came from user @MT, who asked if the city would devote a chunk of its budget to erecting a statue to RoboCop, the eponymous protagonist from Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 action film, which is set in a futuristic, chaotic, and ruined Detroit. (For the uninitiated, the film RoboCop satirizes the excess and horrors of the Reagan era. The character and franchise has since become an American pop-culture icon. A 2014 remake is on the way.)

This is all Mayor Bing had to say about @MT’s modest proposal:

…which spurred further discussion on the matter:

Bing did not entertain the idea of building a fully functional killing machine, either.

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Behind the Saga to Bring a Giant RoboCop Statue to Detroit

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Quiz: All The Words That Aren’t Fit to Print in the New York Times

by Prokippxv Posted on August 29, 2013

Mother Jones

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return container.find(‘.’ + this.name);
,
create_element : function(slide)
if (!slidethis.name) return ”;
return jQuery(‘

‘
+ slidethis.name + ”
);
}
},

name : ‘middleimage’,
finder: function(container)
return container.find(‘.’ + this.name);
,
create_element : function(slide)
if (!slidethis.name) return ”;
return jQuery(
”
);
}
},

name : ‘middlevideoembed’,
needs_aspect_ratio : true,
finder: function(container)
return container.find(‘.’ + this.name);
,
create_element : function(slide)
//check aspect ratio
if (!slide.middlevideoembedaspectratio) return ”;
return jQuery(”
+ slidethis.name + ”
);
}
},

name : ‘subhed’,
finder: function(container)
return container.find(‘.’ + this.name);
,
create_element : function(slide)
if (!slidethis.name) return ”;
return jQuery(”
+ slidethis.name
+ ”
);
}
},

name : ‘text’,
finder: function(container)
return container.find(‘.’ + this.name);
,
create_element : function(slide)
if (!slidethis.name) return ”;
return jQuery(”
+ slidethis.name
+ ”
);
}
},

name : ‘bottomimage’,
finder: function(container)
return container.find(‘.’ + this.name);
,
create_element : function(slide)
if (!slidethis.name) return ”;
return jQuery(”
);
}
},

name : ‘bottomvideoembed’,
needs_aspect_ratio : true,
finder: function(container)
return container.find(‘.’ + this.name);
,
create_element : function(slide)
//check aspect ratio
if (!slide.bottomvideoembedaspectratio) return ”;
return jQuery(”
+ slidethis.name + ”
);
}
},
],

init : function(quiz_data, options)

self = this;
if (options)
for ( var option in options )
selfoption = optionsoption;

}

if (typeof(quiz_data) === ‘string’)
//is a google spreadsheet
self.make_quiz_from_google_spreadsheet(quiz_data);
return self;

self.calculate_aspectratios(quiz_data);

self.quiz_data = quiz_data;

self.create_cover();

for ( var i = 0; i < self.quiz_data.length; i++ )
self.append_question(i);

self.append_how_you_did_section();

return self;
},
append_how_you_did_section: function()
correct_answers_element = jQuery(‘0’);
var how_you_did_element = jQuery(”);
how_you_did_element.append(jQuery(‘You got ‘));
how_you_did_element.append(correct_answers_element);
how_you_did_element.append(jQuery(‘ correct answers out of ‘ + self.quiz_data.length + ‘ questions’));
cover.append(how_you_did_element);
,

make_quiz_from_google_spreadsheet: function(spreadsheet_id)
Tabletop.init(
key: spreadsheet_id,
proxy : ‘https://s3.amazonaws.com/mj-tabletop-proxy’,
callback: function(data)
var quiz_data = self.make_quiz_data_from_spreadsheet_data(data);
self.init(quiz_data, options);
,
simpleSheet: true
});
},
calculate_aspectratios: function(data)
for (var i = 0; i < data.length; i++)
var row = datai;
for (var k = 0; k < row.possible_answers.length; k++)
var answer = row.possible_answersk;
self.find_aspectratio_for_each_type_of_video_embed(answer);

self.find_aspectratio_for_each_type_of_video_embed(row.question);
}
},

find_aspectratio_for_each_type_of_video_embed : function(slide)
for (var i = 0; i < self.possible_display_elements.length; i++ )
var display = self.possible_display_elementsi;
if ( display.needs_aspect_ratio && slidedisplay.name )
slidedisplay.name + ‘aspectratio’
= self.find_aspectratio(slidedisplay.name);

}
},
find_aspectratio: function(videoembed)
var height = videoembed.match(/height=”d+”/);
if (!height ;
height = parseInt(height0.replace(/height=”/, ”).replace(/”/, ”));

var width = videoembed.match(/width=”d+”/);
if (!width || !width0)
console.log(‘Your video embed code needs a width.’);
return ”;
;
width = parseInt(width0.replace(/width=”/, ”).replace(/”/, ”));

return (height / width)*100;
},
pull_answer_value_from_spreadsheet : function(row, value, wrong_number, correct)
var correct = correct ? ‘right’ : ‘wrong’;
if (rowcorrect + wrong_number + value && rowcorrect + wrong_number + value !== self.defaulting_flag)
return (rowcorrect + wrong_number + value);

if ( (self.defaulting_behavior_on && rowcorrect + wrong_number + value !== self.defaulting_flag)
|| (!self.defaulting_behavior_on && rowcorrect + wrong_number + value === self.defaulting_flag)
)
return (rowcorrect + value && rowcorrect + value !== self.defaulting_flag
? rowcorrect + value
: (row’answer’ + value && row’answer’ + value !== self.defaulting_flag
? row’answer’ + value
: row’question’ + value
)
);
else
return ”;

},
get_possible_answers : function(row, is_correct)
var possible_answers = [];
var right_or_wrong = (is_correct ? ‘right’ : ‘wrong’);
if (rowright_or_wrong)
possible_answers.push(self.make_possible_answer(row, ”, is_correct));

for (var i = 0; i < 10; i++ )
if (rowright_or_wrong + i)
possible_answers.push(self.make_possible_answer(row, i, is_correct));

}
return possible_answers;
},
make_possible_answer: function(row, row_number, is_correct)
var right_or_wrong = (is_correct ? ‘right’ : ‘wrong’);
var answer =
answer: rowright_or_wrong + row_number,
correct: is_correct
;
for (var i = 0; i < self.possible_display_elements.length; i++ )
var display_element = self.possible_display_elementsi.name;
answerdisplay_element = self.pull_answer_value_from_spreadsheet(
row, display_element, row_number, is_correct
)

return answer;
},
make_quiz_data_from_spreadsheet_data: function(data)
var quiz = [];
for (var i = 0; i < data.length; i++)
var row = datai;
var possible_wrong_answers = self.get_possible_answers(row, false);
var possible_right_answers = self.get_possible_answers(row, true);

var right_answer_placement = [];
for (var j = 0; j < possible_right_answers.length; j++)
right_answer_placement.push(
Math.round(Math.random() * possible_wrong_answers.length)
);

// IMPORTANT TO SORT THIS. rather than check if a value is in, we only check the first
right_answer_placement.sort();

var possible_answers= [];
var right_answers_placed = 0;
for (var j = 0; j <= possible_wrong_answers.length; j++)
while (j === right_answer_placementright_answers_placed)
//push right answer
possible_answers.push(possible_right_answersright_answers_placed);
right_answers_placed++;

if (j === possible_wrong_answers.length)
continue;

possible_answers.push(possible_wrong_answersj);
}

var question =
question :
,
possible_answers : possible_answers,
rowNumber : row.rowNumber – 1
};
for (var j = 0; j < self.possible_display_elements.length; j++)
var display_value = self.possible_display_elementsj.name;
question.questiondisplay_value = row’question’ + display_value;

quiz.push(question);
}
return quiz;
},
append_question : function(question_index)
var question_data = self.quiz_dataquestion_index
var question_container = jQuery(‘<li class=”question_container row-fluid question_’
+ question_index
+ ‘”>’
);
question_container.append( self.build_question_element_from_row(question_data) );
question_container.append( self.build_possible_answer_elements_from_row(question_data, question_index) );
container_elem.append(question_container);
,
build_question_element_from_row: function(row)
var question_container = jQuery(”);
for (var i = 0; i < self.possible_display_elements.length; i++)
question_container.append(
self.possible_display_elementsi.create_element(row.question)
);

return question_container;
},
build_possible_answer_elements_from_row : function(question, question_index)
var answers_container = jQuery(”);
for (var i = 0; i < question.possible_answers.length; i++)
var answer_data = question.possible_answersi;
var possible_answer = jQuery(”
+ answer_data.answer
+ ”);
(function(question_index, answer_index, possible_answer)
possible_answer.bind(‘click’, function()
// was it the right answer?
var was_correct = self.quiz_dataquestion_index.possible_answersanswer_index.correct;

// Add correct classes to possible answers
answers_container.find(‘.selected’).removeClass(‘selected’);
$(this).addClass(‘selected’);
$(this).removeClass(‘possible_answer’);
answers_container
.find(‘.answer_’ + answer_index)
.addClass(
was_correct
? ‘correct_answer’
: ‘wrong_answer’
);

//track how many you got right the first time
if ( typeof(answer_trackingquestion_index) === ‘undefined’ )
answer_trackingquestion_index = was_correct;
self.update_correct_answers_element();
cover.find(‘.question_’ + question_index).addClass(
‘first_guess_’
+ ( was_correct
? ‘right’
: ‘wrong’
)
);

//show new slide
self.display_answer(self.quiz_dataquestion_index, question_index, self.quiz_dataquestion_index.possible_answersanswer_index);

// track that this was selected last
self.quiz_dataquestion_index.previously_selected = self.quiz_dataquestion_index.possible_answersanswer_index;
});
})(question_index, i, possible_answer);
answers_container.append(possible_answer);
}
return answers_container;
},
add_display_in_correct_place: function(container, place_in_display_elements, slide)
for ( var i = place_in_display_elements; i > 0; i– )
if (self.possible_display_elementsi – 1.finder(container).length )
self.possible_display_elementsi – 1.finder(container)
.after( self.possible_display_elementsplace_in_display_elements.create_element(slide) );
return;

}
container.prepend(
self.possible_display_elementsplace_in_display_elements.create_element(slide)
);
},
display_answer : function(question, question_index, answer)
var displayed_slide = question.previously_selected
? question.previously_selected
: question.question;
var slide = container_elem.find(‘.question_’ + question_index + ‘ .question’);
slide.addClass(‘revealed_answer’);
for (var i = 0; i < self.possible_display_elements.length; i++)
var display_value = self.possible_display_elementsi.name;
if ( answerdisplay_value != displayed_slidedisplay_value )
if ( !answerdisplay_value )
self.possible_display_elementsi.finder(slide).remove();
else if ( !displayed_slidedisplay_value )
self.add_display_in_correct_place(slide, i, answer);
else
self.possible_display_elementsi.finder(slide).before(
self.possible_display_elementsi.create_element( answer )
).remove();

}
}
},

create_cover : function()
cover = $(‘#’ + self.container);
container_elem = jQuery(”);
cover.append(container_elem);
container_elem.addClass(‘quiz_container’);
container_elem.css(‘padding’, ‘0px’);
,
update_correct_answers_element: function()
var right_answers = 0;
for (var i = 0; i < self.quiz_data.length; i++)
if (answer_trackingi)
right_answers++;

}
correct_answers_element.text(right_answers);
}
};
return quiz.init(quiz_data, options);
};

$.fn.quiz = function(quiz_data, options)
options = options ;
options.container = this.attr(‘id’);
this.quiz = $.quiz(quiz_data, options);
return this;
};
}(jQuery));

The Gray Lady has her standards, at least. For as long as anyone has kept track, the New York Times has enforced a strict policy of avoiding language it deems offensive while jumping through hoops to explain why. While cursing is permitted in excerpted works of fiction, in the paper’s news sections, f-bombs, s-words, racial slurs, and off-color terms such as “screw,” are strictly non grata. (The one exception: The 1998 publication of the NSFW Starr Report.)

No one—even Joe Biden—is exempt. In the hands of the Times copy desk, “cocksuckers” becomes “Offensive Adjective Inappropriate for Family Newspaper“; “fuck you money” is “forget you money“; and “slutbag” is euphemized as just one of “several vulgar and sexist terms” uttered by New York mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner’s spokeswoman. If—to borrow a trope that really ought to be banned—the Eskimos have 100 words for snow, the New York Times has at least 100 ways to say “fuck.” None of them use the word “fuck.”

Can you read between the lines to figure out which words the Times copy desk considered unfit to print in the quotes below? Give it your best fucking shot:

var quiz = jQuery(‘#quiz_container’).quiz(‘0AswaDV9q95oZdDlmanhkZDd0TVhVcGRSQjlqdzQwNUE’); //your published spreadsheet key or URL goes here
Like this quiz? Wanna build your own? Check out our open-source quiz builder here!

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Quiz: All The Words That Aren’t Fit to Print in the New York Times

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"If You Note Me Drifting or Grammatical Errors…I’ve Not Eaten in 35 Days"

by PierresHood Posted on August 29, 2013

Mother Jones

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

On July 8, 30,000 California prisoners went on a hunger strike to protest the treatment of those who are kept in extended solitary confinement. Even the slightest evidence of gang affiliation—such as possessing a copy of Machiavelli’s The Prince—can land prisoners in the short corridor isolation unit (a.k.a. the SHU, or “the hole”), where they are confined to tiny windowless cells for 23 hours a day, denied many provisions and visitors, and often kept apart from other inmates. Hundreds of prisoners have been in the hole for a decade or more. (Read our hunger strike explainer for more.)

What follows are excerpts of letters from the hole by a leader of the prison strike who was eventually hospitalized after nearly starving to death. The group Legal Services For Inmates With Children provided the letters to Mother Jones on the condition that the prisoner’s name be withheld. He is a self-identified member of the New Afrikan Revolutionary Nationalist Collective Think Tank, and an alleged member of the Black Guerilla Family, a prison gang. He resides in the SHU of the California State Prison, Corcoran. These excerpts are lightly edited for clarity and brevity, and are organized according to the date of the events being described.

July 11 — They came to me and Zah’s cell and told us they were moving all “strike leaders” (us and 7 others) out of the 4B1L C-Sections short corridor isolation unit to an undisclosed location on 4A yard. After an initial discussion, we all refused. Warden Gipson’s immediate reaction was to order a mass cell extraction of all of us—an attempt to provoke a violent confrontation with peaceful protestors, which would have occurred with serious injuries or casualties to people on both sides. Enough prisoners came to the consensus that maintaining the peaceful posture of this protest was our primary concern, so we agreed to move.

They opened our tray slot and told us to “cuff up.” Captain Smith of the I.G.I. Institutional Gang Investigators came through the yard gate and stated to us: “The warden ordered that all of you ‘strike leaders’ be put on 4A yard to isolate you.” I responded: “We’re housed in the short corridor isolation unit already—isn’t that it’s purpose?” And he responded, “Well, apparently you’re not isolated enough.”

We’re all now housed in 4A3R—a debriefer’s block. They’ve isolated us in a block full of snitches, rats, state agents, informants and unprincipled elements of every description.

With all of the cells they could have moved Zah and I into, they’ve moved us into a cell with “FUCK YOU NIGGERS” written in big black ink print over the cell door and window, so that’s the first thing we see every morning we wake up. No one can tell me that that was not intentional.

July 21 — Today is the 14th day we haven’t eaten and my thinking’s kind of fuzzy. I was 223 lbs in June and Zah was 178. We’ve both lost over 10 pounds thus far.

I’m tired, and I’m sluggish—but other than a little light-headedness I’m holding up well, as is Zah. They have me, Zah, Micah, Sneaky, Yuri Estrada, Stomper, Popey, and 4 of our Northern Mexican brothers all stuck in C-Section around all these rats. I.G.I. said they would move us back when the protest is over. They really did fuck over our property—most of the other guys still haven’t been given more of their stuff and they lost almost $100 of my books, which I’m appealing now. I’ll be alright—such is the nature of sacrifice.

It is only through the exercise of the First Amendment to protest government when its laws are unjust, immoral, and inhumane have such crimes against humanity been abolished.

July 30 — This is the 23rd day I’ve not eaten. I was 235 on 7/7 and 204 on 7/26, a loss of 31 lbs.

They started giving Zah and me B-complex, thiamine, and a multivitamin yesterday to delay organ damage or failure (at this point). I do feel a little better, less dizziness, though I’m still light-headed and weak. This pain in my right side has intensified considerably—but my pain threshold is extraordinarily high—I can handle it.

I’m sure that you heard about how they’ve written us up for hunger striking. In classic authoritarian fashion, they seek to mask this crime of maintaining a domestic torture program by charging us with the “crime” of protesting this inhumane practice and couching it in the terms “gang activity.” This is no different than what slave owners sought to do to abolitionists and runaway slaves in that epoch.

We’re unwilling to start eating again—no matter what Pelican Bay and Sacramento decide—unless they rescind these 115s disciplinary write-ups and return these soldiers property (after they return us to 4B1L; we’re still trapped in this rat block full of debriefers and informants).

If I had the ability, I’d hound, embarrass, and shame mainstream news agencies relentlessly for their utter failure to honestly report on this program of torture CDCR is running or our protest to it.

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"If You Note Me Drifting or Grammatical Errors…I’ve Not Eaten in 35 Days"

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Every Hurricane of the Past 170 Years in One Map

by Bernadine Posted on August 29, 2013

Mother Jones

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

This story first appeared on the Atlantic Cities website and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Should you pilot a small, rickety craft across international waters this summer, it would be wise to consult this unusual map of foul ocean weather. The gusty cartography plots the paths all the tropical cyclones recorded in the past 170 years. Brighter areas show where they have overlapped in space, representing areas of historically frequent hurricane activity—tumultuous ocean zones probably best to steer around.

Visualization super-nerds at NOAA (that’s meant in the most flattering way) conjured this top-down look at hurricanes and Pacific cyclones using storm-track records from the National Climatic Data Center. The records date back to 1842 and include both satellite data and first-person accounts from (no doubt really stressed) mariners. Though the U.S. government stocks such information on 11,967 tropical cyclones, that number is probably smaller than what has actually blown across the seas over the ages. Satellites nowadays keep a laser bead on these powerful storms, but back when sailors were responsible for snitching on them, one could flail about in the middle of the ocean without many people noticing.

This key shows where on the map the highest points of overlap are:

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Every Hurricane of the Past 170 Years in One Map

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