I just read an article in Haaretz that got me thinking again about a topic I’ve been mulling off and on for the better part of twenty years: namely, is part of the appeal of radical Islam tied the lack of a radical, trans-national revolutionary movement such as existed through the Cold War and in more diffuse respects for decades before that? The article itself is about the fact that a very high proportion of the ‘foreign fighters’ in ISIS and in other rebel groups in Syria/Iraq are ethnic European converts. In other words, not first or second generation naturalized immigrants from the MENA region or Central or South Asia, but white Britons, Germans, French and Belgians who’ve not only converted to Islam but into its most extreme, totalizing variant. In some cases, men (yes, largely men) who have little more than a passing knowledge of the basics of Islamic ritual practice.
Human Rights Watch says ISIS carried out a mass-killing of 770 Iraqi soldiers when it overran Camp Speicher in June.
“I actually think of the irony as a virtue. This is the age of Colbert. So hacking the super PAC to end the super PAC is a completely viable and obvious strategy that everybody is happy to get behind.” Lawrence Lessig on his plan to raise $700 million for a PAC to end SuperPacs. And for all the freedom to spend without limit bequeathed by the Supreme Court, what about the great majority of billionaires who don’t donate any more to campaigns that your average small town doctor?
A senior operations manager at Princeton University has been told to choose between his job and medical marijuana.
The latest details of the horrific accident with the 9 year old and the Uzi almost perfectly captures the term ‘tragicomic’. Not surprisingly, after the shooting, the 9 year old complained that the gun was too powerful for her and complained to her parents of shoulder pain. Her parents were so focused on her apparent injury that they did not at first notice that instructor Charles Vacca was lying on the ground with a mortal wound to the head.
ISIS has released a video showing what purports to be beheading of a second journalist in its custody, Steven Sotloff.
As I mentioned just below, there’s some movement toward red states adopting Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. But the holdout states are clustered in the South, where African Americans are most affected by the lack of Medicaid coverage.
The idea that Medicaid expansion in red states is a dead letter until Obama leaves office may not entirely hold up. The financial incentives to expand sooner are so great that even very conservative states (at least outside the South) are starting to see the light.