MetaFilter posts tagged with MotherJones

Where'd I put that nuclear recipe again?

kmz — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 08:41:41 -0800

Did America Forget How to Make the H-Bomb? Nobody in the general public knows exactly what it is, though there are guesses, but it seems the bombmakers themselves forgot how to make a crucial ingredient in US thermonuclear weapons, FOGBANK.

Be all that you can be

Joe Beese — Tue, 19 May 2009 06:52:11 -0800

The Department of Veterans Affairs has reported that military scientists tested hundreds of chemical and biological substances on them, including VX, tabun, soman, sarin, cyanide, LSD, PCP, and World War I-era blister agents like phosgene and mustard. The full scope of the tests, however, may never be known. As a CIA official explained to the GAO, referring to the agency's infamous MKULTRA mind-control experiments, "The names of those involved in the tests are not available because names were not recorded or the records were subsequently destroyed." Besides, said the official, some of the tests involving LSD and other psychochemical drugs "were administered to an undetermined number of people without their knowledge."

The Failure of the Business Press

ornate insect — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 13:25:55 -0800

How Could 9,000 Business Reporters Blow It? A former Wall Street Journal writer dissects why business reporters bought the bull—and missed the biggest story on their beat. from the linked Mother Jones article: FOR CASUAL readers of business coverage—that is, most of us—the past 18 months have been a crash course in things we never knew existed but that, we are told, have already done us all irreparable harm. Not only are the problems catastrophic, goes the somewhat frustrating message, but it is already too late to do anything about them—other, that is, than pay for them.[...]business journalists as a rule are as smart, sophisticated, and plugged-in as they seem. And yet that army of professional business reporters—an estimated 9,000 or so nationwide in print alone—for all practical purposes missed the biggest story on the beat. Why? ** In addition to examining the question of why the mainstream business press mostly failed to recognize, predict, or properly understand the current financial crisis, the author of the article, Dean Starkman--who worked as a Wall Street Journal staff writer for eight years ending in December 2004 and now critique[s] the business media full time at the Columbia Journalism Review--also addresses the dismal failure of the financial regulators: IT WASN'T JUST the media abdicating their watchdog role: Just as financial news outlets were weakening, regulators were also abandoning the field, leaving business reporters starved of the investigative leads they rely on.[...] In 2002, the [FTC] announced a then-record $240 million predatory lending settlement involving Citigroup's giant subprime units, and covering no fewer than 2 million customers. Since then the FTC has brought no major consumer lending cases. Zero. The last such case brought by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, against Providian National Bank, came in 2000.[...] It is worth remembering that prior to the Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, and Tyco scandals earlier this decade, the SEC had already opened formal investigations into each doomed company—forcing disclosures that tipped off investors, yes, but also providing road maps and official cover to the financial press. (The problems at Enron, a special case, were first uncovered by a short seller, who tipped off reporters.) Contrast that with the most recent disasters: Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, AIG, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac had all collapsed before the SEC had even launched an investigation....

Hate's Haberdasher

ooga_booga — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 13:16:25 -0800

Aryan Outfitters - a photo and audio essay from Mother Jones magazine about a day in the life of a 58-year old seamstress who caters to the Ku Klux Klan.

Iraq Out How

shotgunbooty — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 17:46:51 -0800

The focus of the current issue of Mother Jones is the Moral Dilemma of Leaving Iraq.

Top Universities, by any definition

blahblahblah — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 22:42:34 -0800

The Top 200 Universities in the World. [logon:mefier/pass:metafilter] For the second year, the Times Higher Education Supplement has exhaustively ranked the top schools in the world. The US, and, to a lesser extent, the UK, dominate the list, but Australia continues to have a strong showing, and China makes more appearances. If you don't like that list, try Newsweek's Top 100 Global Universities, or the ranking by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, which looks at Nobel Prizes and highly cited articles, or just judge universities by their age. All of this a little too global? Washington Monthly rates universities by how they contribute to social mobility and the US as a whole, Mother Jones ranks by social activism, and Young America's Foundation lists the 10 best conservative colleges. [prev.]

Blah blah BLAH blah BLOGS! BLOGS!

troutfishing — Thu, 13 May 2004 12:58:30 -0800

Yackity yackity, choo CHOO!, Yackity yackity.....BLOGS! Self proclaimed Blogoholic George Packer, at Mother Jones, shits on blogs everywhere, joins bemused chorus - FOX, journalism grad students, and so on - blathering on blogs. What are they? What do they mean? Quoth Packer : "Blog prose is written in headline form to imitate informal speech, with short emphatic sentences and frequent use of boldface and italics. The entries, sometimes updated hourly, are little spasms of assertion, usually too brief......All of this meta-comment by very bright young men who never leave their rooms is the latest, somewhat debased, manifestation of the old art of political pamphleteering.....if blogs are "a new way of doing politics," there is also something peculiarly stale and tired about them — not the form, but the content......So far this year, bloggers have been remarkably unadept at predicting events.... Above all, they didn't grasp the intensity of feeling among Democratic primary voters — the resentments still glowing hot from Florida 2000, the overwhelming interest in economic and domestic issues, the personal antipathy toward Bush, the resurgence of activism, the longing for a win. The blogosphere was often caught surprised by these passions and the electoral turns they caused." Packer even gets paid for this, plus starring appearances on snooty public radio talk shows! [ Kevin Drum makes an appearance ].....I can excrete lightly digested opinions with the best of them. Where do I apply ?

servicemen Iraq

thedailygrowl — Sat, 20 Mar 2004 22:16:49 -0800

One year later "It's easy to send soldiers off to war. It's a lot harder to face them when they come home"

troutfishing — Wed, 30 Oct 2002 12:48:41 -0800

CIA funds "alternative" media through nonprofit foundations? "The multi-billion dollar Ford Foundation's historic relationship to the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] is rarely mentioned on Pacifica's DEMOCRACY NOW / Deep Dish TV show, on FAIR's COUNTERSPIN show, on the WORKING ASSETS RADIO show, on The Nation Institute's RADIO NATION show, on David Barsamian's ALTERNATIVE RADIO show or in the pages of PROGRESSIVE, MOTHER JONES and Z magazine. One reason may be because the Ford Foundation and other Establishment foundations subsidize the Establishment Left's alternative media gatekeepers / censors" -- heavy claims. A several part report, in considerable detail. My note - the Mexican PRI, when it ran Mexico, used to fund a whole constellation of Mexican Leftist groups - the threat of withdrawing funding $ proved a very effective way of keeping dissent within "safe" limits.

semmi — Sun, 23 Jun 2002 09:26:57 -0800

What the anti-globalists and the dogmatic left share above all with their newfound fellow-travellers among the Islamic fundamentalists is a loss of faith in the modern age and in Enlightenment ideas. The spirit of their protests was captured by a banner at a recent rally in Berlin: "Civilisation is genocide".

snakey — Mon, 30 Apr 2001 16:07:50 -0800

Is violence necessary to fight The Man? Hey, ya can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs. This essay makes some compelling points on the violence in Seattle and at the FTAA protests.