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"Twenty-three detainees are currently being force-fed. At least twice a day, guards in riot gear tie each detainee to a chair or bed, and medical personnel force a tube up his nose and down his throat, and pump a can of Ensure or other dietary supplement into his stomach. There are so many detainees being force-fed that Guantanamo’s medical personnel are working around the clock to keep up with the demand, and approximately 40 additional medical personnel just arrived in Guantanamo to help deal with the growing crisis."

— Photos: Stark Scenes From the Guantanamo Hunger Strike | Mother Jones (via fireintheheart)

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nprfreshair:

Sebastian Junger tells Terry Gross about the day the late photographer Tim Hetherington started taking pictures of sleeping soldiers while the two were filming Restrepo:

It was a very hot day, boring day. We hadn’t been in a fire fight for at least a week, perhaps more, and the guys were just zoned out. … [S]oldiers kind of sleep as much as they can. One of them said to me, “You know, if you sleep half the time it’s only a six-month deployment,” and so they were sleeping in the middle of the day, sprawled on the ground in their little bunks … and the flies were buzzing around and Tim was scuttling around photographing them. I was like, “Tim, man, what are you doing?” For me it was the ultimate situation where nothing’s going on journalistically and you can just space out and he said, “Don’t you get it? All the photos you see of soldiers, they’re all geared up and they’ve got their weapons and they’re all tough-looking, but when they’re asleep they look like what they really are which are little boys.” And they did: they all looked like they’re about 10-years-old, so vulnerable, you know. And no nation wants to think that their soldiers are vulnerable, but of course they are and Tim saw that.

Nevalla, Korengal Valley, Kunar Province, Afghanistan, 2008. © Tim Hetherington via the International Center for Photography

We wrote about Junger’s new film, about his friend and colleague Hetherington, this week—”an exceptionally talented photographer with true aspirations of not just making a difference with his photos, but trying to understand the people he was photographing and the reason he was there.”

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While working on an assignment to capture how people made use of the streets in Monterrey, Mexico, photographer Alejandro Cartagena discovered an unusual perspective on commuting.

We love this photo essay.

(Photo by Alejandro Cartagena)

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Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is dead.

In 2009, photojournalist Bryan Derballa covered that nation’s referendum to end presidential term limits for MoJo. The measure allowed Chavez to hold onto his job for a third term beginning in 2012.

Photo by Bryan Derballa

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“Welcome to the Hotel America”: Inside the airport hotels where refugees start their new lives.

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Erlen is 14 years old and is pregnant for the third time.

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“Joey lives in Kentucky with his parents and older sister. He is 11 years old. He regularly accompanies his father on hunts. He owns two shotguns and a crossbow and made his first kill—a deer—at the age of seven.”

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For our September/October issue, we asked…a Mother Jones contributing photographer [Danny Wilcox Frazier] to trek around the middle of America and check in with three candidates fighting to go back to Washington.

Here’s Illinois congressional candidate Tammy Duckworth. Check your newsstand in a week or two for a full profile. (Or, you know, subscribe.)

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DRIVING THROUGH JANESVILLE, WISCONSIN, IN A DOWNPOUR, looking past the wipers and through windows fogged up with cigarette smoke, Main Street appears to be melting away. The rain falls hard and makes a lonesome going-away sound like a river sucking downstream. And the old hotel, without a single light, tells you that the best days around here are gone. I always smoke when I go to funerals. I work in Detroit. And when I look out the windshield or into people’s eyes here, I see a little Detroit in the making.

A sleepy place of 60,483 souls—if the welcome sign on the east side of town is still to be believed—Janesville lies off Interstate 90 between the electric lights of Chicago and the sedate streets of Madison. It is one of those Middle-Western places that outsiders pay no mind. It is where the farm meets the factory, where the soil collides with the smokestack. Except the last GM truck rolled off the line December 23, 2008. Merry Christmas Janesville. Happy New Year.

Your morning must-read: Charlie LeDuff on the struggles of Janesville, Wisconsin, Paul Ryan’s hometown.

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Want lower crime rates? Plant tomatoes. A growing body of research shows that urban farms reduce violence.

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magnumfoundation:

Cedric Gerbehaye

Featured in MotherJones

South Sudan came into being a year ago but remains fragile today: It is rife with violent conflict and corruption, and sorely lacks infrastructure.

In 2005, a peace treaty between Sudan’s mostly Muslim North and mostly Christian South put an end to Africa’s longest civil war and set in motion a process for the South to become independent. After almost 99 percent of the population voted for separation in January 2011, the leaders of the main Southern rebel group, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, became the de facto leaders of the new nation. Today, the country is among the worst in health and education rankings globally. And President Salva Kiir recently admitted that the country’s leadership stole $4 billion in funds intended for clinics, roads, and schools.

Check it out.

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How much do we love this photo essay on the search for life-saving mushrooms? THIS MUCH.

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DRIVING THROUGH JANESVILLE, WISCONSIN, IN A DOWNPOUR, looking past the wipers and through windows fogged up with cigarette smoke, Main Street appears to be melting away. The rain falls hard and makes a lonesome going-away sound like a river sucking downstream. And the old hotel, without a single light, tells you that the best days around here are gone. I always smoke when I go to funerals. I work in Detroit. And when I look out the windshield or into people’s eyes here, I see a little Detroit in the making.

It’s recall day in Wisconsin. Go read Charlie LeDuff on what happened in Janesville.

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The Olympic Games in London this year are going to be recordbreaking. On top of London becoming the first city to host the Olympics three times, this year’s games are going to be the first EVER to have both men and women competing in every sport category.

What was the lone straggler causing all the hold up? Women’s boxing. Check out our photoessay on the three badass American women going for the gold.

The men in these photographs are soldiers who were wounded in Iraq. Two of them were wounded in firefights. One was delivering ice. Another walked off into the desert on a bathroom break and stepped on a mine. One was wounded while blowing up a munitions dump. Two of the soldiers who look the least damaged are blind, far more damaged than the camera can record. Whatever they may feel about their condition now, these men tend to sum up our involvement in Iraq in simple, blunt phrases. Like this, from a double amputee: “The reasons for going to war were bogus, but we were right to go in there. Saddam was a bad guy.”

—”Returning from Iraq, the Damage Done.” Photo Essay and Interviews by Nina Berman, Text by Verlyn Klinkenborg.

More here.