What We Read Today 20 June 2014

Econintersect: Every day our editors collect the most interesting things they find from around the internet and present a summary “reading list” which will include very brief summaries of why each item has gotten our attention. Suggestions from readers for “reading list” items are gratefully reviewed, although sometimes space limits the number included.

• ISIS Insurgents Listed Atrocities In Annual Report (Jim Michaels, The World Post) The Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIS) has published an annual report. In it they catalog all operations and compare 2013 activity to the prior year. The report details explicitly each assassination, suicide bombing, knifing and even “apostates run over“. The report also details conversions: “apostates repented“. The report itemizes 537 car and truck bombings in 2013, up from 330 in 2012.

• This Is How You Fight ISIS (Jamie Dettmer, The Daily Beast) Baghdad should take pointers from the Kurds on how to fight ISIS.

• The Monster of Mosul: How a Sadistic General Helped ISIS Win (Andrew Slater, The Daily Beast) Why did Iraqi forces abandon their arms and flee Mosul when a few thousand jihadists approached? The Daily Beast offers an explanation:

The top Iraqi officer in Mosul, whose forces fled with hardly a fight as ISIS militants and their allies took over Iraq’s second-largest city, is an accused torturer who was once targeted by the U.S. military and the Iraqi criminal justice system.

• How Dying Became A Multibillion-Dollar Industry (Ben Hallman, The Huffington Post) This is a comprehensive investigative journalism report. Hospice, which started as a not-for-profit concept is now dominated by profit-making corporations.

…mounting evidence indicates that many providers are imperiling the health of patients in a drive to boost revenues and enroll more people, an investigation by The Huffington Post found.

• Solar panels made three times cheaper and four times more efficient (Darren Quick, Giz Mag) An order of magnitude improvement in lowering cost pf solar power is promised by this new design technology which uses current photovoltaic cells.. If this promise is fulfilled solar power will be produced at a fraction of the cost of any other system.

• Solar Wind Energy’s Downdraft Tower generates its own wind all year round (Darren Quick, Giz Mag) This process uses solar energy (thermal) and evaporative cooling of air to produce electricity from wind turbines 24/7.

Today there are 12 articles discussed ‘behind the wall’.

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