New notes

Taliban militants attacked the Afghan Parliament in Kabul on Monday.

NPR's Philip Reeves reports that police say all of the militants were killed by Afghan security forces and more a dozen civilians were injured. Philip filed this report for our Newscast unit:

"Police say the attack began when a suicide bomber in a car detonated outside parliament's gates.

"Inside, lawmakers were meeting to confirm the appointment of a new defense minster. TV pictures showed the speaker sitting calmly as a cloud of dust from the blast fills the room.

"A prolonged fire-fight then followed which police say ended when the security forces killed the six Taliban attackers. There's been a surge of Taliban attacks since last year's withdrawal of most U.S. and foreign forces.

"The Taliban will see today's attack as a propaganda coup — as it's against a major government power center in the heart of the capital. The attack is raising questions about how this security lapse could happen and about the overall ability of Afghan forces to combat the militants."

The New York Times reports this incident is an embarrassment for the Afghan government. Parliament was meeting to try to confirm a third nominee for the defense minister post.

The first two, the paper reports, were rejected by parliament leaving the country without a defense chief for 10 months. The Times adds:

"The Taliban took responsibility for the attack, posting what their spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, described as 'live tweets.'

"'Parliament of the puppet administration of Kabul is under heavy martyrdom-seekers attack at a time which they were casting confidence vote for the minister of defense,' one of Mr. Mujahid's Twitter posts read.

"In another worrisome development for the Afghan government, a second district in the northern province of Kunduz fell to Taliban control, according to Afghan officials there. An Afghan Local Police commander said the Archi district fell to the insurgents Monday morning. On Sunday, the Ministry of Defense and other officials confirmed Taliban claims that another district, Chahar Dara, had fallen to the insurgents that morning."

The Wall Street Journal reports that all members of parliament were accounted for and safe.

Kabul

Taliban

Reports of the Russian military helping pro-Russian separatist fighters in Ukraine are common — but can be hard to confirm. Russia denies that its soldiers are fighting in Ukraine. VICE News correspondent Simon Ostrovsky decided to retrace the steps of one soldier — as documented in the soldier's social media posts — to see where exactly the soldier had been, and if this might help confirm Russia's direct involvement in Ukraine.

The Two-Way

Ukraine's President Warns Of Russian Invasion

Ostrovsky's new documentary, Selfie Soldiers, chronicles his journey in the footsteps of Bato Dambaev, who he'd confirmed was enlisted in the Russian military. He then contacted Dambaev directly.

The film follows up on recent work by the Atlantic Council, a Washington, D.C., think tank that issued a report relying on open-source information to track and verify locations where photos and videos of Russian soldiers and equipment have been taken in Ukraine.

"I wanted to find any way to be able to confirm what pretty much everybody already believes, which is that the Russian government has been directly involved in the conflict in eastern Ukraine," Ostrovsky tells NPR's Arun Rath.

"And it just happened to be that it was the Russian soldiers themselves who provided that proof inadvertently, by posting photographs of themselves online in Ukraine. And it couldn't have been simpler. So there it is."

Interview Highlights

On how he found Bato Dambaev

We were working together with the Atlantic Council and Elliott Higgins, who's a citizen journalist who's been geolocating — which is to say, finding the location of photographs — for a long time until we found one who'd posted a photograph of himself in an area that looked like it was a battlefield and was different from all of the other photographs that he'd posted of himself.

So once we saw that there was a photograph there that looked a lot like it could have been taken in Ukraine, we started focusing on this soldier. ... We traced his entire journey from Siberia, 4,000 miles away, to eastern Ukraine.

On Dambaev's reaction

He denied everything. I think he'd actually been prepared, as all soldiers are, that they're supposed to take off their insignia before they go into Ukraine. They're supposed to not take cellphones with them. He'd broken that rule, so he knew that he was in trouble.

I know that he reported me having contacted him immediately after I spoke with him on the phone. And this isn't in the film, but a few hours after I put the phone down, the security services came and paid me a visit in my hotel and I was essentially hounded by them out of Russia thereafter.

On Russia denying its role in Ukraine

It's a very sensitive issue, the participation of Russian soldiers in Ukraine, because everybody from Putin on down denies that it's happening. So until Russians understand, until the Russian government admits that it's taking part in the conflict, I don't think there's going to be any kind of a resolution. And I hope that this film brings us a little bit closer, at least, to that sort of an admission that it's going on. ...

One ... way I think the Russians are trying to prevent this kind of reporting is I've been applying for journalist accreditation, which I've been able to get before, for the last year, over a year. And it was a few days after I was basically pushed out of Russia that I finally got an email saying that I would be denied journalist paperwork.

An explanation was never given to me, and I think this is an extra method that the government is using to prevent reporting on its activities on Ukraine.

Ukraine

Russia

We have heard about how ISIS is recruiting foreign fighters to join its ranks. But it's happening on the other side as well.

Just last week, a Massachusetts man who died fighting against ISIS in Syria was laid to rest.

Last year, a British man who calls himself Macer Gifford left his job as a financial trader in London and went to join the Kurds and fight the self-declared Islamic State in Syria.

Gifford spoke on the condition that NPR not reveal his real name, because he fears for the safety of his family in the UK.

Though he had only a little military training — Gifford had joined the British equivalent of the National Guard — he was driven by a desire to defend people against ISIS.

"I was sitting at my desk in London, in an ordinary job, working in the city," he says. "Every day I'd flick on my computer screen and see the most horrendous crimes being committed in the Middle East. It just stirred me into action. I first wanted to donate money to charity, perhaps even work for a charity, but then the option came up that I could actually go out and volunteer and fight ISIS, so that's exactly what I did."

I'm very much poorer but a lot more satisfied as a human being, and in myself.

Macer Gifford

Gifford came back to the UK on the day the Massachusetts man, Keith Bloomfield, died.

"I never met him, although I met people who did know him," he says. "He had the same sort of values as me, and actually values that are very much ingrained within the culture of the United States, freedom, democracy, liberty."

Interview Highlights

On how he decided to join the Kurds

I was doing my research online [on] the different parties that were taking the fight to ISIS and the ones that were fighting generally in the region, and the one group that came up consistently in my research was the Kurds. It was the YPG in particular who were fighting for democracy. They weren't fighting [Syrian President Bashar] Assad, which for me, as a British subject, I couldn't actually volunteer to fight Assad directly, I could only fight the Islamic State ... The law is pretty hazy in this regard. Basically, you're not allowed to fight a state, whether that's an enemy of the United Kingdom or an ally. That's illegal. Me, I went out there just to fight the Islamic State.

On whether he had any second thoughts about his decision

Not a single one. From the moment that I arrived to the moment I left, I never questioned whether or not my decision was the wrong one, even when I learned of friends dying or even when I was fighting.

On the media attention he has received

It's strange that, if a Kurdish young man of 18 as well, 10 years younger than me, can volunteer to fight for his country, no one will blink an eyelid. But it takes a young man from the United Kingdom or from the United States or from Canada or Australia to go out and fight, for the media and the British government and the governments around the world to say, 'Ah, right, this is interesting,' and actually start to take notice.

On what he gave up in going to Syria, and what he gained

Before I left, I had a flat. I was just about to buy a house. I had a girlfriend. I had a job, a career, and I gave it all up to go out to fight. So now I've come back, six months later, I'm very much poorer but a lot more satisfied as a human being, and in myself.

When Sarah Hepola got her very first writing job at The Austin Chronicle, her editor-in-chief gave her an unlikely Christmas gift — a hat that could hold beers. "It was my top boss," Hepola recalls, who had drawn her name in a Secret Santa gift exchange. "He just threw it on my desk and said: 'So you can drink more at work.'"

Hepola's new memoir — Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget — is filled with such funny/tragic stories, about drinking until last call, blacking out, and then trying to piece it all together the following day.

"The truth is, I didn't feel like that interesting of a person," Hepola tells NPR's Rachel Martin. "It felt to me like my colleagues knew so much more than I did, was always so intimidated by them. They knew more about pop culture, they knew more about politics. What did I have? What were my stories? And suddenly, drinking was giving me these stories, it was giving me attention."

Interview Highlights

Blackout

Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget

by Sarah Hepola

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Read an excerpt

On blacking out one night at a Paris hotel

I don't know how much time I lose. And when I come to, I'm having sex with somebody and I don't know where he came from. I'm in a terrible kind of fog. I eventually sort of got sharp enough to realize that I needed to get out of that hotel room.

I was walking towards the elevator; I realized it was my hotel at that point. Halfway to the elevator and I realized that I didn't have my purse and I went back to retrieve it from the guy's room and I realized I didn't know what his room was.

It was this panic. You're standing in the middle of this hallway ... and all hotel doors look the same. I eventually went downstairs. I got the concierge to help me. When I went back up to my room, I thought the story was over, I thought I was safe, I got into bed — whew, another narrow escape — and then the concierge called me.

I'd left my leather jacket in the bar. And he came up and there is an interaction with him that is, at the time, deeply shameful; and I don't really understand how that happened. ... I don't know how romantic it was; it was certainly an entanglement.

On when she started drinking

There was a Christmas party at the paper and I went to it and I had a blackout and I woke up in somebody else's house and I woke up in their dog bed.

Sarah Hepola

I first took a sip of alcohol around five, six or something. My dad gave me some sips of alcohol from his beer. Then I started stealing these cans of Pearl Light that my mom left in the refrigerator. My mom is such a moderate drinker that she would actually not finish her beer in one sitting — which even to this day I'm like: Ugh, mom, come on. I still have this weird drinker's pride of, like: How can you not finish your beer? But she would leave these cans of Pearl Light in the fridge and I would steal these sips of them.

On stories that are embarrassing – but also "comedy gold"

There is a story that I don't really dwell on too much in the book, but there was a Christmas party at the paper and I went to it and I had a blackout and I woke up in somebody else's house and I woke up in their dog bed. And I didn't know how I got there. And I woke up because the dog was pushing me out of the bed. The dog was like nudging its little wet snout into my drunken face and I was like, what am I doing here? I was so mortified. I can't tell you how mortified I was. That was so embarrassing.

And then, there's this horrible catalyzing moment where you realize it's also comedy gold. And so I went to the staff meeting that day and I told everyone the story about waking up in the dog bed and they were roaring with laughter. That is the admiration and attention that I have craved all my life and there is that idea that writers have that it's all material.

On how she finally quit drinking

People often ask me: What made you quit? Because they want to hear the one piece of information that maybe they could use. The thing is, it wasn't one moment. When that thing happened in Paris, I swore up and down I am never going to drink again — and then I drank on the plane. And the next five years, it's just that. It's the same song on repeat. Why do you stop? I mean, I stopped so many times, I think sometimes you have to quit 100 times to make the 101st time stick.

I don't know exactly why that is, but I will tell you this: I was 35 years old and I was starting to realize that none of this was funny. You asked me earlier about weren't you embarrassed — no, I thought I was funny because everyone else was laughing. And then people stopped laughing, and I think that was brutal for me. ...

I remember the night that I quit drinking for the last time. I didn't think I was going to die. I was like: I'm going to be like this forever. I'm going to be sitting in apartment, drinking my wine and my beer and my tequila by myself with the dead bolt on because I'm afraid of what I'll do when I'm outside. That's not a life. And I just thought, all right, I got to try this again.

On dealing "with life on life's terms"

I have found all sorts of things that I didn't get rid of when I drank. I'm an anxious person. I worry all the time. I'm always reminded like: that's why you drank. I try to control things that are not in my control. I worry too much, way too much what other people think about me. So there are all these challenges that I have, but I am so grateful that it doesn't feel like that chaos, where it just feels like its spiraling out of control.

Read an excerpt of Blackout

I was so scared when I quit drinking that my life would be over and that everything would be worse and that I'd never have fun again. And I really just feel like it has been this extraordinary new path that I've gotten to take which is to deal with life on life's terms and to find self-reliance in myself.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz blew away another gathering of religious conservative leaders this week, preaching about threats to religious freedom to a receptive and hungry crowd.

"I will never, ever, ever shy away from standing up and defending the religious liberty of every American," the GOP White House hopeful thundered at the Faith and Freedom Coalition's "Road to Majority" conference in Washington.

"Religious liberty has never been more threatened in America than right now today," Cruz added.

Cruz hit all the right notes and could easily be declared the winner of the three-day conference, which wraps up Saturday. But despite the good receptions at events like these, Cruz's work on stage is not translating to the campaign trail. He not only lags behind in early state polls, but also in organization. And despite being the first major presidential candidate to declare this cycle, early state activists are baffled by how little they say they have seen Cruz.

"I've always thought that Ted Cruz was kind of the perfect caucus candidate," said Craig Robinson, who runs "The Iowa Republican" website and is a former political director for the state party. "But what we haven't seen is a real commitment to the state."

Speaking their language

There's a reason Ted Cruz does well in front of these crowds. He roams the stage with the gusto of a televangelist. He does not work from a podium, and he strikes just the right tone.

At the Road to Majority confab, he slammed other Republicans for backing down on Indiana's controversial religious freedom law, warned against a potential same-sex marriage decision from the Supreme Court and bashed the Obama administration for not standing up more forcefully to the threat of Islamic extremism.

He boosted his own bona fides, too, telling the audience how he had successfully argued cases before the Supreme Court on "religious liberty," such as protecting a Ten Commandments display at the Texas Capitol.

And with the cadence of a preacher, Cruz seamlessly and empathetically weaved in the tragic Charleston, S.C., shooting that had occurred the night before and left nine dead at a historically black church.

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American flag at the Road to Majority conference on June 19, 2015. Lydia Thompson/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Lydia Thompson/NPR

American flag at the Road to Majority conference on June 19, 2015.

Lydia Thompson/NPR

Cruz led the audience of hundreds — they could have been congregants — in a moment of silence.

"Christians across our nation, across our world — believers across the world are lifting up the congregants at Emanuel AME," Cruz said.

Other GOP rivals touched on many of the same issues, but none with perhaps the same zeal or with the same visceral reaction from the audience.

The faithful ate it up.

"I like the fact that he fights even his own party for the right issue and the right cause," said John Redell, who was attending from Wilmington, Del. "That's the kind of strength we're going to need for a president: someone who can say no — even to his friends — to do what's right for the nation."

Jessica Burnett, a student at Georgia State University: "Ted Cruz was full of energy. He spoke a lot about the issues. He really got the crowd riled up a lot, and you can tell how serious he is about this and how much he cares about America."

The importance of retail politics

It's perhaps no surprise Cruz is able to channel a preacher. His father is an ordained minister, and he went to high school in Houston on the campus of a megachurch.

The former Ivy League debate champion has always loved performance art. He has moved between stages his whole life — from high-school musicals to the high-pressure collegiate debate circuit to the floor of the U.S. Senate. The challenge, though, for Cruz is coming down from the stage.

A majority of Republican caucus goers and primary voters in Iowa and South Carolina are white, evangelical or born-again Christians. In 2012, 57 percent of GOP voters in the Iowa caucuses described themselves that way, while 65 percent of the GOP primary electorate in South Carolina said so, according to entrance and exit polls.

The candidate who can unify them has a time-tested path to victory in those states and, with it, a springboard to the front of the presidential pack. But winning over those voters requires hand-to-hand, grip-and-grin campaigning — retail politics.

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Members of the audience applause at the Road to Majority conference on June 19, 2015. Lydia Thompson/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Lydia Thompson/NPR

Members of the audience applause at the Road to Majority conference on June 19, 2015.

Lydia Thompson/NPR

It's what former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum did in Iowa in 2008 and 2012, respectively. Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who built a career on this kind of campaigning, has already hit hard key sections of the state with deep pockets of religious voters.

The building blocks, the enthusiasm, are there for Cruz, but so far, observers in early states say, he has not shown the willingness to do the kind of required on-the-ground work — to the extent it's needed to win.

Craig Robinson, the former Iowa GOP political operative, noted Cruz's thin staff in the first caucus state compared to other candidates. What's more, Cruz, who is in Iowa this weekend, has held just 23 events in the state over a total of 16 days, according to the Des Moines Register's candidate tracker. That ranks seventh among Republican candidates and isn't in the top 10 overall.

Ted Cruz ranks seventh among Republicans for number of events held in Iowa so far. Domenico Montanaro/NPR/Des Moines Register Candidate Tracker, as of June 20, 2015 hide caption

itoggle caption Domenico Montanaro/NPR/Des Moines Register Candidate Tracker, as of June 20, 2015

By contrast, Santorum has already held 62 events over 29 days; Rick Perry 61 over 30 days; Rand Paul 41 over 16 days; and Mike Huckabee 37 events over 20 days. Even Carly Fiorina and Bobby Jindal, who is set to declare Wednesday, have done more events.

"I still think Cruz has some work to do in terms of his retail campaigning in Iowa," Robinson said, "but I think he has it within himself to do it."

The battle for the evangelical vote

Some of those who have topped him in sojourns to the state are also competing for the same crucial evangelical voters, and were also well received at the conference this week.

Santorum reminded the audience of his long track record fighting for conservative issues, while others were just talk.

"You know me, I'm probably best known for issues of faith and freedom. In some cases, I'm only known for that," he laughed.

Jindal also spoke at length about the threats to religious liberty the day after Cruz, and was also well received by the crowd. Talking of his own conversion to the Christianity from Hinduism, he bemoaned how he felt it was no longer acceptable to stand up for unpopular opinions central to much of the evangelical faith, such as opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage.

"I'm tired of the hypocrisy of the left," Jindal said. "They say they tolerate diversity, and they do, unless you disagree with them. ... The United States of America did not create religious liberty. Religious liberty created the United States of America," he added to applause.

Ben Carson, another favorite of the crowd, Iowa conservatives and Tea Party supporters, spoke of how his faith helped him in his career as a world-renowned neurosurgeon. He said he saw the healing power of prayer and attributed his surgical skill to God after a child he didn't expect to recover went on to do so.

"I thought I was doing everything," Carson said. "I realized after that, that it wasn't me, it was God. I just said, 'Lord, you be the neurosurgeon, and I'll be your hands.'"

Carson, who rose to political fame in 2013 after giving a blistering broadside of Obamacare as the president sat feet away, had another critique for the president's administration.

"I know that President Obama says we're not a Judeo-Christian nation," Carson said, "but he doesn't get to decide. We decide."

While Cruz may have blown away many in the crowd the first day, others were left impressed by many others, underlining the difficult choice Iowa and South Carolina evangelical voters will have next year.

"I'm hoping, because we have such a large field, that as the field narrows down, the candidates are seeing what the American people really are looking for," said Terri Wical of Atlanta. "You know, getting back to our roots, getting back to character and all that. They don't want someone moderate. They don't want something that's going to accommodate everybody...They want somebody that's going to stand on a firm foundation."

Lauren Leatherby contributed.

Ben Carson

2016 Presidential Race

Ted Cruz

Rick Santorum

Bobby Jindal

Mike Huckabee

Rick Perry

Republicans

Barack Obama