A plea from a Libyan fighting Qaddafi. He's fine with a no-fly zone – but no foreign troops on the ground.
Month: March 2011
Quote For The Day
"Rumsfeld's memoir is one big clean-up job, a brazen effort to shift blame to others – including President Bush – distort history, ignore the record or simply avoid discussing matters that cannot be airbrushed away. It is a travesty, and I think the rewrite job won't wash," – Bob Woodward, guest-blogging for Tom Ricks.
It's a must-read because it reveals not only lies of omission, but downright, well, lies. He'll deny something to your face insistently until he's proven wrong, and then he'll concede.
I remember once challenging him on why the Pentagon was firing so many Arab translators at a time when intelligence was vital – just because they were gay. He denied any Arabic translators, gay or straight, had been fired at all. This was just not true. At the end of our spirited but good-natured interaction, he said he'd look into it. I wonder if he ever did.
The View From Your Window Contest: Winner #39
A reader writes:
Brest, France? Just a wild guess, since I can’t see any clues at all in this thing.
Another writes:
The bin, the railings, the green doors, the sky and the wet ground tell me that I know this place well. I think it could be in Dublin, Ireland, maybe outside the Convention Centre at Spencer Dock. Probably wrong, but I still think I’ll know the place well.
Another:
I am going to guess that this somewhere on the edges of Canary Wharf, London. The late-’80s corporate style matches, as does the waterfront location. However, these elements must exist in any number of other developments of that era – I have checked Vancouver, Seattle, and Dublin without apparent success. The main reason I am unhappy with my guess is the white colonnaded tower in the top right quarter of the photo – nowhere I’ve looked has that feature.
Another:
Ok, I haven’t got the slightest idea where this is. That would appear to be a river, not an ocean, so there’s no point in searching coastlines, I’ve got no real idea what the triangle things are on the left, there’s a phantom triangle that might be a mountain just above the blue temporary wall, and no one can read the plaque on the near railing. There’s a Roman-style cupola or steeple visible in the upper right if you use various Photoshop-like techniques, but that just means there’s a town hall somewhere nearby.
In short, the photo has a North American quality to it, the building looks like it was made between the 20s and the 40s or thereabouts, and beyond that, you just plain haven’t given us enough clues. Such is life. Ottawa is as good a guess as any.
Another:
Venice, Italy? Specifically, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection on the Grand Canal. That’s the first thing I thought when I saw the photo. The fact that I thought of an answer so quickly suggests I’m probably way off.
Another:
I don’t know where it is, but it’s too fucking clean to be Venice.
Another:
Maybe because I was there just a few months ago, stayed at the Shangri-la Kowloon and could walk to the ferry, but I am convinced that it’s the Star Ferry Terminal in Hong Kong.
Another:
The view is of Speicherstadt, the old warehouse district in Hamburg, Germany. This area is one of the largest, perhaps the largest, constructions sites in Europe with thousands of apartments and offices currently under construction. A highlight of the district is the stunning Elbphilharmonie symphony hall (a photo might be nice to see on your blog).
July 2010 photo by Axel Heimken/AP. Another writes:
Long time lurker, first time poster. This reminds me of “Sleepless in Seattle”, specifically a place on the west side of Lake Union, right off Westlake Ave N. My family moved up here to the Puget Sound region four years ago, after visiting from Texas and finding out how beautiful it is here. We stayed on a houseboat, used as a B&B. We don’t miss Texas too much – although up here, we have to wait a lot longer for spring to arrive.
Another:
Finally, a location I think I’ve been, but unlike other readers with other views, I can’t quite remember where. I have a very vague memory that the photo brought up – of going to a waterside restaurant in the greater Seattle area (or in Victoria) and being seated in an adjoining blue box structure like the one pictured. Also, the hanging flower planters (and gray skies) are totally Pacific NW.
Another:
Let’s see, we’ve got plants in bloom, so this location can’t have cold winters. We’re on the water, but it doesn’t look like a marina. What it does look like is a ferry terminal. Finally, there appears to be a few buildings visible over the roof of the facing building in the pane on the right side. One looks a lot like the top of the San Francisco Ferry Building along the Embarcadero. So I think this is the Embarcadero along the San Francisco waterfront.
Correct! Another submits a photo:
Another sends a daytime shot:
Another writes:
I think you’ll get a lot of correct responses for this one. This is the first one for which I’ve had any clue. It’s San Francisco, California, USA (where I live). I’m guessing from an office suite in Pier 3 overlooking the patio of La Mar Cebicheria Peruana. If you look carefully you can see the very tip of the ferry building in the far upper right hand of the photograph. I also believe that’s Mount Diablo faintly visible above the blue patio awning.
Another:
That’s the Peruvian seafood restaurant La Mar. I lived in San Francisco until a few months ago and the picture reminds me of how much I miss the great food there. La Mar is one of the city’s great waterfront restaurants where the quality of the cuisine is matched by the steepness in price. I remember getting a ceviche and loving it, and my then-girlfriend having a tough time because she didn’t eat seafood!
Another does his research:
This is a picture of Pier 1.5 and La Mar Cebicheria Peruana, taken from Pier 3, on the Embarcadero. Here is a picture off Flickr. Here‘s a view from the water. Here‘s a view of Pier 1.5 and Pier 3 from above. Here‘s another view off the web in 2010, with the blue structure added by then. Here is a blog post with some good pics of the food and the interior of the restaurant, and another shot of the restaurant taken from Pier 3. The blue part of the structure seen in the contest pic wasn’t there until later – it was added to bridge to the patio seating. The blue extension matches the blue interior.
La Mar is one of my favorite restaurants in San Francisco – great Peruvian seafood! You can see a nearby view in this video, 37 seconds in (It’s an interview with La Mar’s chef, Gaston Acurio, perhaps Peru’s most famous chef. He has opened several La Mar Cebicherias across the Americas):
Another:
I have lunch at the benches at this building all the time! This complex is located within the historic district of the Embarcadero. The developer did a great job in reconnecting the street to the water’s edge.
Another:
This just looked so familiar at first glance. The building in the foreground is actually Pier 1 1/2 (Pier 2 being south of the ferry building) and the longer larger building in the background is Pier 1.
Another:
I work in the tourist industry in SF and know this view well. Pier 3 is often referred to as the Hornblower Pier as it is the launching point of Hornblower cruises.
Another:
About a million tourists must stroll by here every year.
Another:
This is the view from the easternmost of the two large, south-facing doors and windows in the building that houses both Bloomberg and Whiskies of the World. Having led two groups of friends and relatives along my walking tour (Death March) of San Francisco in the past month, this one was obvious to me. The view is toward La Mar Cebicheria Peruana’s back patio area with a white, wrought-iron handrail of a neighboring pier visible beyond. The flower baskets hanging from the lamppost and the metal railing were dead giveaways. I remember noticing the enclosed area with its distinctive blue fabric siding, the kind used to protect sails and other vulnerable parts of sailboats from sun damage and the elements.
I always enjoy leaving the bustling Embarcadero and walking along the boardwalk facing Treasure Island and Yerba Buena. Most of my guests are usually preoccupied with their cameras, and the Blue Bottle Coffee we just bought in the Ferry Building, to notice the benches and flowers though.
Another:
I have worked for the Port of San Francisco for six years, the administrative offices for which are located in the front of Pier 1. I have a special attachment to this picture, because I also happen to run the Port’s unofficial happy hour. When I first came to work at the Port the pier in the foreground was in terrible condition, with the apron facing the water (an apron is the decking that creates a space between the pier shed itself and the water) was crumbling and extended only a foot or two past the end of the Shed. The building was unoccupied. For the first three years, we watched slowly being developed into what I knew would be the ultimate afterwork drinking spot for my happy hours.
Another:
I know this is the Peruvian restaurant La Mar because I celebrated New Years Day there two years ago with my family. My brother was about to be in the doghouse for getting too drunk until I decided to one up him and become the drunkest person in San Francisco. His girlfriend was too busy being annoyed with me to pay him any attention. Since then he has called me The Wizard because I make magic happen.
Another:
First I thought someplace near the London Canal Museum, but the railings didn’t match. The plaque on the railing was the only meaningful clue to me. A few Google
searches for waterfront, railings, and plaques turned up some similar-looking plaques with Herb Caen quotations about San Francisco.
Attached is a picture from a few windows closer to shore. The railings, lamp posts, and hanging flowers seem similar enough (marked in the photo). The photo was taken by someone working in the office area visible through the glass partition. Based on a little more poking around on Google, I would guess that this is the Bloomberg SF bureau in Suite 101.
So so close. Another:
View from Pier 3 looking back to Pier 1.5, just north of the Ferry Building. Shot from the offices of San Francisco Waterfront Partners, standing about 10 feet from their conference room. Just a guess.
And a correct one! But the winner of this week’s contest goes to the reader who sent in a photo for the tie breaker:
The President’s Speech
Hollywood fights back:
“It’s Only Tweets, Unless They’re Motherfucking True”
Alexis reveals the identity of Twitter star @MayorEmanuel:
There is no doubt that [the Twitter account] is a cultural work of some kind. And at 1,942 tweets and probably 30,000 words, it's a piece of writing with some heft and depth.
The plot is simple: @MayorEmanuel is running to be mayor of Chicago. His adventures sometimes overlap with the campaign activities of the real-life Rahm, like when the latter visits Groupon or does a 50-ward tour or watches the Bears. But a lot of the time @MayorEmanuel's adventures occur in an alternate reality. He has wild dinners at his brother Ari's house in Los Angeles. He moves into the crawlspace of Emanuel's rented house in Chicago, and later into an igloo. He gets stuck in the sewers underneath City Hall and kidnapped by current Mayor Richard M. Daley. During that last adventure, he realizes that two Mayor Emanuels can't coexist and goes through a time vortex, ending the story (for now).
@MayorEmanuel is sometimes accompanied by political advisor David Axelrod and a cast of imaginary characters: Carl the Intern, Hambone (a dog), and Quaxelrod (a duck with a moustache).
If Only McCain Were President …
In his article yesterday, mentioned here, Niall Ferguson claimed that “the correct strategy” in the Middle East would have been pursued if John McCain had been elected president:
The correct strategy—which, incidentally, John McCain would have actively pursued had he been elected in 2008—was twofold. First, we should have tried to repeat the successes of the pre-1989 period, when we practiced what we preached in Central and Eastern Europe by actively supporting those individuals and movements who aspired to replace the communist puppet regimes with democracies. … The second part of our strategy should have been to exploit the divisions within the Islamist movement.
Larison’s eyes widen:
Only the hopelessly naive (or the desperately opportunistic partisan) would believe that a little more McCain-sponsored Western support for, say, Ayman Nour would have dramatically altered the political landscape in Egypt in just a few years’ time. If “the best organized, most radical, and most ruthless elements” will be able to exploit the situation in Egypt now, they would have been able to do so even if the U.S. had followed all of the democracy promotion advocates’ advice.
There is also a pretty massive difference between Eastern and Central Europe in 1989 and the Arab world today. Much of central Europe had been occupied by the Soviets and their dictatorships were enabled by such a power. The US was that power’s global enemy. And so decades of 
pro-Americanism had prepared the way for the moral credibility of American intervention.
The opposite is the case in the Arab and Muslim Mediterranean and Middle East. For decades, the West – following Kissingerian logic – propped up these monsters and tyrants. When we invaded Iraq, we copied their methods of rule – with mass arrests and torture – before finding a way to construct an Iraqracy that would enable us to save face enough to leave.
In Libya right now, Niall is arguing for armed intervention because of the ghastly fact of possibly thousands of murdered Libyans. I don’t doubt his sincerity or motives. But when the US occupied and was responsible for security in Iraq, over a hundred thousand people were murdered in sectarian warfare. If carnage is your metric, how on earth can the West preach now about humanitarian values? Paul Wolfowitz – yes a man who served in the Defense Department under which so many were slaughtered in the streets of Iraq and so many tortured by US soldiers and CIA agents – worries that America’s “moral credibility” will be shaken by not intervening in Libya. Is he out of his fucking mind?
Whatever moral credibility America has ever had in the Middle East was destroyed by Wolfowitz and his crew. McCain particularly has none, especially after he signed off on the very same torture techniques once used on him. I totally accept the fear that revolutions can result in worse tyrannies than they replaced. I also see the benefit of exploiting intra-Muslim splits when and where we can if necessary. But the danger there is the US becoming involved in a sectarian struggle between Sunni and Shiite. It’s not as if we need to remind the Arab world why the brutal regime of the King of Jordan is scared to death of Iran – as well as bigoted toward Shiites in general. Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs/Persians are already divided. There may be some tactical opportunities to protect our interests, but a strategy? God help us.
Are Public Sector Unions Winning The Debate?
On collective bargaining it appears they are, both nationally and in Wisconsin. Ed Morrissey questions the NYT poll's sample here.
Goldblog vs Rutten
It's a little meta – did a review quote a parody of a roman a clef about Obama? – but a good question. I kinda dismissed the notion that Mark Salter wrote the apparently dreadful anonymous novel "O". Salter, I figured was a great fiction writer. And his greatest fictional character came to be John McCain.
New Rules, Ctd
A reader writes:
No. I will not pronounce Koch "Cock." I will not pronounce Boehner "Boner." I like those two things too much.
Getting Rid Of Bad Teachers
Yglesias hopes it's going to get easier:
Good news: “Responding to criticism that tenure gives even poor teachers a job for life, Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, announced a plan Thursday to overhaul how teachers are evaluated and dismissed. It would give tenured teachers who are rated unsatisfactory by their principals a maximum of one school year to improve. If they did not, they could be fired within 100 days.”
Okay. Now do this thought experiment and try and simulate it in a private sector context. Say there's a teacher who is cited by his principal in February for dismal performance. If he's still a terrible teacher in April, no problem. Come May, he needn't have improved. In June, he can send his underprepared students on to the next grade, enjoy his summer vacation, and return in September to a new class, educating them poorly too. In fact, those kids will keep falling behind in October, November, December and January. Finally, February rolls around again. A year later, the teacher hasn't improved a bit. Can he be fired?
No, the principal then must wait 100 days. And that's the concession. My own view is that if unions did less protection of mediocrity and more protection of wages and benefits, their general image would improve drastically. But they cannot expect to continue their bad old ways and win public support in recessionary America.
The Dish 