Month: June 2011

Ackerman thwacks the Obama counterterrorism strategy for ignoring the Internet:

It would be one thing if the White House made an argument that al-Qaida’s online activity is unlikely to result in actual terrorism. But Brennan didn’t even do that. In his Wednesday speech, he warned of the danger from English-speaking extremists like Awlaki or Adam Gadahn who “preach violence in slick videos over the internet.” (Indeed, someone appears to be interrupting that flow right now.) Yet the strategy doesn’t devote any effort to confronting those online messages.

Joshua Foust, on the other hand, warns against overemphasizing the role of technology in contributing to violent extremism. He singles out Google's SAVE initiative:

SAVE doesn’t say if technology can contribute to radicalization, but we can guess it does. It’s far easier for extremists to organize, raise money and plan acts of violence using technology. Technology lets them spread their influence over a far wider space than they could without cell phones and the Internet. So how will SAVE use technology to combat that? The extremism they want to combat isn’t an extremism of technology, but an extremism of ideas inspiring action. Technology makes it easier to spread ideas and to perform actions. But if your ideas are already so irrational as to inspire horrific acts of violence, will a little more technology, a little more empowerment and adventure, really undermine that? I doubt it.

Will McCants, for his part, figures that Google's best tool in fighting extremism is its checkbook. The above graph, taken from a paper (pdf) by Clinton Watts, depicts number of foreign al Qaeda fighters per 100,000 Muslims in a country (red) versus Internet access per 1,000 people in that country (blue).

Forget the suspension. What's interesting to me is how this non-pareil in empty conventional wisdom hacks viewed yesterday's presser. In the negotiations with the Republicans, Obama and the Dems have offered a couple of trillion in cuts. The Republicans have refused even to discuss increasing tax revenues in return. For the president to react with understated anger strikes me as perfectly natural and overdue. And it comes with the amnesiac, news-cycle crap that Halperin routinely peddles that this basic fact should be ignored for a faux equivalence.

It's not the word, in other words. It's the empty beltwayism behind it. That's what Halperin should be suspended for. But it was, of course, the reason he was hired.

A reader writes:

I suspect that you'll get a lot of emails in response to your posts on this topic.  I really hate to see the decline of gay bars because they were havens.  My first gay bar was The Heretic in Atlanta.  What an introduction!  It was 1998 and I was active duty military, stationed in rural Alabama and a virgin with men.  I was incredibly paranoid of getting caught in a gay bar, especially the Heretic, which had such a reputation that even I had heard of it. I went with my very first boyfriend who I had just met through one of those new fangled online personal ads, and a couple of his friends.  

As we were walking in, I was too preocupied with scanning the parking lot for undercover Military Police (I told you I was paranoid) to notice the guy checking IDs until I was up.  I fumbled with my wallet and out flopped my military ID.

I scrambled to hide it and find my drivers license and the guy said "Don't worry honey, that's not the first one of those I've seen tonight."  His joke eased my paranoia.  That night was the first time I ever danced with a man.  It was overwhelming to see a room full of men dancing with men.  If there's anything more liberating than that, I haven't experienced it yet.

Another writes:

My first bar was the old Mary's on 8th St. in NYC. I actually came out while overseas with the Army (which is another amusing story but too lengthy to go into here; besides it wasn't a really gay bar). Discharged in March 1959, I stayed with my folks in Florida for a couple months until I could stand it no more. Got to NYC in June or July, staying with supposedly straight college friends. My first weekend free of them, I betook myself to the San Remo, which I knew about from gossip and also from reading Wm. Gaddis' "The Recognitions" (a great book, if you don't know it). It was quite quiet and not visibly gay. But after my dinner I was approached by an older man; we chatted and established things, then at his suggestion moved on to Mary's. (That was his mistake, ha ha.)

Like your experience, it was as if I'd walked into some kind of heaven. I rather rudely managed to lose the older guy and set about finding myself. All those beautiful young men, and so many my own age. That was the summer when the original cast album of "Gypsy" was the most popular thing in town, on every juke box, and even now, 50+ years later, I have wonderful flashbacks whenever I hear one of those tunes. "Sing out, Louise!"

I ultimately found myself a gay "sister", also new in town but much more experienced, and we explored the bars together, even though there weren't many (at least not in Manhattan). Eventually we went to Fire Island a couple times, and I still treasure memories of heading back to the cabin after all-nighters in the meat-rack. There's something magical about watching the sun rise over the Atlantic Ocean, no?

As the early 60s set in, the bar scene in NYC deteriorated thanks to a mayoral campaign and assorted raids or threats thereof. Finally about the only place left was the Greenwich Bar on Greenwich Ave., a real hole, and known as The Wrinkle Room to most. Long gone, of course.  I left NYC in 1964 and discovered Chicago.

Another:

I'm another (slightly later) Manray alumnus, and I guess Campus was technically my first exposure to gay bar culture, too. But unlike you it wasn't initially transformative for me. I thought I had walked into a very fucked-up frat rush party that was just way more up front about what pledges had to do in the name of brotherhood. I met some nice guys but most of them were totally not down with me questioning gender, both mine and in general. It was one more place where I felt like something was wrong with me. Clearly there was a right way to be gay and I was doing it all wrong.

My out-of-the-movies moment was my first trip to Xmortis, one of the goth nights also hosted at Manray. For the first time in my life I was in a room full of people who though it was just dandy that I, born male, wanted to wear a Victorian mourning dress (with modest bustle) to go get my dance on. Suddenly, it was like I walked through a door from a tawdry technicolor dance flick into old silent film noir, and I could be Theda Bara as long as you squinted and I didn't talk.

In the regular gay bar scene guys looked at me like there was something terribly wrong with me. In the goth scene the men and women looked at me like there was something completely right with me. And like you, I returned week after week to figure out who I was and who I could be.

The report on the disturbing event is now out. It cites rank homophobia by the cop who led the raid:

In describing his belief that gay people are more violent than heterosexuals, Sgt. Brock stated: “In the past I have as a patrol officer handled calls where there are gay couples living in residence where one is mad at the other, and they slash clothes, furniture, anything they can do. They’re very violent.” (GT report, pp. 142-143.) When asked if he thinks “that the gay community is more violent than other citizen groups” Brock replied: “My experience, yes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when they’re — when they get mad, they get really mad.”

"Irony is lost on [Robbie] George. His interviewer is Kathyrn Lopez, a known supporter of torture, which is a clear and unambiguous intrinsically and gravely evil act. He himself cavorts with Glenn Beck and holds views on economic issues that (to put it charitably) are not exactly in line with the tenor of Catholic social teaching. And there is no way a Catholic can admire Ayn Rand. Of course, he mirrors Edward “One-Note” Peters here, who is yet again calling for somebody to be denied communion under Canon 915. Yet again, this uniquely American concern wants the Eucharist to be used as a political tool in a selective and partisan fashion. That’s the real scandal," – Morning's Minion.

A better way to recipe:

Dan Savage calls the nephew of Carl Kruger, one of the last Democratic senators to come out for marriage equality, "New York's unsung hero". From the NYT:

The gay nephew of the woman he lives with, Dorothy Turano, was so furious at Mr. Kruger for opposing same-sex marriage two years ago that he had cut off contact with both of them, devastating Ms. Turano. “I don’t need this,” Mr. Kruger told Senator John L. Sampson of Brooklyn, the Democratic majority leader. “It has gotten personal now.”

Mr. Sampson, a longtime supporter of same-sex marriage, advised Mr. Kruger to focus on the nephew, not the political repercussions. “When everything else is gone,” Mr. Sampson told him, “all you have left is family.”

Dan advises:

The only leverage adult LGBT children have over our parents, siblings, and other family members is our presence in their lives. If they don't respect you, if they don't accept you, if they don't support your equality, do not see them. Too many LGBT people worry about being rejected by their families when it should be—it must be—the other way around: our families should be worried about being rejected by us.

Ezra Klein sounds defeated over the debt ceiling:

[I]n the absence of a deal on the table, the parties are moving to the sort of policies they'd prefer if they didn't have to make a deal at all, which are also the sort of policies their bases will prefer. As their bases come to like the new positions better and demand their legislators stop wavering and rewarding the other side's insane negotiating posture, it'll get tougher and tougher for either group to seriously return to the table.

In a new paper (pdf), Douglas Ollivant pushes back against "the New Orthodoxy" that emphasizes the role of the US military in decreasing violence in Iraq:

I argue that the crisis of violence in Iraq in 2006-2008 was fundamentally a political problem that the U.S. lacked the capability to resolve, though the U.S. presence and strategy did shape the context in which the several Iraqi actors made their calculations. Because the New Orthodoxy focuses on military factors, rather than political questions, it is unable to fully explain the reduction in violence in Iraq. By reframing the problem, the key factors in the reduction of violence emerge more clearly.

First, the Sunni casualties in the civil war reached an accumulated total that made it clear that continued conflict would not result in a favorable outcome for Sunnis, which incentivized Sunni elites to find a political settlement. Second, Shi’a leaders generally, and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki particularly, desired to consolidate power and accumulate wealth. This desire required a certain level of stability. Third, the development of key Iraqi governmental institutions, most notably the army, gave the central government the ability to counter other destabilizing elements—in particular AQI and the various Sadrist militias—as the civil war began to taper off. Fourth, the United States provided a necessary package of support, including unequivocal political support from the highest levels, separation of the warring parties, a softer tactical approach, and the killing by U.S. forces of extremist Sunni and Shi’a elements who were blocking compromise…

Andrew Exum endorses the "excellent paper":

Doug knows enough to know that we cannot definitively determine what caused the 2007 drop in violence, but he advances what he calls "an alternative, counter-narrative" to those offered by Tom Ricks, Bob Woodward, Kim Kagan, Linda Robinson and others.

And Sean Kane checks in on the Iraqi political situation as the country experiences an uptick in violence.

Mac McClelland explains how arranging a violent mock-rape helped her overcome her PTSD, which was caused by reporting on rape victims in places in Haiti:

I did not enjoy it in the way a person getting screwed normally would. But as it became clear that I could endure it, I started to take deeper breaths. And my mind stayed there, stayed present even when it became painful, even when he suddenly smothered me with a pillow, not to asphyxiate me but so that he didn't break my jaw when he drew his elbow back and slammed his fist into my face. Two, three, four times. My body felt devastated but relieved; I'd lost, but survived. After he climbed off me, he gathered me up in his arms. I broke into a thousand pieces on his chest, sobbing so hard that my ribs felt like they were coming loose.