Month: May 2013

The Incriminating Benghazi Email

Be prepared to be shocked. Here’s what Ben Rhodes wrote in an email after the initial confusion about what happened at the Benghazi diplomatic outpost and CIA base:

“All – Sorry to be late to this discussion. We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation.

There is a ton of wrong information getting out into the public domain from Congress and people who are not particularly informed. Insofar as we have firmed up assessments that don’t compromise intel or the investigation, we need to have the capability to correct the record, as there are significant policy and messaging ramifications that would flow from a hardened mis-impression.

We can take this up tomorrow morning at deputies.

Outrageous political meddling to cover the State Department’s ass, right? Just as the Weekly Standard insinuated, right? Er, no. Tapper’s take-away:

Whoever leaked the inaccurate information earlier this month did so in a way that made it appear that the White House – specifically Rhodes – was more interested in the State Department’s concerns, and more focused on the talking points, than the e-mail actually stated.

Just an early, failing attempt to smear Hillary for 2016. Because the GOP has no relevant policies for our times, just politics.

List Love, Ctd

Jessica Helfand considers the appeal of list-making:

Occasionally, lists provide a therapeutic benefit, as if the very act of writing something down can help keep chaos at bay.  (The famously apprehensive Alfred Hitchcock once shared the order in which he had come to anticipate the surge of adrenaline preceding an anxiety attack: “1: small children, 2: policemen, 3: high places, 4: that my next movie will not be as good as the last one.”) If the internet itself can be considered a kind of list, then Google is the über-list, and indeed, once online, you can massage the formal qualities of the list-as-template to chronicle your own peripatetic priorities…. For that matter, there is Craigslist. (And not to be outdone, Angie’s List!) Finally, for those of us determined to make our own mortality the defining feature of all essential decision-making, there is the recent phenomenon known as the “100 Things To Do/Eat/See/Before You Die” list: in common parlance, we call this a bucket list.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, there is the shopping list — a willy-nilly compendium that mirrors the unparalleled idiosyncrasies of its maker. Here, the order of items can be intentionally cryptic or just plain loopy. (If you’re lucky, it will be both.) Lists such as these typically sit rather far down on the information food chain: in the universe of list-making, they’re doomed to an all-too-brief life expectancy. This is particularly true of the grocery list, a study in planned obsolescence if ever there was one, which is basically an aide-memoire rendered ineffectual once complete. Simply put: grocery lists are ephemera writ large, which is precisely what makes them so engaging.

Previous Dish on the allure of lists here and here.

(Image: Johnny Cash’s to-do list from Lists of Note)

Embracing The Suck

At some point, when tackling completely new models of form and content and business in journalism becomes exhausting, you just let go and try to enjoy it. Here’s Ann Friedman’s advice to young journalists:

Chaos is good for creativity. When traditional paths to professional success are closed, those of us who love journalism so much we’d never give up altogether are forced to redefine success—and our methods of seeking it. Luckily, at a moment when everyone is hungry for new models and solutions, there are more ways to gather and disseminate the news than ever before.

Here’s a little secret: Even if I’m wrong and it’s not the best moment, we’d all be well-served to operate as if it is. Because you know what? The old models aren’t coming back. Lamenting the death of classifieds and display advertising and annual subscribers isn’t serving anyone. The sooner journalists start seeing disruption and technology as opportunity, the better off we’ll all be.

Dogs vs Cats: Let The Great Debate Begin

Cats are sad:

But Ryan Kearney greatly prefers them to dogs:

Even leading dog-brain guy Brian Hare, who has an academic and financial interest in promoting the intelligence of dogs, concludes a Wall Street Journal piece—titled “Why Dogs Are Smarter Than Cats,” no less—by writing, “And what might the genius of cats be? Possibly, that they just can’t be bothered playing our silly games or giving us the satisfaction of discovering the extent of their intelligence.”

Nail on the head right there. Cats don’t rush me the moment I enter a room and put their paws on my chest or sniff my pant leg or shove their snout into my crotch or bark loudly or lick or bite me. Dogs alone do—which, in a way, is why so many people love them. Dogs are almost certainly the world’s most affectionate species, giving their owners what (most) humans, out of self-respect, cannot: mute devotion.

Elsewhere in the piece, Kearney claims to hate dogs. His main reason:

Few of us, relative to our ancestors, use dogs for hunting. Which means that, aside from several obvious niche uses (guiding the blind, sniffing for bombs or drugs, chasing down criminals; I draw the line at “therapy dogs“), we now rely on dogs for only one thing: to be our living stuffed animal, something to cuddle with when we’re feeling sad or wistful or lonely. That is all we ask of them—that they always be there when we need them—and they happily oblige, since we also happen to feed them in the process.

Some find poetry in the simplicity of this transaction. I see human neediness, if not weakness, and perhaps even exploitation.

Our oldest hound, Dusty the beagle, would not qualify as a dog on these grounds. She’s like Snoopy in her beagleness. Yes, she howls loudly whenever I arrive home. But the affection? Not so much. What I love about her – dustyivyand it’s been clear since she was eight inches long in my hands – is her ornery independence, her contempt for the lubrications of dog love, the minimalism of her gestures of affection, the constant insistence that all that really matters to her are her twice-daily meals. I know my place. Only a couple of times have I felt her need me badly. Once was when she got entangled in another leash on the beach and couldn’t move. That howl was different and it was directed toward me. Then there was a recent occasion when she was clearly feeling poorly – a urinary tract infection – and for the first time clambered up to sleep next to me on my pillow. I was so moved. It only took fifteen and a half years for her to open up.

Eddy, our younger hound-mutt? An open wound of vulnerable affection. I’d be reluctant to generalize about a species whose individuals seem to me to be as unique as humans are. As for cats, my mind is indifferent; my body, alas, gets hives and my face blows up and I have trouble breathing.

Recent Dish on dogs here.

The EU And Its Nations

A fascinating graphic from Pew’s new report on the EU:

European Stereotypes

Good to see the Brits are still focused on the real threat. But Germany is obviously becoming more isolated in the EU. What we are seeing is an almost text-book case of why conservatives can be smarter than liberals. The EU is in so many ways a wonderful development. It has fostered democracy, made another European war unimaginable, and generated growth and trade. But it has always been to my mind a utopian project because the actual human beings who live in Europe do not identify with the supra-state against their actual nation-state. The nation state seems to me to be the least worst unit of democratic accountability – drawing on ineffable bonds of solidarity, history and a scale that is actually manageable. To pretend that isn’t the case, or to try to impose some new form of identity, along with a new, abstract and cold currency, was always going to end in tears. It appears we are now at the stage when the whole project itself is being reconsidered:

First, attitudes towards the EU are getting worse. While there is always going to be some noise in these kind of data, the consistency of the negative changes is noticeable. What I think is potentially most important are the two countries (France and Spain) where we’ve gone from significant majorities with a favorable view of the EU to majorities without a favorable view.

Tyler Cowen adds:

The French are growing increasingly disillusioned with the European project, and on key questions the French see the world as the Italians or Spanish do, not the Germans.

Karl Smith bets that this state of affairs can’t last:

For a several years I have had a hard time seeing how the European project survives continual economic and monetary mismanagement. Little has happened to change that assessment. It appears that public opinion in France has turned decidedly against the project. Equally, as important the French, like everyone else, blame their own leaders more than they blame the EU.

This implies that new elections will be new leaders, who will be quite aware, that it is either Brussels or themselves. They’ll blame everything on the European Union and push unreasonable demands as a way of divorcing themselves from [popular] outrage.

The View From Your Window Contest: Winner #153

Screen Shot 2013-05-10 at 11.26.51 PM

A reader writes:

It could be anywhere tropical. The coconut tree, the papaya plants, the bamboos – I am tempted to call it in some place in India, but the high cliffs are not what you typically see in India. It could be some other Asian country, but somehow the word Guatemala is screaming in my head. And I refuse to scan the entire country looking for this particular area – sorry. Neither my back, nor my brain, is quite cut up for that kind of effort.

Another:

Never actually tried to answer before, but this looks suspiciously like Cuamba, Mozambique. I traveled through this region when trying to get from Malawi to the coast of Mozambique. There is a somewhat sketchy old train line from Cuamba near the Malawi border to Nampula near the coast. It crosses Niassa province, once of the poorest but most beautiful parts of Africa. Niassa is peppered with rock formations lke the one in this week’s contest.

Another:

I’m guessing the photo was taken in Krabi, Thailand. The vegetation, the karst rock formations, the type of construction, the thatching on the roof, all points to Krabi. If that’s the view from a hotel, I’m a little sorry for the tourist who shot it. Weird mix of beauty and the mundane. But, hey, I’m also envious: He or she’s in Thailand!

Another:

The geography of in this week’s photo reminds me strongly of the limestone formations found on Thailand’s Andaman Coast. My guess is that the photo was taken on the isthmus of Ko Phi Phi Don. Satellite photos are not helpful, but this photo shows a red roofed home on the far end of the isthmus which could line up with the hills in the contest photo if the perspective is right. A friend and I took the ferry to Ko Phi Phi Don from Phuket in August of 2006 when the island was still very much in recovery mode from the 2004 Tsunami. We loved the island enough that we made an unplanned overnight stay with only the shirts on our backs and paid about $9 for a shack near the beach. The window frame in the contest photo reminds me very much of that shack. There were many interesting people on the island, ranging from Danish economics students to an American military contractor on leave from Afghanistan.

Another:

Could be any of the Andaman Sea islands of Thailand, or even Krabi on the mainland, but this looks vaguely reminiscent of Phi Phi Don (and I’m not going to go searching through ours of images to try to match up the cliffs).  If so, this is probably from a bungalow set back a bit from the beach and main road on the Ton Sai Bay side (I think they call the area “View Point”). This was one of the places devastated in the Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004.  We were back in 2009 and the recovery was in full swing – too much so, in fact.  The place was fast on the road to over-development and we escaped after two days (e.g., the south end of Koh Lanta was our favorite).

Another:

The nap of the felt on that tennis ball in the corner is clearly of a type sold only in the Lesser Antilles. Given that and some clues apparent only to me, I am certain that this photo was taken from Room 4F at the Still Beach House in Soufriere, St. Lucia.  Wait – Is that a mango?

Another:

The geography and the hanging tobacco remind me a lot of a visit to Viñales, in the Cuban province of Pilar del Río during my undergraduate career at Berkeley.  On one of the days there we visited an old tobacco plantation and we hiked a couple of mogotes, those hills in the background.  I might be wrong, but thanks for bringing back those wonderful memories.

Another:

I may be continents off, but as soon as I saw the photo, it reminded me of the many villages along the Mekong River, particularly the region between the Golden Triangle of Thailand and Luang imagePrabang, like the one in the photo below which I took last summer.   Since the writing on the water tower is in English, my first thought was that this was in Myanmar, and it may be, but my gut is saying Laos. This looks like a very small village, but I suspect it isn’t, because theres too much concrete and that would make it too impossible.  Since many of the slow boats that make this journey stop in Muang Pakbeng overnight, and there are plenty of hostels and guest houses there that look out on the outskirts of this small town, I’m going to guess that’s where this was taken.

Another:

Vang Vieng, Laos is a station on the backpackers’ SE Asia grand tour with spectacular karsts along the river. VV is the halfway point on the amazing bus ride from Vientiane to Luang Prabang. Parts of Laos are changing rapidly but the charm and good nature of the people has not yet been badly compromised by tourism but I fear it eventually will be. People need to eat and be sheltered and kids need education and unfortunately tourism is one the few revenue streams in very poor country. Part of me says, “Go now!” while another says, “Stay away.”

Another:

The eroded limestone mountains plus the tropical foliage leads me to guess this is a photo from a room in a hotel somewhere on Ha Long Bay in Vietnam. My parents were Americans in South Vietnam during the war. Dad was there working on malaria eradication and my mother was a French language intelligence collector for the CIA. I was born in that Saigon in 1965, but my mother and I were evacuated two weeks later. Some day I will have to go back to the country of my birth.

Another:

You’ve got to be kidding with this one!

It could be a million places in the tropics.  The dramatic peaks in the background looks like those which rise from South Pacific islands which I’ve visited, but the green is less intense.  It’s probably in Central America some place, but for kicks I’m going to say it’s Pago Pago, American Samoa.

Another gets closer:

For some reason, Sumatra popped into my head immediately upon seeing this. Have I been to Sumatra? No. Do I know anything whatsoever about Sumatra, other than its general location? No. Have I done an exhaustive (or even non-exhaustive) Google search to bolster my claim? Again, no. Nevertheless, this is my guess. I’m stuck working the weekend in a hotel in California. (The very same hotel from which I took the picture in Contest # 144.) It’s a beautiful and dry 88 degrees outside, but I’m inside. I needed a break and I knew it was VFYW day, so here I am, gazing at what may or may not be Sumatra. Thanks for the distraction!

Another gets really close:

Very challenging this week.  The only clues I could use (besides general tropicalness) were the watertank (“Bestank” is a Philippines company), cliffs are mostly in the Palawan Islands, and the presence of satelite dishes indicated some level of power usage and a southern view (assuming northern hemisphere).  Lots of swanning about the Palawans, trying to narrow it down but no success.  I’m sure others will have nailed it; we have such a sophisticated crew here!

A previous winner gets incredibly specific:

A brutal contest with a deceptive start. It only took me a few hours to find that this view is from  El Nido, Palawan, Philippines. So, sick with flu, I went to sleep thinking that I would quickly find theVFYW El Nido View Above with Insets - Copy actual window when I woke up. Ha. Two full days and one bottle of Dayquil later and I was still searching. See, the thing about resorts in developing nations is that the small inns and hotels are constantly rebuilding and expanding – as in, every year. And in the tropics, the roofs have a fun way of rusting into oblivion every year too. The upshot is that online searches are really hard because the architecture changes so much. This was especially true here because your viewer stayed at a building that’s only two years old.

That building is the new expansion at “Rosanna’s Cottages” that sits on M. Quezon street (not the beach). The window is on the second floor, possibly in room #15, and looks towards Taraw Peak at a heading of 204.46. For the curious, the coordinates are 11°10’57.39″ N, 119°23’32.92″ E. VFYW El Nido Rosanna's Actual Window Marked - CopyUnfortunately, recent satellite maps only show a copse of trees on that spot; they were torn down for construction. Next time a Dish viewer goes to El Nido, I recommend the Four Seasons; it shows up on a map like you wouldn’t believe.

Attached is a combination image. On the left is a 2011 view from the cliffs looking down on the town and your viewer’s location, circled in yellow. On the right side is a magnified area from that shot inset into your viewer’s photo. The purple, orange and green boxes match up the three roofs seen in both images (the blue roof in your viewer’s foreground has rusted considerably in the past two years). Also attached is an oblique image of the actual window showing the direction your viewer was facing, and one of their building’s front.

VFYW El Nido Rosanna's Front - Copy

But the prize this week goes to a reader who has guessed a difficult view in the past without yet winning and who has participated in 12 total contests:

I’m sure in a few weeks I’ll be Google-mining trailer parks in Hickspit, Alabama, but as far as this view is concerned, thanks for forcing me to closely examine paradise. Wow.

As one of your less worldly Dishheads, the key for me this week was correctly identifying the steel gravity water tank. An hour or so in we had our manufacturer, based out of the Philippines. From there, image search “Philippine cliffs” and bam – El Nido! Done and wrapped up by 9:30 Saturday night.

But wait. It’s become apparent over the last few months that the Window View’s new obsession is picking non-Streetviewable locations, and as is often the case, getting the last few blocks became untenable. To me, anyway. I think I’m close, and I’ve attached a murky overhead in the block near where Calle Real meets Osmena St., but I can’t get inside the room this week, despite searching the entire wonderful town of El Nido for the right set of louvered windows.

I hope I’m closest, but under the assumption I’m not, I hope somebody won who can give me the right search criteria so I’ll know what I did wrong. I’ll set my laptop on fire if this one goes to the “I got married in that shanty” crowd.

(Archive)

Blaming America The Most

Perhaps it’s unfair, since this was said in the heat of a debate with Bill Maher. But this is how my friend Glenn Greenwald described the US last Friday night:

It’s amazing for you to say “Look at all these Muslims. The minute you give them a little freedom, they go wild and they start being all violent” … How can you be a citizen of the United States, the country that has generated more violence and militarism in the world over the last five or six decades and say “Look at those people over there? They are incredibly violent”?

I’m very much with Glenn on American denial about the consequences of our own actions. I’m with him in believing that we have a very dangerous capacity to whitewash our own sins and highlight those of others. I do think the US – mainly since 9/11 – has been generating violence on a large scale, most recently by invading and occupying Iraq and not providing minimal security for its inhabitants, leading to a sectarian bloodbath bigger even that Syria’s current horror.

But really: the US has generated more violence and militarism in the last sixty years than any other country? Has Glenn heard of the Cultural Revolution? Or the reign of Pol Pot? Or the brutal legacy of Stalin?

Or the invasion and suppression of Central Europe by the Soviets? Or the Chinese campaign to immiserate Tibet? Or the Rwandan civil war? Or the Balkan atrocities (which the US helped stop)? Or the civil war in Congo? Or Bashir Assad in Syria? Or Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war? Or the brutal repression of the Iranian regime in 2009?

Yes, we need to look our own recent militarism and war crimes with a clear eye. But America has not been the most violent and militaristic country on the planet over the last six decades. We are not inherently a force for good – no country can be. We are all humans prone to human failings and crimes. But I’m not going to stand by and have the US equated with the Soviet Union and Mao’s China and Saddam’s Iraq and Assad’s Syria without a protest.

Terror And Terrorism

There’s a massive four Pinocchio difference between those two words, according to Glenn Kessler. When Obama said that Benghazi was an “act of terror” three times in three days after the attack on the diplomatic facility, he was not saying, apparently, that what had happened was an act of terrorism. On a couple of occasions after, he demurred when asked specifically whether this had been “terrorism“, rather than “terror”, saying instead:

Well, it’s too early to know exactly how this came about, what group was involved, but obviously it was an attack on Americans. And we are going to be working with the Libyan government to make sure that we bring these folks to justice, one way or the other.

Does that sound like Nixon to you? In fact, according to Kessler, the question of whether Obama specifically avoided the term “terrorism” instead of “terror” on purpose comes down to a subjective understanding of how Obama said the word “right.”

I think this whole Benghazi thing nuked the fridge months ago. Now it’s just a farce.