Month: June 2014

The reaction of the Fox News right to the capture of the ringleader of the attack on the Benghazi consulate/CIA base tells you a huge amount. If their concern at the attack on the compound were genuine, they would have taken a moment to celebrate. Here, after all, is the fanatic they’ve wanted to get for two years now. He could help answer more questions than dozens of Congressional hearings. The truth of what occurred could be fleshed out much more definitively, as long as we use civilized methods of interrogation; and justice can be better served by trying him in a civilian courts rather than military commissions, since the courts have an exponentially better record at prosecuting terrorists.

But no. The FNC right is not interested in the actual facts of the case or the pursuit of justice. It is merely a weapon with which to bludgeon their partisan opponents. So good news like yesterday’s will have to be instantly dismissed in order to maintain the crusade against the president. And when I say instantly, I mean instantly. Here’s  Paul Waldman:

I just turned on Fox News and heard one commentator say “We all have questions about the timing” of the arrest, and another chimed in to say, “You have the former Secretary of State who is in the middle of a high-profile book tour, and I think this is convenient for her to shift the talking points from some of the things she’s been discussing.” If you aren’t a regular Fox viewer, you’d react to that by saying, “Are these people insane?” But if you are a Fox viewer, it makes perfect sense. Because you’ve been hearing for almost two years that Benghazi isn’t a story about an attack on an American consulate, it’s a story about the Obama administration’s cover-ups and lies and betrayal.

Morrissey scrambles for something disparaging to say:

So yes, this is a win for the US, but it’s still going to raise questions about how much effort the US put into capturing Khattala until now. At the time of Calderone’s piece, the White House insisted that they couldn’t act without destabilizing the government in Tripoli. What’s changed since then? Last week, incoming PM Ahmad Maiteeq offered his resignation after a court ruled his election was unconstitutional and current PM Abdullah Al Thani refused to recognize his legitimacy.  This hardly seems like a propitious time for a Special Forces raid if the previous delays were taken to promote stability.

The big fish still remains to be found. Abu Safian bin Qumu has long been suspected of commanding the attack, despite an inexplicable New York Times claim to the contrary. The US had bin Qumu in custody, too — until the Bush administration released him from Gitmo in 2007. This good news will serve as a reminder of the dangers of releasing terrorists back into the war, a reminder that the White House probably would prefer to avoid at the moment.

Eli Lake and Kimberly Dozier explain why the Khatallah operation was a year in the making:

The Obama administration has come under withering criticism because the whereabouts of abu Khatallah have been generally known. Journalists in Libya were able to interview him, critics asked, so why couldn’t American special operators track him down, too?

But other U.S. officials, who spoke to The Daily Beast anonymously because they were not authorized to talk to the press, said the mission to grab abu Khatallah had been planned for more than a year. Indeed, the Benghazi ringleader had been in the sights of Delta Force operators at the end of August, according to these sources, but no order was given at the time. A senior administration official told The Daily Beast that the delay in apprehending the suspect was due in part to requests from the Justice Department to gather appropriate evidence to prosecute him in criminal court.

Erika Eichelberger and David Corn look back at all the nasty things Republican leaders had to say about the president as he calmly and quietly went about planning to capture the Benghazi terrorists:

[F]or a long stretch, maybe a year or more, the Obama administration had been trying to figure out how best to grab Abu Khattala, who was identified as a possible Benghazi ringleader soon after the September 11, 2012, assault. Yet for much of that time, Republican critics of the president have repeatedly criticized Obama for not capturing the Benghazi perps. Even though it took a decade to nab Osama bin Laden, GOPers have depicted Obama as feckless on the Benghazi front, with some even saying that he was not truly interested in bringing the Benghazi killers to justice.

… It can take a while—even years—to capture a suspected terrorist overseas. (Ruqai, the embassy bombings suspect, was apprehended 15 years after the attacks.) Yet that didn’t stop these Republicans and other conservatives from slamming the president and suggesting publicly—in a real underhanded dig—that Obama was not seeking the murderers of Benghazi. Now what will they say? That his heart wasn’t really in it?

And the last resort of the partisans is to insist that the captive be sent to the torture and detention camp at Gitmo, where no one is successfully convicted of any crime and where they can become instant martyrs in the eyes of their followers – if they don’t go on hunger strike. Sargent asks a good question: will Rand Paul stand up to the pro-Gitmo crowd?

We are frequently told there are genuine tensions within the GOP over foreign policy and national security, with libertarian and isolationist Republicans like Rand Paul sparring with mainstream conservatives or neocons on a range of issues. Benghazi has kind of papered over such divisions by giving Republicans a common target (Obama) and a ripe scandal narrative to focus on. But the question of where to detain the first apprehended Benghazi suspect will provide a good test of just how deep these civil liberties differences among Republicans really run.

My bet is that partisanship will defeat principle every time in this GOP. But let’s see if Paul can come through. It’s an interesting test.

With climate changing leading to a rise in sea levels and an increase in droughts and floods, Mark Anderson worries that “the acreage available for conventional, freshwater agriculture is shrinking rapidly.” Which leads him to this thought:

More than 97 per cent of the water on Earth is saline. Wouldn’t it be cruel if nature had locked up the vast bulk of the planet’s vital fluids in a form that no plant could drink? Well, as it happens nature is not quite that cruel. Of the 400,000 flowering plant species around the world, 2,600 do drink seawater. They are halophytes, meaning ‘salt-plant’, and they might just be the answer to a question surprisingly few governments have yet asked: namely, how can we put our planet’s practically infinite volumes of saltwater to good use?

Among the halophytes he believes holds promise is a perennial species called “seashore mallow,” a plant that “can grow in salty soil, using saltwater irrigation” and has been championed by the University of Delaware researchers John Gallagher and Denise Seliskar:

Last year they published a paper in the journal Renewable Energy, co-written with a group from the US Department of Agriculture, that analysed the plant’s potential as a biodiesel and ethanol source. By their calculations, it comes out roughly on par with soybeans, one of the commonest sources of biofuel now in use. A second paper, in Biomass and Bioenergy, examined the perennial’s stems’ absorbency, revealing commercial potential as mulch, erosion control and even kitty litter and animal bedding.

That variety of applications is important. ‘The thing that became apparent to us is it wasn’t going to run economically just on the oil you squeezed out of it,’ Gallagher says. ‘It’s taken 8,000 years to evolve corn from the teosinte [wild grass] found in the Mexican highlands to the Iowa cornfields. I just don’t have that long. So we thought we’d try to come up with an array of things we can get from the plant.’ Gallagher and Seliskar estimate that the entire crop can be harvested for products that could compete with existing markets of conventionally farmed commodities. The absorbency of its inner stem makes it attractive for animal bedding, while the outer bark has been developed into a thread for cloth. The seed, as noted, is a promising stock for ethanol and biodiesel. And the seedmeal offers a spread of amino acids that make it attractive as animal feed. Roots, spent flowers and the biopolymers in the plant are also being investigated for everything from gums to industrial chemicals.

(Photo of Salicornia, a genus of halophyte plants, by Rusty Clark)

And it’s contributing to the wage gap:

The proportion of Americans who work long hours has increased substantially over the past 30 years. In the early 1980s, fewer than 9 percent of workers (13 percent of men, 3 percent of women) worked 50 hours per week or more. By 2000, over 14 percent of workers (19 percent of men and 7 percent of women) worked 50 hours per week or more. Overwork began to decline in the mid-2000s, but it remains widespread today. The slowdown in women’s wage gains was especially notable in professional and managerial careers, just the ones where women’s educational advantages should have paid off, but where the stall in pay equality was most evident. …

Expansion in “overwork” – net of other changes since 1979 – could have affected the gender gap in two ways: Men could be overworking increasingly more often than women, or the financial payoff to overworking could have increased, or both. In their statistical analysis, [researchers Youngjoo] Cha and [Kim] Weeden identify the second factor as critical. In 1979, workers who put in long hours tended to make less per each hour than those who worked full-time; by 2009, that had reversed. Putting in the extra hours now pays off more. Or phrased another way, working “only” full-time now pays off relatively less.

Previous Dish on the wage gap here, here, here, here, and here.

David Goldblatt explores the larger-than-life role that soccer plays in Brazil’s culture and history:

Whereas the response of the visual arts in 20th-century Britain to football can be boiled down to a single Lowry canvas, football has appeared in the oeuvre of dozens of Brazil’s leading artists—from the nationalist surrealism of Cândido Portinari to the abstract geometries of Ivan Serpa to the pop art of Claudio Tozzi. Its writers and novelists have, again and again, found space for the game in their literary landscapes: from Mário de Andrade’s Macunaíma, to José Lins do Rego’s epic saga of life on Rio’s periphery, Água-mãe, from the urbane and witty crônicas of Clarice Lispector to the sharp short stories of Edilberto Coutinho’s Maracanã, Adeus.

The game has also been a thread and connector across the many spheres of Brazilian life. João Cabral Melo Neto was a diplomat who wrote poetry and his poetry featured Pelé. Pelé, a footballer, has gone on to be a businessman, the minister of culture, and a singer and composer. The composer Ary Barroso crossed over into football commentary and then to municipal politics. Politicians regularly seek the presidency of clubs, while club presidents try to make the transition to formal politics. The crowd can become musicians, while musicians have endlessly written and composed songs for players and clubs. Poets and dramatists commentate on football. Football commentators like Washington Rodrigues and João Saldanha have become coaches.

Ilan Stavans asks why the sport doesn’t feature more prominently in Latin America’s canon of great literature:

I can’t quite explain why there aren’t more fine literary artifacts on fútbol in Latin America. In contrast, the number of classic baseball novels in the United States is astounding, from Bernard Malamud’s The Natural (1952), to Robert Coover’s The Universal Baseball Association, Inc. (1968), to Michael Chabon’s Summerland (2002). This is because the game is seen as a kaleidoscope of the American Dream, the platform through which not only immigrants but various ethnicities make their way into the melting pot. Latin America isn’t known for its social mobility. Perhaps the reason for this scarcity is that until recently, soccer in Latin America was a poor people’s sport. TV, of course, has changed that. The sport might make players like Uruguay’s Luis Suárez and Mexico’s Chicharito rich, but it still isn’t seen by young athletes as a ticket to a college education. Nor is it perceived as an environment where people from different ethnicities find a common ground.

A reader objects to Ruth Graham’s argument that adult readers of YA must “abandon the mature insights … that they (supposedly) have acquired as adults”:

I don’t think of this as a fair criticism. This makes me think of a book I read, Beautiful Creatures, which I enjoyed because I thought it had an interesting story set in a culture distinct from my own. However, the teenage characters were, as she described, portrayed in a fairly uncritical way. This led to portions of the story that frustrated me, but it did not require me to abandon my adult perspective. In fact, it allowed me to apply it as I saw fit. I don’t need the author to provide me with an “adult” perspective.

This applies to children’s novels too. A story can be written in a way that is suitable for children, but possess elements that can be appreciated better by an adult. Think of the political dynamics in Harry Potter or the religious insights in The Chronicles of Narnia. I’m an adult who has read and reread many of these books and likely will again. I see no shame in this.

Another reader emphasizes the pleasures of reading with children:

My daughter is turning 10 this summer, and I love sharing books with her. We just started The Witch of Blackbird Pond; a personal favorite made all the more special because she goes to school in Old Saybrook.

I don’t think reading YA or even children’s chapter books is reading down; rather it is doing exactly the thing I am looking for in reading fiction which is to be transported to another place and another time for a bit. Through my children I have discovered so many wonderful books that I have enjoyed re-reading with them (I dare anyone not to be cheered by any book written or illustrated by Oliver Jeffers or to claim that they didn’t read ahead in any Harry Potter book) and I have shared my favorites with them.

When so many adults are not reading anything at all, should we be attaching age limits to books?

On a similar note, another reader contends that adult fans of YA do the valuable work of building a shared literary culture:

While culture as a whole seems pretty fragmented these days, young adult novels are books that teens and adults can both read and enjoy. Many of them can be read aloud to younger children. If a whole family has read a book, then they have something to help bind them together. If a book is popular, then more members of society can get together and talk about this shared story, and there is value in that.

That’s why it’s so great that children’s movies have become more an more enjoyable to adults. It’s why it’s a good thing that the cartoon series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic appeals to boys and young men: we can share these wonderful things with each other as a society.

A reader quotes a previous one:

You want to get serious about preventing rape? Single-sex dorms, no visitors after ten, doors ajar when there are visitors, room checks by RAs, consumption of alcohol banned, sexual contact beyond first base punished by warning, then formal reprimand, then suspension, then expulsion. Yeah, college will be less fun. But you’ll learn more, and there’s no chance that progressive, sensitive, feminist men will ever rape you in your dorm room.

Rarely has your otherwise insightful, eloquent and attractive readership been so completely full of shit. Have you just not been following the sexual abuse scandals at Pensacola Christian College? Or Bob Jones? Patrick Henry College? And others.

I went to a school like that:

single-sex dorms, no opposite-sex visitors except on specially designated Saturday afternoons (about three a semester, if memory serves), doors ajar during any such visit, no alcohol on campus, no DANCING on campus, PDA reprimanded, and excessive violations expelled.

(On a side note, the expulsion?  Only applied to girls.  Of course the poor kids coming to my college came from crazy-ass Red State “good Christian families” and had no idea about contraception, so of course pregnancy was a problem, and pregnancy would get you expelled.  This was an abortion incentive, plain and simple.)

But buddy you better believe we had a rape problem, and the expulsion policy that your reader touts was a powerful weapon in the hands of an administration determined to cover it up. If you admit to being assaulted, you get expelled for having sex. That is the ONLY reason we hear of fewer rapes from colleges with this sort of policy – because they’re covered up.

This regressive horseshit does nothing more than to promulgate the notion of sexuality as bad, dirty and something to be hushed up and swept out of sight – in other words, rape culture – and these notions of purity always always ALWAYS play right into the hands of straight-up, old-school misogyny, whereby women are a property belonging to men, either their fathers or their future husbands.  Shockingly, men who are trained to view women in this way are much more likely to rape.

Update from a reader:

Between the “hookup culture is rape culture” line and your reader’s response to “this regressive horseshit,” there is a middle road is screaming for attention. The first reader’s point should be well taken: empower emotionally under-developed people with the idea that they can make rational decisions about sex and have a bingey good time, and you will likely increase incidences of rape. It’s not blaming rape on sexual progress or chemical liberation; it’s acknowledging that with a benefit comes a cost.

Coming from an evangelical background, I have a lot of sympathy for your second reader; the wholesale application of evangelical university life won’t prevent rape (and it comes with a whole lot of other costs). But they miss the point when citing the Pensacola, Bob Jones, and other Christian college rape scandals. Those are scandals about brutal, systematic administrative cover-ups of rape, not sheer quantity or rates of sexual assault. There is no evidence indicating that the rate of sexual assault is higher or lower at sexually regressive Christian schools. Moreover, your reader concedes that they attended “a school like that.” It may be a question of the grass always growing greener, but “hookup culture” (i.e., a sexuality based on instant and emotionless gratification) is not something I would desire to replicate anywhere (okay, maybe at BJU).