Yesterday, Virginia’s marriage equality ban bit the dust. Burroway charts the progress of the gay rights movement:
Emma Green explains what makes the VA ruling stand out:
The question of “rights” is exactly what makes this decision significant, said Claire Guthrie Gastañaga, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia. Unlike some other cases on same-sex-union laws, Bostic examines whether couples have a fundamental right to marriage. The judges applied strict scrutiny, the highest standard of legal review, under which the government has to show a compelling interest for limiting the plaintiffs’ ability to marry. “This court says very clearly: This is a fundamental right, and the government just didn’t meet their burden of explaining why there should be a [ban on] same-sex marriage,” Gastañaga said.
Dale Carpenter observes that the ruling referred to the ban as a form of “segregation”:
The idea that laws limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples are a form of segregation is historically loaded, especially for a court sitting in the heart of the old Confederacy. Analogies to the black civil rights movement, and in this context specifically to anti-miscegenation laws and second-class status, have become a staple of gay-rights political and legal arguments. Rarely have they gained quite this explicit an endorsement from a prominent court.
Mark Joseph Stern describes the striking down of Virginia’s gay marriage ban as “the latest victory for marriage equality in a unbroken string of triumphs since the Supreme Court overturned DOMA in 2013.” On what the opinion could mean for other states:
Although the court struck down only Virginia’s marriage ban, the 4th Circuit also has jurisdiction over Maryland, West Virginia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. The latter three states still ban gay marriage—but today’s ruling throws those laws in serious jeopardy.
Two Israeli government officials told The Daily Beast that Israel could not agree to the Kerry draft proposal because it felt it would constrain the Israeli Defense Forces from finishing their mission to destroy the tunnels in Gaza. Yet Kerry’s proposal explicitly did not include a call for the IDF to withdraw from Gaza during the ceasefire. What’s more, U.S. officials told the Israeli government that tunnel work would be able to continue during the ceasefire, as it had during the previous short-term pauses in the fighting.
The Israeli government was not confident the IDF would be able to continue tunnel destruction inside Gaza during the ceasefire. The officials in Jerusalem were not willing to commit to any timeline for completing the tunnel mission because they were still discovering the extent of the tunnel network and thought the mission could take as long as three weeks to complete.
Saletan considers that demand a reasonable one, given the extent of Hamas’ tunnel complex:
One possible compromise might be a cease-fire that forbids further IDF movement in Upper Gaza but allows the IDF to continue demolishing Lower Gaza. No more tunnel hunting on the surface, but you can finish imploding the bunkers and passages you’ve already found. Both armies would object, but civilians on each side would be protected. If Hamas refused the deal, the IDF would keep moving through Upper Gaza to hit Lower Gaza. Israel would have to be held accountable, to make sure it respects the distinction and pulls out expeditiously.
In the longer term, each side needs more. Gazans need reconstruction aid, open borders, and autonomy. Israelis need an end to rocket attacks. All of these goals could be served by destroying the tunnels and weakening Hamas.
So what then could possibly explain the foul insults that senior Israeli officials leaked to the press? The proposal was a “strategic terror attack?” Jon Stewart noticed the contempt last night (see above), and he’s not the only one. You’d think the Israelis might have some appreciation for, say, the Iron Dome, which was made possible in part by Obama’s initiative and millions of US aid. But nah. The more US money the Israelis get, the more contempt they exhibit toward the US. Adam Taylor rounds up some of the commentary:
On Sunday, Ynetnews the English-language Israeli Web site of Israel’s most-read newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, published an article titled “Obama’s wars on Israel.” The author, Guy Bechor, also singled Kerry out:
This isn’t the first time Kerry is caught smiling at Israel while inciting against it behind the scenes. But not just towards Israel. This is also a betrayal of the moderate axis of the Middle East – Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia – as well as encouraging and rewarding jihadist terror, and a betrayal of all the real American values.
At the Times of Israel, a Web site that boasts of its independent politics, analyst Avi Issacharoff wondered if Kerry was “merely naive,” or if the United States was now aligning itself with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Apparently in response to Israel’s conniptions, the US declined to veto a “presidential statement” from the UN Security Council demanding an immediate ceasefire:
A U.N.-based European diplomat … said Washington’s move was “an expression of discontent” and a signal that the United States might be willing to go further in taking action against Israel than before. It was the first time that the U.N. Security Council had taken a formal action on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since January 2009, when George W. Bush’s administration abstained on a resolution calling for a “durable” cease-fire to pave the way for Israel’s military withdrawal from Gaza. At the time, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States essentially agreed with the goal of that resolution, which was supported by the council’s other 14 members, but that U.N. action threatened to harm mediation efforts in Egypt to resolve the crisis.
More, please. Keating sees a faint glimmer of hope – maybe:
I suspect that some of the anger being directed at Kerry is just deflecting attention from the fact that the two sides have what still seem to be irreconcilable demands. Kerry’s dialogue with Qatar and Turkey began only after Hamas rejected an earlier, Egypt-backed proposal. If Kerry had stuck with pushing the Egypt plan, he might have avoided becoming a punching bag in the Israeli media over the weekend, but it likely would have been equally useless in terms of the goal of stopping the bloodshed.
The only good news is that even without much chance of a permanent cease-fire, the two sides do seem to be putting out signals about de-escalating the conflict, though they haven’t been on the same page about the timing and terms.
Skepticism is not nihilism. It doesn’t posit that there is no truth; it merely notes that if truth exists, it is inherently beyond our ultimate grasp. And accepting those limits is the first step toward sanity, toward getting on with life. This is what I mean by conservatism.
I am a lifelong liberal, perhaps for genetic reasons (as some recent studies have proposed), but most certainly because conservatism in America has, as you say elsewhere in your piece, degenerated into reactionary, xenophobic, fundamentalist, hate-inspired lunacy. So, yes, I am a lifelong liberal (also because as a gay man, now in his seventies, the liberal left always seemed to me to be more favorably disposed to accepting me and our kind, though slowly and reluctantly.)
But I tell you, I heartily and wholeheartedly agree with your statement. So I guess I’m a conservative too, at least one of your kind. Can you confess that maybe you’re a liberal too? The progressive objection to the way of Montaigne?
I haven’t met a leftist ideologue who thought there were “true” solutions since the sixties. You, fighting leftist gays when you were arguing for gay marriage and they were for rejecting your “virtually normal” ideas, may have soured your views of the left, but believe me, there were millions throughout the country who just wanted their rights, to be as lawfully legitimate as our heterosexual brothers and sisters. And we have prevailed, spectacularly.
The key here, it seems to me, is understanding conservatism as a disposition rather than as a fixed ideology. That suggests, of course, that it might pragmatically express itself, at times, as a form of political liberalism as we understand it.
One of the aha! moments I had in reading Oakeshott (who was deeply influenced by Montaigne) was when he actually described progressivism as an integral part of the Western conversation – one that a true conservative would not seek to extinguish, but rather respect and nurture. The genius of the modern European state was that it contained two core impulses – collective action and individual liberty – and the conservative mission was to find the right balance between them, at the right time, with a little preference for liberty.
That requires prudential judgment and a light, pragmatic touch. Oakeshott’s vision of the conservative politician was a “trimmer” – someone who trims the sails on a ship to exploit the current winds and weather. The point is merely to keep the ship afloat – not to reach the perfect desert island or to conquer distant lands, but for the sake of the coherence and steadiness of the whole. And when you look at Montaigne’s own political predilections, he fits smack dab in the middle of just such a disposition.
Bakewell, in How To Live, vividly brings to life the era of zeal and religious conflict that Montaigne lived in.
It was like Iraq in the last decade, the bodies piled high from sectarian murder and chaos and fanaticism and hatred (see the depiction of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre above). The human atrocities wrought in the name of ultimate truth and personal salvation beggar belief. And throughout it all, despite being enmeshed in politics at times, Montaigne kept his independence and perspective and balance. Bobbing and weaving between Protestant and Catholic, and finding the extremism of both distasteful, he homed in on the key failing of his time:
Our zeal does wonders when it is seconding our leaning towards hatred, cruelty, ambition, avarice, detraction, rebellion. Against the grain, toward goodness, benignity, moderation, unless as by a miracle some rare nature bears it, it will neither walk nor fly.
He embraced moderation as a way of life:
The most beautiful lives, to my mind, are those that conform to the common human pattern, with order, but without miracle and without eccentricity.
He sought ordinariness, acceptance of reality (including the reality of one’s own nature), an aversion to heroism and conquest, and the long view of human affairs (he was, after all, dependent for much of his learning on men who lived thousands of years before). That’s partly why he was derided by some as a “politique“, which translated pretty much to Oakeshott’s notion of the “trimmer.” And what motivated both Montaigne and Oakeshott was a preference for “present laughter” over “utopian bliss”. Yes, reforms may well be necessary; yes, there are times for collective action; but a political regime that leaves people alone in their consciences and allows us the task of ordinary living is the best regime. In that sense, Montaigne was stranded in the wrong country. While France was convulsed with the blood of religious conflict, England was benefiting from that very politique Queen, Elizabeth I.
As for our time, an attachment to a fixed ideology called conservatism (which is currently suffused with the zeal and passion Montaigne so deeply suspected) or to an ideology called progressivism (which increasingly regards most of its opponents as mere bigots) does not exhaust the possibilities. A disposition for moderation and pragmatism, for the long view over the short-term victory, for maintaining the balance in American life in a polarized time: this remains a live option. You can see how, influenced by this mindset, I have had little difficulty supporting a Democratic president as the most conservative figure, properly speaking, now on the national stage. You can see why I have become so hostile to neoconservatism whose unofficial motto is “Toujours l’audace!” And you can see why, after an important reform like marriage equality, I am deeply suspicious of those on the left seeking to remake society in its wake and to obliterate bigotry in our time.
Another reader writes:
Reading PM Carpenter‘s entry into the Montaigne discussion, the ending thought jumped out, as it did to you probably.
“So what of my underlying if not uneasily irrepressible socialism? What of Sullivan’s conservatism? In effect they’re indistinguishable, which is somewhat mind-blowing. But then again, so was Montaigne.”
It made me immediately remember a passage from Eric Hobsbawn, who has a thing or two to say about how to live and how to doubt. This is from The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century:
It may well be that the debate which confronted capitalism and socialism as mutually exclusive and polar opposites will be seen by future generations as a relic of the twentieth-century ideological Cold Wars of Religion. It may turn out to be as irrelevant to the third millennium as the debate between Catholics and various reformers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries on what constituted true Christianity proved to be in the eighteenth and nineteenth.
I’m addicted to your weekly window contest. It is challenging, fun, and a great distraction. But there might be more practical uses for the skills involved in solving the contest. Recently, several bloggers have been using a photo posted on Twitter to figure out where the BUK missile system that Ukraine’s Russian separatist rebels had misplaced has been traveling. KoreaDefense.com has this post explaining how it and other bloggers found the location.
Another reader turns to the difficulty of this week’s missile-less contest:
Earth has two hemispheres, and this view is clearly on one of them. Seriously, the EU license plates (and I should know better than to get fixated on license plates) and French vehicles had me checking every remaining Western Hemisphere colonial enclave, before finally deciding that those white buildings = Portugal. So Lisbon, and it’s wrong. When it turns out to be Morocco I’mma throw something.
Another aims south of the border:
Hoping proximity counts on this one. I cannot pinpoint the city, but it is very reminiscent of Playa del Carmen in Quintana Roo, Mexico.
Or farther south?
Quito, Ecuador. It looks like the old city, perhaps on or near Guayaquil.
Another must live in New York:
No idea, but it looks like you could eat off that street; it’s so clean!
Another:
Had to be in the south of France somewhere. I looked up the last few stages of the Tour de France and decided this must be Maubourguet, starting point for stage 19. But it could easily have been somewhere else in the south: Nice, or Cap d’Antibes, or something like that. Beautiful light.
Getting there. Another reader:
This is my very first entry for the VFYW contest. I saw English words, European traffic signs, and Mediterranean style roofing slate. I googled “English speaking Mediterranean countries” and came up with Gozo, Malta. Then I got lost in all the gorgeous photos of the land and art and couldn’t be bothered to track down where the photo was taken. I randomly chose Victoria because it’s in the center of the island and “Victoria Gozo Malta” sounds goofy when you say it out loud. I don’t know if I’m even close, but it was worth it for the photo tour alone.
The Mediterranean it is. Another reader nails the right country with this exhaustive entry:
Spain.
A more detailed response:
All I know for sure is, it’s one of the White Towns of Andalusia, Spain. Ronda seems as good a guess as any:
(1) Googled “Tourneo” (back of the white car/van): said it’s a Ford model used mainly in Europe.
(2) Looked up the formats of European license plates by country; the only match was Spain.
(3) Googled “Spain red tiled roofs” and found lots of stuff about the White Towns of Andalusia.
From there I was stuck. The sign in the foreground appears to be for a restaurant. It’s hard to tell what the second row of the sign says: begins with a C or G, and the third letter is probably Ñ. I went through an enormous list of restaurants in Andalusia on TripAdvisor, found some possibilities, but came up empty.
Andalusia was this week’s most popular incorrect guess:
EU license plates, looks to be on or near the Mediterranean, most likely in a country where the word for “restaurant” starts with “R-E-S-T”, which is basically all of them except Italy and Malta. The two readable license plates are in the four digit, three numeral format which is apparently unique to Spain.
I recently spent two lovely weeks in Barcelona, and only really ventured briefly out of the city to Girona and Figueres. This isn’t Barcelona (the sidewalks are too narrow, the streets too wide) but it could be one of the other two, or any of dozens of other small cities in Spain. But I’m actually inclined to say that this isn’t likely anywhere in Catalonia, because there are no Catalan flags to be seen, and I saw them EVERYWHERE when I was there.
Is this one of the famed “White Towns” of Andalusia? It sure looks like it. But which one? The fact that we have a fairly modern street (asphalt, not cobblestones, wide enough to park cars on both sides, and in a fairly grid-like configuration) may narrow it down a bit to the larger towns. And the convergence of opposing one-ways onto another street seems a pretty unusual configuration. That should be easy to spot … but it isn’t.
I’m liking Ubrique, for its size and layout, and the surrounding landscape looks right. But I can’t quite seem to nail this one down. Algodonales looks exactly right for the surrounding landscape, but again, I can’t seem to find the exact spot. Ditto Grazalema. And Prado del Rey. So, I’m going to go with my gut and stick with Ubrique.
No matter: browsing the White Towns on Street View was a great deal more enjoyable than looking at Sports Authorities in the Northeast! And I really need to get back to Spain.
This one is driving me crazy! The truck in the foreground has Spanish plates but all the signs are in English. This makes me think the most obvious place would be Gibraltar. After rooting around in Google maps I found similar looking road signs, and the architecture seems like a fit, but I can’t for the life of me find a road that matches the one pictured. So I’m just going to have to say Gibraltar somewhere off of Main street. Although I’m sure I’m off by miles and that this is some obvious yet obscure region that several Dishheads will have vacationed. Tuesday can’t come fast enough!
The best incorrect entry we received this week:
Since today is national dance day in the US and I just this afternoon read that Father “Pepe” Jose Planas Moreno dances the sevillanas with his parishioners at his church in Campanilla in the Malaga district of Spain (seen below) – I’m going with that town. I wish I had time to delve more deeply into the search but will be seriously happy with myself if I’m this close to correct!
But this reader correctly identifies the type of Spanish land mass we’re looking for:
This week’s contest is massively frustrating, I’m haunted that I am missing some clear clue as to the location. For a while I was stuck on the French Riviera, based on the white houses, red roofs, and appearance of the stop sign. But I eventually started investigating the licenses plates and found that 4 digit/3 letter combination is unique to Spain. But I couldn’t find anything else in the image to focus my search.
After looking at Pamplona (given the recent running of the bulls) and not finding any likely hits, I went further afield. It appears that the Canary Islands are rife with one-way streets, occasionally have the word stop printed along crosswalks, has a predilection for green shutters, and has a terrain that may match the background. But zooming around the islands in maps and street view hasn’t helped in isolating the location. For some reason, I still feel strongly that the Canary Islands are it, so I’m guessing Santa Cruz de Tenerife, prepared to find out that I missed some obvious hint and that the location is actually on the mainland in Spain.
Yes, an island, but the Canaries are much too southwest. Another reader starts paddling us in the right direction:
I’m sure that there are contributors with hi-res screens who can read a phone number on what looks like a restaurant menu posted on the left, but all I have to go on is a Citroen sedan with a Euro-style plate. Having Googled the number/letter sequence I’ve narrowed it down to Spain. And with the Mediterranean look of the buildings I will make the wildly general guess of Ibiza, Spain.
Another gets closer still:
Last week’s Sherlock Holmes here. I’m going to play the game like I play GeoGuessr. In GeoGuessr you can, if you want, travel in the scene until you get to a place where there are clues to where the picture was taken. Instead, I usually try to go solely on gut, and whatever clues are in that frame and only in that frame.
With this VFYWC, I could spend hours googling “red tile roof” or try to find out what countries the Ford Tourneo is sold in. (If that’s even the right model of the mini-van in lower right of this week’s view.) I could invest the rest of this lovely Saturday searching for that white “R” on a red background to see if I can figure out if it is associated with a specific location.
Instead, I will once again go with my gut and say Mallorca, Spain. The cars look European – where else do they still sell Citroens, after all? The license plates are from the EU, I think. Plus, the scene has sort of an island feel to me. The red tile roofs feel Spanish. So, Mallorca.
I realize I’ll never win the book this way. But life is filled with disappointments.
A former winner almost got the right island but veered away at the last moment:
The house is a cheap-looking Spanish colonial with a Mediterranean color scheme. It appears to be an old farm (olives or wine ?) with several buildings that has been converted to apartments. I deduce that from the exterior wall connected them and the lack of a balcony on the building on the right. Also, there is an old stone horse trough that’s being used as a planter, but possible it was previously used for actual horses or as a water reservoir to clean the olives or grapes. So based on the horse trough I am narrowing my search to Spain, Portugal, or nearby islands, where horses were common. It looks like water in the background, so I am guessing that’s the ocean. I can’t imagine unpaved rundown apartments being that close to the ocean – at least not in mainland Spain or Portugal.
So how about Mallorca, or Minorca or one of the Balearic Islands? Possibly, but the color scheme doesn’t fit, and the those islands have mostly hipped roofs or higher pitched roofs and brighter colors.
However, Madeira does have some dull colored unpaved properties close to the water with hilly populated areas visible from a window – specifically Funchal, Madeira, Portugal. Wish I could make out the three numbers above the exterior doorway, but I only participate by iPhone with no access to photo enhancement. So my guess is Funchal.
In case there was ever any doubt, this week’s contest definitely proves why Chini is the VFYWC Grand Champion; he was the only player to get the correct town, let alone the exact location and window:
Aw man. Last week, when I had free time, the view was dead simple. Then this week we get a good one and I’m swamped getting ready for a two-day trip. So I had to be selective with my time, but what to focus on? The license plates were Spanish, clearly, but what next? The hills in the distance? The street markings, the architecture? It was almost too much to pick from, until I remembered a similar view from last summer. And then the path became clear …
This week’s view comes from the town of Es Mercadal on the island of Minorca, Spain. More precisely, the picture was taken from the front dining-room windows of the Restaurante Ca N’Aguadete and looks east northeast along a heading of 71.92 degrees towards El Toro, Minorca’s highest point.
Respect. This week’s winner was the only other reader to correctly identify the island:
Well, looks like for the second time in around a month living in Spain is having its advantages for this contest. The plates are Spanish. An eagle-eyed reader might be able to get the “E” as the country code on the plate, but the 1234 BCD format is how things have been done here since around 2000. This leads to the key clue to be found on the red Seat Ibiza. Prior to the current format there was a province code followed by 4 numbers and one or two letters. The Ibiza, quite aptly, has the code IB for “Islas Baleares” meaning we are looking at Menorca, Mallorca, Ibiza, or Formentera.
I have been driving myself crazy trying to figure out what town it could be, though. There is terrain, but not big enough mountains to be Western Mallorca. A particular style and abutting one way streets. Perhaps not even Balearic islands at all and the number plate is a red herring.
Either way, I just don’t have it this week, but I will go with my gut of the towns I looked at and say it’s Ferries, Menorca. Wish I could get an exact window, but not this time.
Close enough for a win. From the submitter:
I’m thrilled you chose the photo, my first submission. It’s from the second floor (European “1st”) of Restaurant Ca N’Aguedet, Carrer Lepanto 30, Es Mercadal. We shot the image from just to the right of the perpendicular “restaurant” sign that’s just visible in the picture.
We were in Menorca to celebrate a significant birthday of mine and because my husband had lived in the capital, Mahon, as a child. The restaurant, where we ate on a friend’s recommendation, is outstanding; its chef is dedicated to reviving and preserving traditional dishes of the island.
Thanks so much to the more than 70 readers who challenged themselves with this week’s contest, including many stumped veteran players. Here are everyone’s guesses on the OpenHeatMap, a cool app created by Dishhead Pete Warden:
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And for our newer players, don’t worry – the views are rarely this hard. Until Saturday!
But one last thing: the WaPo’s indispensable Christopher Ingraham wrote to the Dish over the weekend:
Inspired in part by the VFYW Contest, Wonkblog started running a contest of sorts whereby we present a map or other visual sans labels and ask readers to identify the data behind it. This week’s installment is here; here is last week‘s and the answer post. Thought you might enjoy.
Their latest contest closed yesterday and a new one will be up this Friday at noon. Check it out, VFYW nerds.
Previous VFYWC inspiration felt by the NYT and CNN.
Orders are starting to pour in for our new t-shirts and polos, both detailed here. If you’re interested in a shirt but haven’t bought one yet, don’t delay – go here now! We’re about to print our first big order of shirts, so act now to get yours in the first shipment. One happy customer writes:
Finally, Andrew, finally. I can now claim my Dishness loud and proud wandering around Denver. Order placed! This little experiment of yours is the best chance to save journalism. Hope more swag is on the way.
It is. Another owner of a new shirt:
I bought one despite my frequent disagreements with you. Good luck with the retail endeavor.
Another:
Boom! Just ordered a blue women’s t-shirt. Just in time, too, before I move abroad!
Another doubled-down:
God help me I just bought two. Will I get hit on by bears if I wear these? If so I’ll order more …
Another:
WooHoo! Finally, I just purchased a baby blue t-shirt and I love the simple design. I can’t wait to see how it fits – I’m particular with the fit of t-shirts since most are too short after one washing. If all goes good I am getting the gray one also.
The high-quality tri-blend fabric is designed not to shrink. Another reader:
Sweet. Earlier this week, my subscription to the Dish auto-renewed and I missed the chance to up my contribution for the year like I had intended. Now ordering a polo gives me a chance to make up for it.
And just as our gift subscriptions are great for birthdays, a Dish shirt for your friend or family member could be as well. Or you could wait a little, like this reader:
The new T-shirts look great! I have to say, the resemblance between the Howler T and my cousin’s beagle upon finding me in their guest bedroom/basement/his territory is uncanny. I think I know what my cousin is getting for Christmas.
Another:
I’d like to lodge an official protest. Where are the slogans we voted on? Nothing on the back? Now, mind you, this didn’t stop me from buying one. But if you later come out with slogan t-shirts I’m going to be pissed!
We are definitely keeping the slogans in mind for other merch, such as mugs and totes, but there wasn’t enough demand for individual slogans to use them for the screen-printed bulk ordering process we’re doing for these shirts, in order to keep costs down. Another reader suggests for the “next round: please also do long-sleeve versions for chilly Portland.” Duly noted. Another’s input was implemented:
Just ordered two shirts – the grey t-shirt and the navy polo. Thanks for going with the Dish beagle logo. That’s what I voted for when you gave us the chance to chime in.
One more satisfied customer:
As a big fan from the New Republic-then-blog-tip-jar days, how could I resist these shirts? Plus I’m DOG PEOPLE from way back. I got me a Howler and a navy polo and look forward to people asking what they’re about. Apropos of which: why don’t you get your current intern or Special Teams to work up a simple one-page promo “flyer” or some such, that us hardcore fans could give to curious fellow truth-or-whatever seekers? In my life and work I interact with a lot of potential Dish readers, mostly smart and curious like your base readership. Just suggestin’.
P.S. I’m not much in the looks department, but when I get shirts I’ll take a picture with my darling little bitches: Two Tibetan terriers (mostly – they’re mutts) about 18 months old. Beagles aren’t the ONLY game in town.
Definitely send some pics our way. And as far as a one-page promo “flyer”, this page describing the shirts in detail and illustrating them with photos might do the trick. Thanks to all our merch customers for supporting the Dish. And a big shout-out to Jerzy Shustin and everyone else at BustedTees who set up our storefront and helped shepherd us through this often bewildering process. Jerzy is actually a long-time Dishhead and wrote to us when we first started talking about doing t-shirts, asking if we needed any help. So like most things on the Dish, you readers are integral to its success.
Manfred Mann’s “Blinded by the Light.” Very few people actually realize this song was originally written and recorded by Bruce Springsteen. Manfred‘s version is dramatically different:
Another:
I would like to nominate The Beatles cover of “Twist and Shout”, which was originally recorded by the Top Notes in 1961 and the by The Isley Brothers in 1962. The Beatles version changed the form of the original and John Lennon gives us one of the greatest vocal performances. The Beatles version has become the standard:
The Boys had the savvy to not only repeat the bridge and buildup but to parlay the latter into a slow-triplet-bound complete ending. This gives the overall thrust of the song a much greater sense of teleology, of having “arrived” somewhere; the Isleys sounds in comparison more like just static vamping.
Although the European Union agreed last week to consider sanctions against Russia’s energy, defense, and financial industries, it was unclear how far they would go. It’s still uncertain how broad the sanctions will be, but the call on Monday indicated a change of tone from last week, when EU politicians were trading barbs over whether Britain or France was more reliant on Moscow’s money.
The EU will likely restrict each industry slightly, rather than imposing a full ban — such as an arms embargo. That approach would help address the fundamental problem of different EU countries relying more on Russian business in different industries.
After a five-way conference call between the leaders of Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Italy the European Union seems ready to outline tough new sanctions on Russia. Not just the shooting down of MH 17, but Russia’s total lack of remorse or post-shootdown restrain appears to have been a game-changer in terms of German politics and that’s been enough to swing the situation around. The sanctions package is looking very similar to ideas outlined last week in a memo obtained by the Financial Times. The new package belies the notion of a “weak” Europe that is refusing to counter Russian aggression.
We already know that Russia’s energy sector—which supplies power to many European countries, not just Germany—is likely to escape most of the new restrictions. The exact terms of the arms embargo have yet to be decided, but it isn’t expected to have any effect on existing contracts, such as France’s delivery, later this year, of a Mistral warship. That leaves the new financial sanctions, and I’d be willing to wager that they won’t be as draconian as they might appear, either.
Last week, Anne Applebaum analyzed Putin’s grip on Europe:
Which is worse? France sending Russia a ship that could be used against NATO allies in the Baltic or the Black Sea? Or Britain’s insistence on its right to launder Russian money through London’s financial markets? It was an amusing spat, not least because it plays into the stereotypes: Britain versus France, crooked bankers versus cynical politicians. The dispute dominated headlines as Europeans debated the right response to Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine.
But in some sense, it also disguises the real nature of Russian influence in Europe. For Russia’s strongest political influence is not in relatively large countries such as Britain or France, where at least these things are openly discussed, but rather in weaker countries that barely have a foreign policy debate at all.
Yesterday, Ioffe took a closer look at the EU industries that would be impacted by Russian sanctions
For example, German car manufacturers. Russia is their second-biggest market. If sanctions get in the way of that, German autoworkers are out of some jobs. Or if E.U. sanctions affect defense contracts, French workers building Mistral warships (for which Russia has already paid $1.1 billion) will also find themselves out of a job, and possibly striking. If Russia cuts off titanium exports—it is the world’s largest producer and the best at machining the parts—Airbus and Boeing have to stop building Dreamliners and double-deckers.
Countries like Bulgaria and Italy who are reluctant to hit Russia harder are involved in building the South Stream gas pipeline and also see a lot of revenues from Russian tourists. Bulgaria is especially vulnerable: 70 percent of its tourists are Russian. The U.K. financial industry launders a lot of Russian cash, so they are understandably reluctant to voluntarily plug up that flow. Cyprus is in a similar situation, both with Russian tourists and Russian offshores.
“A lot of jobs would be affected, but the macroeconomic effect is less than is often claimed,” says Cliff Kupchan, head of the Russia practice at the Eurasia Group.
If the EU were suddenly to shut down all the gas pipelines and order Russian oil tankers to turn around, it would certainly inflict some short-term damage on Russia. But there are plenty of other customers out there for Russia’s oil, which is pretty fungible. As for natural gas, the huge new supply deal Putin inked with China means that a large customer will be emerging in Russia’s east. And while European countries could make a point of purchasing oil from non-Russian sources, they don’t have a ready replacement for Russia’s natural gas.
Taking serious steps to reduce purchases of Russian energy would require European leaders to show both moral courage and an overt willingness to inflict financial pain on large and well-connected companies. But both of these things are in short supply—just like natural gas and oil.
It’s hard to recall now but Tony Judt was once ostracized and vilified for writing this (among other things):
We can see, in retrospect, that the victory of Israel in June 1967 and its continuing occupation of the territories it conquered then have been the Jewish state’s very own nakba: a moral and political catastrophe. Israel’s actions in the West Bank and Gaza have magnified and publicized the country’s shortcomings and displayed them to a watching world. Curfews, checkpoints, bulldozers, public humiliations, home destructions, land seizures, shootings, “targeted assassinations,” the separation fence: All of these routines of occupation and repression were once familiar only to an informed minority of specialists and activists.
Today they can be watched, in real time, by anyone with a computer or a satellite dish – which means that Israel’s behavior is under daily scrutiny by hundreds of millions of people worldwide. The result has been a complete transformation in the international view of Israel. Until very recently the carefully burnished image of an ultra-modern society – built by survivors and pioneers and peopled by peace-loving democrats – still held sway over international opinion. But today? What is the universal shorthand symbol for Israel, reproduced worldwide in thousands of newspaper editorials and political cartoons? The Star of David emblazoned upon a tank.
For these heterodox views, Judt was banished from the New Republic masthead, and targeted by the ADL and American Jewish Committee. He subsequently sighed: “I didn’t think I knew until then just how deep and how uniquely American this obsession with blocking any criticism of Israel is. It is uniquely American. Apparently, the line you take on Israel trumps everything else in life”.
No longer. I doubt Judt would recognize the kind of debate now raging – that so many tried to stop. I offer one example today – Matt Yglesias attributing the lockstep support in Congress for anything Israel does as a function in part of donors whose litmus test is support for Greater Israel. The leaked internal documents of Michelle Nunn’s campaign for the Senate – which show that she has to adopt a maximalist pro-Israel stance if she is to get anywhere with Jewish donors – is the latest proof. Money quote:
Jewish donors are very important to Democratic Party finances, some of these donors have strongly held hawkish views on Israel, and the financial clout of AIPAC is the stuff of legend. At the same time, talk of rich Jews throwing their financial muscle around to influence policy in favor of Israel touches far too many anti-semitic tropes to be regularly mentioned in political discourse. But the concrete world of political fundraising doesn’t leave a ton of time for beating around the bush, so we get a little window here into how it looks to the finance people: if Nunn wants to maximize her donations, she needs to take the right stance.
Note the core point: not so long ago, anyone saying that Jewish donor money made an even-handed approach to Israel-Palestine a pretty dead letter would be deemed ipso facto an anti-Semite.
More to the point, such a view would not be allowed into print in any mainstream outlet. It would be regarded as an anti-Semitic trope – even if it were factually true. It’s as if a libel law did not allow for the truth as a defense! Heads we win; tails your career is over. Now of course these distortions of the fundraising process are not restricted to Israel. Think of the Cuba lobby, for example, another toxic force against a sane foreign policy. But it strikes me as a good thing that the truth can now be told and a more normal set of rules for debating the state of Israel is beginning to take shape. And so the extreme anomaly of the US Congress can come into greater relief:
While much of the rest of the world watches the Gaza war in horror and scrambles for a cease-fire, U.S. lawmakers are pressing the Obama administration to take no action that puts pressure on Israel to halt its military operations.
There aren’t many military actions that kill scores of children that the US Congress is enthusiastic about. But at least the incongruousness of this – and the moral coarsening it reveals – can now be better exposed. And the web surely has something to do with this. At Vox, Yglesias does not have to answer to a bunch of boomer editors still traumatized by the self-censorship of the past, and has grown up as a writer with the kind of freedom of expression that blogging allows for. And reporters from the scene can actually express in real time – outside the usual pro-Israel self-censorship that has existed for years at the NYT and WaPo – what they are actually witnessing. David Carr has a great reflection on all this – and how the sight of such unbelievable carnage and cruelty has altered the global debate, intensifying Greater Israel’s international isolation.
It’s also a matter of record, I think, that there is no way I could have written or published anything along these lines before the blogging era. Having my own space to think out loud, outside the parameters of an existing institution, without all the caution around the subject that was baked deep in Washington journalism, was critical to my changing views in response to changing facts. The intimidation had an effect. It was designed to. And one huge benefit of a site like this – now entirely funded by readers – is that I am only accountable to you, and fear only being wrong.
(Photo: An Israeli soldier seen walking in the dust near the Israeli-Gaza border on July 25, 2014 near Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip. By Ilia Yefimovich/Getty Images.)
The United States euthanizes 1.2 million dogs per year, according to the ASPCA. Would eating them be so different? It actually could be seen as helpful.
“[U]nlike all farmed meat, which requires the creation and maintenance of animals, dogs are practically begging to be eaten,” Jonathan Safran Foer, a vegetarian and novelist, writes in the book “Eating Animals.” Euthanizing pets, he says, “amounts to millions of pounds of meat now being thrown away every year. The simple disposal of these euthanized dogs is an enormous ecological and economic problem. It would be demented to yank pets from homes. But eating those strays, those runaways, those not-quite-cute-enough-to-take and not-quite-well-behaved-enough-to-keep dogs would be killing a flock of birds with one stone and eating it, too.”
Michael Brendan Doughertyobjects to this line of reasoning:
[T]he reason we shouldn’t eat dogs is related to the same reason it is more heinous and hateful to burn a synagogue than a community center, or that it is more of a violation to burn down a man’s home than the two rental properties he owns of an equivalent dollar value. The spaces, objects, and even animals we sanctify with our respect, friendship, and time really do enter into different moral categories. It is not inherently evil to smash a picture, but it is a gesture of hatred to tear a beloved family photo.
Societies like Korea, where dogs have been eaten and kept as pets, even come up with different categories of dogs to separate the ones that are sanctified by human friendship, and those that are not and therefore can be eaten. As Americans, with our own history and sense of ethics, we would probably never develop this distinction, and that’s okay. We’re fine with diversity when it comes to other cultural manifestations, like manners, another dimension of human behavior with moral implications. It is a human wrong to be inhospitable, but hospitality may have completely different expressions and taboos from one culture to the next. So, too, with our taboos on eating and animals.
The Dish has covered this subject repeatedly over the years. Update from a reader:
Before moving to eating dogs, why can’t we at least start with eating the pigeons? City pigeons are extremely well fed, many are gourmet fed and plump as hell. They should taste great. And it’s gotta taste like chicken, right?
Maybe from a pigeon farm. But you really want to taste a pigeon that feeds on New York Shitty trash?
Jordan Weissmann argues that Paul Ryan’s anti-poverty plan is a solution in search of a problem, and that the safety net as it is has been successful at keeping most Americans out of long-term poverty:
In 2011, according to the Survey of Income and Program Participation, the annual U.S. poverty rate was 14 percent. But only 3.5 percent of Americans were chronically poor, meaning they had been impoverished for three straight years. … One take-away from these numbers is that, yes, chronic poverty is real, and we need to work toward fixing it. But another is that, by and large, most people don’t need a life contract to escape poverty; the existing safety net catches them and helps them back onto their feet.
To his credit, Ryan makes some of these distinctions. The animating idea of his plan is that our approach to poverty should be customized person by person. His plan even distinguishes between the sort of approach the government could take to help a woman facing “situational poverty” versus someone stuck in “generational poverty.” He clearly sees the poor as individuals, which is far better than many politicians. But in order to make custom poverty prevention a reality, he wants to tear down a system that already works fairly well for the majority and has without question diminished material deprivation in this country.
Bouie turns to similar statistics to fire back at Reihan’s defense of the Ryan plan’s inherent paternalism:
At some point in their lives, millions of Americans will experience a short spell of poverty. Not because they don’t have a plan to fix their lives or lack the skills to move forward, but because our economy isn’t run to create demand for labor, isn’t equipped to deliver stable work to everyone who wants it, and wasn’t built to address the distributive needs of everyone who works. The best way to confront this problem for most people is to just address those needs.
Yes, on the margins, there will be Americans who need an intensive approach, and I endorse government support for voluntary life coaching. (For example, look at the Center for Urban Families in Baltimore.) But by and large, the easiest solution is to mail larger checks to more people. In other words, we need more solutions like Ryan’s expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit—the best part of his plan—and fewer life coaches for the poor.
Reihan goes another round, now arguing that caseworkers would make up for the failures of poor communities to provide “mutual self-help” to their members:
Mutual self-help still exists, yet its institutional manifestations seem to have decayed as U.S. culture has grown more individualistic and as the state has grown more inclusive. Civil society cannot, in my view, replace a robust safety net. There are some things, however, that mutual self-help networks can do better than the state, e.g., impart implicit learning or facilitate the transmission of beneficial social practices that must first be validated by in-group members, etc. And so the fact that mutual self-help networks, including invisible mutual self-help networks, are stronger among the nonpoor than the poor is a serious problem, albeit one that is hard to capture through anything other than ethnography.
What does any of this have to do with casework? Essentially, I see casework as a substitute, albeit a decidedly inadequate one, for mutual self-help networks. In an ideal world, casework might even contribute to their revival. For now, at least, casework strikes me as the best tool we have to see to it that the right help goes to the right people at the right time.
The Dish 