Month: August 2014

Hamas And the Teen Murders, Ctd

Pushing back against the latest Israeli government media offensive, Sheera Frenkel’s sources say that the alleged culprit was tortured into the confession:

“Since the kidnapping of the Israeli teens, the number of cases where torture is being used is unbelievable,” Fadi Qawasami, [a lawyer who is working on the case and is a distant relative of the Qawasmeh family], said in an interview with BuzzFeed in East Jerusalem. “Anyone who has any connection or relationship to the kidnappers has been arrested and tortured.”

Those closest to the investigation continue to doubt the involvement of the Hamas leadership.

Last week, Israeli intelligence officers told BuzzFeed they had not found a direct link to Hamas in their investigation into the kidnapping. “If there was an order, from any of the senior Hamas leadership in Gaza or abroad, this would be an easier case to investigate. We would have that intelligence data. But there is no data, so we have come to conclude that these men were acting on their own,” said one intelligence officer.

When reached for comment Wednesday, after the Israelis had revealed the arrest of Qawasmeh, the same officer told BuzzFeed that from an intelligence standpoint, a connection still did not exist to the senior Hamas leadership.

Obviously I cannot verify any of this but will continue to post any reporting that adds to our understanding. But the alleged use of torture here would be a classic case: not to get intelligence but to create reality to justify more aggression, or exculpate the torturers.

Back Hair Is Beautiful, Ctd

A reader writes:

I’m finally emailing you and it’s because of back hair. Executive branch malfeasance, congressional skullduggery, calamitous events that threaten to shake society to their very core have transpired since I first started reading your wonderful site ages ago. You write ONE missive about back hair and now I feel the urge to reach out.

photo1It cannot be overstated just how much of a hindrance this perfectly natural state of being can be to an individual. Every day one is faced with the perception that they are grossly hideous because of the way God made them. Trips to the beach, a visit to a swimming pool, intramural sports ( I don’t even want to begin with mockery that can come from a shirts versus skins match). All of these moments can just wear ones self-esteem to the point that it’s just easier to avoid them.

It’s easy enough to say that you should be proud of who you are, but it is through the difficulty in getting to this point that I understand in some miniscule way how hard it can be to be different from the norm.  I don’t really expect to there be any sort of reversal, but it would be great if I didn’t hear a “Take your shirt off. Oh you already did.” or “Shouldn’t you be back in the zoo?” joke after removing my top. Maybe one day that will happen, but I’m not expecting it.

Another:

I never realized how maligned back hair is. I’m a straight woman and my boyfriend has a lusciously hairy back.

I call him furry. I love to nestle in it while I’m spooning him. Or nestle his chest hair from the front. It’s one of my favorite things about him, and makes every other man seem peculiarly hairless.

This thought of yours struck me: “Or maybe because when a man allows his body to be what it is, and doesn’t try to micromanage every inch of it, he’s inherently sexier than the manscaped, plucked and trussed twink version.” Man, I wish more straight men had this attitude toward women. Or really, I wish a fraction of straight men held this attitude toward women and hair.

Our reader should check out the Dish thread, “Why Should Women Shave?” Another laments:

As a gay man who is naturally about as smooth as a baby, it is one of my own life’s greatest sadnesses that I am not hairy.  I barely even have pubes.  Hairy chests and thighs, especially, really turn me on (I’m fairly indifferent about back hair, but it doesn’t bother me).  No man in my family is hairy.

But your story about drawing men covered in fur reminded me of an episode from my own childhood.  I must have been about 5 or 6, probably, and I had one Ken doll among my many Barbies.  At some point I decided this plastic replica of a man wasn’t to my liking at all, and I found a Sharpie and drew a massive pubic bush on him, and covered his chest in black, inky swirls.  I don’t even know how I knew to do this, but I knew I liked it much better that way.

Unfortunately my two older brothers found it and thought it was the most hilarious thing in the world and told my parents.  My dad took it away from me, though to this day, I still have no idea why.  Especially since he was desperately trying not to laugh when he did it. We never talked about that Ken doll again.  Nor did I ever get it back.

(Photo: the hubby by Ric Ide Photography for Tim-scapes in Provincetown.)

A Reason To Be A Spurs Fan

They just hired Becky Hammon to be the NBA’s first full-time female assistant coach. Yglesias isn’t surprised by the move:

As Slate’s Amanda Hess wrote in a well-timed piece published yesterday, the NBA is generally much more aggressive at promoting women into non-playing roles than the other sports leagues. One reason for that is that unlike football or baseball women do play basketball at very high levels of competition – Division I NCAA, pro leagues in the US and Russia, the Olympics – so women are networked in to the world of big time hoops in a bigger way. The NBA also has a more politically liberal fanbase than the other men’s sports leagues (the WNBA is even more leftwing) and former commissioner David Stern had a personal commitment to the project.

Kavitha Davidson assures fans, “this isn’t some Battle of the Sexes, anything-you-can-do-I-can-do publicity stunt”:

This is a historic move by the Spurs, a progressive organization with a reputation for turning innovation into success – their roster of foreign-born players was also controversial until it started winning rings. As Hammon put it, physical differences will likely always separate men and women on the court, “but when it comes to things of the mind, things like coaching, game-planning, coming up with offensive and defensive schemes, there’s no reason why a woman couldn’t be in the mix.” As women continue to break down barriers in business, politics, and culture, the Spurs have signaled that a basketball team with much at stake has something to gain from a woman on the bench.

Is Russia About To Invade Ukraine?

With thousands of troops amassed on the border and talk of a “humanitarian intervention”, NATO warns that it might be:

“We’re not going to guess what’s on Russia’s mind, but we can see what Russia is doing on the ground – and that is of great concern. Russia has amassed around 20,000 combat-ready troops on Ukraine’s eastern border,” NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said in an emailed statement. NATO was concerned that Moscow could use “the pretext of a humanitarian or peace-keeping mission as an excuse to send troops into Eastern Ukraine“, she said.

Ian Bremmer doubts this is a bluff, although it’s not really what Putin wants:

Sustained intervention is Putin’s current and preferred approach, where he can foment enough instability through the separatists that a unified Ukraine cannot pull away from Russia. The “long game” is more Russian arms provisions and economic pressure until Kiev is forced to accept a deeply Russia-influenced federal system. Direct invasion would come with a much more staggering price tag. First and foremost, the Russian people are opposed. …

But even though Putin still prefers the intervention route, it makes sense for him to brace for invasion. The mere threat has strategic benefits: it’s primarily a deterrent against Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, demonstrating the consequences for a siege of Donetsk and Luhansk. In addition, it makes the West focus on the question of ‘Will Russia invade or not invade?,’ drawing attention away from the blurrier forms of intervention that Putin is already engaging in.

Emile Simpson urges Western governments to give Putin a way out of this mess:

If the West is serious about stopping naked Russian aggression against a sovereign state, but nonetheless recognizes Moscow’s own interests in this conflict, it should put its money where its mouth is by reconfiguring its sanctions to be a deterrent rather than a punishment, and look to the U.N. or OSCE to seek a real international peacekeeping or monitoring force that gives Putin a face-saving way out. Otherwise Western policymakers will be left with two unsavory options, should Russia intervene further in eastern Ukraine: either effectively to accept a fait accompli, as in Crimea, or react with half measures that only further provoke a Russian president who feels he can only fight his way out of the corner he’s been boxed into.

Meanwhile, Anna Nemtsova reports on the growing humanitarian crisis in eastern Ukraine, where government forces are still battling pro-Russian separatists:

At a United Nations emergency meeting in New York on Tuesday, John Ging of the Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs warned the Security Council that the worsening situation in eastern Ukraine caused “an increase in numbers killed” and put millions of people at risk of becoming victims of violence. On Wednesday, Ukrainian officials urged Russia to stop Grad rocket fire from across the border, while Russia accused Ukraine of carrying out artillery and air strikes. Local medical personnel and volunteers struggling to help the increasing number of victims complained about two key issues:  the shortage of medicine and their own security. In the past two months of combat in and around the cities, seriously injured people often have been left lying on the ground for hours waiting for medical help to arrive. Donetsk had very few volunteers; and after gunmen stormed the office of Doctors Without Borders (Médecins sans Frontières MSF), not many foreign professionals are willing to work on the ground.

End Of Gay Culture Watch

A reader flags this report:

New research finds that traditionally gay neighbourhoods are becoming increasingly “straight” places, and could be at risk of losing their distinct cultural identity. Fewer same-sex couples reside in historically gay neighbourhoods compared to 10 years ago, according to one of the largest studies of sexuality in the U.S. Led by University of British Columbia sociologist Amin Ghaziani, the study found the number of gay men who live in gay enclaves has declined eight per cent while the number of lesbians has dropped 13 per cent. Ghaziani’s research, which is collected in his new book There Goes the Gayborhood, suggests that San Francisco’s Castro district, New York’s Chelsea, Chicago’s Boystown and other “gayborhoods” are changing as growing numbers of heterosexual households join or replace gays and lesbians. He offers several reasons for the shift, including gentrification, changing attitudes among gays and lesbians, and growing acceptance of same-sex couples.

This season in Provincetown has been very striking. It’s nearly a decade since I wrote  The End Of Gay Culture for TNR, but only now that the small drip-drip-drip of change seems to have reached a tipping point. The Ptown I came to in the late 1980s is gone forever. Back then, the crowds that thronged here – far larger than today – were dominated by gay men of all ages. On big holiday weekends, there were long lines outside several bars and the entire street was a virtual club. The crowd at Spiritus Pizza at 1 am would stretch for blocks and last for a couple hours. Cruising was everywhere – on the streets, the beaches and the docks – all amid the somewhat dilapidated houses and sea-shacks where groups of gays would crash for night after night. It felt like an alternative reality – an oasis at the end of the world, a place where some of us had come to die but so many more had come to live for the first time.

It’s utterly different today. The gay male crowds are much smaller; the straight influx far larger. Children are everywhere – of gay and straight parents. The super-wealthy have moved in – and real estate prices have all but prevented most regular gays from being able to live or rent here. Instead of legions of young homos working as busboys and waiters – exiled from their homes, or seeking a new life, or just killing time in a beautiful spot – we now have hundreds of young Bulgarian work-study exchange students brought in every summer and housed collectively. And many of the gay men here are like me – older now, and married, and spending more time in the garden than in the bars.

Don’t get me wrong: it’s still an unabashedly gay-friendly town. You wouldn’t mistake its vivid tableau of street life or its scootering drag queens for, say, Chatham. But when dozens of bachelorette parties invade the gay bars, when children are building sand-castles where gay men used to cruise, it has a very different vibe.

You begin to see the depth of the social transformation that the debates over the military ban and marriage have wrought.

The happy, integrative truth is: gay men can now go on vacation to many different places in America and feel safe and secure. They don’t need to be in Ptown any more. A middle-class gay couple in Boston can go anywhere on the Cape or the North Shore. Or anywhere in Europe. Ptown has competition all over the world in a way that just wasn’t true ten or twenty years ago.

Then there’s the extraordinary impact of technology. One of the attractions of Ptown back in the day – when I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time – was that you could get laid almost as easily as you could get sub-burnt. It was so amazingly convenient – everyone within a few blocks over a couple of miles. But that convenience is now enjoyed in countless places in America, because of hook-up and dating apps. Every urban neighborhood has a virtual Ptown readily available all the time.

There has also, of course, been a slow transformation of gay culture in the last decade or so – including the first big generation since AIDS of middle-aged gay men. Hence the bears. But hence also the shift toward coffee shops over bars, indie cinema over drag queens, or events like the Tennessee Williams festival in September or the Film Fest in June. I’m not saying the old Ptown doesn’t still exist – in Bear Week or Carnival Week or July 4, you can still catch a strong whiff of it (among other things) – but it’s a lot less visible and complemented by a much more integrated and diverse summer population.

Do I feel some pangs of nostalgia? Of course I do. I do think there’s space for different sub-cultural oases in a fast homogenizing culture. Regret? I miss going to a gay club and not having to fight my way past a phalanx of twenty-something bachelorettes, taking selfies surrounded by “the gays.” Some of the straight love can feel a little like being in a zoo for their amusement. We sure don’t scare them like we used to. At the same time, this shift is a function of far greater freedom and integration than gays have ever experienced in America or the world. It is a new dawn for the vast majority – but a gathering dusk for something else more distinct, more edgy, more alienated and more exhilarating.

(Thumbnail image: Provincetown, MA by Ted Eytan. Note: photo has been cropped.)

Hackers, Hawkers, And Hacks

A security company claims to have uncovered a ring of Russian hackers that carried out the largest theft of usernames, passwords, and e-mail addresses to date:

Security experts have determined that a crime ring out of Russia has stolen a whooping 1.2 billion username and password combinations. They also got away with 500 million email addresses. To date, this is the single largest theft of login information. Initially, Hold Security, who spotted the breach, thought they were “run-of-the-mill spammers.” But overtime, the gang upped its thievery and went after SQL servers. Alex Holden, chief information security officer at Hold Security, told USA Today that the e-gang used malicious code to infiltrate 420,000 websites, and was then able to steal their databases. Holden found his own login and password information were compromised in this theft.

Technically, the gang could be brought to justice as Hold Security has both the location and names of the criminals. However, Holden believes this won’t occur, “The perpetrators are in Russia so not much can be done. These people are outside the law.”

But Bruce Schneier recommends taking this news with a grain of salt:

As expected, the hype is pretty high over this. But from the beginning, the story didn’t make sense to me. There are obvious details missing:

are the passwords in plaintext or encrypted, what sites are they for, how did they end up with a single criminal gang? The Milwaukee company that pushed this story, Hold Security, isn’t a company that I had ever heard of before. (I was with Howard Schmidt when I first heard this story. He lives in Wisconsin, and he had never heard of the company before either.) The New York Times writes that “a security expert not affiliated with Hold Security analyzed the database of stolen credentials and confirmed it was authentic,” but we’re not given any details. This felt more like a PR story from the company than anything real.

Russell Brandom heaps on the doubt:

The biggest problem, as Forbes‘s Kashmir Hill and The Wall Street Journal‘s Danny Yadron have noted, is that Hold Security is already capitalizing on the panic, charging a $120-per-year subscription to anyone who wants to check if their name and password are on the list. Hold says it’s just trying to recoup expenses, but there’s something unseemly about stoking fears of cybercrime and then asking concerned citizens to pay up. It also gives Hold a clear incentive to lie to reporters about how large and significant the finding is. …

Both Perlroth’s article and Hold Security’s description stop short of saying the group actually stole all 1.2 billion passwords. They just “eventually ended up” with them. We already know the gang started out by buying data from earlier hacks, but it’s remarkably unclear where the bought data ends and the stolen data begins. Many of the passwords could have been old data from someone else’s hack.

A War Without A Winner

https://twitter.com/samwithaner/statuses/497337372149678080

Israel may have technically “won” the Gaza war by weakening Hamas and destroying its tunnel infrastructure, but David Rothkopf argues that this “win” carries with it an even greater loss in terms of its image:

If Israel’s goal was to delegitimize Hamas, whatever it achieved during these last three weeks came at the expense of its own reputation. No matter how many articulate, pommy-accented spokespeople Israel rolls out to discuss human shields, they are trumped by the images of dead and wounded women and children, the stories of displaced families, the ground truth of an advanced, technologically sophisticated, militarily powerful nation laying waste to a land it occupies in order to root out a small cadre of fighters who pose little strategic threat to it. In short, Israel was waging a military action against an adversary that was waging a political campaign and thus adopted the wrong tactics and measured their progress by the wrong metrics. In fact, there is no denying that the Israeli tactics (it seems very unlikely there was any real strategizing going on) in this war do not pass the most basic tests available by which to assess them, those of morality, proportionality, and effectiveness.

Hamas’ defeat hasn’t been categorical either, Ishaan Tharoor observes:

Operation Protective Edge, as my colleagues report, has badly damaged Hamas’s operational capabilities, dismantling tunnels by which Hamas could launch attacks on Israel, destroying command centers and killing hundreds of supposed Hamas fighters. The group’s arsenal of rockets is also now considerably depleted. … But for Hamas, to mangle Clausewitz, the firing of rockets was politics by other means. “For Hamas, the choice wasn’t so much between peace and war,” writes Nathan Thrall, Jerusalem-based analyst for the International Crisis Group, “as between slow strangulation and a war that had a chance, however slim, of loosening the squeeze.” With Israel now at the negotiating table, there’s a chance that gamble paid off.

But Saletan suspects that many Gazans won’t soon forgive Hamas for putting them through another war unless they get something out of the ceasefire negotiations:

Gazans will judge the war based on postwar concessions. As things stand, they see the war as a loss. But that calculation assumes the continuation of the blockade. “All the industries are dying, and there are no jobs for the young,” laments a Gaza City man. “It’s a kind of suffocation. So if we can’t change that, this has all been for nothing.”

On the other hand, he admits, that will require Israel to be clearheaded about its strategic interests in easing the Gaza blockade:

[T]he cost of granting concessions is less than the cost of not granting them. Yes, if Gaza’s borders are opened, its people will celebrate. Yes, they might applaud Hamas, and they might conclude that belligerence works. But if the borders aren’t opened, the people might radicalize and explode. That’s the warning in those prewar surveys about the political effects of the blockade. Hamas and its violent inclinations might gain more support from the blockade than from its relaxation.

Whatever deal, if any, comes out of these negotiations, Matt Duss emphasizes that it could and should have been done months ago, before 1,800 people were killed and hundreds of thousands displaced:

In a press conference on Wednesday, Netanyahu indicated that he would be open to the possibility of the PA taking control of the Rafah crossing. It’s a tragedy that this option wasn’t explored earlier. At the time the unity government was announced, Israeli security analysts Kobi Michael and Udi Dekel recommended that Israel take the opportunity to empower the PA by “focus[ing] on rebuilding and developing the Gaza Strip, with the PA in charge of the Gaza Strip crossings” – precisely what’s being considered now, 1800 deaths later. Maybe the United States should have second-guessed Netanyahu earlier, and more forcefully, on this point.

Grading the parties to the conflict on how well they fared, Aaron David Miller gives top marks to Egypt:

Egypt’s new government under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi actually comes out of this round faring better than anyone else — in part, because it was only semi-invested. The Egyptians had no illusions about this conflict. They wanted to cut Hamas down to size, keep the Qataris and the Turks out of the equation, and marginalize U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, too, for that matter. Indeed, it was Egypt that produced what appears to be the successful cease-fire. And Cairo is now the venue for the follow-on negotiations at a longer-term agreement. Egypt once again demonstrated its centrality in Arab-Israeli politics by maintaining good ties with Netanyahu and the PA. Even Hamas understands that it needs Cairo’s assistance to maintain control of Gaza. That said, if talks in Cairo falter and Gaza spirals back into conflict, Egypt could lose some prestige. But Sisi still will have bolstered key regional ties with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and with the Israelis. And a successful outcome might improve delicate relations with Washington, too.

DC Will Vote On Legalization

Know dope:

The D.C. Board of Elections has officially certified Ballot Initiative 71 for November’s general election. If passed by a majority of D.C. voters, Initiative 71 will repeal all criminal and civil penalties for the personal possession and limited, private cultivation of marijuana. Passage of this initiative will be yet another step towards sensible marijuana policies in our nation’s capital, so make sure your voter registration is current if you are a D.C. resident so you can vote “yes” on November 4.

But Jon Walker reminds everyone that, “Even if the voters approve the initiative, it is possible for Congress to overturn it, similar to what they did to the district’s medical marijuana initiative in 1998”:

[T]he initiative would only legalize possession of up to two ounces for adults over 21 and limited home growing. Due to the unusual rules governing the D.C. initiative process, the campaign was not able to include provisions for the regulated and taxed sale of marijuana. Allowing adult use sales will still take an act of the D.C. Council, but several members of the Council plan to move forward with a bill if the voters support this initiative.

Assuming our politicians don’t interfere, the district should soon legalize marijuana. A Washington Post poll found 63 percent of registered voters in D.C. support legalization.

Should the initiative pass, Abby Haglage wonders, “Will Congress be allowed to get stoned?”

The short answer is—yes. If passed, Initiative 71 will allow D.C. residents above the age of 21 to possess up to 2 ounces of marijuana, cultivate up to six cannabis plants at home, and transfer, not sell, up to 1 ounce. Assuming that members of Congress who live in D.C. are adults, they, too, will be permitted to get stoned at their leisure.

But don’t start dreaming of hot-boxing the Capitol. “This initiative changes D.C. law,” says Bill Piper, the director of public affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance. “Marijuana possession would still be illegal on federal property.” Until cannabis is removed from the Schedule I substance list, it will not be allowed on federal property. So, members of Congress couldn’t light up at work—but they could if they live in the district.

The Stoned-Driving Crisis That Wasn’t

CoTrafficDeaths

Legalization doesn’t appear to have had much of an impact on roadway safety in Colorado:

Here’s a month-by-month comparison of highway fatalities in Colorado through the first seven months of this year and last year. For a more thorough comparison, I’ve also included the highest fatality figures for each month since 2002, the lowest for each month since 2002 and the average for each month since 2002. As you can see, roadway fatalities this year are down from last year, and down from the 13-year average. Of the seven months so far this year, five months saw a lower fatality figure this year than last, two months saw a slightly higher figure this year, and in one month the two figures were equal.

One longstanding theory is that more pot use will mean less alcohol use. You can’t infer than from this data, but it sure looks encouraging. Can you imagine what prohibition will look like in retrospect if it emerges that legalizing weed saves lots of lives? And there’s more good news for the Rocky Mountain State: Matt Steinglass got high in both Amsterdam and Boulder and came away touting the latter experience:

I smoked the joint sitting on the patio of the house where I was staying [in Colorado] that evening. This, rather than the issue of legality, is probably why it was more pleasurable to smoke in Boulder than in Amsterdam, even though buying the product had been much more clinical. It was a starry night, and the house was on a wide hillside facing west; the still masses of the Rockies registered as deeper darknesses along the horizon. At its best, smoking pot gives one an expanded spatial awareness and a sense of freedom, but in Amsterdam the atmosphere had been wrong. … Amsterdam has always tried to create a sense of freedom within the rules and infrastructure of a dense urban port-city landscape. But the open, no-limits sprawl of Boulder, edging up into the empty mountains, seemed a better fit for that mind-enlarging ganja feeling.

But if geography matters so much, why is Rhode Island the highest state in America?

Much more Dish on stoned driving here.