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A Year Later, We Finally Have a Pretty Good Idea What Happened in Benghazi

by MaurineLarose Posted on December 31, 2013

Mother Jones

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We will never know definitively what happened in Benghazi on the night of September 11, 2012. There were too many people involved, too many motivations for the attack, too many conflicting stories after the attack, and too little indisputable evidence about the exact course of events. Add to that the usual fog-of-war issues and you simply have to accept that we’ll never know with absolute certainty everything that happened.

That said, after more than a year of investigation we know a lot. And while I was out of town, David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times produced a state-of-the-art summary of where the best evidence leads us. The whole piece is well worth reading, but I’d highlight a couple of things.

First, Kirkpatrick concludes that the attack was primarily the work of Mr. Abu Khattala, who headed up a local militia that was allied with Ansar al-Sharia, another local militia:

The C.I.A. kept its closest watch on people who had known ties to terrorist networks abroad, especially those connected to Al Qaeda. Intelligence briefings for diplomats often mentioned Sufian bin Qumu, a former driver for a company run by Bin Laden….“We heard a lot about Sufian bin Qumu,” said one American diplomat in Libya at the time. “I don’t know if we ever heard anything about Ansar al-Shariah.”

….The only intelligence connecting Al Qaeda to the attack was an intercepted phone call that night from a participant in the first wave of the attack….But when the friend heard the attacker’s boasts, he sounded astonished, the officials said, suggesting he had no prior knowledge of the assault.

….Three weeks after the attack, on Oct. 3, 2012, leaders of the group’s regional affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, sent a letter to a lieutenant about efforts to crack the new territory….The letter, left behind when the group’s leaders fled French troops in Mali, was later obtained and released by The Associated Press. It tallied up the “spectacular” acts of terrorism the group had accomplished around the region, but it made no mention of Benghazi or any other attacks in Libya.

It’s important to understand just what Kirkpatrick is saying: not just that Al Qaeda had essentially nothing to do with the attack in Benghazi, but that our preoccupation with al-Qaeda actively crippled our understanding of what was happening in Libya. And the same thing happened after the attack. Based on the thinnest imaginable pretexts, conservatives have continued to insist that Al Qaeda was responsible, and that’s crippled our ability to understand what really happened that night.

Beyond that, I think Blake Hounshell makes the most salient point: it’s all but impossible to pinpoint exactly what “Al Qaeda” is these days anyway. In reality, there’s a continuum of groups, starting with purely local militants on one end and Al Qaeda central on the other. In between are groups “allied” with Al Qaeda; groups with “ties” to Al Qaeda; groups with members who once worked with Al Qaeda; and groups that have no real connection to Al Qaeda but have similar goals. Trying to figure out which of these groups are “really” Al Qaeda and which aren’t is a mug’s game.

The second point I’d highlight is the role of the infamous “Innocence of Muslims” video. Here is Kirkpatrick:

On Sept. 8, a popular Islamist preacher lit the fuse by screening a clip of the video on the ultraconservative Egyptian satellite channel El Nas….Islamists in Benghazi were watching….By Sept. 9, a popular eastern Libyan Facebook page had denounced the film.

On the morning of Sept. 11, even some secular political activists were posting calls online for a protest that Friday, three days away….Around dusk, the Pan-Arab satellite networks began broadcasting footage of protesters breaching the walls of the American Embassy in Cairo, pulling down the American flag and running up the black banner of militant Islam. Young men around Benghazi began calling one another with the news, several said, and many learned of the video for the first time.

….There is no doubt that anger over the video motivated many attackers. A Libyan journalist working for The New York Times was blocked from entering by the sentries outside, and he learned of the film from the fighters who stopped him. Other Libyan witnesses, too, said they received lectures from the attackers about the evil of the film and the virtue of defending the prophet.

If Kirkpatrick sounds slightly exasperated in this passage, it’s because he reported all this more than a year ago. And he wasn’t the only one. For some reason, though, it’s been almost universally shoved down the memory hole. It’s conventional wisdom these days that the video played no role.

But that’s almost certainly not the case. The best evidence suggests that Benghazi was an opportunistic attack: There were lots of militant groups in Benghazi itching for action and looking around for a suitable provocation. Lots of things might have done the job, and in the end, “Innocence of Muslims” turned out to be one of them.

Not the only one, though. Like it or not, there’s no simple motivation for Benghazi. Likewise, there’s no simple account of how well planned the attack was. Most likely, as Kirkpatrick says, it was neither spontaneous nor the result of long planning. It was probably in the works for a day or less before it started.

At this point, this is what we know. Benghazi was an opportunistic attack. Several groups were involved, all of them essentially local and with nothing but the most tenuous connections to Al Qaeda. These groups had multiple motivations for the attack, and anger over the “Innocence of Muslims” video was one of them. It provided the spark, and within a day or two it had fanned the flames of resentment enough to make an attack feasible. A few hours later, the attack was planned and then carried out.

That’s the nickel summary. But do read the whole thing to get the full story. For now, it’s about the best, most fair-minded account that we have.

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A Year Later, We Finally Have a Pretty Good Idea What Happened in Benghazi

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We Should Pay Less Attention to Seniors and More Attention to Workers

by neogrom Posted on November 25, 2013

Mother Jones

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Our story so far: a few days ago I wrote a post describing the Social Security Administration’s MINT forecast of retiree income. As the chart on the right shows, they project that retiree income will continue its steady rise, increasing from $20,000 in 1970 to $46,000 in 2041 (adjusted for inflation). Based on this, I questioned whether the much-talked-about “retirement crisis” was for real.

Dean Baker responded to my post, for which I’m grateful. He basically made five points:

  1. Social Security is a big part of the reason for rising retiree income. No argument there.
  2. Income replacement rates have declined from 95 percent for Depression-era workers to 84 percent for future retirees. This is true. However, as I explained on Friday, this is more because of sluggish income growth among workers than it is because retiree incomes are in any real trouble.
  3. 65-year-olds are living longer and are more likely to be working these days, which is part of the reason for strong incomes among seniors. Again, no argument there. But income is income, regardless of where it comes from. (It’s also worth noting that longer lifespans are primary a phenomenon of the well-off, not those with lower incomes.)
  4. Medicare premiums are increasing, which is an added expense for seniors.
  5. The MINT projections include imputed rent as part of income. In some cases this is fine, since living rent-free in a paid-off house does indeed have the same effect as cash income. In other cases, where retirees live in large houses with large imputed rents, it can give an inflated idea of how well off a retiree is.

The first three of these items don’t really change the picture. They’re just observations about the nature of the income that retirees are likely to have. Item #4 is relevant, but I think it’s cherry picking. Every age group has expenses that others don’t, and those expenses rise and fall differently. The only way to judge this fairly is to look at overall inflation rates for various age groups, and most efforts to do this have yielded only modest and ambiguous results. Finally, item #5 is a good point. It probably inflates the MINT projections modestly.

Overall, then, I don’t think this affects my point too much. If you revised the MINT projections to take into account CPI-E and made an adjustment for possible overestimates of imputed rent, the projected income line would probably go down a bit. But not very much. We’d still be looking at a world in which, relatively speaking, retirees are doing quite a bit better than current workers. In fact, their incomes are growing more strongly than pretty much any other age group.

This is why I’m not on board with calls to expand Social Security. Rhetoric and pretty charts aside, I simply don’t see any real evidence of a looming retirement crisis that urgently needs to be addressed, and I think focusing on it just distracts us from our real problem: sluggish wage growth among workers. And the funny thing is that Baker basically agrees:

Seniors income has been rising relative to the income of the typical working household because the typical working household is seeing their income redistributed to the Wall Street crew, CEOs, doctors and other members of the one percent….We can argue about whether young people or old people have a tougher time, but it’s clear that the division between winners and losers is not aged based, but rather class based.

That’s precisely right. I’m not willing to dismiss the relative problems of young and old quite as quickly—I think the young are being pretty badly screwed these days, and unlike seniors they have no one in Congress who really cares about them—but this is essentially a class problem, not an age problem. We should be doing everything possible to raise low and middle incomes regardless of age. If we do that, retirees will benefit, but so will everyone else.

This is obviously a lot harder than a simple crusade to expand Social Security. But the latter helps plenty of people who don’t really need it, while the former helps those who do. If part of helping those with low and middle incomes means changing Social Security payouts to reduce the future growth rates of high earners and increase the future growth rates of lower earners, that’s fine with me. But if I can borrow Baker’s headline, we need to keep our eye on the ball here. Let’s stop inventing crises that don’t really exist. If we want to move the Overton Window, let’s move it for the thing that really matters: the fact that the fruits of economic growth now accrue almost entirely to the rich, with the rest of us treading water at best. That’s the transcendent economic problem of the 21st century.

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We Should Pay Less Attention to Seniors and More Attention to Workers

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Starting Salaries for Attorneys Are Pretty Weird

by Anatoleia3 Posted on November 13, 2013

Mother Jones

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Via Tyler Cowen, here’s a chart of starting salaries for attorneys from Peter Turchin. It shows what’s now a fairly familiar bimodal distribution: there’s a relatively normal spread of salaries on the left centered at $50K and declining close to zero at $100K. And then there’s a second peak on the right.

This bimodal distribution didn’t exist 20 years ago, and there are several theories to explain how it evolved. But that’s not what I’m interested in for the moment. What I’m curious about is how sharp the second peak is. It’s not really a second distribution at all. Nearly 20 percent of starting attorneys belong to the super-elite group that gets high pay, but they all get exactly the same high pay: $160,000. Why is that? Can it really be the case that all of these super elites are precisely as elite as each other? Is there really not even a whit of sub-competition for this lucky 20 percent that would produce a few of them getting $180,000 or $200,000?

Why is the second peak so sharp? Normally, I’d toss out a few ideas, but I can’t really think of any aside from some kind of weird cultural collusion among top law firms. But that doesn’t really sound right. So what’s going on?

UPDATE: Based on comments, the answer seems, indeed, to be “weird cultural collusion among top law firms.” Except that it’s not really all that weird. It’s like one gas station lowering its price and suddenly all the other gas stations on the same corner start charging the exact same price. There are only a few dozen super-elite law firms, and they pretty much all offer the exact same super-elite starting salaries. From comments:

The Commentor: The primary reason for the spike is that large law firms have a herd mentality. No one wants to be below the market when recruiting from the 14 or so schools we all recruit from. There is close to perfect information about the salaries at the firms on the Internet and if the market leaders pay 160K for a kid from one of these schools, then the other top 50 or so firms will all largely pay the same too….Truth be told a very small percentage of graduates get into top law firms. We are hiring far fewer than we used to. They have next to no chance to make partner, and most try to stay long enough to pay off their 200K+ of student debt before we fire them or they leave.

Mannahatta: There are multiple outlets (websites, magazines, directories) that publish starting salaries for big law firms. So, there absolutely is a level of implicit collusion that goes on between law firms. For the most part these firms are difficult to distinguish for law students, and it’s difficult for firms to make fine distinctions between someone with a certain GPA from one law school or another. So firms tend to compete for graduates on the basis of potential bonuses, what the firm has to offer in terms of specialties, training, etc., rather than starting salaries.

Read the full comments for more details. Via email, a couple of folks who work in Big Law say that Cravath has traditionally been the first mover in this super-elite competition. “But, during the real estate bubble that led to a biglaw bubble, Simpson Thacher, another top firm, started offering $160k in an attempt to jump Cravath. To stay competitive, everyone had to follow suit.”

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Starting Salaries for Attorneys Are Pretty Weird

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New Yorkers exposed to more pesticides than rural residents

by Nomi Steen Posted on October 4, 2013

New Yorkers exposed to more pesticides than rural residents

By

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New Yorkers can eat all the organics that they want — but that won’t be enough to protect them from the Big Apple’s stubborn pesticide problem.

Despite living in a dense city with only tiny patches of agriculture (much of it organic, local, and ad-hoc), New York City residents have higher exposure levels than most Americans to two toxic classes of pesticide, according to a new study.

And the poisons are not just hitchhiking in on the produce.

Researchers studied data from samples taken from New York City residents in 2004 and found that “exposure to pyrethroids and dimethyl organophosphates were higher in NYC than in the US overall.”

These are the two most widely used insecticides used on farms and in homes. They work by screwing up the insects’ nervous system — and once they make it into humans they can wreak havoc with our growth and development and our reproductive systems.

Here’s an explanation for the finding from the study, which was published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives:

Widespread use of these compounds to control building infestations in New York City (NYC) may have caused higher exposure than in less urban settings.

That’s right, folks, think roaches and bed bugs — and the knockout poisons that the city’s ample fleet of exterminators use to kill them.

Residential broadcast spraying is an important source of non­dietary exposure in NYC, where confined indoor and limited outdoor space increases the potential for contact with residual chemical. Risk of exposure is amplified indoors because compounds are slower to degrade when not subject to sunlight, rain, and soil microbial activity.

The indoor use of dimethyl organophosphates was phased out more than a decade ago because of its health impacts, but that wasn’t enough to flush city dwellers of the poisons in the years that followed the ban. The chemicals continue to be used outdoors on farms and in gardens — tens of millions of pounds every year are sprayed in America.

Both classes of pesticides can cling to fruit and vegetables — with studies cited in the paper revealing that more than 40 percent of produce can be affected. And although pyrethroids are registered as “professional use only” in New York, the researchers reported that such products are sold illegally on the streets and in stores.

If you’re a New Yorker, you’re probably wondering how you can lower your risk. The researchers found that concentrations of the poisons were higher in older residents, in those who work with insecticides, and in those who ate the most fruit. So be sure to not age, to avoid using pesticides, and to scrub the hell out of your apples.

While concerns have been growing about pesticide impacts on farmworkers, the researchers say their findings show “the importance of considering pest and pesticide burdens in cities when formulating pesticide use regulations.”


Source
Population-Based Biomonitoring of Exposure to Organophosphate and Pyrethroid Pesticides in New York City, Environmental Health Perspectives

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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A Painful Mix of Fire, Wind and Questions

by Myrna Posted on July 6, 2013

Investigators are beginning the task of unraveling how a routine afternoon of cutting fire lines along the edge of a community in Arizona became the deadliest day for wilderness firefighters in 80 years. Original source: A Painful Mix of Fire, Wind and Questions ; ;Related ArticlesHomes Keep Rising in West Despite Growing Wildfire ThreatOfficials Say They See Signs of a Slowdown in Deadly Arizona WildfireAt Anchor Off Lithuania, Its Own Energy Supply ;

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A Painful Mix of Fire, Wind and Questions

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Flipside – Richard Martini

by Myrna Posted on May 22, 2013

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

Flipside

A Tourist’s Guide on How to Navigate the Afterlife

Richard Martini

Genre: Spirituality

Price: $0.99

Publish Date: December 14, 2012

Publisher: Premier Digital Publishing

Seller: Premier Digital Publishing LLC


What happens after we die? Author and award winning filmmaker Richard Martini explores startling new evidence for life after death, via the &quot;life between lives,&quot; where we reportedly return to find our loved ones, soul mates and spiritual teachers. Based on the evidence of thousands of people who claim that under deep hypnosis, they saw and experienced the same basic things about the Afterlife, the book interviews hypnotherapists around the world trained in the method pioneered by Dr. Michael Newton, as well as examining actual between life sessions. The author agrees to go on the same journey himself, with startling and candid results, learning we are fully conscious between our various incarnations, and return to connect with loved ones and spiritual soul mates, and together choose how and when and with whom we'll reincarnate. The author examines how &quot;Karmic law&quot; is trumped by &quot;Free will,&quot; with souls choosing difficult lives in order to learn from their spiritually; no matter how difficult, strange or complex a life choice appears to be, it was made in advance, consciously, with the help of loved ones, soul mates and wise elders. Extensively researched, breathtaking in scope, &quot;Flipside&quot; takes the reader into new territory, boldly going where no author has gone before to tie up the various disciplines of past life regression. near death experiences, and between life exploration. In the words of author Gary Schwartz, Phd, once you've read &quot;Flipside&quot; &quot;you'll never see the world in the same way again.&quot; Praise for Flipside: &quot;Richard has written a terrific book. Insightful, funny, provocative and deep; I highly recommend it!&quot; – Robert Thurman, author of Why the Dalai Lama Matters “Inspiring, well written and entertaining. The kind of book where once you have read it, you will no longer be able to see the world in the same way again.” – Gary E. Schwartz, author of The Sacred Promise &quot;Everyone should have a Richard Martini in their life.&quot; – Charles Grodin, author of If I Only Knew Then… What I Learned From Mistakes

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Flipside – Richard Martini

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Climate negotiators are betting on improbably deep emissions cuts

by Myrna Posted on November 30, 2012

Climate negotiators are betting on improbably deep emissions cuts

By Philip Bump

It’s the strategy of every bad gambler: If you just keep betting more than you lost, you’ll eventually come out ahead. Lose $10, bet $20. Lose that, bet $30. In a rigged game, though, a game where the odds are tilted however slightly against you, eventually you’ll go broke, making one or two huge bets that don’t pay off.

Which is the situation the U.N. finds itself in during its current climate negotiations in Qatar. When it comes to the carbon dioxide levels we need to maintain in order to avoid catastrophic temperature rises of 2 degrees Celsius, we’re deep in debt, meaning that we’d need steeper and steeper bets in order to win.

From Reuters:

“The possibility of keeping warming to below 2 degrees has almost vanished,” Pep Canadell, head of the Global Carbon Project at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization, told Reuters. …

Global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas, have risen 50 percent since 1990 and the pace of growth has picked up since 2000, Canadell said. In the past decade, emissions have grown about 3 percent a year despite an economic slowdown, up from 1 percent during the 1990s.

Based on current emissions growth and rapid industrial expansion in developing nations, emissions are expected to keep growing by about 3 percent a year over the next decade.

For the talks to have any chance of success in the long run, emissions must quickly stop rising and then begin to fall. Temperatures have already risen by 0.8 C (1.4 F) since pre-industrial times.

If we can just slash emissions by 3 percent, by 5 percent, by whatever percent next year, we can avoid disaster. Avoid coming up broke.

The Washington Post‘s Brad Plumer makes the same point, using the graph below.

Climate Action Tracker

Click to embiggen.

The graph is from a report by Climate Action Tracker [PDF] that outlines the various mechanisms and strategies under which we could stay below the 2 degree Celsius mark. In other words: the bigger bets we need to make. Ignore the boxes in that graph. Focus on the lines. Steeper and steeper lines mean bigger and bigger bets.

My analogy breaks down in one way. If you’re sitting at a roulette table, trying to break even, to save your shirt, you actually make the bet. In the case of taking action to slow climate change, the world isn’t even in the game.

Source

Is there still time to avoid 2°C of global warming? Yes, but barely, Washington Post
As nations haggle, global carbon cut targets get impossibly deep, Reuters

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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