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The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

     ~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI." 

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

Washington Post: “An early Titian masterpiece — once looted by Napolean’s troops and a part of royal collections for centuries — caused a stir when it was stolen from the home of a British marquess in 1995. Seven years later, it was found inside an unassuming white and blue plastic bag at a bus stop in southwest London by an art detective, and returned. This week, the oil painting 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt' sold for more than $22 million at Christie’s. It was a record for the Renaissance artist, whom museums describe as the greatest painter of 16th-century Venice. Ahead of the sale in April, the auction house billed it as 'the most important work by Titian to come to the auction market in more than a generation.'”

Washington Post: The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which houses the world's largest collection of Shakespeare material, has undergone a major renovation. "The change to the building is pervasive, both subtle and transformational."

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Sunday
Nov282010

Tales from the WikiLeaks Papers

Scott Shane & Andrew Lehren write the New York Times main story: "A cache of a quarter-million confidential American diplomatic cables, most of them from the past three years, provides an unprecedented look at backroom bargaining by embassies around the world, brutally candid views of foreign leaders and frank assessments of nuclear and terrorist threats. Some of the cables, made available to The New York Times and several other news organizations, were written as recently as late February, revealing the Obama administration’s exchanges over crises and conflicts. The material was originally obtained by WikiLeaks.... WikiLeaks intends to make the archive public on its Web site in batches, beginning Sunday. The anticipated disclosure of the cables is already sending shudders through the diplomatic establishment, and could conceivably strain relations with some countries, influencing international affairs in ways that are impossible to predict." The Times' overview page. links to other stories. The Lede is following reactions to the WikiLeaks release. 

David Leigh of The Guardian has a good, brief synopsis. AND here's The Guardian's overview page.

Der Spiegel's overview page (English version) is here.

The WikiLeaks site is here, BUT Times of India, November 28: via Twitter, WikiLeaks claims it is under "denial of service" hack attack.

Zachary Roth of Yahoo News lists the "top ten revelations from the WikiLeaks cables."

Arshad Mohammed & Ross Colvin of Reuters: "The White House condemned the release of the [WikiLeaks] documents, saying their release could endanger the lives of people who live under 'oppressive regimes' and 'deeply impact' the foreign policy interests of the United States and its allies....

... Here's Robert Gibbs' full statement on the leaked documents.

Der Speigel: "In the documents..., US diplomats stationed across the globe report back to the State Department in Washington, communicating sensitive information about international arms deals, evaluating political developments or assessing the corruption level of local leaders. The compendium of reports, most of which cover the period from 2003 until the end of February 2010, sheds light on America's at times arrogant view of the world. Never before have so many political revelations embarrassed the US State Department in one fell swoop."

Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "The treasure trove of secret State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks ... chronicle the Iranian nuclear standoff from its genesis. The diplomatic memos disclose the extent to which many of the United States's allies in the Arab world repeatedly implored Washington to stop Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons." ...

... Iran Sanctions: Bush 0, Obama 10. David Sanger & James Glanz of the New York Times: "In day-by-day detail..., cables ... tell the disparate diplomatic back stories of two administrations pressed from all sides to confront Tehran. They show how President George W. Bush ... struggled to put together even modest sanctions. They also offer new insights into how President Obama, determined to merge his promise of 'engagement' with his vow to raise the pressure on the Iranians, assembled a coalition that agreed to impose an array of sanctions considerably harsher than any before attempted."

Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times: "The United States has expanded the role of American diplomats in collecting intelligence overseas and at the nited Nations, ordering State Department personnel to gather the credit card and frequent-flier numbers, work schedules and other personal information of foreign dignitaries. Revealed in classified State Department cables, the directives, going back to 2008, appear to blur the traditional boundaries between statesmen and spies."

Robert Booth & Julian Borger of The Guardian: "Washington is running a secret intelligence campaign targeted at the leadership of the United Nations, including the secretary general, Ban Ki-moon and the permanent security council representatives from China, Russia, France and the UK."

Der Spiegel: "The ... documents ... reveal that the US has an extensive network of informants in Berlin and was kept informed of coalition negotiations as Chancellor Merkel was forming her current government. US officials, the cables show, are skeptical of several top German politicians. The ... secret documents from the US State Department show just how critical the American diplomats were of the new German government."

Barak Ravid of Haaretz: "Israel tried to coordinate the Gaza war with the Palestinian Authority.... Both the PA and Egypt refused to take control of the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave."

Der Spiegel: "The leaked diplomatic cables reveal that US diplomats are skeptical about Turkey's dependability as a partner. The leadership in Ankara is depicted as divided and permeated by Islamists.

David Bernstein, in the Volokh Conspiracy, on Saudi & other Arab states' effort to get the U.S. to attack Iran: "It’s quite a blow to conspiracy theorists, is it not, that the combined weight of two of their favor bogeymen, 'the Zionists' and 'the Arabs' haven’t been able to get the U.S. to take military action against Iran."

Spencer Ackerman in Wired: "Perhaps the most worrisome news to come out the diplo doc dump is that North Korea secretly gave Iran 19 powerful missiles with a range of 2,000 miles.... 'If fired from Iran,' the New York Times notes, a missile with that range could 'let its warheads reach targets as far away as Western Europe, including Berlin.' ... No wonder why European leaders are suddenly so keen on missile defense. And no wonder why so many of the leaders of the Arab Middle East are increasingly freaked out by Iran’s growing conventional arsenal — and nuclear program."

Amy Davidson of The New Yorker: "... the Guardian noted that the database the documents lived in had 'a very wide distribution among diplomatic, government and military circles,' and that about three million people are allowed to read 'secret' things. Maybe those were three million eminently respectable people, all carefully vetted.... Or maybe the government, if it expects the word 'secret' to constitute a clear warning about the potential for danger to one’s country, should think hard about what the word means."

Kevin Drum of The Nation: "... so far I just don't see these leaks causing an epic amount of damage. Obviously feelings will be bruised by the blunt language in some of the cables — though if Spiegel's excerpts are typical, the language is only slightly blunter than your run-of-the-mill anonymous carping — and foreign officials might be reluctant for a while to share confidences with American diplomats.... Hillary Clinton will indeed have her hands full for a while. But honestly, there's hardly anything here that I haven't already read on the front pages of multiple newspapers. Titillating, but not much more.

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