#Dexter Filkins

[xtruss]

Florida’s Vanishing Sparrows

A group of eccentric endangered birds serves as a bellwether of the climate crisis.

— By Dexter Filkins |July 17, 2023

The survival of the Florida grasshopper sparrow is in doubt, but the scientists who are working to help the species refuse to give up.Photograph from Nature Picture Library/Alamy

The Avon Park Air Force Range, in central Florida, is a noisy place. Most weeks, American pilots practice dropping bombs and firing rockets there, turning old Humvees into clouds of scrap metal and smoke. Last month, a crowd gathered at the range to listen for the song of the Florida grasshopper sparrow—a faint chittering noise that evokes an insect’s buzz, giving the bird its name. As the crowd looked on expectantly, a group of tiny birds, small enough to fit in your palm, ventured tentatively from a pen, looked into the sunshine, and then flew away. The grasshopper sparrow, a modest and eccentric creature that inhabits the prairies of the central and southern parts of the state, is considered the most endangered bird in the continental United States. The birds at the bombing range were part of a program to bring their species back from the brink. “It will be hard, but we think this sparrow is worth saving,” Angela Tringali, a researcher at Archbold Biological Station, which is involved in the effort, told me.

With its subtropical climate, Florida hosts a vast array of wildlife that exists nowhere else in the county. But years of relentless human population growth have driven many to the vanishing point: Florida is home to sixty-seven species of threatened and endangered animals, among the highest numbers in the continental U.S. Those include the Miami blue butterfly, the Everglade snail kite, and the Florida panther, of which fewer than two hundred and fifty remain.

Birds that nest on or near the ground—like the Cape Sable seaside sparrow and the grasshopper sparrow—are especially vulnerable. Grasshopper sparrows can fly, but they spend most of their lives on the ground, nesting in clumps of tall grass. This provides easy access to the insects that they eat (though it also makes them susceptible to predators, like skunks and snakes). As more and more people moved to Florida, their habitat—in the prairies that used to cover much of the state south of Orlando—gave way to shopping centers and housing tracts.

For decades, scientists watched the sparrows’ numbers slowly ebb. In 1986, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared them endangered; by the end of the century, there were thought to be fewer than a thousand left. Shortly after that, the population began dropping precipitously, and by 2012 as few as seventy-five males remained. Beyond habitat loss, the reasons for the steep decline weren’t entirely clear, though some scientists suspected fire ants, an invasive species. “We started to panic,” Mary Peterson, an endangered species biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said.

As the sparrows approached extinction, Peterson and other scientists decided that they couldn’t risk letting the bird continue to breed only in the wild. After identifying three concentrations of birds in protected habitats, and one on a private ranch, they gathered what adults they could and began breeding them in captivity around the state. Captive breeding is generally considered a last resort—some species of birds and other animals don’t survive it. But, Peterson said, “the risk of not doing anything could be catastrophic.” The scientists released their first batch of youngsters, a dozen birds, in 2019. Since then, they have bred and released more than seven hundred. In a good year, about a quarter of the chicks survive to adulthood in the wild; the release at the Avon Park bombing range last week brought the estimated number of birds to about two hundred and fifty.

The Avon Park range appears to be an especially promising venue for the birds. With more than a hundred thousand acres, it contains more than a dozen other threatened and endangered species. Twenty years ago, before populations collapsed, it was home to about three hundred grasshopper sparrows. The Department of Defense has proved to be an eager partner in preservation: Charles (Buck) MacLaughlin, the range operations officer, told me that the Air Force and the Fish and Wildlife Service periodically survey the landscape, when there aren’t air strikes scheduled. “I don’t think any have been killed there,” he told me.

Still, the survival of the grasshopper sparrow is in doubt. “Extinction is still a possibility,” Peterson said. The scientists aim to create ten protected sites of at least fifty breeding pairs each—a goal that is many years away, at best. The challenge is less in breeding sufficient numbers than in finding space for them; some ninety per cent of the bird’s historic habitat is gone. There are similar stories throughout the state. The Florida panther is making a modest comeback, but it’s constrained by human presence in the Everglades; last year, some twenty-five panthers were killed by cars. In the oceans off the coast, temperatures of ninety-plus degrees threaten coral reefs. But the scientists who are working to help the grasshopper sparrow refuse to give up. Tringali, the biologist, told me, “It’s really easy to do nothing. We are not done. We have a long way to go.” ♦

[batboyblog]

A Call for Empathy for Innocent Israelis

Open Letter: A Call for Empathy for Innocent Israelis

OCTOBER 19, 2023

To the Editor: Every Tisha B’av, the national day of communal mourning, Jews read liturgy recounting the horrors of our slaughtered ancestors throughout history and around the world. Every year, our blood runs cold rereading accounts of those nightmares. This year those nightmares became real. Earlier this month, the slaughter in southern Israel has matched the brutality of that liturgy: 1,400 people murdered at a concert, in their cars, in their homes, and nearly 200 taken as hostages. These are scenes we never thought we would see. We are heartbroken and disgusted by the shocking lack of empathy on much of the self-professed global left for the innocent Israelis who were murdered and kidnapped, and for the Jews in the diaspora who watched helplessly around the world as the most catastrophic slaughter in our history since the Holocaust was perpetrated. For much of the left, however, this was “resistance.” Furthermore, it was “justified,” as if the Jews murdered in their beds and the closets of their own homes somehow deserved to die. Jews and Palestinians have something in common: the dead bodies commentators around the world either pretend to care about or grotesquely dehumanize were once people we loved. The body count only grows. In the wake of Israeli retaliation the number of civilian Gazan deaths approaches 4,000. We can extrapolate from our own pain, and we recognize the despair and horror haunting Palestinians in and outside of Gaza. Grief should be respected. It would be an expression of gross inhumanity to demand that the Palestinians are only entitled to their grief if they publicly blame the deaths of their loved ones on their leadership. Jews deserve the same respect and the same degree of empathy. The victims in Israel were civilians. They were not “partisans,” merely because they lived within Israel’s borders. Much of the conversation since the dark events of October 7 has focused on distinguishing Hamas ���militants” from innocent Palestinians, a distinction that is real and significant. But why does the same distinction not apply to Israel and its people? Why are Jews living in the Jewish state seen as justifiable collateral damage? Those who in any way justify the actions of Hamas should consider the macabre tradition in which their rhetoric falls: the mass murder of innocent Jews in cold blood, justifying this mass murder as necessary policy, and celebrating the bloodthirsty evil that is, that has always been, antisemitism. That tradition reached its apex in the Holocaust, an epochal catastrophe that changed the face of Jewish and world history forever but whose legacy is somehow vanishing by the day. The events of October 7 only underscore how much. Celeste Marcus James McAuley David Grossman Cynthia Ozick Simon Sebag-Montefiore Anita Shapira Leon Wieseltier Simon Schama Michael Walzer Natasha Lehrer Lauren Elkin Robert Alter Etan Nechin Arash Azizi Oksana Forostyna Dexter Filkins Alex Levy Natalie Livingstone David Avrom Bell Elliot Ackerman Anne Sebba Noga Arikha Kati Marton Daphne Merkin Matti Friedman Marie Brenner Elisabeth Zerofsky Names added after publication: Anshel Pfeffer Daniel Mendelsohn Enrique Krauze Nicholas Lemann Ruth Rosengarten Judith Shulevitz

[shu-of-the-wind]

okay so!! for those who wanna learn more about the origin points of the iraq war, some basic primers that i have either read, or found on recommendation lists that i trust:

fiasco: the american military adventure in iraq by thomas ricks

people like us: misrepresenting the middle east by joris luyendijk

imperial life in the emerald city by rajiv chandrasekaran

america's war for the greater middle east by andrew j. bacevich

the forever war by dexter filkins

to be clear: i'm not saying i am recommending these books because they are all historical analyses, or because i trust each of the writers completely. you'll notice that most of these books are written by war correspondents, not survivors. they all have their flaws and they all have their unanswered questions. but it at least gives a general grounding on what the theories behind certain moves were at the time, even if those times still cannot be fully explained now, with 20 years of hindsight.

I missed most of the Iraq war due to being a baby, but every time I read about it I start wondering why we aren’t all talking about it all of the time

[scratchpad123]

The 12 Best Articles of 2024 by Jacob Feldman of The Sunday Long Read

The Sunday Long Read is a weekly roundup of the week's best longform journalism delivered straight to your inbox every Sunday morning. We asked SLR founder and editor Jabob Feldman to pick the best articles of the year, and he didn't disappoint:

Priscila, Queen of the Rideshare Mafia by Lauren Smiley - She came to the US with a dream. Using platforms like Uber, Instacart, and DoorDash, she built a business empire up from nothing. There was just one problem.

A Family Ranch, Swallowed Up in the Madness of the Border by Eli Saslow - Desperate migrants. Cartel violence. It’s all happening in the Chiltons’ backyard.

I Always Believed My Funny, Kind Father Was Killed by a Murderous Teenage Gang by Tracy King - Three decades on, I discovered the truth

The Ramen Lord by Kevin Pang - At Chicago’s buzziest new restaurant, Mike Satinover is obsessed with one goal: making the perfect bowl of Japanese noodles.

The Return of Ta-Nehisi Coates by Ryu Spaeth - The Return of Ta-Nehisi Coates A decade after “The Case for Reparations,” he is ready to take on Israel, Palestine, and the American media.

Guns. Knives. Bats. Hammers. Hatchets. Spears. by Ruby Cramer - As incidents of road rage escalate across the country, aggressive drivers in Texas try to understand what triggers anger.

Seventy Miles in Hell by Caitlin Dickerson - The Darién Gap was once considered impassable. Now hundreds of thousands of migrants are risking treacherous terrain, violence, hunger, and disease to travel through the jungle to the United States.

The Unbranding of Abercrombie by Chantal Fernandez - The problematic mall brand pulled off the most exciting makeover in American retail. How?

I Don’t Know If I Can Call Myself a Mom by Jess Mayhugh - After enduring infant loss and years of fertility challenges, I still don’t have a child.

Will Hezbollah and Israel Go to War? By Dexter Filkins - Months of fighting at the border threaten to ignite an all-out conflict that could devastate the region.

Racing to Retake a Beloved Trip, Before Dementia Takes Everything by Francesca Mari - My dad always remembered his childhood journey through Europe. Now, with Alzheimer’s claiming his memories, we tried to recreate it.

From Heartbreak to Hope by Catherine Elton - A Maine father’s unlikely journey, one year after the Lewiston massacre

For more great journalism, check out the SLR Best of 2024 Edition and, of course, subscribe to the newsletter!

[occupyhades]

DeSantis. Who needs friends when you’re an instrument of the divine? - RawStory.com

Ron DeSantis has no friends.The guys he played baseball with at Yale didn’t like him. One told New Yorker writer Dexter Filkins, “Ron is the most selfish person I have ever interacted with. ”While DeSantis appeared highly intelligent, he enjoyed “embarrassing and humiliating people.”

[vollesroah]

DISGUSTING

If they can't and won't learn humanity, hit them where it hurts.

Boycott all Iranian products and services. Reduce them to the level of North Korea. Bring the economy to collapse.

From Wikipedia:

"In July 2022, the average inflation rate rose 40.5% while the inflation rate for food and beverages alone rose 87%.[137][138]Iran's banking system is "chronically weak and undercapitalised" according to Nordea Bank Abp,[45] holding billions of dollars of non-performing loans,[46] and the private sector remains "anemic".[45] The unofficial Iranian rial to US dollar exchange rate, which had plateaued at 40,000 to one in 2017, has fallen 120,000 to one as of November 2019.[47] Iran's economy has a relatively low rating in the Heritage Foundation's "Index of Economic Freedom" (164 out of 180);[48][45] and ease of doing business ranking (127 among 190) according to the World Bank.[49] Critics have complained that privatization has led not to state owned businesses being taken over by "skilled businesspeople" but by the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps "and its associates".[139] In 2020, an Iranian businessperson complained to a foreign journalist (Dexter Filkins) that the uncertainty of "chronic shortages of material and unruly inspectors pushing for bribes" made operating his business very difficult -- "Plan for the next quarter? I can't plan for tomorrow morning."[139]"

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Iran

The same goes for Afghanistan too.

Boycott mediaeval monsters.

Atefeh Rajabi Sahaaleh (September 21, 1987 – August 15, 2004) was an Iranian girl from the town of Neka who was executed a week after being sentenced to death by Haji Rezai, head of Neka's court, on charges of adultery and crimes against chastity after being repeatedly raped.

[haliho123-blog]

DeSantis. Who needs friends when you’re an instrument of the divine? - Raw Story - Celebrating 19 Years of Independent Journalism

[compacflt]

For the anon who just wrote in asking about mil lit and my recs. Would also add to this list some books i read this summer— “the forever war” by Dexter filkins about our Middle East campaigns, really excellent, and Lawrence wright’s “the looming tower: Al-qaeda and the road to 9/11.” Again another larry wright book not necessarily mil related but simply required reading if you want to understand better the landscape of modern warfare & the thought processes that led to the last 25 years of American foreign policy

I found it a lot easier to start with military FICTION first so i could see what I found interesting, and then read nonfiction about that interesting stuff for me personally. Fiction is usually more accessible even if it is less accurate/doesn’t give the whole picture

Do you have any nonfiction that you would recommend if someone was interested in the US Navy/military?

im probably not the right person to ask this bc most of my military knowledge hyperfixation is centered on the ARMY in the American Revolutionary War & World War II. It’s only pretty recently that i got into modern warfare as a topic, so let me just give some indiscriminate recs

Can’t go wrong with David McCullough‘s 1776, which is a great overview of the first year of the revolutionary war + the extremely fraught politics of trying to start a new nation’s military—really illustrates where a bunch of lingering schools of thought in our military originated from.

Another David McCullough shout-out: his The Wright Brothers is an excellent book about the origins of flight, AND it was the book right next to the picture of Ice and Maverick shaking hands on Ice’s bookshelf in TGM. So we know ice has read that one. I think you can’t go wrong at all with any David McCullough. I own like 5-6 of his books and he hasn’t missed once. (His best is John Adams but that’s not mil related)

Ron chernows biography of Washington goes into his military background (7 years' war) a whole bunch, and kind of elucidates how truly fortunate we were to have our nation’s first leader be a military man who really kinda didn’t want to be there. Some really good takes on leadership. Just beware that chernow does have a reputation in the history community for just makin shit up sometimes. If it sounds too cute/quaint to be true, it really might be.

u may be tempted: DO NOT read Brian kilmeade's Thomas Jefferson & the Tripoli Pirates, one of the few navy NF books I've read. I read it b4 I even knew who kilmeade was--didn't matter. it fucking sucks. he uses like 7 sources in the whole book.

Stephen E. Ambrose's Citizen Soldiers is a great WWII NF book about that generation of infantrymen.

The one big Navy NF book I've read recently is (not to brag but my personally signed copy of) Craig symonds' new biography of admiral Chester Nimitz, who was COMPACFLT during WWII's war in the pacific. I got a SHIT ton of professional characterization for Ice from Nimitz' life and this book--Nimitz also worked 18 hour days, was also separated from the love of his life for long periods of time in Hawaii, was also probably acutely depressed, etc.

okay: THOMAS E. RICKS. The Generals is SUCH a good book. Army leadership from WWII up through Iraq and Afghanistan. Focusing on how the Army used to relieve (fire) commissioned officers who couldn't hack it, and that's a huge part of why we won WWII, but somewhere between WWII and Korea, being fired started being super shameful (macarthur's fault if I'm reading it correctly) so mediocre officers didn't get fired and that's why the army has suffered shit leadership in every war since WWII. It's a HUGE thesis that he backs up so well. Would so recommend. I'm also currently reading his FIASCO about the fuck-up of Iraq. Also incredible so far.

Michael O'Hanlon's Military History for the Modern Strategist-- a post Civil War survey of military strategy on the campaign/operational level. Might be a good introduction to US military history, just giving a pretty broad overview of post-CW warfare, so that way you don't pick up a random book about the Korean War and go "wait what was the Chosin campaign again?" Interestingly written and I got to meet him and he wrote "wishing you the best" in my book after I told him I wanted to steal his job at Brookings someday, so admittedly I'm biased.

Lawrence Wright's The Terror Years: From Al-Qaeda to the Islamic State is not strictly military related, but it is one of the best-written and most illuminating nonfiction books I've ever read and I cannot recommend it enough.

For war fiction, my taste is v mainstream: Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy, Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato (imo better than the things they carried), Ahmed Saadawi's Frankenstein in Baghdad, Kevin Powers' The Yellow Birds, Cannot Miss Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front if you haven't read it, Hassan Blasim's The Corpse Exhibition: And Other Stories of Iraq... For specifically Naval lit: Run Silent, Run Deep is a pretty good classic, and this summer I read the 600-page behemoth The Caine Mutiny, which is about specifically WWII-era naval law... it's a brick. But it won a pulitzer and it's...passable. Kind of interesting at least.

[nprfreshair]

Secretary Mattis is really sober about this, and he said if there is a war with North Korea, it will bring the worst casualties and the worst bloodshed that any of us have ever known in our lifetimes.

Dexter Filkins, speaking with Terry Gross today, on Rex Tillerson, North Korea, and the understaffed State Department 

[inluces]

I felt it then. Darting, out of reach. You go into these places and they are overrated, they are not nearly as dangerous as people say. Keep your head, keep the gunfire in front of you. You get close and come out unscathed every time, your face as youthful and as untroubled as before. The life of a reporter: always someone else's pain. A woman in an Iraqi hospital cradles her son newly blinded, and a single tear rolls down her cheek. The cheek is so dry and the tear moves so slowly that you focus on it for a while, the tear traveling across the wide desert plain. Your photographer needed a corpse for the newspaper, so you and a bunch of marines went out to get one. Then suddenly it's there, the warm liquid on your face, the death you've always avoided, smiling back at you like it knew all along. Your fault.

The Forever War, Dexter Filkins

[unpaesesospeso]

Guerra per sempre, di Dexter Filkins, recensione di un classico

Guerra per sempre, di Dexter Filkins, recensione di un classico

Come tutti i classici, sebbene inserito in un determinato momento storico, quello delle guerre in Afghanistan e Iraq dopo l’11 Settembre, questo libro parla agli uomini di ogni tempo, denunciando l’orrore e l’insensatezza di ogni guerra.

Dexter Filkins è stato corrispondente del New York Times sul campo, questi sono i suoi taccuini. Il suo stile, tipicamente anglosassone, è essenziale, rapido…

[saltphil]

Dexter Filkins’s The Forever War is aptly titled for a memoir that narrates the waves of death that washed over Iraq and Afghanistan in this new century. Readers today might be surprised to learn that the book was published in 2006. Filkins worked as a conflict journalist for the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times first in Afghanistan (from 1999 to 2003) and then in Iraq (from 2003 to 2005).  The book is a masterly crafted man-on-the-scene account of what the words “civil war” actually mean.

[whileiamdying]

Iran Detains Its Most Celebrated Actress

Taraneh Alidoosti is the latest prominent figure to be arrested, as the regime faces the most serious challenge to its rule since it took power in 1979.

By Dexter Filkins December 18, 2022

📸 On Saturday, Taraneh Alidoosti was taken from her home by officers from an unidentified agency, after she denounced the government for executing the protester Mohsen Shekari.Julie Sebadelha / Getty 

The Iranian government’s campaign to crush a nationwide revolt reached one of its most famous actresses Saturday, with the arrest and detention of Taraneh Alidoosti, a beloved movie star known internationally for her role in the 2016 Oscar-winning film “The Salesman.” Alidoosti was taken from her home, in Tehran, by local authorities, after she denounced the government for its execution, earlier this month, of a young protester, Mohsen Shekari. In a posting on her now-deleted Instagram page, which had eight million followers, Alidoosti wrote, referring to Shekari’s killing, that “every international organization who is watching this bloodshed and not taking action, is a disgrace to humanity.”

irna, the Iranian state news agency, confirmed Alidoosti’s arrest, saying that she was unable to provide documents to substantiate her public claims against the government. But the dispatch provided no details of her whereabouts or the crime, if there was one, with which she was being charged. “We absolutely have no idea where she is at the moment,’’ a friend, who requested anonymity, told me by telephone.

Alidoosti, who is thirty-eight, is one of the most prominent figures to be arrested in the protests, which began in September after the death of Mahsa Amini, a twenty-two-year-old Kurdish woman. Amini, who had been arrested by the state morality police for improperly wearing her hijab, the hair covering required of adult females, was beaten in a police van, according to witnesses. (Iranian authorities deny this.) Following Amini’s death, Iranians across the country flooded the streets, first to protest her murder, then to denounce the hijab, then to call for an end to the regime. The demonstrations, now in their fourth month, pose the most serious challenge to the Iranian regime’s rule since it took power following the revolution in 1979. At least four hundred people have been killed so far and thousands more arrested, according to human-rights groups.

Alidoosti, who has a nine-year-old daughter, is a leading figure in Iran’s internationally respected movie industry; her arrest is a measure of how thoroughly Iran’s leaders appear to have lost the support of the population. She is perhaps best known for her role in “The Salesman,’’ which won the 2017 Academy Award for best international feature. “She’s a hugely respected actress,’’ Nazanin Boniadi, a British Iranian actress and activist who appeared in “Homeland” and “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” told me. “The significance of someone of her stature being arrested is that it shows how fearful the regime is of artists, because they have a galvanizing effect on the population.’’

When the protests began, Alidoosti paused her acting work to focus on supporting the protest movement. Her actions grew increasingly defiant; last month, she posted a photo of herself on Instagram in which she posed without a hijab and held a placard saying “Woman, Life, Freedom” in Kurdish—the motto of the protests. It was not Alidoosti’s first foray into the political arena; she has also been active in calling out sexual harassment in the movie industry, engaging through a group known as 800 Women. Alidoosti’s friend said, “Taraneh has always used her voice to echo the voice of the Iranian people.’’

Alidoosti is the latest of several artists to be arrested and jailed by the Iranian regime, whose senior ranks are dominated by bearded elderly men. Among those arrested are Saman Yasin, a Kurdish rap artist, who has since been sentenced to death; Hossein Mohamadi, a stage actor, also reportedly sentenced to death; and Toomaj Salehi, a rap artist. Katayoun Riahi, an actress, was arrested in November; two months prior, she had told an interviewer in London that “imprisoning people has become useless, because Iran itself has become a prison.”

Other well-known Iranians denounced the regime, including Sardar Azmoun, a star soccer player for Bayer Leverkusen, the German football club; in September, he wrote on Instagram, “Shame on you for easily killing the people and viva women of Iran!”

Though the protests have mostly been peaceful, Iran’s clerical leaders have struggled to contain them. As the demonstrations have carried on, the regime’s tactics have grown more savage. In addition to hundreds of people killed by security forces, the government put Shekari to death earlier this month, the first execution of a protester. Iranian authorities said he had attacked a member of the security forces with a machete. Shekari was tried and convicted in a judicial proceeding in which he was denied access to his own lawyer; as a result, it was impossible to know whether the charges had any veracity at all. Boniadi, the actress and activist, said: “There’s no justice involved here.” ♦