Month: May 2014

by Jonah Shepp

With less than a week to go before Ukraine attempts to elect a new president, Putin claims that he has ordered Russian troops to pull away from the borders—again:

The president made a similar pronouncement on May 7, which was met with the same skepticism by global leaders when NATO officials on the ground said that there appeared to be no reduction in troops. Now, also, an unnamed NATO officer told Reuters that “We haven’t seen any movement to validate (the report).” But this time, it seems that Putin may have an actual incentive to ease some pressure off of its neighbor. According to the New York Times, one candidate running for office in Kiev has caught the Kremlin’s attention, and could become something of an ally if he is voted the country’s next president. Petro Poroshenko, a wealthy pro-Western candidate who has business interests in Russia, is now a favorite to win the May 25 election.

The Dish took a look at Poroshenko last month here. Previewing the elections, Erik Herron wonders whether Kiev will be able to pull them off:

The May 11 “referendums” held in Donetsk and Luhansk further complicate the implementation of presidential elections. Polling places and election equipment (e.g., ballot boxes) were commandeered by groups conducting the vote, and some separatists have indicated that they will not permit the presidential election to take place.

Large-scale violent demonstrations in the cities of Odesa and Mariupol, as well as active combat between separatist and pro-government forces in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, threatens the security of citizens who want to participate in the polls and threats are likely to further undermine turnout. Based on data from the last presidential election, impediments to voting in Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk alone could affect around 5 million voters, or 20 percent of the voting population. These regions border other large population areas, and if instability spreads, the impact on the voting-age population could be intensified.

Joshua Yaffa expects the pro-Russian separatists to attempt to sabotage the elections, but doubts they will be successful:

The separatists have enough fighters to disrupt voting and keep some polling stations from opening, especially in areas where they’re strong such as the military stronghold of Slaviansk. But they lack the numbers to take over every school, cultural center, and administrative building where voting will occur. They will probably focus on preemptive intimidation, targeting electoral officials and other local administrators for threats and attacks. In Luhansk, for example, separatist fighters kidnapped an election commissioner. Voting day may be a flashpoint for violence, because pro-Kiev paramilitary groups are expected to deploy to ensure voting while anti-Kiev fighters may fan out to do the opposite. Civilians could be the ones who suffer, as they did on May 11 during the separatist referendum, when a pro-Kiev battalion of unclear authority fired into an angry crowd in Krasnoarmeysk, killing two people.

In any event, the threat of war is being taken very seriously. In Kiev, David Patrikarakos reports that “the atmosphere has darkened”:

Maidan remains cosmetically militarised—ringed by barricades of tyres and sandbags – but it has become little more than a tourist trap, selling souvenirs of the revolution to the trickle of foreigners who still visit. Now the barricades are being reinforced and expanded. On 5 May, access into the square via a neighbouring street was controlled by a blonde militia girl of no more than 17, who manned a makeshift gate allowing vehicles access in and out. The armoured personnel carrier parked incongruously in the middle of the street—which some of the more enterprising militiamen had been charging people 50 hryvnias a turn to sit in and have their photo taken—was being cleaned and tested.

Both sides are adopting a war mentality, the most obvious—and ominous—aspect of which is the dehumanisation of the enemy. Pro-Russians describe the Odessa fire as “inhumanity … last seen by the Nazis in the Second World War,” while the more extreme pro-Ukrainian elements post memes that mock those who died. A collective psychosis, born of machismo and paranoia and fuelled by rumour, is taking hold. The latest story gaining traction in the capital is that thousands of Russians—solitary males of military age—have begun to appear in Kyiv, renting rooms and just waiting. “Let them come,” says Maksym, my wiry and intense landlord. “I’ve got body armour and I’m cleaning all my guns.”

And, in Odessa, Kirchick profiles Brighter Future for Ukraine, a recently formed civil defense group that opposes both Russian intervention and the new government:

Given the 40,000 or so Russian troops still amassed on Ukraine’s eastern border, and the active subversion efforts aimed at destabilizing the government, I ask the men why they have not joined the Ukrainian military or national guard. “There is no real chain of command in the army,” Baba tells me. They have helped the government as necessary, like when, last month, they captured, an alleged spy with a Russian passport and dozens of bank cards (purportedly for paying provocateurs). They turned him over to the Ukrainian intelligence service. But their aversion to signing up for their country’s defense forces goes beyond mere disappointment with organizational dysfunction, and strikes at the heart of why they established parallel structures to carry out what should be state functions in the first place. “So-called state leaders are not interested in the state,” Baba says.

Recent Dish on the crisis in Ukraine here, here, and here.

by Katie Zavadski

Picky-eating adults (or PEAs) count the likes of Anderson Cooper among their ranks. Hilary Pollack infiltrated one of their online communities:

As a non-PEA, it can be difficult not to pass judgments on those who are basically encouraging a mother to shrug and supply her son with a diet entirely of gluten and sugar. But why do we care what other people eat, especially those who have such strong convictions about it that they’d rather risk becoming a pariah than try a bite of zucchini? It’s difficult to imagine that anyone would choose such an affliction.

Group founder Bob K. assures another exasperated parent with some resigned but hopeful food for thought:

“In most cases … hypnotherapy will fail.  What we have is very hard to overcome.  The good news [is that] many people that have [this issue] are gifted in other ways, and there is no reason to not have a very happy life with it.”

This may be true, but one of the more difficult parts of being a PEA—and one that they lament together with knowing words of encouragement and empathy—is the ongoing struggle with romantic relationships. Some are in happy marriages, but many others report being rejected by potential partners again and again for their seeming stubbornness. The more experienced PEAs of the group adamantly insist on being upfront about it on the first date, lest it come out as a “secret” weeks or months into a relationship. And universally, if they’re forced to choose between a babe and their French fries, the fries will prevail. Conversion is not an option, but maybe finding a kindred spirit is. And nobody wants to be lonely.

by Patrick Appel

Plumer provides five maps that illustrate the severity of the drought:

This isn’t a one-year event: at least half of the United States has faced drought on and off since 2012 — at the peak in July 2013, some 81 percent of the country was experiencing at least some level of drought. …Put together, the 2012-14 drought has been one of North America’s biggest since the costly 1988-89 drought.

In response, Philip Bump argues that “the current level of national drought isn’t remarkable” given that “half the country has been in drought for half of the weeks since January 2000.” What is unusual:

The actual problem right now is noted by Plumer, a little further down. “[E]very single part of California is now facing ‘severe,’ ‘extreme,’ or ‘exceptional’ drought,” he writes, “the first time that’s happened in the [Drought Monitor]’s 15-year history.” The drought is substantially worse than past droughts. That’s the problem. And that is exactly what we’d expect to see in a warming world.

William Cowan urges Californians to remember that their state is just as prone to floods as it is to drought, writing that “may be no better moment than the dry present to remember the extraordinary washout of 1862, which brought what was likely the most expansive flooding in the recorded history of America’s West”:

Aridity is the norm here, but it is only part of the story. Despite its reputation for perpetual sunshine, Southern California may face as great a risk from cataclysmic flooding as any other major metropolitan region in the United States. Its geologic history tells us so. Massive floods might be the exception, and yet, these events have factored into California’s history for millennia. Whether it is cyclical, the product of a changing climate or some frightening combination of both, extremes of weather, flood, and drought appear to be occurring with more regularity. We fear how dry we are now, but we will be wet again. And we should be prepared for that, too.

On that note, John Upton warns that the next El Niño could hurt the global food supply:

A dinosaurian belch of warm water thousands of miles wide has appeared at the surface of the Pacific Ocean near the equator. The warming ocean conditions have spurred NOAA to project a two-thirds chance that an El Niño will form by summer’s end. It’s tipped to be of the monster variety—the extreme type that could become more common with global warming. Because the planet has warmed since the last extreme El Niño, some 17 years ago, there are fears that these warm waters could herald record-shattering extreme weather and temperatures.

For a sense of the type of havoc that extreme El Niños can wreak, think back to the late 1990s, or to the early 1980s, when widespread flooding and droughts plagued every inhabited continent, bleaching corals, ravaging wildlife, and killing tens of thousands of people. And as you mull over those disturbing memories of yore, chew on a sandwich—and savor it, for the weather that’s forecast to strike us could make that bread harder to get.

by Chris Bodenner

Such as this one:

As a man, one of the benefits of strict condom usage is that it allows me to fake an orgasm at will. Sometimes it’s because I’m insecure about achieving a real orgasm or avoid a partner’s insecurities (altruistic). From conversations with other men I know I’m not the only one, and yet in the wider culture the male-faked orgasm is invisible.

Another reader:

The Science of Faking It and Starting With Sex lead me to wonder, given some past blog posts, that you might open up a thread on men who fake orgasms. To encourage that, I thought I’d share the two times in my life that I’ve done so.

I’m a straight male in my late 20s, and each time I faked an orgasm it was with a girl I met and went to bed with without actually getting to know too well. Condoms are essential to that sort of thing. First time was when I brought home a girl who shouted so much (from the moment of penetration) that my roommate with whom I shared a wall walked out of the apartment and loudly slammed the door, which was such a terrific embarrassment that I essentially just quit the whole matter, faked a spasm or three in the rod, and told her I’d had it and was too tired to go on.

Second time was about four years later, when I left a terrible party and wound up at a bar nearby, met an extremely attractive woman who took me home with her. But she was completely un-participatory in bed. Up too late, and having had well enough to drink, I gave up on trying to please someone who obviously wasn’t interested in the first place. Faked a few spasms, then went to the bathroom to flush the evidence that I’d enjoyed it as much as she apparently had, and then went on to make a fool of myself by continuing to contact her and see her over the next few weeks, before she stopped talking to me. I’d say who could blame her, but I’d imagine that meeting a thoroughly disinterested partner is not a thing that is limited to gender.

Best I can say is that a man faking an orgasm is a method of saving face for both parties.

by Jonah Shepp

After anti-China protests in Hanoi escalated into rioting and arson last week, Per Liljas reports on the aftermath of Beijing’s latest provocation in the South China Sea:

Two Chinese passenger ships arrived early on Monday at the central-Vietnamese port of Vung Ang to evacuate Chinese nationals, who are fearing for their safety after anti-Chinese riots last week saw foreign businesses attacked, two Chinese killed and about 140 people injured. More than 3,000 Chinese have already been helped to leave the country following protests that flared up across Vietnam over a Chinese oil rig that is drilling in waters claimed by both sides. Beijing has announced a 4.8-km exclusion zone around the rig, and Hanoi claims that there are 119 Chinese vessels in the area, including warships.

Public protests are a rarity in communist Vietnam. The security forces have been deployed in Ho Chi Minh City to quell new waves of demonstrations, and mobile carriers have sent repeated texts to subscribers with a message from Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung asking people to stay away from further protests. However, small groups of peaceful protesters continued to gather on Sunday, and neither side has shown any real sign of backing down over the territorial conflict, which has revived a long-standing enmity between Beijing and Hanoi.

Zooming out, Sean Mirski analyzes the Chinese leadership’s strategic calculations:

Beijing seeks to control the South China Sea in order to manage national security threats and advance its economic objectives. The Sea represents a strategic vulnerability for China, both as a historical invasion route and as a modern threat to its energy security and export-oriented economy. Controlling the South China Sea would also offer many tangible benefits. The Sea teems with bountiful fishing stocks, a mainstay of many regional economies. Beneath the ocean floor, even more valuable assets wait. Although experts differ about the size of the potential bonanza, they all agree that there is enough petroleum and natural gas to make any bordering state covetous.

These strategic imperatives are reinforced by China’s domestic politics. … So even if China’s leaders were inclined to surrender Chinese claims in the South China Sea, they would be deterred from doing so by the inevitable domestic backlash. Instead of compromising, Beijing feels increasingly pressured by a nationalist public to act assertively in its relations with the other claimants.

Vikram Singh thinks China’s aggressiveness could backfire:

Beijing’s actions carry significant risk, and mask a tension between China’s short and long-term goals. Sailors or airmen in tense standoffs could miscalculate and spark an incident that demands military escalation. Countries like Vietnam could also decide to take a stand and choose to fight rather than give in to Chinese pressure. Yet that decision would be calamitous: the last time China and Vietnam went to war, in 1979, about 60,000 people were killed. China would not benefit from such conflict in Asia, especially if it took the blame for derailing Asia’s long run of peace and progress.

Even if it avoids war, China can overplay this hand to such a degree that Southeast Asian nations defy history and join together to resist domination by a resurgent Middle Kingdom. The 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are far from forming an alliance and have no tradition of such banding together, but ASEAN has grown stronger and is welcoming a greater U.S. role in the region, in part because of China’s assertiveness.

Zack Beauchamp assesses the likelihood of a full-blown conflict as fairly low:

The case for the possibility of war is simple: it’s happened before. In the late 70s, Vietnam aligned itself with the Soviet part of the Communist bloc rather than the Chinese one (the two had, at the time, parted political ways). China wanted to punish Vietnam for the deviationism, and they fought a somewhat pointless, but fairly bloody, war in 1979.

That’s not likely to repeat itself today. For one thing, China is exponentially more powerful than Vietnam, and so Vietnam knows risking a conflict is risking a crushing defeat. For another, China contributes a lot of money to Vietnam’s economy, particularly through tourism. Vietnam wouldn’t want to risk losing that. Finally, as [Jonathan] London notes, Vietnam’s core leadership — its general party secretary, president, and leader of the National Assembly — have a well-known pro-China tack. “Their loyalty,” London writes, “is to the enduring illusion that Beijing is a partner.”

by Tracy R. Walsh

Pediatrician Russell Saunders is alarmed by the finding that thousands of American two- and three-year-olds take medications for ADHD:

Because the behaviors that typify ADHD are common and normal in toddlers, thus contraindicating treating them with medication, there is little study on the effects of treatment at this age. However, the side effects of these drugs are well known. Among others, they include interference with sleep and suppression of appetite. Toddlers and preschoolers typically need lots of sleep, including daytime naps, so giving a medication that throws their ability to sleep into disarray is ill-advised. (Sleep deprivation can make ADHD-like behaviors even worse.) Further, they are often picky eaters under the best of circumstances, and curbing their appetite during a period of crucial growth can have a significantly negative outcome.

What’s more, using medication rather than consistently and patiently helping these children learn self-control robs them of a necessary part of cognitive development. Parents need to help their kids learn boundaries, behavioral expectations, and how to control their own impulses (I usually recommend a simple and sensible approach like “1-2-3 Magic”), and replacing this education with Ritalin does them a grave disservice with potentially long-term behavioral ramifications.

KJ Dell’Antonia notes that poor children are “disproportionally represented” among the medicated:

Medication for some toddlers can seem like a cheap and fast fix, and one that parents who are probably already struggling may welcome. Many toddlers on Medicaid live in single-parent homes, where the time to put into alternative programs may be as scarce as the programs themselves. For black parents, other considerations come into play: even in preschool, black students are more likely to be suspended; children with ADHD behaviors often find school difficult; and parents of children on Medicaid who are lucky enough to have a preschool placement for their children (particularly during working hours) may have a lot at stake if that place is lost.

It’s not hard to see what may lead a parent and a doctor to choose to medicate a toddler’s ADHD-like behaviors under those circumstances. What is difficult is addressing the vast set of inequalities that underlies this particular example of the increasingly large gap between the childhoods of low-income children and those of children whose circumstances are more fortunate. For now, we’re left with one of the ironies of income inequality: a rare instance of poor children getting more of something than they need.

Recent Dish on ADHD here.

By Jonah Shepp

Passing along this map of India’s election results, Max Fisher comments on just how big the Bharatiya Janata Party’s victory was:

We knew from polls that BJP was almost certainly going to win. And it’s been clear for a few years that the Congress Party, as India’s economy slowed and middle-class Indians suffered, was losing popularity. But the extent of orange on this map, and the dearth of blue, is just stunning. Doug Saunders, a respected international affairs columnist at the Globe and Mail, called it “one of the biggest electoral routs I’ve ever seen.”

The results aren’t completely in yet [as of Friday afternoon] and BJP has already won an outright majority of 280 out of 545 seats. Typically, several parties have to form coalitions to get a majority, so the fact that BJP has a majority all on its own is a big deal.

But Adam Ziegfeld disputes this narrative, attributing the BJP’s lopsided majority in parliament to India’s electoral system:

First, as of the most recent counting, almost 70 percent of Indians did not vote for the BJP.

Commentators such as Max Fisher at Vox claim that the BJP “dramatically … swept the vote.” In fact, the BJP won about 31 percent of the vote, a new high for the party. Although this is the first national election in which the BJP has ever won more votes than any other party, less than a third of Indians voted for it. The BJP’s legislative majority is largely a function of India’s single-member district (SMD) electoral system, the same system used in American, British, and Canadian legislative elections. In an SMD system, votes rarely translate proportionally into seats. This system rewards parties that are the largest in each electoral district. The BJP’s vote is patchily distributed across India, which works to its advantage. …

Meanwhile, in states where the BJP won few seats, it did quite poorly. Thus, relatively few of the BJP’s votes were wasted—that is, cast in electoral districts where the party ultimately failed to win a legislative seat. As a result, the party won a legislative majority on a fairly small vote share.

Taking a long look at Prime Minister-elect Narendra Modi’s career, William Dalrymple comes away with some concerns:

Today Modi remains the most polarising figure in Indian politics. Many intellectuals and urban liberals view him as an almost satanic figure pushing India towards fascism. They point to his record with dissent: journalists from the Times of India who wrote against his government had sedition charges brought against them; Rahul Sharma, a policeman who helped convict many of the 2002 rioters, had his promotion blocked (“due to misspellings”); Teesta Setalvad, the lawyer who brought riot cases against him, had charges of embezzlement slapped on her. Most sinister of all, Haren Pandya, Modi’s former home minister, who agreed to give evidence against him to an independent commission of inquiry into the riots, was first made to resign his position, then deprived of his seat and finally murdered in mysterious circumstances in 2003. Modi, the argument goes, displays all the signs of becoming an Indian Putin.

Despite his image as a successful economic reformer, John Cassidy points out that this is not a fact universally acknowledged:

Many, though not all, economists believe the Indian economy needs another wave of liberalization that builds upon the one that Singh introduced in the nineteen-nineties, when he was minister of finance. Those measures cut the budget deficit, stripped away some of the country’s infamous licensing restrictions, and made it easier for foreigners to invest in Indian companies. Jagdish Bhagwati, the Columbia University economist who is one of Modi’s most prominent supporters, has criticized Singh for not following up on these reforms during his time as Prime Minister.

It has been widely reported that Bhagwati and his Columbia colleague Arvind Panagariya, another supporter of free-market reforms, will play some role in the new Indian government. Modi, however, also has his critics in the academy. Some studies suggest that Gujarat, despite enjoying stronger than average growth, has a questionable record relative to other Indian states in reducing poverty, improving child nutrition, and promoting education and social inclusion. Last year, Amartya Sen, perhaps India’s most famous economist, came out strongly against Modi’s candidacy, criticizing his failure to protect religious minorities, and saying, “His record in education and health care is pretty bad.”

Daniel Twining sees Modi’s pro-growth agenda as good news for Indian-American ties:

The greatest momentum in U.S.-Indian relations came during the 2000s, when India was growing at rates approaching 10 percent. The growth Modi promises should restore energy to the bilateral relationship. A flourishing India undergoing vigorous reform will be a better business partner for American firms than one limping along under state socialism. A dynamic India is more likely to have the confidence to engage the United States as a diplomatic partner, rather than retreating into the old shibboleths of non-alignment and third-worldism. A surging India is also more likely to pursue the kind of activist foreign policy that makes it a shaper, rather than a victim, of world events.

But comparing Modi’s worldview with Obama’s, Tunku Varadarajan doubts the two will get chummy:

Obama and Modi are from two different planets, and each, in his heart, is likely to have vigorous contempt for the other. The former is an exquisitely calibrated product of American liberalism, ever attentive to such notions as “inclusiveness.” He is the acme of political correctness (notwithstanding the odd drone directed at “AfPak”). Modi, by contrast, is a blunt-spoken nationalist, opposed to welfare, and to the “appeasement” of minorities. …

Modi’s keenest ally—potentially his BFF—is likely to be Japan’s Shinzo Abe, who was one of the first to send his congratulations to the Indian politician when it became apparent that he would be the next prime minister. Abe and Modi are, in many ways, made for each other: Ardent nationalists yearning to break free from their respective nations’ patterns of international passivity, they both face the terrifying challenge of a China that plays by its own unyielding rules, a maximalist hegemon which has the economic and military heft to dispense with diplomacy as the primary means of dispute resolution.

And Tanvi Madan considers what issues are likely to define Modi’s foreign policy:

The relationship with Pakistan is perhaps the biggest wild card. It is not known whether Modi will essentially take the line that India needs stability in its neighborhood to ensure economic growth and development, which is the primary and perhaps sole objective for which he will have a clear public mandate. Such an assessment could mean Modi would reach out to Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and take confidence-building measures further, especially in the economic realm. There are some who think he’ll go further—in the Nixon-going-to-China vein. …

There’s a possibility that Modi will take a more hawkish line instead. This is especially likely if, in the first six months or so of his government, there is a major terrorist attack in India or on Indians abroad that can be traced to elements in Pakistan. This is not a far-fetched scenario—terrorist groups might see the period of political transition as an opportunity to derail any chance for peace. And in the event of such an attack it is unlikely that any Indian government will sit back and do nothing or essentially act in a post-Mumbai-like manner—especially if there is little cooperation from the Pakistani government.

Previous Dish on Modi and the election results here and here.