Month: May 2014

Ask Elyn Saks Anything: The Stigma Of Mental Illness

In another video from MacArthur “Genius Grant” winner Elyn Saks, she identifies the ways society often fails those with mental illness, especially when it comes to stereotypes and name-calling:

In a followup, Saks pushes back on the popular idea that mental illness somehow always leads to violent behavior:

More about Saks:

Elyn Saks is an expert in mental health law and a winner of the Mac­Arthur Foundation Fellowship, which she used to create the Saks Institute for Mental Health Law, Policy, and Ethics. She is also Associate Dean and Orrin B. Evans Professor of Law, Psychology, and Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at the University of Southern California Gould Law School. Saks lives with schizophrenia and has chronicled her experience with the illness in her award-winning, best-selling autobiography, The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness.

Update from a reader, who points to a transcript of a TED talk by Saks:

Immediately after the appointment with Kaplan, I went to see Dr. Marder, a schizophrenia expert who was following me for medication side effects. He was under the impression that I had a mild psychotic illness. Once in his office, I sat on his couch, folded over, and began muttering. ‘Head explosions and people trying to kill. Is it okay if I totally trash your office?’ ‘You need to leave if you think you’re going to do that,’ said Marder.

(Archive)

An Effort To Eradicate Education, Ctd

Zack Beauchamp shares the latest from Nigeria:

According to a video made public on May 12, Abubakar Shekau, [Boko Haram’s] leader, demanded an unspecified number of Boko Haram prisoners held by the Nigerian government, possibly all of them, be released in exchange for the girls’ freedom. Political science research on hostage-taking suggests Boko Haram may well succeed at getting a ransom, and some reports say the Nigerian government is already negotiating.

Before this video, Shekau threatened to sell the girls into slavery, chillingly promising that “by Allah, I will sell them in the marketplace.” Shekau’s threat is not idle. Unverified reports suggest that several of the children have already been sold to Boko Haram fighters as “brides” for around $12. West Africa has one of the world’s largest per capita concentrations of enslaved people; there are human trafficking routes that extend into Niger and Cameroon (the latter of which isn’t in West Africa), countries to which Boko Haram has easy access. A lot of the people trafficked in and around Nigeria are children.

Lanre Ola reports that there has been “no immediate reaction from authorities,” while Frank Gardner observes that the US has sent teams of “highly experienced hostage negotiators” to Nigeria. Meanwhile, Nina Strochlic notes that Boko Haram had been terrorizing children for years before the West started paying attention:

[I]n 2012, the organization’s leaders concluded that obliterating the already weak education system would be a valuable means to their end. That year, Boko Haram began burning school buildings to the ground to keep children out of school. At one point 10 schools were incinerated in as many days. …  In June 2013, the campaign against schools had turned into violence against children. “When no one took them seriously, they became very angry and so began to attack students and teachers for not listening to them,” Obaji says. Schools were no longer destroyed in the dead of night—they were attacked when class was in session.

Over the course of just two days last June, 16 students and two teachers were murdered. That summer, Boko Haram leader Shekau pledged to continue burning educational institutions and killing educators. According to an Amnesty International report, at least 50 schools were targeted in the state of Borno that year and more than 100 students were killed or wounded, with some attacks claiming dozens of casualties. The campaign seemed to achieve the terrorists’ goals of banishing education – schools closed and an estimated 15,000 children, both Muslim and Christian, were kept from attending class.

At the same time, Lola Ogunnaike suggests that Nigeria’s internal divisions may be at least partly to blame for the government’s sluggish response to the kidnapping:

Several people that I spoke with believe the government would’ve been quicker to react if the students were abducted from a school catering to the Lagos elite. “If this had happened to rich kids in Lagos, the country would have been shut down until they were found,” said the development manager. “But then again, what truly rich kid goes to school in Nigeria after the age of 10?  From 10 on, they’re schooled abroad in London. And that’s the problem. The divide between the haves and the have-nots is so great that the elite never feel these things directly. And until the elite feel it directly, it’s going to be really difficult to motivate these people to action.”

Rana Foroohar, reporting on the World Economic Forum’s recent conference in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, elaborates on those divisions:

Just a few weeks ago, the World Bank “rebased” Nigerian GDP numbers to account for the fact that old calculations weren’t taking into account new industries like telecoms and Nollywood. The result was that Nigerian GDP grew by 89 percent overnight, making the country the largest economy in Africa, trumping South Africa. … Yet unemployment is still high and inequality even higher. Half of Nigerians live in poverty, despite vast oil and gas wealth. In fact, that’s one reason that many prominent citizens say that Boko Haram has gained a foothold in the country. Some Nigerians are getting wealthy, but there aren’t jobs for enough of them, particularly given that over 50 percent of the population is under 18 years old. That’s exactly the kind of demographic and economic combination that bred the Arab Spring uprisings.

Previous Dish on the kidnappings here, here, here, here, and here.

Like A Gay Sonic Boom, Ctd

Mary Elizabeth Williams reflects on Sam’s kiss with his boyfriend:

In his new Visa spot, Sam defiantly asks fans to “Judge me for what I do on the field.” But that very message acknowledges that his place in sports will always be defined both on and off it. Like other public figures, he’ll be watched and scrutinized for his private life and his relationships. That kiss – and the room full of supporters – invited the world to see Michael Sam as he is, both as a player and a man. He’s not going to play it down for the comfort of anybody else – and this is important. It’s important because it’s the answer to everybody who argues that they don’t have a problem with gay people, but you know, they just prefer them not to be quite so “open and avowed” about it.

While that kiss might not do anything to open the hearts of the crazy YouTube ranters, it is a big step toward tolerance and equality. So if you’ve somehow managed to successfully avert your eyes for too long, or think that gay people are fine as long as they’re not being gay in front of you, go ahead and look. It’s not scary or strange. This is love. This is celebration. This is normal.

Here’s what that embrace and kiss meant to me. It meant that Sam is not afraid, and neither is Vito, his boyfriend. There are no double standards here or special exceptions. If Sam were with a girlfriend, the scene would be utterly banal, if still beautiful. It helps that they are so young – because they are not yet old enough to have their minds clogged with qualifications, warnings, worries. They just respond as two people in love. In that moment, the hug matters more than the kiss; and the faces more than the hug. Look at Vito in the video as he waits for and absorbs the news. The anxiety, the trepidation, the concern for his partner: this is what love looks like.

Then there is the interracial aspect.

The love between a black man and a white man punches a hole through the wall of racism, just as the love of a black man and a white woman or a white man and a black woman. And it punches it with love. There is way too much embedded racism in the gay community, way too much lingering homophobia among African-Americans, and way too much sexual-racial segregation all around. Breaking these impulses down is the work of culture, not law, and as such, it’s life that helps move us forward, not politics. By showing us a simple, obvious love affair across race and within gender, Vito and Michael strip us down to a deeper human identity.

It helps too that this was not a staged kiss. It was incidental to something else: a rite of passage for a football player. And that’s the best way to glimpse love – in passing. It’s always more authentic that way. And it shows too, I think, that it’s not quite right to say that love knows no boundaries. There are boundaries everywhere – class, race, religion, gender, language, geography and on and on. And they are real and daunting at times. But love is uniquely capable of piercing those boundaries in a fundamental way. When it does so, even once, in front of all of us, it creates just a little more breathing space for more people to be more fully human, to be more fully themselves. And I think this is increasingly not lost on straight people. They see that the gay rights movement is not about gays as such, but about humanity. Not just gay potential – but our collective human potential.

Meanwhile, Nate Silver admits he was wrong to assume that Michael Sam “would be chosen by a team like the Patriots or the Seahawks or the San Francisco 49ers that play in an urban area especially tolerant toward gay people.” Why he thinks “St. Louis was probably the best fit all along”:

Interest in the Tigers [the University of Missouri football team, which Sam played on,]  is about 50 times higher in Missouri than in the rest of the country, according to the number of Google searches. In other words, a higher percentage of people in St. Louis and elsewhere in Missouri will know of Sam as a football player and not just as a gay athlete. Here’s hoping that helps him to concentrate on what he does best.

Ian Crouch points out that Sam’s “spot on the Rams is far from assured”:

Seventh-round picks are never locks to make the final roster, and it appears that Sam will be competing for a place on special teams, rather than as an everyday starter. In February, when he came out, Sam had been projected as somewhere near a third-round pick. But there were concerns that he was too small to be lineman in the pros, and his performance at the draft combine left scouts doubtful of his ability to play the smaller position of linebacker, which requires speed as well as strength. His new coach, Jeff Fisher, spoke about his team’s commitment to fair treatment, but was plain about Sam’s prospects: “It’s not going to be easy. We’re too deep at defensive end. But he deserves a chance.”

Robert Silverman agrees that this will be a challenge:

 He’s going to have to carve out a roster spot on what is generally considered the best defensive line in pro football, featuring stars Robert Quinn and Chris Long, an emerging talent in Michael Brookers, and fellow Rams draftee, Aaron Donald, the 13th player chosen in the 1st round.

Jazz Shaw adds that “if this guy were any other regular player coming out of the college ranks, nobody would exactly faint from shock if he wound up without a team on opening day this fall.” He worries about the reaction should that happen:

Like many, many other young hopefuls, the chance is not only real but fairly high that he might not make the cut and the Rams will have to turn him loose to free agency, where his prospects may not look much better. But now he’s captured media lightning in a bottle. If he is cut, will the immediate howls begin across the small screen Left side blogs, claiming that the Rams’ ownership must all be hateful homophobes? Will boycotts be organized? Will this be held up from the highest ramparts as yet another example of the heteronormative patriarchy keeping the gay man down?

Or will people understand that the Rams are there to try to win another Superbowl and they can’t afford even one weak link in the chain?

Meanwhile, Sam jerseys are selling like hotcakes:

Orders for Michael Sam’s St. Louis Rams jerseys were the second-highest of any NFL rookie drafted this weekend. … “This is unprecedented for a Day 3 pick, let alone a seventh round pick, to crack the top five rookies sold following Draft weekend,” said NFL spokesperson Joanna Hunter.

Quote For The Day

“When I give talks about interrogations and torture, people always ask me why I have a problem with it. I understand – I was all for torture right after 9/11. I would have tortured the hijackers myself if they were still alive, and if I had been able to find them. I wasn’t thinking very rationally. Then I started learning about terrorism and I met the people who had been tortured, and I realized how wrong I was – and naïve. Believing in torture means you aren’t looking at the facts on the ground–you are just believing in some kind of fantasy about how to fix the world,” – Tara McKelvey, author of Monstering: Inside America’s Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War.

Yes, that’s exactly the right adjective to describe Dick Cheney, beneath all the blather and bullshit: naïve.

Putin’s Euro-Nightmare, Ctd

Anti-gay Russians are upset about the Eurovision victory of bearded drag queen Conchita Wurst:

Some of the most vitriolic posts online have involved men sharing photographs of themselves shaving in protest against Wurst. Rapper Aleksandr Stepanov, known as “ST,” uploaded to Instagram pictures of him shaving, with the message, “I pass the baton,” and the hashtag, “Prove that you’re not Conchita” (#докажичтотынекончита). Anton Korobkov, a popular pro-Kremlin blogger, also posted a “selfie” while shaving.

A tweet example of the bizarre shaving protest:

Russian officials are joining in the homophobia:

Nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky told Rossiya-1 state television: “There’s no limit to our outrage. It’s the end of Europe. It has turned wild. They don’t have men and women any more. They have ‘it’.

“Fifty years ago the Soviet army occupied Austria. We made a mistake in freeing Austria. We should have stayed.”

Alrighty then. Some Russians want to boycott the competition:

In what would surely be a historic retreat from Europe—and a flagrant breach of continental norms—several Russian organizations are calling for a boycott of Eurovision 2014. This because, in the words of St. Petersburg legislator Vitaly Milonov, Eurovision has become a “Europe-wide gay parade.”

But this is far from a consensus view. Alan Renwick calculates the points awarded to Austria by country:

[D]ifferences in popular attitudes seem to be much less marked than the overall points suggest.  Only one country – Estonia – put Austria lower than fifth in the popular vote.  Conchita ranked within the top three not just in most of western Europe, but also in Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia.  The average points she would have won had only the popular votes counted would have been 8.0 in the former Soviet Union excluding the Baltics, 7.3 in the other former communist countries, and 10.0 in the rest.  So the differences are really quite small.

Donetsk And Luhansk “Vote” For “Independence”

Jamie Dettmer reports on the plebiscites that pro-Russian separatists held in eastern Ukraine yesterday:

The separatists used all the now familiar techniques—including weeks of armed and thuggish intimidation, the abductions and murder of opponents, multiple voting, pre-filled ballot papers, adding names to an incomplete electoral roll and allowing anyone who turned up at a polling station with a Ukrainian passport in hand to cast a ballot.

In the circumstances the separatists were restrained with their referendum result: an 89 percent majority for secession and 10 percent against on a 74.7 percent turnout. A Soviet-style majority but not as unabashed as Crimea’s supposed 97 percent secession triumph in March.

In neighboring Luhansk, one of the poorest Ukrainian regions, where similar plebiscite tactics have been employed, the leader there, Valery Bolotov, at least had the decency to appear to go through the motions of actually counting votes, and so a result will be declared later Monday. No one is in doubt about which way that vote will go, either. Luhansk separatists hint their turnout was even higher yesterday—79 percent.

Separatist leaders in both regions are now saying they will not participate in the presidential elections scheduled for May 25 and will seek to become part of Russia:

Denis Pushilin, the self-styled governor of the “People’s Republic of Donetsk” said the presidential election “will not happen” in the Donetsk region, AFP news agency reported. A separatist leader from Luhansk also said the presidential vote will not be held in the region. “As of today, we are now the Republic of Luhansk, which  believes it to be inappropriate and perhaps even stupid to hold a presidential election,” Russia’s RIA news agency quoted him as saying. …

Only Russia is likely to recognise the “People’s Republic of Donetsk” and the Kremlin has already said it “respects the expression of the people’s will” there. On Monday, however, the Kremlin made it clear that Moscow has no intention of immediately annexing the regions. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s office urged the Ukrainian government to engage in talks with representatives of eastern Ukraine that could be brokered by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The referendum results, of course, contrast sharply with independent polling:

A poll released last week by Pew Research found that 70 percent of respondents in the east – and 58 percent of Russian-speaking eastern respondents – wanted Ukraine to remain whole. Only 18 percent of easterners, and 27 percent of eastern Russian-speakers, said the eastern regions should be allowed to secede.

The Pew findings appear to roughly match an April poll on attitudes in southeastern Ukraineconducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS). Both found high dissatisfaction with Kiev’s governance, but little appetite for outright independence.

Sunday’s referendums only took place in the two easternmost regions of Ukraine. The two earlier polls considered attitudes in a much larger portion of eastern Ukraine – 11 regions by Pew, eight by KIIS. However, for the referendum results to square with the earlier polls, support for secession would have to be miniscule outside of the Lugansk and Dontesk regions.

But Berman notices that the international press has covered the votes as though they were legitimate:

Ukraine rebels hold referendums in Donetsk and Luhansk, says the BBC. Ukraine: pro-Russia separatists set for victory in eastern region referendum, is how the Guardian reports such a shocking prospect. Ukraine regions hold sovereignty vote, announces the Boston Globe. Ukraine’s eastern regions vote on self-rule, notes the Hindu. As for coverage of the results, Yahoo was big offender with its headline, Voters Turn Their Backs on Ukraine, given that we have little more idea of what the voters in the region want than we did a week ago.

Notice anything? Regardless of the content of the articles, the basic presumption has been to note the controversy about the referendums, provide several interviews with yes voters, and maybe note for a second or two the glaring problems with the process, which the Guardian sneaks into the middle of it’s piece. Nonetheless, the vast majority of the coverage has taken the referendums seriously as a major event, even though in many of the cities such as Mariupol, the rebels only control a single building, and had only four ballot boxes set up for a city of 500,000.

Bershidsky looks at the bigger picture:

It’s not the referendums or the Russian military threat that Ukraine, and its Western neighbors, should worry about now. Moscow sympathizes with the rebellion, but deposed president Viktor Yanukovych’s friends need it much more than Putin needs another headache. In an interview with Russia’s state-owned Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Pavel Gubarev, one of the rebels’ leaders, unexpectedly accused many of his comrades-in-arms of taking money from Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man and a long-time Yanukovych ally. Politicians from Yanukovych’s Regions Party have recently stepped up calls for the withdrawal of Kiev’s troops from eastern Ukraine. The losers of last winter’s revolution are hoping to turn the east into a successful version of the Vendee, the province that rose up against the Great Revolution in France in 1793.

Kiev needs to concentrate on counteracting that.

The Wrongful Convictions We Can’t Test For

John R. Lott Jr. defends the death penalty partially on the grounds that “DNA evidence has improved its accuracy in trials over the past couple of decades, as it has become more commonly used.” Balko counters that “it’s a mistake to look at DNA testing as a panacea”:

[DNA testing] isn’t relevant in the vast majority of criminal cases, so we can’t rely on it to catch our mistakes. It’s really more of a wake-up call. Death penalty supporters who say we can just sit back and rely on DNA testing to save us are putting forth a dangerous proposition. At some point, we’ll either have found all of the wrongful convictions that can be exposed by DNA testing, or the remaining wrongly convicted in those cases will all have died. From that point forward, we won’t hear about exonorations nearly as often. DNA testing will go a long way toward preventing wrongful convictions, but — and this is important — only in the small set of cases for which DNA testing is dispositive.

Here’s the scary part: If we haven’t fixed the problems with the criminal justice system by then, we’ll continue to have the same rate of wrongful convictions in non-DNA cases that we have today. But at that point, we’ll be much more likely to plod along with a false sense of confidence, because we’ll no longer have a transcendent technology to remind us that we sometimes get it wrong.