Month: August 2014

Spiking Surrogacy

by Dish Staff

Writing in the NRO, Jennifer Lahl issues a call to end surrogate motherhood:

[T]hese arrangements in my view are fraught with medical, ethical, and legal problems that affect women and the children they produce in negative ways. Take the breaking news of Baby Gammy in Thailand: The surrogate mother was carrying twins for the intended parents and did not know until late in her pregnancy that Baby Gammy had Down syndrome; allegedly the parents did not want the disabled child and asked the surrogate mother to abort the disabled fetus; the surrogate mother refused, carried the fetus to term, and is now parenting that child. Or consider the story breaking in Italy about an embryo mix-up, in which a woman just gave birth to the twins of the wrong couple; or the case of the wealthy young Japanese businessman who has fathered 13 babies via surrogacy. These stories should wake the world up to the gross human-rights abuses of women and children in the surrogate-mother industry.

Mark Joseph Stern seizes on the piece, arguing that “the larger question of surrogacy is poised to cause a catastrophic rift within the conservative movement as a whole”:

Why do some Republicans want to legalize surrogacy contracts? Easy: Straight people, including straight men, need surrogates. Although some surrogacy opponents try to frame their argument as a fundamentally anti-gay one, this is a bit of a ruse. Gay couples represent only a fraction of all potential surrogacy clients; most people in need of a surrogate are infertile straight couples. Surrogacy opponents, then, may try to capitalize on existing anti-gay animus to further their cause—but really, their hostility to the practice is tethered to their broader enmity toward modern conceptions of sexual autonomy.

This animosity toward sexual liberty is the barely stifled undercurrent of pretty much every anti-surrogacy article out there. For a fringe group of conservatives, gay marriage and abortion are just the tip of the iceberg. What truly disgusts them is the whole array of modern sexual and reproductive practices, from egg donation and IVF to divorce and remarriage. To orthodox Catholics, the widespread acceptance of assisted reproductive technologies and non-traditional families is a grotesque violation of natural law and the start of a horrifying brave new world in which technology trumps humanity.

Zooming out, Amel Ahmed notes that about 100 policymakers and activists will be meeting in The Hague this week to discuss ways to improve and standardize national laws on surrogacy:

Some nations tightly restrict surrogacy or ban it outright, while others have no surrogacy laws and provide no oversight. In the United States, some states forbid surrogacy contracts. Others, including California and Illinois, have regulations to help enforce agreements. Some countries, including India and Thailand, have fairly lax regulations and are popular destinations for parents from developed countries such as Australia and Japan who are looking for affordable surrogate mothers. In India alone, about 3,000 clinics offer surrogacy services, according to Sama, a New Delhi organization working on women’s health issues. Despite the proliferation of clinics, there is no international consensus on how to establish legal parentage in the context of surrogacy arrangements. This can leave children exposed to potential risks, including abuse and denial of citizenship.

Writing last week, Jessica Grose examined the situation in Thailand:

I asked Joan Heifetz Hollinger, an affiliate of Berkeley Law School’s Center for Reproductive Rights and Justice, if we are going to keep seeing these legal messes for decades to come. In a word, yes. … It’s a particular mess in Thailand right now, Heifetz Hollinger says, because it’s currently a boom country for surrogacy, but, in another legal gray area, surrogacy is not explicitly legal or illegal there. (In the case of Chanbua, the Thai Ministry of Public Health is now reportedly saying that by being a surrogate, she violated their human trafficking laws.) A lot of couples who had previously used Indian surrogates are now using Thai surrogates, because some Indian provinces are starting to make restrictive laws around surrogacy, doing things like banning foreign gay couples and single people from using Indian surrogates.

In Thailand, the state recognizes the surrogate as the legal mother, according to the U.S. Embassy (though, again, surrogacy isn’t exactly legal). But the biological father can be listed on the birth certificate as well – only if the surrogate is unmarried. If the surrogate is married, her husband is listed as the father. … There are no easy answers here, only questions, often ones that are so complicated that you could not make them up if you tried.

Maliki’s Last Stand

by Dish Staff

World Leaders Converge At 62nd U.N. General Assembly

Despite – or more likely, because of – the emerging consensus that it’s time for new leadership, the embattled Iraqi prime minister insists that he will remain in his post until a court orders him to vacate it:

“Holding on (to the premiership) is an ethical and patriotic duty to defend the rights of voters,” he said in his weekly televised address to the nation. “The insistence on this until the end is to protect the state.” Al-Maliki on Monday vowed legal action against President Fouad Massoum for carrying out “a coup” against the constitution. “Why do we insist that this government continue and stay as is until a decision by the federal court is issued?” he asked, answering: “It is a constitutional violation — a conspiracy planned from the inside or from out.”

Iraqi troops imposed heightened security in Baghdad Wednesday as international support mounted for a political transition. Tanks and Humvees were positioned on Baghdad bridges and at major intersections on Wednesday, with security personnel more visible than usual. About 100 pro-Maliki demonstrators took to Firdous Square in the capital, pledging their allegiance to him.

Josh Voorhees outlines the supposed constitutional basis for Maliki’s claim:

The issue of who’s in the right is a complicated one, all the more so given the Iraqi constitution’s often vague and muddled wording.

The letter of the law calls for the president to nominate a prime minister from “the largest Council of Representatives bloc.” In this case, that would be the State of Law coalition, which both Maliki and Abadi belong to. According to Reidar Visser, a historian and expert on Iraqi politics, there may once have been a case that Maliki deserved the chance to form a government. But such an argument quickly fell apart over the past 48 hours as the State of Law coalition split its support between the current prime minister and the man nominated to replace him. “Maliki’s promise to bring the case before the Iraqi federal supreme court will [now] be of academic interest only,”Visser has concluded.

Having lost the support of both Washington and Tehran, Maliki’s fate looks sealed, but he could still cause trouble:

“Ultimately, Maliki certainly cannot survive as ruler of Iraq without Iranian and U.S. support,” said Faysal Itani, a resident fellow at the Atlantic Council. “The question of his premiership is not very relevant now; he’s no longer prime minister of Iraq, whatever he says.” Michael Eisenstadt, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Maliki had lost support inside and outside Iraq, with 38 of the 96 lawmakers in his State of Law bloc backing Abadi just as Washington and Tehran effectively told him to throw in the towel. “In practical terms, Maliki’s fate as a legitimate politician is sealed,” Eisenstadt said. …

Even if he steps down, Itani cautioned that Maliki could make life difficult for Iraq’s next rulers. Maliki, Itani said, has spent years appointing loyalists to key positions throughout Iraq’s government and security organizations. He could emerge as a “pretty powerful de facto militia leader, capable of causing all sorts of headaches for the U.S., Iran, and his Shiite rivals,” Itani said. Eisenstadt, meanwhile, said Maliki could decide that violence is the answer.

And Maliki’s past misdeeds, Juan Cole adds, might make things difficult for his intended successor, Haider al-Abadi:

Unfortunately, in order to resolve the current crisis in Iraq, al-Abadi needs internal allies more than external lip support. He needs more than pro forma support from the Kurds in confronting IS in Diyala, Salahuddin and Ninawa provinces. And, he needs to detach some of the Sunni tribal leaders from the IS. The last time the Sunni rural notables allied with Baghdad against al-Qaeda, they were treated shoddily. Al-Maliki declined to continue their stipends or give very many of them government jobs. Since they had fought terrorists, they were often targeted for reprisals by the terrorists. And, al-Maliki even prosecuted some who had fought Baghdad before changing their minds and joining “Awakening Councils.” The difficulty is that when al-Abadi goes to the tribal chiefs, he may not get much of a hearing. He is after all from al-Maliki’s party.

(Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Clinton Out-Hawks Obama, Ctd

by Dish Staff

Fallows is troubled by Clinton’s recent comments:

[I]n this interview—assuming it’s not “out of context”—she is often making the broad, lazy “do something” points and avoiding the harder ones. She appears to disdain the president for exactly the kind of slogan—”don’t do stupid shit”—that her husband would have been proud of for its apparent simplicity but potential breadth and depth. (Remember “It’s the economy, stupid”?) Meanwhile she offers her own radically simplified view of the Middle East—Netanyahu right, others wrong—that is at odds with what she did in the State Department and what she would likely have to do in the White House. David Brooks was heartened by this possible preview of a Hillary Clinton administration’s policy. I agree with Kevin Drum and John Cassidy, who were not.

Ezra thinks the interview demonstrates that Clinton’s nomination isn’t inevitable:

There is a pattern that has emerged in almost every recent interview Clinton has given: liberals walk away unnerved. She bumbled through a discussion of gay marriage with Terry Gross. She’s dodged questions about the Keystone XL pipeline. She’s had a lot of trouble discussing income inequality. I initially chalkedsome of this up to political rust. I am quickly revising that opinion.

 

Waldman sees Clinton’s disregard of the liberal base as a consequence of her not having a viable Democratic challenger:

Over the next two years there will probably be more situations in which Clinton winds up to the right of the median Democratic voter. That would be more of a political problem if she had a strong primary opponent positioned to her left who could provide a vehicle for whatever dissatisfaction the Democratic base might be feeling. But at the moment, there is no such opponent. Her dominance of the field may give her more latitude on foreign affairs — not to move to the right, but to be where she always was. Neither Democrats nor anyone else can say they didn’t see it coming.

Scott McConnell despairs:

George W. Bush once had the wit to joke about major financial elites being his “base”, but with Hillary the gap in attitudes between the major money people and the base of Democratic voters is substantial, and no joking matter.

As yet, amazingly, Hillary has no real opponent to the nomination. Centrist inside politics watchers have concluded her Goldberg interview means that she carefully calculated that she can run to the right and face no consequences. It’s probably true that most of the names floating about, Brian Schweitzer and Elizabeth Warren pose little threat to a Clinton coronation. But someone who could talk coherently about foreign policy—James Webb, for instance—might be a different matter, though no one besides Webb himself knows if he has the discipline and energy to take on what would a grueling, and probably losing campaign. The absence of the genuine challenger to a hawkish Hillary leaves one depressed about the state of American democracy.

However, Noam Scheiber thinks Clinton’s comments are risky:

Team Obama has calculated that it’s in the president’s interest to see Clinton succeed him. I suspect that will remain the case, Axelrod’s venting notwithstanding. But Obama’s advisers are not the same as Obama’s donors, many of whom have never loved the Clintons and still don’t to this day. A few more comments like this and many will be happy to ante up for Warren or some other challenger—perhaps even Biden, whose loyalty to the president many Obama donors consider his most important quality.

Tomasky agrees with Hillary brushing off the Democratic Party’s base. But, he writes, “I don’t think she’s a neocon hawk”:

[U]nlike McCain, who preens his way around Washington saying that that ISIS’s strength is entirely Obama’s fault, at least Clinton says, “I don’t think we can claim to know” what would’ve happened had the FSA been armed two years ago. That’s a humility the neocons lack. It’s a crucial distinction, and it’s a pretty damn important quality in a president.

How Philip Klein understands the game Clinton is playing:

Clinton is trying to strike a balance — she wants to distance herself from President Obama on foreign policy in areas in which he’s viewed as a failure, but she wants to preserve the veneer of experience that comes with having served as his Secretary of State. The problem she’s going to run into is that it’s easy to see how these two goals could conflict with one another. To the extent that Clinton touts her vast experience as Obama’s Secretary of State, it becomes more difficult to separate herself from the administration’s foreign policy.

Suderman gets the last word:

She wants to suggest some differences between herself and Obama, but not with any clarity, and not in a way that creates any real distance between them. And she’ll probably want to keep most of whatever differences she does reveal confined to the realm of foreign policy, partly because that’s where her experience is, and partly because the Democratic base isn’t likely to support major departures in domestic policy. Which means that unless there’s some big, unexpected break coming, she’ll essentially be running as a slightly more hawkish version of Obama. Inevitably, that means she’ll be tied to Obama’s less-than-popular presidency and controversial domestic agenda. Unless Obama’s current approval ratings improve—which of course they could over the next two years—that’s not great a place to be.

 

 

Many Jobs, Few Hires

by Dish Staff

Jobs Market

Ben Casselman analyzes the latest job market numbers:

U.S. employers listed 4.7 million available jobs at the end of June, 700,000 more than a year earlier and the most since 2001, according to new data released Tuesday. Meanwhile, the number of unemployed workers has been falling steadily and is now below 10 million. As a result, the remaining job seekers face their best prospects of the recovery: There are now two unemployed workers for every job opening, down from about seven at the height of the unemployment crisis.

Matt Phillips throws cold water on the news. He proclaims that “American companies want workers—they just aren’t actually hiring them yet”:

 US job openings have been at highs not seen since early 2001. Openings touched 4.67 million in June, up 2.1% from May. So if there are job openings, and business owners intend to hire, surely they’re hiring, right? Well, not so fast. The [Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey] hiring rate is nowhere near as buoyant as the job opening rates.

Jared Bernstein’s take:

Here’s what I think is going on. The job market has in fact been tightening, but in a somewhat unusual way: through diminished layoffs more so than through robust hiring (see figure here and this important related work as well).  The former—fewer layoffs—is keeping the short-term unemployment rate nice and low. The latter—tepid hires—is keeping the long-term jobless rate high. That’s creating the illusion of decreased matching efficiency but it’s really just the result of the persistent slack and the unusually high share of long-term unemployment with which we’ve been stuck for years now.

Arming The Kurds, Ctd

by Dish Staff

The EU could not agree yesterday on whether to arm Kurdish fighters in Iraq, but gave member states permission to do so on their own. This morning, France announced that it would send an immediate shipment of weapons:

The sudden announcement that arms would begin to flow within hours underlined France’s alarm at the urgency of the situation in Iraq, where the Islamic State fighters are threatening the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq. … French authorities have pushed other European Union members to do more to aid Christians and other minorities being targeted by the Islamic State group extremists. E.U. foreign ministers will hold an emergency meeting Friday to coordinate their approach to the crisis and to endorse the European arms shipments already announced, according to an E.U. diplomat speaking on condition of anonymity pending the official announcement later Wednesday.

Rick Noack notes that Germany is also considering sending weapons to Iraq, which might also entail arming the peshmerga directly. That would mark a major change in policy for the world’s third largest arms exporter:

“If Germany decides to arm the Kurds, this would be a watershed moment. Germany has so far refrained from delivering such aid to militants,” said journalist Thomas Wiegold, a leading authority on Germany’s defense industry.

In the past, Germany had always refused to deliver arms to rebel groups such as those fighting in Libya or Syria, although it did earlier approve the delivery of arms to Iraq. Iraqi Kurdistan, however, is a semi-autonomous region within Iraq, which makes it difficult for foreign governments to directly negotiate arms deliveries. Direct support would also contradict E.U. guidelines that rule out deliveries to warring parties that belong neither to the European Union nor NATO.

Meanwhile, the Kurds have sent the Pentagon their wish list of advanced weaponry, which, according to Eli Lake, includes armored personnel carriers, night vision equipment, and surveillance drones:

The Pentagon has yet to respond to the Kurdish request. But the list is an indication of the rapid expansion of the multi-pronged American campaign in Iraq. On Tuesday, the U.S. military announced it would be sending 130 more U.S. military advisers to northern Iraq, bringing the total number of troops to over a thousand in country. American boots on the ground will only be a small piece of the larger effort against ISIS, however.

The U.S. is scheduling up to 100 attack, surveillance, and humanitarian airdrop missions a day over Iraq.  Those flights are being carried out by drones and manned fighters, U.S. Navy and Air Force aircraft alike. But American forces are not the ones calling in those strikes, as has become commonplace in warzones throughout the world. Instead, Kurdish fighters are identifying targets for the American bombing runs, breaking with years of U.S. military practice meant to ensure that the right targets are hit—and civilians are not.

Depression, Success, And Lies Of The Mind

by Elizabeth Nolan Brown

spirit animalYesterday I bemoaned those who would turn Robin Williams’ death into a mandatory mass therapy session. But that isn’t to say I don’t appreciate some of the conversation his suicide is provoking. If you’ve never been clinically depressed, the idea that someone like Williams could possibly find life wanting tends to seem absurd.

But depression is a “lie of the mind,” to borrow an old Sam Shepard title. It cares not for your comedy-god status or your loving family. It cares not that plenty of people have it worse. “Depression is a skilled liar, using what you know is true as basis for a massive fraud,” wrote journalist John Tabin yesterday. “If you’re suicidal, you’re where I was five years ago,” he tweeted. “Please read”:

Bu3KI4iIMAI0PVZ

 

I got teary-eyed reading that, and not just because Tabin is someone I know and like. There’s also the pain of recognition: I could have written nearly every word he did here. This is my depression story, too.

But then again, it is almost all depression stories. That is what will strike you if you read very many of them. The building blocks of depression are always the same: hopelessness, isolation, pain. The absolute, iron-clad conviction that nothing will ever change. Then (if you’re lucky) come hard-won coping tips. An uneasy peace between you and your biology. But it can all be illusory, as Tabin mentions—you are fighting to overcome a brain that wants you to die using that same brain. You will often have to keep coming up with new tricks.

Can you imagine doing that for a lifetime? I don’t think it speaks ill of anyone who eventually decides the tradeoffs aren’t worth it. As a Dish reader lamented via email:

…when someone dies after a lifelong battle with severe mental illness and drug addiction, we say it was a tragedy and tell everyone “don’t be like him, please seek help.” That’s bullshit. Robin Williams sought help his entire life. He saw a psychiatrist. He quit drinking. He went to rehab. He did this for decades. That’s HOW he made it to 63. For some people, 63 is a fucking miracle.

People unfamiliar with how depression works think Williams’ wealth and success should’ve been an antidote. Dave Weigel deconstructed this myth yesterday at Slate, with rare help from personal anecdote:

If you’ve never suffered from depression, or had a public career, the suicide of a successful person makes no damn sense. It’s the same reason why an artist quitting or breaking his band up makes no sense—you wanted something, and you’ve finally grabbed it, so why would you ever give that up? What’s wrong with you?

Depression is what’s wrong with you. I’ve been medicated for depression since 2001. In 2002, after a particularly low episode, I was taken in by campus police that marked me as a risk for self-harm. I then voluntarily checked myself into a mental hospital.

I like seeing men like Weigel and Tabin sharing their stories right now. Too often, depression is still viewed in a gendered light. And because women are expected to be emotional, I don’t think our stories resonate as strongly with those who don’t understand depression. That it really isn’t a disease about emotionality falls on the proverbial deaf ears.

But perhaps the hardest thing for people to understand is that depression doesn’t respond to rational incentives. It doesn’t matter if you have a new, awesome job or a new, awesome baby. It doesn’t matter if you’re a world-famous actor or a successful political journalist. Here’s Weigel again, explaining how the depression-brain tricks you:

One: You earned none of what you have. You’re a fraud. People are going to find out. Everything your critics have said about you, from the guy who lobbed dodgeballs at your head to the hate-mailer who hated your Iowa story, is completely right.

Two: All that other stuff you feel, the negativity and the screw-ups? You definitely earned that, because you’re meant to fail. You’ve succeeded, and you still feel this way? Why, that’s proof that you won’t possibly feel better.

Three: Nobody truly likes you. They can desert you at any moment. They’re succeeding, and you’re not.

It’s contradictory, and pointless, and bears very little relationship to the reality of what you’re going through. It’s unpredictable in a way that makes you feel callow; I’ve been sad but functional after the deaths of family members, then horribly depressed while walking home on a random Wednesday.

The random-Wednesday bit is one of its most insidious parts. And it also makes it tricky to calibrate your response. Is this afternoon funk just an afternoon funk? Is there something secretly bothering me? Or am I once again spiraling into a totally irrational and unprovoked cycle of hate and emptiness that will last for months? Only time will tell! 

Any sort of conclusion here feels pat and forced, so I’ll just say that I’m glad people are sharing about and discussing this right now—and in ways more nuanced than “depression is bad, get help!” Thanks, Tabin. Thanks, Weigel. Thanks everyone who is sharing stories (I’d be amiss not to mention these very good takes from Helen Rosner, Molly Pohlig, Chris Gethard, and Jim Norton). Oh, and thanks GlaxoSmithKline! Wellbutrin is my spirit animal…

The No-Drama Doctrine

by Dish Staff

Cameron Hudson finds the Obama Doctrine of genocide prevention sensible, if not particularly satisfying to those who would have liked a more robust American response to the crisis in Syria:

In an interview Friday with Tom Friedman of The New York Times, Obama remarked, “When you have a unique circumstance in which genocide is threatened, and a country is willing to have us in there, you have a strong international consensus that these people need to be protected and we have a capacity to do so, then we have an obligation to do so.” Some would argue that this explanation walks back from the high-minded justification for the forceful response to the potential massacre in Benghazi, Libya, in late 2011 when Obama asserted that a failure to act “would have stained the conscience of the world.” More importantly, it sets a new and seemingly higher bar for taking action to prevent genocide—one that is unlikely to be replicated very often.

If that’s the intent, it is not necessarily a bad thing.

Genocide prevention, as a community of practice, is in need of bookending. In a world full of nails—or potential nails—the U.S. military is the literal hammer. Absent a clear understanding of the circumstances when force could be used to save lives, advocates and communities at risk hold out false hope that the cavalry is coming, when it so rarely is. Understanding when a military response is on the table and when it is not will focus our attention on the cheaper, more politically palatable non-military options that should always constitute the heart of genocide prevention.

Aaron David Miller argues that despite the decision to strike ISIS, Obama remains as risk-averse as ever:

The Friedman interview revealed another important reason why Obama’s risk aversion is likely to endure. The president raised the issue about the lack of follow-up to help Libya after Qaddafi’s overthrow. “Then it’s the day after Qaddafi is gone, when everybody is feeling good and everybody is holding up posters saying, ‘Thank you, America.’ At that moment, there has to be a much more aggressive effort to rebuild societies that didn’t have any civic traditions…. So that’s a lesson that I now apply every time I ask the question, ‘Should we intervene, militarily? Do we have an answer [for] the day after?'”

Even though he doesn’t come out and say it, you get the sense that if there was a chance to do it over again he’d be much more engaged. But there’s another way to read the president’s comment, too. And that’s this: Military action is only one step in a complex process that requires a huge investment to create a relatively stable and functional transition from authoritarian to democratic rule. And Obama understands that hitting the Islamic State (IS), as necessary as it may be, is hardly a panacea for rebuilding the new Iraq. More to the point, that’s not America’s job. And Obama isn’t going to correct his Libya mistake by getting bogged down in nation-building in Iraq.

But Micah Zenko expects the mission in Iraq to expand beyond Obama’s stated limits, because they all do:

The expansion of humanitarian interventions — beyond what presidents initially claim will be the intended scope and time of military and diplomatic missions — is completely normal. What is remarkable is how congressional members, media commentators, and citizens are newly surprised each time that this happens. In the near term, humanitarian interventions often save more lives than they cost: The University of Pittsburgh’s Taylor Seybolt’s 2008 review of 17 U.S.-led interventions found that nine had succeeded in saving lives. But they also potentially contain tremendous downsides — as recent history demonstrates.

On April 7, 1991, the United States began airdropping food, water, and blankets on the largest refugee camps along the Turkish-Iraqi border that were sheltering Kurds displaced by Iraqi Republican Guard divisions brutally putting down an uprising in northern Iraq. That same day, when asked how long the U.S. military would play a role within Iraq, President George H.W. Bush declared, “We’re talking about days, not weeks or months.” In support of the humanitarian mission in northern Iraq, the United States concurrently began enforcing a no-fly zone above that country’s 36th parallel. In August 1992, a U.S.-led no-fly zone south of the 32nd parallel of Iraq was formed by unilateral declaration to compel Saddam Hussein’s cooperation with U.N. weapons inspectors and to protect the Shiite population caught in a counterinsurgency campaign in the southern marshlands. Bush was right about the U.S. military involvement not being weeks or months: The northern and southern no-fly zones lasted another 10 and a half years.

Where Are These Kids’ Parents? Ask The Cops

by Elizabeth Nolan Brown

Due process? Too good for children! That seems to be the attitude at police stations across the country. New research shows juvenile suspects are routinely interrogated about serious crimes without parents or a lawyer present.

The research, presented at the American Psychological Association’s annual convention last week, relied on 57 11698954185_02367aba3e_zvideotaped juvenile interrogations from 17 police stations around the country. In these interviews – 93 percent of which pertained to serious or violent offenses – less than a third of the 13- to 17-year-old suspects had a lawyer present during the interrogation. And only 21 percent had parents present.

“From a due process perspective, this was very troubling to see,” Hayley Cleary, lead researcher and developmental psychology professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, said in a statement.

Yes, these teens had waived their Miranda rights. However, “laboratory-based studies have shown that adolescents may not fully understand their right to decline police questioning when not in custody,” said Cleary. Teens may also “not be developmentally able to assert themselves when asked to consent to questioning and those vulnerabilities can continue into the interrogation room.”

Cleary believes (or at least tactfully says) that “we need more research examining why juveniles in particular are waiving their constitutional rights so frequently and confessing to crimes before they’ve obtained advice from an attorney.” But it doesn’t seem like much of a mystery. The reasons she previously mentioned – lack of understanding of their rights, fear or acquiescence in the face of authority – are perfectly sufficient to explain why a 14-year-old might answer cops’ questions in loco parentis or an attorney.

There seems to have been an interesting criminal justice bent to this year’s APA convention, including a symposium called “Stand Your Ground Law – Psychology’s Contribution to the National Conversation”. It was co-led by Stanford University professor Jennifer Eberhardt, whose below comments to APA members came the day before unarmed black teen Michael Brown was shot by white police officers in a suburb of St. Louis. From the APA conference blog:

Eberhardt discussed some of the research that has implications for “stand your ground” laws. For example, although research finds that most white people think that they treat other groups fairly and that discrimination is a thing of the past, her research tells a dramatically different story. In a series of studies, she has found that “race influences what we see, where we look and how we respond.” Understanding the psychological consequences of these laws is critical, she said. “People of color are finding themselves in a vulnerable position in public spaces,” said Eberhardt. “Children of color are growing up situations where they feel  that the state is not protecting them, that the state does not recognize their pain. As children, they are already feeling invisible.”

A few days earlier, the APA’s governing council approved a resolution recommending that all interrogations of felony suspects be videotaped from start to finish. Surveilling the police, said the psychologists, could help end coercive police tactics and “the problem of false confessions and wrongful convictions.”

(Photo of an interrogation room by Kris Arnold)

Trend Anticipation

by Phoebe Maltz Bovy

Rachel Hodin at Into The Gloss declares delicate jewelry so last season:

As someone who’s skilled in the art of falling (and then breaking those falls with her hands), a change from the popular dainty ring scenario feels in order. However, it wasn’t until I stumbled on Erin Wasson’s Instagram (“stumbled” being an exalted term for my stalking habits these days) that I could finally visualize it: thick gold rings. Paired with nothing more than plain pants and a basic white tee, Erin’s ring game looks fresh in comparison to ‘gram upon ‘gram of dainty finger stacks (though it’s probably mostly vintage).

This is a real shame, because the dainty rings Hodin finds insufficiently “fresh” are much prettier than the clunky ones that barely manage to work on Erin Wasson, the model-about-town wearing them. While I’m not super into rings myself, and only wear the ones that may cause others to question my feminist principles, for other jewelry, or jewelry on other people, I suppose I’m Team Dainty. But that is not our principle concern.

So, back to Hodin: The ‘grams in question refer not (just) to the weight of a really tiny ring, but to Instagram. As every last Dish reader surely knows, for some time now, all the fashion-blogger-types were posting pictures of themselves with dainty rings, sometimes stacked, often worn in addition to wedding and engagement rings. Sometimes worn, bafflingly, at the knuckle. (How do those stay on? Answer, from the infinitely stylish Garance Doré: They don’t.) This was the look of 2013, which explains why, in 2014, the NYT style pages have announced that dainty is so very now. As has Forbes.

A cynic would consider the possibility that someone trying to sell clunky rings has PR’d said jewelry onto Wasson, hoping that enough shots of this edgy-gorgeous woman glaring, smoking, and giving the finger in a certain sort of ring would convince us plebs to go out and buy the same kind of ring. (Learned the hard way: Just because a look works on Alexa Chung, it may not work on you. Presumably this principle carries over to models and it-girls more generally.) But of course something along those lines must have been what brought us delicate rings as a thing. Still, that something is being marketed to us doesn’t mean it’s not appealing in its own right.

What was so brilliant about this ITG post was its timing. “Delicate” has been the thing for quite some time, which explains why the notoriously late-to-the-game NYT style pates only just now took notice. The NYT pieces suggest a knuckle-ringed finger to the pulse, but for whatever reason (a stodgy editorial process?), they’ve arrived once the moment’s over. That, or their arrival means that the moment’s over.

All of which gets us to the secret formula of trend anticipation. It involves identifying current trends once they’ve reached their peak and declaring the opposite look the hot new thing. Has the NYT discovered skinny jeans? Mom jeans are the thing. They just feel fresh.

While trend anticipation skills probably do have some financial use I have yet to harness, they don’t by any means need to determine our own sartorial choices. I will leave mom jeans and enormous gold rings to those at the cutting edge, and will stick with daintier denim and accessory options for my own trips to such glamorous places as the Wegmans parking lot.

Painless Meat?

by Dish Staff

Rhys Southan suggests it’s possible to raise and slaughter animals “without causing them any more suffering than what we might expect a well-off human to experience”:

The first premise might seem hard to accept, given the brutal realities of modern animal farming. Most farm animals are raised on intensive factory farms where they suffer for the majority of their short lives. Even small, high-welfare farms tend to subject their animals to at least some painful procedures like castration without anesthetic, dehorning or the separation of mothers and their newborn children.

Yet ultra-high-welfare animal products are a possibility, not a fantasy. Consider the highest level of the “5-Step” animal-welfare rating program at Whole Foods Market. For beef, this prohibits branding, castration, ear notching, separating mothers from calves for early weaning and long trips to the slaughterhouse. For pigs, this ensures they are never separated from their littermates, which is important because of how social pigs are. For chickens, it means they have plenty of space and don’t have to endure physical alterations like debeaking.

Almost no farms meet these standards, but if more of us were willing to compromise on the price, taste, quantity and texture of the meat we eat, more farms like this could exist and thrive.