Month: January 2015

Iraq veteran Brian Turner, author of the memoir My Life as a Foreign Country, has an insightful take on American Sniper and how the film reflects our flawed understanding of the conflict:

This isn’t the defining film of the Iraq War. After nearly a quarter century of war and occupation in Iraq, we still haven’t seen that film. I’m beginning to think we’re incapable as a nation of producing a film of that magnitude, one that would explore the civilian experience of war, one that might begin to approach so vast and profound a repository of knowledge. I’m more and more certain that, if such a film film ever arrives, it’ll be made by Iraqi filmmakers a decade or more from now, and it’ll be little known or viewed, if at all, on our shores. The children of Iraq have far more to teach me about the war I fought in than any film I’ve yet seen — and I hope some of those children have the courage and opportunity to share their lessons onscreen. If this film I can only vaguely imagine is ever made, it certainly won’t gross $100 million on its opening weekend.

The biggest problem I have with American Sniper is also a problem I have with myself.

It’s a problem I sometimes find in my own work, and it’s an American problem: We don’t see, or even try to see, actual Iraqi people. We lack the empathy necessary to see them as fully human. In American Sniper, Iraqi men, women, and children are known and defined only in relation to combat and the potential threat they pose. Their bodies are the site and source of violence. In both the film and our collective imagination, their humanity is reduced in ways that, ultimately, define our own narrow humanity. In American Sniper, Iraqis are called “savages,” and the “streets are crawling” with them. Eastwood and his screenwriter Jason Hall give Iraqis no memorable lines. Their interior lives are a blank canvas, with no access points to let us in. I get why that is: If Iraqis are seen in any other light, if their humanity is recognized, then the construct of our imagination, the ride-off-into-the-sunset-on-a-white-horse story we tell ourselves to push forward, falls apart.

If we saw Iraqis as humans, we’d have to learn how to live in a world far, far more complicated and painful than the difficult, painful one we currently live in.

The crisis could be spreading:

Wild bees are at risk of catching diseases from their struggling domesticated brethren, according to a recent study published in The Journal of Applied Ecology.

The study, led by evolutionary geneticist Lena Wilfert of the University of Exeter, adds a new layer to the crisis known as colony collapse disorder (CCD), which has precipitated an alarming drop in honeybee populations worldwide. … [T]he use of pesticides isn’t the only anthropogenic driver behind the transmission of pathogens into the wild. Wilfert’s team also found that many commercial beekeepers are creating ideal conditions for virulent diseases to emerge. “High densities within breeding facilities and in commercial pollination operations increase the contact rate between infected and uninfected conspecifics, thereby lowering the threshold for disease emergence,” the authors explain.

Helen Briggs reports from across the Pond:

Vanessa Amaral-Rogers of the charity, Buglife, said the results of the study showed an urgent need for changes in how the government regulates the importation of bees. “Wild honey bees can no longer be found in England or Wales, thought to have been wiped out by disease,” she told BBC News. “Now these studies show how diseases can be transmitted between managed honey bees and commercial bumble bees, and could have potentially drastic impacts on the rest of our wild pollinators.”

A study last year on a sample of commercial bumble bee hives imported into the UK found 77% were contaminated with up to five different parasites, with a further three being found in the pollen that was brought in with them, she added.

More Dish on the bee problem here and here.

Adam Segal sees new cyber laws as a real possibility:

Could this finally be the year when the Congress passes cyber legislation? I think yes. Public awareness of the threat is at an all-time high. The Sony attack has created pressure for Congress to act (though it is not clear that any of the legislation would have prevented the North Korean hackers from breaching the company). Moreover, there is bipartisan support for cybersecurity legislation. … [W]hile disparaging most of the President’s agenda, prominent Republicans like Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee have pointed to cybersecurity as an area where “we can get some agreement.” As in the past, privacy concerns will make or break the legislation, but we should expect to see real signs of progress.

Katie Benner examines the cyber proposals in Obama’s SOTU:

The Obama ideas with the most potential to bolster corporate security are his threat-sharing measure and the corporate disclosure rule.

As I’ve written before, collaboration is considered to be one of the best defenses against cybercrime, but a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers survey found that only 25 percent of businesses currently share information about attacks. Obama wants to encourage companies to share threat data with the government in order to get liability protection. … The disclosure rule isn’t useful because it increases security per se, but because it gives companies an incentive to pre-emptively beef up their defenses.

However, Timothy Edgar declares that no “proposal in Obama’s State of the Union address would truly hold companies accountable for cyber insecurity”:

If you are looking for effective ideas on this score, you would do better to listen to students here at Brown University where I’ve lately been teaching.

One student’s idea was to build on existing “bug bounty” programs in which software companies pay researchers money for uncovering security flaws by turning the federal hacking law on its head. Today, all intrusions—even “white hat” penetrations for security research—are illegal unless the system owner consents. A company with lousy security may threaten a security researcher with a lawsuit or jail time for pointing out a gaping hole in its defenses. What if Congress reversed this perverse law, requiring companies to pay ethical hackers for demonstrating vulnerabilities?

Charles C. Camosy’s forthcoming Beyond the Abortion Wars tries to chart it. Calling the book “fascinating and compelling,” Jim A.C. Everett applauds it for cutting through the spin:

In this book, Camosy masterfully traverses the ‘battleground’ between the ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-choice’ camps in order to show that this battleground is in fact no such thing. In fact, as Camosy notes, the majority of the American public actually agree on a middle-ground position on abortion. Despite what one might think from reading certain media outlets and Twitter wars, there is actually a large consensus in the public regarding abortion. This insight is deceptively powerful. By demonstrating the areas of agreement, Camosy is able to help guide us beyond the abortion wars to allow a way forward for a new generation.

Commenting on the House GOP’s Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would have prohibited abortions after 20 weeks (except in cases of rape or to save the mother’s life), Camosy points to one key factor in crafting legislation that appeals to this middle-ground – “that Roe has, in effect, already been overturned”: 

In a 2010 article she wrote in the William and Mary Journal of Women and the Law, Caitlin W. Bormann says quite directly that the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey “established a new, less protective, constitutional standard for abortion restrictions.” Instead of defending privacy, Casey focused on making sure that abortion restrictions didn’t impose what it calls an “undue burden” on women. This standard, she says, “immediately enabled states to invade women’s privacy in new ways.”

Bormann says the Roberts court “has interpreted Casey expansively”, resulting in “erosions of the privacy boundaries” that were once protected by Roe. Indeed, she says that certain privacy rights to abortion were “eviscerated” by Casey, especially as interpreted by the all-important swing voter on the Court, Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Writing in the New Yorker, Jeffery Toobin agrees. Would Kennedy uphold a state law with a 20-week (or earlier) ban? Toobin points out that in Gonzales v. Carhart (2007) this swing justice upheld federal law against late-term abortions with a very different sensibility from his opinion in Casey. Kennedy wrote, “The State may use its regulatory power to bar certain procedures and substitute others, all in furtherance of its legitimate interests in regulating the medical profession in order to promote respect for life, including life of the unborn.” What counted as an undue burden for him when he helped decide Casey in 1992, Toobin noted ominously, looked very different to Kennedy fifteen years later.