Author: Andrew Sullivan

Map Of The Day

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Cohn captions:

Using data from the Centers for Disease Control, [researchers at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, working with Gilead Sciences] developed online, interactive maps depicting where AIDS infections were most prevalent—and where new cases were cropping up most frequently. They called the project AIDSVu. Its principal researcher is Patrick Sullivan, an epidemiologist who worked at the CDC before coming to Emory. … The South has just 37 percent of the country’s population, Sullivan notes. But it has nearly 50 percent of the new HIV diagnoses.

The Definition Of IS Is …

Apparently it’s just “the Islamic State” now, not “ISIS”:

IS announced Sunday it was establishing a “caliphate” — an Islamic form of government last seen under the Ottoman Empire — extending now from Aleppo in northern Syria to Diyala province in eastern Iraq, the regions where it has fought against the regimes in power. In an audio recording distributed online, the group declared its chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi “the caliph” and “leader for Muslims everywhere”. Henceforth, the group said, he is to be known as “Caliph Ibrahim” — a reference to his real name.

Though the move may not have immediate significant impact on the ground, it is an indicator of the group’s confidence and marks a move against Al-Qaeda — from which it broke away — in particular, analysts say. The caliphate is “the biggest development in international jihad since September 11”, said Charles Lister of the Brookings Institution in Doha, referring to the Al-Qaeda attacks on the United States in 2001.

J.M. Berger reads into this lofty declaration:

The pronouncement of the caliphate is sure to be wildly controversial on religious grounds, but ultimately it could cut either way.

The backlash may harden the pro-AQ segment of the global jihadist movement against ISIS, especially with the announcement’s flat-out demand that all other jihadist groups are religiously obligated to pledge loyalty to ISIS. But it will also generate some enthusiasm from foot soldiers and different segments of the global movement that see ISIS as a rising star. …

On the other hand, Muslims worldwide are likely, on the whole, to react negatively to the pronouncement. The question here is how many currently nonviolent radicals will jump toward ISIS and how many will jump away from it. Again, this is a high-risk, high-reward scenario for ISIS. It could reap considerable benefits, but the backlash could be severe.

Juan Cole ridicules the announcement, pointing out that the abolition of the caliphate 90 years ago has meant precisely nothing to the vast majority of the world’s Muslims, who aren’t likely to care any more for “Caliph Ibrahim” than for Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi:

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood developed the institution of the Supreme Guide, which under President Muhammad Morsi in 2012-2013 developed theocratic aspirations. The Supreme Guide, Muhammad Badie, proved conspiratorial and controlling, and Morsi proved compliant. The vast majority of Egyptians were annoyed by this grandiosity, and they overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood government. Badie is in danger of being executed. I think that the Egyptian elite has gone too far in persecuting Muslim Brothers and branding them terrorists, mind you, and the death sentence on Badie is a human rights violation. But I’m just pointing out that calling yourself Supreme Guide and getting the loyalty of a sectarian group is no guarantee of worldly success. And the Brotherhood is way more important the the ‘Islamic State.’

This Baghdadi ‘caliphate’ thing is doomed, as well.

Morrissey is also dismissive, but he sees a strategic purpose:

At any rate, the declaration of the caliphate has less to do with statehood or global leadership than it does with local competitors. Zawahiri may get annoyed, but he’s not really the main target of this declaration. It’s meant to warn competing militias in the areas ISIS already controls that either they’re with Baghdadi, or they’re against him. ISIS wants no competition in arms inside of their existing footprint or adjacent to it, and will target any other networks that don’t fall in line. That’s where the infighting will occur.

Charles Lister, on the other hand, thinks it’s a pretty big deal:

The impact of this announcement will be global as al-Qaida affiliates and independent jihadist groups must now definitively choose to support and join the Islamic State or to oppose it. The Islamic State’s announcement made it clear that it would perceive any group that failed to pledge allegiance an enemy of Islam. Already, this new Islamic State has received statements of support and opposition from jihadist factions in Syria – this period of judgment is extremely important and will likely continue for some time to come. …

Geographically, ISIS is already fully operational in Iraq and Syria; it has a covert presence in southern Turkey, appears to be establishing a small presence in Lebanon; and has supporters in Jordan, Gaza, the Sinai, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. This could well be the birth of a totally new era of transnational jihadism.

Gay Republicans Leading The Way, Ctd

We nearly missed this email from last Tuesday:

You asked, “Are Democratic gay candidates still in a defensive crouch at this point [about touting their marriages in campaign ads]?” This email came from my Democratic congressman, Sean Patrick Maloney, a few hours ago:

Well Jonathan, I’m a married man [as of Saturday, June 21]! So I bet you’re thinking: shouldn’t you be on your honeymoon and NOT emailing me? I probably should be, yes. unnamed (1)But I’m back at work because there’s a battle I can’t ignore right now.

Jonathan, my wedding is a testament to the progress we’ve fought so hard to achieve and I refuse to see that progress erased.

Not for other LGBT men and women who want to marry their partner. Not for my children who deserve to live in a country defined by equality and opportunity.

There are a lot of people – with a lot of money – who hate our values and want to destroy the gains we’ve made. That’s why Randy and I agreed that I need to get back to work; the honeymoon has to wait.

The NY primary is tomorrow and the biggest FEC public filing deadline is seven days away. I wouldn’t be asking – in fact, I wouldn’t be here today – if this weren’t so important. Please donate whatever you can to my campaign before midnight tomorrow by using this link. It would be a huge help and since I can’t spend these next few days with my husband, I might as well make it worth it and beat these guys coming after me.

Thanks again and we’ll send pictures along ASAP!

Sean

P.S. Now that the wedding is over I can admit it – yes, I was a little nervous…no, I don’t feel any different!

From The Annals Of Chutzpah

Matt Wilstein almost missed that recent tweet from the former half-term governor:

Perhaps Palin forgot what it was like to be the subject of a similar investigation exactly three years earlier after her office released her emails to the press.

On June 13, 2011, the Anchorage Daily News reported that “Nearly a month of former Gov. Sarah Palin’s emails are missing from the documents released to media organizations last week, a gap that raises questions about what other emails might also be missing from what’s being nationally reported as her record as Alaska governor.”

According to the documents Palin’s office provided, she sent no official emails from between December 8, 2006 and December 29, 2006, in other words her first full month in office. As the paper put it, “That means zero emails during a period during which, among other things, Palin put out her proposed state budget, appointed an attorney general, killed the contract for a road out of Juneau and vetoed a bill that sought to block state public employee benefits to same-sex couples.”

The Anchorage Daily News argued that the gap was due to Palin’s preponderance to use a personal Yahoo email account instead of the official state account, thereby allowing her to hide certain communication from public view. The first email Palin was on record as sending came on January 2, 2007, one month after she took office.

1,700 Slaughtered? Ctd

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In what Elias Groll calls “an incredible piece of detective work”, Human Rights Watch has partly verified ISIS’s grisly claim from earlier this month that it had killed over 1,700 people during its campaign through northern and western Iraq:

In a report released Friday, Human Rights Watch pinpointed the exact location in which the images were taken. Corresponding satellite images show ground disturbance that apparently matches what the area would look like if mass graves had been dug and heavy vehicles — as seen in images posted by ISIS — had been driven there there.

Human Rights Watch determined that the photographs were taken a stone’s throw from the Tigris River and a former Hussein palace. The group’s analysis picks out individual captives and militants who appear across the photographs, seemingly bolstering the photos’ authenticity. The analysis suggests that between 160 and 190 men were killed between June 11 and June 14, though the actual death toll from ISIS executions in Tikrit could be significantly higher. The slides documenting the analysis are reproduced at the bottom of this post.

Meanwhile, Mona Mahmood and Mark Tran report, ISIS isn’t the only militia that has Iraqis scared for their lives:

[A]trocities are also being carried out by Shia militias, who have been summoned by the highest Shia authority in the land, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, to defend Shia holy shrines. The old Mahdi army, rebranded as Peace Brigades, can be counted on to stand and fight the insurgents, unlike the military. But their zeal is feared by those they target.

Hani Sa’aeed, 24, disappeared three days ago when he went to a shopping centre with a friend in Mahmoudiya, a town south of Baghdad. “After a few hours, his friend contacted us to say that Hani was taken by the Righteous League militia who are in control of the town,” said Ibrahim Abdul Majid, Hani’s cousin. “The militia were so furious after four explosions rocked the centre of the city during the day and killed many people. They were busy picking up young men based on their IDs. Hani’s friend advised us to act quickly to save him but we did not know what to do.”

Adbul Majid eventually rang the police, who said they had found the body of a young man in a compound near the shopping centre.

The Picture Of Controversy, Ctd

A reader brings some firsthand perspective to a recent post on the notorious photographer:

I knew Terry Richardson in high school, when he was an angry young punk. It has been fascinating watching his transformation into superstar and cultural lightning rod. Here is some context I don’t ever see in the press:

His mom, Annie, a successful rock ‘n roll photographer in her own right with lots of very famous and creative friends, suffered a brain injury when he was a kid, resulting in unpredictable anger, short-term memory loss, and colorful, loud, often inappropriate, over-the-top behavior. She was a town character, riding around with wild hair on her adult tricycle. When we were hanging out at his house, her raspy voice would screech out from the other room, “Terrrrrrry!” – often calling him to do some chore that he’d already done.

In this context, nothing I read about him really surprises me. The perviness, the megalomania – it all just seems a natural outgrowth of the bizarre childhood he had.

Not that it would matter if he were wagging his boner in my face! But it is an interesting case study into what turns a guy into a talented raging asshole.

Meanwhile, Eleanor Margolis compares Richardson to Dov Charney, the recently ousted CEO of American Apparel who had been battling sexual harassment suits and an overall seedy reputation:

Charney and Richardson represent an uncomfortable truth about our current conception of coolness.

The two men are emblematic of a hipster veneer that’s so often used to cover up the mistreatment of women. In the name of cool, we so often make allowances for men like these. With their 70s porn star aesthetic seems to come this notion that they’re only subjugating women ironically: we’ll carry on buying clothes from people who look like the result of Ron Jeremy humping a copy of Vice. Misogyny is OK, as long as it pastiches a bygone era of kitsch female subjugation; as long as it’s retro. These bizarre double standards are only serving to blur the lines (sorry…) between sexism and chicness.

A more detailed look at Charney’s persona:

Charney appears in several of the ads, including one with two women, all three of them fully dov-charneyclothed, titled “In bed with the boss.” He is known for walking around in his underwear in front of his employees. His messianic, provocative persona has been a large part of American Apparel’s image; with his often extravagant facial hair and retro clothing, he resembles a character in “American Hustle.” …

The reporter Claudine Ko, who recorded Charney repeatedly masturbating in front of her in an article for Jane magazine in 2004, rejected the idea that she was a victim of his behavior. “Who was really exploited?” she writes in a follow-up article. “We both were—American Apparel got press, I got one hell of a story. And that’s it.” But Charney didn’t control Ko’s salary; he couldn’t fire her.

Veronique Hyland thinks American Apparel should “build on the goodwill from the Charney firing and completely re-brand itself’:

American Apparel truly has some bona fides to emphasize in this area: It makes its clothing in the U.S., and pays its employees well 20121126-215406above minimum wage (and offers them an array of benefits). The company has spearheaded goodwill-generating campaigns in favor of immigration reform (Legalize LA) and LGBT rights (Legalize Gay). It has fabric re-use initiatives and sustainable lines. It has worked with charities like GLAAD, donated shirts to the victims of the Haitian earthquake, and held a sale to benefit homeless youth. (It has even been endorsed as an exemplar by the author of Ethical Chic!)

The curse of American Apparel’s original branding is that it worked too well — and now we can’t get it out of our heads. The key for whoever takes over from Charney will be to make a completely new message stick.

Medicaid Can Keep You Out Of Prison

Judy Solomon makes the case that the program reduces prison recidivism:

States considering whether to expand Medicaid should consider the growing evidence that connecting the jail-involved population to treatment for mental illness and substance abuse can lower the rate at which they return to jail or prison.

For example, a study of a Michigan program to help recently released prisoners obtain community-based health care and social services found that it cut recidivism by more than half, from 46 percent to 21.8 percent.  Similarly, a study that the Justice Department funded in Florida and Washington found that “in both states, 16 percent fewer jail detainees with serious mental illnesses who had Medicaid benefits at the time of their release returned to jail the following year, compared to similar detainees who did not have Medicaid.”

Misjudging A Book By Its Cover

William Jordan of YouGov found that Republicans and Democrats are both bad at guessing a book’s politics from its title alone:

We tested the titles of 17 political memoirs from potential 2016 candidates, both Republican and Democrat, asking which book people would be interested to read without saying who had written which book. It turns out that the overall favorite book amongst Republicans is by the Dennis Kucinich (A Prayer for America), a liberal, and the overall favorite amongst Democrats is by Ben Carson (One Nation: What We Can All Do to Save America’s Future), a conservative.

No Place To Sleep, By Design, Ctd

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A reader notices another way that architects are deterring homeless sleeping:

Glad to see this trend getting some air, and some criticism. When we were living in Astoria, I noted the appearance of some curious structures above the M/R subway lines. I assumed they were combination vents and benches, but it turns out they are effectively cowlings or battens placed above the existing tunnel vents, designed to keep floodwaters from penetrating the tunnels and disabling the trains.

They are undeniably elegant – and I appreciate the MTA’s choice of elegance over mere utility – but the undulating vanes were also deliberately peppered with raised sections that don’t affect sitting but make lying down painful. For the homeless – and Astoria has many, including for a time Cadillac Man, who wrote about his life for Esquire – the typical flush-to-the-sidewalk vents had for decades been a source of warmth in the winter months. These new structures struck me then as bitter symbols of the new New York: increasingly wealthy and stylish – but in equal measure increasingly hostile, by choice, to those who didn’t catch the cresting wave.

Update from a reader:

In that picture, those metal bumps are used to prevent skateboarders from grinding the benches. Maybe they also prevent sleeping, I am not sure, but where I live they were installed as anti-skateboard devices. I bet if there are handrails near those benches they also have metal caps on them to prevent grinding.

(Photo by Sean Hopkins)

Our Mountains’ Majesty Is Melting

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John Upton considers what climate change means for the snow-topped mountains of the American West:

New research has painted a vivid picture of the global warming-induced fate of what currently are snow-peaked mountains across the region. Within 50 years, University of Idaho scientists concluded, the lower-elevation peaks could be wholly rained upon instead of receiving mixtures of snow and rain. And across much of the region, the snow season is expected to contract from five months every year to just three months. Those were some of the findings of an attempt to model how global warming will shift rain-snow transition zones upward throughout a vast swath of the United States. It’s a swath of the nation where farmers and residents rely heavily on melting snowpacks for water supplies during the warmer months. That means the change from wintertime snow to rain could worsen both winter floods and summer droughts.

(Photo: A Dish reader’s airplane window view of Mt. Rainier, southeast of Seattle. More VFYAWs here)