Author: Dish Staff

The Fate Of The Syrian Rebellion

by Dish Staff

A view of a damaged buildings after barrel bomb was dropped

Robert Ford disputes the conventional wisdom that the non-jihadist rebels in Syria are more or less finished:

The death of moderate armed opposition elements has been greatly exaggerated. These groups — whom I define as fighters who are not seeking to impose an Islamic state, but rather leaving that to a popular decision after the war ends — have recently gained ground in Idlib province in northwestern Syria, and have nearly surrounded the provincial capital. If the rebels are ever to demonstrate military capacity, it should be in Idlib, where the supply lines from Turkey are easily accessible.

Their advances over the past month also extend beyond Idlib. Notably, moderate armed groups repelled regime attacks in the vicinity of the town of Morek, in west-central Hama province, and also advanced on the Hamidiyah air base there. They even damaged aircraft at the air base, with some reports claiming that they used surface-to-air missiles. Moreover, they launched renewed rebel incursions into Damascus from the nearby eastern suburb of Jobar on July 25 and 26.

But Charles Lister paints a very different picture of the rebels’ condition, warning that they appear to be losing the long battle for Aleppo and its environs to both the Assad regime and ISIS:

The military has followed air bombardment with methodical but effective ground incursions that, over time, have enabled it to re-capture territory and force a rebel retreat to the city’s northern districts. As such, the opposition is now in its weakest position in Aleppo city since mid-2012. … But although regime advances in Aleppo city are extremely significant, the most immediate threat comes from ISIS and its rapid advance north of the city.

Controlling Dabiq, one of the villages that AFP reported was seized Wednesday, is already extremely symbolic for ISIS, whose official magazine is named after the town for its role in the hadith — the teachings, deeds, and sayings of the Prophet Mohammed — as the site of a major battle before the end of the world. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who founded ISIS’ precursor group, once said the capture of Dabiq would represent the first step towards conquering “Constantinople” and “Rome.” With those villages in hand, ISIS now seems likely to move forward on two primary fronts — northwest towards Sawran and eventually Azaz and southwest to Liwa al-Tawhid’s stronghold in Marea.

Zaher Sahloul zooms in on the regime’s targeting of hospitals and health care workers:

According to Doctors Without Borders and other human rights organizations, the Syrian regime and some of the military groups have systematically targeted health care professionals, facilities, and ambulances. Physicians for Human Rights said government forces were responsible for 90 percent of the confirmed 150 attacks on 124 facilities between March 2011 and March 2014, which have devastated the country’s health care system. Of the more than 460 civilian health professionals killed across Syria, at least 157 were doctors, followed by 94 nurses, 84 medics, and 45 pharmacists. Approximately 41 percent of the deaths occurred during shelling and bombings, 31 percent were the result of shootings, and 13 percent were due to torture.

The crisis has forced many doctors to flee to neighboring countries. I heard of a doctor from Aleppo who decided to take the risky trip from Libya to Malta with his wife and three children by boat, trying to reach Europe, but they all died when the boat sank in the Mediterranean.

(Photo: A view of a damaged buildings after barrel bomb was dropped. At laest 17 people were killed and wounding dozen others after Syrian regime helicopters dropped barrel bombs on an opposition-controlled areas at Bab al-Nairab district in Aleppo, Syria. (Photo by Karam Almasri/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Your Saturday Morning Cartoon

by Dish Staff

http://youtu.be/GYSfncB4peU

Jonathan Crow heaps praise on Astro Boy, the early ’60s cartoon developed by Japan’s “god of manga,” Osamu Tezuka, who counted Stanley Kubrick among his fans. Crow describes the first episode, “Birth of Astro Boy,” seen above:

After his son dies in a freak car accident, scientist Dr. Astor Boynton is driven mad by grief. He develops an insane laugh and, with it, an equally insane plan to build a robot who looks just like his dead son. After a Frankenstein-esque montage, Astro Boy is born. All seems well for the adorable, sweet-natured robot, until Boynton freaks out over Astro Boy’s lack of growth. “I’ve been a good father to you, haven’t I?” he whines. “Well then, why can’t you be a good son to me and grow up to be a normal human adult?” How’s that for a parental guilt trip?

So Dr. Boynton casts Astro Boy out, selling him into slavery to The Great Cacciatore, an evil circus ringleader who forces him to be the world’s cutest robot gladiator. Fortunately, Dr. Elefun, a colleague of Dr. Boynton, takes pity on Astro Boy and works to free him from his bondage.

The whole story plays out as if Mary Shelley and Fritz Lang collaborated to make Dumbo. Tezuka throws in a lot of wacky slapstick comedy, which just barely takes the edge off the story’s Dickensian melodrama, which relentlessly mines all those primal fears you thought you got over. In short, it’s brilliant.

A Legal Nightmare

by Dish Staff

In a long and compelling article, Paul Campos presents the for-profit Florida Coastal School of Law as a microcosm of the problems afflicting higher education in America:

Florida Coastal is one of three law schools owned by the InfiLaw System, a corporate entity created in 2004 by Sterling Partners, a Chicago-based private-equity firm. InfiLaw purchased Florida Coastal in 2004, and then established Arizona Summit Law School (originally known as Phoenix School of Law) in 2005 and Charlotte School of Law in 2006.

These investments were made around the same time that a set of changes in federal loan programs for financing graduate and professional education made for-profit law schools tempting opportunities. Perhaps the most important such change was an extension, in 2006, of the Federal Direct PLUS Loan program, which allowed any graduate student admitted to an accredited program to borrow the full cost of attendance – tuition plus living expenses, less any other aid – directly from the federal government. The most striking feature of the Direct PLUS Loan program is that it limits neither the amount that a school can charge for attendance nor the amount that can be borrowed in federal loans. … This is, for a private-equity firm, a remarkably attractive arrangement: the investors get their money up front, in the form of the tuition paid for by student loans. Meanwhile, any subsequent default on those loans is somebody else’s problem – in this case, the federal government’s.

He adds, “From the perspective of graduates who can’t pay back their loans, however, this dream is very much a nightmare”:

How much debt do graduates of the three InfiLaw schools incur? The numbers are startling. According to data from the schools themselves, more than 90 percent of the 1,191 students who graduated from InfiLaw schools in 2013 carried educational debt, with a median amount, by my calculation, of approximately $204,000, when accounting for interest accrued within six months of graduation – meaning that a single year’s graduating class from these three schools was likely carrying about a quarter of a billion dollars of high-interest, non-dischargeable, taxpayer-backed debt.

And what sort of employment outcomes are these staggering debt totals producing? According to mandatory reports that the schools filed with the ABA, of those 1,191 InfiLaw graduates, 270 – nearly one-quarter – were unemployed in February of this year, nine months after graduation. And even this figure is, as a practical matter, an understatement: approximately one in eight of their putatively employed graduates were in temporary jobs created by the schools and usually funded by tuition from current students.

Policing The Police With Cameras

by Dish Staff

Nick Gillespie wants to make cops wear recording devices:

While there is no simple fix to race relations in any part of American life, there is an obvious way to reduce violent law enforcement confrontations while also building trust in cops: Police should be required to use wearable cameras and record their interactions with citizens. These cameras—various models are already on the market—are small and unobtrusive and include safeguards against subsequent manipulation of any recordings.

“Everyone behaves better when they’re on video,” Steve Ward, the president of Vievu, a company that makes wearable gear, told ReasonTV earlier this year. Given that many departments already employ dashboard cameras in police cruisers, this would be a shift in degree, not kind.

Derek Thompson is on the same page:

When researchers studied the effect of cameras on police behavior, the conclusions were striking.

Within a year, the number of complaints filed against police officers in Rialto fell by 88 percent and “use of force” fell by 59 percent. “When you put a camera on a police officer, they tend to behave a little better, follow the rules a little better,” Chief William A. Farrar, the Rialto police chief, told the New York Times. “And if a citizen knows the officer is wearing a camera, chances are the citizen will behave a little better.”

Matt Stroud talked with attorney Scott Greenwood about putting cameras on cops:

“On-body recording systems [OBRS] would have been incredibly useful in Ferguson,” he says. “This is yet another controversial incident involving one officer and one subject, a minority youth who was unarmed,” a reference to Michael Brown, who was killed by police on August 9th. “OBRS would have definitively captured whatever interaction these two had that preceded the use of deadly force.” Armed with footage from an on-body camera system, it’s possible that police would’ve had no option but to take swift action against the officers involved — or if Brown’s behavior wasn’t as eyewitnesses describe, perhaps protests wouldn’t have swelled in the first place. Instead, the citizens of Ferguson are left with more questions than answers.

Moving forward, Greenwood doesn’t see how on-body cameras can be avoided. “I see no way moving forward in which Ferguson police do not use OBRS,” he says. “The proper use of OBRS is going to be a very important part of how these agencies restore legitimacy and public confidence.”

“One Must Respect These Old Names” Ctd

by Phoebe Maltz Bovy

In what has to be a French-major’s anxiety dream come to life, a reader implies that I omitted a definite article in this story:

I’m writing from Normandy, France. I did a quick search to look for some French articles related to that “Mort aux juifs” town, and it looks like the reporting was quite misleading. First of all, the village name is not “Mort aux Juifs” (Death to the Jews) but “La mort aux Juifs” (The death of the Jews). I found another explanation for the origin of the name, which would come from a Jewish uprising in the 16th century against the local lord, during which they were slaughtered.

The town name, as I indicated in my original post, definitely has that “La” – the “Mort aux juifs” in quotes refers to the graffiti I saw on the RER B. It could be that other accounts this reader found left it out. As for what changes when one puts “the” in front of “death to the Jews,” I’d say not much. If one wished to say “The death of the Jews,” one would need “La mort des juifs.” That said, I’m not an expert on medieval French place names, and there could some idiomatic loophole according to which, in this context, the town name translates to “The death of the Jews.” An “à” can be possessive. It’s not impossible. It is striking that “death to the Jews” would have a “the” at the front of it, and I’m grammatically flummoxed. Readers who can clear this up, or who are interested in providing me with fodder for more French-major anxiety dreams, please advise: dish@andrewsullivan.com.

The reader continues:

The “town” itself is in fact a “hameau”, the smallest possible kind of village in France. In our case, “La mort aux Juifs” is composed of only one farm and two houses. The name appears in the “cadastre” (the old official plans you can consult at the townhouse) and so it appears on Google maps too,  but the postal address is completely different and the habitants refer to the place as “La Mare-aux-Geais” (the pond of the jay), probably a phonetic evolution of the original name – that’s understandable, given how distasteful the original name was!

I think the deputy mayor reaction (“one must respect these old names”) has nothing to do with actual antisemitism in France.

She simply says that the name refers to a historical event, not that she condones it. Instead of trying to change that name, I think the Simon Wiesenthal Center should just do the reverse thing: do some historical research on the antisemitic acts that lead to that massacre and then help fund some sort of street sign at that exact location, with some explanations (“In 1565, hundred of Jews were the victims of… etc). That would help educate people and the deaths of these people would be remembered instead of lost in oblivion.

I suppose it’s better that this name belongs to a very, very small town, and not to, like, Paris, but if this reader’s point is that the name is actually a solemn commemoration of anti-Semitism (akin, perhaps, to the plaques in front of French schools listing children killed in the Holocaust), then why should we dismiss it on account of its size?

I agree with this reader that a sign would do wonders (again, France already does this sort of thing), but unless the definite article in this context means more than I think it does (which is, again, possible), it would seem… not so much that the deputy mayor “condones” the massacring of Jews, but that she’s treating French heritage as more important than Jewish sensitivities. If the deputy mayor wished to convey that the place name commemorated a sad event in Jewish history, she might have spelled that out.

Other readers, meanwhile, point out that murderous place-names aren’t limited to France, or to Jews:

Earlier this year, the Spanish hamlet of Castrillo Matajudíos (Castrillo Kill the Jews) voted to change the name to Castrillo Mota de Judíos (Castrillo Hill of the Jews).

Another adds:

This one cuts in many different directions. Ever been to Matamoros (Spain or Mexico)? “Killer of Moors,” or “Kill the Moors.”

Jumping The Shark Week

by Dish Staff

Brad Plumer shakes his head over “that magical time of year when shark scientists tear their hair out over all the misleading claims about sharks that get splashed on TV”:

Case in point: On Sunday, the Discovery Channel aired a two-hour segment called “Shark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine” about a 35-foot-long great white shark the size of a sub that supposedly attacked people off the coast of South Africa. And, surprise! None of this was real. As zoologist Michelle Wciesel points out at Southern Fried Science, the “submarine shark” in South Africa was an urban legend started by journalists in the 1970s who were trying to fool a gullible public. But the Discovery Channel didn’t debunk the myth — instead, they offered up computer-generated images and interviewed fake experts with fake names (like “Conrad Manus”) about the fake submarine shark.

As Arielle Duhaime-Ross observes, actual scientists are not amused:

Of course, this isn’t the first time Shark Week has experienced backlash for its negative portrayal of sharks and its tendency to rely on fiction rather than fact, as last year’s Megalodon documentary was widely trashed for suggesting that extinct sharks still roam Earth’s waters. But this year feels different, perhaps because a number of shark scientists have begun to explain why they refuse to work with Discovery – and how Shark Week burned them in the past. …

Samantha Sherman, a marine biologist at James Cook University, says that Shark Week was “the best week of the year” growing up, but it has taken a distinct turn toward pseudoscience. As a result, she says, her colleagues have been less than forthcoming when producers have called them and asked for help. “I have a couple friends that have been approached by Discovery and have turned it down because of where it’s going and the fear-mongering,” she says. “They don’t want to be part of the hate, or have their message misinterpreted so they have just said ‘no.'”

Joanna Rothkopf sighs:

In an interview with the Atlantic’s Ashley Fetters, Shark Week’s former executive producer Brooke Runnette outlined Shark Week’s programming strategy:

To a large extent, she says, the ominous tones and the imminent danger are still what draws viewers to Shark Week. In the past 25 years, Runnette and her team managed to isolate “what works” into a neat, distilled list of elements: “The shark is the star. Just keep showing that. Don’t give too much reason to worry. Make sure we stay outside, because it’s summertime, and everybody wants to see the colors and the light outside. You don’t want to be inside talking to people; if anything, you want to be outside talking to people. Just be in the water, with the shark; or be out on the boat, with the shark.”

It’s a classic story of modern media — when clicks and views mean success, accuracy and quality become unnecessary bonuses. We just need to stop being surprised when it happens.

An American War Zone, Ctd

by Dish Staff

At the first of two press conferences today, Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson IDed the officer who killed Michael Brown and added that the teenager was suspected of robbing a convenience store on the day of his death. At the second, Jackson admitted the robbery had nothing to do with the shooting:

Jackson on Friday said the police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown was not aware that the unarmed 18-year-old was accused of robbing a convenience store just minutes before the shooting. Jackson said that “the initial contact with Brown was not related to the robbery.” Jackson also clarified that Darren Wilson, the officer who shot and killed Brown, wasn’t even responding to a call about the robbery as initially reported. Wilson instead stopped Brown because he was jaywalking.

Brian Beutler confesses, “I find the Ferguson police department’s behavior over the past week even more baffling than I did before”:

For the sake of argument let’s assume (a huge assumption) that the Ferguson police are not trying to build a public case for Wilson’s innocence by assassinating a dead man’s character. Why did it take five days for them to release this information, none of which has anything to do with the circumstances of Brown’s death? … Per Matt Yglesias, if Brown was a suspect in a robbery, why wasn’t his accomplice Dorian Johnson arrested and charged rather than allowed to escape and appear in multiple television news interviews? Was Johnson lying when he claimed that Wilson approached him and Brown not to question or arrest them for robbery but to tell them to “get the fuck onto the sidewalk”?

Aura Bogado argues that the Ferguson police are doing transparency all wrong:

In the images and video released to the media this morning, someone who is purported to be Brown is seen pushing another person assumed to be a store clerk. We’re told that the person identified as Brown stole a box of little cigars. The problem here is that the supposed images of Brown, along with the unverified allegation that he carried out a “strong-arm robbery,” primes the media – and its readers –   to focus on the wrong suspect. Rather than releasing images of Darren Wilson – who’s suspected of something far more serious than theft – this emphasis places blame on the victim. Even if it’s confirmed that Brown took a box of cigars and pushed a store clerk in one place, he was killed in another – and witnesses claim the 18-year-old was essentially executed in cold blood.

Ed Morrissey also raises an eyebrow:

If Brown and Johnson were fleeing from a felony theft, the shooting may have been justified under Missouri law – which may explain why the police handed out the report on the strong-arm robbery. But they still have not released the report on the shooting itself, and it doesn’t explain why it took six days to get around to discussing the robbery.

Meanwhile, German Lopez notes that Missouri Highway Patrol Captain Ron Johnson, who’s been credited with calming the situation in Ferguson, was “not notified” that the local police was going to release the news:

The lack of communication between the two police departments raises questions about the coordination of security in Ferguson. Given the volatility in the St. Louis suburb, law enforcement, protesters, and reporters on the ground are concerned the allegations that Brown robbed a convenience store could escalate the situation. Missouri Highway Patrol Captain Ron Johnson, who’s leading security operations in Ferguson, acknowledged the mood changed in the area after Friday’s news release. Johnson suggested he would have “a serious conversation” with local police about not giving him the information prior to the release.

Jelani Cobb gets to the heart of the matter in describing the latest developments as “an object lesson about the importance of accountability and transparency”:

The release of the images that possibly show Brown assaulting a man makes these issues more important, not less. The reasons that the officer stopped Brown, the possibility that the 18-year-old struggled or just panicked, might become less inexplicable. That Brown appeared to have been involved in a robbery, even that he was a large man who might, conceivably, have resisted arrest, do not abjure the possibility of excessive force in the confrontation at Canfield Green; there is no death penalty for stealing cigars. Brown was shot thirty-five feet from Wilson, and the question of whether Brown’s back was to Wilson when the officer fired the gun—that is, if he was running away, and therefore not a threat—is just as pressing, as is the question of whether his hands were in the air, as witnesses claim, when the final volley of shots came. One of the pieces of information the police has delayed releasing is just how many bullets hit him. We also need to know why this information has been so hard to come by. The answers have not come quickly or completely—and not very willingly. What people who gathered in Ferguson have sought, even more resolutely than the police officer’s name, is, simply, respect.

Follow all our coverage on Michael Brown and Ferguson here.

(Photo: Demonstrators wrote messages while protesting on August 15, 2014, the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. By Joshua Lott/AFP/Getty Images)

Faces Of The Day

Indians Celebrate Independance Day

Youth paint their faces with social message and the colours of the Indian tricolour painted on the eve of Independence Day on August 14, 2014 in Mumbai, India. India celebrates its anniversary of independence from Britain on August 15 with great pomp and the Indian tricolour is hoisted atop prominent buildings and homes. By Vijayanand Gupta/Hindustan Times via Getty Images.

Clinton’s Slide In The Polls

by Dish Staff

Aaron Blake examines it:

A new poll from McClatchy and Marist College documents that decline pretty well. In hypothetical matchups with potential 2016 Republican candidates, Clinton has seen her lead decline from 20-plus points in February to the mid-single digits today. She leads Chris Christie by six points after leading him by 21 points six months ago. She leads Jeb Bush 48-41 after leading him by 20 in February. She leads Rand Paul 48-42 after leading him by the same margin early this year. …

Clinton’s continued lead, at this point, is pretty clearly a function of her superior name ID. While Clinton wins the votes of 97 percent of “strong Democrats” in all three matchups, Christie and Paul take only 91 percent of “strong Republicans.” While Clinton takes 79 percent of “soft Democrats,” Paul only takes 65 percent of “soft Republicans.” That’s largely because these Republicans aren’t as well-known to their base.

Ed Morrissey raises an eyebrow:

Even if the sample gets balanced out with more Democrats and fewer independents, though, it’s clear that Hillary has faded considerably over the summer. Whatever spin Team Clinton wants to put on her individual statements and retreats, the cumulative effect has been to both raise her profile and reduce her support. It’s a bad way to start a presidential campaign.