Author: Dish Staff

A Cure For Ebola? Ctd

by Dish Staff

Yesterday the World Health Organization determined that it is “ethically sound” to administer promising but unproven Ebola treatments on a wide scale, countering earlier criticism that one such treatment, the experimental antibody therapy ZMapp, had been made available exclusively to Westerners. The Liberian government has announced that it will be administering the drug to two afflicted doctors in the country, but as Josh Lowensohn notes, it remains unclear just how much medicine will ultimately make it to West Africa:

Supplies of the drug have also dwindled due to difficulties producing it, though Canada today said it would donate 800 to 1,000 doses of the drug to be used in aid efforts. A separate drug called TKM-Ebola, which is also developed in Canada, could end up being used as well after getting a nod from the US Food and Drug Administration last week to restart human testing of the drug on those who are already infected.

Peter Loftus notes ominously, “The maker of the experimental Ebola drug that was given to two infected Americans said Monday that its supply has been exhausted after the company provided doses to a West African nation [presumably Liberia]”:

Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc. said in a brief online statement it had complied with every request for the drug that had the necessary legal and regulatory authorization. The company said it provided the drug, called ZMapp, at no cost in all cases. San Diego-based Mapp didn’t name any countries that requested the drug and didn’t release additional details.

Alexandra Sifferlin considers how health officials will make the tough decisions about administering the drugs:

[N]ow the question is: With not enough to go around, who gets them? That’s ultimately at the discretion of the countries themselves, and before that happens, there’s a waiting period as the WHO formulates another panel of technical experts to create guidelines for the best use of these drugs. Some of the questions they will try to answer are: At what stage of the disease are the drugs or vaccines effective? Are they effective at the beginning of the disease or at the later stages? What are the safety issues related to the drugs? What’s the efficacy of the drug—do 30 percent of people respond or 50 percent?

“It think [who gets the drugs] is one of the most difficult questions to answer,” says Dr. Abha Saxena, the coordinator for the global ethics team at WHO. “There is a limited supply and there is a lot of demand. But who gets it is contextual, it will depend upon on the country, the situation, and they type of drug that will eventually go forward into either trial or compassionate use.” The panel will meet by the end of this month.

Meanwhile, Amanda Taub suggests that “most of the people Ebola kills may never actually contract it”:

New, worrying information from Sierra Leone suggests that damage from the disease may go far beyond deaths from the Ebola virus itself. Rather, Ebola is claiming more victims by damaging already-weak local health systems and their ability to respond to other medical problems, from malaria to emergency c-sections. The ebola-driven rise in deaths from those other maladies may outpace the deaths from ebola itself.

The effect of the loss of services may be severe. Even before the Ebola outbreak, Sierra Leone was ranked the seventh-worst country in the world for maternal and child mortality. In 2012, the aid group Save the Children reported that 18 percent of children in Sierra Leone did not survive to age 5, and one in 25 women died of childbirth or pregnancy-related causes. If these fears prove correct, those numbers may be about to get much worse.

Egypt Is Led By A Mass Murderer

by Dish Staff

That’s the conclusion of a Human Rights Watch investigation into the killings of at least 817 and probably over 1,000 Egyptians during the dispersal of pro-Morsi demonstrators from Rabaa al-Adawiya Square a year ago tomorrow. The massacre, HRW contends, was deliberate, premeditated, and readily qualifies as a crime against humanity:

The 195-page investigation based on interviews with 122 survivors and witnesses has found Egypt‘s police and army “systematically and deliberately killed largely unarmed protesters on political grounds” in actions that “likely amounted to crimes against humanity”. The report recommends that several senior individuals within Egypt’s security apparatus be investigated and, where appropriate, held to account for their role in the planning of both the Rabaa massacre and others that occurred last summer – including Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, Egypt’s then defence minister and new president. As head of the army at the time, Sisi had overall responsibility for the army’s role at Rabaa, and has publicly acknowledged spending “very many long days to discuss all the details”.

HRW’s executive director Kenneth Roth, who was refused entry into Egypt for “security” reasons when he arrived in Cairo on Sunday to present the report’s findings, further details the role of Sisi:

There is every reason to believe that this was a planned operation implicating officials at the very top of the Egyptian government. Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim was the lead architect of the dispersal plan. His immediate supervisor, in charge of all security operations, was Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who was then defense minister and deputy prime minister for security affairs and is now Egypt’s president. In discussions prior to the dispersal, senior Interior Ministry officials spoke of anticipating thousands of deaths. The day after the slaughter, Ibrahim said it had all gone exactly according to plan, and later gave bonuses to participants.

The Rabaa dispersal was part of a pattern of cases across Egypt in which security forces used excessive force, including killing 61 participants at a sit-in protest outside the Republican Guard headquarters on July 8, and another 95 protesters near the Manassa Memorial in eastern Cairo on July 27.

But don’t hold your breath waiting for Sisi to be referred to the International Criminal Court. Owen Jones is outraged that the brutality of the Egyptian regime gets little press in the West, even as the US and UK funnel vast amounts of money, weapons, and other support to Sisi:

Too little has been said about Egypt’s human rights crisis. More than 40,000 people were detained or indicted in the first 10 months after the coup and, according to Amnesty International, the regime is usingmethods of torture from “the darkest days of the Hosni Mubarak era”. With “rampant torture, arbitrary arrests and detentions”, there has been a “catastrophic decline in human rights”. There have been claims of rape against male political dissidents; the use of electrocution, including on prisoners’ testicles; and in one case, a hot steel rod was inserted in the anus of a dissident who later died. …

Egypt is in the grip of a violent tyranny that brooks little dissent. And just as the west is complicit in Israel’s attack on Gaza, it equally shares some responsibility for the actions of Egypt’s regime. The question is surely, how many more corpses until we start holding those responsible to account?

Read the Dish’s extensive coverage of last summer’s bloodshed in Cairo here.

Quarantine As A Civil-Liberties Issue

by Dish Staff

Three American missionaries who worked with Ebola patients in Liberia were immediately placed under quarantine when they returned to the US Sunday. Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley mull over the legality of such a move:

The legal theorist Jennifer Elsea has drawn parallels between the rights of the quarantined and those of American citizens who have been deemed “enemy combatants.” Both medically quarantined subjects and detained terrorist suspects are examples, Elsea’s work suggests, of how the rights of citizens can be put on hold for indefinite periods of time. If being held in a state of quarantine is legally comparable to being held as a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay, is quarantine something we should trust to protect us, or is it something we actually need protection from?

The A.C.L.U. has argued that trading liberty for security in the event of a pandemic is not only undesirable but also constitutionally dangerous and unnecessary. … In 2007, Barry Steinhardt , an A.C.L.U. spokesman, emphasized that, “in the vast majority of cases, sick individuals are the first to want proper medical attention and need no encouragement or state coercion to voluntarily isolate themselves.” As we have seen in the cases of Andrew Speaker and the West African victims of Ebola, however, such rational and altruistic responses to involuntary quarantine are by no means universal. Active resistance does occur, and when it does it poses extraordinary problems of control.

Do Anti-Bullying Laws Work?

by Dish Staff

LGBT_anti-bullying_laws

German Lopez finds reason to think so:

It’s possible that some of these numbers reflect more tolerant environments in certain states. If a state legislature has the political support to pass laws that protect LGBT students, the state’s residents might be more likely to take action against anti-gay or transphobic discrimination regardless of the law.

But Eliza Byard, executive director of GLSEN, says her organization’s research controls for those factors. She points out that her group found better reports from LGBT students in Arkansas and North Carolina, two states that aren’t traditionally associated with LGBT-friendly environments, after they passed comprehensive laws protecting LGBT students.

Just Another Ceasefire, Or Something More? Ctd

by Dish Staff

J.J. Goldberg passes along news from the Israeli press that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have come close to reaching an agreement on a long-term Gaza ceasefire during Egyptian-brokered talks in Cairo. He relays the reported terms of the agreement: on the Israeli side, these include a halt to hostilities, Israeli control over border crossings between Gaza and Israel, and PA control over payments to public workers in Gaza. The Palestinian delegation is demanding an expansion of the coastal waters open to Gaza fishermen, the opening of the Rafah crossing into Egypt, and an expansion of amount and variety of goods Israel transports into Gaza. Other demands appear to have been set aside for the time being:

The Palestinians have agreed to drop for now their demands for a Gaza seaport and reopening of the Dahaniya airport in Gaza. Israel and Egypt had opposed the opening of a Gaza seaport out of fear that Hamas would use it to import weapons. Israel’s position is that it will not agree to opening a Gaza seaport until agreement has been reached on a verifiable, enforceable disarmament of Hamas and demilitarization of Gaza.

For the present, Israel is said to have dropped its demand for demilitarization of Gaza. There was never any chance that Hamas would agree to it, and as such it would require a complete reconquest of Gaza and defeat of Hamas. That, as the heads of the Israel Defense Forces warned the cabinet last week, would require a massive operation that would devastate Gaza and lead to Israel’s complete isolation internationally.

Yishai Schwartz expects these negotiations to come to nothing and the war to end in a stalemate, as neither party is willing to compromise much:

Given the incompatibility of the sides’ respective goals, it’s clear that negotiations are a bit of a farce. In the short term, Hamas seeks an arrangement that expands its legitimacy at the expense of the Palestinian Authority; Israel seeks to weaken Hamas and enhance the authority of the Palestinian Authority. Hamas seeks rearmament; Israel seeks demilitarization. In the long term, Hamas seeks Israel’s dissolution and replacement with an Islamist state. Israel seeks a reliable normalcy for its citizens, and is currently deeply divided over whether it wants, needs, or can even afford the creation of a Palestinian State. These objectives are simply not reconcilable. …

Instead, both sides will likely resign themselves to some sort of renewed modus vivendi that is only slightly less terrible than the status quo. Israel and Hamas will agree to a partial weakening of the blockade in exchange for a nominal effort at demilitarization.

In the meantime, activists are organizing another flotilla of boats to run the Gaza blockade. Dish alum Katie Zavadski can guess how that will turn out:

Like the one in 2010, this flotilla will come from the IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation, a Turkish NGO, complete with very concerned activists from 12 countries. The group, part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (which describes itself as “a grassroots people-to-people solidarity movement composed of campaigns and initiatives from all over the world working together to end the siege of Gaza”), told Reuters that this is being organized “in the shadow of the latest Israeli aggression on Gaza.”

Of course, since the seven-plus-year blockade of Gaza is a handy bargaining chip for Israel, we can already tell you how this will likely go: Tensions will flare as the ship(s) near Gaza, refusing to be inspected by Israeli forces. Eventually, the IDF will raid them. There may be casualties. And inevitably, the “humanitarian mission” will set back peace talks even further because this will be touted as another show of Israeli aggression.

ISIS And The Islamist Menace

by Dish Staff

Alex Massie contends that ISIS’s peculiarly evil worldview puts us at odds whether or not we choose to be:

Make no mistake, we may not consider ourselves at war with ISIS but they most assuredly reckon themselves at war with us. And with anyone else who does not share their murderous corruption of Islam. The world has rarely been short on horror but there is something especially horrifying about ISIS. If heads on pikes won’t convince you, what would be enough to persuade you this is an evil that must be confronted? And if not confronted today it will have to be confronted eventually. Because these are not people and this is not a worldview that will be content to carve out territory and then, once it has established its base, live quietly and peacefully ever after.

In the end, all the wrangling about cause and effect and who started what and who is to blame this or that becomes a form of dissembling dithering. In the end we are responsible. Not so much on account of the unforeseen consequences of past blunders but because we – the United States and its NATO allies – have the power, the equipment and the opportunity to do something about it.

David Rothkopf identifies the threat of radical Islam as “the principal source of threat to our interests, the stability of the region, and to our allies.” He argues that the US’s Middle East policy should address this threat holistically, rather than on a case-by-case basis:

While the conditions and specific upheavals in each state in the Middle East are, as noted earlier, different, it is this battle that is responsible for the greatest amount of today’s unrest and violence. Whether it is Ansar al-Sharia in Libya or the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hamas in Gaza or al-Nusrah Front in Syria, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or the Islamic State struggling to establish its caliphate, it is clear today that extremist Islam is emerging as a threat so broad that it must be seen in its totality to be contended with.

Further, the ties of these groups to others operating in the periphery of this region — from the Taliban to the Haqqani network, from Boko Haram to Uighur or Chechen separatists — both underscore the global scope of the problem and the potential for significant alliances to help combat it.

Certainly, our traditional allies in the Middle East have come to see the problem as one. Consider the degree to which Israel and Egypt have cooperated to deal with Hamas. Consider that unifying animus toward the Muslim Brotherhood that has linked together not only those two former warring states but also Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates.

Adam Taylor observes that ISIS’s extremist brand is catching on:

What’s really worrying is that despite all the confusion over its name, the Islamic State “brand” actually seems pretty solid — and worryingly global. It’s distinctive black-and-white flag was flown in London last week, and leaflets supporting it were handed out in the city’s Oxford Street on Tuesday. An American was arrested at a New York City airport this month after authorities were tipped off by his pro-Islamic State Twitter rants. The group has began publishing videos in Hindi, Urdu and Tamil in a bid to reach Indian Muslims. There are credible reports that the group is hoping to target Asian countries — and Indonesia is so worried that it banned all support for the Islamic State. The list goes on and on. Whatever you call it — the Islamic State, ISIS, ISIL, or something else — its brand is potent.

Indeed, even China is starting to worry:

China has been fighting a low-level separatist insurgency of its own in Xinjiang for decades and worries that foreign Islamic groups are infiltrating the region, emboldening the simmering independence movement. Uighur exile groups say China’s government overstates its terrorism problem and falsely paints protests that turn into riots as premeditated terror attacks. In any case, Beijing is likely alarmed by IS’s criticism of its treatment of the Muslim Uighurs and the group’s alleged plan to seize Xinjiang, no matter how far-fetched the idea might be. But just how actively authorities will deal with any IS threat remains to be seen.

Furthermore, Andrew Tabler cites “analysts and European and American officials” as saying that “hundreds, if not thousands, of ISIL and Al Qaeda operatives in Syria and the Islamic State are likely planning attacks either back home or elsewhere”:

These include Muhsin al-Fadhili, former head of Al Qaeda’s Iranian facilitation network; Sanafi al-Nasr, head of Al Qaeda’s Syria “Victory Committee”; Wafa al-Saudi, Al Qaeda’s former head of security for counter intelligence; as well as Al Qaeda founding member Firas al-Suri. Members of Al Qaeda Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) are also reportedly in Syria, indicating a growing opportunity for connectivity, coordination, planning, and synchronization with Jebhat al-Nusra and other jihadists. Taken together with national-based Jihadist units from China, the Caucasus, Libya, Egypt, Sweden, and beyond, the “Islamic State” is already the next Afghanistan or Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas in terms of a durable safe haven and training ground for global Islamic terrorism.

William Inboden believes the threatened Yazidi genocide opened Obama’s eyes to the scope of ISIS’s fanatical ambitions and is changing the president’s beliefs about terrorism, the Middle East, and American power:

I have written before about the close connections between religious persecution and national security threats. The vicious Islamic State campaign to exterminate Yazidis and Christians further reinforces this point. The Islamic State’s targeting of religious minorities is not merely a side effect of its territorial advances; it is central to the group’s identity and purpose. The worldview of the militant jihadist holds religious pluralism and religious freedom to be anathema, and the Islamic State perversely considers its own measures of success to include eliminating religious minorities. Just as the Islamic State’s persecution of Christians and Yazidis should have been an early indicator of the larger security threat it poses, the longer-term American response to the Islamic State will need to go beyond airstrikes to include a renewed diplomatic commitment to protecting and promoting religious freedom.

Not Again, Ctd

by Dish Staff

With tensions in the St. Louis area remaining high following the shooting death of unarmed teen Michael Brown, Conor Friersdorf gapes at the now-famous photo of heavily armed police confronting a local protester:

[T]hose three officers are dressed and outfitted such that they could as easily be storming into an ISIS safe house in Iraq. Actually, they are on the streets of an American city, clad in combat gear, squaring off against a nonviolent protestor in a t-shirt and jeans with both of his hands raised over his head. It is easy to see how visuals like these could dissuade people from taking to the streets to assemble in protest of police shootings, as is their moral and Constitutional right.

A handful of protestors in Ferguson, Missouri have reportedly thrown rocks at police, a wholly unjustified act that ought to result in their arrest and prosecution, if the perpetrators can be identified. But in the image above, the camouflage pants and assault rifles are hardly there to protect against thrown rocks. If the police were dressed as civilians, but with helmets and shields, that would be more understandable. The other bit of necessary context: as mostly black protesters face these pseudo-military troopers to protest what they believe to be a civil rights violation, they’re staring at another police excess that disproportionately affects people like them.

Notably, the photographer, Whitney Curtis, was struck by a rubber bullet while covering the scene. Jay Caspian Kang decries the police response:

[A]s the images and stories from Ferguson, Missouri, joined the news churn, many who registered their thoughts via social media noted that what they were seeing – policemen with dogs and AR-15 assault rifles standing in a Stygian, blue-lit cloud of tear gas; crowds of protesters with their hands in the air, screaming “Hands up, don’t shoot”; members of the press being removed from the scene – did not look like America. The sentiment underlying the shock – that the United States should be better, that we have a Constitution that protects its citizens from violent excesses, that an unarmed young man ought to be able to live through an encounter with a police officer – seems almost precious, when one considers the country’s racial history. … But after last night’s militarized reaction to the protests in Ferguson, it’s worth considering whether the typical ending to the story, wherein the outrage of the community is met with silence on the part of the authorities, has changed for the worse.

Annie-Rose Strasser observes ominously that on Tuesday the FAA issued a no-fly zone over Ferguson “to provide a safe environment for law enforcement activities”:

To get more of a sense of what that means, ThinkProgress called the helicopter dispatcher at the St. Louis County Police Department. St. Louis, not Ferguson, has been “responsible for crowd control,” a Ferguson Police spokesperson said. According to the dispatcher, the department originally requested the no-fly zone – for certain flights; “the ceiling is only at 5,000 feet,” the dispatcher said, though the website actually lists 3,000 feet – for 24 hours. The department then asked the FAA to extend the ban on flying.

The reason? “It’s just for a no-fly zone because we have multiple helicopters maneuvering in the area and we were having some problems with news aircrafts flying around there,” the dispatcher, who would only identify himself by his first name, Chris, said. The effort to stop media from flying over the area to film is troubling, especially in light of reports that police have turned journalists away from the sites of the protests.

Melissa Byrne suggests the police bear some responsibility for the rioting:

They should have gathered people of faith and trauma specialists to listen to the community. They should have ordered pizzas and sodas to feed people into night as they aired their anger and grievances. They should have packed away all need to fight the community. They should have committed to an open and transparent process for justice. They should have not relied on creating the conditions for a riot to cover up for their history of problematic policing. Yes, it was wrong for people to commit property damage, but I am 100-percent confident that non-violent, non-aggressive policing would have prevented the outburst of rage.

Emily Badger examines the racial composition of the Ferguson Police Department:

The St. Louis suburb of Ferguson where the working-class, majority-black population has been clashing with law enforcement for the last three days has 53 commissioned police officers. According to the city’s police chief, three of them are black. These numbers matter not just for the terrible optics of white officers clutching tear gas canisters opposite black residents shouting back. They speak to a fundamental problem rooted deep in history and driving the perception of injustice in Ferguson today: This community isn’t represented in its own institutions of power.

Robert Tracinski, in a post regrettably titled “Why Ferguson Needs John Adams,” urges observers not to rush to conclusions:

We ought to know how much can be distorted, misrepresented, and misunderstood by seemingly official or sympathetic sources on all sides, how long it can take for accurate information to come out, and how equivocal the results can be, with the evidence so evenly balanced as to convince partisans on both sides that they are right. But when every new politically charged shooting comes along, we forget what we should have learned, and there we all go, back to making confident pronouncements about who we think did what, who is the villain, and what is the remedy. The cardinal sin here is the subordination of facts to a “narrative” adopted by activists and by the media. To adopt a narrative about how all police are racist or all police lie about shootings would be as unjust as to adopt a narrative about how all young black men are violent. Instead of insisting on our cherished narrative, we should be calling for the rule of law—which applies for everyone.

But John McWhorter contends that the narrative about racially biased policing is accurate:

I am the last person to jump in with overheated rhetoric that America is engaged in a “war against black men.” There is no evidence of anything so deliberate. However, when more temperately minded people say that black lives are valued less in the clinch than white ones, jump in I must, because it’s true.

A few weeks ago, white 18-year-old Steve Lohner could tote a gun around in Aurora, Colorado (where in 2012 James Holmes gunned 12 people to death and injured 70 others), practically taunting law enforcement  to mess with him, in a quest to make a showy point about gun rights. Who among us can pretend that if a black kid was doing the same thing he wouldn’t be much more likely to wind up killed? Those inclined to pretend might note that meanwhile, black 22-year-old John Crawford was killed two weeks later for holding a toy gun at a Wal-Mart in Ohio. This kind of thing sits in black American minds and creates a sense of alienation.

Meanwhile, Landon Jones mulls over the shooting in light of St. Louis’ troubled racial history:

There is no large city in America more burdened by racial tension and mutual suspicion than St. Louis. The racial and economic problems that have beset America’s cities are particularly intense in my hometown. Despite the city’s large black population, the single black person I met during my childhood in the 1950s was my parents’ housekeeper, Willie Brown. She would arrive at our house once a week and go to the basement to change into her maid’s dress. St. Louis is the city that produced Miles Davis, Chuck Berry, and Josephine Baker. Yet when Michael Brown died, white and black residents quickly drew back to their default positions of mutual distrust: Black people took to the streets to express their anger, while white citizens expressed dismay at the chaos. There are echoes of this throughout the city’s history.

But Jelani Cobb emphasizes that such an event could happen anywhere:

Three weeks ago, Eric Garner died as the result of N.Y.P.D. officers placing him in a choke hold, a banned tactic, following a confrontation over selling loose cigarettes. His death echoed that of Renisha McBride, the nineteen-year-old who was killed when she knocked on a stranger’s door following a car accident, which in turn conjured memories of Jonathan Ferrell, who was shot ten times and killed by officers in North Carolina soon after the death, in Florida, of Jordan Davis, shot by a man who wanted him to turn down his music, which in turn paralleled the circumstances of Trayvon Martin’s demise. For those who have no choice but to remember these matters, those names have been inducted into a grim roll call that includes Sean Bell, Oscar Grant, Amadou Diallo, and Eleanor Bumpurs. These are all distinct incidents that took place under particular circumstances in differing locales. Yet what happened on Staten Island and in Dearborn Heights, Charlotte, Jacksonville, and Sanford have culminated, again, in the specific timbre of familial grief, a familiar strain of outrage, and an accompanying body of commentary straining to find a novel angle to the recurring tragedy.

 

 

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)