Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 945

Would It Have Been Legal to Shoot and Kill George Zimmerman?

Yesterday, Shellie Zimmerman told a 911 operator that her husband George "was going to shoot" her and her father at their Florida home. "I'm really, really afraid," she added. And while the incident did not end in violence — nor has anyone been charged as the facts are still sorted out  — Shellie's panicked 911 call poses an obvious question: would Florida law have offered Shellie the same defense had she used lethal force against her husband, as George used after he shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin? 

This, to be clear, is a hypothetical situation: unlike Trayvon Martin, both Zimmermans are around to tell their version of events and we're learning quite a bit about what happened — including that Shellie Zimmerman's story has changed since her initial 911 call. Shellie and her father declined to press charges, and it turns out that police weren't able to find a gun on Zimmerman, or at the scene of the dispute. And we may never know who was telling the truth: George Zimmerman smashed an iPad allegedly used by Shellie Zimmerman to record the whole thing. 

But what if Monday's incident had escalated? What if Shellie or her father got hold of a gun to defend themselves? If the situation had gone differently and Shellie had used a gun to shoot George  — and George had not survived — one of the last records would have been Shellie's 911 call. George would not be around to give his side of the story. You can listen to the whole thing here, but this is the key point in which Shellie claimed George was armed and threatening her and her father:

Police: Is he inside now?

Shellie: No, he is in his car and he continually has his hand on his gun and he keeps saying step closer and he is just threatening all of us.

Police: Step closer and what?

Shellie: And he is doing to shoot us.

Police: OK.

Shellie: He punched my dad on the nose. My dad has a mark on his face. I saw his glasses were on the floor. He accosted my father and then took my iPad out of my hand and smashed it and cut it with a pocket knife. There is a Lake Mary city worker across the street that I believe saw almost all of it. He is sitting in his truck right now. He just showed up here but my phone died so I had to call from my father's phone. I'm really, really afraid.

Police: We have units in the area where you are at so just stay on the line with me.

Shellie: I don't know what he is capable of. I'm just really scared.

For comparison, you can read the transcript of George Zimmerman's 911 call before he engaged Martin. He started by saying "This guy looks like he's up to no good, or he's on drugs or something," and later added "Yeah, now he's coming towards me. … He's got his hand in his waistband."

So, under the scenario Shellie initially described to police, would Florida law permit her to shoot and kill George Zimmerman? Elizabeth Megale, a Savannah College associate professor who's written about stand your ground and self-defense laws in the state for years, told The Atlantic Wire that Shellie would have a good chance of walking free. "There are a couple of things going for her," Megale said,  "They were at the house, so there's actually, in Florida, an even broader protection in your home," if it was proven that Shellie and her father had residency. Shellie filed for divorce from George days ago, and the home is owned by her parents, one of whom was involved in the incident yesterday. If Shellie and her father were established as the residents of the home, they would have been "afforded a presumption of reasonable fear" against George Zimmerman, entitling them to defend themselves with lethal force. And if it's arguable that Zimmerman was entering the home unlawfully, police will start with that presumption, Megale added, which would make it incredibly difficult for Shellie or her dad to face charges. 

On the other hand, it appears that George, and not Shellie, was living at the home they used to share at the time of the incident. She was stopping by to pick up some belongings. So even without the presumption afforded to her by the first part of the law, if it was established that George had a right to be there, Shellie or her father would still have "no duty to retreat" if "he or she reasonably believed it was necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another." If that sounds familiar, it's because it's the same self-defense provision invoked by George Zimmerman in his trial. 

Because George and Martin were in the street, George had to provide evidence to the police in order to establish his reasonable fear from Martin — including the lacerations he sustained. Megale mentioned the case of John Tabutt for comparison, a 62-year-old Florida man who shot and killed his own fiancée in their home the night before their marriage. Tabutt said that the thought his fiance was an intruder. A grand jury declined to press manslaughter charges against him. "There are tons of cases," Megale said, "where there's no evidence of a break-in, but the shooter is awarded the presumption of reasonable fear anyway." 

There's a contrasting comparison to make here, too: Marissa Alexander, also of Florida, was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison after she fired a warning shot towards her abusive husband Gray Rico in what she says was self defense. Rico, who survived, disputed his wife's version of events, and a judge denied her immunity under stand your ground. So maybe the real lesson here is that Florida's laws work best if there's no one else around to dispute the story. 

       

Food Critic Ruth Reichl Makes the Leap to Fiction

PBS's Ruth Reichl, former editor of the now-defunct Gourmet Magazine, is the latest beloved food writer to score a high-profile book deal.

But Reichl won't be going the Marilyn Hagerty route, which is to say, cobbling together a 250-page anthology of poetically terse restaurant reviews that describe waiters as "friendly, but impersonal" and napkins as "natural-colored." Nor is she doing the Anthony Bourdain thing, for that matter. 

Reichl is writing a novel, her first work of fiction after three best-selling memoirs. It will be published by Random House, The New York Times reports. Did we mention it's a three-book deal?

Restaurant critic. Editor of Gourmet magazine, shuttered. Next, novels. Three-book deal for @ruthreichl with RHPG: http://t.co/UsOo05dFHG

— Julie Bosman (@juliebosman) September 10, 2013

The first of the three is about a cache of secret correspondences written during World War II, with a plot involving "sisters, family ties, and a young woman who must finally let go of guilt and grief to embrace her own true gifts," Theresa Zoro, Random House's Director of Publicity told The Atlantic Wire in an email. Oh, and also the food world. And it's titled Delicious!

It'll be interesting, at the very least. 

"In her bestselling memoirs Ruth Reichl has long illuminated the theme of how food defines us," Zoro wrote, "and never more so than in her dazzling fiction debut."

Reichl is not the first food writer to make the leap to novelist, though she is probably the most famous. Gael Greene, famously of New York, dabbled in fiction in the '80s, while the aptly named Aaron Hamburger more recently chronicled how food writing "fed [his] fiction." And Jonathan Safran Foer, of course, made the opposite jump, sort of.

We anxiously await Marilyn Hagerty's debut novel.

       

NSA Violated Privacy Rules Because It Lacked 'Full Understanding' of Its Program

"There was nobody in NSA who really had a full understanding of how the program was operating at the time." That's an intelligence official's one-line summary of thousands of documents released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in a briefing on Tuesday. The documents, released at the DNI's declassification Tumblr, detail a massive overhaul of the agency's collection of phone metadata in 2009 following the discovery that the NSA was improperly checking phone numbers against the database.

Bloomberg reports:

The violations occurred between May 2006 and January 2009 and involved checks on as many as 16,000 phone numbers, including some based in the U.S., said two senior intelligence officials with direct knowledge of how the program operated.

Those checks came from a pre-determined list including numbers that should not have been included. Of the 17,000-plus numbers on the list, only about 10 percent met the necessary standard for inclusion. For a limited time, the FISA Court, which approves any surveillance by the NSA, mandated that any checks against the database be conducted on a case-by-case basis. That database contains data collected under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the phone metadata gathering that first came to light following the leak by Edward Snowden of a FISA Court document related to the collection of records from Verizon.

Officials were quick to note that the violations were unintentional and the problem has since been remedied. A substantial part of the DNI's letter explaining the release of the documents is predicated on exhaustively articulating that response. Among the fixes: "making technological fixes, improving training, and implementing new oversight procedures." The DNI also explains how the technology got out ahead of the ability of staff to understand how it exceeded authorization. "NSA also recognized that its compliance and oversight infrastructure had not kept pace with its operational momentum and the evolving and challenging technological environment in which it functioned."

Since the Snowden leaks began, we've been assured that violations have been addressed with a (newly) robust system of checks and balances. The Wall Street Journal contrasts the document release with the language the NSA has used to describe its surveillance.

Top U.S. officials, including NSA Director Keith Alexander, have repeatedly reassured lawmakers and the public that the phone-records program has been carefully executed under oversight from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court court.

"This is not a program where we are out freewheeling it," Gen. Alexander said in June. "It is a well-overseen and a very focused program."

In addition to assurances that these violations have been addressed, the DNI's blog post offers an explanation for its impetus for the release.

Release of these documents reflects the Executive Branch’s continued commitment to making information about this intelligence collection program publicly available when appropriate and consistent with the national security of the United States.

Not exclusively. As with the release last month of documents related to a 2011 violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, this most recent release stems primarily from a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. At its site, the organization made this clear last week:

Like our lawsuit over that 2011 FISA opinion—where the government posted the results on Director of National Intelligence’s new Tumblr account—the Justice Department may attempt to portray this release as being done out of the goodness of its heart and as a testament to its commitment to transparency. While we applaud the government for finally releasing the opinions, it is not simply a case of magnanimity. The Justice Department is releasing this information because a court has ordered it to do so in response to EFF’s FOIA lawsuit, which was filed on the tenth anniversary of the enactment of the Patriot Act—nearly two years ago.

Presumably, the NSA is now fully aware of how its various programs are operating.

       

Let Us No Longer Be 'Intimate' with Our Novelists

Alice McDermott's new novel, Someone, is getting a lot praise — but it's a particular word in the novel's reviews that seems to recur with somewhat odd frequency. Like a noisome smell, it must be addressed. 

[image error]In its review of the novel, NPR says that Someone — essentially, the chronicle of an Irish-American woman's life in Brooklyn — is "a beautifully intimate novel;" meanwhile, the website Bustle says that the work is "intimate, elegant, and beautifully crafted." And in The Washington Post, novelist Roxana Robinson praises the novel's "small, rich, intimate scenes" and the Brooklyn streets that McDermott "knows intimately." Robinson says that "One of the great strengths of the book lies in this sense of tenderness and intimacy." 

I haven't read the book yet; it may be excellent, for all I know. But the use of "intimacy" as a term of praise is troubling. That word is hardly confined to McDermott's novel, either. Jhumpa Lahiri's new novel, The Lowland, is written with attention to "intimate detail," according to The Guardian. In The New York Review of Books, Joyce Carol Oates says that Karen Joy Fowler's We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves "provides an intimate, child’s-eye look at a midwestern academic household of the 1980s" — presumably, a vantage point desired by readers. The New York Times Book Review says that Stephen King's Joyland is narrated with an "intimate quality." Kevin Powers's Yellow Birds, about the war in Iraq, is to be praised for its "intimacy," according to The Seattle Times. And, this from the Los Angeles Review of Books: "Krys Lee's stories are resourceful, determined, fragile, intimate, and lonely all at once." Hell, I've used the word myself, to describe the work of Ernest Hemingway, of all writers.

[image error]Now, this may be nothing more than the flagrant overuse of a word — and poor overuse at that. After all, how can a novel be anything but intimate? The act of reading is, almost by definition, an act of intimacy between a reader and writer, an exchange of intellectual fluids. As such, James Joyce's Dublin in Ulysses is intimate, even at it most crowded, cacophonous and inscrutable. The same for the London of Zadie Smith, the ruthless England of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall. Intimacy, in the end, is just the transmission of insight from one mind to another mind.

But that's not how the word is used today. "Intimate," as I understand its usage in contemporary criticism, means "small." In fact, Roxana Robinson uses precisely that word to praise Someone, which she contrasts with novels of big scope and huge ambition:

You can dazzle the reader with an intricate narrative, full of clever twists and conundrums. You can set the novel on another planet; you can people it with vampires and time travelers. You can fill it with violence or sex or mathematical theorems. You can dazzle with your arcane knowledge, your vaulting ambition or your extraordinarily inventive voice.

This is an obvious broadside against the fiction of David Foster Wallace, Thomas Pynchon and Donna Tartt — fiction that is smart and ambitious and is afraid to be neither. NPR's Susan Jane Gilman makes much the same point:

There has been a trend in fiction in this millennium that critic James Wood has dubbed "hysterical realism." We all know the books: celebrated, outsized, "genius" novels, outlandish in their cleverness. But Wood has argued — and I would agree — that novels must ultimately be about genuine human beings. Otherwise, all that literary velocity becomes mere pyrotechnics.

Gilman notes that "Nothing spectacular happens" in the novel. That is not, presumably, to the novel's detriment, at least in this estimation.

And, again, Someone could be a fantastic work of fiction, but the frequent reference to "intimacy" does not do the novel any favors, implying, not only a smallness of setting or overall scope, but a far more fatal smallness of ideas.

This, in the end, is the problem with "intimate" fiction — the emphasis, that is, on the novel as a warm blanket to cuddle with instead of a fire that burns clean through you. Intimate reading is reading for comfort, instead of all that good stuff — beauty, truth, wisdom — that we no longer acknowledge seeking without ironic air quotes. Intimacy is too nice for any of that.

In his seminal Reading As Therapy: What Contemporary Fiction Does for Middle-Class Americans, the young literary critic Timothy Aubry argues that we have come to "treat novels less as a source of aesthetic satisfaction than as a...form of therapy." Intimacy, in this context, makes sense, giving us what Aubry calls that "tingle of self-recognition" we want from books today, as opposed to an experience of the alien or the new. One of Aubry's chapters, on Rebecca Wells's novel Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, is simply called "Therapy and Intimacy."

But maybe fiction should be neither. The emphasis on intimacy seems a dangerous path for fiction, fostering a cloistered art form that does not address the issues of the day. Save intimacy for the bedroom. With fiction, please dazzle.

 

       

Nothing Is Better than a Raccoon Pool Party

We realize there's only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cellphone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why, every day, The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:

Jason Statham is one of my favorite action heroes. What we noticed (even before this video came to life) is that many of his films revolve around one very familiar plot device: 

Thank heaven for people who like to film their loved ones' most intimate moments and then post those moments on the Internet for consumption by complete strangers. Today we present you with the heart-warming tale of Jason Mortensen. Jimmy Kimmel, if this is your doing, you are one evil man: 

We discussed today how people doing dumb things on the Internet inspires people to follow suit and do even dumber things. I kinda wish the same went for stop-motion animation like this: 

And, finally, the raccoon pool party we promised:

       

George Zimmeman Smashed the iPad That Recorded Yesterday's Domestic Dispute

The only thing stopping police from figuring out what happened on Monday between George Zimmerman and his estranged wife, Shellie Zimmerman, is an iPad that was smashed into "multiple pieces" during the alleged incident. It was George Zimmerman who did the smashing, of course. 

An altercation erupted Monday between Zimmerman, Shellie, and her father, David Dean. The details are sketchy, but this is what we know. Shellie Zimmerman told 911 dispatchers that Zimmerman punched her father in the nose, that he was brandishing his gun, that he pulled a knife on her and smashed her iPad. Here's the 911 call: 

Just days before, Shellie Zimmerman announced she was filing for divorce. But Shellie Zimmerman and David Dean both decided not to press charges. He was free to go, again, and the police never did find the gun. At first it seemed someone was lying about the gun after Shellie Zimmerman's story changed Monday evening. But Lake Mary police kept investigating, attempting to piece together what happened the best they could from witness statements and security camera footage.

The investigation is now focussing on the smashed iPad because Shellie was allegedly filming the incident before Zimmerman smashed it to pieces, Lake Mary police spokesman Officer Zach Hudson announced Tuesday, per the Associated Press: 

“The iPad video is going to be paramount in this case,” Hudson said.

When asked who could possibly be charged, Hudson said, “As of right now, it could be either one or it could be no one. It depends what that iPad has on it, what that footage shows.”

Since the incident happened, both have accused the other of being the aggressor in the incident. Zimmerman says his wife pushed him, and his now former lawyer Mark O'Mara said the incident was nothing more than a common domestic dispute between soon-to-be-divorcees. But police are looking at charging Zimmerman with domestic violence if they can recover the video on the smashed iPad. In Florida, the state attorney doesn't need a victim's consent to charge someone for domestic violence. Zimmerman could also be charged with destruction of evidence, depending on what the iPad reveals. "It's been pretty badly damaged," Hudson told reporters, about the iPad.

The phantom gun has also completely disappeared. "We searched him... there was no weapon," Hudson said. "As of right now, a gun is not a part of the equation." Where the gun went, well, we'll probably never know. 

       

Nadal Wins Men's US Open

Rafael Nadal trounced Novak Djokovic in the final round of the US Open on Monday night, earning his second championship title in the tournament and his 13th Grand Slam overall. Nadal beat the No. 1-ranked Djokovic 6-2, 3-6, 6-4, 6-1. It is his sixth victory over Djokovic in their last seven matches.

Nadal had missed the start of the 2013 season due to knee problems, but has clearly been able to stage comeback over the last few months, winning the French Open as well. He has won 60 of his 64 total matches this year.

Afterwards Nadal said:

"this is probably the most emotional one in my career. I felt that I did everything right to have my chance here. You play one match against one of the best players in the history. I know I have to be almost perfect to win. It means a lot for me to have this trophy with me today."

 

 

 

       

Human Rights Watch Report Concludes That Assad Carried Out Chemical Attacks

A just-released report (warning: graphic cover page) from Human Rights Watch, based on evidence and interviews with those in the area, concludes that the chemical attacks carried out on August 21 were the action of the Syrian government and not rebel forces.

Though the report's authors could not actually investigate the Ghouta area where the rockets landed, they interviewed more than 10 eyewitnesses and three responding doctors via Skype to verify the use of chemical weapons and the exact types of rockets used. The rockets used in the attacks—330mm and 140mm surface-to-surface rockets—could only have been possessed by Assad's forces:

The evidence concerning the type of rockets and launchers used in these attacks strongly suggests that these are weapon systems known and documented to be only in the possession of, and used by, Syrian government armed forces. Human Rights Watch and arms experts monitoring the use of weaponry in Syria have not documented Syrian opposition forces to be in the possession of the 140mm and 330mm rockets used in the attack, or their associated launchers.

The doctors interviewed said that the symptoms correlated with Sarin gas or some other nerve agent.

The report also refutes claims that the attacks were caused by Syrian opposition forces mishandling chemical agents, noting "Claims that the August 21 deaths were caused by an accidental explosion by opposition forces mishandling chemical weapons in their possession are inconsistent with large numbers of deaths at two locations 16 kilometers apart."

On Monday, President Obama said that he had discussed with Vladimir Putin the possibility of placing Syria's chemical weapons under international control.

       

What You Should and Shouldn't Expect From Apple Today

Today, Apple is holding another one of their keynotes, where they will probably announcing some new shiny cyber doohickey. But exactly what shiny doohickey will be revealed? Here are the possibilities.

Definitely A Sure Thing Unless The World Ends

iPhone 5S: It's right around that time of year when Apple releases a new iteration of their iPhone, and this year is a half-step, keeping in line with the tick-tock release schedule (alternating numbered and 'S' models) that the company has maintained for the last few year. While the new model will likely have the requisite processor and camera improvements, other features such as a fingerprint scanner are more speculative. Leaked photos also show that the models may come in more colors than white and black, including a flashy champagne gold.

Highly Likely

iPhone 5C: The fabled "cheaper iPhone" rumors have been around for years but those rumors might finally come to fruition in the form of a lower-end model. It's unknown exactly what this device will lack that the 5S will not. In the past, Apple has simply dropped prices on older models.

[image error]

iOS 7, OS X Mavericks: The annual updates to Apple's mobile and desktop operating systems, respectively, will probably receive more specific launch dates than the broad "fall 2013" window previously supplied. iOS 7 will bring an all-encompassing aesthetic redesign to the system—AT&T  has apparently been prepping customer support reps to deal with blindsided customers—as well as new features including the Pandora-copying iTunes Radio. OS X Mavericks will also have a bunch of new stuff but really the only thing that matters here is that Apple has fixed the issues with multiple displays that have persisted for two years.

Jony Ive Talking About Chamfers or Something:  Sir Ive, set against a white background, will probably tell you that it's the best thing Apple's ever made or whatever.

Uh, Maybe?

Something about TV: While speculation has persisted that Apple finally figured out TV, there is unlikely to be any new hardware. More likely is a software update for current Apple TV boxes, which has been adding more and more streaming services over the past few months.

Mac Pro: This probably won't eat up more than a couple minutes of time, but the oft-neglected Mac Pro, which is seeing its first substantial update in nearly a decade, might get a solid release date.

Probably Not

iWatch: Despite Samsung's announcement of their entry into the smartwatch game, Apple is probably not going to announce any wearable technology. They're not a company that rushes things out, and two substantial hardware announcements in one keynote would probably spread conversation thin.

Phablet: An ugly portmanteau of "phone" and "tablet," rumors circulated this week that Apple was experimenting with 6-inch screens on their phones. Maybe next year, but Apple's pattern of alternating between internal and external revisions will probably hold up for now.

Admitting Total Complicity In PRISM: That would be nuts though, wouldn't it?

The keynote begins Tuesday at 1 p.m. Eastern, 10 a.m. Pacific.

       

Bashar al-Assad Warns of Repercussions in Charlie Rose Interview

Syrian president Bashar al-Assad sat down with Charlie Rose on Sunday for an hour-long interview that aired in full Monday night on PBS. And while there was little surprising in the content of his responses to Rose's questions, the interview, conducted in English, is still an unsettling look into the leader of a country that's spent the past two years mired in a brutal, devastating conflict. Here are some of the more interesting snippets from the interview. 

Assad thinks that accusations of his regime covering up chemical weapons use with bombs are "stupid." 

"How could bombardment cover the evidence? The-- technically, it doesn't work. How? This is stupid, to be frank. This is very stupid," Assad said. The president denied his forces were working in the area of the attacks near Damascus on August 21. he also claimed that some Syrian troops were victims of chemical attacks:

"Our soldiers in another area were attacked chemically, our soldiers...They went to the hospital, as casualties because of chemical weapons. But in the area where they said the government used chemical weapons, we only had video and we only have pictures and allegations. We're not there."

Assad wants Americans to "expect everything" if the U.S. bombs, but not necessarily from him

CHARLIE ROSE: Will there be attacks against American bases in Middle East if there is an airstrike?

BASHAR AL-ASSAD: You should expect everything. You should expect everything — not necessarily from the government. It’s not only the government are not the only player in this region. You have different parties, you have different factions, you have different ideology. You have everything in this region now. So you have to expect that.

CHARLIE ROSE: Tell me what you mean by expect everything?

BASHAR AL-ASSAD: Expect every action.

CHARLIE ROSE: Including chemical warfare?

BASHAR AL-ASSAD: That depends if the if the rebels or the terrorists in this region or any other group have it, it could happen I don’t know. I am not fortune teller to tell you what’s going to happen.

Assad compared the opposition to the 1992 rioters in Los Angeles. 

It looks like the Atlantic Wire may have compiled its list of the worst Syria analogies too soon. While trying to explain his stance that the opposition in his country is illegitimate, Assad brought up the 1992 LA race riots: "Do you call the rioters in Los Angeles in the 1990s opposition or do you call them rebels?" he said. 

"Do you call the rioters in Los Angeles in the 1990s opposition or do you call them rebels?" -Assad ... uh, neither?

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) September 10, 2013

Assad: "I'll do anything to prevent the region from having another crazy war."

While tonight's interview was actually taped on Sunday, Assad's answer to a then more hypothetical question about a deal to prevent military action in Syria. However, it seems to ignore the fact that his own country is currently in the midst of a civil war, which has claimed the lives of over 100,000 people. Rose, however, asked Assad specifically about his willingness to give up chemical weapons in order to prevent war. "You always imply that we have chemical weapons," Assad said, smiling. 

John Kerry has "no evidence" of Assad's culpability in the chemical attacks: 

The Secretary of State "didn't present any evidence, nothing so far," Assad said, adding, "It's not about how they are dead, it's that they are dead." The Syrian president blamed the "terrorists —" his favorite shorthand for the rebels — for the attacks. 

Assad sees himself as a surgeon, not a butcher: 

"When you have to cut off a leg with the gangrene, you don't call that person a butcher. He's a doctor," Assad said. He also spoke of his war against the rebels as a "cleaning," evoking the image of an infected wound.