Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 141

Face Of The Day

A Syrian Muslim pilgrim poses for a picture outside a hotel near Mecca’s Grand Mosque on October 1, 2014. Hundreds of thousands of Muslim worshipers started pouring into the holy city for the annual Hajj pilgrimage. The hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam and is mandatory once in a lifetime for all Muslims provided they are physically fit and financially capable. By Mohammed Al-Shaikh/AFP/Getty Images.

Global Business Boosters

Neil Irwin flags a new survey showing that “where big business has the least power and capitalist economies are the least developed, optimism and support for the corporate sector is highest”:

When it comes to business exerting power over the economy, Americans have mixed views but are generally comfortable. But when it comes to business exerting power over government, they are much more exercised. Americans aren’t antibusiness, in other words. They’re just against business having what they see as too much power in Washington.

Compare that with China, where citizens seem to view businesses as less powerful in terms of lobbying (only 19 percent seeing a lot of influence by corporate lobbyists, a full 40 percentage points lower than in the United States) but are more likely to believe it is good for companies to be strong and influential. One might imagine that Chinese citizens see less a phenomenon in which business overly influences government and one more in which government overly influences businesses. … In Communist Party-led China, 74 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that “it is a good thing when corporations are strong and influential, because they are engines of innovation and economic growth.” That is around three times the level of support found in capitalist paradises like Britain, the United States and Australia.

A Climate Polemic Against Capitalism

Naomi Klein’s new book, This Changes Everything, argues that capitalism is largely to blame for our climate crisis. How Klein describes her book in an interview:

What I’m arguing in this book is that we need to return to the progressive tradition of responding to deep crisis by trying to get at the root causes of the crisis. And the best example of that is the way in which the progressive movement responded to the Great Depression. It became an opportunity to change the way we organized our economies, to regulate banks, to launch social programs that got at the roots of inequality.

If we really believed that climate change is an existential crisis, if we believed climate change is a weapon of mass destruction, as John Kerry said, why on Earth would you leave it to the vagaries of the market?

In another interview, Klein clarifies her position:

I’m not saying that markets have no role in combatting climate change. I think the right market incentives can play a huge role—we can point to all kinds of companies doing great stuff. The issue is not to say the market has no role. It’s the idea of leaving this to the market. We can mint solar and wind millionaires and still not get there because we have these hard targets we have to meet. There will have to be a strong role for the public sector, a strong role for regulations and, yes, incentives. But the idea of just leaving our collective fate to the market is madness. You wouldn’t treat any other existential crisis in that way.

Zachary Karabell strongly disagrees with Klein’s thesis. He fears that “rhetoric risks obscuring just how much is being done by large companies around the world to reduce their carbon emissions and environmental footprint”:

None of us should lose sight of working toward a less resource-intensive future. Getting there requires massive investment of trillions of dollars and concerted effort at multiple levels of society. Dismissing a key element of that change—the multinationals and global NGOs that are trying to make these changes in spite of the sclerosis and opposition of so many governments and in the face of powerful lobbies—may galvanize some activists. But barring a synchronous overthrow of the entire global capitalist system, we need the assiduous efforts of multinationals that simultaneously strive to make heaps of money and to reduce their environmental impact. Without them, we would be many steps closer to the environmental Armageddon that Klein and so many of us fear is nigh.

Rebecca Henderson argues along the same lines:

We need to build a social movement that can insist that our leaders put in place the policies that will enable us to deal with the threat of climate change. And while we may struggle with longer-term priorities, we’re also a species that will do almost anything to ensure the welfare of our children. We need to rediscover the old idea that responsive, democratically controlled government has a central role to play in ensuring that the rules of the game are fair, and in dealing with problems like climate change: tough, long-term collective action problems that can only be addressed by the state.

But that doesn’t mean that we should abandon capitalism. With the right policies, capitalism properly understood is perfectly well equipped to prepare us to face the risk of large scale climate change. In fact, it’s the only thing that can.

And Will Boisvert calls the book “a garbled mess stumbling endlessly over its own contradictions”:

Her understanding of the technical aspects of energy policy — indispensable for any serious discussion of sustainability — is weak and biased, marked by a myopic boosterism of renewables and an unthinking rejection of nuclear power and other low-carbon energy sources. Having declared climate change an “existential crisis for the human species,” [15] she rules out some of the most effective means of dealing with it.

Her attack on globalization and trade sometimes clashes with rather than supports her goal of rapid decarbonization. Her abhorrence of industrial civilization misconstrues its complex, sometimes positive impact on the environment. Her politics veer between calls for massive government initiatives and celebrations of an extreme localism and populism that are likely to hobble state action. And her rhapsodic ideal of a society that stands in “humility before nature” [267] glosses over the inherent tension between natural limits and human aspiration — and what that implies for her goals of development and liberation.

John Gray is much more sympathetic. He calls Klein’s latest “a powerful and urgent book that anyone who cares about climate change will want to read.” But he finds it “hard to resist the conclusion that she shrinks from facing the true scale of the problem”

When I read The Shock Doctrine (Guardian review headline: “The end of the world as we know it”), I was unconvinced that corporate and political elites understood what they were doing in promoting the wildly leveraged capitalism of that time, which was already beginning to implode. The idea that corporate elites are in charge of the world is even less convincing today. …

Another problem with pinning all the blame for climate crisis on corporate elites is that humanly caused environmental destruction long predates the rise of capitalism. As Klein herself observes in an interesting chapter on what she calls “extractivism” – the economic model that treats the Earth as a bundle of resources waiting to be exploited – human activity was already changing the climate centuries ago. “We started treating the atmosphere as a waste dump when we began using coal on a commercial scale in the late 1700s and engaged in similarly reckless ecological practices well before that.” Moreover, though Klein doesn’t explore the fact, it’s worth bearing in mind that the extractive model was applied on a vast scale in the centrally planned economies of the former Soviet Union and Mao’s China, where some of the largest and worst 20th-century environmental catastrophes occurred.

However, Chris Bentley is against dismissing Klein out of hand:

We haven’t made significant progress, Klein argues, because we’ve been expecting solutions from the very same institutions that created the problem in the first place.

As for who should be the agents of this change, Klein reports on the front lines of grassroots movements from Montana to Greece — an unofficial coalition of shared interests that she dubs “Blockadia.” Klein says the answer is to empower the communities that stand to lose the most: among them, indigenous peoples threatened by mining and drilling operations, the world’s developing nations, and activists resisting austerity amid widening socioeconomic inequality.

While “power to the people” may seem an uninspired way to change the world’s dominating socioeconomic systems, Klein’s sharp analysis makes a compelling case that a mass awakening is part of the answer.

Would You Eat A Black Bun?

Food for thought on the way home… Could you stomach a black burger? – http://t.co/8d8GO9re9w #Japan #BlackBurger pic.twitter.com/33FaieokTS

— Creative Boom (@Creative_Boom) September 30, 2014

Tiffanie Wen discusses the reception of a black burger in Burger King restaurants in Japan:

Americans have been both intrigued and repulsed by the images. “Finally #BurgerKing makes a burger the way your body sees it … disgusting and cancer-causing,” one Twitter user wrote. Another tweeted: “It’s the black cheese that freaks me out the most. It looks like the kind of rubber they use to make gimp masks.”

But the burger is enjoying a “favorable reception” in Japan, according to the Guardian—so why do Americans have such a negative response to it?

She offers an answer:

McDonald’s and other international chains have long adjusted their recipes and menus to cater to local tastes. Last year Thrillist dedicated a post to the best foreign McDonald’s products from around the world. (I’d personally love to try the deep-fried Camembert “cheese melt dippers” from branches in Ireland.)

With regards to the KURO burgers, Garber says, “Black in the U.S. simply doesn’t convey a favorable food meaning. It means charred or burnt or moldy or spoiled or inedible.” But in Japan, black is positively associated with food. Eva Hyatt, a professor of marketing at Appalachian State University, told New York Magazine that people in Japan are exposed to more black foods, including seaweed, bean paste-based foods, black walnut powder, squid ink, and other grey foods.”

Clint Rainey notes that McDonalds has followed suit with a black burger of its own, “and the limited-edition burger is now available at three Tokyo branches”:

Happy Halloween from McDonald’s Japan! http://t.co/WTSal1bRdu pic.twitter.com/RBtAMyoyHK

— Brian Ashcraft (@Brian_Ashcraft) September 26, 2014

Critical Thinking On The Job

Tara Mohr flags startling new research on the criticism men and women receive in the workplace:

Across 248 reviews from 28 companies, managers, whether male or female, gave female employees more negative feedback than they gave male employees. Second, 76 percent of the negative feedback given to women included some kind of personality criticism, such as comments that the woman was “abrasive,” “judgmental” or “strident.” Only 2 percent of men’s critical reviews included negative personality comments.

She offers some practical advice:

In my coaching practice and training courses for women, I often encounter women who don’t voice their ideas or pursue their most important work because of dependence on praise or fears of criticism. …

I’ve found that the fundamental shift for women happens when we internalize the fact that all substantive work brings both praise and criticism. Many women carry the unconscious belief that good work will be met mostly — if not exclusively — with praise. Yet in our careers, the terrain is very different: Distinctive work, innovative thinking and controversial decisions garner supporters and critics, especially for women. We need to retrain our minds to expect and accept this.

There are a number of effective ways to do this. A woman can identify another woman whose response to criticism she admires. In challenging situations, she can imagine how the admired woman might respond, and thereby see some new possible responses for herself. It can be helpful to read the most negative and positive reviews of favorite female authors, to remind ourselves of the divergent reactions that powerful work inspires.

For more on Mohr’s work, check out her new book Playing Big: Find Your Voice, Your Mission, Your Message.

Mental Health Break

Spot your favorite underwater scenes in cinema:

China vs #OccupyCentral

Beijing’s censors have been working overtime to scrub coverage of the Hong Kong protests from social media:

Weibo censorship hit its highest point this year at 152 censored posts per 10,000, according to Weiboscope, an analytics project run by the University of Hong Kong. (“Hong Kong” and “police” were the day’s top censored terms.) To put that in perspective, the Sept. 28 censorship rate was more than double that on June 4, the 25th anniversary of the crackdown on the Tiananmen student movement — an event so meticulously censored in both traditional and social media that many of China’s younger generation are largely ignorant of the event. …

Despite 2014’s many politically sensitive and potentially destabilizing events — including a March 1 terrorist attack at a busy train station, the July 29 announcement of an investigation into former security watchdog Zhou Yongkang, and the Sept. 23 sentencing of prominent Uighur scholar Ilham Tohti on charges of separatism — the three most censored days on Weibo nevertheless all related to Hong Kong. Beijing’s official rejection on August 31 of open nomination of candidates in Hong Kong came in second, while the annual July 1 pro-democracy march in Hong Kong took third.

Alexa Olesen monitored the reaction after China blocked Instagram on Sunday:

A handful of Chinese Weibo users blamed the Hong Kong protestors for getting their Instagram service axed. But many Chinese appeared oblivious to the situation in Hong Kong, unsurprising given the current mainland news blackout on the escalating situation and the scrubbing of Weibo messages that mentioned Hong Kong. Weibo also was blocking searches for the keyword “Instagram,” forcing users to resort to calling the service “Ins” in order to grouse about the shutdown.

Most mainland Chinese still likely know nothing of the Hong Kong protests, now continuing into the early hours of the morning. But online chatter about the Instagram blackout could backfire on Beijing, leading otherwise indifferent Chinese web users to feel the personal impact from events transpiring far away — and to begin asking why yet another popular online tool has, at least for now, been taken away.

And Lily Kuo looks at how Chinese netizens are getting around the censors:

Bloggers are findings ways to get around the censors by searching for the English transliteration of blocked Chinese phrases—substituting “xianggang” for Hong Kong or “zhanzhong” for “Occupy Central,” for example. Entering a space in between the two Chinese characters for Hong Kong is another way around the restrictions, [Chengdu resident] Li said. Censors are adapting swiftly. Searching for the phrase “zhanzhong” already prompts a notice on Weibo that results cannot be displayed. Even posts critical of the protesters are being removed, including a comment that read, “So violent like this, and you tell me you want democracy. I don’t want this kind of democracy!” was deleted.

(Chart via Lily Kuo)

Going Viral

Kalev Leetaru considers the role that online data – even blogs – could have in halting diseases like Ebola:

It turns out that monitoring the spread of Ebola can teach us a lot about what we missed — and how data mining, translation, and the non-Western world can help to provide better early warning tools.

Earlier this month, Harvard’s HealthMap service made world headlines for monitoring early mentions of the current Ebola outbreak on March 14, 2014, “nine days before the World Health Organization formally announced the epidemic,” and issuing its first alert on March 19. Much of the coverage of HealthMap’s success has emphasized that its early warning came from using massive computing power to sift out early indicators from millions of social media posts and other informal media.

As one blog put it: “So how did a computer algorithm pick up on the start of the outbreak before the WHO? As it turns out, some of the first health care workers to see Ebola in Guinea regularly blog about their work. As they began to write about treating patients with Ebola-like symptoms, a few people on social media mentioned the blog posts. And it didn’t take long for HealthMap to detect these mentions.”

The unfortunate flip side:

“The power of social media to rapidly spread information, both accurate and inaccurate, is enormous” -Thomas Lee http://t.co/hHTxhQAP1Y

— Kelly Hills (@rocza) September 30, 2014

But there was some great news today:

“Africa’s most populous country seems to have beaten its first Ebola outbreak.” http://t.co/tUAPOK57th via @nytimes #Nigeria #ebolaoutbreak

— Markeya Thomas (@MarkeyaThomas) September 30, 2014

Meanwhile, Maryam Zarnegar Deloffre assesses the latest US role in combatting the Ebola epidemic – boots on the ground:

Last week, President Obama announced the deployment of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), which will set up a joint force command in Liberia to coordinate the activity of 3,000 U.S. forces; expedite the transportation of equipment and supplies; and train an estimated 500 health-care workers per week. …

The AFRICOM and UNMEER missions are not your typical militarized humanitarian intervention. Defining the Ebola crisis as a human security issue is a game changer. There is no conflict in the West African countries most heavily affected by Ebola (at least not yet), thus the security threat highlighted by the UNSC is a threat to people and their humanity — the right to life with dignity. Humanity is a universal principle, one that transcends and orders all the other humanitarian principles, one that NGOs, states and international organizations can all get behind. Viewed through this lens, it is no wonder that NGOs, such as Doctors Without Borders, that typically refuse to work with national militaries are calling on militaries to provide logistical support to address the Ebola epidemic.

Ezra, in an interview with the director of the CDC, underscores the connection between West Africa and the US:

Ezra Klein: One thing that has been striking here is the degree to which weak health-care systems in poor countries can be a real threat to rich countries. How should we think about that?

Thomas Frieden: Yes. We are all at risk. But it’s not health systems so much as public-health systems. Do you have a system in place to find when there’s a cluster of unexpected illness, whether it’s Ebola or MERS or SARS or the next HIV? Do you have a system in place to get the lab tests done? Do you have trained disease investigators?

This is not going to come by creating some great global entity to do all this for us. We need to build the capacity of countries to find, stop, and prevent global health crises. We are all vulnerable to the weakest link in the chain. And it is not that expensive to strengthen those links. But it does mean you need to train public-health workers. It does mean you need a lab-reporting network. It means you have more than a public-health system you pull out in case of emergencies. It means you have one you’re using every day to fight disease, and so you can scale it up in the event of an emergency.

Follow all our Ebola coverage here.

Parody For Profit

David Hajdu charts the rise of the satirical music video:

Song parodies now generate more revenue than official videos, according to YouTube data provided in the 2014 Annual Report of the International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI), a music-recording trade group. While YouTube once discouraged parody videos on the dubious grounds of copyright infringement – its attorneys must have skipped the readings on Berlin v. E. C. Publications in law school – YouTube now welcomes music parodies, because it has figured out how to make money from them. YouTube is helping record companies and rights administrators to hit up parodists (and others who employ copyrighted music in their content) for licensing fees.

He finds himself ambivalent about the genre. On the one hand, parody amounts to “critique in creative form, and as such it provides a service essential to society”:

These benefits are real and important, particularly at a time when mainstream popular music is subjected to so little serious criticism, and when serious criticism has so little traction in mainstream culture.

On the other:

There is something disconcerting about the dominance of parody in the YouTube musical sphere today. The true purpose of parody is the making of jokes rather than the making of critique. The final test of a parody is its ability to get laughs; it is not the depth, nor even the accuracy, of its insights.

Fluid Dynamics

Vanessa Vitiello Urquhart objects to describing women as more “sexually fluid” than men:

There is some evidence that women experience arousal in response to a wider range of visual stimuli than men do. There’s also a great deal of evidence that females can go from having female partners to male ones, or vice versa. But nowhere in the literature is any firm line drawn between this vague concept of “fluidity” and the other word we use for people who experience attraction to people of both genders: bisexuality. Why don’t we just call it that? …

[A]fter we filter out the sexist idea that women’s sexuality is so completely different from men’s as to be unrecognizable, [all that's left] is the strong possibility that women are a bit more likely to be bisexual than men are. If this is so, then the negative stereotypes about bisexuals are negative stereotypes about women, and attacks on the legitimacy of bi identities are attacks on the legitimacy of female identities. It’s therefore in the interest of all women to combat biphobia and work for bi acceptance. It’s in the interest of lesbians, who are often bombarded with unwanted advances from men who may believe that the fluidity of female sexuality entitles them to sex with us. It’s in the interest of straight women, whose male partners may use the same logic to attempt to impose unwanted threesomes on them. And, of course, it’s in the interest of bi women, who have no more choice about who they love than anyone else does, even if those loves may come from any gender. What isn’t in our interest is to make women’s sexuality seem confusing, mysterious, or overly complicated.

I have no problem with a greater understanding of and respect for bisexuality. But why would women be more likely to be bisexual than men? Why would their sexuality respond to a wider range of physical stimuli? That’s the question that isn’t answered by renaming it bisexuality. And note the straw woman here: who actually believes that male and female sexuality are so different as to be completely unrecognizable? The question rather is: how are men and women different in their sexuality? And why?

Read our long discussion thread on bisexuality here.