The Bowdoin Globalist – Issue 11 May 2015

Electronic Waste in China – “Loyalty” Among American Politicians – Peshawar Massacre – Contemporary Journalism – British Elections– Richard Zuley – Chaple Hill Shootings – Islam in Austria – Three-Parent Children – Commercial Surrogacy in Thailand – The Anti-Vaccination Movement Volume IV, Issue 4, May 2015

Marijuana, Bees, and the Maraschino King of Red Hook 1

Letter from the Editors The Bowdoin Globalist Editors In Chief Kate Herman Mark Pizzi Nick Tonckens Associate Editors Camille Wasinger Dylan Devenyi Drew Van Kuiken Layout Kate Berkley Mark Pizzi Photography Editor Hannah Rafkin Staff Writers Sara Baronsky Hailey Blain Griffin Brewer Liam Gunn Adam Hunt Derek Kang Kayla Kaufman Danny Mejia-Cruz Skylen Monaco Maeve Morse Chase Savage Hannah Sherman Serena Taj Spencer Wuest

Dear readers, The Globalist has always aimed to be something more than a news magazine.

Since our founding, our writers have striven to find those stories that surprise, drawing out new issues that will shape our world in many ways to come. Accordingly, our latest issue offers several perspectives on emerging conversations over such issues.

A few short decades ago some of these stories would have belonged to the realm of science fiction: Maeve Morse looks at the science and ethics behind the manipulation of mitochondrial DNA in embryos; Kayla Kaufman analyzes the Thai government’s pending ban on commercial surrogacy; Camille Wasinger shows us the environmental consequences of the digital revolution.

Other writers investigated the political implications of the increasingly fluid movement of peoples and ideas. Dylan Devenyi shows us how concerns about immigration from other parts of the EU are reshaping the British political landscape, and Spencer Wuest digs into how renewed concerns about political Islam reemerge in the current debate regarding the place of Islam in Austrian society today.

Meanwhile, Drew van Kuiken provides us an entertaining perspective on the turbulent present and unpredictable future of our own field, journalism.

As we always make sure to mention in these letters, none of the viewpoints expressed within these pages represent the editorial stance of the Globalist.

These articles will hopefully provide an entry into these topics – introducing them to the mind of the reader without then guiding to a conclusion. Articles like these serve to orient us towards the future without prescribing the path that will be taken. This is in reflection of the role we see this publication undertaking in contributing to dialogue on campus. May we all never stop asking questions.

Sincerely, Mark, Nick, and Kate

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CONTENTS Volume IV, Issue 4, May 2015

Your iPhone, China’s Ecological Disaster, and the Pitfalls of Free Trade

By Camille Wasinger

The Battle for American Authenticity

By Chase Savage

The Peshawar Massacre

By Adam Hunt

How the Red Bees Took Down the Cherry King of Red Hook

By Hannah Sherman

6 Crazy Things About the Future of News Media

By Drew van Kuiken

British Elections Explained

By Dylan Devenyi

4 15

Richard Zuley: The Interrogater

5 18

Why the Chapel Hill Shooting Won’t Be Called a Hate Crime

6 19

Islam with an Austrian Character

8 20

Fixing the Powerhouse of the Cell

10 21

The Womb of Asia No Longer: Thailand Bans Commercial Surrogacy

12 22

The Philopshical Underpinnings of the Anti-Vaccination Movement

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By Skylen Monaco

By Sara Baronsky

By Spencer Wuest

By Maeve Morse

By Kayla Kaufman

By Hailey Blain

YOUR IPHONE, CHINA’S ECOLOGICAL DISASTER, AND THE PITFALLS OF FREE TRADE

BY CAMILLE WASINGER

To the average American iPhone owner, the components and inner workings of the smartphone are somewhat of an enigma. To the poor farmers of Baotou, a city in northern China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, they are less so. Though the grand majority of Baotou farmers barely earn enough to feed and clothe their families, much less purchase an iPhone, they understand more about what it takes to make the apple on your screen light up than you would probably ever care to. Baotou is the epicenter of the planet’s rare earth metal mining industry, and its farmers are intimately familiar with the grievous ecological and public health side effects that come along with it. It is thanks to Baotou and several other cities colloquially known as China’s “cancer villages,” where rare earth mining and refining has destroyed cropland and poisoned water supplies, that we have cellphones, laptops, flat screens, electric cars, wind turbines, and missile defense systems. While environmental destruction and human suffering have been a byproduct of much, if not all, technological advancement in human history, the story of rare earth metal mining in China highlights not only the irony of today’s “smart” phones and “green” technology, but also the failures of the modern international trade system to balance competitive markets with human and environmental protection.

Many modern gadgets are comprised of a cocktail of seventeen elements with unpronounceable names like Yttrium and Praseodymium. Known collectively as the “rare earth metals,” they are found in mineral ores in the earth’s crust, often chemically bound to radioactive materials, such as thorium. The process of separating rare earth metals from their ore requires massive quantities of highly toxic carcinogens, including ammonia and both sulfuric and hydrochloric acid. Though China possesses only 30% of the planet’s rare earth ore deposits, the country’s lax environmental laws have facilitated rapid growth of its mining and refining industries, which at their peak supplied more than 95% of the world’s tech industry demand.

Though China’s rare earth industry has fueled Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurship and innovation, it has wreaked havoc on the health of the country’s population and ecology. Birth defects, as well as high levels of leukemia and pancreatic and lung cancer, have become commonplace in villages where drinking water has been permeated by sludge waste from rare earth metal refineries. Toxic sludge dumps, known as “tailings ponds,” poison wildlife and kill vegetation in and around rare earth mines. In Baotou, contaminated groundwater from the world’s largest tailings pond, which lacks a proper lining to prevent toxic chemicals from leaching into the surrounding soil, moves at a rate of 20-30 meters per year towards China’s Yellow River several miles to the south, which supplies drinking water to more than 150 million people. Entire cities between Baotou and the Yellow River have been evacuated or residents mandated to wear face masks to prevent inhalation of the radioactive and carcinogenic dust from the mines’ waste dumps.

In 2006, citing the rising health and environmental costs of rare earth mining, China enacted taxes and export quotas on rare earth metals, sending price shocks rippling through the global tech industry and drawing World Trade Organization (WTO) litigation from the United States, European Union, and Japan in 2012. The U.S., EU, and Japan claimed China was breaking free trade laws by enacting protectionist

policies, accusing China of using environmental concerns as a cover for policies truly aimed at pushing prices up, putting pressure on Japan in the midst of a territorial dispute between the two states, and giving domestic electronics producers an edge. The case against China was based on the fact that, though limiting exports, China did not restrict domestic access to rare earth metals, as would be expected if it were truly trying to clean up its rare earth metal mining industry. Upon these premises, the WTO found China in violation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), prompting China to lift its restrictions in early 2015 and resuming the free flow of metals from China’s “cancer villages” to an Apple store near you.

Whether China intended its policies to further domestic economic goals or enable it to clean up its environment almost doesn’t matter. Either way, this case provides an illustration of the immense challenge developing countries face in the modern international trade system to successfully balance free trade with human and environmental protection. Under the current system’s incentive structure, there is inadequate room or impetus for environmental protection.

As it is, countries with low environmental standards can bring in much desired foreign currency by extracting, refining, and exporting raw materials at lower cost than states with more stringent environmental regulations. While under some circumstances GATT permits states to enact export restrictions in the name of environmental protection, it is difficult to determine when policies are enacted to further environmental goals rather than protectionist schemes, making the implementation of this GATT article dubious at best. Developed states, which import cheap raw materials and would like to see this flow of inexpensive goods continue, have little motivation to encourage improvements in standards for environmental protection or public health abroad that might limit access to important natural resources or make them more expensive. Even if a country were to prioritize importing only materials extracted, refined, or produced in an environmentally responsible manner, it is currently illegal under international trade law for a state to discriminate against a product on the basis of its origin.

In the Chinese rare earth metal case, the US, EU, and Japan chose cheap raw materials over the protection of humans and ecosystems an ocean away. Though China’s policies were certainly not aimed exclusively towards environmental protection, they did have limited environmental and public health benefits, forcing the closure of several illegal, exploitative mining operations in the country’s south and giving the national government greater regulatory control over the industry as a whole. By opposing China’s export restrictions, the US, EU, and Japan guaranteed themselves cheap rare earth metals while setting a dangerous precedent for developing countries the world over looking to institute environmental protection measures: if you limit exports, even in the name of environmental protection, you’ll be brought to court. For the sake of Baotou’s farmers, and countless others like them, it is high time the international community took a fresh look at its trade laws. While competitive markets are important to help spur innovation and keep consumer prices low, they should not come at the cost of human lives and healthy environments. n

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THE BATTLE FOR AMERICAN AUTHENTICITY BY CHASE SAVAGE In February, conversations reignited about American exceptionalism, as the state of Oklahoma and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani made headlines for separate incidents. In Oklahoma, legislators reviewed and later pushed for a cut in funding for AP United States History courses because, in the words of Oklahoma State Representative Dan Fisher, the AP framework “trades an emphasis on America’s founding principles of constitutional government in favor of robust analyses of gender and racial oppression and class ethnicity and the lives of marginalized people, where the emphasis on instruction is of America as a nation of oppressors and exploiters.” While it remains important to note that this bill has not passed into law and it appears that it will not, the proposed legislation brought up new conversations about how to teach American history. Supporters of bills such as Oklahoma’s believe that AP US History should emphasize more of America’s successes instead of its failings. CNN recently reported that six other states have proposed similar bills that aim to emphasize the successes of the United States while speaking little to its failings, such as the issue of slavery. Critics view these attempts by lawmakers as an effort to sanitize and narrow American history courses.

In the case of Mr. Giuliani, he came under pressure for a statement he made in a speech at a private dinner, which also featured Presidential candidate and Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker. In his speech, Mr. Giuliani questioned President Obama’s loyalty and love for the United States: “I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the President loves America… He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country.” Mr. Giuliani later elaborated on his comments but did not back down. He stated that the President, “sees our weaknesses as footnotes to the great things we’ve done.”

Comments and events such as these highlight the rising debate surrounding what it means to be an American. The argument is quite partisan in nature. According to a recent Pew Poll, eighty-one percent of “business conservatives” feel pride in the United States; only forty percent of liberals polled felt pride for America. That pride for the United States has led many to question political leaders. Former Vice President Dick Cheney, for example, recently accused President Obama of purposely undermining the United States in regards to the recent Iran nuclear deal, stating, “if you had somebody as president who wanted to take America down, who wanted to fundamentally weaken our position in the world and reduce our capacity to influence events, turn our back on our allies and encourage our adversaries, it would look exactly like what Barack Obama’s doing.”

Mr. Cheney’s comments about the President do not stray far from the current dialogue in regards to the Iranian nuclear deal. Republican Senators stated as much in regards to their open letter to the Iranian government this past March, explaining that any potential nuclear treaty would be revoked in 2016 with the election of a Republican president. When Senator Tom Cotton, author of the letter, was pressed further by The Atlantic, he did not shy away from his criticism of the President or the Democratic Party. When Mr. Cotton was asked about whether or not the criticism of his letter resonated with him, Mr. Cotton was blunt in his response: “No… What we did was certainly more measured than what past senators had done, in conciliating with people like Manuel Noriega, Bashar al-Assad, or Leonid Brezhnev. The difference is we openly stood up to a dictator, and in a lot of those past precedents, Senate Democrats privately conciliated

and coddled dictators.” Senator John McCain’s recent statements against the Obama administration’s deal further irked the Obama administration. McCain stated in regard to the deal, “I think you’re going to find out that they had never agreed to the things that John Kerry claimed that they had”. The debate was marred even further by the increasingly hostile debate between Democrats and Republicans in regards to Speaker of the House John Boehner’s invitation to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before Congress over the Iranian nuclear peace agreement. Democrats viewed the invitation as a direct attack on President Obama’s stance on the Iranian nuclear deal, a view that differed greatly from Mr. Netanyahu’s views; fifty-eight Democrats did not attend Mr. Netanyahu’s speech.

The focus on the Iranian nuclear deal highlights how the debate over American exceptionalism has changed. One end of the spectrum has painted President Obama as the new Neville Chamberlin, while the other side has painted the opponents has war mongering and imperialistic.

Neither side is entirely right or wrong, but neither side has productively contributed to the conversation. The President, for example, should be expected to do what is best for the United States, even if that means escalating sanctions or threatening military action against Iran. However, in regards to general American exceptionalism, it is not the President’s job to impose upon others the United States’ way of thinking. The President, for example, cannot be criticized for stating that he believed in American exceptionalism in the same way that British citizens living during the height of the British Empire believed in British exceptionalism or Greeks during the Classical Greek Period believed in Greek exceptionalism, as he did in 2011.

The Tea Party’s rise lies at the very crux of this argument. Through homegrown values and a focus on the vision of the United States as the “City on the Hill”, the Tea Party emphasizes the need for the United States to impose itself on the world. Walter Russell Mead, writing for Foreign Affairs in 2011, described the Tea Party as a return to Jacksonian populism.

While questioning elites and the political status quo can be beneficial for debate, the Tea Party’s stance on foreign policy issues has reared its ugly head. Embracing uber-nationalism, the Tea Party embraces, in the words of Mr. Mead, “total war…They are prepared to support wholesale violence against enemy civilians in the interest of victory; they do not like limited wars for limited goals…” In short, the Tea Party is not interested in international diplomacy and bilateral treaties that would act as a limitation on American action abroad. The Tea Party seeks a free-reigning, free-wielding American super power, that can impose itself on others. While in certain instances that may be required, the Tea Party’s views run counter to the current status quo and in many cases, could serve to further alienate or harm America’s standing abroad. The Tea Party’s role, both in regards to the removal of Republican moderates for Republican extremists, and its role in shifting the debate towards emotions rather than fact, has helped bring about this new debate regarding American exceptionalism. As a nation, the good and the bad must be recognized. Neither Democrat nor Republican has been immune to buying into American exceptionalism.

Both Democrat and Republican Presidents have committed heinous acts in the name of American exceptionalism, whether it be American imperialism in the late 19th century, CIA covert actions during the Cold War, or recent efforts in the Middle East. By acknowledging both the good and the bad, America will move forward as one instead of dividing into many. n

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THE PESHAWAR MASSACRE & THE WAR ON EDUCATION

BY ADAM HUNT

On December 14th, 2014, the Pakistani Taliban attacked an English-language, army-run public school in Peshawar. The school had roughly 1,100 students ranging in age from eight to eighteen and was on the outside, and in many ways functionally, just like any junior-high or high-school complex you would find in suburban America. Many kids who went there had parents in the army, but it was also the school of many non-military families – just a good local school, which although military in name, was not militant in the way someplace like West Point is, for example. The event, truly a massacre, left 132 schoolchildren and 13 teachers and faculty dead. It is being called the largest terrorist attack in Pakistani history and the newest offensive in the “war on education” by prominent media outlets in the US and Pakistan.

The violence began at 10:00 a.m., Peshawar time, when a man strapped with a suicide vest stormed into an auditorium-style classroom where an exam was being taken and self-detonated. Almost immediately, five other gunmen, also wearing suicide devices, stormed into the school and began shooting teachers and students indiscriminately. According to survivors, shooting in a given classroom would begin mass-execution style, by which one or a few of the gunmen would spray bullets into the crowd of children, and would then proceed into close range shootings while pacing around the room, looking for survivors. It is believed that most of the student and faculty deaths took place within the first few minutes of the attack; after the nearly immediate response of security forces, the incident turned into a hostage situation which lasted nearly eight hours involving 34 students, 20 teachers, and the last two remaining gunmen. The gunmen were ultimately shot and killed by the police. None of the hostages were harmed.

The Pakistani Taliban took responsibility for the attack roughly two

days later. Pictures of the gunmen taken shortly before the attack were posted online, and a public statement given by Pakistani Taliban spokesman Mohammad Khurasani included both a justification of the event, claiming that the Pakistani Military has long been killing innocent children and families of Taliban members, and a warning, promising further attacks on military institutions and advising civilians to distance themselves from them immediately. “We targeted the army’s school for the attack because the government is targeting our families and females… We want them to feel the pain,” he said.

The Pakistani government responded swiftly to the event, lifting a moratorium on the death penalty for terrorism cases that had been instated in 2008. Obama stood strongly with the Pakistani Government saying, “We… reiterate the commitment of the United States to support the government of Pakistan in its efforts to combat terrorism and extremism and to promote peace and stability in the region.” This support is likely to come in the form of increased military aid, specifically drone strikes.

The attack comes at, and as, a defining moment for the Pakistani Taliban after years of internal tensions and differences in leadership. It is important to note that unlike other Taliban groups, the Pakistani Taliban is more of a disparate coalescence of forces, often defined by geographical barriers and each with its own leadership, which, although sharing some goals, also differ greatly in their ultimate motives regarding their relationship with the Pakistani Government. In May 2014, the Mehsud faction of the organization, historically considered the basis and most important of the various groups, defected from the TTP in protest of its more violent, extremist practices. “We consider kidnapping for ransom, extortion, damage to public facilities and bombings to be un-Islamic. [TTP] Mehsud

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group believes in stopping the oppressor from cruelty, and supporting the oppressed,” said Mehsud in a public statement after the split. In August 2014, TTP elements from four of the seven tribal areas defected after disagreeing with the leader of the TTP’s decision to combat the Pakistani Army during Operation Zarb-e-Azb. Along with other shifts, the TTP has also become progressively more internationally diverse in its agency; for example, all of the terrorists of the Peshawar were foreign nationals – one Chechen, three Arabs and two Afghans.

Within the Pakistani Taliban, an increasingly international make-up, radical nature and directed focus against the Pakistani government reflects what the Pakistani government has long claimed to be efforts of Indian and Afghani intelligence agencies to infiltrate and gain control of the Pakistani Taliban for the purpose of waging a proxy war against Pakistan. After the Peshawar shooting, the Pakistani Army’s official spokesperson, Major General Asim Bajwa, claimed, “India is funding Taliban in Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Baluchistan,” citing that, given the Pakistani Taliban’s disparate structure and banned status, it would be unable to exist with such power and resource without the backing of a country of India’s scale.

The Pakistani government has also come out against the state of Afghanistan, particularly strongly after high-status TTP officials were seen being escorted by Afghani Intelligence, picked up by US officials and returned to Pakistani authorities. US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has also affirmatively cited the role of Indian and Afghani intelligence in aiding the Pakistani Taliban, saying that India has “for many years been using Afghanistan to fight a proxy war against Pakistan by sponsoring terror attacks inside it… India for some time has always used Afghanistan as a sec-

ond front, and India has over the years financed problems for Pakistan on that side of the border.” On the other hand, the Pakistani government has been doing the same thing against Afghanistan. Ex-President and Army Chief of Pakistan, General Pervez Musharraf, has since leaving office noted Pakistan’s history of supporting the Afghani Taliban. Notably, the Afghani Taliban came out against the attack in Peshawar, referring to the act as “un-islamic”.

So, in essence what exists now is a network of proxy wars – an Indian proxy offensive against Pakistan that has lasted since the Partition of 1947, facilitated by Afghanistan, which to some degree is inescapably caught in the middle and merely choosing the stronger side and to some degree is defending its interests by minimalizing Pakistan’s strength in the region, and a Pakistani proxy war against Afghanistan, supported by the US, which also has its own interests in the Middle East. The politics are such that an aggressive proxy war against India is impractical, both for Pakistan and the United States, although it is almost certainly being waged to some degree.

It’s tough to predict the future of the situation. The Afghani Taliban is fundamentally different than the Pakistani Taliban, and may not be as malleable to an outside agent as the Pakistani Taliban has been to India and Afghanistan. Additionally, Pakistan has less economic and political influence than India, likely limiting its capacity to influence terrorist groups in these other countries. However, caught in the middle as it is, Afghanistan does not seem to be in a much safer position. The future of the conflict will likely be seen most vividly, and most messily, in Afghanistan and Pakistan by means of indirect, veiled conflict. n

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HOW RED BEES TOOK DOWN THE CHERRY KING OF RED HOOK

BY HANNAH SHERMAN

The funeral for Arthur Mondella, the Cherry King of Brooklyn, was held on the last day of February at the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary – St. Stephen Roman Catholic Church on Summit Street. A wake followed at Raccuglia & Son Funeral Home in Cobble Hill. Mondella’s three daughters – Dana, Dominique, and Antoinette – sobbed and hugged one another as their father’s dark wood casket arrived for his funeral and Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” the anthem of Italian South Brooklyn, played in the background. As the funeral music demonstrated, Arthur Mondella did things his own way — for better or worse.

Fifty-seven year-old Arthur Mondella owned Dell’s Maraschino Cherries, one of the largest maraschino cherry processors in the United States.

His grandfather, Arthur Mondella Sr., and father, Ralph Mondella, founded the business in 1948 in a small 1,500 square foot Brooklyn storefront.

Today, the factory – located in an immense warehouse in Red Hook, churns out 400,000 pounds of cherries per week. Chances are if you’ve ever enjoyed a fresh, cold root beer float at Red Lobster, Buffalo Wild Wings, TGI Fridays, Chick-fil-A, or Caesar’s, you’ve encountered a Dell’s cherry.

Its website proudly proclaims: “Inspired by 67 years of family ownership, Dell’s Maraschino Cherries is still guided by the same family values, traditions and their passion for cherries.”

Despite the once impeccable reputation of Arthur Mondella, Dell’s has not escaped the scandals that generally befall businesses whose owners have known ties to the Brooklyn Mafia. For Mondella, the scandal begins with some red bees and ends with him locking himself in a bathroom and putting a gun to his head.

This story spans a period of six years and cannot be told by starting at the end. Back in 2010 some urban beekeepers, typical Brooklyn hipsters, grew concerned when their bees started returning to the hive with red gunk showing through their translucent stomachs. The bees also began producing something closer to cough syrup than honey, and which had a strong metallic taste. The beekeepers jested that the bees must be feasting on the waste at the maraschino cherry factory. But then an apiculturist

(for the uninformed, this refers to someone who raises bees) found Red Dye #40 in the gunk being produced by the bees. As luck would have it #40 is the same dye that gives maraschino cherries their delightful hue.

Arthur Mondella was wonderfully accommodating during the subsequent investigation and attempts to find a solution. Little did he know that the police had decided to take this opportunity to further an investigation of a different nature.

In a truly appalling display of the efficiency that is the Brooklyn DA’s Office, Mondella’s suicide was actually the culmination of an ongoing sixyear investigation by the DA’s office into his second life as the owner of the largest marijuana farm in New York City. In 2009, a Brooklyn postal inspector made the first tip that Mondella was selling pot. He alleged that there was a secret entrance to the farm via the factory’s garage, in which Mondella kept his luxury toys: a Mercedes, a Porsche, a third unidentified vehicle (the inspector was unclear on whether it was a Rolls Royce or a Bentley), and a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. In what may have been an underhanded attempt to prove his innocence, all three vehicles were snow white. They may also have been merely a reflection of his favorite color. Lacking all the necessary details, however, the police failed to obtain a search warrant to examine the garage.

Luckily, the drama with the bees gave police the opportunity they needed to continue investigating Mondella. For six weeks they followed him, staking out the factory and tailing Mondella 24/7 as if they were the lead investigators in a particularly eventful NCIS episode. They started out simple, parking discreetly outside the warehouse and watching as he drove around the block five or six times at the end of the day before returning to his relatively modest house on Staten Island. They also watched him score cocaine from various friends in Red Hook. Following this discovery, they sent in a drug-sniffing dog, which detected drugs inside the factory.

This was not enough to obtain a search warrant, however. Police wanted to test the factory’s exhaust, but could not obtain a warrant for that either.

Branching out over the next few weeks, they consulted the fire depart-

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stairway leading down into a secret basement that the building’s official plans said did not exist. At that moment Mondella excused himself, saying he had to go to the bathroom.

After six long years, the investigators finally had enough to secure a search warrant. And, once they did, they ventured tentatively down the steps. What they found at the bottom was far beyond what anyone had expected: a 2,500-square-foot underground marijuana farm, the largest ever discovered in NYC. Investigators estimated that the farm had the capacity to produce 1,200 pot plants reaching five feet tall. There were 120 grow lamps (shielded from thermal imaging by the floor above), seeds of 60 different marijuana strains, and an irrigation system, all of it seemingly more than any one person could install. Police were shocked that Mondella had managed to operate the entire operation on his own, without any of his employees discovering his surreptitious business. The search also produced a secret office containing $125,000 in cash and bookshelves stacked with 50 volumes on horticulture and a copy of the World Encyclopedia of Organized Crime. Mondella apparently had just completed a harvest.

Investigators found only three large bags with a total of 100 pounds of marijuana.

So how did Mondella manage to keep secret for so long NYC’s largest-ever marijuana farm, one from which he was apparently raking in more than $10 million a year, at $6,500 per pound? While investigators suspect that Mondella has ties to the Mafia, it appears that he ran the marijuana business on his own. Investigators believe that neither his family nor his employees knew anything about his double life. The two biggest tipoffs of grow houses are an electrical bill spike and the smell. Mondella used the pair of huge generators to avoid the first problem and the cherries themselves to mask the second.

The greatest mystery of all, however, comes in the form of Mondella’s reaction to the entire situation. For five hours Mondella cooperated fully with the police inspection of his factory. When police found the suspicious shelving, Mondella politely excused himself to use the bathroom. At which point he quickly locked the door, shouted at his sister: “Take care of my kids,” and then proceeded to shoot himself in the head with a .357 Magnum handgun that had been strapped to his ankle the entire time.

In the shocking days that followed, some likened Mondella to Brooklyn’s own Walter White. However, this comparison fails to explain Mondella’s response to the police’s discovery. As it currently stands, the very district attorney whose investigators made the bust has a very lenient policy towards prosecuting people caught with marijuana. Mondella was like a guy caught with an illegal still just as Prohibition was about to end.

And that just deepened the persisting mystery of why he had gone into the bathroom and shot himself, just after his mother had left the factory, while his sister was still there. Some pointed to his paranoia and cumulative stress from years of living a double life as reasons for his drastic actions.

Others claim he may have just freaked. It is tempting then to think that were it not for the instantly accessible gun in an ankle holster, the moment of panic and perhaps shame might have just passed. When asked for his opinion, Mondella’s family attorney Michael Farkas gave a very Brooklyn answer: “I wouldn’t tell you.”

At Mondella’s funeral, family and friends spoke about the positive impact Mondella had on the Red Hook community: his generosity during Hurricane Sandy, his philanthropic hiring of parolees from a nearby housing project. Mondella’s daughter, Dana Mondella-Bentz, delivered a eulogy in which she said her father was not defined by his mistakes. “I am, and will always be, so proud to call Arthur Mondella my dad,” she said. In the meantime, prosecutors and cops sift through the 100 boxes of evidence pertaining to the investigation, while the factory continues to deliver its cherries to customers across the nation. Less clear is what will happen to Mondella’s other set of customers. n

ment and discovered that Mondella had permits for two large generators.

In an attempt to cover all their bases, they also checked the factory’s official building plan, finding to their dismay that the factory did not have a basement. In a final desperate effort, police flew a helicopter with a thermal-imaging camera over the warehouse to see if they could find the big glow that usually emanates from a grow house. They found nothing.

And so they retreated, not entirely convinced of Mondella’s innocence, but lacking the evidence to do anything about the situation. In 2012 there were two complaints from Mondella’s neighbors about the generators, but again the police failed to get the necessary warrant to act. In 2013 a former factory worker accused Mondella of polluting local waters, with no results.

Finally in 2014 new DA Ken Thompson, in an attempt to clean house, reopened the investigation one last time.

Having obtained a warrant on the previous grounds that Mondella’s factory was dumping hazardous waste, police went back into the warehouse, heading straight for the aforementioned garage from the first tip.

Once there, one of the investigators noticed suspicious shelving on wheels.

He yanked on the shelves but they did not roll. He then noticed that the wheels were held in place by magnets in the way of “traps,” the secret compartments used in cars to hide guns and drugs. So the investigator pulled harder on the shelves, which suddenly swung away to reveal a door and the overwhelming scent of pot. Opening the door, investigators found a

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6 Crazy Things You’ll Never Believe About Vox, Ezra Klein, and the Future of News Media

BY DREW VAN KUIKEN

What is good journalism? Or perhaps the question belongs to the realm of proper nouns; Good Journalism, a brand in and of Itself, always ready for consumption by the ravenous masses.

History seems to tell us that It moves in waves, slowly rising from the ashes of John Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Empire, eventually finding Its true form in the storied pages of the New York Times and between the bylines of Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, steadily chiseling away at Dick Nixon’s suit of armor. It’s one of those things where we know It when we see It; like a particularly cheesy remake of Field of Dreams, God reaches out, grabs us by our collective collars and calmly tells us, “this, this right here.

This is It.” Good Journalism is eminently readable but devastatingly effective, right? It’s an important question to ask, especially as the entire news media industry seems to be teetering on the edge, like an old bus hanging over a cliff, one quick push away from careening down into the valley of the unknown and the unexplored. To the other side lies the well-known path, the comfortable roots of our journalistic souls. It provided a comfortable home for Good Journalism not too long ago, and with its respectable seriousness, abiding concern for the rules of journalism, and journalistic integrity. It’s by all means a more moral place. In fact, it’s probably objectively better journalism. But it’s also dying, and fast.

The old stalwarts of the comfortable path, the names that worked their way into every household and tore down the careers of many a powerful man and woman, are pushing the bus over the edge as we know it. Progress, meet the pay wall. Those aching for the old experience of a newspaper in hand, ink dyeing their fingers as they sip on a black coffee and smoke three cigarettes—people still living in 1960 and hipsters—may try to deny the loss of the old guard, but it’s a tough sell. For now, they can turn to Al Jazeera America and pretend everything feels just as stuffy as it was before.

But for the rest of us, Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post, the Grey Lady started hemorrhaging print subscribers, put in a pay wall, and the land of digital media became the name of the game. To finish off the metaphor, the bus may be past the point of no return. It’s unclear anyone knows where it’s headed.

Ezra Klein seemed pretty sure he knew. At least, one could hardly fault him for thinking that he could stare into the void and that the void would peer back, graciously imparting the wisdom required to lead the charge and revolutionize media as we know it. This was, after all, a man who Washington DC—the same town notorious for throwing Copernicus to the breeze and insisting that the sun revolves around its tiny, little rock full of tiny, yet very brave, gladiators sent to change the world—insisted

on calling a wunderkind. As early as 2007 Paul Krugman blogged his affection for Klein, which doesn’t seem like so long ago until you realize that Klein was 23 when Krugman introduced his network to the intrepid young blogger.

It’s mostly a story of upward mobility on steroids from there, as Klein’s Washington Post-hosted “Wonkblog” gained a niche following, and then a significant DC powerbroker readership, and then became the fodder of politically inclined debaters everywhere, all the while marching towards its final tally of four million page views a month. Though in college he made his name as an online firebrand, the kind that usually either becomes a Reddit commenter or Andrew Breitbart, Klein showed a very different side of himself with Wonkblog, where he broke down complicated policy debates into easily digestible pieces. His casual style and sophisticated analysis gave The Washington Post—which had looked more like a cut of fly-covered, rapidly-decaying, USDA prime steak than a modern news outlet before he arrived—the breath of fresh air that it needed. Not to overdramatize the significance, but it should be recognized: the whole thing almost felt like Good Journalism. Maybe he was the future.

A year later, the jury’s still out. Or, sort of, depending on who you ask.

But once Klein started to really taste the success that his brand brought along, once he peeked into the yard of Nate Silver and saw the making of a national-geek celebrity, one who could rival and complement his ascendancy to journalistic greatness, Klein decided to plunge headfirst into the void and make the move his career seemed to be calling for. With an expiring contract at the Post, Klein sent an unrealistically large promotion request to Jeff Bezos and began packing his things. It was decided: he would move on, taking advantage of his four million page views and the accompanying celebrity he’d accumulated over the years. He started his own outlet.

Welcome to the story, Vox. Klein’s brainchild started with unique enough goals: like he’d done at Wonkblog, Klein wanted to explain the news, to break it into even more digestible pieces than he’d done before with even snazzier graphics and prettier colors than he’d used before. He’d also have a staff of 30.

Vox came to life in the spring of 2014 and, side by side with Nate Silver’s newly launched, newly independent FiveThirtyEight platform, it seemed like the newest incarnation of Good Journalism was here. It sort of felt like watching the future arrive. Washington’s wunderkind couldn’t not save the day, right?

It’s hard to overwhelmingly condemn the whole experiment just a year later, but it seems clear that something got lost in translation for Klein. To

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adelphia Inquirer these days.

But what Vox and Ezra Klein fail to realize is that new age media hardly rests in presenting one monolithic product: block grants don’t belong in the same category as two dinosaurs trying to drive a car, so why put them there? Today’s news media seems to stare longingly at the world of newspapers circa 1975 and the front to back quality that made them great, but their hopes can only fall flat. People don’t seem to want cover-to-cover quality, and dinosaurs can be pretty funny. But Vox seems to insist that Good Journalism needs to hide beneath the shadows of brighter, more colorful photos dealing with less interesting, more mindless topics. If not a crime, it’s at least sad.

To his credit, Klein’s experiment is far from over. But in the search for quality amidst the new digital media landscape, Klein’s story points to a more startling truth: widely read, consistently great outlets may be dead, but Good Journalism lives on. Only once media outlets learn to separate the great from the mindless, to uproot It from the drivel and let it flourish unencumbered by the overpowering allure of pretty pictures will it all start to improve. Ezra Klein may still have time, but it’s winding down. For now, the bus looks to be falling. Let’s hope he learns how to drive. n

his credit, he doesn’t seem to have lost much in his own writing, recently breaking down the idea of “block grants” and their application to huge Republican spending cuts in Vox’s trademark shiny yellow color scheme and engaging language. The real tragedy came on Vox’s homepage though, where an inquisitive reader could find Klein’s article neatly nestled into a set of exposés covering everything from “2 dinosaurs explain why driving a car is absolutely terrifying,” to “5 utterly insane things that happen in the terrible new Adam Sandler movie The Cobbler.” As if to underline the point, Klein’s title rests atop a picture of Mitch McConnell either trying to make a speech or imitate the cute online videos of turtles trying to eat strawberries. Even for a dedicated news junkie, it lacks some of the pop that, say, two dinosaurs staring at a car might.

If you hear something, it might be the sound of Ida Tarbell’s soul quietly weeping.

It’s hard to believe that Good Journalism might ever die, but the parable of Vox, which consistently publishes a bizarre mix of intelligent analysis and Buzzfeed-esque clickbait, shows the danger of pinning all of one’s hopes on a still only thirty year-old man. And to a certain extent, it makes sense why Vox looks the way it does; critiquing the appetites of news consumers is as pointless as writing an article for the print edition of The Phil-

11

The upcoming British Elections Explained

BY DYLAN DEVENYI

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(currently David Cameron of the Conservative Party). The Prime Minister in turn selects members of Parliament, generally from his or her own party, to become his cabinet ministers, forming “Her Majesty’s government.”

The next largest party forms a “Shadow Government,” led by their leader (currently Ed Milliband of the Labour party) and formally known as “Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.”

However, it is not always the case that any one party can win a majority of the seats in the House of Commons, the main house of the British Parliament. Currently, the Conservatives only hold 303 of the 650 seats, 23 short of a majority. In order to achieve a true majority, the Conservatives formed a coalition with the third largest party, the Liberal Democrats, who currently hold 56 seats. Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, is the Deputy Prime Minister, and the Liberal Democrats hold several seats in cabinet.

This match has proved disastrous for the Liberal Democrats’ popularity. Their support has fallen from 23 percent in the last election to around 8 percent in recent polls. Mr. Clegg and his party suffered a great loss in popularity early in Cameron’s first term, when they were unable to keep a promise to prevent the rise of university tuition in England. Over the past five years the party, traditionally further to the left of Labour, has alienated many of their former supporters by aligning themselves with the Conservatives. Their share of seats is expected to fall from 56 to just 16 in the next election, according to the Electoral Calculus (a respected election prediction site much like FiveThirtyEight in the United States.)

As the Liberal Democrats have fallen, competition has heated up between Labour and the Conservatives, with their respective leaders clashing on television and in the news for the weeks leading up to the election.

Weekly “Prime Minister’s Questions” (PMQ’s) have been one of the more dramatic battlegrounds of the election, with Milliband and Cameron sparring before a cheering and jeering audience of MPs. In the last PMQ’s before the election on March 25th, the two joked about each other “planning their retirements,” among other things, in between questions about the National Health Service, the Value Added Tax, and Income Tax cuts. Milliband repeatedly insisted that “nobody believes his promises,” and accused Cameron of dodging questions, who responded with his own questions about promises Milliband had made. With the rapid fire parry and riposte nature of question times (accompanied by a vocal crowd of MPs worthy of a cage fight) it is no wonder that the two sides of the Halls of Parliament were designed to stretch just over two sword lengths apart.

General consensus has been that Cameron has gotten the upper hand of these shouting matches. His party has been inching forward in the polls, closing the narrow lead that Labour previously held, with Cameron touting a growing economy and new doctors in the NHS among other achievements of his government. The day after the last PMQ’s, Cameron and Milliband participated in a forum with British presenter Jeremy Paxman, who is famous for his aggressive and unforgiving interview style. The debate was judged to be a good performance by both candidates, although more undecided voters indicated they would switch to Labour than to the Conservatives after the forum. Milliband’s strong performance helped tone down concerns about his charisma and authenticity. What would follow not long after was ITV’s full debate, more like an American one, with seven parties instead of only two.

Cameron was initially disinclined to participate in the recent TV debates, citing his obligation to govern as more important, but when he was nearly “empty chaired,” he agreed to participate in just one, with all of the major leaders. Between the Left-oriented Plaid Cymru (Welsh Nationalists), Green Party, and Scottish Nationalists (SNP), the center-left Liberals and Labour, the center-right Conservatives, and the right-leaning Nationalists of UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party), the spirited debate represented a much wider variety of viewpoints than traditionally

On May 7th, 2015, the people of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland will vote in one of the most tightly contested elections in British history. The next Prime Minister will either be Ed Milliband of the center-left Labour party or David Cameron of the Conservative party, returning for a second term in office. Given the incredibly narrow polling margins that have become the norm in recent months, the next British government could be decided by a very slim margin.

The British electoral system is very different from the American one.

Unlike in the United States, voters select a party rather than an individual when they vote. Each constituency acts like a district in the House of Representatives, with each party selecting a member to run and the one receiving the most votes becoming the next Member of Parliament (MP) for that constituency. Generally, even though there are several large minor parties in Britain, one of the two major parties (Conservatives and Labour) will win a majority of the seats. When this happens, the majority party elects the Prime Minister, the British head of state, from amongst themselves 13

party is done for, and it is true that they have a few advantages that may give them a chance to survive: for one, their candidates can argue local issues effectively while Clegg himself (a rather weak personality who underperformed dramatically at the debate) proposes relatively inoffensive national policy. Beyond that, their incumbents are at an advantage; Lib Dem MPs always poll better when mentioned by name than when only party names are given. Clegg knows, however, that his deal with the Conservatives has been disastrous for his party. His inability to reconcile his party’s left-leaning ideology with Conservative policies has hollowed out his support base, so he has gone on the attack. In the last debate, Clegg spent much of his time criticizing David Cameron, despite the fact that they have been partners in government for the past five years. If Clegg can survive, then Milliband may have an out from his Scottish problem, but the polls simply do not indicate the the Lib Dems will be able to maintain a strong presence, and Clegg failed to deliver the strong debate performance needed to definitively turn that around.

Nigel Farage’s role in this election has been very different from Clegg’s or Sturgeon’s in that his party (UKIP) does not stand to hold a large number of seats after this election. They seem poised to win three, perhaps four if Farage’s personal celebrity allows him to win his own constituency. However, they have consistently polled in the double digits nationally, and most of these votes have come from Conservative voters. This led to a dynamic at the debate that saw Cameron promising a referendum on EU membership and offering some support to immigration restrictions while carefully avoiding alignment with Farage’s anti-immigrant sentiments, which drew fire from the left-leaning party leaders. Farage was undoubtedly the loudest leader at the debate, and though his voice in Westminster is likely to be weak after the election, he has nonetheless been able to shape the national conversation.

Cameron himself faces a difficult set of circumstances going into Election Day. A renewed Liberal coalition seems unlikely and the SNP are hardly a natural fit, while UKIP are both too right-wing and too weak to be able to fill the gap Clegg’s party will likely leave. Even if the Conservatives win the most seats, they may not be able to form a government, and if they are, they may find themselves forming a coalition with UKIP, small Northern Irish parties, or perhaps even Wales’ Plaid Cymru. In the Scottish leaders’ debate, the Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson expressed that the Conservatives would rather form a minority government than form a coalition with any of the other parties. Such a situation could lead to an ineffective government that would struggle without a strong voting majority, but it would keep Nigel Farage’s xenophobic reputation a safe distance away from David Cameron and the Conservatives.

As Election Day approaches, the fate of all the major leaders and parties remains profoundly uncertain. With predicted margins between the two biggest parties as slim as .1% , it is unclear which party or parties will find themselves in control after Election Day. Any of the many possible outcomes could have massive ramifications both within the UK, as issues such as NHS funding and immigration hang in the balance, and outside the UK, as debate rages on foreign aid, banking policy, and the EU. If Cameron fulfills his promise to have a referendum on EU membership, the foundations of the Union could be shaken, and the pro-Union leaders of Wales, Northern Ireland, and especially Scotland could face renewed internal pressure to leave the UK. If the SNP end up in any kind of power, a debate about devolution could lead to major constitutional changes. Any government with any coalition could negotiate radically different deals with the US or with the EU, and different philosophies on banking regulation and taxation could impact London’s massively influential financial markets. A minority government could lead either to compromise or to years of gridlock. As the future of the UK hangs in the balance, there is no doubt that on the 7th of May, the world will be watching. n

witnessed on the American stage. Solid performances by Milliband and Cameron, a spirited and forceful show from Nigel Farage of UKIP, and a charismatic pitch from Nicola Sturgeon of the SNP led polls to pick them as the winners. Farage and Sturgeon in particular outperformed their voting expectations, with 1200 new members signing up for the SNP during the debate. (In Britain, most people are not members of parties; members pay dues and are more committed, generally, than party members in the US.) Sturgeon’s successful performance in the debate drew attention to an important possibility on the horizon: it currently appears that neither the Labour party nor the Conservative party will be able to hold a majority in Parliament. This was the case in 2010, and the Liberal Democrats were able to form a coalition with the Conservatives to allow the Conservatives to form a government. The collapse of Liberal Democrat support, however, has made it unlikely that the Liberal Democrats will be able to make the difference between either of the major parties and the critical majority number of 323 (members elected from the Sinn Féin party in Northern Ireland have traditionally abstained from Parliament, meaning that there are effectively only about 645 seats instead of 650). The SNP are poised to take between 40 and 55 of Scotland’s 59 seats and may be prepared to take the role of “kingmaker” that the Liberals held in 2010, potentially being able to choose between Labour and the Conservatives.

Despite the fact that the SNP are expected to win less than 5 percent of the vote across the whole of the UK, the fact that their support is concentrated in Scotland alone (as Scottish Nationalists they do not run candidates in the other countries) means that they may end up with twice as many seats as the Liberal Democrats, who have more than twice the vote share but are more spread out. This power in the SNP’s hands may give them significant power to direct government policy.

Critically, however, the SNP are relatively unpopular in England: most English people opposed Scottish independence, and many more are leery about Scottish Nationalists who do not even want to be a part of the UK making critical decisions on issues that affect England. Center-left Labour seems like a more natural partner than the Conservatives for the left leaning SNP, and the Conservatives have seized on this state of affairs to argue that putting Labour in power would lead the SNP to a powerful position: “Go to bed with Ed Milliband, wake up with Alex Salmond [former head of the SNP currently running for the Westminster Parliament],” went a campaign slogan that the Conservatives nearly published. During his interview with Paxman, Ed Milliband expressed confidence in his ability to win a true majority, and before that he had already confirmed that he would not form a coalition with the SNP. Sturgeon stated in the Scottish leaders’ debate that she would “never prop up the Tories,” and that she was keen to work with Labour, but she met with reluctance from Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy, who echoed Milliband’s unwillingness to form a coalition.

Sturgeon may or may not be able to be a member of the next government formed in Westminster, but as First Minister of Scotland she needn’t lose sleep over Milliband’s unwillingness to extend an olive branch. Her party netted 300 new members during the forum with Paxman, and she is polling stronger in Scotland than Milliband by double digits. Her charisma at the debate earned her the respect (if not the love) of many English voters, and as her party stands to take most of Scotland’s seats it is unclear that any of the other parties will be able to succeed without her support.

Labour may have no choice but to cooperate with the SNP, and many have speculated that a “Confidence and Supply” agreement may be made between the two parties, meaning that the SNP would support Labour in “no confidence” votes and budget matters while being free on all other matters.

Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats, however, does not believe his

14

RICHARD ZULEY: THE INTERROGATOR

BY SKYLEN MONACO

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Zuley and other interrogators refined their technique: keeping arrestees out of booking databases, shackling innocent civilians to walls, beating them, suffocating them, and forcing their confessions. As in Guantanamo, torture was used as a way to establish guilt and detain Americans who sacrificed their freedom for the sake of escaping their interrogators’ wrath.

In Homan Square, an old abandoned warehouse located on Chicago’s west side now revealed as one of the city’s many black sites, interrogators effectively operate outside of legal jurisdiction. Suspects, regardless of the legitimacy of the arrest, are brought to this location and are systematically broken. If taken to Homan Square, a suspect will – for all intents and purposes – disappear. No record will exist of their detainment. The Chicago Police Department (CPD) denies its involvement with these sites, claiming no knowledge or association with the alleged human rights violations. Unfortunately for the CPD, Zuley’s story says otherwise.

In light of #BlackLivesMatter and the escalating militarization of the now unpopular and intolerant police officer, Zuley’s story becomes increasingly relevant. The brave men and women we entrust to protect and serve our communities now face further scrutiny, with Zuley only heightening our lurking suspicion; as the thinking goes, a white police officer – who marginalized potentially innocent minorities. What a surprise. Although Zuley was a unique and extreme example, his story does little to help ease the tension.

Zuley’s reputation as an interrogator dates back to the early 90s. He gained recognition for his ability to extract confessions from suspects while serving as an officer and detective in the CPD. The CPD also respect-

“I’m going to do everything I’m allowed to break you.”

Between moments of agony and unyielding interrogation, Mouhamedou Ould Slahi lies waiting in his cold Guantanamo Bay cell, anticipating his torturer’s arrival and praying fruitlessly for his unlikely release. Since 2002, Slahi has been rotting in Guantanamo Bay, awaiting charges, and living as a daily victim of “enhanced interrogation techniques.” In his recently published memoir, Guantanamo Diary, he describes some of the cruel and unusual techniques that Richard Zuley – Slahi’s lead interrogator and a former Chicago police officer and detective – once used to “break him.”

Torture, as intuition suggests, is both complicated and questionable.

It undoubtedly provides results. If a person won’t speak, the threat or use of pain and suffering might be the only way to begin the conversation.

Still, it might be argued that these conversations are one-sided. When a confession comes out garbled during a waterboarding session, it’s hard to know exactly where the truth lies. Maybe he is guilty. Maybe he is innocent. Unfortunately torture makes the guilt of the victim irrelevant. As the recent public outcry over Richard Zuley’s revealed history demonstrated, the public understands: the ends do not justify the means. This is especially true when American lives are involved.

Indeed, Slahi’s experience with Zuley is not unique. To this day, a handful of Chicago’s convicted poor and non-white citizens insist that they were wrongfully convicted because of coerced confessions extracted

by Zuley and his colleagues. They worked under the cover of CIA-esque “black sites,” where some of the horror tactics that made Guantanamo so controversial slowly crept into the heart of American society. For years,

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the loved ones of those he tortured.

Zuley and his fellow interrogators informed Slahi that they had taken his mother from Mauritania – his home – and had brought her to Guantanamo, and if he didn’t give officials the information they expected, she would be severely tortured. “Just don’t rape my mother,” Slahi begged, as their threats implied the possibility that his mother would be exposed to the other all male prisoners. Despite the threat, Slahi remained uncooperative.

Among the many hellish experiences Slahi’s memoir describes, it also reveals that Zuley and military police in riot gear once took Slahi blindfolded on a boat to suggest that his execution was near. The point of this interrogation technique was to, in Zuley’s words, “assist in developing the atmosphere that something major was happening and add to the tension level of the detainee.” Threatening a prisoner with the possibility of an execution was used as a means to extract a confession. Despite this, Slahi remained silent.

To this day, Slahi remains in Guantanamo Bay, quietly awaiting trial.

Zuley and his team were unable to get anything from him, even with permission to punish, bend, and break their detainee. Zuley’s struggle further demonstrates the problem with torture. It may occasionally succeed at extracting a confession – legitimate or not – and may succeed at revealing the tenacity of its victim. For Zuley, Slahi and Boyd’s stories stand as a sad reminder that not everyone can be broken. Still, these examples serve as sad exceptions to the rule.

If Richard Zuley was considered “bad at his job” rather than as a “bad cop,” would he have been hired at Guantanamo? Surely, if Zuley were pegged as a bad detective whose investigations only succeeded when he muscled out an unreliable confession, then he would not have been hired.

Having faith in America’s good intentions would incline us to agree. A government that took its duty to protect its citizens from real terrorists seriously would not waste its time with a bad detective.

Yet, as it stands, facts seem to suggest something different. Torture, clearly fraught with obvious methodological problems, was used as a legitimate way to determine if Slahi was a terrorist. Not only this, but the government once considered Zuley a valuable asset in determining his guilt due to his reputation in Chicago. Perhaps lost in a post-911 hysteria, America – like Chicago faced with escalating crime and gang violence – lost its way. Richard Zuley was a product of these times. Enabled by his surroundings, he found an authorized venue for his brutality and hidden contempt for humanity.

Although implied, the question remains inadequately answered: why was Richard Zuley, given his reputation, hired to work at Guantanamo?

The answer to that question lies deeper in Zuley’s background and connection to the Pentagon’s European Command (EUCOM) in kidnapping and bringing prisoners to Guantanamo. It is unclear whether Zuley himself participated in these kidnappings, yet it is certain that he was aware given that he once worked for the Joint Analysis Center at EUCOM. The connection leads us into a dark, long and confusing rabbit hole, best summarized in a few words: connections among top-secret officials removed the federal government’s responsibility for hiring Zuley as a sort of contract torturer.

We might not be able to necessarily point fingers at any one individual, perhaps not even Richard Zuley, as the need for his skills only arose from an unguided desire for results. Zuley, exposed by Slahi’s diary and The Guardian’s reporting, faces a federal civil rights lawsuit from his former prisoner – Lathierial Boyd. Those who were once marginalized and continue to be marginalized have taken a stand against their former oppressor.

Guantanamo Bay may at one point have celebrated the arrival of a successful interrogator – a hero – in the wake of 9/11, but must now acknowledge the public’s negative reaction to Zuley’s story. n

ed Zuley for his dedication and courage, as he was once shot and wounded when attempting to apprehend four armed burglars back in 1980. As the CPD sees it, Chicago owes many of its arrests and successful investigations to Zuley. Say what you will about torture. Zuley was effective at getting the job done. For example, twenty years ago, two men were shot outside the Exodus, a reggae nightclub in Chicago, leaving one victim dead and the other paralyzed. Despite a lack of physical evidence, eyewitness identification, and clear motive, Zuley suspected Lathierial Boyd, and brought him in for enhanced interrogation. In many ways, it was out of the CPD’s hands.

Boyd, years later, shared his experience with Zuley in an interview with The Guardian. He explained how Zuley shackled him to the wall and floor for two days after he refused to confess to a crime he had not committed.

After sitting through two line ups, Boyd asked Zuley if anyone had identified him as the shooter. “No,” Zuley said smiling, “but we are charging you anyway.”

Boyd was given an 82-year life sentence and waited 23 years before he was exonerated. As the CPD saw it however, Boyd going to jail meant that the job was done. The CPD thanked Zuley for another successful investigation. The benefit of both Boyd’s story and hindsight beg us to question whether Zuley did the job well however.

After his release, Boyd filed a federal civil law suit against Zuley, accusing his interrogator of torture, planting evidence, and withholding critical information. The investigation confirmed that Zuley had used similar tactics for years on a number of other convicted individuals, many of them poor minorities. In another 1995 case, Richard Zuley handcuffed Benita Johnson to a wall for over 24 hours until she confessed that both she and her boyfriend had committed a murder. “It still doesn’t seem real,” Boyd explained.

These sorts have black-sites have existed for decades, under the protection of the Chicago Police department, and perhaps presaged the conditions Slahi and other modern Guantanamo Bay prisoners’ experience.

It is easy to condemn Zuley and the Chicago Police Department for what they did to Boyd, Johnson, and others like them. These examples demonstrate that torture, when done correctly, succeeds at bending the will of the victim, forcing him to say whatever the torturer wants to hear. What the torturer hears, however, is not often the truth. Such a confession indicates nothing but a victim’s broken resolve, not his guilt. Despite this, the federal government recruited this worthless method for prisoners in Guantanamo.

Richard Zuley first went to Guantanamo on a special assignment in late 2002. His job was to interrogate Slahi, a suspected al-Qaeda recruiter. As part of this interrogation, Zuley would employ some of the techniques he learned in Chicago under the approval of the then current Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. Zuley’s appointment raises the question: did his criminal behavior in Chicago qualify him for a job with the federal government? If so, then not only did Zuley succeed at advancing his career by being an ineffective detective, he also succeeded at further delegitimizing America’s counter-terrorism effort.

Although outlawed by the army field manual and Geneva Conventions, “enhanced interrogation techniques” found their way into the arsenal of Guantanamo Bay interrogators. Donald Rumsfeld even promoted the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” even joking that they were more coddling than torture. Among many others tactics, waterboarding, sexual humiliation, isolation, and various dehumanizing stress positions were approved for use at Guantanamo. Slahi and his fellow inmates know these “enhanced interrogation techniques” all too well. Rumseld effectively created a demand for employees like Zuley – men ready to throttle the necks of those unfortunate enough to stand in their way. Zuley took it a step further, relying on a tactic he learned on the streets of Chicago: threatening

17

WHY THE CHAPEL HILL SHOOTING WON’T BE CALLED A HATE CRIME

BY SARA BARONSKY

It would hardly seem controversial to assume that religion was a factor in the triple homicide of three young Muslims in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, last month, mostly because there aren’t many other explanations for the shooting. The victims were hardworking and valued members of their communities; Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, was planning to enroll in UNC next fall. Her husband Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, was an accomplished dentistry student, and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, studied environmental design and architecture at NC State University.

According to those who knew the victims, none had ever given the shooter, their neighbor Craig Hicks, any reason to feel ill will towards them. Hicks and his wife, however, maintain that the shootings were the culmination of an ongoing parking dispute. This explanation rings remarkably false to relatives of the victims and others who live in the area.

No one had any trouble finding parking spots, and even if they had, a parking dispute seems an implausible motive for murder. Though Hick’s lawyer has blamed inadequate access to mental health services for Hick’s behavior, the shooter does not have a history to support this claim beyond the cyclical logic that sane people don’t shoot their neighbors over nothing, or even over parking. Hicks did, however, frequently make anti-religious posts on Facebook, and his hostility only began to make the victims uncomfortable, relatives reported, after the headscarf clad Abu-Salha joined her husband in the apartment next to Hicks. Reading between the lines reveals that there was clearly anti-Muslim sentiment fueling Hick’s actions.

The international community, Muslim rights activists, and Twitter users armed with the hashtag “#muslimlivesmatter,” responded to the murders with demands that police investigate Hick’s motive further. Many argued that the shootings needed to be classified as a hate crime. Hate crime laws in the United States are designed as an avenue through which victims targeted because of their race, religion, sexual orientation, or other protected characteristic are entitled to impose harsher legal penalties on the perpetrators of crimes against them, such as lengthening prison sentences.

The laws serve a practical purpose and as a symbolic statement against persecution. President Obama’s statement in response to the murders speaks to the obvious moral goals of these laws: “No one in the United States of America should ever be targeted because of who they are, what they look like, or how they worship.” But though authorities and media tacitly imply Hick’s religious motivation to kill, Hicks has only been indicted on three charges of first-degree murder, with no additional legal penalties for, nor even any mention of, hate crimes.

Though UNC Chapel Hill is an open community in which the Muslim population has never been at odds with non-Muslim residents, there were a tense three days when the FBI refrained from intervening, and it seemed that local police would have to handle the homicides alone, without conducting any type of investigation into the hate-based nature of the crime.

Now, police are taking the implications of hate crimes seriously; an FBI investigation is currently underway. Those investigating the murders and the

North Carolina community seem to truly want honest answers as to why these three innocent students were killed, and do not seem unwilling to entertain a religiously-motivated hate crime explanation. But even if this tragedy is handled through the best, most fair legal avenues, it is extremely unlikely that Hicks will be convicted of a hate crime, which demonstrates a greater problem that minority groups face when seeking legal justice: hate crimes are nearly impossible to prove.

The first impediment that a conviction faces is buried in state and federal regulation. Under North Carolina state law, additional hate crime sentences cannot even enhance a felony charge. Even if Hicks were to be found guilty under the Federal Hate Crime Statute, his conviction would be merely symbolic. He already faces capitol punishment, so a hate crime conviction would provide meaning for relatives and some measure of justice for those who identify with the victims, but not change his sentence.

The next hurdle to jump in convicting Hicks of a hate crime is the lack of concrete proof. He most likely never did anything damning—like writing epithets or joining explicit hate groups—to provide proof of his motives. These obstacles are only a few of many that render hate crime laws unused by victims. Often, not even finding concrete proof is enough.

The FBI keeps a record of hate crimes committed in the U.S. yearly, but it publishes numbers of crimes reported, not criminals indicted. These numbers are extremely misleading; they imply that thousands of criminals are apprehended for hate crimes per year, when in fact the numbers of indictments are substantially lower. According to a ten-year study conducted

by Texas law enforcement agencies, out of an average of around 200 hate crimes reported per year, less than one resulted in an indictment.

A crime can be motivated by bias without resulting in a hate crime conviction for many reasons: complex motives make prosecution difficult, and, for felony-level crimes, would only extend what is already a life sentence. It is for these reasons that doling out harsher punishments on the basis of hate-based victim selection is rare. Although increasing Hick’s penalties because of hate-crime status would explicitly support the families’ claims of persecution, the symbolic victory might not be worth the bureaucratic hassle and legal costs.

This tragedy brings to light the fact that bias-motivated crimes are not a black and white matter. Those who call for a more thorough investigation of the motive behind this shooting likely won’t find the closure they crave in a hate crime indictment. The Federal Hate Crime Statute does more as a symbolic protest against hate than it does as an avenue for minority groups seeking justice. And because labeling something as a hate crime is not nearly as frequent, easy, or clear, we are misled to believe that bias-based crimes don’t happen as often as they most certainly do. Those seeking their fully deserved justice for hate crimes shouldn’t limit their definitions of success to achieving symbolic legal acknowledgment, but they also shouldn’t stop fighting for it. For the sake of the thousands of possible hate crimes that go unreported or are never legally addressed, the Chapel Hill shooting needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. n

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Islam with an Austrian Character

the religion in German. Finally, Muslim organizations “must have a positive attitude toward society and state” or be shut down. Muslim groups say this is unfair because it casts a “veil of general suspicion” over the entire community, Reuters reported. Moreover, the insistence on a “positive attitude” can easily be seen as a restriction on the freedom of speech. Public response to the recent legislation varies widely. The Austrian government says the new law is a milestone and could serve as a model for the rest of Europe. In contrast, Muslim groups within Austria say it is discriminatory and have vowed to challenge it in court.

The indignation is not merely a local phenomenon, and it extends to Muslim communities beyond Austria. For example, the Turkish government has expressed outrage at the financing ban, which it says amounts to “Islamophobia.” According to Mehmet Görmez, Head of Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate, “countries cannot have their own version of Islam. Islam is universal and its sources are clear. ... [E]fforts taken by state leaders to create a version of Islam that is particular to their own countries are futile,” as reported by the BBC. Many of Austria’s Muslims hail from Turkey, which sends imams to the European nation and helps finance them.

Prior to the new legislation, the government’s relationship with the domestic Muslim community had been relatively good. “What we want is to reduce the political influence and control from abroad and we want to give Islam the chance to develop freely within our society and in line with our common European values,” Minister Kurz told the BBC. These “common European values,” in the words of Kurz, presumably include freedom of religion and universal human rights. Ironically, state control of, or interference in, religion may not be compatible with these values. Furthermore, the ban on foreign funding, when not applied to other comparable groups such as Roman Catholics or Jews, clearly discriminates against Muslims and violates the same common European values advocated by Minister Kurz. It is interesting to note that the bill was backed by Austria’s Catholic bishops.

According to the Austrian government, this new legislation makes it clear that Austrian civil law has priority over Islamic Sharia law. This position exhibits the inherent tension that exists between being both a human being and a citizen of a state. Individuals should all be allowed to have their own beliefs; and governments may attempt to align these beliefs in ways that assure the well-being of the state and its citizens. With the recent legislation, Austrian parliament has acted in its best interest—that is, out of deepening concern for internal security—while allowing citizens to practice the faith of their choice. Minister Kurz assesses the intention of the new law in this same light: “In Austria there must be no contradiction between being a self-conscious Austrian, while at the same time also being a devout Muslim.”

To date, Muslims in Austria have never engaged in terrorism in their country. Nevertheless, based on recent experiences in other countries, a paranoid fear of Muslim communities is growing within Austrian society, and fear is always dangerous. Its spread must be limited so that society does not become more polarized on issues related to Islamic faith. For the most part, however, life in many parts of Austria is still far removed from the situation of Muslims in Vienna. For example, questioning a resident of Lech about the status of Islam in Austria would seem out of place; in casual conversations, such matters would have been awkward to bring up, even with Austrian friends. This remains true even in mountain villages situated in Vorarlberg, the Austrian state with the highest share of Muslims in the country. It is important to remember that matters of religious diversity are not confined to any nation’s urban centers. If handled sensitively by the government and citizens of Austria, recent legislation in Vienna may prove to contribute toward positive and productive discussion of Islamic affairs throughout Austria and abroad. n

BY SPENCER WUEST

Is an authentic, local Islam to be brought about via legislation, or should it come organically from within communities?

In the resort town of Lech, Austria, there is only one story late in the ski season. Beneath the warm spring sun, torrents of beer flow from the taps, and the après-ski crowd share the day’s exploits. Accounts of challenges faced that day on the mountain are accompanied by the salutatory “Prost!” As glasses clink and shades replace goggles, locals and tourists alike—nearly all of whom are affluent Caucasians – worry most about the discomfort of a long day spent in ski boots.

The story of daily life is quite different in the Austrian capital of Vienna, where parliament has approved controversial reforms to the country’s century-old Islam Law (Islamgesetz), which governs the status of Muslims in the country. The original law was passed as an expedient to help integrate Muslim soldiers into the Habsburg Imperial Army after the Austro-Hungarian Empire annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908. The law recognized Islam as an official religion in Austria, and it allowed Muslims to practice their religion in accordance with the laws of the state.

The number of Muslims in Austria has fluctuated throughout the 20th century, first diminishing after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the aftermath of World War I, then increasing after World War II with the arrival of workers from Turkey and the Balkans in the 1960s, as well as refugees from Bosnia in the 1990s. According to data compiled by the University of Vienna, the Muslim population in Austria now exceeds 574,000, or roughly 7% of the total population.

The newly reformed law, which was passed on February 25th, is designed to promote an “Islam with an Austrian character.” The law does this by halting the flow of external funds to Muslim organizations within Austria as a way to mute the influence of foreign nations and organizations, while granting Austrian Muslims more legal security in practicing their faith. Although the changes were proposed years ago—long before homegrown extremist terror attacks in France and Denmark—the recent reforms are intended to “clearly combat” the influence of radical Islam, according to Austria’s conservative foreign affairs minister Sebastian Kurz, as reported by Agence France-Presse. In effect, Austria, motivated by a desire for increased internal security, is attempting to construct a version of Islam unique to its own country.

Religion, however, is not a matter of engineering. Although it is the job of government and legislation to help nudge society in positive directions, interference in matters of faith risks creating an official form of Islam co-opted by the state but distrusted by many grassroots believers, thereby increasing the risk of extremism.

Johann Rädler, a member of the Austrian People’s Party, said the law, “guarantees Muslims more rights,” while serving, “to counteract undesirable developments,” the BBC reported. The new law meets all of the non-controversial demands put forth by Austria’s Muslim communities.

These demands include the right to seek clerics in institutions, such as hospitals and the armed services; not work on religious holidays; and eat and produce food according to religious law. The final version of the law rescinded more radical measures contained in an earlier version, including the imposition of an “official” Koran in German, which understandably had sparked considerable controversy because this religious scripture is only supposed to appear in Arabic.

Nevertheless, the new law still goes far beyond what Muslims had wanted. In particular, the new law seeks to reduce outside meddling by prohibiting foreign funding for mosques, imams, and Muslim organizations in Austria. Furthermore, imams must present the central tenets of 19

FIXING THE POWERHOUSE OF THE CELL

BY MAEVE MORSE

The headlines are attention grabbing: “House of Lords Legalizes Three-Parent Babies”. But what exactly is a three-parent baby? And what does their legalization mean?

Three-parent babies could be the answer to one of the most common and deadly genetic mutations. Mitochondrial mutations within a developing fetus can lead to crippling diseases throughout the child’s adult life.

Three-parent babies provide a permanent genetic solution to these devastating problems.

The mitochondria are organelles within the cell that are responsible for breaking down sugars into useable energy for the cell. Mitochondrial DNA is different than the DNA that codes for the rest of the body’s development and traits. Because mitochondria were developed from outside bacteria absorbed by the cell, they have a completely different set of DNA that only contains thirty seven genes. These genes code for everything that the mitochondria do.

Unlike other DNA, in which you get two copies of each gene, one from each parent, each person only has one set of mitochondrial DNA because it is only passed down from the mother. Therefore, any mutations in the mother’s mitochondrial DNA have a 100% chance of being passed down to the child. Since the mitochondria are responsible for providing the energy cells need to function, these mutations can lead to heart issues, respiratory issues and developmental problems. Diseases stemming from mitochondrial mutations are often fatal and occur in 1 in 6,500 births.

But what if there was a way to eliminate the mutated mitochondrial DNA in a developing fetus? Three–parent babies offer one solution. The idea behind three-parent babies is simple: if you can replace the mitochondrial DNA of an embryo with that of a healthy donor, the child will be born healthy. This is possible because mitochondrial DNA is completely separate and codes only for functions within the mitochondria– it has nothing to do with behavioral or physical traits.

In order to create a three-parent baby, two embryos need to be created – one from the biological mother and one from the donor parent. The nucleus from the biological mother (which contains the DNA of the child

that is related to the physical and behavioral traits) is inserted into the embryo from the donor mother, the nucleus of which has been removed.

This has created controversy among many religious groups, as it requires the destruction of a fertilized egg, also known as a stem cell. If allowed to develop normally, this cell would turn into a human being.

Groups such as the Catholic Church are against procedures such as this one because they see the process as destroying the potential of a human life.

There are many other controversies surrounding the legalization of this procedure in the UK. The first of which is that European law prohibits any genetic alterations that can be passed down into future generations. This is because these future generations cannot consent to the genetic alteration that is going to affect them. The parents of the first generation child can give consent for their unborn fetus but have no legal consenting abilities for the future generations.

The UK is directly violating this law, because the change in the mitochondrial DNA would be permanent for all future generations. This is where the process differs from organ donations, as some people have compared it to. In organ donations, the genes for the faulty organs are still going to be passed down even though the individual has been corrected for the malfunction. In this new form of IVF, the change will be permanent.

Some interpret this as doctors having the ability to “play god” in permanently changing the human genome.

The controversy that holds the most weight in the eyes of the public is not the legal or religious controversy. It is the idea that these children represent the top of a slippery slope that could end up leading the widespread creation of “designer babies.” Yes, it is true that these children will have genetic material that has been specifically selected for them, but it is crucial to remember that these specially selected genes are not those for blonde hair or blue eyes. They are the genes that represent the difference between life and death for a child. It is for this specific reason that the procedure should, and most likely will, be legalized in countries other than just the UK. n

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Shigeta, who sought surrogacy from eleven different Thai women during the same short timespan, resulting in him fathering fifteen children. Officials raided his apartment in Bangkok and discovered several infants and a pregnant surrogate woman. The greatest concern was whether or not he was trafficking the children, or potentially selling their organs on the black market.

After these events and the significant international media coverage they received, it seemed to be the right time for Thailand’s government to intervene and finally pass a law banning commercial surrogacy. Sriamporn Salikoop, a Thai Supreme Court judge, said the ban was put in place to prevent abuse of surrogate mothers: “Giving birth to a human is not like breeding animals.” A member of the country’s National Legislative Assembly also said the measure is to prevent Thailand from becoming “the womb of the world.”

Regardless of these scandals and the negative connotations associated with the practice, there are those who do not favor the law. Those who support commercial surrogacy as a practice believe that it is a simple way to be financially stable while simultaneously helping a couple carry a child.

Pakson Thongda, a forty-two year-old Thai woman whose daughter sells her eggs to fertilization clinics said “There’s nothing wrong with surrogacy – you are helping people who can’t have a baby. I understand the feeling of a mother who really, really wants a child.”

Considering Thailand’s dark history of human rights violations, it is hard to believe the country’s government had a sudden clarity of conscience. Their presentation of the ban as a solution to a moral problem rings hollow. The infamous and severely unregulated sex and human trafficking industries are perfect examples of Thailand’s lack of concern towards commercialized human rights abuses.

It seems more than likely that the ban was imposed as a way of expanding governmental presence in the region. Further, there are those who suggest it is a method for the Thai government to block homosexual couples from having children in the country. Although Thailand is known for being relatively tolerant of homosexuality, it was only in 2002 that the country stopped classifying it as an illness. Moreover, Thailand does not have a “hate crime” law, and thus does not persecute crimes against the LGBT community as such. However, Thomas Fuller, the Southeast Asia correspondent for the New York Times said, “My impression is that the law was mainly designed to crack down on what the Thai authorities saw as unregulated business ridden with moral quandaries.”

Regardless of the motives behind the ban, it will undoubtedly result in some serious issues. The first and most basic is that people who are currently mid-pregnancy are now in limbo. It is unknown whether they will be allowed to take home their child and how the monetary exchange with the surrogate mother will be finalized. Second, it is very likely that the ban will result in a black market for surrogate mothers. This is similar to the organ donation controversy, which resulted in an enormously unregulated black market for organs. The emergence of such a market could endanger the lives of mothers and children if the practice continues, but without regulation.

There is a big discrepancy between the government’s narrative and the probable results of the ban. In theory, it sounds as though the intentions of the regime are purely humanitarian. However, a closer look at the potential consequences tells a different story. With a black market more than likely to emerge, and the lives of children on the line, it seems to be a rather irresponsibly abrupt transition from legality to illegality. It is not unlikely that the government did aim to better the situation of the surrogate mothers and children, but it is possible the outcome of the law will result in more severe problems. Without strict regulation, it is impossible to know what direction the practice will take; only time will tell whether or not the ban was a wise decision. n

THE WOMB OF ASIA NO LONGER: THAILAND BANS COMMERCIAL SUROGACY

BY KAYLA KAUFMAN During much of the 2000’s, Thailand was branded “the womb of Asia” thanks to its incredibly lucrative commercial surrogacy business. However, on February 19, 2015, the Thai legislature voted 1602 in favor of banning commercial surrogacy. This new law prohibits all foreign and same-sex couples from seeking surrogacy within Thailand and places severe restrictions on heterosexual Thai couples wishing to partake in the practice. Only couples married for three years or longer, with one Thai partner, can use surrogacy in the country. The surrogate must be a Thai citizen, over twenty-five years old, and have a familial relationship to one of the parents. Perhaps the most significant clause prohibits any monetary exchange between the surrogate mother and the potential parents. If caught, citizens can expect up to a ten-year jail sentence and a hefty fine.

This law, although just recently passed, has been circulating through the Thai government for almost five years. However, due to military coups and other political and environmental crises, the bill was never given much priority until the recent surfacing of two large scandals last year.

The first scandal involved an Australian couple who took home only one baby from the set of twins they paid a Thai surrogate mother to carry.

The abandoned child, now an honorary Australian citizen named Gammy, was born with Downe’s syndrome. The couple, Wendy and David Farnell, said they wanted a refund from the surrogacy service for not informing them of the baby’s maladies in advance, seeing as they would have asked for the pregnancy to be terminated. As media coverage of the story increased, it was discovered that Mr. Farnell was convicted for twenty-two counts of child sex offences, for which he was imprisoned. The baby now lives with his birth mother in Thailand.

Unfortunate scandals such as Baby Gammy’s story are why so many people favor banning commercial surrogacy. Many consider it an exploitation of marginalized Thai women by wealthy foreigners. Commercial surrogacy is an extremely lucrative business, with each successful pregnancy costing almost $10,000. Moreover, surrogate mothers are treated extremely well, their health being of the utmost priority to the couples. Many are even placed in homes for the duration of the pregnancy. However, this idealized nine-month stability, some say, is the result of a Thai woman selling her body as a means to make money and temporarily be taken care of.

Critics parallel commercial surrogacy to prostitution and the controversial organ market. The question remains, then: where should we draw the line?

A second horrific incident came to light shortly after the Baby Gammy story died down. This one involved a single Japanese male, Mitsutoki 21

THE PHILOSOPHICAL UNDERPINNINGS OF THE ANTI-VACCINATION MOVEMENT BY HAILEY BLAIN What balance between individual freedom of choice and the common good does American democracy require? To what extent is the press entitled to free speech? How much of a role should the government play in making medical decisions for citizens? These questions add philosophical depth to the conflict between those who refuse to vaccinate themselves and their children for philosophical reasons, and those who assert the great medical importance of immunizations.

The resurgence of the anti-vaccination movement has resulted in a series of outbreaks, most recently a widely publicized measles epidemic at Disney World in California. These individuals crusade against immunizations for a variety of reasons. Surprisingly, the group of individuals who ignore the scientific evidence proving the effectiveness of vaccines tend to be wealthy and well-educated. It should be clear: failing to vaccinate children harms society, as immunizations reduce rates of disease. The creation of vaccines greatly reduced, and eventually eliminated, diseases such as polio, measles, smallpox, and pertussis that killed an enormous amount of people. In 1952, 57,879 cases of paralytic polio existed in the United States, but six years after the introduction of the vaccination, only 1,312 had the disease, and today polio no longer poses a threat to American people. The anti-vaccination movement threatens to reverse advances in eradicating diseases. Given the potentially devastating fatalities that could arise from the movement and the philosophical debates that underlie it, this movement cannot be overlooked.

The anti-vaccination debate centers on an ambitiously difficult philosophical question: what’s more important, the common good or individual choice? A variety of reasons, namely personal preference, have led individuals to refuse vaccinations. Vaccinations create what is called herd immunity, the protection provided to those individuals who cannot be vaccinated for medical or age-related reasons when vaccination rates reach above 95 percent. In other words, a safe community requires the vast majority of the population to be immunized. The question then becomes whether democracy permits citizens to make a personal decision about their medical care if scientific evidence is able to demonstrate the dangerous effects of that decision on society.

The controversy over the media’s right to freedom of speech in part fuels the anti-vaccination movement. Media portrayals of vaccines as dangerous contributes to the movement’s success. The crusaders of the anti-vaccination movement have a prominent voice on the Internet where

many have written articles, blog posts, and social media posts supporting their case. Between sixty and seventy percent of Americans use the Internet to obtain health or medical information. A study by Rachel Buchanan and Robert D. Beckett found that the anti-vaccination movement gained momentum through Facebook. As of 2014, Facebook hosted 196 sites from 187 groups with 520 pages of vaccination-related content. While half of these sites argued in favor of vaccination, the sites with the most active users encouraged readers not to vaccinate their children. As a result, claims about vaccines causing autism, infections, and being both ineffective and dangerous spread easily. According to the study, only five percent of the information about vaccines was correct on anti-vaccination Facebook sites.

The media also propagates the views of celebrities, notably Jenny McCarthy, who claim that vaccines cause autism or have other deleterious effects. The media’s freedom of speech allows them to spread stories about celebrities who tell emotional tales about vaccines causing cancer while publishing an insufficient amount of material arguing for the proven benefits of vaccines. While the freedom of the press is in principle necessary for our country to maintain its democratic ideals, the media must take great caution in the information it relays to the public. Specifically, in the case of vaccines, the press must not sway public opinion towards validating the anti-vaccination movement, because this action leads directly to epidemics and fatalities.

The anti-vaccination movement also hinges on the controversy of the role of the government in making medical decisions for citizens. The growing anti-authority culture in the United States parallels a growth in the viewpoint that the federal government shouldn’t be permitted to interfere in an individual’s medical decisions, such as whether or not they receive vaccinations. The anti-vaccination movement is an anti-authority movement because it appeals to Americans who now view their government with varying levels of distrust. Opponents of vaccines view the government as the perpetrators of the push for immunizations and blame them for the harm they believe to be attributable to vaccinations.

The more the government attempts to convince the population that vaccinations are not harmful, the more it raises suspicions among those already skeptical. But, in order to avoid any further erosion of the advances that have been made in eliminating disease the government needs to tighten restrictions, public education about vaccinations must be more coordinated. n

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Photography Credits Front Cover: Photo by Susy Morris, Page 2: Photo by Mark Pizzi, Page 5: Photo by Tom LeGro, Page 6-7: Photo by Jordi Bernabeau Farrus, Page 9: Photo by Valerie Hinojosa, Page 10-11: Photo by David Zhou, Page 12-13: Photo by Michael D. Beckwith, Page 15: Photo by Gino Reyes, Page 16: Photo from Wikimedia Commons, Page 18: Photo by Joe Catron, Page 20: Photo by flickr.com user Science 3.0, Page 21: Photo by Sippanont Samchai, Page 22: Photo by Carol E. Davis, Page 23 & Back Cover: Photo by Richard Vignola Front Cover: Photo by Justin Shead, Page 2: Photo by Mark Pizzi, Page 4: Photo from Wikimedia Commons, Page 5: Photo by M. 23

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