Power of Evidence

We're talking about the role of colonialism and then World War I in turning US and UK culture "noir." We're also stressing the importance of evidence in making assertions and coming to conclusions about whodunit, not to mention everything else.  A major New York Times investigation brings these two issues together.  The story points out that, "Recklessly or intentionally bombing hospitals is a war crime, but proving culpability amid a complex civil war is extremely difficult, and until now, Syrian medical workers and human rights groups lacked proof."  The NYT investigation has proof that the Russian Air Force, in support of the Assad government in Syria, intentionally targeted the four hospitals in question.  The proof consists of several kinds of evidence, which they detail at the bottom of the article. I'll cite the whole thing because I'm such an evidence nerd:

Our reporting began by collecting social media posts, interviewing witnesses and speaking with organizations that support hospitals in opposition-held Syria. They gave us the approximate time each hospital was struck on May 5 and 6.

We obtained access to tens of thousands of flight observations kept by spotters who watch the skies and warn civilians of incoming airstrikes. Each observation logged a time, location and type of plane.

Most crucially, we also obtained thousands of Russian Air Force radio transmissions never before made public. We spent weeks deciphering their code words. By the end, we knew when Russian pilots were receiving coordinates, locking onto targets and dropping their bombs.

Finally, we reviewed the videos of three of the four bombings and consulted with military experts. We concluded that the videos showed the hospitals being bombed at the reported times, and in two cases that they were hit with precision bombs that the Russians possess but the Syrians don't.

Combining all this information revealed that Russian pilots were flying at the time and place each hospital was bombed, that they released their weapons at the same time we'd been told the strike occurred, and that at least two of the strikes were too precise for the Syrians to have even accomplished.

This is an enormous amount of dedicated work.  It's also expensive, which is why most newspapers, including my hometown newspaper the Los Angeles Times, do a lot more cutting and pasting of internet stuff than they do investigating.

In addition to money, there's the problem of savvy replacing truth as the ethos of high-end reporting, at least according to this interesting analysis.

War Comes Home

One of our course themes--and Cause 1 of the Noir crime genre and accompanying social changes--appears literally in the title of this article, "When War Comes Home."  In it, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof tells the story of a horrific random murder committed by a returned vet.  Here an apparent case of PTSD may have been caused by a physical brain injury suffered by Staff Sgt Dwight L. Smith, pictured here, and that went untreated.  It's a story worth reading in part for confirmation of some of our discussions and also for a sense of the ongoing currency of the problem.

Soldier Mental Health

As newspapers continue to describe some urban neighborhoods as war-zones, here's some news from the Iraq war-zone. A new report, as described by Peter Spiegel in the Los Angeles Times, has found that soldiers are more likely to suffer from mental health problems in their third and fourth tours of duty. "27.2% of noncommissioned officers - the sergeants responsible for leading troops in combat - reported mental health problems during their third or fourth tours. That was up from 18.5% of those on their second tour and 11.9% of those on their first tour." These are self-reported numbers.

Soliders also have increasing trouble concentrating on their work. "Most strikingly, soldiers reporting they intended to separate from or divorce their spouses shot up over the courses of the 15-month tours, with 30% of all junior enlistees saying they planned to break off personal relationships at the end of their deployment. Only 10% reported similar feelings at the start of their tours."