“Far more civilians have been killed by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas than U.S. counter-terrorism officials have acknowledged, a new study by human rights researchers at Stanford University and New York University contends. The report, "Living Under Drones," also concludes that the classified CIA program has not made America any safer and instead has turned the Pakistani public against U.S. policy in the volatile region. It recommends that the Obama administration reevaluate the program to make it more transparent and accountable, and to prove compliance with international law. "Real people are suffering real harm" but are largely ignored in government or news media discussions of drone attacks, said James Cavallaro of Stanford, one of the study's authors. Cavallaro said the study was intended to challenge official accounts of the drones as precise instruments of high-tech warfare with few adverse consequences. The Obama administration has championed the use of remotely operated drones for killing senior Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders, but the study concludes that only about 2% of drone casualties are top militant leaders.”
—David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times; Drone Strikes in Pakistan have killed many Civilians
Only 2% of casualities are actual militants, but we wouldn’t know that since “militant” is now defined by any man over the age of 18.
Most Terrorist Plots in the US Aren't Invented by Al Qaeda -- They're Manufactured by the FBI
alternet.orgIndeed, while terrorism sting operations are a new practice for the Bureau, they are an evolution of an FBI tactic that has for decades captured the imaginations of Hollywood filmmakers. In 1982, as the illegal drug trade overwhelmed local police resources nationwide and contributed to an increase in violent crime, President Ronald Reagan’s first attorney general, William French Smith, gave the FBI jurisdiction over federal drug crimes, which previously had been the exclusive domain of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Eager to show up their DEA rivals, FBI agents began aggressively sending undercover agents into America’s cities. This was relatively new territory for the FBI, which, during Hoover’s thirty-seven-year stewardship, had mandated that agents wear a suit and tie at all times, federal law enforcement badge easily accessible from the coat pocket. But an increasingly powerful Mafia and the bloody drug war compelled the FBI to begin enforcing federal laws from the street level. In searching for drug crimes, FBI agents hunted sellers as well as buyers, and soon learned one of the best strategies was to become part of the action.
Most people have no doubt seen drug sting operations as portrayed in countless movies and television shows. At its most cliché, the scene is set in a Miami high-rise apartment, its floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the cresting waves of the Atlantic Ocean. There’s a man seated at the dining table; he’s longhaired, with a scruffy face, and he has a briefcase next to him. But that’s not all. Hidden on the other side of the room is a camera making a grainy black-and-white recording of the entire scene. The apartment’s door swings open and two men saunter in, the camera recording their every move and word. Everyone sits down at the table. The two men hand over bundles of cash. The scruffy man then hands over the briefcase. The two guests of course expect to find cocaine inside. Instead, the briefcase is empty, and as soon as they open it to find the drugs missing, FBI agents rush in, guns drawn for the takedown. Federal law enforcement officials call this type of sting operation a “no-dope bust,” and it has been an effective tool for decades. It’s also the direct predecessor to today’s terrorism sting. Instead of empty briefcases, the FBI today uses inert bombs and disabled assault rifles, and now that counter-terrorism is the Bureau’s top priority, the investigation of major drug crimes has largely fallen back to the DEA. Just as no-dope busts resulted in the arrest and prosecution of those in the drug trade in the twentieth century, terrorism sting operations are resulting in the arrest and prosecution of would-be terrorists in this century.
While the assumptions behind drug stings and terrorism stings are similar, there is a fundamental flaw in the assumption underpinning the latter. In drug stings, federal law enforcement officials assume that any buyer caught in a sting would have been able to buy or sell drugs elsewhere had that buyer not fallen into the FBI trap. The numbers support this assumption. In 2010, the most recent year for which data is available, the DEA seized 29,179 kilograms, or 64,328 pounds, of cocaine in the United States. Likewise, in terrorism stings, federal law enforcement officials assume that any would-be terrorists caught in a sting would have been able to acquire the means elsewhere to carry out their violent plans had they not been ensnared by the FBI. The problem with this assumption is that no data exists to support it, and what data is available suggests would-be Islamic terrorists caught in FBI terrorism stings never could have obtained the capability to carry out their planned violent acts were it not for the FBI’s assistance.
In the ten years following 9/11, the FBI and the Justice Department indicted and convicted more than 150 people following sting operations involving alleged connections to international terrorism. Few of these defendants had any connection to terrorists, evidence showed, and those who did have connections, however tangential, never had the capacity to launch attacks on their own. In fact, of the more than 150 terrorism sting operation defendants, an FBI informant not only led one of every three terrorist plots, but also provided all the necessary weapons, money, and transportation.
The FBI’s logic to support the use of terrorism stings goes something like this: By catching a lone wolf before he strikes, federal law enforcement can take him off the streets before he meets a real terrorist who can provide him with weapons and munitions. However, to this day, no example exists of a lone wolf, by himself unable to launch an attack, becoming operational through meeting an actual terrorist in the United States. In addition, in the dozens of terrorism sting operations since 9/11, the would-be terrorists are usually uneducated, unsophisticated, and economically desperate—not the attributes of someone likely to plan and launch a sophisticated, violent attack without significant help.
“What the dialogue on Muslim women in America has failed to capture is that they are intertwined in communities with Muslim men; and though the U.S. has tried, it’s not possible to rescue one while killing the other. Muslim women are part of Muslim countries and Muslim cities; they do not exist independently of their homes as damsels in distress for the U.S. to pick up.”
—Stop saying targeted killings protect Muslim women at Salon
Republicans and Obama Can Agree on Criticizing China’s Trade Practices
nytimes.com
By MARK LANDLER Published: November 21, 2011 WASHINGTON — China’s swift economic rise, and a presidential election dominated by fears of a declining American economy, have produced a rare convergence: Republican contenders talking tough about China, and a president who is already getting tough on it.
As President Obama returned Sunday from a trip to Asia that was filled with signs that the United States plans to be a counterweight to Beijing’s growing influence in that region, Mitt Romney and other Republican candidates have stepped up their denunciation of China’s trade practices, casting the country as predatory and a culprit for lost jobs at home.
Given the bleak economic backdrop, China’s emergence as an election issue is no big surprise. But it is an unusual case in which domestic politics are playing to Mr. Obama’s diplomatic advantage, allowing him to project to China the picture of a country united in its resolve.
Still, the intensity of the American anti-China sentiment— in Congress, as well as on the campaign trail and during Mr. Obama’s travels — could have damaging consequences for the relationship between the two countries, regardless of who wins the White House.
Mr. Romney, diplomats and other experts said, could be haunted by his harsh claims that China steals American technology and hacks into its computers, and his threat to declare it a currency manipulator on his first day in the Oval Office. As candidates, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton both attacked China, only to have to make amends after bitterness in Beijing hindered their efforts to work with Chinese leaders.
Mr. Obama avoided going after China when he ran in 2008, and he has sought to balance criticism of Beijing’s economic policies with pledges of global partnership. But experts and former officials said the president would be pressured, by the Republicans and by his own political advisers, to take a harder line this time around. “He has not risen to the bait to try to outbid Romney rhetorically in terms of the security relationship,” said Jeffrey A. Bader, who was Mr. Obama’s chief adviser on China until last April. But, he added, “If you look at what he has said on economic issues, it’s hard-edged.” At an economic summit meeting in Hawaii last week, Mr. Obama said that China was now a “grown-up” economy, and that its leaders needed to start behaving that way. He singled out Beijing’s artificially depressed currency, which undercuts exports from the United States. The American people, he declared, “understandably, feel that enough is enough.” On Saturday, on the Indonesian island of Bali, Mr. Obama threw his weight behind neighbors of China who are disputing Beijing’s aggressive maritime claims in the South China Sea. Chinese leaders were rattled by the flurry of American initiatives during the president’s trip, which also included reaffirming an alliance with the Philippines, opening a historic diplomatic channel to Myanmar and agreeing to deploy 2,500 Marines to Australia. The American election adds to their confusion, China experts said, because they are uncertain how much of Mr. Obama’s stance is driven by domestic political calculations. But the president’s criticism has been far more measured than that of Mr. Romney and other Republicans, who excoriated China at a debate in South Carolina that occurred as Mr. Obama was greeting the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, in Hawaii. “We can’t just sit back and let China run all over us,” Mr. Romney said, calling for tariffs on Chinese goods. “People say, well, you’ll start a trade war. There’s one going on right now, folks.” For Mr. Romney, a wealthy business executive with free-market credentials, criticizing China is a rare chance to play the populist and appeal to working-class voters, many of whom do blame China and other Asian nations for sucking away jobs with cheaper labor and production costs. Not wanting to be outdone, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas likened China to the Soviet Union. “I happen to think that the Communist Chinese government will end up on the ash heap of history,” he said. While Chinese officials are sophisticated enough to understand the posturing in Republican primaries, Kenneth G. Lieberthal, a China adviser to President Bill Clinton, said that on a recent visit to Beijing, several of them expressed worry to him about the tone of the campaign. China is in its own delicate leadership transition and has a restive military eager to flex its muscles. “This kind of rhetoric really helps the nationalist and conservative wings of the Chinese government,” said Cheng Li, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “To reinforce the hard-liners could lead not only to economic tensions, but a military confrontation.” […]Drone Wars
So for whatever reason my news feed has been filling with comments and complaints about America’s drone war. It’s a lot of repeats, but the gist is clear: progressives don’t like drone war.
I’ve been struck by the confusedly intermixed arguments underlying these complaints. At least two seem to stick out to me, and I thought I’d take a moment to unpack them a bit. I doubt this will make my progressive followership happy, but it seems to me its usually better to have a clear grasp of ideas before building political action on them.
The first objection to drone war that I think needs thinking through is the notion of defining one’s enemy. Lots of critics argue that the US is not really killing enemies, or that even if the US is killing the people it intends to kill, the negative consequences of such killings will ultimately work against our interests. You can’t win for losing, in other words: in making war on some “other,” the United States remains isolated in political affairs and may indeed promote hatred of the US in the first place.
This objection, it should be noted, is a perfectly reasonable political objection to US policy. One can believe that the war on terror is misbegotten (as I do), and that US actions are making things worse rather than better (as I have mixed feelings about). But you should be clear: Barack Obama does not care that this is your opinion. He has made the decision, as the duly elected President of the United States, to employ American military power in this way to this end. He has exercised his political power to an end you find politically objectionable, and he does not appear to be losing any sleep about it.
I emphasize this point to say this: if you really think we need to change US policy, including drone war, then you need to work to ensure that someone other than Barack Obama or Mitt Romney is elected President in November. Gary Johnson would do well. Just shaking you’re finger and saying “don’t do that” isn’t going to change a damn thing.
A second set of objections to drone war derives from critics’ discomfort with the concentration of power it seems to manifest in the White House. In drone war, President Obama can seemingly kill anyone anywhere at will, all without due process or other check or balance — even US citizens. The ease of the use of drones — they are both easy to hide and don’t leave vast trails of devastation in their wake — makes it increasingly likely that presidents will become killing machines: Terminators-by-proxy.
Part of me is sympathetic to this argument: the notion that the President can have a “kill list” and the means to employ it with no checks and balances violates my sense of the what the Constitution was created for in the first place.
Yet part of me wants to ask: what the heck have you been paying attention to for the last 60 years?
Over the last 60 years the United States has transferred immediate control of its nuclear arsenal to the President and his designees. It has created a vast national security state of spies and operatives who have overthrown governments, assassinated enemies, and worked to destabilize political movements and political cultures. It has allowed the basing of hundreds of thousands of US soldiers near US adversaries, meaning that minor tensions risked global conflict. It has run untold airstrikes and interventions and occupations as it sought to shape global political outcomes in ways it finds desirable. It runs Guantanamo and Baghram and has tortured and used rendition to allow others to torture on our behalf. And it has done much, much more besides.
If you use your objection to drone war as a start of process of understanding, unpacking and working to transform US global military policy, more power to you. If all that bothers you is that the President can send drones to kill people, you need to get serious.
The Great Internet Freedom Bluff of Digital Imperialism: Thoughts on Cyber Diplomacy, Cargo Cult Digital Activism... and Haystack
Over the last few months I’ve been following the developments around Haystack, an “anti-censorship tool” for Iranian internet users. As the media was fawning over Haystack as a free speech tool and its co-creator, Austin Heap, as a poster-child for digital activism, I observed conversations unfold on the Stanford’s Liberation Technology email list-serve where members began to raise some serious concerns about Haystack’s major security gaffes and its shady beta release.
Jillian York has written biting analysis of the media coverage of the Haystack Affair. The Economist has a great review of the events.
Projects like Haystack reveal so much more about our own fears of the world. But the bottom line is that Haystack was blown out of proportion from the very beginning for something that it wasn’t. The Haystack Affair, however, is not an isolated incident; it is a continuation of projects coming from Westerners who place their own narratives on people and situations they really don’t fully understand.
The Internet Freedom Bluff
The Haystack Affair, like the recent Google-China Saga is just another technology that has been caught in the digital geo-politics of what I’ve been calling, neo-informationalism. Neo-informationalism is the belief that information should function like currency in free-market capitalism—borderless, free from regulation, and mobile. The logic of this rests on an ethical framework that is tied to what Morgan Ames calls “information determinism,” the belief that free and open access to information can create real social change. I write more about the roots of neo-informationalism from hacker and corporate tech culture in my analysis on the Google China Saga and on my research blog on this topic, but I think what’s important to note here is that we are starting to see that the neo-informationalist agenda is not only built into the way we and corporations promote our technologies, but is reflected in our state policies. This all started with Hilary Clinton’s talk on internet freedom in early January of this year, which marked a clear turning point in US foreign policy. The talk didn’t just reprimand China for not making it possible for Google to do business on Google’s terms in China, it also announced to the world that the US was embarking on a new crusade for freedom - internet freedom.
And here’s the thing - the people being recruited for this new crusade aren’t your typical jingoists who tend to support protectionist policies and centralized controls on information, but techies who believe in free-information in the name of liberty and rights for all human beings. Just as much as neo-liberalism successfully incorporated the Left and Democrats to support open markets in the name of “development” when really it was all about the control of money and power, neo-informationalism incorporates lefty digital activtists to support freedom and open information when in reality it serves to benefit Americans and their allies at the end of the day - not real social change in the places that need it the most. (Hackers be aware!)
Free-markets, like free-information, need to be created. Free-markets are maintained through the heavy subsidization of the US military industrial complex. We are all familiar with this kind of imperialism- the exploit of resources in other countries so that we can maintain our standard of living (e.g. military build up in the Persian Gulf to protect oil fields). But what’s emerging is a new form of domination that I call digital imperialism - the exploit of other countries through digital means so that we can maintain our status quo. The former does it in the name of free-markets, the latter does it in the name of free-information.
Neo-informationalist policies, such as the new “internet freedom” foreign policy to ensure free and flowing information, compliment neoliberal practices in corporate welfare to keep markets free and open to the US and all of our allies who benefit from our work. Neo-informationalism works on two fronts - on a policy/political and on a corporate/market level. Governments are increasingly flexing power through information policies. This is what Sandra Braman calls the new “information state,” replacing the bureaucratic welfare state. In her book (must-read), Change of State: Information, Policy, and Power, she argues that this new information state influences the way states govern down to research, internet/network connections, and policy. Alongside with changes in governance, corporations also draw upon neo-informationalist rhetoric as its modus operandi for extending its reach and maintaining its current policies even when they may not benefit groups of users. I and many others have argued that the corporate efforts of companies such as Google must constantly be checked (just like any other institution) to ensure that their policies are benefiting users, not just the corporation. Tim Wu’s latest book, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, speaks to this very concern - that the history of ICTs in the US show that when a corporation is able to monopolize a technologial innovation, its action switch to centralizing the control of the medium. The internet is built on open protocols, but this doesn’t mean that the very institutions that are invested in keeping those technological protocols open are always equally invested in what’s best for their users.
The narrative of internet freedom is a myth - it’s a myth that Americans have constructed about the technology. We hear this perpetuated with rallying cries such as, “If we don’t do X, the internet will no longer be free!” How is this different from, “If we don’t invade X or control Y, then American will no longer be free!” Then to add to this you have the hackers and techies arguing that “information wants to be free,” reflecting the techno-anthropomorphization of information. All of these statements create the larger narrative that OUR internet is free and other internets are unfree.
The internet as freedom myth rests on a binary that the internet is a platform that either promotes freedom or total control. Wendy Hui Kyong Chun’s book, Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics, attacks this Western binary and asks, ” How has the Internet, a medium that thrives on control, been accepted as a medium of freedom? Why is freedom increasingly indistinguishable from paranoid control?” The silver lining in her argument is that she shows how the internet came to be constructed as a tool for empowerment - mainly as racial and sexual empowerment in the US.
But now this myth of internet freedom has become internalized within our media sphere and among digital activists. And at times the real concerns of serious issues like net neutrality get mixed into the internet freedom rhetoric that has now been adopted by the State Department. The danger of seeing the internet as a binary is that we lose the ability to see how the internet is manifested in various ways depending on institutional contexts, how the internet AMPLIFIES existing conditions.
It’s also a dangerous way of seeing the world because we begin to believe that real social change can happen if the internet was just “free” and if all information just flowed freely. The internet creating more democracy is a myth (Matthew Scott Hindman’s book, The Myth of Digital Democracy, makes this point). Now we have this tech deterministic argument wrapped up in our state policy. And it’s quite powerful when you combine it with the current neoliberal efforts to over-ride “inefficient” governments and regulators to create more “efficient” markets.
Neo-informationalism and neo-liberalism work symbiotically to create what Wendy Brown calls the governed citizen who seeks solutions in products as opposed to the political process. Neo-informationalism is a re-visioning of a non-redistributive laissez-faire ideology of modernization theory transplanted into Western technologies that assumes surely people cannot be self-sufficient without unlimited access to the tools that connect them to the world wide web. Underlying this ideology is the notion that information openness and market openness are inseparable and non-mutually exclusive. Information openness can only be achieved through free-market conditions. This is a model of social change that puts faith in objects, not in governance processes. And now even our State Deparment is pushing this agenda as it fits quite nicely with the efforts to bring democracy to the world - esp where we need it the most- our oil fields.
Now I have no qualms with countries advocating for democracy, but like sami ben gharbia, I am very critical of the hypocrisy in this new crusade. In sami’s latest (and awesomely researched) blog post, The Internet Freedom Fallacy and Arab Digital Activism, he writes that
“the U.S cannot be regarded as credible in their new crusade for Internet freedom as long as they maintain the same foreign policy which is, as many Arab affairs specialists and activists describe it, a hypocritical and counter-democratic one.”
As Western countries such as the US become more invested in promoting freedom through information practices, we will see more projects that attempt to fulfil the political promise of spreading and maintaining democracy abroad (see Evgeny Morozov’s article on this topic). We’re returning to some good old post-Cold War policy making. This time around, however, state governments no longer need to spread information and knowledge by erecting universities abroad when they can now offer internet circumvention technologies that will give the world access to all information. It’s digital imperialism as its best - the marriage of computer programmers who believe in free-information and state governments who believe in freedom. And therein that marriage came the short lived baby named Haystack. But rest assured, there will be more babies that come out of this new public-private partnership of digital activists and government actors. And when these babies come, will the media and people remember the Haystack Affair or will we repeat the same old mess?
Avoiding Cargo Cult Digital Activists
These messy digital affairs are often fueled by digital activists who unknowingly get caught up in these neo-informationalist landscapes. This graph by sami ben gharbia illustrates the new context of digital activism. There are whole host of new players who want to promote this new crusade of US cyber diplomacy through the internet by working closely with digital activists and grassroots organizations. Sami warns that if digital activists do not exercise more discretion in who they become involved with, they can end up supporting the very policies that they are fighting.
It may sounds alluring at first to collaborate with the government when it appears that there is a shared goal to promote free and open access to information. It’s especially alluring to groups who already believe and practice this. I am embedded in a community of hackers, techies, and organizers who believe in free-information as a practice. While I share similar values, what I see happening is that many digital activists are quick to jump on any international case promoted by the media where information does not appear to flow “freely.” Then they launch some project and naively step into a larger geo-strategic power struggle that has nothing to do with free-information for all and everything to do with freedom for some.
Austin Heap, fell into this power struggle. Even worse, he prematurely courted the media’s attention (and the media courted him) before having a solid product. Putting my anthropologist hat on, i would say that Austin Heap was just doing cargo cult science. Physicist Richard Feynman used this term to criticize scientists who conduct and promote their own scientific projects just to secure research funds and media attention. (more on the history of real Cargo cults). The point is that you can’t take cargo cult science seriously; giving it more attention (like the media did) only encourages more spectacle.
In this new era of cyber democracy in the name of “Internet Freedom,” we’re going to see more cargo cult technologies from digital activists. Some technologies will suck and some will work, but the problem is that the tools that make false promises to users can actually cut off dialogue instead of cultivating it.
And that is the MOST CRITICAL danger of tools like Haystack - they are distracting mirages for the digital activists on the ground doing the grueling work of keeping conversations open, encrypting banal and politicized convos, working with local communities and governments to improve their information services, and building participatory sites. As we walk through the dessert of global affairs, let’s not be distracted by the mirages and keep our eyes on the real goal, which is to cultivate relationships where we can learn from each other and support communities so that they sustain themselves economically, politically, and socially.
My issue with projects like Haystack is that the creators attached a political ideology to its software. By politicizing the “tool,” it becomes less useful because its only targets high-value users, which then exposes them to greater danger. Sometimes, the most depoliticized tools are the most beneficial in highly politicized situations. Youtube is a great example of a real life working anti-censorship tool. It’s the most popular website for video uploading and viewing and the third most trafficked site in the world. It’s subversive because it’s popular and because it has no stated agenda for target users. Tor is another example of a widely used anonymous software that doesn’t set an ideological narrative for its users.
Doing more harm than good when stories are forced
What I’ve learned throughout my years of organizing is that activists too often have a pre-set narrative for the outcome in which they are trying to change. In my early days of activism in youth media in NYC, I was too invested in creating one outcome for the youth that we were trying to “save” from the projects. It didn’t help that we could only find funders who would give grants for promises of “measurable change” for “disaffected and media illiterate youth” from the ghetto. Change is possible, but genuine and sustainable change has to be negotiated and determined by the community. This to me is what I love about participatory tools that bring people together whether it is an inviting warm fire or hip-hop music or an internet meme.
Over the last few years of researching technology and migrants in China, I’ve seen scores of anti-censorship projects (from art to technology to straight up protests) aimed at freeing Chinese people from their “censored lives.” These projects, propped up in the name of freedom, can often hurt the very people they are trying to save or the people who are working to improve the situation without the spotlight of international media attention (this is the topic of Linda Polman’s book on the harm of many humanitarian aid efforts). I’ve seen this happen way too many times. Some of the most exciting social reforms in China are happening in places without any international NGOs or media attention or activists waiting to tell their deportation survival story.
I think the underlying work of activism is the goal of revealing concentrated or unfair forms of power. Yet, often times in these macro discussion of geo-political and international diplomacy making, we forget that power is not possessed but exercised. If this is the case, then activism is less about redistributing power but more about igniting people and communities to believe that they have the power to represent their own stories, lives, needs, and hopes. Some of the most exciting prospects for change are tools, projects, and institutions that facilitate people to code their own space, to program their own lives, and to represent their own stories. As geographer John Allen argues (pg 163), “there is no everywhere to power.” While we may all be immersed in “arrangements of power,” power is not evenly distributed. Can this be the exploit then for digital activists?
Truths and Stories
Philosopher Martin Heidegger tells a story of how a farmer uses traditional technology and a Westerner uses modern technology with a piece of land. While the farmers see the land as something to cultivate, the Westerner with her/his modern technologies sees the land as a resource where only one thing is possible - maximum yield for profit. The farmer sees her/himself as the steward of the land while the Westerner sees her/himself as the beneficiary of the land. Non-modern technologies cultivate objects for the most sustainable path while modern technologies in the West exploit resources for the ‘maximum yield at minimal expense.’
Heidegger was concerned about the Western approach to technology because it sets the world up as a set of calculable and coherent forces. This way of seeing and doing penetrates our subconscious as we approach countries, communities and then individuals. When armed with technologies that helps us make rational and calculated decisions, it reifies what we see as the truth - ours! Heidegger argued that the modern Western spirit is not whole because there is no such thing as just one “truth.” For the spirit to be whole, Heidegger suggests that we need to be open to a greater variety of truths.
To me, the beauty of the internet is that in the tradition of other communication tools, it offers other ways to experience different realities and truths. Tools like Haystack reify our truth - that others live in repression and Americans live in freedom. If you create a tool that is only for people to fight against repressive governments, then you’re forcing one use scenario for your users. Projects that go in with a pre-set story or mission is a myopic way of interacting with the world because it can prevent the possibility of other stories from emerging that were never imagined in the first place. And this worries me because having a pre-set story of “liberatory technology” stunts the imagination for other innovative possibilities for social change with technological objects and with people.
Cut off what?
Short of killing the actual leaders in repressive countries (which the US has done and continues to support), social change can take a long time. It’s not sexy and it doesn’t grab media headlines. The people at NGOs and companies creating awesome possibilities and dialogues around the world in this space aren’t in the New York Times for every community they work with or every bridge they build. The states that are experimenting with alternatives to neo-liberlalism and trying to create a sustainable present don’t even get press attention (great article on how South America has become neoliberalims’s weakest link).
If the goal for activists, in Zizek’s words, is to not dirt[y] the balls of those in power but to cut [their testicles] off, then we should cultivate trust abroad, not destroy it. My concern is that digital activists have not learned from our own history. Haven’t we learned from countless projects, such as how we totally screwed up Afghanistan, that we tend to create chaos when we naively simplify our actions as a matter of freedom and democracy? So how about we work on “Internet freedom” on our own soil first? There’s a lot of work to be done and stories to be told. Here’s some projects and people who are doing awesome work on good old American soil: Jennifer Pahlka at Code For America, Anil Dash’s work at Expert Labs, Gina Trappani’s app Think Up, and Noel Hidalgo’s work at the NY State Senate.
bit.ly link to share this post: http://bit.ly/if00
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And while I have your attention, could I engage you in some satire on this very topic of giving “help” to others? For some laughs, watch this video from the Armando Iannucci Show. Its the best thing I’ve seen in a while.
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thanks to Calixte Tayoro for forcing me to write my thoughts up on this topic :)
“It's time for Washington to abandon the fiction that the cartels don't operate in the United States. The U.S. government's narcotics-flow maps show the drug trade as fat arrows coursing their way from Colombia through Central America and Mexico -- but they all stop at the U.S. border. The National Drug Intelligence Center has published a list of 235 American cities reporting a Mexican cartel "presence," and that just skims the surface. Ignoring the cartels' vast networks won't make them go away. Co-responsibility also means addressing "southbound" flows -- the U.S. arms and cash that are the raison d'etre of the cartels -- to Mexico, Central America and beyond. Or if we're unwilling the match the courage that the Mexicans have shown -- and if we just want the Central Americans to follow the same failed strategy -- we must launch a serious dialogue here on legalizing, or at least decriminalizing, the drugs. It's not a perfect solution, but it's better than no solution at all.”
—End the Drug War by Fulton T. ArmstrongEssays for the Presidency | 1924-Present
While campaigning for the highest office in the land, presidential hopefuls and their advisers have turned to Foreign Affairs to publish essays laying out how they see the world. Here is a collection of those articles, grouped by election year. View all the collections back to 1924.
Including Aaron L. Friedberg, a foreign policy adviser to Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee for president; Michèle Flournoy, co-founder of the Center for a New American Security; Janine Davidson, professor at George Mason University; and Jim Lindsay, senior vice president and director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations
Including Barack Obama, John Edwards, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Bill Richardson, then candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination; and Mitt Romney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, John McCain, and Michael D. Huckabee, then candidates for the Republican presidential nomination.
Including Madeleine K. Albright, then head of Albright Stonebridge Group; Colin L. Powell, then U.S. secretary of state; and Samuel R. Berger, then chair of Stonebridge International.
Including Condoleezza Rice and Robert B. Zoellick, then foreign policy advisers to George W. Bush, Republican nominee for president; and W. Bowman Cutter, Joan Spero, and Laura D’Andrea Tyson, then economic policy advisers to Al Gore, Democratic nominee for president.
Visit ForeignAffairs.com to view the complete collection going back to 1924.
US War on Yemen: Invisible Casualties
english.al-akhbar.comThe life of fourteen-year-old Ali Alkhadr from Abyan was changed forever on 9 May 2011. Returning from a family visit in al-Mihrab village, Ali was hit by shrapnel from an air-strike that tore his jaw wide open. Air-strikes in the South that target al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) often indiscriminately kill or wound anyone in the surrounding area, including civilians, without a warning.
According to Ali’s father, Alkhadr Ali Hassan, Doctors without Borders/Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) generously conducted 1 million Yemeni Riyal ($4,660) worth of reconstructive surgery. Yet Ali still needs a lot more. The once studious teenager dropped out of school due to depression.
“He refuses to see his classmates because he is disfigured. It’s been eight months and there is nothing I can do to help my son,” said the boy’s father. “He does not want to go to school and one time I hospitalized him because he overdosed on drugs. I believe he wanted to end his life, and it pains me to see that. I don’t know what to do,” he added.
Ali Alkhadr is not alone in a country were civilians are often caught in the middle between militants and the government. These civilians are often ignored in the mainstream media and their deaths denied by governments.
For a decade, US policy in Yemen has centered on counter-terrorism cooperation with Yemeni security forces through the training and funding of counter-terrorism units, targeted assassinations including US citizens, small on-the-ground operation units, and drone attacks.
Terrorism is of grave concern in Yemen, and its consequences are far reaching. On Saturday 4 August 2012, locals in Jaar were the targets of a bombing by militants that killed at least 40 people. The Yemeni and US government’s response to these attacks in Yemen has included arbitrary arrests, homes being demolished, death and injuries, and displacement of civilians.
Since January 2012, there have been over 60 US air-strikes in Yemen, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), killing hundreds of civilians.
On 15 May 2012, an air-strike, believed to be a US drone, hit a civilian home. People nearby ran to see what had happened and to help the injured inside.
“About 15 minutes later, another plane suddenly struck the same building killing 15 people, including my brother,” said 19-year old Hassan Ahmed Abdullah recounting the incident. “He was wounded by shrapnel in his chest, liver, and neck. He also had burns on 50 percent of his body.”
From scarred people to destroyed buildings, Abyan carries many testaments to the war on terror.
Most of the civilian homes in the impoverished area of al-Kod were destroyed by air-strikes and heavy artillery. This area houses some of the poorest people in Yemen.
Bombs did not only hit homes but also struck schools and even the largest hospital in Abyan, al-Razi hospital.
“The bombing of al-Razi hospital was a tragedy, and I believe we will suffer from it for years to come, especially in light of Yemen’s economic social and political deterioration,” said psychologist and Jaar resident, Wahib Saad who also stressed the psychological trauma of such attacks.
“A Republican foreign policy for the twenty-first century will require more than traditional realpolitik and balance-of-power politics. The success of our policies will depend not only on the extent of our power, but also on an appreciation of its limits.”
—Chuck HagelYesterday the US Senate confirmed Chuck Hagel as the next Defense secretary. Read his vision for American foreign policy, in his own words.
A Republican Foreign Policy
The Shameless Rebranding of The Arab Spring
salon.comThe CIA’s spokesman at The Washington Post, columnist David Ignatius, recently announced that the glorifying term “Arab Spring” is no longer being used by senior intelligence officials to describe democratic revolutions in the Middle East. It has been replaced by the more “neutral” term “Arab transition,” which, as Ignatius put it, “conveys the essential truth that nobody can predict just where this upheaval is heading.” Note that what was until very recently celebrated in American media circles as a joyous, inspirational awakening of ”democratic birth and freedom” has now been downgraded to an “upheaval” whose outcome may be odious and threatening.
That’s not surprising. As I’ve written about several times, public opinion in those nations is so strongly opposed to the policies the U.S. has long demanded — and is quite hostile (more so than ever) to the U.S. itself and especially Israel — that allowing any form of democracy would necessarily be adverse to American and Israeli interests in that region (at least as those two nations have long perceived of their “interests”). That’s precisely why the U.S. worked so hard and expended so many resources for decades to ensure that brutal dictators ruled those nations and suppressed public opinion to the point of complete irrelevance (behavior which, predictably and understandably, exacerbated anti-American sentiments among the populace)…
[T]hat phrase — “authoritarian but dependably loyal” — captures the essence of (ongoing) American behavior in that region for decades: propping up the most heinous, tyrannical rulers who disregard and crush the views of their own people while remaining supremely “loyal” to foreign powers: the U.S. and Israel. Consider this equally revealing passage from The Guardian:
Israel fears that the post-Mubarak regime will be more sympathetic to Hamas and could even revoke the 1979 peace treaty with Israel. “They feel the need to respond to the [Arab] street,” said an Israeli government official. “Instead of calming things down, they are being dragged.” The Egyptian statement was “a very dismal development”, he said.
“Arab street”: the derogatory term long used to degrade public opinion in those nations as some wild animal that needs to be suppressed and silenced rather than heeded. That’s why this Israeli official talks about “the need to respond” to Egyptian public opinion — also known as “democracy” — as though it’s some sort of bizarre, dangerous state of affairs: because nothing has been as important to the U.S. and Israel than ensuring the suppression of democracy in that region, ensuring that millions upon millions of people are consigned to brutal tyranny so that their interests are trampled upon in favor of “loyalty” to the interests of those two foreign nations.
This is why American media coverage of the Arab Spring produced one of the most severe cases of cognitive dissonance one can recall. The packaged morality narrative was that despots like Mubarak — and those in Tunisia, Bahrain and elsewhere — are unambiguous, cruel villains whom we’re all supposed to hate, while the democracy protesters are noble and to be cheered. But whitewashed from that storyline was that it was the Freedom-loving United States that played such a vital role in empowering those despots and crushing the very democracy we are now supposed to cheer. Throughout all the media hate sessions spewed toward the former Egyptian dictator — including as he’s tried for crimes against his own people — how often was it mentioned that Hillary Clinton, as recently as two years ago, was saying things such as: ”I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family” (or that John McCain, around the same time, was tweeting: “Late evening with Col. Qadhafi at his ‘ranch’ in Libya - interesting meeting with an interesting man.”)? Almost never: because the central U.S. role played in that mass oppression was simply ignored once the oppression could no longer be sustained.
Our media approvingly allowed the notion of revolution to be expressed as a good thing, but as the revolutionaries move closer to enacting real change, we’re seeing the public discourse shift to allow continued subjugation and oppression by the United States and it’s allies against those same revolutionaries. We long propped up dictators and monarchs in the Arab world in order to shape their domestic policies- with our puppets out of the way and anti-American sentiment running high, we now see our political leaders searching for an excuse to deny democratic rights to the people who rose and fought for them.
“US policy, currently, is to strangle Iran through economic warfare. The sanctions against the Central Bank of Iran have led to the Iranian currency, the rial, losing half its value in less than a month. Food prices have skyrocketed and basic supplies have disappeared from the markets. Riots in the bazaars threaten to bring social distress to the country. US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate Arms Services Committee in February of this year that the sanctions “probably will not jeopardize the regime,” but will certainly, “have greater impacts on Iran.” By “Iran,” Clapper means the seventy-five million Iranians. The US political class is in agreement: “Sanctions,” they say gleefully, “are working.” This is reminiscent of US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s callous statement in 1996; when asked about the half-million dead Iraqi children resulting from the sanctions against the regime, she said, “we think the price is worth it.”
—The Southern Silk Road by Vijay PrashadPre-WWII in terms of APUSH
Needed one, couldn’t find one, made one myself instead.
US foreign policy, pre-WWII
- People like Gerald Nye decided that WWI was caused by nothing more than greedy merchants; isolationism was still big even as totalitarianism spread
- Neutrality Acts of ‘35, ‘36, ‘37 - once war was declared by the President, citizens couldn’t sail on a belligerent ship or give munitions/money to a belligerent - this didn’t differentiate between the good or bad guys
- We basically ignored the Spanish when they were being taken over by Franco the Fascist
- Japan and Germany were doing blatantly awful things but we pretended to not notice (USS Panay, invasion of China, demand for Sudetenland)
- FDR’s Quarantine Speech - called for positive endeavors to “quarantine” the aggressors, but isolationists flipped out
War starts
- Hitler invades Poland and signs a treaty with Stalin
- Neutrality Act of 1939 - “Cash and Carry” - European democracies can buy munitions only if they can pay and get the goods from us
- Fall of France - we begin bolstering the army/navy, enact a conscription law, and get 20 other New World countries to agree to uphold the Monroe Doctrine (Havana Conference - direct result of the “Good Neighbor” policy)
- Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies (wow nice name) vs America First Committee - what policy do we adopt?
- Destroyer Deal (1940) - FDR sends 50 Destroyer ships to Britain (this breaks various neutrality laws but nobody cares because Hitler)
- Lend-Lease Law - neutrality was over. We now were openly loaning arms to Britain
- We expected the Germans to attack us first because we began allowing merchant ships to sail around armed, but instead Japan attacked us at Pearl Harbor after we refused to stop embargo-ing them unless they left China
I’ll probably make a WWII post in a bit. jk sorry i’m going to bed
