Author Archives: mstalcup

Black Lives Matter Syllabus Project

The Anthropoliteia #BlackLivesMatterSyllabus Project, Week 5: Meg Stalcup and Charles Hahn on Technology, Surveillance, and Security

The editors of Anthropoliteia are happy to present the latest entry in on ongoing series The Anthropoliteia #BlackLivesMatterSyllabus Project, which will mobilize anthropological work as a pedagogical exercise addressing the confluence of race, policing and justice.  You can see a growing bibliography of resources via our Mendeley feed.   In this entry, Meg Stalcup and Charles Hahn discuss technology, surveillance, and security in their article “Cops, Cameras and the Policing of Ethics“.
 
Screen grab from post by SPDbodywornvideo CC BY-SA 4.0 2015 by Meg Stalcup

Screen grab from post by SPDbodywornvideo CC BY-SA 4.0 2015 by Meg Stalcup

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#Ferguson & Elsewhere, Dossiers

The Lost Space of Dissent: Amidst Charleston’s Unity

The Editors of Anthropoliteia welcome Bradley Dunseith with a report from Charleston, South Carolina

Knights of Columbus hall in Charleston, South Carolina. June 2015. Photo by Bradley Dunseith CC BY-NC-PSA 4.0

As I walked towards the Mother Emmanuel Church I found myself counting every step I took, part of me didn’t want to arrive. On June 19th I took a morning bus to Charleston, South Carolina, two days after a self-described white supremacist walked into the historic black church of AME Mother Emmanuel and, after sitting in for an hour of bible study, murdered nine black churchgoers. Reverend and Senator Clementa Pinckney, Tywanza Sanders, Reverend Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Cynthia Hurd, Reverend DePayne Middleton-Doctor, Reverend and Doctor Daniel L Simmons Sr., Ethel Lance, Myra Thompson, and Susie Jackson were gunned down on the evening of June 17, 2015. The shooter was able to reload five times during the attack, prompting gun rights activists and some black faith communities to argue that having a firearm within the church’s premise could have prevented the attack, while President Obama spoke in the immediate aftermath, saying that “once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun.”

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Commentary & Forums, Security in Brazil: World Cup 2014 and Beyond

Unravelling Goliath

The editors of Anthropoliteia welcome Christopher Gaffney with a commentary on the current crisis at FIFA and its implications

“Unfair Players” Photo by Christopher Gaffney CC BY-NC-PSA 4.0

Like most football fans across the world, I have taken a perverse and personal delight in watching the bloated, jowly patriarchs of FIFA fall, one after another. Not only do I feel that the on-going investigations into the misogynistic world of backslapping, ham-handed, wink-wink deal making are confirming my own knowledge and intuition, but also that the doors to the smoky back rooms of FIFA have been prised open, exposing a global coterie of sycophants and their clever, intertwined, and illegal schemes.

FIFA and its (two) presidents have cozied up to dictators and presidents, popes and prime-ministers, conferring upon themselves all of the pomp, power, and impunity of a head of state

For the last six years, I have been investigating how the hosting of the World Cup and Olympics impacts upon urban and social relations in Brazil. In this work, I have exposed how the intricate shell game of FIFA and the IOC extracts maximum wealth from host cities and countries while at the same time militarizing and privatizing urban space, violating human rights, and leaving legacies of debt and unfulfilled promises. For those who can afford it, the party is fantastic. Once the floodlights have burned out, the hangover lasts for decades. In Brazil, the links between big business, big government, and big sport are opaque and insidious, yet the connections to the most recent FIFA-crisis are all too clear. Brazilian companies and executives are in the spotlight, again, for all the wrong reasons.

Favela da Paz

Favela da Paz “This is the Cup that Globo won’t show” Photo by Christopher Gaffney CC BY-NC-PSA 4.0

The most surprising development is that it has happened at all. Since 1974, FIFA and its (two) presidents have cozied up to dictators and presidents, popes and prime-ministers, conferring upon themselves all of the pomp, power, and impunity of a head of state. They have showered riches upon themselves as the self-appointed stewards of the game and like the Euro-aristocracy resident on Mt. Olympus, have made others rich in the process. The complex systems of patronage and peonage that define FIFA´s political philosophy are the same as those used by colonial powers. Big egos in white bodies (with apologies to Jack Warner and Issa Hayatu) rule this world by manufacturing consent through the distribution of favours, suppressing dissent through the militarization of urban space and the curtailment of civil liberties, and choreographing their marionettes who, in accordance with the Brazilian World Cup slogan, are “all in one rhythm.”

will there be anything left of FIFA? Or rather, is it reasonable to think that FIFA can disassociate from the same kinds of oppression, violence, and injustice that define global consumer capitalism?

Predictably, it was from FIFA´s band of servile minions – morbid troglodytes like Chuck Blazer, hyperbolic shysters like Jack Warner, and half-arsed opportunists like Ricardo Texeira – that the tightly wound FIFA-world began to unravel. Too much money flowing too quickly to the wrong people though the wrong country for too long, coupled with the FBI´s charming insouciance for the real-politik of global sporting affairs has resulted in a very hard, very determined tug on a lot of rotten strings. Among the unanswerable questions is, if it all unravels, will there be anything left of FIFA? Or rather, is it reasonable to think that FIFA can disassociate from the same kinds of oppression, violence, and injustice that define global consumer capitalism? There has never been a period in the era of mass-communications when FIFA was not corrupt, so how will it suddenly emerge? Will cutting off some heads of the scabrous FIFA-Hydra change the nature of the beast? While behind the scenes deals are being struck, these desperate attempts to consolidate power are finally in conflict with an exasperated public, the FBI, and a thirsty press corps. Somehow, despite the rot, we are still captivated by football.

“Sir Blatter, Homeland of the Barefoot Gives You a Kick in the Ass” Photo by Christopher Gaffney CC BY-NC-PSA 4.0

As the events of the past weeks have unfolded, the depth and extent of FIFA´s criminal network has become evident even to casual observers. The sudden resignation of FIFA´s communications officer, Walter de Gregorio (responsible for Blatter´s 2011 re-election campaign), may be a sign that there is no message to deliver, no more damage control to be done. It is almost impossible to keep track of the threads, but some of the more intriguing are that:

  • The Germans may have swapped arms for a Saudia Ariabian vote to get the 2006 WC
  • FIFA authorized a $10 million USD bribe to then-CONCACAF president Jack Warner
  • Jack Warner split this with his deputy Chuck Blazer, who used the money to keep a Trump Tower apartment for his cats
  • The 2018 and 2022 WC votes were bought, as were 1998, 2006, 2010, and 2014. The 2002 WC was not exempt, either, but corruption allegations against corrupt officials were never pursued
  • Nike, the Brazilian Football Confederation, the ex-president of Barcelona, Sandro Rossell, and the Qatari royal families have exchanged hundreds of millions of dollars between them
  • FIFA paid the Irish FA 5 million Euros to not make noise about being wrongly disqualified from the 2010 WC.
  • All of the television broadcasting rights contracts for the WC, as well as the Copa Libertadores, Copa América, and other tournaments in Brazil, and much of South America, were illicitly gained

This list is far from comprehensive and spans several modes of corruption, ones that affect governance, publicity, as well as actual decisions on the field. One hopes that in the coming months, the details will emerge to fill in these categories. In the meantime, everything – from marketing contracts to penalty decisions to hotel accommodations – is tainted with corruption.

Journalists and academics that report on and research global sport had yet to touch the bottom of the fetid pool, but even for us it still comes as somewhat of a surprise that the rest of the world can now read about match-fixing, illegal transfers, human trafficking, money laundering, Swiss bank accounts, bribery, racketeering, falsification of contracts, etc. as an integral part of the way football is organized. With the recent politicization of labour rights for NCAA athletes, the banal cruelty of playing a World Cup on turf, and the destruction of human life in the NFL and its subsidiaries, perhaps there is a chance that sport and politics will find a place in the public consciousness.

This is not about using sport as a force for good, or as FIFA claims “developing football everywhere.” Sport is about power

In reality, the FIFA saga is a captivatingly complex morality play being acted out on a global stage with curious twist: the chorus is hundreds of millions strong and may be able to influence the plot. Will the hood-eyed prince, Michel Platini, make his move for the presidency now? Will the court jester, Zico, show that he can perform better than Texeira? This is not about using sport as a force for good, or as FIFA claims “developing football everywhere.” Sport is about power and we should be aware that our places in the audience impact on its exercise.

We know World Cup games are bought and sold. We know that the WWC is being played on turf because football associations are on FIFA´s leash and have more power than the players. We know that thousands of kids are trafficked across borders, sold into prostitution, or are molested, mistreated, or die because of a lack of medical attention. For every Dani Alves or Neymar, there are a hundred thousand broken legs and a million broken dreams in Brazil alone. We know of the bribery behind World Cup bids, the illegal and blindingly idiotic stadium building contracts, the militarization of cities for FIFA VIPs, dirty billion dollar television contracts, institutionalized racism and sexism, and a never-ending series of lies, deceptions, and platitudes. There is no “Fair Play” in or with FIFA.

2014 World Cup Protests Photo by Christopher Gaffney CC BY-NC-PSA 4.0

2014 World Cup Protests Photo by Christopher Gaffney CC BY-NC-PSA 4.0

As a reminder of how short our memories are, it is nearly a year to the day that the 2014 World Cup kicked off in Brazil. Of the twelve stadiums, in the twelve cities, ten are in serious difficulty. The only two that are not going through financial and political turmoil are the two built by clubs in Curitiba and Porto Alegre. Of all the football associations implicated in the current FIFA hullabaloo, the Brazilian federation is the most embroiled. The Brazilian João Havelange was FIFA´s modern architect and his granddaughter, an executive director of the 2014 World Cup, famously quipped about the R$ 30 billion outlay, “however much was spent, or stolen, already has been” [so why worry?].

None of the “legacy” promises made by FIFA has come to fruition in Brazil. On fleeing the country as protests erupted around the Confederations´ Cup in 2013, Blatter announced a $ 100 million USD “legacy fund”, that would be administered by the CBF. This is the Brazilian organization recently run by a man now sitting in a Zurich jail house and currently headed up by a man who fled Zurich and ran straight to Brasilia where he was honoured by senators and congressmen. Of course, FIFA regulations prevent the Brazilian government from interfering in CBF affairs, a position that is at least consistent with the surrendering of territorial sovereignty that comes with hosting the World Cup. This takes the form of tax exemptions, restrictions on advertising, and the ability to close any street in a host city, at any time, for any reason.

Above

Above “Ronaldo Fenômeno does not represent me!” Below “Football Yes. FIFA No” Photo by Christopher Gaffney CC BY-NC-PSA 4.0

And now, as if to prove the point that the Canadian World Cup doesn´t matter, the Copa America kicks off in Chile, a country with long and painful associations between football and politics. In the same way we should remember those tortured and murdered in Santiago´s National Stadium, we should also remember that the same people who organized, broadcast, and advertise at this tournament are implicated in the shambolic governance of football. The show goes on with the same delirious media coverage, the same lack of critical reflection, the same people making more money than ever. It may be that FIFA and football are beyond reform as long as the crowds pour their money in and conform to FIFA´s inexhaustible list of prohibited behaviours. Is it possible that the global chorus of football fans can only hope to sing their teams on to victory, while the dark-suited protagonists squirrel away their millions? Can anything change if we only watch the ball?

Christopher Gaffney, PhD (University of Texas at Austin) is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Geography at the University of Zurich. His work investigates the impact of major sporting events on urban centers and their populations.
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#Ferguson & Elsewhere, Commentary & Forums

Notes on Ferguson: Some factors in the policing of protests

 
Ferguson Missouri protests

Ferguson, MO – Protests Day 4 –August 14th 2014
By Loavesofbread (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-4.0 ] via Wikimedia Commons

A friend sent me an article which quoted a police officer in Ferguson, MO snarling to a crowd, “Bring it. You fucking animals, bring it.” She asked for my thoughts. I’d seen the article earlier, part of the news reporting and blogosphere discussion of people of color killed by on-duty officers and the accompanying demonstrations against police violence. I think that coverage has correctly pointed to 1) entrenched racism, such that black faces are reflexively perceived as suspicious and dangerous, 2) and militarization of the police. But even with these explanations there seems to remain something incomprehensible, and I think that comes from just how differently the police tend to understand what they do.

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Commentary & Forums, Dispatches, From the Field, Security in Brazil: World Cup 2014 and Beyond

The Other Side of the Bay – Social Consequences Across from Rio de Janeiro

The editors of Anthropoliteia welcome Nick Wong and Stuart Davis with the latest entry in our forum Security in Brazil: World Cup 2014 and Beyond.
Photo by Nick Wong CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

A young boy playing in Fazenda dos Mineiros. Many of the toys provided to the children are donations from church organizations and other social programs aimed at helping these communities. They are insured to be in good working condition before donation, but due to the large demand for toys, children remain with the same toy for years. Photo by Nick Wong CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Our first contact with the Fazenda dos Mineiros community was by chance encounter. We were invited to visit the home of a friend, Gilberto Lima, a community leader who works in Rio de Janeiro and São Gonçalo on children’s rights, among other issues of social justice. Gilberto was the uncle of a friend back in the US who helped one of us prepare for our respective Fulbright terms, and for hospitality’s sake, he invited us over for lunch. What we didn’t know was how much the visit would influence our nine months in Brazil.

Located 15 miles across the Guanabara Bay from Rio de Janeiro’s historic downtown, the city of São Gonçalo has followed a much different path than its famous neighbor.[1] Continue reading →

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Commentary & Forums, Security in Brazil: World Cup 2014 and Beyond

A Conflicted Brazil on the Eve of the World Cup

The editors of Anthropoliteia welcome Meg Stalcup with the latest entry in our forum, Security in Brazil: World Cup 2014 and Beyond.
“evento da pompéia 2014.” Paulo Ito. Courtesy of the artist CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

“evento da pompéia 2014.” Paulo Ito. Courtesy of the artist CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

News and social media around the world are carrying stories about the tear-gassed transportation strikers in São Paulo, violence and conflict with the police in Rio’s favelas, and – witty but no less serious – John Oliver’s scathing explanation of the problems with the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), which drew on major media reports about the organization’s well-known illegal cash-for-contracts corruption, and also its scandalously legal pillaging of World Cup host countries.

For those who have been following the preparations for the World Cup in international reporting, or this forum, strikes, protests and corruption are no surprise. Continue reading →

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Dossiers

Wikileaks Crib Sheet, Part 2

Source: a place, person, or thing from which something comes or can be obtained

Bradley Manning is the 23-year-old intelligence analyst who has been charged with “transferring classified data onto his personal computer and adding unauthorized software to a classified computer system,” and “communicating, transmitting and delivering national defense information to an unauthorized source,” i.e. he is allegedly the person who supplied Wikileaks with its most spectacular coups of disclosure: the Afghanistan and Iraq War logs, comprised of over 391,000 reports which cover the wars from 2004 to 2009, the video of the 2007 Apache helicopter attack released with the title Collateral Murder in April of 2010, and the 251,287 United States embassy cables, which they began releasing in November 2010.

Manning entered the Army in October 2007, and was an Army intelligence analyst in Iraq when he allegedly took the documents, passed them to Wikileaks, and confessed his actions to former hacker Adrian Lamo. A few details about the interaction between Manning and Lamo can be found in a June Washington Post article. Many more details are in what is nonetheless an extremely edited copy of their chats, available online at Wired.com. Wired’s introduction is vague enough to give the impression that Lamo edited the logs before providing them, although they don’t actually say that, and do say that they removed very personal statements by Manning or what might be sensitive military secrets. According to Glenn Greenwald in Salon, the editing was done by the magazine, and further:

Lamo told me that Manning first sent him a series of encrypted emails which Lamo was unable to decrypt because Manning “encrypted it to an outdated PGP key of mine” [PGP is an encryption program].  After receiving this first set of emails, Lamo says he replied — despite not knowing who these emails were from or what they were about — by inviting the emailer to chat with him on AOL IM, and provided his screen name to do so.  Lamo says that Manning thereafter sent him additional emails encrypted to his current PGP key, but that Lamo never bothered to decrypt them.  Instead, Lamo claims he turned over all those Manning emails to the FBI without ever reading a single one of them.  Thus, the actual initial communications between Manning and Lamo — what preceded and led to their chat — are completely unknown.  Lamo refuses to release the emails or chats other than the small chat snippets published by Wired.

What Greenwald goes on to explain is presumably why he thinks it is significant:

Indeed, Lamo told me (though it doesn’t appear in the chat logs published by Wired) that he told Manning early on that he was a journalist and thus could offer him confidentiality for everything they discussed under California’s shield law.  Lamo also said he told Manning that he was an ordained minister and could treat Manning’s talk as a confession, which would then compel Lamo under the law to keep their discussions confidential (early on in their chats, Manning said:  “I can’t believe what I’m confessing to you”).  In sum, Lamo explicitly led Manning to believe he could trust him and that their discussions would be confidential — perhaps legally required to be kept confidential — only to then report everything Manning said to the Government.

Maybe that the kind of information that would help in a civilian defense of Manning; it seems unlikely to help in a court martial. But the result of the editing is a nearly one-sided conversation, which does not allow what Greenwald alleges about Lamo’s promises of the anonymity to come through at all. What does come through is Manning’s altruism and hopes for changing the world, “i want people to see the truth… regardless of who they are… because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public”. Neither factor makes what he did less illegal, and as an enlisted member of the armed forces, he is subject to different laws than civilians, as his defense attorney explains at least in relation to his detention:

PFC Bradley Manning, unlike his civilian counterpart, is afforded no civil remedy for illegal restraint under either the Federal Civil Rights Act or the Federal Tort Claims Act. Similarly, the protection from cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment and Article 55 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) does not generally apply prior to a court-martial.

But Manning’s motivations are still important in as much they were clearly not for profit, nor to harm the United States, although he was despairing of the US-backed Iraqi government, and the actions of the US government in Iraq.

The exchange between Manning and Lamo took place between 21 May, 2010, and 26 May, when Manning was arrested.

(02:35:46 PM) Manning: was watching 15 detainees taken by the Iraqi Federal Police… for printing “anti-Iraqi literature”… the iraqi federal police wouldn’t cooperate with US forces, so i was instructed to investigate the matter, find out who the “bad guys” were, and how significant this was for the FPs… it turned out, they had printed a scholarly critique against PM Maliki… i had an interpreter read it for me… and when i found out that it was a benign political critique titled “Where did the money go?” and following the corruption trail within the PM’s cabinet… i immediately took that information and *ran* to the officer to explain what was going on… he didn’t want to hear any of it… he told me to shut up and explain how we could assist the FPs in finding *MORE* detainees…
(02:36:27 PM) Manning: everything started slipping after that… i saw things differently

(02:37:37 PM) Manning: i had always questioned the things worked, and investigated to find the truth… but that was a point where i was a *part* of something… i was actively involved in something that i was completely against…

On a later date:

02:22:47 PM) Manning: i mean what if i were someone more malicious
(02:23:25 PM) Manning: i could’ve sold to russia or china, and made bank?
(02:23:36 PM) Lamo: why didn’t you?
(02:23:58 PM) Manning: because it’s public data
(02:24:15 PM) Lamo: i mean, the cables
(02:24:46 PM) Manning: it belongs in the public domain
(02:25:15 PM) Manning: information should be free
(02:25:39 PM) Manning: it belongs in the public domain
(02:26:18 PM) Manning: because another state would just take advantage of the information… try and get some edge
(02:26:55 PM) Manning: if its out in the open… it should be a public good
(02:27:04 PM) Manning: *do the
(02:27:23 PM) Manning: rather than some slimy intel collector

One of the reasons Spc Manning’s story and situation have received much less international attention than Assange’s is because he is being held at Quantico. He’s in solitary confinement, according to Salon and the New York Times, or being held in a cell with others, according to the Guardian, but either way can’t be reached for comment, photographed, lauded or attacked.

Wikileaks and Assange in his role as its leader, are in many ways new and do not fit into familiar categories of journalism. Prosecution of Assange or his organization is likely to break new legal ground, even if old laws, such as the Espionage Act, are used. But Spc Manning is “the source”; he is charged with well-defined crimes, which I suspect have been successfully prosecuted in the past (feel free to post), and for which he can be imprisoned up to 52 years.

This configuration misses a key point though, in that the actions Manning is accused of resulted in the dissemination of a vastly greater quantity of information than leak laws were created to punish. What this means is that the type of act Manning is accused of is familiar, but the specific act, if it includes any one of the data dumps published by Wikileaks, is unprecedented in scale. This quantitative difference becomes qualitative.

At very least, it seems unlikely that the military wouldn’t take this opportunity to revise the punishments associated with “transferring classified data” and “communicating, transmitting and delivering national defense information to an unauthorized source” when those actions can occur several orders of magnitude up from what they have been in the past, although it should not be possible for this to be retroactively applied to Manning. Presumably  the military will also take the opportunity to redesign its information systems network, since the SIPRNet and  JWICS components of that system are what Manning is alleged to have accessed. What they should do is reconceptualize how information is defined, in order to then rethink how to link and store it, since the system which allowed such such a massive quantity of significant information to change “locations” (siprnet to the internet) and status (from secret to public) seems pretty clearly to not to understand digital data.

That’s all for now on sources.

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Dossiers

A Wikileaks Crib Sheet, Part 1

I think what is happening with Wikileaks is an event, maybe the first one since 9/11. The organization has been around for about four years, this is far from its first significant release, and further, something that could be called a hacktivist subculture has been in existence for probably twenty years already; but if events are ruptures, they are ruptures of what was already existing anyway. One way or another things snowballed for Wikileaks so I am going to write a couple of posts that offer my potted analysis of how: a Wikileaks crib sheet. I needed a way to organize the pieces for myself, so, if you’ve lost track of all the threads, or don’t have time to read them exhaustively (I didn’t really either, but now it’s done), this is for you. A lot of interesting things have been written about Wikileaks, some of which I’m going to summarize. Rather less interesting and generally less accurate things have been written about the charges brought against Wikileaks’ frontman Julian Assange, international warrants and policing, and since I know relatively more about those things, I want to do an analysis of that as well.

A brief summary of what has happened might seem unnecessary except that I just watched a video in which Lula (the president of Brazil) seemed to be under the impression that the charges against Assange had to do with making public the diplomatic cables rather than sexual misconduct.

There’s a difference between not knowing what the charges are for so assuming that Assange is being held because his organization released secret cables, and knowing that the allegations against him concern sexual misconduct but believing those to be trumped up. I think that there are probably a very large number of people around the world who haven’t paid enough attention to think anything more than the first (and it is what they expect from the US anyway), and so their position doesn’t have anything to do with how seriously they take rape charges. As a point of fact though, it is important to note that it is unclear what a person associated with Wikileaks could be charged with in relation to the release of secret information, and Assange is actually being detained on four allegations of sexual misconduct and a European Arrest Warrant issued in order to question him about those charges. But this is getting ahead of myself.

In 2010, Wikileaks describes itself as a non-profit media organization. I actually like the term “media insurgency” (from this June New Yorker piece, because “rising in active revolt” against the status quo of  excessive secrecy and repression of information in both governments and the mainstream media seems apt. I also like the term because it has resonance with the “talibanization” of information in a “flat world” or as Geert Lovink and Patrice Riemens more eloquently put it in their Twelve theses on WikiLeaks “Despite being a puny non-state and non-corporate actor, in its fight against the US government WikiLeaks does not believe it is punching above its weight – and is starting to behave accordingly. One might call this the ‘Talibanization’ stage of the postmodern ‘Flat World’ theory, where scales, times and places are declared largely irrelevant”. What Wikileaks is legally defined as is much more important than what I happen to like though, since its status as a media organization (or not) will determine what protections it has and what charges can be brought against it. This exchange at a press briefing by Department of State Assistant Secretary Philip J. Crowley on 2 December 2010 was meant to lay the ground for the US government position that Wikileaks shouldn’t get first amendment protections:

QUESTION: Some of the governments that have been mentioned in these cables are heavily censoring press in terms of releasing some of this information. How do you feel about that? (Laughter.)
MR. CROWLEY: The official position of the United States Government and the State Department has not changed. We value a vibrant, active, aggressive media. It is important to the development of civil society in this country and around the world. Our views have not changed, even if occasionally there are activities which we think are unhelpful and potentially harmful.
QUESTION: Do you know if the State Department regards WikiLeaks as a media organization?
MR. CROWLEY: No. We do not.
QUESTION: And why not?
MR. CROWLEY: WikiLeaks is not a media organization. That is our view.

Wikileaks traces the principles on which its work is based (on its site, which I can’t reliably link to because it keeps getting shut down), “freedom of speech and media publishing, the improvement of our common historical record and the support of the rights of all people to create new history” not of course to the US constitution and its amendments, but to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in particular, Article 19.

I think that Wikileaks problematizes both our conceptions of media and information, but more about that later. Since officially launched in 2006 (according to Wikipedia) or 2007 (according to its site), the organization has posted a staggering number of leaked documents. Until recently, everyone’s favorite leak, for which it won the 2009 Amnesty International human rights reporting award (New Media) was the 2008 publication of “Kenya: The Cry of Blood – Extrajudicial Killings and Disappearances”, a report by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights about police killings in Kenya. According to the Wikileaks website, the leak “swung the vote by 10%. This led to changes in the constitution and the establishment of a more open government”. Since the beginning of 2010, Wikileaks has made four major releases, possibly all from the same leak, of information from various branches of the US government: on 5 April 2010 a video of US soldiers in an Apache helicopter shooting people in an Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad; on 25 July 2010 the “Afghanistan War logs” and on 22 October 2010 the “Iraq War Logs”, both compilations of documents detailing the war and occupation of those countries by the United States military; and beginning on 28 November 2010, what will eventually be a quarter million diplomatic cables from US Embassies around the world.

Below are some pieces I’ve found useful. Next post, I’ll write about the charges against Julian Assange, the role of Interpol, European Arrest Warrants, and extradition, among other things.

Best pieces on Wikileaks
Twelve theses on WikiLeaks
Wikileaks, Now

Best pieces on Assange
Julian Assange and the Computer Conspiracy; “To destroy this invisible government”
What is Julian Assange Up To?

In Julian Assange’s own words
Interview on the Colbert Report
His blog on the wayback machine
Opinion piece posted 8 December 2010 in an Australian paper, before turning himself in the UK Don’t shoot messenger for revealing uncomfortable truths

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Blotter

“The crisis in Rio and the media pastiche”

Brazilian anthropologist Luiz Eduardo Soares, who served as the Coordinator of Public Safety for Rio de Janeiro and the Brazilian Secretary of Public Security, among other posts, and has held several academic positions, at private and public universities in Rio, São Paulo and in the U.S., has written an excellent piece, The crisis in Rio and the media pastiche, on the violence in the city of Rio that has made front page news around the world. I met Soares in the spring of 2005 when he agreed to come to Berkeley for a conference I co-organized on violence and the Americas.

The last month and a half in Rio have been particularly bloody, as both the traffickers and government have made shows of force. The most recent events (roughly following this summary in the newspaper the Jornal do Brasil) began on the evening of Sunday, November 21st, when six men armed with machine guns set three vehicles on fire on a major highway called the Linha Vermelha, and while escaping attacked the car of an air force commander. On Tuesday, all of Rio’s active police, along with officers from federal highway patrol were put to the streets to deal with further attacks. Throughout the rest of the week, in which 181 vehicles were burned, the Navy, Army and Federal Police joined forces with Rio’s police in attempting to control the situation, which, it should be noted, was not spread throughout the city but concentrated in specific neighborhoods.

Last Thursday, 200 officers belonging to an elite police force known as Bope (Batalhão de Operações Especiais) entered a favela called Vila Cruzeiro, which is part of bairro da Penha (where for a brief period of time I taught English). Some of the drug traffickers there escaped to another favela, Morro do Alemão. On Sunday morning, a week after this particular episode began (although it is misleading to speak of such events as isolated, even as a shorthand), the forces took control of the morro and the whole Complexo do Alemão, more or less without resistance from the traffickers, according to reports. All of this received dramatic coverage by the Brazilian press. Since at least some of the major traffickers are now making their way through the forested areas of the city to Rocinha, another major favela, the police campaign and accompanying violence will presumably continue.

At least 39 people died in this time period. The initial violence by the gangs was widely reported to be a response to the installation of new community policing units called UPPs in but some sources have said, to the contrary, that rather it was due to a standstill between police and bandits who were in negotiations to update their agreed upon index of bribes.

UPP stands for Unidade de Polícia Pacificadora, in English Pacifying Police Unit, a program that at least in theory aims to impede the “parallel power” of the drug traffickers by actually providing state services in long neglected areas while also addressing crime. (Here’s a NYTimes article; Ben could undoubtedly say a lot more though) They are the current incarnation of a program Soares tried to implement when he was the Public Safety Coordinator in 1999.

Most of the international media, such as the New York Times, has been positively euphoric over the turn of events: “In a quick and decisive military sweep, Brazilian security forces seized control of this city’s most notorious slum on Sunday, claiming victory in a weeklong battle against drug gangs that has claimed dozens of lives”; this echoes the reporting in the mainstream Brazilian media.

The traffic the TV shows. The traffic the TV does NOT show

Soares, who was in much demand by the media for comments on the events, instead wrote a piece for his blog. Some of the points he made are these:

The media always repeats the same cycle of rabid attention to crises, paired with a complete lack of investment in reflection and consistent, solid information in the off period. They repeat the same wrong questions (a) what can be done right now to contain the violence? (b) what can the police do to definitively conquer the drug trade? (c) Why doesn’t the government call in the army? (d) will Rio’s image be sullied internationally? (e) Will we succeed in having a great World Cup and Olympics?

de André Dahmer http://www.malvados.com.br Rough translation: 1) guy: I wrote a piece on Facebook defending the death of the trafficker. 2) guy: Or you think a bandit would grant quarter to someone? He’d kill him right away. 3) guy: I am a good citizen, you have to put bullets in them. Dog: one more good citizen who thinks like a bandit

He then proceeds to respond to these questions. There is nothing, he says, that can be done immediately to resolve the situation of insecurity. “If we want to in fact solve a serious problem, it is not possible to continue to treat the patient only when he is in ICU, stricken with a deadly illness, in the acute stage…Therefore the first step to avoid repeating the situation is to change the question… : what can be done to improve public security, in Rio and in Brazil, to avoid the everyday violence, as well as its intensification, expressed in successive crises?” Those who say that the situation requires immediate response take exactly the position that has impeded consistent advances in public security; long term solutions are necessary. “The best response to the emergency is to begin to move in the direction of rebuilding the conditions that generated the emergency situation.”

The police, Soares writes next, must stop joining the traffickers: they must stop selling them arms, and they must not form militias that take criminal profits. In other words, “the polarity referred to in the question (police versus traffickers) hides the real problem: there is is no polarity.” What must happen is in fact a separation of the bandit from the police, a differentiation between crime and police. There are, he emphasizes, honest police whom he considers the first victims of their institution’s degradation, because the “rotten band of police” who act in militias, embarrass, humiliate and threaten them.

Soares makes several other useful comments, pointing out, for example, that trafficking as it is currently conducted, by gangs that are expensive to arm and have high mortality, is going to change to a delivery model; I’ll leave it at this for now though.

He ends with an incensed description of the media coverage. The nightly news in Brazil, watched by nearly everyone, is called the Journal Nacional. Soares writes that the news on “Thursday, 25 November, defined the chaos in Rio de Janeiro, splattering scenes of war and death, panic and desperation, as a day of historic victory: the day the police occupied Vila Cruzeiro. Either I suffered a sudden mental blackout and became an obdurate and incorrigible idiot, or the editors of the nightly news felt themselves authorized to treat millions of viewers as obdurate and incorrigible idiots.”

Here’s another useful analysis of the media and what has been happening in Rio (in Portuguese)

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Blotter

Follow up: women police chiefs in Mexico

On Monday Hermila García Quiñones, who on October 9th 2010 became the first female police chief of the city of Meoqui in Mexico, was shot and killed after leaving her home, which she shared with her parents, whom she supported, on her way to work. García Quiñones was one of four women who have recently taken on leadership roles in police departments in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, in the face of drug-related violence the government has been unable to control.

I wrote in October about the 20-year-old criminology student, Marisol Valles Garcia, who became chief of police in Praxedis G. Guerrero. Her youth and determination to prevent violence with “principles and values” rather than guns, were headline news for a brief moment, and quickly inspired two more women to become heads of security of their towns, also in the Juárez Valley – Verónica Ríos Ontiveros, of El Vergel and Olga Herrera Castillo, of Villa Luz. Both are small hamlets in Samalayuca, south of Juárez City, and since there are only a few officers and one patrol car,  they will mostly take crime reports.

Although Hermila García Quiñones started before the other women, and led a much larger force of 90 officers, she didn’t receive quite as much publicity. She was unmarried and did not have children, and although criticized for her lack of experience in police work, she was at least an attorney and had worked in city government before. Her situation was similar to that of Silvia Molina, who in 2008 was the top administrative official of the police department in Ciudad Juarez and was also killed.

The media’s interest is greater for more exotic cases, the very young student with an infant, the two housewives she inspired. They would all seem to be part of the same trend, of women taking on security posts, and the death of García Quiñones, and Molina before her, make it doubtful that female gender provides any protection from the violence of the cartels. Maybe the other women’s inexperience and motherhood will make a difference, and maybe this is what they are hoping.  So, this is just an update; if anyone has any thoughts, please do share

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