Thursday, April 13, 2023

How one gamer posting on Discord threw the security state into a panic

The national security leaker was very, very online.

This photo illustration created on April 13, 2023, shows the suspect, national guardsman Jack Teixeira, reflected in an image of the Pentagon in Washington, DC. Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

Jonathan Guyer covers foreign policy, national security, and global affairs for Vox. From 2019 to 2021, he worked at the American Prospect, where as managing editor he reported on Biden’s and Trump's foreign policy teams.

It’s extremely funny that hundreds of sensitive US military documents appeared on Discord, the decentralized social media platform. Or at least that’s how a very online person, who traffics in memes and crass one-liners, might put it. But it is darkly funny that a disgruntled service member has thrown the US security state into a panic.

And it’s ironic that no one in intelligence agencies seems to have seen it coming.

New reports from the Washington Post and the New York Times reveal in great detail the young man who allegedly posted the sensitive intelligence files: a 21-year-old Air National Guard member named Jack Teixeira.

On Thursday, the FBI arrested him.

Teixeira reportedly posted the documents in forums dedicated to gaming, where a group of 24 people, mostly male and young, also shared offensive memes, information about guns, and more — and in turn has shown that the DOD and intelligence agencies are not prepared for our current digital age.

Screengrab via Linkedin NSA/Linkedin
The US national security institutions have put a major emphasis on integrating advanced technologies, like artificial intelligence, into their arsenals. They’ve also invested heavily in recruiting young and mid-career tech talent from unlikely spaces. In practice, that means that the CIA regularly hosts events at tech forums like South by Southwest, and the National Security Agency posts memes about World Introvert Day (“NSA is known as the world’s largest employer of introverts for a reason!”).

But at their core, none of these institutions has grappled with the shape of internet culture and how that affects the people among the military’s ranks.

It’s not about TikTok. It’s about edgelords.

So how did the US national security establishment miss this?

After the perpetrator of a racist mass shooting in Buffalo in May 2022 killed 10 people, we learned of his regular posting on a Discord channel. The platform’s track record as a space for risky actors and its extreme-right presence is now well-documented. This isn’t to say that the Pentagon ought to be surveilling Discord, of course, or that Discord ought to be shut down, but rather that there is little surprising about this chain of events.

Yet to some establishment voices, this whole latest leaks scandal is “incredibly weird.” At least, that’s what one prominent national security academic, Amy Zegart, wrote in the Atlantic. “A massive leak of highly classified information revealed on a small online gamer channel by an anonymous user with no clear policy goals or telltale signs of the usual motives is an utter mystery,” explained Zegart, who has served on many government advisory boards. She argued that the historically common reasons for a leak are a hack, a mole, or an insider going rogue. Teixeira appears to be closest to the last one. She goes on to say that the two reasons an insider would go rogue are “ideology and ego,” but dismisses those motives given the lack of a media spectacle around the leaks.

Zegart wrote the piece before Teixeira’s identity was reported. But the more we learn about his posting, in a forum where other young users saw him as “the undisputed leader,” a uniquely social media picture of ego emerges.

To be sure, the culture of edgelords posting memes and gaming forums escalating into a national security threat may seem new to intelligence leaders, but in 2023 the prospect of an online dude wreaking havoc should probably already be on their radar.

If you’re very online, you start to see a pattern. “Discord has become a haven for Gen Z-ers, who use it to hang out with their friends online, but older generations who still rely on Twitter and Facebook may be wholly unaware of it,” Kyle Chayka, an internet culture columnist for the New Yorker, has explained.

Teixeira’s publishing of intelligence papers belongs to a growing recent history of online posters who have shocked the world.

He apparently does not represent the violent, insurgent, or terrorist inclinations of those who planned the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot in digital forums or the Norwegian attacker Anders Breivik, who was found guilty of conducting mass murder in 2012. Yet his methods of oversharing and showing off are of a piece with the ecosystem of the internet.

The edgelord culture privileges those who post stuff that provokes. Wasn’t it only a matter of time before that shocking content would be state secrets?

Researchers have noted that law enforcement hasn’t yet grasped the challenges of extremism in gaming forums, like the Minecraft channel where classified documents began appearing. It’s important to acknowledge the prevalence of grotesque hate speech there, and to contextualize them as spaces that serve a number of purposes and are not exclusive to extremists. “They are also places of belonging and should be treated as such; it is of crucial importance to acknowledge gaming not only as not inherently linked to negative outcomes but as a force for good in people’s lives,” the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism wrote in a recent report.

What struck me in particular about the Washington Post’s deep dive into the Discord channel where Teixeira posted classified documents was the sense of family that it represented, “a group of far-flung acquaintances searching for companionship amid the isolation of the pandemic,” though xenophobic memes, racist jokes, and firearm-loving banter appears to have been central to this community.

Much still needs to be confirmed about Teixeira’s alleged actions and motivations. But it’s not hard to imagine that these twin ego-driven motivations — a “little bit of showing off to friends,” but also building a connection and “wanting to keep us informed,” as one of his Discord friends told the Washington Post — could push someone to breach US classification.

Taken together, what these episodes reveal is that the US national security establishment has been so focused on vilifying TikTok but has failed to understand internet culture.

“I don’t use TikTok and I would not advise anybody to do so because of these concerns,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said recently. By knocking TikTok, US leaders are failing to understand how and why Americans post on platforms like TikTok.

The Pentagon is deploying the methods of internet culture as a recruiting tool and innovation as a necessity, but it has apparently not fully grasped the central, simple truth of how the internet has decentralized culture, enabling people to share anonymously and gleefully.

And that’s a national security threat.
Posted by at No comments:
Ex-C.I.A. Psychologist Re-enacts Interrogation Techniques for Guantánamo Court

Lawyers for a Saudi prisoner had the psychologist show some of his practices in an effort to exclude evidence as derived from torture.
Lawyers for Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri have portrayed him as deeply damaged by physical, psychological and sexual abuse in his nearly four years of C.I.A. detention.
Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

By Carol Rosenberg
April 13, 2023

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — In court this week, a psychologist who waterboarded prisoners for the Central Intelligence Agency rolled up a towel, wrapped it around the neck of a criminal defense lawyer, and slowly pulled the lawyer toward him and up on her toes — a dramatic re-enactment of practices used on a Saudi detainee in the war on terrorism.

There was no waterboarding or commanding the defense lawyer to crawl into a cramped confinement box. But the demonstration on Wednesday by the psychologist, John Bruce Jessen, was meant to replicate some of the approved “enhanced interrogation techniques” that C.I.A. agents used on the Saudi prisoner, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, at a secret interrogation site in Thailand in late 2002.

Defense lawyers used the demonstration in an effort to persuade a military judge to exclude certain evidence from Mr. Nashiri’s trial as the fruit of torture. The judge, Col. Lanny J. Acosta Jr., allowed the presentation to show practices that C.I.A. officials had destroyed video evidence of two decades ago.

Mr. Nashiri is accused of plotting Al Qaeda’s suicide bombing of the U.S. Navy destroyer Cole off the coast of Yemen on Oct. 12, 2000. Seventeen American sailors died.

In years of pretrial hearings, mostly over the lawfulness of evidence for Mr. Nashiri’s eventual death-penalty trial, his lawyers have portrayed him as deeply damaged by physical, psychological and sexual abuse in his nearly four years of C.I.A. detention.

More on U.S. Armed ForcesUneasy Coexistence: A new round of U.S. military expansion in Guam comes just as new efforts are being made by the Chamorro people, the island’s first inhabitants, to rediscover their culture and assert their identity.
Stripping Confederate Ties: In the first of nine scheduled redesignations aimed at purging the symbols of the Confederacy from the military, Fort Pickett in Virginia became Fort Barfoot in honor of Col. Van Barfoot, a Medal of Honor recipient.
Feeding the War Machine: The Pentagon’s deliveries of weapons to help Ukraine hold off Russia have exposed a worrisome lack of production capacity in the United States that has its roots in the aftermath of the Cold War.

His lawyers argue that by the time federal agents questioned Mr. Nashiri at Guantánamo in 2007, he was so thoroughly conditioned that he told his interrogators what they wanted to hear. It was four years into his captivity; he had never been allowed to consult a lawyer. The judge is deciding whether those 2007 interrogations are admissible at trial, as the war court wrestles with the legacy of torture after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Dr. Jessen testified that the practices — including waterboarding, nudity and isolation — were not meant to rob a prisoner of his will but to gain his cooperation and disclose Al Qaeda’s secrets to the C.I.A.

“It’s all about establishing rapport and finding that path ahead,” he said.

Dr. Jessen, who spent 20 years in the U.S. Air Force and specialized in survival training, called the interrogations “well monitored” but “very intense.” C.I.A. headquarters would relay to him messages such as: “Get a spine. Tell us when the next attacks would be.”

Prosecutors have already agreed that nothing Mr. Nashiri said at the so-called black sites can be used at trial because evidence derived from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment is unlawful. But they defend as untainted his 2007 law enforcement interviews, which took place at Guantánamo at a former C.I.A. prison where Mr. Nashiri was held by the agency in 2003 and 2004.

To bolster that claim, prosecutors plan to call a forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Michael Welner, to testify next week that an examination of Guantánamo records and court observations indicates that the detainee has no signs of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Dr. Jessen said he imposed safeguards on the techniques he and his waterboarding partner, James E. Mitchell, employed, including having other psychologists monitor the interrogations to essentially make sure they were doing no harm.

Mr. Nashiri was waterboarded multiple times before interrogators abandoned the technique on him. The detainee, who is 5-foot-5, kept slipping from his straps — the “safety equipment” on the board that was built for the first person the interrogators had waterboarded, Abu Zubaydah, who was 5-foot-10.

But Dr. Jessen also acknowledged that “unfortunate things” happened to the prisoner when he was not observing the interrogations. Dr. Jessen later learned, he said, that Mr. Nashiri was held with arms strung up over his head, chained to a wall and sodomized.

An internal investigation also showed that a C.I.A. interrogator simulated Russian roulette. A drill was revved next to Mr. Nashiri’s hooded head. Dr. Mitchell has testified that guards bent him over backward, a broomstick behind his knees, leaving Mr. Nashiri howling in pain.

Dr. Jessen also testified that the C.I.A. ran a rival black site program that he learned about later.

Dr. Jessen was testifying to the court in Guantánamo on a video link from a secret courtroom annex in Virginia, near the Pentagon. The cinematography was sharp, and the audio picked up his surprise and reluctance at illustrating certain interrogation techniques when a defense lawyer, Annie Morgan, asked him to stage the demonstration on her.

“I’ll wreck your suit,” Dr. Jessen protested, while Colonel Acosta appeared startled. “You want him to slap you?” he said.

“Don’t worry, judge, I’m not going to have him waterboard me,” said Ms. Morgan, a former Air Force lawyer.

Dr. Jessen protested that he had no towel. If a prisoner was only in a diaper or nude, he explained, interrogators used a towel. One was produced. Ms. Morgan stood at attention and then the psychologist illustrated a towel-assisted “attention grasp.” He explained that the purpose was “to dislocate your expectation” — to condition a prisoner to understand that “this is real, this person wants me to pay attention.”

“I feel like I’m beating up my daughter,” Dr. Jessen remarked as the demonstration proceeded.



Carol Rosenberg has been covering the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, including detention operations and military commissions, since the first prisoners were brought there from Afghanistan in January 2002. She worked as a metro, national and foreign correspondent with a focus on coverage of conflict in the Middle East for The Miami Herald from 1990 to 2019. @carolrosenberg • Facebook


Posted by at No comments:
In football, FIFA has always put profit over people


Liam Kennedy
13 Apr, 2023

The decision to expand the World Cup to make it more international and inclusive doesn't address the deep inequalities in football. It simply means more money in the pockets of FIFA and its corporate partners, writes Liam Kennedy



There’s always football on, and there is even more coming. In March, FIFA confirmed their plans to extend the next men’s World Cup to 48 teams – 16 more teams, 40 more games and billions in extra revenue to further inflate FIFA’s “exceptionally robust” finances.

Despite the controversy, the Qatar World Cup was hailed “the best ever”, delivering arguably the greatest final of all time, the most goals in the tournament ever and a fairytale ending for Lionel Messi. FIFA made a record $7.5 billion in revenue. Expansion seems like a no-brainer.

Of course, the World Cup probably wasn’t a success for the roughly 6,000 migrant workers who have died in Qatar since 2010. Despite some attempts at reforms and the Qatari stance that “one death was too many”, the so-called legacy fund will not guarantee access to compensation for dead workers’ families.

It will instead focus on education and a new (but not yet agreed) memorandum of understanding with the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The memorandum will apparently uphold “human rights requirements” in the bidding process.

"Under the current rules of the game, international sporting events, irrespective of geography, are vehicles for private gain at the expense of wider social benefit"

Given Saudi Arabia’s impending bid for the 2030 World Cup, hopefully it will inhibit the state-sanctioned murder of dispossessed tribespeople and secure commitments to not murder any more dissident journalists.

Yet Western critics of Qatar and other Gulf countries’ atrocious record on human rights have rightly been accused of hypocrisy. The UK has actively supported repressive regimes in the Gulf, prioritising access to fossil fuels and financial flows into the City of London more than local demands for democracy.

Nor is the UK itself a safe haven for migrants and asylum seekers, who are either illegally deported to Rwanda (itself an authoritarian regime), end up missing or, if they’re lucky, get exploited by unregulated employers.

This isn’t to play some kind of repression bingo or create a hierarchy of exploitation but to highlight that under the current rules of the game, international sporting events, irrespective of geography, are vehicles for private gain at the expense of wider social benefit.


FIFA's history

These debates aren’t new. Long before Gianni Infantino was schmoozing Mohammad bin Salman and Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Qatari stadiums, former FIFA President João Havelenge stood next to military dictator Jorge Rafael Videla as Argentina lifted the 1978 World Cup in Buenos Aires.

Videla had seized power in a 1976 coup and used the World Cup to obscure the atrocities being committed by his regime. Around 30,000 people disappeared throughout his seven-year military junta, with the tournament’s final being played just a few blocks away from a brutal military prison.

As one of the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo group (a collective who protested the disappearance of their children) put it, “while the goals are shouted, the screams of the tortured and murdered are muffled.”

When Sepp Blatter took over FIFA from Havelenge in 1998, a now widely reported era of institutionalised corruption began. Blatter remains banned from football and has never been found guilty of a crime but the South Africa World Cup in 2010, the Russia World Cup in 2018 and the Qatar World Cup in 2022 were bombarded with accusations of bribery and state-sanctioned espionage under his watch.

RELATED
Voices
Emad Moussa

This corruption was often downplayed by FIFA’s argument that it was just bringing football to new countries and regions, a ruse that obfuscated what FIFA claimed to be doing – remedying global inequalities – with what it was really doing – expanding into new markets to accumulate private wealth.

Take South Africa, the first World Cup to ever be held in Africa. There has been no meaningful legacy – “all we have are memories” mused one South African football expert – and the World Cup unashamedly prioritised corporate interests over local development.

Local vendors were banned from selling products and food around stadia and FIFA’s corporate partners were exclusively handed development contracts at the expense of local workers. Instead of developing pre-existing facilities, South Africa constructed entirely new stadia at significant public cost. The former option was rejected because it meant showcasing South Africa’s poverty.

In the words of one FIFA report, “a billion television viewers don’t want to see shacks and poverty on this scale.” As esteemed football journalist Andrew Jennings concluded, “[FIFA] officials and the government have sold South Africa down the river: ‘Bye Africa, bye suckers!’”



The illusion of representation

Unsurprisingly, this new wave of World Cup expansion is being touted as another great victory for internationalism. Sky Sports News chief reporter Kaveh Solhekol argues that “if you take off your blinkers” and “look at football not just from a western European perspective”, the new World Cup format is significantly more inclusive.

Yet representation without addressing the underlying political economy of world football is meaningless. This is not to demean the spectacle and importance that, say, Zambia or Syria or India’s first World Cup appearance would have for these nations – getting routed by Kylian Mbappé in the group stage is probably better than not being there at all, it’s not for me to say.

But let’s not pretend that a bigger tournament will mean anything other than bigger profit margins for FIFA and their corporate partners. The measly amounts paid to participants will do nothing to elevate grassroots football or materially change lives in new participant countries.

"But let’s not pretend that a bigger tournament will mean anything other than bigger profit margins for FIFA and their corporate partners. The measly amounts paid to participants will do nothing to elevate grassroots football or materially change lives in new participant countries"

It’s perhaps fitting that the first 48 team World Cup will be predominantly held in the United States. There will be very little uproar about the atrocious labour conditions in the land of the free. The fact that the US routinely ignores ILO conventions, systematically violates workers’ rights and now apparently encourages child labour should render any FIFA-ILO memorandum of understanding more of a farce than it already is.

As the FIFA machine rumbles on, an alternative vision for the future of football is sorely needed, where desperate governments (the UK included) don’t pander to the parochial whim of wealthy nations and corporations.

In the words of Marcelo Bielsa, the only irreplaceable thing in football is the fans. It is time that the game is run for them and by them.

Liam Kennedy is a researcher at the Communication Workers Union (CWU) and an editor at Red Pepper magazine.

Follow him on Twitter: @liamkennedy_

Have questions or comments? Email us at: editorial-english@newarab.com

Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.
Posted by at No comments:
UN nuclear chief says Ukraine plant 'living on borrowed time'

The New Arab Staff & Agencies
13 April, 2023

UN nuclear chief Rafael Grossi warned that 'we are living on borrowed time' following two recent landmine explosions near Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia plant.



UN nuclear chief Rafael Grossi warned on Thursday that "we are living on borrowed time" following two recent landmine explosions near Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia plant.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has repeatedly expressed fears over the safety of the plant, which is Europe's largest atomic power station.

Russian forces took control of the six-reactor plant in embattled southern Ukraine in March last year.

"We are living on borrowed time when it comes to nuclear safety and security at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant," Grossi said in a statement.

"Unless we take action to protect the plant, our luck will sooner or later run out, with potentially severe consequences for human health and the environment," he added.

Two landmine explosions occurred outside the plant's perimeter fence -- the first on 8 April, and another four days later, according to the statement.

It was not immediately clear what caused the blasts, it said.

Grossi met senior Russian officials in Kalingrad last week and prior to this with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Zaporizhzhia to discuss a safety plan.

He also warned on Thursday that the plant continued to depend on a single still-functioning power line, posing "a major risk to nuclear safety and security".

A back-up power line damaged on March 1 has still not been repaired, the IAEA said.

It also said the staffing situation at the plant remained "complex and challenging", in part because of staff shortages.
Posted by at No comments:

 Vatican City

Religion Inspired The Nation-State, But Politics Made The Difference – Analysis

  

By 

Think that the modern nation-state originated with the emergence of the 17th-century beginnings of the era of science and reason? Think agai

In a recently published book, political scientist Anna Gryzmala-Busse traces the origins of the modern state to medieval Europe when religion and the church played a powerful role rather than the 16th-century beginnings of the modern era.

Ms. Gryzmala-Busse’s analysis is not simply academic and historical.

It puts in a different light notions of Christian religiosity and heritage in Central and Eastern Europe that have strained relations in the European Union between Western European states and former Communist countries like Hungary as well as secular Europe’s struggle to come to grips with the religiosity of their Muslim minorities, nowhere more so than in France.

Although Ms. Gryzmala-Busse’s focus is on Christianity and Europe, her analysis helps explain why the Sunni Muslim world took a different path and why the concept of a caliphate remains a hot-button issue in Islam.

Ms. Gryzmala-Busse asserted that secular European rulers needed to create institutions to collect taxes and have an institutional base for fighting wars and negotiating peace on a fragmented continent.

To do so, monarchs adopted administrative policies and approaches developed by a wealthy church that was Europe’s single largest landowner. It levied taxes on its land holdings. In addition, the church boasted a highly educated elite, commanded authority, and held out the prospect of salvation.

As a result, “the church was an essential source of legal, administrative, and conciliar innovations… The church showed rulers how to collect taxes more efficiently, request and answer a flood of petitions, keep records and accounts, interpret the law, and hold counsels that could provide valuable consent,” Ms. Gryzmala-Busse wrote.

“Concepts such as representation, binding consent, and even majority rules relied on ecclesiastical precedents,” she said.

In short, “the medieval church was so influential because it was armed with superior organizational reach, human capital, and spiritual authority,” Ms. Gryzmala-Busse concluded.

Implicitly, Ms. Gryzmala-Busse acknowledged that the Muslim world travelled down a different path when she noted that there were no governance models in Asia and the Middle East that medieval European leaders could emulate.

Ms. Gryzmala-Busse was likely referring to Islam scholar Ahmed Kuru’s ground-breaking analysis of what he called the state-ulema alliance.

That alliance precluded an arrangement similar to that between the church and rulers as portrayed by political scientist Jonathan Laurence. This arrangement involved rulers successfully deploying what they had learnt from clerics to curtail and sideline the church.

In his award-winning book, Mr. Laurence noted that ultimately the church could no longer prevail and accepted temporal jurisdiction over what became the tiny Vatican state while reaching a modus vivendi with European governments that ensured its continued existence and enabled it to thrive.

“European nations strong-armed, expropriated, violated, and humiliated the Catholic hierarchy,” forcing it to “relinquish its 1,000-year claim to political rule and focus instead on advocacy, global spiritual influence, and its evangelizing mission,” Mr. Laurence wrote.


The political scientist argued further that European efforts to undermine the Ottoman caliphate that was abolished in 1924 in the wake of the emergence of a modern Turkish state fueled theological differences in the Sunni Muslim world.

While that may have been a contributing factor, Mr. Kuru’s analysis suggested that the evolution of relations between the state and religious scholars in the Sunni Muslim world would have prevented it from adopting the European model irrespective of external attitudes towards the caliphate. So did the absence in Islam of a central authority like the pope.

Mr. Kuru traced the modern-day state template in many Muslim-majority countries to the 11th century. This is when Islamic scholars who until then had, by and large, refused to surrender their independence to the state were co-opted by Muslim rulers.

The transition coincided with the rise of the military state legitimized by religious scholars who had little choice but to join its employ. They helped the state develop Sunni Muslim orthodoxy based on text rather than reason- or tradition-based interpretations of Islam.

It is an orthodoxy that prevails until today even though various states such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have adopted far-reaching social change as part of economic reform efforts and as a regime survival strategy.

The orthodoxy is reflected in reticence with few exceptions to reform outdated religious legal tenets, particularly when it comes to notions of the state.

In a bold move in February, Nahdlatul Ulama, the world’s largest, Indonesia-based Muslim civil society movement argued that Islamic jurisprudence needs to be updated to introduce the notion of the nation-state and a United Nations that groups these states

The movement contendedc that this would involve abolishing the notion of the caliphate as a legal concept.

“It is neither feasible nor desirable to re-establish a universal caliphate that would unite Muslims throughout the world in opposition to non-Muslims…. Attempts to do so will inevitably be disastrous and contrary to the purposes of Sharia (Islamic law): i.e., the protection of religion, human life, sound reasoning, family, and property,” the group said in a declaration on its centennial according to the Hijra calendar.

Nahdlatul Ulama’s reforms of Islamic jurisprudence do not bind others in a Muslim world where religious authority is decentralised.

However, they lay down a marker that other Muslim legal authorities will ultimately be unable to ignore in their bid to garner recognition as proponents of a genuinely moderate Islam.

As a result, politics rather than morality or spirituality will determine Nahdlatul Ulama’s impact beyond Indonesia, the world’s most populous and largest Muslim-majority democracy.

The importance of politics is reinforced by the implicit agreement between scholars Gryzmala-Busse , Laurence and Kuru that the state has successfully subjugated religious power in Europe as well as much of the Sunni Muslim world.

However, the difference is that in Europe the church withdrew from politics and retreated to the spiritual realm while in the Muslim world religious figures retain some clout with rulers wanting them to legitmise their authoritarian or autocratic rule.


James M. Dorsey
Dr. James M. Dorsey is an award-winning journalist and scholar, a Senior Fellow at the National University of Singapore's Middle East Institute and Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and blog.
Posted by at No comments:
What is “Humanitarian Journalism?”


Photo: Flooding in the UN Tomping site for displaced people in Juba. Credit: OCHA

Mark Leon Goldberg April 13, 2023

Several years ago, I received a request for an interview from an academic in the United Kingdom named Martin Scott who was doing journalism-related research. He’s a professor of Media and Global Development at the University of East Anglia and had some questions about how I go about my work. My interview was one of hundreds that helped inform the new book: Humanitarian Journalists: Covering Crises from a Boundary Zone by Martin Scott, and coauthors Mel Bunce, and Kate Wright — all of whom are academics.

As Martin Scott explains, he set out researching deficiencies in how mainstream outlets cover crises around the world. But in the process, he and his co-authors discovered that there are a small number of professional journalists who are charting a very different course. The book explicitly cites my work, as well as that of a few others journalists and outlets, who do what they identify as “humanitarian journalism.”

In this book, we show that there are a small but influential number of humanitarian journalists who defy many conventional journalistic norms. These humanitarian journalists work largely for specialist international news outlets such as Devex, HumAngle, India Blooms, Inter Press Service, Just Earth News, SciDev.Net, The New Humanitarian (formerly IRIN) and UN Dispatch.

In contrast to more conventional journalists, their professional practices are informed by hybrid combinations of journalistic and humanitarian principles. For example, their strong adherence to the humanitarian norm of ‘moral equivalence’ – the idea that all lives have equal worth – means that they continue to cover humanitarian crises even when these do not correspond with conventional news values…But reporting under-reported crises is not the only way humanitarian journalists’ professional practices differ from conventional journalism. We also show that the format of and sourcing practices within their coverage is distinct.

We also argue that humanitarian journalists help to challenge some of our longstanding assumptions about news coverage of humanitarian affairs. They demonstrate that the episodic, simplistic and selective nature of much news coverage of humanitarian crises is not inevitable. There is nothing intrinsically ‘un-newsworthy’ about humanitarian crises like those currently occurring in South Sudan, Somalia and Yemen.

It has always seemed intuitively important to me to cover stories that other outlets tend to ignore — and to do so in a way that offers my audience nuance and context often lacking in mainstream news. But in all these years, I never thought that I was helping to pioneer a new form of journalism.

Reading this book was really revelatory for me, personally. It explained back to me the kind of work I’ve been doing with this podcast for the last decade, and with UN Dispatch and my other writing for the ten years prior. To be sure, not all of my work neatly falls into the category of humanitarian journalism — there are now over 900(!) episodes of the podcast on a variety of topics. But I’m certainly proud that a substantial part of my body of work is contributing to an emerging field of journalism.

Going forward, I definitely intend on leaning into the monicker “humanitarian journalist” and truly hope it becomes widely adopted throughout media.

Please take time time to listen to my conversation with Martin Scott about the theory and practice of humanitarian journalism.

Mark Leon Goldberg
Mark Leon Goldberg is the executive editor of UN Dispatch
Posted by at No comments:

 

Posted by at No comments:
SCOTUS 
Thomas failed to disclose real estate deal with GOP donor who also paid for lavish trips: report

BY JARED GANS - 04/13/23 3:43 PM ET

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose a 2014 real estate deal he made with a wealthy Republican donor who also paid for lavish trips for him over the years, ProPublica reported on Thursday.

The outlet reported that a company belonging to Texas billionaire Harlan Crow bought a series of properties in a row on a residential street in Savannah, Ga., including a single-story home and two vacant lots. The company bought the properties from Thomas, his mother and his late brother’s family for $133,363, according to a state tax document and a deed dated Oct. 15, 2014, that the outlet obtained.

Thomas’s mother was living at the house, and contractors implemented renovations of a new carport, a fixed roof, a new fence and new gates soon after the sale was completed. The renovations cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Federal law requires certain officials, including Supreme Court justices, to disclose information about most real estate transactions worth more than $1,000, but Thomas never listed the deal on his annual disclosure documents.

Four legal experts told ProPublica that Thomas appears to have violated the law by not disclosing the deal.
 

The report comes after another that ProPublica released last week detailing multiple luxury trips that Thomas received over a period of years from Crow, who has donated millions of dollars to conservative causes. Thomas also did not disclose these trips on his annual financial disclosure forms.

Thomas defended himself following the earlier report by saying that he “was advised” that he did not need to disclose the trips because they came from the “personal hospitality” of a “close, personal” friend.

ProPublica reported that Thomas did not respond to detailed questions for its most recent story on the real estate deal.

The Hill has reached out to the Supreme Court for comment.

Crow told ProPublica in a statement that the company, Savannah Historic Developments, bought the home to help preserve it as part of a historic area of Savannah. He said he approached the Thomas family about his intention to maintain the “historic site” so future generations could learn about Thomas’s life.
 

“My intention is to one day create a public museum at the Thomas home dedicated to telling the story of our nation’s second black Supreme Court Justice, who was born in Pin Point, Georgia and later raised in Savannah,” Crow said.

He said the Thomas property and surrounding properties were purchased at market rate based on factors like the size, quality and livability of the dwellings. He said improvements were made to the house to “preserve its long-term viability and accessibility to the public.”

Crow said the company built one new house and made it available to a local police officer, and the other lots were later sold to a “vetted builder who was committed to improving the quality of the neighborhood and preserving its historical integrity.”

Experts in ethics law told ProPublica that Crow’s intentions do not take away from Thomas’s obligation to report the sale.
Posted by at No comments:
Canada: Over 30,000 Afghan refugees arrive with IOM’s support

13 April 2023

The arrival of a charter flight in Toronto on Wednesday marked the successful departure to Canada of more than 30,000 Afghan refugees with the assistance of the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

IOM  has worked closely with the Government of Canada and other partners to safely resettle Afghans in the country since August 2021.

“The safe and dignified resettlement of refugees globally has been a central part of IOM’s work for more than 70 years and we are proud to be part of Canada's efforts to provide a new home for tens of thousands of vulnerable Afghans,” said IOM Director General António Vitorino.

“We continue to work closely with the Government of Canada and other partners to ensure Afghans are provided the opportunity to restart their lives in safety.”

‘A signifcant achievement’

The latest flight included Afghans who supported Canada’s mission in Afghanistan, including family members of former interpreters and privately sponsored individuals. In the past, the programme has also resettled members of many marginalized groups such as disabled persons, women, and girls, and LGBTIQ+ people.

“Welcoming 30,000 Afghans, even though Afghanistan is one of the largest and most difficult resettlement efforts in Canada’s history, is a significant achievement,” said Sean Fraser, Canada’s Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship.

“This milestone is also a testament to the dedication of our partners, including the IOM, who continue to help vulnerable Afghans travel safely on their journey to Canada,” he added.

“I have met with newcomers and seeing how they are building their new lives in Canada makes us more determined than ever to help as many vulnerable Afghans as possible. We will continue to collaborate with our partners to do everything we can to bring Afghans in need of protection to safety, and to provide them with a new home and the support they need to thrive in Canada.”


A crucial collaboration

This achievement is the result of hard work and collaboration between IOM, the Government of Canada, NGOs, and other organizations operating in the region.

IOM plays a crucial role in the resettlement process, including coordinating resettlement flights, assisting with the application process, and providing pre-departure health assessments and pre-departure orientation sessions to prepare Afghans for their new lives in Canada. The UN agency also facilitates their travel to their new home communities around the country.

IOM collaborated with the Government of Canada to resettle Syrian and Iraqi refugees in the recent past, and it will continue to work with its global partners to support Canada’s pledge to welcome at least 40,000 Afghans.
Posted by at No comments:

Turkey earthquake causes 6.6-meter tectonic displacement


A recent analysis by South Korean researchers has shown that the land in Turkey's northwest moved southwest and the land in the southeast moved northeast following the massive earthquake in February. The researchers at the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (KIGAM) have attributed the displacement, which reached up to 6.6 meters, to a left-lateral displacement caused by the movement of faults along the boundary of the tectonic plates.

The team of South Korean researchers at KIGAM led by Director Song Seok-gu published a report titled “KIGAM Overseas Earthquake Research Status” on Thursday. Their findings were based on remote sensing techniques, utilizing data from the European Space Agency's Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 satellites, which have a spatial resolution of approximately four meters.

The earthquake, which occurred in Turkey in February, was of a magnitude of 7.8. Turkey is located on the Anatolian Plate, with the North Anatolian Fault adjoined with the Eurasian Plate, and the East Anatolian Plate with the Arabian Tectonic Plate. The earthquake hit those two major faults. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the seismic event in Turkey triggered surface ruptures that span over 470 kilometers.

Surface ruptures occur when the movement of tectonic plates causes a fault to be exposed on the surface. These are typically seen in earthquakes with a magnitude of 6.0 or higher. The KIGAM research team found that the maximum horizontal displacement caused by the surface ruptures was around 3.8 meters in the southern region of the East Anatolian Fault and up to 5.7 meters in the northern part. The research team noted that their findings were consistent with those of international research teams.


jawon1212@donga.com
Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)