Which brings me to Iran…

Now, before you go thinking that I’m some kind of hippie peacenik, know that I am quite fond of blood and guts and gore and veins in my teeth. Even as someone whose foreign policy views verge on realpolitik, I recognize the threat of a nuclear Iran to Middle East stability. I’m also aware that our options are limited.

But this isn’t about geopolitical choice so much as the language that shapes how we perceive choice itself.

Exhibit A: US Fears Israel Will Hit Iran Without Warning

“Whoever says ‘later’ may find that later is too late,” Israeli Defense minister Ehud Barak said. (The Post notes he switched from Hebrew to English when saying the words, “Later is too late.”) Leon Panetta, meanwhile, declined to refute a report that he was worried about an Israeli attack.

It’s probably unsurprising that Israel is trying to convey a sense of inevitability here. Still, one wonders if Israel has the capability of neutralizing the below-ground, concrete-reinforced facilities that comprise Iran’s nuclear workshops. In which case, the drum beating may be a nudge to the US to hurry up and complete work on its Massive Ordnance Penetrator, which may or may not be up to the task. (Either way, the MOP can be seen as a major advancement in military hardware as phallic symbol.)

Exhibit B: U.S. Intel: Iran Willing To Attack on American Soil

You can’t say the ruling Mullahs don’t have a sense of humor. In response to US demands that Iran return a RQ-170 Sentinel stealth drone that went down over the eastern part of Iran, the country’s leaders have agreed to send back a toy version worth about four bucks.

The drone’s capture back in December 2011 sparked some debate in intelligence and military circles about whether to launch an operation to destroy it, or simply leave it in Iranian hands. The former was decided to be too risky, so the US ultimately chose to send a formal letter requesting the drone be returned. The same week they also sent letters requesting Justin Bieber stop being so damned adorable and for Tim Tebow to convert to Satanism.

Meanwhile, Iranian officials claim to have finished extracting data from the unmanned aircraft. They also plan to file a lawsuit against the United States in US courts for alleged invasion of their airspace. Good luck finding a friendly bench, fellas.

All of this makes one wonder why, with such sophisticated technology, there isn’t some kind of destruct mechanism on these drones. I suppose the lack of such a failsafe is why “military intelligence” remains an oxymoron.

Ah well, at least the President will have an interesting new paperweight for his desk in the Oval Office.

One of the reasons I haven’t been posting much is that I’m spending every spare bit of my energy trying to make sure a pair of ill-conceived pieces of legislation do not become law (at least in their current form). The bills in question are the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House of Representatives, and the PROTECT-IP Act in the Senate. (Of the two, SOPA is the worst.)

Now, both of these proposals could be considered well-intentioned, but their language is dangerously overbroad and could have serious implications on free speech, innovation and cybersecurity. I won’t bore you with the details, because I have a broader point to make. (Here’s my favorite analysis of the bills’ scope and provisions, if you’re curious.)

What pisses me off most is that there’s likely another way to achieve the bills’ goals — namely, combating foreign sites that traffic in unauthorized American intellectual property. Yet these alternatives are largely being ignored by a Congress eager to simply hand the internet over to Hollywood. And can say with certainty that these folks are always happy to restrict speech and quash competition in the name of preserving an antiquated business model.

In an agonizing twist of irony, Congress’ mad rush to codify online censorship is in direct opposition to the American government’s efforts to promote informational freedom abroad. This article in Slate expertly explains the discontinuity.

There is a recurring theme in terms of how recent legislation is being crafted. We’re seeing deliberate loopholes that don’t explicitly detail how your liberties will be restricted, but nonetheless establish the conditions under which such outcomes are not only possible, but likely.

Take for example, the highly controversial National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Steve Benen has an excellent analysis about whether this law would allow for the permanent detention of American citizens.

Not to compare apples to oranges, but I was struck by the following disclaimer in NDAA:

Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.

Oh, good! Then there’s NO WAY a court could interpret this statute as giving the president the option of indefinitely detaining without trial an American citizen suspected of terrorism!

This deliberate-loophole doublespeak reminds me of the opening renunciation in SOPA (emphasis mine):

(1) FIRST AMENDMENT- Nothing in this Act shall be construed to impose a prior restraint on free speech or the press protected under the 1st Amendment to the Constitution.

(2) TITLE 17 LIABILITY- Nothing in title I shall be construed to enlarge or diminish liability, including vicarious or contributory liability, for any cause of action available under title 17, United States Code, including any limitations on liability under such title.

That must mean that there can be absolutely NO WAY that any portion of a site that is “avoiding confirming a high probability” of infringement could be blocked by the US attorney general or have its commercial transactions halted on the mere accusation of infringement (the latter without any due process, and and with an impossibly narrow window for recourse). I feel so much better now!

We’ve always been at war with Eastasia.

To go any further would require a level of legal analysis that would likely put you in a coma. So I’ll close with this hopefully straightforward statement: American civil liberties are currently under threat, and our elected officials have abdicated their fundamental responsibility to safeguard these basic freedoms.

And that should scare the shit out of you.

When Zainab Bibi’s husband threatened to rape her daughter, she took things into her own hands… and oven. Although her husband had never acted on his twisted desires, he had made suggestive comments when drunk. As Bibi states, “I killed my husband before he dared to touch my daughter.”

She never planned to eat him, apparently. The husband-korma was merely a way to dispose of the corpse. Bibi said she was going to dispose of the “mystery meat,” telling people it was spoiled. Her plan ultimately backfired when neighbors complained of the stench, leading police to investigate.  It has also been suggested that Ahmed Abbas was planning to take a second wife, which complicates the narrative.

How to respond to Bibi’s actions, particularly after the Penn State scandal in which adults utterly failed to report the abuse that was going on under their noses (to say nothing of the Catholic Church’s decades-long indifference to sexually abused children)? Why didn’t Bibi report her husband to the police? Her husband, whose side of the story we will never hear, did not rape his stepdaughter. And, no matter how degrading polygamy is to a woman—if that was indeed a motive behind the killing—does it warrant a death sentence?

But let’s give Bibi the benefit of the doubt and assume she acted out of a desire to save her daughter Sonia from sexual assault. Could Bibi really have turned to the police for protection? Or, what if she’d ignored her husband’s comments and her daughter was raped? What kind of justice would Sonia have received under the Pakistani legal system?

Not much, according to blogger Sana Saleem, who recently published an excellent article called “Your Rape Culture is not My Religion.” The 1996 abolishment of the Hudood Laws (which required the presence of four witnesses to prove a rape occurred) has faced continued opposition by the political party Jamaat-i-Islami. Theoretically, the “women protection” legislation introduced the same year encourages victims to come forward and prosecute their rapists provided there is medical and forensic evidence. Yet, prominent Jamaat-i-Islami member Munawar Hasan argued on TV that a victim “should keep quiet if she has no witnesses.” This guy makes John Boehner look like Gloria Steinem.

As Saleem argues, it is unthinkable that those who witness a rape would not come forward, if not stopping the assault from happening in the first place. Therefore, the four witnesses requirement is “irrational and absurd.” She adds, “the callously flaunted idea that women use rape as a tool for popularity, fame, and money or simply to attack Islamic principles is devoid of logic. For all we know, taking a rapist to court in Pakistan can put you behind bars, after dealing with the severe moral policing, of course.” It is likely Bibi knew all this when she committed the crime.

Although Bibi’s actions were extreme and vigilantism is not to be applauded, they make a kind of grim sense, given Pakistani women’s lack of social and legal equality. As Mark Twain wrote, “I’ve never wished a man dead, but I’ve read many an obituary with pleasure.”

I live in Washington, DC and work in tech policy (as it relates to creative content). This means I have the dubious privilege of seeing how the sausage is made when it comes to the laws that shape our digital future. Increasingly, I’m witnessing a convergence of some pretty hairy issues that previously had limited public impact. And, for better or worse, policymakers — domestic and international — have started to pay attention.

There are three core concerns that will have an outsized effect on how we all experience technology. The first one encompasses the other two, which are of nearly equal importance. Bookmark this page, and we can talk about it in 10 years (provided we’re all still here).

1. Internet freedom
2. Intellectual Property Enforcement
3. Data Privacy/Security

Before I explain how these issues are converging, let’s look at what each means individually.

Internet Freedom
This is the mother of all tech-policy debates, and the one with the most potential to impact every facet of your online experience. The internet is essentially a packet-switching information exchange network that uses a simple protocol to allow all these interconnected machines to “talk” to each other. Its process is, by and large, neutral with regard to content. This is what has allowed it to become the most powerful engine for democratic speech in the history of humanity. That speech may very well be 90 percent LOLcats, but it also includes political speech and practically every other flavor of expression. In the United States, this means that our First Amendment rights are automatically ported over to this digital conduit. That may not be the case with other countries, which is why you see a lot of high-falutin’ talk from the State Department about the importance of maintaining global networks where free expression can flourish.

Unfortunately, recent American trends giving corporate speech unparalleled weight means that your own online speech could depend on how deep your pockets are. This is the crux of the so-called “net neutrality” debate, in which the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) want to charge a premium for the faster delivery of content, sites and services. Without clear rules of the road, speech that does not benefit the ISP’s bottom lines — or those of their corporate partners — may be delayed, or worse still, blocked. There has been progress in achieving at least some protections here. But these rules — promulgated by the Federal Communications Commission — are currently in danger of being stripped away by Congress.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the FCC established separate rules for the “wired” web vs. internet accessed on mobile devices. This distinction, to me, is arbitrary and pointless. There is ONE internet, regardless of how you connect to it. Having a tiered internet for wireless may end up impacting those whose speech has historically been at the greatest disadvantage, as underprivileged and minority communities are more likely to access the internet via mobile devices.

It will be very interesting to see how the American virtue of free expression plays out on our domestic networks, especially as we promote open technology platforms as a means of democratic participation overseas.

2. Intellectual Property Enforcement
Wikipedia defines Intellectual Property (IP) as “a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized… common types of intellectual property rights include copyrights, trademarks, patents, industrial design rights and trade secrets in some jurisdictions.”

IP is big business. REALLY big business here in America. Which is why there are so many large stakeholders pushing for stronger intellectual property laws on the internet. I have no problem with this in theory, as I am a copyright holder myself, and believe that I should have exclusive rights over how my expression is capitalized upon in the marketplace – that is, for a limited term, which was the balance struck by Congress when it devised our laws governing this part of IP. There are different rules for trademarks and patents, on which I am no expert. So I’ll stick with what I know.

Increasingly, copyright law is coming to loggerheads with the consumptive behaviors of internet users. This is something I’ve written about and spoken on extensively in my professional life. In the interest of space, and without picking sides, I can say this: rightsholders are currently pushing hard on Congress to pass laws that, to my reading, look like blunt instruments when it comes to protecting IP online. And by this I mean legislation currently proposed could, at worst, restrict legitimate speech and compromise the underlying security of the internet. For further details, I point you to my DC colleagues, Public Knowledge. (Full disclosure: my wife works for them.)

3. Data Privacy/Security
Which brings me to my final issue, data privacy/security. Again, I can’t claim to be an expert here, but on the other hand, not many can. Here, we have everything from domestic defense to corporate espionage to individual rights and even First Amendment concerns. Some may have heard Eric Schmidt of Google‘s statement on total data transparency being the key to informational security. I’m sure the NSA would agree, so long as they are the ones with “total” access to the data. I bring this up because at no other point in history has informational privacy been of such import — perceived and actual. I can remember people on the street where I grew up being hesitant about having their name listed in the phone book. Now, everything we do and say online leaves a digital trace. Before you get yourself in some Philip K. Dick psychological tailspin, keep in mind that there’s a big difference between personally-identifying data and non-personally-identifying data. The former can be used to target, track and harass individuals; the latter is basically why Amazon knows what books you might be interested in reading next. Still, there is a lot of grey area with regard to how this information is collected, shared and exploited. And, at the moment, US privacy law is a patchwork of state-by-state regulations and jurisprudence. That might not be the case forever, as Congress has shown interest in establishing a federal privacy standard. Obviously, that could cut both ways.

Data security is the other side of the coin. Here, we reach the queasy intersection of defense, espionage — corporate and state — and hackerdom. Much of what occurs in the world of data security happens privately, or though private-public contracts between government and IT wizards. Obviously, any breach of US information security comes with pretty severe (domestic) penalties, but that doesn’t mean that hackers here and abroad aren’t trying to break into our informational infrastructure every second of every day. A serious breach is practically guaranteed, as is the subsequent crackdown. I believe this is what is referred to as the “Internet 9/11.”

The US isn’t just playing defense here. I’ve followed closely reports of how the administration very seriously considered a cyberattack on Libya’s air defense network in the lead-up to the NATO engagement. We ultimately decided against it, likely for a combination of reasons: one, we may not have wanted to be the first country to open the Pandora’s Box of cyberwar; two, we didn’t have enough time to pinpoint and exploit weaknesses in the Libyan network before airstrikes were scheduled to commence; and three, there were lingering legal questions about whether cyberattacks are considered “hostilities” subject to Congressional oversight within the War Powers Act. I guarantee these questions will soon be answered one way or another. And this will undoubtedly impact the evolution of global information networks.

All three of these issues intersect in myriad ways. The economics of digital entertainment is related to open networks vs. walled gardens, and also bumps up against data privacy/security on both the consumer and corporate end of the spectrum. Participatory democracy depends on open tech platforms and access to robust data pipelines and mobile spectrum. Overly-broad IP enforcement has the potential to limit exactly that openness while sending the signal to other nations that censorship is OK. Digital networks can also be exploited by despots (and even less-nefarious governments) to monitor the speech and movement of a populace. And around and around we go.

Taken together, as they are destined to be, these three issues represent the last tech-policy debate. How we respond will shape human interaction for decades, if not centuries to come.

Conspiracies are fun. Everybody has one, or at least the inclination to maybe-kinda-possibly entertain one. For example, I used to be partial to the John F. Kennedy assassination. Some folks are into alien cover-ups, others believe that our current president was born in Africa. The world of conspiracies is vast and often interconnected — pick up a thread here, and you never know exactly where you’ll end up.

Which brings us to The Contrarian’s Old-Time Conspiracy Hour. Consider this another idea for a recurring feature that we’re unlikely to follow-through with. But we’ll have some fun with this entry, at least.

One area that naturally lends itself to conspiracy theories is intelligence work. From US-sanctioned “wet teams” to CIA‘s notorious MK-ULTRA program, covert ops make for wild stories. The interesting thing about the spy game is that it’s really tough to separate fact from fiction. Today’s post deals with the former — namely, CIA’s alleged control of the media. Or are these “facts” yet another misdirection? Welcome to the house of mirrors.

“The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.” — Former CIA chief William Colby, who died under rather mysterious circumstances.

Our little conspiracy is largely informed by a Carl Bernstein story which originally appeared in a 1977 edition of Rolling Stone. Bernstein, you surely recall, is the journalist who, along with Bob Woodward, helped break the Watergate scandal. His subsequent investigation, which resulted in the article “The CIA & The Media,” laid the cornerstone of a durable, if lately neglected conspiracy: the manipulation of the American press by shadowy government entities.

Perhaps this conspiracy died down because the US government became more audacious in its manipulation of the media. The George W. Bush administration was hardly subtle in this regard. Still, the information in Bernstein’s story, dated though it may be, paints a disturbing picture of clandestine control of the “fourth estate.”

The directive under which CIA conducted its media operations was called MOCKINGBIRD. The extent of its reach, and indeed, whether it existed at all, is a matter of debate. The working theory holds that Frank Wisner, CIA Director, Office of Special Projects (OSP) managed to cajole high-ranking media officials into running CIA reports in their respective press outlets. By the 1950s, the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, CBS and more had been folded into the operation.

Bernstein’s article focuses on one Joseph Alsop, a reporter who penned countless foreign affairs stories in more than 300 newspapers. He didn’t work alone. Even Ben Bradlee — the storied Washington Post editor who presided over both The Pentagon Papers and Bernstein’s own Watergate reporting — was thought to have been with MOCKINGBIRD. And the list by no means stops there. According to Bernstein:

Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were Williarn Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Tirne Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the LouisviIle Courier‑Journal, and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps‑Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald‑Tribune.

And placing stories was apparently not all the agency called upon its press agents to do. Bernstein:

Appropriately, the CIA uses the term ‘reporting’ to describe much of what cooperating journalists did for the Agency. “We would ask them, ‘Will you do us a favor?’” said a senior CIA official. “‘We understand you’re going to be in Yugoslavia. Have they paved all the streets? Where did you see planes? Were there any signs of military presence? How many Soviets did you see? If you happen to meet a Soviet, get his name and spell it right…. can you set up a meeting for us? Or arrange a message?’” Many CIA officials regarded these helpful journalists as operatives: the journalists tended to see themselves as trusted friends of the Agency who performed occasional favors — usually without pay — in the national interest.

Sometimes they did get paid. Charles Douglas Jackson of TIME supposedly split time running CIA’s Psychological Operations and being Vice-President in charge of his company’s media empire.

Although it is pretty shocking to realize that our supposedly “free” press may not be entirely so, the relationship between CIA and reporters dates back to the early days of the agency. Director Allen Dulles, the man whose operational DNA is still very much a part of CIA, stocked the fledgling organization with Yale men, most of whom had a reportorial bent. That these Ivy Leaguers would in turn recruit more of their kind for strategic purposes makes perfect sense.

America has, since its inception, held its press as an example of freedom and integrity — particularly in comparison with countries where information is tightly controlled. Interesting then, that one of the pillars of our liberty has such a duplicitous past.

We all know that women worldwide do the lion’s share of housework and child rearing,
while receiving less pay for equal work. Many women wrestle with the task of maintaining a household or small business, but what about actually wrestling? As in choke holds and pile-drivers? And how about wrestling in your native costume, in this case a long skirt with an outrageous petticoat and Andean hat? In Bolivia, female wrestlers known as cholitas do just that for the pleasure of crowds.

The very word cholita is contentious. One Peruvian-American woman contends that it is a term of endearment, stating that her own mother was called chola or cholita. “A ‘cholita’ is a girl of native or mixed heritage,” she says. “Used among friends, family and neighbors, it is a warm reference also commonly used to describe indigenous women selling their goods at the markets.” Another site explaining the word’s origin maintains that “A ‘cholita’ is a slang term for a tough girl, the way ‘cholo’ can refer to a tough guy. It can be a positive or derogatory term.”

Despite the word’s murky origins and use, Indian Bolivian women have reclaimed cholita, just as marginalized groups in America have recovered other pejoratives used to injure. An article entitled, “Lucha Libre & the Fighting Cholitas,” notes that there is even a Miss Cholita pageant. However, the author adds… “it’s still a dangerous word for gringos to be tossing about.”

The significance of indigenous women wrestling goes beyond providing entertainment for tourists and their countrymen. Cholitas confront their country’s ugly racist and colonialist past while subverting traditional notions of femininity. As wrestler Carmen Rosa explains, “Because we cholitas have been humiliated and very discriminated in the past that is what mostly drove me to be a fighter. I also wanted to show people, not only Bolivia but around the world, that a woman can do what men do.”

Moreover, the phenomenon of cholita wrestling provides economic opportunity for working-class women. In the words of Bolivian blogger and cholita-wrestling promoter Alberto Medrano, “Most cholitas are housewives from low-income families who train as wrestlers on the side. They train very hard, with well-known professional wrestlers like Kid Simonini. They learn how to tackle, throw their opponent, hold him or her down, dodge blows, jump and fall without hurting themselves. Some of them become really excellent wrestlers and famous in their own right.”

The famous feminist quote “Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels” applies here.

Feminist and anthropological analysis aside, seeing a cholita match is definitely on my bucket list!

Post-revolutionary Egypt is still a sausage fest. When women gathered in Tahrir Square — the symbol of Egyptians’ self-initiated political liberation — they were attacked by more than 200 men. Women were forced to the ground, dragged out of the crowd, groped and sexually harassed while the police and military watched with indifference.

The reason for the demonstration? International Women’s Day. Journalist Jumanah Younis was among the women protesting against, in her words, “Egypt’s chronic sexual harassment problem, against the many barriers women face in public life and against the pervasive conservatism that curtails the freedom on women in society at large.”

According to Younis, “The women’s chants calling for an ‘Egypt for all Egyptians’ were drowned out by retaliations such as ‘No to freedom!’ shouted by opposing groups. The men charged at the female protesters, who had been standing on a raised platform in the middle of Tahrir Square, and shouted: ‘Get out of here.’”

Journalist Younis, along with five other women, remained on the platform while a group of sympathetic men formed a protective a circle. Younis herself endured the indignity of being groped and having her clothes pulled at. Another woman was subjected to having a man put his hand down her shirt, while still another was forced to the ground and pinned down by a man. While she was being assaulted, police simply continued to direct traffic.

As Widney Brown writes in “Is the Egyptian Revolution Sidelining Women?” one hundred years after the first International Women’s Day took place in Europe, “…women are still much more likely to be poor. They are more likely to be illiterate. They earn only ten per cent of the world’s income but do two thirds of the world’s work. They produce up to 80 per cent of the food in developing countries but own only one per cent of the land.”

Moreover, as Brown writes, “Many governments — including many from the West — still only seem to support women’s rights when it’s convenient.” After all, women’s liberation was and is a key argument in the war against Afghanistan. One need only remember Bibi Aisha’s mutilated face on the cover of TIME with the words “What Will Happen If We Leave Afghanistan?” to see that. (Never mind that her disfigurement  — and other instances of violence against women — took place under U.S. occupation.)

Yet, as Brown adds, “When negotiations with the Taliban seem like a good step, suddenly women’s rights don’t matter so much. When they need Pakistan as an ally, they accept the Pakistani government giving autonomy to regions of the country where women are utterly victimized by the parallel legal system. And alliances are made in Iraq with militias that in their spare time attack and kill women’s rights activists.”

As Brown continues, “Most recently, a new national committee formed to write the new Egyptian constitution was composed only of men. This is not acceptable.”  The very men who were once oppressed have assumed the role of oppressor. Egyptian women, many of whom expected democracy, are now subjected to phallocracy.

David Fincher‘s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has its trailer in theaters now. Tagline: “The Feel Bad Movie of Christmas.” It’s a well-put-together montage of scenes that look more like what I pictured in my head when I read the book than what appeared in the Swedish version.

You probably know that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are doing the soundtrack (the two won an Oscar for Fincher’s previous flick, The Social Network). Well, this trailer features a cover of Led Zeppelin‘s “Immigrant Song” performed by Reznor and Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I don’t love it, but I certainly admire it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yUwXwrR35U

Definitely looking forward to the film…

The Contrarian is temporarily suspending publication in order for the Editor in Chief to take a much-deserved vacation. Our daily schedule will resume on or around June 12. We apologize for any inconvenience this service interruption may cause, and promise to take lots of pictures of our tour through Paris, Rome, Sicily, Turkey and Greece.