v a l l e j o n o c t u r n o

The Story as We Know It

From Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone:

Markets all over the world freaked out over the prospect of having ignorant European voters meddling in the recovery process the geniuses of the high finance world had already painstakingly laid out for them. The model for economic progress in the financial bubble era, after all, is supposed to go something like this:

1. Let banks inflate massive asset bubbles with the aid of cheap or even free government cash, and tons of leverage;
2. Before it all explodes, carve out gigantic sums for bonuses and compensation for the companies that inflated those bubbles;
3. After it explodes, get the various governments to bail those companies out;
4. Pay for it all by slashing services to what’s left of the middle class.

This is the model we used in America. We had a monster asset bubble based on phony mortgages, which Wall Street was allowed to inflate to spectacular dimensions with minimal reserve capital, huge amounts of leverage, and tons of fraud for good measure. When that bubble exploded, we first rescued the banks who inflated the thing in the first place, and then our plan for paying for it mostly revolved around folks like Paul Ryan and Chris Christie, who made great political hay by trying to take an ax to "entitlements" like health care and retirement benefits.

They're replaying the same script in Europe, sort of. The causes of crises in places like Spain, Greece, Portugal and Italy vary somewhat and are less simple to define, but a common denominator in all of them is weak growth mixed with giant budget deficits.

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Shredded Social Contract

From The Guardian:

In Cartagena, Molina successfully launched this dialogue, with leaders of the Organisation of American States agreeing to carry out a technical study on current drug policy that will be used to recommend alternatives. But it wasn't just those in favour of policy alternatives doing the talking; president Obama and Canada's prime minister Harper have also, in their own slow and disingenuous ways, begun to acknowledge reality. Although Obama has been clear that he opposes all forms of decriminalisation and legalisation, he admitted that drug reform was a debatable issue, stating: "I think it is entirely legitimate to have a conversation about whether the laws in place are doing more harm than good in certain places." Perhaps even more telling was Harper, who conceded at a press conference that the drug war was "not working".

What these kernels of reason suggest is that even for ideologues, the topic of reform has become unavoidable and that the political currency of polarisation is officially bankrupt. If we view Cartagena within the framework of a traditional war, what we have witnessed is the first draft of an armistice. The problem with the drug war, and the reason why it has taken so long for reformers to gain any traction, is that it has remained a niche issue due to its deeply classist nature. In a global context, developing nations endure the violence while the developed subsidise it, through both consumer demand and law enforcement funding. Within the developed countries a similar formula is reproduced; with poor neighbourhoods and demographics taking the place of their nation-state equivalents.

The corrosive results of this arrangement are obvious to anyone who has been paying attention. Public funds are diverted away from more worthy projects into the criminal justice system. Police are made to spend their days toiling as bagmen and bullies while other, more morally reprehensible crimes go unnoticed. Entire postal codes lose faith in their governments and many become completely alienated from those same police who are meant to protect them. Throughout the western hemisphere and Europe, the public's view of government has been subject to a lingering decay. The American public's trust in their government has never been lower, the same goes for Mexico, and last year's riots in England demonstrated exactly what happens when a nation operates on a shredded social contract.

The colonization of the Americas

From the New York review of Books blog:

Immigration detention, which is run primarily through DHS’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement division (ICE), is the fastest-growing system of incarceration in the United States. In 2006, approximately 250,000 people passed through it. This October the Obama administration, evidently determined to prove itself a strict enforcer of immigration law, announced it had deported nearly 400,000 people through the DHS system in fiscal year 2011. Immigration detention is considered civil or administrative confinement, rather than criminal or punitive, but in practice this is a thin distinction. Almost all immigration detention facilities were originally built as prisons and jails, and the atmosphere inside them is very much what is euphemistically called “correctional.”

Immigrants in civil detention actually have fewer legal rights than their criminal counterparts. Unlike people charged with crimes, detained immigrants do not have a right to a government-appointed attorney, and because few can pay for one, only about sixteen percent have legal representation. And DHS not only oversees the detention of immigrants, it decides their legal status and whether or not they are to be deported. If this were taking place within the criminal justice system, it would be as if the jailors of a man awaiting trial were then to serve as his judge and jury.

Terrified of deportation and separation from their families, immigrants in detention are often extremely reluctant to file grievances against facilities run by the very people who can expel them from the country; and there is little question that deportation is sometimes used as retribution against immigration detainees who complain, and sometimes as a way of forestalling investigations into abuses. And it’s clear that facilities holding people who do not feel able to complain are particularly fertile grounds for abuse, as are institutions that can easily deport witnesses against them.

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Wikileaks in Lima

El Commercio in Peru just reports today that they have just received over 4,000 pages from Wikileaks of US diplomatic cables between the US and its embassy:

EL ENCUENTRO
El lunes 7 partí a Londres, aún intrigada de hasta dónde realmente me llevaría este misterioso asunto. Después de todo, podría tratarse de alguna tontería sin la importancia que hasta entonces le habíamos dado. Una y otra vez me repetía a mí misma que no debía hacerme demasiadas expectativas.

El martes, ya en la hermosa capital británica, volvimos a entrar en contacto: la reunión ya no sería en la noche del miércoles sino a las 10 a.m. “¿Podrás llegar a ‘tal’ dirección a esa hora?”, me preguntó. ¡Cómo no! Si ya había cruzado el Atlántico, tomar un taxi que me llevara hasta allí no sería muy difícil.

Llegué un poco antes de la hora fijada. Allí, sin embargo, no sería la reunión. Alguien pasaría a recogerme para llevarme a otro lugar. Así fue.

Ya en el sitio que tanto había perseguido durante 19 días, volvieron a entrarme las dudas: lucía demasiado simple para albergar los secretos develados del gobierno más poderoso del mundo, y quién sabe cuántos secretos más.

Allí conocí a mi contacto y al finlandés Kristinn Hrafnsson, director de Sunshine Press Productions, la rama encargada de las publicaciones de Wikileaks. Finalmente había llegado.

Con Hrafnsson firmamos un memorándum de entendimiento antes de que me entregaran el material prometido. El paquete proporcionado a este Diario consta de unas 4.000 páginas enviadas a su gobierno por funcionarios de la Embajada de Estados Unidos en Lima entre los años 2006 y 2010, más unos pocos relacionados con Bolivia.

En esas estábamos cuando, inesperadamente, se abrió una puerta y entró un sujeto alto y delgado cuyo rostro era inconfundible: Julian Assange. No esperaba encontrarlo. No me aceptó una entrevista ni una foto, pero sí pudimos intercambiar algunas palabras. Se interesó por el caso de los ‘petroaudios’ en el Perú y también por el Cusco que, dijo, le gustaría visitar, aunque evidentemente, lamentó, por ahora eso no será posible.

From their edorial, El Commercio ponders its duty and impact on publishing these documents:

A nuestro Nobel de Literatura Mario Vargas Llosa le parece que estas publicaciones nos defienden “contra las intrigas, las maniobras, que están siempre vinculadas a la vida política y sobre todo al poder”, pero le preocupa el peligro de que pueda desaparecer “toda forma de confidencialidad”, al punto de que los estados no puedan funcionar, generando “una fragilidad tal que las instituciones, una tras otra, se desprestigien así como la esencia de la democracia”.

En la misma línea, para el semiólogo italiano Umberto Eco, los documentos de Wikileaks tienen un doble valor. Por un lado, no es más que un escándalo aparente, un escándalo que solo parece tal por la hipocresía que gobierna las relaciones entre los estados, los ciudadanos y la prensa. Por otro lado, anuncia cambios profundos a nivel internacional y prefigura un futuro dominado por la regresión” [para salvaguardar secretos en la era digital, se entiende].

El director del diario español “El País”, Javier Moreno, es un convencido de que los documentos muestran que las “clases políticas en las democracias avanzadas se la han pasado engañando a sus ciudadanos”.

Los lectores y lectoras de El Comercio quizá se pregunten por qué hemos decidido publicar estos cables. La respuesta es que consideramos necesario, hoy más que nunca, poner en debate una información notoriamente de interés público.

Desconocemos los criterios de selección del paquete recibido –que abarca del 2006 al 2010– por lo que no estamos en capacidad de afirmar que se trate de toda la documentación producida en ese período sobre el Perú. En esta edición damos cuenta de dos cables y en el transcurso de la semana retomaremos su publicación.

The Way to Kill Wikileaks

From the NYTimes :

This week, hackers said they had penetrated the computers of HBGary Federal, a security company that sells investigative services to corporations, and posted tens of thousands of what appear to be its internal company e-mails on the Internet.

The documents appear to include pitches for unseemly ways to undermine adversaries of Bank of America and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, like doing background research on their critics and then distributing fake documents to embarrass them.

The bank and the chamber do not appear to have directly solicited the spylike services of HBGary Federal. Rather, HBGary Federal offered to do the work for Hunton & Williams, a corporate law firm that has represented them.

A Hunton & Williams spokesman did not comment. But spokesmen for Bank of America and the chamber said Friday that they had not known about the presentations and that HBGary Federal was never hired on their behalf. A chamber spokesman characterized the proposal as “abhorrent.”

Since the hacked e-mails appeared on a file-sharing network several days ago, a broad range of bloggers and journalists have been scouring them and discussing highlights on the Internet. The New York Times also obtained a copy of the archive.

One document that has received particular attention is a PowerPoint presentation that said a trio of data-related companies — HBGary Federal, Palantir Technologies and Berico Technologies — could help attack WikiLeaks, which is rumored to be preparing to release internal e-mails from Bank of America.

One idea was to submit fake documents covertly to WikiLeaks, and then expose them as forgeries to discredit the group. It also suggested pressuring WikiLeaks’ supporters — notably Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com — by threatening their careers.

“Without the support of people like Glenn, WikiLeaks would fold,” the presentation said.

Another set of documents proposed similar ways to embarrass adversaries of the Chamber of Commerce for an initial fee of $200,000 and $2 million later.

The e-mails include what appears to be an exchange on Nov. 9, 2010, between Aaron Barr, HBGary Federal’s chief executive, and John W. Woods, a Hunton & Williams partner who focuses on corporate investigations. Mr. Barr recounted biographical tidbits about the family of a one-time employee of a union-backed group that had challenged the chamber’s opposition to Obama administration initiatives like health care legislation.

I Am Fodail Aberkane

From the blog Laila Lalami:

Fodail Aberkane is a name you will not have read much about in the press. He was a Moroccan construction worker, a man of very modest means, who spent the last week of his life fighting for the return of his motorcycle. It seems like such a trivial thing to lose your life over, a motorcycle, but when you have nothing, even an old moped, little more than a bicycle with a low-speed motor, can make a difference.

One reason you haven’t heard about Fodail Aberkane is that the facts about him are few and slim, and come mostly from an account given by his brother to newspapers in Morocco. Aged thirty-seven, Fodail Aberkane lived in Hay Inbi’at, a working-class neighborhood in Salé, the town that sits across the river from the capital, famed for its fortress walls, its medina, and its pirates. On September 9, which was the eve of Eid in Morocco, Aberkane was riding his moped when he was stopped by police, on suspicion of being under the influence of cannabis. The officers took him to the Hay Salam station, where he was held for two days, before being released on judge’s orders.

On September 13, Aberkane returned to the police station to collect his moped and his mobile phone. The police told him they could not release the vehicle without proof of insurance, which he did not have in his possession. Instead, he showed them a document attesting that he had declared the loss of his insurance papers to the relevant authorities. The police refused to accept the document. On September 15, Aberkane returned to the station yet again, this time bringing with him a new insurance contract, but the officers still refused to release his moped.

Here an argument broke out, which resulted in his arrest for insulting police officers. When his brother Mustapha visited him at the Hay Salam station, he says, he saw agents beating Fodail in full view of everyone. The police then threw Mustapha out of the station and warned him, “Don’t ever come back.” Two days later, on September 17, Fodail Aberkane was turned over to Ibn Sina Hospital in Rabat, where he was pronounced dead. The district attorney has opened an investigation, and everyone connected with the case is waiting to see whether charges will indeed be brought against the agents responsible for his murder. Until then, it’s the usual Wait and See.

 

The other reason you will not have heard about Fodail Aberkane is that he is the kind of victim who does not attract the attention of the English-language press. He is not a famous journalist, he does not run a political party, he has not run afoul of the Islamists, and he does not have any connection to terrorism. This particular victim is an easy one to ignore and to forget. When stories about Morocco are written, who will remember his name? Who, aside from his family, will mourn him? Who will hold his alleged murderers to account? Who will make sure that no other man or woman is beaten to death?

 

In 2004, Morocco established an Equity and Reconciliation Commission to document cases of torture during the Years of Lead. Since then, however, the country has once again started down the old, familiar road. Fodail Aberkane is not an exception. Over the last few years, allegations of torture have been made against the police in Morocco on many occasions. Two years ago, Zahra Boudkour, a 21-year-old university student from Marrakech, was arrested for taking part in a student demonstration. She was stripped naked and beaten, but no one was brought to account for the violence that was visited upon her. In his encounter with the Marrakech police, another university student, Abdelkebir El Bahi, found himself thrown from the 3rd floor window of a dorm. He is now in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Boudkour and El Bahi were abused and tortured because of their ideas and their ideals. Fodail Aberkane was trying to get his moped back.

Torture has become one of Morocco’s most popular exports. According to the New York Times, the kingdom has provided its services to CIA investigators in the case of Binyam Mohammed, the Ethiopian citizen who was detained for five years at Guantánamo Bay, and later released after all charges against him were dropped. Morocco was also the site where Ramzi bin al Shibh, one of the 9/11 conspirators, was allegedly questioned. Videotapes of the interrogations were discovered under a desk at the CIA last year, the Associated Press recently revealed.

At a plenary meeting of the United Nations last week, Morocco’s king Muhammad VI spoke about the National Initiative for Human Development he has committed himself to for the last five years: education, job creation, poverty alleviation, environmental protection. These are all wonderful goals. But even an educated, employed, middle-class citizen with a low-carbon footprint cannot enjoy her full rights if her human life, that most precious of gifts, is not itself respected. Morocco cannot—indeed, it will not—progress as a nation, if the rule of law is not obeyed. Until then, the names may change, but the story will remain the same.

 

 

A Homicide Detective

"I should like to have been a homicide detective much better than being a writer. I am absolutely sure of that. A string of homicides. I’d have been someone who could come back to the scene of the crime alone, by night, and not be afraid of ghosts. Perhaps then I might really have become crazy. But that could easily be resolved with a bullet to the mouth."  Bolaño to Mónica Maristain

Alcala

The Disgusting History of a Bad Photographer