Acting a fool

Human stories from a world in conflict. No Images? [Click here]( March 22, 2019 If you read just one thing ... Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan is now [under investigation]( by the Pentagon’s inspector general for favoring Boeing, his employer of 30 years, in the company’s race with competitor Lockheed Martin to replace the Air Force’s aging F-15C fleet. Shanahan allegedly called Lockheed’s F-35 program “f---ed up” in internal Pentagon meetings, among other prejudicial statements. The investigation is ironic because, by most reasonable definitions, Lockheed’s F-35 program has indeed been [fairly]( [f---ed]( [up]( (which is not to say that Boeing has a [stellar record](). The problem is, even if Shanahan believes saying so is in the public interest, his close connection to Boeing means doing so in the middle of Pentagon procurement deliberations likely constitutes a conflict of interest. It’s a Catch-22 for Shanahan that illustrates the risks involved in choosing defense bureaucracy leadership from the ranks of defense contractors. ## ... if you read more than one thing [In China’s bid to recreate the Silk Road, Italy rewards commitment to the bit]( The coastal Italian city of Trieste will be accepting substantial Chinese investment to revamp its port facilities as part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative — a set of infrastructure projects designed to extend Chinese market penetration worldwide. Italy, expected to sign a preliminary BRI agreement today with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a visit to Rome, will become the first G7 country to sign onto the initiative. - The agreement demonstrates China’s growing irresistibility as a commercial partner, even in the face of other geopolitical considerations. The United States National Security Council, which regards BRI with deep suspicion, warned its NATO ally that “Endorsing BRI lends legitimacy to China’s predatory approach to investment and will bring no benefits to the Italian people,” an assessment the Italian government discounted. - Bloomberg reporters Vernon Silver and Sheridan Prasso put on a masterclass in journalistic shade in their article about the agreement. After speaking to Zeno D’Agostino, president of the management body for Trieste’s modest port, they quoted D’Agostino as saying optimistically, “‘Trieste will become Singapore or Hong Kong.’” [Ferguson protesters keep dying in strange circumstances]( Six men heavily involved in protests against the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, have died since the protests under mysterious circumstances. Police say the deaths, which include two unsolved homicides in which the victims were shot and then burned in their cars, three apparent suicides, and a drug overdose, are unrelated, but activists aren’t sure. - Many activists still report receiving frequent death threats, over four years after Brown’s killing. The Rev. Darryl Gray, a prominent figure in the protests, had someone leave a 6-foot python in his car. Cori Bush, another protest leader, has had her home vandalized and her daughter was almost hit when someone shot into her car in 2014. - Some activists speculate that some of the deaths are less the result of foul play than of the ongoing stress associated with protesting a police department that many still engage frequently. As Washington University sociologist Odis Johnson put it, “This has to have a big impact on their mental health… For many, law enforcement is not a recourse. Many times law enforcement is not on their side." ## Deep Dive Critical State readers will have noticed an uptick in stories about mercenaries and private security forces of late. From [Erik Prince]( to [small-time contractors](, the privatization of violence has become a frequent topic of discussion in the US. In many parts of the "global south," however, private actors have long played a major — and sometimes leading —role in national security architectures. For the next two deep dives, we’ll dig into recent research on what privatized security looks like in the global south and the effect it has on the lives of the people it protects. Rivke Jaffe and Tessa Diphoorn have an [article]( in the latest issue of Interventions tracing the history of what policing scholars call “plural policing” in Jamaica — a public safety system where “non-state security forces collaborate and compete with the formal state police” — in the capital Kingston. Kingston alone has over 200 registered security companies that employ roughly 20,000 guards. By comparison, Jamaica’s national constabulary force had just over 11,000 officers in 2016. The resulting imbalance creates a plural system in Kingston in which private security forces are often viewed as legitimate users of violence to maintain order. Jaffe and Diphoorn traveled to Kingston and interviewed people from every corner of the city’s security sector to understand how Jamaica’s colonial legacy shapes Kingston’s plural policing system. They found that modern private security has inherited a great deal from the plural systems that defined colonial policing, especially racialized attitudes about who needs protection from whom. Private policing in colonial Jamaica got its start on plantations, where security specialists were hired to ensure that enslaved people remained at work and in bondage. The slavery system itself was, of course, heavily racialized, and after emancipation, most state-supported policing was directed at the large population of newly freed black people, whom the state saw as a threat to public order. That structure of blurred public-private security aimed at “ensuring a cooperative and productive [labor] force” has persisted to this day, Jaffe and Diphoorn write. In their interviews, the authors found that the upper echelons of the private security industry operated as part of the same clique as the upper echelon of the Jamaican security services, and in fact, there was major overlap between the two. This “old boys” structure corresponds with the phenomenon of the “badman,” Jamaican slang for the “archetypical security threat in Kingston” — a poor, black gunman from the downtown area. Elite-led security companies pitch themselves as offering protection from badmen, and it becomes part of their corporate ethos to the point that private guards engage in widespread racial profiling. Interviewees spoke openly about the prevalence of profiling, even as they expressed frustration with the practice. By exploring the colonial relationships enacted in domestic plural policing systems in the global South, we can get a better sense of the role foreign private security operators might play in those societies. In a security environment still shaped by a history of slavery, for example, elites paying for foreign specialists to allay their security fears will likely result in the same racialized outcomes Jaffe and Diphoorn describe in Kingston. Show me the receipts Brazil’s Bolsonaro heads to White House amid scandals at home Catherine Osborn [offered]( a rundown of the scandals that followed Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro on his trip to Washington, DC, to meet with President Donald Trump this week. Mocking the Bolsonaro administration became a major part of carnival celebrations in Brazil this year, with revelers dressing as oranges to evoke Brazil’s slang term for accomplices to fraud. Oranges allegedly associated with Bolsonaro include the president’s son, a senator from Rio de Janeiro, who is under investigation for laundering kickbacks with the help of his bodyguard. [Learn more >]( [Sudan American teens protest in solidarity with Sudanese.] How Sudan’s uprising is inspiring a generation of Sudanese American teens Hana Baba [reported]( on how the ongoing uprising against longtime Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir is transforming the attitudes of young Sudanese Americans toward Sudan. The uprising, in its third month despite mass arrests and over 45 deaths among the protesters, has been broadcast over WhatsApp and Facebook. For many young people in the Sudanese diaspora, the videos have pushed them to engage with Sudanese politics for the first time. As one young person at a symposium on Sudanese politics in California put it, “your people wanting freedom just makes you proud — and I just never felt that much pride before until now.” [Learn more >]( [At #Nukefest, we asked all the wrong questions]( Matt Korda [attended]( this year’s Nukefest and wasn’t impressed by what he saw. The biennial event, known as the Carnegie Nuclear Policy Conference to the uninitiated, is a gathering of the leading lights in nuclear policy that sets the agenda for the field. That agenda, Korda argued, isn’t focused nearly enough on “the health and sustainability of the field itself,” which is a major cause for concern as the Cold War generation that dominated nuclear policy ages out of the profession. Without greater attention to issues relevant to junior nuclear wonks like “diversity, mentorship, gender mainstreaming, and youth engagement,” young talent may flee the field. [Learn more >]( Well played Matt Korda’s article on work-life balance in the nuclear world was very good, but not good enough to keep his boss from [calling him out]( for tweeting during work hours. ## So bear with us here. Mike Gravel represented Alaska in the US Senate from 1969 to 1981 and distinguished himself as a fierce critic of the Vietnam War by reading the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record, ensuring their broad publication. He ran for the Democratic nomination for president in 2008, producing a [TV ad]( of such visionary artistry that he won a whole zero delegates and eventually switched his registration to the Libertarian Party. Now, at 88, he’s [back on the scene]( thanks to three New York teens who wrote him a strategy memo convincing him to run for president again. Those teens are now running his Twitter account, and they’re [bringing Gravel’s vendetta against Nixonian foreign policy]( into the 21st century. ## Venmo’s policy of making users explain all their payments finally [catches]( notorious sanctions violator Joseph Rodgers — a graduate student at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies — red-handed. ## [New frontiers in policing.]( ## [This week in nerdy political science jokes.]( ## AI may be the future, but we have faith that human stupidity will always [remain one step ahead]( of algorithmic intelligence. ## Public Radio International (PRI) is a global nonprofit media company focused on the intersection of journalism and engagement to effect positive change in people’s lives. We create a more informed, empathetic and connected world by sharing powerful stories, encouraging exploration, connecting people and cultures, and creating opportunities to help people take informed action on stories that inspire them. 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