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… read about how to expose wartime corruption.

When you read investigative reporting about defense contracts and the murky world of provisioning foreign wars, it’s rare that you get to see how the journalistic sausage gets made. In an ongoing Twitter thread [[link removed]], Government Accountability Project reporter Zack Kopplin offers a detailed explanation of what it takes to comb government databases, track down sources, and decipher heavily redacted documents to get a sense of how contracts to support US bases in Afghanistan are awarded. The thread both exposes how completely byzantine the Defense Department’s contracting system is and how much work reporters have to do to get even the beginnings of a handle on who receives public funds in a warzone and why.

Manliness at Dayton

One way to measure the effect of the Women, Peace and Security agenda on international peacemaking efforts since its introduction at the United Nations in 2000 is to look back at peace efforts that immediately preceded it. In a new blog post [[link removed]], Aida Hozić looks back at the Dayton peace accords — one of the most influential diplomatic events of the 1990s — and traces the effect of its complete lack of engagement with gendered analysis.

Gender-based violence was widespread in the Bosnian War, but is not addressed at all in the accords. Instead, the agreement (and the talks it grew out of) follows what Hozić calls a “manly” model of diplomacy that focuses on military security and neoliberal economic reform.

By conditioning the accords on balancing power between patriarchal institutions, Hozić argues, the peace ended up strengthening those institutions and shutting down pathways toward more gender-inclusive reform.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] Investigation exposes Oracle’s entrails

Oracle, a front company for a yachting cartel [[link removed]] that deals in data management, turns out not to have the commitment to data nationalism that it claimed. Once considered so patriotic that the Trump administration thought it a worthy buyer for Chinese social media giant TikTok, an investigation [[link removed]] published last week shows that, for a fee, Oracle will just as happily provide data analytics to Chinese police as to American police.

Documents dating back to 2010 show that Oracle’s data management tools have helped power Chinese domestic surveillance systems by analyzing everything from banking data to video from traffic cameras. Oracle products help police keep track of the data, but they also enable “predictive policing” by offering algorithmic projections based on the inputs.

The revelations are particularly ironic, given CEO Larry Ellison’s 2018 comments chastising Google, saying that the search giant “goes into China and facilitates the Chinese government surveilling their people is pretty shocking.”

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] DEEP DIVE COVID-19 and the limits of state power: Part II

Last week, we looked at new research on how local officials in the Philippines are coping with COVID-19 in areas where rebel groups violently contest the central state’s control. This week, we’ll look at how local communities are handling COVID-19 in places where the obstacles separating the communities and the central state are less political and more geological.

In the Pacific archipelago nation of Vanuatu, made up of 80 islands that stretch across more than 800 miles of ocean, the cost of projecting state power to the edges of the country is high on a good day. The costs rise dramatically on the not-infrequent days when one of the country’s many active volcanoes begins to spew ash and lava or during cyclone season, when Vanuatu finds itself in the path of major storms. In the months since COVID-19 was first confirmed in Vanuatu, communities have been forced to deal with the pandemic alongside those and other environmental threats that have challenged the government’s ability to execute public health interventions.

A research team from the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security and the Vanuatu Fisheries Department ran a survey [[link removed]] at the start of the pandemic to see how communities coping with the costs imposed by natural disasters and environmental threats were adapting to the COVID-19 era. As if to underscore the exact problem their work highlights, the researchers conducted their survey by the only viable method for efficiently contacting local officials scattered across the country: They called their respondents on the phone.

In those phone calls, the discrepancy in government response between the more populous central islands and the more remote islands was clear. None of the seven sites on remote islands that researchers contacted had been visited by provincial task force teams working to spread information about COVID-19. By contrast, all but three of the 16 sites on primary and secondary islands included in the survey had hosted members of the provincial task forces. Yet the country’s long history with natural disasters also increased the ability of local communities to respond to the pandemic even without direct government intervention. Community disaster committees, which grew out of responses to earlier cyclones, were reactivated in many communities and tasked with everything from distributing information about social distancing to improving local food production to reduce the need for travel between islands. Information about which programs to implement was distributed by the government via radio, cell phone and social media, but in many cases it was these community organizations actually doing the implementation.

This turn toward self-sufficiency had some negative effects, however. Increased fishing to make up for a lack of food imports led to cases of ciguatera poisoning, as inexperienced fishers caught contaminated reef fish. The local merchants who supply imported goods to outlying islands faced mounting debts as the COVID-19 restrictions prevented them from doing business. Most starkly, people mostly just didn’t want to stay in remote areas if they could avoid it. Populations in areas to which people could travel shot up in the weeks after COVID-19 restrictions were put in place. The migration put some strain on resources in the central islands, but it also allowed people to access government aid that would not reach them if they remained in more remote areas.

In all, remote Vanuatu communities seem to have been quick and flexible in their COVID-19 response, even in the absence of direct intervention from the central government. The country’s history of decentralized disaster response proved valuable in areas where intersecting challenges of distance, resource strain and environmental threat prevented the state from offering uniform public health services across the islands.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] SHOW US THE RECEIPTS

Shirin Jaafari explained [[link removed]] an Amnesty International report on how Lebanese security forces have used violence against peaceful protesters in recent years. The report highlights the government’s use of munitions, including rubber bullets and tear gas canisters that Lebanese forces acquired from France. French president Emmanuel Macron garnered praise for his rhetoric backing Lebanese anti-government protesters, but the report details how France has profited by supplying the forces that repress, intimidate and injure the protesters.

Zoe Jordan and Vivek Pisharody chronicled [[link removed]] Clubhouse’s brief heyday in China. For a short time in early February, the social media app drew thousands of new users in China as its unique, audio-based structure allowed for open discussion on topics China’s internet censors usually block. The Chinese government soon caught wind of the app and shut down access to it from within China. Its swift rise, Jordan and Pisharody argued, demonstrates the demand in China for more open fora to discuss political, social, and historical issues that are currently verboten on the country’s national internet.

Rupa Shenoy spoke [[link removed]] to people honoring the memory of Moustafa Kassem, an Egyptian American who died in an Egyptian prison after an unjust trial. Kassem, a taxi driver in the US, was visiting family in Egypt in 2013 when he was arrested at a sit-in as part of a police roundup. Sentenced to 15 years in prison after a mass trial in which no evidence was presented against him, Kassem eventually went on a hunger strike to agitate for his release. He died of the effects of the strike last year. Activists who worked to free Kassem have commissioned a mural in his honor, near his former home in Queens, New York.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] WELL PLAYED

The next time you need an illustrative example of how government programs look different when executed at the periphery than when thought up in the capital, check out these [[link removed]] pictures of Brazil’s vaccination mascot.

The Freedom of Information Act is truly one of the United States’ greatest National Treasures [[link removed]].

Not only is this poem [[link removed]] brilliant, but it also provoked an astonishingly humorless response [[link removed]] that really just proves the poet’s point.

It’s a taste sensation [[link removed]], and all part of this complete breakfast [[link removed]].

Australia’s Emu War is a Critical State favorite, particularly when presented [[link removed]] in the style of a Down Under Bernard Fall [[link removed]].

Checking in [[link removed]] on the Pivot to Asia. Seems like it’s going great.

It’s a little known fact that SAM isn’t actually an acronym — it’s just that both the serf and the heir [[link removed]] were named Samuel.

As if CENTCOM didn’t have enough problems to deal with, now there’s a heavily armed zombie colonialist operating [[link removed]] off the Horn of Africa.

The key [[link removed]] to prompt municipal service provision in Russia.

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Critical State is written by Sam Ratner and is a collaboration between The World and Inkstick Media.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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