This posting has been forwarded to you as a service of the Austin Comite de Solidaridad con Chiapas y Mexico.
NOTE BENE: The report that follows gives some of the ideas of a RAND analyst who has been monitoring our work in cyberspace. This guy contacted me last Spring after reading the piece I wrote on "The Chiapas Uprising: The Future of Class Struggle in the New World Order". (Which can be obtained via gopher eco.utexas.edu faculty/Cleaver/Cleaver papers.) He pointed out the similarities between what I had written and his own ideas. A collegue of his also contacted me and wanted to collaborate in work on the activities of NGOs in Chiapas. I told him that I didn't think the NGO's needed the information he wanted to gather, that it would only be of use to people who might cause the NGOs trouble with it. Needless to say I did NOT collaborate.
This is an example of the kind of monitoring and studying of our activity that I was talking about in a message I posted some time back. In case you missed that posting I will attach it to the end of this article.
That the other side is studying what we are doing, is only to be expected. Let's make sure that WE study what we are doing and think about the implications.(See my comments at the end of the three articles appended below.)
At the same time, we can do what they are doing, i.e., study the opposition. In the case of the following article, for instance, we can ask ourselves about the meaning of the assertion that our work might make Mexico "ungovernable". We know that this term was bandied about in Mexico in the period before the last elections. Various groups used the term to evoke fear and galvanize their own organizational efforts. The term also has a history in American policy circles. Remember the THE CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY: Report on the Governability of Democracies (1975) published by the Trilateral Commission. In the essay on the US by Samuel P. Huntington (one of three, two others were on Europe and Japan), Huntington presented an analysis of the crisis in the US as a situation in which the "balance" between democracy and "governability" had been tipped toward democracy and needed to be re-tipped in the opposite direction. In other words, the "crisis of democracy" was that there was too much democracy. (Not of the formal kind of course but of the grassroots sort, in which everyday people were interfering in the usual governing of America.)
So we know that for policy analysts the spector of "ungovernability" is a nightmare, a possibility to be avoided at all costs. Many of us, on the other hand, are fighting for just that: to make it impossible for those who would "govern" to do so, and thus to open space for a recasting of democracy in which there are not rulers and ruled, or governors and governed, but rather self-governance of the people, by the people and for the people. Hmmm have I heard that before somewhere???
The best examples I can think of from recent history in which countries became "ungovernable" are all in Eastern/Central Europe during the downfall of the Stalinist states of that area. In country after country a massive movement of people made it impossible for the communist regimes to "govern" and they collapsed, opening the way to new forms of politics and new kinds of social relationships. Now, we may not like the way the situation has evolved in those countries, but most would probably agree that those revolutions were successful in removing undemocratic regimes and opening the way to more fluid change. The usual spector raised by policy makers, of course, is that ungovernerability quickly becomes lawless chaos (of the sort depicted in Somalia and Ruwanda --or Road Warrior for that matter). This has always been the ploy of rulers, to present themselves as the only reasonable option, as the only way to avoid the disintegration of civilized behavior. (I'm going to leave aside for the moment the issue of the historical weight of the term "civilization" and assume the usual commonplace meaning, i.e., the ability of large numbers of people to live together with all their differences and similarities without so much antagonism that relationships dissolve into continuing violence and bloodshed.)
But what about Mexico? "Ungovernability" today can only mean the breakdown in the ability of the "government" (i.e., the PRI party-state) to "govern" (i.e., maintain its power). This is exactly what the Zapatistas have called for, and what so many in Mexico desire (as well as many of us outside Mexico).
Now, please note: the emphasis in the Rand analyst's work is on "ungovernability" NOT on what might replace the PRI's ability to govern. Yet in the situation he describes (and I have discussed elsewhere --the article above and the introduction to ZAPATISTAS! DOCUMENTS OF THE NEW MEXICAN REVOLUTION --at gopher lanic.utexas.edu Latin American/Mexico) is something far more interesting: elements of alternative ways of organizing Mexican political and social life. The analyst sees that the grassroots movment that has been using cyberspace as part of its self-organization "doesn't have the ability to take power", but doesn't recognize how the new networks are increasingly made up of people who do not WANT to "take power", of people who do not want ANYBODY to "take power", of people who are working out conceptions of politics where "power" is either abolished, or reconceptualized in new, truly democractic ways.
That their "lack of centralized authority makes them less susceptible to cooptation or repression" doesn't strike him as also providing a model for a more democratic society in which "repression" and "cooptation" are made much more difficult through the organization of the polity. Yet, that is exactly what we should be striving for within the organizational fabrics we weave. That is exactly what all those who have fought against the "centralized authority" of rulers/governors/state-bureaucrats have long sought. The fabrics we weave today are complex things. They resonate with some old models --say the direct democracy of some indigenous villages-- but they are also woven within a completely new context: a global capitalism in which communications makes it increasingly difficult for the would-be rulers to divide (through ignorance) and conquer (via repression or cooptation). Now those electronic communications are not some neutral technology, even though it may seem that way at first glance, as capitalists continue to maintain their very hierarchical power structures using the same circuits that we use to undermine them and construct alternative sets of relationships. Indeed, the original network, ARPANET, was created by the Advanced Research Projects Agency to facilitate the circulation of research for the Defense Department. But out of that has grown not only the Internet but cyberspace in which diverse and often conflicting goals are pursued, from commercial ventures such as America Online or Compuserve to activist networks like PeaceNet and EcoNet, from the reinforcement of capitalist power to systematic attempts to undermine it. There is no longer a single "electronic communication technology" but rather the nets themselves with all their structures AND contents constitute alternative technologies being elaborated within diverse contexts for diverse purposes. Those of us who are using the nets to fight for democracy are constructing the technology as we proceed, we are not just "users" as the big companies would have us believe.
So, we have to be very self-conscious about what we are constructing as we go along. What are the politics of what we are constructing, both in cyberspace and within the larger space within which we live and fight. If it serves no other purpose, perusal of this report on RAND research, should stimulate our collective thinking about how what we are doing can contribute "in the doing" to the construction of new, alternative ways of social being in which "governability" is put behind us, permanently.
Harry
---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 11:26:27 -0500 (EST) To: hmcleave@arrow.eco.utexas.edu Subject: netwars? (fwd) Content-Length: 7158 COPYRIGHT PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE 450 Mission Street, Room 506 San Francisco, CA 94105 415-243-4364
NEWS ANALYSIS-665 WORDS
EDITOR'S NOTE: While media attention focuses on the turmoil within Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, another destabilizing force, which Rand Corp. national security expert David F. Ronfeldt dubs "netwar," is spreading. Netwar enables widely dispersed and highly marginalized opposition groups to coordinate strategies utilizing new information technologies. While their lack of central authority makes it unlikely they could take power, they could make Mexico ungovernable. PNS contributing editor Joel Simon reports regularly from Mexico.
BY JOEL SIMON, PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE
MEXICO CITY -- While Mexico reels from the worst financial and political crisis in decades, a low intensity "netwar" is also spreading across the country. That's the conclusion of social scientist David F. Ronfeldt of the Santa Monica-based Rand think tank who studies the impact of new information technologies on national security.
Ronfeldt and a colleague coined the term netwar to describe what happens when loosely-affiliated networks -- social activists, terrorists, or drug cartels -- use new information technologies to coordinate action. Throughout the world, these networks are replacing "hierarchies" as the primary form of political organization among opponents of the state.
Whatever the outcome of the current turmoil in the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and the gains scored by the conservative National Action Party (PAN), Ronfeldt argues that netwar will ultimately change the country's political equation by giving even the most marginalized leftist opposition new clout. "The risk for Mexico is not an old-fashioned civil war or another social revolution," he notes. "The risk is social netwar."
The impact of the netwarriors is already clear. In 1993, opponents of the North American Free Trade Agreement used fax machines and the Internet to coordinate strategy. During the August 1994 Presidential elections, a watchdog group called Civic Alliance organized a network of observers throughout the country who faxed reports on voting irregularities back to Mexico City.
Even the Zapatista Army of National Liberation is fighting a form of netwar. The August 1994 National Democratic Convention brought together hundreds of diverse groups in the rebels' jungle stronghold to fashion a de-centralized opposition. That they succeeded was evidenced last month when thousands marched in Mexico City to protest the Zedillo Administration's arrest warrant for Subcomander Marcos, chanting "We Are All Marcos." Rebel supporters around the world followed developments by reading Zapatista communiques on the Internet.
Precisely because of their de-centralization, the netwarriors don't have the ability to take national power. But, Ronfeldt predicts, they are a growing political force which could make the country ungovernable. And their lack of any central authority makes them far less vulnerable to cooptation or repression.
Who are the netwarriors? They are the traditional leftist opponents of the PRI, groups fighting for democratic change, as well as an array of special interests, from peasant organizations to gay rights groups. At a time when the political and economic crisis has created widespread disaffection, Ronfeldt theorizes that network-style organizing will enable the opposition to overcome its traditional factionalism. The greatest threat to the government could be hundreds or thousands of independent groups united in their opposition but "accepting of each other's autonomy."
Ronfeldt argues the international non-government organizations (NGOs) operating in Mexico provide a "multiplier effect" for netwarriors. Electronic communication allows Mexican groups to stay in touch with U.S. and Canadian organizations which share their goals and can coordinate an international response in the event of a government crackdown. These groups are media savvy in a way Mexicans may not be; they also have access to the international media. Global Exchange, a small humanitarian organization in San Francisco, is one example. It began denouncing human rights abuses and mobilizing protests in the U.S. only hours after government troops dislodged Zapatista rebels from villages last December.
Netwar is not unique to political groups, however. Terrorist organizations and drug cartels are also becoming less hierarchical and thus harder to control, says Ronfeldt. The Sicilian Mafia is losing ground to less centralized drug cartels.
Ronfeldt acknowledges that the potential for transnational netwar in Mexico is limited by the deficiencies in the nation's phone system. "Netwar doesn't work unless lots of different small groups can coordinate...and that requires high band-width communication." While fax machines have become ubiquitous in Mexico, electronic communication is only starting to take hold.
Still, Ronfeldt cautions that "The country that produced the prototype social revolution of the 20th century may now be giving rise to the prototype social netwar of the 21st century." If so, the Mexican government will have its hands full.
(03131995) **** END **** COPYRIGHT PNS
------- End of Article on Rand Research-------
What follows is a reposting of earlier reflections on other examples of being watched.
From hmcleave@mundoMon Mar 20 11:29:01 1995 Date: Sun, 5 Mar 1995 11:09:51 -0600 (CST) From: "Harry M. Cleaver" <hmcleave@mundo> Subject: Media Recognition: Opportunities and Dangers Mar.5 To: Chiapas95 <chiapas95@mundo.eco.utexas.edu> Message-ID: <Pine.3.89.9503050922.B17175-0100000@mundo> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Over the last 10 days or so, the mass media has begun to report on what we are doing in and with cyberspace. The following 3 items are examples of the kind of reporting on our work that is being done. Some comments follow these three examples.
ITEM #1: Tod Robberson, "Mexican Rebels Using A High-Tech Weapon; Internet Helps Rally Support" WASHINGTON POST, Feb. 20, 1995, pg. A1 (complete article)
SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico: They have waged war on the ground with stick rifles and World War II vintage guns, but in fighting the international propaganda war, the rebels of the Zapatista National Liberation Army have invaded cyberspace.
With help from peace activists and rebel support groups here in southern Chiapas state, the Zapatista message is spreading around the world, literally at lightning speed, thanks to telephone links to the Internet computer network.
Ever since the rebels, most of them peasant Indians, launched their uprising here 13 months ago, Chiapas has become one of the hottest informational topics on the Internet, with computer linkups enabling Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos to circulate his communiques worldwide, at virtually the push of a button, via Internet bulletin boards like PeaceNet, Chiapas-List, Mexpaz and Mexico 94.
A week ago, President Ernesto Zedillo became acquainted with the power at Marcos's fingertips through the Internet when the president announced the start of a military offensive aimed at capturing the ski-masked Zapatista leader and bringing the rebellion to a decisive close.
Within hours, "cyber-peaceniks" and human rights activists here and elsewhere in Mexico had distributed the president's words verbatim via the Internet -- along with a call for "urgent action" to press Zedillo into reversing course. Included in their computer messages was the direct fax number to Zedillo's office, as well as the fax line to Interior Minister Esteban Moctezuma.
"I don't know how effective the campaign was, but I do know that Zedillo's fax machine broke or was eventually turned off," said Mariclaire Acosta, president of the Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights. She estimated hundreds of faxes were sent to the president, who eventually changed tack and ordered his troops to halt their advance.
[Ed.Note by the person who originally posted the story to the net: Actually they did not halt their advance, but have continued deeper into the jungle, and in a number of documented cases have been torturing and killing locals to try and get more info.on the EZLN leaders.]
The Chiapas rebels are only the latest group embroiled in conflict or afflicted by disaster to use the Internet to disseminate information and opinion around the globe -- and given the huge volume, apparently the most successful in mobilizing international support. Peru and Ecuador have used it in their border claims. Warring factions in Bosnia, separatists in Chechnya and relief organizations in quake-striken Kobe, Japan all circulated reports --some of which reached news organizations
"The Internet is the best vehicle we have to spread information around. Before, we used faxes and telephones, and it took forever," Acosta explained. "Now the information arrives like this," she said, snapping her fingers. "The feedback is instantaneous."
It remains a matter of speculation whether Marcos, recently identified by the government as Rafael Sebastian Guillen, or any other top Zapatista leader has hooked into the Internet directly, although acquaintances say the rebel leaders are no strangers to computers and high technology. When federal police raided alleged Zapatista safe houses in Mexico City and the southern state of Veracruz last week, they found as many computer diskettes as bullets. Reporters were allowed to examine the captured rebel computer equipment at a press conference in Mexico City.
According to federal legislator Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, who met with Marcos at a jungle hideout last year, the rebel leader typically would write his voluminous communiques on a laptop computer, which he carried in a backpack and plugged into the lighter socket of an old pickup truck he used when traveling between the remote Zapatista strongholds of La Garrucha and Guadalupe Tepeyac. Today, both villages are firmly under Mexican army control, while the whereabouts of Marcos and his followers remains a mystery.
Nevertheless, Marcos's communiques continue to flow unimpeded through cyberspace, usually reaching readers in countries as distant as Italy, Germany and Russia faster than they can be published by most Mexican newspapers. When the communiques do reach the local press, they appear to have been formatted and printed on a computer.
If Marcos is equipped with a telephone modem and a cellular phone, it would be possible for him to hook into the Internet even while on the run, as he is now.
"People have talked about trying to get Marcos online . . . but so far it hasn't happened, at least as far as we know," said Harry Cleaver, a University of Texas economics professor and frequent supplier of Chiapas -related news on the Internet.
Cleaver and other Internet users compiled a book last year, published in the United States, drawn in part from information and essays about Chiapas transmitted through the Internet. The translation and editing of the book, "Zapatistas! Documents of the New Mexican Revolution," was coordinated through the Internet, Cleaver said.
The information exchange has drawn the attention of the Mexican government. Among the government's targets for search and arrest warrants here last week was the office of Jorge Santiago Santiago, a social worker and recipient of grants from numerous international aid organizations, including Britain's Oxfam, who was a frequent contributor to the Internet dialogue on Chiapas. Zedillo accused him of being a Zapatista commander. Santiago is currently under arrest on charges of treason.
The Catholic Church's human rights office in San Cristobal, another heavy contributor to Internet's Chiapas data, was so concerned about the possibility of government interference that it refused to allow a reporter into its computer room to observe employees working on line.
"Our mission is strictly informative," said the Rev. Pablo Romo, head of the church's Fray Bartolome Human Rights Center. "We use the Internet to inform people abroad of what is happening here, but mainly to counter the government's disinformation."
For example, he said, "the government circulated a rumor through [the official news agency] Notimex that I had been arrested. Without the Internet, I would have had to spend days on the phone, . . . to tell everyone that it wasn't true. Now, I just send a message to the bulletin board, and the word goes out instantly."
Acosta and other Internet users belonging to a confederation of nongovernmental human rights organizations say their offices have been ransacked and phone lines tampered with because of their computer communications.
Critics charge that the Internet is being used by Zapatista supporters to distort recent events. When the army began mobilizing, for example, word went out on the Internet that San Cristobal was surrounded by tanks and armored cars. While it was true that the army prsence had increased throughout Chiapas, no tanks were to be found anywhere in the state.
One user group here sent out a report that airborne bombardments were underway in several named mountain villages and urged an international protest. They passed on rebel assertions that women were being raped and children killed. But reporters who visited those areas and interviewed scores of witnesses said they were unable to confirm even one such incident.
The self-declared rebel governor of Chiapas, Amado Avendano, used the Internet to distribute an urgent plea to his North American supporters to travel to Chiapas. "We know we can count on America's best men and women, who will know how to . . . impede fratricide in our nation. There is an urgent need for international observers to serve as witnesses to the events we are denouncing," he wrote.
Some users with access to Chiapas related computer bulletin boards have posted messags urging measures to weed out untruthful entries. Others aregue, however, that such proposals smack of censorship.
Nevertheless, the unsubstantiated assertions of army atrocities prompted hundreds of Zapatista supporters to converge on San Cristobal from as far away as San Francisco and Oregon in recent days.
----end of article---
ITEM #2: Russell Watson et al, "When Words are the Best Weapon. Revolution: Information can undermine dictatorships, and the faster it flows, the more trouble they're in. How Rebels use the Internet and satellite TV." NEWSWEEK, February 27, 1995, pp. 36-40. (excerpts)
Here's how to wage a revolution in the Information Age: two weeks ago Mexican government troops lunged into the rain forests of Chiapas state in renewed pursuit of the Zapatista rebels. Wehn the federal soldiers reached an insurgent stronghold at Guadalupe Tepeyac, the guerrillas melted into the jungle, leaving behind a few trucks but taking with them their most valuable equipment --fax machines and laptop computers. In retreat, the Zapatistas faxed out a communique claiming that the army was "killing children,beating and raping women . . . and bombing us." Soon the government was taking another public relations beating. It stopped the offensive and allowed reporters into the area. They found no signs of atrocities or bombing. But the government attack had been thwarted, and the rebels were free to fight on, with words as their best weapons.
The Zapatistas' chief spokesman, Subcommandante Marcos (the government says his name is Rafael Guillen), knows that he will never obtain political power from the barrel of a gun. "What governments should really fear," he told a NEWSWEEK reporter last summer, "is a communications expert". Information technology has always been seen as a potentially revolutionary weapon. Almost as soon as the printing press was invented, governments and churches tried to control it, and the Ottoman Empire shunned the technology for almost 300 years. The Amercian Revolution was spurred on by Benjamin Franklin, a printer; Thomas Paine, a pamphleteer, and Samuel Adams, a propagandist. In the modern era, vulnerable governments have been challenged by proliferating means of communication. Long-distance telephone service, for example, helped to undermine the Soviet Union, connecting dissidents to each other and to supporters outside the country. Other Communist regimes have been weakened by radio and television signals [. . .]
[. . . ]
On a much more modest scale, the Internet also has become a platform for the Zapatistas. One of the services offering information about the movement is run from Mexico City by Barbara Pillsbury, a 24-year old American who works for a development organization. She transmits bulletins about the Zapatistas and communiques from Subcommandante Marcos to subscribers around the world. (Her internet address: pueblo@laneta.apc.org) She says interest in the Zapatistas helped introduce many Mexicans to cyberspace. [. . .]
[. . .]
Even in less rigid dictatorships, communications technology cannot make a revolution by itself. [. . .] But the flow of information helps to undermine such regimes, and the faster it flows, the more trouble they're in. Few states can afford to opt out of teh Information Age; they have to keep up with at least some of the latest scientific, technical and commercial developments. [. . .] If dictatorships want to play any part in the modern world, they have to risk exposing themselves to ideas and information that could inspire reform or spark a revolution"
----end of article----
ITEM #3: TV Globo and CNN Sunday February 26, 1997
The New York producers of the Brazilian TV network TV Globo, called me in my office as part of a story they were doing on the use of cyberspace by the Zapatistas and those supporting the struggle for democracy in Mexico. They wanted to know if the latest Zapatista communiques were available on-line. While I e-mailed the communiques to them, they filmed the texts on their computers sitting in their studio. The report they put together combined images of Chiapas, pure audio, images of the Zapatistas, images of computer screens scrolling through the communiques, images of the White Guard attack on the cathedral and its defenders in Chiapas. Over these images was an account of the way we have been using cyberspace to spread information about what is happening in Chiapas and to mobilize support to oppose the military crackdown. They reported the overload of protest faxes to Zedillo and said as a result "He ordered a retreat." --which overstated the case drastically. They showed taping into the lanic files via gopher and noted the use of net by human rights groups. The report ended with the reporter asking "I wonder what would have happened if Karl Marx or Che Guevara had had access to the Internet?"
The report interested CNN enough for them to run it on their weekend World Report Sunday, February 26th.
Comments:
We are watched. We are read. There are a number of issues here that it would be useful for people to pay attention to.
First, on the positive side, mass media reports may facilitate our work by leading more people to be aware of what we are doing and how we are doing it, such that they join in. As a result of being named in the Washington Post article I have received several letters asking for more information by people wanting to help.
Second, the same publicity certainly makes our enemies more aware of what we are doing and of its effectiveness. We have evidence of three kinds of responses. We know that military consultants are studying what we are doing and treating it as a kind of low-level insurgency. I was contacted last Spring by two researchers at RAND Corporation --a think tank that does much work for the state, including the military-- who had read a paper I wrote last February dealing with (in part) the use of cyberspace in the struggle. They wanted to share ideas and collaborate! I followed up enough to read some of their stuff and discovered their views on these issues. We also know that outside the state, the exteme right wing is also monitoring our activities --including the LaRouche people. Such proto-fascists can be extremely dangerous. I know of activists (in the anti-nuclear power movment) who were attacked physically as a result of their activities being monitored and reported by the LaRouche organization. We know that they are already talking about infiltrating the peace brigades being organized for Chiapas. Lastly, we know that there are well-intentioned types within such capitalist policy making institutions such as the World Bank who are passing on our information to attempt to influence policy in more humane directions.
Third, so far it is obvious that we are using the mass media as a source of information far more than they are using our material. The information we produce and circulate --what the Italians call "counterinformation"-- is designed precisely to get the real story out, the story the press and TV are not reporting, or not reporting accurately. So far, from what I have seen, the big media have used our activities for stories, but not our information, while we, on the other hand, continually monitor what they do report while assessing its usefulness and accuracy. In the story above Tod Robberson impunes the accuracy of our information with unnamed sources and fails to report what we all know: namely that misinformation gets queried and challenged and corrected here infinitely faster than it does in the mainstream media --which prints corrections on back pages if at all.
Fourth, as a result of these phenomena I think we should make concerted efforts to:
1. keep track of and document the back and forth between our work here in cyberspace and elsewhere, i.e., the paths by which our information reaches and influences those who are not in cyberspace, the feedback loops by which the activities spurred by those influences are reflected in and have an impact on what we do here. For example, I think it is very important for our own energy levels to consistently report on protest activities prompted by or fueled by information we have provided. One of the important lessons of every major protest movement in recent decades has been that individuals have more energy to fight when they can see how their own, limited individual efforts are part of a much wider movement.
2. We, or at least some of us, should keep a careful eye on the activities and discussions of our enemies: HOW they are monitoring us, WHO is monitoring us, what they are SAYING about what we are doing, what COUNTERMEASURES they are taking against what we are doing. We need to do these things because even if we do not want to view them as "enemies" many of them DO view us as enemies and are proceeding accordingly. Counterinsurgency professionals do this for a living and they believe it it. Marcos got labeled a "professional of violence" by those who really deserve the title! As far as those who are acting as intelligence providers for institutions like the World Bank but do not think of themselves as our enemies, perhaps even feel they are on our side, well, we can certainly deal with them individually as well-intentioned persons, but it is still important to recognize and watch how the institutions they are trying to influence actually behaves in the light of the information it is provided. The Bank in particular has demonstrated a certain capacity for neutralizing some of its opponents by internalizing them, i.e., giving them jobs as professional curmudgeons within the Bank. We need to watch these things to understand what threatens us and how best to deal with it.
3. We really should mobilize the "Lies of Our Times"-type critics of the distortions of the mass media to document the misrepresentations and lack of reporting that has been going on. The greatest "unreported story of 1995", at least so far, is the story of the continuing push by the Army --despite the Mexican governments denials-- and their brutal treatment of campesinos and grassroots activists in Chiapas.
4. At the same time, we need to keep track of where and how we HAVE been successful at influencing what the mass media has reported correctly. For example, when Ken Silverstein and Alexander Cockburn published their story on the infamous Chase Manhattan report calling for the elimination of the Zapatistas and the stealing of the elections in Jalisco very few people read it in COUNTERPUNCH simply because their newsletter has a very limited readership. After we uploaded their story AND the report itself to the nets, the situation changed dramatically. Not only were both items reposted over and over again on a wide variety of lists and conferences, but they were soon being discussed in the Mexican press and then the American press and then in Europe etc. Partly, that success story was due to the intrinsic drama of the report. But more important, I think, was our ability to get that drama to so many places that it could not be ignored and therefore wasn't. Now, it is also of interest to consider who did what with it. I know that the Perot people, the Nader people and other anti-NAFTA people used it for their purposes of condemning the agreement they had been unable to block. Mexican nationalists used it to object to Zedillo following the orders of Wall Street. Anti-capitalists used it to demonstrate the perfidity of capitalism --once again. Financial democracry types (those calling for the demoratization of the Fed) used it to attack financial monopoly power. And so on. By understanding the array of forces susceptible to use information we provide, we are more likely to be effective.
5. After surveying the material we have been providing on the nets, I am struck by another thing: we are doing a better job at circulating news and analysing it than at providing more indepth material. Yet there is no reason why we cannot do this. Certainly some material is best provided in bookform, indeed can only be provided that way due the need of authors for copyrighted publications. However, the book Zapatistas:Documents of the New Mexican Revolution mentioned in the Robberson story above is a good counterexample. Not only was that book generated through the nets, but it was posted at lanic.utexas.edu BEFORE it was published by Autonomedia in Brooklyn. A certain number of more indepth pieces have circulated but a great many that might have, or still should have, have not. Some of us scurry around to get what we need from whatever source, hard copy, e-text, NPR, TV clips, etc. But a great many people cannot do that and it would be better if more material was at their fingertips and easily accessible. Therefore, I would encourage the uploading of useful material, including articles published elsewhere in hard print. The authors can usually do this by retaining copyrights. Others can get permission. A rapidly growing percentage of authors are crafting their material on computers and therefore their material exists in e-text form. It is just a matter of knowing it is there, seeing its usefulness and uploading it. The same goes, obviously, for a variety of media that can be made available on the World Wide Web --photos, speeches, reports, etc.
Enough. All these comments are simply suggestions as to how we might do what we are doing even better, and avoid some dangers. As we care on the struggle to roll back the power of the Mexican state (and that of the US government, the IMF, etc), we also need to develop the highest state of self-awareness possible about what we are doing, how we are doing it, what is most effective and what threatens that effectiveness. I would end with a call for more frequent discussion of these issues as a part of our ongoing work.
Harry