Jorge M. Cino

A Promise and a Threat: WikiLeaks’ “Anonymous” and the Shaping of Online Protest

Well, it’s been difficult not taking sides on the WikiLeaks’ scandal and, more precisely, Julian Assange’s dubious ethical standards. In the article I wrote for Tikkun Daily last month, I focused on the two aspects of this issue that progressive minds and Internet enthusiasts should remain aware of once the scandal dies down: it seems to me that the intra-governmental reaction to the information leak is indicative of what certain democratic government think the Internet should not do, and that, contrary to the average surfer’s perception, big private companies are the ones who own the online places where we hang out, receive our information, and store a lot of valuable information on. Users are dependent on privately-owned companies to manage their personal information as well as how they receive information with which they process reality. The major problem to this is that those services aren’t equally dependent on us; they actually depend on the economic and governamental status quo. Every time the Internet shows its truly “horizontal” potential, the more obvious the power struggle.

Online social protest has huge potential to help real-world social activism, but between its logical shortcomings (mostly based on the fact that its mechanics are just being shaped) and structural powers attempting to control the medium, we have to observe and analyse how big shakes like the WikiLeaks infowar shape online democracy.

About two months after Malcolm Gladwell’s notorious (and notoriously dismissive) proclamation, “The revolution will not be tweeted,” we find ourselves in the middle of the Wikigate scandal. There is a metaphysical lesson in there, I’m sure.

Now that WikiLeaks — legitimately or otherwise — has leaked a massive amount of confidential information, and now that different agencies of control — legitimately or otherwise — are trying to punish its founder and indirectly intimidate those who might attempt something similar in the future, a different kind of battle is being shaped: the battle over who gets to control the digital space. From our point of view, this means: who gets to voice their opinion online and how will online protest techniques be shaped? How can we make them have the largest impact possible? In the near future, protesting online will become as important as following causes or donating money, and social media will play a big role in shaping how those protests are expressed, as well as their effectiveness. This is something that progressives need to keep an eye on.

As Peter Marmorek pointed out in “The WikiLeaks Infowar,” as soon as the information leak first began, first-world governments — but most actively, the government of the United States — quickly went through great pains to pressure big companies to formally stop letting people support, get access to, or donate money to WikiLeaks. Mastercard and Visa don’t allow clients donations to be made, PayPal blocked those accounts that had previously given money to WikiLeaks, and online retailer Amazon hosted WikiLeaks for less than a week: as soon as the nonprofit media site posted its exposé, the financial sites cut it off.

Read the rest of the article at Tikkun Daily.

Costco – “Bargain Hunting”

A collaborative photo essay….

Bargain Hunting

Photos by Monty Suwannukul

Words by Jorge Cino

Costco sells Baby stuff, Toys & Games, Books/CDs/DVDs/, Electronics, Instruments, Sports stuff, Computers, Food, Jewelry, Floral, Beauty Stuff, Décor stuff, Furniture, Houseware Stuff, Office products, Outdoor stuff, Pet stuff and more Baby stuff.

Tabula Rasa proposes that a person is born without any preconceptions; life itself ultimately shapes our personality, our psychological makeup, and perhaps even our intelligence.

Costco is your age; its first store opened in Seattle in 1983. When you were a child, your parents would sit you in the shopping cart and let you be the captain of the ship. Sometimes they would even let you push the cart. You stood at the foot of a wall of GI Joes and Barbies lined up by the hundreds. Everything felt so massive, so endless in that giant cement castle. Mom would buy you a toy and Dad might get you a hotdog or a smoothie. The family’s car went back home a good deal heavier.

Read the rest at GeneralMonty.com

Debating Social Activism In the Age of Tweeting, Blogging, and Facebook-ing

“[Social media] makes it easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have any impact.”

This provocative assertion was made by Malcolm Gladwell in his New Yorker piece, “Small Change,” published earlier this month.

To sum it up quickly, Gladwell’s article is centered around what kind of activism social-media outlets are really motivating. Specifically, he talks about Twitter and Facebook, and omits -though it is public knowledge- that he doesn’t use and doesn’t like Twitter. But we’ll let that slide. The article first relates the story of four African-Americans who, in 1960, were refused service at a restaurant in Greensboro, NC, for having sat down on seats that were reserved for “white people.” The episode sparked a massive and violent student protest which “became a civil-rights war that engulfed the South for the rest of the decade – and it happened without e-mail, texting, Facebook, or Twitter.”

By the end of the article you’ll see that he clearly thinks that Internet-based social activism is effective only when it requires 1) less effort, 2) less personal involvement, and 3) less hierarchical organization than when it does not. Following this logic, we could say that it’s easy to retweet someone else’s message about a rally happening somewhere, and it’s easy to like it on Facebook and say you will be attending the event, but when it comes to actually making phone calls, and printing out flyers, and organizing meetings, or putting our personal freedom at risk, our motivation to participate quickly fades. Problem is, Gladwell explains, that real, radical social movements have always required high-risk actions and close ties among their members, not to mention a strong organizational component. Gladwell concludes that social media today is useful only for small-scale, low-involvement social participation.

Several social-media critics have answered to Gladwell’s claims, including Twitter co-founder Biz Stone himself. Most of them disagree with Gladwell’s assessment. Some

smart readers do too.They criticize Gladwell for making an unfair comparison between “Twitter activism” and the Civil Rights Movement, and they say that Gladwell is making a big mistake by dismissing the entire spectre of possibilities of social networking. His view, they say, is anachronistic and unrealistic. The world doesn’t function and doesn’t organize itself the same way it did in the 60s. The enemies are different. So are the players.

But it seems that we are missing the opportunity to frame the discussion in a more valuable, deeper, and urgent direction. This debate shouldn’t become a question of whether Twitter and Facebook favor one kind of activism over another, or if they make us more idle or more participatory in the face of civil struggle. Rather, the central matters here are 1) How can users take advantage of these tools to advance those causes that matter to them? 2) How can leaders use these tools to foster a sense of loyalty and engagement within their base? 3) How can the technology itself continue to be shaped so that more effective tools become available to us?

Read the rest of the article at Tikkun Daily.

Diálisis (una crónica sólo parcialmente inventada)

An experimental-ish short story of mine just got published in the wonderfully quirky and sophisticated Revista eSe, which hunts for young, emerging Latin American writers from around the globe. My aesthetic aim, if you will, was to play with the rhythm line and stanza breaks help achieve in poetry, as well as using the ominous and forceful declarative sentences seen in gospel writing.

Un pastor evangélico predica a medio millar de sus seguidores en la plaza central de la ciudad, gratis.

Ante miles y miles de miradas —esperanzadas y desesperadas a la vez— el pastor promete — dice saber— que este país caído en desgracia pronto será bendecido con paz y prosperidad.

Éste es el momento, el pastor indica, para que de una buena vez el pueblo unido deje su historia de demonios en el pasado.
La salvación está siempre disponible para todos.

Un día después, ese domingo, doce hinchas son asesinados durante la sexta fecha del torneo nacional de fútbol.
Violencia entre barras rivales.

Se toman medidas punitivas contra los clubes de fútbol; se promete redoblar el número de uniformados para la siguiente fecha; la policía va detrás de la evidencia y se queda atrás. Los jugadores de fútbol se lamentan; los familiares de las víctimas piden justicia; los periodistas informan algunos datos e ignoran otros tantos.

El Ejecutivo califica el episodio como una tragedia.

Un hecho aislado.

La gente común —los riñones del pueblo— se pregunta: ¿por qué ocurrió este hecho cuando el pastor había prometido exactamente lo opuesto?

Read the rest of this story at Revista eSe.

Note: I’m sorry that I can’t make Dialysis available in English right at this moment, although it was originally written in that language. As a general rule, I intend to republish a .pdf version of a published story in the “other” language. In other words, if some journal or magazine publishes a story of mine in English, you’ll be able to find its Spanish version here, if I have gotten around to translating it.

But because this story is under review in several American journals, I have to refrain and present to you only the version in Spanish. Good time to practice your Spanish, though—or run the text through Google Translate (no, please don’t do that – though I am slightly curious…).

Coming (and Being) “Out” as a Spiritual Path

Although my humor could be categorized as “sarcastic x 1000,” and my observations on daily life are usually razor sharp, and my fiction is demential, I am indeed a spiritual person who is deeply worried about the state of the world. This is why I’m happy to be a web editor intern at Tikkun Magazine, a Jewish, independent, not-for-profit publication about politics, religion, and culture.

The best part? They are pro-interfaith, and pro-gay rights. I wouldn’t work there otherwise. And so, in observance of National Coming Out Day, they encouraged me to write a post about the ramifications of coming (and living) out. Yippee.

So:

“For those of us who have come out of the closet, National Coming Out Day – which is being internationally celebrated today – is a good reminder of the spiritual journey each of us have undergone since the fateful day we decided to say, ‘Enough. I am who I am, and from today onwards I will live by it.’

The idea that coming out is a defining spiritual moment in a person’s life is not something you’ll find in mainstream LGBT discourse. Understandably so, of course: those who control religious discourse in America and elsewhere have done a tremendously effective job at turning gay people against organized religion. Ask a gay guy if they believe in God and an overwhelming majority of them will say, ‘I don’t think so,’ or ‘No, I don’t.’”

Please read the rest of this entry on Tikkun Daily. It’s not an easy read, but I think it raises some good points I will continue investigating in the coming years. I am primarily concerned (and fascinated) by the incongruencies we gay folks show as “gay individuals” versus as “the gay community.” I’ll explain more on this soon.

—jorge cino