Joel Simon (1)

Amazing book about the Kidnap and Ransom insurance industry, government policies around paying ransom, and how to achieve the best outcomes for both individual hostage situations and policies overall. As I've lived/worked in high-kidnap-risk environments, this is interesting to me.

(My solution in war zones was to just spend any money I'd have spent on K&R on more security; I assumed an American kidnapped in Iraq was going to be tortured/murdered, so my plan was to try to drop everyone or go down fighting. Fortunately it never came to that, but I would not have hesitated.
Most of the other American contractors I ever talked with had the same plan; we used low-pro vehicles and such so our insurance/K&R policies were invalidated anyway.)

Overall, the author makes a case that the US/UK policy of "no negotiation, no ransom" is a bad policy, but also that the European policy if paying essentially unlimited ransom (and in the French case, massive publicity before and after release) is also bad. He makes a case for "strategic ambiguity", using private cut-outs to mask government involvement in paying ransom, and taking advantage of the ability of private parties to plead limited resources (which governments can't do), keeping the prices down.

There's long been an argument that paying ransom encourages more kidnapping, but the author makes a credible case that most kidnappings are opportunistic, not made with specific regard to the nationalities of victims. However, higher ransoms do increase kidnapper motivation overall, and some of the nation-state ransoms are so high ($30-50mm!) to actually be a major source of financing for some groups.

My suggestion is some form of this "strategic ambiguity" program combined with guaranteed retribution -- e.g. one American is kidnapped, 10 affiliates of the hostage-taker are taken, and if $10mm in ransom is paid, an extra $100mm bounty is put into a fund for 51% of the bodies of terrorists. Deterrence is one factor, but mainly just a direct "when there are no X terrorists, there will be no kidnappings conducted by X terrorists". Perhaps it would be easier for someone other than a nation-state to conduct this kind of response.… (más)

Censorship—and murder—threatens journalism

The New Censorship: Inside the Global Battle for Media Freedom by Joel Simon (Columbia University Press, $27.95).

A Japanese journalist was executed by ISIL just a few days ago, his only crime reporting on the disappearance of another Japanese journalist—also executed by ISIL. There are three Al-Jazeera journalists in prison in Egypt, accused of spying because they dared to report on protests in Cairo. A total of 61 journalists died during the course of doing their jobs in 2014.

Joel Simon, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, addresses the state of freedom of the press from a global perspective in The New Censorship: Inside the Global Battle for Media Freedom, paying close attention to trouble spots around the globe as well as explaining general trends in censorship.

He’s quick to point out—using the case of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl as one example—that not all violence against journalists comes from governments, and censorship is far from the only danger journalists face. While the Internet has opened up more opportunities to report from troubled areas and oppressive regimes, it’s also put more journalists at risk. Essentially a report, Simon relies on the facts to make his case, and doesn’t limit his criticisms to totalitarian regimes.

Reviewed on Lit/Rant: www.litrant.tumblr.com… (más)