Chasing Dragons

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 55

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'Surveillance Suspected as Spacecraft's Main Role' by William J. Broad at nytimes.com

• 'Killer Entertainments' by Jennifer Terry at vectorsjournal.org

• 'Obama's Missing Moral Narrative' by George Lakoff at truthout.org

• 'Bourgeois Property-based Rights and their Exclusions' at Lenin's Tomb

• 'And so Cameron's First Victims Are...' by Johann Hari at johannhari.com

• 'Jamaica Bleeds for Our "War on Drugs"' by Ben Bowling at guardian.co.uk

For those stateside or in the UK, enjoy the long / bank holiday weekend!

Photo credit: atomicshark

The Parliament Square Peace Camp: An Early Test of Tory Commitment to Civil Liberties?

Several media outlets--including the Guardian, the Independent, and the Telegraph --are reporting today that London Mayor Boris Johnson (Con) is seeking a High Court action to remove peace protesters who have been camping outside the Houses of Parliament.

The removal has the support of the local Conservative Council and Tory members of Parliament, all of whom seem to miss the irony of attempting to remove peaceful protesters from Parliament Square on the very same day that David Cameron presented his commitment to 'restore' the right to peaceful protest as part of the throne speech. 

Mark Field, the Conservative member of Parliament for the Cities of London and Westminster, provides some insight into the rationale, by attempting to justify the removal of the peace camp because it's 'an appalling eyesore.' This sentiment reveals just how shallow the Tory commitment to civil liberties really is.

The right to non-violent protest is the right to non-violent protest. It can't be overlooked because it is aesthetically unpleasant. It can't be dismissed because it may cause disruption. And it can't be over-ruled because a government and/or members of the general public find it offensive. A commitment to civil liberties is best demonstrated when demonstrating this commitment is the least easy option to pursue. In this regard, the Conservatives have failed their first test. This failure does not bode well for the future, given that the policies pursued by the this government--like any government--will catalyze a great deal of protest.  

Therefore, early indications are that the Tory commitment to the right to peaceful protest--and to civil liberties more generally-- is a rhetorical ruse, a means of appearing more humane while they--and the Liberal Democrats--orchestrate a series of devastating cuts to the public sector that will prove to be deeply unpopular once their effects are experienced.

Lest one be seduced by this ruse--and given Labour's appalling record on this front it's easy to be seduced--remember that the Conservatives are the political party that previously passed legislation (e.g., the Employment Acts of 1980, 1982, 1988) that undermined long-standing labour rights--and note that re-establishing labour rights does not appear in the coalition's manifesto. Remember too that the Conservatives were also the party that introduced the Public Order Act (1986) and subsequent amendments which dramatically undermined the right to Public Assembly. 

It just goes to show how bizarre UK political culture has become, when given their track record, the Tories are being portrayed in some quarters as the champions of civil liberties.

Photo credit: Josh Heald

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 54

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'Partners with Apartheid' by Sasha Polakow-Suransky at guernicamag.com

• 'Bangkok: The Future of Urban War' by Martin Coward at martincoward.net

• 'Darth Vader's Guide to Winning Your Political Campaign' at killercampaigning.com

• 'France's Pupils to View Cinema Classics in the Classroom' by Lizzy Davies at guardian.co.uk

• 'Why Middlesex Matters' by Jon Protevi at timeshigher.co.uk (or why it is an unwise decision to close the highly regarded philosophy department at Middlesex University)

• And last but not least, 'The Coalition: Our Programme for Government' (see paragraph 1, p. 35 for the true priority) available here

Enjoy your weekend!

Photo credit: kevindooley

Happy 30th Birthday Pac-Man!!!

Pac-Man made by Neave Games

Pac-Man, the classic arcade game that helped to launch the home video game console revolution, turned 30 years old today. It's amazing to see how far the technological and programming capacity has moved in three decades. Moreover, it's also great be reminded just how well these early games were designed!

What Makes Political Campaigns Go Viral? Five Lessons from the Founder of MyDavidCameron.com

Clifford Singer, founder of Bubblewrapped, the Other TaxPayers' Alliance, and MyDavidCameron.com has published a concise audit of the factors that made some of these endeavors successful and others--in the words of Borat-- not so much.

With on-line political campaigns that rely on 'word-of-mouth' for promotion, social networking for distribution, and crowd-sourcing for content becoming more common, he provides an interesting set of observations about the positives and negatives of this nascent form of political activism. You can read his comments here.

The unanswered question for me is what kind of effect do these campaigns have on election outcomes? Do they amplify lingering suspicions in the minds of the doubtful? Do they convert the potentially convertible? Or, are they a means of promoting group solidarity in situations where mainstream forms of media are largely under the control of opposing political forces? 

But this also raises the issue of whether immediate electoral results should be the litmus test of success for these kinds of campaigns? Might it be that the power of something like MyDavidCameron.com derives from the ability to contribute to the process of repositioning the terms of political discourse during the Con-Dem reign so that privilege, class, and structural inequality are once again recognized as problems facing the United Kingdom? Time will only tell...

Image credits: David Rosenberg and Ian Cuthbert at MyDavidCameron.com

High Tech Soul: The Creation of Techno Music

Gary Bredow has put together a really tight film on the rise of techno in Detroit.

High Tech Soul describes itself as 'the first documentary to tackle the deep roots of techno music alongside the cultural history of Detroit, its birthplace. From the race riots of 1967 to the underground party scene of the late 1980s, Detroit’s economic downturn didn’t stop the invention of a new kind of music that brought international attention to its producers and their hometown.'

Plus the interviews with techno pioneers like Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Windsor's Ritchie Hawtin  provide a personal layer to the story that often gets overlooked in any macro analysis.

So, even if you don't like techno music--or don't have any idea what techno is--the film will still be interesting--particularly the first half--because it provides  insight into how cityscapes, soundscapes, means of production, and politics came together to facilitate a musical genre whose global popularity foreshadowed today's viral commons.

If you are interested in finding out more about the global development of techno, Simon Reynold's Generation Ecstasy is also excellent.

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 53

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'The Little Pill that could cure alcoholism' by James Medd at guardian.co.uk

• Craig Endler's insider's perspective on television production: 'A dozen reasons TV shows get made BESIDES ratings', 'Canceling a TV show: the network's POV', and 'Explaining 12 things Networks do that appear crazy': here, here, and here from boingboing.net

• 'IPL Scandal Exposes Dark Side of Neoliberal Dream' by Mike Marqusee at guardian.co.uk

• 'How to get paid for free content' by David Campbell at fastmediamagazine.com

• 'The Dunning-Kruger Effect' from the Science Show at abc.net (another find from boingboing.net!)

Enjoy your weekend and for all of the Antipodean T20 supporters, best of luck in the T20 final this afternoon!

Art and Photo Credit: 'La-Lis and a Cool Breeze' (Embroidery on Felt) by Ray_chel

Happy Anniversary Chasing Dragons! One Year On and Growing...

The Chasing Dragons blog celebrates its first anniversary today! In terms of numbers, Chasing Dragons has:

• published over 200 posts

• been visited by over 6,000 unique visitors from 96 countries

• attracted nearly 12,000 page views in total (and rising!)

In the blogosphere, this is very very very small fry. However, in comparison to the audience sizes--and the immediacy of these audiences--provided by traditional means of academic communication, I'm really pleased with how things are progressing. It's really nice to have an outlet to share ideas in progress and short commentaries that would otherwise go unwritten with the knowledge that there are others who think that there is something interesting--or some cases fundamentally wrong--about your viewpoints. 

While I initially approached this project with some trepidation and angst, I'm really glad that I took this step forward. None of this would have been possible without the support--both personal and technical--of my wife Denise--design wiz and fashion blogger extraordinaire at theswellelife-- who encouraged me to make the leap into the great unknown of the blogosphere.  

I'd also like to thank my colleagues who have provided support and encouragement, particularly David Campbell, Martin Coward, Matt Davies, and Simon Philpott.

Last but not least, I'd like to express my gratitude to everyone who has visited, commented, and/or linked to Chasing Dragons over the past year. It's been a lot of fun for me and I look forward to building upon recent momentum in the months to come.

And if you are at all interested in how this started, you can see my first post--on military recruitment and video games--here.

Photo credit: dawn m. armfield

Dr. StrangeGov: Have the Lib Dems Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Tories?

Last night, after Gordon Brown formally resigned as Prime Minister the Queen accepted David Cameron's offer to form a new government. And after days of speculation, conjecture, and predictions, we now have a Con-Dem coalition government that aims to hold power for the next 5 years. David Cameron will serve as Prime Minister and Nick Clegg will assume the position of Deputy Prime Minister. Furthermore, Lib-Dems will be receiving additional cabinet positions as well as mid-level postings within all government departments. The policy compromises underpinning the agreement can be found here.

One reading of the Con-Dem coalition is that it demonstrates innovation and creativity in the way that compromise is embedded into the agreement. Some will argue that this indicates that British politics may be turning towards a new positive direction for governance based on consensus building, unity, and bi-partisan support.

I think that such a characterization is overly optimistic. The odds are long that this government will be able to last five years in any kind of functional form for the following reasons:

• It is going to be exceedingly difficult to keep civility, let alone unity, in a divided cabinet. For example, how is a reasonably intelligent operator like Vince Cable--if he is given the post of Chief Secretary to the Treasury as is expected--going to be able handle working with George Osborne--generously described by those who you would think would be largely supportive as 'untested'--in his capacity as Chancellor? Is Nick Clegg going to be prepared to defend core Tory policies as Deputy PM? Moreover, how divisive will the decision to allow 'sleeper' Lib-Dems to be strategically positioned in all of the major government departments and offices turn out to be when there are stark differences of opinion? Will this create a culture of secrecy, suspicion, and stilted communication? And if things do become toxic, how badly will the morale of top civil servants--the people who actually get things done in Westminster-- be affected?

• The size of the majority of the Con-Dem coalition (approximately 76 seats) may prove to be too big, leading to break-downs in party discipline, and very public expressions of discontent that undermine the coalition. Counter-intuitively, the price of dissent with the current distribution of seats is relatively low for an individual MP. And many MPs in both parties are going to feel real pressure to vote in a way that best reflects the demands of their core constituent supporters. This probably won't lead to a defeat that triggers a registration of non-confidence, but it will create tensions and bad-feelings that will amplify over time.

I'm also very puzzled why the Lib-Dems were willing to form a coalition with the Tories rather than holding the sword of Damocles over the heads of a Conservative minority government. While the prize of electoral reform must have been a motivating factor, the following risks--which I initially outlined in a previous comment to my colleague Nick Appleby who, amongst many hats, is a Lib-Dem activist-- strike me as major reasons not to enter into a formal agreement:

• Even the most optimistic Liberal Democrat has got to know that they will be punished for forming a coalition in the next election. Tactical voting--with a sizable number of traditional Labour voters crossing over-- got the party 23% of the vote. What happens when these people leave at the next election? Moreover, what happens when core membership that is anti-Tory also leaves? The Fabian Society has done an initial analysis based on the recent election results with a projection that if 1/5 of soft Lib-Dem support migrates to Labour, they lose 15 seats. A similar shift would potentially swing another 25 Conservative seats to Labour. Even if this projection is overly pessimistic in its assumptions--and who says previous voting patterns will hold--I'd still find this very worrying if I were a Lib-Dem strategist.

• Even with a guaranteed referendum, electoral reform is still a long-shot. Both the Tory and Labour machines will do their best to undermine it. Moreover apart from the Independent and the Guardian, the Lib-Dems lack media support. How can one expect a positive result from a referendum when every single major tabloid will be coming out against it. In this country, that makes it a dead duck.

• Finally, the Lib-Dems will gain nothing from humanizing the Conservatives. Anything positive that the Lib-Dems bring to the coalition will be attributed to the Tories by their self-promotion machine. Anything that goes wrong--including any breakdown in the coalition--will be blamed on the Lib-Dems. This seems like a lose-lose to me even if some pet Lib-Dem legislation is passed.

Given all of these reasons, I fail to see what long-term benefits Clegg et al believe are going to be accumulated through the StrangeGov arrangement?

Image credits: mydavidcameron.com

Good-Bye Mr. Brown: Visual Resignation

  

I find photographs of Gordon Brown incredibly interesting because they often seem to capture a pathos that many public figures work incredibly hard to conceal. Nowhere has Brown's pathos been clearer than during yesterday's resignation speech, a poignant twist in the ongoing election drama.

No doubt this was a hard decision for him to make. Admitting defeat is always difficult when you've fought for something you believe in. But beyond the difficulty of articulating defeat, he would have also been aware that with most of the media establishment against him, members of the press would see this act as a final opportunity for a public humiliation. Yet in the photos above and directly below, you have images of a confident and dignified Brown seizing the moment. At the same time, the poisoned chalice of #10 looms behind him, with the number bearing weight on his left shoulder in the first image and dwarfing him as an obelisk in the second. The signal is somewhat ambivalent: is it that being Prime Minister was a burden upon the back of Gordon Brown or that no person is bigger than the office of the Prime Minister?

It is these visual contradictions that I find so fascinating.  In a previous post some weeks back, I remarked that Gordon Brown when photographed conveys a remarkable level of vulnerability. In my eyes at least, it is his vulnerability and awkwardness that makes him appear more human and common--in the very best sense of the word--than other political leaders.

This inner turmoil surfaces quite clearly in the photo above. And this time, we see a man who is enveloped in darkness, a lonely and solitaire figure trying to figure out why the reward for boldly preventing a global financial meltdown--at a time when no one else was prepared to do so--has been vilification, unpopularity, and abandonment by the very people he helped.

But perhaps the most iconic image from yesterday--and one that has been picked up as the lead photo by several newspapers--is of Gordon Brown retreating from the press scrum. Again, the ambiguity of #10 looms large in this photo: is it his sanctuary or his tomb? More importantly, the image is of Gordon Brown turning his back on a press, a party, and a public that had turned on him. And the message is clear: you won't have Gordon Brown to kick around anymore.

Photo credits: Getty Images and David Levene