Chasing Dragons

Reflections on the G20 Summit in Toronto

These are a few of my scattered reflections on the G20 Summit in Toronto:

• The role of the police in a democratic society is to provide for the security and safety of the people. And, I would be the first admit that this is a very challenging, and at times, thankless job. Yet, with over $930 million spent on security and the deployment of nearly 15,000 police officers (at a cost of over $122 million) the Toronto Police Service demonstrated how inept it was at keeping the peace and how brutally effective it was at violating the rights and freedoms of peaceful protesters, ordinary citizens, and members of the media.

• As a result, there ought to be an independent public investigation into how this summit was policed and Toronto Chief of Police Bill Blair ought to be held to account for every strategic and tactical decision that was made over the weekend. If policing decisions were being dictated by political pressure, this ought to be brought out for public scrutiny too.

• The secret passage of Ontario Regulation 233/10 through the Ontario legislature, a bill that gave police the power to arbitrarily search and detain anyone within 5m of the security fence, is a low water mark for civil liberties, not experienced since Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act during the FLQ crisis. Not only does this regulation likely violate constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure, but unlike the War Measures Act, the public were given no warning of this sweeping extension of police powers. Hopefully, there will be successful constitutional challenges to this regulation. Moreover, there ought to be an independent inquiry into how this amendment was passed and at whose bequest.

• These summits and the protests that surround them have moved from providing a forum for political expression into a spectacle divested of much of its political content and subversive potential. Events are not of themselves; events are that which can be narrated from within a particular interpretive framework that is understood to constitute common-sense. Keeping aside the allegations surrounding the use of agent provocateurs, it is important for protestors not to rise to the bait because the dominant iterative is predisposed against them. Acts of petty vandalism are not going to raise consciousness or foment revolutionary fervor given the dominant interpretative framework of the contemporary media. Similarly, if you think that smashing the window of an independent mom and pop store is striking a blow at global capitalism, you really are delusional.

• Finally to appreciate what transpired in Toronto over the weekend, you have to understand the Machiavellian darkness that envelopes Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He dislikes Toronto immensely, not just because he has adopted the anti-Toronto populism of the Prairie provinces, but because Toronto represents everything that he fears: cosmopolitanism, progress, innovation, the urban, culture, and diversity. In the wake of the G20 summit he has managed to:

• bring negative global media attention to the city;
• impose significant financial burdens on the city  due to the de facto closure of the downtown core, clean-up costs, and loss of future revenues to industries like tourism because of the negative coverage;
• convince the provincial government (which is Liberal) to conduct the dirty work of undermining constitutional rights through the passage 233/10 leaving them to take the brunt of the political fallout;
• draw attention and criticism away from the ideological position on budget deficits held by himself, David Cameron, and Angela Merkel that will likely plunge the global economy into another recession;
• unite other parts of Canada in a mutual feeling of schadenfreude over what has happened to Toronto.

Therefore, using the events surrounding the summit as a catalyst, I fully expect that the Conservative party will try to leverage anti-Toronto sentiment--which has a long provenance in Canada--into more substantive political support going into the next federal election.

Update: For on-going in-depth coverage of the G20 and its aftermath, check out the following links:

Toronto Star

Globe and Mail

The Torontoist

Toronto Media Co-op

Stencil and photo credit: Posterchild

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 59

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'The Anosognosic's Dilemma: Something's Wrong but You'll Never Know What it is' by Errol Morris at nytimes.com

• 'Mossad Doesn't Accept Losers' by Yaakov Katz at jpost.com

• 'What to Expect at G20: Lots and Lots of Cops' by Sandro Contenta at truth-out.org

• 'Seeds of Suicide' by Marie-Monique Robin at guernicamag.com

• 'Permanent Impermanence' by Syed Ali at contexts.org

Enjoy the rest of the weekend!

Photo credit: Jenny Downing

Precision Targets: GPS and the Militarization of Everyday Life

Precision Targets: GPS and the Militarization of Everyday Life is a collaborative multi-media piece created by Caren Kaplan, Erik Loyer, and Ezra Clayton Daniels. Through a series of vignettes, it explores the ways that dual use technologies like GPS are used in military and civilian spheres and how these technologies increasingly blur the distinction between these spheres. As she argues:

• the circulation of GPS between military and civilian use is instructive if we want to understand better the ways in which government and business cooperate not only to make war but to create consumers. Most importantly, in this way, people who have no particular interest in military projects or nationalism may find themselves through their use of technology in everyday life participating in the culture of war: through ways of seeing, forms of entertainment, and modes of communication.

The argument is provocative and compelling. And what I particularly like is that Kaplan is able to demonstrate a nuance put forward by David Campbell and Michael J. Shapiro more broadly with respect to visual cultures. That is, rather than getting stuck in an 'either-or' understanding of technologies like GPS, it is important to understand how they underpin contemporary military practices while potentially offering a means of critically engaging with them.

Moreover, the format is engaging and accessible to an extent that traditional methods of presenting arguments are not. Thus,  Precision Targets is also a catalyst for people like myself to think about how we go about presenting our research and the sorts of platforms that might convey our messages better than traditional publishing outlets.

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 58

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'U.S. "Secret War" Expands Globally as Special Operations Forces Take Larger Role' by Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe at washingtonpost.com

• 'K-Pop a Direct Declaration of War' at the sonicwarfare blog

• '"So" Pushes to the Head of the Line' by Anand Giridharadas at anand.ly

• 'The G20 and the Architecture of Paranoia' by Christopher Hume at thestar.com

• 'Yes the World Cup is About Politics' by Michael P. Jeffries at guardian.co.uk

Happy Father's Day and have a great weekend!

Photo credit: Schristia

The Price of Peer Review

There is a lot that can be said about universities in the digital age. There is also a lot that can be said about current models for scholarly publishing and the ridiculousness of holding on to analogue products trapped behind barriers in a digital age as the output of choice.

But, if one needed any more evidence of the pathologies of contemporary academic publishing, one need go no further than the quick analysis undertaken by Prof. Martin Weller of the Open University at The Ed Techie blog (thanks to Cory Doctrow at boingboing.net for the link).

His estimate of the total labour cost of peer-reviewing in any given year is £209,976,000. This is quite a conservative estimate with other calculations placing the global total at £1.9 billion!

And it's not just that these labour costs go uncompensated by the private publishers who rely on peer-review to ensure that their journals are publishing academically 'rigorous' research. Rather, they then turnaround and sell access to these journals for a tidy sum to the very institutions whose employees have been a source of unpaid labour. And in most cases, these are public institutions whose primary source of funding is from the government. 

At a time of fiscal retrenchment, the continuation of this massive subsidy seems imprudent. Moreover, if there weren't already enough reasons, the barricading of most academic journals behind pay-walls can now add economic double-dealing into its calculus of moral dubiousness.

Given that keeping publicly funded knowledge behind barriers is socially irresponsible and that  higher education budgets are going to be slashed in the UK, our disciplinary associations ought to be leading the charge for open access to all publicly subsidized academic outputs. Unfortunately, based on previous experiences, I'm not going to hold my breath....

Photo credit: cinocino

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 57

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'Barcelona Rebels Against Tourist Invasion' by Giles Tremlett at guardian.co.uk

• 'The Art of War: Deleuze, Guattari, Debord, and the Israeli Defence Force' by Eyal Weizman at mutemagazine

• 'Report of the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, and Arbitrary Killings: Special Report on Targeted Killings' by Philip Alston at the United Nations Human Rights Council

• 'Ten Things that Terrify Right-Wingers' by Joshua Holland at truthout.org

• 'Is NATO to Blame for Russia's Afghan Heroin Problem' by Simon Shuster at time.com

Have a good weekend!

Photo credit: bitzcelt

The Canadian Lesson: Deficit Reduction is a Pretext For the Permanent Lowering of Social Spending Levels

Introduction

It is not surprising given their shared governing ideology that the Con-Dem coalition is relishing the opportunity to cut public sector spending in the UK. With the help of the UK media and the City, they have successfully securitized the budget deficit by presenting it as an existential crisis requring emergency measures that break normal conventions of what a government is supposed to provide. What is surprising is that the Canadian experience of the mid-1990s is being forwarded as a model for initiating 'progressive' public spending cuts in a rigorous fashion. But there was nothing  progressive about Canadian spending cuts or they way in which they were organized. Moreover, deficit reduction in Canada took place during a time of economic stability, not in the wake of the biggest financial crisis in modern history and the resulting global recession.

What then can we expect if the Con-Dems do indeed adopt the Canadian model? The short answer is devastating cuts to front-line services with many of the burdens of these cuts falling onto other levels of government. In Canada, transfer payments were cut to provinces. In the UK we can expect that cuts will be shifted  onto local authorities. But what will be more harmful is that the Canadian case illustrates what is likely to happen if growth returns and surpluses begin to accumulate. Re-investment into social spending will be sacrificed in order to initiate tax breaks.

What did the Canadian government do?

After winning the 1993 Canadian general election the Liberal Party embarked upon an aggressive deficit reduction program. With the federal deficit sitting at 6 percent of GDP and public debt at 64 percent of GDP, Finance Minister Paul Martin sought to balance the budget by 1997. Such a dramatic turnaround required that massive spending cuts be taken in defense, foreign aid, and transfers that would go to fund provincially administered social programs in health, education, and housing. As Hugh Mackenzie has documented, by 1996-1997 program spending had been reduced from $120 billion CDN– the 1993-1994 spending level– to $108 billion CDN. Relative to the size of the Canadian economy, this was the lowest level of federal government spending since 1950. Those who did not have the necessary financial supports to find alternatives to reduced and/or eliminated social services were most affected. 

What happened next?

With the return of economic growth in Canada and the beginning of huge budget surpluses (e.g., in 2004 fiscal year, the federal government achieved a $9 billion CDN surplus), new funds were not re-invested into those areas most affected by previous cuts. Instead a choice was made to cut taxes– particularly corporate income tax rates– and to funnel a significant portion of each yearly surplus to debt reduction. The goal was to reduce the debt load to 25 percent of GDP.

Unsurprisingly, alternative assessments of these budgets in Canada show that the tax cuts disproportionately benefited the most wealthy members of Canadian society, thereby increasing income inequality. Moreover, economic growth-the ultimate goal of these policies– would have been better served through increases in funding to education and health care rather than servicing the debt in a dollar to dollar comparison (see for example Andrew Jackson's work and analysis or Ellen Russell).

What were the longer-term effects?

Overall, while economic growth and debt reduction exceeded target goals, these achievements came with significant social costs. A scathing UN report noted the following issues years after cuts were first implemented:

• poverty levels--at 11.2% of the population--remained extraordinary high for a high-income country.
• minimum wages in all provinces were located below the poverty line, even for full-time workers.
• social program funding transfers were  below 1994-1995 spending levels despite nearly a decade of sustained economic growth.
• social assistance benefits were set at 50 percent below the poverty line. 
• 7.4 percent of Canadians were identified as facing food insecurity.
• 40 percent of food bank users were found to be children.
• although the Employment Insurance scheme accumulated a large operating surplus, unemployment benefits were reported as only being available to 39 percent of the unemployed, with youth, immigrants, and women facing serious barriers to access.
•  unemployment benefits levels had fallen to their lowest level in Canadian history.

These outcomes were not the result of mismanagement or financial constraint. Rather, they were made possible by specific political choices.

Lessons from the Canadian Experience

If Canada is the role model for the current British government, there would seem to be dark days ahead. While David Cameron has been at his patrician best claiming that 'we're all in this together', the Canadian experience clearly demonstrates that some will be in the muck for deeper and for far longer than others.

There are many lessons that can be taken from the Canadian experience. But one that might be most pertinent at this time is the following:

• it would be unwise to capitulate to current spending cuts in the belief that public provision levels will return in the not-so-distant-future.

Unfortunately, neoliberalism does not work like this and as an ideology, it will seek to hollow out the state--save for its coercive capacity--as its continuous mission.

Thus, it would be prudent at this point for those on the Left to establish a counter-discourse that places an emphasis on income generation through innovative taxes that target speculative financial activity and wealth (e.g.,  a French style wealth tax) and push that the government take advantage of its banking assets--beyond income garnered from bail-out repayments. 

Photo credit: The Prime Minister's Office

Is the US Military Addicted to Drones?

As mentioned on GamePolitics.com, earlier this week, the UK's Channel 4 put together an interesting report on the use of Predator drones by the US Army. Many of the key issues are identified and discussed:

• the legality of drone strikes
• the appropriateness of the recourse to technological solutions for political problems
• how (military) technologies become gendered and tied to conceptions of honor
• the problem of proliferation (if you think this is far fetched, check out the DIY Drone community who build kit for recreational/non-military purposes)

But what is perhaps most fascinating is the claim that drones are changing military culture and tactical doctrine to the point where they are now referred to as 'Army crack'.

Given that drones are a dual-use technology that also allow for the overt and covert use of force,  what might it mean for understandings of modern warfare--or the popular identification of war itself--if the US military is indeed 'addicted' to the use of drones? Moreover, what happens to our spatial understanding of war-fighting when combat can be initiated and completed by individuals situated thousands of miles away from the theater of operation? Will actions traditionally considered to be acts of war become recoded as something else? What will be the political consequences of such a recoding?

These are but some of the questions that continue to motivate my project on assassination and targeted killing...

Many thanks to my colleague Martin Coward for alerting me to this story.

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 56

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'Of Drone Wars and Buffalo Urine' by Conn Hallinan at fpif.org

• 'The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment' by Peter Beinart at the New York Review of Books

• 'The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment: An Exchange' at the New York Review of Books

• 'Don't Replace Child Detention with Enforced Separation' by Simon Parker at guardian.co.uk

• 'Canada Unveils Arsenal for Anti-G20 Protests' by Pav Jordan at reuters.com

• 'State Sponsored Stupidity, and Why Dissent Still Has to be Chaotic' by Hariman at nocaptionneeded.com

Photo credit: Gaensler

Newcastle University Launches World Politics and Popular Culture MA Degree

I am pleased to announce that Politics at Newcastle University will be launching a new MA degree in World Politics and Popular Culture for the 2010-11 academic year. Here is the course description:

• World Politics and Popular Culture is a distinctive interdisciplinary degree programme that examines the changing dynamics of contemporary international relations in the context of the politics of the various forces shaping and shaped by popular culture. The programme focuses on key theories, policies, and events in world politics in relation to both traditional and new media. You will learn not only how to think critically about how world politics is reflected or reproduced in popular culture, but also how the politics of popular culture shape the dynamics of world politics...

The programme entails three core modules in Politics (World Politics and Popular Culture, Theories and Approaches to the Study of Politics, and a Dissertation in World Politics and Popular Culture) with 4 optional modules that can be taken from politics, cultural studies, media studies, and film.

Admission requirements are an undergraduate degree from an accredited university with at least a 2.i result--the rough equivalent in North American systems would be a B average.

Please note that 'other qualifications or relevant professional experience may also satisfy the entrance requirements. Applicants whose first language is not English require IELTS 6.5, TOEFL 575 (paper-based) or 233 (computer-based), or equivalent.'

Information on how to apply can be found here. There is no formal deadline--apart from the start of classes at the end of September--but if you are applying from overseas, securing a student visa can take several weeks depending on your circumstances.

If you'd like to talk to someone to find out more about the World Politics and Popular Culture MA, you can contact  Matt Davies, whose tremendous efforts and vision saw this through from design to implementation.

I'm also happy to field any inquiries that you may have about the programme or pursuing a MA in politics in the UK.

Disclaimer: If there are any differences between information provided here and that contained on official Newcastle University web-pages, the latter should be viewed as the authoritative source.

Collage and photo credit: DerrickT (work displayed under a Creative Commons attribution license)