Chasing Dragons

The Flower: A Film With an Anti-Prohibition Message

I just caugh this over at boingboing.net and thought it was a clever way of presenting the follies of illict drug prohibition.

What do you think?

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 63

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'Taliban Says US Drone Attacks 'Temporaily' Hindering Insurgency' by Mark Tran at guardian.co.uk

• 'Divided Cities' by Martin Coward at martincoward.net

• 'James Scott on Agricultre as Politics, the Dangers of Standardization, and Not Being Governed' at theorytalks.org

I know this is coming in at the wire, but have a good weekend, wherever you are!

Photo credit: Insight Imaging

Why is Taser International Demanding that a BC Death Verdict Be Quashed?

Why is Taser International demanding that a British Columbia provincial inquiry into the death of Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver International Airport on Oct. 14, 2007 be quashed?

The answer, as reported by the Toronto Star, is that they are upset that the Braidwood Commission ruled that the use of Tasers can cause death, a finding based on evidence gathered after Mr. Dziekanski was tragically killed---he had been shot five times in the chest with tasers by Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers.

Taser International's lawyer David Neave--a partner at the Vancouver branch of Blakes, Cassell, and Graydon--has argued that the finding that the product carries a low risk of death, is '...a slur that ought to be removed.'

And Taser International is demanding that all references to the weapon's (lack of) safety be struck from the report. The argument is that the company was not warned of the findings in advance of their publication and therefore was not given the opportunity to refute the inquiry's conclusion!

One can only hope that the law --always a very different beast from morality-- and the way in which the BC Supreme Court decides to interpret it upholds the right of a public and independent inquest to publish its findings regardless of the impact on private interests. To disallow this vital aspect of democracy so that a corporation does not lose potential clients for a controversial product strikes me as a dangerous precedent completely at odds with the public interest and the protection of human rights...

Photo credit: hradcanska

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

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

Why Jamaica Proves that the 'War on Drugs' is Not Over

Last week, Gil Kerlikowske, the top drug adviser to the Obama administration, claimed that the American government has ended its 'war on drugs'. Yet, as he made these comments in Ireland, a bloody battle was being waged on the streets of Tivoli Gardens in Kingston Jamaica.

Gunfights between the security services and residents, mass arrests, and reported extra-judicial executions were taking place in an ill-fated attempt at to capture Christopher 'Dudus' Coke, an alleged drug kingpin. The operation, initially resisted by the Jamaican cabinet, was eventually undertaken to fulfill the request made by the American government to extradite Coke to the United States to stand trial on an assortment of charges.   

As Maxine Williams has outlined in the Guardian, the political and legal situation in Jamaica is complex. To make sense of what has taken place, most media outlets have focused on Coke's close ties to the ruling Labour party, the absence of a government presence in these estates, and the desire of the Jamaican government to regain control of them. More critical observers, like Ben Bowling, have been quick to point to how American drug prohibition encourages the establishment of transnational drug cartels, endemic corruption, and levels of violence that are necessary to sustain this underground economy.

But there is another policy dimension to the US drug policy that allows one to understand what is taking place here and to see that the war on drugs is definitely not over. As I mentioned in a previous post, the war on drugs is deeply embedded into the institutional infrastructure of the United States. And one of the most effective mechanisms has been the Certification Process for Major Drug Producing and Transit Countries and accompanying Presidential certifications under Section 489 of the Foreign Assistance Act.

As I explained,

• These procedures are supposed to be used to monitor whether other nation-states have been complying with counter-narcotics obligations--or doing their best to meet them-- as laid out in the 1988 UN Drugs Convention. Foreign governments that are determined not to be meeting these obligations lose their eligibility for most forms of American economic and military assistance and an obligatory 'no' vote by the United States in six multilateral development banks. This entire process with the American government serving as prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner and the potential sanctions it generates provide a form of political leverage that no administration will want to lose. And meeting the obligations of the UN Convention requires a vigorous law enforcement response to illicit drugs issues meaning that wars on drugs will continue elsewhere.

In the latest National Drug Control Strategy Report, Jamaica is listed as a major drug transit or drug producing country, though it was not given as dire an evaluation as Burma, Bolivia, or Venezuela. Thus, I suspect that political pressure exercised through this mechanism--as much as any desire by the  state to gain de facto control over areas like Tivoli Gardens--has also influenced the decision of the Jamaican government to conduct military operations against its own citizens at the request of a foreign state.

Currently, Jamaica is facing a budgetary crisis that has required the intervention of the IMF. It has been estimated that this coming fiscal year, nearly 62% of government spending will be used to service the national debt. American financial support through USAID Jamaica--as documented in the 2010-2014 USAID report-- is not a decisive factor enabling government spending overall but would be a key contributor to the security services budget at a time of cutbacks. Similarly, the recent Inter-American Development Bank plan to approve a $600 million loan to Jamaica is significant, as is the fact that the United States is the largest shareholder (30.1%) out of the 48 member states. An American no-vote based on Section 489 provisions might have put that loan in jeopardy, something of which the Jamaican government would have been acutely aware.

Jamaica then appears to be going through a process similar to that experienced by Colombia in the 1980s and 1990s. It was at this time when the United States resorted to a variety of incentives and coercive measures to get members of the Medellin and Cali cartels extradited to face charges in American courts. Extradition requests led to spectacular acts of violence and human rights violations on the part of cartels and the Colombian security services, greatly contributing to human insecurity experienced by ordinary Colombians. And in the end, successful arrests, extradictions, or eliminations of key underworld figures did nothing to stem to tide of cocaine entering the United States.

Four decades later, despite proving to be a failure as a tactic, the front-line of American counter-narcotics policy is still being exported--along with the associated costs in violence--through pressures enabled by extradition requests. The drug war and its coercive practices rage on in Jamaica, despite the claims of the Obama administration that its own rhetorical reference point has changed. 

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