Not surprisingly, since it began with the ‘leader of the free world’, the idea that if you feel a bit nervous about someone you should whack ‘em straight away is now becoming an excuse for more everyday violence. Aussie rugby star Willie Mason described yesterday the exchange of abuse with Stuart Fielden on the international rugby stage after which Willie concussed his opponent with a right hook. He explained “I saw his right hand cocked and thought he was going to throw it. I thought I’d hit him first before he hit back.” Well, if that logic is good enough for international relations maybe its good enough for rugby. Mason’s brief helpfully added that his client shouldn’t be punished simply for being the better fighter - showing the kind of sharp legal mind that might, in some company, win rapid promotion. Interestingly, this court wasn’t buying it. (report)
Wow, this really is real. Checkout Amazon’s ‘Imaginarium’ (yuck) for great security related toys:
Customers who bought this also bought…
- Playmobile Police Van
- Playmobile Tanker Truck
- Playmobile Bank Counter
Obviously that sent me on a quick browse of the military toys I found, as you’d expect, lots of the ususal replica tanks and planes etc. I really enjoyed the well-placed quote marks in the description of this missile launcher:
“Mega Missile Launcher - Take command of your very own ‘peace-keeping’ tank!”
“The conflict between Davos [the partisans of the World Economic Forum] and Porto Alegre [the partisans of the World Social Forum] is not about the virtues and vices of neo-liberal globalisation, although this is how it is often protrayed … It is not about capitalism as a world-system, since capitalism as a world system is in structural crisis and will disappear in the next 20-50 years. The conflict is about what will replace the capitalist world-economy as an historical system. It is about whether we shall move in the direction of a different system that maintains one crucial feature of capitalism - its hierarchical, inegalitarian, polarising nature - or of a new world system that is relatively democratic, relatively egalitarian.”
Immanuel Wallerstein , 2004, “The dilemmas of open space: the future of the World Social Forum” in International Social Science Journal 56(4), pp. 629-637.
It is worth noting that the next paragraph begins “This is no small question…” - no shit professor!
The most important political difference cutting across the entire [World Social] Forum concerned the role of national sovereignty. There are indeed two primary positions in the response to today’s dominant forces of globalization: either one can work to reinforce the sovereignty of nation-states as a defensive barrier against the control of foreign and global capital, or one can strive towards a non-national alternative to the present form of globalization that is equally global. The first poses neoliberalism as the primary analytical category, viewing the enemy as unrestricted global capitalist activity with weak state controls; the second is more clearly posed against capital itself, whether state-regulated or not. The first might rightly be called an anti-globalization position, in so far as national sovereignties, even if linked by international solidarity, serve to limit and regulate the forces of capitalist globalization. National liberation thus remains for this position the ultimate goal, as it was for the old anticolonial and anti-imperialist struggles. The second, in contrast, opposes any national solutions and seeks instead a democratic globalization.
Michael Hardt, 2002, “Today’s Bandung” in New Left Review 14, p.111.
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I came across this flash ‘game’ that basically involves you throwing this bikini clad woman around a bare skyscape, through which she falls. I found it oddly compelling, and it sparked off this stream of consciousness.
Feel free to come back to the comments and call me a plonker if you like |
Over at Idiolect Tom’s been having a running battle with Elsevier Science, the major science and medical publishers who also run the DSEi arms fair beginning in London next week. (Disarm DSEi, Campaign Against the Arms Trade ).
The Guardian reports that this week the world-leading medical journal The Lancet has just run an editorial criticising its own publishers for their involvement in the arms trade. It also published a letter by a number of leading academics, and a response from Elsevier.
I particularly like this line from the editorial board: “The arms industry draws vital investment away from the health budgets of low income nations.” because it sounds like the gearing up of inter-elite argument. There is no doubt that major health policy makers and major medical suppliers are among the readership; giving them some ammo against the arms lobby is really vital.
And, of course, the scarcely veiled threat in this line is exciting too: “We cannot believe that Reed Elsevier wishes to jeopardise that commitment by its presence in a business that so self-evidently damages its reputation as a healthscience publisher.”
And in Elsevier’s reply you can’t help thinking that the first draft went like this: “take real pride in the contribution they make to the important industries which we serve, of which science, medicine, and education are directed to the advancement of human wellbeing. In the interests of balance, it is essential, therefore, that we are heavily involved in an industry that acts precisely to the contrary of human welbeing.”
In terms of further campaigning, I suggest that every academic who comes across this page takes copies of the Lancet Editorial, the letter and reply to every senior academic they can find. Write to any journal you read and point out the Lancet story - the more journals that make some sort of statement, either publicly or in private letters to Elsevier, the shakier their board of governers are going to look.
Well done Tom!
According to a friend:
Let the pants shitting begin. We’ve hit Peak Oil three months earlier than Kenneth Deffeyes’ most pessimistic calculation:
So, what to do with that damned SUV when the price of petrol gets beyond your means? A couple of suggestions:
- Kick out the floor and walk it around Flintstone style - a great work out!
- Park it in the garden, remove all the glass and leave it to rust as a particularly dull and expensive climbing frame.
- Recycle all the materials to make ingenious low-tech weapons. Get punk hair and look forward until everything goes a bit Mad Max.
- Sell your house, and continue to buy petrol so that you can get little Johnny to school ’safely’.
Got any more? Gi’s a comment.
…that the police do, in fact, infiltrate small activist groups, here’s a selection of quotations from a well-informed paper from Studies in Conflict and Terrorism
“The security concerns [about infiltration] were openly discussed [by activists] and many critical analyses were offered locally and via the Internet. A particular effort was made to learn techniques for identifying law enforcement officers working in undercover capacities. This posed a serious concern for undercover officers, especially given the level of hatred many anarchists express toward the police.”
And…
“Many law enforcement professionals view modern anarchists simply as a protest group. As long as the activity at large-scale protests is relatively contained and the protests do not devolve into riots, law enforcement may be tempted to ignore the movement. Violent revolutionary actions—including guerilla warfare—however, pose a threat to the communities and people that law enforcement officers are sworn to protect. To monitor that activity seems prudent”
And even…
“Infiltration into large affinity group meetings is relatively simple. However, infiltration into radical revolutionary ‘cells’ is not. The very nature of the movement’s suspicion and operational security enhancements makes infiltration difficult and time consuming. Few agencies are able to commit to operations that require years of up-front work just getting into a ‘cell’ especially given shrinking budgets and increased demands for attention to other issues. Infiltration is made more difficult by the communal nature of the lifestyle (under constant observation and scrutiny) and the extensive knowledge held by many anarchists, which require a considerable amount of study and time to acquire. Other strategies for infiltration have been explored, but so far have not been successful. Discussion of these theories in an open paper is not advisable.”
Notice, “few agencies are able … years of up-front work”. The implication of course, being that some are. Years of work? To infiltrate some anarchist commune with no telly or vacuum cleaner? Spend the days gardening and the nights getting drunk on homebrew and talking about revolution. Wonder how many go native?
Source: R. Borum & C. Tilby, 2005, “Anarchist Direct Actions: A Challenge for Law Enforcement” in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 28:201–223, Routledge, London.
Nice one to Another Blog is Possible for putting the reference on Infoshop.
“Timid, at the outset, Socialism spoke at first in the name of Christian sentiment and morality: men profoundly imbued with the moral principles of Christianity - principles which it possesses in common with all other religions - came forward and said - “A Christian has no right to exploit his brethren!” But the ruling classes laughed in their faces with the reply - “Teach the people Christian resigantion, tell them in the name of Christ that they should offer their left cheek to whosoever smites them on the right, then you will be welcome; as for the dreams of equality which you find in Christianity, go and mediate on your discoveries in prison.”
Kropotkin, P., c. 1882, “The Place of Anarchism in Socialistic Evolution.” An address delivered in Paris, translated by Henry Glasse.
Revolutionary socialists, in the main, depend on international organisation, for one of the key lessons that many (following Trotsky) took from the Russian experience is that socialism cannot exist in one country, but requires a wave of revolutions across the globe. Workers struggle requires, therefore, solidarity and coordination.
(more…)
Democracy continues to be the most important source of division among the coglomeration of radical movements active today.
The radical wings of socialism, anarchism and liberalism are all alive and kicking in the current movements for social change, although they have undoubtedly both learned and innovated in the face of a changing politico-economic habitat. Each of the ‘big three’ have historically carried substantially different meanings of ‘democracy’, and each have been attached to real-life experiments with democracy in various settings. (more…)
“nowadays the most reactionary grouping in Great Britain… These pompous authorities, pedants and haughty, high-falutin’ cowards are sytematically poisoning the labour movement, clouding the consciousness of the proletariat and paralysing its will. It is only thanks to them that Toryism, Liberalism, the Church, the monarchy, the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie continue to survive and even suppose themselves to be fairly in the saddle.”
Leon Trotsky, quoted in J. Callaghan, 1987, The Far Left in British Politics. p.10.
“What we see today - continual warfare and persistent authoritarianism in the post-colonial world and explosive terrorism spreading its horrors - are dark streaks across the vision of peace seen by the free-trader…
A nation-state system based on furthering material interests is incapable of curbing violence. It is only by relentlessly pursuing the deepening of the democratic revolution - at home and abroad - that we can hope to respond to the multifaceted injustice that defines our age.”
One of the most appealing arguments for an international economic regime of free and frequent trade is that it will - through nations’ own self interest - lead to peaceful international relations. (more…)
It seems to me, that the real political task in a society such as ours is to criticize the working of institutions which appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticize them in such a manner that the political violence which has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that we can fight them.
Michel Foucault quoted in Rabinow (1986) The Foucault Reader, p.6
So its not had the publicity attached to the big G8 event in Gleneagles, Scotland, next month, but it is now just two weeks until the justice and home affairs ministers of the G8 countries gather in Sheffield to swap notes and make plans.
I had heard that it would be just the G7 ministers (i.e. excluding Russia) coming along. If true this might let Russia off the hook, given today’s news that Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a trenchent critic of Putin and the Kremlin, has been jailed for nine years. (Independent, Mosnews Interview) With minimal knowledge of the case I can’t help feeling deeply ambivalent. I’m all for billionaire oil tycoons who are convicted of fraud and tax evasion being locked up. I’d like to see more of it. Though the concern on everybody’s minds is, of course, that it was his funding of opposition political parties that really got him in trouble.
So, what’s on the agenda? The public information suggests that on the agenda for the Sheffield meeting is work on transnational organised crime and counter-terror measures. A sceptical glance at the thin details available publicly are as follows.
First up is counter-narcotics work in Afghanistan. The UK is supposed to be the lead nation here, but only last week was the subject of criticism by both the US and Hamid Karzai that it simply wasn’t doing its job properly.(Guardian)
Next, the curbing of immigration crime, focussing particularly on documentation. I can’t help suspecting that a focus on documentation is either a red herring, to stop us worrying about the 1,800 people currently locked up without trial or time limit in detention centres in the UK (with plans in progress for another 4,000 places). (Barbed Wire Britain) The alternative is, of course, that what they’ll actually be talking about is making everybody’s documentation less forgable, which suggests biometric data for all.
The final note is a mixed bag, “international law enforcement co-operation, focussing on child protection, the expanded use of DNA and the international illegal trade in firearms”. As I’m in skeptical mood I’ll just ask, why only firearms? The illegal trade in all grades of weapons continues apace, with London as the international centre for arms trading. (Noted in passing in today’s Independent, much more in relation to DSEI - Disarm DSEI!.)
What’s not on the agenda? Well perhaps the major thing that’s missing is what plans the G8 ‘justice’ ministers have for the burgeoning network of torture centres they are maintaining in countries with less ‘respectable’ records on human rights. Are they going to talk about it? Work out who’s footing the bills? Who’s providing the soldiers? Worry about the reliability of the ‘evidence’ they are disclosing?
As I said, a skeptical look, and it is quite possible that they’ll come up with some valuable initiatives. However, with the quality of information publicly available, what they’ll actually be discussing is anybody’s guess. A couple of catchphrases and bureaucratic buzzwords is all we’re offered. The main criticism aimed at the actions of the G8 is currently a complete lack of transparency. And as yet, despite a smooth looking website and a charming picture of the PM, the UK presidency of the G8 does not look likely to open it up to any significant degree.
Further Information on the G8 in Sheffield
- Official Government Sheffield G8 site
- Sheffield Indymedia
- Sheffield Against the G8.
- Information and petition about protests being banned in Sheffield
- Sheffield Counter Conference planning