For the seven years since he was overthrown in a coup in February 2004 there have been many different speculations about why Aristide never returned to Haiti. People argued that his exile in South Africa was comfortable, that he had fled in 2004 out of fear for his life and didn’t return because of that same fear, that he was waiting for the moment when he could return to power.
Author: Justin Podur
Author of Siegebreakers. Ecology. Environmental Science. Political Science. Anti-imperialism. Political fiction.
Wikileaks and the Future of Information
Wikileaks and the future of information from Justin Podur on Vimeo.
Justin Podur on Wikileaks and the Future of Information Part 2 from Justin Podur on Vimeo.
Parts 1 and 2 of a talk on Wikileaks, media, and the future of information given at the Toronto Public Library’s “Thought Exchange” program on January 31, 2011.
Settle in and wait for the coup in Egypt
Most people are interested in something that no one knows or can know: what is going to happen in Egypt? It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future (that’s from Keynes). There are lessons from past revolutions that might help us understand what is happening, but from where I’m sitting, marveling at Egyptian people’s courage and looking at these utterly unanticipated and amazing events, I haven’t said much because I don’t have much to offer the people whose courage made this happen and whose decisions will determine how this all goes. Still, there may come a time in the near future when we can help, and when that time comes the more we understand about these dynamics the better.
So, parallels. The 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising was definitely the first one that came to mind. One thing to remember on that front, if you are feeling impatient: the protests at Tiananmen started in mid-April 1989, and the big massacre that drove them out of the square wasn’t until early June. It seems to me that everything depends on Egyptians’ capacity to stay mobilized and to keep escalating protests. The other major point is that if they lose now, they really lose – the worst violence is after the big demonstrations, not during them, when protesters and dissidents are hunted down.
One I hadn’t thought of came from Bill Blum, who made the comparison with Portugal 1975 in his “Killing Hope” column:
“The visual symbol of the Portuguese “revolution” had become the picture of a child sticking a rose into the muzzle of a rifle held by a friendly soldier, and I got caught up in demonstrations and parades featuring people, including myself, standing on tanks and throwing roses, with the crowds cheering the soldiers. It was pretty heady stuff, and I dearly wanted to believe, but I and most people I spoke to there had little doubt that the United States could not let such a breath of fresh air last very long. The overthrow of the Chilean government less than two years earlier had raised the world’s collective political consciousness, as well as the level of skepticism and paranoia on the left.”
“Washington and multinational corporate officials who were on the board of directors of the planet were indeed concerned. Besides anything else, Portugal was a member of NATO. Destabilization became the order of the day: covert actions; attacks in the US press; subverting trade unions; subsidizing opposition media; economic sabotage through international credit and commerce; heavy financing of selected candidates in elections; a US cut-off of Portugal from certain military and nuclear information commonly available to NATO members; NATO naval and air exercises off the Portuguese coast, with 19 NATO warships moored in Lisbon’s harbor, regarded by most Portuguese as an attempt to intimidate the provisional government. In 1976 the “Socialist” Party (scarcely further left and no less anti-communist than the US Democratic Party) came to power, heavily financed by the CIA, the Agency also arranging for Western European social-democratic parties to help foot the bill. The Portuguese revolution was dead, stillborn.”
Blum has good reason to worry, but events don’t always go Washington’s way. If they did, Egyptians wouldn’t have made it this far, and if they go further and keep their resolve, the US won’t have unlimited options. Of course they’ll try to subvert anything decent – but that doesn’t mean nothing decent can happen.
There’s Iran 1979, which Juan Cole did a good blog about.
There’s Venezuela 2002. This wasn’t a revolution though, to overthrow Chavez, but an attempted coup. What’s interesting here is the contrast in the US reaction. Everybody’s seen “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”, right? Remember how there was a setup, in which coupster snipers attacked the crowds, killing pro- and anti-Chavez demonstrators, and news companies manipulated the footage to suggest that Chavistas killed the demonstrators? In that situation, the (false) claim that pro-Chavez forces killed 10 demonstrators (a number it seems selected in advance by the coupsters) was enough to convince the US that Chavez was a human rights violator who had to go (the whole movie is on Google Video). Take a look at around minute 30 for the incident, and 49:05 for the White House spokesman’s statement, which is too good to not quote at length:
“We know the actions encouraged by the Chavez government provoked this crisis. The Chavez government suppressed peaceful demonstrations, fired on unarmed peaceful protesters resulting in 10 killed and 100 wounded. That is what took place, and a transitional civilian government has been installed.”
Haiti 1986. Another interesting case, because mobilizations took years before they overthrew Duvalier (Egyptians have actually been struggling for years, but not on this level). I was reading Michel Trouillot’s excellent book about the Duvaliers (Haiti: State Against Nation: The Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism, 1990, pg. 224-5)
“For different reasons, the US government, the CNG, the Haitian urban elites, political parties of all tendencies, and large chunks of the Haitian masses have fancied the assumption that Baby Doc’s departure was a clear step on the march to democracy, an immediate and inevitable consequence of the disturbances and massive riots of 1984-5. To be sure, the riots were a necessary factor in the end of the Duvalier dynasty: had the Haitian masses not defied the army and militia with their bare hands during a month of daily encounters in which many unarmed citizens were injured and killed, chances are that Jean-Claude Duvalier would still be ruling the country. But if the riots were necessary for Duvalier to leave, they certainly were not a sufficient condition for him to depart the way he did. It took something else to orchestrate his departure at that particular time, under those specific circumstances, and with a no less specific aftermath… Two series of events occurred on February 7, 1986: first, the departure of Duvalier; second, the takeover of the state machinery by a group of apparently disparate individuals, civilians and career army officers… For what Haitians witnessed on February 7, 1986, was not the disorderly escape of an ‘entire leadership’ pushed out by popular pressure… but a transmission of power, orchestrated with absolute order – albeit against the background of a pouplar uprising.”
Trouillot refers (on pg. 226) to “one crucial fact: Jean-Claude Duvalier was brought down by a high-level coup d’etat executed with international connivance.” The coup prevented the complete uprooting of the structures of the dictatorship, and a series of dictators continued to rule the country for years, a scenario many, like Samir Amin, have foreseen for Egypt.
Of course, the best thing about this situation is that it isn’t a repeat of anything that has happened in the past. It is the Egyptians’ moment, and they will make it.
Justin Podur is Toronto-based writer.
More such philanthrocapitalism and we shall be utterly undone
Philanthrocapitalism, a book by Bishop and Green, argues that philanthropy will help the public accept a new age of plutocracy (the rule by wealth). The rich are giving their money away so effectively, they say, that the public won’t mind increasing inequality. At one point the authors of reference Slavoj Zizek, who criticizes philanthrocapitalists and calls them “liberal communists” in an essay called Nobody Has To be Vile and it’s available for free at the LRB, which isn’t the norm (I am still trying to figure out how to get Jackson Lears’s review of Nader’s “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us” without subscribing, which wouldn’t be worth it for me).
Zizek is lots of fun. He identifies a real problem, which is a turn to the rich for solutions to the problems they create. Zizek helps clarify the problem in his description of Soros and Gates. Soros:
“…stands for ruthless financial exploitation combined with its counter-agent, humanitarian worry about the catastrophic social consequences of the unbridled market economy. Soros’s daily routine is a lie embodied: half of his working time is devoted to financial speculation, the other half to ‘humanitarian’ activities (financing cultural and democratic activities in post-Communist countries, writing essays and books) which work against the effects of his own speculations. The two faces of Bill Gates are exactly like the two faces of Soros: on the one hand, a cruel businessman, destroying or buying out competitors, aiming at a virtual monopoly; on the other, the great philanthropist who makes a point of saying: ‘What does it serve to have computers if people do not have enough to eat?’”
Gates:
“is already the single greatest benefactor in the history of humanity, displaying his love for his neighbours by giving hundreds of millions of dollars for education, the fight against hunger and malaria etc. The catch is that before you can give all this away you have to take it (or, as the liberal communists would put it, create it).”
Zizek’s conclusion, quoted by the authors of philanthrocapitalism, is:
“We should have no illusions: liberal communists are the enemy of every true progressive struggle today. All other enemies – religious fundamentalists, terrorists, corrupt and inefficient state bureaucracies – depend on contingent local circumstances. Precisely because they want to resolve all these secondary malfunctions of the global system, liberal communists are the direct embodiment of what is wrong with the system. It may be necessary to enter into tactical alliances with liberal communists in order to fight racism, sexism and religious obscurantism, but it’s important to remember exactly what they are up to…They may fight subjective violence, but liberal communists are the agents of the structural violence that creates the conditions for explosions of subjective violence. The same Soros who gives millions to fund education has ruined the lives of thousands thanks to his financial speculations and in doing so created the conditions for the rise of the intolerance he denounces.”
Where Zizek’s essay is incomplete is in the answer to the pragmatic argument. People are turning to money – or, to use Zizek’s term, to ‘liberal communists’ – as a matter of urgency. In this system, problems can’t be solved without money. Governments are captured by money. So, where to turn for help, if you need to solve a problem right now? People with money. In doing so, we make things worse, we strengthen the ‘structural violence’ of the system. But if we want to support and be a part of ‘true progressive struggle’, what can we offer to counter their patronage power other than structural critique? The democratic/social movement idea is that mobilized and organized people can counter elites even if elites have much more money, whether in social contests or even in solving social problems like health, education, or environmental problems. It seems like that idea is the one that is weakened the most by this philanthrocapitalistic movement, especially added to all the other demobilizing elements in society (propaganda, infrastructure, etc.).
Zizek writes this as if the counter-argument is self-evident – indeed, so self-evident that his description of their ideology is mocking.
“Liberal communists are pragmatic; they hate a doctrinaire approach. There is no exploited working class today, only concrete problems to be solved: starvation in Africa, the plight of Muslim women, religious fundamentalist violence. When there is a humanitarian crisis in Africa (liberal communists love a humanitarian crisis; it brings out the best in them), instead of engaging in anti-imperialist rhetoric, we should get together and work out the best way of solving the problem, engage people, governments and business in a common enterprise, start moving things instead of relying on centralised state help, approach the crisis in a creative and unconventional way.”
But I am pretty sure that they would read that description and say, yes, and?
My attempt at an answer to that question (“yes, and?”) would be that even philanthrocapitalism’s proponents concede that the billions they give are peanuts compared to what taxpayers provide. And what they don’t concede is that a lot of hype conceals a huge gap between what is pledged and what is actually delivered. The result is that all this philanthropy seems to provide the wealthy with control over public systems by virtue of giving a small portion of the total money to a program. Through that small portion of a contribution, they buy control over a whole system (like New York’s public education system, university priorities, or public health systems in various African countries). Linda McQuaig’s book “The Trouble With Billionaires” argues the crazy idea that the wealthy should pay taxes.
Another attempt at an answer might be to identify certain things that billionaires won’t ever do. Call this my challenge to the philanthrocapitalists. They can call leftists doctrinaire and trapped in the old ways all day, and I will celebrate their innovation, if they do the following:
1. Pay the $25 billion France owes Haiti, and then use international legal means to get the money back from France.
2. Pay Rwanda off to stop its de facto occupation of the eastern DRC, which Rwanda is doing for the hundreds of millions in minerals it gets from the enterprise. Philanthrocapitalists could make a major contribution to peace in one of the worst human conflicts by creating an endowment that will give Rwanda an annual subsidy equaling what it would earn from plundered DRC minerals, in exchange for Rwanda’s complete withdrawal of all militias and Rwandan military presence in the DRC. A similar arrangement could be made with Uganda.
3. Here I’m inspired by one of Ralph Nader’s proposals in “Only the Super-Rich…” and JK Galbraith’s novel, “A Tenured Professor”. For every politician who gets private campaign funding, give a matching amount to a politician opposing them automatically. Neutralize the effects of money in elections, creating a disincentive for all lobbying activity. When the super-rich character in Galbraith’s novel tried this, the system was able to mobilize quickly to change the laws and take away his fortune. I suspect the same would happen to the billionaires if they tried it for real.
4. Inspired by the various anti-Israeli-apartheid organizations in Toronto and elsewhere (Queers Against Israeli Apartheid QUAIA, Students Against Israeli Apartheid SAIA, etc.), form Billionaires Against Israeli Apartheid BAIA. Give the government elected by Palestinians funds matching what the US gives Israel. Offer Israel funds matching what the US gives if they end the occupation, allows the refugees to return, and give equality to Palestinian citizens of Israel. If BAIA wants to attach all sorts of conditions to this, fine – for example, if BAIA says that Palestinians and Israelis can only receive their funds if they renounce violence, that is ok. Conditions must apply to both sides, however. To smooth things, BAIA could also match funds the US gives to Egypt if it abandons those funds and provides Gaza with a normal border that people can cross normally (ie., if it stops helping Israel with the siege).
The point is not to encourage billionaires to adopt my own favourite causes, in effect saying – stop fighting malaria and AIDS and follow what I think you should do. The point is, instead, to show that billionaires are not above politics. Their taking and their giving has a definite political bias, and will either reject or are not strong enough to win even reform-oriented, very money-oriented proposals (none of my 4 proposals are revolutionary, they don’t ask for overthrowing the system) if they run against the system.
Philanthrocapitalists might have two possible counterarguments. 1), my causes are too obscure and low priority or 2), no billionaires are interested in these particular causes. To one, I would say there was plenty of philanthropic interest in Haiti after the earthquake, just no mention of the stolen billions; that the DRC is probably the worst conflict in the world in absolute terms; that neutralizing money in politics is an old favourite of liberals (it comes from Galbraith and Nader!); and that Israel/Palestine is one of the longest-running and most attended-to conflicts in the world, it’s just that all the billions are going to making things worse for the Palestinians now and for everybody eventually. To 2), I would say this proves my point. With more billionaires all the time, why isn’t there support for any of these problems that might be solved if the right billionaire came along to throw money at it? Perhaps because there’s some kind of selection process for becoming, and staying, a billionaire. And that these hyperagents (that’s what philanthropists call them because they are able to do so much more good than ordinary people) can only exercise their hyperagency in ways that reinforce the system.
For the rest of us agents (not hyperagents), we are going to have to try to convince large numbers of people to do things using non monetary methods. That’s my hypothesis, and until billionaires have fulfilled my simple, 4 item list, I won’t drop it.
Justin Podur is a Toronto-based writer.
I am not a gadget
Jaron Lanier, author of “You are not a gadget”, is very well-informed about what he is writing about, which is some of the social consequences of the internet, and some of the implicit ideologies that are built into the internet as we are living with it today. Lanier was one of the early minds behind virtual reality and has helped create a lot of the technology that shapes how we live and how we think. In his book, “You are not a gadget” (Knopf NY 2010) he offers some reflections on this technology, recent trends and coming trends, and the relationship of the technology to society.
Raj Patel’s “Value of Nothing”
For various reasons I found myself with several hours on public transit and with Raj Patel’s fine book “The Value of Nothing” in hand. I really liked a few things about it. First, it’s a very readable summary of a lot of economic theories (and ideologies) that guide policies today. For a more mathematical treatment of these I really like Steve Keen’s “Debunking Economics” which is recommended by Jonathan Nitzan, another very interesting political economist who argues that money is the commodification of power, and makes the argument utilizing some interesting analyses of data.
A short video on Toronto Star’s recent G20 coverage, technology and protests
Three minutes on technology and protests, focusing on the Toronto Star’s recent G20 coverage, especially Rosie DiManno’s articles.
Thoughts on Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows”
After a couple of recommendations from a couple of different directions, I read Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows: What the internet is doing to our brains”. It combines neuroplasticity research (which I read about in Norman Doidge’s “The Brain that Changes Itself”) with ideas about a literary, print-based culture versus an electronic media-based culture. The book was mentioned in Tapscott & Williams’s “Macrowikinomics” and in Chris Hedges’s “Death of the Liberal Class”. Hedges also criticizes electronic media based culture and laments the death of print-based culture in his “Empire of Illusion”.
The basic argument of “The Shallows” is that the web is good for associating bits of information but print was good for deep reading, thinking, and contemplation. My friend Michael Albert focused on the attention span aspect of the argument in a recent blog post on ZNet: that attention spans decrease as online information flow increases.
Here’s a hopeful aspect: neuroplasticity goes both ways. If lots of internet use can reprogram us to lose our attention spans, practice thinking and contemplating can reprogram us to be reflective and thoughtful.
The other point that I’ve been thinking about is where Carr quotes Neil Postman, a very interesting writer on technology and society. On pg.151-2, Carr quotes Postman’s book “Technopoly”, who in turn was describing the key elements of scientific management. The six assumptions of Taylorism, or scientific management, as Postman writes – quoted in Carr:
“that the primary, if not the only, goal of human labor and thought is efficiency; that technical calculation is in all respects superior to human judgment; that in fact human judgment cannot be trusted, because it is plagued by laxity, ambiguity, and unnecessary complexity; that subjectivity is an obstacle to clear thinking; that what cannot be measured either does not exist or is of no value; and that the affairs of citizens are best guided and conducted by experts.”
Carr uses this quote in a discussion about Google’s philosophy, and corrects the sixth assumption for the case of Google: “Google doesn’t believe that the affairs of citizens are best guided by experts. It believes that those affairs are best guided by software algorithms”.
This does take me back to Douglas Hubbard, who I mentioned in my post about Norberto Bobbio and democracy. Hubbard’s business book “How to Measure Anything”, is, if anything, an argument for good measurement and not bad measurement. His more recent book called “The Failure of Risk Management”, is even more explicitly a plea for using techniques that have some rigor and justification as opposed to subjective illusions of measurement and quantification.
What I wonder about though is, does even good measurement have possibly perverse effects? Does even good measurement crowd out important ways of thinking, like ethical reasoning or historical comparison? I am genuinely not sure about this point. Another question – if it comes to social conflict, can networked thinkers beat deep thinkers, or does it go the other way?
“Santa” Ford just stole 1000 jobs from the future
Yesterday’s headlines in Toronto newspapers were about how Rob Ford and City Council repealed the $60 vehicle registration tax. The Toronto Sun went as far as painting a beard on a picture of Ford, calling him Santa, and referring to the tax repeal as a christmas gift to Toronto. Another advance against the war on the car. Toronto’s progressive councillors, according to the reports, voted with Ford and apologized for implementing the tax in the first place. At the end of the reports, there was a statement about how Ford promised he would make up the $64 million shortfall in revenue without “major” cuts.
The things populist politicians promise – balanced budgets, reduced taxes, and jobs – are all in conflict with each other. A $64 million annual shortfall is enough to fund 1000 very good jobs. How much work gets done by 1000 full-time workers? How much does their spending affect the economy of the city? Ford has ensured either increased deficits (which means no balancing of the budget) or loss of services. By separating the tax cut from the service cuts or deferring them to the future, Ford has ensured that when the time comes to pay for these cuts, the people paying will have forgotten that it was “Santa” who forced the sacrifices on them. The Grinch is invisible behind the painted Santa beard.
Society pays for everything, one way or another. If it’s not taxes now, it’s unemployment now and broken infrastructure later. If Ford and the Toronto Sun can convince us that there’s a magical way to get something for nothing, they will end up helping us wreck the place we live in. In Toronto as in Canada, we are watching tomorrow’s problems being created, and the rest of the world could be forgiven for thinking that we are applauding.
Spinning the leaks
My daily routine these days includes going to the Wikileaks twitter feed (twitter.com/wikileaks), which took me to this story in the UK Guardian about how Saudi Arabia proposed an Arab force to invade Lebanon. The Guardian is definitely the best site on the Wikileaks, and for data in general – they have understood something about what media organizations should be doing and they are going about it, in ways that a lot of other outlets haven’t.