Is Gun Control Debate Missing The Point?

The brutal and tragic killing of 12 people in a movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado has raised the thorny issue of gun control in an election year. Not surprisingly both Obama and Romney, fearful of being targeted the politically powerful National Rifle Association have dodged the issue and stated that they are committed to defending the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees citizens the right to bear arm. For or against gun control has become the central focus of the political debate.

But what if the entire debate is, in part, besides the point? Don't get me wrong, the American obsession with owning M-16s and Uzis is a clear signpost that America is a sick society. The fact that it is easier to get guns than it is to get decent healthcare or to organize a union is also a symbol of America's bizarro world priorities. And it is those priorities that ought to be interrogated because they are ultimately at the root of America's gun crime world record.

First, the idea that mass killers - or even just run of the mill murderers - are the result of gun availability or not misses the underlying point: why do so many Americans solve their problems with weapons? I mean, why would a guy who had a bright future, like James Holmes, do such a thing? Why would high school students show up to school and shoot their fellow students? Let's try to pick this apart.

There's an element of chickens coming home to roost in all of this - obviously not that any of the victims deserved what they got but rather that America valorizes violence in its foreign and domestic policy and, as a reflection of that, in its popular culture. The US spends more on the military than the next ten biggest military spenders combined. They spend as much on the military as on education and sixty percent more on the military than on welfare. America holds its pre-eminent place in the world order, as the empire that rules other empires, by use of that enormous military might. It propped up the Egyptian dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak by supplying weapons and money for weapons. It sells plentiful weapons to Saudi Arabia that are used, in part, to suppress their own population. The lion's share of aid to Israel is also in the form of military equipment. In fact, America is the world's largest supplier of weapons used in global conflicts.

Given the importance of weapons to the US political and economic system it's no surprise that the foreign policy response of the USA involves violence or the threat of violence. After 9/11 the first response of America wasn't to examine why they were targeted, it was rather to organize a war... against two countries that weren't responsible for the 9/11 attack, Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, America has invaded more countries and overthrown more foreign government than any nation in history.

At home the response to social problems and social movements is also profoundly influenced by the role of violence. From the violent repression of the Black Panthers in the 1970s to the police brutality by leading NYPD officers that brought the Occupy Wall Street movement to national attention, violence is the go-to response to political movements. It's no surprise that America incarcerates people at a higher rate than any other country on the planet. Punishment for deviancy is a core American value.

And this dependency on violence to maintain America's dominant position in the world order can't but help find its expression in popular culture. Of the top ten highest grossing films of 2011at least eight have plots that revolve around violence, or in which the problems of the lead character are solved through violence. I'm no prude and I like a good action movie; this isn't about judging people's personal tastes but rather making the point that American society is steeped in violence.

But it doesn't end with valorizing violence. That valorization itself is rooted in the fact that America is the most unequal society on the planet. America NEEDS violence to sustain that inequality - that and a stiflingly conservative and narrow ideology that labels anyone who disagrees with the main tenets of US foreign or domestic policy (never mind challenging the dominance of the market) as "UnAmerican." In part because social and political responses to inequality are shut down, the frustration that working people feel is often channeled into interpersonal violence, both verbal and physical. Secondly, the inequality and repressive laws, for instance around drugs, lead many poor people into a life of crime, understanding that "crime" is itself defined by those with power. It's OK to steal the homes and livelihoods of millions of ordinary workers (in fact, you will be rewarded with a bailout when the pyramid scheme comes crashing down). But if you sell a bag of weed or crack cocaine you will spend some serious time in jail. When people are defined as living outside the law they are the subject of violence, both by state institutions like the police and prison system, and from outlaw gangs who compete through violence as a side effect of their outlaw status.

Finally, the military and repressive priorities of the US federal and state governments and the lack of a comprehensive and universal health care system, austerity to social programs at the state level, etc. means that deeply disturbed people are on their own. The destruction of any institutions of social solidarity - outside of the family, which lacks the training and resources to tackle mental health issues - means that someone as deranged as James Holmes is left to fend for himself. He had more opportunity to purchase guns and ammunition online than he did to receive treatment. If the money spent on the US military were instead spent on a comprehensive network of support services - from welfare to mental health services and more - it would be less likely that someone like James Holmes would fall through the cracks. And it would also create a paradigm shift in some of the dominant values of American society, making it less likely that his mental derangement would lead him towards violence.

Gun control? Sure. But it's time to talk about the sickness at the heart of American society that is at root - not least because that is exactly the model which Harper's conservatives would have us emulate here in Canada.


Obama, Romney back gun owners as they decry shootings - The Globe and Mail:

'via Blog this'

Why I Support Somali Pirates

APPARENTLY SOME PEOPLE FELT THAT I WENT TOO FAR in defending Somali pirates as representing a legitimate response to imperialism. After all, the pirates take hostages and threaten - though, statistically, it is the pirates who are most likely to be killed. And, as the Wired interview I linked to notes, it is not in the interest of pirates to actually kill their hostages. There have been very few fatalities. Nonetheless, it raises some serious questions about political ethics for progressives. Luckily, being a know-it-all, I have a response.
The first response of course is that there's always a double-standard in the moral outrage about "criminals" and "terrorists". Nobody credible in the mainstream media would suggest that the US president is a terrorist or a criminal. Yet, the United States, under the leadership of pretty much every president, has been responsible for hundreds of times more deaths than any terrorist organization that you might care to name. Bush alone must bear responsibility for the deaths of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan. Clinton bombed Serbia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq and, of course, Somalia. Obama looks set to send another 34,000 troops to Afghanistan - and at $1 million bucks each, you can bet they won't be playing pinochle. They'll be killing people wholesale.
And the US is more than happy to hold people hostage, including starving people, using secret prisons, keeping them in legal limbo in Guantanamo, and the use of extraordinary renditions. In Somalia right now the US is holding millions hostage, refusing to allow US food aid out of Kenyan warehouses because it might get into the hands of the Islamist al-Shabab movement that is winning the war against the heavily-subsidized and heavily armed - by the US - TFG government in Mogadishu. Even Foreign Policy Magazine has an article condemning the policy, concluding with the following:

The U.S. government is holding the Somalia relief enterprise and its beneficiaries hostage to its counterterrorism policy... Until Washington lets [aid] agencies fulfill their mission unhindered, the U.S. mission to win "hearts and minds" in Somalia, a feared up-and-coming stronghold of terrorism, will be completely undermined. Knowingly allowing millions of people to suffer is no way to win friends.

But there's a second point, that I think is even more important. It is this: that the application of abstract universal values is politically useless to understanding the world, to providing a just framework for action, and to maintaining a coherent, non-hypocritical value system.
Let me put this more concretely. Is it right to say that lying is wrong? Most people would say "yes, of course. Honesty is the best policy." etc. And yet nobody actually believes that. We lie everyday, often several times a day. We lie to our boss - "sorry, I'm late: traffic". We lie to our spouse: "no, you don't look fat in that." We lie to our friends. Because we understand that context is what determines our response. Similarly theft - do we condemn the theft of a loaf of bread by someone so poor that to do otherwise would be to starve? Certainly the British condemned the Irish during the Potato Famine. And what is theft? Is it theft for children in Indonesia to work 12-hour days, being paid sweatshop wages by major multinational garment corporations? Is it theft for the world's largest banks to have gambled wildly and then, having brought the system to near collapse, demand public money, refuse public control, and continue to give out bonuses?
And lastly, of course, killing. Surely we must be against killing. Its a commandment from God himself. There's laws against it. We condemn it. But we don't condemn all killing. We have war memorials to commemorate the occasions of mass slaughter that punctuate our history. We're told to "support our troops", which always means "shut up and support the killing of foreigners in a war somewhere else."
So, unless we are going to consistently tell the truth, never steal and never support any war or violent act, we must permit that sometimes those actions are acceptable. The question is when are they acceptable and this really comes down to "whose side are you on?" It also means a concrete analysis of each situation.
Let's take the pirates since this is where we started. Somalia's pirates are indubitably - even the mainstream media acknowledge this - a response to the lack of a central government to police the waters of the Somali basin, and the devastating poverty of that country. The action of seizing boats might seem extreme but since the pirates aren't recognized as a legitimate sovereign authority, they are forced to use coercion. If we're honest, all state transactions - including taxation and tariffs - are rooted in the threat of violence (whether physical or financial) against the subject. We have created laws to mediate this but behind the laws that threat remains - and as the Branch Davidians or various aboriginal protest movements (or the Black Panthers or the MOVE organization or the trade union movement) have often discovered, it's not that far buried. So, the pirates, without the benefit of legal recognition, are applying the threat.
There's also a question of power implied here. Somalia is a country that is suffering because of the continued meddling, manipulation, invasion, bombardment, etc etc of the USA, et al. The USA support the dictator Siad Barre. They invaded to prevent Mohammad Farah Aideed from consolidating his power. They supported the Ethiopian invasion which forced the Union of Islamic Courts out of power, after they had brought a modicum of stability to the country. And now they are arming and backing a group that has no support outside of a few neighbourhoods in Mogadishu.
The USA is the most powerful empire in world history. It has bases in more than 100 countries. Its military spending alone makes up more than half of the total world military spending. Its economy is the world's largest. It controls the key international economic institutions in the world, the IMF, the World Bank, etc. It has invaded more countries and overthrown more governments than any other country in history.
From these two facts - oppression and domination - I draw two conclusions. The first is that the actions of the oppressed to alleviate their conditions are not the same as those of the dominant powers. The actions of, say, the pirates has a democratic component to it - they are attempting to overcome the effects of imperialism and to affirm their right to self-determination and sovereignty. The actions of the United States are designed to strengthen and affirm the present set-up, in other words their dominance. Thus, their invasions of Iraq or Afghanistan, their support for the Ethiopian dictator (the Jordanian dictator, the Egyptian dictator, the Israeli apartheid regime, of China, etc), are about sustaining domination. They run directly counter to democracy and self-determination. And since I support democracy - in the broadest sense of the term, including in the economy - because I believe that it is necessary for the full development of humanity, I support weakening the forces of domination. So, anything that weakens the Americans, their allies and clients, or other imperial powers (including the Russian, Chinese, British, EU, Canada, etc.) at the very least creates more space for the potential of democratic development. There will be no women's liberation in Afghanistan as long as NATO and the Americans are there. Only once the occupying powers are driven out, will there be the possibility of democratic development.
This doesn't mean that I support all actions putatively directed against the American state or other imperial regimes. Terrorism for instance, while often an understandable response, is usually counter-productive. (and by terrorism I don't mean the usual "anything that opposes us using violence is terrorist" discourse). When al Qaeda blew up the Twin Towers, did that weaken or strengthen the US? It strengthened it. It provided a pretext to invade Afghanistan and Iraq and to increase the repressive powers of the US state through the Patriot Act, the open acceptance of torture as legitimate, etc. There is a question here of ends and means - ie. the ends don't justify the means, the ends are determined by the means. And that is why I support the pirates.

Death Cult Nation - Serial Killers, Superheroes & Imperialism, Part 2

Any discussion of serial killers has to start from the fact American culture is probably the largest death cult in human history. Even the Aztecs, famous for their mass human sacrifices, weren’t as obsessed with killing as we are – nor did they kill as many people as has the United States of America. Death is the air that we breathe and for that reason its omnipresence is normalized and made invisible. Some day people will take a look at our worship of death and see a culture in desperate and flailing decline.
Video games provide a key example here. They have become a central part of our leisure culture, exploding in sales over the last decade, with sales of $9.5 billion in 2007, representing 268 million units. A significant number of these games are about killing and death, with the biggest selling video game of 2008, Grand Theft Auto IV, built around vicious mob violence and the guiltless murder of competitors and enemies. The game broke all records upon its release, garnering $500 million in sales in the first week, by moving 6 million units. And of the top 5 selling video games of 2008, violently themed games, in which loss and victory are measured in deaths, make up three of them. The Entertainment Software Association suggests that violence isn’t key to video game popularity by pointing to the fact that only 15% of games sold are rated “mature”. However, the top-selling SuperMario: Galaxy, a game rated “everyone” is still about violence, it just happens to be stylized for young minds, not yet ready for spurting blood, entrails and shrieking. SuperMario is the cute gateway drug that leads the player towards the mass killing mayhem of Resident Evil or Gears of War.
Our movies and television: the same. Romantic love and death are our two greatest obsessions, next to the shallowest conceptions of beauty. If we’re not falling in love or shopping, it seems, we’re killing people. The top three films of 2008, for instance, involved multiple murders and a violent protagonist.
But it would be a mistake to think that video games or movies are making people more violent or crime prone, per se. Rather they are a reflection and reinforcement of social values that are as American as apple pie and a handgun hidden in Dad’s underwear drawer.
The Americas were built upon murder and theft. And the Europeans were only really bringing to the New World what they practiced in their own backyards, from the Enclosures in Britain to the Inquisition of Spain – and the Crusades just beyond Europe’s borders. The wealthy and powerful pursued a model of social engineering that set the terms for interactions all the way down to the base of society. Americans still cling to the Second Amendment of their Constitution, which proclaims the right to bear arms.
The validation – and necessity - of violence is a product of a class divided society and of colonialism. It is an extension of a whole series of coercive relationships infused with open or implied violence that hold our society together – from the economic coercion that forces you to work that miserable, alienated job, to the coercion of the police who patrol our neighbourhoods, guns at the ready. And make no mistake, forcing people out of their homes at the end of a sheriff’s baton – as millions of Americans have experienced in the present crisis – is also a form of violence. Hobbes primeval “war of all against all” isn’t the thing that society was created to end – it is the sine qua non of “civilization” itself.
Beyond the boundaries of our countries – whether that is across the world or across the wire fence between the dominant group and the occupied, forced onto reservations, ghettoes and Bantustans – our leaders still exercise mass violence to achieve foreign policy goals, territorial expansion, to open markets or access resources, etc. It is worth remembering that during the Gulf War in 1991 the United States murdered tens of thousands of Iraqis on the infamous Highway of Death as they retreated from Kuwait. The invasion of 2003 led to the premature deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.
And, of course, in the recent invasion and bombardment of Gaza by Israel, there were thousands of casualties during the three weeks of the operation, with hundreds upon hundreds of civilian deaths, not to mention the mass destruction that will cripple Gaza for years, if not decades. All of which was passed over without too many tears shed with the kind of crass “we think the price is worth it” that drives the plots of violent, quest-based video games.
And even here in Canada “the Peacekeeper” we have our share of murderous history that is still being written, as the indigenous population could well attest. Our present mission in Afghanistan was described by General Rick Hillier, former head of the Canadian Armed Forces as being to slay the “detestable murderers and scumbags” of the Taliban. And kill them we did, with greater joy the larger the number of them that we slew. After all, as Hillier said on another occasion, “We're not the public service of Canada; we're not just another department. We are the Canadian Forces, and our job is to kill people. This job is celebrated every time millions of commuters drive down the Highway 401, a section of which have been re-named the Highway of Heroes for the bodies of soldiers killed in Afghanistan that are transported along its length.
So, there can be no claim that mass murder is an aberrant behaviour in our society. It is the way we get the job done. Mass murder is government policy, carried out by soldiers who are rewarded for killing more people than the next guy. No, the problem for “serial killers” is that they don’t carry out the killing in the service of power.

Serial Killers, Superheroes & Imperialism: Part 1

There’s certainly nothing new in our obsession with serial killers, particularly the gory details of their crimes. Jack the Ripper was perhaps the first and most famous of a long line of mass murderers that have inspired films, books, and articles. His combination of brutal, ritualized murder, sex, and the taunting of legal authorities set the archetype for almost all future representations.
Since the time of “Saucy Jack” the interest in mass murders of this type has grown, becoming a genre of film and novels unto itself, with probably dozens of each produced and published each year, from teen slasher films to art films like “Man Bites Dog”. The subject warrants multiple Wikipedia pages and hundreds, if not thousands, of “fan sites” dedicated to either specific serial killers or to serial killers in general.
One of the interesting things about serial killer representations in popular culture is how plastic they are. That is, the character of a serial killer, beyond having some specific technical similarities (ritual, emotional disconnection from victims, lack of guilt, etc) can fit almost any mould.
There is the award-winning Showcase series, Dexter, about a serial-killer-as-boy-next-door-slash-vigilante-superhero. We all love Dexter because we don’t see anything wrong with executing bad people. He’s a working class, lower tech, less ridiculous version of Batman. And he’s just so huggable.
He’s like you and me. Hell, if you were Dexter, wouldn’t you kill that murderer, those heartless and brutal smugglers of illegal immigrants, or that nurse with an enthusiasm for euthanizing patients? Dexter, the mass murderer, ironically, satisfies our desire to overcome that sense of powerlessness we all feel towards one of the greatest bogeymen of our time: random killers specifically and criminals more generally. We become the mass murderer, in a sense, through our identification with him.
In this way he’s not so very different from the more monstrous and more aristocratically charming character of Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lector. If Dexter is Batman, Lector is Lucifer, the fallen angel. His ultimate history, in many ways similar to Dexter’s – and all superheroes – is one of childhood trauma that marks him indelibly, followed by a struggle to understand and control his special powers. Hannibal Lector is reminiscent of Magneto, the vengeful Jewish mutant from the X-Men series who seeks to destroy all non-mutants as a result of his experiences in World War Two.
These aspects of the serial killer - his/her plasticity and their kinship superheroes/supervillains and supernatural figures – vampires also come to mind - is worth exploring further. All of them say something about our culture more generally that could be valuable in unearthing the origins of our society’s pathologies.

TOMORROW: Part 2, Death Cult Nation