did you notice? Election Fraud in IRAN was in the news
for weeks, but Afghanistan... you know, the place were
WE BRING DEMOCRACY ... fraud is not so bad?
Imagine if the brother of Ajmedinashad was a
drug-baron!
(like Karzai's)
Most western world leader have castigated Iran and are now mute on Afghanistan.
Is this a religion? Is being fair heretical?
.===========
Maybe I should do some reading:
Policing Dissent: Social Control and the
Anti-globalization Movement
category international | imperialism / war | review
author Wednesday September 09, 2009 08:51 author by
Deric Shannon - University of Connecticut
Review of the Luis Fernandez book
With this book anarchist sociologist, Luis
Fernandez, writes on his studies of policing protests
(broadly speaking). At first glance, the references and
style of the book might make one think it is written
for other academics -- dispassionately studying the
behaviors of our political masters and their domestic
army, the police. A close read, however, makes it clear
that Fernandez has fighters for social justice in mind,
taking a critical approach to studying police and
conceiving of policing processes broadly to demonstrate
the ways that our ruling relations are protected in
western "democracies".
Policing Dissent begins by defining our terms and
operationalizing the categories of analysis for this
ethnographic study. Next, Fernandez gives a review of
the existing literature on the control of dissent.
Interestingly, here (and throughout the book) Fernandez
shows some of the radical political uses of
post-structuralists like Michel Foucault. Indeed, any
volume on dissent would be remiss not to mention the
ways that discipline, discourse, and regimes of
knowledge are implicated in domesticating desire,
including the desire to rebellion. This frees us from
looking at power as only being located in specific
institutions (such as the state, or capitalism), but
also gives us ways to analyze productive power that
disciplines us, often times in complex ways that are
not reducible to capitalism and the state. This
conceptualization of power is becoming much discussed
in contemporary militant movements, as queer theory and
other recent perspectives have taught us that sometimes
hierarchies and oppressions develop out of the ways
that we invent social categories and essential
corresponding roles, attitudes, actions, etc. -- in short,
we create docile, disciplined, and domesticated bodies,
both individually, but also, as Fernandez demonstrates,
docile social bodies. This is something of concern to
all people who hope for a radically different future
and a revolutionary social body to carry out the task
of bringing this future about.
Another item of interest in this book is Fernandez.s
analysis of the uses of police psychological control.
Through the creation of images of violent "anarchists",
the police frame the debate in ways that both
delegitimize anti-authoritarians and demonize them.
This involves a process through which our rulers
actually hire public relations experts to give them the
proper public image and persona before spraying us with
teargas and clubbing us in the streets (demonstrating
their actual contempt for us, the subjects of their
rule). Fernandez shows how they court the media to help
them frame public opinion on their terms, or to use
Herman and Chomsky.s famous phrase, the ways that they
"manufacture consent".
Fernandez has clearly been on the front lines in social
justice struggles. As more and more militants move
beyond summit-hopping politics to organize within their
workplaces and communities, these lessons from the
anti-globalization movement can serve as warnings for
what might come as we battle in new areas (and continue
to practice our legitimate right to protest). May we
win our battles and the larger war!
[First published in Political Media Review, 8 Sept.,
2009.]
WEBLINK:www.anarkismo.net/article/14370
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