Alternatives International

The Results that We Got: The Contradictions of American Gun Violence

Dylan Boyko — 2016-07-04T17:04:26Z

There is a problem in America with the economics of safety. Early in Evan Osnos' stunning New Yorker article on the subtle proliferation of gun ownership and gun discourse in America, he quotes Smith & Wesson CEO P. James Debney as “very pleased with the results that we got” in a sales increase surrounding personal protective firearms. The results, in America, vary heavily depending on what political perspective one takes, as red and blue rarely skews black and white regarding the Second Amendment.

Outside ideological differences, the entire equation surrounding gun control tilts away from logic and towards feelings. Quantitative analysis is strangely absent in most discussions regarding guns in America, and most gun manufacturers would love to keep it that way – unless they're discussing sales figures.

Available statistics often come from gun industry trade magazines or actual gun policy. The numbers gathered in Osnos' piece are stunning. In two decades, concealed carry permits have went from being illegal in twenty-two states to legal in all states, with nearly 12.8 million active permits in the United States.

In 1999, self defence was cited as the reason for gun ownership in 26 per cent of industry respondents – in 2013 this answer was given more than any other reason. The ownership pool was shrinking, however, as Osnos notes that gun owners now own an average of eight guns each. Osnos' ultimate statistic may shock, but more defines the constant locus of violence in contemporary American society: “more American civilians have died by gunfire in the past decade than all the Americans who were killed in combat in the Second World War.”

Again, the speculative nature of such statistics complicates any argument for gun control. Due to the extensive gun lobby and the National Rifle Association (N.R.A.), the Centre for Disease Control (C.D.C) cannot receive federal funding to study gun deaths in America. Such studies, or any real evidence to the effects of guns and gun violence on American citizens run contrary to the ethos of the N.R.A. Consequently, the group needs to maintain its aging and dwindling base of support. Osnos notes that ”the problem with failing to recruit and grow [gun supporters] is that numbers equate to political power.” What tricks then, can the gun industry reuse to invigorate their core base of gun-toting Americans?

History offers the worst kind of inspiration. Traced from the rural to urban migration (and the pure white panic after the Rodney King verdict in the early 1990s), gun advertising around personal safety has always contained an implicit racial component – be in the threat of 9/11 and the response, in armament, of 9/12 or the current push for conceal-carry civilians armed against ‘Radical Islam.'

Fear and preparedness form the twin bastions of patriotic gun ownership in America – tragedy does not demand a revisitation of how and why guns are available, but a redoubled vigilance, a tighter grip, and a truer aim. The dissonance between perception and reality regarding gun violence in America becomes Osnos' refrain: violent crimes are going down each year but people feel less and less safe.

Osnos final observation outlines the true double-bind of gun politics in America. If Donald Trump were to become president, the gun lobby would have a true ally in the Whitehouse. If Trump were to lose, those same embittered N.R.A. supporters would simply cling tighter to their weapons, decrying the new round of persecution gun owners face for simply wanting to protect them and theirs.

Jon Favreau and Dan Pfeiffer, two formers Obama staffers who co-host a pro-Democrat podcast, reach a similar conclusion in their evaluation of the House Democrat sit-in regarding gun control policy. Both spoke to the capriciousness of the no-fly list (a major talking point for new gun legislation that supposedly leans in a bipartisan manner) but more so discussed the Democratic policy as something that looks good in an attack advert but has no real agenda past political windmill-tilting. Real change, it seems, can never materialize when politics gets in the way.

The recent tragic events in Orlando, where Omar Mateen brutally murdered forty-nine and injured fifty-three people using a semi-automatic pistol and rifle, only exacerbate a disastrous American dichotomy on guns. After the requisite forty-eight hours of mourning (aside from a tone-deaf Donald Trump tweet or two), each side of the political spectrum puts on their tired and tawdry battle armor, preparing for the usual media mud-slinging. Gun lobbyists prepare speeches wishing for a single armed patriot present at Pulse that night.

Those demanding better gun control speculate on the means through which Omar Mateen obtained his weapons for his hateful mission. In the midst of infighting, another column of statistics are left uncounted in the continuing decades of gun violence in America. Fear and anger both do their part in ignoring the daily enormity of human loss in tragedies like the Orlando massacre. One side of the results are measured in sales dollars earned and polling points shifted, while the other deals in absented persons and unanswered questions. We cannot be happy with the result of such calculus.

Who Drives the Story: The Panama Papers and Narrative Control

Dylan Boyko — 2016-06-02T17:01:00Z

The Panama Papers may prove to be the single most important leak in a new era of data-driven activism. Delivered by an unnamed source to German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, and investigated with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), nearly 2.6 terabytes of data detailing the shadiest aspects of international and corporate finance fell into the public eye from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.

How the information was delivered to the people, however, belied a certain essential question in an unfolding era of journalistic activism. Who chose the stories the public would consume, with such a wealth of narratives and accusation to examine and unfurl? Who was driving the investigation?

Firm co-founder Ramon Fonseca, in a Panamanian news story, compared his business to a “car factory” where one could hardly blame the manufacturer “if the car was used in a robbery.” Such a massive data dump quickly forms into a story of negligent, willful or not, institutional power.

Investigations into the financial misdeeds detailed in the data have already claimed some important casualties, detailed Tess Owens of Vice News. The Icelandic Prime Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson resigned following national media coverage regarding his actions to shelter personal wealth off-shore during Iceland's financial collapse. José Manuel Soria, Spain's minister of industry, energy, and tourism, lost his position over his vast and secret personal wealth. Even Britain's David Cameron was unable to avoid scrutiny, for money he made of his father's sheltered investments and cash holdings.

What isn't immediately measurable, in terms of public outcry or lost political positions, is the endemic corruption of democratic and corporate society. As Owens details, certain startling patterns emerge from the Panama Papers. New Zealand, with its strict privacy laws in the face of anything but egregious crimes, was and is a favorite destination for the wealthy of Latin American nations to squirrel away ill-gotten funds and avoid full taxation. Corroborating an Oxfam Report titled “Broken at the Top,” documents within the Panama Papers confirm that the top 50 American corporations roughly 1.4 trillion dollars in hidden assets. With such obvious structural problems, one had to wonder about the absence of hierarchical critiques of the institutions of taxation. Who exactly was driving the investigation?

The initial targets of ICIJ articles and mainstream press during the initial release of the Panama Papers offer some clues. Through an Al-Jazeera Listening Post, the detailed targets of immediate coverage (namely politicians and not institutions) make sense from a practical storytelling perspective. Known entities like national leaders will obviously drum up the most public interest. The question still requires answering, especially in the wake of certain ‘interesting' choices of domestic coverage.

The Al-Jazeera piece rightly singles out The Guardian's coverage of the Kremlin and Putin's purported offshore holdings, when information regarding David Cameron was also so readily available. Decisions that avoid more widespread criticism of social systems for the easy pickings of specific political missives send a message operating on two distinct wavelengths. There are individuals deserving of punishment and reprimand, but they have to be the right individuals in the right types of political and national stratospheres.

Both the ICIJ and Süddeutsche Zeitung offer rationales for the stories told, or the limitations to certain narratives, but the underlying problem remains. Wolfgang Krach, Süddeutsche Zeitung editor, claims – again in the Al-Jazeera piece – the twofold restriction of shrinking newsrooms and German privacy laws prevent any further investigation into the democratic largesse behind such lax tax laws or the revealing of certain corporate perpetrators.

Gerard Ryle, head of the ICIJ, deflects using a different tact, claiming, “we [the ICIJ] are not Wikileaks” in the hopes of “reclaiming journalism.” Ryle's comments are reminiscent of a strange elitism where the objective of journalism becomes muddied. The people deserve knowledge, and the source — however disconcerting to a particular moral or journalistic code — should not receive undue derision. Information should drive the conversation, yet with Ryle and Krach's reasoning, and the lack of corporate coverage, the public is left with a rather large missing piece of the Panama puzzle.

The entirety of the documents released to the ICIJ is now available to the public. While initially criticized for withholding the information, a true public inquiry can now be conducted with both journalist and online activist alike taking up investigations into projects outside the normative purview of the media.

The move away from a corporatized approach will probably shed new (and possibly appalling) light on the sordid practice of legalized money laundering, but the question of making a difference remains hazy.

A Vice article from December, 2014 had already detailed the shady quality of Mossack-Fonseca, with little blowback in the mainstream press. What can a few more rabble-rousers do? The drive, apparently, is a ride – operated by corporate interests controlling the duration of our media-driven timeline. The accompanying nausea at nothing changing, unfortunately, has a little staying power.

Fighting Against the Bureaucratic Tide

Dylan Boyko — 2016-05-06T17:47:08Z

The problem posed by the current refugee crisis in Turkey, Greece, and much of Europe is, on one hand, an economic and political morass and, on the other hand, a very simple human crisis. There should not be much debate in terms of helping refugees. Despite this, the governments of many European nations have turned a man-made calamity into a bargaining chip, one that exacts a larger human cost by the day. Examining the political motivation for the EU's inaction does little to alleviate human concerns, but does help explain the intricacies of bureaucratic failure.

First, some context. As more and more refugees stream arrive in Europe, the European Union has struck a potential deal with non-member Turkey for help. As detailed by The Guardian's Jennifer Rankin, EU representatives and ex-Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu agreed to a 1 to 1 ratio for refugee settlement (one European migrant for every one refugee returned to Turkey).

Bare statistics reveal some harrowing realities: of the already 3 million refugees in Turkey, nearly 363,000 have made it to mainland Europe and an additional 2,000 arrive on the Greek shores each day. EU chief Donald Tusk openly hoped that “the days of irregular migration to Europe are over,” where the agreement aims to halt the horrors of human trafficking and arrange movement on a more sanctioned level. The problem, then, with such politicized change is the ignorance to the needs of refugees.

Survival, for migrants, often demands illegality – they are fleeing turmoil and potential death. Turkey, the nation where refugees will be deported, holds nearly as much danger as Syria, simply because of proximity. Sergio Peçanha, writing for theNew York Times, uses Aleppo as an example. The city's border is now closed, trapping migrants on each side of potentially disastrous regional divide. The Aleppo decision further enforces Turkey's institutional failure, one that Peçanha breaks into four categories: unemployment, poor housing, limited education access, and bureaucracy. The Turkish state, in efforts to curry European favor, fails refugees at nearly possible juncture, offering little to no support.

Rigorously detailed by Peçanha and Patrick Kingsley of The Guardian, among others, refugees stand little chance of improving their lot in Turkey. The government offers temporary status which affords refugees' rights to health care and education but no international refugee status or a clear path to citizenship. Bank accounts are necessary for resident permits and, both tragically and ironically, resident permits are a requirement for bank accounts. Only about 10% of all refugees in Turkey will be eligible to work. Only one in three Syrian children attend school in Turkey, partially because of the need for illegal child labor to offer some financial respite to migrant families. What was originally a deal to normalize migration quickly devolves into an abusive free-for-all where the nation with the lowest interest in protecting human rights accepts migrants in a clear ploy to grab a larger piece of the EU pie.

The Turkish government does not have the purest of intentions. According to both Kingsley and Rankin, the Turkish government and EU have entered into a double bind where the migrant deal is contingent on the relaxation of visa restrictions into Europe for some 75 million Turkish citizens. Such lessened restrictions would arrive at a moment of increased authoritarian intolerance towards political dissent within the Turkish media.

Rankin's article briefly mentions President Erdoğan's recent seizure of the news agencies Zaman and Cihan as a gesture towards increasingly restricted free speech in Turkey. Kingley's tells an equally questionable tale of censorship, where Erdoğan charged a Turkish journalist, Can Dündar, under a rarely used archaic piece of German law that prohibits slighting foreign leaders when Dündar published a critique in a German magazine. The story in question, accusing the Turkish government of selling weapons to Syrian rebels, held obvious negative political impact for Erdoğan and his regime. What appears more frightening is the lack of European criticism. Because of the need for migrant aid, even the furthest left of EU members (despite those governments and contingents shrink due to right-wing paranoia) has remained eerily quiet. Turkey's role in the Syrian refugee crisis will apparently continue unabated and, apparently, unwatched.

Damien Gayle of The Guardian aptly follows the double-illegality of the EU's planned migrant removal. UN officials, most certainly experts on international law and the status of refugee rights, decried the deal as a twofold betrayal: collective deportations without any opportunity to claim asylum offer the first breach of the law, and the good-faith guarantee of observed rights by the Turkish government offers the second failure. Even worse, Gayle outlines some of the obvious and distasteful justifications for such an arrangement. Members of British Parliament, as per Gayle's reporting, have already begun the alarmist table-pounding of insurgents sneaking into Europe with the countless thousands of refugees. While terrorism poses a real threat to Western Europe, refugee movement offers only one of a near-infinite bevy of options for illegal immigration. To harp on the weakest of citizens, at their most prone moment, seems to heap insult onto injury.

All of the political justifications work backwards. Instead of targeting the area of need – helping millions of displaced people find a suitable and conflict-free migration zone – most European nations place a newfound xenophobia at the foreground of tacit economic fears, especially at a time of EU instability. Even still, the predictability of such a Western failure does nothing to empower refugees. There are two worlds viewing the Syrian crisis, one upper and one lower, producing diametrically opposite evaluations of the situation. Consider two quotations, one from EU Chief Donald Tusk, and another from a Syrian migrant. Sounding impossibly out-of-touch, Tusk praises Turkey as “the best example for the whole world for how we should treat refugees… Nobody should lecture Turkey on what to do.” In direct contrast, and stressing the immediacy of their situation, an unnamed refugee outlines their reality: “We will repeat our trip again and again if needs be, because we are running away in order to save our lives.”

There is a falsified tension in the political and real perspectives of a crisis. Political answers aim to uphold a certain tenet of civil society in answering a terrifying question. Realistic answers disregard propriety and nuance because it no longer exists, often exploded in civil war or natural disaster. What such a deal like the EU-Turkey bargain defiantly restates is a return to the established order. Political considerations will trump realistic ones. The sun still rises, the tides still goes in and out and, again apparently, there will always be turmoil and for the most vulnerable of the human community.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/02/eu-turkey-refugee-plan-could-be-illegal-says-un-official

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/08/european-leaders-agree-outlines-of-refugee-deal-with-turkey

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/23/angela-merkel-turkey-visit-refugee-camp-gaziantep

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/23/merkel-accused-turning-blind-eye-syrian-refugees-turkey

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/04/18/world/middleeast/How-Turkeys-Promise-to-Stop-the-Flow-of-Syrian-Refugees-Is-Creating-a-New-Crisis.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FTurkey&action=click&contentCollection=world®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection

Written on April 30th, 2016.

USA Elections 2016: Violence and Currents and Why We Should Worry

Dylan Boyko — 2016-04-02T02:24:59Z

When we think of Donald Trump, and the possibility of violence that comes with his candidacy, we might be thinking of what a normal American is and isn't. What we (the collective we that encompasses so much difference) fear is the narrowing of that pronoun. The we should contain multitudes, and must not be a singular representation (probably white, probably middle-class) of what America is. Donald Trump's fear-mongering over difference isn't a new political tactic – the same violent opposition of values bear a striking resemblance to early segregations.

Consider a long quotation from a policy advisor to Richard Nixon – John Ehrlichman – regarding the push towards law-and-order during Nixon's administrations: “We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and black with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities . . . Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” Ehrlichman admitted the underlying racist prejudice beneath Nixon's supposed push towards domestic safety. Stated in a 1994 interview, the remark referenced a choice made during the height of white suburban flight from the mainly African American downtown cores of cities, the Vietnam War, and general civil unrest. Everything is political, including the motivation to normalize or disenfranchise certain opinions. Violence and criminalization of beliefs due to simple difference is not a new American idea.

History, then, begins to explain Trump's expressions of national anger masked as care for the common citizen. In an article examining the basis for “law and order” politics in America, Julia Azari wonders whether “Trump's deliberate choice of words have raised urgent questions about whether he is making a similar racialized appeal” to his Nixonian forbearers. After all, the origins of law-and-order right wing intention stemmed from “an effort by the losers of the civil rights struggle to redefine the policy debate.” Could the Trump supporters simply want a seat at the table, facing another liberal Supreme Court Justice, further codification of Obamacare, and the striking of abortion and discriminatory gay marriage state laws at a near unprecedented pace? Could the country be changing, however correctly, too rapidly for some citizens who feel ignored?

As Azari astutely notes, many of the similar late 1960s fears are present (Black Lives Matter protesters riling up old racist ideologies of safety, the never-ending War on Terror inspiring the right-wing equivalent of anti-Vietnam sentiments), slowly pressurizing into a violent bravura of misshapen value politics. The fear then falls on the man – Donald Trump – as the leader of a voracious rabble possibly out for vengeance against widening diversity, or anything that doesn't match a lily-white patina of American ideals.

However, maybe the crowd drives the madman as much as his influence excites the mob. Maggie Koerth-Baker investigated the concept of emotional contagion – “our tendency to unconsciously mimic the outward expression of other people's emotions (smiles, furrowed brows, leaning forward, etc.) until, inevitably, we begin to feel what they're feeling” – and how it relates to national politics in a recent FiveThirtyEight article. Her findings, in trolling the multiple studies conducted on the topic, were illuminating if incomplete. Only two full-course studies, one from 1990 and another from 2006, followed the inverse relationship: how a crowd could influence a leader's expressions and emotions. Both studies revealed something seemingly obvious, but nonetheless chilling – the herd could just as easily control the pack leader. In Koerth Baker's words “Trump's use of violent rhetoric isn't just something he's forcing on an easily manipulated mob. They respond to him. But he also responds to them.”

Emotional contagion was originally studied under the auspices of corporate America. It was, as Koerth-Baker notes, a way to examine the nature of power relationships, a basic top-down structure in the office environment. Bosses directed workers and workers, in some form, found emotional impetus in their bosses' behaviors. Reversing the current didn't seem a very fruitful avenue of study.

However anecdotal two studies and one windbag leader might be, the results of this emotional transference could be devastating. The 1970s saw a tacit criminalization of a whole class of Americans, of a whole way of life and a whole alternative politics. The causal aftershocks of entire generations in jail or economically disadvantaged is still felt today. Trump's violence, or maybe the violence of his supporters, is much less tactically savvy. Theirs is the brute force approach of a SWAT team, of a border wall, and of a moneyed and distracted solution to institutional problems. The problems of a nation are not solved by pitchfork and torch.

I normally dismiss the threats of widespread violence. This is a token of my own white privilege, but also a fundamental optimism in the collective ‘we'. We wouldn't do this, because we all fundamentally want similar things. Every day I watch the highlights of a Trump rally – because what else can these clips be called – I begin to worry more and more. The we of which I was so previously confident is changing, or changed. Possibly I've just missed the messages of normalcy in a nation where I do not actively reside. More problematically, maybe even with some trepidation, it's a nation that I couldn't live in, for fear of being a part of the excised, a part of what is eventually defined as unwanted or criminal. John Ehrlichman made it abundantly clear: just because something isn't illegal doesn't mean it can't be treated as such.

References:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/from-wallace-to-trump-the-evolution-of-law-and-order/

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/donald-trump-incites-his-crowds-and-his-crowds-incite-him/

http://jezebel.com/nixons-policy-advisor-admits-he-invented-war-on-drugs-t-1766359595

What The Nation Can(‘t) Give You

Dylan Boyko — 2016-03-02T20:12:39Z

The sheer amount of wealth in America is disturbing. The vast acres of untouched and untouchable – at least for some – resources is a quixotic kind of problem. There seems to be too much to do any good. As Hamilton Nolan notes in a short Gawker piece, come March 1st many Americans will lose access to food stamps. While the most vulnerable in America face such a massive crisis, unbelievable amounts of money pour into presidential campaigns. Failed candidate Jeb Bush raised roughly $125 million dollars from corporate donors and Political Action Committees. Something so obviously wrong is occurring in American politics, where money is callously wasted during a time of national crisis.

A Richard W. Painter New York Times op-ed reads as a summary of the greatest hits of disgruntled right-wing voters, where even the American conservative movement finds the current donation climate untenable. Campaign finance breeds big government, campaign finance increases regulation, campaign finance fails to address the faith or issues-based voter because “values don't pay for campaigns; health insurance companies, entertainment businesses, the gambling industry and its online counterparts do.” Money, wasted again, but in different ways, irks the conscientious conservative. The kinds of donations that fund campaigns don't come from individuals but conglomerates and corporations. The apparent danger exists in money not derived from the same ideological cause. Corporate money is dangerous because it literally could be foreign – the ultimate terror to individuals committed, paradoxically, to American governed by and for Americans.

Somehow mining an impactful quotation from the dark recesses of Barry Goldwater, deceased conservative extraordinaire, Painter uses Goldwater's words to underline a visible fault on both sides of the political aisle: “In order to achieve the widest possible distribution of political power, financial contributions to political campaigns should be made by individuals and individuals alone [with] no reason for labor unions — or corporations — to participate in politics.” The issue does not need a partisan connotation; the influence of large donors obscures the importance of governing for the people and obfuscates the reality of issues like Nolan's observations on the diminished access to food stamps.

Individual representation needs to be prioritized, especially in campaign finance. There needs to be an accessible and accountable way to monitor and manage campaign donations. More importantly, the vast amounts of wasted capital should, instead, funnel towards addressing social and economic inequity. While too naïve to assume a one-to-one ratio, imagine the impact of these dollars in a state or national welfare setting. No candidate, Democrat or Republican, escapes the pratfalls of abusive campaign financing.

Politics on Island Time

Dylan Boyko — 2016-02-02T16:27:00Z

The saggy middle of American international intervention stretches into the multitudinous crevices of other nations. Paradise is corrupted or lost or confounded, as a fervent U.S. desire for stability in governance often clouds (or outright obscures) better judgments for the people of far off lands. Haiti is no stranger to these machinations of otherworldly powers, nor to the predilections of other regimes in their free and democratic ‘elections'. What disappoints the casual observer is the probable inevitability of such occurrences.

There are certain national facts that complicate Haiti. As John Lee Anderson's fantastic profile for The New Yorker details, there are endemic problems within the country that prime the stripping of individual rights by the international speculation and aid. It is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Nearly sixty percent of its ten million residents live in poverty. Nearly half the nation is illiterate. These are the terms under which the Haitian people negotiate with their government, other governments, and international aid organizations. Help is simply needed, without recourse.

The political situation presents another rubric for judgment, and another complicated ecosystem that limits the choices of Haitians. Outgoing President Michel Martelly was a champion of the lower classes, but also a staunch supporter of purely capitalistic agendas (he was, thusly, a favorite son of the Obama administration's “search for stability” in the region). Martelly's chosen successor, Jovenel Moïse, is a banana plantation owner who possesses the same industrious fervor as Martelly – both, to varying degrees of political incorrectness, truly do want what's best for Haiti. Moïse's opponent is the same foe that opposed Martelly, Jude Célestin, a man of a party with open interests not all that different from Martelly. What then, has caused such turmoil during the new election season in Haiti? Are not the people receiving representation?

Francis Roble, writing a brief summary for The New York Times, details the functional failures of election-time Haiti. Célestin and Moïse have accused each other of voter fraud. The U.S. position is one that searches for stability, as “[t]he Obama administration has expressed concern that if a successor was not elected, the result would be an unconstitutional power vacuum.” For the United States, instability breeds contempt or, worse, socialism.

Further evidence indicates a nation striving for fair representation amidst unrealistic and often disastrous international pressures. Both Robles and Carrie Kahn, in an interview with Steve Inskeep of NPR, detail a Haiti foregoing national improvement for the pacification of international powers. Robles underlines Martelly's nonexistent plan for relinquishing power without a new mandate, all while his political opposition refuses (rightly) to force through any constitutional amendments to lengthen his reign. Kahn's constant refrain throughout her interview reiterates a Haitian problem: either in intervention, in nefarious goings-on, or even in general democratic principles “they just couldn't pull it off.” Haiti appears stuck behind layers of good and bad intentions, almost imperceptibly intermingled, especially convoluted to a U.S. government that only pursues a vague and imprecise regional stability.

Asides are useful in Haitian politics, or any nation towards which the United States only has a casual and causal interest, to define an underlying theme. When Anderson asked previous President René Préval about the 2012 Haitian earthquake and respondent international aid “he told [Anderson] that the earthquake wasn't his fault.” This must be important.

Questions are also posed to President Martelly, similar in structure and as deferential in their answers. Anderson outlines Martelly's slogan, “Haiti Is Open for Business,” as capitalistic placation bordering on magical realism. When Robles notes that party members possibly used indelible ink to vote multiple times in the first round of Haitian elections, the metaphoric implications seem to slap the casual observer in the face. Who are we empowering with Democracy? Why is Democracy rarely democratic?

Jonathan M. Katz, another journalist in conversation with Anderson, does his best to describe the electoral conditions of Haiti, imposed by foreign “support.” Martelly, despite being a reformed pop-star stolen from a far right party, has “probably achieved more or less what they wanted him to,” namely kept power and order and the U.N. in the nation, didn't fight foreign investors, and kept the visible violence to a relative minimum. Katz's final dictum, however, chills the most optimistic of Haitian sympathizers: “The fact that nearly everyone in Haiti is worse off than they were five years ago gets a pass. That's the tyranny of low expectations for you.”

The situation seems terminal. One would assume Moïse will triumph in the “elections” and that Célestin's claims of “fraud” will go un- or under-investigated. There is something languid about the corruption of island governments, something static in the heat of the place that demands stagnation masquerading as stability. Ask a U.S. official and they will preach the virtues of democracy. Ask a Haitian and it's a coin flip whether they could even read the question. There is something obviously disheartening in this, the absolute failure to successfully protect the virtues one extols. There is failure, and then there is farce. A man from a banana plantation will run the country, next maybe Haitians will get a stand-up comedian.

Sources:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/01/aftershocks-letter-from-haiti-jon-lee-anderson
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/23/world/americas/haiti-postpones-presidential-runoff-vote.html
http://www.npr.org/2016/01/25/464266267/elections-in-haiti-are-postponed

The Disinformation Age

Dylan Boyko — 2016-01-04T17:54:15Z

I love populism. The more participation in government, the more educated the electorate is regarding important issues. A system, potentially, of accountability and responsibility can then be forged between voter and elected official, an ideal feedback loop. But, right now, I hate populism. In America, an overcooked carrot of a man sells a populist agenda to a group to unquestioning to google his baseless claims. Maybe the truth doesn't matter. The key difference with Donald Trump is not his funds or his hair or his inability to discuss actual policy – but his appeal directly to the worst parts of the American psyche, to the darkest and dumbest corners of national imagination. Trump has canonized ignorance as more than bliss.

There is a simple inversion that the Trump campaign performs, one that makes his entire oeuvre possible. In a recent interview with John Dickerson, relative King of Satire Stephen Colbert jumped on the most integral part of Trump's game: “The party elders would like him to go away but the people have decided that he is not going to.” Colbert's comments underline a distrust the general American has for Big Party Politics, the all-caps nebulous shadow organization that runs the nation and ensures that Jim and Holly will lose their job at the local tinfoil hat factory. The second half of his sentence redistributes power in a near-socialistic manner, as the determinant for staying power is the new bond between potential voter and brash candidate. Neither part of the electoral equation needs to ‘know' anything, but understand what Colbert called Trump's saving grace, his “emotional appeal.”

There is a real danger in a policy of emptiness. Donald Trump enjoys all the grassroots popularity of a folk hero without actually doing anything to benefit his base of power. While the man loves American ingenuity, I doubt very much he has any sympathy for the less fortunate – freeloaders, in normative Republican parlance. He draws power from the very population that should fear him the most.

Fear, for Trump, doesn't flow from concepts he fails to understand. Ask any relatively intelligent person to explain exactly what the internet is or how it works, and you'll probably receive an unintelligible answer or at least admittance of unknowing. Trump, however, doubles down on his false supremacy with the electorate; because he's the one speaking into the microphone, he assumes you're there for the Rapture, not insecure answers based in fact or research.

The low-hanging fruit of Trump's inane answers shouldn't be the point of ridicule any longer than the general amusement they provide. Instead, picking apart the stupidity for its troubling moments becomes maybe the only important component of his comments. When, during the December 15th CNN Debate, moderator Wolf Blitzer likens “closing” the internet to “[putting] the U.S. in line with China and North Korea,” Trump's response has an insane logic, considering the specific audience to which he speaks.

The internet serves as a collection tray for the worst partisan appeals from Trump's rhetoric and targets, in an exhausting sense, the fear inherent to a particularly poor, white, and angry part of the nation. Rattled off in a two-paragraph rambling answer to Blitzer's internet metaphor-question, Trump manages to hit the following lowlights: immediately changing the discussion to one of security and ISIS, namedropping Silicon Valley “friends,” the need to protect precious American youths, name-calling instead of congratulating terrorist forces, and a final confirmation of American supremacy in both force and intellect. Do you see an answer to the comparison between censorship and communist nations? Neither do I, but that doesn't matter to the people to which Trump is talking. They started clapping at the first positive reference towards America, the brave. As Washington Post reporter Alexandra Petri notes, it is “this sort of ballooning overconfidence . . . we have come to expect from our Boomer Adults in Positions of Power.”

Again, the danger is apparent. Limiting affordable technological access hurts the poor again. War and increased international hostility, historically, falls on the poor the hardest. It's the children of the less fortunate that fight. It is the children of less fortunate who miss out on education – they never become the best and brightest Trump mentions, destined only to listen and parrot back what their false profit spews. Their hill is incredibly large and incredibly steep, and a blustering piece of human salt water taffy surely isn't going to try and level the playing field.

While parsimonious with his words, Trump funds his own political machinations. The money makes him dangerous, much like – again Colbert in conversation with Dickerson – a “Frankenstein of the idea that facts don't matter, and only money does” or “my old character [from The Colbert Report] with $10 billion dollars.” The man has no answers, no policies, and almost no peaceful thoughts. Fear often comes from the unknown, but I'm becoming more comfortable in stating that, sometimes, fear is what is directly in front of you, unapologetic about the potential storm on the horizon. Donald Trump is the houseguest who starts a fire in a decorative fireplace. But he talks so pretty, some of us just don't have the heart to ask him to leave.

Sources:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/colbert-trump-is-a-frankenstein-made-of-money-devoid-of-facts-20151228

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/12/23/stephen-colbert-i-may-have-been-wrong-to-say-trump-can-t-win.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2015/12/16/donald-trump-doesnt-know-how-the-internet-works/

Questions, Period/Question Period

Dylan Boyko — 2015-11-05T16:04:51Z

Explain to me, if you can, why we love public figures. Narrative creation, especially in the realm of public policy, seems an inauspicious way to search for new politicians or validate old ones. Here lies my confusion, mise en scene, with Wayne Gretzky and Stephen Harper as told by the CBC. “You've been wonderful to the whole country,” he says. “I know you have the country's best interest at heart,” he says. Maybe it's portentous that Harper hitched his wagon to a bygone greatness. Maybe it's indicative of something that Gretzky couldn't even vote in the election.

Conservatism loves its symbolism, big and small. Stephen Harper wrote a book about hockey, because he wants you to know he loves similar things. That he isn't so embroiled in environmental policy or international finance to dismiss the good ole game of puck. In turn, the greatest hockey player to ever live shook his hand over a tabletop hockey game and said ‘not bad Steve'. This is inconsequential to someone worried about immigration reform or progressive income tax, but I guarantee my grandmother found it interesting. The simplicity of appealing to entertainment and pleasure comes alongside fear mongering, a mirrored version of the ancient authoritarianism of love and respect.

Gretzky says ‘I do' in mid-September, but when the polling house of cards began to tumble, you could always count on mud-slinging coated in schadenfreude. Postmedia, the conglomerate running most Sun newspapers among others in the nation, ran a full front page spread detailing how “Voting Liberal will cost you” or “Voting NDP or Liberal will cost you” – in case no one informed you of the mass virtues of the Conservative party. The splashes were clearly marked as Conservative ads, yet the subconscious residue reeked of something more nefarious, Snidely Whiplash reincarnated as political ad copy. The full-page yellow followed the color scheme voters would face at polling stations. The ‘X-marks-the-spot' in the bottom corner of most of the ads appeared like a ballot, just enough. These things don't act in isolation. There's always a little bit of fear mixed in with the placation, or a turn just short of outright illicit activity. Gretzky didn't say it, but you could tell he didn't trust the man with the hockey hair from Montreal.

Firstly, the good news is that banal evil was defeated. Just blandly, the fact that there isn't a Conservative government is a boon for cultural diversity, immigration reform, general humanitarian efforts, and scientific knowledge. Just remember what we lost. Yes, a government complacent in its power and generous with its disregard for majority desires or even common compassion, but also a whole Leftist faction of the political sector. Fewer NDP and more Liberal seats mean more accountant and lawyers, and fewer social activists and community organizers in Parliament. The professionalization of politics is dangerous from a human perspective. Social opinions and general policies are more agreeable – less open homophobia and increased refugee quotas – but there is a modicum of control with Trudeau's liberals that strikes a familiar tone. There is slow burn to some kinds of evil, and some kinds of failure.

Remember that entire hullabaloo about C-51? The Liberals aren't repealing it, just updating. Worried about mandatory minimum sentences? The Liberal party might look at removing them. Think corporations should pay more taxes? The Liberals don't. There are layers to every victory and some of us are inclined, or maybe cursed, to the dark looming in the distance just after the first storm breaks. Just note that coopted Obama imagery of capital-h Hope or the picaresque story of a puckish Justin Trudeau are not true. This is a party of dynastic power, a party of machinery, and ultimately a party of control.

Yet is it? Contradictions seem to be plentiful throughout the election period where Conservatives promised safety by preaching hate. Justin Trudeau's recently announced cabinet is completely balanced in terms of gender. This is an unequivocal success. He is a staunch defender of female reproductive rights, and even used the F-word self referentially on Twitter with abandon. An unabashed Feminist runs the country, and he has plans, machinations. Trudeau's desire to “launch a national inquiry into the missing and murdered indigenous women of Canada” would take steps to confirming certain Liberal promises to protect the most marginalized groups in Canada. Even if the imagery is borrowed, there is hope or at least a lack of that moribund feeling of national embarrassment.

There was a certain futility in Canadian politics for the last ten years. The static, often damning, illogic of the Conservative party stifled science, culture, and every facet of national ability. The negativity contained in losing a truly left-leaning NDP opposition is replaced with uncertainty. However unfortunate it may seem, the fortune of being uncertain instead of defeated, of looking for social growth instead of mitigating political disaster, is a new discomfort. Follow the man with the great hair, the masses cried. Lafleur over Gretzky, for now at least.

References:

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-politics/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-parties-platforms
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/10/21/justin-trudeau-women-cabinet_n_8349432.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/10/18/postmedia-front-page-ads_n_8326634.html
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/gretzky-harper-endorsement-social-media-1.3235375

Crisis of Coincidence

Dylan Boyko — 2015-10-01T18:06:50Z

Stephen Harper is not my dad, but he might wish he was. It is becoming categorically apparent that helicopter parenting is all the rage in the Harper household, with its peculiar and protective restrictions against those who need Canada's help the most. The Syrian refugee crisis is yet another black eye for a government that turns even the most simple, compassionate policy decisions into lame-duck lessons on security and protectionism.

Aggression, in subtle and direct forms, underlines all refugee policies currently presented by the Conservatives. As a Canadian Press article outlines, the Harper government seeks to accommodate a small number of refugees while maintaining public goals of anti and counter terrorism inherent to their near militaristic agenda. Harper's patriarchal ‘Don't talk to strangers' approach does not only exist overtly. The goal is a “classic Conservative two-fer” – marrying a control with security, and aid with an increasingly politicized message.

Make no mistake, as Stephen wants to be a good dad! Noted in the Canadian Press article, Harper wants to appeal to female voter empathy by softening his stance on sex trafficking refugees, along with his Syrian allowances. Never mind the constant refrain that comes with any softened policy, – allow human trafficking immigrants easier asylum but increase the criminal scrutiny and the politics of aggression towards said human traffickers (not necessarily a negative, but part of a theme). Harper's gendered aims speak to a through line in the Conservative Party's conduct in regard to human trauma. As awful as sloganizing can be, Stevie wants the nation to stick with “Proven leadership” and return control to a dangerous sense of complacency.

The statistical reality of Canadian commitments to Syrian refugees reveals the stagnant paternalism always present in Conservative foreign policy. A Vice primer written by Jake Kivanc provides the facts: 10,000 refugees will be admitted by 2018, of which only 1000 have currently been admitted and only 600 of those migrants government sponsored. Private citizens are sponsoring forty percent of all Syrian refugee claimants in Canada, a troubling truism. These numbers fail to completely describe the humanitarian failure at work. Kivanc notes that – of course, being a god-fearing dad – Harper's policy prioritizes religious minorities in refugee selection, almost positively pulling the region's Christians ahead of Muslim refugees. Saving individuals in general is good, but saving refugees based on religion alone is xenophobic and emphasizes a more covert distinction. The grotesque party line is toed again and again, where Kivanc consistently lists the failings of Canadian efforts: Turkey and Lebanon each have taken over one million refugees, Conservatives are specifically against strategic evacuation arilifts, and the false panacea of military intervention ‘stabilizing' the region. Conservative refugee policy is fundamentally at odds with humanitarianism .

The decision to avoid reality is not a new tactic for Stevie. Speaking colloquially, he's the kind of dad to ask if you filled up the windshield wiper fluid all the while forgetting to tell you the brakes might be cut. A Stephen Marche New York Times opinion piece cuts deeper than any unsubstantial parental metaphor: “[T]he nine and half years of Mr. Harper's tenure have seen the slow-motion erosion of that reputation for open, responsible government. His stance has been a know-nothing conservatism, applied broadly and effectively.” Instead of considering the plight of any refugee, Stevie sticks to the platitudes that have so long served him. The fear-mongering gestures towards the spectre of terrorism. The religious homogenization of a nation's immigrant class for fear of cultural difference. The focus on militarism despite his nation having a reputation as peacekeepers. When Steven Harper dreams, its is of bald eagles and Patton, not of Romeo Dallaire and diplomacy. In his dreams, trumpets are always playing, strategically and efficiently. En masse, the Conservative Party's lack of commitment underlines a strange commitment to insolation over charity, even when the nation could provide so much more.

We are on the eve of another Canadian election, one in which the polls consistently vacillate between involved parties. The Conservatives, led by their bland father figure, are representative of the safe choice. Stevie “has to look like the adult in the room,” but he promises Marche's “steady and quiet life, undisturbed by painful facts.” The quiet life cannot and should not be accepted. All cloying metaphors aside, the man and his party are delaying help to a most vulnerable group of the global population. This is wrong. There appears to be a disinterest in change, a stagnation of moral outrage because of the weathered quality such a leader and party can enact on a nation. Sometimes you need to disregard your parents, your paternalistic government, and even cynicism. Change requires motivation, and Stephen Harper is providing the best sort of impetus to enact some substantial alterations in Canadian government.

Sources:

http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/what-stephen-harper-has-to-prove-in-the-munk-debate/

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/opinion/sunday/the-closing-of-the-canadian-mind.html?_r=0

http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/what-have-canadas-politicians-promised-to-do-for-syrian-refugees

The Small Town Discount

Dylan Boyko — 2015-09-02T17:51:04Z

I'm from a small town that prides itself on those stereotypical small town values. The people are thrifty and hard working, or at least present as such. They believe in an honest day's work for an honest day's pay, if they are to be believed. Ask how much a full-time fast food clerk should make, and suddenly Cousin Merle takes on a near-Victorian air where the insidious nature of classist thinking, gussied up as economic rationale, tilts a discussion of equality in a decidedly unfair direction. How does the question of minimum wage increases affect anyone but those currently earning minimum wage? The economic risks normally presented to the average Canadian fail closer inspection. How can the current state of a minimum wage under the poverty line be validated? Cousin Merle knows a thing or two about work, you see, and has the answers.

Firstly, the intended goals of raising the minimum wage must be established. Pam Frache defines the benefits of an increased wage floor for the poorest of the nation's workers would not be a singular curative but instead “an essential piece of what should be a comprehensive poverty reduction strategy.” The goal then, for less gracious individuals worried about economic stability, is to partially alleviate the larger costs of the welfare state by providing a legitimate living wage.

Cousin Merle immediately speaks out, in elevated diction: Hark, will not a general wage increase ensure the demise of many lower-tier positions? Are we not biting the hand that feeds? Frache quickly debunks Merle's common refrain, as a recent Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives study determined quite obviously that the stability of low-income positions hinges on larger macroeconomic factors, and not on the baseline wage of the lowest earners. False concern over employment security for the lower classes shields a jealous reality: the protection of social status.

Merle is not convinced – surely, the increase in a minimum wage would cripple the small business owner! Again Merle misses the point. Frache links the pressure of macroeconomic factors with the alternatives to an increased minimum wage (food and housing programs through social assistance) as a continuation of the problem where “taxpayers subsidize businesses that pay poverty level wages” instead of fighting poverty directly. Cousin Merle needs to recognize that the poor single mother does not just work at the local Mom n' Pop hardware store, but also runs the till at the Tim Horton's. Even Merle knows Tim does not need more money. Alternatives to a higher minimum wage draw support from benefitting the poorest citizens, all the while drawing conservative ire for the purported – and false – claims of an attack on small business or an expansion of social assistance. The impoverished within society, especially those working full-time under the poverty line, should always come first when ordering economic concerns.

Ah, but Cousin Merle throws out his last, decidedly meager barb: those damn teenagers! What about the part-time workers, who clearly make up the majority of individuals holding minimum wage employment? Why should Jimmy get more money when he lives with his parents? Frache's statistics, derived from British Columbia, describe nearly the opposite situation where 47% of minimum wage workers are over the age of 25 and 43% work full-time. These numbers also fail to gather the sheer amount of individuals in B.C. working in the grey areas of the economy, with salaries over the $10.25 minimum threshold, but below the $15.00 proposed mandatory minimum. The parable of the teenage wage-earning underclass, Frache states, is simply a myth. Merle's excuses, or the excuses of any middle class citizen against an increased minimum wage, fail to pass muster. Instead, the desire to further suppress the lower class stems from either stupidity or protectionism of certain cultural status.

My small town is full of people who work incredibly hard. They deserve nothing less than the ability to provide for themselves and their families, and Cousin Merle would agree. Hierarchical organizations of work and working fail our poorest social participants. They work honestly and deserve that often-inadequate pay. How does the question of minimum wage increases affect anyone but those currently earning minimum wage? Because every Canadian above the poverty line owes it to those less fortunate to look out for the neighbor that cannot escape the rut of capitalism and corporate greed. How can the current state of a minimum wage under the poverty line be validated? It cannot. Even Cousin Merle might understand that soon enough.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/policynote/2014/12/refuting-tired-claims-those-opposed-to-minimum-wage-increases