The Mayor, the Arms Dealer and 'Security'

A few weeks ago I discussed Mayor Larry O’Brien’s dependence on large federal contracts to build his ‘entrepreneurial’ spirit – including significant contracts with the Department of National Defence (DND). The close connection between the local business elite and government operations comes as no surprise. Ottawa’s local power brokers have long had a special relationship with the DND and the Department of Public Works (see previous post). The practice continues. The local growth machine continues to putter along in this age of restraint with adaptations to the contemporary political economy. Captains of industry are clever and adaptive, even more so when they get the reins of political power. It makes servicing the interests of your friends much easier.

In today’s Ottawa Citizen, after a shout-out by the District Labour Council, the personal level of this tidy relationship was exposed in an article on Larry O’s new ‘senior advisor on transformation’ Gordon J. Hunter.

During his tenure in the upper echelons of the federal bureaucracy, Hunter worked as director general in charge of purchasing for such key military hardware as ammunition and electronic equipment. In the course of his long-term as a government operative, Hunter forged a 15 year relationship with Larry O’s Calian Technology. In 2004, while Hunter was still with DND, O’Brien’s firm won a sweet $400 million contract to supply DND with high-tech services. Once out of the public service, Hunter took the revolving door from DND into the defence lobby. Among other clients, Hunter now lobbies for ‘counter-terrorism’ equipment maker Allen-Vanguard Corp. and ammunition maker General Dynamics Ordinance. With the military-industrial complex in full swing, this is a booming business.

Our revanchist mayor Larry O has taped into his friendship with DND operative/defence lobbyist Hunter help him escape the impossible mission of meeting his zero for zero’s campaign promise. However, the defence lobbyist has no experience in municipal politics. How, one might ask, is he to ‘advise the city on transformation’ with absolutely no expertise in the area?

Perhaps, I suggest in a generous tone, Hunter could re-invent the PPP with his new partners at City Hall. He could ask the city staff to manage the equipment and arms sales of one of Hunter’s clients. With its new arms dealer role the city could find an alternative revenue stream (always popular in public management speak).

OK, this might sound ludicrous, but I want to expose how insane it is to have an arms dealer and defence lobbyist advising the Mayor. It makes it very clear who O’Brien values as his closest friends and what he means by a ‘security’ agenda. Without any thought, Larry O has made the police budget a sacred cow. The local enforcers will get an automatic 1.6% increase (while crime is the lowest in 30 years), while at the same time, the Mayor advocates cutting 1,000 jobs, suggests a freeze for pools, playground, childcare, housing, and transit. You get a picture of his priorities. Cities are just like National Defence, right? You simply deploy shock troops to establish order.

This squeaky clean mayor is covered in a dirty past, and his associates are part of the repressive security establishment. Cleary O’Brien remains too dependent on his military and police pals. Considering the illogical nature of the ‘security’ business it is no shock that Larry O is mired in his own indecisions, flip-flops, and deer-in-headlights statements. He is constantly trying to backtrack and re-track his train to nowhere. He and his cronies are unaccustomed to the exposure and accountability of managing the complex public interest, instead of the accounts of defence firms. The tidy relationship O’Brien has to the military-industrial complex needs to be exposed: it is unfit for a mayor of a city that depends on its ‘soft’ services such as parks, pools, social services, leisure, housing, transit. This is what city life is for. These are the things that keep cities working. More ‘security’ of the shock-troop variety leads to greater insecurity of the already maligned, disadvantaged and over-policed. I suggest the frustrated Larry O take leave for a position at the Conference of Defence Associates and leave the defence lobby out of our city. We want our city back.

Sell-Off

Yesterday, our unelected Minister of Pork-barreling (otherwise known as Minister of Public Works Michel Fortier), announced that Canada’s “new” government had sold off a package of public properties to private developer Larco Investments for $1.6 Billion. The government was only too willing to unload these properties fearing to have to foot the bill for much needed repairs after years of neglect. As part of the deal Larco will provide $77 million dollars of repairs. So far, so good.

However, several factors point to the long-term insanity of these asset sell-offs:

• The federal government will still have to pay annual maintenance and operating costs on top of base rent.
• The base rent of $79 million dollars/year is more than the amount Larco will spend on the extensive repairs needed.
• As a condition of the sale, the feds signed a guaranteed 25 year lease.

Now that is pretty sweet. Can you imagine getting a 25 year guarantee by your tenant, employer etc. This is what I call revenue security. PSAC has called the Minister to task, noting that on top of giving up control of these properties “the federal government has, in effect, written a $630 million dollar check signed by Canadian taxpayers.” It is even more perverse considering a counter-appraisal by Infometrica evaluated the properties at $2.3 Billion. No risk of large repairs, or increasing utility costs, no risk of default, AND guaranteed rent. Sounds like a license to print money. However, this type of profligacy in favor of private property developers is nothing new, and we should head warning to lessons of the past to learn about the repercussions of these silent deals.

In early 1974, when restrictions were imposed on public works expenditures, the federal Department of Public Works (PW) cleverly adapted to these new conditions. With the assistance of private sector real-estate moguls, senior mandarins at PW initiated an early form of public-private-partnership (P3’s) to ensure the post-war building boom would continue. Under direction of Andy Perry, who before his appointment as ADM of PW had built Robert Campeau’s Place de Ville Complex, the feds abandoned the “crown-construct” model preferred by past and current functionaries at the NCC and launched the “lease-purchase agreement programme” (Deachman and Woolfrey, 1982).

However, as Deachman and Woolfrey (1982) astutely demonstrated in their case study of Terrasse de la Chaudière, the cost-effectiveness of such agreements was often questionable since over the long-term costs for office-retail-hotel developments such as Terrasse de la Chaudière were considerably higher under the “lease-purchase” agreements than the “crown-construct model.” Deachman and Woolfrey estimate the Terasse de la Chaudière development would over the full 35 years would cost $1B, and $900M more than it would have cost to self-build.

Yesterday’s announcement is a continuation of this trajectory.

This is a classic case of what McGill University Prof. Henry Mintzberg has referred to as the perverse adoption of private management models to the public sector, which contrary to the private sectors have completely different goals, and as a result different criteria from which we should judge efficiency. Leasing works for large private sector firms since they must meet short term financial objectives to keep investors happy. These private firms often sell-off valuable property to boost profits, dividends or stock price. Private firms may also sell fixed assets to provide cash for investments in liquid assets with higher returns. Private firms use opportunity costs as a way to make these decisions. Fixed asset sales work very well in the short-term. However, governments operate over the long-term with financial horizons beyond the life span of the average firm. Governments are not in the investment business: they cannot turn around and invest the sale value in another asset that will give better returns (It’s not like Harper is going to invest the 1.6 B in Berkshire-Hathaway and send me a nice dividend check every quarter). Assets such as buildings make sense for the public sector because over the long-term owning is cost-effective. Moreover, no matter what, the feds will need office space. They will never “get-out” of the business of needing office space. The logic just doesn’t work here.

We can excuse ministry officials, I guess, since Fortier is hiding in the shadows of his barrels. Remember this is the unelected and uncountable Minister who is unwilling to run in one of three (THREE!) by-elections in Québec. My guess is he is scared of facing public scrutiny. To scare him out of the shadows, I say that whenever Fortier announces something every reporter should ask the same question: Mr. Fortier, why are you not running in the Outremont by-election?

The murky nature of this deal, and flawed rationale of the initial 1974 P3’s continues to capture the minds our MBA-indoctrinated ADM’s and high-level federal property mandarins. Henry Mintzberg should take them to school! Oh, and did I mention this: When is Fortier going to run anyway?

Remembering State Violence in the Everyday

Henri Lefebvre's preface to his Critique of Everyday Life is a wonderful voyage into the veiled alienation of bourgeois urban life. In the first few pages, Lefebvre rails against those who were only willing to see “alienation on the speculative level” and
unwilling to see alienation “soiled by the confrontation with actual human reality, with everyday life.” The eternally humanist HL wants to connect alienation to everyday life and to anchor them in the materiality everyday life: to renew the critique of everyday life as a “base” that matters. Lefebvre successfully drew attention to the alienation of everyday life, and the techno-urban dream of modern of urban life.


In one of the more telling passages, Lefebvre, uploads the following quotation from L’Express of June 8 1956:

“Kitchens are becoming less like kitchens and more like works of art... The latest technique is the electronic oven... The intercom (a system of loudspeakers linking every room) is becoming a standard piece of equipment in the home, while everyone is talking about a personalized little television network which will enable the lady of the house to attend to her chores while keeping an eye on the children playing in another room or in the garden... The remarkable ubiquity of ‘do it itself,’ the latest craze for the American husband... includes all the household gadgets that go with it...”

These new found gadgets were in K. Ross’ (1996: 192) words, “an assemblage of standardized, interconnected components” of newly created “totality of use-values... adapted to capitalist mass production through the development of “design” : a functionalist aesthetic that would render the components uniform, or compatible, the stove-sink-refrigerator flowing together in a seamless, white-chrome unit...”

Lefebvre extended Marx into the every-day by connecting "alienation" with the everyday using the poets of contradictory modern life: Brecht and Chaplin.
Just as HL confronts actual human reality using the power of illusion to uveil his critique of everyday life (a critique in action), I want use these passages and this poetic inspiration to jump into a discussion of everyday life as portrayed in two films set close together, but produced decades apart: Jacques Tati’s Mon Oncle and the recent film Nuit Noire, 17 Octobre 1961.


First, Mon Oncle. In the earlier passage, HL could be describing one of the ridiculous scenes in which the Jacques Tati’s clown-like Mr. Hulot witnesses complete household automation with much surprise in various scenes of his 1958 spectacle of subdued hilarity. In the film, Hulot, played by Tati himself, makes several visits to the suburban home of his relatives, where every aspect of domestic life has been automated: the kitchen, the fountain, the garage door, the cooking, the watering, and even the childhood games. All is clean, modern, sparkling and automated. With his usual flair for the ridiculous, Tati plays hubris with this convenience of modern domestic life. The romantic and residual, Hulot - who continues to ride his bike and smoke his pipe - exposes the all too silly nature of automated domestic life. The juxtaposition of his simple life with that of this ultra-modern relatives provides opens up questions about the utter insanity of post-war consumption and materialist aspirations.

Hulot’s relatives are the model of the new French middle class and “the construction of the new French urban techno-couple” awash in the dream of the American Life. Tati pokes ridicule at the continued division of labour upon which this new habitus rests. Not only is home life industrialized, segregated but, as we find out, the husband/bread winner is engaged in an equally regimented and segmented quotidien. He is the “new man” of the modern bureaucratic capitalist modernization, running an efficient modern plant (in some hilarious scenes Hulot is a series of jobs in the factory but is completely unable to adapt to the assembly line). At home, his wife runs the efficient household. Together this “new couple” is the micro-level of technological society. They are manifestations of the urban revolution, and testaments of modern convenience and technical brilliance, but also of the hidden contradictions of this urban life. As Lefebvre notes in another passage of Critique (1991: 8)

“Manifestations of the brilliant advances in the ‘ideal home’ constitute sociological facts of the first importance, but they must not be allowed to conceal the contradictory character of the real social process beneath and accumulation of technological detail. These advances, along with their consequences, are provoking new structural conflicts within the concrete life of society. The same period which has witnessed a breathtaking development in the application of techniques of everyday life has also witnessed the no-less breathtaking degradation of everyday life for large masses of human beings. All around us, in France, in Paris itself, there are hundreds of thousands of children of youngsters, students, young couples, single people, families, living in conditions of undreamed-of by anyone who does not bring the sociologist’s interest to bear: furnished rooms (increasingly expensive and squalid), slums, overcrowded flats, attic rooms etc.”

What Lefebvre draws attention to here is the contradiction of the ideal suburban home of the upper cadres of French society. A well-run and quality domestic environment has a major influence on the “physique and health of the nation.” As K. Ross (1996) has argued, much of this process of “washing the nation” and cleansing the French nation from its history of colonialism was a central component the domestication of political economy that is part of the consolidation of the new national (French) middle-class to absorb the dangerous classes and to provide a new (domestic) market for capitalist expansion.

While the utopian habits of bourgeois spatial segregation portrayed in Mon Oncle are taking root, becoming the dream-image (model) of French society, an other suburbanization being forged remains silent and forgotten. Workers and labourers from le magreb are being solicited to migrate as the labour-power behind the massive expansion of post-war production and consumption: the very urban fabric which has become the ideal to the “new couple” is unaccommodating to the Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian workers who can barely afford decent housing and continue to face racialized repression and segregation.


The alter-reality of this inner colonization, and violent repression has recently come to life in the film Nuit Noire: 17 Octobre 1961. The film recalls the events of the night known only a October 17, 1961, and the censored history of the "dead bodies the newspapers didn't mention, that we weren't supposed to know about." (KR, 2002) That night, the FLN organized its first protest to protest a curfew which prohibet Algerians from being on Parisian streets after 8:30pm. Recalling the brutal and forgotten repression of a peaceful pro-FLN march, the film shows in chilling detail how the between peaceful march of between 30-40 thousand men, woman and children was met with fierce violence, and fired upon almost immediately. More than a simple reaction of incompetance, the violence was planed with cold calculation. In the weeks proceeding the march, ex-parachustiste has visited Paris's commissariats and virtually given carte-blanche the police. Papon had told his troops to "Settle your afairs with the Algerians yourselves. Whatever happens, you're covered. For one blow, give ten back... Even if the Algerians are not armed you should think of them always as armed." (KR) The violence was sickening: urnarmed marches in their Sunday bests were shot, matraqué, tossed into the river. How many? To this day, the corpses remain uncounted.

This film has revisited not only the state-perpetrated violent event, but also has shown glimpses into the everyday life of the dangerous classes that are to be absorbed or excluded from the national ideal of mass consumerism. In several scenes, FLN organizers walk through les bidonvilles to attend to organizing meetings and in the process show glimpses of the everyday life in the working districts. It is a stark contrast with the clean, modern totality of the modern home portrayed in Mon Oncle. These fleeting images offer a significant contradiction not only for socio-economic reasons, but also as since they exposes the moment of inner colonization. They are counter-images which expose how - as Kristen Ross has brilliantly noted - France continues to hold “its colonial past to be an “exterior” experience.” A “France” she concludes which has “closed that chapter and moved on to bigger autoroutes, all-electric Kitchens, and the European Economic Community.” When les flics en masse are deployed to stop the march with not so ambiguous instructions the scene is set for a evocation of the urbacidle moment of the urban revolution. Empowered by the brutal French Interior minister, and the right-wing Gaullist government, les flics conduct their brutal repression in subsequent scenes. On that black night remembered on our screen with the relentless violence of our modern state: the willingness of authorities to exert maximum force, the momentum of massive police deployment; the almost inevitable scene of mast arrests and bloodshed; and the impeding quiet aftermath.

The question as always is what do we do with the silence?

Listen... carefully... the silence of state violence is here, today, everywhere, and especially, today, in Montebello... Remember.

Turkey's Presidential Debate

In the weeks following the Turkish election there has been extensive coverage of the simmering tension between the defenders of Ataturk’s Kamalist republic and the newly re-elected populist AK Party. Most of these debates have centered around the renewal of Abdullah Gül’s candidacy for president. Opponents have claimed that the former Welfare Party (RP) member is a threat to the secular nature of the Turkish state. Amongst a host of issues, defenders of strict secularism have taken up the fact that Gül wife wears a headscarf as proof that he is unfit for the presidency. In the unitary Turkish state, as in France, the headscarf issue is more than symbolic: it strikes at the heart of republican rule. However, unlike in France which has promoted knee-jerk reactionary politics to perceived threats to national identity, the past Turkish election is hints at how a politics of recognition can open rather than close the republican realm.

In a recent interview with Zaman, Pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) parliamentary group leader Ahmet Türk - itself a party established to gain rights for the long-persecuted Kurdish minority - stated plainly the problematic aspects of an over-determination the headscarf as an issue of survival of the secular state:

“We don’t have anything to do with anybody’s headscarf. We are not dealing with that. Furthermore, we think this kind of discussion is simply wrong,”

By dismissing concerns over Gül’s presidential candidate, Türk disarms a debate that is often uses someone else’s identity as the battleground for power politics: often with disastrous consequences. Past interventions by the military and other state institutions to “defend” the secular state often undermined human rights and the process of democratic rule, with harsh consequences for minority rights. In this moment of clarity in the battle over the meaning of republicanism, Türk also defended the need to defend democratic rule and cultural rights. As he noted:

“We and our people have expectations. We have problems with democracy and human rights that need to be resolved and one of these issues is the Kurdish question. We discussed our opinions about a possible solution to this issue with Mr. Gül. The problems should be solved within the norms of a civilian democracy. We are against resolving problems by means outside democracy.”

This debate cannot be simple seen as a question of the defense of the republic but also a question of how to proceed towards further empowerment of groups historically excluded from participation in Turkish society (especially woman and Kurds); including the political and economic realm. An approach which recognizes difference is far more democratic than the use of force and the violent rule of law to strip people of their chosen identities.

Despite representation by western media* of the new government as an “Islamic” government (in the process stirring up all too common Islamaphobic sentiments), the Justice and Development Party (AKP) represents a much more complex constituency and practices a varigated politics. The AKP plays its multiple identities well, and has, at times, acted more “social democratic” than the old ruling republican CHP. The AKP has show itself willing to usurp and disrupt oppressive traditional power hierarchies. For example, in rencent elections the AKP bypassed traditional clan structures in the selection of candidates and implemented aggressive woman’s literacy programs.

On the non-state front, many political and civil society groups have supported Gül’s candidacy including the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP), the Turkish Public Workers' Labor Union (Kamu-Sen) and the Turkish Union of Agricultural Chambers (TZOB) the Turkish Union of Chambers and Commodities Exchanges (TOBB) and the Confederation of Turkish Labor Unions (Türk-İş). Remember, also, that it was the republican boycott of the parliament’s presidential election that forced this summer’s election. The result has been seen as a rejection of the old guard’s claim over the sanctity of the secular state. Still, the pro-republican military continues to issue vague threats. In a recent intervention the head of the Turkish army warned the government to "adhere in earnest and not just in words to the ideal of a secular, democratic state." It is an indication of the army’s long-shadow over Turkish politics, and its self-perceived role as defender of the republic. This veiled threat is also the root of the debate over who will control the state: the parliament, or the state’s powerful republican establishment. Given the checkered history of strong-willed military institutions in the defense of secularism in Turkey, and in other countries, the willingness of the powerful army to continue to interfere should be taken very seriously.

In light if these threats, however, the political mobilization should be seen as a potential opening for an extension of a Turkish-style politics of recognition. The broad based support from non-state actors and from the DTP for Gül’s candidacy should not be taken simply as support for his candidacy but rather as an emerging consensus that military-led manipulation of power will no longer be tolerated. There is within this new political alignment a preference for a non-reactionary politics of recognition over the old school tactics of de-legimitisation of identities. The days of military-led threats to the reigns of the state should slowly fade into the horizon.

(*For example, Canada’s Globe and Mail defined Gül as a “religious candidate.” I wonder if George Bush would have got the same moniker.)

Flashdance Flashback: An Exchange on Urban Film

Hey Pittsburg,

For some reason I keep having images if you wearing leggings, dancing in your rusty warehouse space, flying out freely into the fire-escape, exploring abandoned factory spaces to an upbeat 80's soundtrack, and "dancin' like you never did before." Some kind words of advice: don't get too sweaty, avoid shady bars by the waterfront, and watch out for Richard Florida. (Hmm. I may be mixing metaphors here... I am prone to that).

Now that I've exhausted my knowledge of Pittsburgh I wish you best of luck. I was sad to miss your party, and a chance to see you before you leave. I am sure you new adventure will be fruitful. Look forward to seeing you sooner rather than later.

Un Canadien Errant

********

Hey C.E.,

Thanks for the well-researched email. I meant to write you earlier, but things slipped in the midst of my move. However, now I have an appropriate Flashdance story to tell you, which is that I recently brought my bike into the coffee shop that I go to and the theme song was playing on the radio when I entered. I think this is a sign, I mean, Jennifer Beals rides her bike to that song and she lives in Pittsburgh. I'm thinking about auditioning for the ballet or at least finding a wealthy benefactor to support me. I also wouldn't mind getting a mean looking dog.

Hopefully I will see you on one of my trips and please come visit any time. Take care and talk to you soon.

Pittsburg

Silent Streets

“Silence. People who write history devote too much attention to so-called events heard around the world, while neglecting periods of silence... Silence is necessary to tyrants and occupiers, who take pains to have their actions accompanied by quiet.”

Ryszard Kapuscinski
The Soccer War