Political activism has been in the news more in the last year than in all the years since the 2003 Iraq war. Revolutions in the Arab world, occupations in America and beyond, and student protests and social unrest in the UK have all been hailed as ’social networking revolutions’. To understand the importance of information and communication technologies to these examples of political activism, we must examine the extent to which these events were actively driven by new technologies. By discussing these cases, we can see that increased use of social networking software and other technological advances is not necessarily a root cause of these events, but rather simply an aspect of them.
There can be no denying that, in the West, if your political event is not advertised on the internet, it is probably not going to be considered much of a success in 2011. In terms of promoting activism through the internet, a small number of websites have basically cornered the market, most prominently Facebook and Twitter. Almost every political event, from protests to organising meetings, to even attempted riots, now comes with a promotional Facebook event. Twitter updates followers in real time of what is happening in volatile situations, and provides a new media platform to activists as it becomes journalists’ first stop for ready-made quotes. Twitter has even spawned its own new form of activism, sometimes called the ‘Twittermob‘, where users can come out of seemingly nowhere to force action from previously near untouchable institutions such as the courts or powerful newspaper outlets. This has been seen prominently in the News of the World hacking controversy, the anger at offensive newspaper articles such as Jan Moir’s homophobic Stephen Gately treasure or the Sunday Express’ insensitive Dunblane article, and the Trafigura oil spill/Ryan Giggs being a mad shagger super-injunction cases.
It is important however not to overstate the importance of websites such as Twitter in recent political events. Reading newspapers and watching television news, it would seem like Twitter is incredibly important to modern day political activism, or indeed pretty much any mundane news story about anything ever. However, we shouldn’t mistake media portrayals of social networking software for reality. The traditional media frequently hype social networking in their reports, but in part this is because they are convenient to access, easy to understand, and important for news output in a world where traditional media is fighting to maintain its relevance and readership. Twitter provides user-generated content for traditional media to exploit while simultaneously cutting the number of paid journalists on their staff, and in this sense it can feed a capitalist agenda.
Two scientists have now resigned from a group charged by the Food Standards Agency with having a “public dialogue” about genetically modified foods.
Last week Dr Helen Wallace, who is part of the think tank Gene Watch UK, resigned from the steering group for the project, and Professor Brian Wynne, who was the group’s Vice Chair, resigned yesterday.
Professor Wynne is an expert on public engagement with science, and said the dialogue programme, which was set up by the previous government, was in fact little more than propaganda for the companies responsible for developing GM food. He added that the Food Standards Agency, which is supposed to act as an independent watchdog that protects the public, had a “dogmatically entrenched” position in favour of GM.
Dr Wallace has similar concerns, arguing:
“It has now become clear to me that the process that the FSA has in mind is nothing more than a PR exercise on behalf of the GM industry. In my view, this would be a significant waste of £500,000 of taxpayers’ money. A process that was barely credible has become a farce.
“Taxpayers’ money should not be wasted on a PR exercise for the GM industry.”
Campaign groups have argued that the whole exercise, which is going to be outsourced to another organisation, will in fact just be used to gather information to allow better marketing and political propaganda efforts as part of an effort to make the public accept GM food.
The last government set up the project to explore the public’s views on the possible wider use of the technology. In the late 1990s GM foods were introduced throughout Britain, including in Scotland, with virtually no public consultation. This led to many massive campaigns, of which the SSP played a key part in several. Now, although GM crops are still grown in the UK, many supermarkets promise not to stock them because of the pressure.
GM protester pulls out crops
Socialists have argued for years that the drive to introduce the technology was coming from massive private companies with an interest in making more money from food, and agricultural products like pesticides and fertilisers. Chemical companies like Monsanto have worked hard to genetically alter organisms so that they will be able to cope with poisons intended for pests being sprayed on them. However, there are concerns that once new genes are introduced into the natural environment they have been shown to spread to other organisms and crops, with unforseen consequences for environmental and human health.
But perhaps most worryingly, these new technologies are not being developed by innocent scientists just interested in advancing knowledge. They are being designed and developed by for-profit corporations, whose sole interest is in making more money. So once a company has altered the genes of an organism, it can claim that this living thing is now their work, and patent it. This means that whenever someone uses that crop or animal in farming, they will have to pay the company for the privilege. In fact, many farmers have been forced to pay who weren’t growing genetically modified crops, after company scientists discovered that what was predicted had happened: their genetic modifications had cross pollinated, and you could find altered genes in non GM crops. Instead of seeing this as a concern, companies like Monsanto see it as a way to make more money, by making these unfortunate farmers pay.
The ultimate consequence of this would be the privatisation of our food supply, so that a few huge corporations would be able to control the seeds and technology necessary for the world to feed itself, and we would have to pay them ransom to survive. One of the most terrifying examples of the way these companies think was the attempt to develop “Terminator” seeds (their name!), which would produce crops that would not themselves go on to produce any seeds. If the companies were ever able to get this product widely used, then farmers would be unable to collect seeds from the previous years’ crops for replanting, meaning they would be completely dependent on seeds bought from the company that owned the patent on Terminator crops.
The resignation of these two scientists follows on from the complete discrediting of the previous government’s relationship with science, after it reclassified cannabis as a Class B drug despite the advice of its own scientists not to, and then rushed through a ban on mephedrone with no concern for real scientific evidence. It remains to be seen whether the ConDems will have a better relationship with the scientific community, but given their support for the mephedrone ban we won’t hold our breath. The Food Standards Agency says it will ask the new government before going ahead with the GM food consultation.
Eating this can not be a good idea
The fact of the matter is, the idea that we need GM crops to end world hunger is a myth peddled by people looking to make money for themselves. The world is more than capable of producing enough food to feed the human race through sustainable, ecological and organic agriculture. The problem isn’t the food we produce so much as the way its distributed. When so much of the land on Earth is dedicated to producing crops and meat for the rich countries, it’s hardly surprising those who live elsewhere go hungry.
Earlier this year The Guardian reported how a group of police forces and government agencies are working with BAE systems to adapt military drone robots for use in spying on UK citizens.
The flying robots are currently used in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world to monitor and mount attacks by remote.
When the US invaded Iraq in 2003 it had no military robots on the ground, and only a few unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the air. Today, just in Iraq, the US military is using 7000 drones and around 12, 000 ground robots. Although the US military is driving the development of military robots, the UK and other major arms manufacturing countries aren’t far behind. The Ministry of Defence has hosted robotics competitions to design new surveillance bots, and recently bought 100 Dragon Runner robots. Canada, South Korea, South Africa, Singapore and Israel. China, Russia and India all have military robotics programmes of their own.
Without any real public scrutiny or comment, the way our governments conduct war, and indeed carry out police operations at home, is becoming increasingly robotocised. What’s wrong with this? On the face of it surely less human casualties for our soldiers is a good thing?
In Vietnam 58, 000 US soldiers died, compared to a few thousand in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. A lot of this has to do with advancing technology, better medical techniques etc. However, over the past century civilian casualties in war have rocketed. In World War 1 civilians were only 10% of those that died. Today they make up as much as 90% of war casaulties. For example, it’s been reported that 1 million Pakistanis have fled their homes because of threat of US drone attacks on the border with Afghanistan. The people of the North-West Frontier Province must be wondering where their John Connor is.
Predator drone
Military chiefs have recognised since Vietnam that it’s often difficult to make ordinary people pull the trigger and kill a fellow human being. Even unconsciously, many will aim their guns high rather than shoot someone. It’s one of the reasons that the US moved away from using conscription to recruiting their army. They wanted a professional force of highly motivated trained killers.
Since Vietnam, the US military has becoming increasingly dependent on air power, and satellite monitoring from space. Now the sudden upsurge in the use of robots continues the trend-increasingly US soldiers in other countries are able to kill at a distance, probably with a video screen in between. This makes it much easier to indiscriminately destroy any suspected threats, meaning more civilians get killed in the process. For a generation of military robot operators who have grown up doing similar tasks in computer games again and again, it’s easy to see how they get desensitised to the misery they’re causing from afar.
Anti-war campaigners are currently able to get a lot of support because many people in Britain and the US are angry about the numbers of our troops dying in imperial wars. One of the main drives behind developing new robots is a hope by the government that this means they can reduce the numbers dying significantly. While nobody wants to see working class kids sent to die, we also don’t want to see the government feeling free to intervene anywhere it feels like it using robot troops.
The boom in military robots is also making a lot of money for arms manufacturers, like the privatised UK government agency turned international evil megacorp QinetiQ.
And now, with the news that the police in the UK are going to have access to surveillance drones, we’re about to see a dramatic increase in the ability of the state to spy on us wherever we go. The people of the UK already have more CCTV watching them than anywhere else on Earth. There’s about 1 CCTV camera for every 14 people in Britain.
But with the use of drones the police will be able to cheaply monitor anywhere they want from above, which obviously has implications for political activists that get up to things the government don’t like.
Some companies, like iRobot, make both civilian and military robots. iRobot manufactures both the PackBot and the Roomba home cleaning bot. Such companies are potentially worried about public pressure, and should be targeted.
Just in case you think I’m making this up, or exaggerating the threat, here’s a look at some of the latest developments in robotics.
This is the SWORDS robot, that is armed and able to kill:
Here’s some footage of the truly terrifying (but still cool to look at, I know) BigDog robot, designed with funding from the military to be an artificial pack mule carrying gear over difficult terrain:
BigDog has got a little friend, the LittleDog.
This is a group of swimming robots based on a fish, with obvious potential naval applications.
Something that is especially creepy is the potential now to remotely control insects and intercept what they see for the use of surveillance. Check out this cyborg moth:
Perhaps the most crazy idea of all though is the EATR. This stands for Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot. The basic idea is that it would be able to operate alone out in the field for a long period without going back to base to refuel. Hence EATR-it can take organic matter from the environment and turn it into fuel. This has, unsurprisingly, got a lot of people worried. The idea of a potentially flesh eating killer robot on the loose is something that does not appeal to anyone who is even half way sane.
Artists' impression of the future EATR robot
The manufacturers and government agencies working on this technology have strictly denied that the EATR would ever start using the “organic matter” contained in the corpses of those it kills as fuel. They claim it is strictly vegetarian. Yet their own documents talk about chicken fat as a potential fuel, so the possibility that it could use fuel derived from animals, including humans, is clearly there.
Although many of these robots are developing the capacity for autonomous action, that is to take decisions on their own without the need for a human operator, we’re still quite a few years away from something with the intelligence of a Terminator or a Cylon.
And we shouldn’t be against the advances in robotics technology going on per se. It’s just that no technology is neutral-people design things with a goal in mind. And in our society one of the main goals is to make sure that the world’s most powerful countries are able to dominate the planet and exploit its peoples at the minimum cost to themselves.
But even with the prospect of robots becoming self-aware and nuking humanity isn’t quite on the horizon yet, some experts are already calling for serious thinking about military robots. Many have demanded that governments start thinking now about the implications of taking the decision of whether or not to kill someone out of human hands and putting it on an autonomous robot.
But SSY has a slightly more radical idea: how about we just don’t build KillBots. Doesn’t sound so crazy really, does it? Here’s a couple of documentaries that might win you round if you don’t agree:
Two scientists have now resigned from a group charged by the 
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