Social Movements Against the Global Security Architecture!
A Critique of the Militarisation of Social Conflict and the
Securitisation of Everyday Life
Gipfelsoli

* Assessment of the Strategy Papers of the ‘Future Group’ (on the
future of EU Home Affairs policies) and the ‘new strategic directions’
of NATO, put forward in the publication, ‘Towards a Grand Strategy in an
Uncertain World’

* Proposal for a campaign against the new EU policies to be ratified
under the Swedish Presidency of the EU in 2009

Recent unrest due to food price hikes, protests against rising energy
costs, visions and realities of a climate crisis and growing concerns
over scarce resources, in conjunction with the continued turmoil of
financial markets, are creating a sense of insecurity for a neoliberal
regime in severe crisis. The G8 states and their allies are seeking to
contain these conflicts and the evident accumulation crisis of the
global economy through market-orientated solutions in order to restore
economic growth whilst calls for more state intervention in the
regulation of financial markets are rife. At the same time, the ‘war on
terror’ serves to justify ever-more militarisation of all spheres of
life. Wars are waged to secure new markets, transport routes and
resources. New techniques of governance are emerging within a logic of
waging war against who- or whatever cannot be made profitable.

"Corruption in Tanzania" Albanie Marcossy, Dar es salaam, Tanzania Under the Local Government Reform Programme (LGRP), the local government authorities, including the sub-council level authorities, are undergoing the following reforms: (i) Capacities enhancements to either provide the services directly or facilitate their delivery through other actors and players. (ii) Restructured and re-organized to become more efficient in carrying out their new functions. (iii) Acquiring more legal and administrative powers and freedom, in formulating their plans, budgets, activities and in managing their human and financial resources. (iv) Acquiring powers to mobilize their own resources.

borders 2.0 - future, tense Angela Mitropoulos* Mute Magazine Arrayed beyond and around the obvious walls of migration control, the architectures and technologies of the border proliferate. These technologies seek to sort, expunge, confine and delay; to sift potential value from non-value; to fix the border inside and round both states and selves; to foreclose the future to versions of an infinitely stuttering present. Just as new instruments of financial debt and the offshore internment facility were exported from their post-colonial laboratories situated beyond Europe and the United States, so 'civil', metropolitan spaces have, in turn, been restructured by devices once reserved for those declared to be 'uncivil'. The partitioning of 'third' and 'first' worlds, colony and empire, the zoning of regular, waged work and that of precariousness and slavery – these are some of the divisions that have been shaken by the unprecedented movements of people around the world since the late 20th century. Flows shifted course, reversed, the (ex-)colonised moved toward the colonisers. And so, there is the militarisation of policing, the amplification of the prison lockdown as urban crowd control, preemptive surveillance and simulated warfare, a diffused fear and suspicion no longer confined to the 'margins'. To be sure, these expanding technologies oftentimes multiply death and suffering in an attempt to re-impose the ways in which misery was previously displaced to others, elsewhere – that is, marginalised. They aim to reinstall the borders, to fine tune the ramparts of wealth and its extraction, sometimes by new means, often as retrofits. Yet, as such, this expansion indicates the failure of the walls to hold firm against a future which is contingent upon movements that cannot be identified before they occur.

"The Worst and Best of Times" Grace Lee Boggs, The Michigan Citizen My first column with this title appeared in the December 31-January 6, 2007 issue of the Citizen. We were living in the worst of times, I wrote, because of the Iraq war, the planetary emergency, the growing gulf between rich and poor, corporate takeover of the media, and a president who was acting like a king and losing all connection with reality. But it was also the best of times, I said, because Americans were beginning to create new forms of community-based economic institutions that are less vulnerable to globalization, like coops and ESOPs (employee stock ownership enterprises). Local and state governments were assuming the responsibility, abdicated by the federal government, to reduce global warming. The urban gardening movement was growing by leaps and bounds.

"On the Pogroms in South Africa" Richard Pithouse The industrial and mining towns on the Eastern outskirts of Johannesburg are unlovely places. They’re set on flat windswept plains amidst the dumps of sterile sand left over from old mines. In winter the wind bites, the sky is a very pale blue and it seems to be all coal braziers, starved dogs, faded strip malls, gun shops and rusting factories and mine headgear. All that seems new are the police cars and, round the corner from the Harry Gwala shack settlement, a double story facebrick strip club.

The 2008 G8 on Hokkaido, a Strategic Assessment Emergency Exit Collective Bristol, Mayday, 2008 zero The authors of this document are a collection of activists, scholars, and writers currently based in the United States and Western Europe who have gotten to know and work with each other in the movement against capitalist globalization. We’re writing this at the request of some members of No! G8 Action Japan, who asked us for a broad strategic analysis of the state of struggle as we see it, and particularly, of the role of the G8, what it represents, the dangers and opportunities that may lie hidden in the moment. It is in no sense programmatic. Mainly, it is an attempt to develop tools that we hope will be helpful for organizers, or for anyone engaged in the struggle against global capital.

"The New Security Culture" Boris Beauregard It’s a New Security Culture! A message from Boris Beauregard celebrating the World Security Days: "Never before in the history of the world, there has been such a need to respond effectively to critical events. In today’s complex world where the solutions to your security concerns are no longer straightforward, it is more difficult than ever to successfully protect interests against diverse and intricate dangers." http://www.global-security-alliance.com/gsa/world-security-days/en Below his keynote speech...

Pogroms in South Africa Sunday, 25 May 2008

Empire or Humanity? What the Classroom Didn't Teach Me About the American Empire By Howard Zinn With an occupying army waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan, with military bases and corporate bullying in every part of the world, there is hardly a question any more of the existence of an American Empire. Indeed, the once fervent denials have turned into a boastful, unashamed embrace of the idea. However, the very idea that the United States was an empire did not occur to me until after I finished my work as a bombardier with the Eighth Air Force in the Second World War, and came home. Even as I began to have second thoughts about the purity of the "Good War," even after being horrified by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even after rethinking my own bombing of towns in Europe, I still did not put all that together in the context of an American "Empire."

Mugabe Said to Be Negotiating Possible Exit By THE NEW YORK TIMES HARARE, Zimbabwe — Advisers to President Robert G. Mugabe of Zimbabwe are in talks with the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, amid signs that Mr. Mugabe may be preparing to resign, a Western diplomatic source and a prominent Zimbabwe political analyst said Tuesday. The negotiations about a possible transfer of power away from Mr. Mugabe come after he apparently concluded that a runoff election would be demeaning, a diplomat said.