State Violence

"""In October 1973 a mass movement forced Thailand’s prime minister to step down and leave the country, ending nearly forty years of dictatorship. Three years later, in a brutal reassertion of authoritarian rule, Thai state and para-state forces quashed a demonstration at Thammasat University in Bangkok. In Revolution Interrupted, I focus on this period when political activism briefly opened up the possibility for meaningful social change. Tenant farmers and their student allies fomented revolution, I show, not by picking up guns but by invoking laws— laws that the Thai state ultimately proved unwilling to enforce.

In choosing the law as their tool to fight unjust tenancy practices, farmers and students departed from the tactics of their ancestors and from the insurgent methods of the Communist Party of Thailand. To first imagine and then create a more just future, they drew on their own lived experience and the writings of Thai Marxian radicals of an earlier generation, as well as New Left, socialist, and other progressive thinkers from around the world. Yet their efforts were quickly met with harassment, intimidation, and assassinations of farmer leaders. More than thirty years later, the assassins remain unnamed.

Drawing on hundreds of newspaper articles, cremation volumes, activist and state documents, and oral histories, I reveal the ways in which the established order was undone and then reconsolidated. Examining this turbulent period through a new optic—interrupted revolution—I show how the still unnameable violence continues to constrict political opportunity and to silence dissent in present-day Thailand."""

Este trabalho analisa a relação entre a Política Brasileira de Mudança Climática e os discursos oficiais Brasileiros nas negociações internacionais da mudança climática que sucederam a adoção desta Política. Enquadrando os esforços Brasileiros incluídos nesta Política em “regimes de verdade” – governamentalidades – induzidos na sociedade Brasileira, procuramos perceber como a agência coletiva é considerada na formulação do regime Brasileiro de mudanças climáticas e propusemos uma narrativa dos esforços institucionais Brasileiros para legitimar uma ideia de “controle ambiental” e progresso ecológico, através do cumprimento, por estratégias económicas e tecnológicas, de uma política normativa. Com uma metodologia do tipo qualitativo, este estudo procedeu à análise de documentos e a entrevistas semiestruturadas a funcionários governamentais. Posteriormente, uma análise crítica-comparativa dos discursos presidenciais e ministeriais elaborados para as COPs da CQNUMC no período 2008-2012, comparando-os com o teor da Política e do Plano Nacional de Mudança Climática e de seus instrumentos regulamentadores, permitiu perceber como a governamentalidade da mudança do clima no Brasil se enquadra nos discursos internacionais Brasileiros sobre essa problemática

"This event brings together scholars and activists to discuss the connections between state violences against migrants and Muslim, black and other minority communities. What can we learn by considering the links between these processes and the overlapping techniques of intimidation and repression that are employed? How do communities resist such incursions and what tactics could be shared?

Speakers include:

Bridget Anderson (COMPAS)
Nandita Sharma (University of Hawaii)
Anthony Gunter (UEL)
Frances Webber (Institute of Race Relations)
Aaron Winter (UEL)
SOAS Detainee Support Group
Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance (COPS)

This is an informal event for students, activists, researchers and anyone interested in resistance to state racism. There is no charge to attend, but places are limited. Please email g.bhattacharyya@uel.ac.uk to confirm attendance.

The event, hosted by the Centre for Migration, Refugees and Belonging will take place on Wednesday 26 March, 1.30-4.30pm, CC.G.05, Stratford Campus. "

"This paper is an attempt to critically analyse the underlying forces that shaped the Arab Spring and understand the role and perception(s) of the West, controversies in naming it as Arab Spring along with the emergence of a Dabashian politics of hope.
It further explores whether Arab Spring fits into Non-Violent Civil Resistance and whether it will succeed or fail in bringing freedom, justice and dignity in the Arab World.
"

Tharoor strongly feels that un-employability of the youth is a major national challenge. He says “if we do not get our education priorities right, violent incidents like the Maoist violence would recur. We will be faced with frustrated unemployed young men with no stake in the system and with no hope in the economy; these men will prefer picking up the gun, as an alternative to finding the right job. That is the danger that we need to avert. To my mind, education is not just about the social and economic future of India, it is no less than a national security challenge.” He further adds that if India fails to educate and train these millions of youth then the country will face a ‘humungous disaster’ and there is a very high level of risk of losing these men (mainly men, may be a few women as well) to the path of extremism and terrorism. 

The article reveals how particular mass-mediated journalistic discourses of white middle-class “respectability” are normalized and rendered invisible by dominant media institutions. It explores how Canadian mainstream journalism not only interprets reality in ways that reflect reactionary ideologies and prevailing views of “common sense,” but is responsible for constructing that reality. This reality also reflects how Canadian productions of gendered racial citizenship and white supremacy are currently being reconstituted and revivified by the neoliberal “anti-state state,” and are fueling the discursive and physical violence that drives “necropolitics.” The article engages in a frame analysis of news coverage of two high-profile criminal cases that are cited as the cause célèbre legitimizing the passage of The Citizen’s Arrest and Self-defence Act, and engage with the interventions of critical race feminism and postcolonial theory,  which are attentive to how gender and race thinking are co-imbricated in necropolitical forms of power within white settler societies. Since the dualist “construct of respectability and degeneracy” determines who possesses the rightful claim to citizenship and who is excluded from belonging to the nation, it remains important in uncovering interlocking structures of domination.

Este artículo pretende sintetizar las políticas, las prácticas y las experiencias de la detención de inmigrantes en Grecia, además de abordar las críticas recibidas tanto a nivel nacional como internacional. Este trabajo plantea los modos en los que el Estado griego ha reaccionado frente a las críticas y presiones para realizar una reforma, especialmente aquellas que provienen del extranjero. Se sostiene que ni las intervenciones nacionales ni las internacionales han logrado provocar un cambio progresivo y real en el sistema de detención de inmigrantes adoptado por Grecia. Las autoridades de ese país han neutralizado, sistemáticamente, las críticas mediante el uso de una variedad de técnicas retóricas, principalmente a través de la evocación de la philoxenia (en términos generales, significa hospitalidad a los extranjeros y foráneos) como rasgo común y natural de los griegos. Además de destacar las dimensiones ambiguas y paradójicas de las defensas retóricas adoptadas por Grecia, en especial respecto a su discurso de philoxenia; este artículo continúa exponiendo las principales funciones sociopolíticas que, sutilmente, actúan dentro de los límites del país por medio del mantenimiento de políticas y prácticas deplorables en la detención de los inmigrantes, incluyendo el manejo simbólico de las ansiedades públicas de acuerdo con lo que puede llamarse el principio de “mayor elegibilidad”. Señalando estas funciones, este artículo ayuda a explicar por qué el Estado de Grecia insiste en hacer uso de una retórica que, visiblemente, resulta indefendible y está destinada a generar una mayor desaprobación.

""Generalmente la violenza di Stato è associata a sistemi totalitari e a dittature che violano i diritti umani. Carente è invece la letteratura scientifica in merito alla violenza di Stato esercitata in società democratiche. Il presente articolo cerca di colmare questa lacuna, analizzando gli eventi del G8 di Genova del 20-22 luglio 2001, durante i quali, secondo osservatori internazionali, si è verificata la più grave sospensione dei diritti umani in un Paese occidentale dopo la seconda guerra mondiale. Criticando la diagnosi di disturbo post-traumatico da stress (PTSD), e articolando i concetti di delegittimazione sociale, trauma psicopolitico e terapia della testimonianza, viene proposta un’analisi contestuale del trauma subìto dalle vittime durante le violenze del G8 di Genova.
State violence generally is connected to totalitarian regimes and dicta¬torships that violate human rights. Conversely, scientific literature is poor in state violence practiced in democratic societies.

The aim of this article is to fill this gap by analyzing the events occurs during the G8 summit in Genoa of July 20-22, 2001, during which, according to international observers, there has been the most serious suspension of human rights in a Western country after World War Two. Through a criticism of the diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), by articulating the concepts of social delegitimization, psychopolitical trauma, and therapy of testimony, a contextual analysis of the trauma suffered by victims during the violence of the G8 summit is suggested."""