Friday, April 26, 2019

GIG ECONOMY = POSTMODERN SWEATSHOP


In an industry built on fun, some employees are pushed to their breaking point



Canadian video game designer Osama Dorias works at 
his computer with his son sleeping on his shoulder 
in this picture from 2008. (Osama Dorias)

EUGENE'S NOTE: 
THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE CONTAINS VIDEO'S NOT AVAILABLE HERE 

It was Osama Dorias's first job in the video game industry.


He was thrilled to be working as a designer with a company in Montreal.


Then he got his first real taste of what's known in the business as "crunch" — when a team crams for weeks or even months to complete a game in time for its scheduled release."Seven days a week, between 14- and 16-hour days," he recently told CBC News of that experience back in 2008.


The punishing schedule went on for three months.


Dorias's first son had just been born, but he was working every day from 8 a.m. until it was time to catch the last subway ride home.


Watch: Video game designer Osama Dorias describes the toll of working 16-hour days to finish a game on deadline.





'I had to learn how to be human again.' The toll of video game crunch

Video game designer Osama Dorias describes the personal toll of working extreme overtime a.k.a. "crunch."3:10


One day, while on a diaper run, he had a breakdown in a drugstore. In tears, he called his friend.


"My mind was racing and I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to live and I didn't know how to tell him I'd left the house without asking what size diapers my son wore."


Dorias had no idea about the proper size because he was rarely home.


When the game was finally completed, he got a few days off and a thank-you note, but no overtime pay. Welcome to crunch in the gaming industry. It's a long-standing feature of the sector's workplace culture, but the calls for change are getting louder.
Big business, bad habits


The video game industry long ago powered up from basement workshops to big business. The multiplayer game Fortnite now competes with Netflix in terms of the number of eyeballs they attract. In 2018, revenue for the U.S. gaming industry reached a new high score of $43.4 billion — far surpassing the film industry.


With big-name companies such as Ubisoft and BioWare, Canada is a major player — the world's third largest producer of video games, behind the U.S. and Japan.




Elbi@derElbi

Managers: "This game isn't doing well! The only way to save it is to crunch!"

Managers: "This game is doing incredibly well! The only way to keep up with the demand is to crunch!"


Yet devs still sacrifice mental & physical health for bosses earning 1.000x their wage 



Polygon
✔@Polygon
How Fortnite’s success led to months of intense crunch at Epic Games https://www.polygon.com/2019/4/23/18507750/fortnite-work-crunch-epic-games?utm_campaign=polygon&utm_content=chorus&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter …



9:16 AM - Apr 23, 2019


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But as the industry grows, crunch appears to be a bad habit that some companies have yet to break.


Part of the problem is that the practice of pulling all-night coding sessions is baked into the DNA of video game creation.


A 2017 survey by the International Game Developers Association found 53 per cent of employees said crunch was expected at their workplace.


Recent news reports also suggest crunch is still common. Earlier this week, the gaming website Polygon reported that workers at Epic Games in Cary, N.C., are allegedly toiling for brutally long hours on the hit game Fortnite.


In the piece, the company says its success has put added demands on its team, but it is hiring more staff and improving its planning process to reduce the workload.



Allegations of crunch also became part of the narrative of what went wrong with the new BioWare game Anthem. After the much-anticipated title debuted to low ratings, the gaming news site Kotaku published an article describing what appeared to be a troubled development process. Citing numerous anonymous sources, Kotaku reported on instances of crunch and how some employees were put on doctor-mandated stress leave.


The Edmonton-based company quickly responded to the story in a blog post. "We put a lot of focus on better planning to avoid 'crunch time,'" the statement says.


"The health and well-being of our team members is something we take very seriously."
Crunch culture takes a toll


Dave Chan, an audio designer who worked with BioWare beginning in the late 1990s, says the industry has a big problem with "wearing fatigue and overwork as a badge of honour."


He remembers enduring months of what he called "death march crunch," consisting of 12- to 16-hour days, seven days a week.


He says at one point an executive asked him how he was doing. "I told him I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and almost lost my marriage."


Chan says he was always running on empty, and that crunch was part of the reason he left the company in 2004.





 
Dave Chan worked at BioWare in Edmonton. 
He says crunch brought him to 'the verge
 of a nervous breakdown.' These days he's
 a biweekly columnist on video games fo
 CBC Edmonton's Radio Active show.(CBC)


But some managers see a place for crunch.


Former BioWare co-founder Trent Oster, who was with the company for 15 years, remembers working 212 hours in the final two weeks before the game Neverwinter Nights shipped.

He says crunch can be valuable in short spurts.



Trent Oster, right, is CEO of Edmonton's independent video game company Beamdog. He co-founded BioWare in 1995. (CBC)

"When it first happens, it's really empowering because you're letting all the excess details of your work life disappear and you're focusing in on the core problems."

But when weeks become months, the value of crunch plummets.

"You're sitting at your desk for 12 hours a day, but you're getting eight hours of work done," he said. "Then you're sitting 14 hours a day to get eight hours of work done."

Oster says while he was working at BioWare they actively tried to avoid crunch. If crunch is required, he says, it's because something has gone wrong.

"Crunch is a disaster-mitigation strategy. When things have gotten so sideways it's like, 'Oh my God, this is on the edge of failure.'"

Watch: Trent Oster breaks down the pros and cons of crunch.







Video game creator Trent Oster explains the pros and cons of crunch. 0:55


According to Oster, another part of the problem is the pressure from shareholders looking to see if the company can deliver what it promised.


"These are publicly traded companies. They have earnings obligations. They put products into a kind of timeline and they're under a lot of pressure to hit those timelines."


Oster left BioWare in 2009, long before Anthem was released.
Do you work in the gaming industry and have experiences with crunch? Contact Eli Glasner at eli.glasner@cbc.ca


At his new company, Beamdog, they keep crunch to a minimum of a few weeks and staff are paid when they work overtime.


CBC News reached out to BioWare and many of Canada's top gaming companies for comment on crunch. None would talk to us.


Many of the gaming employees who spoke with CBC News and shared concerns about their work conditions were afraid to go public for fear of being fired or blacklisted by employers.
The crunch pushback begins


But some creators who have been caught in the crunch are taking a stand.


At last month's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, talk about crunch took centre stage.

One of the hosts, narrative designer Meg Jayanth, spoke passionately about how she'd suffered as a result of crunching.





Game Workers Unite @GameWorkers


· Mar 21, 2019


If you missed the #IGF and #GDCAwards last night, you should really go back and watch. We'll highlight some of the best parts.






Game Workers Unite @GameWorkers


We thought @betterthemask was an absolutely killer host. Dropping truth all night about the need to deroot white supremacists from our communities and improve our industry with worker power and collective action! pic.twitter.com/JRdCWnwgGI

597

11:24 AM - Mar 21, 2019


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On the conference floor, the pro-unionization movement Game Workers Unite held a panel touting the benefits of collective bargaining.


Chapters of GWU are gaining new members in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. Again, supporters who shared their experiences with CBC News said they were worried about speaking publicly.


Daniel Joseph, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto working with GWU, says interest in unionization is growing as crunch culture forces more and more people out of the industry they love.



"When people hit 35, they leave the industry because they can't keep up with the amount of work that's required, while [companies] exploit the passion of young workers who've always wanted to make games."


These days, Edmonton's Dave Chan channels his passion for gaming into his CBC Radio column. He believes unionization will happen "when the meat grinder of development stops being fed by college graduates or when it stops being economically viable to run things this way."



 
Osama Dorias has more time to spend with his
 video-game loving family now that he found a
 https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2019/04/domestic-1401-16-apr-2019-behind-996.html
 company with a no-crunch policy. (Eli Glasner/CBC)

In Montreal, Osama Dorias is now the lead game designer at Warner Brothers Games, where he says there is a no-crunch policy.


Dorias feels the anti-crunch conversation is getting louder — and he hopes more companies are listening.


From how we think about our jobs to where and when we do them — the stress of modern work is affecting Canadians in a lot of ways and across industries.


This week, CBC News — led by The National — takes a look at the forces behind this stress and the ways we can avoid burning out. We'll examine new approaches to productivity and creativity, how we structure shift work, the mental health effects of telecommuting and what Canada can learn from other countries.

For more on our series "Burnout: Stress At Work", watch The National or read more at CBCNews.ca.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR







Eli Glasner

Entertainment reporter and film critic

Eli Glasner is a national entertainment reporter and film critic for CBC News. Each Friday he reviews films on CBC News Network as well as appearing on CBC radio programs coast to coast. Covering culture has taken him from the northern tip of Moosonee, Ont. to the Oscars red carpet.
Updated 16:48, 16-Apr-2019
Bi Ran
When we think of tech workers, we think of plaid shirts, mobile game work breaks, instant food, and enviable high salaries. Not surprisingly, their profiles in the public's eyes are always linked with financial success, crazy working hours, creativity drives, and, recently, 996 and ICU. 
What is "996.ICU"? 
It is a popping-up GitHub project by Chinese tech workers to protest "996 schedule" — work 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week — which makes people sick, literally, ending up in ICU, the hospitals' Intensive Care Unit. 
The second most starred repository
This social protest happened in late March. 
996.ICU repo becomes the second most starred repo of all time with so far 220k stars of support clicks. 

996.ICU repository and web page. /CGTN Photo 
It is not like a usual social promotion appeared on Twitter or Weibo with preplanned buzz strategies. It is a repo (repository, or you may call it a collaborative project) on Github, an online code-sharing community, detailing labor laws, showing blacklisted companies and firms with better working conditions. They are collecting and sharing more proof and information about tech companies' work conditions, discussing their own troubles, and trying to find more similar cases internationally. At the bottom of the repo page, there is the campaign slogan, “developers' lives matter,” speaking out from anonymous tech activists. 
Tech workers have flooded GitHub in the past month, not to convey anger and rage, but to let their comments seen by more people. Facing a situation that they cannot change work conditions by complaining to HRs, 996 campaigners chose this very "geeky" way to raise concerns. 
The repo did become a tech workers' social platform though. Many 996 campaigners even see this repo as a job-hunting guidance for them to filter employers as the blacklist and whitelist are quite credible. 
Under Chinese labor laws, workers should not be forced to work over three hours of overtime each day and not over 36 hours of overtime every month. The law also stipulates that workers should get 150% of their usual salaries for prolonging hours, and three times of their regular pay if they work during a national holiday. Zhang Yi, the senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the overtime work could be legal only when the labor contracts include specific related terms and the employers establish a system of the compensatory level.  
Given the stipulations, the social discussion has raised the question of whether it defaults to work overtime or it's just an option. The reality could be worse actually since a lot of tech companies do not provide any compensation or stipend to overworking employees. 

Chinese tech giant Alibaba pledged to use its platform to stimulate consumption and generate more orders for the manufacturing and services sectors this year, February 22, 2019. /Xinhua Photo
Ezra Zhang, who's invested in several tech start-ups in Beijing, said the campaign can be a reminder for the industry to pay more attention to balancing workers' work and life. 
"The protest is very tender and civilized, which will possibly lead to some practical changes, "said Ezra, adding that it's a good thing to see the industry has to face such long-existing problems and think about solutions together. 
'Take it as a blessing'
"I don't defend '996' schedule, but I salute to those very diligent workers. Tech workers should take it as a huge bliss for they got the opportunity to work that way," said Jack Ma, the founder of China's tech giant Alibaba, said on his Weibo Friday which however stirred up much backlash from netizens calling him out for only endorsing the overtime work culture because it benefits his own wealth. 
Jack Ma then posted another Weibo out of pressure to justify his early comments, explaining that he was persuading young people to be hard-working instead of promoting an unhealthy way to work. China's richest person highlighted the importance of passion and ambition when choosing a career, as vaguely mentioned that money (extra pay) should not be a decisive factor if your companies need you to work more. 

Jack Ma's Weibo. /CGTN Photo
Other business tycoons also joined this working schedule debate with various stands. Founder of China's e-commerce giant JD.com Richard Liu posted a short story pointing out that JD.com will never force employees to work in a "996" way, though he does require the workers to fight tooth and nail in work. He even said he could work under an "8116+8" schedule: 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. for six days, plus eight hours every Sunday. Brian Shen, CEO of China's mobile communications company Oppo, posted that people with different goals choose different career path; personally, he would definitely backup 996 work schedule because he loves his job. 
Yet, the founder of China's book retailing website Dangdang.com, Li Guoqing is sharply against "996" schedule, as he believes it negatively affects employees' work and life balance without enhancing work effectiveness. 
"It's tougher for employees to maintain a healthy work-life balance considering the extremely high demands on their professional front, even a short piece comment encouraging prolonged work can be a huge buzzkill," one interviewee told CGTN, who preferred to remain anonymous for fear of losing her job. 
She said as one of the new-age employees facing fierce competition, she is well aware that only hard work can help them achieve the dream. She was pretty angry that comments like Jack Ma's obliterate most people's contribution if you are not a 996 worker. 

In a Twitter poll created by CGTN digital, most of the netizens are willing to have a work-life balance for they think work is not everything. /CGTN Photo
Work toward a better life ≠ Compulsory 996
As the agitation escalates, people started to dig deeper into how the debate triggers such a tide. 
During my interviews, many young tech workers have made it very clear that there's a misunderstanding at the value level: their protest against 996 is not about being lazy or losing passion.
"I am willing to make every effort to working toward success, but it doesn't mean the company can force me to work overtime without adequate compensation," said Mr.Yuan, who is working at Huawei as a Java technician. 
Many enterprises are struggling under the pressure of economic downturn, while new-age workers do understand they need to work more hours than they would like to for the survival of their companies. However, this can never be a legit reason for no-limit working hours and the so-called "struggle spirit". Linking a legal 9 a.m.-5 p.m. work schedule to poor work ethics is not logically persuasive, let alone calling this a lack of eagerness to succeed. 
Unfortunately, thought the protest against this long-existing ineffective work culture is on, the latest Healthcare and Life Sciences Predictions by Deloitte pointed out that the Chinese are suffering worse health, while overwork death accounts for one of the reasons. 
The discussion initiated by "996.ICU" is an opportunity for us to rethink China's tech corporate culture and business ethics. A beautiful life does not simply mean earning more money for today's Chinese people, and a respected enterprise is definitely not only chasing after profits. The growth of overtime work culture has shown its unhealthy social costs. It's taking a toll on workers' families, communities, and ultimately on employers themselves.


Abusive work schedules in tech industry under fire
(China Daily) 08:15, April 10, 2019
Activists are calling for more supervision over labor exploitation in an online crusade spearheaded by software developers against the so-called 996 work schedule, which is widely practiced in China's tech industry.


The rules-which require employees to work from 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week without overtime pay-came under fire after a programmer created 996.ICU, a page on code-sharing platform GitHub.com. The page garnered immediate attention at home and abroad.


The name 996.ICU refers to a saying among Chinese developers that following the 996 schedule puts you at risk of ending up in an intensive care unit.


In the weeks that followed the creation of 996.ICU in March, the page has accrued almost 200,000 stars-which indicates popularity among users.


Users listed tech companies that use the 996 schedule, and then created a licensing agreement that would ban such companies from using their codes.


The 996.ICU page was soon blocked on multiple platforms including the messaging tool WeChat and the UC Browser.


The 996 schedule was allegedly first adopted in 2016 by 58.com, a major online classified advertisement site.


Jiang Ying, a professor at China University of Labor Relations and a leading expert on China's Labor Law, said the rare protest by sleep-deprived tech firm employees underscored the difficulties facing workers who defend their rights.


"When resorting to the legal system for protection, there is a price to pay: time, money and the risk of losing your job. And as a result they took to cyberspace," she said.


Employers are obliged to provide overtime pay, bonuses and welfare benefits to employees working overtime. But many tech company employees said it was too much to hope for.


A senior developer with the e-commerce giant Alibaba, who asked not to be named to protect his career, said employers seldom say the schedule is compulsory, but failure to follow the rules could lead to low performance scores and layoffs.


"Defiant behavior can also lead to losing your annual bonus, which is a lot of money," he said.


To better protect workers from harsh treatment, Jiang suggested that oversight should be beefed up, and systems for lodging complaints should be improved.


China's Labor Law prescribes that the working hours of an employee should not exceed an average of eight hours daily, or 44 hours a week.


Employers may extend working hours after consultation with an employee, but shall not exceed three hours a day or 36 hours a month.


The 996 work schedule, however, can easily ratchet up weekly work to 60 hours.


Jiang said tech firms represent the country's most advanced productive force and should have the wisdom to adopt a more effective way to improve productivity.


Zhao Wei, an industrial sociology professor at Beijing Normal University, said the new industries led by internet companies have revolutionized how workloads are calculated, thus dimming the distinction of working overtime.


"Labor laws should be revised with new industries in mind-which in today's case is the information industry," she said.



.https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2019/04/gig-economy-postmodern-sweatshop.html




I had a front-row seat to hate and was physically assaulted: The liberal-washing of white nationalism

April 1, 2019 4.41pm EDT

An academic expert on Islamophobia attended a ‘free-speech’ conference in Toronto, where she was assaulted after challenging speakers for promoting hatred against Muslims. 


The horror of the New Zealand terror attack that targeted two mosques during Friday congregational prayers and left 50 people dead has raised important questions about the kind of ideas that inspire this senseless violence. In Canada, the 2017 Québec mosque shooting that left six Muslim men dead also forced the question: what drives the hate that leads to white nationalist terror?

Recently I attended a “free speech” conference on the outskirts of Toronto. In attendance at the event were lawyers from prominent legal firms and other professionals. When I challenged one of the speakers for remarks I felt promoted hatred against Muslims, I was physically assaulted.

I have long been examining the question of what fuels white nationalist hatred by documenting and mapping the “Islamophobia industry” in Canada. The industry is a constellation of individuals, media outlets, think tanks, politicians and organizations that purvey racism and Islamophobia. These include white nationalist and “alt-right” groups that are proliferating and expanding their reach in Canada from upward of 100 groups in 2015 to nearly 300 by 2018.

While the alt-right, neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups are the foot soldiers of the movement, there are other, more covert players that form the soft power of this widespread industry. These power brokers use cultural, political and economic ideas to influence, shape and inform white nationalist views. They help circulate bigotry by dressing it up as patriotism and purveying it through “respectable” channels.

I refer to this as the “liberal washing” of white nationalism, where politically camouflaged xenophobic, Islamophobic and racist notions are disguised under the veneer of liberal discourse such as “protecting democracy,” “freedom” and the “rule of law” from what are regarded as illiberal, anti-modern and anti-democratic minorities.

I had a front-row seat to liberal-washed hate messaging at the conference held by Canadians for the Rule of Law, a registered charity that seeks to challenge “political tribes” and “disruptors” who question the rule of law in Canada.
Teaching Islamophobic fear and bigotry

The idea that “Islamists” are infiltrating and imposing shariah law in Canada was a common narrative at this event and disturbingly echoed the views of the New Zealand shooter, whose manifesto spoke of Muslim “invaders” who were corrupting western civilization.

Protesters decrying hatred and racism converged around 
the U.S. after a white supremacist rally that spiraled into 
deadly violence in Virginia in the summer of 2017. 
(Anna Reed/Statesman-Journal/AP)

The vague deployment of the term “Islamist” at this conference reduced a broad political spectrum to a narrow epithet for the violent overthrow of democratic rule to install an Islamic State. The Islamist bogeyman became the dominant representation of Muslims. Fear-mongering about the infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood in Canada was used as a clarion call to warn of impending threats to Canada’s freedom and democracy from Muslim neighbours, organizations, politicians, Muslim Student Associations and Islamic schools.

Preserving Canadian “values” from the corruption of minorities seems far more reasonable than shouting racist slogans in the street — except this liberal-washing of hate is simply another way of echoing and dog-whistling white nationalist, xenophobic ideals by masquerading them through more “civil” and “polite” discourse.

One of the supporting organizations of the conference was Act For Canada, an offshoot of Act For America, one of the most prominent anti-Muslim groups in the United States. Their website outlines their goals:


“ACT! For Canada is a forum for citizens concerned about the triumphalist brand of Islam that seeks to erode our cherished western principles of free speech and equality with the goal of eventual Islamic supremacy in the West ….”

Other groups supporting the conference included conservative media outlet TAG TV, the Bangladeshi Minority Rights group, B’nai Brith and several pro-Zionist groups that equate criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic and “illegal.” The conference also received funding from Daniel Pipe’s Middle East Forum think tank that “protects western values from Middle Eastern threats” and “emphasizes the danger of lawful Islamism.”
A front row seat to hate

To set the tone for the day, conference organizers began with a condemnation of the New Zealand terror attack. Attendees were asked to rise for a moment of silence. It turns out the silence was not to commemorate the victims of this heinous hate crime, but rather to honour “free speech.”

I spent a long day of being a fly on the wall at this conference, hearing non-stop pro-Zionist rhetoric denying that Israel was oppressing Palestinians and consuming a steady diet of Islamophobic bigotry. Along with this came calls for preserving “Judeo-Christian democracy,” protecting against multiculturalism and the need to build a “coalition of the willing,” (the term used by George W. Bush to refer to countries who supported militarily or politically the 2003 U.S-led invasion of Iraq), to challenge “Islamists” and preserve the rule of law in Canada.

Most egregiously, in one session I attended, panellists repeatedly referred to the Al Noor mosque in New Zealand where the terror attack occurred as a “known site of radicalization” without citing any evidence. They complained the media was not publicizing this information. Despite their caution to say this was not a justification for the shootings, I was concerned their salacious and unfounded claim against the Al Noor mosque created further fear and hatred against Muslims.
I finally decided to intervene.One of the panellists was Christine Douglass-Williams, who in 2017 was removed from the Canadian Race Relations Foundation for remarks described by non-profit organizations as Islamophobic.

I asked her about a speech she made in Iceland in which she warned Icelanders about the “Islamicist supremacist incursion into their country:


“Islamic supremacists will smile at you and invite you to their gatherings, make you feel loved and welcomed but they do it to deceive you and take over you, your land, and your freedoms …Many friendly, seemingly ‘moderate’ Muslims are deceiving you …”

I asked her what her warning was for Canadians, given that’s what she told Icelanders.
Not so free speech

Douglass-Williams became defensive and said she was misquoted. I was paraphrasing, but I told her I took the information directly from an article she wrote. The moderator became angry and told me I couldn’t speak anymore. He told me to leave.

I protested and said I was trying to engage in a dialogue, to exercise my free speech rights, which this conference purported to uphold. The moderator, who is an “ethicist,” informed me I was now trespassing and had to leave.

Did I breach conference decorum by being unwilling to be silenced? Yes. Did they have a right to ask me to leave because I spoke after being told to be quiet? Technically, yes. I did not plan to interrupt the far-right echo chamber, but when I did intervene in the discussion, I realized it was likely I’d be asked to leave because of my views. And I was willing to do so peacefully. But I was not prepared for what happened next.

I stood up voluntarily to leave as instructed by the moderator. But I made one final comment: I said their thinly veiled white supremacist views and Islamophobic fear-mongering is the kind of rhetoric that inspires white nationalist terror.

That comment caused a commotion.

A man from the audience grabbed me and pulled me from the room, twisting my arm with force. I shouted to the silent onlookers: “This man is hurting me! He has no right to touch me!”

A man in the audience shouted back: “You are lucky to even be in this country!”

During this incident, not one person said or did anything. All cellphones, by order of the conference, were surrendered so no one took videos of the incident. I had to wait to call the police until afterwards.

As the man was physically accosting me, I looked over my shoulder to the crowd in the room. They did not look like Proud Boys wearing Doc Martens; they were mainly white seniors that included a retired school psychologist, a teacher and lawyers dressed in suits and ties. Others wore leisurewear, the kind worn on a winter cruise.

One of the people in the room was a former Toronto police officer and “security expert.” I thought he might see the danger in the situation and stop it, so I appealed to him: “You are a former police officer and I’m telling you this man is assaulting and hurting me!”

He stared at me and said nothing. Ironically, all of this occurred during a panel about public safety and upholding “the rule of law.” No amount of “liberal washing” will clean this dirty laundry
.



















































 Mourners pay their respects at a makeshift memorial near the Masjid Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 16, 2019, after a 28-year-old white supremacist was accused in mass shootings at the mosque that left 50 people dead. (AP Photo/Vincent Thian)

Editor’s Note: Prior to publishing this article, The Conversation Canada asked the organizer of the conference, Canadians for the Rule of Law, why Jasmin Zine was forcibly removed from the event she attended. Donald Carr, president of Canadians for the Rule of Law, replied in an email that Zine “did not conform to clearly stated ‘rules’ relating to asking questions of the panellists.” Carr said Zine was asked to surrender the microphone after asking her question and that conference organizers then considered her to be a “trespasser on private property” and asked the conference’s private security firm to escort her out. Carr admitted an “unknown individual from the audience seized the professor to take her out, but on request, released her” and a security officer escorted Zine to the lobby of the building. Carr said a police officer subsequently interviewed several people and told conference staff that there “had been no illegal action.” Zine has since received an email from the investigating officer from York Regional Police who indicated that people at the conference he spoke to “were not very forthcoming with information about the suspect.” The officer said conference organizers told him the suspect was selling books at the conference, but they didn’t have any contact information for him. “I’m sorry I could not find the suspect and give you anymore closure in this upsetting matter,” the officer concluded.


Author

Jasmin Zine

Professor of Sociology, Wilfrid Laurier University
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Jasmin Zine receives funding from the Social Sciences Research and Humanities Council
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VENEZUELA'S PETRO ECONOMY CRASHED THE STATE


Oil’s corrosive impact on democracy is the true socialist gateway drug

April 2, 2019 5.04pm EDT

Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro throws his handkerchief into a crowd of supporters at an anti-imperialist rally for peace in Caracas, Venezuela, in March 2019. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

During the Cold War, socialism was portrayed as a gateway drug to communist orthodoxy. The crisis in Venezuela has resurrected tired old tropes about “pinks” and “useful idiots” who start out as democratic socialists, but end up marching in lockstep towards a workers’ dystopia.

United States Sen. Lindsey Graham tweeted recently that new Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “and her new socialist colleagues seem hell-bent on making sure that our last 12 years will be spent as Venezuelan socialists, not Americans.”


Lindsey Graham✔@LindseyGrahamSC · Jan 24, 2019
Let’s bury the hatchet and enjoy the next 12 years because they are going to be our last, right?
Lindsey Graham✔@LindseyGrahamSC
Even worse news, @AOC and her new socialist colleagues seem hell-bent on making sure that our last 12 years will be spent as Venezuelan socialists, not Americans.17.2K10:29 AM - Jan 24, 2019Twitter Ads info and privacy6,927 people are talking about this
A Republican National Committee email called Ocasio-Cortez a “mini Maduro,” a reference to Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, and accused her of leading the Democratic Party “to the left with nothing more than an unsubstantiated, factually incorrect socialist wish list.” Reason’s John Stossel and New York Times columnist Bret Stephens have all taken readers down the slippery slope from democratic socialism to Venezuelan disaster socialism.

It is a powerful fallacy. The bogeyman of Venezuelan “socialism” has had repercussions throughout the Americas. A close contest in last year’s Colombian presidential election swung toward the ruling party as the conservative candidate Ivan Duque accused the leftist Gustavo Petro of wanting to turn that country into Venezuela.
Even in a jurisdiction as far away as Alberta, conservatives have tried to use the Venezuelan crisis as wedge. The right-wing Rebel Media asked whether Alberta would become the next Venezuela as the moderate leftist leader rolled out a carbon tax.

If Maduro’s Venezuela is the guiding light for democratic socialism, it has attracted the support of some rather anti-democratic leaders. It’s not Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib who have leapt to Maduro’s defence. Rather, Vladimir Putin, Bashar Al-Assad and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, of Russia, Syria and Turkey respectively, have been among the staunchest defenders of the Venezuelan president since Juan Gauidó declared himself interim president.

Leftist litmus tests

There was a time in the early 2000s when Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez served as a tidy litmus test for the international left.

Much like his nemesis, George W. Bush, he divided the world into people for him and people against him. For those on the left with serious misgivings about Chávez’s penchant for authoritarianism, there wasn’t much wiggle room. The United States was the empire. The bloc of Cuba, Bolivia and Venezuela represented the revolution. Forced to choose sides, anyone wanting to maintain their leftist credentials had to pick Chávez.

Since Venezuela descended into chaos under Maduro, however, protesters have transcended political divisions.

Women’s groups and many leftist parties have turned against Maduro, while militaristic nationalists in the Middle East have become his biggest supporters. Yes, there are a few “fellow travellers” — to borrow another Cold War idiom — in the West who continue think of the humanitarian tragedy in Cold War terms. Oliver Stone, who once tweeted that his “heart goes out to Nicolás Maduro,” is a particularly egregious example.


Oliver Stone✔@TheOliverStone
My heart goes out to Nicolás Maduro and his leadership during this dangerous period since the Chávez Revolution. #UntoldHistory318:16 AM - Dec 23, 2013Twitter Ads info and privacy63 people are talking about this
Anyone who’s paid attention to the real cost in human suffering, however, knows that Venezuela’s crisis looks a lot like a classic natural resource curse. Venezuela, like virtually every other nation blessed with abundant fossil fuels, has known for decades that it must diversify away from its dependence on oil.

Even the CIA in the 1970s made the case that the influx of petro dollars could destabilize the country in the long term. Oil could create a class of oligarchs that would represent a target for leftist militants.


Venezuela became more oil-dependent

Chávez promised to redirect oil revenue into programs promoting food security and domestic farming. Yet Chávez, too, found the temptations of the rentier state too much to resist. Despite all Chávez’s lofty goals and rhetoric about self-sufficiency, the country became more dependent on the rents from oil and gas than before his so-called Bolivarian 
Revolution.

Kiss marks left by supporters of Venezuela’s former president Hugo Chávez cover a photograph of him hanging in Caracas, Venezuela in 2013. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

Chávez pumped proceeds from oil revenue into poverty alleviation programs, but the infrastructure of the industry gradually fell into decay and technocrats left for Canada and the U.S. Despite it all, Venezuela still sent around half a million barrels of oil a day to the United States in 2018.

We know that our consumption of fossil fuels is the primary driver of climate change. But less well-known is oil’s corrosive effect on democracy. An American political scientist found that the states that most depended on the rents from the extraction of oil and gas tended to be the least democratic and the most corrupt.

Looked at through ideological glasses, the myriad problems facing Russia, Venezuela, Iran and Saudi Arabia can be blamed on corrupt right-wing politicians, Islamism or socialism, depending on your political predisposition.

These rentier states, however, all have one thing in common: they rely on the royalties from unearned income rather than taxing individual citizens to make the government work. The result is a less accountable and more corrupt political system.

Whether that state is nominally socialist, as in the case of Venezuela, Islamic, as in the case of Iran, or ethno-nationalist, as in the case of Russia, is far less important than the overall damage that the reliance on natural resources does to the social and environmental health of its citizens.

If there was a gateway drug to the current crisis in Venezuela, it was oil, not socialism.



Author

Russell Cobb

Associate Professor of Latin American Studies, University of Alberta
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Russell Cobb does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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