openDemocracy

The human fighting machine, Àngel Ferrero

Àngel Ferrero — Thu, 31 May 2012 02:03:15 +0000

In the amorality of capitalism, the alternatives for an emigrant are virtually reduced to cynicism or melancholy.

Cigarette smoke snuck into clothes and wreathed tables, chairs, and walls of the bar in Neukölln, Berlin’s old working-class neighbourhood, now home to many of the city’s Turkish and Lebanese immigrants who are being pushed further and further south, north and west as expanding gentrification annexes their former territory. There was a rebroadcast of the boxing match between Wladimir Klitschko and Jean-Marc Mormeck that night and this was the best place to be. Surprise: boxing’s still a popular sport in Germany. Maybe the name Klitschko has something to do with it. Or maybe not.

Boxing was a sport much loved by workers before corruption, doping and flouted rules relegated it to the category of blood sport for the lumpenproletariat with cable TV, thereby giving it its present bad name. It was not always thus. In the first half of the twentieth century even the vanguard movements of Dadaism and Futurism were attracted to boxing because of the sculptural qualities of the crude physical clash – which leaves little room for intellectual frivolity – and its indisputably popular character. Arthur Cravan, Francis Picabia and Sergei Eisenstein were keen on the sport and, in 1925, Brecht began to work on a never-finished biography of the boxer Paul Samson-Körner (also painted by Jakob Steinhardt), which was to be titled The Human Fighting Machine (Die menschliche Kampfmaschine). He also wrote a short story which he called The Uppercut (Der Kinnhaken). Suhrkamp published these works in 1995 with the title Der Kinnhaken und andere Box- und Sportgeschichten. I discovered all this when I was working on a thesis about Brecht, which is of absolutely no interest to anyone: “too historical”, “too political”. I’ll probably have to submit it to the gnawing criticism of the rodent family. That is if Spanish universities still exist in three years’ time.

Wladimir Klitschko is an interesting guy. His story is told in a recent documentary by Sebastian Dehnhardt (2011), simply titled Klitschko. Born in 1976 in Semipalatinsk, a port city of the then Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan where his father – a Soviet Air Force officer who later took part in the cleaning operations after the Chernobyl disaster – had been posted, Wladimir Klitschko is fluent in four languages (Ukrainian, Russian, German and English), an avowed chess enthusiast and, since 2001, holder of a PhD from the University of Kiev. Indeed, many boxers wonder why the Klitschko brothers – Wladimir’s brother Vitali is also a successful boxer – get into the ring when they could choose from many other careers.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, when many elite sportsmen and members of the armed forces slid easily into the ranks of the mafia, the Klitschkos emigrated to Germany. In Hamburg they faced the whole range of stumbling blocks that any immigrant has to battle with but resumed their sporting careers. In the heavyweight division, the Ukrainian Volodymyr Volodymyrovych Klychko who thenceforth used the German version of his name, has been one of the most successful pros in the history of boxing. The night I was watching, Wladimir Klitschko had entered the ring sixty times and won fifty-six matches, forty-nine by knockout. He’d promised to beat Mormeck and notch up the fiftieth knockout of his career.

For all his undeniable achievements, the word is that the style of the Ukrainian – reputed to be one of the last representatives of classical boxing – doesn’t impress the Americans, who say he’s too “technical” and “slow”. Klitschko is level-headed. He’s not prone to fits of anger and neither is he brutal with his opponent. He mostly keeps him at arm’s length and relies on his strong point, an amazing “granite” jab. Nothing spectacular, say the Americans, but that might be out of envy too since his romantic conquests include the actresses Yvonne Catterfield, Alena Gerber and Hayden Panettierre, and the Czech model Karolina Kurková.

Fifty thousand people have flocked to the Düsseldorf Arena to see the match. All the betting is on Klitschko. Jean-Marc Mormeck, a Guadalupe-born Frenchman is shorter and lighter, although more agile as a result, which could complicate things for Klitschko. Mormeck is known for his aggressive style and has also been successful: thirty-six victories (21 knockouts) and only four defeats. Mormeck, in black trunks, is the first to enter the ring, followed by Wladimir Klitschko in his robe and red trunks. Now the chatter stops. “Let’s get ready to rumble.” The bell rings. First round. Mormeck tries to get as near as possible to Klitschko, to hit him close up and from below, as would seem logical for a boxer of his size fighting somebody like Klitschko, who’s keeping him at bay. Here’s Klitschko, the Ukrainian emigrant, fighting Mormeck the Antillean emigrant and here am I, the Catalan emigrant surrounded by Turkish and Arab emigrants, plus some others I can’t identify.

What a sight I am, sitting here fiddling with my glass of beer and fiddling with all the problems I’ve got in my head. According to José Ignacio Wert, the Spanish Minister for Education and Sports, those of us who’ve ended up in these parts of the world aren’t proper Spanish emigrants but Latin American descendents of Spaniards who obtained citizenship thanks to the Law of Historic Memory (it all fits!). A friend of mine assures me that if things keep going like this we’ll be sent to the firing squad for high treason if we return. It would seem, in any case, that we’re not a great loss.

There was a slight kerfuffle in the media a few months ago but, since then, no one remembers that we exist. When you’re an emigrant, hardly anyone is interested. No one cares about you in the host country and no one cares about you in the country you left. We’re men and women without a homeland, Spanish nationals for administrative purposes only, hirelings wandering round Europe: Germany today, Austria or Switzerland tomorrow, and who knows where the day after tomorrow. How one might have friends like this, have a partner like this, form a family like this might be a fleeting news item with a coy headline recalling a film of the late-Franco era denatured of all human experience. But we’re not their problem anymore. We’re someone else’s problem.

I look up. Second round. I’d say this isn’t going to last long. Most of Klitschko’s fights end before the sixth round. Klitschko’s on the attack. Mormeck’s hanging in quite well. Berlin. You’ve all seen it in culture and fashion supplements. But not the Bosnian who picks up cigarette butts in Alexanderplatz. Or the unemployed Hartz IV beneficiaries hanging round the door of my local supermarket drinking beer and cheap vodka at ten in the morning. Or the Turkish woman, whose husband punched her and broke her nose, looking fearfully out of the window. Or the Eastern European prostitutes who take up their positions around Hackescher Markt every weekend. Their stories are of no interest to the media either. They’re history’s losers and those of us who’ve recently joined them go to the end of the queue.

In the amorality of capitalism, the alternatives for an emigrant are virtually reduced to cynicism or melancholy. You’re obliged to do things that weigh on your conscience, maybe for years, obliged not to tell the whole truth, to lie to your family, your friends, your landlord, the authorities and whoever else because, when you’re an immigrant, you don’t have many points of support. Your family and friends aren’t here. The Spaniards haven’t formed any kind of community of immigrants. Turks, Russians, Jews, Greeks, Chileans and the English have their own clubs, cafes, cultural associations and radio stations. They publish their own newspapers. The Spaniards, of course, look upon all this communal activity with the utmost disdain. They’re living in the glorious past and their glorious footballing present, and they don’t need any more than that. And they buy El País and El Mundo. They usually fill the void with booze, drugs, gambling and prostitution, more or less openly or more or less secretly, whatever, as long as they can keep their minds busy till the next lousy job brings in a bit of cash to keep going.

Who wants to read this stuff? It’s depressing. It doesn’t interest journalists who’d have to write it, or the media that would have to publish it, or the readers who’d have to read it. Better to roll out the young liberal professionals with bulky CVs – who, later, when you get to know them, only speak four of the five languages they claim, and then “riding roughshod” as my dad would say, not to mention their spelling and grammatical mistakes in their own – the ones who always look good in photos, who never have back problems or migraines, the “digital bohemians” as they’re now called, who will triumph in other lands and right now. I read in El País that they value social “meritocracy” and want to import it here, and the sooner the better. They don’t even think they’re immigrants. Klitschko’s pitiless and a well-aimed punch makes Mormeck stagger and fall. Mormeck gets up and the fight goes on. Third round.

Things are livening up. It’s all Mormeck can do to take Klitschko’s blows, like a sack of potatoes, blows from above, blows in the ribs, one, another and yet another, like an emigrant who spends most of the week staggering from one feeling to a totally opposite one. There are days when you dream of (better said, long for) a new life, making a clean break, having a second chance. In any case, you’re glad you’re not there. I remember all the people who made things difficult for me when I was at university, the lecturers, the scholarship holders and even the administrative staff (where would they be now?), people with no merit at all, most of them opportunists. I imagine their present situation and think: Schadenfreude. Better you than me. That’s how it is.

All of us here have these thoughts at some time or another, however mean they might be. Mormeck’s getting pissed off and edgy. There are days when you’re so dejected you just want to stay at home. All the clichés about southern Europe, the routine racism in the Bürgeramt, in the Finanzamt, people glaring at you in the metro, in the street, the idea that you can’t help the people you’ve left behind, still battling to keep going back home.

Klitschko’s taken advantage of the fact that Mormeck’s leaving himself open. Mormeck’s weakening. The end of the affair, as the commentator yells, is nigh. A few weeks ago, a volunteer from some NGO (I don’t recall which) asking for a donation in Alexanderplatz was surprised when I didn’t dig into my pocket to contribute a few coins because she opined, judging from my appearance, that although I come from a country in crisis things can’t be that bad and, after all, there’s always somebody worse off than me. Maybe the troika will have to bring us down to Liberia’s poverty levels so we can be worthy of the compassion of the liberal left in the industrialised world. Maybe they’ll even toss a few coins in our box, a quick way of getting rid of a bad conscience about not doing anything for the rest of the year and not even being properly informed about what’s going on around them. All in all, Germany is a tolerant but not open country, the complete opposite of Spain which is an open but not tolerant country.

Ours is not a fortunate generation. Some people say that when things start improving (when?) they’ll call us back. But why are we supposed to go back? It’s difficult to describe the mixture of rage, frustration and impotence. Those who aren’t in total despair feel hopeless. León Felipe wrote in exile something that is much in my mind these days:

Yours is the estate
the house
the horse
and the gun.
Mine is the ancient voice of the land
and you leave me bare and roaming the world.
But I leave you mute …
Mute!
And how will you harvest the wheat
and feed the fire
if I take the song?

So what about us? Have we taken it? Did we have it before? If we did have it, did it matter to anyone? Does it matter to anyone if we take it now? What shall we do with it, if we can do something with it? To write, Adorno once said, is to send messages in a bottle and today’s ocean is called Internet. Who knows. “I feel that my spiritual powers have fully matured and that I can write”, Pushkin wrote from exile, before he finished Boris Godunov and Eugene Onegin. But, the way things are, is anyone interested in all this? It’s all the same and it’s all different. It’s all confused, anyhow, because things aren’t that bad for me but they’re not that good either and, of course, they’re better than they are for lots of people back home and here I am now in Berlin and here we have Klitschko and Mormeck in Düsseldorf, Catalonia, Ukraine, Guadalupe and the whole world out there, the three of us in Germany and me sitting here thinking about writing things that in all probability nobody will read, wondering whether it’s worth writing them, if someone will read them, and there is Klitschko, all muscle, pure physical power, trying to floor Mormeck and, in doing so, breaks his defence and, one jab, two, three very quick jabs and Mormeck’s done for, drops to the floor and it’s history: knockout number fifty for the Ukrainian. Good for Klitschko. I down the dregs of my beer, pay, put on my coat and leave.

Tomorrow’s another day. You fall, you get up. The struggle goes on.

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The Great British Summer? , OurKingdom

OurKingdom — Thu, 31 May 2012 04:33:12 +0000

As the UK gears up to the Diamond Jubilee and Olympic Games, the 'Great British Summer' is beginning. But behind the pomp and dazzle, big questions loom. What is 'great' and 'British' about these celebrations? Do they belong to the British people? OurKingdom invites you to investigate.

Look around you. Everywhere, we are being told that 2012 is the year of the 'Great British Summer': a celebration of Britishness, of identity, of 'us'.

But as we are called upon to pay tribute to the monarchy and 'welcome the world' to London's Olympic Games, it's time to ask what is 'great', what is British, and what is ours about these celebrations.

For the union is in crisis. In the same week that Union Jacks appeared along the capital's thoroughfares in preparation for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, the Yes to Independence campaign was launched in Scotland. While we are blinded by the pomp and dazzle of the 'Great British Summer', a question is being asked whose answer will profoundly affect not only the Scots but the people of all the nations. The UK political class may bury their heads in the sand of the Thames and the spectacle of London as an unchallenged centre of power, but OurKingdom will use these coming months to ask who we are and what we mean by Britishness.

And what is ours. The ongoing assault on Britain's public sphere and transfer of power to the private sector has received a huge boost from the Olympics. Who will benefit? This momentous global event, bringing sporting eminence, team endeavour, fun and magnificence to our shores, should be a shared good, and a unifier. But towns and hamlets across the UK are banned from flying the official London 2012 banners and bunting, because they belong to the multinational sponsors who have long run UK plc behind the scenes, but have never come so close to branding our identity. And while Kate'n'Wills complete the transition into 'royal celebs', can the magic of the monarchy as the soul of these islands be sustained?

OurKingdom invites contributors to join us and reclaim the Great British Summer. This Summer does not belong to LOCOG or Lord Coe or the Queen. We welcome submissions interrogating these months of celebration, exploring the traditions, identity, culture, politics and society of the people of the British Isles, in a way that speaks to and belongs to us the people. Let the summer begin!

Join the 'Great British Summer?' debate.

Email niki.sethsmith@opendemocracy with submissions and suggestions.

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A three point plan to keep America healthy , Leonard Benardo and Jennifer Weiss

Leonard Benardo and Jennifer Weiss — Thu, 31 May 2012 05:58:48 +0000

Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act is facing a yet another test, with the Supreme Court controversially set to rule on the bill’s constitutionality. Were it to be overturned, millions of Americans would once again find themselves with the prospect of no healthcare. Jennifer Weiss and Leonard Benardo offer a few original ideas about how the state could step in to fill the gap.

With June upon us, health care advocates, insurance companies, politicians and the Conference of Catholic Bishops are anxiously awaiting the Supreme Court’s decision on the Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s signature achievement to expand health care access and coverage. No doubt, contingency plans will be crafted should the legislation be overturned: Insurance companies will plot ways to get the pre-existing condition clause repealed as the critical next step; members of Congress will devise strategies for future health care battles; advocacy groups will gin up campaigns to reduce the number of the uninsured; and Michael Moore will be readying his next ideological salvo against the US health care system.

But what about the immediate needs of those bereft of health care coverage? What kind of contingency plan could be put in place for them? The nation will need to find some quick alternatives to get health care to the people if Obamacare meets its demise. After examining existing institutional structures and laws, we have identified several imaginative approaches to keeping our country healthy.

1. Build in a health care exam in the strip search procedure during arrests.

In April, the Supreme Court ruled that law enforcement officials could strip search people arrested for any offense before admitting them to jails, even when there’s no suspicion of contraband. This was hardly one of the Supreme Court’s more popular rulings, particularly among civil libertarians who claim that it would jeopardize the privacy rights of millions. But matters might not look so bleak if correctional officers got standard medical training and administered annual exams and preventive screenings at the time of the strip search. After all, you are already naked. Beyond serving as one solution to our health care crisis, it’s also a jobs plan providing professional development opportunities and employment growth for those working in jails.

You may think this isn’t quite fair—hardened criminals would be getting access to health care while law abiding citizens would not. But here’s the beautiful part: Now even those arrested for minor offences can get strip searched. So if our plan goes forward, after being read your Miranda rights when pulled over for driving with a noisy muffler or riding a bicycle without an audible bell, you can rest easy knowing that you’ll finally get that prostate exam you’ve been long putting off.

2. Train police officers doing “stop and frisk” duty to identify medical concerns.

This is of course the poor man’s version of the strip-search health exam, but a less extensive health survey could still be executed by cops when they “stop and frisk.” While making contact with a “suspect’s” outer clothing to see if there is a concealed weapon, police officers with the right training could, for example, identify reflex issues, protruding bumps, scoliosis, dermatology concerns, obesity, even malnutrition.

Now one may object to this approach as statistics make clear that African Americans and Latinos get stopped and frisked far more frequently than Caucasian men. But once we attach health care exams to “stop and frisk,” we might see a movement of Whites lobbying to end the imbalance of who is disproportionately stopped. And, in the name of efficiency, if as reported almost nine out of ten people being stopped in New York City are innocent, then let’s make the stop worth their while and give them a little health care.

3. Train transport security staff to provide radiology services.

The influx of full body scanners in airports across the country has proven to be an additional nuisance to travelers eager to get on their way. But what if these 360 degree monster devices not only detected if you left a penny in your loafer but were also surrogate x-ray machines providing a full range of radiology services? With the proper training and a quick scan, TSA airport personnel could pick up tumors, fractures, even cavities, then send you to your gate— or, if necessary, re-route you to the nearest hospital. Racial profiling would be implicitly undermined as it’s only a person’s interior that will matter.

Should the health care law be gutted or overturned next month we’ve shared our prescription for making the best of a bad situation by deputizing correctional officers, policemen and TSA officials as medical screeners. Americans know that with a little creativity there is always a silver lining in the strange laws and practices governing our lives. By implementing this three point plan, we pledge to strengthen job skills and provide people the health care coverage they so richly deserve.

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Can disruptive policy create a sustainable finance system?, Chris Hewett

Chris Hewett — Wed, 30 May 2012 00:38:58 +0000

The ideas for creating a new and sustainable finance system are out there. If this thinking doesn't get greater exposure to policy makers and the media, the world of finance will remain a barrier to social and environmental progress.

Since the financial crisis of 2007/8, there remains an enduring understanding amongst commentators that the financial system, as it was structured up to 2007, was a major contributor to the crash. There are also well understood flaws in the system that, if rebuilt in the same way, are likely to be major barriers to supporting a sustainable, and socially just, economy. Issues such as short termism, the conflicts of interest between principal and agent in the investment supply chain, failure of the system to place value on environmental & social risks, and the sheer complexity of the financial markets all play a role in steering capital away from socially useful purposes just at the time we need it most.

The Finance Innovation Lab, a partnership between WWF UK and the Institute for Chartered Accountants of England and Wales (ICAEW) is building a network of finance experts, NGOs, social entrepreneurs and academics dedicated to stimulating systemic change to the finance system that serves the public good. A theme that comes through is that if change is going to happen, it will probably come through in a disruptive way. No government will be able to either design the perfect finance system or force through all the change itself. Left to their own devices, the existing finance market players have no interest in changing the system for the public good if it threatens their position. New financial innovations and business models struggle to challenge the status quo on their own. Put these three forces together, however, and more systemic change is possible.

We have mapped some of the policy ideas being researched and advocated in this area that are designed to disrupt the finance system in order to transform it to one that can support people and planet. The good news is that there are a lot of new ideas out there but so far only a few have become prominent in mainstream debate. Despite this, however, there is a latent political demand for changes to the financial system which is coming from left and right. Frustration from shareholders against top pay, appreciation that the German banking system was far more resilient than that in the UK, and the growth of the peer-to-peer lending sector, all show the potential for disruptive change is growing.

Disruption can come from three directions: it can be imposed by government and regulators in a top down way, it can come from mainstream players changing the way they operate, or it can come from new business models rebuilding the system from the bottom up. The Finance Innovation Lab has been reviewing options and working with those with the most promising ideas.

One of the most exciting areas of socially useful financial innovation, where the UK has really taken a lead, is the peer-to-peer finance sector. Companies such as Zopa and Funding Circle are using internet platforms to facilitate direct lending contracts between individuals and companies. By cutting out the banking middle man, they can simultaneously provide savers with higher returns and borrowers, be they individuals or companies, with lower interest rates. Many, including Andy Haldane from the Bank of England, are predicting that this business model could provide serious competition to high street banks in years to come. But at the moment their growth is undermined by regulation which favours traditional savings accounts in banks in terms of tax treatment, and a regulator (FSA) that doesn’t really have the tools to engage with such innovative new entrants. Simon Deane-Johns, a lawyer who was one of the co-founders of Zopa, has set out a series of recommendations for proportionate regulation of the peer-to-peer sector, but the government is so far leaving these new innovators to find their way in the market. Here we have financial innovators who want some regulation, in a way to demonstrate the safety of their products to customers, and a government failing to act.

A similar development is happening in the field of banking itself. As the large, too-big-to-fail banks are increasingly ignoring small businesses, there is a surge in interest in creating new, local banks to fill the gap in the market. Many are looking to the experience of the German banking system, which has a whole tier of local savings banks, the Sparkassen, held in trusts and controlled by boards of local stakeholders. Whilst the 2007/8 credit crunch saw large international banks in the UK and Germany withdraw finance from SMEs, thus transferring the banking crisis to the real economy, the Sparkassen actually increased their lending. This could well be an important factor behind the strength of SMEs and manufacturing in Germany. The centre-right think tank Civitas has recently published the report Street Cred which details recommendations for how to stimulate such a revival of local banks in the UK. Again, there are concerns that because our financial regulation is designed to accommodate large international banks, it cannot handle small new entrants which only wish to deliver fairly simple financial products. Banking licenses can take years to obtain, creating a financial and knowledge barrier to entry, which benefits the incumbents, and not the consumer.

These two examples are very ‘bottom-up’. To stay with banking, there are two other examples of how government could act to help create a more sustainable finance system. First, it could use tax incentives to reward responsible finance practices. Green Alliance, the environmental think tank, has recently produced a report, Saving for a Sustainable Future, advocating that any tax relief given to savings or investments, such as pension tax relief, or Individual Saving Account tax allowances, should be accompanied with some conditions of responsible finance. For example, what if a bank could only have the right to issue a tax-free savings product if it complied with transparency rules so that we knew what sectors of the economy it was lending to year on year. This idea might encourage some of the mainstream players to lend more responsibly.

A more radical, top down, approach to control the excesses of the banking sector comes from economists who are questioning the value of a great deal of the lending activity of banks. Bank of England figures, analysed by the New Economics Foundation, show that only a small proportion of lending from the banks actually goes to businesses (less than 20%). Far more goes to either finance property, through mortgages, or to other financial institutions, often for speculation. Economists such as Professor Richard Werner and Ann Pettifor are arguing that governments or central banks should be controlling the flow of credit in the economy by limiting the amounts that can go towards different parts of the economy. Many of the East Asian economies, including Japan in the 1950s and 60s, controlled the amount of credit that its banking system could allocate for financial speculation. One of the consequences was the amount of investment that went into infrastructure, domestic manufacturing and other productive parts of the Japanese economy, helping to build its ‘economic miracle’.

A similar analysis of disruptive thinking can be applied to other parts of the finance system, particularly the institutional investment side and how it interacts with the equity markets. Groundbreaking work in organisations like Fair Pensions, Carbon Tracker Initiative, the Network for Sustainable Financial Markets and the Climate Bond Initiative all deserve a mention here, as does the newly created EU public interest organisation, Finance Watch.

The ideas for creating a new and sustainable finance system are out there and being developed. This thinking deserves far greater exposure to policy makers and the media. If it doesn’t then the system will be rebuilt much as it was in 2006, and the world of finance will remain a barrier to social and environmental progress.

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Barack Obama and Poland: injurious ignorance, Adam J Chmielewski

Adam J Chmielewski — Wed, 30 May 2012 21:39:16 +0000

The American president's award to the wartime Polish hero Jan Karski was tarnished by a historical blunder that reveals all too much, says Adam J Chmielewski.

The occasion had been long awaited. Jan Karski, the legendary Polish hero who risked his life to gather firsthand knowledge of the degradation and extermination of Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland, and who as a special envoy travelled to the capital cities of Poland's Allies to share this knowledge, was at last to be formally honoured at a ceremony in the White House on 29 May 2012. The current president of the United States was to award Karski the highest national honour: the presidential medal of freedom.

This overdue act of recognition had, on the part of the United States (and Britain) an element of restitution about it. For when Karski reached their shores in 1942-43, virtually none of the great politicians in the two countries was willing to listen to his message. Thus, the Allies did nothing to save the lives of Jews being annihilated on the territory of Poland - then a nation without a state, after the invasions and partition of the country by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in September 1939.

Among the most drastic examples of indifference to Karski’s desperate appeal is that President Franklin D Roosevelt was more interested in the Nazis' treatment of horses than Jews, and that the supreme-court judge Felix Frankfurter responded to the materials presented by Karski by saying: "‘Mr Karski, A man like me talking to a man like you must be totally frank. So I must say: I am unable to believe in what I have just heard, in all the things that you have just told me."

It is very unfortunate, then, that during the award ceremony, President Obama used the expression "Polish death camps". The implication these words carry is that it was Poles themselves who had invented and operated the Nazis' mass-extermination machine. It is difficult to imagine words more insulting and offensive, or that more deeply convey disregard for the cause Jan Karski risked his life to pursue.

Jan Karski, after all, is recognised at Yad Vashem, the memorial museum of the Holocaust in Israel, as belonging to the "righteous among the nations". Yet on the very occasion that he is being honoured in Washington, with these words his memory is defiled. It is as if the campaign for Karski's recognition undertaken by the Polish government and intellectuals, led in the United States by Alex Storozynski - the chairman of the Kosciuszko Foundation - had never been understood in the White House.

The outrage in Poland is enormous, even after a weak admission that the president "misspoke". Polish media across the world are full of protests against this serious faux pas. Nowy Dziennik, the best Polish-language newspaper, which happens to be published in New York, calls for a joint resolution of the US congress and senate concerning a ban on this expression, which is mindlessly propagated by many English-language newspapers. The blunder has also provoked wild speculation among extreme right-wing Polish parties to the effect that Obama's use of these words was deliberate, on the grounds that the largest ethnic minority in America is supposedly German.

This has not been Obama's first great error in relation to Poland. In 2009 the American administration chose 17 September to announce that it was abandoning its planned "anti-missile shield" over Poland and the Czech Republic, which had been designed with the putative threat from Iran in mind. It is worth stressing that Poles, great enthusiasts of this misbegotten programme, always thought that its true purpose was to defend them from potential Russian aggression.

The gravity of this earlier misjudgment is that every 17 September in Poland is solemnly remembered as the anniversary of the launch of the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939 - two weeks after the invasion by Nazi Germany from the west. The American president seemingly did not know or care that his decision would be connected with a Soviet attack that has long been ingrained into Polish consciousness as a "knife in the back". Many Poles saw the coincidence as a knife in the chests of a later generation of Poles, descendants of those who had fought bravely against two overwhelming enemies.

Mind and heart

On an apparently different note, for months the Polish press has been debating the deplorable condition of Polish universities. In the discussion, Harvard University is often cited as the best example to follow and learn from.

It seems appropriate to recall that President Obama graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School. I do not know in detail what was taught at these two prestigious institutions at the time, but I can state with confidence that at the law faculties of Poland's much criticised universities the students do study history. Moreover, Polish high-school pupils in general know much more about the United States than do their American peers about Europe as a whole or any of its constituent nations.

Obama’s repeated blunders suggest that the Polish enthusiasts of the American educational system, who are also harsh critics of the Polish one, would do well to rethink their position. Everyone else, especially active politicians, would do well to take into consideration people’s feelings. For in political action few things are more important than the hard facts of human sentiment.

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Presidential Medal of Freedom, United States

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Against Polish Death / Concentration Camps - a how-to guide

Yad Vashem, Jan Karski

Kosciuszko Foundation

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Adam J Chmielewski is professor of philosophy in the Institute of Philosophy, University of Wrocław ↑ , Poland. His books include Popper's Philosophy: A Critical Analysis (1995); Open Society or Community? (2001); and Psychopathology of Political Life (2009). He is also the author of the successful bid of the city of Wroclaw for the title of the European Capital of Culture 2016

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It’s the Taking Part... , Mark Perryman

Mark Perryman — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 05:42:27 +0000

Participation is one of the main legacy claims of the London 2012 Games. Mark Perryman, author of a forthcoming book on the Olympics, examines the evidence.

Participation is one of the main legacy claims of the London 2012 Games. Mark Perryman, author of a forthcoming book on the Olympics, examines the evidence.

The Olympic Motto “The most important thing is not the winning but the taking part” represents many of the finest ideals not only of Olympism but any model of sport as democratic, participative and accessible. It is a sentiment most liberals and progressives would readily endorse.

Indeed there has always been a tendency in such quarters to disavow almost any merit at all in competitive sport as a whole. But as the Jubilee hoopla fades away, the forthcoming summer of sport - Euro 2012, a serious British challenger at the Tour de France, Wimbledon fortnight, overseas rugby tours to the southern hemisphere, a domestic test match series, and the first and last home Olympics for most of our lifetimes - a soft patriotism around sport will be tested to the full as the mass emotions behind Team GB gathers pace.

Of course ‘Team GB’ is more contested now than it once was. Few Scots, Welsh or Northern Irish will have much interest in England’s efforts at Euro 2012, an early exit on penalties will bring plenty of happy smiles to those countries’ fans. And as for Wimbledon, the English position on Andy Murray is well known, ‘British when he wins, Scots when he loses.’ A little harsh perhaps but the recent invention of ‘Team GB’ to brand our Olympic squad has to cope now with the mounting tensions apparent in the devolution settlement and the Scots push for independence. Of course it is no accident Alex Salmond has chosen 2014 for the referendum vote, a year when Glasgow hosts the Commonwealth Games and outside of team sports the one occasion England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, not forgetting the Isle of Man and Channel Islands, compete as independent nations.

Seeking to cement the emotional investment in Team GB and the perceived benefits of London hosting the Olympics is the Olympic Torch Relay, now well into its second week. On the surface this is an initiative that would seem to represent all that is good about sport. Criss-crossing the country, coming to a city, town, or village near you. Isn’t this what ‘taking part’ should be all about? Not at all. Instead it reveals the flimsy populism combined with chronic lack of ambition that London 2012 has come to symbolise. The Relay has of course proved popular, almost any event with this scale of publicity and coverage would surely attract inquisitive crowds. And the passion is entirely genuine. But how is that energy being connected to participation. Beyond waving a flag, cheering from the kerbside, providing a backdrop to the sponsors’ branding and celebrity torchbearers what opportunities are there to take part?

A Torch Relay for all would have started off with popular participation as its organising principle. Each 10k leg the roads and pathways closed for the torchbearer to be followed by fun runners and active walkers London Marathon or Great North Run style. This could have been the biggest venture ever in participative sport, yet none of this gets a look-in because it might deflect, overrun literally, the sponsors’ message instead. Villages, towns, localities within a city each given their stretch of the route to run or walk down, other legs given over to cyclists, canoeist, ramblers and fell-runners, yachts and any other mode of human powered, or human steered transport. All this would have amounted to involving far more than the really quite limited numbers in the London 2012 version of the Torch Relay and directly connected to initiatives that provide the vital access to participation in sport the Olympics at its best can provide.

Sport is by its nature is a public activity, yet the neoliberal economics of modern sport have increasingly sought to confine it to private spaces. A process spearheaded by the Los Angeles Olympics of 1984, the first Games organised on an explicitly commercial, for-profit basis, in the home state, California, of 1980s era ‘Reaganonmics’ as an ideological response to the Moscow 1980 Games organised by the USSR.

Sport constantly struggles with these restrictions. The London Marathon, Great North Run, fun runs big and small all over Britain, represent runners occupying public space - the overwhelming majority running for no financial gain, more likely to lose a few inches around the waistline and raise money for good causes. Likewise the Tour de France, the greatest cycling race in the world has days known as the 'Etape du Tour' when amateur cyclists can ride a stage or two, something reproduced on this side of the channel by the hugely popular day rides such as London to Brighton, Manchester to Blackpool, century rides and others. Both are hugely popular and imaginative combinations of elite and grassroots sport, something the London 2012 model has spectacularly failed to embrace.

To quote another Olympian motto, the Olympics is a festival to celebrate the ‘Swifter, Higher, Stronger’, and that is what the TV cameras and public interest will be focused on, especially when those that excel are dressed in the Team GB kit. But this is a model that increasingly precludes public participation, and has little or no impact at all on boosting any potential legacy. Neither anti-Olympics nor against sport, the key is to re-imagine a better Games for all.

Mark Perryman is the author of the forthcoming book ‘Why The Olympics Aren’t Good For Us, And How They Can Be’. Available at a 15% pre-publication discount here.

Topics:

Equality

Ideas

South Africa: social change or Plus ça change?, Will Emkes

Will Emkes — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 04:18:26 +0000

The consequences of Black Empowerment policies as implemented by the African National Congress (ANC) now constitute the most severe threat to South Africa’s young democracy to date.

When the ANC was elected to office in 1994 the party identified Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) as the key instrument with which to penetrate the inequality and exclusion the apartheid era had built around the South African economy. The result has been widespread confusion over how to implement such policy and the extent to which it can act as an effective agent of social change within the country. To date, South Africa has seen a relative privilege conceded to a minority of blacks whilst preserving the pre-existing structures of social inequality. The policy has bred a powerful, oligarchic and parasitic capitalist class largely to the detriment of its young democracy.

Zwelinzime Vavi, General Secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, (COSATU), has described Zuma’s administration as ‘heading rapidly in the direction of a full blown predator state’, run by ‘corrupt and demagogic political hyenas.’

Many observers have noted the anti-democratic nature of BEE, the paradoxical re-racialisation of capitalism and the small number of empowered black capitalists. Others rightly highlight the corruption inherent in many of the deals, often fronting for white capital, and the inability of the state to monitor compliance with its BEE programmes as evidence of its failure. These problems, all important, derive from the role that the ANC has assigned this new category in their vision of post-apartheid nation building. BEE deal-makers with strong political connections, capable of persuading the state and other social institutions, have articulated a class political project serving primarily the corporatist agenda of big business. In the end the power of such a connected, predatory elite, intent on using political leverage to secure business opportunities, together with the implicit corruption of government officials has superseded the mechanism of democracy as enshrined in the post-apartheid constitution.

In 1994 the ANC took on an adherence to the notion that South Africa had embarked upon a National Democratic Revolution (NDR). The perspective broadly states that the nation, on account of its extensive natural resources, has been inculcated into world capitalism and the neo-liberal ideologies of institutions like the IMF. Historically these resources have been the preserve of a few, with white settler minorities oppressing the black majority population, facilitating a vast accumulation of wealth for the few at the expense of the many. The objective of the NDR is to overcome this legacy of racial oppression, thereby forging a united nation, achieving democracy and forming the basis of an equal society.

The NDR has led South Africa into a situation in which elements of the project are now threatening the stability of democracy and widening inequality gaps. The ANC’s strategy, orientated towards the emergence of a ‘patriotic bourgeoisie’ has encouraged elitism. The group that the NDR sought to promote was always going to be far too small in size to lead to the consolidation of democracy. Instead a self-serving and corrupt culture has emerged, all the time seeking to secure its own interests at the expense of democratic governance.

African nations fail primarily when corruption ceases to become an aberration and instead becomes institutionalised in the system itself. One only needs to look at the history of failed states throughout the continent to arrive at this conclusion. In such states, politics no longer bears any resemblance to competing ideas and policy, but rather, a battle to gain access to the state in order to exploit it for personal enrichment. This often starts with the centralisation of power with small ruling elites, deploying allies to entrench personal interests. Once in power they move to secure the mechanisms in which to keep power.

Exploitation of the state by the ANC is the key problem affecting South Africa’s new democracy. If the nation comes to be viewed as being run in a similar fashion to many other of the continent’s countries, foreign investment will be choked off and the economic policies of the ANC will have less and less an effect on the prosperity of the country. Meanwhile, the conflation of party and state under the rule of President Zuma looks set to get worse, as has been highlighted by his attempts to censor the press, undermine the judiciary and his scant regard for the constitution. A credible opposition capable of achieving significant support at the election booths is vital to the evolution of our democracy.

There are many reasons why this may not happen. The success of the BEE elite is entirely dependent on the electoral hegemony of the ANC, needing the necessary political connections to secure their on-going wealth. Such a class would become extremely brittle and fragile should South Africa evolve into a more pluralised democracy. Thus, it is in the interests of the governing elite to discourage such a situation, if only in the hope of preserving their on-going status in society.

President Zuma’s personal history and the allegations that preceded his inauguration mean that he is never going to be well placed to lead the fight against corruption. As soon as he was elected to office in 2009, he quickly set about dismantling all the bodies involved in bringing corruption cases against him. The Scorpions, the only real anti-corruption agency in South Africa, were quickly shut down almost immediately when Zuma entered office. The National Prosecuting Authority was, quite astonishingly, placed under the leadership of the discredited former Director-General of Justice Menzi Simelane, who seems to have done more than any other individual to undermine investigations and allegations of corruption. The ANC under Zuma has served to symbolise the same corruption and confusion that BEE spawned in its early years. Despite his numerous appeals for greater transparency from companies concerning their BEE deals and his relentless demand for a more inclusive empowerment there is an undeniable duplicity between his rhetoric and behaviour.

The nexus between business and politics has undermined the moral integrity of the ANC. Not a month goes by without the announcement of a major new empowerment deal in which senior members of the ANC are the direct or indirect beneficiaries. The political potency of this new black capitalist class that emerged shortly after the fall of apartheid has meant that each successive move in the corporatist agenda of South Africa has been an attempt to consolidate their power.

Compared with other young democracies on the continent, South Africa has seen a relatively stable transition to democracy. This may be attributed to having such a dominant party system, effective at the time, but now the principle danger to a sustainable and prosperous democracy.

Country or region:

South Africa

Topics:

Conflict

Democracy and government

Economics

International politics

Deals with the devil, Ivan Briscoe

Ivan Briscoe — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 01:32:52 +0000

Talk of a pact with criminals is beyond the pale in Mexico’s presidential election campaign. But the tentative success of a deal with gang leaders in one of Central America’s most violent countries suggests the time may have come to explore a new style of negotiations aimed at reducing appalling levels of violence.

As Mexico inches closer to its elections on July 1, the realization that the country may soon reprise the vices of its old regime is causing shudders. Already a student movement has arisen to protest against the alleged manipulation of the campaign by giant media conglomerates. Face to face with the boyish leader of the reborn Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI, Mexico’s most prominent leader of crime victims this week spilled out his misgivings. “You are not swayed by the victims, you speak coldly, just like the old PRI. That terrifies me, it terrifies all of us.”

There are many separate elements that join together to make up the catalogue of fears expressed on Monday by the poet and activist Javier Sicilia. The PRI, now led by Enrique Peña Nieto and riding high in the polls, ran the country for 70 years until it was ejected in 2000. It permanently toyed with democracy, steamrollered the press, and systematically favoured insiders. It massacred student protesters. Its economic policy roamed free, first nationalizing industry, then running up huge foreign debts before finally throwing down all barriers to trade and capital.

But in a country that has witnessed over 50,000 organized crime killings since late 2006, where the number one concern of citizens is crime and violence – 41 percent regard it as the nation’s principal problem, according to Latinobarómetro – the most perturbing legacy of PRI rule lies in its shadowy connections to the criminal underworld. Violence has become a lot worse since the party was booted from power; but the current agents of insecurity happen to be precisely the heirs of those cartels that PRI state governors cultivated, or which the party’s security officials in the infamous Federal Security Directorate minded.

Amid the jostling groups of competing drug traffickers, two now stand out. The Zetas are an offshoot of the Gulf cartel, which was born in Tamaulipas in the 1970s after decades of state-protected rackets. The Sinaloa Cartel, meanwhile, was incubated by Miguel Ángel Felix Gallardo, now serving life in jail, but whose published memoirs point to a litany of excellent contacts with police and politics in the 1970s and 1980s.

The prospect that the PRI might tackle Mexico’s violence by settling with cartels over the negotiating table is a live concern, and universally feared. In a recent television debate, the ruling centre-right party’s candidate, Josefina Vázquez Mota, drew on this fear: “I am not going to negotiate nor make any truce with organized crime.” For novelist Fernando Vallejo, a Colombian who lives in Mexico, the PRI is “the seedbed of all the cartels.” For outgoing President Felipe Calderón, any talk of a pact to bring down violence is utterly myopic. “We’ve had too many years of truce with criminals, and now we’re paying the consequences.” Naturally, Peña Nieto has insisted he will be anything but soft on crime, preferring strong intelligence and targeted policing; any talk of a pact with the cartels is invisible and inaudible.

On track with the maras

Yet what makes these righteous arguments against negotiating with criminals rather less watertight is what is happening not far away, in Central America. El Salvador can claim to know barbaric violence as well, if not better, than Mexico: its murder rate is around three times higher, and second only in the world to Honduras. Since emerging from one of the region’s most even-handed and closely fought civil wars, two federated street gangs, the Mara Salvatrucha and the Barrio 18, have cemented deep loyalties in the country’s poorest areas and recruited an estimated 62,000 members, used to man protection rackets, kidnap, carry out hits and the like.

For the last decade, including the first years of the centre-left government led by Mauricio Funes since 2009, the official response has been a programme of Mano Dura (iron fist), or, to turn the screw one notch tighter, Súper Mano Dura. Then all of a sudden, amid a patchy information blackout and with no forewarning, it emerged in March that mediators acting with the approval of the government have reached an entente with imprisoned gang leaders. In return for moving 30 of these inmates to a more relaxed prison regime, the go-betweens asked them to order an end to the killings. A month later, for the first time in years, the country recorded a day without a violent death; the official hope is now that the murder rate will fall in 2012 by 50 percent. The gangs have even agreed to halt forced recruitment of young people.

When Interior Minister David Munguía Payés, a retired general, arrived in his new job, it was widely taken to mean the beginning of a virulent extermination campaign against the maras – one tweet when he took office declared “let’s hope they burn like in Honduras”, referring to the death of 358 prisoners in a fire in February. Until recently, he had refused to elaborate on his apparent change of heart. But in an interview a fortnight ago with the superb El Salvadorean website El Faro, he twists and feints between questions, seeking both to avoid the responsibility of negotiating with blood-stained gangsters while also wishing to claim the credit for indirectly convincing them to call a halt. It is not a stable foothold for an argument, but it makes for one of the more fascinating documents in the region’s recent history of criminal violence.

Munguía Payés doubts the security campaign is over, and insists the authorities are preparing for the worst – a rebirth of gangs, new leaders, schisms or rearmament. One of the two negotiators, former guerrilla leader Raúl Mijango, also downplays the relevance for other countries, distinguishing the strong community roots of the maras from the itinerant criminal syndicates of Mexico. Yet in spite of these efforts to belittle themselves and the dimensions of what they have achieved, Munguía Payés is adamant and unequivocal on one issue. And its significance for other countries cannot be downplayed. “My hope is that they [the gangs] don’t commit serious crimes, like they are committing at the moment, because in reality the gangs aren’t going to disappear in the next 15 or 20 years. You will die, I will die, and still there will be gangs here in El Salvador. At best they just won’t be as violent as they are now.”

Good and bad pacts

The prescience of a military officer recognizing the immovable fact of criminal structures in society provides a night and day contrast with the explicit rejection of any sort of arrangement in Mexico, or elsewhere in Central America. Pact, it must be said, is in any case a dirty word in Latin America: its connotations are of the two parties of Venezuela carving up the political spoils for 40 years from 1958, of backroom deals over constitutional change in Argentina, or of working agreements big and small, from street-level to presidential palace, between criminals and public figures.

Outrage over the notion of conversing with criminals is common and, given the wanton atrocities committed (two percent of Mexico’s killings are beheadings), completely understandable. But it could also be argued that what the Mexican populace dislike is not so much a cautious, rational dialogue, the sort tried in El Salvador, but the inevitable distortions that would befall covert talks under the influence of scheming politicians and fragmented cartels.

For these are precisely the sort of deals that have proliferated across the continent. Examples abound: parapolitics in Colombia, the shadow state of Guatemala, the mafia tycoons under Argentina’s President Menem. And whereas Mexico’s post-PRI authorities disavow any sustained links to crime, the evidence would suggest otherwise. Suspicion has long centred on official favouritism towards the Sinaloa cartel, the largest and most business-like drug organization, whose leader, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, seems to be both mobile and impregnable. Other cartels frequently leave painted sheets alongside mutilated murder victims to denounce Sinaloa’s special treatment by the state; pamphlets thrown from a airplane in Sinaloa this week alleged the same.

Meanwhile, the number of scandals involving senior military figures would suggest the proximity to crime has hardly abated. Four formerly high-ranking officers have been arrested on such charges in the last month, one of them a deputy defence minister. Yet the drive-by gun murder in April of retired general Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparro has raised even more eyebrows. Having been jailed for 30 years in 2000 for links to the Juárez cartel, Acosta was released in 2007, exonerated, reabsorbed into the army with full honours, and reputedly sent off for secret talks with all the main cartels.

The difficulty of reaching a conclusion

The twilit gloom of the contacts between crime and politics, and the nature of the people wandering the shadows, make objective assessment of the merits of dialogue incredibly hard. A host of very practical worries and doubts, echoed by Munguía Payés, intensify these doubts. It is not clear what would become of hardened criminals atop hierarchical transnational operations after any such deal. Whereas rebel armed groups may move into politics, a shift in the same direction for the Zetas would seem either to be improbable, or distinctly undesirable. The sheer fragmentation of Mexico’s cartels, contrasting sharply with El Salvador’s two gangs, make the feasibility of reaching and holding an accord questionable. One truce three years ago between cartels in the state of Sinaloa lasted all of 70 days, and reportedly broke up when the groups disagreed over how many revenge killings would be permitted.

But at same time, the extremities of criminal violence in Mexico and Central America make consideration of some sort of pact unavoidable. Much attention has been devoted by experts, research organizations and even Javier Sicilia’s movement of victims to reducing levels of violence; Peña Nieto promises exactly the same. Yet as El Salvador shows, this will invariably require some form of rapprochement or understanding, or at the very least, a deliberate choice of who to target, and who to leave alone. Former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda put the matter clearly: “I think it’s pretty clear that [Peña Nieto’s] proposal is to concentrate federal resources on the fight against crime and violence, and not on the fight against drug trafficking. If your resources are limited, and you focus on A, you won’t pay much attention to B.”

The reality of choosing where to apply limited resources in conditions of multiple criminal activities would make it inevitable that someone or other is let off the hook, or paid off. Although this is politically unpalatable, it would be foolish to deny this is not at the heart of current thinking. The Guatemala president’s proposal to decriminalize drug trafficking envisages, as one possibility, corridors for free passage of narcotics. The Organization of American States has expressed great interest in the El Salvadorean experiment. Even the United States has followed it closely, while keeping to tradition by paying scant attention to the subtleties: the mediator Mijango observed in an interview that a “lady from the US State department” visited him to suggest he use the opportunity of dialogue to “dissolve the gangs” once and for all.

Notching up progress towards safer societies by dealing directly with those responsible for crime and corruption is undoubtedly one of the most risky endeavours that Latin American democracies, or any other county, can set themselves. However, ignoring the issue is irresponsible; denying contact with criminals is a lie; and pushing for quick strategic wins is a delusion. To talk with criminals rationally and prudently, as Munguía Payés argues, is to accept risk and imperfection. It is to acknowledge that not everyone can wait for the day that police are reformed and the judiciary functions, and that belabouring fine plans may actually do more harm.

Country or region:

Mexico

El Salvador

Topics:

Conflict

Democracy and government

Ideas

Move aside, now it's up to us: Italy’s political quake, Giovanni Navarria

Giovanni Navarria — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 01:16:25 +0000

Beppe Grillo’s Five-Star Movement is not the antithesis to politics, nor is it the end of democracy; on the contrary, it demonstrates that activism in Italy is alive and kicking.

Italy has recently been struck by two different kinds of earthquakes: one was geological in nature, whilst the other was purely political. Merely by coincidence, both earthquakes had their epicentres in the region of Emilia Romagna, the first near the city of Modena, the second in the city of Parma. The geological quake came unannounced and left behind death, debris and grief. The political quake instead had been in the coming for quite some time.

All started on September 8, 2007, when over two million people gathered in more than 200 cities (in Italy and abroad) to shout vaffanculo (go-fuck-yourselves) to their Members of Parliament. The Vaffanculo-Day Protest was organised by the controversial comedian-turned-blogger Beppe Grillo. Grillo had asked his fellow bloggers to sign a petition to propose a new electoral law. The proposal was composed of three different elements: candidates convicted by courts of law should be forbidden from running for public office; political careers should be limited to only two terms; and the Members of Parliament should be directly chosen by the people.

Overall, V-day turned out to be a success both in terms of attendance and media exposure. Following in the footsteps of the American advocacy group MoveOn, the event was by and large a product of a grassroots group inspired by Grillo’s blog. The final tally of the signed petition was over 330,000 signatures, a number much lower than the unexpected 2 million attendees in the streets, yet over six times more than the 50,000 mark required by the Italian Constitution in order to submit a popular proposal to Parliament.

In the aftermath of the V-day protests Grillo and his Grillini (Little Crickets) - as many in the media referred to the protesters - were accused of gravely undermining the foundations of the Italian representative political system and widening the division between government and governed in order to promote a form of direct democracy in which many see the dark shadows of plebiscitary dictatorship, or the end of democracy as we know it.

Grillo and his followers were accused of lacking a sense of respect for the institutions that govern the country, of shallow demagoguery and populism, even of fostering terrorism: ‘What would happen if a crazy man listening to Grillo’s accusations decided to take a gun and pull the trigger on those attacked by the comedian?’, asked the then director of RAI 2 News, Mauro Mazza.

To explain the phenomenon of Grillismo (the catchword used to describe Grillo’s style of politics), it has frequently been compared with Guglielmo Giannini’s qualunquismo. In 1946, with the slogan non rompeteci le scatole (don’t bother us), Giannini, a journalist, tired of the Italian political establishment, founded Il Fronte dell’uomo qualunque (The Common Man Front). In that year’s elections, the new party, with its antipolitical philosophy and the support of the ‘common people’, surprisingly won 30 seats in the Italian Parliament. Giannini’s ascendance to fame, however, lasted only one term and many critics foresee a similar fate for Grillo. In 2007, those critics discredited Grillo’s ideas and his V-day protest, as many had done with Giannini’s exploit in 1946, as simply inconsequential antipolitics, ‘a mediocre and vulgar matter’, as Eugenio Scalfari, the founder of the influential daily La Repubblica wrote.

In the past weeks, before and after the results of the first round of the recent municipal elections (6-7 May) the same wave of criticism hit the Five-Star Movement (the political movement supported by Grillo and his Grillini, inspired by the political ideas expressed in the Vaffanculo-day petition). But when election-weekend came it captured the votes of a large percentage of the nine million Italians who cast their ballots. The Movement presented candidates in 101 municipalities (out of 941), an electoral area representing nearly 30 percent of the total number of citizens called to vote. In the first round of the elections the movement received almost 200,000 votes, or 9 percent of the total number of valid ballots. In some cities such as Genoa and Parma, the movement’s candidates reached peaks of 14 and 20 percent.

On Monday 21, after the second election round, the Grillini won the mayoral seat in the important city of Parma, together with the smaller centres of Comacchio and Mime. For a political movement that shies away from the idea of coalition and the limelight of television and with little funds to organise their campaigns (Parma’s cost less than 7000 Euros), their results are anything but insignificant.

The success of the Five-Star Movement is one to ponder. It is undeniable that, in the wake of recent scandals on electoral reimbursements, which has hit several major parties across the political spectrum - with The Northern League being the main casualty of the scandal (it lost 7 times out of 7 in the second round) - the temptation to interpret the electoral results as a protest vote is strong. It is equally difficult to deny that Grillo, for better or worse, is one of those polarizing public figures that you either hate or love. He has asked the Movement’s candidates to avoid TV shows on the ground that all TV journalists are nothing but mere loudspeakers of the main political forces; that going on TV, sharing the space with the other parties, would reduce the movement’s credibility; that appearing on TV would make the Movement indistinguishable from the ruling political class.

Nonetheless, the movement and its activists are not the invertebrate personifications of Grillo’s (often) hard-to-swallow ideas or the result of an impromptu political protest; they are not new-recruits of Giannini’s political indifference creed; they are something else. Behind the movement is a hard core of supporters and activists that have been working on this project for a few years already. The philosophy and actions of the Five-Star Movement are the result of a long and complex gestation that started on Grillo’s blog and has now evolved into a mature and active political group whose members have a strong interest in the political future of the communities they live in. They understand the power of social media to reach out to others and know how to use them effectively to organise regular meetings and build a network of active supporters. This movement is not the antithesis to politics, nor is it the end of democracy; but in fact it’s the opposite, it demonstrates that activism in Italy is alive and kicking.

The Five-Star Movement did not go to the barricades, did not throw petrol bombs or shoot anyone. They have gone back to the basics of politics. Its candidates, often using alternative media like the Internet or simply endless door-to-door campaigning, have built strong bonds with their constituencies, have discussed their ideas and increasingly gathered support.

The Five-Star Movement’s approach to politics is simple and effective, yet it is a strategy that many of the major political parties in Italy seem to have long forgotten. Silvio Berlusconi, commenting on the election results, dismissed Grillo simply as the mere product of antipolitics. Yet, he added, the movement’s success is an important warning signal for those who are engaged in politics. “Our kinds of parties, with their overcrowded conferences, large meetings, slow cumbersome decision bodies are dead, are something that belongs to the past, we should follow Grillo’s example or we are done.”

The American historian and philosopher Thomas Kuhn would argue that we are witnessing a gestalt switch, that is a fundamental change in the Italian political paradigm. After World War II and the end of Fascism, it was Christian Democrats vs. Communists; the five-party system of the 80s was brought down by the scandal of Bribesland; the last twenty years were mainly dominated by Silvio Berlusconi and his media regime, while the post-communist Left, for lack of courage and will to renew its ranks, wasted too many opportunities to steer the country to a better route. And now, looking at the last elections, one could be tempted to argue that the time is ripe for the Internet-generation. A generation of Italians who are finally ready to commit themselves to politics and work hard to change the country.

The Five-Star Movement has begun a process of structural and cultural change of the Italian political system, a change which will be crucial in helping Italy out of the economic and social quicksand in which the country is presently drowning. Italy’s crisis is the sour bequest of a political class which, over the last fifteen years, excluding some isolated exceptions, has proved itself to be too mediocre, often vulgar and unquestionably politically incapable.

In a democracy that works well, citizens have the right (and often the duty) to shout go fuck yourselves to those who have betrayed their electoral mandate, in the streets first, as did those who took part in the V-Day protest in 2007, and then, when the opportunity presents itself, at the ballot box, as it has just happened in Italy. This is not simply a shout of protest, but it's a go fuck yourselves which is expressly political, that is made of commitment and promise. It means, in simple words, move aside, now it's up to us.

Country or region:

Italy

Topics:

Civil society

Democracy and government

Democratic politics: a glorious messiness, Vidar Helgesen

Vidar Helgesen — Thu, 31 May 2012 22:47:19 +0000

The combination of post-election protest in Egypt and parliamentary stalemate in Nepal teaches Vidar Helgesen a wider lesson about democracy.

In the aftermath of the first round of Egypt's presidential election on 23 May 2012, thousands of people reassembled in Tahrir Square in Cairo to protest the outcome. It’s quite a paradox, in two ways. Firstly, Egyptian revolutionaries have been longing for free elections, but now many of them lament the result of the first free presidential vote in the country’s history. Secondly, Egyptian liberals and secularists started the revolution at Tahrir in January 2011, then failed to get sufficiently organised to be successful in both the parliamentary and the presidential elections - and now many of them are back in Tahrir.

I am not arguing they don’t have good reasons to gather in Tahrir again. But popular movements, uprisings, revolutions, will ultimately be unable to deliver on their promise of democracy and dignity unless they are able to move from "street democracy" to "institutional democracy", and from Facebook to the rulebooks of democracy. In the end, only institutions that are effective and accountable can deliver where unaccountable authoritarian regimes didn’t and can't. So when popular movements are successful in toppling dictators, they have not even done "half the job". The even more challenging part remains: to get organised enough to compete for political office. For only when these movements reach office do they face the ultimate test: whether their new democracy can deliver.

The process of getting there is not a straightforward one. More often than not there will be setbacks and confusion, which in turn give cause for popular dissatisfaction. Democracy holds such great promise, but that’s exactly why the process of getting to it is bound to disappoint many. By its very nature, democracy is messy and unpredictable. Democratic political systems offer citizens the opportunity to control their decision-makers. But since it is the people, and not the systems, who are in charge and who own democracy, democratic elections can produce unexpected results.

Those who don’t like the results can well take to the streets and protest. But they would do even better by organising in order to do better next time round. If a democratic revolution is to be sustained in the long run, its supporters need to prepare for just that: engaging in political parties, building new ones if need be, conducting opposition politics in parliament and not only on the streets.

In the same week as these Egyptian events were unfolding, the messiness and the long-term nature of democracy-building was demonstrated elsewhere: in Nepal, where the political parties represented in the constituent assembly failed to reach agreement on a new constitution within the final deadline, even after four years of deliberation. In the wake of the stalemate, and as the parties trade accusations of why negotiations broke down, the situation is likely to erode popular trust in political life. At the same time, there is little sign of any popular willingness to return to the armed conflict or autocratic rule of Nepal's recent past; rather, the talk is about new elections for yet another constituent assembly. Democratic politics may be messy, but the alternative is worse and it has been tried.

Autocracy is certainly more predictable than democracy. Autocracy has none of the last-minute high-wire thrill of democratic politics. But the unpredictable nature of democracy is not least due to the fact that the citizen is its ultimate source of power. That’s why, after all, democracy is a glorious messiness.

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UK court halts kidney-transplant patient’s deportation, and Colin Firth lends support, Esme Madill

Esme Madill — Thu, 31 May 2012 18:00:05 +0000

One arm of the state, the NHS, saves Roseline Akhalu's life. Another, the UK Border Agency, threatens to end it.

Eleven days ago I wrote here about kidney transplant patient Roseline Akhalu who was detained by the UK Border Agency on Wednesday 16 May and threatened with removal to Nigeria where, doctors warned, she would swiftly die, being unable to access or afford vital medical care.

Brighter news arrived yesterday. Rose was granted an injunction stalling her removal to Nigeria, she was released from detention, and Oscar-winning actor Colin Firth broke off from filming in Thailand to offer this statement:

“Few things are this straightforward: Rose is sick, if we don't help her she dies. The decision is entirely ours. I'm sure saving her won't compromise the government's enforced removal policy. This is an exceptional case.”

Rose faces a fresh hearing on 24 July, when she will seek permission for a full judicial review hearing.

Roseline’s is an extraordinary case. One arm of the state, the NHS, has saved her life. Another, the UK Border Agency, is threatening to end it.

She arrived in the UK in September 2004, a Ford Scholarship student on a student visa, to pursue a Masters Degree at Leeds University. Rose unexpectedly developed end stage renal failure in 2005 and remained on dialysis until she received a kidney transplant at St James Hospital, Leeds in July 2009.

Her renal specialist Dr James Tattershall says Roseline “will be on anti-rejection medication for the rest of her life.” About her threatened removal to Nigeria, he says:

"the drugs she needs aren't available to her there. Deportation will be a death sentence. In Nigeria most people with kidney disease such as Rose has, wouldn't receive any treatment and they would die.”

Tessa Gregory of Public Interest Lawyers, the solicitor who successfully challenged Rose’s removal yesterday, said:

“The Government’s treatment of Rose and the determination to deport her truly beggars belief. This is an exceptional case where the Home Secretary should clearly allow Rose to remain in the UK to receive the treatment she so desperately needs. To do otherwise is inhumane, unspeakably cruel and a profound insult to the person who donated their kidney in the hope of giving another life.”

Rose’s MP Greg Mulholland welcomed yesterday’s decision:

“It is great news that the judge today has seen sense and ordered a halt to Roseline’s deportation order . . . I will be writing to the Home Secretary to ask why, despite being granted an appeal hearing, the judge thought it acceptable to allow UKBA to continue harassing Roseline and continue to seek her deportation from the UK. As well as the distress caused, this has been a farce and has wasted considerable amounts of taxpayers’ money. The system clearly needs to be looked at so this cannot happen.”

OurKingdom published Roseline’s own account of how, during an earlier period of detention in March, the Border Agency’s commercial escort contractor Reliance refused her the use of a toilet, of how she had to urinate into a plastic bag in full view of a CCTV camera. For that ill-treatment, Public Interest Lawyers are pursuing a civil claim for damages against the Border Agency and Reliance — who took over the escorting contract last year from G4S.

An online petition to stop Rose’s deportation can be signed here: http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/stop-the-deportation-of-transplant-patient-roseline-ak.html

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America's new wars, and militarised diplomacy, Paul Rogers

Paul Rogers — Thu, 31 May 2012 14:41:22 +0000

The experience of Afghanistan and Iraq compels Washington to rethink its model of 21st-century warfare. Its evolving focus, already visible in the widespread use of drones and special forces, also has profound political implications.

The appointment of Donald Rumsfeld as defence secretary in 2001 by the incoming United States president George W Bush represented the promotion of a figure who was convinced of the value of new military technologies. In future, believed Rumsfeld, military campaigns would be fought largely with stand-off weapons; there were few areas where "boots on the ground" would be necessary; and there was every prospect that the US army could be cut right back without diminishing the country's security.

It appeared to work in Afghanistan at the end of 2001 when the Taliban regime was easily terminated by a combination of airpower, special forces and the militias of the Northern Alliance warlords. Rumsfeld saw this very much as a vindication of his concept, and his attitude was further bolstered when the first three weeks of the Iraq war culminated in the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime. The widepread looting in Baghdad could be dismissed in the notoriously offhand remark, "stuff happens". But with the escalation of the insurgency in Iraq and the regroupment of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the gap between thinking and practice grew into a chasm.

The new model

Now, long after Rumsfeld's departure, the Pentagon is seeking to move beyond a "boots-on-the-ground" era unseen since the Vietnam war, and reach for a new concept. The politicians also feel the need to respond to a situation where the massive troop deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan over these grinding years have incurred such an enormous cost, both financial and human (tens of thousands of soldiers were killed and injured) and where such wars have proved so unpopular at home. Thus, amid conflicting views within the administration and military, President Obama has overseen a remarkably quick withdrawal from Iraq and set a timetable for rapid downsizing in Afghanistan.

The collapse of a military model based on large force-deployment has forced a rethink about how the United States can maintain control in a country such as Afghanistan, and how it may learn to handle other risks. Some of the thinking was already being done in the early period of Rumsfeld's tenure, but the accumulated experience of these two disastrous wars has sharpened its urgency - and offered lessons and possibilities unimaginable even a decade ago.

For the Pentagon, the most tempting response has been to embrace the high-tech option of "wars by remote" - evident in the rapid increase in the use of armed drones, whether or not the authorities in a given country acquiesce to their use, (see "Drone warfare: cost and challenge" [23 June 2011], and "The drone-war blowback" [29 September 2011]). Just as significant, however, is the greatly increased focus on special forces.

While most countries with a substantial military capacity have special forces of one sort or another, the size of the United States's commitment far exceeds that of any rival. Its special-operations command (Socom) oversees forces that are larger than many conventional armies. Socom currently has 66,000 personnel, with 12,000 deployed outside the homeland, three-quarters of them in Afghanistan (see David Isenberg, "The Globalisation of U.S. Special Operations Forces", IPS/TerraViva, 27 May 2012). A 12% increase is planned over the next four years, though a period of increasing budget pressures means that Socom wants to forge far greater cooperation with supportive allies.

It envisages a series of regional centres that concentrates the training and coordination of special forces from a number of countries (see Barbara Opall-Rome, "U.S. Seeks Global Spec Ops Network", Defense News, 14 May 2012). These would be modelled on Nato's special-operations forces HQ at Mons in Belgium. The latter has been instrumental in the rapid expansion of such forces in Afghanistan, where the US has worked closely with the British SAS, Australian units, and contingents of other coalition states (see Andrew Bacevich, "The Golden Age of Special Operations", TomDispatch, 29 May 2012).

Socom is already planning to set up the first such centre to cover central and south America (based, however, in Miami). The current leadership is also looking to establish another centre in the the middle east, though major political differences between allies will make this hard.

Instead, a likely candidate region is sub-Saharan Africa, where US forces are reported to be widely engaged in seeking to control a number of conflicts. A current example is the hundred Socom personnel now aiding operations against Jospeh Kony and the remnants of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo (see John Ryan, "The Search for Joseph Kony", Defense News, 21 May 2012). A probable future focus is backing for the Nigerian authorities in countering the Boko Haram rebellion (see "Al-Qaida franchise: the Nigerian case", 25 August 2011).

The future war

The overarching assumption guiding military planners in this switch of emphasis to drones and special forces concerns the future of warfare. In particular, that there will be more "small wars in far-off places"; that these, despite their modest size and distance, might threaten US and western interests; and that they must be controlled without huge military commitments. Thus, the planners see drones and special forces as central to the challenge (see "America's global shift: drone wars, base politics", 3 May 2012).

But in the case of Washington's shift of emphasis there is a further, intriguing twist: the ever-closer linkage of this evolving approach not just with the US security posture but more generally with the country's foreign policy.

Two examples illustrate the trend. The first is the unexpected address by secretary of state Hillary Clinton at the special-operations forces industry conference in Tampa, Florida (see Paul McLeary, "U.S. State Department, SOCOM forge unlikely partnership", Defense News, 28 May 2012). This focused on the need to connect the state department and its diplomatic missions much more closely with Socom; as a case-study, Clinton cited the work of an inter-agency team, the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications, in countering al-Qaida propaganda in Yemen. This team was housed in the state department, but it included Pentagon and intelligence-agency staff along with Socom personnel.

The second example relates to the aforementioned Socom operations in eastern Africa. Before Socom's involvement, the state department's new bureau of conflict and stabilisation operations (CSO) was working across the region. As Clinton put it: "{You) can begin to see the potential when soldiers and diplomats live in the same camps and eat the same MREs [meals read to eat]. This is smart power in action."

None of this is new. Diplomats and the military of many countries have invariably worked together, a reality especially pervasive when American and Soviet missions were engaging in numerous "proxy wars" during the cold-war era. In some ways, then, the trend represents "back to the future" - even if it flows directly from the experience of the post-9/11 wars.

What is different is the context: not of an ideological conflict between rival superpowers but of a constrained environment filled with ever more individual "revolts from the margins". In this 21st-century world, the closer integration of military and diplomatic missions may lean more in the direction of a militarisation of diplomacy than the other way round. That certainly is significant.

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Paul Rogers is professor in the department of peace studies ↑ at Bradford University, northern England. He is openDemocracy's international-security editor, and has been writing a weekly column on global security since 28 September 2001; he also writes a monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group ↑ . His books include Why We’re Losing the War on Terror ↑ (Polity, 2007), and Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century ↑ (Pluto Press, 3rd edition, 2010). He is on twitter at: @ProfPRogers

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Some people, Mr Cameron - the Murdochs and a Satanic deal, Anthony Barnett

Anthony Barnett — Thu, 31 May 2012 12:59:43 +0000

Cameron has again denied any 'great conspiracy' between the British government and the Murdochs, despite accusations by 'Some People'. Anthony Barnett, who counts himself in this group, sets out why the pact was doubtless Faustian, and the denial heaping insult onto injury.

Here is my update after a day of Jeremy Hunt's evidence:

In the short run the government will get away with it, and the Jubilee will proceed without the Prime Minister being forced to re-shuffle the Cabinet. To understand why - and why this deepens the scandal - you need to understand the distinction I try to make in this article.

In his brilliant daily roundup, the Telegraph's Benedict Brogan writes that after the day's events and the press response: "The legacy for Mr Cameron though is fairly toxic. No direct evidence of the so-called grand deal has been found, and yet all the evidence so far suggests both sides shared a common, cosy purpose". This is a perfect summary of how the political class sees things. It tries to get us all to search out a tree when it itself is the forest. The cosy, common purpose was the grand deal. This is what sharing a "common purpose" with the Murdochs means.

Back among the trees Downing Street justifies its supporting Hunt because he took "regulators' advice throughout the process [and] he took a series of decisions which were contrary to News Corp's interests". Behind this is Hunt's argument to Leveson that he saw his role as "defending British democracy", no less, by making sure that "plurality" was preserved while his well know view that the Murdoch bid for all BSkyB was beneficial in no way effected his making sure plurality was protected. He therefore acted properly. Ah yes.

In the narrow but not unimportant sense this seems to be correct and is the strength on which his position rests. There is no point in the opponents of Murdoch pretending otherwise. There are also, however, two significant though narrow weaknesses in Hunt's position and with it that of the Prime Minister.

They have abandoned the principle that for justice to be done it must be percieved to be done. Hunt's preference for the bid was so blatent, even texting James Murdoch to calm his anxiety while being in a quasi-judicial role, that he was disqualified both before being given the power and he disqualified himself by the way he behaved after he exercised it, in terms of perception - even if his actual decision making process was justified.

Second, his failure to warn his Special Advisor, Adam Smith, that he had to behave differently once representing a Minister acting in a quaisi-judicial was egregious, and not just regrettable as he admitted. If Smith did wrong so too did Hunt. That Hunt may actually have carried out his own role properly does not excuse his failure to control Smith. This failure should manifestly have been sent to the Prime Minister's adviser on the Ministerial Code, Sir Alex Allan. If he has a shred of gumption in his spinal cord, Alex Allan should resign rather than suffer the humiliation of being totally otiose. To continue to draw a salary now is a form of corruption.

Not incidently, we can also see here a clear example of David Cameron's slight-of-hand. When in 2010 he was warned by many not to bring his Director fo Communications Andy Coulson into Downing Street because it had emerged that Coulson had employed the services of a heavy-duty criminal whom the police had also charged with murder, Cameron pretended that these were just like the earlier warnings about Coulson's engagement in phone hacking. Similarly, this time he has declared that he will not refer Hunt to his Advisor on ministerial conduct, because Hunt's conduct of the actual bid was not faulty. But the point at issue is his breaching the Ministerial Code in terms of his responsibility for his Special Advisor!

However, all this is small change compared to the defining issue. Hunt told the Inquiry that he was determined to proceed towards the bid in a way that was "impartial, unbiased and decided on the basis of the evidence in front of me". But anyone looking at what had happened in News International in an impartial, unbiased way, on the basis of the evidence, could see that Rupert and James Murdoch were responsible for a criminal conspiracy. The defence of British democracy meant, and still means, ensuring father and son have as little to do with this country as possible, unless it is behind bars.

George Osborne texted Hunt, "I hope you like our solution" meaning that Hunt himself was the solution to the fears that Hunt expressed that the Murdoch bid might fail. the Prime Minister has now endorsed this judgement, that Hunt was the solution. The three of them, Cameron, Osborne and Hunt were the problem, as they worked to open the gates of the Kingdom to James Murdoch.

28 May 2012

It was a great week for denials. Last Monday Peter Mandelson, the Mephistopheles of New Labour, assured the Leveson Inquiry into the ethics of the British press and politics that there was no “Faustian pact”. Well, he would say that wouldn't he. And admire his devilishly tuned wording,

I reject the view that, under either Mr. Blair or Mr. Brown, some sort of Faustian pact was forged between the government and Rupert Murdoch involving commercial concessions to him in return for support from his newspapers.

Since when were Satanic deals bogged down in the mere details of “commercial concessions”? It is the spirit of the thing that matters, for they concern the sale of souls.

The more important denial was David Cameron's. Our current Prime Minister went on ITV Friday morning to defend his friend Jeremy Hunt, the Cultural Secretary, and insist that Jeremy was indeed the right man to have overseen the decision about approving the Murdochs’ bid to acquire all of BSkyB. The fact that Jeremy had strongly argued for the bid in a private memo to Cameron before being given this authority in no way undermined his capacity to act impartially afterwards, David insisted.

There is an old rule that justice must not only be done, it must also be seen to be done. The Prime Minister would have none of it. Jeremy was quite able to turn his mind into a blank slate untouched by his passionate personal commitment and political interest in backing the Murdoch bid. (As Stuart Weir points out, no one would permit such elasticity in local government.) The Prime Minister went on to raise the defining issue, going out of his way to repeat what he already had gone out of his way to emphasise when on the BBC in April, when he insisted there was no “deal”. That’s what “people want to know”, he said then. Apparently they still do,

Some people are saying there was some great conspiracy between me and Rupert Murdoch to do some big deal to back them in return for support. Rupert Murdoch has said that's not true, James Murdoch has said that's not true, I have said that's not true. There was no great conspiracy. (My emphasis)

Some people!

Just because we were in and out of each other’s backdoors, some people think I was in some great conspiracy over bootlegging with Al Capone. Al Capone has said that’s not true. Al Capone Junior has said that’s not true. And I have said that’s not true. Yes, hand on heart, I, like others, did a bit too much cosying up to them in the Speakeasy. But that does not mean there was a deal. And by the way Dr. Faustus was not involved.

The “hand on heart” bit about "cosying up" are David Cameron’s words to the House of Commons.

But if he admits the cosying up was overdone, we can ask what was its purpose in the first place?

Cameron’s denials are a gambit to turn the claims against him into a caricature, so that their deflation moves opinion in his favour. But no one in the main print papers has alleged the supposed caricature, that there was "some great conspiracy" between Cameron and Co and the Murdochs; although Peter Oborne has asked the question, Private Eye assumes the obvious and Tom Watson and Martin Hickman in their book detail the Murdoch machine’s intimidation, criminality and political influence. However, I am definitely one of the “some people” and I have already set out the case as forensically as possible based on the information to hand.

It is perfectly reasonable to think there was a “great conspiracy” meaning a Faustian selling of souls. Now it has become clearer what this meant thanks to Hunt’s memo. He wrote to Cameron:

what James Murdoch wants to do is to repeat what his father did with the move to Wapping and create the world's first multi-platform media operator, available from paper to web to TV to iPhone to iPad.
Isn't this what all media companies have to do ultimately? And if so, we must be very careful that any attempt to block it is done on genuine plurality grounds and not as a result of lobbying by competitors.
The UK has the chance to lead the way ... but if we block it our media sector will suffer for years. In the end I am sure sensible controls with be put into any merger to ensure that there is plurality but I think it would be totally wrong to cave in to the Mark Thompson/Channel 4/Guardian line that this represents a substantial change of control given that we all know Sky is controlled by News Corp now anyway.

A great amount of heat has been generated by the fact that this memo disqualifies Hunt from adjudicating impartially between the Murdochs and the 'BBC/Channel4/the Guardian' axis of evil - because he was commited in advance to the former.

Rather than fixating on this issue we should look at the argument he sets out. It is the government’s case at its best. First, it demonstrates a clear and succinct grasp of the core long-term strategy of James Murdoch and more important supports it. The aim is to forge an integrated multi-media global platform. This is the purpose of 'Operation Rubicon ', the NewsCorp codename for the acquisition of all of BSkyB: to integrate it with all of News International’s other UK and then US publishing and European satellite services, over a period of years.

In a strong post written immediately after the memo was released, Dan Sabbagh of the Guardian shows that the opponents of the bid had argued exactly this. But their fears about the intent behind the BSkyB acquisition were dismissed - and even laughed away by James Murdoch. He was dissimulating and they called it right.

But even though it is shocking that the Prime Minister and his close colleagues had such a clear, sharp understanding of the Murdoch strategy but were dishonest enough to go along with its public denial, the policy Hunt sets out politically was legal and coherent and even reasonable within the given framework of law and regulation. It is a point David Elstein makes in our exchange, there was nothing in our existing legal structures that could have prevented the BSkyB takeover taking place on the lines Hunt argued for and indeed it was approved.

(That is why unless we do something about our multi-media policy NewsCorp will rise again or, more likely perhaps, its fearsome competitor Google with its even more humongous cash flow will get to rule the roost - and the Tories are already deep into its London operation.)

But the very fact that there was nothing wrong legally with the James Murdoch bid as advocated by Hunt points to the greater wrong that was taking place: the conspiracy against British democracy such as it is.

There are two obvious democratic problems with the Cameron / Hunt approach. It was covert and it embraced James Murdoch as a torchbearer of Conservative media politicy, and therefore a commanding aspect of their own politics for the coming decades.

James Murdoch set out his view of British public life and the need for it to be whipped into shape by market fundamentalism in his 2009 MacTaggart Lecture for all to see, his concluding words being:

There is an inescapable conclusion that we must reach if we are to have a better society.

The only reliable, durable, and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit.

This is why I say the deal was about the selling of souls, in this case the soul of British government.

Remember, from 30 August to 4 September 2009 Hunt, a friend of Cameron, was in the US talking to various branches of NewsCorp about "local television" at the same time NewsCorp took the decision in principle to bid for the totality of BSkyB and Rebekah Brooks was made head of News International in the UK. Six days later James Murdoch flew to London to dine with Cameron and tell him that they would switch the Sun to support him in the election.

What was being agreed between the parties was joint support for a political philosophy that committed the UK to the sway of corporate interests. Incompatible with left and liberal politics it also undermines a core principle of traditional conservatism, which sees the reliable guarantee of patriotism and independence in the law, liberty and institutions such a parliament and even the BBC - and never only in the profit motive.

Fair enough, you might say. Who these days gives a toss for traditional conservative values. You might think what Cameron was doing profoundly wrong, but that’s politics. He was only doing what he and his colleagues did with the NHS, where he regularly denies that he is selling off its revenues to corporate health care providers when this is what he is doing. The real problem is surely that Labour’s opposition is half-hearted, tactical and crippled by its bad-faith after its own years of getting into bed with corporate power, while the Lib Dems are broken by being in the Coalition.

However there are two further factors which take us to the heart of the conspiracy. Together they place it beyond any definition of acceptable politics. First, this was a policy in which Britain's "leading the way" as Hunt puts it, is entirely placed in the hands of a single foreign corporation. It is bad enough for an American to lecture us on how we will secure our "independence" by granting him all the freedom he desires. It is much worse, the word "treason" comes to mind, for Ministers and Prime Ministers to embrace him, his company and his views wholeheartedly.

Second, the heads of this corporation, father and son, were engaged in a criminal conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and the Tory leaders knew this.

I set out this case at some length in my forensic essay. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequor knew, understood and permitted the Murdochs to intimidate MPs, put themselves above the law and act with impunity. Rupert and James Murdoch deny this. They say that both the phone hacking and also the long, aggressive and costly cover up by their companies of the phone hacking, took place without their knowledge and that they are utterly straightforward chaps who operate strictly within the law. What happened, they claim, is that there was a concerted cover up within News International to prevent them, the poor diddums, from knowing the truth. This concerted plot against the Murdochs was carried out by Rupert’s life-long mate Les Hinton, Tom Crone the legal director of News of the World, Colin Myler its editor and doubtless Uncle Tom Cobley who was their go-between. Although not the Prime Minister's friend and neighbour Rebekah Brooks, now charged with conspiracy. Despite all her considerable talents for networking she was so close to the Murdochs that the conspirators also kept her in the dark (and under such innocent circumstances who might not seek to "remove seven boxes of material from the archives of News International" and seek to conceal "documents and computers" from investigating detectives, as the Crown now "weakly" alleges?).

Would you want to be governed by a Prime Minister who believes this?

I suppose it is a small comfort to say that he does not and we are not. If David Cameron were honest this is what he'd say:

Of course we cosied up with the Murdochs as often as we could because we agree with them! We want profit to be the only basis of a better society, like James. There was no small minded "deal" or “single transaction”. That would have been "wrong” to quote my predecessor Tony Blair and anyway it was unnecessary. The Murdochs and team Cameron met at Christmas and New Year, on horse back and before gatherings in New York, via texts and on the phone, in order to develop a joint approach based on mutual harmony, to borrow a term from our friends in the Communist Party in Beijing.

Faustian? You bet.

So when some people like myself say there was some great conspiracy between the Camerons and the Murdochs, this is what we mean. We allege:

That there was a wide understanding and agreement to work together to secure the corporate supremacy and market values of James Murdoch. This agreement was arguably legitimate and most certainly was politics as we have come to know it in our benighted age of rule by a political class.
Provided, that is, the Murdoch's were fit and proper people.
But they are not. They have a well established reputation for intimidation, including of legislators; their newspapers had systematically broken the law and collaborated with criminals; the cover up of these crimes could not have been sustained except at the behest of the Murdochs themselves.
Any rulers acting with honour would have seen it as a patriotic duty to protect Britain from any further expansion of their influence, however positively you might have viewed Rupert Murdoch's role in the past.
To join with them in any exercise of mutual policy making, with the inevitable concommitant of seeking to secure each other in power, was therefore a conspiracy against the interests of the country.

People can conspire, however foolishly, for the greater good as they see it. But not with the Murdochs. The Prime Minister calls upon the word of Rupert Murdoch, who was ultimately responsible for the newspaper that hacked Milly Dowler's and hundreds of other phones, and directly responsible for the extensive conspiracy to cover up what happened after the exposure of hacking in 2006. The Prime Minister calls upon the word of this man - to assure us of the integrity of the government of our country. By doing so he brings shame upon it.

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What the market takes from our NHS, Richard Whittell

Richard Whittell — Thu, 31 May 2012 09:44:36 +0000

Tax avoidance and high interest costs are diverting resources away from healthcare.

The news last weekend that outsourcing company Serco would be investigated by the Care Quality Commission after being accused of providing an “unsafe” out-of-hours GP service in Cornwall is only the latest example of the dangers the profit motive can bring to the operation and quality of ‘public’ healthcare services in the UK.

A couple of weeks earlier, Spire Healthcare released its annual report and accounts for 2011, and gave a reminder of the financial irrationality of private companies taking over healthcare provision. Spire, the second largest private hospital provider in the UK, is increasing its patient list as more people choose to pay for their treatment outside an NHS shrunken by £20 billion of cuts to its budget.

The company’s annual report says it is “enhancing” its relationship with GPs to convince them to pass more work its way, while chairman Gary Watts describes the “enormous opportunity” created by “pressures on the public purse”.

More bluntly, CEO Rob Rogers told the Financial Times: “If you are an individual over 40 and you have a hernia, you won’t be treated by the NHS, and that’s where our focus will be.”

This focus will presumably not include people who can’t afford the £3,000 Spire is charging for hernia repair. But with its revenues having increased by 5 per cent in 2011, the company doesn’t need to worry about them.

Spire is also looking to increase the amount of care it is paid by the NHS to provide, such as hip replacements and varicose vein surgery. Already 20 per cent of its revenue comes from the NHS and its annual report says it will be on hand to “tackle demand bottlenecks and reduce waiting lists” in the future, as further opportunities are opened up by the Health and Social Care Act.

Of all the healthcare tax dodgers exposed by Corporate Watch earlier this year, Spire stood out for the size and brazenness of its operation. Spire’s taxable UK profits are used to pay interest on a loan it has taken from a Luxembourg-based subsidiary of Cinven, its private equity owner. The money then goes from Luxembourg back to Cinven as dividends. Spire’s 2011 accounts show this scam has only increased in size, with £72 million going straight to Cinven, compared to £64 million the previous year, wiping out its UK tax bill.

It is not just tax avoidance that is draining UK healthcare. Spire’s accounts also show it is paying 8 per cent interest on the £1.2 billion debt Cinven has taken out to finance the business. So £100 million goes straight to the banks that loaned the money.

Spire is not alone in paying far higher interest rates than those a public service would pay. Earlier this week Circle Health went to investors to raise money, partly to help pay off £14 million it had borrowed from hedge fund James Caird Asset Management, at a staggering interest rate of 25 per cent. Care UK is paying almost 10 per cent interest on the bond it was forced to issue when it was taken over by private equity firm Bridgepoint in 2010. Ramsay Healthcare is paying 6 to 7 per cent on its loans.

These interest rates are high partly because the lenders think these businesses are risky. And in many cases, the banks’ judgment appears sound. General Healthcare Group, the largest private hospital group in the UK through its ownership of BMI Healthcare, is, according to the Finanical Times, “teetering on the brink”, again due to the huge debt load incurred when it was taken over by a consortium of investors in 2006. The FT called it “an unwelcome reminder of the recent collapse of Southern Cross”.

Southern Cross’s troubles started when its private equity owner Blackstone sold its care homes to property companies, then rented them back. When this rent became unsustainable, Southern Cross went down and the government had to guarantee 30,000 elderly people wouldn’t be thrown out onto the streets.

Regardless of the Southern Cross experience, Spire is looking to sell, and then lease back, a third of its hospitals to reduce its debt as Cinven looks for a major payday by floating the company on the stock market.

Compare all this to the 2 per cent interest the government is paying on the bonds it is currently issuing, and getting private companies in to make the NHS more financially efficient doesn’t make as much sense as the government likes to pretend. Nor is it rational to cut £20 billion only to force people to reach into their own pockets to pay for Spire’s financing.

The government talks about the NHS’s lack of efficiency and the need to make money go further. But with companies like Spire involved, money is disappearing to satisfy the demands of financiers. Add on the profits and dividends that go to owners and shareholders, and that’s a huge amount of money gone that could have been spent on public healthcare.

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Entrepreneurs of the revolution: jockeying for livelihood and security in post-Arab Spring Cairo, Leila Zaki Chakravarti

Leila Zaki Chakravarti — Thu, 31 May 2012 02:48:34 +0000

In the context of lax policing in the aftermath of the Arab spring, Cairo’s affluent neighbourhoods have seen the incursion of new ‘street entrepreneurs ’ from the city’s poorer areas and outskirts. Educated, business-savvy and fleet of foot, they articulate a new sense of entitlement that blends Tahrir Square’s calls for change with the ‘moral economy’ rhetoric of Nasser’s original revolution

Flinging open the window on my first morning back in Cairo after some months away, I stand for a few seconds in a state of utter incomprehension. On every previous visit this has always been a special ‘coming home’ moment for me, as I breathe in once again the scene, well-loved from my childhood, of the quiet garden of our ground-floor flat in a faux-Moorish Heliopolis block. This time, however, my field of vision is overwhelmed by a new food venture that seems to have taken over the entire pavement outside. Large beach umbrellas draw the eye to a brightly coloured cart, gaily festooned with bright rows of oil, vinegar and pickle jars, and hung with vivid green buckets of spring onions. Beneath them aish baladi (flatbread) is piled high alongside the biggest ful (stewed fava beans – Egypt’s most popular dish) pot I have ever seen

The cast-iron railings of my rickety garden fence have been turned into hoardings for placards advertising the street cafe to be open for business, the crumbling concrete base lined with well-worn cushions on which rows of customers – mainly workers on the way to their daily labour – now sit to eat their breakfast. Business is evidently humming, and in the middle of all the bustle stands the commanding figure of the café owner, vigorously ladling ful into bowls which his two child-workers ferry to the eager customers – until one of them wriggles his skinny frame through the railings and runs to my garden tap, which I now see spouts an unauthorised hose to replenish the street café’s two large water barrels. Coming to my senses, I yell at the boy to get out of my garden and stop stealing my water – he gazes at me in astonishment, before scampering back to tell his master of the new arrival on the scene.

Before long my front doorbell rings, and Imam, the owner-manager of the new facility, comes to introduce himself. I am instantly struck by how different he looks from the street peddlers who have worked Cairo’s teeming roads for as long as I can remember. Instead of the poor working-man’s ‘galabeya and stubble’ look, traditionally adopted by the city’s numerous cart-pushers and tray-carriers, Imam is clean-shaven and neatly attired in an office worker’s shirt and slacks (with the addition of a white apron to guard again splashes and stains). He is courteous and non-threatening, explaining that his café is only there from 6am to 1pm (though he doesn’t mention that he takes the liberty of taking my water and storing his kit in my garden overnight!), and telling me that if it wasn’t for this business he would have no way of feeding his family back in Fayoum (an oasis town some 100km from Cairo). Evidently educated, and by his own account forced by economic adversity to take to street vending, he immediately puts me in mind of Mohammed Bouazizi, the young Tunisian street-vendor whose self-immolation was the spark which first lit the flame of revolution for the Arab Spring. We decide to talk further in the coming days.

Hardly has Imam left to return to his ‘workplace’ than the doorbell rings again – it is my upstairs neighbour Mai, come to welcome me back, but more urgently to impress upon me the need to do something about this unwelcome addition to the neighbourhood. “I can’t understand what’s got into people,” she says, rolling her eyeballs in frustration. “You need to find a way to put a stop to this vandalism. My nephew Khaled says he knows the precise words you have to use when filing a police report – that’s the only way of getting those lazy officials to take action!”

Later that evening, going out to get provisions from the grocer whom I have known since childhood, I see that it is not only my fence that been commandeered. Around the corner, the railings of another street-front property have been taken over to support a ‘night market’ style jewellery stall, complete with its own generator, bright lights and candy-floss machine, stylishly branded (in English) as ‘Tropicana’.

The owner turns out to be Hassan, who is also young, neatly dressed, clean-shaven and evidently well educated. He tells me that every evening he puts up his stall, often against a different fence, to catch what passing trade he can from Heliopolis’ affluent residents out for their evening stroll. Further down the road my eye is drawn to a brightly polished blue car which seems to have been deliberately parked at right-angles to all the others crowding the pavement-edge, on which are displayed for sale a range of stylish sunshades (male styles on the bonnet, female on the roof), all under the watchful eye of Ali who once again looks (young, clean-shaven), dresses (jeans and neatly pressed shirt), and talks (educated) more like his intended customers than any traditional street peddler. Ali tells me that he drives his car out every evening, parking in a different spot in one of Cairo’s more affluent districts. He is unabashed in explaining to me that these days it is only through this form of itinerant street-selling that he can find a way of trying to make ends meet, and cheerfully agrees when I ask if I might take his photograph.

Over the coming days, as I take taxis to visit friends in other areas of town, I am struck by the sheer number of similar street ventures that appear to have sprung up in the city’s more affluent neighbourhoods such as Zamalek and Maadi, the residential and commercial districts representative of Egypt’s professional classes and well-connected families. There seem to be hundreds along 26^th July street (one of Cairo’s major thoroughfares) alone. A gendered aspect also comes to light as I notice the number of women, many of them anonymised - perhaps deliberately? - in full niqab (Islamic face and body covering) outfits, who weave through the endless traffic jams hawking boxes of paper tissues. This phenomenon, far removed from the set-piece political rallies of Tahrir Square, is not something which seems to have been noticed by the press and other commentators. Informal street commerce has, of course, always been one way for the poor of Cairo to make ends meet. Yet the appearance in affluent neighbourhoods of this new class of hard-up but educated, mobile, business-savvy street-entrepreneurs – and the better-off local residents’ reactions to them – seems to me to provide a vivid illustration of how livelihoods and security have become primary and urgent battlegrounds in Egypt’s transition to an uncertain post-Arab Spring future.

The causes behind their appearance are readily apparent. On the one hand, the economic slowdown which followed the upheavals of January 2011 shows no sign of abating, and, if anything, seems steadily headed towards more general economic collapse (with tourism, commerce and investment all heavily affected). Increasing numbers of Egyptians accordingly find themselves having to turn to informal trading simply to bring in some money for daily essentials, which themselves seem to be in increasingly erratic supply. On the other hand, the very public ‘withdrawal from the streets' of the police has opened up space, in the literal sense, for denizens of the city’s poorer quarters, as well poorer migrants from outside the city, to move into the previously well-protected areas of affluence where buyers have more money, and can more easily be persuaded to part with it.

For the better-off residents of these previously-insulated areas, as exemplified by my neighbour Mai, the arrival in their midst of ‘outsiders’ from ‘poverty-stricken communities’ is seen as a distinct threat, and a symptom of both a general absence of public order and a profound lack of any sense of national direction. Rather than bringing to mind the economic factors which inspired the call for change in the first place, the new street entrepreneurs are typically characterised as baltagayya (thugs or hoodlums – the very same word used by the revolutionaries of Tahrir Square for the armed gangs who set upon them, often with savage violence, in the run-up to the overthrow of Mubarak), who are taking advantage of fawda wa’ sawra (chaos and revolution – the two words harmonize in Arabic) to turn any passing opportunity to their own advantage. A term commonly used for this, in a derogatory way, is fazlaqa – implying a way of unscrupulously taking advantage of circumstances and of playing the system. And their presence on the scene is taken to provide all the evidence one might need to confirm that the revolution has degenerated into sawrit il ash’waiyaat - ‘a revolution of the slums’.

But talking to Imam, Hassan, Ali, and a small number other street-sellers like them with whom I was able to engage during my journeys around the city, I was left in no doubt that, unsurprisingly, the new class of street-entrepreneurs have a radically different self-image. Their justification - and indeed vindication - of their unlicensed activities appears to rely on three distinct through related discourses. The first is evident in the manner in which, when speaking of themselves, they often seem consciously to echo the mould-breaking discourse of the young, educated protestors who first lit the spark of rebellion in Tahrir Square: the sense of Egypt’s educated youth seizing the moment to break free of suffocating paternalist dominance, of find their own voice, and of daring to take matters into their own hands for the realisation of their aspirations for a better future. The second is indicated by the ways in which they mirror the ‘stand on your own two feet, pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ models of self-starting, self-reliant economic behaviour lauded during the neo-liberal Mubarak era: in this context, fazlaqa becomes a positive not a negative posture, a street-savvy knack for ‘seizing the main chance’ to hustle, make some money, and to better oneself in the face of an uncaring world. And yet underpinning this, and in many ways restoring the balance, is the way in which they refer to their actions in terms of opening new channels to provide hard-pressed ordinary people with their daily needs at affordable prices – echoing the yakul we yi’akelni (‘feed oneself by feeding others’) ‘moral economy’ principles of the early years of Nasser’s socialist revolution.

As the days pass my acquaintance with Imam and his team deepens. The two boys are affectionately known as Bilya (‘marbles’) and Ota (‘cat’). Though neither can be more than 10 years old, they run, fetch, carry and wash dishes all morning long, discharging their duties with energy and cheerful self-assurance – the latter best evident, perhaps, in the way in which they repeatedly readjust the angle of the baseball caps which they wear, jauntily reversed, all through the working day. The only time available for them to be children seems to be first thing in the morning, when freshly delivered sacks of aish baladi are used for impromptu bouts of pillow-fight horseplay. At the end of the long shift, when Imam sits them down for their daily meal, their skinny legs, feet dangling in torn slippers, barely reach the ground – a vivid reminder of quite how young they are, and of the many facets to the ‘moral economy’ which Imam is developing. All of which deepens within me a growing moral dilemma of my own. On the one hand, the last thing I want to do is to knock this latter-day ‘Bouazizi’ off his feet, to deprive his team (however under-age) of the livelihood they are working so hard - and smartly - to achieve, or to disrupt their working class customers’ newfound access to affordable staple food. On the other, I need to maintain harmony with my neighbours, who have been growing increasingly pressing in their demands that, in the face of ever-growing uncertainty and social instability, I should reclaim an established sense of public order by making an official complaint to the police.

A visit to the local police station, accompanied by my lawyer, does not do much to help me resolve this dilemma. The place appears the usual bastion of indifferent bureaucracy. When my lawyer seeks confirmation of the correct format for isbat hala (a well-known official phrase, ‘establishing the case’), the uniformed officer behind the desk dismissively indicates that we can use whatever words we like – it will be his prerogative to record our words in the formal language of the State. His indifference confirms something which I have begun to suspect from the number of uniformed customers whom Imam, on a daily basis, seems to treat to free ful breakfasts – namely that one of the ways in which he keeps his business going (by securing access to a prime retail location) is through a network of petty bribery and tazbibat (alliances). It is only when, as advised by Mai’s nephew, I bring out my British passport and invoke my dual nationality, that the officer seems moved to take any meaningful action, telling my lawyer how bringing Western forces to bear witness to the daily fawda is bad for the reputation of Egypt. When I ask him how he envisages the rule of law and order re-materialising, he replies, with a wave of the hand, that all measures to restore order will only be enacted, at one go, once hebit ildawla - the legitimacy of the State - is restored.

The serious prospect of any such restoration of public order is, however, viewed by my friends and neighbours with deep cynicism. They describe the hotly contested race for the korsi (Presidential seat) as having descended into nothing but film action, i.e. a movie with lots of set-piece fight scenes, but no serious plot or meaning, as personal bickering between the candidates grows ever more strident, and new gossip and revelations emerge daily about their personal lives and conduct. The daily film action political shenanigans are seen as badly out of step with ordinary people’s concerns that prioritise the need for the restoration of public order and viable livelihoods. Indeed, the entire political process is widely interpreted as a conspiracy by the forces of the ancient regime to undermine the objectives of the revolution. Much of this criticism is voiced in the form of a daily stream of freshly minted satirical jokes in keeping with Egypt’s inimitable political humour or angry graffiti which mocks and turns back on itself the Supreme Military Council’s dark muttering that the daily fawda (chaos) is caused not by their own ineffectiveness, but by ‘sinister hands’ and ‘third parties’ from outside e.g. the “Real Hidden Hand” anti-military graffito below.

Eventually it is the serving boys at my grocer’s who help me find a way of resolving my dilemma. Explicitly quoting the Nasserist moral economy principle of akl eish - livelihood and the meeting ordinary people’s basic needs - they ask why I don’t simply have the fencing reinforced, so that Imam can continue to conduct his business on the public street, and my neighbours can feel reassured that the block of flats has been protected. A civil contractor devises an elegant engineering solution for me, designing panels of light chain-link mesh which, when painted dark green and welded to the inside of the cast-iron railings, provide a raised, though transparently unobtrusive, boundary between the street and the garden, between the commercial and the residential, between the public and the private. Local residents emerging from the nearby mosque after Friday prayers stop to look at the new addition to the street landscape, and express their approval of the win-win solution that has been found.

As I pack for my return to London I again look out of my window, and through the new fencing see Imam’s street enterprise thriving just as vigorously, if not more so than, the first morning when I was so taken aback. After getting back I hear through phone calls with the neighbours and other friends that, with profits soaring to several thousand Egyptian pounds a day, Imam has even found contacts in his ever-expanding customer base who want to help him take over an established ful restaurant which has grown notorious for serving its customers ayy kalam (rubbish) ful. It seems that the next chapter may be about to open for this ‘entrepreneur of the revolution’.

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Coming face to face for justice, Nyta Mann

Nyta Mann — Thu, 31 May 2012 00:06:29 +0000

Bringing together the victims of crime and those who have harmed them has been shown to reduce re-offending and bring relief to the sufferers, but Lizzie Nelson says the the UK still lags behind best international practice

Victims of a crime in the UK wanting to meet the man or woman who has caused them grief face an uphill struggle.

“They can be heavily discouraged and it can take an awfully long time before they get to meet,” explains Lizzie Nelson, director of the Restorative Justice Council whose main activity is victim-offender mediation. “The adult justice system generally keeps victims and perpetrators strictly apart. It has no restorative justice element to it.”

Victim-offender meetings take place as a matter of course in other countries – Australia, New Zealand and Sweden, to name just three. However, they remain a rare element in the UK’s criminal justice system and there is no nationally determined framework for organising such meetings. Victims of crime are believed to have played their part once the guilty party is sentenced in court.

The Restorative Justice Council, established in 2003, aims to change this. Among its 150 member organisations are police forces, local authority mediation services and prisons who believe there can be great benefits for both parties when criminals face their victims.

The introduction of various elements of restorative justice has been under government scrutiny for more than a decade. At the start of the millennium, the Ministry of Justice of the then Labour administration introduced and funded a seven-year research programme looking into the efficacy of restorative justice schemes.

Now Justice Secretary of State, Ken Clarke, in charge of the same ministry in the current Conservative-Lib Dem coalition, has set in train similar studies. There is growing public interest in what restorative justice schemes have achieved in other countries, and in such experience as there has been so far in the UK.

A meeting between the two “sides” of a crime, victim and offender, can take place months or years after the trial is over. Such a meeting allows the victim of a crime, or the close relatives in, for example, cases of murder, to talk to the person who may have so dramatically impacted on their lives.

But there are many who question its value. Such schemes have to be voluntary on both sides, so why would a criminal agree to such a process? What do criminals get in return if they do agree to a meeting? And would it be a just outcome if they were “rewarded”?

“If it’s a minor offence, it can have an effect on their sentence,” Nelson acknowledges. “But for serious crimes, restorative justice only happens post-sentence. It doesn’t happen pre-sentence at all.”

In the case of some minor offences, such a meeting may replace a custodial sentence. But for serious crimes it could never replace prison. For very serious offences such as rape and murder such meetings may be vetoed anyway due to the strength of emotions involved.

“It’s a process, not just a meeting,” says Nelson of the kind of mediation the Restorative Justice Council and its member organisations attempt to facilitate. “Meetings between victims and perpetrators of crimes all require a risk assessment first.”

“The criminal may not even be admitting their crime, and the victim may just want revenge. That would be a meeting you simply wouldn’t want to happen. So the preparation is important – and a risk assessment is a vital first step.”

“It’s about managing expectations on both sides – so when it comes to meeting neither the criminal or the victim go into that room with unrealistic expectations,” she says.

Currently, Nelson explains, once a court has confirmed an offender guilty, a victim of crime has no official role to play at all. This is the stage at which the Restorative Justice Council may receive a call from a victim, their family, friends or representatives. They will then try to connect them to a variety of local organisations able to offer help.

Often, the authorities need to be persuaded to allow a meeting to take place. There may be concern that such a meeting would damage either or both the victim and the offender. More and more, though, it is beginning to be understood that a victim’s persistence may be driven by the need to seek some form of closure.

However keen a victim may be to meet an offender after the trial, a meeting can only take place when both parties agree. Often the offender will say no. But if they do agree, extensive preparations must take place for both parties separately before they meet, including for example, enabling the victim to visit the secure facility where they will eventually have contact and seeing the room where they will meet face to face.

It took nine months of such preparation before Joanne Nodding, the first rape victim to speak publicly of the experience of meeting the man who raped her, sat opposite her attacker.

The meeting itself took place in 2011, five years after the actual rape. Nodding “wanted to be free of that burden of grievance” that she had carried ever since the attack. Their meeting took place over the course of an hour and a half.

“As I left that room I felt on top of the world,” she said afterwards. “Meeting him gave me closure, because I had said everything I had wanted to say and I had taken back some kind of control over my life.”

She believed that the meeting also made an impact on her attacker.

The affect on offenders and their likelihood of re-offending formed part of the seven-year study set up by Labour. The Government-funded research programme, evaluated by Professor Joanna Shapland, found a 27% reduction in offences where restorative justice measures had been used. In 2010 the government undertook its own analysis of the data in the Shapland report, and quantified the reduction in frequency of re-offending following restorative justice as 14%, a lower but still significant impact. Such a reduction in re-offending nationwide would amount to a substantial public benefit and strong justification for pursuing such programmes.

But there is also huge reported value to the victims and an imbalance in the legal system that needs addressing, “victims are either treated really badly in court or are there only as witnesses. Restorative justice recognises them and gives them a voice,” explains Lizzie Nelson.

“In a prison setting, if you have a legal requirement for every prisoner to have a shower, make a phone call, have food and so on, that is what you are going to focus on. So until the legislation comes in to make restorative justice part of what is required, it is simply not able to happen.”

“It’s remarkable how many victims talk about getting a sense of closure and moving on after these meetings,” says Nelson. “And restorative justice does also have a definite impact on reoffending – and that’s helped raise its profile.”

Though the British Ministry of Justice has funded projects, it provides no core funding to restorative justice organisations. The RJC is not a government-funded department or “official” organisation; it is a charity, and needs continually to raise funds.

“There’s a massive gap in the adult criminal justice system. There’s no legislative system in place for this, no statutory system at all. We’re really looking forward to this changing in coming years.”

In the Queen’s speech laying out legislative plans for the next 12 months, the Government unveiled its intention, through the Ministry of Justice, to protect free speech, make the security services more accountable, and make the justice system more accessible.

As yet, there is no specific word on restorative justice. But in continuing recession, a restorative justice process that meets the needs of victims and reduces re-offending is surely a policy whose time has come.

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Fears and threats in the realm of fantasy , Fyodor Lukyanov

Fyodor Lukyanov — Wed, 30 May 2012 16:49:03 +0000

Cold War weapons remain an important political tool in the 21st century, if only because it’s easier to deal with imaginary problems than real ones. Fydor Lukyanov wonders whether the world’s political elite will ever get around to tackling more actual and pressing concerns.

I recently attended a Russian-American seminar on strategic relations. On the second day, one and the same thought occurred simultaneously to me and the American colleague sitting next to me: It would be a great idea to choose some island in the South Pacific and send all world experts on strategic stability and arms control there. They would be comfortable and happy, discussing first and second nuclear strikes, the dialectics of Mutually Assured Destruction, mutual verification possibilities, confidence-building through monitoring missile speed on takeoff, etc, etc. They would achieve interim results and then resume their discussions with gusto. Because it would be happening somewhere far away, these interesting activities would not interfere with the main course of international politics, which has long been developing in a different direction.

Not that this is unimportant or meaningless. As long as Russia and the United States have huge nuclear arsenals capable of destroying each other and the rest of the world, the principles worked out and accumulated in the era of bipolar nuclear confrontation can neither be cast aside nor sidestepped. But they are in a different dimension, a dimension that is real but, at the same time, parallel to the main place of action.

‘In reality, everybody understands that there can be no war, nuclear or conventional, between Russia and NATO or Russia and the U.S. in principle – especially in Europe, which is fast turning into a strategic periphery, but really anywhere else.’

Recent statements by Nikolai Makarov, chief of the general staff of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff, to the effect that Russia might launch a strike against American missile defense installations if they are deployed close to Russia’s borders, caused a great stir. The most alarming thing was that the Russian commander did not rule out military action against Europe. This sounds frightening, but what exactly does it mean?

This is a typical example of a parallel dimension. In reality, everybody understands that there can be no war, nuclear or conventional, between Russia and NATO or Russia and the U.S. in principle – especially in Europe, which is fast turning into a strategic periphery, but really anywhere else. Yet the military must proceed not only from common sense, but from the potentials of hypothetical enemies that are being calculated and assessed. Meanwhile, for 20 years now, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has been expanding to encircle Russia and, in the last 10 years, the United States has been talking about deploying strategic missile defenses close to Russia’s borders. That is also a parallel dimension, because the need to build missile defense installations in these places is justified by the need to protect Europe from the Iranian missile threat. Iranian long-range missiles do not yet exist and it is unclear why Iran, which is vying for regional influence with neighboring countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia, should target its missiles, if ever it gets them, on Europe.

The American missile defense system is a very costly, technologically sophisticated and politically controversial project that is virtually akin to religion. President Ronald Reagan’s idea that America could create a shield against any missile threats has been firmly embedded in the American establishment for nearly 30 years. It is gradually turning from a Reagan utopia (or rather bluff, intended to scare the Soviet Union) into a project in which huge sums of money and a lot of effort are invested. As long as the principle of Mutual Assured Destruction is in place and no other way of balancing the huge weapons arsenals of the U.S. and Russia has been invented, it is hypothetically possible to build a shield against a retaliatory strike. No matter that this scenario between Russia and America is beyond the bounds of reality. It is possible, so it is real.

Actually, the situation is still more speculative. The Americans tell the Russians that the first three phases of the proposed European missile defense could not damage the Russian arsenal and that such a theoretical possibility would only appear at the fourth, last phase. That phase is still a long way off and there is no guarantee that it is technologically feasible. This is probably true. But, on the other hand, if it is possible, how should the Russian generals react? Allow the system to develop until it becomes a real threat and only then take retaliatory measures? At that point, it would be too late. And the American response would be: Why did you agree in the first place, didn’t we warn you?

'A non-existent missile defense system against a non-existent threat that provokes an impossible response and interminable and acrimonious discussion – all this is a symbol of the inability of the world political elite to face the real challenges.'

But again, all this has little connection with the real agenda and the real threats faced by Russia, the United States, NATO and other countries. The nuclear weapon, as soon as it was built, acquired a political rather than a military character. The whole point of having one was to show that it would never be used. Deterrence was not only mutual; the nuclear weapon imposed responsibility and disciplined those who possessed it. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the nuclear powers restrained themselves and the adventurism of their own leaders, cutting out radicals from their elites.

The political function of the nuclear weapon remains; it is, above all, an element of prestige of a superpower, a great power or simply an important player in international relations (the real deterrent function is still relevant to countries like North Korea, which thus protect themselves against “regime change”). As a political factor, nuclear weapons will survive and all accompanying discussions will continue, but we should be aware that this is a parallel dimension linked with – but not coinciding with – the main dimension in which international events happen.

In politics, the virtual is often as important as the real. The world of perceptions, symbols and images, especially when bolstered by an existing, incredibly destructive, though unusable arsenal does exist, and developments will happen in this world. A non-existent missile defense system against a non-existent threat that provokes an impossible response and interminable and acrimonious discussion – all this is a symbol of the inability of the world political elite to face the real challenges. It is always easier to discuss what is very familiar than what is new and unknown. But reality will eventually prevail and arms control specialists will sail off to a desert island, if not in the direct, then in the figurative sense.

This article is published in association with the Valdai Discussion Club, partners of the oDRussia project. Originally published on RBTH

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Why are Pussy Riot girls still in prison?, Yelena Fedotova

Yelena Fedotova — Wed, 30 May 2012 15:06:26 +0000

Reaction inside Russia and further afield to the imprisonment of 3 members of a punk rock girl band after their performance in one of Moscow’s cathedrals has been by turns outraged and baffled. The girls are still on remand, awaiting trial for hooliganism (maximum sentence 7 years). One can only hope they will triumph in the end, says Yelena Fedotova

It is now three months since some of the members of the punk rock band Pussy Riot were detained in a remand prison, awaiting their trial for their punk-prayer ‘Holy Virgin, get rid of Putin!’ in the main Russian cathedral, Moscow’s Christ the Saviour.

Prisoners of conscience or hooligans?

The Pussy Riot story has long since become more than just an art event; it has acquired political overtones and even Amnesty International has recognised the girls as prisoners of conscience. Some days ago one of the Pussy Riot girls went on hunger strike in support of her demand to be moved to solitary detention because relations with her cellmates were so bad. Her demands were only met on 21 May, some five days later, when the media had picked up information about her hunger strike.

Why is it that girls from a punk rock band are being held on remand and accused under the ‘hooliganism’ article of the Criminal Code, with a possible maximum sentence of 7 years, when all they did was to execute a few steps in the pulpit of the Cathedral?

‘The Pussy Riot story has long since become more than just an art event; it has acquired political overtones and even Amnesty International has recognised the girls as prisoners of conscience.’

There is no rational answer to this question. Any administrative penalty, such as a fine, would have given rise to many fewer repercussions than criminal proceedings. Their performance wasn’t even a punk concert, as it might appear from the video clip, which has had more than a million viewings on You Tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?y=GCasuaAczKY. Careful examination reveals that the video is a cut and paste job: the scenes where the girls play the guitar were obviously not filmed in the Cathedral. There they only managed to get up into the pulpit, take a few steps and, falling on their knees, to make the sign of the cross before they were dragged away by security guards. The scenes with the guitars were filmed in another cathedral, so the three girls are being held because of a fake video clip.

Church vs art

The story of the relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and modern art is a long one. The most striking episode was Avdei Ter-Oganyan’s protest: during his performance ‘The Young Atheist’ he hacked copies of icons to pieces. This was his radical way of putting up a fight for the ‘aura’ (Walter Benjamin) of the original in the age of mechanical reproduction. Ter-Oganyan has now been living in emigration for more than ten years: he left Russia when criminal proceedings were instituted against him.

The Pussy Riot girls belong to quite another generation. They didn’t live in the Soviet Union, when one really could lose one’s liberty for some ideological misdemeanour. They remained in Russia, probably unable to believe in the unprecedented cruelty of the state, and have been punished for it.

The words of the song they sang in the Cathedral might well not have been to the liking of Russia’s highest-ranking personages, especially just before the presidential election, but should the girls really have been put in prison for an offence of this kind? Pussy Riot obviously trod on a very painful corn of Russian leaders, clerical or secular.

The story of the Pussy Riot feminist punk group, who performed a punk-prayer in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour has shown up the divisions in Russian society. For state and church leaders the group’s performance was blasphemy, for the democratic opposition a legitimate act of protest.

The song hinted at the overly close friendship between Church and State: they sang that Patriarch ‘Kirill believes in Putin, when he’d do better to believe in God.’ There was also a hint of the Patriarch’s links with the FSB. Public opinion was outraged by the phrase ‘Holy shit!’ which was part of the refrain. This is not blasphemy; it simply means that the situation being described is shameful before God. The phrase itself is current youth slang. The song also contained a plea to the Holy Virgin to become a feminist. All in all, the words of the song and the whole performance would have been worthy of at most an administrative fine, or community service for disturbance of the peace. But matters took quite another turn.

Two of the Pussy Riot girls, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Mariya Alyokhina, were arrested a few days after the ‘punk-prayer’ and a third, Yekaterina Samutsevich, was picked up soon after. The girls are not just punk-rockers, but educated as well. Tolokonnikova is studying philosophy at Moscow State University, Alyokhina is studying at the Institute of Journalism and works as a volunteer in the Children’s Psychiatric Hospital. Samutsevich is a student at the progressive Rodchenko School of Multimedia Studies.

Inheriting the Voina mantle

Pussy Riot has obviously taken a leaf out of the Voina [street art group, Rn word for war] book. Their 2010 project ‘Dick captured by the FSB’ involved painting a huge phallus on Petersburg’s Liteiny Bridge, right opposite the FSB building. The phallus rose in a most impressive way every time the bridge was opened to let ships through. Two of the Pussy Riot girls had connections with Voina: Tolokonnikova was one the group’s founders and Samutsevich was part of the team that developed and installed their various projects, though she hadn’t featured in the media before that. When Voina disbanded, some of its members (Oleg Vorotnikov, Natalya Sokol and Leonid Nikolayev) moved to Petersburg: they are now co-curating the Berlin Biennale with Artur Zmiyevsky. Tolokonnikova and her husband Pyotr Verzilov remained in Moscow.

‘The Pussy Riot group appeared in the autumn of 2011: its members devised their own particular image, consisting of brightly-coloured balaclavas and dresses. Like the Guerrilla Girls, they hid behind masks and preserved their anonymity, but their target was not feminism – although they definitely consider themselves feminists – so much as the political situation in Russia.’

Initially the Voina events didn’t make many waves. One of them, ‘Hug a Fuzz Lady’, involved girls spending a whole day in the street and the metro kissing women police officers to ‘emancipate them’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0A8Qf893cs.

The Pussy Riot group appeared in the autumn of 2011: its members devised their own particular image, consisting of brightly-coloured balaclavas and dresses. Like the Guerrilla Girls, they hid behind masks and preserved their anonymity, but their target was not feminism – although they definitely consider themselves feminists – so much as the political situation in Russia. Pussy Riot would appear in public places, the roofs of trolleybuses, for instance, and metro stations, twanging their guitars and singing their songs. The girls immediately attracted the attention of Centre E [the Russian Interior Ministry’s Centre for the Prevention of Extremism].

Pussy Riot’s boldest project was their performance in Red Square of the song ‘Putin pissed himself!' But even this event at the Place of Execution, no less, in the middle of a snowy Red Square didn't particularly anger the authorities. It was only after their punk prayer in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour that Vladimir Putin himself appeared on central television to apologise to believers, thus covertly signifying that the affair was being dealt with at top level.

The Pussy Riot girls: (from the left) Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Mariya Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich. Amnesty International has recognised them as prisoners of conscience and demanded their immediate release (photo: http://pussy-riot.livejournal.com)

The story's repercussions were unprecedented: Pussy Riot was criticised throughout the media and public opinion was polarised. The Church, too, was split. Patriarch Kirill has a reputation for being a strong conservative: he described the performance as a 'mockery of all that is sacred' and expressed his regret that some believers felt moved to try and find a justification for the girls' behaviour. Another churchman, somewhat less exalted but no less a personality, Deacon Andrey Kurayev, spoke out in defence of the girls, saying they should be admonished, but then released. The performance took place during Mardi Gras, when the Church turns a blind eye to all sorts of funny jokes. The last day of Mardi Gras falls on Shrove Sunday, a holy day when believers forgive each other for any offence caused.

The Church and the Cathedral

Most importantly, the affair has revealed the sickly state of the ROC, which is increasingly becoming involved in matters unrelated to religion, by no means as ascetic as laid down in the Bible, and not averse to money-making. The Church makes constant and regular attempts to get scripture lessons included in the school curriculum, for instance. The authorities regard these attempts with obvious approval and clerical attitudes are becoming more pronounced. But the Pussy Riot event attracted public attention to the Cathedral itself and it has become clear that the services on offer there are commercial, as well as religious.

Journalists from the newspaper Moscow News investigated: they found that the Cathedral and the land it stands on belong to the city of Moscow, not the ROC.

‘Most importantly, the affair has revealed the sickly state of the ROC, which is increasingly becoming involved in matters unrelated to religion, by no means as ascetic as laid down in the Bible, and not averse to money-making.’

The Cathedral is managed by the Christ the Saviour Cathedral Trust, which official rents out facilities in the building http://www.mn.ru/society_faith/20120423/316172981.html. According to Moscow News, the Council Hall with its VIP dressing rooms can be rented for 450,000 roubles per day ($13,830); the Conference Hall for 100,000 roubles ($3,072). The Trust also lets out several small offices on a long-term basis. The newspaper established that in effect many of the companies working in the Cathedral precinct – including a car-wash and underground parking facilities – are managed by the members of one family. The director of the Trust's family. This information makes the Cathedral seem more like a business centre than a house of prayer. That Pussy Riot elected to perform in the Cathedral is evidence they wanted to draw attention to the current state of the ROC. The Moscow News articles produced no reaction whatever. http://www.fxxc.ru/other/

Wider ripples

Pussy Riot in prison has become a symbol of resistance in Russia. The art world is agog. Not everyone views the performance positively, but artists, critics and gallery owners have closed ranks at the injustice of the punishment. Pickets have been set up in defence of the girls and a one-day exhibition in support of Pussy Riot was organised by the curator Tatyana Volkova in a bus which travelled round the Garden Ring, tailed by 8 police cars.

At the last demonstration against the rigged elections on 6 May there was even a whole column of demonstrators in coloured balaclavas to show their solidarity with Pussy Riot. Some sceptics naturally consider that the Pussy Riot girls were competing with the lads from Voina to see who could produce the greater effect, and didn't expect the authorities to come down so hard on them, but that doesn't really matter any more. http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=451427544870693&set=t.586870807&type=3&theater (photo: Vlad Chizenkov).

The severity and inappropriateness of the reaction to this reasonably innocent, if cheeky, event has turned it into an act of civic resistance, a real political gesture. The authorities themselves politicised it and the government has made Pussy Riot into martyrs of the regime. Until fairly recently it was a fair assumption that Russian society was mired in stagnation, which was forecast to last for another 12 years. Now the protest movement has developed so fast and the three fearless young women have had a hand in it. It's not what they did, but that they overcame their fear. Over the last two weeks a significant section of politically active youth has ended up in police stations, accused of taking part in unsanctioned meetings, and many of them too have overcome their fear of the possible consequences.

The Russian democratic community was unanimous in its support for Pussy Riot. Numerous protest actions against their arrest have continued until now in Russia and all over the world (photo: http://pussy-riot.livejournal.com)

After the 6 May demonstration, which was broken up particularly violently by OMON [Special Purpose Mobile Police Unit], people stayed in the streets and politically active artists assisted at the birth of the the protest movement Occupy! on the boulevards of Moscow. Energetic protest gradually turned into intelligent protest: activists started working on the political demands they wished to put forward and these were discussed at a daily Assembly. The camp may have been broken up after several days of moving from one place to another, but the new experience of street fighting gained has been indispensable. It's probably too early to start comparing the May 2012 events with Paris in May 1968, but the clock can't be turned back now and society will be unlikely to go back to its previous state of hopeless submission.

The song

Meanwhile..Pussy Riot is still in prison: the hearts of the judges were not even melted by the fact that two of the accused have small children. The investigation has cynically asked for Pussy Riot to be left in prison 'for their own good', so that fervent defenders of the faith don't avail themselves of the opportunity to get even with them. Back in April the criminal investigation team had produced an expert report which was unable to find any motives of hatred or enmity in the actions of Pussy Riot. Psychological and linguistic analysis showed that the song the girls sang in the Cathedral was 'not an incitement to any unlawful actions, nor was it dictated by hatred or enmity towards any social groups.' The experts did conclude that the feelings of some religious people might have been offended, but this is not a crime. The barrister Violetta Volkova maintains, however, that the results of the expert report were given to the investigating officers on 2 April, but the relevant papers were not put with the files when the case for extending the detention of the girls came up in court.

‘Pussy Riot in prison has become a symbol of resistance in Russia. The art world is agog. Not everyone views the performance positively, but artists, critics and gallery owners have closed ranks at the injustice of the punishment.’

While the court was in session, representatives of the artistic world came to the Taganka courthouse, where the case was being heard, to show their support for the girls. There were some arrests outside the courthouse for attempts to sing their song, for trying to put a coloured cap on and for trying to write words of support on the pavement with chalk. Those detained were relased the same day, but the futility of the arrests is baffling and leads to a suspicion that the police are not completely in control of what they do.

And now…?

If there had been any hopes that the new Minister of Culture would be a democratically-minded official who would help to get the girls released, then the appointment of Vladimir Medinsky will have dashed them. When he appeared on a TV talk show, he described the girls as 'immoral women' and compared their trial with the trial of the revolutionary and terrorist, Vera Zasulich. Medinsky didn't insist that Pussy Riot should stay in prison, but suggested that as a punishment they should work as cleaners in a maternity hospital, or sing in a mosque. One thing is quite clear – the new Minister of Culture has a vivid imagination. But one still hopes that Pussy Riot will triumph in the end.

Sideboxes

'Read On' Sidebox:

Free Pussy Riot, web site

Sidebox:

Three young women are being detained by Russian authorities for allegedly performing a protest song in a cathedral as part of a feminist punk group "Pussy Riot".

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alekhina and Ekaterina Samutsevich were arrested in March 2012 and charged with "hooliganism". If found guilty, they could be jailed for up to 7 years.

The three women deny any involvement in the protest although even if they took part, the severity of the response of the Russian authorities would not be a justifiable response to the peaceful - if, to many, offensive - expression of their political beliefs.

Tell the Russian authorities to drop all charges and release them!

Amnesty International, April 3, 2012

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The Exile Nation Project - Allison T. Moore, Charles Shaw

Charles Shaw — Wed, 30 May 2012 11:55:36 +0000

Allison Moore was once labelled a "habitual offender" by the State of Pennsylvania for receiving seven convictions for theft, fraud and forgery. Having reformed her life, she now works as an author and motivational speaker for women in prison. Now further motivated by a son in prison on drug charges, Allison has become a powerful voice for change.

The Land of the Free punishes or imprisons more of its citizens than any other nation. This collection of testimonials from criminal offenders, family members, and experts on America's criminal justice system puts a human face on the millions of Americans subjugated by the US Government's 40 year, one trillion dollar social catastrophe: The War on Drugs; a failed policy underscored by fear, politics, racial prejudice and intolerance in a public atmosphere of "out of sight, out of mind."

ALLISON T. MOORE

Allison Moore was once labelled a "habitual offender" by the State of Pennsylvania for receiving seven convictions for fraud and forgery.

Having reformed her life, she now works as an author and motivational speaker for women in prison.

Now further motivated by a son in prison on drug charges, Allison has become a powerful voice for change.

This interview is #31 of 100 In the Exile Nation Project's archive, which can be found at
ExileNation.org/interview-archive

G4S asylum housing, the evictions begin: mother and baby dumped in substandard flat, John Grayson

John Grayson — Wed, 30 May 2012 09:19:03 +0000

The UK Border Agency gave a £30 million contract for housing asylum seekers to G4S, the world's biggest security company. Now vulnerable people are losing their homes.

On Tuesday 8 May a Bradford asylum seeker and her twelve week old baby were given barely a week’s notice by private landlord UPM to quit their home. On Thursday 17th they were transported forty miles to a tiny flat in Doncaster with no cooker, table or chair, and only a tiny sink to wash dishes and clothes.

Campaigners in Bradford and Doncaster supported the mother and engaged with local medical services and the Red Cross, and protested to the UK Border Agency and local authorities.

The protests prompted a Border Agency inspector to visit the Doncaster flat. On Monday the Border Agency declared the flat “contractually non-compliant” and “not suitable in its present state for mothers and babies”. The Border Agency claimed it had instructed UPM to relocate the mother and baby as a matter of urgency. But they remain in the Doncaster flat, marooned 40 miles from anybody they know.

This is the new world of asylum seeker housing controlled by G4S, the world’s biggest security company.

In March G4S won a massive £30 million UK Border Agency contract to house asylum-seekers in the Midlands, the East of England, the North East, Yorkshire and Humberside. Using the “prime contractor model”, which G4S tells investors is “attractive”, the company granted subcontracts to UPM and the charity Migrant Help.

UPM, or United Property Management (slogan “Serve like a charity. Perform like a business”), describes itself as “a market leading provider of accommodation and support services to people from all walks of life.” They’re based just up the road from Manchester’s Victoria Station.

Beatrice Botomani, a worker at Bradford Refugee Action Forum who has coordinated protests and emergency help for the Bradford women and children, said:

“We met UPM at the end of April and they gave a long list of pledges about not taking children out of Bradford and away from social and medical services and schools, and giving adequate notice on removals. Only a few days later they started evictions and removals with less than a week’s notice.
Some of these women and children have been in Bradford for two years or more awaiting decisions on asylum claims. UPM has not told us where people are going and we cannot alert local support services to contact them – many of these people are already traumatised and have fled from terrible conditions in their home lands, UPM is adding to their stresses.”

It seems 35 people have been removed from Bradford. Two are reported to have been sent to Sheffield but asylum group volunteers have been unable to locate them.

For months now I’ve been writing about the takeover of asylum seeker housing by G4S, the world’s biggest security company. I am one of the Yorkshire campaigners who tried to fight off G4S’s bid to run asylum housing here. Our South Yorkshire Migration and Asylum Action Group is urging the Border Agency to instruct G4S to cancel the UPM contract. In our view UPM is simply not a fit landlord for the sensitive job of housing asylum seekers.

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