a matter of opinion

Back with a vengeance

2011-01-01T10:46:00.000-08:00

I've been quiet for a very long time.
There are excuses galore. And they are all good.
But there is only one reason. And it's all bad.

I got sidetracked by work and travel and missed a week and then another. And by the time I had the opportunity to write there was so much to say. Too much to say. And I choked on my own anger

But really, I've had so much to say that I have been virtually silenced.
But as ever, something happens that is too much to bear. Too funny. Too ridiculous. Too bad.
In my case, it was a televised debate on pension reform on American TV.
The TV was on in the back ground while I was unpacking my bags during yet another business trip (and let me tell you, the glamour wears off fast).

Now normal people start dozing when pension reform is mentioned but not I. The geek within pricked its ears and I kept it on, half listening as I was settling in. The debate was civilised, considering, but I was struck by the single-sidedness of it all. 'no democrat on the panel' I thought to myself 'that's just ridiculous'. So clutching a pack of jumpers to my chest I stood trying to figure out how they could get away with having no democrat on the panel.

It is preposterous to expect to retire before the age of 75, said one panelist.
Republican, thought I, and put the jumpers away.
We should tax unearned income at the same rates as earned income, says another panelist. Ah finally, I think to myself as I pull out skirts and jackets, speaking of taxation as redistribution, not punishment.
Oh how wrong I was.
The unearned income the lady was referring to was not inherited millions and trust fund security. It was pocket money given to children for helping grandparents with the groceries and baby sitting money handed to a young cousin on a Saturday night.

I stopped dead on my tracks, shoe bags in hand.
Income? Did we really just refer to pocket money and an pretext for a bit of help being passed around families as 'income'?
Republican, I thought. Of the worst kind.
Assuming all money is fair game. As if money for bread and money for diamonds has the same value. As if 'taxing unearned income' in this context didn't just mean double taxing the poor. And the Mexicans.
Bloody racist, right wing, self-righteous pigs who always think that poverty and misery are diseases afflicting other people, I thought to myself.
Not my finest hour. Rather uncharitble. Not all that nuanced.
But give me a break. I was jet lagged. I was tired. I get all worked up about social policy. And things were only going to get worse.

As anger is bad for my karma, I decided I had had enough but as I reached out to turn the TV off I heard the offending panelist extolling the virtues of President Obama.
Oh the horror.
She is a democrat.
A. Democrat.
A DEMOCRAT.
Unapologetic. Unaware.
I felt cheated. I got angry. Seething. And I stayed angry.
That was fun for my colleagues, let me tell you. But they got over it, whereas I didn't.

When exactly was it that we stopped believing that things can change? When was it that we, the human race, collectively resigned ourselves to the fact that the way things are is the way things will always be, apart from the times when they just get worse?
'We need to be realistic' said the panelists. And what they meant was: we need to give little, care little, change little.
'We need to be realistic' say the coalition of the damned in the UK. And what they mean is dare little, probe little, concede little.
'We need to be realistic' say the Greek authorities. And what they mean is we refuse to take responsibility for the violence that ravages our society and the misery that has come to define us.

Well sod that.
If realistic means resigned, cowardly, settled then count me out.
If realism entails ditching all your dreams and just sitting out the game then realism is the enemy.

I've said it before and I will say it again: citizenship is not a spectator sport.
Society is not other people.
The future is not written.
Citizenship is made up of caring, acting and turning up.
Society is you.
And the future is what you make of it.
And if we are to stand a chance, people, 2011 had better be the year of unrealism.

We need not be realistic any more – let's face it, we've been realistic for so long now and look where that got us? We need to dream, we need to hope, we need to dare.
2011. Brand new year. As good a time to start as any.

New Year's Resolution

2010-12-22T15:17:00.000-08:00

Dear Readers. Dear Friends.
You have faith. You have patience.
I have no excuse.

No that's not right.
I have many excuses.
But no reasons. None good enough anyway.

So thanks for bearing with me. Thanks for waiting for me.
I will be back in the New Year. I shall blog.
With the same anger and renewed intensity.
With the same indignation and increased frequency.

I shall blog.
In the meantime, merry christmas everybody.

Economics for dummies aka us

2010-08-13T04:41:00.000-07:00

I don’t know why we bother with government and the IMF in Greece.
The sort of policies we end up with could have been devised by a 7-year old who read the back flap of an economics textbook while waiting for his mum to take him to school.

Ignoring the complicated charts, omitting the long words, leaving out the hard bits involving money supply, employment statistics, growth, sustainability and other such luxuries that Greece has no time for anyway, our industrious 7-year old understands the basics and proceeds from there.

The first idea he grasps is that governments need cash and cash comes from taxes so let’s increase those because we need loads of cash. And since he’s only 7, he can’t be expected to come up with convoluted systems for establishing how taxation is to be calculated and collected. He can’t be expected to assess equitable burden sharing or sensible collection timings. He can’t be expected to ponder on the free rider problem or tackle tax evasion. He’s 7 for crying out loud. He has realised taxes are needed so he shall collect taxes by extraordinary collections. It’s simpler that way. I need, I take.

The second idea he grasps from the blurb at the back of his ‘economics for dummies’ book is that any economy needs people to spend money in order to keep going. Stimulating consumer spending is indeed a vital parameter in overcoming a recession so our 7 year old has done well here. But how can you make sure people spend? Especially when times are hard, salaries low, basic goods expensive and the financial insecurity of the job market is exacerbated by 7 year olds imposing extraordinary tax collections?

Well, how does mum make sure you brush your teeth before bed? She makes you.

So, our 7 year old has sensibly concluded that, if you need people to spend in order to stimulate the economy, then you make them spend. And if they don’t spend enough – ‘enough’ here being determined on the basis of what the state believes you make and what the state believes you should be able to ‘spare’ – then you get fined.
It’s neat, it’s simple, it works. And if you are 7, it also shows rare acumen.

Only the Greek Prime Minister is not 7.
And he should know that increased taxation, extraordinary collections and fines on under-spending based on income assumptions made on the basis of tax return figures simply squeezes one segment of your population dry: The ones who pay taxes already. The ones who declare their income already. The ones that are doing what they can already.
In a country where tax evasion is an epidemic, the government’s tax policy penalises those who fail to tax evade. The government is punishing the good guys.

What would my 7 year old have to say about that?
He’d say that if you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t, then you might as well not and at least stand a chance of not getting caught. But he’d also tell you that his mummy never taught him that. His mummy taught him to be good. His mummy taught him that being good is never punished.

And although, given his age, he’s doing a decent enough job at understanding the bare bones of economics 101, which is all he is going to need if he chooses to go into government, his mummy is really doing a lousy job preparing him for his subsequent career as a Greek citizen and taxpayer.

Citizenship is not a spectator sport

2010-06-19T03:53:00.000-07:00

Let me start by outing myself: the title is not mine. The line is Robert Putnam's but it's so good, so succinct and so, well, true that I am stealing it and stealing it with pride. I dare say he'd approve.
So.
Democracy. Citizenship. Voting. And we are done till the next time. Right?
Right. If what you want to end up with is Greece.
No? Didn't think so.

So here's the low down.
Greece has a mammoth fiscal crisis and a deep economic crisis. Money supply issues collide with the net deficit in economic outputs across the board; add to that financial mis-management, corruption and the almost total absence of industry and manufacturing, the decline of agriculture and tourism and the untouchability of shipping and you have Greece in the year of our Lord 2010.
And yes our governments are to blame. All of them, since 1974.
And, of course, citizenship does come in, in as far as we voted for them but really what choice did we have? Lesser evil at best. Devil you know at worst.
Citizenship in representative democracies is not all it's cracked up to be. And whatnot.
Political corruption, venality, patronage, complete lack of transparency and accountability all conspire to make politics a sordid occupation anyway. Good people don't run for office and citizens know better than to take the whole damn mess seriously.

So the economic crisis comes with a deep stateness crisis, profound legitimacy deficits and endemic institutional malfunctioning that is never addressed so it only gets worse with time.
And when real problems hit, delays, poor decision-making and finger pointing are the order of the day. Even though real lives may be at risk.

Take this week, for instance.
Our national outstanding debt to medical suppliers and ill-advised attempts to bring down the cost of medications by 35% meant that the pharmas are simply redicrecting supplies away from Greece leaving the country with a serious shortage in, among other things, insulin.
While the government are negotiating down, stalling and scribbling out figures a suspended death sentence is hovering over the country's 800,000 diabetics. There are no two ways about it. The government is failing us. And there is nothing we can do right now.

So we are victims, really. Of our circumstances and our governments. Of our own choices and our own powerlessness. There is nothing we can do. There is nothing we could have done.
We 'called' it, you know. We saw it coming. We shook our heads at the television screen.
But what can one person do?

The answer to that is unequivocal and simple. One person can do everything. Anything. All of it. Or none of it.
You make your bed and you sleep in it.
Of course our governments are to blame. But so are we.
Not because we voted them in. But because we decided that once that was done, citizenship was over till next time.
So we lived within our concentric circles of home, family, clan and patronage bonds. Never feeling responsible for the butterfly effects of our choices and actions. Never thinking that people we don't directly know matter. That we should matter to them. That community is only real if enough people act like it already exists. And unless you act like it exists then it doesn't. Simple as.
Never stopping to think that 'it's no skin off my nose' is the sort of attitude that sustains dictatorships, allows environmental destruction to go on unchecked and breeds the perfect environment for abuses of all kinds.
We are to blame for everything, because we did nothing. Nothing to stop bad stuff from becoming endemic. Nothing to make good stuff part of the picture.

And before the cynics call me naïve, please do some reading.
Civic engagement and civil society participation are statistically positively correlated with economic prosperity, political stability, personal health and well-being, crime reduction – and the list goes on. Engaging with the community builds trust in human interactions and faith in other people. It creates a shared purpose and the conviction that change is possible. It makes corruption seem less of a necessary evil and more of an unacceptable and unaffordable transaction cost. It makes inefficiency seem less unavoidable and failure less inevitable.
Civic engagement teaches people that the personal is the political and back again.
And it teaches people to take responsibility for their actions and expect others to do the same.

I just heard of someone being mugged at needlepoint in front of the National Theatre in the heart of Athens. Junkie, used needle and fear.
Who's fault is that? Who's responsibility? Who's problem?
No-one's, everyone's, yours. Mine.

Greeks were never ones for civil society.
Civic connectedness outside the home, caring and contributing outside the family, protecting and nurturing outside the clan, that's not how we roll.
And now that our streets are full of the homeless and desperate, every street corner crowded with prostitutes and every step shadowed by beggars, now what do we think of social connectedness? Nothing. We think nothing.
We think foreign mafias are to blame for the increase in crime rates and prostitution. We think the influx of immigrants can explain the rising numbers of rough sleepers. We think successive corrupt governments and continuous bad governance explain the state of affairs.
We think we are victims. We think there is nothing we can do.
So we do nothing. We watch and wait and despair.
Because we are convinced there is no other way. Because we have forgotten that citizenship is not a spectator sport.
Because we have forgotten one basic fact of life: if you want change, you need to make it. If you want things to get better, you need to get up, roll your sleeves up and join the fray.

If you want a future then there is only one way to look at this whole damn mess:
Our country. Our community. Our problem.

Back in business - and it's business as usual all round

2010-06-02T03:33:00.000-07:00

About time I broke the radio silence, don't you think?

You will be pleased to hear – one hopes – that I am not dead and neither have I given up blogging. But despite the obvious raw material over the past few weeks, I have found the situation in Greece too overwhelming to write about and the UK election too underwhelming to write about.
So radio silence it was.

Not because I've lost my interest in politics, not because I've lost my sense of profound engagement with, well, everything but because my usual outrage has recently been replaced by stunned disbelief and an ever-spreading sadness.

But I will confess that I have been perking up recently.
Things in Greece are stable for the time being, which is the best one can hope for; this United Kingdom of ours has a government and it's not an all-blue one (thank god for small mercies) and the World Cup is about to kick off. What's not to like?

Well.
Although the French Open is keeping me from switching back to the news channels as frequently as my natural proclivities would demand, there is no avoiding the fact that the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico is still not off the headlines, with six weeks of recriminations and environmental horror pushing us inexorably towards a criminal investigation, empty talk and an as yet unknown impact on our life and health as a species.
At least BP's shares plummeted by 13% yesterday. As I was saying. Small mercies.
According to the Guardian this was the worst one-day fall for 18 years for what was once Britain's most valuable company.

But have the mighty fallen?
Will Obama ban BP from operating in the US? For a time? For ever? Will he take the whole industry to task? Will he find scapegoats and allow the industry at large to proceed in a business-as-usual fashion?

Business-as-usual is a powerful motivator.
Keep things ticking over, restore public confidence, avoid dips in the stock-market, work-force contractions and costly regulatory adjustments.
Of course it all makes sense.
Until the next time we fail to prevent bad things from happening because we focused more on functional continuity than systemic soundness.

Big words, fancy talk and yada yada but it's not just oil spills I'm talking about.
We seem to be living in a chicken-and-egg, told-ya-so universe where nothing gets fixed for fear of missing a beat.
Issues big and small don't get dealt with until they explode and then all they get is a band aid.
If Britain had a different electoral system, legitimacy would not be such an elusive concept for its elected representatives but to achieve electoral reform you need to disrupt government business-as-usual for at least 5 minutes and we can't be having that.
If Greece streamlined and cleaned up its state sector then you wouldn't need to worry about having to bail them out again in 10 years or this current bailout going off track. But cleaning up the public sector will delay the implementation of the bailout and we can't be having with that.
And on and on, business-as-usual.

And forgive the cynicism when I say this, but what was Israel's raid on the aid shipment to Gaza other than business-as-usual? They do their thing, counting on the world's obsession with moving on and going back to normal.
Bullets, zodiacs full of soldiers and submarines. Outrage. Riots, Diplomats shaking their heads and the threat of an investigation.
Oh no, now the Israelis are shaking in their wee boots.

Are we missing something?
With at least 9 dead and insane confusion around what exactly the Israelis were thinking, the explanation that Israel is a big bully isn't quite enough to cover the 'what the hell?' moment we all had when we heard the news a couple of days ago.

And my overwhelming sadness threatens to return.

What sort of a world is this?
So we'll get an investigation. And Israel may even get a slap on the wrist. While everything will be moving back towards business-as-usual. And we can't even hope for small mercies.
Hilary Clinton described the situation in Gaza as 'unsustainable'. At last she noticed.
Now what Hilary dear? Now what?
Now nothing. Now, it's business as usual.

And the cherry on the cake of world madness?
Snazzy, cuddly, pretty Apple had to deal with the embarrassing news of a string of worker suicides allegedly linked to horrible working conditions at the Chinese factory where iPhones and iPads are assembled. Oh the irony.
Steve Jobs must be hating the job now, having to comment on the intimation that cuddly Apple is using sweatshops for fabricating its fancy toys.
And?
And nothing. Apple is selling like mad, overtaking Microsoft as the world's largest technology company by market value and iPads are selling like hotcakes. And although the US justice department is making preliminary inquiries into whether Apple unfairly dominates the digital music market through its iTunes store, it's business-as-usual for Apple despite it all.

Well.
If it's business-as-usual for everyone; if all we can hope for is small mercies; if I-told-ya-so is the best we can do, then it better be business-as-usual for me too. Because I may not be able to change a damn thing but I can roll my eyes at the newspapers and shake my fist in anger.
In short, I'm back. Yeah yeah, small mercies indeed.

Home

2010-05-05T08:42:00.000-07:00

Greece riots on every TV screen.
3 dead.
And I have no words.
Only silent despair.
And tears.

Election special: vote to change how you vote

2010-04-30T08:09:00.000-07:00

Election-time in the UK is fast approaching so get your party hats on and sing a happy song, for it is election time and we have all fallen into the trap of watching the leaders' debate and reading the rankings as if they mattered.
Don't they? You ask.
Of course they don't, I reply – and not, for once, just to be controversial.

The leaders' debate is interesting. It shows you how photogenic your new prime minister will be. How good a debater. How good at repeating or creating sound-bites. It may even give you a tiny little glimpse of what his politics will be like once elected, but let's not get over-excited. These guys are trying to get elected, not give you an insight on how realism and constraints on the ground influence policy-making in real life.

The numbers that we all pore over the morning after each debate are also interesting. But ultimately completely misleading.
So we know who the country, overall, would vote for if choosing a prime minister across the nation was how we voted over here. But it ain't so the figures we look at are no use at all in understanding what will happen with the election. They would and could be useful in another place, one with oh I don't know a proportional representation electoral system, perhaps? But this is not that place and looking at those figures is not simply a waste of time, it is a deeply misleading political proposition.

First past the post, folks.
That means you vote for your MP, not your PM.
Yes, yes I know you often actually just choose a party; often not even knowing what your local MP stands for – although you really should not be doing that because that is not how electoral responsibility works in this country but that's another conversation for another time. And yes you vote 'Labour' but you voting Labour doesn't necessarily help Labour get elected. Or the Lib Dems, more to the point.

Diffuse support all over the country is no good whatsoever for making it into government in this United Kingdom of ours. You need concentrated support in a winning number of constituencies. That doesn't even mean a majority in said constituencies. It just means more than the other guys.
An excellent system for choosing your MPs who will then go on to form a government. A pretty poor system for choosing a presidential-style Prime Minister or which party you want in government.

So cut back to the debates.
You look at the three of them and make your choice. 'I'll have Clegg. I like his politics, I like his wife, I like that he doesn't do God, he's my sort of guy'.
And now what?
In a PR system if you vote Lib Dem, you've voted Lib Dem. Your votes towards both your local MP and the government swing the same way. But what about here? You vote Lib Dem and maybe your candidate gets the seat and you are home free. But if not? You may actually be helping the bad guys (whoever you deem them to be) get into government.
Does that matter?
It depends. If you think you are choosing a government on polling day, it matters a great deal.
And our parties seem to want us to choose a government, to select a premier and only as an afterthought also choose our MPs on polling day.
Which is fine, it is how many countries successfully run their democracies after all. But their electoral system fits the way their election is being fought so at least the numbers add up. Most of the time. All things being equal.

So now what?
We are in the land in-between, where the way we are encouraged to vote by party political broadcasts, manifestos, debates and advertising has absolutely no connection to the way we actually vote, the way our vote counts or is counted. Voters in Wonderland and through the looking glass nothing is as it seems so you don't get what you bargained for.

Electoral reform is needed, my friends. Or a return to fighting a pre-election campaign that is suitable to our electoral system.
Eliminating the disconnect between the choice we are given and the way we can make it is the only way to help democracy remain vibrant and relevant in this country. So. If you want to give me presidential-style debates, if you want me to think of politics at party-level and in terms of sweeping national mandates, give me a voting system that allows me to make those choices without unwittingly helping re-elect the people I wanted out in the first place.

Democracy needs informed, responsible voters or it perishes.
So here we are .
Traditionally the main defense of the current system has been its empowering simplicity.
But the simplicity is outdated and its guardians are making the most of the disconnect between the way we vote and the way those votes are counted. Apart from Clegg. He's honest about the need for electoral reform – especially as he stands to gain from it most of all.
Actually, that's not true.
He stands to gain more than any other party.
But the real victor, that would be us. You. The voters. The people.
So power to us, damn it. It is a democracy after all.
And although we tend to forget all about participation between elections, let's at least remember on polling day.
And make it count.
If not in the grand scheme of things then let's at least make the numbers add up.

Eyjafjallajökull is a bit of a mouthful. So is globalisation.

2010-04-20T01:23:00.001-07:00

Can't pronounce Eyjafjallajökull?
Fret not my friend for you are not alone. None of us can. But you don't need to be able to pronounce it. Everyone is talking about 'it'. Any mention of 'ash' or your auntie being stranded and you are immediately and perfectly intelligible without twisting your tongue. The effects of the volcano are so pervasive that you don't need to be able to name the culprit to get your point across.

Airplanes have been grounded for days.
People are stranded for an ever-lengthening string of days in places they had visited for a long weekend or for a couple of meetings. Because that's how we have come to expect things to be. Hopping from place to place is not a miracle of science. It's a mundane fact of life for the globalised era. Only now, thanks to Eyjafjallajökull, people, mail and goods are going nowhere fast.

Goods are taking the scenic route, by ship, while the 'Armada' is setting sail to rescue stranded Brittons on the continent.
'Operation Volcano' is, according to the Daily Mail, 'a rerun of the 1940 Dunkirk evacuation'.
Easy on the drama guys.
Or, come to think of it, pile it on because this is as dramatic as drama gets.
Yes it's a bummer that holidays were missed, return dates pushed back, shipments of this and that and the odd parcel have been delayed. But it would not be excessive to suggest that this incident, these last few days have been an alarm bell for the fragility of our entire civilisation model.

Maybe Eyjafjallajökull is Icelanding for 'how could you not have seen this coming?'.
First with global banking. Now with globalisation.
First cash and now ash. Thanks lads. Much obliged.

Can't pronounce Eyjafjallajökull? How about 'globalisation', can you manage that?
We have long lived with the assumption that the world is getting smaller. That you could pop over to New York for a weekend, take a day trip to Paris, nip over to Dublin for a meeting.
And now we are grounded. Literally.
63,000 flights canceled since Thursday – and counting.
1 million people stranded.
Not to mention the millions of trips that did not take place at all and flights that never got booked.
The cost to the airlines is astronomical.
The overall cost of the crisis is even higher.

And the real crisis is yet to be thought through.
Because while we are waiting for the ash to clear and trying to figure out how to pronounce Eyjafjallajökull, our entire civilisation model is on hold and none of us have voiced what we should all be thinking.

Everything from international sporting events to business, from leisure to high-value goods deliveries and mail, relies on thousands of airplanes criss-crossing the ether every day. It's not simply a matter of convenience. Our entire civilisation is based on the assumption that people and goods can move freely and speedily. That is the premise of globalisation. Without that, the entire system hollows out.

Don't celebrate the end of the global era quite yet. For now, no systemic change is thought about For now, we just wait. But we don't know how long this will last or how long we can physically be kept waiting for. Or when we may need to start waiting again.
When the volcano last erupted in 1821 it remained active for 13 months. There's a sobering thought.
You may not be able to pronounce Eyjafjallajökull but you can surely say 'oh dear'.

So what does this mean in real terms?
It means you may have to go without mangetout and mangoes for a while. Forgive me if I don't weep for you.
You may have to go without supplies for engineering and IT hardware needs. Or wait until a boat or lorry brings them over. Delays will cost money. But they will be absorbed in the end.
Arms supplies may be affected. As may, possibly, the drugs trade. Not so sad now.
But it will also mean shortages in pharmaceutical supplies. Unless a plan for road and sea supply routes is implemented soon, before the shortages come near.

Carbon emissions will go down. Although there is talk of severe melt-down (no pun intended) around Eyjafjallajökull which is not good news. But then again it's part of the bad news we already know. And then there is the sister volcano that may still erupt and if that goes, we have no way of knowing what that will mean, for us, in real terms.

But what about the bad news that we haven't yet thought about?
For now we are all waiting for the volcano to stop and life to resume.
We expect this disruption to last however long it lasts – although we hope it won't last as long as last time – and then things will go back to normal. Mail, goods, drugs and people will cross continents with speed and reliability.
Amen.

But until then?
Until then we are left staring at the face of a civilisation that was kicked in the gut and is panting on the floor. For all our triumph over nature, our commercial giants and the leaps of science, there was no real plan B in place. And there isn't one still.
Our over-reliance on planes is mental as well as practical. Our planes are grounded and we wait. Because we cannot fathom that other ways of doing things are as valid. Or essential.

The newsflash is simple: you can't say Eyjafjallajökull but surely you can say 'nature' and remind yourself we don't actually run it. Even though we often pretend we do.
Our entire civilisational paradigm is based on a massive assumption: that we can fly. Freely. Frequently. At a moment's notice.
And while we can't, maybe we could have a think about what our over-reliance on the airline industry means. What our over-reliance on shipping goods and people across oceans and continents super-fast actually means and how we can live and live well when, for whatever reason, that can't go ahead as planned.

Now, while we wait, we are just waiting. We are not doing any thinking.
We never do any thinking.

But what if Eyjafjallajökull is Icelandic for 'suckers, the system has a massive weakness, how did you fail to spot it this time?'
Oh hold on. It wasn't just this time. It was also last time.

So maybe Eyjafjallajökull is icelandic for 'our arrogance is our worst enemy'.
The money markets. The global nexus. Our 'small world'.
Maybe Eyjafjallajökull actually stands for 'we will never learn'.
Even when we are forced to wait and all we can do is think, we still don't.
Meanwhile nature is doing its thing, despite our plans.
Inconsiderate thing that it is.

The future is what you dream of it

2010-03-31T01:39:00.000-07:00

'No future' sang my beloved sex pistols. Maybe they had Greece in mind. Maybe they had the world in mind. Maybe they were talking of us all. This country is also going to the dogs, say my English friends. Seriously guys, get in line.

Yes our economy (let's not forget, I am a UK tax payer after all) is still not showing signs of recovery. Yes the budget was a bit of a joke. Yes the upcoming election is scaring me (Brown or Cameron? It's a voter's Sophie's choice). Yes I am slightly bemused by the eviction of an Israeli diplomat and the nursery school language used to describe it: 'the Israeli government promised never to do this again' ('this' being the forgery of UK passports) but the UK government stomped its feet because 'they told us the same thing the last time' (they forged passports) and this is a major blow to our 'friendship' so no kissing and making up.
One diplomat gets kicked out, Milliband doesn't go to the Israeli Embassy party (I kid you not) and we are all very stressed about 'what it all means' about the future of British-Israeli relations, about whether forging traveling documents is common practice among spies and international men of mystery and about whether sending the diplomat away was excessive, appropriate or inadequate.

And the Greek in me goes 'seriously folks, you call these problems?'.
And the rest of me (the adult, the political scientist, the voter, the tax payer) thinks 'these are serious problems. They are serious enough without being systemic. They are serious without marking the demise of the entire socio-economic edifice of the state'. That's the sort of thing that should be worrying the media and citizens in a civilised, stable, European democracy.
Not whether there is a future, but how to make the future better than the present.

Not 'how do you deal with your select troops (see SEAL equivalent) who decided that a national holiday parade was a good locus to shout out racist abuse of the worst kind?'
Not 'why did a 15-year-old Afghan refugee die of what sounds scarily like an IED hidden in a rubbish pile in downtown Athens?'
Not 'how do you stop gunmen from robbing diners at point blank in fashionable Athenian restaurants?'

With shouts and screams of 'we will spill your Albanian blood' and 'we will sew ourselves suits made of your skin' Greece's select troops have waltzed into a massive inquiry at the end of which, I trust, heads will roll. But will the damage be undone?
Will the people who watched these soldiers perform hate chants in unison, chants that had evidently been practiced, sporting weapons and the insignia of the state: flag, badge, uniform, will these people ever forget the fear? The shame? The anger? The horror?
Is the damage to the future to be undone by a committee?

And only days later a young boy, running away from the random death meted out on the streets of his native Afghanistan, dies of an unclaimed bomb/IED on the streets of Athens. Was he rummaging through the rubbish to find food? That in itself is heart-breaking. That in itself deserves a million posts. But that in itself is not the full story. Was he simply curious to see what lay in an abandoned bag? He had fled to safety, after all, to a place where curiosity doesn't kill the cat. Only it does and it did.

And it's not an isolated incident.
Random violence has been on the news and on our minds since the day Alexandros Grigoropoulos died. It's not all connected. It's not continuous. It's not all part of one story. But it is now constantly there. Be it police or anti-police violence, random gunmen, random explosions, stray bullets.
Be it armed men relieving people of wallets and jewelery in Athens restaurants.

What are we dealing with here?
It sounds like law and order is suspended, expectations of mutuality and social self-healing are irreparably breached and fear reigns supreme. Add to that a thick lather of financial insecurity, shame and fear at what the future holds, poverty and grim fiscal prospects and what have you got?
A country that has long since gone to the dogs and sees no way out.
Which is what many Britons think is happening to their country at the moment.

'Don't compare Greece to England' is the rejoinder I get from everyone. And I understand why they say that but, by the same token, it's the fact that we can't compare these two EU-member states, these two European democracies, that holds all the answers to our current predicament.
Why can't we compare them?
Because despite the crises, the problems, the corruption (don't forget Britain is currently in the midst of a new scandal whereby key Labour figures were busted trying to 'sell' their influence to the highest bidder and, on the back of the expenses fiasco, British politics is beginning to look distinctly continental all of a sudden) there is an expectation that the institutions will hold. Disintegration is not on the cards. Over here, the 'country going to the dogs' does not entail a genuine fear of complete lawlessness.
Going to the dogs does not entail the fear of 'shutting up shop' that underlies Greek political discourse over the past few months.

But why not? Are things really that different?
Corruption, poverty, unemployment are plaguing both countries.
Violence too.

A boy was stabbed to death in Victoria station a few days ago. In plain daylight.
A boy died of a rogue bomb in central Athens a few days ago. In the middle of the night.

Bad news all round.
Maybe we are all going to the dogs.

Yet in Greece we are rolling our eyes and shrugging our shoulders and saying 'what can you do' and 'oh it's bad, isn't it' whereas over here people have an unshakeable faith that they deserve more. Where the Greeks expect worse to follow, the Brits demand that their representatives pull their socks up. 'We are going to the dogs' they say 'and we won't be having with that'.
Where the Greeks sing along with the Sex Pistols, the Brits demand Annie.
'The sun will come out tomorrow' to our 'no future for me'.

Maybe that is the main difference after all.
Maybe we have forgotten how to believe in better, how to hope for more.
Maybe we are going to the dogs because we don't know how to think up a different future. Maybe we should start by hoping again. And believing.
For now, the Greeks proudly think that hope is for wimps and small children.
And we despair with our heads held high.

What change should look like

2010-03-22T10:42:00.000-07:00

This is what change looks like. Said Obama.
Yes we can. Said the Democrats.
And lo and behold, the healthcare bill passed.
Was it simple? No.
Was it fast? No.
Was it everything we had hoped for? No.
No. No. No. But it was something. Both a practical solution to America's oldest social responsibility deficit and a symbolic move that change is not always for the worst. And many had said it can't be done.

That made me smile.
I haven't smiled at the news in a while.
But the smile didn't last long.
A text message flashed up on my phone a few minutes ago 'factions fighting on the streets, tourist organisations declaring Greece unsafe'. Thanks for shattering my zen. You know who you are.

'It is unthinkable that Europe won't support us' said the Greek prime minister.
No 'this is what change looks like' grandeur in our neck of the woods.
'We consider it unthinkable for the European Union not to give us the assistance and political support we are asking for' said our Premier.
And that is the extent of his policy.
And although it is most probably true – joining the euro didn't come with a withdrawal clause as such, you didn't keep your old currency in the attic 'just in case things didn't work out'. Failure was not an option. That was not the general idea. We were in this together from now on and whatnot.
So of course Europe will help. But Europe will be bitter and difficult about it every step of the way. In the middle of the current crisis, on the back of Germany's strop, the last thing Europe wants to do is help the destitute relative. The last thing they are prepared to do is be gallant about it.
And if the extent of our policy is 'sit back, have another mushroom vol-au-vent, they'll help us, what else can they do' then we need to be prepared for quite a bit more abuse from Germany.

Not that I think that the German press's puerile hate campaign is ok. But then again I don't think the way we've been running our affairs is ok either. And as two wrongs don't make a right, I wish the global press paused long enough to realise that the people mopping up the mess, picking the tab, suffering the cut backs, shouldering the extra tax and suffering the shame of this prolonged press campaign actually have no way of changing their fate. Never did.
And spare me the crap about democracies and the responsibility of the electorate. Procedural democracies with entrenched party systems tend to be stable Polyarchies with limited choice for the electorate whose participation only occurs every five years and in-between civil society is dormant, transparency wanting and accountability faint. Add to that Greece's deep-seated paternalistic venality, favouritism and clan mentality and what you have is a system of extremely qualified access and representation by numbers. Short of a revolution, there is very little 'the people' can do and the Commission wouldn't want a revolution within the eurozone now would they?

So go easy on us because we don't like our leaders any more than you do but we are the ones who have to pay the bills and live with the corruption and the shame.

And before you quote myself back at me, I know that I always bang on about public responsibility and I do not intend to go back on that now or ever. We are responsible writ large for our own society. And we are responsible for our lack of collective action, for the lack of civil society mobilisation. And for the lack of revolution damn it.
But one thing we cannot be held responsible for is our inability to get ourselves out of this bind right now. Social change does not occur fast enough. And global fiscal systems are interlinked with corporate power structures and government, not civil society actors and citizen associations.

Pointing out the obvious? Perhaps.
But as I keep telling my students at the university, the one thing that most political theories forget is real people. As I keep telling my colleagues in the City, the one thing most fiscal systems forget is real people.
But it's real people who die in wars and real people who represent that strange and wonderful animal that is 'consumer confidence'. And it is real people that are living in fear, insecurity and shame in Greece now. And none of them are in government or in a position to do anything right now other than suffer.
And what good is that doing anyone?

If the Commission went straight to the culprits I'd scream off with their heads and accept any stringent regulations that were thereafter imposed on our society. Do we need to up our game? Absolutely. Us the people need to do more. Need to be more.
But to do that we need to be able to stand up. If our backs are broken we are no good for growth and future prosperity.

News coming out of Greece at the moment is the exact opposite to the wonderful feel-good victory feel of news out of the USA. Yes they can and they did. And we cannot and did not. But we could.

Bear with us, is what the Greek government is telling the EU.
We will tax the Church (at last). What else will we do? We don't know. But bear with us.
The EU need to see more.
Damn it. We need to see more. Because we are tired of paying and being mocked by everyone, our government included. And there is little we, the citizens, can do right now. So.

That's what change looks like said Obama.
And why did that matter?
Because he made things happen. Because not only did he remember the real people. He actually made policy for them.

Mr Papandreou, it's your turn to show us what change looks like or face the consequences. Real people are watching.

Selling off the family silver

2010-03-05T02:29:00.000-08:00

My mother was right.

'Are we even a country any more' she asked me, after the EU Financial Salvation Army made clear what the price of salvage was actually going to be.

At the time I made some vague noises around conceptual issues and the idea of statehood but as it turns out, she knew what she was talking about and I can just stuff my statehood notions. After explaining to my mother that countries are not businesses for whom bankruptcy can well mean selling off assets and shutting up shop and that borrowing and lending at the state level carries a different set of caveats than corporate lending does, I may just have to eat my words.

You must have heard of the two Germans, an MP and a finance expert, who suggested during an interview that Greece should sell off a few islands and maybe the Parthenon to pay off its debts?
Crazy? Possibly.
But yesterday the article was reprinted in the Guardian. In the Business section. Not the funny pages. Not in the spirit of 'comment is free'. And although it was treated as preposterous, it was still printed. In the Guardian. In the Business section.

So get in line guys.
Crete and Mykonos are already spoken for and me and a couple of mates are clubbing together for Santorini but the rest is available so have a look at the map and take your pick.

Now Josef Schlarmann and Frank Schaeffler didn't actually suggest we sell off the good islands, they are economists after all and this is a practical solution for them: Greece keeps the islands that bring in tourist revenue and the ones that are inhabited at a push – the logistical nightmare of relocation is just not worth it – and uninhabited islets that currently generate no revenue go up for sale.
Oh and the odd antiquity goes up for sale too.

"Those in insolvency have to sell everything they have to pay their creditors. Greece owns buildings, companies and uninhabited islands, which could all be used for debt redemption" Schlarmann told the Bild.

Buildings? If the country's debt would be settled by selling the odd building we wouldn't be where we are now. As for Greece's state-run businesses, again, if they were appealing prospects for private investors we wouldn't be in such dire straits. So. Islands and nuggets of history it shall be, decree our German friends.
Great.
Gotta love economists. A problem demands a solution and all assets are ultimately for sale. Ergo.

Now granted, I know that these statements are made against the backdrop of a German populace that is against a Berlin-funded bailout for Greece and I can't blame them. But not helping may not be an option within the confines of the euro-zone and although they EU and its powerful members retain the power – and on some level the right – to demand austerity measures, cut-backs and tightened belts, surely there is a limit to what can be asked of us.

Or is there?

Because, let's face it, this is no joke.

Of course the Bild headline Sell your islands, you bankrupt Greeks! And sell the Acropolis too! was, one would hope, tongue in cheek, the idea is out there. Granted, in the UK at least it has been printed and reprinted as a preposterous idea that is now on the table.
Preposterous. And on the table.
And Merkel is meeting Papandreou, in Berlin today. And she is not going to suggest that we sell off the Acropolis. Or antiquities. Because I am hoping her advisors have filled her in on the EU's legal and moral stand on matters pertaining to the trading in civilisation and cultural artifacts.
But uninhabited islands are real-estate and the idea is out there.

So could future maps show a bit of Austria in the Aegean? A bit of Malaysia in the Ionian sea? Could school-kids in future generations learn that Greece shares borders with Turkey, Bulgaria, Albania and Unilever since their purchase of the island of Evoia?

Of course Evoia is populated – not to mention massive – so it wouldn't be an obvious candidate for sale but the underlying concern is the same: when a distinct and contiguous piece of land – however small – is sold to an individual, company or foreign government what jurisdiction is there on that island? Logically the pre-existing national jurisdiction remains because what you sell is a plot of land, not sovereignty.

So what's the big deal? Land is bought and sold in Greece all the time.
And what the Germans don't know is that there is a law in Greece that protects public access to all beaches. So if Mr Schlarmann buys himself an island, I can always paddle out there and sun myself on his beach whether he likes it or not.
So what difference does it make, if the plot of land sold to an individual, company or government is on the beach or in the middle of the sea in the shape of a tiny little island?

Is it just that we resent being told what to do?
Is it that we resent the symbolic power of selling off islands rather than the odd field? Chunks of homeland, rather than plots of land?
Is it that we resent the implication of what was said: you are finished anyway so you might as well sell the family heirlooms and the house because you'll be out on the street whether you like it or not.
Or do we resent being told by the Germans who, after all, were the guys who most recently tried to take those islands away by force, and are now seemingly trying a different route? The echoes are deeply unpleasant. That, of course, is a facile criticism but that doesn't make it any less true.

Not that the Greeks would have enjoyed being told to sell by anyone else. The implication of selling distinct chunks of land and antiquities is too stark: you are finished, you are through, the vultures are circling your body and the heirs are already squabbling over the silver. Not a pleasant image and of course we are upset. But let's be honest with ourselves.

We are not upset just because two very practical teutonic economists found very practical teutonic solutions to a practical hellenic problem without consideration for our feelings.
We are not upset just because two lone voices in Germany told us we are finished.
We are not upset just because the world press is discussing that we are finished, as if we couldn't hear, as if it didn't matter we can hear.
None of this would matter as much, if we weren't all actually convinced we are finished. And if every solution didn't ultimately feel like selling off the family silver because there's nothing else left to do.

So onto the auction block. And don't forget. I've got first dibs on Santorini. You lot squabble over the rest.

The problem with Greece

2010-02-18T08:00:00.001-08:00

If I had a penny for each time someone asked me 'so what on earth happened in Greece' I could be retiring to an exotic destination round about now, with funds enough to sustain a life of leisure and several pina colladas a day. I don't even like pina colladas. But anything would be better than having to explain to people that the only viable answer to 'what on earth happened in Greece' is nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing happened in Greece.
And that means two things.
It means, nothing happened in Greece – from a fiscal and economic perspective. Nothing was done to fix any of the pre-existing fiscal and economic problems and that is the problem.
It also means nothing new has happened in Greece. Things have been bad for a very long time. But now you noticed. The global markets noticed. And the moment they noticed, confidence – what little there was of it – died and with it died Greece's obscurity. You are no longer an embarrassing relative that can't keep their house in order. You are the problem child that needs to be chastised, disciplined and brought to order.
Well.

We should have seen it coming.
We always knew we were a problem child. Did we think we'd never get grounded?
That's what people had in mind when they were saying 'join the Eurozone, then Europe will be responsible for saving us. We won't be able to hurt ourselves too badly any more'. True words. But I am not sure what type of rescue they had in mind. Galloping stallions, gallant princes and pats on the back? Not a stern warning and instructions to cut spending and pull our socks up.

The Greeks are shamed. Why us and not the Irish?
The Greeks are angry. Demonstrations protesting salary cuts, demanding investment.
And the moon on a stick.

The Greeks are afraid. Are we still our own country, after we've been bullied, made to buy military equipment we neither need nor can afford only to be given money to buy it with? Are we still a real independent state, after the big boys have stepped in, settled in, changed the wallpaper?
We are to be kept under observation, now, of course. Of course.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.

If this was a lecture, this is where I would introduce the idea of a 'failed state'. But it's not a lecture. And it's not an account of a far away land. This is my homeland we are talking of and objectivity goes out the window as my heart breaks every time I hear Greece mentioned on the news.
The news.
Some times sympathetic. Some times outrageous. Always bad.

The Observer wondered out loud a few days ago whether Greece is up for a coup. Seriously. Sack the idiot who wrote that and the idiot who hired them because if you don't know Greece's military is emasculated and largely rudderless – and therefore incapable of political action, at last – then you should not be allowed to publish your drivel. One thing we learned over the last century is to keep the generals out of politics. With hindsight, we should have kept the politicians out too.

Because let's face it, this is several decades' worth of financial mismanagement catching up with us. And yet we've learned nothing. And the Greek government is still acting as if tricks will fix this.
Encourage consumer spending, say the economics textbooks, I know what I'll do, says the Greek government: I will make things like eating out tax deductible, then I will both tax and fine people who don't hit a certain level of spending. That should do it.

That's so perverse I can't even laugh about it.
Or maybe I can't laugh because after years of teaching development policy to keen-eyed students, I know how the mechanics of international debt work. I know what good governance standards entail and I know what happens next. Which is invariably nothing.
Nothing happens. Things don't get worse. Things don't get better. Things don't slide but they don't improve either. Purgatory for the fiscally irresponsible.

And this will be soon the problem with Greece.
For now, the problem with Greece is Greece.
The problem with Greece is that to the world Greece is the problem.
The problem with Greece is that to some of us it's home. And our home is on fire.

Collateral damage

2010-01-26T07:01:00.000-08:00

'What the hell are you doing to the Euro?'

That is how a client greeted me on arrival at a meeting last week.
You can imagine my confusion.
I was pretty sure I hadn't done anything to the euro.
Not recently, anyway.
I was pretty confident that my company had done nothing to the euro either – suspecting we would have noticed if we had gotten mighty enough to destabilize the supreme European currency.
The meeting I had just arrived at was decidedly not about the state of the euro. Nor was it about European fiscal policy. But it was taking place in a country where the euro is indeed in use so I suspected my client of wittily referring to something that had hit the news that day, implicating our industry and the fate of the euro.
But no.
None of the above.

Seeing my confused look he elaborated: 'what are you Greeks doing to the Euro?'.
Ah.
That one.
Yes.

What the Greeks are doing to the Euro is hitting the news hard all over the world. Apart from Greece. And I seem to have to personally answer for it wherever I go in Europe.
Thanks guys.

'Was being back home for Christmas really depressing?' asked an Irish friend whose own credit crunched homeland showed signs of wear and strain over the holidays.
But the answer is no, being back in Greece was really not depressing because the vast majority of people have not fully appreciated how bad things are.

How can that be?
'How bad things in Greece are' is on the news all over the world all the time, how can the Greeks not realise?
Are we just unfazed because we are so used to being in trouble?
Are we just serene because our government seems to suggest this ship ain't sinking?
Or are we still calm because we believe in some comforting conspiracy theory: maybe the EU is picking on us but, really, Ireland, Spain and – wait for it – France and Germany are in exactly the same pot and we are just being made an example of. And before you mock me, I didn't make the last one up. I heard it. From a Greek banker. Nuff said.

So. What are the Greeks actually doing to the euro?
In some ways, they are doing no more to the euro than they have been doing to the drachma since time immemorial. Only now they are not on their own, this is not their own little gig – theirs (ours) to mess up to their hearts' content – others are watching and suffering overspill from the Greeks' mess and, to be brutally honest, they don't much like it.

In some way however, we have to ask ourselves, whether this is different to other times because, well, those 'times' have lasted so bloody long that something will eventually have to give. There is no system, no economy, no society that can survive being in a perpetual state of crisis without something either being fixed or ending up irreparably broken.

So which will it be in Greece?
Those of you who have been reading this blog regularly know that optimism is not my strong suit.
And much as I try, I don't see a solution on the horizon.
And I mean this in both senses: I do not see what the possible solution could be given the magnitude, depth and complexity of the problems facing Greece and their multiple interconnections with other problems, in Greece and abroad, that all point to the need for a whole host of radical, visionary and above all rapid solutions to be kicked off at once and, let's face it, when did that ever happen within a state bureaucracy?
But neither do I see a solution (of whatever magnitude) being put on the table by any domestic or international agent, political or regulatory.

So if no solution, then what?
We can hope that things will carry on ticking over.
But for how long?
And when they stop being able to tick along – there is only so much you can do with string and scotch tape and there is little else holding the Greek economy together at the moment – then what?

And to be honest, it's not the euro I am worried about.
At the end of the day, money, the economy, fiscal balance are all semiotic exercises and big boys in big offices will work out a way to stabilise things in the end.
It's the people I'm worried about. The people of Greece who had the euro thrust on them with no protection and after watching their salaries shrink and the cost of their lives soar, after being left with few options and little cash, after being taxed for everything and anything to make up the national deficit, now they are being asked 'what have you done to the euro'?

Well.
On one level, we did back to the euro what the euro did to us.
It's not big, it's not clever but there was little else to do and there is even less to do now other than hope that whatever crisis ensues doesn't end up breaking the backs of Greek wage-earners. Because at the end of the day, it wasn't them who messed up the euro. It was a string of useless governments and although democracy comes with responsibility for those you voted into power, give us a break, already.

So. We know something's gotta give.
I just hope whatever gives, stays in the realm of banking. I hope it stays in the big offices. I hope it stays out of people's homes.
I hope, but I do not trust.

Happy new year. But just how new would you like it?

2010-01-07T03:36:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year to All and to all a good day.

Sadly, I have to report that my pre-festive determination to leave the world at my mother's doorstep largely failed.
Partly because my father is a news junkie (I had to take after someone in my family and I could have done a lot worse, trust me).
Partly because politics is what the Greeks discuss at table. Always and without fail. Ok maybe not all Greeks. But all the ones I am related to do which made all the difference as I was trying to stick to my no-sadness-no-aggravation Christmas diet.
And finally because some of the news is so random that even the dry-cleaner cannot resist offering you his theory on how the police should go about apprehending the Athens sniper (done now, maybe he called the authorities after failing to get the right reaction out of me).

So I failed.
Even though I barricaded myself behind mountains of confectionery, the world with all its despair and madness filtered through.
Christmas-day despair, poverty and desperation reached me as I had feared it might.
And the new year celebrations were no different.
I got to hear about the first casualties in Afghanistan for 2010 – if there could ever be a stronger reminder that the old adage holds strong: different year, same ole crap. People still dying way too young, fighting an un-winnable war, following a bankrupt policy in someone else's ravaged country.

But I've been here before. And I guess that's the point.
As I look through the news – no longer pretending to try to avoid it – I feel more than ever that Christmas is just a time in the calendar. A time during which you put things on ice, maybe, slow things down, perhaps. But Santa never leaves solutions under the tree and goodwill and love don't go beyond our TV screens.
Fine.
Maybe I spent way too long watching made-for-TV American movies in which 'it's Christmas after all' was the line that resolved a seemingly unsolvable problem. 'It's Christmas after all' is what melted the heart of the most hard-nosed unrelenting mean-spirited bastard.

What a thought.
If only we really had a window of time when we could hope to appeal to inner goodness and do what is right on a higher plain. But then again, if that was possible for two weeks a year, it would be conceivable for the rest of the year and where would that get us?

A very nice place, is where it would get us. A fairer, stabler and altogether more livable place, is where it would get us. But it would dent P&L accounts, it would weaken power-holds, it would shift our priorities, the things that make our world go round. It would make our world less like the mess we currently live in and more like the sort of place we pretend we want to live in in Christmas movies.

Well. Sign me the hell up.
I want to live in a place where 'it's Christmas after all' justifies altruism, goodness and a kind gesture. Because I believe that what goes round comes round. And I believe in goodness as a way of life. And if it means I get to live in a more humane world, then I'll believe in Santa Bloody Clause if that's what it takes.

So as I read about Obama facing a mass exodus in the Senate, Brown facing demands for early elections, young boys accusing the Greek police of torture on the island of Patmos, war risks rising in the Sudan and a drive-by shooting at a Coptic church killing seven innocent people in Egypt on their Christmas, what I try to hold onto is my faith. That what we have is not all we can have. That all there is is not all there can be.

That, although it's not Christmas any more, if you are capable of goodness once you are capable of goodness always. That we are capable of goodness once.
Because it is our life and our world and our future, after all. Christmas or not.
So happy new year to all.
Let's see what we can do with this one.

Hell's bells a-jingling or 'sod this, I'm going home'

2009-12-17T03:04:00.000-08:00

The Greek financial crisis made the BBC news. That's how bad it is.

And by that I don't mean that the BBC's nod bestows significance, or strictly come dancing dance-offs and wheely bin face-offs would be events of global import. What I mean is that the financial crisis in Greece got serious enough to be global news, where the Athens riots of last year got a passing mention and the national election of a mere few weeks ago, none at all.

And although normally, when I tell people in London I'm going home for a few days, their eyes glaze over and the croon 'oh lucky you, big blue sky and sandy beaches' even in February (and no, I never let them down by saying Greece is not on the equator and it's cold in winter). Now they shake their heads. My Greekness is cause for concern. 'Oh' the say. 'Oh'. 'Things are bad out there aren't they?'

Yes. Things are bad.
Things have been bad for as long as I can remember and yet still manage to get worse quite regularly. Astonishing really. But not in a good way.

New taxes appearing right left and centre in a desperate attempt to refill the empty state coffers with the massive twin holes in the bottom, deficit on the one side, corruption on the other. New taxes for everything, till the only thing left untaxed is thinking rich thoughts. And if anyone else is reminded of the Sheriff of Nottingham, let me know, because I can't get the story out of my head.

So what is to be done?
There are no jobs and those that exist are tragically underpaid.
Unless you have one of the government or party-related cushy jobs in which case you are not lucky, you are simply part of the problem.
There is no infrastructure, no growth, no fiscal policy.
There is little hope, limited enterprise, no silver lining.

Corruption in government and business alike. Venality. Paternalism.
Violence on the streets, sex on TV.
People living at home till they are 40 and using their meagre salaries as lavish allowances – what is not enough to live on becomes excellent pocket money when all it needs to buy you is over-priced coffees and the latest mobile phone.

Something's gotta give.
The parents who will eventually need to retire, the adults that will eventually need to stand on their own two feet, the flimsy bridge between soaring prices and plummeting salaries.
Something's gotta give.
Will it be riots again? Will it be the EU and the IMF stepping in and sorting us out? Will it be a Christmas miracle like in the movies? I know not.

I know not and, I confess, that for the next few days I will seriously try to care not.
I'll keep my head down and try not to think about any of this. I'll use my euros – bought with pounds that I have earned by myself, living in a home I am paying for myself, sustained by goods and services I am paying for myself through a job that, if nothing else, allows me to be financially independent as people my age should be. Paying predictable, if high, taxes. Living with occasional annoyance but not with despair. That's right. Living away from Greece and only visiting occasionally. As I will tomorrow.
A visitor.
And I'll use my euros to pay for over-priced coffees and exorbitantly priced glasses of local wine. I'll look at the Christmas tree and not the TV screen. I'll read a good novel and not the newspaper.

I'm going home, damn it.
I am going home, not to the crisis, not the crumbling state and social entropy. Not to the violence and the despair. Not even to the hope of a new start.
I am going home to my mum and like so many Greeks before me, I am leaving reality at her doorstep and cocooning myself for a few days. Only for a few days. Then I'll be back to being an adult, a worker, an analyst, a political animal. But not now.
Now I'm off to mum's and with any luck they'll be cookies on the table and cartoons on TV and I may even write a letter to Santa for that new pair of shoes I really want. And peace on earth. And a financial miracle for Greece.
It's Christmas, after all.

Just another Athens Sunday

2009-11-30T07:24:00.000-08:00

Shoot-outs in Athens last night.
And all I hear you say is 'what's new then?'

A man and a woman shot at policemen in Metamorphosis, an Athenian suburb. The story goes that they were flagged down for a routine check, they duly stopped and when the policemen got out of their patrol car the pair, on a motorcycle, opened fire before speeding away and disappearing.

The motorcycle was later recovered but, surprise surprise, it had not been properly registered so we don't know who the Metamorphosis Bonnie and Clyde were, why they were armed and why they were so keen to flee.

And as nobody was injured, this is almost a non-story, buried in the back pages of the few newspapers that deigned to report it. And I am only mentioning it here as a backdrop to the main news: the fact that yesterday Nea Dimokratia got a new leader, a man who will spend the next few years trying to persuade us he is better, not only than his predecessor, but also better than the current prime minister at governing the ungovernable jungle that has become Greece. As of today, he wants to make the Metamorphosis shoot-out his problem. He wants to make the ailing economy his problem. He wants to make all our problems, his problem. So here we are. The scene is set and our great protagonist makes his entrance.
Antonis Samaras.
You cannot be bloody serious.

What's so bad, I hear you ask? Wasn't this man once hailed as the greatest hope for Greece's future?
Yes he was. But that was a long time ago. When we were all waiting for Samaras to save the day with bated breath, I was still in high-school and the New Kids on the Block still had a career.
And there has been nothing but water under the bridge since then. Dirty water under a rickety bridge, to be precise.

But let's be fair.
In many ways, Mr Samaras is a definite upgrade from Mr Karamanlis: he has as strong a pedigree being the son and grandson of famous and respected scientist and artists, he has an excellent educational background with degrees from Amherst and Harvard and, quite unlike Mr Kramanlis, he has experience in government. And that, in many ways, is where the problems start...

Mr Samaras served as Finance, Culture and Foreign Affairs minister throughout the 80s and 90s but, if you ask people what they remember him for, no grand policy initiative or genuine substantive change drive springs to mind. People remember him for one of two things:
they may remember his inflammatory and populist 'hard line' approach to the macedonian question that completely failed to take into account geopolitical realities, international treaties already signed or the sheer laws of probability...

Or they may recall the fact that, in 1993, he single-handedly brought down the government he had until the previous year been a minister for by creating his own party and encouraging the defection of an MP that tipped Nea Dimokratia's precarious majority. And all because he had been removed from his post for pursuing a misguided and pointless 'hard line' policy on the Macedonia question.

Mr Samaras' new party, with the comedy name 'Political Spring' and an ideological positioning that largely overlapped with Nea Dimokratia but was decidedly more conservative on a number of issues, was an excellent vehicle for vocal, sweeping opinions and grand dramatic gestures – made safe in the knowledge that the party would never be in government.
And of course it never was. In fact, the party was hardly in parliament as the joke grew tired soon enough. In fact, much sooner than Mr Samaras had anticipated and, after a fairly good run in the 1993 general and 1994 European elections, the party lost support and failed to be reelected. Ever. Then in 2004, mr Samaras rejoined the party he had beached a decade before.

I just want to make clear we all know who we are dealing with here.

And while he's back, with a bang and a vengeance, what I cannot quite decide is whether we – the Greek people, the electorate, the tax payers, the voters – are ridiculously good-hearted and forgiving or just plain dumb, forgetful and criminally indifferent.

And it's not Mr Samaras' victory alone that makes me wonder that. It's the nature of the campaign, the vendetta-style opposition between Samaras and the defeated Dora Bakoyiannis and the populist undertones that drove the voting: rewarding Samaras somehow for his 'stand' against a man that now everyone has learned to hate, the then Premier K. Mitsotakis.

Forgetting how politically irresponsible and devoid of substance Samaras' defection was in 1993, his supporters within the party chose to view it as 'resistance' to the man the entire party now hates, penalising Dora in the process for being mr Mitsotakis' daughter. Despite her solid record in office. And the fact that, regardless of whether you agree with her politics, she was the only contender for the conservative leadership with an agenda, a portfolio of genuine policy initiatives while in office and some political substance. But never mind all that, right? Cos we don't like her daddy. And her last boss. Which brings us back to Mr Samaras whose hands are clean of the failures of the last government. Because he was simply not in it. And why was he not in it? Because he rejoined the party he had brought down a decade previously in 2007 and he never got round to holding serious office, serving as minister of culture for a mere few months following a late-term reshuffle in 2008.
And now here he is, top dog.

Despite accusations of bullying leaked by other candidates. Despite the technical melt-down at the start of the election process that caused ripples among journalists who suspected Florida-style tampering and got momentary illusions of grandeur a la 'first Bush, now us'. And despite a populist campaign of assorted sound-bites, completely devoid of content.

Despite it all, he's back in black. And despite it all, the top dog promised he'll play nice and will 'wipe off with a sponge' (I am not making this up, check today's Eleftehrotypia for the original quote) all that he heard during the succession race because party unity is now uppermost. Let's all be friends, he says, and together let us 'lead the party in new struggles for the country's progress and young children's right to hope'.
No, it's not a bad translation, it made no sense in Greek either.

So here we are. And I am already dreading the next election. Already. Because it will be just another big pile of 'same old'. In the context of the same old corruption, the same old violence, the same old inefficiency, the same old poverty for the many and same old cushy set-up for the few.
It will be just another Athens Sunday when we go back to the polling booths in four years time and I am getting sick and tired. But at least Olympiakos won both the footie and the basketball yesterday. So thank God for small mercies. Because for once corruption, inefficiency and cushy set-ups gave me something to cheer about and given everything, all you can hope for in Greece is small mercies.

Afghanistan: does defeat go away if you refuse to accept it?

2009-11-12T08:41:00.000-08:00

'The key is knowing when to call it a day' said my great uncle.
Although he was talking about drinking and not troop deployment to treacherous war zones, the rule applies. And the rule is this: if you set out to achieve something within a given time frame, and the time frame has elapsed many times over, and what you set out to achieve still eludes you then you have failed and the one thing that is guaranteed to not make the situation any better is a determination to carry on doing what you have been doing because, well, that's the bit that failed.

Modern warfare is nothing like old school sieges. Battering the wall until it cracks worked against medieval citadels but doesn't take you very far as a parable for modern war tactics.

What am I talking about?
I am talking about the front page of yesterday's Times.
I quote: 'President Obama is to ask members of NATO to provide up to 4,000 more troops to help break the deadlock in Afghanistan'. And a good morning to you too.

Although Obama's appeal is expected to go largely unheeded, 35,000 additional US troops are expected to hit Afghanistan before long with supplementary units from Britain and Turkey possibly joining them before long. Possibly.

Talk, of course, is around credibility: the credibility of the alliance if no troops are forthcoming... the credibility of President Obama himself, if his request is ignored... the credibility of the AK party government in Turkey if they send a few hundred more troops... and of course the credibility of our own superhero, Gordon Brown, whose willingness to send more troops is going down with the voters like a proverbial lead balloon. As is his explanation, that he's staying in this war to keep Britain safe.

The war rhetoric has no mileage in it any more.
Democracy for the Afghans peace for the world. Nice idea. Pity about the outcome.

Democratisation sounds good. But after last month's election debacle, I am surprised world leaders still mention democracy and Afghanistan in the same sentence without dying of shame.
'Indelible ink that washed off, voters walking home with whole ballot boxes, election monitors who didn't dare leave their NATO base'. You don't believe me, fish out your back copy of the Guardian (20.10.09) and see for yourself.

Is this our fault? I hear you ask. Hell yes. Have you forgotten the rhetoric? The promises? The democracy banners we waved the world over to justify the invasion and continued presence of allied troops in Afghan provinces up and down the country? Democracy is what we were there to give. Allegedly. Elections were the West's idea and were supposed to take place under our tutelage and protection. Go us. And by this time round the Afghans were supposed to have picked up a few tricks, willing and able disciples of worthy tutors.

As it turned out, the election was not exactly a showcase of democracy in action.

I am not suggesting the allied troops had anything to do with rigging the election. Karzai and his cronies did that all on their own – although their ineptitude even at that suggests they could have used some help, with hindsight. But then again, Karzai could not have had any more help, realistically: from being hand-picked and propped up every step of the way, to being given trust he had not earned as he repeatedly refused there was a fraud problem of any real magnitude on American TV. Not to mention the international community simply not intervening at any point during proceedings, trusting, cowering. Stalling. Failing to pre-empt, failing to prevent, failing to end the abuses.
Failing.
Failing at delivering democracy to the Afghans and peace to the world.

And while the democratisation experiment is clearly not working (yet), more troops are needed in the name of peace, we are told.
Only UK voters are not buying any of this any more.
According to a poll published in yesterday's Independent '4 out of 5 of those questioned do not believe that British involvement in the conflict... is keeping the streets of Britain safe from terrorist attacks'.

So. If by being in Afghanistan we are not helping them and we are not helping ourselves, why exactly are we there still and how will 35,000 additional US soldiers and another 4,000 allied troops help achieve what we are failing at?

Put it this way: How will more troops prevent future killings from corrupt Afghan police officers? I'll tell you how. By taking patrolling away from them and putting it back in the hands of allied troops. By entrenching their presence even further.

But what else can you do? When you have failed but cannot stop doing the same thing... partly because you have no other ideas and partly because you have unleashed forces you cannot control and have managed to leave yourself no way out. What else can you do? Because when you went in, it did not occur to you that an exit strategy may be needed. Because it never occurred to the leadership that it may just be essential to call it a day at some point.

More troops then.
Because we have worked our way clean out of options. More troops.
Because we have ran out of ideas and need to be seen to be doing something.
More troops.
Even though that does not change the fact that refusing to admit defeat doesn't mean you are winning.

When 'every little' doesn't help

2009-10-30T09:22:00.000-07:00

'May you live in interesting times'.
That, says my beloved Terry Pratchett, is not a blessing. Rather it's a bit of a curse, if you think about it. And there is no denying that we are now living in interesting times. And there is no denying that's not all that great. But that's no excuse for totally losing all sense of perspective.

We are scared.
Of terrorism. Of pedophiles. Of swine flu. Of the E coli 0157:H7 virus and other pathogens carried in poorly packaged or poorly cooked meat. Of Nick Griffin and hate preachers. Of racists. Of Islamic fundamentalists. Of sounding racist. Of our own shadows.

We are scared at the citizen level and we are scared at the government level. And what do we do about it? If you look through the papers of a day, you may well come to the same conclusion as me: what we do about it is kick frantically to all directions, keeping clear of the heart of each issue but making enough noise to look like we are doing something. When all we are doing is making noise. And noise is rarely a good thing.

Now as you know, I live in Britain so my examples are local yet I fear that, no matter where you are, similar things are happening every day: a sense of impeding hysteria, an overwhelming sensation that we really do not know what to do to prevent bad things from happening so we'll just try to allow few things to happen full stop and thus play the numbers game.

We all laugh when we see airport security staff putting children's plastic sandals through the scanner. Laugh but don't stop them because you never know and better to be safe and late than sorry and dead.
But what is the outer limit of caution?

Britain's tabloids have gone wild this week as parents in Watford are no longer allowed to supervise their children in playgrounds unless they have undergone criminal records checks. Vetted 'play rangers' are to supervise children instead of mums and dads.

Why? Because the case of Vanessa George has sent shock-waves through the nation. She is a paedophile. She is a woman. She is a mum. That means the demographic of potential dangers to children just widened to include absolutely everyone, so absolutely everyone is banned from playgrounds and here's to hoping that whatever tests play rangers are subjected to are the right kind and perverts don't creep through. I would still personally prefer to know that each kid was looked after by his or her parent. And that parents are keeping an eye on each other. What the hell. I would like to know that when I have kids I will be allowed to keep an eye on them myself.

But with a recent case of suspected rape of an eight-year old girl by two ten-year-old boys, stunning us all into silence, the only truth is that we really don't know how to keep our kids safe and putting them in a glass jar may well be the only way forward. Because if our children are not even safe from other children, then what is safe?
A glass jar. Safety through separation.

Now, I don't have kids. But I'm guessing, in light of recent events, if I had kids and was not allowed to keep an eye on them in the playgrounds, I'd just keep them away from the playgrounds and be done with it. Was that what the council was going for? I'm guessing not. But that's what they'll get. Because a blanket policy of considering everyone guilty until proven innocent is never going to bring about good things. Still how can we expect Watford council to maintain a sense of perspective when everyone else has lost it?

A woman in labour asked for 'ethnic minority' staff to leave her bedside, at a hospital in Milton Keynes earlier this week. It is not clear what particular minority she objected to (although according to reports, it was one group in particular she objects to) and it is not clear why she objected to them being present. What is clear is that the hospital refused to accommodate her. So the hospital acted as they should. Her request was racist, unreasonable and by the sounds of it unreasoned. The hospital overruled her and she went home a while later with a healthy child.

Now she could be facing action in a county court on grounds of discrimination. And although I object to her racism and find her ability to demand racial segregation between contractions faintly amusing, I can't help but think that the thought police are on the prowl. I disagree with what she stands for. But she didn't act on it because the hospital did not let her. So what would the trial be about? And why is there a threat from the Equality and Human Rights Commission that the hospital may be under suspicion as well, when no discriminatory act was perpetrated by hospital staff?

I fear the answer is simpler than we are comfortable with: this is the sort of problem we can deal with, be outraged by, 'handle', judge and close. Only it doesn't solve a thing. If anything, it exacerbates the situation. The likes of Nick Griffin can spin the whole 'no place for Britons in Britain' tale and the bottom line remains that we have lost perspective because the big issues are just too big for us to deal with so we contend ourselves with the contained little issues thinking it's better than nothing. Only it isn't. It's actually worse than throwing hands up in the air and going 'this is too big and I can't fix it the way I've been fixing things hitherto. I need to think, I need to change'.

If you are not sold yet, here is another example:
An elderly lady in Norfolk wrote to her council to complain about a gay pride march in her vicinity. I personally enjoy Pride and everything it stands for and tend to join when I can although I am not, myself, gay. Nobody cares. Pride, as I know it, is inclusive and open and most participants would welcome elderly ladies from Norfolk if they wanted to join in the festivities. But they would equally accept her right to refrain, even to disapprove of them. Each to their own and all that.

And a letter to the council is a rather innocuous – if pointless – form of protest that will not have any real effect on Pride. On this occasion, however, it may have a real effect on the person complaining as the council wrote back to the homophobic old lady warning her that she may be guilty of a hate crime. The matter was passed on to the police and I expect it to be dropped but the point remains: with real hate crimes committed every day, why is a narrow-minded pensioner exercising a democratic right to free speech targeted? It could be because a council employee was not thinking or was misguidedly over-zealous. It could also be that she is simply an easier target than say the thugs who still engage in gay bashing in the centres of our towns. The same way that a bigoted mother in labour is an easier target than the police officers whose routine racism victimises young, black males as a matter of course as the Guardian recently revealed.
And I use 'revealed' very loosely here.
Because we all know.
We know racism is a violent reality for many people in our communities. Homophobia is spectre in many lives. Real, physical dangers to people's bodily integrity and sense of safety.
And yes we do know that child abusers of all genders and all ages are also abroad.
We know all that.

The question is what do we do about it?
And all I'm saying by pooling together three largely unrelated examples is that we are currently doing NOTHING. Because bashing soft targets and imposing blanket bans is not making our society more tolerant or safer, it is just making it more hypocritical, harder to live in and less likely to resolve the real issues underlying the violence and sense of threat that seems to hide in every dark corner.
Making every person a suspected paedophile does not make children safer.
Punishing unsavoury opinions does not make hate crimes less likely. Making opinion - however unpalatable - a crime makes us the bad guys. It makes our democracy shambolic while race and homophobic crimes - actual acts, the stuff the law should target - carry on occurring because they are not properly prevented or followed up.

And creating a society of division, mistrust and fear will not make anyone safer.
So no, ladies and gents, every little does not always help. Particularly when we are trying to navigate through 'interesting times' without throwing everything we have achieved through decades of social struggle, democratisation and liberalisation overboard.

What fearing Nick Griffin tells us about ourselves

2009-10-22T09:08:00.000-07:00

Why is everyone so scared of letting the leader of the British National Party speak during tonight's Question Time show? Why is everyone so worried about what it will signify, to take a seat on a panel next to him, in obvious opposition to him?
Don't give me that crap about legitimising him. What additional legitimacy does a democratically elected representative of the people need?

Tell me what's really on your mind people.

Are you afraid that cool, articulate, unflustered, racist Nick Griffin will get his despicable point across better than the representatives of the political mainstream?
Because that is what I am afraid of.
I am afraid he will be calmer than the other guys.
Less arrogant in the eyes of the average viewer.
I am afraid he will be more articulate and more convincing, keeping things real and relevant, never using abstractions and generalisations. I am afraid he will manage to reduce big issues to small, personal fears in a way that is non-patronising and almost self-evident.
I am afraid he will do all that without insulting any of his fellow panelists while they will be struggling to hold back cries of 'begone you disgusting racist slug'.
And I am afraid that the other side, the non-racist side, our side damn it, will be left speaking in generalities, attacking his racism but offering no coherent answer to counter his concerns and offering absolutely no counter-solution to his own objectionable measures.

So the problem is not him. It's us, folks.

Let's call a spade a spade.
Immigration is not a subject most parties are comfortable with. Invariably, even parties on the left are in favour of controlling the borders and not throwing the gates open to all and sundry. Increasingly centre and left-of-centre parties grudgingly accept that freedom of speech will not deal with radical Islamist preachers in our midst 'organically' and a bold fresh look is needed asking where their liberty infringes on someone else's – not on a community basis but on an individual basis, you know, the way we used to apply the law all these years before this became such a 'hot potato' issue. And then there is the issue of building community, and living together in all our multi-colour, multi-faith, multilingual splendour.
And many left or centre-left politicians are not comfortable with immigration debates because they rightly consider these three issues distinct and separate and find that more and more people don't and in fudging the debate these people confuse the matter, create panics and allow concerns over hate preachers to poison community relations.
Nick Griffin is one of those people.

He is not afraid to talk about immigration. For him the distinctions are distracting and the problem boils down to what moves and scares the individual citizen. And his solutions are stark, simple, bold. And racist.
But what is the other side counter-suggesting?
A convoluted narrative of freedom, multi-culturalism and necessary border controls, constant reminders that the problem is multi-faceted and many-tiered and above all not simple. All solutions offered are halting, nuanced, complicated, careful – because one should not confuse the issues. And rightly so. Still, I fear that Nick Griffin has this one wrapped up if 'straight talking' is what the audience are after.

Holding a contradiction in his mind is not a challenge for Mr Griffin who is both articulate and clever. He understand the contradictions and in them he sees the weakness his opponents most suffer from. This contradiction, in his hands, stops being innate in the subject and becomes a weakness in his opponents' political will and solutions' agenda.

What do we have to counter that? I am using 'we' in the loosest possible sense here, siding with the people who disagree with Nick Griffin even if that is the only thing we agree on.

What have we got?
Don't forget Jack Straw is sitting on our side.
Griffin is articulate, confident and confidence-inspiring. He sounds like he commands the issues and can effortlessly pare them down to their essence. Even though that essence is tainted, one-sided and heavily nuanced, he appears to be offering common sense summaries and bold solutions. Jack Straw is not and does not.

So why are we so scared of letting him speak tonight?
Not because we disagree profoundly with what he has to say – that, if anything, is reason to take him on, thrash it out, expose him to the public, ensure the other side is heard.
Not because we fear what his effect might be on the polity – because he is already in the polity so it is too late, plus we already know that enforced isolation and silence creates heroes and not villains.

It is because we are afraid we can't match him, blow for blow, for the hearts and minds of the viewers. And that is terrifying.
It's because we know Nick Griffin is as popular as his opinions are objectionable. And we know we have all the good arguments. But we don't have a Nick Griffin on our side to deliver those arguments in level, even-toned, convincing, populist nuggets.

So we are scared.
Of course we are scared.
I, for one, am terrified.

And I don't know about you. But I will be glued to Question Time tonight. Munching pop-corn, mumbling to myself and hoping against hope that Griffin will have a bad day, that he will lose his cool, that he will sound to all tonight as offensive as he sounds to me all the time. And that Baroness Warsi, Chris Huhne or Bonnie Greer will pull an ace out of their sleeves explaining why a world where Nick Griffin's opinions are not put into practice is a better world for all. And that Jack Straw stays silent. Wishful thinking but what the hell, while I'm at it I might as well.

I just hope that the arguments for our side go further than 'Nick Griffin, you are a racist' because he will slam them down and go for a home run before anything else has been stated. Not because he is not racist. But because pointing out the obvious in a petulant way is not good debating.
Telling him his policies are wrong because he is a bad person is a non-sequitur that makes us look like fools with nothing else to say and gives him the moral high-ground.
And that's the last place you want to concede to your neighborhood racist. He is already self-appointed defender of home and hearth, hand him the moral high ground on a platter and what have you got? A populist, playing on everyone's most closely guarded fears, articulating their concerns about safety on their streets, jobs for their children, a culture they call their own, who is victimised by the very same people who don't address the people's worries, the very same people who have no counter-argument to throw his way than an insult.
Attack him on who he is rather than what he says and you've driven people into his arms in droves.

You do see where I'm going with this right?
The urge to slap Nick Griffin lurks in us all. But that is not what is called for today.
We need to take him on the issues or go home. Blow by blow, line by line. Address the same questions, counter his conclusions, offer alternative solutions.
Speak to the same people he is speaking to on the same issues.
He claims he is of the people, for the people. Do we all realise what that means?
If he is addressing a struggling, white manual labourer in Bradford, we cannot be addressing a professor of ethics at Edinburgh. If he speaks about protection against radical Islam, we cannot be addressing comparative theology scholars who understand that the Islamic Umma is a community of peace ergo Griffin is wrong.
Take him on, damn it. Being more highbrow than him is how we lose this battle not how we win it.
Surely, career politicians can do this, right?

So what are we afraid of?
Are we afraid of 'the people'? Their inability to see through him and know better? Then we should all go home because no democrat is afraid of the people. You either trust in the people or join the populists a la Nick Griffin.

So if not that then what?
Could it be that although we disagree with Griffin we have absolutely no ideas on the matter he is about to challenge us on that we are comfortable with? I sincerely hope not. But I can see no other explanation that makes sense. We are afraid of Nick Griffin because he's calling our bluff and, other than grand ideas, the political mainstream have nothing to suggest that makes sense to their voters.
In which case we should be afraid of Nick Griffin. Very afraid.

Forget Wonderland. Through the Looking Glass, lies Turkey

2009-10-13T01:35:00.000-07:00

If asked to take a guess, would you suppose that:
A western-oriented, secularist, aggressively modernising party would be in favour or its country joining the EU?
An army would be traditionally conservative and sympathetic to religion and tradition?
A populist government would always make sure they carry the people with them?

Yeah, you would, wouldn't you?
Only if you were talking about Turkey you'd be wrong.

In Turkey, the populist Islamist government currently in power is in favour of EU accession and the secularist, traditionally westernising opposition (the CHP, Atatürk's own party) are vocally against all reform efforts and, although theoretically in favour of accession, effectively blocking the path to EU by demanding that the EU 'respects' Turkey in ways that make no sense to the EU whatsoever. Not that the Euros mind. All delays to Turkey's accession are well and good by Brussels, but that's another story altogether.

Meanwhile the AKP is locked in a battle to the death with the country's high-profile, aggressively secularist military who, quite frankly, loathe the AKP and everything it stands for and are – possibly, maybe – trying to undermine the government quite actively. A series of leaks (more on this in a minute) have caused the army's otherwise impeccable reputation to suffer and for the first time in the Republic's eight decades, the people are losing faith in the military and are beginning to see the value in purging politics from military influence and putting the soldiers back in their box.

The AKP, of course, agrees and has been trying to do just that for the best part of a decade now. But do they manage to carry the people with them?
No sir.
They manage, magically, to make the people feel excluded from proceedings and by-passed as the government is acting on what everyone in principle agrees upon but without any public debate or evident deliberation. And although agreement over the bottom line is there, these are vital questions affecting the nature and future of the Turkish polity and reform without deliberation is unacceptable in principle, agreement notwithstanding.
You'd think that for sheer ease the government would have capitalised on the popularity of the idea, being populist and all. But paternalistic habits die hard and even populists take a leaf out of the book on old school Turkish politics traditions.

Under normal circumstances you would expect the opposition to make the most of the government's failures roundabout now. But don't hold your breath.
The opposition is even more paternalistic than the AKP who have nothing to worry about because the CHP seems hell-bent on working itself into extinction one statement at a time.

First of all, the CHP are perceived (and dismissed) as a mouthpiece for the increasingly discredited military. This, at least, gives them something relevant to say as, when not saying what the generals want them to say, the CHP have little to say that is of any interest to the people. Out of touch? And then some as the CHP have been outside power for the best part of two decades and once, after the 1999 elections, also outside Parliament. Popularity is evidently not the word here but has the CHP leader Deniz Baykal resigned to let a more credible (not to mention likeable) candidate to take the reigns? Like hell he has.

Now being perceived as the mouthpiece of the military wouldn't have been all that bad had it not been for a series of recent leaks and almost-scandals that show the military getting really jittery, planning coups, plotting against the government and against powerful religious brotherhoods, particularly against the Gülenists. Obviously, none of these plots have come off – or I would have been blogging about that instead – and most of them have been stopped by the military leadership themselves but the fact remains that people believe the military is taking things too far. All cries that the memos are fabricated or that the army purges itself fail to drown out the feeling that the time is right for change.

The people want it.
The Gülenists want it.
The AKP want it.

So why is it not happening?

Well. Bits of it are happening. Change is afoot and has been non-stop since 2001. To a Turkey buff like me the changes that have come to pass in the past 8 years are immense, mind-boggling, 'I never thought I'd see this' type changes. But to the naked eye, things are not as great. To the close-up look of a Turkish citizen or the bird's eye view of an external observer, change is slow, sluggish, halting, half-hearted and above all: a bit of a sand-castle on the surf. Because you can reform all you want, unless you tackle the constitutional foundations of the state, it's like selecting toppings before you make sure you have enough flour to make a pizza.

And what I mean by that is this: for all the bravado and all the radical mini reforms, the AKP's policy has been a balancing act so far. Pushing change as far as it can go before things snap, break, shatter and come back to bite you in the proverbial rear. The AKP's genius – if you will permit me the term – is that they have managed to play on all their opponents' weaknesses while using their opponents' ideas to further their own cause. And it has worked. It has worked well enough to keep the AKP in power, to keep the EU happy and the accession process ticking over. It has also helped accomplish important and much needed reforms and keep the people on side. Most of the time.

But a balancing act rarely bodes well as a sign of decisive political will, which is what fundamental constitutional reform would entail.
In short.
Turkey's constitution was written by the army in the 80s. It reflects their ideas, it promotes their priorities and it upholds their role as guardian of the Republic.
Amen.
This constitution has been massively amended. It is now a patchwork of ideas and a lot of the 'in your face' militaristic provisions have been removed. So what? The heart of it remains and it will always do until someone has the political balls to say 'enough of this, let's make a new constitution that tells the soldiers what to do rather than the other way round'.

But who is going to be that guy?
And assuming we get 'that guy', where on earth will he start?
Where do you start in a political system where nothing is what you expect, allegiances are very idiosyncratic and nobody ever says exactly what they mean because there are laws against that.
And even when things seem aligned, groups seem to agree, consensus seems almost inevitable nothing ever happens like you'd think it would. Because you are through the looking glass and nothing is as it seems.

And as with the fairytale, so with Turkey, while the white rabbit, the mad hatter and the queen of hearts indulge in their games, express their quirks and pursue whatever takes their fancy, it is the common folk that have to dodge the Cheshire cat, ensure they hold onto their heads and try to build for themselves a semblance of normality despite it all.
And you can't help but think that, given the circumstances, 'that guy', 'those guys' the people who can visualize and implement real change are exactly the people who are trying to get past the cat and the deranged queen of hearts. The people who could change it all are exactly the people who are too busy trying to build a life, despite it all.

Cry, the beloved country

2009-10-05T03:48:00.000-07:00

I did not vote yesterday.
I live in London, innit?

Plus the election results seemed almost predestined.
Plus, I cannot legitimately bring myself to choose between the choices available and as casting a blank 'protest' ballot would simply boost the top party along its way in this curious twist of proportional representation whereby blank and spoiled ballots are added to the votes knowingly cast for the winner, I didn't vote.

But this is not a critique of Greece's electoral system.
It's not a critique of Greece's political system.
It's just a realisation, that crept up on me slowly last night as I was watching the results come in over the internet and talked on the phone with family and friends out in Greece. And the realisation is this: we, the Greek public, are like one of those girls, neglected, abused and unloved by their boyfriends but so convinced we can do no better, that we have learned to draw pleasure from the days when he isn't so bad and we are simply over the moon on the days he can muster some basic decency. And so deep is this conviction that we can do no better that, when we finally leave the brute, we end up in the arms of someone just like him because 'that's what men are like'.

How many times on the run-up to this election did you say: 'well, at least the new one cannot possibly be as bad as the last one, he may try but it is impossible to be just as bad'?
How many times did you hear: 'well now the only way is up, surely we have hit rock bottom'?
How many times did the voting public vocally and actively affirm that they considered the choices presented to them inadequate and the act of voting a mechanical discharge in the hope that further evil would be averted by removing from power the guy who so clearly failed to resolve all the pressing problems that presented themselves on his watch?

And replace him with what?
A guy the voting public had pointedly rejected twice before.
A guy who did not have the decency to resign when he should have because he knew that if he stuck around it was a matter of time before we needed somewhere to run, away from the neglect and abuse of our Nea Dimokratia boyfriend. And despite our previous rejections, when things got depserate and we had nowhere else to run, we did run straight into the arms of suitor number 2, George Papandreou: twice rejected but never actually gotten rid of.
He stuck around shamelessly and here he is now, in power.

So don't talk to me about George Papandreou's 'triumph'. Mr Karamanlis simply lost the election. He lost it with a bang, he lost it by a mile but he lost it by himself. Mr Papandreou didn't need to actively win it. He just needed to wait for power to land on his lap. As it did.

Semantics, I hear you say?
Hardly.
Negative voting of the 'I really don't want this guy, I'll vote for the other one' variety makes the lives of politicians really really easy. They do not need to campaign on the issues, they do not need to stick to the issues, they hardly need to do anything about the issues once they are in power. All they need to do is be perceived as a better choice than the other guy. So on this occasion Karamanlis had sunk so low in people's estimations that Papandreou could have turned up on the day without campaigning and he still would have won by a landslide.

'Ultimate personal vindication' for Papandreou, says the front page of Eleftherotypia today.
Give me a break.
They feed us this crap and we sit here and take it. As if the election results prove that Papandreou was right not to resign after his last defeat – and the one before – as if this proves we were always coming back to him. As if the poor choice and the chronic damage it is doing both to our political culture and to the country as such is not even worth mentioning. Because when it comes to prime ministers and boyfriends, they are all much of a muchness and prince charming has been dead for decades.

At least Karamanlis resigned, so that is that there and on we go with a new face and old ideas when the time for their leadership election comes. Even more mediocre suitors to choose from. But maybe the baseline will be higher. Maybe Nea Demokratia's next leader will realise that if you have been in power two years, during which all you have achieved is beaching the economy and watching idly on while riots raged throughout your country, well if those conditions are met then you don't call an election unless losing it is what you are after.
And maybe that is what you were after, Mr Karamanlis, you were tired after all and the glamour wore off pretty soon this second time round, didn't it?

So what have we got?
A populace that is dispirited, tired and completely disillusioned. A populace that puts up with the neglectful, abusive boyfriends because it is convinced that mediocrity is 'as good as it gets' and the goal is to swap one inadequate man with another to avoid the worst of it and keep afloat.

This makes the job of running for elections that bit easier. The less your voters care, the less you have to do to convince them. The less your girlfriend expects, the more you get away with.

Meanwhile, the parties of the left are losing support – not fast, but noticeably – and LAOS, the racist, ultira-nationalistic, uber-rightist party that seemed like a bad joke when it first hit our TV screens is gathering votes – fast and noticeably.

Does that matter?
Damn right it does.
Because some people vote for mr Karatzaferis despite his politics, for his affability – and that is simultaneously stupid and irresponsible. But many are voting for him for his politics and his affability: at least he cares, they say, and maybe he could have handled the riots better (as the extreme right are want to do) and maybe he would have handled the economic crisis better, by clamping down on the illegal immigrants because, didn't you know, they brought down the international banking system and are to blame for Greece's ailing economy.

So maiden Greece assessed her available suitors and, convinced she can do no better, is salvaging what she can. Taking the power mantle away from the guy who failed her most recently and giving it to the guy whom she has repeatedly rejected but who won't take the hint because he knows, he just knows her expectations are low and if he waits long enough, if he just waits long enough.

And he did. Wait long enough. And here we are in his arms. In fact, so eager were we to get rid of Karamanlis, that we rushed to the polls and gave the new guy a majority that means he doesn't need to consult with anyone, within or outside parliament, setting him up to be our new abusive and neglectful boyfriend, convinced that we can do no better.

Blogging for democracy

2009-09-10T10:29:00.000-07:00

World rejoice. I am back.
I've been offline for a whole month and, although I am sure you missed me and, I assure you, I missed you back, I must report that it is possible to live away from a computer. For a few weeks, I caught a glimpse of a parallel universe in which my friends were not scattered the world over, my job did not rely on shared documents and email and day-to-day activities did not depend so totally on the internet.
You guessed it. I was on holiday.

In real life of course staying away from the computer is not an option. Work. Checking cinema listings. Submitting my tax return. Downloading the latest TED talk. Reading the papers. Chatting to friends. Grocery shopping. Job applications. Travel bookings and theatre reservations.
What did we ever do before the internet? But really, what are we really doing with the internet?

Bear with me.
I was walking through Athens a few weeks ago till a gaggle of teenage tourists caught my eye.
'The Pnyx. Where the hell is the Pnyx. I don't see anything' said one.
Behind you, you moron, thought I.
But I didn't say it. Because really, the Pnyx is not much to look at. Places where real business takes place rarely are. The Pnyx, or what is left of it, is easy to just walk past and, in the dark, it looks less like a world heritage site and more like an empty lot. Which, nowadays, it is in more ways than one.
So the tourists walked on, having decided that their guide book was rubbish and it was time for a drink and I was left thinking that they are not alone in having totally missed the Pnyx.

Athenian democracy was flawed, we all know that. But the one thing that was right about it was the Pnyx and everything that transpired there as this was where the citizens, free and equal, got to speak, openly and on any subject they wished to speak on.
Dull? I bet it was.
Every Tom, Dick and Harry having a constitutional right to go on and on and on (and on) about their pet peeve, their favourite gripe. Painful. But vital. For democracy. For community. For fairness. In the Pnyx no politician could ever claim to be 'the voice of the people'. The people would speak for themselves and tell him where to get off. The people can of course be wrong – they did, after all, kill Socrates and exile Aristeidis – but that's an occupational hazard if you are a democrat. At least back then the people had a chance to get it wrong themselves, rather than by proxy.

Democracy is not meant to be the system of good outcomes. Democracy takes care of the many. If the many are wrong, so is their polity. If the many are brutal so is their state. If the many are inspired, so is their society.
Democracy has nothing to do with the what and everything to do with the how.

For the ancients, getting that right involved leaving women and slaves out of it because they had no cognitive abilities. Do I disagree with it? Of course I disagree with it. But I don't disagree with the premise, even though it would leave me out in the cold without a vote.
Deciding who your citizens are is hard and every benchmark is arbitrary – gender, age, money, nationality, religion, race: what criteria define 'the people'?
Lines need to be drawn and it is not always obvious where you should draw them. Women today have universal suffrage while monarchs, refugees, migrants, lunatics, children and criminals don't get the vote.
Defining 'the people' is neither easy nor straightforward.
In Athens that group was narrow and closed. But at least it was equal and free. Which is more than we can say about the citizen body of any modern democracy.

In Athens only free-born, Athenian-born males of some property were part of the 'people'. The group was small. Still it had wild variations within. But once you were in you were in and you got to benefit from a system that was there to serve you. Now there's a thought.
Inequalities of wealth and status among citizens did not matter in the exercise of civic duty and the enjoyment of civic rights. Politics was the great leveller. The exact opposite of today's democracy where status, money, skin colour and connections determine power, access, influence and civic security.

Democracy in its purest form rested on three simple principles: isonomia, isopoliteia, isigoria.
All citizens are equal under the law.
All citizens have equal voting rights.
All citizens have an equal right to debate policy.

The Pnyx is the spatial substantiation of the principle of isigoria, the forgotten heart of democracy, the right and opportunity to speak on an equal footing in matters of state.

Of course, the three principles of Athenian democracy are mentioned in every self-proclaimed democratic constitution in Europe, America and, I am sure, in a few even less probable locations. We pay lipservice to isigoria: everyone is allowed to speak. Everyone is allowed to stand for election. Everyone is allowed to speak to their MP. In the UK you are even allowed to stand on a soap box and speak to the pigeons of Hyde Park Corner.
So bloody what?
It ain't the Pnyx is it? It ain't the Pnyx if nobody is listening.

Isigoria means you have a right to be listened to. Not just a right to babble.
Isigoria means you have guaranteed access to media that will allow your opinions to be heard and considered. In ancient Athens that medium was a rock near the Acropolis. Central. Good acoustics. It worked.
Today it would be an online citizen forum, a people's assembly, a rally.
Today it could be a million and one things – we have, after all, the internet.
We have it, but what do we do with it?

A lot. Actually.
Our governments may not be helping here. They don't protect our access. They don't encourage our participation. But now, for the first time ever, we don't need them to. We have the internet.
The internet is for porn and facebook.
The internet is for speed dating and spam email.
The internet is full of fascinating blogs, community portals, grassroot mobilisation sites, civil society organisations and communal action outlets.
The internet is our Pnyx.

So blog away my friends and let's get back what is rightfully ours.

And next time someone asks where the Pnyx is within earshot, I'll give them the only possible answer: it's wherever you make it happen.

Broken record day: Iraq

2009-08-13T07:26:00.001-07:00

July 31st, US troops roll back leaving security operations in Iraqi hands. Five minutes later all hell breaks loose. Of course that is an exaggeration but in the 2 weeks since the withdrawal of US troops there have been no fewer than 5 separate bomb attacks in Iraq.

On Friday last week, 36 people died in a series of attacks in Shia areas.
Just another day in Iraq?
Pretty much.
A couple of days ago, two truck bombs exploded in Khaznah, near Mosul. 23 dead, 130 injured.
Meanwhile, two more bombs went off in Baghdad killing 16 and injuring 80 people.

A mere two weeks after US troops pulled back leaving security in Iraqi hands, bombs are going off, taking out houses in residential neighborhoods, targeting labourers gathering for work, killing pilgrims, ensuring normal life is still not an option in Iraq.

Of course they are trying to make a point.

The attacks are extremely well-orchestrated, with bombs going off simultaneously in disparate locations. And although the bombs seem to target Shias more than Sunnis, mixed areas are hit frequently enough to make the violence all-enveloping.

The challenge to the government is palpable.
Can they handle the security situation? They say they can. But if you are waiting for the next bomb to go off you may not feel that secure. But that's another day in Iraq. It's not like anyone has felt safe since all this started in March 2003.

First it was the invasion. Then it was the insurgency. Now we hear that it's al-Qaeda. That's right. Mosul is allegedly the last stronghold of al-Qaeda in Iraq. The frequent deadly bomb blasts that have been shaking Iraq since the withdrawal of US forces are attributed to that shady and seemingly omni-potent organisation. Elusive yet seemingly to blame for all ills and all ailments.

Meanwhile bombs explode in building sites and rubbish piles. The Iraqi government says this is the last of the insurgency. The European press says this is al-Qaeda fighting on. And the Iraqis just ask themselves when will this all stop?

Early in 2003, before troops were deployed into Iraq, George W. Bush speaking to Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward (yes, Bob of Watergate fame) said that he expected that the war in Iraq would be over in a matter of weeks. Big cheese invasion general Franks concurred. A few weeks should do it.

We now know how much they didn't know then. How much they didn't understand, didn't take seriously, didn't think through. We know that the Iraqi exiles Bush's administration took advice from were horribly out of touch at best and severely biased at worst. We know that ORHA and subsequent reconstruction efforts were chaotic some of the time and shambolic the rest. We know the war was not over in a matter of weeks. And we know that although US troops are withdrawing – because Obama pledged they would – the war is not over yet. And reconstruction is but an elusive dream for all concerned.

So let's recap.
The US and their coalition of the willing went into Iraq in 2003 for four stated reasons:
1. To find and destroy weapons of mass destruction.
2. To remove Saddam from power.
3. To liberate Iraqis and bring them democracy.
4. To fight the war on terror and make the world a safer place.

So 1 out of 4.
Saddam is deposed and dead but on the rest, the scoreline doesn't look so good. Weapons of mass destruction simply did not exist and the capability for creating them was questionable at best. Iraqis are liberated from Baathist oppression but with constant violence and destruction every day over the past 6 years, liberty is not a word that springs to mind. As for democracy, we've talked about this again and again, democracy and war don't mix and while people fear for their lives and livelihoods, democratic participation and civil society are not an option.

As for making the world a safer place, well, definitions vary but however you define it and however much you stretch it, it hasn't happened.
And now they are withdrawing. Leaving behind them chaos, violence and destruction. Being none the wiser as to what it was that made the world so unsafe and so terrifying in 2001 and since.
We still don't understand so we still cannot prevent.
Meanwhile yet another country is left with smouldering piles of debris, fear and anguish.

I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound like an improvement on the general state of the world to me. And until we realise that violence breeds violence and fear breeds pain and anger, we are not going to get very far fixing the mess we are in.
Bombing it didn't fix it.
Withdrawing from it won't fix it.
Somewhere in-between must be another way, the way that makes peace an option. We just need to stop shooting long enough before we start packing to figure it all out.

European History X.

2009-07-28T02:40:00.001-07:00

If I say 'the extreme right is on the rise in Europe' what comes to mind?

Neo-nazi gangs on the rampage, xenophobic orators and angry mobs, racist slogans, fear and violence? Ed Norton as Derek Vinyard running through European backstreets and various renditions of the famous teeth-on-sidewalk scene? Ed Furlong bleeding on a bathroom floor and whatnot? Right. Yes. Me too.

Yet, although racist violence is sadly occurring all over Europe, the rise of the ultra-right seems to have taken a more sanitized form this time. Suits and somber rhetoric. Anger has ceded its place to patronising goodwill and the ability to tap straight in the heart of your average euro-Joe-public whose comfort zone has shifted sharply to the right and who is eager for a politician who will defend him and his.

The latest EU election brought in more openly nationalistic candidates than ever before. And what should have been a contradiction in terms – anointing an insular nationalist to represent you in a multi-national institution – is a fact. Europe is moving to the Right.

Social scientists are not surprised. High immigration levels, a global financial crisis and rising unemployment are invariably a bad cocktail. In times of crisis scapegoating becomes a team sport and the more different you look the more likely you are to be blamed for whatever is going wrong in your vicinity.
Rationality doesn't come into it. Just as the Jews were single-handedly responsible for both capitalism and communism in the eyes of Nazi propagandists in the 30s and 40s, similarly, your scapegoat of choice is to blame for poverty, unemployment, crime, pollution and the demise of the welfare state. Add to that the appeal of blaming Europe for anything you can't directly blame your government for and what you have is a full-bodied nationalistic, anti-immigrant and anti-EU movement sweeping across Europe.

Now this is bad news in itself. The EU as a set of institutions evolved from a pan-European need, post World War II, to marshal all existing resources and cross-border institutions and fuse them into the ultimate bastion against fascism. The vision was one of pluralism, inclusion and openness. And, no, ultra-rightists didn't feature in this plan. There was no role for them in this scenario, no place at the table.

But now they have turned up for dinner and the question is what do you do with them?
You can ignore them. Pretend they are not there, hope they go away. That is what Britain did a few days ago when a government champagne reception for the country's 72 MEPs pointedly excluded the BNP's Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons. NFI-ed. There. That restores the cosmic balance and, if asked, we'll roll our eyes and say that the weakness of our first-past-the-post electoral system is that localised support can occasionally see a very unlikely candidate elected. We do assure you all, however, that there is no wider sociological significance to this election.
Thus goes the official British line.

Only there is no denying there is a wider sociological significance to this election and that significance is EU-wide. Ultra-right parties are on the rise. Ultra-right priorities are on the ascendency. Ultra-right language is in common use.

And here we are trying to figure out What Is To Be Done.

In France and Belgium the main parties have their routine worked out. When unsavoury right-wing elements attract popular support, the system colludes to keep them out. I personally kind of like that but, let's not kid ourselves, it is undemocratic to the extreme. The people have spoken, it seems to suggest, but they are talking gibberish so we'll ignore them for now until they talk sense.

But how will they talk sense if you change nothing in the way they live and the way they learn? Change is needed but change takes time and time is at a premium so rather than hatching long-term social strategy, our leaders simply ignore the misguided populace and hope for the best. Meanwhile they don't even bother to lead by example. On the contrary, they make the most of a bad situation, neutralising the bad guys or simply playing ball with them and giving themselves a popularity boost in the bargain.

Sarkozy in France, Berlusconi in Italy and sadly many others across Europe 'neutralise' the ultra-right by borrowing their language, embracing their agenda and stealing their supporters. That is seen as 'sanitizing' the extreme right because the unsavoury individuals are kept away from power, the people are kept in check – and meanwhile the mainstream is suffused with the language of antagonism, exclusion, insularity.
Le Pen was kept away from office even though he recently garnered 47% of the vote. And before you say that a small injury to democracy protects the essence of la Marianne, let me remind you that Sarkozy's social and immigration policies only differ from Le Pen's in one thing: tone.

Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, Poland and Slovakia the extreme right are colonising Parliament en masse. They know the tricks. They speak the right language and respect the law. They do not advocate violence, they do not incite pogroms. But they are using the institutions they have access to – domestic and European – to 'protect', to close, to limit, to measure, in short to push forth the agenda of the extreme right clad in a language of understanding and evenness.

The extreme right has had a make-over. Derek Vinyard is nobody's poster child anymore. The face of the extreme right wears a suit and speaks the polished and value-neutral language of power. They are here, they mean business and they have a following. And it's that last bit that nobody seems to be dealing with. Their following.

According to the Guardian the new European Parliament sports 'Hungarian gypsy-haters, French Holocaust deniers, Dutch Islam-baiters, Austrian antisemites, Italian racists, and Flemish separatists, as well as Griffin, for whom Islam is a cancer and who wants boats of illegal immigrants sunk at sea'.
And editorial after editorial laments the existence of these parties. And nobody speaks of their voters. Because those who berate the ultra-rightists never fail to canvass their voters when elections near.

Co-optation, collaboration or Berlusconi's 'big tent' party are nice ways of saying that the mainstream is happy to get into bed with the ultra-right if it means getting more votes. Berlusconi's party has thus embraced latter-day fascists and anti-muslim groups such as the highly racist Northern League. Similarly, in Poland the opposition Law and Justice party has risen to prominence by, among other things, embracing antisemitic, anti-German and ultra-Catholic messages. Across Europe, in national and European elections the Right carries the day. It may be disguised, sanitized or in-your-face, ultimately it makes little difference as when it comes to the bottom line in questions of immigration, social policy, European integration, welfare, law and order and nationalism the flavour is the same.

Europe is moving to the right because its voters will it and its politicians make it happen.

It is a bit late in the day to be wondering what is to be done. Especially when those wondering are the same people riding the wave of change and benefiting from the electoral maths of an ever-increasing insularity among Europe's voters.

Europe is turning to the Right.
That's because politicians are leading and voters are following.
That's because voters are demanding it and politicians are complying.

Europe is taking itself to the Right.
And nobody is to blame but us.
And nothing can be done unless we do it.

Afghanistan is a war, not a country

2009-07-13T09:20:00.000-07:00

Afghanistan is a forgotten country.
We all know where it is but most of us forget what it is. To most people, Afghanistan is a war. A policy point. A problem.
US democratisation initiatives try to remind us that Afghanistan used to be a country, that there is future after the war. The problem is, whatever the future holds post-war, Afghanistan has been at war for so long that there is little left that could be called a country and what is still there, is at war.

Where does this story begin? With the Americans arriving five years ago? With the Taliban taking power? With the Soviets? When was Afghanistan not at war? When was it last just a country? And how does this story end?

For many Westerners the war has lost its newness 'oh yeah, that's still going on, isn't it?' is not an uncommon reaction. Yet with more troops pouring into the country than ever before, there is no end in sight. As Afghanistan heads into elections – in a desperate pretense of normality – 4,000 US marines arrived in Afghanistan's troublesome Helmand province a few days ago. This is the biggest offensive since the war began. Surely there are now enough marines on the ground to completely flood Helmand's poppy fields and kill two birds with one stone: chase the Taliban out of the area and end opium production. Regime change and crop change in one fell swoop.

Guns and money should do it.
Guns will drive out the bad guys.
Money will pay for the roads that will allow consumer crops to be taken to market before they rot, pay the blood bondage that keeps many farmers tied to opium barons and pay cash incentives for the switch from the very profitable poppy to something far less profitable albeit more benign.
Guns will persuade the undecided. And the drug barons. Maybe.
Then when Afghanistan goes back to being a country, ideas of social responsibility, legality, social and agricultural development can be debated.
Trying to discuss those now, while the war is raging seems like a cruel joke. Pretending normality is simply lurking, pretending the war has not obliterated everything that used to be Afghanistan, for better or for worse.

Everything apart from the Taliban, that is.

Marines are now combing villages in areas that were until recently held by insurgents. The latest offensive is reputed to have met with little resistance. But that is not because the insurgents gave up. It is because the insurgents slipped away. Again. And the 'boundaries' moved. Again. And the Taliban retreated across the border to Pakistan, again, because Pakistan failed to up numbers and simply deployed the existing, insufficient garrisons. Again.

Same old then?
Well not exactly. There is some variation. NATO has put more emphasis on protecting the locals rather than killing the bad guys on this occasion. If it works, they'll stick with this model. Keeping them alive, you see, is the first step to convincing them we mean well. Next step – which is what the marines are working on now – is to persuade them we really are there to stay, the Taliban are not coming back and it is safe to vote in the upcoming presidential elections. Only problem? It's been five years that the Americans have been fighting the Taliban and, although still 'there' in large geographical terms, US forces have not always managed to successfully hold onto territory. What is now the domain of the marines tomorrow could be back in the hands of the Taliban. So although the marines are promising secure civic participation now, will they still be around tomorrow? Or will the Taliban be back, killing everyone who voted in the election against their explicit warning?
Do that and I'll kill you, say the Taliban wielding their guns. That's pretty persuasive. The Marines' job is to say 'don't mind them, we'll keep you safe'. But how convincing is that?

Captain Bill Pelletier stressed that there had been no civilian casualties or damage to property, no artillery, aerial bombings or other indirect fire in a long time. Read: things are improving. But is this progress enough for the Afghans to believe the Taliban are not coming back? After 5 years of inconclusive confrontations, what would it take for people to believe? And why would people risk their lives to vote in an election that means nothing, as what passes for their country now is a set of half-baked structures propped up by the US? Why risk your life to be a citizen of a war when the very war isn't even yours?

'Afghanistan' is not a country. It is a bloody conflict, a losing battle, shorthand for all the questions US decision makers forgot to ask before engaging.
'On s'engage, puis on voit' didn't work for Napoleon and it didn't work for Bush. So it makes sense if the Afghans themselves are reluctant to put their lives in the hands of US marines who, as an army should, can always resort to a tactical retreat if the Taliban return and things get ugly. This is a war, after all.
Only for some it's also home. Ravaged, unsafe but still home. Tactical retreat is not an option.

The US may be realising this. They have shifted their strategy, confirms military strategist Anthony Cordesman. They now seek to hold onto territory and build lasting security. Right. And what was the strategy before? Lose territory and wreak havoc?

Naturally that's not what Cordesman means. US forces have proved time and again that they can win battles. They have also proved (time and again) that they cannot hold territory or win over and keep the loyalty of the population. They need to provide security, create economic opportunity, minimize Taliban influence and battle the fear of what the Taliban will do to 'collaborators' were they to come back in order to start 'holding on' to what their guns can win them. Then and only then will 'reconstruction' make sense.

This is not rocket science.
We know this. We've known it for five years. We've been talking about it for five years. They have been talking about it for five years. So they have either been lying about their intention to really do it all this time or we need to face the simple fact that they just can't do it. Maybe it just can't be done. Not this way. Not by these people. Not right now.

Michael Clarke, director of the Royal United Services Institute, begs to differ. 'This is a very specific example of fighting for democracy' he told the Guardian. Really?
Whose democracy? Your democracy ain't there and Afghanistan doesn't have a democracy. And that's not the way to get one either. Democracy requires stable institutions and basic freedoms, it can therefore not exist in wartime. It also necessitates grass roots participation and public engagement so it cannot be offered as a gift by an external party. Especially if said external party is wearing camouflage gear.

We occupy land so people can register for the election in August, say the marines. We protect the civilians, even if it means avoiding confrontation with the Taliban.
In other words we fight the war by not fighting the battles. And we play at citizenship, when the country is dormant.

Don't get me wrong. I'd love for the war to stop right now. For all wars to stop right now for good. But what I love and what I know are at odds on this one and what I know is this: you fight a war to win it. Day to day political activity is subjected to martial law and normal liberties are suspended. When you had those to start off with. If you never had them, introducing them during wartime is not stupid. It is hypocritical, a simple case of being seen to be doing something while everything is failing.

Obama has rightly noted that the military solution alone in Afghanistan is doomed to failure. But what he meant was that the military cannot solve the underlying problems the country had before and as a result of the war. He did not mean a non-military solution will solve the problem that is the war. What he didn't say is that the implication of this is that infrastructure development and social healing cannot take place in war time and cannot be carried out by soldiers. Particularly not foreign soldiers.

And herein lies yet another challenge: alongside the 4,000 marines hitting the ground last week there were only 500 Afghan soldiers – a token force if there ever was one. In this war, the Afghans are on the other side or simply on the sidelines, giving the question 'whose war is this' immense poignancy. And while we are focusing on Helmand, the war is raging in the entire country.
'Afghanistan' is still going on. Five years on.

What are the Americans after, what are they fighting for? Does anyone remember any more? The administration has changed, times have changed and what they set out to fight against, fight for has also changed. Yet the war continues and there's no changing the fact that this is the Americans' war. They need to figure out what it is they are fighting for if they are ever going to end it, let alone win it. Democracy and freedom are not theirs to give and they are not why they are there in the first place. Lofty ideals keep troop morale high but values and bayonets don't mix well together.

Afghanistan is a war and it's the Americans war. They should figure it out. They should end it. Then they should leave.
When the soldiers leave, when peace returns, when democracy and liberty become possible even if they remain elusive; when Afghanistan belongs to the Afghans, then it has a chance of being a country again.
Till then, Afghanistan is no country, it is a war and any talk of reconstruction, democratisation and institution-building is simply trying to mask the fact that the war is still going on and it is going rather badly. For all involved.

When in Rome, how about remembering you are a Roman?

2009-07-03T08:32:00.000-07:00

What are you up to this summer?
Island hopping? A beach holiday? A cricket tour? Watching Wimbledon? Whisking your underage offspring out to southeast Asia to marry them off to someone they've never met?
I'm only asking because, if that's your plan, the authorities are onto you.
Apparently teachers, doctors and the police have been given guidelines to help them 'identify and tackle the problem of forced marriage' now that forced marriage season is upon us. That's right, summer holiday is peak time for children to be taken to south Asia and forced to marry, says the British government. That makes sense, doesn't it? You don't want the sudden end of innocence and trust to mess with the underage bride's education.

But obviously this is no laughing matter.

According to recent figures released by the National Centre for Social Research more than 5,000 people are at risk of forced marriage each year. In Britain. The research is trying to stay neutral – to avoid accusations of Islamophobia – but the fact is that the vast majority of those 5,000 'people' are girls born to Muslim families of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin. That said, the research also has to stay neutral because their data is shaky and hard to obtain. For instance. The Centre believes that between 5,000 and 8,000 cases of forced marriage were reported in England in 2008 alone.
First thought: fucking hell that's a lot.
Second thought: if these forced marriages are reported, how can you be estimating in the first place, surely it's a hard number. Plus how on earth can you have a margin of error of this magnitude? 3,000 incidents is hardly a case of 'give or take a couple'.

Why on earth can we not count these incidents properly?
Part of it is because the people dealing with these incidents don't always understand what they are up against. And part of it is that those dealing with these issues, well, they'd rather they didn't have to.

The research found that there is a distinct lack of understanding among statutory service providers making the problem harder to spot. When is a marriage a forced marriage? Who needs to report it to make it real? If the bride bows her head and goes along with it yet her cousins call the authorities, is the marriage consensual? If the wedding takes place in another country, is it still our problem?
And isn't it altogether easier to put all this unpleasantness in the 'ethnic' box, plead 'cultural sensitivities' and let the whole thing carry on in that grey space of 'cultural practices' in which coexistence flirts with the ghetto?

Although schools have been instructed to be on alert, many are reluctant to look into this issue for fear of being accused of being disrespectful towards other cultures. Is that a true fear? Is that an excuse used by school staffers who do not want to have to deal with this? Is it a convenient shield for fathers who want to determine their children's fate in a country whose legislation does not permit it? And who should back down first in what starts as a conversation over a small girl's future and before you know it becomes a grand debate over multiculturalism? Well. That depends. On whether you care more about the epistemology of the question or the little girl.

Let me put it another way: Whose problem is it that underage girls are being married off against their will and before the legal age of consent?
If you ask me, I'd say this problem, like all others, belongs to those who cause it and those who can solve it. Those who cause it don't want to fix it on this occasion. And those who can solve it wash their hands on grounds of culture.
The government spokesmen are trying very hard to be firm in their opposition to forced marriages whilst not dismissing any religion or culture, coming up with the following gem in the process ' there is no culture, and there is no religion in which forced marriage […] is acceptable'.
I'll give you the religion bit, Mr spokesman, with the caveat that no religion embraces forced marriage in its pure doctrinal form. Because all religions have at some point condoned and many have embraced forced marriages in practice. And although I salute this commitment to wooliness, I'm afraid there are numerous cultures in which forced marriages are acceptable by default, because familial hierarchy means that daughters in particular (but also children in general) are not equipped with independent judgment or volition and decisions are to be made by the head of the household, family, clan or tribe for the good of all.
That's cultural. Not how we do things here. But how things are done elsewhere. Culture.
Culture is not all jingly anklets, lantern festivals and pinning money on the bride, you see.
Culture entails prohibitions and imperatives, duties and invisible lines of command. Every culture.
And in some cultural settings it is acceptable to marry off underage girls to people their families have chosen for them. In fact, in many cultural settings from South America to Africa and from Eastern Europe through Asia, this is hardly shocking. Not here. But elsewhere. The difference is that here 770 girls have already reached out to the Forced Marriage Unit this year. And it is feared that many more are too scared of their parents to pick up the phone, go to the police, speak to a teacher – in short, too scared to use the legal framework that exists and is on their side. They are here. And yet they are not.

But those who call, what do you think they say on the phone? Please sir can you protect me without antagonising my dad and insulting my culture? If not, forget about it and thanks for trying.
Or do you think they may be saying the exact opposite: I was born here and I was raised here and I used to think I belonged here. So if I am one of yours, regardless of creed and colour, why are you not making sure your laws apply to me when I need them most?

All I'm saying is their dads have forgotten about the old adage 'when in Rome'. Despite the laws and the discourse of freedom, their dads have forgotten to act like the Romans would.
What about the Romans?

Broken record day: Credit crunch yourself

2009-06-26T03:59:00.000-07:00

Today is a broken record day, you've been warned.

Repeat after me: Greece does not have a credit crunch. And again. And again. Now say it like you mean it. There is no credit crunch: The fact that you live in the midst of a crisis does not mean that your crisis is either glamorously 'made in the USA' or someone else's fault.
I know I've said it before, but after 9 solid days of hearing Greeks bemoan 'the international crisis' it's obvious that when I last said it nobody was listening.

You hear it on the Greek news: 'Greece is in the grip of a global credit crunch'. You hear it in the shops. Even the baker near my parents bemoaned the credit crisis. Apparently it was to blame for the reduced profiteroles sales. Even though profiteroles don't sell well in summer. Ever.
But everyone wants a share of the misery pie that is the crisis. It gives everyone a reason to moan and we all love a good moan. It gives everyone a reason to ask for reductions to commercial rent, retail prices, hotel bills. And it gives the authors of Greece's actual crisis (because as we've said before, it does have one) a perfect excuse to hide behind. Not only is this crisis not our fault, not only is it not in our power to resolve it but all the cool kids have the same crisis too.

Well. Not quite.
The cool kids have an actual credit crunch courtesy of American bankers who over-leveraged and decided, to put it as simply as it deserves to be put, that the unemployed and the under-employed living in trailer parks were not likely to default on their rent or mortgage payments and buying up that risk would make a good product for their clients. My seven-year old cousin could tell you what would happen next: the bottom of the food chain did what it was always going to do (it defaulted) and the repackaged financial products that transferred parceled-up risk across the globe made a single mother's rent woes a global financial headache. Apply the same model to repackaged credit card debt and you have a lot of corporate bankers feeling stupid and a lot of their clients losing serious amounts of money.

Now these financial products are created and consumed within a rather narrow (large but still narrow) community of financial services players, all of whom are big corporate entities and not individuals. In other words, this crisis was internal to the system that caused it and could have stayed there. But that would have pretty much killed the system in its present form and would have hurt the people who run and benefit from it, so it didn't stay there. It was shared out and we all got to feel the pain. First the pain was shared with the rest of their organizations and, though their commercial banking sections, with the public. And we all got to join in the fun.

First it was our mortgages. Then it was residential rent prices. Then it was interest rates. Then it was salary freezes and job cuts. Then it was consumer goods and everything else you can think of.

What was the alternative, you ask?
The only alternative would have been for the whole financial services community, globally, to go down in flames. Corporations would lose money, financial products would lose all credibility, the financial services sector would self-combust and stop selling hot air (futures, options, repackaged debt) thus causing massive unemployment in the financial sector and all those servicing said sector. We would have had a crisis then as well. But we would have had the right kind of crisis and the system would have purged itself, possibly into extinction. Now we are all counting our pennies and the way banking is carried out is largely unchanged.

Is it simplistic to suggest that they could have protected the consumer from feeling the pinch? Yes, slightly. But given the choice between sharing the pain or losing not just their jobs and their bonuses but also their entire industry, big banks decided to engage in some displacement activity. Anything else would have involved radical change in the banking sector and who wants that? Not the boys in the big offices. So the pain was shared out and, before you know it, everyone is feeling the pinch. Retail spending goes down and marketing shifts to adjust to the new patterns. Advertising is withdrawn so newspapers are slashing journalists' jobs; bankers and lawyers are being sacked so the sandwich shops, dry cleaners' and retail units all around their offices are shutting down too, for lack of custom; financial services businesses are cutting costs and the support staff (cleaners, receptionists, maintenance staff and canteen workers) made redundant go on the dole, become exempt from paying council tax for a while and, before you know it, councils are slashing mother and toddler aqua classes, teachers' posts and your second rubbish collection every week.

Of course it's a cycle.
Of course Greece is part of the global cycle of woe, doom and gloom.
But the credit crunch hit Greece in a localised and specific manner. Mortgages were affected. But the percentage of Greeks carrying a mortgage is tiny compared to the rest of Europe. Shipping was affected, but that is a small and self-contained community. Import-exports were affected and that spilled into retail. Tourism was affected but we are yet to feel the after-shock for that one.

But was your Joe Public affected? No. Because his salary was so low already and the cost of living so high already that he hardly felt the additional spike. Now he's told it's all down to the credit crunch and he buys it because there is a global credit crunch and it's affecting the whole world so why not us? And if we haven't caused it, we can't fix it so the government can sit on its ass while the few businesses that are benefiting from this all are pushing prices higher and higher and salaries lower and lower.

It's a good plan. Only there is a flaw in it that will become apparent when the credit crunch passes, because it will at some point, and the Greek financial crisis remains. And remain it will because it has nothing to do with the credit crunch and everything to do with public mismanagement of tax revenue, high unemployment and under-employment, low salaries crippling the spending power of an entire generation, insufficient public investment, an ailing agricultural sector and dying manufacturing.

Add to that a banking sector that is almost entirely outside state control and effective scrutiny thus managing to get away with the biggest differential between interest rates on loans and interest rates on savings in the whole of Europe. One has to wonder who pockets the difference. I guess it's the same someone who benefits from the numerous repossessions, unlawful banking charges and other benefits brought to you by the small print that keeps being challenged by domestic and European courts to no avail.

This is not a global tsunami. This crisis has everything to do with Greece.
It has everything to do with unfair taxation, targeting those who don't tax evade and crippling them. It has everything to do with non-existent fiscal policy, with empty coffers and no ideas. And I mean no ideas. The government's latest money-making scheme is to tax mobile phone usage, per minute. Credit crunch that.

This crisis has everything to do with an economy that has not been properly tended since the military experiment of the 60s and 70s ended, and anything that is left untended goes to hell. If you use and abuse it on top, it goes to hell even faster.

So crisis? Yes.
Credit crunch? No.
And as the problems will persist even after the credit crunch goes, what I want to know is this: when the rest of the world has recovered and our home-grown crisis is still going strong, what are we going to call it then, to avoid having to deal with it?

One lovely blog, it's official

2009-06-25T01:25:00.000-07:00

Start spreading the news: I was just given the 'one lovely blog' award by my friend Fri who is obviously a kind and charitable soul and sees through the fire and brimstone posts, through the anger and the rants to the soul within. For that I thank her and will wear my award proudly on my cyber-sleeve.

Here is the deal though.
An award is a joy to be shared and once you've accepted your award you are in turn empowered to grant 15 awards to 15 lovely blogs. So if you are on my list below do the following:

1. Accept your award – a speech thanking the academy is optional.
2. Select 15 adorable blogs and give them their award
3. Let the lucky ones know they have been chosen

That's it. Hardly taxing!

So, lovely people, here it is...
Singling out 15 blogs is actually not an easy job. My original shortlist was about 60 strong. Oops.
So here comes my disclaimer: if you are not on my list it's not because I love you any less. Honest. But considering I can only choose 15 this time, in no particular order the winners are:

Leviathan , Thanos , Colourful mind , Forada St'Aloni, Dorothea , Polyvios , Haris, El Romandante, Zinaa Kapa, Viky Papaprodromou, Polykarpos, Tyler Durden, Ftylos, Candiru, Zirzirikos

Again special thanks to Fri.

And thank you, wonderful people, who read, write and comment in this wondrous space that is the blogosphere; a space that seems to atract and keep more intelligence and commitment than any other communication sphere. Habermas would have been proud. And that's a very good thing.

Peace and I'm out.

Equal but different is not equal at all

2009-06-19T09:55:00.000-07:00

At last.
President Obama signed a memorandum extending to same-sex domestic partners of federal employees some of the rights enjoyed by their heterosexual counterparts.
At last.

Still, this is no cause for celebration. This is basic stuff we are talking about. And although we are all happy this has finally happened, I can't help but be bothered by the fact that this simple memo is the result of months of study into how to extend benefits for same-sex couples without upsetting the conservative right and without violating the Defense of Marriage Act, an Act the Obama administration has vowed to scrap yet keeps defending.
So this memo, important as it is, is nowhere near enough if you are committed to ending the inequality marginalising same-sex couples. But it is too much if you care about not offending the conservative right.
There is no middle ground here and Obama is rapidly discovering this much to his dismay.

'This is only one step' said Obama in a conciliatory tone.
But that was a step too far for the conservarive right while pro-gay rights communities were left wondering when he's going to take the next step.
Obama has paid lip-service to the gay rights agenda but supporters feel he is not going fast enough or far enough. The conservative right, on the other hand, think he has already gone too far too fast.
From an electoral perspective, Obama needs to get this balance right. The gay community is a big chunk of votes he can't afford to lose but America's conservative heartland represents more votes still. From an electoral perspective, he needs to placate both sides, a mathematical impossibility as one side wants all rights to apply regardless of sexuality and the other, well, doesn't. So his only option is to anger both sides, a little but not too much. A thankless task if there ever was one.

All this considered, I still don't think that giving same-sex domestic partners access to healthcare is a breakthrough: it's a much-needed, long-overdue 'fix' to an unfair practice that discriminates and excludes people just because of how they find happiness and who they chose to love.
So the question, really, is 'now what?'

Obama has appointed openly gay individuals to prominent positions thus angering the right – name one thing that doesn't anger the right other than bible study – but beyond that, this is the first nod towards gay rights since he took office five months ago. Yes yes I know he has wars to finish and a financial crisis to manage but, to be honest, if he can't multi-task he's in the wrong job.

You wanna call a spade a spade?
In America, land of freedom and opportunity, some animals are more equal than others. So when a young black Democrat was elected to the supreme office, the entire world thought: here comes the end of 'equal but different' – segregation policies in all but name. But five months on, we are still waiting. What is he waiting for? The tide is already turning. Six states have legalised same-sex marriage. But, wait for it, Obama opposes that on religious grounds.

And that's where Barack lost me. Not that he cares. But he lost me.
Because that is a hypocritical narrow-minded rejection of difference (for political gain or out of personal cowardice and I don't know what's worse) and this is why:
- Christianity is a faith system based on love. Love for God and love for each other. No true Christian rejects love, wherever it is found, whatever form it may take, even if it is love you do not wish for yourself.

- Marriage is a civil bond that may or may not be sanctified by a religious ceremony. It is a contract allowing partners who spend their lives together to share the property they amass together, to make decisions regarding each other's health when the time comes, to be a unit in the eyes of the law. Religion comes into it if the couple feel it should and to reject a couple's legal right to marry on religious grounds is misguided and hypocritical.

- A same sex couple taking vows of fidelity and love hurts absolutely nobody. It takes away nothing from any other group. Even if you don't think that their love and partnership makes the world a better place, you cannot point to a single thing you lose through their union. If you don't like what you see, look away. Human and civil rights are granted on grounds of humanity and citizenship and cannot be legitimately withheld because you do not like the way people choose to exercise them.

And this is not about sexuality as such. This is about the sort of world you want to live in. And here is my problem: I think there should be anti-gun laws because people with guns can hurt others. I don't object to anti-smoking laws in public places on the same grounds but think that laws banning people from smoking in their own cars is penalizing a lifestyle choice and that's not how we do business in a liberal society. And that's the crux of the matter. My rights can only legitimately be curtailed in order to safeguard other people's rights. Not on grounds of the tastes and preferences of those in power. Objecting to gay marriage on religious or moral grounds, to me, translates to 'you can't have it cos I don't like it and don't want it for myself'.

So the time has come to stand up for what we believe in and that does not entail answering the question 'do you think gay servicemen and women should have the same right as civil servants not in uniform' (which they should); the question is 'do you want to live in a world where some animals are more equal than others'?

Obama promised to reverse the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act yet only last week the Justice Department filed a legal brief opposing a challenge to said Act (apparently administrations defend laws they oppose as a matter of course, according to Obama's press secretary) using unnecessarily strong language. If this was an attempt at conciliation, it failed. Gay groups are offended, rights activists are outraged while the right is not placated by the brief and finds Obama's memo a violation of the rule of law and the Defense of Marriage Act.

So what will it be Barack?
This war won't be won with token gestures and small concessions. While same-sex couples live in the margins because their rights are denied by a majority that doesn't care about what doesn't concern them, the right consider tiny redresses to the massive rights imbalance 'aggressive' and 'radical'.
Tony Perkins, President of the conservative Family Research Council, went as far as to speak of the homosexuals' extreme demands.
What would those be, I wonder?
The right for a couple to stay together when one partner is posted abroad? The right to take compassionate leave when your life partner is sick and needs you by their side? The right to live in dignity and peace? The right to publicly love and protect your chosen partner?

Extreme indeed.
As extreme as black kids going to school and women getting jobs. As extreme as black women voting and taking the bar exam.

The point is, fairness is not a popularity contest.
Equality is universal or it is not at all. Rights are universal or they are a sham.
That's why the world looked on in hope when a black man became President of the US. Because he didn't need to have some things explained to him. He didn't need to be told discrimination is criminal and 'equal but different' is an insult and a lie. And because he didn't need to have any of this explained to him, we expect him to stand up to be counted when fairness is at stake.

So Mr Obama, on the question of gay rights what we want from you is to eliminate the very phrase. We want equality for individuals to completely eclipse the need to even talk of gay rights. Because people who happen to be gay will have the same rights as people who happen to be straight.

Equality cannot be had by degrees. You are either equal or you are not.
So what will it be?

Greece, my Neverland

2009-06-15T08:43:00.000-07:00

I just got back from Greece. I've brought back several tons of olives and a passable tan; I managed to forget half my clothes and take, instead, summer clothes I haven't worn in decades (because 'you never know' whatever that means, sometimes I don't even make sense to myself). And here I am back in London, back at work. Missing my mum. Missing the sunshine. And realising that storylines matter. 'Once upon time' creates its own imperatives. Stories have power, they don't determine everything but they do open up some options while closing others. That's why so much of the randomness of Greek life can be taken for granted while you are actually in Greece.
Take zebra crossings. I will go out of my way in London to find one, law-abiding citizen that I am. In Greece it never crosses my mind to cross at one. It wouldn't make a difference even if it did. Because crossing at zebra crossings doesn't happen in Greece. It's not part of the story.

Everything comes with a storyline. The way people behave in public, the way they approach politics, what they expect from the economy.

Take the European elections.

I flew out to Athens on Friday night last week. Thursday was the European election in the UK, Sunday was election day in Greece. In England you could have missed the fact that there was a European election altogether. Advertising did not go much beyond a 'don't forget to vote/make sure your papers are in order so you can vote' campaign and some flyers from various candidates. The actual candidates. 'Vote for me' type flyers including a photo and a name. Of the candidates. Themselves.

And then I fly out to Greece. And during the sleepy drive (worry not faithful readers, I wasn't doing the driving) from Athens airport to the heart of Thessaly (that's half-way up the country, for the non-Greeks among you. a drive of just over 3 hours) I saw literally thousands of political posters. More per hundred yards of high-way than in the whole of West London put together. In fact, I lost count of the political posters lining the streets before I even lost sight of the airport.
Poster after poster after poster but no sight of a candidate.

The posters fell in two categories: the two big parties (PA.SO.K – nominally socialist but essentially value-neutral unless lining your own pocket counts as an ideology – and Nea Demokratia – nominally conservative but in reality focusing more on being the most corrupt and inefficient government in a series of corrupt and inefficient governments, regardless of hue and creed. It's hard work but they are doing it very well). Those posters look identical: leader looking wistfully into the middle distance, backdrop in the party colours (green and blue, respectively) and an inspirational, void logo along the lines of 'we vote for Europe, we decide for Greece' or 'focusing on the citizen'.
The second type of poster was fielded by the communists (yes, we still have those in Greece) and the Euro-Communists (aka 'Syriza'). These were in various shades of red and focused on encouraging people to vote against the big parties as a sign of rebellion. Hasta la victoria siempre.

No mention of the European Parliament.
No mention of the actual candidates.
The storyline was all about parties and expressions of loyalty to colour schemes.

And that's the story both politicians and journalists stuck to.The entire European parliament election shebang was couched in a party narrative. The journalists were using the exact same language as if they were covering a parliamentary election. As were the politicians.
This party did this, this party got that share of the vote, a great success for the leader of the opposition, a blow for the Prime Minister.
And as all narratives, this one built up its own momentum and everyone around me was speaking of the European elections the same way. They even joked about how poorly Gordon Brown did over here.

Naturally MEP election results are often read as a rough indication of how well big parties are doing at home. But no more than that. MEP elections are safe (because MEPs have no power whatsoever so a voter will never live to regret a poor choise) so people vote in ways that they wouldn't vote 'at home': they vote Green, they vote Liberal, they vote 'funky' because they can.
No-one suggests that the result doesn't reflect poorly on Labour in the UK (not least because the nationalists did so well in the UK MEP election) but here's the newsflash: Brown was not running in the European election. The Greek Premier and his arch rival were not running the European election. Their parties weren't even running in the European election as MEPs belong to EU-wide amalgamation parties with separate leaders and rather loose party discipline.

But the narrative was so over-powering, no-one questioned it in Greece.
The narrative of the European election as a national election means that the premier has to hang his head in shame and promise the voters that he will reflect on the message they sent him (in this election that had nothing to do with him). But this same narrative allowed him to dismiss parliament, hide a series of scandals under the carpet and literally get away with murder.
This narrative gave all political parties a breathing space of several months 'preparing' for an election that didn't affect them and basking in the glory of a victory that doesn't concern them.

Stories matter.
'Once upon a time' sets the tone and we follow. It takes skill to spin a good story, to make sure things are understood a certain way, viewed a certain way, linked a certain way. Stories matter. Because we live in terms of stories and we understand our experiences in terms of the stories they fit into and we all assume our roles within the stories. And although we question events and people and facts, we rarely question the story.
Remember the Matrix? It's a bit like that minus the kicks and the leather coats.

Of course, I do realise that, in the grand scheme of things and in light of all our erstwhile leaders have put us through, this is small fry. In some ways, the European election gave our leaders something to play with that meant the economy, justice system and social structures were left in peace for a while. And yet this little game matters immensely. Because this story, as many others, was spun to perfection as far away from reality as it could possibly be without giving the game away.
And we swallowed it whole.

All I'm saying is that those who determine the 'once upon a time' also hold the 'happily ever after' and if we want a part of that, we'd better keep an eye on the storyline they are feeding us.

The wicked witch of the west, the cowardly lion and the murdered abortionist

2009-06-05T09:32:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time there was a famous Wizard who made wishes come true. In the weird and wonderful land of Oz, the Wizard captured people's imaginations and creatures travelled far and wide just to ask him for a favour. Of course those of us who know the story, know that all said creatures already had what it is they were after and the journey to the Emerald City was one of self-discovery during which our heroes learned to accept themselves and others.
The story I am about to tell you now has many similarities to that tale but, as it's a true story, we are not holding our breath for the happy ending.

So, my story begins with the cowardly lion. Not the cute one in the movie but the man who shot a doctor dead a few days ago in the US of A, in church, no less, because they disagreed on the issue of abortion. Well, we sure are not in Kansas any more, if people who call themselves 'pro-life' kill a man to stop him from doing things they disagree with. Only, we are in Kansas, cos that's exactly where the crime took place: in a church foyer in Wichita Kansas.

And here's me thinking anti-abortionists were church-going folk who objected to a woman's right to choose on God grounds and would never desecrate a church.

As you would expect, anti-abortion groups in Wichita were fast to condemn the murder. They would never do that, they said. Harassment was their method of choice. Without a hint of embarrassment they relate to the press how they have spent money, time and effort to have Dr George Tiller investigated by the health authorities and prosecuted for 'his crimes'. Which are? Doing something that is perfectly legal but contrary to the moral code of some.

News flash, everyone: 'but I don't like it' stops being a valid argument roundabout the time you start kindergarten. Especially when the thing you are pouting at is a. legal b. none of your business.
Because abortion is legal and the people who are objecting to it are not being forced to have one, so what is their problem? Or, to put it more scientifically, whatever happened to that most glorious gift of American democracy: liberty? Was the gift a lie – smoke and mirrors, a bit like the Wizard of Oz himself? Is your liberty actually mitigated by who disagrees with you and how powerful they are? The short answer to this, I'm afraid, is yes.

And of course abortion is a very controversial subject for American politics. In fact, it is bordering on the obsessive. Election after election, the christian right will find a way to make abortion a debate topic somehow. Why? Because they care. But why they care quite so much, beats me.

Why is there a large chunk of the American public who cares so much about something that doesn't necessarily concern them?
Bear with me here:
Abortion is never compulsory even when it is advisable on medical grounds. So those who object to abortion don't need to have one. Surely that should be the end of the conversation, in a democracy, right? Right. Unless you are a neo-con, Christian rightist who believes that their morality is the straightjacket humanity has always needed.

Now I am not for a moment suggesting that all anti-abortionists would condone the killing of George Tiller, publicly or privately. And I don't think anyone would disagree that the man who shot him is a danger to society and should not have had access to a weapon. But – oh hold on, what do I see here? Do I see statistics suggesting that anti-abortionists are in their majority pro-guns? And, no, before you ask, they don't see the irony here.

I will not patronise you by saying I am pro-choice and anti-gun, it's dead obvious – no pun intended. But I will say that this is where we have a communication breakdown with 'The Other Side' – the Wicked Witch of the West and her ultra-right flying monkeys: when it comes to gun laws, they uphold every man's right to own a gun. To this, I say it is my right to not live in fear that some lunatic will buy a gun from Wal-Mart and wreak havoc just because. I fail to see how guns are useful items of everyday life and do seriously believe that my right to stay alive outweighs somebody's right to have a very dangerous toy. Go to the range and shoot all you like buster but don't take it to the mall. Where other people may suffer the consequences of your choices.

You see where I am going with this.
Abortion is different. It's personal and private. Doing or not doing it affects only the mother and the foetus. And although the entire controversy is, of course, around whether the foetus is a person that should be protected, the point remains that the debate is around a medical procedure that affects one body: that of the mother. And while the debate on whether a foetus is a person continues, how about a musical interlude during which the pro-lifers explain to us why, feeling as strong as they do on the subject of the foetus as a living being whose life is sacred, they remain in favour of free access to deadly weapons and the death penalty?

Dr Tiller's death will now reopen the debate on abortion – a debate that President Obama was rather keen to not have to deal with just yet as it never leads to anything other than bitter recriminations, value judgments and frothing at the mouth by some.
But debate they will now.
And what I want to know is this: what's there to debate?

A woman's right to choose is something to defend and fight for.
Dr Tiller's death is something to castigate and prevent from ever reoccurring.
But if you want a debate, how about discussing the harassment Dr Tiller dealt with in life (blockades and attacks outside his clinic, home and church; a series of legal challenges including two grand juries convened by citizen-led petition drives; and a previous non-lethal gun attack), how about discussing how all this can be stropped and a doctor administering a legal procedure protected from thugs and bullies?

Abortion is legal but there's nothing stopping pro-lifers from following the yellow brick road and seeking out the wonderful wizard of Oz with a plea to reverse the law and make abortion illegal. But while doing that they have to the stick to the yellow brick road and avoid breaking the law themselves (through harassment, murder or intimidation).

And you never know, the journey of self-discovery that helped the tinman realise he already had a heart may help pro-lifers too. They may realise that pro-choice stands for just that. Nobody is saying abortion is a good or pleasant thing. Nobody is saying it should replace contraception. Nobody is saying it is an easy choice. But it is a choice that must be available. Because women get raped, because pregnancy may present a danger to the mother's health, or because a woman is not emotionally and psychologically ready to cope with motherhood.

And while the pro-lifers will preach abstinence and threaten us with fire and brimstone and the pits of hell, I just hope that Glinda will glide in and reset terms, reminding everyone that while abortion remains legal, the state has a duty to protect practitioners from violence, intimidation, harassment. And a duty to protect the women who choose the exercise that right.

And failing that, maybe Obama should take some time to remind everyone – not what he thinks on the issue of abortion - but what the law prescribes and what the state will uphold, for as long as the law stands.

Then let the debate resume in these terms, while I rub my ruby slippers, willing a house to collapse on the thugs who have killed 4 doctors in the past ten years just for giving women the right to choose as the law prescribes.

Actions speak louder than words or why I'd like to slap the prom queen

2009-06-01T06:39:00.001-07:00

A few days ago I read an article that winded me. It upset me. It angered me more than I can say. And my anger revealed a basic truth about myself: there are limits to my open-mindedness. I am not proud of this for, although I reject and resent those who attempt to silence me, there are people I would like silenced. So this is less of a polemic, for a change, and more of a confessional. Bear with me.

Beliefs are important.
But beliefs only come about on issues where more than one answer is possible. You don't believe in breathing because without it you die. There is only one way to deal with the issue and that is to breathe. You don't believe in what is given, natural and non-negotiable. Belief is about conscious espousal. Belief is about choice.

And here is where my trouble begins.
There are certain things where I don't believe choice exists. There are some issues on which I feel there is only one natural reaction. And when, on those issues, someone disagrees with me, I experience it as a violation of the laws of nature.
Take racism for instance.
I struggle with it. Not just because of its intrinsic injustice and irrational rejection of some human beings in favour of others. But because to my mind it is unnatural and therefore it should not exist. And this is not just a moral 'should'. It is physiological. It should not be possible for racism to exist. The equality of all human beings is not up for debate. It does not need to be believed to be true. Yet it does. In practice, it does. Because unless you act like it's true then it stops being true for many people.

And here is my problem. I do not accept the racist's right to their convictions. I think they deserve a thorough beating. I am ashamed to be saying this. But it is true and the urge to hit someone overwhelmed me when, a few days ago, I read an article in a back copy of the New York Times. Here is the issue: At Montgomery County High School in Georgia, USA, black and white students mingle freely in the classrooms and corridors but every year, without fail, they hold separate proms.
On the face of it, that's no big deal. Schools are no longer segregated and what's in a party? Well. Everything. Actually.

First of all I can hardly believe this occurs in the first place. And let me say that segregated proms are not a Montgomery County specialty but take place across the rural South of the US. Only last year, actor Morgan Freeman offered to pay for an integrated prom at Charleston High School in Mississippi, his home state. This was to be the first prom of its kind and students supported the idea but a group of white parents rejected the offer and held a rival prom for the 'white folk'. That then the white folk dully attended, perpetuating the problem.

The segregated proms are organised outside the schools by parents and student committees. While all students are welcome to the black prom, few if any white students turn up. The white prom on the other hand is governed by an unspoken rule that keeps black students at bay.
Omerta in the schoolyard.

Black students, the New York Times report, have put pressure on Montgomery County High to hold a single school-sponsored prom to no avail.

Students are quick to note that interracial friendships and couples are common at Montgomery County High School. White parents don't always approve but what they don't know, can't hurt them.

We are not like our parents, say the students.

Bullshit you are not. If you go to the white-only prom they throw for you, you are as much part of the problem as they are.

And the fact that the students interviewed discuss what is natural as a breakthrough in public morality ('we have black friends, we have black boyfriends') simply underlines the hypocrisy of it all.

Your friends are the people you want to spend the prom with. Your boyfriend or girlfriend is the person you want to go to the prom with. What fun is a prom that excludes the very people you are supposed to share it with? What good is a celebration that excludes and humiliates the people you want to share it with?

And how come, neither love, nor friendship, nor moral outrage stand in the way of hundreds of students attending such proms, year in year out?

We are not racist, say the students. It's just how it's always been. Our parents refuse to pay for mixed proms and having segregated ones is a tradition.
It's how it's always been.
To hell with that.
'It's how it's always been' was the argument used to defend slavery, the disenfranchisement of women, the criminalisation of homosexuality. 'It's how it's always been' has been the argument in favour of the continuation of all repressive practices in human history. And I have news for you: it is a lie. No social practice has always been. Every social practice is human made and can be unmade by humans. And few have been so lucky as to be able to affect social change of this magnitude by simply not going to a party.

Beliefs matter. But actions matter more.
These kids say they believe in one thing, but when it comes down to it, they do another. It's hard work, living up to your beliefs. Standing up to Dad. Missing parties and whatnot. Practicing what you preach is hard work.
I understand them, I know reading about their predicament has put me in the same position they are in, of believing in one thing and wanting to do another. You see, although I believe in everyone's right to hold and express any belief they choose, my action of choice in this particular isntance, if only distance permitted, would be to go over to that white-only prom and kick their righteous racist asses to hell and back.

When it comes to scandals, size really doesn't matter

2009-05-27T07:04:00.000-07:00

Life may not imitate art but my conversations seem to follow on from my blog posts in a rather peculiar way. Barely a week since my 'dangers of not caring post' and I am sitting in the most unlikely of settings – a wedding reception – talking to a complete stranger about this and that. The stranger, it turns out, lives and works in Zimbabwe and on those grounds dismisses the British MPs expenses scandal.
When put that way it makes no sense does it? But you've seen it happen again and again.
'You call this a scandal? Wait till you've seen one of ours'. The principle here, evidently, being that when it comes to scandals size does matter.
Well, friends, I am not sure it does.

In case you've missed it (because as luck has it you may live in a country that has impressive, block-buster style scandals and this one did not register as being worthy of column inches in your location) the UK is in the midst of a scandal of its own around the expense claims members of Parliament have been submitting and getting away with. Such claims range from the illegal (mortgage payments for a house that is already mortgage-free) to the absurd (cleaning a moat, yes a moat) to the downright hilarious (porn for the MP's husband). Claims cover huge value items such as houses and tiny items such as a chocolate bar. And if I am allowed to digress briefly, I am not entirely sure which one of the two extremes bugs me more – the insanely huge bills on something like new hardwood floors and chandeliers or the tiny tiny bills for tampons and fizzy drinks. Obviously, as a tax payer I resent the massive items more yet, as a citizen, I find the small ticket items more offensive because they seem to be telling me that the MPs have no intention of using their salary to pay for anything. At all. Ever.
But I digress.
The point is, some of these claims are illegal but mostly they are within the rules and that is the problem: that the rules allow for way too much of this to go on so the rules need to be reformed while the rest of us have a conversation about morality and whether the MPs were actually breaching our trust and their sacred duty even if they were not breaking the law.

And all this is very important. In a democracy.
Because it entails discussions of trust in your elected representatives and systemic transparency. Because it concerns the use and potential misuse of public funds and the public, whose funds these actually are, merits an explanation and an apology.
And because this is supposed to be a democracy the fact that regulations exist does not end the matter. We need to ask if the regulations are appropriate to the situation, whether they do what we want them to do, whether our system is serving us as it ought to.

Which is where the person living in Zimbabwe guffawed saying it was sweet that those of us living in England could get flustered over things like the expenses scandal when corruption and inefficiency in their political life is so high and so common that millions of dollars' worth of public funds appear in politicians' bank accounts and nobody even thinks about prosecuting.
In short this translates to 'you guys have nothing, ours is bigger than yours'.

And my first reaction was a need to win, to trump her, to show her I had scandals as big as hers up my sleeve.
It was an interesting inversion as my interlocutor is English albeit living in Zimbabwe and I am, as you all know, Greek living in England. So what England fails to provide by way of scandals, the motherland obligingly offers. 'You call that corruption? We closed down Parliament for 5 months, we have massive scandals implicating the government, opposition, private sector and some priests to boot. We have corrupt policemen, corrupt judges, corrupt civil servants. Millions of euros go missing from public coffers as a matter of course, rights are trampled, nothing moves without bribery and nobody even blinks. Try that one on for size'. My scandal is bigger than yours. I win. Well done me.
Only not so well done as scandals are not good things and big bad things are a whole load of bad more than small bad things. So what's with the pride in being totally shambolic? And exactly why are you so chuffed your scandal is bigger than anybody else's? This is one of those things where size really really doesn't matter.

And that's the problem with comparisons.
You put something next to something else and all of a sudden both are reduced to the sum of their differences. Inevitably one will be bigger. And then what?
The fact that Zimbabwe is more corrupt than the UK and Greece is somewhere in between does not absolve Greece and the UK, it does not render their inadequacies irrelevant, it does not make taking the citizens for a ride ok if others do it too.

We all live in imperfect systems, that much we know.
Power corrupts and no political system has ever escaped sleaze, corruption, misuse. The question is what do you do to prevent it and, when it occurs, what do you do about it?
In Zimbabwe, you do nothing because doing something may put you in real physical danger.
In Greece, you do nothing because, well we've been through this before: you do nothing because corruption is what you expect, scandal is what public life is made of.
And in Britain? In Britain you do nothing until you can no longer get away with doing nothing. And then you do the absolute minimum but at least you do it and therein lies the difference.

British public life is full of blunders, attempts at cover ups, corruption and dishonesty. But there is also this basic instinct somewhere in the gut of the body politic that something needs to be done about the things that are going seriously wrong.
So when the expenses scandal appeared, the newspapers screamed bloody murder until an investigation started and some heads rolled. The rules will be revised. And at the end of it all the system will still be imperfect, corruption will still be a possibility, but it will not be the norm.
So rather than laughing at them, because their scandal is smaller than ours, how about we take a leaf out of their book and stop taking scandals for granted?

This is not an art to be perfected, size does not denote expertise and 'when you do it, do it right' should not be the attitude we take to corruption.
Scandals are bad, boys and girls, and on this one size really doesn't matter: a scandal is a scandal is a scandal – big or small, the only constant fact about them is that they shouldn't be there.
And if ours is bigger than anyone else's then one thing we shouldn't be doing is a victory dance.

The dangers of not caring

2009-05-20T03:56:00.000-07:00

Politics.
I love it. I hate it.
It moves me. It inspires me. It pains me. It angers me.

And, as you know only too well, I don't shut up about it.

Of course I know few care about politics as much as I do. But I avoid people who don't care at all. I don't want their friendship, I don't want their time. And that's not because I am an intellectual snob (ok, maybe a little) but because of two fundamental and interconnected beliefs I hold: 1. politics is everything and 2. only fools fail to care about what doesn't immediately concern them. Because only a fool feels sheltered from bad things happening elsewhere or to other people.

Let me explain.
There are people who think that politics equal elections and tax reform, parties and prime minister's question time. Of course all this is politics but everything else is politics too. Nobody is outside it. School curricula, bus routes, pub opening times are all political and not just because they are regulated by law, policy and institutional practice. Whether you can buy fags in the supermarket, enjoy a late-night pint, adopt a child, sign your child out of school, buy a house with a partner, have a duvet day and take your boss to HR for being a bully boils down to politics. Politicians may not be involved but policy, principle, communal action and public negotiation are involved and that makes all of this political. You call it what you like. It is politics to me. If it entails the ordering of public life, the negotiation of social interactions and the matching of realities to ideas then it is political. So everything is political and politics is everything.

On the second issue. Well. I've already said that I believe that the ability for reflection, abstraction and compassion is what singles humans out from the rest of the animal kingdom. We can see the significance of things that don't directly affect us. We are capable of caring for and about things taking place outside our own backyard. Some times we choose not to care. But we still have the ability.

Well, when it comes to choosing my friends, an ability and propensity to care is something of a clincher.

So it has come as a huge shock to me, how many of my own friends in Greece don't care.
They do.
But they don't.
They care about the civil war in Sri Lanka being over and civilian deaths in Pakistan proliferating. They care about Darfur and the fact that Palestine is still not at peace. They care about Guantanamo Bay. They care about the British MPs' expenses scandals. They care both about the what and about the why. And they care about the implications of all that they care about.
But try talking to them about Greek politics and they talk to you about Sakis and the Eurovision.

Yes they know things on the political front are bad. They know. A boy standing trial only yesterday for wearing green shoes, a man being attacked by a flower pot (the police find ever more creative ways of dismissing injuries suffered during interrogation or arrest) and parliament being shut for 5 months so it doesn't get in the way, yes they know all these things and they know how bad they are. And they know why they are bad. But they don't want to talk about it. Or do anything about it.
And why not?
Because they are tired. And bored. And feel they've seen it all before. Which I guess they have to a certain extent. But that makes it worse, not better.

But because people are jaded and care less; because they don't expect anything good from their politicians; because corruption and ineffectiveness surprise no-one, these have become the baseline that politicians work from.
When expectations are below zero it's almost impossible to truly disappoint. So politics is no longer about ideas, policy or persuasion, it's not even about compromise and image management. The voters expect nothing between elections so the politicians deliver nothing between elections. Instead they focus on the game at hand – securing power, getting pay-offs, getting re-elected.

Politics has become a binary game of election/non-election for those playing it: did I get in? Doesn't' matter how many votes I got or how I got them, I'm in. Is my party in power? Forget about protest voting, the narrowness or margins and political intimidation. Forget about mandates and policy promises. Forget about pressing problems. Did we get in?
Yes/no, black/white – binary.
Only politics is not binary. It is convoluted and multi-faceted, complicated and multi-layered, nuanced and always capable of as many possible endings as there are people on this earth. So politics, the activity of negotiating public life, only works if we care enough to acknowledge its complexity and seek compromise.
Our politicians don't – they've gone binary.
And more and more people don't – they are as tired as their prime minister it seems.

So what are we left with?
An ever-plummeting benchmark of acceptability: it takes more and more to shock us so there's forever more the politicians can get away with before we will go 'hold on a minute buster'.

First I thought all the scandals would do it.
Then I thought the runaway police and colluding judicial system would do it.
Finally I thought closing down parliament would get people on their feet.
But no.
People are blasé, tired, bored.
They expect little so when they get little they are not surprised.
A pretty sweet deal if you are a politician I guess.
But for the rest of us it's a pretty dangerous place to be, a dangerous thing to have given away, a slippery slope without crash barriers.

Because if you were a politician and you did get away with all this, wouldn't you find yourself wondering what else you can get away with?

If it looks like a dictatorship and acts like a dictatorship

2009-05-11T07:14:00.000-07:00

He adjurned Parliament.
The Greek Prime Minister shut up shop.
It doesn’t compute, does it?
Dictators dismiss Parliament, elected Prime Ministers call elections. You’d think.
But no, he decided Parliament can go home for a few weeks, shocking even his own team.

Why?
Because Parliament was investigating his government for a number of scandals (code names: Vatopedio, SIEMENS, Germanos – among others) and there was a real and present danger that unpleasant things would be discovered, ugly truths would be told.
But why wait around for bad things to happen when you can go all dictatorial and just send the MPs home?
Of course this is not the stated reason – the European election is – and all this is conjecture on my part. Nevertheless four things are true:
Parliament was investigating a number of scandals; members of the governing party appear heavily implicated (read: in it up to their eyeballs); the opposition party was leading at the pre-European election polls; parliament was sent home. You do the math.

So now the Prime Minister doesn’t need to worry his pretty head over managing the scandal debates in Parliament and he can focus all his energies on mounting a vicious and vitriolic election campaign. The opposition party is ahead in the polls, you see, and governing the way the constitution prescribes would get in our PM’s way of winning the election – which is what he’s there for. Right?
Only, hold on, the election in question is for MEPs, not for a new national government. The Prime Minister is not actually running in it. But his party is and he needs the message at the polls to be loud and clear ‘Costa: your people love you’. And what’s a month’s worth of parliamentary deliberations compared to happy news for the party?

So here we go, the longest recess for Parliament before a European election – otherwise known as ‘a way of stopping the deliberations and scandals’ discussions’. Nice work Costa. Nice work.

If you are wondering on the ‘how’ – as in ‘how the hell did he pull that one off’ – it seems that our Premier spoke with the ‘boys’ (high ranking ministers within the party tho not necessarily male – hint hint) and then ambushed the president of the republic after the day’s news cycle had closed on Friday. Apparently most of the governing party were surprised by the announcement and scrambled to see to unfinished business when they heard. On Friday night, high-ranking governing politicians were informed after the ball had been set rolling whereas lower-ranking government MPs were stunned and confused after hearing it on the news.
Shall I say it again: that’s how dictatorships come about. A small group strike under cover of darkness and the inner circle are presented with a fait accompli once the process is set in motion.
The people usually sleep on until it’s too late.

Of course the government claim that they have nothing to hide and parliament is shut because they don’t want to politicise the elections. Oh I like this one. This one actually made me laugh out loud. The PM actually stressed his continued commitment to the ‘big issues’ that plague our land. And he practically expressed this commitment by sending parliament home. This buys him not one but five months of peace and quiet as summer recess kicks in by the time they are all back from this unexpected holiday. And with this little interlude comes blissful over-right for a series of cases that concern the ‘first period’ of the governing party’s period in office.

So yes, a number of uncomfortable issues will now be silenced. Legally. Don’t you just love procedure and regulations?
Meanwhile the political leaders are still accusing each other of ‘political cowardice’ and a tendency to ‘politicise the agenda’. And to be honest with you all, I’ll be damned if I know what any of that means any more.

But the leader of the opposition, always on the ball, challenged the prime minister to call early national elections, castigating the early closure of parliament as an ‘institutional digression’. You tell him boy. Bet he’s shaking in his boots now.
Don't you just love made-up innocent-sounding names for things? It’s not unconstitutional it’s an ‘institutional digression’. Linguistic acrobatics obscuring the issue. Otherwise known as grade-A bullshit.
How about we say it like it really is: Dismissing parliament threatens democracy, constitutionality and the rule of law.
Is anyone listening over there?

And here we are being asked to vote for MEPs. In fact we are being encouraged to turn up en masse for the European election, to ‘send a message’. That’s what both the party leaders want us to do. Send a message to the other guy.
They count on us to carry on acting like elections are simply about sending messages. Not about electing decision-makers. Who will then govern.

And while adjourning parliament for a whole month in order to focus on a different, separate and unrelated election, makes a mockery of democracy and politics as a whole, what I want to know is why does no-one feel like the system is sliding into dictatorship?
Dictators don’t always wear uniforms. Dictators don’t always launch campaigns of death and destruction. Dictators can wear suits and be the butt of jokes. The measure of the regime is not how afraid of them you actually are but how afraid you should be. What makes a dictator is not how many people he kills but whether he ignores democratic structures and legal frameworks in going about the business of government.
And Costa’s greatest success to-date is that he keeps breaking our already derelict system bit by bit and we are still not afraid. Tired, fed up, amused, disgusted – but not afraid.

Wake up and smell the bacon brothers – if it acts like a dictatorship, reacts like a dictatorship and looks like a dictatorship then maybe we should treat it like one and start fighting it again.

The criminalisation of the Converse All-Star

2009-05-05T09:44:00.000-07:00

Welcome to a lesson in logic, courtesy of the Greek police.

On the 19th of May 2009, Panagiotis Ketikis will stand trial. For wearing converse.
So you won’t think I am putting it too strongly when I say, this could have been me, this could have been you. This trial concerns us all. Especially those of us wearing converse. Or care about the rule of law. Or care about politics and hope for change.

On May 5th 2007 there was rioting and some vandalism in the centre of Thessaloniki. What’s new, you say.
Some hours after the events and a few roads along, where Egnatias and 3rd September roads meet, Panagiotis was stopped and taken into custody, initially to confirm his identity (yes Greek police can do that. Yes Greek police do do that every chance they get).

Upon arrival to the police station and, presumably, after checking Panagiotis’ file, the policemen must have thought Christmas came early. Panagiotis had a previous arrest on his record, you see.
A few months previously Panagiotis had been arrested alongside another 48 people, accused of vandalism during a demonstration in favour of universal free education.
All 49 were acquitted.
But why should the police let facts stand in the way of a good story?
Panagiotis was there and the police needed a suspect.

So yet again Panagiotis is accused of something he has not done.
Only this time resolution has not been quick.
Only this time, not only did he not do what they say he did – he wasn’t even there.

On Saturday the 5th of May Panagiotis was at his university campus at a party.
So he has an alibi and more witnesses than you can shake a stick at that he was not where the police say he was. But that doesn’t stop the prosecution from proceeding. You see there is irrefutable evidence that Panagiotis was one of the vandals at work in the centre of town on that 5th of May 2007: one of the vandals had been wearing a pair of converse and Panagiotis was wearing a pair of green converse when stopped by police. QED, thought the Greek policemen and arrested the chemical engineering student who at the time was only 19. Simple police reasoning: as there can only be one person wearing converse in Thessaloniki, arrest the first converse-shod person you come across. Job done.

So Panagiotis found himself with a list of charges as long as your arm: possession of explosives; construction of bombs; causing an explosion; vandalism; disturbing the peace; disturbing the safety of the transport system – among others.

On May 8th 2007 Panagiotis meets with the interrogator.
His lawyer presents video footage of the wanted vandal smashing up a Mercedes Benz pointing out that the man in question looks nothing like Panagiotis (being evidently taller and skinnier) yet, according to the police, he is Panagiotis. And his converse are not even green. But the interrogator decides to imprison Panagiotis until his trial regardless. Despite the witnesses. Despite the alibi. Despite the evidence.

His lawyers accuse the DA and the Thessaloniki Police Department of collusion and fabrication of charges but all attempts to have the young man released fail. And Panagiotis is treated like a dangerous criminal, held before his trial to minimise the chances of his escape to a foreign country or the danger of his committing another crime. That dangerous converse-wearing, party-attending engineering student.

But this is no joke
Panagiotis was held for over a month.
And although the treatment he got from other inmates was understanding, almost warm, the police used every means at their disposal to scare, hurt and intimidate him.
And yet, in interviews and in his blog, Panagiotis is measured, calm, grounded.

Well I am not.
That boy was stuck in prison way too easily. With no evidence of guilt. Against all evidence of his innocence. He was at the wrong place, at the wrong time, wearing the wrong shoes. Wearing the shoes I wear most days of my life.
So yes, this could have been me. It could have been you. It may well be you next time. Don’t fool yourselves: Panagiotis is the only one suffering right now but on May 19 we are all on trial.

This case sounds too much like something that would happen in Saddam’s Iraq, in Pinochet’s Chile, in Greece under the colonels.
Dictatorships stick people in prison just because.
On May 19th it’s our democracy and our rule of law and the integrity of our institutions that should be judged. It’s not Panagiotis but the whole bloody system that should be on trial. Converse or no bloody converse.

I haven’t met Panagiotis.
But I read about him in the papers, in blogs. And I read what he has to say in his own blog and this is what I see: I see a sharp, measured and politically engaged man, left-wing and opposed to violence. Not so much angry as hungry for change and opposed to destruction and blind rage. Stick a pair of converse on his feet and this is me.

And I, too, am a citizen of a country that allows vandals to run riot while a thinking political animal has to report to the nearest police station every month for the two years between his release and his trial. And I too am a citizen of this country that takes its rage out on the innocent, those who happen to be nearest, those who will be easier to arrest, easier to intimidate. And I too wear converse. And while I write this from the comfort of my home, far away from the clutches of the Greek police, safe and snug, not having shared in anything Panagiotis had gone through, the fact remains that May 19 2009, at the Katerini Court House will be a big day for us all.
And it’s up to us to make sure that it’s not Panagiotis that is on trial that day. But the system that victimised him. Because unless we do that, we are up next.
Converse or no converse.

Cyprus: in the most convoluted of disputes, at least one thing is clear

2009-04-29T05:35:00.000-07:00

Meletis Apostolides is going home.
Who is he, the non-Cypriots amongst you, will ask. That is immaterial, I will answer. He is one of thousands of Greek Cypriots who fled the North of the island after Turkish forces invaded in 1974. He is one of the thousands that have spent the last three and a half decades oscillating between hope and anger. And for most of that time, going back was not an option. But the world is changing.

After the 1974 invasion the island of Cyprus was partitioned.
Greek Cypriots from the North and Turkish Cypriots from the south became refuges in their own homeland. And although the situation seemed untenable, it held for a very long time. The island remained divided against all the rules of logic and international affairs.

The North declared itself an independent state that nobody other than Turkey recognised as legitimate. The world just ignored it. But it didn’t go away.

I grew up in Greece, where the North was always referred to as ‘Denktaş’ fake state’. And although Denktaş is no longer at the helm, the North remains a fake as far as the Greeks are concerned.
For the Turks, in Turkey or in North Cypris, that is – unsurprisingly – not the case. The North has a name and its name is KKTC (kakateje, amusingly) Kuzey Kıbrıs Türk Cumhuriyeti ‘the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’.
What’s in a name? Claims to legitimacy and aspirations for recognition, that’s what’s in a name. A clear affiliation to the mother state (the Turkish Republic), a claim of ethnic ownership of the land occupied and an appeal to democratic legitimacy in the form of a Republic of their own. A name that claims ‘we are genuine even if the Greeks think we’re fake’.

But the name didn’t do the trick.
The rest of the world averted their eyes, discussed ‘the issue’ at UN summits and largely pretended the North did not exist.
Sure, Turkey got a slap on the wrist for invading but there was no long-term damage to relations with Europe. So, many thought being ignored wasn’t altogether bad news.
Only Turkey was not prepared for a long-term occupation. Nobody had the stomach for it. They had neither the means nor inclination to sustain a patch of earth ignored by the rest of the world. But sustain it they did.

From 1974 and until the opening of the borders to foreign commerce and tourism, Turkey provided all the food, water, electricity, blankets, medication, toys, boots and shovels Northern Cypriots needed. KKTC had no economy of its own, no industry and inadequate agriculture. Naturally there was no foreign investment – direct or indirect – and the North’s beautiful beaches were out of reach for foreign tourists.
Turkey had to foot all the bills and put a big bright smile on it all as the military had decreed KKTC a priority on all levels.

Meanwhile the North was repopulated with Turkish-speakers, the South picked up its pieces and people tried to rebuild their lives. Never ignoring the big green line dividing their island, never forgetting the pain of separation.

And both sides think they are right. And both sides have stories of pain and loss. And the story changes depending on when you start the telling and when you stop. On where you stand when you tell it and where you stand when you listen. One thing is certain in every version: it is a sad story with no winners.

And I cannot for a moment blame Mr Meletis Apostolides for wanting to go home. And I understand why he went to court in Cyprus demanding his right to get his land back, now the border is open and the EU is asking all Cypriots to play nice.
And the Cypriot court said Mr Apostolides can have his land back.

And here is where the problems begin.
The land is not empty.
A British couple – Linda and David Orams – bought the land off a Turkish Cypriot and built a villa on it and, as you can imagine, they are not too keen on the idea of Mr Apostolides coming back.
So he went to the European Court of Justice where the Cypriot court ruling was upheld: Mr Apostolides can go home.
Now this is all academic, of course, because Northern Cyprus is not part of the EU so ECJ rulings do not bind the KKTC. And I don’t see them rushing to uphold a Greek Cypriot court ruling either.
But Mr Apostolides can seek compensation in a UK court and I would be very surprised if he doesn’t.

But even if he pursues this no more, Mr Apostolides’ case has set a massively significant precedent that will send chills down many spines.

And I will not pretend to have the requisite knowledge to suggest an appropriate solution for repatriation after a 36 year gap. Families that have lived and died in a once-empty house feel this is as much their home as the person’s who left it 36 years ago while fleeing for their life. Maybe it is. When ownership becomes entangled with morality and history there is no straightforward answer.

For a foreign investor, however, things are simpler and they boil down to this: like your daddy used to say, there is no such thing as a free lunch.
When something looks like too much of a bargain, you should always wonder why that is.
A beach-front villa in Northern Cyprus is so much cheaper to come by than its counterpart in the Marbella. I wonder why?

For 36 years Europe has ignored Northern Cyprus. We pretended it was a black hole. No flights landed there, no commercial relations existed, no goods were imported directly.
But in the last few years things have relaxed. Tourists, merchants and speculators have all descended since movement in and out of Northern Cyprus became possible.
And nobody noticed that nothing had changed in the status of KKTC. Still nobody recognised it as anything but occupied territory. It still had no standing, no membership in international organisations, no part in treaties and alliances, no international presence whatsoever. As a state, it only exists at home.

But investors, sun-hungry Brits and various land developers did not want to get bogged down in the political detail. Such a shame that this beautiful place was closed off for so long, they thought, and aren’t I lucky to be getting in first?
With cheap land up for grabs, investors rushed to beat others to it without stopping to think about ownership or legal redress.
Otherwise known as ‘the catch’.
You are buying land in a country that does not exist as far as your own country of citizenship is concerned. What are you going to do in case of a dispute?
Believe in the power of the dollar, is the answer.
The borders have already been opened to trade. This means that methods must have been found to resolve resulting disputes, so we must be fine, let’s go invest in cheap land.

Yet there is no such thing as ‘empty land’. It’s been centuries since that was last true – and even then it was dubious. Land always belongs to someone. Who did yours belong to before it was sold to you? In most cases you don’t really care.
Unless you are buying in a former war zone.
Unless you are buying in an area famous only because of an invasion and corresponding population displacement that occurred in living memory.
All I’m saying is in Northern Cyprus, you should care, because these guys may want to come back.

With Cyprus ‘peace’ negotiations being on the news pretty much non-stop since 1974, people became jaded about the possibility of a real solution, but nobody forgot the war, the division, the refugees. Until the refugees' houses went up for sale when everything was forgotten in the face of a good bargain.

With population displacement things are difficult and I do not envy the task of the judge that should decide to evict families – some times, though not always, refugees themselves – because the original occupants – also refugees – want to come back. People pitting their pain against each other trying to figure out whose tragedy is worse, whose right strongest. People in each other’s home, not everyone wanting to return.
That is hard.

But with an investor who grabbed the bargain not stopping to think about the complications, not caring about the implications, not stopping to wonder about the ‘catch’, well in their case, they took a risk. They gambled on the politics remaining conveniently unresolved, they gambled on people not wanting to come back. They staked their money on a bad situation staying bad. And they lost. But at least they lost after taking a conscious risk. And if they didn’t pay attention to the small print, the risk factor, then they only have themselves to blame.
They should have paid more attention to their daddy when he told them that this is the problem with bargains, there is always a catch.

Remind me again – who did you say are the good guys?

2009-04-23T08:54:00.000-07:00

Ah the Cold War. We knew who the villains were, we slept soundly in the knowledge we were with the good guys and James Bond movies had blissfully uncomplicated plotlines. Ok so that last bit hasn’t changed. But everything else has.

Now did I actually sleep soundly thanks to the Cold War?
No, not really.
I personally lived in constant fear of nuclear annihilation and could not possibly figure out why that terror of a man, Reagan, was supposed to be the good guy ahead of cuddly, smiley Gorbachev. But I was barely 10 when perestroika started so I am obviously nothing to go by here.

Still the fact remains: those who thought they knew where they stood with the cold war can say that no more. Sure, the Arabs are today’s bad guys. And they fit into the civilisational ‘us vs them’ battle over liberty and ‘our way of life’ (as well as banal questions of military supremacy and global power).
But not all Arabs are bad, now are they? Some are friends. But how do you tell them apart? And then, of course, those who are foe are not alone, are they? So many other bad guys to keep an eye on. Plus, this new generation of bad guy is very mobile. You don’t know where to point your missiles any more.
Add to that the fact that there are all sorts of allies we don’t really like all that much and you have a right headache in your struggle to safeguard freedom and the way of life we were talking about.

Take China for instance. Now that’s a good subject for someone interested in freedom, fairness, justice and democracy. A trading partner, of course. So we try not to bug them too much. Although, if truth be told, we are not too fond of them. Or their human rights record. Or their tendency to execute people en masse (and then sell their bodies to the West to be used in art exhibitions of dubious taste. Yes, yes it’s the Bodies exhibition I am talking about and, yes, I am squeamish). And now China has created an ever more degrading, even less controlled and monitored and even more outrageous way of killing off its own people: the mobile execution vehicle, the death-mobile, a van that can come to you and administer lethal injection in your own location. Trivialising life and death and laughing in the face of UN representatives speaking of China’s ‘improving human rights record’.

But stop press for a moment.
Have you thought that China’s record may well be improving, not out of any concerted effort to democratise, liberalise or play nice but simply because everybody else’s record is deteriorating at the speed of light?
I’m sure you all read the articles earlier this week – the CIA waterboarded two suspects 266 times during interrogations. Now 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and alleged terror commander Abu Zubaydah are bad guys. But that used to mean that they were prone to do things we wouldn’t do, us being the good guys. Thieves are bad because stealing is wrong, murderers are bad because life is sacred, rapists are evil because violation and violence is a sin, a crime and an abomination. So we are the good guys, not because we are victims of badness but because we wouldn’t do what bad guys do. Right?

Then explain torture to me, will you?
And before you tell me that Obama – blessed be his name – has banned waterboarding, let me tell you that it was happening till 2 months ago and, as Obama has not instructed a wide-spread inquest and purging of the CIA, waterboarding will stop but torture won’t.
Because 266 instances of waterboarding on 2 people says one thing and one thing alone: it happened a lot. And that, in turn, tells us an awful lot of things about how the CIA go about interrogating bad guys. And none of those things are good.

Now if you are of the ‘an eye for an eye’ school, you obviously disagree with me. Especially as we have now seen memos outlining how medical experts prevented waterboarding from causing severe mental or physical harm to the subject. So it’s not even an eye for an eye as we keep them alive.

Is that the measure of our humanity, then? Ensuring the pain doesn’t kill the suspect?
When did ‘who we are’ stop mattering?
Because who you are is measured half against what you do with you life and half against what you refuse to do. So, no, torture is not ok. Even if you have the worst of villains sitting across the interrogation table from you. And it’s not ok for three reasons:

1. What if you are wrong? What if hours, days, years from now you find that the guy who looked so evidently guilty on paper actually wasn’t? What if?

2. Revenge is not what our legal system is based on. Revenge is a bad motive and a bad reason for action. Revenge leads to the dark side.

3. If who you are entails a capacity and drive for violence, inflicting fear and pain on a defenceless – however horrible – human being, then you too my friend are one of the bad guys. Not as bad, perhaps, but bad all the same.

And making waterboarding illegal far from solves the problem
Because, don’t tell me that, when not using waterboarding, the CIA just had stern chats with their charges? And don’t tell me that, since Obama is not prosecuting any officials (not those who devised the policies, not those who carried out the interrogations, not those who failed to stop them) there will be a real change in how the supposed good guys interrogate the suspected bad guys?

And before you tell me that all’s fair in love and war, tell me how turning into what you are fighting against helps protect what you are fighting for?

Some fear that taking techniques off the table will make the enemies even more daring. More daring than what? What’s more daring than a suicide bomber?

And while experts debate whether torture ‘works’, whether accurate confessions are exacted through the medium of pain and the associated panic simulated drowning would cause, I maintain that this is not the point.
As a citizen, as a person, as an one-time ‘expert’ I refuse the ulta-right dismissal of the anti-torture argument as naïve and stand by my original proposition: humanity and morality cannot be fully separated. If you stand against the bad guys, don’t be a bad guy. If, in fighting a war, you compromise what you are striving to protect, you are your own worse enemy. And if you are fighting for freedom and democracy, well, then you can’t agree with Obama’s decision not to prosecute.

The point is that good is as good does. And no matter what desperate times call for, whatever popular wisdom absolutions you can think up, the fact remains: good guys should act like good guys, all the time, under any circumstances.
Even when doing so is difficult.
Particularly when doing so is difficult.

Why the folks running Greece cannot possibly be human

2009-04-20T08:20:00.000-07:00

I have this theory.
That three things set humans apart from other animals: our ability for reflection, abstraction and compassion.

What do I mean?
I mean that unlike other animals, humans can deeply reflect on their behaviour, on life, on the universe. We have an ability and often a need to link the dots, poke in the shadows, truly seek to understand how things fit, why things are the way they are, why things feel the way they feel. Why did so-and-so do this? Why was I left feeling this way?
On top of that, we can do all this in the abstract. We can think about our own liberty and freedom writ large. We can think about rights, ethics, social reform. We can write poetry and debate religion. We can deal in things that cannot be touched or seen and yet we feel strongly about them.
And, most important of all in my mind, we are capable of compassion. Not just the fierce love of the lioness for her cubs. Not just the acute territorial protectionism of a wolf for his pack. Compassion. For complete strangers. On grounds of our shared humanity.

So, after thinking about it at length, I have concluded that, if my taxonomy is taken to its logical conclusion, we are left with only one option: the people running Greece are not human as they demonstrate no ability to reflect, no capacity for linking up the abstract with the concrete (the law they are passing with the problem they are trying to solve, say) and above all, no compassion whatsoever.

Let me demonstrate.
Mr Markogiannakis – successful lawyer, public prosecutor under the dictators and high and mighty within the current government. If he is not proof enough in his continued service that our leaders don’t reflect, let me give you more. He is one of the forces behind the stun guns our policemen carry – notorious for causing permanent health problems or even death – and is currently clamouring for the hire of ‘foreign’ policemen with the express job description of informing and keeping an eye on their compatriots, saving the day by arresting scores of illegal immigrants selling home-made CDs on street corners
Leaving aside his belief that illegal immigration is Greece’s most pressing problem at the moment (being stupid, sadly, fails to disqualify him as a human), his proposed solution fails to even for a moment consider what sort of society he would be building if the measure went through. No abstraction. He fails to consider how relations within the force and between the force and the community would fragment, sour and militarise. No reflection. And he fails to see – or fails to care – that this measure is preying on the poverty and despair of many an immigrant who would agree to anything that would feed their families in an honest, if not honourable way. So compassion is out the window too.

The really bad news, of course, is that Mr Markogiannakis is not alone.
Our glorious police force demonstrate a pitch-perfect ‘pack mentality’ looking after their own, covering up trespasses, crimes, violations of the law and police code of conduct. Evident is an inability to think in abstract terms of public service, order and an active contribution to democratic governance. Evident is their total lack of compassion for those they are meant to protect. Evident is also a total lack of willingness to reflect on their own conduct.
A recent study revealed that 4 or 5 policemen go down every year on charges of drug and people trafficking, blackmail, pimping and murder. That’s a tiny number in a corps that is notorious for its corruption. Yet even these few invariably come back into the force, having lost a few months’ earnings.
With more and more cases of evident police brutality being written up as people ‘beating themselves up’, tripping and, of course, suicide, ‘looking after one’s own’ is not just a figure of speech. The boys in blue don’t just keep an eye out for each other. They take out any eye that witnessed wrong-doing in a fierce protection of the pack.

Now ‘looking after your own’ is a natural instinct. Meerkats do it. Hyenas do it. Policemen do it. All humans do it, if we are honest. But they don’t do it to the complete detriment of everyone else. That’s the difference between hyenas and humans living in society. The latter know that survival does not need to be a zero sum game.

And while I’m at it – the priests? Not human either.
Sex scandals, appropriations scandals, land sale scandals and pure theft from charity coffers. Wanna talk compassion now? Wanna talk reflection? Why am I here, why am I wearing this funny black dress and what was it I set out to do?

Animals live meal to meal.
When humans have to live like that, we feel a crushing sadness as this life robs them of the basic tenets of their humanity – the ability to make complicated choices, the ability to live in the abstract, the luxury of showing compassion which you just don’t have when your own belly is empty.
But when you are fed, watered and sheltered from the elements, abstraction, reflection and compassion are possible. And essential.

Which brings me to the subject of our prime minister.
Well-fed, undoubtedly. Safe, warm – even though a trifle tired.
He is in a position to engage in reflection, abstraction and compassion. And yet he does not. He allows his government to pass laws that at best fail to address the problems he has to solve and at worse manipulate society closer and closer to a repressive regime.
There are three options here.
Option 1: his ability for reflection and abstraction is impaired because he’s dumb. That doesn’t make him any less human although it does throw his suitability for the post he is holding into sharp relief.
Option 2: the lack of reflection and compassion suggests he is not actually human. And that explains a lot.
Option 3: he is reflecting all right. And he has a perfect visualisation of where he is taking us, so his powers of abstraction are unimpaired. The slow but sure descent into a controlled state of fear and state repression is part of the plan and the prime minister and his cronies are simply members of that species that can think like a human but not feel like one. Abstraction? Reflection? Yeah, sure. Compassion? No, not today.

And here we are, trapped in a weird fairy tale, a work of science fiction, with a dark and sinister plot, unexpected twists, beasts, demons, battle scenes, plenty of villains – and no good guys.
But if this is a fairy tale, and having demonstrated that we are governed by wolves and ogres, are we not due a prince to slay them all roundabout now?

Witch-hunts for the digital era

2009-04-16T07:17:00.000-07:00

One of my pet peeves, of which I have many, are people who use the terms ‘natural’ and ‘normal’ interchangeably.
Homosexuality ‘it’s not natural’ they say ‘it’s not normal’.
No sir.
It’s natural because it occurs in nature. But it is not normal as in, it is not of the norm – as in it is not the statistically prevalent, culturally prescribed, socially expected and publicly encouraged form of conduct.
So let’s get our terms straight here: ‘natural’ has everything to do with Mother Nature. ‘Normal’ has everything to do your own mother, her expectations and a whole number of social prescriptions on how ‘things should be’.

Now if you ask me, societies change, opinions evolve and what is considered normal is far from constant, varying from time to time, from place to place and from one person to the next. So although ‘natural’ is an altogether safer bet long term, ‘normal’ is what gets you invited to parties and leaves your aunties and nosy neighbours feeling safe and all warm inside. You don’t need me to tell you people generally prefer ‘normal’ to ‘natural’. Societies have historically victimised, marginalized, criminalized, ostracised and killed witches, prophets, adulterers, abortionists, unmarried lovers, homosexuals, members of different religions, parties, factions or football clubs.
You catch my drift.
‘Normal’ can be brutal and scary.

And here we are, in the year of our Lord 2009, in an era of openness, acceptance, moderation. In an era where your creed, colour, sexual preference or taste in neckties will not lead to a marginal life of victimisation and uncertainty. Or so they tell us.
Here we are thinking that, in our open-minded Western societies, ‘normal’ is a multi-hued, multi-faceted thing, as close to ‘natural’ as it has ever been in human history.

And here I am reading with incredulity that a number of psychiatrists and therapists are still offering their services to gay customers: 'helping them become heterosexual'.
To be honest, I first read the item a couple of weeks ago and dismissed it as an April fool’s day folly. A bad one but still a folly.
But no. It’s still on the wires. Evidently not a joke. Patently not funny.

Although such treatments are at best irrelevant and at worst harmful, apparently one in six of the mental health professionals surveyed in a recent poll in the UK said that they had ‘helped at least one patient curtail their gay, lesbian or bisexual feelings’ and one in 25 would try to ‘treat’ someone with homosexual ‘emotions’.
That’s a big percentage.
Maybe they are starting a trend. Maybe they will launch a pill.
I can see the adverts: ‘Tired of being different? Now you can fit it with the jocks, the cheerleaders and the conservative Christian right! Yes you can. You can try lobotomy or our new revolutionary Straight Pill – available at pharmacies near you’.

No, I don’t think this is funny either.
If licensed mental health professionals are trying to ‘cure’ sexual preference then it’s a matter of time before an angry mob bearing pitchforks comes to my door and drags me away to be burnt at the stake for witchcraft – what with my opinions and the people I hang out with.

Professor Michael King, from University College London, denounced any such attempts to cure homosexuality as scientifically unfounded and potentially harmful. His statement was countered by someone who refused to be named (the KKK also wore hoods to conceal their faces) who claimed that many a gay person is unhappy with their sexuality and ‘wish they were heterosexual’ and thus deserve help.
Professor King of course puts this proposition on its head, noting that many people face prejudice against their sexuality both from society and from within themselves – because you can’t shake your upbringing as easily as you’d like – and the mental health practitioner’s job is to help the individual deal with and overcome this prejudice, wherever it comes from.
As I was saying, when ‘natural’ and ‘normal’ collide the socially-fabricated and collectively-upheld normality wins over nature every bloody time.

And so ‘normality’ is shoved down our throats, with a lab-coat and stethoscope screaming from afar ‘when society and science converge, there is no use resisting’.
Now you may say, 1 in 25 practitioners being tempted to ‘cure’ homosexuality is not that bad, statistically speaking. But I really hope you won’t say that. Because one is one too many.
Besides, if a few sessions of cognitive behavioural therapy are believed to cure homosexuality, it is a matter of time before we hear of pills for atheism, syrups for liberalism and an enema to cure trade unionism.

This is not the first time doctors help us to be 'normal'.
This is not the first time scientists opt for upholding 'normality' and corresponding relations of power and control.
'Normal' has by definition strenght in numbers. 'Normal' lives, by definition, in the mainstream. What was once done in Churches is now done through chat shows, socio-babble jargon, websites. But a witch-hunt is a witch-hunt even with a .com at the end of it. And this wouldn’t be the first time the bad guys wore lab coats either.

And although the numbers are low (1 in 6 have done it, 1 in 25 would do it), the numbers are too high. And until the profession purges itself, there is a collective reponsibility no-one can deny. And until 'normal' aligns itself with 'natural', I will have cause to rant. This anger may be not be natural but, given the world I live in, let's face it: it's normal.

Economic crisis made in Greece.

2009-04-14T08:28:00.000-07:00

If I hear one more Greek in Greece bemoan the credit crunch I may have to fly over to hit them on the head with something heavy. A volume of ‘Economics for Dummies’ may be a good idea.
Why the urge for violence? You ask.
Am I doubting Greece is facing an intense economic crisis? No. Of course I’m not. Greece is in the midst of an intense economic crisis with a financial and fiscal crisis to boot. By there is no credit crunch. Not yet and not for a good reason: Greece is not a global financial hub. The credit crunch has not affected Greece. Not yet, not as such. The Greek crisis is at the heart of government, in the local market and in every household.
Leave American bankers and British traders out of it, guys, this is one of ours.

Yes, there is less money sloshing about the Greek market and there is less money going into the state coffers in the form of taxation. But you can’t blame it on the credit crunch.
Of course the flow of international capital into Greece is affected by the global crisis. And the knock-on trade melt-down has affected us all – although the real effect has been on the shipping sector and not on agricultural producers. Besides, as the agricultural crisis can be blamed on government mismanagement of European directives; and as the shipping sector is tax-exempt, all this can’t be blamed for the crisis either.
Neither can we blame the December riots for the crisis. Undoubtedly businesses were lost or damaged but statistically the destruction was not widespread enough to create a financial downturn. And, no, the strikes can’t be blamed either. They don’t help output and they don’t help consumer confidence. But strikes are usually the results of a crisis, not its harbingers.

The global crisis started in the private sector, it started in the moneymaking backyards of big corporates. Not so in Greece.

The government are still trying to put a positive spin on things – despite the prime minister being so very tired, poor thing. They try to argue Greece is faring well, comparatively, but the fact is Greece is weathering a different storm to the rest of the world and the government, rather than being our valiant captains, are part of the problem.

Der Spiegel ran a most depressing article listing small and medium-sized Greek businesses that are packing up and closing down, not because of the credit crunch, not because of the global fiscal crisis, but because the government owes them too much money for them to stay afloat. Yes you read it right, unpaid bills in the millions of euros to suppliers of medical equipment – a total debt across the business of 800 million euros and bills remaining unpaid for over four years.
Businesses that should be recession-proof are closing down, courtesy of the government. Of course there are reasons for this delay in payments and these reasons are built into the system, but even with those taken into account, the delays suffered and amounts outstanding are outrageous even for Greece. Plus banks are not playing ball any more and the business that had traditionally financed the wait with loans can no longer do so.

Can’t the government help?
No.
As I said, they are part of the problem as the banks are not afraid the medical suppliers can’t pay up. They are afraid the government can’t pay the medical suppliers.

So the government is taxing like mad and not paying up.
In many ways, what’s new?
Well, the extent of the badness is new. The numbers are new. Even higher unemployment. Even higher costs of living. Even higher taxes.
And in the midst of it all government secretary general of information Panos Livadas announces Greece’s triumph where the global economies have failed, describing the Greek economy as ‘indestructible’ on the strength of the fact that the cafés are full of customers.
Because sales figures for espresso are how you assess the robustness of an economy.

Meanwhile people are sinking into debt; qualified and unqualified, skilled and unskilled workers alike fail to find work, spending savings, cutting spending, living in poverty. But Mr Livadas is right. This is not the credit crunch. This is a crisis of biblical proportions made in Greece.

Now Mr Livadas keeps quoting growth figures. While people can’t make ends meet.
The banking sector is sound, he says.
So what? No credit crunch does not mean no crisis and what good is escaping the global tidal wave if everyone is being crunched regardless, courtesy of home-grown deficits and deficiencies?

Greece’s national deficit has exceeded the euro zone limit of 3% three years in a row and counting. Meanwhile, and for comedy’s sake, the government is steeped in financial scandals of all hues and varieties including, my favourites, the ones including the Lords’ Lambs, the Orthodox Church – from the Vatopedi land sales to the bishops of Thermopylae and Velestino’s appropriation of 13 million Euros worth of charity money. And the state’s response to all this: the silence of the lambs with dirty hands.

Greece owes 94% of its GDP according to Der Spiegel. Europe practically owns us. Not a very sound investment on their part but I guess they see us as a fixer-upper. Provided the current tenants move out. Because until they do, Greece will retain the lowest credit rating in Europe.

So: corruption in the public sector, bankrupt pension funds, underemployment, unemployment and rising taxes. No wonder the Prime Minister is tired. Inheriting chaos and making it worse must be hard work indeed. Wait till the global recession hits Greece, we won’t be able to get him out of bed he’ll be so exhausted.

So the world is floundering and so is Greece.
But don’t let them fool you. The world’s problems are not at our doorstep yet. As the summer nears, dipping tourism figures will bring the global crisis home to roost. Greek investment in Eastern Europe will also soon be in danger.
But things are bad already. Without the credit crunch.
And although the credit crunch will come to our corner of the world sooner or later, merging with our own troubles and magnifying our woes, don’t let them fool you: this one is a crisis made in Greece.

The joke that was the G20 summit or why many potential protesters stayed at home

2009-04-09T07:12:00.001-07:00

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/03/28/article-1165382-04255381000005DC-599_468x314.jpg
Sure, protesters marched through the City of London, flanked by police. Loads of police. But, let’s face it, their heart wasn’t really in it. And there weren’t that many of them. Even the Countryside Alliance has fielded more people than hit the City last week.

All the banks were on high alert of course. City workers were told to work from home or dress down, come in earlier than normal (protesters are not used to early starts, you see, they sleep in, lazy people that they are) but really when it came down to it, things were quiet in the City. Eerily quiet most of the time.
And that’s as it should be. Contrary to pet fears, protesters are neither ignorant nor stupid. They have no quarrel with City workers, the number-crunchers that get crunched by the crisis worse than anyone. The people they have a quarrel with were either not coming into work on those days or sitting right at the heart of the G20 summit. So City workers were left to their own devices, largely.
Their bosses were largely not there, so they weren’t hassled.
And the G20 bosses, well, they have security details and traffic police clearing the way so they can’t have noticed much either.

Uneventful, is what the protests were.
Now that’s no bad thing. The people who hit the streets were pacifists, issue-focused and politically aware. Destruction and havoc was not on the agenda so the fact that the protests were uneventful was part of the plan and not, as the BBC seems to suggest, a lucky accident. These people protested our leaders’ inaction in the face of a financial crisis that has been raging and deepening for months now; they protested the indecision and lack of vision that plagues the efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan; they protested climate change and the lack of any policy to combat it. They protested real issues affecting us all, in the presence of people who can do something about it. Not the junior associate from HSBC, but the presidents and prime ministers of powerful nations sitting in consultation with each other for the good of their people.

Well some of their people were outside the building trying to get heard but, as usual, they got penned in out of the way until the leaders were out of earshot. Predictably no leader or representative even attempted a sortie even though the protesters were peaceful.

‘We are not all like that Mr President’ said the Sun, juxtaposing a picture of a protesting crowd in the City of London and a photo of the Queen with the Obamas.
What does that mean anyway? We are not like what?
We are not all like a kindly, elderly monarch with a strange taste in clothes? No, I’d think not. But obviously that’s not what it means at all. What it means is we are not all like ‘the great unwashed’, the filthy hippy protestors. We wouldn’t protest, oh no, not us!
And what I want to know is how is that a good thing?
If something is worth protesting against and you do so peacefully and respectfully, how is a protest not proof of care, compassion, humanity and engagement?

Oh yes, the Sun never fails to offend me.
But strongly as I do feel about all this, I must confess that I was not out there on the streets last week.

In the past, I have joined demonstrations even though I knew the government would not listen. Stop the war coalition – I was there, in the cold and rain every time although I knew Blair would take no note. It was important to me to stand up to be counted.
Now?
I care. Oh do I care. I wish I didn’t, it may help me sleep at night, caring less. But much as I care, I could not take the G20 summit seriously enough to protest against it. And I could not take the leaders involved seriously enough to try and get their attention.
It was clear even before the summit started that nothing would come of it. No new idea, no commitment, no genuine debate, no genuine falling-out, even, helping to clarify where the global politico-economic fault-lines lie.
We knew, before the debates even started, that we couldn’t even hope for radical disagreement showing us, the voters, that there are genuine, thought-through viable options to choose from.
Nobody had any expectations from the summit. Nobody has any expectations from the leadership.

So I stayed at home alongside millions of people.
Some disagreed with the protesters. The Sun and the man down my local pub feel squeamish at the sight of a protest, those dirty hippies and all that. That’s not me.
The cynics say we are not in Kansas any more and only the protesters can’t see it. That’s not me. Others stayed at home because they have more influence when they are near their phones and laptops than if they are waving placards at passing cars. Well that’s not me either.

I just couldn’t shake the sinking feeling that even if we were to rally the mighty, it will make not a jot of difference as they are largely to blame for the mess we are in anyway. The feeling that the protests had loads of goals but no real aim. A lot of issues but no real focus because it is no longer clear who can solve these problems and how – our leaders lacking both means and will, both ideas and a backbone.

So I stayed at home.
But I am comforted by the fact that not everyone did.
Because when there is this much wrong with the world giving up and going home seems like the sensible option. But it’s not the responsible option.
And still I stayed at home.
Because I knew that everything would come down to cash injections and I just couldn’t muster enough enthusiasm or anger to get out onto the streets to be yelled at by policemen over that. Of course other things were on the agenda. I’m sure Sarkozy suggested radical solutions Obama shrugged off because, generally speaking, the sort of thing the French like gets shot down on the Hill before you can even blink. So we are left with cash injections. And the problem with cash injections is that you and I, long-suffering tax payers, finance those thus salvaging the banks the bosses of whom brought us to where we are today.

And the protesters know that, of course. And I know that.
The difference is I stay at home while they obviously still shout in hope and anticipation even though they are bound to know the paradox – the lack of clear solutions, the total lack of grounds for inter-governmental collaboration and agreement. They are bound to know. Because if they care enough to be angry, if they care enough to be there, they care enough to know.
They know. And they still hope.
They were out on the streets because they still have faith.
And I was at home because I’m all out.

G20 stands for ‘pollution, traffic jams and white noise’

2009-04-06T08:36:00.000-07:00

What comes to mind when a large-scale political bigwig summit takes place?
I don’t know about you, but I think of their carbon footprint.
I mean, the only thing that can be taken for granted when it comes to summits like London’s recent hosting of the G20 talks, is that the heads of state and their delegations will cause an inordinate amount of pollution by flying large numbers of people across the world, not to mention motorcades and mountains of wasted paper; they will then cause traffic jams as their security details completely ignore the fact that these summits are held in inhabited areas and other people need to get about too; and they will finally produce endless amounts of white noise – long words that sound right until you string them together, when they tend to mean that the leaders agreed on the significance of the matters on the agenda but could not reach agreement on specifics (read: actual solutions) but we shouldn’t worry our pretty heads as their staffs will sort out all the ‘detail’ (read: actual solutions) at a later date.
By its conclusion, the summit has caused pollution, traffic jams and white noise.

Was this one different?
Well.
We’ve definitely had pollution and traffic jams. And white noise.
As for substance, I don’t think anyone really expected much in the first place.

Just take a look at who the G20 actually are: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the US and the EU.
See what I mean?
What are the chances of that lot agreeing on a solution to a problem that affects them in fundamentally different ways, largely because of each other?

Of course it would be lovely if they all agreed on a set of real solutions. The world would suddenly go cinemascope and we would all live happily ever after.
But the hope that the G20 would unveil a great new initiative had died a death before the leaders even started arriving in London. Or, if truth be told, no one ever expected much more than pollution, traffic jams and white noise.

So what did we get?
A new name for the Financial Stability Forum – now called the Financial Stability Board. More regulation for all financial institutions, instruments and markets. That’s good, of course. But also expected. And as the ‘who’, ‘when’ and ‘how’ are, predictably, left to be worked out at a later stage, it all boils down to white noise.
Don’t hold your breath while waiting for change to happen, everybody.

Tough new rules for hedge funds, pay and bonuses and new accounting standards were promised and a ‘shared approach’ was announced. You guessed it. Detail and implementation to be fleshed out at some other point by less important people.

Meanwhile the leaders wagged a finger at tax havens that don’t share information readily. That will teach them.

Oh and more money will be poured into the IMF – three times as much money coming to approximately $750bn.
Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
Yeah. We (the Long-Suffering Tax-Payers' Club) just paid for a summit that simply repeated what we already knew. Couldn’t we have just skipped the party, pollution, traffic jams and white noise and spent the money on cash injections directly?

I can see you are yawning already but there’s a little more I’m afraid. A little more white noise.
The G20 supports increased lending for developing nations, you’ll be pleased to hear – more debt that our erstwhile leaders can then act surprised at in a few years’ time. Trade assistance, export credit, investment agencies all meet with G20 approval. Blah blah on how the rich will help the poor. Meanwhile the rich are floundering just as badly if not worse than the poor and nobody can help them. Not even each other. And how they will help the poor when they can’t help themselves is anybody’s guess.

So the white noise continues. Pledges to resist protectionism and protect free trade. Pledges to notify the WTO if any children don’t play nice. White noise promising more white noise. Oh and a request that the WTO produce their own white noise in the form of regular reports. Now that’s reassuring.

And there is no new fiscal stimulus. There is but there isn’t. Trust Gordon Brown to come up with that one.

And although all leaders were triumphant at the end of the summit, I have to wonder whether things would have been better had they stayed at home. Since they said nothing new, they failed to really address let alone solve anything, they did not alleviate anything or punish anyone all we got was pollution, traffic jams and white noise.
So they should have stayed at home. They came all this way to bore, anger and disappoint us. Well they could have done that from their respective capitals and they would have, at least spared, the environment.

Iraq: it’s the long way home for coalition troops

2009-04-03T01:23:00.000-07:00

Coalition forces have been slowly leaving Iraq for a while now. But now it's getting real as British forces have begun their official withdrawal from Iraq. Units stationed in Basra have handed over and are on their way home.
Only the handover was to a US general, not to an Iraqi one. A multi-national division has taken over. So the Brits left, someone else moved in and I am feeling like someone is playing me for a fool, thinking I can’t tell the difference between ‘leaving Iraq’ and ‘passing the parcel’.

Still, by the end of May Britain will withdraw more than 3,500 troops, leaving only 400 in training and HQ positions.

This is good, of course. This is no time to count the dead, assess what has been achieved. And what hasn’t. No time to think unhappy thoughts. But I can’t help it.
179 British dead since 2003. Of course it could have been worse. It was worse for Iraqis. And for every person dead, dozens are left bereft and crushed. Those are the mathematics of war and we ought to always remember. One death is one death too many.

Now obviously I was against going into Iraq in the first place.
But once there you can’t just pack up and go whenever you feel like it. Realities on the ground cannot be ignored and whatever the reasons for going in, Basra is just not safe enough to leave just yet. Partial withdrawal is possible but total coalition withdrawal is not an option. Yet the presence of Western troops is part of what makes the place unsafe, the thing that rebels fight against and suicide bombers launch themselves at.

Now Maj Gen Salmon says that Iraq is in a much better place than it was under Saddam. It’s more stable, he says, and freer. Investment is pouring into the country, the Iraqi security forces are gaining confidence, free and fair elections have now been held. Iraq is a new country. He says.
How much of this is true?
How much of this will still be true when the US forces finally withdraw, when the cat’s away for good and the mice can run riot if they so will?

In Basra, the hand-over won’t change that much as the Brits were a shadow force letting the Iraqi Army and police remain the most visible presence on the streets and the Yanks will do the same. Coalition troops are not that visible. But they are still there and everyone knows it. They provide a security blanket for some, a red rag for others but even when they stay at home, they are very much still there. And part of the reason they are still there is that they are propping up structures that would cave in without them.
I’m not talking semantics here.
British troops in Basra spent time and effort training the Iraqi army. But they lacked the bandwidth to train police officers and as they withdraw, Maj Gen Salmon deplores the lack of resources to build up a credible police force in Basra. So yes, Iraqi police remains visible. And ineffectual. But backed by the big boys with the big guns.

And US troops will be there until the end of 2011.
How entrenched will they be by then?
How essential will they be to any equilibrium that has been created?
A post-war situation is an explosive chemical compound and any ingredient to stability may be more important than even its core players realise. What if the US presence becomes such an ingredient – by design, flaw or default?
Once the equilibrium has been achieved, you make changes at your own peril.
And as change goes, it doesn’t come bigger than withdrawing a foreign army.

But there is always hope that the new systems and structures will be robust enough by then to survive this change and the complete US withdrawal.
Naturally, the coalition forces have been training Iraqis to replace them. Of course they have. They’ve been working on infrastructure and preparing for transition. Ignoring the elephant in the room that is the future legitimacy of any organisation and structure that has been touched by the invasion forces.
Let’s face it, Saddam was a blood-thirsty dictator. But he had been backed by the Americans for years and although they deposed him in the end, the freedom rhetoric seemed an afterthought at best. Nobody will forget the tenuous Al-Qaeda links and tall WMD tales spun by the Bush administration to justify the invasion. And after 6 years of war and occupation, the question to ask is whether what the US forces help build will be tainted by virtue of having been built by the invaders?

I’m speculating here. But it’s happened before.
Meanwhile 2 days ago another suicide bomber struck Mosul – 7 dead and 15 injured.
All of a sudden the Coalition’s optimism sounds hollow.
Yes, Mosul remains a problem child. Yes it’s believed to be the last remaining urban stronghold of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
And yes, as British forces withdraw from Basra, a suicide bomb goes off in Mosul.

All I’m saying is, they haven’t finished what they started and I don’t know what’s worse, withdrawing before it’s done or staying around and doing it themselves, thus creating a normality that relies on their initiative and depends on their presence.

Greece: Where democratic ideals go to die

2009-03-27T07:30:00.000-07:00

Today is a broken record day. You know the drill. Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.
Nothing is special about today. But it’s as good a time as any to take (yet another) look at the motherland. So. Where are we?

Katerina Goulioni is dead. Don’t rake your brains. She’s not a famous artist or politician. She was a substance abuser, prison inmate and activist – trying from her cell to end the prison guards’ right to submit inmates to vaginal searches at will. She’s dead and nobody will tell us exactly how she died.
Inmate Giannis Dimitrakis was savagely beaten in prison by ‘Periander’ a notorious fascist agitator, finally behind bars.
We get it.
Inmates have no rights. They betrayed the sacred bond of citizenship when they broke the law and the system is punishing them in more ways than one.
We get it.

But what about the rest of us?

Well, it depends.
On your skin colour – as racist attacks are reported all over Greece and courts reduce the sentence imposed on ‘Periander’, racist attacker extraordinaire.
We get the message.
So earlier this month a Nigerian man is stabbed to death and it doesn’t even make the news and an Afghan migrant ‘strangles himself’ in his cell while students attack a group of Pakistanis in central Athens. Nothing at all ensues. Conditional rights. We get it.

It also depends on your sexual orientation. Only a week ago, a bar in Athens’ Exarcheia neighbourhood was attacked by hooligans screaming bloody murder against homosexuals. Naturally they attacked everyone in the bar, regardless of tastes in the bedroom. No-one was arrested. We get that too.

Is that all?
Well no, as the country’s flagship mental health hospital is virtually non-functioning as it’s understaffed by over 50% and a man gets beaten up by riot police for asking a question (you don’t believe me? Check out tvxs.gr for yourselves), rights seem to depend on a million and one things.

So where did we get to?
Rights are not for everyone. Prisoners, immigrants, homosexuals, the mentally ill and people who happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time may suffer. But the rest of us are ok, surely. Right?

Well, that also depends.
On whether a policeman armed with a stun-gun takes a shot at you with his Taser possibly causing permanent muscle damage. If that happens, you may find there is no recourse because the weapons are ‘safe’. Same applies to teargas.
On whether you found yourself arrested for being near a demonstration and then find that a number of policemen swear blind that they saw you throwing Molotov cocktails with your right arm. And then find that, even though your right arm is in a cast, the judge does not dismiss the testimony. Check out Sunday’s Eleftherotypia for a detailed breakdown of just how often this sort of thing happens.

Of course there are quotas. The police need to make arrests, show activity.
But when the only proof of guilt is the policemen’s own testimony, then all our rights depend on their moods. And I’m not all that comfortable with this idea.

So the police arrest those they can get to rather than those they need to get to.
D. Sarafianos, a representative of the Constitutional Rights committee of the Athens Bar Association, put it rather bluntly: ‘anyone is in danger of finding themselves accused of something they have no connection to’. We get it.

So a policeman’s word is enough to get me into prison?
Looks like it.
So just being at or near a demonstration can land me in prison. Being or being near an ‘undesirable’ singles me out for victimisation.
Of course, the courts don’t uphold all those arrests. Of course the system is not completely defunct. Yet. But it sure looks like it’s heading that way.

Police depositions are, according to reporters and journalists, formulaic, designed to send people to prison. Identifications of suspects are so detailed that, mr Sarafianos notes, they can only mean one thing: identifying traits were singled out after people were arrested. What are the chances of identifying the logo on a shirt pocket or the colour of a collar in the midst of a violent demonstration? You tell me. I’d go with slim.
But what do I know?

I know that statistically, the DA tends to accept police depositions.
As do many judges, claiming that if all police depositions are the same, any opposite opinion entails an accusation that the police suffered mass hallucinations or colluded to lie against the public.
Yes. Well. Now you mention that.

To be fair, because someone has to and I wouldn’t leave that to the state right now, so far, statistics suggest that most of these cases collapse in court.
Which is reassuring, but not enough. As it is not reversing the trend.

So let’s recap.
Rights. Depend. On your lifestyle and personal morality, on your skin colour and political affiliation, on wardrobe and geography, on bad luck, sheer luck and the mood the police, public prosecutor and district judge may be in that day.
An awful lot of variables.

That’s all I have to say today. No analysis. No clever repartee.
Nothing but anger, despair and fear over what comes next. Because if one of us is hit we are all hurt. One of these days, we’ll realise that. I just hope it’s not too late by then.

Not ‘same old’ Northern Ireland: nothing will change until we do

2009-03-25T03:27:00.001-07:00

Many thought this story was over and the book back on the shelf.
Some didn’t think as much as hope that this would be the case.
But with one police constable and two soldiers dead to dissident republican fire over the last few weeks, the illusion is well and truly shattered.

Of course there are the cynics who claim that there will never be a perfect peace in Northern Ireland. A bit like the Guardian’s Henry McDonald who claims that Ireland will forever have ‘occasional terrorist outages’ – in one sentence dismissing a decade’s worth of peace efforts, the dissidents’ desperate passion and the heart-wrenching misery each death brings.
Not cool, mr McDonald.

Sapper Mark Quinsey was buried last week. He was 23. Sapper Patrick Azminkar, also killed at Massereene army barracks in Antrim, was 21. Speaking of terrorist outages is disrespectful to say the least. It is also misleading, treating the violence like something incidental yet entrenched, marginal yet inevitable.

And yesterday a 17-year old was charged with the murder of police constable Stephen Carroll. The teenager, suspected of membership of the Continuity IRA, is too young to be named but not too young to possess an AKM assault rifle and shoot a man in the back of the head.
To speak of terrorist outages is to trivialise the deaths and to underestimate what it is that makes a 17-year-old take up arms.

11 years after the Good Friday accord, three years into power-sharing and people still join the militants, despite the IRA ceasefire.
Yet the voices urging us all not to allow the violence to derail the peace process are loud. The voices suggesting this is how things are in Northern Ireland and we shall move on regardless are loud.
But what if they are wrong?

Three people died over the past few weeks.
The IRA fights no more but the Real IRA and Continuity IRA do. We can choose to ignore this or we can choose to acknowledge that not all is well in the State of Denmark.

Martin McGuinness, former IRA bigwig turned peacemaker, denounced those behind the attacks as "traitors" to the people of Ireland. I’m sure they consider him a traitor to their cause too. In every conflict, each side has its own truth. The more sides there are, the more truths there are, the harder the conflict is to resolve.

Mr McGuinness changed his mind regarding his own particular truth. But not everyone in Ireland accepts that unification is no longer on the cards. And the fact that, if put to a referendum, the motion of unification would be defeated in Northern Ireland due to demographic realities on the ground is not enough to change the hearts and turn the heads of those who are prepared to take up arms in the name of a cause – even a lost cause.

I don’t pretend to know what goes on in the heads of people who opt for violence in the defence of an idea. I don’t know how the brain gets to the conclusion that putting oneself in harm’s way and inflicting hurt on others is the way forward on a particular question.
But I know that for as long as these thoughts are being thought and for as long as we do not understand them, whatever solution we offer will leave some people dissatisfied. And if those people are the ones who are willing and able to take up arms to protest their dissatisfaction, then we have a problem that cannot be dismissed through sanitised language, describing murder as ‘terrorist outages’, destruction as ‘violent incidents’ and the, small-scale but undeniable, re-militarisation of northern Ireland’s youth as ‘statistically insignificant’.

And comparisons won’t help either.
Comparing Northern Ireland to the Basque country obfuscates the problem. The history and socio-economic background of the conflicts could not be more different. Same goes for their demands: ETA wants the Basque country to break away, most IRA offshoots want Ireland to unite. That’s a pretty big difference if you ask me.
Where the two resemble each other is in that the people living in the areas affected are far from unanimously behind the idea of independence or unity – and even those who share the vision and understand the sentiments are getting increasingly fed up with the violence.

But the thing about violence is that ignoring it never makes it go away.

The peace process should not be derailed by the violence, is the chorus coming out of both Stormont and Westminster.
And that is right.
But the peace process cannot afford to ignore the violence either.

Their goal may be utopian, their ranks may be depleted but the militants who don’t buy into the power-sharing experiment in Northern Ireland are still around and not sitting tight.

McGuinness can accuse them of betraying their people all he likes – chances are that’s exactly what they think of him as well.
And the problem is that they are ‘the people’ as much as McGuinness is. They are ‘the people’ as much as those embracing the peace process are.
And ‘the people’ remain divided. So the peace process remains shaky. And hard work is still needed. And a perfect peace is still a way away. And the ability to take peace for granted further still.

But the greatest enemy of a perfect peace, that can be taken for granted as ‘the way things are’, is not the violence right now. It’s the people who tell us that violence in Northern Ireland is inevitable. It’s the people who think the way things always were is the way things will always be.
It’s the people who cannot believe in a perfect peace even though they are working towards it.

Cheer for freedom of expression, but not too loud

2009-03-20T09:19:00.000-07:00

Next person to call Greece the cradle of democracy gets their ears boxed, courtesy of me.
It’s not even funny any more. It actually hurts to hear Greeks and non-Greeks sing the praises of our ancient glories when, nowadays, Greece looks more like the place where democratic ideals go to die. Part of that is a government that just doesn’t care enough to even pretend they care. Part is a repressive and irresponsible police force. And part – the worst part – is that chunk of citizenry that doesn’t care to fight for freedom and some times is way too eager to shout against it.
Freedom is great you see, as long as it cleans up after itself and doesn’t cause unnecessary traffic jams. Oh and as long as we like it and it doesn’t take up too much time or clash with this evening’s socio-cultural happening.

But a couple of weeks ago, clash it did.
A co-production of the Greek Lyriki Skini and the Opéra de Nice was expected to be one of those events attended both by genuine music lovers and by those who wanted to say ‘oh yes, I saw Dvořák’s Rusalka, didn’t you?’ Neither group expected the opening to turn into a struggle over artistic freedom, censorship and homophobia.

The story begins with a new interpretation of a known work. Happens all the time. But not all revisionist directors have a vigilante musicians’ union to reckon with.

On opening night, a union picket was handing out leaflets outside the theatre, informing the audience of the dangers lurking in the director’s revisionism. They accused director Marion Wasserman’s adaptation of adulterating the libretto and undermining the work.
And those stalwart defenders of artistic purity would not stand for it.
Of course the libretto was untouched, the score unaltered and the musicians’ union did not object to the orchestration or casting. In fact, this had nothing to do with music. This was about stage instructions, the manifesto denouncing Wasserman's addition of ‘extreme scenes’ of a sexual nature.
Extreme scenes, ladies and gentlemen.
Drum roll please.
A kiss.
One.
Kiss.
Between men.

Homophobes of the world unite.
The union complained to the ministry of culture and staged a picket outside the theatre. Inside the theatre large parts of the audience – possibly egged on by agitators – booed, heckled and jeered when the performers and director took to the stage after the end of the performance. Disgruntled opera-goers spoke to the ‘Nea’ news crew. My favourite was a man who exclaimed he could not possibly bring his wife to ‘shows like this’. His wife obviously inhabits the 17th century. As does the rest of Greece, it seems.

A homophobic picket? An audience that boos its disagreement?
And before you say it was an isolated incident, when, at the Lyriki’s urging, Les-Bi-Gay representatives issued a statement before curtains-up on the second night, they were booed by the orchestra and audience in perfect synchronisation.

So art is to be censored and curtailed and never to show us anything we don’t already know, like, are comfortable in and agree with.
The same applies to life, it seems.

Greece’s Supreme Court has now legitimised the firing of an HIV-positive worker. This is not a case of someone being fired, who also happened to be HIV-positive. This is someone who was fired because he was HIV positive. And the Supreme Court ruled that the firing was legitimate and the man was consequently not entitled to compensation as the decision to let him go was within the limits of labour legislation and the employer’s rights. How?
His presence was disrupting the smooth operation of the company. How?
His work mates were upset.

The man was sacked in February 2005 after his workmates submitted a written request for his dismissal. On health grounds.
Understandably, he appealed and won.
So his employer counter-appealed bringing us to the Supreme Court. That effectively ruled that it’s ok to demonise people and to yield to unscientific fears and prejudiced instincts and to hell with the lives of those who don’t fit into the grand plan of ‘how things should be’.

So to recap: it is the year of our Lord 2009 and people in Greece think that they may catch HIV by sharing a water fountain with a patient, the Supreme Court not only fails to point out how ludicrous that is but goes ‘there, there’ and pats them on the head, encouraging the notion that it’s ok to drive away everyone that makes us uncomfortable meanwhile a subtle reference to homosexuality in a work of art is met with full-blown industrial action.

Let’s cheer the birthplace of philosophy, democracy and ethics everyone.

Oh of course we are all for democracy and freedom. Just not for those who disagree with our tastes and beliefs, those who look different, live differently and smell funny. Particularly not those who smell funny.

So go on children, cheer for democracy, individual rights and freedoms and free speech.
Just not too loud. We don’t want to give people ideas now do we?

Is this a hoodie I see before me?

2009-03-18T11:37:00.000-07:00

Last time ‘fashion policing’ actually occurred in Greece, a slightly deranged dictator dispatched policemen with measuring tapes onto the streets of Athens. His name was Pangalos and he objected to short skirts. This time things are more sinister because fashion policing is coming from a democratically elected government trying to outlaw the hoodie. Because trouble-makers wear hoodies you see. Ergo hoodies mean trouble.

Justice Minister Dendias clarified that sporting a hood is not a crime in itself. But if someone is caught breaking the law and wearing a hood at the same time, they will be punished more severely than if they had made a different wardrobe choice.

Is it true that vandals often pull hoods tightly around their faces in order to make identification harder? Oh yes.
Is it true that Athens has experienced a spike in vandalism since December 2008, and that many of the culprits wear hoods? Oh yes.
Is it true that the government has been unable to curb, control or even understand the wave of violence and has thus been ineffectual in every way? Oh yes.
Hence the hood legislation.
It could have been worse. Apparently loud voices in parliament demanded that wearing a hoodie was outlawed as such. This time they were not listened to. Just.

But this law is bad enough as it is – elevating a wardrobe choice to the factor that turns a misdemeanour into a crime in sentencing terms, regardless of context, the severity of the acts committed and the existence (or not) of prior convictions.
And I can’t help but think that this will only help play the statistics game.
Surely the vandals have broken the law already. Hood or no hood they should be arrested. But they are not. Because the police can’t or won’t find them.
How is the hood law going to help with that?

Well it won’t of course. But it will give the police latitude to arrest fringe elements in protests or demonstrators who dare protect themselves against tear-gas – a riot police favourite. The hood law will allow the police to look busy. And it will lead to the harassment of anyone kitted out in ‘criminal attire’.
You think I’m reading too much into this?
Well, if the Greek government can read your character through your wardrobe choices, I can read political intent in legislative reform if I want to. And I have a bit more than a jumper to go on. As the hood law is in good company.

As part of the new bout of legislative frenzy, ‘insulting’ public servants – which includes shouting out chants against the police or parliamentarians – is to lead to automatic prosecution.
Now that’s a blast from the past.
Greece used to have laws that banned citizens from insulting the authorities.
Greece also used to have a dictatorship.
Getting rid of those laws, allowing citizens to protest and, if they so wished, to chant against the police or their government was a huge step towards democratisation. And now it’s being revoked ‘in light of recent events’ according to the Justice Minister.
What events would those be, sir?
Would they have anything to do with the death of a 15-year old boy?
Do I need to remind anyone that the policeman who shot Alex in December 2008 claimed that Alex and his friends taunted him and his colleagues?
In light of recent events, I hardly need to ask myself whose side the law is on.
It wasn’t on Alex’s and it’s not on mine.
It’s not on yours either, unless you are a policeman.

You see, the police need our protection and support now, in light of recent events.
I swear I am not making it up. I am quoting the Justice Minister verbatim.
We cannot yell at the police or insult them, in light of recent events.
We need to protect them from the cowards protesting with their faces hidden.
Thus spake the Justice Minister trying to whip up some rightful indignation.

Well.
I for one am not feeling any of that.
I’m too busy being horrified at the government’s blatant disregard for the basic premises of the rule of law and democratic freedoms.
I’m too busy being furious at the government’s evident confidence in their ability to fool us. They think we can’t see through their inability to understand and their unwillingness to act. They think we can’t see the difference between noise and action.
They think we can’t understand the difference between the ‘who’ and the ‘why’.
But we can.
And we can see no-one is addressing why these young people are so desperate, so angry. Why they are out on the streets, wearing hoods, setting things on fire.
So go on, arrest them.
But while you are not thinking about the why, you can keep on arresting and they’ll keep on coming. That’s how it goes. The dispossessed have nothing to lose.

I don’t want to point out the obvious here but the vandals are breaking the law anyway. If they are not yet arrested, it has nothing to do with the existing legal framework.
So these new pieces of legislation are doing two things: mocking us and gagging us. And I don’t much like either of those.

‘We must protect the police’ said the Minister of Justice.
Well, no, not really.
On a good day, they must protect us.
On a bad day, like the ones we’ve been having recently, we must be protected from them.
How a bit of legislation doing that, mr Prime Minister?
Or are you too busy banning yellow T-shirts next?

A lesson in losing perspective: Muntadhar al-Zaidi

2009-03-17T02:18:00.000-07:00

Remember Muntadhar al-Zaidi?
We all cheered him when he threw a shoe at Bush in December last year. Some of us even thought ‘oh man, I wish I had done that’. We cheered him and we forgot about him. And when he was sentenced to three years in prison a few days ago, for attempting to assault a foreign leader, nobody really noticed.

Zaidi, a journalist, pleaded ‘not guilty’ to charges of assault, considering his act a reaction to the violence he and his people had suffered in the hands of the American invader. But as it often happens with these things, if you have an army, your trespasses are discussed in round tables, if you protest on your own, you soon find that most of what you can think of doing breaks the law. So Bush is sitting at home and Zaidi is going to jail.

Now, I'm not saying that chucking shoes at people you dislike is an acceptable form of political disagreement. I am saying that, in the context of Iraq, war changes the normal rules of the game.
Of course there is a debate to be had here about the limits of lawful protests and the boundaries of legitimate expressions of disagreement. But this debate cannot be had in war-torn Iraq, not yet. Not while the US occupation forces are still on the ground. Not while democracy and civil society are still just words in textbooks.
But rather than admitting that the debate regarding acceptable limits to freedom of expression cannot be had in the context of a war and what Zaidi did cannot be judged as if it were done in peace time, the court ploughed on ahead regardless.

Surely, when shoot-outs on the streets are a daily occurrence, the boundaries of what constitutes ‘violent behaviour’ ought to be slightly adjusted to fit reality?

But even if context is not taken into account, a three-year jail sentence is radically out of proportion with the nature of the crime, if flinging a shoe can be described as a crime at all, raising important questions about the sobriety, independence and reliability of Iraqi courts.

It is telling that Zaidi’s lawyers failed to convince the court to reduce the charge of attempted assault to insult. The courts were evidently making a point, still the tragic irony of the terminology is way too poignant: In the context of an on-going war, you would expect people to know the difference between a flying loafer and mortar. But everyone is in a flap over insulting the Americans and moderation has gone out the window. Premier Nuri Al-Maliki described the throwing of the shoe as a ‘barbaric act’ in December, earning himself universal scorn for having no sense of perspective. Obviously the sentencing has done his reputation as an American mouthpiece no favours.

The Journalistic Freedoms Observatory is shocked and dismayed at the harshness of the decision. Public opinion in Iraq, however, remains divided, some believing that a foreign guest should not be insulted under any circumstances and a journalist should be able to keep a cooler head. Others of course have hailed Zaidi as a hero.

The court had a chance to diffuse this situation without taking sides, but the harshness of the sentence imposed shows they have no such intention.
The anti-American Shiite factions have already accused the pro-US factions of leaning too heavily on the judges while the response form Maliki’s party was the incredibly callous: “If this case was politicized, the punishment would have been harsher.”

And the Americans?
Desperate to leave Iraq, they have stopped caring about their legacy.

This was a unique opportunity to lead, to inspire, to show what democracy, free speech and toleration look like in practice.
Maybe they did lean on the judiciary to get retribution of sorts – and if that happened it shows a complete lack of vision, humanity and imagination.
But maybe they didn’t lean on the judiciary at all. They left the Iraqi judges to fret over expunging the insult and placating the Americans on their own and, in doing so, they missed a momentous opportunity to lead, teach and inspire.

So Zaidi is going to prison for throwing a shoe at Bush.
Bush goes home to tend to his presidential library after carpet-bombing Zaidi's country.
And ‘democracy-building’ in Iraq has gone from being an empty shell to a hollow promise, not even symbolically upheld by those who made it.

So when we start wondering when America went beyond caring about democratisation in Iraq, remember Muntadhar al-Zaidi.

Broken Record Day: Afghanistan

2009-03-11T09:05:00.000-07:00

If I’m going to say the same thing over and over again anyway, I might as well pretend it’s all part of the plan.
So I hereby create the institution of the ‘Broken Record Day’ during which I am allowed to repeat myself and go on and on about the things that really bug me.
That sorted, I might as well inform you that today is a broken record day and my subject is Afghanistan. Then again, when the subject is Afghanistan, every day is a broken record day.

Things are not going well in Afghanistan.
Things have not gone well in Afghanistan since the beginning of the operation.
Of course, there have been good days and bad days.
But on an average day it is evident that US and coalition forces are approaching this all wrong: from rotating troops out of the country pretty much the minute they are beginning to understand what’s happening on the ground; to falling prey to cheap emotional tricks like trying to befriend the local children and being drawn into ambushes; to getting caught up in regional and tribal disputes they do not understand and cannot resolve - but can exacerbate. And exacerbate them they do.

No-one is saying it’s easy.
The US troops are battling on many fronts: fighting the insurrection; trying to help Afghanistan build new institutions, structures and a new political culture; undermining these institutions, structures and culture via their very presence; fighting the drug cartels; trying to discourage poppy cultivation and encourage alternative crop cultivation whilst simultaneously trying to build the roads via which the alternative crops will be taken to market without rotting while the farmers are negotiating treacherous terrain; grappling with the centuries’ old system of feudal debt and bondage that would keep farmers bound to poppy cultivation even if viable alternatives did exist; watching their reconstruction work being undermined by their counter-insurgency fighting and their counter-insurgency fighting hampered by their reconstruction work.

It’s not easy.
But it was never going to be easy.

And now accusations are being made that US forces are failing to share counter-insurgency intelligence with their international military allies.
A report prepared by RAND and leaked to Wikileaks suggests that efforts in Afghanistan are hampered by the twin evils of US commanders being overwhelmed by information on hundreds of contradictory databases and the same commanders not comparing notes and/or sharing this information with their counterparts within the coalition.
Meanwhile much of this closely guarded intelligence is coming from local contacts that get tipped for every tip they offer, thus providing unreliable and often erroneous information that the US army then spends time and money to code, analyse, counter-reference and guard. From their own allies, among others.

The report describes a force drowning. In information. In confusion. In despair.
Having gone in without a plan.
Realising slowly that the military commanders do not understand Afghanistan with its tribal politics, deep-rooted religious entanglement and drug-fuelled economy based on debt bondage and serfdom.
And now, not seeing a way out that wouldn’t push the country over the brink into complete civil war and political disintegration, the force is drowning.

Things are not good for the US troops.
But they still need to send reports home. And ‘we are in this way over our heads’ is not a good report. Besides, you can only say it so many times.
So, it seems, the US forces have devised complex economic, military and political ‘progress indicators’ the relevance of which is shaky but the purpose clear: they allow for reports to be sent back home, for activity to be measured, for an illusion of progress to be maintained.

All the while, according to the same report, coalition forces at Camp Holland near Tarin Kowt in southern Afghanistan maintain 13 different intelligence sections as nobody is talking to anyone else.
If nothing else, the coalition is leading by example: a true inspiration for the fragmented, tribal and bitterly divided Afghan society.

Broken record day.
You cannot provide a solution to a problem you do not understand.
You cannot navigate an unknown land without a map or compass.
Good intentions and a cheery disposition suffice only if your name is Polyanna.

‘On s’engage et puis on voit’ didn’t work out all that well for Napoleon.
Why Bush thought it would work out for him beats me.

And yes, I know: ‘No plan survives contact with the enemy’.
I know.
But if you start out without a plan, without even knowing what you are setting out to achieve, in general terms, it’s you that may not survive contact with the enemy. Especially if your enemy knows what he’s fighting for, and you don’t.

When looking ahead is hard, look back and look busy

2009-03-09T04:00:00.000-07:00

For 5 points, political science:
What is the function of the US Congress?
If you answered ‘legislation’ you get 5 points. But if you answered ‘to serve as the forum in which political vendettas and ideological politics are all played out’ you also get 5 points. Because debate within Congress is partly about making laws and partly about making a point. And I can’t help thinking that the latest push towards passing a resolution that describes the Ottoman massacres of the Armenians on the run-up to and during the First World War as ‘genocide’ is little more than that. I am just not sure what the point is.
Despite placating the Armenian lobby.
Despite giving the beleaguered Armenian nation a belated moral victory.
Despite looking back and nodding wisely.
Despite all this, I fear that this gesture is just that – a gesture – a symbolic pat on the head and not the start of a global preventative initiative.

Almost a century has gone by since the Armenian massacres the proposed Congress resolution is dealing with occurred. And although the memory of the pain and the horror remains, none of the political players do.
At the time, Armenia was not yet a state.
The state that perpetrated the crimes (the Ottoman Empire) no longer exists.
The state that replaced it (Turkey) came into being partly by rebelling against and rejecting the Ottoman Empire. It has a new polity, new legal system, new language and script, new capital and no state religion. It is in all ways different to the Ottoman Empire, difference compounded by rejection when the nationalists rebelled against the Ottomans. This is not our crime, say the Turks. And nobody is actually accusing the Republic of a crime that was perpetrated before it existed. But the ‘Armenian question’ makes Turks feel put on the spot, accused, provoked to respond. And respond they do. Most vociferously. And then of course the world thinks ‘the lady doth protest too much’. And Turkey is looked at suspiciously. And the cycle continues.

So if the resolution passes, it will be castigating a country that no longer exists. It will be offending a country that is only linked to the horrors perpetrated by history and association but not institutional continuity and ‘national’ collective responsibility. And it will be giving the Armenians a nod. Nothing more. The resolution is offering no reparations, no redress and no promise that we have learnt from this particular horror, as a species. All that is offered is a piece of paper saying that the horrors endured by the Armenians a century ago were comparable to the horrors endured by the Jews during World War II.
Because that’s what the term ‘genocide’ boils down to.
Of course, it has been used since and for other cases but when Raphael Lemkin first wrote of genocide in 1944 he only had one thing in mind: to build legislation that would punish the perpetrators and avoid a repetition of the horrors of the Holocaust.

It didn’t work.
Genocide predated its name and outlived Lemkin.
But what we have had since Lemkin is a body of international law and the right language to understand, isolate, describe and – on few occasions – punish the crime that is genocide.
But this being a body of law, it all gets technical, as one of the criteria for proving a massacre constitutes genocide is that specific intent needs to be proved. The letter of the law requires a paper trail or suchlike proving that the killings are part of a sustained policy to annihilate an ethnic group as such, people being killed because they belong to that ethnic group.

Rwanda – with the extensive incendiary media coverage exhorting members of one group to kill members of another, qualifies.
The Armenian case is more complicated.
The Armenian massacres occurred before the information age. There were no media campaigns. The dissolution of the Ottoman state means that even if paper trails existed then, they no longer do. And chances are they never did as high levels of illiteracy meant that orders had to be given orally in the most part.
It was a different time. The definition does not apply. Still, the deaths occurred and the legal assessment makes them no more and no less real.

The resolution may ignore all this and call it a genocide regardless.
And yet this will offer little comfort to Armenians – only the bittersweet aftertaste of a minor and long overdue moral victory. If giving a title to suffering can be counted as a victory. Meanwhile the Turks will feel slighted and wronged. A minor diplomatic episode might ensue. But they too will get over it.

And then what?

Then we all go back home.
And if new atrocities occur, we make sure we wait a good hundred years before assessing exactly what is going on, why it is happening and just how horrible it is.
Of course time gives us perspective.
Time also ensures we don’t have to get our hands dirty in the messy business of saving lives and preventing slaughter before it becomes genocide.
Time allows for taxonomy.
Time is the enemy of survival.

I do not object to the sentiment behind this resolution.
I also appreciate the technical debate around this. I am quite fond of taxonomy. I like legal definitions and pedantic arguments.
But the US Congress is not a historical society.
For Congress this is not about a moral choice. This is a choice between looking back, looking busy or looking straight ahead.
The victim often has no choice but to look back.
The law-maker always has a choice.
Call me pedantic, but given the choice, I’d rather law-makers opted for looking ahead rather than looking back and looking busy.
Because that’s as bad as looking the other way as things actually occur.

On perky princes, pesky workers and how the story ends for the rest of us

2009-03-06T05:12:00.000-08:00

Big news!
Prince Charles has been voted ‘Esquire’s best dressed man’. Of the year. I think. I could check, if it matters that much to you? No. I didn’t think so.
Still, you will be pleased to know, prince Charles’ sartorial success boils down to the ‘quintessentially perky British look’ (that’s the Guardian’s Simon Chilvers speaking, not me). Perky?
How can double-breasted suits be perky, you ask? What does ‘perky’ actually mean?
Well, let me help you out here.

Prince Charles’ suits are perky.
The thousands of construction workers, who’ve just seen their worst suspicions proven
true, are not perky. I’m not perky, as I read that numerous companies including Britain’s leading construction outfits have been buying personal data for decades in order to vet applicants before employing them.

So someone (to be precise, private detective, Ian Kerr who, I hope, is not perky right now) has been making a living by gathering and selling the private information of unsuspecting individuals. He has been making a living out of depriving others of theirs.
Does this break the data protection act? Sounds like it to me.
And it looks like Kerr will be investigated and possibly (read hopefully) tried for his involvement in producing ‘black lists’ that helped construction companies decide who should work. And who shouldn’t.

So thousands of people have been denied work by the major construction players because they were ‘troublesome’ and hence blacklisted.
Troublesome means ‘not perky’.
That includes ‘lazy’.
It also includes ‘union member’, ‘communist party member’ as well individuals ‘previously involved in strike action’.
Troublesome includes workers who trusted in the letter of the law and exercised their hard-earned rights to unionise and strike.

Thousands of people out of work because of their political beliefs; because they, at some point over the past thirty years, fought for better conditions, better wages, a better life. Because someone assessed their records and decreed them troublesome.
Because, someone, somewhere decided that the propensity to strike has more to do with the person than the working conditions he are forced into.

Does it remind you of anything?
McCarthyism, the juntas in southern Europe and Latin America – they kept Communists out of work. Because they were troublesome and the state – in those days, in those places – did not like trouble.
Just like the big construction companies in Britain, today. Only here the state is not actively involved. Small comforts. Especially as the result, from the construction workers’ point of view, is the same.

To the list of things that are not perky, add me.
To the list of things that are perky, add the construction companies. Who have been caught red-handed but are looking perky nonetheless because, as it stands, they may have well not broken the law.

In 1999 the Labour government got very close to banning the practice of blacklists but then decided not to implement the law in the absence of hard evidence that blacklisting was actually occurring.
So in 2009, blacklisting remains, for all intents and purposes, legal.
And although the Labour party are looking shamefaced, any change to the legislation now will not be retroactive and the construction companies will get off scot-free with a warning to not do it again and play nice.

And that's where this story ends.
It's a happy ending. For all. Not for everyone. But for all directly benefiting by the lack of blacklisting legislation, it is a happy ending.

That's the bit we keep missing, when we are told 'and they all lived happily ever after'.
Nobody ever speaks of everyone living happily ever after.

Plus ça change: Turkey 12 years on

2009-03-02T07:36:00.001-08:00

This Saturday past marked 12 years since Turkey’s latest coup.

Twelve years is a long time. A lot can change in twelve years. And a lot has changed in Turkey, in the 12 years since the post-modern coup of Feb. 28, 1997.
It is now legal to broadcast in Kurdish, family law has been liberalised, Turkey has deepened its rapprochement with Europe and, in economic terms, the Anatolian heartland is flourishing. Even the make-up of the National Security Council has been changed to achieve increased civilian control over the army.

Things have undoubtedly changed.
In 1997, the religious Refah party was ousted by army memorandum.
Twelve years on, the AK party (openly religious and counting many ex-Refahites among its members) has been governing for the better part of a decade.
The AK party is itself proof of profound change – the secularists have changed enough to endure it and the Islamists have changed enough to join and vote for the reformist, Euro-phile AKP. Even the army are yet to take drastic action against them. And many believe that the fact that the AKP is still around is proof enough that the TSK (Türk Silahlı Kuvvetleri, the Turkish Armed Forces) have also changed.

When the AK party was investigated for unconstitutional activities and acquitted, some hailed the end of an era. When the TSK failed to intervene as pious Abdullah Gül was elected to the revered office of the President of the Republic, some were convinced that was the end of the TSK as we knew it. Just because they did not intervene.
Are we not forgetting something?
The army didn’t get the troops out in 1997 either. But a government fell nonetheless.

The TSK has not changed since 1997.
The TSK is done changing.
Between 1960 and now, they have perfected the art of interfering without intervening. Why change any more?

The position of the TSK within the polity is clear:
Past and present versions of the constitution and the uniform code of military justice recognise the TSK's duty to protect the land, the people, the Republic and Atatürk’s legacy from enemies within or without.

So Turkey has changed. But within certain limits.
After all, protecting a legacy from enemies within clearly means that the TSK are there to block the wrong kind of change.
In fulfilling that duty, the TSK intervened once every ten years, never holding onto power for long, between the advent of multi-party democracy in 1950 and 1980 when it appeared that a more ‘lasting solution’ was needed. Thus far, the army had been intervening in a correctional manner, addressing a perceived problem swiftly and returning to barracks. It was actually widely believed that to hold onto power too long would corrupt the corps.

But in 1980 things were different. Turkey was in chaos. Basic good shortages, government failures and violence on the streets meant that this time, when the TSK intervened, they were reluctant to withdraw immediately. Or even soon.
General Kenan Evren would retain power until he has satisfied the system had been re-jigged appropriately.
That took three years.
Before returning to democratic politics he made sure he had given Turkey a new constitution, new institutions and himself as President of the Republic for the next 7 years.

Since then, the army has interfered a lot and intervened little.
Although in 1997 some tanks did leave the barracks – in the city of Sıncan, following an unfortunate incident including a fiery oratory and the Iranian ambassador – 1997 was a very civilised coup, done via communiqué rather than military action.
Since then, the TSK’s unquestionable power has been turned into diffused influence. So diffused, you can hardly see it. But that doesn’t make it less real or less potent.

Of course, it helps that the core principles of the constitution are the TSK’s guiding principles. And it also helps that the current constitution is a heavily amended version of the document the junta drafted in the early 80s.
It also helps that the TSK have a say in all high-level judicial appointments. They have influence over all high-level state university appointments as well as in a number of other areas including a number of regulatory bodies.

Of course things have changed. But plus ça change…

Granted, the TSK don’t always get their way.
Neither Erdoğan nor Gül are to their taste. And they are both still around.
But neither Erdoğan nor Gül have pushed through any particularly controversial legislation, despite numerous tense stand-offs. Somehow AKP politicians manage to reign it in before it’s too late. For instance, Erdoğan tried, early on in his first term, to criminalize adultery, yet he soon dropped the issue like the hot potato that it was. The EU saw it as a sign of respect for the Copenhagen criteria.
But the secular TSK knew better.

The EU was also pleased when the number of civilians in the National Security Council was increased and the TSK chiefs were given ‘line managers’ lower down the food chain – from the head of state to the minister of defence.
The EU stopped being so pleased when they realised that the change in the National Security Council make-up had absolutely no bearing on the Council’s decision-making patterns as the TSK’s views still carried the day and that Army chiefs carried on being treated with deference by their civilian superiors.

Turkey has changed, say the EU observers, and now it’s time for the TSK to do the same.

Look again, says me.
Turkey was Atatürk’s project: an exercise in collectivism, statism, secularism and modernisation. The project is working, the legacy is upheld and the TSK is overseeing proceedings.
Of course Turkey has changed since 1997.
Turkey has been changing since 1923. It has been changing according to Atatürk’s plan and legacy. And since 1923, the TSK has also changed, to ensure it remained best placed to protect and forward the plan.

The one thing that hasn’t changed is the plan.
The TSK made sure of that.

For Peace in Sri Lanka, Remember Bandaranaike

2009-02-25T08:48:00.000-08:00

The war is almost over in Sri Lanka, the papers announced.
What war? People asked me.
The war.
The war that has been going on so long, many in the West have forgotten it hasn’t actually ended. The war that has claimed thousands of lives, caused hundreds of thousands of people to lose their homes and livelihoods. The war between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers. That war.

When did this war start?
Was it 1983 as many official histories claim? Was it 1976, when the Tamil Tigers first came into being? Was it even earlier, when the Tamils clashed with government forces in opposition to the ‘Sinhala only’ legalisation?
The legislation marginalized non-Sinhalese speakers – ostensibly to distance Ceylon from its former colonial masters but also actively reversing the ethno-linguistic make-up of the civil service (from predominantly Tamil to almost 100% Sinhalese) in under a generation and effectively marginalising the Tamil population.
But marginalisation leads to discontent and discontent leads to resistance. Those are the mathematics of conflict.

For now, the Tamil Tigers are still fighting. And although they are evidently losing, no amnesty has been declared, no foundation for peace has yet been laid. When the Tigers called on the international community – that inscrutable animal – to broker a truce, Colombo resisted and anonymous government sources said that this will end as it started: fighting.
So the beginning of the end for this war may actually be less of a promise and more of a statement of fact: the war will be over soon, because there will be no one left to fight against.

But not yet. For now, the Tigers are still fighting and the military are preparing for at least one more, final, showdown before the curtain falls on this conflict. Meanwhile the rest of the world had forgotten there was a war going on still. And if we forgot the war, what are the chances of remembering Bandaranaike?

PM Solomon Bandaranaike was the man behind the ‘Sinhala only movement’. Obviously this did not start the war. Obviously he did not start the war. But he is where the story starts. And now that the story is about to come to an end, the beginning is of the utmost importance. Now, when people least want to think back, is when the past needs to be re-examined.

Healing is what matters now, I hear you say. Rebuilding, not rehashing.
But when the time comes to rebuild, will anyone remember Bandaranaike?
Will anyone remember that the young Sri Lanka had a beautiful, pristine, Westminster-style democracy, upon independence?
That was the fruit of ‘rebuilding’ as well.
Rebuilding.
But in doing so, the new system did not protect itself against ethnic take-over. It did not create structures and systems that could protect minorities, ensuring that they could not be disenfranchised, that the tyranny of the majority would not occur.
Mistakes were made.
The system was abused.
’Sinhala only’ was launched and although opposition and some negotiation took place, Bandaranaike’s legacy held firm – in the shape of laws and a political dynasty: his wife Sirimavo Bandaranaike was three times prime mister, his daughter Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga president and son Anura Bandaranaike many times minister and speaker of the house.

Don't get me wrong.
I don’t want to reduce the legacy of a political dynasty to two words. But those two words, ‘Sinhala Only’, stand for the mind-set of an entire state apparatus - the apparatus that the Tamil Tigers rose to fight against. So all I’m saying is, remember Bandaranaike. Remember where democracy was weakest, and when rebuilding, build up there first.

If government forces crush the Tigers, defeating them completely and irrevocably, there will be victorious swagger where quiet reflection is necessary.
Of course, the victors will celebrate, the vanquished will nurse their wounds, families will heave a sigh of relief and no one will want to think back.
But if nobody remembers Bandaranaike, what are the chances of a lasting peace?

Bandaranaike demonstrated how easily democracy can crumble. How can we rebuild, without remembering Bandaranaike?

To end this, we have to go back to the beginning, to the structures that made ethnic politics possible in the first place. Now that victims and perpetrators have swapped places a number of times and every home has a personal tragedy in Sri Lanka, it’s time to go back to the beginning. Amends can’t be made. But amendments can, and the whole political machinery needs to be re-jigged with two words in mind. Not ‘Sinhala only, but ‘never again’.

The war is almost over in Sri Lanka.
And it’s time to remember that history only goes round in circles when we forget the likes of Bandaranaike, when we forget how painful stories actually began.

All together, one more time

2009-02-24T08:18:00.000-08:00

I hate repeating myself. I hate it.
But while something remains true, it needs to be said again and again. For as long as it takes.

So.
The Greek Prime Minister was quite clear: ‘I am not thinking about elections. End of discussion’.
Well if you say so…
The most ineffectual man in European politics hath spoken.
Predictably, nobody cared. Almost simultaneously the opposition leader announced that he is ready to be judged by the people in an election that he deemed both expedient and imminent.
Mr Papandreou said it was time he measured himself against History (whatever that actually entails). In this most critical of junctures, and sounding uncannily like his dad, Mr Papandreou spoke of his financial vision, which boils down to privatising banks and getting the ‘rich to help out’.
So, to recap, the government won’t tell us what their financial plan entails (see my post Greece 2009: welcome to the dark side), the opposition’s financial salvation plan sounds like it came straight out of a 1950’s ‘socialist government’ manual while the Greek Communist Party’s response to all this was to rehabilitate Stalin. Yes that’s right. And I don’t know what’s more outrageous: the fact that they are not dealing with any of the current problems plaguing Greece but rather speaking of a man who has been dead since 1953 or that they are publicly redeeming the reputation of one of the world’s bloodiest leaders. But then again this encapsulates beautifully the general status of Greek politics: shut the windows, turn off the TV, throw away the newspapers, keep it self-referential and make sure you don’t deal in real issues.

Meanwhile, just to add to the comedy of it all, Vassili Paleokostas and Alket Rijay, serving sentences in an Athens maximum-security prison, have escaped. They were airlifted, to be precise. By privately-hired helicopter, off the prison building roof. Again. Having escaped the same way just under three years ago.

What’s the connection between the escape and the various party preoccupations discussed at the start of this post, I hear you ask?
None. None whatsoever. That’s the whole point.
Those governing don’t even bother to come up with a credible story on why things are bad or what they are about to do to make them better. The opposition is jumping up and down going ‘pick me pick me’ with no real plan beyond changing the wallpaper once they are in office and the smaller parties – that could represent the core or at least the start of civil society – are looking in, looking back and looking lost.

As lost as the security services that manage to be terrified of disruptive and violent elements, outwitted by prisoners who do not even need to vary their routines in order to escape and bring the force of the Force to bear on dissenting students, disgruntled farmers and errant teenagers. Same old, really.

And the government does not feel the need to declare elections; the opposition talk about history; and this particular story is getting way out of hand. Same old, yes.

So, I am deploring the state of affairs in Greece again.
For as long as it’s deplorable, I shall be deploring it.
For as long as it takes.

At least we have Dev Patel

2009-02-23T09:22:00.000-08:00

Because, let’s face it, reading the British press gives me little joy otherwise.

Jade Goody, of course, all over the papers. And it is terribly sad that she is dying so young. And I appreciate what she is doing and why. But she is one of those celebrities I do not understand – famous for being famous – of which we seem to have many.

The sports pages are out, as my football team needs a miracle to avoid relegation.

The financial pages are interchangeable with the obituaries, without the warm and fuzzy memories of better times, and the analysis pieces seem hell-bent on feeding the monster that is the ‘crisis of confidence’ that they agree underpins it all. And although Gordon assured us he has saved the world, neither the world nor this particular corner of it seem saved or indeed safe.

And today the usually level-headed Guardian predicted a summer of violent street fights for the capital, with the middle classes taking to the streets to protest the credit crunch and fight with the police in the process.

What this fear is based on is unclear.
Clashes over Gaza between police and protesters in January are cited, but the comparison is hardly credible as neither the issues nor the demographics in question are inter-changeable. Plus the January clashes were an isolated incident.
But the article is adamant the police expect a ‘summer of rage’ in 2009. They even seek to scare us with the prediction of ‘a return to the 1980s’. Whether that also entails a covert threat that the police will go back to Thatcherite styles is yet to be determined.

‘Superintendent David Hartshorn, who heads the Metropolitan police's public order branch, told the Guardian that middle-class individuals who would never have considered joining demonstrations may now seek to vent their anger through protests this year.’
This is assuming that the middle classes do not demonstrate. And that issue-specific demonstrations are easy to ‘hijack’ by determined agitators. Not to mention the assumption that disgruntled and disappointed masses can and do get violent. All tall orders. All, I’m sure, backed by statistics and blind to individuality.

The fact remains, however, that Mr Hartshorn has intelligence suggesting that the mood of demonstrations has changed recently with a noticeable increase in the specific ‘intent’ to create public unrest among protesters in this country. Plus things are not rosy in the rest of Europe. Inevitably, the farmers’ road blockades in Greece are cited as a sign that this is a Europe-wide phenomenon (failing to mention that such blockades happen every few months in Greece because there the system did not need the global financial meltdown to stop working).
Still, demonstrations also took place in France and Iceland and the piece is evidently worried.

Some of the agitators are well-known, apparently, but in times of stability their message falls on deaf ears, says Hartshorn, whereas now many hitherto respectable citizens may be lead astray out of desperation.

Well, if we know who they are, why don’t we send the agitators to their rooms?
You think I’m going mad, but I’m only quoting from the latest Tory youth offender handling recommendation (‘ground them’).
An ASBO and no TV for two weeks. Sophisticated policy-making in action.

No TV for two weeks might not be a bad idea though. It may actually spare said offending youths from losing their faith in the system entirely. That way they would not hear about the thousands of people who contracted HIV and Hep C through transfusions with contaminated blood during the 70s and 80s.
Just the story the ailing NHS needed to lose even more public confidence, as doctors find themselves over-worked, over-managed and under-trusted by harassed patients.

And I can’t even take solace in the sports pages.
So thank God for Danny Boyle and his decision to receive his Oscar skipping like Tigger. Just the feel good factor we needed.
If only Parliament would close its sessions with a hug, a kiss and a group dance. Skipping is optional.

El divo: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

2009-02-20T09:21:00.001-08:00

I was not going to blog about this.
Say it again. I was not going to blog about this.
But when people make mountains out of molehills I get annoyed. So here it comes.

Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stormed out on Israeli President Shimon Peres at the World Economic Forum in Davos. That’s funny, of course and every Tom, Dick and Harry blogged about it. But I didn’t. No Sir.
But then I started reading what other people wrote and I started getting annoyed, predictably, at how so many commentators managed to royally miss the point. People always miss the point when it comes to Turkey. But that’s another story for another time. So here I am, blogging about the things I was not going to blog about. Bloody typical.

Still.
Anyone vaguely interested in geopolitics knows that Turkey has traditionally been an ally of Israel’s.
In practice, this translates into a strained security understanding that enjoys the full backing of the all-mighty Turkish Armed Forces while civilian authorities remain ambivalent. At times, politicians have even expressed open hostility. That never lasts long. The last prime minister to do so (the notorious Necmettin Erbakan) was summarily deposed (for a variety of reasons) by an army communiqué in 1997. No violence, no coup, no fuss. Just a bit of paper and a press conference. Job done. It as called a post-modern coup with no hint of irony.

My point is, Turkey's security bonds with Israel are strong. And although Erdoğan’s personal preference for the Arab world ahead of Israel is well documented, his outburst was not a sign that Turkey is breaking with Israel as the press reported. Nor is it a sign of latent anti-Semitism, as the Economist’s Amberin Zaman claims, out of left field.
For the millionth time: disagreeing with Israel is not tantamount to anti-Semitism. Millions of Jews disagree with Israeli policy. Israelis disagree with Israeli policy.

Still, I don’t mean to defend Erdoğan.
A grown man, a professional politician and a, now, seasoned Prime Minister should be sober enough to not storm out when things don’t go his way. But to accuse him of anti-Semitism is to miss the point of what happened.

Erdoğan is a religious man. That much is well-known.
What that means is hard to tell as current legislation prevents him from expressing extreme religious sympathies even if he harbours them. We know he is pious and devout; we know he has fallen foul of the secular authorities and served a short jail sentence for ‘inciting religious violence’ through the use of some patriotic verses written in a time when secularism was not yet in vogue. And we know Erdoğan seeks to bring Turkey closer to the Arab states for the first time in its history. What that means is, again, not clear because this is rhetoric, scoring points with the religious heartland at home, rather than a genuine foreign policy position.

But that’s what Erdoğan does: he says out loud the things everyone had hitherto whispered. That is what makes him popular even with people who don’t actually agree with him, especially those who don’t have to live with his policies: the Europeans. With every nod from Europe, Erdoğan is a little safer at home, and so it continues.

Yet his record remains mixed.
He has liberalised the penal code but imposed restrictive legislation on alcohol; he has strengthened civilian control of the polity but he has also politicised the judiciary and skewed the demographics of the civil service.
He has brought Turkey closer to Europe and that has ensured his survival. But the truth is, he is pro-accession because he has no choice: his religiosity can only survive under an EU-sponsored freedoms discussion and his personal politics can only be legitimised as by-products of EU membership efforts. The secularists scowl, the traditionalists cheer and he walks the political tight-rope with ease, agility and flair.

Of course many wonder whether he’s worth all this effort. Whether EU accession is compensation enough for putting up with him. Recently, the Courts came close to resolving this dilemma as they questioned the constitutionality of the ruling AK Party, but Erdoğan survived again. By the skin of his teeth. And that made him even more of a hero with his constituents. Of course.

So, for me, his dramatic departure in Davos was not an act of political defiance.
It was a primadonna moment.

A perceived pro-Hamas leaning in Turkey meant that Erdoğan’s meeting with Peres was never going to be easy. But it doesn’t follow that Erdoğan’s outburst signifies, as one writer put it, ‘Turkey’s shift away from the West’. Easy tiger. The West is currently telling Israel off just as much as Turkey is. Erdoğan is, for once, on message and in good company.

Equally, to read too much into his actions is to give him credit he has not earned. Zaman, Turkey’s most religiously-minded mainstream daily, ran editorial upon editorial suggesting that what Erdoğan actually meant is that peace-building requires an honest assessment of the corruption and incompetence on the Arab side, US and European naïveté when it comes to Israel and the simple fact that Israeli hard-liners always seem to carry the day in Israeli domestic politics.
I’d have a lot of respect for Erdoğan had he said all that. But he did not.

Of course he objected to the Gaza killings. And of course Peres pushed back. That much was expected.
But then Peres accused him of not knowing what actually goes on in Gaza. And then the moderator, David Ignatius, started tapping Erdoğan on the shoulder, so he would cede the floor. And without wanting to trivialise this, Erdoğan does not take kindly to any slight to his personal authority. Satirists, cartoonists, journalists have found themselves fined and tried for mocking Erdoğan. He is under EU caution for his intolerance to any slight to his authority. Tap taps on the shoulder and accusations of ignorance don’t sit well with him.

So is that why he stormed out?
I’d say partly. The other part being made up of a plethora of factors including his religiosity, personal dislike for Israel and commitment to his pro-Arab, Muslim brotherhood rhetoric.

This was not about Turkey’s radical repositioning on the geostrategic map. This was not a symbolic departure from the straight and narrow as defined by the acquis communautaire and EU lore. This is not even about Turkey breaking with Israel (although stranger things have happened and one never knows what tomorrow brings). This is simply a diplomatic blunder by a man who occasionally gets carried away by his own self-importance.

So here’s my two kuruş’ worth: there’s no massive political realignment afoot. Just a garden-variety case of over-inflated political ego and a bit of a temper.

Now let’s sit back and watch him spin this to his advantage at home.

Greece 2009: Welcome to the dark side

2009-02-19T08:26:00.000-08:00

So I was in Greece last week.
I did the whole staying-up-till-six-am-eating-and-drinking-with-family. I played the let’s-see-how-much-caffeine-it-takes-to-kill-you game. I saw friends. I walked the streets of my youth. I spent time at home.
It was good.
But inevitably at some point, I turned on the TV. And, the Petroula debacle aside, in the space of the 10 minutes I lasted in front of it, I saw 3 things:

I saw the anchorman of a major channel battling with the news that the Prime Minister of Iceland is gay. Why that is news in the first place, I cannot say, considering it is neither newsworthy nor new. But they were announcing it still and the newscaster was struggling with his terminology. After half-starting on ‘homosexual’ and ‘lesbian’ he settled for ‘the PM of Iceland has… errr… special abilities’. Quite. X-ray vision and telekinesis, I’m sure. Pity I’m straight. But for a change in my sexual preferences I could be Wolverine.

So I flicked the channel in disgust and I got the news on a different one where the reporter had intelligently edited clips of a few ministers contradicting themselves drastically in public statements made within the last few days. My favourite was the minister for agriculture. On being informed that a group of disgruntled Cretan farmers were coming to Athens (with their tractors) to demonstrate, he said they would be welcome and a public debate would ensue. What actually ensued was a street fight complete with teargas and police violence captured on camera. The same man subsequently said that the state did what it had to do to prevent social unrest. So the state moves against protesting citizens, for their own sakes. How reassuring.

So I flicked the channel in despair and got three government spokesmen, ministers and under-secretaries, as well as a clip of the prime minister all saying the same thing ‘we have a plan to get the country out of the financial crisis’. ‘What is it’, ask the journalists. ‘We have a plan’ they repeat. What is it, I shout at the TV. ‘We have it and have had it since June’, Palli-Petralia (Minister for Employment and Social Protection) insisted. Yes but what is it? ‘We have it’.
Insolent citizens not taking the government’s word for it. Shame on us.

So I switched the TV off and turned to the newspapers. Asking for it, I know, but I am a news junkie and will never learn. So I discovered the following: I learned that the government’s popularity is waning (there’s a surprise) but the Prime Minister remains popular and is thought of as the stronger leader (God help us) – possibly assisted by the fact that the leader of the opposition seems to have no ideas whatsoever and an inability to string a sentence together without stumbling at least once.
I also learned that information about abuse in Greek prisons had been released again a few days previously, but no inquiry had been instructed and nobody seemed to be doing anything about it. I read about the farmer strikes and road blockades (part of which was the Cretan farmers incident). I also read about the failing economy, the faint echoes of land-sale scandals implicating the church that are now old news and the odd report about financial irregularities and EU controllers. Business as usual, really.

And then it struck me.
How all this was reported as a matter of fact. As if chaos, disorder, narrow-mindedness, dishonesty, injustice and incompetence were given facts of life that we were all powerless against. As if all this was our fate and, although we can see right through it, there is nothing we can do about it, there is nothing that can be done about it. As if change is not an option, not a possibility. As if hope is all but dead even though criticism isn’t. As if we are all spectators in a football match we have no power over. We can shout and swear but can’t touch the ball. We can see all that’s wrong but don’t believe we can fix it, don’t believe a fix is possible.

So nobody acts.
So nothing changes.
So.
So welcome to the dark side.

Chavez latest: calling a spade a spade

2009-02-18T01:24:00.000-08:00

Have I or have I not already said that the essence of democracy is that it can vote itself out of existence at any time?
No need to search back through old posts. I have and it is.

Knowing this, however, doesn’t make it less painful to watch when it happens.

So Hugo Chavez has been given the people’s blessing (via referendum) to run again and again and again for President. Because the 10 years he’s already had in power are not long enough.

Mr Chavez is popular. He is charismatic, he is loudly anti-American and that always goes down well with the masses the world over. His socialist programme has moved many but the jury is still out on his effectiveness as a president. To put it mildly.
Nevertheless when he announced that he needs to stick around for another term after this current one expires in 2012, in order to consolidate Venezuela’s socialist revolution, the referendum was called and the people spoke: 54% backed an end to term limits. In other words, 54% chose ‘more Chavez’.

Chavez’s time in office so far has not been smooth and uncomplicated.
Removed from office for 2 days by an abortive coup, winning a recall referendum and several elections, you may say that his survival in office despite the hurdles is a sign of the people’s will and his own determination.
You may also say that this is not the first time he tried to ensure he can run indefinitely – a similar attempt in 2007 failed but that, evidently, did not put him off. And now, 2 years on, he got the constitutional amendment he was after in a vote that was described by observers as free and fair. Although critics claim that government funding and blanket TV coverage (a Chavez speciality) swayed the vote, no allegations of fraud have been made.

So the people have spoken and, in a democracy, the popular will wins the day. Right? Right.
And it is within the people’s power to scrap the limits on how often politicians can run for office, right? Right.

But let’s not kid ourselves. Democracy is all about voting and free choice, of course, but it’s also a system that relies on certain vital ‘mechanical’ elements in order to actually function. One of them is checks and balances. One of those is the limit on how many times someone can run for office.

So democracy can vote itself out of existence alright, but once it’s done that, let us not kid ourselves, it no longer exists.

O tempora and all that

2009-02-17T08:03:00.000-08:00

Early last week, when I was in Athens, I met an old friend for an overpriced beer and a long-overdue catch-up. As we were chatting, he got to berating the phenomenon that is Petroula. Obviously, I had no idea what he was talking about. But I could guess. Partly because he’s eloquent and partly because I know what Greek TV is like. Leggy, busty blondes is what prime time private Greek TV is made of. But still, I was curious, so I checked it out the next day and discovered that this particular specimen of television genius tells the weather in fur-trimmed lingerie. Feminist activists turned in their graves and my mum tutted in disapproval, as I explained that I absolutely had to watch this: it is a social phenomenon and I am a social scientist. Yes. That’s right.

So the phenomenon that is Petroula is half-naked, a gentle breeze ensuring the little she wears sways suggestively, and her language is loaded with innuendo. She meows the names of towns and islands, sighs the temperatures and mouths the wind directions. I am female and I am straight yet I still found it mesmerising for about two minutes, because it is so openly sexual that, surely, I thought, it has to be a double-whammy: a critique of the voyeuristic tendencies of Greek TV and the thinly disguised sexualisation of TV presenters and a simultaneous ‘tapping into’ the phenomenon they criticise. A bit like the black-eyed peas singing ‘my humps’ and having the people they were mocking buy their singles while the rest of us sniggered conspiratorially. Market smarts or artistic sell-out, you decide.

Only with Petroula there is no dilemma. There is no critique. The whole thing is a full-throttle indulgence in soft-porn aesthetics. So I watched – by way of sociological research, you understand – and it appears I was in luck: it was the prodigy’s birthday and she did a dance and everything. As she progressed to the pièce de résistance , her catch phrase, ‘I am Petroula and I just finished’, which in Greek carries the innuendo of sexual climax, I didn’t know whether I should laugh or cry.

I wanted to laugh because it’s funny. It is so bad, it’s funny.
But it is mindless and despite the fact that the girl has great legs, I failed to see why she has become a sensation in Greece ahead of others.

But I also felt a rising sense of despair.

I was not prepared for this. I expected to have a giggle and a shake of the head. But I was confronted with a summary version of Greece’s deadlock in a frilly nighty: Petroula, I discovered, started off on 50 euros for a 3-minute slot. Now she’s famous and her 'show' is longer, that figure must have risen. But 50 euros for 3 minutes of shaking your boobs and moaning in front of a camera is a lot of money, especially in a country where other people her age would be making about 500 euros per month. If they were lucky.

So rather than laughing, I found myself doing the maths.
People in their early 20s who are not Petroula, make a salary that is hardly a living. Most young people can’t leave home – and it’s not because of family values any more, it’s because they simply can’t afford it. So they live with their parents and their salary becomes their pocket money while mum and dad still pay the rent, electricity and grocery bills.
And then these 20-somethings spend the little they have on over-priced commodities in a country that is rapidly becoming one of the most expensive in Europe, with a cup of coffee costing as much as 8 euros in fashionable haunts.

And as I watched Petroula celebrate her 20th birthday on television, I got angry. Because all the people who should be engaging in politics, trying to change their fate and fighting for the future, were at home watching her too. People her age, who can’t afford to not live with their mum and dad. People her age who don’t realise that by living with their mum and dad they don’t just compromise their coming of age, they also create a long-term effect on the Greek economy, as their parents cannot retire and their savings are depleted while their offspring fail to become financially independent through no failure of their own.

O tempora. Yes. But morality? This has nothing to do with morality.

I had thought I’d have a laugh and I found myself immersed in gloomy socio-economic analysis. Because I looked at Petroula and I saw a generation that is stuck, truly stuck, in a financial black hole and doesn’t seem to realise that this way is not the only way. And they stay at home on their mum’s sofa and find Petroula hilarious.
Maybe I am reading too much into things. I often do. But Petroula, for all our scorn, is doing well for herself. And her peers, who find her condescendingly hilarious, choose to talk about her rather than their own predicament.
So she serves her purpose and the world carries on like before. And it’s only a matter of time before things get too dire and Petroula’s becomes a coveted career, a way to ensure a better life.

O tempora indeed. I fear we’ll be saying that a lot in the years to come.

A week of no opinions ahead...

2009-02-06T09:05:00.001-08:00

Well, no, not really.
But I will be away for a week.
Think of it as a field trip, during which I will not be posting but will be collecting material for future rants.

I hope you miss me ;-)

A rant for a rant: on Hitchens and gay adoption

2009-02-06T01:13:00.000-08:00

Today’s rant is courtesy of Peter Hitchens of the Mail on Sunday. And before you ask, no of course I don’t read it. The article – or rather an article denouncing the article – was forwarded to me by a friend. And then I did my research. And now I’m going to rant. Because Hitchens said what he said and because he’s not alone in believing it.

Hitchens claims that ‘the Thought Police’ forces him to ‘wave [his] little rainbow flag as the "Gay Pride" parade passes by.' It seems that he inhabits a different universe to me. Of course what do I know? I am heterosexual and may have missed the revolution of tolerance and open-mindedness that has swept Hitchens with it. Only you and I both know I have not missed the revolution because there hasn’t been one. There has been change in attitudes, but not enough of it and I have friends whose sexual preferences (a private matter if there ever was one) still cause problems at work and on the street. Insurance premiums remain higher for gay men even if they are in stable, long-term relationships and gay men and women still don’t have the universal right to protect their relationships via marriage – which, apart from a cake and confetti, actually means that everything they build together belongs to them equally and they can make medical decisions for each other, as partners should be able to.
Go wave your little flag at that Mr Hitchens.

But back to the point.
Hitchens’ gripe is that two Edinburgh children were taken away from a heroine-addict mother and put in the care of a childless couple in a stable long-term relationship and not in the care of grandparents that were deemed by social services to be too old and too ill. I don’t know if the assessment is fair. And neither does Mr Hitchens. But he goes out on a limb on this one and says the kids would be better off with their grandparents. Why? You guessed it. Because the couple that took them in is gay.

What’s his problem with homosexuality, you ask?
Well. First of all, homosexuals ‘tyranise’ him. Yes you do. ‘We show tolerance to “gays” and get tyranny in return’ he claims, because the entire gay community (in quotation marks, always, because he doesn’t like the cheeriness of the word ‘gay’ – his words, not mine) wants all of us to know what they do in their bedrooms. As I said, he inhabits a different universe to me.

But there is more. Hitchens continues:
‘We are forced to say that we think homosexuality is a good thing, that homosexual couples are equal in all ways to heterosexual married couples. Most emphatically, we are compelled to agree that homosexual couples are just as good at bringing up children as the children's own grandparents. Better, in fact.’
No, Mr Hitchens.
First of all, you are not forced to say any of those things and you are not actually saying them. Secondly, the question of ‘good’, ‘bad’ and fair is one that interests you and you alone. The rest of us just want to get on with life. And homosexuality is a fact of life. Has been for a few thousand years and does not need to be assessed as good or bad to be real. By you, least of all.

But yes we would like you to accept that heterosexual and homosexual couples are equal in all ways before the law. And as common law marriage is a bit of a sham, we would like people who spend their lives together to be able to get protection before the law and be married if they wish to be.
As for bringing up children, well, I wouldn’t say gay couples are better. I would say they are just as good. Because parenthood is about personal commitment, not sexual preference. A stable home is about love, care, attention, safety. What your parents do in their bedroom does not affect how they love you, as their child. With more and more cases of child abandonment, abuse, neglect and violence every day, I’d say we need to grab hold of love and stability where we find it and entrust children to people who can care for them, whatever their colour, creed, football team or sexual preference.

And, yes Mr Hitchens, I know several gay parents.
Do you?

Obama’s first stumble or my chance to say ‘I told you so’

2009-02-04T08:16:00.000-08:00

Did I or did I not say that those cheering for Obama will be the first to criticise his inability to magically fix the world and ensure we all live happily ever after, like in the fairy tales, with royalty in our beds and white stallions in our stables?
I said it, of course I did. I told you so and I was right. And much as I love being right (and saying ‘I told you so’) this one is annoying me.

And it’s annoying me because Obama screwed up as much as because people somehow expect Washington and the entire political establishment to be new, fresh and clean ‘now that Obama is around’.

So today we wake up to banner-sized headlines – ‘Obama admits: I screwed up’. Why? Well, because he said it, obviously.
And why did he say it? Because being able to hold his hand up and say ‘mea culpa’ is part of the persona he’s projecting, part of the reason we liked him in the first place.
But did he screw up? Yes, of course he did. And I’ve got news: he will again. And again. And again. Because he’s human, because politics is a dirty game, because Washington is a tricky bio-system with its own rules of engagement. And because (oh blessed subjectivity) some of us will forever disagree with what he chooses to do.

But back to today. The man promised to clean up politics in Washington. That is a hard promise to keep for anyone without the magic wand I’ve been going on about. So what does his promise entail?
Effort. Relentless effort.
And?
Well, he’s already not trying hard enough.
Tom Daschle, a former Democratic leader in the Senate and Obama mentor, had to withdraw as cabinet nominee because he had not paid his taxes.
I know places where no-one would blink at this, but America is not one of them and that is as it should be.

Obviously, this is embarrassing. Particularly because this is the third Obama appointee with tax problems. And that’s not counting one confirmation that went through despite the tax problems… One person is an accident. Four is a trend.
But does this trend say more about Obama’s insincerity or the pool of people he can pick from?
I’m not suggesting all politicians and politicos are tax evaders. But I am saying that angels don’t do politics. They leave it to humans. And humans err. A lot.

But to make matters worse, tax is not the only problem with Daschle, who has been making his living since leaving the senate in 2004 through informal lobbying and advisory work. Doing, in other words, exactly the sort of thing that Obama castigates as damaging to the political process.
As I was saying, embarrassing.

But I would not say Obama is insincere – at least not yet.
I’d say the first reality check has hit him and when it did, to use his own words, he screwed up.
Obama campaigned on the loftiest messages, he promised big, as people do during campaigns. But he’s not campaigning any more and the collision with the real world was inevitable and, considering, quite mild.

Obama must realise the real work begins now and his message needs to be tailored not to what he’d like to do, but to what he can do.
A steep descent but a necessary one.
Meanwhile, the rest of us need to come to terms with the fact that he hasn’t got a magic wand, he can’t just do away with the bad stuff and he can’t operate in a vacuum – past policy and the Washington political nexus will constrain him every step of the way. That’s how it will be and don’t say I didn’t tell you so because I’ve been saying it since before his inauguration. You just haven’t been paying attention.

So he screwed up. Big time.
He screwed up by over-promising. And by trying to brush this one under the carpet (saying that tax lapses are mistakes that should not stand in the way of confirmation) before deciding to come up and say I screwed up and let's move on. And by picking the wrong people to work with. Assuming that the right people exist in the first place.

No matter what he does, Obama will be better than Bush. But the gulf between ‘better than bad’ and ‘miraculous’ is huge and don’t tell me I didn’t tell you so.
Some of the questions facing Obama now have no good answers. Only different degrees of bad.
Some of the decisions he will make in the future, will be driven by political expediency and not lofty ideals.
Because he’s a new guy in the same old world with all the baggage of the other guy still on his back. And because angels don’t do politics, they leave that to humans.
And humans err. As Obama did and as Obama will.
And when he does, don’t say I didn’t tell you so.

Neo-ellines or ‘why I don’t want you blaming me for your character defects’

2009-02-02T06:34:00.000-08:00

Enough is enough already.

I was browsing my favourite blogs this morning.
What do you want from me? I’m snowed in and work is slow.

So, while browsing, I stumbled upon a very interesting debate about whether the chaos that is modern Greece is cool or despicable; whether the general ‘it’s all about me’-ness you see in your everyday dealings is a trait of the rebelliousness and innate freedom of the Greek soul or a sign that ‘modern Greeks’ (Neoellines – the newbie Greeks) are a decaying civilisation.
This debate is neither new nor is it rare. Thinking about Greece, Greeks and all related problems as collective issues is not new. Neither is it helpful

So I say: enough already.
A group of rude, inconsiderate, narrow-minded gits who happen to be Greek are not the sum total of Greekness, no matter how many of them there are. And that’s not because ‘Greekness’ is something else. It's because Greekness simply doesn’t exist at this level.
How about we leave the motherland out of it and accept responsibility for our own defective citizenship, our own inability to function in a polite and considerate manner around strangers and our unwillingness to accept difference – of creed, politics, personal preference, colour, shape or football team?

Obviously enough, I do not consider myself as belonging to the group I castigate. You got me. And I know others like me. And I know many more who are not like me and are not like the ‘neoellines’ we all love to hate either.
We are all Greek, for our sins, and we are all ‘new’ enough, as in still alive and kicking. And complaining. About being parcelled up and labelled, burdened with behaviours we don’t condone or accept. Only that's not what most of us complain about. Rather the complaint is about the state of the neoellines, the state of us all. Well.
We are not all the bloody same. We are not even similar.

Obviously society exists. Obviously socialisation and the experience of living within a given society creates certain shared traits, common ground, recognisable behavioural patterns that are not necessarily meaningful anywhere else.
Yes, shared nationality gives you a nexus of meaning, a shared language in literal and symbolic terms. Yes you have narratives, stories, symbols and heroes in common – not to mention a language, religion and shared collective experiences courtesy of the school system, press and the thing called society.
But sameness? Shared personality traits? That, my friends, would not be nation, it would be a sci-fi thought experiment. Yet day in, day out we talk like we believe ourselves to be living in it.

If the ‘neoellines’ are overwhelmingly behaving one way, it does not follow on that they behave that way because they are ‘neoellines’.
Maybe they act like they do because it’s easy. Maybe they do it because they can get away with it.
And we make it easy because, those of us who disagree, let them get away with it.
And we let them get away with it by missing the errant person and deploring the state of the ‘neoellines’ as a whole. As if 'a whole' existed that was coherent down to the way we all drive, treat immigrants, scoff cynically at politics, dodge the taxman, park on the disabled ramp.
They get away with it because they make it about ‘all of us’ and we let them.

Well we are not all like that. And we are not all ‘the other way’ either.
And the sooner we say ‘enough is enough’ out loud and break the cycle of endless debates about the state of the neoellines, the better.

A bunch of inconsiderate bullies have been hiding behind a national banner long enough. And those who disagree with them shake their heads at the state of the neoellines as if they themselves do not fully belong.

Well, here’s some news for the new Greeks: no 'national character' in the history of humanity has determined behaviour to such depths and in such detail. Handy as it is to blame all ills on our shared Greekness, the joke is getting old and tired.

If every bad character trait, if every dark personality twist can be blamed on the burden and blessing of the national character, nobody will ever have to clean up their act. And that’s handy for some but awful for others and counter-productive for the group as a whole.

Who are the neoellines anyway?
Just over ten million people. as varied and different as the number suggests.
And if a bunch of them want to persuade themselves (and us) that their own indifference sum us all up, why the hell do we let them?

Enough is enough already.
We are not all the same damn it. And that’s a good thing.
And if you want to be rude, inconsiderate and narrow-minded, leave the rest of us out of it.

Liberalism 101

2009-01-29T10:28:00.000-08:00

A woman in the US of A is running the risk of having her children taken away by social services because they have Nazi-inspired names including ‘Adolf Hitler’ and ‘Aryan Nation’. That’s a middle name. In case you were wondering.
Cruel? Absolutely.
Distasteful? Totally.
Worthy of social services intervention? I’d say no.
Of course there may be more to this than the parents’ poor taste and horrendous political affiliations. Although so far there doesn’t seem to be. And if those children were taken away because their mum has Nazi sympathies, then we have a problem. Because freedom is not faring well, when it only applies to those who agree with us.

Of course the concern is valid – in a liberal democracy, can you allow the expression of views the logical conclusion of which would be the dissolution of the very foundation of the freedoms you so cherish? I’d love to say no. But if you silence those who would silence you, you are no better than they are.

Still, it’s a tough call to make.
But choice is what freedom is about. The choices you are allowed to make because you are free. And the choices you must make in order to be free.
And obviously none of this is simple. And it all got a whole-lot more complicated post 9/11 when we were told we could either be safe or free. Freedoms, we were told, had to be curtailed for our own good. More surveillance, longer periods of detention for those arrested on suspicion of threatening our lives or way of life, new legislation, more monitoring. Freedom of expression is now a heavily qualified proposition. In the name of security: our safety and the protection of our way of life.
And many of us accepted limits to freedom in the name of security – because what good is freedom to a dead guy?

Even though our freedoms were secured by many who died demanding or defending them.
Even though security and freedom do not have to be mutually exclusive, unless we make them so.
Even though our way of life was meant to be all about freedom in the first place.

Wasn’t the right to have unpopular opinions part of what we used to stand for? Part of what we used to fight for?
Freedom was never meant to come in one size, one shape and one flavour.
Freedom was never meant to make life easier. It was meant to make life better.
Freedom was never meant to be restricted to those we like. That was the whole point: freedom was meant to make us bigger than the bad guys.
As I was saying, liberalism for beginners. But maybe it’s time we went back to basics.