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2000 dead

For lack of a real person finds it surprising that only 64% voted against the ban on gun sales in Brazil, and suggests that with 36,000 annual gun deaths in Brazil, Americans should stop complaining about their 2000 Iraq war dead. Huh? Why?

Here are photos from the 2000 too many peace protest in New York's Times Square the day before yesterday. The NY Times has a chilling online interactive feature with the faces, names and ages of the (mostly) young men who died.

How's this for perspective instead? At least 26,732 Iraqi civilians dead, according to Iraq Body Count.

October 29, 2005 in News related | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Bad democracy

An Anti-Uribe blogger in Columbia, links to Isabel Hilton's article, Álvaro Uribe’s gift: Colombia’s mafia goes legit and says he feels it shows that scepticism in the world is greater than the Columbian press - or government - would make it seem.

Is anybody as surprised as I am that Silvio Berlusconi is leading over Uribe in the current results of openDemocracy's BAD democracy awards?

Ibn ad Dunya on Fustat nominates his own candidates for Egypt and the Arab world. In Norway, an oD fan votes for John Bolton.

October 29, 2005 in openDemocracy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

openDemocracy event in New York

Obviously, everyone in NY should come to this. I'm very excited about the speakers. Check out Anthony Barnett's interview with Mary Robinson about her human rights work from 2003.

In New York, openDemocracy, the The Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs, and New York Society for Ethical Culture present:

"Is a FAIRER Globalization Possible?"
Wednesday, Oct. 26 - 7PM

*Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland, and President of Realising Rights: Ethical Globalisation Initiative
*Kemal Dervis, head of United Nations Development Program
*Stephen Macedo, Professor of Politics, Princeton University

Globalization has brought about more opportunities for people worldwide, but also rising inequality within and between nations. This poverty and despair is unsustainable and morally unacceptable. But what should be done? Gideon Rose, Managing Editor of Foreign Affairs will serve as Moderator.

Tuesday, October 26, 2005 from 7pm to 9:00pm. At the New York Society for Ethical Culture, 2 West 64th Street at Central Park West. (Subways: 1 & 9 to 66th St-Lincoln Center. Or A/C to Columbus Circle.) Donations will be accepted. No reservations. Seating is first come, first served. Call openDemocracy's New York office on +1 (646) 220-1459 for more info.

October 24, 2005 in openDemocracy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Brazil on a knife edge

“Should the sale of guns and ammunition to civilians be prohibited?” This is the question that 122 million Brazilians answered 'No' to as they went to the polls yesterday to vote in the first referendum on gun control in the world.

The daily crime statistics would seem to have pointed overwhelmingly to an obvious Yes vote. There are currently an estimated 17 million guns in Brazil and 39,000 firearms deaths every year. Over 500,000 people have been killed by guns between 1979 and 2003 – more than in any other country in the world, including those at war.

However, to combat these shocking statistics, the powerful ‘No’ lobby – supported by the National Rifle Association (NRA) in the US and accused of a ‘dirty tricks’ campaign – has been promulgating the commonly held belief that the guns used to commit crimes are those acquired on the illegal market or diverted from state security forces. Enforcement, they say, would allow criminals in possession of weapons already to further threaten the security of ‘ordinary’ citizens.

Such a view seems to have struck a chord with the electorate and reflects a mind-set entrenched within social and institutional spheres that has allowed a culture of violence to go unchecked for so long. Since the military government of the 1970s policing has become a matter of protecting one group a civilians from another. In a Manichean division of society drawn along economic (and therefore racial) lines, “ordinary” citizens are protected against the marginais, or “low-lifes”. Under this so-called “criminalisation of poverty”, the Polícia Militar (PM) continually demonise and target “subversive elements” of the population within poor, urban (favela) communities. Judges are able to issue collective warrants drawn against whole communities containing “genetic rubbish” in order to respond to “the cry of help and justice” by “honest” citizens.

Those that are seen to be dangerous are therefore literally removed from the streets in what the police advertise as a civil war. The disparity in mortality statistics tells a different story. In Rio in 2003, 1192 civilians were killed versus only 45 policemen in co-called “shoot-outs” in which the police are cast as the victims. Police power and police action have all too often become one and the same thing over the last two decades under a reductive methodology in which deaths are seen as evidence of effective and efficient policing. This results-oriented approach has been to the detriment of preventative policing and criminal investigation (over 90% of people are arrested in the act of committing a crime) and has led to the highest increase in prison population in the world (1995 to 2003 saw a 93% increase). The forced classification of prisoners by criminal faction in many prisons has lead to the perpetuation of factions within favela communities on the outside and further violent clashes on the inside.

It is clear that the democratisation of power does not necessarily bring the democratisation of institutions and the state. Authoritarian patterns of behaviour continue within state institutions including a culture of impunity amongst the security forces offering police an official mandate for violence against a crimal(ised) class. If, as David Bayley has famously asserted, “the police are to government as the edge is to a knife”, in Brazil the security forces have cut through the rule of law, severing notions of citizenship and tearing up the liberal tradition by its roots. Brazil is still a long way from upholding the 5th article of its constitution guaranteeing equality under the law and the discourse of human rights continues to be degraded in the public sphere as offering privileges for “bandits” whilst acting against the concerns of “good citizens”.

There remains a suspicion by many that the government’s disarmament campaign – begun in 2003 under President Lula – is a mere gesture to both the public and to the watching world whilst the will to true institutional reform remains a long way off. Whilst not a solution to Brazil’s security problems the banning of guns would have been a crucial first step – especially after the sale of guns has soared in the months leading up to the vote – on the road towards reform and must be viewed as a missed opportunity. The government must now act to bring about weighty and long-term commitments to reform the police and changing a public and institutional mindset that continues to cut Brazilian society into good and bad, rich and poor.

October 24, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Debating our debate

Marc Schulman's blog on the article I wrote with our Editor Isabel Hilton misses most of the points despite generous quotations - thanks for them. Solana linked to it below. It is far too defensive. A huge debate is finally opening up in the United States about the dangers of the way it is seeking to impose democracy, and it is not 'anti-American' to make these points just because one is not American.

As for the leadership of the anti-war demonstrations, I agree. We refer to the exceptional size and genuine character of the popular feeling against President Bush's war of choice. Alas, the leadership of the organisations that called them were there because they opposed the war in Afghanistan. In my view, their sectarianism ensured that there was no popular, or democratic follow-through.

There is a good discussion about this in Todd Gitlin's blog at TPM cafe.

October 24, 2005 in Democracy & Terrorism | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wikipedia sucks?

In his blog, Marcus Gilroy-Ware who has written for openDemocracy about Wikipedia, defends the open source encyclopedia from The Register's Andrew Orlowski. Orlowski's article, "Wikipedia founder admits to serious quality problems" has been buzzing around the internet propelled by horror that someone could say something so mean about a collaborative success story. "Yes it's garbage," he says, "but it's delivered so much faster!" Admittedly, he makes some good points (you should read it) but not enough to merit such scorn. Like Marcus, I'm left with the sense that Orlowski doesn't quite get it. Has he ever edited a page himself?

October 21, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Muslim empire

In his blog, Somali-Norwegian Bill Ainashe shoots down Hazem Saghieh & Saleh Bechir's argument on openDemocracy that the "muslim community" is a European invention. He says the community even "predates the European colonialists" and was the foundation for a Muslim empire that ruled for centuries...

October 20, 2005 in Democracy & Terrorism | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Arabamerican.net

It's a pleasant surprise to see openDemocracy's RSS feed included on the ArabAmerican.net news portal (in the right hand column). It's really simple to set something like this up. With more than 4 new articles a day, it's a good service too.

October 19, 2005 in openDemocracy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Response to Barnett and Hilton

Marc Schulman on the blog American Future, carefully uncovers what he says are leftist, anti-American flaws in Anthony Barnett and Isabel Hilton's recent democracy article on openDemocracy. "Dangerously naive," he says. Him or them?

Singabloodypore rallies behind openDemocracy and says it's time to fight back against threats to democracy and human rights.

October 19, 2005 in openDemocracy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Chavez answers your questions

BBC World's Talking Point is fielding questions from the audience for President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Post your own question to him here. So far most of them are pretty congratulatory. "I love your stance, etc". I wonder if the Chavez camp is fielding the questions too. Either way, I doubt the BBC would ask, "OK, once and for all. Did you rig the elections?" no matter who posed the question.

Here's what I would like to know:

A major part of the World Social Forum will take place in your capital city Caracas in January 2006. You were the star speaker at last year's World Social Forum in Brazil, which attracted more than 100,000 activists from around the world. And you quoted outcomes from the Forum in your speech at the UN Summit in September. As a head of state, how have you become such a popular figure among activists, and what do you hope the Forum will achieve in 2006?

October 17, 2005 in World Social Forum | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Brazil is the internet

There's a great piece in the UK Guardian today profiling Gilberto Gil, dissident, musician, and now minister of culture for Brazil. He is a huge supporter of the Creative Commons, and the profile  captures what's so great about all the Brazilian culture and intellectual property issues that make the country stand out as a citizen of the twenty-first century.

Meanwhile Britain, still hopelessly stranded in the twentieth, took one step further into the future with the launch of the Royal Society of the Art's Intellectual Property (IP) charter. John Naughton was there.

I had the opportunity to meet John Howkins, who is behind the charter, last time I was at the RSA. He was chairing a panel which included - and was dominated by - Creative Commons hero Lawrence Lessig. Howkins finds intellectual property issues "intellectually fascinating". I quite agree.

October 14, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Ousted Ecuadorean leader announces his return home

Former Ecuadorean President Lucio Gutierrez, who was ousted by Congress in April and is wanted by the law in Ecuador, said today that he would return home to try to regain power.

Renouncing the political asylum granted to him by Colombia, he said he would fly to Ecuador, “to take the legal and constitutional actions” needed to retake power from his successor, Alfredo Palacio, who he described as a usurper.

The government played down Gutierrez’s statement and said that if he touches ground in Ecuador he would be arrested for endangering national security.
His presence could destabilise the political situation of a country that has seen several protests, both against Palacio and the former president this year. Three presidents have been deposed since 1997
Indeed Gutierrez, who was elected in 2002, was sharply blamed for abandoning left-wing policies in favour of fiscal austerity and a close relationship with the United States. He came to political prominence when, as an army colonel, he led a coup attempt in 2000
Palacio had been Gutierrez’s Vice President. After Congress ousted Gutierrez, Palacio took power. He has steered Ecuador away from US-friendly policies and towards the left. Although he is still struggling to enact political reforms – and had to bow to public pressure during recent oil strikes – he has boosted social spending and dismantled a fund set aside to guarantee debt payments.

October 14, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Harold Pinter and Margaret Thatcher

It is a rare and gloriously perverse alchemy – unless someone in the Swedish Academy has an even wickeder sense of humour than the awarder of the Nobel peace prize to Henry Kissinger in 1973. The announcement that the English playwright, poet and polemicist Harold Pinter is the recipient of the 2005 Nobel prize for literature comes on the same day that the fading Margaret Thatcher, during her almost twelve-year reign as Britain’s prime minister one of the principal targets of Pinter's characteristically vehement anger, marks her 80th birthday.

A piquant moment for those, like Pinter himself, who spent the whole of the 1980s – that politically terrible decade – railing and fuming and cursing as “that woman” rode roughshod over Britain’s constitution, civil rights and political opponents on the left (despite having voted for her in 1979, an act he described twenty years later as "idiotic, infantile on my part.")

Thatcher, now leaning into the twilight in irresistible imitation of Gloria Swanson in "Sunset Boulevard" – bereft of husband, wayward son, the press which once worshipped her (no exaggeration), and the legion of sycophants and minions who burnished the cosmic self-regard that became her downfall – now inspires little attention and less sympathy even from that large section of the British public which repeatedly voted her into office. From many of those who consistently opposed her, the feelings of bitterness and hatred (no exaggeration) remain unremitting.

The conjunction of Pinter’s triumph and Thatcher’s melancholy celebration is a great story which the British newspapers will no doubt milk and mould. Two great haters: one who also happens to be a great artist, the other a major though deeply destructive and vengeful politician whose favourite literary figure was the imperial poet, Rudyard Kipling (Pinter’s 1907 predecessor, and – it must be said, if through gritted teeth - a writer who has become undervalued).

But perhaps anti-Thatcherites should pause before savouring the moment too much. Not just for the obvious reason that much of Thatcher's political legacy continues in the Britain of Tony Blair and the frenzied, unsettled society his predecessor helped usher in (to the equal fury of prominent Blair-haters like Pinter, consumed with unalloyed loathing of the “war criminal” in Downing Street).

Hatred disfigures. Where it becomes a dominant element in a person’s political expression, it corrodes the ability to think, to make judgments, to connect to the true reality of things, to persuade. As a result, it cannot produce a serious, humane politics. This was part of Karl Kraus’s truth when he wrote: “Hatred must make a person productive; otherwise, you might as well love”.

It is fortunate that Pinter’s profound dramas come from a different place than his shallow, vulgar and myopic political views. But insofar as his award will be celebrated for his politics as much as for his art, these two giant figures are closer than they know – trapped in a shrill, polarising language that does a disservice to democratic public discourse. This is not just Margaret Thatcher’s or Harold Pinter’s tragedy, but of many of their political opponents. In short, of modern Britain itself.

October 13, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

“Creeping coup” in Nicaragua

Political tensions in Nicaragua between the president, Enrique Bolanos, and Sandinista leader and former president Daniel Ortega, are seen as a threat to the country’s democracy.

In the last days, the Sandinista-majority National Assembly has cut back the powers of four ministers and two vice presidents. Also, Sandinistas have threatened to lift President Bolanos’ immunity from prosecution for misuse of state funds.

The crisis has cross border implications. The US has warned that Nicaragua could be removed from CAFTA (the Central American Free Trade Agreement) for its lack of democratic stability.
But on Thursday, Bolanos and Ortega agreed to postpone controversial constitutional reforms, easing a political crisis.

Bolanos said after a six-hour meeting on Monday night with Ortega, that the reforms would take effect in January 2007, after he finished his five-year presidential term.
Ortega, who is favoured to win the elections in late 2006, now controls the judicial and legislative branches of Nicaragua's government. He is one of many popular left wing candidates in the wider region – Lopez Obrador in Mexico, Evo Morales in Bolivia. There is a growing trend of Latin American nations electing leftist presidents critical of Washington, such as Chavez in Venezuela and Lula in Brazil.

October 12, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Counting the Cost

After reading Jean Seaton’s recent article for openDemocracy, “The Numbers Game”, I was struck by the prominence of casualty figures littering the headlines about the recent earthquake in Pakistan. The true scale of the tragedy in the country’s northern provinces has been revealed through an overall death toll that has risen steadily – and often shockingly – since the earthquake struck on Saturday 8th October.

It is hard to know how to react to the prominence of such figures. Seaton’s article questions whether death counts should be the most important thing in a story and calls for journalists to move beyond the attention-grabbing tactics of the numbers game. On the one hand she is right. We must continually be wary of an eagerness by news agencies to guesstimate casualty figures in order to be the first to claim a new headline. In these cases the pain and suffering that lies behind the figures can be lost or easily forgotten amidst a battle of numbers.

On the other hand news agencies have a duty to seek out information and continually update reports as more is known, a task made especially difficult in remote areas like Kashmir where accurate information is hard to come by. Also, the prominence of casualty figures in the headlines has, as it did for the Asian Tsunami, alerted the world to the scale of the disaster and prompted large-scale international aid efforts – the other figures making the headlines.

It is perhaps too early to be able to assess the media’s response to the tragedy in Pakistan. Estimates of the scale of the disaster in human fatalities have their time and place and, perhaps, will always be the first news 'stories' from any disaster zone. When more is known we must move beyond such attention-grabbing numbers to more thoughtful assessments of, for example, why so many people lost their lives, how the disaster has affected people in the region and what it could mean for the future of Pakistan.

October 10, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Culture Jammin'

As the world becomes more convoluted with imagery, particularly with that perpetuated by the advertising world, we see more subversive movements emerging to commentate on their influence upon people’s lives.

In New York, artist Ji Lee has been stickering speech bubbles  on advertising billboards around town and photographing the humorous scribblings left behind by passers-by. His aim? To “transform the corporate dialogue into an open monologue”. A similar project to what adbusters have been doing for some years now.. His cv lists a variety of advertising agencies he has worked for. Either he has been ‘sleeping with the enemy’ to subvert from the inside or he has learnt some handy tricks in how to successfully market a new book.

Another artist subverting public spaces in America is Stephen Stapleton who has been travelling across the US on his bicycle and reporting on what he sees. A midnight prowler, he takes down advertising posters, draws, cuts and pastes over them and puts them back up in their original setting,transforming their meaning.

In London, Banksy, a modern day Scarlet Pimpernel, has been using stencilling to brighten up public spaces and bring a smile to humdrum lives while also making political commentary. His humorous sketches which merely require a can of spray paint and a pre-prepared stencil, take seconds to put up and can be seen peppered around the city in the most unlikely places. A recent outing to Palestine to what he described as the ‘ultimate holiday destination for the graffiti artist’- the apartheid wall / separation fence (Palestinian / Israeli terminology) between the West Bank and Israel- saw him assailed by gunmen as he worked on decorating the “fence”.

Also in London, but spreading ever outwards into Europe and beyond, come Mobile Clubbing and Pillow Fight Club. Participants communicate via e-mail and a website and convene in a public space at a predestined moment to either dance away on their personal stereos or fight each other with pillows. The organisers claim there is no political subversion intended, simply free expression and brightening up commuters’ lives.

Finally, in Paris, an environmental group calling themselves “Les Degonfles” ("The Deflators"), angered by  the presence of so many polluting vehicles within the city, have been letting down the tyres of SUVs and other gas-guzzlers and explaining why to the owners with a polite note on the windscreen.

Where do all these groups come from and why do they seem to be on the increase? Technology seems to have much to do with it, particularly increased communication through internet, email and mobile phones. The success of these movements can be classified by what Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene coined as a ‘meme’ – “a unit of cultural transmission or a unit of imitation”. The Blogosphere has allowed apparently insignificant movements to snowball into cultural events which everyone (within a certain demographic) is talking about or participating in. Perhaps with the apparent failure of traditional forms of protest (witness mass anti-war marches before Iraq which appeared to have little effect) the disenfranchised are looking for new ways to attract attention to their causes. By subverting the recognised mechanics of corporate marketing their message is being heard outside the conventional constraints of traditional channels of communication.

October 4, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Today on openDemocracy: Jan McGirk on Bali's agony, Thailand's turmoil

Later today, openDemocracy will publish a topical analysis by experienced Independent journalist Jan McGirk of two southeast Asian fracture zones where a combination of ruthless political violence, extreme social problems, cultural and religious tensions, and problematic security policy is posing major problems to Thailand's and Indonesia's democratic development...

"The suicide bombs that ripped through the Bali tourist resorts of Jimbaran Bay and Kuta on 1 October, killing at least twenty-six people and injuring more than a hundred (most of them Indonesians) are the latest in a series of attacks over the past four years that have been attributed to the militant Islamist group, Jemaah Islamiyah.

The most deadly was the October 2002 bombing in Bali which killed 202 people from twenty-four countries (the largest number being Australian), followed over the next two years by two Jakarta attacks: a car-bomb in August 2003 that killed twelve and a suicide car-bomb outside the Australian embassy in September 2004 that killed eleven. The arrest and conviction of fifty-four alleged Jemaah Islamiyah operatives for these three incidents have not, it seems, prevented the group from maintaining its coherence and pursuing its strategy.

The renewed assault on Bali, its tourist industry and employees as well as foreign visitors, comes in the wake of an escalation in the insurgency in three provinces of southern Thailand bordering on Malaysia...."

Jan last wrote for openDemocracy on the Bali Declaration on building interfaith harmony, not four months ago. For more from our archive on the 2002 Bali bombings, read Paul Rogers, Pere Vilanova and Tani Bhargava.

If you believe that democracy and human rights are worth defending in the face of indiscriminate terror, visit the Unite Against Terror petition and add your name to the hundreds of people (including our editor-in-chief, Anthony Barnett) who have signed since 2003. Or, if you prefer to express your civic defiance through photoshop, visit we're not afraid.

October 3, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack