Open Democracy

div class=field field-summary div class=field-items div class=field-item odd pIt should never be underestimated with the Saudi ruling family, the importance of regime stability at all costs./p /div /div /div pThe Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has moved one step closer to showing its hand on the upcoming dilemma of who will succeed the sons of the Kingdom’s founder Abdulaziz al Saud (ibn Saud). The appointment of Mugrin bin Abdulaziz to the position of Second Deputy Prime Minister, long seen as a necessary office for a King-in-waiting indicates that King Abdullah has decided for now at least to defer the transfer of power to the grandsons of Ibn Saud for a few more years./p pMugrin was not an obvious choice, rather unceremoniously removed from his post as head of Saudi Arabia’s makhabarat in 2012, many thought Mugrin’s career had hit the buffers. nbsp;A great many Kingdom watchers (myself included) will now have to admit that the excitement of a potential generational shift caused us to overlook the older man, and dismiss his mother’s Yemeni roots as being unsuitable for a man aspiring to the throne of the al-Saud, a family from Arabia’s harsh Nejd regions. /p pIn truth Mugrin was never far away from the main circle of power. In July 2012, he was appointed King Abdullah's advisor and special envoy with the rank of minister, and recent film footage of Abdullah chairing weekly council meetings from his palace or from his hospital bed showed Mugrin sat never more than two or three places away from the King, with usually only Salman and Nayef (in their roles as Crown Prince) in closer proximity. /p pThis was not an overnight decision, the aging King has expended much of his remaining energy on restructuring the Kingdom in recent months, and it has been known for some time that the early months of 2013 would be the setting for major structural changes in the Kingdom’s executive branches. /p h2Meritocratic moves/h2 pFirst came the movement of Mohammed bin Nayef to head up the Ministry of the Interior, the Kingdom’s ubiquitous arbiter of civil and security affairs. The movement surprised some in that the younger bin Nayef was moved to head the Ministry ahead of the incumbent Prince Ahmed, his unclenbsp; and senior by some twenty years. nbsp;In a country in which deference to age is a constituent part of the culture, this signified a very meaningful shift away from traditionalism towards a system based more on meritocracy./p pJanuary also saw some meaningful reshuffles; in the Eastern Province, Saud bin Nayef took over from longstanding governor Mohammed bin Fahad, a reshuffle also occued in Medina, and rumours persisted that Khalid al Faisal would be moved from his position in Mecca to the governorship of Riyadh. Quite what that said of Prince Sattam, Riyadh’s incumbent governor is a mystery, but for former Interior Minister Prince Ahmed and Mohammed bin Fahd it is safe to say that their influence in Saudi politics is now limited. /p pYet in the midst of these changes and much talk of shifting the hands of the Kingdom to the next generation in comes Prince Mugrin, one of the old guard, though at 67, he’s younger than all but one of his brothers.nbsp; Abdullah clearly wants a steady hand on the tiller, and is nervous about giving the top job to a ‘younger’ prince at this time. Mugrin’s appointment to Second Deputy Prime Minister is a sign that he does not yet believe the youngsters ready to assume the top job of the world’s most powerful oil state. /p pYet the analysis is not so black and white, Abdullah has ensured that younger princes begin to receive more influence and power in the ruling hierarchy, and given Crown Prince Salman’s well documented health concerns and declining mental faculties, Mugrin will be expected to do much of the heavy lifting from the moment Abdullah passes away. His relationship with the young generation is therefore crucial. Mugrin’s relationship with his ministers will not be like that seen during the end of the reign of King Fahd or that of Abdullah, it will be more consultative and hierarchically horizontal.nbsp; The influence of the younger family members will grow and under Mugrin we will see a fully fledged shift to the younger generation occur. Then and only then all the questions about generational shifts will start to become clear. /p h2Mugrin bin Abdulaziz/h2 pMany wonder what sort of a man Mugrin is, the answer from those who know him is always the same;nbsp; friendly, with a good sense of humour, foreign diplomats and businessmen rarely have a bad word to say about the man. In Saudi Arabia more widely he is considered one of the more popular members of the family and his affable character has certainly ensured that there are few who dislike him. He is largely unencumbered by the issues of being a Sudairi or a Faisal, and therefore perhaps the best choice to be the arbiter of power shifts amongst the younger members of the family in coming years, being as he is free of the baggage of emfekhitha /em(sub-tribe) politics./p pMugrin is known to be a liberal on social issues, but his links with the country’s religious establishment remain an unknown. Certainly there is little to suggest he commands influence over the Haia (the religious police), therefore if Mugrin does become King he will need to work hard on cementing these relationships with the Sheikhs and will most likely rely upon Mohammed bin Nayef to help keep the hand of the state on the religious police and their occasional excesses. It is not clear that Mugrin could handle them in the way his older brothers Nayef and Abdullah have done, which is to show no mercy when a zealous cleric oversteps the boundaries of acceptability. /p pOn issues of foreign policy Mugrin is largely cut from the same cloth as his brothers. Rumours exist that he is perhaps even a hardliner on issues to do with Shia empowerment in the Kingdom but there remains no concrete evidence to support this analysis. He possesses a deep suspicion of Iranian intent in the region, and is none too fond of Iraqi President Nouri Al Maliki who is viewed almost unanimously in Riyadh as a Persian stooge. His position on the Bahrain and Syria questions are again a product of consensus: Syria must not remain in the hands of Bashar al Assad, but neither must it become a new haven for jihadist terror which has the potential to blow back inside Saudi Arabia’s borders. Here the experience of Mugrin as intelligence chief will be of particular use, how he manages his increasingly important portfolio with that of the rather unpredictable Prince Bandar, Saudi’s current intelligence chief, will be interesting to watch in coming months, and is a potential source of tension./p pMugrin’s appointment is designed deliberately not to answer the question that remains on everybody’s lips; who in the next generation of the Al-Saud will rise to become King. However what it does do is allow those younger Princes a little more time to cement themselves in the more powerful positions they have been afforded under the watchful eye of a trusted ally of King Abdullah. Who will work to ensure that Abdullah’s reforms and hard work are not undone, and that the family remains united as it begins the transition phase to newer younger generations of princes./p pIt is important to remember that Mugrin being appointed to Second Deputy Prime Minister is not a 100% guarantee that he will assume the role of King. He could in effect serve in Prince Regent type role, assisting his ailing half brothers Abdullah and Salman in running the Kingdom whilst ensuring that the processes necessary for transition are smoothed over and that inter-factional fighting is avoided./p pIt should never be underestimated with the Saudi ruling family, the importance of regime stability at all costs. Whether change to younger generations happens now or in ten years matters little to the ruling house, as long as it occurs smoothly whilst allowing the country’s citizens to feel secure in the knowledge that the al-Saud is taking the decisions necessary to place the best princes in the highest offices. Mugrin’s appointment was surprising to be sure, but makes sense in the context of a ruling transition which King Abdullah envisions will take close to a decade to complete.nbsp;/pdiv class=field field-country div class=field-label Country or region:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd Saudi Arabia /div /div /div div class=field field-topics div class=field-labelTopics:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd International politics /div /div /div

div class=field field-summary div class=field-items div class=field-item odd pNorway has often been cited as an example of what Britain's future relationship with the EU might look like. One of the most prominent Norwegian opponents to EU membership shares his thoughts on David Cameron's speech/p /div /div /div pimg src=http://www.opendemocracy.net/files/1239377.jpg alt=Demotix/Pål Bergstad. All rights reserved. height=306 width=460 /span class=image-captionDemotix/Pål Bergstad. All rights reserved./span/ppspanMr Cameron has delivered a very interesting speech about the United Kingdom's relation with the EU. His emphasis on the democratic problem the EU suffers from goes to the very heart of today's Norwegian debate over the EU, and indeed also back to our first EU referendum in 1972. It is all about national sovereignty versus the expansion of centralized EU power to nearly every corner of Norwegian society - and politics./span/p pThe Norwegian people's position is overwhelmingly clear: over 70 percent of the population reject joining EU, whereas the 'Yes' side gets support from less than 20 percent of Norwegians. This has been the picture for the last two years - and the 'No' side has dominated every poll since 2004./p pStill, Norway is a member of the common market through the European Economic Area, which results in the Norwegian people also experiencing this democratic deficit – an aspect Mr Cameron also evoked, and I absolutely agree with his point there. This is why I find his speech so refreshing and full of promise - also from a Norwegian perspective! A third way must be found, a way to combine national sovereignty with common interests of commerce and co-operation. /p pThis third way would require Norway and Iceland to withdraw from the EEA, Switzerland staying out of it and the UK not joining the EEA at all, leaving them free to combine their forces in developing this third way - a vision of Europe that puts democracy in the front seat, and not Mrs Merkel's ideas of a German version of the United States of Europe. /p pThese are the most exciting possibilities one can extract from Mr Cameron's speech, from a EU-sceptic Norwegian point of view. The problem is that the leading politicians in Norway, as in many other countries, are far more pro-EU than the people. This last assertion is also valid for the EEA treaty; in the last few days we have seen the Social Democratic Party crush down on its junior partners in Government – the Rural Party and the Socialist Left Party – both of whom oppose the EEA treaty and want to replace it by a more modest trade treaty. Having already had a strong debate over the EEA for a couple of years, the Social Democrats now try to avoid re-opening the topic, not least because polling numbers don't look very good for the ruling red-green coalition ahead of next September's parliamentary elections.nbsp;spanMeanwhile, right wing politicians are also expressing scepticism as a result of all the regulations and laws imposed by Brussels, and growing resistance against the EU's influence on the country's policies./span/p p2013 is set to be an exciting and vital year to determine what future relations between Norway and the EU will look like – and no one can really tell how this will end.nbsp;/pfieldset class=fieldgroup group-sideboxslegendSideboxes/legenddiv class=field field-related-stories div class=field-labelRelated stories:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd a href=/mark-leonard/cameron%E2%80%99s-backward-looking-speechCameron’s backward-looking speech/a /div div class=field-item even a href=/ulrike-guerot/britains-european-catharsisBritain#039;s European catharsis/a /div div class=field-item odd a href=/david-gow/false-start-for-uks-fresh-settlement-with-europeA false start for the UK#039;s fresh settlement with Europe/a /div div class=field-item even a href=/kirsty-hughes/lost-in-1990s-timewarp-uk-and-european-unionLost in a 1990s timewarp: the UK and the European Union/a /div div class=field-item odd a href=/ourkingdom/nick-pearce/why-british-left-must-engage-with-europeWhy the British left must engage with Europe/a /div div class=field-item even a href=/david-krivanek/wimpish-speechA wimpish speech/a /div div class=field-item odd a href=/ren%C3%A9-schwok/brexit-swiss-model-as-blueprint#039;Brexit#039;: the Swiss model as a blueprint ?/a /div /div /div /fieldset div class=field field-country div class=field-label Country or region:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd Norway /div div class=field-item even EU /div /div /div div class=field field-topics div class=field-labelTopics:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd Civil society /div div class=field-item even Democracy and government /div div class=field-item odd Economics /div div class=field-item even International politics /div /div /div

div class=field field-summary div class=field-items div class=field-item odd pThe risk of violence coming from the radical right in the US is high, and increasing. But it is only the logical consequence of a culture that promotes polarization and overreaction over finding consensus in political and public discourse./p /div /div /div pimg src=http://www.opendemocracy.net/files/madashell.jpg alt=During a Tea Party protest in San Diego. Demotix/Daniel Dreifuss. All rights reserved. height=307 width=460 /span class=image-captionDuring a Tea Party protest in San Diego. Demotix/Daniel Dreifuss. All rights reserved./span/ppThese days they call themselves Patriot Groups and Militias, drawing on tradition and cherished cultural imagery to lend themselves legitimacy. But today’s far right wing is increasingly radical, and a recent a href=http://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/challengers-from-the-sidelines-understanding-americas-violent-far-rightWest Point study/a is entirely correct: they represent an increasing threat of violence./p pFar right groups are not new, and we have faced their wrath before. Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, is the best-known example of far right terrorism, but he has a good deal of company, all incubated within radicalized conservative groups. As watchdog groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center have been pointing out, such groups have been increasing rapidly of late. /p pThese groups pose a very real and increasing threat, but not entirely for the reasons Arie Perliger outlines in the West Point study, which focuses on an “idealized past-oriented” mentality. Although it's true conservatives tend to be past-oriented and liberals tend towards a progressive and therefore future-oriented mindset, radical leftist groups in the 60s, 70s and 80s were decidedly violent, so clearly being future-oriented is no barrier to violence./p pThe key is the word “idealized.” The radical leftist groups of past decades were willing to kill for an emidealized/em future. That which is emideal/em is fixed, immutable and can be continued whole or shattered completely—there can be no reinterpretation, compromise or subdivision./p pIn the modern radical right, we see a kind of historical revisionism, a description of a past in which their ideals were enshrined as sacred, before becoming polluted by the profane. It should go without saying that as a view of history, this is very much incorrect—which, all things being equal, is still negative, in that all historical revisionism is negative, although innocuous enough./p pIt’s a human tendency to see the past, and hope for the future, through the proverbial “rose-tinted spectacles.” However, once the language becomes that of sacred and profane, we hit real problems—that’s exactly where the left went decades ago, and that’s exactly where the right is now. To a believer, this isn’t just an academic distinction or highfalutin language. It is meaningful and literal. Once something is seen as sacred, as the idealized all too often is, then one emmust/em defend it even to death—one’s own, or someone else’s. emTo fail to do so is faint-hearted and dishonorable/em, and the nation we are becoming is a threat to that idealized past.nbsp;/p pAs a group, the radical right is overwhelmingly white and Protestant, while demographic shifts will soon ensure that, for the first time in American history, this group will no longer be the majority. This recent presidential election has arguably proved it has already happened - politically, if not demographically - so this quarter sees a very real and present threat. With that in mind, more liberal political movements that would otherwise be merely distasteful now represent an existential threat. A cursory look at radical right websites shows language heavy with the threat of violence, justified as legitimate defense against aggression.nbsp;/p pOnce a group has locked onto that kind of armored mindset, historically speaking it’s only a matter of time before the violence spills out of rhetoric and into action.nbsp;/p pBut it’s not taking place in a vacuum: the language American government and society is using even in the most mundane political processes speaks only of finality, not ongoing process. It is neither about negotiated compromise and balanced governance—it’s about final solutions, end states and totalities. We talk about cliffs, we talk about redlines, we talk about finality and “nuclear options.” The obvious effect of this is that psychologically we increasingly tend to see that action by the other side not only risks permanence, but is done by an adversary that intends it that way—and that kind of adversary is an enemy.nbsp;/p pThis is increasingly true of the American society as a whole, and we have been feeling the effects of that divisiveness ever more painfully - but the radical right has taken it on as a definitional platform, which negates the possibility of negotiated political action./p pWhen our mindset and our language goes to that extreme, we don’t see integrative solutions and ongoing processes any longer, we see winning and losing, empermanently/em - winning equates to survival, while losing equates to destruction. A moderate would look at those same demographic shifts and say that the country is finally becoming what it always intended to be - these changes are not an imposition on or a removal of rights from the majority, but minorities are finally moving closer to having the same rights and pride of place in culture and society that they have previously been denied. But the radical right sees it as the orchestrated destruction and theft of their nation, and is operating with a decreasing amount of language available to it that does not suggest violence.nbsp;/p pThe risk of violence coming from the radical right is high, and increasing. It isn’t coming out of nowhere. We are creating it, as a people and as a government—not by pushing for greater social inclusivity, or women’s choice, or easier immigration, but in how we argue these points with one another. With every new mention of someone “taking off the suicide vest of governmental shutdown,” of cliffs and final solutions, we raise the risk by eliminating the space for politics and negotiation, leaving only action. We raise the risk by creating a political space in which the violent language of the radical groups seems ever more reasonable.nbsp;/p pThis country was founded on the principles of compromise. It was founded to be a work in progress, and to remain so, always educating itself, always striving towards a better and more inclusive place. This language of final solutions and end states is profoundly un-American—as is resorting to violence in order to reach our goals. The radical right has made it seem as though the coming violence represents the highest American ideals of justice and self-defense… and we as a nation have paved the way for them to do it.nbsp;/pfieldset class=fieldgroup group-sideboxslegendSideboxes/legenddiv class=field field-related-stories div class=field-labelRelated stories:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd a href=/5050/ruth-rosen/gender-wars-women-redefining-customs-as-crimesGender wars: women redefining customs as crimes /a /div div class=field-item even a href=/james-warner/is-world-riding-wild-horse-read-mark-helprin-to-understand-american-republicanismIs the world riding a wild horse? Read Mark Helprin to understand American Republicanism/a /div div class=field-item odd a href=/opensecurity/jeremy-pennington/death-in-school-in-post-911-americaDeath in school in the post 9/11 America/a /div div class=field-item even a href=/opensecurity/ruth-wodak/security-discourses-and-radical-rightSecurity Discourses and the Radical Right/a /div /div /div /fieldset div class=field field-country div class=field-label Country or region:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd United States /div /div /div div class=field field-topics div class=field-labelTopics:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd Civil society /div div class=field-item even Conflict /div div class=field-item odd Culture /div div class=field-item even Equality /div /div /div

div class=field field-summary div class=field-items div class=field-item odd pRelying on the regional and world powers has proven to be a costly participation in a proxy war that is devastating the country./p /div /div /div pEarlier this week, the president of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (the National Coalition), Mouaz al-Khatib, announced that he is prepared to talk directly with representatives of the Syrian regime. He insisted however, that the regime releases 160,000 detainees and renew or extend expired passports for Syrians living outside the country. Meeting on Wednesday in Cairo, some members of the National Coalition slammed al-Khatib, accusing him of straying from the Doha agreement, a document on the basis of which the National Coalition was formed.nbsp;/ppIn the light of the disagreements, one must ask: why did al-Khatib offer to hold direct talks with representatives of the regime? For answers, we must look at the recent events related to the Syrian crisis. I will highlight some of these events that could reconstitute the National Coalition or force the resignation of its current president./pp1. Immediately after the formation of the National Coalition, the US administration placed one of the main Syrian armed groups, Jabhat al-Nusra, on the list of terrorist organizations. The measure created a filter that limited the flow of arms into Syria. The legal implications of the label of terrorism split the opposition and tempered Saudi and Qatari enthusiasm for arming it. The categorization of the opposition into terrorist and non-terrorist groups was further enhanced by France’s intervention in Mali and the French media’s accusation of Qatar of supporting extremist groups in the Maghreb.nbsp;/pp2. Three weeks ago, Assad gave a speech in which he called for reconciliation talks that excluded opponents he called terrorists. Syrian officials said this week that political opposition figures could return to Damascus for national dialogue and that any charges against them would be dropped. In the same speech, Assad announced plans for a reconciliation conference with opposition figures who have not betrayed Syria.” He totally ignored plans by the UN envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, who, according to some observers, was close to bridging the gap between the Russian and American plans for solving the Syrian crisis. Assad’s speech practically rendered Brahimi’s efforts irrelevant.nbsp;/pp3. This week (on Thursday), EU foreign ministers agreed to keep in place the ban on exporting arms to the Syrian opposition. This decision upset efforts by some leaders of the National Coalition who met earlier in the week (Monday and Tuesday) to ask for $500 million and arms. The meeting, which al-Khatib did not attend, failed to provide the National Coalition with any tangible support. Moreover, early last week, France’s foreign minister acknowledged that there is no indication whatsoever that Assad is about to be overthrown and he communicated this new assessment to the so-called “Friends of Syria” when representatives of about 50 countries and organizations met in Paris. Initially, the National Coalition planned to announce the formation of a government in exile during this meeting. But the lack of enthusiasm “delayed” the announcement.nbsp;/pp4. Compared to the failed meetings in Paris and Cairo, several other international gatherings about Syria were held around the world and have produced actual results that could help the Syrian people mitigate the economic and political problems they face. One of such meetings was held in Kuwait to raise money for Syrian refugees and displaced civilians. This meeting was not political and perhaps because it was not political it was very successful. More than $1.6 billion was raised in two days. Importantly, the meeting, which was attended by representatives of many countries, including Russia and Iran, highlighted the extent of human suffering and the horror of war. Although the Syrian government was not represented, its authority was nonetheless preserved since the money that is intended to be used to help displaced Syrians inside and outside Syria will be managed by a UN agency, which will coordinate parts of its activities with the Syrian government. This fact could explain al-Khatib’s comment about expired passports. Apparently, he realized that despite France’s (and a handful of other countries’) recognition of the National Coalition as the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people, Assad’s regime is still the only legitimate government in Syria. A second gathering was held in Geneva and it brought together about 300 representatives of the so-called “civil opposition” and international NGOs. The participants issued anbsp;a href=http://syrianncb.org/2013/01/30/the-statement-of-syrian-international-conference-for-democratic-syria-and-civilian-state-in-geneva/declaration/anbsp;calling on the world community to take steps to end the violence in Syria on the basis of the International Geneva Agreement. Specifically, the participants agreed to “negotiations between the opposition and the regime to implement the International Geneva Agreement, for issuing a constitutional declaration to create a Government with full power to administrate this stage, and work to bring about fair legislature and presidential elections, under international supervision.”/pp5. This week, too, more shocking images of horror emerged:nbsp;a href=http://youtu.be/KIkiebjrgDA80 bodies of Syrian civilians were pulled out of a river near Aleppo/a. The images showed more victims of summary executions. The Syrian government accused “terrorists” of kidnapping and executing civilians living in neighborhoods known for their support to Assad. The opposition groups accused the regime of the brutal killings. Only an independent investigation could determine the identity of the victims and the perpetrators. Nonetheless, regardless of the identity of those who committed this horrible crime, the images remain shocking. The horrific scene of bodies scattered along the river bank made more people realize that the agony of the Syrians is indescribable./pp6. Adding to these crucial developments, a spokesperson for the National Coalition announced today (Friday) that “Syrian National Coalition President Moaz Alkhatib will meet U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi.” Reacting to this announcement, Lavrov’s deputy Gennady Gatilov tweeted, “Media reports about the upcoming Munich meeting… are not true.” It is not surprising that Russia would hesitate in granting al-Khatib a high profile meeting given that the latter, when he was selected to head the National Coalition, demanded that “Russia apologizes to the Syrian people.” Russian officials are unlikely to agree to a multilateral high profile meeting that includes a figure they characterized, then, as “amateur.” In other words, this proposed meeting might turn into a series of one-on-one conversations to assess the situation and suggest a path forward. It is unlikely that such a meeting, even if it were to happen, will result in a breakthrough given the gap between Russian and US positions on Syria and the disagreements within the National Coalition./ppNotwithstanding this public dissent, and in the light of all these important developments, it is likely that some leaders on both sides are now convinced that there must be an end to the bloodshed, suffering, and destruction. Al-Khatib might be one of them. After all, and despite being attacked by his colleagues from the National Coalition, al-Khatib appeared on an Arab television after the Cairo meeting and declared that he is master of his own decision. He said that he stands by his statement on talks with the regime. He also said that he was not pressured or enticed by anyone or any country but his stand is based on his personal concern for the lives and welfare of the Syrian people. When asked if he is acting in contravention of consensus among the leaders of the Coalition, he replied, “the Coalition members have agreed always to alleviate the pain and suffering of the Syrian people.”/ppIndeed, al-Khatib’s new position might be dictated by his realization that Syria could not and should not endure this horror for another 22 months. It is also possible that he finally realized that the support promised by the sponsors of the National Coalition may never materialize. In a sense, his about-face regarding talks with the regime to which he previously vowed not to talk is either an act of political maneuvering or a cry of despair. Perhaps, now, the Syrians can trust each other and rely on one another and put an end to an unwinnable civil war. Relying on the regional and world powers has proven to be a costly participation in a proxy war that is devastating the country and further pushing Syrians to the brink of sectarian and ideological war that will certainly fragment the Syrian society and destabilize the entire region./ppemProfessor Souaiaia writes here in his personal capacity./em/ppnbsp;/pdiv class=field field-country div class=field-label Country or region:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd Syria /div /div /div div class=field field-topics div class=field-labelTopics:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd Civil society /div div class=field-item even Conflict /div div class=field-item odd Democracy and government /div div class=field-item even International politics /div /div /div

div class=field field-summary div class=field-items div class=field-item odd pimg style=float: right; src=http://www.opendemocracy.net/files/generalfarm_0.jpg alt= width=160 /A monastery near Moscow has opened its doors to the city’s homeless — in exchange for food and shelter, the men help out on the farm. Marina Akhmedova spent some time among the labourers, discovering how they ended up on the streets, and finding out what they think of the meaning of life.nbsp;/p /div /div /div p class=p1Roman, a novice, pushes open the door and goes into the narrow building. A man in military fatigues is sitting on an old sofa with frayed upholstery, holding his head in his hands. The young novice unbuttons his jacket and sits down beside him, his cheeks flushed. Before them stand cows, in two lines stretching to the opposite wall.nbsp; There’s no window in the cow byre, yellow lights hang from the whitewashed ceiling, there is a fusty smell of cow urine and the fresh dung steams in the cold air./p p class=p1‘So, Sergei?’ sighs the novice./p p class=p1Sergei takes his hand from his face, stands up abruptly and goes out without saying anything. I can see the novice would like to follow him, but he decides to stay sitting where he is. I observe this scene from behind a large brindled cow, whose back leg I am cleaning with an iron brush./ph2strongNaughty Marina/strong/h2 p class=p1‘If you scrape like that, you’ll never get anything off,’ says a young man in a grey sweater, taking the brush from me. He starts scraping more rhythmically and strongly and a column of dust rises from off the cow./p p class=p1His name is Arthur; he has a young face and reddish hair./p p class=p1‘Talk to her,’ he advises me, as he gives me back the brush. ‘You’re new here and the cows don’t allow just anyone to come near them.nbsp; She’s called Dawn.’/p p class=p1‘Clever girl, Dawn, dear heart…’/p p class=p1With a clank of her chain the cow lays her head on my shoulder.nbsp; I feel its warm weight and the soft flesh under her chin./p p class=p1‘Dawn is the easiest of all of them,’ says Arthur. ‘She’s well-behaved and tries not to shove her nose into the other feeding buckets.nbsp; You see that cow over there?’nbsp; he shows me a black and white cow standing opposite. ‘She’s the naughtiest.nbsp; Her name is Marina.nbsp; What’s yours?’/p p class=p1‘Marina.’/p p class=p1‘Ah..’/p p class=p1Next to Dawn stands a large cow with protruding ribs.nbsp; She lifts up her tail and with a plopping sound expels a bloody clot.nbsp;/p p class=p1‘That’s Plum.nbsp; She’s just calved.nbsp; She’ll pass the afterbirth next.’/p p class=p1Plum is the first in the row. She stands by the wooden partition on whose door someone has written with a felt-tip pen ‘13.12. Semyon-Sonya. 8.00 pm.’nbsp; I look through a crack and see a cramped stall lit by a red light.nbsp; Two calves lie on the straw, one big and one smaller. A broad shaft of yellow light from somewhere up above splashes sunlight over the red floor.nbsp;/p p class=p1‘What are you doing here?’ I ask Arthur./p p class=p1‘I spent 6 years living on the street,’ he replies. ‘While I was in prison my aunt decidednbsp; she didn’t want me in the flat any more.’/p p class=p1‘What were you in for?’/p p class=p1‘Theft.’/p p class=p1‘First offence?’/p p class=p1‘It was a long time ago.nbsp; I was 14.nbsp; I broke into a car and took the radio.’/p p class=p1‘Where did you get the idea that you could take something belonging to someone else?’ With my hand I brush off Plum’s hard flank which is covered with icicles of dried mud./p p class=p1‘Where I came from nobody though in terms of other people’s property,’ he replies, as he too brushes off Plum with his hand./p p class=p1‘Did you go to school?’/p p class=p1‘No, I was a bad boy.’/p p class=p1‘What about your parents?’/p p class=p1‘Mum was on the move all the time because she was a market trader.nbsp; I don’t have a dad. I was sent to a young offenders’ prison for taking the car radio.’/p p class=p1‘Did they treat you better than you treat the cows here?’/p p class=p1‘Ha! You must be joking!’ he shouts. I move away from the cow and turn to face him. ‘You’re mad! Much worse.’/p p class=p1‘But you didn’t get knifed there, did you?’ I put the brush into the pocket of my working jacket./p p class=p1‘They don’t need to knife you.nbsp; Do you want me to tell you about prison?’ he asks with a grin. ‘The only people that survive there are sharp and tough. They know how to make the right decision quickly.’ nbsp;/p p class=p1‘Don’t tell her anything,’ barks Sergei in my direction, as he goes past./p p class=p1‘Well,’ Arthur comes right up close to me, ‘the rule was that the young offenders were not to be given any cigarettes or tea. We had to take the right decision and quickly, so we hid.’/p p class=p2span‘Hid?’/span/p p class=p1‘It was the right decision.nbsp; We would have been beaten…badly beaten, sometimes they even string you up on a pipe in the ceiling and beat you with truncheons.’/p p class=p1Dawn suddenly flicks my back with her tail.nbsp; I am not expecting this so I straighten up.nbsp; Arthur tugs the chain around her neck which is tied to an iron pipe running along the wall./p p class=p1‘Everyone got beaten. They just wanted to break us, that’s all. To break our spirit so that we lost our sense of identity.nbsp; Everyone has a spirit..’ he says, boldly studying my face, ‘including you…’/p p class=p1img src=/files/imagecache/article_large/wysiwyg_imageupload/533823/arm.jpg alt= width=460 /‘Perhaps when you hid, you knew it wasn’t for real, that you wouldn’t die,’ I said. Dawn chomps peacefully on the hay, while continuing to flick me with her tail. Her tail is supple and tough, with an apparent life of its own./p p class=p1‘No, of course not,’ raps out Arthur, looking me straight in the face. ‘I acted decisively..’ he pulls up the sleeve of his sweater. 8 white scars run from the bend of his elbow to his wrist, like the edges of fresh dough which have been roughly stuck together./p p class=p1‘Why so many?’/p p class=p1‘That’s how it was. They wouldn’t sew them up, so the wounds had to heal by themselves. It was the same for everyone.’/p p class=p1‘So you took a razor and…’/p p class=p2span‘No, no razors. It was a metal shank – every boot has one. You take it out and sharpen it..’/span/p p class=p1‘Isn’t taking out and sharpening a bit time-consuming for a quick decision?’/p p class=p1‘No, that’s done before.nbsp; Just in case..’ he rolls down his sleeve./p p class=p1‘Then you came out of the young offenders and stole again?’/p p class=p2span‘Yup.’/span/p p class=p1‘Out of weakness?’/p p class=p2span‘Stupidity.’/span/p h2The labourers/h2 p class=p1Just behing the partition there is a square space, the corner of which is lined with boards. Short fat carrots with their tops cut off are sprinkled on the floor and there are saucepans full of pale, sticky-looking gruel. A frozen pig’s head lies on the floor with a greyish-blue nose. nbsp; Labourers come in and out with sacks and spades; they are all wearing work jackets and move sluggishly. Many are alike, their bloated faces indistinguishable. It looks as if someone has taken the mash from the piglets’ saucepan and smeared it all over their real features.nbsp; The mixture has dried so that everyone in this cattle yard is walking around with the same bloated floury mask.nbsp;/p p class=p1The labourers gather by the sofa before the evening milking. Some sit with their knees together, others stand, stooping. Overalls hang on the wall behind the sofa.nbsp; At the side a black whip hangs on a nail.nbsp; Two cats sit on the window sill, one grey with no eyes and the other ginger whose backbone is sticking straight up in the middle of her back./p p class=p1‘That’s no 13,’ says one of the labourers, stroking the ginger cat. ‘We were given kittens: we gave them all away, but this one got squashed by a cow.’/p p class=p2span‘Where did you live before you came here?’ My question is addressed to no one in particular, but Sergei suddenly rises up from the sofa. He’s like a little old mushroom: not very tall, stocky, with a short black beard and a young face./span/p p class=p1‘Fifth manhole on the right…Roman said that no one is obliged to talk to her.’/p p class=p1‘Do you treat all newcomers this way?’ I ask him./p p class=p1‘You, thank heavens, are hardly a newcomer,’ Sergei screws up his eyes, ‘I watched you plenty as you were walking around the monastery zoo.’/p p class=p1‘I didn’t know you were observing me.’/p p class=p1‘You just leave them in peace. If someone wants to tell you something, then he’ll do so himself.nbsp; Don’t try and peer into their souls.’/p p class=p1‘And don’t you breathe down my neck..’, I reply, and Sergei goes off grinning./p p class=p1“It’s just a mask,’ says Arthur. ‘He’s really very kind.nbsp; But what do you want to know?nbsp; All these people,’ he sweeps his hand with the sweater hanging loosely over the wrist towards the people standing there, ‘were born at home, not in the street, but each one of them has a story behind him.nbsp; Some were conned out of their flat..’/p p class=p1‘Some probably drank a lot of vodka,’ I say./p p class=p2span‘Everyone sleeping rough drinks,’ says one of the men, shoving his hands into his pockets and clicking his heels in their rubber boots./span/p p class=p1‘Well, yes, I used to drink, but I don’t now – I’m completely dry and have told everyone that.nbsp; The lads are my witnesses,’ says another one in a reedy voice./p p class=p1‘My flat burnt down and I slept in stairways, on the hot water pipes.nbsp; It was cold but I survived, as if I was being protected my guardian angel,’ mumbled another. ‘I was chased away from the stairways, of course, so no one would like that. But in the street I could get enough for a crust of bread and a can of beer.nbsp; It’s no secret – some people are kind. But then I was taken in by Father Roman, for which I am very grateful.’ He looks at the empty corridor, where the novice usually walks, his boots catching the hem of his habit./p p class=p1‘The homeless,’ says Arthur meaningfully, ‘are the lowest form of human life.nbsp; They are people who have drowned themselves.nbsp; You want to find out about homeless people?nbsp; Part of me would like you to understand us, but you have to grasp what has happened to us, why we drink and why we sleep rough. The biggest danger in the street are young people, the skinheads. They start trying out their karate moves on us and could easily kill us.’/p p class=p1‘Is that what happened to you?’/p p class=p1‘It was the same for everyone on the street, and still is. A homeless person is a disgrace to the nation. We are not regarded as human beings, though some people do understand. In one filling station I went up to a woman to ask for help.nbsp; She stopped her jeep and said ”Wait.nbsp; Are you going to be here for a bit?” “Of course I am.” She brought me some clothes, bought a whole bag of food from the shop and gave me some money. I was able to change my clothes. Some people living rough try to wash twice a week, but others just let themselves go.nbsp; That’s how far they sink – alcohol and a total lack of self-respect.nbsp;/p p class=p1Some give up the struggle, others embark on the process towards death, just waiting for the Grim Reaper to come for them.’/p blockquotep class=p1strongem‘You all sleep in your warm beds, so you don’t see the corpse lorry collecting up the homeless people early on winter mornings.’nbsp;/em/strong/p/blockquote p class=p1‘Aren’t they afraid of him?’/p p class=p1‘Why?’ Arthur opens his eyes wide in amazement.nbsp; ‘It’d probably be a pleasure. Lots of people long for it.’/p p class=p1‘I realised I wouldn’t last the winter, so I came here,’ said another labourer./p p class=p1‘He’d already done 4,’ explains Arthur, ‘but he wouldn’t have survived this one, because it’s going to be very cold. Many people die this way: all the entrance stairways are closed, no one’ll let you in anywhere and if there is some kind of rehab centre, then it’s stuffed to the gunnels and there’s a 6-month queue to get in.nbsp; You all sleep in your warm beds, so you don’t see the corpse lorry collecting up the homeless people early on winter mornings.’/p h2strongSubmission is the name of the game/strong/h2 p class=p1The evening milking gets under way. Arthur brings the equipment, which is hooked up to the compressor pipe running around the cowshed, with the other end attached to a metal churn.nbsp; He puts a bucket of hot water down in front of me and gives me a rag./p p class=p1‘Soak, squeeze and wash,’ he orders./p p class=p2spanI do as he says.nbsp; He is not satisfied and tells me to do it again.nbsp; Then he gives me another bucket with some feed in it. I take it to the feeder: the cow turns around, pushes my hand away and sticks her head into the bucket./span/p p class=p1‘NO!’ shouts Arthur. ‘Put it in the feeder!nbsp; Never let them eat out of the bucket.’/pp class=p1img src=http://www.opendemocracy.net/files/generalfarm_0.jpg alt= width=460 //p p class=p2spanI wrench the bucket away from the cow, but another one immediately starts muscling in.nbsp; Arthur seizes the bucket, digs his elbow into the cow to move her and quickly pours the feed into the feeder./span/p p class=p1‘Don’t let them misbehave! You shouldn’t be too soft on a cow, because she’ll start bucking when you milk her.’/p p class=p1‘No, she’ll just understand that man is not the worst evil,’ I reply. ‘That she can appeal to his conscience when he brings this awful equipment to her.nbsp; When she bucks, she’s only showing that she trusts in his good instincts.’/p p class=p1‘You do talk rubbish.nbsp; If she’s not milked, her udder will swell up and the milk will start to fizz inside her,’ says Arthur, squatting down. The cow moves away from the feeder and licks the top of his head with her big grey tongue. ‘But she’ll be for the chop sooner or later,’ he jerks his head away from the tongue.nbsp; ‘You’ve got to realise that.’/p p class=p1‘Perhaps it could be resisted?’/p p class=p1‘Don’t forget you’re in a monastery.nbsp; Submission is the name of the game here.’/p p class=p2span‘You didn’t submit when you were in the city.’/span/p p class=p2span‘Submit to what? Temptations?’/span/p p class=p1‘And what kind of irresistible temptations were there there?’/p p class=p1‘Well, the most banal was…’/p p class=p1‘Drink?’/p blockquotep class=p1strongem‘You become a psychologist when you’re on the street, because you sense who you can approach.nbsp; I wouldn’t have gone near you. People warming themselves in railway stations can still be helped, but you have to understand what you’re giving them money for. Yes, vodka, but that’s because the body can no longer take anything else.nbsp; It’s out and out war there.’/em/strong/p/blockquote p class=p1‘No.nbsp; Sexual,’ he replies.nbsp; I turn to face him. ‘If I fancy you and you fancy me, then why shouldn’t we?nbsp; But not according to the Bible.’/p p class=p1‘You should have thought of the Bible when you were stealing the car radio.’/p p class=p1‘It’s suffering that brings a person to God.nbsp; I came here voluntarily.nbsp; People like you helped me when I was living rough.’/p p class=p1‘I wouldn’t have…’/p p class=p1‘I can see that. You become a psychologist when you’re on the street, because you sense who you can approach.nbsp; I wouldn’t have gone near you. People warming themselves in railway stations can still be helped, but you have to understand what you’re giving them money for. Yes, vodka, but that’s because the body can no longer take anything else.nbsp; It’s out and out war there.nbsp; The first thing is not to freeze. You can’t sleep, because the slightest rustle will wake you up.nbsp; It’s not real sleep, because you have to be on the ball. Why do they drink? They get tired of being on the ball all the time, making sure they don’t get beaten up by underage thugs.nbsp; If you take a sober look at that kind of life, then a person can’t really survive more than a week and getting drunk is the best solution.nbsp; In that life you’ve only got God, there’s nothing else, though there’ll be times when you end up cursing him as well. The most important thing is not to lose your sense of self.nbsp; If, for instance, I’m sitting in Savyolovsky Railway Station and you are walking past me, you slip…I’ll help you up.’/p p class=p1‘You’re dirty, smelly and drunk – why would I want a hand from you? You’ll probably nick something or you’re just giving me a hand so I’ll feel sorry for you and give you some money.’/p p class=p1‘I don’t want your money.nbsp; Everyone has at least one spark left in them. Pick up the churn and carry it yourself.’/p h3strongVladimir’s tattoos/strong/h3 p class=p2spanI grab the churn and drag it along the aisle to the parlour. A man comes in, dressed in wide trousers and a knitted sweater. His hands look like fish scales: they are completely covered with swirling tattoos of churches with no spaces in between. I pour off the milk, grab my churn and make for the exit. But he blocks my way.nbsp; His face is doughy and elongated like a goat’s./span/p p class=p1‘Hmm,’ I say, ‘what interesting tattoos.’/p p class=p1‘Marina!’ shouts Arthur in the cow byre, ‘Marina, what did I say?’/p p class=p1‘You don’t have to shout like that!,’ I stick my head out of the cow byre./p p class=p1‘Actually, I was talking to the cow, but as you’re here…’ he shoves a spade at me and points at the steaming heap of dung. ‘Tidy it up.’/p p class=p1‘You shouldn’t have come here,’ says Vladimir, the tattooed man, putting mashed potato on to my plate./p p class=p1‘Why did you come?’ he asks. ‘We’re simple folk and we share the same destiny. I’ve been on the street since I was a child and the government didn’t help…on the contrary, it punished me.’/p p class=p1Arthur comes in and sits down next to me.nbsp; Vladimir pours me a full cup of thick brown stewed tea from the tea pot./p p class=p1‘A delicate cup of tea,’ he says. ‘You turn up here with your angel’s face, but your questions are not angelic at all. You’ve got clever eyes.’/p p class=p1‘What colour are your eyes?’ asks Arthur./p p class=p1‘You can see they’re different colours,’ says Vladimir./p p class=p1‘Chameleon,’ adds Arthur./p p class=p1‘Look here, no need for a discussion of my eyes,’ I bang my fork on the plate./p p class=p1‘Just answer straight out, yes or no,’ says Vladimir. ‘Would you like us to pray for you unceasingly for the next 3 months?’/p p class=p1‘I’m not sure I deserve that.nbsp; But tell me where you got your tattoos done.’/p p class=p1‘What’s it got to do with you?nbsp; Your presence here is bound to lead to something bad happening.’/p p class=p1The door opens and Sergei comes in.nbsp; He puts a military jacket over his shoulders, but when he sees me he immediately throws it back and leaves, without saying a word./p p class=p1‘He’s not as tough as he’d like to be’ opines Arthur./p h3‘Would you give me a job?’/h3 p class=p1Today is colder. The sun is looking out to see whether it did the right thing to hide in its celestial freezer, having decided that it wouldn’t survive the winter.nbsp; In the delicate yellow light which it throws like a veil over the wasteland and the cattleyard, the icicles look razor-sharp and the steam from one’s mouth takes on monstrous shapes. Everyone who knocks at the big gates of the cattleyard next to the a href=http://eng.aerialphoto.ru/states.php?states=1320347653Nikolo-Peshnoshky/a Monastery can be sure that the decision to hole up here from the winter, sprinkling snowflakes as sharp as the scythe of an old woman, was both speedy and right./p p class=p1Arthurnbsp; is standing with a fire gun over the blackened body of a pig. Winter itself might have thrown it down to scare people as a demonstration to those below of how well her icy scythes are working./p p class=p1‘Would you give me a job?’ asks Arthur./p p class=p1‘No, you’d rob me.’/p p class=p1‘How about someone on a journey having a drink and falling asleep somewhere on a park bench?nbsp; Can one take his bag? The poor man who went up to him didn’t do anything except check his pockets…and take his bag.’/p p class=p1‘Have you done that?’/p p class=p1‘Are you trying to squeeze a confession out of me?’nbsp; I’m only describing something that happens all the time.nbsp; Is it good or bad?nbsp; You think it’s bad, but I think that’s what should happen. For centuries people have been getting into one and the same humdrum routine. Think what it means to be on the road…you can’t relax, you are permanently in a state of heightened awareness,’ he says.nbsp; Something seems to have snapped in him after our conversation in the stall./p p class=p1‘I don’t like listening to you, Arthur.’/p p class=p1‘Why’s that?’ His face flares up as if the piglet he is grilling is a piece of his own body, which has been torn off but still has sensation. ‘I’m not saying I’ve done that, I was just telling you about a typical situation.nbsp; I think that those sorts of people should be punished.’/p p class=p1‘Who gave you the right to be the instrument of their punishment?’/p p class=p1‘So you wouldn’t give me a job?nbsp; What if I say I hadn’t done it?’/p p class=p1‘For me the fact that you’re justifying it is enough.’/p p class=p1‘You wouldn’t give me a job and no one else would either – there’s your answer!’/p p class=p1I go a roundabout way through the monastery. Coming towards me is a stocky figure in military clothes. When he sees me, Sergei turns and walks in another direction.nbsp; I catch him up./p p class=p1‘Sergei!’/p p class=p1He stops and hunches his shoulders./p p class=p1‘We haven’t fallen out, but let’s be friends anyway.’ I take off my mitten and hold my hand out to him./p p class=p1‘Put on your glove, it’s cold,’ he says, turning his shoulder towards me. His light blue eyes have tears in them, possibly from the frost. ‘Take your hand away.nbsp; I hate you.’/p p class=p1‘Why?’/p p class=p1‘Because you’re a woman.nbsp; Didn’t you hear me?nbsp; Take your hand away.’/p h2strong‘Why are you pushing me away?’/strong/h2 p class=p1In the kitchen Louis Armstrong is singing ‘Let my people go’ from a tape recorder. nbsp; Vladimir sits at the table, supporting his head with his violet hand. I am peeling potatoes. A large enamel pan bubbles on the stove with pale yellow pieces of udder turning over in it./p p class=p1‘On day 3 I ended up in the morgue,’ Vladimir is continuing the story of how he once died./p p class=p1‘In a bag or in the fridge?’ I ask, as I peel.spannbsp;/span/p p class=p1‘I was lying on a bench in a room,’ he answers seriously. ‘Other people lay near me.nbsp; I looked terrible,’ he says and I think that he doesn’t look much better now. ‘My body was cold and I felt so uncomfortable in it, really bad.’nbsp; He goes up to the saucepan and looks into it for a long time.nbsp; ‘That’s a domestic animal,’ he says, ‘one of God’s delightful creations.nbsp; I can’t watch when it’s being slaughtered, but someone has to feel sorry for it, so I come along and pity it.nbsp; I give it my strength to help it survive its last moments.nbsp; Why? Why are people made like that?nbsp; Why does no one have any need of us?nbsp; You want to know if I’ve been in prison.nbsp; I have, I have.nbsp; When I came out I was passed from department to department. I ended up in Social Protection, but they also washed their hands of me.’/p blockquotep class=p1strongemVladimir lifts his elongated goat’s face to me.nbsp; He really is looking at me with love, but there’s something terrible about it./em/strong/p/blockquote p class=p1‘Have you stolen too?’/p p class=p1‘Not on purpose.’/p p class=p1‘What about on purpose?’/p p class=p1‘When I had a company, things happened as a result of combinations of circumstances.’/p p class=p1‘People always try to justify their actions.’/p p class=p1‘Blaming oneself takes a lot of strength. People will always look for the easiest way…so I’ve been inside.nbsp; So what?nbsp; Does it mean I’m a bad person?nbsp; So why are you talking to me?nbsp; Why are you pushing me away?nbsp; I love people….’ he lifts his elongated goat’s face to me.nbsp; He really is looking at me with love, but there’s something terrible about it. ‘Yes, I was once a conduit for evil, but I was severely punished for it and I haven’t become bitter. I want to live in peace with everyone in the world./p p class=p1‘I am probably weak, may the Lord have mercy on me,’ he says. ‘I have been looking for truth all my life.nbsp; I’m told it doesn’t exist, but it does. I had my eyelids tattooed when I was still little, because it was considered prestigious where I come from. So I did it like everyone else, like a monkey. Where I lived the laws were different. But I never did any harm to defenceless people. Or stole from people who didn’t have enough to live on.’/p p class=p1‘Who does have enough?’/p p class=p1‘You know, simple people who manage to live with just enough continued to be kind, even to me. Very few of them condemned me.nbsp; The people who did that were different and were always stressing their difference. They talk about my hands.nbsp; Can you imagine what it’s like when people are always talking about your hands?nbsp; I’ve carried that cross all my life; all my life I’ve hidden my hands, but people still understand that the tattoos were done in prison.nbsp; When you saw me, you asked immediately.nbsp; If only you know how I minded that. If it were possible, I would flay the skin off my hands. I tried to burn it off with sulphuric acid, but it was so painful that I couldn’t bear it.nbsp; I washed it off and only the indentations remain.’/p p class=p1‘What did you go down for?’spannbsp;/span/p p class=p1‘Theft, but it all started when my mother abandoned me and I was living rough. That was the launch – since then I’ve been flying like a rocket that can’t land.nbsp; I go to sleep with a sense of relief that the day is over and the hope that the next might not start. I’m tired. A person who can’t cope with his conscience is even lower than the cattle, more of a creature governed entirely by his desires and convenience.’/p p class=p1‘I don’t understand.’spannbsp;/span/p p class=p1‘The whole point is to preserve one’s dignity as a human being, rather than just being a creature with instincts. To preserve the voice of conscience.nbsp; I’m so afraid, Marina, that you will do us all some damage here.’ He is speaking with a drawl and his words fit perfectly with the music playing on the tape recorder./p p class=p1‘I was only little…’ he says again, and the way he says it is just like a child standing in a dark corner quite alone, crying because it seems to him that a wrong has been done to him and that no one has ever done anyone in the whole wide world such a wrong before.spannbsp;/span/p p class=p1‘Shall I tell you something?’ I put the knife on the table and beckon to Vladimir.nbsp; Obediently, he comes towards me.nbsp; ‘In Moscow offices there are masses of people with tattoos and they think they have some significance. Most of them don’t actually produce anything, but you are feeding people.nbsp; People can take various forms,’ I continue in a whisper, ‘like wet clay, they can be terrible and even hideous.nbsp; What really matters is how they end up when the clay has hardened.nbsp; The fact that they have been hideous doesn’t mean they can never be beautiful.’/p p class=p1Vladimir gets up and goes to the cooker. He clenches his fist over the bubbling udder and sways on his feet. His hands are covered with a soft layer of fatty perspiration./ph2Renaming the cat/h2 p class=p1‘I have a suggestion,’ I say. ‘Let’s rename no 13 – from today we could call her Happiness.’nbsp;/p p class=p1‘As if we have nothing else to do!’ sneer the labourers who, as usual before the milking, are gathered around the sofa./p p class=p1‘No 13 is Arthur’s cat,’ says Kostya. ‘We should ask him first.’/p p class=p1Arthur is sitting on a stool near the parlour and plucking a goose.nbsp; A pile of feathers rises up near his feet./p p class=p1img src=http://www.opendemocracy.net/files/cat.jpg alt= width=460 /‘Well, Arthur,’ I say, ‘shall we rename your cat?’/p p class=p1He doesn’t answer my question. ‘You only know me as a person who lives in cowshed. You just see me milking the cows, no more and no less.nbsp; You don’t know anything about me.nbsp; I want to hold on to what no one, neither you nor anyone else, can take away from me.’/p p class=p1‘And what might that be?’/p p class=p1‘My belief in God. I have no need of anything, including your values. What is it you want from me?’/p p class=p1‘I work near Savyolovsky Station.nbsp; I don’t want to see you there, among the homeless, when I come out of the metro station.’/p p class=p1‘Don’t worry, you won’t. I told you – in this monastery I’ve found what I was looking for and no one can take my faith away from me.’/p p class=p1‘Who would want to? You’re just a coward who’s afraid of life and has holed up here hiding behind his belief in God.nbsp; You’re scared of getting kicked again.’spannbsp;/span/p p class=p1‘Yes, OK, OK! Satisfied? You don’t make the same mistake twice. If you trust someone, they’ll just kick you again!’ His face is scarlet./p p class=p1‘Well what DO you want? You can’t spend your whole life in this cowshed, plucking geese,’ the cat jumps out from under my jacket and runs along the aisle, dragging its back feet./p p class=p1‘That’s my cat and her name is No 13!’/p h2Looking for Sergei/h2 p class=p1The novice sits down heavily on the sofa./p p class=p1‘Sergei has left,’ he says in a tense voice. ‘I’ve just heard.nbsp; Did he say anything to you?’/p p class=p1‘Yes, that he hated me.’/p p class=p1‘Don’t pay any attention to that. His mother abandoned him when he was a child and he grew up in a children’s home.nbsp; He’s been here for several years.nbsp; He did the work of 6 men and he’s left without even saying goodbye. I knew he was depressed and yesterday evening I went up to him and gave him a hug, asking him what the matter was.nbsp; He cried for 3 hours after that.nbsp; I look after them all like little children.nbsp; They’re brought here and dumped by the gates, lousy, full of abscesses and all beaten up.nbsp; I feed them from a pipette.nbsp; Kostya came here like that.nbsp; I thought he was an old man, but when I’d washed him, I saw he wasn’t even 30.nbsp; Well, he’s gone and that’s that. I can’t look after each and every one like a child.nbsp; But, it’s frosty outside and he has nowhere to go, so I can’t just sit here. Mynbsp; heart is….’ he lifts up his fingers pinched together as if he means to cross himself, but only moves his hand over the area of his heart.nbsp; He gets up resolutely and goes outside./p p class=p1An hour and a half later, the novice Roman returns. He flops down on the sofa, his cheeks red from the frost.spannbsp;/span/p p class=p1‘I didn’t even know which direction to go in,’ he says. ‘I just followed my nose. Have you seen the trees today? They’re cased in ice. I caught up with Sergei after 90 minutes; he’d got as far as Rogochevo, walking along with a small bag. What a man!nbsp; He’s worked for so long and then just leaves taking nothing.nbsp; I turned him towards me: his face was covered with icicles. I said to him “Have you taken leave of your senses?nbsp; You’ve nowhere to go.” His reply was “I’m not going anywhere.nbsp; I just want to freeze to death.”nbsp; I tried to persuade him to come back, but got nowhere.nbsp; So I asked him why he’d bothered with the cats, because now they would die.nbsp; He said someone would feed them, then he turned away and got into a car.’/p p class=p1The labourers gather silently round Roman. He suggests they should try and guess my age./p p class=p1’45,’ he suggests, to get the ball rolling./p p class=p1‘No-o-o, more like 55,’ says Tsar, squinting at me./p p class=p1‘What’re you talking about?’ says Arthur. ‘More!’/p p class=p1‘Stop it!’ I shout, leaping up off the sofa. ‘Stop it right now!’/p p class=p1‘She’s an old, old lady,’ drawls Kostya./p p class=p1‘Sorry,’ says Roman, shaking with laughter. ‘There was no other way of getting you off the sofa.’/p p class=p1At that moment the door opens and in comes Sergei. He looks at no one, scuffing his feet to wipe them clean.nbsp; Finally, he raises his head and, seeing me holding no 13, he freezes in feigned horror.nbsp;/p p class=p1‘There’s no hope…’ he shrugs his shoulder and, spluttering with laughter, runs away.nbsp; The labourers all laugh./pfieldset class=fieldgroup group-sideboxslegendSideboxes/legenddiv class=field field-related-stories div class=field-labelRelated stories:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd a href=/od-russia/marina-akhmedova/snap-goes-crocodileSnap goes the Crocodile/a /div div class=field-item even a href=/od-russia/grigory-tumanov/russia-land-of-slavesRussia, land of slaves/a /div /div /div /fieldset div class=field field-country div class=field-label Country or region:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd Russia /div /div /div

div class=field field-summary div class=field-items div class=field-item odd pSome say we should put Britain's complicity in torture and human rights abuse in Libya behind us. We cannot do so. Lessons have not been learned, victims still await justice, while the 'secret courts bill' would help ensure future abuses remain hidden./p /div /div /div pimg class=image-left src=http://www.opendemocracy.net/files/ok-friday-essay.png alt= width=80 //ppThe UK government’s decision last month to pay £2.3 million in compensation to Sami al-Saadi - following allegations of UK complicity in his rendition to Libya in 2004 and subsequent torture at the hands of Gaddafi’s regime -nbsp; made the pre-Christmas headlines.nbsp; But few of the news and comment pieces properly situated this case in its wider context - the Blair government’s active courting of Muammar Gaddafi during this period, linked to anti-terrorism and counter-proliferation interests, and the apparent willingness of some working for the UK government not just to overlook rights abuses committed by Gaddafi’s thugs, but to facilitate them. While investigative journalists and organisations like Human Rights Watch have uncovered important cases of abuse, many facts surrounding UK relations with Gaddafi’s Libya have yet to be revealed. Key figures within the UK government and the intelligence services are determined they never will be./p pBased on our research and that of others, this much we know.nbsp; Throughout Gaddafi’s 42 years as the leader of Libya, including the period of close UK-Libyan relations in the 1990s, the country had an extremely poor record on human rights.nbsp; From 1969, when Gaddafi came to power, to the late 90s, the UK and other Western governments focused their criticism largely on Libya’s very extensive support for violence and terrorism overseas. These actions included the arming of the IRA, the shooting of the UK policewoman Yvonne Fletcher in 1986 and, most spectacularly, the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, with the loss of hundreds of lives, on December 21, 1988.nbsp; /p pBut alongside Libyan support for violence beyond its borders, Gaddafi’s regime was responsible for large-scale domestic repression. The worst single instance was the Abu Salim prison massacre of June 1996, in which 1,270 men were gunned down following a protest about prison conditions. However, many other critics and opponents of Gaddafi were tortured and mistreated throughout this period. /p pAfter three decades in which Gaddafi was ostracised and denounced by Western governments, the long road back to Libya’s public rehabilitation began in the late 1990s. This story is well told by Channel 4 News’ International Editor, Lindsey Hilsum, in her excellent book on Libya, ema href=http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sandstorm-Lindsey-Hilsum/dp/0571288030Sandstorm/a/em. On the Libyan side, Gaddafi and those around him began to recognise that the country’s pariah status was harming it economically and that they needed to improve their image to get sanctions lifted and attract foreign investment. Gaddafi’s second son, Seif al Islam, was a particularly strong advocate for changes in Libyan policy to end its isolation, including handing over the Lockerbie suspects for trial, expelling Abu Nidal’s organisation and ending support for Hamas and Hezbollah, steps that helped secure the suspension of UN sanctions in 1999. /p pThe 9/11 attacks were also highly significant in triggering a reassessment of UK policy toward Libya. Gaddafi moved quickly to condemn the terrorist attacks on the US and exploited the moment to assert that the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) was not just a serious threat to him but to the world, emphasising its links to Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.nbsp; /p pWhile there were links between the LIFG and Al-Qaeda, the former was focused, first and foremost, on the overthrow of Gaddafi’s regime.nbsp; But post 9/11, and in the context of the oversimplified “war on terror”, there was a tendency on the part of the UK and other western governments to treat groups like the LIFG as if they were part of a unified, global jihadi movement.nbsp; Operating with this mindset the UK saw the benefits of substantive intelligence cooperation with the Libyans as part of their effort to combat Al Qaeda. So they began to countenance and then initiate joint actions with the Libyans, despite the Gaddafi regime’s continuing and well-known repression of its opponents, including systemic torture in its detention centres.nbsp; /p pThe dialogue quickly intensified. In 2002 the Libyans agreed to pay compensation to the Lockerbie victims, and a year later Seif al-Islam Gaddafi approached MI6 with a still more dramatic offer - to end Libya’s chemical and nuclear weapons programme.nbsp; Extensive negotiations ensued, involving Mark Allen of MI6, the CIA and the Libyans, including Gaddafi himself.nbsp; UK, US and Libyan officials also firmed up proposals for practical cooperation around intelligence, including how the Libyans could help tackle the Al-Qaeda threat, and how the UK could assist Gaddafi in dealing with his domestic opponents. After much back and forth, agreements were reached and documents signed, allowing Tony Blair to announce publicly that Gaddafi was no longer viewed as an enemy./p pWhile these efforts to bring an end to Libya’s nuclear and chemical weapons programme might seem like a reasonable justification for bringing Gaddafi in from the cold and for negotiation, the trade-offs that the UK and others appear to have made in respect of counter-terrorism and human rights were indefensible, contravening their obligations under international human rights law.nbsp; The most unconscionable aspect of this cooperation involved extraordinary rendition, the practice of kidnapping Libyan opposition figures and returning them to Libya, in exchange for Libyan intelligence on other global terrorist suspects. The evidence also suggests that the UK provided intelligence to Gaddafi’s regime on Libyan opposition figures living in the UK, even though some of Gaddafi’s opponents living in the UK had previously been murdered, almost certainly at the hands of Gaddafi’s agents. /p pOn the basis of a cache of unclassified documents discovered by Human Rights Watch researchers in Libya in 2011 and other information, we know that al-Saadi, his pregnant wife and his four children were forced onto a plane in Hong Kong, in a joint UK/US/Libyan operation in 2004.nbsp; They were handcuffed, hoods were placed over their heads and their legs were tied up with wire. His wife and children were imprisoned for two months in Libya, but then released. Sami al-Saadi was held for 6 years and says he was repeatedly beaten, subjected to electric shocks and threatened that he would be killed.nbsp; On his release, he reportedly weighed just 44kg and was close to death.nbsp; While the UK government said that last month’s £2.3 million compensation payment for Sami al-Saadi was not an admission of liability in the case, the amount paid underscores the UK’s moral culpability./ppspan class='wysiwyg_imageupload image imgupl_floating_none_left 0'a href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/files/imagecache/wysiwyg_imageupload_lightbox_preset/wysiwyg_imageupload/535193/sami%20al%20saadi%20%3A%20demotix%20%3A%20Amine%20LANDOULSI.jpg rel=lightbox[wysiwyg_imageupload_inline] title=img src=http://www.opendemocracy.net/files/imagecache/article_medium/wysiwyg_imageupload/535193/sami%20al%20saadi%20%3A%20demotix%20%3A%20Amine%20LANDOULSI.jpg alt=Sami al Saadi. Image: Demotix / Amine Landoulsi title= width=240 height=360 class=imagecache wysiwyg_imageupload 0 imagecache imagecache-article_medium style= //a span class='image_meta'span class='image_title'Sami al Saadi. Image: Demotix / Amine Landoulsi/span/span/span/ppIn a similar case, another prominent Libyan opposition figure, Abdul Hakim Belhaj, was rendered to Libya with the involvement of the UK.nbsp; A 2004 fax from Allen, MI6’s head of counter-terrorism, to the Libyan intelligence chief, Moussa Koussa, was found by Human Rights Watch researchers after the fall of Tripoli. In it Allen says, “I congratulate you on the safe arrival of (Mr Belhaj). This was the least we could do for you and for Libya. I know I did not pay for the air cargo (but) the intelligence (on him) was British.”nbsp; Like al-Saadi, Belhaj was imprisoned by the Libyan authorities and routinely mistreated and tortured. Belhaj’s civil suit against the UK for its role in his rendition and torture is ongoing. /p pA year later, in October 2005, in an act of great cynicism, the UK government drafted and agreed on a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Libya. Designed to help expedite the return of opponents of the Gaddafi regime to Libya, the MoU asked the Libyans to give an undertaking that those returned would not be tortured.nbsp; To their credit, the UK courts blocked any returns to Libya, saying that assurances from Gaddafi’s regime were not reliable.nbsp; /p pEight years after these events and following the change of government in the UK and, more dramatically, the overthrow of Gaddafi’s dictatorship in Libya in 2011, some might suggest that we should put this period behind us and “move on”. Not so. Some extremely important issues relating to this whole period have yet to be resolved, as well as lessons for current and future UK government policy./p pFirst, the victims have still to see justice.nbsp; The compensation payment offered by the UK and accepted by al-Saadi does not absolve the UK government and the UK criminal justice system of the responsibility to investigate what happened and for those involved in their abuse to be held accountable.nbsp; Belhaj has said that he won’t accept compensation, and the criminal cases relating to both men are ongoing. /p pSecond, there has been no proper investigation of the policy framework and the political and diplomatic decisions that led to these abuses during these years.nbsp; The Cameron government set up the Detainee Inquiry under retired judge Peter Gibson in 2010, to look into these matters.nbsp; But it was established with insufficient powers and without adequate independence. Human Rights Watch and other human rights organisations argued that it would not get to the truth and we declined to participate in the process./p pIn the face of opposition from human rights organisations and those representing torture victims, the UK government dissolved the Gibson Inquiry last year. However, it has promised to initiate a fresh inquiry once the criminal investigations linked to the Al-Saadi and Belhaj cases are concluded.nbsp; It is critical for an inquiry be established and for it to be given sufficient powers and the requisite independence.nbsp; /p pAlthough not a focus of Human Rights Watch's research, others have suggested that there may also have been an economic factor in UK decision-making towards Libya at that time, something which an independent inquiry could potentially throw fresh light on.nbsp; It is certainly the case that the UK moved quickly to secure new deals with the Libyans on oil once Gaddafi's regime was brought in from the coldstrong./strong/p pThe UK’s involvement in the torture and mistreatment of Libyans is not in doubt. But what remains unclear is whether Ministers at that time formally or tacitly sanctioned the involvement of UK officials and intelligence officers in actions that contravened international standards and involved complicity in ill-treatment and torture (something which those Ministers very strongly reject), or whether conversely, these officials acted independently, without the knowledge and approval of their political masters.nbsp; Both scenarios are profoundly troubling and only an independent inquiry can establish the truth./p pThird, despite some breaks with the policy of its predecessor, the current UK government is proposing new legislation that would make the discovery of these kinds of abuses much harder. The government is pressing ahead with its controversial Justice and Security Bill, which would widen the use of so-called “secret hearings” in the civil courts whenever national security grounds are invoked. (emSee Tim Otty QC's a href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/tim-otty/slow-creep-of-complacency-and-soul-of-english-justicedetailed analysis/a, and a href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/yvonne-ridley/secret-courts-what-they-dont-want-british-people-to-knowYvonne Ridley's piece/a on the bill and its relevance to UK-Libya relations./em)nbsp;/p pThe effect of the proposals would be to exclude the applicants and their lawyers from the courtroom, contravening a basic principle of justice – the ability to know the case against you.nbsp; Parts of the judgement would also be kept secret, meaning that someone could lose a case without being told why.nbsp; Another part of the government’s bill would prevent the disclosure of material that reveals UK involvement in wrongdoing by other countries. If the bill passes, it is most unlikely that any further documents on the intimacy between UK and Libyan intelligence will ever come to light. The UN special rapporteur on torture has raised concern that the new law will undermine accountability for abuses in which the UK is complicit. /p pThe UK’s relationship with Gaddafi’s Libya in the early to mid-90s, and the abuses that arose from it, demonstrate why greater transparency and accountability are essential.nbsp; If the UK government gets its way with this bill, future Libya-type cases will be held behind closed doors, with the victims and their lawyers, journalists and the public excluded.nbsp; Far from drawing a line under the UK’s involvement in rendition and torture - David Cameron’s stated purpose when setting up the Detainee Inquiry – the Justice and Security Bill makes it more likely that further abuses will occur and less likely that they will be discovered and those responsible will be held accountable.nbsp; nbsp;/pfieldset class=fieldgroup group-sideboxslegendSideboxes/legenddiv class=field field-related-stories div class=field-labelRelated stories:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd a href=/ourkingdom/yvonne-ridley/secret-courts-what-they-dont-want-british-people-to-knowSecret courts: what they don#039;t want the British people to know/a /div div class=field-item even a href=/ourkingdom/aisha-maniar/secret-justice-making-exception-ruleSecret justice: making the exception the rule/a /div div class=field-item odd a href=/ourkingdom/tim-otty/slow-creep-of-complacency-and-soul-of-english-justiceThe slow creep of complacency and the soul of English justice/a /div /div /div /fieldset div class=field field-country div class=field-label Country or region:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd UK /div div class=field-item even Libya /div /div /div div class=field field-topics div class=field-labelTopics:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd Conflict /div div class=field-item even Democracy and government /div div class=field-item odd International politics /div /div /div

div class=field field-summary div class=field-items div class=field-item odd pAs each day progressively reveals the extent of corruption inside the ruling People's Party, the Spanish people are disheartened by the conduct of their politicians, including that of Prime Minister Rajoy. But there are things that they can do./p /div /div /div pimg src=http://www.opendemocracy.net/files/1584559 (1).jpg alt=Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. Demotix/Lino De Vallier. All rights reserved. width=460 height=306 /span class=image-captionSpanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. Demotix/Lino De Vallier. All rights reserved./span/ppspanThe big question all Spaniards want to know the answer to is whether PM Mariano Rajoy received side payments over his years as a top official of the People's Party (PP), if so, whether he declared them to the fiscal authorities. If he is not able to give a clear and convincing answer, it will become really hard for him to maintain his credibility while trying to impose the toughest economic measures on his countrymen and women since the return of democracy./span/p pThe “atomic bomb” that former PP treasurer, Luis Barcenas, threatened to drop, has actually exploded already. The publication by emEl País/em of Barcenas’ parallel PP accounting between 1990 and 2008 reveals payments to many party officials – including Rajoy, and now PP Secretary General Maria Dolores de Cospedal - nbsp;in addition to their regular salaries. The papers also reveal “donations” from different well-known businessmen. In a communiqué, the group denied all accusations. /p pOnly a few weeks ago we learnt that Barcenas - who was already indicted in the Gurtel affair, a huge case related to briberies to PP officials in return for public contracts, and left the party more than two years ago - had kept up to €22 million from dubious sources in bank accounts in Switzerland. Then we learnt about the “envelopes” (the way the extra payments were handled), and the ramifications of his network, and as the general level of enraged disbelief rose, Barcenas himself confirmed that he had benefited from the tax amnesty offered by the Government until the end of 2012; another slap in the face for a stunned population. Where the money came from, who received it, what was it in exchange for, were those “envelopes” registered and declared, are just some of the questions to be asked by a judge and answered by an investigation. Behind all this lies a very sensitive issue: the illegal financing of political parties./p h2strongA widespread epidemicnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; /strong/h2 pThe depth of this case, and its as yet unknown consequences, cannot hide however the myriad of other corruption scandals scattered all around the country. This cancer has reached all levels of institutions and society, from the King’s son-in-law to major political parties, from small and large municipalities to NGOs and foundations, from the Chinese mafia to the Russian mafia, from life-long career politicians to flamenco celebrities. Name a place and it will be difficult not to find a corruption case nearby. As in a popular Mafalda a href=http://www.elblogalternativo.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/MAFALDA.jpgcartoon/a, today most Spaniards would want to stop if not the world, at least their country, and get off./p pIt is therefore hardly surprising that with almost six million people without a job (over 25% of the population), the two main concerns of Spanish public opinion are unemployment and the general economic situation; and right after that, the political class, corruption and fraud, according to the December survey by the emCentro de Investigaciones Sociologicas /em(CIS). Worse than that: 96% of respondents to another poll by emMetroscopia/em believe that politicians are corrupt and 95% that political parties cover over corruption cases instead of helping to bring them to light./p pSeveral reasons may help to explain how we have reached this situation./p pThe economic bubble of the early 2000s and its blind profligacy are largely to be blamed, of course. This is neither the first time, nor the first place, where easy money perturbs the moral and ethical compass. But some roots of the problem go further back in time. After Franco’s death, the drafters of the Spanish Constitution chose a proportional electoral system, with strong parties, strong leaders, and closed lists in order to favour stability. At the same time, they designed a heavily decentralized state structure, in order to attend to the regions' historical demands. Both facts, among others, assured a peaceful transition to democracy and a very stable political environment for more than 30 years. But, involuntarily, they also helped to develop a hydra with several heads: those of the political parties, which became machines to achieve and perpetuate power with very little accountability and transparency; and those of the different layers of the Administration, local, regional, national, whose competences tend to duplicate each other and have become the place where politicians of all stripes can engage in nepotism./p pSome will appeal to the idiosyncratic element, too. We seem to have recovered “empicaresca/em” as a key feature of our national personality. emPicaresca/em was the term used to describe the one thousand ways to escape poverty and misery in the declining society of seventeenth century Spain. The truth is that Spain still has a long way to go to achieve the civic maturity of other democratic societies. /p h2strongTough medicine/strong/h2 pWhat the country badly needs now is a complete political, social and moral overhaul. Easy to say or write, much more difficult to execute, especially given the fact that those who can push change are those who would lose the most were it to happen./p pSome of the obvious solutions are already on the table… waiting for discussion or approval. Last summer the Government presented a project for a Transparency Law, now being discussed by the Parliament. Several specialist organizations in the field have criticized the draft, among other reasons, because it does not include political parties, trade unions or the King’s House. It may be a start, though. There is also a project to reform the law of Public Administrations, which is being studied by a special committee chaired by Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, deputy PM. This process will certainly take time./p pA few days ago Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, leader of the opposition Socialist Party (PSOE), asked for a national pact against corruption. Nice try - but in the five years since the economic crisis started, the main political forces have never been able to agree on common action against recession or unemployment. Beyond good words and gestures, it is hard to believe that they really mean it this time. /p pStruggling to survive in this moral desert, the people’s reactions mix rage, indignation, despair, and also humour. But there are several things that we, as citizens, can do. To start with, be much more demanding with our politicians. When the first major scandals in several PP-governed regions were revealed a few years ago many commentators wondered why corruption did not really affect the conservatives at the polls. The PP remained in power in Valencia, for example, despite several of their top officials being involved in corruption cases. Spaniards should also learn to officially complain. There is a lack of tradition and few channels to place accusations and complaints beyond friends and coffee-table talk; but citizens, or party members, should be able to denounce misconduct and mismanagement as part of their individual responsibility./p pIt is certain, though, that a national pact is needed; that a national, inclusive and frank debate should be open to review our democratic principles and institutions. Constitutional reform cannot be a taboo. The text that has served its purpose for more than three decades – and was based on a wide consensus - has to be adjusted to the new realities, under a new consensus. It is urgent to tackle the way political parties are financed, too, because it is the source of many of the current woes. Many think that there are other priorities now: dragging the country out of the crisis and economic recovery. Today, however, the priorities have shifted: the PM has to demonstrate he is a trustworthy leader. If he cannot, the Barcenas papers could turn out to be Rajoy’s own Watergate.nbsp;/pfieldset class=fieldgroup group-sideboxslegendSideboxes/legenddiv class=field field-related-stories div class=field-labelRelated stories:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd a href=/ourkingdom/jose-luis-marti/civic-republicanism-north-star-for-hard-timesCivic Republicanism: a North Star for hard times/a /div div class=field-item even a href=/5050/liz-cooper/on-streets-in-spain-not-only-homelessOn the streets in Spain: not only the homeless/a /div /div /div /fieldset div class=field field-country div class=field-label Country or region:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd Spain /div /div /div div class=field field-topics div class=field-labelTopics:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd Civil society /div div class=field-item even Democracy and government /div div class=field-item odd Economics /div div class=field-item even Equality /div /div /div

div class=field field-summary div class=field-items div class=field-item odd pHealth Secretary Jeremy Hunt's decision on Lewisham hospital is a clear signal that some fundamental and bold changes are needed on NHS (National Health Service) structure, PFi debts and the private sector. Roy Lilley sets out a five point action plan./p /div /div /div pYesterday I watched LaLite doing his stuff in the House of Commons, announcing the Lewisham decision. If you read his early-career CV you'll see he didn't have much luck selling marmalade. This time he's hoping for better luck with fudge./ppWhat can he do but fudge the whole issue? He's stuck with two disastrous PFI deals, too many patients and no money. Whatever he does people will still be out on the streets. He's stuffed. And so are the good people of Lewisham./ppHe knows there are probably as many as ten other places in England where he's going to be faced with similar problems. There's not enough money to shift around the system to keep services open. His only alternative is to close stuff and shift the patients around the system and get NHSMD Bruce Keogh to say it's OK. He's stuffed. (And so is Keogh). He can't expect the Treasury to come up with any more money because the economy is stuffed./ppRobert Francis reports next week; he's going to want to demolish just about everything and unpick chunks of LaLa's lunatic reforms. Lalite is going to have to juggle all that. Again he's stuffed./ppEarlier in the day the King's Fund's John Appleby was unveiling his 68 page bodice-ripper; 'Spending on health and social care over the next 50 years'. Central message; we're stuffed./ppHe says:/pp..... policy options should include the quantification of possible trade-offs with other government spending. They should also consider the scale of the possible impact on tax and borrowing. Analysis of the distributional, access and health consequences of any moves to change or supplement the current funding base of the NHS and long-term care need to be part of this debate./pp.... Err, this is uncharacteristically opaque for Appleby but I think he means, act holistically and persuade other government departments to give us some money? Bad idea; they're stuffed, too./ppAround the same time as all this, the LSE Growth Commission report was published. It says:/pp...at the beginning of 2013, the outlook for the UK economy remains highly uncertain. Output has been depressed for a longer period than it was even in the Great Depression, with GDP still below the peak level of early 2008./ppThis means we're all double, triple stuffed./ppI think LaLite needs to act and act fast. We need an NHS Emergency Powers Act with five sections./ppSection one; PFI. It's only about 2% of NHS turnover but in some places it is totally unmanageable. The NHSEP Act would allow LaLite to leave the PFI debt with the Trusts but deal with the payments as interest bearing debt and as one global sum by adjusting the tariff. Effectively, sharing the pain across the NHS. This would provoke an outcry from non-PFI places but he'll have to ignore that and act in the national interest. If he doesn't more Trusts will close, run out of money or end up with useless blue-light-lite services and more disaffected voters./ppSection two; dump the market. Everyone knows the costs-in-flow around Monitor, staff, overheads, advertising, tendering, procurement-specifications, pre-qualification, evaluation, conditions, performance bonds, lawyers and all the rest of the hoop-la will never deliver savings or efficiencies to match the costs. Go to Scotland and ask them to be kind enough to show us how to run and NHS without a market./ppSection three; the quality crisis. Scrap the CQC use the money to reinvent Community Health Councils. They are cheaper, local, know the plot, the players, the issues and the patients. Give them draconian powers of access and make them handle all complaints in three months top-whack. Introduce a license to hold public office for Board members./ppSection four; give the private sector a sensible exit route. Not because they can't do the job, or for ideological reasons. The simple truth is there is not enough money in the system to give them a profit without cutting corners, deskilling and slashing staff numbers. There will be insurmountable quality grief and damage to brands, not least the NHS. They'll have LaLite over a barrel, pester for more money or fiddle with contracts. In the end they'll walk and the NHS will be in the lurch. Encourage staff, now, to take over services as social enterprises and give them the money and management support to do it./ppSection Five; dump the Carbuncle and its ludicrous wage bill. Its line of command is too remote and will only be fixed by evermore expensive and labyrinthine layers of bureaucracy. Take temporary responsibility back to the DH until finances and the future are more stable. Then decide./ppLalite knows, Appleby knows, the LSE knows, Francis knows and every front-line worker, nurse, doctor and NHS manager knows; if we carry on the way we are, we're all stuffed./ppnbsp;/ppemThis article originally appeared at a href=http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=zfxea5cabamp;v=001vd12ggE3Xa4Wyw_kfa-khcvuNH0RvztRyx5OEyxPjOfUrnX2uxjU7zO8Mw0eQi0geldpw7sks51YXPwD66eVx2E7nI-xPz4UfvlLi8ZUQpxz6DYA2BnYQIbX3VJrrKKC19P7fbjgVZWXqe4OYQNsPmL41akcqsUSHwgdUQgZofvoVuWk89GiNQ%3D%3DNHSManagers.net/a/em/ppnbsp;/pfieldset class=fieldgroup group-sideboxslegendSideboxes/legenddiv class=field field-related-stories div class=field-labelRelated stories:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd a href=/ournhs/max-davie/lewisham-scandal-market-failure-and-nhsThe Lewisham scandal: market failure and the NHS/a /div div class=field-item even a href=/ournhs/marcus-chown/great-nhs-robberyThe great NHS robbery/a /div /div /div /fieldset div class=field field-country div class=field-label Country or region:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd UK /div /div /div

div class=field field-summary div class=field-items div class=field-item odd pThis week we have launched OurNHS, a brand new section of openDemocracy dedicated to England's National Health Service (NHS). The Coalition's Health amp; Social Care Act 2012 formally ends the NHS as a free and comprehensive health service. OurNHS will be campaigning for its restoration. This introduction sets out what we are doing, with who, and why./p /div /div /div pOne of the strangest things about the passage of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 was the divide between social media platforms and traditional media. Stories could rage across the blogosphere without gaining any traction, or indeed even a mention, in the press. And the BBC was by no means the only offender here; it was simply the most disappointing./p pWith the exception of The Guardian, the resulting geography of NHS ‘resistance’ is one of patchy, but at times excellent, coverage in the press – The Telegraph and The Daily Mail in particular – with enormous amounts of activity from the public, bloggers, academics, activists and NHS staff bubbling underneath. This is not to underplay the limited but growing interconnectivity between social media and ‘big media’, but merely to recognise that there remain important differences which have been particularly acute in the NHS debate.nbsp;/p pWhat the NHS needs now if it is to be reinstated post-2015 is large scale, co-operative, creative and well organised campaigning. The first stage is to engage the public with the realities of what has happened. That the Coalition’s NHS “reforms” lack a democratic mandate is not in serious doubt. It has been confirmed, whether implicitly or explicitly, even by senior Conservatives. David Cameron himself, in a typically dishonest display, announced his “a href=http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jan/19/nhs-cuts-scale-shakeup-surprisesurprise/a” at the contents of Andrew Lansley’s White Paper when he realised the scale of public outrage and the damage it was doing to Brand Cameron. Yet according to a Conservative special adviser,/p pem“James O’Shaughnessy [Cameron’s director of policy] would have penned quite a lot of the words. And all those things were cleared by a policy board chaired by Cameron. So the idea that Cameron didn’t know what was in it… He and Oliver Letwin helped write the Green Papers.”/em (Timmins, 2012, p38)/p pThe lack of a clear mandate is important because the changes are fundamental, they go to the heart of what the NHS is and rip it out. The Secretary of State for Health no longer has a legal duty to emprovide or secure/em comprehensive healthcare to all English citizens – that has been the legal foundation of the NHS since 1948. The state need only now “promote” a comprehensive service. Cherry-picking of patients, fewer and fewer services being provided for free and large scale privatisation are the real fundamentals of the Health amp; Social Care Act – not “empowering GP’s” as the Coalition (and the BBC) claimed./p pConsequently, the road to US style health provision becomes clear: reduced NHS services and cherry-picking of patients will force more and more people down the route of medical insurance and ‘top up’ plans. For the first time in over 60 years, medical insurance will start to become a normal part of life. This is not strictly a party-political issue – New Labour were instrumental in reconfiguring the NHS as a branded marketplace for private providers. Rather, it is demonstrative of the way our entire representative system has been bought out. That the a href=http://www.nationalhealthaction.org.uk/NHA Party/a even had to be formed is a clear indictment of our democratic health./p pTwo conclusions must be drawn. Firstly, the press, taken as a whole, have failed to inform the public adequately about what is happening to the health service. Mass campaigning to reinstate the democratic basis of the NHS in England will not come from the press. Secondly, Labour are deeply implicated in what has happened and despite encouraging words from Andy Burnham it would be unwise to presume that, if left to their own devices, they will reinstate a genuine NHS come 2015 – that’s emif/em they form a majority, or emif/em they find willing coalition partners. The NHS is too important to leave to a kaleidoscope of red and yellow ‘ifs’ and a dysfunctional electoral system./p pCampaigning will be left to the public, patients, medical staff, unions, individual journalists and bloggers, local press, academics and many more. Organisation, communication and cooperation are all major challenges. Much of the best material on what’s happening is found on personal blogs and campaign sites, which are rarely established publishing platforms and are often run by people working flat out in their spare time on top of full time jobs. Burke’s ‘little platoons’ have not been manifested in Cameron’s “Big Serco”, a smokescreen for the mass looting of public services, but in the wave of civic energy that has mobilised to emoppose/em it./p pYet this does leave a role for the more established but non-mainstream platforms, such as openDemocracy. We asked ourselves how we could best use our resources, infrastructure and networks to assist what is a nationwide NHS campaign. We had already published some excellent material on the NHS bill but we wanted to do more. As of August 2012, we raised funds, built an expert advisory board, partnered with many of the leading sites for NHS action in the country and built a dedicated section of openDemocracy – OurNHS.nbsp; The site is not finished but it’s functioning, we are publishing, and we will be adding many features to it over the coming months./p pWhat we intend to do now:/p pFirstly, publish as much original and high quality content as we can. The site was launched with a long a href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/ournhs/david-owen/bill-to-re-instate-nhsessay/a written for us by David Owen, introducing his NHS reinstatement bill (a shortened version was published at the Guardian). Already this week we have published ‘a href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/ournhs/marcus-chown/great-nhs-robberyThe great NHS robbery’/a by Marcus Chown and an illuminating piece of a href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/ournhs/andrew-robertson/what-was-real-purpose-of-virgins-mysterious-report-into-nhs-customer-serviceinvestigative work/a by Andrew Robertson, of the Social Investigations blog. Next week, we have articles from Clive Peedell of the NHA Party and Anna Cootes, formerly of the King’s Fund./p pSecondly, we want to cross-post and help publicise the best content from across the web. On Tuesday we cross-posted an excellent piece by a href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/ournhs/max-davie/lewisham-scandal-market-failure-and-nhsMax Davie/a on the battle to keep Lewisham hospital fully operational and we intend to highlight and reproduce the best of the web regularly./p pThirdly, campaigning. We will continue to work with our partners, advisory board and many others on this front./p pWhat do we need: input. Article submissions, suggestions, ground level reports, personal accounts, video/audio submissions, ideas for campaigns, information on events that we can help publicise – all the above. You can submit material a href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/ournhs/submithere/a, and contact us a href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/ournhs/contacthere/a./p pAnd we need funding. To run OurNHS properly, with editorial time, publishing costs, editing, commissioning, office space, meeting space, financial controls, web support – it all costs money. The ‘a href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourbeeb/oliver-huitson/how-bbc-betrayed-nhs-exclusive-report-on-two-years-of-censorship-and-distortiHow the BBC betrayed the NHS/a’ report was a 50 hour job, for instance, it would not have been feasible without being funded by openDemocracy. We want to raise £40,000 a year and run the project until 2016, by which time we hope to see a new government in place and a democratic health system restored. We have already raised £12,500. To make the project sustainable we urgently need to raise the rest./p pOn a budget of this size every single donation helps. We are mostly supported by charitable grants and donations but this is a political project – we are relying on non-charitable donations./p pIf you want to make a contribution you can strongdonate/strong directly to the OurNHS project a href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/ournhs/donatehere/a./p pBest wishes,/p pOliver Huitson/ppnbsp;/p pstrongOurNHS partners, supporters and advisory board:/strong/p pstrongPartners/strong/p pa href=//localhost/about/blank38 Degrees/a, /p pRichard Murphy’s a href=http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Tax Research UK/a/p pAndrew Robertson’s a href=http://socialinvestigations.blogspot.com/Social Investigations/a/p pa href=http://www.spinwatch.org/SpinWatch/a/p pa href=http://www.keepournhspublic.com/Keep Our NHS Public/a/p pa href=http://www.nhscampaign.org/NHS Support Federation/a/p pCHPI/p pnbsp;/p pstrongSupporters/strong/p pHenry Tinsley/p pAndrew Wainwright Reform Trust/p pnbsp;/p pstrongAdvisory board /strong/p pa href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clare_GeradaemDr Clare Gerada/em/a, Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners/p pa href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allyson_PollockemProf Allyson Pollock/em/a, Professor of Public Health Research and Policy at Queen Mary, University of London/p pa href=http://www.aynsley-green.com/emProf Sir Al Aynsley-Green/em/a, former Children’s Commissioner/p pa href=http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/aboutus/people/wolfe.ingridemDr Ingrid Wolfe/em/a, Honorary Research Fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine/p pa href=http://www.ippr.org/emGabriel Scally/em/a, formerly of the Department of Health, now an IPPR fellow/pdiv class=field field-country div class=field-label Country or region:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd UK /div /div /div div class=field field-topics div class=field-labelTopics:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd Democracy and government /div /div /div

div class=field field-summary div class=field-items div class=field-item odd p'It ruined my marriage' 'my wages were cut in half'... the blacklisting of workers ruins lives, as the latest scandal in the building sector shows. Now the fight is on to push for a public inquiry into the practice./p /div /div /div pspan class='wysiwyg_imageupload image imgupl_floating_none_left 0'a href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/files/imagecache/wysiwyg_imageupload_lightbox_preset/wysiwyg_imageupload/535193/blacklisting%20.jpg rel=lightbox[wysiwyg_imageupload_inline] title=img src=http://www.opendemocracy.net/files/imagecache/article_large/wysiwyg_imageupload/535193/blacklisting%20.jpg alt= title= width=400 height=300 class=imagecache wysiwyg_imageupload 0 imagecache imagecache-article_large style= //a span class='image_meta'/span/span/ppInnbsp;emPeople of the Abyss/em, his excoriating first-hand account of the rank poverty endured by England’s working classes at the turn of the last century, the American author Jack London recounted a meeting with a former docker, Dan Cullen, who had been languishing for years in near indigence, sustained only by charitable donations from friends. London describes the process by which he had been reduced to this condition:/ppHe did not cringe to other men, even though they were his economic masters and controlled the means whereby he lived, and he spoke his mind freely, and fought the good fight. In the ‘Great Dock Strike’ he was guilty of taking a leading part. And that was the end of Dan Cullen. From that day he was a marked man, and every day, for ten years and more, he was ‘paid off’ for what he had done …. Dan Cullen was discriminated against. While he was not absolutely turned away (which would have caused trouble, and which would certainly have been more merciful), he was called in by the foreman to do not more than two or three days’ work per week. This is what is called being ‘disciplined’ or ‘drilled’. nbsp;It means being starved. There is no politer word. Ten years of it broke his heart, and broken-hearted men cannot live./ppDan Cullen was a victim ofnbsp;blacklisting. His crime was to have been a union member who stood up for his fellow workers. The private employers whom he had dared to offend never let him forget the consequences of his waywardness./ppUsually, books like this are treated as historical documents affording an insight into the desperate economic plight of Britain’s poor, before the advent of the welfare state and legislation to rein in the free market’s excesses. Recent startling revelations, however, demonstrate that we have no cause for smug self-satisfaction about how far we’ve come in the intervening century, since, in at least one important respect, we are still living in the Britain described by Jack London./ppA hundred years after Dan Cullen, thousands of working people are still being placed on blacklists for such offences as raising concerns about health and safety and being a union rep. Today, solicitors representing thousands of construction workers a href=http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/feb/01/construction-blacklist-met-police-no-investigationlaunched an appeal/a against the refusal of the London Met police to investigate claims that it was involved in supplying information to an illegal blacklist. The list of 3,000 workers, mainly in the building sector, had been unearthednbsp;after a raid on the offices of the Consulting Association in 2009.nbsp;Last July, 86 people launched a legal action for the loss of earnings and psychological distress they experienced after being 'on file' and denied work for years./ppAn ex-scaffolder, Mick Abbot, whose file stretches back to 1964, gave some idea of the shattering impact being blacklisted had on his life: This nearly ruined my marriage and it meant that my children were on free meals at school….They have been watching me all these years and passing this information around, blighting my life over four decades. Steve Kelly, an electrician, was fired by the building firm McAlpine and blacklisted after refusing to work on a moving platform without proper training. As a result, he suffered severe financial strain, my wages were cut in half which caused immense stress paying bills and putting food on the table. I was out of work for a year apart from few weeks here and there in 2001. Being sacked from Colchester Barracks after only two days piled up the stress and caused a nervous breakdown for me eventually.nbsp;/ppHow did the blacklist operate? For a subscription fee, 40 construction firms were able to gain access to the list and cross-check the names of job applicants against it. Many of these firms were beneficiaries of lucrative public sector contracts. Speaking to MPs, the directors of McAlpine and Balfour Beatty admitted that they had vetted workers employed in the construction of the Olympic stadium./ppThis, however, is only the tip of the iceberg, since, according to the Information Commisioner’s Office, only 5 per cent of the association’s documents were seized during the 2009 raid. Not only the building sector, but a number of other professions may well be affected. For his involvement over 16 years in supplying firms with information on workers, the chair of the Consulting Association, Ian Kerr, was fined a measly £5,000.nbsp;/ppNot only is the Met police now refusing to investigate allegations, there has been no public inquiry in the years since the list was exposed. The coalition government has refused to conduct one unless it is presented with some evidence that the practice is ongoing. In contrast to the massive attention given to phone-hacking by the press, this breach of people’s liberties is not deemed sufficiently important to warrant a Leveson-style inquiry. Last week’s parliamentary debate on the subject was notable for the rows of empty seats, and the lethargic performance of the Business Secretary, Vince Cable. After a few pro forma, perfunctory condemnations ofnbsp;blacklisting, he concluded that, as far as he was concerned, the matter was not one for further investigation: Obviously, if there is fundamental new information, logically we will look at that, but we have not yet seen it./ppLabour MP Michael Meacher rightly scolded the government for its apathy in relation to what was arguably the worst human rights abuse against workers in the UK since the war. It is worse than imprisonment in that it is usually imposed on the victim without his being given any opportunity to defend himself and it lasts for an indefinite period—often decades./ppThere is in fact circumstantial evidence that blacklists are still being used. A few months ago, it was revealed that one of the managers on the Crossrail project – the new rail link being built in Greater London – had frequently referred to blacklists whilst employed by a previous company. Ian Kerr has also told a parliamentary select committee that Crossrail was regularly discussed at meetings of the Consulting Association. Crossrail denies any knowledge ofnbsp;blacklisting, whilst Bechtel, the particular Crossrail contractor for which the manager has been working, has pleaded ignorance of the fact he was formerly involved in the vetting of job applicants.nbsp;/ppAnother Labour MP, John McDonnell, though, made the point recently that blacklistingnbsp;is far more pervasive than the assurances of ‘ethical’ employers might lead us to think, and is a routine tactic employed against those who are seen to question authority: nbsp;I have been on the cleaners’ picket line across the city—at Schroders, John Lewis and elsewhere. People employed as cleaners join a trade union and become the trade union representative. They are then victimised—and yes, in some instances, physically assaulted; we have evidence of that. Eventually, they are sacked or have to leave. All of a sudden, coincidentally, they cannot find employment anywhere else./ppBy refusing to investigatenbsp;blacklisting, the government has indicated its fundamental indifference to large-scale violations of workers’ rights, so long as it is done covertly and in a manner not likely to attract publicity.nbsp; Interestingly, none of the companies implicated in the use of blacklists have been subjected to criminal proceedings. Many of them are still engaged in carrying out profitable government contracts, and seem so far to have escaped the public opprobrium that attached to the tabloid press in the wake of the phone-hacking charges. Other companies will surely take note of this lax approach, and, rather than being deterred by the recent furore, as Vince Cable seems to think, will be encouraged by the lack of penalties.nbsp; As Michael Meacher observes, there are loopholes these companies can exploit if they so wish. In UK law, though it is illegal to compile a blacklist, it is not technically an offence to make use of one. Hitherto, the government has given no sign that it will close this loophole.nbsp;/ppFor years proponents of the market have lost no opportunity to warn us against the dangers to liberty posed by an expansive state. Interfering with the unbridled operation of the market not only discriminates against hard-working men and women, it stymies the spirit of capitalist enterprise and innovation. But, in light of the foregoing, people must surely be led to ask whether there is any system better calculated to crush the human spirit than one in which employers, facing no checks on their activities, are permitted to act like petty tyrants and deny livelihoods to thousands of workers, simply for the crime of speaking up for themselves./pfieldset class=fieldgroup group-sideboxslegendSideboxes/legenddiv class=field field-related-stories div class=field-labelRelated stories:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd a href=/ourkingdom/stuart-weir/n30-strike-and-camerons-propagandaN30 strike and Cameron#039;s propaganda /a /div div class=field-item even a href=/ourkingdom/stuart-weir/fresh-start-for-britain-in-europeA #039;Fresh Start#039; for Britain in Europe?/a /div /div /div /fieldset div class=field field-topics div class=field-labelTopics:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd Democracy and government /div div class=field-item even Economics /div div class=field-item odd Equality /div /div /div

div class=field field-summary div class=field-items div class=field-item odd pGradually, EU systems of governance have extended into the southern Mediterranean, linking dynamics in the Sahel with European interests through its borderlands. This could be a test of the EU's foreign policy ambitions. But is the Union ready and capable to act, and if so, what is at stake?/p /div /div /div pFrom its usual location in the shadow of world politics, the Sahel region has in a matter of weeks assumed unprecedented geopolitical significance. The complex set of security threats coalescing in the largely borderless Sahara-Sahel has generated a flurry of international reactions – and some conspicuously absent ones. /p pFollowing UN Security Council Resolution 2085, France intervened unilaterally in defence of Malian sovereignty in the on-going emOperation Serval/em, and has received varying, primarily logistical, support from European allies, notably the UK, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, and Denmark, in addition to airlift support from the US and Canada. The United States has been present in the region with various counter-terrorism activities since 2002, but has kept a relatively low profile in the recent events in Mali. Moreover, regional organisations such as ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) and the African Union (AU) are increasingly involved politically and militarily, leading the African-led International Support Mission to Mali (AFISMA). There are thus plenty of actors interested in keeping the Sahel in check. /p pFor the European Union, the crisis in the Sahel is a potential litmus test of its foreign policy ambitions. Historical ties, geographical proximity, economic relevance, and strategic pertinence all seem to call for a robust EU intervention in the region. Yet, the Union still seems to be reluctant to mobilise the full array of foreign policy instruments at its disposal, including the deployment of battlegroups. /p h2strongThe EU in the Sahel /strong/h2 pSome activities are nevertheless underway. The EU’s current involvement in the Sahel region aims at countering the deterioration of the humanitarian and security situation that has marked the area over the past two years. The most recent EU action in this regard is the decision to establish an a href=http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/EN/foraff/134748.pdfEU Training Mission in Mali/a (EUTM Mali), taken at the Foreign Affairs Council on 17 January 2013. The mission will dispatch 250 civilian experts and 200 military staff who will provide military training and advice to the Malian armed forces. The EUTM Mali comes at a critical moment, as French forces seek to find an exit from the scenario of holding garrison towns and desert outposts for the foreseeable future. However, the EU mission also represents a continuation of EU activities aimed at assisting the governments in the Sahel to tackle the security challenges and foster economic development. In 2011, Brussels adopted the a href=http://www.eeas.europa.eu/africa/docs/sahel_strategy_en.pdfEU Strategy for Security and Development in the Sahel/a (the ‘EU Sahel Strategy’), a comprehensive attempt to address these challenges. /p pIn the framework of the Sahel Strategy, the Union launched fact finding missions, and drastically augmented aid budgets. It also initiated some Security Sector Reform (SSR), notably by deploying the a href=http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2012:187:0048:0051:EN:PDFEUCAP SAHEL/a mission to Niger in 2012 with the aim of building the capacity of the Nigerien security forces to counter terrorism and organised crime. Concurrently, the European External Action Service (EEAS) set up a Task Force Sahel to monitor the activities within the EU Sahel Strategy and improve coordination. While still at an early stage a href=http://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/studiesdownload.html?languageDocument=ENamp;file=73859these developments clearly indicate/a that the EU has started to pay much attention to this semi-arid region, while linking the stability of the Sahel to the security of Europe and its citizens. /p pThe a href=http://euobserver.com/foreign/117823appointment/a of former EU Commission President Romano Prodi as UN Special Representative to the Sahel in 2012 only reinforces the impression that the frenzy of activities aims at anchoring the EU as a key foreign policy actor in the Sahel region. The absence of any NATO initiative, the reluctance of the United States to increase its involvement for the moment, and the French encouragement of a stronger EU engagement further supports this assumption. /p h2strongThe EU and its Borderlands/strongnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; /h2 pA closer look at relations between the EU and the Sahel points to the existence of substantial inter-linkages. Perhaps most important is the way some of the bordering countries of the so-called southern Mediterranean have gradually been drawn into cooperation with the EU over the past two decades. Officially starting with the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership in 1995, the countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region have signed association agreements with the EU, laying the basis for enhanced cooperation in a number of key policy fields. These range from security and migration to trade, transport, energy, environment, civil protection and communications. Linking the southern Mediterranean to Europe and thus creating borderlands in this area has brought the EU core ever closer to its periphery, as well as to the periphery’s hinterland. /p pAs a consequence of the Arab Spring, the MENA region witnessed a reconfiguration of unprecedented intensity. The fall of autocratic regimes in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt had the effect of drawing the Sahel states into the dynamics of these upheavals. The largely borderless Sahara-Sahel offered no protection to states and people from the changes that were taking place in the region. /p pThe EU’s cultivation of the MENA countries as its borderlands had the consequence that it is now much more directly entangled with the political and security situation along the disaggregated and partly porous frontiers of its “empire”. The Sahel has in this way been rendered a classic periphery of the EU borderlands, in which all things destructive, illegal, and potentially dangerous are coalescing. This includes poverty and underdevelopment, environmental degradation, ineffective and weak states, heavily armed militias undermining any central authority, circulation of weapons, nomadic groups fighting for self-determination, and the presence of the Al-Qaeda franchise in the area. The geopolitical gravitation towards the southern rather than the northern Sahara-Sahel region has brought local conflicts in the Mauritania-Mali-Niger nexus much closer to the EU than anyone would have imagined only a few years back. /p pThe EU’s a href=http://www.fride.org/publication/1078/implementing-the-eu-sahel-strategyinterests/a are plentiful in this recalibrated region, including securing energy supplies via gas pipelines and solar power projects, expanding export markets for European goods, preventing unwanted migration from the Sahel and North Africa, and hindering drug trafficking and terrorism reaching EU territory. The connection between internal and external security has never been more apparent. The EU’s policies of expanding some of its rules and practices to its southern borderlands, thereby connecting it substantially to the European core, seems to force the EU to act vis-à-vis the acute crisis in the borderland’s periphery. Indeed, the EU has played the game of empires and is now confronted with its consequences. /p h2strongEU intervention in the Sahel?nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; /strong/h2 pThere are three main reasons as to why the EU would expand its foreign policy role in the region. First, it could provide an opportunity to the newly established EEAS to assert its institutional independence and legitimacy, given that no other EU institution is involved in this area. Second, if Europe does not commit to comprehensively tackling challenges in this region, there are good chances that the US will get more involved, and policymakers in Brussels and other European capitals a href=http://www.culturaldiplomacy.org/academy/content/pdf/participant-papers/2012-01-eaac/The_European_strategy_for_the_Sahel-_Berangere_Rouppert.pdfmay be reluctant/a to accept a stronger US presence in an area that is geographically and historically close to Europe. Third, a href=http://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/studiesdownload.html?languageDocument=ENamp;file=73859it has been argued/a that the Sahel is in need of external assistance and providing such assistance aligns with the EU’s strategic interests — and its ambitions. /p pThere is no doubt that the Sahel crisis has significant strategic implications for the EU and its borderlands. However, there are rather sobering implications of a potentially greater EU involvement in the region. The Sahel crisis is of such a magnitude and complexity that it defies any primarily developmental approach, as the EU has maintained hitherto. In addition to substantial development aid, seeking to efficiently tackle the crisis would also necessitate a stronger military assistance and possibly the deployment of EU troops, together with the need to cooperate pragmatically with regional partners such as Algeria and Nigeria. Should EU member states – despite apparent reservations and even disinterest in African affairs – support more extensive EU action in the Sahel it would demand a long-term commitment from the EU, both in terms of substantial aid and military presence. /p pThe situation is extremely messy, potentially involving a protracted guerrilla war in a desert terrain, and external actors have relatively little knowledge of regional dynamics. The UN-sponsored US intervention in Somalia in 1992-1993 but also the current NATO involvement in Afghanistan should serve as reminders of what is at stake. Nevertheless, compared to France alone or the US, the EU may be in a much better position to implement a policy towards the Sahel that addresses the nexus between development and security. A long-term engagement with the region also seems to correspond to the EU’s foreign policy philosophy. Thus, the EU has the potential of developing into a full-fledged foreign policy actor with regard to the Sahel crisis. It is an experienced player in development policies, peacekeeping and institution-building; it has troops, the right reasons – and huge ambitions. A comprehensive intervention in the Sahel crisis will be a very serious undertaking. Thus, while the Sahel crisis might present the EU with a perfect opportunity to develop its foreign policy capacity and take on responsibility, Brussels should think carefully of the potential implications of seeking to recalibrate its extended borderlands./pfieldset class=fieldgroup group-sideboxslegendSideboxes/legenddiv class=field field-related-stories div class=field-labelRelated stories:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd a href=/paul-rogers/mali-war-after-warMali, war after war/a /div div class=field-item even a href=/opensecurity/dan-smith/eus-nobel-peace-prizeThe EU#039;s Nobel Peace Prize/a /div div class=field-item odd a href=/opensecurity/dan-smith/far-horizons-of-peacebuilding-%E2%80%93-and-nearThe far horizons of peacebuilding – and the near/a /div div class=field-item even a href=/hans-kundnani-justin-va%C3%AFsse/eu-foreign-policy-moving-on-from-libyaEU foreign policy: moving on from Libya/a /div /div /div /fieldset div class=field field-country div class=field-label Country or region:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd EU /div div class=field-item even Mali /div /div /div

div class=field field-summary div class=field-items div class=field-item odd pa href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/freeform-tags/britain-and-ireland-lives-entwinedimg style=margin-left: 5px; src=http://www.opendemocracy.net/files/Lives Entwined 460_0.png alt= vspace=10 width=140 align=right //aAnyone familiar with the story of language in Elizabethan Ireland can only feel impatience – if not despair – at the latter-day triumphalism of works like Melvyn Bragg’s best-selling emThe Adventure of English/emem./em/p /div /div /div pInbsp;/p pOne late-September night, I was having a glass of wine with a friend in Galway. From her balcony, we were watching the harvest moon turn the bay silvery blue; Aran Mór basked just out of sight, in the mind’s eye. I’d sent off the manuscript of my book, emLanguage and Conquest in Early Modern Ireland/em1, that morning and now the conversation swung back and forth between those two potent symbols, the Celtic-Tiger, waterfront apartment (we never use the word ‘flat’ any more; it reminds us of thatched cottages and bedsits in Kilburn High Road) and Synge’s Aran Islands finally slipping out of national consciousness. Eventually, my friend turned to me, her smile teasing in the moonlight: ‘So, is that what your book is about? All research is autobiographical, didn’t you know that?’ I didn’t know that, or didn’t until then./p pimg src=http://www.opendemocracy.net/files/Galway_bay_december.jpeg width=460 /span class=image-captiona href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Galway_bay_december.jpgFlickr/Bhalash/a. Some rights reserved./span/p pII/p pTwo days later, I drove eastwards across Ireland, against the drift of Joyce’s great songline that tracks the snow’s westward journey at the end of emThe Dead/em: past ‘the dark mutinous Shannon waves’, past the Bog of Allen, the treeless hills and the dark central plain. I was leaving Ireland to take up a teaching post in the University of York. That longer journey would throw my friend’s observation into even sharper relief. emLanguage and Conquest/em is, essentially, a story of linguistic colonisation. Its focus is the clash of languages set in motion by the Elizabethan (re)conquest of Ireland and the plantations associated with it. But, strangely, I hadn’t set out to write a historical work. I was addressing – or so I imagined – an entirely contemporary predicament. The work was rooted in a desire to understand Irish people’s ambivalent relationship with English, an ambivalence that, I believe, runs deep in the national psyche. Always dazzled by words (and all my most fluent words were English), I felt, nonetheless, at a remove from English. Its words had an oddly hand-me-down feel and they didn’t always fit. Breathy aspirants softened the edges of English words in my mouth; the phonetics of the Irish language (on which Irish speakers of English draw, even if they know no Irish) had no place for the lisping ceceo of the English /th/; and the rise-and-fall inflections of south Munster carried my words far away from the norms of my English cousins. Every summer, they came ‘home’ for the holidays from their smart London schools, speaking – as all their Irish aunts and uncles declared in admiration – ‘beautifully’. No wonder they felt the need to teach us how to pronounce ‘theatre’ properly – ‘For Heaven’s sake: it’s not ‘teatre’ – look, just put your tongue where I’m putting mine’. They sought to save us from drinking ‘minerals’ and putting Tings2 in ‘presses’, and struggled to stop us from ‘giving out stink’ and calling them ‘eejits’ and ‘looderamauns’. After all, they pointed out (unanswerably, we had to concede), ‘we are the ones that speak proper English’./p pBut it wasn’t simply a question of accent. (Canadians, New Zealanders, Australians might all have similar stories to tell.) We lived in a landscape of strange and obdurate names. My grandmother came from Cumeenduassig, my grandfather from Tureenafersh. Years later, I would be bewitched by the transparency of English placenames: Juniper Hill, Milton-under-Wychwood, Woodstock; you knew, at one level at least, where you were. But to grow up in Kerry was to be at play in a landscape where names guarded their secrets closely. We swam in Coumeenoole, climbed Beenkeragh and sailed out to Ilauntannig from Scraggane Pier in the Maharees. In one sense, these places meant everything. But in another, they drew a veil over our world, locating us in a landscape of sound effects rather than sense. Of course, if we picked away at the Ordinance Surveyors’ haphazard nineteenth century anglicisations and reconstructed the original Irish name, we could lift the veil for a moment. My grandmother would come not from mesmeric but meaningless ‘Cumeenduassig’, but from Coimín dú easaigh, ‘the dark little coomb of the waterfalls’. /p pThe poet John Montague speaks of a similar disorientation growing up in South Tyrone: ‘The whole landscape a manuscript / we had lost the skill to read’3. What is lost when a placename becomes detached from meaning, and becomes just a sound, is the connection between a place and its history: space is set adrift from time. Irish history and mythology are written onto the face of Ireland to a degree that is unusual elsewhere in Europe. (You have to read the journals of Captain Vancouver, splattering the names of midshipmen and misadventures – Puget Sound, Deception Pass – all over the intimately named haunts of the Salish and Kwakiutl people on the Canadian Pacific to get a similar sense of place sacralised through naming – and a similar sense of loss.) Slieve Mish, which I look out on as I write, is not only a mist-covered hill, but a repository of memory. It was there, the nineth-century Book of Invasions tells us, that the Milesian invaders met Banba, a queen of the Tuatha De Danann, and her druids. And when the Milesians braved the magic mist of her tribe and wrested the land of Ireland from them, it was in that epic battle that Mis, a Milesian princess, fell, on the bare mountainside that still bears her name. To live in a landscape where rich, time-layered meanings swim in and out of view, at the mercy of placenames that block access and sound like melodic nonsense words, is to be made acutely aware of language. You learn that English alone cannot fully explain your world; and you are left haunted by the sense of a missing language. /p pFor those growing up now, the predicament must feel very different. As I drove across Ireland towards the Irish Sea and York, I was struck by how very new the country I was leaving looked. ‘A time lag’, Elizabeth Bowen wrote in 1947, ‘separates Ireland from England more effectively than any sea.’4 It still does, but the valence of the lag has shifted: to go to England now can seem like travelling not forward but back in time. Still-medieval York feels, at its most vibrant, like 1950s England. The pulse slows; the Hot-Pot Café on the street I was moving into would serve weak tea with the milk already in. The Ireland I was leaving looked as though a second Columbus had discovered it about 20 years previously and intense colonisation, à la vingt-et-unième-siècle, was hitting its stride. One-third of the housing stock of the Republic was built in the past 15 years: this may be an ancient landscape, but you’d be forgiven for mistaking it for an island-wide building site. Ireland has left Cumeenduassig far behind. The giant reflectorised billboards for ‘Chelmsford Manor Drive’ and ‘Tudor Heights’ that I was driving past are markers of displacement. The new names offer the illusion of sense (we know what the words mean), but their aspirational geography (Home Counties-sur-Portlaoise) maps out the rootlessness of our new commuter-belt diaspora. /p pAs the architectural bricolage of Concrete-Tiger Ireland suggests – neocolonial porticos, mock-Georgian frontages, faux-Victorian gateposts – the disorientation that a language change brings affects time as well as place. The past is half-lost in translation and must be reinvented. My grandfather used to recall playing on summer evenings while his own father sat on a mossy outcrop of rocks behind their farm, talking to an elderly neighbour in a language my grandfather – a boy in 1900 – did not understand. (He learnt his own – bookish – Irish only in 1923, in Caherdaniel, when the fledgling state sent its teachers back to summer school to learn the new First Language). The voices of the men on the rock, rising and falling with the rhythms of a dying language, and the puzzlement of a small boy hearing their bursts of inexplicable laughter, capture the moment when Túirín na fuirste, ‘the turret of the harrowing’, turns into the sonorous blank of ‘Tureenafersh’. A screen comes down, cutting the present off from the past. This rupture, this rend in the narrative, is the untold – perhaps untellable – story of nineteenth century Ireland. What was happening in my grand-father’s Ivreagh – 90 per cent Irish-speaking on the eve of the Famine (and the Famine is, of course, central to this story and its silences); 70 per cent English-speaking by 1926, and soon after almost exclusively so – was repeated all over Ireland. /p pBut just how translatable is a culture? Can its chipped and battered Lares and Penates set up shop in another language? We can translate everything, we are told, except the poetry. ‘It’s good that everything’s gone, except their language, / which is everything’, says Derek Walcott, with rich ambivalence, in his meditation on English colonisation in the Caribbean and in his own native Saint Lucia5. Everything and nothing: herein lies the paradox of translation; it can carry over everything – except the essence. We know that part of what gets lost, especially for an oral culture (as Irish largely was by the nineteenth century), is an irreplaceable cache of stories, poems, oral history and proverbial wisdom. ‘Mairean lorg an phinn, ach ní mhaireann an beál a chan’: the trace of the pen endures, but not the mouth that sang. But, most irreparably, a language itself is lost. The way a language conjugates time through its tense system, the patterns of metaphor and word association it encourages, the way it adjudicates between concrete and abstract expression, the particular cast it gives to beauty and loneliness and anger – all these are unique. ‘Mo bhrón ar an bhfarraige / Is í atá mór’: nothing can replicate the exact curlew-call of loneliness in those words. I still remember the cold shiver of awe I felt in an airy, wainscoted Leaving-Cert. classroom when I realised that no other language could deliver precisely the arrogant, steely heartbreak of Aodhagán Ó Rathaille’s closing lines: /p blockquotepStadfadsa feasta ’s is gar dom éag gan mhoill,br / Ó treascradh dragain Leamhain, Léin is Laoi, Rachadsa a haithle searc na laoch don chillbr / Na flatha fá raibh mo shean roimh éag do Chríost.6 /p/blockquote pIts untranslatability is apposite: it speaks of the death of a culture. Ó Rathaille had lived to see the Gaelic world that he served collapse and fall silent. In 1726, on his deathbed, he vows to follow to the grave the lords his people have served since before the time of Christ. /p pFor speakers of a world language to imagine that other people’s languages can become obsolete and discarded without loss is to assume an extraordinary complacency about one of the least spoken-of human and ecological tragedies of our time. Some linguists expect 90 per cent of the world’s estimated 6900 languages to be extinct or close to extinction by the end of this century. The most optimistic put the figure at 50 per cent: one human language dying every month. In Australia alone there were 51 Aboriginal languages with just one speaker in 1999; some of those have since slipped away. These are not primitive languages; there is no such thing. Each has a suppleness of form, a line in beauty, a residue of wisdom whose loss should appal and galvanise us./p pimg src=http://www.opendemocracy.net/files/Killagh_Priory_St._Mary_de_Bello_Loco_South_Range_2012_09_10.jpeg width=460px alt=Galway beach from Salthill align=center /br / span class=image-captiona href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Killagh_Priory_St._Mary_de_Bello_Loco_South_Range_2012_09_10.jpgWikimedia/Andreas F. Borchert/a. Some rights reserved./span/p pIIInbsp;/p pIrish and the fragility of its place in the world fundamentally shaped the way I encountered other cultures. In the end it was, as much as anything else, an old man in San Pedro de La Laguna, in Guatemala, that propelled me into writing about English linguistic colonisation. I was staying on the shore of the volcanic Lake Atitlán, in a little reed-thatched choza which the old man rented out for a few quetzales. He spoke a variety of Tzutojíl used only in that village. His language passed out of range even when he went the small distance by boat to the neighbouring village of Santiago de Atitlán. His son was home from the city. I’d hear them talking as they chopped wood in the evenings, the father in the urgent, glottal-stopped sounds of Tzutojíl, the son, insistently, in fractured Spanish. ‘He never talks to us any more in Tzutojíl’, the father told me with a kind of sad pride; ‘you see, he’s getting on in the city.’ Some afternoons, touched by my odd interest in a language used only by the shrinking pool of older villagers, the old man would gesture to my notebook and, intent on conveying something of the complex beauty of his receding mother tongue, start a shy, impassioned language lesson. /p pTravel with an open notebook and an interest in language and you can have such moments all over Latin America. Four per cent of the world’s languages – the giants being Mandarin, English, Spanish, Bengali, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian and Japanese – are spoken by 96 per cent of the world’s population. At the other end of the scale, one quarter of the world’s languages have fewer than 1000 speakers each. English is spoken, as a first language, by almost 400 million people – and rising. Travelling through Central America, I became preoccupied by glottophagy: by the way a language, almost any random language, once it is backed by power and empire, can gobble up other human tongues. ‘Language’, the Spanish grammarian Nebrija7 wrote in the climacteric year of 1492, ‘was ever the compañera – the handmaid – of empire’. But what did that really mean in practice? I’d witnessed the consequences of Spanish colonisation in the New World. But to follow up this question, I knew I was going to have to bring my exploration back to Ireland. Not to nineteenth century Ireland, the century of silence, as Thomas Kinsella calls it, but to the sixteenth century and the Elizabethan conquest of Ireland. There, I had a hunch, our predicament began. /p pThe defeat at Kinsale and the subsequent Flight of the Earls in 1607 is often seen as the nail in the coffin of an autonomous Gaelic Ireland. Although a simplification, there is no doubt that, as far as language goes, remarkable things were afoot during the reign of Elizabeth I. English had been a vibrant community language in parts of Ireland since the thirteenth century. But it was very much a minority language; even in the Pale, the leading Old English families were comfortably bilingual. It’s now automatically assumed that the language of Shakespeare’s England was boisterously self-assured and poised for expansion. In fact it was, as the poet Samuel Daniel put it, almost a ‘speech unknown’. Edmund Spenser’s schoolmaster, Richard Mulcaster, lamented that English was ‘of small reach, it stretcheth no further than this Island of ours, nay not there over all’. But it would have its first experience of ‘reach’ and ‘stretch’ in Ireland. I wanted to see what would happen then. /p pWe go back to origins in search of explanation. We sift through the past for an understanding of the present. The language encounter of 16th century Ireland set down patterns of conversation and misunderstanding that are still with us. Henry VIII’s assumption of the title ‘King of Ireland’ in 1541 marked a new stage in relations between Ireland and England. As the century progressed, London grew ever less inclined to leave its nominal sister island to its own devices. Reform gradually gave way to increasing military intervention, to plantation, in Munster and Leix, and eventually to outright war. By the end of the Nine Years’ War in 1603, the great lordships that sustained Gaelic cultural life were no more. A famine-ravaged, depopulated land was left, as Lord Mountjoy announced with satisfaction, ‘as a payre of cleane tables, wherein the state might write lawes at pleasure’. Ireland was ripe for translation. A silence was beginning to fall, and the bardic poet Eóghan Ruadh mac an Bhaird picks up an intimation of it in his poem, ‘Anocht as uaigneach Éire’, ‘Ireland is lonely tonight’. No word, he says is heard from Ireland: ‘labhra uaidhe ní héistior’. /p pThere had been nothing silent about the Ireland which the Elizabethans came to ‘reform’. The State Papers are, in many ways, reports from a noisy island. ‘These rebellious People’, Lord Mountjoy’s secretary wrote in vexation, ‘are by Nature clamorous’ and masters of ‘colourable evasions’. The poet Edmund Spenser, who worked as a colonial administrator in Munster from 1579–98, deplored the ‘subtleties and sly shifts’ of the ‘sharpe witted’ natives. Exasperated by the protestations of affably insincere chieftains; mistrustful of duplicitous interpreters and propagandising bards, the English came to equate Irish with dissidence. Mathew de Renzy, one of the few planters to learn Irish (but then, he was German), fretted that Irish speakers ‘will ever be shrewder and more suttler than the English that comes out of England’ as long as they speak Irish because it could prove ‘the black crow to be white’. /p pThe English saw Irish as a rebel tongue and a popish one. The consequences for policy were obvious. Already, in 1537, the ‘Act for the English Order, Habite, and Language’ had decreed: /p blockquotepthat the said English tongue, habite and order, may be from henceforth continually ... used by all men that will knowledge themselves ... to be his Highness true and faithfull subjects. /p/blockquote pAs the century progressed, the aspirations of the 1537 Act began to acquire real force. When Gaelic lords submitted – either under the policy of ‘Surrender and Regrant’ or in the wake of defeat – the terms of their indentures almost invariably required them ‘to bring up their children in the use of the English tongue’. To make sure this happened, the eldest sons of the leading Gaelic families were fostered – or raised as hostages – in the English-speaking Pale or in England. Hugh O’Neill, surrendering at Mellifont in English, captures the profound shift in language use by the end of Elizabeth’s reign. /p pSilencing Irish was, of course, inseparable from promoting English. Late sixteenth century Ireland brings us to a turning point in the fortunes of the English language. Mulcaster, who had bemoaned the narrow geographical range of English, mused that ‘it would stretch to the furthest ... if we were conquerors’8. It is remarkable how many of the leading poets and translators of Elizabethan England did a tour of duty in Ireland. Edmund Spenser, Sir John Davies, Sir John Harington, Barnabe Googe and a score of minor luminaries argued tirelessly that conquest would ‘augment our tongue’. ‘Matters of war’, argued Mulcaster trenchantly, ‘make a tung of account’. And just as Mountjoy was stepping in to bring the Nine Years’ War to its climax, Samuel Daniel dedicated his poem, ‘Musophilus’, to him. In it, Daniel jubilantly proclaims the imperial destiny of English: /p blockquotepAnd who in time knowes whither we may ventbr / The treasure of our tongue, to what strange shores This gaine of our best glorie shall be sent,br / T’inrich unknowing Nations with our stores?br / What worlds in th’ yet unformed Occidentbr / May come refin’d with th’accents that are ours? /p/blockquote pMen like Walter Ralegh and Humphrey Gilbert, who had cut their teeth in the savage repression of the Munster Rebellion, were on hand to make that happen when they moved on to North America, carrying with them a pattern of linguistic imperialism honed in Ireland. Anyone familiar with the story of language in Elizabethan Ireland can only feel impatience – if not despair – at the latter-day triumphalism of works like Melvyn Bragg’s best-selling emThe Adventure of English/emem. /emItem /emretells an old tale about the unique fitness of ‘Shakespeare’s English’ to become a world language – a story which ignores the bitter fact that it is military might, not linguistic merit, that makes ‘a tongue of account’. Daniel, poet of empire that he was, had no time for such romanticising: all empires, he acknowledged robustly, ‘may thanke their sword that made their tongues ... famous and universall’. /p pSir John Davies, sonneteer turned Solicitor General, came to Ireland in 1603 to prepare the legal ground for the Plantation of Ulster. His hope was: /p blockquotepthat the next generation will in tongue amp; heart, and every way else becom English; so as there will bee no difference or distinction but the Irish Sea between us. /p/blockquote pBut the notion that a shared language would lead to shared understandings would prove illusory. Even by the end of the Elizabethan period, a remarkable difference was opening up between the way Irish and English speakers used their ostensibly common language. The English defined themselves as measured and verbally continent. Mountjoy, his secretary tells us approvingly, disliked ‘a free Speaker’ and was himself ‘sparing in Speech’; he ‘will never discourse at table; eates in silence’. The Irish, on the other hand, were ‘wily’, ‘dissembling’, ‘hyperbolical’ and – plus ça change – contested English definitions vigorously: ‘these outlawes are not by them termed Rebels, but men in Action’.9 Out-manoeuvred by the ‘guileful eloquence’ of Hugh O’Neill and his ilk, English negotiators felt the smart of having their language turned against them. Late-Elizabethan playhouses fill up with ludicrously loquacious stage-Irishmen; but it is Caliban who actually seems to speak with an Irish accent: /p blockquotep‘You taught me language and my profit on’t Is, I know how to curse’.nbsp;/p/blockquote pIV /p pParadoxically, the English ascribe eloquence to the Irish – while the Irish are haunted by a sense of inarticulacy. (The two often amount to the same thing: the English equation of reticence with rationality relegates eloquence to the margins, to the banlieue of art – and blarney.) /p pJohn Montague’s emThe Rough Field/em, first published in 1972 in the dark early days of the Troubles, captures the Hiberno-English speaker’s sense of being tongue-tied by English: Dumb,/ bloodied, the severed head now chokes to speak another tongue.nbsp;Montague travels back imaginatively to the late 16th century and the ‘disappearance and death / of a world’ to gain a purchase on the pain of losing a language and having its replacement imposed through violence. He takes as his starting point an old rhyme that states the predicament starkly:/p blockquotepnbsp;And who ever heard /Such a sight unsung /As a severed head /With a grafted tongue? /p/blockquote pThe sense that one is speaking with a grafted tongue runs deep in the Irish sensibility. Stephen Dedalus, arguing with the English Dean of Studies in Joyce’s emA Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man/em, gives the predicament its classic expression: /p blockquotepThe language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine. How different are the words home, Christ, ale, master on his lips and on mine! I cannot speak or write these words without unrest of spirit. His language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an acquired speech. I have not made or accepted its words. My voice holds them at bay. My soul frets in the shadow of his language. /p/blockquote pAn ‘acquired speech’ always has a self-conscious feel to it. We are aware of its materiality; the grafted tongue moves jerkily in the mouth. This, it seems to me, is the great difference in the way English and Irish people use their shared language. A national language slides effortlessly into seeming like a natural language. Its words are the right words; they fit.. I’m always struck by my York students’ unquestioning confidence in the solidity of their language. For them, it is a safe home, secure in its meanings and incontrovertibly theirs. I often teach W. S. Merwin’s poem ‘Losing a Language’. It is – patently – about the loss of Native American languages: /p blockquotepA breath leaves the sentence and does not come back .../ppnbsp;/ppMany of the things the words were about no longer exist/ppnbsp;/ppthe noun for standing in mist by a haunted tree the verb for I. /p/blockquote pBut I’ve never yet had an English student, intense and smart as they certainly are, recognise that that is what the poem is primarily about. They engage with it as an abstraction, imagining it to be about communication barriers, aboutnbsp;misunderstandings between generations. Though they have all studied another language, they cannot fully imagine themselves outside the native element of their own. When I taught the same poem in Ireland, my students immediately identified – and identified with – its evocation of being linguistically unhoused./p pThe estrangement that comes when one’s mother tongue doesn’t have the natural inevitability of a ‘national’ language pushed Joyce, Flann O’Brien and Beckett towards modernist experimentation; English writers still feel more at home with the realist novel – a genre, after all, for those who are at home. It is precisely that feeling of continuity and groundedness that is snapped by a language shift. The postcolonial condition is always marked by discontinuity and a sense of living along the fault lines of a fractured tradition. /p pNowhere is the difference between Ireland and England greater than in the way we relate to history. A language shift entails a catastrophic break in the transmission of a whole world of traditions and stories. Amnesia follows. History is a blank. But far from making us indentured to ‘history’, as the English so often imagine, the absence and loss at our backs drives us away from the past, in a break-neck rush towards the future. For the English, however, history is Heritage. The past is consecrated, memorialised and preserved. Irish visitors to England now exclaim, as Americans visiting Ireland did 20 years ago, about ‘how old it all looks’. But unlike the marvelling Americans, there’s a moue of disapproval in the comment: the Irish don’t like Old. Old gets pulled down, concreted over, driven through. I visited the state-owned Parknasilla golf club last summer with my father. He’d played there as a young man but couldn’t quite get his bearings. Looking down towards an old curtain wall by the sea, he asked the club secretary where the castle had gone. ‘Yerrah, that old castle was falling down’, the man replied, ‘and ’twas in the way of the cars, so we pulled it down altogether.’ Asphalt, white-lined for latest-reg. Lexuses and four-wheel drives, marks the spot. /p pMany of the now moribund Aboriginal languages make a distinction, not available in English, between ‘we’-inclusive (you and me) and ‘we’-exclusive (us but not you). To be Irish in England is to feel keenly, at times, the need for such a distinction. The Irish have a far stronger sense of being distinct from the English – of being foreign – than the English seem able to grant. The English include us in their communal ‘we’ in ways we cannot subscribe to. That is why we bristle at the English usage of the word ‘mainland’ with its amorphous but predatory notion of Britishness. The mild-mannered formula ‘these islands’ may not set the teeth on edge in quite the way that ‘British Isles’ does but it still, too often, performs the same alienating ‘act of union’. /p pIronically, the blithe English assumption of communality can be sustained only by remaining essentially ignorant about Ireland. In a spirit of political right-on-ness, emThe Guardian /emcan go along with the notion that ‘three of Ulster’s nine counties [are] in Éire’, all unaware that ‘Éire’ is simply the Irish for ... Ireland (all four provinces of it) and not some quaint acronym for the 26 Counties. Elizabeth I’s Secretary of State confessed that he ‘understoode lesse Ireland than any other country’. History continues to provide him with bedfellows. Ireland’s radical social and economic transformation seems, at times, to have made scarcely a dint on English stereotypes of Irishness. Hermione Lee, reviewing Colm Toibín’s emBlackwater Lightship/em on Radio 3, spoke in hushed tones about ‘how very brave’ it is for an Irish novelist to write about being gay. (I think of my gay American friend who moved from Cork to York. ‘It must have been so difficult, being gay in Ireland’, an English colleague murmurs sympathetically. His eyes widen in disbelief: ‘Compared to York, Cork is Babylon’.) The emIrish Times/em reports on England under ‘European News’; emThe Guardian/em covers Ireland – ‘Air of Dissent as Cork Fears a Cultural Damp Squib’ – under ‘National News’. It’s the old, familiar impulse to domesticate Ireland while knowing almost nothing about it. Mark Lawson, writing in emThe Guardian/em of Robert Redford’s declared intention to leave the USA for Ireland after Bush’s election, sneers that, if he did, he would just ‘find himself in a theocracy’10. It’s a poor theocracy that manages to see just one priest ordained for the diocese of Dublin (population 1.4 million) in 2004. And it is poor journalism that does not keep abreast of that.nbsp;/p pV /p pJoyce is stung into his epiphany about language by coming up against the English Dean of Studies. Talking to the English brings us up sharp against our language anxieties. (By ‘the English’, we almost invariably mean the English upper-middle classes. It is their accents we take off when voicing discomfort about English attitudes to ‘Ah-land’. I remember leaving a seminar room in Cork where a young English lecturer had just given a talk on working-class literature, in a glottal-stopped, adenoidal Estuary accent. The students in front of me were mimicking his accent, as they had heard it: ‘Oh, I do say ... jolly good, old stocknbsp;... there’s a good chap’.) An Irish voice sounds differently in the ears of its speaker when delivered into the acoustic world of ‘the English’. Our always latent sense of estrangement from English is activated when vowels and turns of phrase that sit at the core of our being suddenly sound strange even to ourselves. (I remember a dinner party in Cork, hosted to entertain a visiting English professor. ‘Could you pass the milk, please?’ asked an Irish postcolonialist. ‘Oh, do say “milk” again’, pleaded the professor excitedly, ‘I do think that Ah-rish light ‘l’ is extraordinary’.) Delivered into the echo-chamber of Received Pronunciation, our ordinary speech turns into performance and we into actors./p p‘Irish Men in England’, wrote an English planter in Ireland in 1608, ‘act as it were a part in a Play; they are never themselves but in their own Countrie’11. Elizabeth Bowen, herself half denizened in the Irish Sea, writes of the crossing from Cork to Fishguard in emThe House in Paris/em. An English woman, Karen, is joined at table by a bumptious Irish woman in a yellow hat. ‘I guess you think we’re all mad’, prompts the Irish woman expectantly. (This is one of our fondest tenets: we know how to enjoy ourselves; the English just get drunk. To consecrate this, we have recently taken to spelling ‘crack’ – an English word with the same root as ‘corncrake’ – in cod Irish orthography as craic. By such slender threads, linguistic and behavioural, does our identity hang.) Karen sizes up Yellow Hat:nbsp;/p blockquotepShe could not help acting Irish even at Karen: once in England what a time she would have! The relation between the two races remains a mixture of showing off and suspicion, nearly as bad as sex. Where would the Irish be without someone to be Irish at? /p/blockquote pOne wonders what Yellow Hat made of the English. Though they may not be ‘acting English’, their conduct can, nonetheless, seem like a performance to Irish spectators. The accents of ‘the English’, for example, seem wildly improbable. I still half-imagine them slipping into something more comfortable – softer consonants, dressed-down vowels – when they get home. English directness and a fondness for the imperative – ‘Come along now!’, ‘Oh do shut up’ – strike us as rude and eye-poppingly bossy. And even Yellow Hat could not but be struck by the shrunken domain of public chat. In Ireland, repartee – at shop counters, at bus stops, with strangers and people one only knows to see – is the great intoxicant. I rang a wrong number the other day. ‘Is that such-and- such a hairdresser’s?’ A strong Kerry accent answered me: ‘I get ashked that so often, I’m going to buy a scissors myself’. These chance glees are denied us in England. Public conversation is formulaic; transgression – by uninvited spontaneity – is embarrassing. An Irish friend visiting me in Oxford was behind two pleasant, middle-aged women in a queue at the Post Office. They were discussing one of her favourite books. ‘I can’t help overhearing you ...’, she ventured enthusiastically. The two stared at her. ‘I’m terribly sorry’, one replied witheringly, ‘were we disturbing you?’ English conversations, picking fussily over unimportant details, puzzle us. The Anglo-Irish Lady Naylor, in Bowen’s emThe Last September/em, wickedly caricatures them:/p blockquotepif one stops talking, they tell one the most extraordinary things, about their husbands, their money affairs, their insides. They don’t seem discouraged by not being asked. Of course, they are very definite and practical but it is a pity they talk so much about what they are doing. /p/blockquote pThis dogged literal mindedness is closely related to their confidence in the solidity of language. A spade is a spade. To know, as the Irish do, that alongside the absolute clarity and cut-and-driedness of ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ there is no Irish word for either yes or no is to inhabit an uncertain space. In the realm of ‘n’ fheadar’, the great indeterminate West Kerry reply to most questions – ‘there’s no knowing’ – there is far more room for irony, scepticism and a doubleness of vision than in the black-and-white world of yes and no. The dry wit and pervasive irony of English conversation mocks, but never fundamentally challenges, this propensity to believe in words. Maybe this explains the willingness of a significant proportion of the English public, so out of line with the rest of Western Europe, to believe the 45-minute warning and the Blair government’s rickety justifications for invading Iraq. /p pWhen I worked in the University of Limerick, proposals for bureaucratising departmental procedures would occasionally make their way from central administration. All that ever needed to be said at Faculty Board was ‘if we’re not careful, we’ll end up like England’. I had to move to York to realise just how potent that warning was. I found a system in thrall to literalism. The leaden hand that is squeezing the life out of all public-service institutions in England is born of an impulse to describe and make explicit. Only the word – mountains of futile acronyms and jargon – can make flesh the government’s promised ‘reforms’. In the process, excellence can turn to dust. Since coming to York, I’ve seen modules ‘redescribed’ and, by being pinned down and prescribed to vanishing point, lose their flexibility and flair. The department has just finished a year-long paper-trail audit: all that was hitherto done with inventiveness and goodwill is now reduced to hollow protocols and forms in triplicate. There is, I suspect, something deeply Protestant about this trust in accountability and willed perfectibility – as, indeed, there is about believing in the literalness of the word. The response of my English colleagues to the rolling programme of ‘reforms’ that are calcifying and demoralising the universities is instructive: they ironise, they cavil, they rail – and they implement, meticulously and to the letter./p pimg src=http://www.opendemocracy.net/files/Dunaonghasa2-1.jpeg width=460px alt=Aran Islands align=center /br / span class=image-captiona href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dunaonghasa2.jpgWikipedia/TheLopper/a. Public domain./span/p pVInbsp;/p pBut the pitfalls of literalism cannot be taken as confirming the superiority of the Irish strategy of having things both ways, of nods and winks that cancel out the official meaning. The English commitment to transparency, though it can lead to stupefying regulation and conformity, is also the keystone of civil society, a concept that Ireland flirts with only fitfully. Public discourse in Ireland eschews literalism and transparency. Whether in the ‘cute-hoor’ obscurantism of some of our leaders or Sinn Féin’s accomplished detachment of language from meaning, direct dealing – truth-telling – is not the currency of Irish public life. Regulations give expression to our highest aspirations; the sanctioned breaching of them saves us from having to live up to our ideal selves. Planning laws forbid building between the road and the sea, but an inexorable palisade of joined-up ‘one-off’ houses is turning our sea views into one long, bungaloid ‘Sea View’. We rebrand the Emerald Isle as ‘green’ and environmentally friendly by banning plastic bags, but we drive roads through wetlands and national monuments: there are no more ragged plastic bags flapping from our ditches, but that’s because there are so few ditches left. The landscape which ‘we had lost the skill to read’ is now being read in a new way, as a privatised terrain of ‘plots’ and planning permission signs. The lost language is being replaced by the dialects of prosperity. The DART-accented speech of AA-Roadwatch threatens to become the new vernacular. As the trickle-down ‘duckspeak’12 of the business schools takes hold (one-fifth of all our third-level students are pursuing commerce degrees), prefabricated phrases – ‘proactive scenarios going forward’ – and the stentorian discourse of the market bid to drown out all other voices. /p pIn her 1998 collection, Cead Aighnis, the poet Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill has a sequence entitled ‘Na Murúcha a Thriomaigh’, ‘The Mermaids who Dried Out’. The figure of mermaids who have come out of their element onto dry land, who have cast off their songs in order to prosper, allows Ní Dhomhnaill to meditate on losing a language. The mermaids have forgotten the confusion of the currents and the whale choirs of the deep; their scales dry out and flake off. One mermaid, in therapy, struggles to find words to convey the full intensity of what the word uisce – ‘water’ – means for her. But is it not just Ní Dhomhnaill’s mermaids who are on that headland: we, too, are poised between siren voices calling to us in Anglo-American and the promptings of the deep. /p pimg src=http://www.opendemocracy.net/files/Galway_Bay_from_Salthill.jpeg width=460px alt=Galway beach from Salthill align=center /br / span class=image-captiona href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Galway_Bay_from_Salthill.jpgWikipedia/Peter Clarke/a. Public domain./span/p pnbsp;/p pEndnotes /p p1 nbsp;Patricia Palmer, Language and Conquest in Early Modern Ireland: English Renaissance Literature and Elizabethan Imperial Expansion, Cambridge University Press, 2001. /p p2 nbsp;The Irish sounds falls midway between /t/ and //. /p p3 nbsp;John Montague, The Rough Field, Dublin, Dolmen Press,1972. /p p4 nbsp;Hermione Lee, ed. , Mulberry Tree, London: Vintage, 1999, p. 101. /p p5 nbsp;Derek Walcott, North and South, Collected Poems 1948-84, Faber 1992. /p p6 nbsp;Aodhagán Ó Rathaille, ‘An File ar Leaba a Bháis’. /p p7 nbsp;Quoted in Aldrete Bernardo: ‘Del origin y principio de la lengua Castellana’ Vol.2, Madrid, 1972. (Antonio de Nebrija was the author of the first grammar of a romance language: Gramática de la lengua Castellana, published in 1492, the date of Columbus’s first voyage to America.) /p p8 nbsp;Richard Mulcaster, Elementarie, London, 1582. /p p9 nbsp;Fynes Moryson, Shakespeare’s Europe, ed. Charles Hughes, London: Sherratt amp; Hughes, 1903. /p p10 nbsp;emThe Guardian/em, ‘Red Faces at Blue Peter over Red Hand’, 22 January 2005; emThe Guardian/em, 22 January 2005, p.2; emThe Guardian,/em 6 November 2004. /p p11 nbsp;Sir Parre Lane’s Character of the Irish’, Bodleian Ms.Tanner 458. /p p12 nbsp;George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983, p. 265. /p pnbsp;/p pemThis article a href=http://www.britishcouncil.org/britain_ireland_lives_entwined.pdfwas first published/a in 2005, in the first volume of the British Council series, a href=http://www.britishcouncil.org/northernireland-lives-entwined.htmBritain and Ireland: Lives Entwined/a. The a href=http://www.britishcouncil.org/c205_lives_entwined_iv_web.pdffourth volume/a was/em emcommissioned by openDemocracy Editor Rosemary Bechler in autumn, 2012/em. emShe would like to thank the British Council Northern Ireland, the British Council Ireland and the authors, for the chance to republish here a selection of articles from the entire series.nbsp;/em/ppembr //em/p p align=centera href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/freeform-tags/britain-and-ireland-lives-entwinedimg src=http://www.opendemocracy.net/files/Editorial Partnerships British Council 1.png alt= width=150 //a/pfieldset class=fieldgroup group-sideboxslegendSideboxes/legenddiv class=field field-read-on div class=field-label 'Read On' Sidebox:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd pa href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/freeform-tags/britain-and-ireland-lives-entwinedimg src=http://www.opendemocracy.net/files/Lives Entwined 460_0.png alt= width=140 //a/pp See our a href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/freeform-tags/britain-and-ireland-lives-entwinedBritain and Ireland: Lives Entwined/a page dedicated to this editorial partnership with the British Council. /p /div /div /div /fieldset div class=field field-country div class=field-label Country or region:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd Ireland /div div class=field-item even UK /div div class=field-item odd Northern Ireland /div /div /div div class=field field-topics div class=field-labelTopics:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd Culture /div div class=field-item even Democracy and government /div div class=field-item odd Ideas /div div class=field-item even International politics /div /div /div

div class=field field-summary div class=field-items div class=field-item odd pThe government is persisting in its efforts to pass the so-called Justice and Security Bill. Through the introduction of secret judicial processes, it would permit the cover-up of illegal activity by the State. The attempt should be abandoned./p /div /div /div div class=firstParp When I worked on the City pages of The Daily Telegraph a quarter of a century ago, we young reporters were advised by Christopher Fildes, the paper’s legendary financial columnist, to take note of three corporate sell signals. /p/divdiv class=secondPar p The first concerned the chief executive. If he purchased a string of racehorses, it meant that he wasn’t concentrating on the job and had got ideas above his station. The second was the appearance of a fountain in the head office foyer, a sure indication of extravagance and frivolity. Finally, Mr Fildes urged us to view with distrust all companies that shifted to a lavish new headquarters. Too often for comfort, he asserted, such a move presaged disaster. /p/divdiv class=thirdPar p When I moved to cover politics, I soon realised that the same rule applied in the public sector. The textbook case concerns the Home Office, which notoriously descended into a dysfunctional shambles after it moved from its headquarters in Queen Anne’s Gate to gleaming new offices in Marsham Street eight years ago. Likewise, the government Whips Office lost all purpose after being shifted from its historic 12 Downing Street base. /p/divdiv class=fourthPar p Something went wrong with the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) shortly after it moved into its hideous new HQ, whose rear end overlooks the Thames with the same elegance and charm as the stern of an expensive cruise liner. I am not talking about the operational errors, of which one of the most recent has been the failure to grasp, despite warning signals, the role played by al-Qaeda in the Syrian uprising until too late. Far more troubling have been the structural problems that emerged after the existence of SIS was formally acknowledged in 1994 – by curious coincidence the same year as the building in Vauxhall was opened. /p/divdiv class=fifthPar p The first of these has been the propinquity between the intelligence and political establishments, a normal state of affairs in authoritarian states but always very troubling in democracies. This became manifest after 1997 under New Labour, when for a time SIS and the Blairite machine in effect merged. New Labour spin doctors travelled to Vauxhall to brief intelligence chiefs on how to conduct their public relations. Meanwhile, SIS shockingly tolerated New Labour’s use of secret intelligence as political propaganda. /p/div div class=body p This process reached its apotheosis in the notorious Iraq dossier of September 2002. Ten years have passed since the start of that catastrophic conflict and still questions remain to be answered. The Chilcot Inquiry, which was supposed to answer them (then again, perhaps it wasn’t) appears to have sunk without trace. /p p The second problem involves British complicity in torture. Like the repudiation of traditional intelligence methods that led to the Iraq fiasco, this had its origins in the merger between the security elite and the political class after 1997. /p p Bear in mind that Margaret Thatcher, when prime minister, had refused to countenance the use of evidence gathered under torture. This doctrine was turned on its head by Tony Blair’s government. After 9/11, though under pressure from the United States, British intelligence officers (from both SIS and the domestic intelligence agency MI5) were still barred from carrying it out themselves. But a new convention permitted them to seek evidence gathered under torture. /p p In particular, Britain became heavily complicit in what is known as extraordinary rendition, or the kidnap and subsequent torture of individuals as a matter of state policy. It goes without saying that this activity is against the law, and wholly contrary to our international obligations as a signatory of the United Nations Convention against torture. /p p Reports of British involvement leaked out at an early stage, but for a very long time were denied by ministers. Foreign secretary Jack Straw exploded in indignation when Britain was accused in 2005 of being party to the CIA extraordinary rendition programme: “Unless we all start to believe in conspiracy theories and that the officials are lying, that I am lying, that behind this is some kind of secret state which is in league with some dark forces in the United States, and also, let me say, we believe that Secretary Rice is lying, there is simply no truth that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition, full stop.” /p p Mr Straw has since gone quiet in the face of a mass of overwhelming evidence. This silence brings me on to the Justice and Security Bill, whose committee stage will today be debated in the Commons. A superbly researched Centre for Policy Studies pamphlet a href=http://www.cps.org.uk/publications/reports/neither-just-nor-secure/Neither Just nor Secure/a, by Anthony Peto QC of Blackstone Chambers and the Conservative backbencher Andrew Tyrie, argues that the Bill may stop the truth ever emerging about British involvement in torture. It enables government secretly to present evidence in civil cases, without allowing the other party or his or her lawyers to see it. The other party can never even know, let alone challenge, the evidence presented against him. A judge will decide whether the evidence should be heard in open court. /p p Second, the Bill blocks the courts from using the information-gathering legal principle known as Norwich Pharmacal. “This would make it harder,” argue the authors, “to uncover official wrongdoing in matters such as extraordinary rendition.” /p p Third, the authors demonstrate that the mechanisms set up by John Major in the Intelligence Services Act of 1994 to make the security services accountable have failed. Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee is beyond incompetent. It is supposed to oversee the security services. In 2007, the hapless ISC found no evidence of complicity in any extraordinary rendition operations in a notorious report from which, it has now emerged, 42 vital documents had been withheld. The Gibson Inquiry into rendition, set up by David Cameron in 2010, was just as useless and has now been abandoned. /p p Successive ISC chairmen (the former foreign office minister Kim Howells has been the worst) have been bossed around by government, and shown a feeble-minded naivety. “In recent years,” the authors note, “a string of appointees have come out of Government to chair the Committee only to return to the front bench afterwards.” Nothing in the Justice and Security Bill remedies this toothlessness. /p p John le Carré once wrote that “the only real measure of a nation’s political health” is the state of its intelligence services. For much of the last century (as readers of Mr le Carré’s novels can surmise) they have manifested a distinctive British integrity, ruthlessness, tolerance, eccentricity, and breathtaking heroism when required. /p p But, if Mr le Carré is right, something must have gone wrong with 21st-century Britain. Few sensible people would deny that we need effective security services, nor that the great majority of people who work for them are highly capable and patriotic, condemned by the nature of their work to stay quiet about their achievements and the bravery of what they do. /p p But the best intelligence officers admit that British complicity in torture has amounted to a thoroughgoing betrayal of our values, acted as a recruiting sergeant for terrorism, and made intelligence gathering more difficult. Deepening the secret state is a step in the wrong direction. The objective of any decent government should be to expose as much of the truth as we can about British involvement in torture, not to hush it up. It’s time for the Coalition to ditch its shameful little Bill. /ppemWith thanks to the a href=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/9837251/We-must-shine-a-light-into-the-dark-corners-of-our-secret-state.htmlDaily Telegraph/a where this originally appeared. See also Anthony Barnett and David Davis MP 'a href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/anthony-barnett-david-davis-mp/coming-dictatorship-of-britainThe Coming Dictatorship of Britain/a'/em emin Our Kingdom before the Bill went to the Lords. /em/p /div

div class=field field-summary div class=field-items div class=field-item odd pBritain is at a fork in the road with a choice to make about what role it will play in the 21st century. Yet, David Cameron’s long-awaited speech about Europe is a miscalculation that will leave everyone frustrated./p /div /div /div pspanspanimg src=http://www.opendemocracy.net/files/1594285.jpg alt=British PM David Cameron. Demotix/Giacomo Quiici. All rights reserved. width=460 height=307 //spanspan class=image-captionBritish PM David Cameron. Demotix/Giacomo Quiici. All rights reserved./span/span/ppspanWith the speech, British euro-skeptics are denied an immediate referendum on EU membership, and pro-Europeans in Britain will lose their voice in the debate about Europe’s future while their country’s energy is wasted on renegotiating existing powers. Meanwhile, the rest of the world will have to deal with a quest for special treatment rather than have a reliable British partner at a time of uncertainty. Worst of all, Cameron’s promise to go for a cosmetic renegotiation followed by a campaign to stay in the EU is designed to obscure rather than resolve the fundamental dilemma facing his compatriots – a choice between two radically different British futures./span/ppOn the one hand, the euro-skeptics, who have held Cameron hostage in parliamentary votes on Europe, have a clear agenda. They have set out a modern argument that is very different from the blimpish isolationism of past decades. In the place of old arguments about European super-states destroying British sovereignty, they have an entirely new narrative of a Britain “tethered to the corpse” of the euro zone. They claim that the single market ties British business in red tape; the Customs Union holds Britain hostage to the protectionist lobbies of all member states; and the free movement of people is flooding its labor market with immigrants. The EU seems a fossilized relic of the 20thnbsp;century in a new digital world. What matters to the skeptics, in the words of conservative columnistnbsp;a href=http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/comment/articles/2013-01/11/david-cameron-eu-referendumMatthew d’Ancona/anbsp;fornbsp;emGQ/em, is “not post-colonial reach or the ability to fight alongside America in military interventions, but the real freedom to trade globally.” He concludes: “What is so bad about being a new Singapore off the shore of Europe?”/ppThe new euro-skeptics think that the modern era transcends geography, uniting the world economically and politically in the cloud. The countries they admire the most – such as Australia, Dubai and Singapore – have successfully managed to carve out a global role without being hung up on trying to shape the world. What the new skeptics want flows naturally from former Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Cameron’s foreign policy of trying to pull back from what Cameron saw as the “over-reach” of the Blair era./ppThe “Brameron” era has been characterized by a move away from both Washington and the EU, a sense of the primacy of economic diplomacy, and a greater interest in the troops in Afghanistan and aid workers in Africa than the pursuit of traditional influence. The intellectual rationale for this move is that while Britain may enter a “new Elizabethan age” where it retains a global outlook, it should refuse to be drawn into disputes about the shape of the euro in Europe’s backyard, in which it has little interest./ppTo diplomats and statesmen, the location of the skeptics is cloud cuckoo land. They see the new “Little Britain” credo that “small is beautiful” as a betrayal of Britain’s historic role and a needless emasculation of the influence that had been won back so painfully after the Suez. As one very senior official said to me: “For the last few centuries, Britain has been in the cockpit of global affairs. For the next few we will need to get used to life on the margins.”/ppAt the end of November, former Prime Minister Tony Blair returned to the political scene to argue that pro-Europeans also need to radically recast the case for Europe to counter the false claims of the skeptics. “Sixty-six years ago when the [European] project began, the rationale was peace. Today it is power,” he said. Blair argued that as power shifts in the world, the only way for Britain to avoid irrelevance is to combine with other Europeans – uniting the world’s biggest market and the considerable political, diplomatic and military resources of Europe’s nations behind a common voice./ppThis is in fact the best way – maybe the only way – to gain access to new markets and to have a voice in shaping the rules of engagement in the multi-polar world of the 21stnbsp;century. Rather than contracting out the big decisions to Washington and Beijing, Europeans should unite in an attempt to build a G3 world./ppBlair is banking on the fact that his compatriots – whose country at one point or another has controlled all but 14 of the 200 nations in the world – have not lost the will to power. In one of the more narcissistic and revealing passages in his memoir,nbsp;emA Journey/em, he writes: “I always reckoned that even the ones who didn’t like me (quite a few) or didn’t agree with me (a large proportion) still admired the fact I counted, was a big player, was a world and not just a national leader.”/ppFor the last 50 years, British foreign policy has been a two-legged affair, balancing the “special relationship with the United States” with membership in the European Union. Today, both these pillars are collapsing. President Barack Obama gives flesh to many European fantasies about American leadership, but he leads a country that is pivoting its energy and attention from the Atlantic to the Pacific. At the same time, Europe is recasting its institutions and projects./ppThe two questions for Europe are whether the EU will integrate enough to put the euro on a sustainable footing – and whether this can be done in a way that does not destroy Europe’s three other political projects: the single market, pacification of the European neighborhood, and the projection of global power. For Blair, Britain cannot afford to sit out these big debates in a passive outer tier of the EU./ppBritain can attempt to help write the rules of the 21stnbsp;century as an engaged and leading force in the European pole of an increasingly multipolar world. Or it can aspire to a future as a global financial center – a new Singapore – that seeks to take advantage of the openings in a global system run by others. Both prospects are viable, but they involve tough choices that go to the heart of Britain’s national character./ppThe tragedy of Cameron’s Europe speech is that the British people will be denied the chance to choose between these options. Rather than joining with other members of the EU in a debate about our common future, he will launch a chimerical quest to renegotiate obscure powers. The uncertainty this will create for global business is troubling, but equally worrying is its effect on Britain’s standing in the world./ppAs the rest of the continent grapples with questions about currencies, political union, and the global balance of power, the British political class will engage in a solipsistic debate about which aspects of the common fisheries policy or the working-time directive they should opt out of. Instead of offering a choice for a European future that Britain can play a role in shaping, Cameron is trying to renegotiate the past./ppemThis article has been a href=http://blogs.reuters.com/mark-leonard/2013/01/23/camerons-backward-looking-speech/previously published/a as part of the author's column on Reuters./em/pfieldset class=fieldgroup group-sideboxslegendSideboxes/legenddiv class=field field-related-stories div class=field-labelRelated stories:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd a href=/ulrike-guerot/britains-european-catharsisBritain#039;s European catharsis/a /div div class=field-item even a href=/david-gow/false-start-for-uks-fresh-settlement-with-europeA false start for the UK#039;s fresh settlement with Europe/a /div div class=field-item odd a href=/kirsty-hughes/lost-in-1990s-timewarp-uk-and-european-unionLost in a 1990s timewarp: the UK and the European Union/a /div div class=field-item even a href=/ourkingdom/nick-pearce/why-british-left-must-engage-with-europeWhy the British left must engage with Europe/a /div div class=field-item odd a href=/david-krivanek/wimpish-speechA wimpish speech/a /div div class=field-item even a href=/ren%C3%A9-schwok/brexit-swiss-model-as-blueprint#039;Brexit#039;: the Swiss model as a blueprint ?/a /div /div /div /fieldset div class=field field-country div class=field-label Country or region:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd EU /div div class=field-item even UK /div /div /div div class=field field-topics div class=field-labelTopics:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd Democracy and government /div div class=field-item even International politics /div /div /div

div class=field field-summary div class=field-items div class=field-item odd pimg style=margin-left: 5px; src=http://www.opendemocracy.net/files/Martin.jpeg alt= width=140 align=right /Bookshops are places where the rhizome of culture breaks ground, connected beneath the earth but apparently separate on the surface.nbsp; But in Morocco at least, something dreadful is happening to girls between the age of ten and 20, and leaching away their early literacy./p /div /div /div h2Life's the thing/h2 pAs Logan Pearsall Smith lugubriously remarked, “People say that life’s the thing, but I prefer reading.”nbsp; Few would go quite that far, but I admit that my house is fuller of books than my wife would really like it to be, and in a mysterious way they keep arriving. I find it hard to keep out of bookshops./p pI’m not of course talking about Waterstone’s or Borders, those two-dimensional warehouses that are less like rhizomes and more like nostoc,nbsp; (“excrement blown from the nostrils of some rheumatic planet”):nbsp; I mean those rare and mostly vanished shops, where there is a presiding intelligence, someone who makes whimsical and informed choices, and knows his shelves, who surprises you with odd juxtapositions and unknown authors, finds recondite titles and recommends forgotten poets./p pThere are cities in the Middle East where bookshops are definitely shoots from the rhizome of culture. In Cairo I used to spend many hours among the barrows on the Ezbikiyeh Gardens (and I still go sometimes to the sad little yard behind the Ezbekiyeh tube station to which they have been brutally banished). I have several treasures on my shelves found on those barrows 30 and more years ago, bound up in leather and buckram by the old emmugallid/em behind the Abdin Palace who used to bind books for King Farouk’s library./p pBut the quintessential bookshop is somewhere in Baghdad, on al-Mutanabbi Street. I bought few books there, perhaps because we lived in Baghdad in one of the leaner times, in 1989-90, just before the first (or second, if you count the way we did then) Gulf War. Al-Mutanabbi Street, though an early twentieth century creation in its present form, was on much the same spot, in some previous life 1200 years ago, when London was a boggy village and Rome the sad wreck of an ancient city populated by grim clergymen and grubby sheep. Baghdad was a book-mad city, a factory of poetry and knowledge, omnivorously creating, digesting, translating, rethinking, creating anew. The city spouted verse, philosophy, science and theology, and its scribes churned out books on the newfangled paper that came from the east. That crazy bibliophily, that intoxicating excitement at the discovery of ideas and words, had its home on, or very near, the crooked street running down from Rasheed Street to the River Tigris./p pAl-Mutanabbi Street has had its ups and downs since then, most recently this year a night-raid with bulldozers by Baghdad’s city authorities, to carry out ‘urban improvements’ under cover of darkness. But its worst moment in recent times was on March 5, 2007, when a car bomb exploded in the street, killing thirty people and injuring at least a hundred more, destroying bookshops and storerooms, cafés and street stalls. The whole bookish culture of the street was smashed to smithereens in an instant, and the idiocy of Logan Pearsall Smith’s comment brutally underlined:nbsp; life’s the thing, after all, and reading is contingent on living./p pI’ve been thinking about it today, reading an anthology of poetry and prose written about the bombing and its significance, called emAl-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here/em (Oakland, CA, 2012).nbsp; It’s a gesture of solidarity from a group of mainly Californian and Iraqi writers to the universality of the culture of literature and imagination; and the universality of the wound that is made by wilfully destroying both, in a godless explosion of blood and paper./p pThe preface, by Muhsin al-Musawi, tells of the bomb, and the destruction of the Shahbandar Café, but more remarkably, to me, describes the street itself like a print-historian of early modern London wandering in his mind through the bookshops of St Paul’s churchyard or London Bridge. I’ll quote it because it creates a poignant sense of the reality, of the sensuous tissue of people and books and imagination, the intricate intellectual ground-plan that was al-Mutanabbi Street:/p blockquotepemAmong individual booksellers from al-Mutanabbi Street’s more recent history were Abd al-Rahman Effendi (1890), Mulla Khidayyir (1900) and his son Abd al-Karim, who later owned Mishriq Bookshop. He was followed by Numan al-Adami (1905) with his Arabiyya Bookshop, then Mahmud Hilmi (1914) with his famous Asriyyah Bookshop. Shams al-Din al-Haidari had his Ahliyya Bookshop, which was the first to get Franklin’s books published. The famous Husayn al-Fulfili, with his many anecdotes, had his Zawra Bookshop, named after the original epithet of Baghdad (1932). Around the same time, Muhammad Qasim al-Rijab bought the historical house of Saib Shawkat on the right side of the same street. It became the Muthanna Bookshop … Mahmud Jawad Haidar had his bookshop, al-Marif, on the right side of the street, the same side where Ali al-Kalqani had his Najah Bookshop (that changed into al-Bayan Bookshop, which produced a famous journal published in Nejef). Abd al-Hamid Zahid inaugurated the auction for books and had his bookshop on the right side, as the Bookshop of Abd al-Hamid Zahid . He was among the leaders of the popular revolution of 1920. Abd al-Rahman Hayyawi established his Nahdhah Bookshop … His son Najah took over after his father’s death, and was followed by his brother Muhammad. The latter lost his life in 2007./em/p/blockquote pThis was what was blown up, a delicate membrane of trade and publishing, politics and tobacco smoke, readers, gossips and couplets. Verse, literature and conversation were ripped apart, deep seriousness and thistledown frivolity. The anthology contains some poignant descriptions not just of the books themselves and the garrulously bookish culture of the stalls and shops; but of the Shahbandar Café whose owner lost four sons and grandsons in the bombing, “where antique water-pipes were stacked in rows three deep. On the walls inside were pictures of Iraq’s history: portraits of the bare-chested 1936 wrestling team, King Faisal’s court after World War One and the funeral of King Ghazi in 1939;” … “where you order a emnargila/em and smoke it and leaf through the books you’ve bought, its bubbling laughter mixing with your stifled giggles.”/p pAnthony Shadid writes of the bizarre “intellectual free-for-all” that the street became after the US invasion, where “Shiite iconography – of living ayatollahs and 7th century saints marching to their deaths – was everywhere. Nearby were new issues of emFHM/em and emMaxim/em, their covers adorned with scantily clad women. On rickety stands were compact discs of Osama bin Laden’s messages … Down the street were pamphlets of the venerable Communist Party.”/p pBut that wasn’t all. Ayub Nuri writes of his delight at finding a job lot of 27 novels by Agatha Christie; another writer tells of coming across a volume of Persian verse once given her by a lover; yet another celebrates the discovery of an old book, still carrying his own signature, looping back through time to its first owner. Muhammad al-Hamrani tells how he was spared death by a gunman who recognized him, far from Baghdad, as a bookseller from the Street./p pOn her way to al-Mutanabbi Street, Irada al-Jabbouri follows an itinerary that speaks from the page to me: emOn the way to the British Council in the Waziriya Area, we stop at the print shop … we pretend to drink tea on the pavement of the next door, while we wait for our photocopies of forbidden books … in the British Council garden we swap books and talk – Iraqis from Baghdad and the provinces, Arabs, foreigners. We borrow books, films, music tapes from the Council’s library./em/p pThese visits were perhaps a year or two before I arrived in Baghdad on my first British Council posting, but that garden I remember very clearly, with its tattered wicker chairs and its chipped green tin tables, its babel of accents and its occasional furtive and solitary tea-drinking listener who the young avoided. It was one of the very few places in Baghdad where it was respectable for a boy and girl to go together, and where conversation was safe enough. Some of the forbidden books came from the Council’s library. I remember the long-suffering librarian, Naomi Kazwini, sadly putting an end to the ploy of a group of different library members ordering Rushdie’s emSatanic Verses/em, one chapter at a time, from the British Library at Boston Spa. I remember the appetite for books, the amazing rate of theft, which we thought of as ullage, and didn’t worry too much about. I remember two army officers found getting a copy of emJane’s Fighting Ships/em out of the library through the gap under an air-conditioner, one pulling from outside, one pushing from in. (I’ve often wondered how emJane’s/em got into the library in the first place: all books were censored, and I still have a children’s book about Noah’s Ark with emmamnu3/em – forbidden – scrawled across the flyleaf.)/p pBooks are no substitute for living, but they are a necessity; and through them and the complicated life and bloody injury of this short street we catch a glimpse of Iraq and its heart. Anthony Shadid writes of one bookseller, Mohammed Hayawi that “his quiet life deserves more than a footnote, if for no other reason than to remember a man who embraced what Baghdad was and tried to make sense of a country that doesn’t make sense any more. Gone with him are small moments of life, gentle simply by virtue of being ordinary, now lost in the rubble strewn along a street that will never be the same.”/p pOne last and, for me, very poignant footnote: March 5th 2007, the day of the bomb, was my daughter’s seventeenth birthday. Born while we were living in Baghdad, her second name – given her by her Baghdadi godfather – is Sheherezad./p pnbsp;This a href=http://marforioromano.wordpress.com/2012/12/19/lifes-the-thing/blog was first published/a on a href=file://localhost/x-msg/::9962:marforioromano.wordpress.comemMercurius Maghrebensis/em/a in December, 2012.nbsp;/p pimg src=http://www.opendemocracy.net/files/threeheads.jpeg width=460 //p h2Pirls and boys/h2 pIn early December emL’Economiste/em ran a front page editorial by Mohamed Benabid, which was bitter in its condemnation of Moroccan public schools. emEveryone knows/em, he writes, emthat the public school system in Morocco is a disaster/em. This is so despite the hugely increased spending on public education in the country; and today emthe crisis of education has broken bounds and invited itself to the table of another crisis, that of exports and competitivity/em. Benabid concludes that the crisis in education is one of sector governance and strategy: emwe’ve been reflecting on the future of the school system for a quarter of a century, without any real idea of how to handle it./em/p pOuch. What prompted this tirade was the publication of the 2011 PIRLS and TIMMS results. These are two international tests, the first in literacy and the second in mathematics, which calibrate achievement by children in countries that take part, and give some kind of objective assessment of whether education policies are having the impact intended. The results are not kind to Morocco. Out of 45 countries testing its Fourth graders in literacy, Morocco comes forty-fifth; of the 4 levels of literacy assigned, only 21% of Fourth graders reach or pass the lowest (as against 95% for the international median), a figure that rises to 61% when the same test is applied two years later, in the Sixthnbsp;grade. It isn’t possible to compare meaningfully with previous years (Morocco has done the PIRLS, in 2001, 2006 and 2011) as “average achievement is not reliably measured because the percentage of students with achievement too low for estimation exceeds 25%.” The maths results are similar: forty-ninthnbsp;out of 50 countries (beating Yemen) at Fourth grade; and forty-eighthnbsp;(Yemen and Ghana) at Sixth grade. Ouch again./p pSo what’s going on? This is an education system that has had 2.7 billion euros poured into it since 2009 under the emPlan d’Urgence/em: somehow the problems seem to defy the very real and substantial efforts of the educational planners and funders. I find PIRLS particularly interesting and particularly depressing, in two dimensions. The first is the interplay with overall literacy statistics; the second is the interplay with gender./p pWorld Bank figures on literacy in Morocco show 56.1% literacy – a steadily but slowly rising line of achievement which still leaves the kingdom one hundred and eighty sixthnbsp;out of 205 countries measured, the lowest scoring of all MENA countries, and two points below Mauretania. The youth literacy rate in the same sources is 79.5%, suggesting on the face of it that illiteracy is an age-related problem that is being squeezed, albeit slowly, out of the system by increased primary enrollment and steady attrition./p pBut this doesn’t square with the PIRLS results. If only 61% of Sixth graders reach the lowest measurable literacy level (designed for grade 4), and more than 25% are at too low a level to measure at all (leaving perhaps 14% somewhere between the barely measurable and the lowest achievement level), then a 79.5% youth literacy rate cannot be right. Unless of course significantly less demanding standards than PIRLS’s are being applied in the World Bank statistics: and this of course is what is happening./p pPIRLS is an attempt to measure the ability to interpret simple written texts in terms both of content and context. As the PIRLS literature describes the test: “PIRLS devotes half of the assessment to reading for literary experience and half to reading to acquire and use information. It also assesses reading comprehension processes across the two purposes for reading.” The World Bank criterion is simpler: “the percentage of the population age 15 and above who can, with understanding, read and write a short, simple statement on their everyday life.”/p pIn what sense is the single-statement test actually a measure of literacy? Or perhaps more fairly we might ask: what emdoes/em literacy mean, and what emshould/em it mean? The single-statement tells us that someone can manage a simple, pre-determined task, its terms of reference defined by the familiar. To be able to manage it is – of course – a very real achievement in a non-literate environment and should not be belittled; but is it adaptable to other circumstances (an application form, a public notice or a newspaper)? And is it a contributor to individual and collective prosperity? Above all, is it accumulative – does it provide an active tool for the progressive acquisition and retention of knowledge? I am not clear that the literacy rate stated by the World Bank is an indicator of any such thing./p pPIRLS measures the ability to emuse/em written text, and is a serious attempt to answer the last question. It measures not a static and familiar skill, but a versatile skill that can be redeployed in other circumstances than that in which it was learned. Literacy of this sort emdoes/em provide an active tool for the progressive acquisition and retention of knowledge, and so it is a genuine, live instrument which will, in the hands of some children at least, equip them to build cultural and knowledge capital in Morocco./p pMy second point concerns gender, and again there is a contradiction between PIRLS and national statistics, this time dramatic and diametrical: PIRLS finds girls more than 10% ahead of boys at grade 4, and 8.5% ahead at grade 6. But in the national statistics we find that 68.9% of men and 43.9% of women are literate./p pOnce again, this could be age-skewed, so the better comparison is with the figures for young people aged 15-24 (still potentially age-skewed, but much less so). Here the difference between girls and boys is 81.5% – which means that for every 100 literate boys, there are only 81.5 literate girls. But at grade 4 there were 110 literate girls for every 100 literate boys; and at grade 6, there were 108.5 literate girls for every 100 literate boys. Something dreadful is happening to girls between the age of ten and 20, and leaching away their early literacy. A girls’ out-performance over boys of +10% at grade 4 has changed to an under-performance of -18.5% by (let’s say) the age of 20. And this isn’t just to do with school attendance: official figures for primary school completion, to the end of grade 6, are 85.8% for boys and 81.8% for girls. If all children by grade 6 had learned to read, this would mean 105 literate boys for every 100 literate girls, which PIRLS suggests strongly isn’t the case./p pThere’s something fishy here. There’s a wonderful moment in Terry Pratchett’s emTruckers/em, when the learned old abbot tries to discourage the heroine from learning to read on the basis that reading “makes girls’ brains overheat.” Perhaps that’s it, and girls reach their intellectual ceiling between the beginning of grade 6 and the end, and their brains fry. But I rather doubt it. The collapse of female achievement after elementary education is cataclysmic./p pAnd this takes us back to Mohamed Benabid’s remark that emthe crisis of education has broken bounds and invited itself to the table of another crisis, that of exports and competitivity. /emIf the literacy aim of primary education is simply to increase the proportion of children who can read and write a single sentence, it can have little bearing to speak of on the economy. Even 56% literacy puts Morocco far down the world chart in terms of a skilled workforce, and for a country that must build its prosperity on its proximity to Europe and its situation at the gateway to Africa, this is not enough. Those 56% may have adequate reading skills to be effective manual and semi-skilled workers (though the language deficit is also crucial, as the import of anglophone Indian labourers into the Tangier Free Zone illustrated recently); but if Morocco is to become, as it must, the offshoring centre of southern Europe, the outer end of Europe’s key manufacturing supply-lines, and the gateway to Africa, then a different and higher kind of literacy is needed. And the half of the potential workforce that is made up of women needs to be brought fully into the circle of literacy, productivity and potential employment. The situation echoes poignantly the AHDR of 2005, which summarizes, on women and education, thus:/p blockquotepemDespite the tremendous spread of girls’ education in Arab countries, women continue to suffer more than men do from a lack of opportunities to acquire knowledge. This occurs despite the fact that girls excel in knowledge pursuits, outstripping boys in competitive academic performance./em/ppembr //em/ppemIn terms of basic indicators, the Arab region has one of the highest rates of female illiteracy. It also displays one of the lowest rates of enrolment at the various levels of education …/em/ppembr //em/ppemInternational data indicate that girls in the Arab region perform better in school than boys. Drop out rates for girls are lower than those for boys in all the countries for which data are available. …/em/p/blockquote pGirls, go out and overheat your brains.nbsp;/p pThis a href=http://marforioromano.wordpress.com/2013/01/12/pirls-and-boys/blog was first published/a on a href=file://localhost/x-msg/::9962:marforioromano.wordpress.comemMercurius Maghrebensis/em/a in January, 2013./pdiv class=field field-country div class=field-label Country or region:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd Morocco /div /div /div div class=field field-topics div class=field-labelTopics:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd Civil society /div div class=field-item even Culture /div div class=field-item odd Equality /div div class=field-item even Ideas /div div class=field-item odd International politics /div /div /div

div class=field field-summary div class=field-items div class=field-item odd pThe eruption of protests, violence and civil disobedience in Egypt this month is a replay of the scene in 2011 before the status quo was ruptured, but the current regime’s attacks on women and religious minorities in order to quell opposition is more pervasive than anything seen before, argues Mariz Tadros/p /div /div /div pIt is too soon to predict how the current battle between the Muslim Brotherhood-led regime and the opposition in Egypt will end, as a href=http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/28/morsi-egypt-polarised-secularists-islamistsviolence escalates/a and spreads, claiming 50 lives this week - and counting. /p pThere are three major differences between the political scene at the wake of the revolution in January 2011 and the January 2013 anniversary of the events. First, unlike President Mubarak whose sole constituency were members of his party, a handful of businessmen and a minute proportion of the population, President Morsi has been elected tonbsp; leadership through a 51% vote (though some political analysts have questioned the credibility of the results ) and therefore he presents himself to the people as “the elected President”.nbsp; Second, while Mubarak’s use of force relied exclusively on the security apparatus and its hired thugs, the Morsi regime not only relies on state apparatuses of repression, but also within the civil society arena, on its own militias and the Salafi constituency. The Muslim Brotherhood government has not shied from a href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/mariz-tadros/perilous-slide-towards-islamist-dictatorship-in-egyptunleashing/a the powers of the state and militia forces against citizens.nbsp; The third difference is that while Mubarak sought to instrumentalize Islam to prop his rule, the Muslim Brotherhood regime has claimed that it emrepresents /emIslam itself. Some citizens feel that though they have experienced a real drop in the quality of their lives, they can’t revolt against Morsi because he is the elected and believing President who prays at the mosque every Friday and is a God-fearing man. /p pThere are many commonalities in the conditions before the revolution of the 2011 and the situation today, including acute economic hardship, thriving corruption, the social and political exclusion of large segments of the population, and a President oblivious to the angry pulse of the street (in fact President Morsi’s speech, two days after the eruption of violence on the 25th of January 2013, is strongly reminiscent of Mubarak’s first speech after the uprisings seen on the same month, two years earlier).nbsp; Yet the three differences mentioned above have produced a deeply polarized society, the extent of which is incomparable to the scene two years ago. In such a context, the emmillioniyya/em in Tahrir Square (one million person) has become ineffective for eliciting change.nbsp; Mass mobilization of an oppositional bloc is countered with the mobilization of a pro-Islamist bloc. Further, the combined forces of the state, army and militia in the hands of the authorities shows no restraint in the ruthless repression of the citizenry. The political exploitation of religion has created two sides: the believers who observe God’s laws, and the presumed infidels who comprise all Muslims who oppose Morsi’s rule, in addition to the religious minorities. As one citizen put it simply “we want Morsi because the Christians are against him”. Against the background of stalled dialogue processes, and the lack of responsiveness of the Muslim Brotherhood to the opposition’s demands - which include revisiting the contentious elements of the constitution, power sharing - some resistance movements that resort to violence have emerged. /p pWomen’s participation in emmillioniyyas/em two years ago played an instrumental role in the activism against Mubarak’s regime, and the women’s march to Tahrir Square on the 25th of January 2013 greatly contributed to the energy and numbers of the protestors. Yet on the same day, after dark in Tahrir Square, men organized in groups began to target women for sexual assault. Shoft Taharosh,nbsp; a youth led initiative that was formed to address sexual assault, a href=https://www.facebook.com/Shoft.Ta7roshreported/a dealing with nineteen cases of assault, six of which required medical intervention, in addition to other cases of assaulted women they became aware of. The a href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/zainab-magdy/egyptian-women-performing-in-margin-revolting-in-centrecases of sexual assault/a are in fact more numerous since some are likely to have chosen not to file complaints. There is a need to recognize that these acts of sexual assault are not driven by the same motives as the social forms of sexual harassment that one regularly witnesses on the streets of Egypt (i.e by men showing off their power or taking it as a way to pass time or “have a good time”.) The kind of sexual assault that was witnessed in Tahrir Square on 25th of January 2013 is politically motivated and pre-orchestrated. Women who have a profile of political activism are a prime target of organized men’s assault. /p pThe acts of sexual assault witnessed in Tahrir Square follow a a href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/eba%E2%80%99-el-tamami/harassment-free-zonefamiliarnbsp; pattern/a that we have witnessed since protestors were attacked in Mohamed Mahmoud Street by the police force in November 2011. At that time, one young man explained in an interview, the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi followers had formed a human cordon to prevent the protestors from entering Mohamed Mahmoud Street. When they tried to pass through, the Islamists attacked them, and many women and men were sexually molested by having their bodies touched and fingered.nbsp; The wave of politically motivated sexual assault has continued, being witnessed in June 2012 against a demonstration of women who were ironically, protesting the increased incidence of sexual assault against them and in Tahrir Square in November 2012. The a href=http://www.youtube.com/embed/AXsjfrC0uLI?feature=player_embeddedattacks/a by the Islamists at el Etehadiyya palace in December 2012 exposed the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis violent and sexual assault of women whom they “captured”.nbsp; /p pWhile the Mubarak regime resorted to thugs to molest women as a tactic to break the opposition, and SCAF soldiers stripped and assaulted women protestors, politically motivated sexual assault of women has gained new momentum under the current Brotherhood regime. First, is the scale of politically motivated sexual violence that we have observed under the Brotherhood’s watch. Second, the pattern of sexual assault suggests that it is undertaken in a systematic, pre-planned way and involves co-ordinated groups of men acting in unison. Farah Shash, a psychologist at a href=https://alnadeem.org/en/node/23El Nadim Centre/a for the treatment and rehabilitation of victims of torture and violence has observed that the sexual assaults often follow a particular pattern: “they take place in the same way and sometimes around the same area. The pattern is as follows: it starts with around 15- 20 men who surround a woman or two, they put their hands together, and their number increases during the harassment assault? to around 50 men. They form two circles, an inner one thatnbsp; attacks the women, harassing, groping, assaulting them and ripping off their clothes trying to get them naked, and an outer circle that protects the inner one and attacks any man who tries to save the girls. Several incidents took place at the entrance of Mohamed Mahmoud Street and in-front of Hardees in-front of the square”.nbsp; One young woman told me that in June 2012 she tried to save a girl who was being assaulted in the middle of one of these circles, and she couldn’t get through because the men were harassing her so much and pulling her towards the centre of the circle. There is a singular single, blatant objective of such a href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/zoe-holman/state-complicity-in-sexual-abuse-of-women-in-cairopolitically motivated attacks/a: to render women too scared to go out to protest, and to turn families and society against women’s political activism. So far, it has not worked, with women activists taking to the street in large numbers (as we witnessed on the 25th of January 2013). However,nbsp; no perpetrator has been incriminated and, no action has been taken against the criminals. Shash argues that the sexual harassment of women by collectivities of men is intended to make it impossible for victims to be able to identify their individual assaulters. However, even when individual men were identified, as was the case in one female protestor’s account of her subjection to sexual assault at el Ettehadiya palace, no one has been arrested and no legal action has been taken against the perpetrators. In fact, at el Ettehadiyya palace, the security forces played an active role in enabling the Islamists to “keep” their “captured women”.nbsp; The ruling regime a href=http://www.youm7.com/News.asp?NewsID=559494neither issued an official condemnation/a nor made any acknowledgement of women’s exposure to sexual assault- even the Supreme Council of Armed Forces and the former Mubarak regime dared not go so far. /p pThe rupturing of the very social fabric of society in order to subjugate the opposition has also taken a more dangerous turn in the form of scapegoating Christians for political dissidence. The Mubarak regime’s secret political police often used sectarianism as a divide and rule strategy - while SCAF was behind one of the country’s worst a href=http://www.merip.org/mero/mero101311massacres/a in contemporary history against Christians, that at Maspero on the 9th October, 2011. This open nationwide incitation to violence against Christians has never been displayednbsp; in such a systematic and consistent way. /p pMilitia movements like the a href=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-21228852Black Bloc brigade/a have emerged to counter the violence of the regime were observed in Tahrir Square on the 25th of January 2013. The Muslim Brotherhood’s Ikhwan online website a href=http://www.elwatannews.com/news/details/120609announced/a (and later repealed) a statement that the Black Bloc brigade were formed by the Coptic Orthodox Church and have been engaged in acts of more widespread violence. /p pThe Black Bloc have come out categorically denying any association with the church and have accused the Brotherhood of seeking to incite sectarianism. This is not the first time that the Muslim Brotherhood have turned the battle against the opposition into a religious war involving the believers and the unbelievers. In December 2012,nbsp; Mohamed el Beltagy, Head of the Freedom and Justice Party a href=http://www1.youm7.com/News.asp?NewsID=873567amp;SecID=12accused/a Christians of being the main proponents behind the opposition at el Etehadiyya Palace. In the context of a nation deeply ripped by sectarianism, the continuous representation of the opposition as being the (non-Muslim religious enemy) infidel can only be interpreted as a step towards bringing the country to the brink of a civil war. /p pThe assault on women and minorities has been part and parcel of a larger policy of repressing dissidence, including the subjection of revolutionaries and protestors to arrests and disappearances, the demonization of the independent media and press, and the struggle with the workers’ movements. Yet the Muslim Brotherhood-led government’s a href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/deniz-kandiyoti/fear-and-fury-women-and-post-revolutionary-violencesystematic use of politically motivated sexual assault /aagainst peaceful female and male protestors, and their decision to represent the political struggle as a religious battle against the Christians who foment all political opposition has surpassed many of the most brutal tactics of former authoritarian regimes in Egypt. They strike at the very fabric of Egyptian society not because women and religious minorities are the weakest segments but because they have the least political clout to launch a counter-assaultnbsp; There is very little social sympathy or empathy within the wider population for their predicament, and hence the Brotherhood are targeting segments of the population that would be met with the least social resistance to their repression.nbsp; /p pnbsp;/p pnbsp;/p pnbsp;/p pnbsp;/pfieldset class=fieldgroup group-sideboxslegendSideboxes/legenddiv class=field field-related-stories div class=field-labelRelated stories:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd a href=/5050/zoe-holman/state-complicity-in-sexual-abuse-of-women-in-cairoState complicity in the sexual abuse of women in Cairo/a /div div class=field-item even a href=/5050/nelly-van-doorn-harder/egypt-does-revolution-include-coptsEgypt: does the revolution include the Copts?/a /div div class=field-item odd a href=/5050/mariz-tadros/egypt-islamization-of-state-policyEgypt: the Islamization of state policy /a /div div class=field-item even a href=/5050/zainab-magdy/egyptian-women-performing-in-margin-revolting-in-centreEgyptian women: performing in the margin, revolting in the centre/a /div div class=field-item odd a href=/5050/hania-sholkamy/egypt-will-there-be-place-for-womens-human-rightsEgypt: will there be a place for women#039;s human rights? /a /div div class=field-item even a href=/5050/eba%E2%80%99-el-tamami/harassment-free-zoneHarassment free zone /a /div div class=field-item odd a href=/5050/deniz-kandiyoti/fear-and-fury-women-and-post-revolutionary-violenceFear and fury: women and post-revolutionary violence/a /div div class=field-item even a href=/5050/hania-sholkamy/from-tahrir-square-to-my-kitchenFrom Tahrir square to my kitchen/a /div /div /div /fieldset div class=field field-country div class=field-label Country or region:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd Egypt /div /div /div div class=field field-topics div class=field-labelTopics:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd Democracy and government /div div class=field-item even Equality /div /div /div

div class=field field-summary div class=field-items div class=field-item odd pAward winning author, Marcus Chown, summarises the reality of what has happened to the NHS, the quality of press coverage and why it is so important the public understand the truth beneath the packaging./p /div /div /div pspan class='wysiwyg_imageupload image imgupl_floating_none 0'a href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/files/imagecache/wysiwyg_imageupload_lightbox_preset/wysiwyg_imageupload/535628/NHSbupa1.jpg rel=lightbox[wysiwyg_imageupload_inline] title=img src=http://www.opendemocracy.net/files/imagecache/article_large/wysiwyg_imageupload/535628/NHSbupa1.jpg alt= title= width=400 height=222 class=imagecache wysiwyg_imageupload 0 imagecache imagecache-article_large style= //a span class='image_meta'span class='image_title'NHS - becoming a logo for private providers? Image: Graham Smith/span/span/span/p pThe Health and Social Care was passed 27 March 2012. Crucially and most seriously, it removes the UK government’s obligation to provide universal healthcare in England, something so fundamental it amounts to the a href=http://tinyurl.com/4xdnoboabolition of the NHS/a. As Dr Jacky Davis, co-chair of the NHS Consultants Association says: After the passage of the unwanted, unneeded and deeply undemocratic NHS bill, we no longer have a national health service./p pThere was overwhelming opposition from the medical profession – for instance, from the British Medical Association and all but one of the 26 royal medical colleges. This was not communicated by the mainstream media, particularly the BBC. Although the NHS affects every man, woman and child in England, most remain in the dark about what has happened./p pThe government has played a big role by repeatedly concealed the purpose of the bill - to make possible the gradual dismantling of the NHS and its replacement in a few years by a market system, based on ability to pay rather than need. According to a href=http://tinyurl.com/d64qov6Michael Portillo/a: the Tories did not believe they could win an election if they told you what they were going to do [to the NHS]./p pThe government also used mis-information to justify its reforms. According to Portillo, the Tories had to do something about the a href=http://tinyurl.com/d64qov6incredible inefficiency/a of the NHS. The truth is the NHS is one of the a href=http://tinyurl.com/3qf92zcfairest, most efficient and cost-effective/a healthcare systems in the world. It has half the per capita costs of the US health system - which is not universal - and has a higher life expectancy and lower infant mortality (OECD figures)./p pThe government even defied a Freedom of Information act ruling to make public the risk assessment of the bill, despite the commissioner's verdict of exceptional public interest. And there was a massive conflict of interest, with 1/4 of the MPs and Lords who voted for the Bill having a href=http://tinyurl.com/7gcsaqffinancial stakes/a in private health companies that stood to benefit by from the bill's passage. “Care UK”, a private health company donated significant money to the office of health secretary Andrew Lansley./p pIn addition to removing the universal right to healthcare, which has existed since 1948, the HSC Act also opens the door for charges without limit for NHS services. It permits private providers to take over any NHS services. And it allows up to 49% of the business of NHS hospitals to be private. Quite apart from the fact that the intention is almost certainly to eventually increase this percentage to 100% - ie: create a US-style insurance-based system - this will create a health system with a href=http://tinyurl.com/c7jbd2ptwo queues/a: one for the poor and one for the rich. In a cash-strapped system, a rich person with a minor ailment will be treated over a poor person with a more serious ailment. Care will never again be according to need but ability to pay, says Dr Clare Gerada, Chair of the Royal College of GPs./p pThe Faculty of Public Health's risk assessment a href=http://tinyurl.com/7z2nf2fwarns of/a 1) Loss of a comprehensive Health service, 2) Increased costs, 3) Reduced quality of care, 4) Widening health inequalities. In a nutshell: the NHS is integrated, comprehensive, cost-effective, accountable. A mix of providers is fragmented, unaccountable, expensive, only profitable services. nbsp;‘Integrated’ means that data is shared – something which was not the case with the private companies involved with the recent breast implant scare – and that patients receive care from a multi-disciplinary team of doctors, nurses, physios, district nurses, and so on. ‘Comprehensive’ means that all people and all ailments are treated. ‘Accountable’ means that problems are made public and not concealed by commercial contracts./p pBut the risks highlighted by the Faculty of Public Health are all short term. The NHS is being removed gradually - no government would dare remove it in one go since, at the last election, it had the highest-ever public approval rating. However, the end-game is an insurance-based system like the US where, without health insurance, you will not be able to get treatment for you and your family. The term NHS will be meaningless. The NHS will be reduced to a logo, a budget and a few qangos, says public health physician, Dr Alex Scott-Samuel./p pMost people remain in the dark about what the HSC Act does because of failure of the mainstream media. As has often been said on Twitter, if the BBC covered economics like it has health, nobody would know there had been a global financial crisis. On the day the Act was passed the strap-line across the bottom of BBC News broadcasts said Bill which gives power to GPs is passed. It would be difficult to find a GP who agreed with that./p pAt a time of severe financial pressure, huge sums of money – estimated at more than £3 billion - are being diverted from patient care to fund the reorganisation necessary to implement the HSC Act. /p pThe implementation of the HSC Act is creating huge amounts of duplicated bureaucracy – the principle cause of the high cost of the US healthcare system./p pGradually, the government is starving the NHS of money. This is deliberate. As hospitals run out of money - and the exorbitant repayments on PFI deals are a major factor here - they become prey to takeovers by private companies. This has already happened, with Serco taking over Newmarket Hospital./p pNot only does a private company cherry-pick profitable services but it gains infrastructure paid for by the taxpayer. It can also give preferential access to equipment such as kidney machines, blood and organs that were specifically donated by the public to the NHS for use by everyone./p pNHS services must be put out to tender. The core business of the transnational corporations that are bidding is emwinning government contracts/em, as they have the experience, deep pockets and legal expertise to do so. Small enterprises and local GPs cannot compete with them in tendering for services as has already been seen in the Virgin takeover of community services in Surrey and children’s' services in Devon. When private companies fail, such as the company with the contract for GP services in Camden, London, patients are high and dry./p pThe starving of the NHS of money to force the pace of its sell off to private companies is forcing the imminent closure of 4 out of 9 Aamp;E departments serving NW London. It is forcing the closure of Lewisham Hospital Aamp;E and maternity unit, despite the fact that they are highly rated as centres of excellence./p pTrusts are getting together in cartels to force down nurses' pay, though nurses have experienced a pay freeze (ie: pay decrease, taking into account inflation) for several years now. Dr Peter Carter, Chair of the Royal College of Nurses is predicting the loss of 56,058 nursing jobs./p pLastly, the fragmentation of the NHS is reducing data sharing. This means it is even becoming more difficult to assess just how healthcare is emworsening/em./pp Cameron's destruction of the NHS is arguably the worst crime committed by a UK government against its people in generations. He is dismantling a much-loved and precious institution while lying that he is not. And he is doing at a time when Barrack Obama in the US is moving his country from a disastrous market-based health system to a universal system of healthcare similar to the NHS. Cameron is doing it with no mandate and he is doing having concealed his health policy prior to the 2010 election. The NHS represent everything the British people hold dear. It is integral our culture and, as Danny Boyle demonstrated at the 2012 Olympics, defines Britain, symbolising fairness and working together for a common good. /ppnbsp;/pfieldset class=fieldgroup group-sideboxslegendSideboxes/legenddiv class=field field-related-stories div class=field-labelRelated stories:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd a href=/ournhs/david-owen/bill-to-re-instate-nhsA bill to re-instate the NHS?/a /div div class=field-item even a href=/ournhs/allyson-pollock-david-price-louisa-harding-edgar/briefing-paper-nhs-reinstatement-billBriefing paper - the NHS reinstatement bill/a /div /div /div /fieldset div class=field field-country div class=field-label Country or region:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd UK /div /div /div

div class=field field-summary div class=field-items div class=field-item odd pimg style=float: right; src=http://www.opendemocracy.net/files/DW logo small.png alt= width=140 //ppRepublicans seek to protect and promote individual freedom. So do libertarians of the right. The difference? Republicans recognise that the market is constructed through political, public action./p /div /div /div p class=Body1span class='wysiwyg_imageupload image imgupl_floating_none_left 0'a href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/files/imagecache/wysiwyg_imageupload_lightbox_preset/wysiwyg_imageupload/535193/res%20publica.jpg rel=lightbox[wysiwyg_imageupload_inline] title=img src=http://www.opendemocracy.net/files/imagecache/article_large/wysiwyg_imageupload/535193/res%20publica.jpg alt= title= width=400 height=268 class=imagecache wysiwyg_imageupload 0 imagecache imagecache-article_large style= //a span class='image_meta'span class='image_title'Image: Songquan Deng / Shutterstock.com/span/span/span/pp class=Body1Freedom in the republican tradition requires enjoyment of the fundamental liberties with the security that only a rule of law can provide. You must be publicly protected and resourced in such a way that it is manifest to you and to all that under local (not unnecessarily restrictive) conventions: you can speak your mind, associate with your fellows, enjoy communal resources, locate where you will, move occupation and make use of what is yours, without reason for fearing anyone or deferring to anyone. You have the standing of a emliber/em or free person; you enjoy equal status under the public order and you share equally in control over that order.nbsp;/p p class=Body1This approach to the public world ascribes importance to a sphere of relatively private relationships and actions, insisting that within that sphere you should not be beholden to anyone for your ability to act as you will. But on any of the established republican views that sphere is a space that is carved out by public custom and law, maintained by public enforcement, and secured by a form of public control in which each has an equal share. The rules of public order constitute the possibility of private life in the way in which the rules of a game like chess constitute the possibility of playing that game. They represent enabling (or enabling-cum-constraining) rules, not rules that merely regulate a pre-existing domain. /p p class=Body1This republican image runs into sharp conflict with a more received picture, celebrated by right-wing libertarians, according to which the rules of public order regulate the private sphere rather than serving – now in the fashion of one culture, now in the fashion of another – to make it possible. On this libertarian view the private sphere is only contingently dependent on public regulation, not dependent in the constitutive manner envisaged in the republican. The conflict between the images is important because it shows up in alternative visions of the economy and the relationship between the economy and the state./p p class=Body1strongProperty: the contrast in libertarian and republican views/strong/p p class=Body1To bring out the conflict of images, consider the property conventions that establish the titles and rights of ownership. On the libertarian picture owning is a natural relationship — you might think of it as a relationship of possession and use — and the rules of property serve to affirm and protect the natural rights of owners. /p p class=Body1On the republican picture, owning is a relationship that presupposes law, if only the inchoate law of informal custom. You do not own something — you do not have the freedom of an owner — just insofar as you can hang onto it, frightening off or driving off potential rivals. You own something only insofar as it is a matter of accepted convention that given the way you came to hold it — given public recognition of the title you have to the property — you enjoy public protection against those who would take it from you. It is yours to hold and enjoy in private; but it is yours in that sense only by grace of public convention. /p p class=Body1This view of property, prominent in spana href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/jean-jacques_rousseauemRousseau/em/a/span and presupposed in the broader republican tradition, is scarcely questionable in view of the salient diversity in systems of property. These differ in how far they allow for communal and public property as well as private; in the titles they recognize on the private front; and in the rights of usage that they grant to private owners. Think of the variation in how far landowners are taken to own minerals under the surface of their land, or of the diversity in copyright law and intellectual property, or of the differences in how far people are allowed to treat their animals or extend their houses. Or think, of course, of the range of variation in taxation regimes, remembering that public taxation is part and parcel of any property system./p p class=Body1These observations, scarcely richer than platitudes, are important for giving us a perspective on the market and the economy, undermining the libertarian image. That picture represents the market as a emres privata/em, a private thing, suggesting that the role of the state is merely to lay low the hills in the way of the market and smooth the paths for its operation. And so it depicts any other interventions of government in the market as dubious on philosophical, not just empirical, grounds. I suspect that this image accounts for the continuing attachment to austerity among those on the right. They are philosophically opposed to Keynesianism, not just opposed on empirical grounds, and their ideological stance obscures to them any empirically based argument for Keynesian policies. /p p class=Body1strongThe public rules of economic association/strong/p p class=Body1What constitutes the economy on the republican approach? The answer is: the sorts of public rules that create private space in general, such as the public rules that create the possibility of private ownership. These rules are public in the sense of being accepted across the society as a matter of common awareness, and being normally spelled out in statutory or customary law. And they vary across societies and periods, reflecting the varying assumptions of parliaments and courts and other public forums. They include the property conventions that we have been discussing but also extend much further. Without aspiring to be exhaustive, we should add to the emRules of property/em at least the following four categories of market-enabling rules./p p class=Body1emRules of incorporation/em. These determine the forms in which individuals can combine to form new economic players. They have evolved greatly over the past two hundred years, giving companies and banks and other such entities life without a sunset clause; liability that is limited to a shared treasury; the possibility of owning other such entities; the possibility of changing location and sphere of operation; and so on. While the rules for the formation and operation of commercial entities have generally become more and more permissive, most countries impose some anti-trust restrictions, guarding against monopoly. And countries vary a great deal, of course, in how far they allow corporations political influence, with the United States growing ever more tolerant of the pretense that spana href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/corporate_personhoodemcorporations have the rights of natural persons/em/a/span. /p p class=Body1emRules of production/em. These rules impose restrictions on how far the larger players in an economy, especially in manufacturing industry, are allowed to locate near centers of population, to pollute the ground or water or atmosphere, to contribute to global warming, and to impose negative externalities on other players, individual or corporate. Many of these rules come about via statute while others emerge from the courts in the resolution of common law issues, in particular issues of spana href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/tortemtort/em/a/span. The spana href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/calculus_of_negligenceemLearned Hand rule/em/a/span on such questions of tort would suggest, for example, that producers and other parties ought to take precautions against harming others in any cases where the cost of the precaution is less than the expected cost of the damage: that is, the cost of the damage, discounted by the probability of its occurring. /p p class=Body1emRules of contract/em. These determine a variety of matters that have to be sorted out for the smooth and successful operation of a market. Who are competent parties to make contracts? What conditions, say in the matter of records of the transaction, are required for a binding contract? How far is the contract to be understood on the basis of the exact words used and how far on the basis of presumptions reasonably ascribed to the parties? When is a contract null and void? What damages may a party seek for breach of contract: the loss suffered as a result of reliance on the other or the loss of the benefits that the contract promised? And so on. /p p class=Body1emRules of finance/em. By what agencies is the money supply in the economy to be controlled? And what are the guidelines that those agencies should follow? Most countries rely on central banks for controlling the money supply and impose guidelines related to keeping inflation down and employment up. In pursuing its aims, and subject to statutory constraints, the central bank will vary factors such as the base interest rate at which commercial banks can borrow, the ratio they have to preserve between their reserves and their loans, the extent to which their loans can be bundled together in derivatives, the insurance available to depositors in the event of a bank defaulting, and so on./p p class=Body1As the rules of property establish a system of ownership, so these and other rules combine with them to establish, more broadly, a full-scale market economy. This claim, like the earlier claim about the role of property conventions, borders on the platitudinous. But by giving it prominence we can avoid being seduced into the libertarian view — now, alas, almost an orthodoxy — that the market is a relatively autonomous sphere which depends only contingently on the framework of custom and law, and on the role of the state in supporting that framework. The role of the state in relation to the market — the role of the community, operating through the state — is constitutive and not just regulative, enabling and not just constraining. And it is extensive in even a greater measure than my five sets of rules suggest, since it also includes providing for the infrastructure of education, communication, transport and insurance that any contemporary economy requires. /p p class=Body1strongTaking back the economy: the first step is philosophical/strong/p p class=Body1The message, to end on a slogan, is that we should take back the economy in the course of our political thinking. As we theorize normatively about the organization of political life, and about the distribution of socio-economic assets, so we should also theorize about what general shape our economy ought to take and about how our states ought to combine in shaping international economic forces. We should not shrink from such prescriptions on the spurious ground that the economy is a natural reality, subject to its own autonomous laws, and that government intervention always represents a potentially warping influence: the source of what are often described as distortions. (See also in this series the spana href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/stuart-white-martin-oneill-thad-williamson/democratic-case-for-free-marketemrelated discussion/em/a/span of John Tomasi’s arguments for ‘free market fairness’ by Martin O’Neill and Thad Williamson.)/p p class=Body1The philosophical re-construal of the market that I am recommending is quite consistent with empirically based arguments to the effect that one or another form of government intervention is counter-productive and that it may make very good sense in some areas of activity to let the market operate under its own logic. The point is that on issues of economic policy we should keep an open empirical mind. We should not be seduced into a hands-off presumption of the kind that libertarians support. But neither should we presume that we can rely usefully on the hand of government in every area of economic performance. /p p class=Body1We may know as republicans what we ultimately want to secure in political action and organization within our domestic community. I would say that we want to establish people’s equal enjoyment of the basic liberties, secured by a public order that is itself subject to their equally shared control; if you like, we want to promote equal freedom as non-domination in both private and public spheres.nbsp; But neo-republican philosophy on its own does not tell us how best to achieve that goal on any front, economic or otherwise. It sponsors a research program on such matters, framing that program as an inquiry into what we can collectively do through government in trying to further the common good. /p p class=Body1What, then, have I wanted to do here? Merely to insist that that research program should not be inhibited by libertarian presumptions about the market that are implicit in much contemporary thinking. We should not go along with the naturalization of the market, as we might describe it in more or less Marxist terms. We should resist the presumption that the market is a natural domain with its own natural laws and that the depth of government intervention should be limited on the basis of principle, not empirics. nbsp;/ppstrongThis piece is part of the a href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/collections/democratic-wealth-building-citizens-economyDemocratic Wealth series/a, hosted by OurKingdom in partnership with a href=http://politicsinspires.org/category/democratic-wealth//Politics in Spires/a./strong/ppimg src=http://www.opendemocracy.net/files/DWlogoedpartnership_1.png alt= width=300 height=80 //pfieldset class=fieldgroup group-sideboxslegendSideboxes/legenddiv class=field field-related-stories div class=field-labelRelated stories:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd a href=/ourkingdom/stuart-white-martin-oneill-thad-williamson/democratic-case-for-free-marketA democratic case for the free market?/a /div div class=field-item even a href=/ourkingdom/jessica-kimpell/commercial-republic-contradiction-in-termsThe commercial republic: a contradiction in terms?/a /div div class=field-item odd a href=/ourkingdom/stuart-white/democratic-wealth-exploring-ideas-for-citizens%E2%80%99-economyDemocratic wealth: exploring ideas for a citizens’ economy/a /div div class=field-item even a href=/ourkingdom/vincent-bourdeau/what-do-todays-republicans-have-to-say-about-workWhat do today#039;s republicans have to say about work?/a /div /div /div /fieldset div class=field field-topics div class=field-labelTopics:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd Democracy and government /div div class=field-item even Economics /div div class=field-item odd Ideas /div /div /div

div class=field field-summary div class=field-items div class=field-item odd pWhilst women are struggling to gain access to parliament in Morocco, in the religious field they are gaining ground as a legitimate authority. Whether female religious authorities will contribute to the empowerment of Moroccan women in the long-term remains to be seen./p /div /div /div pThe recent a href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/hoda-elsadda/narrating-arab-spring-from-withinpolitical upheavals/a in the Arab world have led to dramatic changes in governance due to the great discontent of people with their authoritarian regimes. In the a href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/mariz-tadros/egypt-islamization-of-state-policyMiddle East/a and a href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/kristine-goulding/tunisia-arab-spring-islamist-summerNorth Africa/a, massive populations have chosen Islamic parties as a substitute for the old corrupt systems. /p pMorocco did a href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/valentina-bartolucci/moroccos-silent-revolutionnot avoid/a the turmoil of the Arab spring. A number of angry protests took place in major cities led by the a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxiIctYkUZUFebruary 20/a Social Movement which demanded the right to social equality and democracy and showed discontent with the prevailing corruption. King Mohammed VI swiftly responded by drafting a modified constitution promising more democracy and greater protection of human rights, and by bringing forward parliamentary elections to November 2011. In these elections, the moderate Islamist Party Justice and Development (PJD) accomplished an overwhelming a href=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/morocco/8919096/Islamist-party-wins-power-for-first-time-in-Morocco.htmlvictory/a, beating the incumbent Istiqlal party which has historic ties to the monarchy. /p pThis revolutionary change in Morocco was marked by women’s significant a href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/heidi-basch-harod/uncertainty-for-future-of-moroccan-women%E2%80%99s-movementpresence/a in the struggle for democracy; with their different religious and political orientations, women marched alongside the men and demanded change. Yet the legacy of this appears as yet unclear. The government’s attempts to reflect the image of a modern and moderate Islamic party through a respect for women’s rights has shown a new will, yet challenges remain. /p pstrongWomen’s political participation in Islamist politics/strong/p pIn Morocco, the Islamist movement includes groups which operate within the political system, like the PJD, and others which operate outside of it, such as the Justice and Charityem /emIslamist group. These two groups do not share the same political agenda. While Justice and Charity is an opposition movement which advocates the transformation of Morocco into an Islamic state, the PJD is officially accepted and endorses the state’s political legitimacy. Both groups advocate gender equality and social justice within an Islamic paradigm and allow women opportunities for political participation and leadership. /p pNadia Yassine, of Justice and Charity, exhibits the integral role women play within the group. She is not only the spokesperson of the group before Western media, she also founded and directs the women’s section which attempts to revive the active role of women in society based on Islamic teachings. In a number of her talks and writings, a href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-village/nadia_yassine_journeyNadia Yassine/a depicts Islam as a liberating force which guarantees equality for women, and advocates the importance of re-interpreting Islamic tradition and engaging women in this process. /p pThe a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moroccan_constitutional_referendum,_2011modified Moroccan constitution/a recognizes gender equality and equal political representation for women. This is something that the government has committed to deliver through women’s increased participation in politics, not only as active citizens, but also as parliamentary representatives. For the first time in the history of Morocco, a veiled political figure, Bassima Hakkaoui, has taken over the Ministry of Solidarity, Women, Family, and Social Development. This move is emblematic of the new opportunities created for women by the Arab Spring: the state would simply not have allowed a veiled woman to enter parliament had it not been put under pressure to be democratic./p pYet in spite of these advances, women’s inclusion has been scant elsewhere in parliament. Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane’s ministerial cabinet included only one female minister, Bassima Hakkaoui, as opposed to the former government which included a total of seven women ministers from 2007 to 2011. This has caused unease amongst secular-liberal activists who view this as a decrease in women’s political representation. /p pIn an interview, Iman El-Yaacoubi, a member of the PJD, a href=http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/3562defended/a this poor representation by saying that the party “democratically elects its ministers”. She also said that “the women of the party participate in these procedures and the appointment of one female minister from our ranks was a democratic choice made by all the members of the party, regardless of gender.” She added that “for years our party has had the most female representation in parliament which shows the explicit trust the party has in women, but choosing the ministers has to take into account the ministries the party won and not their gender.”/p pMore effort should clearly have been made to strengthen female political representation. Having just one female minister is an indicator of the new government’s failure to implement the democratic measures that the new constitution promised. It also undermines the credibility of the changes women can bring to the political scene./p pstrongWomen and religious authority /strong/p pWhilst women are struggling to gain access to parliament in Morocco, in the religious field they are increasingly gaining ground as a legitimate authority. Whereas female Islamist activists are politically oriented and use Islam as a political tool to reach power, at another level women religious leaders carve out space for leadership within religious institutions - their work is a form of social activism channeled through the talks they give in mosques, as well as other social and academic activities they engage in. /p pThe role of these female religious leaders is not unproblematic and not without controversy. State-sponsored women scholars are to a great extent a response to the work of Islamist activists. In other words, the state has long endorsed religious reforms to curb the momentum of political Islam. A view prevalent among members of the public is that such measures are an attempt to endorse the authority of the state to control the dynamics of religion in Morocco and to curb voices of individuals or groups that operate outside of the official religious discourse. /p pIn its most recent measures, the Moroccan Ministry of Islamic Affairs has endorsed women’s presence and authority in the religious sphere through the training of female religious preachers (emmurshidat/em) and scholars (em‘alimat/em). 50 emmurshidat/em are trained every year to contribute to strengthening the country’s ‘spiritual security’. The concept of spiritual security emerged in the context of the 2003 a href=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3035803.stmterrorist attacks/a which took place in Casablanca. The tragic magnitude of this event urged Moroccan authorities to reconsider the state’s religious policy, and redefine ‘Moroccan Islam’, based on four components: The Ash’ari doctrine - a major theological school within Sunni Islam founded by Abu Al-Hasan Al-Ash’ari in 936 AD; the Maliki School of Jurisprudence - one of the four mainstream schools of jurisprudence within Sunni Islam practiced by Muslims in North Africa, West Africa and other parts of the Arab world; endorsing the king’s status as the commander of the faithful; and adopting Sufism as the official discourse of Morocco to monitor the transmission of the religious discourse and thus shift toward a more moderate religious expression. /p pSince 2003, women have been participating in the Hassaniya Ramadan lecture series, presided over by King Mohammed VI in his royal palace every Ramadan, and attended by members of the government and high-ranking officials and scholars from all over the world. In 2004, local councils opened their doors to 36 women scholars for the first time since independence. Women have been assigned significant responsibilities within the supreme religious council as well as local religious councils, and their responsibilities include offering spiritual counseling and religious instruction to women and girls. /p pWomen are demonstrating a growing interest in religion by attending talks in mosques and study circles in Quranic Institutes (emDar al-Qur’an/em) and university campuses. Gatherings of family and friends also present an opportunity for women to conduct their religious activity. Women have long been active in the domain of religion both in private and public spaces and within informal and more official structures. The novelty of the phenomenon of integrating women within the religious sphere does not therefore separate women’s engagement with religion from its socio-historical context, rather it helps identify new ways for women to (re)position themselves, express their religiosity and redefine religious authority. /p pThe Danish Institute for International Studies’ most recent a href=http://www.diis.dk/report/a on Islamic women’s activism in the Arab world presents much of the criticism related to the emmurshidat/em training program. It includes the argument that the emmurshidat/em program does not represent something new as there have a href=http://www.diis.dk/sw115153.aspalways/a been female mosque preachers (emwa‘idhat/em) who fulfill their preaching tasks in affiliation with local mosques and local religious councils. This, it is posited, renders the program a non-genuine effort which imposes the state’s interpretation of ‘Moroccan Islam’ and legitimizes the authority of the king as the commander of the faithful. This training program is also viewed as a means to polish Morocco’s image before Western media, and to reflect the image of a modern and democratic country which endorses women’s participation in all spheres and which has succeeded in fighting against terrorism./p pUnsurprisingly, the first group of the emmurshidat/em to graduate comprised a number of candidates who are now affiliated with the PJD and Justice and Charity, and whose current work requires that they commit to the state’s policy in relation to religious affairs. This, the report claims, exposes the double purpose the emmurshidat/em serves for a King wanting to placate both the West and the rapidly growing Islamic movement./p pDespite the limitations which undoubtedly throw into question the legitimacy of these female religious authorities, they may yet hold the potential of contributing to the social welfare of communities both in urban and rural settings. Female participants carve out space for leadership, reshuffle public and religious spaces, and negotiate the dynamics of social structures. These women embrace the state’s definition of Moroccan Islam, but their real impact lies in their grass-roots work. Through their participation in the religious domain, they define a new model of activism which aims at contributing to social reform by spreading religious values through the different activities they carry out in mosques and other settings. These female religious authorities articulate the importance of reviving Islamic thought and reconsidering religious texts in order to promote new roles for women./p pThe new religious authorities have already succeeded in attracting a broad following across different social classes, as opposed to women’s rights groups who have a more limited outreach. Although these women’s rights groups have undoubtedly had an a href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/audio/jane-gabriel/we-moroccan-women-we-are-not-impatient-we-know-that-it-will-comeinfluential impact/a on the socio-political changes in Morocco, including the battle to reform family laws, which led to introducing the a href=http://www.hrea.org/moudawana.htmlmodified family code/a in 2004, female religious authorities seem to be having a more influential role in promoting the rights of Muslim women. They are proving more accepted by the masses because they are seen to represent the voice of moderate Moroccan Islam, and have easier access to different settings because of their official status. /p pThe long-term impact these female religious authorities have on the wider community and the extent to which they contribute to the empowerment of Moroccan women remains to be seen. Meanwhile, we cannot lose sight of political power: we also need more women in Parliament. nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; /pfieldset class=fieldgroup group-sideboxslegendSideboxes/legenddiv class=field field-related-stories div class=field-labelRelated stories:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd a href=/5050/masooda-bano-hilary-kalmbach/spread-of-female-islamic-leadershipThe spread of female Islamic leadership/a /div div class=field-item even a href=/5050/mirjam-k%C3%BCnkler/what-iran-wants-from-female-religious-authority-piety-yes-expertise-in-fiqh-noWhat Iran wants from female religious authority: piety - yes, expertise in fiqh - no /a /div div class=field-item odd a href=/5050/shirin-ebadi/shirin-ebadi-who-defines-islamShirin Ebadi: who defines Islam?/a /div div class=field-item even a href=/audio/jane-gabriel/we-moroccan-women-we-are-not-impatient-we-know-that-it-will-comeWe Moroccan women: we are not impatient, we know that it will come/a /div div class=field-item odd a href=/audio/jane-gabriel/feminism-and-fatwas-it-all-began-on-march-8thIt all began on March 8th: feminism and fatwas...... /a /div /div /div /fieldset

div class=field field-summary div class=field-items div class=field-item odd pIn Sweden, women establish religious authority as they are appointed leaders in Muslim youth associations. Their commitment is intertwined with identity politics, leading their activism out beyond the mosques and classrooms and into civic centres and television studios/p /div /div /div pThe number of women engaging in Islamic study circles is growing steadily around the world, as is the number of female instructors. The various ways in which the religious authority of these circles is legitimized and practiced has motivated an exhaustive collection of studies published in the volume a href=http://www.brill.com/women-leadership-and-mosquesWomen, Leadership and Mosques: Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority/a. It provides the world-wide dimension of such a development, while including Muslim diaspora communities in Europe. Here the women’s religious commitment often becomes entangled with identity politics and the quest for recognition and participation in the larger society. This is perhaps especially true for the activists in Muslim youth associations, such as the Sunni-dominated national organisation a href=http://www.ungamuslimer.se/Sweden’s Young Muslims/a (Sveriges Unga Muslimer, SUM). Fieldwork among its members provides insight into how young women’s religious commitment and leadership increases their engagement, not only with mosques and other venues for the acquisition of Islamic knowledge, but also with various non-Muslim public spheres./p pMany of the young women I interviewed had participated in Qur'an schools in local mosques during their childhoods in the 1980s and 1990s. However, their narratives reveal a lack of continuity in their mosque attendance. Not much space was offered to the adolescent women within their congregations. This reflects what happened during the establishment of Islam in Sweden that took place in the latest decades. There were few larger mosques and smaller premises rarely allowed any space for women; instead men were given precedence because of their duty to pray collectively. The exclusion of the young women from the mosques reflected the differing expectations of the appropriate roles for ‘man’ and ‘woman’./p pHowever, as pioneers in the first Muslim youth associations during the 1990s and 2000s, the women interviewed had experienced the mosque culture shifting from a mono-gender space to a forum for both men and women. One explanation for this shift, besides the women’s own struggle for access, is the need of Muslim communities to mobilize women in the Islamic revival and the need of the Swedish state for representative Muslim spokespersons. As highlighted by Miriam Künkler in her a href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/mirjam-k%C3%BCnkler/what-iran-wants-from-female-religious-authority-piety-yes-expertise-in-fiqh-noarticle/a on Iran, the a href=http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sant1959/Files/WomenLeadershipMosques-Section1Intro.pdftheoretical framework/a adopted by a href=http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/masooda-bano-hilary-kalmbach/spread-of-female-islamic-leadershipMasooda Bano and Hilary Kalmbach/astrong /stronghelps explain such conditions for the career paths female authorities choose, that is, “between female agency, male invitation and state initiative”./p pIn fact there is a great demand for the young women’s public Islamic activism, from both Muslims and non-Muslims. Within the frames of mosques and youth associations they are invited to be transmitters of Islam to the next generation, as well as activists encouraging the young to identify with Islam. Thus, even while they are students, the young women take part in teaching basic knowledge of Islam to children and peers. The lack of formally trained scholars among European Muslims produces a market for many less skilled teachers to contribute, women among them. Here, authoritative charisma would first and foremost be a question of having an extrovert personality and contributing to the sense of community and role-modeling of the new generation of Muslims. As suggested by one of the women called Leyla:/p pNow, as I am a member of the board [of a local Muslim youth association] and a leader of the younger ones, I must behave properly. I am a role-model. ... We leaders joke a lot and try to create this cheerful climate in which the young ones feel safe. Of course, our task is to strengthen their emiman/em [faith] and we should encourage them to pray and wear the emhijab/em and so on. But we avoid putting pressure on them. We just let them see that we pray and practice Islam and, yes, that we are pretty cool people./p pFurthermore, the women are invited to act as leaders in the sense of being decision-makers and organizers. In their youth associations they are engaged in boards and committees, even as presidents (i.e. Barlin Nuur who was president of SUM from 2004 to 2008). They organize courses, seminars, conferences, camps and excursions. In relation with broader Swedish society, which places demands on Muslim communities to move towards more egalitarian gender norms, the young women are requested by the Muslim community to act as public representatives, or ‘ambassadors’ for Islam - as the young women themselves would sometimes jokingly phrase it./p pThis mindset is reflected in the view of one male respondent, who argued that there is a need for a ‘super-sister’ to defend Muslim women’s interests, “because their own voices would be better heard than men speaking on their behalf.” The young women willingly embrace this extrovert task and associate it with agency, as did Hawa in her description of herself as a capable and courageous person fighting for Islam: “Sometimes we say, ‘She’s a real emmujahidah!/em’ That is, someone who fights.” The designation emmujahidah /emis a feminine term for ‘freedom-fighter’. Hawa clenched her fist, but immediately chose to clarify herself: I mean, not emjihad /emlike violence. Everyone seems to believe that emjihad/em is only about emwar/em, but it is more like emstruggle/em. So, a emmujahidah /emcan be someone who does her best. Like Amina, my friend, who studies to become a physician and has children at the same time. Or like me, struggling for people to understand Islam./p pThus, the young women act as guides in mosques, and as invited public speakers and debaters. They have taken action in favor of specific minority rights, such as alternative diets in school and the establishment of mosques and Muslim schools; they are committed to supervising representations of Islam in the media and other public spheres and counteracting misrepresentations; and they engage as a href=http://muslimerforfred.org/?page_id=2amp;lang=enwriters/a and editors for a href=http://www.hikma.se/bloggen/img/sum_infoblad.pdfnewsletters/a and a href=http://www.scribd.com/doc/66560937/SUM-Bladethomepages/a on the internet /p pNot withstanding many Muslim men’s invitation to the young women to get involved in public Islamic activism, this issue is constantly renegotiated and challenged. An example of conflicting positions on femininity in relation to such a public activism is the young man who, contrary to the one who called for a resourceful ‘super-sister’, critically reminded Hawa about men’s role as ‘foreign ministers’ and women’s role as ‘domestic ministers’. He pointed to the ever-present perception of women needing protection from public situations and people’s gazes. “It is an effort that you do not need to be exposed to,” he declared to Hawa who was about to participate in a television talk show about the use of emhijab/em. In this case Hawa thanked him for his caring words, but remained true to her calling to perform emdawa/em. Thus, she also remained true to that view on Muslim femininity that sees it as compatible with the particular form of exercising authority in public that is represented by the performance of emdawa/em./p pWhen making their voices heard in the open the young women are clearly driven by an impulse to counter their popular image as passive victims to Islamic patriarchy; rather, they want to present themselves as autonomous agents. This self-description reflects one core aspect of their reinterpretation of Islam, that is, the emphasis on personal piety and free choice as basic and compatible moral categories. The influence of this positioning as pious subjects is two fold./p pFirst, it may strengthen the women’s position in their negotiations with family members on crucial issues, such as their public activism or future marriages. With solid references to the Qur'an, to its reinterpretation by renown religious authorities, and to her own piety, Noor managed to get what she wanted in several areas despite initial opposition from her family, for instance participating in gender-mixed activities organized by SUM, and becoming engaged to a ‘brother in Islam’ of different ethnic background than herself./p pSecond, the emphasis on personal piety and free choice as basic and compatible moral categories may pave the way for the women to become understood as ‘normal’ people in coherence with the dominant ‘Western’ ideal on individual agency. This ideal has become increasingly used in non-Muslims majorities’ identity constructions, in contrast to Muslims who are instead conceptualized as determined by their culture and religion. The women destabilize such a divisive and exclusionary view by stressing their active agency.nbsp;/p pHowever, the women’s message about having a free choice – to choose a husband, be involved in Islam, don the emhijab/em, or refuse to shake hands with men – has not been absorbed by many Swedes who find claims of female empowerment shrouded in Islamic dictates unconvincing. In the autumn of 2008, Swedish Television launched a talk show called a href=http://insideislam.wisc.edu/2009/01/confusion-at-halal-tv/Halal TV/a with three hostesses all wearing emhijab/em. It was broadcast in prime-time with the explicit aim of giving voice to women committed to Islam. It was cancelled after one season, after strong criticism not only from those normally negative to the mere presence of Muslims in Sweden, but also from people who initially looked forward to the programme. Besides depictions of the women as fundamentalists and victims of false consciousness, part of the critique made reference to the hostesses having given an impression of double-speaking and as having an unclear agenda. Why did they a href=http://www.newsmill.se/artikel/2008/11/01/dalia-kassem-fr-n-halal-tv-d-rf-r-beh-ver-vi-inte-skaka-handrefuse/a to shake hands with a non-Muslim male guest while claiming to be emancipated women? Did one of them, a student of law, reject the death penalty and reject stoning as an execution method or not?/p pThe example of the TV-hostesses shows the multiple platforms through which Muslim women are exerting their authority. They have gained authority as a result of their own initiative and by invitation from various Muslim and non-Muslim actors. A general motive for their increased authority is their function as transmitters and mediators of Islamic identity. Simultaneously, their bodies become sites of contestation over what constitutes such identity and a good Muslim role model. There are voices telling women to withdraw from the public scene, not only Muslim voices echoing patriarchal ideals, but also non-Muslim dismissing them as “victims” or “fundamentalists” rather than good Muslim role models. The example of the TV-hostesses also sheds light on the failure of non-Muslim audiences to grasp the complexity of the representations of Islam made by women active specifically within organized Muslim youth networks in Sweden and, not least, these representations’ intertwined relation with discussions about ‘the national self’ and ‘the other’. /p pIt is empowering for the women to take part in the re-reading of original Islamic texts. However, these reinterpretations are not supposed to be carried out according to individual initiative, but developed in relation to authorized representatives and the general consensus on what should be recognized as authentic Islam. The women adhere to the teachings of established religious authorities in part because of the priority they put on the rights and needs of the wider Muslim community. This priority is related to their sense that the Swedish Muslim diaspora and its practice of Islam are vulnerable and open to attack. Researchers such as Nadia Fadil (2009) have illustrated how Muslims are deprived of authority and pressed to submit to what is perceived as the majority’s national values in order to be recognized as full citizens. The Halal-TV hostesses, like other members of the Muslim minority, were asked to adapt to the practice of hand-shaking with the opposite gender, while the majority does not need to realize the coexistence of diverse ways of greeting./p pMy analysis emphasises that such domination of the majority may result in the young women acquiescing to the restoration of (male) Muslim authority because of the likelihood that debates resulting from their efforts to change the Muslim community from within will leave the Muslim community as a whole open to attack. For example, in June 2000, just a week after its inauguration, Stockholm’s new grand mosque was reported for gender discrimination by a woman member of the Swedish parliament to the government agency Jämställdhetsombudsmannen (The Office of the Equal Opportunities Ombudsman, EOO). Faced with this report, the young women did not leap at the chance to compare their position with men or to measure their status by the amount of square metres offered on the balcony. Rather, they stood together with the traditional religious authorities to protect the prevailing order./p pIn order to better understand the young women’s priorities when negotiating gender dynamics within the Muslim community with various agents in the larger society, the concepts of emfrontstage/em and embackstage /emactions are helpful. According to Erving Goffman in his book ema href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Presentation_of_Self_in_Everyday_LifeThe Presentation of Self in Everyday Life/a/em frontstage actions aim at presenting a coherent self before a broader audience, while keeping all incoherence backstage. In critical frontstage situations, as in the case of the Stockholm Grand Mosque being reported for gender discrimination, the young women did not seize the opportunity to debate alternative gender orders, but instead stood with the traditional religious authorities /p pIn an a href=http://www.abc.se/~m9783/misf_sv.htmlopen letter/a addressed to the politician in question, representatives of several Muslim women organisations emphasised a tradition, which they dated back to the days of the prophet Muhammed, of separating the two genders in prayer. They underlined their perception of this gender division as a voluntarily chosen order, organised to facilitate the focusing on God in prayers. They wrote, this gender division could be organised architecturally to give women a separate space free of 'disturbances', yet with the possibility to see and hear everything going on in the mosque.”/p pThe young women I spoke to agreed with the open letter, arguing that the prevailing gender order was voluntary, practical and, above all, in line with God’s will. However, in less formal and conflict-ridden situations – that is backstage, among their peers – these women engage in reflexive deliberations and test alternative norms and practices. In Suad’s youth association they decided to take away the curtain dividing them from the male teachers and peers, a decision which she appreciated as an improvement: “I mean, you actually don’t learn well if you are only listening. One also wants to see the speaker and to be able to put direct questions to the teacher.”/p pThis study’s wider importance lies in its demonstration of the value of including the perspectives of young Muslim women in a collective conversation, instead of instigating debates and actions on the premise of ‘their false consciousness’ and ‘our gender equality’ only. The reporting of their mosque for gender discrimination is an issue that is not only related to gender relations within the minority community, but also to the centrality of gender relations in the constitution of Swedish identity and national boundary making at large. Along these lines, portraying women’s unequal access to mosque space as a problem can be read as a way of defining the gendered character of the nation, through the establishment of acceptable and unacceptable ways of presenting female bodies in the public sphere./p pSuch ‘problematization’ of the minority obscures the way many of the young women close ranks to protect their community when criticized from the outside, while they are simultaneously putting gender on the agenda as the organizers and lecturers of youth classes. They promote readings and discussions on women’s roles and rights, and are negotiating for greater visibility and presence within the formal affairs of the Muslim community, including the arena of religious authority. Ill-informed pressure from Swedish officials and other non-Muslim actors is likely to shut down these ongoing ‘backstage’ processes of change. In the long run, the closing of ranks that occurs in response to outside pressure on the Muslim community has the potential to restrict female Islamic authority and public activism. /p pemThis is the third in a series of articles stemming from the volume/ememnbsp;/emema href=http://www.brill.nl/women-leadership-and-mosquesWomen, Leadership, and Mosques: Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority/a published by Brill,2012 /em/p pnbsp;/pfieldset class=fieldgroup group-sideboxslegendSideboxes/legenddiv class=field field-related-stories div class=field-labelRelated stories:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd a href=/5050/mirjam-k%C3%BCnkler/what-iran-wants-from-female-religious-authority-piety-yes-expertise-in-fiqh-noWhat Iran wants from female religious authority: piety - yes, expertise in fiqh - no /a /div div class=field-item even a href=/5050/masooda-bano-hilary-kalmbach/spread-of-female-islamic-leadershipThe spread of female Islamic leadership/a /div div class=field-item odd a href=/5050/meriem-el-haitami/women-in-morocco-political-and-religious-powerWomen in Morocco: political and religious power/a /div /div /div /fieldset div class=field field-country div class=field-label Country or region:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd Sweden /div /div /div div class=field field-topics div class=field-labelTopics:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd Democracy and government /div /div /div