Tom Griffin

Tom Griffin (London, OK): No one has kept a closer eye on the rise of the database state than Henry Porter. On his Guardian blog today he sees signs in stories from Westminster, Scotland, Northern Ireland and France that suggest the tide may just be turning.

In the United Kingdom the primary struggle against government intrusion centres on the ID card and the plans for a huge government silo to store information on every phone call, email and internet connection. There is good news on both these but the campaign against the theft of our democratic rights will not be won unless public opinion builds against these two schemes.

It is in our hands. 

Craig Barnett

 

London to become 'Olympic City of Sanctuary' for 2012

London joined 11 other UK cities in a making the commitment to become a 'City of Sanctuary' for people claiming refuge in the UK with a launch event at St Martin-in-the-Fields last week.

Sheffield became the first official City of Sanctuary in September 2007,with the support of Sheffield City Council and over 70 local organisations. Since then, the idea has spread rapidly, with new groups of local volunteers setting up in cities including Bristol, Swansea, Oxford, Leicester and Bradford.

London is the latest city to form its own group, with the ambitious aim of building a grassroots, city-wide movement of support for people seeking sanctuary in the capital. Alexandra Feachem, from the London City of Sanctuary group, said, "Our ambition is to see thousands of London  organisations, from top businesses, football clubs and cultural institutions, to community groups and residents associations, all pledging their support for declaring London as an Olympic City of Sanctuary. Then for the Mayor and the GLA to take up the idea, so that by 2012 we see refugees at the heart of the Olympic Celebrations."

At the meeting on 12th November, human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell spoke in support of the new movement from his own experience of supporting a refugee doctor who had been targeted by a death squad in Iraq for his sexuality. Neil Gerrard MP, also welcomed the initiative, as a way of bringing sanctuary for people who are persecuted back into the mainstream of British culture.

Craig Barnett, the national co-ordinator for the City of Sanctuary movement, encouraged Londoners to seize the opportunity to make a difference to the way the UK treats people in need of safety. "Cities are powerful," he said, "a whole city which is committed to offering sanctuary can't be ignored as just another lobby group. By building a network of Cities of Sanctuary across the country we can change the whole debate about refugees, and transform what is politically possible to improve the way we offer them safety and welcome."

Further information about the City of Sanctuary movement at: www.cityofsanctuary.org

 

 

 

Stuart Weir

Stuart Weir (Cambridge, Democratic Audit): Two years ago Democratic Audit and two of our partners, Helen Margetts and Peter John, provoked a storm when we suggested that the British National Party had a far larger potential electoral support than specialist political scientists believed.  The conventional view was that far-right parties in the UK were an insignificant political force. We compounded their ire by getting a front-page article in the New Statesman and a great deal of media coverage (but see our report, The BNP- The Roots of its Appeal, for the full story up to then).

Now Stuart Wilks-Heeg, joint author of Whose Town is it Anyway?, has published a cogent article in Parliamentary Affairs, that builds on our analysis and takes the story up to the 2007 local elections where the BNP secured 300,000 votes for 754 candidates.  There are currently 55 BNP councillors, spread across 22 local councils. While the BNP’s overall share of the vote was small, at around 1 to 2 per cent, geographical concentrations of their vote have enabled the far right to establish unprecedented levels of representation in local government.

 Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin

Tom Griffin (London, OK): John Osmond brings us news of the debate in the Senedd that launched the Institute of Welsh Affairs' new book, Politics in 21st Century Wales. He suggests that, given some of the players involved, the event may turn out to be a preview of the coalition negotiations that follow the next Assembly election:

Of course, First Minister Rhodri Morgan won’t be among them after 2011, since he has announced his impending retirement from politics – “he has indicated a wish to stand down as First Minister well before the elections” (according to his biographical note in Politics in 21st Century Wales). However, he prompted the speculation by suggesting in his contribution to the book that Labour should countenance proportional representation in local elections in order to allow a coalition deal to be negotiated with the Liberal Democrats.

It was Plaid Cymru’s Adam Price who suggested somewhat mischievously that this was tantamount to Rhodri revealing ‘a bit of ankle’ to the Lib Dems.

 

Catherine Stephens

Catherine Stephens (International Union of Sex Workers): Yesterday the Home Office announced new proposals intended to “protect the thousands of vulnerable women coerced, exploited or trafficked into prostitution in our country, and to bring those who take advantage of them to justice”. It’s a great story, with drama, heroism, anguish and a big white horse for Jacqui Smith to ride as she swoops in to rescue tearful hookers from foreign countries.

Unfortunately, it’s pretty much fact-free and bears no relationship to the reality of the sex industry: it will in actuality increase the vulnerability of all women who sell sex, even privileged, educated, white, British passport holding women like me. How come?
 Read the rest of this post...

Kanishk Tharoor

Following in our footsteps, a New York Times editorial today forcefully argues for the abolition of the electoral college in favour of the popular vote. There are numerous reasons to dispense with the creaking, archaic system: much of the initial rationale of the system lay in slavery; it is unconscionable that the presidency can be awarded to the candidate for whom fewer Americans vote (as happened in 2000); and the electoral college exaggerates the importance of votes in "swing states" like Ohio and Florida, while diminishing their significance in "safe states" like New York and Texas.

But most importantly, in my opinion, the system reduces the diverse political landscape of the country into monochrome blocks. It creates the crippling sense of a "red state" vs "blue state" divide. If a popular vote was in place, this perception would not have room to flourish. As the editorial points out, over 40% of voters in deep red Alabama cast their ballot for Obama, while 4.5 million Californians voted for McCain (equivalent to the number of votes the Republican got in Texas). If Obama is serious about transcending red-blue fissures, he should welcome the burgeoning national movement for the popular vote.

Tom Griffin

Tom Griffin (London, OK): As the Guardian 's Michael White notes, the leak of the BNP's membership database raises many of the same issues as recent losses of personal data by the Government. If anything, it has provided a much more dramatic illustration of the potential impact on individuals.

The episode has also proven to be a true 'wikileak', in the sense that it has highlighted the power of Web 2.0, with a Google Map of the data briefly appearing before its creator decided to take it down in favour of a somewhat less informative heatmap.

openDemocracy's own Tony Curzon-Price has produced an analysis of the titles of individual BNP members which provides an interesting social snapshot of the party:

Number of BNP members by Title

Mr    11688
Ms    556
Mrs    1419
Miss    410
Prof    1
Rev    5
Sir    1
Cllr    74
Capt    2

 

Thomas Ash

The tea leaves are ready, and the crystal balls are out. Now that the campaign is over, everyone's attention is focused on predicting what sort of president Barack Obama will be. The real answer is that it is too early to tell: the degree to which he moves the country to the left will be limited not by his plans but by what is politically feasible, and that will be revealed by events yet to come.

It is true that some of Obama's recent actions seem almost designed to test his left-wing base's patience. He has reportedly offered the position of secretary of state to Hillary Clinton, who he pilloried in the primaries as a symbol of nineties triangulation. Clinton was never popular with the party's left wing or 'netroots', and Ben Smith at Politico reports that they are reacting to her reemergence with some dismay.

Likewise, the possibility of Lawrence Summers becoming Treasury Secretary is generating anger among feminists; they reacted badly (and in my opinion unfairly) to a notorious remark he made mentioning the possibility of gender differences in aptitude and interest in science. Obama's tolerant attitude towards Joe Lieberman, which yesterday resulted in the Connecticut Senator earning only the mildest of punishments, has also irritated some on the left.

However, these actions tell us more about Obama's attitude to HR than about his governing agenda. Neither Clinton nor Summers would drag the administration notably towards the left; both show signs of having moved away from the centrist nineties. As for the Democrats' leniency towards Lieberman, I argued earlier this week that it was the smart political choice, and this consideration appears to have been what drove Obama's decision.

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OurKingdom

Geoffrey Bindman (London, BIHR): My old school in Newcastle, founded in 1545, was proud of famous former pupils. Several of them were mentioned in the school song. Eldon was the procrastinating judge caricatured by Dickens in Bleak House, Armstrong an armament manufacturer, Collingwood was Nelson’s second-in–command at Trafalgar. Absent was John Lilburne, leader of the Levellers at the time of the English Civil War, who I discovered years later had been at the school in the early 17th century.

Lilburne is only now coming to be recognised as a fundamentally important figure in our political and constitutional history. He was also a man of extraordinary personal courage and determination. Cromwell thought highly of him and made him a colonel in his army but he became disillusioned with Cromwell when he abandoned the democratic programme which Lilburne passionately advocated.

 Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin

Tom Griffin (London, OK): The Northen Ireland Executive is set to meet for the first time in months on Thursday after the DUP and Sinn Féin agreed a way forward on the disputed issue of policing and justice today.

Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness have written to the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive Review Committee, stating that a Justice Minister will be appointed under interim arrangements that will last until 2012.

The planned process remains somewhat opaque, and there's a lively debate over on Slugger about who blinked first to allow the deal to happen.

openDemocracy

Here's a fascinating chart of spam activity on oD's forums for the past 2 months:

So, has Mollom beaten the site spamsters? It certainly looks as if they eventually learn that their spam messages are getting blocked ... Now we just need Mollom to implement this for Drupal 4.7 so we can apply to the main site and I'll be singing the praises of Mollom to all who care to listen.

Damian O'Loan

Damian O'Loan (Paris): It is not only in the UK that the introduction of Taser electronic pistols has ignited controversy.  As Amnesty’s Patrick Corrigan has highlighted here, the weapons’ implications for the Right to Life have been called into question by a judicial review to be decided in Belfast in January.  Directly comparable issues are also coming before the courts in France.

Over here, however, it is the distributors of the weapons, SMP technologies, who have been initiating the actions.  The French company has launched defamation and slander lawsuits following citations of Amnesty International figures citing up to 290 fatalities following exposure to the weapons’ 50,000-volt force.

 Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin

Tom Griffin (London, OK): The Calman Commission on Scottish devolution today received a report on the future of taxation and public spending from its economic advisors. 

The report's contents have been heavily spun over the past couple of days. Several members of the expert group told Scotland on Sunday that it would favour greater powers for Holyrood.

 Read the rest of this post...

Kanishk Tharoor

The New Yorker's recent issue boasts a particularly arresting cover (pasted below). Obama's "O" moon waxes high over the Lincoln Memorial, casting a pale reflection in the pool beneath. Still months before his inauguration, Obama finds himself in the longest of shadows, that of the president who steered the United States through bloody division and great crisis. It's a mantle that Obama has, in effect, placed upon himself. He quoted Abraham Lincoln extensively throughout his campaign. And in his first interview since the election, Obama told CBS' Steve Kroft that he'd been preparing for the months ahead by returning to the works of Lincoln: "I’ve been spending a lot of time reading Lincoln. There is a wisdom there and a humility about his approach to government, even before he was president, that I just find very helpful."

The reflection of the memorial - eerily reminiscent of the pillars of light that all too briefly replaced the World Trade Centre after 9/11 - tells a cautionary tale. Even the brightest alabaster of presidential grandeur has its dark side. He probably knows this. Obama's performance on 60 Minutes was low-key and almost pedestrian, belying the tremendous anticipation weighted on the President-elect. On display was not only Obama's famous calm, but his deep respect for the office and the moment he has risen to. Perhaps he has imbibed the "wisdom" of Lincoln. The "greatness" expected of him, Obama knows, will only materialise if it ultimately draws from a deeper reserve of modesty.  

 

Hat-tip to BAGnewsNotes.

Tom Griffin

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Under Siege: Islam and the Media was the theme on Saturday for a half-day conference at the LSE organised by Media Workers Against the War. Among the speakers was Daily Mail columnist Peter Oborne who talked about his own experience of disillusionment.

I found it very profoundly shocking in the lead-up to the Iraq War, to be lied to systemically by the British state. I thought it was something which was foreign to our traditions and our experience. Oddly enough, it radicalised me. I went through the opposite journey to what Nick Cohen went through.

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Tom Griffin

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Labour must renew itself in West Wales, if it is to regain a dominant position in the Cardiff Bay Assembly. That's the message from First Minister Rhodri Morgan in his contribution to a new book from the Institute for Welsh Affairs:

"The reason why I think it absolutely essential that we turn our minds again, as a party, to winning in the west is the simple recognition that, as far as the Assembly is concerned at least, without winning in the west, Labour cannot win Wales.”

The First Minister argues that the impression Labour has sometimes given as being reluctant advocates for the Welsh language, reluctant on more powers for the Assembly, and reluctant exponents of Welsh identity have allowed party to be portrayed as ‘London-dominated’, with the Conservatives, in particular, repositioning themselves as more pro-Welsh than Labour. To rebuild he says Labour should start with creating a platform in local government in west Wales.

Politics in 21st Century Wales also includes contributions from Welsh Conservative leader Nick Bourne, Liberal Democrat Assembly Member Kirsty Williams and Plaid Cymru MP Adam Price.

Karl Smyth

The significance of the transition period for an incoming presidential administration cannot be overstated: not only does it offer the opportunity for the President-elect to identify the priorities within his or her legislative and policy agenda for the forthcoming term, but it also represents the first true test of managerial acumen at the highest governmental level; just ask Bill Clinton, who endured a number of early and largely self-inflicted blows to his executive authority as a result of tardy mobilization and ill-judged selections for his supporting cast (cf. Zoe Baird).

As such, the actions of the Obama transition team in the coming weeks should not be observered merely for the sake of palace intrigue. Instead, like a candidate's general election campaign, transition offers a fleeting glimpse as to how well prepared a future Obama administration is to meet the challenges ahead, while at the same time acting as a rough indicator as to what the President-elect's advisers believe are the key issues that need to be addressed internally between now and January 20th 2009. Over the brief but fervent period of time that has elapsed since Obama's electoral victory, I would suggest that the following has rung true:

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Tom Griffin

Tom Griffin (London, OK): The debate about Cornwall's constitutional status seems to have taken off over at Comment if Free, where Truro and St Austell MP Matthew Taylor responds to Peter Tatchell's call for self-rule:

Mebyon Kernow support in Cornwall isn't low because we have an unfair electoral system. The simple truth is that Cornwall is not full of people who want a separate parliament – nor, incidentally, did they want one in 1497. In both cases what is wanted is a genuine recognition that poor rural communities such as ours have not had their problems taken seriously, let alone addressed, in decades. We don't need a separate parliament, we simply need genuine local autonomy over the things that matter locally rather than nationally, and fair funding to go with it.

Christopher Lydon

The Obama Moment in America reminds the Chicago anthropologist John Comaroff of the Mandela Moment in his native South Africa in the early 1990s. The whole world has embraced the Obama Moment as its own, Comaroff says, because it marks “the reentry of a pariah nation into the world” on the terms of a revived democracy.

Click to listen to Chris’s conversation with John Comaroff. (52 minutes, 24 mb mp3)

There’s a bracing analysis here from a man who makes it his business to jar our perspective — whose definition of anthropology boils down to “critical estrangement.” Anthropology won the election, Comaroff says, only half kidding. He means not just that Barack Obama is the son of an anthropologist but has a mind to stand outside the consensus when he must.

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Tom Griffin

Tom Griffin (London, OK): In today's Guardian, Ronan Bennett looks forward to The Devil's Whore, Channel 4's forthcoming drama by Our Friends in the North creator Peter Flannery. The series promises a new portrayal of the upheavals of the English Civil War, with characters including the Leveller leaders, Thomas Rainsborough, John Lilburne and Edward Sexby.

As Bennett notes, the radical narrative which sees the Levellers as key figures in an English revolution has become unfashionable among professional historians in recent years.

so-called "revisionist" historians have argued that the civil wars were "an accident", a temporary falling-out among the country's natural rulers. They say a misleading emphasis has been placed on the kind of ideological conflict represented in The Devil's Whore, and they will likely find in Flannery's preoccupations too many echoes of the late historians Christopher Hill and Brian Manning, whom they have criticised for a skewed reading of the period.

Of course, it is more comforting for political centrists to interpret the tumults of the period as an aberration. That way, England's "genius for compromise" is given the authoritative endorsement of tradition, and the role of organised and militant radicalism - from the Levellers to the suffragettes and early trade unionists - can be quietly put to one side. 

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Thomas Ash

Senator Joe Lieberman has been a thorn in the Democrats' side for a long time, but relations have only worsened since Connecticut primary voters booted him off the party ticket in 2006. Lieberman reacted by separating himself from the party and running as an independent, despite his earlier promises not to do so. Having campaigned for him in the primaries, many of his Democratic colleagues switched their support to the official party nominee, much to Lieberman's chagrin. He won re-election anyway, and since then has repeatedly broken his campaign promise to be loyal to the Democrats, stumping for his old friend John McCain, smearing Barack Obama, and delivering the keynote address at the Republican convention.

It's no surprise, then, that the party base want revenge. There is already outrage at the gentle approach President-elect Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have taken thus far. However, they ought to remember the proverb about not cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. Kicking Lieberman out of the party might send a message that disloyalty will be punished, but other than that it would accomplish precious little. It would be far wiser for Democrats to send a forgiving and non-partisan message, and keep Lieberman on board for important Senate votes. There is currently a real prospect of their controlling a 60-seat majority in the Senate, which would let them stop Republican filibusters derailing their legislative goals. These are still goals that Lieberman shares, despite his alienation from the party. Here's hoping Democrats don't give him more reason to subvert these goals. Lieberman is the one who has been cutting off his nose to spite his face, and there is still a chance that he will come to see that.

Gareth Young

Gareth Young (Lewes, CEP): It’s taken seven months from petition end but finally the Prime Minister has gotten around to replying to my ‘Say England’ petition. Since it’s been a while I will remind you of the details of the petition:

“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to stop saying ‘Our country’ or ‘This country’ when he is talking in relation to devolved issues such as health, education and housing. If Mr Brown is talking about English matters then he should say ‘England’, even if it is politically inconvenient for him to do so.”

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Anthony Barnett

In the sixth part of his exchange with KA Dilday, Anthony Barnett realises that Obama's victory was hardly as comprehensive as it seemed. Catch up with part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5. 

Dear Kay,

You are right to mull it over. There are big issues to be addressed, from celebrity to Afghanistan not to speak of the recession. But not immediately. I had a shock about 36 hours afterwards. I'd known - I'd put it as strongly as that - since January that Barack Obama could win and that in his case his race would not prevent this. I suppose I must have been too confident that he would. It was only afterwards that I suddenly saw how close it was. Obama needed Lehman Brothers to turn all the "palling around with terrorists" junk into froth.

One American in three did not vote at all! Most Americans did not vote for Obama. He got 66 million to McCain's 58 million votes. Nearly a quarter of the US's 300 million plus population are under 18, still leaving over 230 million of which less than 130 million voted. Obama got the actual votes of barely more than one in four American adults. He and his supporters must do something about the extent of what remains, in effect, a form of disenfanchisement in the USA.

 Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin

Tom Griffin (London, OK): The BBC reports on growing tensions in the Welsh Assembly Government over Westminster legislation that would give the assembly new powers on housing:

The order has become a touchstone issue in the increasing tension between Cardiff and Westminster - the presiding officer of the assembly Lord Dafydd Elis Thomas, has accused the MPs on the committee of "anti devolutionist tendencies" over their demand for the order to be redrafted.

While they don't have the power to redraft the legislation, the Welsh secretary Paul Murphy has the power of veto - unless he approves it, it cannot go forward into parliament, become law, and see the powers in this area devolved to the assembly. 

The Western Mail reports the suspicions of some in Plaid Cymru about the crisis:

“It is looking increasingly as if those Welsh Labour MPs who always opposed the coalition with Plaid are trying to manufacture an artificial crisis that will result in the One Wales deal falling apart.

“This isn’t the first time they have tried this, but on previous occasions Rhodri Morgan has been prepared to stand up against them behind the scenes.

Tony Curzon Price

The Bank of England has just come out with its quarterly inflation report.

The big headline is that recession for the next 12-18 months is almost certain.

A comparison with August's forecast is interesting:

Although the shape of the downturn is broadly similar, the current forecast has essentially shifted down between 3/4% and 1.5%. Note also that the BoE has been consistently optimistic in its forecasts---if you look at the balck "ONS Data" line, that is how things actually turned out. You might have thought that the statisticians at the BoE might have learned by now to take the pinch of salt into their own forecasts by now. (Actually, the optimism seems even worse than the graphic suggests. The Quarter 3 out-turn growth was a whisker above 0%, which is right on the outside edge of the outside August probability band. However, the BoE has decided to represent this graphically in the November chart as being on the inside edge of the outside band. (Ah! The rhetoric of charts!)

Anyway ... what we now know is that the BoE thinks we have a nastier and sharper depression coming than it thought in August. It is interesting -- particularly so given the election cycle that sees a general election by May 2010 -- to see what kind of shape they predict for the end of the depression.

Their central estimate is that things are getting better very fast by May 2010, with growth around 2% and the rate of change of growth very rapid --- things have been pretty bad just 6 months earlier. Sounds good for Brown. Indeed, one assumes that an independent bank must play the election calendar into its scenario-building, and must be assuming heavy government action in its central case.

In this respect, it is interesting to compare the August and November inflation forecasts. This is the current forecast of inflation:

And this was the August forecast:

In August, the rate of price growth rate was expected to fall for the whole 3 year forecasting period. Now, inflation starts to rise again (although from a lower base) already by mid-2010. This seems clearly compatible with a change in the basic assumptions about increased government borrwing and a lower sterling exchange rate.

Based on these BoE forecasts, Brown's window for an election in 2010 looks very tight---when incomes have started growing again and before inflation has shown the economy to come out of the depression in a pretty unproductive state.

And remember the BoE pinch of salt -- that will make the window even tighter.

Tom Griffin

Tom Griffin (London, OK): In this week's New Statesman, David Davis speaks out for the first time about the tensions inside the shadow cabinet sparked by his stand against 42 day detention:

He revealed that George Osborne was so concerned about Davis's pro-civil liberties approach that he had a private 45-minute meeting with Davis and Cameron to discuss “tactics”, with Osborne worried that the Conservatives would be “outflanked on the right” by the Government on terrorism. Of Cameron's position on civil liberties, he said: “If there's a difference...it's just how much you care about it.”

The full transcript is here.

Kanishk Tharoor

Elsewhere in openDemocracy, Anita Inder Singh explores the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, which poses one of the toughest foreign policy challenges facing the next president. Singh paints a bleak picture: "The Taliban now control at least one-third of the country; President Karzai's fledging elected government struggles to extend its authority beyond the capital Kabul; and wracked by growing divisions and doubts, NATO seems to be at risk of losing a seven-year old war." Read the rest of the article here.

 

Stephen Zunes

There is a quiet revolution going on in the international struggle against corruption and for greater transparency in government.

Two years ago, I attended my first International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC), sponsored Transparency International and other groups, which takes place every other year. The location was Guatemala City, a country where the per capita annual income is only slightly more than the registration, hotel and air fare of most participants. Sponsors included Rio Tinto, Royal Dutch/Shell and other corporations whose own record of upholding legal and ethical standards is far from pristine.

There were a number of sparsely-attended workshops during the four-day conference featuring participants who emphasized the importance of grass roots struggles to fight corruption: Walden Bello, Alejandro Bedana, Shaazka Beyerle, Giorgi Meladze and a handful of others spoke about the successes of grassroots movements in such countries as the Philippines, Nicaragua, Turkey, and Georgia struggling against official corruption. However, the overall emphasis at the conference was on strengthening laws, better oversight by international organizations, stricter sanctions by foreign governments and corporations against corrupt local officials, and other top-down solutions.

What a difference two years can make.

This year's IACC, which just concluded in Athens, took on a very different tone. Though the corporate sponsorship and high visibility of current and former government officials was still enough to give one pause, there were an unprecedented number of participants from civil society: human rights activists, feminists, veterans of nonviolent action campaigns, journalists from alternative media, environmental campaigners, advocates of debt relief, and - despite the European location - and unprecedented number of participants from the global south.

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Michael Calderbank

Michael Calderbank (London) reviews Hunger, directed by Steve McQueen.

On April 9th 1981 Bobby Sands, a 27 year-old prisoner on hunger strike in “H-blocks” of HMS Maze prison (known to republicans as Long Kesh), was elected Member of Parliament for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, having polled over 30,000 votes. This was a momentous episode not only in British (or “British”) electoral history, but in the course of the republican struggle and possibly in the future of politics in the six counties. Yet Steve McQueen’s harrowing dramatisation of Sands’ tragic story sees fit only to mention this remarkable political episode in the closing credits. This has the effective of casting the wider social context of the hunger strikes into the background, as the spotlight focuses forensically on the horror of Sands’ imprisonment and the tragedy of his self-sacrifice.
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Shaazka Beyerle

The 13th International Anti-Corruption Conference is over, a few participants are bumping into one another at the Akropolis and on Syntagma (Constitution) Square, the warm sun shines overhead, and Athenians can be spotted still swimming in the enveloping blue Mediterranean.

On the last day, while I "manned" the exhibit table for the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), a modest woman with a kind face and big smile came up to me. She told me she had wanted to stop by earlier. Her name is Phyllis Muema, she is with the Kenya Community Support Centre in Mombasa, and she gave permission to be identified. As we chatted, I told her about a comment made by a another Kenyan during a session organized by ICNC on the creative, brave ways in which civilians have mobilized and engaged in civil resistance to break the violence-corruption nexus in their societies, for example, in Sicily (mafias) and Guatemala (narco-cartels). (Vanessa Ortiz posted impressions about this session earlier.)

During the panel discussion, an elegantly attired man, whom I was later told (but cannot verify) was a Kenyan member of parliament, asserted that it was the violence in Kenya that created the urgency and impetus for the negotiations and solution to the political conflict following the contested presidential elections last December. I relayed the story to Phyllis, and asked her what she thought. "Well," she said, "the power-sharing agreement is for only 210 people - those in the parliament. It's not power-sharing by the people for the people. Their [parliamentarians'] needs were met, namely to sit in the Parliament."

"Were there other options available?" I queried. She argued that no dialogue or negotiations were attempted before the violence escalated ten months ago. And this was not for lack of good people, as she believes that there were a number of Kenyans and other Africans based on the continent with solid diplomatic skills. After much bloodshed, finally, the two sides ended up in negotiations mediated by Kofi Annan - something that could have been attempted from the outset.

Phyllis is concerned with repercussions the post-election violence is having on Kenyan society, particularly young people. "Violence breeds violence." She said that youth burned three hundred schools over the past few months. "They learned from their parents' actions last January. When they have a problem with the school administration, they burn the school." In her view, many people were also manipulated by the politicians during the violence. "The young men who were used were poor and unemployed. Many were paid...While many who fought now don't know why they fought, now forty government ministers (an expanded number) are fighting for themselves." As for the victims who lost their lives, she'd like to see restitution. She stated that some militia-men are in jail but have not been tried. "And the politicians who incited and funded the militias have gone back to the city. They don't take responsibility for what happened and are sitting in the best hotels drinking coffee."

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