A broadsheet SPRING 2011 / £3 FRONTLINE

photography by JEAN-JACQUES GONFIER. pages 07–10 I The Frontline Club EVENTS B

13 Norfolk Place, London W2 1QJ N U +44 (0)20 7479 8950 / www.frontlineclub.com F IS SILVIO S O H

The Frontline Club Charitable Trust runs a programme April 12, On your doorstep,photography and poverty. of panel discussions and documentary screenings An eye-opening presentation of photographs will be CONTENTS that bring together leading international journalists, accompanied by a discussion with two respected photographers, filmmakers and video journalists. All photographers about their experiences of working in 03 ‘Il duce dolce’ B the events are open to the public, have an informal the UK, covering issues on their doorstep. John Hooper asks: Is Berlusconi losing his grip? atmosphere and end with a question and answer LOSING HIS GRIP? session. The discussion continues on our blogs and April 13, On the media: What does the future hold 05 BUSH & BLAIR L twitter feeds. We are also launching several new for the Arab state media. What is required in order Charles Glass on a very special relationship strands of events in our programme. All events are that a genuine revolution takes place in the media - A filmed, live broadcast on the internet and are available not only in Egypt but in other countries where autocrats 06 THe arab awakening as a video/audio archive on our website and podcast have used it to bolster their power? What happens in Enas Refaei on nuances of Spring across Arabia Caught with his polls down, and, many believe, his pants down, on Itunes. countries such as Iran where control of the media I remains absolute? the Italian prime minister – due in court in April on sex charges – faces 07 Insects, Photoessay April 19, Zarghuna Kargar will be at the Frontline A universe in Hyde Park: Jean-Jacques Gonfier ever-louder howls of outrage and calls to quit. His control of R Club to discuss the stories of the hidden lives of women of Afghanistan that she heard while working 11 Russian London the media and populist touch have seen him through similar crises on the popular radio show, Afghan Woman’s Hour. Alex Dryden on the Russian bear in Britain before, but can he escape this time? John Hooper in Rome charts SCREENINGS 12 Info WARS April 03, Armadillo. Followed by a Q&A with Director the remarkable career of the man many italians feel is still ‘one of us’ B Janus Metz Pederson. Tense, guttural, and uniquely David Rieff calls ‘connectivity’s’ bluff. human, Winner of the International Critics’ prize at Marcus Gilroy-Ware on protest and the web. Cannes, Armadillo throws you into the experience of illustration by chris riddell E war as a member of the troop itself. 14 A house divided Protest, technology and the end of fear Jenny Morgan on South Africa’s shackdwellers April 10, Gas Land. Oscar nominated GasLand The start of 2011 will be remembered as a period in R explores the tangled threads of the US’s search for which the barrier of fear fell across the Middle East 15 Cale force natural energy production. and North Africa as people took to the streets Ed Vulliamy talks myth and movies in Wales demanding freedom from the tyrants who had L April 11, Sex, death and the Gods. Followed by Q&A governed for so long. 16 we have lost... with director Beeban Kidron. The film examines the No one can predict where these momentous Derek Brown, a veteran’s veteran U devadasi, a group of Hindus who are married or events will lead and what the repercussions will be for dedicated to a god or temple in childhood only to be years to come. later sold as prostitutes. For this special event held at the The Royal S Institution of Great Britain the Frontline Club and BBC Issue 06/Spring 2011 © The Frontline Club April 17, Budrus. In an inspiring tale, Budrus follows Arabic Service will be bringing together some of the Designed by Sarah Douglas and Lee Belcher the struggle of a father and daughter team who fight key players, journalists and experts to discuss what C to save their village from imminent destruction at the has taken place so far and to try to gauge what the hands of the IDF’s Separation Barrier. future might hold. With those that were instrumental in organising O April 18, Blood in the mobile. Followed by a Q&A the uprisings we will be discussing the role that new with Director Frank Piasecki Poulsen. The film reveals technology has played; is social media simply a new the dark side of the mobile phone industry and the tool or has its role been more fundamental, changing N link between minerals mined in Eastern DR Congo. not only the way that people communicate but also the way that they think and act? We will be discussing how and when the movements where formed, what I TALKS common ideas they share and how they see things April 06, First Wednesday. A public meeting hosted moving forward. by Paddy O’Connell of the Radio 4’s Broadcasting The discussion will be chaired by Paddy O’Connell of House with topic announced only the week before. BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House To subscribe go to www.frontlineclub.com

editorial WHY DO THE BRITISH Call for TAKE IT candidates

In 1994 Naples was probably cleaner than it has ever that revolved around Coca-Cola Light and, sometimes, Berlusconi is among the contemporary world’s most leader – not once, nor even twice, but three times – a been (certainly cleaner than it has ever been since). It a bit of karaoke. What remains to be seen is whether successful politicians. If a modern-day Machiavelli man widely regarded in the rest of the world as a LYING DOWN? had been spruced up for that year’s meeting of what evidence that has titillated newspaper readers far were casting around for a leader on whom to model buffoon, if not something altogether more sinister? was then the Group of Seven, when Bill Clinton and beyond Italy will be sufficient to obtain, first, an an updated Prince, he might well plump for the Those questions are particularly pertinent in other heads of state had come to solve the problems indictment and then a conviction. And, what is more, diminutive (and apparently scandal-proof) media view of Berlusconi’s utter failure to deliver on his of the world. Looked at now, the list of leaders invited even before they reach court the prosecutors will have billionaire politician. central pledge. At the 2001 election, which marked to talks in the old Royal Palace has a distinctly a number of obstacles to overcome: Berlusconi’s Berlusconi has been in power for eight of the last the beginning of what has since become the It has become an almost casually normal headline in the and the rest laugh all the way to the tax haven. The Bayeux-Calvados award for war historical look. François Mitterrand has been dead for lawyers argue that, for reasons of jurisdiction, their 10 years and during that time has stamped his Berlusconi decade, he promised his compatriots a national and local press: ‘Fury At Rail Fare Rise’, ‘Fury At Gas The oh-so-thrifty coalition proves itself impotent in correspondents rewards a report on 15 years. Helmut Kohl, John Major and Jacques client ought never to have been investigated by personality on Italy in a way that no other leader has new economic miracle to match the one that Price Rise’. Never the real story: ‘No Fury At Any Of This Extortion preventing a further bonus-guzzle by bankers, already bailed- Delors have all long since retired. In fact, none of the prosecutors based in Milan, and they say the case done since Mussolini. Unlike his more enduring transformed their country between the late 1950s a conflict situation, or its consequences leaders at the summit has been active in politics since should have been referred to a special court that predecessors, moreover – such as Alcide De Gasperi, and the early 1970s. Racket. People Queue Up To Pay Up, then Shut Up’. out by the taxpayer’s hard grind, having looted the economy. for civilian populations, or on a news It goes on an on. The price of a barrel of oil settles and The much-heralded ‘trickle-down effect’ that was supposed to 2003: with one exception – the host, Silvio Berlusconi, judges government ministers. Only one of the offences Aldo Moro, Giulio Andreotti and Bettino Craxi – he It could be argued at the time that this was not decreases, Britain’s privatised gas, water and electricity bills rise follow the prostituting of our country to the super-rich and item concerning the defence of individual who was by no means the youngest of those present, of which Berlusconi is suspected can normally be has built around himself a personality cult that is such a preposterous idea. Berlusconi, after all, had to record levels and British Gas announce record profits – while financial sector has not only failed to occur, it has become a freedoms and democracy. is still leading his country 17 years later. tried without the need for committal proceedings. quite unlike anything seen in a post-war western turned himself into Italy’s richest man. Was it so publicly-owned utilities in continental Europe keep steady, far ‘trickle-up’ – no, a waterfall-up, from the people to the fat-cats. Not for the first time his grip on power is looking The scene looks set for a protracted legal wrangling, European democracy. absurd to think that he might bring his Midas touch lower prices. Petrol prices at the pumps similarly soar. As the economy dives into the consequential post-industrial The report must have been produced shaky. On February 9, Berlusconi learned that and it could be that his political enemies get to him Not even Charles De Gaulle arrived at political to the nation as a whole? The rail operators, which already charge the highest fares abyss, and a return to mass unemployment, there is a sudden between 01 June 2010 and 31 May 2011. prosecutors in Milan had asked for him to be tried on before his courtroom adversaries do. rallies to be met by a song like the one rendered by Ten years later, the answer is clear. The economy in Europe for the continent’s worst service, up the price of a eruption of public works at public expense – white-elephant charges of paying for the services of an underage Berlusconi’s poll ratings have fallen considerably Berlusconi’s followers, “Meno male che Silvio c’e” has barely grown at all. The economies of Spain, prostitute; and abusing his position to cover up the since last spring and of the three leaders who joined (roughly, “Thank goodness there’s Silvio”): Britain, France and Germany all forged ahead in the commuter’s season ticket by 12 per cent in places, and the poor binges such as Crossrail - as local and national politicians and A prize of €7,000 will be awarded wretches cough up. Network Rail, meanwhile, soaks up, bureaucrats engage in an orgy of mutual back-scratching. Then fact by bringing pressure on the police. Together, him in his last coalition government only one, 2000s before getting caught in the credit crunch. proportionately, more taxpayer’s money than the old, come the everyday raids on the people’s purses: parking and in each category: they carry sentences totalling 15 years. Umberto Bossi of the Northern League, now remains Viva Italy – But, even after the recession that followed, they are nationalised British Rail could have dreamed of spending. traffic charges and fines with no sane relation to those for • Photo The prosecutors believe they have so much and loyal. Pier Ferdinando Casini and his conservative The Italy that has chosen still significantly bigger than at the start of the decade. Small businesses crumple under the weight of raised VAT, serious crimes, ‘late payment penalties’ on everything, higher • Radio such convincing evidence that they can get Berlusconi Christian Democrats peeled off before the last To still believe The Italian economy, on the other hand, has barely hikes in rates and rents, national insurance increases, cranked- food prices - the mitts of government and rip-off business • Television put on trial without committal proceedings. And general election in 2008. Gianfranco Fini split away In this dream. grown at all. In fact, there was a point at the start of up council tax, red tape costs, and limited bank lending – in forever in your wallet. • Grand format television because they had to submit their case to parliament with some of his formerly neo-fascist followers last Prime minister, we are with you. last year when real GDP was lower than in 2001. The addition to the impact of utility and transport costs. And what happens? Almost nothing. Schoolchildren protest • Written press before proceeding with a crucial search, much of that year. Italy’s media tycoon-turned-statesman finds Thank goodness there’s Silvio! only other countries of which that could be said were The coalition government insists that it must reduce the in defence of their future, for which they are kettled and terrified evidence has leaked out to the media: statements by himself more politically isolated then ever before. Prime minister, this is for you. Zimbabwe and Haiti. deficit: it ravages the supposedly extravagant library service (!?) by the police, ignored by the politicians and tut-tutted by the guests at the prime minister’s villa outside Milan Though he survived two no-confidence motions Thank goodness there’s Silvio! The explanation for his survival most often on which many children depend for peace and quiet and the public. The unions call a protest, and the usual crowd turns out. A new prize is created this year: recounting dinners for flocks of prostitutes and in parliament last year his majority has been whittled advanced by Berlusconi’s supporters is an unexpected elderly for a place to go, and get a book, and sets about the The people pay up, the people shut up. • Web journalism showgirls, actual and aspiring, who repaired down to a bare minimum, so it is likely that at some Nor did Margaret Thatcher have a fan club like one. His present government is, or at least was, a social organisation of ignorance by raising university fees and What must the politicians, preparing their consultancies afterwards to a so-called Bunga Bunga room, point before his mandate expires in 2013 he will be the one whose web site offers Silvio Berlusconi tee- significant improvement on the previous two. Like feudalising education. It privatises the NHS, pairs basic civic and and after-dinner speeches, and their masters in the banks be Information and entry form: equipped for pole dancing; transcripts of telephone forced into an early election. But it would be foolhardy shirts, bags, aprons – and a word from the wise that the others, it is has been hamstrung by his conflicts of local authority services to the bone and cuts the military off at thinking? We wonder if it would make any difference to the www.prixbayeux.org calls referring to payments running to thousands of to predict he could not win it. And even were he to hints at the view of democracy held by many of his interest and his attempts to provide himself with the knees (while declaring war in Libya). public’s indifference if we could hear their laughter at what they +33 2 31 51 60 59 euro, and evidence from cellphone records that lose, his place in the history of his country would followers. A quotation, supposedly from Aristotle, immunity from the law. But it has kept control of the placed a then 17-year-old Moroccan runaway, have been assured. He is Italy’s longest-serving prime reminds visitors to the site that “A state is better public finances and succeeded in imposing some Taxation authorities are quick to mail out fines of £100 a can get away with. At risk of being accused of political [email protected] month for anyone who misses the self-assessment deadline, incorrectness, we quote a prescient John Lennon, way back in Karima el-Mahroug, at Berlusconi’s villa eight times minister since the second world war and the one who governed by a good man than by a good law.” change on Italy’s legendarily sclerotic civil service while the deficit-cutting politicians show themselves utterly 1970: “They keep you doped with religion and sex and TV / in early 2010. has been in office for the longest continuous period So how has he done it? How has he persuaded and its hidebound university system. Yet even disinterested in reclaiming the hundreds of billions embezzled And you think you’re so clever and classless and free / But you’re We are pleased to announce the president He and several of his associates have denied the – from 2001 to 2006. Italians in their tens of millions that he is the “good convinced Berlusconi-ites show embarrassment when by corporate tax-evaders. Philip Green’s Topshop, Vodaphone still fucking peasants as far as I can see”. of the jury for this year is Mort Rosenblum. allegations, insisting the dinners were seemly affairs His many detractors may be loath to admit it but man” they need? Why have they elected as their it comes to defending his record or saying openly that

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U all the S H they admire and support him – and to such an extent had a weak point. With the budget deficit apparently that it skews the results of opinion polls. spiralling out of control it was pretty clear that, if Instead, they tend to argue there is no choice; returned to office, its candidate, Romano Prodi, and that Italy’s left-wing opposition is simply unelectable his followers would increase taxes. But Berlusconi – and so, for better or worse, Italians have no choice trailing a long way back in the polls – was unable to B but to cast their votes for Berlusconi. In other words, capitalise on this because, after five years in power, president’s “Thank goodness there’s Silvio.” he was the one chiefly responsible for the parlous The Italian left unquestionably has problems. state of the finances. Shortly before the vote, however, L The biggest opposition group, the Democratic party he told an audience of shopkeepers: “I have too much (PD), is made up of former acolytes of two failed respect for the intelligence of the Italians to think that creeds. The predominant one is Communism. Soon there are so many dickheads around who would vote A – almost indecently soon – after the fall of the Berlin against their own interests.” Wall, the old Italian Communist Party (PCI) ditched On the assumption that you do not win at the I its Marxism and turned itself into the first of various polls by insulting the voters, most commentators re-incarnations espousing social democracy. The last concluded he had made a dreadful faux pas. In fact, mendacity of these merged in 2007 with a party that represented it almost won him the election. The effect of his R the more progressive wing of Italian Christian apparent gaffe was to prompt many to reflect on just democracy to form the PD. what a vote for the opposition would mean. Prodi’s Christian democracy may not have been lead was drastically reduced in the final days of the discredited to the same extent as Communism. It is campaign leaving him with what proved to be an still the dominant force on the right in Germany, unworkably small majority. after all, and many Italians still admire and respect The incident shone a fleeting spotlight on another B the Roman Catholic church’s social teaching, which reason why voters – and particularly lower-middle inspired it. But in its Italian form Christian democracy class family businesspeople like shopkeepers – vote for was profoundly compromised by its leading role in Silvio Berlusconi. They believe he is soft on tax- E the so-called First Republic, an increasingly corrupt dodging. The freedom Berlusconi subtly implies he system that was used to run the country right up will confer on voters is the one after which many an until the early 1990s by means of a loose and shifting Italian hankers – to do “quello che gli pare”, whatever all the R alliance between five parties whose common aim was he or she likes. Nowhere is this truer than in taxation. to keep the Communists out of power. For almost half a century, the key inter-reaction L in Italian politics, then, was between Catholicism on the one hand and Communism on the other. U Liberalism barely got a look-in. So it is no surprise that the PD – a party created from the remnants of prime minister cannot, of course, the two previously warring factions – has never openlyA tell people that he is happy to turn a blind eye S managed to sound convincing when espousing the to tax-dodging. But, with a series of nods and winks, prime minister’s liberal ideas that have been incorporated more or less he has certainly given that impression. In 2004, he smoothly into the programmes of other centre-left said that “if [taxes] go over 50%, then it is moral to C parties in Europe, like Felipe González’s PSOE and evade them”. And reviewing a parade of the revenue Tony Blair’s New Labour. guards, who in Italy carry out many of the functions What is missing almost completely from the of tax inspectors, Berlusconi said he had often feared O Italian political scene is the social democratic tradition their knock on his door. that González and Blair represented and which has xxxxxxxxxx Ironically, though, his governments have not managed to sell itself, not just in Spain and Britain, reduced taxes. Shortly after returning to office in N but in France, Germany and many other European 2008, Berlusconi fulfilled an election pledge to flattery states, as an acceptable and moderate alternative to world, with a net worth of $9 billion. That sort of The degree of bias ranges from subtle, as on abolish a much-disliked house tax. But the overall tax conservatism. This too is a result of the First Republic cash can come in handy in politics. It helped him Mediaset’s TV5, to blatant on RAI 1 (at least since burden has grown. According to an OECD report at I which, if it compromised Christian democracy, all return to power at the 2001 general election when, at the editorship was handed to a former La Stampa the end of last, fiscal pressure in Italy in 2009 reached but destroyed social democracy. a cost of 37 billion lire (Eur 18.5 million), he writer whose job in newspapers had been to follow 43.5 per cent of GDP, putting it third among the Italy’s small Social Democratic party was distributed copies of a hagiography of himself to Berlusconi’s every move and pronouncement). organisation’s members after Denmark and Sweden. When George met Tony it was a regarded as the most hopelessly sleazy of the five that every household in Italy. The effect of all this is impossible to demonstrate He describes himself as a liberal. Yet he is instinctively collaborated in the cartel-like division of power, jobs The opposition claims that money also helped in any quantitative way. But it can be illustrated. Last anti-competitive. His first act on returning to office – and, crucially – bribes or “tangenti”. But in the him to survive in December when no fewer than 10 year, in a poll carried out to identify public perceptions in 2008 was to block the sale of Italy’s failing flag- marriage made in Transatlantic heaven. latter stages of the old regime, it was rivalled, if not members of the Chamber of Deputies shifted their of the economy, one question asked when in recent carrier, Alitalia, and arrange for it to stay in Italian actually overtaken, in the scale of its venality by the allegiances in the run-up to the confidence vote that years unemployment had been at its highest. In fact, hands by selling it to a a hastily assembled consortium They bonded over movies and were as Socialist party under Bettino Craxi, a politician who risked toppling his government. One, who was it has been rising all the time Berlusconi’s current of Italian buyers. To make the operation possible, it was subjected to the indignity of being pelted with reckoned to be too rich to be bribeable, said the government has been in power. Yet the largest number was granted a monopoly on the only really profitable coins by outraged members of the public and who going rate was between EUR 350,000 and EUR of respondents gave as their answer 2007 – the year internal route, between Rome and Milan. one mind over dealing with terrorism. died in exile as a fugitive from justice. 500,000. Berlusconi has denied that money had before he returned to office. If crippling levels of taxation and a stagnant anything to do with it. Over the past 17 years, Berlusconi and his media economy were not enough to make Berlusconi’s But what really made them tick? His other immense advantage is, of course, his flunkies have succeeded in twisting not only survival puzzling to outsiders, the scandals hold over the media. He owns a weekly news perceptions but the meaning of words. The head of surrounding his private life certainly are. In less than Charles Glass peers into the entrails magazine, Panorama, and through his brother, Mediaset began his political adventure with a massive two years, he has attended the 18th-birthday party of Berlusconi effectively controls a daily newspaper, Il handicap. Casting around for support, the only an aspiring showgirl who said she had known him for ery few people outside Italy realise that, Giornale. But though they come in useful on people he could find, apart from the Northern several years; has been accused by his wife of being of the Bush and Blair memoirs for clues toV the extent socialism and social democracy live on occasions (as, for example, last summer when League, were Fini’s neo-fascists – the pariahs of the sick and in need of help; is said to have hosted parties in Italian politics, it is not on the left, but in reporters from Il Giornale dug the dirt on Gianfranco First Republic. When he first expressed support for in which women outnumbered men by four to one; Berlusconi’s party and among his followers. Fini after he dared to rebel), it is Berlusconi’s hold on them, most Italians were deeply shocked. So what has been subjected to the indignity of having his Berlusconi himself was closely tied to Craxi, who television that really counts. Italians are vastly more did Berlusconi do? Far from acknowledging that he alleged intimate pillow talk with a prostitute put up wangled for him the law that allowed him to create a dependent on TV for their news and information was the head of an alliance loaded down with far on the web; was caught intervening with the police nationwide television network. Many of his closest than people in Britain or the US. Even before the right-wingers, he began to refer to them as on behalf of a teenage belly dancer; and been accused ‘There is no worse heresy than that the office accounts, Republican Richard Nixon and Conservative sought (first and foremost the post of Labour party drawn Blair to the power he felt he lacked. Appreciating associates were once members of Craxi’s party. internet began to make inroads into circulations, “moderates” and to his coalition as being of the by another prostitute of having twice paid her for sanctifies the holder of it’ Ted Heath had little rapport. When Ted needed Nixon leader) and on dubious businessmen whose money- his weakness as a political leader, he rushed into the One tells a story about how he was visited in his barely one Italian in 10 bought a daily newspaper. “centre-right”. At first, people took it for the nonsense sexual encounters – an accusation he denies. Lord Acton, 1887 during the Arab oil embargo and the three-day week, making skills he would take years to perfect. arms of Rupert Murdoch. In Murdoch, Blair sensed minister’s office by a prominent foreign politician Through a 39 per cent stake in the Mediaset it was. But Berlusconi and his television channels All this has taken place against a background of the Watergate-battered American was too absorbed in In the absence of a solid base and profound real power, undiluted by pandering to the electorate who had done some homework on his past. group, which he founded, Berlusconi controls three hammered at the terms relentlessly – “centro destra”, mounting allegations of graft within the Berlusconi The friendship between George W Bush and Tony self-preservation to pay attention. convictions, he mastered the arts of cajolery, courtship for votes or begging the rich for campaign funds. The “ ‘So’, he said. ‘You’re a socialist.’ of Italy’s four main terrestrial commercial television “moderati” – and over the years they have become administration. The fact that he has not merely Blair, insofar as these two damaged men are capable The high water mark of the “special relationship” and flattery. His assiduous cultivation of Michael most formidable media baron on three continents, I said: ‘And I’m not the only one in this networks. The other three are all state-run. But Italy’s universally accepted. survived all this but avoided even having to explain of it, should not have been surprising. Partisans in came with the accession of two like-minded and Foot, at once the most principled and electorally least Murdoch embodied both the powerful figure to whom government. There’s the foreign affairs minister, the public broadcaster, RAI, is nothing like the BBC. himself in parliament raises some pretty awkward both camps had doubted the likelihood of a bond revolutionary politicians determined to remake their successful post-war Labour leader, kept the old man Blair was invariably drawn and the force that would civil service minister, the employment minister, the Under the First Republic, control over its three questions: about whether the problem is really Italy’s between a conservative Republican president of the countries in similar moulds. In the 1980s Ronald on Blair’s side until he died in 2010. This was despite ease his passage into Downing Street. As with every chief whip in the lower house . . .’ channels was at least shared out between the big leader or the country itself, and how they interact. Is United States and an ostensibly liberal British prime Reagan and Margaret Thatcher embarked on the obvious moral and political distance between other action during his career, he claimed to be doing ‘So, am I to understand you are all socialists?’ parties: the Christian Democrats had RAI 1; the Berlusconi an embodiment of Italian values or has he minister. Bush himself did not expect to like Blair. As identical campaigns to reduce the average wages of their world-views. As it was with Foot, so it passed right in the face of wrongheaded and incomprehensible asked the visitor. Socialists RAI 2 and the Communists RAI 3. bestowed on the nation a new set of values formed in he writes in Decision Points of his impressions just workers in each country, redistribute wealth upwards, with Neil Kinnock and John Smith. Blair did not criticism by accepting Murdoch’s offer of a free trip ‘No’, I said, ‘The minister of culture is But since the collapse of the old system, he reality is that Italy has perhaps the most his own image? before Blair arrived at Camp David in February destroy trade unions and reduce government support ascend the ladder by criticising their flaws and staking to Australia in 1995. a communist.’” and the advent of what is unofficially known as the right-wing T government in Europe – and all the more In recent months – and not before time, some 2001, “I knew he was a left-of-centre Labour party for the poor to levels that would do little more than out his own position so much as by joining their The occasion, a gathering of Murdoch business As indeed Sandro Bondi, the minister in Second Republic, the left-wing bias has persisted on so since the departure of Fini and Casini. For might think – this has become a favourite subject for prime minister and a close friend of Bill Clinton.” stave off rebellion. Externally, both were hostile to courts and waiting his turn at succession. executives, allowed Blair to ingratiate himself with question, once was. RAI 3, while the others have become simply pro- example, Rocco Buttiglione, a politician whose views debate within Italy’s chattering classes. Usually, it is Such qualifications were not likely to endear him to Murdoch and his minions to the point that their news The hollowing out of the socialist and social governmental. Currently, Italian viewers get a on gays were judged so reactionary that he was framed in terms of whether the country faces a “moral the right-of-right president, who until then had outlets would support him. He realised he was democratic traditions in Italy has left a gap that has sceptical view on the third channel and blatant blocked from taking up a seat in the European crisis”. The premise was set out in a paper given last loathed Bill Clinton. Yet the amity, as deep as their betraying Kinnock, who could fairly blame his 1992 never been satisfactorily filled. And the intrinsic toadying on the first two (with the single exception of Commission, is in the opposition. He is a member of year at the LSE by a UK-based Italian academic, shallowness permitted, was predictable. general election defeat on the Murdoch newspapers’ artificiality of the “centre-left” helps explain why it a highly critical current affairs reporting and Casini’s party, which calls itself the Union of the Andrea Mammone. “Everything seems to be accepted For a British prime minister from one end of the vicious onslaught on him. “On the other hand, as I has never been able to gather enough votes to govern discussion programme on RAI 2 called Annozero). Centre (UDC) and occupies what, in today’s Italy, and acceptable in contemporary Italy: from potential political spectrum to find a kindred soul in an Without blair, Bush’s presidency would said to Alistair [Campbell],” Blair writes, “not to go without the often grudging and intermittent support By and large, then, while Berlusconi is in office, passes for the middle ground. bribes to political ‘clientelism’, from cynical careerism American president from the opposite pole was not was to say [to Murdoch] carry on and do your worst, of more radical groups, including some made up of five out of the seven main terrestrial channels can be Berlusconi’s media power has unquestionably to prostitution, from xenophobic slogans to machismo, unusual. It has been a staple of the global scene since have been just the same. Without Bush, and we knew their worst was very bad indeed. No, you diehard Marxists. counted on to reflect a view that is favourable to him. been one of the keys to his success. But his apologists from mafia links to wasting public funding… what at the conservative Conservative Winston Churchill sit down to sup; or not. So we did.” Not surprisingly, Berlusconi apologists who claim there is no make a fair point when they say that it would not one time would have seemed unacceptable now is plighted his troth with the most liberal president the blair would not have been a wartime given his adulation of every other strong man he alternative nevertheless overlook the fact that the have done him much good if it had projected turning out to be at least tolerable.” Democratic party ever produced, Franklin Delano encounters in this tale, he writes of Murdoch, “I came centre-left now has, in the tough, cigar-chomping messages that were unattractive to the public. A The implicit contention, then, is that recent Roosevelt. Their differing domestic policies did not leader with all that meant to his spiritual to have a grudging respect and even liking for him.” Pier Luigi Bersani, a candidate who would be further and important reason for his success is that years – during which Silvio Berlusconi’s political and interfere with a shared belief in world leadership by a Blair’s speech at the Murdoch jamboree, in line regarded as perfectly electable in any other country he is an outstandingly talented communicator. In a media clout have done much to shape Italian attitudes strong, ostensibly enlightened and civilised power. mission to save the world with all the other lectures he cites in this book, “went in Europe. Even Berlusconi himself, it would seem, society where it is impolite to dwell on anything – have seen an erosion of morality that has allowed The difference was over whether the United States down well”. (Invariably, according to Blair, audience has a high opinion of him. why have they negative or nasty, he is careful to stay relentlessly him to prosper. Mammone calls it “a dismantling of or the British Empire would provide it. The issue was reaction was “ecstatic”.) “I could feel we were within Among the Wikileaks cables is one describing a upbeat (even going so far as to deny that Italy would perceptions about justice and ‘morality’ that were decided by Britain’s relative weakness after the fall of a chance of winning the Sun’s support,” he enthused. visit by the US ambassador in Rome to Italy’s prime three times elected be affected by the global economic crisis). once part of common sense and accepted belief, France in June 1940 and became all the more As Peggy Lee used to sing, “is that all there is?” Or minister last winter as he was recovering from the He shamelessly identifies his cause with and… the decline of the social sanctioning that we apparent by the end of the war. was? A rousing speech, a little flattery and Murdoch attack on him in Milan by a mentally unstable as their leader footballing success and national pride (to the extent might expect in a democratic society.” In the 1960s, Harold Macmillan played uncle to small countries like Nicaragua attempting to escape He admits telling his wife one morning in Paris, “If anointed him prime minister? assailant wielding a model of the city’s cathedral. that his lawmakers are known as “Azzurri”, the name But has there really been such a decline? John F Kennedy, forging another Conservative- the Cold War dichotomy. Between Ronnie and John dies, I will be leader, not Gordon.” And so, in Murdoch, despite Blair’s fatuous take on him, Among other things, the ambassador noted that a man widely given to players in the national squad). And, unlike Mammone himself quotes the late Communist leader, Democrat alliance that was both personal and political. Maggie, the political and the personal overlapped to this Biblically-inspired version of history, it came to was neither stupid nor vain enough to be swayed by “Berlusconi praised the Democratic Party Leader, most politicians of the centre and left, he speaks Enrico Berlinguer, back in 1981, asserting that the Relations between their 1950s predecessors, the the extent that she called him “the second most pass with Smith’s death in 1994. Tony and Gordon the force of Blair’s convictions [sic]. Murdoch needed Pier Luigi Bersani as a ‘straight shooter’ who was fair regarded in the a plain, unadorned Italian. He draws his metaphors “moral question is the centre of Italy’s problem”. And Conservative Anthony Eden and Republican Dwight important man in my life”. Their immediate Brown buried Smith and the Labour party he led, a winner. He didn’t back the horses he liked the look [and] with a top rate intellect.” from family life, eschews the subjunctive and uses a most of the vices Mammone denounces – corruption, Eisenhower, were hostile. Eden went to war in 1956 successors, George Bush Sr. and John Major, never creating a Thatcherite version of the old party that of, he backed those who would take him into the Like his predecessors, however, Bersani is up rest ofthe world simple – and, on occasions, even crude – vocabulary cronyism, careerism, mafia, machismo and profligacy over the Suez Canal behind Ike’s back, an act for which achieved that affinity. they called New Labour. (Margaret Thatcher too winner’s circle. In 1997, nothing was going to prolong against a rival with unique advantages. For a start, that is instantly recognisable to the man or woman – were all visible then. What is to be deplored, perhaps, the former Supreme Allied Commander punished Tony Blair came along in 1997 determined to was one of the powerful Tony admired and flattered. the Conservative tenure in Downing Street. Even if Silvio Berlusconi is among the richest men on earth. as a buffoon, in the street. is not so much that Italy has deteriorated since then, him by forcing a humiliating British withdrawal from restore the “special” to the relationship. It did not Having felt betrayed by her chosen successor, John Blair didn’t realise it, Murdoch did. In endorsing His business empire stretches far beyond the media Contrary to what is often reported outside Italy, but that it has failed to improve. Egypt. In the 1970s, when a Labour prime minister, matter who lived in the White House. Blair, or what Major, she later told journalist Paul Johnson that Blair, he could rightly expect a sympathetic hearing (he also has vast stakes in book publishing and film if not something Berlusconi, when he resorts to vulgarity, is seldom An altogether more cynical view is taken by the Harold Wilson, and the Democrat Lyndon Johnson little of him emerges from the succession of homilies Blair was “the son I wish I’d had”.) Perhaps to for his financial interests when the time came. As the distribution) into retailing, insurance, asset committing a gaffe. His apparent lapses usually carry popular author and journalist, Beppe Severgnini. His shared the world stage, the magic similarly failed. and instructive moral lessons that constitute his disguise its lack of content, Tony’s handlers named mobsters in The Godfather pleaded, “It’s business.” management and, of course, sport in the form of AC a precise message which the vulgarity enables him to latest book, La Pancia degli Italiani. Berlusconi spiegato Wilson attempted to appease Johnson by speaking in memoirs, A Journey, was mesmerised by whatever his politics “the third way”. In America, Bush’s When Blair achieved his ambition of becoming xxxxxxxxx OG RA P H s BY more sinister? xxxxxxxxx OG RA P H s BY T Milan football club. In relative terms, the tycoon- get across with a clarity and impact that would be ai posteri, tries to identify the reasons for Berlusconi’s T favour of America’s war against Vietnam, but the wily form of power he lacked. He fawned on popular public relations machine briefly called his creed prime minister in 1997, the habit of sucking up to the politician has slipped a bit over the years. But the lacking if he used milder language. success. First among them is what he calls the Human Texan demanded nothing less than British troops musicians whose guitar-playing talents were beyond “compassionate conservatism”. powerful did not abate. He shone his acolyte’s candle P H O latest Forbes ranking still puts him at no 74 in the At the 2006 election, for example, the opposition Factor: “Berlusconi is like us. He is one of us. P H O dying alongside their American cousins. By all him, on fellow politicians who held the offices he A hazy inkling of his shortcomings may have on Bill Clinton, whose more potent locus as Leader

04 05 FRONTLINE FRONTLINE Agnismod molum adiat eugiamet del ullaore eugiat dolore venibh estrud minibh eugue exeraessenit eu faccum vullaor sus CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE… B of the Greatest Power on Earth would enable Blair to him to, he would have done anything else George fight above his weight in the international arena. Blair asked. I have little doubt that a Bush invasion of When they agreed at Camp David to watch U used Clinton, on this telling, to make himself the Indonesia to restore Suharto would have seen at least saviour of Kosovo. (One wonders whether his long- a brigade of Royal Marine Commandos in the first Meet the Parents, a comedy with Robert S term social climbing goal is canonisation by the wave. One cannot help but feel, though, that despite Catholic Church as Saint Tony of Kosovo. If not George’s respect for Tony, the relationship was a bit de Niro and Ben Stiller, ‘I knew the Bushes Kosovo, then Sierra Leone, Iraq or Afghanistan.) one-sided. An indication of this is in the number of H Clinton said, “We were political soul mates.” Despite Index entries each man’s book has for the other: and Blairs were going to get along’ that, the Blair-Clinton romance ended. Blair on Bush: 61 Bush on Blair: 15 Without Blair, Bush’s presidency would have been much the same – two disastrous wars, a ravaged economy, the ignominy of failing to organise relief B after Hurricane Katrina and the unprecedented did, perplexed) and planes were crashing into the and Iran as players in the drama, would it have been as it something Bill said? Not exactly. enrichment of the already rich. Without Bush, Blair World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the first manageable? Without hesitation, the answer was yes.” HeW just moved out of the White House, and Tony would not have had Afghanistan and Iraq. He would foreign leader to call him was Vladimir Putin. Luckily If Britain had not had to contend with Germany and L pursued the man who moved in. Transferring his not have been a wartime prime minister with all that for Blair, who called later, Bush had yet to reach the Japan in the second world war, it might have beaten affections from liberal Bill to hang ‘em high George meant to his hollow ego and his spiritual mission to White House. So, he was actually the first to speak to Italy handily. came as easily to Tony as his move from Princess save the world. All he would have been left to write Bush. This happened the next morning, as Bush Blair’s A Journey, despite its title, goes nowhere. A Diana, whose death he used adroitly to ingratiate would have been the bickering with Gordon Brown, writes: “My first call was with Prime Minister Tony It offers neither insights gleaned nor development of himself with the weeping mob, to Diana’s nemesis, his sermon at Diana’s funeral, his meetings with rock Blair of Great Britain . . . [who] would stand with character. Its deepest penetration of other people was I Queen Elizabeth II. Power, whether real in an stars, his free family holidays courtesy of more rock America ‘one hundred per cent’ in fighting terror. that he was either “a really nice guy”, “a good American president or symbolic in the monarch, drew stars whose copyright limits he pushed to extend, The conversation helped cement the closest person”, or “brilliant.” (The military is always him into the role of perpetual courtier. Neither queen more freebie stays with Silvio Berlusconi and assorted friendship I had with any foreign leader . . . some of brilliant, even when it isn’t.) Blair’s banal litany of R nor president proved immune to the wiles of a lackey wide boys and leaving office just in time for Gordon our allies wavered. Tony Blair never did.” Blair gave a lessons for the aspiring politician carries on to the who not only flattered but made himself useful. Brown to take full blame for the bursting of the speech that night in which he said Britain stood final paragraph: “My conclusion, strangely, is not Tony Blair the peacemaker loved making war, economic bubble. “shoulder to shoulder with our American friends”. that the power of politics is needed to liberate the always, however, in a good cause. “My first full-scale If George Bush’s wars gave Tony’s tenure American and British soldiers went “shoulder to people; but that the power of people is needed to military campaign was underway,” he writes of the meaning, Bush found his purpose after the terrorist shoulder”, which, Blair writes, was “something of a liberate politics. An odd thing for a politician to say; NATO bombing of Kosovo and Serbia. This was his assaults of September 2001. His book does not defining phrase”, into the mire of Afghanistan and, but then, as you will gather from this memoir, it has B messianic attempt to spare the Albanians of Kosovo discuss, as it should have, the way in which his with the warlords of northern Afghanistan, overthrew never been entirely clear whether the journey I have from ethnic cleansing by Serbian security forces, but administration missed the many signals that al-Qaida the Taliban while somehow losing sight of bin Laden taken is one of triumph of the person over the politics, what came immediately after was the displacement he had planned a major attack. But it does tell how the as he rode towards the Pakistan border. Next came or of the politics over the person.” E was trying to avoid. “To cap it all,” he writes, “there murders of that day determined him on a course to the rebuilding of Afghanistan, a project still underway What? Read it again. Say it aloud. Say it in were now hundreds of thousands of refugees invade Afghanistan and Iraq. The rationale for and unlikely to be achieved in Bush or Blair’s lifetime. reverse order. It makes no sense either way. Although streaming across the borders.” He visited a refugee Afghanistan was, even if you disagree with it, clear: And then came Iraq. Blair writes: “But for September he writes, “I am normal”, often enough for Craig R camp, which “allowed him to speak with greater the culprits were there. The result was, however, that 11, Iraq would not have happened.” Brown (who, if the book had been more clearly authority.” Which camp? Where? What did he say to Osama bin Laden was not captured and the United written, I would suspect of having ghosted it) to the refugees, and what did they say to him? He does States military is still fighting a losing battle to remake comment in his review that “in my experience, L not tell. The Kosovo tale goes on, but as with every Afghanistan in an American image of what a Central normal people don’t spend their time telling everyone other attempt at narrative in this book, he interrupts it Asian democracy should be. how normal they are”. Who really wrote this book? U with another of his Politics 101 lessons: “By and large The link between al-Qaida and Iraq, however, George Bush acknowledges the writing politicians are an odd mix of rhino hide and super- was never more than hypothetical. What if, Bush oth George and Tony do their best to contribution of his former chief speechwriter, Chris soft tissue. They need the hide just to get through the asked himself, Saddam gave weapons of mass Bjustify the invasion while vilifying the critics who Michel. He does not go so far as to confess that S day…” This goes on and on. By my haphazard destruction to al-Qaida? If a question can be the warned against war. Neither book advances the Michel ghosted the book, but there can be no other reckoning, this book without those pointless asides basis for launching a war, there is no mention of it in arguments for war, although both inadvertently explanation for the absence of the usual Bush would be half the length. No bad thing. the United Nations Charter. He might as well have reinforce the case against it. Blair blames the failure in contortions of meaning, abuse of syntax and assaults C The Blair-Bush duumvirate was born out of a asked, “what if he didn’t?” Which, in fact, he hadn’t. Iraq on two unforeseeable elements: Iran and al- on grammar. Michel has done a good, workmanlike simple choice of what film to watch, as Bush explained Nor, it turned out, did he have any weapons to hand Qaida. He does not explain how he did not put them job of telling the story from the partial point of view of that first meeting between their families in the cosy over anyway. Tony asks, “Would he [Saddam] be into his calculations, when part of his justification for of his master. If the reader happened to miss the O confines of Camp David a month after he assumed prepared to use them [WMD] outside Iraq? Very participating in the Iraq invasion was the possibility of reality of Bush’s White House years, it is a readable office. “There was no stuffiness about Tony and possibly.” Had he ever done so before? No. Saddam an al-Qaida presence there (which did not materialise narrative (clearer, anyway, than A Journey). (For Cherie,” Bush writes. “When they agreed on Meet the was so cautious in his battles with a superior western until after the US and Britain sent troops to be shot those who read the newspapers at the time, much of N Parents, a comedy starring Robert De Niro and Ben army in Kuwait in 1991, unlike his behaviour during at) and Iran had been next door to Iraq for, well, as this will be hard to reconcile with memory.) Stiller, Laura and I knew the Bushes and Blairs were his eight-year war with Iran in the 1980s that the US long as Iraq has existed. Blair, without mentioning any help from a ghost- going to get along.” And get along they did. (What and Britain supported, that he was careful to use Iran, moreover, had demanded regime change writer, thanks Caroline Gascoigne and David Milner, I might have happened if Tony had asked to see Dead nothing resembling a weapon of mass destruction in Baghdad a dozen years before Blair and Bush did. “who have lived with this book almost as long as I Man Walking?) Bush pays him tribute, “The more from fear of retaliation in kind. Iran had played host to almost the entire Iraqi have . . .” If they did ghost the book and if Blair ever time we spent together, the more I respected Tony.” On the morning when Bush was reading The opposition that the US eventually placed in power. realises how their hilarious satire is sending him up, From his side, Tony’s support for George was Little Goat in a Florida classroom (about which he How did Tony miss all that? Yet miss it he did, making the poor couple could finish like their counterpart in unwavering. He not only committed himself and gives a hilariously unbelievable account that conflicts Iran and al-Qaida scapegoats for the state of Iraq Robert Harris’s The Ghost. All I can say to them is, Britain’s armed forces to every venture George asked with the YouTube footage of him looking, as he often post-invasion: “Suppose we had not had al-Qaida watch your backs. © Charles Glass 2011

A insects have no country. R A I could be in any B I jungle in the world A ning An between any of these vast countries. It has felt as even Saudi Arabia. Most failed to mention that Jordan though the western media had also fallen under the only a few years ago reformed its parliament after dream of a Pan-Arab state. As Tunisia’s government protests; that Bahrain has been staging protests almost jean-jacques gonfier reports from hyde park, London rab fell, and Tahrir Square began heaving, the western every Friday for years, and army tanks frequently media was excitedly waiting for the next Arab state invade the Shia quarters to try and hold down A ake to fall to the pressure of its people, not acknowledging rebellion. Even the forms of oppression can differ the huge differences in the social and political make greatly. Syria prefers a secular domination, spying on up of the countries they were comparing. its speople, with one in three suspected of being a w Islam is crucial in the western media palette, secret police informer. Saudi Arabia uses religious drawing on examples of women’s dress-code and police, Mutaween, to control the moral behaviour of “It all began in Guadeloupe, about three years Back in London, during April that year, with spring to perfect my steadiness of hand, the ways of clinging on to a leaf, and holding the female, and obscure Islamic practises. As Tunisia’s and Egypt’s its nation. Libya is now centre stage. It took a while to ago”, recalls Jean-Jaques Gonfier, known and in the park and nature coming back to life, I thought: crouching and moving without sound, holding the the meal he must prepare for her to eat if he is governments fell, we were told Islam must be the realise that Gaddafi, gasping his last few breaths in beloved as host and kernel of the Frontline “Why don’t I give it a try here too.” I bought myself camera in one hand, flash in the other. When you are allowed to do his business. Enas Re fae i ona aspirations and common theme underlying both uprisings. In fact leadership, would be prepared to hurt his own people clubroom . But this is nothing to do with a macro lens and an external flash, and set myself on shooting flowers, you can use a tripod, but with People react differently to what I do, and the the differences are vast. Practising Islam from state to keep power: he was shaken by a tidal wave of mixing drinks or serving partridge in this learning curve, to discover and photograph the these guys, you don’t get that luxury. pictures. Back home in Guadeloupe, some friends to state can differ. In Sudan and Morocco, Sufis revolutionaries refusing to back down, so civilians Paddington – this is Jean-Jaques’ real, private world I found. I was amazed. When I looked through Using the flash is a learning curve in itself: and relatives think I’m a bit weird – they have these nuances behind the arab spring sway to the sound of music and recite poetry, in with little combat training are trying to fight back passion: the project he calls Macro. Gonfier’s’ that lens at the world which people pass by in the sometimes, it knocks them out, they just fall away – bugs crawling over the patio – to them it’s nothing: huge contrast to the stricter Saudi state that declares against an army raining bombs from above. And career, fascination and joy as an entomological park, I was not in London any more. or else it makes them leap, so that all you get in the for me, it’s beautiful. Then again, some of my cousins music and dance to be blasphemous. The many recently even BBC reporters have suffered torture at photographer began in a garden back where I’m a city boy, but I’ve always loved nature. I picture is a glimpse of a leg. Through the lens, have started taking photographs of the bugs too. Libya is the latest country where we are seeing the French forces carved the region into separate other religious minorities are largely ignored, other the hands of Libya’s security apparatus. Suddenly it his roots are, sitting with friends and listening was born in Paris, but my parents are both from though, you get to see just how fast they move – I People in Hyde Park see me and wonder: “What’s people taking a stand against a network of dictators countries. Since then each country has had than the persecuted Christians of Iraq and Egypt. all feels very different from what happened in Tunisia to the sound of night in Guadeloupe. The Guadeloupe. I have many relatives there; my father was amazed by the speed of these guys. this crazy guy doing?” But then sometimes, you’ll that have existed for the past 30 years. These experience of being ruled by alternating dictators How has the region been tarred with the same and Egypt. But in contrast to the other uprisings in sounds returned with him to Paris and London has nine brothers and sisters, most of whom live in But when you get it right, there is no greater show a picture to someone and see their eyes popping domineering dictators have played a key role in the and monarchies. A corrupt elite has been created brush? In some reports we read how the Green the region, we are not hearing much about an as memories, but Jean-Jaques wanted to take the West Indies, and on my mother’s side too – feeling. Of course, I came to recognise the different out – “Wow!” – and I tell them that they walk past make up of the modern Middle East, and in that through a network of nepotism that benefits only a Revolution of Iran was the catalyst for the erratic organised Facebook page or a Twitter feed. Protesters back the sight of the creatures making them – though most of them are now in France. I have my species, by appearance – kind of social meetings in this wonderland every day. process are experts at controlling what information few. The gap has been widening in almost all Arab behaviour of its Arab neighbours. in mainstream Arab all over the world are using the internet as a medium tiny frogs and a kaleidoscopic richness of life here in London, and in France – but of course I the park. There are flies that are quite confident and The first time I tried to take the micro lens out the population has access to. They have kept whole states, and the population has been growing with a thought, Iran is rarely mentioned as affecting the of organisation, however they still find it hard; the insects – as a matter of visual record. He began miss where my family comes from, and carry it relaxed with your presence, and those that are shy of this country was to Thailand – to explore the populations brainwashed into thinking any alternative rising unemployment. The disillusioned young have Sunni majority states of north Africa. This internet zeitgeist has fuelled an old burning flame, but to photograph them. “Then I realized that I inside me. When I am back there, I am always out in and hard to get. Some are approachable, others flee differences. There were ants which looked like would be destructive; that without a strong leader looked towards greener fields abroad and now want generalisation has been bolstered previously by the the general media has not shown how long this fire could do the same in London, in the park. I the jungle and the forests, exploring – and that one as soon as you come near. With them, it became a soldiers wearing armour – the colours of the countries would fall to Taliban style forces, and some sort of democratic choice. At least the freedom “war on terror”, in which America engages “Syriana”. has been burning. These have all been pre-existing could shut out the city, and immerse myself in time after taking my first photograph, I came back bit like hunting. But of course, it is the opposite to vegetation were electric green. My next trip will be western-imposed democracy would lead to another to change their county. From Morocco to Pakistan terror and now revolution revolutions in isolation. Little notice has been given to their world”. A hidden world, he says, “of to the noise and bustling in Paris and I just felt dead. hunting: a hunter tracks the animal in order to kill to Brazil, to the jungles there, to explore. But the fragmented Iraq. The internet is changing all of this; are the most reported upon of exports. Islam is named their parallel evolution, but maybe the shouting and beauty and amazement, where a gust of wind I don’t know why that time in particular – after the it, the photographer in order to bring it to life. universe, the world, is basically the same place – the suddenly people have access to information that has as manufacturer for both, with the country of origin screaming will reveal a bigger need for understanding is a hurricane, of creatures settling for a jungles back home, the cities just seemed a little bit But the process is the same, and physically world of the insects, without a country, indifferent been previously censored by their governments – lost in the deserts of western ignorance. Tunisia’s of the complexity of each part, without wilfully moment on a blade of grass, or the edge of a crazy, you know, insane. demanding too: you have to know it, spot it and you to the things that concern human beings. they are now uploading their own experiences and Mohamed Bouazizi was not an Islamic revolutionary, looking at a region as a whole. leaf – beautiful, secret and like something from That is really how it took off – I needed to bring must approach it carefully, with no sudden There is something psychedelic about the insect telling the world about hidden struggles. nor was he funded by a hidden organisation, his battle Huge political figures like Mubarak have outer space”. a little bit of that jungle back with me to Paris or movement, position yourself, hold the camera world, it feels like another universe, through the Silencing a nation is getting harder and harder, imply, to be Arab is to speak Arabic, as was simple, and that’s what struck the chord in the dominated the scene for generations. It took some London. The pictures of the insects became a form of correctly – and even then, sometimes, I know I’ve lens. It’s a place where a blade of grass is a tree- the new freedom to share has become the driving Sdeclared in 1946 with the formation of the Arab hearts of Tunisians. Bouazizi suffered a profound time for the Egyptian people to stand against a leader I had for a while taken photographs, quite seriously, escape into the hidden world, a communing with got the picture of my life, I’ve done everything right trunk, and you are permitted to walk that force in telling a new story. In Egypt, the internet League. All Arabs read and write the same language, feeling of helplessness and in protest he struck the who seemed to play an integral part in the making of of people in the world around me – of the Notting nature, and with home in a way. Because the world of until the last moment – then the creature senses universe. No wonder that in science fiction, creatures scared Mubarak into cutting all lines of and can communicate (although sometimes in a match that lit up the whole region. Nobody mentions modern Egypt, and who had such strong ties with Hill carnival, of demonstrations and festivals, public insects is its own world; it has no country. When I take me, or there is a gust of wind, and it flies away.T hat from outer space are imagined to look like insects – communication during the protests, and we quite hit and miss fashion) across borders in that he came from the secular state of Tunisia, where the West. We can only now imagine what might have events. But something led me, after hearing these a camera into Hyde Park, and look through the lens, is what is so exciting: it may be just a breeze, but like a projection from the “micro” world to the witnessed a blackout covering Cairo – no information northern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Which wearing a headscarf in government buildings and happened in Iraq if the people themselves were sounds of the night back in the West Indies – I I could be back home, or in any jungle in the world. you are watching the effects of a hurricane, the universe itself. could get in or out, and local television stations means that all information is easily understandable schools is actually against the law. The differences in allowed to bring down the previous regime, without wondered at how different they were in Guadeloupe It is one thing to penetrate the insect world, creature clinging on. And that is how it feels to do this. I am in a showed no updates from Tahrir Square. But a few across the region, without translation. how these governments are formed and run is also the intervention of foreign forces. Now with the UK from back in Paris or London. I was sitting with and another to photograph it. It’s a world where the There was this one species of fly in particular, relationship with the perfect organism, the species managed to keep a camera rolling, streaming live It does not mean that all states share similarities ignored. While we were gripped by the euphoria of government facing the dilemma that is Gaddafi, do friends and relatives in the garden, about three years slightest breeze is like a hurricane, where the slightest very shy. I came to know it, understand it a little that would survive a nuclear holocaust. Any day footage, which protected the protesters, and in many in culture, dress code and religious practises. revolution, the media looked at other states waiting we swoop in with our heroic oil-saving ways, or allow ago, and wanted to photograph whatever creatures movement can scare the insect away from becoming better, and eventually got one, then another – it took now, spring will come and I will be out there. I’m so ways actually encouraged their persistence However, judging by the coverage of the Middle East for a sign of gathering masses. The frenzy began, with the people to finish what they started? were making them, and take them home: the first the best picture of my life. I had to develop the me weeks and weeks, just creeping up on them. excited. Spring will come, and I’ll be looking at the During and after the first world warB ritish and in many newspapers it is hard to see any difference reports on uprisings in Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain and Enas Refaei is a producer for the BBC’s Arabic service was of a tiny frog, then a number of insects. project technically as well as philosophically – I had Then finally, the picture of my dreams: the male ultimate form of life.

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with billions of dollars at stake, the kremlin and its business associates are fighting to stop rogue oligarchs using english courts against them. alex dryden reports on the high-profile cases that expose putin’s corrupt legal system It ex euiscil eros alit vel diam dolorpe raestie miniatum esto duisim in ullan erciduis et irit dolorpe rillamet luptat velit prat.

Russians who have used London courts to win cases she said, “Danilkin started writing his verdict, and I intimidated into selling his stake in Russia’s Sibneft of Baturina’s companies in order to protect against the Russian state and its cronies – and revealed imagine that this was the one which the higher oil company to Abramovich for $1.3bn, losing as Chigirinsky’s stake in the joint partnership. Kremlin corruption in the process – will find it much authority didn’t like. So he received another verdict, much as $4bn on the deal. Abramovich then sold Another case – Ashot Eziagarian v Suleiman harder in future. Human rights activists in Moscow which was the one he had to read out.” The final Sibneft to the state-run Gazprom for $13.1bn. The Kerimov, Arkady Rotenberg (Putin’s long-time claim the Kremlin is trying to get a stranglehold on verdict in Khodorkovsky’s case was not written by difference is believed to have been pocketed by sparring partner) and Luzhkov/Baturina – also cases in British courts by urging Russia’s biggest the judge who presided over the case, she claims: “I Putin’s cronies and even by Putin himself. Similarly, shows how effective British law can be in regard to corporations to sign up top London law firms. This know absolutely for certain that the verdict came Cherney, known as “the father of Russian aluminium”, the freezing of assets. Kerimov allegedly has a history would ensure that Moscow’s opponents would be from Moscow city court.” claims that Deripaska stole his 20 per cent in the of raiding with the support of his Kremlin backers. unable to fight their battles on British soil because Khodorkovsky made himself an enemy of Putin company RusAl. In 2008, he or they wished to secure Uralkali, a those law firms will be unable to act for them without by refusing to kowtow to the state and by funding In the High Court, judge Lord Clarke ruled that company that supplies 35% of the world’s potash. accusations of conflict of interest . politicians in opposition to the then president. And in Russia Cherney risks “assassination, an arrest Dmitry Rybolovlev, the Uralkali owner, was This would not be the first attempt the Russian unlike other oligarchs, such as Boris Berezovsky and on trumped-up charges, and lack of a fair trial”. summoned to Sechin’s office and told that Uralkali state has made to prevent its opponents litigating in Vladimir Gusinsky, who fled Russia when Putin Cherney’s recourse to British courts has received was under a “new investigation” for an accident at London. In November, Russia’s justice minister came to power, he chose to stay. In order to remain a a typical response in Russia. Rather than rely on the mine. Sechin said that Rybolovlev’s liability Alexander Konovalov came to Britain to try to end friend of the Kremlin, however, and avoid the same British or any other law, Deripaska’s case is being might be as much as $20bn. Having spent 11 months to the practice. The justice secretary Kenneth Clarke fate as Khodorkovsky, the owner of a targeted lobbied personally by Putin in phone calls to the in jail in 1997 on a trumped-up murder charge, diplomatically agreed with him, but also told him company such as Yukos must hand over de facto British and US governments and Russia’s foreign Rybolovlev knew the score: “Large business cannot there was little he could do about it in a free country control to Putin’s clan in the form of controlling minister Sergei Lavrov has written letters pleading function outside the state.” He recognised that “KGB with an independent judiciary. Konovalov went stock packages. If they don’t, owners are removed on the tycoon’s behalf. Inc” wanted his company and in June last year he home empty-handed. and either flee the country or go to a Siberian jail sold the controlling stake in Uralkali to Kerimov. Russians favour British courts because Russia’s indefinitely, as happened with Khodorkovsky. Kerimov and Ashot Egiazarian were partners in justice system is run by and for the Kremlin. In In charge of this stealth renationalisation is the reconstruction of the Moscow Hotel, one of the recent WikiLeaks revelations, two US ambassadors Putin’s right-hand man, Igor Sechin, also an ex- capital’s more famous landmarks. Kerimov was also described Vladimir Putin’s government as “a virtual KGB officer known to the Russian press as “Darth a partner of Luzhkov/Baturina, who decided who mafia state”, “an alliance of officials, oligarchs and Vader” and “the scariest man on earth”. His methods third case recently fought in London got construction projects in Moscow. Kerimov, with organised crime” and an “autocratic kleptocracy”. are more subtle than old-style gangsterism and direct Awas between Shalva Chigirinsky and the companies the tacit approval of the Moscow city government, When leading British brands such as BP try to sell bribes. Known in Russia as “raiding”, law enforcers controlled by Elena Baturina, said to be Russia’s accused Egiazarian of stealing from him. The stakes to companies such as Rosneft the British first attack the target company with aggressive richest woman. This case reveals the second of the influence of Kerimov’s friends in the Kremlin and in government should keep in mind that the British investigations into its taxes or alleged money- Kremlin’s fears of recourse to British law after Moscow far outweighed Egiazarian’s as a mere company is selling to an effective organ of the state. laundering. The owner is then made to understand exposure of its own corruption; asset-freezing. member of parliament. Egiazarian fled, a case was After 10 years in which any major business in that all charges will disappear once he sells all or part Baturina is the wife of Yuri Luzhkov, the rotund opened against him in Russia, he was divested of his Russia, particularly in the raw materials and heavy of the company to a designated beneficiary – often at former Moscow mayor and one of the senior Russian parliamentary position, and Russia put out a warrant industry sectors, has either been seized by the state well below market value. The beneficiaries are officials featured in the WikiLeaks US embassy cables for his arrest. or must pay state officials to continue normal members of Putin’s clan, mostly like him former as part of Russia’s corrupt power structure. US Egiazarian was not to be silenced, however, and operations, Putin’s KGB elite now runs Russia like a KGB officers, and it is they, rather than those listed ambassador John Bayerly wrote to the State responded through the British courts, filing a suit in medieval fiefdom. Oleg Deripaska, the aluminium in the Forbes rich list, who are the richest Russians. Department that “Luzhkov heads the corruption the London International Arbitrage court as well as tycoon and Russia’s richest man, admitted as much An extreme case involved the owner of the London pyramid consisting of the Kremlin, law enforcement in Cyprus. The court in Cyprus immediately froze to the Financial Times in 2007. “If the state says we Evening Standard, Alexander Lebedev. Last organs, special services, political parties, and crime Kerimov’s assets in Uralkali, the company he had need to give it up, we’ll give it up. I don’t separate November his Moscow-based National Reserve groups”. Chigirinsky made his fortune in the 1990s finally succeeded in seizing a few months earlier. myself from the state. I have no other interests.” This Bank was raided by dozens of masked, machine-gun in oil, having been a smuggler in Soviet times. Once And the court acted in order to protect Egiazarian’s is what Putin likes to hear. wielding policemen accompanying three men in established in the oil business he moved into real stake in the Moscow Hotel. In the end Kerimov The system of law in Russia is known as balaclavas who demanded a meeting with Lebedev. estate in Moscow, after forging a friendship with appears to have won his appeal and his assets were telefonnoye pravo – or “telephone law”. In high-profile The British courts, offering fair and open Luzhkov. Baturina, Russia’s only female billionaire, unfrozen by the Cyprus court on 17 February. cases where the government wants a certain outcome, hearings, provide a safe haven for the legal battles of then fell out with Chigirinsky. Many of these London cases represent a threat the judge receives a phone call letting him know what Russia’s rich. Tantalisingly, they also reveal much He was prosecuted with the express purpose of to the Kremlin that revelations in open court will it must be. In the recent, second trial of Mikhail about how the Kremlin and Putin’s clan operate. bankrupting him and stealing his company, according expose exactly how corruption works in Russia and, Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man and former Currently there are four cases between Russian to a well-informed lawyer in Moscow, and he fled to perhaps more importantly, the names of those head of the Yukos oil company, which was seized by billionaires, as well as over 20 lawsuits between the Britain. The London courts hold a document showing involved at the highest level. On December 10, the the state, the rug has finally been pulled back to mere multi-millionaires. that he and Baturina were joint partners – which UK High Court ruled that the Russian state shipping reveal “telephone law” in action. The two highest-profile cases are Boris contradicts her testimony. She has hastily settled out and oil transportation company Sovcomflot’s case Berezovsky v Roman Abramovich, for which of court. Vitaly Kryukov, an analyst in Moscow, said against its former CEO, Dmitry Skarga, was based on preliminary hearings have been set for October 3, that further revelations might have been even more fabrications and lies. This is the most serious ruling and Michael Cherney v Oleg Deripaska. Both point damaging to her. Chigirinsky’s case was greatly by any court against the conduct of Russian state to similar conclusions. Berezovsky claims he was helped when the London court froze the assets in two company officials. In effect, the High Court implied that Sovcomflot shares the blame for these lies with nly his most besotted supporters see Igor Shuvalov, a Russian deputy prime minister. O Khodorkovsky as unblemished, but it is widely The law in Russia is very effective – and applied acknowledged in Russia and internationally that both solely to protect KGB Inc’s interests. Anyone crossing his trials have been politically motivated and reached this elite will find a highly believable criminal case conclusions which the state demanded rather than opened against them. If they then flee Russia, an the judge independently assessed. In fact during the The system is known as telefonnoye Interpol arrest warrant will be issued. If they are recent trial, in a clear signal to the judge, Vladimir arrested by Western police forces, it will be hailed as Putin pre-empted the verdict by calling Khodorkovsky pravo – ‘telephone law’. when the “a successful cooperation with Russian colleagues in a thief who “belonged in jail”. But it has taken Natalia fighting organised crime”. British courts now provide Vasilyeva, a clerk of the Khamovniki court where the government wants a certain outcome the only bulwark against such actions, and increasingly trial was held, to show how the system works. In a the proof that US diplomats – as reported by sensational interview in Moscow, she talked of the judge receives a call letting him WikiLeaks – are right when they describe Russia as a “ordered justice” and how Judge Danilkin received de facto mafia state run by organs of state security. And instructions from Moscow city court “by phone”. know what it must be the Kremlin will try anything to prevent British courts She described how the judge was summoned from revealing it. each week to the court where he met “important Alex Dryden is the author of Red to Black, Moscow It ex euiscil eros alit vel diam dolorpe raestie miniatum esto duisim in ullan erciduis et irit dolorpe rillamet luptat velit prat. people” over and above the court chairman. Finally, Sting and The Blind Spy, published by Headline

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WikiLeaks has not only broken state secrets, it has broken long-held methods of doing business and, more importantly, doing politics. David Rieff and Marcus Gilroy-Ware outline how the world will have to adjust to a new cyber-warfare driven by the internet and new media

calling the bluff on ‘universal connectivity’ BY DAVID RIEFF Lean forward and listen up by Marcus Gilroy-Ware

The childish panic that has swept the US policy hate losing their intellectual monopoly, since they People from Gates to Margaret Thatcher seemed to established transmission network of office holders and Every so often the people of Britain are reacquainted and the broadsheets and the broadcast media have establishment over the WikiLeaks revelations has know that if they do, loss of status will not be far consider this almost like a law of nature, although, in diplomats leaking some information to trusted with important aspects of their own political history. been only marginally better. Surely, if the media largely subsided, even if there was a brief flare-up behind. In this sense, the back-story of WikiLeaks is retrospect, syllogism may be closer to the mark. journalists and pundits, who then transmit it to the The cocktail of broken windows, defiant politicians, landscape is so different in 2010, this shouldn’t after the fall of the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia over not that American diplomacy is threatened or that And what would we do with all this freedom? public. And in the latter, it insists that there is simply injured policemen and kettled protesters, an matter: the most liberating thing about the ease of Washington’s complicity with that dictator, and al-Qaida has been strengthened but that American Well, the Bill Gates of the 1990s thought we would no such thing as proprietary information, which in the ambivalent Middle England – not to forget royals publishing, communicating and advocating on the another over the confirmation that President diplomats have lost face and American policy all go shopping, either literally or metaphorically. context of diplomacy means it does not acknowledge set upon by an angry mob – is not a new one. internet is that if you don’t like how it is being done, Mubarak of Egypt took US military aid as his due for intellectuals have been confronted by an existential As he put it at the time, “we [will] find ourselves in a the state’s right to keep secrets. Here, the state is like But for a whole generation of young people, you can do it yourself. Citizens have done that to the collaborating with the US and Israel. Secretary of threat to their “priestly” monopoly on inside new world of low-friction, low-overhead capitalism, Microsoft, with its closed-source technology, while whether they chose to participate or not, this type of conventional media, leaving it in tatters in some Defense Robert Gates’s sensible remark that information. Oh, the pity of it! in which market information [will] be plentiful WikiLeaks is the open-source alternative. constitutive political action is new. The last time respects, so it seems they ought to be able to do it on “governments deal with the United States because In fact, though, the policy establishment is and transaction costs low. It [will] be a shopper’s And, again as with open-source software, there Britain’s streets and institutions were the backdrop their own behalf, but they still must overcome two it’s in their interest, not because they like us, not absolutely correct in worrying about WikiLeaks – heaven.” Later, as Gates’s interests shifted toward is no going back. Julian Assange may go to prison in for a movement of this kind was during the dramatic enormous obstacles. because they trust us, and not because they believe just not for the reasons that have usually been stated. philanthropy, his view of what capitalism needed to Sweden or even be extradited to the United States, but failed bid to stop Britain from going to war in Traditional papers and broadcasters are lean we can keep secrets”, was worth a boatload of For where WikiLeaks poses a serious challenge is do and, more importantly, could accomplish, and though it is far less likely, WikiLeaks itself may be Iraq in 2003. back media: that is, they are a form of passive apocalyptic prognostications from the likes of in its application of a technological mindset that up broadened and deepened. shut down. But for better or worse, the WikiLeaks I was in Parliament Square in March 2003 as a consumption. You buy a magazine or turn on the TV Michael Cohen from Democracy Arsenal, who to now had seemed both the product of and What has been called “philanthrocapitalism” is model is here to stay. For as it turns out, the web is 19-year-old student, throwing bits of wood at the without necessarily knowing what you are going to insisted thatWikiLeaks has fundamentally undermined inextricably linked to the “clean”, enlightened liberal now the order of the day with Gates. In fairness, not just a place for shopping or searching for police, along with many others. More memorable get, and you sit back, often literally. By contrast, the US national security and effective US diplomacy”), capitalism of the Microsofts, Googles, Apples and though hardly the unassailable paragon of virtue its pornographic images or finding virtual communities than anything else was the anger of that crowd. web is a lean forward medium. Almost without or Joe Klein in Time magazine claiming that, “This Intels of this world. myriad admirers make it out to be, the Gates of like-minded people – it is the new bloody Similar anger has been present again in 2010, and exception, you visit a web page or read an online entire, anarchic exercise in ‘freedom’ stands as a Even the protests in the Arab world have been Foundation has done a great deal of good, and the crossroads of our politics. arguably the power of this particular movement to article because you decided that was what you human disaster.” folded into this techno-moral liberal narrative, which world would probably be less well-off without it. But Al-Qaida proved this with its virtual Jihad; and make a difference is much more within reach if wanted. This extends to social media – you only The frenzy was unwarranted from the start. has focused on how Twitter and sms texting have the Gates vision of solving the world’s problems – then the Chinese state demonstrated how easily the people don’t get too disheartened. “follow” somebody on Twitter or watch a YouTube Secretary Gates could express his confidence that made the demonstrations possible. Intellectually, one Aids, the global food crisis, education at home – is Web could be used for surveillance and repression. But something else very important has also video of students protesting in Top Shop if it’s the long-term effects would actually be “fairly can draw a line from Marshall McLuhan’s injunction just as post-political as his pre-philanthropic vision Now, (presumably state-sponsored) attacks against changed. In 2003, unless you were an early adopter something if you want to do modest”, at least in part because the “revelations” in the 1960s that “the medium is the message” to the of the world as shoppers’ paradise. WikiLeaks are being countered by attacks on and knew a bit more than the average person about Usability expert Jakob Nielsen, who coined contained in the WikiLeaks document dumps mostly current fixation on the technological means of purported enemies of WikiLeaks from Sarah Palin to the technologies of the internet, the chances are that the terms lean back and lean forward, has been confirmed things that were at least long suspected. popular mobilisation. Neither Twitter nor sms are Visa and Mastercard by online techno-anarchist the web was a “read only” medium, as Professor making this point since 1997. In other words, the For example, many supporters of the Israeli without importance, but to emphasise them over groups like anonops, which recently posted a list of Lawrence Lessig, an expert on the internet, puts it. web is an extremely efficient means for preaching to government’s alarmed (or alarmist, depending on what the protestors think, or the harm Washington’s email addresses of institutions that had either cut off There were no so-called “social media” tools like the converted, but it’s extremely limited for your point of view) position on stopping the Iranian unwavering support for Mubarak has done to the WikiLeaks or criticised its message. Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, and Matt convincing those who disagree with you, unless nuclear program, if necessary by force, have been people of Egypt, is part of liberal capitalism’s grandest verything has a technical fix, or, to put it Speaking of the PayPal online payment service, Mullenweg was two months away from releasing the they’re unusually curious. saying for some time that it was a view shared by ideological project: the de-idologising of reality. Eslightly differently, we all agree on what we want – an the anonops poster wrote, “With shopping coming up first ever version of Wordpress – the dominant open- Even before a way round this can be attempted, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council. Of course, this is not the way it is ever presented. end to poverty, decent education for everyone, etc. – and people needing to pay for their online purchases, source blogging platform that has been downloaded the second, more worrying obstacle is that many They were right. And while it may be satisfying to On the contrary, beginning in the 1990s technophiles so the thing to do is brainstorm and research the best this will really put them at a halt,” and they will “regret over 12 million times. What a difference nearly eight of those involved in this movement don’t seem to have the details of Washington’s anxieties over the started writing rapturously of the internet way to get there. The idea that one’s political views, messing with WikiLeaks and Anon”. Whatever the Bill years can make. The internet may never become the have a clear idea of how to communicate with the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons arsenal, inaugurating a new age of high-tech Jeffersonian for example, on whether the established order or Gateses of this world may choose to imagine, ideology main conduit of bottom-up political change, but its lean back media beyond their control, or with the China’s inability to bring North Korea to heel, or the democracy (the phrase is from Richard Barbrook property rights, or, dearer to Gates’s pocketbook if is alive and well, and living in cyberspace. Hold on, existence can still be seen as a game changer. people ignorant about their cause who will be Yemeni president’s willingness to collaborate with and Andy Cameron’s 1995 critical essay, “The not his heart, the current global patent regime, so Toto, we’re not on eBay anymore. Admittedly, much “content” that ends up on watching and listening – they only seem to want to US anti-terrorist operations in his country, the broad Californian Ideology”). As a leading Silicon Valley favourable to companies like Microsoft, might affect The new cyber-battlefield will exact real-world the net using these tools takes a pretty inane form: preach to the converted. outlines of all three of these stories were already software entrepreneur, Mitch Kapor, put it in 1993, what one thought the right outcome to be, is a casualties. Why break a few windows and burn a few videos of kittens, poorly written blog posts and Lawyers and philosophers know the importance largely public knowledge—at least among specialists. “Life in cyberspace seems to be shaping up exactly thought utterly outside capitalist philanthropy’s ken. cars in an anti-globalisation demonstration any unfounded narcissism almost without end, but the of a sound method of argument, but most of the Does anyone seriously think the Iranians don’t as Thomas Jefferson would have wanted: founded on And yet, paradoxically, “philanthrocapitalists” more? Even the black-clad anarchists know the glass possibilities of an easy, participative internet are organisers and protesters I’ve met – even the law know about the Saudi king lobbying Washington to the primacy of individual liberty and a commitment like Gates are absolutely persuaded by the idea that is quickly swept up and business is back to normal in what matter most. For some of the same reasons Twittered then battered… the Duchess of Cornwall leaves her car after it was attacked by student protesters last December and philosophy students – appear not to. For bomb Natanz and the other [Iranian] nuclear to pluralism, diversity, and community.” technology brings radical change. There is even a days. The only real casualties are innocent bystanders. that they have shaken the journalism industry to its example, at an occupation at Birkbeck College, facilities, or that the Pakistani Taliban don’t know In many ways, this thinking was extremely term for this: disruptive technology. A disruptive Even the maddest anarchist cannot think such crimes core, these tools also make an enormous difference University of London, I suggested that the group about American moves with regard to Islamabad’s radical. In the future, people like Kapor and Apple’s technology is conventionally defined as “an undermine capitalism. But it is not vainglory to to political organising. Tunisia and Egypt, or the Iranian elections of 2009, be understood, and people are not wrong to hope might issue a press release in easy language calmly nuclear programme? It would be idiotic to imagine Steve Jobs and, of course, Bill Gates, argued, we innovation that disrupts an existing market”. Coined believe that incapacitating PayPal, even briefly, causes The basic structure of the internet was designed we don’t (I hope) have a government that is prepared for cooperation from the media in this regard. Any outlining their calls to action and objections to the our enemies are so badly informed that the WikiLeaks would have a completely new relationship to in 1999 by Clayton M Christensen of the Harvard real damage. Napoleon said that in war, the moral not to make easily identifiable its transactions or to try to justify harsh curtailment of our internet realist will admit, however. that there are always legislation in question. This would be combined information is news to them. information. “Universal connectivity,” Gates wrote Business School, the term was originally meant to was to the material as three to one, and perhaps more people who use it: real identities are only required freedoms to stop us from organising politically. political decisions to be made in constructing the with the list of “demands” they were drafting, which In reality, there was only one group that was not in Forbes in 1999, “will bring together all the describe business innovations that improve a product important still is the fear such attacks inspire. by higher level software that implements identity- In fact, according to The Net Delusion, a book public representation of a political movement, and included the resignation of the master of the college, privy to this information: the general public. And we information and services you need and make them or service in ways that the market does not expect, Of course, government will strike back, checking for other, non-technical reasons; for by Evgeny Morozov which came out in January, that expecting that job to be done by the mainstream Professor David Latchman, and abolition of his can’t have them properly informed, now can we? available to you regardless of where you are, what usually either by lowering the price or redesigning presumably far harder than they have already. The example paywalls or Facebook accounts, so it’s a much of the “cyberutopian” talk – especially by media in a politically neutral way is at best a fantasy. post. The puzzled silence and blank expressions that Father (or, in the case of Secretary Clinton, “mother,” you are doing, or the kind of device you are using. for a different market or a different set of consumers. Mubarak regime’s successful shutting down of the perfect system for those who want to challenge those in power in the west – of how effective Twitter Well covered is the anger, but nobody in the followed told me everything. I suppose) knows best. I do not often agree with Call it ‘virtual’ convergence with everything you want Two current examples of disruptive technology are internet and of mobile telephony is a foretaste of this, authority. Outside the kettle, protesters have used it and Facebook can be in revolutions has only served mainstream press has succeeded in capturing or I’ve said things are different, and I reiterate it. Noam Chomsky, but it seems to me that he was in one place, but that place is wherever you want it to nanotechnology, which is heralded as promising to as is the way in which, after the mobiles were turned to organise and to outmanoeuvre the police. When to undermine any potential that they might have including a well-briefed, articulate account of the We know these tools are powerful enough to create exactly right when he said that, “one of the main be, not just at home or in the office.” supersede current production technology, and so- back on, the Egyptian authorities forced Vodaphone they haven’t managed to dodge the kettle, they’ve otherwise had, not least by calling attention to it. reasons for it. All they ask the students is “how do real change, not least from seeing how American reasons for state secrets is so that the state can defend But the future Gates and so many others called open-source software, which challenges the and the other principal operators to send hundreds used Twitter to show those outside it what is The use of these tools may even seem a naïve you feel?” politics have been transformed in the last three or so itself from its citizens”. But regardless of Washington’s believed awaited us was also profoundly post- reigning assumptions about what the basis should be of thousands of messages scripted by the government. happening, and how useful platforms like these can luxury when compared with the brutality with which I spoke to Sasha Salmon, one of the organisers years. I would love to be able to say that those motives, stopping Julian Assange (which, in any case, political, or, more precisely, proceeded from a for how software is both created and sold. To those who worried about the co-optation, or, as be under such conditions. many political struggles are decided, but in this case of the LSE occupation, who was asked the same changes – the development of tools like Twitter and is not the same thing as stopping WikiLeaks, as we “Fukuyamish” assumption that the great ideological At first glance, WikiLeaks would seem to be far Tom Franks famously put it, the commodification of In a recent issue of New Statesman Laurie they’re a natural choice for a new generation who question by Newsnight’s Matt Prodger on December YouTube – mean that everything is in place to let are all starting to discover) will not be a victory over questions had been resolved. We were all liberal from this world of business innovation. And yet it dissent, stop worrying. When the ad agency that Penny made the point that the organised use of real- have grown up with the internet and mobile phones. 9: “I would have liked them to talk more about what those fighting for causes in this country finally speak terrorism, as Senator Mitch McConnell has suggested capitalists now. There were important questions isn’t. On the contrary, what WikiLeaks does is exactly enjoined buyers of Apple Macs to “think outside the time services such as Twitter from mobile phones is Both the ease of use and the relative anonymity we were arguing about. I don’t think a lot of people for themselves, surely one of the most important so preposterously, for the simple reason that the one remaining – above all, when history, which Fukuyama what a disruptive product does: as with box”, or when Microsoft commercials asked, “where a so-far unanswered thorn in the side of the of the internet have made a space more comfortable know what’s about to happen,” she told me. “I also objectives for any movement, however small. group we can be sure had the information in the declared had already “ended” in the rich world, nanotechnology, it supersedes the way information is do you want to go today?” the only answer they authorities, and in the context of the protests in for many group activities, political organising and think if they showed the reality of the group of But until this movement finds solutions to these cables before the WikiLeaks are the terrorists. would end in the developing world as well – especially, made available to the general public; and as with didn’t expect was “to war”. But with the revenge London she is right. protest alike, but, although equally important, a people [who are protesting] and how varied and two challenges of articulating itself properly and xxxxxxxxx OG RA P H s BY

In contrast, powerful people hate being shown of course, in China. But markets would bring open-source software, it challenges the idea of what attacks by supporters of WikiLeaks and the T However it is relatively rare – WikiLeaks firm grasp on the opposite – a recognisable public diverse it is, that would also really speak volumes.” using the internet as its own medium, it’s unlikely to up at least much as they hate failure, and people with prosperity, and the rise of the middle class would the public can know and how it can know it. counterattacks by governments, we are getting a excepted – that they can be used to achieve face – is much more difficult. Instead, we’ve seen the usual: the tabloid press, be able to use the immense power of these platforms

insider information that gives them special status inspire a finally unstoppable demand for freedom. In the former case, WikiLeaks breaks the small taste of the cyberwars to come. P H O measurable political impact. Unlike in the protests in What all political causes deserve is a chance to if paying attention at all, has been predictably savage, to its fullest advantage.

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W N S’bu Zikode’s address. CHICAGO, NOVEMBER 2010 S

by jenny morgan H I A P So S uth ag ain Af its st a ri own ca’s a p nd e arthe AN ha fo C vi gov ve cted byrmer suid but su fo er ppo rmed a m n Rece ppo it may beme l rted by N AN n C rters. shackdn leader calledtly, -c t won ov on a in o gainst such d aist o eme tr s the powam o ing C nt t lled l the fig er ho o w on msky a recla o ellers, attackedht the ful s cal auth peace p ortionwo eech n im the wi d Na th rld’s o in o ir c r of democrat C ic m iti opp h i it es ica Kle ies, ressed tgo in . , the People are living here . . . shackdwellers and their homes, Foreman Road, Durban PHOTOGRAPH by Christopher David Lier o HOUSE sta ir ideals. n When the poor ask for what is basic to life we are taken as a threat to society well-connected people and left the majority poor]. Our country is on the d by many rich people. The most basic and humble demands are shown to brink of catastrophe. The poor continue to get poorer while the rich get the world as if they are the work of criminals, third forces and people who richer and more oppressive. We feel the world closing in on us. We have can’t think and who are violent. For this reason it is very important for the long been warning that the anger of the poor can go in many directions. survival of our struggles that we can build alliances with people who are Loyalty should start with us. It should start from where we are, with what willing to testify to the world that it is not the organised poor who are a we have. We must first be loyal to ourselves without seeking to impress threat to society but that it is the system that makes some people poor and anyone else with this. We must then be loyal to our families, to our others rich that is a threat to society. communities and to our society. Our loyalty should start from the bottom of Our living politic begins with the fact that all of us were created in the society, where we are, and not from the politicians at the top. image of God and are, therefore, equal. Our living politic starts by I must also warn that loyalty does not come from being rich nor from “When we asked to speak to the authorities, beaten and had their homes destroyed for their without shops, schools, clinics, factories. The houses with truth and justice – and it’s falling apart in recognising the full and equal humanity of every human being. We struggle being successful in one’s career. It does not mean that we should agree they sent the police instead” political views and practices. Once again an armed are typically smaller than even the matchbox houses court.” The judge told the prosecution she was as human beings with equal worth and intelligence to all other human when there is no need to agree. It should not be seen in terms of peace and minority have used violence to implement a ban on a of the apartheid era and often shoddily constructed minded to dismiss the case; nonetheless, the trial will beings against a system that produces inequality by denying, every day, the compromise. What may be moral and benefit the most vulnerable groups S’bu Zikode might have been describing relations democratic organisation favoured by a majority.” – concrete floors crack within weeks, roofs blow off. resume in next May. humanity of some of us. in our society and our future generations may take us into conflict with the between poor people and the old racist apartheid What is the “crime” Willies Mchunu alleges It is alleged that house-building budgets are often None of the mob has been arrested, though When our movement started in 2005 it was out of anger, hunger and politicians and the rich. Sometimes it may also take us into conflict with regime when he said this at the University of Chicago Abahlali committed in Kennedy Road? creamed off by contractors and councillors. Kennedy Road residents could identify many of frustration. We were becoming desperate and we needed to be heard. Our some parts of civil society. last November. But he was explaining the reaction Some weeks before the attack, the safety and Abahlali argues that South Africa’s cities cannot them. International figures like Noam Chomsky, first collective act, the act that gave birth to our movement, was aroad Today let us review our loyalties just to check how much damage or good of ANC-led authorities in democratic South Africa security committee of the local Abahlali chapter be only for rich people. It campaigns for shack Naomi Klein, Raj Patel and human rights lawyer blockade in March 2005. None of us had planned to form such a movement. they do to others. Let us continue with those loyalties that keep us safe, that to a movement that has sprung up among the voted to introduce a shebeen closing-time of 10pm. settlements to be upgraded, so people can continue John Dugard have appealed to the government to In fact none of us had even planned the road blockade long in advance. affirm our dignity, that louden our voices, that build our power. Let us put away country’s poorest citizens – Abahlali baseMjondolo South Africa has terrifyingly high rates of rape, and to live and work where they have jobs and their intervene, at least to refurbish its credentials as a state Many of us did not know that the road blockade was such a political act. Yet those loyalties that tie us to the people and systems that keep us oppressed. (AbM – people of the shacks). As its democratically the committee argued women and girls would be children go to school. It’s a reasonable demand and under the rule of law, but to no avail. In October we realised how political it was when 14 of us were arrested, unlawfully Loyalty to political parties, to experts and to the whole top-down system elected president Zikode had been invited to six US safer if drinking stopped earlier. This move was by December 2008 it seemed Durban’s municipality 2009 they signed a petition supporting AbM’s drive detained and beaten in prison. has resulted in denying shackdwellers and the poor their rights to citizenship, cities to address meetings co-sponsored by the US supported by the local police, who, until then, had had begun to listen – S’bu Zikode told the movement’s for poor people to play a leading part in the public We had thought that we were being ignored because our voices were to cities, to well located land, decent housing, safety and education. We National Economic and Social Rights Initiative and been notoriously unsympathetic and violent towards AGM that a memorandum of understanding was decisions about housing, land, and development that not being heard. But we discovered that when we forced our voices to be have been denied basic services, such as water and sanitation, electricity, other human rights and community organisations, AbM. But shebeen and off-licence owners were being drawn up between AbM and the municipality affect their lives. They condemned violence and heard and asked to speak to the authorities they would send the police road access, refuse collection. For the past year or more, Zikode and his family unhappy with what they called a “curfew”. Members for upgrading three settlements and providing intimidation against AbM members and residents of instead. We discovered that in the eyes of the state our demand to be heard We have been excluded from participating in the discussions on our have been living in hiding in the port city of Durban, of Abahlali subsequently wondered if the police had services to a further 14. “Talk to us, not about us,” the informal settlements and ended with a call to the was taken as a criminal demand. Later we discovered that some parts of future. And most importantly we have been denied our dignity, Ubuntu and KwaZulu Natal (KZN), having had to flee their played a double game, deliberately engineering a one of the key Abahlali slogans, seemed to have been government “to respect and facilitate, rather than civil society took the same view. We discovered that we were supposed to Abahlalism. It is through this denial that the state – with the support of some home in Kennedy Road, the shack settlement where casus belli for the attack. heard, which makes it all the harder to understand discourage, popular participation in the governing of suffer in silence while other people, politicians and experts, debated our few regressive leftists – think that they can buy or intimidate our struggle in Abahlali began in 2005. On the night of Saturday, Why did the authorities do so little to prevent why just under a year later the authorities saw the South Africa”. lives, our struggles and our futures. But we also discovered our collective order to bury our struggle so that they may continue to have the only September 26 2009, around 40 men armed with the rampage by armed mobs shouting racist slogans, movement as a law and order problem that needed to strength as the organised poor, the self-organised poor. legitimate right to speak for the poor. We will never accept this. The poor knives, sticks and guns burst into the narrow lanes of with all the risk of uncontrollable public disorder be crushed. As Zikode said in Chicago, “We Loyalty has been both our weakness and our strength. have the same rights as everyone else to be at the centre of the discussions Kennedy Road, where 7000 people live without such attacks might provoke? Some 16 months earlier discovered we were supposed to serve our life Loyalty was destroying us when we gave it to the political parties. Our concerning our future. street lighting or running water and with just five widespread xenophobic violence, in which 62 people sentence in the shacks and suffer in silence.” loyalty did not help any of us with our various party political affiliations. Our We are calling upon all the poor and all the marginalised along with all public lavatories.The men were shouting racist were killed across South Africa, had been quashed Two people were killed during the first night loyalty did not even help those of us who struggled and made a lot of the progressive social movements of the poor and those NGOs, churches slogans against anyone who wasn’t Zulu, smashing with difficulty. And what makes an unarmed, of the September 2009 Kennedy Road mayhem, bM now has a branch in the Western sacrifices within the United Democratic Front (UDF) during the struggle and individuals that are willing to speak to and not for the poor, to struggle shacks they thought belonged to Abahlali leaders politically non-aligned grassroots movement a and in the days after the attacks 13 members of ACape, and, with the Landless People’s Movement of against apartheid. with and not for the poor, to join us in our journey to a fair world, one of and members and threatening to kill Zikode. challenge to be crushed with such violence? Abahlali were arrested in connection with these Gauteng, the Rural Network in KZN, and the But loyalty has also been the source of our survival. Loyalty is fundamental equality, in which everyone counts. This is not an easy journey. Sometimes it Terrified residents called the police, but they Shack settlements developed in all South Africa’s deaths and their homes destroyed. Months later 12 Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, forms the to the strength that we build in our families and with our friends, our is very difficult. Sometimes it is accompanied by lies, beatings, arrests and appeared not to understand the need for urgency towns and cities in the dying days of apartheid, as were charged variously with murder, assault, and Poor People’s Alliance. Abahlali continues to challenge movements and our communities. As a poor person you cannot survive in death. But we will keep going forward although we know that victories are since, according to Amnesty International, they only Africans defied racial segregation and moved closer to public violence. At their trial, which began last the authorities, with sometimes bitter irony; after fires this world on your own. Without loyalty there would be no one to care for not certain and that when they are won they are sometimes won at a turned up around 6.30 the next morning. Attacks job opportunities and schools for their children. Post- November, the testimony of the state’s first four destroyed shacks in Cape Town’s Khayelitsha your children when you are at work, to offer you a place in their home after considerable price. and looting continued the following day, and apartheid provincial and municipal governments have witnesses disintegrated under cross-examination; township last December, AbM of the Western Cape a fire or an attack, to introduce you to a community when you need a place For example in 2009 we won a case in the Constitutional Court against hundreds fled with their possessions; that night the built many small new houses but Abahlali argue that several said the police had written their statements said, “We saw on TV that the municipality has to live, to stand with you when the police and the land invasions unit come. the KwaZulu-Natal Elimination and Prevention of Re-emergence of armed men returned – Amnesty says as many as 500 these democratically-elected authorities, with their and they’d been intimidated into signing. decided to send out a theatre group to teach shack Maybe it is because we cannot survive without loyalty that we take loyalty to Slums Act 2007. We slaughtered two cows in celebration. But we were – and Zikode’s house was one of those demolished. mantra of “clearing the slums”, all too often replicate Bishop Phillip, who, along with Amnesty dwellers how to avoid fires. We are poor, not stupid. We be such an important thing. punished for this victory by means of a planned violent attack on our The day after the first attack KZN minister for the authoritarian practices of the apartheid regime. International, has been campaigning for an know very well what causes fires. We do not need But while loyalty is the great strength of the poor it is also at the same movement. The violence that followed the attack left two people dead and safety and security Willies Mchunu, a veteran of the AbM emerged in Durban in 2005, when independent commission of inquiry, commented, “A theatre designed for children. What we need is time a great threat to the poor. Loyalty to political parties and to those who several injured. The Abahlali headquarters were looted, the homes of struggle against the old regime who spent months in Kennedy Road residents discovered that a piece of political case against Abahlali has trumped concerns electricity, and decent housing.” try to privatise the history of the struggle against apartheid for themselves its leadership and their families homes burnt down and several hundred hiding to dodge apartheid death-squads, stood on nearby land their ANC councillor had assured them It’s this voice that refuses to “suffer in silence” becomes a very serious threat to the poor in a top-down system of governance. people forced into hiding. Our attackers were fulfilling their loyalties to the hillside of Kennedy Road and proclaimed the would be used to build housing for them had been that riles the authorities. As S’bu Zikode says in my It is even dangerous to our democracy, a democracy that continues to serve those politicians who instigated the attack. The premier of the province and settlement “liberated” from the criminals who had sold to a local businessman. When residents blockaded film,A Place in the City, “Leaders think democracy is the interests of the few, while the majority are rotting in the shacks, without the president of the republic were all silence. None of our attackers was been “holding residents hostage”. He wasn’t talking a highway in protest, 14 of them were arrested and about us giving them respect; it’s about us listening homes, without jobs and without dignity. Loyalty becomes too dangerous arrested and the few charges that we succeeded in raising against them about the armed mob. By the Monday, the official beaten in the police station. AbM was subsequently to them, without us having a voice. But for the first when political leadership exercises loyalty to parties and to individuals within were never investigated. South African Information Service reported that able to stop many attempts to bulldoze shacks and leaders think time now, the poor are beginning to speak for their parties to advance themselves while excluding the poor. This has This was clearly an attack on our hard-won democracy. Our constitution senior provincial and municipality figures were evict residents. South Africa’s constitution outlaws themselves. That threatens those who are paid to promoted a culture of corruption, favours, nepotism, political intolerance, allows for all such democratic organisations as our movement. But the state gathering in Kennedy Road to assure traumatised forced evictions, but that hasn’t prevented armed democracy is about think for us, who are paid to speak for us.” violence and the party politicisation of government service delivery. and its party are shutting down the spaces of democracy. Abahlali has residents they were now “free to walk, cook, and police and demolition squads from destroying shacks Zikode’s speaking trip to the USA was by no Those of us opposed to this loyalty to the politicians will not only be worked hard to create its own space to share, learn and build living solidarity watch television as they so desire”. filled with belongings and firing rubber bullets at us giving them means the first such international visit by Abahlali; excluded but we will also be severely punished. It is on this basis that the amongst the poor. We had worked very hard to protect such a space even protesting residents. Links that AbM has made with previous delegations have been invited to Italy, shackdwellers and the poor are taken for a ride and are made to serve when the party loyalists wanted to hijack it for themselves to secure their local human rights lawyers willing to act pro bono respect; about us Britain and the USA, amongst others, and delegates their life sentence in the shacks, despite numerous calls for small steps future career. Although we have taken our space in our society humbly we have helped get injunctions to stop such events. This went to the 2009 World Social Forum in Brazil. And forward such as the Millennium Development Goals. In fact in our country also take it firmly and we refuse to give our power away. We will not allow makes constitutional rights and protections more of a listening to them. the movement continues to grow. Six months after the MDGs have just become a new licence for those in power to advance the loyalists to the people and the system that oppresses us to destroy our reality for poor people but does not go down well the attacks, it said more branches were forming, themselves through Black Economic Empowerment [the policy introduced by movement and compromise our morals. Our loyalty remains with the his bizarre picture was contested by another with the authorities. But for the first despite intimidation: “We don’t mobilise Thabo Mbeki’s government that obliges all businesses to have a black oppressed and with all people who are willing to take a side with the T veteran of the struggle, the Anglican bishop of KZN, AbM argues the government needs to understand people. People come to us. They mobilise us to come ownership component. Inevitably the policy has enriched a small number of oppressed in our struggle to build a just world. Rubin Phillip, a “banned person” under why people are prepared to endure terrible conditions time the poor are and share our experience of struggle with them. It is apartheid. He set up an emergency relief fund for in the shacks in order to live in the city. Public the condition of people’s lives that recruits them to displaced residents and in an impassioned statement transport and basic foodstuffs are not subsidised and beginning to speak this struggle.” It seems the South African government headlined “Democracy under attack” said, “The in some areas – Durban is one – unemployment runs has yet to understand this basic fact. militia that has driven the Abahlali baseMjondolo at 40 per cent. People can’t afford to live miles out of For more information, visit Abahlali baseMjondolo’s for themselves xxxxxxxxx OG RA P H s BY

leadership and hundreds of families out of the town – they can’t afford fares to get to work or look website www.abahlali.org. A feature-length documentary T settlement is a profound disgrace to our democracy. for work; they can’t afford to send their children to about AbM, Dear Mandela, is scheduled for release

Once again [as under apartheid], people have been school. Yet new housing is built miles out – in areas early in 2011, www.dearmandela.com P H O

13 14 FRONTLINE FRONTLINE F

I

L M cale force The rising star of Indie film raids the linguistic and musical riches of her ancestral country – land of her father – for her next project

By Ed Vulliamy

So the Academy of Oscars reverts from that moment family. But the catalyst on the road home was the of ingenuity last year when The Hurt Locker stormed arrival of Mared Lenny in New York, with her band, Hollywood to a more comfortable shower of praise Swci Boscawen (Welsh for a tame lamb and a wild and dew-eyed anglophilia on Tom Hooper’s ersatz flower). “She’s the Debbie Harry of Wales”, says ravaging of Beethoven’s most beautiful music and of Cale, “she came from around Carmarthen to sing in the true story about Winston Churchill, Edward VIII New York (sounds familiar!?) and she became my and his brother, George VI. best friend. Last time I was back, her mother gave me And this despite the heart-stopping innovation half of a fossil from the mine my grandfather worked of Winter’s Bone and True Grit, both led by young in – Mared kept the other half, so we’re like two actresses. But with our digestive systems heaving halves of the same fossil.” with monarchist saccharine (and a wedding still to It was this friendship, then, as well as family, that come), last year’s justifiable enthusiasm about the drew Cale to her father’s native land. “There’s prominence and prowess of independent – “Indie” something about Wales that always keeps a part of – women in American cinema must now pass to the me when I leave to come back to New York. Yes, I coming generation. And with a twist: for among the know the industries have gone from Garnant, there next likely shooting stars – this time on both sides of are serious drug problems around there, and the the lens, acting and directing herself – is the half- place is almost dead. But I have family there, and I Welsh daughter, no less, of the former bass and viola look over the tops of the Black Mountains and I player in the Velvet Underground, John Cale (himself think: ‘could anything be more beautiful?’” on a something of a roll these days, orchestrating his John Cale’s relationship to the Welsh language is solo oeuvre and recently in London to collect an even more complicated than that with Wales itself – OBE, with his hair dyed electric pink, from George Eden Cale… “there’s a vapidness, an obsession with the shallow in my generation” his father forced to learn it as a precondition of VI’s grandson). courtship of his mother at the insistence of her mother. In Los Angeles meanwhile, the spotlight shone But nowadays, Cale Senior instills a warm glow among even brighter on 25-year-old Eden Cale, who – it gothic shadows in Eden’s film contain delicious, set in, of all places, the Land of her Father – Wales. home crowds by bidding them “Noson dda, Caerdydd” must be said – loved The King’s Speech: “As a barbed comedy brimful of other references – often John Cale, a man of voracious intellect as well as and the language utterly compels his daughter. Mared, screenwriter who sits in front of a computer all day, I playful, sometimes to sudden, fearsome effect – to creative musicianship, has a fascinating relationship her teacher, “says ‘yn Gymraeg os gwelwch yn dda’ thought that script was a work of art.” But Cale is Hitchcock, Carrie, Scream and even the landmark with the country he left. During an interview in 2003, which means ‘in Welsh, please’ when I’m speaking too cooking far more exciting ideas herself. Her short “Bohemian Rhapsody” video by Queen. he went so far in a song called “E Is Missing” as to much English. I have to earn Welsh,” says Eden, film The Roast was the toast of last winter’s Beverly The film has a strange provenance: with two feel an echo of the treachery of Ezra Pound when “because if I don’t, I won’t be able to teach it to my Hills Independent Film and TV festival, winning weeks to go before filming in August 2009, the script considering what he called “the emotional curve of children, and would not be a real Welsh American.” Best Directorial Debut of a Short Film. The Roast was ready, the cast assembled and rehearsals done. my journey from Wales to New York and back again”. had already conquered New York, where, although But there was a problem: “I had a director, a friend, Not to live, but to work with a drug rehabilitation her first film, it won Best Dark Comedy Short at the who I realised had done no work on it at all. I kept charity in Llanelli, to famously curate the Welsh tent 2010 International Independent Film Festival. It was trying to discuss the film, but there was no discussion. at the Venice biennale, to premiere his astonishing then submitted to Los Angeles and selected for “I had the locations arranged, the cast – everything orchestration of “Paris 1919” in Cardiff – with an screening alongside a dotty but entertaining gothic was ready. I didn’t want to cancel, so I had a extended family reunion afterwards – and launch his he film will draw on these bonds at every comedy short starring Joan Collins, with whom Cale conversation with Matt Kohn, the cameraman, and band’s most recent tour of the UK in Wrexham. level.T It is about “young people grappling with shared the red carpet in rainfall befitting her father’s decided ‘well, I wrote it, I’m in it, so I might as well But if Father Cale has in part repatriated (in mortality, as one of the characters is forced to deal native Dyfed more than Wilshire Boulevard. This is direct it myself’.” The movie was entered for the heart if not in body), there was no self-evident reason with cancer. It’s based on a true story – I don’t think serious limelight for Cale as she plans her next film, New York prize only because she wanted to see it on why Eden Cale, in the springtime of her New York I could ever write anything that didn’t come from my for she has barely begun. the big screen – “I had low expectations” – but it won life, should immerse herself in the affairs of the own experience,” she says. A graduate of drama (rather than film) schools, the prize, and Beverly Hills too. village of Garnant, on the edge of the Black But the story, set around Carmarthen, at another she grew up and lives in New York, daughter of the Mountains, from which the tinplate and anthracite level also narrates myth. “They are never far from musician and his former wife Rise. Eden Cale had coal mines have long been wrenched. But as she everyday life in Wales,” says Cale, “so that each always intended to write the script for The Roast, came of age, Ms Cale developed a strong Hiraeth – character in the movie doubles as a character in Celtic whose title comes from what she describes as “parties “a Welsh word”, she says, “that has no translation, mythology.” There are frequent allusions to the story held with the intention of hurting peoples’ feelings”, other than ‘a strong yearning for home’. of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, with its romance, which are a form of social entertainment these days ale now wonders whether all these “I was at a private school in New York, with kids magic and occult meanings and underlying theme of in counter-cultural New York. She wrote the lead role Caccolades should propel her towards directing or who had a lot of money and not a lot of curiosity. It the power of women. “There’s also the fact that Sir for herself to act, based on a real friend of hers: acting. The credit of “Written, Directed By And mattered what purse you carried, what car you drove Gawain is King Arthur’s nephew and is accused of “Celia” in the movie has a habit of trapping and Starring” is usually supposed to crown a career in and I thought: ‘this stuff doesn’t impress me at all’. nepotism,” she jokes, semi-seriously, “something I breaking the hearts of vainglorious, “cool” young Hollywood, not launch one. Cale approaches the There’s a vapidness, an obsession with the shallow know a bit about! Hollywood is full of nepotism, and men whom she then destroys. This she does with predicament with a mixture of logical maturity and among my generation. I think they’ve dropped the I really don’t want to be part of that, just because of help from a friend – Cale, called “Ella” in the film: determined innocence, both utterly disarming. “I’ve ball a bit or they got delivered a hard deal and don’t Dad. I’m doing something different, and I want to be “So basically, I play my friend, and my friend plays been passionate about acting all my life and don’t want know what to do with it. (That’s what I like about The recognised for what it is and who I am.” me,” she says. “In the movie I’m the heartbreaker; in to stop now. I enjoy writing a script in which nothing King’s Speech – those scenes of how people lived back Cale’s partial repatriation inevitably divides her life, I’m the assistant.” is wasted, no word unnecessary.” However, she adds then.) Although I like comedy, and write comedy, life “into a dichotomy that suits me, between the self In the film, though, the destruction of the with a self-confidence that is part grande-dame, part I’m quite a serious person.” She talks eloquently who needs the buzz and for everything to be open amorous Romeos is literal: they are murdered, albeit child still: “I can’t see myself directing something I about “an obsession with virtuality” among her 24 hours, and the self who needs to get away to be casually, by happenstance or accident. Of course it is didn’t write. But Katherine Bigelow and The Hurt peers, “and things that are unreal. I’m more interested alone with the – with the wind power”. She is not xxxxxxxxx OG RA P H s BY

tempting to look for the influence of Dad singing Locker have taken the glass ceiling away, and we ladies in reality – physics and science, and in authenticity.” talking about alternative energy, and repeats, slowly: T those dark masterpieces, “Femme Fatale” or “Venus now like to think that anything is possible.” It is, and Along this self-gouged furrow there were visits “The power of the wind in the mountains. I need to

in Furs”, but that would be pointless: the opaque, the obvious next move is her first feature-length film, home to Wales, and there was a warmly welcoming feel that.” P H O

W derek brown May 7 1947 – February 23 2011 E Derek Brown, who died in February at 63, was a for missing the story, and had no memory of above Darjeeling with a fellow correspondent, county of Hereford. beautiful writer, a Belfast veteran, a well-travelled writing it. and saying: “And we get paid for this!” Followed, Although Derek was born in Glasgow, his foreign correspondent, an editor, a parliamentary The freedom that posting offered was curbed no doubt, by one of his great gusts of laughter. family moved to Southport when he was 11 and sketch writer, and probably the first full-time web when he moved to Westminster, where his But it was great value for the paper. Derek’s he started his first newspaper job, on the Southport journalist. And a man who always left you feeling parliamentary sketches showed his writing skills acute observation of the Indian way of life and his Visitor, almost straight from school, after briefly happier after meeting him. but he desperately missed being out and about. tireless coverage of conflicts from Sri Lanka to trying bus-driving, fish-frying and the theatre. H He worked for the Guardian, the paper he His independence was further limited in Afghanistan showed what an asset he was, which Eileen, known to Derek as “the memsahib” had loved since boyhood, for 41 of those years, 1980 when he became night news editor – which is probably why (as they do) management decided since their India days, was not just his constant and when he emailed the last of his weekly is when he began the Silly File. This hilarious, he must be moved. companion throughout, she was his support A columns, to the Guardian Weekly, he was already quirky accumulation of cuttings and documents So Derek and Eileen had to up sticks for service and it always paid to copy Eileen into suffering severe pain from the septicaemia that concerned with the absurdities of life, and the Israel, a time that severely tested his impartiality. emails to Derek if you wanted an answer. killed him the next day, February 23. It was the strangulation of the language, filled a folder that For four years he became a polite, but enduring Derek’s love of food, drink and good V anniversary of the day he joined the paper. grew rapidly during foreign postings, and now thorn in the side of the authorities until 1997, company was equalled only by that for his books. During those years he served many parts demands to be published as a posthumous when he was recalled to London. The collection lined the walls of most rooms of E of the paper, starting in the Leeds office with expression of his sense of fun. Typically, the Browns avoided planes and their home and included a prized, and almost Michael Parkin, before moving, with his new wife While the news desk gave little scope for booked a passage on a container ship which complete set of the 167 gung-ho adventures for Eileen, to Belfast the next year. That landed him in writing, Derek used his experiences in Belfast to carried them sedately back to Blighty. Which is boys, written by Percy F Westerman. But there the thick of Northern Ireland’s most troubled good effect. When the Brixton riots broke out he when things went wrong. Despite all the evidence were many other loves: cheeses, birds, whisky, times, days that were long and testing, but not went to watch the mayhem and was appalled at of Derek’s skill and ability – and the kind of gardens, bus rides, islands, the Lib Dems (until joyless. On one occasion, as night news editor, I the rioters’ lack of stone-throwing skills. sensitive writing style once prized by the paper – recently) – and conversation. L called him late one evening, after a PA rush about Eventually, after a time in the features he was offered no new posting and languished. Anne McHardy, who shared the Belfast office a bomb in Derry. Eileen told me he was being department, persistent pressure to be relocated The beginnings of the Guardian Unlimited and was a staunch friend to both Derek and convivial in the Europa, but when I phoned he paid off, with an appointment as Brussels website created an opening, of sorts, as he Eileen ever since, says her daughter used to think O had left. correspondent and all the complexities of the EU. became the one journalist distilling the day’s Derek was Santa Claus. An easy mistake. As the third edition deadline approached But he boasted that in four years he never wrote events into crisp stories for the web. The funeral took place on March 10 at Derek called, went straight to copy and delivered a word about Belgian politics. He stuck that till 2002, by which time Hereford. Derek Brown, died February 23, aged S a flawless story that went to the top of the front Then to India, Derek and Eileen’s favourite the website staff had grown to 150, before 63, in Hereford. He is survived by his wife Eileen, page. The following day he apologised profusely posting. He recalled standing on a lofty ridge retiring, eventually to Leominster, in their favourite his mother, brother and sister. Geoff Andrews T

16 FRONTLINE