Banking with thieves

So, the banks win again. This is the first case I've read about our new Supreme Court handling, and it's not a great first impression. After being bailed out by the taxpayer, and continuing to pay themselves massive 'bonuses' (it would really help their PR if they called a 'bonus' what it is – commission), the banks have won an appeal against paying people like me back the £30 to £50 a time we get charged when our accounts slip into the red, or over our overdraft limits if we have them.

Apparently the banks say that "these unplanned overdraft fees could be avoided" – but I've never been offered a choice of account by HSBC or Nationwide (both of whom I bank with) which gave me the option of having payments blocked if they would take it over the limit. HSBC just charged each time I went over, and let me go quite far over the limit. Nationwide charge once, then don't let me go any further, which is much worse!

Nationwide once refused a payment, charged me £30, and the outsourcers who collect payments on behalf of my insurance company then charged me another £20 because they had to collect the payment again a few days later. Beset by thieves on all sides, I am. And let us not forget that these are the very thieves who only last year posted record profits of $17bn.

I hope they can't all be tarred with the same brush – and the Cooperative certainly seems to be better than most. I think it's time to switch.

Somalia: Winds of change in the horn

After independence in 1960, Somalia suffered some classic postcolonial problems. In 1969 came the military coup which installed Siad Barre, who became embroiled in the chess-game of the Cold War. He took Somalia into a war with Ethiopia to annex the Ogaden, a border region where many ethnic Somalis live. The state collapsed as the Cold War ended, and Somalia embarked on a period of civil war and chaos. For fifteen years Somalia has had no effective government and no guarantee of security. The north of the country has some limited government in Somaliland and Puntland, but the south, where the capital, Mogadishu, is, has been in a worse condition.

Recent events have been quite complex, though the United States' relatively minor 'war on terror' operations are overshadowing other, more important and more surprising developments. At least three types of group have been involved in vying for control of Mogadishu and the country. First of all, the Islamic Courts Union, commonly referred to in western press as "the Islamists", wrested control last summer from the warlords who had divided the city between themselves since the Somali state collapsed in 1991. The Islamist's rule was short, though reportedly characterised by relative calm and order, even if there were some reports of "Talibanization".

Then over the last couple of weeks, the Transitional Federal Government, heavily backed by the Ethiopian army (one of the largest in Africa), drove out the "Islamists" and took control of the capital and the third city, Kismayu. Since then the transitional government, internationally recognised and formed by negotiations in 2004, has been moving towards imposing order and asserting its authority. It has a transitional charter to implement and a lot of negotiation and compromise to achieve if it is to garner the cooperation of the warlords and the moderate elements of the Islamic Courts Union in — necessary if the transitional government is to build peace and security, which is the primary aim at the moment.

For the future, the transitional government is probably the best hope for peaceful development in southern Somalia, though a problem remains regarding the north. The transitional government's charter is committed to a unified Somalia: they hope that the northern regions, particularly Somaliland, will be amenable to joining with the south as they did after they gained independence from Britain in 1960. However, it is doubtful that Somalilanders will want to be governed from Mogadishu again, after the experience of being ruled by Barre. Indeed, 97% of the population voted in favour of independence in a recent referedum, and many would rather fight than rejoin the south.

Somaliland, "a home-grown democracy", is campaigning for international recognition of its reconstitution within its 1960 borders, prior to unification with Italian part of Somalia. With the second-largest city, Hergeisa, and an important port at Berbera, Somaliland is an economically important region, so the transitional government may not give up its hopes of unification easily. Unfortunately, the international community is not easily persuaded to accept border changes and new nations, so even if peace is established in the south, civil war may be a possibility.

Ethiopia and Kenya no doubt hope that a friendly government will abandon its historic claims to border-lands and so maintain peace in the Horn of Africa. The United States has been increasingly concerned about Somalia — a Muslim country — being a haven for terrorists and a money-launderer's paradise. Events are going in a direction which is good for most of the international players involved, but it remains to be seen whether it will be good for Somali people.

For the moment the transitional government's authority, and any possibility of security, is only guaranteed by foreign troops. Those who call for Ethiopian troops to leave as soon as possible, including the EU commissioner responsible for relations with the region, are right in arguing that a continued Ethiopian military presence could end up stirring up resentment among Somalis. The possibility of an "Iraq-style insurgency" against the foreign military presence has already been suggested by The Economist and others. We might also compare the Somalilanders in the north, with their aspirations for independence, to the Kurds in northern Iraq.

Many suspect Ethiopia's intentions, not least Somalians themselves, who have little reason to trust their neighbour. But just as maintaining military operations in Iraq is proving costly for the American and British governments, Ethiopia will not relish having direct control of the volatile and hostile region that southern Somalia is to them. Their best hope, and the best hope for Somalia, is that they can leave quickly and the transitional government can establish peace and security in Somalia with the aid of an international force drawn from other African nations, not least so that children can go to school and people can live their lives.

(Edited 16 January 2007; thanks to Peter Low for his comments.)

Historical labyrinth

Pan's Labyrinth is superb. It has fairies, it has gore, and the acting and production are top notch. But I'm not going to go on about the film here: I want to talk about the historical background. The Spanish Civil War looms over their recent history as the Second World War looms over Britain and most other European countries. It began in July 1936 with General Franco's military uprising against the republican government, and ended when his forces took Madrid and Valencia in March 1939. At the end of the war, thousands on the republican side were put to death and Franco ruled Spain as a dictator until his death in 1975, when the country finally began the transition back to liberal democracy.

The film is set in 1944 in a remote mountain base where Franco's forces are combatting republican guerrillas, who are still hiding out after the war had been over for five years. The desperate position of these remnants is clearly portrayed, and any notion of the situation in Europe in that period only strengthens that picture. To the west, Portugal had already come under a right-wing dictatorship in the late 1920s; to the east was Italy where the fascism had begun under Mussolini even earlier. Franco was a military dictator who'd had material support from Italy (who had sent thousands of troops) and Nazi Germany (who had, among other things, tested out their bombing methods at Guernica). Six months after Franco took Madrid, Britain and France were at war with Germany.

The only allies the republicans had abroad were the Soviets. But with Soviet arms came Soviet orders: the Communist Party were to be in control and the republican resistance was to be centralised as a "People's Army" instead of the decentralised Popular Front. These imperatives led to the Barcelona May Days, when divisions came to a head between the Communists on the one hand and the anarchists and democratic socialists on the other. These events are recorded in a first-hand account by George Orwell and a 1995 film by Ken Loach.

Anyone living under a dictatorship in the twenty-first century would have the hope of escaping to somewhere liberal and tolerant — today, any western European country fits that description. But in 1944, France was the place for Spanish republicans to escape to, despite the fact it was under Nazi rule. Many escaped north over the Pyrennees from 1936 onwards (including Manu Chao's parents) but that avenue was gradually restricted. It is rare that any country will willingly accept massive numbers of refugees, and in this sense civil wars can become complicated international affairs.

After the unequivocally fascist governments of Germany and Italy fell, Franco's Spain (which shouldn't be described as fascist, but was more aligned with fascists than anyone else) was very isolated internationally, but Franco and his cronies, the Franquistas, ruled until his death in 1975. After that, Spain's King, whom Franco had groomed and named as his heir, ensured that democracy returned to Spain: there were political prisoner amnesties, a new constitution ratified by a referendum, and the long-banned Communist Party were allowed to campaign for election again (only to be stubbed with less than 10% of the vote). The test of this return to democracy came in 1981 when there was a coup attempt: it failed when the King declared, in a televised address, support for the elected parliament.

For me, knowing this history clarified and sharpened Pan's Labyrinth: the brutality of the Captain, the desperation of the guerrillas and the hopelessness felt by Ofelia, a little girl longing to escape a world where things "aren't so good", all make so much more sense.

How white is white?

The front page of this weekend's Guardian sports a picture of the "non-white" British National Party candidate for a ward in Bradford, one of the northern towns which suffered race riots in 2001.

That's him, Sharif Gawad, to the right. His name sounds foreign, certainly, but he looks pretty "white" to me. But, no — as the Guardian put it, he's the Greek-Armenian "grandson of an asylum seeker". He's "ethnic".

The BNP leadership puts it somewhat differently. He's the grandson of a "genuine refugee" (the use of that term by the BNP might be a first) who came to Britain fleeing "Muslim persecution". He is "of Christian origin" and "the sort of chap" who'll attend BNP demos "whatever the weather".

It's interesting to see the reversal: the Guardian — revelling, I think, in a bit of BNP-baiting — pointing out his grandfather was an "asylum seeker", and the BNP — on the defensive — referring to that same person as a "refugee". Part of the distinction seems to be that Gawad's grandfather was a Christian fleeing Muslims: I wonder if the same arguments could apply to, say, Christians of Darfur fleeing Arab persecutors?

Whatever justifications their leadership can come up with, the Guardian reckon the BNP rank-and-file is upset by Gawad's candidature. The party admits that "his name alone" could "give rise to confusion". They suggest that "in hindsight" it might've been best not to put him up as a candidate. Apparently the lesson is that someone with a Muslim-sounding name shouldn't be a BNP candidate. It's okay, though, he's "known for his strong anti-Islamic stance".

This is the point: the BNP is at the moment focusing on Islam as the malign force invading our great nation. Their strategy is to capitalise on and/or create anti-Muslim feeling based on Islamic terrorism (New York, Madrid, London), making it a fight between the good, Christian west and evil Muslims from the east. Widespread lack of knowledge about Islam and a skewed conception of Muslims due to these recent events contribute wonderfully. (George Galloway is playing the same game from the other side: he is capitalising on Muslim reaction to anti-Muslim feeling.)

But the BNP is still an organisation committing to "shut[ting] the door" on immigration (including refugees, assuming they can find safe refuge in places other than Britain). It is a party that wants to want to "strengthen the traditional family" — that is, the patriarchal one. They are in favour of corporal and capital punishment (for "petty criminals and vandals" and "paedophiles, terrorists and murderers", respectively). Not to mention its economic policies which would, to put it frankly, cripple our economy.

The BNP claim to be defending British "traditions and values" — but I can think of at least one they are assaulting, a tradition of ours of which I am proud. The British tradition of providing a safe haven and openness to immigration is, despite tabloid hysteria, a long-running, beneficial feature of our society. A quote from the memoirs of a Russian who fled the Tsars in 1876 will suffice to illustrate this:

As I went to the steamer I asked myself with anxiety, "Under which flag does she sail, — Norwegian, German, English?" Then I saw floating above the stern the union jack, — the flag under which so many refugees, Russian, Italian, French, Hungarian, and of all nations, have found an asylum. I greeted that flag from the depth of my heart.

Remember, remember

"Excuse me. There seems to be some sort of mistake. I bought a drink and some popcorn and now I have no money."
— Black Books, series 1, ep. 5

Tonight, I went to the cinema. But, heeding the warnings implicit in Bernard's bewilderment above, I took my own popcorn, freshly made. It's so much cheaper. Alas, it seemed a petty act of rebellion next to the explosives on screen.

We saw V For Vendetta, the latest comicbook-made-film from Hollywood. I've read the comic, but I won't pretend to be a superior geek — I read it when I heard they were making a film about a British Orwellian dystopia with an anarchist hero of sorts. My cup of tea, I thought. And it was: Alan Moore's comic is a brilliant work, and I know its not only those of us with a soft spot for anarchism and a crush on George Orwell who appreciated it — my girlfriend loved it too.

After Sin City, I had high hopes of how a comicbook film could look, and with the Wachowskis scriptwriting, expectations were higher still. Those hopes have not been dashed: The comic is, to oversimplify, "a blend of 1984 and Batman", and the film takes that and builds on it, sticking to the comic's imagery, making the story "relevant" and, well, just making that story.

As with any adaptation, it's not a question of whether it's been changed or how much, but simply how. I expected not to have quite as much Shakespearean monologue or deeper philosophical explanation from V; I was even braced for a bit of sexualisation of the characters, perhaps a broadening of the relationship between V and Evey. Thankfully, the imagery and the relationships between characters didn't stray far from those of the graphic novel, making for an impressive identification of the two: in my mind, the train scene near the end plays out in the frames just as it does in the panels.

As well as the Shakespeare quotes, which were integral to V's original character, I loved the references to Emma Goldman and the Sex Pistols — but particularly I enjoyed the way the Wachowski's have updated the story in its detail, but not in its form. As the comic did, the narrative mentions "the way the meaning of words changed" — but the Wachowski's have used the more recent euphemisms "collateral" and "rendition" for their examples.

The TV-footage-style flashbacks and clips that illustrate Britain's slide towards fascism blend the ranting-on-a-podium imagery which is so ubiquitous in dystopian film with eerily familiar-sounding news reports. Images of "America's war", for instance, or the reference to people being "interned at Belmarsh", gave the film an urgency it would have lacked if the setting had been less contemporary. The effect was enhanced by the fact that, as a Brit, seeing any film based in this country is a relief amidst the domination of American cinema. Just seeing motorways instead of freeways lightens my heart.

V For Vendetta stirs all sorts of political and philosophical debates: about V's nihilism; where power lies; the ethics of political violence and revenge. I hope this film gets more people to look at today's situation — broadly, the "war on terror" — from a different perspective. There is an ever-present threat of tyranny in any democracy, and the swift transitions to tyranny that we can see in history are quite alarming. Today we have two camps: the complacent majority that hardly notices the government's creeping authoritarianism, and the 'lefties' who cry 'fascism!' far too frequently.

I'll leave you with the one line that stuck with me from the comic, and which I think and hope will stick with others walking out of the cinema: "people should not be afraid of their governments; governments should be afraid of their people."

The wikiworld will come

By now I suspect most web users have heard of wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that recently celebrated its millionth article. I used to edit it quite a lot, but that's no great distinction: it had hundreds, thousands, of editors then and it has more now.

There's no doubt in my mind that wikipedia is a wonderful project. Whether it is a platform for cranks or a reliable reference source, it is the most interesting development the web has brought us yet. True, many of its other inventions are more popular to participate in — music and film downloads, social networks starting with livejournal and culminating in myspace, and, linked to the latter, blogs.

These other trends weren't all that easy to predict, but they make sense. Who'dve thought we'd be downloading music instead of buying it in a physical form? Once the technology was there — particularly broadband 'net access — it was inevitable really. Music providers were slow to respond to the opportunity, so web users set out to do it themselves, uncertain about the legalities.

But who would've predicted blogs and, especially, journals? Blogs, once again, soared in popularity after the technology was up to scratch, once it was easy to upload articles and have them read. XML and related languages have really made that possible. But before that was all sorted out, people were already keeping public diaries. There may well be a theory that anyone writing a diary secretly wants it to be read, but to actually publish the daily events for all the world to see? Again, it wasn't easy to predict, but looking back it seems quite a natural development out of Usenet groups, discussion lists and the like.

Filesharing and discussion came together to form social networks — Friends Reunited was one of the important precursors to that, and now friendster and myspace are classic examples. I don't know whether livejournal's friends list function was a first, but it was definitely a forerunner to the lists people now create on other social network sites, with all the same worries about who to add and who not to add, just as party-throwers might agonise over who to invite and who not to invite.

But back to the wiki — who could have predicted that? Yeah, it would become obvious people would start using the internet to collaborate in various ways and to share information, and those are the main points about wikipedia. But to create a collaborative project open to everyone without exception? It defies expectation, certainly.

Someone quoted recently (on a livejournal community for wikipedians which I set up) that the problem with wikipedia is that it only works in practice — in theory, it can never work. People really did say it'll never work. They said it would fall to vandals, that the articles would be crap. There have been problems with those particular worries. Indeed, a number of contributors have left the project because of incessant vandalism, and I'm sure many potential contributors have been discouraged by the poor quality or particular articles.

But wikipedia has not fallen. It persists and improves, much to the surprise and bemusement of everyone, its founders included. Why should we care? Well, it is an incredibly useful site, providing systematic and easy-to-access information on a massive range of topics. It may need to be taken with a pinch of salt, and it can never be perfect, always being a work-in-progress.

What is important to realise is that wikipedia has a vision and a plan attached to it: the ultimate aim is to give "every single person... free access to the sum of all human knowledge". When the day comes that the wikimedia foundation distributes wikipedia affordably in all the world's major languages — then people will realise the very real impact this project is going to have.

Mislabelling liberals

Liberals: the bogeymen of US politics. It's tempting, but condescending, to say that Americans don't fully understand what "liberal" means, but there is a better explanation for their 'misuse' of the word. In the US "liberal" means socially liberal, which conservative America can't handle. Economic and political liberalism, at least, is what that country is founded on, but for various reasons a large part of that nation has chosen to despise those among them who see abortion and religion as matters of choice.

BarryNYC's comment on this discussion of Belarus is an illuminating, though maybe not entirely representative, example. Notice that Barry isn't using liberal as an adjective, but a noun: He doesn't call Timothy Garton Ash "liberal", but "a liberal". This might seem like a petty distinction put in those terms, but what it reveals is a combatative attitude where 'liberals' can be pitted against... well, "conservatives" (it seems to be a positive word over the Atlantic), "patriots", and the like. "Liberal" doesn't appear as an adjective, as a property that could change, or one that might be 'in the eye of the beholder', but instead is seen as an essential category that Garton Ash belongs to, just as we might say he is a man.

This is the kind of language that George W. Bush, "The President of Good and Evil", is both a cause and a sympton of. It's the black and white world of "Us against Them", leaving little room for shades of grey — that is, serious debate. Demonising your opponents and making generalisations like that is dangerously divisive, and injects hostility into politics, as well as leading to ridiculous misunderstandings — according to Barry, liberals were fond of the Soviet Union. No, Barry, that's communists you're thinking of (and it's not even all of them).

But apart from the rhetoric of political battle, the major mistake made in the US in terms of labelling is that 'liberal' is too often equated with 'the left'. That is not what liberalism is. Since I started formally studying politics, I've became acutely aware what a great shame it is that the people of those most liberal countries (Britain and most of the rest of the EU, the US, Canada, etc.) don't even have a clear idea what liberalism is. Maybe I'm biased, but a lack of any political or philosophical education in (at least British) schools is a major and obvious flaw. People don't read or know about the classic arguments for freedom of speech and association, the tenets of liberalism, such as J. S. Mills' On Liberty.

I mentioned previously that Dr Frank Ellis, Leeds Uni's resident racist who's just been suspended, called the BNP "a little too socialist". That makes him seriously right-wing, doesn't it? Well, not necessarily. It puts Ellis to the right of the BNP, but the BNP aren't actually very right-wing. What they are is authoritarian and xenophobic — but I need not make arguments against the BNP here. The point is that this is another over-simplification: there is right and there is left, the two are mutually exclusive, and if you're on one side, the other is your enemy.

Politics is not simple. You can't see every party or politician as simply either left-wing or right-wing. That's not to say those distinctions aren't useful — they are, as long as you recognise at least one other dichotomy: libertarianism and authoritarianism, as politicalcompass.org shows. Even their grid isn't ideal in some cases, but every model is a simplification, and we use each of them as far as they are useful. We need to remember this, because the labels we derive from those models are always simplifications too, and sometimes they go terribly wrong.