Blogging for Democracy

In much of the Arab World the media is state-controlled and has its hands tied by despotic government. Bloggers, by contrast, have stepped into the fray as the indymedia of the Middle East and it is they who are opening up debate and proposing reforms. However, internet freedom is now being severely curtailed and - as Sandmonkey said in his final post (due to police harassment he has now had to quit because of fears for his personal safety) :

"Bloggers have been intimidated by the authorities in Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan, Syria, Iran, Bahrain, just to name a few. It seems like the period of hope and reform that the bloggers of those countries have pushed for and represented in the past 2 years is now coming to an end, with the authorities more and more focused and intent on shutting us up, using everything from intimidation to imprisonment. And we have no defenders, no one to protect us, or champion our causes or lobby for our rights and safety. There used to be the Committee to Protect Bloggers, but that went defunct due to lack of funding, its media-pressure- only strategy and wide scope".

He proposes a coalition of bloggers, mainstream media, human rights organisations, thinktanks, and, of course, politicians and their staff, to campaign for freedom of speech in the Arab World - and for bloggers wherever they may be - and pressurise repressive governments into halting their unjustified arrest and imprisonment.

If you think you could contribute, contact him at sandmonkey@gmail.com. I know that many of my political friends should have at least some decent contacts to make this initiative work.

Pass the Remote

Sometimes we Europeans are given the impression that misogyny is the rest of the world's problem (Italians and Greeks excepted of course). As my post on Mernissi (To Starve or Not to Starve) was meant to show, Western women are often oblivious to the subconscious training in submission to male values they receive. How refreshing, therefore, to have encountered a dose of good-old-fashioned in your face sexism on the bbc website today.

Sir Patrick Moore believes women are responsible for dumbing down television. When asked what the problem was he replied:

"The trouble is the BBC now is run by women and it shows soap operas, cooking, quizzes, kitchen-sink plays. You wouldn't have had that in the golden days...I used to watch Doctor Who and Star Trek, but they went PC - making women commanders, that kind of thing. I stopped watching...I would like to see two independent wavelengths - one controlled by women, and one for us, controlled by men"

Sorry, I didn't think today was April 1st - more fool me I guess.

Start of The Braveheart Era?

"It's time". This was the slogan the Scottish Nationalists' campaigned on to turn what should have been a policy-driven Holyrood election into a referendum on independence and Blair's political legacy. The net result, as you will have seen, is a nationalist victory by the slimmist of margins (47 seats to 46) over Labour, which has been Scotland's biggest party for the best part of 50 years.

The decisive seat of Cunninghame North separates the two parties, and is hanging in the balance because it was won for the SNP by a mere 48 votes over the Labour incumbent Allan Wilson - significantly fewer than the number of spoilt ballots in that that constituency. The result also spells the end of the rainbow of parties which have hitherto figured in Scottish politics. The Socialists lost all six seats, while the Greens dropped from 7 to 2, with 17 Tories and 16 Lib Dems, who did disappointingly in comparison with predictions.

That the SNP is only one seat ahead means attention has shifted to the other big electoral issue: disenfranchisement. Widespread incompetence in the voting booths (who said Scottish education was the best in the world? My proud people cannot even follow basic instructions like 'mark your preference with a cross. Do not vote more than once') combined with flawed counting machines which broke down right left and centre and a cock-up regarding the distribution of postal ballots means 100 000 people were disenfranchised. Not to mention the bizarre incident of the disgruntled punter who took his golf club to the ballot boxes of Edinburgh West and destroyed significant numbers of votes.

This enormous number of spoiled ballots could have made a serious difference to the distribution of seats. Yet, in a situation reminiscent of the hanging chads incident, while the Electoral Commission is busy wringing its hands over what went wrong and, sensibly, advising a return to the traditional method of manual counts and metal boxes, the horse trading surrounding the formation of the new Executive is well underway and it is hard to see how we can now go back on those election results.

Coalition-forming, too, has thrown up some surprises. The media anticipated an alliance of SNP, Lib Dems and Greens which would form a very small overall majority. Lib Dem Leader, Nicol Stephen, however, has ruled that out now, on the basis that the Nats won't drop their demands for a referendum on independence. However, having read Iain MacWhirter's piece in today's Herald I am inclinded to disagree with this decision, however much I may dislike the idea of Scottish Independence.

The Lib Dems have already advocated more powers for the Scottish Parliament, particularly fiscal federalism and control over energy, through reopening the Constitutional Convention which led to the devolution settlement in the first place. The Nats must know that there is no majority in favour of independence in the House so any Bill would be voted down. The only way they can save political face is to advocate an Independent Commission to examine the relative merits of the status quo, greater autonomy, or independence itself - with non-binding results.

It is hard to see how such a commission could have recommended independence on any kind of non-ideological basis at the current time. As such, the Libs had little to lose - so long as they phrased the compromise properly. Now they have been cast in to opposition, and with them a long line of policies they would have done well to implement in the absence of a labour majority - particularly their commitment to PR and Local Income Tax, which the SNP also supports. Of course , there is no reason this cannot be accomplished on a consensual basis - but now the Lib Dems will be unable to make the running. And a minority government which could be taken down at any time might actually increase public support for embattled Nats when they see that noone is prepared to work with the largest party.

But I wait to be proved wrong. And the negotiations are not over yet. Not by a long shot.

Laicité vs Pluralism: Turkey's dilemma

Abdullah Gul's Presidential candidature has been declared nul and void by Turkey's Constitutional Court, triggering early parliamentary elections. Millions marched in defence of secularism on the streets of Istanbul and May Day riots saw 600 leftists arrested over fears that a Gull/Erdogan premiership would undermine the separation between religion and state which the army has traditionally defended.

Yet curiously it is the the unholy alliance between the military and political left, rather than the AK Party's Islamic agenda, which poses the greater threat to Turkey's democratic institutions. The cause of the Constitutional Court's decision to invalidate the first round of voting, in which Gul was nominated for President, was that there were insufficient MPs present to constitute a quorum.

That only 361 were actually in the Chamber at the time was no surprise - because the opposition parties had decided to boycott the vote. Indeed, of those who did cast their ballot, only 4 voted against Gul. Having thus rendered the procedure nul and void the AKP's opponents called upon the Court to overturn the decision, stirred up dissent on the street, and sent the stockmarket spiralling downwards in the process.

True, if a 'Christian Solidarity' Party were marching to power in Scotland I might think twice before letting it take office - and even take to the street. However it is difficult to view the AKP as militant. They bear rather more comparison to our 'family values' Conservatives (more specifically the Christian Democratic centre-right in Europe) than an Al-Qaeda cell.

Indeed, what are the 'radical Islamist' misdemeanours for which the europhile reformist Gul is reproached? Allowing university students to wear hijab on campus and promoting Koran-reading competitions for schoolkids on Turkey's national day. Replace Koran with Bible, and you'll find that in school assembles in Britain every day of the week.

I am a secularist myself. However, my beef with its defenders in Turkey is that democracy should be one of the fundamental principles of secularlism. If they are prepared to overturn their own democratic processes for the sake of laicité they will simply have done what they accuse the Islamists of and turned secularism into an ultimate value - or religion in its own right.
For more views on the matter, see the following article published in Zaman.

Urban Living

Neighbours. Europeans love to hate them. Not me, I was always one of those who believed in tripping round there with some cookies to introduce yourself and offer to water their plants when they are on holiday. However after being in my new apartment for two days I must say that some of my new voisins are singularly inconsiderate.

Now, it may be that the walls are much too thin in this concrete bird-cage of a building. But then, I would have expected the neighbours to have caughtebned on to that fact some time ago. So between upstairs 'faisant la fete' until about 2am last night and some other sod getting his hammer out at 8.30 am (and on a public holiday, so it can't be any workers they've hired) only to FINISH what he was doing at 9.30, my zen state went out the window and I found myself screaming "SHUT UP" at the walls in general. I'll purchase some ear plugs and see how that goes.

However it got me thinking. Either I was much too spoiled by the sound of silence (and occasional birdsong) at my parent's place when I was growing up. Or urban life just isn't good for you. All boxed together in these concrete shacks, surrounded by constant noise, from the wailing of sirens to screams in the night - not to mention the fact that everytime someone flushes the toilet it reverberates around the building. Is this the kind of progressive society we wanted to build? What happened to dreams of space, privacy, calm? Of home as a retreat? Or even of home in general. So many people I know treat their apartments as somewhere to sleep (though even that is kinda difficult) and spend all their time out the house. I guess it's cos we all live on our own these days.

I think it's sad. If I had the choice I would live in a big house with a courtyard, lush gardens and fountains. With my family round about me, somewhere on the outskirts of town. I'd have friends round regularly for dinners, games, and simple pottering. Their kids could run around the grounds safely, rather than being boxed in in front of the TV. I'd grow vegetables and cook. Learn to draw. Maybe even play some more tunes on the guitar. What is funny is that, despite the simplicity of all I've just outlined it seems unattainable. My current life gives me (some) money, status, excitement. But it also traps you in a vicious circle. Maybe I should think about trying something completely different in a year or so?