Anti-Bribes

Kabul artist Aman Mojadidi dressed up in a policeman’s uniform, set-up his own check-point, and began offering bribes to passing motorists.  The stunt was a protest against the high-levels of corruption in the city:

“On behalf of the city of Kabul and the Kabul police, if you have paid a bribe or ‘tip’ to someone in the past, I apologize,” the officer says in Dari to the disbelieving driver. “Please take 100 Afghanis,” or about $2.

Mojadidi wanted to draw attention to the pervasive misuse of power in Afghanistan and to see how Afghan drivers would react when he apologized on behalf of the widely scorned police force.

H/T @RohanJay (whom fans of media freedoms should follow).  The stunt reminded me of the story earlier this year about the Zero Rupee note, an innovation by 5th Pillar designed to combat bribe culture in India.  From the CommGap report:

Fed up with requests for bribes and equipped with a zero rupee note, the old lady handed the note to the official. He was stunned. Remarkably, the official stood up from his seat, offered her a chair, offered her tea and gave her the title she had been seeking for the last year and a half to obtain without success.

The problem of bribe-culture of course begins when public officials are paid too little in the first place.  One hopes that these high-profile, amusing-yet-persuasive interventions inspire the politicians of those countries to address the underlying issues, if they can.  Charter Cities are one way of guaranteeing standards of pay and public standards, though I recoil at the colonialist mindset such projects seem to promote.  Are there more internationalist, left-wing versions of the underlying idea, I wonder?
Zero Rupee Note

The Big Libel Gig

Last night, the Libel Reform Campaign staged ‘The Big Libel Gig’, an evening of comedy, science and politics.  Scientists Simon Singh and Brian Cox joined doctors Ben Goldacre (author of ‘Bad Science‘) and Peter Wilmshurst.  Politicians Evan Harris (Lib Dem), Peter Bottomley (Con) and Paul Farrelly (Lab) also took a turn, alongside the proper comedians: Robin Ince, Marcus Brigstocke, Ed Byrne, Shappi Khorsandi and Dara O’Briain.
Some of my photos from backstage and in the wings are online at Flickr:

In parliament, the campaign reached a tipping point – the majority of eligible MPs have now signed Early Day Motion 423 which calls for reform.
Unfortunately, the libel laws are still being used to suppress discussion in the public interest.  Professor Francisco Lacerda is a Swedish academic who has been threatened with a libel suit by an Israeli lie detector manufacturer. He visited London last week, to highlight how England’s libel laws prevent him from publishing research about technology being used by the DWP in England. Millions of pounds of public money has been spent on this technology.

Answering the McCann Question

Mark Pack asked me to write a guest piece for the Liberal Democrat Voice on Libel Reform. It was a good opportunity to dig a little deeper into the argument for reform, and rebutt one of the most common objections to making changes.


Free Speech is Not For SaleThe clamour for a change to our pernicious libel laws grows louder every day.  In November, Index on Censorship and English PEN published Free Speech is Not For Sale, a report into the state of libel in England & Wales, and the bizarre phenomenon of libel tourism.  Impressed by this report, Jack Straw announced the creation of a working group to deliver reform.  Lib Dem peer Lord Lester announced on the BBC Radio 4 PM programme he will begin drafting a libel bill, and MPs have begun to sign EDM 423 (tabled by Dr Evan Harris) which demands a libel overhaul.  High profile cases like the recent battle between Trafigura and the BBC, and the suing of cardiologist Peter Wilmshurst, have shown the general public what a blight on free speech our libel laws have become, and a petition for change is nearing ten thousand signatures (do sign it if you haven’t already).
Not everyone is convinced by the need for reform, however.  Some people resist the need for change, and it is up to campaigners to win the argument.  Since the Bournemouth conference made a brave manifesto commitment to libel reform in September, ‘campaigners’ now includes every Liberal Democrat party activist.  Liberal Democrat Voice is the ideal place to explore the sticking points of this debate a little more deeply. Continue reading “Answering the McCann Question”

The Execution of Gary Glitter

The-Execution-Of-Gary-Gli-001
I watched The Execution of Gary Glitter tonight.  Just as executions have a morbid fascination, dramas about executions, like Dead Man Walking or The Green Mile seem to have that same fascination (although perhaps one degree removed).
I think the death penalty is a valid subject for Channel 4, a public service broadcaster.  Though it is not a live debate here, it is a real and divisive issue for our cultural cousins in the USA.  The hanging of paedophiles is an oft repeated thought experiment, whenever a Huntley or a Vanessa George is arrested, and it is sufficiently discussed in the UK for pollsters to regularly ask the public’s opinion on the issue.  According to the programme, 54% of British adults support its reintroduction.

The device of using Gary Glitter felt like exactly that, & hopelessly crass. If we executed people in the UK they’d be poor & unknown. (@leylandrichard on Twitter)

There’s no doubt that the choice of Glitter as the anti-hero was was a fantastic marketing ploy.  He is, shall we say, the most culturally significant bogeyman we have.  However, this also gave the narrative extra depth, because his rock-star past allowed the programme makers to pass commentary on popular culture. The Daily Mirror headlines for a Glitter trial felt real, and the MP3 remix sending Gary Glitter back to No.1 (on downloads) on the day of his execution was an obvious slam dunk. It is an uncomfortable thought, but I think he is the protagonist many writers would have chosen.  The device cannot simply be marked down as the product of pure cynicism.
Continue reading “The Execution of Gary Glitter”

Anatomy of Injustice

I’ve just attended the launch of the CPJ report Anatomy of Injustice: The Unsolved Killings of Journalists in RussiaIndex on Censorship hosted a debate as part of the Free Word Festival.

Manana Aslamazyan, Jo Glanville, Nina Ognianova and Richard Sambrook discuss the report. Photo by englishpen on twitter
Manana Aslamazyan, Jo Glanville, Nina Ognianova and Richard Sambrook discuss the report. Photo by englishpen on twitter

A culture of impunity has sprung up in Russia.  The murderer of Anna Politkovskaya has not been brought to justice, and the authorities are under no pressure to take investigations to their conclusion.  For the panel, the blame for this climate of indifference lies in a large part with the Russian media.  According to Manana Aslamazyan, there is no culture of solidarity amongst Russian journalists.  They fall into three categories:

  • A sizable group of cynics, who are content to game the system and support the regime;
  • A larger group of under-trained, provincial journalists, who live in fear of reprocussions and do nothing to upset the status quo;
  • A small group of “mad” campaigning journalists, who persist in holding power to account.

It is this group which is being murdered.  “An entire granch of journalism has been taken out” said Richard Sambrook, Director of BBC gobal news.  Investigative journalism has been effectively killed off in Russia.
It therefore falls to the Western journalists to keep Russia from sliding further into a deadly authoriarianism, and to support their beleagred Russian colleagues.  Foreign media can be a thorn in the side of the Russian authorities, says Aslamazyan, even ‘name-and-shame’ those in the domestic media community who are complicit in corruption and failure to accurately report.  By leading the way, Western journalists can embolden their Russian counterparts.  Indeed, said Oleg Panfilov (director of the Centre for Journalism in Extreme Situations), Russian journalists often ask foreign correspondents in Moscow to cover a trial on their behalf.  A report in the Financial Times of London is worth more than dozens of domestic reports.
Panfilov’s mentioning of the FT dove-tailed neatly with a comment by the author of the report, Nina Ognianova, who suggested that campaigners should focus on “shared interests” that the West has with Russia, rather than the rejected notion of “shared values”.  If the Russian government, and even the Russian public, are not outraged by the killing of journalists, then perhaps a campaign that aims for the wallet, rather than the heartstrings, might have more effect.  Business journalists, lead by (say) the Financial Times, should place more emphasis on how the decline of investigative journalism leads to corruption… which stunts the economy and ensures fewer returns on investment.  When the Russian elite realises that its own business interests are being irrevocably damaged by this culture of impunity, then perhaps they may be motivated to stop it.