Liberating Spaces

The Arab world is awakening to a new political era. Times of real democracy and respect for human rights seem to have arrived to a region which seemed condemned to live in the permanent dilemma between secular autocracy or radical Islamic rule. It is too soon to say, but from what I’ve seen from trips, conversations and research about the region, this seems to me a radical change from past experiences. This is neither an Islamic revolution (the deputy leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Rashad al-Bayoumi, said in an interview to the Spiegel “We don’t want this revolution to be portrayed as a revolution of the Muslim Brothers, as an Islamic revolution. This is a popular uprising by all Egyptians”), nor a traditional liberal one. Islamist groups have played a marginal role in the uprising, and no secular political groups or leaders are capitalizing the change. Instead young people from different affiliations, religions and political beliefs coordinated their action under the conviction that their country was in a bad state, it needed to change, and change had arrived.

There is no single cause or factor that explains these sudden political changes. There are, however, elements that facilitate it happening. And today this is how people are using new tools of information, communication and organisation to challenge the power of the state against those who appropriated it for their own personal benefit. In autocracies, this means bringing the authorities to kneel by the force and conviction of the many, coordinated to achieve a well-defined common goal e.g. in Tunis and Egypt for the toppling of the dictators (Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak).

This is people’s revolution. Those who don’t enjoy the rights and obligations of democratic citizenship, revolt against the powerful to get them. This will extend to many other autocracies in the world. Many countries are ready for a real people’s revolution.

In well-established democracies these technological changes may facilitate revolt against the privileges of the political class – from the pettty corruption of letting the taxpayer pay a hotel room in a private trip to the big commissions attached to public procurement contracts -, and the manipulation of state structures for the benefit of the few, those with money and position to influence, sometimes even determine, how we are governed – above all the financiers, who with arrogance move money, take money as they please.

keep reading »

Having done some research work on Middle East politics (including a Masters in Middle Politics) and being academically, professionally and personally connected to what the Internet is doing to politics, it is amazing how I haven’t commented on what’s happening in Egypt yet. I want to write a longer article on young people, revolutions and communication. But for now, I’ll have to be satisfied with a bit of free time I have found to write a short note on Egypt twit-face-wiki-jaz revolution. A short note, because I just want to point towards a couple of interesting sources, on internet or non-internet related factors in relation to the Egyptian revolution.

First I should mention the unavoidable Evgeny Morozov (@evgenymorozov) and his article “The dark side of Internet for Egyptian and Tunisian protesters“. Not that he says much more than his usual (see his book The Net Delusion)): new communication technologies help democratic and non-democratic revolutions alike, dictators also use Internet to repress, there are more reasons behind a revolution than the Internet. But it is also interesting to have a powerful critical voice out there, pointing these (rather obvious?) facts.

Then there is one of my favourites, Patrick Meier (@patrickmeier). He has interesting articles on his blog iRevolution about the use of crisismapping – particularly Ushahidi – for mapping the Egyptian protests.

Two articles analysing the situation in Egypt. First about the first US reactions (on Foreign Policy), and, second, in the context of a possible Middle East awakening (on openDemocracy). And a collection of articles on Foreign Policy magazine about the options and consequences for US diplomacy.

keep reading »

Tomorrow I’m flying to Warsaw. Since June, I’ve been training Polish civil servants on EU negotiations for the Polish Presidency in the second semester in 2011. I won’t tell you about my impressions at this moment. I’ll do it when the training is finished at the end of January 2011. At this moment, it is mixed, though more positive than negative…

In the meantime, France is melting down, or so it looks like. Would the government concede or the demonstrators become tired of so much protesting? I’d bet for the second. Sooner or later people will have to go back to their jobs, to consume and ignore the neighbour…this is not 68 anymore. This has negative – e.g. no further debate about the appropriateness of the economic measures or a path to change of economic model – and positive – e.g. defeat of the most conservative forces in the left (which are, I reckon, quite powerful in France (and arrogant too!)) – effects. Europe is trapped in this false dilemma between neo-liberal recipes for our economic predicament and old, reactionary social policies, which are based on the actual exploitation of a big part of the human population and natural resources e.g. cheap oil price, low salaries, authoritarian governments…

A new narrative, discourse is necessary. A discourse that’s brewing, and it’s actually there, but that needs (1) leadership and (2) momentum i.e. the right generation to support it. This discourse is based on simple ideas: (1) Big truths do not exist = nobody is 100% and always right, (2) we only have one planet, (3) we are what we are = we should solve our own problems, each and everyone of us, (4) everything is connected.

keep reading »

By coincidence, I am in Poland this weekend. I went to the centre of Warsaw to see and feel the mourning Polish citizens are demonstrating for those killed in this morning’s plane accident, including the Polish President Lech Kaczynski. I have videos and pictures I will post tomorrow.

The emotions one can feel in front of the Presidential palace are overwhelming…

The liberation of women is still an ongoing process. In the last 50 years we have made great advances in the legal, economic and political rights of women. There is much to do in the world on this. But there is much more to do in the social and cultural dimensions. In our societies, we still hear how women are verbally misrepresented, attacked or discriminated. We still see how women are sexually attacked and violently beaten. We still treat women as inferior beings, which don’t think like us, and so don’t deserve the same responsibilities. Even if consciously we don’t realise it, in our everyday lives we often treat women as objects, trophies or servants. When I say “we”, I am not only referring to men, I am referring to society, men and women. It is our cultural values and social practices that put women in this position. Some benefit from it, many suffer from it.

The real liberation of women. The one in which they have the opportunity to be women without being attacked, discriminated against or dominated. It does touch me directly since I was born. Now, it touches me even more.
keep reading »

In a world where politicians and civil servants do nearly what they please with our money and resources, because we, the citizens, don’t have enough instruments to scrutinize what they are doing, the banks take advantage to reap the possible benefits. This is what happened in Greece and other European countries on the road to the Euro before 2001. And this is probably what continues to happen today.

The New York Times, still the best newspaper in the world IMHO, has a news article on how Goldman Sachs and other Wall St banks negotiated financial products with the Greek government, and possibly other European countries, which facilitated their hiding of high deficits to get onto the Euro. In return, they got the future proceeds of Greece’s airports and highways, among other things in a deal termed as a “garage sale”.

This is what happens when governments and public administrations do what their please without the proper scrutiny. In most of Europe, parliaments are not anymore, if they ever where, a place of accountability, but of consent and quarrelling. Today, it is up to the citizen to control that those who govern us and administer our resources and tax money do it properly. Every bit of control, even the minor one is useful by aggregation. For this we need new instruments and rules. Opening public data to all (e.g. data.gov and data.gov.uk) is a very good step in this direction.

At the request of the UK government, Facebook took down 30 pages linked to prison inmates who were, according to the authorities, behaving inappropriately on the site, including taunting victims’ family members. It took them 48 hours to do it.

In itself this fact is worrisome. At the request of a government Facebook decides, at its own judgment, to curtail the individual freedom of 30 people (for though they are in prison and they are crime offenders, they are still people), without the intervention of a judge to guarantee the respect of fundamental rights. It seems that victims, government and Facebook (!) are the new authorities with regards to online freedom.

But it gets worse, for these new authorities are taking their self-assigned responsibilities very seriously, according to their declarations reported on today’s International Herald Tribune (print-version).

Gary Trodwell of Families United, a group founded by relatives of young murder victims, said:

When someone is convicted of a crime he loses his civil liberty through sentencing…We say he should lose his cyberliberty as well.”

keep reading »

Yesterday I did some digital reporting. For nearly two weeks, I’ve been collaborating with TweetyHall & FutureGov in preparation for the UK elections in May. His founder, Dominic Campbell, asked me if I could attend the first conference of local councilors in the UK C’llr10 organized by the Local Government Information Unit (LGiU) last Thursday. So armed with my iPhone and a Kodak digital camera I tweeted about it, took some pictures and recorded some interviews with councilors about their use of the web in their work.

I am very critical with the party system. I think it is based on bureaucratic and opaque principles that are not much adapted to the informational and social transformation of the last decades. When I arrived, I saw all these councilors, most of them in suit and tie, that looked, in my eyes, like political bureaucrats, just managers of mid-size organizations. This image was confirmed by the speeches in the plenary: Caroline Spelman, tory shadow secretary for local government, Julia Goldsworthy, lib-dems shadow secretary for local government and John Denham, the current secretary for local government. Nothing new under the sun, and lots of “ours is great, yours is awful” discourse.

Yet, during the day and through getting into small conversation with some of the councilors my perspective changed. There are good people in local politics doing very important stuff. Communities should thank these people for their work, for most of them feel it in their hearts, and do it for vocation. My last personal tweet after the conference was:
keep reading »

The title of this post seems counter-intuitive. Common sense tells us that battling successfully against the consequences of the financial crisis, capitalism is more alive than ever, thriving in India and China, making states tremble on their foundations. Yet I dare to say that, against this common sense and in line with Marxists, anarchists, socialists of all kinds and other anti-system movements, capitalism as we know it, i.e a socio-economic system based on the ownership and accumulation of capital, is showing its last moments of life. Yet I don’t affirm its decease for the reasons that these other ideological movements assume i.e. capitalism is failing, but because thanks to both its success and its deficiencies, it’s letting way to a new system that, like capitalism itself and contrary to communism or I would even say (paradoxically) anarchism, doesn’t need to be imposed for its popular acceptance, for it feeds from a characteristic that makes us human. In capitalism it was greed, in compartism it’s generosity.
keep reading »

Pilar Juárez was the head of the political section in the European Union delegation in Haiti. She was trapped in the collapse of the United Nations building in last week’s earthquake. On Sunday, 17 January, the Commission received news of the confirmation of her death, with High Representative Cathy Ashton releasing a press release, after her body was found the day before…but was it?

Today, we know that the body claimed as Pilar’s is not hers (in English). Apparently, the United Nations Police, UNPOL, made a mistake in the recognition of her body. The Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs discovered the truth after checking the fingerprints. Her furious husband said that he was “disgusted” by this “very serious mistake.” He accused international organizations and donors of lack of proper channels of information and coordination among them.

Meanwhile, a relatively small organization called Ushahidi was mounting an impressive network of people to gather information on the field to help the coordination of aid assistance and rescue missions, which has been translated into a website (haiti.ushahidi.com) gathering all the reports they receive via SMS and web apps. On the Ushahidi Situation Room, Patrick Philippe Meier, one of the persons behind this effort of humanitarian crowdsourcing and writer of the blog iRevolution, tells us about a

live Skype chat between Anna here in the Sit Room and Eric Rasmussen (InSTEDD and former Chief Medical Officer of the US Navy). Eric skyping from tarmac of PoP airport asking for GPS coordinates of the most obscure addresses, sites, locations and Anna providing these in record time. She has wowed the entire team in PaP including military, UN, etc. Incredible to witness all this real time networking and collaboration.

keep reading »

Naturally, most newspapers’ front pages are dominated by Monday’s Haiti’s earthquake. Watching Euronews this morning, I was especially struck by the headlines of three outlets: The Independent (UK), Libération (France) and La Stampa (Italy). The three of them used explicitly Christian terms. ‘Hell in Haiti’ on The Independent, ‘Terre maudite’ says the Libération and ‘Haiti, il giorno dell’Apocalisse’ on the front page of La Stampa: hell, apocalypse and damnation.

Why did it strike me? Because they give the idea that what happened in Haiti is mostly the fault of God, of forces beyond our control. And this, I reckon, is not entirely true. keep reading »

© ?

Young Europeans do not want political parties in their lives. Only 4% of young people (15-29 year olds) participate in a political party or trade union (on Euronews (2:02 mark) from Eurostat statistics). This is a clear figure of what young people want or do no want. Political party politicians and their acolytes would quickly blame the education system, capitalism, the television or even the Playstation for the lack of interest in politics of young people. They are blinded by their group thinking and narrow perspective of what politics is. Politics is not only, and not even mainly, about what political parties and their representatives (the so-called “politicians”) do. This fact, many people, including young people, know very well. I recommend the party people to go one night around bars in any city or town in Europe, to listen to what people are talking about. They talk about politics beyond political parties and their captive public institutions. They will be surprised to hear that there is political life outside the party. For politics is mainly about people and what they do, and not about organisations of any kind. That is why we need to reform the system to give chances to those who want to talk and participate in politics, but do not want to be captive of an organisation that has its own interests, often different than the interests of the rest of us.

When I left Barcelona for the first time in 1998 to go to Paris, Catalunya was rarely known as a place where identitarian feeling was strong and culture thriving. Very often, my language, Catalan, was known as a Spanish dialect and our claims of autonomy taken lightly, as part of our folklore, in comparison to the violent separatist movement in Basque country.

In all this time since I left my country, more than 10 years, things have changed. News about what Jose Ortega y Gasset called “the Catalan problem” (el problema catalán) have regularly appeared in international media. Something I was not accustomed to. At the same time, a Catalan government more assertive in claiming the position of the Catalan language, and in extending the presence of Catalunya around the world came into power in 2003.

keep reading »