Mobile Democracy, Mobile Terror, Mobile Jobs

Political penetration

The bombs that tore apart both the trains in Madrid and European security two weeks ago were triggered by mobile phones.

Yet another example of technological innovation being used against us for reasons of terror. The 9/11 hijackers booked seats on their Boeing 737s online.

However, three days after the devastating attacks in Spain, mobile phones were put to a different use: democracy.

An article in the International Herald Tribune this week described how “On the eve of the March 14 elections that resulted in the defeat of the governing Popular Party, text messages and e-mails raced around Spain.”

Both socialists and supporters of the Popular Party were said to be keeping their thumbs busy. But the socialists (for once) had the technological edge.

In the opinion of the IHT, the outcome of the elections “is the latest example of an emerging digital democracy that is revolutionizing how people engage in politics.”

Now if we can just make those electronic ballots work...

The result of all this, Howard Rheingold, a “techno-sociologist”, told the IHT, is “new kinds of politics” (although Rheingold, author of Smart Mobs: the next social revolution, acted as a consultant to the Howard Dean campaign for president, so bear in mind: technology has its limits).

Text messaging is said to have contributed to the removal of the Philippine president, Joseph Estrada, in 2001, and the election of (currently impeached) South Korean president, Roh Moo Hyun, in 2002. Apparently, Spain has a 94% mobile phone penetration, whatever on earth that means. El Pais says text messaging in Spain was 40% higher on election day than normal.

A civilised technological revolution through peaceful democratic means? It sure beats choppin’ the heads off aristos, don’t it?

Unfortunately, there are some forces with other aims in mind: neo-Nazis, certain global resistors, and others for whom peace means capitulation to enemy forces and peoples – not that the Diaryis trying to anger any readers out there, or anything.

Plus, there’s the issue of factualness and accuracy versus unsubstantiated rumour and outright falsehood. The IHT points out that an email was doing the rounds in Spain before the election which claimed the Popular Party was planning a Franco-style coup.

European union?

So, the big question of the moment: will the Madrid bombings unite Europe like never before?

There’ve been several reasons this week to suspect not.

True, Euro leaders and foreign ministers have hooked up, posed for photos, attended memorials in Madrid, tolerated each other’s company in meetings. New Spanish prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero talks of Spain taking its “magnificent” place back alongside “old” pals France and Germany.

However, there’s rhetoric, there’s desire even, and then there’s reality. A New York Times report this week ran under the headline “Terror suspects slip through Europe’s jurisdictional cracks”. It quoted Baltasar Garzón, the Spanish investigative judge. “There is an enormous amount of information, but much of it gets lost because of the failures of cooperation. We are doing maybe one-third of what we can do within the law in fighting terrorism in Europe. There is a lack of communication, a lack of coordination and a lack of any broad vision.”

Ever closer union, anyone?

It gets better. Here’s the bottom line: “Our security is much less integrated than our business or transport infrastructures,” says one senior German intelligence official about his continent. “We also have many different languages, while the terrorist cells all speak Arabic.”

It’s almost worthy of Monty Python.

There’s the case of Mohammed Daki, a Moroccan suspected of the Madrid bombings. Daki was questioned by German police in Hamburg after 9/11 as a possible member of the cell that coordinated and carried out those attacks. The German police let him go, failed to register his name on any international list, then lost him. “Looking back, I would say that we should have asked more pointed questions than we did,” lamented a Hamburg police investigator.

Mmm...

Of course, the Spanish authorities had already raided the apartment of the suspected Madrid bombers a year before the bombings. Despite finding videos of Osama speeches, telephone numbers of terrorist cells, and the like, they did nothing except confiscate the evidence. According to the New York Times, “while the Sept. 11 attacks elevated the importance that the Spanish authorities accorded to the Islamist cells in their midst, they pursued them with perhaps one-third or one-fourth the agents they assigned to ETA.”

Anybody out there feel safe?

Anyway, the summit of egos this week inspired little confidence in this regard. Politics, in all its varieties, still comes ahead of security. Like it or not, that’s always gonna be the way – so get used to it. A new “terrorist czar” is to be appointed by the Brussels politburo (sorry, couldn’t resist). Gijs de Vries (former deputy Dutch interior minister) is being tipped. Though if it’s names you’re after, the Diary hears Nicholas always goes down well.

It doesn’t come as any comfort that while such joint measures were being proposed to prevent further terrorist attacks, Germany called for a delay in implementation. The decentralised nature of the German system means it takes an eternity to introduce measures that might help those Hamburg police ask more pointed questions next time. Across most of Europe, the breakthrough European arrest warrant is yet to be made real.

“Words are not enough. We need action,” demanded British foreign secretary Jack Straw, in what is turning into a reversal of traditional roles.

Action? Get real, Jack. OK, so a 30 June deadline was set by when member states are supposed to comply. But wasn’t there supposed to be a European Constitution by December 2003 at the very latest? Or is the Diary just imagining it?

Much better to look at the evidence. Are the big boys really willing to share intelligence? Will the British security services really cooperate with the Germans? Jack Straw said the United Kingdom was only willing to share intelligence on a bilateral basis – i.e. you don’t all get to know. It would require a “very high level of confidence and trust,” Straw said, using the two words unlisted in the Eurospeak dictionary. French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin described the sharing of intelligence as “a very delicate matter” which doesn’t sound like he’s in any great hurry to hand over French info.

Trading votes

As you’ll know, the issue of outsourcing is dominating the domestic agenda of the race for American president.

First it was Senator John Edwards who went protectionist, railing against NAFTA (which he “never voted for” – because, neatly, he wasn’t a Senator at the time). John Kerry quickly followed suit. A free-trader by instinct and record (whose campaign is relying heavily on his wife’s outsourcing-friendly Heinz fortune) he nevertheless started referring to a “betrayal” of “American interests” by “treacherous” “special interests” who outsource.

This has gone on and on. Globalisation-bashing grabs votes. No candidate in a democracy is immune.

New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman has been in Bangalore the last few weeks making the outsourcing case and spinning his “What goes around, comes around” argument. Last month, he quoted Ashish Kulkarni, chief operating officer of the Jadoo-Works animation company. “It’s unfair that you want all your products marketed globally,” Kulkarni said of the US, “but you don’t want any jobs to go.”

Hard to argue with that. In a New York Times interview this week, Azim Premji, chairman of outsourcing giant Wipro, said Americans had nothing to worry about. “We are not dealing with cold reasoning here,” he said, “but with emotions of Americans whose personalities changed after 9/11 and who feel threatened by anything that hurts their security, their wealth and their jobs.”

So how to explain German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder’s claim this week that offshoring jobs is “unpatriotic”? Schroder doesn’t even have a 9/11 to excuse himself.

Answer: having to push through hard-to-swallow labour reforms, the German Chancellor needs to lash out at something. Help business with one hand, slap it with the other. Politics.

According to Glen Hubbard, former chairman of the US Council of Economic Advisors under President George W. Bush, writing in the Financial Times this week, “Rants about offshoring are the top of a slippery slope towards (wrongly) condemning overseas operations and even trade itself.”

Schroder, by the way, has used the “unpatriotic” attack before. Previous victims of the label include Boris Becker and Michael Schumacher, both of whom were considered unGerman for living in Monaco and avoiding Schroder’s taxes.

Big trouble in little Taiwan

Last week’s Diary included an item on Taiwan that ended with the prediction: “Expect trouble”.

A few hours later, President Chen Shui-bian and Vice-President Annette Lu were shot.

Both recovered and won an extraordinarily close-run election – winning by 0.2% of the vote.

Much of the public weren’t buying it and claimed that not only was the vote a fix, but that the shootings were staged in order to gain 0.2% of voter sympathy.

Chen denies all accusations, but people have taken to the streets in protest.

“They have labelled me a vote-rigging president,” Chen blubbed, “and this is the biggest humiliation to my character.”

Trouble? What trouble?

Don’t miss!

The computer programme that can predict how you will vote

Figure of the week

30
The number of minutes that new Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodriquez Zapatero kept US Secretary of State Colin Powell waiting while he had a tete-a-tete with French president Jacques Chirac. Powell was said to be “fuming”.

Quotes of the week

“It is a mind-set that rejoices in suicide, incites murder and celebrates every death we mourn. And we who stand on the other side of the line must be equally clear and certain of our convictions. We do love life, the life given to us and to all. We believe in the values that uphold the dignity of life: tolerance and freedom and the right of conscience. And we do know that this way of life is worth defending. There is no neutral ground – no neutral ground – in the fight between civilisation and terror, because there’s no neutral ground between good and evil, freedom and slavery, and life and death. The war on terror is not a figure of speech, it is an inescapable calling of our generation.”
President George W. Bush

“I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he’s done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11.”
Richard Clarke, former counter-terrorism chief to President Bush, who retired last year after serving for thirty years and under four presidents.

“I’m so strident in my criticism of President Bush because by invading Iraq he has greatly undermined the war on terrorism.”
Richard Clarke, again.

“The fact is I wasn’t born yesterday when Dick Clarke briefed me.”
US national security advisor Condoleezza Rice responding to Clarke’s claim that Rice had given him “the impression she had never heard of the term” al-Qaida “when she first took office”.

“Al-Qaida is an ideological virus. Until the right medicine is found, the virus will continue to spread.”
Madeleine Albright, former US Secretary of State

Contact the Diary: dominic.hilton@openDemocracy.net