Scrooges and anti-Scrooges

Manufactured spirits

‘Tis the season to be jolly, right?

You’d better believe it.

A report in the Moscow Times tells the strange story of Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, described by the Times as “Moscow’s own anti-scrooge”.

Luzhkov is a big fan of the holidays. A tad obsessive, some might say. Not prepared to enjoy the winter celebrations alone, he has demanded that all of Moscow get into the right spirit. Every shop has been ordered to decorate itself appropriately. Those who fail to adorn their premises in a satisfactory manner will be fined.

The penalty for those who don’t comply is anything up to 200 roubles.

“People who, for example, operate a store, must understand that it is not their house but a kind of public place,” said Zhanna Artyomova, deputy head of Moscow City Hall’s consumer goods department. “After all, their mission is to please consumers and to keep them in good spirits.”

The Times acknowledges that “Forcing people to celebrate may be an unusual way to govern,” but, it says, “the Moscow mayor is not the first to try his hand at it.” The cite Peter the Great’s decree that everyone will have fun at Christmas time. Then there’s the Chinese government, who forced Tibetans into celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Communist rule, threatening them with pay and pension cuts. “Luzhkov still has a long way to go,” the Times says.

“Of course, everything will depend on their wallets and imagination,” Artyomova said, insisting there were no “strict guidelines” on how to decorate. None, that is, except the rule that all businesses must illuminate its windows from 4:30 pm, ‘til 1 am. “Those who fail to switch their lights on will be considered violators and subject to fines as well,” Artyomova said.

“You can’t force people to drink champagne,” complained Magistral store manager Sergei Baranov. “I like cognac.”

Yuletide changes

All this strikes the Diary as remarkably similar to Bush’s calls in October 2001 for American citizens to continue shopping as part of their “patriotic duty”, a call echoed throughout the world in the face of economic slowdown.

The Diary wonders aloud whether this is some new strain of capitalism? Everyone knew how economies relied on consumer spending, but governments seem to be increasingly involved and open in their demands for us to abuse our credit cards. Are they finally admitting their covert involvement in the consumer culture? Is our civic participation really reduced to our ability to shop? What would Plato say?
(See “Consumer Trick”)

Meanwhile, in this week’s New Statesman an article by James Crabtree and William Davies suggests that consumer relations with Christmas are changing. Christmas, they say, is usually “the time when advertisers remind us to adore the company of our family and welcome all comers into our home.”

“But this year,” the authors say, “with a collective “bah humbug”, the branding agents have decided that December is becoming a time of stress, queues and disasters waiting to happen. “

In others words, a rebranding of yuletide.

The article suggests that online shopping (sitting at home in front of a warm log fire in your padded wool socks, sipping hot mulled wine) is starting to invade the traditional territory of the crowded stores in which millions of stressed out Santa Clauses are jostling for elbow room.

The shift is from a hellish public experience to a comforting private space.

Or as Crabtree and Davies put it: “Online advertisers are now asking us to admit that we secretly hated Cliff Richard all along.”

Are you listening Mayor Luzhkov?

(Also see Media & the net on openDemocracy)

On the cheap

What’s the big deal with the EU expansion? Or, more to the point, where’s this big deal?

The Diary tends to avoid front-page stories. But a lead piece by Thomas Fuller in the International Herald Tribune caught the eye this week.

The article described how the “EU gets a ‘bargain’ in expanding east”. It sheds a small spotlight on the ‘fine print’ of the expansion treaty. The results make fascinating reading.

Fuller points out how, on agreeing to admit ten new countries last week, the EU put the cost at €40 billion for the first three years. In fact, the article says, “The net cost of expansion is actually one quarter that amount - €10.3 billion”.

How can this be?

Well the IHT says ‘the newcomers will pay €15 billion in dues and a lot of the aid promised in the budget will never get paid.” Evidence comes straight from documents released by the European Commission.

“Enlargement has worked out to be a whole lot cheaper than initially envisaged,” says Michaele Schreyer, head of the budget office at the European Commission. “It could hardly have been obtained at a more favourable price.”

The deal works out at about €9 a year for each citizen of the EU. Previously, says Fuller, “experts had spoken about €30 per person.”

Check out these figures:

Poland will receive €67 per person in aid from Brussels. Hungary €49 per person. Slovenia €41. The Czech Republic €29.

This compares to (existing members) Greece €437 per person. Ireland €418 per person. Portugal €211. Spain €126.

“These numbers are actually going to scare people in Eastern Europe,” says Heather Grabbe of the Centre for European Reform. “For the average Pole and Hungarian in a referendum, they’re asking themselves, ‘Why is this organisation working in this crazy way?’ ”

All ten countries are planning referendums next year on whether to join.

So who’s footing the bill? Fuller writes that Schreyer only gave “selective figures” on existing member contributions, and those were given verbally to reporters. Sensitive stuff this.

France will stump up €1.93 billion for the first three years. Spain €900 million. Portugal €162 million. Greece €192 million. The Netherlands €600 million.

Britain’s deal was described as “perfect”. The “rebate” means London faces a bill for €800 million – “much less ... than then other EU heavyweights are paying.” Without the “rebate”, Britain would pay over €1 billion more.

As the article points out, the eight richest EU members are net payers into the EU budget. The seven others are net recipients. This existing system has meant that aid to the newcomers is, in effect, capped. Farmers in the east will get one quarter the level of farm subsidies of those in the West.

And those in the developing countries? Let’s not even go there.

Europe, it seems, has a lot of refiguring to do.

Secrets and allies

What can the US do about the rise in “anti-Americanism”, as reported by the Pew Research Center last week?

Well, the State Department has already hired the best and brightest from Madison Avenue to rebrand the country. And now, the Defense Department looks set to launch a new round of propaganda.

The New York Times reported this week on how Rumsfeld and co. are “considering issuing a directive to the U.S. military to conduct covert operations aimed at influencing policymakers in friendly and neutral countries”.

Missions might include undermining (with words that is) mosques that have connections to Islamic militancy, as well as setting up schools that teach “a moderate Islamic position laced with sympathetic depictions of how the religion is practiced in America.”

One military officer told the NYT, “We have the assets and the capabilities and the training to go into friendly and neutral nations to influence public opinion. We could do it and get away with it. That doesn’t mean we should.”

The Times talks of “a fierce battle throughout the Bush administration over whether the military should carry out secret propaganda missions”.

Not for the first time either. In February, the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Influence was disbanded by Rumsfeld, “ending a short-lived plan to provide news items, and possibly false information, to foreign journalists to influence public sentiment abroad.”

Countries whose names appeared in the article ranged from Germany to Iraq, through Pakistan, Colombia, the Philippines and Bosnia.

All focus is on amendments to a classified Department of Defense directive: “3600.1 Information Operations”. The proposed revisions would make allies and neutral states targets for US military Information Operations (I.O.s).

“Running ops against your allies doesn’t work very well,” says Admiral Denis Blair, a retired commander of US forces in the Pacific. “I’ve seen it tried a few times, and it generally is not very effective.”

Tell that to Don Rumsfeld.

New born life

Finally, some better news from India, as read on DigitalOpportunity.

An “electronic cradle” that has been installed at one of the state child welfare centres in Kerala has “recently received its first guest”.

A baby girl, abandoned to state care, was placed into the cradle, which sends out a signal of occupancy only after the depositor leaves. This, of course, allows for anonymity. And the cradle even sings a lullaby to comfort the baby.

Quotes of the week

“We will not turn the war into a picnic for American or British soldiers. No way! The land always fights on the side of its owners.”
Saddam Hussein

“We don’t have, in Syria, organizations supporting terrorism. We have press officers. These press officers represent Palestinians who live in Palestine. Palestinians have a right to have someone to express their opinions.”
President Bashar Assad of Syria

“I will not leave under pressure from a group of managers, a group of coup plotters, a group of fascists, a group of entrepreneurs or mass media.”
President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela

“Bush and Cheney can operate in complete secrecy with no oversight by Congress.”
Representative Henry Waxman of California. (Click here to read Washington Post article on the weakening of Congressional oversight of the White House)

“It [the European Parliament] appears remarkably similar to Fawlty Towers; confusion, mismanagement and misunderstanding seem to be the order of the day. All it lacks is the funny walk.”
Graham Booth MEP, of the the UK Independence Party. Like Basil Fawlty, Booth is a hotelier in Torquay (England’s Riviera). He has declared the town a “euro-free zone”.

Readers’ Response

- Reader Paul Francis asks some questions of William Burns

‘In response to the following in last week's Diary:

‘Washington has much to learn from Algeria on ways to fight terrorism.’
William Burns, US Assistant Secretary of State. The US announced this week that it planned to supply military equipment to the Algerian government, to aid its fight with Islamic militants.

In the second year of my journalism degree we studied Financial Times reports of Algerian government soldiers dressing up as Islamic militants then committing massacres of villagers in order to brand the militants as terrorists. Is this what Burns means?

Many commentators have viewed the appointment of Henry Kissinger to head up the belated inquiry in to 9/11 sceptically. Some have called him the man most likely to aid a cover up. Who was that CIA man who died on his first day as head of security at the WTC? Didn't he leave the security services having shouted till he was blue in the face that Bin Laden was about to strike in a big way and being written off as crank? And what was that about Bush and Bin Laden family members all investing in arms companies via the Carlyle Group?

I suppose you do have to create terrorism if you're going to profit from a war on it, eh Burns?

Contact the Diary editor: dominic.hilton@openDemocracy.net