New Turn Magazine No. 3 by Babatunde Williams

newturn THE STUDENT MAGAZINE FOR POLITICS, ECONOMICS AND CULTURE 3rd Issue February/March 2013

A Conversation with Jan Egeland Co-Initiator of the Oslo Accords

CHINA`S GHOST CITIES

A skate-ямБlm and the Chinese construction boom

PHOTOGRAPHY: ELECTIONS IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA

THE POST-RACIAL PITCH: RACISM AND FOOTBALL

CONTENTS

newturn February/March 2013

Politics 08

Vaporizing Stigmas

Is the US really getting more progressive?

Messing it up since 1993

A conversation with Jan Egeland

Fuelling the UK Economy

Is the ﬁlm industry Britain‘s greatest asset?

The Great Political Stimulus Package

The winners and losers of the SuperPacs

The Broadsheet Newspaper Is print a sinking ship?

Guilty , My Lord

An endless death-trial in Japan

Myths, Narratives and Rape The misleading discourse of rape in the Congo

Culture 46

The Nature of Nature

Of manipulated insects, fake meat and ‚natural‘ reality

Bizarre Sex

Elections in Papua New Guinea

Dr. Grifﬁths gives us an overview of the most common paraphilias

A photo-essay by James Morgan

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The Post-Racial Pitch

The matter of race in society and on the football grounds

What Is and Should Never Be

Upton Sinclair‘s struggle with the US left-wing

Somewhere in Between Photography by Rafael Uniszewski

Linguistic Re-Appropriation

An examination of political language

Economics 32

Tax Wars

Beyond Starbucks

China‘s Ghost Citys

A skate-ﬁlm and the stark realities of the Chinese construction boom

Cynicism vs. Conspiracy

Is it the age of the cynic or the conspiracy theorist?

Rediscovering Sebald

A look back at the strident German author

WHO´S WHO

newturn magazine est.2011

David Vajda EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ART DIRECTOR

David founded Newturn Magazine in June 2011. He interned at the German political monthly Cicero, at the FT Weekend Magazine and at the Guardian, all of which published his work. At the moment, he is a freelance writer for the Guardian Travel section. David is a Philosophy graduate of UCL.

Matthew Bremner CO EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Matthew has worked for both ArtReview Magazine and Timeout London. He is a regular contributor and freelance editor of the New Wolf Magazine and runs a boutique arts agency, Blue Period Ltd, which promotes emerging international artists in London. He is a graduate of UCL.

Natasja Rupesinghe POLITICS EDITOR

Natasja is a ﬁnal year ESPS student, specialising in International Relations and French. She has previously worked as an intern at Relief International and as a research assistant at the documentary production company Six Oranges.

Ruth Ingamells CULTURE EDITOR

Ruth is the editor of the online culture magazine Not So Reviews. She has worked in theatre, as part of the editorial team of the National Student Drama Festival's magazine Noises Off in 2008 and 2010, and as an assistant at the Southwark Playhouse. She also writes poetry and ﬁction and is the Vice President of the Queen Mary Literature Society. Ruth is a third year English Literature student at Queen Mary's.

Handan Wieshmann ECONOMICS EDITOR

Handan has interned as a researcher at The Week Magazine and in the parliamentary ofﬁce of an MP. Last year she completed a year abroad at Sciences-‐Po Paris. She is a ﬁnal year European Social and Political Studies student at UCL specializing in Economics.

david.vajda@newturn.org.uk

matthew.bremner@newturn.org.uk

Virginia Wuttke GRAPHIC DESIGN

Omar El-Nahry, Joshua Davison SUBEDITORS

Anastasia Zheleznyak PICTURE EDITOR

Charlotte Whiston (cover, intro-pages), Claudine O‘Sullivan, Matthew Dale, Mia Kennedy, Charlotte Lucy Whitehead, Virginia Wuttke ILLUSTRATORS

GET INVOLVED est. 2008

The young people`s political organisation

Babatunde Williams CHAIRMAN

babs.williams@newturn.org.uk

Marley Miller VICE CHAIRMAN

marley.miller@newturn.org.uk

NEWTURN MAGAZINE IS RECRUITING If you like what you`ve read and would like to get involved, please get in touch. We are looking for experienced editors and writers to join our team. Additionally we are in urgent need of a graphic designer, a treasurer and a secretary. If you are interested in any of the above positions, please send us a short bio focusing on previous experience and attach some some work samples if available. If you want to run for editor or want to write for us please also suggest a topic for the next issue. Contact: matthew.bremner@newturn.org.uk

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Dear Readers,

THE WORLD

of travel journalism is a cruel one. Free travel and fun lure you in – and it is fantastic. But then you sit down and are obliged to boil the vast impressions of your trip down to an easily understandable, simple amalgamation of positive experiences, travel information and cultural clichés. Especially for someone with cynical tendencies, it is tough, to say the least. Coming back from this to Newturn Magazine and the supposedly ‘unprofessional’ realm of student journalism felt like a liberation. This third issue of Newturn Magazine has extremely beneﬁted from a better editorial structure, more ‘exotic’ articles, more mature illustrations and simply more time. It took Charlotte Whiston, for instance, over a month to create this amazing cover collage, which subtly and antithetically references Peter Blake’s cover for The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper Lonely Hearts Club. You might ask yourself why Big Bird is standing among Abbas, Obama and Yitzhak Rabin. After becoming synonymous with bizarre politics during the US elections, we thought that he might as well join the illustrious ranks of the ever so absurdly entrenched Israel/Palestine conﬂict. Jan Egeland, who I interviewed for the cover story, seems to agree. All in all, we got much closer to our ideal of an independent, beautiful, intelligently illustrated student magazine, which isn’t concerned with student politics – however thrilling they may be. Handan Wieshmann collaborated with some skateboarders who went on a trip to the deserted Chinese city Ordos and wrote an impressive feature on the Chinese Building Boom in the economics section. From cinema dominating our culture sections in the past, we shifted our focus to essays and literature with an anthropological examination of nature in modern times, a rediscovery of German author W.G. Sebald and more. Polish photographer Rafal Uniszewski’s black and white split-seconds add a more artistic, neorealist touch to a rather serious, sober culture section. Award-winning photographer James Morgan - who is among others known for that surreal underwater shot of an Indonesian Boy being pulled by a tiger shark that has dominated the internet - provided us with an impressive unpublished picture-essay of last year’s general election in Papua New Guinea. The politics section is bursting with pertinent analysis - from a different look at rape in the Congo, a never-ending death-trial in Japan to an insight into the re-approbriation of political language. And there is more and, indeed, more. This is the last issue under my supervision - the sirens are calling. Thanks for your interest and good luck.

David Vajda EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Art Director

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ARCHIVES

FROM THE

beginning, we wanted illustrations to play an important part in this magazine. London’s design and art schools offer a vast pool of talent. John McLoughlin, an engineer turned illustrator, produced a detailed, straightforward ink portrait for our first issue in November 2011, as you can see below. On the five pages of the interview with Assad’s cousin, more and more blood was coming out of Assad’s mouth as he slowly fell out of the pages - visualising our certainty that he will be gone soon. As there were delays with the printing, we even panicked that the interview would lose relevance, thinking he could be ousted any second. In February 2013, Assad is still there and the blood is still flowing.

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POLITICS

What Is and Should Never Be

Upton Sinclairâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s struggle with the US left-wing

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USA

Progressivism

Vaporising Stigmas The legalization of same-sex marriage and marijuana in the 2012 US election suggests a break from the conservative backlash that took hold in 2010. But is it here to stay?

new high in levels of support, while the 39 percent of respondents who oppose legalization marks a new low for opposition groups. Furthermore, for the first time in history the President of the United States openly supports marriage equality. This growing sentiment for equal rights translated to the ballot box in November. Maine, Maryland and Washington became the first states to legalize same-‐sex marriage by way of election. They join Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont and the District of Columbia as states in which same-sex couples can marry. While New Jersey, Rhode Island, and California do not grant same-sex marriages, they recognize those agreements performed in other jurisdictions. In Minnesota voters didn’t have an opportunity to legalize samesex marriage, but they did repeal a law that would have banned homogenous matrimony. To top it all off, constituents in Wisconsin elected the first openly gay US Senator.

BY ERIC WALDSTEIN

last year’s US presidential election results unveiled, American voters are not ready to abandon hope…not yet anyway. Not only did President Obama win by a wider margin than anticipated but multiple states displayed a ﬂash of progressivism by voting to legalise same-sex marriage. Even more startling, voters in Colorado and Washington chose to legalize marijuana. This liberal surge comes on the coattails of a landslide defeat for Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections when conservatives punished proponents of Obamacare and other liberal policies by gaining 6 seats in the Senate and 63 seats in the House. But what does this mean in the long run for the United States? Are we witnessing a new era of American progressivism, or simply another tantrum in what has all-too-often been a ﬁckle and emotional polity?

The world will be looking to Colorado and Washington to see how they handle the legalization of marijuana. As this is the ﬁrst time the drug has ever been fully legal (in both the US and the World), the stakes of this precarious dance are quite high. The slightest misstep could result in national and even global backlash against further legalization of cannabis, while a smooth transition could ignite a multinational movement. About half the US population supports the legalization and regulation of marijuana, and the numbers are growing. In Colorado that number jumps up to 61 percent. 14 states in the US have decriminalized the drug, meaning

The US federal government has yet to recognize marriage between same-sex couples, and historically states within the US have unanimously followed suit. However, the marriage equality movement has been gaining status and momentum over the last few decades and continues to march forward. Public opinion polls continuously show that support for same-sex marriage has been steadily increasing over time. In fact, a majority of Americans now support the legalization of same-sex marriage. “According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll…53 percent of those questioned say [same-‐sex] marriage should be legal.” This reﬂects a

For the ﬁrst time in history the President of the United States openly supports marriage equality a person can only receive a ﬁne for the possession of a limited amount of marijuana as opposed to jail time, and 17 states plus the District of Columbia have legalized the use of medicinal marijuana. It is important to remember, however, that marijuana remains illegal at the federal level. Colorado

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Picture by ajagendorf25 (Flickr)

Governor John Hickenlooper reminded us of this in a recent statement, asserting, “Federal law still says marijuana is an illegal drug, so don‘t break out the Cheetos or gold ﬁsh too quickly.” So, what does this mean for the direction of American politics? The 2012 US elections afﬁrm, at least for the time being, a shift towards more progressive politics in America.

and Washington’s ability to implement and regulate the law. This will require savvy statesmanship and prudent economics. The two states are going to have to ﬁgure out how to legalize marijuana without dramatically increasing consumption or lowering the market price. Although marijuana can be farmed and processed for about $10 per pound, it sells for roughly $300 an ounce. The reason for this dramatic markup is risk. Because it is illegal, everyone on the production line – from horticulturalist to dealer – takes a risk in producing and distributing marijuana. With legalization this risk disappears, and so therefore does the markup. If the price of marijuana plummets in Colorado and Washington, the states risk a dramatic increase in consumption and/or becoming hubs for North American drug dealers. Both of which will not bode well for broader lega-

The slightest misstep could result in national and even global backlash against further legalisation of cannabis, while a smooth transition could ignite a multinational movement

As far as marriage equality is concerned, evidence suggests the US is reaching a point of no return and same-sex marriage will soon be the new normal in America. While the movement still has a long way to go (after all, 31 states have amended their constitutions to prohibit same-sex marriage), trends in public opinion and voter turnout indicate a solidifying national mindset as opposed to a temporary ﬁt. A majority of Americans support the legalization of same-‐sex marriage, and the make-up of the US electorate is becoming increasingly supportive. The proportion of young voters (age 18-29) was up last year from 2008, and according to The American Prospect, “Young voters are considerably more likely...to identify as liberal…[and] believe in…same-sex marriage.” Further, “partisan preferences tend to solidify in the mid-20s” – i.e. “If you voted for Barack Obama at 24, and…again at 28, you’re almost certain to vote for Democrats for the rest of your life.” Whether or not marijuana will achieve legal tenure remains more ambiguous. Colorado and Washington have their work cut out, but if they manage to succeed it will set an economic and social precedent that will be very hard to ignore in the rest of the country. Regardless of how much public support the movement receives, the future of legal tree will largely be inﬂuenced by Colorado’s

lization. To complicate things further, all of this will have to be done under the increasingly watchful eye of President Obama and the federal government. Clearly nothing is for certain and there are numerous variables that could disrupt current social and political patterns. But last year’s presidential election results and the direction of national trends in the US imply a more progressive turn for American politics. It would be surprising to see support for same-sex marriage diminish in the future, and while marijuana may or may not experience broader legalization, its current status in Washington and Colorado suggest, at the very least, a willingness for progressive experimentation. Eric Waldstein studied political science at the University of San Diego and received a Masters in Education at George Mason University. He currently works for a Seattle-based think tank and is studying Social Policy at LSE.

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Messing it up Since 1993 A look at the Israel/Palestine deadlock after the Israeli elections and a conversation with someone, who was there 20 years ago when both sides came closest to breaking the hatred – Jan Egeland, acclaimed humanitarian and co-initiator of the Oslo accords BY DAVID VAJDA

HIS

His words are overly clearly pronounced; cushioned in a thick Norwegian accent, they form a stacchato of expressions rather than a flowing sentence. Often a moment of internal quarrelling, a certain healthy hesitance announce a carefully reflected argument. This is a diplomat speaking, aware of the power of words and their potential misuse. Jan Egeland is sat in his cabin in Norway after a good day of skiing when he picks up my call . He was one of the three initiators of the Oslo accords between the PLO and the Rabin government in 1993 and is a renowned international diplomat (the Norwegian band Ylvis recently released the song “Jan Egeland” satirically calling him “the United Nations superhero man”). Our conversation falls within a discourse dominated by the overconfidence of extremist, muscle-‐ flexing and non-‐sensical populism -‐ on both the Palestinian and Israeli side. Two months ago, Kahled Meschal- expat head of the Hamas, and who for the first time since 1967 set his foot in Gaza- stepped out of a huge cardboard Fajr rocket in Gaza City reaffirming that “Hamas will never recognise the legitimacy of Israel”, and also that “Jihad and armed resistance are the only way to liberate Palestine” including Jerusalem, Haifa and Jaffa. On the other Illustration by Claudine Sullivan for Newturn Magazine

The Israelis and Palestinians were accommodated in the same hotel, had the same cars and sat down for breakfast, lunch and dinner together

side, Netanyahu, in what is seemingly a sullen response to Abbas’ successful UN bid, approves the construction of 3000 housing units in the E1 area, possibly bisecting the West Bank and making a two-state solution more utopian than ever. Earlier during Netanyahu’s strong attack of the Gaza strip as a response to the ongoing missiles ﬂying in on Israeli territory, Gilad Sharon, son of former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, was able to publish an article in the Jerusalem Post calling

el, fail to consider Israel’s special security concerns or fail to mention the 12,800 rockets that came out of Gaza since 2001. When looking at the record of Israel leaving occupied territory the current Israeli peace-‐sullenness isn’t justiﬁable, but it is, in some sense, explicable: they left the Sinai peninsula in 1982, which is now plastered with Iranian rockets, South-Libanon in

Pictures by award-winning photographer Rusty Stewart, all from August 2003

on the Netanyahu government to “ﬂatten Gaza” and to send it back to “the middle ages”. These extreme tones, at most, only partly outline the conﬂict. Nevertheless, they are interesting snapshots of the ongoing radicalisation of the two sides. And the less extremist ones equally fail to be promising. The following mantra has been all over the internet during the week-long Gaza-blitz in late November: “If Israel puts down it’s weapons, it wouldn’t exist anymore. If Israel’s neighbours put down their weapons, there would be peace.” It might be true, but at the moment it is a useless conditional statement which bears no relation to a reality; a reality in which the Netanyahu government does its fair share to ensure that Israel’s neighbours keep their weapons or that most of Gaza’s 72% of unemployed youth cue up to become terrorists. The question is not what happens if Israel’s neighbours put down their weapons but what Israel does or does not do to make this happen. On the other hand, most commentators rightly criticising the endorsement of the settlements and airstrikes on Gaza, fail to distinguish the Netanyahu government from the state of Isra-

2000, which was taken over by Hisbollah and of course Gaza… This black and white tinting of the conﬂict is set to continue. As we went to press, a weakened Netanyahu was struggling to build a coalition. Yet whether Bennett’s pro-settler party or Yair Lapid’s moderate Yesh Atid make their way into the government, peace won’t be the coalition’s priority. Lapid, now interestingly considered the new peace-hope, build his campaign’s success entirely on domestic issues. Any coalition formed will be lacking uniformity and a two state solution is highly unlikely to play the cohesive part in a rainbow coalition still dominated by the right. Hamas has tanked conﬁdence – they are thankful for Israel’s airstrikes proclaiming their rocket’s victory and are hijacking Abbas’ successful UN-bid for their own radical purposes. In such a climate of unilateralism what use is there in reminiscing about the Oslo Accords? Is there even anything to reminisce about?

MIDWIFES “There is no doubt that the process we helped as midwifes, died some time in the late 1990s”, Jan Egeland is quick to assert. When Egeland (at the time, Norwegian deputy foreign

The rise of importance of the Oslo back-channel came with a rise in ambition on the side of the Norwegians. The Norwegian Foreign Minister Johan Jørgen Holst slowly took over seeing a potential success as a boost for his country and the re-election campaign of his party. As Holst was more and more determined to come to a result, Norway’s position shifted from that of a facilitator to that of a mediator, which is one of the reasons for the productivity of the meetings, but also for the unequal terms of the ﬁnal agreement. As a powerless mediator Norway couldn’t achieve more than the strongest party, Israel, allowed.

minister), Terje Larsen and Martina Juul saw that the official negotiations in Madrid were halting in 1992, they tried to open up a back-‐channel serving the official negotiations through the formation of informal political contacts. For over one year their efforts remained futile. An important factor in this was an Israeli law illegalising contact with the PLO. The Israeli Labour party scrapped this law on the 10th of January 1993 and shortly afterwards the first secret meeting in Oslo took place between two Israeli academics, Yair Hirschfeld and

Israel could have left the negotiations at any point with ease, and Norway slowly leaned in favour of its interests in order to keep the talks going. As a result of the Accords, Israel left Gaza and Jericho, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) was instantiated and the PLO acknowledged Israel’s right to exist. But the most difﬁcult issues, such as a Palestinian state, Israeli settlements, the national rights of Palestinians as well as the future of Jerusalem were not addressed and the continuation of the process was left to bare mutual trust - which was not more abundant than it is today.

Ron Pundak (who Egeland believes were Mossad agents) and Ahmed Qurei, a prominent Fatah official. The mechanics of the series of 14 talks in the Fafo institute were revolutionary at the time. The meetings weren’t reduced to mere official negotiations. The Israelis and Palestinians were accommodated in the same hotel, had the same cars and sat down for breakfast, lunch and dinner together. “At the first meetings the whole body language of the two sides showed that they have seen each other as enemies for a seeming eternity. That slowly changed in the course of the other meetings”, Egeland says. “At the beginning we thought that we were doing some confidence building measures that would then feed the front channel in Washington. To our own surprise the Oslo meetings became the main channel – the parties wanted to come back to Oslo in secrecy explaining to us that the 300 people in Washington were actually now the sideshow. The seven people sitting in Oslo, facilitated by us five, were the real action.” Some excitement from back then rings in his voice.

“The PLO was as much seen as a terrorist organisation as the Hamas is today”

“The Oslo Agreement was not a peace agreement, it was an agreement on how to negotiate. It was basically a road map. It would have been much better if they had also agreed on the ﬁnal stages.” Is there anything he and his colleagues should have done differently back then? He hesitates. “Well, I am sure we could have. Perhaps we should have understood that the counter-forces were much stronger than we thought – the forces

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“If your main tool is a hammer everything looks like a nail”

against the handshake and the peace were incredible on both sides. I mean Rabin was killed by one of his own! Arafat let the Hamas and Jihadists ﬂourish. And Israel even nourished the Hamas start-up as an anti-PLO move!” Some commentators even speculated that Israel armed the early Hamas in order to break up the Palestinian front – whether that’s true or not, in a strategic move that backﬁred, the Israelis initially welcomed the Hamas. This is evidence of a type of ‘American’ realpolitik Israel is playing around with until today.

undermining peace (for Egeland they are “ﬁnally calling a spade a spade”) but the EU even ofﬁcially speculated about economic sanctions against Israel. This did not and will not happen but it is an unprecedented evidence of a massive change of opinions, which shouldn’t leave Bibi as cold as he makes us believe. It has shifted the focus from the threat of Iran seeking nuclear weapons – an issue where Israel simply cannot keep up its isolationist tendencies - to the pettiness of 3000 new homes for settlers. The Netanyahu government

A DOUBTFUL LEGACY

was, in what seems to be unwise propaganda, reinforcing this animosity by depicting the approval of the settlements as a “penalty” for Abbas’ UN bid – a justiﬁcation which delegitimises what it tries to justify.

Despite the fact that they are widely perceived to be a failure, the Oslo accords do have a lasting legacy for Jan Egeland. “The mutual recognition that came about at that time was remarkable. You have to remember that the PLO was as much seen as a terrorist organisation as the Hamas is today…And, as an indirect result of the Oslo Accords, in the ﬁnal period of Clinton’s presidency there were workable ideas which are still in the drawer: Palestinian refugees getting compensation and a new life partially where they are, partially in a new Palestine, some returning to Israel. Land being compensated where settlements cannot be moved - this can still be done. But every single month of new settlements, of new provocations makes it more difﬁcult.” Netanyahu’s approval of new settlements in the E1 area east of Jerusalem was a strategic move to please the far-right before the elections – which, as Yesh Atid’s success showed, alienated the centre instead. But with regards to Israel’s foreign policy it is not just wrong from a pro-two-state standpoint, but also not really in Israel’s pragmatic self-interest. Most of the EU countries and the US not just univocally condemned these plans as

The dissenting voices of high-‐profile conservatives in Israel give further evidence to what is seemingly irrationality on the part of Netanyahu’s former Likud-Israel Beneitu coalition. In a brilliant interview with the New Yorker, Meir Dagan, exMossad chief and one of the toughest and most radical Israeli officials, harshly criticised Netanyahu’s Iran stance depicting it as suicidal. And high-‐profile officials such as Yuval Diskin, ex-‐ head of Shin Bet, and numerous army officials have joined in. For the issue of the settlements such voices are to be awaited, but they would be invaluable for the peace process.

THE ROCKETS With regards to Gaza, things are not that simple. Ironically, most of the vast amount of rockets quoted by the Israeli Defense Forces, were ﬁred as a response to the Israeli ‘defense’ offensives in 2004, 2008 and 2012. Nevertheless any amount

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“In the past, Israel has made compromises with Egyptian leaders, who have attacked them several times – the same is possible with Mursi”

of rockets being ﬁred on a nation’s territory during a ceaseﬁre, whether deadly or not, are unacceptable. And what can be regarded as an ‘adequate’ response to such constant attacks? For a second, Jan Egeland falls back into diplomatic truisms. “Israel just as any other nation has the right to defend itself”, he says, devoid of his usual stiltedness. “However, if one has used the same response mechanism continuously since 67’ and it hasn’t really worked, wouldn’t it be logical to start trying something new? A popular saying in the Middle East is: If your main tool is a hammer everything looks like a nail.” After a little pause, he adds: “As a global humanitarian coordinator, people often ask me, what is needed the most in Gaza. Is it building materials, more emergency relief, power or more schooling, what is it? The one thing that is needed is hope – also to avoid missiles! At the moment there is zero. When I was there in 2006, I remember local UN colleagues asking me to help them being transferred somewhere else. ‘All we build is being torn down, Africa would be much nicer’, they said.”

several times – the same is possible with Mursi. What’s interesting with Mursi is that he represents the Muslim brotherhood out of which Hamas evolved. In an ideal world, Egypt would use both stick and carrots vis-à-vis Hamas and the Obama administration would do the same vis-à-vis Israel. But the pressure has to be more coherent.” Indeed, Obama has nothing to lose in his final term yet Egypt does – it is unlikely that Mursi will be as keen to sacrifice American financial support as he has his democratic principles. The US has kept the Egyptian economy afloat since the late 1970s with an average of $2bn in aid a year - only Israel receives more aid from the US. As we went to press, an additional $4,8bn IMF loan was pending and Obama proposed a massive debt relief.

After 38 minutes and 35 seconds a slightly exhausted Mr. Egeland politely announces his ﬁnal words. “When the Oslo meetings were made public, one Israeli diplomat in Washington said: ‘It’s so unreal, the next thing that will happen is that Elvis comes through that door!’ It was an amazing shock that the Israelis had met the PLO in secrecy. It would be less of a surprise, if there was a back-channel between Netanyahu and the Hamas leadership at this very moment.”

Despite all, he sees a small chance in Bibi having renewed his power and the current shifts in the Middle East. “Of course, if you can get the hawks on either sides to sit down and talk it’s much better than to get the doves to sit down because the hawks will never agree on what the doves agree on.” With regards to the Israel’s allies he adds: “There is hope in the current reshufﬂe of power in the region. In the past, Israel has made compromises with Egyptian leaders, who have attacked them

David Vajda is the editor-in-chief and founder of Newturn Magazine

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PAKATON02011990: I L

The conversation evolves and after 30 minutes Egeland seems to be keen to end it – this weariness beneﬁts the conversation. He drops his protective shield and answers more courageously, more quickly, seemingly in order to bring the interview to an end.

Even if Mursi exerts pressure on the Hamas, Egeland is sure that the ﬁnal stumbling block will be Hamas’ reluctance to accept that the state of Israel is a reality and that it’s people deserve to live in security. With regards to this, he is sure that the Oslo Accords can still serve as a viable model.

Legal

JAPAN

Guilty, My Lord Japan‘s old-fashioned criminal justice system does not only infringe on suspects‘ basic rights. It also inﬂicts unnecessary mental strain both on defendants and on the people working within the judiciary BY PERLA BRONZI

ON SEPTEMBER

11, 1968, the Shizuoka District Court sentenced Hakamada Iwao to death for killing four people. On that day, his dreams and aspirations came to an abrupt end. His record-breaking boxing career as well as his family life became projects he had to leave unﬁnished. After 44 years, he is still sitting in solitary conﬁnement waiting to die. He is not the only one - in fact, Hakamada Iwao is one of the 131 Japanese death row inmates who are left in a so-called “bureaucratic limbo”. In Japan, from the moment the defendant is proclaimed guilty, he/she may have to wait for years before being executed. Professor William Schabas, one of the foremost international authorities on death penalty, says that “these executions are often performed secretly without any warnings.” Japan is one of the few developed democracies in the world which retains death penalty. The 14th session of the Universal Periodic Review on Japan, published by the UN Human Rights Council, called for a moratorium on the death penalty but without success. Over the past years, many European countries such as the UK, Luxembourg and Italy have

asked the Asian country to review the use of capital punishment. Yet, this practice still lingers. In 2012 the number of Japanese executions reached 7 people compared to the astonishing 0 of the previous year. But more alarmingly, the conviction rate of this country is 99%. In the early 1990s, the criminal justice system was subject to extensive criticism, both in Japan and in the international arena. After a series of death row acquittals, the public became concerned with the fairness of the usual three-judge panel. As a consequence, in 2009 Japan decided to implement a lay judge system. Under the saibanin seido, professional judges had to work alongside jurors to determine the sentence and verdict of the defendant. In contested cases, the panel would be formed by six lay judges and three professional judges whereas in uncontested cases the numbers would be three and one respectively. For the first time, Japanese citizens were directly involved in the decision– making process. Their position however bears significant responsibility as the power to end the life of a fellow citizen lays in their hands. “This decision can represent an emotional burden on the lay assessors”, confirms Professor Schabas. The majority rule ensures that a death sentence can be imposed as long as one vote comes from a professional judge. Ultimately, those who deem the capital punishment avoidable will have to live the rest of their life with what was democratically agreed upon. This situation is aggravated by the fact that jurors are sworn to secrecy. Hence, they are compelled to internalize an experience that can often be traumatic. Norimichi Kumamoto for example, one of the

Hakamada Iwao is one of 131 Japanese death row inmates who are left in a so-called “bureaucratic limbo” 15 newturn Feb/March 2013

JAPAN

Legal

judges in the boxer‘s case, was outvoted by the judges. So convinced was he that a miscarriage of justice had taken place that he tried to commit suicide three times. The psychological effects impact the convicts as well. Hakamada Iwao’ s health degenerated over the 44 years he has lived under threat of imminent execution. He developed a mental condition for which he now needs special medication. „There are days when he refuses to meet me or the members of his family”, says Hakamada’ s

Executions are often performed secretly without any warnings lawyer, Hideyo Ogawa. What is most disturbing however is that his life seems to not have been valued. “According to the European Court of Human Rights, Hakamada’s rights were indeed deeply violated,” asserts Professor Schabas. The interrogations leading up to his trial in 1968 were performed under unacceptable circumstances. In fact, the police has the right to interrogate a suspect for 23 consecutive days without the presence of a lawyer. As a result, suspects will most likely plead guilty due to the ensuing mental and physical strain. This is what happened to Hakamada after the interrogators inﬂicted violence upon him for 20 days. In court the boxer has always claimed his innocence, blaming torture for his false testimony. Yet this system still persists despite the reform of the Japanese mixed jury system. If Hakamada were to be judged under this system, he probably would not be sitting behind bars today. But he is a case “lost in reform”.

Illustration by Matthew Dale for Newturn Magazine

Last year, new forensic tests were performed on the clothing that is held as evidence. The defence is hopeful that these results will finally absolve him. On October 19 2012 the Shizouka District Court has officially started examining this new scientific evidence in order to evaluate whether a retrial is possible. One thing however is certain: no one will ever be able to give him back 44 years of his life. Perla Bronzi is a second year International Relations student at Queen Mary University. She writes for the QM Amnesty International Society‘s newsletter.

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Congo

WAR

Myths, Narratives and Realities of Rape in the DRC Rape has virtually become synonymous with violence in the eastern provinces of the DRC. However, the powerful discourse of rape and subsequent aid agency practice has left a trail of unintended consequences on the ground BY NATASJA RUPESINGHE

RECENT

Recent months have marked a new peak in the violence for the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a ‘déjà vu’ phenomenon in a country where cyclical violence has been endemic since the official end to the war in 2003. A new rebel group, the M23, seized and later relinquished control of Goma, and was accused by Human Rights Watch of committing war crimes, including rape. With FARDC back in charge in Goma, numbers of rape incidents are increasing, UNICEF having reported 72 cases. Every conflict has its storyline, casting roles of perpetrator and victim with an emotional appeal that resonates with audiences around the globe. For the DRC, this narrative draws on the brutality of conflict-‐related rape, which ravages the eastern provinces like a pandemic. This dominating narrative of rape emerged in 2002, when Human Rights Watch released a disturbing report about the ‘war within a war’. Yet during the first two Congo wars from 1998-‐ 2003, sexual violence existed at higher levels than today, but received scant attention and was considered a part of a broader pattern of violence that occurred. Since then, rape has been the angle chosen by journalists and NGOs desperate for fun-

ding. Today, ‘rape’ and ‘violence’ in the DRC are inextricably linked. We are familiar with the shocking labels which have been recycled in media reports. Recently, the UN called the DRC “the worst place on Earth to be a woman”. Margot Wallström, the Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, named the DRC the ‘rape capital of the world’, which is puzzling when statistics have shown that 39% of women in Uganda and 44% in Ethiopia have experienced sexual violence in their lifetime. Hilary Clinton’s visit to the eastern DRC made the issue a top priority for US Foreign Policy. It is now estimated that at least half a million women have been raped since the start of the war in 1998. Why has this narrative become so entrenched in the DRC’s discourse, eclipsing other examples of violence that occur there? In Séverine Autesserre’s latest article ‘Dangerous Tales: The Unintended Consequences of Dominant Narratives’, she explains that the emotional impact of sexual violence for external observers is so powerful because the victims are mainly women and girls, who are socially constructed to be more vulnerable and emotionally fragile than men. This makes the narrative appear all the more shocking to international audiences. While this discourse has pushed rape to the top of the humanitarian agenda- attracting, in the process, massive amounts of medical care and relief aid for survivors – there is an unintended consequence: attention is drawn away from other pressing issues such as the use and abduction of child soldiers, torture, extra-judicial killings, and forced labour. The singular focus on sexual and gender based violence against women obfuscates the nuances within the dominant narrative, which are equally concerning. In 2011, The American Journal for Public health found that 48 women were raped per hour in the DRC, and that incidents weren’t confined only to conflict

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BIOSA came to SOS FED’s centre in Mboko as she wanted to regain the dignity that she felt she had lost after being raped. She chose the image of a spear for her embroidery to show that war is the root cause of the proliferation of sexual violence in the Congo (Picture by The Advocacy Group)

MAUWA came to SOS FED to recover psychologically after she had been raped. Her work depicts a riﬂe, since the men who raped her whilst she was tending her ﬁelds carried guns. (Picture by The Advocacy Group)

regions, but that domestic sexual abuse was pervasive. This report saw an upsurge in media interest leading Laura Saey to ask ‘Do we have the Congo Rape Crisis all Wrong?’

to account for men in its discourse on sexual violence, and international human rights instruments largely exclude males. However a recent report found that 24% of males reported experiences of sexual violence, compared with 40% of females. No one has heard the men’s stories, mainly because of its taboo and controversial nature. They live in fear of being ostracized by their communities and are turned away by organizations with a remit to treat women, remaining in silence and in the shadows. Furthermore, the possibility of women as perpetrators of violence is ignored and placed in a no-go category for the media. Female survivors in the JAMA report revealed that 41% of perpetrators were female, while males reported 10% of their perpetrators were female. In these cases, female perpetrators were combatants. This survey attracts less attention and detracts from understanding the complex mosaic of violence on the ground.

This year’s Human Security report on Sexual Violence debunks the ‘myths’ of rape, in a compelling, yet highly critical report. The ‘rape as a weapon of war’ ﬁxation is considered reductionist as it has been found that the majority of sexual violence in war-affected countries takes place in the home, and is almost twice as high as that of conﬂict-‐ related sexual violence. Another survey showed that 1/3 of men admit to having committed sexual assault in the eastern provinces, while 2/3 agreed with the statement that ‘women should accept partner violence to keep the family together’, which exposes deeply entrenched gender inequalities. Instances of domestic violence are ‘inherently less news worthy’ says the HS report - although they are pervasive, they are less extreme.

The UN has called the DRC “the worst place on Earth to be a woman”

It is important to remember that discourse informs policy which eventually materializes into projects aimed at meeting needs of the community, and in this case the solution to rape is to provi-

Gender stereotypes, of male-perpetrator and women as victims are also reinforced. The UN Security Council Resolution fails

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SANGHO´S Image shows the stigmatisation and humilitation that rape victims face in their local communities. (Picture by The Advocacy Group)

BINWA´S message is one of hope for the emancipation of Congolese women. Her embroidery shows a woman studying at a blackboard. (Picture by The Advocacy Group)

de medical care to the survivors, which makes the solution seem simple on the surface. Experts have noted in interviews with local aid agencies, that the failure to include the rape catchword could mean missing out on funding. As a result other projects dealing with domestic violence for instance, suffer.

the Mayi Mayi Sheka systematically attacked 13 villages, raping 387 civilians in the Walikale territory in North-Eastern DRC, in order to draw attention to their cause and be invited to the negotiating table. It has been observed that armed groups with political claims increasingly use sexual violence.

There are also perverse consequences in the very settings in which these narratives take place. The discourse has become so integral and well-known, that rape has been ‘commercialized’. Baas and Stern in ﬁeldwork interviews, show that women who have not been raped present themselves as rape victims to gain access to medical care, knowing that rape survivors get free treatment – which highlights wider causes of insecurity such as widespread poverty, lack of basic health services and education.

There is no doubt that the eastern DRC continues to be an extremely dangerous place for women and girls. But it is also a dangerous place for men. In a conﬂict where the mosaic of violence is ever-evolving and complex, it is important not to simply scratch the surface by subscribing to dominant discourses. Policy is needed to preserve achievements of the dominant narrative, but to also treat its negative, ‘unintended consequences’. Translating these policy insights into action on the ground will be an important test for the international community. Only then can the complex sources of sexual violence really be probed, to ensure long-term preventative measures that include vulnerable individuals, from victims to perpetrators to the ‘categoryless’ who are all embroiled in a reality of grave insecurity, conﬂict and poverty.

The most concerning, and probably, the most extreme consequence is that rebel groups have tuned in to the power of the rape narrative, and have, in some cases, used it as an effective bargaining tool- mostly in the form of threats. When these threats are put into practice the results are catastrophic and troubling. From 30 July to 2 August 2010, the combatants of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) and

Natasja Rupesinghe is a ﬁnal year ESPS student at UCL and is currently writing her BA dissertation on the DRC. She is the Politics editor of Newturn Magazine.

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A Different Kind of Election Photo-Essay by James Morgan

JAMES

Morgan is a multi-award winning photojournalist and filmmaker. He documents human rights and environmental policy issues, and focuses on ethnographic storytelling in remote locations around the world. His work has been exhibited internationally and has been published in The Sunday Times Magazine, New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel – as well as online at National Geographic and the BBC. Most of the following pictures have not been published. James was in Papua New Guinea in 2012 shooting a story for WWF when he heard about the elections in the highlands and seized the opportunity to capture this unique political festival. Politics in Papua New Guinea adhere to the Westminster system, but that’s as far as the similarities go. This photo-essay explores the highlands of Papua New Guinea, where candidates prepared to contest the elections. They lead the voting public with a two month festival exhibiting traditional dress, machine guns, ancestral belief, copious amounts of marijuana and corrupt political scams. In the run up to the elections, violent tribal conflict increased as more villagers acquired automatic weapons. The elections marked the end of a constitutional crisis which saw the country’s two political rivals, Peter O’Neil and Sir Michael Somare claim the role of PM. Following the nationwide polls in June, Peter O’Neil was finally sworn in as the country’s PM. INTRO BY NATASJA RUPESINGHE

Vegu and Michael, members of the Nagamiufa tribe, in the eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea wearing traditional ‘bilas’. Her grandfather receives a small living allowance from the government for his work preserving traditional costumes of tribal groups in the highlands.

(TOP) One of the major problems facing the highlands is the drug and arms trade. Marijuana, which grows in large quantities around Goroka, is smuggled out on ships operated by logging companies. The marijuana is then traded for AK47s, M16s and RPGs from post conďŹ&#x201A;ict countries in Asia, especially from the Indonesian province of West Papua.

(BOTTOM) Papa Manape, at his home outside Kainantu in the Eastern Highlands.

(TOP) Mama Kinanoh is a traditional healer, her skills have been passed down through generations. She is able to heal broken collarbones in one week, legs and arms take two. She is often called in to work in Goroka hospital.

(BOTTOM) It is customary for villagers to slaughter a pig, among the communityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most highly prized assets, and present it to the visiting candidate, in this case Thompson Harokqveh. Each one is carefully logged, for Thompson is now indebted to those who made the contribution.

(TOP) Thompson Harokaqzeh, the minister for environment and conservation in Papua New Guinea, is given a traditional reception in Gamusi Village, Goroka District.

(BOTTOM) Inhabitants of Kimayao Village remove pumpkin and sweet potato from their Mumu (earth oven). A fire is first built in a pit, stones are then heated on the embers of the fire before the food is placed on top of banana leaves. This is then covered with earth. Bamboo stems feed water to the hot rocks to steam the food.

Young boys from Gamusi Village shave their heads and glue the hair to their faces in order to look like dwarves. Dwarves are considered good luck in Papua New Guinea and can only be seen by children.

LITERATURE

Socialism

Upton Sinclair‘s Politics: What Is and What Should Never Be Upton Sinclair wrote against capitalism, took his efforts to the political stage and was crushed by his opponents. A story of America’s struggle with left-wing politics BY OMAR EL-NAHRY

LOOKING

back at it, I realise that I was far too young to read Upton Sinclair‘s “The Jungle” when I read it for the ﬁrst time. I had found it among my mother‘s books, a small, blue hard cover, next to her extensive Jack London collection. At the time, I knew too little about the author and American history to appreciate what the novel really stood for. It tells the history of a Lithuanian family that arrives in the United States, full of high hopes and expectations of wealth and a better life. The stage is set for the reader to expect an “American dream story” to unfold when Jurgis Rudkus, the book‘s protagonist, and his young wife Ona get married in Chicago. Having been lured to the United States by a relative who claims to have made his good fortune, their dreams soon implode. The book is rife with tales of abuse, illness, alcoholism, cruelty, sexual assaults and death, with Jurgis losing his wife, son and his health to the cruel conditions in Chicago‘s industrialised meat packing district. These

experiences leave him on the verge of death, and only after being revived by socialism does he manage to pick up the pieces and find a new cause for his shattered life. I have re-read “The Jungle” several times since, and the book has lost none of its potency. The vivid descriptions, the sense of a lurking catastrophe every time the Rudkus family makes a new, naive decision and the intense wish to help the protagonists understand their fate, still have a very strong pull. However, more interestingly, and what took me time to notice, is that the story and its characters all share a left leaning political outlook. Indeed, the demise of each of the book’s characters is a direct, or indirect result capitalism. And as I followed the family of immigrants through their struggles with capitalism, I sometimes disagreed with their politics, but I found it easy, for instance, how forces beyond his control pushed Jurgis to join a socialist movement and fight for a different economic order. In the American context however, the work‘s politics gain an exceptional significance. Apart from reading like a brutal parody of the “American dream” it has come to signify the pinnacle of un-American ideas for many people on the right margin of the

Illustration by Virginia Wuttke for Newturn Magazine

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It remains a mystery how a country with a workforce as large as the one of the United States has not experimented with Socialism, or Social Democracy at the very least

political spectrum, a critique of the nation’s very roots in individualism and capitalism. Political America is a strange, contradictory place. The latest presidential election serving as further testimony to this perspective: why would anyone resist health care, gun control or progressive taxation, observers this side of the Atlantic may ask themselves? The politics of the Left-wing politics in America is a puzzle. Even when accounting for its traditions of liberalism and individualism, it remains a mystery how a country with a workforce as large as that of the United States, at times accommodating millions like Jurgis Rudkus, has not been able to establish Socialism, or Social Democracy at the very least. Sinclair himself decided to transfer the political vision sketched out in his works into the real world, running for Governor of California in 1934. He suffered a crushing defeat. Sinclair was no novice in politics, and neither was he unaccustomed to losing elections. Running on the Socialist ticket for Congress twice in the 1920s and losing each time, he managed to convince the California Democratic Party to put him up as their candidate for Governor of the state. Sinclair‘s platform, End Poverty in California, promised that unused factories and land in California would be put to use under state supervision, to raise taxation to pay for public and social projects and to reform health care. In short, it aimed to change many of the things Sinclair described in “The Jungle”, things that contributed to the demise of Jurgis Rudkus: a lack of healthcare, the masses of unemployed (which served as a reserve pool of workers that not only spread despair, but also kept wages down) and a lack of worker’s rights. They are also the very issues much of this year‘s election was about: rights, welfare, the state and the market – issues that seem to be unresolved despite the fact that they have been continuously discussed ever

since “The Jungle” was published in 1906. But as is in the present, raising these issues in the early 20th century exposed the ﬂanks of Sinclair‘s campaign to attack. Reading what one would term an “attack ad” from this time it is surprising, or, depending on your politics, shocking how little things have changed over the years. The End Poverty in California platform was tainted with a familiar set of accusations, with “destroying California‘s business structure”, hating “American ideals and principles”, radical and unfounded politics all liberally deployed. And so, backed up by political consultants and, most importantly, a large amount of money, the Republican Party defeated Sinclair, forcing him from politics for good. What does this trajectory of a committed Socialist tell us about left-wing politics in America? As a matter of fact, they exist, albeit more in the cultural and artistic sphere than in the actual political arena. Indeed, it seems that even he grudgingly accepted that anything that your opponents can classify as Socialism is doomed to fail in the United States. This was true before the Cold War and McCarthyism and has been true ever since. To borrow Sinclair‘s own words: „The American people will take Socialism, but they won‘t take the label.” In our times, a Chomsky or a Klein will be discussed and celebrated in their roles as philosophers, authors and journalists – but never will such a success translate into political success. Books like “The Jungle” can work as muckrakers, leading to a public outcry and reforms, but they are unlikely to galvanise the public, and plot them behind anything that seems as if it might have a left lean.

The American People will take Socialism, but they won‘t take the label

Omar El-Nahry is the Politics subeditor of Newturn Magazine. He is a ﬁnal year ESPS student at UCL and has been accepted in the Fullbright Master scheme

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THE ESSAY

Language

Linguistic Re-Appropriation A look at the mechanics of how shifting connotations determine political language BY CHRISTO HALL

ONE

of the distinct qualities that sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom is the complexity and the flexibility of our communicative system. The limitless variety of ways we can use language not only represents our biological development but also our sensitivity to culture and identity. The diverse and pluralistic society in which we live encourages constant shifting of our word choices, the way we use those words and the connotations attached to them. Aside from the beliefs of the language purists, language change is championed as a positive reflection of a responsive and receptive society. We only have to look at the list of words that make their passage into the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) each year to see the rapid change and the liberalisation of the values reflected in our language usage. Nouns are used as verbs (to inbox), sounds and exclamations are accepted as words (mwahahaha), phrases are initialised (OH: Other half; UX: User experience), and words are conjoined to express a single meaning (Photobomb: to spoil a photo by leaping in front of the camera while a photo is being taken). Language is a mirror of our society and language change often comes about organically as a reflection of changes in society and through the creativity and the flexibility of its members. The latest additions to the OED are not autocratic choices made by

authoritarian wordsmiths but are merely echoes of the growing usage of the word or phrase. However, such dictatorial control over our dictionaries has existed and has been seen in the language planning policies of ministries and governments for centuries. A major part of General Franco’s nationalistic policy was to seize control of the language used in Spain; all other languages other than Castilian (Spanish) were not to be used in schools, administration, newspapers, radio transmissions, and political and cultural institutions. It can likewise be seen in the British eradication of the Gaelic language in Ireland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (beautifully captured in Brian Friel’s play Translations), as well as in many instances of imperial or nationalistic policy the world over. By controlling the language that people speak an authority can diminish, supress or eradicate a culture and effectively reassign an individual’s identity. And so those who may engineer change in our language usage hold a powerful position in society. Battles to control the use of a word are played out more often and more deliberately than one might think. In 1834, the struggling Tory party had just been trounced by Earl Grey’s Whig government in the election of 1832, where they lost sixty seats and won less than a third of the popular vote. The Tory party needed a change and immediately disbanded

The diverse and pluralistic society in which we live encourages constant shifting of our word choices

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the Tory moniker and adopted ‘Conservative’. Within a year they had gained almost 100 seats and by 1841 had returned to power. That is not to suggest that broader political debates, as well as the ascension of Robert Peel, didn’t have something to do with the turnaround in the party‘s fortunes, but by changing the linguistic symbol of the party a new set of beliefs and an expression of newness itself were communicated. We have seen this in the change of airline names because of poor safety records (ValueJet Airways changing to Airtran Airways), fast food companies attempting to shed their reputation for unhealthy food or unethical farming practices (Kentucky Fried Chicken to KFC), and tobacco companies coming to terms with the evidence of cigarette-related deaths (Philip Morris into Altria).

In an attempt to overcome past failures and dispel negative associations, language can reassert and rebrand, and in turn change people’s perspectives. However, despite these attempts the act of renaming alone rarely changes people’s prejudices, because it only replaces the old word with a new one; this has the effect of shifting the connotation from the old word onto the new. In addition, a new set of connotations needs to be attached to the term, which demands a more complicated process of redeﬁnition. The active and deliberate attempt to change the connotations of a word that refers to oneself or the group to which one belongs is known to linguists as linguistic reappropriation. While it can be applied to branding and public relations it is more commonly

Picture by celesteh (Flickr)

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POLITICS

Language

By controlling language, an authority can diminish, supress or eradicate a culture

connected to a minority attempting to brush off negative associations that are tied up in the reference for that class or group of people. The connotations of that reference, put in place by that group’s opponents can become the accepted norm in a society and so can affect the opinion of the general populace. Linguistic reappropriation occurs when that minority decides to throw a spanner in the works, they adopt the negatively-connoted title for themselves. Black people call themselves ‘niggas’, gay people call themselves ‘queer’, Democrats call their health policy ‘obamacare’. I’ll come back to that last one later. A paper by Robin Brontsema, a linguist at the University of Colorado has given us a far deeper understanding of how to evaluate the options that are available to a minority when faced with a label that has pejorative connotations attached. She has suggested that there are three options available: one, they decide to oppose reappropriation because they see the pejorative connotation as inseparable from the term; two, they support reappropriation because they see the pejorative connotation to be separable from the term; or three, they decide to support reappropriation because they see the pejorative connotation as inseparable from the term. The ﬁrst perspective is plain to see. If a group of people call gay people ‘queers’ with the negative connotations of weakness or unmanliness and the group of gay people deem that connotation as being inseparable from the term, then despite all their efforts there would be no way to disassociate weakness from ‘queer’. They therefore oppose reappropriation, leaving the term out there to be uttered only by the opposition. Presumably in the hope that it will be ignored or go away by itself. In the second perspective, gay people attempt to reappropriate the word ‘queer’ because they feel that the negative connotations of weakness can be banished by a campaign that creates new connotations. For the AIDS activist groups of the 1990s, using the phrase ‘Queer Nation’ as its slogan, it attempted to reposition the term ‘queer’ with connotations of radicalism and those willing to ﬁght against the commonly held beliefs of the time. The hope was to pacify the strength of the opponent’s insult and produce language change, and in so doing, affect the

course of societal norms. The third perspective is where gay people reappropriate the word ‘queer’ in opposition to the opponent’s accepted term. Gay people do not expect to shut down the negative connotations but wish to use the negative connotations as a line of thought to oppose. If there is no negative connotation there is no radicalism behind the reappropriation. This was seen in gay rights organisations’ use of a pink triangle in protest, this was a symbol reappropriated from the Nazi practice of giving gay men in concentration camps a badge with a pink triangle. The trouble with any of these perspectives is that there is no guarantee that the successful reappropriation and adjusted connotations thereby attached will reach an endpoint; there is a chance that yet another negative association is added or that because of the reusage of the term by the minority group, with its negative connotations still attached, the slur can be reinvigorated and made more public. And therefore the democrats must take heed. The Republicancoined ‘Obamacare’ in reference to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was used to associate the more illiberal consequences of the act to Obama himself, hoping to force the president out of office. The name stuck. It was used by Republicans and the media alike. In the run up to the 2012 U.S. elections the Democrats began using it for themselves. A democrat with impeccable taste could purchase t-shirts and bumper stickers with the phrase ‘I love Obamacare’. Barack Obama’s official twitter account used the #iloveobamacare hashtag. In an attempt to reappropriate the word from their opponents, the Democrats tried to take ownership of the word, to redirect the associations attached to it in a more positive direction. The awareness of the power of language has attracted more and more deliberate attempts to redefine a term and empower a group as a consequence. But no term has an endpoint. The flexible and vacillating nature of language can betray the effort. No word can be determined in advance. And history suggests that the more successful a reappropriation the more likely another group will want to own it for themselves.

Christo Hall is the co-editor of The New Wolf Magazine

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ECONOMICS

The Great Political Stimulus Package

Who are the winners and losers of the SuperPacs?

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EUROPE

Legal

Tax Wars From Jimmy Carr to Starbucks, what to do when morality clashes with economic incentive? BY JOSHUA DAVISON

2012

ducive to easy business implantation and operations.

was not a good year for tax dodgers. Multinational corporations, holders of Swiss bank accounts and B-list celebrities have all had the full panoply of tax-ducking charges levied against them. What ﬁnger pointers, including David Cameron and George Osborne, have sometimes failed to acknowledge however, is the key distinction between tax evasion and tax avoidance. While the former is illegal and hence punishable by law, the latter is a perfectly legal practice. Moral considerations aside for one moment, from an individual’s or company’s perspective it makes sense to pay as little tax as possible within the conﬁnes of the law. And if these moral considerations were truly important, then surely the tax system should have been designed to stop them being subverted?

These tax wars are particularly viable in the European Union, where the rules of the common market allow the free movement of wor-

Unfortunately things are not quite this simple. In an increasingly open world economy, in which people, companies and especially capital are very mobile, countries have engaged in tax wars in order to attract wealth. Principally, this has entailed governments continuously undercutting the tax rates of their potential “competitors” in an attempt to lure away their businesses and capital. Indeed, while UK politicians were slamming Starbucks, Google and Amazon for diverting revenues through

kers, capital, goods and services. People or businesses can pack up and leave one EU country in favour of another without the cumbersome documentation and tedious application process that are normally required elsewhere. In Ireland, the country through which Google channels revenues to avoid UK taxes, the corporate tax rate stands at just 12.5%, compared to the EU average rate of 23.5%.

Over 50% of world trade takes place through tax havens other countries they were at the same time inviting steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal to move his business from France to Britain. There have also been examples of relaxing rules and procedures on claiming and receiving tax reductions. In the most extreme cases, the so called tax havens, very low rates are accompanied by bank account anonymity and a regulatory environment con-

However, this inadvertent encouragement of tax wars provoked by the construction of the European Union isn’t categorically a bad thing. For smaller and less wealthy countries attracting big businesses through low tax rates was a tool for economic growth and a means towards the standards of living enjoyed in the big-

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ger European economies. For many years after the onset of the common market, Ireland displayed exceptionally high growth rates alongside shrinking public debt. Observers have also argued that ﬁrms consider a whole range of factors when choosing where to set up shops, one of which is the standards of living that can be enjoyed by the staff. Therefore, countries that cannot compete with lower taxes will compensate with improved public services and amenities – surely no bad thing.

debt) or to raise taxes on less mobile tax bases like people and consumption goods. Indeed, the falls in corporate tax rates in the common market were mirrored by hikes in income taxes and VAT.

Nevertheless, these tax wars have been a point of political tension between countries. In the midst of the Irish Crisis in 2010 France argued that raising Ireland’s corporate tax rate should be a precondition for the country receiving a bail-out. In addition, although the argument that low taxes are part and parcel of a broader policy for economic convergence and are reasonable for some countries, for extremely wealthy tax havens like Switzerland and Luxembourg, the argument is far less convincing. In any case, when more than 50% of international bank loans, a third Illustration by Mia Kennedy for Newturn Magazine of all Foreign Direct Investment and over 50% of world trade takes place through tax havens, the impact on tax systems’ capacity to redistribute wealth must be substantial.

The trouble is that tax systems are intimately linked to individual countries’ sovereignty, having evolved over many centuries

Most importantly, while an individual state cutting its taxes can attract a bigger tax base of businesses and savings and therefore raise its overall tax revenues, this only works if rates in all its “competitor” countries remain unchanged. Unfortunately when many states cut taxes at the same time, the increase in the tax base is small and all states tend to lose out. This inevitably forces them either to accept a permanently lower level of tax revenue (and reﬂect this in poorer public services or higher

Over the years there have been numerous, mostly unsuccessful, attempts to harmonise taxes across Europe for all these reasons. One of the biggest “successes” came in 1997, when the European Council agreed on a “Code of Conduct” that encouraged EU members to freeze business taxes. This recommendation however involved no legal obligation and has been widely ignored.

With one hand politicians are admonishing tax avoiders for doing the “immoral” thing, with the other they are fighting off the international coordination needed to stop this happening to reflect national history and culture. Symbolically then, tax policy is a difficult thing to relinquish. This is especially true for those states in the Eurozone who have already ceded their monetary policy and a degree of their fiscal policy to supranational institutions and rules. Tax wars in the European Union pervade because economic sense comes up against political entrenchment. With one hand politicians are admonishing tax avoiders for doing the “immoral” thing, but with the other they are fighting off the international coordination needed to stop this happening. Of course better coordination of tax policies wouldn’t eliminate the problems entirely, but it would certainly help change the beggarthy-neighbour culture among states, corporations and the very rich. For as long as politicians fail to take this plunge, don’t expect the Starbucks case to be the last of its kind. Joshua Davison is the Economics subeditor of Newturn Magazine. He is a final year student of Economics and French at UCL.

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China’s Ghost Cities

‘Ordos’: a skateboarding ﬁlm and the stark realities of the Chinese construction boom BY HANDAN WIESHMANN

IN 2012

French-‐born skateboarder and film maker Charles Lanceplaine travelled over 1000km from Shanghai to Inner Mongolia to make a skateboarding film. Not your usual Ollie-‐crammed 10 minutes, Lanceplaine’s film aimed to juxtapose anthropology with the aerial, “I always try to film skateboarding in a way that not only focuses on a trick, but on a place” says the Shanghai based filmmaker, “when filming in China, with such an interesting backdrop, you always have a story to tell”-‐ And this film certainly tells a story. Ordos, the city in which Lanceplaine shot his film of the same name, was built a decade ago to hold one million people and fitted out with infrastructure and amenities to make it suitable for a population of that size. The city’s wide roads give way to imposing architecture. Impressive government buildings, museums, cultural centres, parks and a stadium large enough to hold over 35,000 spectators are scattered across this gleaming metropolis. At its centre in the sprawling Genghis Khan Plaza, stand two giant statues of Mongol horses rising on their hind legs - a reminder that here was born one of the greatest empires in history.

known ofﬁcially as Kangbashi New Area, was founded. It has since become a symbol of the dark side of the Chinese housing boom and worryingly, it is not the only place of its kind. All over China, new developments stand without inhabitants. Over 2000km away from Ordos, in Yunnan province, is the city of Chenggong. Construction began here in 2003. In 2010, World Bank blogger Holly Krambeck documented over 100,000 apartments without occupants. The New South China Mall in Dongguan, Guangdong province, is the largest shopping centre in the world with space for over 2000 stores. It has seen 99% vacancy since its opening in 2005.

The aesthetics of this brand new city symbolise power, wealth and luxury. Yet, it is deﬁned overwhelmingly by one thing-‐ a distinct and unsettling absence of people. Filled with unsold apartments and inhabited by only a few thousand, Ordos is China’s most famous ghost town. The 35km2 new district has a population density of 17.8 people per square kilometre, compared with 5206 in London or 3,848 in Berlin.

It is not only large scale construction projects which are bearing witness to this phenomenon. In the outskirts of large cities

At present, more than 60 million apartments stand empty in China

For a skateboarder, this desolate urban landscape offers a dramatic backdrop. “Ordos is like a movie set, a surreal place, a utopia that never took off” describes Lanceplaine, “everything is clean, the architecture is beautiful, there is classical music playing in the parks but it is such a lonely place in the middle of nowhere - when you are in this town you feel like time has stopped.”

across China, smaller real estate developments also remain uninhabited. In Daxing, one hour south of Beijing’s city centre, a compound of 545 Italian-style, million dollar mansions stands

In the early 1990s, private mining companies poured into the Inner Mongolian steppe region to exploit the vast coal reserves discovered there, bringing with them unprecedented wealth and generating an economic boom. Ordos, a subdivision of this region, prospered and in 2003, its municipality laid out plans for a huge new city, built from scratch, ﬁfteen miles south of the old town. Aggressive development was catalysed by wealthy entrepreneurs, former farmers who had become rich from land sales to mining companies, and the existence of a large grey market for debt. In 2006, the city,

36 newturn.org.uk

almost entirely empty. Thames town, 30km outside central Shanghai, was built in 2006 to resemble an English market town. It has cobbled streets, red brick and mock Tudor buildings, a church with a steeple and even a red phone box. Again, there is no one here apart from the newly-‐weds who flock en masse to take advantage of the unusual backdrop for their wedding photos. These bizarre anecdotes give way to shocking figures. At present, more than 60 million apartments stand empty in China The Chinese real estate market only came into existence in 1998. Prior to this date, housing was a public good provided by work units or danwei, the employer who was the first link in the complex chain between each Chinese household and the central Communist Party. Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms of the 1980s, which began to introduce the principles of a capitalist market to this communist state, left the nation in

increased demand further and in 2003 Wen Jiabao began a set of measures to increase access to credit for the construction and purchase of property. Alongside this, Chinese households, beginning after a long period of economic isolation to accumulate wealth, did not know where to put their money: Interest rates offered by banks were too low to offset inﬂation, the stock market too risky and the bond market too inactive to offer rewarding returns. This lack of investment alternatives drove households to place their wealth in property, buying second, third, fourth and ﬁfth homes and speculating that these would increase in value. In 2007, 15% of China’s urban households owned two or more homes. Speculative buying in turn increased the upwards pressure on prices, sparking concerns that a real estate bubble was emerging in China.

“Ordos is like a movie set, a surreal place, a utopia that never took off” economic limbo for over a decade. Citizens were still refused property rights and there existed no legal market for buying or selling housing. Then in 1998 the government took the abrupt action of severing the link between work units and housing provision. Employers were instead required to provide subsidies to help workers buy their homes. This move marked the monetisation of the property market, which opened the ﬂood gates on one of the largest accumulations of real estate wealth in history. Mass urbanisation fuelled the demand for housing and caused property prices to rocket. Between 2002 and 2011, China’s urban population grew by approximately 20 million each year. Cities such as Beijing and Shanghai saw house prices increase by up to 30% each year within that period. Low interest rates

In response to rising concerns of a bubble, Moody’s downgraded its outlook for the Chinese real estate sector from ‘stable’ to ‘negative’ in April 2011, with Standard and Poor’s following in July 2011. The Chinese government itself began to take measures to curtail credit, increasing interest rates and administering a sales tax to curb speculative investing. In early 2012 it appeared the market was beginning to contract and prices started to fall. However, by October, things looked again on the up with average house prices rising in 70 Chinese cities tracked by the national bureau of statistics. In December, Moody’s returned its outlook for the sector to ‘stable’, citing “solid underlying demand” and “continuing urbanisation” as indicators that prices will grow at a steady rate over the next 12 months. Does this mean the Chinese property market is out of the danger zone? Unfortunately, economists are rarely conclusive on

37 newturn Feb/March 2013

ket. The Chinese government ﬁnds itself in a Catch-‐22. On the one hand it seeks to stiﬂe speculative investment and oversee a transition to a robust real estate sector; on the other it becomes increasingly dependent on this sector as an impetus for economic growth. While analysts remain in dispute on how prices will evolve over the coming months, one thing is certain: If the real estate bubble does burst, the negative impact will reach far beyond the borders of China. Stephen Green, of Standard Chartered in Hong Kong calls the Chinese property market “the most important sector in the universe”. The country is the world’s single largest importer of commodities. A sharp correction of property prices will not only dampen domestic consumption but could have global consequences ranging from a collapse in commodity prices, to a destabilising trade war. We need only to look at the aftermath of the housing crisis in Spain to imagine the potentially disastrous effects of a crash in Chinese asset prices.

the existence of asset price bubbles until they have burst, but many are still raising concerns. In the same month that Moody’s upgraded its outlook for the real estate sector, UBS warned against the possible consequences of increased investment: potential overbuild and resurge of discontent amongst the urban population.

In 2011, real estate investments constituted 13% of China’s GDP and the sector is now a greater contributor to net growth than exports

Other analysts point to the empty properties all over China as evidence that supply had outstripped demand and that the Chinese economy has become excessively dependent on the construction sector. They claim that the increase in prices has become purely speculative and translated into an unstable real estate market, prone to collapse.

The Chinese authorities appear keen to stiﬂe potential panic and avoid embarrassment by inhibiting media coverage on the ghost cities. “Our trip almost never happened because two weeks prior to our departure a foreign journalist got kicked out of the city” says Lanceplaine, “the local authorities were deﬁnitely watching us while we were there.”

Despite these concerns, construction shows few signs of slowing. In 2012, China’s highest administrative authority, the State Council, approved plans to ﬂatten 700 mountains in the Lanzhou district in order to make way for a new metropolitan area covering 500 square miles of land. As the country’s economy slows to its worst rate in recent years, construction plays an ever more important part in occupying the Chinese labour force and fuelling the economy. In 2011, real estate investments constituted 13% of China’s GDP and the sector is now a greater contributor to net growth rates than exports are.

His ﬁlm, which depicts skaters cruising freely down four-‐lane highways and performing tricks in front of vacant government buildings has the same beauty and awe of a post-apocalyptic Hollywood epic. But this beauty belies, in this region at least, a gargantuan disequilibrium between supply and demand. ‘Ordos’ is a chilling reminder that the engine driving global economic growth is a fragile one.

China’s response to the global ﬁnancial crisis was to unveil, in 2008, a record breaking stimulus plan worth four trillion Yuan ($586billion) with much of this spending channelled into massive construction projects. In June 2012, the country began an aggressive loosening of monetary policy in response to deteriorating global conditions, further stimulating the property mar-

Handan Wieshmann is Economics Editor of Newturn Magazine. Charles Lanceplaine relocated from France to Shanghai in 2007. Specializing in sports and music, Charles today works with companies such as Adidas, Nike and Converse among others. You can see his ﬁlm ‘Ordos’ online at www.vimeo.com

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Arts

Fuelling the UK Economy Is it all ‘poverty porn‘ or is the ﬁlm industry Britain’s greatest asset? BY SOPHIA WYATT

WHAT

were your top films of 2011? I don’t think I need to name Harry Potter, The King’s Speech or Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy for you to notice that 2011 was a good year for British Cinema. Whilst the definition of what makes a film British is up for discussion, the unmistakable fact is that in the face of the economic downturn, the UK film industry is booming. What was decried two years ago as the downfall of the UK’s creative industries, with 30% cuts handed to the Arts Council, seems to have given way to a success story. British film has always thrived in uncertain times, most glaringly in genres like social realism. ‘Poverty porn’, as it was known, was the bread and butter of British Cinema during the 1980s and 1990s. Cheap to make and playing wonderfully on our narrative of class warfare, social realist films reflected the times and in turn prospered due to them, underpinning the careers of some of our best loved directors, like Mike Picture by Tom Ellefsen (overseastom on Flickr)

39 newturn Feb/March 2013

Arts

sophisticated big-budget Les Misérables, hotly tipped as an Oscar contender. Not only are these ﬁlms attracting Hollywood’s attention they also, in their qualitative style, seem to be affecting the processes of the major production houses. Now, rather than churning out a series of marketable ﬁlms year upon year, companies such as Universal seem to be taking on fewer projects and concentrating their efforts on one or two ‘prestige pictures’; more akin to that of the smaller production house.

Leigh, Ken Loach and later, Shane Meadows. Is this still the case? Is Plan B’s Ill Manors our modern equivalent of Stephen Frears’ My Beautiful Launderette?

British ﬁlm has always thrived in uncertain times, most glaringly in genres like social realism

It might well have been, had the economic downturn not happened at a time when advancements in technology far outweigh the tight purses of producers. It cannot be denied that funding by more traditional routes has become increasingly difficult to come by, with angel investors taking less risk and the dissolution of outfits such as the UK Film Council. Yet new models for investment are quickly filling the gaps, playing on the ambivalent powers of social media in platforms such as crowd-sourced funding sites Kickstarter and Indiegogo. These take full advantage of the networks such as Facebook and Twitter to generate interest and gain fundingwhat used to take months to achieve, is now possible in a matter of days

Yet, that’s not where the interest stops either. More foreign investment is coming directly from the big Hollywood studios and Pinewood is investing heavily. The government is also taking steps to support British cinema: Westminster is offering tax relief to provide vital ﬁscal stability, contributing to a production rise of around 70%. And if these signs alone weren’t positive enough, television broadcasters are clamouring to join in. In the 1980s Channel 4 invested in ﬁlm, in an attempt to further mould the cultural landscape of Britain - and now the broadcasting giants ITV and BBC are also seeing the advantages of cinema, with their own investments.

Last year witnessed the highest ever level of UK ﬁlm production activity, with over 500 British ﬁlms produced in twelve months

In line with this, the price of cinema-quality cameras has dropped considerably. The DSLR revolution of the past few years has meant that both large-scale productions like Avengers and smaller indie pictures like Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture use cameras worth just under £2000 to get their shots. In the past months, the high-end camera company RED has announced that due to favourable economies of scale, and a large dose of philanthropy, it has eschewed huge proﬁts in favour of creativity, reducing prices by up to 45%.

All this amounts to a buoyant industry. Last year witnessed the highest ever level of UK film production activity with over 500 British films being produced. This corresponds to a 7% growth in the industry and a £4.6bn contribution to national GDP- these are not the signs of an ailing trade, far from it. And so whilst British cinema remains creatively conservative to the razzmatazz of Hollywood, there is fuel enough to stoke the fire of Britain’s creative future.

These are the positive signs of readjustment in an industry that is slowly shaking off Hollywood as its role model – signs, that one suspects, will profit British Cinema socially as well as financially. What we might observe is less of a trickle down phenomenon than a trickle up, with the big studios taking a greater look at independent films, practices and filmgoers and responding to their wants. For example, last year Universal Pictures snapped up The King’s Speech director Tom Hooper to direct the

Sophia Wyatt is the creator of a youth movement zine, Milk Teeth, and has contributed to GQ and student publications in London and Paris. She is a ﬁnal year French with Film student at King‘s.

40 newturn.org.uk

Money

US ELECTION

The Great Political Stimulus Package The opening of the ﬂoodgates on spending on US electoral campaigns in 2010 by the Supreme Court lead to last year’s elections being the most expensive in US history. Who are the winners and losers of this change in campaign funding regulation? BY NEER SHARMA

THE 2012

election has been marked as the most expensive in US history. $6bn spent and the political landscape is relatively unchanged: Obama remains president, the Republicans control the House, and the Democrats hold onto the Senate. In the 2008 presidential race, individual donations were limited to $2300 and corporations were prevented from producing electioneering messages or donating directly to campaigns. But in 2010, the Supreme Court decided that the first amendment – the right to free speech – be applied to corporations as it is to people. It ruled to allow for individuals, unions and organisations to form SuperPACs (Political Action Committees) that could spend and raise unlimited amounts of money for electioneering communications. US politics, already notoriously expensive, witnessed an unprecedented influx of money: campaign spending in the US 2012 presidential race stood at $18 per capita compared to a meagre $0.80 in Britain’s last general election. This nexus of money and politics is not inherently bad. The most obvious beneficiaries of the ‘Obama-‐Romney stimulus package’ have been local television-broadcasting stations. In the 7 months preceding election day, more than 1 million campaign-ads were broadcasted – a 40% increase on the 2008 election. Overall, Moody’s Investors Services estimate that local television broadcasters earned $2.8bn in this election

cycle, from political ads alone. For a broadcasting industry that is struggling against its online competitors and faced with a stagnant demand for advertising, this stimulus provided a much welcomed boost. There is also a case to be made that unlimited funding enhances the democratic process. Whilst speech is free to make, it’s not free to broadcast. The communication of political ideas and messages necessitates expenditure on a vast array of media, and ﬁnancial limitations may restrict this. SuperPACs can ease these restrictions. This can, in turn help to make candidates more accountable to the public, with policy inconsistencies and poor individual track records more likely to be picked up on. In short, the reform might lead to a better informed electorate. The emergence of SuperPACs may help level the political playing ﬁeld. Following Paul Tsongas’s failed campaign for the democratic candidacy in 1992, the former Democratic National Committee Treasurer Robert Farmer remarked: “People don’t lose campaigns. They run out of money and can’t get their planes in the air.” This election’s Republican primaries saw an unprecedentedly protracted battle for nomination. Candidates such as Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich prolonged their campaign thanks to SuperPACs, eventually losing not because they had depleted

41 newturn Feb/March 2013

money could have been allocated more productively to investment into the economy or social projects. Many commentators have also pointed out that campaign ads focused more on character assassinations, relying on distorted facts and innuendo, than on candidates’ political programs. SuperPACs might have increased the quantity of information, but they have provoked a severe decline in its quality. Illustration by Matthew Dale for Newturn Magazine

Most significantly, the empowering of outside groups threatens to undermine democracy. Unlimited spending allows wealthy individuals, large corporations and unions to buy influence over a candidate. Rather than appealing to a broad base of individuals to raise money, candidates can raise much larger sums by targeting a narrow spectrum of society, whose interests may conflict with those of the wider public.

their own resources but because they simply didn’t have the support needed to win. Similarly in the presidential race, outside groups eroded the fundraising advantage that historically beneﬁts the incumbent; while Obama raised approximately $250m more than Romney through traditional fundraising, this advantage was entirely negated by the impact of outside spending from pro-Romney SuperPACs. This helped equalise total spending across the two campaigns and arguably allowed for an equal competition. Insofar as SuperPACs promote competition, their existence could well be construed as being good for democracy. These arguments are not entirely convincing. Theory and evidence alike suggest that increasing spending on a campaign does not change its outcome, but represents a massive waste of resources. If it is not the absolute levels of money spent, but the amount spent relative to one’s opponent that creates political advantage, whether both candidates spend a little or a lot is inconsequential – so why not spend just a little? The problem, which spending limits are designed to address, is that candidates will never spend just a little because they fear being left behind by their opponents. The bottom line is that more money is spent with no return, not to mention the time that is wasted attending numerous fundraisers to drum up donations.

Even more worryingly, SuperPACs allow donors to remain anonymous, making any subversion of the political process completely unaccountable. Even if, as evidence suggests, Su-

Moody’s Investors Services estimate that local television broadcasters earned $2.8bn in this election cycle - from political ads alone perPACs are not decisive in most results, donors will nonetheless continue to wield inﬂuence over their sponsored candidate once they have been elected. This analysis highlights that there needs to be a comprehensive debate on campaign ﬁnancing in the US. Now that big money has been granted its place in the political process, one fundamental question needs to be answered: does this political stimulus enrich democracy or debase it? Neer Sharma is a third-‐year economist at UCL. He recently completed a summer internship at N.M Rothschild & Sons, working on mergers and acquisitions within the Technology, Media and Telecoms division.

Moreover, the additional spending has, broadly speaking, represented a transfer of wealth from rich donors to rich media owners- this is a massive wasted opportunity for society, as this

42 newturn.org.uk

COMMENT

Is the Broadsheet Newspaper a Sinking Ship? Despite declining sales and the menace of the digital age, there may be hope yet for the inky trade BY SARAH WHITEHEAD

WHEN

walking across the esplanade of La Defense, a suburb just outside Paris where the International Herald Newspaper paper has now moved to, the deputy editor asked me what I planned to do with myself once my internship here was over. “Well, my ﬁrst love was always newspapers” I began, before I was interrupted by the former New York City crime correspondent: “You better fall out of love Sarah.” As I stand on the brink of graduating with an MA in Print Journalism, I can’t help but worry how I will make a living and often feel that going into the world with my shorthand and ry feature writing is like being sent into tiona d Dic strate lu Il war with a water pistol. w ’s Ne bster 2 We 1 When 9 1 the

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I voice my ambitions to write for the broad sheets I am met with worrying looks from most and hollow laughter from journalists. Despite its close connections with the New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, or the ‘Trib’, has not been immunised against the economic impact of digital technologies currently run-

COMMENT

The Guardian reported an annual loss of around £76m, despite having one of highest international readerships in the world

editors, Alison now faces the challenges of navigating her newspaper through the unpredictable media world. She must oversee its evolution through online pay-walls and android editions, to enable the kind of stories she broke during her days on the wires to continue being told.

ning rampant in newspapers. The New York Times Company which includes The Times, The International Herald Tribune and The Boston Globe, reported a net income of $2.3million in the third quarter of 2012, down 85.5% on the same period the previous year.

Almost in response to the ﬂying rumours that ‘in 5 years newspapers will be dead’ echoing through the grand hall in Paris, Alison said: “We have been hosting the global conversation for 125 years, analysing events and pouring light on untold stories and although we are entering an unpredictable world, we do not plan to stop”.

Today, most people get their news via social media or online websites - and who can blame them? Why pay for something when you can get it for free? The getwhat-you-can-foras-little-as-you-can mentality applies to nearly everything else in life, so why not news? The ﬁnancial impact of this mentality is severe: The Guardian, one of the online newspapers that has yet to put up a pay-wall on its online content, reported an annual loss of around £76m - despite having one of highest international readerships in the world.

Can accurate, independent journalism, written in the public interest and not simply about what the public are interested in, continue to be delivered to readers?

Instead of lamenting the impending death newspapers may or may not suffer, the question we need to ask is how can accurate, independent journalism, written in the public interest and not simply about what the public are interested in, continue to be delivered to readers; whatever platform newspaper journalism eventually takes. Although the next 125 years remain uncertain, changes happening to our media are not necessarily negative. Despite declining sales in print, slowly but steadily rising numbers of online subscribers to web editions and apps suggest that newspapers are ﬁnding ways to ﬁnancially adapt to the times and, most importantly, that there are still people who want to listen in on the global conversation.

Three months ago we celebrated the 125th anniversary of the International Herald Tribune. A party was held in the magnificent France Amériques and towards the end of the evening a speech was given by the newspaper’s Executive Editor Alison Smale, an inspiration to any reporter. She told us how she was one of the first people to cross Check-‐point Charlie and enter West Berlin in 1989 -‐ it was the first moment in her life that she had ‘to pinch herself to make sure she was still alive’. Like all

Sarah Whitehead is a recent Journalism MA Graduate from Goldsmiths. Currently an intern at the International Herald Tribune in Paris, she has written for The Guardian and The Liverpool Echo.

44 newturn.org.uk

CULTURE

Rediscovering Sebald

A look back at the strident German author

45 newturn Feb/March 2013

ANTHROPOLOGY

Science

Of Manipulated Insects, Synthesised Meat and ‘Natural’ Reality What is nature? Can it be harnessed and still retain its biological purity? And, particularly in the modern age, are we living in a synthetic reality? An investigation into the nature of nature BY AERON O’CONNOR

THROUGH

velop fake meat. We’re no longer talking about Quorn: this is real ﬂesh created with either synthesised animal tissue or plant material. The aim is to reduce the amount of animals slaughtered to feed the human population, with the principal hope of drastically reducing the human footprint on the planet: meat production is responsible for 40% of nitrogen oxide emissions, 40% of methane emissions and 5% of CO² emissions. If the ﬁrst method is employed, using synthesised animal tissue, stem cells (the cells in organisms that create new tissue in case of injury or damage) will be extracted from an animal and added to a concoction of synthetic nutrients. Within a few days a thin layer of muscle tissue will have formed. Of course, animals will die in this process, but far fewer than at present. Indeed, one animal could provide hundreds of tonnes of meat.

out our history we’ve had an engrained fear of tampering with nature. Ironically, however, we have also often been guilty of failing to pay any heed to that same fear. This is particularly true in the ﬁeld of science, where the possibility of manipulating genetics, for example, has caused many controversies. The fear that our creations may grow stronger than us and threaten our own existence has existed for many years now. Craig Venter, the man who mapped out the human genome and created the ﬁrst synthetic organism, wants to infest the planet with insects whose DNA has been manipulated. He will programme them with instincts that will solve problems such as pollution, food scarcity and disease. They will produce fuel and food, clean up toxic waste, detect diseases and even produce medicine. Insects are one of the most resilient and common living organisms on the planet, so they seem the perfect candidate. The science behind how they will produce fuel is complicated, but, essentially, by harnessing photosynthesis Venter hopes they will recycle CO² and turn it into new fuel. This means we will no longer need to tap into underground carbon sources and pollute the atmosphere with even more CO²; we simply recycle the CO² we have already emitted. Another highly controversial project taking place right now is the race to de-

This, of course, is causing huge uproar amongst many people: from farmers who would see their livelihoods brought to an end, to ethics committees questioning the moral implications of creating real animal ﬂesh in laboratories. There’s also the question of dual-‐use, where people might ﬁnd alternate uses

A project taking place right now is the race to develop fake meat. We’re no longer talking about Quorn: this is real ﬂesh created with synthesised animal tissue 46 newturn.org.uk

for this process: could people create fake human flesh, for instance? What are the implications of that? What is most astounding about these two projects is that humans are now able to take a part of nature and redesign it so it ‘naturally’ facilitates our existence. Venter is creating synthetic organisms with ‘natural’ instincts; and fake meat could become the new ‘natural’ way of supplying meat. We are currently witnessing Could this guy secure our resources in the future? (Picture by Martin LaBar, Flickr) the naturalisation of artificial procesand ‘authentic’ than the more ‘artificial’ and ‘modern’ cities ses and the breakdown of the distinction between natural and of the world. Sociologist Bruno Latour suggests the world is artificial. not just made up of nature and society, but that it is composed of hybrids. Hybrids are things that combine ‚nature‘ and ‚soEnhancement technologies, such as genetic modification, arciety‘, like pollution clouds - which although naturally formed tificial organs and prosthetics, offer another perspective into this discussion that might be easier for people to relate to. Anti-depressants, for example, are a controversial enhancement technology. There are many debates over whether depression is are made up of socially produced substances. Humans have inbiological or social, whether we are genetically predisposed to teracted with ‘nature’ to such an extent that, nowadays, almost suffer from low moods or whether our social lives cause us to anything could be classified as a hybrid. There are very few fall into these moods. Those who support the second argument spaces and things in the world that have not come into contact would claim that anti-depressants are attempting to solve social with humanity and remain unspoilt by it. Human pollution is afissues with science. Is that ‘natural’? How do anti-depressants fecting landscapes, species and ‘natural’ processes that we may compare to homeopathic remedies, which are considered ‘nanot even know about yet. tural’?

Life without naturalised, artiﬁcial processes would seem unimaginable

All this brings us to an important question: do we live in nature or culture? Are the things we assume to be natural, actually socially constructed? For example, would you classify Regent’s Park in London as nature or culture? Remember that its whole landscape has been groomed and controlled by humans. People often associate authenticity with nature, too. For instance, when discussing their favourite cities, people often refer to old European or Asian cities because they feel more ‘natural’

Consider the forms of artiﬁcial life we’ve created, like online, virtual communities. They are so engrained in our social landscape that we often treat them like a ‘natural’ part of our existence. As we live out more and more of our social lives on metaphysical platforms like social media websites, the boundary between ofﬂine and online life is blurred. Since its inception, people have criticised social media for its false sense of reality, but as we interact more and more with these digital platforms

47 newturn Feb/March 2013

ANTHROPOLOGY

Science

Others would argue that material objects and bodily practices are a medium for us to construct ourselves through: the process of creating and acting helps us think through our existence and form our identity. This perspective would hence argue that the objects of our creation inﬂuence our social existence. That either means that human social lives are not ‘natural’, but cultural, or that the things we create (like clothes, computers, synthetic organisms and fake meat) are not ‘artiﬁcial’, but ‘authentic’ and ‘natural’.

our lives on them become an inextricable part of our offline reality. This brings us back to the nature versus culture debate: when compared to face-to-face social interaction, is online social media natural or artificial? This collapse in the distinction between nature and culture is influencing all spheres of life from our sense of identity and place in the world, to the value we place on things, to the institutions and morals that guide and regulate us. If Venter’s synthetic insects and fake meat become reality they will drastically change the lives of every organism on the planet, not just those of humans. Life without these naturalised, artificial processes would seem unimaginable. We are already highly dependent on digital technology: our social infrastructure is constructed around the internet, for example. Fears of cyber terrorism prove this reliance on the internet. As we construct increasingly autonomous technologies, one can’t help but wonder who is in charge: us or the technologies we produce and rely on? Just as we have created and influenced technology, so has technology influenced us: consider how much our perception of the world has been transformed by the science and technology that is such an intricate part of the world.

Reducing this discussion down to either “humans influence their own existence” or “socially constructed objects influence people’s existence” is too simple and deterministic, however. In today‘s context, it seems too easy to just ask whether we are biologically or socially determined. It seems more likely that we are both, but then again we‘ve only looked at very Western ideologies of reality that usually divide the world into two simple categories of nature and culture. We are forgetting that other communities around the world understand their existence in different ways to us, with often more than just two categories. Some divide the world into ancestral and living; of the sky, of the earth, and of water; magical and non-magical; male and female (not just in relation to people, but objects too). We may not see the value in these classifications, but just as our lives go on with the nature-culture paradigm, so do theirs with their own paradigms. It would seem then that our existence is relative to the paradigm we live in and that perhaps what influences our actions and moral grounds is not strictly ‘nature‘ or ‘culture‘, but the paradigm we subscribe to.

In the future it is possible that insects will be able to produce fuel and food, clean up toxic waste, detect diseases and even produce medicine

What caused us to be the way we are today then? Ourselves? Or the objects we have created? Some would argue that the material and our bodily practices (everything from tattooing and dressing to dancing and playing) are an externalisation of our internal, true selves: mirror images. This would therefore suggest that we inﬂuence the way we are and the things we create help express ourselves.

Aeron O`Connor is doing a Master in Digital Anthropology at UCL. She is also a contributor to the New Wolf Magazine

48 newturn.org.uk

Psychology

THE GUEST

Bizarre Sex Sexual paraphilias and fetishes are more common than we think. Expert Dr. Mark Grifﬁths of the Nottingham Trent University gives us an overview BY DR. MARK GRIFFITHS

THE

German psychiatrist Richard Von KrafftEbing is usually credited with first identifying paraphilias in his 1886 book Psychopathia Sexualis (Sexual Psychopathy). Paraphilias (from the Greek “beyond usual or typical love”) are uncommon types of sexual expression and often more commonly described as sexual deviations, sexual perversions or disorders of sexual preference. For many people, they may appear bizarre and/or socially unacceptable, and represent the extreme end of the sexual continuum. They are typically accompanied by intense sexual arousal to unconventional or non-sexual stimuli. In some cases, the behaviour may only occur sporadically whereas for others it may be compulsive or addictive. Many sexologists have described some paraphilic behaviours as ‘fixated’ and for those affected the desire can be insistent and demanding. Most adults are aware of paraphilic behaviour where individuals derive sexual pleasure and arousal from sex with children (paedophilia), the giving and/or receiving of pain (sadomasochism), dressing in the clothes of the opposite sex (transvestism), watching others have sex (voyeurism), inanimate objects and non-sexual body parts (fetishism), exposing genitals to a stranger (exhibitionism), sex with animals (zoophilia), and sex with dead people (necrophilia). However, there are literally hundreds of paraphilias that are not so well known or researched including sexual arousal from amputees (acrotomophilia), the desire to be an amputee (apotemnophilia), flatulence (eproctophilia), rubbing one’s genitals against another person without their consent (frotteurism),

urine (urophilia), faeces (coprophilia), pretending to be a baby (infantilism), tight spaces (claustrophilia), restricted oxygen supply (hypoxyphilia), trees (dendrophilia), vomit (emetophilia), enemas (klismaphilia), sleep (somnophilia), statues (agalmatophilia), and food (sitophilia). Sexual fetishism itself comprises hundreds of different fetishes and may also involve some kind of enhancement of a sexual act such as a person being asked to wear a particular piece of clothing by the fetishist during sex (e.g., leather outﬁt or ﬁshnet stockings). Technically, fetishes refer to the obtaining sexual excitement primarily or exclusively from a non-living (inanimate) object or a particular part of the body that is not conventionally viewed as being particularly sexual in nature (e.g., a sexual attraction by males to feet is more likely to be viewed as a sexual fetish than a sexual attraction towards breasts). Attraction to a very particular body part is typically classed as ‘partialism’. Fetishes rarely develop into an offence that harms anyone although offences may include things like theft (of underwear) or cutting hair from an unwilling victim.

Paraphilas are rarely described as addictions

Fetishists (usually male) are often unable to orgasm without the fetish present, and can be established as young as 4 years old. Fetishes in and of themselves are not considered to be disorders of sexual preference unless the fetishistic behaviour causes signiﬁcant negative detriment and/or psychosocial distress for the individual. Scientiﬁc research has also indica-

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THE GUEST

Psychology

raphilic behaviours because much of the scientiﬁc literature is based on case studies. As paraphilias typically offer pleasure, many individuals affected do not seek psychological or psychiatric treatment as they live happily with their sexual preference. Furthermore, reliable statistics are further compounded by the fact that many paraphilic acts are illegal. Because of the illegality, paraphiliacs often experience high levels of shame and guilt and (like those who experience pleasure from the behaviour) may not seek medical or psychiatric help. For those that do seek professional help the disorders are often difﬁcult to treat. Therapeutic success is more likely to be related to curbing or suppressing the behaviour rather than eliminating it altogether.

ted that the most prevalent body fetishes appear to be for feet, hands, and hair, and that the most prevalent fetish objects are shoes, gloves, and (soiled) underwear. However, there may be differences in relation to sexual orientation. Most fetishism research concerns heterosexual men who have fetishistic desires for feminine items such as high-heeled shoes, lingerie, and hosiery. Among homosexual men, the fetishistic objects tend to be highly masculine. One of the most interesting study on sexual fetishes was led by Dr G. Scorolli at the University of Bologna, Italy. They examined the relative prevalence of different fetishes. Most studies on fetishistic behaviour are either case studies or small-scale surveys where sample sizes are rarely above 100 participants. Dr. Scorolli and his colleagues examined the content found in fetish discussion groups. Via a search of Yahoo! groups online,

Although the statistics are biased by differential reporting and prosecution, there is general agreement among the psychiatric community that all paraphilias are male dominated (with at 90% of all those affected being men and with some estimates suggesting the ratio is as high as 30 to 1). Research also indicates that some paraphilias appear to be more common than others. For instance, the most common paraphilias reported in the scientiﬁc literature appear to be masochism, sadism and fetishism. Within clinics that treat sex offenders, the most common paraphilias are (perhaps unsurprisingly) paedophilia, voyeurism and exhibitionism.

Research has reported that paraphiliacs commonly experience two to three paraphilas concurrently the research team located 381 fetish discussion groups were totally dedicated to sexual fetishes included over 150,000 members. The authors argued that ﬁgure was inﬂated, because many fetishists would be subscribed to more than one group. It was estimated (very conservatively in the authors’ opinion), that their sample size comprised at least 5000 fetishists (but was likely to be a lot more). Their results showed that body part fetishes were most common (33%), followed by objects associated with the body (30%), preferences for other people’s behavior (18%), own behavior (7%), social behavior (7%), and objects unrelated to the body (5%). Feet (and objects associated with feet) were by far the most common fetishes.

It is also known that atypical sexual behaviours often cluster and/or overlap (either simultaneously or sequentially). For instance, some research has reported that paraphiliacs commonly experience two to three

It is thought that paraphilias are rare and affect only a very small percentage of adults. It has been difﬁcult for researchers to estimate the proportion of the population that experience pa-

Picture by nicoyogui (Flickr)

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concurrent paraphilas with around 5% experiencing up to 10 concurrently. The onset of paraphilic behaviour is typically initiated during early adolescence through a complex biopsychosocial network of causes. The behaviour usually reaches its full development by the age of 20 years. Some of the causes of paraphilic behaviour are known to include various genetic and hormonal abnormalities, pre-natal neuro-developmental factors, neurocognitive and brain dysfunctions, maladaptive learning, and dysfunctional family life during childhood. Paraphilas are rarely described as addictions as most of the debate surrounds whether they are impulse control disorders or whether they fall within the spectrum of obsessive-compulsive disorders. Arguably, the best criteria for diagnosis of a paraphilia are found in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. To be classed as a paraphilia, the sexual behaviour has to meet two essential criteria. The ﬁrst criterion is that the essential features of a paraphilia are recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges or behaviours generally involving nonhuman objects, the suffering or humiliation of oneself or one’s partner, or children or other nonconsenting persons that occur over a period of at least six months. The second criterion is that a diagnosis is made if the behaviour, sexual urges, and/or fantasies cause clinically signiﬁcant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

The element of coercion is another key distinguishing characteristic of paraphilias. Some paraphilias (e.g., sadism, masochism, fetishism, hypoxyphiilia, urophilia, coprophilia, klismaphilia) are engaged in alone, or include consensual adults who participate in, observe, or tolerate the particular paraphiliac

Fetishists (usually male) are often unable to orgasm without the fetish present behaviour. These atypical non-coercive behaviours are considered by many psychiatrists to be relatively benign or harmless because there is no violation of anyone’s rights. Atypical coercive paraphilic behaviours are considered much more serious and almost always require treatment (e.g., paedophilia, exhibitionism, voyeurism, frotteurism, necrophilia, zoophilia). Finally, it is also worth noting that some practitioners working in the field have made distinctions between what are referred to as optional, preferred and exclusive paraphilias. An optional paraphilia is a behaviour that provides an alternative route to becoming sexually aroused. For instance, a male with fairly normal sexual interests might occasionally enhance their sexual arousal by wearing women’s high-‐heeled shoes and fishnet stockings while having sex. In preferred paraphilias, a person prefers the paraphilia to conventional sexual activities, but is still able to engage in conventional sex. For instance, a male might prefer – whenever possible – to wear women’s highheeled shoes and fishnet stockings during sex. In exclusive paraphilias, a person is unable to become sexually aroused in the absence of the paraphilia. In this case, a male would be unlikely to get sexually aroused during sex unless he was wearing highheeled shoes and fishnet stockings. Dr. Mark Griffiths is a Chartered Psychologist and Professor of Gambling Studies at Nottingham Trent University. He is internationally known for his research into behavioural addictions and has published over 1500 scientific papers and articles including many on human sexual behaviour.

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The Post-Racial Pitch The matter of race in society is, and always has been, a contentious issue, and never more so than on the football pitch BY MATTHEW BREMNER

Illustration by Charlotte Lucy Whitehead for Newturn Magazine

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ONLY 50

The only thing worse than being accused of being racist is being falsely accused of being a racist.

years ago foreign players were very rare in British football leagues. Glasgow Celtic’s European Cup winning team of 1967 for instance, all grew up within 30 miles of one another. In 1982, out of a selection of 39 English clubs, there were 19 teams without a black player in their squad, and only 27 black players in total. In the minority, but more saliently, aesthetically different, these Black and Asian players experienced severe racial prejudice: racist chants echoed throughout the stadia of Britain, banana skins were thrown at the feet of black players and many suffered wage discrimination. Although equally as talented as the home grown players, it was the colour of their skins and the purported dispositional and cultural differences this symbolised, that obscured their skill and saw them subjugated within the British footballing culture.

Fast forward to the present and to be accused of being racist in modern British football is beyond reproach. Indeed, the only thing worse than being accused of being racist is being falsely accused of being a racist. Of course, this polarisation between the “normative” white European players and the “subordinate” black and Asian players no longer exists in the same way as it did in the 60s and 70s. This is particularly true in England, a country whose cosmopolitanism is more developed than that of the rest of the “benighted” continent: in 1990 wage discrimination against ethnic players ended and in 1991 the Football Offences Act banned racist chants in all stadia. To put this into perspective, in Spain Luis Aragones was allowed to keep his job as the Spanish National coach after calling Thierry Henry a “black shit” whereas, in Britain, John Terry faced criminal charges for what one might, tentatively, argue was a less offensive slur against the Queen’s Park Ranger’s player Anton Ferdinand. And who could forget the liberal deployment of opprobrium and disgust after Luis Suarez, a Uruguayan international, called Patrice Evra, a Frenchman of Senegalese birth, a “Negro” on British soil.

Although, superficially, this might appear a positive step towards racial equality, a public demonstration of cultural acceptance, this hypersensitivity to race causes its own problems; problems that are not so far removed from the more patent racism seen in the 60s and 70s. Indeed, it seems that the media and public reception of racism in the Suarez case is paradoxical, and that the event itself has been covered in a way that has revalorised ethnic and racial stereotype. To invert Hans Christian Anderson’s Emperor: modern racism in football is pretending to be naked whilst at all times being fully clothed. The Suarez debate begins with a linguistic ambiguity. It has been reported that the Uruguayan called Patrice Evra “negrito” is often used in the Spanish language as an affectionate term to mean “friend” or “mate”. Whether Suarez meant it in this way is of course impossible to find out. However, what is certain is that this lexical ambiguity has become central to the footballer’s defence. Indeed, he claimed that his use of the word was not intended to be pejorative, but friendly; and that his misunderstanding of the word’s connotations was a cultural aberration- a result of his Uruguayan upbringing and not inherent xenophobia. Such a defence falls under cultural relativism, in which society is not something absolute or universal but relative, and where morals and ideas of how to behave are true only as far as the boundaries of one’s particular culture extend. Unsurprisingly this plea of cultural naivety was met with an equally culturally relativistic reply in the press: “It doesn’t wash. Suarez is living in our culture now. There are hundreds of English black footballers who would not perceive the cultural nuances of Suarez’s words and should in no way be expected to understand them, either”, reported the Daily Express. So it seems that central to the debate is the presumption of cultural assimilation, and the defiance of it. Not only was Suarez racist to

To invert Hans Christian Anderson’s Emperor: modern racism in football is pretending to be naked while at all times being fully clothed

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to the English Football another foreigner, but he Association (FA), Patrice could also be considered Evra was seen to be acanti- British, by the very ting in a British manner. fact that his defence is in He acted to help Britain some way a declination of eradicate racism where British sensibility. Suarez did not, and so he Being a non- normaticould be held up by the ve, and within this footFA as a nationalistic symballing context I mean bol of foreign integration a non-white European and a poster boy of British player, Evra would have anti-racism. been perceived in the Suarez celebrates his goal against the Netherlands. Photo by jikatu (Flickr) past, as racially subordiHowever, Evra’s poster-boy status falls under what the German nate to Luis Suarez, who although Uruguayan is of white Eunewspaper Der Spiegel recently termed “bipolar thinking”: ropean heritage. However, in our hypersensitive society the a term that accounts for the exaggerated positive reaction toblack football player’s hierarchically inferior position has been wards foreigners. Now everyone is naming their favourite “darreversed. This is because many black players have, or more kie” and avoiding claims of xenophobia by stating black people realistically are perceived to have, deferred to their host culas amongst their closest friends. In essence, the integration of ture; relinquishing their own practices in favour of the home the foreigner on the public stage and in the more intimate social practices. To clarify this point, take the external example of the realm is an act through which people can communicate their Turkish Alevi Muslims in Germany. The Alevis often practise the concealment of their culture, known as taqiya (females often do not wear headscarves, for example.) This is perceived by the normative German population, those with white Christian European lineage, as an attempt to ﬁt in with the German culture, even though it is in fact the complete opposite. openness to difference. Here we encounter the paradox. On The Alevis’ practise of dissimulation in Germany is fundamenthe one hand the treatment of this case demonstrates a very antally the same, in ﬁdelity to itself, as the Sunni’s more apparent ti-racist sentiment because it shows the assimilation of the fordisplays of Islam there. They are both enacted as they would be eign other into the nation’s collective imagination (Evra), and in their home countries, it is simply that the Alevis’ practise of the repudiation of those who refuse to accept the foreigner’s concealment is less incongruous with German societal norms place there (Suarez). On the other hand, this overt sympathy for than the Sunni or other Islamic groups. the foreign other turns the Patrice Evras of this world into functional devices which, if handled with care and sympathy, can be Returning to the case of Patrice Evra, one can identify a similar used as personal and collective anti-racist propaganda. Evra’s public reaction in Britain. Like the Alevi, Evra seemed to be acplight is merely a sign of the normative culture and race still ting in the way of his adopted home country, having responded being white British. Like Barthes’s French soldier, the incident to the racial slur in a manner that adhered to the common Brimight echo racial equality, but behind the scenes sits the editor tish perception of what racism is and how it should be responof the normative culture, only making it seem that way. ded to. Regardless of whether the term is as offensive in French as it is in English, by bringing it to light and by complaining

People become afraid of associating with ethnic groups, not because of any intrinsic wrong in that group, but because they are afraid of inadvertently insulting them and so incurring the wrath of an equally uneasy public

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Moreover, labelled as marginalised and abused ﬁgures, foreigners become social mousetraps: volatile groups who are likely to take offence at any ambiguity. Indeed, how often does the average person check themselves before addressing or referring to a foreigner: is he/she black, coloured or brown? This drive for political correctness induces the feeling that these racial groups need to be treated differently, in order to be integrated and treated the same. People become uneasy at the thought of associating with ethnic groups because they are afraid of inadvertently insulting them and so incurring the wrath of an uneasy public. Racial segregation is therefore passive, unspoken and arrives through the paradoxical situation of trying to avoid segregation.

York literary scene. Although he managed to outfox most of his white editors because of his pale complexion, he never managed to convince the black community, who denounced him as a charlatan and a coward for running away from his social and “racial” roots. Johnson, by denying Suarez’s racist act, didn’t go as far as pretending to be white. But as with Broyard, many in the Black community see him as having defended the ruling

Segregation and racial wariness still exist, except that they are now expressed in anodyne sentences

Finally, the contradictions of the Suarez debacle are further reinforced if one examines the incident from inside the black community. Glenn Johnson, Liverpool FC’s only black player at the time, came out and defended his team mate against the charges of racism. Along with the rest of the squad, Johnson wore a pro- Suarez T-shirt before the game against Wigan Athletic to demonstrate his belief that Suarez was not a racist. The Liverpool player was branded a deserter of his “people”, an “Uncle Tom” figure, as Marcel Garvey the black England rugby International, commented on Twitter earlier this year. The black community, particularly those high up within professional sport seemed incensed by his lack of loyalty, ‘If I was in Glen Johnson’s position, I would have thrown the shirt to the floor,’ said Paul McGrath, a former Manchester United Defender. So what are the reasons behind this internal attack? It has been well documented that a form of anti-racism amongst the black community has been the raising of black consciousness, in which black people emphasise their blackness and pride in their roots. This movement accepts the black and white divide and tries to reinterpret it positively. Johnson’s apparent betrayal of this black solidarity might have been one of the reasons he aroused such ill-feeling. Indeed, his story is similar to that of the black American journalist and writer Anatole Broyard. Broyard didn’t want to be known by the colour of his skin, he pretended to be white so as to flourish within the New

white’s superiority -deserting his own cultural and social roots in the process. Yet by attacking Johnson, the black community paradoxically separate themselves from the white community and marginalise those of their own who wish to be assimilated within it. They therefore perpetuate racism by adopting the same superior position that they reject in normative white culture and frowning upon any inter-‐racial solidarity. In an attempt for self-‐deﬁnition the black community drives away any possibility of complete racial cohesion. In many ways the Suarez case has demonstrated the more insidious nature of our modern racism, which unlike the physical segregation and outspoken attacks of the past, is coated with a feel good rhetoric of racial deconstruction and integration. Moreover it presents us with a paradox in which the caustic reactions of the press and the FA, intimate a sense of social cohesion and a quelling of racial tensions, when in reality they simply re-inscribe the extant racial tensions in a more insidious manner. Segregation and racial wariness still exist; it is simply that they are now expressed in anodyne sentences. Evra, an example of how Britain is not racist, is at the same time symbolic of a marginalised minority. And Johnson, in an attempt to quell racial tensions is marginalised and labelled as a betrayer of his own heritage. The face of racism may have matured with the progression of time, but its youthful thoughts remain very much the same. Matthew Bremner is the co editor-in-chief of Newturn magazine.

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Somewhere in Between Introducing Rafal Uniszewski

AGAINST

the spread of digitalism, Polish photographer Rafal Uniszewski remains defiant in his use of traditional materials. Shooting on film and fibre-‐based silverprints he controls the process of each of his pictures from the first click to the final development. His style might be called anthropological fiction; his photographs seeming to occupy the ground that lands the space between documentation and art. His exhibition of quotidian in Polish culture is softened into nostalgia by the grain of the anachronistic film and contrived into a perhaps more impactful profundity by a stubborn resistance against pure documentation. His work is a modern photographic revival of neo-‐realist film, in that when the work is viewed, one is tempted by it both as reality and as the result of pure artistic imagination. Eventually, you might relent, and view it as just somewhere in between. INTRO BY MATTHEW BREMNER

Rafael Uniszewski graduated in Photography from the Academy of Fine Art in Poznan, Poland. He has won many international and national photography competitions including the „Photographer of the Year 2008“ in B&W magazine‘s photography competition.

Pop Culture

COMMENT

Cynicism vs. Conspiracy We live in the age of conspiracy theories – 9/11, the Bilderberg group, and the reptilians dominate internet discussions of politics. But we also live in an age of apathy – young people‘s involvement in political parties and voter turnout is now at some of its lowest levels in history. Does this make sense? Is this the age of the cynic or the conspiracy theorist? BY OLIVER HOTHAM

WE LIVE

in a cynical age - it‘s a cliched statement, and always true in one way or another, but our generation is one of the most cynical there‘s ever been. Taken down a peg or two by austerity and miserable job prospects when we graduate, we languish in an ether of the ironic and detached. We celebrate ﬁlms like “The Room”, we dance to quirky Korean pop music, and think that Vice is good journalism. A look at Google‘s “Zeitgeist” feature, which reveals the most popular google searches of the last year, do you know what the “#1 fastest rising search” was? Barack Obama, Arab Spring? No. It was Rebecca Black, whose song “Friday” now has 47 million hits on Youtube. The general public isn‘t all that much better. A recent poll conducted by Lord Ashcroft revealed that, when asked, less than 10% of the public could name a recent political news story, and in the last ten years voter turnout at general elections has reached its lowest levels. Politics has become a dull affair - we‘re governed by mediocre career politicians beaten into submission by the depressing pragmatism our economic situation has forced them into. But we also live, increasingly, in the age of the conspiracy theory; the theory of the “not-all-is-as-it-seems”. A cursory look at the online political activities of young people reveals many believe the US government was behind 9/11, that evil central bankers control the world, and that we must ﬁght the Roth-

schilds and the Bilderberg group if we are to prevent the creation of a totalitarian New World Order. Even the idea that corporations secretly control our governments and media through lobbying, and that the British and American governments conduct foreign policy in the Middle East “for oil”, widespread among the left-wing “Occupy” movements, has signiﬁcant conspiratorial aspects to it. So why this discrepancy? Surely, in the age of the cynical, the outrageous, outlandish and simplistic claims about our political systems the conspiracy theories propagate would be dismissed out of hand, not accepted by numbers that do. Is this the age of the cynic or the conspiracy theorist, or is it both? Conspiracy theories lie in our desire to understand the complicated world we live in, the desire to make sense of what is essentially an absurd amalgamation of all human behaviour ever, and, to some extent, our fundamentally rebellious nature. In a world full of bad things, and in liberal democracies where increasingly our voice seems softer and softer, the best explanation, often, is a big conspiracy. It also lies in our love of secrets and gossip – you know something the “sheep” don‘t. Take the most prevalent conspiracy theories of our time, our JFK assassination as it were: 9/11 conspiracy theories.

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COMMENT

Pop Culture

We all remember where we were on September 11th, 2001, as we watched the horrifying, almost surreal images of those planes slamming into the World Trade Centre. I was ten years old at the time, and had arrived home from school to my mother on the phone with her sister, who lived in lower Manhattan at the time, and was watching …damus. Picture by glasseyes view (Flickr). it from her balcony. The afternoon If you‘ve seen “Loose Change”, the bible of the 9/11 “Truth” unfolded and we watched the people jump to their deaths from movement, you‘ll know it‘s a hell of a story. Through complex the flames and the death toll rise, and the world was never the mental gymnastics, and assaulting you with engineering jargon same again. The terrifying notion of a foreign non-governmen(all of which has been refuted by the USA‘s major engineering tal power being capable of murdering almost 3000 Americans organisations and publications) the film “proves” that the US in front of the world, without remorse or pity, seemed the end government was in on the attack. And, of course, it‘s all as unof the blissful post-Cold War consensus which dominated the falsifiable as it can possibly be. 90s. It launched the USA‘s “War on Terror”, a grim and often misguided attempt at revenge disguised as sensible foreign poChris Hedges, a left-wing American journalist, sums it up nicelicy. ly: “What conspiracy theorists forgot is that the elites are incompetent”. What conspiracy theorists forget is that, far from Such an earth-shattering event was bound to soon be the subbeing highly competent shadowy puppet masters, governments ject of suspicion. The whole “look who stands to gain” train of are terrible at keeping their secrets, and that to keep something like “we blew up the Twin Towers” secret would be impossible.

Less than 10% of the public could name a recent political news story, and in the last ten years voter turnout at general elections has reached its lowest levels

It‘s all the product of our cynical age, an age where, as technology plays a larger and large role in our lives, and we have access to unprecedented amounts of information, we feel that our voices should be louder, that our generation has something to say. We see politicians we don‘t like, we see an economic crisis caused by institutions we‘ve never been involved with, and we see austerity previous generations never suffered. Our parents‘ generation got university for free, economic prosperity and jobs when they graduated. We get recession, retail, and debt.

thought inevitably leads to suspicions of a false ﬂag attack, the displays of over-the-top patriotism and “you‘re either with us or against us” proclamations of the Bush Administration, and the “for your own good” counter-terrorism laws did make you feel that everything had gone a bit Orwellian.

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What conspiracy theorists forgot is that the elites are incompetent

Both cynicism and conspiracism are reasonable reactions to this state of affairs. In the age where politics is cold and pragmatic, it seems reasonable to switch off from it, dismiss them all as corrupt and try to live your life without it concerning you.

do. And the events of the 00s do somewhat prove this point – Governments love to behave as though they do have the right to more power than they already have, and time and time again think they can get away with, sometimes quite literally, murder.

But this is where the political cynic, who‘s never made the effort to learn about politics because it repulses them so, is vital ground for conspiracy theories and cultish radicalism – they haven‘t got an alternative point of view. They won‘t understand the fundamental truth about living in a free and democratic society: that the outcome of political decision making won‘t always reﬂect your point of view. Instead, they‘ll see an economic and political system rigged against them, so when someone tells them that it‘s all the New World Order and the Central Banking cabals, they‘ll believe it.

The Iraq War and the Hutton Inquiry was an example of this – it was revealed that the British government had deliberately “sexed up” the September dossier, exaggerating Saddam Hussein‘s WMD capabilities to orchestrate a war. The growth of Government power in response to terrorist threats, too, sent the most sober person into suspicious speculation about the Government‘s motives: “If you‘ve nothing to hide, you‘ve nothing to fear”, and “Report all suspicious behaviour”, were the ominous slogans of the state ﬂexing its muscles.

The easier to understand explanation is always the most appealing one, especially for someone with an only rudimentary understanding of politics. What‘s a more fun explanation for the Government‘s austerity policies? This one: ‘the chancellor of the exchequer believes that the most effective way for us to cut the deﬁcit is to make signiﬁcant cuts to the budget so that the UK might retain its AAA credit rating and remain competitive‘; or this one: ‘the Tories hate the poor!‘? It‘s very much a product of our late Capitalist, liberal democratic society and our technocratic politicians. I mean, look at the Coalition – they don‘t exactly inspire you to join a political party and get involved in the process, do they? They are pragmatic, boring, and occasionally a little incompetent. The always brilliant “South Park” did an excellent episode on the 9/11 conspiracy theories, where it transpires that 9/11 conspiracy theories are the creation of a government conspiracy to get people to believe they have more power than they actually

I began proclaiming how cynical and conspiratorial our age was. So which is it? I think their products of each other. Political stagnation and the moderation of our politics have left a vacuum normally ﬁlled with activism and idealism ﬁlled with wild speculation or uncaring apathy. “Have you ever wondered why newspapers don‘t tell the truth?” I once overheard a Socialist Workers‘ Party activist asked a potential new recruit. The recruit nodded emphatically. The SWP recruiter leaned in: “It‘s because the Tories control the press.” A rather simplistic explanation, don‘t you think? But the recruit signed up anyway, promising their involvement and completely sold by the argument. So have you ever wondered why conspiracy theorists don‘t tell the truth? The truth is too complicated, everyone likes a good story, and everyone else is just too cynical to care.

Oliver Hotham is currently studying history at Queen Mary University

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LITERATURE

Germany

Rediscovering Sebald A look back at the strident German author who scorned the Holocaust "industry", despised the ofﬁcial culture of mourning and remembering, and believed that a novel could not be written from a compromised moral position

Reading him is rather like looking from a distance through narrow windows into a large and busy room: we never see the whole picture, events transpire beyond the limits of the frame about which we know nothing. As we read on though, we notice common threads and themes – both emotional and philosophical – that tie the work together. Sebald‘s skill is in situating this window in such a way that we come to understand the broader picture from these ﬂeeting, partial glimpses.

BY THEO BONES

He is often described as ‘a holocaust writer‘ – an epithet both true and unfair. It is a label which unreasonably pigeonholes his writing, and yet the climate of silence – the unwillingness to speak of the immediate past – that characterised his early life in Germany informs almost everything he wrote. And his narrative style is entirely informed by the discursive, oblique style in which he wrote about the war: always declining to tackle subjects head-on. His reason for doing this was simple; as he said in an interview just a few days before his death:

IN THE

few years before his untimely death in 2001 at the age of 57, W.G. Sebald had risen belatedly but rapidly to become a celebrated ﬁgure in world literature. And in the years since his death, his star has continued to rise, as writers and critics have fought to eulogise the man and his work ever more fervently. His is a reputation built on the strength of four novels –published in German and English between 1990 and 2001, which explores themes of memory, exile, isolation, and the German response to the Second World War.

I have always felt it was necessary above all to write about the history of persecution, viliﬁcation of minorities, the attempt well nigh achieved to eradicate a whole people, and I was in pursuing these ideas at the same time conscious that it‘s practically impossible to do this, to write about concentration camps in my view is practically impossible. So you need to ﬁnd ways of convincing the reader that this is so-

To call them ‘novels‘ however, without some qualifying remark is to mislead: the content of his work is suspended somewhere between narrative ﬁction, historical account and philosophical musing; and stylistically he is no novelist, essayist or historian. To paraphrase the man - the big things are true, the events and settings; the details are often invented. And while his books contain narratives, they are anything but plot-driven. Sebald’s technique is to use a narrative voice to enable readers to explore particular mental landscapes, from which to consider afresh the underlying thread of human experience that ties events together.

Reading Sebald is like looking from a distance through narrow windows into a large and busy room: we never see the whole picture mething that is on your mind but that you do not necessarily roll out on every other page...this is why the main scenes of horror are never directly addressed; I think it is sufﬁcient to

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remind people because we have all seen images, but these images militate against our capacity for discursive thinking, for reﬂecting upon these things, and also paralyse...our moral capacity. These images are with us all, and yet while their power remains, the shock these images inspire does not dull with familiarity because the scale of the horror they invoke is impossible to think beyond, round, or with; numbing us, dulling our critical and creative faculties, the impossible to move beyond. He is a master of allegory, for although his subject matter is limited and never too thickly obscured, he inspires a new way of thinking – or better, he reinvigorates our ability to think – about those subjects. Thus in Austerlitz, the most authentically novelistic of his works, instead of writing directly about concentration camps, Sebald moves his eponymous hero around from a zoo to a railway station to a jail and then to an asylum, each of which become refracting mirrors for that other subject matter.

men is not, in itself, Sebald‘s central concern. Rather he uses their meeting as a transition point in moving from a description of Conrad‘s life until that period, to one of Casement‘s after it, and illuminates the parallels in their outlooks and ideas that are the roots of that afﬁnity. The two men stand out amongst the host of apparently disconnected characters in The Rings of Saturn as the clearest examples of exiles. Each was removed at a young age from the environment he knew and understood, and forced into a new life. Later, both chose consciously to further exile themselves from the society and community of which they were (ostensibly

Redemption is possible not by attempting to embody a shared existence and history but rather, by recognising individual isolation as a shared characteristic

Alongside this predominant concern with the war, the holocaust, and more broadly with man‘s unfathomable capacity for inhumanity, his other recurrent themes isolation, exile and existential quandary sit comfortably. In The Rings of Saturn - a book predictably scored-through with melancholy – Sebald uses a circular walk through a neardeserted Suffolk to structure a series of apparently anecdotal memories, reveries, and historical accounts pertaining to the existential insecurity inspired (or caused) by the experience (created either internally or externally) of exile. In a particularly affecting section of the book, Sebald describes the chance meeting of Joseph Conrad and Roger Casement in the (then) Congo Free State in 1890. The friendship between the two

at least) a part. Then, while in the Congo, their shared antipathy for actions of their fellow Europeans made them exiles even within that community. Only once in the chapter does Sebald divert from the two biographical accounts, but he does so to good effect. In the three or four pages separating them, he describes his own ﬁrst visit to Brussels in 1964, during which trip he visits the memorial site of the Battle of Waterloo. From a raised platform he looks down on the recreated battle scene: This then, I thought, as I looked round about me, is the representation of history. It requires a falsiﬁcation of perspective. We, the survivors, see everything from above, see everything at once, and still we do not know how it was. (Sebald 1999, 125)

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LITERATURE

Germany

In a revealing interview by Sarah Kafatou for the Harvard Review, he quotes (or perhaps paraphrases) the Swiss writer Robert Walser:

It is a rare moment of explanation from Sebald, whose style is otherwise almost uniformly descriptive. He breaks into explanation only when his footing is – as here – sure: the whole of history is shown to be essentially unreachable.

I admire ash very much, he says: it‘s the most humble substance there is! The very last product of combustion, with no resistance in it. Not like a twig, which you can feel through the sole of your shoe. The borderline between being and nothingness. Ash is a redeemed substance, like dust. (Kafatou 1998, 32)

Sebald wrote from a position of self-imposed exile (between cultures, between times, between languages) and seems to have understood the human condition itself as a state of permanent, inescapable exile. This is certainly a central and recurrent theme in his work: that we are always somewhere else…that we are never truly there. We are all exiles – as much from our own histories as from those of others – in a state of permanent isolation, victims of the terrifying power of memory – which destroys whatever it attempts to grasp. There is certainly recognition of the horror inherent in the realisation that the passage of

Sebald‘s assertion seems to be that it is precisely our horror at, aversion to, and resultant (ultimately doomed) attempt to resist the destructive passage of time, that causes the existential crisis that all-‐too-‐often comes to define us. By freeing ourselves of this “resistance”, we enable ourselves to transcend the temporal destruction and isolation that is the cause of our distress. Thus redemption is possible not by attempting to embody a shared existence and history but rather, by recognising individual isolation as a shared characteristic. Only once that is understood and accepted, is the possibility of transcendence permitted. By finding the interstice between the present and the past (“The borderline between being and nothingness”) – by accepting the fundamentally destructive nature of the passage of time and moving with it instead of rebelling and fighting against it – one is able to move beyond the condition of existential despair, and hence the state of exile becomes a force for positive change, and future projection: a way of looking forwards, not back.

He is often described as ‚a holocaust writer‘ – an epithet both true and unfair time destroys all things: that we are all, each, ﬁnally alone, and that the whole of history is a tomb. At times with Sebald, one is acutely aware of Benjamin‘s Angel of History, “face...turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet.” Ultimately, however, Sebald‘s vision is not one of solitude and abandonment. Rather, whilst he unquestionably recognises the primal panic induced by realisation of exiled solitude, he maintains that in uncovering this truth, we discover a path to some sort of redemption.

Theo Bones is the Co-‐Editor of the New Wolf Magazine

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Dear Readers, For the past three years, New Turn has held events at universities, ran schools projects and released this magazine all in the name of increasing political engagement across London. Although, we are still motivated by the belief that politics should be accessible, engaging and affordable our structure shall be changing. As of August, we shall be housed within an umbrella organisation named the Institute of Political Engagement. New Turn shall continue to offer the same services, however, it shall go through a rapid period of expansion. In practise, this shall mean three things. Firstly, with the support of various University networks and the buy-in from Citizens UK into New Turn we aim to be in 80 schools by the end of 2014. Our termly Schools Workshop shall also be supplemented by our new summer schools programme; the New Turn School of Government. Secondly, we shall expand the printing of the magazine to once every two months as well as creating an online presence seperate of the New Turn website. Finally, on the events front, we are aiming to expand to more universities and shall be decreasing the cost of membership from £10 a year to £2. All of this requires student volunteers, whether they be journalists, events organisers and treasurers. If you are interested in getting involved in an organisation that passionately cares about grassroots engagement then check out our website www.newturn.org.uk Chairman Babs Williams We are London´s politics society for young people. For more information on what we do, visit www.newturn.org.uk

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