Slow Living and the Fast-Track to Nowhere

Colin Todhunter

Modern culture is an advocate of speed. From urban planning and transport systems, to the food industry and beyond, ‘fast living’ cuts deep and affects almost every aspect of life.

In terms of distances, things today are more spread out yet are more interconnected than in the past. This inter-connectedness has had the effect of shrinking even the largest of distances and is ably assisted by digital communications technology and rapid transit systems. Airports and metro transport links are being extended or built, huge concrete flyovers cut through neighbourhoods and separate communities from one another and employment is being centralised in out of town business parks or city centre office blocks. Speed of communications and transport narrows the distances.

Encouraging further urban sprawl is of course highly profitable for the real estate, construction, automobile and various other industries. It is not that we need this type of urban planning and development, but powerful economic interests and their influence in/over governments dictate it’s the type we get.

Speed and high-energy living have become an essential fact of life. In the process, our communities have become disjointed and dispersed. We have sacrificed intimacy, friendship and neighbourliness for a more impersonal way of accelerated living. And the process continues as rural communities are uprooted and hundreds of millions are forced into cities of ever-increasing sizes to indulge in the fast life.

In the virtual world, friends possibly half the world away are made and ‘defriended’ at the click of an icon. Likes and dislikes are but passing fads. Meaningful social activism has been trivialised and reduced to the almost meaningless clicking of an online petition. It’s more convenient and quicker than taking to the street. After the near destruction of working class movements in many countries, this is what ‘protest’ has too often become.

In the ‘real’ world, where ‘clicking’ just doesn’t cut it, how to physically move from A to B as quickly as possible dominates the modern mindset – how to get to work, the airport, to your kids’ schools, the hospital or the shopping mall, which are increasingly further away from home. Many now appear to spend half their lives in transit in order to do what was once achievable by foot or by bicycle.

It’s all become a case of how to eat fast, live fast, consume fast, text message fast, Facebook fast and purchase fast. Speed is of the essence. And it seems that the faster we live, the greater our appetites have become. The mantra seems to be faster, quicker, better, more. In a quick-paced, use-and-throw world, speed is addictive.

But there is a heavy price to pay. We are using up the world’s resources at an ever greater pace: the materials to make the cell phone or flat screen TVs; the water to irrigate the massive amounts of grain and land required to feed the animals that end up on the dinner plate as the world increasingly turns towards diets that are more meat based; the oil that fuels the transport to get from here to there, to ship the food over huge distances, to fuel the type of petrochemical agriculture we have come to rely on, or the minerals which form a constituent part of the endless stream of consumer products on the shelves. Greed and the grab for resources not only fuels conflict, structural violence imposed on nations via Wall Street backed economic policies and death and war, but high energy, accelerated living takes a heavy toll on the environment and, if we are honest, on ourselves, in terms of our health and our relationships.

If the type of high energy living outlined above continues, we are heading for a crunching slowdown much sooner than we think. It will be catastrophic as current conflicts intensify and new ones emerge over diminishing resources, whether water, oil, minerals, fertile land or food.

The term ‘slow living’ was popularized when Carlo Petrini protested against the opening of a McDonald’s restaurant in Piazza di Spagna inRome in 1986. This reaction against fast food sparked the creation of the Slow Food movement. Over time, this developed into other areas, such as Cittaslow (Slow Cities), Slow Living, Slow Travel, and Slow Design.

What was Carlo Petrini actually originally arguing against? Fast food is food that is grown quickly, eaten quickly and prepared quickly. It is convenience food of dubious nutritional quality that fits in with the belief that the ‘good life’ equates with fast living. It is food that tends to rely on petrochemical pesticides, fertilizers and transport across huge distances.

Food that is chemically processed and which relies on hormones, steroids and other similar inputs in order to ‘speed things up’ in terms of crop or animal growth and delivery to plates that may be half a world away from where it is produced by agricultural workers who themselves are undernourished or malnourished. It is nature speeded up, but also nature that has been contaminated and distorted and pressed into the service of big oil and agribusiness interests.

On the other hand, slow food tends to imply food that is grown or produced locally and with minimal bio-chemical inputs. It tends to rest on the sourcing of local foods and centuries’ old traditions and ideally sold by neighbourhood farms and stores, not by giant monopolistic retailers that are integral to the fast food industry. Slow food also implies more nourishing and healthy food and agriculture that places less strain on water resources and soil to produce better yields and which does not pollute either body or environment as a result of chemical residues or uproot communities or destroy biodiversity.

Slow food is associated with lower energy inputs. It is less reliant on oil-based factory-processed fertilizers/pesticides and oil-based transportation across lengthy distances, not least because it is organically produced and locally sourced. In their ultimate forms, slow food and living slow can arguably best be achieved via decentralization and through communities that are more self-sustaining in terms of food production/consumption as well as in terms of other activities, including localized energy production via renewables or industrial outputs such as garment making or eco-friendly house building. In this respect, slow living extends to remaking the communities and relearning the crafts and artisan skills we have often lost or had stolen from us.

Ultimately, urban planning and the ‘local’ are key to living slow. No need for the automobile if work, school or healthcare facilities are close by. Less need for ugly flyovers or six lane highways that rip up communities in their path. Getting from A to B would not require a race against the clock on the highway that cuts through a series of localities that are never to be visited, never to be regarded as anything but an inconvenience to be passed through en route to big-mac nirvana, multiplex overload or shopping mall hedonism.

Instead, how about a leisurely, even enjoyable walk or cycle ride through an environment free from traffic pollution or noise, where the pedestrian is not regarded as an obstacle to be honked at with horn, where the cyclist is not a damned inconvenience to be driven off the road or where ‘neighbourhood’ has been stripped of its intimacy, of its local ‘mom and pop’ stores, of its local theatres?

Having jettisoned the slow life for a life of fast living, we are now encouraged to seek out the slow life, not least for example through tourism. The trouble is that with more and more people seeking out the slow life for two weeks of respite, destination slow suddenly became a complete mess. Instead of genteel locals, pristine forests and refreshing air, what you experience is sprawling hotel complexes, endless buses and taxis clogging up the place along with thousands of other tourists.

And the locals – they abandoned the slow life once mass tourism arrived and jumped on the bandwagon of fastness to rent out their rooms at inflated prices, to open restaurants serving fast food that caters to fast tourism. The slow mindset suddenly became abandoned in the quest to make a fast buck from the tourists, and before you knew it, six lane highways arrived, water was gobbled up by tourist complexes and urban sprawl sprawled even further across the once pristine hillsides or beaches.

But that’s what fast living or, to be precise, the system that creates it does. It corrupts and destroys most things that get in its way. It recasts everything in its own image. Even ‘slowness’ has become a bogus, debased commodity sold to the fast living, fast consuming masses.

What can we do on a practical level that does not result in the debasement of the slow life? Is living slow nothing more than the dreamers mandate for taking us all back a century or two?

For some advocates of slow living, it is about trying to live better in a fast world, perhaps making space to enjoy ‘quality time’. For others, however, it comprises a wide ranging cultural and economic revolution that challenges many of the notions that underpin current consumption patterns and ‘globalization’.

Loosely defined, slow living is nothing new. From Buddha to the social philosopher Ivan Illich in the 1960s and 70s, the philosophy has always been around in different guises and has been accorded many labels. Whether it is anti-globalization, environmentalism, post-modernism, the organic movement, ‘green’ energy, localization or decentralization, these concepts and the movements that sprang up around them have embraced some notion of slowness in one form or another.

In India, the Navdanya organization is wholeheartedly against the destruction of biodiversity and traditional farming practices and communities and presents a radical critique of consumerism, petro-chemical farming and Western agribusiness. The views of Vandana Shiva, Navdanya’s founder, are well documented. Shiva advocates a radical shift of course from the one the world (and India) is currently on. Navdanya has even opened a Slow Food Café in Delhi.

On a general level, again taken loosely, slow living might involve improving the quality of life by merely slowing down the pace of living. In urban planning, for example, it may mean pedestrianising urban spaces and restricting motorized traffic, especially car use. In many European cities cycling is encouraged by offering the public the free use of bicycles. Visit any Dutch city to see that cycling is a predominant mode of transport, which certainly makes a positive contribution to the easy going ambiance.

In the UK, in part as a response to traffic congestion and the negative impacts of motorized transport on communities, a movement emerged in the early nineties to ‘reclaim the streets’, to hand them back to local residents who felt a need to claim ownership of their communities and public spaces, which had essentially been hijacked by commuters or large corporations.

Living slow may entail slowing down in order to develop some kind of spiritual connection with one’s inner self. It might also involve opting for more environmentally friendly products while shopping, living in more eco-sensitive housing, developing small cottage industries or just generally leading a ‘greener’ lifestyle as a consumer.

But it’s no good adopting a piecemeal, watered-down approach. The root of the problem needs to be addressed. The slow life, whether slow food or slow urban environments, is impossible if we fail to realize that decisions about urban planning, economic activity, investment, products and services, etc, are made through the capture of governments, regulatory agencies and courts by corporations adamant on expanding and perpetuating their dominance.

In order to achieve any semblance of genuine, lasting change towards a better, slower world, we must eradicate the material conditions that produce and perpetuate class-based exploitation and divisions on an increasingly global level. These conditions stem from patterns of capital ownership and the consequent flow of wealth from bottom to top that occurs by various means of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ (corruption, tax evasion/avoidance, bail outs, ‘austerity’,  ‘free trade’ agreements, corporate taxpayer subsidies, capital market liberalization, etc).

What we need is proper democracy achieved through, for example, common ownership of banks and key industries and a commitment to ‘green’ policies and renewable energy. This entails challenging the oligarchs and their corporations that have colonized almost every aspect of modern living, from healthcare, urban planning, food and agriculture to education and development, in order to effect change that is beneficial to their interests and thereby enslaving us all in the process.

Terrorism In Kenya: Media Practitioners Must Not Fall Prey

Collins Wanderi

According to the United States Army Field Manual, 1996, “information is the currency of victory” in warfare. Every good soldier knows that both conventional and non-conventional wars are fought in several theatres of operation. To declare a conclusive conquest in modern warfare, it is not enough to win significant battles in the field but the war must also be won in the hearts and minds of the people in the countries or territories under assault. The use of information operations is critical in any war or battle and can influence the final result of the conflict. Even military coup plotters know that to dislodge an existing political regime they must first seize national broadcasting stations to control the flow of information; whip up emotions against the regime and maintain public support.

Terrorist organizations too have adopted information operations as a method of conveying their extremist ideology and to instil maximum fear in target populations. Terrorist groups like Al-Shabaab use both mainstream and social media to spur new attacks and shape public opinion. Although Al-Shabaab has substantially lost the physical war after being dislodged by the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) from much of the territory and grounds of tactical importance they held in southern Somalia, the militants appear to be winning the psychological war in Kenya.

Al-Shabaab’s new narrative that Kenya should withdraw its forces from Somalia has been buoyed by sections of local media who constantly use shallow “experts” and political opposition to spread this terrorists’ propaganda as the ultimate panacea to repeated terror attacks within the country. What these media practitioners and politicians forget is that Kenya is at war; and in every war civilian casualties are, regrettably almost a guaranteed certainty. Al-Shabaab is leveraging on spreading hate, fear and outrage among ordinary Kenyans to achieve a political aim; the withdrawal of KDF from Somalia. And some media houses, journalists and politicians are playing along and urging the government to accede to the demands of the terrorists.

Terrorists cannot flourish without the media. They adore publicity which helps them spread their ideology, aims and objectives. Exposure also helps terrorists to spread fear and despondency among real and potential victims. Technology has created a limitless virtual space and social media which have given terrorist organizations an expedient and affordable medium to spread materials and information that promote their propaganda; extremist ideology, recruit new followers and mobilize resources.

Al-Shabaab has since November 2011 created and maintained real and parody accounts in social media for this purpose. Bloggers and social media activists often spread propaganda; materials and information crafted by Al-Shabaab just to gain new followers. Mainstream media and accredited journalists too, keen to compete with bloggers, unwittingly pick the same information and relay it to the wider audience who invariably take it as the gospel truth. Similarly, competition between local media houses to access and relay information that keeps their audiences captivated, boost ratings and increase profits has given Al-Shabaab room to influence public opinion and set the agenda in public debate. Consequently, Al-Shabaab is now adopting more ruthless methods and severer tactics on its actual and potential victims in Kenya to create greater impact and attract better media coverage and attain maximum publicity and attention.

Media practitioners must realize that terrorists can do anything to manipulate journalists to communicate their message. Reporters can be bribed and gullible editors manipulated to pick information from blogs and parody accounts operated by terrorist groups to unconsciously spread terrorist propaganda. Cabinet Secretary Joseph Nkaissery was right to censor the local media for repeatedly broadcasting exaggerated figures on the number of casualties in the recent Al-Shabaab attack at Yumbis in Garissa County.

The initial information broadcast by some media outlets and journalists on 26th May, 2015 exposed them as robots that are all too ready to spread war and terrorist propaganda without questioning its source or veracity. Such media houses are certainly vulnerable to manipulation by Al-Shabaab to advance its political objectives and set the agenda for public debate in Kenya. All journalists and editors must remember that Al-Shabaab is a terrorist group which has no chance of physically defeating the KDF or the African Union Forces in Somalia. This is why the group has resorted to the use of psychological warfare through deliberate and sustained violent attacks on unarmed civilians and threats of use of such violence in Kenya and Somalia to achieve a desired political end.

The Gloomy Side of a Young Entrepreneur

Michael Musau

It is five years since I published a book titled “Unpackaged Gains: 29 Great Lessons that I have learnt as a young entrepreneur.” As you’d expect if you never got to read the ‘not so widely circulated book,’ most of the lessons were stated in the negative - what not to do! After having the book in the shelves and a couple of university libraries, it was no surprise that I had to get back to business and keep running the business that I had come to call my other ‘better for worse half.’  One thing about gaining momentum once you’re in business is that you never want to let go. But it got to a point two years ago when I had to let go; but it wasn’t easy- leaving me with such sad emotions, gloom, regrets, frustration, bitterness, you name it. Now that I am learning that it’s time to pick up the pieces, see someone else reap the benefits from my hard work, I have also come to terms with the fact that entrepreneurship is not what majority of business people out here think it is.

When I was starting my first business seven years ago, a few guys, much older than me would tell me: “you just won’t make money, at least not anytime soon.” It sounded ridiculous at the time, because even before I went into running my company on a full time basis, I was already making money, and lots of it. One thing that I didn’t realize was that any money that your business makes in its formative years is never your money but the business’ money.  If you’re unlucky to have started your business after making sacrifices to save, then perhaps better for you; because the idea of ‘making it’ yet doesn’t fool you too soon.

One thing that I have learnt from the older business men who have been in it for over 20 years is that sometimes, what seems to be a few months before loads of money starts coming in could be many years of wait. And that’s why they say that entrepreneurship is just not for the faint hearted.

Another thing is that no matter how committed you are at first into making your personal relationships work, they will definitely face a blow because the reality is that you’ll always be distracted; mentally, physically or financially.  I have on many occasions found myself having to walk out of events just because the emergency call came and I just wasn’t confident that anyone else was well suited to solve the problem at hand. And even worse is the fact that you have to contend with being the last person out of the office, the first one in every morning and sacrifices over the weekends; sometimes to the extent of working on Sundays.

Being the jack of all trades again will hurt you even more. I recently had the opportunity to be on a panel that was interviewing for a value chain position for a regional firm supporting young farmers.  My colleague was surprised at just how much I had perfected my human resource skills; something that I didn’t even know about myself because everything just felt like my everyday life. I have found myself having to edit the content of my website without having to call for IT professionals, having to stock up on office basic supplies to doing my own Quickbooks, PowerPoint presentations to the extremes of being the agronomist in a rural plantation.  It’s tough; it’s at times exciting but also a way out of the comfort zone that our careers entangle us in. But does it define the success of what we do in the long run? Arguably not - we end up so tired and unable to do anything much after those work hours. 

Then comes the harder problem; the toughest challenge that I had when running my business was having to separate myself from the company. Few of us get too entangled into the affairs of the company that we forget that the two are separate entities. Due to this, you end up biting the harder challenges of your growing enterprise, making personal payments for company expenses and worst of all, spending ‘your personal’ time on the business. This is the one problem that most entrepreneurs don’t treat as a such, but one whose implications can be costly. I have found myself years later personally carrying the baggage that should have been the company’s.

Sometimes, entrepreneurs go an extra mile and spend a lot of money to have professionals write for them well laid out business plans. The sad truth is that those business plans are never the Bible they think they are. In fact, there is usually a high chance that your performance is never anywhere close to your performance. I am not saying that you shouldn’t have a business plan. However, your business’ initial goals should be to aggressively drive a demand for its products and/or services. Trying to match up performance with expectations can be quite gloomy, if not plain frustrating. There is no pain in always abandoning the plan if it can’t work at all, or the business because you can always start all over again.

Then there’s always the frustration over making some decisions that you’ll find yourself having to make along the way. These could vary from taking a loan to bringing in shareholders, hiring relatives to making some commitments.  I have over the years been haunted by mistakes that arose from decisions I wish I never made. One best way to deal with this is just learning to let go, after all, they shape the person you become.

Finally, running a small business is about risks; it is taking chances and we could either succeed or fail miserably. Learning from the past, I have taken every new challenge with the hope that it will succeed. I however handle each one of them like it could be that one good thing that could just go wrong. I am a risk taker but risks aside, the thing we think we see too clearly could be the worst thing we wish we didn’t see at all.

Africa and the Danger of a Single Story

HE John Dramani Mahama

What is the story that comes to mind when people hear the name “Africa”? The presentation, or representation, of one? That has always been the danger when it comes to how we discuss Africa. There has always been the assumption of a monolith: Africa as one country, not 54; One culture, not an immeasurable number; One climate, hot! hot! hot! Africa as one intractable reality.

When you hear the name Africa spoken on television or radio or in an unfamiliar public space; When you read the name Africa in a newspaper or magazine, do you, for even the briefest of moments, wonder about the story that will follow? Which Africa will it show? Will the story simply be about malaria, Ebola, high infant mortality and poverty; or will it also mention the innovative ways in which these critical issues are now being addressed?

Take, for instance, MedAfrica, the free mobile phone app that was created and launched in Kenya. We’re talking about a country with a population of roughly 44 and a half million—and only 7,250 doctors to serve it. MedAfrica provides people with basic information about health and medicine, it provides its users with possible diagnoses for symptoms, and it also connects them, through a directory, to doctors and hospitals.

Another is WinSenga, a low-cost mobile app that was launched in Uganda. WinSenga monitors the heart rate of an unborn baby and provides a diagnosis that is then sent to the mother via text message, along with suggestions for possible actions that can be taken.

Then there’s M-Pesa, a micro financing and money transfer service that relies on mobile networks, not the Internet. It allows users to pay bills and school fees, buy groceries, or make cash transfers.In 2014 alone, M-Pesa, which was created and launched in Kenya, facilitated over 40 billion US dollars worth of transactions. The app is now being used in numerous other African countries, as well as in Afghanistan, India and Eastern Europe.

If you think these three apps are impressive, there are dozens more that I could list. There are African-made and Africa-centered apps for almost everything; for cow farming and horticultural irrigation; for locating lost members of refugee families; for scheduling, tracking and paying for motorbike delivery services; for tutoring students who are studying and preparing for exams.

And for those who fear that technology is turning our world into one that is devoid of real human contact and concern, a world in which we are no longer our brother’s keeper, there’s an app called Olalashe that might restore your faith in both technology and humanity. Olalashe means “brother” in the Maasai language, and if ever you find yourself in a dangerous place or situation in Africa, with one touch, this app will send an SOS message to all of your specified emergency contacts along with a link to your exact location.

Most of the world is well aware of the very real problems that exist on the African continent. I just wish that most of the world were also as aware of the very original and modern attempts being made by Africans to solve some of these problems. It should be common knowledge that South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya are fast becoming the international leaders of mobile app innovation. So much so that people have started referring to Kenya as the Silicon Savannah.

It should be common knowledge that in terms of mobile phone usage, over the next seven years, sub-Saharan Africa will be the fastest growing region globally. As early as 2016, mobile broadband connections will reach 160 million; quadruple what it was in 2012. My own country, Ghana, is a leader in providing broadband access. Only last Monday I commissioned into service an 800km optic fibre cable, which will provide 26 districts with high-speed access.

When it comes to Africa, when it comes to the information and the images that are associated with that name, it feels as though there is a constant battle between the rural and the urban, the traditional and the contemporary. There is a tug-of-war between the decades during which we were supposedly lost and the ones during which we are supposedly rising. It is always one or the other. Rarely is the spectacular multiplicity of our continent acknowledged, let alone promulgated.

Imagine this: A story about the nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples of Africa. Who might be the focus of such an article? Hunter-gatherers, such as the San and the Hadzabe? Pastoralists like the Maasai and the Fulani? What if the article included all of those peoples and perhaps also focused on another type of itinerant lifestyle, that of—and I’ll borrow a name made popular by the multi-hyphenated author Taiye Selasi—an Afropolitan?

What is an Afropolitan, you ask? Taiye Selasi offers a definition in her essay, “Bye Bye Babar”: “[T]he newest generation of African emigrants [.] You’ll know us by our funny blend of London fashion, New York jargon, African ethics, and academic successes. Some of us are ethnic mixes, e.g. Ghanaian and Canadian, Nigerian and Swiss; others are merely cultural mutts: American accent, European affect, African ethos. Most of us are multilingual: […] We are Afropolitans: not citizens, but Africans of the world.”

With all due respect to this new generation of African emigrants, by this definition one could argue that Dr. Kwame Nkrumah was an Afropolitan; as was Mzee Jomo Kenyatta and numerous others of their generation, including the African Oxonians I mentioned earlier. But even before them, there were others, like Anton Wilhelm Amo, who is said to be the first African to attend a European university. Amo, a member of the Nzema tribe, was born in the area that is now Ghana. He was taken to Europe at an early age and became a chambre slave to Duke Anthony Ulrich of Brunswich-Wolfenbüttel who supported his studies.  Amo earned numerous diplomas and degrees, including a Doctorate of Philosophy in 1734. He was fluent in English, French, Dutch, Latin, Greek, German and, one would assume, an indigenous language or two… or three.

Throughout the centuries there have been people like Anton Wilhelm Amo, Africans of the world whose stories have not been told widely, Africans of the world whose names and contributions have been all but forgotten by history.  “A people are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves,” the Nigerian-British author Ben Okri has written. “Sick storytellers can make nations sick. Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose its moorings [.]”

We are taught at an early age about borders and boundaries, the physical structures that separate “us” from “them.” Sometimes I wonder at the dialogue that must have taken place at the Berlin Conference that partitioned Africa. “I have signed a treaty with the King of Dahomey and my troops just discovered the source of the river Volta” the French must have said. “You can keep the Ivory Coast, we will take the Gold Coast, we are in possession of the Fort at Elmina” The English must have replied.

All this while our great grandfathers and mothers went about their daily chores, oblivious that their destinies were being changed forever in an European city 5000 km away. The borders on the maps of Africa that I studied in school, and the names that were affixed to the land within those borders, gave me a very clear indication of how certain people could be defined and where those people belonged.

We, for instance, were from Ghana. Those other people across the border from us, depending on which direction you travelled, were from Togo, Cote d’Ivoire or—Upper Volta, which, as you know, is now called Burkina Faso.

Different places, different people; at least that’s what I thought—until someone told me a story that broadened my perspective. That someone was Salifu. During my youth, he worked for my family as a watchman. He’d been a serviceman with the British Brigade. He even served in the Second West African Infantry brigade during World War II. Those experiences and the alleged nonpayment of his pension by the British had left him bitter.

All of Salifu’s stories, no matter how wonderfully they started out, seemed to end with him saying, “One day, those British will get theirs. They will find themselves trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea.”

There’s one story Salifu told me that I keep coming back to. I’ve told it over and over again in speeches; I even wrote about it in my book. It was about the proverbial Gali family, whose house sat right on top of the border between Ghana and Togo. The house had been handed down from generation to generation of the Gali family. The house was there long before the border. In those days, the Galis called themselves Ewe. That was the name of their tribe, and their language. But the border had brought confusion into their lives.

You see, technically, their front door, sitting room, eating area and kitchen were on Ghanaian soil. But the bedrooms, bathrooms and back door were all in Togo. So suddenly the Galis found themselves straddling two places and two additional identities. By day, when they walked out of the front door to go to work and school, they were to be Ghanaian. They spoke English, the country’s official language. By night, when they exited the back door to join their neighbors in the common courtyard, they were Togolese, and were required to speak French, that country’s official language.

“You see the problem those British and French made and then left for us to solve?” Salifu would ask after he told that story. “What happens when your house is divided?”

The borders in Africa that are the most challenging, yet at the same time the most crucial to cross are the ones that have been imposed on us by others. On 25th May 1963, a group of leaders from all corners of the continent gathered in Addis Ababa to form an organization whose primary goal was the unity of African people. They were fed up with those artificial borders, as well as the division and confusion they caused. It was a courageous act, driven by a lofty goal, one that the Organization of African Unity, which now goes by the name “the Africa Union”, has been pressing forward to achieve— sometimes steadily, sometimes clumsily—since the day of its inception.

There are now also a number of regional blocs, such as the Economic Community of Central African States, the East African Community, the Southern African Development Community, and the Economic Community of West African States, that are also working towards that goal of unity. These regional communities are working to enable the free movement of goods, services, capital and people across those once rigid borders. And now more than ever before technology has made the goal of African unity a virtual reality. It’s easy to take this newfound mobility on the continent for granted and forget that it hasn’t always been this way.

Not so long ago—as recently as the late 1960s and early 1970s—unless it was on foot or with an automobile, you couldn’t travel from one African country to another, even if they were neighboring, without first going through Europe. Even postal mail and telephone calls were routed through at least one European country, sometimes two.

It is true that our physical borders, those colonial constructs, are no longer as monumental or divisive; but they are not the only borders in existence. There are new borders being drawn every day—by religious intolerance, by economic disparity, by gender discrimination, by xenophobia and ethnic conflicts, and by terrorism, hatred and fear. The challenge to moving forward is finding new ways to not only cross these borders but to also erase them completely.

The late Chinua Achebe, our literary father, was fond of recounting an old proverb that says, “the reason the hunter is always victorious is that the lion does not have a storyteller.” We must insist on being the experts of our own experiences, on telling our own stories of the Africa we know, as Noaz Deshe did in his film, “White Shadow,” about the plight of albinos in Tanzania; and Young Kim did in his film, “City of Dust,” about life in the slums of Uganda.

In 1969 when FESPACO, the biennial film and television festival in Ouagadougou, was launched, only 23 films were shown. Filmmaking in Africa was still in its fledgling stage. Now the film industry in Nigeria alone—Nollywood, as it has been nicknamed—is the third most lucrative film industry in the world, behind cinema in India and the United States.

The world is literally at our fingertips. In 140 typographic characters, we can share even the most mundane news of our lives with complete strangers in faraway places. With a single hashtag, we can appeal to the humanity of our brothers and sisters across the globe and ask for help with a deadly epidemic, or with the return of kidnapped schoolgirls.

We must continue to take to Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. We must continue to post, share, pin and blog about all our victories, whether large or small, personal or political. When we celebrate yet another free and fair election, we celebrate our future.

When we recognize people like Patrick Ngowi, who is revolutionizing the solar industry; Dele Olojede, the first African-born Pulitzer Prize winner; and Farida Bedwei, a brilliant software engineer with cerebral palsy who is a shining example of the many abilities of the so-called disabled, we recognize our own limitless potential. Each story affirms that the true wealth of our resource-rich continent lies not in the gold, silver, diamonds, bauxite, coltan or oil but, rather, in our people.

That is why dialogues and exchanges are so important. They give us an opportunity to share accomplishments and experiences and, yes, frustrations; they allow us to understand that we are part of a movement, a unique moment in time. But most of all, they remind us that if we want to give this moment its due, if we want to keep it from being omitted from the pages of somebody else’s history book, then we must be the magicians, the storytellers, and the historians who claim it, — for posterity, and in the name of our beloved motherland Africa.

I wish to close with a few lines from the poem “Random Notes to My Son,” by South African poet laureate Keorapetse Kgositsile or, Bra Willie, as he is affectionately called.

“I have fallen with all the names I am but the newborn eye, old as childbirth, must touch the day that, speaking my language, will say, today we move, we move”

Oil price drop triggers sharp decline in Canadian economy

Roger Jordan

Canada’s economic output (GDP) fell 0.6 percent in the first quarter of 2015, its largest contraction in six years, Statistics Canada reported last Friday. The last time such a sharp contraction occurred was in the second quarter of 2009, the height of the global financial meltdown.

The figures took all economists by surprise. According to a survey carried out prior to the announcement, economists had reckoned growth would come in at around 0.3 percent for the quarter. The Bank of Canada still maintains the economy will pick up in the remainder of 2015, believing that low energy prices will enable manufacturing and other export industries to enjoy growth.

A significant contributor to Canada’s negative growth was the economic contraction announced the same day in the US, where the economy shrank by 0.7 percent during the first quarter. The US is the main destination for Canadian exports, which were down by over 1 percent for the quarter. Imports also declined.

Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz justified his decision earlier last week to hold interest rates at 0.75 percent by citing hopes that a pickup in the US economy later in the year would boost growth in Canada.

The drop in business investment was even more pronounced, falling by 9.7 percent. Mining, quarrying, and oil and gas investment saw an annualized drop of 11 percent. Mining and oil and gas extraction was down 30 percent.

Meanwhile, activity in the financial sector continued to rise, reflecting the international trend which has seen companies turn to myriad forms of speculation and increased payouts to shareholders in the form of dividends and share buy-backs, rather than investment in productive activity.

Canada’s economy was hit hard by the decline in oil prices last summer. The crisis in the oil industry has already resulted in thousands of layoffs in the country’s main oil-producing regions, but the worst is likely still to come.

A study by the Petroleum Labour Market Information (PetroLMI) division of Enform published in May predicted that 185,000 jobs could go across the oil and gas sector and supporting industries. This would equate to approximately 25 percent of the 720,000 jobs in Canada that were dependent on oil and gas either directly or indirectly in 2014.

Around two-thirds of these layoffs would take place in Alberta, Canada’s largest oil-producing province, the study predicted. A further 20,000 would go in British Columbia and 14,000 in Ontario. In all, oil companies have announced over $30 billion in expenditure reductions for this year.

Significantly, the study predicted that the impact on the oil and gas industry would be much greater and more long-lasting than in 2008-09, when energy companies slashed investment by 39 percent. In 2009, this contributed minus 1.5 percent to Canada’s GDP. “The outlook for 2016 and beyond is still uncertain, and there are no indications that the industry will recover as quickly in 2016 as it did in 2010,” PetroLMI wrote in the study.

Faced with such a bleak outlook, oil industry figures have stepped up pressure on Alberta’s newly-elected New Democratic Party (NDP) government to lay out its plans for a review of the royalties paid by oil firms and its broader policy towards the energy sector. Canadian Natural Resources Limited (CNRL), the country’s largest oil producer, announced last Wednesday that it is putting new investment plans on hold and is cancelling an investors’ conference later this month that was to provide details on future projects.

In comments on the CNRL move, Jeremy McCrea, managing director of institutional research at AltaCorp Capital, stated, “There is legitimate concern. If a company has a budget and they are looking at the economics of a well, and there is some uncertainty what the (royalty) rate is, there is a higher level of risk … and so if they can have less risk in other jurisdictions, that is where the capital will be deployed.”

The oil companies are kicking at an open door. The NDP has repeatedly emphasized its readiness to collaborate closely with the industry and reassured investors that no steps will be taken that undermine their core interests.

Premier Rachel Notley announced that her government would not present its first budget until the fall, allowing it the time to coordinate its policies with the oil industry and big business as a whole. Notley has already stressed that she has been in close telephone consultation with oil company executives.

Speaking after the new government’s first cabinet meeting last Wednesday, Notley remarked on concerns expressed by industry about policy changes: “In order to deal with these issues, we’re going to take a thoughtful, considered, intelligent approach to moving forward and we are going to do it with a great deal of consultation and a great deal of dialogue and they’re not going to be surprised by anything.”

At the same press appearance, Notley claimed that the province’s financial position was much worse than she and her party colleagues had previously thought. She warned that this would affect some election promises. This is an unmistakable sign that the trade union-supported NDP government is preparing to unveil further attacks on workers in the name of financial stability and balancing the budget.

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) has expressed its full confidence in its ability to work closely with the NDP. “I think we share the same goal as the Alberta government right now and that’s keeping Albertans working,” stated Jeff Gaulin, communications vice president at CAPP. “We’re in this together and I think at the end of the day that if we recognize that it’s a very delicate and challenging time, we’ll make smart decisions about what policies are needed to keep the industry attractive.”

For years, the NDP has criticized the oil companies for their unwillingness to conduct more of their refining operations in Alberta and other oil-producing provinces.

Notley raised this again in the wake of her victory, commenting in a television interview that it was necessary to go beyond Albertans being “drawers of water and hewers of wood.” “Let’s make sure that we have more upgraded product and more upgrading here because the higher up the supply chain you get, the more a drop in oil prices helps those higher up in the supply chain,” she commented.

The nationalist framework of her outlook was made even more explicit in her remarks on the Keystone-XL pipeline, which she opposed on the basis of national interest rather than the adverse environmental consequences the project would have. “My concern about Keystone as it’s currently thought out, and of course, it doesn’t need to be exactly what it is right now, is that it’s going to ship a lot of jobs south of here,” she said.

The logical conclusion to reach from such comments is that the NDP government is preparing to offer big business additional incentives to encourage investment and activity in the province based on increased profits and lower wages so as to undercut locations in the United States.

The Alberta government’s determination to establish a close working relationship with big oil is not merely aimed at winning over the provincial ruling elite. At the federal level, the NDP is entering an election campaign with the polls showing that it has a chance of forming the next government in Ottawa, either as part of a coalition or on its own.

The NDP is therefore intent on demonstrating to the Canadian ruling elite that it would be a dependable instrument in enforcing its interests. Under conditions of a deteriorating Canadian economy, global economic slump and increased tensions between the major powers, this will inevitably mean a continuation and intensification of the austerity policies pursued by the Conservative Harper government at home and the assertion of Canadian imperialist interests abroad through military interventions and war.

Mexican elections overshadowed by political crisis

Don Knowland

Mexicans will vote Sunday June 7 in legislative elections for the lower house of the Mexican Congress—the Chamber of Deputies—along with governors in nine of Mexico’s 31 states, state legislators and municipal presidents. The vote is overshadowed by a profound crisis of rule for Mexico’s capitalist political establishment.

Eighty three million Mexicans are registered to vote. But the turnout will be far lower, likely well under 50 percent.

There is widespread and pervasive disgust in Mexico with a ruling class that is viewed as rotten and corrupt, from politicians and the state bureaucracy, to big business and financiers, along with the major media and the narcotics mafias.

Over the last year major scandals rocked Mexico, from the disappearance and likely brutal killing of 43 Ayotzinapa teaching college students in Guerrero state, to extrajudicial killings by the army in the state of Mexico, to corruption involving the financing by a business magnate close to the president of the first lady’s purchase of a mansion, and the involvement of his business group in awarding a contract to construct a high-speed bullet train.

Polls show that eight out of ten voters say they do not trust the three major political parties. A recent poll showed that 85 percent of the population do not trust President Enrique Peña Nieto of the ruling Party of the Institutional Revolution (PRI), a plunge from a 51 percent favorable rating in August 2014. Such distrust has spread to supposedly left-leaning parties, such as the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and the National Regeneration Movement (Morena) of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who was the PRD’s candidate in the last two presidential elections.

Opposition to Peña Nieto’s handling of the economy has risen to above 70 percent, in large part due to his so-called Pact for Mexico, which passed the Congress with the approval of the three major parties, the PRI, the previously ruling right-wing National Action Party (PAN) and the center-“left” PRD. The Pact has included historical reversals of workers’ rights. Its centerpiece has been the opening up of the Mexican economy to big foreign capital, most importantly the state-owned oil industry, which is still viewed by most Mexicans as part of their national patrimony.

The government’s program has done nothing to turn around Mexico’s $1.3 trillion economy. It continues to limp along, showing growth so far this year of only 2 percent, once again falling far below the predictions of major economic and financial analysts. This follows two years of growth under 2 percent. As a result, the Bank of Mexico has been forced to hold interest rates at a record low of 3 percent.

Earlier this year, the Mexican peso hit its lowest level against the dollar since the 1993 devaluation in the wake of the 1992 debt crisis. The peso’s fall reflects plunging oil prices and threats by the US Federal Reserve Bank to raise interest rates, which could cause investors to dump risky emerging market assets, especially debt denominated in dollars.

Mexico registers the second highest level of inequality amongst the 34 advanced economies that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Masses of workers continue to struggle to make ends meet, paying rising prices for basic goods and services.

While opinion polls show that the three major parties are, in the aggregate, polling upwards of 70 percent compared to other registered political parties (PRI-32 percent, PAN-22 percent and PRD-14 percent), rejection of the current political setup is taking various forms.

The candidate of the Citizen’s Movement Party (MC) for mayor of Mexico’s third most populous city, Guadalajara, is running neck and neck with the PRI candidate, even though the MC is only polling 3 percent nationally. MC, originally known as Convergence for Democracy and later just as Convergence, was founded in 1997 by Andrés Manuel López Obrador, before he joined the PRD. MC now holds power in the poor southern state of Oaxaca, which has seen struggles by teachers and social movements over the years. In the past, MC entered into national electoral alliances and fronts with the PRD and the Labor Party (PT), an originally Maoist organization that now claims a “democratic socialist” platform.

Jaime Rodriguez, an independent candidate, has a serious shot at winning the governorship of the northeast state of Nuevo León, which includes the major industrial city of Monterrey. Legislation passed last year allowed independent candidates for the first time in Mexico. Critics have charged that Rodriguez, who spent 33 years in the ruling PRI, broke with the party to take advantage of the new law and to ride the wave of anti-government and anti-party sentiments.

Rejection of the current setup also is taking the form of widespread calls to abstain from voting or to deface ballots.

The major party candidates shy away from public controversy, running their campaigns on empty rhetoric and platitudes, such as calls for “good governance” or “teamwork.”

Despite attempts to sanitize the election process, its ugly face is there for all to see.

The PRD and Morena are engaged in a furious battle for the powerful position of Mexico City mayor.

The National Electoral Institute recently fined Mexico’s Ecological Green Party (PVEM) around $21 million for campaign advertisements allegedly paid for illegally. PVEM says it is innocent and that the rules were changed due to pressure from other groups, including the ruling PRI, which itself was accused of widespread fraud by vote buying in the 2012 election. The Greens’ spokesperson said the party intended to file a complaint against Mexico’s government before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Mney from organized crime washes into candidates’ campaign war chests to buy their loyalty. All three of the major gubernatorial candidates in Michoacán, from the PRI, the PRD and López Obrador’s Morena, have accused each other of links to drug gangs.

Criminal groups favoring candidates who protect their interests have been using threats, kidnapping and violence against their rivals. There have been assassinations of mayoral candidates of the PRI, the PRD in Michoacán and Guerrero states, and of the Green Party in the poor southernmost state of Chiapas, where it holds state office.

Voters will elect 500 deputies to the Chamber of Deputies, 300 by party plurality vote and 200 by proportional representation. Under proportional representation parties such as Morena, the Green Party and PANAL, a party created by the corporatist National Union of Educational Workers (SNTE, the largest union in Latin America), polling nationally around 8, 7 and 4 percent respectively, can add seats up to 8 percent above their electoral showing.

The composition of the Chamber of Deputies will determine the size of the expenditure cuts in the 2016 national budget. The PRI, PAN and PRD will likely maintain their current majority. This will lead to further budgets cuts, mostly to spending on social programs, as opposed to infrastructure.

None of the political parties offers a way forward for the Mexican working class. The PRD has largely abandoned even its populist pretensions, joining the PRI and PAN in pushing the demands of the Mexican oligarchs and foreign capital.

The nationalist program of Morena’s López Obrador represents the interests of smaller sections of the Mexican bourgeoisie and the upper-middle-class, as does that of the Green Party and CM. All such parties claiming to pursue a social democratic program of reform—along the lines abandoned by socialist parties in Europe years ago—will succumb to the interests of the financial oligarchy at the end of the day, like Syriza in Greece.

Finally, whatever their rhetoric, the pseudo-Trotskyist Pabloite and Morenoite parties such as Socialist Convergence (CS), the Workers Revolutionary Party (PRT), the Socialist Workers Party (PTS) and Socialist Alliance (AS), to the extent they even continue to function, ultimately will join in electoral alliances with Morena and its ilk, preserving the present economic setup.

All the ills that beset Mexican society and its masses are the product of the crisis of international capitalism. None can be remedied outside of an international revolutionary socialist program. This requires the building of Marxist revolutionary parties, linking up the struggles of the working class throughout the Americas.

Australian Labor leader moves bill on same-sex marriage

Nick Beams

There is no question that the ability of same-sex couples to marry is a basic democratic right and that all legal impediments to it should be removed.

But equally there is no question that Australian Labor Party leader Bill Shorten’s private member’s bill, introduced into the federal parliament yesterday, to make that possible has nothing to do with any fight for principle.

Rather, it is an attempt by Labor to give itself a “progressive” gloss as it deepens its collaboration with the Abbott Liberal government in its far-reaching onslaught on democratic rights under the guise of national security and the bogus “war on terror.”

Shorten brought forward the bill following last month’s Irish referendum, which endorsed same-sex marriage in that country. Its aim is both to boost Labor’s stocks and head off a call by deputy Labor Party leader Tanya Plibersek to make support for same-sex marriage compulsory for all the party’s MPs, ending the present policy of allowing a conscience vote.

Plibersek has said she will raise the issue at the party’s national conference in July, arguing that Labor does not allow a conscience vote on other major issues of democratic rights and social policy, and nor should it on this question.

Introducing the bill, Shorten tried to invoke the social reforms initiated by the Whitlam Labor government of 1972–75. He declared that “It’s time”—the slogan of the victorious 1972 campaign that ended 23 years of Liberal Party rule—for the legislation to be passed. “Let us delay no more. Let us make this a reality,” Shorten declared to a half-empty chamber, with most of the Liberals and a considerable number of Labor MPs not in attendance.

With Labor lacking the numbers to push the issue, and the Liberal Party refusing to allow a free vote on the question, the debate was quickly adjourned. There is a deal in the making, however. Government MP Warren Entsch, who has led the push for recognition of same-sex marriage within the Liberal Party, is negotiating with Labor for a cross-bench bill to enact marriage equality later in the year.

Labor’s attempt to drape its stance as support for democratic rights is another expression of the hypocrisy that has become its stock in trade. Despite having the opportunity to do so, Labor made no move to legalise same-sex marriage during the Rudd and Gillard governments of 2007–2013. Gillard specifically opposed such legislation.

Labor’s latest move comes in the face of the support it has given, first in government and now in opposition, to deep-going attacks on democratic rights.

Under the Rudd and Gillard governments, Australia became a world leader in the persecution of refugees, attacks that have intensified under the Liberal government, with Labor’s full support. Shorten has specifically refused to commit to any reversal of the Liberals’ “turn back the boats” policy, which Abbott insists is the “model” European governments should seek to emulate to stop African refugees seeking sanctuary.

The Labor Party has marched in lockstep with the Abbott government’s deployment of Australian troops to Iraq—with deputy leader Plibersek, the champion of the democratic right of same-sex marriage, insisting it bears no similarity to the 2003 invasion. The Labor opposition supported the government’s orchestration of terror raids last September, backed the elevation of the Sydney Lindt Café siege by the mentally-deranged Man Haron Monis last December into an “ISIS attack” and backed all its reactionary “anti-terror” legislation.

The Abbott government’s latest anti-democratic move, to revoke Australian citizenship for those who hold a dual nationality and possibly even for Australian-born citizens, was first mooted by the Greens-supported minority Labor government in 2013. Last week, Michelle Rowland, the party’s citizenship spokeswoman, said Labor was “absolutely committed to doing everything in a bipartisan way to keep our citizens safe.”

Appearing on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation program “Q&A” last night, Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese refused to take a position on the government’s proposals, saying the party would need to see the legislation.

This bipartisanship goes beyond the issue of democratic rights. It extends to attacks being delivered against social rights, through the budget cutbacks to health, education, pensions and other social services. In his May 14 budget reply speech and in subsequent interviews, Shorten made clear that just as there was a “bipartisan approach on national security,” so there should be one on major economic issues.

In order to cover up its ever-closer collaboration with the Liberals, Shorten has seized on same-sex marriage to try and establish a Labor point of difference.

The exploitation of this issue for the most reactionary purposes does not stop with the Labor Party. Last Saturday, Sydney Morning Herald journalist Peter Hartcher published an article based on leaks from the cabinet discussion on the government’s sweeping proposals to remove citizenship status.

His conclusion, however, was at complete variance with the assault on democratic rights reported in the article. The Abbott government, he claimed, was an active agent in the furthering of rights in Australia. “Gay rights, and particularly the right of homosexual people to marry in the law, is on the cusp of recognition in Australia. Abbott has yielded to the inevitability,” he wrote.

Hartcher concluded by invoking a “rights revolution,” of which the legal recognition of same-sex marriage was a part, as a weapon in the “war on terror.” An Australia “united in advancing fairness and human rights,” in a profound “repudiation of the barbarians who call themselves Islamic State,” would truly be an “extraordinary proposition.”

Opinion polls record that 70 percent of the population are in favour of legalising same-sex marriage. That signifies an advance in social thinking and a decline in reactionary influences, such as the teachings of the churches. However marriage equality is far from a key question for large sections of the population; the attacks on jobs, health and other social right are of far greater importance.

However, same-sex marriage and questions of identity politics in general are of concern for relatively better-off sections of the upper-middle class. All sections of the political establishment would like to present themselves in “progressive” garb to these socio-economic layers. This is the underlying reason for the Pauline-like conversion of a number of MPs from both major parties on this issue, not any concern for democratic and social rights, which they are jointly attacking.

Former Israeli Premier Olmert sentenced to jail

Jean Shaoul

Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert has received an eight-month jail sentence for fraud and breach of trust for actions taken when he was trade and industry minister in the early 2000s.

He also received an eight-month suspended sentence and a $26,000 fine. This is in addition to a six-year prison term for bribery in relation to another unrelated case, related to the Holyland development project in Jerusalem, which he is currently appealing.

If Olmert’s appeals are unsuccessful, he will be the first former Israeli Premier to be jailed.

The sentences highlight the pervasive and systemic corruption at the heart of Israeli state institutions. Olmert, a long-time member of the Likud Party, served as a cabinet minister in the 1980s and the mayor of Jerusalem between 1993 and 2003. He then entered the Likud-led cabinet of Ariel Sharon. He joined Sharon’s breakaway Kadima Party in 2005, becoming prime minister after Sharon suffered two strokes in January 2006.

Far from being a man of peace who came close to reaching a deal with the Palestinians, as he likes to claim, Olmert launched criminal and murderous wars on Lebanon and Gaza in 2006, imposed an illegal blockade on Gaza that continues to this day, and mounted a further military assault on Gaza in 2008-2009.

He remained in office until 2009, when he was forced to resign due to indictment for fraud in a case arising out of the Rishon Tours scandal that had occurred some years earlier. He was acquitted in 2012 but received a $19,000 fine and a suspended jail sentence for a breach of trust.

New evidence came to light during the Holyland trial that led Judge David Rozen to agree to a plea bargain with Olmert’s former secretary and confidante, Shula Zaken, for her involvement in a series of graft scandals surrounding Olmert. In exchange for a light prison sentence, she handed over diary entries and tape recordings of conversations with Olmert about illicitly receiving cash-stuffed envelopes from US businessman Morris Talansky when Olmert was mayor of Jerusalem and a cabinet minister.

The tapes reveal that Olmert told Zaken not to testify in the first trial so she would not incriminate him. Last March, the retrial revealed that Olmert had given Zaken some of the money to ensure her silence in the first trial, while keeping the rest for his own personal use without reporting it in violation of the law.

Olmert drafted his cronies, including former British prime minister Tony Blair and former Israeli Mossad chief Meir Dagan, as character witnesses, but to no avail. He was found guilty of illicitly receiving money, as well as charges of fraud and breach of trust.

Olmert’s name has long been synonymous with bribery and corruption scandals, including the events surrounding a ministry-run Investment Centre, the Talansky, Rishon Tours, Bank Leumi, and Cremieux Street affairs, and improper political appointments, with other bribery charges still under investigation. But he is only one of a long line of Israeli politicians in all the main political parties, going right to the top, who have been tainted, if not convicted, by corruption and other charges.

All Israel’s prime ministers after the first, David Ben Gurion, including the current prime minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, have been linked to corruption, although none of the allegations have resulted in jail sentences. In Ariel Sharon’s case, he had the good fortune to become incapacitated before any convictions.

Some of the most notorious cases that resulted in guilty verdicts include:

* President Moshe Katsav was forced to resign to face charges of rape. He is serving a seven-year prison sentence after being found guilty of obstructing justice.

* Aryeh Deri, the leader of the Shas Party, was convicted of bribery while serving as interior minister and given a three-year jail sentence. He went on to resume the leadership of the party until last December.

* Finance Minister Avraham Hirchson received a five-year jail sentence and a 450,000-shekel fine for embezzling millions from the Histadrut Labour Federation while he was its chairman.

* Justice Minister Haim Ramon was convicted of sexual assault for forcibly kissing a young soldier in the prime minister’s office and sentenced to community service.

* Shas legislator Shlomo Benizri was found guilty of accepting bribes, with his sentence increased by the Supreme Court to four years.

* Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman was found guilty of assaulting a 12-year-old boy, fined, and ordered to pay compensation.

At least 12 legislators have also been found guilty of serious crimes.

Last December, the police announced that they were investigating 30 public figures and politicians in a major corruption case relating to nepotism and the illegal transfer of funds. A number were from Avigdor Lieberman’s far-right Yisrael Beiteinu Party, including Faina Kirshenbaum, the former deputy interior minister, and her daughter, Ronit. As a result of the scandal, Yisrael Beiteinu won just 6 seats in the March elections, down from 15 in 2009.

Others arrested include the former presidents of the basketball and handball federations and several officials in charge of settlement operations in the West Bank and Golan Heights.

In April, one of the most serious public corruption cases in Israel came to light, involving Ruth David, a former Tel Aviv district prosecutor, senior police officers and Ronel Fisher, a top lawyer. The case involves the alleged systematic bribery of police officers to secure inside information on cases under investigation.

According to the OECD’s index of global corruption, Israel is consistently ranked in the bottom half of its 34 member countries, coming 24th in 2014. Last year, Israel stood 37th in Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index, behind the United Arab Emirates (25) and Qatar (26). In both cases, this represented a fall of one place from the previous year.

Rampant corruption and criminality in Israel have become the norm, as politicians seek both personal gain and political power for themselves and their sponsors. Israel’s financial elite dominates much of Israel’s economy based on vast speculation, plunder and the upward redistribution of wealth through the impoverishment of the great majority of Israeli and Palestinian working people. This financial oligarchy controls all the levers of power—the media, courts, the police and the army—while the politicians are their bought and paid hirelings.

That some at least of these politicians are now being prosecuted and convicted testifies not to the pursuit of justice, but rather to the venomous relations that prevail within Israel’s ruling circles.

The corruption that Olmert epitomises is a symptom of the decay of Israeli democracy, which never even in principle encompassed the entire population, most notably Israel’s own Palestinian citizens and Palestinians living outside Israel’s internationally recognised borders.

In the final analysis, democracy is incompatible with the increasing pauperisation of working people, both Israeli and Palestinian, and the decades-long military suppression of the Palestinian people.

None of this goes unnoticed, in Israel or elsewhere. Last year, Transparency International reported a survey showing that nearly three quarters of Israelis believe the government is ruled by insiders promoting special interests. According to another survey cited by the Times of Israel, half of all Israelis say corruption is increasing and 79 percent say that Israel’s political parties are the most corrupt institutions in the country.