A Bombay Mix

I'm in Bombay/Mumbai at the World Social Forum. Delegates are beginnng to trickle in, but over 75,000 have registered, so it's going to be huge! This is my first time beyond Europe and the Middle East, and there is an explosion of experiences - sight, sounds and especially smells, that any visitor to India will be familiar with. I've just been wandering around the conferene grounds acclimatising and meeting people. The most fun was swinging on vines with some kids! So much great stuff is happening here, that I'm finding myself quadruple booked for most of the three seminar slots each day. I though Baghdad traffic was crazy - but Bombay can certainly compete for chaos on a grand scale - no roadblocks or tanks though, thank goodness. I find the WSF experience partiularly intriguing because it's the first time I've been to a stand alone civil society summit. Normally there are counter summits at IMF, WTO and G8 events, but this is unique in being internally driven (although the name is a counter to the World Economic Forum in Davos). In fact, bizarrely enough, there is actually a kind of counter summit to the WSF, called "Mumbai Resistane" (they've managed to graffiti half the city) which I understand is a really far left alternative. Can't type much more on this dodgy keyboard. One exciting thing to report, I'm having breakfast in a few days with a Nobel Prize winning economist. He's a bit of a personal hero, and I'm very embarrased because both sets of cloths i brought are already caked in grime!

Space waste?

I've just heard rumours that President Bush will be announcing long term plans for a lunar station and a manned mission to Mars next week. I'm internally divided on this. It seems crazy spending huge amounts of resources on space exploration when there is such huge poverty and environmental degragation here on Earth. But on the other hand I'm a lifelong space junkie and Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars comes very near Lord of the Rings in my personal chart of all-time favourite reads. I couldn't help the butterflies of excitement stir in my chest when I heard this rumour about Bush's forthcoming announcement, so unexpected after the Columbia shuttle disaster. However one worrying aspect was a reference in the articles to "closer cooperation between NASA and the Pentagon" - if Bush is going to use science and exploration as a cover for the militarisation of space then this is very ominous.

Stories from Iraq

I spent some time over the weekend with a couple of Iraqi friends, one of whom will now be in the air somewhere over the mediteranian on route back to Iraq for the first time in 31 years. Iraqis are great story tellers, and some of the anecdotes they told me are worth repeating.

The first took place in the Ministry of Planning back in the early 1970s, when my friend first came face-to-face with Saddam, not yet president, but already holding most of the reins of power. The meeting concerned projections for the economy, and Saddam's reaction to one particular statistic is very revealing. He became very angry with the statistician who estimated the population growth rate at 3.2%. "You must make it higher," Saddam bizarrely insisted, "we need to have more people than the neighbouring countries." He was candid about the reason: "I need people to fight when we invade Iran." Remember that he said this almost a decade before the Iranian revolution and the Iran-Iraq war - he was already hungrily looking East.

The second anecdote concerns an Iraqi gradute student studying linguistics in the UK in the 1970s. The title of his Ph.D thesis was "The similarities between the Tikriti accent and Hebrew." My friends explained that people from Tikrit (Saddam's home) speak in a thick accent which can be incomprehensible to other Iraqis - a bit like an American trying to understand thick Glaswegian English. In fact one of them claimed that an Israeli might be able to understand more of it than an Arab. The reason being that historically the Tikrit area was settled by Jews (because of the Assyrian and Babylonian transmigration policies), whom later assimilated into the Arab world, many embracing Islam. Hence the Tikriti dialect of Arabic is strongly influenced by Hebrew. At least this was the contention of my Iraqi friend and the subject of the Pd.D thesis. This is intriguing stuff. Unfortunately there is an unhappy ending. The Iraqi embassy in London heard about the thesis, and was not best pleased with someone investigating links with their enemies in Israel, and an offical was heard to said that the student was liable to end up being put in a diplomatic box and shipped to Iraq. Soon after the student disappeared, and has not been heard of since.

Help the Bam earthquake victims

Online donations can be made to the Red Cross/Crescent while UK residents can donate here and US residents here. Eyeranian casts doubt on the trustworthyness of the Iranian Red Crescent, saying in the mid-90s he could buy unused tents marked with the RC logo from the previous earthquake appeal.

Alternatives are Islamic Relief or Mercy Corps.

Some moving accounts posted on the BBC comments page from relatives, friends and survivors. Also hear what Iranian bloggers are saying.

Photos from Iraq

I've finally got around to posting these up on my fotopage. planning a return trip to Baghdad in mid-January on the way back West after the World Social Forum in Mumbai, India. I'll make an effort to take more and better photos. Off to cinema to see Lord of the Rings now, am completely over excited!

So, do you look your age?

Today's been quite a media flurry for Jubilee Iraq, what with James Baker's tour of Europe. I was due to be in Geneva today to protest at the UN Compensation Commission (which is having it's 50th meeting to allot yet more reparations against Iraq) but none of the London Iraqis who wanted to come were able to get visas over the Switzerland. So instead I spent the day firing off press releases left right and centre.

Did a 3 minute slot on CNN breakfast news, which was my first experience of a TV interview - quite surreal. The lady who called to invite me on the program asked how old I was (25) and then said "not meaning to be rude, but do you... hmm, look you age?" Help, if I was being really honest I should have said that I almost get IDed going into 18 certificate films and when I was in Iraq was frequently asked "how is it that your parents and school have allowed you to come here?" If I had come clean, I wonder if they would have said "thanks but no thanks" - though wouldn't that be age-ist, or appearance-ist or something.

Until about half an hour ago I was due to get up at 6am tomorrow to be interviewed on the Today program, the BBC's flagship morning news/politics show, but annoyingly that has been cancelled. I seem to spend ages waiting for calls from journalists and they end up calling at inappropriate times. Just now some guy from the Associated Press in America called right in the middle of the penultimate episode of the last ever series of Buffy... grrrrr.... aaarg....

Photos & celebrations

I've just set up a photo page. So far there are just a few photos of friends from my last few weekends and about 40 photos of a building site in Baghdad which I posted up to help an Iraqi friend who is trying to find investors to support his little project - just about the only real "reconstruction" actually happening on the ground. But I'll try and post up all my photos from Iraq in the next couple of days.

I went to a celebratory rally with some young Iraqi friends outside the Houses of Parliament last night, it was being filmed by the Iraqi Media Network - did any friends in Baghdad spot me? (actually, I know none of you watch the state media).

Later I had supper with two older Iraqi friends to chew over all the implications of Saddam's capture and discuss how this effects the Jubilee Iraq campaign. One of them had just finished a two hour interview with Al-Mutaqele, an arabic satalite channel, and was frustrated at how many of the Arab callers to the program (aside from Iraqis and Kuwaitis) had criticised him for welcoming Saddam's capture, and accused him of being an American stooge. This to a guy who has campaigned for years against the US sanctions, against the war and is now on the board of Occupation Watch. He said that some Arabs can get very blinkered and see things in black and white - "Saddam was against the Americans, so if you are pleased that he was captured then you must be with them", I pointed out this is very similar thinking to Bush's "You're either with us or with the terrorists."

It's been one of the great pleasures of working on Jubilee Iraq that I've been able to work with people who have much more complex political views than the black & white sylogisms of either the Arab extremist or the American Neocon varieties, and who are willing to adjust their views as situations change or new evidence comes to light.

The 519th Billesdon dinner

Now for something completely different: let me give you an account of the archaic remnants of British tradition and privilage.

This evening I was a guest at the annual Billesdon dinner, at which the Master and Wardens of the Merchant Taylors' Company visit the Worshipful Company of Skinners. These two "companies", along with many others based in the heart of London's financial district (called "The Square Mile" or simply "The City"), are all that is left of the ancient guilds which once dominated British - and indeed global - trade. The remnants of the guilds are essentially social clubs with some tacked on charitable activities, principally schools (the Skinners founded Tonbridge, where my father was educated, while the Merchant Taylors school main is Winchester). The members of the guilds are drawn from "the great and the good" of British society, in large part the financial services industry, for whom the guilds are a useful networking forum and a colourful backdrop to the fevour of the financial markets, reminding them of a time when The City dealt in physical goods rather than abstract financial instruments. Anyhow the origins of this particular dinner are in 1484 when, following an armed battle between the Skinners and the Taylors, over which would march ahead of the other at the annual Lord Mayors Show, Mayor Billesdon decreed that they should kiss and make up, cementing this with an annual dinner. Five hunderd and ninteen years later this is still happening - with considerably better food, wine and cigars than would have been available back in 1484. The meal is steeped in ceremony, from the sung grace, to the passing of the Loving Cup to the formal toasts to the royal family and officers of the companies.

I'd expected the whole affair to be very alien, but as it happens I had connections to the all the principal participants. The Master of the Skinners was educated at my prep school (the Dragon), the after dinner speaker was an alumni of my Oxford College (Balliol) and the most honoured guest, the Acting Master of the Taylors, was my sister's godfather. I was forcifully reminded how inescapably entwined I am with the old British Establishment by dint of upbringing and education.

Anyhow, the guest speaker, Sir Eric Anderson, the Provost of Eton College (bitter rivals of my own secondary school Radley), was very humourous and impressive. He has the unusual history of having taught, early in his career, both the Prime Minister Tony Blair and the Heir to the Throne Prince Charles. A few years ago there was a very powerful television advertising campaign to attract people to teaching in which celebrities simply spoke the names of their favourite teachers, with the tag line "No one forgets a good teacher." Tony Blair named Eric Anderson. This fact makes what he said at the dinner particularly poinient. "Something I must clear up immediately is that, while I did teach the Prime Minister, I certainly did not teach him either politics or economics... And his latest proposals do not get high marks." He was refering to the governments policy of introducing £3000 top-up fees for university students, something Anderson said was the most bureaucratic and least effectual option for tackling the crisis in higher education. Anderson certainly agrees with the government that more funding is needed for universities - stating that the Americans spend 2.7% of GDP on this against our mere 1% - but favoured a system of giving univeristies discretion in what they charge, with half of raised funds going to pay bursaries for students unable to afford the fees.

Anyhow, much to my shame I rather enjoyed the dinner, although after the five courses of food, wine, port, brandy, cigar and pipe... I was feeling rather brittle this morning.

In Prague

Suddenly It seems I'm becoming a bit of a jet setter. I'm currently in Prague for a Eurodad conference of about 100 debt and development campaigning groups, mainly from Europe but also Zambia, Indonesia and South Africa. I've been amazed by the amount of interest in Jubilee Iraq, and am really excited by the number of groups across Europe who are keen to start campaigning on Iraq (or who have already begun without our knowledge!).

I saw the World AIDS Day concert in Cape Town on Czech TV on Monday night, great stuff. The crowd was a bit confused about when to cheer. When Nelson Mandela was talking, and saying things like "when I was in jail for 18 years the Apertheid regime wanted to reduce me to a number (46664), now millions of individuals dying from AIDS are also being reduced to mere numbers." Importan and stirring stuff coming from the living legend, but not really appropriate for cheering... but crowds at concerts are used to cheering. Anyhow you can donate the AIDS program of the Nelson Mandela Foundation at www.46664.com.

World AIDS Day

Over 45 million people are infected with HIV, more of half of them are in Sub-saharan Africa. South Africa has the largest burden, with latest figures implying 5.3 million have HIV. Tying in with World AIDS Day (today), I've written a 2-page update on my report for NPC Rhetoric to Action, a guide for potential donors to AIDS projects in South Africa. We've emailed the update to about 500 wealthy indiviudals and foundations, and hopefully it will generate some new funding into projects such as the Treatment Action Campaign.