Barely noticed, the United States sent a top diplomat to  Europe this week to seek help on an important commitment by President Barack Obama — to close the Guantanamo Bay prison.
   
The trip by veteran envoy Dan Fried to Brussels and Prague is part of efforts to persuade European states to take in some of the 241 remaining detainees at the prison, synonomous for many with rights abuses in the “war on terror” under U.S. President George W. Bush.
   
Europe has long called for the jail to be shut down, but only a few countries — such as France, Portugal and Albania — have  volunteered to resettle any inmates from third countries such as Afghanistan or China.
   
 Time is steadily running out if Obama is to achieve his goal of clearing and closing the prison by next January.  A perceived  lack of European help could sour the much-vaunted new start in transatlantic ties which both sides say they want.
  
But many European officials are asking why they should help the United States out of a hole it dug itself into.
   
The main problem does not involve the small number of  so-called high-value  terror suspects in the camp — they will remain in detention and Washington does not seriously expect anyone to come forward and take them off its hands.
   
Nor does it involve the 17 detainees who have already been cleared for release. The really hot issue is the fate of  the remaining detainees who are not high risk but have not been given the full all-clear.
   
 European officials fear the affair could turn into a legal and political nightmare. Who will take which detainees? Given that much of Europe is now border-free, how will one country reassure its neighbours if it agrees to resettle inmates? And doesn’t the fact that European states have different national policies on surveillance and detention pose extra problems?
   
Worse still, the political fall-out could be devastating. If , for example, a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner carried out an attack in Germany just before an election this year, how would Chancellor Angela Merkel explain it to voters? 

Washington knows it won’t be easy to get the Europeans on board. But it says it would be hypocritical for Europe now not to help after all its criticism of Guantanamo.

It also points out that some of the Europeans who are now raising concerns over security were not so long ago saying  most of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners were innocent.
   
Washington hopes to encourage EU justice and home affairs ministers to at least agree a common line on the need to help it with Guantanamo at a regular meeting scheduled for June. Then it will approach individual countries for negotiations on resettling specific cases.
   
Is it time for Europe to come forward and help Obama or is this one file on which it is advised to stay clear?

So President Medevedev would like to create a “Speakers’ Corner” in Central Moscow for Russians to vent their political passions.

“It looks cool,” Medvedev told a group of human rights activists. “I need to speak with the Russian authorities and build our very own Hyde Park.”
Was this just a rhetorical flourish to impress his guests, a signal that he would loosen the reins that his predecessor, Vladimir Putin, has pulled so tight? Free speech, say the rights activists, is not something Russian authorities have prized, whether on the streets or in the media. Would it, could it, work in Moscow? Where ever would you put it in that crowded, bustling city? Who would go there? What would they do there?
Singaporeans, not know for a culture of dissent and protest, have led the way, setting up their own speakers’ corner to protest over economic hardship. Hundreds meet there every Saturday to demand government help. No trouble reported yet.

The London speakers’ corner is held up by some as a symbol of British democracy, a place where anyone can stand on a box and say (more or less) whatever he wants without fear. Yes, in their day, Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx haunted the place, touting ideas that would have had them dragged away by police in their own countries. Lenin’s wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, wrote in her memoirs that the Bolshevik leaader was most impressed watching speakers “harangue the passing crowds on diverse themes”. All jolly stuff and not something he himself encouraged when he set up the dictatorship of the proletariat back at home.

These days though, for the most part, London’s speakers’ corner is a gathering place for quirky exhibitionists and comedians, political oddballs of left and right and religious eccentrics of all ilks warning sinful tourists of hell and damnation. The occasional thoughtful soul will read through Shakespeare’s sonnets or expound the virtues of a forgotten philosopher. Heckling seems to be a central part of the fun. A policeman may be at hand in case things turn nasty, but they rarely do.

Possibly, the spot in the north-east corner of Hyde Park was chosen for its closeness to Tyburn gallows where once the condemned would make their last declarations. The Moscow equivalent to Tyburn, I suppose, would be Red Square, where villains were put to death by the axe – though, in the Russian tradition, without those last words. Perhaps, then, Moscow’s Speakers’ Corner might fit nicely nearby at Alexandrov Gardens, at the Kremlin Walls. Arguably, though, a bit too close to
Medvedev’s seat of power. My proposal would be a few hundred metres up Tver Avenue, on Pushkin Square where the Soviet Union once maintained its own bizarre and macabre form of speakers’ corner. Perhaps I should call it the hat-takers-offers corner.

Every Human Rights Day, a keen crowd of journalists and plain-clothes KGB officers would gather in the winter cold around the perimeter of the square named after the great liberal poet Alexander Pushkin. As the hour of eleven approached, a tense hush would descend. A single figure would eventually appear, walk to the centre of the square, stand for a moment, and then take his hat (usually a rabbit-skin ‘shapka’) off; a symbolic protest against the suppression of human rights in the communist state.

In an instant, the KGB officers would swoop down upon him, drag him across the square, bundle him into a van and speed him off to the Lubyanka prison. A few minutes would pass and a second dissident would arrive, take off his hat and stand to attention before being likewise borne away by the forces of order. And so it went on.

Pity though the ‘innocent’ citizen who strayed unwittingly onto the square on that December day, carrying perhaps a magazine or a string bag of potatoes, and found himself suddenly the focus of this hawkeyed gathering. He would break his step and look around, of course, in wonder at his sudden and unexplained celebrity. Me?
That was more enough. Hat or no hat, he followed the rest, bundled into the van and away. It happened, sadly.

Finally, I ask myself who would pitch up at Moscow’s speakers’ corner and in what frame of mind? Memories of the breakup of the Soviet Union, the coups, the civil wars, the anger and the hardship, are still fresh. Economic crisis raises fears of another plunge into uncertainty and the eternal search continues. Kto Vinovat? Who is to blame?

What makes London’s Speakers’ Corner possible, amid all the mockery and sometimes quite pernicious views, is that most people just don’t take it seriously. They laugh, make fun. There may be anger but it knows its bounds. People throw up their hands and walk away, triumphant or humiliated before their peers.

How would Speakers’ Corner take root in Russian soil? Would liberal literati feast on Pushkin and Gogol, while the preachers invoke the fires of hell? Would it become a platform for Muscovites nursing private grievances against uncaring state institutions, the police, big business, the President? Could a Chechen malcontent plant his flag alongside angry nationalists and red-banner waving Stalinists?
Are Russians ready yet to laugh at profanity?

The following piece is written by Turkey correspondent Ibon Villelabeitia:

A new and intimate documentary on Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the
venerated soldier-statesman who founded modern Turkey after
World War One, has sparked controversy in this European Union
candidate country at a time of national self-absorption.

“Mustafa”, which opened on Oct. 29 on the 85th anniversary
of the foundation of the republic, has spawned a lively debate
in newspapers and television shows on the merits of the film.

Is it appropriate to depict Turkey’s national hero as a
flawed man who drank heavily and suffered from bouts of
loneliness? Could he be called a dictator? Did he talk about an
autonomous land for the Kurds?

An anti-smoking group has complained that the movie sets a
bad example for the youth because Ataturk is seen smoking one
cigarette after another — 3 1/2 packs a day we are told.

Calls for a boycott from hard-line “Kemalists” have been
mixed with praise for bringing “Ataturk down from a pedestal”.

Westerners visiting or living in Turkey are always mystified
by the almost religious reverence Turks feel for Ataturk, who
laid down the strict secular principles of today’s Turkey.

His peering blue eyes and sage-like composure tower over
everyday life here. Banners and portraits of Ataturk, adorn the
walls of government offices, barbers and kebab stores across
this deeply nationalistic nation.

Our 4-year-old son, born to an American mother and a Basque
father, came home from school the other day with the white-and-
red colours of the Turkish flag painted on his cheeks, a banner
of Ataturk in one of his hands.

- “Who is that gentleman?” I asked.

- “Well, Ataturk the Father of the Turks”, he replied,
dutifully repeating what children here are taught by teachers,
before rushing to the living room to play with his Scooby-Doo
castle.

Personality cult is no exclusive preserve of Turks,
but the omnipresence of Ataturk has no parallels today in any other
European country.

Is Turkey — where profound social changes, EU-inspired
reforms and globalisation are shaking the pillars of Ataturk’s
autocratic state — reassessing the legacy of its founder?

Ataturk is still deeply respected by most Turks, as a visit
to his mausoleum in Ankara shows. Young and old, urban and
rural, covered and uncovered women line up to visit the
Anitkabir in awe — a pilgrimage to a secular Lourdes of sorts,
as a Turkish friend defined it to me.

Ataturk is universally credited for giving women the right
to vote, modernising the education system and removing religion
from public life in order to bring up levels of social and
cultural development on par with Europe.

But the strict tenets of Kemalism — secularism, statism
and nationalism — are under strain 70 years after his death.

A rising and religious-minded middle class from the Anatolian
heartland is moving to positions of power, and with it,
redefining notions of Islam, secularism and individual rights.

Critics say Ataturk has been taken hostage by an entrenched
military, judiciary and state bureaucracy, which have turned his
legacy into dogma to defend the status quo. Those who claim to
defend Ataturk’s legacy more fervently are, ironically, the same
who are blocking his fulfilment of a modern Turkey, they say.

Can Dundar, a 44-year-old film-maker with impeccable republican credentials and who calls himself an Ataturk follower, said his goal was to present a more human Ataturk to better understand his legacy.

“Ataturk said once his greatest achievement was to bring
sovereignty to earth instead of a sovereignty stemming from a
book which is believed to come from the sky, refering to the
Quran,” Dundar said. “I hope this film helps to bring him down
to the earth again.”

“People look at headlines from two or three countries and forget there are 55 countries in Africa and in most of them life is normal.”

That is what Mo Ibrahim, a Sudanese-born telecoms entrepreneur and one of Africa’s best known business leaders, told Reuters at the launch of the 2008 Index of African Governance by his foundation.

The index showed that governance had improved in almost two-thirds of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa since the 2007 index.

It follows weeks after the Transparency International corruption perceptions index, on which African states featured heavily among the worst offenders.

The Ibrahim Index is based on criteria including corruption, economic stability, security, rights, laws, elections, infrastructure, poverty and health.

The winner - Mauritius - will not be much of a surprise and nor will the fact that Somalia was in last place. Liberia had shown the most improvement.

Despite the dramatic headlines from Africa’s crisis zones, an overall improvement in governance is one of the reasons cited by investors for unprecedented financial flows to Africa in recent years.

“Africa is open for business,” Ibrahim told us. “Investors should look at our growth. And with the global financial situation the way it is, perhaps their money is safer in Africa than in the U.S.”

But how deep does any improvement in governance go? How long might it last? Who is doing well and who should do more? What do you think?