through europe

On the 2nd December 2010 FIFA announced the country that will host the FIFA World Cup in 2018. This may seem an unusual place to start to unravel the trends of power - but the reaction to this announcement and to the beginning of the release of 251,287 US diplomatic cables by Wikileaks, gives a hint of a shift in attitudes towards democracy and corruption.

In June of 2000 58 Chinese people died of mass suffocation in the container of a lorry that arrived on a ferry at Dover. They died trying to enter the UK illegally. The direct cause of these deaths was the blocking of the air vents worked into the container by the driver, a Dutchman, Perry Wacker. He is the worst of criminals, a panicker lacking the basic nerve required, in this case, cutting the air supply from a fear of being caught. The reporting of the case by large sections of the British media was either downright callous, or sympathetic in abstract terms only, the horror felt from putting ourselves in the shoes of those who died, presumed to be too much.