Egyptian cameraman at the heart of the Tahrir Square clashes | World news

 

Mostafa Bahgat's video of the recent conflict in Tahrir Square.

Through clouds of smoke, two black-clad and face-masked central security troops advance steadily towards the camera, pausing every few seconds to fire shotgun rounds that whistle perilously close to the screen.

On one side of the street is a column of armed riot police; on the other, hundreds of stone-throwing youths, their heads wrapped in scarves, bodies occasionally crumpling to the floor as another volley is fired.

And in the middle of it all stands the cameraman, Mostafa Bahgat. "This stretch [of road], this little distance, is the most important 15 metres of urban space in our country right now," says the 31-year-old film-maker. "If I'm not there to record what is happening then the lies of the state will go unchallenged. If I wasn't in that place, at that time, I couldn't live with myself. It's what I have to do."

The past two weeks have proved to be a turning point in Egypt's ongoing revolution, with huge anti-junta street protests coming under relentless assault from the security forces and millions of Egyptians defying the bloodshed to turn out and vote in elections for the first post-Mubarak parliament.

But although future historians looking back at this period will have ample primary source material available – from a mountain of ballot papers to the hundreds of hours of footage covering rallies in Tahrir Square – their most important asset may prove to be six-and-a-half minutes of jerky video, shot by Bahgat from the heart of the violence.

The film, which consists of a series of clips made over several days at the height of the unrest, directly contradicts many of the claims made by the ministry of interior regarding the type of weaponry deployed by its troops and its insistence that only "reasonable force" has been used to confront protesters.

Better than anything produced by more conventional media outlets, the footage captures the dramatic reality of Cairo's recent clashes. It is also one of the most intense recordings of guerrilla warfare ever produced and has rapidly become a viral sensation, clocking up over 100,000 hits on YouTube.

But for the quiet, softly spoken man behind the lens it's just another piece of work, albeit one that serves a vital purpose in the ongoing information war between the Egyptian authorities and the young revolutionaries who accuse the country's ruling generals of unleashing brutal violence against those who dare to speak out against them.

"People in Egypt who only have access to state TV find it hard to believe that the army could hurt or kill anyone, or that the police under the army's control could do the same.

I want to enable them to think differently," explains Bahgat, who stumbled into video journalism by accident while working as a moderator at Egyptian news outlet al-Masry al-Youm.

In early 2009 the multimedia desk wanted to cover a factory strike but was short of personnel; despite having no experience with a camcorder, Bahgat volunteered. "Since then, I haven't stopped," he grins.

At the outset of this year's anti-regime uprising, the tall, red-headed Egyptian found himself in Suez, an industrial city that in January and February played host to some of the biggest street battles between pro-change demonstrators and the hated central security forces – who after three decades of Mubarak's dictatorship had come to symbolise the detachment and brutality of Mubarak's all-powerful political elite.

Having witnessed the violence himself, Bahgat decided that footage shot by others failed to convey the real drama of the frontline, and resolved to do something about it.

"When I looked at the other videos, I didn't see in them what I'd seen with my own eyes on the ground," he says. "I knew I needed to start filming myself from the frontline, and that I had to get close to the armed police in order to get proper details of how they behaved, what they were doing."

It was in Suez too that Bahgat learned how to survive amid the rocks, molotov cocktails, teargas and live bullets. He wears no helmet or flak jacket, preferring instead to stay open to the elements, hyper-attuned to the situation unfolding around him, including the shifting position of all the combatants, the direction of the wind, and the precise location of every lamp-post, phone box and scattered piece of street furniture that could be pressed into use as an emergency barricade.

"Much of the time I'm not even looking at the viewfinder; instead I'm glancing all around me, calculating what's going to happen next and whether or not I need to move," he says.

"My strongest tactic is to think back to when I was younger. As a child we jump, roll, hide and play all the time; it feels instinctive to move around in a creative way. Those instincts don't leave us, and now I know what I can use them for."

Beyond those instincts, Bahgat's only protection is a pair of heat-resistant gloves that enable him to hurl back any teargas canisters landing near his feet, and some onions and eyedrops to help combat the effects of the gas.

Bahgat's exploits have earned him an almost mythical reputation among revolutionaries, many of whom describe him standing serenely with his camera in the thick of the action, seemingly immune to the ammunition and chaos exploding all around him.

But as Bahgat himself explains, rumours of his invincibility are wide of the mark: he has been hit by gas cylinders, sprayed with birdshot, and has had eight pieces of metal in his leg for 10 months; shrapnel embedded so deep that doctors are loth to remove it.

The distinction between activist and journalist is one that doesn't concern him; he also dismisses any claims to heroism, shuffling uncomfortably whenever passersby stop to offer praise.

"I take this risk because when you see people die in front of you who are on your side, you can't go around thinking of your own safety," he says.

"My bravery is nothing compared to those who walk forward with nothing, their hands held aloft, only to be shot down, rushed back to a field hospital for treatment, and who then swiftly return to the frontline to confront oppression once again."

Bahgat now works for a private television network called ONtv, but much of his footage ends up being distributed on social media and other independent channels.

The experience of seeing such police brutality up close has convinced him that a complete rebuilding of the security forces is needed if Egypt's stuttering revolution is ever to succeed. He says he has sympathy for the police conscripts who are placed on the frontline and are given little more than rocks to fight with, but he finds it hard to view with any humanity the officers with guns, who can sometimes be seen in the video beckoning protesters towards them before firing.

In Bahgat's eyes, military rule is also beyond redemption, and he remains determined to document the struggle against it.

He says that when Mubarak was toppled, the military generals told the young people they were amazing.

"'We always thought you were useless before, but you have proved us wrong,' they said. 'Now you've achieved what you want, go home and stop making trouble.' They did this because we were in a state of revolution and this was the best way to suck the oxygen out of that desire for change. But violence begets violence and they are running out of chances.

"They tell us to wait and be patient, but what are they waiting for? For the revolution to die out? We won't let that happen. And whenever they strike against us, we will be there to record their crimes."

Herman Cain to make 'major announcement' about campaign

 

Herman Cain speaks in South Carolina on Friday. Photograph: John Adkisson/Reuters

Embattled Republican candidate Herman Cain promised to announce Saturday afternoon at an event in Atlanta, Georgia, whether he will quit the race after a week in which he faced fresh sex allegations, saw donations begin to dry up and his poll ratings go into free fall.

Speaking at a campaign event in Rock Hill, South Carolina, Friday, he offered no hint of his decision, whether to battle on in the hope of recovering lost support or pull out.

"I am reassessing because of all this media firestorm stuff," he told the audience, adding that his wife Gloria and his children came first. He was due to meet Gloria at their home outside Atlanta late on Friday for their first face-to-face meeting since Atlanta businesswoman Ginger White claimed on Monday she had had a 13-year affair with him.

Cain told the audience he did not doubt that he retained a strong level of support among Republican voters. "Tomorrow in Atlanta, I will be making an announcement," he said.

His statement caught some of his staff off-guard. His campaign organiser in Iowa, Steve Grubbs, only moments before Cain's speech, denied there would be a major announcement Saturday.

Cain has demonstrated he is more tenacious than most candidates, carrying on in spite of a spate of negative reports that would have sunk other campaigns. He has survived four women coming forward to accuse him of sexual harassment. On top of this, his lack of knowledge of foreign affairs has been cruelly exposed in recorded interviews.

He said on Thursday night he would make a decision on whether to remain or stay by Monday.

Support for Cain has gone into a nosedive in Iowa, one of the key early states, according to a poll in the Des Moines Register.

The poll, published Friday, shows support among likely Republican caucus-goers has dropped from 23% in October to 8%. The first of a series of allegations that he had sexually harassed women emerged on October 31, but he appears to have suffered the most damage from a claim by White of a long-lasting affair.

The polls over the last few months have been volatile, and even now only an estimated third of potential caucus-goers have made up their mind who they will support. But the Des Moines Register poll has a good track record, being one of the few that was relatively accurate during the 2007-8 campaign.

Ed Rollins, who was campaign manager for the Republican candidate Mike Huckabee who won Iowa in 2008, told Fox News Friday that he thought Cain's campaign was effectively over and predicted he will quit the race over the next few days. "He is dropping like a rock," Rollins said. Cain could either get out or stay in and be clobbered, he added.

The Des Moines Register poll, carried out between November 27 and 30, was of 401 likely Republican caucus-goers. Iowa holds the first of the Republican nominating contests on January 3.

One of the most telling details in the poll is a sudden drop after Ginger White claimed in a television interview broadcast on Monday evening that she had had an affair with Cain. He denies it, acknowledging her as a friend he had helped out financially on a regular basis but insisting they had no sexual relationship.

On Sunday and Monday, 22% of those polled said he was the candidate they would most like to meet in person. Those polled on Tuesday and Wednesday showed a fall to 8%. Overall support for Cain stood at 12% on Sunday but had dipped to 4% by Wednesday.

Grubbs, Cain's campaign manager in Iowa, admitted that support for Cain in Iowa had slowed this week and the Des Moines Register's poll was not good news. But he told the Register that only 2% of the precinct captains needed to organise the caucus had deserted.

He said they had 901 precinct captains in place out of the 1,700 needed to get out the vote on January 3.

Angela Merkel takes action to stop euro collapse

 

In a bid to stave off the euro's collapse, German chancellor Angela Merkel said it was time to stop talking about a fiscal union and start creating one. Photograph: John Macdougall/AFP/Getty Images

Angela Merkel demanded tougher control over the tax-and-spend policies of Germany's single-currency partners at the start of a make-or-break five days for the euro.

Seeking to halt the single currency's drift towards collapse, the German chancellor finally took decisive action to calm the financial markets when she said it was time to stop talking about a fiscal union and start creating one. Merkel said, however, that negotiations to secure greater centralised control over the budgets of the 17 members of the eurozone could not be rushed and would involve a risky renegotiation of the Lisbon treaty.

Interest rates on Italian and Spanish government borrowing fell sharply and markets rose on hopes that politicians are taking the euro crisis seriously and have woken up to the potential damage that a breakup might inflict. But as Merkel said, the process could take years, and could still be stymied by politicians from any of the 17 eurozone countries wanting to retain control of their budgets.

David Cameron, for whom the talks over closer fiscal union threaten to be politically perilous, was in Paris for talks with the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. The prime minister, concerned about the impact of a chaotic breakup of the euro on an already fragile UK economy, said he was not opposed to Merkel's plan.

France and Germany will seek to draw up a more detailed blueprint at a summit on Monday after Merkel sketched out her proposal to the Bundestag, while the US treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, will demonstrate Washington's concern over the risk to the global economy posed by the crisis in monetary union when he makes his fourth visit to Europe in six months.

Sarkozy is reluctant to cede too much control over the ability of Paris to set its own budget, and some analysts warned that next week's European heads of government summit in Brussels could end with only the flimsiest of agreements.

Chris Iggo, head of fixed-income investments at AXA, said: "The outcome to the crisis is breakup or makeup. The makeup option involves throwing in the towel on the idea that national sovereignty can be fully preserved in a monetary union."

Merkel is pushing for a new enforceable regime under which countries using the euro would ultimately need to sacrifice budgetary and fiscal powers to a European authority that would monitor and then either endorse or veto budgets. It would penalise those whose debt levels are deemed to be destabilising the currency. She said, however, that there was no quick fix to a crisis that had taken years to develop, and stressed there was no danger for German budgetary sovereignty.

The thrust of Merkel's argument is not so much about settling the immediate crisis, but installing a longer-term system to ensure it can never happen again. The Lisbon treaty would need to be revised to make that possible. But if that proved too difficult, she added in remarks that will resonate in Downing Street, the eurozone leaders could take matters into their own hands outside the EU treaty.

An EU treaty negotiation would present Cameron with the perilous task of trying to prevent a rupture between his pro-European Lib Dem coalition partners and the increasingly impatient Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative party.

Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, described Merkel's speech as a welcome development, but in Paris, where he had a 90-minute lunch with Sarkozy to discuss next week's EU summit, Cameron struck a more guarded note. He said the most important thing was for the European Central Bank to take a more robust stance in defence of the euro and for Europe to become more competitive. If there were to be an EU treaty change, his priority would be to "protect and enhance Britain's interests".

No 10 says it accepts that the eurozone needs a "new set of rules" and, with a treaty negotiation looking increasing imminent, Cameron has said his priorities in those talks would include protecting the single market and the City of London and preventing the 17 countries in the eurozone ganging up against the interests of the 10 EU countries who are outside it.

But some Tory MPs want to use any renegotiation to demand a wholesale repatriation of powers from the EU – a position that is unacceptable to the Lib Dems.

Cameron's response has been to stress his commitment to the repatriation of powers in the long term while arguing that, with the euro in crisis, now is not the time for the time for a full-scale renegotiation.

She sought to turn the tide on two years of a collapsing euro by demanding a fiscal union among the 17 single currency countries and insisting on a risky re-negotiation of the EU's Lisbon treaty.

Amid apocalyptic warnings that the decade-old currency was on its last legs, with only days left for Europe's leaders to concoct a response to the sovereign debt crisis that would appease the bond markets, Merkel, however, emphasised that she would not be rushed and that there was no quick fix to a crisis that had taken years to develop.

 

In a speech to the Bundestag in Berlin, Merkel said the time had come to stop talking about a fiscal union and start creating one. She is to draw up a more detailed blueprint with President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris on Monday and deliver the new scheme to a crucial EU summit in Brussels next Thursday.

Coming on top of Sarkozy's setpiece speech on Thursday night in Toulon on the future of Europe, Merkel's statement was broadly seen as a signal of Franco-German resolve to get to grips with the crisis after 18 months of persistent failure. It remained to be seen, however, whether the show of Franco-German resolve, with Paris playing second fiddle to Berlin, would suffice to resolve the EU's most debilitating crisis.

On the two key points that would provide instant relief, pushed by France and many others, Merkel remained unmoved. She flatly ruled out the introduction of eurobonds, the issue of common eurozone paper in a pooling of single currency debt that would leave Germany exposed in covering the debts of others and possibly threatening its gold-plated credit rating.

She also opposes a more expansive and activist role for the European Central Bank widely seen as the only EU institution with the firepower required to douse the flames of the euro and sovereign debt crisis. It appeared, however, that she was muting her resistance to an expanded if limited ECB role, clearing the way for central bank and International Monetary Fund interventions that might take the edge off the immediate emergency and provide a breathing space for a more systemic political response.

British soldier fired for stabbing Afghan boy

 

A series of prosecutions have been mounted against British military personnel accused of causing civilian casualties in Afghanistan. Photograph: Ahmad Jamshid/AP

A British soldier has been dismissed from the army after stabbing a 10-year-old Afghan boy in his kidneys with a bayonet for no reason.

Grenadier Guardsman Daniel Crook was suffering from a hangover after a heavy vodka drinking session when he bayoneted the boy, who was running an errand. He could not explain why he carried out the attack.

After being traced by the Guardian, the boy's father said the attack had left his impoverished family bitter and financially burdened. More than 18 months after the attack, his son is still unable to go to school. He said British forces were "in Afghanistan to build the country and remove insurgents, not to stab a child".

The unpublicised conviction of Crook is the latest in a series of prosecutions mounted against British military personnel accused of causing civilian casualties in Afghanistan.

The Guardian has learned that in a separate case, another soldier is being investigated on suspicion of murder after allegedly shooting dead an Afghan civilian who was digging near a military base.

Prosecutors are considering whether to charge the private in the Royal Welsh Regiment over the incident in Helmand province in June last year.

The Guardian has pieced together the the court martial of Crook from an interview with the boy's father and an account from the Service Prosecuting Authority (SPA), the agency established in 2009 to conduct independent prosecutions of military personnel.

One evening in March last year, Crook "drank a considerable quantity of vodka which was sent to him in a mineral bottle contained in a welfare parcel", according to prosecutors. He was so drunk that medics had to treat him overnight.

At 9am the next day, his unit left a checkpoint in the Nad e Ali district of Helmand to go on patrol. Crook followed his colleagues after arming himself with a pair of grenades and a bayonet. His rifle had been confiscated as a safety measure, the court martial heard.

He soon came across two Afghans riding bikes. One of them was the 10-year-old boy, Ghulam Nabi. His 72-year-old father, Haji Shah Zada, said his son had been sent to collect a bottle of yoghurt.

The soldier was "alone and not patrolling and he ordered Ghulam to stop. But he was just a little child and he didn't understand. The soldier had just come out of his base and he didn't have a gun, only a bayonet. He grabbed Ghulam and stabbed him in the back, near his waist."

Prosecutors said the boy had pesteredCrook for chocolate. "In response Crook took hold of the boy's shoulder and stabbed him in the region of his kidneys with his bayonet. Crook felt the bayonet pierce the boy's skin but did not see if he was bleeding." His father said: "His clothes were covered with blood. We put him in a car and raced to Lashkar Gah but the doctors couldn't treat him there and we took him to Kandahar."

Meanwhile Crook had caught up with his patrol and admitted he had stabbed a child. The bayonet and grenades were taken from him and he was handcuffed. He later told military police he could not explain why he stabbed the boy.

At the court martial in June, the judge described the trigger for the crime as "the considerable amount of alcohol consumed the night before" and ruled that he had put the lives of his comrades in danger. Crook was jailed for 18 months and dismissed from the army.

This week, the boy's father said he had a big scar on this back from the wound. He boy is still not going to school as he struggles with the 1km walk and riding his bike is impossible.

The attack has imposed an extra financial burden on the poor family as Ghulam cannot run errands or help his father collect grass for their animals.

Shah Zada, a shopkeeper and farmworker, says he cannot understand why his son was attacked and has received no apology from the British forces. Although he credits Nato troops for expelling the Taliban from his village, the attack has soured his opinion of western forces. "Of course foreigners are the enemies of Afghans – otherwise he wouldn't do that to innocent child who was just going by on his bike." On the question of compensation, he said: "We asked for $40,000 but they only gave us $800."

Six members of the British armed forces have been, or are being, prosecuted over allegations of abusing or wounding Afghan civilians since March last year.

The prosecutions, which have led to four convictions, were brought by the SPA , headed by Bruce Houlder QC, a former chairman of the Criminal Bar Association. Ministers were forced to set up the civilian-run agency following severe criticism that military prosecutors had failed to properly prosecute British troops accused of killing or abusing Iraqi civilians.

Details of the prosecutions are deeply embarrassing given that foreign troops in Afghanistan say their mission is to build up a stable and lawful country. Civilian casualties play an important role in the propaganda battle to win the "hearts and minds" of Afghan civilians – waged by both Nato and the Taliban.

In a separate prosecution which was reported at the time, two Royal Marines were dismissed from the navy for assaulting an Afghan civilian. Sergeant Mark Leader and Captain Jody Wheelhouse assaulted Mohammad Ekhlas, 48, with a boot. He needed four stitches to his lip.

Michael Hunter, the judge at the court martial, ruled that "this was a sustained assault on an injured and unarmed prisoner". He added that it was understandable that soldiers who have seen the effects of roadside bombs should "feel a degree of hatred towards those who plant them", but assaulting prisoners undermined the standards of the armed forces and everything they were trying to achieve in Afghanistan.

In a further prosecution, Dane Keir Leyland-Jones, of Ist Battalion, the Duke of Lancaster's Regiment, was fined £1,000 in May for negligence after an Afghan policeman was shot. According to the SPA, he was manning a checkpoint in Nad e ali in May last year when a bullet from a gun he was handling struck the left leg of the policeman. Medics decided that they needed to amputate his lower leg, but he vanished and has not been found since.

The SPA is also prosecuting a corporal, understood to be in the special forces, for allegedly assaulting an Afghan in March last year.

Many Afghan civilians have been killed or injured by British forces during the decade-long conflict, although United Nations figures show that the Taliban kill far more civilians than Nato troops.

Britain's military police investigated 99 incidents in which UK forces had been accused of killing or wounding Afghan civilians between January 2005 and March this year.

Ronaldo takes lead in organising 2014 World Cup in Brazil - video

 

The former Brazil striker has accepted a leading role in organising the 2014 World Cup in his home country amid mounting concerns over legal issues, delays and infrastructure works. Ricardo Teixeira, Brazil's Fifa member and 2014 World Cup chief said the 35-year-old former World Cup winner and World Player of the Year had been invited to become a member of the local organising committee

US politics live blog: US unemployment figures, Herman Cain accusations

 

Former president Bill Clinton and President Obama at an event in Washington DC to publicise a $4bn energy efficiency fund. Photograph: Pool/Getty

Good morning: a rare spot of good economic news for the Obama administration is the highlight of the day, while Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain struggles with the latest allegations in a series of duelling television interviews.

Coinciding with the fall in the US unemployment rate to 8.6% – the lowest rate since early 2009 – President Obama appears with former president Bill Clinton to showcase a $4bn plan to upgrade buildings for energy efficiency, in an effort to improve the administration's green credentials and give a boost to the construction sector.

In Congress, a fight continues over extending the payroll tax cut, as Republicans and Democrats voted down their respective plans in the Senate – with a significant number of Senate Republicans crossing the floor to vote down their own proposal.

11.30am: Bill Clinton is speaking now to introduce President Obama and explaining his role in promoting the $4bn energy efficiency conversion plan – the event is taking place in a renovated office block next to Farragut Park in downtown DC.

Clinton is his usual fluent self talking about the benefits of the proposal. "It's the nearest thing we've got to a free lunch in a tough economy," says the former president.

President Obama and Bill Clinton tour an energy-efficient office building renovation in Washington Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

11.44am: President Obama is up now, touting the package that has just been announced and taking the opportunity to push the latest jobs figure showing a 100,000 increase in private sector employment:

This morning, we learned that our economy added another 140,000 private sector jobs in November. The unemployment rate went down and despite some strong headwinds this year, the American economy has now created in the private sector, jobs for the past 21 months in a row. That's nearly three million new jobs in all and more than half a million over the last four months. So we need to keep that growth going. Right now that means Congress needs to extend the payroll tax cut for working Americans for another year.

Congress needs to renew unemployment insurance for Americans who are still out there pounding the pavement, looking for work. Failure to take either of these steps would be a significant blow to our economy. It will take money out of the pockets of Americans who are most likely to spend it and it would harm small businesses that depend on the spending. It would be a bad idea. I think its worth noting, but the way, I notice that some folks on the other side have been quoting President Clinton about, "it's a bad idea to raise taxes during tough economic times", that's precisely why I've sought to extend the payroll tax this year and next year.

Obama changes tack and moves on to the legislation before Congress, which saw a battle over the payroll tax holiday take place last night. Obama wants Congress to pass the tax holiday, saying: "Now's not the time to slam on the brakes, it's time to step on the gas."

Then Obama threatens: "Otherwise Congress may not be leaving, and we can all spend Christmas here together."

That's not a prospect that anyone will be enthusiastic about.

12.04pm: More on the unemployment figures, which President Obama just now burnished as the 21st consecutive month of job growth, creating nearly three million jobs. The US economy added 120,000 jobs in November, the US Dep[artment of Labor said today, meaning the economy has generated 100,000 or more jobs for five months in a row – the first time that has happened since the good times of April 2006. On top of all that, revisions added a further 72,000 jobs to previous months' growth.

But the underlying picture is less bright. The unemployment rate shrank to 8.6% but that was because there were 315,000 fewer people active in the labour market.

Economist Dean Baker of the CEPR explains that fewer opportunities for women were behind the fall in the labour market participation rate:

The drop in participation was entirely among women and especially black women. (Among married women, employment rose by 194,000, so this was not a case of women as second earners dropping out of the labor force.) Participation numbers among white women fell by 199,000, a decline of 0.2 percentage points. The drop among black women was 164,000, a drop of 1.2 percentage points. These monthly numbers are highly erratic, and it is likely that at least part of this drop will be reversed in future months. Nonetheless there had been a trend of declining participation rates among both white and black women even prior to the November plunge. This suggests that there is a real issue of women losing access to jobs; although the December figures may show some reversal.

12.27pm: Speaking of keeping Congress back for Christmas, the next showdown over spending looms in the next two weeks when the last emergency funding bill runs out and the possibility of a government shotdown is back on the agenda.

The White House's budget director, Jacob Lew, has been telling journalists that Republicans are holding up the $900bn omnibus funding bill by insisting on tacking on legislation on abortion and the environment, as well as showing discomfort at the previous budget deal agreed in August.

12.40pm: Andy Kroll of Mother Jones magazine has sat down with a calculator and figured out that President Obama has averaged a fundraiser every five days so far this year, in preparation for "what's shaping up to be one of the most bruising, cash-drenched campaigns in history":

Obama is not on the money trail because he enjoys hotel ballrooms and posing for pictures with 1-percenters. The president's ramped-up fundraising efforts reflect the changing landscape of money in American politics, especially in the wake of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. Clinton and Bush II didn't have to worry about candidate-specific super-PACs and Karl Rove's shadowy Crossroads GPS outfit raising tens of millions of dollars to finance negative ads. And with the collapse of the presidential public financing system, which capped a candidate's spending, it's up to the candidates to rustle up as much private money as they can in the campaign arms race.

There's a very interesting comparison with the previous Clinton and Bush administrations: in the similar pre-election period, while Obama has held 69 fundraisers, Bush held 41 in 2003 and Clinton just 23 in 1995.

Saatchi's scathing portrait of the art world: 'Vulgar, Eurotrashy, masturbatory'

 

Charles Saatchi has launched an incendiary attack on the buyers and dealers who populate the art world. Photograph: James King for the Observer

Charles Saatchi, the most important British art collector of his generation, has launched an incendiary attack on the buyers, dealers and curators who populate the contemporary art world and concluded that many of them have little feeling for art and cannot tell a good artist from a bad one.

Writing in today's Guardian, Saatchi paints a scathing picture of the contemporary art world and says that being a buyer these days "is comprehensively and indisputably vulgar".

He says: "It is the sport of the Eurotrashy, hedgefundy, Hamptonites; of trendy oligarchs and oiligarchs; and of art dealers with masturbatory levels of self-regard." Saatchi described the Venice Biennale, scene of the world's biggest contemporary art jamboree, as a place where these people circulate "in a giddy round of glamour-filled socialising, from one swanky party to another".

"Do any of these people actually enjoy looking at art?" asks Saatchi. "Do they simply enjoy having easily recognised big-brand-name pictures, bought ostentatiously in auction rooms at eye-catching prices, to decorate their several homes, floating and otherwise, in an instant demonstration of drop-dead coolth and wealth? Their pleasure is to be found in having their lovely friends measuring the weight of their baubles, and being awestruck."

His comments will unquestionably cause waves in a world in which Saatchi has taken a pivotal role.

For some he is the less famous husband of Nigella Lawson but for the art world he is of immense importance. For 30 years he has been a voracious buyer of new art and was instrumental in the success of the Young British Artists movement, buying up the best of the likes of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin and exhibiting it at the groundbreaking Sensation show at the Royal Academy in 1997.

But Saatchi says he finds the new art world toe-curling. "My little dark secret is that I don't actually believe many people in the art world have much feeling for art and cannot tell a good artist from a weak one, until the artist has enjoyed the validation of others.

"Few people in contemporary art demonstrate much curiosity, and spend their days blathering on, rather than trying to work out why one artist is more interesting than another."

Many will be surprised at the ferocity of his opinions. The Turner-nominated artist Louise Wilson – half of the Wilson twins – said she did not recognise his characterisation of collectors. "Maybe Charles is upset because he is not longer the chief proponent of the vulgarity," she said. "There are more collectors out there as opposed to the late 80s and 90s when there was just one which is a good thing."

But she added: "Many artists and art works have now definitely become a brand in a sense and some people may well go 'I'll have a Koons and a Gucci.' You can see that happening in certain contexts so in a way he does raise some interesting observations."

The curator Norman Rosenthal said it was impossible to generalise.

"It is very difficult to make a good exhibition," he said, "and the real problem is the art world has become so huge. When Charles and I were younger and doing the world of art it used to be much easier to sort it all out."

Rosenthal said Saatchi had put on extremely good shows but also shows that were not so good "and I speak as a dear friend of Charles."

Rosenthal was speaking from Miami where most of the people Saatchi is talking about have gathered for the latest fair on the contemporary art calendar. Rosenthal admitted that if 95% of the art there were destroyed then it would be no great loss.

What effect Saatchi's intervention will have on a buoyant contemporary art market remains to be seen but Sarah Thornton, the author of Seven Days in the Art World, predicted it would change little.

"This is so disingenuous of Charles Saatchi because he is selling art to these people and he is their role model. I find it shocking that he would come out and say this because his gallery has become a showroom for upcoming auction lots."

Thornton said Saatchi had made many millions selling on much of his collection. "He is feeding the people he is condemning." She put his comments down to "misanthropy".

Saatchi has had a London gallery for contemporary art since 1985 in different locations including St John's Wood, County Hall and since 2008 the former Duke of York's HQ in Chelsea.

According to the Art Newspaper's survey, in 2009 and 2010 the most visited UK show was Van Gogh at the Royal Academy followed by five shows at the Saatchi.

In 2010, Saatchi said he wanted to leave the gallery and part of his collection to the nation. A spokeswoman said negotiations to make that happen were continuing.