Peter Nolan

MySpace.gov

Not just the Artic Monkeys but now the Israeli government is trying to get attention on MySpace, Salon.com reports. 

" According to its profile, Israel is a single female, 58 years old, a Taurus, who lives in Jerusalem. (When asked if Israel's close ties with the United States meant that she should perhaps be listed as "in a relationship," the young official demurred.)"

Saranga and other Israeli officials are proud of Israel's MySpace page and other nascent efforts to break into new media. They point to some early improvement in relations that have gone beyond American youth. "We were surprised by the kinds of people who wanted to be friends with Israel," one of them told me, mentioning that the blog sometimes receives visitors from Saudi Arabia and Iran. For a while, he said, Israel's bloggers were regularly conversing with someone from the United Arab Emirates, though eventually it became clear that he was only interested in trying to sell them real estate.

Sounds as if they've been having the same problems with comments as Neil Clark. 

Jean Buadrillard Did Not Die

I've often tended to share Ambrose Bierce's view of philosophy,  which he defined as "A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing. "

I'm reminded of it because today, comes the sad news that the post-modernist French philosopher of the "hyperreal" - Jean Baudrillard, has died. 

I wrote this commentary - Welcome to the Desert of the Theoretical - on one of his more recent books - "The Spirit of Terrorism" - just over two years ago. 

I subsequently read his magnum opus "The Gulf War Did Not Take Place" as well.   First written as a series of essays in the French communist party daily Humanite, it was overpoweringly silly.  He repeatedly mentioned Timosoara, the town where protests by minority Hungarians precipitated the downfall of the Romanian dictatorship in 1989, as an example of the misuse of hyperreality: his outraged tone hinted that he and the majority of Romanians might not share the same conception of reality.  In practise, this has always been the art of politics, to do what observers and opponents cannot understand.  In the words of Machiavelli, in chapter eighteen of the Prince:

Men in general judge more by their eyes than by their hands, because seeing is given to everyone, touching to few. Everyone sees how you appear, few touch what you are; and these few dare not oppose the opinion of many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them.

 

Georgeous George Meets Eloquent Eamon

On Friday 29 September, on The Late Late Show, the main evening chat show on Irish TV, editor, novelist and former Irish diplomat Eamon Delaney took on George Galloway MP, the former Labour MP who now presides over the well-oiled electoral machinery of the red-black alliance known as the Respect party. 

The first question that occured to me when I appeared on this was why would a politician, particularly one as controversial as Galloway, appear on a light-entertainment show?  The answer seems to lie in the interrogation skills of the presenter, RTE's Pat Kenny, or rather the lack of them.  I've seen shower-curtain mold that's more aggressive and lively.  Throughout, his manner was gentle and unconfrontational, as if coaxing a small child whose cat has just been run over by a lorry. 

Throughout, Galloway shows why he's the man who put the common in the House of Commons.    Dressed in a black shirt and sports jacket, open to his chest hair, he's crude, uncontrollably aggressive and snarling throughout.  He described Brown and Blair as "two cheeks of the same arse”, repeating the same metaphor, telling of meeting Tony Blair in the Commons toilet, of John Prescott “fiddling with his secretary’s drawers”, as if he's the Bernard Manning of the British left. 

Galloway got enthusiastic applause from much of the audience at certain points, when describing Bush and Blair as war criminals. 

While Galloway sat in the leftmost of three or more empty armchairs next to Kenny, Delaney was set up as an invited heckler - parked several rows back in the audience, without a microphone, left hardly visible and easy for Galloway to drown out.  He's invited into the discussion at 7:30 on the timer.  Galloway doesn't deign to answer – “I’ll speak through the chair. I wasn’t expecting this harangue”. – “you’re welcome to have a stand-up brawl”

“You were expecting an easy ride, were you? ...This isn’t Bagdhad!” Delaney responds at one point. 

Galloway asks “Where did you get that eejit?” and that it''s “shocking that an editor is so ignorant and ill-informed about these issues?”, even though he repeated a number of obvious, documented and well-covered lies.  “The Iraqis will fight you with their teeth if necessary…” - so why all the foreign suicide -bombers or only Sunni insurgents? 

“...when we were arming Saddam Hussein..." - Hence all those Russian tanks, and missiles, MiGs, French missiles, Mirage jets and nuclear reactors and  Chilean  cluster bombs, South African artillery, along with tens of billions of dollars of funding from the Saudis, Kuwaitis and the UAE.  Oh, and rice  from the US.  SIPRI figures show the US and UK contributions were in the order of 1% of Iraq's total arms imports, which leaves out their substantial domestic arms industry. 

The US and UK have killed more Iraqis  than Saddam managed.  Again, even tagging the coalition with the deaths of the suicide bombers,  death squads and head-choppers,  the Lancet's total doesn't match the  300,000 odd Shia mown down in the 1991 uprising, the same number of Kurds killed in the Anfal genocide and  probably the same number again  just of Iraqi casualties during the Iran-Iraq war, and perhaps three quarters of a million Iranians, still dying today from the after-effects of gas attacks.

“Bin Laden was equally armed and supported by  America" - although it's unclear why the Saudi construction billionaire channeling the funds of the oil sheiks would need CIA money, which he always denies taking and the Americans, according to the 9/11 Commission report,  have no evidence of paying.

A stronger and better-briefed chair would have challenged Galloway on these, but Kenny was unwilling and unable.  Delaney got some applause for continuing to challenge him and asking him if he expected an obedient audinece like the ones in Bagdhad. 

Galloway went on to describe Castro, whose biography he recently published, as the greatest third-world leader of the twentieth century: I would have thought that Gandhi might have topped anybody else's list. 

Galloway was probably never more puffed up with pride than when talking about his Talksport radio program in the UK, which he claims has 3 million regular listeners. 

I've rarely seen Galloway in action before, but I can imagine that I'd not find it too hard to take him on in debate.  On the evidence of this showing, his supposed eloquence consists of him being nothing more than being crude, rude and evasive. 
 

Bumps in the road

My apologies if posting is a little light over the next week or so.  I'm going through something of a busy period at work, I have to do some travelling and I'm also writing a profile cum interview of the man who is, by many accounts, the world's most influential columnist.  So, sorry to dissappoint all of you in my audience, that means you John, if posting isn't what it should be. 

The New New Republic

The New Republic has had an injection of capital and is beefing up its already considerable web presence.  Of all the American political opinion magazines, The National Interest, American Interest, Commentary, Nation, National Review and Weekly Standard, TNR is still the best-written and most open-minded. 

Along with articles on the web, the magazine has made a major push into blogging, The Plank, Open University and now even one for its editor, The Spine, written by the indomitable Martin Peretz.  According to the New York Times story by Katharine Seelye,

Mr. Peretz, 67, has himself become a blogger. He said he was “not enjoying it exactly,” but that he had found it addictive.

“When I used to see something irritating, I would typically call a friend,” he said. “Now I just go to the blog.” He said he is often surprised at how quickly readers will post a response. “It’s as if they’re waiting for something,” he said. “Then they say, ‘Ah, here he is. I’m going to pounce.’ ”