Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Of course the Arab League wanted to postpone the Iraqi elections. Its faux concerns for the well-being of the voters didn't fool many, though. In the end, despite the worst efforts of the corrupt mouthpieces of the autocrats and the desperado acts of a deposed minority, the people spoke. Oh, to be sure, innocents were murdered and mutilated, and this may have pleased quite a few in the worldwide coalition of the unwilling who never wanted to see Iraq hold free elections, but there's no stopping the momentum now. The Shia and the Kurds who were denied democracy by Saddam, his stooges and accomplices cannot be pacified with food for oil or intimidated by thugs any longer. They are ready to rule.

And here's another very important lesson for all those who fought the liberation of Iraq: the opposition to yesterday's election was not about the injustice of a foreign occupation. If that had been the case, the Shia and the Kurds would have risen up and joined the fighting long ago, but they didn't. Those who are setting off the car bombs and assassinating doctors and conducting side-street massacres are a small minority of Ba'athists and Salafist fundamentalists aided and abetted by foreign terrorists and radical Islamists. They didn't want elections. Not yesterday, not ever. Postponing the poll, and thereby giving this mob a veto of the rights of 80 percent of the people of Iraq, would have been catastrophic. Oh, and another thing, the anti-war movement and all those who hope that the liberation of Iraq will fail should heed yesterday's Observer leader: "Even those angry at the way in which Britain went to war or at the subsequent prosecution of that war know that there is no moral equivalence between the occupying coalition and the forces of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the self-appointed al-Qaeda representative in Iraq who threatens to behead those attempting to vote."

So, today, let us give thanks to all those men and women — Iraqi, American, British, Italian, Polish — who gave their lives so that others might be able to create a decent society. Yesterday was a great day for democracy and, thankfully, another defeat for Islamism. Actually, things are looking up, despite what the mass media say. In October, the voters in Afghanistan refused to elect a bunch of fanatic theocrats to rule them and the Iraqis have done likewise. As an electoral movement, as a political process, Islamism is a total failure and we can only hope now that the long-suffering people of Iran will be allowed a fair election in which to vote out the mullahs who have blighted their lives and ruined their country. Bottom line: theocracy happens when democracy is denied.

But let's leave the last word to an Iraqi. It's that irrepressible blogger Hammorabi. Yesterday, he wrote: "The New Democratic Iraq Born! No more 99.99% in Iraq! This is the figure of the Arabs' dictators except Saddam! He used to get 100%! Surprisingly those who voted for the master of the mass graves are abstaining now!" Elated by the democratic elixer, Hammorabi was moved to compose the following:

Our voting is:
No to the terrorists!
No to the dictatorships!
No to hate and racism!
No to the fascists!

Excellent! Freedom is exhilarating. The people of Iraq will be tested many times in the coming months but there's no going back now.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 31 January 2005 at 12:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today we remember Mary Maloney who died just over four weeks ago. Our thoughts go out to those attending her memorial service later this morning. In memory of a mother, then, who is very much missed, here is Patrick Kavanagh's moving tribute to his beloved, departed mother.

In memory of my mother

I do not think of you lying in the wet clay
Of a Monaghan graveyard; I see
You walking down a lane among the poplars
On your way to the station, or happily

Going to second Mass on a summer Sunday —
You meet me and you say:
'Don't forget to see about the cattle' —
Among your earthiest words the angels stray.

And I think of you walking along a headland
Of green oats in June,
So full of repose, so rich with life —
And I see us meeting at the end of a town

On a fair day by accident, after
The bargains are all made and we can walk
Together through the shops and stalls and markets
Free in the oriental streets of thought.

O you are not lying in the wet clay,
For it is a harvest evening now and we
Are piling up the ricks against the moonlight
And you smile up at us — eternally.

Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967)

Born in Inniskeen, County Monaghan, Patrick Kavanagh was the son of a small farmer. He left school at thirteen, destined to work the "stony-grey soil" rather than write about it, but "I dabbled in verse," he said, "and it became my life." In 1936 his first book of verse, Ploughman and Other Poems, was published, and in 1938 he followed this up with The Green Fool, an autobiography. He spent the years of the Second World War in Dublin, where his epic poem The Great Hunger was published in 1942. Tarry Flynn, a novel about a small farmer who dreams of a life as a writer, appeared in 1948. When the Irish Times published a list of "'the nation's favourite poems" in 2000, ten of Patrick Kavanagh's works were in the first fifty.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 30 January 2005 at 8:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The London newspaper, The Independent, asked a number of prominent persons this question: "What is the legacy of the Holocaust?" Among those who contributed their opinions were, novelist Amos Oz, human rights campaigner Bianca Jagger, historian Sir Ian Kershaw, Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Iraqi writer Fuad al-Takarli and former Labour cabinet minister Tony Benn. Here's what he said:

"The most important lesson of the Holocaust is that fear provides a power structure for political leaders. Hitler portrayed the Jews as the enemy and used it to instil fear and gain power. George Bush evokes the fear of terrorism and becomes a more powerful leader. The important thing moving forward is to look at history and understand. Only by seeing how such things develop can we be sure such atrocities will not happen again."

We began the day here with the Irish president, Mary McAleese, using the occasion of the liberation of Auschwitz to slide Northern Ireland's Protestants into the Nazi league, and now the man who sidled up to Saddam is placing the US president in the Hitler category. What's the old lunatic smoking these days?

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 29 January 2005 at 6:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

The Republic of Ireland's president, Mary McAleese, said in a radio interview on Thursday that the Nazis had given "to their children an irrational hatred of Jews in the same way that people in Northern Ireland transmitted to their children an irrational hatred, for example, of Catholics..." For those of you unfamiliar with the code words of the ancient conflict, "people" here means Protestants.

Ooops! Although many Northern Irish Catholics have long disparagingly referred to the mainly Protestant-peopled police force as "Nazis", this colourful, colloquial term is regarded by students of the clan dialects as "sub-standard, regional". That one of the most celebrated members of the North's minority community, now comfortably ensconced in the republic's presidential residence in the salubrious settings of the Phoenix Park would, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, have reverted to the irrational lexis of her tribe is revealing, though. Faced with the gales of outrage that followed her slip of the tongue, Mrs McAleese took to the airwaves last night and issued this clarification: "What I said I undoubtedly said clumsily. I should have finished out the example and it would have been a much better interview had I done that. That was certainly my intention. It was never my intention going into it simply to blame one side of the community in Northern Ireland."

As embarrassed evasions go, this is quite good. Note the emphasis on style as opposed to substance. She said something "clumsily", and she would have given "a much better interview" if she had only completed her example. Over at the indispensable Slugger O'Toole, the commentators have been having a field day with the fallout from the presidential lapsus. Meanwhile, and further afield, the tremors resonating from the leaderene's misstep have been recorded on the outrage scale. Nasty. Very nasty.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When the world was disputing about how best to deal with Saddam Hussein along came Kenneth Pollack with The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq. In the heat of that venomous debate, Pollack presented a very coherent argument for military intervention to achieve disarmament and regime change. Now Pollack is back with The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America and again he's arguing for change but with the significant difference that he regards all the options available to the US as bad.

Still, the growing row about how best to deal with the mullahs does sound eerily familiar? You know: hawks calling for strikes to prevent an enemy from acquiring WMD, exiles providing intelligence about secret weapons programs and the Europeans demanding a diplomatic solution. And it's not only recently familiar; it's old familiar.

In Chapter 9, "Collision Course", Pollack looks back at the first Clinton administration's policy towards Iran called "Dual Containment", which was designed to "constrain Iran's ability to make trouble in the Middle East". However, America's Dual Containment ran smack up against Europe's policy towards Iran called "Critical Dialogue". Writes Pollack:

"The Critical Dialogue reflected a fundamentally different philosophy from the American approach... Europe's approach, or so its diplomats claimed, was to show Iran that there were rewards for acting as a good citizen of the world. Whether anyone believed this is just unclear. In practice, the Critical Dialogue was little more than a façade for European trade with Iran despite Iran's persistence in taking actions that Europe found distasteful or abhorrent."

Such "actions" included the death sentence against the author Salman Rushdie, the 1991 assassination of ex-Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar in Paris and the brutal murder by Iranian agents of four Kurdish dissidents at the Mykonos Restaurant in Berlin in September 1992. In the end, says Pollack:

"Dual Containment failed to change Iranian behaviour because it was a policy that relied only on sticks and, especially early on, rather small sticks at that. Critical Dialogue similarly failed (if it ever was truly meant to try to change Iranian behaviour) because it was a policy of nothing but enormous carrots that were provided regardless of what Iran did."

Talking of carrots and sticks, in yesterday's Guardian, Timothy Garton Ash was telling readers to "First know your donkey" in a piece subtitled "Ukraine is the right way to spread freedom, Iraq the wrong way." Referring to Iran, he wrote: "If another crisis of the west is to be avoided, Europe and America have to agree a joint approach, with more European sticks and more American carrots." That's right, more sticks, more carrots. And if the old diet and discipline don't work, what then? Sheaves of corn from Nebraska? Buckets of potatoes from Idaho? The Irish cudgel? The English truncheon? Maybe the donkey has a better memory than Timothy Garton Ash and it won't budge, just as it didn't budge a decade ago. What then?

AUSCHWITZ We have marked the week of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz here with a series of diary entries from those who chronicled what happened some six decades ago. To finish, then, this observation by Nella Last:

6 May 1945 "Last week I would not go to see the Belsen horror-camp pictures. I felt the ones in paper quite dreadful enough. They were shown again tonight, as requested by someone. I looked in such pity, marvelling how human beings could have clung to life: the poor survivors must have had both a good constitution and a great will to live. What kept them alive so long before they dropped as pitiful skeletons? Did their minds go first, I wonder, their reasoning leaving nothing but the shell to perish slowly, like a house left untenanted? Did their pitiful cries and prayers rise into the night to a God who seemed deaf and pitiless as their cruel jailers?"

Nella Last (1909-1966) was a housewife from Barrow in England. She started a diary in 1933 and continued it for almost 30 years. Her writing became part of the "Mass Observation Archive", a project set up to record "the voice of the people". She left a detailed account of her life, comprising over two million words, part of which the BBC has made available online as The War Diary of Nella Last.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 28 January 2005 at 6:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Naturally, the World Economic Forum in Davos has gone and gotten itself a blog. What self-respecting event/entity doesn't have one anymore? So, who's blogging Davos? Well, there's the very talented Rebecca MacKinnon who'll be moderating a panel on China and speaking on another panel on blogging. Yes, there's a Davos panel on blogging now! For the technically minded, it's worth noting that Davos posts will be equipped with del.icio.us tags and Technorati tags. What? Suffice it to say that these are two of the hottest developments in blogging right now. And of course there'll be webcasts of the main panel discussions.

BTW, Jim Fruchterman, the president of The Benetech Initiative is blogging Davos for the BBC and Eric Le Boucher is doing the Chroniques de Davos thing for Le Monde. Rainy Day prediction No. 582: blogging will lead to the establishment of a distinct class of news/opinion reporters/pundits who'll earn their living by following the global events calendar.

AUSCHWITZ Continuing our series of diary entries that mark the week of the liberation of Auschwitz, we turn today to this ominous note made by Victor Klemperer some four years before the full horrors of the concentration camps were revealed to the world:

21 May 1941 "Sonnenstein has long ceased to be the regional mental asylum. The SS is in charge. They have built a special crematorium. Those who are not wanted are taken up in a kind of police van. People here all call it 'the whispering coach'. Afterward the relatives receive the urn. Recently one family here received two urns at once. We now have pure Communism. But Communism murders more honestly."

Victor Klemperer (1881-1960) was the son of a rabbi. He studied in Munich, Geneva, Paris and Berlin, where he became a journalist. He taught at the University of Naples and served with distinction in the German army in the First World War. He was a professor of Romance Languages in Dresden until he was fired in 1935 as a result of Nazi race laws. Klemperer survived the Holocaust and lived in East Germany until his death. The first volume of his diaries (1933-45) was published in 1998 and the combined works provide a gripping, graphic account of life under Nazi rule.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 27 January 2005 at 6:08 AM | Permalink

Back at the beginning of 2001, Christopher Hitchens was tiring of politics so he decided to do some serious reading. With the vague idea of writing a reply to Alain de Botton's How Proust Can Change Your Life, he opted to tackle Marcel Proust properly. Just as he finished the project in early September his wife woke him up one morning — he was on the West Coast and she was in Washington — and told him to turn on the TV. The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City were burning.

Since that day, Christopher Hitchens has become the most prominent journalistic supporter of American military action against Islamic terrorism. Adored by the left until his "apostasy", he is now hated by those who once admired his elegant and incisive writing. In the current issue of The Atlantic, Hitchens talks to Daniel Smith in The Contrarian in Combat (subscription required). Here's an excerpt:

Staying with Iraq and your support of the war there, what about other regimes that clearly pose a risk to the United States? North Korea, for one. How do you apply the logic of regime change in Iraq to the rest of the world?

North Korea has threatened the invasion of South Korea; it's starving its own people to death; it's repeatedly caught sponsoring international terrorism; and it's obviously violating the Non-Proliferation Treaty. But North Korea has us in a stranglehold that Saddam didn't. We've let things get to the point where North Korea can —and might, given what we know of the nature of its regime — destroy the capital city of South Korea if we make a move against it. If we were an imperialist state we wouldn't give a shit about that. We'd just say, It's in our interest if the North Korean regime ceases to exist — too bad if South Korea ends up getting blown up. But we can't do that.

So essentially it's a military calculation?

Yes. The calculation made by the Administration — in my opinion, quite rightly —was that we're not going to let Saddam Hussein get to the point where he could say, like Kim Jong Il, "Come and get me if you'd like, but look what I've got." Of course, Saddam was continually trying to get into that position.

Christopher Hitchens there in The Atlantic in fighting form. His latest book is titled Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays.

AUSCHWITZ In this week in which we are remembering here the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz with diary entries from those dark days, we present an account from 1945 that captures the full horror of the "Final Solution". The diarist is Abel Herzberg:

22 March 1945 [Bergen-Belsen] "The weather affects the mood of the camp most profoundly. Had it not been such a gloriously fine spring day today, we would all be feeling as dejected as on our worst days.

Last night a transport of two thousand people arrived from Buchenwald concentration camp. The shouting, abusing, crying, taunting, groaning, cracking of the whips and thuds of the beatings could be heard throughout the night.

This morning behind Hut 16 we saw hundreds of corpses being dragged onto a heap and stripped of their clothing. They also removed the gold teeth from their mouths. Never has it been as bad as this. All day, the heap of emaciated, naked bodies was left lying in the sun. Their facial expressions are frightening. They seem to know what is being done to them."

Abel Herzberg (1893-1989) was the son of a broker of uncut diamonds and grew up in Amsterdam. During the First World War, he enrolled as a volunteer in the Dutch Army though he did not have Dutch citizenship. He qualified as a lawyer and played a prominent role in the Dutch Jewish community. After the German occupation of Holland in 1940, Herzberg, his wife and three children went into hiding, but were later arrested and deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Amazingly, the whole family survived. His concentration camp diary was published in English as Between Two Streams.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 26 January 2005 at 12:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It hasn't escaped your notice, of course, that the fascist "insurgents" in Iraq have taken a break from killing US troops. Their principal targets now are Iraqi election workers, candidates, local officials and police. What the Baathists and jihadists seek to prevent at all costs is a large turnout in Sunday's election. The very last thing they want is for the Iraqi people to take control of their own destiny. If the elections fail and a power vacuum ensues, those Iraqis who have put themselves on the front lines in an effort to build a decent society will be slaughtered like lambs. So, there's an awful lot at stake.

The desire for collapse in Iraq isn't confined to the terrorists, though. In a truly abysmal editorial, that once-respected journal of the American left, The Nation, embraces electoral failure. It's filled with this kind of sleight of tense: "As conditions deteriorated, it became harder for the Bush Administration to spin the upcoming poll to choose an Iraq National Assembly as a major step toward restoring security." Don't you love the word "poll" there with its trivial associations? It's disheartening to see The Nation trapped in such a rigid ideological corset. It's distressing to see it in denial and it's depressing to see that it's so dismissive of the reality in which Iraqis are literally dying to vote in a general election.

As the marvellous Iraq the Model blog has pointed out, what the fascists fear most is that the world will wake up one day and notice that what's happening in Iraq is not a war between Muslims and Western infidels, but one between reactionary Muslims with their suicide cults and progressive Muslims who want to bring their faith into the 21st century where the ballot and not the bullet will determine who governs. There's a life-and-death struggle going on now in the Muslim world and the first great battle in this ideological war takes place on Sunday in Iraq.

AUSCHWITZ: Continuing with our remembrance of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, we present another diary entry from the 1940s. This one conveys the slow strangulation of society that marked the first phase of the Nazi plan that eventually led to genocide. The diarist is Edith Velmans:

1 July 1942 [Holland] "New measures again. Not only are we not allowed to cycle any more, we are not allowed to ride the trams either. We have to be off the streets by eight, and we are not allowed inside non-Jewish homes. Shopping is restricted for us to the hours between three and five p.m. It's a mess. I've moved back home. I couldn't stay with the Fernandes' [non-Jewish friends] any more. I did have a wonderful time there. At my last meal with them last night, I read them a poem of thanks I had written. We were all so moved and depressed because of the new measures, and crying so hard about everything, that we ended up sobbing with laughter. It was a comical tragedy, really."

Edith Velmans (1925-) enjoyed a carefree life until the summer of 1942 when it became clear that her family's Jewish background might be fatal. She escaped the death camps by spending three years in hiding with a Christian family in the south of Holland. Her diary, published as Edith's Book in 1998, tells of how she survived the war, after which she became a psychologist specializing in gerontology. She immigrated to the United States in 1957.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 25 January 2005 at 7:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This is the week that marks the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, where the unthinkable took place and the modern benchmark for man's inhumanity to man was established. To be sure, the world has witnessed its fair share of horror these past six decades, but Auschwitz remains the great warning to us all as to what can happen when nationalism is combined with racism and power. It was this unholy trinity that enabled the logistics of the killing camps where human beings — millions of them — who did not meet the standards of the master race were reduced to ashes, but not before they had been humiliated, robbed, deported, terrorized, exploited and starved.

What was it like to experience the unimaginable? Rainy Day recommends If This Is a Man, Primo Levi's account of the time he spent as a prisoner at Auschwitz. After reading Levi, one understands why some people would want to deny the Holocaust. The wickedness involved defies comprehension and suggests that "civilization" is but a veneer, and a thin one at that.

For the rest of the week, in remembrance of the liberation of Auschwitz, Rainy Day will be presenting diary entries written during the Second World War by those who were either caught up in the Nazi murder machine or by those who oiled it. We begin with an example of the latter. Why? Well, in the last few years Germany has witnessed a return of a specious 1950s theory that presents the perpetrators as victims. Actually, in this revisionist scenario the enablers of Auschwitz are double victims, first of Hitler the Great Seducer, and secondly of the Allied air campaign that destroyed the supply chains that filled the railway cars that delivered the men, women and children from all over Europe to the death factories. For those Neo-Nazi members of the parliament of Saxony who, last Friday, sought to equate the bombing of Dresden with the Holocaust, here's a pertinent entry from the diary of Josef Goebbels:

4 December 1940 "Watch the newsreel with the Führer, who is very pleased with it. The shots of London burning make a particularly profound impression on him. He also takes careful note of the pessimistic opinions from the USA.

Nevertheless, he does not expect the immediate collapse of England and probably rightly. The ruling class there has now lost so much that it is bringing up its last reserves. By which he means not so much the City of London as the Jews who if we win will be hurled out of Europe, and Churchill, Eden, etc., who see their personal existences as dependent on the outcome of the war. Perhaps they will end up on the scaffold. We can expect little resistance to them from the masses at the moment. The English proletariat lives under such wretched conditions that a few extra privations will not cause it much discomfort. There will be no revolution, anyway, because the opportunity is lacking. England will thus survive through the winter. The Führer does not intend to mount any air-raids at Christmas. Churchill, in his madness, will do so, and then the English will be treated to revenge raids that will make their eyes pop."

Josef Goebbels (1897-1945) became an enthusiastic supporter of Hitler in the 1920s and edited the Nazi rag, V ölkische Freiheit. Ultimately, he was head of the Ministry of Propaganda and Popular Enlightenment. Vain, rabidly anti-Semitic and ruthlessly ambitious, he retained Hitler's confidence to the last. His diaries cover the years 1924 to 1945.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 24 January 2005 at 12:02 AM | Permalink

It's bedtime, so a tract on the decline of Italian film will have to wait for another day, but it will be delivered, never you fear. Meanwhile, the case for the prosecution presents Gente di Roma, the latest work from Ettore Scola. Your team had the misfortune to endure it last night and then fight biting winds and snow on the return trip from the cinema.

Just as James Joyce made it impossible for all Irish writers to novelize Dublin, so definitive and magisterial was his Ulysses, so Fellini's Roma seems to have dazzled Italian filmmakers to the cinematic potential of their capital. Note the word "Italian", there. After all, Peter Greenaway, who directed The Belly of An Architect, an unforgettable film about the Eternal City, was British. With Gente di Roma, however, Scola has attempted to repeat Fellini's trick and in doing so has achieved the impossible: a dull film about one of the world's greatest cities.

The wretched thing is a series of unconnected vignettes that attempts to say something, but for two of those present in the cinema last night, the pieces could not be fitted together in any way that made a semblance of sense. Granted, three of the bits work well, but the rest are so banal, so dull, so lifeless, that one has to wonder how this thing ever got released. Four thumbs down here. And so to bed and dreams of the next trip to Rome.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 23 January 2005 at 12:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Words of wisdom from Richard Ford's wonderful novel, The Sportswriter. Here is Frank Bascombe, the 38-year-old narrator:

"Why, you might ask, would a man give up a promising literary career — there were some good notices — to become a sportswriter? It's a good question. For now let me say only this: if sportswriting teaches you anything, and there is much truth to it as well as plenty of lies, it is that for your life to be worth anything you must sooner or later face the possibility of terrible, searing regret. Though you must also manage to avoid it or your life will be ruined. I believe I have done these two things. Faced down regret. Avoided ruin. And I am still here to tell about it."

Marvellous. Back in 1999, Sophie Majeski conducted this very readable interview with Richard Ford for Salon.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 22 January 2005 at 8:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

... Minsk, Pyongyang and Harare. The minions of the despots who control Iran, Burma, Cuba, Belarus, North Korea and Zimbabwe can spend as much time as they want combing yesterday's presidential inauguration speech for hidden signals, or they can note this sentence and report it, if they dare, to their rulers: "So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." There you have the Bush agenda.

Loved this line, by the way, with its nods towards the barbarity of 20th century fascism and the disgrace of 19th century colonialism: "Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave." Not, of course, that the 19th and 20th centuries are part of the past for everyone. In the Sudan, they're part of the daily horror.

The message delivered by President Bush yesterday was crystal clear: it is only through the expansion of democracy that security is possible, at home and abroad. In the near term, this means he's staying the course in Iraq. In the long term? Well, inaugural speeches are never very big on policy details so get ready for four memorable years.

Meanwhile, Davids Medienkritik has an excellent post on how one very cultivated German newspaper marked the inauguration. With an obituary for the president, no less. Charming. By the way, isn't it awfully sad to see Griel Marcus reduced to this?

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 21 January 2005 at 7:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Thomas Friedman, star columnist of the New York Times, is watching today's presidential inauguration from Paris, the capital of "the world's biggest blue state" — Europe. "This whole region is a rhapsody in blue," says Friedman and notes:

"Before Mr. Bush's re-election, the prevailing attitude in Europe was definitely: 'We're not anti-American. We're anti-Bush.' But now that the American people have voted to re-elect Mr. Bush, Europe has a problem maintaining this distinction. The logic of the Europeans' position is that they should now be anti-American, not just anti-Bush, but most Europeans don't seem to want to go there. They know America is more complex."

Really? Meanwhile, in "the ultimate red state", Iran, "many young people apparently hunger for Mr. Bush to remove their despotic leaders, the way he did in Iraq," writes Friedman:

"An Oxford student who had just returned from research in Iran told me that young Iranians were 'loving anything their government hates,' such as Mr. Bush, 'and hating anything their government loves.' Tehran is festooned in 'Down With America' graffiti, the student said, but when he tried to take pictures of it, the Iranian students he was with urged him not to. They said it was just put there by their government and was not how most Iranians felt."

Observations, there, by "An American in Paris". From New York to Paris to Teheran and now back in Washington, where there's disenchantment for the rhapsodic blues but hope for the ultimate reds:

"Dr Rice said that although things had not always gone as expected in Iraq, the decision to go to war was right, and that the world was better off with Saddam Hussein's removal from power. She argued that though no weapons of mass destruction were found after the war, the WMD threat was not the only justification for it."

As Norm said, when she's right... she's right.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 20 January 2005 at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

He didn't vote for George W. Bush. In fact, after much public agonizing, he voted for John Kerry and he's become an increasingly vociferous critic of the president's policies, particularly regarding Iraq, the deficit and the White House position on gay marriage. He is, of course, Andrew Sullivan. But "fair is fair" he says and here's his take on Bush II, which kicks off in style later today:

"Bush's real chance is in the Middle East. In Iraq, we are on the brink of a new era — either of democratic renewal or of catastrophic implosion. My bet is on renewal — simply because it is in the interests of the 80 percent of Iraqis who are Kurds or Shiites and because that 80 percent has a vast U.S. army to help it crush the resistance. In Afghanistan, we have the inklings of an Islamic democracy. On the West Bank, we actually may have a Palestinian leader who has democratic legitimacy and can negotiate a deal with Sharon. All these represent real achievements for Bush. Without the Afghan war, the West would still be beset by a terror factory and Afghans terrorized by theocratic fascists. Without Bush's steadfast support for Sharon, the Israeli leader would not have been able to make a move toward a secure peace. And without Bush's sane refusal to deal with the mobster, Arafat, we may never have been able to break the cycle of Palestinian terror and thuggery (we still may not). Without Bush and Blair, we would still be facing Saddam's brutal kleptocracy, enabled by a corrupt U.N., and the threat of an end to sanctions and a possible terrorist-WMD alliance. If Bush manages to nudge these hopeful developments to a more peaceful and democratic solution, then he will have pulled off a feat almost rivaling Reagan's."

Andrew Sullivan, there, eloquent, passionate and fair. The excerpt is from A Case for Hope? Bush's Second Term, which appeared in The Sunday Times on 15 January.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on at 7:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mitteleuropa was shaken out of its hibernal torpor last Friday morning when news came of the murder of Rudolph Moshammer, an eccentric Munich fashion designer famed more for his wig and pet dog Daisy than for his couture. Before the day was down, the crisp Bavarian air was filled with salacious rumour about Mosi's penchants. Before another day was down, a suspect had been arrested and he quickly confessed to the killing. In his defence, Herisch A. claimed that Daisy's owner had offered him €2,000 for sex and then refused to pay upon conclusion. The dispute was resolved, fatally for Mosi, with a telephone cable.

In Munich, the murder of Moshammer has had the impact of a meteorite slamming into the city and the local hearsay industry has been working three shifts to keep up with the public appetite for kitsch and spice. Bloggers are getting in on the act as well. Minga is exemplary in its coverage. It had the scoop on Mosi being buried in a glass coffin and then had to watch Bild, the country's most popular scandal sheet, steal the story. Meanwhile, ToytownMunich has been getting bitchy comments about Moshammer and his ways. A sample:

fredrich: I remember something quite extrodinary about Moshammer — the fact that he tried to pick me up outside Movenpick (next to the BMW showroom.) I am now 17 years old and this happened when I was 13 and a half! This filthy old man offered me 50 euro to touch him and play with his "little shnitzle" as he put it. This is not a joke. I wish the good people of Munich would come to realize what a sick man he was.

Gary G: And that was back when 50 euros was a lot of money. What a generous and thoughtful man he must have been.

Anonymous: There was no Euro in 2001.

mini: well I actually do not like this guy at all. Last year I was in his shop because I wanted to buy a tie for my hubby. I had someone advise me on what tie to buy and when it came to paying, on second thought I did not want to put the tie on my credit card because hubby sees the bill and I did not want him to know how much his present had cost. So I asked for the tie to be held for me for 5 mins while I went to the bank machine to get the cash out and suddenly Moshammer shoots up from his seat like some nasty insect from outa space and says I need to leave a deposit. I said no, I would be back in 5 mins. So he had a big tirade about these bloody Americans always coming in his shop and not buying and I said well, if you talk to me like that I sure won't buy anything. And he says you wouldn't have done anyway you are American. I asked: don't you like Americans. And he said no. I said: I can't do anything about my nationality and that is not very nice of him. And he said he was tired of Americans and just to leave his shop. This left a very bad taste in my mouth and ever since then, I do not believe any of his "nicey-kindy" image he tries to put on in public. I think he only does it for show. Someone who is that racist and nasty cannot be kind at heart, no way, no chance.

Anonymous: Harsh but fair, Mosi 1 America 0.

Alex: Was he like Germany's version of a Michael Jackson. A freak but loved by many?

So farewell, then, Rudolph Moshammer. We will miss your gaudy outfits. In your native dialect, with its bizarre homage to Catalonia's greatest architect, you were "a Gaudi". A bird of paradise and a colourful dog, you were as well. Winter days will be duller without you. RIP.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 19 January 2005 at 7:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Yesterday's posting on Bush II prompted Rainy Day reader Barbara Previdi to ask what political experience or academic qualifications your blogger has that allows him to pronounce on US policy. The answer is none. Which reminds me of the anecdote about Pauline Kael, the great film critic of the New Yorker magazine. When asked how she could judge films without ever having made one, she'd answer: "You don't have to lay an egg to know if it tastes good." Declaration of interest: Rainy Day has a controlling share in seven hens.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 18 January 2005 at 7:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Liked this bit: "We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 elections," President George W. Bush said in an interview which appeared in yesterday's Washington Post. "The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me." Hello, what's that noise in the background? Could it be the gnashing of teeth in the blue states and in the capitals of Old Europe? Sure sounds like it. And here's a sentence that must have had the gargantuan propagandist Michael Moore and the payola blogger Daily Kos chewing their plush carpets: "It's important for people to know that I'm the president of everybody." It is this simplicity and certainty that sends Bush haters into paroxysms of rage but they shouldn't forget that 61 million voters liked his style when the "accountability moment" arrived.

Favourite part of the WaPo interview? Here goes: "As for perhaps the most notorious terrorist, Osama bin Laden, the administration has so far been unsuccessful in its attempt to locate the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Asked why, Bush said, 'Because he's hiding.' " In the last three years, millions of paragraphs have been written about bin Laden, his whereabouts, his strategies and his targets, but Bush summed it up neatly in three words. The fact is that the jihadist who would wage a victorious war on the infidel is now confined to a burrow and there he'll have to stay for the rest of his days.

So what can we expect during Bush II? Lots of resolve and seriousness of purpose is the forecast here. This means the president will not subject his decisions to any kind of "global test" as proposed by John Kerry and neither will he be swayed by opinion polls. Iran and North Korea will be the great challenges. Preventing the malevolent mullahs getting their hands on nuclear weapons and stopping the crazy Kim Jong Il from deploying his would be daunting tasks at the best of times but they'll be made all the more difficult because Bush will have to take them on in the face of hysterical opposition from Europe, the UN, the global media and his own foreign policy elites. It won't be easy, but what George W. Bush has in his favour is that his opponents constantly underestimate him. That's why he's running a superpower and they're not.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 17 January 2005 at 7:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Of warnings there was no shortage. Still, the Irish taxpayer should have been told about the lampposts and the manholes. "Each lamppost could be a Wi-Fi peer-to-peer station," said the glamorous visionary. And the manholes? They're spaced at regular intervals throughout a city and could be used for — well, something, he added. With the public footing the bill, it was easy for Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab to go on like that. Now, however, the well has run dry and the same people who were duped into funding the excesses will have to pay for picking up the pieces.

Had you bothered to visit the grandiosely named Media Lab Europe anytime since Christmas, you would have noticed that the "Latest news" section of the homepage was looking decidedly old. Heading up the "breaking-news" list is "Media Lab Europe Teams with Amsterdam New Media Institute, 23 November 2004" and "Google Founders Visit High-Profile Research Facility, Media Lab Europe, 6 October 2004". Bit behind the curve, that, for an entity that boasts itself to be "Leveraging the innovative and entrepreneurial operating model of the world renowned MIT Media Lab".

There was a very good reason why the European scion of fabled MIT was so lethargic with updating its homepage: it was broke. On Friday came the grim announcement that the flagship digital research institute set up in Dublin by the Irish state at a cost of €35 million, was closing after just five years in operation with the loss of 50 research and administration jobs and an unknown number of others in institutions engaged in collaborative work with the lab. Ooops.

So why did it go pear shaped? Put simply: inflated egos on both sides of the Atlantic. The Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern loved the project from day one, despite being warned about the weakness of the business model, and with Negroponte not having to worry about developing commercial products there was no need to care unduly about the bottom line. The taxation pit is, as we know, bottomless. "Negroponte: Tough Times? Go Crazy" was the headline on Karlin Lillington's article in Wired News on 2 October 2003. How crazy? Intimate interfaces crazy.

"A major current theme at Media Lab Europe is Intimate Interfaces: bringing together inter-modal interfaces, biometric sensing, and rich representations to create intimate and personal connections with and through new technologies." Er, yes.

How embarrassing is this for Ireland, which wishes to establish itself at the research end of the IT business? Very. MediaLab Europe was the anchor tenant of the government's "Digital Hub" in the run-down Liberties area of Dublin and the closure is very bad news, and more unpleasant headlines may be on the way. The hub has attracted some 40 companies but half of these are involved in educational software projects and, as we know, the bloom is long gone off the e-learning rose.

Ireland has to focus on R&D if it wants to keep pace with its IT competitors but that does not mean throwing prudence out the window when those slick manhole salesmen come to town. Could this be another case for the lawyers? You know: a tribunal on the misue of public monies?

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 16 January 2005 at 9:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A search of http://search.ebay.com/running+shoes returns 2,587 items, including "Dolce & Gabbana Running Shoes Italy New sz.41 for Men". Yours for $112.50, sir. And here's a pair of "Brand new ladies Reebok RB Flyer running shoes". Only GBP 9.99 to you, madam. And for all those on a tight budget, we have "Reebok DMX 10 Size 7 Running Shoes With BOX" costing a mere $0.99. By the way, if you have time on your hands this year, there's great fun to be had by entering "http://search.ebay.com/x+y", where "x" and "y" are the products of your boundless imagination. Now I'm off for the first major run of the year. Can't imagine that I'll manage an hour but that's the plan. Here goes!

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 15 January 2005 at 8:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This week's Madame Defarge Award nominee is Seumas Milne, The Guardian's in-house insurgent. "This election could plunge Iraq further into the abyss" said the headline on his egregious apologia for tyranny and terror yesterday. "Rigged polls held under foreign occupation have a notorious pedigree," goes the subhead. An excerpt:

"But most crucially of all, whatever the turnout and relative votes for the different lists, the result cannot and will not reflect the popular will over the most important issue facing the country: the occupation. Opinion polls show most Iraqis want foreign troops to leave now. But none of those with a chance of being elected — all compromised by their links to the current administration — supports such a demand. Without foreign troops, they would fear for their own skins."

Those unacquainted with Milne's history will think that his concern for democracy is genuine, but a reading of the record reveals otherwise. Back in December 2001, Milne the anti-imperialist was mourning civilians killed during "a coward's war":

"Champions of the war insist that such casualties are an unfortunate, but necessary, byproduct of a just campaign to root out global terror networks. They are a world apart, they argue, from the civilian victims of the attacks on the World Trade Centre because, in the case of the Afghan civilians, the US did not intend to kill them... what has been cruelly demonstrated is that the US and its camp followers are prepared to sacrifice thousands of innocents in a coward's war."

In July last year, however, Milne the militant was rationalizing civilian deaths during "a real war of liberation":

"The resistance war can of course be cruel, but the innocent deaths it has been responsible for pale next to the toll inflicted by the occupiers. Its political strength lies precisely in the fact that it has no programme except the expulsion of the occupying forces. Jack Straw said this week that the resistance was 'opposed to a free Iraq' — but its campaign is in fact Iraq's real war of liberation.

Did you get that? "Innocent deaths" are "cruel, but...". Have you ever read such a brazen defence of barbarism? The horrific bombings being carried out by Iraqi, Iranian and Syrian terrorists in and around Baghdad are the most vile of crimes with the victims overwhelmingly Iraqis trying to build a better society, but to Milne this cruelty can be fobbed off with a "but". And what did Milne's heroic "resistance" achieve yesterday? According to the BBC:

"In other violence, gunmen have killed six people and abducted a Turkish businessman in an ambush outside a Baghdad hotel.

Up to 10 gunmen opened fire on a minibus that had come to pick up the businessman — identified as Abdulkadir Tanrikulu — from the Bakhan Hotel.

The dead were local employees of Mr Tanrikulu who had come to collect him in the minibus."

Yes, Seumas Milne is worthy of The Guardian and worthy of the Rainy Day Madame Defarge Award.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 14 January 2005 at 7:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lots of doctors use the iPod. So what? Lots of dentists do, too. No, the thing is that doctors are using the iPod in their work. Managing medical images is what they're doing with the portable music player. Such images are vital in diagnosing everything from heart disease to cancer and are critical for research, but they're big and storing them is a pain. Enter the iPod. "I never have enough space on my disk, no matter how big my disk is — I always need more space," said Osman Ratib, vice chairman of radiologic services at UCLA. "One day I realized, I have an iPod that has 40GB of storage on it. It's twice as big as my disk on my laptop, and I'm using only 10 percent of it for my music. So why don't I use it as a hard disk for storing medical images?"

All he needed was a program that would store and manipulate the images on the iPod in the way that iTunes handles music files so Ratib sat down with Antoine Rossett, a Swiss radiologist, and together they wrote the open-source software OsiriX. Now it's news.

The Radiological Society of North America has just published "iPod Helps Radiologists Manage Medical Images" and eWEEK has picked up on the story. Now, who was it that said the iPod is just a toy? What next? The iPod in the cow byre? In the cockpit? In the classroom (been there!)? In the White House (done that!)? On the moon?

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 13 January 2005 at 7:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mark Steyn was in mighty form in The Australian at the weekend. Pointing out that the German Formula 1 racing driver Michael Schumacher had donated $10 million to help the victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami, Steyn noted, "For purposes of comparison, Herr Schumacher's donation is the same as that of oil-rich Kuwait. As for even oil-richer Iran, its Government has earmarked $627,000 for disaster relief." And what were the geographical limits of the tsunami? Why, the Muslim world, from Sumatra to Somalia. As Steyn observed, Indonesia, the hardest-hit country is the world's most populous Muslim nation, and the most damaged part of that country is the one province living under sharia:

But, as usual, when disaster strikes it's the Great Satan and his various Little Satans who leap to respond. In the decade before September 11, the US military functioned, more or less exclusively, as a Muslim rapid reaction force — coming to the aid of Kuwaiti Muslims, Bosnian Muslims, Somali Muslims and Albanian Muslims. Since then, with the help of its Anglo-Australian allies, it's liberated 50 million Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq.

That's not how the West's anti-war movements see it. I found myself behind a car the other day bearing the bumper sticker, "War Is Costly. Peace Is Priceless" — which is standard progressive generic autopilot boilerplate, that somehow waging war and doing good are mutually exclusive. But you can't help noticing that when disaster strikes, it's the warmongers who are also the compassion-mongers. Of the top six donor nations to tsunami relief, four are members of George W. Bush's reviled "coalition of the willing".

Mark Steyn's "The Coalition of the Giving" should make one weep but, given the psychological state of the Muslim world, unless you have a heart of stone it will make you laugh. Loved this bit about Hilmy Bakar Almascaty, spokesman for the Islamic Defender Front, who warned the Australian charity "Youth Off the Streets" that its plan to open homes for 35,000 Indonesian orphans was all very well, but on no account was it to try converting Muslim children. Says Steyn, "Jeez, man, would it kill you once in a while just to send a box of chocolates and a card saying 'Thank you, you infidel sons of whores and pigs', and leave it at that?" Priceless. Meanwhile, the invaluable Middle East Media Research Institute offers excerpts from the Arab press centering on "Conspiracy Theories Surrounding the Tsunami: It was a Punishment from Allah for Celebrating Christmas and Other Sins; It was Caused by the U.S., Israel, India." Yes, friends, it's a sad, mad, bad world out there but we gotta roll up our sleeves and help.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 12 January 2005 at 6:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Gore Vidal, wit, essayist, playwright, historian, author, provocateur, gay icon, would-be-senator and former resident of Ravello on the Amalfi Coast... Anyway, Lincoln: A Novel is numbered among the celebrated works of the great Gore Vidal so who better then to assess C. A. Tripp's much-discussed, hotly-disputed new book, The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln? In Vanity Fair, Vidal ponders the big question: Was Lincoln Bisexual? It's full of good bits, especially this one:

"The young Lincoln had a love affair with a handsome youth and store owner, Joshua Speed, in Springfield, Illinois. They shared a bed for four years, not necessarily, in those frontier days, the sign of a smoking gun — only messy male housekeeping. Nevertheless, four years is a long time to be fairly uncomfortable."

The peerless, wicked Gore Vidal there. He rounds off the piece with an observation filled with admiration and acidity: "Finally, without this great ethical Lincoln there would be no United States and despite our current divisions, we should be forever grateful not only to him, but of course to his Creator, who, on our behalf, brought him to an early puberty; thus, making our restored Union God's country." Well worth a read, then, Vidal's Was Lincoln Bisexual?

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 11 January 2005 at 7:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

As the year 2004 transitioned into 2005, Rainy Day was "off the air", as it were, for personal reasons. Anyway, during the night when the old went out and the new slipped in, a truly bizarre incident took place in Dublin's Fairview Park: Sean Russell was beheaded. Given that the world's media was focussed on the Indian Ocean tsunami catastrophe at the time, the matter received very little attention, which was a pity, in our opinion, as this was a political event with international ramifications.

So, who was Sean Russell? Well, he was a leader of a nationalist-terrorist-fascist organization called the Irish Republican Army, better known as the IRA. Born in 1901, he died in a German U-Boat 100 miles off the coast of Ireland in 1940. Eh? Hold on a minute. If he died 65 years ago, how could he have been beheaded this year? Simple. It was a statue of Sean Russell that was decapitated. Wow! That's pretty grotesque. Yes, it is. But then so is Irish politics.

BACKGROUNDER: when dark clouds were gathering over Europe in the 1930s, Sean Russell perceived not great danger but great opportunity. Irish nationalists saw in Hitler, just as they had seen in the French tyrant Napoleon 130 years earlier, the island's saviour. According to the IRA worldview, the destruction of Great Britain would lead to the liberation of Ireland and the creation of an Irish-speaking, Catholic nation peopled with epic poets, quaint storytellers, harp-playing maidens and sturdy hurley wielders. With this goal in mind, Sean Russell set off to Berlin to make his pact with the devil. Having overseen a campaign of assassination and sabotage in England, he felt well qualified for greater things. Thankfully, he died before he was able to achieve any of his aims.

Despite his bloodstained record and his perverted visions, Russell did not want for admirers in his homeland, and so it came to pass that in 1951, which would be six years after the full scale of Nazi barbarity became known to the world, a statue of Russell was commissioned and placed in one of Dublin's most public spaces. It immediately became a focal point for IRA groupies. In fact, two years ago, the Sinn Fein/IRA Member of the European Parliament, Mary Lou McDonald, chose the location of the memorial for the delivery of a panegyric to the Russellian dream, er, nightmare.

Here's a suggestion: The next time Ms McDonald is down Strasbourg way, enjoying her fat EU salary, protesting the liberation of Iraq and supping with her anti-imperialist allies, someone should take the time to give her a copy of the address delivered by the late W.G. Sebald at the opening of the House of Literature in Stuttgart in 2001. The writer devoted his speech to one of the sons of the region, Friedrich Hölderlin, the great lyric poet. Saying that some connections cannot be explained by causal logic, Sebald continued:

"For instance, the connection between the former princely residence of Stuttgart, later an industrial city, and the French town of Tulle, which is built on seven hills — 'Elle a des prétentions, cette ville,' a lady living there wrote to me some time ago, 'That town has grand ideas of itself' — between Stuttgart, then, and Tulle, in the Corrèze region, through which Hölderlin passed on his way to Bordeux, and where on 9 June 1944, exactly three weeks after I first saw the light of day, in the Seefeld house in Wertach, and almost exactly a hundred and one years to the day after Hölderlin's death, the entire male population of the town was driven together in the grounds of an armaments factory by the SS Das Reich division, intent on retribution. Ninety-nine of them, men of all ages, were hanged from the lampposts and balconies of the Souilhac quarter in the course of that dark day, which still overshadows the memories of the town of Tulle. The rest were deported to forced-labour camps and extermination camps, to Natzweiler, Flossenburg, and Mauthausen, where many were worked to death in the quarries."

If Sean Russell and his ilk had their way, Ireland would have become a willing part of this totalitarian death machine. He failed and they failed and the machine was stopped, and the gangster movement to which Mary Lou McDonald belongs and which honours the memory of this wretched Nazi stooge will fail as well. Still, it would be comforting if the voters in the north and south of Ireland who have, to their shame and our horror, elected Sinn Fein/IRA members to their respective assemblies would admit the error of their ways as soon as possible so that democracy can be restored to the island. Until then, we must depend on the statue desecrators to remind the nation about choices and consequences.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 10 January 2005 at 7:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

It was the day of the Rays, yesterday. First up was "Ray" the film, in which Jamie Foxx plays Ray Charles, the R&B musician who died last year aged 73. Foxx will surely get a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his excellent performance, but the film spends far too much of its time dealing with the artist's repetitive drug excesses. Interestingly, the usually hyper-critical David Denby of The New Yorker called the movie a "vibrantly intelligent and tough-minded bio-pic." Here's his conclusion:

"An actor's most expressive tool is his eyes, but Foxx acts behind dark glasses or with his eyes shut, and he doesn't shrink from an element of the grotesque in Charles's stiff-gaited walk. Sometimes, when his Charles gets angry, people recoil for a second; they need a moment's reassurance that he's still human. There's something demonic about this guy, an insatiable energy that fuelled his personal life as well as such innovations as his insistence on driving soul and country sounds into the beats of R. & B. For many older people in the audience, the sound of Ray Charles's impassioned music is inseparable from memories of dating, dancing, lovemaking, and loss. 'Ray' has the bold good grace to honor the enraptured kids they once were and the sterner but still hungry grownups they have become."

David Denby in suspiciously sentimental mood, there, about a film that delivers a lot, but deserves to be criticized for not making up its mind about what it wants to say. No such criticism can be leveled at Ray Wylie Hubbard, however. Hubbard is of the elder statesman of Texan singer-songwriters. Over the course of four decades, he has perfected a brand of contemporary folk spiced with blues, rock and country. His songs are filled with, well, life:

The Last Younger Son

My last name is Younger; I am the last Younger son
The name I was given was Luke 15:21
Three days of thunder three days of rain
I come to be in this world with a number and a name.

My last name is Younger; I am the last Younger son
I stand as a witness to the things I have done
I have caused sorrow yet I too have been pained
You cannot be in this world and not get stained.

As with Ray Charles Robinson, Ray Wylie Hubbard paid his dues to the wild life and the substances that fueled it, but he woke up one morning 15 years ago and took a hard look at what he wanted to do with the rest of his days. The years of rocking, rolling and raving were over and the newly clean and sober Hubbard set about cementing his position as the patriarch of the booming young Texas and Oklahoma music movement.

On the day of the Rays, a day when the sun shone, we rounded things off listening to Ray Wylie Hubbard "Live at Cibalo Creek Country Club". It's a hard-to-find recording, unlike "Growl".

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 9 January 2005 at 9:15 AM | Permalink

Among the many passings of 2004 lamented here, the loss of John Peel, the BBC Radio 1 legend, was particularly keenly felt. He was inspirational in that he never seemed to reach that dread point where one says, "Ah, well, I'm too old for that." In John Peel's case, the years may have kept rolling by but the man's quest for the new, the innovative, the original was never ending.

In memory of John Peel, Radio.plus.com is offering free legal downloads of several hundred songs that were featured on his show since 1992. Commendably, all have been made available by the bands or the record labels themselves.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 8 January 2005 at 12:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A tidal wave of compassion is bearing down on Sri Lanka. A guy on the radio is saying that his travel company will fly people from Ireland to the Indian Ocean island to help the victims of the tsunami. You pony up 850 euros for the flight and he'll take care of the accommodation. Skills required? None. The hungry have to be fed, the homeless housed and the grieving counselled. So what if you don't understand the dialect or can't put a splint on a broken leg? Love conquers all. Right?

All this reminds me of an anecdote related by Kevin Jones of The Anglican Malaria Project which, by the way, provides low-cost, effective malaria intervention in Southern Africa and has achieved a ten-fold reduction in mortality through its work. Anyway, he recently came across an indignant posting by a guy who wished to offer his labour to the tsunami victims but wanted food and housing in return and was upset that no one would take up his offer. It prompted Jones to recall his days doing hurricane relief work along the Mississippi Gulf coast:

"The first people to arrive were the Red Cross, who set up emergency clinics. Next were the teams of Mennonite carpenters who doubled as electricians and plumbers. They made sure the Red Cross shelters were wired, that the timbers were shored up, the ditches bridged so people could get to the clinics, etc. none of these first two groups put any additional requirement on the infrastructure; the Mennonite women cooked for themselves and, sometimes, the Red Cross, bringing their own food, water and stoves. Next were the southern Baptists with their large 18 wheeler tractor trailers converted into kitchens, to feed the people who were without food or electricity. Again, none of the first three groups made any demands on the disabled infrastructure. Exactly the last person, the very last person anyone would have wanted to see in that situation (and the tsunami is of course, far worse) is a willing, skill less volunteer who needs to be fed and housed and managed. The wordless teamwork between the Red Cross and the Mennonites was a beautiful thing to behold, few words, a few nods and gestures and people knew what to do and got to work. The contrast between that and demanding to be taken care of so you can be helpful is, I hope, clear."

What a marvellous story. You can picture the various teams working seamlessly together, systematically rebuilding and restoring, cooking and caring. You can also picture the opposite: gangs of well-intentioned people, totally unfamiliar with the local language and customs standing around, getting in the way and waiting for someone to tell them what to do. Want to really help? Now and in the future? Learn a skill that could be put to use helping victims of natural disasters. There's still time. Meanwhile, here are some links to organizations working to help the victims. Check out the skills sets they require: The International Red Cross and Red Crescent, Doctors Without Borders and UNICEF .

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 7 January 2005 at 1:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the space of two pages yesterday, Ireland's most popular daily newspaper, the Irish Independent, provided a classic display of the schizophrenia that permeates the island's media. On page 10, there was a large photo of the inside of a US helicopter attributed to "Reuters/Tyler J Clements" and carrying the caption "Air crewman Matt Gardner from Phoenix, Arizona holds an IV bottle for an ill Indonesian woman during a humanitarian aid mission to Aceh in Sumatra, Indonesia yesterday in the wake of the tsunami."

On page 12, the leader page, a column by Mary Kenny, entitled "Disaster brings forth an outpouring of generosity", there was a larger image, a cartoon by "Dave Browne". Again, the inside of a helicopter featured, but this time the figure was an ugly caricature of George W. Bush in fighter pilot gear, holding a huge missile inscribed "U.S.A.F" in one hand and cradling a gigantic carrot with the other. The contents of the speech balloon read: "Remind me... Is this Sumatra or Fallujah?" As Ms Kenny's column makes no reference to the US or its president, the placing of the crude cartoon is all the more bewildering. The closest Kenny gets to matters political is her very human observation: "Unlike 9/11, there are no villains. It is simply an act of nature, before whose power we are helpless. That is one lesson we may take from it: however much we 'plan' our lives, when nature moves, we are its playthings."

Fattened by the by-products of the inward investment, much of it from the US, that has enriched the island, the local media reflect the confused nature of contemporary Ireland, loving and despising its new materialist reality while comforting itself with a weird kind of nationalist idealism tinged with green envy and hatred. The national broadcaster, RTE, best exemplifies this internal conflict. Increasingly uncritical of Sinn Fein/IRA apologists who finesse murder and robbery, it abandons all pretence of objectivity when it comes to the USA. In the RTE worldview, all tragedy can be traced to social deprivation, caused preferably by the USA. What the ideologues don't get is that an idealized UN cannot bring back the tsunami dead and "society" cannot lessen this kind of loss. It must gall quite a few in RTE and at the Irish Independent to see so many of their beloved multilateral institutions occupying themselves issuing press releases while the likes of air crewman Matt Gardner from Phoenix, Arizona, go about the business of saving lives. What was it that the great Dr Johnson said?

"How small of all that human hearts endure
That part which laws or kings can cure"

Rainy Day has e-mailed the Irish Independent requesting an explanation for the offensive cartoon that appeared on its leader page yesterday.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 6 January 2005 at 1:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Your correspondent has returned to his rural base after spending a most enjoyable evening in the White House. No, not the one on Pennsylvania Avenue. It's the poetic public house on the corner of O'Connell Street and Glentworth Street in Limerick City we're talking about here. This particular premises has much to recommend it but there's one aspect that's especially noteworthy in these days of omnipresent Premiership football and non-stop Sky News: it does not have a television. Conversation, unadulterated, is what the place encourages. And what splendid talk we had. Guest of honour for the occasion was the charming Dervala (late of Limerick and currently of New York City), the proprietoress of that most literate of blogs, dervala.net. Limerick residents Mary and Tony O'Brien added the necessary salt, pepper and perspective to our ramblings.

We all raised our glasses to Dervela for helping staff the Manhattan Samaritan phone lines on Christmas Day. While the rest of us were tucking into turkey and trifle she was listening to the despair of those who have no one to talk to on the day when so many are surrounded by family and friends. For those who are alone and lonely, that anonymous, comforting voice on the other end of the line might be one thing that prevents them from ending it all, there and then.

Inevitably, our conversation led to the topic of suicide. Why "inevitably"? Well, suicide is now the most common cause of death among 15- to 24-year-olds in Ireland. And, according to the National Suicide Review Group, the highest rate of suicide over the past five years has been among young men. To put this in context, the majority of those at our table were able to cite personal experience of this alarming statistic through relationship to someone who had taken his life. Coincidentally, in Monday's Irish Times, Marese McDonagh wrote about the tiny village of Dromahair in County Leitrim, where three families have been affected by suicide. McDonagh told of seven young people who had killed themselves; an astounding figure, given that the population of the county is just 26,000. In a praiseworthy move, the Dromahair families are organizing a conference entitled "Suicide: Prevention and Awareness", which will be held at the Abbey Manor Hotel in the village on 18 and 19 February. Among the speakers will be Dr John Connolly, secretary of the Irish Association of Suicidology and the broadcaster Gareth O'Callaghan, who has written a book, A Day Called Hope, about his battle with depression.

Was our evening in the White House dismal? No way. It's just that all of us who have been spared depression and who can laugh and enjoy an evening in the White House should be prepared to reach out to those who suffer its horrors. Just as Dervala does.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 5 January 2005 at 2:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Favourite Xmas pressie? It would be invidious to pick one, but My Trade by Andrew Marr, a gift from the Rainy Day sister, is close to the top of the list. Subtitled "A short history of British journalism", the book provides a panoramic tour of the "trade" that has propelled Marr to his position as Political Editor of the BBC. Expect many excerpts from it here in the coming weeks.

Marr is particularly entertaining when it comes to answering the question: What is news? His search for a suitable definition takes him back as far as the 1680s and the emergence of the English newspaper. By the beginning of the 19th century, he say, the Observer was printing items that would make the front pages of the Sun today. An example from 18 January 1829 entitled "Extraordinary Investigation: or the Female Husband" concerned a "person known as James Allen, 42" who had been working for a Mr Crisp, a shipwright, when he was killed by a piece of falling timber. He was rushed to St. Thomas' Hospital where, the report continues:

"An examination took place, when, to the astonishment of all present, it was discovered that the deceased was of the female sex. Mary Allen, who had been married to the deceased for 21 years, on hearing of the accident, flew to the hospital and was present when the sex of the deceased was discovered, and was very evidently no less astonished than any of the others positively declaring that she had never before known that her husband was a woman. Both the coroner and the jury expressed their astonishment of so extraordinary a circumstance of two females living together as man and wife."

The report goes on to say that "James Allen" never seems to have had sex with Mary and was generally considered "of rather an ill temper" and would beat her "if she noticed a man particularly". The word "lesbian" does not appear notes Marr, who adds that today's reader would demand Mary's side of the story. In 1829, however, the age of the interviewing journalist equipped with shorthand had not yet arrived.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 4 January 2005 at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In the immediate aftermath of the South-East Asian tsunami, the first thing that struck me was how quickly the calamity dwarfed what appeared to be major concerns — terrorism, Iraq, the Ukraine and all the other "crises" that headline our daily news diet. So many people died in one day; many more than in _____ and even more than in ______ (Fill in the details yourself). It was a humbling experience, especially for all who felt that they were, that we are, the Masters of the Universe. The necessary lesson such vast loss of life hammers home is that we will all disappear one day, maybe not in one day like the victims of last week's killer waves, but vanish we surely will.

Such thoughts, not in the least morbid, by the way, bring to mind this passage from the Gospel of Luke:

13:1 Now there were some present at the same time who told him about the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices.
13:2 Jesus answered them, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered such things?
13:3 I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all perish in the same way.
13:4 Or those eighteen, on whom the tower in Siloam fell, and killed them; do you think that they were worse offenders than all the men who dwell in Jerusalem? 13:5 I tell you, no, but, unless you repent, you will all perish in the same way."

In other words, this disaster should prompt us, the spectators, the survivors, to think about how we live our lives. Whether we will to so is an issue for another day. Meanwhile, Suhit Anantula and a team of volunteers have set up The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog, and over at Wikipedia, a whole lot of bloggers have been contributing to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake page, supplying valuable tsunami information and pointing visitors to where they can donate to help the victims.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 3 January 2005 at 3:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)