Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

According to this Reuters story, "Lebanon's Syrian-backed government collapsed Monday, piling more pressure on Damascus, already under fire from the United States and Israel." All well and good, but here's the kicker: "The news delighted thousands of flag-waving demonstrators who had defied an official ban to protest at Syrian domination of Lebanon. Banks, schools and businesses had closed after an opposition call for an anti-Syrian general strike."

Sound familiar? It was the blatant attempt to steal the Ukrainian election that led to last year's "orange revolution" and it now appears that the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on 14 February will be the catalyst that leads to the next uprising. Yesterday, for the first time since 1989, when the last major anti-Syrian protests took place, Lebanese of all ages and religious beliefs paraded their anger at the Syrian presence. On Saturday evening, a human chain with up to 20,000 participants lined the route from Place des Martyrs to the site where the fatal blast took place.

Despite the desperate acts of those who this morning slaughtered more than 110 young Iraqi men who wished to work to stabilize their society, the Middle East is changing before our very eyes and it's getting very, very lonely for the likes of Syria, which is unable to wean itself away from tyranny and terror. Time's not on its side, though and its friends are few. It hasn't got many in Lebanon now.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 28 February 2005 at 10:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's not the first novel that's the problem, writers say. It's the second. This item of lit folk wisdom was confirmed a few years ago when Alex Garland, author of the massively popular The Beach, produced The Tesseract, a truly wretched follow up that led to him having some kind of nervous breakdown. Those unfortunates, including myself, who bought it, are still trying to figure out what he was trying to say. Anyway, does the same "second rule" hold for entrepreneurshp? Well, let's see how Even Williams does with his latest project. Williams, 32, is the guy who helped found Pyra Labs, which allowed a zillion blogs to bloom, which he sold to Google two years ago for an undisclosed amount of stock. Talk about timing! Talk about a happy end!

With his new venture, Williams is betting that podcasting — the process of creating, organizing and listening to digital audio files — is going to be the next Blogger.com. How fired up is he about the idea? Here's an excerpt from his posting last Friday:

"Podcasting is going to be freakin' huge. I don't have time in this post, because it's 2am and I gotta be on stage at 8am, to give my pitch for why. But it's the same story as blogging (with several unique characteristics of its own), but in a whole new medium that is much bigger than people think. And it'll happen much, much faster. It's about personal media, time-shifting, and the long, long tail. And I love that shit. Amazing things are going to be created."

When Evens talks about a "whole new medium" there, he's referring, in part, to the ownership of MP3 players, and the numbers do tell a remarkable tale. Here's the introduction to the Pew Internet Project on iPods and MP3 players:

"We just got the results of the survey we took between January 13 and February 9 and for the first time asked a question to find out how many American adults have iPods or MP3 players. The answer is 11% —or more than 22 million of those who are age 18 and older. It's safe to say that there are several million more MP3 players owned in the teen world, but we did not survey teens in this poll."

It would be nice to know how many of these players are distributed a across the planet, wouldn't it? With Jupiter Research predicting US ownership to hit 45 million devices in 2005, we can assume a global spread of 100 million by 2010, and that's a conservative forecast. Wow! Seeing that music radio has degenerated into playlists of 100 songs, the time is right to take broadcasting out of the studios of the radio programmers and put it in the hands of the commuters. And that's just the beginning of what podcasting could do. Meanwhile, check out Odeo to get an idea of what Even Williams is up to.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on at 7:17 AM | Permalink

Images of candles and quill pens come to mind when one thinks of Britain's oldest Sunday newspaper, the Observer, but that's only half the picture. Behind the scenes, the new media savvy Guardian is hard at work and that means internet, lots of internet. Then there's the zeitgeist. Now that foxhunting has been outlawed, the young bucks who throng London's coffee houses are getting restless and their thoughts are turning to pamphleteering — the electronic kind. Not wishing to be left behind, the Observer revealed yesterday that it has a blog. Announcing the decision to get on board the departing train, Rafael Behr noted that the old Fleet Street verities are currently getting a right pasting from the citizen scribes: "The speed and brutal effectiveness with which they are held to account is already crossing over into the mainstream. Ultimately, it will change the way political and cultural debate is conducted." Indeed it will. And with the overthrow of Dan Rather and the expulsion of Eason Jordan clearly very much on his mind, Behr adds:

"Old media, meanwhile, historically see their relationship with power in adversarial terms. But they are also traditionally gatekeepers of information — much of which is now being shared peer-to-peer on the internet. That makes them increasingly look like accomplices of power.

In a world where people get their news on screen, a reputation for independence, accuracy, good judgment accrues to a brand, which can as easily be an individual at home in pyjamas as a bricks and mortar institution. The good news for old media is that their brands are as powerful online as off. People still prefer bbcnews.com to lonenutter.com. The bad news is that mistakes and omissions are exposed at a hyper-accelerated rate. Whether you make bike locks or news, your brand can quickly turn to dust."

So, how does the Observer blog stack up? It's very good, actually. Best bits? The podcast of John Naughton's weekly internet column, the compactness of the posts, the tasteful use of images and the links via del.icio.us. Welcome to the conversation.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 27 February 2005 at 5:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Fair play to ye! As they say in Tipperary. I'm talking about Jason Kottke who took the plunge this week and became a full-time blogger. The man can code, the man can write; he thinks, he links, he's got what it takes. In a clever riff on the "micropayments" melody, he's come up with a "micropatron" concept, and in a vote of confidence, Anil Dash quickly untrousered the stipulated $30 and became a micropatron. "I believe in the idea of everyone being a Medici, except without the nasty Medici habit of infiltrating the papacy," is how he put it his ardent post about the move.

But why patronage? Why not product promotion? Why Medici and not Madison Avenue? Here's how Jason explained it in his announcement:

"If ads were involved, I might feel the need to change what or how I write to appease advertisers. I might write to increase pageviews and earn more revenue. I could fill pages with ads, earning more revenue but making the content more difficult to read or pushing some content off the page entirely. You could block advertising and deny me needed revenue."

In one of those odd coincidences that makes it worth getting out of bed each morning, the issue of advertising in blogging bubbled to the surface the day after Jason went public with his decision. Involved was the former Financial Times reporter and columnist Tom Foremski, who courageously left the day job last year to become a professional blogger. Foremki's excellent Silicon Valley Watcher has just accepted its first sponsor and the blog praised its client in a fulsome posting. This prompted Dan Gillmor, the guru of grassroots journalism, to raise a red flag: "The Silicon Valley Watcher posting is advertising, and should be explicitly labeled that way," said Dan. Before the ink was dry, so to speak, Tom was tapping at his keyboard and out flowed "An open letter to Dan Gillmor". It concludes with this uplifting statement:

"As journalist bloggers we should seek to communicate as clearly as possible and signpost as much of this brave new world as we can. It is important to show that blogging is not some weird gonzo-like form of journalism, but that it might even be a superset of journalism -- able to accommodate all the familiar forms of journalism such as news, features, interviews -- and the wondrously new forms that arise."

Medici vs. Madison Avenue? There need be no conflict if the markers are clear. Both are valid and it's great to see the two emerging as potential blogging business models. Could a hybrid form work? You know: Medici Avenue, a mix of patronage and promotion? Can't see why not, really. The Via Medici will be discussed at the next meeting of the Rainy Day board, which is scheduled for Dublin in mid-March.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Last Sunday, Hunter S. Thompson, the inventor of gonzo journalism, killed himself. Matthew Hahn, a freelance writer from Richmond, Virginia, arrived at Thompson's home in Colorado on the evening of 15 July 1997 and began an interview that extended into the early hours of 16 July. "A glass of Wild Turkey and ice was placed in front of me — for elocution purposes, of course," wrote Hahn. In "Writing on the Wall: An Interview With Hunter S. Thompson", which appeared in The Atlantic (subscription required), we learn that Thompson foresaw the blogging phenomenon:

Hahn: The Internet has been touted as a new mode of journalism — some even go so far as to say it might democratize journalism. Do you see a future for the Internet as a journalistic medium?

Thompson: Well, I don't know. There is a line somewhere between democratizing journalism and every man a journalist. You can't really believe what you read in the papers anyway, but there is at least some spectrum of reliability. Maybe it's becoming like the TV talk shows or the tabloids where anything's acceptable as long as it's interesting...

...You can get on [the Internet] and all of a sudden you can write a story about me, or you can put it on top of my name. You can have your picture on there too. I don't know the percentage of the Internet that's valid, do you? Jesus, it's scary. I don't surf the Internet. I did for a while. I thought I'd have a little fun and learn something. I have an e-mail address. No one knows it. But I wouldn't check it anyway, because it's just too fucking much. You know, it's the volume. The Internet is probably the first wave of people who have figured out a different way to catch up with TV — if you can't be on TV, well at least you can reach 45 million people [on the Internet]."

"He did not give 'a flying fuck' what he smoked, or ingested, or did, but there was a thoughtful side," writes the The Economist in its Thompsonesque obituary. Thompson's hero was Hemingway, and in 1964 he had made the long journey to Ketchum, Idaho, to the writer's grave to "understand why Hemingway had killed himself in his cabin in the woods, and concluded that he had lost his sense of control in a changing world." His crystal clear conclusion:

"It is not just a writer's crisis, but they are the most obvious victims because the function of art is supposedly to bring order out of chaos, a tall order even when the chaos is static, and a superhuman task when chaos is multiplying... So finally, and for what he must have thought the best of reasons, he ended it with a shotgun."

The Hemingway connection featured prominently in David Carr's appreciation in the New York Times. "The Thompson Style: A Sense of Self, and Outrage". Carr ends thus:

"And his suicide had its own terrible logic. A man who was so intent on generating a remarkable voice that he retyped Hemingway's novels just to understand how it was done, gave a final bit of dramatic tribute in turning a gun on himself."

Hunter S. Thompson's masterpiece is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which follows the writer, using the pseudonym Raoul Duke, and his psychopathic Samoan attorney, Dr. Gonzo, as they travel to cover a bike race in the Nevada desert. In the trunk of their Bronco, they have "two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers.... A quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls," which they consume during their trip. When he arrives at the race, Thompson sees that there is no way that it can be covered in any conventional journalistic sense due to the drugs, the heat, the dust and the insane nature of the event itself. Realizing this, he writes:

"It was time, I felt, for an Agonizing Reappraisal of the whole scene. The race was definitely under way. I had witnessed the start; I was sure of that much. But what now? Rent a helicopter? Get back in that stinking Bronco? Wander out on that goddamn desert and watch these fools race past the checkpoints? One every thirteen minutes...?"

This is the journalism that made Thompson unique: facts and rhetorical questions. The reader has to imagine answers and images. At its best, it was original and intoxicating and to preserve the narrative, he purposely submitted his copy long after deadline to prevent too much editing. In his prime, the multiplying chaos was an asset. In the end, we should remember him in his prime.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 26 February 2005 at 7:12 AM | Permalink

Tomorrow, Mrs Rainy Day and seven of her colleagues from the German Heart Centre in Munich head off to Tanzania. During their fourteen-day operating tour, they'll perform open-heart surgery on patients with congenital cardiac problems such as aortic valve defects and rheumatic mitral valves. All this will be taking place at the Tanzania Heart Institute in Dar es Salaam, which was founded by Ferdinand Masau, a cardiovascular surgeon, who trained at the Texas Medical Centre in Houston under the world-famous heart specialist, Denton Cooley.

"Our long-term goal is to train a Tanzanian cardiac team so that they can carry out heart surgery independently," said Mrs Rainy Day in the course of an exclusive interview. "In the short-term, we're bringing lots of medical supplies and equipment with us so that we'll be able to operate round the clock, starting Monday."

Heading up the Munich team in Dar es Salaam is Gregory Eising, a surgeon who performed the first open-heart operation in the history of Tanzania two years ago. Until that point, the procedure was unknown in that part of the Swahili-speaking world but that very flexible language responded instantly and created upasuaji ya moyo, meaning "heart operation". So, here's to a fortnight of successful operating and hats off to a group of very dedicated people who are volunteering their time and skills to help the needy of East Africa. We look forward to progress reports.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 25 February 2005 at 12:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Some 10,000 are expected to greet President Bush this morning in Bratislava's Hviezdoslavovo Square says the Slovak Spectator. Quite a contrast compared with the rent-a-protest 7,000 who turned up in Mainz yesterday. But then Slovakia is very much on the front line of history whereas Germany isn't anymore. With the escape from Communism still fresh in most Slovak's minds, it's easy to see why people would want to celebrate the living embodiment of the system that triumphed and ensured their freedom. Another difference, of course, is that Germany's leaders, in their desire to win re-election three years ago, opened the anti-American bottle and the genie is well and truly out now. Slovakia's leadership, however, joined the "Coalition of the Willing" and took a very different tack.

Speaking of Iraq, well worth taking a look at is Bernard Gwertzman's interview with presidential adviser Robert Blackwill over at the Council on Foreign Relations. Money quote:

Gwertzman: Put on your Harvard hat for a moment. What's the impact of these elections and the recent Palestinian elections on the whole Middle East? After all, the president's been mocked by a lot of Democrats and others for the idealistic speeches he's been making about bringing democracy to the Middle East. Is this now more of a reality? Is this election going to put pressure on other states to reform?

Blackwill: The answer is yes. And, I must say, that those who mock haven't been paying attention to the empirical data that's been piling up. First, we had the Afghan election last fall with this extraordinary turnout. Then we had the Palestinian election. Then we had the Iraqi election. We're going to have a parliamentary election in Afghanistan in the spring. So this isn't a theory anymore, this is actually happening on the ground in the Middle East and it is absolutely revolutionary, these free and fair elections.

As the man said, "revolutionary". It's worth noting, by the way, that the entire revolutionary role of the Bush presidency didn't get much mention in the European press during his trip, which ends to today. Then again, seeing that the trans-Atlantic relationship has been reduced from substance to style, it is understandable that the media would prefer to focus on the charm rather than on the offensive.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 24 February 2005 at 7:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Looks like someone is going to end up with a lot of silicone on their hands, as it were. We're not buying. On the other, er, hand, one of these would look well in the Rainy Day wardrobe.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 23 February 2005 at 7:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There is no scientific explanation for some phenomena. Take last night's mass gathering in Munich. Some 59,000 people assembled in the open-air refrigerator known as the Olympic Stadium, including me and mates Xtain and Ian, to watch 22 young men in shirts and shorts run around a field pursuing a ball. Frozen to our seats by the bone-chilling -6C temperature, we were. Paid a small fortune for the pleasure, too.

When it was all over, the score line read Bayern 3-Arsenal 1. An excellent result for the hardy Bavarian chaps and a doleful one for the delicate Londoners who had to be treated for hypothermia once this second-round Champions League game ended. Well, that's the rumour anyway. That late goal for Arsenal could turn out to be extremely valuable, though, and the second-leg of this clash in a fortnight will be a thriller. It will be uphill at Highbury but it's all to play for yet.

Now, to our interview with Arseblog, the game's best football diarist. Here goes.

RAINY DAY: Why do you do it? Arseblogging, I mean.

ARSEBLOG: When I started Arseblog nobody was doing a football site like it. Sports and blogs still lag way behind all the other kind of blogs. Now that there are loads and loads of football blogs. I keep going so I can continue to claim to be the original. But seriously it's a labour of love. I love writing it and I love Arsenal and I love all (mostly) the regulars who visit and comment. I think it's probably one of the most commented on blogs around — 600+ comments a day is about the average. When I stop enjoying it then it'll be time to close down.

RAINY DAY: If you could meet any three players, past or present, in the pub who would they be?

ARSEBLOG: Liam Brady, Ian Wright, Anders Limpar. My three favourites.

RAINY DAY: What is the best game you've ever seen?

ARSEBLOG: The game that really sticks in my head is the 1979 FA Cup final against Manchester United. On reflection not a great game but I can still remember the enjoyment of being two goals up with just a few minutes to go, then the horror as they scored one, the feeling of wanting to vomit when they equalised and then the unadulterated joy when Alan Sunderland scored the winner. There have been better games of course, and better performances, especially from the current crop, but that's just the most memorable.

RAINY DAY: When you write about Spurs manager Martin Jol and say that he's "the only Spurs boss in living memory that doesn't appear to be a total and utter cunt", are you not afraid of scaring away readers who might find such terms, well, too descriptive?

ARSEBLOG: Not at all. It was a very deliberate decision when I started the site that I was going to swear like a trooper. I talk like that in real life so if I'm going to write an opinionated website shouldn't it be my voice? If I think someone is a cunt I'll call them a cunt. I know some people don't like it but there are plenty who do and those that don't like it are under no obligation to read Arseblog. To be fair though I've only ever had a handful of complaints about the language in three years so the grouches keep it to themselves or just never come back.

RAINY DAY: What is your favourite piece of football wisdom?

ARSEBLOG: "Oh no ! Bloody hell, French ? I've got to play for a Frenchman? You must be joking." Tony Adams upon hearing Arsene Wengers appointment.

RAINY DAY: What everyday activities, blogging and playing football excepted, do you regard as a total waste of time?

ARSEBLOG: Waiting for the lift in my apartment building. It's slower than your average Spurs fan. Communicating in any way with Telefonica, Spain's equivalent of Eircom or BT. If you put 6 employees in a row and asked them to tell you the time you'd get 6 different answers. They should suffer for what they do to people here.

RAINY DAY: Do you think you could ever be married to, or in a long-term relationship with, someone who supports Manchester United?

ARSEBLOG: Yes, and I am. Obviously she's extremely beautiful and wonderful for me to overlook such a terrible flaw.

RAINY DAY: Jens Lehmann? Good, bad? On his way up or out?

ARSEBLOG: Not as bad as people seem to think. Obviously not the long term answer to our goalkeeping position but people seem to fall for the media hype too easily. Arsenal were invincible for ages, we lose a couple of games we're in crisis and it's all the fault of the goalkeeper he didn't lose a Premiership game last season. He's experienced, kind of mental and I like him. I think we do need a new number one in the summer though.

RAINY DAY: Ricky Gervais. Genius? Wanker?

ARSEBLOG: Both? I like The Office but I'm not sure I like him on stage. Does that make him a genker or wanius?

RAINY DAY: What would your ideal holiday be?

ARSEBLOG: Somewhere hot by the sea, with a golf course, an endless supply of mojitos and good books and my missus.

RAINY DAY: What would you do if you won the lottery?

ARSEBLOG: I assume you're talking the big Euro Millions lottery here so the first thing I'd do is take out a full page advertisement in the Irish Times to announce my retirement. Take that friends back home who still have to go to work every day. I'd buy an enormous attic here in Barcelona, fill it with nice things and gadgets, then eat, drink, play golf and travel for the rest of my days. Maintaining Arseblog all the while, of course.

RAINY DAY: Name your three favourite blogs.

ARSEBLOG: They tend to change a bit but off the top of my head at this moment:

timemachinego.com/linkmachinego/
gavinsblog.com — keeps me connected to Ireland,
scaryduck.blogspot.com — funny and an Arsenal fan.

Our sincere thanks to Arseblog for taking the time to answer these questions. And so to bed.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on at 12:18 AM | Permalink

Rainy Day is proud to add its voice to this global day of action dedicated to freeing two bloggers, Arash Sigarchi and Mojtaba Saminejad, currently imprisoned in Iran. Those of us fortunate to live in tolerant societies cannot begin to imagine the horror of living under a regime that despises free expression and savagely penalizes those who speak their minds. The persecution of Arash Sigarchi, author of the blog "Panhjareh Eltehab", illustrates the terror that the mullahs are now perpetrating. On 17 January he received a summons from the intelligence ministry in the northern Iranian city of Rashat. He was then arrested and since then he's been held at Rashat's Lakan Prison. Along with being denied the right to see a lawyer, his bail has been set at the exorbitant sum of 200 million rials ($25,000).

Life for bloggers across the border in Syria is equally oppressive. Ammar Abdulhamid, who writes Ammar has been detained for questioning by the authorities three times in the last few four weeks because of his viewpoints. Regarding his brush with the law on Monday, 14 February, he wrote: "I just survived another round of dubiously curt and polite investigation by the Military Security Directorate. This promises to be the last such session with this particular Directorate. But it seems obvious now that other security branches will be jumping into the fray soon."

Ammar Abdulhamid is a member of the advisory board of The Committee to Protect Bloggers, which has organized the "Free Mojtaba and Arash Day". Our best wishes go to them and our thoughts are with all those who are being abused, imprisoned and harassed by tyrannical regimes.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 22 February 2005 at 12:14 AM | Permalink

Can spring be far away? Despite snow on the ground, leafless trees and the distinct absence of birdsong one can sense a seasonal change. The evidence? Tomorrow night the second phase of the Champions League kicks off. Thanks to good friend Xtian, Rainy Day has scored a ticket for the long-awaited Arsenal-Bayern Munich clash featuring the duel of the two keepers, Jens Lehmann and Oliver Kahn. The eve of a great battle is always a time for reflection here. Huh? Well, as in life, so in football. Meaning? It's not how you begin; it's how you finish.

Anyway, to the week ahead. Think Chelsea vs. Barcelona. Talk of the luck of the draw! Here we have two of the great form sides of the European game offering two very different recipes for success. Jose Mourinho knows he's facing a team that can create 20 chances on a good night and unless he goes into total attack mode, Chelsea's hopes are slim. Speaking of a capricious draw, it's AC Milan vs. Manchester United also on Wednesday night, with the English side the deserved underdog. Still, with Ruud back and Rooney in form, Sir Alex will not surrender without a fight. And what about Arsenal vs. Bayern Munich? Certainly, the London side has played some of the most exquisite stuff in the Premiership these past years, but what goes down well in England doesn't guarantee success on the Continent.

The Premiership is hallmarked by fast and fierce football and one-to-one marking. On the other side of the English Channel, however, spaces are tightly closed down and the ball is not given away so frequently. Remarkably, Arsenal seem incapable of grasping these simple facts with the result that their European runs tend to end far in advance of the finals they dream of winning. With Roy Makaay in top form, scoring a hat-trick for Bayern on Saturday in a Bundesliga rout of Dortmund, and Arsenal just managing a 1-1 draw with Sheffield United in the FA Cup, albeit with a depleted side, the scene is set for an intriguing evening. And, who knows, if Owen Hargreaves lines out for Bayern, it might happen that the Bavarian club fields more English players than the English one. In "A league of their own", John O'Farrell has great fun with last week's all-non-England Gunners' squad story. Pull quote: "There is no doubt that there's a crisis in English football — it isn't English anymore." Arseblog, however, speaking from sunny Spain by the looks of it, demolishes the the old nationalism argument:

"Anyway, the bottom line is that Arsenal don't have the money, at the moment, to spend on English players when they can get a player of the same quality abroad for much less. It's like people who get cheap flights to Spain to buy cheap cigarettes — it's cheaper for them to fly here, buy as many cartons of fags as they're allowed, then fly back home to England than it is to buy the same amount of cigarettes in the shops."

Excellent! Feckin' excellent.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 21 February 2005 at 12:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Although Emily Dickinson wrote 1,713 poems during her life of seclusion in Amherst, Massachussets, odes to love do not figure prominently in her work. Biographers have suggested several objects of her affection, but none has been proven. Why did she always wear white? Were her outfits in any way evocative of bridal garb? Regardless, in "Wild Nights", as in all her work, a little says a lot.

Wild Nights

Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury.

Futile the winds
To a heart in port —
Done with the compass
Done with the chart.

Rowing in Eden!
Ah! The sea!
Might I but moor
Tonight in thee.

Emily Dickinson

Back in September last year, Rainy Day declared Emily Dickinson to be our favourite female poet. With her breathtaking originality — astonishing imagery — and dramatic punctuation — she was — and is — a revolutionary.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 20 February 2005 at 8:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Readers of the Guardian this morning can digest the thoughts of Iain Duncan Smith, the former leader of the Conservative party, with their breakfast. He's got the blogging fever, has Iain. Inspired by the Rathergate and Easongate stories, he's now convinced that "Bloggers will rescue the right in Britain". "The internet could do more to change the level of political engagement than all the breast-beating of introspective politicians and commentators. A 21st century political revolution is now only a few mouse clicks away," he says. He's right, too.

But will the revolution be co-opted and commercialized until it becomes part of the establishment, as has happened so often before? The reason one asks is that yesterday, the New York Times Company became the biggest blogger of them all when it bought About.com for $410 Million. "About.com uses a network of about 500 experts to write online about hundreds of specialty topics, from personal finance to quilting to fly-fishing... Times Company officials said About.com would help diversify its online advertising base by adding 'cost per click' advertising, in which advertisers pay only when a reader clicks on an ad. Cost-per-click ads are the fastest-growing segment of online advertising." Indeed. Ask Google. The dot.com bust was well and truly buried yesterday.$410 million! That's real money.

Because the new media insurgency is happening in real time, things get old before they're allowed to be young and that's why the same New York Times has this front-page story today: "Tired of TiVo? Beyond Blogs? Podcasts Are Here". An excerpt: "And as bloggers have influenced journalism, podcasters have the potential to transform radio. Already many radio stations, including National Public Radio and Air America, the liberal-oriented radio network, have put shows into a podcast format. And companies are seeing the possibilities for advertising; Heineken, for example, has produced a music podcast." Expect to hear a Rainy Day podcast before long. Don't want to be left behind, and all that. Want to make sure the market value of this blog is right when the NYT comes bidding.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 19 February 2005 at 8:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Back at the beginning of December last year, in a posting called "Yamani or ya life! The UNSCAM GUBU", we took the time to explain the peculiarly Irish acronym, GUBU. It comes, we said, from the days of Charles J. Haughey, an Irish prime minister who put the "Mac" into Machiavellian and who called the discovery of a serial killer hiding in the flat of his attorney general "grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented". Conor Cruise O'Brien, the PM's nemesis, pounced on this Grand Guignol scandal and coined "GUBU", which came to sum up Haughey's putrescent reign.

And now Ireland is enveloped in another GUBU, and a vast one, involving the largest bank heist in the history of the British Isles, and it looks as if the laundering of the loot goes all the way to the top. Well, to the top of Sinn Fein/IRA, but that's only the beginning. Gavin Sheridan has been blogging the story in detail and Slugger O'Toole is on the job as well. Gavin crossed a threshold by being the first to name the suspects, breaking what Richard Delevan calls "a legal/media consensus about how such cases should be dealt with in the Republic of Ireland among its stakeholder media, politicians and police." So, along with rocking the country to its foundations, this could be the story that makes blogging a force to be reckoned with in Ireland.

Just in: a priceless statement from the boss of Sinn Fein/IRA, Gerry Adams,: "I would urge people to be very measured," he said, adding that it was not the time "for making knee jerk judgements or trying to beat up on Sinn Fein".

Get that? "Beat up on Sinn Fein"! For sheer shamelessness and unintended humour, this comes close to Haughey's GUBU declaration. Beat up on Sinn Fein! Tell that to the widows and orphans of the IRA and a hobbling generation of kneecapped unfortunates who happened to incur the wrath of Gerry's thuggish pals. Ladies and gentleman, we have another GUBU on our hands.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 18 February 2005 at 6:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Visitor's comment No. 1,739: "Eamonn, I am a fan of the blog, (although we disagree on almost everything). As a fellow Limerickman I think I may understand your contrariness more than most :) That said the above is bollox." John McDermott is referring to Wednesday's post, Kyoto vs. Copenhagen. He continues, warming to his theme, as it were:

"Global warming is a fact, the cause may be debatable, but we are getting warmer. An educated individual can dramatically minimise their exposure to HIV, however even if that same person minimised their personal affect on CO2 emissions, they would still be affected by the overall picture. AIDS has one cause, and when a cure is found — end of story. There will never be a one shot cure for global warming. I realize a cure does not help those already afflicted, but there are also ways to treat those with HIV; the problem is getting it to the affected and making it cheap enough.

All surmountable problems if we should so desire. Defeating HIV is mired in the same political rat holes as is the effort to combat global warming. Instead of being guided by scientific inquiry our esteemed leaders, (especially here in the US) are guided by political dogma. Even if we were definite on the causes of global warming and agreed on a cure it could take centuries to reverse. The problem is we haven't even reached the point of agreeing the cause not to mind a course of action. Global warming will have a negative affect on every single life form on our planet, and could be a much greater destabilizing influence than AIDS. The truth is all of these issues need to be viewed holistically. Global issues need global solutions. We need to find the will and the cash to treat all these problems.

Your beloved President Bush ain't helping matters. What ever one thinks of the war in Iraq, his policies on AIDS are Neanderthal, (Read Nicholas Kristoff's Op Ed in the NY Times for some interesting stats on his abstinence programs) and he seems dead bent on reversing any progress made on cleaning up the air and reducing CO2 emissions. You forget in your support for Iraq the negative impact he is having on other issues his own country and other countries. I could go on, (how countries like Thailand, Russia etc use the war on terror as an excuse to roll back democracy etc)."

John McDermott, there, putting Rainy Day in its place. In 1993, John left Limerick for the "shores of Amerikay", as many a 19-century Irish ballad puts it, and settled in San Francisco, where he works in the software industry. His main passion, along with his wife and kids Shane and Maya, is music: "I still wanna be a rockstar/professional surfer — during my daily allocation of 2.5 minutes of free time," he says. He blogs at, logically, John McDermott's Blog.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on at 7:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Who assassinated Rafik Hariri, and why? A must read is Rami Khouri's analysis in Beirut's Daily Star. Clearly, the cover of "stabilization" that Syria has been using to cloak its occupation of Lebanon is now well and truly blown as Ewen MacAskill writes in today's Guardian. But could Bashar Asad be so inept as to make such a ghastly misstep? With Iraq on the road to democracy and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process on track again, why would he want to plunge Lebanon into crisis at this time? Surely Asad must know that any such move would be disastrous for the already very rocky relationship between Syria and the US. Here's Rami Khouri on "The ramifications of Hariri's assassination":

"The madness is not just in the murder of a fine man and a true Lebanese and Arab patriot; it is in the ongoing legacy of rampant and often brutal political violence that at once defines, disfigures and demeans political elites and perhaps even Arab society as a whole."

If not Syria, then, who? One theory is that al-Qaeda was behind the operation figuring that assassinating Hariri would damage the House of Saud. Hariri, who was worth $4 billion, made his money in Saudi Arabia and was very well connected in the Kingdom. Another possible al-Qaeda gambit would be fomenting a crisis between Damascus and Washington. Still, the finger points at the next-door neighbour because Hariri had advocated the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon. Regardless of who did the deed, however, as Rami Khouri wrote, this is "madness".

UPDATE 12:04 In today's New York Times, Tom Friedman lays into Syria in fine style.

"When Syria's Baath regime feels its back up against the wall, it always resorts to 'Hama Rules.' Hama Rules is a term I coined after the Syrian Army leveled — and I mean leveled — a portion of its own city, Hama, to put down a rebellion by Sunni Muslim fundamentalists there in 1982. Some 10,000 to 20,000 Syrians were buried in the rubble. Monday's murder of Mr. Hariri, a self-made billionaire who devoted his money and energy to rebuilding Lebanon after its civil war, had all the hallmarks of Hama Rules — beginning with 650 pounds of dynamite to incinerate an armor-plated motorcade."

That's good, but there's better to come. Here, Tom gets in some telling jabs against the Arab League and its partner in mendacity, the European Union:

Rafik Hariri stopped playing by 'Lebanese Rules' — eating any crow the Syrians crammed down Lebanon's throat — and openly challenged Syrian imperialism. If the Lebanese want to be free, they have got to take the lead. They have to summon the same civic courage that Mr. Hariri did and that the Iraqi public did — the courage to look the fascists around them in the eye, call them in the press and in public by their real names, and confront the European Union and the Arab League for their willingness to ignore the Syrian oppression."

As the man says, read the whole thing.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 17 February 2005 at 7:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today's the day when the Kyoto Protocol, which aims to slow global warming, comes into effect. A total of 141 countries have signed the treaty promising to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Specifically, the protocol demands a 5.2 percent emissions cut from the industrialised world by 2012. Each country has been given its own individual targets according to its pollution levels. The USA, Australia, China and India, however, have not ratified the treaty.

Rainy Day regards the Kyoto Protocol as an ineffective, politicized waste of time and money. Our thinking here is very much influenced by the Copenhagen Consensus. This was a meeting of nine leading economists who came together last year in Denmark to answer the question: of all the threats to humanity, where could we do the most good. Top of the list? Fighting HIV/AIDS. At a cost of $27 billion, an estimated 28 million cases could be prevented by 2010, with enormous benefits for the world. Bottom of the list? Climate change.

The inspiring thing about the Copenhagen Consensus is that it set priorities. Climate change was not ignored by the experts, but it was not regarded as critical to saving lives. Instead of reacting to the latest, trendy media-driven fads, the economists had to face the fact that no dollar can be spent twice. Our willingness to help may be unlimited, but our resources are not, in other words. So, let us take the Copenhagen Consensus to heart and devote our capital to fighting disease and malnutrition and work to provide water and sanitation to the millions who are deprived of what we in the developed world take for granted. Once that's done, we can focus on ending conflict, corruption and climate change.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 16 February 2005 at 7:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Remember Scott McKenzie? "If you're going to San Francisco/Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair". There's another line in the song that runs through my mind from time to time: "People in motion". It's got a dynamic in it, like a train rolling along a track, "People in motion. People in motion. People in motion." Get it? Anyway, here's the relevant part of the song:

"All across the nation, such a strange vibration
People in motion
There's a whole generation, with a new explanation
People in motion, people in motion"

And people are in motion. And San Francisco is at the centre of it all. First, there's Dervala, that good friend of the Rainy Day team. She's been packing her bags in New York City this recent while and she's now gone west to the Golden Gate where great opportunities await. Going the other way, however, is David Galbraith. The brilliant Scot, who traded in a career as an architect at Foster & Partners for the high-tech biz, is moving to New York. He's leaving part of his heart on the West Coast, though: "For me, San Francisco is a model of a 21st century city, it is at the heart of an area which is the world capital of both science and liberal thinking. As such, it is one of the few places where engineering is taken to a truly creative level, becoming an art as much as a science."

The exciting news is that Galbraith is launching a new product, which will build on the very hot tagging concept and will lie somewhere between Flickr and del.icio.us. Good luck! When Rainy Day was starting out, David provided a link, which we considered a great honour. Newsflash! Another friend, T, is moving. She's going to California as well, to Los Angeles. "People in motion. People in motion."

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 15 February 2005 at 12:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On the left, here, you can see that another testimonial about Rainy Day has been added to the list. It comes from the Irish Times and an article by Robin O'Brien-Lynch that appeared in the paper on Friday (subscription required). As regards this blog, O'Brien-Lynch said: "Rainy Day by Eamonn Fitzgerald is a little heavy on homespun whimsy for some tastes but erudite and well-written. There is perhaps too much focus on foreign affairs at the expense of local comment."

The "local comment" that's missing in O'Brien-Lynch's eyes is material about Ireland, its politics and society. Here's his argument:

"When Irish bloggers want to talk politics, they tend to discuss US and global affairs, particularly Iraq. This is a self-defeating process; US politics and the war in Iraq are well-documented, with thousands of bloggers based in Iraq. Admittedly, Irish bloggers extend their potential audience by keeping their subject matter universal, but there also seems to be an unconscious snobbery towards Irish current affairs ק all Iraq and no IRA. Perhaps unsurprisingly, when Irish political blogs do come up trumps, the focus is on the North."

The Rainy Day response to this position is that on the net, all politics is local, in the sense that everything is just a click away. To be sure, the parochial is important and events at the foot of the Galtee Mountains are sometimes addressed here, even if it is with "homespun whimsy"; the provincial is significant — be it Munster rugby, Bavarian software or Catalonian wine — and is not ignored; and the national, from Norway to New Zealand, is taken seriously, but the rest of what you get here is the wide world of the web and that's because your blogger regards this as a global medium as opposed to a countrywide one. Actually, the proportion of posts relating to Ireland is flattering when one considers the state's size. Culturally and economically, however, the island is influential beyond its geography, and punches above its weight, as A.J. Liebling, the Shelly of the ring, would have put it, but the issue that most concerns Rainy Day is security in an age of terror and failed states, and Ireland's policy of neutrality means that it is simply not a player in the bigger game.

For more on this debate, and to read the Robin O'Brien-Lynch article, pop over to Gavin's Blog. Meanwhile, in the spirit of the illustrious West Cork paper, the Skibbereen Eagle, which warned 147 years ago that it was "keeping an eye on the Czar of Russia" and his expansionist plans, Rainy Day promises to not ignore Ireland.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 14 February 2005 at 12:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

As the participants in Munich's annual Security Conference prepare to head to the airport at the close of a strenuous day marked by speeches from Kofi Annan and Hillary Clinton, there's one question uppermost in many of their minds, and it's this: What would happen if Afghanistan didn't exist? The answer, of course, is that if it didn't all those members of NATO who proudly parade their peacekeeping achievements would have to put boots on the ground in Iraq. Among the countries that have figured out that the Hindu Kush can provide perfect cover for their troops and their true commitment to collective security are Germany and Spain. Both are happy to combat the poppy growers for as long as it takes. Both are delighted that Afghanistan does exist.

This doesn't help the people of Iraq very much, though. And it certainly doesn't help those battling the monsters who slaughter men, women and children by bombing bakeries, mosques and hospitals. The elaborate and regular NATO announcements of its members' willingness to train Iraqi forces anywhere except in Iraq are farcical, but no one wants to draw too much attention to this because President Bush will be visiting NATO headquarters on 22 February, and bandaging the external fractures is more important in the run up to his arrival than examining the internal injuries. Regardless of the tension between the allies and despite what's happening in the world's conflict zones, organizational harmony, or the appearance of it at least, is the most important issue now. The show must go on.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 13 February 2005 at 4:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Connoisseurs of marathon races, and there are such people, rank Rotterdam in the world's top ten. The post-race relaxation opportunities allowed by Holland's liberal society have nothing to do with this. No, Rotterdam is loved because the course is flat and fast. Last year, Felix Limo won the men's event in a splendid 2 hours and 6 minutes. Phew! This year's race promises to be even more memorable as it's the 25th anniversary Rotterdam Marathon. And it will feature the eagerly-awaited duel between Ed Whitlock and Joop Ruter.

Ed who? Joop who? These are not household names but they are famous because Ed Whitlock in 73 and Joop Ruter is 71. That they are running marathons at their age is remarkable enough, but it's the times they finish in that has people talking. Whitlock ran the Toronto Waterfront Marathon last September in 2 hours, 54 minutes and 49 seconds, while Ruter ran 3 hours, 2 minutes and 49 seconds last year in Rotterdam.

In a fascinating article in today's New York Times (registration required), Marc Bloom notes that among the United States' 400,000 marathon finishers in 2003, some 500 were 70 or older, compared with about 100 a decade ago. "For many of the active elderly, 70 may be the new 50," he writes, and quotes Dr. Benjamin D. Levine, a cardiologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, who found that a group of people with an average age of 70 who had started exercising in midlife — as Whitlock did at 41 — and kept it up had "hearts indistinguishable from healthy 30-year-olds."

Ruter, who took up running at 51 has run 11 marathons. After his 3:02:49 time last year, he celebrated by drinking and dancing in a pub. "I will run against Whitlock as though I am a youngster," he said. "I will give him the race of his life." Marvellous.

Time to put on those running shoes.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on at 8:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After a three-year campaign of orchestrated demonization by the media, most Germans regard President George W. Bush as the contemporary incarnation of Lucifer. If the weather is too warm, it's the fault of Bush for not signing onto the Kyoto treaty. If the North Korean tyrant says he's got the bomb, the madman's lack of oil will be trotted in some bizarre article in the toady press as the real reason he's allowed to terrify his neighbours. From Bremen in the north, to Bavaria in the south, the cult of the "American devil", to recycle some of that old Maoist terminology, is ubiquitous.

After the President, Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary of Defense, is the "running dog" who sends the Little Red Book crowd into contortions of rage. To their horror, he's in Munich today. And he's just finished speaking at the city's annual Conference on Security Policy. What did he have to say? Well, Rummy wouldn't be Rummy if he didn't have a few barbs in his PowerPoint. To put his remarks in context, the German Minister for Defence, Peter Struck, preceded him on the podium reading a speech that was supposed to have been given by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. He's ill in bed, although quite a few mischievous minds at the conference say that it's a Rummy antipathy and not a tummy bug that has him lying low. The Schröder/Struck speech was filled with the usual obscurities about "Europe" and "the EU", aspirational stuff about conflict resolution, calls for talks about talks and and lots of the ankle-biting that has come to hallmark the recent German approach to NATO. Yes, "multilateral" was there, too. In short, Germany wants to get the EU into NATO, turn it into a talking shop and immobilize it completely. It was left to Rummy to give this kind of mushiness a good knock on the head and remind those present of what's involved here. An excerpt from his speech:

Sixty years ago, World War II came to an end. Since that time, we have counted on each other in times of peril and challenge. I am old enough to remember both the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall, and the ascension and collapse of Nazism, of Fascism, and of Soviet Communism as well. Together we have helped to protect Kosovo. And recently brought aid to the victims of a devastating Tsunami. Great achievements are possible when the Atlantic Community is united.

Our unity need not be a uniformity of tactics or views, but rather a union of purpose. Those who cherish free political systems and free economic systems share similar hopes. And working together, those hopes can be realities for the many more who yearn to be free.

As Winston Churchill once said of our Atlantic Alliance: "If we are together, nothing is impossible."

Yesterday Mosul; today Munich. "Old Rumsfeld", as he mockingly called himself this morning, is not slowing down or softening up. Next up on the Atlantic Alliance? Expect a run on crucifixes in Germany because He is coming.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 12 February 2005 at 12:16 PM | Permalink

Mrs Rainy Day: "My favourite Central Park memory is from the time I was working in Mount Sinai Hospital. It was a gorgeous day and I decided to walk down through the park to get the express train on Lexington Avenue at 60th. On my way down, I came across a film crew and stopped to stare. And there was Woody Allen directing Mia Farrow before my eyes. I watched, totally excited, until a crew member cruelly moved me on. That's New York for you."

The logistics of "The Gates" installation are impressive. Since 3 January, eight trucks a day have been delivering steel structures and rolls of luminous saffron fabric to Central Park. Since Monday, 700 workers in teams of eight have been fitting 46 miles of cloth over 7,500 16-feet-high steel gates standing 12-feet apart. The unfurling of the fabric starts today and once it's done Central Park's paths from 59th Street to 100th Street will be transformed into golden, billowing rivers for 16 days.

The conceptual artists Christo and his wife Jeanne Claude brought Paris to a standstill in 1985 with "The Pont Neuf Wrapped", and their "Wrapped Reichstag" attracted five million visitors to Berlin in 1995, but "The Gates", which has been 25 years in the making, is set to be their superlative work. It's also a tribute to their adopted city where they have lived in the same fifth-floor walk up studio apartment for 40 years. Not that the couple are short of money. They just have a different business model, that's all. "The Gates" is going to cost $20 million to stage but the resulting spectacle will be free to everyone. Christo and Jeanne Claude don't accept sponsorship and they finance all their projects themselves. Once an installation has been completed, museum directors and wealthy private collectors vie for their drawings, their plans and their materials. Licensing of the couple's designs is global and the market for the images is strong. Simple. Effective.

Mr Rainy Day: "My favourite Central Park memory is from November last year. It was the Friday before the New York City Marathon and we decided to have a look at the preparations near the finish line. It was a beautiful day and we ended up in a part of the park known as the "Literary Walk", a kind of "sylvan tunnel", to use an expression favoured by the piper Seamus Ennis. Anyway, the elm trees were still shedding their golden-red leaves and a wind was whipping them into all kinds of shapes. It was magical."

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on at 7:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

So, it's been confirmed. North Korea has nuclear weapons. And it's pulling out indefinitely from six-party talks on its atomic ambitions. For those who hope that Iran will give up its dream of acquiring nuclear weapons, the North Korean story is instructive. Back in 1994, Bill Clinton almost went to war with the Hermit Kingdom because of its nuclear program, but at the last minute the Koreans agreed to freeze their work in exchange for a lifting of US sanctions and help with building a series of nuclear reactors that could not be used to make weapons. Well, not easily anyway.

Sure enough, North Korea did indeed freeze its plutonium program, but it secretly pursued another way to make nuclear weapons by enriching uranium. Right here, doves would say that 1994 agreement was good because it stopped North Korea's efforts to make nuclear weapons by using plutonium, which is more dangerous than going the uranium way and which makes a larger volume of weapons possible. So, argue the doves, if it hadn't been for the 1994 agreement, North Korea would now have at least one hundred nuclear weapons, maybe two hundred. Yes, well, it's got some now. So, the hawks vs. doves debate won't help us much.

What might help us, though, is reading the best book ever published about North Korea. Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader, which took Bradley Martin twenty-five years to write, presents life in North Korea with frightening lucidity. As Martin makes clear, this is the most secretive, savage, totalitarian and repressive country in the world. It allowed some two million of its citizens to starve to death in the 1990s. Nearly every home is fitted with a speaker that booms propaganda from morning to night. The main railway is lined with walls to prevent foreign passengers from seeing the countryside. Entire families are executed if a member gets drunk and insults the Dear Leader. And on and on and on in unmitigated horror.

Most frightening of all, Martin quotes one North Korean defector after another who says that a new war on the Korean peninsula is very possible, and that many North Koreans would welcome it in the hope that it might finally end their awful existence.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 11 February 2005 at 12:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Check this out: "Any person who, while in a public place, intentionally wears and displays his below-waist undergarments, intended to cover a person's intimate parts, in a lewd or indecent manner, shall be subject to a civil penalty of no more than $50. 'Intimate parts' has the same meaning as in § 18.2-67.10." Hold on. Let's get some background here.

On Monday 21 June last year, the Rainy Day topic was "overhang". Remember? Don't worry, my memory isn't so hot either. Anyway, during a trip to Ireland, your blogger was talking to some teenagers and learned that "overhang" in the language of today's yoof is "the amount of excess midriff displayed by young women who wear low-rise jeans and short T-shirts." The subject of midriff bulge might appear an odd one, a suspicious one, even, to be discussing with minors, but it was all very innocent and it was simply impossible to ignore the blobby bellies and the peering bottoms that were, well, in my face during the trip home. Fed up with the constant eyefuls of undies, this trenchant statement was issued:

"I don't know about you, but I find the sight of rolls of midriff fat often accompanied with naval bling and visible G-strings distinctly unappealing. Actually, let me be honest here: I find it hideous. Are the people who dress this way aware of how their tubby tummies look? A taut, firm midriff is a thing of beauty, of course, but those who are unfortunate enough not to possess one should consider covering up."

Clearly inspired by the Rainy Day stance, the General Assembly of Virginia has introduced a bill to amend the state's code by adding the section quoted at the start of this post relating to the indecent display of below-waist undergarments "intended to cover a person's intimate parts". Is this an overreaction? Are we, like, puttin' down the kids and turning into the reactionary old spoilsports we once battled for the right to wear long hair? Your call. But in this corner, the binge drinking and the droopy drawers are seen as a coarsening of society and it's time to take a stand. So there.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 10 February 2005 at 12:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

What was going through the minds of the Rive Gauche crowd yesterday afternoon as they sat in the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris and stared at the person on the podium before them? Did they see a US Secretary of State radiating the enormous confidence that comes with the kind of power France no longer possesses? Or did they see a US Secretary of State who is the living proof of a society that now enables its once-oppressed minorities to become part of the ruling elite? Or did they see a US Secretary of State who is a woman both extraordinarily elegant and sophisticated?

Regardless of what they thought, we can assume that many of them left the room far deeper in the grip of the gloom that currently envelops France. It's bad enough being a country that seems to have lost its way in the world, but it's even worse being one where even the old certainties no longer hold true. Remember those? Americans should admire French fashion and esteem French culture, but the French should be allowed to retain their right to mock American fashion and despise American culture, and consider themselves a vastly superior civilization while doing so.

This hypocritical state of affairs might have continued for generations to come for all we know, but the French made a fatal move two years ago and things have changed as a result — changed utterly. It is one thing to ridicule, to hate, to oppose the US, but it's a very different matter to set about building a coalition to inflict damage upon it. And that's what Jacques Chirac did. With US troops massed on the border of Iraq and ready to remove its despot, George Bush, at the behest of Tony Blair, spent four months trying to cobble together a UN resolution that would have pleased Paris and its partners Berlin and Moscow. But all to no avail. In that wasted time, Saddam was busy planning the guerrilla campaign of murder that has since led to the deaths of thousands of Iraqis (21 more yesterday) and more than 1,000 Americans. A very costly lesson has been learned in Washington and it won't be forgotten for a long, long time. For those ordinary Americans whose fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers fought to free France in the 20th century, all M. Chirac's horses and all M. Chirac's men will never be able to put it back together again.

Best bit from the speech? There were many highlights, but this is hard to beat for the amount of history it compresses into a few sentences:

"In my own experience, a black woman named Rosa Parks was just tired one day of being told to sit in the back of a bus, so she refused to move. And she touched off a revolution of freedom across the American South. In Poland, Lech Walesa had had enough of the lies and the exploitation, so he climbed a wall and he joined a strike for his rights; and Poland was transformed. In Afghanistan just a few months ago, men and women, once oppressed by the Taliban, walked miles, forded streams and stood hours in the snow just to cast a ballot for their first vote as a free people. And just a few days ago in Iraq, millions of Iraqi men and women defied the terrorist threats and delivered a clarion call for freedom. Individual Iraqis risked their lives. One policeman threw his body on a suicide bomber to preserve the right of his fellow citizens to vote. They cast their free votes, and they began their nation's new history. These examples demonstrate a basic truth — the truth that human dignity is embodied in the free choice of individuals."

Excellent, too, was the reply to the questioner who asked: "Is there one single Arab country; is there one single Arab country in the world, which really deserves to be defended by the President Bush?" Secretary Rice:

"Let's talk about the Arab people. The Arab people deserve a better future than is currently in front of them. This is a part of the world in which the status quo is not going to be acceptable. You have large populations that are not receiving proper education. As the report to the United Nations by Arab intellectuals noted, you have 22 countries that have a GDP that is not the size of Spain. This is just not acceptable for a culture — the Arab cultures — that were, in many ways, part of the cradle of civilization. How can this be? And so the freedom deficit, the absence of freedom, has had very dramatic, negative effects in this part of the world. And unfortunately, we in the West, for too long, turned a blind eye to that freedom deficit. When the President spoke at Whitehall in London, he talked about 60 years of trying to buy stability at the expense of freedom, and getting neither. And what we have gotten instead, is a level of hopelessness that has produced an ideology of hatred so virulent, so thorough, that people flew airplanes into American buildings on a fine September morning; blew up a train station in Madrid; people in another part of the world from another tradition, but the same ideology of hatred, that took helpless children hostage in Russia. This can't be the future of the Middle East."

Don't know what Senor Zapatero will make of the mention of Spain, there. Doubt if we'll be hearing much from him on trans-Atlantic policy for the next four years, though. Condoleezza Rice means business.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 9 February 2005 at 12:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Lent starts tomorrow and that means 40 days and 40 nights without booze and sweet things for your blogger. But before the fasting begins, there'll be one final feast tonight featuring pancakes washed down by Pinot Noir. Known to the Romans as Helvenacia Minor, Pinot Noir is one of the oldest grape varieties and it's now a movie star. In the Oscar-nominated Sideways, the hero Miles, played brilliantly by Paul Giamatti, tells the woman he's hoping to bed that he likes Pinot Noir because it's sensitive, somewhat temperamental, subtle, sometimes great, and sometimes a disaster. "Only the most patient and faithful and caring growers can do it, can access pinot's fragile, delicate qualities," he says. As the film progresses, it becomes clear that Miles is really describing himself.

As for the pancakes, they're best when simple. Here's how Jamie Oliver does them. First the ingredients:

3 large eggs
1 cup flour (122 grams)
1 heaped teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup milk (110 milliliters)
Pinch salt

THE BUSINESS: Separate the eggs, putting the whites in one bowl and the yolks into another. Add the flour, baking powder and milk to the egg yolks and mix to a smooth batter. Whisk the whites with the salt until stiff. Fold into the batter. Heat a non-stick pan on a medium heat and pour a little oil onto it. Add some of your batter and fry for a couple of minutes until it looks golden and firm. Loosen and flip over. Continue frying until both sides are golden. You can make them large or small, to your liking. Serve covered with maple syrup, butter or creme fraiche. Optional toppings: blueberries, bananas, chocolate... Tastes pukka! Here's to Easter Sunday and the next bottle of Pinot Noir!

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 8 February 2005 at 6:00 AM | Permalink

Sir Martin Rees predicts: "By 2020, bioterror or bioerror will lead to one million casualties in a single event." For the record, I agree with the prediction and have voted accordingly. Don't be so gloomy, you say, but look at how fast SARS spread, says I, and think of devastation wrought by the HIV epidemic, whose origins are still a mystery. Anyway, the action is taking place over at Long Bets. By the way, Rees says that "bioerror" is something which has the same effect as a terror attack, but "rises from inadvertence rather than evil intent." His argument is chilling:

"Biotechnology is plainly advancing rapidly, and by 2020 there will be thousands — even millions — of people with the capability to cause a catastrophic biological disaster. My concern is not only organized terrorist groups, but individual wierdos with the mindset of the people who now design computer viruses. Even if all nations impose effective regulations on potentially dangerous technologies, the chance of an active enforcement seems to me as small as in the case of the drug laws."

Rees has been dismal on the future for some time now. In a controversial book he wrote called "Our Final Hour" he declared that there is a 50/50 chance that our civilization will end this century. Let's get to the pub as quick as we can, says I. Anecdote moment: the original title of the book was "Our Final Century?" but the British publishers took out the question mark and made it "Our Final Century". Then the US publishers changed it to "Our Final Hour". Pessimism sells.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 7 February 2005 at 5:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Where's the book publishing business headed? Look at where HarperCollins is going and you'll get a good idea. The pioneering work it's doing on direct-to-consumer marketing suggests that communicating directly with readers is a vital part of the new business model. HarperCollins initiatives in this area already include AuthorTracker, which enables readers to get e-mail updates on a book's progress; Invite the Author, which lets book groups have a telephone chat with a writer; and First Look, which provides early copies to readers and gets feedback on the contents and its cover.

Next up is Publishing Plus. Pitching new books directly to readers through e-mail and offering "bonus material", much the way additional features are regularly included on DVDs, are at the core of the new project. Digital audio will be a key part of Publishing Plus and is set to replace audio books on CD and cassette. After all, downloadable books are cheaper to produce and more profitable to publish than the other varieties.

The person driving most of this change is Jane Friedman, president and chief executive of HarperCollins. Friedman worked her way up from typist at Random House to the top of HarperCollins, helping to make it the third-largest publishing company in the US along the way. Last week, News Corporation, its parent, said HarperCollins's revenue grew eight percent, to $741 million, in the first half of fiscal 2005, while operating income rose five percent, to $122 million. So, if anyone can make a success of Publishing Plus, it's Friedman. Her feel for innovation is legendary. In 1970, her job was to schedule author Julia Child on morning TV shows to promote "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." Friedman added a series of cookery demonstrations by Child at department stores across America, and the author tour was born. Who started the audio book business at Random House, thereby bringing the idea of recorded books into the mainstream? Jane Friedman.

Book publishers are now competing with film, television, radio and computer gaming for attention but Friedman has discovered that the internet allows businesses to establish a direct relationship with their customers, inexpensively. Target your marketing and watch those sales grow. Ask Jane Friedman. Since taking over HarperCollins in 1997, profits have risen 1,000 percent. Her boss, Rupert Murdoch, is happy and so is her star author, Michael Crichton.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on at 12:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It has been said of the Irish author, Colm Tóibín that his writing is marked by "austere, monkish prose". There's more to the man than that, though, as readers of his most recent triumph, The Master, have learned. In the book, Tóibín's adopting the register of Henry James is completely convincing and further proof of his extraordinary talent.

In this weekend's edition of the New York Times, Colm Tóibín reviews LOVE, POVERTY, AND WAR: Journeys and Essays by Christopher Hitchens. In these two paragraphs he praises and pans:

In Hitchens's assaults on Mother Teresa, it was apparent that the storm had merely found its teacup; then, after 9/11, he found a worthy subject. His message was clear. These atrocities were not caused by 'freedom fighters'; these events were not chickens come home to roost. 'The bombers of Manhattan,' he writes, 'represent fascism with an Islamic face, and there's no point in any euphemism about it.' He now had two new sets of archenemies, the bombers themselves and those in the United States who took the view that the atrocities were a result of American foreign policy. In the months after 9/11, Hitchens ran a campaign of shock and awe against these people, most of it passionate and, even in retrospect, persuasive.

HE then wrote two articles, included at the end of this book, that represent a low point in his long career. In October 2001, when he visited Pakistan, all his subtlety and street wisdom left him, all his wit was gone. He was simply an arrogant Englishman in a hot country having a snarl at the natives. Watching the local men coming out of the mosques, Hitchens became indignant at them for displaying what he could 'only call an attitude.' He himself has made his living, and rightly so, out of such displays. 'As elsewhere in Pakistan,' he says, 'there was a miasma of self-pity mingled with self-righteousness.' Some of that miasma must have been infectious, since Hitchens exudes his own brand of self-righteousness and vast superiority in his account of his journeys through the country at that time. Evelyn Waugh would have recognized his type."

On the day after he finished his final exams in September 1975, Colm Tóibín left Dublin for Barcelona where he got a job teaching English at an institution called the Dublin School of English. His career evolved from English teaching to journalism to fiction writing: "Magazine journalism gives you all the tricks of fiction. Endings, openings, stopping, starting. You deal with story and you are absolutely reader-shaped," he once said. His website, by the way, is exquisite.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 6 February 2005 at 8:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

After the Joe Louis-Max Schmeling world heavyweight title fight on 22 June 1938, Heywood Broun wrote in the New York World-Telegram: "One hundred years from now some historian may theorize, in a footnote at least, that the decline of Nazi prestige began with a left hook delivered by a former unskilled automotive worker who had never studied the policies of Neville Chamberlain and had no opinion whatever in regard to the situation in Czechoslovakia..."

THE ANNOUNCEMENT that Max Schmeling had died on Wednesday and was buried in Hamburg yesterday put the historical spotlight firmly back on boxing, a sport both shocking and compelling in which the winner is decided by his ability to deliver more punishment than he accepts. Boxing is also a sport in which a fight can be laden with meaning beyond itself and never has any fight carried more symbolic weight than Louis-Schmeling in June 1938.

The story really began in 1935, before the first Louis-Schmeling fight. As Hitler consolidated his dictatorship, Schmeling was pressed into serving as a diplomat of sorts. In the run up to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Americans had criticized Germany's treatment of its Jewish athletes and the US Amateur Athletic Union had proposed a boycott of the Olympics. At Hitler's direction, Schmeling went to the US with a letter promising that Germany's Jews would be fairly treated.

THOUGH HITLER ADMIRED SCHMELING, he worried about the 19 June 1936 fight with Louis. Chris Mead, in a study of Louis, wrote: "When he got back to Germany (after meeting American Olympic officials), Schmeling lunched with Adolf Hitler in Munich... The dictator was upset that Schmeling was risking Germany's reputation in a fight against a black man when there was so little chance of victory. With his usual self-confidence, Schmeling assured his Fuehrer that he had a good chance to win, and Hitler presented the boxer with an autographed picture of himself." After his victory over Louis, Hitler sent a telegram to Schmeling in New York: "Most cordial congratulations on your victory." Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels also weighed in: "I know you fought for Germany; that it was a German victory. We are proud of you. Heil Hitler!" On his return to Germany, Schmeling brought his wife to lunch with Hitler in the Reich Chancellery.

In the summer of 1938, with the world edging towards conflict, the Louis-Schmeling rematch became a metaphor of the coming war. When the 24-year-old Louis stopped by the White House to meet Franklin D. Roosevelt, the president gripped his arm and said, "Joe, we're depending on those muscles for America." Some 70,000 crowded into Yankee Stadium on June 22, 1938; millions listened on the radio and heard "A right to the body, a left hook to the jaw, and Schmeling is down."

DURING WORLD WAR II both men served in the military for their respective countries. Schmeling enlisted in the German army as a paratrooper and was wounded in action in Crete in 1941. While some criticized him for not distancing himself from Hitler, British military authorities cleared him of any complicity in war crimes and in 1993, University of Rhode Island researchers produced evidence that during the Kristallnacht pogrom, Schmeling sheltered two Jewish children, the sons of an old friend, in his suite in Berlin's Excelsior Hotel.

Max Schmeling became a millionaire after James A. Farley, former postmaster-general and Democratic Party chairman awarded him several Coca-Cola distributorships in Germany. When Louis died in 1981, Schmeling reportedly sent money to his widow. "I didn't only like him, I loved him," he said of his great opponent.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 5 February 2005 at 12:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

On the bleak and windswept Craggy Island somewhere off the coast of western Ireland, Father Ted Crilly and his housekeeper Mrs. Doyle are tasked with keeping the not-very-bright Father Dougal McGuire and the raging alcoholic Father Jack Hackett out of trouble. Unfortunately, God is not on Father Ted's side so he spends most of his time attempting to remove himself and his colleagues of the cloth from totally bizarre situations instead of caring for the needs of his parishioners.

As the BBC Guide to Comedy puts it, "Dougal, his young protégé, is strangely obtuse and stupendously dense, with a habit of asking blindingly obvious questions (if Ted is reading a book, Dougal inevitably asks, 'Are you reading a book, Ted?') that seriously irritates Ted and leads to a torrent of un-priest-like language."

There's hope for the Dougals of Erin, however, because Doogle: The Feckin' Search Engine of Ireland is outa beta. Enter a search term and Doogle will, unbidden, add an extra word such as "Connemara, leprechaun, arse" to the query. Ted would have approved. Wonder if Larry Page and Sergey Brin think it's mighty craic, though? Bet they love the "Searching 12 web pages" bit.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 4 February 2005 at 6:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Her vocabulary is heavy with "sustainability, delivery, citizens, Lisbon agenda, competitiveness and focus." What else would one expect from a Eurocrat? The thing is, though, Margot Wallström isn't just any old Brussels-based civil servant. She's the EU Commissioner for Institutional Relations and Communication. And she's a blogger. Joined the club, she did, at the beginning of the year. Welcome, she is, too.

On Friday, 28 January, she was under attack in the European Parliament for one of her favourite initiatives: REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals), a proposal for a new chemicals policy for Europe. To those complaining about the cost of the plan, Wallstrom said: "The newspapers the same day had the story of how costly 1 (one!) dangerous chemical — asbestos — has been to companies (and society!) involved: between 70.000 and 80.000 jobs lost! Not to mention the litigation, compensation and health costs in the range of billions of dollars. There is a cost to inaction!"

This was too much for the entrepreneurial Euro-sceptic blogger Tim Worstall. "How interesting that you should combine the Lisbon Agenda and the Reach Directive in one post," he commented. "The latter is a perfect example of why the former will never be achieved as the following true story of my own little company will show." Worstall went on to illustrate how the likes of REACH destroys businesses, and he ended with this paragraph which should be framed and placed on every wall in Brussels:

"It is small companies that drive economies, create most of the new jobs, do most of the innovating, people setting up with a bright idea on a string and a prayer, and imposing a cost of $100,000 on each and every one of these will mean that tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of ideas, are never pursued, not really quite the way in which we should be striving towards the goals of the Lisbon Agenda now is it? In fact, deterring innovation in this manner is simply the best way, short of letting the unelected and economically illiterate design our economy for us (or have we already done that?), to drive our children and grandchildren into relative penury."

Now, here's a scary synchronicity. Wallström and Worstall are trading Lisbon Agenda punches when along comes European Commission President José Manuel Barroso yesterday and drops the (in)famous program. Clang! As the Financial Times put it in its leader: "Gone is the ludicrous slogan vowing to make the EU the world's most competitive knowledge-based economy by 2010 — spurious both in the artificiality of its deadline and in the implicit comparison with the US." Ouch! Reality bites.

The embarrassed shelving of this daft agenda came on the very same day that Germany, once regarded as the powerhouse of the EU, announced that unemployment had risen to levels not seen since the 1930s. [Insert Weimar Republic here. Ed.] Officially, the German jobless total reached 5.3 million in January: unofficially, well, no one is quite sure. But given that the greater part of former East Germany is an economic basket case where most people are in receipt of some form of state support, the real number is certainly six million, but it might be seven million.

If Ms Wallström wants to see how over-regulation is suffocating businesses and human lives, she should visit Germany. If she wants to prevent the virus contaminating the rest of the EU, she'll think twice before adding to the regulatory burden that's strangling entrepreneurship. If she doesn't, it shouldn't surprise her when Tim Worstall's battle cry — Ceterum censeo Unionem Europaeam esse delendam — is taken up by the crowds on the terraces.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 3 February 2005 at 7:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Over in Manhattan at the American Folk Art Museum there's this fascinating exhibit about the "multiple dimensions of the colour blue". Which part of the spectrum will be next to be honoured? We suggest "gosling green". What's that? Listen up.

In my mother's time, Maggie Peters, a neighbour in the Glen of Aherlow, bought a dramatically bright woolly coat for her forthcoming wedding. Asked to describe its colour, she replied "gosling green", much to the bemusement of the locals. Now, those of you unfamiliar with the world of poultry would benefit here from knowing that a "gosling" is a young goose and it arrives into the world as an adorably fluffy yellow object. As it matures, however, it changes to a greenish hue, "like the colour of moss," as my mother put it. Was it this natural transformation that inspired Maggie Peters to come up with the colour "gosling green" for her yellow-green coat? Or was it Shakespeare? Rainy Day readers, who have come to expect erudition from this corner, will not be surprised to learn that the gosling and its colour appear in the works of the Bard. For example, in "Love's Labour's Lost", the comedy that satirizes men who use the excuse of studious pursuits to avoid romantic involvement, we get Berowne saying:

This is the liver vein, which makes flesh a deity,
A green goose a goddess. Pure, pure idolatry.

That's the "green" and the "goose" but where's the "gosling"? Well, it turns up in "Coriolanus", probably the last tragedy written by Shakespeare. The Roman general Caius Marcius (honoured with the surname Coriolanus after his victory over the Volscians) is nominated for consul on a wave of public adoration. Later, he comes to despise the citizens of Rome and declares:

Great Nature cries "Deny not." Let the Volsces
Plough Rome and harrow Italy! I'll never
Be such a gosling to obey instinct, but stand
As if a man were author of himself
And knew no other kin.

The "gosling" and the "green" finally came together in "The Vicar of Wakefield" by Oliver Goldsmith: "His waistcoat was of gosling green, and his sisters had tied his hair with a broad black ribband. We all followed him several paces, from the door, bawling after him good luck, good luck, till we could see him no longer."

Although Maggie Peters, who was born 150 years after Goldsmith's novel appeared and 300 years after Shakespeare died, left school at 10 and worked on a small farm in Tipperary all her life, her vocabulary was of the classical kind.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 2 February 2005 at 7:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The world is having a party to celebrate the good news from Iraq when the door opens and in walks Sami Ramadani, yes, that's right, the dour ambassador of the "insurgents" (aka murderers) himself, and he's carrying a copy of the Guardian bearing the headline, "The Vietnam turnout was good as well". Well, of course he's got the paper with him; he wrote the article himself, didn't he? The al Grauniad subbies like this kind of cheerful, optimistic story so they helped him out with the tag line "No amount of spin can conceal Iraqis' hostility to US occupation". Right.

Once you've read one Sami piece, you've read them all, so there's no point wasting space here quoting any of it, but the good news is that The Dude got right on the case with "Beating a Dead Parrot", a wittier headline, which was aided by a much more informative subhead: "Why Iraq and Vietnam have nothing whatsoever in common." His conclusion is notable:

"I suppose it's obvious that I was not a supporter of the Vietnam War. Indeed, the principles of the antiwar movement of that epoch still mean a good deal to me. That's why I retch every time I hear these principles recycled, by narrow minds or in a shallow manner, in order to pass off third-rate excuses for Baathism or jihadism. But one must also be capable of being offended objectively. The Vietnam/Iraq babble is, from any point of view, a busted flush. It's no good. It's a stiff. It's passed on. It has ceased to be. It's joined the choir invisible. It's turned up its toes. It's gone. It's an ex-analogy."

Sami Ramadani with his Bin Ladenist ravings has had a good run in the Guardian but his apologias for the detested "insurgency" are getting a bit tired now. He's definitely not going to be invited to any Rainy Day post-election parties. Bah!

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 1 February 2005 at 9:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Two of the most enjoyable social occasions of the past six months were accompanied by cups of tea in Cafe Regular in Brooklyn and pints of porter in the White Horse pub in Limerick. Both events were enabled by blogging and both featured Dervala, author of that excellent diary, dervala.net. Indeed, so excellent is her blog, that the very prestigious consultancy, Stone Yamashita, took note of it, invited her out to San Francisco for a chat and then hired her. Says Dervala: "They do work that's as solid, smart, and beautiful as an iPod."

Congratulations! Here's to seeing you at the Golden Gate.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on at 12:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)