It was "China Week" a while ago on BBC World and I, as a fully paid-up Sino-phile, was looking forward to seven days of special programming on the Middle Kingdom. But I'm afraid to say that the Beeb's efforts were largely disappointing. There were some interesting reports, especially about the Muslim population of the far west, but too much of the coverage was of the highly cliched variety " Look! Some people in China are rich these days !" etc. The one programme that really rankled was t...
A few months ago, I came home from work and switched on the TV. On the screen were two men holding a photo opportunity, one Catholic, the other Protestant - His Holiness, Pope John Paul the Second and George Walker Bush, President of the United States. The Supreme Pontiff was trying to read a written statement to the press. I strained to listen to what the old man was saying. Was it Polish, Italian, Latin even? It was only after several moments that I realised that the leader of the world's C...
In a strange way, I find myself agreeing with the US ambassador to Israel, Dan Kurtzer, when he said on Friday that it is "unrealistic" to expect the large settlements on the West Bank to be evacuated. It seems to me that Kurtzer is correct in identifying the permanence of Ma'aleh Adumim et al . However, the American diplomat was amiss in not drawing the logical conclusion from this. The harsh reality is that the larger settlements on the West Bank, many of them now the size of small tow...
Thursday was my last St. Patrick's Day. From now on, I'm boycotting the annual celebration of all things Oirish. Next March 17th, no matter where I may be in the world, I will be defiantly (and uncharcteristically) sober. Anyone foolish enough to wish me a happy Paddy's Day will be met by a terse "bah, humbug!" For me, this won't be much of a sacrifice. When I was a kid, St. Patrick's Day wasn't that big a deal, except on the rare occasions when one of my school's sports teams made it to t...
The first thing that struck me upon entering the West Bank city of Nablus was not the poverty or the violence but rather the sheer natural beauty of the city's setting, nestled in a valley. It seemed only right that Palestine, as a land over which two peoples struggle, should be a physically beautiful country. Other conflict zones like Ireland, Lebanon and the Balkans are also pleasing on the eye. The wistful side of me likes to think that men would no more fight over an ugly country ...
One of the advantages of learning Hangeul , the Korean writing system, is that it allows the native English speaker to understand many words which have been Hangeul-ised from English. So for example, at the cafe I can order a " ka peu chi no " or a " mo ka ". Sometimes though, ignorance might be bliss. A while ago, I saw a public information notice on the Seoul subway. My Korean is very poor so I could only understand the title, which was derived from an English word: " te reo ". Unfo...
In the run-up to the war in Iraq, the supposedly liberal US commentator, Tom Friedman tried to rally progressives to the war camp with the argument (I'm paraphrasing) "somethings are still right, even if Bush thinks they are". While I do not agree with Friedman's position on the Iraq war, I do accept the principle he was espousing. Every once in a while, I find myself agreeing with the US president. It sends a shiver down my spine and I feel like I need a shower, but still I can't deny it...
I find it remarkable how Americans refer to their government, their armed forces and their country in the first person."We have to support our president and our troops in Iraq. We have to win." Or equally, "We have to oppose our president's Iraq policy. We have to bring our troops home. We can't win." The idea that the government belongs to the people is strongly enshrined in the American constitution. It probably seems natural then for Americans to speak of their state as "we" "us" and "...
Ten years ago my school, deep in unionist Ulster, became the first mainly Protestant place of learning to invite members of the IRA's political wing, Sinn Fein (SF), to come and speak to the pupils. At the time this was a controversial step. The IRA's ceasefire was not yet a year old and SF was still, to many unionists, completely beyond the pale morally. As Jim Gibney and Tom Hartley arrived at my school that day back in 1995, I imagine that they saw their visit as one more small step on...
Last year a family friend spent a week here in Seoul on business. The second time we met, just before he was due to leave, he looked at me in a pleasantly bewildered manner and sighed: " This city has beaten me. It's a beast ." For those unaccustomed to epically large Asian cities, this is a common sentiment. The traffic, the noise, the over-crowding, the energy, the sheer size of a city which has twice the population of Ireland, can be a bit much for a newcomer from the west. I live on...
I've been away from Northern Ireland (NI) for ten months and as such, I'm starting to feel out of touch with political developments back home. In particular, I've been perplexed by the depth of the crisis precipitated by the IRA's robbery of 26 million pounds from a Belfast bank just before Christmas. Of course, I accept that the two governments and the other political parties in the north are right to have no faith in Sinn Fein after this robbery. But still, isn't all the shrill rhetoric...
Thirty miles from where I sit typing this is the country of North Korea, which announced last week for the first time that it has nuclear weapons. When I first heard this news I paused for a moment of trepidation. And then, like everyone else in this region, I got on with life. After all, last week's announcement was not "news" as such, but merely confirmation of what, to use the Belfast parlance, "the dogs in the street know". Like it or not, we in north east Asia are learning to live with t...
When someone you care about is terminally ill, their death can be the cause of guilty satisfaction on your part. "At last", you think to yourself, "the suffering is over". I feel a little like that this week following the summit between Mahmoud Abbas and Ariel Sharon in Sharm-al-Sheikh. At the meeting in Egypt, the two leaders agreed to a ceasefire ending the four-year old intifada. The uprising, which has been in intensive care for more than half its life, has finally been put out of its mis...
I haven't been looking forward to writing this blog. I've known for some time that my best friend Soupy, known to Joeusers as johnsoup, will be leaving Korea. Knowing his dislike of presents, I promised to write a blog about him in lieu of a going away gift. There is the possibility, as I'm sure John will welcome, that this will lead me to write about my emotions; a very un-Barry thing to do. We first met in September 2000 in my native Belfast. We were in the same Masters class, two of t...
At the top of the Newtownards Road in east Belfast stretches one of the longest murals in Northern Ireland (NI), a collection of street art celebrating loyalist paramilitarism which encompasses an entire block. Alongside the predictable images of masked gunmen, there are some more unusual touches like the attempt to claim the Declaration of Arbroath and the legendary figure Cuchulainn as loyalist symbols. At one point, if you look closely you can see a crest bearing the legend "their...