It is only two months since the death of Yasser Arafat, yet already the new political lexicon created by his demise has descended into meaningless cliche. I refer here to the oft-quoted "window of opportunity" ( WofO ) which, we are led to believe has been opened by Abu Ammar's passing. This term has quickly become the hopelessly innacurate short-hand of the politically illiterate, already rivalling "coalition of the willing" and "ethical foreign policy" for toe-curling cringe-worthiness. ...

Link Actions like this are "worthy" of the Brownshirts. My deepest respect to Eugene and his family for standing their ground.

There's never a good time to go to a fancy dress party as a Nazi soldier but Prince Harry managed to choose a most inappropriate moment to make his sick joke. He was pictured in his fascist get-up only two weeks before the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. His idiotic actions have caused outrage and deep offence. Quite rightly he has apologised. More importantly for his own sake, I hope he takes time to consider his menatality which led him to believe that such a costum...

One of the most infamous incidents in the history of the House of Commons occured in 1972 during a debate about the murder of 14 civilians in Derry by the British army - Bloody Sunday. At one point Bernadette Devlin, who had witnessed the slaughter first-hand, rose from her seat, strode across the august chamber and punched home secretary Reggie Maudling in the mouth. Predictably this caused uproar. While Devlin's action was certainly "un-parliamentary", no one got seriously hurt that day...

Prediction, like alcohol, makes fools of us all, so here goes: 1. Iraq The elections will be held in most of the country and then guess what? The violence will go on. The country will descend even deeper into anarchy and despair. At some stage this year it is possible that the American public will reach a tipping point when a majority realise that, for everyone's sake, their troops have to leave. It is at this point that one should expect the US right to start thrashing around...

Year-end obituaries tend to suggest some commomn thread running through the twelve months in question. There is supposed to be a theme, 2004: The Year Of X. But this is a conceit. 2004 was not the year of X, or Y, or even Z. It was just a period of time. In this past twelve months new trends became apparent, established trends continued and old trends faded away. People lived and died, laughed and cried as they do every other year. With this in mind, I will eschew all narrative in my humbl...

You know how it is. You're compiling your Christmas card list when the name of an old friend springs to mind. You're unsure whether or not said old pal should receive a card. You were thick as thieves once, but that was long ago. Would sending a card now make up for all that time or would it just serve to highlight the distance that has grown between you? It's a tough one, no doubt. As for us mere mortals, so for The Most Powerful Man On Earth, Gerorge W Bush. The US President has spent th...

As I'm sure you're all aware, I celebrated my first anniversary as a Joeuser last week. Yes, O G San is now one year old. Birthdays are a time for reflection so I've been pondering the nature of blogging recently, "this thing of ours", as Tony Soprano might say. There can be no doubt that the weblog is an idea whose time has come. Bloggers have started to effect the media and politics of our societies in ways which none of us can yet fully comprehend. It is only right that "blog" has been...

One Saturday last year I was browsing the shelves of a basement book shop in Taipei, my home at the time. Having made a purchase, I was walking up the stairs back to the street when I was confonted by something quite unexpected - quiet. Taipei must rank as one of the world's noisiest cities, with traffc roaring by twenty-four hours a day. But as I stood there, I couldn't see a single car on the road, not one of the ubiquitous yellow taxis, no buses being driven by madmen and not a single scoo...

A few years ago there was a fly-on-the-wall documentary about Ulster Unionist leader, David Trimble. At one stage the star of the piece is shown travelling to Stormont to be sworn in as first Minister for the first of what turned out to be several occasions. "An historic day" offers the interviewer from the front seat of the car. "Yes", says Davie, not even looking up from the file he is reading, "one of many", he replies wearily. Even back in 1999 one of the peace process' key protagonists h...

Public protest is a vital part of any true democracy. When people are angry about something, it's right and healthy that they should take to the streets to voice their unhappiness. To the thousnads of British citizens who have protested, and who continue to protest, against their government's insane support for Bush's war in Iraq, I say "more power to you." But protest is not enough. Another sign of a healthy democracy is the ability to address the concerns of protestors within the politic...

Last weekend I was, as ever, sitting in a bar with Soupy, my erstwhile friend in both the online and offline worlds. At one stage, as we sat there putting the world to rights, an English woman came up to us and started chatting. The woman in question was determined to tell us, over and over and over, just how sexy she found our Ulster brogues to be. Well, who am I to argue with such an assessment? It seeems that for the English these days, the Ulster accent is in. Large English companies ...

"Remember that when Arafat was still regarded as a superterrorist...the Israelis encouraged the Hamas to build mosques and social institutions in Gaza. Hamas and the Israelis had very close relations when the PLO was still in exile in Tunisia. I can remember being in southern Lebanon in 1993 reporting on the Hamas, and one of their militants offered me Shimon Peres' home phone number. That's how close the relations were!" Robert Fisk, April 2002 In the 1970s and 80s, Israel, like m...

At Easter I was drinking in the famous Crown Bar, a popular tourist spot in Belfast city centre. Waiting for my drinks, I got chatting to the guy next to me, who like most of the people in the bar, was not a local. He was from Tralee, in the south-west of Ireland. Despite being the wrong side of forty, it was his first visit to our country's second city. He commented, as most first-timers do, on the freindliness of the people and on how much he was enjoying his visit. I've always been su...

One of the most popular myths in the corridors of power in Tel Aviv and Washington is the notion that the Israeli/Palestinian conflcict could be solved easily were it not for the obstructionism of Palestinian president, Yasser Arafat. If nothing else, Arafat's imminent death will soon show this belief to be a fiction. It is of course convenient for Bush and Sharon to place all the blame for the conflict at Arafat's door, since it absolves them and their countries from any responsibility f...