The Quiet Road

Almost anyone with a blog that allows reader comments will be familiar with the problem of ‘Comment Spam’. This is the practice of posting a comment for no other reason than to create one or more links from your website to another one. This is not in the hope that people will follow that link, but rather to help with search-engine placement.

See, search engines rank sites using complex algorithms that take into account numerous factors. One of those factors is the number of other sites that link to them. So a website about basket-weaving, for instance, which has a thousand links to it will – all else being equal – appear higher in Google or MSN searches than one with only a hundred links to it. Given that search engines generate large amounts of traffic, and people tend to click on search results higher up the list, it makes sense from a commercial standpoint to try and maximise the number of incoming links your site has.

Yet another example where commercial interests conflict with ethical ones. Because although it may be a small issue, it is nonetheless a dishonest practice. If the owner of a basket-weaving site spends time adding links to their site on blogs, it creates a false impression of how popular that site is. Again, a relatively minor issue in the grand scheme of things, but one which nonetheless makes the internet as a whole less reliable. A thousand people saying “This site is great” means far more than one person (the site owner) saying it a thousand times. Yet currently search engine technology cannot distinguish between the two, so you may find yourself getting all your basket-weaving tips from a dreadful site run by a dishonest spammer rather than the excellent one that is recommended by lots of people.

As I say; it’s a dishonest, unethical practice carried out by people with no real sense of decency or fair play. Nasty scum basically. The kind of people you’d cross the road to avoid. Unsurprisingly the main purveyors of comment spam are porn sites and online casinos… neither of which I object to on principle, but both of which – in practice – tend to have a significant whiff of exploitation and unpleasantness about them.

Sometimes, however, you get comment spam that is simply perplexing. Recently, for example, I’ve had the same comment posted to every single one of the posts on this blog. It reads: “Great article. I am just sad I dont know how to reply properly, though, since I want to show my appreciation like many other.”

A very nice thing to say. The first time it appeared I approved it for publication. It sounds like someone for whom English is not a first language and who wishes to express their appreciation of your writing, but doesn’t quite have the words (the singular of the word “other” gives away the potential non-native-speaker). Soon afterwards, however, the same comment began to spring up on every blog post (including the ones that are just an image and a link). I realised therefore that it was comment spam and deleted them all.

What is perplexing about it, however, is the fact that the spammer doesn’t include any links in the actual comment, and the web-address they provide (which links from their name – Bonifacious) doesn’t work. Ergussumatrras dot com. There’s nothing there; leastways not yet; so as comment spam it’s a complete waste of time. Not only unethical and dishonest, but utterly incompetent too.

The Assassination of Richard Nixon

A while ago – on my last blog but one – I received a positive comment on one of my posts. It was clear that the commentator had not only read, but actually thought about, the post. I naturally checked out his link and found it led to a blog which he kept regularly updated. I became a reader of his site and he became a semi-regular commentator on mine… always relevant and thoughtful comments. He appeared no different to any other blogger. After a while, his blog became darker and darker. He wrote about his wife leaving him and refusing him access to his kids. He wrote about how this had a knock-on effect on his work and how he was in real danger of losing not only his family, but his job and home too. I became quite concerned for the guy and sent him a couple of emails. I saw undercurrents of suicidal tendencies begin to manifest in his writing, and emailed him again suggesting he contact The Samaritans, or – if he wasn’t willing to do that – then I’d be glad to meet up with him for a chat, if he needed someone to vent at.

I received no response to my emails, and wasn’t willing to discuss this publicly in the comments of his blog… I didn’t know how sensible it would be given his fragile state of mind; it’s very very difficult to predict how someone will interpret a chunk of plain text posted to a public website. In order to deal with serious emotional issues, it’s far better to do it in person.

Then there was a shift in his outlook… he began posting hints that his situation was in danger of driving him to violence. At first I became seriously worried that he might hurt his ex-wife and genuinely considered contacting the police. Then however he started talking about “hitting back at the powerful”. He commented on one of my blog posts – an attack on Tony Blair – stating that someone should “try to get close to Blair and do us all a favour”. Then, on his own blog, he began discussing a plan to sneak into a banquet being held at a London hotel which a number of foreign and UK politicians would attend, and poison the food.

It was only at this point that I smelled a rat. He’d been so smart up until that point… I knew he wasn’t dumb enough to post details of an assassination attempt on a public website. I still believed that this was a poor bloke who’d just gone through a hellish time; lost his family, lost his job, was in danger of missing payments on his mortgage and was genuinely at the end of his tether… the assassination thing was clearly a dark joke from the mind of someone in a dark place. A plea for help… a plea for attention from his ex. It was hard to know, but I felt very bad for the guy.

The day after the banquet had passed off without incident I logged onto his blog. The blog was no longer active. In its place was a large advertisement for the film “The Assassination of Richard Nixon”. The entire thing had been part of a viral marketing campaign to coincide with the UK release of the movie. His apparently genuine messages on my blog and on his own site had merely been lies designed to part people with their money. He had taken advantage of my concern (some would say, my gullibility) and abused my trust for personal profit. What a deeply nasty excuse for a human being. True pondscum.

Yes, the film is fantastic (Sean Penn is an amazing actor). And yes, the campaign was very clever. But you can be clever and still be pondscum. And manipulative advertising for a fantastic film is still manipulative advertising. If I ever met that blogger in a pub I’d spit in his face. Because frankly, that’s what it feels like he did to me.

Hallo there!

Welcome to my new blog. I’ve already posted a few things; written while I was setting up this place; but this is the official Inaugural Post.

How’s it going so far? Well. It’s probably a bit early to say I guess.

Dublin certainly decided to welcome me in style. Within four days of my arrival, the city erupted into violence. The worst rioting in recent memory.

There has been condemnation from across the political spectrum of the violent clashes between protestors and gardaí in Dublin city centre this afternoon.

The Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, said it appeared that dissident republican elements, as well as local people, were responsible for the disturbances.

Labour leader, Pat Rabbitte, said the Justice Minister, Michael McDowell, should make a public statement, based on a garda report, about whether reasonable steps were taken to ensure that this kind of mayhem could not be created.

Meanwhile, Mr McDowell has condemned today’s protests. He said the riots were ‘inexcusable’ and ‘an organised vicious attempt to discredit democratic protest’.

However, a small group of ex-girlfriends of new Dublin resident, Jim Bliss, sympathised with the rioters insisting that they ‘knew exactly how they felt’. They commended the city for exercising ‘incredible restraint’ in suffering almost an entire week without an outburst of some kind.

RTÉ News | Widespread condemnation of city violence

For my overseas readers, let me explain a little of the terminology used in that news item, and introduce some of the participants. Although, can I please remind everyone that this blog will be a process of discovery. I’m new here myself (well, it’s been over two decades since I last spent any length of time in Dublin… and that was when I was twelve years old). And I have no idea who either Michael McDowell or Pat Rabbitte (good name though) are. Nor do I know who “Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny” is (the other prominent politician mentioned in the original news article).

Day 7: View from bedroom window

But I do know who Bertie Ahern is. He’s The Taoiseach (pronounced ‘Tea-Shock’). That’s Irish for “leader of the country”. It’s a prime-minister-type position rather than a “president” kind of thing. Bertie is leader of the Fianna Fail political party who have a majority of seats in parliament (actually, because Ireland has a more representative electoral system than, say, the UK; Fianna Fail don’t have an absolute majority and are the largest party in a coalition government. I think.)

Bertie has cultivated a “man of the people” political persona. How genuine that is, I have no idea. But I’m suspicious of people who wield a lot of power and pretend to be “just one of the lads”. Power over others is a strange thing. And one of the first changes it wroughts is to stop a person from being “just one of the lads”.

Hopefully I’ll know a little bit more about all this by Tuesday… apparently the flagship political debate show (the Irish equivalent of Question Time) is called Questions and Answers and is broadcast on Monday night. I expect it to be equal parts confusing, enlightening and infuriating.

Also, to clear up the other potentially confusing term… in case you aren’t already aware, the police are called gardaí­ here in Ireland. The singular is garda.

It’s as gaeilge ( “in Irish” ).

As Gaeilge

The Irish have a peculiar relationship with the native language. It was systematically discouraged during periods of British occupation, sometimes to the point of active persecution of those who spoke it. This had two results. Firstly it succeeded in almost killing it off completely. There are now only a few isolated spots in the west of the country where Irish is the first language. Secondly, it succeeded in making it exceedingly precious in the national psyche.

So every schoolchild in Ireland learns Irish as a second language. All of the roadsigns are bilingual. The common names of institutions (the main parliament is the Dáil) and organisations (the gardaí) are often Irish words, and official documents are all printed in both languages.

This is despite the fact that almost every schoolchild in Ireland stops learning Irish after the age at which it’s compulsory, and has forgotten all but a smattering by the time they reach adulthood. So with the exception of a handful of people living in the far west, fifty percent of everything the government produces is all but indecipherable to the public.

Quite aside from the waste of paper… The symbolism of the thing!

What now?

Well I’ve been in Dublin for almost two weeks now, and I still feel very much like a visitor. I’m beginning to wonder whether that’s not just my general feeling about planet earth, rather than any specific part of it.

I’ve not really ventured much beyond the confines of my new house just yet. But now that I’m completely unpacked and moved-in, and the loose ends from England are all being tied up one by one, I expect I’ll be discovering a little more about my new / old home town.

Hopefully this voyage of discovery will generate some interesting stuff to write about. If it doesn’t I can always continue droning on about peak oil and sustainability, or maybe just make some stuff up.

Just what the world needs right? Another new blog.

But at least in this case, the world isn’t getting another new blogger. I used to blog at cloud23.net, then more recently I had a blogspot blog, and now I’m back at my own domain.

“Numero 57” is a George Orwell reference by the way; “The Quiet Road” is from a Talking Heads song. And although “The Quiet Road” neatly sums up where my head’s at just now, I’m hoping that “Numero 57” doesn’t also become an appropriate choice rather than merely a powerful image.

But what’s “The Quiet Road” going to be about?

Ah, the question on everyone’s lips.

Accepting, of course, that you define “everyone’s lips” as the lips of the three people reading this.

In truth it’s going to be “more of the same”. So all those who are familiar with my previous blogs should feel free to mutter “So it’s just a trumped-up redesign then!” The rest of you should feel free to remain none the wiser.

It’s a cruel world and no mistake.

My recent move from London to Dublin will shift the emphasis of my political writing a little. Though probably not as much as one might expect. From an historical perspective Britain has always punched above its weight politically (so to speak). Clearly the actual power possessed by that small industrial nation has waned considerably since the days of Empire. Nonetheless, much of Britain’s influence still remains.

Part of this can be attributed to its absurdly disproportionate military power for its size. With a tiny handful of exceptions, the British armed forces could effectively reduce any nation to a smouldering pile of rubble should the order be given. And even that tiny handful wouldn’t fare well against the British nuclear submarine fleet.

And part of it can be attributed to the silly idea of having five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. Five nations who can veto any decision made, and who – by and large – dictate the terms of any debate on the world stage. Incidentally, it is no surprise that the other four permanent members of the Security Council also have fleets of nuclear-missile-bearing ships patrolling our oceans. Little gangs of genocidal terrorists.

It’s a simple fact that the longer those fleets are out there waiting for the order to murder hundreds of millions of people, the more likely it is that the order will be given (in anger or in error). That the human race sees fit to take such an enormous risk with its future is probably all the evidence that the Climate Change lobby needs to pack up and go home. By backing up political power with the threat of human extinction we have undeniably entered an age of deep nihilism.

Those of us who warn of Peak Oil or Climate Change or Unsustainability just can’t compete with a system threatening to murder us all if it doesn’t get its way.

Which isn’t to say that local Irish politics will be pushed aside by the Big Global Issues. Sometimes the apparently “small” stories can be illustrative of important points. Points that get obscured by the bombastic fog of International Affairs. And let’s not forget that British politics are actually very important here in Ireland. After all, they still occupy a quarter of the country (ooooh… see how I, not so subtly, set out a broadly Republican stance through my use of the word “occupy”? You have to watch out for bias like that in the media. Absolutely scurrilous.)

Interestingly, just as Britain has long puched above its weight, politically speaking; so Ireland has done the same culturally. And for almost exactly the opposite reason. Britain’s political influence was wrought with economic and military dominance. Ireland’s cultural influence was a product of oppression and economic hardship.

Thanks to a millennium of occupation by our nearest neighbour, the Irish gained the dubious gift of having just as much ownership of the global language as the English, or later the Americans. Then a rich literary tradition, geographical proximity to the cultural centre of the world (London), and the economic hardship that created global emigration combined to allow even average Irish writers to gain far wider audiences than the best Belgian or Swiss or Danish ones. It’s no surprise then, that when Joyce or Beckett or Yeats came along, they would shake the world of literature to the core.

Which is not to say that I intend to deliberately shift focus from politics to culture because of my change of city. I shall – as always – merely continue to tackle those things that inspire me to write. Though I do intend to be more disciplined about it, and try to post a bit more regularly.

Well, here’s hoping…