Aleppo citadels and carpets

Aleppo is one of the oldest cities in the world. There is evidence of continued occupation in this part of Syria dating back to 5000BC. Some of the crumbling streets look that old and are in need of serious attention. It was also a city that looked labyrinthine and I would need assistance to get around. I asked the guy who ran my fleabag hotel where I could get a map. He didn’t understand me so he walked me to the shop next door where the owner translated my question. He pointed down the road to the tourist police office.

There I was helped by a young, tall and smiling man whose slightly oily appearance somehow reminded me of Franz Kafka. His English wasn’t great but he wanted to be friendly. He was also inquisitive. What is your work? He asked. I said computers. He then asked for my email address “in case I have question about computers.” Feeling a bit dodgy about this request, I gave him a fake address. But perhaps I needn’t have been suspicious. He told me the citadel wasn’t very far away. He gave me a map, a thick book about Syria and walked me around the corner to the ATM (It didn’t work for me, but that was hardly his fault). I wanted to be quickly away from the scene of my “crime” in case he quickly emailed and got an “address not known” response.

The map wasn’t easy to interpret and none of the streets had English transliterations of their Arabic names. I walked in the direction of what I assumed to be the citadel only to realise I was completely wrong when I got as far as what was the main football stadium. I knew the 50m high citadel dominated the landscape but I couldn’t see it anywhere. Finally after a half hour of wondering through nondescript streets the mammoth structure came into view.

There have been castles of some sort on the site for 5,000 years. The prophet Abraham is said to have milked his sheep on the citadel hill. But warfare and earthquakes have long since taken care of whatever castle Abraham saw and the present structure dates from around the 13th century. There was just one entrance a 16th century fortified gateway, added by the Egyptian Mamlukes, and accessible only by an arched bridge.

The road to it was a maze through the old city. I went in through the Bab Antakya (Antioch Gate) which protected the city from the west. Once inside I passed through the long and winding covered souk that led to the citadel. Halfway through, I was approached by an eager merchant. "Hello, where you from, what’s your name?" he asked. I made the mistake of telling my details (luckily he did not ask for an email address). "Ah you come visit my shop, and see my rugs. I am mentioned in all the guide books. I am in Lonely Planet". I told him I was on my way to the citadel. “Ah, it is closed today, holiday. Come visit my shop.” I said I might visit his shop after I had checked out for myself whether the citadel was shut. After a few more protestations, I finally got rid of him. A few more sellers came up asking my name and where I was from. This time I steadfastly stayed true to my purpose and refused to communicate with any of them.

But Mr Lonely Planet was right – the citadel was closed. Though it was a Tuesday, it was a “holiday” of some sort. The doors on the arched bridge were firmly shut. But even closed, it looked impressive. It was an elliptical structure with stone walls 50m high and a 100m wide. The base had of almost half a kilometre and a width of 325m. It took a good 15 minutes to walk a loop of the base. The large moat surrounding the citadel was a defacto tip for Aleppo and strewn with rocks, household and street rubbish. Deep inside the moat was a boy, no older than ten, driving a bulldozer (perhaps legitimately, but in Syria you can never tell).

“Hey, my Ireland friend!” My reverie was rudely interrupted. Mr Lonely Planet had found me again. “You must come now and see my shop, I have wonderful carpets, very cheap!” I had to be very firm and tell him I wasn’t interested in carpets, however cheap. I fled the scene and walked rapidly back through the covered souk avoiding all eye contact with anyone who looked like they were about to offer me the deal of the century.

Israel proceeds towards its own election

Israel has reacted cautiously to Barack Obama’s victory in the US presidential overnight. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said her country hoped the president-elect would maintain US friendship with Israel and a commitment to peace talks. She called Obama's election win "a mark of merit for American democracy." Israel has also hailed the announcement Obama has appointed Jewish former Clinton aide Rahn Emanuel as chief-of-staff. However with its own parliamentary election due early next year, Israeli politicians are wondering what impact he will have on the Middle East.

Livni is hoping to emulate Obama’s success in that election. In September she was narrowly elected leader of the ruling Kadima party edging past main rival, Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, by one percentage point replacing scandal-ridden Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Livni’s hopes of becoming immediate Prime Minister were dashed by the refusal of coalition parties to work with the new Government, leaving Kadima little choice but to call an election. As a result Olmert continues to lead a transitional government until the election on 10 February. This is because of a law the Knesset must wait 21 days until it officially declares that general elections will be held within 90 days. The ultra-Orthodox Shas party said it would not join a Livni coalition, citing differences over the future of Jerusalem in the peace talks with the Palestinian Authority, and its demand for increased welfare benefits.

Livni labelled her former coalition partners’ demands for continued power-sharing “extortion” and said she would not “pawn Israel’s future for the prime minister’s chair”. Livni told President Shimon Peres she had done everything she could to put together a parliamentary coalition. She said other parties preferred elections. "If everyone agrees that elections are in order," she told Peres, "then we must do it quickly." She is hoping to become Israel’s first female Prime Minister since Golda Meir 30 years ago.

Tzipi Livni was born 50 years ago in Tel Aviv of a Polish father and an Israeli mother. After finishing compulsory military service she worked for Mossad before resigning to finish a law degree. She spent 10 years practicing law specialising in public and commercial law before being elected to the Knesset as a Likud member in 1999. She joined the ministry two years later under Ariel Sharon and worked her way up to Minister of Justice by 2005. When Sharon left Likud to form Kadima, Lipni went too and became second in line to succeed him after Olmert.

The current political impasse is hampering efforts to make progress on the Palestinian settlements. Outgoing US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with top Israeli and Palestinian negotiators this week to discuss the faltering Annapolis peace process. According to Barry Rubin, an international affairs and terrorism specialist at Global Research in International Affairs Centre (Gloria) in Israel, Livni wants to use the talks to demonstrate to voters that they should elect her as the country's next prime minister because she is for peace.

However her bid to become Prime Minister could be thwarted by the return of Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu who is leading in the polls. He was also at yesterday’s meeting with Rice and intends to adopt a new peace model should he be elected prime minister. Netanyahu told Rice his model would combine diplomatic peace with economic peace, coupled with "accelerated development." He stressed the peace model would be premised on improvement on the grassroots level and then move to leadership level. However, Netanyahu’s track record as former Prime Minister is not impressive in peace talks. He is a hawk and would not be trusted by any of the Arab participants. The more moderate Lipni would be a better bet for peace, but will Israeli voters give her the chance?

Masada

A new musical opening in the West End is causing controversy for its subject matter – life in the wartime Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw. The story is about a family of actors in the Ghetto who put on a play about the Jewish resistance against the Romans at Masada in 74AD. Many critics have raised eyebrows. The Lebrecht Weekly says “putting the Holocaust on stage is fraught with risks of moral trespass and want of verisimilitude”. However The Jewish Community Online says it is a clever plot twist to show an attempt to raise the morale of the ghetto community by staging a musical about Masada.

The history of the siege of Masada was noted by Josephus Flavius who also recorded the destruction of Jerusalem four years earlier in 70AD. The events were closely related as one led directly to the other. Flavius records that Masada was first fortified by Herod The Great who chose the site as his Winter Palace sometime in the 30s BC. Masada lay 450 metres above the Dead Sea on two strategic trade routes; to Moab in the south and Jerusalem in the north. After Herod died in 4BC, the Romans inherited the site and turned it into a garrison post.

Nothing changed until the Great Revolt by the Jews against the Romans in 66AD. One of the first actions of the revolt was the conquest of Masada by a militant Jewish group called the Sicarii (named for the curved Sica dagger they carried). The revolt spread to Jerusalem where it was brutally suppressed, leading to the destruction of Herod’s Temple and the enslavement of large parts of the population. Many fled to Masada which was the last rebel stronghold. The Romans sent the 10th Legion to end the siege and 8,000 soldiers staked out the cliffs in eight camps. The siege lasted several months until the Romans constructed a ramp. Over the ramp came a tower with a battering ram which they used to crush the walls. The relentless attack took its toll but rather than surrender, the Sicarii committed mass suicide of the 960 members of their community. The men drew lots to see who would have to do the awful deed to the others. Just two women and five children hiding in the cistern survived to tell their incredible story to the Romans.

I climbed up Masada earlier this week to see for myself the nature of its mystique. It is about an hour and a half south of Jerusalem by bus. The route descends out of the mountains that ring the city into the depths of the Dead Sea. We pass the Dead Sea resort of Ein Gedi; the “lowest place on Earth” according to one sign, before the towering cliff of Masada appears on the right.

There are two ways up the mountain from the east (there is also a Western route which is not connected by road and is an incredible 90 minutes drive away). While a cable car route was built in 1971 to provide mass transit for tourists, I prefer to walk the cheaper zigzag Snake Path up the side of the mountain. After all, this was the route that Herod and the Sicarii took to get there and if it was good enough for them, it is certainly good enough for me. The guide at the bottom told me it was 700 steps to the top and it would take 45 minutes. I did it in 30 minutes but I counted over 800 steps. Hot and sweaty at the top, I was stunned to see how big the complex was; it took up the entire plateau. The view, as I expected, was excellent with the entire vista of the Dead Sea and the mountains of Jordan beyond. Looking north was Qumran where in 1949 the Dead Sea Scrolls were found locked in the mountains.

Masada is a forbidding place. Situated on the eastern fringe of the Judean Desert, the cliffs are severe in every direction. The camp commander’s house overlooks the top of the Snake Path giving him a total view of everything that came and went from the fort. On the other side was the quarry which provided the durable dolomite used for the buildings of Masada. Behind lay Herod’s majestic Northern Palace. Built on three rock terraces, it gave the king solitude and some amazing views. His 29 storerooms held a mass of corn, an abundance of wine and what Josephus called “every variety of pulse and piles of dates.”

Lack of food would not be a problem in a siege. The palace was also geared to support Herod’s sumptuous tastes. He had his own sommelier, a special fish sauce imported from Spain and apple liqueur from Italy. There was also a bath-house, a banquet hall and a synagogue.

The Achilles heel was the fort's western side. Here next to a second palace that Herod built, the accent to the top was not as steep. In the Hebrew month of Nissan in the spring of either 73 or 74 AD, the Romans raised a tower high enough to overlook this part of the wall and bombarded the area. They then burned the wood and earth walls the rebels had built to shore up the outer walls. With defeat certain, the defenders killed themselves rather than submit to slavery. Josephus quotes their final acts: “It is very plain that we shall be taken within a day’s time, but it is still an eligible thing to die after a glorious manner, together with out dearest friends.”

A Roman auxiliary force occupied the fort for the next 200 years. After they finally left Masada, the site lay abandoned for centuries. The Byzantines established a monastery on the site until Palestine fell to the Muslims in the 7th century. Masada sank into oblivion until the 19th century. Archaeologists then began to uncover the old ruins. By the 1930s, Zionists saw the possibilities of the symbolism of the old fort and began to revere Masada as a sacred Jewish site. The Snake Path was discovered in 1953 and Masada National Park established in 1966. UNESCO instituted the site as a world heritage area in 1991 saying the “camps, fortifications and attack ramp that encircle the monument constitute the most complete Roman siege works surviving to the present day.” A worthy subject for a ghetto musical.

Kristallnacht - 70 years on

Coming barely a couple of days after my visit to Yad Vashem (Jerusalem’s intensely evocative and memorable Holocaust Museum), this weekend marks the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht (the night of broken glass) in Nazi Germany. It was this night that showed Germany’s fatal intentions towards its Jewish population. The pretext was the 1938 assassination of the third secretary of the German embassy in Paris, Ernst Vom Rath. Vom Rath’s killer was a Jew, 17 year old Herschel Grynzspan. Grynzspan was outraged over the scandalous treatment of his parents at the hands of the Nazis and took the law into his own hands. His actions served as a pretext for mass violence across Germany.

Though conditions were ripe for such a reaction, Kristallnacht would have been inconceivable barely two years earlier. Indeed in February 1936 a young Jewish man David Frankfurter assassinated Wilhelm Gustloff, the Nazi Gauleiter for Switzerland. There was no obvious backlash to Frankfurter’s action. Even though Vom Rath was a lower ranking Nazi official than Gustloff (who headed up a country’s Nazi apparatus), conditions had changed drastically by November 1938. It was now easy to enact, what today’s Jerusalem Post called “brutal vandalism [against] the Jewish community”.

Germany had been exposed to a steady barrage of anti-Jewish propaganda since 1933 with the Nuremburg Laws of 1935 relegating Jews to second-class citizens. The law and propaganda worked hand in hand to crush Jewish life. Authorities rushed to become “Judenreit” (Jew free) and movies and cartoons portrayed Jews as vermin, extortionists and rapists.

The world beyond Germany tacitly participated in this downgrading of an entire race of people. The 1938 Evian Conference held in the French Alps was called to discuss the growing problem of Jewish refugees anxious to get away from the troubles of the Third Reich. However none of the countries attending the conference were anxious to take the Jews in. As an exhibit in Yad Vashem points out, Australia does not come out well from this shameful conference. Australia’s representative T.W.White is quoted as saying “We have done all we can. Australia does not have a racial problem and is not desirous of importing one”. His view was mirrored by the other western powers. A Nazi observer returned to Berlin overjoyed with the news he gave Hitler. “you can do what you like with the Jews, no one is interested in them,” he told the Fuhrer.

This view was reinforced by the experience of the SS St Louis. The St Louis set sail from Hamburg with its cargo of 900 refugees. Its destination was Havana and Cuba had already issued visas in advance, on the understanding the visitors were tourists not refugees. However by the time the boat landed in Havana, the Cuban government had changed its mind and refused to allow the refugees land. The boat then drifted off Florida waters before it became obvious US authorities were not going to allow it to land either. The captain had no alternative but to set sail back for Hamburg. But when the passengers threatened to commit mass suicide, the captain landed in Belgium and homes were grudgingly found for the Jews in Belgium, Holland, France and Britain.

There was an upsurge in anti-Jewish violence after Evian. On 30 October 1938, Germany expelled 20,000 Polish Jews who did not have German citizenship. Among these were Grynzspan’s parents. Young Herschel wanted to call world attention to the plight of these people and acquired a gun with which he intended to kill the German ambassador. As this proved impossible he shot Vom Rath instead on 4 November. Iironically Vom Rath had been under Gestapo surveillance for having Jewish sympathies. He died two days later from his wounds.

Vom Rath’s shooting was the perfect pretext to launch a major action against Germany’s Jews. The day he died, Gestapo headquarters sent out a sinister message to all its staff: “At very short notice actions against Jews, especially against synagogues, will take place throughout Germany. They are not to be hindered.”

The “actions” received popular support. The night of 9 November 1938 became known as Kristallnacht with many Germans zealously supporting the Nazis in targeting the Jewish community. 267 synagogues were gutted by fire, 7,000 Jewish shops were looted, 91 Jews were killed and anywhere between 20,000 and 200,000 were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Insurance reports estimated the damage caused by shattered glass at $6m. Goering publicly regretted the action but went on to impose a penalty of 1 billion Reichmarks ($400m) to be paid by the Jewish community for the damage caused to them.

His regret was about the violence’s amateur nature. From then on, violence against the Jews would be left to the specialists. The road to the Wansee Conference and the Final Solution was already laid out. Already the Manchester Guardian of August 1938 announced the existence of three concentration camps at Dachau, Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald. When told of Kristallnacht, American president Franklin Roosevelt said “I could scarcely believe such things could occur in 20th century civilisation”. But civilisation or not, things were to get a lot worse than this for the Jews during FDR’s watch.

Diary of an Istanbul haircut

A bit delayed, but worth relaying:
Monday 20 Oct 2008. We left Bindarme at 7.30am on the hydrofoil to Istanbul. The crowded port boasted ships registered in Panama, Monrovia and Valetta and there was also one from Moscow, a true fish out of water. The boat sped across the Sea of Marmara getting to Istanbul in just two hours.

Arriving at Yenikapi port in Istanbul, I was greeted by the usual plethora of men asking me if I wanted a “tacsi”. But I was determined to set out on foot. The line straight ahead was blocked by the railway to Europe so I headed east in the general direction of Asia. Eventually there is a pedestrian overpass which goes through to a narrow alley onto a busy looking street. It looks promising with signs for Internet and the all-important “otel” (after drawing a complete blank on that score in Izmir). The first two “otels” I try are completely booked out but a third can fit me in for two nights (I wanted four). I wondered if it was because of Arsenal fans in town for the Champions League game tomorrow night. I set out and barely ten doors down I found a barber. I had promised myself a haircut in Istanbul and despite a total lack of the Turkish tongue I figured the language of clippers can’t be too difficult to communicate.

As soon as I was sat in the barber’s chair I was offered a sweet. I looked twice at the offering before the second barber made the “eat” gesture. I had seen this confection barely minutes earlier on the street. It had the look, texture and taste of toffee. “Kurdish” said my new barber friend. “I am Kurdish” he went on. The Kurdish barber stopped cutting my hair to allow me digest the “toffee”. But given that could take some time, I urged him to continue clipping away. A bit of hairy Kurdish toffee couldn’t hurt.

The barbershop had the usual array of incongruous photos common to barbers the world over. Pictures of Istanbul and Pammukale were mixed in with a mural of a Canadian ski slopes.

When I advised the barber with a heavy grunt he had cut my hair to my satisfaction and the universally understood “ok”, he proceeded with the next step of the operation. I could barely believe my eyes as he reached for a cigarette lighter and proceeded to set alight both my ears – Twice! I kept my apprehension to myself, assuming this was some local rite and was surprised the operation was painless. I wondered if this was an effort to quick-dry my ears but as the next step was a hair wash that theory foundered. I assume it was either his way of burning off the hairs from my ear or else a way of taking the piss out of a stupid tourist. The wash felt like a massage and after 15 minutes in the chair I was totally relaxed – despite the earscorching. I walked away with the remains of my Kurdish toffee in my pocket for safe-keeping.

Jordan to invest in Petra facilities

The Jordanian government has announced a $US 1.4 million plan to upgrade visitor facilities at the ancient Nabataean city site of Petra three hours south of the capital Amman. According to local authorities, the project will “enlighten tourists through a wide range of exhibits depicting various aspects of economic, cultural and social life of communities that lived there in a historically accurate way.” The aim is to provide insights into how the Nabataean culture operated 2,000 ago and will be a significant addition to Jordan’s premier tourist site which attracts 30,000 visitors every month.

Petra was the glittering capital of the Nabataean empire which reached its zenith under King Aretas IV (9BC to 40 AD). These dates straddled the lifetime of Jesus and Aretas was involved in hostilities with Herod, the Roman client king of Judea over a domestic spat when Herodias displaced Aretas's daughter as Herod's wife.

The city was established three hundred years earlier by a formerly nomadic people called the Nabataeans. The Nabataeans migrated from Arabia as shepherds and caravan traders who benefited from horse breeding. They settled and farmed rich irrigated productive land on a trade route, centred on the previously unpopulated area round Petra. It became known as 'a rose red city half as old as time'. The capital was strategically situated only twenty kilometres from the crossroads of two vital trade routes; one linking the Persian Gulf (and the silks and spices of India and China) with the Mediterranean Sea (and the empires of the Greeks and Romans), the other connecting Syria with the Red Sea.

Over the next two centuries, Petra became a major centre of commerce in the Negev desert dominating the spice route down to Arabia and Yemen. It carved out a bustling trade in incense, ivory, textiles and other precious goods that flowed by camel caravan from China, India and Southern Arabia to Mediterranean markets. It was the Nabataean ability to harness the limited water supply of the region that was the key to their success. The city’s elaborate water management system is still not fully understood.

By the time the Romans took over the desert metropolis in 106AD, a complex integrated system of hand-carved stone flumes (some lined with ceramic pipes), reservoirs and 200 cisterns was capable of supplying as much as 12 million gallons of water a day to the settled valley.

Petra was half built and half carved into the rock at the interior of a circle of mountains riddled with corridors and gorges. The largest monument is the Treasury building, the Al Khazneh. It is Petra’s signature building most often photographed through the narrow siq (the gap in the gorge) which leads to the monument.

Petra’s decline began after the Roman takeover as the Romans found new sea trade routes replace the caravans. But it remained a capital of a Roman province and a bishopric when Rome converted to Christianity. A major earthquake in 363AD destroyed much of the city’s infrastructure and crippled the water system. Petra sits on the western edge of the Arabian plate, southeast of the Dead Sea. The sandstone outcrops extend north on the eastern side of the transform fault segment of the Dead Sea rift zone. When the water system crumbled, the Nabataean dams and canals no longer diverted flow from the tombs and town and the community no longer had the wealth to rebuild the city. A second earthquake a hundred years later left the city in ruins. It lay forgotten until rediscovered by 19th century archaeologists.

Petra has made the cut in the "official" new seven wonders of the world (alongside Machu Picchu, the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal, the Colosseum, Rio’s Christ Redeemer and Mexico’s Chichen Itza). The interactive exhibit idea was inspired by Fawwaz Hasanat, head of the Petra Hotel Association, after his visit to the Pharaonic Village in Cairo. The Cairo village uses over 100 actors and actresses to perform daily activities and arts of the ancient Egyptians including agriculture, pottery, sculpture and weaving as well as fishing and wine-making. “It was something we lack in Jordan,” said Hasanat. “We have an amazing civilisation of Nabataeans, which deserves to be highlighted in that way.”

Surviving Syria

The Syrian Government showed last week it has no intention of conforming to democratic norms after the First Damascus Criminal Court sentenced a dozen leading activists on politically motivated charges. The 12 signatories of the so-called “Damascus Declaration” were found guilty on trumped-up charges of “weakening national sentiment” and “spreading false or exaggerated news which would affect the morale of the country.” The Damascus Declaration is a coalition of political parties and independent activists whose stated goal is to build internal support for peaceful democratic change in Syria. There was brief hope in the Damascus Spring of 2001 just after President Assad came to power but security crackdowns put paid to any lasting democratic breakthrough.

The country itself occupies an ambiguous status between rogue nation supporting Islamist groups while at the same time providing refuge for the US extraordinary rendition program. That sense of imprecise belonging is obvious on the streets of Damascus and Aleppo, the countries two biggest cities. I was unable to get money anywhere in Syria from an ATM and I assume there is no reciprocal agreement between the banks of Syria and Australia (there is certainly no diplomatic relations between the two). Yet when stuck for local currency I was able to walk into the most prominent building in Aleppo – the $US300 a night Sheraton and change euros into Syrian pounds with ease.

However I did not carry a lot of cash and my entire supply of US dollars was wiped out at the border from Turkey when they charged me a whopping $50 for the privilege of getting a visa to enter the country. I tried haggling the cost but the border officials weren’t souk salesmen looking for my custom - they genuinely didn’t care whether I came in or slunk off on the bus back to Turkey. The guy at the immigration desk also stole my only pen as his one broke. This was after a three hour wait filling in forms and waiting for the head honcho to stop arguing with a gaggle of burqa-clad harridans so he could frown at my passport from several different angles before letting me into his country. Oddly enough the one question they didn’t ask was whether I was intending to travel on to Israel.

So with little cash and even fewer opportunities to use credit cards I knew my stay in Syria would be short. The planned visits to Krak des Chevaliers and Palmyra would have to wait for another time. I would have to make a beeline for the Jordan border. Arriving late in Aleppo I stayed the night in a fleabag hotel. I walked to the city’s highlight, the 13th century citadel that soars over the town. Passing through the undercover souk en route, I was accosted by a carpet salesman who claimed to be mentioned in Lonely Planet. I resisted all attempts to visit his emporium but he did provide the useful information the citadel was shut for “a holiday”. I would have to admire it from the outside only.

I then walked to the train station where I bought a ticket to Damascus at 6am the following morning. With any luck, there might be a connection to Amman later that day. I was up early the following morning and off to the station in plenty of time for the train. But at the station, the conductor point blank refused to allow me board.

It turned out that yesterday, I was sold a ticket back to Turkey not Damascus (it was all in Arabic so I hadn’t a clue of the destination from reading it). Having come from Turkey I didn’t want to backtrack – I was headed for Jordan and Israel (though I wasn’t telling the Syrians that). Anyway with the aid of a few helpers and a few more of my ever dwindling supply of Syrian pounds I was scrambled onto the already departing Damascus train which left at 5.45am (the 6am train was for Antakya, Turkey). After 5 hours of scrubby desert country (and a long and indecipherable pantomime followed by Tom and Jerry on the TV in the carriage), the train dropped me off on the outskirts of Damascus (there is a city centre station which is mysteriously closed).

I asked was there a train to Amman today. "No", replied the station master. "Ok, what about tomorrow?" He shrugged his shoulders and said "maybe..." Insh’allah!
Undeterred, I started walking in what I thought had to be the direction of the city centre. Barely 200m away I found a bus station which had a bus to Amman in 5 hours time. I used up the last of my remaining local currency to buy the ticket and had nothing left over for the cost of them looking after my bags for a few hours. I had to trudge the one hour distance to the city with all my luggage.

I had time for a quick look round before I trundled back to the bus. Many buildings had President Bashar Assad prominent painted on to them, I saw a statue hailing the liberation of Jerusalem (1184 from the Crusaders not 1967 from the Arabs), a very colourful local funeral, and drank a strong coffee next to the Umayyad mosque with my last change and chatted with a retired elementary English teacher from Azerbajani Iran.

Then it was the long chug back to the bus before we set off for Jordan. We were close to the border when the driver shouted something in Arabic. We stopped at a market where everyone got off. I assumed it was only to stock up on food but one passenger showed me what he got and what I too needed. It was an exit visa costing another 500 pounds (about $15). This was more than what I had left in local currency. At this stage I feared I would be spending time in a Syrian prison until I miraculously located 10 euro which was buried deep in my wallet. The market keeper was only too happy to sell me the exit visa for hard currency and I was able to make good my escape.

When the bus finally crossed into Jordan I saw an ATM at the border which gave me money and next door was a shop selling Heineken beer. Though I didn’t buy any, I knew I was back in civilisation again.

Never plain sailing in Byzantium

It is difficult to imagine Istanbul being any more chaotic than what hapens on the streets but the life in the news appears just as full as mayhem. There is a trial in swing of 46 people accused of plotting to overthrow the Turkish government and yesterday the judges announced they were refusing to grant them bail. The defendants, known as the Ergenekon network, all have high profiles and they include former army officers, journalists, and a retired university dean. All 46 have denied the charges and claim the trial was politically instigated by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's government in order to censor its critics.

The Ergenekon trial is the topic of most conversations around the city and has sharply divided opinion into three camps. Firstly there are those who support the defendants and say the case is an excuse for the Islamist government to suppress its opponents. A second group of government supporters say the suppression of the secretive Ergenekon clique is a major step in the road to enhance Turkey's democracy. The third and most cautious camp consists of the intelligentsia who believe the trial will not result in any concrete gains for democracy as the indictment for the case is weak. But everyone has an opinion. The fact the indictees include generals, journalists, business leaders and an actress means that the case has enormous cachet on the streets.

And what incredibly noisy streets they are. Trams, cars, dolmus and buses compete for space with ever industrious trolley-boys, sackmen and slack-jawed tourists straining to capture the spirit of the place with yet another photograph. The central district of Sultanahmet is almost entirely surrounded by water. The Sea of Marmara lies to the south where an enormous queue of cargo boats awaits a spot to load and unload. East is the Bosporus and Asia across the water. A steady stream of ferries take the thousands home and abroad though the toll-spanned Bosporus Bridge is eating in to their traffic. North is the Haliç – the Golden Horn which splits the two European arms of Istanbul. Here the bridges are awash with fishermen and foodstalls and a clutter of noise and energy.

Napoleon reputedly once said that if the world had a capital then Istanbul would be it. And although it is not even the capital of its own country, the Corsican genius had a good point. Not only is the city's geography illustrious, so is its history. That history is most redolent in the three buildings that dominate Sultanahmet's Bosporus shoreline, the Blue Mosque, Aghia Sophia and the Topkapi Palace.

The Blue Mosque is the colloquial name for the Sultan Ahmed (Sultanahmet) mosque and is the country's national house of prayer. It was built in the 16th century by Ahmed as the first mosque of his massive Ottoman Empire which stretched from Morocco to Persia and from Ethiopia to the gates of Venice. The mosque earned its common name thanks to the blue tiles adorning the walls of its interior.

The Ottomans had inherited the great city of Constantinople two centuries earlier when it finally ended the thousand-year reign of the Eastern Roman Empire. Back in 532, its great emperor Justinian had also ordered the construction of a great building in Istanbul to honour his deities. That building was the Aghia Sophia, which would be the largest basilica in the world for a thousand years. When the city fell to the Ottomans in 1453, it was re-consecrated as a mosque still replete with Byzantine murals. Then in 1923 Turkey's great modern secular leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk turned it into a museum as part of his move to abolish the caliphate.

Also now a museum is the next door Topkapi Palace. Topkapi was the home of the Ottoman emperors for 400 years. It was built after the capture of the city and is a complex structure divided into four courtyards each one leading into more restricted parts of the palace. By the mid 19th century, its Asiatic style was becoming tiresome to the more sophisticated tastes of the Europeanised sultanate. They abandoned it in 1853 and Kemal Ataturk transformed it into a national museum in the 1920s.

The ghost of Ataturk still haunts the city. His image appears on many Turkish flags branding by streetsellers and hangs from the windows and from portraits on the walls of shops. Erdogan's government may have the veneer of Islamism that provoked the ire of the plotters but a strong taint of capitalist secularism lines the streets. The merchants compete on equal terms with the muezzins. Money is the real religion here.

Chaos, Chios and Cesme

I was never supposed to be in Chios or Cesme. The idea was to get the nine hour ferry from Pireaus to Lesbos and then sail into Turkey via Ayvalik. But somehow I was convinced the ferry made good time from the mainland or that I had researched it wrong and it was only a seven hour voyage. In any case I blissfully disembarked the ferry from Pireaus and sought out the nearest hotel as the last light faded behind the hills of the port.

It was not until I entered the lobby of the hotel that I noticed something was amiss. The wording on the scenic picture that greeted me was Chios not Lesbos. I did not want to ask the lady at the desk where I was (which seemed too silly for words). Then I remembered some people on board the ship who did not seem in a hurry to disembark. Putting that together with the 2 hours gained, I realised there and then that my ferry made two stops and I had accidentally got off at the first port of call. At that moment the ferryboat hooted loudly and I could see it leaving port by the window. For better or worse I was staying in Chios.

Immediately I smiled at my mistake for I knew this was actually a good outcome. Researching ways into Turkey via the Greek islands, several Internet sites said Lesvos was the most expensive port of departure and Chios and others were a lot cheaper. Plus it meant I would land in Cesme which was loaded in history. All that remained was to find out more about Chios itself.

It was a large island by Aegean standards. Lesbos was Greece's third largest island and Chios wasn't far behind in fifth. The large island was itself another reason why it never twigged I was headed for the wrong place.

The fame of this island is based upon its mastic gum. Mastic is a small tree almost unique to Chios. In a small area on the south of the island, mastic trees produce a distinctively flavoured resin, also known as mastic. Mastic has been used as a spice for over 2,000 years as a gum, medicine or to spice up cakes, pastries and liqueurs. When Chios was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire, the spice and the area it grew in became crucial to defend.

I took a leisurely local bus to the town of Mesta barely 35km from the town of Chios but one hour away on narrow winding roads. Here in the southwest of the island is the heart of mastic production. This village, like many around it, was built in defensive formation with the houses tightly packed around the church making it difficult for enemies to penetrate. These mastic villages have controlled the gum production since Roman times.

The pretty town of Chios itself faces off the Turkish port of Cesme visible less than 10km away. The waters between the towns were the scene of a crucial 18th century naval battle that was instrumental in the growing reputation of the Ottomans as the sick man of Europe. Here in 1770 was fought the battle of Chesma in the Russo-Turkish war. Aided by British naval officer Rear Admiral John Elphinstone, Russian forces under the command of Grigory Potemkin defeated the Turkish navy which sought refuge in Cesme. Potemkin was a particular favourite of the German born Tsarina Catherine the Great who called him endearingly "my dear pigeon".

Dear pigeon's victory established Russian control of the Aegean and Catherine erected Cesme Palace in his honour. The palace is still extant but it is the Cesme castle that is the major drawcard. The castle was built by the Genoese rulers of the 14th century and passed into Ottoman hands around 1400. Bristling with towers that slide down the hill to the port, the castle presents a fearsome barrier to control of the mainland. Outside lies a statue that attempts to turn this dark page of Ottoman history into a victory.

This is the monument of Gazi Hasan Pasha next to his lion. Kaptan Pasha was a former slave who rose through the Ottoman naval ranks. He avoided worse disaster in the battle of Chesme by withdrawing part of the Turkish fleet to port. Despite personally bringing the bad news of defeat to the Sublime Porte in Constantinople, he was eventually promoted Grand Vizier. Cesme still proudly honours the Pasha, an attitude probably for the best when dealing with someone with such a potentially nasty pet.

Athenian Agora phobia

Welcome to thriving and prosperous Athens. The world financial meltdown seems to have passed Greece by. Either that or Prime Minister Karamanlis has ordered a food led recovery. Cafes, bars and restaurants are numerous and packed. A gemutlich hum competes for attention with the ceaseless traffic. Gnomes from Zurich number banks are here to understand why the country seems immune to crisis. Either that or they are Swiss football fans here for the World Cup match v Greece tonight at Piraeus. Perhaps the slight grim look on the Swiss faces is more to do with that country's embarassing World Cup loss to Luxembourg rather than the impact of the battered bourses of the world.

October is a good time to come to Greece. The weather is warm but the crowds are thinning out. There are no peak season prices either. Hotels are cheap, clean and competitive. I flew into Thessaloniki on Friday on a quiet British Airways flight from Gatwick. The capital of Macedonia is Greece's second city hugging the Thermaic Gulf some 500km north of Athens and contains a considerable charm of its own. The city is named for the sister of Alexander the Great who married the founder of the city, King Cassander of Macedon. The city subsequently passed through a series of rulers, Romans, Byzantians and Ottomans who all left their mark on the architecture. The Turks captured Thessaloniki in 1430 and turned the city into a religious-coded patchwork of Islamic, Greek and Jewish areas. This uneasy multiculturalism survived until three 20th century tragedies forever changed the town. A great fire destroyed half the city in 1917, and five years later the Turks were expelled creating a refugee crisis across both countries. Finally Hitler's conquest in 1941 doomed the Jewish population. By the end of that war, Thessaloniki was a purely Greek city.

Today, Thessaloniki proudly wears it patchwork past and even more proudly proclaims itself capital of Macedonia (FYROMers need not apply). The former Ottoman prison guarding the eastern entrance to the town is now the White Tower museum and lookout and is the preeminent symbol of the city. Underneath the tower the seafront stretches on for miles in either direction while the remains of the Ottoman walls guard the hills over the old city. Other museums detail the Alexandrine, Roman and Byzantine epochs while the subsequent 400 year Turkish occupation is casually ignored.

They may not like the Turks, but the Thessalonikans do like their food. Cafes and bars radiate out from Aghia Sophia square and hog every available space in the numerous alleys and lanes. This glorification of food was repeated in Volos some 2.5 hours south of Thessaloniki, on a railway branch line out from Larissa. Volos is on the Pagasetic Gulf which, when not sounding like some nasty infection, resembles a lake being surrounded on three sides by high mountains some of which are skiable in the short winter. Though a relatively new city founded in the 19th century, it is one of Greece's most charming towns with many neoclassical buildings peering out on the promenade. Behind the town, Mount Pelion commands the landscape imperiously. The seafront exudes relaxation and demands the consumption of a beer, ouzo or Metaxa, or better still all three.

Although Volos is only 300km north of Athens, it took seven hours to get there by train including a one hour wait in Larissa. There are some serious mountains to contend with in Central Greece but annoyingly the railway line grimly clings on to the side of the mountains while the motorway cuts a swathe through the plain. Why couldn't they have built the railway there too? Eventually the "fast" train rolls lazily into Athen's Larissa station in late afternoon.

There is just enough time to visit the Agora before it closes at 6pm. Situated between the Plaka and the foot of the Acropolis, the agora dates back to the 6th c BC. Here was where ancient Athenians met to discuss public matters. If some international financial crisis was afoot, the leading men (ancient democracy was not asexual) of the era would gather in one of the buildings of the agora to discuss what impact it would have on Athens. There under the cool marble stone, religious gatherings took place, merchants sold their wares and artists displayed their handiwork. Much of the spirit of the agora is retained in the Plaka where a steady stream of hawkers gather around the outdoor diners selling knickknacks of dubious provenance.

Behind the Plaka and the newly built metro lies the glory of Athens: the Acropolis. Greek for "high city", the Acropolis is the Sacred Rock and officially Europe's most pre-eminent cultural site. Rising 150m above sea level, the earliest buildings on the site date from Mycenean times. The Parthenon was built to commemorate the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC but was destroyed ten years later by marauding Persians. During Athens' Golden Age 20 years later, Pericles began an ambitious building program on the sacred rock. He build temples which honoured many of the Greek Gods including Athena herself in the form of Nike ("victory"). The Parthenon was rebuilt as a treasury, also honouring Athena. The building has since served as a Byzantine church and an Ottoman mosque. The Venetians badly damaged the site during their invasion in 1687. The British Earl of Elgin stole many of the Parthenon artefacts in 1801 leading to a squabble over the marbles between Greece and Britain that remains a touchy subject to this date.

There have been several restoration projects since the Greeks regained control of Athens in 1832. The earliest efforts were clumsy and made matters worse. Greece established a Committee for the Conservation of the Acropolis Monuments in 1983. Every item on the rock was meticulously catalogued and the restoration began with the delicate task of repairing the bad re-work. The difficult task has been exacerbated by the pollution which has plagued Athens since the 1960s. Acid rain and car pollutants have eaten into the marble threatening to undermine the whole restoration project. News that the Italians have returned some stolen booty is only partially good news. Some day, the Acropolis museum may be the only place to see the wonders of Pericles' greatest creations.

Ireland's bankers wake up to the hangover bill

Irish banks are likely to be presented with €2 billion bill for the Government’s bank guarantee announced earlier this week. Irish Central Bank governor John Hurley said the rescue package should not come at a cost to the taxpayer and the banks should pay a substantial fee in return for state coverage. The Department of Finance said it would seek an annual charge of 0.2 percent of the €500 billion banking market which would amount to two billion over two years. The move represents an extraordinary transfer of power from Ireland’s top bankers to the previously pliant administration in the wake of the worldwide financial crisis.

The open Irish economy was always extremely vulnerable to the credit crunch. The 15 year boom was based on easy and flowing access to large amounts of money. But since 2007 the construction industry has been in crisis and consumer spending has waned. It was also only a matter of time before the toxicity of the US money market spread across the Atlantic. Matters moved swiftly in the last two weeks with a series of interlocking events. As the US banking house of cards teetered on the brink of collapse, Ireland announced its second successive quarter of negative growth. The country was officially in recession. Figures from the Irish Central Statistics Office showed the economy had contracted by 2.3 percent in the last 6 months and the exchequer faced a €7 billion shortfall.

Then on Monday last week, Irish banks suffered one of their largest ever one day falls in the wake of US legislators’ failure to agree the original rescue package. The Wall St carnage rippled quickly across the Atlantic and threatened tsunami on Irish banks. The combination of a freefalling share market and the lack of access to international funds had the potential to produce a run on Irish banks. Alarmed bankers privately told the Government that maturity dates on loans needed to fund their business were rapidly approaching and the cupboard was bare. The government moved quickly and by Wednesday had announced emergency legislation to protect the integrity of the local banking system. The extraordinary package guaranteed €400 billion of “deposits, loans and obligations” at six Irish financial institutions, a value some three times the size of Ireland’s total GDP.

The risky manoeuvre had immediate success in reversing the share losses of the Irish banks. Crucially it also ended speculation of a run on the banks, ending the possibility of it becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. In order to quell speculation the Government was underwriting selfish banking practices, the bill allowed the Government to recoup any financial support provided and also set a higher charge on the state guarantee on financial institutions who engage in risky lending practices.

International reaction to the bill was mixed. The Wall Street Journal hailed the move as one of the most ambitious measures taken by a government since the credit crunch began. The European Commission was dismayed at Ireland’s independent move ahead of the weekend’s continent wide crisis talks in Paris. The possibility of a run on foreign owned banks also remained real as they were deemed out of scope of the rescue package. The Ulster Bank which relies on the Republic for a substantial portion of its business was particularly aggrieved to be left out of the arrangements. They have applied for coverage under the guarantee along with three other internationally owned banks.

The possibility Irish owned banks may not have learnt the sobering new economic lesson was underscored by the revelation Michael Fingleton Jnr (whose father Michael Snr is Irish Nationwide’s CEO) used the bailout to drum up business in the UK. Fingleton sent out an email last week stating the building society was now “the safest place to deposit money in Europe”. While there is now considerable truth in that assertion thanks to the Government’s intervention, this was not the message Taoiseach Brian Cowen wanted to trumpet with the rescue plan. Cowen reacted quickly to describe the email as unacceptable behaviour. “The whole purpose of providing the State guarantee was not to allow for predatory practice,” he said. But predatory practice is exactly what financial institutions thrive on and Cowen will have to tread carefully to ensure that the taxpayer guarantee doesn’t underwrite more of the behaviour the plan was designed to cure. Combined with a recession likely to last until the end of 2009, the results would be toxic both at the bank and the ballot box.

Woolly Days on tour

Posting here will be on an irregular basis for the next few months as I'm heading overseas to Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

New Al Qaeda video affirms Bin Laden is still alive

Al Qaeda have released a new video marking the seventh anniversary of 9/11 which claims Osama Bin Laden and former Taliban leader Mullah Omar are both alive and well. The 90 minute video also contains speeches by Al Qaeda’s number two Ayman al-Zawahiri and the head of Al Qaeda in Iraq Abu Ayyub al-Masri, (also known as Hamza al-Muhajir) as well as a reading of the will of 9/11 Flight 93 hijacker Saeed al Ghamdi. Al Qaeda’s video production arm As Sahab released the footage in full on jihadi websites this week after Al Jazeera had broadcast excerpts on 8 September.

The full video comes just days after two suicide car bombers claimed the lives of 17 people (including 6 attackers) at the US embassy in Sana the capital of Yemen. A group calling itself Islamic Jihad has claimed responsibility for the attack but the group is almost certainly linked to Al Qaeda. Bin Laden’s father Muhammad was born in Yemen and Osama remains extremely popular in the Gulf state. A large percentage of his followers and all his bodyguards are Yemenis or from the nearby Assir region of southern Saudi Arabia. Al Qaeda’s first ever attack bombed US soldiers in Aden in 1991. And one of its most notorious attack before 9/11 was on the USS Cole also at Aden in October 2000 in which 17 American sailors died.

The British based Palestinian journalist Abdel Bari Atwan would not be surprised to hear the news that Osama is still alive. Atwan is the editor of the London based Arabic newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi and the author of the book The Secret History of Al Qa’ida. He is also one of the few Western based journalists to interview Bin Laden in person. He tells the story of that hair-raising interview in the first chapter of his book. After a secret and dangerous trip via Peshawar and Jalalabad, he arrived at the Tora Bora caves in the Winter of 1996. Atwan complained to Bin Laden how cold it was in the caves. Bin Laden said he was lucky; when the UK Independent journalist Robert Fisk arrived, it was Summer and the caves were infested by scorpions.

Atwan was struck by how modestly Bin Laden lived. His manner, austere living habits, and renouncement of comfort and wealth have all contributed to his air of a champion of revolution and rebellion to many Muslims. He was born in Riyadh in 1957, of a Syrian mother and a self-made construction contractor father Muhammad Awad bin Laden. Muhammad was from the Hadramaut region of southern Yemen whose inhabitants are renowned for their business prowess. Bin Laden senior fit the mould and rose from being a labourer to a billionaire presiding over the largest construction empire in the Arab world.

Osama was the forty-third of fifty-three siblings and the family was adopted by the Saudi Royal Family after his father died in a plane crash. Osama was just 10 years old. He was educated at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah where he studied Islamic trends under Muhammad Qutb (brother of the Egyptian Father of Islamism Sayyid Qutb) and Abdullah Azzam. Azzam was a highly influential Palestinian-born scholar and theologian, and a central figure in preaching for jihad.

Azzam became Osama’s mentor and encouraged him to join the mujahideen rising in Afghanistan against the Soviet invasion. He moved there in 1982 and became a key role in fundraising and organising Saudi volunteers for the jihad. He set up his own camps and created a register to inform families of those who were killed. The name of the register was Al Qaeda (“the base” or “the foundation”). After the Soviets withdrew in 1989, he and Azzam fled back to Saudi Arabia, having been warned by Pakistani intelligence that the pair were a target for CIA assassination.

The Saudis placed him under house arrest in 1990 after he was too outspoken about the threat from the “godless regime” of Saddam Hussein. He also predicted Iraq would invade Kuwait. When the panicked Saudis invited US troops into the country after his prediction came to pass, Osama described the deployment of the “infidel soldiers” as the “biggest shock of his life”. He used his royal connections to get a passport and moved to Pakistan and then to Afghanistan where he prepared to organise a new jihad against the invaders of his homeland.

After threats on his life, Osama moved to Sudan in 1991 where he was made welcome by the Bashir Islamic regime which had taken power in a coup two years earlier. Osama invested $200 million in Sudanese infrastructure including an airport in Port Sudan and the 400km Defiance Highway between Port Sudan and the capital Khartoum. From here, he launched his first attacks against the US, the Yemen incident mentioned earlier and he was also instrumental in bringing down two Black Hawk helicopters in the US 1993 mission in Mogadishu.

But under increasing international pressure, Sudan looked for a way to expel its increasingly dangerous guest. In 1996 Bashir told him Sudan could no longer protect him from assassination. Osama took the hint and moved his operation back to Afghanistan. The country was then in chaos as the Taliban were taking city after city. Osama was initially wary but changed his mind after meeting Mullah Omar in Spring 1996. He gave his bayat (pledge of allegiance) to Omar and threw his forces into battle against the Northern Alliance. The safe haven provided by Omar’s successful capture of Kabul allowed Osama to do longer term planning against his implacable enemy – the US.

That year, he faxed Atwan’s newspaper his declaration of war against the US, which he called the “jihad against the Americans occupying the land of the two sacred places” (Mecca and Medina). Atwan believes that planning for 9/11 started in 1998. Under the influence of his Egyptian 2IC Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Osama saw the advantages of the military strategy of suicide bombing. They looked for recruits with religious zeal, courage, mental agility, a clean criminal record, and those with no spouses or family to support. There were hundreds of eager applicants.

Al Qaeda are also sophisticated users of the Internet. Electronic jihad is a “sacred duty” in which believers are called on to defend Islam and also hack into, destroy American and Israeli websites. Jihadi groups have four elements: a leader, religious guide, members and IT specialists. Prior to his death in 2006, Iraqi Al Qaeda leader Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi gained enormous status almost entirely due to his use of the Internet. He averaged nine communications a day and released numerous videos on the Net. Al Qaeda is now believed to have almost five thousand websites promoting the movement.

Al Qaeda has been mostly extremely successful in meeting its goals. Its 9/11 operation cost $500,000 to fund and caused billions in financial damage. American troops left Saudi Arabia in 2003 and a year later Spain overthrew its pro Iraqi invasion right-wing government just three days after the Al Qaeda killed 200 people in the Madrid bombings. Osama has tapped into the worldwide Muslim umma, most of whom see him as a David figure, bringing down the American Goliath. As Atwan says, not many Muslims necessarily want Wahhabi-style caliph rule that Osama says he wants to bring back, but that is not an issue for now.

Osama is hoping to stretch American hegemony in the Middle East to breaking point (much like how the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989). Then, he believes, it will be easy overthrow the weak and corrupt Arab and Gulf regimes once US power in the region is destroyed. As Atwan concludes matter-of-factly and chillingly “as long as connections continue to be made between US policy, actual or perceived, and the continuing instability in much of the Middle East, we can expect that Al-Qaeda will grow stronger and expand the sphere of its operations”.

The crowd of Turin: The application of wisdom in chess and football

Through a recent article in Club Troppo, I heard about a couple of excellent blog posts by Michael Nielson. Nielson is a Queensland educated writer and scientist who now lives in Toronto. In the first post, Nielson outlines six rules for rewriting that Troppo’s Nicholas Gruen rightly calls “simple but compelling”. Gruen then asks his readers to see how Nielson himself measures up to these rules in the second post, a fascinating story about “the chess game of the century”.

In this post Nielson talks about the famous chess game in 1999 played over the Internet between then-world champion Garry Kasparov and “the World”. Over 50,000 individuals from more than 75 countries participated in the game. One move was made every 24 hours with the World’s move decided by a vote which was open to everyone. Kasparov won a fascinating contest in 62 moves after 51 percent of the World team voted to resign. Afterwards Kasparov called it “the greatest game in the history of chess.” He said it was never clear who was going to win and he expended more energy on this one game than any other in his career. Although Kasparov was far better than any single contributor to the World team, collectively they produced one of the strongest games ever played.

The idea that a bunch of amateurs would give the best in the business a run for their money should not strange to anyone who has read James Surowiecki’s classic 2004 book, The Wisdom of Crowds. In a series of remarkable stories, Surowiecki shows how mass collective decision making consistently beats that of the few, even when those few are experts. His thesis was that groups are remarkably intelligent and are often smarter than the smartest people in them.

Will Brooks, a former BBC sportswriter, took this idea to heart when he founded the company My Football Club in 2007. His idea was a fan-owned and fan-run football club in which the each of the owners would have an equal say in the day-to-day management of the team. With the help of thousands of subscribers, Brooks bought a controlling interest in the Football Conference (England’s fifth football tier) team Ebbsfleet United FC based in Kent. The fans are now the legal owners of the club and members vote on team selection and player transfers.

The club is doing very well under the crowdsourcing arrangement. There are currently 30,000 internet members who pay £35 annually for the privilege. Twenty percent of the membership login to the club’s website every day, posting thousands of messages and debating issues such which players to recruit to how to increase attendance at games. The club hopes to gain promotion to the football league in the next few years. Already Brooks experiment has paid off on the field. This year Ebbsfleet United won the FA Trophy (the highest accolade for semi-professional teams) in May beating Torquay 1-0 at Wembley, becoming the first team ever from Kent to win the trophy. At the club’s request, the game was made available as a live online video feed to satisfy members in the US, Australia and across Europe.

The Ebbsfleet experiment in trust and mass participation stands in stark contrast to the Italian experience. In “The Wisdom of the Crowds”, Surowiecki discussed the corruption that tears at the heart of Italian football. In 2002 Italy were knocked out of the World Cup by South Korea after Byron Moreno, the Ecuadorian referee made two crucial errors that gifted the co-hosts victory. Surowiecki noted how Italian fans didn’t blame Moreno for his incompetence but instead accused him of “criminal behaviour” in league with football’s governing body FIFA. If Italy lost, then it had to be because of a global conspiracy for which Moreno was just the front.

Although no evidence emerged in the weeks that followed to support the conspiracy theory, Italian newspapers and fans remained convinced it existed. Surowiecki put it down to the fact that corruption is assumed to be the natural state of affairs in Italian football. Every season some new scandal emerges and claims of corrupt referees are commonplace. Games are negative, foul-ridden affairs where defeat is never accepted as an outcome of a fair contest. There is a total lack of trust between participants and the system is geared to protecting interest at the cost of entertainment. Cheating on the field of play is commonplace and even encouraged. This problem was noted by AC Milan playmaker Gennaro Gattuso when he said in 2003: “The system prevents you from telling the truth and being yourself.”

Gattuso is not alone in despising the system, but no one seems to be able to address the issue. In the absence of trust, the pursuit of self-interest is the only strategy that makes sense. Surowiecki says Italian football has failed to find a good solution to the problem of co-operation. Co-operation problems involve more than just co-ordination, he says. To solve these problems, the members of a group need to adopt a broader definition of self-interest than that of maximising profit in the name of short term demands. Trust is needed. Successful co-operation relies on people who repeatedly deal with each other over time. The promise of continued successful interaction keeps the participants in line. The key to co-operation is what Robert Axelrod called “the shadow of the future.” Or as Surowiecki says, the best approach is to be “nice, forgiving, and retaliatory.”

Future of Journalism Queensland 5: Techniques and technology

This is the fifth and final post in a series about the Future of Journalism Queensland summit held last Saturday at Brisbane’s QUT campus. See links to parts one, two, three, and four. The final session was entitled “Tools or toys: techniques and technology for the digital age. The session was moderated by the ABC Landline’s executive producer Peter Lewis. The panellists were The Courier-Mail’s online chief sub-editor John O’Brien, citizen journalist and CEO of Perth Norgmedia, Bronwen Clune and the editor of news.com.au, David Higgins.

The numbers of people at the conference had dwindled significantly by the time of the final session and moderator Lewis jokingly threatened to lock the doors to keep the rest of the audience in. He also claimed organisers had “saved the best till last” and he may have been right. Lewis began describing himself as a Luddite and asked his panellists how do old technologies fit in. Higgins talked about his audience profile and how they accessed news.com.au differed depending on the time of day. He said that between 7am and 9am, it was peak time for mobile phone access with 150,000 people accessing the site via mobiles. Then as people arrived at their work they logged on to the website from their offices. Higgins said the industry needed more tools to further granulate their audience tastes. “We need to figure out what stories fit where”.

John O’Brien from the Courier-Mail’s online team said they needed to be selective about what stories are carried across each platform. He said the important part was getting a good headline to “lock in” customers to their site. Bronwen Clune spoke next. The head of citizen journalism site Perth Norg said that for time-poor people, online was the best way of consuming news. But she said that print still has “a long life” ahead. Clune said that a different writing style was needed for online content, a style that was less formal, more personal and opinionated and not bound by the traditional “inverted pyramid” format of hard newspaper articles.

Clune then talked about Amy Gahran’s article about journalism culture in which she described the "Priesthood Syndrome". This syndrome describes the assumption that traditional journalists are the sole source of news that can and should be trusted. This supposedly gives them a privileged and sacred role that society is ethically obligated to support. Clune said citizen journalism was dispensing with the priesthood syndrome. She said mainstream journalists were allowing comments in their “blogs” but were not engaging with their audiences.

Higgins also said his online organisation was dispensing with traditional journalistic practices such as the “inverted pyramid” (the practice where print journalists write their article paragraphs in descending order of importance so that subeditors can cut from the bottom up if newspaper space is at a premium). Article length varied from print to online but there was no hard and fast rule as which format might provide more information. News.com.au are also experimented with “chat boxes” where audiences can engage with the journalist in the side bar of the screen. The speedier delivery of online news also means that journalists use tools such as Twitter in the field. They then can, and do, go back later to add more information as it arises and in Higgins’ words “craft a more traditional story”. The “day after” newspaper story is no longer straight reportage but has more detail and analysis.

Lewis asked the panel who was “minding the gates” in this new dynamic environment. Higgins admitted that journalists were now doubling as their own subeditors. “You’re constructing the story in front of the audience”, he said. Clune said citizen journalists relied on their audience to pick up errors. She noted the fact that her provocative blog post entitled “A letter to love-stricken Fairfax journalists” (written during their industrial action last week) had incorrectly spelt the title word as “love-striken” until a Courier-Mail journalist pointed out the error to her. Clune’s response was “Thanks for pointing it out. All fixed now…That’s essentially subbing isn’t it?” (For what its worth, I believe “striken” was a totally appropriate word to describe the Fairfax journos!)

John O’Brien said his motto was “your readers know more than you do”. Nevertheless, he said that his comment thread moderators needed to be well trained to deal with flame wars and potential defamation threats. He noted that as a result of Fairfax’s mass sackings, the company got rid of their in-house specialist lawyers which could have an unintended (or possibly intended) “chilling effect” if controversial stories can not be vetted before publication. Lewis said “the law has not caught with (digital) reality”. O’Brien agreed and talked about the importance of cleaning up errors as soon as possible after the fact, however, he said, “mistakes live on in Google cache or if someone has taken a grab”. Higgins said he would advise against the “open moderation” model of the ABC, because “you will get sued and there is nothing you can do about it.”

The panel then took a set of diverse questions from the audience. Clune said bloggers offer a diverse voice, “which we don’t have in the Australian media”. When asked about tools of the trade, Higgins said that the best camera for a journalist was “the one they happen to be carrying at the time”. He did add that PDA devices could be useful for reporting from the field but “what you have in your hand is most important”. Clune said she was a fan of the Iphone which “allowed for participation as well as consumption”. Clune also promoted the micro-blogging concept of Twitter where “disorganised news very quickly organises itself”.

Higgins talked about the importance of Search Engine Optimisation and getting journalists trained in how to attract a high Google rating with their headlines. He said making a story more effective was ‘less about brand, and more about mobilising the story and putting it out there in places such as Facebook”. Lewis asked him whether there were concerns over what effect this would have on the journalist and whether the Internet deliberately attracts dumbed down content. O’Brien said the effect was not all bad. He said celebrity stuff drives other hard news traffic. Higgins also disagreed. “Websites are the way journalists set them up,” he said. “Its not a management decision. He said his team edits the site “in real time with incredible amounts of information”. However, like any other media product, he said, “you place them where you think they will get the most traffic”.

Unfortunately I had to leave as the panel wrapped up and did not catch Chris Warren’s closing remarks to the conference. Nonetheless, I believe it was an extremely valuable day. While the immediate future of the more traditional and hierarchical forms of journalism remains grim, there are a number of exciting avenues and new models available that make me believe a new Gutenberg revolution is at hand. Despite a continued dwindling of resources, there will continue to be, I believe, a home for quality journalism in the big “media of record.” But they will be supported and challenged by a plethora of small independent online media as well as norgs, blogs, micro-blogs, citizen journalism, magazines, non-fiction books, wikis and social media projects that will keep print-democracy flourishing in the years to come. The challenge will be connecting all the dots that lead to the people formerly known as the audience.

Future of Journalism Queensland 4: Bloggers

This is the fourth in a series of posts about the Future of Journalism Queensland summit held last Saturday at the QUT campus in central Brisbane. See links to parts one, two, and three. This one was about bloggers and was subtitled “amateur netizens or professionals of the future?” The session was moderated by the ABC’s Christen Tilley, a senior producer and opinion editor at ABC News Online. The panellists were freelance journalist Marian Edmunds, sociologist and blogger Mark Bahnisch and Dr Axel Bruns, a senior lecturer in the Creative Industries Faculty at QUT.

Tilley began the discussion by quoting at length from Mark Day’s article in the Australian last week. Day said the only model that could support investigative journalism was “the traditional advertiser-supported model that has sustained newspapers for more than a century” and said blogging won’t work as an alternative. He said citizen journalism “hasn’t happened and is not likely to.” In Day’s view, effort should not be wasted on blogs and instead editors should focus on creating news. For Day that meant: “revealing information about the communities in which they work, setting agendas for discussion, reporting events figuratively over the back fence, and using this to add value to the essentially free flow of breaking news and information accessible virtually anywhere.”

Marian Edmunds spoke first in response. Edmunds is a very experienced journalist who has worked in Australia, London and Hong Kong on such publications as the Financial Times (fulltime) and the Australian Financial Review, and the Weekend Australian as a freelancer. She now blogs at “Will write for money”. She began by describing why she had turned to blogging. “For me,” she said, “it being in touch with people who are not normally sources or contacts…voices we don’t normally hear that provide local colour”. Edmunds advised those starting out to look at the business models and create your own space. But the fundamentals of journalism still applied: "Learn the craft," she advised.

Mark Bahnisch, custodian of perhaps Australia’s most influential blog Larvatus Prodeo, attacked the issue of Mark Day more directly. He firstly pointed out the absurdity of Day attacking blogs in a space entitled “Mark Day blogs”. Bahnisch said the debate between journalism and blogging was poorly presented. There were many aspects to the debate, but…“It has little to do with blogging and more to do with changes in journalist profile,” he said. “(Their) identity was at risk from online competition and changes in the industrial environment”.

Bahnisch pointed out that bloggers represent an “incredibly diverse” range of opinions. He blasted the newspaper stereotype of “bloggers in pyjamas” and said journalists were blaming bloggers for their own problems. The debate had little to do with bloggers and more to do with changes in the profile of journalism. “The underlying angst of what is a journalist is projected onto the nefarious figure of bloggers (who will) steal their spot,” he said. Bahnisch could not see why the narrative was one of competition and said that journalists were using “imaginary demons” to “keep the opposition alive”.

Axel Bruns took up the narrative at this point. He also disputed Day’s view and said there were hundreds of different forms of blogging. He pleaded for the debate to move on from the “us and them” and said the line between professional and amateurs had changed with the Crikified blogs of Possums Pollytics and The Poll Bludger. Possum’s free analysis gave the mainstream media a run for its money and set off the “who owns the polls” debate in The Australian. Bruns noted that this was a peculiarly Australian problem and harked on the notorious 2007 The Australian (newspaper) editorial which claimed that “unlike Crikey, we understand Newspoll because we own it.” Bruns said it was Rupert Murdoch who owned Newspoll not The Australian.

Bahnisch said blogs were a “distinct space for micro communicators and micro publishers on line”. Blogs create a community that do not rely on “arm’s length sources”. He pointed out how different they were to George Megalogenis’s so-called blog which appealed for civility claiming a “significant minority” of bloggers begin their posts with an assumption that everyone who disagrees with them is a “moron”. Bahnisch quoted Trevor Cook’s response which called out a wonderful comment response to Megalogenis that laid the blame squarely at The Australian for earning the civility (or lack thereof) it gets.

Axel Bruns said this antagonism towards blogs occurred only in Australia. He said projects elsewhere united blogs and professional journalism in much more productive ways. Bruns said the local situation was a product of “a severe lack of diversity” in the media. Because of this, he said, there was no need to drive exploration of new models. Bahnisch agreed and said that blogging was a risk-taking, conversational form. From the audience, Antony Funnell took passionate exception to this sense of antagonism that Bahnisch believed existed between journalists and bloggers. Funnell said that the anti-blogging opinions of Day and Christian Kerr were “not representative”. He said most journalists understand new media and use bloggers as part of their daily media diet.

To my mind, Funnell’s point is valid. With more than a hint of a sympathetic working journalist’s anger when provoked, he showed up some glaring open wounds between the two disciplines of “journalism” and “blogging”. For all their talk of false dichotomies, none of the panel were able to bridge the gap between the two. The scholar Bruns clearly understands how the models operate but showed no sympathy for those in his audience who are about to be impaled on the pointy end of the media stick. Bahnisch, meanwhile, is the archetypal blogger-netizen who uses his sharp intellect and wit to slam the justifiable flaws of mainstream media without stopping to worry if he is casting the first stone. Somehow of the three, it seems to me that it is Edmunds who comes closest to the honest norm of a working journalist who happens to use the medium of blogging to “write for money”.