Sunday 9 June 2002

I've just finished watching a documentary about the siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. All it did was reinforce my previous feelings about what happened there. The programme makers didn't come across as having an opinion one way or other on the events, and I think it made bad television because of this. Several statements were simply dropped into the narrative out of the blue -- most specifically at the very beginning of the programme, where the Israeli presence in Bethlehem was simply presented as a given, rather than as the incursion it really was.       Things were shown almost exclusively from the perspective of the Israeli command post and the viewpoint of the Israeli negotiators in the standoff. Admittedly, towards the end there was a suggestion of frustration when power shifted from the local perspective to the international. At one point it was actually stated that the final outcome -- three categories: One, go into exile (including two here in Ireland); 2, transfer to Gaza; 3, return home -- was identical to what had been arrived at locally two weeks before. In the mean time, of course, several people were killed, tensions increased, and the whole sorry spiral simply dug deeper.       This is all wrong! At two points in the programme there was mention of international protesters arriving on the scene, and these principled people were shown with their banners. I felt guilty and ineffectual when I saw this, thinking that I should do something about all this rather than just talk to friends or write it up in this weblog that nobody reads. So I consulted the Irish telephone directory to find the number of the Israeli embassy. It wasn't easy to find (it's actually listed under 'Diplomatic and Consular Missions'), but now at least I have an address and a phone number and I am full of the best intentions to register some form of protest tomorrow when the Israeli embassy office re-opens. 9:34:26 PM  Your view

Jonathon Delacour: "Macromedia's Site of the Day -- the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's World Cup Game Tracker -- is the first well-designed, useful Flash site I've encountered."  [Scripting News] I'll second that. This is a stunning example of using a tool imaginatively and to its best ability. The site now occupies a place of honour in my OS X Dock, ready to be called into action whenever I have any question about the tournament.       Mind you, while this must now rank as the benchmark for Flash-site design, I think Jonathon is being unfair to some other fine examples which came before. 5:21:26 AM  Your view

		© Copyright 2002 Jim MacCormaic . Last update: 29/09/2002; 06:03:02 am .