Islam vs the West | It’s not a God thing

In response to this paragraph from blogger neanderpundit: -

Open a Bible. Pretty much any bible will do,I like this one but evenm a Gideon will work fine. Go to the new testament. Look at the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. In those gospels lie the core messages of Christianity. Read them. Use a pencil to underline the places where Jesus tells his followers to kill someone. (or for that matter do harm to someone, or do anything but love them) You won’t NEED a pencil, because he never does. But go ahead and search anyway.

Now. Get a Koran. What’s best is to find one that is a direct translation of the original, but again, any one will do. Find the places where Mahomet tells his followers to kill someone or enslave them or do harm to them or force them to submission. There are plenty. Then try to put them into any good context. Go ahead, try.

Neanderpundit is deliberately narrowing the scope of the reader by insisting the reader concentrates on the Gospels, when indeed the purist word of God is found in the Old Testament – what has OG got to hide? Can he not reconcile his argument with the whole of the Bible? Why the need to compare one narrow passage with the whole of the Koran?

The regression of the Muslim faith can be traced to the emergence of Wahhabism in the 1700’s. The Islamic World had moved beyond the literal word of the Koran, and had become much more enlightened than the pre-renaissance Christian dogma.

This is the problem. As Christianity was rediscovering Classical philosophy (pre-Christian), which let’s be honest was the real thrust of the Renaissance (not some Rome-led enlightenment); religion in the Islamic World’s cradle (the Gulf) was lurching backwards.

Christians like to portray that their faith is somehow superior to Islam because of its tolerance and liberalism, but it was not the Church that led this evolution, the Renaissance was in truth, an affront to both Catholicism and Puritanism. As we have seen, particularly, in the Southern States of the U.S., Christianity is a natural enemy of individual liberty and tolerance, seeking to curb freedoms and dictate legislature.

Wahhabism sought to free Islam of the progress it had made, looking to rediscover a more pure, literal, incarnation of their faith. This abdication of reality is little different to the Evangelical Church, which concentrates much of its dogma around the Old Testament – no less dangerous than the Koran.

What makes us different from the radicals in Saudi Arabia and the wider Middle East is our cultural secularism and tolerance, not our faith. Every freedom and liberty we enjoy was won against the conservatism and intolerance of the church – the current benevolence of the church indicates its emasculation at the hands of secular liberals, not its natural compassion. Do not confuse the liberties of the liberal democracy with Christianity.

This is not an argument about Christianity vs. Islam. This is an argument between the liberal democracy and the darkness and intolerance of Abrahamic religion.

The next Great President?

Barack Obama, the democratic senator for Illinois, is regarded by many, as a future Democratic nomination for President of the United States. After a highly successful keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Obama was held up as the great hope for a beleaguered party. There is no doubt that the Democrat’s do need a glimmer of hope, following their loss in the 2004 election, to the polarising George W. Bush.

The Hawaiian born Obama meets many of the prerequisites for a future Great President: industrious, intellectual (he was former pres. of the Harvard Law Review), bold, and charismatic. If you could buy a presidential hopeful off the shelf, Obama would be the top of the range, a premium model.

Even in Washington’s Machtpolitik, Obama seems to score highly, taking on the current Rovian bifurcation:

“We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States, and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq.”;

However it is the very motivation of this statement that defies the notion that Barack Obama could ever be a Great President. The US is just too politically fractured for any president to ever be considered Great again.

The current level of American political division is destroying any collective will to tackle the great problems facing the union. Globalisation, fiscal concerns, and the threat of international terrorism have knocked the US for six, yet American politicians are unwilling to drop the electioneering for a second to join arms in solidarity.

Maybe I’m wrong, and I truly hope I am, and someone like Obama can unify this great nation; but the signs, sadly, do not look good.

Trident: The third way

I have a plan for Britain’s next generation of nuclear weapons. As news junkies will be well aware, the Trident weapon system will be obsolete within the next 20-years, and the government faces the question of whether we invest in its successor.

Trident was conceived prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, so one could argue that its necessity was apparent, against the possibility of Soviet advances into Western Europe. Of course this never happened, and the Russians are now friendly gas-vendors, who keep us lovely and warm throughout the chilly months. So the question on the lips of everyone who cares, is whether we actually need a replacement?

The gestation period for such a project is about 14-years, and people expect it cost up to £25bn, but knowing the British penchant for sticking to budgets, one would expect it to cost at least this amount. That’s a lot of money, a lot of our money.

The post-Iraq world is no more stable than the bipolar one that gave birth to Trident and its predecessor, Polaris, so one would assume that we need to continue to have our own nuclear deterrent, lest we become completely reliant on the US for the integrity of our interests. This is the pro-development argument.

The opposing argument highlights the reality, that nuclear weapons have never been used in anger since WW2; unless of course the French were deliberately nuking shoals of tuna in the South Pacific 15-years ago. So why do we need nuclear weapons?

Of course the nuclear question is about presence and prestige on the international stage. Britain the former Imperial Power is unwilling to give up its seat at the big table. The fact that we are nothing more that wilful sidekick, to a real heavyweight, is immaterial, our politicians love nothing more than ‘bigging it up’ on the international stage. So inevitably our leaders will get their toys and we will stump the cash.

But I have a better idea….

Why don’t we announce that indeed we will be replacing Trident, and spend a few hundred pounds thinking of some Greek god to name it after. When this important decision has been made, we can employ some scientist’s to knock up a few drawings, and appear on TV in white coats making informed statements about fusion and delivery systems, but actually invest the bulk of the £25bn in a high interest savings account.

Think about it: £25bn invested over 20 or 30-years; that’s a whole bundle of cash that could be spent really needy causes, such as health, education, or financing tygerland.net – you see, it makes perfect sense. If we could pull it off, we would get all the kudos and recognition that goes with being a nuclear superpower, yet none of the cost of running it. Everyone’s a winner.

So Tony, if you’re interested, please contact me via email. And that’ll be the usual 10%, plus expenses obviously.

Thoughts on hyperbole

On the Today programme this morning there was a debate on the supposed overuse of the noun Tragedy; I didn’t hear all of the discussion, such is the reality of the working week, but it did get me thinking about the abuse of terminology in modern discourse.

If there is a single faction that is overwhelmingly responsible for excessive linguistic hyperbole, it is of course, the Media. The overwhelming amount of print, online, and televised content, inevitably leads to an overextension and abuse of our wonderful, if finite, language. It was the Today show itself that cited its sports commentator, Steve May, who described the death of Irish racehorse, Best Mate, as a ‘tragedy.’ Best Mate won a trio of Cheltenham Gold Cup’s, and was one of the most beloved modern racehorses. The Times even ran an obituary, concluding: “Few horses have been so special.”

The death of Best Mate was front-page news in many newspapers, and many within the sport believe they were denied one of the very great champions of all time, but was it actually a ‘tragedy?’ To highlight this supposed misuse of the lexis, the programme spoke to an ‘expert’ on the classics, who argued that the phrase was essentially a dramatic term, and had been diluted – and somewhat damaged - by its modern use.

Surely words are subject to context, and evolve with their continued use? Words mean whatever we intend them to mean, and no single person, or institution, are the gatekeepers of our language. It is ingrained feudalism that dictates that we should use a pre-described version of English (or whatever tongue one speaks), something that in our modern Liberal Democracy, we should eschew. Students of linguistics are aware that language is not something that can be enshrined; it’s organic, as it evolves with our civilisation, not isolated from it by some authoritarian diktat. If any one section is the gatekeeper of our precious language, then it is our children. Children have the faculty to invent new words, develop grammar where none existed, and merge different tongues into a working form of communication.

There is, however, some truth in what the Today programmes learned guest said. The creators of our media do prostitute our language in the hope of exaggerating the prominence, or impact, of a story. The term ‘tragedy’ is used to describe all sorts of mildly gloomy news; the ousting of a cabinet minister, the contents of our school meals, or the death of a racehorse. None of which, technically, one could describe as a ‘tragedy.’ Using such a delicate and important term loosely does devalue it, and leaves its correct usage somewhat muddied by its newfound ambiguity. Clarity and meaning is lost, so ignorant hacks can embellish an otherwise unspectacular story.

Let us first, define tragedy. Tragedy is from the Greek tragoedia, meaning “goat song;” its origin, probably, linked to the sacrificing of goats prior to the performance, or the goatskin often worn by actors in deference to the god Dionysus (Dionysus famously partied with half-goat beings). It was defined by Aristotle in his work Poetics, and was a definition of a specific form of drama.

Tragedy should not be misrepresented as a ‘sad story.’ The death of a horse is sad, emotional, and even – to those involved - devastating, but the heart attack of Best Mate was not tragic.

Tragedy is the drama of noble and/or heroic virtue against some overwhelming power. The ‘power’ may be the law, the gods, moira (fate), or society. The fight of the heroic man (this was Greek drama after all, women were either bed-fodder, witches, or Gorgons) against inevitable failure was, Aristotle argued, an important dramatic device to create Catharsis: the emotional cleansing of the audience through pity, sorrow, or another heightened emotion. Having ridden this emotional rollercoaster, the viewer would consider their own situation, and be relieved that they don’t face such insurmountable obstacles. A tragic drama would, in practice, enforce the role of the State as a benevolent force, relative to the malevolent powers portrayed onstage.

It should come as no surprise that Tragedy was silent during the moral theatre of Medieval Europe; the regressive and suspicious church would never tolerate such a celebration of heroic virtue. It was the dramatists of the Renaissance who rediscovered this classical device, following the translation and distribution of classical texts (the printing press was reinvented in the West in 1450, meaning the churches control of literature – through its network of scribing monks – was relinquished; it is clear that the emergence of movable type was the single greatest liberating event in European philosophy and art).

Shakespeare’s best work was tragedy. Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth, were not only gifts to Freud, but brilliant examples of Tragedy. Hamlet’s moral righteousness in his vengeance (for the murder of his father, by his uncle - Claudius) was tragically thwarted by the mechanisms of the Danish court. The audience is witness to the deus ex machina that is the ghost of Hamlet’s father; we therefore share the young princes outrage, and we want him to succeed in usurping the wicked Claudius. And we are horrified by the eventual bloodbath that is its climax (sorry for the spoiler, but if you haven’t seen Hamlet by now you probably never will).

Critics and scholars may question Hamlet’s case as a heroic character, and even question the nobleness of vengeance, but certainly in Classical Greece, and throughout Mediterranean culture, revenge was viewed as a moral necessity, and a virtue worthy of Tragedy (our modern concept of revenge is filtered by works such as Melville’s Moby-Dick, which convey the futility of vengeance).

It is in this context, that I argue that we have indeed perverted the true connotation of what is a great word - a term of definite and precious meaning. Journalists and writers should respect terminology that is loaded with such exact context, not idly adulterate it by poor association. We overuse - and therefore weaken – great words in our day-to-day communication; words such as fantastic, evil, and disaster are used liberally, with scant regard for their power and meaning.

It is with these considerations that I implore politicians, commentators, writers, and journalists, to moderate their use of our language. Do not abuse the dictionary in the pursuit of impact. If a story, decree, or response, is indeed worthy, it need not be embellished by such lazy hyperbole.

Is there life on Enceladus?

Last week NASA released new pictures taken by the Cassini probe, the spacecraft mapping Saturn and its moons. The big news is that NASA boffins believe that the pictures suggest the presence of water on its moon Enceladus. The possibility of water existing on Enceladus raises the question of whether simple living organisms, may also exist on the moon.

Wired has a selection of the pictures here.

Americans must be patient….

You have to give it to Dubya; the guy’s got some front.

It seems that the American people are going to have to be patient, while US and Iraqi forces fight “the enemies of a free Iraq.” The obvious question is: haven’t the American people been patient enough?

Almost daily, reports are emerging as to how the administration bungled its post-invasion ‘strategy,’ and how requests for more troops – always denied by the Whitehouse – were ignored. The post-invasion handling of the fractious state has been an unmitigated disaster, which has utterly destabilised any chance of peace in the Middle East. And yet still we have the same myopic nonsense being spouted by the President.

One has to wonder, if the presence of Coalition troops is actually the root cause of the insurgency, and that their removal would usher in some semblance of peace? Either way this ongoing war of attrition will only have one winner, as the US people will not continue to watch their troops being ground down. Yes, yes, I know Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s real goal is bringing the Shia into a civil war with Sunni fighters, but it may take the wind out of the Sunni insurgency (which is not, and has never been, Al Qaeda) and turn genuine Iraqis against the foreign terrorists.

After all, what have we got to lose? Iraq already appears to be sliding into a civil war, and this is the worst possible outcome. We need to harness whatever goodwill is left among the Shia and Sunni communities, who have proven their commitment to progress in the fledgling parliament, and trust the Iraqi people to decide their own destiny.

Iraq needs our help, our support, and our investment. What it doesn’t need are troops on the ground, many of whom have shown nothing but contempt for Iraqis and their country.

Congressmen get a chance to prove their worth

An extract from a letter by Lance Armstrong: -

….this week Congress is considering a budget that, for the first time in 40 years, slashes funding for cancer research programs, cancer survivorship programs and important cancer-related initiatives.

If Congress approves the President’s proposed 2007 budget, lawmakers will effectively turn their backs on our national commitment to defeating one of our leading killers and turn back the clock on progress against the disease Americans fear most. As proposed, the 2007 budget cuts the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) budget by $179 million and carves $40 million from the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Far from arbitrary figures, these funding cuts translate directly into diminished research discovery, treatments and programs that help people with cancer live life on their own terms.

While all of us understand the need for budget constraint and the difficult choices facing our elected officials, we also know that taking money from the fight against cancer is not a tough choice - it’s simply the wrong one.

Armstrong, the King of the Tour de France, and sometime cycling buddy of George W. Bush, appears to be equally frustrated by the priorities of lawmakers in Washington.

I suppose a ‘bridge to nowhere’ is more important than fighting cancer?

Milosevic and Saddam: lessons we have unlearned

Few people, beyond his wife and gangster son Marko, will rue the passing of Slobodan Milosevic, found dead in his cell in the early hours of Saturday morning.

The former Yugoslav president, and architect of the civil wars that tore the fragile Balkan union apart, was on trial for his alleged crimes against humanity. The Balkan War led to the deaths of 200,000 people in Bosnia, the displacement of 2m, and the fracturing of his nation into several failing-states.

Even now, half a decade after his overthrow, countries such as Croatia are still to fully-purify their body politic of those responsible for the atrocities, which included the ethnic cleansing of 800,000 Albanians. In the sullied history of Europe, the Balkan region remains an open wound, testament to the deep ethnic and religious divisions that poison the European character.

As we ushered in the new millennium, we Europeans ignored the pressing threat of Milosevic, our colonial guilt and political cowardice, stymied our will to intervene, as forces loyal to Milosevic, slaughtered 7,000 Muslim men in Srebrenica. Yet again Europe was humiliated by the need for American intervention in their regional affairs.

Milosevic was a spineless opportunist, described by commentator Milos Vasic as “ideologically empty.” All he wanted and demanded was Hobbesian power – absolute political and cultural dominance. He manipulated the Soviet-era corridors of power, to install himself as president, and was soon to drop communism in favour of blind nationalism when the Eastern Bloc began to collapse. He seized and controlled the media, influenced the political elite, and directed the army. Milosevic was a pure dictator, even dismantling Tito’s constitutional checks, which held together the loose association of Slovenia, Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro, and Croatia (Kosovo and Vojvodina are autonomous provinces within Serbia).

Such was the total destruction of the unity, even Montenegro and Serbia, whose loose alliance survived Milosevic, are to separate this year (Montenegro is to hold a referendum in May). Only Slovenia has been accepted into the European Union, the other states have either not applied, or as in the case of Croatia, not deemed politically compatible.

Milosevic should remind Europe of the dangers of inaction, and the futility of acquiescing to dictators. This is why Iraq remains a conundrum; should we have suffered Saddam Hussein indefinitely? The man whose genocidal practices saw the gassing of his own people, the use of chemical and biological weapons on Iranian villages, and two large-scale wars. Was it right to allow Saddam, even in his nullified and politically emasculated state, to remain in power?

How Iraq could have been different had Europe been unified in its approach? Even a unified political opposition may have discouraged America, but a collective will to rebuild the collapsing state may have led to greater progress in reconstructing a working democracy. This is not to blame Europe for America’s folly, but to highlight the reality that Franco-German Schadenfreude is not a political solution.

The pending civil war in Iraq is evident of a pluralistic approach to dealing with oppression and totalitarianism. Containment and interventionism are both useful tools in dealing with dangerous states, but they should not be mixed when dealing with one country. Through a reformed and emboldened NATO, we must ensure that political and economic expediency does not deny us a unified opposition to tyranny. The UN may be important, but it remains crippled by powerful undemocratic regimes such as China and Russia, unable to deal adequately with an ongoing humanitarian crisis.

As regular readers will be aware, I didn’t support the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but my opposition was not ideological. I could see through the manipulation of the public consciousness by the Whitehouse and Number 10, which is why I am suspicious of the rancour about Iran now. The international community had more pressing issues to deal with, namely the rise of international terrorism and globalisation, neither of which have been addressed by toppling Saddam. It is also clear that the coalition has made fundamental errors, including the destruction and dissolution of Iraq’s institutions and public infrastructure.

However the premise to remove Saddam was just. The war may not have been well timed, or well executed, but it was justified. My greatest opposition to the war was that I don’t think that moral justice was ever the motive for the invasion, merely an idle excuse. The prostitution of rebuilding contracts to Halliburton, the oil siphoning, the lack of troops and adequate equipment, and the billions of dollars unaccounted for suggest a war for profit and oil. The war was not the problem, the Bush administration was.

The mock trial of Saddam in Iraq is also an example of the Whitehouse’s utter contempt for the international community, if he, like Milosevic, had been tried in The Haige, they may have deserved some credibility for the removal of a tyrant, as it stands, they deserve none. Also the desperate imperialist desire to hold the fractious Iraqi state together may cause as much bloodshed as Saddam himself was guilty of; again the lesson of history lies in the Balkans with the subsequent breaking up of Yugoslavia.

Only international institutions should instigate war. Only the UN, or more likely NATO, has the resource, both politically and militarily, to adequately deal with international issues. NATO countries should not have allowed Iraq to fragment their unity; America and Britain should not have acted unilaterally, and equally Germany and France et al should not have been quite so vulpine in their self-serving geo-politicking. The eventual management of the Balkan War should have been a blueprint for future engagement: American led, but in harmony with its NATO allies, and with a no desire for long-term hegemony.

Kev Speck

I found out about illustrator Kev Speck through an excellent piece he did for a Macintosh magazine, an illustration that now adorns my iBook desktop.

His work is fresh, modern, and occasionally nothing short of beautiful.

Take a look. 

Brown’s wealth redistribution

Tom Utley, in today’s Telegraph, wrote an arresting piece on our ravenous chancellor, decrying his latest perplexing policy gaff. The dour, perspiring, chancellor is to give our teenagers a card, which entitles our Green Day loving shoplifters, to spend between £12 and £25 on locally provided services.

No, this is not an uncharacteristic outburst of altruistic charity from Mr. Brown. Of course it’s not. This is not his money he is throwing around, but ours, the great unwashed.

Rather than trusting those who labored for it, Brown is keen to liberate us from the burden of spending our money as we see fit. The dour Scot believes he can replace every mother and father in the land with his benevolent grace. Our children can be shaped into good little citizens, modeled by the loving hand of our paternal leader.

Well I’m sorry to rain on your parade, Gordon, but this is just nonsense.

Brown is from the old school within the Labour Party, the faction that holds onto the plainly daft belief that government can be a force for benign goodness. You would think that after almost a decade of proving that, in realty, government is completely feckless, Labour would want to keep their interference to a minimum. But nooooo the chancellor wants to use statist mechanisms to engineer change within our society; he wants to dictate.

This is because, as Utley explains, Brown is an old socialist. A dinosaur rooted in the meddling, puritanical, foundations of the Labour Party. He waxes lyrical about the importance of an incentive-driven, competitive economy, but then shackles the albatross of high taxation around its neck. He cares not about reform of the education system; bringing back streaming, and the grammar school. Instead Brown would rather level the playing field, with the horrendous comprehensive system, ensuring equality through mass educational deprivation.

We know what the Labour Party is doing. Creating a generation that’s dependent on state handouts, desperately voting Labour to ensure their continued unearned piece of the nations collective worth. It’s a conspiracy of self-preservation.

tygerland.net | Coming Soon!

I’m in the process of building a new version of tygerland from scratch. This is my first experience of creating a website so it’s laborious and glitchy work, but it should give me much more scope to make the blog more professional, and allow me to control the whole background code. This also explains why the site has been somewhat subdued on the posting side of things.

Take a look at the work in progress at tygerland.net*

*note the fancy new URL

Well said: Garton Ash on Iran

Do you know when you read a text so on the nose, that you just wish you personally had authored it?

Well that happened to me today when I read the always-excellent Timothy Garton Ash, in The Guardian, today: -

Two clocks are ticking in Iran: the nuclear clock and the democracy clock. The strategic objective of western policy must be to slow down the nuclear clock and to speed up the democracy clock. Our problem is that some of the things we might do to slow down the nuclear clock are likely to slow down the democracy clock as well.

[…]

Writers, artists and filmmakers should be encouraged to travel to and fro, carrying ideas in both directions. Women’s movements in Iran, representing half the population systematically discriminated against, should be supported by women’s movements in Europe. Iran’s Islamic thinkers and jurists, both reformist modernisers and conservatives, should be engaged in dialogue by theologians and scholars from other faith traditions. All this should be done less by our governments than by our own societies, and not just by America and Britain - traditionally distrusted by many Iranians - but by all European countries, working separately and together. We need a European Iranpolitik.

I utterly and completely agree with every word. Give it a read.

The Independent turns the screw

 

It seems the Independent, long-time opponents of the Iraqi debacle, are highlighting the increasing disillusionment among neoconservatives. The marriage between ideological acolytes of the Liberal Democracy and Bush and Cheney’s corporate interests was always going to end in tears.

Why did so much blood have to be spilled so pathetic little men could relearn age-old lessons?

William Buckley Jnr

INFLUENTIAL CONSERVATIVE COLUMNIST AND TV PUNDIT

‘One can’t doubt the objective in Iraq has failed … Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an army of 130,000 Americans. Different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgement of defeat.’

Francis Fukuyama

AUTHOR AND LONG-TERM ADVOCATE OF TOPPLING SADDAM

‘By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at.’

Richard Perle

ARCH-WARMONGER AND PIVOTAL REPUBLICAN HAWK

‘The military campaign and its political aftermath were both passionately debated within the Bush administration. It got the war right and the aftermath wrong We should have understood that we needed Iraqi partners.’

Andrew Sullivan

PROMINENT COMMENTATOR AND INFLUENTIAL BLOGGER

‘The world has learnt a tough lesson, and it has been a lot tougher for those tens of thousands of dead, innocent Iraqis … than for a few humiliated pundits. The correct response is not more spin but a sense of shame and sorrow.’

George Will

RIGHT-WING COLUMNIST ON ‘THE WASHINGTON POST’ AND TV PUNDIT

‘Almost three years after the invasion, it is still not certain whether, or in what sense, Iraq is a nation. And after two elections and a referendum on the constitution, Iraq barely has a government.’

***

Thanks to Richard W. Symonds for sending me the link.

Real Madrid: Ready for the knackers yard?

Having witnessed the sheer brilliance of Barcelona’s defeat of Chelsea over two-legs, it was something of a comedown to observe Real Madrid capitulate this evening to a resurgent Arsenal. This is not to suggest that Real didn’t have their chances, but the sheer desperation of watching one of the most expensively assembled teams in the world, come unstuck against Arsene Wenger’s inconsistent Gunners, has been a delight.

The question facing Real, is the same one it faced after last years unsatisfactory season, should they replace their aging superstars? Figo has gone, but is Zidane really the best player, or even the best midfielder in the world anymore? Of course he’s not; and neither is Beckham nor Ronaldo at the top of their game. I would always rate Maldini as the best left-back of the last two decades, but Roberto Carlos ran him a close second, again now a fading light. With sides such as Barcelona, Chelsea, and AC Milan coughing up millions for the best rising stars, Madrid is no longer the only club capable of finding $40m for the next big thing.

Maybe summer arrivals, possibly including Juventus’ Zlatan Ibrahimovic to partner the promising Robinho up front, will bring vitality to a stagnant side. Too many players are playing on past glories, happy to pick up gargantuan salaries, but less inclined to swallow their egos and work as a team.

I’m sure Zidane and Beckham can smell the glue factory already.

Britain online - Part One | What does this mean for TV?

In the news today has been the revelation that Britons, on average, spend more time online than watching television. This raises several questions, not only about how we ‘receive’ content, but questions about how those who seek to influence us, go about doing so.

Advertisers are faced with several choices. Do they continue to nourish underperforming TV channels, or transfer more of their budget to Internet banner and flash advertising? It’s unlikely that prime time shows such as soaps, movies, and Premiership football will suffer a drop in viewers, but UK media companies, such as Sky, NTL, and ITV, have mortgaged their future on multi-channel television, which is not of the same quality.

Now Sky and NTL are, for the most part, content deliverers rather than content producers. Sky does produce some channels, but merely ‘hosts’ much of the services output. Are the hundreds of specialist channels that are available, at all sustainable at present, even before advertisers migrate more of their finance to net-based content providers?

If more and more Britons are switching off their sets, surely they will practice an ever-greater level of quality control. Idle channel hopping will be replaced by indolent surfing, and the revenue starved digital television channels will be whittled down to a few strong swimmers.

The Net, of course, offers several benefits to the advertiser, over the traditional 5-minute TV ad-break. One is the ability to link their ads to their websites, offering prospective customers the chance to learn more about their products or even buy products online. Another benefit is targeted advertising, much like that used in print media (such as newspapers and magazines). Advertisers are keen to see maximum return on their capital invested, and know if they can target a 1,000 people who are likely to buy, it often makes more sense than advertising to 20,000 people, many of whom would never consider buying their products.

A third benefit would be the ability to accurately track the performance of their ad-spend. Visits to a company’s websites can be monitored to show which sites or ads referred the consumer. Payment can actually be levied based on the ‘click-through’ rate of a given ad, so they only pay if a potential consumer clicks on the ad. There is no reason why payment cannot be based on consequent sales; meaning ad-spend would become a variable cost, rather than a fixed central overhead. This is hallowed ground for the marketing team and the accountants.

High profile TV advertising, such as ad-breaks between popular programmes, and sponsorship will not be replaced. Companies who seek to generally raise their profile in the public consciousness, an important factor in ‘brand-management’, will still flock to popular television shows and sporting events. But those companies who seek to increase retail activity may find online advertising offers more value for money.

The upside of this is change to where advertisers allocate their money, is that content providers who operate online, should have access to a greater level of revenue. Google, which operates an easily available service called AdSense, will probably become if it is not already, the largest handler of adverting in the world. And this easy access to potential ad revenue allows people to set-up content providers (blogs, websites) with little or no start-up costs. This represents a return of power to the people. Rather like the sixties and seventies where bedroom activists could realistically get pamphlets and even magazines published, they can now, with little skill or cost, publish online. Also AdSense and similar services, have a completely passive relationship with their site meaning no pressure on the editorial or the content of the site. You simply have to attract enough people to your site.

Of course the downside to this media ‘revolution’ will be the collapse of unprofitable television media companies, but considering much of the dross among so many of the digital channels, this may not be such a huge cultural loss.

If this prophesy does come to pass, and it’s hard to imagine that advertisers will not take a greater advantage of the Web’s increasing popularity, it will justify those who argue that the Internet has recovered from its late-1990’s bust. Emerging from the humiliation of the dot-com bubble, the Internet is confident again, and this time it has the hard cash to justify its promise.