Last evening I appeared on PressTV's FORUM, a one-hour live debate show akin to BBC News's Question Time, on the topic "The Iraq War, 6th Anniversary: Is the end in sight?"  It was my first time on television and I only fumbled one question, I think... er, maybe two.  And I learned that four seconds of dead air time can seem an eternity.

Andrew Gilligan moderated, and fellow panelists were Andrew Murrison (Shadow Defence Minister), Nick Palmer (Labor MP), and Gilber Ashcar (Co-Author with Noam Chomsky of Perilous Power).  I'll post a link next week. PressTV is an international news broadcaster funded by the Iranian government.  The producers, staff, other panelists, and audience were all well informed, and highly civilized.  However, at the end, Gilligan had a disappointed look on his face.  I suspect he was secretly hoping for some Jerry Springer-like action.

In the afternoon, rather than preparing crib notes for the debate, I was thinking about Harry Potter, and folding a US dollar bill every which way to its make various  Masonic symbols even more prominent.  It was one of those days.  Perhaps I was downcast.  Money certainly was on my mind.  Following a sure-fire tip I'd put a fiver on Mighty Man in the 3:20 at Cheltenham, 33-1.  Inexplicably, he'd lost.  That evening, after appearing on Iranian TV, I repaired for a Guinness to the beloved Prince of Wales, where the week before a punter who'd been in and out of the bookies next door had give me that sure-thing tip.  The tipster, a ruddy-faced older gent with an East End accent, was there, as always.  I confronted him.  "Mighty Man?  No, no, my friend, I said Power Station."  Please.  A horse that wasn't in that race.  This was my one wager in the last year.  What's more, the truth is I don't particularly love Guinness.  I'm a New Yorker, and the betting and Guinness were just a weak attempt to try to go native.  I walked home and turned on "Question Time" to see how Jonathan Dimbleby handled debates and whether he knew wrath-stirring tricks that had eluded Gilligan.

But what ho!  Dimbleby was wearing some weird tie... a tie that prominently featured a spider.  A Spider? 

The background of the BBC set was decorated with a vast cross-hatching, a sort of abstract colorful spider's web. 

Consulting an Islamic Imagery manual, which I happened to have at hand... or in any case within a few clicks of the mouse... I read that "a spider web invokes a famous story in which the Prophet Mohammad, being pursued by the Quaraish, finds safety in a cave.  The Prophet's position in the cave was concealed by... a... spider... web."  Bingo. 

If you look at things long enough they always connect.  Dimbleby's producers may through such iconography be sending coded messages about their hidden control of the program to jihadists in the audience.  Or something like that.   I know that on Iranian TV I was sending coded secret coded messages to the other liberal internationalists in the audience, if there were any.  The message was "Help."  Did I mention?  Four seconds of dead air time can feel like an eternity.  I also kept trying to drop the term "neo-liberal" but couldn't find the opening.

But about "Question Time"... it was after all the show where Dimbleby reduced the American Ambassador to tears the week of 9/11.  So his agenda is transparent, even if his coded messages are "veiled."  It's wonderful when everything is clarified, and I'm glad I got something right this week.  Still, shame about the horse. 

I've put a call in to the BBC News press office to ask who gave Dimbleby the tie.  I wonder: is Dimbleby witting?  No answer back from the Beeb yet.  STANDPOINT's other on-line columnist, Michael Burleigh, thinks it might be worth our looking into Jon Snow's socks.  Perhaps, because his ties are unfortunate, the only message in them is "out of date." 

Something to look into next week.