VRC Pillow Fight

The latest in a series of snarky exchanges between The Economist and National Review magazine is hinted at today in a post on the latter's group blog, The Corner, but as before, NR is relying on most people not having a subscription to The Economist to see what the offending remark is.

The article is an assessment of William F. Buckley, who was present at the creation of the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy. It's perhaps best read as a sly commentary on the current state of conservatism and not its apparent subject of conservatism as Buckley found it 40 years ago:

Yet, more than anybody else, it was Mr Buckley who rescued conservatism from obscurity and ignominy. When he founded the National Review in 1955, Eisenhower's Republican Party was as adamantly middle-of-the-road as it was middle-brow. As for right-wing activists, most were certifiable: convinced that Eisenhower was an agent of communism (the John Birchers), that Barry Goldwater was a pinko (the Conservative Society of America), that the Jews were the roots of all evil (the Liberty League), and, often, all of the above.

Mr Buckley steered conservatism out of Crackpot Alley, driving out most of the obvious lunatics and building a creed on three solid pillars—support for free markets, traditional values, and anti-communism.

Whereas it's now a movement devoted to arguing about what the meaning of 'torture' is and seemingly oblivious to the basic principle that when the government borrows money, it has to be paid back.

But anyway, the offending remark comes in the context of this generation's VRC pundits:

The problem is that they are all much of a muchness: bit-players in a pundit industry that can't tell the difference between political debate and a Punch and Judy show. And such knockabout stuff has a way of debasing anyone who takes part in it. For instance, Jonah Goldberg is a bright young right-winger who writes for the National Review with the same wry wit as Mr Buckley. But Amazon.com informs us that his forthcoming book, “Liberal Fascism”, argues that “liberals, from Woodrow Wilson to FDR to Hillary Clinton, have advocated policies and principles remarkably similar to those of Hitler's National Socialism.”

By "wry wit" they presumably mean things like Goldberg's post making fun of the people stuck at the New Orleans Superdome while Dubya cleared brush in Texas. But yes, there really is such a book.

UPDATE: Further developments in the case of Jonah's book and the feud with The Economist. Goldberg claims that (a) the book is not the caricature that its Amazon promo makes it out to be, and (b) those meanies at The Economist were nice to him in person but now trash the book in print:

I've chosen not to engage a debate about a book I have not finished based upon a description I did not write months before the book even comes out ....

I will say one thing in response to the Economist's Lexington piece, which was written by Adrian Wooldridge. He's taken a some cheap shots at National Review (or his magazine has under his direction) ever since Ramesh panned his book in NR ... Indeed, he seemed a very nice and intelligent fellow and we had a nice chat. And that's the funny thing. During that chat I explained to him in broad brushstrokes what my book was about and he was very flattering about it and even offered a suggestion or two about contemporary examples I might use to bolster my thesis.

So my question is, did he think it was a contemptible project then and gamely offered some help with it anyway? Or does he merely say he thinks so now in print so he can once again take cheap shots at National Review, this time via me?

He sounds ... hurt! Incidentally, despite the book not being in print yet, Amazon has already matched it based on purchases to, inter alia:

Mommy Knows Worst : Highlights from the Golden Age of Bad Parenting Advice by James Lileks
America Alone: Our Country's Future as a Lone Warrior by Mark Steyn

Because al Qaeda is really strong in the North Pole

Dubya in Alaska, opening an ill-tempered campaign-style speech while wearing a preposterously puffed-up military jacket:

Laura and I were in the neighborhood - (laughter) -- we thought we'd come by to say hello to the nation's "Arctic Warriors." (Applause.) We're proud to stand with the courageous airmen of Elmendorf Air Force Base, the soldiers of Fort Richardson, the Coast Guard -- (applause) -- the Coast Guard men and women here in Alaska -- (applause) -- the men and women of the Alaskan Command, and all those who wear the uniform of our country. (Applause.)

... Here at Elmendorf Air Force Base, you're defending our nation's frontiers ...

... I want to thank Senator Lisa Murkowski for flying all the way from Washington today to make sure she was here to see her fellow Alaskans, as well as to be with the President. It means a lot to me. I don't know if you know this or not, but after this speech, she said, make sure you keep it short because she's got to fly back to Washington this evening to make important votes for the people of Alaska. Lisa, thank you for your service. (Applause.) She's doing a fine job. And I see she brought her parents with her.

Well, her parents are indeed important, seeing as how she inherited the Senate seat from her father, which comes in handy when voting for pork-barrel projects financed by taxpayers for a state awash in oil revenues and useless military bases. And those parents -- the Governor and First Lady of Alaska, Mr and Mrs Frank Murkowski. Jobs for everyone is apparently what the Republicans mean by family values.

And while Dubya is mostly giving the same speech each time, he seems to add a new lie with each one:

Iraq was the only country that had used chemical weapons on its own people, invaded its neighbors, and fought a war against the United States and a great coalition.

So what was that business in Yugoslavia about, then? Especially the bit that was opposed by George W. Bush? ---

2000 Bush-Gore debate: The vice president and I have a disagreement about the use of troops. He believes in nation-building. I would be very careful about using our troops as nation builders.

Morale in today's military is too low ... Some of our troops are not well-equipped. I believe we're overextended in too many places.

The most benign interpretation of this statement would be that the country did get the policies of, but not the person, who got the most votes in the 2000 election.

Blog scooped by dead-tree edition

Did Andrew Sullivan decide to inform his readers today of his impending move inside the Time.com deflector shield only after he realized that today's New York Times print edition was going to mention it in a by-the-way (but complimentary) fashion in an article about what the NYT sees as tasteless coverage of crimes and mayhem in Manhattan? --

Blogs can be serious enough and conventional enough in execution to fit in with mainstream media (as will be the case when Time.com will begin running AndrewSullivan.com in January)

which Sully, perhaps feeling defensive about now being in the dreaded mainstream media, explains as:

I like to think of it as a moment when the blogosphere and the MSM made touchdown. We're distinct but more connected. Maybe others will follow; others still may stay where they are. Good for them. May a thousand bloggy flowers bloom. But this one will now get a real gardener to nurture it

As bizarre a melange of metaphors and expressions from rugby, American football, Scooter Libby's aspens letter, Mao, and even, peripherally, Led Zeppelin, as we've seen in a while.

The War on Trinners

National Review magazine's Cliff May is directing people, via the mag's group blog, to his account of the GWOT debate at Trinity College Dublin's Philosophical Society a couple of weeks ago. He informs NR's readers that

It went well beyond garden-variety Bush bashing. With friends like these, who needs Militant Islamists?

where 'It' seems to cover just about every other speaker, moderator Charlie Bird, and most of the audience. An incident that will doubtless be recounted many times:

I criticized [Patrick] Cockburn and others in the media for having failed to report extensively on Saddam Hussein's mass murders and routine use of rape, torture and ethnic cleansing – crimes against humanity that never got anything like the attention attracted by the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib.

Cockburn got so angry that he approached the podium and for a few moments it appeared he might take a swing at me.

We understand that Free Stater is trying to obtain a transcript of the evening's events to set a few things straight, not least May's apparent accusation of rampant anti-Semitism amongst his opponents. Updates as necessary.

Of Irish interest

The New York literary pages seem to have become a preferred venue for feuds with an Irish angle. Following hot on the heels of the John Banville controversies comes an annoyed letter to the editor of the New York Times Sunday Book Review by Fintan O'Toole. Fintan is upset at the implication of their review, by Caleb Crain, 4 weeks ago, of his book White Savage that he had lifted sentences without attribution from major books in his book's topic area.

Crain doesn't allege outright plagiarism since it seems to be agreed that Fintan wasn't making any attempt to hide his source material, and argues (fairly, in our view) that it would have bogged down the writing style of the book to attribute each sentence:

Crain might have argued that I should have annotated every sentence I wrote, but he might at least acknowledge that the 27 pages of source notes in "White Savage" give the reader ample guidance to my sources, including the three fine works he mentions. Perhaps he would have been happier if I had offered a numbered source note for each sentence in the book — a procedure that is commonplace in academic monographs and law review articles, but hardly ever recommended in the composition of books for the general reader.

Crain goes for the mostly snarky response:

For that matter, I do not require him [Fintan] to rearrange the words of other writers, either. If he wants to make use of their sentence-making ability, he need only place their words inside quotation marks.

But it's not just a matter of quotation marks; there's the additional "As X says, as Y says, as Z says," which can make for clumsy reading. On the scale of cases discussed here, O'Toole is in a grey area. In the manner of other literary feuds, his revenge will probably come with an opportunity to review Crain's next book.

Department of nationalist corrections

Friday's Wall Street Journal (subs. req'd), on the "Taste" Page:

Even the Belgian government's own Web site admits: "From 1530 until 1800, two names only deserve mention as concerns French-speaking literature." The country's Flemish half didn't exactly pick up the slack: Only four Dutch-speaking writers merited a mention. In England, meanwhile, just one nine-year span in the 16th century saw the births of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Donne and Jonson.

Since becoming the last Western European country to gain its independence in 1830, Belgium has been somewhat more prolific.

We can think of a Western European country that got its independence after 1830 and has the Belgians beaten on literary output as well.

And then there's last Sunday's New York Times (yes, we know there's a lapse of time before we got around to it, pesky work commitments). It's an article (subs. maybe req'd) about Nik Cohn, unlikely impresario of New Orleans hip-hop, which God knows could use one right now, but there's a discussion of his unusual upbringing:

Mr. Cohn was born in 1946, the son of Norman Cohn, a historian with a cult following among British university students. In Nik's childhood, his family relocated from London to Londonderry (sic), in Northern Ireland, where he was an outsider top to bottom: in his words, an "Anglo-Irish Russian German South African Jew caught up in the tribal war between Protestant and Catholic, equally unacceptable to both."

Cold and unforgiving, Londonderry (sic) was the opposite of New Orleans

OK, that feels better.

Tax policy is like a road in Kildare

Charlie McCreevy is the European Union Commissioner for the Internal Market and the most recent former Irish Minister for Finance. His current role does not include any responsibility for EU tax policy but he's spouting off anyway (WSJ, subs. req'd):

Charlie McCreevy, told a business group [in Brussels], "I am emphatically opposed to [European Union] tax harmonization -- be it by the front door or the back." ...
His speech came two weeks after the European Commission, the executive body of the EU, proposed a series of measures to encourage the 25 EU countries to establish the same criteria for taxing a company's profit ... Although tax policy isn't in his purview, he said he would fight any common definition of the corporate tax base, saying he hadn't taken a job in Brussels "to tiptoe about in my slippers." He added: "If I sense there are potholes ahead, I want to spot them before I walk into them -- and point them out to others."

It's odd for a politician to use such a metaphor but not close it by the analogy to filling the potholes. Anyway, the backstory here is that McCreevy has found his own portfolio too hot to handle, shying away from reviving the Frankenstein Bolkestein Directive, but sees the need to protect the Irish Republic's generous definitions of what constitutes taxable income -- a regime that sees the country earn more corporate tax revenue from Microsoft's UK operations than the UK does. Strangely enough, the UK will likely agree with this pothole-avoidance crusade of Charlie's.

Euphemism of the Day

Having a meeting with the dictator of an oil-rich African country (Gabon), a meeting for which a party lobbyist ("Casino" Jack Abramoff) may have been paid $9m for setting up:

Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, [] said the meeting was "part of the president's outreach to the continent of Africa."

There's always an Irish angle

From the excellent Washington Post story on the now ex-New York Times reporter and purveyor of WMD shite, Judy Miller:

Miller attributes her explosiveness to her heritage -- a brew of Russian Jewish (her father's side) and Irish Catholic (her mother's). "The thing they had in common was they were volatile," she says of Bill Miller and Mary Theresa Connolly.

The Irish parliamentary party

The Times of London quasi-blogging of Tony Blair's defeat in the House of Commons on Wednesday over the 90-day detention period for terrorism suspects notes the evolving possibility, ultimately not fulfilled, that Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party would vote with the Government:

3.15pm -- In the last few minutes, members of the DUP have been seen going into a huddle with Peter Hain, Northern Ireland Secretary. Could a deal be on the cards? ...

4.30pm -- Peter Hain is looking pretty happy after his meeting with the DUP. Does this mean a Blair-saving deal has been done?

6.15pm -- The Government failed to do the deal with the DUP, who voted against the Government

The margin of defeat exceeded the size of the DUP vote, but one does wonder what the outlines of a deal might have been. It's possible that the DUP looked for concessions on the "on-the-run" amnesty bill, which will cover terrorism offences related to Northern Ireland that were committed before 1998 by people currently at large. Indeed, getting that bill through Parliament is going to be another tricky proposition for Blair. While there's unlikely to be sufficient outrage in the Labour ranks to block it, the House of Lords may well. In fact, the DUP will have some seats in the Lords by then, adding to the problems.

At that point Blair will face the same issue that Charles Kennedy challenged him on yesterday -- whether he would use the Parliament Act to ram it through. The two situations make clear how difficult a deal with the DUP was always going to be: Blair needed their support for a toughening of anti-terrorism legislation now, but will be going over their heads on what they see as their home turf in a few months' time. In keeping with the purely speculative tone of this post, perhaps the DUP was looking for some input on events which would constitute "glorification of terrorism", a section of the bill that did pass.

Moore no longer the goat

Not for the first time, Andrew Sullivan seems to be embracing rhetoric that he had previously ridiculed. So today:

From Christopher Meyer's new book, a story about former British prime minister, John Major, on September 11, 2001:
>>John Major was due to head off to a meeting of the Carlyle Group, one of the most powerful private equity firms in the US, whose European arm he chaired.
Catherine urged him not to go downtown [in Washington], but he did. He returned at lunch to say there had been a brief meeting of the Carlyle Group people, who had then gone their separate ways. "I met Mr Bin Laden this morning," he reported. This was, it transpired, one of Osama's many siblings, a major Carlyle investor.<<

Business must go on, I guess.

Wait a minute ... Carlyle group ... Bin Laden ... 9/11? That's crazy talk:

[duc de Sully, July 2004]THE LIES OF FAHRENHEIT III: On the Carlyle Group and how the Saudis allegedly bought the Bushes.

Can pet goats and trans-Asian oil pipelines be far behind?

Good news from Paris

Wednesday's Wall Street Journal Europe editorial page (subs req'd) is upset with the French public TV networks for not showing all the mayhem in the suburbs:

Pictures of the worst urban violence in France since World War II are capturing the world's imagination. Only the French themselves aren't necessarily watching the same thing as the rest of the planet.

The country's largest private television network, TF1, refrains from airing footage of burning cars or buildings. "We know that it's the type of thing that provokes contagion," Robert Namias, the head of the station's news division, told the Journal yesterday ... Pretending otherwise [no emergency] won't help France understand or come to grips with the problems in the burning banlieues that have caught most of France -- certainly, consumers of its television news -- by surprise.

Yet this same editorial page has for the last two years claimed that the problem in Iraq is media coverage of the bad stuff, and hosted a "Good News from Iraq" spot on their website -- assembled by a blogger on the frontline (Australia):

... no escaping the continuing negativity of the mainstream media coverage ... Experts might debate exactly how much water there is in the Iraqi glass, but there is little doubt that--yet again--while the cameras and microphones were pointing toward the carnage, violence and corruption, Iraq has continued its slow and steady march out of its three-decade-long nightmare into a much more normal tomorrow ... It's a pity because the story of "Iraq, the phoenix rising from the ashes" is in many ways a lot more interesting, not to say consequential, than the usual steady media diet of "Iraq, the Wild East."

We're off now to get a number on how many French children attend school today -- something the relentlessly negative media have failed to report.

Noted in the obituaries

The Times of London has a nice obit for Harry Thompson, dead at 45 from lung cancer (he was a non-smoker). His writing figures in an impressive list of British radio and TV comedies, and he had substantial connections to Private Eye. His best known creation would be Ali G, but speaking personally, we find the show too cringe-inducing to watch and view Have I Got News For You as the finest achievement. The timeliness of the obituary (he died yesterday) suggests that he had a plan for his last days on earth. It notes that he got married on the day he died.

Shannon and Sugarland

As we've said before, this blog's name is meant to capture a theme of news stories that have unusual transatlantic aspects. In that vein, there won't be a more bizarrely apropos tale than the collapse of a trial in the Republic of Ireland because of apparent personal links between the judge and George Bush and Tom DeLay. In merely one of the ironies, the Irish judge removed himself from the case just as Tom DeLay seeks to game his impending trial for money laundering and fraud in Texas by petitioning for changes of judge till he gets one he likes.

Anyway, the Irish case is a long-running affair concerning an attack by anti-war protestors on one US and one Irish plane at Shannon, Shannon being a key staging point in the War on Terror. The current trial is the second attempt to bring the case, but all hell broke loose in the courtroom today when the defence made several queries about trips that the judge had taken to Texas (ireland.com, subs. req'd):

Defence counsel had asked Judge McDonagh to confirm whether or not he had, as a barrister in the mid 1990s, attended a conference in Texas which involved a photo call with the then Governor Bush.

Counsel for the five accused also suggested that Judge McDonagh was invited to both of Mr Bush's presidential inaugurations and attended the first in 2000.

Now getting a change of judge in the Republic is not simply a matter of pushing a button on a video game console, as it seems to be in Texas, so the defence had to be careful not to impugn the judge's integrity while making their case -- but they clearly struck a nerve:

Michael O'Higgins SC [senior counsel] said that the defence was simply asking whether their information was correct and would then take further instruction from their clients. Mr O'Higgins said the defence was not attempting to argue that any decision made by Judge McDonagh had been affected by the information.

Mr O'Higgins said the defence believed that Judge McDonagh had attended a conference in Texas in the mid 1990s during which he was one of a group invited to a photo call with George W Bush. He suggested Judge McDonagh was later invited to, and attended, the 2000 inauguration of Mr Bush as President and received a further invitation in 2004 which he did not accept.

Mr O'Higgins suggested that the invitation was "extended by Mr Tom Delay, who has had recent difficulties".

Judge McDonagh saw enough of a "perception" problem to withdraw. The trial was in the closing stages, and while the government could in theory try for a 3rd prosecution, one might have thought their will won't be in it this time. Unless they're under pressure from the US to bring the case.

UPDATE: free link from RTE; doesn't contain the hypothesis from the above link that it's a friendship with DeLay that marks the origin of the link to Bush. And here's Tuesday's Irish Times story (subs. maybe req'd) that is essentially the same version that ran as above.

FURTHER UPDATE: Here's another theory about why Judge McDonagh withdrew -- it certainly would have been awkward if the sentence for taking a hammer to a military plane turned out to be higher than the disgracefully lenient sentence he handed down today in what should have been an attempted murder case:

A tennis coach and a university student who left a man in a coma after attacking him on Dublin's Grafton Street are to serve three months in prison.

Stephen Nugent, 24, from Swords and 29-year-old Dermot Cooper from Stillorgan, both in Dublin, pleaded guilty to assault causing harm to Sligo librarian Barry Duggan in April 2003. Judge Donagh McDonagh said the defendants had run off 'triumphant' after the assault on a 'puny man'.

However, Judge McDonagh accepted that they had no previous convictions and were unlikely to come to the attention of gardaí in the future. He therefore imposed three-year sentences with all but the last three months suspended.

Is interfering with the War on Terror a bigger trangression than interfering with another person's brain?

Getting the retaliation in first

Via Wikipedia, Godwin's law:

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.

Since two makes a trend, we propose the Gigot Corollary, named for the editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page:

If there is any non-zero probability of a Nazi or Hitler comparison arising from a discussion, you might as well make the comparison as soon as possible.

Hence, From Monday's WSJ editorial page, the headline from an article (may be free) by Senator Norm Coleman (the man who managed to make George Galloway look good):

NORM COLEMAN
Beware a 'Digital Munich'

Delete the U.N. from the Internet.

Tax Avoidance 2.0

It's no secret that the Republic of Ireland has an extremely advantageous corporate tax system for multinationals. Nor is it a secret that the Republic's corporate governance rules tend to be in the "and whatever you're having yourself" spirit. We've noted this before, such as here and here. But Monday's Wall Street Journal European edition (subs. req'd) lays out in fascinating detail how it works, using the example of Microsoft.

The more traditional form of tax avoidance used by multinationals in the Republic was to manage the accounting so that the most valuable part of their chain of production would show up in the country and be taxed at a low rate. This meant that there was at least some physical production taking place in the country, which would show most of the company's profit (e.g Coca Cola). But now the real action is not in the actual production, but in the intellectual property to software and pharmaceuticals. So Microsoft, for example, structures its operations so that its physical manufacture and sales outlets don't make much money, because they are paying huge licensing fees to company subsidiaries -- and those subsidiaries happen to be located in the Republic. Example:

Round Island One Ltd., has a thin roster of employees but controls more than $16 billion in Microsoft assets. Virtually unknown in Ireland, on paper it has quickly become one of the country's biggest companies, with gross profits of nearly $9 billion in 2004.

Ireland's citizens may not have heard of Round Island One, but they benefit greatly from its presence. Last year the unit handed the government of this small country of four million citizens more than $300 million in taxes ... Microsoft routes the license sales through Ireland and Round Island pays a total of just under $17 million in taxes to about 20 other governments that represent more than 300 million people.

But Microsoft does some real stuff in Ireland, so at least you can drive by one of their facilities and see the buzz of activity at Round Island? Errr.. No:

Round Island's legal address is in the headquarters of a Dublin law firm, Matheson Ormsby Prentice, that advertises its expertise in helping multinational companies use Ireland to shelter income from taxes. It represents other U.S. technology companies including Google Inc., which recently set up an Irish operations center that the firm credits in its SEC filings with reducing its tax rate. A Google spokesman said the company set up in Ireland to be close to its European customers. "Because that business is done outside of the U.S. it is taxed according to international law," he said.

It does seem that concerns in Ireland about losing tech business to Rummy's "New Europe" are overblown, because the government was quick to see that the real action was in tax rules for intellectual property as opposed to factories:

In the past four years, Ireland has stepped up its effort to woo U.S. high-tech firms by piling on new tax breaks for technology transfers, leading a string of major U.S. companies to announce research facilities here. The trend poses a quandary for U.S. regulators and policy makers in the face of a skyrocketing federal deficit and widespread tax shelters.

Irish officials say U.S. companies aren't exporting their intellectual wealth to Ireland, just sharing it. "This isn't about sucking knowledge out of the U.S. This is about building up capability elsewhere," says Enda Connolly, a manager at the Industrial Development Agency of Ireland.

The IRS is fighting intellectual-property migration in court, and the Treasury Department has issued a draft of new rules to limit it. Their efforts have done little to slow the trend

Amongst the people on the downside of this arrangement: Gordon Brown --

Microsoft's ability to avoid reporting large profits in the United Kingdom relies on its position that its U.K. sales -- $1.8 billion in fiscal 2004 -- are actually conducted from Ireland.

To avoid U.K. corporate-profits tax, a company must show it has no "permanent establishment" in Britain through which it makes sales. Microsoft has a large U.K. operation (owned by Round Island) that it calls marketing and a tiny Ireland-based sales staff.

It helps that those pesky regulations about timely annual reports are enforced in a business-friendly manner:

Round Island ... filed its annual report in Ireland on Oct. 27, some seven months late. When asked, Microsoft attributed the delay to the need to finish routine audits of subsidiaries. In the U.S., such a late filing would require an explanation to regulators and possibly large penalties. In Ireland, regulators don't even ask. The penalty for late filing: $3.60 a day.

Notwithstanding the bus fare sized penalty for a late report, Microsoft understands the need to keep the local chieftains happy -- and they reciprocate:

Last year Microsoft also helped cover Ireland's costs in its six-month turn in the EU presidency, donating software and forgiving some $60,000 in royalties. Bertie Ahern, the Irish taoiseach, a title similar to prime minister, spoke at Microsoft events twice this year. "The growth and success of Microsoft Ireland has coincided with, and played an important role in, a dramatic transformation in the Irish economy," he said at an event at Dublin Castle last month.

One other thing; the article explains why the Republic is better at this than small tax haven rivals -- because the country is just big enough for companies to plausibly make the case to the Internal Revenue Service that substantive economic activities take place there:

The Matheson Ormsby law firm in Ireland promotes its expertise in setting up tax-sheltered structures, in a glossy booklet available at its Dublin office. As the global economy changes and technology develops, the firm notes, it is getting easier for multinationals "to unbundle the traditional value chain and locate appropriate profit generating functions in Ireland," including "ownership and exploitation of intellectual property." The law firm has an office in the heart of Silicon Valley, in Palo Alto, Calif.

The booklet sheds light on how Ireland has beat out smaller locales like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands in the competition for U.S. firms' intellectual property. The answer involves the IRS. As Matheson notes, small, sparsely populated and largely undeveloped havens like Cayman lack "the necessary economic infrastructure to which value and ultimately profits can justifiably be attributed." But Ireland has the people and physical infrastructure to permit "construction of profit-generating centres defensible by reference to functions, risks and tangible assets of the Irish operation."

This is too easy but we're going to do it anyway: "construction of profit-generating centres defensible by reference to functions, risks and tangible assets of the Irish operation"

Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;

Yes.

UPDATE 17 NOV: The New York Times editorialises: American Ingenuity, Irish Residence . And [22 NOV] the WSJ story has sparked several in the Irish Times; for instance this one (subs. req'd) notes that the Internal Revenue Service is contesting a $500 million tax reduction achieved by Synopsys through an Irish subsidiary.

A billion people get footnoted

As we've noted before, sic is an important weapon in the hands of White House transcribers (and no, we don't mean the pundits, but the people who actually textify what Bush says). But they had to bring in reenforcements today -- specifically an asterisk. The context: Dubya is in Brasilia, meeting with Lula, and at the public remarks, he said:

We're the two largest democracies in the world.

Which in the transcript appears as

We're the two largest democracies in the world [sic]*.

Because of course, it's wrong, the obvious counterexample being India. So let's see about that asterisk:

* Western world

Not a bad save, but can it be that in Dubya's mind, democracy for non-Christian people is something different?

A word we didn't know existed

We'd heard of people talk about the Murphia before (in the context of networking amongst Irish emigrants), but this is better, via John O'Donoghue at Inishraam:

murphoisie

Indeed. In the old days it would have meant a little less Kilburn and a little more Ealing.

[Previous entry in this series]

Only in France

[NYT] Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres [Minister for Culture], scion of a family of distinguished civil servants ...

The War on Pacifists

We were going to do a longer post in this opinion article from Friday's Wall Street Journal but the basic point is simple. Its target is Christian pacifists:

Despite the record of gruesome violence since 9/11, many Christian leaders still refuse to confront the radical evil of militant Islam. Just last month, for example, England's House of Bishops released a report -- "Countering Terrorism: Power, Violence and Democracy Post 9/11" -- that managed never to mention the horrific intentions of Osama bin Laden in the course of its 100 pages. Instead, al Qaeda is likened to the Irish Republican Army.

Apparently, being compared to the IRA is a compliment. Anyway, since Christian pacifists have zero influence on how the GWOT/GSAVE has been conducted, the article (by someone from the Heritage Foundation) stands as a good example of a conservative whose opinionating is driven solely by annoyance that there are people out there who don't agree with him.

Bonfire night

To which noted leader does this clause from a National Review article by John Derbyshire refer?

and his court degenerated at last into a whispering, bickering nest of favorites.

Does your previous guess become more or less plausible if we add the information that:

He was foul-mouthed, had a speech impediment, and was physically unattractive.

or that he once said

"I am surprised that my ancestors should have allowed such an institution to come into existence."

Yes, it's James I.

Lord of the Endzone

We somehow missed the emergence of an Irish dancing move as the currently fashionable way of celebrating touchdowns in (American) football (NY Times):

Chad Johnson, the [Cincinnati] Bengals' receiver who is the Arthur Murray of the N.F.L., performed a rendition of "Riverdance" after scoring a touchdown against the Bears on Sept. 25. Then Hines Ward of the Steelers mimicked it while Pittsburgh was pounding the Bengals two weeks ago. The officials remained silent; the only comment came from Ward. "I'm a bad Riverdancer," he said.

But N.F.L. officials are not Denny Terrio, and this is not "Dance Fever." Even lousy dancing does not get flagged.

Attention Irish Immigration Authorities

A busy week for the entry of undesirables to the Republic. A couple of days after Cliff May made it to the Phil at Trinity to debate the GWOT/GSAVE (of which we have to hope to have further accounts soon), Friday's Irish Times (subs. req'd) brings news that the Rev. Moon might be popping up in the city to appear at a "Moonie" conference:

The "Reverend" Sun Myung Moon, the Korean-born founder of the Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace (IIFWP), is due to speak at a "peace" conference in Dublin today on what would be his first visit to Ireland.

The 85-year-old has been banned from travelling to a number of countries in the past, including Britain and Germany, due to concerns about his financial affairs. He was convicted and jailed for tax fraud in the US in 1982 ...

The IIFWP has admitted that a private function will be held for its members in a Dublin hotel this evening. However, it said Moon's attendance had yet to be confirmed.

Now while the concerns of objectors are legitimately focused on the cult aspect of the Moonies, the politics are just as atrocious. The Rev Moon has tight links to the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy via his organ, the Washington Times. For some insights into the type of characters he has working there, check out this selection of posts on his editor-in-chief Wes Pruden by the non-repulsive Roger Ailes.

And if you think this is just a fringe operation in terms of mainstream Washington politics, how about this? --

More than a dozen lawmakers attended a congressional reception this year honoring the Rev. Sun Myung Moon in which Moon declared himself the Messiah and said his teachings have helped Hitler and Stalin be "reborn as new persons."

At the March 23 [2004] ceremony in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.) wore white gloves and carried a pillow holding an ornate crown that was placed on Moon's head. The Korean-born businessman and religious leader then delivered a long speech saying he was "sent to Earth . . . to save the world's six billion people. . . . Emperors, kings and presidents . . . have declared to all Heaven and Earth that Reverend Sun Myung Moon is none other than humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent."

Details of the ceremony -- first reported by Salon.com writer John Gorenfeld -- have prompted several lawmakers to say they were misled or duped by organizers. Their complaints prompted a Moon-affiliated Web site to remove a video of the "Crown of Peace" ceremony two days ago, but other Web sites have preserved details and photos ...

The event's organizers flew in nearly 100 honorees from all 50 states to receive state and national peace awards. The only "international crown of peace awards" went to Moon and his wife.

Some Republicans who attended the event, including Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett (Md.), said they did so mainly to salute the Washington Times, a conservative-leaning newspaper owned by Moon's organization. "I had no idea what would happen" regarding Moon's coronation and speech, Bartlett said yesterday.

He reads the paper for its political leanings, but not its broader lunacy.

The War on France

We'll probably do a longer post on this but for now we just want to collect a few links from what is clearly a sustained campaign by the American Right to package the riots in the Paris suburbs as confirmation of their longstanding claims about a Muslim 5th column waiting to destroy Europe:

Andrew Sullivan: DAY SIX: France's Islamist underground riots have now continued for almost a week, and are spreading.

National Review Online: BARBARIANS AT THE GATES OF PARIS [Jonah Goldberg] ...

RE: FRANCE [Andy McCarthy]
The dirty little secret of Europe, and France especially, is not just the failure of assimilation addressed by Francis Fukuyama (my piece on it from yesterday is here), but the corollary of that failure. The French have gradually been ceding sovereignty over swaths of their country. Scores of the Muslim ghettoes have been no-go areas where the authorities have basically abandoned the responsibilities of government, creating little emirates where the Islamic leaders hold sway ...

They [mainstream media, example Times of London] presents a narrative. In this one, the guys responsible for the dangerous state of affairs in France (Chirac, de Villipan (sic), etc.) are painted as the enlightened heroes, while the guys doing the real-world grunt work needed to restore order (Sarkozy, etc.) are the Yankee cowboys.

[Rod Dreher] I just watched a three-minute report on CNN about the Paris riots that never once mentioned the words "Islam" or "Muslims." It referred to the rioters merely as "ethnic immigrants." You cannot tell me this isn't on purpose.

And, an addition:

SEND IN THE MUJAHEDEEN? [Jonah Goldberg]
I certainly hope this doesn't happen, but if you were al Qaeda or some similar outfit, wouldn't you want to foment these riots as much as conceivably possible? The Jihadis subscribe to the Lenninist (sic) doctrine of the worse, the better. Fomenting violence and alienation in the heart of Europe sounds like the ideal means of doing that. Can we expect to see foreign fighters in France?

"the worse, the better" -- Sounds like the White House spin on Iraq.

More: Sullivan goes for the brace: a Bell Curve/Islamist two-for-the-price-of-one:

PARIS IS BURNING: We are entering Day Eight of the underclass, mainly Muslim, unrest.

And [6 NOV] trust Powerline to get right to the point:

Civil War In Eurabia, followed by Steyn -- Early skirmish in the Eurabian civil war.

FINAL UPDATE AUGUST 21 2007: An interesting article from the Financial Times noting that there's little evidence that the riots had an Islamist component.

Typo of the Day

The Wall Street Journal editorial page offers a subconscious tribute to the sloppiness and incompetence of the Iraq war (reg. req'd for article):

On the Editorial Page
How Democrat are lying about Bush lying us into war

Waterboarding government

Is the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy's love affair with eastern European countries a result of their embrace of the "flat tax," their participation in Dubya's global collection of secret CIA detention/torture sites, or both? Today's Washington Post:

Although the CIA will not acknowledge details of its system, intelligence officials defend the agency's approach, arguing that the successful defense of the country requires that the agency be empowered to hold and interrogate suspected terrorists for as long as necessary and without restrictions imposed by the U.S. legal system or even by the military tribunals established for prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.

The Washington Post is not publishing the names of the Eastern European countries involved in the covert program, at the request of senior U.S. officials. They argued that the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those countries and elsewhere and could make them targets of possible terrorist retaliation.

UPDATE 3 NOV: This Times of London article names Poland and Romania as the likely suspects. One a current EU member, and one prospective.

Donald, Donald, Donald. Out, Out, Out.

A follow up to our post about the Gitmo hunger strikers. Here's the transcript of a Pentagon news conference on Tuesday where this issue came up. We listened to the news conference live and the text doesn't do justice to Rumsfeld's cavalier attitude to the problems at Gitmo, but it's a start:

Q Can I follow up? Do you approve of the forced feeding of detainees who are on hunger strikes?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I guess -- I'm not a doctor and I'm not the kind of a person who would be in a position to approve or disapprove. It seems to me, looking at it from this distance, is that the responsible people are the combatant commanders and the Army as the executive agent for detainees. They make -- have expert medical people who make decisions of that type.

And they've made a decision that they think it's appropriate for them to provide nourishment to people who, for whatever reason, at various points in their detention decide they want to not provide normal nourishment to themselves.

There are a number of things that one can glean from the way it's being done. I don't think there's a serious risk of people -- well, I shouldn't say that, I'm not in a position to know that.

But there are a number of people who go on a diet where they don't eat for a period and then go off of it at some point, and then they rotate and other people do that. So it's clearly a technique to try to get the attention of you folks, and they're successful. Yes?

Q One difference between the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] and the [UN] rapporteurs is that the ICRC operates under confidentiality arrangement, whereas the rapporteurs are going to make their findings public. Is that what the government or the department is concerned about? Is that the reason they're trying to --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Not at all. The ICRC does it for a very obvious reason. They do it because that's the only way they can be assured that they're going to have access to countries around the world. And there's a very good reason for the ICRC policy. Obviously, the other people seem not to find that reason valid. But I'm not involved in the decision. That is a decision that the government of the United States has got to address because it's a precedent that applies across the government.

Q Mr. Secretary?
SEC. RUMSFELD: You have new glasses.

Q Just for reading. You know, I'm getting older. (Laughter.) (Off mike.)

The Dublin GWOT event guide

Filling out some missing details in our earlier post, Free Stater informs us that it is in effect Global War on Terror/Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism Week on the campus of Trinity College Dublin. Cliff May and his dope rhymes are headed to the Phil on Thursday night, while the Hist (seemingly with a smaller travel budget) is settting loose the hounds of peace (Fintan O'Toole and Robert Fisk) against Richard Waghorne of the Freedom (sic) Institute (sic) on Wednesday night.

In the spirit of Pajamas Media i.e. distributed news gathering via blogs, although without the Pajamas Media incompetence, we will point you to an eye-witness account of the events should one become available. Your best bets are at the aforementioned Free Stater and the Freedom (sic) Institute (sic) watchers at FI Fie Foe Fum .

UPDATE: Here's another observation about Cliff May. On his blog at his foundation, he cites an analysis by "Scholar Michael Ledeen." Scholar? How about Man Who Despite Ranting About Iran Seems to be Intermediary in Getting Iran What it Wants? Indeed, we'd love if the Hist or Phil would really stir things up with the motion that "This House Believes that US Republican Presidents Implement the Foreign Policy Preferences of Iran." The tricky part of the proposition is squaring it with US policy towards Israel, so that needs further thought.

And here's more on Pajamas Media, including the May-Ledeen connection from James Wolcott [also here].

Of Irish Interest

Dissenting from the general words of praise for John Banville's The Sea, winner of the Man Booker Prize, New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani delivers one of her occasional slams:

Any one of these novels [On Beauty, Never Let Me Go, Saturday] would have been a worthy recipient of Britain's prestigious Man Booker Prize for fiction. Instead, the judges last month awarded the prize to John Banville's novel "The Sea" - a stilted, claustrophobic and numbingly pretentious tale about an aging widower revisiting his past ... [Banville's] novels have tended to be willfully lapidary works, filled with dense, pictorial descriptions and recondite words and allusions: think of a self-conscious attempt to wed Joyce to Nabokov to Wim Wenders ...

Max, a would-be art historian who has lived off Anna's inherited fortune, seems to have spent his copious amounts of free time gazing at his own navel and thinking very big thoughts about very little ...

Equally irritating is Max's penchant for describing and redescribing everyone in his life and everything he sees in minute physical detail that radiates a prissy disgust for the human body ...

Though "The Sea" may deal with some of the gravest issues of life - death, loss, regret - it remains, in the end, a chilly, dessicated and pompously written book that stands in sharp contrast to the vibrancy of many of this year's other Booker nominees.

With Trinity's debating societies livening things up by bringing over Americans to argue about controversial issues, any chance of them hosting a debate about Banville's book with Michiko battling the locals on its merits?

UPDATE 2 NOV: The NYT returns to the critical reaction to Banville's Man Booker, noting the hostility of many reviewers including Michi's above, that the Booker panel chairman John Sutherland had feuded with Banville in the NY Review of Books but voted for him anyway, and that Banville doesn't care that people don't like him, explaining his style in terms of his Irishness:

He says he is puzzled by the thought that his books are somehow too dense or opaque.

"I'm constantly being accused of being elitist," he said. "But I write quite easy, approachable books." He has an autodidact's love of language and a writing style he describes as informed by his Irishness.

"English writers for the most part try to follow Orwell's dictum that prose should be a pane of clear glass through which you look," he said. "But Irish writers think of prose style as a distorting lens. We love that ambiguity; we love that a word can have three or four meanings at the same time."

He added: "We're a language-based society. You can get away with practically anything in this country if you give a good account of it."

If you burn on the hot coals, you're a witch

It doesn't get any less outrageous with the passage of time, the Pentagon tactic of saying that any complaint by Guantanamo Bay detainees that actually goes public is itself evidence of their terrorist activities -- Tuesday's Washington Post has the latest example:

"This technique, hunger striking, is consistent with the al Qaeda training, and reflects the detainees' attempts to elicit media attention and bring pressure on the United States government," Martin [Gitmo spokesman] said.

We speculated at the start of the year that the Pentagon was covering up hunger strikes, so they've clearly now moved to phase 2, which is to acknowledge their existence but couple it with the prisoner self-indictment. And as for explaining why there were hunger strikes before al Qaeda came along, well, that's just evidence of links between other terrorist groups and al Qaeda!