The Palestinian reality

In the New York Times Book Review, Ian Black's review of Anshel Pfeffer's biography of Bibi --

Netanyahu, in this view, has always seen the Palestinian issue as a diversion — a “rabbit hole” that misinformed Westerners insist on going down. 

It's a little strange how much that Matrix-influenced terminology -- red pill, rabbit hole -- has influenced the rhetoric of conservatives, but one possibility is that it's something that they've heard from each other as they compare notes on their true knowledge of liberal prejudice and the "real issues" in the Middle East.

Eurovision theory

Putin hacked it for Israel to make it up to Bibi for not keeping the Iranians under control in Syria. 

Before the Kanye West revisionism

New York Times, Jesse Green's review of Summer, the Donna Summer musical --

It totally botches, for instance, her relationship with the gay community, which instantly embraced her on the radio and the dance floor for reasons the show doesn’t explore. Comments that Ms. Summer later made about God not creating “Adam and Steve” (let alone others she denied making about AIDS as a punishment for sin) left many gay men feeling betrayed — a betrayal they attributed to her resurgent Christianity. Rather than dramatizing this fascinating conflict head on, the musical brushes it aside as an ancient misunderstanding and uses Ms. Summer’s gay publicist as an alibi. (Singing “Friends Unknown,” she mourns his death to show she couldn’t have been homophobic.) It does not even mention her 1979 announcement that she was born again; she sings “I Believe in Jesus” instead.

Saddam and Bashar

In the weekend FT, Ben Judah mingles with Momentum to get a flavour of the movement from activists. In the studio with Aaron Bastani ---

Next topic: Syria. Is the Stop the War Coalition approach still working? What is "a left geopolitics"? Live-viewers are messaging in: "What we did in Mosul and Fallujah makes Douma look like a picnic." "100 per cent correct," says Bastani.

Note the logic: Iraq gives Bashar al-Assad a free pass for atrocities in Syria. And change that message to "What Bashar did in Aleppo and Homs makes Gaza look like a picnic." Same logic, different reaction.

Quote of the Day (3)

Via Orla Ryan (Financial Times) on the latest iteration of Ireland's decades-long abortion debate --

Whatever happens, perhaps Rhona Mahony [master of the national maternity hospital puts it most succinctly. "Terminations will continue," she says. "They have done since the beginning of time." 

Quote of the Day (2)

Alexandra Petri (Washington Post) on Donald Trump's bizarre Fox and Friends interview --

Stars spun into existence in the deep womb of the sky and burned out again, and planets rose and set, and at the end of the last age of men the great wolf Fenris rose from the deep and swallowed the Earth — and Donald Trump was still on the phone with “Fox and Friends” after calling in with a lot of opinions he wanted to share, against the best legal advice, and also probably the advice of his lawyers.

Quote of the Day (1)

Gail Collins (NYT) on Mitt Romney's struggling campaign for Senator from Utah --

First, he had to get the nomination in a state where he’s lived only a sliver of his life. Romney’s been trying to dig in, buying mansions in Utah (half his four houses are now there). This week he showed up for a Utah Jazz basketball game, eager to prove he was just one of the guys by wearing a Jazz jersey over his dress shirt.

No chemical weapons used, so it's fine

Via Al Arabiya, a screen grab from a Russian video which appears to show Russian special forces, masked, guarding the Syrian military leadership at a recent appearance in Qalamoun. As the story explains, the video was not shown on Syrian TV, since it would highlight the dependence of the regime on external support, but appeared on Russian websites.

Robert Fisk is making no effort to debunk the reporting of on-the-ground Russian support to the regime, since no one is proposing that anything be done about it. 

Move along folks

It's depressing to observe the media interest in certain events drop like a stone as follows:

• The Toronto truck attack, once it was clear the suspect wasn't Muslim
• The Nashville Waffle House shootings, once it was clear that the victims, and hero, were not white
• The al-Assad/ Putin assault on Syrian cities, once it was clear there was no prospect of western countries doing anything about it.

Debate on shorter name ongoing

[Jordan Times] .... Jordanian National Campaign Against the Gas Agreement with the Zionist Entity  ... 

Image of the Day

Poster for the feature on Tunisian directors that will be held as part of the Directors' Fortnight running in parallel to the Cannes film festival next month.

Cheap eats

From the latest iteration of a USA nationwide E.coli outbreak apparently attributable to romaine lettuce, with the latest lead coming from Alaska --

State officials are responding to an outbreak of acute gastroenteritis caused by Escherichia coli (E.coli) O157:H7 bacteria in the Anvil Mountain Correctional Center in Nome. Eight confirmed cases have been identified to date. The recently discovered cases appear to be connected to a nationwide E. coli outbreak affecting at least 53 persons in 16 states and linked to romaine lettuce grown in Yuma, Arizona. .. No additional cases have been identified in Alaska outside of the Anvil Mountain Correctional Center. 

The outbreak was first reported as nationwide on April 10 and suspicion was on leafy greens from the start. And then a prison got a batch of greens. Interesting timing on the shipping.

Arab agency

First, on Robert Fisk's visit to Douma, ahead of OPCW. If the victims were suffering from "dust" inhalation, then that means that the building they were in was bombed by Russian or Syrian forces ... something that seems to happen a lot, despite Russia/ Syria denials that they target civilians.

Which brings us to the question of why Robert Fisk is only trying to debunk one particular type of regime attack (for example, does he have any views on what has happened to the Syrian healthcare system in rebel areas due to government attacks on infrastructure and personnel?). Anyway, the answer is that Fisk is only attempting to debunk one type of attack, because it's the only one that burnishes supposed anti-establishment credentials. If there's no prospect of a western response, then there's no need to debunk, because it's just a plain vanilla al-Assad atrocity.

Fisk's style of reporting does a lot of damage, especially for people whose own anti-establishment mentality locks them into believing him and contrarians like him, and even more especially people who are themselves in the establishment but want the credential of not being so. Here's Michael McDowell explaining the Syrian crisis to his Sunday Business Post readers --

Indeed, it was Qatar and the Saudis, acting back then as joint sponsors of an Islamist Sunni revolution, that started the Syrian civil war. 

This is a standard narrative for soi-disant contrarians, but it ignores the fact that actual Syrians began their own Arab Spring protests, which the regime turned into a civil war by brutally repressing them. Then the Qataris and Saudis got involved (and by the way, here's a post we keep having to go back to as a reminder that the Saudis had no intrinsic quarrel with Bashar until he started killing protesters). But for Fisk and McDowell, it's far easier to view the Arab world through the lens of endless western machinations than to allow a role for choices made by Arabs themselves.

Quote of the Day

There's a class of people giving a lot of their time on social media to claims about "false flags" and "crisis actor" interpretations of chemical weapons attacks in Syria -- people who would scoff at exactly that mode of analysis, and that terminology, when applied to crackpot theories about school shootings in the USA, but somehow don't make the connection to what they are doing in giving Bashar al-Assad the benefit of the doubt. So instead of getting sucked into their descent into troll bait, here's Henry Mance with a perfectly-timed column in the FT --

Anti-conspiracists must release our own irresistible theories. Let’s tell Jim, a local tennis coach, to tell others that Roger Federer is not the world’s best tennis player: someone is sedating his opponents in a scheme to increase national happiness. We should ask Samantha, a local actor, to point out that every new play in London’s West End is written by a so-called “James Graham” who must be a piece of advanced software. The conspiracies go on. Why do Underground trains always arrive marginally later than the arrivals screens promise? How did seagulls survive the 5G apocalypse?

Audience becoming more selective

Among the things highlighted by today's joint US-UK-FR military strikes on Syria: the extremely degraded quality of Russian diplomacy. In 2013, Russia had its cynical motivations, but it also had the ability to translate those motivations into a deal within the framework of international law. But in the week since the latest (of many) chemical weapons attacks, there was nothing coming out of the Moscow Ministry of Foreign Affairs except trolling and disinformation -- as if the same staff assigned to muddy the Skripal affair were simply reassigned to keep the al-Assad / Maduro fanboys on Twitter happy, but no substantive work got done.

Note: Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov has been in that job since 2004, and was Russia Ambassador to the UN for the 10 years prior to that. It's not just presidents who can be in the same job too long. 

Liberal Classism

David Brooks on the ridiculous new Jonah Goldberg book --

His conservatism is missing the bonding sentiments of Edmund Burke, and the idea that the little platoon of the family is nestled in the emotional platoon of the neighborhood and the emotional platoon of the nation.

That little platoon phrase is often pulled out of context from where it appeared in Reflections on the Revolution in France --

Turbulent, discontented men of quality, in proportion as they are puffed up with personal pride and arrogance, generally despise their own order. One of the first symptoms they discover of a selfish and mischievous ambition, is a profligate disregard of a dignity which they partake with others. To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country, and to mankind. The interest of that portion of social arrangement is a trust in the hands of all those who compose it; and as none but bad men would justify it in abuse, none but traitors would barter it away for their own personal advantage.

Burke didn't mean just family. The little platoon was your place on society, and it was better if you didn't get notions about being above it. Conservatives have struggled with this for a while.

Sublime to Ridiculous

Princeton Alumni Weekly on the course of visiting lecturer in theatre, Fintan O'Toole --

Students reflect on a play or movie each week and submit blog posts before class. Some potential class-discussion topics: Can the state prohibit people from burying the dead (as in Antigone); how are dead bodies portrayed differently in Hamlet vs. MacBeth; and how does the presence of a body throughout Weekend at Bernie’s bring a certain heaviness to an otherwise comedic film? Students will also act out scenes in some of the plays, with the opportunity to portray a corpse themselves.

Quote of the Day

"Social networks are a murky source”

Vladimir Putin, quoted in the Wall Street Journal, visiting the city of the Siberian mall fire disaster, where multiple accounts of what happened are proliferating. 

The Shiny Swan

New York Times on Egyptian Presidential election --

With the Irish bookmaker Paddy Power putting Mr. Sisi’s odds of losing at 1 in 500, most Egypt watchers are already looking past the vote that starts Monday to his next challenge: whether he can change the Constitution to extend his rule beyond the current eight-year limit.

Is there any reason for Paddy Power to quote odds on the Egyptian Presidential election other than to be cited in news articles as quoting odds on bizarre scenarios?

Running the tap and flushing while Irish

These are average monthly water and sewage bills for families in the indicated cities in 2015.

The Irish left has attached itself to the cause that the right equivalent number for Irish families is zero. And they shouted about it enough that they won.

Chart from Circle of Blue via Julia Norgaard. 

Bombing while white

The Austin murderer "blew himself up" (New York Times, Reuters) while today's Kabul murderer was a "suicide bomber" (New York Times, Reuters).

Custodian of the Crazy Brexiteers

Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed Bin Salman meets Queen Elizabeth II in London -- without bowing!

Photo: SPA.

Neighbours

In Cairo on Monday, Coptic Pope Tawadros II meets with visiting Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman at St Mark's Cathedral.

Consider this meeting in light of (1) Saudi Arabia's conventional portrayal as hostile to Christianity and (2) the fact that Pope Tawadros refused to meet with US Vice President Mike Pence in January, despite the latter styling himself as a champion of Christianity in the Middle East. 

Money for Oil

There's a lot of excitement about a potential Trump - Russia strand that runs through the partial privatization of Rosneft in which the Qatar Investment Authority was part of a group (with Glencore) that bought a 19.5 percent stake in the company. For example, in Slate, there's a shaky logical chain running from that deal to Jared Kushner not getting a loan from the Qataris later in 2017, orchestrating the June crisis in the Gulf, and later getting a loan from a Qatari-backed entity. The link back to the Rosneft deal is supposed to be through the Qataris, but the link back to Trump is supposed to be through a Carter Page angle to the Rosneft deal - which never happened!

Anyway, for the present purpose, the point is that the actual flows of money associated with the Rosneft deal are not clear. From the start, well informed Russians and outside analysts suspected that the deal was actually a round trip of Russian state bank cash into the Russian exchequer, with the Qataris and Glencore agreeing to put their name to the transaction in exchange for (1) a nice fee, (2) being pals with Putin, and (3) an understanding that the shareholding would eventually be placed with someone else.

Evidence for this interpretation includes that the two shareholders put up almost no cash for their stake. Instead, the money came mostly from a loan to them from an Italian bank, Intesa, which had trouble offloading the loan through syndication (because of sanctions) and eventually found a solution in the sale of the share to a Chinese company. To say the least, finding any simple Trump angle in such a convoluted transaction is not easy.

War for oil

A couple of weeks ago there was a lot of intrigue around an encounter between Russian mercenaries in Syria and US armed forces; a combination of pro-Assad militias and the Russians ran into much tougher opposition (Kurdish militia backed by US) than they are used to (civilians and poorly organized rebels) and it ended badly for them. Amid much theorizing about what was the motivation for the botched attack (e.g. Putin thought he could embarrass Trump), the Financial Times has a much, much simpler explanation:

For now, some [Russian] businesses are using unconventional methods to position themselves in Syria. Mr Jawabra said Evropolis, a company linked to an ally of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, is receiving revenues from Syrian oil wells in territory captured from Isis by a Russian private military contractor.

Fontanka, a Russian website, last year reported that mercenaries had secured deals under which they would receive a cut of income from oilfields they captured, but Mr Jawabra is the first official to confirm it.

"I don't know how many wells, and how big a cut they get," he said. "But there are others as well. It may be one model that helps get around the problem with the sanctions."

Note that the botched attack was on an oil facility. Thus, the Russian mercenaries in Syria need to capture oil to get paid. If you adjusted the labels on this mechanism (e.g. change "Russia" to "USA" and "Syria" to "Iraq), it might even be a scandal!

Wenger is doomed

The FT weekly lunch slot is with Chris Ruddy at Mar-a-Lago:

We walk down to the beachfront, past the president's quarters and some of the cottages built for club members. In the middle distance, a boy in an Arsenal shirt is kicking a football around — he appears to be the president's 11-year-old son, Barron.

Cargo ship diplomacy

From the latest Theresa May speechifying on Brexit --

First, our agreement will need reciprocal binding commitments to ensure fair and open competition. Such agreements are part and parcel of any trade agreement. After all, why would any country enter into a privileged economic partnership without any means of redress if the other party engaged in anti-competitive practices?

Because the means of redress in a typical trade agreement is simply to retaliate and ultimately suspend the agreement, since more intrusive but less disruptive means of redress is precisely what the UK says it doesn't want. This has already been pointed out to the government by their own technical analysis. 

Same as it ever was

From Emma, by Jane Austen (published 1815) --

(Emma speaking) “So obliging of you! No, we should not have heard, if it had not been for this particular circumstance, of her being to come here so soon. My mother is so delighted!—for she is to be three months with us at least. Three months, she says so, positively, as I am going to have the pleasure of reading to you. The case is, you see, that the Campbells are going to Ireland. Mrs. Dixon has persuaded her father and mother to come over and see her directly. They had not intended to go over till the summer, but she is so impatient to see them again—for till she married, last October, she was never away from them so much as a week, which must make it very strange to be in different kingdoms, I was going to say, but however different countries, and so she wrote a very urgent letter to her mother—or her father, I declare I do not know which it was, but we shall see presently in Jane’s letter—wrote in Mr. Dixon’s name as well as her own, to press their coming over directly, and they would give them the meeting in Dublin, and take them back to their country seat, Baly-craig, a beautiful place, I fancy. Jane has heard a great deal of its beauty; from Mr. Dixon, I mean—I do not know that she ever heard about it from any body else; but it was very natural, you know, that he should like to speak of his own place while he was paying his addresses—and as Jane used to be very often walking out with them—for Colonel and Mrs. Campbell were very particular about their daughter’s not walking out often with only Mr. Dixon, for which I do not at all blame them; of course she heard every thing he might be telling Miss Campbell about his own home in Ireland; and I think she wrote us word that he had shewn them some drawings of the place, views that he had taken himself. He is a most amiable, charming young man, I believe. Jane was quite longing to go to Ireland, from his account of things.”

Is Ireland any better understood in the elite classes in England now as Austen gently indicates was not the case then?

The storm with no name

The latest installment on the UK-Ireland weather service American import of naming winter storms: the blizzard hitting the countries is being referred to as Storm Emma, even though (1) there was no Storm Emma in the list of names for 2017-18 and (2) the low pressure system which is being named is not the feature that's causing all the snow.

Instead, Emma was named by the Portuguese weather service, and its collusion with an off-track Siberian jet stream is producing the blizzard.

Anyway, the American weather hype has moved on. Out goes named winter storms, and in comes impressive sounding weather physics. Thus, this weekend in the northeast will see an event due to Miller-B Cyclogenesis!

The Lavrov-Kerry Pact

Obama era National Security Adviser Susan Rice in a valedictory interview, January 16, 2017

We were able to get the Syrian government to voluntarily and verifiably give up its chemical weapons stockpile.

New York Times story yesterday with  yet more revelations about Syria's continuing chemical weapons program --

Mallory Stewart, a former State Department official who was involved in the Obama administration’s efforts to dismantle Syria’s chemical weapons program, said that there were always concerns that the Assad government had not listed all of its chemical weapons stockpile on its declared inventory of what it gave up. The report, she says, “confirms everything we’ve been saying.” “Certainly what we tried to do in the last administration is dismantle the entire chemical weapons program,” Ms. Stewart said, “which we know they never did.”