Quote of the Day

Dan Azzi on Carlos Ghosn --

For a second, he wonders to himself, is it better to be imprisoned in Japan with free cash or free in Lebanon with imprisoned cash?

Origins

Don Imus is dead. Here's his New York Times obituary. For all the "Trump country" trips that journalists do to diners in Ohio, it would be a better use of their time to study Don Imus. He wasn't from New York City, but he became integral to its political culture through his decades on radio. And whether from being lucky or good, his show was the morning anchor program on WFAN, otherwise an all-sports station, at the very beginning of the all-sports all-the-time format that now accounts for a sizable chunk of your television content. New York is of course a "liberal" city, but lots of conservatives live in the city, or its suburbs, and a visceral political culture was emerging from the mid-1980s. The timelines for Fox News and its major personalities like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity begin there. Rudy Giuliani thrived in it. And of course, the New Yorker who's now President, Donald Trump. Without Imus, it's more difficult to imagine a President Trump. 

Outrage of the Day

 They're dressed as priests and altar boys! They're mocking religion! They're saying we should worship rock and roll like Jesus! Head to Twitter immediately and denounce them!

PS: It was released in 1977.

Quote of the Day

Simon Kuper in the Financial Times --

Covering politics today often feels like covering football. There’s the same stupidity of much of the discussion, the blaming of referees and the empty slogans (“Get Brexit done”). There’s also the same abuse: many people now build their identity on blind political partisanship, whether it’s for Trump, Corbyn, Leave or Remain. Cornel Sandvoss, sociologist at Huddersfield University, calls this political fandom.

They still don't get it

House of Commons 2nd reading of the EU Withdrawal Bill -

Jim Shannon (DUP -- Strangford) 

It is clear that a number of issues will make Northern Ireland a less Unionist region of the United Kingdom. Fishermen who bring fish back to Portavogie will be subject to a tariff, and the meat sector will also face tariffs. Does my right hon. Friend agree that Northern Ireland will end up being less Unionist than Liverpool, Leicester, Manchester, Newcastle and London, and that we should be the same as, not different from, everywhere else in the United Kingdom? 

From the same debate, the maiden speech of Claire Hanna -- from the nationalist party that actually shows up in Parliament -- is here. 

Geoffrey Cox was right

House of Commons 25 September 2019

This Parliament should have the courage to face the electorate, but it won't, because so many of them are really all about preventing us from leaving the European Union at all. But the time is coming, Mr Speaker, when even these turkeys won't be able to prevent Christmas.

http://bit.ly/2n9rbO6 

There is always a line from The Godfather

The UK election result calls to mind Clemenza's reference to "pain in the ass innocent bystanders." 

That guy in Riyadh

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's tweet of concern about the Pensacola shooting refers to a phone call that he had with Saudi Arabia "Foreign Minister al-Saud." This is nonsensical. The foreign minister is a prince and like many in government, shares a descent from the founding al-Saud family -- hence the name of the country! 

Could he not even be bothered to use one of the minister's more specific names, like Faisal bin Farhan? Perhaps his mind was too preoccupied with the aborted but no less bizarre stunt where he was going to bring Bibi with him to Morocco? 

Quote of the Day

From superbly illustrated interview with Edna O'Brien in the Financial Times --

Her stories are studded with sparkling encounters. “I asked Beckett that once,” she says, when she thought I’d asked her about God. “He said: ‘Hang on, hang on, the bastard doesn’t exist . . . ’ ”

That man again

One thing that London Bridge attacker Usman Khan and Pensacola mass-shooter Mohammed Al-Shamrani had in common was an affinity for the writings of Yemeni-American Anwar al-Awlaki [the alleged social media posts by al-Shamrani include a quote from al-Awlaki].

This shows -- again -- that whatever about the various brands of ISIL, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) remains a potent and long-lived driver of radicalization.

And again points to the serious flaws in the US strategy against al-Awlaki, from embarrassing disclosures about his personal life to assassination of him and family members. An alternative world where al-Awlaki had been persuaded against violence, or not elevated to mythical status by his assassination? We just don't know. 

Here, there, and everywhere

During the US Vice Presidential "surprise" visit to Iraq, Mike Pence gave a short address to US military personnel at Erbil Air Base in the Kurdish Region of Iraq. During the address, he mentions that he's at Erbil Air Base 10 times. It's a sure sign of a rushed and cobbled-together visit -- was it meant to be Trump? -- that the speech has to be peppered with references to where it is taking place. 

Lawyer, Mayor, Salesman, Spy

It's been clear for a while that Donald Trump's circle of confused old men, himself included, is an easy target for a Russian intelligence operation. Sure there will be a lot of inconsistencies in their research on their theory that Ukraine framed Russia, since it's a ludicrous theory, but then again a good spy will know how to keep the information flow tempting, as George explained to the Minister in Tinker, Tailor --

MINISTER (Appalled) Witchcraft's intelligence is genuine! It's been gold! 
SMILEY Just enough glitter, amongst the chicken-feed.

All Souls Brexit

Lionel Barber in the FT with a brilliant reflection on Brexit; one highlight --

Several Eurocrats interviewed for this article agreed that the Brussels summit in December 2011 marked a turning point for British diplomacy. France and Germany were battling to secure agreement on a “fiscal compact” to buttress the eurozone after the global financial crisis. In the early hours of the morning, Cameron, without forewarning, produced demands to protect the City of London and threatened a veto if he was rebuffed. European leaders, including Merkel, were outraged. They saw this as a domestic gambit to appease Eurosceptics on a matter of singular importance to eurozone members. So they simply ignored Cameron and secured an agreement among themselves, outside the EU treaties. The UK’s bluff had been called.

One implication of this is that the 2012 Irish referendum to ratify the fiscal compact -- needed precisely because it was outside the EU treaties -- was a bigger deal than perhaps realized at the time. If that referendum had failed, Cameron would have been rescued from his isolationist stance on the compact and the momentum towards his own doomed Brexit referendum would have slowed. 

Old guys in diners, Damascus edition

Bashar al-Assad --

As for Trump, you might ask me a question and I give you an answer that might sound strange. I say that he is the best American President, not because his policies are good, but because he is the most transparent president.

Halloween Brexit

David Cameron, who started the whole mess, in Riyadh meeting King Salman on the day that Britain was supposed to leave the EU.

Photo: Saudi Press Agency. 

No quid pro quo, right?

Denmark is a very special country with incredible people, but based on Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s comments, that she would have no interest in discussing the purchase of Greenland, I will be postponing our meeting scheduled in two weeks for another time....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 20, 2019

Word Choice

Donald Trump, announcing the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,  carefully thanked the nations of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Russia. Not the governments.  

Not caught sitting down

Jordan's King Abdullah (with his son Hussein), perhaps having learned well from Donald Trump's experience 3 days beforehand, not to look like Nancy Pelosi is standing up to him.

Photo: Petra (Jordan News Agency)

Brexit quote of the day

Terminator 3 --

John Connor : No, you shouldn't exist. We took out Cyberdyne over ten years ago. We stopped Judgment Day. 
Terminator : You only postponed it. Judgment Day is inevitable.

The Donald Trump travel guide

His description of the car and motorcycle collision that has become a diplomatic incident:

I believe it was going down the wrong way, because that happens in Europe.  You go to Europe and the roads are opposite.  And it's very tough.

Perfidious Albion

One minor question amid the much bigger Brexit questions -- is the transparently obvious Tory strategy to blame Ireland and Germany for a disorderly Brexit named Project Devil Eire or Project Asgard? 

The Unionist veto

Financial Times --

Steve Baker, head of the pro-Brexit European Research Group, said he would support the new deal if the DUP followed suit. “On the union it's clear to me we don't have a right to trump the DUP,” he said.

All of Brexit and all of United Kingdom politics has been defined down to the position of one small  regional political party on one probably unworkable proposal. 

There is always a tweet

"Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work." - Aristotle

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 2, 2013

The selfie of doom

لا تعليق pic.twitter.com/KbXMcJlw8K

— Saad Hariri (@saadhariri) April 9, 2018

That's Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri's famous selfie with Saudi Arabian Crown Prince MBS and Moroccan King Mohamed VI ("M6"), in Paris in April 2018. It hasn't been a good couple of days for the trio.

M6 was supposed to go to Paris for Jacques Chirac's funeral but couldn't due to a heavy lung infection.

Saad Hariri saw the world find out via the New York Times and the intrepid South African tax system about his bizarre US$16 million payment to a Cape Town bikini model.

And MBS had to navigate a lot of barbed remembrances of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. 

Quote of the Day

Henry Mance in the Financial Times:

A no-deal Brexit is a macroeconomic Marie Kondo.

Goya / Hogarth

Ingram Pinn in the FT is another level of cartoon mastery, but given the reference period for his Jacob Rees Mogg caricature, here's our previous attempt to relate Goya's contemporary, Hogarth, to Brexit.

Quote of the Day

Henry Mance in the Financial Times on Trump business school:

Third, Mr Pence showed no initiative. "I'd love to stay at your golf course," he could have told Mr Trump. "But I have a better idea. Why don't I — and my taxpayer-funded entourage — stay at a rival Dublin golf course, then leave one-star reviews on TripAdvisor?" For all these reasons, I fear Mr Pence won't feature in the Trump MBA module on succession planning.

The other phone call

You wouldn't know it from the US State Department, but US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo phoned Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri on Sunday; there is much more publicity about Pompeo's call to Benjamin Netanyahu.

In the Beirut phone call, "Pompeo stressed the need to avoid any escalation."

Whatever attack took place in Lebanon, took place on Lebanon. 

Brazil searches Trump's tweets

So horrible to watch the massive fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Perhaps flying water tankers could be used to put it out. Must act quickly!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 15, 2019

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazilian warplanes are dumping water on the burning forest in the Amazon state of Rondonia, responding to a global outcry over the destruction of the world’s largest tropical rainforest, according to a government video.

Automatic partner

From Boris Johnson's letter to Donald Tusk --

This Government will not put in place infrastructure, checks, or controls at the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. We would be happy to accept a legally binding commitment to this effect and hope that the EU would do likewise. 

This is the critical point. Compliance with any trade deal that the UK signs with a non-EU partner will entangle the border -- unless the partner country doesn't care about the leaky bucket in the middle of the deal. And the EU will face the same considerations on its own trade deals with other third countries. Unless Boris has some further elaboration of his proposal ready, it looks like the UK would have to provide assurances to other third countries that Ireland consents to the border obligations created by such deals -- which of course, Ireland is free not to do!

When the eye of the needle is wide

Just arrived in Israel with dozens of other members of Congress—Republican and Democrat. We are here to show unity in our support for Israel and her people. 🇺🇸🇮🇱 pic.twitter.com/rIUvAQIkZQ

— Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) August 10, 2019

Quote of the Day

David Allen Green in the Financial Times:

But still the finality of a potential departure ("no-deal Brexit) is not fully recognised. The airlock door will slam shut on the astronaut and there is no easy way back into the spacecraft. This brutal finality is written into the Treaty on the European Union itself, the highest form of EU law which neither inconvenience nor wishful thinking can gainsay.

The Epstein Supremacy

Farhad Manjoo in the New York Times,  January 2019:

But Twitter isn't just ruining the media's image. It's also skewing our journalism. Everything about Twitter's interface encourages a mind-set antithetical to journalistic inquiry: It prizes image over substance and cheap dunks over reasoned debate, all the while severely abridging the temporal scope of the press.

At the time, he was talking about the Covington outrage cycle (remember that?). But his point is perfectly illustrated by the Epstein suicide, where every political reporter and writer is using Twitter to elevate the conspiracy theories,  even while ostensibly downgrading them. 

And Donald Trump,  who knows that his Twitter audience includes writers and reporters, stokes the fire perfectly. The result, as Manjoo says, is not just the attention to the event but the skewing of journalism about it to engagement with the cranks and trolls. 

The problem is not just the Trump fund raiser

Amanda Hess in the New York Times last year, on the contorted messaging of I Feel Pretty:

And SoulCycle, prominently featured in "I Feel Pretty," frames the fitness craze as a moral imperative: "With every pedal stroke, our minds clear and we connect with our true and best selves."

SoulCycle's philosophy is a hair away from Renee's own delusional body transformation. As Ms. Widdows notes, the beauty ideal is so pervasive that it is internalized in many women, who are haunted by idealized visions of their own bodies — fantasies of how they might look after undergoing extreme diets or cosmetic procedures. But because nobody can ever achieve perfection, we instead begin to fetishize the striving for it — spinning on bikes and slathering on lotions. So even after Renee experiences her awakening to self-acceptance, she ends up right back at SoulCycle, this time having completely swallowed the "I'm doing this for me" line. 

Sometimes Chris was correct

.@hardball_chris must have the lowest IQ on television—now telling people that domestic terrorists are from the right.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 16, 2013

Palestine on the verge (5 decades ago)

Time Magazine cover, 13 December 1968. 

Britain on the verge (4 decades ago)

Questions to the Prime Minister, 3 April 1979 [Hansard]

Mr. David Atkinson 
Will the Prime Minister take time today to go into the Library and read page 505 of volume 6 of the "Collected Works of Marx and Engels" where he will see a list of the 10 preconditions necessary for any country to be ripe for a Communist takeover, seven of which have already been satisfied in this country, largely through his Government's policies? Will he give a pledge to the country and the House that he will support the next Conservative Government in reversing that trend? 

The Prime Minister (Jim Callaghan)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on getting as far as page 505. I wish that his question had shown a more percipient understanding of the erudite conclusions reached by Karl Marx, some of which are apposite in the present state of development of our world.

The Black Swan

Wolfgang Munchau in the FT:

The probability [of no deal] was at no point anywhere close to zero. It increased when Boris Johnson emerged as the winner of the Conservative leadership contest. But it never made sense to attach ultra-low probabilities to a legal default position.

Islam in the White House

The best moment of Donald Trump's chaotic media Q and A during the visit of Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan --

PRESIDENT TRUMP: [...] And we just came out, Mr. Prime Minister, with tremendous economic numbers for the United States — the best we’ve ever had. We’ve got the best economy we’ve ever had. And I think we can shift some of that over to Pakistan. We should be doing tremendous business together. So, I look forward to it. 

PRIME MINISTER KHAN: Inshallah.

As if something makes 2003 significant

From U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speech to Christians United for Israel:

In Iraq, Syria, and other countries in the region, the last remnants of ancient Christian communities are at near-extinction because of persecution from ISIS and other malign actors.  And just one example: before 2003, there were an estimated 1.5 million Christians living in Iraq.  Today, sadly, almost a quarter of a million.

Salute to America*

Among the various problems with the Trump 4 July address last night was that its version of American history ignored the country's indigenous population.  They appear only obliquely,  in references to an untamed continent and a wild frontier. 

They left out "Hope"

The image that is used by Saudi Press Agency to link to all stories about Crown Prince MBS visit to Korea during his Asia / G20 trip.

Trump should get one made for his Call Me Maybe friend, Kim Jong-un. 

About that West Bank - Gaza corridor

Media reports are leaping on a single sentence in the Deal o' the Century narrative:

Additional investment will finance the development of a transportation corridor directly connecting the West Bank and Gaza through a major road and, potentially, a modern rail line.

But in the list of projects accompanying that main report, there is no such project listed. Instead there is this:

Construct a transportation network connecting Gaza to the West Bank, which could fundamentally change the Palestinian economy. Features could include an interurban rail line linking many of the major cities of Gaza and the West Bank for rapid urban transport, mass transport stations near urban centers, and connections to regional railways such as the Jordan railway project. This connection will occur in stages, with an interim solution planned for implementation within two years.

There are many ways this could be done without the building of a dedicated, land-using direct link between the West Bank and Gaza.

Quote of the Day

Simon Kuper in the Financial Times on the Oxford domination of Tory politics and a potential resemblance to the Cambridge educated spies of the 50s and 60s:

The Cambridge Five were given roles of responsibility because they possessed elite CVs and came across as archetypal British gentlemen (partly through displays of eccentricity in hairstyles, drink and dress). They pursued their utopia for decades, ignoring all evidence that contradicted it and looking down on the rest of the establishment for its unimaginative thinking. When the spies were finally exposed, British trust in the establishment suffered a lasting dent.

Admittedly, the comparison between the Cambridge and Oxford sets isn't entirely fair: though both betrayed Britain's interests to the benefit of Moscow, the Brexiters didn't mean to.

Understatement of the Day

From the White House release of the economic component of the Israel - Palestine Deal o' the Century:

The Palestinian people routinely encounter logistical challenges in the West Bank and Gaza, impeding travel, stagnating economic growth, reducing exports, and stunting foreign direct investment.

Quote of the Day

In the Financial Times,  David Pilling on Sudan:

Protesters have vowed to continue their struggle. The odds are stacked against them. The youth of Sudan, and much of Africa, has a faith in liberal democracy and peaceful protest that has all but evaporated in much of the world. This is a bad era in which to be a democrat without a gun.

Words not being read

From the closing statement of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation summit held in Mecca, and chaired by Saudi King Salman --

The Conference affirmed its rejection of any proposal for a peaceful settlement that does not conform to the legitimate and inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as recognized by international legitimacy and is incompatible with the internationally recognized references to the peace process, foremost international law and United Nations resolutions. ...  The conference confirmed the adoption and support of the vision of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in his address to the Security Council on 20 February 2018 calling on international actors to engage in sponsoring a multilateral political track with the aim of launching a credible peace process under international auspices aimed at achieving peace.

Somehow the Trump Administration's reading of the situation is that there is an alternative path to a settlement that doesn't involve any of the above. 

Israeli politics: All-Media Apology

[Idea from Private Eye]

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
An Apology

In common with all other media outlets in recent months, we may have given the impression that Benjamin Netanyahu was in some way a political genius who was a worthy victor of the Israeli general election. Headlines such as "He's David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, and Moshe Dayan rolled into one," "Bismarck of the Middle East," "Election victory is equivalent of Six Day War for Bibi" and "Is Bibi the Messiah?" might have reinforced the view that were in some sense in awe of Mr Netanyahu's skills. 

We now realize, in the light of the collapse of government formation and a new election in September, that Bibi is in fact somewhat incompetent and prone to exaggeration and motivated mainly by the narrow self interest of him and his family. Our headlines this week such as "Bibi and wife headed to adjacent jail cells," "35 seats when 61 needed for majority returns to haunt Bibi" will, we hope, go some way to correcting any misunderstanding to which our thousands of previous news stories and opinion articles may have given rise.

Leader of "Israel Our Home" Party, Avigdor Lieberman
An Apology

In common with all other media outlets in recent months, we may have given the impression that Avigdor Lieberman was in some way a dangerous ultra-nationalist who represented the worst of Israel's shift to the right. Headlines such as "Back in the USSR," "Lieberman demands all Arabs move east of the Tigris river," and "He wants nothing more than to crush the Church of the Nativity under the wheels of a Russian tank"might have reinforced the view that we in some sense viewed Lieberman as a bizarre byproduct of Soviet migration to Israel who was determined to start an all-out war to expand Israel in every direction.

We now realize, in light of the collapse of coalition negotiations due to Lieberman's insistence on inclusion of the Orthodox in a conscription law, that he is in fact the true custodian of a secular Israel. Our headlines this week such as "Lieberman the toast of Tel Aviv" and "Get a White Russian for The Dude Lieberman" will, we hope, go some way to correcting any misunderstanding to which our thousands of previous news stories and opinion articles may have given rise.

Quote of the Day

Speech today on the anniversary of the Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000, by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah:

Imagine if there had been no resistance in Lebanon, and if there had been no liberation in 2000,  one would have thought that if the Israeli occupation army still controls our land in southern Lebanon to a minimum today, would not we now have seen Mr. Trump guide southern Lebanon or a large part of southern Lebanon to the government of the enemy, as given by Jerusalem and as given by the Golan, as the West Bank will give it and as given by its predecessors in 1948? 

Is he wrong? 

New exploding turban cartoon outrage

That's a caricature in Saudi newspaper Okaz accompanying an opinion article discussing Iran's possible motives in the still murky attacks on Gulf shipping in the waters off the UAE. 

Quote of the Day

From the film Brüno --

For the second time in a century, the world had turned on Austria's greatest man just because he was brave enough to try something new.

Quote of the Day

In FT weekend,  John McTernan reviews a few Corbynism books:

[Labour] Centrists had forgotten the old motto of the Labour party's organisation department — "The Victory of Ideals must be Organised".

Bad breeding

No more massive injections. Tiny children are not horses—one vaccine at a time, over time.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2014

Prior to the Kentucky Derby tweeting, the last time Donald Trump had shown this much interest in horses was when he was dabbling in the anti-vaccine cesspool. 

Bobos in Dublin

The New York Times Sunday Travel section hails the authentic cocktail bar scene in Ireland --

The growing popularity of craft cocktails has spread well beyond Dublin, and its rise could have stifled the unfussy fun of Ireland’s bar scene. And yet, the opposite is true. Instead of a gruff doorman with a clipboard outside a cocktail bar, visitors can expect the warm welcome, conversation and personality inherent to Ireland’s best pubs at this new generation of bars. “What Irish people tend to hate is pretension,” said Stephen Teeling, the distillery co-owner, adding that such affectations crept in during the country’s economic boom years, “but it’s not us.”

Ireland's (pre-2009) economic boom is to Ireland what the 2003 US invasion of Iraq is to "anti-establishment" posers everywhere -- everyone defines themselves in terms of not being that sort of thing, even when by an objective standard, they're doing something just as ridiculous (tripping over themselves to buy €15 cocktails, or supporting Baathist dictators, respectively).

A pint of Guinness will cost about half of one of these cocktails, and it's still your only man. 

Bobos in Belgrade

Branko Milanovic --

When I arrived in the United States, coming from the worker-management world of Titoist Yugoslavia, I was somewhat surprised how Americans took the strongly hierarchical, quasi dictatorial relations in the business world as fully “normal”. I was half expecting that workers would have a say in the choice of their “managers” (actually, for a long time, I could not even figure out who exactly is a “manager”) but of course they did not. The promotions were made by cooption or even direct appointment of lower echelons by the higher echelons. And of course, the management was selected by the owners themselves. So the system was entirely top-down: the top selected the down it liked to have. It was remarkably similar to the political system from which I came. There too the Central Committee coopted its new members; these selected their replacements and so forth down to the lowest level of Communist Party cell. Formally speaking, American companies were organized like the Communist Party. In both cases, to paraphrase Bertold Brecht, the leadership selected their employees, or their citizens. In one case the dictatorship was in the social sphere, in another in the work sphere.

This point is important. There is a further implication. The similarity of the Communist Party and American companies was reflected in the shared emergence of a managerial class; these were very complicated entities without internal market signals, and it takes a lot of managerial capacity to run such organizations. And those people emerge as a class with their own interests.

"The New Class" as the Yugoslav dissident (eventually) Milovan Djilas labelled them.

There is a lineage from the realization of 1950s Communism that something new had emerged, to noticing the same feature of large corporations in "the West," to the rise of an upper middle class in Europe and North America organized around credentials, consultancy / management / professions, to the Peak Bobo presidency of Barack Obama. And the backlash, the reveling in ignorance and the ostensible appeal to "physical" work of Donald Trump and his fellow strongman populists. Who are neither strong, nor populist, but anyway. 

Keynes on Electability

As US political pundits work through their "learned nothing, forgotten nothing" antics for another election cycle, presidential candidates are being assessed in terms of their "electability," meaning some sense of for whom a typical voter is likely to vote. Here's Keynes from Chapter 12 of the General Theory on the problems with that approach --

This battle of wits to anticipate the basis of conventional valuation a few months hence, rather than the prospective yield of an investment over a long term of years, does not even require gulls amongst the public to feed the maws of the professional; — it can be played by professionals amongst themselves. Nor is it necessary that anyone should keep his simple faith in the conventional basis of valuation having any genuine long-term validity. For it is, so to speak, a game of Snap, of Old Maid, of Musical Chairs — a pastime in which he is victor who says Snap neither too soon nor too late, who passes the Old Maid to his neighbour before the game is over, who secures a chair for himself when the music stops. These games can be played with zest and enjoyment, though all the players know that it is the Old Maid which is circulating, or that when the music stops some of the players will find themselves unseated. 

Or, to change the metaphor slightly, professional investment may be likened to those newspaper competitions in which the competitors have to pick out the six prettiest faces from a hundred photographs, the prize being awarded to the competitor whose choice most nearly corresponds to the average preferences of the competitors as a whole; so that each competitor has to pick, not those faces which he himself finds prettiest, but those which he thinks likeliest to catch the fancy of the other competitors, all of whom are looking at the problem from the same point of view. It is not a case of choosing those which, to the best of one’s judgment, are really the prettiest, nor even those which average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be. And there are some, I believe, who practise the fourth, fifth and higher degrees.

Les Etats-Unis, Douze Points

This year's Eurovision Song Context, hosted in Tel Aviv, will in all likelihood be the first to be watched, or at least tweeted about, by an American president. 

Quote of the Day

Jay Caspian Kang in the New York Times Sunday Magazine --

Imagining yourself in a book club with Pete Buttigieg becomes this election’s having a beer with George W. Bush. If the news media has an “identitarianism” problem, it’s not so much that people bunker down into racial, gender or sexual groups, but that a whole class of journalists and thinkers never seems to be able to wander out past its own pool of references — all so admiring of the same things that some are blinded to the similar backgrounds of almost every other Democratic candidate for president.

Let's hope it's contagious

#السودان #سونا| عاد إلى البلاد مساء اليوم #المشير_عمر_البشير رئيس الجمهورية بعد زيارة للجمهورية العربية السورية استمرت يوما واحدا حيث كان في وداعه الرئيس السوري #بشار_الأسد وعدد من أعضاء حكومته.https://t.co/ThrQQi4d6s pic.twitter.com/xW8NKckRGq

— SUDAN News Agency (SUNA) 🇸🇩 (@SUNA_AGENCY) December 16, 2018

Sudan News Agency still has posted the December tweet featuring the jubilant visit of the now deposed Omar al-Bashir to his friend Bashar al-Assad in Damascus.

The protests that brought down Omar al-Bashir began nearly as soon as his return from Damascus and still continue today.

The two dictators have a lot in common; most of all, they held on to power while bankrupting and partitioning their countries and committing large scale war crimes.

Omar al-Bashir never had the cachet with the anti-establishment left that Bashar al-Assad still has. But that insular cranky world is getting small, smaller than Julian Assange's now vacated flat. 

The Real Trump

In an admittedly desperate search for positives, there is one reassuring thing about the latest chaos at Donald Trump's Department of Homeland Security: that last Trump weekend in Las Vegas and California, the weekend where he seemed to be in a perpetual rage -- that wasn't an act, that was genuine Trump. Because he clearly got back to Washington DC still in a rage and decided that he had to make a move.

This, incidentally, is why the perpetual pundit prospect that such and such an event will reveal "the true Trump" is futile. There's only one Trump, and you can see it all where he sees it all, on television. 

The Transfiguration of Trump

It is snowing in Jerusalem and across Lebanon. Global warming!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2013

Donald Trump is such an expert on the Golan Heights that he knows it's evidence of the "global warming" hoax if it snows there in January!

The luck of the Irish

Maybe the madness of the Trump administration is such that relative distinctions are pointless, but Trump's twitter feed has gone noticeably crazier since 8 March, the day he pushed out Bill Shine as his communications director. The tweets are more obsessed with Trump World -- his TV-twitter feedback loop and the Mueller investigation -- and less concerned with the "real" World. He's spent the New Zealand weekend tweeting about TV watching, TV personalities, and Mueller, with a little space for the bowl of shamrock. 

Global Compact for Migration

Here's a link. It seems to have featured in the demonology of the New Zealand mass killer, which should call for a second look at the rhetoric that was used against it. 

Quote of the Day

The FT's Robert Shrimsley on the latest Brexit House of Commons setback:

It is possible to imagine the TV interview after the vote: "I think when Death sees the unity within the Conservative party around eternal life, he will be forced to come back to the table," the chairman of the Mortality Research Group would tell the BBC. "This is a clear message to Death from the UK that it is time to put aside his scythe."

Laissez Faire

It's too soon to say that the political crisis in Algeria will end well, but Algerians are off to a better start than one might have expected.

It certainly helps that the usual pro-authoritarian coalition ("anti-establishment"left, hard right, Russia, and social media trolls) was too busy with Venezuela to launch information operations against the Algerian protesters before they could get momentum.

And there were probably outside parties inclined to intervene if they possibly knew what they would do.

As a result, at least for a while, one Arab country was let make its own choices. 

Irish Parliamentary Party

Financial Times on the meaningful vote eve:

Downing Street hopes that if Mr Cox provides MPs with legal assurances that the backstop is truly temporary, then the DUP will back the deal, in turn winning over scores of Tory Eurosceptics.

"We can't be seen as more unionist than the unionists," said one Tory Brexiter. Arlene Foster, the DUP leader, held talks late in the evening with Julian Smith, the chief whip.

Note the bizarre Tory logic. One branch of unionism in one part of the UK gets to define unionism for everyone who lives in the UK. 

Time saver

In case you're looking for it, here's the announcement in the official gazette of Saudi Arabia canceling the Saudi nationality of Hamza bin Laden. 

Free thinking anti-establishment, Irish style

Might the Irish Government and others in Western block who are interfering in the electoral process in #Venezuela consider taking an honest look at #Israel who practice Apartheid in Israel and Genocide in #Palestine ... https://t.co/RMyKdTx69a

— Mick Wallace (@wallacemick) February 18, 2019

A long way from Sir Humphrey

The FT on the interministerial feuding between defence and exchequer as a Philip Hammond China trip implodes:

Claims Mr [Gavin] Williamson's speech had disrupted planning for chancellor's trip this weekend were "total bollocks", according to a person close to the Ministry of Defence.

Quote of the Day

In the Financial Times, Simon Kuper discusses the perceived commonalities between Trumpism and Brexit --

Weakling neighbours that we bullied in the glorious past — Mexico and Ireland — will bow down again if shouted at hard enough.

The Baathist entity

Member of Irish Parliament Mick Wallace, who for context is a very active tweeter on 3 foreign affairs topics: Israel (against), Syria (for Bashar), and Venezuela (for Maduro), speaking on Tuesday on a bill to restrict Irish imports of goods produced in the Israeli settlements in Palestine --

We should stop defending the indefensible - the behaviour of the state of Israel. We are not anti-Semitic, but we are certainly against the violence and brutality of the Israeli Government against the Palestinian people and several other entities in the region.

The only thing he could mean by Israeli violence against "other entities in the region" is Israeli attacks on Iranian and Hezbollah facilities in parts of Syria under the control of the al-Assad regime. He's therefore directly equating the Palestinian cause with that of foreign entanglements of the al-Assads' lust for power, which to say the least, is a discredit to Palestinians (those Palestinians in Yarmouk might not feel the same way as Mick about the virtues of Bashar al-Assad).

Then there's the question of why Mick holds Bashar al-Assad to a different standard, let's say a double standard, to the one which he holds Israel. But he's clever enough to work in the obligatory disclaimer on that one. 

Quote of the Day

The FT's Philip Stephens on Theresa May:

She imagined herself the leader who could set at once the terms for Brexit and forestall a Tory rupture such as those over the Corn Laws or “imperial preference”.

That is a vital point. The teaching of history has tended to cast Chamberlain (J, not N) and Gladstone with their legacy of split parties -- and so the standard became not splitting the party. As Stephens says, the cost is splitting the country. 

Missing in action

In yesterday's no-confidence motion in the British government,  it was left to a Scottish MP to deliver the significance of Irish nationalism:

Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)

I hope that the motion tabled by the Leader of the Opposition is successful this evening. I was reminded that today is the anniversary of one of the first Home Rule Bills for Ireland, which was agreed by this House in 1913 but defeated in the other place. Yet again—I say this with due deference—the Democratic Unionist party is in control of the Government. Can my right hon. Friend assure me that if the motion succeeds this evening, the Scottish National party will have no truck with any Government funding the Democratic Unionist party and its type of politics?

Not shy

When US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived in Riyadh this evening, his big meeting was with Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir, and Prince Khalid bin Salman, Saudi Ambassador to the USA and brother of the Crown Prince. Prince Khalid's name, shall we say, came up in the Khashoggi affair, so having him visible at a meeting with Pompeo is a statement of itself.

Photo via SPA. 

How it's done

Just in case anyone forgets that Whataboutery originated not as a Russian media strategy or among Bashar al-Assad fanboys, but as a description of Irish Republican posturing in the 1970s:

RTE --

Sinn Féin President Mary Lou McDonald has said she is very glad that two Sinn Féin representatives were in attendance at the inauguration of Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro.

His election has been criticised by the EU and America as a fraud.

"We believe the Venezuelan election was open and democratic," Ms McDonald said.

"It's for the people of Venezuela and them alone to decide who their president is."

"There are people in this country who would not endorse Leo Varadkar on the basis that they have endured poverty...we also have to accepted that he is the Taoiseach."

The Obama truthers

The Muslim Brotherhood, @BarackObama's allies in Egypt, will cancel the Camp David Agreement. http://t.co/Vzswqker What a disaster!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 31, 2012

Trumpism (increasingly indistinguishable from the Republican party overall) has been obsessed with Barack Obama's 2009 Cairo speech since it was delivered. It's that obsession which resulted in US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's clunker of a speech on Thursday, again in Cairo.

The real time context for that obsession is important. At the time (and right up until well into his campaign in 2016, when he suckered rolling news channels into yet more free coverage), Donald Trump had been trafficking in theories that Barack Obama was not born in the USA and was secretly a Muslim. That "secret Muslim" idea, whose entry into the Republican mainstream is a story worthy of Inception, has in turn driven Trump's Middle East views, and those of the people he has around him. And they've now contorted themselves into a set of alliances and stances that will eventually blow up -- as Iran (their other obsession) did in the 1970s. 

Fiasco in Cairo

There may never be a worse high-level speech than the one that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered yesterday at the American University of Cairo. Pompeo travelled all the way to the Nile, but could not step outside the Potomac/ Hudson/ Fox News international relations book circle, in which the Arab Spring was Barack Obama's fault, the average Arab lives in mortal fear of Iran, and a judo contestant from Israel going to Abu Dhabi is the greatest breakthrough anywhere since Nixon went to China. And then's there a line for which we'd have blamed Steve Bannon if he was still in the administration:

Our eagerness to address only Muslims and not nations ignored the rich diversity of the Middle East and frayed old bonds. It undermined the concept of the nation-state, the building block of international stability. And our desire for peace at any cost led us to strike a deal with Iran, our common enemy.

In the background, whoever wrote that is thinking ... ISIS is just like The Globalists! 

The country that should probably feel most aggrieved is Lebanon: Pompeo ignored its hosting of large numbers of Syrian refugees, mindlessly equated it with Hezbollah and Iran, and presented it as a country only to be thought of in terms of the implications for Israel.

There's not much that can be done, but why is Poland lending any legitimacy to this charade?

Brexit road trip

Maybe Paul McCartney has been writing great songs about so many things for so long that he wrote about future events decades ago, but Helen Wheels (1973) might need to be the upbeat soundtrack for people finding a lot more joy in time on British roads.

Two nations once again

No Labels co-founder Daniel Arbess has got that whole Israel-Palestine thing sorted out in the manner that only a bipartisan no labels person could (Wall Street Journal). He's gone back to the 1922 British Mandate map of Palestine, inserted the word "Jewish" on the part between the west of the Jordan River and the sea, and declared, if you will, that we just need to go back to that map. Jordan would assume responsibility for any Arabs in the West Bank (there's no mention of Jerusalem, or indeed Arabs of 1948 who are citizens of Israel). Israel would have sovereignty, and freedom of movement and settlement, throughout the West Bank. What's not to like?

Well. for one thing, that's quite a map. There's no such thing in post-Ottoman history as "Jewish Palestine." Instead, there was an international agreement that there would be a "national home for the Jewish people" west of the Jordan river. But that careful phrase left options wide open for what the political structure and governance of that national home would be -- reasonable given that the vast majority of its inhabitants were Arab. And as a partition plan, it worked out about as well as the partition of Ireland and India by the same imperial power. Let's hope Trump is not the intended audience.