His man in Dublin

Irish Times --

Three paintings hang on the wall behind the desk of Brian Burns, the business executive, attorney, philanthropist and, he hopes, President Donald Trump’s soon-to-be-appointed ambassador to Ireland. ... It was in his capacity as negotiator that Burns first met Trump about “eight or 10 years ago”. He does not want to divulge details of a dispute involving the Manhattan billionaire. He would only say Trump had a legal problem in Florida where he owned his luxury Mar-A-Lago Club not far from Burns’s office in Palm Beach, and that he was asked to play peacemaker. Burns helped the problem go away and the two men have remained friends ever since, meeting regularly at the club.

The timeline and context suggests that the specific legal problem (among many) was a row that Trump had with the length of the flagpole at the Mar-a-Lago estate, which Trump resolved by donating the size of a fine he had incurred to the West Palm Beach Fisher House veteran's charity -- a donation that turns out was made from the Trump Foundation rather than Trump's own funds. 

Our men in Khartoum

From the Sudan Tribune, in the context of the dismayed reaction of the Sudanese government to the Trump visa ban --

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) office in Khartoum is the largest one in the Middle East, said the Sudanese intelligence General Hanafi Abdallah, to give an idea about the importance of intelligence cooperation between the two countries. "There is communication between the two bodies and regular meetings. The CIA office in Khartoum is the largest office in the Middle East. Because the United States is aware of the Sudan strategic importance in the region, it has established one of the largest diplomatic missions in the region, even they had to expand their buildings," said Hanafi in an interview with the Khartoum based Al-Sudani newspaper published on Tuesday.

Quote of the Day

From a later (see below) House of Commons special debate sought by Ed Miliband on the Trump visa ban --

Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar [Western Isles/Outer Hebrides]) (SNP) 

 Has the right hon. Gentleman noted that Donald Trump’s mother was a migrant? She was not just from Scotland but from my constituency. Donald Trump’s first cousin’s wife was my English high school teacher, but we can leave that to one side. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned shame. As a Hebridean, I feel utter shame at how Donald Trump, the son of Hebridean woman, is behaving on the world stage. It is absolutely disgraceful and shameful. I hope he rescinds and changes the measure—not recasts, but rescinds it.

They'll need the Irish one for everywhere else

During questions to Boris Johnson in the House of Commons today about the Trump visa ban --

Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP) ... Could he also advise Northern Ireland citizens who hold Irish passports but who are entitled to full British passports on whether they should apply for British passports for ease of travel to the United States?

It's not bad quality attempted trolling but it's nonsensical. It now turns out that Boris's "exclusive" deal exempting UK passport holders had already been obtained by Canada, and seems also imminent for Australia, New Zealand and perhaps given that trend,, Ireland. It's also not clear what the description of the deal given by the Foreign Office means, since, for example, no is flying directly from Mogadishu to the USA anyway. But finally, note Big Ian Jnr's inability to see beyond the opportunism of a preferential exemption to the principle that all nationals should expect the same treatment. That's the DUP in a nutshell.

Said but not understood

Donald Trump today made phone calls to King Salman of Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed. The official statements from the respective news agencies (SPA, WAM) are stilted but interesting, especially this from Sheikh Mohamed --

Sheikh Mohamed affirmed that extremism and terrorism have no religion or identity and the groups that preach false slogans and ideologies seek to disguise their criminal intention in spreading chaos and destruction.

That's of course central to the debate about whether describing these groups as Islamic terrorism is useful.

Detail of history

... everyone's suffering in the Holocaust including obviously all of the Jewish people affected and the miserable genocide that occurred is something that we consider to be extraordinarily sad and something that can never be forgotten and something that if we could wipe it off of the history books we could. But we can't. And it's terrible.

If that statement was made by Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine Le Pen would be under pressure to disown it.

It was made by White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus on NBC's Meet the Press today.

Something old, something new

Washington Post --

A U.S. service member died of injuries suffered during a weekend raid against al-Qaeda militants in Yemen, the military said on Sunday. Three other American troops were wounded in the operation on Saturday against members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the militant organization that has remained a potent threat amid an extended civil conflict in Yemen, U.S. Central Command (Centcom) said in a statement.

This latest of many attacks highlights the shambles of US counter-terrorism policy in the Arab world. Donald Trump and those around him are obsessed with ISIS, to the point of announcing work on a new Plan to defeat them, with the indicated components of the plan consisting of things that the Obama Administration was already doing. But lost in the ISIS obsession is a group like AQAP, which in its strategy is a different kind of danger to Americans (for one, they've displayed continual ingenuity in developing ways to get bombs on planes).

Another thing about AQAP is that it's the joint Saudi - Yemeni branch of Al Qaeda, and unlike ISIS, has remained loyal to the AQ leadership in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Of these aforementioned countries, only Yemen is included in Trump's visa ban.

Finally, AQAP says that the raid killed a daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki -- he being American, she was also born a US citizen. The killing of Anwar al-Awlaki was arguably a major blunder by Barack Obama, given his role from beyond the grave in inspiring terrorist recruits. It's not much defence of Trump, but he inherited a lot of incoherence.

The recurring figure in Donald Trump's nightmares

Kicking off the week with some exciting news! #ComicCon is officially coming to Saudi Arabia for the first time ever https://t.co/cXb1O5kl1h pic.twitter.com/bKDhtd2MPS

— Arabia Now (@ArabiaNow) January 23, 2017

Who is a minority?

The New York Times has helpfully printed the actual text of the Trump Administration executive order on the refugee program and visas. It's demented and there are about 20 different things that could be unconstitutional, illegal and just plain immoral, but among the lowlights is this --

Upon the resumption of USRAP [refugee] admissions, the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security, is further directed to make changes, to the extent permitted by law, to prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual’s country of nationality.

Thus the wheeze to avoid mentioning religion directly is to say that if religious-based discrimination could be occurring, it has to be for a minority religion. The gamble is that therefore that the order would have its practical impact for Muslim-majority countries. As the order is tested, at least two problems will emerge. The first is defining religion, as opposed to sect, whereas for example Shia could claim discrimination in Sunni majority countries and vice versa. The second is Muslim minorities such as Rohingya in Burma/Myanmar and Kashmiris in India. Will they be beneficiaries of the priority under the new framework?

Incidentally, countries that host USA pre-clearance facilities for US Customs and Immigration, such as Canada and Ireland, are now in a somewhat awkward position, as a policy with which they likely disagree is now being directly enforced on their soil.

We lose another Great

John Hurt. One could have picked 20 superb roles, but he was just fantastic as Control in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Maybe, inspired by that, La Mer is the right elegy music for him.

Sterling identity

Daniel Hannan is in the Lunch with the FT slot this week, and while the usual front is generally up, there's a revealing remark --

He started in Brussels convinced that Tony Blair would try to take the UK into the euro. “I was assuming things would come to a head much earlier than they actually did . . . I wish I’d done other things in retrospect.” His inclination now is to make up for lost time and he is considering leaving politics when his term expires in 2019.

The high position of the single currency in Eurosceptic demonology is forgotten now, but it's the common thread from Thatcherism through to John Major's exchange rate crisis, and the Tories in prolonged opposition during the Blair era. Elsewhere in the aforementioned FT article, it's mentioned that Hannan's student writing at Oxford was fulminating about the Exchange Rate Mechanism (also forgotten: the ERM was a two-time winner of Private Eye's Bore of the Year award).

Yet the single currency issue was killed without a fight by ... Gordon Brown. Could it be that the entire Brexit situation, which only became an electoral force after the single currency was off the table, happened because that there was a generation who had styled their careers as being against the Euro and now needed something else to validate that?

Miss them yet?

First 4 items on BBC Radio 4 midnight news this evening --

Theresa May in Philadelphia: era of humanitarian interventions is over
Trump moots 20 percent import tariff on Mexico to pay for wall
Labour to impose three-line whip on rammed through Article 50 legislation
Boris Johnson calls for fresh look at whether Bashar al-Assad really has to go

Bush and Blair at Camp David.

Jeddah beach party 2017

Saudi Press Agency --

The Security Spokesman of Ministry of Interior has stated that in implementation of the directives of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Naif bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Deputy Premier and Minister of Interior, Prince Mohammed bin Naif Counseling and Care Center has granted beneficiaries of its two branches in Riyadh and Jeddah a mid-school year vacation starting from Thursday 28/4/1438 AH to Saturday.

You wouldn't know it from the description of a care center giving beneficiaries a one week school term break starting tomorrow that this center is actually ... the rehabilitation program of the government for at risk jihadis aka "terrorist rehab." The students must have had good report cards.

Hard Mexit

Seemingly unrelated news items --

Reuters  -- A leading contender for the Mexican presidency urged his government to lodge a lawsuit against U.S. President Donald Trump at the United Nations for the wall he plans to build on the border with Mexico to keep out illegal immigrants. Speaking as Trump gave orders to start work on the wall along the 2,000-mile (3,200-km) border with Mexico, two-time presidential runner-up and leftist opposition leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said the announcement was an insult to his country. "I respectfully suggest that the government of Mexico presents a lawsuit at the United Nations against the U.S. government for violation of human rights and racial discrimination," Lopez Obrador told a crowd of supporters north of Mexico City.

Reuters -- Britain's plans for a "hard Brexit" could lead to customs controls along the Irish border, Sinn Fein's new leader in Northern Ireland said on Wednesday, putting the onus on the government in Dublin to limit the damage. Prime Minister Theresa May has said Britain will not remain a full member of the European Union's customs union, potentially meaning a tighter border between the British province of Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. It will be Britain's only land frontier with the EU once it leaves the bloc. Asked if this would make customs controls likely along the border, Michelle O'Neill told Reuters: "Yes... That is going to be the implication if we don't have our interests looked after and the Irish government don't step up to the plate."

Quote of the Day

James Poniewozik in the New York Times --

But as much as Mr. Trump has adapted to modern media, he is still a 70-year-old man who came of age in the era of three TV networks, when there were no niche hits.

Zeasteading

Peter Thiel interview/profile in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago --

If the worst fears of annihilation seem plausible, Mr. Thiel can always invest more in his libertarian fantasy of a new society of Seasteads: islands at sea with their own rules, starting with a French Polynesian lagoon. “They’re not quite feasible from an engineering perspective,” he says. “That’s still very far in the future.”

Peter Thiel citizenship revelation explained by Stuff --

How did he get his citizenship? When? 

 Thiel became a citizen in June of 2011, the Department of Internal Affairs have said. The "how" is yet to be seen. Getting residence in New Zealand as a super-rich person is fairly easy - you really just need to invest more than NZ$1.5m in the country, a drop in the bucket for someone like Thiel. But citizenship requires a bit more. If you and your family aren't born in New Zealand, then you need to spend 240 days of every year for five years in New Zealand before being granted citizenship, or be granted special permission by the government.

Dubai finds its limit

Reuters --

Authorities in the United Arab Emirates have opened an investigation into a visit by Kim Kardashian to a Dubai government children's charity this month and suggested it undermined local values, a state-owned newspaper reported. Kardashian concluded a brief stay in the Gulf Arab emirate last weekend, shopping at the sprawling Mall of the Emirates and attending a masterclass there on makeup. However, the Emarat al-Youm newspaper quoted Ministry of Community Development official Wafa bin Suleiman as saying her visit to children at the Rashid Centre for the Disabled was not authorized and "had no goal from which students could benefit". The ministry is investigating why the center hosted Kardashian without its authorization, bin Suleiman said, adding that the ministry would have rejected such a request because approval depends on "full commitment to the customs and traditions of the state".

Pot in new Kettle "outrage"

Via Saudi Press Agency, Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia Adel Al-Jubeir during a Riyadh news conference with the visiting French foreign minister Jean-Marc Ayrault (whose surname pronunciation issues in Arabic have seemingly been forgotten) --

I think that the problems between the Kingdom and Iran have started since the eruption of Iranian revolution (Khomeini's revolution) in 1979 when Iran adopted a sectarian policy and sought to stage sedition in the Muslim world, adopted a supportive policy for terrorism through establishing Hezbollah terrorist militias in Lebanon and stormed the embassies, assassinated diplomats and carried out terrorist operations not only in the region but also in Europe, South America and other regions. These are the reasons of the problems.

It's time for some 19th century trade policy issues

Wall Street Journal --

Farm groups expressed dismay on Monday at President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from a Pacific trade agreement they were counting on to sell a glut of American agricultural products in new markets. “It is critical that the new administration begin work immediately to do all it can to develop new markets for U.S. agricultural goods,” said Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation. Farm groups estimated the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership would have added $4.4 billion annually to the U.S. agricultural sector, offering some relief to farmers during a multiyear slump in crop prices and farm profits. U.S. net farm income last year dropped to the lowest level since 2009, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Many farmers backed Mr. Trump’s presidential bid, responding to his vows to roll back environmental and land-management regulations that many see infringing on their business. While Mr. Trump consistently criticized TPP on the campaign trail, farmers and agricultural groups hoped that he would renegotiate some aspects of it, or craft new and better trade deals in office.

Now one country that is looking to sign an expansive bilateral trade deal with the USA and which currently has an agricultural sector protected from American food exports is ... the UK! Could the Tories handle a new Corn Laws debate?

It's time for some 18th century constitutional issues

Donald Trump made clear today that he has in mind not just a general border tax (which would really be a type of VAT) but a tax specific to products of companies that are determined to have outsourced jobs that previously were in the USA.

US trade policy will therefore be used to punish specific companies (and their shareholders) for decisions that are not illegal, but declared worthy of sanction by the legislature.

That sounds like it violates the Bill of Attainder clause of the Constitution.

Angry at Numbers

Every part of White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer's press briefing yesterday is crazy (beginning with his claim that 720,000 people attended the inauguration) but if your time is limited to less than the entire 6 minutes, start at the 4 minute mark for peak incompetence (botches the title of Mexico's President and the day of Theresa May's visit).

One incidental detail that emerges from it is the sensitivity to the Churchill Bust meme, an affair that we've been monitoring for a long time. It's forgotten now, but it was Nile Gardiner who got that story in circulation, and it never went away.

Controversial President who lost popular vote quits

Reuters --

BANJUL  - Gambia's leader Yahya Jammeh said on Saturday he was stepping down under pressure from West African armies which entered the country this week following his refusal to concede an election defeat to President Adama Barrow. Jammeh is yet to leave the presidential palace but his announcement on state television overnight appears to signal an end of a political impasse.

He wants the Paris ambassador job

Another sign of the end times: Karl Rove explaining to French people via Le Monde that Donald Trump is not that crazy.

Take back control!

Via Bloomberg News, note the company that the UK is now in, based on sovereign bond returns over the last two weeks.

Quote of the Day

Philip Stephens in the Financial Times --

British prime ministers are prone to spend their last days governing from a bunker. Convinced of their own immortality they dispense with forthright advisers in favour of devoted aides. The passage of time narrows their sight of the world beyond the front door of 10 Downing Street. Theresa May has started out where her predecessors ended up.

Risk mining

The above is the FiveThirtyEight Premiership win probabilities. The probabilities are in the right column. The current positions and point totals are in the left column. One could wonder what is the value added of a model that's converting the observed form -- as reflected in the tables -- into a probabilities that reproduce the ordering of the table.

That conceptual challenge of probabilistic forecasting, but more importantly, the deceptive ease of applying the methodology to political forecasts, is something that 538 impresario Nate Silver is not much interested in discussing. He is however working towards the conclusion that the need to rethink election analysis is deepest at the political desk of the New York Times. That's despite the fact that the justification of his poll-driven approach is heavily reliant on the notion that certain news stories get reflected in poll movements -- but he has no theory of which news stories make that breakthrough. In football, the events are clear: matches and scores. In political campaigns, the field, rules, and spectators are ill-defined, and there's only one actual electoral event. With the vast amounts of potentially relevant information and a single event, a slippage from data to punditry is inevitable.

Risk shifting

Noted healthcare expert Betsy McCaughey in the Wall Street Journal in the course of claiming that the problem of pre-existing conditions in the US health insurance market is exaggerated --

The healthy can see that paying the same price for insurance as the sick is a bad deal.

Consider that logic applied to car insurance: the driver who hasn't just crashed can see that paying the same price for insurance as the driver who just crashed is a bad deal. Paul Ryan uses identical logic.

Birds of a feather

The faux-realist position that Putin and Assad have won in Syria because they have the cities never made any sense (look at the history of insurgency in Vietnam) but it now makes even less sense (Wall Street Journal) --

Islamic State has ramped up sales of oil and gas to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, U.S. and European officials said, providing vital fuel to the government in return for desperately needed cash. The regime’s purchases are helping sustain Islamic State amid unprecedented military pressure on the militant group in both Syria and Iraq. It is also helping the group despite the regime’s insistence that it is dedicated to eradicating the militant group with the help of its top allies Russia and Iran. Oil and gas sales to Mr. Assad’s regime are now Islamic State’s largest source of funds, replacing revenue the group once collected from tolls on the transit of goods and taxes on wages within its territory, the officials said. Their information comes from the monitoring of oil-truck traffic routes, which have changed from carrying oil to Turkey and Iraq to transporting it to Syria.

Rebels also control much of the water supply to Damascus.

Safe as houses

In UK PM Theresa May's just concluded Bloomberg News television interview, she was pressed twice to give an example of "dysfunctional markets" (a phrase she has used) in which she would intervene. She didn't give any examples. This is despite the fact that she's mentioned housing, in the past, as such an example. Amid the Global Britain blather, it looks like the one sector that had the least connection to the EU is now off-limits with control taken back.

Maggie May

With The Sun reverting to its quarter-century old self, how long before this 1990 front page gets another go-round. Or alternatively, with German paper Die Welt having successfully trolled The Sun into today's response, maybe they should use the above as a model for another salvo?