Yo Brown!

REUTERS/Brian Snyder; caption

One family does its best to deal with the disturbing news from Britain.

UPDATE: Apparently keeping Bush in touch during one of his bike rides requires another person on the ride who carries a cellphone and yells any news to him.

[more here, including remarkable fishing attire from Miss Barbara Bush]

London/Glasgow

It's not clear that certain people understand that it's not that easy to make a gas cannister explode.

[which is consistent with earlier behaviour]

The coastal enclave

AFP/Glenn Campbell; caption

Among the many pathologies of the American Right is that they've never forgiven New York City -- liberal New York City -- for being the victim of the nation's worst terrorist attack, on 9/11. This resentment surfaces in various ways, but one common vehicle for it is a comparison with London when a terrorism attack occurs in the latter city. Examples are found of a supposed sang-froid in London and implicitly or explicitly set against more hysterical or trivial behaviour in New York.

They were doing it during the 7-7 and 21-7 events two years ago and now they're at it again ¹. Witness this idiotic post on Wired's techbiz blog. A Tale of Two Cities. Photos of the iPhone opening-day frenzy in New York juxtaposed against London photos of coverage of the Piccadilly plot. Silly consumerist New Yorkers versus Blitz-hardened Londoners. Geddit? And if there's any doubt about what the Wired post intends, it gets the tell-tale link from Glenn Reynolds.

So how stupid is this? iPhones went on sale in other cities besides New York. At some point they'll go on sale in London and the scene will be exactly the same -- even if there could on the same day be a terrorist attack in some other city in the world. In addition, the Piccadilly bombs didn't actually explode. No one got killed. And people in London are carrying on, like, doing stuff, even as the coverage of the bomb plot unfolds. See the Wimbledon revellers above. But perhaps Wired and Glenn Reynolds think that the champagne drinkers are just another example of tough Londoners. Or visiting New Yorkers? When the only angle is political, the possibilities are endless.


UPDATE: By the way, here's someone else engaged in idle pursuits while the UK deals with terrorism.


1. We need a link for the 2005 claim, but if memory serves us right, Andrew Sullivan was playing that game. (read & scroll)

A&E's main clients

Among the flaws in the apparent Haymarket bomb plot was its assumption that the scene outside a London nightclub would be nice and quiet, with little chance of there being emergency personnel around dealing with other matters. How many pubs/nightclubs has this bomber been to?

UPDATE: Indeed, a second flaw in the apparent Haymarket bombplot was its assumption that an illegally parked car would not quickly come to the attention of traffic wardens. How many times had this bomber actually parked a car on a London street? --

The first device, also planted in a Mercedes, was discovered by chance when an ambulance crew working in the area noticed smoke coming from the car shortly before 2am.

Around half an hour later traffic wardens issued a ticket to the second Mercedes on Cockspur Street and arranged for it be be towed to the holding car park near Hyde Park.

Revenge served lukewarm

There is one crucial detail missing from this otherwise comprehensive New York Times story detailing the response of the United Nations Development Programme to charges that its aid program in North Korea has wasted money -- charges at least partially based, it seems, on fabricated documents.

Because the head of that program, Ad Melkert, has been in the sights of the neocons arising from his role as chairman of the World Bank's ethics committee when the dodgy Paul Wolfowitz deal went down (e.g. this tirade from, who else, Christopher Hitchens). Indeed many of the neocons believe that Melkert was the source of leaks to the media, and have made him the scapegoat for Wolfie's own lapses in judgement. Incidentally, Wolfie's new job is with the American Enterprise Institute. Birds of a feather.

Incidentally, the same grudge against the UNDP is evident in the emerging neocon War on Browns, triggered by Gordon's appointment of Mark Malloch Brown, former UNDP head, to a ministerial role (see also Mark Steyn).

A slight gain for free speech

It's going to take better legal expertise than we have to sort out this out, but it looks like one positive outcome of the Monica Leech imbroglio is that the Republic of Ireland now has the "Reynolds defence" available to defendants in libel actions -- thus removing the irony of an Irish Prime Minister having (through an ill-advised libel action) established that defence in English law.

Monica Leech sued the Irish Independent for simply reporting on a mischievous caller to a radio show who had suggested that she had offered favours normally attributed to another Monica in return for government consulting contracts from a particular Minister's department.

She lost the case, but will not get stuck with the costs of both sides (the usual practice in these cases) because the judge ruled that part of the proceedings benefitted the defendant (Irish Times, subs' req'd):

In a ruling earlier in the case, he [the judge] had found there is such a thing as a public interest defence in defamation proceedings. Such a defence could arise where the subject matter of a publication, considered as a whole, was a matter of public interest.

He also ruled there is a professional duty on journalists to seek out information that is of public interest and to impart it responsibly. The steps taken to gather the information must be responsible and fair and a court or jury must have regard to the practical realities of news gathering.

Which is very like the defence that the Sunday Times was allowed to use against Albert Reynolds: a story might be wrong (or at least not provably right) but it is not libelous as long as the publication uses careful methods and the subject is a public figure. There's just a chance that this might open the way for some edgier reporting as the country faces 15 years of the same government.

Fight the hordes

The latest version of the US Immigration bill died in the Senate today. This leaves millions of Mexicans (and thousands of Irish) in immigration status limbo. One jubilant post from Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review's The Corner captures the forces at work in pressuring Senate Republicans to block the bill --

an enthusiastic kudos to Rush [Limbaugh] and Sean [Hannity] and Mark [Krikorian] and Laura [Ingraham] and Bill [Bennett] and Hugh [Hewitt] and Michelle [Malkin] and Mickey Kaus and Powerline and the Heritage Foundation

-- which, if one was drawing up a catalog of the loony right, would be an excellent list to start with. Among the ironies is that this same crowd will instantly pivot back to support any Bush policy predicated on the belief that "the west" is being "outbred" by Muslims -- having just helped defeat the addition of 12 million mostly Catholics to the legal population of the USA. The idea must be that 12 million are supposed to be breeding for freedom back in their own countries.

Even at The Corner though, there is a jarring note of insouciance in the victory celebrations, as former Maggie acolyte John O'Sullivan (and is anyone keeping track of the numer of Irish surnames in the anti-immigrant crowd?) who sends congratulations but notes ...

I have been cheering on from the sidelines of other obligations. (I'm writing this from Portugal)

Imagine the reaction from these people if someone prominent in favour of the immigration bill had been e-mailing in their thoughts from another country?

UPDATE: You can't parody the Corner. According to Mark Krikorian, the immigration bill itself was symbolic of the Muslim hordes --

It's just that they [pro-immigration bill] went from their usual tactics of piecemeal, behind-the-scenes victories, buried in appropriations bills and little-known courtrooms and bureaucratic offices, and tried to get the whole enchilada — trying to emulate something else that happened on June 28, the Turks' defeat of the Serbs at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, leading to Ottoman conquest of all southeastern Europe.

Yesterday's news

The great thing about a conspiracy theory is that any outcome can be reconciled with it since an outcome that on its face contradicts the theory is therefore evidence of an even deeper conspiracy. "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" and all that.

Nevertheless it would be nice if the Wall Street Journal editorial page would at least take a run at explaining what the deeper conspiracy is in the light of the original conspiracy by George Soros, Mark Malloch Brown, and Gordon Brown to drive out Paul Wolfowitz as World Bank President and install Malloch Brown in his place -- possibly a long-awaited triangulation of Gordon Brown's gratitude to Soros for his run on sterling in 1992.

Because all that remains of that theory is the smooth installation of an American successor to Wolfowitz, and Malloch Brown's decision to become Gordon's Minister for Africa, Asia and UN (with a House of Lords appointment to facilitate this) -- and Soros out of the picture. It's amazing that they found the time to gang up on poor Wolfie with all this other career planning going on.

UPDATE: Speaking of Mark Malloch Brown, it's not clear that the National Review's K-Lo understands the distinction between his job and that of his boss, the actual Foreign Secretary, David Miliband.

Bertie scoops the superpowers

Tony Blair's appointment as special envoy of the Israel-Palestine Quartet is not yet official, apparently due to stalling by the Russians, so a little embarrassment ensued at this morning's Number 10 briefing due to a comment from Bertie Ahern --

Put that Bertie Ahern had said this morning that the Prime Minister had confirmed with him that he had taken the job and that he expected it to be tricky, and could we [No. 10] confirm this, the [PM's Official Spokesman] replied that Bertie Ahern was someone with whom the Prime Minister had the utmost respect, but we had to wait for the outcome of the Quartet meeting instead.

It can't be judged from the briefing summary whether the spokesman's facial expression during the exchange confirmed his self-description as a "dour Ulsterman."

UPDATE: Blair's appointment is now official so Bertie's indiscretion only lasted a few hours. It came in an interview with RTE --

"I spoke to him about this on Friday night when he told me that he was going to take it ... He thinks, and I believe he is right, that if you have hands-on, persistent engagement you can make real progress,"

The new cockpit of Europe?

Wednesday's Wall Street Journal editorial page (subs. req'd) places the Republic of Ireland at the centre of its Eurosceptic opposition to the proposed EU amending treaty, aka the EU Constitution --

But the real drama here is the potential for Ireland to become a proxy battleground for the anti-Constitution types who are being shut out of the ratification processes in their own countries. Countries that decide to ratify the treaty in their parliaments can be considered settled; local politicians might rant and rave about the usurpation of their authority by Brussels, but in the end few are likely to muster a majority against the treaty. That could leave Ireland -- and perhaps Denmark or the Netherlands, which may yet decide to hold plebiscites -- as the last stand for those who think the treaty is being pushed undemocratically.

It seems a bit fanciful to think of Ireland as the scene of an electoral siege of Vienna where the future of Europe is played out. If the referendum fails, it's more likely to be done in by traditional domestic politics, such as might happen with a newly elected government already displaying enough signs of arrogance to irritate a pivotal middle ground in time for the referendum. Then there's the fact that Bertie Ahern, usually seen as Europhile, turns out to have been letting Tony Blair play lead blocker on his own stealth opt-out from the Charter of Fundamental Rights -- a revelation that could alienate the potential Yes vote in a referendum.

An influx of foreign campaigners would certainly liven things up, although the country already has some experience with this as the various abortion referenda have attracted significant interest from outside the country. But it's more likely that Ireland will be keeping the WSJ happy with its tax policies than with any derailing of the European project.

Is it too much to hope for ...

... that The Sun puts some portion of their George Bush interview in or around Page 3?

UPDATE: The Sun's interview is actually over a month old.

There's a 1st time for everything

From an actual White House press release last evening --

Earlier today, in speaking about comprehensive immigration reform, President Bush misspoke.

They really must think that the immigration reform bill is the last substantive piece of legislation that he'll be able to advocate for and sign.

Blair remainders

Apparently Arnold gave him a guitar. Details pending.

UPDATE 25 JULY: There's now confusion as it seems that the gift was an iPod and not a guitar.

That program is already running

Did Irish Times columnist Fintan O'Toole know, when he wrote today's column (subs. req'd) using Tony Blair's negotiated opt-out from the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights as an example of an awful thing that a Blairite Irish Labour party might do, that the Republic had already done exactly that in the treaty negotiations? Because in another Irish Times story, we read that --

But the draft mandate for the talks to finalise the legal text of the new treaty notes: "Two delegations reserved their right to join in the [ British] protocol."

It does not specifically name either state, but EU officials have said they are Ireland and Poland.

The protocols negotiated by British prime minister Tony Blair on the charter state: "The charter does not extend the field of application of Union law beyond the powers of the Union or establish any new power or task for the Union, or modify powers and tasks as defined by the treaties." It continues: "For the avoidance of doubt, nothing in the charter creates justifiable rights applicable to the UK except in so far as the UK has provided for such rights in its national law."

In a sense it makes his argument easier, in that a revived Irish Labour party could define itself by opposition to Blairism as Bertieism -- but that's a recipe that didn't work especially well in the last election. It does raise the interesting question of whether Labour -- and Fintan -- should therefore oppose the EU treaty when it comes to a referendum.

At least it's not in Manchester

It's another of those DIY blogging moments -- insert appropriate smart remark after the following story from Tuesday's Irish Times (subs. maybe req'd):

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has announced that the Government is to honour Tony Blair's "unique contribution to the improvement of British-Irish relations" by endowing a Chair of Irish Studies in his name at the University of Liverpool, writes Frank Millar , London Editor.

The announcement of the £5 million (€7.4 million) Tony Blair Chair in Irish Studies comes on the eve of the British prime minister's retirement from office. The endowment is to create the chair in perpetuity and provision for it will be made in the budget later this year.

Protest season

The Smithsonian Folklife festival begins later this week in Washington DC. One section is devoted to Northern Ireland (not Ulster). Perhaps inevitably, the selection of panelists has resulted in a row, although one which looks like it will blow over quickly. It concerns invitations to David Hume and Jonathan Mattison, historians from the Orange Order, although the Smithsonian is keen to note that the objections have originated from Catholic Irish-American groups and not from Northern Ireland itself.

The essential issue is whether the Orange Order is intrinsically an institution of bigotry. Its history and pronouncements don't make for encouraging reading in that regard but presumably the point of the peace process is to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and judge on future behaviour rather than historical patterns. The Smithsonian hasn't changed its lineup and it's likely that nothing more will be heard about the affair unless there's an actual row at one of the panels.

UPDATE: In an echo of the bitterness that mention of the Orange Order can produce, Northern Ireland's Public Prosecution Service today outlined the history of a weapon used to kill 5 Catholics in a betting shop; the gun was earlier surrendered to the police but then mysteriously came back in circulation among Loyalist paramilitaries when it was used for those murders. The murders were in turn were referenced in a "Five-Nil" chant by goons at an Orange Order parade past the site, an incident considered to be one of the early provocations in what was a fairly bleak marching season in the 1990s.

No trust

One little detail in the reporting of today's hotel bombing in Iraq, which has been described as killing key members of the al-Anbar Salvation Council, repeatedly cited by the US as an example of low locals are turning against al-Qaeda:

After the blast, a member of the Anbar Salvation Council said in the provincial capital of Ramadi that the sheiks meeting at the Mansour Hotel had been dropped from the council "because they did not continue working with us." He said they had been meeting secretly with government officials, about unspecified matters.

So the US-allied group had a serious and perhaps fatal split before this bombing. Not a great endorsement of the new strategy of picking local favourites.

Name the source

Since the gist of this bizarre correction ("Editor's Note") in today's New York Times is that the paper was given false information designed to hype up a supposed dissident crackdown in Iran, the NYT really should complete it and name their source, not least given the role of exiled opposition groups in hyping up the original bases of the current war in Iraq. Whether the source has any ties to "the new crazies" in the White House should also be explored.

UPDATE: Apparently the original (and now disappeared) photos were attracting unflattering detective work quite early on. See here, here, and here.

Phantom, indeed

After being announced last December,

The surge of forces into Iraq is over. The surge of operations has begun, the commander of Multinational Corps Iraq told Pentagon reporters in a teleconference today.

That would be yesterday, Friday 22 June. And, in the glorious tradition of Operation Together Forward, Operation Together Forward 2, Operation Imposing Law (never properly translated by the Pentagon from Fardh al-Qanoon), it's now called Operation Phantom Thunder.

So that noise from the sky doesn't actually mean anything?

UPDATE 5 SEPTEMBER: It's apparent with hindsight that the purpose of Operation Phantom Thunder was to provide a new start date for the Surge, thus allowing the argument that it hadn't yet enough time to be show results (of which there are none).

Sunday Suit

REUTERS/Osservatore Romano; caption

Note Tony Blair's demure suit for meeting Benedict compared to the garish ensemble worn for the EU Summit just a few hours beforehand. The apparel oft proclaim the man, but it's not clear what's being proclaimed in this case.

UPDATE: Via Slugger, Tony's gift to Benedict included a picture of the convert Cardinal Newman (who amongst his many activities was involved in the early days of University College Dublin).

Media Notes

A couple of things in today's New York Times of Irish relevance: a story from Galway about the water crisis (including quotes from sanguine tourists) and a more depressing account from Montclair NJ of the scene at the home of Ballyjamesduff man Thomas Reilly who, in the opinion of the police, drowned his 2 daughters before killing himself.

The medium is the message

Today's Wall Street Journal reports that (subs. may be req'd) Christopher Hitchens is minting it as a result of rapid sales of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. The book is up to 7 times its original print run of 40,000 copies and Hitch looks set to make $1m from it. One hopes that somewhere in the book Hitch deals with his political hero's claim that "the desire for freedom is written in every human heart" but the success also reveals Hitch's talent for the media circus e.g. --

An estimated 1,000 turned out in Miami to listen to Mr. Hitchens challenge a panel that included an Orthodox Jew and a Buddhist nun. "I now wish I hadn't participated," says Nathan Katz, a professor of religious studies at Florida International University. "He was utterly abusive. It had the intellectual level of the Jerry Springer Show."

One does wonder if the book is his (highly lucrative) penance for the shambles in Iraq.

Bertie's Ark

Is anyone in a position of power in Ireland asking why it is that, in a country noted for rain, the place seems to experience so much flooding -- and not just anywhere, but near major roads in urban areas? Presumably the high-priced engineers and consultants designing new infrastructure have thought about things like flood plains, drainage, absorption and elevation, right?

Loss of interest

As this Le Monde article notes (only in French, unfortunately), there was a time when news of a Paris suburb consumed by "urban quasi-guerilla" warfare might have been news. But perhaps it's because the violence occurred between gangs following a rap concert, so not quite easily spun as France's latest run-in with Eurabian demographic terrorists, hence it's ignored. Or maybe President Sarko, tied up in post-election matters, didn't pay much attention so no one else did either.

Multiple Choice

Gordon Brown offered Paddy Ashdown the job of Northern Ireland Secretary because:

(a) he thinks things in NI are still dodgy, making someone with Bosnia credentials a good choice to keep things going

(b) he thinks the NI job is the most meaningless one in the Cabinet, and therefore suitable for a token gesture to the Opposition

(c) he's actually quite worried about the Liberals, at least as destination for disillusioned Labour voters, if not a rival for power, and saw this as a way to split them

(d) he's concerned about a perception that he and Ian Paisley might seem to get on too well and so wants a signal of independence in his on-the-spot man in Belfast

(e) all of the above

We vote for (c), with a smidgen of a mischievous sense of history by Gordon, who surely knows what the Irish question did to the Liberals in the past. A bit of closeted hostility to Blair's self-image as Gladstone?

Wonderful magical animal

From Jonathan Freedland's Guardian column, an ill-chosen expression in a quote from an Israeli "insider" --

As that Israeli government insider puts it, "They'll [Gaza] understand that moderate policies bring home the bacon, while the other road brings only pain."

He forgot to say that the inflow of aid to the West Bank would help support more pork for the Palestinians.

Question inspired by corporate hotel room TV

Which is more annoying: the open loop background music (for weather, text headlines etc) on Sky News, BBC World, CNN, or Fox News? Our nomination is Sky.

UPDATE: For more serious air travel fun (and an episode with which we can identify having spent 3 of 4 days of a trip with no luggage), see the tale of Damien, his bags, and the revenge of the handlers.

FINAL UPDATE: Ireland being Ireland, the suits now have lawyers.

Transitivity

George Bush today, in a meeting that broke the 18 month ostracisation of Israeli PM Olmert -

It's interesting that extremists attack democracies around the Middle East, whether it be the Iraq democracy, the Lebanese democracy, or a potential Palestinian democracy.

Thus, the Iraqi Founding Fathers, installed by a US invasion, are equivalent to incumbent Lebanese government, a product of a sectarian division of power but itself the victim of an Israeli invasion last summer, and to Fatah, the corrupt former (?) terrorist organisation that lost a fairly-conducted election to Hamas, which was part of the government until the Palestinian president introduced the new system of two governments and no state.  It would be harder to find a better illustration of what happens when the GWOT meets the freedom agenda meets the unconditional US security guarantee to Israel.  And that's before any more crazy stuff happens in Pakistan.

Fogra

On the road for a few days with bad Internet so posting may be light. Anyway, there's something about being in a place where the temperature never seems to below 40 Centigrade that seems to sap the blogging enthusiasm a bit. Though it does look like we picked a bad few days to be not paying attention to French politics.

One hopes he wants those sentences back

Sometimes the new "good" Andrew Sullivan gets in touch with his old "bad" Andrew Sullivan --

In fact, a smart withdrawal [from Iraq], if done with finesse, might conceivably undo some of the damage of the dumb occupation. But we also need to be cautious here. As soon as we get news of tribal alliances, we get news of tribal discord. This is Arab culture. They will support you one second and murder you in cold blood the next. And they will do exactly the same to one another.

One of those remarks that sounds about right over a gin and tonic at the club -- 60 years ago. Although Sully's old boss, Marty Peretz, probably agrees with the sentiment.