Don't be told what you want

Telegraph --

His [William Windsor's] decision to wear the Irish Guards Mounted Officer’s uniform, in Guard of Honour Order, was welcomed as a tribute to a battalion that has recently returned from an arduous tour in Afghanistan.

It may also reflect the Royal family’s wish to demonstrate the strengthening of ties between London and Dublin ahead of the Queen’s historic state visit to Ireland next month.

Royal Wedding Music Exclusive

Classy

Wall Street Journal editorial

Political naivete is not a crime, at least not in the West. But Italian Vittorio Arrigoni, a 36-year-old pro-Palestinian activist, was not in the West when he was kidnapped by an al Qaeda offshoot and strangled to death with a plastic cord. He was in the Gaza Strip, where terrorist furies make no exceptions for Western fellow travelers.

Just to pick the most obvious point, note the equation peace activist = terrorist fellow traveller.

The neocon right reacted very differently to the murder in captivity of another Italian a few years ago, Fabrizio Quattrocchi. Can we just say that they were both brave men who shame the evil people that killed them?

The jokes write themselves

Irish Times --

So many people turned up for an auction of distressed properties in the Shelbourne Hotel today in Dublin that it had to be suspended amid Garda concerns for safety ... To ease pressure on the hotel, the entire auction was broadcast to Doheny Nesbitts pub a couple of hundred metres away.

Method to their madness

Prof. Richard Portes, London Business School

Of course, the Emerald Isle could evade responsibility altogether by simply waiting for Greece to restructure its debt first, at which point there will be general confusion and markets will shun Ireland anyway. If that is the tacit strategy, there may not be long to wait.


Wall Street Journal

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, in a question and answer interview with the Die Welt newspaper, held out the possibility that a June audit might show that Greece won't be able to overcome its debt load without relief. Mr. Schaeuble said "other steps" might need to be taken, without suggesting directly that Greece might need to restructure its debt.


"I am awaiting a detailed analysis of Greece's debt sustainability [in June]," Mr. Schaeuble was quoted as saying, referring to a report that also will go to the European Commission and the European Central Bank.

We know this looks bad, but ...

Irish Times --

A truck carrying explosive material has crashed into the front of a shop in Moneygall, Co Offaly that US president Barack Obama is due to visit next month.

Wisconsin judicial elections in pictures

More here.

This means war

Unknown but presumed Iranian hackers enter the servers of a Bahrain media conglomerate and replace maps of the, er, Gulf with one labeling it as the "Persian Gulf."

One hopes this is not the evidence that the US is now citing of Iran's involvement in Bahrain's political unrest.

It's not just us

What's the worst that can happen when a state defaults on its debt?  Ireland should be looking through the history books.  When Pennsylvania defaulted in the mid-19th century, a truly bad thing happened.  William Wordsworth, whose family held Pennsylvania bonds, wrote a poem --

Days undefiled by luxury or sloth,
Firm self-denial, manners grave and staid,
Rights equal, laws with cheerfulness obeyed,
Words that require no sanction from an oath,
And simple honesty a common growth--
This high repute, with bounteous Nature's aid,
Won confidence, now ruthlessly betrayed
At will, your power the measure of your troth!--
All who revere the memory of Penn
Grieve for the land on whose wild woods his name
Was fondly grafted with a virtuous aim,
Renounced, abandoned by degenerate Men
For state-dishonour black as ever came
To upper air from Mammon's loathsome den.

And, er, that's it.   But we're supposed to be scared.

Shoulders do lie

For all the deserved acclaim received by Barcelona football club, it's somewhat bizarre that two of football's most prominent recent handball-leading-to-goal incidents have involved Barca players.  Thierry Henry wearing the colours of France vs Ireland in the World Cup qualifier and now this evening Gerard Pique apparently trying to impress Shakira with a chest move that was really an arm move to control the ball before scoring vs Villareal.

Instant Gratification

You could construct a full theory of the last 30 years of American politics around the proposition that the self-indulgent baby boomers of sociological lore have been Republicans since the late 1970s.

What word does aspiring Presidential candidate and veteran Republican Haley Barbour use the most in the above clip?

A bomb is a bomb

National Review's Andrew McCarthy, in a Peter King-like rush to distinguish the IRA from Islamic terrorist groups --

[US] Administration officials wishfully see Hezbollah as analogous to Sinn Fein, the socialist “political wing” of the Irish Republican Army. But the IRA is (sic) a terrorist organization of comparatively modest, parochial ambitions (and far more modest capabilities). It has a single real enemy, Britain, and it wasn’t trying to destroy Britain — just eject it from Ireland.

Above, Maggie Thatcher's bathroom at the Grand Hotel in Brighton in 1984 following the IRA bomb attack on the hotel, in which most of the British Cabinet were staying.

Asteroid destroys Earth

GDP growth unaffected.

As long as people don't panic.

Japan nuclear crisis coverage explained

At least it wasn't the bust of Churchill

Good Glenn Beck-worthy material from Barack Obama  --

PRIME MINISTER GILLARD:  No, it’s about 20 percent less in size than America.  But 20 million people, 20 percent less in size.  So that’s worth knowing.  Who knows anything about Australian-rules football?
      Q    Ask him.
      PRIME MINISTER GILLARD:  You do?
      Q    I’ve watched a little bit.
      PRIME MINISTER GILLARD:  You’ve watched a little bit?  And what do you think?  Pretty tough guy?
      Q    It’s hard to understand.  (Laughter.)

     PRIME MINISTER GILLARD:  Okay.  I’ve been trying to describe it to the President.  It can be a bit hard to understand.
      PRESIDENT OBAMA:  She brought me an Australian football.  She was kicking it in my office.  (Laughter.)  Almost broke a bust of Lincoln.  It was really -- (laughter.)  That’s not true, guys.  Just making that up. 

Devalued Irish currency?

From the UK SAS/Foreign Office fiasco in Libya (BBC) --

Witnesses said that when the men's bags were checked they were found to contain arms, ammunition, explosives, maps and passports from at least four different nationalities.

Which other nationalities?  We're not that far after the Israel/Dubai imbroglio.

What you're missing by ignoring Washington DC media blogging

Andrew Sullivan --

Yesterday, I accidentally scheduled a post that included Ryan Lizza's email to me rebutting my initial inference  that he approved of Mark Leibovich's collecting other reporters' emails to political sources in order, presumably, to publish them.

It's essentially college newspaper personality dynamics, but with a national platform.

Incidentally, on that core point of Andrew publishing private e-mails to him without permission, there is that Glenda Gilmore e-mail from way back  in 2002.

A recollection that probably means we've been blogging too long.

Ireland's new competitiveness

Not with the economy, but with ... Cricket!  Beating England!

Of course, everyone knows that real Irish sports fans would have nothing to do with a furrin game like cricket and instead only wish to follow Manchester United and their manager, Sir Alex Ferguson.

Photo: AP/Kirsty Wigglesworth

It was the terorrists wot done it

Washington Times --

Evidence outlined in a Pentagon contractor report suggests that financial subversion carried out by unknown parties, such as terrorists or hostile nations, contributed to the 2008 economic crash by covertly using vulnerabilities in the U.S. financial system.



The unclassified 2009 report “Economic Warfare: Risks and Responses” by financial analyst Kevin D. Freeman, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times, states that “a three-phased attack was planned and is in the process against the United States economy.”   ...

Suspects include financial enemies in Middle Eastern states, Islamic terrorists, hostile members of the Chinese military, or government and organized crime groups in Russia, Venezuela or Iran. Chinese military officials publicly have suggested using economic warfare against the U.S.

It's strange the extent to which people will go not to believe in bubbles, even after we've been through a complete cycle of them.

Community organizers

AP news report --

Having successfully toppled their own autocratic rulers, Egyptian and Tunisians are rushing to the aid of their Libyan neighbors with hastily organized blood drives, field hospitals and convoys of food and medicine.


While European countries and the USA focus on getting their own nationals out. 
 
There are war crimes happening in Libya as Eurocrats busy themselves with draft communiques. 

If they're not near the mosques, we should be fine

Wall Street Journal editorial --

But oil traders are already beginning to discount for the risks if the demand for more political freedom also spreads to the Kingdom [Saudi Arabia], which produces 10% of the world's oil. Karen Elliott House's recent piece on these pages explained in persuasive detail why that is not a far-fetched scenario. We hope the Obama Administration is making contingency military plans to protect those oil fields if it comes to that.

It's rarely set out so clearly. If the Saudi people mount a struggle for more political freedom, the US should invade and seize the oil fields.

If only Libyans had feathers

Home page of the European Union Council, evening of 21 February 2011 with unknown numbers of fatalities in Libya.

Libya

Now we really do have an Arab country that needs a humanitarian military intervention.  After all, it is the Southern Neighbourhood.

Clown of the day

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini --

I am extremely concerned about the self-proclamation of the so-called Islamic Emirate of Benghazi. Would you imagine to have an Islamic emirate on the borders of Europe? This would be a really serious threat.

He delivered the quote in English at a meeting of EU Foreign Ministers.  The above video is a similar quote in Italian on the way into the meeting.

The possibilities here are that Italy gets its Libyan analysis from Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and/or that the minister is an extremely gullible and excitable person.

But he's the person in the room making the decisions.  Seen in this light, Ireland's mess -- or at least the component of it due to EU decisions -- becomes easier to understand.

Bloody Friday

Crown Prince Salman of Bahrain to CNN's Nic Robertson --

What we don't want to do like in Northern Ireland is to descend into militia war or sectarianism

Godsend

The government of Iran should be under the same popular pressure as governments in the Arab states.  But all they have to do, it's increasingly clear, is to hang on long enough for it to become apparent that the guns in Bahrain will keep firing until the Shia stop complaining, and they'll have their geopolitical issue.  When we find, as seems likely, that the Bahrain operation is being pushed by Saudi Arabia, they'll be home free.   It's not inconceivable that we'll be discussing how to draw the line between an "invitation" for foreign help and an invasion.

Guglielmo and Monica

Neocon Michael Ledeen takes the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal to offer an oblique defence of Silvio Berlusconi, essentially that hey, it's Italy, and anyway it's mainly leftists and wimmin who are trying to prosecute him.  Going a step further than Ledeen does in the article, the sub-editor includes in the headline --

Imagine Dick Cheney being judged by three women from the Yale Law faculty.

whereas Ledeen had just focused on the politics of the Italian judiciary and compared it to Yale Law.  Incidentally, the headline writer's thought experiment means that Tiger Mom Amy Chua would be one of the justices.  Which is neither here nor there.

But anyway, noting Silvio's longevity, Ledeen says --

Three G-8 summits have been held in Italy in the last 17 years (1994, 1999 and 2009).

The point being that Silvio has presided for Italy at all of them.  But there's one revealing error here.  Italy didn't host in 1999.  It hosted in 2001, Genoa.  That was the summit where the Italians put up anti-aircraft weapons around the summit site because there was chatter that terrorists might try and crash a plane into the summit venue.

That was July 2001.

2 months later, attendees at that summit were claiming that no one had thought that had a plane could be used a weapon.  So a little weird that Ledeen has his years wrong on that one. 

So he sums up -- 

There are other legal moves available to him and his enemies, as well as purely political operations. The left is, of course, demanding he resign at once.  But they haven't convicted him yet, and the calls for resignation suggest anxiety among his opponents. My guess is that the trial will not be quite as "immediate" as some are hoping, and no savvy Italian is going to bet the villa on a guilty verdict.

There you have it.  The sex scandal is essentially a shrug of the shoulder affair in the land of the Latin lover.

Let's now cast our minds back to when Ledeen was channelling Machiavelli to write about the Clinton-Lewinsky imbroglio --

Ledeen is especially contemptuous of leaders he regards as weak and corrupt, such as Bill Clinton. In a 1999 article in the scholarly journal Society, he warned of dire consequences if Clinton were not impeached. "New leaders with an iron will are required to root out the corruption and either reestablish a virtuous state, or to institute a new one. . .," he wrote. "If we bask in false security and drop our guard, the rot spreads, corrupting the entire society. Once that happens, only violent and extremely unpleasant methods can bring us back to virtue."

Or, as he says in the article --

Leaders must therefore personify the virtues expected of others (or at least be perceived to be virtuous).

The choices therefore appear to be that Italy is rotten state headed for a bad end, or that Michael Ledeen is a political hack.   Must we choose?

More Belgitude

Qatar News Agency --

HH the Emir Receives Flemish PM

HH the Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani received at his Emiri Diwan office Thursday morning HE Prime Minister of the Flemish Government and Flemish Minister for Economy, Foreign Policy and Agriculture Kris Peeters and his accompanying delegation on the occasion of their visit to the country. During the meeting, they reviewed ties of cooperation between the two countries and ways of developing them in various areas.

That sounds like a country!

Belgitude

European Council President Herman Van Rompuy on Tuesday:

This is not a non-paper of the Council

 He's referring to the Charlemagne Pact (what it should be called), a Franco-German steamrolling of the economic autonomy of the other Eurozone countries.  Apparently despite its physical manifestation, it doesn't exist.

Image via Wikipedia to illustrate a distinctively Belgian usage

Real tie-in, fair and balanced

On Egypt turmoil weekend, the line up on Fox "News" Sunday's flagship political discussion show --

Segment 1:     Roger Goodell, NFL Commissioner

Then, football “Fair and Balanced”, as we’re joined by two Super Bowl heroes from each team’s storied history.

Segment 2: Lynn Swann, Former Steelers Wide Receiver
Jerry Kramer, Former Packers Offensive Lineman

And, our Power Player of the Week takes us into the broadcast booth, as he preps for the big game.

Power Player:  Joe Buck, Fox Sports

Maybe the political content is coming from Lynn Swann.