And it's Goodnight from him

Two of my esteemed co-bloggers recently waved adieu to the hobby that has been FI Fie Foe Fum, and now this particular scribbler does so as well.

The apparent demise of the Freedom "Institute" blog has robbed us of our principal raison d'etre, even though the chief culprit is still active in regurgitating grade-A wingnuttery. But the shooting-fish-in-a-barrel eventually grows tiresome, and the recent chilling of the tolerance of dissent in the Bog O'Sphere has sent out waves which washed up on even this little corner of the Irish blogging world.

To all our readers and commenters, a fond farewell. We hope we've ruined at least a few keyboards.

Carry On, Sergeant

Sicilian Notes, on word reaching the UCD Politics Department of Irish involvement in guarding the trial of Charles Taylor in Sierra Leone:

"Our soldiers have been doing an excellent job ensuring the security of recent proceedings to bring Charles Taylor to justice. The coverage this has received in Ireland has been minimal. This is deeply unfortunate, firstly as they are doing an important and potentially dangerous job, and secondly as the profile and public awareness of the Irish Defence Forces is unacceptably low as it is.

Several Irish Times articles on the subject made no mention of the contribution of Irish troops (1, 2, 3) while the Department of Defence homepage doesn't even mention the news.

Public support for our defence forces is a long-standing problem, as I wrote here."

As has been dwelt on by FI Fie in the past, there's nothing so dangerous to aspiring public commentators as a little knowledge; a caution which goes double for ideologues fancying themselves armchair generals. The Irish military contribution to the Special Court Sierra Leone (SCSL) is relatively unremarkable as it actually arises from a tasking of the Irish 92 Inf Bn. with UNMIL in neighbouring Liberia (itself the subject of excellent coverage in the Irish media generally).

So far the Sierra Leone role is limited, being restricted to helping guard the SCSL and to rehearsing emergency evacuation of SCSL staff [1]. Yet it has indeed been covered, for those who were paying attention. So much for the RW denunciation for the day (an event more regular than the Angelus).

There is a debate here of considerable worth - but it's on the question of how UN missions frequently come to end up understrength (and with mostly inferior, non-First World troops), making the best of insufficient resources contributed by the West.

Having said all that, we must commend Mr. Waghorne on his lobbying efforts, both on behalf of the unrecognised good work which makes up everyday UN operations and on that of public servants (an unfairly-maligned element of the Irish workforce at the best of times). And we very much look forward to Richard reprising his Berlin activities in two weeks' time, waving his little tricolour to Support The Troops as they parade to commemorate the origins of the Irish Army (and indeed this State) in the events of Easter 1916.

[1] "Operation Green Horizon", An Cosantóir, March 2006

That's All, Folks!

Hello all

A regular reader of my postings here on FI Fie, if such a warped beast could be summoned from the imagination, may have noticed that my posts in recent times have shared a certain tone. It is one of weariness- a weariness born of boredom.

You see, I'm not sure that FI Fie has a purpose any more. I originally set it up in a fit of pique at the regular erasure of reasonable dissenting comment on the Freedom Institute's blog's postings regarding the shooting dead of Jean Charles de Menezes. If you visit the Freedom Institute now, it is a husk of its former self. It certainly doesn't seem to me to be worth reading, let alone disputing.

Its inhabitants have moved on- some to writing in fringe outlets in the media, others to the start of their exciting new lives as people with jobs. And I think its time for this gnat to move on from FI Fie Foe Fum in response. My fellow contributors may carry on as they see fit, though they all have excellent blogs of their own. I suspect, (one last time) without knowing, that I would not be the only reader who would enjoy reading more on the other passions of their lives at those sites.

Now, before I go, I have one issue I'd like to address.
There have been comments, by Mr. Waghorne amongst other people, that FI Fie appeared to be an "I hate Richard Waghorne" site. To clarify; I haven't met Mr. Waghorne. From his writings, I consider it perfectly likely that he is personally charming. I admire his passion for classical music. He is an eccentric young man and, in the main, I favour eccentrics. To date, we appear to be utterly opposed on everything politically, outside of the tedious topic of Sinn Fein. But that's hardly a reason to even dislike a person, let alone hate them. So, specifically regarding Mr. Waghorne, I wish him well while also pointing out that he and his fellow Freedom Institutionals have managed to be uniquely wrong on almost every matter they have put their minds to. I look forward to seeing them reversing the usual pattern of young radicals and becoming Trotskyists in middle age.

In general, I think the best way to stand against an organisation which stresses its seriousness is to refuse to be serious. I think the best way to disagree with people who do not allow for fair dissent is to refuse to play by their rules. And I think that the correct response to a group who strain to stress their own importance is to have some fun.

I hope I managed to do some of those things here.
Simon McGarr

Dick Attacks Lazy Conservatives. Hmm...

It's become axiomatic now that many of our favourite wingnuts are beyond parody, due to an absolute absence of any self-awareness. Is, for example, Tony Allwright aware of the conclusions most normal people would draw about a someone who writes five letters a week to the papers (namely, that he's a sort of political cat-lady?). Does instapundit ever notice that his name implies a person who'll talk at a moment's notice, free of the requirement to consider or ruminate? And does Richard Waghorne ever read his own output before posting it?

Feeling a little bored this evening, I took a stroll around the Freedom Institute gated community, hoping for a chuckle. Alas, as so many times before, the rest of the boys are sleeping on the job (surprisingly public sector of them) and only Sicilian Notes was on hand to entertain.

It seems there's been some criticism amongst conservatives of a paper by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt (yes, I know, you're aghast). Dick thinks they're making the wrong criticisms, and for the wrong reasons:

"Sadly, most [critics] are overlooking the weakness of the paper itself (monocausal analysis, questionable ascriptions of motivation) and are instead zoning in on spurious criticisms..........The thing is, there is something dodgy about the paper, as I've suggested above........you really have to wonder how many of the conservatives now piling on with termed (sic) like 'sloppy' and 'lazy' have even read the paper"

This is all admirable stuff, a muscular defense of the intellectual honesty and rigour so prized at FI Towers. Thing is, the paper is "eighty pages long and I'll only be on top of it myself by this evening". So to recap, when talking out of your behind about a paper which you have not read, "sloppy" and "lazy" are verboten, but "dodgy" is just fine. Well, I suppose it beats keeping your mouth shut.

Gnomes ate Mr. Waghorne's numbers

Mr. Waghorne recently decided to challenge the Irish Time's assertion that Bush's tax cuts have favoured the rich. I admit, this seems like a challenge and a half. I'd have felt 'If they didn't favour the rich, why would he have made them?' was convincing enough proof.

This level of shabby thinking wouldn't do for the readers of FI Fie, however. Mr. Waghorne has gone to the trouble of setting out his proofs in eight easy points. In response, the US Tax Gnomes have contacted us to offer a counterpoint. It also comes in eight easy points.

Gnomic contribution commences;

1. The top twenty percent of earners now pay a larger share of federal income tax than before the cuts."

Cherrypicking - in fact, three different kinds of cherrypicking:
(i) He looks only at federal *income* tax - the share of *Total* Federal Tax Liabilities paid by the top 20% has fallen.
(ii) He ignores the actual tax *rate*, which gives a better picture of tax burden as it is not distorted by changes in the distribution of pre-tax income (which I seem to recall have been rather favourable to the rich in the last 25 years or so).
(iii) O'Doherty spoke about the benefits accruing to the top 1%, but RW chooses to look only at the top 20%. Could this be because the top 1% of earners benefit far more than the 19% immediately below them? Effective tax rates (total and income tax only) for the top 1% fell sharply between 2001 and 2004.

"2. The share of federal income tax borne by all of the other quintiles fell."

Not actually true, but maybe we can put this down to confusion - RW may have been trying to say that the effective tax rates for the bottom 80% fell. Which they did, but not as much as they did for the top 20%, and much less than for the top 1%

"3. The bottom four-fifths of taxpayers pay only 22 percent of all tax. In other words, the top twenty percent of American earners stump up 78 percent of the tax take."

False. In 2006, The top 20% 'stump up' 64% of total federal tax liabilities (down from 65% in 2001). But even this doesn't tell the whole picture. RW simply ignores the state and local taxes that US taxpayers stump up for on top of federal taxes. Why? Because unlike the federal tax code, these taxes are regressive, so much so that as Brian Roach said in 2003 - http://www.ase.tufts.edu/gdae/Pubs/wp/03-10-Tax_Incidence.pdf - the overall tax code is only slightly progressive, but "tax cuts to be phased- in under current legislation threaten to reduce or even eliminate any progressiveness from the U.S. tax system."

"4. Between 1979 and 2003 the total tax burden on the top quintile rose from 56 percent to 66 percent of income"

No it didn't. Here, RW is confusing tax *rates* with the share of tax revenues paid. Schoolboy error, really.

"5. The lowest quintile, the people with a claim to be in actual poverty, saw their share of the tax burden fall. The lowest twenty percent of earners are now down to one percent of the total tax burden."

Again, he is simply ignoring both the distribution of pre-tax income and all taxes outside of federal income tax and social insurance. The table he links to says the lowest 20% had 4.2% of pre-tax income, but Roach cites figures claiming they paid 12.5% of federal excise taxes and 4.3% of state and local taxes.

"6. The bottom quintile pay an effective tax of -5.9% while the second lowest quintile pay an effective tax of -1.1%."

More cherrypicking. Now he is focusing only on federal *income* taxes, ignoring the 8.1% effective social insurance tax rate paid by the bottom 20% which brings their *total* federal tax rate up to 4.8%.

"7. From 2000 to 2003, the share of all individual income tax paid by the lowest 40% of earners dropped from 0% to -2%."

Cherrypicking (see above).

"8. Antipoverty spending has risen under Bush. From 2000 to 2004 antipoverty spending rose from 14.9% of the federal budget to 16.3% percent."

This one actually appears to be true. Hey, one of eight ain't bad!

Links for the date used here: http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdoc.cfm?index=7000&type=1 and http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=5746&sequence=1#pt2

Street cred on the Internets

A repeat outbreak of outrage at that librul' MSM over at Sicilian Notes recently, on word of a minor news story about how the Chicago Tribune had managed to uncover the identities of many CIA employees. This particular feat was accomplished by the simple expedient of utilising the commercial operations which have sprung up online in the US as a result of the lack of meaningful regulation of personal data. (So much for the "free" market). But, as we will see, a rather different conclusion is drawn by RW from this episode.

"It's the reception to the story that's as interesting as the news itself. In the neighbourhood where I stayed during the summer in Virginia, a five minute drive from Langley, it was open knowledge who there worked for the CIA. It was also uninteresting. Most CIA jobs are dry analytical tasks and the agency opens, recruits, and usually operates quite publicly. This will surprise nobody in Washington. "

We can suspect that this is an oblique reference by Dickie to the Plame scandal, where the wingnut defence for a time rested on the claim that everyone in her neigbourhood 'knew' who she was (an administration defence correctly predicted by investigator Fitzgerald). So far, pretty much par the course for any blog post over at Stenographer Notes. What made this one special, however, was the following:

"What should surprise is the slipping in skills. Right-of-centre blogger Slashdot is unimpressed:"

And yes, he does indeed link to "right-of-centre blogger" Slashdot. It fell to a commenter to let him in on the joke.

The kicker comes with Richard's denunciation for the day:

"Presumably it will now become something of an online parlour game to unearth and publish possibly false, possibly sensitive information. The responsibility of Western citizens to show a little discretion is worth emphasising, not least by the administration. I imagine that the Chicago Tribune is close to the wrong side of espionage laws. Bloggers who take up this as sport and publish certainly will be. You have to wonder if papers are really being helpful in pursuing this type of investigation. It might not have occured to our enemies to trawl through these sources before. They'll certainly be doing it now either way."

As P.O'Neill notes, silly public scare stories to keep the base motivated in the GWOT are de rigeur in wingnutville. One recent contribution by Richard is relevant to this post:

"British Military IT Security

While researching something else entirely this afternoon I came across this document (pdf). From page 2:"

(cue a warning unremarkable from anything on the end of an official email)

"It's dated last September and I can't find anything stating that's been reclassified, though I've not read all 241 pages and don't plan to. A little worrying, though. I wonder how vulnerable military IT systems are to human error of the sort where documents are filed with the wrong security designation. This one seems fairly harmless, though according to the same page:

[...]

Makes you worry what else might be lying around online."

A simple perusal of the document in question (warning: PDF) reveals that it is actually a rather dry careers-guidance document, issued in order for British Army officers to know which boxes they need to tick off for advancement. But for Richard - evidently entirely unaware of the innocuous nature of this document - it seems that the past (or even last month) is indeed another country.

Subcontracting Mischief

We here at FI Fie Foe Fum usually plough a lonely furrow. It is a thankless, and utterly pointless, task poking with sticks arguments to which could be applied the well known definition of a net- 'holes tied together with string'.

And yet we still return with our sticks, the ancient rituals of poking so embedded in our lives that the changing of the seasons and the turning of the tides seem but the whims of fashion in comparison.

So you can imagine our delight when assistance with said poking comes from other quarters.

"Richard Waghorne is Clueless" from Backseat Drivers provides a twinkle of entertainment. But a flare of fun is to be found in the comments to same as Peter Nolan, Mr. Waghorne's associate in the Freedom Institute (and I am told, an amateur ventriloquist of some note) responds sagely:

"Dick, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I doubt that Richard or anyone else will rise to the bait."

Sadly, maintaining a dignified silence is not Mr. Waghorne's strong point.
Some ten million words in response may be found here.

Update from EWI, 14/03/05: Treasa at Winds and Breezes says:

"Every so often a totally insane philosophical conundrum arises out of nowhere and stumps me. I must thank Richard Waghorne for today's."

We suspect, without knowing, that Richard'll continue to do his best in this regard...

Any Chance of The Start?

Never one to consciously adopt a dignified silence, Richard Waghorne has views on military recruitment on American university campuses. Or rather, he has reprinted the views of the Wall Street Journal:

Last week it emerged that Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, former deputy foreign secretary of the Taliban, is now a student at Yale while at the same time the school continues to block ROTC training from its campus and argues for the right of its law school to exclude military recruiters.

By way of developing the argument RW adds only this:

Admittedly he's not teaching, but that's hardly the point. When your policy keeps your own military off campus but makes space for the Taliban, that really ought to be the final absurdity before realising something is very wrong.

Turning to the facts, Yale doesn't "keep the military off campus", it merely declines to allow the US military to recruit there (which raises the interesting side-question of how many Yalies are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan). Membership of the US Armed Forces is not a disqualifying factor for potential students. Hashemi is enrolled only as a student. I would imagine (indeed, I would hope) that he's under sufficient surveillance to prevent him from engaging in any Taliban recruitment in his spare time. So, no double standard there, as would have been obvious from a single reading of the WSJ piece.

So what was the point of the post then? Ah, I see:

For a less superficial treatment of the issue of academia and politics, and from an Irish perspective, there's my May 2005 piece On The Structure Of Irish Academia, published first in Magill Magazine.

Funny how so many of RW's posts turn out to be ads for RW. Availble for weddings, parties and right wing think tanks. And as you can see from his "less superficial" gag, he also does comedy.

The Fries Movie Review Forum

Peter Nolan, along with Sacha Kumaria, of the Pfizer mouthpiece think-tank 'The Stockholm Network (or 'Stockhom', if Peter is to be believed), have 'fact-checked Syriana, and found it wanting'. Clicking through to this article allows us to read lots of peripheral bumph about Bob Baer, the CIA agent that Clooney's character (Bob Barnes) in the movie is loosely based on, and revelations that oil sheikhs are devils who contrast with the (presumably non-satanic) Dilbert-like nerd engineers who populate the senior management of oil corporations.

In fact, there's no fact-checking whatsoever. The movie identifies that the oil reserves of the fictional emirate are controlled by a family clique, just like Pete and his pal point out happens in the real world. Bribery (by the oil corporations) is part and parcel of the oil business, just like the film says, the notion that oil companies wield no real power in the oil economy, but rather this is the domain of oil-rich nations will be a revelation to Nigerians. Pete and pal primarily object to what's NOT in the movie, and that the movie didn't restrict itself to the interests and observations of the writings of Bob Barnes. Not quite the fact-checking promised on FI.

Things get a little more interesting in the comments however, when Domenico indulges in one of his occasional wingnut meltdowns:

I was flying Gulf Air the other day and they play Good Night and Good Luck on their in-flight entertainment system. The movie is described in the in flight magazine as a fight of this reporter and his boss against ‘Communist witch hunter’ McCarthy. My, my, someone should tell those who wrote the review that in spite of all the efforts by the Commie-loving liberals no person was found wrongly accused by McCarthy. But never mind the facts. This ‘non-documentary’ says there were no Russian spies in the USA - no sir!! Just mad Torquemada – McCarthy The Witch Hunter.

Now, I'm not surprised that Domenico would dispute the scattershot victimisation of the red scare, and McCarthy's role in promoting that paranoia, but making the case that McCarthy was right on the button with his accusations is quite a step up from that degree of delusion. It's a matter of record that no-one was ever found guilty of any charge levelled by McCarthy, who knew well enough that the initial communist scaremongering was where the political kudos lay, and the tedium of presenting actual, you know, 'evidence' offered no great rewards. McCarthy wrongly accused large numbers of innocent individuals of whatever seemed politically and journalistically expedient to McCarthy's self-promotion. And has fellow commentor Jim points out, the film made no claim that there were no Russian spies in the US at the time.

Still, on he goes:

So, this year at the Academy Awards, after you’ve learned to relate in a positive way with the just struggle of the Communist spies

eh?

and their sympathisers against the evil Republican Inquisitor McCarthy, you will have an opportunity to learn about the warm, human side of suicide bombers - in not one, but in two movies. In Syriana a character depicted throughout the movie as a jolly, humorous bloke at the end decides to blow himself up in the protest against the evil oil companies.

Humour seems to be a bugbear with the Fries gang. Pete didn't like the oil execs joking about bribes, and the demenour of the suicide bomber seemingly should be full-time dour - even when they're not aware that they will be asked to act as said bomb in the future. Everyone knows, of course, that muslims of a radical disposition have no time for anything but anger, hatred of freedom and cartoons, with the remainder of their day given over to oppressing their women-folk. No time for jollity in that busy schedule.

And then you can watch Paradise Now where you can learn suicide bombing is actually a natural and legitimate way of making a political statement against oppression, by ordinary, lovable people. I hope they’ll shoot Paradise Now 2 sequence in which we’ll enjoy the action of our hero with 72 virgins.

I haven't seen Paradise Now yet (looking forward to it), so I can't really dispute this review, but you know what? - I'd lay odds that Domenico hasn't set eyes on the film either. So, we've learned so far that Domenico comes from the cinematic school of thought that has bad things only done by full-on villians (possibly with moustache twisting, and evil cackling laugh to re-enforce the point?), and that Senator McCarthy is a misunderstood patriot, who never sullied the name of an innocent. What's next?

What else do we have here? Ah yes, Munich – about mad Israeli agents who somehow got the idea that hunting down the murderers of their Olympic Team was the right thing to do. Incidentally, the Israeli agent in this movie isn’t barbecue-and-ballgames sort of fella one can relate to like in Syriana and Paradise Now. No, he’s steel-eyed Robocop stripped of emotions bar his inhumane desire to get a revenge for the Israeli soldiers killed in legitimate battle in the Olympic Arena.

Say what?!
The movie I saw had a bunch of personable individuals (with one over-eager greenhorn) who demonstrated conflicts about the morality of their actions. Did I miss the robocop bit? It also seemed clear to me that the victims of the revenge campaign were not the murderers of the Munich athletes, but rather an ever-growing list of Palestinian activists, who may, or may not have had any role in organizing the Olympic kidnappings. You have to wonder if Domenico got out to see this one either.

And then you have Brokeback Mountain – mediocre acting and uninspiring plot but hey – if the message is right you get all the cookies.

Mediocre acting eh? Why do I get the feeling that Dom is just chomping at the bit (see what I did there?) to join in the 'Brokebutt' bashfest that his wingnut buddies have been enjoying for months now? Maybe I'm just cynical. I thought the acting was great, and the film deserving of most of the hype, but each to their own.

The irony is that stupid, fat, white man Moore got there years ahead of the sophisticated Hollywood lot. I guess they were too busy polishing their Priuses to notice until now………

Is Michael Moore supposed to be a Hollywood outsider, or just unsophisticated? I'm not sure what the ironic point of reference is? Is it something to do with cookies and obesity? Clearly however the Toyota Prius is a BAD thing, or is that just well polished ones?

I vote Dom's rant Comment of the week.

Now... back to some Commie-loving.

Echosphere

Crooked Timberite John Quiggin has news on the course of the GWOT, particularly on how George and Tony's Excellent Adventure is currently being viewed among warbloggers:

As far as I can tell, the official pro-war position now emerging is

there is no civil war in Iraq
there will be no civil war in Iraq
if civil war comes, it won’t be our fault
when civil war comes, it will be a good thing

Bursting with intellectual curiosity, we applied this analysis to the evidence at hand (in the form of one of our own, native wingnuts):

Item 1 from Sicilian Notes, on 5th March 2006:

All this talk of civil war in Iraq is revealing, not about Iraq, but about the news media. Where exactly is this story coming from? It's not based on the numbers. According to the latest Brookings Institute report on Iraq, things are moving in the opposite direction [...] Journalists are not seeing (or looking for) the big picture here. Instead, individual events are slotted into a preprepared political view of the country that has decided that the future is civil war and that the present conforms to that pattern. The fact that the trend is actually in the other direction is missed, willfully or unawares, as journalists take the myriad images as a substitutes for the facts as summarised in the actual numbers.

It's a good example of the power of terrorists in the War on Terror. Create the impression of success, despite the opposite being the case, through judicious use of high-visibility attacks. It worked for the Viet Cong with the Tet Offensive and it's working now for al-Qaeda in Iraq. You would have hoped the media would have learned the first time around.

Item 2 from Sicilian Notes, on February 22nd 2006:

Criticisms of the US strategy in Iraq sometimes omit context. Put another way, it’s hard to make a valid contribution to the discussion on pacifying Iraq if the sheer wilfulness and sectarianism of the “insurgency” is left out. I don’t know how you deal with a deliberate and concerted effort to provoke civil war, but this morning news makes it clear, again, that that’s what’s afoot.

It seems impossible to argue that the US presence is the cause of tension and conflict when they are the only lid on internecine conflict. A withdrawal would seem calculated to precipitate bloodshed on a scale hitherto unseen since the liberation. I’m sympathetic both to McCain’s argument that more troops, not less, are what’s needed, and to the arguments of the editors of the Weekly Standard that we should be seeking to build up the Iraqi forces alongside coalition forces, not as a substitute.

Critics of the existing strategy in Iraq are invited to offer suggestions as to how the al-Qaeda/Ba’athist/sectarian conflict would be better resolved.

Item 3 from Sicilian Notes, on January 25th 2006:

Divide and Conquer

Encouraging news:

[Cue piece on start of civil war in Iraq]

Ramadi residents report "all-out war" between the 'insurgents'.

In the Road to Serfdom, Hayek notes an interesting pattern. Inter-war proponents of socialism in Britain were a numerous bunch, but they were also a diverse bunch. While each supported socialism, what they each meant by socialism differed. They differed not only over what the role of the state ought to be, but over what should be considered priorities, and a lot more again. The point was that the apparent unity of the socialist movement was much more fragile and that once attempting to govern, these divisions would necessarily come to the fore and prove ruinous.

Now Iraq today is no interwar Britain, but the shape of the phenomenon repeats itself. Those opposed to democracy in Iraq are a significant minority, but they're also a heterogeneous minority. You get Salafists and Ba'athists mixed up together, which makes no sense. The surprising thing is that they worked together for so long, though almost three years of co-operation between the remnants of Saddam's regime and al-Qaeda give the lie to prewar arguments that they'd never have cooperated and indeed we now know that they did.

Let's just hope they do each other as much damage as possible.

Chalk that one up to Mr. Quiggin, we'd safely say.

We see that Crooked Timber are up for several categories in the US liberal bloggers' Koufax Awards (where, exactly, is P.O'Neill?). How could we not endorse a group of Irish, Aussie and US bloggers who've earned ringing endorsements in the past from old FI Fie muse, Doctor Bill?

Peddlers of Hannity's lies shouldn't be surprised to get stung

McCarthyite Sicilian Notes:

Politics In The Classroom

Leftist abuse of the classroom is something that has to be seen in the US to be believed. Try this latest specimen (mp3). It's both hilarious and scandalous.

It's a recording of a high school geography class in Colorado. That's right - geography. The guy has been suspended. He ought to be sacked. To highjack a high school geography class like this is unforgiveable.

Unfortunately for Richard, Sadly, No!

Hidden Depths

"I'm not a natural linguist" - Richard Waghorne

One of the key teachings of neo-con godfather Leo Strauss was that political texts should be read not for their literal meaning, but for hidden meanings and allusions which the author couldn't make explicit for contemporary political reasons. Well, it's at least plausible, but I've always thought it was just a conservative gloss on post-modernism, and like most post-modernism, so much guff. But I've had to have a re-think in light of "What Are We Doing With Our Army?", a recent post on the FI blog (link not available due to ongoing Technical Problems over at Freedom Towers). Given that most of the text contains, on its face, no actual meaning, some kind of enciphered message is the only plausible explanation for the likes of the following:

"While government and Dail approval for deployment may be each to get waiting around of a UN mandate might take a bit longer, which kind of defeats the purpose of being a rapid reaction unit."

OK, now try reading it again. Still nothing? Never mind, we'll run it through the Enigma machine later. Have a go at this one:

"We have a commitment to the men and women of the Defence forces that they will be replaced by people who’s motivation you cannot question but who’s training you could"

Now this one does contain a meaning, but the meaning is as follows: We owe it to our fighting men and women to replace them with undertrained people. Surely some mistake? Or is it another one for the boys over in the decryption lab? And finally (though I'm only cherrypicking here. The entire post is well worth a read):

"The unfunded funding of Defence Forces has been well documented here"

Finally, a sentence where you at least know what they're trying to say. But "unfunded funding"? The post is given the collective imprimatur of the Freedom Institute, rather than any one of their legion of natural linguists, so we may never know who's responsible. Perhaps, in decades to come, a straussian reading will enlighten us.

Victorian Man

Is there no end to the talents of Richard Waghorne? A Research Fellow at DICK has stumbled upon on the bookshelves of Hodges&Figgis turned up after much work the following remarkable illustration of the breadth of the FI's Director/Policy Head/Spokesperson/etcetc's roles to which he has set himself:

"One series of meetings that had no problem attracting a crowd were the lunchtime comedy debates. Chaired either by a guest comedian or by Jarlath [Regan] himself, who has since become a comedian, the comedy debates were a tremendous success [...] The new breed first displayed their potential on the motion 'That this House would burn all boy bands at the stake' [...] The unlikely stars of the debate were Frank Kennedy and Richard Waghorne, a cigar-smoking, brandy-drinking Wagner enthusiast who, at nineteen, would not have been out of place in Westminster in the reign of Victoria"

(Page 346 of The Literary and Historical Society, 1955 - 2005. Edited by Frank Callanan, publishers A.&A. Farmar)

So, in addition to his other strengths Dickie turns out to be a comedic talent (and a master of parody in the Little Britain vein to boot). We had long suspected, without knowing.

When Pots Attack!

The Freedom Institute blog is [slightly] back amongst us after technical difficulties rendered it mute.

Catching up on the treasure chest of gems contained therein, I found this particularly precious stone.

[Hmm. Can't link to it directly as the blog still seems mostly kaputt. Still, its on the front page, called Exposing the immigration myth, and was posted on January 21st 2005, for the morbidly curious.]

Here Bastiat takes issue with Pat Rabbitte for insinuating that loads of Poles are taking Irish jobs and we might want to pull the drawbridge up a bit. And you know something, I agree with the main thrust of the post. The numbers show we're creating more jobs than we could fill and the moral argument that we owed eastern Europe the same chances to better their lives we had was what swung my vote from no to yes in the Nice Treaty referendums.

So, is the story 'FI Fie in FI agreement shocker?"

Well, not wholly. Here's the opener

Recently Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte, eager to shore up his party's support, decided to pander to the lowest common denominator by having a crack off one of Ireland's most vulnerable (and electorally impotent) groups.

And here's the closer

Unfortunately, with Rabbitte having made comments like "There are 40 million or so Poles after all, so it is an issue we have to have a look at" when outlining his views on immigration, it is clear that some members of the Dáil are willing to be less than tactful in their choice of words when they speak on this important issue.

All I can say in response to these lofty words is to refer the reader to FI Fie's post regarding the FI's previous contributions to thought in this field, The Freedom Institute and Immigration

A taster:

"But the worst of all, failure to stop these ordinary conmen at our borders will create huge problems in our society in the future like it did here, here and here

And it was with those final links that Dominico showed his hand. The first a stirring account of a race riot in France, complete with warnings of race based civil war. The second a peculiarly sensationally headlined report of a vaguely described survey ("In the new method, called MindWorld, qualitative data is reproduced as quantitative data, in which age is also taken into account. And several aspects of the results subsequently come more prominently to the fore." Good luck making sense of that). And the last an outright piece of anti-Arab and anti-European propaganda. Cheers for that, lads."