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Three Things: Irish Fish Stew

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[NB: Check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Looks like Russia decided to move its planned naval war games away from Ireland’s fisheries. Bonus: CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan got to make a trip home to interview Irish fishermen.

(Is it me or did Donie’s accent regain a bit of its strength?)

There are three points about the Irish fishery versus Russian navy story which have struck me as odd and worth more examination:

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Watch CNN’s videos at the Twitter thread shared above. Doesn’t it strike you as unusual that a Russian diplomat would work directly with an Irish fishing industry representative Patrick Murphy, CEO of the Irish South & West Fish Producers Organisation, rather than the diplomatic arm of the Irish government as well as the UK since Irish and UK waters abut each other?

Granted, most U.S. newspapers painted this as Russia being discouraged but what does this scenario look like to the Irish?

Is it possible Donie himself missed a potential influence operation at work?

This clip from an Irish news media outlet doesn’t pointedly say that Russia bypassed Ireland and the European Union, or that the Irish and the European Union ignored Russian diplomats, but the wording suggests Irish diplomatic service and EU’s diplomats may not have been involved directly in the negotiations with Russia’s foreign ministry and navy (at 0:29 in the video).

The Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney tweeted last night that he had written this past week to Russia about the naval war games’ planned location:

But the timing of Russia’s response to the Minister for Foreign Affairs seems secondary to the meeting between the Irish fishery industry’s representative and Russia’s diplomat.

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The 150-mile reference used in most reporting as the range of Irish fisheries from the Irish coast doesn’t make sense, the first reason being the use of an imperial measurement rather than metric like kilometers and the second being the location of the Irish fisheries.

The area of concern is much wider than 150 miles from the coast; as you can see for comparison from this Google Map below, the linear distance between Dublin and Plymouth UK is a little less than 220 miles.

The Irish fisheries are at least as wide as that distance from the west coast of Ireland.

Both Ireland and Russia are parties to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) which spells out the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) for each country. The Irish fisheries are part of that EEZ denoted in the outlined area in the first map above.

Russian vessels would have to make a very large swing around UK waters to get close to the southern Irish fishery while avoiding Ireland’s EEZ.

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No matter what the buzz about Russia’s navy moving further away from the Irish coast, there’s no way Russian vessels can maneuver around Ireland and the United Kingdom without crossing submarine communications cables.

As you can see, a majority of the submarine cables south of Ireland run to North America, and most of them to the U.S.

The suggestion that the Russian Navy might cut communications cables – accidentally or not — while in waters south of Ireland during a military exercise was an implied threat to the U.S. and the Big Tech companies which have data farms in Ireland. Facebook, Google, and Microsoft have facilities in and around Dublin; Apple has been working on a planned data farm near Galway though construction hasn’t started.

The threat also targets NATO since Ireland is dual represented by itself and EU member nations as parties to the UNCLOS. Under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, an attack on a member nation is an attack on NATO.

Where it gets messy: Ireland is not a member of NATO though Northern Ireland is as part of the United Kingdom.

Is this why the Russian diplomatic service talked directly with Irish fishermen, to avoid getting NATO into the mix?

Was it part of a Russian influence operation to be perceived as open to non-NATO countries?

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Speaking of Irish fisheries, I found a recipe for Seafood Chowder from the Renvyle House Hotel in Connemara, County Galway I want to try as I have scallops, salmon, and some lake trout in the freezer which I need to use.

It’s a lot like the Finnish stew kalamojakka my mom makes. Well, right up to the brandy.

Sláinte mhath!

Day 33: Happy Some Saint’s Day

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I know, it’s St. Patrick’s Day, not just any saint but the patron saint of Ireland. It’s certainly not St. Trump’s Day, that’s for sure.

Trump’s budget proposal is the furthest thing from saintly — cutting federal funding to the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) is just one disgusting example. CDBG provides grants to the Meals on Wheels (MoW) program, which feeds the home-ridden elderly and disabled as well as kids in after-school programs. Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney says MoW is “not showing any results.” No more fishes and loaves for you, sickly/old/poor people, if Congress goes along with this nonsense. I guess your desiccated, malnourished corpses are the kind of results this administration wants to see.

According to St. Patrick’s ‘Confessio‘ — an autobiography-cum-confession — he overcame kidnapping from Scotland, enslavement by the Irish, and eventually converted Irish to Catholicism. In contrast, Trump was born with a silver spoon and treated his fellow man (and some family) like crap throughout his lifetime. Definitely not saintly. And definitely not up to converting those who aren’t already his hardcore faithful adherents.

Stuff of the Irish:

Irish PM Enda Kenny visits Trump and asks for leniency for illegal Irish aliens — Let’s be frank about this issue: Trump’s probably fine with them (meaning Bannon is fine with them, too) because these aliens are probably white and Christian. Got to give it to PM Kenny, though, for this nice bit of snark:

“They say the Irish have the capacity to change everything…I just saw the president of the United States read from his script, entirely.”

Wonder if Trump was ballsy enough to go for an other conflict of interest and complain about the sea wall he wants for his Doobeg golf course resort.

British Brexit secretary David Davis says border checks between North Ireland and Ireland possible post-Brexit — He did qualify them as “light” customs checks, saying,

“There are already customs checks between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland because there are excise differences, but they are done in a very light way. … There would be customs checks, [but] that does not mean we demur from our position of wanting to have a very light border, no hard border.”

But wait…what do the Irish think of this?

Sinn Féin MEP tells Theresa May Brexit border checks in Ireland can go ‘where the sun don’t shine’ — And there it is. I didn’t even paraphrase that hed, that’s exactly what The Irish Post wrote. Here’s exactly what MEP Martina Anderson said:

“Theresa, your notion of a border, hard and soft, stick it where the sun doesn’t shine ‘cos you’re not putting it in Ireland.”

Ouch. No mincing words there.

Women won largest number of seats ever in North Ireland’s assembly election — Sinn Féin leads in gender parity as women represent 41% of its Member of the Legislative Assembly. Between the surge of women in NI’s National Assembly and the increased weighting of representation by Sinn Féin in both NI and Ireland’s National Parliament, the reaction toward the UK and Brexit will be quite different from expectations nine months ago.

Banks may be moving to Dublin from London because of Brexit — This report says Ireland is surprised; I don’t know why, given the amount of business conducted in English language in Dublin as compared to any other location like Paris, Brussels, or Frankfurt. Ireland has been a tax haven and a center for both insurance and technology for a couple decades, too. Perhaps Ireland ought to be more lenient toward educated illegal aliens from the U.S. if it’s looking to staff up its financial sector quickly.

Op-ed: ‘Another day, another Brexit lie exposed’ — Theresa May has only increased Irish sympathies for Scotland with her rejection of a second independence referendum, as if all the other Brexit fail wasn’t enough. Could this animus be enough to unite Ireland, but against Britain and its “Tory public schoolboys”?

That’s a wrap on this work week and Day 33 in our countdown to Tax Day. Don’t drink green beer. Just don’t.

I’m a Resident of Flyover Country and a Citizen of Stopover Country

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On my very first TV appearance ever (CSPAN’s Washington Journal the first week of the Libby trial), I shut up my most belligerent caller very simply. He accused me of being a "Katie Couric type from the coasts" … "who had no clue what people like me in flyover country were thinking."

Michigan.

As soon as I said I was from Michigan (unfortunately, Jane wasn’t there to slap down any illusions I’m like Katie Couric), he shut up. Because I am, like he is, from flyover country.

Today, I get to add another moniker to my profile, thanks to Governor Palin. You see, when Palin was trying to claim she had extensive foreign experience thanks to her trips to visit the Alaska National Guard in Kuwait and Germany, she also mentioned her "trip" to Ireland. 

Now, thanks to Governor Palin, mr. emptywheel (through whom I got citizenship), and Ben Smith, I can proudly say I’m a citizen of Stopover Country.

I wrote the other day that a Palin spokeswoman said trips to Germany, Kuwait and Ireland made up her foreign travel.

Two details worth clarifying:

The Ireland trip was a refueling stop on her trip to military installations in Germany and Kuwait, spokeswoman Maria Comella said.

Apparently, Shannon Airport (which has a big US immigration operation to process all the returning Americans) is so foreign that Sarah Palin is now basing her Commander of Chief credentials on it. 

Frankly, there are parts of Flyover Country–probably even including Ann Arbor–that are more worthy of the "foreign" claim.