Enjoy:
Have a wonderful Easter!
This Easter, please remember and pray for the courageous and beleaguered Christians all over the world who are under attack.
Going out in style (literary)
Emily Phillips had a way with words, and she used it to write her own obituary, which has gone viral [hat tip: Althouse]. I bet we can get a good idea of Phillips’ personality by reading it:
It pains me to admit it, but apparently, I have passed away. Everyone told me it would happen one day but that’s simply not something I wanted to hear, much less experience. Once again I didn’t get things my way! That’s been the story of my life all my life…
So many things in my life seemed of little significance at the time they happened but then took on a greater importance as I got older. The memories I’m taking with me now are so precious and have more value than all the gold and silver in my jewelry box.
Memories”¦where do I begin? Well, I remember Mother wearing an apron; I remember Daddy calling Square Dances; I remember my older sister pushing me off my tricycle (on the cinder driveway); I remember my younger sister sleep walking out of the house; I remember grandmother Nonnie who sewed exquisite dresses for me when I was little; I remember grandmother Mamateate wringing a chicken’s neck so we could have Sunday dinner. I remember being the bride in our Tom Thumb Wedding in first grade and performing skits for the 4-H Club later in grade five. I remember cutting small rosebuds still wet with dew to wear to school on spring mornings, and I remember the smell of newly mowed grass. I remember the thrill of leading our high school band down King Street in New Orleans for Mardi Gras (I was head majorette). I remember representing Waynesville in the Miss North Carolina Pageant, and yes, I twirled my baton to the tune of “”Dixie””. It could have been no other way.I married the man of my dreams (tall, dark, and handsome) on December 16, 1967 and from that day on I was proud to be Mrs. Charlie Phillips, Grand Diva Of All Things Domestic. Our plan was to have two children…
So”¦I was born; I blinked; and it was over. No buildings named after me; no monuments erected in my honor.
But I DID have the chance to know and love each and every friend as well as all my family members. How much more blessed can a person be?…If you want to, you can look for me in the evening sunset or with the earliest spring daffodils or amongst the flitting and fluttering butterflies. You know I’ll be there in one form or another…
RIP, Emily Phillips. Sounds as though you had a very very good life.
When I read Phillips’ obituary, it immediately conjured up three widely-disparate literary precedents. I’m not saying she was thinking of these when she wrote her piece (in fact, I very much doubt it). But here they are, proving something-or-other about the universality of these feelings.
The first is Thornton Wilder’s beloved play “Our Town”. For those unfamiliar with the play, this passage occurs towards the end, when Emily (the central character in the play, who happens to have the same first name as Phillips)—who lived in a small town, married her high school sweetheart, and died young—comes back to observe an ordinary day in her life from that perspective:
Mr. Webb [Emily’s father] (off-stage): Where’s my girl? Where’s my birthday girl?
Emily: I can’t. I can’t go on. It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another.
Emily breaks down sobbing.Mrs. Webb exits.
I didn’t realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back…up the hill…to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look.
Looks left and then out past audience and then to the right.
Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover’s Corners…Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking…and Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths…and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.
To the Stage Manager
Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it…every, every minute?Stage Manager
No.Pause
The saints and poets, maybe””they do some.
The second is Antoine de Saint-Exupéry The Little Prince. The quote can be found here:
All men have stars, but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems… But all these stars are silent. You-You alone will have stars as no one else has them… In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars will be laughing when you look at the sky at night..You, only you, will have stars that can laugh! And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me… You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure… It will be as if, in place of the stars, I had given you a great number of little bells that knew how to laugh.
In closing, I offer a passage from Leo Tolstoi’s The Death of Ivan Illych. I first read the story in college and it had immediately made a deep and lasting impression on me. I wrote about it previously here. Emily Phillips doesn’t seem to have the same sense of “terribleness” as Ivan does, but other aspects of Ivan’s thoughts remind me of what she wrote:
In the depth of his heart he knew he was dying, but not only was he not accustomed to the thought, he simply did not and could not grasp it. The syllogism he had learnt from Kiesewetter’s Logic: “Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal,” had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself. That Caius ”” man in the abstract ”” was mortal, was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate from all others. He had been little Vanya, with a mamma and a papa, with Mitya and Volodya, with the toys, a coachman and a nurse, afterwards with Katenka and with all the joys, griefs, and delights of childhood, boyhood, and youth. What did Caius know of the smell of that striped leather ball Vanya had been so fond of? Had Caius kissed his mother’s hand like that, and did the silk of her dress rustle so for Caius? Had he rioted like that at school when the pastry was bad? Had Caius been in love like that? Could Caius preside at a session as he did? “Caius really was mortal, and it was right for him to die; but for me, little Vanya, Ivan Ilych, with all my thoughts and emotions, it’s altogether a different matter. It cannot be that I ought to die. That would be too terrible.”
The Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses
Most people know about concentration camps and the Holocaust; the words have come to be nearly synonymous, although they’re not. But most people are far less aware of how the whole thing began: that it didn’t start with mass murder and that it was a long time coming. In fact, organized actions against Jews and Jewish-owned businesses predated the Nazi takeover of Germany, and the movement began in the universities.
You may have guessed where I’m going with this.
Antisemitism in Germany grew increasingly respectable after the First World War and was most prevalent in the universities. By 1921, the German student union, the Deutscher Hochschulring, barred Jews from membership. Since the bar was racial, it included Jews who had converted to Christianity. The bar was challenged by the government leading to a referendum in which 76% of students voted for the exclusion.
At the same time, Nazi newspapers began agitating for a boycott of Jewish businesses and anti-Jewish boycotts became a regular feature of 1920s’ regional German politics with right-wing German parties becoming closed to Jews.
From 1931-2 SA “brownshirt” thugs physically prevented customers from entering Jewish shops, windows were systematically smashed and Jewish shop owners threatened. At Christmas 1932, the central office of the Nazi party organized a nation-wide boycott. In addition, German businesses, particularly large organizations like banks, insurance companies, and industrial firms such as Siemens, increasingly refused to employ Jews. Many hotels, restaurants and cafes barred Jews from entering…
On 1 April 1933, the Nazis carried out their first nationwide, planned action against Jews: a boycott targeting Jewish businesses and professionals, in response to the Jewish boycott of German goods.
On the day of the boycott, the SA stood menacingly in front of Jewish-owned department stores and retail establishments, and the offices of professionals such as doctors and lawyers. The Star of David was painted in yellow and black across thousands of doors and windows, with accompanying antisemitic slogans. Signs were posted saying “Don’t Buy from Jews!” (Kauf nicht bei Juden!), “The Jews Are Our Misfortune!” (Die Juden sind unser Unglé¼ck!) and “Go to Palestine!” (Geh nach Palé¤stina!). Throughout Germany acts of violence against individual Jews and Jewish property occurred…
Economic boycotts are a valid, lawful tool. They are useful in putting pressure on businesses, but should be considered a potentially dangerous method. Any liberty-loving person planning this approach should consider it very very cautiously. Threatening to boycott a company merely because of the political views of someone who works for it, even a CEO, is starting down a very slippery slope. It’s not that it’s never a good idea, it’s just that it’s a dangerous tool that needs to be handled with care.
The trouble with so many of these campaigns (such as the one against Memories Pizza) is that they represent the imposition of a newly-required brand of thinking and the stamping out of opinions opposed to it, to serve warning that any public display or support of the opposite point of view is going to have severe consequences for those who might espouse it. This, I think you’ll agree, is not good.
A liberal’s take on the Iran “deal”
[NOTE: The word “deal” is in scare quotes because it’s not actually a deal, it’s an announcement of a tentative deal to make a deal. But for the rest of this post I’ll leave out the quote marks for the sake of convenience.]
If you want to know what a well-meaning, relatively well-informed liberal’s take on the Iran deal is, I’m about to describe it.
You say there are no well-meaning relatively well-informed liberals? Of course there are; this is an argument we’ve had many times on this blog before, and you know my position.
After a discussion yesterday with a person I think merits the above description (your take may differ), here’s my summary: The goal of the Iran talks is not to stop Iran from getting a bomb; that horse was already out of the barn. The goal—and the person freely admitted this was a gamble—is to open Iran to more Western influence and over time to soften the theocratic regime there, much as happened in the Communist world years ago. The current government of Iran (not the mullahs, though) campaigned on a platform of doing just that, and if they fail to deliver the people will revolt. The deal is a risky move, but one well worth it, because the government isn’t crazy and won’t nuke Israel or the West. And it’s the best alternative compared to the others.
Our actual discussion was more detailed, but that was the gist of it. This particular person also knows quite a few US citizens who are of Iranian background and have relatives there, so that’s part of what he is relying on when coming to these conclusions. He said that all that jubilation in the Iranian street wasn’t just people happy that Iran has stuck it to the Big Satan (although a lot of people like that absolutely were indeed celebrating there), it was also a large subset of Iranians who are happy because they think this will lead to more human rights and less power for the mullahs.
My part in the discussion was to say things like this: how do you know the Iranian government isn’t just a front for the mullahs? What about all the recent “Death to America” chants? Why is Iran insisting on keeping ICBM’s, if not to deliver weapons long-range? Why the underground facility? Why do you think helping the current regime economically (and allowing it free rein in other countries militarily) will weaken it and make it more vulnerable to the reformers’ wishes rather than strengthening it? Don’t you think Iran would need to show some good will and good intent first by softening its rhetoric and in particular scaling back its operations to take over other countries in the Middle East?
The argument that ensued made it clear to me that, at least in this instance, our main disagreements were over the mindset of the Iranian government (as opposed to the mullahs; we agreed on their motivations), who’s actually in charge there, and where the forces of history and human nature will blow that country, as well as what the risks of this deal will be to Israel and the US. In other words: is the threatening rhetoric mostly for show, or does it represent an intent to act? And in what internal political direction is Iran likely to move if this deal comes to pass?
That’s where the “human nature” part comes on. So much of differing opinion is a different take on people themselves. Conservatives (and I include myself here) tend to take the view that threats signify intent and must always be taken seriously, and that in order to give concessions to a side that has previously been your enemy, the enemy needs to have altered something that indicates a very real change of behavior, and that if you don’t have a very reliable way to check on their compliance with an agreement, the agreement isn’t worth the piece of paper it’s printed on. I think history bears this out.
This agreement, of course, doesn’t even feature a piece of paper, or really any agreement at all. If you want a very penetrating analysis of how that fact serves Obama’s purposes in the political sense, see this. And this describes the deeper roots of the Iran-as-nuclear-power problem:
If a nuclear deal is imminent, that is largely because over the past 13 years of on-and-off negotiations, the great powers of the world have slowly but surely given in to Iran’s demands. As Iran has flouted United Nations resolutions demanding a halt to its program, those nations have steadily softened their terms. Instead of ending the threat of Iranian nuclearization, negotiators have apparently limited their ambitions to an attempt to regulate it””an idea that, given the record of Iran’s lack of even rudimentary compliance with international law, is wishful thinking.
How did we get here? In speaking with nearly 30 experts and veterans of both the Bush and Obama administrations, I’ve found one core factor at the heart of this outcome: the desire to avoid military engagement with Iran at all costs””and, particularly during the Obama administration, the fear of even threatening it. Without a credible threat to use force, the United States has relied on tools that alone could never have compelled the Islamic Republic of Iran to abandon its nuclear program.
Read the whole thing. It’s extremely interesting, and goes into the history of negotiations with Iran during the Bush years. I have long thought that the war in Iraq was deeply connected to what’s going on in Iran right now, in no small part because the Iraq War showed (temporarily) that we meant business about nuclear non-proliferation in the area, and the abandonment of the Iraq War meant that we no longer meant business. The article seems to substantiate that:
While America never seemed capable of aiming a direct threat at Iran when the nuclear program grew more substantial in the latter Bush years, the fact remains that the Iraq war itself initially aided Western efforts to halt Iran’s progress. According to several sources, U.S. intelligence indicated that in the months following the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iran was riven with anxiety that it might come next. That fear probably drove the Iranians into negotiations with Europe in 2003. In those so-called E3 talks, the Iranians agreed to suspend enrichment””the only time they have done so in more than a decade of negotiations.
Michael Singh, a senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council from 2005 to 2008, claims that the E3 negotiations “were about ensuring that Iran escape the peril of an invasion unscathed.” This suggests that when the United States had a high degree of credibility as a forceful actor, Iran made some of its greatest concessions to date.
In summary, the rationale given by my liberal friend for the current approach to Iran is that, if it has become impossible to halt Iran’s nuclear program without war or a credible threat of war, then the next best thing is to make the regime into a more cooperative and tractable entity. I think that’s a highly unlikely and dangerous pipe dream. Nor do I think that war is the only alternative, but a credible threat of war seems necessary—although I understand that a threat of war could propel a country like Iran to become even more determined to get nuclear weapons.
At any rate, the current administration cannot possibly mount a credible threat of war at this point even if it wanted to (which it does not). After the loss of will in Iraq, I’m not sure any future administration can do so.
[NOTE: More about the Iraq War, WMDs, and the rewriting of history here.]
The band that just walked away, Renee (Part II: the lyrics)
[Part I here.]
Whatever was I talking about when I said that the lyrics of “Walk Away, Renee” were poetry? You might think the lyrics aren’t so special; just the usual rock pap. But bear with me and see whether you end up changing your mind.
First, let’s take a look:
And when I see the sign that points one way
The lot we used to pass by every dayCHORUS 1:
Just walk away, Renee
You won’t see me follow you back home
The empty sidewalks on my block are not the same
You’re not to blameFrom deep inside the tears that I’m forced to cry
From deep inside the pain that I chose to hideCHORUS 2:
Just walk away, Renee
You won’t see me follow you back home
Now as the rain beats down upon my weary eyes,
For me it criesCHORUS 2 repeat
Your name and mine inside a heart upon a wall
Still find a way to haunt me though they’re so smallCHORUS 1 repeat
The situation could hardly be more commonplace for a song—the pain of a breakup—and this helps us empathize with the singer. But it’s the specifics here (the girl’s name, the urban setting and images, and the singer’s complicated emotional response—the tension between his feelings of self-pity and his resigned and stoic detachment from it) that are unique and arresting.
From the very first word the lyrics are unusual; is there another song that begins in the middle of a sentence with the word “and?” If so, I can’t think of it. And yet it’s a remarkably effective device, making it seem as though the listener is almost eavesdropping, breaking into the young man’s fragmented private thoughts.
The image in that very first line—a one-way street sign—reminds us that, no matter what we might wish after a love is lost, time’s arrow only goes in one direction: forward. It also plunges us into the song’s setting—an urban street—all in just a few parsimonious words.
Then there’s the second line of the song: “the lot we used to pass by every day.” In a way it’s a ho-hum thought: the jilted lover remembers the places the couple used to go. But why in this song does he mention a lot, and not something more attractive and conventionally sentimental? In a city the word usually refers to a vacant lot, and this image conjures up the idea of the emptiness associated with the loss of Renee, to be echoed later in the chorus with its “empty sidewalks.”
It’s also in that chorus where we learn that, despite the singer’s longing, he’s much stronger than we might expect: “you won’t see me follow you back home.” No stalker, he! And then we’re informed that, not only is this singer stronger than in the ordinary breakup song, he’s devoid of the usual anger or self-pity, and more mature in his acceptance and even forgiveness: “you’re not to blame.”
Next the chorus grabs us with the hook: the “away/Renee” rhyme, which combined with the melancholy melody has made for so many irresistible earworms over the years.
The second verse, like the first, begins in the middle of a phrase (“From deep inside”), and then offers some truncated images and fragments again, this time involving another cliche: tears and pain. Could anything be more ordinary in a song about a breakup? But once again, this singer has something unexpected up his sleeve. He’s not just crying, he’s fighting it: he’s forced to cry these tears against his will.
In the second chorus he adds another seeming cliche: the rain falls on his weary (rhymes with the unvoiced but implied word “teary”) eyes. Next, in a fine and compact example of the pathetic fallacy, the weather expresses his sorrow, described in the succinct phrase “for me it cries.”
We think we hear another cliched image in the last verse: the singer sees the former lovers’ names inscribed within a heart. But, contrary to our expectations, they’re not carved into a tree, they’re graffiti drawn on a wall. There’s that urban setting again. The drawing of the heart with the names is active and almost sentient (it “finds” a way to haunt him), while the singer remains passive and acted upon. And in that verse’s final line, he tries bravely but unsuccessfully to minimize the entire episode and keep the pain under control again and save himself from maudlin excess: “though they’re so small.”
Brown, Martin, Sansone, and all the rest (including Renee herself) seem to have walked away from their brief bolt of fame and fortune. Or perhaps fame and fortune walked away from them. But “Walk Away Renee” lives on, an unexpected masterpiece that seemed to have come out of nowhere to visit its youthful creators. A mysterious miracle.
[NOTE: There are a great many cover versions of Renee on YouTube; most of them seem quite inferior to me. The Four Tops had a popular one, but I don’t much care for it, although it’s better than most. But it’s not quite plaintive enough.
Here’s a strange and surprisingly affecting version with Cyndi Lauper; it’s plenty plaintive, all right. The guy with her gets that first line wrong in a way that’s rather common; he says “light” instead of “lot.” But I really like her voice on the chorus:
And here’s more of the real on-again off-again history of Brown and the band.]
Atlanta cheating scandal perpetrators sentenced
I wrote about the Atlanta school cheating scandal several times (see the first three entries after this one on this list). It’s a shocking tale of widescale corruption within the public education system of the city, plus an attempted coverup:
A state investigation in 2011 found that educators gave answers to students or changed answers on tests after they were turned in. Evidence of cheating was found in 44 schools with nearly 180 educators involved, and investigators found teachers who tried to report it faced retaliation.
A grand jury indicted 35 educators in March 2013 on charges including racketeering, false statements and theft. Many reached plea agreements, and some testified at the trial.
Most of the convicted teachers were immediately taken into custody:
“I don’t like to send anybody to jail,” [Judge] Baxter said. “It’s not one of the things I get a kick out of, but they have made their bed, and they’re going to have to lie in it, and it starts today.”
Here’s some further background.
The Iran “deal”
The more I think about the Iran deal announced yesterday, the stranger it gets.
One strange thing about it is that it’s not a deal at all; it’s certainly not a contract, a treaty, or an agreement. It’s an announcement of intent with some of the specifics of that intent spelled out and some akin to “a player to be named later.” Preliminary announcements like that either signify basic agreement between the parties and really pan out when the details are ironed out, or are mere hopes and wishes and have propaganda value for the moment but cover up a basic lack of agreement. So it’s odd that pundits are discussing its pros and cons as though it’s something real.
There are also large problems with the deal that make it suspect even if the parties do end up agreeing in June on what’s was announced yesterday by the Obama administration as the basics of the deal. Dennis Ross describes what he thinks is the background philosophy behind the deal:
At some point, the Obama administration changed its objective from one of transforming the Iranian nuclear program to one of ensuring that Iran could not have a breakout time of less than one year. The former was guided by our determination to press Iran to change its intent about pursuing or at least preserving the option of having a nuclear weapon. The latter clearly reflects a very different judgment: that we were not able to alter the Iranian intentions, so instead we needed to focus on constraining their capabilities.
…But if the measure of the negotiations is now about breakout time, then the administration needs to show convincingly that the verification regime will be far-reaching and capable of detecting whatever the Iranians are doing and whenever they do it. In fact, a one-year breakout time depends not just on the number and type of centrifuges, their output and the stockpile of enriched uranium””all of which can be calculated””but also on the administration’s ability to discover the moment at which the Iranians begin to sneak out, creep out or break out from the limitations placed on them.
Moreover, for those who say that one year is not enough time because even discovery of a violation does not ensure a response, the administration will need to explain why this agreement will not function like other arms control agreements, where questions related to noncompliance have historically bogged down in endless discussions…
I’d also recommend reading Duelfer on the deal, as well as the WaPo‘s editorial board, which continues to diverge from the attitude of the far more Obama-friendly NY Times. And here’s the reaction of the Times of Israel.
Obama said yesterday that the deal would “cut off Iran’s most likely paths” to the bomb. There’s a lot of technical information out there as to whether this could be true or not. But to me, as a layperson, the fact that the goal of the US, under the best of circumstances under this deal, is to limit Iran to a one-year breakout period certainly doesn’t sound to me like paths are cut off. The best you can say is that a few speed bumps have been placed in the way, and it’s not even clear that those speed bumps would be effective.
Here’s what the WaPo says:
The “key parameters” for an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program released Thursday fall well short of the goals originally set by the Obama administration. None of Iran’s nuclear facilities ”” including the Fordow center buried under a mountain ”” will be closed. Not one of the country’s 19,000 centrifuges will be dismantled. Tehran’s existing stockpile of enriched uranium will be “reduced” but not necessarily shipped out of the country. In effect, Iran’s nuclear infrastructure will remain intact, though some of it will be mothballed for 10 years. When the accord lapses, the Islamic republic will instantly become a threshold nuclear state.
That’s a long way from the standard set by President Obama in 2012 when he declared that “the deal we’ll accept” with Iran “is that they end their nuclear program” and “abide by the U.N. resolutions that have been in place.” Those resolutions call for Iran to suspend the enrichment of uranium. Instead, under the agreement announced Thursday, enrichment will continue with 5,000 centrifuges for a decade, and all restraints on it will end in 15 years…
The proposed accord will provide Iran a huge economic boost that will allow it to wage more aggressively the wars it is already fighting or sponsoring across the region. Whether that concession is worthwhile will depend in part on details that have yet to be agreed upon, or at least publicly explained. For example, the guidance released by the White House is vague in saying that U.S. and European Union sanctions “will be suspended after” international inspectors have “verified that Iran has taken all of its key nuclear related steps.” Exactly what steps would Iran have to complete, and what would the verification consist of?
The agreement is based on a theoretical benchmark: that Iran would need at least a year to produce fissile material sufficient for a weapon, compared with two months or less now. It remains to be seen whether the limits on enrichment and Iran’s stockpile will be judged by independent experts as sufficient to meet that standard.
The more one reads, the more it seems clear to me that the Obama administration has accepted Iran’s nuclear status and has given up deterring it and is now courting it.
Which brings us to the larger issue, which is the nature of Iran and what sort of relationship we can, or should, have with that country. That is as big an elephant in the room as is the question of Obama’s real intentions, which I’ll leave aside for now.
Analogies with the USSR during the Cold War are not very good, because although both Iran and the Cold War USSR have been our enemies (not that Obama thinks in those terms), they are enemies with very different natures. Both wage proxy wars with us all over the world, they desire domination, and they severely repress and control their populations. After that the comparisons fall down. The USSR had nuclear weapons by the time we were negotiating with them; I doubt that negotiations of any sort would have stopped them from obtaining them, even though the task of developing them was more difficult back then because the knowledge was secret rather than in the public domain (see this for a description of the Soviet efforts). The USSR was a ruthless regime, but our negotiations with the Soviets were based on their inherent rationality about survival, and the fact that both sides already had the capacity to destroy each other several times over.
Iran operates under a very different sort of philosophy, an apocalyptic religious one. Iran’s entire history with the US (and with Israel) since 1979 has been to call for the destruction of what it refers to as the Great and Little Satans. “Death to America” is a favorite chant to this day. How does one negotiate with such an adversary? The answer is “very very carefully and expertly, and from a position of great strength and pressure, and be willing to walk away if they don’t give you what you want.” Reagan’s adage “trust, but verify” has to be changed to “distrust, and verify to the nth degree, and carry a very big stick.”
Obama displays a different attitude (whatever his real attitude may be). It can be summed up as the notion that Iran wants to be a nation like any other, and if we treat them well they’ll be eager to “rejoin the international community, and we can begin to chip away at the mistrust between our two nations. This would provide Iran with a dignified path to forge a new beginning with the wider world based on mutual respect.”
This seems delusional to me (again, perhaps it’s not his real attitude, but let’s just take him at his word for the sake of this post). What indication has the post-1979 Iranian government ever given of such an interest? And what about its current aggressive behavior would lead anyone to think anything of the sort? The Iranian people are another thing; perhaps it’s what they (or at least many or some of them) want. But the people of Iran and the government of Iran are hardly the same thing.
Unfortunately, the same has become true in this country as well.
[ADDENDUM: This post hardly scratches the surface of the questions and problems raised by this deal and by the perception of Obama’s conceding to Iran. One, however, is the escalating arms race that probably will ensue in the Middle East. If this deal doesn’t reassure other nations like Saudi Arabia—and I see no reason why it should—those consequences could also be catastrophic.]
Iran: let’s make a deal
Success! They’ve agreed to agree on something-or-other sometime or other, maybe by June 30:
International negotiators announced the framework for an Iranian nuclear deal Thursday, capping days of exhaustive and tense talks that blew past their original deadline.
The preliminary agreement allows all sides — the U.S., Iran and five other world powers — to continue working toward a final agreement by a June 30 deadline.
Speaking in the Rose Garden shortly after negotiators unveiled the plan in Switzerland, President Obama called the agreement a “historic understanding.”
“It is a good deal,” Obama said.
With the framework, Obama may soon face congressional critics concerned about the direction of talks. But the president urged Congress to consider it, and stressed that negotiations are not over yet. He claimed the framework, if fully implemented, would prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.
“This framework would cut off every pathway Iran could take to obtain a nuclear weapon,” he said.
Secretary of State John Kerry, earlier, tweeted that all sides had the “parameters to resolve major issues” and will soon get back to work on a “final deal.”
“Big day,” he tweeted.
Oh, big big big day. Peace for our time. If you like your doctor you can keep it. Whatever could go wrong?
And the beauty of it is, since we have no knowledge of what a final deal would look like, we can’t really criticize it, can we? Sort of like a blank check, or picking one of Monty Hall’s curtained prizes, sight unseen.
Some details on the details—or the lack or details, or the disagreement over what the details are or will ultimately be—can be found here from Allahpundit.
My prediction, for what it’s worth: a big to-do will be made about the historic deal. But this is a cover for the fact that no real agreement was reached. Both sides have a huge interest in convincing their own public that they won great concessions and that the talks have been a success. They will be described that way by both sides, as will any agreement in June, if it is reached. Nothing important will be done to effectively stop Iran, which will be able to assemble a bomb in short order any time it wants. In fact, I suspect it already can do so pretty quickly, even without this agreement.
Obama wants to put Congress between a rock and a hard place. How can they react to a deal that is not a deal, but just a description of how wonderful the deal will be? But if they try to stop it, they will be blamed:
Obama warned leaders of Congress not to stop the deal. “If Congress kills this deal not based on expert analysis and without offering any reasonable alternative, then it’s the United States that will be blamed for the failure of diplomacy,” Obama said. “International unity will collapse.”
So, there you have it.
[ADDENDUM: More here.]
Attack in Kenya
Meanwhile, of course, real religious wars are going on, and it’s Muslim extremists/terrorists who are driving them:
Islamist gunmen burst into a Kenyan university before dawn Thursday, shooting students and taking hostages in a terror attack that left 70 dead, Kenyan officials said.
Two attackers were killed in the ongoing security operation, and one was arrested, authorities said….
Joel Ayora, who was on the campus and witnessed the attack, said gunmen burst into a Christian service. Taking hostages from the service, they then “proceeded to the hostels, shooting anybody they came across except their fellows, the Muslims.”
The attackers separated students by religion, allowing Muslims to leave and keeping an unknown number of Christians hostage, Agence France-Presse reported…
The dangerously porous border between Somalia and Kenya has made it easy for Al-Shabaab militants to cross over and carry out attacks.
The deadliest assault by Al-Shabaab in Kenya was in September 2013 when the group attacked the Westgate shopping center in Nairobi, killing 67 people.
In a December attack on a quarry, Al-Shabaab militants separated Muslims and executed the non-Muslims, a spokesman for the group said.
The attack is now said to be over, with four terrorists killed and over 140 students murdered. Fifty or so held hostage (mostly females; you know what they probably were planning for them) have been freed.
Other articles about the attack have downplayed the anti-Christian element. This one from the Atlantic aims to place the attacks “in context,” for example, but the Christian part is dealt with in a sentence or two; they discuss the fact that the attack was on a school at much greater length. Compare and contrast to this one in the Guardian (of all places) that emphasizes the anti-Christian element:
When the gunmen arrived at his dormitory he could hear them opening doors and asking if the people who had hidden inside whether they were Muslims or Christians.
“If you were a Christian you were shot on the spot,” he said. “With each blast of the gun I thought I was going to die.”
The pattern for attacks by this group has been to separate Muslims from Christians and murder the latter. There’s nothing equivocal about it; it’s a religious war.
The New York Times, on the other hand, is mealy-mouthed in the extreme. The headline doesn’t mention religion, and it’s only in paragraph four that it comes up, and then very tepidly [emphasis mine]:
The Shabab, an extremist group based in Somalia and affiliated with Al Qaeda, issued a statement through a radio station it controls claiming responsibility for the attack. It said its fighters attacked the university early Thursday morning, began separating Muslims from non-Muslims and started an “operation against the infidels.” The group said in its statement that its fighters were still inside the university.
So we have an “extremist” group. Although the paper does manage to say it’s affiliated with Al Qaeda, it is not characterized as Muslim, which might just be one of its most salient characteristics. It “separates” Muslims from “non-Muslims” (Jews? Hindus? No: Christians, but the word is never mentioned, because the Times is just using a quote from the perpetrators as its description). They “start an operation” which is a euphemism for “kill many and hold the rest hostage.”
The article is long, very long, but not once does it use the word “Christian.” That’s quite a feat. In fact, it goes out of its way to emphasize that the “extremists” seem to target all who are not Muslims, and that this is some sort of mixed group. But the reports in the Guardian and other papers make it clear they were explicitly going after Christians. And by the way, the most-wanted leader of the terrorists is named Mohammed Mohamud, which I’m sure has nothing to do with Islam.
Pretty soon Memories Pizza may be just a memory
It is no surprise that a campaign on social media sites has forced Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana to close down temporarily or perhaps permanently. The pizza establishment’s owners are not activists; they merely answered an inquiring reporter’s questions, saying that although they serve everyone who comes into the place, if they were ever asked to cater a gay wedding they would have to politely decline (although it’s moot and will never come up).
This unleashed a firestorm from activists, including death threats. It also sparked a fund-raising campaign by the owners’ supporters to raise money for them. In addition to the ramifications for this family and their business, and other business owners of like mind and faith, there is the fact that the rage against the state of Indiana has spooked its legislature into proposing added language to the recently-passed freedom of religion bill that expressly states it does not allow a business to refuse service to gay customers.
I have read several articles about the Indiana fix (such as this one, for example), and I have yet to understand whether it would protect actual wedding caterers and florists who are Christians and don’t want to work at gay weddings (as opposed to pizzeria owners answering hypothetical questions and being convicted of thoughtcrime) from having to do so or quit the business. The answer is: I don’t know.
What I do know is this: we are close to mob rule here. Unless there’s a rash of people denying service to gays—something no one seems to be alleging is occurring, although fear of it is the scare tactic being used—this is a restriction on liberty rather than an expansion of it.
Who are the people driving the campaign, and what do they want? I refer to them as “activists,” but I’d wager the group doesn’t represent all the people who have campaigned for expanded gay rights; it’s some unknown percentage of them. Also, some are probably not gay activists so much as people who hate Christianity; there certainly are plenty of those around.
Some members of the media were complicit in the stirring up of the anger, because the original statement of Memories’ owner was distorted by those who feed on this sort of thing (and I don’t mean on pizza):
Headline at Daily Kos: “Indiana pizza shop won’t serve gays, owner says ‘we’re not discriminating against anyone'”
Headline at Mother Jones: “Indiana Pizzeria Says It Will Deny Service to LGBT People”
The texts of both articles clarify that it was only about gay weddings, but the headlines are deliberately misleading and make it sound as though the proprietor won’t serve gays in general. Not that the distinction matters all that much to the more activist, to whom anything short of complete support of and participation in gay marriage is unconscionable. Also, expect a rash of gay activist couples to purposely go to florists, caterers, and bakeries known to be Christian, in order to get them on record and drive them out of business.
I have no problem with gay marriage, but I have a big problem with not respecting a mainstream religious belief that until a year or two ago was acceptable and accepted. Gay people who wish to get married in states where it’s legal to do so can choose from a vast multitude of people who will cater to them (literally) and would love to get their business. The rare person who will not because it is against their religion to be a participant in a gay marriage should not be forced into such participation against their will, or threatened for their beliefs, or forced out of business. Understand, also, that the war on devout Christians will not end with this. There is a great deal of rage out there.
Hope and change from Obama
[Bumped up.]
We’ve seen a lot of change from Obama since he became president in 2008. After all, he ran on a promise of hope and change, and although he didn’t exactly specify what the change would be, people somehow trusted that it would be good. That was part of his aura as (in his own words) a “blank screen” on which people could project their own views of him.
Now the screen isn’t all that blank; we know much more about him compared to when he first burst on the scene. But Obama can still surprise us, and the news coming out of the White House today is startling: Obama is about to announce that he may be running for a third term.
You might well ask how on earth he can do that. After all, the Twenty-Second Amendment specifically prohibits it. Well, Obama has found a creative solution.
The text of the speech he is reported to be about to give later today goes like this:
In the six-plus years it has been my privilege to serve as your president, I’ve learned a lot and experienced a lot. You might say I’ve evolved. I’m older, wiser, more tested. As the historic first black president, I’ve been a trailblazer and a beacon to the African-American community and all of America, and I’ve been proud of that. In fact, you might say that it’s the first time in my adult life I’ve been proud of my country.
I know that there are other “firsts” that lie ahead for America, and I want to be part of them. I’ve done a lot of thinking about my next move, and I have decided that as part of my continuing evolution it is time for me to transition to becoming a woman. Thus, I can be not only the first black president, but the first female president as well.
Hillary, eat your heart out; you’re not even likeable enough any more. And Liz Warren, it’s not your time—not yet.
I have directed my legal team to explore the question of whether this act of mine would constitute enough of a change of identity that it would enable me to run for two more terms. I am fully confident that the answer will be in the affirmative, because I will effectively be a different person: Barika Obama.
I’m not just doing this for political reasons, though, but for personal reasons as well. The idea first occurred to me during the 2012 campaign, when Romney declared his war on women. I realized that I wanted to fully understand what it is that women go through at the hands of the likes of the Romneys of the world—what they suffer, and how they overcome the hurdles that a cruel patriarchy places in their way. I believe I can show by example how it should be done. What’s more, some have accused me of lacking compassion and of being cold. Although I believe that this is an unjustified slur, I am looking forward to the extra empathy that a hefty dose of estrogen will afford.
And from now on, all criticism of me will be not just racist, but sexist as well.
Twin announcements by the DOJ: protecting the administration’s friends, destroying its enemies
Why, isn’t this what a nice Orwellian Department of Justice ought to be doing?
The Justice Department will not seek criminal contempt charges against former IRS official Lois Lerner, the central figure in a scandal that erupted over whether the tax agency improperly targeted conservative political groups.
Ronald Machen, the former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, told House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in a seven-page letter this week that he would not bring a criminal case to a grand jury over Lerner’s refusal to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in March 2014. The House approved a criminal contempt resolution against Lerner in May 2014, and Machen’s office has been reviewing the issue since then.
Senator Robert Menendez was indicted on federal corruption charges on Wednesday, according to The Associated Press, setting the stage for a bitter court fight and putting his political future in doubt.
The charges had long been expected and Mr. Menendez, a 61-year-old Democrat of New Jersey, has promised to fight them. He has offered no indication that he plans to step down or relinquish any power while he goes through that process.
Maybe Congress should hurry up and approve Lynch. She couldn’t be worse than Holder, and although I doubt she’s better it’s remotely possible. If they don’t confirm her, Holder just stays in office till someone else is appointed and confirmed, and if it’s not Lynch it will be another Obama lackey, perhaps a worse one.
[NOTE: I’ve written many previous posts about Lerner and Menendez, although this is the first post that discusses both of them together. Just do a search on the blog for either name and you will find them.]