Is Trump “politicizing” the military?

The New Neo Posted on by

Trump has replaced the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr., who is black and highly devoted to DEI in the military. Naturally, this change is one of the many many things that the left is angry about.

When I listen to Rice, I find it amazing that anyone buys what she’s saying. So much of what Trump has done so far, which the left calls politicization, is an undoing of what was done by his leftist predecessors. For example, see this article from 2013:

What the president calls “my military” is being cleansed of any officer suspected of disloyalty to or disagreement with the administration on matters of policy or force structure, leaving the compliant and fearful.

We recognize President Obama is the commander-in-chief and that throughout history presidents from Lincoln to Truman have seen fit to remove military commanders they view as inadequate or insubordinate. Turnover in the military ranks is normal, and in these times of sequestration and budget cuts the numbers are expected to tick up as force levels shrink and missions change.

Yet what has happened to our officer corps since President Obama took office is viewed in many quarters as unprecedented, baffling and even harmful to our national security posture. We have commented on some of the higher profile cases, such as Gen. Carter Ham. He was relieved as head of U.S. Africa Command after only a year and a half because he disagreed with orders not to mount a rescue mission in response to the Sept. 11, 2012, attack in Benghazi. …

From Breitbart.com’s Facebook page comes a list of at least 197 officers that have been relieved of duty by President Obama for a laundry list of reasons and sometimes with no reason given. Stated grounds range from “leaving blast doors on nukes open” to “loss of confidence in command ability” to “mishandling of funds” to “inappropriate relationships” to “gambling with counterfeit chips” to “inappropriate behavior” to “low morale in troops commanded.”

Nine senior commanding generals have been fired by the Obama administration this year, leading to speculation by active and retired members of the military that a purge of its commanders is under way.

Much more at the link.

It also strikes me that 2013 may feel like ancient history to a lot of people, if they even were aware of what was happening back then in the first place.

Man stabbed near Berlin’s Holocaust Museum – plus, German elections coming soon

The New Neo Posted on by

How symbolic:

German police arrested a suspect after a stabbing at Berlin’s Holocaust memorial left a person seriously injured on Friday evening local time.

Police haven’t yet given a motive or made any connection between the stabbing and the Holocaust memorial, known as the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, or the U.S. Embassy located nearby.

The stabbing also came two days before Germany’s national elections on Sunday.

The victim, whose injuries are not life-threatening, was identified as a 30-year-old Spanish tourist, according to The Associated Press.

“Our forces have detained a suspect in the vicinity of the crime scene,” Berlin police posted on X. “Investigations continue.”

During a news conference, police spokesperson Florian Nath said the attack happened around 6 p.m., “probably with a knife. Maybe with something else.”

The suspect was arrested around three hours later after he was seen near the memorial.

“He had blood on his hands, and this made him very suspicious,” Nath said.

This one actually may be a crazy person. Walking around with blood on his hands? The suspect’s name hasn’t been released.

Speaking of German elections, here’s a report:

The frontrunner to become the next German chancellor is Friedrich Merz, leader of the center-right Christian Democratic Union party. Polls show the CDU enjoying a comfortable lead, with 28% support.

But it’s the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany party that has caught the attention of many analysts ahead of this election. The AfD has surged in popularity and is currently polling second, expected to take about 21% of the vote, while the liberal Social Democratic Party (SPD) is polling at 16%, and the Greens at 14%.

That indicates that a coalition will probably be required. But the other parties have ruled out a coalition with Alternative for Germany. What is the AfD? I’m always wary when any party is called “far right,” especially in Europe. It tends to mean against mass immigration, especially from Muslim countries, which doesn’t seem so very far right to me. Let’s see if we can tease it out from its Wiki page:

Alternative for Germany is a far-right and right-wing populist political party in Germany. The AfD is Eurosceptic.

Well, that’s about what I thought. Nothing so “far” about that. And by the way, when I started my search, every single article had the phrase “far-right” in the headline.

However, it definitely seems as though elements in the party – or certainly who support the party – are antisemitic and either Holocaust deniers or Holocaust minimizers. It’s no surprise that any party devoted to German nationalism would attract that element. The Hamas-loving antisemitism of the left and the more traditional anti-Semitism of the right have that perennial favorite – antisemitism – in common.

Young people in particular seem attracted to the AfD. That’s not surprising, considering the disruption that all the newcomers have caused. Simply put, the more traditional parties failed to protect the country from decline and violence, and young people are attracted to a party that promises to reverse that trend.

More on the Bibas family

The New Neo Posted on by

Now Hamas is saying they’ll give back the body of Shiri Bibas. It will, I’m sure, be examined and the DNA checked to see if it finally means that this kidnapped mother’s body has come home to Israel.

Awful, terrible, nightmarish situation.

And Israel has also announced the following:

Hagari said the evidence clearly showed that they [the Bibas children] were not killed in an airstrike as Hamas claimed.

“Contrary to Hamas’s lies, Ariel and Kfir were not killed in an airstrike. Ariel and Kfir Bibas were murdered in cold blood by terrorists,” he said.

“The terrorists did not shoot the two young boys — they killed them with their bare hands. Afterward, they committed horrific acts to cover up these atrocities.”

“This assessment is based on both forensic findings from the identification process and intelligence that supports these findings. We have shared these findings, intelligence and forensics with our partners around the world so they can verify it,” said Hagari.

Hagari added that he spoke on Thursday with the children’s father, recently released hostage Yarden Bibas, who demanded that he tell the world what had happened:

“Yarden looked me in the eyes and asked that all the world know and be horrified by the manner in which they murdered his children.”

Unsurprising, unfortunately. It also still doesn’t give details, and we may have to do without the details. But “bare hands” indicate something like strangulation, perhaps.

It was also announced that the return of six living hostages will go on as planned on Saturday. The article added that, among the Palestinian prisoners slated for the exchange, seven elected to remain in Israeli jails.

It’s probably a lot better there than in Gaza.

Will Trump lift sanctions on Russia?

The New Neo Posted on by

And if so, why?

Commenter “mkent” offers this idea:

Trump has said as a part of the ceasefire he’ll lift Western sanctions against Russia. It’s these sanctions which have ground Russian war production to a halt. They are having great difficulty building new tanks, helicopters, drones, and satellites because of the sanctions. Their tanks use Western radios, optics, and targeting computers. Ditto their drones, helicopters, and satellites.

For example, while the Russians can build older (pre-1990s) C-band communication satellites, they need Western parts like Traveling Wave Tube Amplifiers (TWTAs) to build modern (1990s and beyond) Ku and Ka-band comsats. Even consumer sats like DirecTV and XM satellite radio are beyond them. Their Glonass (GPS equivalent) satellites use Western rad-hard chips. Their Glonass system (used for glide bomb guidance) is slowly degrading because they don’t have access to them. Similarly their oil pipelines and refineries are degrading because of the lack of spare parts.

Right now Russia’s military is big and dumb. It’s why Ukraine can hold it off. But if Russia can build modern comsats and glide bombs (among other things) at scale, its military becomes big and smart. At that point only America would be able to stop it, and it would cost us dearly.

I know next to nothing about weaponry, so let’s just assume the military details are correct or at least mostly correct.

I couldn’t recall what Trump said in the past about Russia and sanctions. But when I looked, I was surprised to find that he’d spoken about it quite a bit during the 2024 campaign – for example this:

Trump decided to address the issue of sanctions on 5 September at the Economic Club of New York, an NGO that has been studying US economic policy for over a century.

Trump expressed doubts about the effectiveness of sanctions for one specific reason: they undermine the status of the dollar as the global currency. The former president cited Iran, Russia and China as examples of sanctions that, in his opinion, have not worked.

Moreover, he believes that greater influence can be achieved not through sanctions but through tariffs, although he emphasised that he used them to prevent conflicts and wars.

But did Trump really talk about lifting sanctions on Russia, as Harris’s team claimed?

One would need to be very creative in interpreting his words to draw such a conclusion. At the very least, Trump mentioned “lifting” sanctions just once – in a hypothetical situation where he would impose “strong” restrictive measures first. …

This may indicate that Trump is willing to use sanctions as a tool in negotiations with Russia, although it’s unclear how. Even in the event of a theoretical victory, he wouldn’t immediately have the authority to lift sanctions on Russia.

Moreover, the sanctions “infrastructure” opposing Russia involves not only the US but also its European allies. A decision by Trump alone wouldn’t dismantle it overnight.

European Pravda, the origin of that article, is apparently a Ukrainian publication focusng on Europe.

But what is Trump saying now about sanctions on Russia in connection with peace talks on the Ukraine war? Let’s take a look at this from SOS Rubio:

Well, sanctions are all the result of this conflict. There are sanctions that were imposed as a result of this conflict. And so I would say to you that in order to bring an end to any conflict there has to be concessions made by all sides. We’re not going to predetermine what those are. We’re certainly not going to negotiate this today or in a press conference for that matter. But – and there are other parties that have sanctions. The European Union is going to have to be at the table at some point because they have sanctions as well that have been imposed.

This is from Waltz, although it’s not about sanctions:

If you’re going to bring both sides together, you have to talk to both sides. And we’ll continue to remind everyone literally within minutes of President Trump hanging up with President Putin he called and spoke with President Zelenskyy. So shuttle diplomacy has happened throughout history, it’s happened all over the world. We are absolutely talking to both sides. The Secretary of State just met with President Zelenskyy days ago, along with the Vice President, seven Cabinet members in Europe at the same time – really showing the importance of engaging our allies. President Trump spoke with President Macron just yesterday. Prime Minister Starmer is coming to Washington next week.

So I think we’ll – the facts – we’ll continue to push back on this notion that our allies haven’t been consulted. They’re being – they are being consulted literally almost on a daily basis. And we’ll continue to do so.

I also found this article, from a curious group that appears to be from the somewhat-isolationist segment of the right:

In a co-authored paper from April 2024, Keith Kellogg, President-elect Trump’s Ukraine envoy, said “the United States and its allies would pledge to only fully lift sanctions against Russia and normalize relations after it signs a peace agreement acceptable to Ukraine.” …

Detailed thinking is needed on how future sanctions relief for Russia might be phased in as part of a longer-term peace plan for Ukraine. That should include realistic and achievable milestones for Russian compliance to avoid the trap of the failed Minsk II agreement.

Any U.S.-brokered future ceasefire in Ukraine may end the fighting but it won’t represent a just peace without a longer-term strategy. Nor will it represent a normalization of relations. …

it also seems clear that negotiations to end the fighting will stall unless Vladimir Putin knows there is a realistic prospect of some sanctions relief. And he will be wary of any draft peace agreement that de facto makes sanctions permanent. That would repeat the same mistakes that made the Minsk II agreement fail. …

And although the Russian economy is overheating from the colossal injection of government war spending, it is more resilient than Ukraine’s economy, with low debt, respectable growth, and still considerable reserves. Ukraine is hugely indebted and kept afloat by Western aid, which accounts for almost half of government spending.

So, while he can’t fight forever, Putin can choose to stall. And European states know the financial burden of an already unaffordable war will increasingly fall on them with Trump in the Oval Office. …

So, we need more granular thinking on what sanctions relief means in the wide gulf between the status quo and no sanctions at all. Russia is subject to more than 20,000 sanctions that extend into the political, social and cultural realm as well as the economic sphere. …

Most sanctions have zero impact. No less than 92% of individual UK sanctions are against persons who have never traveled to Britain or held assets here. The picture is the same for 77% of sanctioned Russian companies and is mirrored across the EU, U.S. and elsewhere.

Upon the agreement of a peace deal for Ukraine, 16,000 zero-impact Russian sanctions could be struck down in a grand gesture brokered by the U.S., EU and UK. This would offer no economic relief to Russia but give Putin something concrete to sell to his public.

Letting Russia compete once more in international sporting and cultural events such as the Olympics would offer a hugely symbolic gesture that the West was seeking to normalize relations, with no economic relief attached.

To avoid a repeat of Minsk II, the hardest-hitting “economic” sanctions would need to be included in a roadmap for the peace process with realistic milestones that it was in Russia’s power to achieve.

Is this what Trump has in mind? Doesn’t sound so bad to me. But unfortunately, I don’t read his mind.

Lastly:

The U.S. could use “economic tools of leverage” and “of course military tools of leverage” if Russia does not agree to a good peace deal with Ukraine, Vice President JD Vance said in a Wall Street Journal interview published on February 14.

It was bad before, but now it’s much worse: the forensics on the Bibas family reveal …

The New Neo Posted on by

… that Ariel and Kfir were brutally murdered.

And that the body of the woman that Hamas so kindly returned is not their mother Shiri Bibas, but is instead some unknown person.

The military informs the Bibas family that the bodies of Ariel and Kfir Bibas have been identified after their remains were given to Israel by Hamas on Thursday.

However, the third body at the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute was not that of their mother, Shiri Bibas, says the Israel Defense Forces. Specialists at Abu Kabir were not able to identify the body.

The authorities, using forensic evidence and intelligence, assess that the two young boys were ‘”brutally murdered” by terrorists in November 2023, says the IDF. Ariel was 4-years-old and Kfir was 10-months-old when they were murdered.

“This is a very serious violation by the Hamas terrorist organization, which is required by the agreement to return four dead hostages,” says the IDF. “We demand that Hamas return Shiri home along with all of our hostages.”

Did Hamas actually believe it could get away with this? I guess they did – they’ve gotten away with so much so far. I suppose they think that their supporters, who believe the Israelis are devils, will just discount everything Israel says as being a lie.

This deception may have serious repercussions, although I don’t know exactly what I mean by “serious.” Hamas still holds a great many living hostages, although we don’t know the exact number. But this is outrage piled on outrage.

And Hamas had to know that this would be discovered. No wonder they dragged their heels.

Who is this unknown poor woman whose body was returned? Where is Shiri Bibas? What torture for the family.

I actually think it’s possible that Hamas doesn’t know where she is. It’s also possible that they don’t wan’t to return her body because of some sort of evidence it would reveal that would make them look even worse than they already look. A third possibility is that she’s actually alive, and they lost track of her. If you recall, the story is that the family was kidnapped by a group called “Lords of the desert” and then transferred to a group known the Mujahideen Brigades of the Palestinian Mujahideen Movement.

An utter nightmare.

ADDENDUM:

More here:

The military identified Oded Lifshitz definitively before confirming the identities of Ariel and Kfir Bibas. The body that was posing as the remains of Shiri Bibas, in a coffin locked and sent with keys that did not match, was an anonymous woman. After arrival, she was dressed in items of clothing, but still not a match to the Bibas’ mother.

Experts attempted to perform DNA matches to the other Israeli hostages held in Gaza, finding no match.

Plus, a failed terrorist attack on buses.

Kash Patel is the new FBI head

The New Neo Posted on by

Patel has been confirmed by the Senate, and this time McConnell voted yes, and Collins and Murkowski voted no. When Pete Hegseth was confirmed, I wrote this post about Murkowski and Collins, and what I wrote there applies to the Patel vote as well. The summary version is that I cut Collins a lot of slack, but not Murkowski.

As for Patel, I can’t recall when I first became aware of him, or in what context. But he immediately impressed me as very sharp. Democrat hate and fear him, in part because they tried to destroy him and they know what vengeance they would wreak if they were in his shoes.

I see at Patel’s Wiki page that he helped write the Nunes memo back in Russiagate days. Well done, Kash.

If the GOP didn’t control the Senate by at least a few votes, Trump would not be getting any of his nominations through except Rubio and maybe a couple of others. Elections have consequences.

ADDENDUM: And Mitch McConnell won’t be running for re-election. Is there anyone on earth who’s sad about that?

Ghoulish Hamas parades the bodies of the Bibas family

The New Neo Posted on by

Today Hamas returned the bodies of the Shiri Bibas and her baby and toddler, and of elderly Oded Lifshitz. We really didn’t need more evidence of the ghoulish nature of this entire society, but we got it nevertheless. When we say that Gazan society is a death cult, believe it.

Plenty of people have written about what happened today. I’ll just take an excerpt from one of those pieces entitled “BEYOND BARBARISM: Hamas Parades the Bodies of Dead Israeli Babies While Palestinians Celebrate”:

In a dusty plain outside the ruined city of Khan Younis, Hamas put on a show. The stars of this show were the caskets containing the dead bodies of four Israelis, including 32-year-old Shiri Bibas and her two young children, Ariel and Kfir.

Kfir was nine months old. …

In another example of Hamas’s courage and fortitude, the body of 84-year-old Oded Lifshitz was also part of the Hamas extravaganza. …

The coffins carrying the dead Israelis were placed on the stage, each with a picture and the text “date of arrest: 7 October 2023.” …

“Date of arrest”? Goebbels is smiling in his grave.

Hundreds of Palestinian civilians were on hand to cheer the spectacle as spritely martial music played in the background. …

The Red Cross never visited any of the hostage families or the hostages themselves for the entire time they were held. But they were on hand to participate in the Hamas spectacle.

Is any of this surprising? I don’t think so. And of course there was the claim – as though it matters in terms of culpability – that Israeli bombs killed them. Perhaps that’s even true; there’s no way to know at this point, but taking anything the Palestinians say at face value is a bad idea. And of course, even if they died that way, Gazans are at fault. In the case of Shiri Bibas, Kfir, and Ariel, they were actually kidnapped by what I call “freelancers” – that is, Gazan civilians, or at least a group that was not part of Hamas.

For what it’s worth, I believe their deaths occurred quite early, because otherwise they would have been exchanged with the other civilian women and children back in late 2023.

Shiri’s husband and Kfir and Ariel’s father, Yarden Bibas, was returned from captivity recently. What he is going through can only be imagined, but for me the analogy is to a WWII concentration camp survivor who manages to survive the horrors of the war and the camps, only to find that most of his family members were murdered there (Otto Frank comes to mind for me). Yarden does still have some living relatives, though, although his in-laws – Shiri’s parents – were murdered on October 7, 2023:

Shiri’s father José Luis (Yossi) Silberman, and his wife, Margit Shnaider Silberman, were also presumed to be missing from the kibbutz. Margit Shnaider Silberman moved to Israel from Peru in the 1970s. José Luis (Yossi) Silberman was originally from Argentina, both Silbermans were in their 60s. The Silbermans were later found dead and officially identified as deceased on 21 October.

It seems likely to me that Shiri’s grandparents were Holocaust survivors who had fled to South America, although I can’t find anything to substantiate that.

Rest in peace Shiri Bibas, Ariel Bibas, Kfir Bibas, Yossi Silberman, Margit Silberman, and Oded Lifshitz.

What did Trump actually say about Zelensky starting the war?

The New Neo Posted on by

I realize that Trump actually said a great many things about Ukraine and about Zelensky, some of them contradictory. That’s par for the course for Trump. I think I’ve made it clear that I find some of those things alarming, although I also realize that – as is usually the case with Trump – it’s important to see what actually ends up happening and judge him on that. But words are also important, and at the moment, they’re what we’re working with.

Yesterday I happened across a podcast on the subject by Bill O’Reilly. I’ve never been a fan, but I’ve watched a few of his YouTube videos since he’s been creating them, and the ones I’ve seen have often made some good points. I think that’s true of this one, too.

He reminded the audience of something about the MSM that’s almost all of us knew but sometimes don’t keep in mind, which is that they are out to portray Trump as evil. One of the many ways they have been doing this is to amplify the idea that, since Trump’s first term, he’s been in league with Russia and Putin. In fact, this was the basis for so much of the propaganda against him during his first term.

So if they can convince people of its truth, it has the effect of helping to validate those earlier charges in people’s minds.

Now, perhaps Trump is indeed Putin’s puppet, or however you want to put it. The Ukraine War negotiations, and Trump’s turning on Zelensky in the last few days, have seemed to fit right into that ready-made narrative as though tailor-made.

But it’s a good idea to keep in mind, when consuming the news, the hard-won knowledge that things are usually more complex than reported in the MSM and that the MSM hates Trump and wishes to destroy him, and that before you completely take their word for it – even about video clips of quotes that seem very clear (for example, “good people on both sides” in Charlottesville) – you must get the context. Unlike the highly articulate speech of DeSantis and Vance, Trump’s words are blunt instruments. They can be very effective – especially at getting attention – and they can be very ill-advised and alarming. But they are also vulnerable to propagandist distortion.

I don’t think any of us have the time or inclination to listen to all that Trump says or to read all he writes. But I think that, if you want to understand what Trump actually said about Zelensky “starting” the war, at least on the occasion that got a lot of coverage recently, you’d do well to watch this from O’Reilly. It’s only 12 minutes long (note, also, that O’Reilly doesn’t agree with Trump, but he does try to clarify what he said):

[NOTE: Tomorrow I’m planning to write a post about what Trump actually said about sanctions on Russia.]

More on Trump, Zelensky, Putin, and the Ukraine peace talks

The New Neo Posted on by

Today I’ve already written one post on my concerns about Trump’s recent statements on Ukraine, and his dissing of Zelensky. One of the things that has kept me wondering what’s really going on is that Rubio is Trump’s Secretary of State, and I don’t see Rubio as part of the pro-Russia camp – what I call the Tucker Carlson wing of the right. And yet he’s in the position of being heavily involved in these negotiations, which makes me a bit more hopeful.

So just now I saw this [my emphasis]:

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff met in Riyadh with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin’s foreign affairs advisor Yuri Ushakov to hash out ways to end the conflict. Ukraine was absent from the negotiations in Saudi Arabia.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to provide specifics about the discussions, but she said the Trump administration was committed to brokering a peace deal to end the conflict between the two countries. …

Zelenskyy has stressed that Ukraine must be involved in negotiations and said Sunday that Ukraine wouldn’t accept a peace deal if his country was absent from negotiations.

But Leavitt said everyone would have a seat at the negotiating table — including other European allies — as the Trump administration seeks to advance a peace deal.

“We’re ensuring that all parties are heard,” Leavitt said in an interview with Fox News’ “America Reports” on Tuesday. “But you have to speak to both sides of the war in order to truly negotiate a deal and problem-solve. And this is a significant first step toward peace.” …

Trump and Zelenskky also spoke over the phone Wednesday about the negotiations, and Zelenskyy said he relayed that he believes Putin isn’t interested in peace with Ukraine.

“I said that [Putin] is a liar,” Zelenskyy said in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” that aired Sunday. “And he said, ‘I think my feeling is that he’s ready for these negotiations.’ And I said to him, ‘No, he’s a liar. He doesn’t want any peace.'”

While Zelenskyy voiced gratitude for U.S. support, he said there is no “leader in the world who can really make a deal with Putin without us, about us.”

This news from Leavitt indicates that Trump is at least indicating that Zelensky will have a voice, and that these first moves are efforts to soothe Putin.

Of course, if it’s just a question of presenting Zelensky with a done deal for him to sign, one that gives him none of what Ukraine wants and needs, then it’s trouble. Here’s where Trump’s unpredictable nature, and his bobbing and weaving when negotiating, get in the way of properly analyzing what the end point will be.