What’s Trump up to now with the talks with Iran?

The New Neo Posted on by

Beats me. So you can skip the rest of this post.

Just kidding. Not knowing doesn’t seem to stop anyone else. So I’ll opine, too.

Trump has apparently fingered Iranian Speaker Mohammed Ghalibaf as the one we’re talking to or are about to talk to:

Iran escalated its attack on infrastructure by striking a water and electrical plant in Kuwait, and an oil refinery was set ablaze in the northern Israeli city of Haifa after the Iranian missile attack. Asked for his response on the strike, he told The Post: “You’ll see shortly.”

As Trump brings more military might to the region that could inflict catastrophic damage on Iran, he encouraged what’s left of Iran’s regime to make a deal before it’s too late. …

He exclusively told The Post that the US will find out whether the speaker is willing to work with Americans –soon.

“We’re gonna find out,” Trump told The Post when asked about Iran’s Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. “I’ll let you know that in about a week.” …

“There has been total regime change because the regimes of the past are gone and we’re dealing with a whole new set of people,” Trump said. “And thus far, they’ve been much more reasonable.”

I read that as not saying we’re talking to Ghalibaf yet, but that we expect him to reply. As I see it, Trump is purposely vague in his public statements.

Ghalibaf – whom I doubt wants a target on his back at which other people in the regime might want to take aim – has been denying talks with the US, as have
others in the government. That doesn’t tell us much either, because they would have reason to lie about it if they were talking.

As far as I can tell, none of these leaders is anything but a hardliner. I think Trump knows that, but I don’t know what he’s willing to concede. It may be that he’s aiming for something like the current Venezuela situation, with a cooperative leader in place who was formerly on the regime’s side. I don’t think this is possible in Iran because of the fanaticism and willingness to lie – but I assume (and certainly hope) that Trump, and the Mossad, know a lot more than I do.

A few weeks ago there was this curious set of statements by Trump, made only a few days after the war began (my emphasis):

Trump said he’s confident of the near-term success of his joint war with ally Israel — though he remains concerned about ensuring there’s a less bellicose leader in the long haul to turn Tehran around. …

“These are bad people. These are people that killed, I guess, it’s 35,000 [protesters in January]. The leader of the pack is gone. And as you know, 49 [officials] were taken out in the first hit. And I guess there was another hit today on the new leadership, and it looks like that was pretty substantial also.”

Trump insisted — without naming any names — that “a lot of the people you would least suspect want to quit. They want to have immunity. They’re asking for immunity, and probably at some point they’ll be dropping — as you would say, laying down their guns.”

But Trump said that he believes the “worst case” scenario could manifest years from now after he leaves office if someone “as bad as” Khamenei takes power.

“I guess the worst case would be we do this, and then somebody takes over who’s as bad as the previous person,” Trump told reporters.

“That could happen. We don’t want that to happen,” the president said.

“That would probably be the worst: You go through this, and then in five years you realize you put somebody in that was no better. So we’d like to see somebody in there that’s going to bring it back for the people.”

He certainly seemed aware of the problem even back then – including the problem of knowing whom to trust to turn power over. Maybe no one.

An arrest in Florida indicates possible election fraud

The New Neo Posted on by

The Democrats and the media are fond of saying that election fraud barely exists and that we needn’t bother our pretty little heads about it. And yet the assertion has always seemed illogical to me on its face. The stakes in elections are high and therefore the motives to cheat are very great. One way to reassure people that it’s not happening is to make the safeguards against it so stringent that it is extremely difficult (nearly impossible?) to pull off. Instead, we’ve loosened the rules (mail-in ballots sent to all names on voter rolls that are bloated with errors; ballot harvesting; complex electronic voting systems that people inherently distrust; lack of checking for citizenship) and made it forbidden to question results unless you’re a losing Democrat challenging a GOP win.

And then there’s the fact that if fraud is done well it would be undetectable.

The above is an introduction to the following story:

A Palm Beach elections office volunteer just got arrested for STEALING an encrypted access key and computer equipment in the March 24 special election where the Democrat won by 800 votes.

This is the district the includes Mar-a-Lago.

Investigators worry that the encryption — used for training — could be reverse engineered and used to tamper with voter registration

The theft was reported on March 27, a few days after last Tuesday’s special election, per WPTV. The theft occurred on March 19, just days before election day.

Democrats are saying any concern over this is hype, because there’s no evidence that it was used in the election or affected the election in any way. But although it is certainly possible the theft had no bearing on the election, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The guy is apparently a self-described “huge tech nerd.” So perhaps he had the ability to do something with the key that would affect the actual election. He was supposedly detected because the theft was serendipitously caught on surveillance video.

Nor have the “move along, nothing to see here” crowd explained (or as far as I can see, even attempted to explain), his alternate motive for stealing the key at this point in time. Did he want to add it to his wife’s jewelry collection?

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The New Neo Posted on by

It dances on the edge of intelligibility but never quite gets there:

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Noelia Castillo Ramos, 25, slid down the slippery slope

The New Neo Posted on by

A sad sad tale:

Spanish woman Noelia Castillo Ramos, 25, died by legal euthanasia this week in Barcelona after a nearly two?year court battle with her parents over her right to end her life under Spain’s 2021 euthanasia law, following paralysis and severe psychological trauma after a gang rape and a subsequent suicide attempt in 2022.

Her euthanasia request, first approved by a Catalan medical-legal committee in 2024, was repeatedly challenged by her father with support from the conservative Catholic group Abogados Cristianos through Spanish courts and up to the European Court of Human Rights, all of which ultimately upheld her capacity and right to choose.

“In the interview, Castillo explained that her decision was rooted in a turbulent home life following her parents’ separation when she was 13. Castillo spent time in a supervised care center and was diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder.

“She also recounted to her interviewer three episodes of sexual abuse: one allegedly perpetrated by an ex-partner, another in a nightclub where she said two men raped her, and a third in a bar involving three young men. She said she never reported any of them. Days after the second episode, in October 2022, she attempted suicide. She survived the attempt, but was left paraplegic and wheelchair-bound.

“This became the turning point that led her to consider euthanasia.”

Much more at the link, including the very chilling report that a good friend who came to the hospital hoping to change the woman’s mind was turned away by the authorities, and another report that the hospital was in favor of the euthanasia decision because “her organs were already committed” to being donated.

This woman had clearly been suffering for a long time. Part of her problem seems to have been a set of emotional problems that started (or first were diagnosed) in childhood. We don’t know what sort of treatment she got, or why it was so unsuccessful. We do know that she tried to end her own life, which only succeeded in making her existence more difficult. And we do know that the legal system approved her for assistance from the medical profession in order to make her next effort at suicide successful, and that the health care system had a separate interest in killing her to harvest her organs.

Those who say that medically-assisted euthanasia isn’t a slippery slope are ignoring a great deal of evidence that says it is.

RIP, Noelia Castillo Ramos.

Why are so many people on the right dissatisfied with Trump?

The New Neo Posted on by

And are there so many people on the right dissatisfied with Trump? Polls don’t really reflect it; Republicans and people who identify as MAGA still overwhelmingly approve of Trump.

But I am convinced there is a group – mostly young – that is angry with him although they once supported him (these are not the old NeverTrumpers). The group may be small but it is vocal, and of course the right needs every supporter it can get because the country is so evenly divided. Some of those young people dissatisfied with Trump believed he would never start any military action abroad and are angry about Iran. Some think he’s too pro-Israel, and/or that he’d take Russia’s side against Ukraine and he hasn’t. Some wanted him to deport every single illegal alien and clearly that’s not happening.

They want what they want and they want it now, or perhaps yesterday. And they’ve learned that Trump has different ideas; he’s too moderate for them.

There is little doubt that there is a movement of online pundits trying to increase the number of Trump-haters on the right and pull the party futher right – so far it nearly morphs into the left on some issues. What are their motives? Clicks and money, power and the dream of being king-makers. They are willing to lie to get it; in some cases they might not even realize they’re lying because they are so ignorant of history and facts. But they are good at manipulation, and the internet is their perfect medium.

Mainstreaming Jew-hatred: Politico tries out being the new Der Stürmer

The New Neo Posted on by

Politico’s got a lot of competition these days in the Jew-hatred sweepstakes, but it’s definitely in the running (hat tip: commenter “TJ”):

Politico published a cartoon on Friday featuring anti-Semitic imagery in an attempt to criticize the war in Iran. The image depicts President Donald Trump, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Republican members of Congress wearing blood-covered Jewish prayer shawls and yarmulkes.

The cartoon, drawn by former New York Post cartoonist Sean Delonas, depicts the lawmakers aboard a rowboat labeled “Ship of Neocons”—a play on the Hieronymus Bosch painting Ship of Fools—that is about to plummet over a waterfall. A bag of blood-smeared money crowns the mast, and the word “Amalek,” a reference to a historical enemy of the Jewish people from the Hebrew Bible, appears in the background.

Netanyahu, depicted with an exaggerated nose, is also shown wearing a blood-covered Jewish prayer shawl and eating from a table covered in blood, while Trump, also in a Jewish prayer shawl, is drawn underneath the word “Amalek.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), who is not Jewish, is depicted wearing a yarmulke and a Jewish prayer shawl and holding a bottle of blood. Graham and Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), also drawn in a blood-covered Jewish prayer shawl, have supported the Iran war and are longtime supporters of Israel.

Follow the link to see the cartoon.

This sort of Jew-hating propaganda is not extraordinary. On the contrary, it’s ordinary in the sense of having a long history. It shocks us because most of that history has been outside the US, but the appearance of such a cartoon in Politico, which is not a traditionally anti-Semitic site, is both a sign of how mainstream Jew-hating has become (at least, among what passes for our political punditry) and how dedicated many people are to spreading and promoting it further.

The cartoon was removed, but only in response to a furor from readers. I believe that Jew-hating is still very much a minority view among people in the US but that it’s growing, especially among young people. And there’s no dearth of people trying to spread it and mainstream it in the media and social media. Some of them are foreign actors with their own agenda and some are homegrown.

Even in the US, this has been building for a long time. It’s not just an old story that harks back to Nazis and way earlier, it’s been a story even during the time frame in which I’ve been writing this blog. For example, Trump and Netanyahu got similar treatment in a 2019 cartoon published in the international edition of the NY Times, for European consumption. You can see it here (and if you have X, you can see the revolting responses even back then, very typical of online Jew-hatred and its intensity and vile nature):

I wrote this post about that cartoon at the time. I also wrote this on the subject. That latter post also features a 2003 cartoon about Sharon which is bloodcurdling and based on a Goya etching. I suggest you read both posts, but here’s part of the latter:

It was early in 2003, during the Second Intifada, when Palestinians had been deliberately targeting and blowing up Israelis civilians (including Israeli children) at a rapid clip for three years. The wall had been started but was far from completion at the time the cartoon was published (January of 2003). One would think that if anyone was going to be depicted as deliberate and ghoulish child killers it would be the Palestinians, who not only supported suicide bombers who murdered children but who purposely used their own children as sacrifices, putting them in harm’s way (see also this) to make it more likely that defensive retaliatory measures by the Israelis would result in the inadvertent death of Palestinian children.

But ghoulish Palestinians wasn’t the image Brown was after (and here the reference is to the famous Goya work “Saturn Devouring His Son“):

See? He’s naked, except for that little Likud rosette instead of a fig leaf. Not a kippah or a Jewish star in sight. So that makes the blood libel perfectly okay.

The cartoon was so highly thought of that it was awarded the 2003 first prize by the British Political Cartoon Society. In his acceptance speech, “Brown thanked the Israeli Embassy for its angry reaction to the cartoon, which he said had contributed greatly to its publicity.”

To repeat: I wrote that in 2019 about something that happened in 2003.

Now for a few words about Jew-hating itself. It puzzles a lot of people, and rightly so, despite the gazillions of words that have been written on the subject trying to explain it. Today, commenter Richard Aubrey asked:

Thomas Sowell has suggested that the Jews have been the “minority middleman” in a number of societies. The same is true of Indians in Africa, Chinese in SEA, Cubans in the Caribbean. Some of the same difficulties are encountered; “clannish, money grubbers, snobs, etc” And, sometimes, violence.

But Jews have about two thousand years’ of hate-generated tactics and accusations to be used against them. It’s different when there’s such a supply to draw from, I suspect.

That being said, why does it light up like kerosene when introduced onto a campus? Is there some need to hate, awaiting only a suggested target? Wny?

I probably will write more on the entire subject, but for now I’ll keep it very brief and say that it’s multi-determined and serves many needs in the haters, and although it waxes and wanes it morphs and persists. But in terms of that first paragraph about the Sowell quote, hating Chinese or Indians involves groups that are among the most numerous on earth. Hating Jews involves hating a very tiny but very prominent group. The Jews – both as a group in terms of monotheism, and as individuals in terms of achievement in fields such as science or popular music – have been far more influential on human history than would might expect from their actual numbers (numbers which people tend to greatly overestimate). Despite their tiny numbers, Jews have been dispersed around the world, and so their small size, prominence, and geographic spread have been fertile soil in which the hatred can grow.

But in the end, explanations which have a spiritual dimension are also compelling. If you believe in the demonic, Jew-hatred partakes of the demonic. It also has historic roots in the two religions it gave birth to, Christianity and Islam, although that has waxed and waned and changed over time, too (I probably will write at greater length about that at some future point, too). It often rears up in societies that are troubled, because Jew-hating is an easy and parsimonious way to cast blame and channel frustration. And the US is certainly troubled at the moment.

NOTE: I doubt Politico would publish any cartoons critical of Mohammed, because they know that could get them killed.

Open thread 3/28/2025

The New Neo Posted on by

I rather like this AI genre. These dresses aren’t imaginary; they’re the ones the actresses actually wore for the occasions. I especially like the suits, which remind me of what my mother often wore when I was a child:

Iran news roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) Interesting observation:

This war is solidifying the petrodollar system as it evolves into a hybrid petro/LNG-dollar. The old system was built on Saudi crude priced in USD. The new system is built on American crude plus American gas from the Gulf Coast, with no alternative supplier of comparable scale. The dependency is deeper because LNG infrastructure requires long term contracts & regasification terminals that lock buyers into supply relationships for decades. Europe & the Pacific allies (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, etc.) cannot pivot away as there is nowhere left to pivot to. They’re now locked into the US energy system.

(2) Rubio is off to Europe, and speaks to the press:

(3) Is a “final blow” being readied against Iran?:

This “final blow” against Iran would include U.S. ground, air, and sea forces. Trump will have at least four options, according to Axios.

– Invading or blockading Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export hub.
– Invading Larak, an island that helps Iran solidify its control of the Strait of Hormuz. The strategic outpost hosts Iranian bunkers, attack craft that can blow up cargo ships, and radars that monitor movements in the strait.
– Seizing the strategic island of Abu Musa and two smaller islands, which lie near the western entrance to the strait and are controlled by Iran but also claimed by the UAE.
– Blocking or seizing ships that are exporting Iranian oil on the eastern side of the Hormuz Strait. …

Another option Trump might choose involving ground troops would be to send a small force to the Ishafan Tunnel Complex in central Iran. The majority of Iran’s 60% enriched uranium (estimated at over 200 KG) is believed to be stored within a deep underground tunnel complex at the Isfahan nuclear site.

Although the surface facilities at Isfahan were bombed in June 2025, the tunnels appear largely intact. Recent satellite imagery from early March 2026 showed a “very narrow access point” through which the material could potentially be retrieved, despite the entrances being buried under soil.

(4) The IDF has struck a major Iranian missile and mine production site.

(5) Battleswarm Blog is a good place to go for information on what’s going on in Iran day by day.

NOTE: You can pick and choose your news slant; there is plenty that’s positive and plenty that’s negative. It’s all speculation; I try to stick to actual events. Most of the other news involves guesses about how strong the mullahtocracy is and whether it can survive. I have no idea and I don’t believe anyone else does, either. But the status quo was unacceptable; had we waited, the task would have been even more difficult as their defensive and offensive situation improved.

The use of “free speech” as a shield for virulent anti-Semitism

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an interesting article from Tablet entitled “The Free Speech of Fools”. Some excerpts [emphasis mine]:

Led by [Tucker] Carlson, the network [of anti-Israel pundits supposedly on the right] systematically undermined the organizing principle of the anticensorship movement, which was aggressive, open inquiry skeptical of ideological dogma and institutional authority. In its place, members of the Carlson clique obey two imperatives: to shield other members from legitimate criticism and to uphold anti-Jewish ideology as the ultimate principle of free speech.

I have noticed this again and again and again. If you’ve been ignoring Carlson, Owens, and the rest of the crew – an understandable thing to do, actually – you may have missed it. But there are many of them, and part of their m.o. is to purposely conflate criticism of them with attempts to “cancel” them or silence them. A typical comment of theirs is, “we’re not allowed to criticize Israel” or “we’re not allowed to ask questions about Israel” when in fact they are completely allowed to do so and in fact do so incessantly. But they accuse their critics of stifling their speech, when all that’s happening is that they are being criticized for promulgating destructive lies, much of them classic anti-Semitic ones such as the blood libel. And in accusing their critics that way, people such as Carlson are slyly appealing to people on the right who are justifiably angry at the rise and previous dominance of cancel culture from the left in recent years.

More from the article:

The structural reshaping of the news ecosystem into “independent” voices and outlets, which once held so much promise to cut through entrenched interests and provide audiences with an unvarnished view of the world around them,, instead ended up as a propaganda industry promoting the work of fantasists and open antisemites.

That’s not the only propaganda it fosters, of course. But it’s a hatred with a long and dangerous history, and the internet is ideal for spreading it.

Actually, the prevalence of Jew-hatred was one of the very first things I ever noticed online when I first started using a computer in the mid 1990s – before there was even Google, using the older search engines. I immediately noticed that, whenever a search was related to Israel or Jews, it opened up and brought forth a huge stinking cesspool of blatant antisemitism. The first few pages of results were full of it. After a while, the people running the search engines fixed the algorithms so the Jew-hate was relegated to the second or third page of results, but over time much of it crept back up in rankings although often in a less blatant form. The loosening of censorship on X and other platforms, which I support, unfortunately opened the door to its return in copious amounts.

Online Jew-hatred is almost like online porn – perennially popular.

NOTE: I’m not sure where to put this, so I’ll put it here:

Several lawsuits impacting freedom of speech

The New Neo Posted on by

First we have Missouri v. Biden, which involves the government’s right to threaten companies such as Facebook if they don’t block information the government doesn’t like. The ruling is actually pretty narrow:

Various federal agencies and the White House directed social media companies to censor viewpoints that conflicted with the government’s preferred policies and messaging on topics ranging from covid policy and election integrity to gender ideology and foreign policy. These egregious First Amendment violations silenced not only the plaintiffs in our case but tends of thousands of other Americans. …

…[T]he government cannot take actions, formal or informal, correctly or indirectly – except as authorized by law – to threaten Social-Media Companies with some form of punishment (i.e., an adverse legal, regulatory, or economic government sanction) unless they remove, delete, suppress, or reduce, including through altering their algorithms, posted social-media content containing protected free speech. …

This prohibition does not extend to providing Social-Media Companies with information that the companies are free to use as they wish. Nor does it extend to statements by government officials that posts on Social Media Companies’ are inaccurate, wrong, or contrary to the Administration’s views, unless those statements are otherwise coupled with a threat of punishment within the meaning of the above provision.

In other words, government can comment on the speech of others on social media but can’t threaten the companies if they don’t actively suppress the speech in question. The ruling only gives this relief to the plaintiffs in this particular case, but it sets a precedent.

But the damage is done, and the damage is considerable. It very much helped elect Joe Biden, for example. It sowed much distrust of the government, and that has encouraged many people to believe the government always lies, and to place more stock than ever in wild and destructive conspiracies (more about that in another post).

Also, it ignores the fact that, even without direct threats to such companies, when the federal government tells companies that something they’re allowing to be published is wrong, the company could assume that allowing it to be aired on their platforms would incur some sort of government retribution even without a direct threat being issued by the government.

But it’s still a victory.

Then there is the recent California case in which YouTube and Facebook were sued for fostering social media addiction in vulnerable children:

The jury awarded $3 million to the plaintiff, a young woman identified as KGM, and her mother, according to NPR, which noted Facebook parent company Meta would be responsible for about 70% of that amount and that the companies could face future penalties as well. The family had accused the platforms of willfully making their products addictive and targeting teens, despite internal research showing it could damage their mental health.

The Los Angeles Superior Court decision is among the first in a wave of hundreds of suits by schools, attorneys general, and others, making personal injury claims about major tech companies’ alleged recklessness.

A New Mexico jury recently found Meta liable on similar claims and the company was ordered to pay $375 million in damages. Meta said it would appeal that decision. Meanwhile, a case is also ongoing in a federal court based in California.

“We disagree with the verdict and plan to appeal,” José Castañeda, a Google spokesperson, said in a statement. “This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site.”

It is no accident that the case involve minors. The law has traditionally allowed more restrictions regarding content or practices aimed at them. The idea is that the companies purposely tried to get kids addicted and that it harms their mental health and that the companies knew this.

I have some trouble with these rulings. I think that the “addiction” model is being overused, although maybe I’m just quibbling here. But I think there is no doubt that YouTube is habit-forming (I can attest to that from personal experience as an adult) and that much of the content is harmful. And I would very much like to protect children. But what is the remedy? Isn’t it parental control? But is parental control totally possible, because even if parents block a child’s access, doesn’t the child probably have access through friends’ devices?