Is there still a ceasefire with Iran?

The New Neo Posted on by

The left and Trump-haters say that Trump and the military have no idea what they’re doing in Iran (or anywhere else, I suppose). I don’t think that’s the case, but one thing that does seem true is that Trump and company don’t want the Iranian regime to be able to predict what the US will do.

The left and Trump-haters also say that Trump has yet to make his goals in this war clear. I disagree. He actually has said many times that he wants to degrade the regime’s capacity to make war and eliminate its capacity to make nuclear weapons, plus recover the nuclear material they already have. Oh, and regime change would be very very nice, but is not absolutely necessary.

The left and Trump-haters would like him to fail. I would like him to succeed. Plus I really really would like regime change in Iran as well. But you can’t always get what you want.

Wars are unpredictable.

My sense of things with Iran right now, for what it’s worth, is that Trump continues to play for time while attempting to strangle the regime economically and precipitate a cascade of events that will cause the army and even some of the IRGC to revolt and/or give up. Without those enforcers, the Iranian regime couldn’t survive. He’s reluctant to bomb further because destroying the targets that remain might end up harming the people of Iran more than Trump would like, and so he’s betting – for now, anyway – on the financial pressure doing the trick.

Also – although I haven’t seen anything definitive on this – doesn’t the ceasefire restart the clock on the need for Congressional approval?

This is what’s been happening recently in the war or the “ceasefire”:

Iran continued strikes on the United Arab Emirates for the second day, the country’s Defense Ministry confirmed Tuesday evening.

“The UAE, a key American ally, said it came under attack by Iranian missiles and drones for a second straight day on Tuesday,” the Associated Press reported. “At least three people were wounded in attacks the day before, and a drone sparked a fire at a key oil facility in the eastern emirate of Fujairah.”

The UAE armed forces are “actively engaging” with incoming missile and drone attacks from Iran, the Defense Ministry posted on X, adding that “the sounds heard in scattered areas of the country are the result of the UAE’s air defence systems intercepting ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones. …

The strikes came hours after the U.S. Navy repelled Iranian attempts to disrupt the operation “Project Freedom,” ordered by President Trump to restore freedom of navigation for commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. On Monday, U.S. destroyers secured the waterway and allowed at least two American-flagged cargo ships to sail through the waterway. …

President Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that the U.S. has effectively dismantled the Iranian navy. “Now they’re reduced to little boats with a machine gun on the front of them because they had a navy of 159 ships!” he said Tuesday evening. “Iran’s Navy is done.”

Make of it what you will.

Small changes in Europe?

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s the first bit of news that at first glance sounds ever-so-slightly encouraging:

The European Union passed several resolutions condemning Palestinian Authority educational materials containing antisemitism and glorification of jihad, the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) has reported.

In the EU’s report on discharge in respect of the implementation of the general budget of the European Union for the financial year 2024, it called for any future funding to the PA to be conditional on the removal of “antisemitic content, incitement to violence and the glorification of martyrdom and jihad” from textbooks.

The European Parliament’s budget report emphasized that EU financial assistance and engagement “should support education that promotes peace, tolerance and coexistence.”

This may seem like a no-brainer. But although I first read about the phenomenon of the vicious Jew-hatred in Palestinian textbooks some time during the 1990s, until now I’ve been unaware of any particular European move against them, and certainly no effective ones. Whether or not the PA complies, Palestinian society is inundated with this sort of thing. But the textbooks are an important part of it.

Doing some research now, I discover this is not a new phenomenon with the EU, although at this point their statements seems a little stronger. Here’s an article from 2021 [my emphasis]:

A study commissioned by the European Union examined 156 Palestinian Authority textbooks and 16 teachers’ guides. Eighteen texts are from 2020, the rest from 2017-2019. The report said they present “ambivalent – sometimes hostile – attitudes towards Jews and the characteristics they attribute to the Jewish people” and their “frequent use of negative attributions in relation to the Jewish people…suggest a conscious perpetuation of anti-Jewish prejudice, especially when embedded in the current political context.”

The EU provides funding for the Palestinian education system …

So the EU helps pay for the education in hatred. The article goes on to say this:

In October 2021, Britain announced it would cease direct funding to Palestinian education in the PA. The government denied it; however, the decision was related to the EU report. According to an investigation by the Jewish News [UK], roughly $137 million was spent by Britain in the previous five years, including on the salaries of the Palestinian civil servants and teachers responsible for drafting the PA textbooks.

In 2022, a group of European Union lawmakers called on the European Commission to reduce funding to the PA if it continues refusing to purge its K-12 curriculum of materials that “incite schoolchildren to hate Jews and emulate terrorists.”

But guess what? Although it appears the funding was frozen for a very short while (the article doesn’t make it clear whether it was just the British funding or the EU funding), it was restored in 2022 pending still another study. How many studies do you need? The problem with the textbooks isn’t subtle, it’s huge and overt.

More history here:

According to IMPACT-se, this is the seventh consecutive year in which such condemnations have been issued.
“>In July 2024, the PA signed an agreement with the EU to reform its curriculum, affirming its commitment to the process, but not all of the EU’s guidelines for the removal of violent, extremist content have been met.

As of November 2025, according to an IMPACT-se report, PA textbooks and educational materials still include content that glorifies jihad and incitement to violence.

Hard to say whether it will end up mattering this time, but it continues to be unconscionable that the EU funds this.

The second piece of news is this from Sweden:

Maria Malmer Stenergard, Sweden’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, announced before parliamentary representatives that the government will no longer use the term “Islamophobia.” She described the concept as “problematic,” because, according to her, “it focuses on individuals’ irrational fears.”

Stenergard emphasized that the Swedish government will also seek to replace the term with “anti-Muslim racism” or “anti-Muslim hatred” in international bodies, including the European Union and the United Nations. Discussions on this matter are set to continue during the third week of May in Brussels.

The decision has been welcomed by the right-wing Sweden Democrats party. Charlie Weimers, a member of the European Parliament for the party, said, “Islamists have exploited the term Islamophobia to advance their agenda and secure EU funding.” He described the government’s action as “finally scrapping a fabricated concept.”

Faw Azzat, Secretary General of the Global Alliance for Peace and Justice (GAPF) in Sweden, also praised the decision, stating that the term Islamophobia was “coined by Islamists themselves to equate criticism of a religion with racism against people—a semantic trick dressed up as anti-racism.”

I think this is pretty meaningless as well. Whether it’s called “Islamaphobia” or “anti-Muslim racism,” the term is often applied not only to generalized hatred of Muslims but also over-applied to rational and realistic evaluations of the radical Islamist devotion to terrorism and violence against the infidel.

The parking permit blues

The New Neo Posted on by

Up until maybe ten or fifteen years ago, in the place where I live, we still had parking meters. They took coins, too, and although the price of parking kept going up, it wasn’t too high. They even took pennies, which got you about a minute, or nickels or dimes, although they also gobbled up quarters quite nicely. If you were extra-lucky and someone had just vacated a space for which they’d bought too much time, you could coast on their extra time if you were doing a quick errand.

There were even places to park, not too far from the main streets, where there were no meters, although the parking was timed. You could park for two hours there for free, if I remember correctly.

Yes, you needed to keep coins on hand. But that wasn’t too difficult because as I said, parking wasn’t mega-expensive.

Then they removed the meters and put in parking stations – is that what they’re called? or kiosks? – where you bought a ticket that you then put in the windshield. At first it wasn’t too bad, although in the snow and sleet and rain it meant a rather nasty trip to the station and sometimes standing in line while the person in front of you paid. The stations took coins or credit cards, and with the coins you could get just a few minutes if that was all you needed.

It occurred to me early on that this had the advantage to the city of parking being non-transferable. No longer could you get the benefit of a person who’d overpaid in your spot. The fee for each person was tied to that person, and so the city got the money even if the time was unused.

Then at some point the parker had to plug into the machine the numbers of a license plate, just to make the fee extra-nontransferable.

And today, when I ran an errand in town and parked, the coin slot at the station was inoperable although it was still there. I think it’s now all credit cards, all the time. This means the shortest segment of parking you can buy has become an hour, which I rarely need and which costs a fair amount.

And then there’s the reading of the messages in the machine. If light is bright and there’s a lot of reflection, faggetaboutity you’ll have to create artificial shade to read it. And please, be quick about typing stuff in, because the machine is impatient and quite quick to say you’ve run out of time and need to start again. Today, for example, there was no diagram to tell me which way to insert my credit card. I tried every way I could think of and it rejected the card and timed out. Today I think I went through the entire protocol about four times before the machine finally had mercy on me and spit the parking permit out – and there, in the slot, I also found the permits of two previous people who’d left them there. They had their license plates on them, so I couldn’t have used them even if I’d known they were there.

Or, I suppose I could get the app. But I park in town so seldom – usually just when on official business – that I tend to forget about dong that until next time. And what guarantee would there be that the app would be any easier to use? None.

Okay, I feel better now.

Rudy Giuliani is very ill with pneumonia

The New Neo Posted on by

Giuliani is hospitalized with pneumonia and was in critical condition, but seems to be on the mend. That latter point will no doubt sadden millions of ghoulish leftists who would wish him dead:

He was now breathing on his own, with his family and primary medical provider at his side, the spokesman said.

The illness is tied to a condition stemming from Giuliani’s experience as mayor during the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Goodman added.

“On September 11th, Mayor Giuliani ran toward the towers to help those in need, which led to a restrictive airway disease diagnosis,” the spokesman said.

“This disease adds complications to any emerging respiratory issue, and the [pneumonia] virus quickly overwhelmed his body, requiring mechanical ventilation to maintain his blood pressure.”

The years since 2020 have been rough for the ex-mayor. His assertions about fraud in the 2020 elections, and a number of statements he made about election workers in Georgia, landed him in legal and financial trouble and also got him disbarred:

He has pleaded not guilty to state criminal charges against him related to the election subversion [editorializing; CNN] scheme in Arizona. Prosecutors dropped a similiar [spelling; CNN] case against Giuliani and others in Georgia last year. The two former Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, also obtained a $148 million defamation judgment against him for false allegations he made about them after the 2020 election.

He was disbarred in July 2024 in New York over his efforts to challenge the 2020 election results.

I doubt that what’s been happening politically in New York City right now has added to Giuliani’s well-being.

Trump weighed in:

President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that Giuliani is a “True Warrior and the Best Mayor in the History of New York City.”

“What a tragedy that he was treated so badly by the Radical Left Lunatics, Democrats ALL — AND HE WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING! They cheated on the Elections, fabricated hundreds of stories, did anything possible to destroy our Nation, and now, look at Rudy. So sad!” Trump said in a post Sunday.

Right about everything? No. But right about a lot of important things over the years I wish him well.

On portraying Mrs. Danvers

The New Neo Posted on by

I first saw the movie Rebecca on TV when I was about ten years old, and was immediately taken with it. I went on to read the book when I was very young, too, and loved it. The movie is something of a chick-flick, but a chick-flick made by Alfred Hitchcock with a stellar cast and a brooding Gothic quality along with some romance.

It was Judith Anderson’s (later Dame Judith Anderson) role as the housekeeper Mrs. Danvers that especially creeped me out. The movie was made in 1940, and although Anderson had been acting for ages, the role made her far more famous and earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Here she is with the shy and nameless second wife of Maximilian de Winter (Laurence Olivier) played perfectly by Joan Fontaine:

Anderson almost overacts but keeps it under tight control. There are oodles of subtexts there, and her extremely polite malevolence is palpable.

Compare to a modern remake from 2020:

The video is entitled, “Kristin Scott Thomas is terrifying as Mrs. Danvers in REBECCA (2020) movie clip.” Oh, really? Terrifying? They wish. To me, she just comes across as a Mean Girl.

But perhaps it’s unfair to compare anyone to Anderson in the role. I happen to think it’s not just the actresses that makes the difference, but the passage of time and taste: black-and-white versus color, and a certain conviction and gravitas about how to portray evil. And of course, Hitchcock.

Tucker Carlson’s apology for having supported Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s been a lot of brouhaha about Tucker Carlson’s unctuous “confession” to his brother Buckley (a lot of “ucks” there), saying that he deeply and contritely regrets his previous support of and campaigning for Trump. If you can stomach his sanctimonious mien, and his self-serving claim of outsized influence, here’s the clip:

But in all I’ve read on this, I haven’t seen anyone emphasize what’s so especially disingenuous about Carlson’s apology. As Churchill might say, he’s re-ratting. Remember this? It wasn’t so very long ago that the story came out, either; just three years (2023, prior to the 2024 election in which Tucker campaigned for Trump):

The latest filings in the case suggest Mr Carlson expressed his dislike of the outgoing US president two days before Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol to derail lawmakers from certifying Joe Biden’s election win.

“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” he wrote in a text sent on 4 January 2021. “I truly can’t wait.”

“I hate him passionately,” he added.

Mr Carlson, the top-rated host on the conservative network, also appeared to denigrate the Trump presidency in these private messages, despite lauding his achievements on air.

“That’s the last four years. We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. But come on. There isn’t really an upside to Trump.”

Fancy, fancy, FANCY that. And all that time, Tucker had been pretending to like Trump – and then later in 2024 he campaigned for him.

Have people forgotten this? I’m puzzled; why are so many taking his apology seriously? I can understand why the left would, because it suits their purposes. But the right? I remember the revelation of Tucker’s hatred for Trump while at Fox because it surprised me at the time, and I filed it away as “Tucker Carlson is not ever ever to be trusted.” We discovered then that all that time he’d been pretending to be for Trump he really wasn’t.

Then again, which was the actual pretense? Was he just pretending to like Trump while at Fox, or were the emails the pretense and he was just pretending to hate him when he wrote them? And then later, during the 2024 election, what was Tucker pretending? Was he just supporting Trump then in order to get supposed influence over Vance or Trump? Or had he changed his mind once more and liked Trump again?

And now what is Carlson pretending? One thing I don’t think he’s pretending now is his hatred of Jews and Israel. I think it’s very sincere. His brother Buckley is quite his equal in that, as well:

But here I am, writing about Carlson again. Why? First of all, I think that he’s a fascinating case. And secondly, although I also think he has less influence on the right than his traffic would indicate, and that he’s following trends as much as he’s creating them, I think it works in both directions and that he does indeed have some influence in spreading the hyper-Buchananesque word and that his message does find traction, especially with young men.

I’ve written several previous pieces on Tucker’s transformation (see this list). But I want to add one more event that might have fostered it: the death of his father in March of 2025. Dick Carlson was a strong and colorful figure with a life of achievement, but among other things he was a “Christian Zionist,” a group that Tucker said in November of 2025 that he “dislikes more than anybody” and which he called “a heresy” It may be that, with his father’s death, Tucker finally felt free to more fully reveal his sentiments about Christian Zionists and Israel and Jews.

Did the press get a wake-up call at the Correspondents’ Dinner?

The New Neo Posted on by

Political changer Sasha Stone writes:

Cole Allen took the press at their word, which is why he couldn’t understand how they could have dinner with a “rapist, traitor, and pedophile.” He has a point. After all, why would they if they really meant everything they’ve been telling us for ten years?

Had he been better at breaching security — if he’d had a better weapon that could fire multiple rounds, there is a good chance members of the press could have been mowed down too …

The press didn’t seem to get it. None of them even took a pause, except to blame Trump, …

The press, however, should have better discernment. If they could just tell the truth for once, or at least try to correct the record, maybe we wouldn’t be here now, where yet another assassin felt he had no other choice but to do the world a favor by killing Hitler.

All of that is true. But I don’t think it matters, because today’s press is uninterested in telling anything but the partisan story. They are propagandists first and foremost. That’s why most of them got into “journalism” in the first place – not to tell the truth wherever it might lead them, but to further the left’s message of the left, a left in which most of them truly believe. They are in it for the perks too, of course, and the power. But they are also in it for the virtue.

Nor do they want to stop the Cole Allens of the world, except when the Cole Allens threaten the safety of the members of the press themselves. The foiled attack at the Correspondents’ Dinner was highly unusual in that regard. The press was not the target, but they would have been the collateral damage had Allen been better at his chosen task. Blaming Trump rather than themselves is a no-brainer for the press, because to blame themselves would take a much higher level of self-awareness and devotion to truth than they can muster at this point.

Why doesn’t the left care about the Iranian protesters who were slaughtered by the mullahs?

The New Neo Posted on by

One would think they would care – after all, it’s a oligarchic theocracy slaughtering people who want freedom. But no. It’s as though it never even happened:

The Left justifies its obsession with Gaza by citing casualty numbers provided by Hamas — a designated terrorist organization — while ignoring the verified slaughter in Iran. This reflects a deliberate epistemology of ignorance. When a terrorist regime like Hamas reports numbers, the Left treats them as gospel to fuel anti-Israel sentiment. When the Islamic Republic slaughters its citizens, the Left does not put the blame on the Iranian regime. Instead, it claims that there is a Western context behind the regime’s crimes — that is, that the crimes are a direct cause of “US imperialism.”

It’s not true that the Left doesn’t have guiding principles. One of the most influential is “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” America and Israel are the enemy; therefore Hamas and the current Iranian regime are the friends because they share the same enemies. Iran calls the US “The Great Satan” and Israel “The Little Satan.” There really couldn’t be more of a mind-meld between the Left and the Iranian leaders than that. Everything else is secondary or lower.

The left pretends to be for “the people” – but it’s the case only if the people are on the same side of an issue as the left. If the people choose wrongly, screw the people. One example of this is the left’s constant attempts to take down the duly-elected Trump, whether through assassination or impeachment or lies. The people of Israel can be raped and murdered or even blown to bits by a nuclear weapon, and according to the left they had it coming and will have had it coming.

And so the left is able to ignore the brutal Iranian regime’s killing of its own protesters. The left is aware that, were the protesters to win their battle, the Iranian people would almost certainly be grateful to none other than the oppressor Trump and The Great Satan the US, not to mention The Little Satan Israel.

Can’t have that.

When the 1979 revolution occurred in Iran, the left in that country was very much for it. But that was mainly because the Iranian left believed they were just using the mullahs and that the clerics would take a back seat to the left in running the country. The Iraniaqn left was sadly mistaken, and thousands of them were summarily slaughtered by the mullahs whose ruthlessness they had much underestimated. But as far as I know, that disabused the Iranian leftists – the ones who remained – of their affection for the mullahs. The American left seems to have held onto that affection, and at this point the American left has taken control of the Democratic Party.