How the NY Times presents the negotiations with Iran

The New Neo Posted on by

If you can get access to the Times, you can find the original here. If not, you can find a copy here.

The headline is “In Pakistan Talks, Iran Saw a U.S. Trying to Dictate, Not Negotiate.” The paper seems to be intent on presenting Iran’s viewpoint. A sample:

Vice President JD Vance summed up the failure of 21 hours of negotiations with Iran in one sentence: “They have chosen not to accept our terms.”

To Iranian officials, that line reflected their biggest problem with the talks, too: The United States they argue, had not come to negotiate.

“Bingo,” Javad Zarif, the former foreign minister who led Iran’s negotiators in the nuclear deal negotiations with the United States and Europe in 2015, highlighting the comment from Vance, wrote on the social platform X. “No negotiations — at least with Iran — will succeed based on ‘our/your terms.'”

This is very much designed to appeal to the left – Trump and Vance the bullies, as opposed to the kindly Obama of the famous Iran Deal. How dare dictatorial Trump and Vance! – say those New Age Iranian regime leaders, always trying to find common ground and consensus.

More:

“We are open to dialogue and negotiation,” Medhi Tabatabei, a deputy to Iran’s president, wrote on social media on Sunday. “But we do not submit to force.”

No, of course not. So very open to that favorite term of the left: dialogue. And force is such an outdated concept. The Iranian regime itself not only doesn’t submit to force – but it never uses force either, right? Just ask all the protesters it has treated so kindly.

More:

Iran’s government sees itself not only as victorious for having survived that onslaught, but also for having emerged with a new and strategic card. Since the war began, it has asserted control over passage through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil shipping corridor — and it is not willing to give up that leverage now.

“We will not stop for a moment in working to secure the achievements of the last forty days,” Gen. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s speaker of Parliament and the head of the negotiating delegation, wrote in a statement on social media on Sunday.

It’s not willing to give up its leverage. But I don’t think the US is asking if it’s willing any more. And what is “new” about this strategic card?

Of course, Iran may have more tricks up its sleeve to thwart the US. But to speak of securing “the achievements of the last forty days” sounds very Black Knight indeed. But much of the world, and I assume many of the Times’ readers, seem willing to buy this narrative.

News roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) Swalwell quits the race for governor.

Let me just say that when the Democrats want you out, they don’t pull their punches. Do they have this volume of opposition research prepared on everyone, just in case? Is one of the other Democrats running for governor in California next under that commodious bus? They have to winnow that field down to eliminate any chance, however slim, of a Republican winning the race.

(2) I don’t know how I got to it. I don’t know why I clicked on it. But once I did, I became fascinated with this one fact about the home Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez once shared, having purchased it for $60 million:

The former couple struggled to find a buyer for the 12-bedroom, 24-bathroom mansion for more than a year.

What’s up with that ratio? Two bathrooms for each bedroom?

(3) From Trump:

(4) There have been large demonstrations in Ireland over high fuel costs:

The Irish government has announced a package worth €505m (£440m) to support those “most impacted” by rising fuel costs.

Fuel costs have soared globally as a result of the US-Israel war with Iran and demonstrators in the Republic of Ireland have been blocking fuel distribution sites and many major motorways and roads in protest.

Taoiseach (Irish PM) Micheál Martin said on Sunday that his government are extending temporary measures to reduce excise duty on petrol, diesel and marked gas oil.

They will also be postponing an increase on carbon tax …

So, which thing are they protesting – or probably both? The high fuel costs due to the war, or the high fuel costs due to the taxes and the proposed tax increase?

(5) How our blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is planned to work:

So we aren’t closing the Strait, we are blockading Iranian ports. This means that Iran won’t be able to sell any oil. Two countries will be hurt: Iran and China, which buys 80% of Iranian oil. The Gulf States will be able to ship their oil through the Strait as soon as they choose to do so.

Meanwhile, we are sending vessels to the Strait to try to dispose of the mines that Iran may or may not have laid there. Other countries may aid in that effort. Iran still has a lot of small boats that they have used to harass shipping, but they will be useless against our ships. And reportedly, a number of oil tankers have diverted from other courses and are heading to the Gulf of Mexico America to load up on American oil and gas.

Orban out, Magyar in

The New Neo Posted on by

I can’t say I’ve followed Hungarian politics all that much. I knew that Orban had been in power for ages and what his general policies have been, and that J. D. Vance visited that country recently to support him in the upcoming Hungarian election. But about his opponent, Peter Magyar, I knew next to nothing.

When I read last night that Orban’s party – and therefore Orban himself – had been voted out in a huge defeat, I tried to read up on Magyar. He was described as “center-right” – which certainly doesn’t sound like a globalist leftist, although European political designations can be mighty opaque. The results appear decisive:

With over 60 percent of the votes in the highest turn-out election in Hungary’s post-communist history, Magyar’s Tisza party had more than 52% support to 38% for Orbán’s governing Fidesz party. Astonishingly, Magyar’s party went from holding zero seats in the 199-seat Hungarian National Assembly to winning a supermajority of at least 138 seats.

That is indeed astonishing, until you read that up till 2024 Magyar was allied with Orban, broke off because of corruption, and formed a new party. So it seems to me that perhaps a lot of people fed up with Orban just went over to Orban-lite.

Some have painted a parade of horribles that will proceed from Orban’s repudiation. There are dire predictions of untrammeled Third World immigration and Budapest being held in thrall by Brussels. None of that seems terribly likely to happen. Magyar had a prominent role in Orban’s party until 2024. …

He holds and ran on positions that are very similar to Orban’s. In fact, had Orban not seemed either disinterested in or willfully blind to the massive corruption infesting his party, he may have won again today. …

What we can expect from Magyar is more of Orban’s Hungarian nationalism. But it will come without the slobbering over Putin and the reflexive urge to be against anything other EU nations support. He opposes Third World immigration and is unlikely to back off that position. His main challenge will be to recharge Hungary’s moribund economy.

I certainly hope that’s the case.

Women and men, men and women – short and tall, tall and short

The New Neo Posted on by

I am not a tall woman. I’m medium-sized, so very medium-sized that at 5’4″ I fall very close to the “average” in the mathematical sense:

The average height for women in the U.S. aged 20 years and older is 5 feet 3.5 inches. This average is based on data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 2015-2018 and the U.S. National Health Survey.

The average height for women in the U.S. also varies based on your genetic background. Non-Hispanic Black women aged 20 years and older have the highest average height at 5 feet 4 inches. Asian women have the lowest average height at 5 feet 1.5 inches. …

Women in the U.S.’s 5-foot-3.5 average is near the middle of global height averages.

That’s me; Ms. Average. And when they measure me these days, I’m still somewhere between 5’3 3/4″ and 5’4″. The residual effects of all that ballet training? Hope it lasts.

Meanwhile, the average male height in the US is 5’9″, and the average worldwide is 5’7 1/2″. The means that, among all the considerations I’ve had to think about when dating, height has rarely if ever been one of them – except in junior high or the early high school years when females had usually attained their adult height but a significant percentage of males had not. And I wasn’t really dating until later in high school, and by that time almost all the boys were taller than I was or at least as tall.

Recently there was a discussion on this blog about the issue of male/female couples’ heights. It started with this comment by commenter “Kate”:

On the video, speaking as a tall woman, tall men should date girls more nearly their size. 🙂

There were a number of responses, such as this one by commenter “TommyJay”:

Re the video: I like tall women. For me, equality between the sexes isn’t just a political idea ? . But it is not at all a “deal breaker” for me. Unlike almost all the single older women I meet, each one of which seem to have dozens of deal breakers.

I looked up some dating surveys of unknown quality a couple years ago. 96% women refuse to date a guy who are even slightly shorter than they are. I’ve met women who require that the man be at least 6 or 8 inches taller. Living and walking a lot in a tourist area where I’ve seen a thousand or more couples, I think the correct number is more like 98% of women.

However, 25% of men wouldn’t mind dating a woman taller than themselves, myself included. Though, even I think that more than couple inches would look a little strange. That leaves the other 75% of men who like the traditional difference.

I’ve wondered about the why’s of all that, myself included. People like, or are impressed by, tall people. Just a basic fact.

Myself, I met a couple of lovely tall young ladies at an impressionable age in high school. One was 5? 11?, the other 6′ 1″. Never got over it. (I’m 5′ 10″ now, and lost about 0.5″ since high school.)

As for me, I’ve never been especially drawn to tall men. My ex was rather short – maybe 5’7 1/2″, but it never was an issue. Even if I wanted to wear very high heels, what did I care? In fact, the only tall man I’ve ever had a relationship with was Gerard, who was somewhat over 6 feet. Everyone else was between 5’6″ and 5’10”. Note, though, that means they all were indeed taller than I. Because of my height, a taller man was never something I had to seek, because the vast vast majority of men are already taller.

Would I have dated someone smaller than I? I don’t know for sure, since it never came up. But I do know that most women prefer to be with a man who gives them the sense that they could physically be protected by the man. I think it’s just a natural element of attraction, although it can be overridden.

Iran War: wanting the Promised Land without the Wilderness

The New Neo Posted on by

Some Iran news:

Vance and company have arrived in Pakistan for the talks, Trump announces we will be mine-clearing in the Strait of Hormuz, and Fox reports that an Israeli intelligence office says that the IRGC is currently in control of the Strait (no surprise there) and is charging tolls. I’ve read a lot of conflicting reportage on that last point.

I’ve also seen many reports – here’s one – that China plans to give Iran new air defense systems during the ceasefire. This is according to “sources with knowledge of US intelligence.” That’s not even sources within US intelligence; just “with knowledge of” (let me guess: a Democrat in Congress?). No way to tell if it’s true or false, but it’s certainly plausible, and Chinese denials are meaningless. But I assume that if it does happen, we and/or the Israelis will be getting intelligence on that.

And two US Navy destroyers have reportedly already passed through the Strait without incident, while Iran supposedly forgot where they put the mines in the first place.

Meanwhile, indeed:

Also this, in which Bill Maher has apparently expressed the “we lost!” point of view, and Douglas Murray responds:

I came across this video last night, which I recommend. You don’t have to watch the whole thing, but it’s well worth watching because it explores this widespread impatience that makes it nearly impossible to carry out any effective major military campaign that lasts more than a couple of days. I got the title of this post from an analogy he makes to the Biblical Exodus tale:

It seems that Swalwell won’t become the next governor of California

The New Neo Posted on by

Accusers are coming out of the woodworks and staff are resigning from his campaign; see this and this.

From the former:

Rep. Eric Swalwell’s campaign for governor was reeling Friday after two news reports detailed accusations of sexual assault and misconduct, with multiple staffers resigning and both prominent allies and rival candidates calling on the California Democrat to exit the race.

The exodus, which began just before the San Francisco Chronicle published a report detailing a former staffer’s claims, jolted California’s marquee race just weeks before ballots start landing in voters’ mailboxes. The former staffer told the newspaper that Swalwell had sexual encounters with her while working for him, and that he sexually assaulted her twice when she was too drunk to consent.

Hours later, CNN reported on that ex-staffer and three additional women who accused Swalwell of making sexual advances and sending explicit photos and messages. And POLITICO reported that a former Swalwell employee had signed an agreement over an employment discrimination claim that included confidentiality and non-disparagement clauses, despite his campaign saying no one on his staff signed an NDA during his tenure.

It’s hard to believe that this information just came out all at once, organically. It’s easier to believe it was revealed now because someone or some group wanted Swalwell out of the race, perhaps because too many Democrat candidates versus GOP candidates threaten to split the vote. Can’t have a Republican governor of California, right?

How many of the accusations are true? If the staffers have the suggestive emails, that would certainly constitute evidence:

Multiple Democrats running for governor called on Swalwell both to exit the race and to resign from Congress — including former Rep. Katie Porter and billionaire Tom Steyer, who have consistently been the top-polling Democrats along with Swalwell and could benefit from his departure.

Such a surprise.

Katie Porter has this history:

In January 2023, Politico reported on criticism that Porter was “allegedly a terrible—according to some accounts, abusive and racist—boss.”

The Washington Post interviewed eight former employees on condition of anonymity about their experiences working for Porter. The staffers described her as domineering and recounted multiple examples of her mistreatment of staffers, including instances where she berated staffers until they cried. In response to the allegations that she created a toxic workplace, Porter defended herself on The View in April 2023 by comparing herself to women of color who are discriminated against.

In October 2025, a video of an online interview from July 2021 between then-Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and Porter resurfaced. In the background, one of Porter’s employees appeared and Porter shouted “Get out of my fucking shot!”. After the video resurfaced, Porter stated that “what I did to the staffer was wrong.” She also claimed that she apologized to the staffer and thanked her for the correction.

And then there’s Steyer, who doesn’t seem to have a lot of skeletons in his closet of the personal variety – not that I’ve done all that much sleuthing. This is interesting, though, about his failed 2020 presidential run (yeah, I didn’t really remember it either):

Steyer spent over $253 million on his 2020 presidential campaign. Nearly $250 million of that sum consisted of his personal funds.

But getting back to Swalwell, it’s interesting that his relationship with a suspected Chinese spy named Fang Fang wasn’t quite enough to sink him – or are the things related? Was more information about that due to come out?:

Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., is threatening legal action against the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as it reportedly considers releasing potentially damaging files just weeks before he faces voters in California’s wide-open gubernatorial race.

Lawyers for Swalwell sent a cease-and-desist letter to FBI Director Kash Patel, warning the bureau would violate federal privacy law if it moves ahead with releasing records regarding the congressman’s decade-old relationship with a suspected Chinese spy named Christine “Fang Fang” Fang.

It seems to me that the Democrats just generally thought Swalwell’s baggage was getting too heavy, and they didn’t want him to become the candidate and have all this stuff come out later. So he’s under that great big bus, or almost certainly will be there shortly. Will he keep his Congressional seat? There’s a motion to expel him, but it was filed by GOP member Luna.

[NOTE: I must admit I find this topic tedious at this point. Corruption, corruption, trying to separate truth from fiction, all the while assuming California is a lost state swimming in fraud and leftism.

Plus, have you noticed that more and more sites make you wait while they verify you’re not a bot? My old computer is so slow it becomes annoying.

Plus, I keep misspelling “Swalwell” as “Stalwell.” Stallwell? Stalewell?]

The rise of family estrangement

The New Neo Posted on by

This news is both sobering and unsurprising:

Adult children vs. parents, siblings vs. siblings — calling quits on one’s kin seems increasingly common.

In a 2025 YouGov poll of 4,395 US adults, nearly 4 in 10 respondents said they “no longer have a relationship with” one or more immediate family members. An episode of the Oprah Podcast on the “culture of estrangement” brought the topic home to millions of listeners.

While polls, social media and news of high-profile celebrity splits highlight the prevalence and pain of family breakups, researchers’ growing but still limited attention has yet to quantify how much they’ve multiplied. There are, however, plenty of potential drivers in today’s divorce rates, political polarization, rising individualism, reliance on therapists and social media memes about toxic relationships, says Joshua Coleman, an author, researcher and psychologist in private practice in the San Francisco Bay Area.

It all comes at a time when more Americans are prioritizing mental health — and when the internet is helping people find connections outside the family, he adds.

It’s mostly the younger generation cutting off the older rather than vice versa – also not surprising. They’ve been taught to label even minor disagreements “toxic” – and that they’re in need of withdrawing in order to protect their fragile selves from them.

I see evidence of this in real life and online. And of course I’ve been writing about familial estrangement because of political differences for my entire blogging career. It happens with long-term friendships, too.

Much of the younger generation wasn’t ever taught that “honor thy father and thy mother” has any particular valence. That Commandment is an interesting one, too; it doesn’t say to “love” parents or even “like” them. But to “honor” them would seem to preclude breaking off relations, unless it’s at the request of the parents.

The entire article is of interest and worth reading, especially if you’ve suffered from this sort of estrangement or know anyone who has. I consider the phenomenon tragic, for the most part. Of course, if parents are truly dangerous (blatant sexual abuse or something else of a very extreme nature, with no repentance or change on the part of the parent), sometimes breaking off is the only answer. But what I see online are almost always more minor complaints or political disagreements causing rifts, usually with the adult children feeling very self-satisfied and virtuous about their act of cut-off.

From the author interview with Joshua Coleman at the link:

A: Yet another strong factor these days is politics. In the Harris Poll, 42 percent said politics was the biggest factor driving family members apart.

Q: It’s the kids who are mostly initiating these estrangements, correct?

A: That’s true. We don’t have good research on the parents, but we know they are in the minority, and that it’s usually for religious reasons or they disapprove of the child’s gender identity or maybe the person that they’ve married, or their values.

Q: Why do you think parents are so much less likely to cut off their kids than kids are to cut off their parents?

A: Sociologists use the phrase “the intergenerational stake,” to convey the idea that when you’re raising your children you make a big investment, in part in the interest of furthering your genetic line. That can lead parents to assume that when they raise children, they will be close to them throughout their lifetime. Yet that’s obviously not how it is for most kids. This may help explain why a classic study in 1999 showed that parents of young adult children reported closer relationships and fewer problems than the children perceived.

Trump’s actual statement in his “civilization” threat, and the reactions to it

The New Neo Posted on by

By now you probably have read the many reactions to Trump’s Truth Social post last Tuesday, threatening to escalate. Both the woke left and the isolationist right spoke as with one voice: “He’s crazy! He’s a war criminal! He’s threatening to nuke the Iranian people and wipe them out!”

Never mind that a ceasefire followed, and that whatever threat he made was a negotiating tactic. Many of them were able to immediately pivot, with no sense of irony or shame, to some version of, “Trump TACO – he always chickens out, the coward.”

But you can search and search among them, as well as MSM articles on the subject, and it will be very difficult to find the full text of Trump’s actual threat. It’s not as though the text is long, either; it’s just a paragraph. One might think that before interpreting his meaning a person might actually read it and then quote it? But actually looking at the text and discussing it in any fair manner would ruin the anti-Trump propaganda message.

And they know they don’t need to do it. They count on their audiences (or people in general, and that includes Trump defenders) not to look it up. They just cite the first sentence for the most part, and then react to that.

But the whole thing is still up there for anyone to see. And here it is:

A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less redicalized minds prevail, maybe something wonderful can happen. WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and ocmplex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!

This had been preceded by an Easter day post of Trump’s featuring the f-word (among other things) and starting with this: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped in one, in Iran.”

How does any of this translate into nuclear weapons in anything except the Trump-haters’ fevered brains? Power plants and bridges (even if capitalized) don’t need nuclear weapons. And the “civilization” in that Tuesday message is quite obviously the “47 years of extortion, corruption, and death” that he threatens to end or supposedly (hopefully?) has already ended, being replaced by these supposedly “less-radicalized minds” with whom he’s now dealing. And that last sentence – “God Bless the Great People of Iran!” (with the capitalizations and the exclamation point) not only makes it clear that Trump has no intention of harming the ordinary population of Iran much less wiping them out, it is also in line with virtually everything he’s said and done up to this point.

So the misunderstanding by the anti-Trump pundits and politicians and MSM propagandists (hmmm; three m-words) is either willful or strikingly negligent or both. I believe it’s willful; I believe they did read the whole thing for the most part and understood it, but assumed their audience wouldn’t read it and that the first sentence could be successfully exploited for anti-Trump propaganda purposes. But if the pundits and politicians and MSM propagandists didn’t read the whole thing, that’s where the abysmal negligence would come in.

You can read more of their reactions here as well as here.

It’s certainly possible to critique Trump’s use of the word “civilization.” It was purposely hyperbolic, although the rest of the paragraph made that more clear. And of course it’s possible to criticize the war itself in good faith, for various reasons. But to pretend Trump was ready to use nukes and that he should be impeached for that? No, that’s not done in good faith.

It’s also instructive to see some newer posts from Trump, such as this:

All U.S. Ships, Aircraft, and Military Personnel, with additional Ammunition, Weaponry, and anything else that is appropriate and necessary for the lethal prosecution and destruction of an already substantially degraded Enemy, will remain in place in, and around, Iran, until such time as the REAL AGREEMENT reached is fully complied with. If for any reason it is not, which is highly unlikely, then the “Shootin’ Starts,” bigger, and better, and stronger than anyone has ever seen before. It was agreed, a long time ago, and despite all of the fake rhetoric to the contrary – NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS and, the Strait of Hormuz WILL BE OPEN & SAFE. In the meantime our great Military is Loading Up and Resting, looking forward, actually, to its next Conquest. AMERICA IS BACK!

Or this, intended to counter various MSM lies:

The Failing New York Times and Fake News CNN each reported a totally FAKE TEN POINT PLAN on the Iran negotiations which was meant to discredit the people involved in the peace process. All ten points were a made up HOAX – EVIL LOSERS!!! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN

I saw that 10-point plan discussed in the MSM and even by some on the right as though it was agreed on by Trump. That seemed preposterous on the face of it, but people were taking it seriously.

We also have this from Trump:

Numerous Agreements, Lists, and Letters are being sent out by people that have absolutely nothing to do with the U.S.A. / Iran Negotiation, in many cases, they are total Fraudsters, Charlatans, and WORSE. They will be rapidly exposed after our Federal Investigation is completed. There is only one group of meaningful “POINTS” that are acceptable to the United States, and we will be discussing them behind closed doors during these Negotiations. These are the POINTS that are the basis on which we agreed to a CEASEFIRE. It is something that is reasonable, and can easily be dispensed with. It’s very much like Fake News CNN last night, headlining a “source” that had no power or authority to write a Letter claiming great authority. President DONALD J. TRUMP

I’m not fond of Trump’s writing style myself. But I think I understand its purposes and I often see its effectiveness. I’m not grading him on style points, even if I’d wish for a more elevated one. I’m grading him on accomplishments.

So far, in a little over a month, Iran’s leadership and capacity for war have been very considerably degraded. A year ago, if someone had told you those thing would be happening in that short amount of time with very little loss of US life, you’d probably be in awe. And this thing isn’t over yet, either.