The art of the China deal

The New Neo Posted on by

Phase 1 completed:

If the Chinese make good on their promises in the trade deal with the United States, it’s a “very big win” for President Trump, Fox Business and Fox News host Neil Cavuto said Wednesday.

Appearing on “America’s Newsroom” with host Sandra Smith, Cavuto said that the devil is in the details when it comes to phase one of the agreement.

“The Chinese have committed to buy $200 million worth of American goods, Sandra, over the next couple of years,” said Cavuto. “Now, they have made similar promises in the past.”

“In fact, they have created eight times since 2010, when they’ve made similar deals,” he said. “So, they’re kind of like me on diet resolutions. You’ve got to check them to see if they are not sneaking some cannolis in the back room.”…

If the Chinese don’t hold up their end of the bargain, Cavuto said the threat to them would potentially become more tariffs…

Would you say that extremely cautious optimism is in order?

Well, now at least we know that Ilhan Omar writes her own tweets

The New Neo Posted on by

…because she couldn’t possibly be hiring someone to come up with this – and if she is it’s time to fire that person:

Reflect upon the fact that Omar is a member of Congress. Then again, at least she doesn’t believe that islands can tip over.

But seriously folks, when you get into your car, don’t you just put a few nickels into the slot and off it goes for miles and miles?

Lest you think my nickels reference irrelevant, let me remind you of this:

A nickel, in American usage, is a five-cent coin struck by the United States Mint. Composed of 75% copper and 25% nickel, the piece has been issued since 1866.

Copper and nickel, just like Polymet. Down with those nickel barons!

The scarlet “I” of IMPEACHMENT

The New Neo Posted on by

Impeachment, now and forever:

Pelosi likes to envision Trump like this:

It occurs to me that Pelosi would be great as Lady M.

And yes, today the House voted to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate.

[NOTE: I first wrote about the scarlet “I” in this post.]

I’m trying to care about the Democratic debate…

The New Neo Posted on by

…and Warren’s handshake snub of Sanders, or CNN’s favoring of Warren (the moderator’s question for Sanders reminds me of “have you stopped beating your wife?”), and all that jazz. But I just don’t.

The entire group is both offputting and boring – boring in that they say the same claptrap over and over. I’ve watched a few moments here and there, and I also read commentary on the debates, and I can’t bring myself to watch any more than that. As regular readers here know, I don’t care for debates anyway, ordinarily. And these are even worse than usual.

But here’s a thread to talk about them, if you feel differently. I certainly do care who ends up being the Democratic nominee, but it seems as though that event is a long way away.

Russian ministers resign, supposedly in protest

The New Neo Posted on by

From Russia:

In a surprise move, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev resigned along with the country’s entire Cabinet, Russian state news agency Tass reported Wednesday.

Medvedev made the announcement after Russia’s President Vladimir Putin unveiled a series of constitutional changes that Medvedev said would alter the country’s balance of power. Medvedev is a longtime close Putin ally. He has served as Russia’s prime minister since 2012. Before that, he spent four years as president, 2008-12…

Tass said Putin thanked Medvedev for his service but noted that the prime minister’s Cabinet failed to fulfill all the objectives set for it. The news agency said Putin plans to name Medvedev as a deputy in Russia’s Security Council. It was not immediately clear whether Putin asked for Medvedev to go and if his role in the Security Council – which he accepted – is a promotion or a demotion.

Putin…has been in power in Russia for more than two decades…Medvedev’s resignation could be a sign that Putin wants to try to extend his 20-year rule after his term of office formally expires in 2024…

Under Russia’s existing constitution, Putin would not be entitled to seek another presidential term in four years’ time.

So, is this some sort of elaborate theater designed to give the appearance of a protest, when it actually will end up facilitating Putin’s power grab? Things are not always what they seem.

Speaking of which, there’s also this:

The constitution currently bans anyone from serving more than two consecutive presidential terms, but Putin proposed Wednesday to limit future presidents to a maximum of two terms, total.

That sounds like a limitation of the presidential role rather than an expansion, but there may be a twist here I’m not seeing. My guess is that Putin wants to expand or at least continue his own power, and that just about everything he’s proposing is an effort to accomplish that.

So far, although I’ve looked, I haven’t seen any discussion of today’s developments that seems to offer much insight. Anyone care to try? I bet I get some takers.

[NOTE: By the way, that USA Today article from which I got most of the quotes in this post also helpfully offers this tidbit as somehow relevant to the occasion:

President Donald Trump has joked several times about trying to extend his time in the White House beyond the constitutionally-mandated two, four-year terms.

“He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday,” Trump said in a speech to Republican donors in 2008, speaking about China’s President Xi Jinping.

At least they acknowledge it was a joke. But there’s absolutely zero reason to put it in the article except to get people worried that Trump has something similar planned, and that his “joke” is just a pretend joke.]

Project Veritas: the left never seems to lose that Gulag impulse

The New Neo Posted on by

That tape reminds me very much of this from the 60s:

Disasters and blame in Iran

The New Neo Posted on by

I thought of adding this as an addendum to my previous post today. But then I decided it deserved the emphasis of a post of its own.

Some Iranian history:

…[I]t was another tragedy, one of the biggest terrorist attacks ever, with a lot of lies behind it that helped bring the Ayatollah Khomeini and his minions to power. Many Americans are not even aware of it…

From Bloomberg:

“On the night of Aug. 18, 1978, a fire broke out at a cinema in Abadan, close to the border with Iraq. The conflagration claimed anywhere from 420-470 lives, and it was quickly clear that the fire was no accident. The government of the Shah, already feeling the effects of widespread popular discontent, blamed Marxist terrorists.

“The opposition, led by the exiled Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, blamed the Shah’s much-feared intelligence agency. The movie being screened, “The Deer,” was a thinly-veiled critique of the economic distress felt by most Iranians, and the widespread corruption of the Shah’s government. Years would pass before the truth of the burning of Cinema Rex came to light: The arsonists had been Khomeini loyalists, inspired by the cleric’s contempt for cinema as an instrument of Western decadence. It is now acknowledged as one of the deadliest acts of terrorism ever.

But in the immediate aftermath of the fire, Iranians widely blamed the Shah’s regime, and Cinema Rex became a rallying cry for nationwide protests. In the months that followed, these grew in size and frequency, leading eventually to the unrest that forced the Shah to flee — and ushered in the Islamic Republic.”

The Khomeini terrorists barred the exits so people couldn’t get out and set the building ablaze, so many burned alive or suffocated. Many were women and children, infuriating the public…

Western mainstream media “instantly and foolishly” fell for it all and blamed the Shah for the fire, according to the Times of Israel. Carter administration officials were completely taken in. The U.S. ambassador to Iran, William Sullivan, referred to Khomeini as a “Gandhi-like figure” and the U.S. Ambassador to the UN at the time, Andrew Young, said, “Khomeini will eventually be hailed as a saint”!

I wrote this post nine years ago about the incident.

More clouds on Iran’s horizon?

The New Neo Posted on by

Iran’s not been having a great week.

This could end up being a big deal, re the Iranian Deal:

Germany, France and the United Kingdom have launched a formal dispute mechanism against Iran which could end up putting international sanctions on the regime. The measure was announced on Tuesday following recent Iranian violations of the 2015 nuclear deal. The dispute will now be brought before a Joint Commission made up of Iran, Russia, China, the three European signatories, and the European Union. If the panel fails to resolve the dispute, the matter will then come before the United Nations Security Council.

Even if the process gets stalled at the UN, Iran could end up facing comprehensive international sanctions — in addition to the current U.S. sanctions, media reports suggest. “If the Security Council does not vote within 30 days to continue sanctions relief, sanctions in place under previous UN resolutions would be reimposed – known as a “snapback”…

It’s not time to get too excited about this. But still, it’s noteworthy that the nations in question – Germany, France, and the UK – might be willing to go along with new sanctions. Even if Iran’s buddy Russia blocks a Security Council vote, the snapbacks might come into play. None of these nations have a history of being tough on Iran – au contraire – so that’s why I put “might” in italics.

Internally, there’s also a seeming split brewing [hat tip: commenter “Sergey”] among the forces in Iran, specifically between the mullahs and the military. This has the potential of becoming big, as well, because history tells us that if the military and/or security forces such as police start refusing to defend a regime, the end may be nigh for the dictators. Whether or not we are anywhere near that point in Iran remains to be seen, but the report is that Iran’s leadership is claiming that not only was the military responsible for the shootdown (on its own?), but they didn’t tell those innocent leaders about the shootdown until Friday, although it happened early Wednesday morning in Iran. So all those denials by the government, and all those lies those leaders told, weren’t lies at all – they were just in the dark.

Riiiight. If so, then why didn’t they just say in their initial statements that they didn’t know why it crashed, and that they were investigating? That would actually be the normal thing for a government to say under the circumstances. Why did they immediately say it was technical difficulties, and anyone who said otherwise was a liar?

I doubt there are many people on the face of the earth who believe the regime at this point, but Iran’s leaders must go through the motions of blaming someone else (including the US, of course), because they know that the Iranian people are intensely furious with the leaders themselves. But the danger of blaming the military is obvious, if the military comes to see itself as endangered in general.

From the article [emphasis mine; also comments in brackets are mine]:

Several people have been detained in Iran over the accidental shooting down of a Ukrainian passenger plane with a missile, the country’s judiciary says…

Mr Esmaili told a news conference in Tehran that the judiciary would “investigate the causes and direct impact of the incident”.

He added: “We will investigate the extent to which US warmongering caused this event. Several people have been detained and the investigation continues.”…

In a televised speech, President Rouhani said the judiciary would assemble a special court with a high-ranking judge and tens of experts to oversee the probe.

“This will not be a regular and usual case. The whole world will be watching this court,” he added.

Mr Rouhani also stressed that Wednesday’s “tragic event” should not be blamed on one individual.

“It’s not only the person who pulled the trigger, but also others who are responsible,” he said.

“Iranian armed forces admitting their mistake is a good first step [indication there will be a show trial plus public mea culpas, as well as military officers going along with the party line that they didn’t tell the leaders right away. And if they really didn’t tell them right away – which I doubt – it probably would be because they were terrified that exactly this would happen, as well as their execution and various punishments for their families],” he added. “We should assure people that it will not happen again.”

The president also said he wanted relevant officials to explain publicly why it took days for the authorities to disclose [see comment in brackets in paragraph above] that missiles were fired at flight PS752.

The Iranian government’s spokesman has denied that it was involved a cover-up, saying Mr Rouhani was not told what had happened until Friday evening.

The commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ Aerospace Force said on Saturday that he had informed “officials” about the strike hours after the incident.

So there’s a bit of a contradiction there, although my guess is that the commander of the Aerospace Force will have his memory “refreshed” about that, until the discrepancy between the two stories disappears and he supports Rouhani’s version.

The Revolutionary Guards are the notorious IRGC:

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)…is a branch of the Iranian Armed Forces, founded after the Iranian Revolution on 22 April 1979 by order of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini…intended to protect the country’s Islamic republic political system. The Revolutionary Guards state that their role in protecting the Islamic system is preventing foreign interference as well as coups by the military or “deviant movements”.

Angering this group could cause them to become a lot more lax about such “deviant movements.”

More:

The Revolutionary Guards have roughly 125,000 military personnel including ground, aerospace and naval forces. Its naval forces are now the primary forces tasked with operational control of the Persian Gulf. It also controls the paramilitary Basij militia which has about 90,000 active personnel.

The Basij militia is the IRGC arm tasked with controlling the Iranian people:

Today the force consists of young Iranians who volunteer, often in exchange for official benefits. Basij serve as an auxiliary force engaged in activities such as internal security, enforcing state control over society,[9] law enforcement auxiliary, providing social services, organizing public religious ceremonies, policing morals, and suppression of dissident gatherings.

I’m not making any predictions. But it seems as though the leaders of Iran are treading on delicate ground if they make the IRGC the fall guys in order to protect themselves. Maybe the whole “trial” will develop mostly as a way to blame The Great Satan for all of it. But I don’t know that such an effort will be successful – except, of course, with the left of the US and western Europe.

Who’s “electable”?

The New Neo Posted on by

I confess that I don’t really understand what makes a candidate “electable.”

I remember, however, that it used to be considered a big deal in the GOP. Over and over, a more moderate candidate was touted as more “electable,” and that seemed at least somewhat correct. After all, to be elected, a person had to appeal to swing voters in the middle.

At least, it seemed that way. That was one of the arguments for McCain and Romney, but both lost. However, the memory of the huge loss of someone like Goldwater was a cautionary tale. The only Republicans who had won the presidency in many decades were indeed moderates such as the two Bushes. Not since Reagan had a conservative won, and he was a special case that included intense charisma. Prior to that, I’d say the last conservative president had been Coolidge.

And then Donald Trump won. I can’t even characterize where he seemed to stand politically prior to the 2016 election, but I don’t think there’s anything especially “moderate” about him as a personality, and his presidency has played out in a way that’s further to the right than most people expected.

Now it’s the Democrats who seem obsessed with finding a candidate who is “electable.” They are handicapped in this endeavor by a seeming contradiction: they want someone electable, but if “electability” is defined as “not being too radically leftist,” then they’re in quite a bit of trouble because Democrat voters seem enamored of leftism these days.

The most passionate candidates among the Democrats are leftists, and even their so-called (or pretend) “moderate” candidates are tacking way to the left in order to appeal to the base. Their “moderate” candidates – if there are any – are just not popular or charismatic and have failed to garner much support within the party (Bloomberg can barely summon a minyan at his appearances). Biden is supposedly moderate, but sounds like a leftist most of the time and also sounds wacky much of the time.

And yet “electability” is what they seek, because defeating Trump – as Pelosi says, “one way or another” – is their tip-top priority.

“There can not be another massacre of peaceful protesters…The world is watching”

The New Neo Posted on by

There are now reports that Iranian demonstrators have been fired on, tear gassed, and beaten by the those in charge of riot control. It’s hard to know the extent of this, and the Tehran chief of police has denied it, but it certainly has been the case in the past.

The title of this post features some tweets from President Trump to the leaders of Iran. Here’s a fuller version:

US President Donald Trump told Iranian protesters that he supported them and warned the regime against cracking down on demonstrations that broke out after Tehran admitted shooting down an airliner by mistake, killing all 176 people aboard.

“The government of Iran must allow human rights groups to monitor and report facts from the ground on the ongoing protests by the Iranian people,” Trump tweeted Saturday in English and Farsi.

“There can not be another massacre of peaceful protesters, nor an internet shutdown. The world is watching,” Trump added, referring to an internet blackout that blanketed the country during widespread protests in November.

For those of us of a certain age, the phrase “the world is watching” rings an over-50-year-old bell. It was the chant the antiwar leftist protestors near the 1968 Democratic Convention shouted as some of them were being beaten by police in Chicago. Some history can be found here, but the gist of it is that the protestors tried to provoke police into violence and the police obliged.

Although there is really no parallel between that milder violence in 1968 and the recent massacres of protestors in Iran, the events in Chicago in 1968 were nevertheless shocking at the time to those of us who didn’t expect such things to happen in 1968 to antiwar demonstrators at a convention in the US. It was easy for college students (many of whom were against the war) to identify with the demonstrators who were being beaten.

That chant “The whole world is watching!” had a different scope in the pre-internet age. But it referred to the fact that there was massive television coverage, and that the demonstrators knew full well that the coverage would reflect poorly on the police.

Trump is old enough to remember. But when he uses the phrase now, he is addressing a murderous regime in Iran. And that regime in Iran has killed many of the student demonstrators in the past rather than just slightly injured them. This time, the whole world really is watching, because of the internet. This time, the mullahs are on the economic ropes. And this time, Trump is also purposely rubbing the left’s face in all of this by using that phrase, because the left is on the other side this time (although they would deny it, they have been empowering the present leaders of Iran).

Who will blink? Will the Iranian regime continue the violence, and how will they calibrate it? The mullahs know that, at least until January of 2021 and perhaps beyond, they are dealing with Trump and his resolve to stop them. They know that Trump has served notice through the killing of Suleimani (who among other things was the person in charge of previously cracking down so hard on the Iranian protestors) that he means business, as opposed to previous US presidents who mouthed words but whose actions spoke of passivity. Not only that, but Trump’s sanctions have hurt them economically and they fear that he’s willing to extend sanctions even further. And perhaps they think that if they start massacring the protestors, even their buddies in Europe may start turning on them (unlikely, but possible).

But they may consider it worth the risk. They know that if they don’t crack down on the protestors with lethal force, the size of the demonstrations may swell to unwieldy or even uncontrollable levels. And if the regime’s security forces ever turn on the regime as well, that would be an even greater turning point, the biggest turning point of all. I doubt it will happen, because those tasked with keeping the people in line tend to be highly dedicated to the cause of the theocracy, but it’s not unprecedented that they might have a breaking point.

One of the most poignant of all the recent chants by the demonstrators – who are mostly students – is ““You killed our geniuses!”. This is of course a reference to Flight 352 and the passengers on it, who leaned heavily to students traveling to Canada to commence or resume studies there. They were among Iran’s best and brightest, and the demonstrating students take it very personally that they were killed, and then that the people of Iran were lied to about it in such a blatant manner.

North Korea has maintained its iron grip by completely cutting its people off from the rest of the world. Iran has not done that for the most part, and it would be difficult (although not impossible) to start doing it now for more than a short while. The whole world is indeed watching, and the Iranian people are watching the whole world.

RIP Sir Roger Scruton

The New Neo Posted on by

A great loss.

Among the tributes listed there I think the one I like best is by Boris Johnson: “We have lost the greatest modern conservative thinker – who not only had the guts to say what he thought but said it beautifully.”

And here are some of Scruton’s best quotes:

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely relative,’ is asking you not to believe him. So don’t. Deconstruction deconstructs itself, and disappears up its own behind, leaving only a disembodied smile and a faint smell of sulphur.

Intellectuals are naturally attracted by the idea of a planned society, in the belief that they will be in charge of it.

It is not the truth of Marxism that explains the willingness of intellectuals to believe it, but the power that it confers on intellectuals, in their attempts to control the world. And since…it is futile to reason someone out of a thing that he was not reasoned into, we can conclude that Marxism owes its remarkable power to survive every criticism to the fact that it is not a truth-directed but a power-directed system of thought.

The disposition, in any conflict, to side with ‘them’ against ‘us’, and the felt need to denigrate the customs, culture and institutions that are identifiably ‘ours’. Being the opposite of xenophobia I propose to call this state of mind oikophobia, by which I mean (stretching the Greek a little) the repudiation of inheritance and home.

Leftwing people find it very hard to get on with rightwing people, because they believe that they are evil. Whereas I have no problem getting on with leftwing people, because I simply believe that they are mistaken.

The contradictory nature of the socialist utopias is one explanation of the violence involved in the attempt to impose them: it takes infinite force to make people do what is impossible.

The fictions were far more persuasive than the facts, and more persuasive than both was the longing to be caught up in a mass movement of solidarity, with the promise of emancipation at the end. My father’s grievances were real and well founded. But his solutions were dreams.

And the proximate cause of Iran’s admission…

The New Neo Posted on by

…about its takedown of Ukrainian Airlines Flight 752 was this:

[Ukainian security official] Danilov said Iran had no choice but to admit to shooting down the plane because the facts had become apparent to Ukrainian experts on the ground and to the international community.

The “cherry on top” in Ukraine’s probe, he said, came on Friday evening Iran time, when Ukrainian investigators found fragments of the top part of the airplane cabin that had been pierced by what appeared to be the shrapnel of a missile warhead.

“As we saw it, Iran had to face the reality that there’s no way they’ll get out of this,” Danilov said.

In addition, reports that the plane had made some sort of sharp or unusual turn are erroneous:

Contradictions and miscues complicated Iran’s message even as it took responsibility for the disaster. Iran’s military, in its initial admission early Saturday, said the flight’s crew had taken a sharp, unexpected turn that brought it near a sensitive military base — an assertion that was immediately disputed by the Ukrainians.

Hours later, an Iranian commander who accepted full responsibility for the disaster agreed that the Ukrainians were right.

“The plane was flying in its normal direction without any error and everybody was doing their job correctly,” said the commander, Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, who leads the airspace unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard — a powerful, hard-line military force. “If there was a mistake, it was made by one of our members.”

But this sentence from the same article immediately stuck out:

Iranians who only a few days earlier were united in outraged grief over the U.S. killing of a storied Revolutionary Guard leader, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, were now once again out en masse protesting their government.

Are the writers of the article that easily fooled? Do they really think that grief at Suleimani’s death gripped the whole country? Do they have no idea how these things work in Iran? Or are they just churning out the usual leftist propaganda?

Or all of the above.