Huawei and the arrest of Wanzhou Meng

The New Neo Posted on by

Of concern for several reasons:

Lake recaps “the arrest in Canada of Wanzhou Meng, Huawei’s chief financial officer . . . on what appears to be Huawei’s evasion of U.S. sanctions against Iran.” Then Lake quickly cuts to the chase: “These are serious allegations, but U.S. intelligence agencies have an even greater concern: that China’s largest telecom company will allow the Chinese state to monitor the electronic communications of anyone using Huawei technology.”

Lake recounts how earlier this year U.S. spy agencies urged Americans not to use Huawei phones; how Australia banned Huawei from assisting the development of its 5G wireless network; and, how in October, Senators Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) warned Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, that joint intelligence activities with the United States, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand may be curtailed if Canada allows Huawei to aid in the construction or maintenance of his nation’s 5G wireless network.

Further, he informs readers how, in 2012, the House Intelligence Committee released a “comprehensive report on Huawei and ZTE” that determined: “Inserting malicious hardware or software implants into Chinese-manufactured telecommunications components and systems headed for U.S. customers could allow Beijing to shut down or degrade critical national security systems in a time of crisis or war.”

I would say that China is more to be feared than Russia these days, but neither country is our friend—which is an understatement. In the Cold War things were more clear and we were more aware. Plus, the internet did not exist, and the internet, the expansion of international trade, and modern telecommunications in general have opened up a whole new world of spying and/or influence possibilities.

Finding the musical fountain of youth

The New Neo Posted on by

I was looking at one of those “then and now” rock music videos, in which there are a series of clips of rock singers singing one of their old hit songs when it was new and then singing it again much more recently.

Sometimes the person has lost his or her voice, but sometimes the singer sounds as good as ever. The same for looks. Some of the singers look as though there are about a thousand intervening years between their two clips rather than a few decades. Some look forever young(ish).

Case in point—someone named Peter Cetera. I’d never heard of him before, but I had heard the hit song he sings here. In the first clip he’s 42 years old (already a little bit long in the tooth for a rock singer) and in the second he’s 73. But he looks pretty darn good for 73—although he’s dressed like a corporate businessman, and he’s taken on an eerie resemblance to Bill Clinton:

Another singer I’ve never heard of is Susanna Hoff. But again, I know the song she sings here. In the first clip she’s 37 and in the second she’s 59, but not only does she look good, but she seems to have retained much of the quality of her very distinctive vocals. Despite this, though, she seems like a very different person, and the song has a much more contemplative and introspective quality:

And here’s a change of pace. It’s from Britain’s Got Talent, and the guy singing here is a 64-year-old parish priest from Ireland. I include it because I’ve always liked this song, but I also think this illustrates a number of things, among them how a voice can sound younger than a person’s years although the person may not look especially young, and also how an older person can convey a depth of feeling and experience that is difficult for a younger person to achieve:

John Kelly on the way out as chief of staff

The New Neo Posted on by

No surprise here.

By the way, the lede in that article is very poorly written. Or maybe it’s very well written, depending on what the writers were hoping to convey. Let’s take a look:

Former White House chief of staff John Kelly, who was assigned to bring a level of discipline to President Donald Trump’s often chaotic administration, is leaving the post after internal tensions increasingly spilled into public view in recent months, Trump said Saturday.

So, what did Trump say? Do you think he said that Kelly is leaving “after internal tensions increasingly spilled into public view in recent months”?

Of course not; that’s the authors of the article saying it. Trump said Kelly is leaving, praised him, and the rest is the authors’ editorializing within a supposedly straight news article, along with either careless construction of the sentence or very careful construction of the sentence to make it seem that Trump admitted to all that.

Who will be Kelly’s replacement? The money is on Nick Ayers, Pence’s chief of staff.

Weekend in Paris

The New Neo Posted on by

This time, authorities were more prepared, and made it more difficult for the rioters to do as much damage.

Most of the demonstrators have been peaceful. But the violent ones are determined to wreak havoc, and the Macron administration is determined to stop them.

Hope springs eternal among Trump’s enemies: now we’ve got him!

The New Neo Posted on by

I used to read memeorandum every day. But quite some time ago I stopped looking at it. It seemed that every single day I’d read the same headlines: Trump is finished and Mueller’s finally got him; Trump’s administration is in complete chaos; Trump is going to be convicted of this that and the other thing; Trump did something stupid.

Most of the headlines didn’t pan out and some of them were based on false premises or quotes taken out of context. Some of them were exaggerations, for example treating any turnover in personnel as a huge mutiny. Every now and then something had predictive value, but not reliably and not all that often. So it became a waste of time to look there and try to sort out the wheat from the chaff.

The same is true now. Today Ann Althouse shows a screenshot of the memeorandum page, and it’s filled with highly ominous headlines that would have you think Trump is only one step from going to prison. One of them that we’ve seen over and over again goes like this (in this case from the NY Times): “Is This the Beginning of the End for Trump?”

Who has the time and inclination to wade through it all at this point? I confess that I don’t. I’ll just read the writer I’ve found over time to be most trustworthy on the subject (although not infallible; but who can be that?): Andrew C. McCarthy. Right now the latest he’s written on the subject is this, from December 1:

Rght after Special Counsel Robert Mueller racked up yet another guilty plea to a false-statements charge on Thursday, a friend asked me, “Doesn’t this destroy Michael Cohen’s credibility as a witness?”…

Cohen would have to have some credibility before it could be destroyed…

…[T]he flaw in my friend’s question was not the assumption that Cohen had some smidgeon of value as a witness until it was extirpated by his plea of guilty to lying to Congress…The real flaw was the assumption that Special Counsel Mueller is lining up witnesses and building a criminal case, as prosecutors do…

As a prosecutor, you build a case by having your cooperating accomplice witnesses plead guilty to the big scheme you are trying to pin on the main culprit. After all, what makes these witnesses accomplices, literally, is that they were participants in the main culprit’s crime. That’s the scheme you’re trying to prove. So, on guilty-plea day, the cooperator comes into court and admits guilt to the same conspiracy on which you are trying to nail the lead defendant…

…[Y]ou build a case by first establishing the foundational criminal offense. Juries do not convict people because they like or trust the prosecution’s witnesses. They convict because they are persuaded that justice demands redress for a real crime.

Much much more at the link. Please read the whole thing.

It’s pretty clear there was no underlying crime here on which Trump conspired. What’s less clear, now that the House is about to become Democratic, is whether there will be an impeachment for that crimeless crime. The impeachment will have no teeth in the sense that—unless a real crime surfaces—there will be no conviction and removal. But that probably won’t stop the Democrats from trying.

There is a possibility that the Democrats may, however, enjoy talking about impeachment and writing about how awful Trump is more than they will actually like impeaching him and then not convicting him.

[NOTE: Andrew C. McCarthy has also written on the Barr appointment to become AG, which he calls a “home run” by Trump. And remember, McCarthy—although a conservative—is not basically a Trump supporter. But McCarthy’s a fair guy who gives him his due when he sees reason to do so.]

[ADDENDUM: This is also worth reading.]

France on the brink—of what?

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t speak French, but Ace has kindly translated this article from Le Figaro:

Fearing that an “enormous violence” will be part of “Act IV” of the mobilization of the “Yellow Jackets,” authorities have announced the mobilization of “exceptional measures” of more than 65,000 security forces deployed throughout France, and putting the finishing touches the security presence already in Paris.

As the fourth Saturday of mobilization of the “Yellow Jackets” approaches, l’Elyssee dreads that “an enormous violence” will explode in Paris this weekend. Throughout France, the calls to gather in Paris and demolish the current establishment rule are multiplying. Last week, a young man encountered by Le Figaro near the Saint-Lazare station was shouting: “This is not a protest, this is the Revolution!”…

“What is at stake, is the security of the French and our institutions,” pronounced the Prime Minister Edouard Philippe Tuesday.

I’ve noticed that in general there are two kinds of people who talk about a revolution. The first is self-aggrandizing Romantic (in this sense of the word “Romantic”) fools who have no idea what a revolution is or what it would entail. The second are those who are deadly serious.

Sometimes they’re even the same people. Sometimes not.

William Barr for AG: the latest in Trump nominees

The New Neo Posted on by

President Trump has chosen William Barr to be his next attorney general.

My first reaction was: Bill Barr? Is he still alive?

The answer, obviously, is “yes, very much alive”—and he’s not even all that old at 68. Barr was George H. W. Bush’s attorney general in 1991, close to thirty years ago, so he was quite a young man at the time.

Barr had been kicking around in various governmental roles till then, but afterwards he stayed mostly in the corporate world. Lo and behold, he’s back, and here’s a description of some of his current positions:

…[Barr] has previously supported Trump’s call to investigate his 2016 rival Hillary Clinton, and has questioned the need for Robert Mueller’s special counsel probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election…

Late last year, after Trump called on the Justice Department to investigate Clinton, Barr told The New York Times there was “nothing inherently wrong about a president calling for an investigation,” though he cautioned that an investigation “shouldn’t be launched just because a president wants it.”

But he told the Times that he saw more of a basis for investigating Clinton’s involvement in a uranium deal as secretary of state than he saw for investigating possible collusion between Trump and Russia.

“To the extent it is not pursuing these matters, the department is abdicating its responsibility,” Barr told the Times.

Barr supported Trump during the campaign and wrote a piece for The Washington Post days before the election saying that then-FBI Director James Comey did the right thing by disclosing that the bureau had essentially reopened the Clinton investigation. Months later, after Trump fired Comey, Barr wrote that Comey had “sandbagged” the Justice Department and usurped its authority by making the initial announcement about the Clinton probe in the summer of 2016.

Barr seems to be a somewhat interesting and unusual combination of things: an old-time establishment Republican allied with the Bushes who was an early Trump-adopter and who seems fairly conservative in his beliefs. He also has the advantage of being well-liked and well-respected by a wide variety of people—at least, till now. Now that Trump has given him the Trumpian stamp of approval, Barr may suddenly become persona non grata with people who previously admired him.

Here are some opinions:

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is said to be “elated” by the choice of Barr and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions has always held his predecessor in high regard, a source close to both men said.

If confirmed this time around, Barr will be tasked with guiding the Department through battles on multiple fronts — not only with a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, but potentially overseeing a politically charged investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, and answering to Trump, whose presidency thus fast has been marked by attacks on the DOJ and the FBI for a perceived failure to target his former political rivals.

I’m not sure who recommended Barr—perhaps the outgoing Sessions?—but it seems like a very creative choice and might even be a good one.

In other appointments, Trump has named State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert to replace Nikki Haley as UN ambassador. Nauert used to work for Fox News. I expect she’ll continue in the vein of Haley, although perhaps with a bit less force and eloquence, but I’m prepared to be pleasantly surprised.

Remember Pearl Harbor: 77th anniversary

The New Neo Posted on by

Today is the seventy-sixth anniversary of the December 7, 1941 Pearl Harbor attack. The generation that reacted to it by mobilizing and fighting World War II is on its last legs. But they were the ones we still call “the Greatest.”

I was reminded of this while watching one of those Oliver North “War Stories” TV shows, about Pearl Harbor. It featured some of the elderly participants reminiscing about that long ago day. Before each one spoke, there was a photograph of him back in 1941: young, vibrant, handsome, full of life. Now they were ancient, and most only vaguely resembled their former selves. But they still transmitted great moral strength and a kind of Gary-Cooperesque stoicism and understated bravery as they told their stories.

One year ago there were still quite a few WWII veterans alive:

The Department of Veterans Affairs doesn’t have data on veterans of individual battles, and an alumni association for the battle disbanded in 2011, at the 70th anniversary, when it believed just 8,000 of the 84,000 uniformed Americans on Oahu during the attack remained alive. Since 2011, roughly half of veterans of World War II who were alive then have died, according to VA projections, leaving fewer than 700,000 alive today. Roughly 400 American WWII veterans die each day. The VA projects fewer than 3,000 veterans of WWII will survive to the 100th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, and that may be optimistic…

That was written one year ago, and obviously the number of Pearl Harbor veterans alive has only gotten smaller—as it will every year until the number is zero. And then, we will still remember? In fact, do most of us remember Pearl Harbor now? Time marches on, and even 9/11 has faded into the background for most people.

A couple of facts: it’s become fashionable to believe that FDR knew about the attack in advance and let it happen anyway. But those 12/7-truthers are almost undoubtedly wrong. Roosevelt wanted to get us into the war, and he knew a Japanese attack was coming at some point, and informed his generals to that effect, but he knew none of the particulars in advance.

This idea of a government in cahoots with the enemy, willing to let innocent Americans die, keeps coming up again and again. A certain not insignificant segment of the population appears to favor such conspiracy theories, probably because we don’t like feeling vulnerable to sudden attack.

Here’s a post I published ten years ago on Pearl Harbor Day. It focuses on FDR’s famous speech afterward, and the will and resolve he amply demonstrated. Will and resolve in war remain extremely relevant these days.

Here is just a little bit of Roosevelt’s post-Pearl Harbor speech, in case we need reminding of what American resolve used to sound like:

No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.

Here’s the speech itself:

The memorable phrase that began FDR’s address, “a date which will live in infamy,” wasn’t in Roosevelt’s earlier draft. It reads “a date which will live in world history.” That sounds like a high school essay; Roosevelt crossed out “world history” and added “infamy” in his own hand. He also changed “simultaneously and deliberately attacked” to “suddenly and deliberately attacked.”

Wise choices.

[NOTE: This is a somewhat updated version of a previous post.]

[ADDENDUM: Somewhere, somehow, I lost a year. I originally labeled this day as being the 76th anniversary, which of course is incorrect.]

Stocks…

The New Neo Posted on by

…have been skittish lately:

Stocks initially fell sharply as continuing fears over U.S.-China trade relations and concern over a possible economic slowdown kept investors on edge.

“There’s concern that the trade deal is not as good as [President Donald] Trump said it was,” said Mark Esposito, CEO of Esposito Securities. “Recession fears are also settling into the market.”

“It’s definitely safer to be in cash right now,” Esposito said. “I don’t think the fall is over.”

But isn’t it usually safer to be in cash, except for the possibilities of theft and fire and flood? The reason people ordinarily invest money, though, isn’t for safety, it’s about growing their money. The possibility of growth always involves the possibility of risk. The greatest growth possibilities often involve the greatest risk.

When I was married I let my husband do whatever investing we did. He was more interested in it and also more knowledgeable, and he had a greater tolerance for risk. We made some money and lost it and made it and lost it and I have to say that was one thing we never argued about. I just assumed the whole endeavor was risky; it made me nervous, but if I’d been in charge we never would have grown our money at all.

I wouldn’t be surprised at this point if the stock market were about to, as they say, “correct.”

Wisconsin Republicans in legislature vote to limit power of incoming Democratic governor

The New Neo Posted on by

This development is interesting on a lot of levels:

Wisconsin’s incoming Democratic governor is condemning moves by Republicans legislators to weaken his power.

Gov.-elect Tony Evers said Wednesday that Republicans have overridden the will of voters who chose Democrats in last month’s election. He says a handful of people desperately want to “cling to power.”

The Republican-controlled Legislature approved sweeping changes early Wednesday that weaken the governor’s ability to make rules that enact laws. The legislation also shields the state jobs agency from his control until September and cuts into the powers of the incoming Democratic attorney general.

What’s interesting about this is that it’s an example of Republicans doing what Republicans so seldom do: playing hardball. It’s also an example of Republicans doing what Democrats would do if they were in the same position—the position being that Republicans control the legislature and a Democrat is about to be sworn in as governor.

But is it right to do it? And is “right” even a consideration anymore, now that politics has become an almost completely non-cooperative and partisan affair?

Here’s what Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has to say about it:

Republicans have controlled both branches for eight years. Their concern about constitutional balance seems at the very least tardy. If that’s the reason, why not take it up before the election — or earlier, when it would have limited Scott Walker’s authority?

There are all sorts of outcome-based reasons for doing this, of course. Republicans will insist that Democrats wouldn’t have played fair with executive authority without those restrictions. As Evers notes, both he and incoming AG Josh Kaul ran on a platform of activism, so the impulse behind this effort may well be understandable. There is a need to protect a lot of good work done over the last eight years, especially from the GOP’s perspective.

That still doesn’t make this the right method, unless we’re now fully embracing a means-justifying-ends philosophy.

My questions would be the following:

What powers does the Wisconsin constitution give the legislature vis a vis the executive branch? Is this action by the legislature within their constitutional powers? Then they can do it. It does set a bad precedent, but it’s been a long time since Wisconsin Democrats have observed any niceties of the sort, particularly in their long and bitter fight against Scott Walker.

I also would like to know whether the powers they are limiting are powers that Scott Walker actively exercised as governor.

By the way, although this is technically a lame duck legislature, it’s not effectively so because after January the Republicans in Wisconsin will continue to be in the majority in the legislature and will continue to control it.