Trump, Putin and Netanyahu: Strange Bedfellows?

In the meantime today’s lead story on the Wall Street Journal website told of initial planning for a summit between President Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Back in the real world, in the world where fictional narratives about Russian collusion blind us to reality, Putin and Trump are beginning to start something of a colloquy, if not a relationship.

Interestingly, the Asia Times reported yesterday, Putin seems to want to use Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu as an intermediary. As you recall, relations between the two leaders have become friendly of late.

The world of foreign policy is difficult and complex. It does not lend itself to simplistic formulae. To understand it correctly, we always need to pay attention to the shifting alliances. We have occasionally drawn attention to such matters, because otherwise it is impossible to understand what is going on in the world.

Asia Times reports on Putin’s remarks at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, the Russian Davos, a week or so ago.

The issue was the Trump administration’s rejection of the Iran nuclear deal:

In wide-ranging remarks at the forum, Putin made an explicit overture to Washington for dialogue. The US decision to quit the Iran nuclear deal was the leitmotif of the Q&A at St Petersburg – which are generally choreographed by the Kremlin in advance – and Putin seized the opportunity to articulate a highly nuanced position on the topic with an eye on the overall Russian-American relationship.

We note that Putin has a more intelligent appraisal of the issue than do the weenie leaders of Western Europe, who are most whining about lost business opportunities with Iran:

Unsurprisingly, Putin criticized the US’ rejection of the Iran nuclear deal as a unilateralist move which would have negative consequences. But then, Putin also expressed understanding for President Donald Trump’s domestic compulsion in taking such a decision.

Putin also proposed that the US and Iran, which had negotiated the 2015 pact directly, could resume their negotiations to settle the differences: “Even now, the US President is not closing the door on talks. He is saying that he is not happy about many of the terms of the deal. But in general, he is not ruling out an agreement with Iran. But it can only be a two-way street. Therefore, there is no need for unnecessary pressure if we want to preserve something. Doors must be left open for negotiation and for the final outcome. I think there are still grounds for hope.”

Putin probably sees Russia as a facilitator-cum-moderator between the US and Iran, but at any rate, he has deflected the focus from the EU’s approach, which single-mindedly focuses on the downstream impact of US sanctions against Iran. It is smart thinking on Putin’s part to signal that Moscow does not propose to wade into any transatlantic rift over the Iran issue. He probably doubts if the rift is real enough for outsiders to exploit.

But, Putin also added some remarks about the good relations he has established with Israel:

But the really intriguing part was that Putin also brought into the matrix the “good, trust-based relations between us (Russia and Israel).” Significantly, the interpolation occurred while Putin was arguing that the preservation of the Iran nuclear deal was also in Israel’s interests.

Neither Moscow nor Tel Aviv has divulged the details of the recent meeting between Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in Moscow in early May. But Israeli sources have since divulged in bits and pieces that a major understanding might have been reached as regards the imperative need for an holistic approach toward the whole situation surrounding the “Iran question,” including Iran’s presence in Syria, which Israel indeed sees as existential threat.

Clearly, if Russia and Israel can work together to defuse the impending conflict between Iranian forces and Israel in Syria, it is a good thing:

Interestingly, three days after Putin spoke at St Petersburg, an influential Moscow think tank came up with a commentary regarding the emergent trends in the Syrian situation. Basically, the commentary stressed that Russian policy was switching tack and giving primacy to the search for political settlement and reconstruction of Syria. But it went on to discuss the rising tensions between Iran and Israel in Syria and blamed Iran for using Syria for the “export” of its policy of Resistance against Israel.

Surely, it matters that Putin is shifting some of the blame to Iran:

Hinting at growing resentment within the Sunni majority in Syria against Iran’s activities, the commentary contextualized Putin’s recent call for the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Syrian soil. It openly rapped the Iranians on the knuckle: “Iran’s operations in Syria go far beyond fighting terrorists and are hardly welcomed by anyone within the region and beyond. This heightens tensions in Israel’s relations with its bitter rivals … Serving as a platform for fighting the ‘Zionist’ enemy is something Syria needs the least.”

Indeed, these are extraordinary statements for an establishment think tank known to be close to the Kremlin. The key elements were: a) Russia holds Iran as responsible for ratcheting up tensions with Israel; b) Russia thoroughly disapproves of Syria being turned into a turf for Iran’s policy of “Resistance” against Israel; and, c) Moscow expects the Assad regime to distance itself from Iran’s anti-Israeli activities.

So, Putin wants to remain a major player in the Middle East. And he knows that he cannot do so without working with President Trump. He knows that Trump and Netanyahu are close allies and he is happy to make the Israeli prime minister an intermediary:

Arguably, this Russian stance harmonizes with what Trump and Netanyahu have been saying all along. Perhaps, Russia hopes to cajole Tehran to walk toward the negotiating table where Trump is waiting. Perhaps, Putin also calculates that such a helpful stance cannot but have positive fallouts on US-Russia relations as a whole. Time will tell.

The Asia Times concludes its report:

The bottom line is that the close ties between Russia and Israel are sailing into full view. Interestingly, Israel just obliged a famous Russian oligarch [Roman Abramovich] who is perceived as close to Putin, by granting him citizenship, which would enable him to visit Britain – although London refuses to renew his residence permit. The influential Kremlin-linked Russian oligarch now de facto becomes the wealthiest Israeli citizen, too.

Suffice to say, it all does seem a cozy condominium between Putin and Netanyahu. The big question will be how far Netanyahu can help Putin to bring about a Russian-American “thaw” under this complex set of circumstances.

We await further developments. Clearly, the latest effort to set up a summit meeting between Trump and Putin shows that the relationship is advancing in the right direction.

Ending "The Americans"

As Shakespeare put it, “our revels now are ended.” Or, in more contemporary terms, “The Americans” is over. True enough, it was one of the best that television has offered. It was exceptionally well acted and written, and mostly sustained itself over six seasons. On Wednesday evening it ran its final episode, and happily for all of us, it was a great episode. Those of us who remember the last episode of Seinfeld know how easy it is to botch such a task.

As it happened, the most important and greatest scene of the episode was the facedown between FBI agent Stan Beeman and Philip Jennings. Elizabeth and Paige Jennings were also in the scene, but as Angelica Jade Bastien notes, the mano-a-mano confrontation was the core of the scene. It was a chance to see two great actors at their best.

Keri Russell as Elizabeth Jennings was also in the scene and she has been excellent throughout the show. Daughter Paige was the weak link in the scene and in the last two seasons. In my humble opinion, once the show moved more of the focus onto Paige, it lost interest. Truth be told, the actress playing Paige was not in the same league as Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell. Thus, no one could really care about her. You cannot hold audience interest in a drama led by an actress whose performances ranged from wooden to leaden.

Bastien correctly remarks the importance of the scene, but she lards over her analysis with girl talk, raising issues about intimacy and vulnerability. In truth, it’s not about intimacy or real vulnerability; it’s about friendship and betrayal.

Stan and Philip had become friends. They had become good friends. And yet, Philip had hidden his true occupation, his defining lie from his best friend, who happened to be an FBI agent assigned to counterespionage.

Bastien describes a crucial moment:

Stan’s devastation leads him to veer from making threats toward the Jenningses to questions of a more emotional sort, like when he simply asks “Henry?” It’s a question ripe with the desire to understand how deep this betrayal goes. It’s his love for the family that leads him to stand frozen when Philip first mutters, crestfallen, “We were just doing a job.” Questions linger in the air between them about loyalty and honesty and how much of their relationship was real. When did things shift from being a job to being a genuine friendship?

Bastien sees Philip baring his soul, which is not quite correct. He does speak honestly, but he does not whine or beg. She is correct to point out how brilliant Matthew Rhys is in this scene. His acting is memorable. We do not see it often.

Rhys’s performance creates an anti-hero defined by his contradictions and vulnerabilities. “You were my only friend in my whole shitty life. All these years, my life was the joke, not yours,” Philip says before revealing how he quit his work as a spy. Instead of cowering or begging or turning to violence, he bares his soul.

We do not know whether Philip really believes this, and we can have doubts about whether he had become a true friend to Stan. Why would a master of disguise and deception not be lying here, too? And yet, Stan accepts it, and maintains his loyalty to a friend.

In the garage scene, Philip gave Stan a choice: between loyalty to his friend and loyalty to the FBI. The choice is made that much more difficult by the fact that, even though the Jennings were responsible for more than their fair share of homicidal mayhem Philip had walked away from espionage in the entire last season. In the recent season, however, he had put a few feet back in the water. And we see later that they need to don their last disguises to pass through Canadian customs. Moreover, both Philip and Elizabeth had turned against their handlers and had undermined a plot to overthrow the recently installed Gorbachev presidency.

We were watching a complex moral calculus, of conflicting loyalties and duties. As you know Stan let the Jennings family escape… he could easily have shot them or arrested them. Some have suggested that this action made him a tragic figure. I do not think so. It made him someone who faced a moral dilemma and made a decision where there was no obviously good choice.

In the end Stan Beeman rides up to the Jennings’s son Henry’s boarding school, to take on his new role of surrogate father. You see, the Jennings flee the nation and the West to return to the Soviet Union. But they decided not to take their son Henry with them. Good decision or bad decision… you decide. But the fact that Stan is going to take over parenting the boy strikes a good note… one that suggested that Stan’s decision has yielded something positive.

The P. C. Police Invade Portland

It’s not just Starbucks that has succumbed to P. C. bullying. America’s junior Red Guards have escaped from their campus cages and are running wild in American cities. Naturally, this happens in the most progressive “woke” cities, places like Portland, OR.

Andy Ngo reports on some recent incidents in the Wall Street Journal. They speak for themselves:

But these days politics is ruining the scene. One of the first victims, Sally Krantz, in 2016 opened a bistro, Saffron Colonial, featuring historical recipes from the British Empire. Furious social-justice warriors accused her of racism and glorifying colonialism. Mobs gathered outside the establishment, and detractors swamped its Yelp page with negative reviews and insults. Suppliers boycotted her. Eventually Ms. Krantz gave in and changed the name to British Overseas Restaurant Corporation.

And also:

In the spring of 2017, Kali Wilgus and Liz Connelly were accused of “stealing” Mexican culture—by selling burritos from a truck. They received death threats and shut down their business and their social-media presence.

Just in case you wondering about the rationale, Ngo continues:

Then an anonymous Google spreadsheet began circulating warning about restaurants that served ethnic cuisine: “These white-owned businesses hamper the ability for POC”—people of color—“to run successful businesses of their own . . . by either consuming market share with their attempt at authenticity or by modifying foods to market to white palates.”

And, of course, an incident at a bakery reminds us of what happened in that Philadelphia Starbucks. It turns out, a black customer wanted to be served after a bakery had closed. She was refused service and decided that she was singled out for being black. It did not cross her mind that being black does not mean that you do not have to play by the rules.

Here is what happened:

Last month Lillian Green, an “equity director” at the state Education Department, entered Back to Eden, a vegan bakery, a few minutes after closing time. She recorded videos accusing the bakery of refusing to serve her because she was black. Using the hashtag #LivingWhileBlack, Ms. Green—a doctoral student at Lewis and Clark College—took to Facebook to demand that Back to Eden fire the clerks.

The bakery obliged, issued a 3,400-word apology, and offered Ms. Green a job training the remaining employees in “racial inclusivity.” “In this situation it doesn’t really matter that the two staff members working are not themselves racist because the call they made to deny Lillian service caused her to feel like she had been discriminated against,” co-owner Joe Blomgren wrote in a now-deleted Facebook statement. “Sometimes impact outweighs intent and when that happens people do need to be held accountable.”

It takes very little in a progressive city to produce paroxysms of guilt in white people who have done nothing wrong.

And then, of course, there was Reparations Happy Hour:

Last week the Backyard Social tavern hosted a “Reparations Happy Hour,” during which “Black, Brown, and Indigenous people” were each given $10 and a drink paid for by white donors—who were asked not to attend. 

Don’t worry. They’re coming for you next.

Sheriff's Office Kept Paramedics from Helping Dying Children

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did. The “it” in the sentence refers to the Broward County Sheriff’s department response to the massacre at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL.

Given that high school children have used the massacre as an impetus to begin a campaign against guns, it is worth underscoring, yet again, the multiple failures of the sheriff’s department. Keep in mind, Sheriff Scott Israel received a vote of no confidence from his department. And yet, he still has his job. Why has the media not been disgracing him and calling for his ouster? It must be more politically expedient to blame it on the NRA.

To its great credit, the New York Times reported yesterday on yet another instance of dereliction by the sheriff’s department. Not from Israel himself, but from a leader in his department, a captain who refused to allow paramedics to enter the school while children lay dying.

Read it:

While students and teachers lay gravely wounded inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, a Fire Department official outside was begging to send in paramedics.

In the chaos immediately after the shooting rampage on Feb. 14 in Parkland, Fla., the Coral Springs Fire Department’s deputy chief, Michael McNally, repeatedly asked to dispatch specialized teams of paramedics and police officers to treat victims.

But his requests, according to a report the department released on Thursday, were denied by a captain with the Broward County Sheriff’s Office who was overseeing the law enforcement response.

Chief McNally wrote that he asked six times to send in the groups, but that Capt. Jan Jordan kept offering the same response: She “would have to check before approving this request.”

One hates to have to mention this, but why was it that a captain needed to check before approving? We already know that cowardly on-duty deputy Scot Peterson ran for cover when the shooting started. Now we see that a female captain was incapable of making a decision. Are you telling me that a captain had no discretion in allowing in paramedics? It feels like weakness, the kind that cares more with self-protection than with helping others. Could it be that she was hired to fill a diversity quota? Will that be a consolation to parents of children who lay bleeding in the building?

The Times continues:

The two-page report by Chief McNally, which outlines his interactions with the authorities outside the school, was the latest account of frustration and bewilderment over the law enforcement response.

After he arrived at the school, he offered four times to send in paramedics while the police were watching security footage to find the gunman, identified as Nikolas Cruz, a former student. The deputy chief told Captain Jordan that the teams — which each consist of three to four police officers and at least three paramedics — were specially trained to treat victims in an active shooter situation and would enter only the areas that the police had searched.

He offered two more times after the police discovered the video delay and saw that the gunman had escaped unnoticed from the building. The deputy chief was told to wait. “Once again, the incident commander advised, ‘She would have to check and let me know,’” he wrote in the report.

Excellent story from the Times. Kudos for good reporting.

Who's the Feckless Cunt Now?

In the past day and a half you have probably heard the word “cunt” more often than you heard it for the rest of your life. You know that decidedly unfunny comedienne Samantha Bee called Ivanka Trump a “feckless cunt.”

One is surprised that no one dared reply that, as the old schoolyard taunt says: it takes one to know one. It would have put an end to an absurd amount of moral posturing and virtue preening.

According to Bee, Ivanka Trump’s crime was… not to have taken control of her father’s immigration policy, something the Bee believed that Ivanka could do by being sufficiently alluring and by incestuously deploying her feminine mystique. What has feminism come to?

Given that these words fell in the midst of the major brouhaha over Roseanne Barr’s racist slur, one can only imagine that if we were still living in a serious country, we would first, not sprinkle our everyday conversation with vulgar epithets or barnyard obscenities, and second, not torture ourselves trying to find new ways to police speech.

It is not only that Bee’s mindlessly provocative slur ought rightly to be denounced. We feel obliged to point out that it was a prime instance of feminist misogyny. Do feminists really hate women that much? Do they believe that an attractive woman can get anything she wants from a man by slipping into a slinky frock, while other women, the true feminists need to work for it?

I leave it to your imagination.

Anyway, among the mass of commentaries on the topic—which mass I have certainly not read—one stands out. It’s by another feminist firebrand, by name of Erin Gloria Ryan. EGR is profoundly upset that the controversy has somehow slandered her favorite word, the word she throws into every conversation, roughly as some people put ketchup on everything they eat. What? You don’t know anyone who drowns all his food in ketchup? Consider yourself fortunate.

So, here is EGR—which, for those less literate, is short for: egregious—on her favorite word:

I love the word “cunt.” It’s so direct, sharp, and mean, with an acrid finish like a lick of whisky that leaves the roof of one’s mouth feeling disinfected and the eyes watering. In my mind, I use “cunt” on everything—men, women, pets, modes of transportation, inanimate objects. The other day I called the toilet paper holder in my bathroom a “stupid little cunt” for failing to hold up the toilet paper. I wish it were more socially acceptable to use it in more contexts. Everything can be a cunt if you truly believe in it.  

At least, EGR has established, for all time, that the  “cunt” she uses on everything is not tasteless. Good to know that Samantha Bee was engaging in tasteful humor. Besides, as we all know only to well, and as the Latin has it: De gustibus non est disputandum. That is: there's no arguing with taste.

Police Are Standing Down In America

Somehow or other, for reasons that defy reason, the presidency of an African-American man did nothing to reduce the incidence of crimes committed by people of color. No one is really willing to face the fact of so calamitous a failure, so our intelligentsia is looking for other ways to deal with the problem.

Political leaders are refusing to hold criminals to account. Thus, pretend that criminal acts are not criminal acts. After all, the Obama justice department, civil libertarians, media pundits and black lives matter activists have focused like a laser beam on faulting white police officers. They exonerated criminals and cannot understand why this produced more crime. Who could have imagined such a thing?

The media is colluding with the police in covering up the problem by ignoring it. They understand that crime statistics will drop if fewer crimes are reported. In those great bastions of Western liberal order, Sweden and Germany, political leaders cover up their embarrassment over the crime that so-called refugees brought with them by not reporting the crimes or by not reporting the ethnicity of criminals. At least, it makes the statistics look better... and we all care mostly about appearances, don't we.

This sends the message that law and order is a white concept. Thus, it does not apply to minority citizens. Having been mistreated by the white power elites in the past people of color should get a pass on crime. They are exempted from following the rules. Thus, the culture can focus on punishing or guilt tripping the true perpetrators, the white police.

The attack against the police is producing another predictable consequence. The men and women who keep us safe have decided that it is too risky to do their jobs. Thus, they turn a blind eye on crime. Professor Eugene O’Donnell has explained (via Maggie’s Farm) that the police have in many cases “gone to ground.”

American policing today is in a state of slow-motion collapse, struggling mightily to attract new officers — no matter how low standards are dropped.

Under sustained assault by the City Council, pundits and self-styled civil-liberties advocates, a new generation of New York City cops is being conditioned to avoid showdowns with civilians, especially where coercion or force is called for. We could have saved the costly investment in body cameras by explicitly telling the cops two words: “Do nothing.”

Officers who do more engagement than what is absolutely required have been threatened by HQ that they’ll find themselves on a list of “troublemakers.” Thousands have, or will soon, head for the exits, telling all within earshot to avoid police work as a career.

In many parts of the country, the police have gone to ground.

More and more police have decided that it simply is not worth the trouble to engage or to confront potential malefactors:

The truth, however, is that the proliferation of video recording of cops’ every interaction only will increase officers’ timidity. That will look like self-restraint in some cases, but overall it’ll put law enforcement on the defensive and dull cops’ instincts.

String together a series of adversarial videos, and almost every officer can find him or herself fast-tracked to trouble.

The new-era calculation for the police is: Conflict is the quickest path to extinction.

Why risk your career and your livelihood to protect people who do not appreciate you. The Giuliani era policy of policing the most minor infractions has been discarded:

Scratch the surface in trendy, uber-safe New York neighborhoods and you will hear public safety and disorder concerns from more than a few. Aggressive panhandling, unreported petty and retail thefts, noise and disorder complaints and a feeling of insecurity on mass transit accompany complaints by those in public housing and poorer communities that violence is never too far away.

If we want to call this by its name, this is the Obama legacy on minority crime. Apparently, the Obama presidency, led by a man of impeccable decorum, did not produce more of the same in minority communities. It was seen as permission to defy the law. Of course, we are not allowed to hold our great former leader responsible, so why not scapegoat the police?

Trump Plays Hardball with North Korea

‘Twas only last week that establishment foreign policy experts were howling in derision at the letter that President Trump sent to North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. Retired English teachers were declaring it to be grammatically incorrect. Not a single one of them, I suspect, saw that the famous book title "The Audacity of Hope" was wildly agrammatical. Anyway, other more charitable souls declared that the Trump letter felt and sounded personal. As though he had written it himself. Trump was extending a hand of friendship... and putting China on notice, I suspect.

What a difference a week makes.

Over at the Atlantic, Uri Friedman gets it:

When Trump initially canceled the summit by sending Kim Jong Un a remarkably personal letter, in which the president both threatened nuclear war and urged North Korea’s leader to “please … call me or write,” critics called it “an example of really bad letter-writing” that would “surely be studied in diplomatic academies everywhere” and likened it to “a 13-year-old’s stream of consciousness in a breakup letter from overnight camp.” But even if you accept those criticisms, one of the lessons of the past week is that sometimes it takes a really bad breakup letter to revive nuclear negotiations with North Korea.

Or, as I put it a week ago, the game isn’t over until it’s over. I cautioned against jumping to conclusions based on a single move in a complex game, and I maintain my caution. I will tell you, for my part, that I am encouraged by recent developments and am especially pleased that Sec. of State Mike Pompeo is leading the negotiations.

Naturally, those who declared that Trump’s letter was a sign of advanced untreatable psychopathology failed to recognize that the president was responding to series of moves by the North Koreans.

Friedman explains:

In the days before Trump regretfully called it off with Kim, North Korea was calling the U.S. vice president and national-security adviser all sorts of ugly names, proclaiming itself a “nuclear weapon state,” and warning that it might withdraw from the summit because of U.S.-South Korea military exercises and U.S. demands that North Korea fully and expeditiously dismantle its nuclear program. With Trump due to meet Kim in just a few weeks, the North Koreans hadn’t shown up for a planning meeting in Singapore and, in the words of one senior White House official, had responded to U.S. overtures with “radio silence.”

A proportionate response to some very undiplomatic behavior from North Korea. This does not absolve John Bolton and Mike Pence for their ill-considered reference to Libya.

Anyway, Friedman explains that Trump is not playing by the standard playbook. And that it seems to be advancing. I have long suspected that he made a deal with China’s president Xi Jinping to move the talks along. We might never know about that.

As for what is going to happen, I can only say: Stay tuned.