This is The “Art of the Deal?”

This is The “Art of the Deal?”

By Howard Barbanel

Is Barack Obama running foreign policy in the second Trump Administration? It sure seems like it. Recall Obama sending actual pallets of cash to Iran in the waning days and hours of his second term? Recall his acceding to most of Iran’s demands just to get an agreement – any agreement? Recall his horrible agreement which enabled Iran to build thousands of ballistic missiles and continue to enrich uranium?

Now comes along one of the most maddening accords ever agreed to. Have you read the 14 points in the memorandum? You’re not alone. Practically nobody has. It’s being done on the QT via executive order without any Congressional oversight (sounds like Obama too). it’s not even a treaty or even a contract, it’s really just the umpteenth ceasefire sweetened by tons of black and green sugar. By that I mean oil and money, which seem to speak louder than right and wrong.

Supposedly, some $24 to $25 billion in frozen assets will be released to Iran during the 60-day negotiation period to devise a treaty and theoretically dispose of Iran’s enriched uranium. Meanwhile, Iran is looking for $300 billion in reparations to rebuild everything the US and Israel destroyed and you can bet your bottom dollar that will include the terrorist infrastructure surrounding Israel. The Strait of Hormuz has been ceded to Iran’s ultimate control and you can bet this sword of Damacles will be wielded whenever it suits the mullahs to take the world economy hostage.

More significantly, the rumor is the US is agreeing not to foment regime change in Teheran and interfere in their internal affairs. Iran will agree not to produce or acquire nuclear weapons, but they’ve been making this promise for decades, insisting their program is for civilian use. If that’s not enough, the US will lift its blockade of Iranian ports and oil exports, thereby effectively rearming Iran with billions in oil sales each month – money that will not go not to the Iranian people but to procure weapons from China and Russia and strengthen the repression of their population. You can also bet that funds will find round-about routes to Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis.

Israel’s hand is being checked and its arms tied behind its back as Trump caved to Iranian demands that Lebanon be linked to any deal with Iran. Hamstringing Israel’s freedom of action in Lebanon is unconscionable and will create friction with Washington.

That this awful deal was negotiated by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner is another disgrace. Two New York Jewish real estate guys reporting to another real estate guy (Trump) with everyone hot for a deal – any deal – just to make a deal. Witkoff is naïve and inexperienced to the extreme and Kushner ought to know better.

On September 30, 1938, British prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich accords with Hitler, a low point of Western weakness and appeasement for a “pledge of peace.” The footage of Chamberlain landing back in Britain, waving a piece of paper gloating about “peace in our time” is an iconic image of the foolishness of believing and trusting in dictators – all because the West lacked the backbone to enforce the Versailles treaty. Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Rippentropp told Hitler that he should sign Chamberlain’s document because it’s just a piece of paper and that Nazi Germany will ultimately do whatever it wants. We know what happened next.

At the end of the day the derisive term “TACO” (Trump Always Chickens Out) has held true here. Instead of ridding the earth of the dangerous fanatical regime in Iran, he’s opted for the photo op. Trump has zero stomach for any dead soldiers, even one is too much. Can’t handle the blood. The Iranians know this. They also know high oil prices and inflation are jeopardizing the Republicans’ chances of retaining the House and Senate in the midterms – and Trump blinked first, gambling that $3 a gallon gas and low inflation could bolster the GOPs chances in November.

The US Marines could have taken Karg Island and the Strait in a few days but probably many would be killed or injured, so instead of guts and glory, Trump raised the white flag and is embellishing that flag with all kinds of money for the mullahs. Disgraceful. And I don’t believe for a second that Iran will agree to the seizure and disposal of its enriched uranium and the kind of inspections and enforcement to keep them from a bomb.

It pains me to say this, but had Trump been President during World War II, he’d be berating Churchill not to fight and looking for a “deal” with the Nazis on the eve of D-Day leaving them in control of France because he wouldn’t be able to stomach the 2,500-plus US casualties on day one of a Normandy invasion.

The prophet Ezekiel (chapter 13, verse 10) famously says to the leaders of Judea, " because they have misled My people, saying, 'Peace,' when there is no peace; and when the people build a flimsy wall, behold, they plaster it with whitewash."

This just kicks the can down the road which like in 1938 will lead to a more deadly confrontation down the road, perhaps horrifically with nuclear weapons.

The Covid Zeitgeist -- The China Syndrome

The China Syndrome

Ghosts of Pandemics Past and Affinity for Despotism

(Posted May 7, 2020)

They got a wall in China

It’s a thousand miles long
To keep out the foreigners
They made it strong

-- Paul Simon

There’s an old joke about eating Chinese food that says after you’ve had a big meal, you’re hungry again a half hour later. That may be true for us but probably also for them too because the foods they have an insatiable appetite for can literally kill you. Iguanas, koala bears, pelicans, dogs, cats and especially bats. Eating bats is literally batshit crazy and harvesting bat guano (excrement) to diddle around with the viruses in their feces is probably what has put us in the two-month Corona lockdown and corresponding economic meltdown we’ve been suffering from. Covid-19 is far from the first time we’ve taken a lethal hit from China.

The 20^th Century saw three flu pandemics (aside from regular, seasonal flus) originating from China. Some suspect that the 1917-1918 pandemic originated here although this can’t be conclusively proven. However, origin of the 1957-58 pandemic was most definitely from East Asia. It killed as many as 116,000 in the US out of a population 174.9 million, or nearly half the size of the today’s US population of roughly 330 million, so the proportion of those who were made ill and who perished was higher compared to today’s Covid-19. The country did not shut down even though the mortality rate was 10-times that of the 2009 Swine Flu.

I vividly recall the 1968-69 Hong Kong Flu. It hit the US in the Fall of 1968 and circulated for nearly two years. The CDC says it was an “avian influenza A virus, (H3N2)” and that killed about 100,000 in the US and a million worldwide. The US population was then 200.7 million. I was 10 in 1968 and my whole family was down with it – both my parents, myself and my younger brother. Things were so bad at home that my maternal grandmother came out to care for us. Most of the fatalities, then as now with Covid-19 were comprised of people over 65. This flu is still around today and has never been cured, just contained. The country didn’t close down even though millions were infected and made sick by it.

In 2009 we had the Swine Flu which was projected to be enormously fatal but ended up burning out earlier than expected. A vaccine was only available after the disease had peaked. From April 12, 2009 to April 10, 2010, CDC estimated there were 60.8 million cases, 274,304 hospitalizations and 12,469 deaths in the United States due to the (H1N1)pdm09 virus. The country did not shut down even though nearly 61 million Americans got sick from it.

Even though none of the aforementioned Asian flu pandemics of the 20^th Century killed millions in the US by any stretch of the imagination, US health professionals opted to latch on to hysterical computer models generated in England that estimated 2.2 million people would die here without a national quarantine and lockdown. It was somehow OK for 60 million to get sick from Swine Flu with no media hysterics but not OK for millions to contract Covid-19. Why was that?

Given decades of history on pulmonary and respiratory pandemics and how they were handled here, what was the model our medical, media and political class decided to adopt? Why the Chinese model, of course. Never mind that Chinese infection numbers and information couldn’t be verified and were lied about. Never mind that China, as a totalitarian Communist dictatorship (Communism is self-defined as the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat.”) can forcibly hermetically seal a city of 11 million (Wuhan) with nary a peep of opposition or information leakage from the people; never mind that China has an extensive history of self-serving deceit and boldfaced deception both at home and abroad, never mind that the Chinese Communist Party would be delighted to see the entire economy of The West crippled or destroyed.

Why use tried and true Western models of disease management when we can ape the bat-loving Chinese? Could it be about power? Power is intoxicating and there’s the old adage that “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Who is power hungry? Let’s start with many scientists who have gotten drunk on being celebrated and venerated on television and online 24/7. Revenge of the nerds here? Then there are the politicians. No politician wants to be held responsible on election day for two million or even 100,000 deaths, so even though there wasn’t a shred of proof that locking down the country would kill the pandemic, they went that route anyway. Then, once in place, it has morphed from “flattening the curve” of an anticipated spike in hospitalizations which might overwhelm the health system to becoming about stopping the virus altogether (for which there is no cure yet for this or the 1968 flu) and then penultimately, particularly among Democratic governors and mayors, implementation of their progressive agenda by executive fiat under the guise of emergency requirements. With people locked in their homes, this effectively squelches opposition. Finally, the Democratic obsession with defeating Trump and regaining control of The White House is so overwhelming that it’s worth any price – even by plunging the nation into a terrible depression, to create an environment where Trump can be turned out of office and stripped of his signature pre-Covid success of a roaring economy. That pleases the Chinese too because Trump had been pressuring them on trade issues.

Places with enough backbone to stick with Western norms have included Sweden, Hong Kong and South Korea. Millions haven’t died as restaurants, parks, schools and offices have remained open. Twelve states in the US didn’t lock down and they’ve been doing just fine. Interestingly, New York State just announced that in a survey of about 1,200 newly admitted patients at over 100 New York hospitals conducted during the first few days of May that fully 66 percent of new Covid patients had been staying at home, not working (only 17 percent) and not using mass transit. Meaning people have been indoors. So how is staying at home indefinitely helpful? Meanwhile Chinese cities are all open for business and millions aren’t dying.

From Forbes magazine: “In addition to [New Yorkers] mostly coming from their homes, surveyed patients were more likely to be over 51 years old, and either nonessential workers, retired or unemployed. 96 percent of the surveyed patients had co-morbidities, which means nearly all had another chronic medical condition prior to catching coronavirus.” We also know that about eight out of ten deaths associated with Covid-19 in the U.S. have occurred in adults ages 65 and older, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) so why are we locking down all the younger people and prohibiting folks to go to parks and beaches where the sunshine (Vitamin-D) and fresh air will do everyone some good if most hospitalizations come from older people who’ve been staying at home? Maybe it’s a form of China envy for the power grab reasons indicated above?

But taking a clear look at today’s China is helpful. Aside from being an incubator for pandemics, China is a country that just last year put one million of their own citizens in concentration camps just because they were Moslems. China is a country that has been brutally suppressing freedom advocates in Hong Kong. China is country that rattles its sabers, missiles, warships and jet fighters every week against democratic Taiwan, threatening to invade and conquer them militarily. China is the main backer of the nefarious regime in North Korea and helps support Venezuela and Cuba among other bad actors. China is a country that essentially relies on the slave labor of untold millions to produce goods at ridiculously low prices so that Western nations can’t compete and then turns Westerners into consumer vassals – making Western nations utterly dependent on them for essentials including medicines and medical supplies, vitamins, clothing, shoes, hardware, electronics, you name it.

To protect America against the evil depredations of despotic regimes such as China and to ensure peace, freedom and stability in the world we must wean ourselves off the teat of cheap (and often shoddily made) Chinese goods even if we have to pay more for them. Make things in America or in allied nations so that we retain our independence on all levels – and one sure way to put us on that path is to send our young people back to work and back to school now so that as a nation we are not bankrupted, enfeebled and ultimately dominated by malevolent dictators.

The Zeitgeist

It’s My Party and I’ll Cry If I Want To.

(Note: This appeared originally on The Huffington Post on the eve of the Republican National Convention which started on July 18, 2016)

In what very likely may look like a derivation of the Miss Universe Pageant (a former Trump Production) the Republican Party convenes from July 18-21^st in Cleveland, home of the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame. The upcoming event portends the antithesis of dull and formal conventions past. Look (metaphorically) for a fusion of a glam rock/heavy metal concert with dollops of The Apprentice, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, WWE and Baywatch covered with a light dusting of Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will, or the will of Trump wherein the GOP “Establishment” will be formally “fired.”

In what can be termed “The Great Leap Backward,” Donald Trump will be leading the GOP into a pre-Eisenhower policy mélange of isolationism, tariffs and economic protectionism (rejection of international free trade) mixed with a noxious whiff of nativism which manifests itself in draconian restrictions on travel and immigration, particularly for ethnic groups that are non-white and non-Christian. It’s no small wonder then that neither Bush the Elder or Bush the Younger will be in attendance. Neither will the “losers” John McCain and Mitt Romney. Trump just doesn’t throw their kind of a party.

In 1963 Leslie Gore had a number one hit with “It’s My Party (and I’ll cry if I want to)” The great Quincy Jones produced it. In this famous single, Gore asserts that “you would cry too if it happened to you,” especially because “Judy’s smile is so mean.” There’s a lot of weeping and bawling in both mainstream and even Tea Party Republican circles because Trump and Trumpism are so antithetical to GOP ideology, ethos and even style that many of us feel dumped after a lifetime of going steady and this is a cause of great vexation, consternation and lamentation – so much so that I’ll probably not watch much of the convention and may not even vote for a presidential candidate in November for the first time in my adult life.

The Party of Lincoln and Reagan arrives at Cleveland with a presidential nominee that most Republicans don’t want and in fact that a solid plurality loathe. Trump got the nod from an invasion of the party snatchers – those open primary voters who crashed the Republican Party by either legitimately crossing party lines, becoming a Republican at the polling station or were allowed to vote Republican even as Independents. A lot of key states permitted this. Trump touts all the millions he brought into the Party – what he really did was bring them in to vote for Trump. The ridiculously fractured field of 17 wannabees, enabled by a debate practically every week allowed Trump to trump the professional politicians with a brew of outrageousness and insults that most media enabled in a shameless pandering for ratings.

Unlike the Democrats who have a “Super Delegate” mechanism to keep the party from getting too wild and out of hand (and which gives some say to party leaders and activists), the Republicans have no “great wall” to fend off the invading wildlings and figurative Mongol hordes. The Democratic Party got tired of nominating implausible candidates and taking a drubbing on election day so they made it virtually impossible for a total outsider to snatch their nomination unless that person swept every primary, much to Bernie Sanders’ dismay.

Both parties need to revise their primary and party membership criteria. It’s not enough to just say you’re a Democrat or Republican and then be able to select the nominee for the highest office in the land and leader of the free world on a whim in whatever party even if you don’t belong to one.

First, the GOP needs to abolish open primaries – they’re a Trojan horse that will always portend danger to viable mainstream candidates because populists like Trump can bring in the wackadoo crowd or Democratic activists can torpedo a candidacy by driving a lot of their members to the polls to vote Republican as spoilers. This can also happen to Democrats too in reverse in an open primary. To vote in a party primary one should be a member of that party for at least 45 days prior and more significantly, there should be a membership fee so that there is some level of serious commitment to the party and skin in the game. I recommend a charge of $10 to join a party with the proceeds being split down the middle between the state and national party organizations. That way the parties pick-up some important revenue (and not from special interests) and voters can’t drop in on a whim. This would seriously limit “spam voters” and “malware candidacies.”

Next, the Republicans have to catch their tongues – no weekly debates for a year with 17 people. There should be a total of six debates, one per month prior to the California primary in June and to participate in the debates a candidate should be polling at least 15 percent, not one percent.

But this is all looking to the future. Meanwhile I, along with millions of other Republicans will absolutely be crying over all the spilled milk and wasted opportunities that a Trump nomination brings and the very real dangers looming for the country if he wins because of his immaturity, irrationality, bellicosity, belligerence and braggadocio.