China just brought a new day to the Middle East

The New York Times has the MSM angle on a 25-year aid deal that Beijing has just inked with Tehran. Politico offers more. China gets a guaranteed oil supply, while also indicating that, with that guaranteed oil supply, the days of Trump's return to sanctions are over. (Would China have done this if Trump were still large and pretending to be in charge? Given that, per the NYT, an initial version of the deal was in place last July, the answer to that is a clear yes.)

From outside the MSM, James Dorsey, who's on my blogroll for exactly reasons like this, offers up his own analysis. He doesn't think China can fully thread the Iran-Saudi Arabia needle, but also notes that China is looking to "manage" and not "resolve" major bones of contention in the Middle East.

It's doubtful that, even if the Obama deal is put back into place, and Iran acts like a semi-good neighbor from there, that larger issues such as Iran's missile program and its support for Hezbullah can be restrained. Per Dorsey, on the "manage" not "resolve," it's also doubtful that China is going to go too far in trying. At the same time, the Saudis and the UAE back China's Uyghur crackdown, Dorsey notes.

That said, even if "manage" is the word, China has shown it's a new day indeed by inviting Israelis and Palestinians to Beijing for talks. If nothing else, as Beijing has no Zionist lobby or a Pat Buchanan-type Amen corner to supplement it, it will bring a different angle than the US. (And, having no large Jewish community of dissidents, also, a different angle than Russia.)

Back to Iran: If the final deal is like a draft from a year ago (which partially answers my parenthetical question) Beijing gets the oil at a discounted price. In return, not only does it invest in broad sectors of Iran's economy (which fits its Belt and Road strategy to a T), it also plans joint military training.

Also interesting: Xi Jinping proposed this in 2016, before he got his mandate to serve more than two terms. Playing some 11-dimensional chess. That said, the pain of Trump's sanctions probably led Iran to set aside qualms it's giving too much to China. But, Ayatollah Khamenei personally ordered the go-ahead.

That second NYT link has the details of what this presumably still involves, after last year's initial version. A Chinese Navy port is among the military cooperation. A possible Iranian version of China's Internet "Great Firewall" is another.

Side note: Politico is so ignorant of Mandarin and Chinese culture that the author of its piece, and their editor, apparently don't know that "surnames" come first in China.

 

Juan Cole has also weighed in, saying this is probably pressure diplomacy by Beijing, noting how it's already attacked Biden Administration foreign policy as part of general US foreign policy. Cole adds that this is the biggest China-Middle East connection since the days of the Mongol Empire.  And, Philip Weiss adds that Biden could, if he chose, with AIPAC looking weakened, go back to the Iran deal without adding new preconditions. He should have done that under cover of the new administration, but might have been worried about expending political capital. Beijing now gives him cover, unless he's worried about being accused of kowtowing.

#DemDebate: Rapid reactions on lack of true foreign policy questions

Overall grades?

Sanders a B+, Clinton a C.

Domestic policy? Sanders an A-, Clinton a B-.

Foreign policy? Sanders gets a B-, Clinton a C-.

Strategery and presentation? Sanders B+, Clinton B.

1. Domestic policy

Clinton, on domestic policy, managed to not get grilled on how she has supported private prisons, re minority quality of life and living standards. But, on the super-PAC issue, Judy Woodruff hit her right between the eyes with that "horns of a dilemma" question about why, if it's wrong for GOP candidates to get all that PAC money, much of it from financiers, it's not wrong for her. And, even less than her ability to answer Wall Street-related questions in previous debates, was she able to answer this.

Otherwise, her attempt to look "tough" on Wall Street? As Mark Shields of PBS News Hour put it afterward, that's like trying to look more anti-busing than George Wallace on busing — while debating him.

She did try to tangle and obfuscate some domestic issues, like immigration, in bureaucratic or Senate voting snares. However, for someone who thinks ISIS is infiltrating all of our computers, she must think that none of us have Google.

Missing? As it has been from all Democratic debates — reproductive choice issues. Sanders might be a hair more liberal than her. He's certainly more so on gay rights, though she tried to make things look different at the end.

2. Foreign policy

Sanders did score some very good points related to Henry Kissinger. Unfortunately, while talking about coups, he didn't talk about the 2009 coup/semi-coup in Honduras that occurred during Clinton's watch as Secretary of State — a change of government that was manipulated by her and her boss, Dear Leader. Nor, per a blog post that's going up this afternoon, did he talk about how we repeatedly sandbagged and kneecapped Russia, from the semi-coup in Ukraine two years ago to prodding Georgia into war against Russia (strongly backed by Clinton as well as lots of GOPers) before that.

(And, I wonder how many Millennials are googling Henry Kissinger?)

Lawrence Korb, former director of national security studies at the Council for Foreign Relations, claims that Sanders is a lot more "serious" on foreign policy than Clinton paints him. Unfortunately as underscored by the piece running in a site like Politico, that's not necessarily a selling point for Sanders in my book. (But it does refudiate Hillary Clinton's "we don't know who you're talking to on foreign policy claim.)

Of course, Sanders had a big whiff at the start of the second hour, in the lead-in question about whether he would cut any federal programs. Sure, he talked about "auditing" the Defense Department (no mention as to whether that would include auditing the cost to build F-35 planes that Bernie wants in Vermont), but he whiffed on giving a straight answer like:

I will cut the Department of Defense and the CIA.

How hard is that to say? Jill Stein can say it, and chide you for not saying it.

Unfortunately, besides no questions on Honduras, and both candidates getting Russia wrong, we had nothing (are you surprised) about Israel/Palestine. We also had nothing about foreign aid, and little about trade (which is surprising). I blogged about the foreign policy questions missing from the previous debate, and with only one more on the Dems' schedule for now, don't expect that to change. It's issues like these that will be key to me to seeing if Sanders, should he beat odds and gets nominated, has any chance of swaying me away from Dr. Jill Stein or whomever the Greens nominate, as I've already blogged. At least he didn't talk about "crushing" ISIS, unlike a week ago. More weirdly yet, no North Korea questions.

Clinton, smartly here, waved the experience flag. Knowing about things like Honduras and Russia, I rate her lower than much of the MSM world probably does.

On the "presentation" side, I agree with David Brooks, among others, that Sanders picked up more steam as the debate went further on. That said, I think focusing on Clinton's "low blow" (and it was at least as much of one as the "artful smear" she alleged he's done) rattled him somewhat during his close, and interrupted his momentum.

That said, Sanders showed even more a sense of humor than he did a week ago in New Hampshire.

The audience was from a university, but, in the second half of the debate, Clinton got more cheers a fair amount of the time. Dunno if that was because more tickets were sold to the general public, or if it was a higher percentage of minority students than at UNH last week and they still don't back Sanders, or what.

Turns out that the Wisconsin Democratic Party was in charge of ticket allocation. And a bunch of older white establishmentarians got theirs. I've not heard Sanders protest an unfair allocation, but I don't think he got his on tickets. So, like his muted protest about the Iowa Democratic Party's stonewalling on a caucus audit, this is probably about preparing to fold his tents at the right time.

Or else, per Clinton wrapping herself in the flag of Obama, and Milwaukee neighboring Chicago, some attendees were naive about Dear Leader. However, this mainly seems to be stacking the deck against Sanders, and him not — at least for public consumption — protesting.

The phony European refugee crisis

Now that I've got your attention with that headline, let me explain what I'm talking about.

It's not that refugees from Syria, Iraq, Libya, or even further south in African are phonies in person, or their reasons for leaving their old countries are phony.

It's arguable that part of the grudging European acceptance of the refugees — a grudgingness most notable in the UK and David Cameron — is the phoniness.

(That sets aside the issue, as shown in this piece about Germany taking temporary border measures to try to force the hand of other E.U. states, how "Europe" ultimately remains a concept more than anything else.)

Hundreds of thousands of refugees are hitting Europe, yes. That said, before the Great Recession made opportunities here in the U.S. less attractive, millions of migrants — some whom might well be identifiable as refugees — hit American lands from Mexico, and increasingly, from points further south. (Mexico itself is near zero population growth by birthrate, like the U.S.)

And, while we've had our share of clamor about the largely Hispanic influx of illegal immigration, it's arguably nothing like that of Europe.

Let's start with some additional context. Europe is about the same geographic size as the U.S. minus Alaska, per this site, which talks about making fair, geographic-based comparisons between Europe and America in other ways. Even if we throw out Russia and other countries of the old Soviet Union, the rest of Europe is as big as the US west of the Mississippi.

With half again as much population as the whole U.S.

And, without even going into the issue of legal vs. illegal immigration, as for actual, documented, United Nations-referred refugees? The U.S. has taken 70 percent of the world's share in the last five years. (To be fair, I should note that, as the Chronicle fails to note, our invasion of Iraq created a lot of those refugees.)

Now, some Europeans might argue that means they have no room. On the contrary, Europe has no deserts, no semi-deserts like the Western high plans, and while it does have the Alps and their extensions, the US has both the Rockies and the Sierras, among other things. And, if we're throwing out Russia, Europe has no North Dakota, eastern Montana or northern Minnesota in terms of winters, either.

To put this in terms of population densities, Hungary, a mainly flatland Central European country, might be taken as "representative." Ohio, a mainly flatland state in the non-mountainous, non-desert part of the U.S., not the most dense, and fighting Sunbelt migration, might be compared.

And, the have almost equal population densities at around 110 people per square kilometer. (So does France, with a mix of densely urban areas and the densely-rural-like Central Massif.)

In short, Europe can handle the refugee "flood." It can do so at least as easily as the United States. U.S. states like Minnesota, with less high-density use land than Hungary, have in the past taken significant numbers of Hmong and Somali refugees.

Did beer give us civilization? I doubt it.

Beer — was grain domesticated for it to actually help create civilization?
Photo from National Post

The idea that man first decided to domesticate grain for some forerunner of today's beer, rather than food, sounds intriguing, and just enough against conventional wisdom for somebody to trot out "paradigm shift" ideas, quotes from famous dead scientists taken out of context, and more.

Here's a study about the research claims, coming from (you hosers, eh?) Canada! And, here's a New York Times column by a psychiatrist, making the social psychology claims for why this would be true.

But, in reality?

I think it's all foamy froth, punning idea highly intended.

Let me dissect the idea in general, then specifics of both links.

I've read reviews and commentary on the idea in general. I find it interesting, at best, and almost SEO-hypish. If it had been about wine, or "wine" from other fruits, I'd be more likely to believe it. Humans would have seen drunk elephants or whatever, known something about the intoxication of rotten fruit, and gone from there. But, the only way they'd know about rotten grain becoming intoxicating is from that grain having first been stored. And, that storage would have been for food purposes.

First, those crazy Canadians:

While the SFU researchers say they haven’t found a “smoking brew pot” providing absolute proof that a thirst for beer drove the Natufian people to become farmers, they “conclude that feasting and brewing very likely provided a key link between increasing ‘complexity’ and the adoption of cereal cultivation.”

In other words, they haven't found anything. Certainly not anything new.

In fact, their study is that old bugaboo of research in the social sciences. It's ... wait for it ... it's ... metadata, or metaresearch, if you will!

The three Simon Fraser University researchers, led by SFU emeritus professor Brian Hayden, synthesized dozens of studies on the “Natufian” culture that, 10,000 years ago, occupied the region immediately east of the Mediterranean Sea, today’s Middle East.

Run like hell from hyped claims based on metadata. You don't believe me? Ask Bob Carroll at Skeptic's Dictionary.

The Canadians go on to talk about what they see as the importance of their unsubstantiated ideas:

Hayden told Postmedia News that “there are lots of implications” of the team’s findings, and that “brewing was just part of the picture” during humanity’s pivotal shift to settled, stable communities with enough food supplies to foster more complex cultural developments.

But beer-making, he added, was one factor “that we think was important in making feasts such powerful tools for attracting people and getting them committed to producing surpluses.”

In short, beer was the original opiate of the masses.

This, in turn, is based on the idea, powerful still in many left-liberal circles and claiming some weight with me, about the dark side of the agricultural revolution, namely, the development of class-based societies and the possession of private property.

That said, you'd really have to really want to get drunk to drink the ancient swill:

“Beers made in traditional tribal or village societies generally are quite different from modern industrial beers,” they state in the paper. “Traditional beers often have quite low alcohol contents (2 to 4 per cent) include lactic acid fermentation giving them a tangy and sour taste, contain various additives such as honey or fruits, and vary in viscosity from clear liquids, to soupy mixtures with suspended solids, to pastes.”

That, then, gets back to what I mentioned up top. Why not eat some semi-rotten, fermenting apples or peaches instead? Or, better yet, experiment with using cloth to filter solids out, and then fire for mild distillation?

Add in the fact that the authors talk about the addition of fruits, but fail to talk about fermented fruits, and it seems like an oversell.

At the NYT, Jeffrey Kahn picks up the social leveling idea and runs with it:

Once the effects of these early brews were discovered, the value of beer (as well as wine and other fermented potions) must have become immediately apparent. With the help of the new psychopharmacological brew, humans could quell the angst of defying those herd instincts. Conversations around the campfire, no doubt, took on a new dimension: the painfully shy, their angst suddenly quelled, could now speak their minds. 

But the alcohol would have had more far-ranging effects, too, reducing the strong herd instincts to maintain a rigid social structure. In time, humans became more expansive in their thinking, as well as more collaborative and creative. A night of modest tippling may have ushered in these feelings of freedom — though, the morning after, instincts to conform and submit would have kicked back in to restore the social order. 

But, if grain DID have any mind-altering effects, maybe it wasn't even from distillation.

Especially when colder and wetter periods hit the Fertile Crescent, can anybody say ergot fungus? St. Anthony's fire or ergotism as a result?

Many people think of medieval Europe and rye ergot. However, the fungus also grows fairly well on barley and wheat, the two common grains of the Middle East.

In short, if Neolithic Middle Easterners were getting wasted at the dawn of civilization, they may have been taking acid trips, not getting drunk.

So, for right now, my perspective? File this under Wolfgang Paul's "not even wrong."

George Mitchell retires of U.S.-inflicted wounds

Former Sen. George Mitchell is retiring as the U.S. special envoy for Middle East issues. Anybody who's read my blogging on the al-Jazeera leaks knows why, too — Team Obama kowtowed to hardliners of ALL major Israeli parties to undercut legitimate peace chances.

Here's the truth:

“What needs to change is Israeli behavior,” said Nabil Shaath, who heads the foreign affairs department of Fatah, the main party of the Palestinian Authority, in seeking to explain the stalled peace endeavor. “The man was not given any support and he failed,” he added of Mr. Mitchell, speaking by telephone. “I don’t really blame him. He found himself without any initiative or ability to move ahead. He found himself doing a futile job. I liked the man. He is honest and hard-working, with lots of experience.”

And here's the lies from Benjamin Netanyahu's staff:

Zalman Shoval, a special envoy of Mr. Netanyahu, who focuses on relations with the United States, said Mr. Mitchell “made a major effort to try to move peace between Israel and the Palestinians forward but, at the end of the day, his efforts were undermined by the Palestinians’ refusal to engage in meaningful negotiations. But he deserves the gratitude of Israel and the Palestinians for his efforts.”

With the presidential election growing larger, Obama will appoint a new envoy but won't change old administration behavior.

Final fallout fromWar on Iraq — Iran and Shi'a worries

I think at least a small part of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment had to know, in advance of March 2003, that an invasion of Iraq with the amount of troops we were using had some chance of empowering Iran.

While not all Shi'ites, especially not many in Iraq, look to Tehran for guidance or marching orders, many in the smaller Gulf states between Saudi Arabia and Iran may have at least some leaning that way. And, Riyadh worries that "some leaning" could increase. The map below illustrates this well.

The Sunni-Shi'ite division in the Middle East underscores Saudi Arabian fears of Iran.

And, recent events prove this out.

Saudi Shi'ites protest, support Bahrain brethren.

One Saudi Shi'ite activist said hundreds attended several protests including one in the eastern region's main Shi'ite center, Qatif, to show their backing for Bahraini Shi'ites who are protesting against the Sunni royal family.

Bahrain encampment in capital has a Shi'ite angle.

Saudi Arabia has voiced concern that if Bahrain is taken over by Shiites, the country would become a satellite state of Iran. But the crackdown may only increase protesters’ sympathy for the Shiite-ruled country, some observers said Wednesday.

More here on Saudi worries about Shi'ites driving this all, and, by extension, Saudi worries about Iran. Here's details on it's arrest of a a Shi'ite cleric last month that triggered this.

Kuwait debates sending troops to Bahrain.

Notice a common thread?

Meanwhile, just because Iraqi Shi'ites don't take orders from Tehran doesn't mean that, to play an anti-American bank shot, someone like Moqtada al-Sadr can't throw gas on the fire.

So, the bottom line? Bush surely had somebody warning him about this.

The neoconservatives behind the throne, with their even more insular thought, would have poo-poohed such worries. Well, democracy promotion had been "problematic" since the Islamic Salvation Front won the 1991 Algerian elections. So, even the neocons had no excuse.

Even if there's no connection to Iran, Shi'ites can exploit that idea. And, given their varying degrees of repression in Gulf states, they will.

Obama is kind of getting hoist, but it's on Bush's petard.

Mona Charen lies about Jimmy Carter lying

I don't go out looking for wingnut columns and blogs. And, I'm not going to defend former president Jimmy Carter against a charge of smugness. But, because Zionist Mona Charen has a column in my newspaper today, calling a Carter liar in general, and with a lot of vitriol directed toward his stance on Middle East issues, I will indeed defend him against a claim of mendacity.

And, I'll go further. I'll point out her lies.

Let's start outside the Middle East:

Carter's apologies for the United States make Obama's seem chauvinistic. Meeting with Haiti's dictator Raoul Cedras, Carter allowed as how he was "ashamed of what my country has done to your country.

Sorry, but true. We could also apologize to Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Guatemala, etc.

Of course, her bete noire is Carter's support for fair play in the Middle East. So, she has to lie about history there. She starts:

Carter repeatedly gets history wrong — as when he suggests that Israel attacked Jordan in the 1967 war. In fact, Israel pleaded with Jordan to remain neutral as it fought off Egypt and Syria.

Nope. First, Jordan never declared war. Neither did Israel. It just attacked. Per Wikipedia:

(O)n the morning of November 13, the Israel Defense Force mobilized, crossed the border into the West Bank and attacked Es Samu. The attacking force consisted of 3,000-4,000 soldiers backed by tanks and aircraft. They were divided into a reserve force, which remained on the Israeli side of the border, and two raiding parties, which crossed into the West Bank.

And, if we're talking about sneak attacks, Ms. Mendacity, let's not forget Israel attacking the USS Liberty while we're at it.

Charen continues with the lying:

Carter also repeatedly insinuates that U.N. Resolution 242 calls for such a withdrawal (to pre-1967 boundaries) — another lie. The resolution does speak of withdrawal, but was carefully crafted (against the objections of the Soviets) not to call for such a total pullout.

Yet another lie. Wikipedia quotes from the relevant section:

Operative Paragraph One "Affirms that the fulfillment of Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East which should include the application of both the following principles: (i) Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.

In the Wikipedia story, then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk said that the resolution allowed for some limited land exchanges, but that was it:

But we never contemplated any significant grant of territory to Israel as a result of the June 1967 war. On that point we and the Israelis to this day remain sharply divided

So, you don't need to read the rest of the column.

Nor do you need to leave a comment on Charen's website at Creators. I took care of that for you. (I wasn't about to bother registering at Townhall.

‘The Limits of Power’ – Bacevich’s lucid take

Andrew Bacevich’s new book, “The Limits of Power,” is blindingly brilliant in its simplicity.

This slim tome ought to be required reading in every high school American government or civics class.

On this blog, I have repeatedly excoriated “American exceptionalism” in BOTH its Republican and Democratic forms.

And now, Bacevich gives a professional historical take on this. Building on historians such as Paul Kennedy and his “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers,” Bacevich notes we also transitioned from an empire of industry (and yes, we’re an empire) to an empire of consumption, more than 30 years ago. (Kennedy speaks of the move from industry to finance as the mainstay of an economy as what has been a sure sign of decline in previous post-Renaissance great powers.)

Bacevich uses as a fulcrum Jimmy Carter’s famous — and famously misquoted and distorted — 1980 “crisis of confidence” speech.

At the same time, Carter, through the “Carter Doctrine” declaring the Persian Gulf a vital American interest furthered the problems with the “empire of consumption,” Bacevich notes.

And, what Carter said, and what Bacevich says, is that the problem lies not just in Washington, but in Austin, Albany and county seats. It lies not just on Wall Street, but on Main Streets.

The third main section of the book, on military policy, is the most interesting. Unlike “citizen reader” critics on places like Amazon, what Bacevich said in this section is certainly not dry, nor difficult to follow.

Some of it, though, sounds exactly like he accuses Tommy Franks of doing — settling scores. Perhaps we should be thankful that Bacevich just got his bird and not any stars. Of course, his unwillingness to play Army politics may explain that in the first place. And that, in turn, although Bacevich kindly doesn’t say so, is why we’ve had what he also kindly does not call “detritus” to generally lead our armed forces in the last generation or so. (Colin Powell was widely seen as a political officer already in Vietnam.)

Some critics claim the book doesn’t offer solutions, but that’s quite untrue. The solutions include:
• Stop believing we’re more enlightened abroad than we actually are;
• Actually do something serious to cut our oil consumption;
• Live m ore within our means otherwise;
• Practice Cold War-type containment, not regime change, in the Muslim world.

Those are simple solutions, but Nos. 2 and 3 rely in large part on Main Streets and individual Americans, not Wall Street or Washington.

And, that’s probably why negative critics and low raters on Amazon claim it doesn’t offer solutions. The truth is, it doesn’t offer either “magic bullet” or NIMBY-type solutions.

Informed American voters and readers call this book a screed, and ignore its warnings about their own behavior, at the peril of themselves and the nation.

That said, the book, like “The New American Militarism,” has one shortcoming. While Bacevich talks a lot about oil supply, he never discusses Peak Oil.

A century ago – Middle East enters world stage

As gas prices break $4/gallon in most the country, take note than on May 26, 1908, the British discovered oil in Iran, the first payout in the Middle East.

Of course, Iran also, over the past 2,500 years, has given the West:
• Crucifixion (no, the Romans didn’t invent it);
• Heaven/hell and apocalyptic dualism (the Bridge of Peril from Monty Python’s “The Holy Grain” comes from the Zoroastrian Last Judgment);
• Pasta (no, not the Chinese, though that’s where Marco Polo first had it).

Well, one out of three isn’t bad.