Who knows what lies ahead, but some things that seemed impossible not that long ago no longer seem that way at all. This is the opening to: The “Trump Doctrine” for the Middle East.
Trump has shown the strength of the United States and restored its credibility in a region where strength and force determine credibility.
Trump more broadly laid the foundation for a new alliance of the United States with the Sunni Arab world, but he put two conditions on it: a cessation of all Sunni Arab support for Islamic terrorism and an openness to the prospect of a regional peace that included Israel.
Secretary of State Pompeo spoke of the “Palestinians”, not of the Palestinian Authority, as in Iran, possibly to emphasize the distinction between the people and their leadership, and that the leadership in both situations, may no longer be part of the solution. Hamas, for the US, is clearly not part of any solution.
Netanyahu rightly said that Palestinian leaders, whoever they may be, do not want peace with Israel, but “peace without Israel”. What instead could take place would be peace without the Palestinian leaders. What could also take place would be peace without the Iranian mullahs.
What possibilities there are! 2024 might be a world unimagined in 2016. The Great Man theory of history remains the only one that works for me, although the temper of the times does count for quite a lot. Stay tuned.
Found in the US on Powerline, but from our own ABC. Steve Hayward finds it funny, and cannot detect the anti-Trump vitriolic hatreds that lie behind it. In some ways it demonstrates that for those of us who line up behind the Trump agenda, his idiosyncracies don’t affect us even in the slightest. We are outcome-oriented. It is the combination of his values and his ability to achieve ends we support that explain why nothing that the ABC and its dreary stupidity are able to overcome. But the ABC and its mates everywhere on the left never give up since there is no doubt that something like a quarter of the population remain wedded to policies that only do them harm because of the political fashion statements put out by the media.
A few months ago North Korea was developing nuclear weapons and a delivery system that could blow up a million people on a single venture into some nihilist political program. Now such a possibility is the remotest likelihood. What has changed? And who caused that change to happen? And odder than perhaps anything, Trump offered this communist tyrant a vision of a peaceful, prosperous, capitalist North Korea as the longer-term future for his nation. I don’t expect the media to get it. Their politically-driven mental derangement is possibly beyond cure, so will simply have to stew in their bile. Meantime, videos such as the produced by the ABC, may help a few of our citizens to cross into the far right, which is the left’s term for people with normal values and common sense.
There are two views on North Korea that you can find if you look. The easiest to find is the left-media take that nothing happened, and it’s all a well-worn charade. But then there is this, which I will come to first before looking at the other. This is the positive view, taken from Ace of Spades.
The big news this morning is not only has the summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un taken place but as we were sleeping the two signed an historic agreement whereby the North has agreed to scrap its nuclear weapons program as part of an overall denuclearization of the entire Korean peninsula.
If you were merely to look at this only through the lens of how the Democrat-Left-Media complex judges success, via optics and feelings alone, then this is the biggest thing since Live Aid. But in reality, this truly has the potential to be one of the biggest foreign policy milestones since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Make no mistake; North Korea has been a belligerent, inscrutable and unpredictable enemy that has overtly and covertly stirred up trouble for nearly 70 years and so an extreme degree of caution and wariness is advised in any dealings with them; the foibles and follies of the past three administrations in particular bear this out as their policies have ranged from farcical to disastrous in terms of American interests and global security. I believe that PDT and his new team of Pompeo and Bolton know this going in.
Beyond all the platitudes and proclamations, when you get down to the granular level, the make or break in all of this relies on verification. North Korea is going to have to open up and submit to an inspection process that is antithetical to its nature as the world’s most closed, secretive nation. Can it do this? Will it do this? I suppose the fact that Kim’s willingness to meet face to face with an American president for the first time, and outside of his own country is something of a tell. He is the X factor in all of this. There may be things going on in Pyongyang as well as in his mind that tell him a rapprochement with the US, and more importantly, a concomitant distancing to whatever extent that is possible with China is in his and his nation’s best interests.
That is how you have to see it. Since memories of the rockets that were being launched not all that long ago have receded and will never be brought to mind by the media, the fact that we are now looking at a possibility of genuine peace is extraordinary. But here is the other side, brought to you via Bloomberg.
Donald Trump’s historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was unquestionably a success — for Kim.
By credibly threatening the U.S. with nuclear war, he won a one-on-one meeting with the American president — a longtime strategic goal of his family’s regime. And that’s not all.
Trump tossed in a suspension of military exercises with South Korea, while China suggested revisiting economic sanctions that the White House credits for the summit. Meanwhile, the president showered Kim with praise, calling the dictator who leads one of the planet’s most oppressive and brutal regimes “smart” and “very talented,” declaring the meeting “a great honour” and saying he trusts Kim.
Less clear is what the U.S. got in return. American officials said before the meeting they would insist that Kim agree to the “complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement” of his nuclear weapons arsenal. The phrase appears nowhere in Trump and Kim’s statement.
Also missing: basics such as a timetable for Kim to give up his weapons, verification procedures or even a mutual definition of denuclearization. . . .
So far, Trump hasn’t shown he’ll avoid the same trap he’s accused his predecessors of falling into: giving North Korea too much without getting anything in return. While the president repeatedly described the document he and Kim signed as “comprehensive,” at 426 words it is anything but — and there is no indication of when or how Kim will follow through on any of his promises.
Fair enough, but the mingy dogs of the left will never say a good word about something done that benefits even their worthless hides, if it is done by someone whose approval they refuse to grant. But we shall see. These are all issues, but with Trump, Bolton and Pompeo on the watch, there is genuine reasons to hope for the best.
UNDERSTANDING THE ATMOSPHERICS: From a comment at Powerline:
Not a formally educated engineer or scientist, but I understand how things work (passed with flying colors the IC2/3 petty officer test without ever going to “A” school. I just looked at the gear and figured out how it worked.)
The one thing I understood very, very quickly (playing around with ham radio as a pre-teen) was signal to noise ratio. Anyone that understands that concept knows what Trump is doing. Lawyers rarely learn this skill. Their avocation (skill set) is to dissect every comma and period for meaning. To skilled/gifted science/engineering types finding the signal and ignoring the noise is easy peasy with Trump.
In other words take him seriously, but not literally — but that is like garlic to a vampire for a lawyer — most lawyers rank way down the scale from vampires
This is also why I know for a fact that man is not controlling the temperature of the atmosphere by using a quick study of signal to noise ratios of temp data over the long term. If you understand that concept and look at the data (even the climate hysterics data) you see for sure that man has nothing to do with climate — except maybe to move to one that suites you.
The political class is screaming bloody murder over Trump’s performance at the G-7 meeting in Canada, where he reportedly spent most of the time detailing how much the US was paying for the defense of our vaunted “allies,” not to mention the high tariffs imposed on American goods. He then proposed a “free trade zone” in which member countries would drop all tariffs, subsidies, and other barriers to trade: the “allies” didn’t like that much, either. Nor did the alleged advocates of free trade here in the US give him any credit for ostensibly coming around to their point of view. Which reminds me of something Murray Rothbard said about this issue: “If authentic free trade ever looms on the policy horizon, there’ll be one sure way to tell. The government/media/big-business complex will oppose it tooth and nail.”
PDT is a specialist in uncovering hypocrisy and there’s plenty of it around.
[My thanks to Max for posting this in the comments.]
Probably my favourite movie of all time. This is a complete steal of TheJamesMadison’s discussion of Amadeus at Ace of Spades. If you don’t know the movie, it’s time you did yourself a favour. Reading what Madison wrote will not spoil a second of the actual film.
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Amadeus
I’ve revisited the first six films in my personal Top Ten of all time chronologically from The Passion of Joan of Arc to Apocalypse Now, so now we get to the 80s, the single most represented decade in my list. And the first movie in that decade is Milos Forman’s Amadeus.
Re-Introductions and Introductions
When I first discovered Amadeus, I loved it, and I showed it to my father. We watched it together (one very nice thing about him was that he’s willing to watch almost whatever I try to put in front of him), and his reaction was much more tempered than mine. He said, “You’ll like it less as you get older.” Not that he didn’t like the film, but he just didn’t love it like I did.
I didn’t watch this movie for at least seven years until this week when I finally revisited it. I was a bit terrified. Was my dad right? Would I finally rewatch the film and decide that it’s simply not as good as my younger self had determined?
Thankfully, I loved the film as much as before, and that started with one particular moment about ten minutes into the film. Salieri, having attempted suicide, is sitting alone in a cell in a sanitarium playing some small tunes on a harpsicord. A priest comes to hear his confession. Salieri wants nothing to do with the priest until the priest insists that all men are equal in God’s eyes. That attracts Salieri’s attention.
He starts by trying to draw the priest into his story by playing some of Salieri’s old tunes, music that the priest should be familiar with because he studied music in Vienna in his youth. The first tune passes over the priest’s head, much to Salieri’s distaste. And then we see this:
It’s a simple cut to a tracking shot, and it completely pulls me into the film.
Salieri plays the first few bars of the music. He takes his fingers off the keys to revel in the sound in his head. We, of course, hear it, but the priest does not. The cut takes us to a live performance of the music sung by a woman, gaudily dressed, on stage. The camera pulls back to reveal a man conducting an orchestra. As this man turns, the camera changes focus from the woman to him, revealing Salieri, decades younger, and at the height of his influence and power.
It’s such a simple cut and dolly, and it sells two things. The first is the basic structure of the movie. We’re going to see what he’s talking about. The other is character based. His telling of his story really starts with Salieri at the height of his influence and popularity. He’s adored by music lovers, and he’s firm in his commitment to his art. That simple cut and dolly puts such a smile on my face every time.
Mozart
Antonio Salieri is the protagonist of the film, and Mozart is the antagonist. Not to say good guy and bad guy, but Salieri is obviously the one driving the plot in the film. He hinders and helps Mozart, driving him from success to failure.
Mozart, though, is a delight and played by Tom Hulce (who lost the Best Actor Oscar to F. Murray Abraham for his performance as Salieri). He’s an effortless genius who’s been spoiled to the point that he can usually get away with any manner of vulgarity. This is evident when he first approaches the Emperor Joseph II and admits that his idea for an opera (in German!) he will set in a harem. The courtiers around the emperor gasp at the mere thought, but the emperor hides a small smile. He’s obviously entertained by Mozart’s brashness, eventually giving in to every wish Mozart has in terms of his art.
The scene that that plays out in is where Salieri begins to truly hate Mozart. Not only is Mozart vulgar, as opposed to Salieri’s own reserved modesty (which he offers up to God, along with his chastity, in order to praise Him through music), but Mozart is also effortlessly gifted. The second scene that I want to highlight is below (the clip is chopped up from a larger scene, but it contains everything necessary for this discussion):
Salieri worked hard on that little march of his. He played with the harpsicord for every note, trying to craft something as an appropriate welcome to the wunderkind. Then, presented with the music sheet, Mozart waves it off. He’s already memorized it after one hearing. Not only does he then prove that he can recreate Salieri’s simple tune perfectly, but he, on the fly, improves it tremendously (eventually turning it into something that actually comes from The Marriage of Figaro). Salieri had worked diligently and reverentially to produce the piece that this creature (as Salieri calls Mozart) instantly turns into something so much better.
Salieri’s dismissive attitude towards the priest’s contention that all men are equal in God’s eyes comes into full view in an instant. Salieri isn’t equal to Mozart. God obviously prefers Mozart considering the difference in talent and perceived holiness between the two men.
Composition
The last scene I want to highlight is the writing of the requiem mass as Salieri assists Mozart after the production of The Magic Flute (quick aside, Ingmar Bergman made an absolutely marvelous production of The Magic Flute, and you should find a copy at your local library).
Salieri, a lover of music who understands the stark contrast between his ability and Mozart’s, wants Mozart to write his own Requiem mass and then to take credit for it. Left alone with him, Mozart’s wife having left Vienna in disgust at Mozart’s inability to focus on making money in favor of potentially empty promises, Salieri dictates Mozart’s work. Together, they compose a few bars of music for every instrument in the piece. They build it layer by layer. Voices, horns of different types, strings. It all comes together, sometimes just sounding like noise, but once it all comes together the audience can hear the confluence of the different pieces to create the harmonious music in its entirety.
The fact that Salieri is behind and can’t understand until it’s spelled out for him is marvelous. He knows enough to aid Mozart, but he’s obviously completely out of his depth. Mozart seems to speak in a different language the deeper into the composition they get. Let’s take a look!
The Movie Entire
The movie itself is obviously much more than the three scenes I’ve highlighted, and what really carries it is Salieri himself. He’s such a wonderfully complex character who balances his hatred of Mozart the person with his love of Mozart the artist.
He often lies to Mozart. He lies about trying to help Mozart at court, only to be thwarted by circumstance. He lies about how he’ll try to help him with an appointment. But he can never lie about how he feels regarding Mozart’s music. Whenever Mozart asks Salieri what he thought of Mozart’s newest work, all pretense falls from Salieri and he tells the honest truth, that it was magnificent.
In addition to Salieri, Constanze, Mozart’s wife, looks like someone who would be completely out of her depth in regards to anything serious, but the fact that she’s the one who sees things clearly offers Mozart a firm base from which to operate. When she leaves, Mozart loses all of the support she offered and falls into the hands of Schikaneder and Salieri.
The court is a joyful little comic delight. Most of them are as opposed to Mozart as Salieri. They use every ounce of their power to keep Mozart in check, but the Emperor Joseph will walk in and completely overturn anything with the smallest of suggestions (“Let me hear the scene with the music.”) that put Mozart back on top.
The movie really is not what one would expect from a three hour film about a classical composer (side note: The Director’s Cut really is a Director’s Cut and probably is the superior version of the film). It’s light and joyful where it needs to be. It’s got surprising contemporary touches like Mozart’s pink wig which evokes mid-80s punk rock. The movie really does fly by, never feeling like three hours, and is one of the most fun times I ever have had at the movies, so to speak.
A Small Note on Historical (In)Accuracy
Thank you, Lisa. If I didn’t think of you as a joyless scold before, I certainly do now.
Some may remember, but I don’t insist much on historical accuracy from films. I don’t expect history lessons from movies, but I do expect to be entertained.
Amadeus is bad history. Mozart had six kids, not one. Salieri didn’t help Mozart write the Requiem. Salieri wasn’t a celibate. There’s so much in this film that’s not historically accurate.
And yet, the movie is filtered through Salieri the character. It’s a telling of the events through an unreliable narrator. It really gives the film credence to be as historically inaccurate as it wants to be. And, probably because of its complete disregard for actual history, the movie is a fantastic entertainment and explores what it means to be an artist.
I actually cannot understand why anyone with sense would have preferred Hillary to PDT but by now, if you are not completely persuaded that Trump is our last chance for the West to hold itself together, then your political judgement is good for nothing. Like this in particular:
“The EU understands that the only way with Trump is strength,” said one European official. “If you give in now, he will come back tomorrow for more.”
Hope things continue with his meeting with Kim (the other Kim) on Tuesday.
The word “university” is derived from the Latin universitas magistrorum et scholarium, which roughly means “community of teachers and scholars.”[1] While antecedents had existed in Asia and Africa, the modern university system has roots in the EUROPEAN medieval university, which was created in Italy and evolved from Christian Cathedral schools for the clergy during the High Middle Ages.
Meanwhile, the Ramsay Centre finds it cannot even give away millions of dollars to a university to set up a program in Western Civilisation, the very place where universities began. First the ANU and now this. From The Australian: Sydney Uni hit by backlash while looking to the West, that is, while examining the possibility of setting up a course of study under the heading Western Civilisation.
University of Sydney academics have reacted furiously to the news, with more than 100 — including refugee and pro-Palestine activist Nick Riemer, fellow boycott Israel campaigner Jake Lynch and Tim Anderson, who courted controversy by defending Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad — signing an open letter signalling that they are “strongly opposed to the university entering into any arrangement with the Ramsay Centre”.
The letter, written by Dr Riemer and history professor Adrian Vickers, refers to “political leanings” of the Ramsay Centre board, chaired by former Liberal prime minister John Howard and including Tony Abbott. It accuses it of propagating a “conservative, culturally essentialist, and Eurocentric vision” and claims its program embodies “chauvinistic, Western essentialism”. “We are deeply disturbed by the possibility of Ramsay Centre courses being part of our institution, to say nothing of the significant and justified reputational damage that the university collectively, and its academics derivatively, would incur as a result,” the letter says. “We belong to a multicultural and hybrid society in a world traversed by serious geopolitical and social animosities. Collaborating with the chauvinistic Western essentialism that the Ramsay Centre embodies would be a violation of our crucial role in promoting a society of diversity, inclusiveness and mutual respect.”
As for finding a society that promotes “diversity, inclusiveness and mutual respect” I hope they have a list of places from which these sorts of things can be learned.
PERVERSE OPINIONS: A number of commenters mentioned PVO’s article in The Oz today so thought I would have a look. Here are the top comments starting from the first and working my way down. I agree with all of them, although they are a bit temperate for my liking.
I read this article with mounting disbelief. For a man who claims a belief in the virtues and benefits of Western Civilisation, his argument boils down to one simple fact. Abbott should not have exercised his right to speak because it would upset an angry nest of bull ants. Claiming that Abbott gave them the excuse to do what they intended to do anyway is as peurile as it is immature. In essence PVO’s argument crystallises into the undergraduates plaint that ‘Abbott made us do it’. Give us a break. The NTEU and the SRC simply used Abbott as an excuse. They had no intention of letting the Ramsay proposal go ahead. And, if it had they would have white anted it anyway. Our universities are publicly funded institutions. They are not personal fiefdoms. Each and every one of us has an interest in them and and a right to speak about them that includes those who the Left choose to dislike.
The Left’s fear of Abbott borders on the unhinged.
‘It was Abbott wot done it.’ Yep, undergraduate stuff, once again. This stuff is lightweight.
Well of course it’s Tony Abbott’s fault! It just had to be. PVO is utterly laughable.
The weather here on Lake Como has been unseasonably wet & stormy. I am sure that with a little imagination this ‘journalist’ could find a way to blame Tony Abbott. If he did a good enough job maybe I could sue!!! To think that people are being paid to write articles such as this defies description. Tony Abbott must be very sore after the kickings which this man has managed to give him.
Gee that man Tony Abbott is mighty powerful! Supposedly because of just one sentence in his erudite article published in a conservative-leaning magazine , a University knocked back millions of dollars. In reality, its VC didn’t have what it takes to stand up to bullies who want to limit intellectual boundaries. However there is an excellent outcome – passionate PUBLIC discussion about Western Civilisation, and Tony Abbott has hit the spot yet again.
If Abbott is blame for the rejection of Western Studies supported by the Ramsay Centre how do you explain the established hate of all things western and conservative in our universities,that is so sensitive that one Statement is used as an excuse to reject the studies. The problem is not Tony Abbott,the problem is entrenched and generational anti western academics riding roughshod over weak and like minded administrations. Government should defund these state universities, pay funding assistance to students to use at private universities that provide diverse studies without political bias.
A female suicide bomber who killed dozens of Israeli soldiers has graced the front cover of a University of Sydney student newspaper, and Jewish students who complained about the cover have been “condemned” for censorship.
Hamida al-Taher killed more than 50 people, mainly Israeli military personnel, when she blew herself up in Southern Lebanon in 1985. The special edition of the University of Sydney’s student newspaper Honi Soit, produced by the student women’s collective a fortnight ago, put her on the cover and called her a “martyr” in an issue dedicated to the struggle against “Israeli colonisation”.
The student queer collective’s edition of Honi Soit on April 16 was criticised for having a picture of a petrol bomb on the cover and supporting a boycott of Israel.
The Australasian Union of Jewish Students has called for an apology over the covers. “They are particularly disturbing to Jewish students as they display a blatant disdain for Israeli victims of violence,” AUJS national political director Noa Bloch said.
“By disseminating publications that sacrifice respectful dialogue … it inevitably causes distress among Jewish and other students who support Israel.”
The University of Sydney’s Student Representative Council passed a motion, 11 to 10, against AUJS on Wednesday night for complaining about the publication.
“This SRC condemns AUJS for suggesting the university should intervene to censor a student-run publication,” the motion reads.
“This SRC congratulates those who put together the women’s edition of Honi for their brave and highly defensible cover depicting a pro-Palestine freedom fighter (opposing) the illegal Israeli occupation of Lebanon and Palestine.”
Taher was a member of Syria’s Arab Socialist Ba’ath party, which is accused of killing thousands.
SRC women’s officers Madeline Ward and Jessica Syed said they did not intend to upset anyone with their cover but stood by their anti-Israeli position. “We are saddened some were upset by the picture — this was not our intention. The policy of the University of Sydney SRC and our collective is pro-Palestine.”
I’ve revisited the first six films in my personal Top Ten of all time chronologically from The Passion of Joan of Arc to Apocalypse Now, so now we get to the 80s, the single most represented decade in my list. And the first movie in that decade is Milos Forman’s 
Antonio Salieri is the protagonist of the film, and Mozart is the antagonist. Not to say good guy and bad guy, but Salieri is obviously the one driving the plot in the film. He hinders and helps Mozart, driving him from success to failure.
The last scene I want to highlight is the writing of the requiem mass as Salieri assists Mozart after the production of The Magic Flute (quick aside, Ingmar Bergman made an absolutely marvelous production of 
The movie itself is obviously much more than the three scenes I’ve highlighted, and what really carries it is Salieri himself. He’s such a wonderfully complex character who balances his hatred of Mozart the person with his love of Mozart the artist.
Law of Markets 