Daily Archives: 5 September 2019

Countrymen

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Claudia Rosett, of the Independent Women’s Forum, had an excellent op-ed in Monday’s Wall Street Journal.  In essence, Rosett compared the PRC of 1989’s Tiananmen Square (she was there) with Hong Kong’s situation today (she was in Hong Kong over the summer), and her essential conclusion is

that for all China’s economic advances, it remains a brutal, dehumanizing tyranny in which the ruling Communist Party would rather destroy people than give them a genuine say in their government.

After all, we’re getting the same thing, so far, in Hong Kong:

Rather than give in to their legitimate demands, the Communist Party is readying its guns.

I agree with Rosett on 99+% of what she wrote.

I do have one point of disagreement, though.

soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army open fire on their countrymen [in Tiananmen Square].

No. The soldiers of the PLA do, certainly, share citizenship with the people of the PRC and of Hong Kong. However, PLA soldiers are not countrymen; the PLA is nothing but a mercenary army in the pay of the despots running the PRC government and the CPC.

Surrender, Or Else

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That’s Teheran’s latest demand regarding the nuclear weapons deal that the European signatories have shown themselves so desperate to preserve.

Iran will “take a strong step” away from its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers if Europe cannot offer the country new terms by a deadline at the end of this week, a government spokesman said Monday as top Iranian diplomats traveled to France and Russia for last-minute talks.

Never mind that those European nations hold all the cards that we don’t hold, and that Iran is in no position to make demands on anyone.  Iran has Europe thoroughly cowed.

It’s a shameful abdication.

Some few pundits, like Amy Kellogg on Fox News last Monday, claim that talks with Europe are Iran’s preparation of themselves for talks with the US.  This is a misreading of the situation.  Iran has already said it will not talk to the US.  Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani:

Maybe there has been a misunderstanding. We’ve said it several times and we repeat it there has been no decision to hold bilateral talks with the US[.] In principle, we don’t want bilateral talks with the United States[.]

The larger misread, though, is this: Iran has no need to talk to us; it’s not laying groundwork for talking to us, because they’re on the verge of getting Europe to surrender outright. That surrender will bypass our sanctions.