Appeasement and then what?

 APPEASEMENT

            And now there is appeasement. This president and his minions are deficient in their grasp of history and policy so they propose a ludicrous “peace plan” that is a colossal blunder but also a travesty of honor. 

            Even if it changes, this is a fraudulent proposal stacked in favor of Russia, need we remind the President the invading party, the war starter, responsible for more than one thousand war crimes in Ukraine. Trump proffers it to display his loyalty to Putin so as to sweeten the atmosphere for his interest in building one of his gilded palaces of vulgarity in Russia.

            Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement to Nazi Germany was a foolish strategy of making concessions because he erred in thinking it would lead to peace. Trump’s thinking is a deliberate sell out of an ally, doing almost nothing to earn peace, but it assures the world his pouty lips remain attached to Putin’s arse. 

A few Washington veterans are waking up to what to has been obvious for some months. The president is a lame duck as well as being a lame brain.

            The sooner the 20 republican senators whose seats are up in ‘26 began thinking of constituents and the good of the nation instead of placating an inept and openly corrupt felon, the sooner they can reinsert their spines and begin to fix how seriously our national security has been damaged. We are a weakened nation. The Republicans have presided over a deliberate debilitation of the legislative branch. It hurts all of us. 

            This administration’s actions are a chain of dishonor. Hosting the Saudi crown prince, explaining away his certain role in the death and dismemberment of a Washington Post journalist, and then offering up sensitive strategic technology and F-35’s may be the most dangerous betrayal and sell out of strategic security in US history. That Saudi royal should be tried for murder, not a person to fete at a State Dinner. Time will reveal the personal Trump fortune building that Jared, Don Jr and Eric have been up to in that region. Trump sold out our children and grand children’s safety to charm the “corrupt deal” that his would-be empire is working.

This presidency diminishes our good will and prestige while degrading our strength. The president diminishes human virtue. Republicans in the Senate should begin saying aloud in public that Trump’s grip has been weakened. 

Recent survey’s show Democrats have a 14 point margin if the midterms were held now. Among independents some 60% would vote for Democrats. Those margins create a wave that could sweep. The President’s approval rate is at his lowest ever. The off-year elections were a message. The mismanagement of the economy and the foolish tariff wars are hurting small business and already suffering workers. People, even some of his base, are fed up, again. 

Journalists have begun to expose how his family has exploited the president’s changes and new policy on bitcoin, so as to amass extraordinary profits. He is what he has always been, a hustler and fraudster. He is now working his con from the oval office. Republicans may be waking up from their lobotomized zombie sycophancy and are beginning to see how deeply their master has pulled them into criminal sleaze and how quickly he will abuse state secrets and national safety if it makes him another buck. 

If the republican leadership would just say it they could break the spell, he is a lame duck. He’s been behaving like a trapped rat, increasingly irrational and lashing out.

When Chamberlain appeased Hitler, it did nothing but feed the coming onslaught of evil and mad power. We need to recall history as we watch Trump’s weasel like appeasement of Putin. 

After the invasion of Ukraine, I posted here the thoughts of senior intelligence and security people from the US, UK, Australia and Canada. A consistent finding was Putin’s thought he would outlast democratic governments, counting on populations to lose interest in a foreign war. Their profiles labeled Putin as a megalomaniac with visions of reuniting the old USSR and investing himself as the savior, a kind of new Czar. 

What was not forecast was the re-entry of Trump, a not very bright man but who is skilled and willing to do the bidding of corrupt expediency and betrayal. Appeasement for any reason, none of which could be good, will empower a ruthless war criminal, or a ruthless crown prince. Trump may act like a mob boss, but he is soft, strong only at lies and cheating. Putin was KGB and has become a calculating killer. Trump may think he is a deal maker but MSB out maneuvered a tent full of Saudi royals. He is also a killer. The president is a pathetic wimp who cheats at golf. He is unqualified and out of his league. What he has are favors to give, bad peace deals, F-35’s, secret intelligence documents. That’s the art of his deal.

 It is time for the legislative branch to wake up and jerk his chain. Fred Trump’s bully punk kid learned at the knee of Roy Cohn, but even that nasty miscreant is easy picking for a man of Putin’s cunning and lethality. Trump tweets in capital letters and calls reporter’s “piggy.” Putin kills his enemies. Trump sent insurrectionists to disrupt the 2020 election, he failed. Putin has sent as many as 130 thousand Russian troops to their death with another 200 thousand injuries. He does not care. He has North Korean troops and professional soldiers.  He bombs churches and schools and public transit lines. 

Even the Americans who voted for the reality show boss must understand there is a difference between pretense and strength. He is weak, the US is weakened and now he is ready to give away the future by allowing a real tyrant to make war and get away with it. At least Chamberlain thought he was getting peace. Trump thinks he’ll get another hotel and golf course.  

 

Face Off-Rocket Magic-The Perfect Drive

into a tricky twilight

    Pay close attention. The White House is in a swirl that is unlike anything else the troubled administration has faced to date. We get into that below.

celebrating the left coast

   This veteran traveler finds this scene one of the most pleasing anywhere. Looking south from Nepenthe in Big Sur.

     Hairpins, tight turns, twists, long drops, rocky walls and sensational views compete for a drivers attention and energy. It is invigorating, though we have found friends who are challenged by the mountain ledges and winding highway. 

      It takes work to keep the iconic Pacific Coast Highway open.

the rocket magic show

      That bright light on the horizon is neither moon nor sun. It is a Falcon 9 Space X rocket racing toward space. The launch at Vandenberg AFB is about 85 miles south from the observation point on my deck.

                 As a kid, fascinated by the new space program, I never dreamt I'd be watching rocket launches from my deck.

           The separation created a bit of a cosmic light show.

    The mission was to deploy an Argentine environmental satellite, but the trick of the evening was to land the Falcon booster rocket, back at Vandenberg in a hard ground landing zone.

             It worked well and this shows the Merlin engines firing as the Falcon 9 was headed home.

       Meanwhile thousands of miles away, the satellite was being carried into orbit and we had a new way to measure the depth of our rich star fields.

more sublime

      A longtime friend, who shared ground breaking campus politics and later worked alongside on assignment in Cuba and who's skill and academic/professional arc I have admired, and I were talking like old guys or gals do. We have reached an age where it can be said of us, what they said about Dean Acheson, "Not only did he not suffer fools gladly, he did not suffer them at all."

     Thus you understand our present state of agitation.

We stepped out to look at a particularly clear and crystalline like sky abundant with pricks of cosmic light. That has the effect of downsizing the scale and importance of all human endeavor so as to render us and our intrigues to a scale of gnats. 

still we have the capacity to ruin this blue ball

    So back to the opening tease. Our rogue administration is navigating a new crisis and it is deep water with submerged danger.

     The very awful destruction of a human life, in this case a powerful, well connected Saudi and critic of the new crown prince is at the center of a pernicious brew.

      As David Kirkpatrick wrote in the New York Times, 

"The disappearance of the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi has set off a diplomatic feud between Saudi Arabia and Turkey, a bipartisan uproar in the United States Congress, tremors of uncertainty in Wall Street and Silicon Valley about how to deal with Saudi Arabia, and a noisy spat between the White House and its closest Arab ally."

           The man who is said to be in charge has yet to demonstrate study or an understanding of the complexity of the world and this is as complex as it gets. He's already gone off half loaded and has reversed himself. Maybe that will help in this instance. Serial liar POTUS is in good company. The Saudi's have been duplicitous in their long relationship with the US since the beginning. The Royal family has lied, cheated, backed terrorists, repressed women, dissidents and free thought for as long as the "kingdom" has been in place. 

       So we have a liar and tax cheat going head to head with a liar and cheat and perhaps killer. Isn't it a damned shame, two human beings of the character and quality of these two have so much power and impact? If you are looking for a precis of how this beautiful and fragile world has been put so upside down, here you have it as the crown prince and the rogue president take measure of each other.

        See you down the trail.

                          

AT THE EDGE AND WHY NOT?

CREATING STABILITY

    Old ideas have failed for centuries so we propose a novel approach to fixing the middle east.  That follows below.

LANDS END

    Surf Lullaby

    Into 22 mph North Westerly wind-motor, not a day for the sail.

   Shore texture

 Dedicated to the US Congress. Your ideas on why?

  Soar patrol 1

  Soar patrol 2

A NOVEL PLAY 

in a tired old drama

     Dexter Filkins has proven himself to be one of the sharpest observers and thus experts on the middle east. The former New York Times writer, Pulitzer winner and current New Yorker writer stands tall in my eyes because aside from his skill, he and I share a theory.  We believe what is unfolding in the middle east is the latest incarnation of a war for power and control in Islam-Shia vs Sunni.  Nation state is of less importance than who's version of Islam, fundamentalist at that, dominates.  Our blundering into and out of Iraq only enabled the larger battlefield.  So, with that as pretext here is my magic bullet solution for the region.

    We create a coalition to internationalize the region, starting with the Saudi oil fields, and then internationalize Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and maybe Oman. The border states would be Israel, Jordan, Turkey, Egypt and Iran.

    The enforcing coalition would be the US, Russia, China as the big 3 with more power but would also include the Euro block, ASEAN, the Southern Hemisphere (African and South America) and finally the unit of Canada and Northern Europe.

    In essence the big 3 runs the new cartel, assigning oil distribution allotments, pricing, flow and etc to the world. The full coalition provides security and infrastructure control for the new middle east. Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Jordan and Israel become operating partners for commerce, social services, education, and economic development in the internationalized region. 

    The Saudi Royal family would be given the option to move to Mecca, that remain would under their control, but the bulk of their military, wealth and the remainder of the kingdom become internationalized. Some of the opulence and wealth we are familiar with would be utilized to build up the quality of life of citizens of the internationalized region. The Royals would be given a discreet amount of time in which to affect their move, after that they are out of luck. 

    In the process much of the British and French partitioning of the Ottoman Empire at the end of WW I, the bastardly and stupid progenitor to much of the regions troubles since, could be partially erased.  The continuing Arab-Israeli friction gets absorbed into the larger construct of maintaining a regional peace and economic vitality.

    The current bad ass, the Islamic State, is snuffed quickly with Russia, China and the US standing on the same sight of the barrel, pointed at them!

    Yea, I know it's a pipe dream but nothing else is working and I think our hope for the future is innovation, new ideas, creative options and bold imagining.  

See you down the trail. 

    

MUSLIM PRINCESS BREAKING BARRIERS & DEFINING SPACE

SHAKING UP THE OLD BOYS IN THE ARAB WORLD

Courtesy gccwomen.org

     Could this be a face of the new Saudi Arabia and/or a face that is trying to create a new Saudi Arabia?

Courtesy saudiarab11

      Princess Al-Taweel, known as Princess Amira, is

as she says a "common girl" but married to Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, the nephew of the King of Saudi Arabia. Princess Amira, a magna cum laude graduate of the University of New Haven is an advocate for women's empowerment.  She is outspoken in her call for equal rights for women in education, the work force and voting rights.  

     Those are difficult and challenging issues for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the royal family.  Her "outspokenness" has been challenged by her uncle, another of the royal princes.

     Amira says women have the right to come out of the burkas, if they wish, it should their choice and not a man's or the government to make. 

     Her husband is fully supportive. He is a power in his own right, being the chairman of the Kingdom Holding Corporation, essentially the investment arm of all those Saudi billions. She is involved in the business and in promoting interfaith dialogue.  

     Both the Prince and Princess are at some risk from Saudi and other Arab parties who are less modern.  She considers herself a devout Muslim and her very openness for dialogue also has earned her enmity. She has defied some archaic edict by driving and then talking about it. 

     Soft spoken, articulate and emphatic this is one Princess

with fairy tale wealth who is challenging a great evil of the real world. She could just as easily live the good life but

she has chosen to battle ignorance, repression, prejudice and cultural chauvinism. We wish her well and hope for a 

happily ever after for Arab women. The 21st Century belongs to them as well!  Talk about a shift in the balance of power.

DAY BOOK

A FENCE

     An artist friend who is also an avid gardener told Lana that a fence can do wonderful things for a garden.  She told her "it defines space."

     So, Lana will have more defined space and the world will

have one more barrier to the marauding killer deer of Cambria.  I'm hopeful the wild turkeys will also be blockaded.

      Don't write me off as a wild life hating old grump, but merely a guy who has seen his wife's loving efforts at providing the world with blooms and beauty be devastated by the marauding killer deer. Year after year.  "They" say that some things are deer proof.  Ha!  

     As for the turkey's-while they are fun to watch, unless you are one of our terrified cats, they leave one of the world's most noxious calling cards.  It's not enough they uproot plants and scatter dirt over walkways.  Those little traces of themselves they leave behind are not little and probably could rate as a weapon class substance.  What do they eat-kryptonite?

      So, we've joined the fence builders of the world.

I see another place to watch the play of light and shadow.

     The fence has forced us to "recover" a back hill top

for more gardening and for a meditation spot with a 

wonderful long vista of Green Valley.

     Our good neighbors David and Lois reworked a portion 

of their privacy wall and tied it in nicely with our fence.

     See you down the trail.

PS-Oh yea, there is plenty of open acreage for the killer deer and dirty turkeys.