Forum: Are Sanctions On Countries trading With Iran Wise Policy?

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Conspiracies, culture, economics, Faith, iran, Islam, National Security, TARIFFS

Every Monday, the WoW! community and our invited guests weigh in at the Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week’s question: Are Sanctions On Countries Trading With Iran Wise Policy?

Don Surber:Yes. Given that the Iranian protests are in their second month, there is a chance for a regime change. Women are doffing their headgear, and drivers are parking their trucks. The Grand Bazaar in Teheran shut down. 40 years ago, merchants in the Grand Bazaar backed the Iranian Revolution. Now they seem to want a regime change.

The only influence the United States has is in commerce. President Trump wisely is avoiding too much public support, and I doubt we are doing clandestine operations, as well. Why risk being associated with the rebellion? Any conection betwen us and them will end the revolution. The one thing we can do is not trade with Iran, and tom punish those who do.

This is the latest sign that the New World Order failed. Brexit, Trump, Macron, AMLO in Mexico, and now this. There are many other examples of regime changes because the old order failed The People.

Patrick O’Hannigan:I wish I could be more original on this question than to say that I agree with Don, but — I agree with Don!

Deterrence does not have to be exclusively in the military realm. The sanctions game (and it is a game, of sorts) amounts to “Leave the gun –Take the cannoli” writ large.

Rob Miller: Oh, I think it’s imperative. Iran’s economy is in free fall. No one wants the rial, inflation is rampant and the prices of food and other necessities is skyrocketing. That’s a big part of what’s behind the protests. Iran will not be able to continue to financially afford adventures abroad in Yemen, Syria or Lebanon for too much longer, and even Iraq’s kingmaker Muqtada al-Sadr is inching away from Iran somewhat. This will get even worse once Trump’s sanctions on countries buying Iran’s oil and natural gas take effect. Iran also my not have the funds needed to continue to be Hamas’s pay master along with Erdogan. The EU, BTW are looking like they’re reluctantly going along with the sanctions. They need our markets far more than Iran’s, and their choice will boil down to paying Putin’s atrocious prices or buying U.S. LPGD.

I also think our President and his team members are making a mistake by NOT informing the American people what a hideous regime this is…how it brutalizes its own people, the corruption of the Ayatollahs, and that Iran is not in any sense a ‘democracy. They need to explain that Iran has been in a state of war with America since 1979. They need to tell the American people that Iran never actually even signed th eso called ‘Iran Deal.’ They need to remind the American people about Iran’s complicity in 9/11, and how the rhetoric of both Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamanei focus on the Twelver Sect’s open embrace of apocalypse as a necessity for the Hidden Imam to return to rule the world for their brand of Islam.

The days of Iran’s despotic regime aren’t over yet. That won’t happen until the Army turns. But this is a great way to get the ball rolling.

Bookworm:I’m going to be so original that I’ll say I agree with both Don and Patrick! Honestly, I’d love to add some unique, wonderful insight, but I think they said it all.

What I will tack on, because I’m petty, is that one of Obama’s most significant failings as president happened early in his administration when he refused to give the Green Revolution any moral support. As we know now, the self-centered Obama had his own grand dream of “solving” Iran and was content to let people die in the streets rather than risk losing the halo he envisioned for himself.

Laura Rambeau Lee:I must say I agree with everyone, also. Sanctions hit them where it hurts most and can often lead to cooperation where and when we need it.

Well, there it is!

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On China, Tariffs, Trade Wars and Intellectual Property

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China, Economy, TARIFFS, Trade wars

FoxConn factory workers in China (screenshot)

Vassar Bushmills

A little background to President Trump’s proposed use of tariffs to punish China, a background that most businessmen his age will understand, while many of more recent generations won’t.

China cheats and steals.

And has for as long as I can remember. And since Taiwan was equally as bad about intellectual property, especially in their bootlegging of copyrighted books, I’ve often pondered if it isn’t cultural.

During the Vietnam War we had a small military mission in Taiwan, which allowed for a lot of TDY travel to the island. Military who traveled there were given small handouts warning against buying bootleg books which printers there had copied, in really cheap print and binding, but still, for a NYT best seller going for $10 back in the states, a great buy at $1. A friend of mine bought coins there and told me there was a pretty good export business for buying some books in large lots then bringing back to the states via Air Force runs from Japanese airbases such as Tachikawa or Yokota AB, near Tokyo. There was a regular hashish run from Thailand at the time, so criminal teams were all over the place, but the next leg back to the States was much safer for big boxes of books. College textbooks were more preferred than hot novels.

Publishers were losing millions, but students didn’t care.

That was Taiwan, not mainland China, which was not yet into economic expansion into commercial Western markets. Mao was still in charge, the Cultural Revolution still at full throttle, and Deng Xiaoping, who would transform the Chinese economy, was still in some type of internal Party exile.

So by the time I left my corporate position in textiles in ’89, with some history with the PRC Chinese, and decided to take my knowledge of Chinese business practices on the road, as a private consultant, it was with the belief, based on some practical observations, that they were not, in the western sense, men of honor in business.

They believed then, and to a great extent still do, that “foreign devils” from the West were well beneath them, notwithstanding that every improvement to their material culture since the fall of the Manchus had come about by Western invention. Still, that every Westerner was beneath contempt and worthy of being fleeced was deeply engrained. And a few American presidents proved them right. (Interesting factoid: “Kowtow” is a Chinese word, and not a New York Times word to define an effete Obama mannerism.)

I won’t turn this into an ethnic screed, as I know far too many Chinese living here who are not of this frame of min. But still, a thousand years of acculturation of royal Chinese worldviews could not have been erased by a few short years of “democracy” in the period just before WWII, when China was largely run by warlords. Chairman Mao simply provided a Marxist validation and system of control for what centuries of despotic rule had bred into them, especially about how humanity was designed, by nature to be ranked, top to bottom[…]

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