MichaelIngle

Retired lawyer/student of Chinese. At I comment on articles posted on 爱思想, also writing about Hu Feng on

[Trita Parsi @tparsi]

Many will dismiss this clip with Trump as empty talk and self-serving.

But they may miss a deeper message here: Trump is deliberately refuting the very premises of Israel's case against Iran: That Iran is ideological, irrational, and suicidal.

The first two premises eliminate diplomacy and detterence. The last one ensures that the only option the US will have is preventive war.

These are the premises you want in order to force the US into war.

Israel largely succeeded in getting Washington to adopt these assumptions.

It is not a small thing that Trump is directly tearing them apart.

[MichaelIngle @ChinaNotes]

@yarbatman You have made a good point about the need to address the underlying causes.

[MichaelIngle @ChinaNotes]

@HistorianZhang The only way to know a Chinese person’s name for certain is to have the characters in front of you.

[MichaelIngle @ChinaNotes]

@bedfordtwo @joncstone @rorysutherland It is true that I managed well in the past with a typewriter, writing paper, alarm clock, record player and physical newspapers and books, but our phones nowadays are a lot more convenient.

[MichaelIngle @ChinaNotes]

@HistorianZhang Chopped onions without cheese must be a Hong Kong thing. People eat different food in different places. That is one of the main pleasures of travelling (including to the UK).

[MichaelIngle @ChinaNotes]

@joncstone @rorysutherland I don’t see the problem either. Most phone contracts now provide huge amounts of data. Why bother with train wifi?

[MichaelIngle @ChinaNotes]

@dominictsz The videos of new stations in China make Shanghai’s Hongqiao Station look like a branch station. At age 75 my first thought is of the amount of walking involved.

[Pedro Sánchez @sanchezcastejon]

Más de 7.400 muertos, la mayoría civiles. Cientos de hogares, colegios y hospitales destruidos. Un incremento generalizado de los precios y miles de millones de euros en pérdidas, también en Europa. Este es el saldo que ha tenido el conflicto en Irán.

Confiamos en que el acuerdo de paz anunciado hoy sirva para poner fin a este sinsentido, que sea respetado por todas las partes, y que marque así el inicio de una nueva etapa en Oriente Medio.

Celebremos. Pero no olvidemos. Y aprendamos de una vez por todas que la guerra es un fracaso. El diálogo y la diplomacia son el único camino.

[Brendan Cox @MrBrendanCox]

10 years ago my wife, the mum of our kids & the MP for Batley&Spen was killed by a far right extremist.

At anniversaries I try to be optimistic about the future. But not this time. In the ten years since she was killed we have gone backwards & I fear our democracy is now at risk

[Tom Harwood @tomhfh]

It's often claimed that social media is producing a generation of inarticulate zombies.

But listen to this girl. Here she is on national TV without missing a beat getting across her points with confidence and good humour.

Too many people are reading into the joke at the end as if it's genuinely what she's going to do. If you think that, she is smarter than you. And she grew up with social media.

[MichaelIngle @ChinaNotes]

@DiaryofaSickGrl Obsessions about food started way back in the 1970s. I was there.

[MichaelIngle @ChinaNotes]

@GabrielAttal OK, where is the plan?

[Shashank Joshi @shashj]

Trump on Feb 28th. https://t.co/G29UoSstoC

https://t.co/zC21NPnHQq

[MichaelIngle @ChinaNotes]

@tomhfh Looks great to me. What is the problem?

[David Henig 🇺🇦 @DavidHenigUK]

Globalisation survives another scare, as is repeatedly the case. Inter dependency is a far greater force than national government wants to admit.

[MichaelIngle @ChinaNotes]

@marcosagusstinn @andrewhesselden Voters were told about many of these things, but they were mesmerised by promises of ‘sovereignty’, the message on the bus, and decades of press attacks on immigration.

[Dan Shapiro @DanielBShapiro]

Until the text of the US-Iran deal is signed and released, there is going to be a lot of spin on both sides. But here is my initial take.

This war was a mistake, and it needs to end. The President thought that the Iranian regime would collapse quickly, but it did not. In fact, it has been strengthened strategically by its survival against a heavy US-Israeli assault and carrying out some effective counterstrikes. Many countries in the region are now courting Iran and looking to deescalate and rebuild ties. A sign of which way the wind is blowing.

Getting the Strait of Hormuz open is the most important outcome of this MOU. Of course, the Strait was open before the war. Now we are paying to reopen it with sanctions relief. Iran has taken a theoretical point of leverage and turned it into a very real and powerful one, imposing costs across the global economy and rattling President Trump.

As for the nuclear issues, there really is no agreement, other than to negotiate over the HEU stockpile and an enrichment moratorium. Iran knows how to drag out those negotiations, and try to pocket concessions along the way. It is possible that no deal will every be reached, and very likely that if one is reached, it will be worse than what we could have achieved through diplomacy before the war.

Iran is not likely to take seriously that the US would return to war, certainly before the US midterms. So that means we will be conducting diplomacy without a credible threat of force.

If any agreement ultimately reached actually safely puts Iran's nuclear ambitions out of reach, I'll acknowledge it. It's just too early to make that judgment.

Trump is mainly focused on comparing his deal favorably to the JCPOA. But we are a long way from being able to make that comparison, and it may end up no better, or weaker than that deal.

But in some ways, Trump's deal and the JCPOA are already similar. Nothing on ballistic missiles, nothing on proxies, nothing on weakening the regime or helping the Iranian people. And plenty of sanctions relief that will strengthen the regime, and be poured into the missile program and proxy network. Honest critics of the JCPOA will not twist themselves into pretzels to defend Trump's approach.

Israelis are deeply disappointed in this outcome, but they should not be surprised. After some initial overlap of Trump's and Netanyahu's interests, there was a strong divergence. The United States needed this war to end. Netanyahu wanted to continue.

Trump's claim to include Lebanon in the ceasefire and his harsh shutting down Israeli attacks on Hezbollah is also a win for Iran. After the JCPOA was signed, Obama and Netanyahu worked together to strengthen Israel's campaign of strikes in Syria to intercept Iranian weapons shipments to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

So let's hope we see the removal of Iran's enriched uranium and a long-term suspension of enrichment, with full verification. But to achieve those goals, Trump's team is going to need to engage in far more sophisticated diplomacy, backed by qualified experts, than they have to date. If it is a phase one splash with no follow-up on implementation of later phases, like in Gaza, we will be much worse off after, and because of, this war.

[Angelica 🌐⚛️🇹🇼🇨🇳🇺🇸 @AngelicaOung]

Seems like Israel can still sabotage this at any time by going back to raze another village in Lebanon or something.

But it is all moot…the structure, the contours of the result of the war is clear. Netanyahu had the ability to disrupt but not to dictate. He can alienate Trump further by sabotaging this deal, but that would not cause Trump to resume the war. He’s more likely to think about what concessions he can give up to get the Iranians to come back to the table.

The result is baked in. Israel must live with a new Middle East where Iran is a permanent power rather than a marginalized pariah. Once the people of Israel get over the sugar high of flattening southern Lebanon, they will realize in dismay what they have done to their strategic position.

[Robert Colvile @rcolvile]

The UK planning system in microcosm - wealthy local campaigners in Cotswolds push through judicial review, even alleging breaches of Public Sector Equality Duty (topical!), just to block housing for year after year after year https://t.co/QtqjoOiPmN

[MichaelIngle @ChinaNotes]

@K_Niemietz @SimonMagus It would take a a Mao, but he is no longer in this world.