Negotiating with Iran, Two Short Stories and Opera

When B'Way Musicals Become Opera

Several centuries ago the very musical people of Italy started putting plays to music.  Thus opera was born, with many if not all of the dialogue of the play being sung rather than merely spoken.  Some “operas” were performed but one time and never heard, nor heard of, again.  But many were performed repeatedly and still are to this day.  It does not matter if you had previously seen them performed when the opportunity to hear Aida, Don Giovanni, the Barber of Seville, Rigoletto, Madame Butterfly or other great operas comes along.  Each time you go to see one of them again, you not only enjoy it again, but get a little more insight into it as well.

Don Giovanni

There are Broadway shows which are slowly evolving to meet these same criteria.  When you buy a ticket to see South Pacific, the Sound of Music, Oklahoma, Porgy and Bess, Showboat, West Side Story or Candide even though you may have seen them before, you still enjoy them, and probably more and more with each performance you see!  These Broadway shows, and others I may have neglected to mention, will be in the same category as opera within a few years. 

South Pacific

I wonder if some of the more recent offerings on the Broadway musical stage such as Kinky Boots or the Book of Mormon ever will attain that level of acceptance.  Whom am I to say they will not, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
Jack Lippman
                                                     

Negotiating with Iran

As mentioned in this blog several times over the past few years, eminent geopolitics expert George Friedman has felt that a better relationship between the United States and Iran was very likely to develop in the near future.  The fact that we have been quietly talking to Teheran over the past year, and that a temporary agreement with them has been reached indicates the accuracy of Friedman’s prognostications.  This has occurred despite our memory of their taking of American hostages 34 years ago and recognition by all concerned of the duplicity which overhangs any promises Teheran makes.

Hostages in 1979

What has been reported (and conceivably there are things that have not been reported) indicates that we will remove sanctions on a very small portion of Iranian banking resources which we had been blocking in exchange for some minimal restriction on the uranium enrichment in which Iran is engaging, ostensibly for peaceful purposes.  The centrifuges will continue to operate but no new ones will be built and enrichment of uranium will be capped at 20%, an amount barely below that needed for weaponry. Supposedly, inspectors will be allowed in to monitor compliance.  We are giving them very little, but they are giving up very little as well.  If all goes well for six months, however, further negotiations will then take place.

Can Iran be trusted?  This initial six month period is in effect a test.  But It is difficult to believe they can since their religious leader, who supersedes their President in power, continues to insult Israel and vow to destroy it.  Some say this is merely being said to satisfy the Iranian hardliners.  Meanwhile, Israel and the Sunni states (Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the Gulf States) find themselves in the same boat, uncomfortable with an agreement which still leaves Iran on the doorstep of becoming a nuclear power.  If the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia and China are satisfied with what has occurred after six months, negotiations will resume with the aim of relieving more Iranian assets of sanctions in exchange for moving them further away from that doorstep. 

 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims the six month deal is a bad one, not exacting enough from Iran.  His position is shared by the Saudis and other Sunni states.  Unfortunately, so long as all of the major powers are in on the negotiations, Israel is not in a position to act on its own, even though it claims not to be bound by the negotiations.  It is conceivable that Netanyahu actually is a party to the deal, but must sound belligerent in order to mollify those in Israel who have no faith in anything Iran says or promises and would support bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities today.

  Israeli Missile Capability 

In view of those nations agreeing to the agreement, doing so would leave Israel all by itself.  I believe, therefore, they will quietly acquiesce to the agreement, but take a firm position if and when negotiations resume in six months.

 

According to Friedman, historically, Iran and Persia before it, has always developed its political stance based on three factors: (1) its protective isolation from nearby countries because of desert and mountain barriers, (2) its desire to be the dominant power in its region, excluding outside influences and finally, (3) the ability to negotiate shrewdly to attain what it wants using whatever factors are at hand as leverage. It appears that is what is happening now.  Friedman has pointed out, using North Korea as an illustration, that so long as Iran is not yet a nuclear power, it has something about which to negotiate, but once it has a bomb, it has nothing about which to negotiate and hence, would actually be in a weaker position.  This is a hard argument to sell to Israelis.

 

If we ask ourselves what the alternatives to the recent agreement would be for the United States. Israel and the other nations involved, and come up with some answers, you can be sure that those answers have already been presumed by the Iranians and are part of their present negotiating strategy and their future strategy in six months.  Diplomacy is very difficult, but is preferable up to a point, to war.

JL

                                                                   

A Pair of Short Stories from My Archives

I had planned to include this story in last week's Thanksgiving posting, but forgot to.  I have included it before, and look at it as the blog's annual Thanksgiving story.

 JL


Something to Believe In  

Wang looked up in amazement at the gigantic balloons which floated down the avenue above the paraders.  Some were in the shapes of elephants and clowns and characters he recognized from the TV shows he had been watching.  And the music!  There were blaring bands from all over the country interspersed among the floats.

“But, Mom, what is this parade all about?  Who are we paying homage to?” the thirteen year old asked the middle-aged woman who held his hand tightly.  “I remember parades like this in China, but they were always in honor of the Party or the working man.  I know you have tried to explain Thanksgiving to me, but who are we thanking?  Where are the leaders we should be cheering, like we did in Tiananmen Square on May Day?

“Wang,” she answered, “We are giving thanks for having the things which make our life so happy.  You know, the food on our table, our clothes, the nice apartment we live in.  Americans give thanks in many ways, some even thank God for what they have, but Wang, God personally won’t be part of the parade.”

Max, on the boy’s other side, gave Louise a jaundiced look.

“Oh,” the boy replied.  But it was clear that he was still confused.  “You mean I won’t be seeing Jesus in the parade?  He’s the one I usually thank for that kind of stuff. That’s what Reverend Lee taught us to do.”

“No, but if you want to be thankful to him, you can, Wang.”  

When Louise and Max had gotten Wang from the Mission Adoption Society less than a month before, they had been told that the Mission people who had taught him English also converted him to Christianity, once they had gotten him out of China where proselyting was illegal.  One of the things they had agreed to was to raise the boy as a Christian.  Neither Louise nor Max really practiced any religion.  They decorated a tree at Christmastime, but had never set foot in a church in their entire lives.  Max was born Jewish, but he lacked a religious background and was totally non-observant.  Louise came from a family of atheists.  So, when they paid the $25,000 adoption fee to the Mission Society, they didn’t object to agreeing to raise the boy as a Christian.  And the Mission people didn’t really care.  So far as Louise and Max were concerned, decorating a Christmas tree and hanging up a stocking Christmas Eve would suffice for his religious upbringing.  But Wang’s constant questioning was getting to be a bother.

The parade was drawing to a close, and the level of tension was increasing.   Wang felt it and didn’t know why, but suddenly, the final float of the parade came into view.  Mounted on a sleigh pulled by eight animated reindeer, and waving to all, was Santa Claus, resplendent in his white-trimmed bright red outfit, his snow-covered beard cascading down over his chest.  A loudspeaker boomed out his cries of “Ho, Ho, Ho, Merry Christmas to All!   Ho, Ho, Ho!”

 

Wang’s eyes opened as wide as they could, as Santa rolled by their curbside position.  The cheers were deafening. 

“That’s Santa Claus.  I saw him on the TV yesterday.  Is he the one we thank for everything on Thanksgiving?”

This time Max answered him.  “No, Wang.  Santa may bring the gifts, but he isn’t the one who gets them for you in the first place.”

The boy looked puzzled.  “If I shouldn’t be thanking Jesus or Santa for the gifts, should I be thanking you, Mom and Pop?”

“Well, sort of,” Louise replied, but obviously, she wasn’t happy with that answer and the thirteen year old wasn’t either.

“Look,” he said.  “I know you two aren’t Christians, and until last year, I hadn’t even heard of Jesus.  So whether or not I believe in him really doesn’t matter. I can take him or leave him.  But now you’re telling me that I shouldn’t be thanking Santa either.  This is sort of like what things were like in China.  Everyone used to thank Mao for everything.  Now, that was before my time, but then they told everybody to thank someone else, and finally, just thank the Communist Party, and that’s what I did in the orphanage, but that was okay since they ran the place.  But who do I thank here in America?  I certainly have a lot to be thankful for, what with you adopting me and all.  I just don’t feel it’s enough to thank just you two for all you’ve done for me.

My God, Louise thought.  Perhaps we should have waited for an infant, not this boy with his inquiring mind.  Maybe he’ll end up being a scientist or something, she mused. 

Later that night, in bed, she turned to Max.  “Max, do you believe in some force that controls the universe, some original cause or something?”

“Like God, you mean?  No … let’s leave it at some kind of power that started it all, and forget the divinity part of it.”

“You’re more of an atheist than my Dad was, Dear,” Louise replied.  “I’m beginning to think, if only for the boy, we have to believe in something.”

Max answered, “Well, Miss Atheist, you’re not going to get me involved with Jesus or back to the smelly old shuls I remember from Brooklyn.  Let’s find something nice and non-religious to credit everything to, and give that to the kid.”

“At least then,” Louise continued, “He’ll have someone … or something … to thank on Thanksgiving.”

And so it was that Louise and Max joined an introspective philosophical group, which met in a professor’s apartment on the Upper West Side on Tuesday evenings, in the hope of learning some answers to the questions the boy was raising.    Wang eventually started accompanying them to the meetings, and perhaps because of his Chinese background, quickly took to what was going on, and understood the discussions in perhaps greater depth than the adults there.   And he never again had to ask about whom to thank for the blessings which he received, but he did give great thought to whether the bounty he shared was indeed a blessing, or perhaps it should be looked at in another light.  He loved to talk about these things with Louise and Max for hours on end after the meetings.

Louise was very happy with the outcome.  Max turned to vodka.

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Reading about the "Black Friday" sales being held in stores across the nation reminded me of this old one, which I include in this posting.  Hope you like it.
JL

The Big Sale

At nine a.m. sharp, the doors swung open for what had been advertised as the greatest after-Christmas sale the Emporium had ever had. 

The advertisements had announced unbelievable sale prices on everything in the store, including merchandise which had never before been put on sale. By dawn, the crowd, many of whom had lined up before midnight, had overflowed from the sidewalk onto the street.  A phone call to the city had brought a hastily organized squad of police to augment the store’s security force, but even then, it was becoming difficult to control what was fast becoming an unruly mob.  When an icy rain began to fall at about seven a.m., the crowd had started chanting “Open the doors, open the doors,” and pushed closer to the building to get some shelter from the weather.  One of the glass doors at one of the entrances had actually buckled from the pressure of the now soaked crowd.  People were passing out and getting stepped on.  Ambulances had already been called to the scene joining with the police vehicles already there.  But the people were undeterred in their quest for what they hoped would be the bargains of a lifetime.  The ads had promised designer fashions at 80% off of their pre-Christmas prices, furs and jewelry drastically reduced and toys at less than wholesale cost!

Seymour Simon, the store’s manager, was knocked to the floor as the throng poured through the doors.  He shrieked with pain as the pointed stiletto heel of a woman’s shoe dug into the small of his back.  The sales force, frightened by the onrushing tide, retreated behind their counters, cowering out of reach of the customers who were ravenously sweeping up merchandise from the racks and tables.  The sound of breaking glass could be heard, as display cases were smashed by buyers eager to acquire what was in them.  It was if a swarm of locusts were sweeping through the store, grasping and devouring everything in sight.

But as unruly as the mob might have been, they were not thieves.  They had come to buy what was on sale.  And so, arms loaded with coats and suits and dresses and vacuum cleaners and luggage and necklaces and shoes and computers and toys and whatever else they were able to grab up at unbelievably low prices, they lined up at the cash registers with money and credit cards in hand.  It soon, however, became apparent that the lines were not moving, not even an inch.  The crowd, whose fury had lessened once they were let in out of the rain, gradually became more raucous and nasty once again.

Seymour Simon, his head bandaged and the left sleeve of his suit shredded, fresh from being treated by the EMTs, climbed as best he could atop a table which minutes earlier had been laden with Ralph Lauren Polo Sportshirts, originally $59.95, now reduced to $11.95.   He spoke into a hand-held microphone which carried his voice through loudspeakers on all four floors of the store.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he stammered.  Droplets of blood came out of his mouth where a broken tooth had cut into his tongue.  “Please bear with us.  Please make room for the paramedics who are trying to get to some people who have been trampled.”

“Mr. Manager, “a fat lady carrying at least twelve dresses from the Dana Buchman Collection called out.  “That’s very nice that the EMTs are here, but how about getting someone to take our money.  This line ain’t moving.”

A young woman, obviously a store employee, tugged at Seymour’s leg, attracting his attention.

“What is it, Stephanie?  Can’t you see I am handling a problem?” 

“Mr. Simon, I think the computers are down and the cash registers aren’t working.”

“Oh, crap!  Are we trying to get them fixed, Stephanie?  Whom have you spoken to?

“Mr. Simon,” Stephanie continued as she fended off a woman who was trying to rip her bracelet off., “Both of our computer technicians have been rushed to the hospital.  Some of the crowd got into their office and there was a fight when they tried to take their laptops from them … and Madame, please get your filthy hands off of me.  I am not a mannequin.”

“Watch your language, Stephanie.   We don’t want to get sued, you know.”

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” Seymour, thinking quickly on his feet, once again turned and addressed the merchandise-laden mob, “Folks, I have some bad news for you and some good news for you as well.  First, the bad news.  Our computers are temporarily down and we can’t operate our cash registers, so we won’t be able to complete the purchases you want to make today.”

A chorus of boos sprinkled with profanities resounded throughout the store.  A lamp flew across the store shattering a mirrored wall and narrowly missing Seymour’s head.

“Now the good news,” he continued.  “If you would tell the clerk at the register what merchandise you wanted to buy today, and give us your name and some sort of identification, you can come back to the store when our cash registers are operating, and we will let you purchase it then, and to compensate you for your inconvenience, you can have another ten percent off of today’s prices.  Okay, folks?”

“I told you this was a phony sale, Maggie,” a gruff voice hollered out.  “They never intended to sell all of this stuff so cheap.  False advertising, that’s what it is!” 

A dull roar of agreement swept through the crowds of angry customers hovering around the registers on all four floors of the Emporium. 

“You’re all a bunch of phonies!”

“They should be put in jail!  Crooks, crooks, that’s what you are!

Just about then, amidst the noise and confusion, someone grabbed Seymour’s leg and pulled him from the table from which he had been speaking.  Grabbing the microphone from him, a swarthy man in a plaid jacket, leapt up in his place and raising his clenched fist in the air, screamed out to the mob, “Screw them all, let’s just take the stuff.  That’s what these bastards deserve!  Just take it and run!”

Responding with a vengeance to the speaker’s plea, the mob on all four floors, almost acting as one, turned toward the doors, carrying whatever was in their arms and anything else they could pick up along the way, and swept down the escalators and toward the street, howling and screaming all the way.

By then, Stephanie, who had watched with fear as the crowd turned more and more vicious, had reached the police captain outside of the store and asked him for help.   

“Don’t worry, m’am, he said.  We’ll put a stop to their thievery.”

But bullhorned requests for them to drop the merchandise they were carrying out of the store, shots fired into the air by the newly arrived SWAT team, and the fire hoses of the fire department didn’t have any effect on the now enraged mob of shoppers.  Laden with loot, they kept pouring out of the store.

“Sir, it looks like we’re going to have to start shooting for real if we’re going to get this thing cooled down,” the SWAT team leader pointedly said, addressing the frustrated police captain.

“Go to it, men!  Do what you have to!”  Captain O’Mally responded.

Once the shooting started, it was hard to stop.  After the initial bursts of fire, leaving half a dozen shoppers dead or wounded in front of the store, the momentum of the crowd seemed to diminish.  But that was only a momentary pause.  A knot of shoppers, led by the swarthy man in the plaid jacket, had taken some hunting rifles and ammunition from the sporting goods department, and had set up sniper positions at the windows on the store’s third floor from which they were soon firing down at the police on the streets surrounding the Emporium.  By the time the first contingents of National Guard troops, just sent in by the governor, had arrived and restored order, about twenty shoppers, three police officers and four store employees had been killed, and at least one hundred people had been hospitalized with bullet wounds or other injuries.

The Emporium remained closed for repairs and restocking until April, and once they reopened, despite all types of sales and promotions, customers just couldn’t be attracted.  The store closed its doors permanently five months later.

Seymour Simon now sells cemetery plots in Florida.  Captain O’Malley, who was eased into retirement after the police investigation of the incident, runs a sport fishing boat out of Wilmington, North Carolina.  The swarthy man in the plaid jacket is serving seven to ten years in State Prison.  Stephanie, who was one of those wounded during the gun battle, has almost completely recovered from her injuries.  She received a generous insurance settlement, is engaged to be married to a podiatrist from Poughkeepsie and shops only on the internet.
                                                             

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