Mark Twain is reputed to have said

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”

Whether or not Mark Twain said this doesn’t matter.  It is the takeoff point of this post.

I am going to give you the rhyme pattern, and I’d like you comment on the places in history where you can detect that pattern or even some significant parts of the pattern.

• A less powerful societal entity (A) demands that a more powerful entity (B) stops committing a perceived offense against the the less powerful entity (A).
• The more powerful entity (B) refuses to talk to the less powerful one (A) about their demands.
• The less powerful entity (A) commits an escalating series of stealthy violent acts against the powerful one (B) until they get some attention to their grievance.
• Eventually, the more powerful entity (B) decides that the pain is great enough that it would just be better to resolve (A)’s grievance against (B).
• (A) gets their grievance resolved, and they become powerful themselves.
• (A) looks back at how they achieved their goals and resolves never to allow a lesser power to  use the technique against them that they used against (B).
• Along comes an entity (C) that is less powerful than (A) and has a grievance against (A).
• (C) starts to use the tactic against (A) that (A) used successfully against (B).
• With (A)’s resolve based on its historic memory it is  even more intransigent against (C) than (B) was against (A).  They even tell (C) that there is nothing (C) can do to get them to change their mind.
• (C) takes this as a challenge for themselves to find something so horrible to do against (A), that (A) will finally agree to address the grievance.
• An escalating series of violent acts are performed by (A) on (C) in retaliation for the escalating attacks of (C) on (A).

There are only a few inevitable outcomes from this battle.

1. (A) finally gives in and tries to resolve its issues with (C).
2. (A) annihilates (C)
3. (C) annihilates (A)
4. (A) and (C) mutually destruct.

Let the contest begin.  The winner is me, if I can get enough of you to participate to build a long enough list.  At some point we might be able to measure which outcome produces the most happy people, the fewest deaths, and the fewest guilty consciences.  If you have other measures of success, I would be glad to hear them.  Even in scenarios 2 and 3, one side is silenced and the other side is left with a blot on their history that will haunt them (or at least their descendants) forever.

Oh, another winner would be the powerful entity that sees the rhyme emerging, and decides to cut to the resolution phase, and skip the pain of delaying the inevitable.

NPR has the article Transcript: President Obama’s Full NPR Interview On Iran Nuclear Deal. You’ll have to want to find out what the President said, and watch the video, because I am not going to give you any snappy excerpts from the video that let’s you go away thinking you have actually learned something.

NPR’s interview with President Obama focuses on the pact the U.S. and allied nations recently negotiated with Iran. The framework requires the nation to reduce its nuclear capacity in exchange for the lifting of some international sanctions.

Below is a window in which YouTube will display the video.  The video is not coming from me or this blog.

I did find the interviewer as annoying as all media people are these days. I won’t give you the exact words that annoy me, because then you might think you actually learned something without having seen the video. I’ll paraphrase the type of dialogue that annoyed me. The interviewer asks a question. The President answers in detail with a quite reasonable answer. Then the interviewer has a followup question where he asks the President if he really meant to say the stupid thought that is stuck in the interviewer’s brain. The President then has to say that no that isn’t at all what he just said. The President then repeats what he actually said and what he actually meant. This happens a number of times throughout the interview. In fact there are probably few questions that don’t lead to this back and forth.

If you want to hear the soundbite that The Daily Kos trivially focused on, then go read their article. If you need a sound bite to entice you to see the whole interview, then less power to you.

The Jerusalem Post has the story Geologists claim stats, science prove Jesus buried in Jerusalem with wife and supposed son.

I have no idea why I post this article here, except that here might be a use for it someday.

The Friends Of Bernie have posted this on their Facebook page.

He has brief discussions on some important issues. I liked almost all his answers. And to think, the guy has a sense of humor, too.

The New York Times has the story Lincoln Chafee Hits Hillary Clinton on Foundation Donations.

Mr. Chafee said his disagreements with Mrs. Clinton were largely about foreign policy issues rather than domestic. He said he recognized that fund-raising would be a challenge if he decided to run, but that he planned to travel to Iowa, New Hampshire and other primary states to drum up support.

Well, I don’t like her foreign policy, but her Wall Street oriented domestic policy is awful.  How could Lincoln Chafee miss that?

Mr. Chafee was a Republican when in the Senate from 1999 to 2007 and later served one term as governor as an independent. He became a Democrat in 2013.

Now I get it.

USA Today has the story Iran: Lift sanctions immediately or no final nuke deal.

In a televised address Thursday at a ceremony marking Iran’s nuclear technology day, President Hassan Rouhani appeared to rule out a gradual removal of the sanctions, which have hit the nation’s energy and financial sectors hard — and devastated its economy.

“We will not sign any agreement, unless all economic sanctions are totally lifted on the first day of the implementation of the deal,” he said. “We want a win-win deal for all parties involved in the nuclear talks.”

“The Iranian nation has been and will be the victor in the negotiations,” he added.

It all sounded pretty reasonable until that last sentence.  Perhaps something got lost in translation.  It wouldn’t be the first time.

The article shows a tweet from Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

All #sanctions should be removed just when the deal is reached. If sanctions removal depends on another process then why we started to talk?

That’s something I have been wondering myself.

As for the negotiations final outcome, I will have to defer to Yogi Berra, who once said “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.”