Canada’s Liberal Party Prime Minister Mark Carney is no piker when pushing them.
…he suggested he has prepared for a possible military invasion by American forces. “I think you have a responsibility in these roles to look at extreme tail risk,” Carney said recently. “That’s just risk management. That’s not a base case, but it would be irresponsible not to” prepare.
Given that level of irrationality, how would it be possible to reach any sort of trade deal with Canada?
President Donal Trump (R) has correctly rejected Iran’s offer of a 7-day cease fire, during which the IRGC, the true power in the Iranian government, would pretend to negotiate a permanent end to the conflict, to do chit-chat regarding the IRGC’s nuclear weapons program, and to codify the fiction that the Hormuz Strait is an Iranian waterway. Even without the nonsense regarding the Strait, the offer was entirely disingenuous, since the IRGC uses all such cease fires and talks solely as periods within which to rest, refit, rearm, and resume fighting.
Trump’s responding plan, though, maintaining the current state of the conflict, is a serious error. He says he won’t resume bombing, if he does at all (he says he hasn’t decided), until after the November mid-terms. His abhorrence of the killing and destruction that war, or any shooting conflict, causes is laudable; however, he’s letting his abhorrence go too far; it’s seriously clouding his judgment in the present conflict. He’s fallen into a never do today what can be put off to tomorrow counterproductive loop.
As the conflict wears on, the destruction and deaths the IRGC inflicts on our Middle East allies and friends steadily increases. The privation the IRGC inflicts on the Iranian people steadily worsens as the IRGC diverts ever mote resources from the people toward its attacks on shipping and the infrastructure of the other nations of the Middle East. The costs to our military and its ability to respond to crises elsewhere in the world—viz., Russia’s growing threat to eastern Europe and the People’s Republic of China’s increasing threat to the Republic of China and the Philippines—greatly increase and is increasingly eroded, respectively. The costs to our military increases in the near term, especially. The repeated delays in serious bombing, the fits and starts, only requires far too many targets to be struck a second time, a third time, a fourth time,…. That just wastes our ammunition.
Domestically, as the conflict wears on, inflation will remain elevated, even if it is vastly reduced by Trump and Republican action so far from the Biden years, and in particular, the cost of gasoline to individual Americans remains high, the cost of diesel to shippers and farmers remains high and is increasing, and from those, the cost of food and cooling homes (and soon of heating them) remains high and is increasing.
Beyond that, Trump’s constant threats to Iran, ranging from harsh consequences to annihilation, are rapidly losing impact and costing credibility from his constant decisions to not act on those threats.
For all of those reasons, delay is strongly counterproductive.
Trump must resume heavy bombing and add heavy cyber attacks on Iran, and do them now, not tomorrow. The IRGC will never negotiate in any serious fashion. The only way to end the conflict and ease the Iranian people’s suffering with any hope of durability is to destroy the IRGC’s ability to fight at all and to eliminate the IRGC’s members altogether.
Many of the Arab nations that as recently as this summer had been pushing for negotiations with Iran to end the fighting between Iran and the US are now trying to persuade President Donald Trump (R) not to negotiate. This comes on the heels of Iranian attacks on Saudi oil tanker shipping in the Arabian Gulf and Iran’s Houthi satrap seizing islands in the Red Sea to cut off Arab shipping there, and attacks by the Houthis and by Iran’s Iraqi supporters on the Saudi oil pipeline to the Red Sea coast and on the Saudi port there.
They’re waffling on that, though. Don’t start shooting again, they’re also pushing. Just maintain the blockade and the economic pressure.
Other Gulf states, mainly Oman and Qatar, argue the region already has suffered significantly and say proposals for a phased reopening of Hormuz and a halt to attacks on Gulf states are the only viable way to end the conflict.
They need to recognize the suffering they’ll continue to experience with Iran still a military and terrorist threat, unless they kowtow to the murderous regime. There’s no need for a “phased reopening” of the Hormuz Strait. There’s only a need for the IRGC to stop shooting at Strait shipping and to acknowledge in writing and in public speaking that the Strait is international waters and Iran has no authority to change that fact.
That change in the IRGC is unlikely. The IRGC, which is the real power in the Iranian government, isn’t interested in ending the fight except on its terms: the Hormuz Strait is Iranian water, and shipping must pay an Iranian toll to pass through it; Iran must be able to resume its nuclear weapons development without interference; and the US must pay reparations to Iran in addition to lifting all sanctions.
The Arab nations may be starting to figure out the real world around their Iran fantasy, but they’ve a ways to go, yet. That path begins with those nations getting their collective heads out of the sand while finding enough backbone to get their hands dirty: taking back those Red Sea islands; getting serious about running the Houthis out of Yemen; joining with actual military force instead of stern words in renewed and expanded attacks on Iran until that nation is completely disarmed and has no means of rebuilding its military, including its missile, rocket, and drone inventory; it has no means of even beginning, much less resuming, its nuclear weapons program; and the IRGC has seized to exist.
The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on protecting women’s sports from male participation by gender identity last Wednesday. Progressive-Democratic Party committee members boycotted the hearing a’fter the committee’s Ranking Member Dick Durbin (D, IL) pooh-poohed the risk of boys and men playing against girls in girls’ sports, calling the hearing a vendetta against trans athletes.
This is Party’s overt, clear statement in favor of boys and men playing in what used to be girls’ sports, denying those girls the privacy of their own bathrooms and locker rooms, denying those girls the self-confidence that comes from competing against other girls and winning or otherwise doing well rather than being dominated by the boys and men against whom they’re competing—to use that term very loosely in this context. It denies girls access to the accolades, scholarships, and money that would otherwise accrue to them from success.
This is the Progressive-Democratic Party. It proudly adds misogyny to their platform.
Meta has released its broad-spectrum AI agent Muse, which does the user’s shopping, handles his email, handles a significant measure of his financials, maintains his calendars, and on and on. Leave aside the security concerns of such a broadly capable AI agent, especially one produced by Meta.
Amazon has blocked it from shopping on Amazon‘s sites.
In addition to selling goods, Amazon‘s shopping site has a large advertising business, and it won’t want to cede any ground to Meta in that space, analysts said. If agents do more shopping for users in the future, that means fewer humans to show ads to, and a potential rethinking of Amazon‘s business model.
It seems to me, though, that most folks shopping via AI agents tell the agents to go buy this sort of thing, not buy this particular thing. Thus, one answer would be to write ads tailored for AI agents as well as human-targeted ads.
Now we’d have robots selling, and advertising, to the robots that are buying stuff. And the ripples ripple. One ripple: humans, in addition to off-loading some of our work onto robots, could now off-load some of the burden of sorting through or ignoring advertisements onto their robots. Indeed, and this is part of Amazon‘s early-stage problem, humans using AI agents already are unburdening themselves of much of the hassle of dealing with advertisements.