Welcome to another damn week: it’s Monday, March 8, 2026, and the ducks are still here. In honor of their Purim arrival, we have named them Vashti (the hen) and Armon (the drake). They are happy and well fed. It’s also National Meatball Day, so perhaps I’ll make a batch of bucatini with red sauce and turkey meatballs. I bet you’re wondering what the world’s largest meatball was. Here’s the answer, and it was big:
It was the biggest meatball anyone, anywhere, had ever seen—a massive sphere that tipped the scales at more than 1,700 pounds. Volunteers from the Italian-American Club on Hilton Head Island [South Carolina] had babysat the big boy around the clock for five days as it cooked away in its custom-made oven.
The aroma wafted through the air at Shelter Cove Community Park and prompted more than one passerby to seek out its source. A group of women trying to concentrate on a morning yoga routine jokingly suggested that it was challenging their resolve to live a healthy lifestyle.
But, no one was pretending that this huge meatball was in any way a testament to low cholesterol and a trim waistline. The whole purpose of its creation was to secure a coveted place in Guinness World Records. To do so, they would have to best the admirable efforts of an Italian-American Club in Ohio that had waddled into history in 2011 when it cooked a meatball that weighed in at 1,100 pounds.
And, now, a representative—an adjudicator—from Guinness World Records was on hand to determine if the Ohio record would fall.
Chef Joe Sullivan of Mulberry Street Trattoria in Bluffton provided his recipe, multiplied it 520 times and helped secure the staggering amount of ingredients needed: more than 1,800 pounds of beef and pork, 700 eggs, 250 pounds of breadcrumbs, 25 pounds of oregano, 56 pounds of salt and an equal amount of pepper. There was some Parmesan cheese in there, too, and some milk to keep everything nice and moist.
Here it is! (Watch from 2:16 to 8:53 and then from 11:00 to 11:52.) It weighed almost a ton!
It’s also Amerigo Vespucci Day, marking the birth of the Italian explorer in 1454, Barbie Day (celebrating her debut at the International Toy Fair in 1959), Commonwealth Day in the UK, and National Crabmeat Day (you’ll see some later today; we had one dish at the Next restaurant).
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 2 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Obituaries first. The rock stars of my generation are dying off. The Reaper’s latest victim is Country Joe McDonald, who died on Saturday at 84 from Parkinson’s disease. McDonald wasn’t really a star but a one-hit wonder, but that hit became an anthem of the anti-Vietnam-war generation, “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag“, released in 1965 by Country Joe and his band, The Fish. It was a bouncy but biting song, and all of us knew the words, including the chorus:
And it’s one, two, three, what are we fighting for?
Don’t ask me I don’t give a damn
Next stop is Vietnam.
And it’s five, six, seven, open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain’t no time to wonder why,
Whoopie! We’re all gonna die
Here’s the song from Woodstock in 1969, starting with the “Fish Cheer,” replaced by another F-word:
*War news: the U.S. and Israel ramp up attacks, and Iran says it’s close to naming a new Supreme Leader. As I predicted (anybody could), it’s Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the late theocrtic dictator. He now has a target on his back, and the oppression, terrorism, and theocracy will continue.
Fuel depots near Iran’s capital, Tehran, were engulfed in flames early Sunday after U.S. and Israeli forces expanded their attacks, while Iran tried to project stability by announcing that top clerics were finalizing their selection of a new supreme leader.
More than a week into the war, there was no sign of an offramp for the fighting. Both sides appeared to be intensifying attacks on critical infrastructure, potentially affecting millions of people across the Middle East.
The United States Central Command on Sunday urged Iranian civilians to stay at home, suggesting that the U.S. could strike densely populated areas as the Iranian forces often use urban areas to launch drone strikes and ballistic missiles. Iran earlier rejected President Trump’s demand for unconditional surrender, with a top leader vowing to avenge Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death.
Iranian state television announced on Sunday that the country’s top clerics were close to naming a successor to Ayatollah Khamenei, the ruler killed in the opening blow of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran last weekend. The channel did not say who the new leader might be, but officials who spoke to The New York Times previously said Mojtaba Khamenei, the ayatollah’s son, was the front-runner.
Mr. Trump warned in an interview with ABC News on Sunday that whoever is selected “is not going to last long” without the approval of the United States.
I am betting the next Supreme Leader will be Ali Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, but I would be scared to death if I became Iran’s next leader. Look what the Mossad did to his father! Anyway, yes, this is going to last a while as I can’t see the regime giving up power unless Qatar gives the leaders sanctuary and the Revolutionary Guard surrenders (and gets amnesty). That doesn’t look to be in the cards.
*US officials have warned that Iran may be able to retrieve the enriched uranium that was buried last year by U.S. bombs near Isfahan.
American intelligence agencies have determined that Iran or potentially another group could retrieve Iran’s primary store of highly enriched uranium even though it was entombed under the country’s nuclear site at Isfahan by U.S. strikes last year, according to multiple officials familiar with the classified reports.
Officials familiar with the intelligence said that Iran can now get to the uranium through a very narrow access point. It is unclear how quickly Iran could move the uranium, which is in gas form and stored in canisters.
U.S. officials have said that American spy agencies have constant surveillance of the Isfahan site and have a high degree of confidence they could detect — and react — to any attempt by the Iranian government or other groups to move it.
That stockpile of uranium would be a key building block if Iran decided to move toward making a nuclear weapon.
With Iran in chaos from the ongoing strikes by the United States and Israel, the fate of the uranium and the options for securing it have become critical issues for the Trump administration.
On Saturday, President Trump was asked by reporters on Air Force One if he would consider sending in ground forces to secure the highly enriched uranium.
“Right now we’re just decimating them, but we haven’t gone after it,” he said. “But something we could do later on. We wouldn’t do it now.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said on Saturday that the decision to go to war with Iran was motivated, in part, by the Iranian government’s decision to move its nuclear and missile projects so far underground that they would be “immune to any assault.”
The United States chose not to try to retrieve the uranium last year after the 12-day war in which Iran’s nuclear sites came under intense bombardment. Mr. Trump determined that doing so at that time would be too dangerous.
Any insertion of ground forces — presumably Special Operations commandos — would be highly risky. U.S. officials said that the air campaign against Iran would need to continue for days to further weaken Iranian defenses before any final decision on the viability of that type of raid.
*If you want regime change in Iran, you can have your views bolstered by this WSJ column by a historian who heads an Institute of Iranian studies. He’s optimistic.
Everywhere you look, there’s another expert to tell you what won’t happen—what can’t happen—in Iran. Regime change is impossible. Never mind the mass protests of January; the regime has the guns and is willing to use them. Never mind the airstrikes on leaders and thugs; you can’t topple a regime from the air. Trust the political science.
Ali M. Ansari has a different view. “I’m a firm believer in what Hannah Arendt says: Revolutions are impossible before they happen and inevitable after they happen.” Prof. Ansari, 58, is a historian at Scotland’s University of St. Andrews, where he directs the Institute for Iranian Studies. His 2024 book, “Iran,” is the best primer available on the nation’s modern history. He worries that social scientists and international-relations types “have become so wedded to their templates that they can’t see” what has happened inside Iran.
“The vast majority of people are struggling. The political system is hated. The economic system isn’t delivering,” he says in a video interview. Salaries “no longer meet the basic needs of life. There’s an environmental crisis—they’ve drained the water table. And now, they have an international crisis.” That’s putting it mildly.
“Every crisis you can think of, the Islamic Republic is facing,” Mr. Ansari says. “People tell me, ‘Oh, but it’s strong and stable.’ Well, it can’t be that strong and stable because people are rebelling every few years, and on a scale the regime deems existential.” Regime supporters, whom Mr. Ansari pegs at 10% to 20% of the population, “are convinced they are going to defeat the U.S. in this war.” He pauses: “They are not going to do it.”
. . . This gets at the main problem Mr. Ansari sees with Western analysis: “We fail to give the Iranians agency in what they do.” When Iran’s economy is in shambles, the reflex is to blame U.S. sanctions. “That doesn’t explain why the Iranians have mismanaged their water. It doesn’t tell you why, well before the real sanctions arrived in 2011-12, they were never able to get any foreign direct investment into the country. Now, why is that?” he asks. “It’s internal. It’s the corruption, the kleptocracy, the short-termism, the opaqueness, the lack of accountability, the uncertainty.” Sanctions didn’t make life easier, he says, but they didn’t befall Iran. They were a consequence of the regime’s behavior.
. . .The regime insisted throughout on a “right to enrich uranium”—which “would have more credibility if they respected any other rights as well,” Mr. Ansari cracks. “We often think of the Iranians as very strategic thinkers, playing the long game. No, no. It’s different. They’re ditherers,” he says. “We ascribe to them too much competence. I do not consider what’s happening now to be the result of great strategic thinking.” He points to a “dogmatic ideology and a grievance culture, whereby they’ve taken a hit for their nuclear program and can’t back down.” In his assessment, by sheer stubbornness, the regime “basically decided to declare war on the U.S.”
The failure to see that, and so much else, can be attributed to the prevailing “Washington-centered analysis,” Mr. Ansari says. “We always see Iran as almost marginal to the problem, which is Washington.” If only Mr. Trump hadn’t done this or that, the commentators rage. But if there is now an opening for regime change, it is because U.S. policymakers for once were able to turn from the mirror and see what the Iranian people know well: The problem is in Iran.
Many of us will be very disappointed if the New Boss is the same as the Old Boss, if Iran continues its nuclear program, and if they don’t give the people freedom of speech, of dress, of education, and so on. What happened to Venezuela should not happen to Iran.
*Oy, a fourth bit of war news: Iran has attacked a desalination plant in Bahrain, a place where fresh water is essential. Iran continues to make more enemies in the Middle East! But Iran claimed they did this because the U.S. did it to them, but the U.S. denies it.
An Iranian drone attack damaged a desalination plant in Bahrain, bringing the war to the oil-rich Persian Gulf’s most strategic resource: drinking water.
The attack did material damage, the Gulf state’s Interior Ministry said Sunday. Iran hadn’t addressed the attack, but a day earlier Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the U.S. had attacked an Iranian desalination plant on the Gulf island of Qeshm. “The U.S. set this precedent, not Iran,” Araghchi said on social media.
A spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for the Middle East, denied that the military hit a desalination plant in Iran.
With desalination plants, the set of infrastructure targets being struck in the war has expanded, marking a new and dangerous escalation in a region where many countries have limited onshore sources of fresh water.
The Middle East’s abundant desalination plants, which remove salt from the Persian Gulf’s seawater, are the key source of drinking water for millions of residents in the arid region.
“It’s really going for the jugular, and in a major way,” said Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, a Washington think tank. “These desalination plants, even more than the energy infrastructure of the Gulf monarchies, are their Achilles’ heel.”
The Middle East accounts for more than 40% of the world’s desalination capacity, with around 5,000 plants feeding its water systems.
Bahrain, where the drone strike occurred, is almost completely dependent on its plants for drinking water for its population of 1.6 million. Israel depends on the plants for about 80% of its drinkable water. About 90% of Kuwait’s water needs are met by desalination.
The only country that can persist with desalination in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia. Bahrain does have an Army, Navy, and Air Force, but it’s not going to use up its military assets when the U.S. and Israel is doing the job. Attacking its water supply is probably a war crime given that Bahrain has not attacked Iran and cutting of water to the population is an attack on the civilian population. And why is Iran going after Bahrain, anyway?
*A red-flanked bluetail (Tarsiger cyanurus; a bird native to Asia and Scandinavia) has appeared in Virginia, and of course the birders are out in force with binoculars and guidebooks.
Native to Asia, the tiny brown-colored bird with orange sides and a short, high-pitched whistle has been spotted east of the Rockies only once before. Its surprise landing in Northern Virginia recently has rocked the world of birding and made it an internet sensation.
Since a birder named Phil Kenny first discovered a female red-flanked bluetail in a tree just off the Capital Beltway on New Year’s Day, crowds of visitors have flocked to Great Falls Park — where the bird has been living for the past three months — to try to catch a glimpse. Locals young and old, plus bird nerds from as far away as Minnesota, Nevada, Texas, Michigan and Florida have all showed up with binoculars in tow.
“It’s a true rarity of it even being on this continent,” Andrew Farnsworth, an ornithologist, said in a phone interview from his office at Cornell University. “It lives in Asia, and seeing it in North America is really rare. This is only the second time the species has been seen in the Eastern U.S.”
. . .“It’s bobbing its little tail like it’s waving to people and saying, ‘Here I am. Here I am,’” Saffir said. “It’s come thousands of miles just to visit us in Virginia. For birders, seeing it is like a mini lottery win.”
How this bluetail traveled thousands of miles and ended up on Virginia’s shoreline is a bit of a mystery.
Known by their scientific name, Tarsiger cyanurus, bluetails are classified as “Old World flycatchers,” meaning they mainly eat insects and are commonly found in Europe, Asia and Africa. Typically, their breeding range stretches from the Russian province of Siberia to northeastern China and west to Russia, and even into parts of Scandinavia. In colder months they usually winter in warmer, forested areas of southern China, Taiwan and Thailand, where food is more plentiful during that period.
In the past few years, however, the bluetails have expanded their breeding range farther east and west.
There have been sightings of the species in Alaska, British Columbia, Mexico and California. Three years ago, a bluetail was spotted in New Jersey — the first time the bird species had been seen east of the Rockies.
Some D.C.-area birders theorize it is the same bird as the one seen in New Jersey. It is possible, given that birds show “strong fidelity to places they breed and spend the winters,” Farnsworth of Cornell said, but there’s another theory.
If there is a population, I hope it’s a breeding one and that this cute little female is not the only one. She “wants” to breed and should be able to; otherwise she’ll die out without issue. It’s amazing that Phil Kenny the birder recognized it as an Asian species, but I guess he knows a lot about birds!
Here’s a female and the species’ native range:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has an encounter of the AI kind:
Hili: Today I spoke with artificial intelligence.
Andrzej: And?
Hili: It agreed with me about everything, not realizing that my opinion was different.
In Polish:
Hili: Rozmawiałam dziś z sztuczną inteligencją.
Ja: I co?
Hili: Zgadzała się ze mną we wszystkim, nie zauważając, że mam inne zdanie.
*******************
From Stacy:
From CinEmma:
From Things With Faces, my only contribution ever to one of these groups:
Jango, preschool dropout (photo and caption by Divy):
Masih reposted this; I wasn’t aware of this assassination plot but the BBC verifies it:
At trial, Merchant admitted that the IRGC sent him to the US to arrange for political assassinations and that his IRGC handler directed him to kill Trump, former US president Joe Biden and Trump cabinet official Nikki Haley, according to the BBC’s US partner, CBS News.
In 2024, the FBI came to my front door to tell me the Iranian regime had put a hit on my life — anytime, anywhere.
This week, the man who accepted those orders, on American soil, was sentenced to life in prison in a New York court.
Anyone who claims the Iranian regime isn’t a… pic.twitter.com/H5owlWfvkV
— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) March 7, 2026
From Luana, a macabre but true post from The Babylon Bee:
To Save Time, Iran Appoints Supreme Leader Who Is Already Dead https://t.co/XHLaudSfs5 pic.twitter.com/jKAdi0sCud
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) March 4, 2026
Two from my feed. First, lovely salticids:
This compilation shows seven male peacock spiders, each from a different species, performing their courtship dances. In the genus Maratus, males raise and fan out their colorful abdominal flaps while waving their legs to attract females pic.twitter.com/xfUq8nduZu
— Nature Unedited (@NatureUnedited) March 8, 2026
. . . and two storks celebrating the production of an egg. Sound up to hear their joy!:
A camera captures a pair of storks celebrating the arrival of their very first egg in the nest. pic.twitter.com/VThTRKzVrd
— Earth (@earthcurated) March 7, 2026
I had to add this one because Baryshnikov was so amazing:
Oh my God FINALLY an excuse to post one of the most INSANE Mikhail Baryshnikov performances from Don Quixote…
Baryshnikov never relied on a body double OR a butt double either, Sir Chalamet… ballet is not 4 the weak!! ☕️🩰pic.twitter.com/l1VR6QAfzz
— Nicole Nichelle (@alamanecer) March 7, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This French Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was 13.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-03-09T10:21:33.541Z
And two from Dr. Cobb. First, the erstwhile rings of Earth (see the article on Space.com):
A long time ago, in a galaxy… well…very very close to you.Earth had a ring (probably).For about 40 million years in the Ordovician (466 MYA), any trilobites that looked skyward would have seen the faint shimmer of the Earth's ring.Let's look at the evidence for this conclusion.
— c0nc0rdance (@c0nc0rdance.bsky.social) 2026-03-07T20:07:00.005Z
This is absolutely true, and I verify it with a reply:
Reminded by a mail from @nccomfort.bsky.social that in UK English “quite” is a negative modifier unless applied to a superlative. So quite good, quite smart, quite tasty etc imply something less than good, smart, tasty. Quite excellent, quite brilliant, quite scrumptious are all better. But why?
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-03-07T13:02:45.324Z
I learned this a long time ago. I think it's a bizarre way of being polite: being negative while not sounding negative!
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-03-07T13:20:17.858Z
Now I’m gonna have to search for those peacock spider dances put to music!
Ze Frank on YouTube has a hilarious video with dialogue between the spiders. Rated PG-13. There also is a YouTube video out there with the peacock spiders set to “Staying Alive” by the Bee Gees. I show that in class as an example of visual communication.
Try using ‘quite’ as a modifier like ‘quite good’ in Oxford Board O level English in 1959 and your marks would have been in the negative. ‘Quite’ was absolute as in ‘Quite so’.
The US 5th fleet is headquartered in Bahrain. Iran has attacked the headquarters. Any attacks on civilian infrastructure are likely attempts to drive a wedge between the Bahrainis and the US.
“And why is Iran going after Bahrain, anyway?”
The U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet is headquartered in Bahrain. This is the naval component responsible for sinking nearly half of the Iranian navy; launching Tomahawk missiles at Iran and sending carrier-based strike fighters over Iran; and ensuring freedom of sea navigation in the Strait of Hormuz and elsewhere in the region. Fifth Fleet assets and host government support should be among Iran’s chief targeting priorities.
“unless Qatar gives the leaders sanctuary”
KNOW YOUR HOSTS:
Qatar tends to give safe harbor to current criminals: Hamas, Muslim Bro’d, Taliban Embassy, etc.
Saudi Arabia is the retirement home for disgraced Muslim leaders: Idi Amin, Ben Ali (Tunisia) etc.
Syria kicked Hamas out in 2012-ish, when they went to Doha. Now Qatar is maybe doing maybe so, for supporting Iran, so one wonders where the current nest of Hamasniks will go?
There’s always the Islamic Republic of the United Kingdom. 🙂
D.A.
NYC
It’s very unlikely that Saudi Arabia will be a sanctuary for the Iranians. The Kingdom, a Sunni country, and Iran, a Shia one, have been opponents for a very long time. The Saudis have had enough trouble from the Shias in its Eastern Province.
I know. I was thinking that. Jokes aside, I am at a real loss to know where the Hamas big shots WILL go if (even) the Qataris show them the door. As rumor has they will. I doubt they will.
Despite ALMOST playing diplomatic footsie w/ Israel briefly in the mid 90s, under an earlier Emir, Qatar has really tripled down on the M.B. and Pawethtine as a cause.
D.A.
NYC
Russia takes even Middle Eastern bad guys. That’s where Bashar Assad, formerly of Syria, is now.
And the former terrible Russia-crony leader of Ukraine – Yevtushenko (sp?).
There were some memes recently (after Assad) of all the international clowns and dictators playing cards in Moscow with the Kremlin in the background. hehehe
People were saying recently some top Iranians might end up there but they don’t take into account that in a theocracy the top level (powerful and rich enough to leave) actually BELIEVE their shia religion and welcome death.
D.A.
NYC
Russia.
I don’t see the leaders of Iran seeking refuge in Qatar. The Qataris won’t have them. They don’t like Qatar. Russia is far more plausible. I would send them to Somalia or Eritrea. However, I don’t get to vote. As for the IRCG, It might be defeated (and disbanded) by the Kurds, the Iranian people, US troops on the ground, or the Iranian military. ‘Might’ is the key word. So far the IRCG appears to be very much in charge (sadly for the people of Iran).
For the life of me, I don’t understand why the U.S. doesn’t build more desalination plants in the Southwest and Texas. The Colorado is down to a trickle and we can’t keep sucking out groundwater. No doubt there have been mass improvements in water conservation here in the Phoenix metro. But they can’t keep up with growth. I wish Elon would turn his attention to this instead of Mars.
“The Middle East accounts for more than 40% of the world’s desalination capacity, with around 5,000 plants feeding its water systems.”
Because desalination is much more expensive in the short run than sucking up the last drops of ground water. The gulf states have the oil revenues to subsidize the water… but I’m afraid that would be socialism in the US. Unless of course a corporation is subsidized to squeeze the citizens.
I have lately become interested in the point that we simply cannot land humans on Mars. Not unless they accept the fact that they will prematurely die there. The radiation alone is a deal-breaker, and that is just for starters.
Elon probably knows this, so I wonder why he talks it up.
Elon thinks that technology can fix any problem, even terraforming Mars so that people can live there. It may indeed be possible to make that technology, but not in our lifetime. Really, it can take six years just to build a bridge over a good-sized river so terraforming Mars is going to be measured in centuries if it happens at all.
Have you read the book “A City on Mars” by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith? Or you could just read the Wikipedia article “A City on Mars” for a comprehensive writeup.
And besides, we wouldn’t want to be colonizers. Everyone knows that colonizing is bad (whether or not there is anyone to be colonized), and we would not want to make the Martian equivalent of Mother Gaia angry, would we?
FX Kober has this correct. Desalination is quite expensive and much of the cost is energy. Desalination should not be used in the US (Hawaii might be an exception, California is not).
Less than expensive then?
The standard approach to water is to use uphill natural sources. For example, SF gets its water from the Hetch Hetchy system. Los Angeles, Denver, NYC, and Boston (probably) use similar approaches. The US is generally a rainy/snowy country. Note that Houston and Chicago (probably many other cities) can not use gravity to deliver water.
I believe curzio malaparte was making a clever joke based on the original post about “quite” being a negative modifier. If so, you played that quite well.
Quite.
At some point water will at least in theory become expensive enough from scarcity that desalination could become cost-competitive. That might not happen until Arizona is down literally to the last few drops but if there is no water at all, the sea becomes attractive by necessity.
Who would build the desalination plants? If water remains a socialized public good, with price set only to cover purification and transmission and not cost of production, then there is no incentive for anyone to conserve water or to invest in desalination. You just keep supplying free water until it runs out. If you price it, you disincentivize wasting and incentivize efforts to make more of it. A desalination corporation shouldn’t need to be subsidized if it is allowed to charge a market price for the precious water it produces. The state could subsidize poor people who can’t afford to flush their toilets so they don’t defecate in the street. It doesn’t need to subsidize the producer unless it wants wealthy people to irrigate their golf courses painlessly. Irrigated agriculture would either be able to compete on price, or farmers would go somewhere else. Avocados and almonds might fetch enough to be viable; Brussels sprouts and rhubarb probably not.
This would be an ideal application for “free” wind and solar electricity to run the reverse osmosis plants. Intermittency is not a problem as you just need the generators to run often enough through the year to keep the reservoirs full.
It’s not an either-or. There are other alternatives. Some people and industries would move away, reducing demand, if water got too expensive. And in the 1960s there were a number of mad schemes to reverse the flow of northbound rivers (mostly in Canada) whose water is wasted by flowing into Hudson Bay and the Arctic Ocean.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power_Alliance
The idea was to dam them, backing them up until they spilled over into the Missouri-Mississippi Basin, then aqueduct the water over the Continental Divide and the Sierra Nevada to California. The electricity for pumping would come from the dams. I don’t know if President Trump got briefed on this but it would be the one clear benefit to the U.S. of annexing Canada and imposing the necessary sovereignty on us. North America has one wet uninhabitable half and one dry populous half. Someday it’ll happen.
Since South Africa’s water crisis first came to my attention quite some years ago, I have been expecting to hear of the creation of mobile desalination plants that can be sailed into a harbour when required.
In other bird news, a crested caracara has been hanging around Lawrence, KS, for several days. Birders are driving miles to get a look and take photos of it.
Regarding the war, it seems that the Democrats have settled on their talking point—that there’s no plan, no strategy, and no goal. I heard several Democrats use those words yesterday, as if they were reading from a playbook, which they probably are. Debbie Wasserman Schultz on CNN yesterday recited directly from the playbook, adding her own flourish that Donald Trump “brushes off” the deaths of U.S. service members, just one day after he respectfully attended the dignified transfer of remains of the six who had been returned to the U.S. That doesn’t sound like “brushing off” to me.
I don’t understand the “no plan, no goal, no strategy mantra.” From the start it has seemed to me that the goal is to do what it takes to prevent Iran from obtaining and delivering a nuclear weapon, with extra credit for eliminating the theocratic government. It can be stated in a single sentence. My guess is that the Democrats are banking that the American people, who may not be paying close attention day-by-day, will succumb to the constant repetition that there’s no plan, no strategy, no goal. The Democratic strategy may be right, as most news outlets are parroting the same thing. The Democrats probably don’t want the U.S. to lose the war, but they seem willing to risk losing it by driving public opposition.
I haven’t heard of any plan regarding what happens next in Iran. I’m glad you’re happy with how Trump is handling things. I hope you’re right, but I fear another endless Afghanistan war.
John Spencer has an analysis on X. His thinking is that being ambiguous about what happens next is a wise tactic. See here: https://x.com/SpencerGuard/status/2030369334426763699
I definitely fear another Afghanistan, but I also fear they the U.S. may end the conflict in Iran too soon.
Oh thanks Norm. I adore him. He’s an incredible analyst on these things and an impressive intellect generally.
D.A.
NYC
Thanks, Norman.
Today, I have been reading and hearing lots of comments where it has been concluded that the explosion at the IRGC girl’s school in Minab, Iran was likey due to a US strike.
I do not have enough info to form an opinion on the culprit, but to me, the argument is interesting mainly because of the logic being used.
The new revelation is a video of a missile alleged to be striking the IRGC base adjacent to the school.
The arguments seem to be that it is obviously a Tomahawk missile, and that any attack by the US or Israel in Minab means that the US almost certainly did it.
But to begin with, nobody seems to want to explain why it is obviously a Tomahawk. I worked with military explosives and missiles for a couple of decades, and it is not obvious to me. There are a lot of missiles with the same basic features and configuration of the Tomahawk in use all over the world. Iran has showcased their own ground-launched version in the past.
Plus, the footage shows the device hitting some distance away from the school, and resulting in barely any explosion.
The post-attack images of the base show the IRGC building each with a little hole in the exact center of the roof.
You use a Tomahawk when you want to leave a huge crater where the building used to be, in my experience.
Anyway, the logic being used is interesting. Even Belingcat spent a lot of time carefully geolocating the likely site of the explosion, but casually assumes the missile is a Tomahawk without any obvious analysis beyond I guess noticing that the missile has wings.
Just my observation.
That’s an interesting observation about “quite”. I also feel that I might say something was quite hard or quite tasty to express an element of surprise that it was actually hard or tasty e.g. “Hmmm. This question is quite hard”. But that’s Gareth’s guide to English usage and probably wrong.
I would have though giving the Iranians a chance at democracy, freedom to move, is the long term solution. The nuke problem then can then be negotiated in good faith. How to do that is for boots on the ground, less than that is to be more of the same in the near and far future. Short gain, long pain.
I could imagine a stable Iran and the flow on to the ME.
I remember the Red-flanked Bluetail which showed up in British Columbia about 10 years ago. It settled down in a public park and so a lot of people went down there to see it, including us. It was a really weird scene. You couldn’t approach the bird too closely, or it would fly and you would be a Bad Person. And you couldn’t stand in front of somebody else, which also makes you a Bad Person.
So we were lined up, about 50 of us, in a rough semicircle around the bird, which was usually in a garden by a building. And periodically the bird would make a little flight to a different spot, and the semicircle would snake over to that spot, like a dragon in a Chinese New Year parade.