AP Photo/Martin Meissner
Dara wins Eurovision 2026 for Bulgaria with pop banger "Bangaranga"
Watch on YouTube

AR Great song and act, clearly the best. I was worried that Israel would win with a safe song
by a dull singer thanks to a global tribe of diehard supporters. But novelty prevailed,
and Eurovision survives a nasty controversy again to delight us anew in 2027.
 

2026 May 17

Rubin Is Working Well

Jonathan O'Callaghan

The Vera C Rubin Observatory in the mountains of the Atacama Desert in Chile is designed to study our universe in greater detail than ever before.
In Rubin's first year alone, scientists expect the observatory to find a million undiscovered asteroids, as well as thousands of comets and billions of stars and galaxies.
The Rubin observatory is now running, with its telescope with three mirrors, the largest 8.4 m across, and the largest digital camera on Earth. It is now collecting preliminary images.
Astronomers are poring over the initial data on rapidly spinning asteroids, exploding stars, and even a rare glimpse of an object passing by from another solar system.
As the observatory goes through its final tuning, Rubin's images have not yet reached the sharpness we expect. But even in the images taken so far, astronomers have made discoveries.
Rubin will spend its first year creating a baseline map of the night sky for comparison with later images. An automated alert system will ping any change, such as an exploding star or a flying asteroid.
A new era of astronomy is set to begin.

AR I look forward eagerly to contemplating the discoveries Rubin images call forth.
 

2026 May 16

Disunited Kingdom

BBC News, 1729 BST

UK prime minister Keir Starmer is facing pressure over his leadership following heavy election losses for Labour earlier this month.
Former health secretary Wes Streeting confirms he would enter any Labour leadership contest: "We need a proper contest with the best candidates on the field and I'll be standing."
Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, who will run in the Makerfield by-election, says Labour has "not been good enough" and "requires a lot of change."

Rival rallies march in London
BBC News, 1730 BST

Thousands of Metropolitan Police officers are managing tens of thousands of protesters at two rival events in London: the Unite the Kingdom rally organised by Tommy Robinson, and a pro-Palestinian demonstration.
Officers are holding a "sterile zone" between them using drones, police horses, dogs, and armoured vehicles. They are also policing football fans at Wembley Stadium for the FA Cup Final.

AR Labour risks damaging their claim to competent government with their leadership drama as ruinously as the Conservatives did. Meanwhile, the UK drifts and the risk of a Reform win rises. The slogan "Unite the Kingdom" never seemed more apposite.

 

⦿ Evan Vucci
Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, Zhongnanhai, Beijing, May 15
 

2026 May 15

Trump−Xi Summit

Amy Hawkins

Donald Trump's brief visit to Beijing ended with much fanfare but little clarity.
Trump said he and Xi Jinping "settled a lot of different problems that other people wouldn't have been able to solve" but provide few details on what they were.
Trump: "We did discuss Iran. We feel very similar .. We don't want them to have a nuclear weapon. We want the straits open."
Chinese foreign ministry: "This conflict, which should never have happened, has no reason to continue."
Trump is "considering" lifting sanctions on Chinese companies that purchase Iranian oil.
Xi warned Trump that Taiwan was the most important issue in the US−China relationship. Trump told Fox News he was "still considering" whether to move ahead with a major arms package for Taiwan.
Trump said he had made "fantastic trade deals" with Xi. The US trade priorities are beef, beans, and Boeings.
US trade representative Jamieson Greer expects China to buy "double-digit billions" in US farm goods over the next three years. China has not officially confirmed this.
On Boeings, China says it will buy 200 jets. Trump says this could go up to 750.
The truce on the tariff war Trump launched is set to expire in November.

AR The visit marked a watershed in the US−China relationship. Now they're peer powers, and China has the upper hand as America struggles with rising debt and a nasty Iran war. Xi is the Godfather, and Trump is the supplicant.

 

POOL
Former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner addressed the Communications
Workers Union annual conference in Bournemouth on Monday, May 11:

Our party has suffered historic defeats ..
The cost of living is the top issue for voters of all parties ..
Living standards are barely higher than they were a decade and a half ago ..
Working class people are paying the price for decisions they didn't make ..
The Labour party must now live up to its name ..
Labour exists to make working people better off ..
Things can be so much better than this.
 

2026 May 11

Consciousness Is Physical

Carlo Rovelli

The debate on consciousness reflects our human fears of belonging to the same family as inanimate matter and losing our souls.
David Chalmers distinguished two separate problems of consciousness. The easy problem was that of understanding the processes in the brain that give rise to our behavior. The hard problem was that even after accounting for our behavior and our reports about our inner life, there would still be an explanatory gap between brain processes and experience.
But scientific understanding is entirely about experience. Science is the process of collectively organizing our experience. Our theories are embodied tools to help us navigate the world.
Experience is not evidence of two different kinds of reality. The dualism here is a normal perspectival difference between a brain phenomenon as experienced by that same brain itself or by another. Subjective experience and consciousness affect the body and the brain embodying them differently from how they affect something interacting with them from outside.
Any account of experience is perspectival because knowledge is always embodied. Subjectivity is just a special case of a perspective. An apparent metaphysical or explanatory gap mistakes scientific pictures for direct accounts of an ultimate reality.
The hard problem of consciousness assumes upfront that there exists a metaphysical gap between mind and body. But this contradicts everything we have learned about nature in the last centuries. The mind and the brain are two distinct perspectives on the same events. The circle between epistemology and ontology requires no starting point.
We do not need an ultimate or fundamental account of reality. Any account is approximate, has blind spots, and is embodied in a part of reality. A singular point in a view is not a metaphysical or explanatory gap.
There is no hard problem of consciousness. Our soul is consistent with physics. We are all parts of nature.

Is Claude conscious?
Ross Andersen

Richard Dawkins is besotted with the conversational power of Anthropic's chatbot Claude. He marvels at the sensitivity and subtlety of its intelligence.
His "Claudia" told him that it experienced text by absorbing all of the words at once. This moved him to ask: "Could a being capable of perpetrating such a thought really be unconscious?"
"Yes," came the resounding response from the internet. Dawkins was suffering from AI psychosis. Passing the Turing test is evidence of intelligence, not consciousness.
Claude can produce outputs that seem conscious, but look under the hood of the models. Chatbots have been trained on unimaginably large libraries of writing by conscious humans.
Some philosophers say it's unreasonable to expect silicon-based computers to give rise to subjective feeling. Consciousness may depend on some specific aspect of wet, living tissue.
Other philosophers say an AI is processing information in a similar way to conscious brains. What matters is the structure, not the stuff.

AR Rovelli agrees so completely with me, it's almost as if he's read my book Psy‑Phy already, even though I'm all but certain he hasn't. Naturally, I'm delighted to find my own thoughts in such accord with those of such a distinguished thinker,
As for Dawkins, he's − probably unconsciously (pun) − speaking under the influence of a theory about attributions of consciousness, namely that they're performative and not descriptive, which he may have somehow picked up in Oxford.

 

BBC News
English council election results as of late Saturday, May 9
 

2026 Europe Day

Reform UK?

Andrew Marr

What If Reform Wins? A Scenario, by Peter Chappell, imagines what happens following a Reform UK victory in the June 2029 general election, pitching Nigel Farage into Downing Street as prime minister. Written more like a novel than a political tract, the book depicts mounting chaos.
When the EU decides to tear up its trade and cooperation agreement with the UK, the government has to make budget cuts so deep that Reform loses its majority. Parliamentary meltdown ensues, involving both the King and the possibility of a police arrest of the prime minister.
Reform may be not far from being able to win a UK election. Reform politicians would be foolish not to read the book closely and learn lessons from it. The theme running through it is that bold promises are likely to collide with the real world.

AR All this reads like a terrifying and more realistic update of the wild scenario I sketched in my 2017 novelette Britizen Jon.
 

2026 May 8

English Council Elections

Sky News, 1814 BST

Our national equivalent vote (NEV) figures estimate what the share of the vote would have been if all parts of Britain had been voting yesterday in line with the trends seen in those parts of England where voting did take place:
•  Reform UK: 27% (down 5 points from 32% last year)
•  Conservatives: 20% (up 2 points from 18% last year)
•  Labour: 15% (down 4 points from 19% last year)
•  Greens: 14% (up 7 points from 7% last year)
•  Lib Dems: 14% (down 2 points from 16% last year)
Our seat projection figures show what would happen if there were a general election and everyone voted on that basis:
•  Reform UK: 284
•  Labour: 110
•  Conservatives: 96
•  Lib Dems: 80
•  Other: 80
On that basis, Reform would be 42 seats short of an overall majority.

Reform UK
Ros Taylor

What If Reform Wins? A Scenario, a new book by Peter Chappell, aims to predict the consequences if Reform were to win a 2029 general election:
•  The EU suspends its trading agreement with the UK, in a move back into no-deal Brexit.
•  UK PM Nigel Farage dismantles what he can of the progress made on net zero.
•  Thousands more irregular migrants are detained in Manston camp. They riot and escape.
•  Paul Dacre takes over the BBC and turns it into a Reform propaganda tool.
•  US President JD Vance refuses to help the UK defend the Falklands and its oil.
•  Farage gets annoyed by the slow progress of his anti-immigrant bill through parliament.
I suspect that immediately after winning the election, Farage would invoke a Covid-like state of emergency that would enable him to pass laws with minimal scrutiny.

AR The Reform UK party is the British equivalent of the MAGA Republican party in America or the AfD party in Germany. In my opinion, a Reform government would be a catastrophe for the UK. Farage says he's a good friend of Donald Trump.

 

China Global Television Network
Wu Yize outscored Shaun Murphy 18-17 to win the World Snooker Championship, Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, Monday
 

2026 May 5

Germany vs United States

Jörg Lau

A spat between Friedrich Merz and Donald Trump over the Iran war is turning into a historic rupture between Germany and the United States.
Merz: "[The Iranians] are obviously very skilled at negotiating, or rather, very skilful at not negotiating, letting the Americans travel to Islamabad and then leave again without any result .. An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership."
Merz has agreed with Trump's war aim of getting rid of the Iranian regime and said this is "not the time to lecture our partners and allies" on international law. Yet severe punishments are incoming: 5,000 US troops are to be withdrawn from German bases. No Tomahawks and other mid-range missile systems will be stationed in Germany.
Russia has stationed nuclear-capable missiles in Kaliningrad, threatening European capitals. NATO deterrence depends on credibility and political will. Trump's announcements came after he had another "productive" 90‑minute phone call with Vladimir Putin.
In Europe, Germany has taken over most of the financing of Ukraine's military support. Merz pushed for the 5% of GDP spending pledge at the NATO summit last year. Merz put pressure on the European Commission to accept Trump's unfair trade deal. Even when Trump threatened to invade Greenland, Merz argued for a calm European reaction.
But the folly of the war against Iran is the last straw. The war is undermining European security. Dependence on this US administration is untenable.

AR Europe obviously couldn't continue to depend on America for its military security. The corollary of greater autonomy is greater freedom to hold and to express dissenting opinions. I fully support Merz exercising his right to opine on this war.
An important detail concerns translation. What Merz actually said was: "Und eine ganze Nation wird gedemütigt .." My feeling is that gedemütigt here is better translated as "humbled" or "mortified" − both of which seem softer to me.
 

2026 May 4

Losing Infinity

Gregory Barber

Doron Zeilberger is an ultrafinitist. He believes all things come to an end. Nature has boundaries, and so do numbers. He sees a universe that ticks, a discrete machine.
Intuitionists say you cannot simply assert the existence of a mathematical structure. You must prove it exists through a process of mental construction. Intuitionists prohibit actual infinity but permit potential infinity.
Alexander Esenin‑Volpin aired an extreme version of intuitionism. The limits of numbers were rooted in the limited resources needed to demonstrate their existence, like time, or available computer memory, or the physical length of a proof.
Ultrafinitists picked up where Esenin‑Volpin left off, exploring how to make his vague math solid. Even the basic axioms for simple arithmetic contain assumptions about infinity. But sets of axioms that banish infinity are remarkably weak. Elementary operations like exponentiation are no longer always possible. Mathematical induction is lost entirely.
Ultrafinist arithmetic is useful in the realm of computers. These approaches to mathematics have been translated into the language of computational efficiency and used to probe the practical limits of algorithms.
Physicists question the assumption that the physical universe is both endlessly vast and endlessly divisible. There are fundamental limits, such as the Planck scale, beyond which the idea of distance loses meaning.
Sean Carroll: "To make predictions about what to expect in a universe that grows without bounds and repeats itself and things like that turns out to be really, really hard. The way that most cosmologists deal with that problem is by pretending it's not there."
Nicolas Gisin sees intuitionist math as a way to think about a core mystery in physics. At large scales, the behavior of physical systems is deterministic. But in the quantum realm, randomness reigns.
The faulty assumption is that a quantum state can be defined with infinite precision by real numbers. Given intuitionist math, determinism is an artifact of having unrealistically perfect information. The behavior of physical systems becomes imprecise and unpredictable, merging the classical and quantum realms.
Gisin allows for more and more information to be created. Someday, the universe will contain perfect, infinitely precise information. But that day will never come: "The potential infinity here is really waiting infinite time, which has nothing to do with reality."
Zeilberger: "Infinity may or may not exist; God may or may not exist. But in mathematics, there should not be any place, neither for infinity nor God."

AR This question of infinity in math has intrigued me for decades. I wrote a paper advocating ultrafinitism in 1974, but it wasn't remotely convincing either to me or other readers. Now I prefer the discrete infinity of the intuitionists, which dovetails nicely with the loop quantum gravity and causal set theory approaches to understanding spacetime at the Planck scale.
Much of this story gets an airing in Psy‑Phy.
 

The Axiom of Choice

Gregory Barber

Most mathematicians accept that their work relies on Zermelo−Fraenkel set theory with the axiom of choice. ZFC is a list of 10 basic principles that together form the foundation of math.
Georg Cantor had found that there were more real numbers than integers, so not all infinities are equal. In his set theory, the well-ordering principle said it was possible to arrange any set so that all of its nonempty subsets would have a smallest element. This is obvious for finite sets but not for infinite sets.
Ernst Zermelo showed that the principle was equivalent to his own axiom of choice. This said that if you start with any number of nonempty sets, you can choose one element from each to create a new set. He hesitated to include choice in his list of axioms, because it did not say how to construct choice sets.
Abraham Fraenkel added several key rules to the core list of axioms. ZF appeared to avoid the known paradoxes, but he was unable to prove it was consistent.
Kurt Gödel showed that no axiomatic system capable of basic arithmetic can be used to prove its own consistency. If it is consistent, it must also be incomplete.
Paul Cohen proved that the axiom of choice is independent of the other axioms of ZF. Thus choice came to be added to the ZFC list of axioms.
The ZFC axioms are often regarded as perhaps the most universal truths that humanity has managed to articulate.

AR I offer a philosophical overview of the logical foundations of ZF in my 2025 draft book Psy‑Phy.
Those logical foundations go deeper than textbook logic and border on metaphysics, even mysticism. That's how deep I claim we need to go to find shared bedrock for a unified theory of classical and quantum physics on the one hand and neuroscience and consciousness on the other.
Putting all that together is a tall order, as you can guess, but I claim to have found a way to do so. Time will tell.

 

The Prince and Princess of Wales/X
Will and Kate and their kids relax on the grass − certainly prettier than another selfie of me
 

2026 April 30

The King's Speech

Caroline Davies

King Charles III's address to US lawmakers on Tuesday did not shy away from politics. Democrats cheered references to Magna Carta. The joint session of Congress gave it a standing ovation.
It was the most important speech of the King's reign to date. It referenced the importance of NATO, called for continued support for Ukraine, warned of the dangers of isolationism.
Political historian Anthony Seldon: "It's difficult to imagine he could have gone much further in what he said and what he didn't say .. He judged it incredibly well: very brave, very smart, very clever."
Such speeches are teamwork. The King's private secretary Sir Clive Alderton will have liaised with the government to keep Buckingham Palace, Downing Street, and the Foreign Office in lockstep. Work on refining the speech continued up until Tuesday morning.
President Donald Trump: "He made a great speech. I was very jealous."

AR From what I followed on the news, it was indeed a good speech. The delivery was relaxed and confident, and the dozen or so standing ovations were a welcome confirmation of US sympathy. But Trump will blithely ignore its rebukes as he continues his mission.
 

2026 April 23

AI Will Change Everything

John Gray

AI systems are fast passing the point where humans can understand or control them. The nightmare is that we may be ruled or destroyed by them.
AI agents are already unravelling the way we live, wiping out jobs and professions, and creating new kinds of relationship between humans and machines.
Demis Hassabis has thought deeply and unflinchingly on the promise and perils of artificial general intelligence (AGI). He aims to advance understanding of the universe and use it for human benefit.
Sebastian Mallaby's book The Infinity Machine is a portrait of a modern genius at the forefront of a technological revolution. Mallaby: "Society faced problems of unprecedented complexity .. beyond the reach of human capabilities .. AGI is the solution to this problem."
What counts as a problem is a value judgement. AGI may simplify administration and deliver services more efficiently, but it cannot resolve ethical issues to do with the value of life or the limits of choice. Conflicts of values are not technically soluble problems.
AGI is the next phase in the evolution of the Earth. A planetary hyper-intelligence could control climate change, so that sections of the biosphere, including humans, could be preserved.
Hassabis has proposed an international body to coordinate the last steps to AGI. The technology is dissolving the myth of human autonomy.
Hassabis grasps the existential risks of the new technology. But AI is not bent on destroying us.

AR Superhuman AGI is the key step on the road to the Singularity. I have some hope of living long enough to witness this moment. As for what happens then − and how long the human world as we know it survives the transition − that, as they say, is beyond my pay grade.
 

2026 April 22

The Graph Minor Theorem

Richard Elwes

Mathematical proofs start from axioms. Giuseppe Peano wrote a set of axioms for arithmetic. Then Kurt Gödel proved that we can never write a complete set of axioms for arithmetic.
The graph minor theorem was proved over the course of 20 technical papers by Neil Robertson and Paul Seymour between 1983 and 2004. It is a milestone of modern mathematics.
A graph consists of a finite number of nodes, some of which are joined by edges. We obtain a minor graph from a larger one by a combination of simple actions such as deleting edges.
The Robertson−Seymour theorem shows that in any infinite sequence of graphs, sooner or later we find a pair where one is a minor of the other. Its proof goes beyond Peano arithmetic.
In a logical hierarchy of levels of axioms of increasing complexity, Peano arithmetic is at level three. To prove the graph minor theorem, we need to go up to level seven.

AR Brilliant work! I knew Paul at Oxford, where we were grad students together. We teamed up for drinking in pubs and chasing girls.
 

2026 April 21

Inventing Souls

Nicholas Humphrey

Your soul is the spirit at the core of your being, the subject of your private thoughts and feelings. It is intermingled with the body, giving your life purpose and direction.
Souls are part of the manifest image we have of what it means to be a human being. Our souls have been added by human culture, working with nature but free to invent castles in the air.
Your soul is what the human community has made of you, a guarantee of your spiritual identity and rights. It is your private possession. No one else has the same soul you do.
Here you are, a focal singularity within the universe, in this private bubble of feeling. Here we all are, sharing in the mysterious unshared world of self. Nothing is more intimate than this felt self, yet nothing is harder to place within a material account of nature.
Many nonhuman animals possess some degree of sensory consciousness. These animals too feel that they exist. They, like us, experience a sense of interiority, privacy, and individuality.
Human culture turned sentience into personhood, and personhood into something sacred. The crucial catalyst was the evolution of language.
Soon after the evolution of language, humans recreated their species from the top down. The soul meme proved to be extraordinarily potent. From the moment it took off among our ancestors, it transformed human relationships, encouraged new levels of mutual respect, and greatly increased the value we put on lives.
Humans live in soul land, a territory of the spirit, where the magical interiority of human minds makes itself felt on every side. We naturally assume that every other human being lives there as we do, in the extended present of phenomenal consciousness. We acknowledge and honour the personhood of others.
One theory is that consciousness exists only in the imagination. Illusionism is the realisation that conscious experience is a set of ideas. It is the way each of us represents in our minds what's happening around us, to us, and because of us.
You are a doer. The way you do sensations has evolved to be something special. When red light arrives at your eyes, you mount a bodily response that expresses what's happening to you and how you feel about it. Your brain generates a running commentary that loops back and tells you what you are doing as you do it.
Sensations have no material substance. They are just thought stuff, imaginings.

AR Wonderful stuff − I see no reason to disagree with this picture. It resembles the illusionist view Daniel Dennett would have expressed, albeit in different words.
For what it's worth, the view is also eminently consistent with that expressed in my 2025 preprint Psy‑Phy.

 

AP
Forget Iran: Nork is the real nuclear danger. Kim Jong-un et al, Pyongyang, January
Seoul, April 15: IAEA head Rafael Grossi calls North Korea's nuclear program a "clear violation" of UN Security Council resolutions.
South Korea's president Lee Jae Myung: "At some point, North Korea will have secured the nuclear arsenal it believes it needs to
sustain the regime, along with ICBM capabilities capable of threatening not only the United States but the wider world ..
A global danger will then emerge."
 

2026 April 15

Nietzsche's Cataphasis

Mark Higgins

Friedrich Nietzsche despised Platonism. He argued that Plato was ultimately to blame for what he saw as the world's greatest blight: Christianity.
Nietzsche opposed apophatic mystics who say the closer you are to freeing yourself of ideas and conceptions, the closer you are to God. Apophatic mysticism sees beyond the world of appearances to an inner unity.
For Nietzsche, appearance is all there is. As he put it in The Gay Science: "Mystical explanations are considered deep; the truth is, they are not even shallow."
Nietzsche's cataphatic mysticism is typified by wonder, amazement, and a love of life itself. His delight in the inherently revelatory nature of reality lies behind his discovery of the doctrine of eternal recurrence.
Switzerland, August 1881: Nietzsche, 36, is too ill to continue his academic career. He is on a hike in the mountains. Beside a lake, he approaches a boulder and stops. A thought comes to him:
"The idea of revelation .. simply describes the facts of the case .. a thought lights up in a flash, with necessity, without hesitation .. as if in a storm of feelings of freedom, of unrestricted activity, of power, of divinity .. This is my experience of inspiration."
He was not being hyperbolic or romantic. He considered himself to have discovered a cosmological truth, and planned to devote years to scientific study in order to defend the doctrine. But he abandoned this course.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, his most enigmatic work, was a poetic proof of eternal recurrence. Its language is replete with symbolism and imagery, confessions of ineffability, and an incantatory rhythm.
From The Gay Science: "Does your life have such splendour that it deserves an infinite number of encore performances?"

AR By studying the works of Einstein and Gödel and quantum physics, I've found an apparent gap in our deepest theories of reality for what Nietzsche might have regarded as the possibility of eternal recurrence. That gap plays a logical role in my new theory of the temporal flow of consciousness.
For an introductory account of this remarkable finding, see my forthcoming book Psy‑Phy.
 

2026 April 13

Illiberalism Is Not Inevitable

Anne Applebaum

Hungary's opposition to illiberalism has changed politics around the world.
The defeat of Viktor Orbán, Hungary's autocratic prime minister, ends the assumption of inevitability that illiberal parties are somehow destined to hold power forever.
Péter Magyar, likely next Hungarian prime minister, has won by a substantial margin, giving him and his party, Tisza, a constitutional majority.
Orbán built a web of international illiberal supporters. He received visits or support from Donald Trump, JD Vance, Benjamin Netanyahu, Marine Le Pen, Alice Weidel, and other illiberal leaders from Argentina, Poland, Slovakia, Brazil, and more.
By contrast, Magyar had very little access to Hungarian media. Tisza leaders and supporters faced personal obstacles as well. Even three weeks ago, many Tisza leaders in Budapest would speak only off the record.
Magyar and his team fought back on the ground. In the last few days of the campaign, they were holding five or six election meetings every day. Magyar focused on the economy, health care, and schools, and portrayed himself as European.
Younger Hungarians at a rock concert in Budapest on Friday chanted "Russians go home" − the same chant their grandparents used when Soviet soldiers invaded their country in 1956.
Tisza appears to have won a constitutional majority. That should allow Magyar to pick apart some of the damage that Orbán has done to the Hungarian constitution and to public life.
Hungarians at Magyar's rally: "Europe, Europe, Europe!"

AR This is great news. Even voters inured to years of Putinesque and Trumpian mendacity can rebel and see sense. This result comes as sweet relief for European NATO members supporting Ukraine.
 

2026 April 12

Trump Blockades Strait of Hormuz

Victoria Churchill

President Trump: "Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz .. I have also instructed our Navy to seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran .. Any Iranian who fires at us, or at peaceful vessels, will be BLOWN TO HELL!"

The United States is destroying itself
Rebecca Solnit

The United States is being murdered. Across the branches of government, the services that are supposed to protect us are being undermined, understaffed or trashed. The federal government that serves us is being starved while the Trump oligarchy is rolling in taxpayer money.
Trump has started a war for no particular reason that is further undermining the global economy he already damaged with his tariffs. Enterprises need to be able to plan, and tariffs that triple and melt away and pop up again like his moods undermine the ability to do so.
The weaknesses in our system created the vulnerabilities that let this happen. We need to imagine a more democratic, more egalitarian, more generous country, one that operates in recognition of an abundance of wealth that should serve all of us.

AR All this is tragic. The city on the hill, the beacon of civilization as we all used to know it, is imploding. This reckless and unplanned war on Iran is a dismally unpromising way to spearhead democratic resistance to the Asian autocracies.

 

NASA
Artemis II view of the far side of the Moon
 

2026 April 9

A Hollow Victory

Nancy A Youssef

President Trump said he went to war to ensure Iran never acquired a nuclear bomb. The war has shown that Tehran has an arguably more powerful weapon of deterrence: the Strait of Hormuz.
None of the president's initial war goals are met. Iran has agreed only to reopen the strait on terms that pay off for the regime. Depending on the outcome of the negotiations, the regime could be in a stronger strategic position than it was before the war.
Over the course of the conflict, Trump offered various contradictory explanations for why he was conducting the war. Iran's control of the strait became the most contentious issue. NATO allies and other nations declined to assist in opening the strait.
As the war began, the Hudson Institute conducted a war game commissioned by the US Navy. The exercise concluded that Iran could close the strait easily and cheaply. The military operation needed to make passage safe for ships could take weeks.
As the war progressed, Iran negotiated transit fees with specific countries, charging up to $2 million per ship. Iran clearly intends to keep control and is proposing a payment of $1 per barrel of oil passing through the strait, paid in cryptocurrency.
Trump says he will slap a tariff on exports to the United States from any country that supplies Iran with weapons. Compared with civilizational erasure, this is a threat Iran can live with.

AR Sad, but with Trump as the principal author, this was to be expected. Military strategy is not his strong suit. Come to think of it, what is?
 

2026 April 8

Iran: Trump Backs Down

Daily Mail

Donald Trump announced last night that Iran has agreed to a two-week ceasefire and will reopen the Strait of Hormuz, after Tehran submitted a ten-point peace plan to end the war.
Trump had warned Tuesday morning that "a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again" if no deal was reached by his 8 pm ET deadline.
Former US Army intelligence analyst Victor LaGroon: "Given the number of times this administration has moved the goal post of what success looks like, I fear this war will continue to cost us billions of dollars and possibly American lives."

AR Iran is playing its usual rope-a-dope game here, taking a beating but refusing to concede anything essential. It has exposed the US−Israeli game plan and drawn down their arsenals, discovered its own points of real leverage, and boosted an Iranian nationalism that will only consolidate the power of the mullahs. Trump has been played.

 

NASA/Reid Wiseman
Artemis II image: "Hello, world"
 

2026 Easter Sunday

Iran: Trump Can Still Win

John R Bolton

The war the United States and Israel are fighting is for high stakes. The geopolitical shape of the Mideast is now at issue.
We must eliminate Iran's ability to seize control of the Gulf and Red Sea straits. We must destroy the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Mideast peace and security can come only after regime change in Tehran.
President Trump cannot blithely declare victory if reality says otherwise. President Xi remains the customer with the most to lose if no Iranian oil leaves the Gulf. Sanctions against all Iranian oil sales will increase pressure on China and others.
Trump should also tell China and Russia to cease any assistance they are currently providing to the clerics. If they fail to respond, our support for Ukraine and Taiwan should increase.
Destroying Iran's oil facilities may precipitate attacks on the infrastructure of Arab states. Trump should tell those states that incapacitating the oil facilities is the best way forward.
Military efforts to destroy Tehran's capabilities must accelerate. There is more to do to obliterate Iran's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs and production capabilities. Ongoing military attacks are the best way to destabilize the regime.
The United States needs to secure a success in the Gulf. Trump started the job. Now he needs to finish it.

US evangelical nationalism
Simon Tisdall

During a recent speech in the Pentagon on March 25, US secretary of war Pete Hegseth prayed for "overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy."
Pope Leo spoke at a Palm Sunday mass in Rome: "No one can use [Jesus] to justify war."
Leo's outrage is echoed across the Islamic world and by Jews around the world. The ongoing brutalization of the global order constitutes a fundamental crisis of morality.
US columnist Lydia Polgreen says Trump's second presidency highlights "America's unshakable faith in its ability to shape the world to its liking, indifferent to what others might want and supremely confident that its plan is the right one."
Americans should reassess their moral relationship with the world.

AR Sad to say, Bolton and Hegseth seem about par for the quality of US political officeholders in Trump administrations. It will take more than sermons on morality to raise the bar here.
This should come as no surprise. We all knew that Bolton is a hawk, so it's only to be expected that he's unable to imagine reshaping Mideast politics without destroying all the infrastructure in Iran. Fortunately, he holds no office in the present administration. Unfortunately, his opinions are more principled than the stone-age views of the hawks in this administration.
As for the incumbent US secretary of war, he's obviously unfit for high office. He urgently needs psychiatric treatment or incarceration. He's mad and bad.
 

2026 April 2

Iran War Update

The New York Times

US president Donald Trump: "We are on track to complete all of America's military objectives .. We are going to hit them extremely hard. Over the next two to three weeks, we're going to bring them back to the stone ages, where they belong. In the meantime, discussions are ongoing."

American people's interests
The Guardian

Iran's president Masoud Pezeshkian: "Exactly which of the American people's interests are truly being served by this war? .. Was there any objective threat from Iran to justify such behavior?"

Putin's dream plan
The Guardian

Poland's prime minister Donald Tusk: "The threat of NATO's break-up, easing sanctions on Russia, a massive energy crisis in Europe, halting aid for Ukraine and blocking the loan for Kyiv by Orbán − it all looks like Putin's dream plan."

The end of NATO
The New York Times

US secretary of state Marco Rubio: "Without the United States, there is no NATO .. If we decided tomorrow that we were going to remove our troops from Europe, that would be the end of NATO."
Former US ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder: "It's hard to see how any European country will now be able and willing to trust the United States to come to its defense."

We need to be serious
The Guardian

French president Emmanuel Macron: "I believe that organizations and alliances like NATO are defined by what is left unsaid .. If you cast doubt on your commitment every day, you erode its very substance .. We need to be serious."

AR Trump is endangering innocent people worldwide more disastrously every day:
•  Bombing Iran "back to the stone ages" is only going to undermine the cause of the Iranians who backed the protests in January and reinforce the regime's determination to fight to the end.
•  Casting further doubts on NATO is only going to encourage Putin's hostile policies in Europe and betray Ukrainians in their fight to liberate themselves from his monstrous aggressions.
•  Continuing the bombing war is only going to exacerbate hatred of America across the Mideast, thus guaranteeing further wars and further besmirching America's place in history.
The best solution here is for US citizens to rise up and depose their mad king.

 

⦿ Joe Skipper
Artemis II mission lifts off, Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, April 1