The US-Israeli strategy against Iran is working. Here is why

The US-Israeli strategy against Iran is working. Here is why | US-Israel war on Iran | Al Jazeera

"Two weeks into Operation Epic Fury, the dominant narrative has settled into a comfortable groove: The United States and Israel stumbled into a war without a plan. Iran is retaliating across the region. Oil prices are surging, and the world is facing another Middle Eastern quagmire. US senators have called it a blunder. Cable news has tallied the crises. Commentators have warned of a long war...

But this narrative is wrong. Not because the costs are imaginary, but because the critics are measuring the wrong things. They are cataloguing the price of the campaign while ignoring the strategic ledger.

When you look at what has actually happened to Iran’s principal instruments of power – its ballistic missile arsenal, its nuclear infrastructure, its air defences, its navy and its proxy command architecture – the picture is not one of US failure. It is one of systematic, phased degradation of a threat that previous administrations allowed to grow for four decades...

I have spent my academic career studying how states authorise the use of force through intelligence institutions, and what I see in the current campaign is a recognisable military operation proceeding through identifiable phases against an adversary whose capacity to project power is collapsing in real time.

Iranian ballistic missile launches have fallen by more than 90 percent from 350 on February 28 to roughly 25 by March 14, according to publicly available data. Drone launches tell the same story: from more than 800 on Day 1 to about 75 on Day 15.

The figures drawn from US and Iranian military statements differ in detail but converge on the trajectory. Hundreds of Iranian missile launchers have been rendered inoperable. According to some reports, 80 percent of Iran’s capacity to strike Israel has been eliminated.

Iran’s naval assets, fast-attack craft, midget submarines and mine-laying capabilities are being liquidated. Its air defences have been suppressed to the point at which the US is now flying nonstealth B-1 bombers over Iranian airspace, a decision that signals near-total confidence in air dominance.

The campaign has moved through two distinct phases. The first suppressed Iran’s air defences, decapitated its command and control, and degraded its missile and drone launch infrastructure. By March 2, US Central Command announced local air superiority over western Iran and Tehran, achieved without the confirmed loss of a single American or Israeli combat aircraft.

The second phase, now under way, targets Iran’s defence industrial base: missile production facilities, dual-use research centres and the underground complexes where remaining stockpiles are stored. This is not aimless bombing. It is a methodical campaign to ensure that what has been destroyed cannot be rebuilt.

Iran now faces a strategic dilemma that tightens every day. If it fires its remaining missiles, it exposes launchers that are promptly destroyed. If it conserves them, it forfeits the ability to impose costs of the war. Missile and drone launch data suggest Iran is rationing its remaining capacity for politically timed salvoes rather than sustaining operational tempo.

This is a force managing decline, not projecting strength.

Much of the criticism of the US-Israeli campaign focuses on its costs while treating the status quo ante as if it were cost-free. It was not.

Iran entered 2026 with 440kg of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity – enough, if further enriched, for as many as 10 nuclear weapons. Before the June strikes, Tehran was less than two weeks away from enriching enough uranium for one nuclear bomb, according to US intelligence assessments. At that time, the International Atomic Energy Agency acknowledged that Iran’s accumulation of near-weapons-grade material had no clear civilian justification.

The current campaign has damaged further the Natanz nuclear facility. The one in Fordow remains inoperable. The defence industrial facilities that would be needed to reconstitute enrichment capacity are being systematically targeted.

Reasonable people can disagree about whether diplomatic alternatives were fully exhausted, the Omani-mediated negotiations in February showed real progress, and there are legitimate questions about whether Washington walked away too soon.

But the critics’ implicit alternative, continued restraint while Iran inched towards a nuclear weapon, is the policy that produced the crisis in the first place. Every year of strategic patience added centrifuges to the enrichment halls and kilogrammes to the stockpile.

The limits of military force against a nuclear programme are real, and as others have argued elsewhere, strikes can destroy facilities but cannot eliminate knowledge. The 440kg of enriched uranium remains unaccounted for.

A successor regime of any political colour will inherit a strategic environment in which the case for nuclear deterrence has been strengthened, not weakened. These are genuine long-term risks. But they are arguments for a comprehensive post-conflict diplomatic architecture, not arguments against the campaign itself.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz is dominating the critical commentary...

But this framing inverts the strategic logic. Closing the strait was always Iran’s most visible retaliatory card, and always a wasting asset. About 90 percent of Iran’s own oil exports pass through Kharg Island and then the strait.

China, Tehran’s largest remaining economic partner, cannot receive Iranian crude while the strait is shut. Every day the blockade continues, Iran severs its own economic lifeline and alienates the one major power that has consistently shielded it at the United Nations. The closure does not just hurt the global economy; it accelerates Iran’s isolation.

Meanwhile, the naval assets Iran needs to sustain the blockade – fast-attack boats, drones, mines, shore-based antiship missiles – are being degraded daily. Its naval bases at Bandar Abbas and Chahbahar have been severely damaged.

The question is not whether the strait reopens but when and whether Iran retains any naval capacity to contest it. Critics compare the challenge of escorting a hundred tankers daily to an impossible logistical burden. But you do not need to escort tankers through a strait if the adversary no longer has the means to threaten them. That is the operational trajectory.

The regional escalation – Hezbollah resuming attacks on Israel, Iraqi militias striking US bases, Houthis issuing threats in the Red Sea – is cited as the clearest evidence of US-Israeli strategic failure. The war is spreading, the critics say, just as it did in Iraq. This misreads the dynamics of Iran’s alliance network.

My research on how states authorise proxy violence identifies four layers of control: strategic legitimation, operational coordination, financial-logistical distribution and deniability calibration. The current campaign has disrupted all four simultaneously.

The assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei eliminated the apex of the authorisation pyramid. His son Mojtaba’s appointment as his successor, a dynastic transfer without precedent in the Islamic Republic, signals institutional fragility, not continuity. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) command structure has been decapitated at multiple levels – the acting defence minister was among those killed.

When proxies launch retaliatory attacks across the region, this is not evidence of an expanding network; it is evidence of predelegated response authority, which is what a centralised command system activates when it anticipates its own destruction.

Predelegation is a sign of desperation, not strength. It means the centre can no longer coordinate. The attacks will continue, but they will become increasingly uncoordinated, strategically incoherent and politically costly for the host states where these groups operate.

Qatar and Bahrain are arresting IRGC operatives. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are intercepting Iranian drones over their own territory. The regional environment that sustained Iran’s proxy architecture, including the grudging tolerance by Gulf states fearful of Iranian retaliation, is being replaced by active hostility.

Hezbollah is weaker than at any point since 2006, degraded by more than a year of Israeli operations before this campaign began. Iraqi militias retain the ability to launch attacks, but they are doing so into a region where they face increasing isolation.

The Houthis in Yemen possess independent capability but lack the command integration with Tehran that transforms militia activity into strategic effect. What the critics described as an expanding regional war is better understood as the death spasm of a proxy architecture whose authorising centre has been shattered.

The most politically potent criticism is that the administration has no endgame. Trump’s own rhetoric has not helped...

But the endgame is visible in the operational phasing, even if the rhetoric obscures it. The objective is the permanent degradation of Iran’s ability to project power beyond its borders through missiles, nuclear latency and proxy networks.

Call it strategic disarmament. This is closer to the approach of the Allies to Germany’s industrial war-making capacity in 1944-1945 than to the US war on Iraq in 2003. The analogy is imperfect: Strategic disarmament without occupation requires a verification and enforcement architecture that no one has yet proposed, but the operational logic is the same.

No one is proposing to occupy Tehran. The question is what happens when the bombing stops, and here the critics raise a legitimate concern, which Murphy articulated concisely after a classified briefing: What prevents Iran from restarting production?

The answer requires a post-conflict framework that does not yet exist in public: a verification regime, a diplomatic settlement or a sustained enforcement posture. The administration owes the American public and its regional partners a clear account of what that framework would look like.

But the absence of a public diplomatic blueprint does not mean the military campaign is failing. It means the campaign is ahead of the diplomacy, a sequencing problem, not a strategic one. The military conditions for a durable settlement – Iranian missile capacity too degraded to rebuild quickly, nuclear infrastructure inaccessible, proxy networks fragmented – are being created right now.

None of this minimises the human costs...

But the critics are making a different error: They are treating the costs of action as if the costs of inaction were zero. They were not. They were measured in the slow accretion of a threat that, left unchecked, would have produced exactly the crisis everyone claims to fear: a nuclear-armed Iran capable of closing the Strait of Hormuz at will, surrounded by proxy forces that could hold the entire region hostage indefinitely.

Seventeen days in, Iran’s supreme leader is dead, his successor is reportedly wounded and every principal instrument of Iranian power projection – missiles, nuclear infrastructure, air defences, the navy, proxy command networks – has been degraded beyond near-term recovery. The campaign’s execution has been imperfect, its public communication poor and its post-conflict planning incomplete. War is never clean. But the strategy – the actual strategy, measured in degraded capabilities rather than cable news cycles – is working."

 

Iran supporters keep citing IAEA claiming there was no evidence Iran was trying to make a nuclear bomb, while ignoring their other observations 

Links - 18th March 2026 (1 - Iran War)

Pro-Iran protesters march in London - "Supporters of the Iranian government flew the flag of the Ayatollahs in central London on Saturday in protest at American and Israeli air strikes... The demonstrators brandished placards showing a portrait of Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader... Others flew the tricolour flag of the Iranian regime, bearing the Islamic emblem... As the pro-Palestine protest drew to a close, one speaker praised the Iranian regime and said:  “When it comes to Palestine, the Islamic Republic of Iran has chosen to be be on the right side of history for the past 47 years.”... A number of protesters also carried anti-Semitic placards that appeared to equate Israel with the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein. One green placard read “Epstein’s Regime Back Off”, while another appeared to connect both the US and Israel to “Epstein” and “paedos”."
Green Party deputy leader blasts 'inherently racist’ claims he was supporting Iran's Supreme Leader at London rally - "Mothin Ali said Saturday's demonstration was organised by Stop the War Coalition and was not a show of support for the regime in Iran."
You're only guilty of association with everything any single person at a protest says or does when that pushes the left wing agenda

Read Trump's full statement on Iran attacks | PBS News - "Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime. A vicious group of very hard, terrible people. Its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies throughout the world.  For 47 years, the Iranian regime has chanted Death to America and waged an unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder, targeting the United States, our troops and the innocent people in many, many countries. Among the regime's very first acts was to back a violent takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, holding dozens of American hostages for 444 days. In 1983, Iran's proxies carried out the marine barracks bombing in Beirut that killed 241 American military personnel.  In 2000, they knew and were probably involved with the attack on the USS Cole. Many died. Iranian forces killed and maimed hundreds of American service members in Iraq. The regime's proxies have continued to launch countless attacks against American forces stationed in the Middle East in recent years, as well as U.S. naval and commercial vessels and international shipping lines. It's been mass terror, and we're not going to put up with it any longer.  From Lebanon to Yemen and Syria to Iraq, the regime has armed, trained and funded terrorist militias that have soaked the earth with blood and guts. And it was Iran's proxy, Hamas, that launched the monstrous Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, slaughtering more than 1,000 innocent people, including 46 Americans, while taking 12 of our citizens hostage. It was brutal, something like the world has never seen before.  Iran is the world's number one state sponsor of terror, and just recently killed tens of thousands of its own citizens on the street as they protested. It has always been the policy of the United States, in particular my administration, that this terrorist regime can never have a nuclear weapon. I'll say it again, they can never have a nuclear weapon. That is why in Operation Midnight Hammer last June, we obliterated the regime's nuclear program at Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan. After that attack, we warned them never to resume their malicious pursuit of nuclear weapons, and we sought repeatedly to make a deal. We tried. They wanted to do it. They didn't want to do it. Again they wanted to do it. They didn't want to do it. They didn't know what was happening. They just wanted to practice evil. But Iran refused, just as it has for decades and decades.   They've rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions, and we can't take it anymore. Instead, they attempted to rebuild their nuclear program and to continue developing the long range missiles that can now threaten our very good friends and allies in Europe, our troops stationed overseas, and could soon reach the American homeland. Just imagine how emboldened this regime would be if they ever had, and actually were armed with nuclear weapons as a means to deliver their message.  For these reasons, the United States military is undertaking a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests. We're going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground. It will be totally again obliterated. We're going to annihilate their navy. We're going to ensure that the region's terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region or the world and attack our forces, and no longer use their IEDs, or roadside bombs as they are sometimes called, to so gravely wound and kill thousands and thousands of people, including many Americans. And we will ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon. It's a very simple message. They will never have a nuclear weapon."
The TDS squad keep claiming he didn't give any reason for his attack. As usual they're ignorant and blinded by hate

Hamas urges key ally Iran to halt attacks on Gulf states
Damn Zionists! They've taken over Hamas!

Riley Gaines on X - "Three Iranian soccer players granted asylum in Australia are returning back home where they will likely face the death penalty. Since their stance against the Iranian Regime, family members have been detained and gone missing. Pray for these women."
Time to blame the US and Israel!

Jeremy Bowen has given the BBC’s game away - "From his lofty perch as the BBC’s international editor Jeremy Bowen has unleashed a thunderbolt aimed at Donald Trump. In plain language, Bowen has called-out the US president as a liar... it’s worth remembering Bowen has been in this kind of situation before. In April 2023 a missile fell on the Al-Ahi hospital in Gaza; the death toll was in excess of 400 and Jeremy Bowen blamed the attack on Israel; however subsequent investigations strongly suggested it was a Hamas rocket.   The Israeli government said that Bowen and the BBC were guilty of a ‘blood-libel’; within a few days the BBC climbed down and acknowledged a mistake but Mr Bowen was not especially contrite: “O yeah, well I got that wrong.” he said. “I don’t feel particularly bad about that. I don’t regret one thing in my reporting because I think I was measured throughout; I didn’t race to judgment.”  With that blunder in mind one might expect Bowen now to be more circumspect. Perhaps further evidence will change the picture. If so it will be too late for the BBC to retract; Bowen has already labelled Trump a liar.   Does it matter? Is it the BBC’s job to make that allegation? The traditional BBC approach was to carefully assemble the evidence and allow the audience to make up its own mind; making forthright judgments was avoided for two reasons.   Firstly you might get them wrong and secondly if you do speak plainly you inevitably enter the political debate as a partisan. The role Bowen occupies used to be done by John Simpson – I cannot believe he would have been so forthright. And that would have been true of a whole previous generation of BBC correspondents who were taught never to editorialise. But Bowen was given the prime 8.10am spot on Today to do exactly that. The problem for Mr Bowen and the BBC is that every instance like this reinforces the view that the BBC has abandoned impartiality in favour of opinion-mongering. Jeremy Bowen has been called out many times by supporters of Israel for his perceived bias in favour of the Palestinians. In his long diatribe Bowen also accused the US of having gone to war “…without a coherent strategy under a president who, the evidence suggests, makes it up as he goes along.”   Later, after he had said his piece, Bowen was asked about it and answered: “…it’s our job, if he comes up with something that’s not just an exaggeration but a barefaced lie to say that. It was actually rather liberating.” And he went on “…tons of people” got in touch to say “Well done Jeremy!” He has certainly expanded his fan club by saying what he did; by the same token he will also have reinforced the view of those of us who feel he too often allows his “revealed preferences” to show."

BMA fails to condemn Iranian attacks on Israeli hospitals - "“I am very surprised that the BMA have only commented about hospitals in Iran while making no mention of the hospitals under attack by Iranian missiles in the UAE and other Gulf states as well as in Israel.”... This is not the first time the BMA has chosen to weigh in on international affairs.  Some 45 motions – representing 10 per cent of all things discussed – at last year’s conference were related to either Zionism or Gaza, provoking a mass resignation of Jewish doctors from the union."

The Iran war has divided Europe and shattered the Atlantic alliance - "where is the Royal Navy? It came as an unpleasant shock to the British public that there were no British warships on patrol in the Mediterranean, the Gulf, or the Indian Ocean.  The only vessel that was available turned out to be the destroyer HMS Dragon, but she only sailed from Portsmouth this week. By the time she arrives at Cyprus, the Iran war may be over.  How did it come to this? The UK is, of course, hardly the only European country to have run down its armed forces after the Cold War. But no other nation, not even the United States, has such a proud naval tradition.  So it has been humiliating to discover that other navies maintain a higher state of readiness — something we once took for granted. Within living memory, Britannia has gone from ruling the waves to being submerged in shame.  Since the time of Nelson, our Navy prided itself on being qualitatively as well as quantitatively superior to its rivals. In 1939, the Royal Navy was still the largest in the world: more than a match for the German and Italian fleets in the Atlantic and Mediterranean respectively, while also contributing to the defeat of Japan in the Pacific.  Together with the RAF, the Navy successfully deterred a Nazi invasion in 1940 and made the Allied landings in North Africa, Sicily, Italy and France (on D-Day) possible.  There was a heavy price to pay. During the Second World War, 278 British warships were lost, including 10 capital ships, three escort carriers, 28 cruisers and 153 destroyers. More than 50,000 officers and men went down with them.  Even in 1982, the task force that Margaret Thatcher sent to recapture the Falkland Islands was able to sail within three days. It comprised 127 vessels, of which 43 were warships. Five ships did not return. We had surprised ourselves, but it proved to be the Navy’s swansong.  Now when destiny calls we can barely even dispatch a flotilla, let alone a fleet. On paper, the Royal Navy today has some 63 vessels, but these include just 15 significant surface warships (aircraft carriers, destroyers and frigates), plus 10 nuclear submarines, of which only a handful are seaworthy. Not accidentally, this decline in British naval power coincides with a loss of prestige and even of respect, especially across the Atlantic... When it passed on the task of keeping the world’s sea lanes open to the US navy after 1945, the Royal Navy could look back on more than two centuries of using its supremacy to benefit humanity, from suppressing slavery and piracy to defeating despots from Napoleon to Hitler – without always being able to rely on American support in these endeavours. Only since 1949 has the Atlantic alliance become a permanent fixture.  Britain’s decline is not limited to naval power. In the past 25 years, our military personnel have collapsed from over 200,000 to below 150,000. Meanwhile, despite the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the disparity between European and US levels of defence expenditure has only grown. In 2024, the US spent just under $1tn (£750bn) on defence, almost five times as much as Germany, the UK and France combined. In defence expenditure, all three lag far behind the American figure of 3.5pc of GDP, with Poland as the only major EU military power to exceed 4pc. What would it take to force Europe to pay for a serious increase in military capabilities?  The political trade-offs necessary to follow the Polish example – cutting welfare, for example – are seen as impossible in Western Europe. Macron failed to persuade the French to accept a modest rise in the pensionable age. He and Merz face threats from parties on both Left and Right who favour deals with Putin on Ukraine and are either sympathetic or indifferent to Iran.  What does move the most immovable European electorates, however, is immigration. A hitherto unmentionable peril could easily emerge if the Iran war topples the clerical regime but leads to the kind of anarchy formerly seen in Iraq, Syria and Libya. It is the spectre of mass migration from a fissiparous nation of 92 million people, perhaps bigger than the wave that arrived from Syria a decade ago.  Several European countries — notably Germany, Britain, France and Sweden— are already home to the million-strong Iranian diaspora, many of whom are highly educated, well-integrated and secularised.  Most of these émigrés support the US and Israel, but this might quickly change if large numbers began to arrive from a potentially chaotic Iran. Some of the new arrivals would inevitably have hardline Islamist views. An unknown percentage would be regime loyalists, affiliated to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) or the paramilitary Basij —well-versed in propaganda, subversion and terror.  The fallout from the Iran war could thus have a profoundly destabilising impact on Europe – even more so than the Arab Spring, Isis and Gaza. It is unclear whether Trump and Netanyahu understand this, still less whether this dire prospect particularly concerns them... The present war in Iran has placed the Atlantic alliance under unprecedented strain.  Defeating the Islamic Republic and deposing its leadership are desirable, justifiable and long overdue war aims. Many Europeans recognise this, but are nevertheless desperate to stay out of the conflict. Europe’s perennial ingratitude and resentment towards America are facts of life. But Trump has cut off US military aid for Ukraine, leaving Europeans to help Volodymyr Zelensky stave off the Russian threat. He has simultaneously embarked on a new war without consulting his allies or considering the impact on them of a protracted interruption of oil supplies.  The defiant message on Thursday of the new Iranian supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, makes it clear that closing the Strait of Hormuz is still seen by the regime as its best survival strategy."
Too bad the British need to pay for benefits, but they can free ride on the Americans to keep sea lanes clear. Time to mobilise that battalion of human rights lawyers to sabotage the US and Israel, ensuring Iran continues to be a threat for decades to come

Too many armchair foreign policy ‘experts’ seem to want Iran to win - "Trump Derangement Syndrome, often with a comorbidity of Israel Derangement Syndrome, plays a major part in many supposed “expert” opinions on the progress of this conflict. Symptoms include a suicidal glee at any sign the war isn’t going well. Intent on contorting Operation Epic Fury into the Iraq war that began more than 20 years ago, many seem desperate for Donald Trump to fail and Iran to succeed. Only these all-knowing academics, journalists and other keyboard warriors have absorbed the lessons of Iraq while Pentagon planners and battlefield commanders, they think, remain blissfully ignorant.  A defeatist outlook also results from a track record of predicting that the Tehran regime cannot be defeated and jihadists will have to be accommodated rather than vanquished. “I told you so” is the refrain when those ayatollahs that are still alive open up on a few tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and fire rockets and drones at their regional neighbours as oil prices spiral and American troops take casualties. The BBC’s Jeremy Bowen could not restrain his schadenfreude at reports that a US missile had tragically hit a school in Tehran.  All of this was bad and all eminently predictable, but not only by the armchair generals. All, and much worse, was factored in by political leaders and war planners in Washington and Jerusalem. It would be nice to be able to deal with the depredations of despotic regimes without breaking any eggs, but that is not possible outside of Hollywood. Nor is it pleasant to say that the end result is worth the pain when human life is lost and the cost of living spirals. But unfortunately that’s what it takes. And the Iranian regime’s growing aggression certainly had to be faced head-on. The stars were aligned with an American president and an Israeli prime minister sufficiently courageous to seize the moment against a recently weakened Iran. Headlines like “a war without a strategy” simply twist reality to fit the straitjacket eagerly donned by the submissive. To think that a war leader should publish his plans for all to read while battles are being fought betrays both arrogance and an ignorance of conflict.  We are rightly not privy to Trump’s exact strategy but his goals were spelt out clearly from the beginning: to terminate Iran’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles programmes, including the development of ICBMs that could hit Europe and the US. He also set out to end Tehran’s worldwide terrorist proxy war and deny their capability to close the Strait of Hormuz.  These objectives are all being met in what has so far been a spectacularly successful campaign by the world’s two leading military powers working in a partnership unprecedented since the Second World War... Politically, Trump’s strategy has succeeded in the total isolation of Tehran, never achieved before, as evidenced by this week’s UN Security Council vote condemning Iranian aggression by 13-0. Even Russia and China felt unable to stand by their ally and abstained. Many commentators have wrongly claimed that Trump’s objective was regime change. In reality he has suggested only that it would be a welcome consequence of military action... Providing Trump and Netanyahu press on until all objectives are achieved, even if regime change does not immediately result, the region and the world will be safer after the conclusion of this war, which really began all the way back in 1979. Until now the terrorist regime had been permitted to gain in strength and danger while Western leaders didn’t do much more than wring their hands and look away. Or in the case of Barack Obama, actually encourage and even help fund their depredations.  Beyond crippling Iran’s military capability, this conflict should also neutralise a key element of China’s strategy of using Tehran to tie down US military assets in the Middle East in the event of conflict in the Pacific, as well as controlling energy supplies via the Strait of Hormuz.  America and Israel have also shown they can suppress Russian and Chinese-supplied air defences with ease, which is good news for all of Nato.  This campaign has already achieved a huge amount at relatively limited cost, with even more to come"

Trump's plan makes perfect sense, and it's working - "There’s a strong misconception in Europe that President Donald Trump prefers dictators and authoritarian powers over democratic allies. The fact is that he has just taken out a major Chinese ally (Venezuela), is in the process of taking out another (Iran), and is threatening to take out a third (Cuba).  As we think about the problem set that confronted the United States when he came into office, we see that he inherited a dwindling heavy-industry sector and a rigid US ideology about offering the world free markets, despite extremely unfavourable terms (US tariffs on EU cars were 2 per cent while EU tariffs on US autos were 11 per cent). He also inherited a rising rival in China, which seemed to be eating US manufacturing share every year while gaining dominance in global shipping and energy markets.  But unlike so many previous American presidents, Trump looks at these problems differently. He sees different problems – inherited from his years as a businessman – and he responds differently.  In The Art of the Deal, he advocates boldness against one’s adversaries, recommends aggression towards perceived unfair treatment and promotes maximum flexibility by pursuing multiple “deals” at once. He is a New York real estate mogul, perfectly attuned to a competitive system and thinks of the international rules-based system as red tape and regulation put in place to hold him down... Everyone is constantly guessing, and he is literally taking his opponents to pieces... If China is building an alternate anti-Western coalition which also happens to control huge swathes of the international oil supply, take them out.  But don’t talk about taking them out in some grand-strategy way because that tips your opponent off to what you’re doing."

Charity behind pro-Iran ‘hate march’ received £450k taxpayer funding - "A charity which funds the group behind the banned pro-Iran “hate march” has received at least £450,000 in taxpayer-funded donations, The Telegraph can reveal.  The Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) Trust has been recognised by HMRC for Gift Aid, which means it can claim an extra 25p from the Government for every £1 it receives in donations.  Accounts submitted by the trust to the Charity Commission show that it has claimed £458,500 in Gift Aid since 2020. It is under investigation by the watchdog for funding an event where “inflammatory” statements were apparently made.  The group, whose spokesman defended Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the late supreme leader of Iran, as a “man of principle”, organised what MPs and peers described as a “hate march” before it was banned this week by Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary... There have been arrests and clashes with the police at previous marches, while the Israeli flag has been burnt, and before Hezbollah’s proscription in 2019, the terror group’s flag was waved."

Babak Taghvaee - The Crisis Watch on X - "BREAKING: Supporters of the Islamic regime of Iran who have recently arrived in Canada seeking protection from the Canadian government are now beginning to attack and threaten members of the Iranian diaspora living there. This Iranian pizza shop owner was threatened with death by three supporters of the Islamic regime of Iran because he had posters and pictures of Reza Pahlavi, leader of Iran’s opposition, on the wall of his shop.  #RezaPahlavi‌"

Attacks on Britain demand a response - "British forces have again come under attack from Iran, and again the Government’s response has amounted to a complacent shrug of the shoulders. Senior officers have revealed that an Iranian drone swarm hit a UK military base in Erbil, Iraq, on Wednesday night. Mercifully, no British soldiers were killed or injured. But that hardly lessens the seriousness of Tehran’s act of aggression or how dangerous it is to let the ayatollahs take free hits at Britain’s servicemen and women... What is Iran learning from this? Or Russia and China for that matter, especially given that the Kremlin is thought to have had a hand in developing Tehran’s tactics? The dismal irony of the Government’s purely “defensive” approach to the war is that it may be making it harder to defend Britain and its interests, because hostile forces will be more likely to believe that they can get away with flagrant acts of aggression.  Donald Trump attracted controversy on Sunday for saying higher oil prices were a “very small price to pay” for his military accomplishments in Iran. He may well be right: it is particularly bizarre that some of the same people who understood that it was important to stand up to Russia in Ukraine, even if that meant paying more for energy, are unwilling to apply this principle to Iran, a regime every bit as malign as Vladimir Putin’s. Whether you agree with Mr Trump or not, he cannot be accused of failing to grapple with the hard choices presented by war. He has taken a gamble on attacking Iran, judging that the risks are worth the reward of massively degrading the longer-term threat presented by Tehran.  Sir Keir Starmer, by contrast, appears to believe he need make no hard choices at all. He pretends that he can keep Britain out of this war and face no consequences for doing so. He is being proved appallingly wrong and, if Erbil is any guide, the price of his inaction is growing higher by the day."
Doing anything other than sending a strongly worded letter would violate international law, so nothing is going to be done and Iran must be allowed to continue attacking everyone

Alan Mendoza on X - "For years, we were told by successive governments that we can’t proscribe the IRGC as it would mean “we can’t talk to the regime”. Now we discover that British officials partied with that same regime weeks after it butchered thousands of its own people. Shameful doesn’t cover it."
Civil servants celebrated Islamic revolution at Iranian embassy - "As smartly dressed guests, including UK civil servants, gathered at the London event, embassy officials hailed Iran’s “remarkable accomplishments” in spite of “unjust” Western sanctions. Video footage shows attendees standing in silence for a rendition of Iran’s national anthem... Reports had reached the West of injured protesters being killed in hospital by the regime’s feared Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and people on the streets being shot in the head and neck at close range.  Demonstrators said the drains of Tehran ran crimson with the blood of the dead... The attendance of Foreign Office staff at the embassy event, as well as unnamed “representatives” from the UK Parliament, was hailed by Iranian state media. It is not known how many government officials took part."

Eyal Yakoby on X - "Dearborn Henry Ford Community College professor Ali Akbar Shdid: “Trump made a huge mistake by killing our leader Ali Khamenei, we are going to continue on his path, we are going to hold his blood and ideology and teach it to our children.”"
If you talk about a fifth column, you are racist, xenophobic and Islamophobic. If you talk about college indoctrination, you're ignorant, poorly educated and hate learning

Babak Taghvaee - The Crisis Watch on X - "BREAKING: The number of Islamic regime officials and supporters, including Shia clerics, defecting to Canada has increased. This footage recorded at Toronto International Airport shows the arrival of a Shia cleric and his family at the airport. Canada has long been a safe haven for officials of the Islamic regime of Iran. After the fall of the Islamic regime in Iran, many Iranians will return to their homeland, while more regime officials and supporters will come to Canada.   #OperationLionsRoar #OperationEpicFury"
Babak Taghvaee - The Crisis Watch on X - "BREAKING: The Shia cleric who was filmed at Pearson International Airport in Toronto, arriving from Iran together with his family, has been identified as Hojjatoleslam Morteza Tayyebi. He has recently obtained Canadian citizenship. Unfortunately, the government of Canada is sheltering these notorious Shia clerics of the Islamic regime, including those who have been directly involved in the killing of Iranian people.  #OperationLionsRoar #OperationEpicFury"

Links - 17th March 2026 (2)

Bring back "Share all tabs" in Firefox for Android - Mozilla Connect - "In current stable version (Firefox 144 for Android) one can easily send all open tabs to other devices. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-share-tab-firefox-android#w_share-all-open-tabs  I use it every day and love it; however, in recent Beta builds the tab menu has gotten a UI tweak and the menu item is gone. It made my tab life really worse and I'd love it come back. Please!"
When you have to downgrade to version 146

Meme - Rothmus: "We're not gonna make it are we"
@ratlimit: "apologies for my phrasing. instead of "my partner", which has connotations of ownership, I am trying to update my language to "a partner to me" (PTM). credit to my PTM for calling me out on this"
masha @MashaParty: "i love this! my lovemate calls me their PFN (Person For Now) to recognize that while i'm in their life today, they don't owe me a tomorrow. it really makes me grateful for every day i have with them"
@ratlimit: "You do not have my permission to distribute this unauthorized reproduction of my content. Delete this immediately. Failure to do so will result in my submission of a DMCA takedown request."

Meme - "Despite lying on camera, Pritam plays victim to the very end.
SCANDAL. WAS IT A CRIME? APOLOGISED? RESIGNED?
Tan Chuan Jin: Extramarital affair NO YES YES
Cheng Li Hu: Extramarital affair NO YES YES
Leon Perera: Extramarital affair NO YES YES
Nicole Seah: Extramarital affair NO YES YES
S. Iswaran: Corrupt behaviour YES YES YES
Pritam Singh: Lying under oath YES NO NO"

Mind over milkshakes: mindsets, not just nutrients, determine ghrelin response - "Objective: To test whether physiological satiation as measured by the gut peptide ghrelin may vary depending on the mindset in which one approaches consumption of food.
Methods: On 2 separate occasions, participants (n = 46) consumed a 380-calorie milkshake under the pretense that it was either a 620-calorie "indulgent" shake or a 140-calorie "sensible" shake. Ghrelin was measured via intravenous blood samples at 3 time points: baseline (20 min), anticipatory (60 min), and postconsumption (90 min). During the first interval (between 20 and 60 min) participants were asked to view and rate the (misleading) label of the shake. During the second interval (between 60 and 90 min) participants were asked to drink and rate the milkshake.
Results: The mindset of indulgence produced a dramatically steeper decline in ghrelin after consuming the shake, whereas the mindset of sensibility produced a relatively flat ghrelin response. Participants' satiety was consistent with what they believed they were consuming rather than the actual nutritional value of what they consumed.
Conclusions: The effect of food consumption on ghrelin may be psychologically mediated, and mindset meaningfully affects physiological responses to food."
A lot of hunger is psychological

@roach-works on Tumblr - "speculative fiction writers i am going to give you a really urgent piece of advice: don't say numbers. don't give your readers any numbers. how heavy is the sword? lots. how old is that city? plenty. how big is the fort? massive. how fast is the spaceship? not very, it's secondhand.   the minute you say a number your readers can check your math and you cannot do math better than your most autistic critic. i guarantee. don't let your readers do any math. when did something happen? awhile ago. how many bullets can that gun fire? trick question, it shoots lasers, and it shoots em HARD.   you are lying to people for fun. if you let them do math at you the lie collapses and it's no fun anymore."

Charestiste🇨🇦🍁 on X - "Federal Vote Intention by Age 18-29 year old 🔵Conservative: 50% 🔴Liberal: 27% 🟠NDP: 14% 🟢Green: 4% 🔷Bloc: 2% 🟣People's: 1% ⚪Other: 0% 60 and over 🔴Liberal: 52% 🔵Conservative: 32% 🔷Bloc: 9% 🟠NDP: 5% 🟢Green: 1% 🟣PPC: 1% ⚪OTH: 0%"
Christian Heiens 🏛 on X - "Boomer Occupied Government Western nations are essentially liberal gerontocracies ruled by a bunch of selfish grandparents who refuse to pass the torch, hate their own offspring, and continue to insist on imposing their 60s era values on society despite the obvious and numerous civilization-rupturing flaws it produces."
It's only "okay, boomer" when it pushes the left wing agenda

Clerics, Baghdad bridal industry profit from child marriage - "Baghdad’s bridal industry has seen a massive boom since Iraq legalized child marriage, and human rights organizations have warned that young girls are being auctioned off in black market sales to older men... Even before the law passed, 28% of girls in Iraq were married before the age of 18, and a further 22% of unregistered marriages involve girls under 14, the United Nations reported in 2023... Dozens of businesses confirmed to the British outlet that since the Ja’fari law passed, they had increased sales.  Baraa Macer, an influencer and bridal makeup artist, admitted that many of her clients are now under 10.  A video allegedly displaying an 11-year-old girl cloaked in white shared on Macer’s page gained more than 250,000 views. Macer declined to confirm whether the content was monetized.  Another Iraqi makeup artist, Zainab Saleem, also known as Makera Dobaa, claimed she disagreed with child marriage but shared her underage client’s videos because “younger brides get more views” and people ask for ages in the comments... Ruweida described a “10-year-old girl who cried throughout her hair and makeup, and still her family was proud to say she was marrying an older man. She was trying to resist, but I could see she had bruises all over her head … this is very common.”"
Damn colonialism!

World's oldest boomerang older than thought, but not Australian - "The tool, which was found in a cave in Poland in 1985, is now thought to be 40,000 years old.  Archaeologists say it was fashioned from a mammoth's tusk with an astonishing level of skill.  Researchers worked out from its shape that it would have flown when thrown, but would not have come back to the thrower."

NASA Stole the Rocket Countdown From a 1929 Fritz Lang Film - "Die Frau im Mond, happened to be written by Thea von Harbou, Lang’s longtime collaborator and then-wife (the two later separated, after von Harbou decided to throw her lot in with the Nazis). The book, which follows a group of backstabbing moon prospectors, is a rollercoaster ride of love triangles, business intrigue, and lunar gunfights, and Lang set out to turn it into a film. While writing the novel, von Harbou had researched spaceflight meticulously, and Lang, wanting his film to be equally grounded in scientific possibility, hired Hermann Oberth—the Transylvanian teacher who had started the whole space craze—as the film’s scientific advisor. Oberth hightailed it to Berlin."

Social Media Ruthlessly Mocks Influencer Who Screamed Her Lungs Out On Singapore Airlines Flight - "Mia was traveling on a Singapore Airlines flight in Business Class, and with her camera pointing right at her, we got to see exactly what her reaction was at the moment the plane started to experience turbulence...   Despite Mia’s self-awareness and apology, the internet was not so kind to her, with other TikTok users making parody videos and commentators calling her out on her video.  What those commentators and video posters didn’t know, however, was that Mia was seriously injured in a severe turbulence incident aboard Singapore Airlines flight SQ-321 from London Heathrow in May 2024 that claimed the life of one passenger who suffered a heart attack.  Scores of passengers and cabin crew were seriously injured when the Boeing 777-300 experienced extreme G-forces, flinging anyone who wasn’t buckled up into the air and then throwing them back towards the cabin floor...   “For those who are saying it’s impossible to have a meltdown while filming, it took me two years, babe.”  “I edited the video and posted it because I thought it was funny, but I guess I cropped too much out and everyone thinks it’s fake.”  Bizarrely, even with this explanation, and photos of Mia in the hospital recovering from her traumatic experience, people have still come for in the comments, claiming the whole thing was “performative” and claiming she can’t really have a fear of flying because she still got on a plane."

Public Attitudes In Iraq: Four Years On - "These are among the findings released today from the largest poll into Iraqi opinion ever to be published. Carried out by UK research firm ORB, which has been tracking public opinion in Iraq since 2005, the poll shows that despite the horrendous personal security problems only 26% of the country preferred life under the previous regime of Saddam Hussein, with almost half (49%) preferring life under the current political system. As one may expect, it is the Sunnis who are most likely to back the previous regime (51%) with the Shias (66%) preferring the current arrangements."
From 2007

Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council - "More businesses are shifting to cashless payment models. For many businesses, cash can be more costly, less secure, and inconvenient than electronic payments.  While most businesses offer a choice in payments, the movement to cashless payments is being driven by security, efficiency and cost-savings... As the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) noted in an article titled “The Hidden Costs of Cash Management,” convenience stores pay employees 15-20 hours a week to count cash. NACS also reports full-time convenience store employees earn $14.33 an hour, meaning each store pays between $11,177 and $14,903 a year just to count cash. That is before calculating, according to NACS, other costs not present with card payments such as theft, safes or the cost associated with securely transporting cash from a store to the bank. The IHL Group, a global research and advisory firm for the retail and hospitality industry, issued a report that found the cost associated with handling cash payments can run from 4.7% on the low end to more than 15.5% for bars and restaurants. For electronic payments, the cost can range from $1.43 to $4.40 per $100 transaction depending on the credit/debit or payment processor (VISA, MC, American Express, PayPal, Amazon Pay, or Apple Pay).  Cash costs can significantly outpace the costs associated with accepting and processing card payments, which also protects consumers from fraud and helps to lift “ticket spend” – the average amount spent by a consumer per transaction – for businesses. According to the 2023 NACS State of the Industry Report, the highest- performing convenience stores pay the highest amount of card fees, which demonstrates how accepting credit cards can generate more sales revenue and, ultimately, more profit. Brick-and-mortar businesses are not the only ones facing high cash costs. Death Valley National Park stopped accepting cash payments after finding the park spent $40,000 to process $22,000 in cash entrance fees. This was due to the park’s remote location and 45-minute armored car ride to a bank.  Cash also creates security concerns. It can be risky to deal in cash because physical currency can be easily stolen. To prevent theft, businesses spend additional money on security measures such as on-location guards and armored cars for cash transport. Nevertheless, U.S. retailers lose $40 billion each year to cash theft."

Asked and Answered - "There are all sorts of consultants, pundits, and politicians who are claiming to have the golden answer for the question: “What is wrong with the Democrat Party?” The thing to understand about these people is that they have the same issue the Democrats do, they are not interested in solving anything because if the solved it, they would have to get off the gravy train at the next stop, so what they are telling you about are symptoms, not problems.  You have lost a generation of young men – young people in general – but that is a symptom, not the problem.  Here are three words I think about with I think about the Democrat Party and policies: 1) performative, 2) ephemeral, and 3) unsuccessful – and when those three combine, they form a political ideology that costs a lot of money and delivers no tangible results. Think about the Biden years – pretty much all of the GDP was due to government spending, more than two thirds of which was borrowed money, the messaging around it had nothing to do with the outcome because it was more about what was trendy than what was delivered and while the inflation it caused wasn’t “transitory” as we were told, the policies were. They had zero substance because the issues they were claimed to solve had no substance. They were just an excuse to spend billions upon billions of dollars because spending is how the Democrat Party measures “success”. The reason you are losing support and your party’s approval is in the teens, is that people, especially young people, see absolutely no positive impact from them. Your party told every parent and child that they had to go to college and get a degree, then you provided easy loan money the university system modified itself to soak up, and when the universities enrolled progressively dumb and ill-prepared students, to soak up tuition they dumbed down the degrees to the point of real-world worthlessness. Most kids should get a tee shirt when (if) they get a degree that says, “I graduated from college and all I got was a quarter million in debt and this tee shirt.”  They resent having to pay taxes on literally everything they own and do, endure high interest rates, and face limited opportunities, all to cover the bill our government is running up – and Democrats are seen, more than ever, as the party of government... The middle class is the same. They intuitively calculate return on investment and I can tell you that trillions of dollars spent on a handful of EV charging stations, replacing racist roads, legalizing discrimination of whites through DEI policies everywhere, subsidizing electric vehicles they can’t afford to buy, and critical infrastructure that never gets built while their electric and water bills keep going up, is a price they are tired of paying. You are hanging by your fingernails to the 65+ demo – the only class you are hanging onto – and only because this is the class of people who are beginning to look to government benefits as a significant percentage of their future income and insurance, but even that group is moving to the right... The GOP would be the same if it weren’t for Trump. Trump is performative, but his policies are not. When he sees something that needs doing, he just does it and his core pushes are yielding measurable results – and he doesn’t give two shits about the fluff – and more people are noticing.  Your party prioritizes fluff over everything. That’s the issue in a nutshell."

Meme - Klara @klara_sjo: ""What if the ship of Theseus was sentient" is not a question I was prepared to grapple with today."
"Thomas didn't enjoy his time at the Works. "It's nice to feel mended again," he said afterwards,"but they took so many of my old parts away and put new ones in, that I'm not sure whether I'm really me or another engine.""

@snugglesquiggle on Tumblr - "in an interesting case of linguistic convergent evolution, the english words scale, scale, and scale are all false cognates of each other
scale as in „to climb“ comes from the latin scala, for ladder.
scale as in the measuring device comes from the old norse skal, for a drinking vessel sometimes used as a weighing device
scale as in the dermal plating on the skin of some fish and reptiles comes from the old french escale, for shell or husk."
"Three languages enter, one language leaves. "

Andre Pagliarini on X - "a first: in rejecting an article I submitted to a journal, reviewer 2 noted I failed to engage the work of one Andre Pagliarini"
Tom Nichols on X - "Years ago I submitted an article to a journal whose reviewer objected to a quote in the paper, saying that the language in the quote was inappropriate for a journal of such prestige. The quote came from an earlier edition of the same journal (which was noted in the footnote)"

Ben Landau-Taylor on X - "If you invented the concept of the zoo today, you'd obviously have cows. At the time they didn't include farm animals because everyone saw farm animals all the time. Today we don't. But, we inherited the idea of which animals are Zoo Animals. Everything works like this."

Middle aged man, where do you buy your clothes? : r/AskUK - "RJR John Rocha was my go to for shirts. He's a fat man and his shirts were always well cut for the egg shaped gentleman.  I used to buy them in Debenhams so it's now a case of working out where they're sold. Not terribly expensive and decent quality material.  Uniqlo for chinos.  My logic was seven shirts and three trousers worn in an ordered 1:3 rotation means you never have the issue of "Oh look, Geoff has his Tuesday outfit on". I got the idea from the cicadas which have a breeding cycle based on prime numbers."

Inside an SS officer’s Auschwitz photo album - "In 2007, Dr Rebecca Erbelding, an archivist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, was sent an album of old photographs, apparently taken in 1940s Europe. Nothing strange about that: her role at the museum saw her receive donations of wartime memorabilia – letters, diaries, keepsakes, snapshots – almost every day of the year. In this case, though, the donor, an 87-year-old retired US lieutenant colonel, claimed the photos, discovered in an abandoned apartment in Frankfurt while he was on US government business back in 1946, had been taken at Auschwitz, the largest and deadliest Nazi concentration camp of all...   Strikingly, of all the photographs in Höcker’s album, not one shows an inmate of the camp. “They really are the selfies of an SS officer,” says Amanda Gronich, an American writer who specialises in adapting true stories for stage and screen. “And I don’t mean that glibly. I mean that [taking selfies] was precisely what they were doing.” As artless as holiday snaps, the photos are shocking in their blithe depiction of apparently carefree life going on alongside one of the most notorious killing machines in history.  These images and the mysterious story of their discovery form the backbone of Here There Are Blueberries – a Pulitzer-nominated play, conceived and co-written by Gronich with playwright Moisés Kaufman – which has its UK premiere in east London this month. Combining large-scale projections with a script embroidered from real-life testimonies, it is both a provocative piece of immersive theatre and a gripping detective story... “The guards know that the Soviets are coming, yet there is a picture of them going on a hunting trip. And instead of destroying the photographs, which is what he should have done, Höcker carefully pastes them into an album. It’s delusional. It suggests that to some extent, the Nazi command really believed that the Germans were still going to win.” The album overturns several widely held misconceptions about the running of the Nazi death camps, not least the assumption that the staff were all male. In fact, “apple-cheeked young women” were regularly employed as Helferinnen at Auschwitz, a position in which, the play argues, they would have had intimate knowledge of the horrors being perpetrated. “For some of these young women, getting to serve in the Third Reich was a chance to leave home,” says Gronich. “It was an adventure. They were teenagers who got to go off and maybe even find a husband.” Perhaps more significantly, both the photographs and the play are radically unconventional in foregrounding a Nazi’s-eye view of Auschwitz, rather than that of their victims. An early scene in the play reconstructs a conversation between Erbelding and her boss about the ethics of promoting such a view in the context of the Holocaust Memorial Museum, with the latter insisting, “We don’t want to elevate Nazis, to give them any kind of platform,” before agreeing that visitors to the museum should be free to draw their own conclusions... "There is a long history of human beings trying to distance themselves from the Nazis, to declare that the Nazis are monsters. By putting photographs such as this in a play, it forces the audience to walk in the Nazis’ shoes.”... Erbelding remembers seeing pretty patterns on the walls of the secretarial office, presumably stencilled there by the women to “cheer up” their daily environment."

Roman gladiators were ‘quite fat’, says historian - "Roman gladiators were not physically fit but rather were “quite fat”, a historian has said.  Gladiators have gained a reputation for having chiselled bodies from the Hollywood actors who portray them, like Russell Crowe and Paul Mescal.  But Harry Sidebottom, a historian, has said the real gladiators that fought in ancient Rome had bodies that were very different.  They would eat barley and bean stew in order to put on weight in the hope that this would protect their vital organs and enable them to take a sword jab, Sidebottom said... While gladiators were often seen as “sex symbols” in Roman society, they were not “conventionally pretty” and worked hard to build up a “thick layer of subcutaneous fat”.  Their bodies were also scarred, deformed, and lop-sided from the amount of training they endured.   Sidebottom told History Extra Magazine: “A Roman gladiator was very much not the ripped Hollywood star. They were fed sagina – barley and bean stew.  “It was carbohydrate-rich and designed to build up a thick layer of subcutaneous fat, the idea being that the gladiators could take a wound and bleed in an almost cinematic, visual way without the blade reaching any vital organs.  “So they were quite fat. They might have looked almost deformed because of the heavy and relentless training.  “They actually became attractive almost because of the fact that they were not conventionally pretty.”"

The surprising cause of balance issues in the elderly - "Brief, if alarming, episodes of acute dizziness or vertigo are common enough. An innocent movement – rolling over in bed, getting up in the morning, reaching up to retrieve an object from a shelf – can precipitate an overwhelming spinning sensation, as when getting off a rapidly moving roundabout, accompanied by unsteadiness and nausea. Then, after a minute or so, it subsides until the next time.  This is the rather long-windedly named Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (BPPV). It is caused by the presence of miniscule calcium crystals in the semicircular canals of the balance mechanism of the inner ear. The (highly effective) remedy is analogous to those frustrating glass box games, where the challenge is to shift small beads from one compartment to another.  Back in 1980, Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) specialist Dr John Epley proposed three movements of the head (difficult to explain but well-illustrated online) that would nudge the crystals out of the semicircular canals into their roomier common chamber where they no longer cause trouble. The ingenious Epley manoeuvre (as it is known) is remarkable for being one of the few instances where acute distressing symptoms are readily curable. This is all relatively straightforward, but it turns out the significance of Dr Epley and his manoeuvre is considerably greater (importantly so) than previously appreciated. Dr Hilary Cox of Newcastle University reports that those calcium crystals may also account for a much wider range of balance problems and predisposition to falls (with all their attendant hazards) in the older age group, even in the absence of those classic symptoms of acute positional change induced vertigo...
4,200 [A&E] attendances for hiccups would certainly suggest the need for a greater appreciation of the diverse range of simple remedies. The most familiar – holding one’s breath and counting to 40 – is presumed to splint the diaphragm (stop it moving), countering the spontaneous muscular contractions responsible for the hiccup.  If that does not work, several methods of sipping water can be tried... The erstwhile world authority on hiccups, Dr Janet Travell, advised the rather different approach of stimulating the uvula, the fleshy protuberance at the back of the throat. This can be accomplished by, for example, pulling forcefully on the tongue or stroking with a cotton bud. Swallowing dry granulated sugar or sucking on a lemon wedge soaked in Angostura Bitters may be effective for similar impact on the area.  Lastly, there is the option of activating the autonomic nervous system that controls the rhythmic contractions of the muscles of the diaphragm. This is most readily accomplished by pressing on the eyeballs or massaging the carotid artery on the side of the neck. In 1988, emergency physician Dr Francis Fesmire reported the impressive benefits of a more intrusive method in a 27-year-old man afflicted with hiccupping up to 30 times a minute for 72 hours.  “When pulling on the tongue and eyeball compression proved unsuccessful, slow circumferential rectal massage was attempted. The frequency of the hiccups slowed immediately and ceased soon after.”"

Young men are so confused by modern porn they need lessons in real life sex - "I never set out to sleep with much younger men – like most things in my life, it just happened by accident. But what a happy accident it’s been... I love living in New York. I hope to work until I drop, and I can assure you my libido is far from fading away, thank you.  I hugely enjoy sex. While I recognise me boldly saying this may make some people squirm, I’m proud of the fact that I regularly and recreationally sleep with younger men. Much younger men in fact, usually in their 20s... At university I discovered sex for the first time. “This is wonderful,” I thought, and wondered “why are we all so uptight about it”? I could never have predicted how big a role sex would later play in my life and work.  I barely dated in my 20s and 30s, being more consumed with climbing the career ladder than any ticking biological clock. In fact, the longest relationship I’ve ever had was merely two and a half years long, and frankly I view that as an aberration. Single life suits me. In my late 30s, I landed my dream job in advertising in New York. I began dating younger men 23 years ago, when I was and running an ad agency. We were invited to pitch for an online dating brand (back when nobody online-dated). We were asked to try the experience for ourselves, and while everyone else created fake profiles, as I was single, I thought: why not do it properly?  I was completely honest, put my real age of 42 and, to my astonishment, about 75 per cent of the responses I received were from younger men. I realised I was a fantasy: older, confident, financially independent, not looking to marry or have children.  I was very clear that I wanted to have fun. I met lovely men whose paths would never normally cross mine (that remains the biggest benefit of online dating in my opinion). That worked extremely well for me then, and it’s worked ever since. I always ask younger men why they seek out older women. The answer I hear most often is brutally honest: women their own age are deeply insecure – just as I was in my 20s. Insecurity makes everything in a relationship (even in just sex) about reassurance.  Older women don’t need that. We know who we are. We’re confident. We’re present. I always tell my younger lovers how “beautiful” they are – deliberately using that word. We don’t tell men they’re beautiful nearly enough. Porn teaches men that sex is entirely centred around their pleasure, but it’s not all about the penis! I tell them their forearms are gorgeous, their shoulders, or their backs. One young man once said to me, shyly, “You make me feel so sexy.” That had never happened to him before... Yes, the sex is fantastic – younger men have stamina and short recovery times, that’s just biology. But more importantly, they aren’t threatened by me. We’re at different life stages, they value my experience, they ask for advice, there’s no power struggle.  They also match my energy and optimism. I have far more in common – mentally and emotionally – with younger men, than with many men my age. I do think boys and men are being tarred with a brush that is completely unwarranted. I constantly meet kind, thoughtful, emotionally intelligent boys and men who want exactly what we all want: love, intimacy, and human connection. They’re not monsters. They’re confused. And they are struggling to work out how to connect in a world where porn, shame, silence, and now AI are doing enormous damage. Sexbots are a bigger threat than traditional porn now. The biggest problem isn’t porn alone. I believe it’s the total absence of open, healthy conversations about sex. Because we don’t talk about sex, people feel vulnerable and insecure in bed and too awkward and embarrassed to speak openly about what they do and don’t like. Many young men I’ve slept with had never talked about sex during sex. Never. One young man, despite many previous partners, had no idea communication during the act was even an option. I coached him in real time. He said it changed everything."

June is...

This was previously in the October 2024 post, "2024 Biology Textbooks / Trans Women Are / June Is...", but got deleted.

I've no idea what the issue was, so I'm reposting them one at a time and masking as might be helpful. Hopefully fewer keywords clustering together helps too:

"June is gr**mer awareness month *Pride flag*"

Links - 17th March 2026 (1 - Polarisation)

The polarization in today’s Congress has roots that go back decades - "The analysis of members’ ideological scores finds that the current standoff between Democrats and Republicans is the result of several overlapping trends that have been playing themselves out – and sometimes reinforcing each other – for decades.
   Both parties have grown more ideologically cohesive. There are now only about two dozen moderate Democrats and Republicans left on Capitol Hill, versus more than 160 in 1971-72.
   Both parties have moved further away from the ideological center since the early 1970s. Democrats on average have become somewhat more liberal, while Republicans on average have become much more conservative.
   The geographic and demographic makeup of both congressional parties has changed dramatically. Nearly half of House Republicans now come from Southern states, while nearly half of House Democrats are Black, Hispanic or Asian/Pacific Islander...
Five decades ago, 144 House Republicans were less conservative than the most conservative Democrat, and 52 House Democrats were less liberal than the most liberal Republican, according to the analysis. But that zone of ideological overlap began to shrink, as conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans – increasingly out of step with their caucuses and their constituents – either retired, lost reelection bids or, in a few cases, switched parties.  Since 2002, when Republican Rep. Constance Morella of Maryland was defeated for reelection and GOP Rep. Benjamin Gilman of New York retired, there’s been no overlap at all between the least liberal Democrats and the least conservative Republicans in the House. In the Senate, the end of overlap came in 2004, when Democrat Zell Miller of Georgia retired.   Ever since, the gaps between the least conservative Republicans and least liberal Democrats in both the House and Senate have widened – making it ever less likely that there’s any common ground to find.  The ideological shifts in the congressional parties have occurred alongside – and, perhaps to some extent, because of – geographic and demographic shifts in their composition."

Lies and Violence - "Hannah Arendt wrote extensively on the psychology of totalitarian regimes. One of her foundational ideas was, of course, the banality of evil. Nazi leaders like Adolf Eichmann, in Arendt’s view, were not obvious monsters but bureaucrats—bland, eager to support the cause, and ready to look away when instructed to do so. Many take this observation as a warning that we should be vigilant in pointing out injustices and rooting them out. We should, but that’s only half the answer. Too often, while we use morality as a bludgeon to chastise our enemies, we fail to hold our own tribe to the same standard.  If we have reached the point of mob violence in American streets, it is because we have turned our heads for too long in our eagerness to support a cause. My concern is that we do this because we have previously ignored unjust, audacious descriptions of people with whom we disagree as fascists, Hitlers, and people who “don’t deserve empathy.” Another anti-totalitarian philosopher, Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, wrote that violence “demands from us only obedience to lies and daily participation in lies.” It would be fruitful for all of us to recognize that a lie of omission is a lie nonetheless."

We're not all going to get along - by Lakshya Jain - "Nobody in America takes politics more personally than young liberals.  In our inaugural survey for The Argument, we sought to measure just how integral politics were to people’s lives and identities. When we asked participants whether it was ever acceptable to cut off a family member over their political views, 75% said no. When it came to the same question, but for friends, 70% also said no.  But beneath the surface-level consensus that close relationships should transcend politics lurk deep divides by both ideology and age. Young people, and especially young people who lean left, were much more likely to say it was acceptable to freeze out friends or family members. Ideological segregation is a real problem for liberalism, and every indication is that it’s getting worse...
Liberals are more likely to cut people off over politics.  Percentage of respondents, by ideology and vote choice, who think it is ever acceptable to cut off family or friends over opposing political views
The patterns were even starker when we broke results down by age. Among liberals under 45, 74% thought it was OK to end a friendship over politics. When it came to all other ideological groups we looked at, fewer than half agreed. But notably, young moderates and conservatives were still much more likely than older ones to say they’d end relationships over politics."
At this stage, we have so much evidence that left wingers are more intolerant that it's like the Law of Gravity. Of course, left wingers cope was copious

How Democracy Faces a Rising Threat Splitting Republicans and Democrats - The New York Times - "This threat to democracy has a name: sectarianism. It’s not a term usually used in discussions about American politics. It’s better known in the context of religious sectarianism — like the hostility between Sunnis and Shia in Iraq. Yet a growing number of eminent political scientists contend that political sectarianism is onbrica...  the two parties have not only become more ideologically polarized — they have simultaneously sorted along racial, religious, educational, generational and geographic lines. Partisanship has become a “mega-identity,” in the words of the political scientist Lilliana Mason, representing both a division over policy and a broader clash between white, Christian conservatives and a liberal, multiracial, secular elite."
Naturally, they don't talk about the contempt that liberals have for conservatives, and what role that might play in polarisation, and the article was mostly about bashing Republicans

J.D. Tuccille: Politicians must shoulder much of the blame for America's political violence - "Reporting on the assassinations in Minnesota, the BBC turned for comment to Jenna Stocker, editor of Thinking Minnesota, a political publication in a state that’s known for its niceness . According to Stocker, “Some people even here in Minnesota have really let politics guide their thinking and how they feel about their neighbours, their friends and their relatives,” and this has fractured society and driven people into hostile camps... Stocker is right that political partisanship is dominating people’s identities and poisoning relationships. A study published in February in the journal Political Psychology reported that, in America, “Political identity outweighs all other social identities in informing citizens’ attitudes and projected behaviours towards others.” That is, being a Republican or a Democrat is more important to Americans than shared racial, religious or class identities. Interestingly, the researchers also found that hostility towards political opponents motivates people more strongly than loyalty to their own side. Anger drives political polarization, and Americans can see the results in the arson attacks, bombings, shootings and riots throughout the country... After the Minnesota killings, NPR reported that threats against federal lawmakers have soared in recent years. “Members from both parties have repeatedly called for Congress to allow lawmakers to spend more money on personal security,” noted NPR. Frankly, though, while no one should be targeted by violence, it’s difficult to care much about the security of government officials who have played a key role in spurring it on. Democrats unleashed the power of the state on political enemies with politicized prosecutions of then-candidate Donald Trump and pressured the banking industry to deny financial services to their opponents. As the American Civil Liberties Union warned in defence of the National Rifle Association, “The NRA has a right, like all other advocacy organizations, to pursue their mission free from reprisals by government officials who disagree with its political viewpoint.” Returned to office, Trump’s Republicans followed suit by targeting the opposition press and suspending the security clearances of law firms associated with the Democratic party. “Punishing firms for their choice of clients or the nature of their legal work cannot help but intimidate the legal community, discouraging attorneys from taking on cases that may be politically unpopular or present a challenge to those in power,” cautioned the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Meanwhile, American government has become so large, intrusive and punitive that many Americans believe they can’t afford to lose elections. We now must ask permission of officialdom to start businesses, take certain jobs and renovate our homes. Politicians raise the political stakes and abuse their authority to punish critics. They tell their followers that opponents are “ deplorables ” or “ enemies of the people ,” “ fascists ” or “ communists ,” and far too many take them seriously. The results, in a growing number of cases, have been violent , bloody and tragic... Turning down the political heat would be a welcome change. The best way to start would be to make the government less important and easier to ignore"

Kevin Bass PhD MS on X - "I was a lifelong Democrat. I thought most conservatives were ignorant or evil or lying. I believed almost everything written in the New York Times, The New Republic, and the Atlantic. I was horrified when conservatives criticized the authorities. Every criticism I saw: I thought all of it was motivated by animus, resentment, self-interest, or ignorance.  Whatever truth there might have been in the criticism, I saw as a mere "half-truth": an exploitation of this or that cherrypicked fact being weaponized. Why did I see it in terms of weaponization? Because I was biased: I saw liberal establishment institutions and figures as fundamentally good, so all criticism of them was automatically interpreted as being in bad faith.  Didn't the critics know that these institutions or figures were fundamentally good? If they didn't, they were ignorant. If they did, they were evil. It was that simple. This meant that any legitimate criticisms would just be dismissed, as if bouncing off of an impenetrable bulletproof shield.  This all changed once I started writing about the pandemic. Soon people started talking about me the way I once thought about conservatives. This led to a complete identity collapse as I came to understand that my old worldview was hateful and ignorant, that I hadn't understood what I had been judging.  I cannot forget the hearing that led to my dismissal from medical school a year after I started writing. During the hearing, people talked about me as if I wasn't human. My behavior was interpreted in the worst possible light. Complete fabrications were created. Nobody was concerned with the truth, only horrified at my apparent "unprofessional behavior", which was really a mirror of their unprofessional behavior directed at me. They structured the hearing to make it virtually impossible for me to speak and explain that what was being said was a lie. And nobody seemed to have any problem with this. Why? Because I was bad. If I am bad, then every mistreatment and every violation of the school's own policies became justified. A person who is bad does not deserve any rights. They only deserve punishment.  But the thing I remember most was the allusions to my social media activity. They said, "Kevin is driven by resentment from his childhood." I wasn't. I was on good terms with my parents. They alleged that I needed psychotherapy to deal with this trauma. It was a completely fake story that they had constructed about me, to demean me, to marginalize me, to try to explain the views I had expressed: that something terribly wrong had happened during the pandemic. They couldn't imagine that I might have legitimate points. So they reduced me to the same kinds of psychological caricatures that I once reduced conservatives to in my own mind.  When I was dismissed, I was broken. But I had help from friends who helped me understand what happened. And I came to realize that a hysteria had overtaken the left. I spent a lot of time reading about show trials, about witch trials, and so on. I also connected with people who had experienced similar things and came to realize that something similar had happened to hundreds of physicians around the country. My story wasn't unique. It was all the same story over and over again.  I cannot believe the person I once was. I cannot believe that I could exist like that. I still don't understand how I could be like that, or how millions of people in this country could continue being like that. It disturbs me greatly.  One thing I know is that whatever this thing is that is driving people crazy needs to be destroyed. It is hostile to civilization and to our humanity. It causes us to dehumanize each other and try to destroy each other. It is the very same monstrous thing that I once attributed to conservatives. But it had been inside me, and I could now see it inside others. This is something I still grapple with."

Meme - i/o @eyeslasho: "Why are politics and political discourse so heated and dysfunctional in the US? Partly because it's the true believers and hyperpartisan who are the most engaged online and in the voting booth."

Young Democrats more likely to despise the other party - "Nearly a quarter of college students wouldn't be friends with someone who voted for the other presidential candidate — with Democrats far more likely to dismiss people than Republicans... 5% of Republicans said they wouldn't be friends with someone from the opposite party, compared to 37% of Democrats... Women are more likely than men to take a strong partisan stance in their personal choices."
So much for "empathy", as well as women being more "empathetic"

Almost half of Americans have stopped talking politics with someone - "Six-in-ten liberal Democrats (60%) say they have stopped talking politics with someone because of something they said. That number is substantially larger than the segment next likeliest to drop the subject with someone – conservative Republicans, at 45%. In another area of difference, half of white Americans have stopped talking politics with someone, compared with roughly one-third of black and Hispanic adults. And those who say they rely most on local TV for their political and election news are far less likely to have stopped talking with someone about politics than any other group, such as those who mostly get this news through news websites or cable TV... Examined by party, Democrats and independents who lean Democratic are more likely to have stopped conversing with someone about politics because of something they said than Republicans and independents who lean Republican: 50% vs. 41%, respectively. But an even more striking contrast emerges from ideological groups within each party. A high-water mark of 60% of liberal Democrats say they have stopped talking politics with someone, compared with 41% of Democrats who are moderate or conservative... These findings are in line with earlier research the Center conducted in 2014. That report found that those identified as “consistent liberals” were more likely than “consistent conservatives” to see political opinions on Facebook that were not in line with their own views. But they were also more likely than consistent conservatives, by a margin of 44% to 31%, to block or defriend someone because they disagreed with something that person posted about politics... The closer people follow political and election news, the more likely they are to say they have stopped talking to someone about it"
Related: Who Doesn’t Want to Hear the Other Side’s View? | by Noah Carl | Medium

America's polarization problem - "Only 29 per cent of Americans would be willing to help someone who “strongly disagreed with me or my point of view,” according to the 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer. Even fewer — 23 per cent — would be willing to live in the same neighbourhood with those who disagree and just 20 per cent would be willing to have them as co-workers. “Ideology becomes identity” is how Edelman summarizes the findings. That aversion to cross-partisan connections has real-world consequences. During the 2020 U.S. presidential election, according to Pew Research, roughly four-in-10 registered voters who supported either Democrat Joe Biden or Republican Donald Trump said “they do not have a single close friend who supports the other major party candidate.” Two years later, one-in-five Americans polled by the New York Times and Siena College said that political disagreements had a negative impact on their friendships and family relationships. This makes it even harder to bridge political divides that are already deepening because of the odd correlation between partisan affiliation and lifestyle preferences. Pew Research finds that liberal Democrats tend to like urban, walkable communities, while conservative Republicans prefer larger homes in exurban and rural settings. Given the opportunities provided by a prosperous country and the growing acceptance of remote work, many people can move to places where they can live the way they want, inadvertently reinforcing political divisions in the process. “America is growing more geographically polarized — red ZIP codes are getting redder and blue ZIP codes are becoming bluer,” notes a 2022 National Public Radio story. “People appear to be sorting.”... “Americans have a deeply distorted understanding of each other. We call this America’s ‘perception gap,’ ” observes More in Common, which has conducted studies about political polarization in the U.S. “Overall, Democrats and Republicans imagine almost twice as many of their political opponents as reality hold views they consider ‘extreme.’ ” So, people are ill-informed, right? They need to follow the news more and open their minds to how the real world functions. Except that More in Common “found that the more news people consumed, the larger their perception gap.” Likewise, “the more educated a person is, the worse their perception gap” — though this only holds true for Democrats. More in Common speculates this is because educational credentialing contributes to the echo chamber effect for those on the left: “Highly educated Democrats are the most likely to say that ‘most of my friends’ share their political beliefs. The same is not true of Republicans.”... While family bonds tend to weather political disagreements pretty well, “a whopping 45 per cent of extreme liberal identifiers have ended a friendship over politics — twice the figure of their conservative counterparts,” wrote Samuel J. Abrams, a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow with the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). And while all Americans are likely to prefer socializing with like-minded people than with political opponents, the right tends to cross lines more often than the left. Fifty-three per cent of Republicans report having Democrat friends, compared to 32 per cent of Democrats claiming Republican friends, according to AEI’s Survey Center on American Life... As people move to be among those who share their lifestyle preferences, their cultural values and their political affiliations, they create an opportunity to reduce friction with Americans they view as enemies. If governance and policy are made more local, decided and implemented by those who overwhelmingly share similar preferences, they’re less likely to contribute to disputes with people who live elsewhere and govern themselves by different rules. Of course, that would require Americans to look for solutions rather than seek access to the government power to torment their opponents. That may be too big an ask for the U.S. in 2024."
This adds to the tons of evidence that liberals are more intolerant than conservatives

Sean Speer: The more radical the progressive left becomes, the more the right reacts - "too few commentators and columnists are prepared to recognize how much left-wing politics has been radicalized in the past decade or so. Understanding these recent ideological and political developments on the left strike me as a key part of making sense of what’s currently happening on the right. Most online critics seemed unwilling to consider the basic idea. Their argument seemed to be that the Republicans in the United States and conservatives elsewhere in the Anglosphere have merely gone bonkers in isolation. Any effort to try to understand these trends as part of a dialogue between the left and the right amounted to excusing conservative excesses.  Yet the idea that left-wing politics haven’t become more radical in recent years just belies the facts. Compare Justin Trudeau’s progressivism to Jean Chrétien’s relative centrism. Or compare the Biden administration to the Obama administration in which the current president served as the vice-president. Their differences are notable across a range of issues from to public spending and the role of government to deeper cultural questions about race, gender and sexuality. We’ve witnessed a marked ideological transformation on the left in a short period of time. There’s plenty of polling that points in this direction, but one doesn’t require data to observe these trends. You can see it in the political trajectory of individuals and even the use of language. That these seemingly radical ideas tend to concentrate in elite institutions — including corporations, news media and universities — only reinforces their pace, intensity and reach across the broader society. Take Barack Obama for example. Then-candidate Obama ran against Hillary Clinton’s broadly-centrist politics in the 2007-08 Democratic primary race as a left-wing insurgent. He distinguished himself on a number of progressive issues — most specifically, of course, the war in Iraq. But barely a decade later former president Obama has gone from being a figure on the left edge of Democratic politics to now being an increasing outlier on the other side of his own party. His 2007-08 positions on immigration, gay marriage and the importance of family stability and personal responsibility would now be viewed as microaggressions by those who occupy the new centre of gravity of left-wing politics. These trends are also evident in shifting language. As examples, Merriam Webster added the singular “they” to its online dictionary in September 2020 and the Biden administration recently replaced “mothers” with “birthing people” in various public health guidelines. These linguistic developments started on the fringe of academic and activist rhetoric and have since come to be represented in mainstream institutions including the National Institutes of Health and the New York State Department of Health in the United States and in high-profile research at Montreal’s McGill University or news reporting at the CBC.  We have almost imperceptibly experienced a marked shift in the centre of political debate in Canada and the United States on a number of key cultural and social questions. It’s almost as if the right had been mistakenly fighting rearguard intellectual battles about taxes and government spending while the left was advancing without much resistance to redefine a broad set of cultural norms and practices. The key point here is that the most underscrutinized political story of the past decade or so is the extraordinary shift in left-wing politics. These ideological trends — particularly with respect to race, gender and sexuality — have essentially crowded out the old, moderate voices in progressive politics and in so doing reshaped the overall political and cultural climate. Depending on one’s perspective, these developments may or may not represent progress. But it seems odd to think that they would have no effect on conservative politics."

Why Societies Need Dissent - "In his latest work, Why Societies Need Dissent, Professor Sunstein casts new light on the fundamental importance of freedom of speech and shows us that nations are far more likely to prosper if they allow their citizens the right to think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and dare to challenge the unchallengeable... when like-minded people are sitting with one another, they end up thinking a more extreme version of what they thought before they started to talk...
 There seem to be three things occurring:  1) The argument pool. If you have a group who believes that corporate misconduct is pretty bad, in a case in which, say, babies’ pajamas caught on fire, there will be a large number of arguments to that effect and not many arguments the other way...
2) The link among confidence and extremism... Any law professor knows that if you’re dealing with first-year students and want a certain answer, you frame the preferred answer as the middle of two poles...
3) Reputation and people’s self-conception. It turns out that people don’t want to be different from everybody else or the same as everybody else. They want to have a relationship to others which goes in the right direction and to the right degree...
 The recent report about the Challenger disaster is about just this. The report says that NASA didn’t have any system of checks and balances, that there was a march toward consensus that was part of the culture, that safety issues were consistently downplayed, and that dissenters were effectively silenced, not through the law but through social norms, which made people feel embarrassed if they raised their doubts. There are two things that can make group polarization worse, in the sense that people move more.  One is if people have a high degree of solidarity with one another and identify themselves in group terms...   The other thing that helps aggravate the effect is if people are antecedently extreme...   In a study done of investors and investment clubs—informal associations of people—the worst-performing investment clubs are clubs in which people like each other, know each other, meet at restaurants, socialize, maybe spend a holiday or two together. They lose a lot of money and they have no dissent.  The best-performing investment clubs in the U.S., in the huge study done at Brown University, involved people who don’t know each other socially, don’t get together except for this purpose, meet in an office rather than at home, appear not to like each other terribly much, and exhibit interactions highly charged with dissent.   Studies of disability movements in the U.S. show that the most mobilized, effective and separatist of the many disability movements, is the hearing-impaired. They are the ones who have the strongest sense of a shared identity, who have the most political clout. The author’s speculation is that deaf people have geographical unity, they have spaces of their own, they often go to school together, so they interact. Like-minded people interact, they polarize, they end up being a unified force, which doesn’t happen for the visually-impaired or depressed people or those in wheelchairs, at least not nearly as much...   The public forum doctrine ensures that each of us, if the streets and parks are places we go, will have unchosen, unanticipated encounters with people who are not like us both in their lives and in their points of view. Even though this is sometimes irritating, or worse, it does something that is not dispensable in a democracy, which is to make it impossible for people to live in gated communities of their own design, something which may be a risk for contemporary Americans, just because of what technology and resources are making possible...
During World War II, Luther Gulick, a no-longer-famous advisor to Roosevelt, wrote a boring book, called Administrative Governance in the United States. He wrote an short concluding chapters in 1948, a conclusion about the war: “Our adversaries thought democracies couldn’t fight, but they had it wrong. Democracies fight better, and the reason they fight better is that they have not just law that tolerates dissent and disagreement but a culture that insists on it.” He attributes the success of the Allies to the fact that if we made any mistakes they could get corrected, whereas for Hitler and Mussolini it just didn’t happen. So for the blunders there were no mid-course corrections, and that was, he says, a great help to us.  I don’t worry in the United States about legal regulation, but in Canada even to some extent, and certainly here, there are norms of political correctness that are a problem."
From 2003. The Science is Settled! Deniers need to be exiled from polite society