Tactical Victories, Massive Strategic Loss

Tactical Victories, Massive Strategic Loss

Ego, Oil and Ignorance Decimate Trump’s War

Trump’s MAGA war on higher education is showing its soft underbelly of failure and extreme vulnerability is his unilateral WAR against Iran. We winced as Trump’s HHS Secretary, RFK, Jr led his department to a medical stance that has resulted in the spread of new strains of bacteria and viruses and the resurrection of once extinguished diseases. The rising infections and resulting fatalities reflect our collective ignorance. But those missteps, colossal as they are, pale by comparison to the needless slaughter, our open rejection of the rules of engagement and the Geneva Conventions against targeting civilians (a genuine war crime), and failure to understand that our government’s military efforts in Iran, rejected by every Western nation, are provoking the exactly opposite result from the few announced goals by the Trump administration.

I write this as one who, as the stepson of an American diplomat, has lived in the Middle East (four years) and has actually visited Tehran. Americans tend to bundle their impression of the Middle East, assuming that Islam is a unitary religion and that all the regional nations are pretty much the same. Iran’s predecessor nations, its very identity and culture, is anchored in what may be the oldest organized state on Earth: Persia. Dated at least as old as 3500 years BCE, long before Islam or Christianity even existed. Iran, Persia if you will, has of late been mostly a secular nation – proud and highly educated, seeking a constitutional democracy – starting in its constitutional revolution in 1906. Unlike most of its neighbors, which were defined in a post-WWI carve-up and setting of artificial boundaries by colonial France and the UK, contemporary Iran occupies much of what was central Persia, defined millennia earlier. They speak Farsi, not Arabic, and never considered the upstart Arab neighbors as cultural equals.

Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, etc. are artificial states whose borders were drawn in secret backroom deals (e.g., the Sykes-Picot treaty of 1916), resulting in struggling with disparate factions that never really fit together. Iran’s culture is a unifying force, and to the extent that incumbent governments have been seen as repressive, Iranians have used religion at the vehicle for resistance. Or, if a religious power itself has become repressive, Iranians – noting that educated and urban Iranians are not particularly religious – you get the kind of civil unrest against theocratic dictators we have seen over the last few years.

Persians have never simply accepted external conquests without some strong symbol of protest. The Muslim Conquest of Persia, also known as the Arab Conquest of Iran, was a series of military campaigns conducted by the Rashidun Caliphate between 632 and 654 CE. But Persian resistance was manifest in a subtle reinterpretation of Islam. Instead of accepting the Caliphate’s definition of the strict meaning of the Koran (Sunnism), Persians designated an “Imam” (a Pope-like leader), to tell the newly initiated faithful what the Koran’s mystical meaning really was. Circa the 10th century CE, the 12th Imam disappeared, leaving this new version of Islam (Shia) in shambles, a reality that was course-corrected in 1979, when the repressive Shah was deposed and replaced by the current Shiite theocracy. But the Shiite takeover, where Ayatollahs became the new “Imams,” did not change that profound secular undercurrent that still defines modern Iran.

The theocracy rapidly built the massive paramilitary, led by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), that is one of the most effective and repressive police states in the world. The IRGC reported to the elder Ayatollah Khamenei, a respected and purportedly God-linked autocrat, but his execution and the subsequent appointment of his son as his successor, did not imbue young Khamenei with the same power over the IRGC. Instead, the young Ayatollah is now subservient to the hardline IRGC. No regime change. Even as educated Iranians once believed in the US as a potential savior (no longer!), the persistence of the Persian culture is the backbone of Iran’s ability to withstand the American/Israeli onslaught and escalate the conflict with resolve and sufficient weapons in reserve to apply their symmetrical strength to stop our superior military dead in its tracks.

Look at what the Iranian theocracy has won: when the US said they totally dominated the air and sea above and around Iran, Tehran shot down two US jet aircraft and managed completely to control passage through the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian tankers can pass freely, and Iran can grant safe passage to ships of any approved nation. Oh, by the way, the once “free passage” of ships through the Strait that has existed for decades until Trump’s WAR, assuming a ship is approved by Tehran, must now pay a $2 million toll just to get through. Between the toll and massive increase in the cost of oil, Tehran should have more than enough future cash to rebuild. And what have we gained except high prices and the disdain of most of the rest of the world.

Further, whatever deterrence against Iran’s building a nuclear warhead or bomb is gone; they have enough fissionable to build a functional, if inferior, nuclear weapon. Energy prices are triggering a massive global recession. Russia is smiling; they have profitable oil. And even China is smiling; between Russian oil and their massive deployment of alternative energy power generation (they never thought climate change was a hoax!!!), they are very well prepared to endure this conflict… and are enjoying the unraveling of the once powerful alliance of Western nations… and de facto demise of NATO. Hell, if Western nations will no longer be dependent on buying top-of-the-line US weapons systems, China may be poised to step in to provide substitutes.

This WAR will not be won by superior American military capabilities. We know that our history against asymmetrical enemies is littered with failure. I’ll end this blog with Iran’s response to Trump’s foul-language Truth Social quote above. Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Parliament of Iran, responded to Trump’s threats in this social media post: “Your reckless moves are dragging the United States into a living HELL for every single family, and our whole region is going to burn because you insist on following Netanyahu’s commands… Make no mistake: You won’t gain anything through war crimes. The only real solution is respecting the rights of the Iranian people and ending this dangerous game.” And no, “Little Man Pete,” God is not on the side of any faction that glorifies war and killing, particularly when it was unilaterally initiated. I am shocked, no “horrified,” at a MAGA minority (represented by Republicans in Congres) failing to understand what is really happening and making inane statements that support and mirror Donald John Trump’s self-destructive ignorance.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I challenge any American to tell me what we have gained or a likely to gain from Trump’s military “excursion” compared to the cost, measured by any standard, that has been imposed on American taxpayers and has resulted our lost global credibility and respect.

Tykes on Trikes without Rights

 

Tykes on Trikes without Rights

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” 

Section 1, 14th Amendment

"Being a citizen in our country is a privilege, not a right. And Donald Trump is going to have everyone in this country who deserves to be here who is a citizen.” 

AG Pam Bondi, who must have flunked her Constitutional Law class.

“Birthright—that’s a big one… We think we have very good grounds.” 

 Trump on January 20, 2025 as he signed an Executive Order questioning birthrights of children born in the US of non-US citizens

I’ve been a practicing lawyer for the vast majority of my adult life. My UCLA Law School classmates and I were literally fed on notions of tolerance, equality and the goal of a level playing field for all in the eyes of the law. The United States was the global model for democracy in action, proving, we believed, that even one of the most heterogeneous and large populations could prosper under philosophical democracy, despite the legal struggles that constantly redefined our nation. Indeed, our post-WWII growth into the most powerful and economically successful nation on Earth seemed to confirm that assumption. And even as flawed as it is – our Constitution is the most difficult to amend among all the democracies in the world – we admired a document that was artfully planted a quarter of a millenium ago. Slavery was an unforgivable acknowledgement in the original Constitution (ultimately corrected), yet in a recent UN vote to decry slave trafficking in the modern era, the United States was one of only three nations to vote against that UN measure. Have we really changed that much?

I have always believed that our quality of life, our standard of living and our tradition of upward mobility, were direct and immediate results of that constitutional foundation. But today, upward mobility is relegated to the history books, our government openly prosecutes institutions focused on expanding opportunity, our military has denigrated women and racial minorities as second class soldiers, the legal system has been profoundly slanted in favor of mega-corporations and super-rich individuals (from tax cuts to deregulation to rewarding political loyalists with lucrative government contracts and privileges), as affordability has pushed post-secondary education and homeownership out of reach for a rapidly increasing number of Americans.

For the first time in our nation’s history, rising generations expect to do worse than the generations that preceded them. For those seeking correlations between the well being of American citizens, the big standout is that the more we gravitate toward one-man autocracy, the wider the disparity between rich and poor and the greater the disenfranchisement of middle- and lower-income Americans. America is proving what we always believed: autocracy assures success only for a privileged elite. The rest are expendable.

What does any of this have to do with birthright citizenship? Well, in an era of deporting a huge body of hard-working undocumented residents, where isolationist forces seek to erect massive trade barriers with the rest of the world, as we declare war without congressional approval, we are witnessing the push-pull of high inflation, fewer job opportunities, falling productivity and a dramatic plunge in our aggregate well-being. According to recent polls, we are ranked a shoddy 23rd on the global happiness index. We are shoving both workers and consumers out the door, such that our citizen birthrate (children per child-bearing aged couples) is down to 1.61… while we would need a birthrate of 2.1 simply to replace our citizens. Echoes of “they shall not replace us” echo across seeming conservative cohorts, and the notion of white Christian nationalism has become a rallying cry to the far right… notwithstanding the devastating impact of that belief even to our economy.

To put is very simply, this nation, built on immigrants entering our great nation to build and grow in what used to be known as the land of opportunity, cannot prosper either in an autocracy or without a serious growth in our population. As we ship cadres of workers and consumers out of the country, the vast majority of Americans suffer. We cannot improve our lot by shifting mountains of work and human productivity to AI-driven robots. Only the owners of those robots will generate benefits from that massive savings in labor costs. But diversity is our new “enemy,” and figuring out how to cull the voter roles, crushing paths to productive immigrants to citizenship, denaturalizing citizens where we can… and preventing a huge historical source of new citizens, constitutionally protected, from even achieving that status.

As Mark Walsh, writing for the March 26th edition of the Journal of the American Bar Association (of which I am a member), writes about the challenge to Trump’s Executive Order against birthright citizenship, now pending before the US Supreme Court. Walsh begins noting the government’s position: “The order declares that a person born in the U.S. is not subject to its jurisdiction and thus is not a citizen by birth under two circumstances: When the child’s mother is unlawfully present in the United States; or when the mother’s presence here at the time of birth is lawful but temporary, such as on a student, tourist or work visa. Both circumstances also require that the father not be a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of the birth….

“‘Automatic citizenship for children of illegal aliens provides a powerful incentive for illegal migration,’ U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer says in the administration’s main brief in Trump v. Barbara, which will be argued Wednesday. ‘Such children become citizens upon birth here, and their illegal-alien parents often promptly assert that citizenship to impede their own removal.’

“The 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause ‘was adopted to grant citizenship to freed slaves and their children—not to children of temporarily present aliens or illegal aliens,’ Sauer says in the brief. ‘The clause’s text, its original meaning and history, and this court’s cases confirm that the clause extends citizenship only to those who are completely subject to the United States’ political jurisdiction—in other words, to people who owe ‘direct and immediate allegiance’ to the nation and may claim its protection.’… Advocates for the class of young challengers say the Trump order would have severe consequences for any child born after Feb. 19, 2025, the order’s effective date that has, for now, been forestalled by litigation.” Walsh also presents the opposing view:

“Advocates for the class of young challengers say the Trump order would have severe consequences for any child born after Feb. 19, 2025, the order’s effective date that has, for now, been forestalled by litigation… ‘For them, what it means is being stripped of the right of U.S. citizenship, being exposed to the terror of—for their families—arrest, detention and deportation,’ says Cody Wofsy, the deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants’ Rights Project, which represents the plaintiffs. ‘It means potentially rendering them stateless. … And then as they grow up, it’s going to mean excluding them from the only country that they’ve ever known.’

“The challengers say the language of the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause—'all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside’—reaffirmed a centuries-old, common-law tradition of citizenship by virtue of birth, rather than parentage.” Indeed, the litany of Supreme Court cases has affirmed this view with no sign of limiting or reversing this constitutional mandate.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am tired of a minority of ultra-rightwing zealots continuing to engage in self-inflicting degradations to our economy and our core American values.

How to Contain-Unleash Artificial Intelligence

Melania at the White House with her Robo-Friend

How to Contain/Unleash Artificial Intelligence

Or is it unstoppable with dire consequences unavoidable?

“The U.S. government is insolvent. That’s not hyperbole.” 

Steve Hanke, professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University and David M. Walker, former U.S. Comptroller General, in a Fortune Magazine Op-ed citing the Bureau of the Fiscal Service

If you think AI is a phase that simply will fade, think again. It is second only climate change (that “hoax” that is flooding, burning and disrupting life in every corner of the planet) in its impact on modern life. Subsistence farmers and self-sufficient isolated pockets of humanity may have less to fear… unless they need to interact or trade with the outside world… but for everybody else, hang on for a very rough ride. In the annals of self-inflicted human disasters, even the failing Trump (Netanyahu?) WAR against Iran pales in comparison. AI is just so much more powerful.

There are populists justified in watching jobs vaporize by the millions (billions?), environmentalists who properly oppose construction of the massive building necessary to house AI’s required file servers only to watch the related exponential rise in electricity demands and resulting down and very dirty pollution, and the societal observers who note that the money involved can only magnify the imbalance between the rising rich and everybody else. In short, there is nothing that will stay the same. NOTHING!!! In fact, the swirling, shifting sands may ultimately require socialism as the only viable system of governance. Who can earn enough to buy their products when jobs disappear?!

If all the wealth is concentrated into a diminishing minority of billionaires and a few privileged centimillionaires, what political system can otherwise survive? I mean if the United States is truly insolvent… The baby steps of such one-sided domination are everywhere. For example, online retail Tsar Jeff Bezos (Amazon) wants a mega-combination of all major manufacturers as [his vision of “business”] is trying to leapfrog into the artificial intelligence race with a $100-billion fund to acquire manufacturers and bring more AI superpowers to factory floors.

“The Amazon founder has reportedly traveled to the Middle East and elsewhere to meet with potential investors for the massive fund. If he succeeds, it would be one of the largest buyout funds and could change the way products are designed, made and distributed… Here is what you need to know about the big plans: [Documents] connected to the fund described it as a ‘manufacturing transformation vehicle’ that would buy companies that could use an AI upgrade in sectors including chip manufacturing, defense and aerospace, according to the Wall Street Journal.” By Nilesh Christopher writing for the March 26th Los Angeles Times. This probably will not be the end of such massive consolidation, and it augurs for a fully corporate state, Trump’s dream.

As Trump’s federal effort at preempting state efforts to regulated AI, with “regulation light” by dictatorial executive order, states are still struggling with more meaningful “balanced” guardrails. As Ian Kreitzberg noted in Puck.com (March 25th). On March 25th, “President Trump named a who’s who of tech executives to a new body called the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST)… It’s an unsurprising move for Trump, whose core policy stance on A.I. can be summed up as decidedly pro-business.” States are trying to reject this federal effort at preemption, speaking much more for “the rest of us,” as Kreitzberg wrote in Puck (3/24):

“New York Governor Kathy Hochul sounds like many politicians on A.I. these days—impressed, maybe a little worried, and trying to be practical about the unstoppable technological freight train headed our way. When I called her late last week, she waxed poetic about ensuring A.I. is ‘compatible with the public good’ before ticking off the various trade-offs she’s now trying to navigate: bringing high-paying tech jobs to the state without driving white-collar work to extinction, solving society’s ‘most-pressing problems’ without jacking up constituents’ electric bills, etcetera. In short, she wants the best of all possible worlds. ‘I do not want to be alarmist,’ she told me. ‘I see the upside, I see the downside.’

“Hochul’s middle-of-the-road mentality is not unique—California Gov. Gavin Newsom is as focused on regulating A.I. as on ensuring the industry continues to thrive, and former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin talked up ‘responsible governance’ without ‘stifling’ the A.I. industry. Likewise, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis wants to ‘protect consumers and support innovation’ while Rep. Sam Liccardo, the congressman representing Palo Alto and Atherton, told my Puck partner Leigh Ann Caldwell this week that Democrats need to get over their anxiety and embrace the future. (No surprise there…)

“But as the technology accelerates and the specter of widespread job displacement begins to appear slightly less hypothetical, a populist backlash is building at both ends of the political spectrum. Hochul told me she’s bracing for a ‘seismic impact,’ and worries about ‘students who took on debt to get degrees in fields that may be evaporating because of A.I.’ Other politicians have gone further: Sen. Bernie Sanders recently called for a national moratorium on all data center construction—not just to keep electric bills low, he says, but to prevent ‘a catastrophic impact on the lives of working-class Americans, eliminating tens of millions of blue- and white-collar jobs in every sector of our economy.’ Republican Sen. Josh Hawley has sounded similar notes, declaring that ‘these companies cannot be trusted with this power.’” It’s just sad that the Trump led billionaires just don’t seem to have enough money or power.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I’d like to pull a quote attributed to Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto after he led the Japanese fleet that bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941… and apply it to AI: “We have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve.”

Rapidly Rising Prices for Consumer Basics is a Small Price to Pay… NOT

 

Rapidly Rising Prices for Consumer Basics is a Small Price to Pay… NOT

Is sacrificing quality of life the new GOP austerity vision for middle America?

Donald Trump has already chastised Americans for giving their daughters too many dolls and hording too many pencils. Decrying the American “affordability crisis” as a Democratic Party “hoax” – which has to be right up there with the Dem “hoax” of climate change (surviving flooding and sweltering are just new American pastimes) – the GOP mantra has switched to convincing us that the exploding costs of living are short-term sacrifices for a better tomorrow. Americans, even diehard MAGA supporters, are skeptical. Simple historical awareness tells anybody with even the remotest sense of history that this skepticism is fully justified. Future cost cuts? Right?!

It should now be quite apparent that Trump’s true political beneficiaries are only the mega-rich. Deregulation does not benefit ordinary Americans who would prefer to live in a pollution-free environment, where less-than-honest profiteers are reined in, corrupt politicians are jailed, where housing and healthcare don’t require giving up most everything else, where children are not saddled with intolerable student debt in a job-impaired environment and where guardrail-free AI is no longer threatening future employment or sucking down a huge proportion of electrical power generation. But if those realities were challenged by a responsible government, those rich folks wouldn’t be raking in the billions that they are, and income polarization would vaporize.

That Trumpian “Big Beautiful Bill,” a Republican home run in a world of tax cuts for the rich, added trillions to our deficit (all Americans pay the interest carry on over $39 trillion in federal deficit) and has salivating Republicans wanting so much more. More tax cuts. Slashing federal spending, even as the DOGE experiment created massive job loss but virtually no reduction in federal spending, is still holy grail to the GOP. And more cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and even Social Security, beyond the almost $1 trillion already cut from those programs. But they also want $200 billion more for the Iran War, which they declared over?!

All across this nation, small hospitals are closing or contracting available services… medical facilities that Medicaid used to support. This hits rural communities the hardest, but these realities are roiling everywhere. Congress and the Department of Health and Human Services are focused on implementing those healthcare cuts necessitated by that Big Beautiful Bill. New restrictions on what federal healthcare programs will cover have sent healthcare providers and insurers scampering for the exits, leaving millions of Americans high and dry, even those seniors that were supposed to be covered in those elusive golden years. Vermont just might be the canary in the medical coal mine.

“The numbers coming out of Vermont are almost unbelievable at first glance. Roughly 92% of Medicare Advantage enrollees in the state were forced to leave their plans after insurers exited the market… That means tens of thousands of seniors suddenly had to find new coverage or switch to traditional Medicare. In some counties, there were no replacement Medicare Advantage plans available at all… Seemingly overnight, a staggering number of older adults were forced off their Medicare Advantage plans. This has left many people scrambling to find new coverage. And what’s terrifying is that this is setting the tone for a larger trend happening across the United States. If you rely on Medicare Advantage (or are considering it), this situation offers a critical warning.” SavingAdvice.com, March 23rd.

National numbers are closer to 10%, but for smaller states, where the insurance profit margins are not high enough, disaster looms. Medicare has reduced coverage and eliminated reimbursable programs to feed the above tax cut. With the collapse of Affordable Care Act premium subsidies, millions of Americans are no longer able to afford healthcare. The Peterson-KFF charts above show the relentless rise in medical costs, just as Congress chooses to cut benefits to fund unnecessary tax cuts for those at the top of the American economic food chain.

The reverse Robin Hood – stealing from the poor to feed the rich – is the new American Golden Rule, one that is particularly cruel to Gen Z. “Recent 2025 polling indicates:

• 42% of Americans under age 30 report they are ‘barely getting by.’
• One in three people are currently going into debt just to attend friends’ weddings or bachelorette parties.

“In response, a growing movement of personal finance experts is urging ‘radical transparency.’ Influencers are coaching Gen Z and Millennials to set firm boundaries, suggesting that being honest about budget constraints is the only way to preserve both their credit scores and their mental health… As the gap between income and social expectations widens, the choice for many Americans is becoming stark: stay home and stay lonely, or go out and go broke… New data from the CFP Board reveals that two-thirds of U.S. adults have declined social invitations—including weddings, holiday gatherings, and birthday dinners—over the past 24 months solely due to financial constraints. The trend highlights a growing ‘financial FOMO’ that is severing social ties across the country.

“The data suggests the economic burden is compounded by social stigma. According to the report, which surveyed over 1,100 Americans, 56% of those who decline invitations never disclose that money is the primary driver. This lack of transparency is leaving millions of Americans feeling ‘out of sync’ with their peers’ perceived spending habits.” Thomas Smith writing for BetterAmerica.com, March 21st. Yet, just about every priority and policy that Donald Trump has embraced, from tariffs and the War over Iran to the cuts to programs intended to benefit average and lower income Americans, as income inequality has widened in this country like never before… have slammed the cost of living and our quality of life. To serve the rich?!

I’m Peter Dekom, and beware of greedy Republicans muttering “creeping socialism” (hardly tracking the real definition of that term) as their excuse to pillage most of us.

 

Who is the Leader of the Free World Not the United States or Donald Trump

Who is the Leader of the Free World? Not the United States or Donald Trump!

“We don’t need anybody… We’re the strongest nation in the world. We have the strongest military by far in the world. We don’t need them.” 

Donald Trump, March 16th when European leaders initially declined to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz

Donald Trump has the lowest approval polls of any president since such polls have been conducted. His own base, traditional MAGA voters, are reeling from his beginning an unwinnable foreign war plus the staggering cost increases in oil & gas, medical care, foodstuffs, housing, automobiles and, well, anything that needs to be shipped by any means. After he and Secretary of War/Defense, Pete “Little Man” Hegseth, declared a total decapitation of the Iranian military, “removal by death” of dozens of key Iranian leaders and complete victory over this middle eastern Shiite theocracy – all in accordance with Israeli plans – Iran then shut down the vital Strait of Hormuz (depriving the world of 20% of all oil and gas), pasted regional Arab nations with missile attacks that destroyed as much civilian infrastructure as military targets, capping off those efforts by launching a longer-range missile (with a range that could reach Europe) 2,500 miles to the joint US/UK base in Diego Garcia (in the Indian Ocean).

Both Iran’s clergy and top military leaders, on the one hand, and the Trump administration, on the other, each declared victory in this Iran WAR. The Trump fomenter-in-chief, Israeli PM Netanyahu, noted that from his nation’s perspective, the WAR was not even half over. Even as Iran pledged that oil tankers from friendly nations would be granted safe passage through Hormuz (despite the extensive mining?) and even as the United States encouraged European and other “allied” nations to defy the Hormuz ban, companies that insured shipping made it very clear that they would not cover any losses incurred in such efforts to pass through that strait. Iranian tankers, now blessed to sell their cargo by Trump himself (more oil in the market may help reduce oil and gas prices), are still making their global deliveries.

Meanwhile, according to the March 24th Wall Street Journal, “Foreign ministers from Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan gathered before dawn on Thursday [3/19] in Riyadh for talks aimed at finding a diplomatic off-ramp to the war in Iran. Egyptian intelligence officials managed to open a channel with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and put forward a proposal to halt hostilities for five days. Those discussions laid the groundwork for an abrupt reversal: On Monday [3/23], as word of the discussions in the Saudi capital made its way to the White House, Trump backtracked on his threat to strike Iran’s power plants, embracing diplomacy with Tehran instead…” Trump claimed the United States was in direct negotiations with Iran, finding a path to settle the WAR. Iran denied that they were in any such discussions with the United States.

But Trump has managed to antagonize most of our traditional allies, whether through his TACO Trump tariffs (legally challenged by our Supreme Court), our out-and-out territorial demands over lands either in allied hands but in no event remotely legally under US control, or our government’s proclivity to use bully and blackmail tactics to coerce even our allies to join forces against Iran. Saudi Arabia, Iran’s most obvious foe despite a quasi-detente, seems to be encouraging the US to keep destroying Iran’s military and governance systems. We have reneged on trade agreements, made demands with threats (especially concerning the viability of NATO), abandoned supporting a democratic Ukraine in favor of supporting Russian bogus territorial claims, while lifting our oil embargo against Russia (ostensibly to increase product in the petroleum market), but effectively funding Russia’s attacks on Ukraine.

Contrary to Mr Trump’s assertions, there are dwindling few nations who still either respect or trust us. Workarounds are everywhere, further isolating the United States. It’s gotten to the point where, since Trump was reelected following an interim Democratic presidency where his volatile personality was quite well established, even a liberal successor to Trump (assuming we have elections) cannot create pledges or treaties that some subsequent autocratic American president just might undo. And Trump loves to find blame among his simpering appointees. Hey, Pete “Jesus Christ is on Our Side” Hegseth, a Trump bus has just left the blame depot and just might be heading in your direction.

So, what does a President who has fallen in global influence, even among his cherished followers, do? He knows that his party is facing midterm elections where his blind GOP follower-cadres face loss of one or, now, both Houses of Congress? Hold your breath until you turn, perish the thought, blue? Or the political equivalent of blackmailing his Senate stooges to repeal the filibuster rule so you can force passage of the Save America (voting) Act to eliminate all that consistently disproven election fraud… but in reality to cull as many blue voters out of their right to vote, knowing that unless you get that passed, GOP control of Congress is almost certainly toast. Add telling your stooges that you won’t sign any bills until they follow your autocratic order. Throw in full funding of DHS to ensure your brutal private ICE police force gets lots of money. Continue to pledge even more tax cuts for the rich – even noting the deficit is now over $39 trillion – but demand another $200 billion to continue your very unpopular WAR in Iran, costing a tad less than a billion dollars a day?

I’m Peter Dekom, and it’s time for the American public to put its collective foot down, send a clear message to their elected representatives in Congress that Trump no longer can call the shots without severe political consequences, underscoring that resolve with a massive “No Kings” day of protests across the land.

Just a Short "Excursion"

   George W Bush – 2003

                  Hegseth & Trump – 2006 

Just a Short “Excursion”

I’m one of those over-traveled, US born Americans, who, as a US diplomat’s stepson, has journeyed to what are currently Middle Eastern regions representing the hotbed of global financial instability (from Beirut to Tehran), the plunge in American influence, the failure of announced military victory to match the reality on the ground – or should I say the reality on critical shipping lanes – and perhaps the beginning of a good old fashioned recession… which were quite foreseeable. Since a seriously misinformed Donald Trump elected to wage WAR – what else can you call an all-out effort to decimate every facet of Iran’s military assets and demand “unconditional surrender”? – from Iran’s effort to attack US regional military bases to the de facto paralysis of that global passageway for 20% of the world’s oil and gas, the obvious has come to pass.

We still have not heard a clear and consistent Trump explanation of why this WAR started. Since the GOP-controlled Congress – lackadaisical in operating as a Constitutionally-endowed equal branch of our government – never authorized this WAR, but Israeli PM Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu did, you would have to believe that Trump is simply following Bibi’s masterplan. To do otherwise, if you listen to too many senior members of Congress, would be, as the increasingly meaningless use of the term suggests, simply antisemitic. That so many American Jews are equally against this WAR would suggest otherwise.

Yet an objective look at what Israel’s unsubtle goal for Iran has been for years – crippling of her ability to apply any force beyond her borders and accept total subservience to Israel’s needs – compared to US goals focused more basically on regional stability and a predictable global petroleum marketplace, you can readily spot the obvious inconsistency. There’s very little in Bibi’s plan that benefits the United States. And as our departing Trump-appointed counter terrorism Tsar has stated, Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States.

Efforts to analogize this to our application of American force to Venezuela – where a tiny US military force removed a single, corrupt figurehead with no other bona fide governance changes – or even as seemingly mentally challenged South Carolina Republican Senator, Lindsey Graham, suggested that a nation that took Iwo Jima in WWII should have no problem seizing key coastal areas of Iran’s oil pumping port facilities – miss so many points. That the US military took 27,000 casualties (of which 7,000 were fatalities) to take that small island atoll seems to have slipped Graham’s failing mind. Iran is a heavily militarized surveillance state, a theocracy where slaughtering its own citizens is viewed as God’s will (hey, Pete Hegseth, you are hardly alone in your God-justified perspective), where Trump’s call to overthrow this regime pits innocent but completely unarmed Iranian patriots against a powerful, unwavering but massive set of well-trained soldiers.

As the current drone warfare suggests, pitting these cheap Iranian weapons again truly expensive defensive American and Israeli defensive missive systems, is not working well. But wait, there’s more. That Iran also launched a sophisticated missile, reaching a joint UK-US base (Diego Garcia) 2500 miles away, came as shock, particularly to Europe, which is within range, even as that strike did not do any damage. Insurance carriers have let their shipping companies know that no matter the pledges of Trump and friends, traversing the Strait of Hormuz would vitiate coverage.

Inasmuch as the theocratic leadership – infinitely replaceable even as they are serially killed – does not measure “victory” in terms of US/Israeli inflicted damage, but rather in staying power and the complete controlled passage through the Strait of Hormuz, Iran stubbornly maintains it is winning this conflict. Tehran has managed to draw a bevy of US Arab allies into this conflict as well, with strategic attacks on military and civilian targets in those countries. Oh, and this: the price of oil has skyrocketed globally, and the damage to Iran’s infrastructure suggests that a return to normal is not in the short-term cards, and just might trigger a global recession, since just about every commodity and product on earth is shipped. This is not a momentary blip in oil prices!

There is this misperception that since the US is one of the major oil producing nations on earth, we are immune to huge price fluctuations in distant petroleum products we neither need nor import. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Oil and gas are global commodities, and a price rise anywhere is a price rise everywhere. It is as if all the oil in the world is dumped into a massive communal bathtub where it is priced for all purposes everywhere. This is why the cost of gasoline/diesel at US filling stations is soaring. Texas oil billionaires are happy; they benefit rather dramatically from this global pricing.

But reminiscent of George W Bush’s “mission accomplished” Iraq War declaration on May 1, 2003, ironically aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln – one of the two US aircraft carriers deployed in this WAR – Christian nationalist Secretary of WAR, Pete Hegseth, has joined the President in stating that we have won this conflict. Really? Our European allies did not join this WAR, because their intelligence services told them that this could easily escalate into one of those “forever wars” and that despite the damage in Iran (and knowing the regime would not fall or be taken over by unarmed protesters – read Islamic Revolutionary Guards’ “fodder’), Iran would never surrender.

But the Trump administration has maintained that we have already won. A few Marines have been sent to “hang around,” but a ground WAR is not what most Americans would tolerate. Been there, done that. As Trump and his mini-minion Pete declare victory, perhaps they should go to the WAR room and look at all those satellite images of tankers jammed together unable to cross the Strait of Hormuz… and ask themselves whose definition of victory actually matters. Wreaking global havoc, impacting the US economy like no other, increasing the wedge between the United States and its allies, and shutting off 20% of the world’s oil and gas supply, seems more like a genuine victory to me.

I’m Peter Dekom, and while having moved out of Los Angeles has impaired my ability to keep putting out the volume of blogs I have been used to writing, if the US can embrace facts… and if our democracy can right the ship, we do have a good shot of making America truly great again.

Your Cheatin’ Heart & Academic Writing Assignments

 

Your Cheatin’ Heart & Academic Writing Assignments

“Google has AI embedded into it, Microsoft has AI embedded into it — like literally everything has AI in it… So, in a roundabout way, there’s no way to write a paper without using AI, unless you go to the library and you check books out and use encyclopedias.” 

Marley Stevens, a recent grad of the University of North Georgia, who battled false charges of AI use.

In ye olde days, rote learning was probably the best level of education any Americans ever received. Public education was not the rule, and back in 1635, Boston built the first public school. TV Westerns are filled with “school marms,” often the love interest of the white Stetson-hatted heroes, but the point illustrates how pervasive public education and functional literacy moved us to a level of modern education that embraces even advanced math and science as part of a basic public education. Rote learning is no longer even discussed. We have social agendas and censorship as prevailing topics, but there is a real question for those students in high school and beyond whether their assignments are truly their own or some version of an easily accessible product of artificial intelligence.

While fake images, and often sexually explicit, have made their way onto mainstream social media sites (like Grok) and sometimes become extreme examples of what was intended as teenage mischief crossing into criminal activity. Even political fakery has become pervasive creating a perplexing challenge in education. We want them to be the digital natives they already are and to be able to function in a world where AI has to be part of their academic tool set, but we also want them to learn. Much like plagiarizing is grounds for academic discipline, or at least a failing grade, substituting genuine research, writing and math skills with AI-generated substitutes seems comparable.

So, as students have embraced these AI shortcuts, teachers and professors have deployed AI detection tools to combat the trend. But just as the military reacts to new weapons being developed by our foes, there is more than a little back and forth in academic as Tyler Kingkade, writing for the January 28th NBC News, points out: “Rapid adoption of AI by young people set off waves of anxiety that students could cheat their way through college, leading many professors to run papers through online AI detectors that inspect whether students used large language models to write their work for them. Some colleges say they’ve caught hundreds of students cheating this way.

“However, since their debut a few years ago, AI detectors have repeatedly been criticized as unreliable and more likely to flag non-native English speakers on suspicion of plagiarism. And a growing number of college students also say their work has been falsely flagged as written by AI — several have filed lawsuits against universities over the emotional distress and punishments they say they faced as a result… NBC News spoke to ten students and faculty who described being caught in the middle of an escalating war of AI tools.

“Amid accusations of AI cheating, some students are turning to a new group of generative AI tools called ‘humanizers.’ The tools scan essays and suggest ways to alter text so they aren’t read as having been created by AI. Some are free, while others cost around $20 a month… Some users of the humanizer tools rely on them to avoid detection of cheating, while others say they don’t use AI at all in their work, but want to ensure they aren’t falsely accused of AI-use by AI-detector programs.

“In response, and as chatbots continue to advance, companies such as Turnitin and GPTZero have upgraded their AI detection software, aiming to catch writing that’s gone through a humanizer. They also launched applications that students can use to track their browser activity or writing history so they can prove they wrote the material, though some humanizers can type out text that a user wants to copy and paste in case a student’s keystrokes are tracked.

“‘Students now are trying to prove that they’re human, even though they might have never touched AI ever,’ said Erin Ramirez, an associate professor of education at California State University, Monterey Bay. ‘So where are we? We’re just in a spiral that will never end.’

“The competition between AI detectors and writing assistance programs has been propelled by a heightened anxiety about cheating on college campuses. It shows how inescapable AI has become at universities, even for students who don’t want to use it and for faculty who wish they didn’t have to police it… ‘If we write properly, we get accused of being AI — it’s absolutely ridiculous,’ said Aldan Creo, a graduate student from Spain who studies AI detection at University of California San Diego. ‘Long term, I think it’s going to be a big problem.’”

To police AI cheating would require a serious escalation in source material tracking, a really huge privacy problem, often with spotty results as Kingkade noted: “Kelsey Auman, who graduated last spring, started the petition after she fought to prove she did not use AI on several of her assignments. She knew enough classmates with similar experiences that they had a group chat named ‘Academic Felons for Life.’ Auman said she started to run her papers through multiple AI detectors on her own before turning them in, hoping to avoid another dispute, but it created more anxiety when they also incorrectly flagged things she wrote as generated by a chatbot.”

But if national leadership is setting a bad example for the use of AI falsification, it seems hard to fault students mimicking the political world around them. Kaitlyn Huamani, writing for the January 28th Associated Press, points out: “Ramesh Srinivasan, a professor at UCLA and the host of the ‘Utopias’ podcast, said many people are now questioning where they can turn to for ‘trustable information… AI systems are only going to exacerbate, amplify and accelerate these problems of an absence of trust, an absence of even understanding what might be considered reality or truth or evidence,’ he said.

“Srinivasan said he thinks the White House and other officials sharing AI-generated content not only invites everyday people to continue to post similar content but also grants permission to others who are in positions of credibility and power, such as policymakers, to share unlabeled synthetic content. He added that given that social media platforms tend to ‘algorithmically privilege’ extreme and conspiratorial content, ‘we’ve got a big, big set of challenges on our hands.’… There are also many fabricated videos circulating of immigration raids and of people confronting ICE officers, often yelling at them or throwing food in their faces.” Embrace AI anyway? Some Academics are finding ways to incorporate honest AI use into class assignments, while others seem to have just given up.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if AI cannot be contained within reasonable guidelines, a declining quality in our high school, college or graduate/professional school grads will infect the entire nation and its competitive future.