We havenât talked much about it here but for the last two months Iâve been absolutely obsessed with Widowâs Bay... Widowâs Bay arrived as a fully formed jackalope, so complete and natural in its combination despite its utter strangeness. The magic trick of creator Katie Dippoldâs series, about a mayor named Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) who [âŠ]
Widowâs Bay arrived as a fully formed jackalope, so complete and natural in its combination despite its utter strangeness. The magic trick of creator Katie Dippoldâs series, about a mayor named Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) who tries to bring tourism to his totally cursed island community, lies in its hard-to-describe tone. Itâs an effortlessly brilliant comedy with the joke density of a sitcom, but itâs also effective horror, delivering enough legitimate scares to give pause to anyone recommending it to a comedy-loving scaredy-cat. Yet to label the show âhorror-comedyâ is insufficient. The defining Widowâs Bay moments happen where the two genres live in the same breath, each heightening the other â such as the Run card game in the second episode, âLodging,â a simple and ingenious gag whose punch line prompts both a laugh and a thrilling chill down the spine. That laugh/dread carries all the way through to the finale, which lands in a genuinely tragic place: Tom has essentially failed to rid Widowâs Bay of its curse, leaving his son trapped on the island. But as viewers, itâs hard not to feel some delight in knowing we get to return to this hilarious and terrifying island now that Apple has renewed the show for another season. (The writersâ room is set to reassemble shortly.)
The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, âWhat good is it?â If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.
Aldo Leopold, Round River: From the Journals of Aldo Leopold
(via exhaled-spirals)
âHandsâ (Multiple Exposure) circa 1945-55 photo by Weegee
* * * *
"How to understand the experience of feeling? We know what sensing is, an inner touch. Feeling requires another quality. It has nothing to do with âlikeâ or âdislike,â and yet it is emotion. I feel sorrow or joy. Feeling is always rising up. Like fire it flares up, then dies away. And I feel âI am.â Pure feeling has no object. I can understand it only if I am capable of seeing without an idea, word or image, able to be in contact with what is."
Maine Senator Susan Collins voted to advance to the Senate floor a bill containing $75 billion in ICE funding, knowing the bill had the votes to pass in the full Senate without her support. As she had done many times before (when her lack of support would not lead to a defeat for Trump), she cast a performative âNoâ vote on the bill funding ICE, which she had helped advance to the final floor vote. (Collins later clarified she voted against the final bill because of Medicaid cuts.)
And then Senator Collins tried to wash her hands of a bill that effectively exempted ICE from the annual appropriations processâone of Congressâs most important oversight mechanisms. By granting Trumpâs masked, armed, woefully undertrained ICE agents an unprecedented multi-year funding guarantee, Susan Collins helped to send a message to ICE:Â Do your worst; Congress canât touch you. Hereâs your blood money.
On Monday morning in Maine, an ICE agent killed an innocent man, an immigrant who was not the subject of the ICE arrest warrant that was being executed. The victim, a 26-year-old Colombian man, Joan Sebastian Guerrero, was driving to work, having just left his wife and three-year old daughter at home. What happened next is not clear, but the ICE agent shot Guerrero five times while he was in the front seat of his car. Some eyewitness accounts suggest that an unmarked SUV attempted to force Guerreroâs car to stop. (This may have happened after Guerrero was shot and unable to control his car.) See CNN, ICE-involved shooting in Maine kills one person.
The Portland Press Herald is providing a live update (accessible to all), here:Â Live updates: ICE releases statement on Biddeford shooting.
While the facts are still developing, ICE issued a statement saying that the officer shot Guerrero âas he was fleeingâ because the officer âfear[ed] for public safety.â See CNN, DHS breaks hours of silence on deadly ICE shooting in Maine, saying officer was âfearing for public safetyâ.
ICE agents are on a reckless rampage, unleashed by a $75 billion slush fund and leadership whose only metric is the number of arrests. The poorly trained, militarized ICE officers view themselves as âhuntersâ capturing human bounty, and apparently believe they can shoot to kill any subject who flees their deadly grasp.
And when ICE agents commit indefensible executions in the streets, DHS steps in to investigate its own law enforcement officersârather than allowing state law enforcement and the local US attorney to investigate. See The Hill, Maine senators demand impartial ICE shooting probe. (DHS said that its âOffice of Inspector General would investigate.â) In other words, the agency that committed the possible criminal killing of an innocent man will investigate its own officersâjust as is happening in Minneapolis with the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Protesters immediately swamped Senator Susan Collinsâ field office in Biddeford. Portland Press Herald, Protesters storm Susan Collinsâ Biddeford office after federal agent shot man. Letâs hope that by Tuesday, concerned citizens are protesting in front of Collinsâ office in Bangor, Maine.
Susan Collins voted to give ICE its blood money. She cannot be allowed to retreat into her feckless expressions of âconcernâ and hopes for an âimpartialâ investigation by the agency responsible for the killing.
Enough is enough. The people of Maine must defeat Susan Collins at the polls by a resounding margin that will serve as a rebuke to her betrayal of the people of Maineâand of America.
Trump has lost his mind.
Trump has lost his mind. I know, I know. âToo late for that,â you say! âHe lost his mind years ago.â True, but on Monday, Trump did something so bizarre that he must have had a mental break of some sort. Having resisted Iranâs efforts to impose tolls and control shipping through an international waterway, Trump said, âNever mind, the US will seize control of the international waterway and the US will impose tolls.â See NYTimes, Trumpâs Cease-Fire Effectively Collapses as He Vows to Restart Blockade and Tolls. (Gift article, accessible to all.)
Say what? The alleged motivation for the US war against Iran just went from âno nuclear weapon,â to âregime change,â to âthe US will seize control of the Strait and turn it into a profit-making venture.â
Hereâs Trumpâs post:
To be clear:
(a)Â The US has no claim on the Strait of Hormuz or the narrow international passage through the strait.
(b)Â It is a violation of international law to charge tolls for passage through any international natural waterway. See Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Fox News
(c)Â The US cannot keep the Strait of Hormuz open by force. A single successful drone attack out of hundreds of attempts will make it commercially impossible for oil shipments to continue. War risk insurance will become unavailable. See The National, (6/3/26)Â Ships face 4,000-times higher insurance costs to cross Strait of Hormuz.
Trump also provided a War Powers notice to Congress of renewed hostilities against Iran. In providing a new War Powers notice, Trump is attempting to âresetâ the War Powers 60-day clockâwhich is not something permitted by the Act. See CBS News (5/1/26), As Iran war hits key 60-day deadline, Congress and Trump face choices on next steps.
(In full disclosure, the constitutionality of the War Powers Act is doubtful, and most presidents have taken that position.)
So, in case you missed it, the US is again engaged in a full-blown war with Iran with no obvious exit strategy. When the US was last engaged in a shooting war with Iran, Trump surrendered in order to extricate himself as quickly as possible. He now finds himself where he left off three weeks ago.
Todd Blanche sanctions order
In a historic rebuke of the Department of Justice and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, US District Judge Kathleen M. Williams ruled that Trumpâs lawsuit against the IRS was brought for an improper purpose. She referred Blanche and other Trump attorneys to their respective bar associations for disciplinary consideration and barred Trump from describing his agreement with the IRS as a âsettlement.â See NYTimes, Judge Denounces Trumpâs I.R.S. Suit as Improper Exercise in Self-Dealing. (Gift article, accessible to all.)
Per the order issued by Judge Williams,
The nature of the suit itself and the conduct of the parties and counsel from its filing make plain that this was an attempt to use the court to provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the president. [¶]
Whether executive branch actors can privately agree to give themselves and their former clients blanket immunities and billions of dollars in tax money for legally undefined grievances was never an issue advanced to this court. The question is whether the parties could do so by claiming to be adverse and engaging the legitimacy of a court proceeding. The answer is a resounding ânoâ: The lead plaintiff and the government are one, a fully realized unitary interest.
Per the Times,
Under Judge Williamsâs order, Mr. Trump and his family are prohibited from calling the audit protections a âsettlementâ in any official proceeding, but it is unclear if that will otherwise prevent Mr. Trump and the many companies affiliated with him and his family from relying on it to try to escape I.R.S. scrutiny. . . . [¶]
Experts have doubted whether Mr. Blanche even had the authority to direct the I.R.S. to stop audits, and Judge Williams said that his directive violated a federal law preventing the White House from controlling I.R.S. investigations.
The final resolution of this matter may be years away. But odds are that Todd Blanche will lose his license to practice law, just like John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, and Kenneth Cheseboro. (Jeffrey Clark is still under investigation.)
Judge Williamsâ order will be appealed. Whether it survives on appeal is less important than the factual findings she made that Trump and his attorneys acted with an improper motive in bringing the lawsuit. Those findings of fact can be considered in state bar disciplinary proceedings. Justice may be slow in coming, but Todd Blanche and other attorneys will be held to account. It is just a matter of time.
Concluding Thoughts
Having spent a couple of hours trying to understand if Todd Blanche has a path to confirmation if the Senate Judiciary Committee declines to recommend him to the full Senate for a vote, the answer is âItâs complicated.â In short, there are several paths to confirmation, some of which are subject to filibuster, others of which are not. Key variables include:
Whether Lindsey Grahamâs seat on the Judiciary Committee will be filled before the final vote.
Whether Mitch McConnell will enter the Senate floor to vote (something that Senate leadership probably does not want to happen).
Whether the Judiciary Committee recommends against Blancheâs nomination (which then triggers a floor vote with a simple majority) or simply sits on the nomination indefinitely (which could go to the floor, subject to a filibuster vote).
And depending on how many GOP Senators are present and voting (98, 99, or 100), it may or may not be possible to have a tie on the Senate floor, which would allow JD Vance to break a tie (or not, if no tie is possible).
In short, there are many paths to confirmation, none of which will be successful if three or four Republicans defect, depending on how many Senators are present and voting. Unfortunately, John Fetterman could change everything by supporting Blanche or not showing up to vote.
Hereâs the point: If confirmed, Blanche would automatically become the worst Attorney General in US history, immediately surpassing Bill Barr. Despite that fact, cowards in the Republican Party will likely vote to confirm Blanche. While that would be a bad outcome, Blanche is weakened, not credible, and on the defensive. We must work hard to keep it that way!
Unlike other forms of psychological disorders, the core issue in trauma is reality.
- Bessel A. van der Kolk, Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society
Today began with yet another demonstration of the fact that the U.S. options for extricating itself from Trumpâs war on Iran with conditions anywhere near as good as they were under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiated with a number of countries under President Barack Obama, or even as good as they were in February 2026 before Trump and Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu launched air strikes on Iran, do not appear promising.
At 10:16 this morning, Trump announced on social media that the Strait of Hormuz âis OPEN, and will remain OPEN, with or without Iran. We are reinstating THE IRANIAN BLOCKADE, so named because it is only stopping Iranâs ships or customers from entering or leaving. All other countries will have fair and open use of the Strait. The U.S.A. will be, from this point forward, known as âTHE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT,â but as such, and as a matter of FAIRNESS, will be reimbursed, at the rate of 20% on all cargo shipped, for any and all costs necessary to do the job of providing safety and security to this very volatile section of the World. The process and formation will begin immediately.â
In other words, the U.S. is restarting hostilityâa blockade is an act of warâand, according to Trump, will protect the Strait of Hormuz but expects to be paid.
Trump has been clear that he considers the memorandum of understanding he signed on June 17 no longer in force, probably not least because Iranian officials interpret the words of the hastily constructed deal as giving Iran control over the Strait of Hormuz. They have been clear they intend to charge fees for passage of the strait, a condition the U.S. rejects although Trumpâs current claim that the U.S. will charge fees seems to undercut the U.S. position.
Crucially, officials in the Trump administration continue to deny that Congress has any role in declaring war, despite the clear language of the Constitution. Under the 1973 War Powers Act, the president can respond without congressional input to an âimminent threatâ so long as the president notifies Congress in writing within 48 hours of the beginning of hostilities. After that notification, the president has only 60 days before he must either end hostilities or secure congressional approval for them.
Trump got around this law first by overruling his own intelligence agencies to insist that Iran posed an imminent threat to the U.S. Then when the May 1 deadline for either withdrawal or congressional approval approached, he claimed that hostilities had ended on April 7 with the declaration of a ceasefire, notwithstanding that both sides continued to shoot at each other and the U.S. maintained its blockade of Iranian ports.
Now they are claiming the power simply to start the clock again. On Friday, Trump formally notified Congress that the U.S. has resumed strikes on Iran, claiming the Pentagon has another 60 days to strike Iran before the timeline specified by the War Powers Act runs out.
Today Elizabeth Dwoskin, Andrew Ba Tran, Luis Melgar, and Peter Jamison of the Washington Post reported that Trumpâs sons âDonald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have amassed a portfolio of defense technology start-ups that are benefiting from new Pentagon priorities and spending, further entangling the United Statesâ interests and the Trump familyâs financial fortunes.â They have invested in more than a dozen defense companies that have collectively received at least $3.2 billion in business directly from the government since those investments, along with $3.1 billion in options for future contracts.
Tonight U.S. Central Command announced it has begun a third night of strikes against Iran.
At about 7:15 this morning, an agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shot and killed 26-year-old Joan Sebastian Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine. According to staff from the Portland Press Herald, Guerrero was from Colombia and was authorized to work in the U.S. The Maine Immigrantsâ Rights Coalition said he had a Social Security number and was on his way to work.
Spokespeople for ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, have not commented. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) has called for âa full and impartial investigation,â but as her political opponents note, Collins voted just last month to give ICE another $70 billion. ICE and Border Patrol had become far less visible as Republicans worked to pass supplemental funding for ICE and Border Patrol through Congress. In the wake of that new funding, immigration sweeps are back in the news. Protests broke out today outside Collinsâs Biddeford office.
Senator Angus King (I-ME) told Patrick Whittle, Leah Willingham, and Jack Brook of the Associated Press that Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin told him Guerrero had tried to use his vehicle as a weapon against officers, forcing the agent to shoot. This allegation has been a common one for agents trying to justify fatal shootings, including that of Renee Good in Minnesota. Witness Daniel Boucher said that in the aftermath of the shooting, he saw Guerrero âbleeding profusely from the head. He was talking. He said: âI tried to stop.ââ
This evening, Representative Chellie Pingree (D-ME) said she had learned that the man ICE shot and killed was not the person they had an order to pick up. â
In a statement tonight the Department of Homeland Security claimed that the officer shot because he was âfearing for public safety.â David Bier of the Cato Institute and Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the Immigration Council both called out that language, noting DHS was claiming not that the officer feared for his life, but that he had a vague concern for âpublic safety.â
The ICE killing of a man in Maine comes less than a week after ICE shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo of Houston, Texas. Salgado Araujo was a Mexican national who had lived in the U.S. for 35 years and was close to obtaining legal status. His son told Lekan Oyekanmi, Jack Brook, and Jeffrey Collins of the Associated Press that the homebuilder knew what to do when approached by ICE but may have feared that the men following him in unmarked SUVs intended to steal his tools.
ICE said the officers âattempted to conduct a vehicle stop as part of a targeted enforcement operation to arrest an illegal alienâ and that Salgado Araujo ârammed an ICE law enforcement vehicle, refused to follow multiple verbal commands, and weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer.â It added that an officer âdischarged his weapon in self-defense.â
A lawyer for two of the people in the van with Salgado Araujo denied that he tried to ram officers. A source later told Dalia Faheid, Chris Boyette, Priscilla Alvarez, and Caroll Alvarado of CNN that ICEâs description of the events that killed Salgado Araujo as a âtargeted enforcement operationâ was misleading. While that may have been the case, Salgado Araujo was not the target. They saw him in his van near the target and thought he âresembled the target.â
This afternoon the Trump administration finally turned over to Minnesota investigators evidence from the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in January. That evidence includes statements, video from police body cameras, and Goodâs badly damaged SUV.
Today U.S. District Court Judge for the Southern District of Florida Kathleen Williams said Trump, his lawyers, and the lawyers for the Department of Justice had manufactured the so-called settlement of Trumpâs $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service. â[T]he Court finds that this matter was brought for an improper purposeâto gain the imprimatur of judicial legitimacy for a âsettlementâ that had no viable basis in law or fact,â she wrote. They launched the lawsuit âas a means of conferring legitimacy upon a course of action that they were unwilling to subject to judicial review.â
The course of action they intended to take was to establish a $1.776 billion slush fund for Trump loyalists who claimed that the Department of Justice under former president Joe Biden had been weaponized against them. While that part of the deal got most of the attention, probably more important to Trump was the addition to the âsettlementâ announced the next day: a promise that Trump, his family, his businesses, and even his âassociatesâ would be immune from prosecution for any tax crimes revealed by audits of tax returns filed before May 19, 2026.
âNo sitting President has ever sued federal agencies completely subject to his control for monetary benefits, or any benefits that inure to him, his family, and associates,â Williams wrote. After Trump dropped his lawsuit, thirty-five former judges had asked Williams to set aside her dismissal of the case with the goal of determining whether the claimed âsettlementâ was a fraud on the court.
In her opinion, she noted that the question before the court was simply whether there was a legitimate lawsuit, and the answer was no. The final disposition of the slush fund and the immunity were not questions before the court. âWhether Executive Branch actors can privately agree to give themselves and their former clients blanket immunities and billions of dollars in tax monies for legally undefined grievances was never an issue advanced to this Court. The question is whether the Parties could do so by claiming to be adverse and engaging the legitimacy of a court proceeding. The answer is a resounding âno.ââ
Williams recommended legal sanctions against some of the lawyers involved and said she was âextremely troubledâ by the testimony of Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, which was âat best, misleading and, at worst, disingenuous.â
Blanche used to be Trumpâs personal defense lawyer and has said he believes he has a âcontinuing duty of loyaltyâ to Trump. The president has nominated Blanche to become attorney general. His confirmation hearings begin on Wednesday.
Thatâs Paul Simon, in the control room of a recording studio, discoursing on how barely audible flaws can become colossal mind games in the process of mixing a record. Itâs a quintessential Simon cadence â âMake a new plan, Stanâ â thatâs backed by experience: The singer and songwriter has had his share of tussles with uncooperative technology, seemingly insurmountable logistical hurdles and marathon searches for the elusive muse.
The singer and songwriter allows that heâs used the line before. But it appears as part of director Alex Gibneyâs masterful documentary In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon, and lands with a heavy resonance. The camera follows Simonâs face at close range. The eyes dart. He looks vaguely troubled, then hunted. Heâs at work on his most recent album, the interwoven song cycle 7 Psalms, and while heâs sweating the usual details of the music, heâs also contending with the sudden onset of hearing loss in one ear.
I went to see Paul Simon in concert last night. Thunderstorms were predicted but there were no storms. We were under a clear sky on a summer night and Paul sang his new songs in an unapologetic cracked 83 year old voice with his peerless band and the audience was .... tender. Respectful.
I bribed my son to go with me. He is a sound engineer. He commented that the concert was so .... quiet. I invited him to feel honored to be sung to by one of the most prolific and talented songwriters of the 20th century.
The final song was ... "Sounds of Silence."
His "Psalms" were a deeply moving sermon:
["The Lord"]
I've been thinking about the great migration
Noon and night they leave the flock
And I imagine their destination
Meadow grass, jagged rock
The Lord is my engineer
The Lord is the earth I ride on
The Lord is the face in the atmosphere
The path I slip and I slide on
A crystal comet
Starlit night
Silver moon
To smooth the edge of daylight
Now turned the evening rose
Tribal voices
Old and young
Celebrations
A history of families sung
The endless river flows
âThere's always a moment when you start to fall out of love, whether it's with a person or an idea or a cause, even if it's one you only narrate to yourself years after the event: a tiny thing, a wrong word, a false note, which means that things can never be quite the same again.â
â Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time
âWhat is required to come to an inner sensation, an inner feeling of reality? We need to know the way, the process, accepting that as we are today we have no means to open to reality amid the activity of life. I must know the road I am travelingâthe way up and the way down. I learn first to withdraw from activity in order to find this Presence, something real in me. Afterward, I will again go toward manifestation.â
~ Jeanne de Salzmann, 'The Reality of Being'
[Thanks to Ian Sanders]
Trump has got himself in a pickle with the most difficult people in the world to deal with.
How to wage a Trump war: Tit-for-tat! Thatâs where itâs at!
Lucian K. Truscott IV
Jul 13, 2026
Trump has got himself in a pickle with the most difficult people in the world to deal with.
Trump announced today that Iran walked out of the negotiating room and said we want some changes to the ceasefire agreement. âI said weâre not going to make changes. You know, theyâre professional negotiators.â He said this in a call to Fox and Friends, because Fox and Friends is where he does his diplomacy and his war planning. Iâm sure theyâre tuned into Fox News in Tehran. Of course they are.
Iran came back and said it was the United States that walked out of the Oman talks. âInterpretation against the text is not permissible,â said Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei. âLying has become part of the U.S. administrationâs behavioral pattern, and they have become addicted to it.â
The dude gets it, doesnât he?
Iran hit a Cypriot-flagged ship on Sunday as it passed through the Strait close to the shores of Oman, a no-go area in the Strait for shipping, according to rules established by the Iranian regime, because they control the Strait of Hormuz. Trump fired back by striking what the Pentagon called â140 targetsâ along the coast of Iran. The Wall Street Journal reported that âthe attacks, like previous rounds, were designed to degrade Iranâs ability to launch attacks on commercial vessels transiting the strait.â
Let me tell you whatâs going on when the Pentagon deploys the word âdegradeâ to describe what theyâre doing. They know that they donât have enough bombs and missiles to destroy all the missile and drone emplacements along Iranâs coast on the Strait of Hormuz. This is a screenshot from Google maps of just one stretch of the 600 miles of Iranâs coast on the Gulf:
Here is another screenshot:
There are miles and miles more coastline of Iran along the Strait of Hormuz. Itâs hard to see in these screenshots, but all those dark sqiggly areas inland from the Gulf are mountains. In both screenshots, all the lettering along the edge of the Gulf and slightly inland are the names of villages. There are people in those villages, buildings, and houses. The Iranian regime can move in and take over a house from a family and install a missile launcher in their living room overlooking the Gulf. The launcher will be invisible to any form of surveillance â U.S. aircraft, satellites, Reaper drones fixed with surveillance cameras. They canât look through the roofs of buildings. In the mountains themselves, there are hundreds of caves that can contain missile and drone launchers. Hundreds. Miles and miles and miles of them. There are dozens of villages with thousands of houses that can be appropriated by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and used to launch missiles at ships in the Gulf or even targets in Kuwait, Bahrain, the UAE, and Jordan, all of which were hit by Iran on Sunday during their half of the tit-for-tat missile barrage.
There never was a ceasefire. There were two pages of paper with a list of 14 agreements, or aims, or promises or whatever the hell they were. The pieces of paper allowed Trump to get oil and gas prices down temporarily, which was the aim of the negotiations that his real estate trust-funders held in Geneva with representatives of Iran. The whole thing was for show.
Let me tell you what the Iranians knew the whole time. They knew Trump is in trouble politically in the U.S. They watch every point by point drop of Trumpâs approval in the domestic polls. They know right where he stands moment to moment. They read his insane rants filled with lies on Truth Social. They watched Trumpâs new chairman of the Federal Reserve take office. They watched as the Fed did not cut interest rates because inflation is still too high. The Iranians know why U.S. inflation is high. Itâs because of Trumpâs tit-for-tat war with Iran.
Now, letâs play a game. Youâre a leader in Iran, it doesnât matter who â Khamenei Jr. or one of the militant generals who are said to have gained power within the IRGC and according to some reports are really running things in Iran. As a leader of Iran, what are you going to do?
If you saw the same videos on the news last night that I saw, you saw the deck of a U.S. destroyer, or maybe two of them, all lit up with a gigantic flash of fire. Do you know what that was? A cruise missile taking off. Letâs go back to the Iranian IRGC commander. Heâs got CNN, just like you and I do. He saw the Tomahawk missiles blasting off. He can count. He probably has an office somewhere with guys at computer screens keeping a running record of how many cruise missiles weâve fired, and how many of them we have left in our arsenal.
If youâre the IRGC guy, what would you do? Would you go back to the negotiating table â wherever the hell that is these days â and keep talking with the representatives of a man who has never abided by a treaty or kept a promise in his life? Or would you fire off a few more cheapie missiles and drones at U.S. targets in Kuwait and Jordan and Bahrain and take a couple of pot-shots at ships attempting to sail through the Strait of Hormuz, so Trump will get pissed and say âweâre going to hit them very hardâ and waste more of his Tomahawk missiles?
Itâs not a hard choice, is it? The choice is made easy for the Iranians by one Donald Trump who has a constant need to go on Fox News and his insane Truth Social account to brag about how tough he is, how strong our military is, how he has âobliteratedâ Iranâs navy and air forces and its defenses. Take a guess at who knows the truth about how much damage Trumpâs tit-for-tat air war has done to Iran. Uhhh, maybe the Iranians themselves, who have spent the ceasefire, such as it was, rebuilding their missile and drone capability and repairing their launchers and resupplying all those caves along the Gulf with new missiles and new drones.
Are you getting a picture of how easy this is for Iran? Trump can bluster all he wants about how he is reimposing the blockade on Iranâs ports. He can go on Fox News and brag that he is the one who controls the Strait of Hormuz.
But do you know who controls it? The Iranian military. They live there. They built all the missile emplacements. They built the single Shahed drone that the Washington Post reported yesterday wiped out a command headquarters in Kuwait on the second day of the war, killing six Americans and wounding â get this â 400 more. The Post story is extraordinary. It goes into how the soldiersâ wounds were understated in communications with the military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, causing the hospital to not be adequately prepared to receive the wounded. Wounds that were severe were listed as moderate. Wounds that were moderate were listed as minor. All the wounds were bad enough that the soldiers were being airlifted out of Kuwait thousands of miles away to Germany to be treated in a hospital. Hegseth lied about the soldiersâ wounds so the Pentagon would not have to report to the press how much damage had been done to the American military by Iran â on the second day of the war.
The Shahed drone that hit the building on the American base in Kuwait cost about $25,000. The first evacuation flight out of Kuwait carrying wounded soldiers to the military hospital in Germany cost that much just in fuel to get off the ground when the C-17 took off.
Tit-for-tat is exactly the kind of war Iran wants with the U.S. because it is so gravely and completely unbalanced. It costs the U.S. a million dollars each day just to wake up the sailors on the ships we have in the Indian Ocean and feed them breakfast. It costs millions of dollars a day just to keep our ships sailing around the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Oman. It costs tens of millions of dollars to fire off a few Tomahawk missiles. It costs tens of millions of dollars for us to put enough U.S. fighter aircraft in the air to bomb and fire missiles at military targets along Iranâs Gulf coast. It costs many more millions of dollars for the missiles the jets fire and the bombs they drop.
It costs less than one million dollars for Iran to fire 40 Shahed drones at U.S. bases we have in Kuwait and the UAE and Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Who has the upper hand in Trumpâs tit-for-tat war? Iâll give you a hint. Itâs not the guy whose name begins with a âTâ and ends with a âPâ who the Iranians call the biggest liar theyâve ever dealt with.
Iran has been dealing with invaders of every stripe for about 3,000 years. Alexander and the Greeks came and went. The Arab armies invaded and before leaving, gave the Persians the Muslim faith. The Turks and Mongols came and went. The Americans came in 1953 with their CIA and overthrew the Iranian government and installed the Shah. The Iraqis did their best during eight years starting in 1980 before both sides gave up after suffering a combined one million casualties.
Now comes Donald Trump. Do you think the leadership in Iran is intimidated by a man wearing orange pancake makeup with confectionerâs hair who spends more time thinking about gold-leafing another piece of gimcrackery for the Oval Office and worrying about his ballroom and the reflecting pool and his ridiculous arch and now the front columns of the White House than he does thinking about his war?
Pray for the power of Trumpâs ego. Itâs driving him to lose his war with Iran, and they will ensure the tit-for-tat war goes on long enough to cost him the midterm elections. The Iranians have been at this game for centuries. Theyâre players. Heâs a putz.
Spiritual practice is not just sitting and meditating. Practice is looking, thinking, touching, drinking, eating, and talking. Every act, every breath, and every step can be practice and can help us to become more ourselves.
â Thich Nhat Hanh
Night View of Lower Manhattan from the Metropolitan Tower 1920
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âThis city is not about other people or buildings or streets but about your mental structure. If we remember what Kafka writes about his Castle, we get a sense of it. Cities really are mental conditions.â
Fyodor Dostoevskyâs manuscript draft of The Brothers Karamazov
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âI believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the worldâs finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that theyâve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.â
âIn search of love and music
My whole life has been
Illumination
Corruption
And diving, diving, diving, diving
Diving down to pick up on every shining thing
Just like that black crow flying
In a blue skyâ
-Joni Mitchell
JĂŒrgen Schadeberg, Hans Prignitz makes a handstand on the Hamburg Michel, 1948
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At This Moment
âIt is not the body that is important but the atmosphere around it. The atmosphere becomes permeated with this finer vibration, in the stillness. And another quality is there.
An axis begins to appear, of pure attention. There is a sensitivity.
This atmosphere, filled with energy. The body, like an envelope.
Respect this atmosphere, this energy contained in the body. And then, even subtler energies can come into youâthe Light can come into you.
All my thoughts, feelings, ideas are nothing compared to this precious treasure, this quality of energy that is not mine but what I am.
More and more, with attending to presence, allowing higher forces to enter, staying collected, returning, we can live in a new way.
You can serve this energy. And the energy can heal. From it can come my best action in the world, my best action for others. Help each other through living in this pure Attention.â
~ Michel de Salzmann, quoted in Fran Shawâs âNotes on The Next Attentionâ
When we are young, the words are scattered all around us. As they are assembled by experience, so also are we, sentence by sentence, until the story takes shape.
