We're all being schooled for moral depravity

Once again, the United States is putting itself in the international war crimes business. If a distinguishing feature of GW Bush's "War on Terror" was institutionalized torture of unfortunate captive brown men, it seems that a central motif of Trump's imperial adventures is using and enlisting the people of the U.S. military in the murder of civilians. 

The ongoing sinking of small boats off Central America without any proof of their involvement any offense is one instance.

Now we get news of an apparently intentional airstrike on a civilian water treatment facility in southern Iran; at least 20,000 Iranians will lose access to clean water.

Strikes early Wednesday destroyed what appears to be a drinking-water facility on Iran’s southern coast, near the Strait of Hormuz, according to an analysis by The New York Times. Around the time of the strikes, the U.S. Central Command said in a post on X that it had conducted attacks near the strait “with precision munitions from U.S. Air Force and Navy fighter jets.” 

Iranian state media reported that the U.S. had hit water storage buildings and a local official said that water was cut off to more than 20,000 people living in a town and villages nearby. Temperatures in the area have reached above 100 degrees Fahrenheit this week.

Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of St. Andrews Phillips P. O'Brien responds to this report without equivocation. 

Is It A War Crime?

Without a doubt. Attacking other infrastructure was probably a war crime as well (think bridges or power plants) but there can at least be arguments made that these are dual use facilities. Militaries use bridges, military production uses generated electricity. If the US destroyed all the bridges in Iran or shut off all the power, as Trump has threatened numerous times, I would definitely consider it a war crime. However, lawyers could try and argue that because of military use, these are allowable targets.

However, a reservoir serving a civilian community is unarguably a crime. The military will get its water somehow, the civilians will suffer. 

And note, this is one of the hottest and driest places on the globe. Academic data for the Sirik region confirms that summer temperatures routinely peak between 45°C and 48.5°C during the warmest months. That is over 115 degrees Fahrenheit. That is comparable to Death Valley in California.

A human being cannot live long in such a climate without water—so either the locals will die of dehydration or, more likely, some will drink contaminated water and die from that.

Either way the US has attacked, seemingly deliberately, a facility vital to the maintenance of human life that has no discernible military utility. So yes, it is a war crime. 

We need to understand that when the military of the United States commits these atrocities against international laws and norms -- as well as against our own legal codes that are supposed to govern our soldiers, sailors and airmen -- something else is happening beyond the immediate rupture of standards.

The Trump/Hegseth regime is corrupting the military, intentionally enlisting serving personnel in crimes. Our rulers want our military to get used to doing these things.

But, like the Bush regime before him, Trump is also corrupting us all. Do we accept that doing wanton murder to prove a point (probably unsuccessfully) is just something this country does? Are we that kind of country? If so, who are we?

We probably don't much care; these crimes are far away and inflicted on people we don't know. And most of the world is certainly not surprised. They live alongside an American colossus that periodically defaults to murderous illegal war-making.

But previous episodes of this national pastime usually evoked some squeamishness from the perpetrators: "No -- it wasn't that bad, it was a mistake, we didn't mean it." 

The Trump regime does mean it: it wants to teach us to thrill to unvarnished, extralegal murder. 

We're living in a magical kingdom with a demented guide

 

The irreplaceable Jonathan V Last at The Bulwark captures the complete lunacy that the madman in the White House and his billionaire buddies have led us into with his Iran debacle

Markets 

The funniest part of this whole thing—the real sorcery—is that the world’s financial markets agree that we’re in a great place and the current status quo is amazing.

America and Israel launched our war against Iran on February 28. Since then,

• America spent in the neighborhood of $30 billion on the war.

• The world experienced the worst oil shock in recorded history.

• Inflation is running very hot.

• There’s been something like $58 billion in damage to infrastructure in the Middle East, which has curtailed industrial outputs independent of the shipping crisis.

• Global companies have lost at least $25 billion in revenue because of the war.

And yet the S&P 500 is . . . up since the war started? Way up?

It gets better! In two days’ time, we will have the biggest IPO in history. SpaceX will shatter records. It will be valued at close to $2 trillion dollars. It will make Elon Musk the world’s first (acknowledged) trillionaire.

It’s going to be the most obscene financial orgy in a century. Like watching John D. Rockefeller and Louis XIV spit roast Caligula.

Iran and the SpaceX IPO are the same thing. Magical thinking. ...

We apparently have an appetite for this sort of thing. Until we don't. Neither Louis XIV (felled by senile gangrene) nor Caligula (killed by associates) ended well. 

Death of Caligula

The American republic, eventually, broke up John D. Rockefeller's oil empire by court order in 1911 and he went on to invent modern foundation philanthropy, for good and ill.

It's all about big boys with blow up toys

Economist and all-round stand up guy Paul Krugman skewers the Trump boys.

... Clean energy has become a bogeyman in the culture wars: mining and burning coal are considered “manly” activities, while renewable energy is portrayed as woke and effeminate. Real men don’t worry about black lung and airborne particulates, let alone climate change.

So a combination of big money and fragile male egos drives Green Derangement Syndrome. And the same is true for both the Iran debacle and the refusal to learn from the catastrophe by turning to Ukraine.

Why was the United States so unprepared for the Iranian drone threat, despite the obvious successes of Ukrainian drones against Russia? Well, as investigative reporters delve into the story, I would urge them to follow the money.

America has a huge, highly profitable defense industry, dedicated to a suite of technologies that are rapidly being rendered obsolete, as $4 million Patriot missiles, that take years to build, are being used to shoot down $35,000 Shahed drones that can be manufactured in months.

So it wouldn’t be surprising if defense-industry interests are playing a significant role in the Trump administration’s refusal to admit that the rules of war have changed — the same way that fossil fuel companies have campaigned against the new realities of energy technology. After all, a deal with drone-savvy Ukrainians would mean less money going to US defense contractors.

While this is speculative, we do know that recognition of the drone revolution in warfare by Trump and his inner circle would require that they abandon their fantasy of macho military power ...

... In military strategy as in energy policy, Trump is betraying America in the service of money and machismo. 

This country will have to grow up, one way or another, whether frying or fried. 

"Can't we all get along?"

Senator Rafael Warnock of Georgia has a new book. I guess that means he's dipping his toe in the water, testing the temperature for a Democratic presidential run in 2028. Good for him -- the more the better, since we probably know clearly what we don't want: that would be Donald Trump, corruption and misrule, and more endless wars. But do we know what do we want? The people who want the job need to make their case.

Warnock sat for a long interview with David Marchese of the New York Times [gift link] which I found full of intriguing tidbits. Marchese's interjections are in bold type. Warnock affirms the traditions from which he comes:

We’ve only been a democracy in a real sense since 1965. What we are witnessing in real time is an assault on those basic voting rights. I think that the Supreme Court has committed violence against the ways in which ordinary people can have a voice in our system. And as someone whose parents lived through that ugly history, I take deep offense....

Warnock's appreciation of democracy leads him to hate gerrymandering which enables politicians to pick their voters rather than the other way round. 

But he's a pastor also; he comes from a broad faith perspective. 

... For me, the acid test of one’s faith is the depth of your commitment to the people who are on the margins. I’m a Matthew 25 Christian.

“What you did unto the least of us, you did unto me.” 

I don’t understand how you read that, say a long prayer, hold hands with your fellow legislators and then cut a trillion dollars out of Medicaid. ...

... Part of the obligation of a person of faith is to ask yourself: “What are you actually worshiping? What are you actually committed to?” Are you committed to the poor? Are you committed to the despised and the rejected? Would Jesus agree with the actions of ICE in this moment, in which we’re seeing organized cruelty on our streets, masked men jumping out of unmarked cars, separating families, terrorizing whole communities of people, whether they’re documented or not, whether they are citizens or not? What is it in the Gospel, I would ask my colleagues, that says that this is right? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. There’s some variation of that in all of the great faith traditions, and that’s the question people aren’t asking themselves deeply enough. Because if you do, you might actually have to make some decisions that make you uncomfortable. 

... One of the animating ideas of your book is that America has lost its way morally. What sort of practical, specific signs are you looking for, or should any of us be looking for, that would make us think America has morally found its way again? What would that look like? Isaiah says that “the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.” As a preacher, I used to think that text meant that the glory of the Lord is so amazing and so overwhelming that all flesh will see it and you can’t help but see it because it’s God’s glory. 

I actually read it in reverse now. The insight that the prophet is laying out for us, whether you’re a person of faith or not, is that there are some things we can only see when we get together. 

On its face, Warnock's prescription here might seem almost laughably weak and inoffensive, a version of "Can't we all get along?" as the spurious quote from police brutality victim Rodney King asks.

But maybe Warnock is on to something about us: maybe what we will want in 2028 is someone who stakes out principled pro-democracy policy positions, but also credibly tries to bring us together. I'm skeptical, But Warnock seems to be exploring such a path ...

If you are looking for a fighter ...

I was born an underdog. 21 surgeries by the age of 12. I had spina bifida caused by my dad's exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam. Was a kid wearing Goodwill handme-downs with the wrong color lunch ticket. I knew nothing would come easy.

But I never doubted my right to the American dream. Sitting in my wheelchair, 9 years old, watching the Olympics, I dreamed of winning gold for my country, too. In 2016, I did just that in with the basketball team in the Paraolympic Games ... [then it he did again four years later.] ...

Josh Turek won his primary last Tuesday to run as a Democrat for the U.S. Senate in Iowa. A state legislator, he's known for campaigning door-to-door in his hilly Council Bluffs district, along with his wheel chair. Watch him in the clip. He won his first contest by 6 votes. Six!! He knows in both body and mind what a tough campaign feels like.

Can an inspiring, hard working Democrat win in Iowa?  It's hard to recall now, but the Senate seat he is contesting was held by Democrat Tom Harkin for 30 years until retirement in 2014. The state followed him with Republican Joni --"we're all are going to die"-- Ernst, but now she's quitting; Turek's run may seem a long-shot, but polls show a good Democratic year in Iowa. The farm economy has taken awful hits from Trump's tariff policies. It seems he might have an opening.

Learn more about Turek's accomplishments here. 

Young women making their own fight

We know that much of MAGA hates women. They want to curtail our freedoms, starting with forced reproduction. They yearn for an imagined lost patriarchy where men were the only bosses and women were content with subservience. Many of them rage against the world that actually is, where young women expect to make their own choices, perhaps alongside a partner, but certainly not under a man's thumb.

Along with Jessica Valenti, Kylie Cheung writes Abortion, Every Day, a tireless chronicle of how right wingers are creating a minefield of barriers, state by state, for adults trying to make their own choices about when and whether to have children. Repression of reproductive freedom didn't start with the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs and it certainly doesn't end there. 

Recently Cheung took a break from reporting the daily details of these horrors to examine what is really happening among young women who are the targets of this coercion. She writes:

The Pink Pill Pipeline Isn’t Working: Conservatives’ tradwife push is losing to feminism. For now. 

... Anti-abortion leaders know their policies are unpopular with young people—certainly with young women who woke up [to the Supreme Court's decision] on June 24, 2022, with fewer rights over their bodies than their mothers and grandmothers.

But despite sweeping declarations of victory from outlets like Fox News, the truth is that this pink pill pipeline isn’t working: Gen Z women are the first feminist majority generation. According to a 2025 Ipsos survey, 53% of Gen Z women identify as feminists—compared with 46% of millennial women, 37% of Gen X women, and 39% of baby boomer women.

We know conservatives have a long-term goal: they’re looking decades into the future, building toward a reality in which women have no options but to marry and have children. They’re priming girls and young women, today, to accept this reality. And while we don’t know what the state of our rights and feminist resistance will look like in a few decades, we do know that right now, this propaganda doesn’t appear to be working on young women. In fact, conservatives’ attacks have activated the next generation—who are now on the frontlines for abortion and reproductive freedom.

The explosion of activism on their own behalf doesn't mean the young women don't suffer constraints that offer women-haters opportunities to try to mess with bodies and minds. 

... Of course, everyone has different experiences with different birth control methods, and our health system has failed many young women as they search for the right method for them. The U.S. economy has certainly failed many young women. Anti-birth control social media content flattens all of these complexities. These posts are solely meant to convince young women that birth control is bad and must be restricted, and marrying and having kids as early as possible is good, and even essential.

Conservatives aren’t interested in improving conditions within the health system or directing us toward real solutions—they’re interested in convincing us to blame feminism.

But it’s feminism that’s helping women see through the lies. [Reproductive rights organizer Stephanie] Spector says that after campaigning for over-the-counter birth control options for years, myths about birth control simply don’t work on her. But she still sees the disinformation everywhere.

Pink pill pipeline content often follows the same recipes and lines of attack: alternative health TikToks questioning the safety and efficacy of hormonal birth control, ‘tradwife’ videos starring young mothers of a whole litter of small children, or, increasingly, celebrity and tabloid stories with predictably misogynistic undertones.

... The right knows exactly what they’re doing: creating cultural support for their repressive, unpopular political agenda. They’re also replicating the success they’ve had with the “manosphere,” which attracts young men first with ‘apolitical’ content about weightlifting and dating. The pink pill pipeline similarly lures young women with seemingly apolitical content—ultimately steering them toward anti-birth control articles from the right-wing billionaire-backed women’s magazine Evie, or Candace Owens’ rants against voting rights. ...

Cheung know where this is going:

... This year, the Heritage Foundation—the architects behind Project 2025—articulated a 250-year plan for the U.S. in which young women will ‘voluntarily’ forgo work and school and pop out an endless flow of babies because there are no other options.

They don’t just want to take away women’s choices—they want to romanticize our oppression. But there’s nothing romantic or empowering about the actual impacts of denying young people options. ...

The whole article is worth reading. 

As we, the largely gray-haired resistance to MAGA, speak out against war and fascism, for democracy and taxing billionaires for the common good, let's never lose sight of the young women fighting for their freedoms.

All together now against MAGA

Immigrants, trans people, and friends gathered outside the San Francisco branch of the California Department of Motor Vehicles Thursday morning to protest plans to turn all of our state data over to a national contractor. The move creates reasonable fear that the Trump regime will use the data to harm people, especially those it is trying to expel or erase from our community.

 Per CalMatters: 

California is preparing to share with an outside organization detailed information about drivers license holders, including immigrants who do not have legal authorization to live in the U.S.

That breaks a promise the state made a decade ago when it began issuing licenses to unauthorized immigrants, advocates say, and it means more than 1 million people may face higher risk of deportation.

California issues an ID card that allows undocumented migrants to drive after they pass a driving test. 

California also protects the rights and privacy of people who have undergone a gender transition, issuing updated ID documents which match the chosen gender presentation. 

Representatives from ... advocacy groups ... told CalMatters the shared information will show whether a person has a Social Security number, meaning it could be used to identify people in the country without authorization. ...  advocates fear that federal immigration officials will try to gain bulk access to the data and use the fact that a person doesn’t have a Social Security number as a signal that they’re deportable.

The state received assurances from the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators that safeguards will be added to prevent bulk searches for unauthorized immigrant license holders in the database and to prevent access by the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to people who joined [a] briefing with the DMV and governor’s office. ... 

“Once this data is uploaded to AAMVA, it’s out of California’s control, no matter what California wants, no matter what protests we may make,” said Ed Hasbrouck with San Francisco civil liberties group The Identity Project ...

 

Meanwhile trans people are all too aware of the threat from the administration to their very existence. So far, California has been a relatively safe place for trans adults -- but anyone who is paying attention understands that MAGA wants to end that.

This is about protecting the integrity of the diverse and welcoming California we have chosen to become ...

He's nuts and senile ...

 

Also preposterous. Let's say it out loud. I bet he aced kindergarten. Subsequently, not so much.

California picks a governor. The return of the gray?

I had thought I might wake up this morning and find myself miserable over the election results in California. But to my surprise, I look at what happened and it seems pretty good. Nothing to get excited about, but no reason to despair of the Golden State either.

The Governor's race: As I've written before, Californians have been spoiled for the last 16 years to have had energetic, intelligent and highly plausible Democratic governors. Yes, there have been multiple occasions on which I disagreed with and even protested Brown and especially Newsom, but they knew a lot about how the state works and tried to accomplish policy wins for their constituents. 

The title of this post refers to their Democratic predecessor Gray Davis who was recalled and replaced in the interesting Arnold Schwarzenegger interlude. Gray was indeed gray; I actually sat at a table with him once at some political dinner and the man had the charisma of a paper napkin. Brown and Newsom came along and set a new standard for high-octane Democratic leaders.

Then, this year, we looked to lurch from these two very qualified pros to a choice from a small bevy of Dems, all except one of whom had little experience in state government. This was jarring; this state is huge and rich and influential and also sometimes needy and fractious. Whoever got to be Governor was going to face a major learning curve.

From a doing-the-job perspective, Katie Porter seemed the best prepared; she understands government as policy and was my choice. But the California electorate quickly decided it wasn't up for an abrasive fat women; that's a reach too far apparently. Congressman Eric Swalwell imploded; lesson to ambitious guys, learn to curb your hormones. 

So for many Democrats, the election came down to which gray candidate could win enough votes to be sure to make the November ballot because, theoretically, if two Republican candidates got the most votes, the splintered Dems would not have a candidate at all. This seemed unlikely, but the horror of the prospect raised the sense of stakes as Primary Day approached. 

We were left with progressive billionaire Tom Steyer and Democratic political fixture Xavier Becerra, a former state legislator, state attorney general and head of Biden's Health and Human Services. And they battled it out. Because neither personally excited much excitement, online the campaign sometimes seemed to exemplify "the narcissism of small differences," the tendency in the heat of conflict to exacerbate minor conflicts in order to draw distinctions which we give excessive weight. I had friends in both camps and I hope they can come together in the aftermath. For a minute there, they were at each other's throats.

It worked out that Steyer's money couldn't overcome Becerra's comforting grayness. Democratic political consultant Gary South identified Steyer's fatal flaw: 

“It may sound facetious to say that you can have too much money in a campaign, but in fact the way these rich self-financing candidates spend their money becomes a liability. …They wear out their welcome.”

L.A. Times political pundit George Skelton catches our former Attorney General's appeal to many:

“Voters are exhausted by Trump. He makes it hard to sleep at night. ‘Cool and calm’ win,” says Chapman University political science professor Fred Smoller. “People want a candidate like a no-drama Becerra.

“The fact he has a charisma deficit may in fact be his political asset.”

But Becerra also has other assets, notes UC San Diego political science professor Thad Kousser — ”legislative and executive experience…. He was safe and predictable.

“And he’s second only to Gavin Newsom in opposing Donald Trump.” 

Besides -- isn't it about time we elected a Latino governor? Seems right. 

We count on Becerra to defeat the surviving Republican in the fall. Party identification plus disgust with Trump ought to do the trick in this blue state. And then we'll come to terms with our latest gray governor.

 • • •

Meanwhile in San Francisco: As well, I have reason to be happy this morning because in my home Congressional district where Nancy Pelosi is finally retiring, a billionaire tech-bro carpetbagger, Saikat Chakrabarti, got handed his walking papers -- driven off the ballot by a hard working Taiwanese immigrant, local Supervisor, Connie Chan. Chan now runs, from behind, against another local fixture, centrist gay policy wonk Scott Wiener. This one is a real San Francisco barn burner replete with scrambled coalitions; at least we haven't sunk so low that our representation in Congress was available to the highest bidder. On to November.

Primary day in CA

Not much here. Voting has been slow at polling sites. After all, eligible Californians received ballots by mail and have multiple options to turn them in. 

Spent the day piloting an election protection scheme, on standby for disruption that wasn't going to happen today. But come November, might it?

Two very quiet polling sites. 

Bibi boasts over Beaufort

Mainstream media have been sharing the news that Israeli forces have seized Beaufort Castle, a Crusader-era high point and fortification on the southern border of Lebanon in a region which is home turf to Israel's foe, Hezbollah. 

The Israelis seem very proud of this conquest, though in modern terms, the ancient "castle" is just some rock piles. Here's the story from Le Monde: 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to push deeper into Lebanon after his military took over the medieval castle of Beaufort on Sunday, May 31, calling it a "dramatic shift" in Israel's campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The Iran-backed militant group, meanwhile, said it targeted Israeli forces near the fortress as well as army positions and infrastructure in Shlomi and Nahariya in northern Israel, while air raid sirens blared in the Acre area. Israeli forces used the Beaufort castle, also known as Qalaat al-Chakif, as a base during their previous two-decade occupation of southern Lebanon that ended in 2000.

"We have returned united, determined and stronger than ever," Netanyahu said in a video statement released after the military took Beaufort. "Now my directive is to deepen and expand our hold in places that were under Hezbollah's control. The capture of Beaufort is a dramatic stage and a dramatic shift in the policy we are leading."

Erudite Partner and I had the chance, thanks to a Lebanese friend, to walk about this eerie spot in 2006, just weeks before that year's Israeli assault on the proud and battered country.

The yellow banner of Hezbollah flew defiantly from the castle's pinnacle then. We didn't see any fighters, though there were rumors that they had tunneled somewhere underneath.

Looking south, across the deep ravine cut by the Litani River, we were looking into Israel where a neat modern settlement had been built.

 

Looking the other way, we could see the Lebanese village of Arnoun. It appeared prosperous in its own way that spring, but very much an organic growth on the hillside, not any kind of planned community.

The contrast between the two towns seemed to exemplify two civilizations. Meanwhile the Crusader castle endured, in between. 

 

I wonder if Beaufort will survive its latest occupants. 

 

I am quite certain that the adjoining Lebanese village is by now destroyed and depopulated. Poor Lebanon, fated to try to survive next to its belligerent neighbor.