Irish Examiner view: US ought to react calmly to unrest

Having already sworn to help those under fire from Iranian security services, US president Donald Trump now has to weigh up the effectiveness of any military action he may take, against the potential for human carnage. Picture: Evan Vucci/AP

At a time of unprecedented danger for Iran’s 92m citizens, the reaction of US president Donald Trump to the Iranian government’s crackdown on protestors across the country will come under the microscope.

Having already sworn to help those under fire from Iranian security services, Trump now has to weigh up the effectiveness of any military action he may take, against the potential for human carnage.

As the bodies mount in Tehran and other Iranian cities after further unrest in recent days, the severe crackdown by government authorities has seen verified reports emerging of protestor deaths and corpses in body bags lined up outside hospitals. Despite an almost total internet blackout and draconian limits placed on phone communications across the country, a picture is emerging of growing casualties and little sign that the government is in any way relenting in violently quelling the increasing disorder.

While Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian had initially struck a conciliatory tone when saying he was working to address protestors’ anger about the state of the economy, by the weekend he had vowed not to allow “rioters destabilise the country”. The reaction from Washington that Mr Trump was looking closely at the situation and evaluating military options indicated that he felt Iran’s leadership had crossed a red line.

Protests have been ongoing since December 28 and while they initially focussed on the collapse in value of Iran’s currency, protestors’ focus quickly turned to demanding the overthrow of the country’s authoritarian clerical leaders who have tried to blame the unrest on the US and Israel.

While Iran has been weakened by the 12-day air war inflicted on it by Israel and America and the neutralisation of its Palestinian proxies Hamas and Hezbollah, Trump and his advisers now have to try to ascertain how risky and costly any intervention might be, and what exactly could be gained.

It would appear that rather than creating an arc of instability in Iran, the US would be better served by sitting down and talking rather than taking direct military action.

Sadly, pleas for commonsense are likely to fall on deaf ears in an Oval Office emboldened by its military intervention in Venezuela.

Time to take action against X

As governments, educationalists, and parents weigh up how to contain the potential damage threatened by the “nudified” images people are able to create by using the Grok AI system, it seems the platforms are probably not prosecutable under existing child abuse legislation.

While experts in the field of child abuse material maintain that, ‘law or no law’, there is no reason for a tool such as that on Grok to exist, the fact is that it does and the artificial intelligence chatbot allows people to alter images of others, including children, by removing their clothing.

This has further led to accusations that the social media site X, where Grok is to be found, is enabling child sex abuse material and non-consensual intimate images to be produced on an industrial scale.

After calls for the Elon Musk-owned platform to be investigated by An Garda Síochána and other police forces across Europe, claims from the billionaire that governments are trying to suppress free speech ring a little hollow, given that thousands of women have had their rights grievously infringed by users of the AI tool using it to create these images.

Britain is already looking seriously at barring access to X as a result of this activity. This is a positive and welcome move which should perhaps be considered by our own administration.

As it is, the authorities, while acutely aware of the problems being created by this technology, seem paralysed when it comes to doing anything about it.

And while the gardaí and educationalists are racing to grasp exactly what they can do about the situation, it appears it is being left once again to individual parents to police what their children are accessing on social media websites and their AI chatbots.

This is plainly unfair and unacceptable and the authorities need to address it as a matter of urgency.

ICE undermining US public’s trust

The doubling-down by US authorities that the killing in Minneapolis of Renee Nicole Good last week was justified in some shape or form has raised many worrying questions about the dispensing of justice in Democrat-led cities

That the White House has blocked Minnesota officials from further investigating the killing, saying local investigators could not be trusted to conduct a fair inquiry, is chilling enough, but US vice president JD Vance’s assertion that federal agents had “absolute immunity” from prosecution set alarm bells ringing.

It is bad enough that the forces of law were imposed on cities that are unfriendly to and unsupportive of the current
administration in Washington, but when the leaders of that administration are prepared to gaslight the public about the intentions of an obviously innocent woman, it reeks of a failure to contain the forces they have unleashed.

For Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem to claim that Ms Good had “weaponised” her vehicle to threaten an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, who was thus justified in shooting and killing her, is a remarkable contrast to the reaction to such incidents by any previous administration.

Previously there would have been calls for calm in such circumstances, but the unanimous reaction from officialdom that Ms Good was the only person in the wrong in this incident, suggests that the FBI is unwilling to fully scrutinise the actions of the agent who killed an unarmed woman.

It is little wonder that trust in public institutions in the US is being eroded so significantly and that citizens now believe their rights are being trampled upon.

What's your view on this issue?

You can tell us here