The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - What is Netanyahu's End Game?

Episode Date: May 26, 2025

His grip on Israel continues, despite long-time external allies beginning to show distance because of the death and destruction in Gaza.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Monday and that means Dr. Janet Stein. She's back, back from her recent trip overseas, especially a number of days in Saudi Arabia, which she's going to talk about, but she's also going to talk about and our focus today will be on the deteriorating situation in Israel with Hamas. Um, we'll get to that in a moment.

First of all, as we always do on Mondays, we'll give you a heads up on what the question of the week is so you can prepare your answers for Thursday's your turn. You have to have them in by noon Wednesday, noon Eastern time on Wednesday to the Mansbridge podcast, gmail.com, the Mansbridge podcast, at gmail.com. Keep it under 75 words. Make sure you include your name and the location you're writing from. Here's the question. The question is, what's your take on the post office? We know the situation. We've seen it a couple of times this year already with the labor situation, but whenever it comes up, it begs the question, what do we want from our post office? Right? At a time where everything's changed. You know, the post office hasn't made money since, Everything's changed. The post office hasn't made money since, I think it was 2017. Everything's changed.

I mean, how often do you write a letter? Some of you have probably never written a letter. It's all been internet. It's all been emails. So what do you use the post office for? What are your great memories about the post office? Some of us have been around for a while and we remember how important the post office used to be. Is it still important to you? Want to

hear your answers on that. The post office, what to do with it? Remember 75 words or less, so pick a lane. It's pretty wide open. You can go in any direction in terms of your feelings about the post office. Once again, I'm over in the UK right now and the post office is like a, well, it's a royal institution. It's the Royal Mail. It makes money here, not a lot, but it makes money and it also delivers six days a week. You see the little Royal Mail trucks all over the place where I am in rural Scotland. But there's a certain attachment to the mail. It hasn't gone without controversy and

consequence as a result of those controversies. But nevertheless, the Royal Mail means something to those who live in the United Kingdom. What does it mean to you in Canada? The post office, Canada Post, that's our question of this week. All right, let's get to Dr. Janis Steinin, Monskul University of Toronto. Great in terms of foreign affairs, analyzing issues. She's a conflict negotiator. She's sought out by governments and organizations literally around the world. She just came off a big trip to the UK, to Abu Dhabi and to Saudi Arabia.

So her reflections on the Saudi thing are really interesting, but that's not where we're gonna start. So here's our conversation for this week with Dr. Janice Stein. Well, Janice, it's good to have you back, but let me start before, I wanna go back and talk about your, your trip to Saudi Arabia, especially, but before we get there, um, we've talked about Israel and Hamas since October 7th, 2023.

It seems to me today's discussion is different than anything we've had before, because it seems like a very, very different situation right now. How do you look at it? I agree Peter, look, 600 days of this war. If you had asked me on October the 10th or November the 10th whether this war would go for 600 days, I would certainly not have expected that in the main way. So the big question is why? And I think part of what we've seen over the last 10 days is a part of the answer, which is it is this prime minister, Netanyahu,

and his coalition politics that have prolonged this war over and over. Look, what have we seen? Big change. We've seen Donald Trump effectively cut Netanyahu out of all the action. So if you, if you think of a strategic defeat for Israel, it is to have disrupted its relationship with its most important political supporter, its most important military supporter, and have this president, that Netanyahu, hung on for thinking this was going to be,

you know, license for him to pursue his agenda. We are what now over five, almost five months, not quite into this presidency. And Netanyahu goes to Saudi Arabia, says to the Saudis in the middle of everything else he was doing there, says to the Saudis in the middle of everything else he was doing there, says to the Saudis, you know, normalization with Israel in your own time. Well.

And this was one of the things that in some ways sparked the whole Israel-Hamas. Was Israel's, or excuse me, Saudi Arabia's cozying up to Israel? Yeah, and we know that now, Peter, and how do we know? Because there are intelligence documents that have been captured from Gaza during the battle, which have been analyzed. And this is clear was one of the most important triggering factors for Yaya Senor.

That's the prospect that Saudi Arabia, that they would extend the Abraham Accords, and that Saudi Arabia would normalize its relationship with Israel. That's what finally pushed him to disrupt the status quo. And that's, by the way, not a new pattern. Throughout this whole conflict, every time you inch closer

to any sort of political resolution, there's an enormous incentive by somebody always to disrupt. The irony of Trump having a falling out with Netanyahu, if it's real and it appears to be real, but I'll still put the qualifier in there. The irony is that in the last six months of the Biden administration, Biden was clearly had had it with Netanyahu and Trump, meanwhile running for office was saying, you can't cut them loose, you can't do this,

we would never do this. And now he seems to be doing the same thing. In many ways, more so than Biden ever did. Biden actually engaged with, harangued, pushed, pressed, but didn't, and that's what his critics wanted him to do, was to simply make it clear publicly that he was distancing himself from Israel.

He refused to do that. It took Netanyahu, it took Trump four months to effectively say, first of all, end the war. He's told that to Netanyiel over and over in this messy war openly Secondly People are starving in Gaza And these are his words people are starving they're hungry that's not okay. We need to fix that

Well, you can't be more direct than that That's not okay. We need to fix that. Well, you can't be more direct than that. And then on the two biggest issues that Netanyahu thought he would have, Trump's support. First the Ibrahim accords. That's Trump's deal. He did it during his first term. It was invented by him, branded by Trump

as his greatest diplomatic success. Effectively, as we've just discussed, said to the Saudis, that's okay. I understand your position, which is there has to be a political pathway for Palestinians and for Palestine. That's okay. Do it in your own time if you do it at all.

So he has taken the pressure off Saudi Arabia to go any further. And then the even bigger break, and this I think in many ways is the most galling for Netanyahu, he's open negotiations with Iran for a new nuclear deal, which Netanyahu in his strategic wisdom has always said is the biggest strategic threat to Israel because Iran is so close to having a capacity to build a nuclear weapon.

To build the bomb, not to delivery and nothing at all has to be tested, but that literally that first piece, they have enough uranium to build three or four, enriched uranium to build three or four. That has been Netanyahu's biggest strategic view. You might remember, some of our listeners remember, his coming to Congress, opposing a Democratic president, coming to Congress with invitations from Republican senators and putting up that famous chart

and using his pointer about the speed with which Iran was enriching Iran. And if there's one thing that N'Yahu has said more than once is that he would not let that happen. No matter what other countries said or did, he would not let it happen. Yeah. And so that's why, you know, all eyes and ears are on what he may or may not do in the in the near term. You know, I have to say, Peter, everybody's watching that. There's an enormous amount of chatter out there, and it's very difficult to separate the chatter. But this is receiving attention, and everybody is on heightened

alert. And the really it's gonna come down to monitoring those negotiations between the United States and Iran. Steve Witkoff left, Trump's personal negotiator left the last meeting early. There was an explosion of speculation based just on that. That's how tense the atmosphere is now, between among the three, among the United States, among Iran and Israel,

because it's clear that Trump does not want Netanyahu to go. Okay. Meanwhile, in Gaza, the situation just keeps getting worse and the stories are horrific. Over the weekend, Ehud Barak, who is a former prime minister of Israel, no fan of Netanyahu, who never has been, wrote a piece for the Financial Times. wrote a piece for the Financial Times. And it's quite devastating in a number of things. I wanna read a couple of the excerpts from it. Here's the first one and get you to,

and it's really is opening lines in this piece. Almost 20 months after the massacre of October 7th, 2023, Israel faces a fateful choice, reach a deal to bring all hostages home and end the war or launch a full scale assault on Gaza in pursuit of the mirage of total victory over Hamas. In other words, we certainly know which one he favors. It's not the latter. It's the former and he sees the latter as a total mirage. Any chance of having a total victory over Elmas? He's right.

He's, I mean, let's just stop there for a second, Peter. He's absolutely right. And the fundamental criticism of Netanyahu literally for the last year, if not longer, so what's the strategy? What's the end game? What's the strategy? And Baruch actually cites Kluzowicz in the article, he worries just politics by other means.

You have to have a political end game. And what Netanyahu has done is repeatedly refused to discuss what people call and post the day after. Who's going to govern Gaza? No, no, he says not the Palestinian Authority. No, no, that can't be it because they support attacks against Israel. An independent group of technocrats? Well, how's that going to happen? because they support attacks against Israel. An independent group of technocrats, well, how's that gonna happen?

So he's effectively refused to invest any serious effort to craft a political strategy. Well, how do you have a military, how do you have a strategic defeat of Hamas, which is both a military and a political group, if you don't have a political alternative? It makes no sense. And this has been the internal criticism inside Israel. So Baruch is not speaking only for himself. He also makes this point, which extends off of what you're suggesting. He talks about how a deal would unquestionably benefit Israel and lists the ways it would

benefit Israel. But then he goes on to say this, for Netanyahu, however, this path is perilous. It threatens his far-right coalition. It opens the door to renewed calls for a commission of inquiry into October 7th and could accelerate his long-stalled corruption trial. More than 70% of Israelis hold him responsible for the October failure, and more than half think he acts based on personal, not national interests. A deal could mark the end of his long tenure.

Well, we've said that before, but I mean, he makes it pretty glaring that he's in it for himself. He's in it to cut a deal, to prevent certain things from happening, not anything else. Well, you know, you can get in his head, frankly, but let's just look at the facts. All right. He he's an ultra right coalition with two parties in there that have made it clear that if there's any

negotiation over Gaza or any stops to the war, they're out of the government. His government falls. The, you know, there are polls in Israel, just like there are polls in any other country. His coalition loses. It's unambiguous now. You know, there was a period right after the war

whenever we had been a devastating defeat. He clawed his way back in the polls in the late summer and fall when the RDF was able to dismantle fundamentally his beloveds and military force. And then when the government in Syria fell, the public said, well, maybe there's a strategic purpose here. That's now gone again, and it's absolutely clear that his coalition could not form a government if an election were held today.

Well, once he is no longer prime minister, he is subject to the three corruption trials that have been dragging along in Israel all this time. That's number one. Number two, it is frankly unimaginable that there will not be a commission of inquiry. And what does that really mean? Not by somebody who's appointed by him. But the tradition is that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court appoints the justice that leads the inquiry. He's refused. He's refused all this time.

And the third piece of this story is every general and head of the intelligence services, with one exception, who had leading roles on October 7th is gone. Everyone. They've all accepted responsibility for the failure and they've resigned. Netanyahu has not and he has not accepted responsibility. Well, if you put those three facts together, I would agree with Ehud Barak that it is his political, it's his political survival and his personal interests that are driving the whole strategy now. And nobody can get in the way of this. I mean, there is opposition right now, two sources.

I mean, and we know this, because that country leaks. So the senior generals are the ones who brought repeatedly to Netanyahu's attention that aid must go into Gaza. So just think about the irony of this. The Israeli military is pushing hardest for resumption of aid against his prime minister. So he was dragged to it by his own generals. And a lot of the senior IDF

generals want the war stopped. Now they agree with Barack. Barack is a former general. He's a former chief of the Israeli military. They agree with him. Can you explain to me how, I mean, I understand the coalition that exists and how the right-wing parties are propping him up. I get that. And I understand what their agenda is, but where it puzzles me is how he commands such loyalty within his own caucus. Did they all feel the same way here? That's, I think, you know, the most important

and the toughest question, because obviously those small, extremist right-wing parties, extremist right wing parties, once this government is gone, I don't think there's a way back for them ever, or at least forever, you know, you never say never, but certainly not in the foreseeable future, there's no way back for them.

So this really hinges on his own party supporting him. And why aren't there, This really hinges on his own party supporting him. And why aren't there, do they now have an eight seat? Because one of the other smaller parties joined, eight or nine seat majority in this parliament. You know, 10 members of his own party would have to defect. What's it gonna take is I think the right question to push 10 of those members to cross the aisles and say the strategic damage that's being done to this country is so

great that we don't have an alternative anymore. But you know, Peter, we asked the same question, but Republicans in Congress. Right. Right? When you watch what's going on, I mean, I ask, what's it gonna take their same Republicans in Congress to have them vote against this president

on a piece of legislation which is less drastic than crossing the floor and bringing down the government. And I'm continuously astonished that they don't do it. And the other thing that happened in the last two weeks to try and put more pressure on Netanyahu to at least move significant aid into Gaza and to stop the fighting. It came from Carney, Stammer and Macron, Canada, the UK and France. All that seems to have done is really upset Netanyahu who was crapping all over the three of them. That was a tough statement. who was crapping all over the three of them. That was a tough statement. That was a tough statement.

Probably tougher than anything we've seen from allied governments to Israel. Absolutely. Absolutely. It was a really deeply critical statement and it was over this issue of aid, but it went further. It threatened sanctions without making it explicit

who these sanctions would be against. And there's a wide variety of possibilities, but it was a really tough statement, unprecedented from these three governments. But? Well, you know, I would have said- I mean, what would it do other than be tough?

And I mean, the EU is sounding like it could be about to say something tough like that as well. But yeah, I would have said three or four months ago, the only person that Donald Trump and the time I met on Yahoo listens to is Donald Trump, but he's not, but even there, right? He's resisted the pressure, which shows you how dug in he is. And I don't believe he's dug in to the strategy. He's dug in to doing enough to present his to prevent his government from falling. That's what this is.

to prevent his government from falling. That's what this is. And outsiders just don't have the leverage. Now, ultimately the United States does have a leverage. There's no question about it. They supply military equipment and assistance, which is absolutely essential for the Israeli army. They need it and they do have the leverage if they want to use it. Okay, last point on Israel. There was a piece in New York Times this weekend

that you pointed out. Tell me why it's important and what impact is it going to have? Well, you're going to have to tell me, Peter, but you're going to have to. So I don't take too long in answering this question because it's a really, it's a fascinating piece. Let's do the Israel part very quickly, but then talk about why it's more important for everybody. This is a story of a former CIA official who was involved in great credentials, involved with Iran contract under Ronald Reagan, moved on from Afghanistan. And Philip Riley, who was the nucleus of a group that began to meet in Israel in 2004, really asking the question, what do we do about the humanitarian aid problem? There is no question that the aid was in part being siphoned off by Hamas and then resold into the black market

and that that was providing needed financing. This is not a problem that's unique to Hamas. I mean, people who work around the world in conflict situations know this as a pattern, that there were militias who are able to control and it all comes on the distribution side, right? So the trucks pull up to the border, then there's, there's grafts, there's corruption, certain part, certain chunks get offloaded from the trucks and go in a different direction than it should be. And siphoning off aid is big business all around the world. So what's the answer here?

Okay, stand up private security contractors. And the leaders who are working on this are all former techies in the technology sector, which shows you where the conversation is going. Stand up something called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Our listeners might have seen that name over the last several weeks.

Establish entry points in the south of Gaza, which the Israeli military now controls, and set up distribution centers. So you bypass Hamas entirely, and you are able to distribute the aid. Now, outcry, outcry of opposition. And you might hear a little bit of sarcasm in my voice here, coming first, of course, from the UN,

because they're entirely bypassed. But the UN couldn't do anything, because it's neutral, and it's never armed. And it has a great deal of difficulty in dealing with with militias, not only in Gaza, but in parts of Africa. And this is a common pattern when there's intense civil conflict, absolutely post. The argument it makes is this is gonna force displacement of Palestinians because those four,

the four first sites, and we may see this happen in the next week or two, because they're going to start it up. The four first sites are all in southern Gaza. What happens to people in the north? They have to walk through the Israeli military in order to access the aid. And that is a legitimate and important concern. There is now a Swiss government investigation into this prompted by a Swiss NGO. Why is this such an important story?

First of all, it's important. It's a matter of life and death for Gazans, frankly. That there be a way for Gazans to receive the humanitarian assistance that they desperately need. This is the most dire situation for gassets that we've seen, but there's a bigger story here. You know, the United States provided 40% of global aid

and the infrastructure for USAID is gone. It's dismantled by another group of Czech brothers who are in Washington, Elon Musk and Doge. What's the new aid infrastructure going to look like? Is it going to be the UN and non-governmental organizations? Are we going to rebuild what we've had in the past with all the flaws? Or are we moving to something entirely different? That looks it's not neutral. You hire private security contractors. We saw that in Somalia. We've seen it in Sudan, frankly. This is the

beginning of an entirely new approach to delivery of aid. Now we don't get a thousand outraged letters based on what I've just said. I will be amazed because this is the holy grail. Aid is neutral. It's nonpartisan. It's delivered by the UN or NGOs. That's the model we built after 45. It's not only in Gaza that it's not working, Peter. This is also so depressing. Just like you keep waiting week after week that something's going to happen to that. There's going to be a glimmer of hope. There's an array of sunshine, that there's a way out of this. And yet we never seem to see it. You know, this is a 130 year old conflict, right? Let's just move. And you know, think about the Irish

and the English, how long that took. And these conflicts tend to be worst among very close neighbors, you know, populations who live in close proximity to each other, because everything is at stake for everybody. The nature of that Hamas attack blew the lid off this one, frankly. It just did. It's so interesting, really, when you think about it, because it almost, if it was designed, it was designed to permanently infuriate and provoke an extreme response. You know, when you rape women at the start of a battle like that, it's just entirely predictable what the male population is going to do in response.

You know, if children are the immediate targets, not the byproduct, but the immediate target, you know what the adults are going to do. We know this from history over and over and over. this from history over and over and over. And yet, and how could that have served Seymour's purpose to provoke a response of this order of magnitude? It's more than 50,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza, leveled, no food. He himself and his brother, apparently both dead. How, you know, I've struggled to understand what scenario he could have had in his, that he would have allowed that kind of ill discipline among those 3,000, you know, Hamas fighters who crossed the border, or 2,000, and then civilians streamed in behind them.

You know, I realize the 130-year history of this. What I get baffled by is how even today it can become the personalities of the leaders of today that instill the desperation and the horror of what we're witnessing on both sides here. Oh yeah. If it weren't for Seymour and Netanyahu, we would not have this story. There's no question. And I'm not drawing any equivalence between the two.

Let me anticipate. I am not. But it is, I think, accurate to say that without that attack crafted by Seymour and the way he did, we would not have had this response. And Ehud Barak's article is representative of the fact that the overwhelming number of senior generals in the Israeli military disagreed deeply and fundamentally with the strategy that Netanyahu is pursuing. So individuals matter hugely in history, hugely.

I mean, I would venture to say, Peter, would we have the kind of trade policy that the United States is pursuing against its closest allies without Donald Trump being there? It's inconceivable. That's why politics matters. That's why you and I care about it. Right.

Okay. You're right, we all get letters. Oh yeah. That is what we get. Okay, we're gonna take a break. We'll come back and we'll move off this topic. And not that far away actually, but I want to get your reflections on your visit to Saudi Arabia.

And we'll do that right after this. And welcome back. Welcome to Monday and our regular conversation with Dr. Janice Stein from the Munk School at the University of Toronto. We missed Janice last week because she was overseas on a fairly extensive series of visits to a number of different countries, one of which was Saudi Arabia, where she spent a few days. At the same time that Donald Trump was there, as a matter of fact. Yes.

So, tell me about Saudi Arabia today. What struck you during that visit? Two really strong and in many ways surprising impressions, Peter, because I had been before and I was really struck. First, what's happening to women in Saudi Arabia is amazing. It is the only thing I can say. It is not that women are driving cars or that they don't need their guardian's permission to go outside.

I spent a ton of my time meeting with leaders in Saudi Arabia who are responsible for their country's artificial intelligence strategy. So this is the heart of the scientific enterprise, the business enterprise and the commercial enterprise. You know, you do that in Canada. There's not an overwhelming number of women in this field. Certainly there are women, but they're not a lot. There wasn't a single room I walked into

that didn't have one or two women at the table. Some fully veiled, wearing a knee cap, and the meeting that stays in my mind and was the senior Saudi chef, who also was dressed in traditional clothes starts the meeting and then says I'm gonna hand this over to my colleague and turns to her and she runs the meeting. Now that's not tokenism. We've moved beyond tokenism, 40% of the workforce in Saudi Arabia are now women. And they look different than they, you know, they dress differently than they do next door in Abu Dhabi

or in Dubai, that's certainly true. But this is an astonishingly rapid social change, five years under Mohammed bin Salman that has made this possible. It's astonishing. Okay, but tell me what it really means. What is the end product or what is the product so far? I mean, let's not forget bin Salman who's, you know, there's a history there. And it's not pretty. Oh yeah, I mean, if somebody said, well, aren't they still imprisoning people for their political views?

And the answer is, yes, they are. Do they still execute people? Yes, they do. And you certainly can overlook that. But what does it mean when you have a workforce that is 40% women, social change happens. There's no turning the clock back after that, frankly. Families start to become smaller as soon as women move into the workforce. All the social changes that we've seen

in the last 25 or 30 years in our own societies, it's just a matter of time once you cross that kind of threshold with women working. So Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia is on the move is what I would say. It's on the move socially, it's on the move economically, because that's the second big surprise, right? I want to talk about AI, because that's one of the things that we are doing. And Canada, you know, we're chairing the G7

very shortly in two weeks, that Canada ask us, and that's one of the themes that will be on the G7 agenda. Well they have it together the Saudis. Now it's easier to have it together under an authoritarian leader who is saying get this done, get this done, get this done. But how do they have it together? Firstly, they have an elaborated plan with measures and targets. Education about AI starts in grade three

and goes right through 12. And they're measuring what they're doing. Well, as soon as you make, as I said, your population literate in that way. The second thing is they are funding research and universities in they are doing the opposite of Donald Trump. Let me put it that way. Despite the fact that I was that he was there, the Saudi strategy is the reverse. Invest in science, invest in universities,

invest in research with a focus on advanced technologies because he, Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince, understands he has to transform the Saudi economy. He has to get it off fossil fuels. It's a wasting asset. And the third thing, and they've got this trifecta, they're investing in people, they're investing in science and they have cheap energy, which is the really important requirement for the next wave of artificial intelligence because it consumes so much electricity.

When Donald Trump came, the least noticed part of that visit because of all the gold that was everywhere. And you know, they played to his ego. It is really astonishing. But the least not part of that visit, she authorized the release, the sale of the most advanced intelligence chips, those Nvidia chips, they will go to Saudi Arabia and to Abu Dhabi next door. They have all the

ingredients to become an AI superpower. I think they stand as good a chance as any society to make it. Where do we fit into this picture? Well, where's the focus? Um, number one, we need to do much better on education and it's not at universities, it's before, as they're doing. Where's the investment in, you know, we have a new government in Canada and the prime minister has spoken about how important

this is, but as you know, education is a provincial responsibility in this country. So we have divided jurisdictions. They don't have that problem. Something's in the way, he moves it aside. They are more focused and faster moving than we are. Although we also have the ingredients, if you think about it. Sure. We have an educated workforce. We have a really excellent system of higher education and we have cheap energy. We have, it's not cheap,

we have accessible energy and abundance of it in a way that even the United States doesn't have. And we have mineral wealth. And we have mineral wealth. And solutions to some of the electrical problems that AI faces. Yeah, yeah. So I can, in my head, as I was listening to all this,

and we are gonna do some partnerships with some of the advanced institutions, but in my head I thought, where are we? How do we compare? Right, well, we're democratic, thank goodness. They have an authoritarian leader who imprisons people for their political views and executes. We don't, thank goodness.

But we have to do better on the focus than we are. The, you know, the Gulf, there are two, there are two countries, everybody needs to keep their eye on Saudi Arabia Next door Abu Dhabi benevolent authoritarian So much more fun better food More relaxed you speak your mind

But they're moving too There are parts of the world that are that understand that are truly 21st century at this point. And I have to wrap it up for today. That's quite the conversation between the first half and the second half. And it's all emanating from the same part of the world. It is.

It's very interesting, that friend. It's good to have you back. And we'll talk again in a week. Thanks, Janice. See you in a week, Peter. Dr. Janice Stein from the Munk School, the University of Toronto. She is such a gift. We're lucky that she spends her Mondays with us because she makes us think. As we've often said, don't always agree with her, but she makes us think. And there's a lot to think about these days isn't there? Okay quick look ahead to the rest of the week. Tomorrow butts conversation number 21 timely you know the King gives the throne speech tomorrow and in that room

will be a lot of new MPs a lot of old MPs some new cabinet ministers some old cabinet ministers and some cabinet ministers who are no longer cabinet ministers. So the Moore-Butts conversation number 21 is all about how do you hit the ground running after an election campaign, especially one like that. Especially if you're new, what should you know about what you're getting yourself into?

That's tomorrow, Moore- Buts conversation number 21. Always a treat to hear them. And a reminder about the question of the week. For Thursday's your turn. The question is, what do you think about the post office? What would you do about the post office? What would you do with the post office? Doesn't make any money anymore, at least not right now, and the forecast's are it's gonna lose a lot more.

So there's that, but there are your memories of the post office. What could the post office do to justify itself these days? Let me know. 75 words or less. Answers in by noon Eastern time on Wednesday. Your name and the location you're writing from are very important. Make sure you add those. Alrighty.

The Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. That's where you write. Wednesday's Encore, Thursday is your turn and the Random Ranter of course and Friday will be Good Talk with Rob Russo and Chantelle Baer. Glad to have you with us once again this week. I'm Peter Mansbridge.

Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again In a mere 24 hours or less