We need to be honest about Iran – and how our rampant greed for oil is causing mayhem

Oil has empowered capitalism, and some of the world’s most exploitative regimes. Move away from it and we can solve some of the key issues we face George Monbiot Irealise this is a serious breach of etiquette. But could we perhaps abandon good manners and contextualise Donald Trump’s attack on Iran? The intense western interest in… Read More We need to be honest about Iran – and how our rampant greed for oil is causing mayhem

The Tides have Turned

The US-Israel war on Iran marks the decline of the Modi era. These years have shown, at immense cost, what happens when a leader confuses personal brand-building with nation-building. Sushant Singh THE US-ISRAEL WAR ON Iran has exposed, across the board, the limits of state capacity and the hollowness of carefully crafted images. Amid this escalating… Read More The Tides have Turned

Vietnam, Afghanistan and the 2026 Iran meat grinder: Why owning the sky is a death trap – and how this war will end an Empire

You can own the roof, but the guy in the basement has the shotgun, and the house is made of solid rock. by Mark A. Shryock – Copyright © Mark A. Shryock The history of modern warfare is defined by a persistent, expensive, and often fatal misunderstanding: the belief that controlling the sky is equivalent… Read More Vietnam, Afghanistan and the 2026 Iran meat grinder: Why owning the sky is a death trap – and how this war will end an Empire

AI got the blame for the Iran school bombing. The truth is far more worrying

LLMs-gone-rogue dominated coverage, but had nothing to do with the targeting. Instead, it was choices made by human beings, over many years, that gave us this atrocity By Kevin T Baker On the first morning of Operation Epic Fury, 28 February 2026, American forces struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school in Minab, in southern Iran, hitting the… Read More AI got the blame for the Iran school bombing. The truth is far more worrying

A grey silence

Governments that mutely line up behind the US as it prosecutes a sinister, illegal war that threatens to destroy their citizens’ ability to cook and eat aren’t rational actors, they are lemmings… Narendra Modi and his partymen are attracted to Israel’s fanatical, anti-Muslim Zionism because it has achieved the disenfranchisement and apartheid that Hindutva aspires… Read More A grey silence

Tearing up the map

NB: ‘Lebensraum’ as national policy; racism, genocidal complicity amongst vast sections of the Western population; total contempt for both morality and international law; limitless expansion of territory by force; the politics of permanent emergency (as per Carl Schmitt); the embrace of bloodlust and cruelty as markers of virtue rather than emblems of evil – all… Read More Tearing up the map

Imperial Decline in the Straits of Hormuz

Alfred W. McCoy ( Tomdispatch.com ) – In the first chapter of his 1874 novel The Gilded Age, Mark Twain offered a telling observation about the connection between past and present: “History never repeats itself, but the… present often seems to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends.” Among the “antique legends” most helpful in… Read More Imperial Decline in the Straits of Hormuz