The additional cost of ONE fossil fuel price spike on the scale of 2022 = the ENTIRE COST of Net Zero by 2050. We get precisely nothing in return for the first cost, and a whole new, more secure and cheaper energy system from the second one.
#NoBrainer
www.theccc.org.uk/2026/03/11/c...
Such a dismal tale about the UK govt: so obsessed w competing with far-right to keep out foreigners that it won’t let in the brightest & best from war-torn countries even when they’re hand-picked by the FCDO, lest they ask to stay. Soft power sacrificed, but how many Reform voters will it convert?
There are quite a few cynical and sinister figures in British public life. But Tony Blair is among the very worst. www.theguardian.com/business/202...
Moscow has so far earned an estimated $1.3bn-$1.9bn windfall from taxes on oil exports, making it the biggest winner from the conflict in the Middle East.
What does this mean for energy markets and the Russian economy? ft.trib.al/E4zE2us
This is an important victory after a hard fight. Congrats and thanks to @ccrjustice.org. They do such important work--please support them if you can. ccrjustice.org/home/press-c...
US bombers loading up on UK airstrips before raining down bombs on Iran.
Parliament wasn't consulted - and polling shows huge numbers oppose it.
When do MPs get a say over our involvement in this war?
www.forbes.com/sites/peters...
Even though I'm an economist, I wish there was more focus on the human suffering from this war and less focus on the economic consequences. Hundreds of little girls are dead, and we're worried about oil prices.
Quiz question for today:
Compare the two images below and decide which one is best described by the word 'sectarianism'
Attacks leave dead vs killed
If we examine the origins of the war on Iran, we get an inkling of a closed domain of international oligarchs, exploiting the state’s power and patriotic sentiment, while creating a world order in which the American state is much weaker. An oligarchical corridor.
snyder.substack.com/p/the-oligar...
“Trump, Look Them in the Eyes” — front page of tomorrow’s Tehran Times with photos of Iranian children killed by US bombing of elementary school
Trump's decision to bomb Iran is now the greatest windfall to the Russian war effort on record. If it continues, it might save the Russian war economy.
Today the United States wasted another #1B on an illegal war in Iran, money that could have been spent on funding health care or providing SNAP benefits or cancer research or academic scholarships for minorities. I could go on and on but I think you get my point. #endtheiranwarnow
"This rubble is of my first home. The home where my father also grew up. Where my husband and I said our marriage vows."
What’s happening in Lebanon is a “human rights and humanitarian disaster in the making,” says HRW’s @lamafakih.bsky.social, whose family home in Beirut was struck.
The MoD secretly described Akrotiri in 1971 as a base for “surveillance operations, including intelligence gathering”.
“There are great advantages in being able to carry out covert surveillance from UK sovereign territory”, the MoD noted.
www.declassifieduk.org/the-empire-n...
Pedro Sánchez has taken a strong position in refusing the US demand to use Spanish bases to strike Iran. Europe should show solidarity with Spain in the face of Donald Trump’s threats. https://bit.ly/4l7IYhs
The U.S. war on Iran is now estimated to cost $1 billion per day. Meanwhile Americans are told there’s no money for healthcare, hospitals, or basic social programs.
The legal arguments and architecture for what's happening in Iran now, and were deployed in relation to Gaza, really did not come out of nowhere.
The pre-emption and targetted assassination arguments might appear spectacular, but they were the workaday archiecture of the war on terror.
“The sad reality is they will have broken Iran and then will leave in place hardline remnants of an old regime that will be equally brutal, but economically strangled."
Sanam Vakil (@chmenap.bsky.social) on the consequences for Iran from the US-Israeli military campaign, via BBC Radio 4.
What happened the last time the US/UK changed the regime in Iran?
The UK armed the Shah’s “autocracy” and directly aided his brutal security service in the decades leading up to the 1979 Islamic Revolution. 👇
www.declassifieduk.org/when-britain...
Keir Starmer’s expertise on or credibility in international law is not what it used to be
Starmer says his approval for the US to use British bases to bomb Iran is “permitted under international law” as “acting in the collective self-defence of regional allies”.
He condemns Iran’s retaliatory strikes but not the US/Israeli bombing of Iran.
www.gov.uk/government/s...
Melania Trump is still scheduled to chair the UN Security Council mtg on Monday 3PM on the topic of "children, technology & education in conflict" 2 days after US/Israeli strikes in Iran (inc reportedly hitting a girls' school)
Maybe it’s because I’m a colonial historian but so many of these white nation states seem to behave exactly like they did in the 19th century: ‘your leaders aren’t right for you,’ ‘we’re only killing you/colonizing you/installing puppet leaders for your own good’
Eisenhower
The world wants to ban children from social media, but there will be grave consequences for us all | Taylor Lorenz
Starmer urges restraint on Iran but not on the states guilty of aggression: Israel and the USA
This approach in itself undermines the rule of law and international law
Regardless of what we think of the Iranian regime
Anthropic takes the high road. Thank you!
Anthropic, which signed a $200 million contract with the Pentagon in July, wanted assurances that its AI models would not be used for fully autonomous weapons or mass domestic surveillance of Americans. The Pentagon strongly resisted that request.
“The last time the American people trusted a president intent on going to war, it ended in catastrophe. And yet Trump now risks sleepwalking the US into another war without even bothering to build a case based on a lie” — my latest for @theguardian.com on echoes of the 2003 Iraq war
Military AI companies arguing that the laws of war do not apply to their type of warfare
www.thetimes.com/article/86e7...
