Intimations of world war three – the big one, nuclear Armageddon – didn’t arise yesterday. But they got more urgent when Donald Trump was elected the second time. In December 2024, Newsweek published a map of the “safest US states to live during nuclear war”. The article was not reassuring. “Nowhere is truly ‘safe’” from such consequences as “contamination of food and water supplies and prolonged radiation exposure”, said the senior policy director of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. Another expert noted that “even a ‘small’ nuclear war…
Tag: Iran
X suspends 800m accounts in one year amid ‘massive’ scale of manipulation attempts
Elon Musk’s X said it had suspended 800m accounts over a 12-month period as it fights the “massive” scale of attempts to manipulate the platform. The social media company told MPs it was continually fighting state-backed attempts to hijack the agenda on its network, with Russia the most prolific state actor, followed by Iran and China. As part of the battle against such content, X suspended 800m accounts in 2024 for breaching its rules on platform manipulation and spam, although it did not reveal which of those suspensions related to…
China calls for vessels in strait of Hormuz to be protected amid soaring shipping costs
The Chinese government has called for vessels passing through the strait of Hormuz to be protected by all sides in the escalating Iran conflict, as shipping freight rates soared. Maritime traffic through the strait – a narrow channel on Iran’s southern border that connects the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman – has effectively been closed since the US and Israel launched missile attacks on Iran at the weekend, prompting a retaliation from Tehran. Beijing’s foreign ministry on Tuesday urged “all parties to immediately cease military operations, avoid escalating…
‘Imperialist undertones’: global south condemns US-Israeli war with Iran
The US-Israeli war on Iran has been condemned as illegal across much of the global south, with China saying it was unacceptable to “blatantly kill the leader of a sovereign state”. Many countries objected that negotiations between the US and Iran over its nuclear programme and missile capability were not given a chance to succeed before Washington and Israel began bombing, and analysts often saw the war in terms of a colonial-style exercise of might. Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, offered condolences over the killing of the Iranian supreme leader,…
The splinternet: how online shutdowns are getting cheaper and easier to impose
During the height of Iran’s blackout in January, people could still access a platform that, in some senses, was like the internet. Iranians could message family members on a government-monitored app and watch clips of Manchester United on a Farsi-language video-sharing site. They could read state news and use a local navigation service. What they couldn’t do was check international headlines about thousands of people being killed by government forces during one of the bloodiest weeks in recent Iranian history. Nor, for the most part, could they get evidence out…
Chinese technology underpins Iran’s internet control, report finds
Iran’s architecture of internet control is built on technologies from China, according to an analysis published by a British human rights organisation. The report by Article 19 says the technologies include facial recognition tools used on Uyghurs in western China and a Chinese alternative to the US-based GPS system, BeiDou. The report outlines the policies and imported hardware behind the growth of Iran’s fine-tuned censorship regime, which allowed authorities to almost entirely cut off its 93 million people from the global internet during the height of January’s anti-government protests. The…
Trump-led abuses amid ‘democratic recession’ put human rights in peril, HRW report says
The world is in a “democratic recession” with almost three-quarters of the global population now living under autocratic rulers – levels not seen since the 1980s, according to a new report. The system underpinning human rights was “in peril”, said Philippe Bolopion, executive director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), with a growing authoritarian wave becoming “the challenge of a generation”, he said. Speaking before the launch of the human rights watchdog’s annual country-by-country assessment, published on Wednesday, Bolopion said 2025 had been a “tipping point” for rights and freedoms in…
Doomsday Clock at 85 seconds to midnight amid threats from climate crisis and AI
Planet closer to destruction as Russia, China and US become more aggressive and nationalistic, says advocacy group Earth is closer than it has ever been to destruction as Russia, China, the US and other countries become “increasingly aggressive, adversarial, and nationalistic”, a science-oriented advocacy group said on Tuesday as it advanced its Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds until midnight. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist members had an initial demonstration on Friday and then announced their results on Tuesday. Continue reading… The Guardian
China threatens to retaliate over Trump’s 25% tariff on countries trading with Iran
US president announces measure in response to situation in Iran, which is facing anti-government protests Business live – latest updates US politics – live updates China has threatened to retaliate against Donald Trump after the US president said he would impose 25% tariffs on countries that trade with Iran as a way of punishing Tehran for its brutal crackdown on the biggest anti-regime protests in years. Liu Pengyu, the spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said Beijing would “take all necessary measures to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests”…
Trump Broke the World Order. Now What?
Adam Tooze The Energy Giants Face Off Dr. Tooze is a professor of history at Columbia University. In the early 1910s, Winston Churchill ordered the conversion of Britain’s giant fleet of dreadnought battleships to oil fuel from coal. In so doing, the story goes, he ushered in the age of oil power. He also effectively anointed the United States — at the time the world’s largest producer of oil — as the 20th century’s natural hegemon. If global competition is inextricably interwoven with technology and energy, how states power themselves…