Will China save Western civilization?

Will China save Western civilization?

Chang Che writes: In November, 2024, on the day of the U.S. Presidential election, Tim Whitmarsh landed in Beijing, jet-lagged and disoriented. It was the middle of the academic term at the University of Cambridge, where Whitmarsh holds the Regius Professorship in Greek. He had been flown business class halfway around the world and put up at a five-star hotel for what he had been told would be the first World Conference of Classics. What followed, he later wrote, was…

Read More Read More

The U.S.-Israeli war against Iran is by far the biggest oil supply disruption in history

The U.S.-Israeli war against Iran is by far the biggest oil supply disruption in history

CNBC reports: The U.S. war against Iran has triggered the largest oil supply disruption in history, more than double the previous record set during the Middle East crisis of the 1950s, according to an analysis by consulting firm Rapidan Energy. About 20% of the world’s oil supply has been disrupted for nine days now as tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remains at a standstill. Crude prices have surged above $100 per barrel in response. The biggest disruption before…

Read More Read More

Middle East oil crisis: What is America’s real ‘endgame’ in Iran?

Middle East oil crisis: What is America’s real ‘endgame’ in Iran?

  The war in Iran is already sending shockwaves far beyond the battlefield. Stock markets are sinking, Brent crude has jumped above $100 a barrel, and G7 governments are considering tapping emergency reserves to steady the markets. Missiles landing close to critical Gulf energy infrastructure have sharpened fears that what began as a regional confrontation could tip the global economy into something far more dangerous. The real question is whether this crisis can be contained, and if not, how vulnerable…

Read More Read More

In the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, Russia reaps the benefits

In the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, Russia reaps the benefits

The Associated Press reports: As U.S. and Israeli missiles and bombs rain on Iran, Russia has responded with words of indignation but no visible action to support its Middle Eastern ally. That cautious stance is driven by President Vladimir Putin’s focus on Ukraine and his apparent hope that the Iran war will play into Moscow’s hands by boosting its oil revenues and eroding Western support for Kyiv. Putin sent his condolences to Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, condemning the killing of…

Read More Read More

Iran is ready for a long war with the U.S. Only economic pain will end it, senior official says

Iran is ready for a long war with the U.S. Only economic pain will end it, senior official says

CNN reports: A top Iranian official has warned that the government is prepared for a long war with the US and signaled that it is willing to continue attacking Gulf countries in an effort to persuade them to convince President Donald Trump to step back from the conflict. The warning came in an exclusive CNN interview in Tehran with Kamal Kharazi, foreign policy adviser to the office of the Supreme Leader, who ruled out diplomacy for now and said the…

Read More Read More

Trump says Iran war — ‘a little excursion’ — is ‘very complete, pretty much’ as economic toll rises

Trump says Iran war — ‘a little excursion’ — is ‘very complete, pretty much’ as economic toll rises

The Guardian reports: Donald Trump has said that the war in Iran is “very complete, pretty much”, as the economic toll of the joint US-Israeli operation has risen, disrupting global oil trade and threatening to engulf the Middle East in a regional war. Trump made the comments before a speech and press conference in Florida where he sought to emphasise that the US military campaign would be ending soon amid concerns from Republican allies that the US was being dragged…

Read More Read More

U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile hit naval base beside Iranian elementary school, video reveals

U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile hit naval base beside Iranian elementary school, video reveals

The New York Times reports: A newly released video adds to the evidence that an American missile likely hit an Iranian elementary school where 175 people, many of them children, were reported killed. The video, uploaded on Sunday by Iran’s semiofficial Mehr News Agency and verified by The New York Times, shows a Tomahawk cruise missile striking a naval base beside the school in the town of Minab on Feb. 28. The U.S. military is the only force involved in…

Read More Read More

Disorder drives one of nature’s most complex molecular machines

Disorder drives one of nature’s most complex molecular machines

Yasemin Saplakoglu writes: At the dawn of complex life, evolution created a container for DNA, its most treasured item. A few billion years later, 20th-century microscopists looked at this container — the nucleus — up close and saw that it was covered in tiny openings. At the time, they didn’t know what to make of these structures, but as microscopy improved, something grand came into focus: what we now call “nuclear pore complexes,” some of the largest and most marvelous…

Read More Read More

The most severe shock to energy markets since the 1970s is now cascading through the world economy

The most severe shock to energy markets since the 1970s is now cascading through the world economy

The Wall Street Journal reports: The chairman of oil producer DNO was flying from New York to Oslo early on Feb. 28 when he told staff to turn off the company’s oil wells in Iraq. America and Israel had just attacked neighboring Iran. Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani wasn’t taking any chances, having weathered a drone strike on the company’s oil fields in Iraqi Kurdistan last summer. By the time he landed, the pumps had stopped—the first oil shutdown of the war. To…

Read More Read More

Iran’s successful targeting of critical missile defense radars highlights global vulnerabilities

Iran’s successful targeting of critical missile defense radars highlights global vulnerabilities

TWZ reports: As expected, Iran has repeatedly targeted prized missile defense radars across the Middle East in retaliation for the joint U.S.-Israeli air campaign that is ongoing. Iran’s attacks on high-value radars that enable the region’s missile defense capabilities appear to have succeeded on multiple occasions. The irony that lower-end long-range kamikaze drones are perhaps the biggest threat to extremely advanced radars capable of providing telemetry for intercepting targets traveling at hypersonic speeds, sometimes in space, is glaring. The losses…

Read More Read More

Oil built the Persian Gulf but desalination keeps it alive. War could threaten both

Oil built the Persian Gulf but desalination keeps it alive. War could threaten both

The Associated Press reports: As missiles and drones curtail energy production across the Persian Gulf, analysts warn that water, not oil, may be the resource most at risk in the energy-rich but arid region. On Sunday, Bahrain accused Iran of damaging one of its desalination plants. Earlier, Iran said a U.S. airstrike had damaged an Iranian plant. Hundreds of desalination plants sit along the Persian Gulf coast, putting individual systems that supply water to millions within range of Iranian missile…

Read More Read More

Dept. of Homeland Security, created in 2002 to protect Americans, has turned its force against citizens

Dept. of Homeland Security, created in 2002 to protect Americans, has turned its force against citizens

The Wall Street Journal reports: Protesters, observers and passersby taken into custody by federal agents were declared terrorists and attackers in hundreds of social-media posts by U.S. officials and departments since the start of the immigration sweeps in cities. This includes Minneapolis, where two citizens were excoriated by officials after they were killed by federal agents in January. The Wall Street Journal found that the Department of Homeland Security, created in 2002 to protect Americans, has turned its force against…

Read More Read More

Putin resurrected and exported a fascist ideology to the West

Putin resurrected and exported a fascist ideology to the West

Zaza Bibilashvili and Tom G. Palmer in conversation at The Unpopulist: Zaza Bibilashvili: Over the last decades we’ve witnessed the rise of authoritarianism and a worldwide crisis of liberal democracy. What caused such developments and what should be done to reverse the trend? Tom G. Palmer: Most prognoses focus on demographics, technological changes, economic structures, and so on, which gives an air of inevitability to trends. I think that there are such contributing factors, notably the rise of media fragmentation…

Read More Read More

How the rapture explains the rupture over Israel on the American right

How the rapture explains the rupture over Israel on the American right

Joshua Zeitz writes: It’s no secret that Israel is losing ground in American public opinion on both the left and the right, even as many American Jews feel newly besieged by rising antisemitism. On much of the left, activists and intellectuals increasingly interpret Israel and Zionism through anti-colonial and anti-racist frameworks, casting the conflict in the moral language of oppressor and oppressed. On the right, a different but equally consequential shift is underway. Influential conservatives like Tucker Carlson have come…

Read More Read More