World

The British Empire may be gone, but there is one area where the UK has not lost its global ambitions: online censorship. The latest vehicle is the Online Safety Act (OSA), a behemoth internet regulation law whose vast provisions are steadily coming into force – and increasingly drawing the ire of the Trump administration as it starts to impact US tech firms.  Under the OSA, “Britain has the power to shut down any platform” that breaks its content regulation rules, boasts secretary of state for technology Peter Kyle. The latest stage of its implementation began last week with new mandatory age-verification measures for social media platforms.  The Act is already curtailing what can be read online in the UK.

Whatever loopiness there is in Donald Trump’s personality is a loopiness born of isolation. For ten years the history of the world has revolved around him, not he around it. The events of last November have left Trump as, for all intents and purposes, the only remaining historical actor – especially after Xi Jinping’s retreat into obscurantism since the pandemic.

The activities of First Lady Melania Trump have been the subject of much discussion in Cockburn’s circles during her husband’s second term. Where is she? What is she up to? For the most powerful spouse in the world, she keeps an extraordinarily low profile. But now a new theory has emerged: she’s been spying for Ukraine. Over the weekend, an X user named “Kate from Kharkiv” posted a photo of Melania wearing a blue blazer bearing the Ukrainian trident insignia. Melania is also wearing one of her signature wide-brimmed hats, which shield her eyes from enemy view. “Agent Melania Trumpenko,” the caption read. https://twitter.

Though clearly resolved to declare victory over Iran’s nuclear program and move on, Donald Trump has been beset this summer by assertions that the Iranian effort has not been “obliterated” after all and that the mullahs will be back at work in no time cranking out the requisite materials for a bomb. Therefore, according to some, Trump should bomb some more – or at least unleash Israel to do so. Whether or not Trump is pushed into further strikes, the argument over Iranian nuclear weapons capabilities will not go away.

On the one-year anniversary of the Butler, Pennsylvania, assassination attempt on his life, President Trump celebrated on stage with Chelsea FC after they won the FIFA Club World Cup in Giants Stadium. No one dancing around the trophy looked happier than Trump, who appeared like an aged striker who’d ducked into the locker room to put on a blue suit and a red tie. "I knew he was going to be here but I didn't know he was going to be on the stand when we lifted the trophy. I was a bit confused,” said Chelsea FC star Cole Palmer. Above all else, Donald Trump celebrates winning, and this was a big win, complete with confetti shower. Plus, you can’t discount the fact that on this day, of all days, Trump was just happy to be alive, the greatest win of all.

When Donald Trump called on Iran’s Ayatollah to “surrender” during Israel’s recent war the word struck many as jarring – almost antiquated. No major global leader has used that language publicly since the unconditional surrenders of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 1945.But Trump’s invocation, intentional or not and soon abandoned by his call for a “ceasefire,” points to a deeper issue: Are the rules that governed mid-20th century warfare still relevant in the 21st century? Why has “surrender” disappeared from the language of modern warfare? And what, exactly, do today’s ever-growing humanitarian laws offer nation-states forced to operate under them, in a world that looks nothing like the one left smoldering in 1945?