A good legal analysis of the sinking of the Dena from IHL experts: www.justsecurity.org/133397/sinki...
09.03.2026 14:58
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A good legal analysis of the sinking of the Dena from IHL experts: www.justsecurity.org/133397/sinki...
“It is becoming increasingly hard to avoid the conclusion that the Trump administration has embarked on this operation without a plan, and is making it up as it goes along, as if they killed enough of the right people and destroyed enough Iranian assets everything would fall into place.”
💯💯💯
So @theguardian.com were clearly accompanying Pollard and now have also blown the geolocation of this repair facility.
The dimensions of the building, the windows and the sunlight all help identify the blueprints and thus the location.
People need to be SACKED.
www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...
When I teach the session on the laws of armed conflict I begin by telling my students that LOAC does not forbid killing in wartime. It is a surprisingly overlooked and widely misunderstood point.
The White House position is that it is no big deal that Putin is helping Iran try to kill US soldiers.
Always remember rule #1. Putin can do no wrong in Trump’s eyes.
Wonder why that is?
The laws of armed conflict are reasonably clear on the restrictions on a national warship firing on a national warship of an opposing combatant that is not carrying ammunition for its main armament.
Namely: there aren’t any.
There isn’t any requirement for immediate threat or anything similar.
Tolkien's original sketch of Smaug: a long, whip-tailed dragon drawn in black ink, with two wings raised and a head like something you'd see on Celtic wirework.
Husband woke me asking, 'The movies say Smaug as in "hour"; was little me wrong to think the dragon Smaug was pronounced "smawg", as in "naughty"?'
I looked it up and ... well, the answer is not just philology. It's incredibly good storytelling.
1/4
It's cool how when you don't have a strategy, anything you do is strategic!
Helping Israel destroy the military of a Chinese ally: Grand Strategy, Much Pivot, Very Clausewitz.
Helping Ukraine destroy the military of a Chinese ally: Big Distraction, Waste of Munitions, Elbridge Colby Sadness.
This is actually, what, the FOURTH enemy ship sunk by a submarine since the Second World War. But fair enough, history, details, accuracy are all woke.
I'll have to save up for a coffee...
If people have published books that are borrowed a lot from UK public libraries, it's also worth signing up for the Public Lending Right (PLR), which pays when this happens. Not as lucrative as the brilliant ALCS (this year my Operation Neptune book earned me 12 pence - before tax).
It's now an annual ritual for me. Waiting for the ALCS statement to see what I've earned in secondary and residual royalties from photocopies, libraries, etc.
Lowest amount: £18. Largest amount: £1900.
If you've got stuff published in the UK and aren't a member of ALCS, you're a chump.
Another crisis in UK-US relations. How does the alliance survive repeated ruptures?
Greg Kennedy & I brought together 14 brilliant scholars to answer that in Transatlantic Storms in Anglo-American Relations: How the Alliance Weathers Crises.
Out today with Georgetown University Press. 1/2
My review of excellent new book ‘Framing the First World War’ edited by the dream team @draefox.bsky.social @dmorganowen.bsky.social and Michael Finch is now in @fwwsjournal.bsky.social
50 free eprints available here:
www.tandfonline.com/eprint/VRRIQ...
🚨 It looks like the UK government is gearing up to upend copyright law in favour of AI companies, legalising the theft of their work.
This is despite creatives' huge protests, and despite previous proposals being roundly rejected by the public.
Please spread the word.
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deconflicting airspace is woke DEI.
"No stupid rules of engagement" is how you shoot down three of your own F-15s in one day. Just a shocking display of martial ineptitude.
Make Counter Insurgency Theory Great Again. Said no one ever*
*except those academics who spent ten years working on Irregular War
Gross.
Note that the administration hasn’t even bothered to ask the same of Russia, although it has targeted American businesses in Ukraine.
In other words, Trump isn’t even trying to look neutral.
It’s not that force itself is losing utility - it’s just that we’ve been using it wrong: in Iraq and Afghanistan the USA and its allies tried to find military solutions to political problems; and Russia catastrophically misread Ukraine.
This is causing despair in academe. (1) We were forced to close during Covid. We had no choice! (2) We're not service providers like a restaurant, we are institutions of state. (3) We did everything we could. (4) This will cripple current students' education.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
This soft-focus puff piece by the Beeb bangs on and on about ‘the principle’ behind this lawsuit without ever pondering whether the principle is itself bullshit. www.bbc.com/news/article...
Some of us actually desire public service careers. PME offers a different teaching environment It supports policy-oriented research. It engages different questions and interdisciplinary work. There is actually SPACE for folks who do military history, strategy, war studies, and national security.
Yes we do need to 'go faster', and funnily enough Sir Keir, as Prime Minister you are the one person who can make it happen.
So maybe.... make it happen?
All those conferences I have participated in with top officials with very concerned faces going on and on about soft power and countering Chinese influence, Russian disinformation, it is all terrible, etc…
Guys.
Fund. The. BBC.
🇪🇺🇺🇦 Kaja Kallas: If Ukraine's military is to be limited in size, Russia’s should be too. Where Russia has caused damage in Ukraine, Russia should pay.
No amnesty for war crimes; return of the deported Ukrainian children.
This is really very least Russia should agree to if peace is Russia's goal.
My school, a top research university, gives us access to an institutional AI bot, HopGPT. As an experiment, I just asked it for the most important *academic* works on WWII. It gave me a list of 8 books. The first was Churchill, followed by David Irving, then Primo Levi. We are so, so screwed
The ‘world order’ didn’t collapse bc Russia invaded Ukraine. It collapsed because the free world chose not to stop them.
By refusing to use our wealth & power to defend even a European democracy, we showed dictators everywhere that aggression pays.
That was the death blow. We did this to ourselves.
