Politics
HuffPost Headlines 3-13 | HuffPost UK Videos
Katherine Heigl faces the public’s fury after a trip to Mar-a-Lago, Timothée Chalamet continues to face backlash and reporter Alanna Vagianos talks about her new HuffPost article “When Miscarriage Is Recast As Murder”— just some of the stories HuffPost is following today.
Politics
The House | To prepare for national emergencies, we must build resilience into our mental healthcare system

(John Eveson / Alamy)
3 min read
The mental health impacts of the pandemic finally got a proper airing at the last module of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry. But the struggle to get mental health onto the inquiry’s agenda mirrors the fight for mental health to be taken seriously at the start of the pandemic and the broader ongoing fight for mental health.
A fight in which mental health, despite progress, does not have parity of esteem with physical health – mental health makes up around 20 per cent of NHS cases but receives less than 10 per cent of funding; and a fight in which the policy response is still lacking. Had Mind and others not campaigned hard for its inclusion in the inquiry, mental health would have been an afterthought again.
It’s true the Covid-19 pandemic created a mental health crisis in several different ways. But it’s also true that in many ways it simply turned up the heat on what was a slow burning crisis already in motion – overstretched services already unable to meet growing demand.
As the pandemic hit, thousands who were already receiving support saw that help delayed, disrupted or moved out of reach just when they needed it most.
Module 10 of the inquiry mattered because it finally took mental health seriously on its own terms. But if this moment is to mean anything, we must confront an uncomfortable truth: the UK’s mental health system was vulnerable long before the pandemic, and in many respects it is more vulnerable now.
We must also be honest about who paid the highest price. Racialised communities, people in poverty and disabled people faced disproportionate risks and poorer outcomes. Women and girls were exposed to higher levels of abuse at home. Young people missed key milestones, saw their education disrupted, and were isolated from their friends. Inequality isn’t a footnote; it is the central story of the pandemic.
It’s also an uncomfortable truth that people with severe mental illness were more likely to find themselves in situations that exposed them to the virus, which they were also more likely to die from.
Why did the system bend so quickly under pressure? The mismatch between the burden on the NHS and funding meant services were already stretched before the first lockdown, and the shock of Covid-19 pushed a fragile system closer to the edge.
The result was longer waits, higher thresholds, exhausted staff and inconsistent quality at the very moment demand surged. Funding alone will not fix this. We need both spending and structural reform for the mental health system to work.
We must design for the inevitable surge in mental health problems during national emergencies in the same way we plan for acute bed capacity in winter. This means ensuring that every base is covered, including infection control guidance for mental health; building social connection into public health planning; and equipping health systems to deliver hybrid mental health care.
We need to embed voluntary and community sector partners, like the federation of local Minds, into local and national planning. These organisations are rooted in communities, understand the unique needs of the people they serve and know how to respond effectively.
It is essential we protect the people we know are at higher risk. The data was there before the pandemic. We need mandatory equality impact assessments built into national emergency planning to ensure that all groups receive the appropriate support.
This needs to form part of a shift towards building trusting therapeutic relationships between patients and professionals and delivering holistic care and support. Getting this right will allow us to build a resilient system for crises we will inevitably face in the future, and also help to create a mental health system that provides accessible and high-quality care right now.
Module 10 was a moment of national reckoning with what happened, what went wrong, and how we avoid the mistakes of the past. The inquiry’s recommendations can shape a lasting legacy: a resilient, compassionate and effective mental health system that delivers the support people need, in calm and in crisis alike. That is the least we owe people.
Dr Sarah Hughes is CEO of the charity Mind
Politics
Do Eggshells Actually Keep Slugs Off Your Plants?
If you’re a gardener, chances are you have a tense relationship with slugs.
Even though only nine of the 44 species in the UK actually eat your veggies. , and while they’re key to feeding our dwindling bird population, it can be hard to give unwanted visitors grace if they’re making your garden suffer.
Still, there are lots of reasons – like the fact that biodiverse gardens fare better – not to kill them. Some turn to repellants over pesticides, some of which are illegal in the UK anyway.
That can include placing “barriers,” like crushed eggshells, around your plants. But that might not work.
There’s not much evidence to suggest eggshells repel slugs
The idea is simple: when you place crushed eggshells on the ground, the theory goes, it makes an uncomfortable carpet for slugs.
So, they turn away from your budding blooms rather than face the sharp, stabbing sensations of crawling over broken shells.
But McGill University’s (MU) Office for Science and Society, as well as the staff at the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) put that theory to the test, and both of them found the same thing.
The MU team placed crushed eggshells around some lettuce (which slugs love), and found it didn’t stop them at all.
And the RHS research, which took place over six weeks, found that plants “protected” by crushed eggshells didn’t fare any better than those with the smashed-up shells.
Side note – in the RHS investigation, no “barrier” methods, including copper tape, pine bark mulch, sharp horticultural grit, and wool pellets, worked.
So, how should I keep slugs away from my garden?
Speaking to HuffPost UK previously, the RHS’ senior wildlife specialist, Helen Bostock, said: “A vibrant garden ecosystem is one that requires [fewer] inputs from gardeners,” including sprays, because “natural predators” will help yo manage slugs, aphids, snails, and more.
So, trying to attract more birds to your garden can be a great first step.
And when you water your garden matters, too.
In one study, researchers found that watering your garden in the morning, rather than later on, is “as good as metaldehyde pellets” for keeping slugs away (metaldehyde pellets were banned in the UK in 2022).
Ferric phosphate pellets are still allowed, but, the RHS said, “slug pellets (even organic ones) have been shown to have negative effects on wildlife in the garden”.
Politics
Clothing brand shadow-banned for exposing Israeli ‘sniper safari’
Social media company Meta appears to have shadow-banned the pro-Palestine ‘Wear the Peace’ clothing brand. This happened after it shared previously unseen footage of Israeli soldiers gleefully shooting at displaced Palestinians. The firm’s Instagram page has amassed 2.3m followers.
The footage – which can only be described as resembling a sniper safari – had been shared by David McIntosh. He previously worked for Gaza aid sites in 2025.
Wear the Peace makes Palestine-branded clothing and donates profits to Palestinian causes. Israel killed Palestinian social media personality, Grandpa’ Nabhan, in 2024 on the first morning he wore one of the firm’s new t-shirts. The item was made in honour of his granddaughter, Reem, who he called “soul of my soul.” The two were inseparably close. Reem was also murdered by occupation forces early on during the Gaza genocide.
The footage shared by the page published by Mcintosh, also referred to a security contractor, shows one of the sites operated by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). The organisation was shutdown after months of outrage at Israeli forces massacring and starving Palestinians.
But it appears Mcintosh has a conscience, though he claims to be “blessed” by having served with the GHF. He posted the footage with a comment that Israeli forces shoot Palestinians “for fun.”
Earlier today, Skwawkbox copied the link to this post. But then later attempts to follow it to the post opened completely different Instagram posts. Even obtaining an ’embed code’ to show the post above was only possible by manually accessing the company’s profile page directly and opening it from there.

Mcintosh’s full comment with his own post makes clear he considers the Israeli military to be war criminals:
*Hard watch* I was blessed to assist in Gaza and work with some of America’s finest soldiers…. can’t fault my American comrades in the work we did there, highly skilled top tier operators….albeit the IDF surrounding our sites, are another level of wicked they openly fire on civilians for fun and even on us (standard procedure)! I Won’t go into detail here… but have faith that there are real warriors still out there ….. These videos are of the infamous gaza aid sites and the strong willed palestinians refusing to bend the knee to fear and let their family’s starve. At the sites I managed the men/women did nothing but their best to help the people of gaza, unfortunately the IDF had sinister motives and would try and sabotage the work we would do… They freely commit war crimes with ease, Ive truly never come in contact with such warped sycophantic minds like this!
He posted his video in a wider format, giving a better view of Israel’s barbarity and the panic of emaciated Palestinians as they fled:
New evidence continues to emerge of the appalling, inhuman crimes of the ethnostate’s colonial occupation.
Social media companies, like ‘mainstream’ media in print and digital, appear to be doing everything they can to shield the apartheid state from scrutiny for its continuing crimes.
Featured image via the Canary
Politics
Trump will exploit American deaths
All six crewmembers of the US military tanker which crashed on 12 March 2026 are dead, after Trump carried out an unprovoked attack on Iran and brought severe unrest to the region. That brings the overall US death toll thirteen – officially, at least. The cause of the crash is unclear, as the Canary reported here.
Needless to say the number of innocent civilians killed across the region are still being counted and are unlikely to have anything like the same sort of news value in the Western legacy media.
For me, the crash summons an acute memory. Twenty years ago, I personally delivered the coffins meant for 14 dead airmen across Kandahar Airfield in Southern Afghanistan to the base’s medical centre where their remains were held.
Their Nimrod spy plane had crashed days earlier. Some reports blamed a fuel leak on the ageing aircraft.
Then as now, the airmen concerned died in a war of choice they were sent to because of the remote, hubristic ambitions of politicians thousand of miles away. Then as now, such deaths were useful to the political class at home.
Trump will fall for the sacrifice trap
One way of understanding how the deaths of these crew members will be received is to look at the ‘sacrifice trap’. I first heard the term in a 2018 report authored by scholar and anti-militarist writer professor Paul Dixon. He describes the trap as one of:
a range of rhetorical devices are identified to justify war.
This device was regularly used back then to head off public opposition to the failing Afghanistan war.
Here’s Dixon:
The Sacrifice Trap – refers to the situation in which the deaths of military personnel creates a
reason to prolong war in order to justify these sacrifices. As more die this creates further
reasons to justify their deaths by defeating the enemy.
You can almost hear a Trump or a Blair saying it now. ‘If we stop fighting, the previous deaths will have been for nothing’.
In this way, the last death becomes the justification for the next one.
Dixon again:
There is an incentive to put military personnel in harm’s way so that their sacrifice leads to the justification of war. The state escalates or continues to fight in order to justify prior sacrifices.
I haven’t heard this rhetorical device employed fully yet. The US leadership doesn’t seem to care much about public opposition… But in my opinion it is only a matter of time as the death toll mounts. And what I do know for sure is that Trump – whose rise to power is so deeply entangled with the War on Terror – won’t hesitate to wield its devices, narratives, and vocabulary for his own ends.
Featured image via the Canary
Politics
Can Democrats actually flip this red Kentucky district?
Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) has locked down his House district for over a decade. Democrats think his Senate bid presents them an opening in a seat that has raced away from the party.
Kentucky’s 6th District — anchored by Lexington in the heart of the Bluegrass State — hasn’t elected a Democrat to Congress since Ben Chandler in 2010. Barr has held the seat since 2013 and has proven difficult to dislodge. The last time a Democrat came close was in 2018, when fundraising juggernaut Amy McGrath came within about 3 points of defeating him.
But Barr won his last reelection in 2024 by 26 points, outperforming President Donald Trump, who carried the district by 15 points according to calculations from The Downballot.
If Barr had sought another term, Democrats privately concede they stood little chance.
But with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) retiring and Barr opting to run for his seat, a rare open seat is now in play — and firmly on Democrats’ target list.
In the Democratic primary, two candidates have emerged as frontrunners, according to national Democrats watching the race: Zach Dembo, a Navy veteran and former federal prosecutor, and Cherlynn Stevenson, a former Kentucky state representative. Each is offering a different theory for how to flip the deep-red district.
The question of how a Democrat could win the seat dominated a Democratic primary debate earlier this month, where candidates leaned on sharp criticisms of the Trump administration, ranging from its decision to strike Iran to affordability issues as a result of the president’s tariffs.
Stevenson has branded herself a “Mountain Democrat,” leaning into her Appalachian roots and pitching herself as someone who could mend the disconnect between the party and rural voters by focusing on cost-of-living pressures and access to affordable health care. She said her upbringing in a small mining town in eastern Kentucky and years living in Lexington allow her to bridge the district’s urban-rural divide.
“Winning right here in Kentucky requires cultural fluency and trust,” Stevenson said in an interview. “I know how to talk to working families, rural communities and independents because I am one of those people.”
She’s also got experience flipping seats. She was the first woman and first Democrat elected to represent Kentucky’s 88th state House district, where she also served as state House minority caucus chair.
Dembo, meanwhile, is pitching himself as a “Beshear Democrat” — a nod to Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, who performed well in the 6th District during his 2023 reelection campaign.
“This is 100 percent a flippable district,” Dembo said in an interview, pointing to headwinds from “all of the terrible decisions of this Republican Congress.”
He has emphasized his experience as a Navy JAG officer and former federal prosecutor, arguing his resume gives him crossover appeal in a Republican-leaning district. Dembo resigned from his position at the Justice Department during Trump’s second term, saying he could no longer remain in his role amid what he described as corruption and the Trump administration’s “abuse of the criminal justice system.”
Both Dembo and Stevenson have posted solid fundraising numbers. And Republicans have a contested primary as well, in a race that includes state Rep. Ryan Dotson and former state Sen. Ralph Alvarado.
“We’re giving Republicans a run for their money in places that they never thought they would have to compete before, and now they do,” said DCCC spokesperson Madison Andrus.
But the race will still be incredibly challenging for Democrats, even though the DCCC has had the seat on its “Red to Blue” battleground list. Kentucky’s federal delegation remains overwhelmingly GOP. The seat also got nominally redder during the post-2022 redistricting process, making it even tougher terrain than during McGrath’s close call in the last Trump administration midterms eight years ago.
Most election watchers believe the seat is well outside the core House battleground as well, and it has not attracted notable outside spending, underscoring how steep the climb would be for Democrats to win even without an incumbent on the ballot.
Republicans dismissed the Democrats’ optimism outright.
“Democrats have been enjoying too much bourbon because their Kentucky 6 wishes are delusional,” said NRCC spokesperson Zach Bannon. “Republicans are poised to keep KY-06 red to retain and expand our majority.”
Politics
Israel manufacturing consent for attack on Egypt
The Times of Israel has reported that Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that the Egyptian military is “getting stronger” and Israel needs to “keep an eye on it” to make sure it “doesn’t go too far”.
Of course, this is the Zionist media attempting to manufacture consent for presumable “pre-emptive strikes’ on Egypt.
Hebrew-language media reported that Netanyahu said that Israel and Egypt:
have a relationship and common interests
However:
Jerusalem needs to prevent it [the Egyptian army] from becoming too strong.
Because, of course, armies full of black and brown people should never be strong. That way, Israel can’t overpower them.
Israel accusations are a confession
Reports as far back as September 2025 suggest that Israel was “concerned” about Egypt’s military buildup in the Sinai.
Israeli officials also claimed that Egyptians have extended runways at air bases in Sinai so that they could be used by fighter jets. The claims also include Egypt building underground facilities, which they believe could be used for storing missiles directed at Israel.
However, the officials also said that there is no actual evidence that the Egyptians are actually storing any missiles in these facilities.
Time and time again, Israel claims the people it is ethnically cleansing are using underground military facilities, which are, of course, a huge threat to Israel. The reality is, there is zero real evidence supporting the claims. In actual fact, it is Israel who is using a huge underground bunker dubbed the ‘Fortress of Zion’.
Make of that what you will.
According to a New York Times article in 2021, it is:
a new Israeli Army command post deep underground beneath its headquarters in the heart of Tel Aviv
Talk about using civilians as human shields.
Illegal occupation
Twice previously, Israel has occupied the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt.
The first time was during the Suez Crisis in 1956.
Israel, France and Britain illegally invaded Egypt. In true colonial fashion, the three countries wanted to topple President Gamal Abdel Nasser. This was simply because he nationalised the Suez Canal Company – a British-French enterprise.
Essentially, all three were set to lose money and control, and as we saw with Iran in 1953, when Western countries are going to lose money, they call for regime change.
Eventually, they withdrew. But then in 1967:
The Soviet Union falsely warned Egypt that Israel was assembling its troops to invade Syria. Under an Egyptian-Syrian defence treaty signed in 1955, the two countries were obliged to protect one another in the case of an attack on either.
Israel then launched a surprise attack against Egypt’s airbases and destroyed its air force.
What followed was Israel seizing the remainder of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, along with the Golan Heights in Syria, and the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. It did all of this in six days.
The night before the 1967 attack, Israeli minister Yigal Allon wrote:
In … a new war, we must avoid the historic mistake of the War of Independence [1948] … and must not cease fighting until we achieve total victory, the territorial fulfillment of the Land of Israel.
Immediately, in direct contravention of international law, Israel started building illegal settlements for its citizens on land it did not (and still does not) own.
By 1977, over 11,000 Israelis were living in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula.
In 1979, Egypt signed the Peace Accord with Israel.
Israel agreed to withdraw from Sinai, and Egypt promised to establish “normal diplomatic relations” between the two countries and open the Suez Canal to Israeli ships.
Israel finally withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula on April 26, 1982.
Manufacturing consent once again
It seems Israeli news sites have been attempting to manufacture consent for taking back the Sinai Peninsula for a while. In 2024, The Times of Israel reported:
northern Sinai has been mired in an insurgency by Islamist groups for the past decade, including an ISIS cell.
It’s a pattern – Israel claims terrorists need to be taken out and then proceeds to flatten entire countries with no regard for life.
Israel made its intentions for Egypt clear as far back as 1967. So why wouldn’t Egypt build up its armed forces? The whole world is watching the Zionists destroy Iran and Lebanon, after already destroying Gaza. Anyone in their right mind would take that as a warning and take the necessary steps to protect their citizens.
Israel has nukes – yet allows no one else in the region to have them. Israel has one of the most technologically advanced militaries in the world, yet its neighbours and resistance movements must disarm. And Israel is using massive underground bunkers under hugely populated areas, yet is blowing entire communities to pieces in other countries for that same reason – without any evidence.
The rest of the world cannot let a genocidal, terrorist state keep bullshitting a moral high ground through fear of ‘antisemitism’, whilst it destroys any semblance of life in majority Muslim countries.
Featured image via Real Time History/YouTube
Politics
Gaza was a testing site for horrific military AI
The UK has awarded 26 arms firms lucrative contracts to develop its own autonomous targeting systems – this is despite numerous atrocities in Gaza – and now, Iran – being linked with haphazard AI kill chain systems. The UK NGO Drone Wars reported:
that as public concern about the use of AI for warfighting grows in the aftermath of Israel’s war on Gaza and US strikes on Iran, the UK is quietly pressing ahead with development of a new AI-based military targeting system.
This should be a worry for us all. Besides the gigantic cost – up to £1bn handed to death firms – the ethics and effectiveness of handing the killing over to AI systems are highly dubious.
The UK is developing a system (typically and idiotically) named ASGARD, a reference to Viking mythology. The tender notice states:
This Open Framework will focus on the ‘Decide’ element of the target acquisition cycle (Sense-Decide-Effect); supporting ASGARD’s goal of reinventing, and transforming, how land forces deliver operational decision-support and decision-making software via the use of modern Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning (AI/ML) technologies.
Gaza is a testing ground for AI
Drone Wars’ Chris Cole said:
While militaries are keen to use AI to speed up decision making around lethal strikes, there are serious ethical and legal concerns about these developments, with increasing evidence that ratcheting up the number of strikes leads to greater danger for civilians.
Drone Wars’ tone is urgent to say the least:
As we have said before, the grave dangers of introducing AI into warfare and in particular for the use of force are well known. While arguments have been made for and against these systems for more than a decade, increasing we are moving from a theoretical, future possibility to the real world: here, now, today.
The horrifying nature of autonomous war systems is hardly a mystery in 2026. Israel’s genocide in Gaza has been fuelled with AI tools like Lavender and the grotesquely named Where’s Daddy, which is:
used specifically to track the targeted individuals and carry out bombings when they had entered their family’s residences.
There is mounting evidence AI targeting has shaped the US-Israeli attack on Iran too. The Guardian said on 3 March:
Academics studying the field say AI is collapsing the planning time required for complex strikes – a phenomenon known as “decision compression”, which some fear could result in human military and legal experts merely rubber-stamping automated strike plans.
The US also reportedly used AI in the 3 January attack on Venezuela.
US-Israel attacked Iran first on 28 February without provocation. Iran was offering unprecedented concessions in negotiations at the time. The Pentagon has since stated there was no imminent threat from Iran. And the UN’s atomic watchdog, the IAEA, has said there is no evidence Iran was developing a nuclear weapon.
The UK government is racing to catch-up with its allies in the US and Israel. There is ample evidence that AI targeting is, at best, deeply flawed. It’s increasing use by indifferent imperial powers – seemingly concerned more with speed and a deadly numbers game – has already produced horrific results for targeted populations in Gaza, Iran, and Latin America.
Featured image via the Canary
Politics
Jonathan Guttentag: Iran exposes the West’s crisis of moral clarity
Rabbi Jonathan Guttentag is a UK representative of the Coalition for Jewish Values and a communal rabbi based in Manchester.
As the confrontation between the United States, Israel and Iran unfolds, Western governments — including Britain’s — now face not only a strategic challenge but a test of moral clarity.
Public statements from many European capitals have emphasised legal caution and diplomatic restraint while avoiding direct engagement with the ideological nature of the Iranian regime.
That hesitation reflects a deeper uncertainty within Western societies: an increasing difficulty in distinguishing between regimes that defend civilisation and those that undermine it.
This is not merely a geopolitical problem. It is a test of whether Western societies still possess the moral clarity required to recognise ideological threats.
For decades the Islamic Republic of Iran has maintained a posture of hostility toward Israel while supporting proxy militias across the Middle East. Its leadership has invested heavily in ballistic missile development and pursued nuclear capabilities while sponsoring armed groups operating from Lebanon to Yemen.
None of this has been hidden. The strategic outlook of the Iranian regime has been visible for many years.
Yet reactions across parts of the Western world to the recent confrontation have been strikingly confused. Within days of military strikes against Iranian targets, demonstrations appeared in several Western cities condemning Israel and the United States, while paying little attention to the actions and ideology of the Iranian regime itself.
At precisely the moment when the nature of the Iranian government’s policies should have become clearer, many in the West seemed unable to say plainly what they were witnessing.
The crisis exposed by Iran is therefore not only about Middle Eastern strategy. It reflects a wider Western uncertainty about power, religion, and the moral foundations of political order.
A deeper civilisational uncertainty
During the twentieth century, Western democracies ultimately recognised that certain ideologies represented existential threats to civilisation. Nazism and Soviet communism were understood not simply as political adversaries but as systems fundamentally hostile to human dignity and freedom. Today that moral clarity appears to be weakening.
In much contemporary discourse, liberal democracies and authoritarian regimes are increasingly treated as morally interchangeable actors in a global system. The language of “both sides” has too often become a substitute for serious moral judgment.
Yet moral relativism becomes difficult to sustain when one side openly pursues destabilisation across an entire region.
Iran’s ruling ideology combines religious absolutism with revolutionary hostility toward Western influence in the Middle East. Its regional strategy has centred on supporting armed proxy groups and expanding its strategic reach through networks of allied militias.
These are not the policies of a conventional state pursuing ordinary diplomatic interests. They are the policies of an ideological regime.
A memory from another moment
For me, these debates carry echoes of an earlier period. In the late 1970s, as a teenager studying in yeshiva in Israel, the radio would often carry news bulletins referring to bnei ha’arubah — “the hostages”. The phrase was repeated constantly during the Iranian revolution and its aftermath, when diplomats and civilians were held captive in Tehran.
For a young student immersed in Torah study, hearing those broadcasts created a vivid impression. Even then it was clear that something profound had shifted in the Middle East: a revolutionary regime had emerged that openly challenged the norms of international conduct.
Those memories return today when watching the current crisis unfold. The ideological roots of the confrontation we see now were already visible in those early years.
The language of a revolutionary regime
Another feature of the Iranian revolution that left a lasting impression was its political language. From the earliest years of the regime, public rallies and official demonstrations were marked by chants calling for the destruction of the United States and Israel. These slogans were not fringe expressions; they formed part of the official vocabulary of the state.
For many outside observers this was sometimes dismissed as rhetorical theatre. Yet slogans matter. They reveal the ideological worldview of a regime and the moral climate it cultivates within its society.
When hostility toward entire nations becomes embedded in public ritual and political messaging, it signals something deeper than ordinary geopolitical rivalry. It reflects a revolutionary ideology that defines itself through confrontation with the outside world.
Religion and power
One of the deeper problems raised by the Iranian regime is the way in which religion itself can be distorted when fused completely with political power.
The Islamic Republic presents itself as a religious state governed by clerical authority. Yet history repeatedly shows that when religious leadership and state power become fully merged, faith can easily become a tool of political control.
The Jewish political tradition developed a different model. In the biblical structure of leadership, authority was distributed across distinct institutions. The king exercised political power — and even he was subject to explicit limits in the Torah’s law of the king (Deuteronomy 17) — while the kohen embodied religious authority and the prophets spoke with an independent moral voice. These roles were not intended to collapse into one another.
In other words, the Hebrew Bible recognised very early that faith must sometimes stand as a restraint upon power rather than an instrument of it.
This arrangement allowed religion to function not merely as an instrument of state authority but as a source of ethical critique of power itself.
In that sense, the Jewish tradition anticipated a principle that later became central to Western constitutional thought: the need to restrain concentrated power and preserve independent moral authority within society — a principle that would eventually find expression in the Western idea of limited and separated powers.
When legalism replaces moral judgment
Another revealing feature of the recent crisis has been the hesitant response of some Western governments. In Britain, as elsewhere in Europe, official statements have often emphasised legal caution and diplomatic restraint while avoiding direct engagement with the ideological nature of the Iranian regime.
Another complication in the present debate has been the tendency to frame criticism of Western preparedness for Iranian escalation as though it were simply an endorsement of a more confrontational American posture toward Iran. That framing risks obscuring the real issue. It is entirely possible to reject reckless rhetoric or unilateral adventurism while still asking whether Western governments adequately recognised the scale of the Iranian threat and prepared accordingly. A serious strategic discussion should not collapse into caricatures about “pro-war” or “anti-war” positions; the more relevant question is whether the warning signs were visible and whether governments responded with sufficient foresight.
Instead of asking the most basic moral question — whether a regime pursuing aggressive regional expansion should be permitted to acquire the means to make those ambitions irreversible — much of the debate has revolved around a narrower legal question: whether military action satisfies particular interpretations of international law.
International law plays an important role in restraining the arbitrary use of force. But when legal frameworks become the sole lens through which governments view serious threats, they risk paralysing the very societies they were meant to protect.
Democratic governments should not lightly resort to war. But neither should they allow procedural legal debates to obscure the underlying moral reality of the situation.
The classical just war tradition, which shaped the development of Western law, recognised that the defence of innocent life may at times require decisive action — a principle that also appears in Jewish law’s distinction between necessary and discretionary wars and in the Talmudic teaching that one may rise in self-defence against a mortal threat.
The question facing Western leaders today is therefore not simply legal. It is whether they still possess the moral clarity required to defend the societies they govern.
Recovering moral confidence
The conflict with Iran will eventually subside, as conflicts always do. But the deeper question facing Western societies will remain. Do we still possess the moral confidence required to defend the values that built our civilisation? Or will we continue drifting into a moral fog in which democracies and authoritarian regimes are treated as morally equivalent actors?
The Iranian regime represents not only a geopolitical challenge but also a warning about the dangers of unconstrained power justified in religious terms. Recovering that clarity — moral, political and institutional — may prove essential if the West is to defend the civilisation it has inherited.
Politics
‘Stiff’ Bowels May Explain Young People’s Higher Cancer Risk
Recent research showed that almost half of bowel cancer cases happen among under-65s.
It wasn’t always that way. Since the ’80s, doctors have noticed that over-50s are getting the condition less, while younger people are seeing more and more cases.
We aren’t sure exactly why that is, though some doctors have shared some possible causes, like “ultra-processed diets, sedentary behaviour, stress, and disrupted sleep”, with HuffPost UK previously.
But now, bioengineers from the University of Texas, Dallas, have found a “distinctive feature of tissues from young patients diagnosed with colorectal [bowel] cancer, a disease that typically affects older patients”.
Are young people’s bowels different to older people’s?
This research, published in the journal Advanced Science, found that a lot of younger people’s colon tissue is “stiffer” than their older counterparts’.
This was true regardless of whether the tissue itself had bowel cancer, though all participants had been diagnosed with either early-onset bowel cancer (under 50s; 14 patients) or average-onset bowel cancer (over 50s; 19 patients).
The colon is a tube-shaped part of the digestive system that uses some muscles to push stool out of your body. But sometimes, it’s “extracellular material”, which is a kind of mesh made from collagen, thickens ― e.g., when it’s inflamed.
Study author Dr Jacopo Ferruzzi said: “Our team brought an engineering mindset to the table to understand the physical mechanisms involved in early-onset colorectal cancer… We know from previous studies that cancers are usually stiffer than normal tissues.
“While this was true also in patients with early-onset colorectal cancer, we were surprised to find that both healthy and cancerous tissues from these younger patients were stiffer than those from older patients.
“This led our team to think that such stiffness could be creating a favourable environment for cancer to develop early in life.”
What does that mean?
The researchers hope it could help us to provide better treatment for people with bowel cancer, especially younger people, down the line.
“If we can understand how physical forces fuel colorectal cancer progression, then we can actually think about early diagnosis and, possibly, therapy,” Dr Ferruzzi said.
“More importantly, we can ask the question: How do we stop people from developing cancer that early in life?”
Politics
Iran is holding a lot of cards when it comes to the price of oil
The US and Israel have accidentally made Iran a global oil superpower. This might sound exaggerated… But it is the view of esteemed scholar of air warfare Professor Robert Pape, whose damning critique of the attack on Iran has generated wide interest recently. Pape said on 12 March:
Iran hit 16 vessels so far in Strait of Hormuz.
That’s all it takes for Iran to control 20% of the world’s oil and become an oil hegemon — the number 1 strategic outcome US has sought to prevent in Middle East since 1970s.
He added:
Iran is not weakening— it is gaining power.
Iran hit 16 vessels so far in Strait of Hormuz. That’s all it takes for Iran to control 20% of the world’s oil and become an oil hegemon — the number 1 strategic outcome US has sought to prevent in Middle East since 1970s. Iran is not weakening— it is gaining power. pic.twitter.com/UOCNEqfDyB
— Robert A. Pape (@ProfessorPape) March 13, 2026
Dire straits, but not for Iran
The Straits of Hormuz are a narrow channel between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. They are natural chokepoint. Like the English channel, they are only 21 miles wide at their narrowest point. 20% of the world’s oil supply passes through annually.
The risks were well known. The straits been the topic of discussion for decades. Iran has long developed an ability to mine, blockade, or otherwise control the straits if attacked by the US and Israel. And Iran has now said it intends to do exactly that.
US-Israel attacked Iran first on 28 February without provocation. Iran was offering unprecedented concessions in negotiations at the time. The Pentagon has since stated there was no imminent threat from Iran. And the UN’s atomic watchdog, the IAEA, has said there is no evidence Iran was developing a nuclear weapon.
As a result of the attack, oil now sits around $100 a barrel. Under severe pressure, the International Energy Agency (IEA) agreed on 11 March to:
make 400 million barrels of oil from their emergency reserves available to the market to address disruptions in oil markets stemming from the war in the Middle East.
And here’s a key detail in the IEA statement:
An average of 20 million barrels per day of crude oil and oil products transited the Strait of Hormuz in 2025, or around 25% of the world’s seaborne oil trade. Options for oil flows to bypass the Strait of Hormuz are limited.
The Iranian government seem to be acutely aware of this fundamental material truth. Military spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaqari said on 11 March:
Get ready for oil be $200 a barrel, because the oil price depends on regional security which you have destabilised.
The Iranians – who say they won’t negotiate – seem content to play a long game.
Fight for the straits
The US response has been to promise more aggression. They’ve floated everything from naval escorts, to a ground invasion, to picking off Iranian mines and boats one by one.
US general Dan Caine spoke to the issue on 13 March:
BREAKING: US Air Force General Dan Caine says US forces are continuing to target Iran’s mine-laying capabilities, adding that Tehran still had the capacity to harm commercial shipping and US-allied forces.
🔴 LIVE updates: https://t.co/dXIECdlxxg pic.twitter.com/gAJxjeDdpT
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) March 13, 2026
Rumours of a ground invasion continue. In response, Drop Site News reporter Jeremy Scahill told Zeteo the Trump administration was ‘high on its own supply’:
When you start to believe your own delusions, when you start to imply that every single Iranian is a prisoner to a dictatorship of a mullah—the rhetoric that these guys use at the Pentagon and at the White House on down—and you start to believe it, you know, get high on your own supply, then you start to say, oh well, if we come in with ground troops—and Netanyahu’s telling us the people are going to rise up—you end up at an utter catastrophe.
The US has made it a policy to lock Iran out of the world economy through sanctions and blockades. This is regardless of the impact of that policy on Iranians – the very people the US often performatively claims to care about.
Today, by its lack of foresight and strategic blundering, the US and Israel have handed effective control of a big chunk of the world’s economy to Iran. The US looks to have completely underestimated Iran: a country which seems to grow more determined, angry and defiant by the hour.
Featured image via the Canary
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