Oil, Empire, and the Price of War: How Energy Became the Ultimate Weapon
May 2, 2026 , Joshua Scheer, https://scheerpost.com/2026/05/02/oil-empire-and-the-price-of-war-how-energy-became-the-ultimate-weapon/
This war isn’t just being fought with missiles—it’s being waged through oil markets, currencies, and corporate balance sheets. And while the world watches bombs fall, something quieter—and far more consequential—is happening: a global energy system is being weaponized in real time.
This on The Geopolitical Economy Report with Ben Norton. Ben digs into the role oil plays at the center of the war on Iran—and how the United States turned itself into the world’s top oil producer to weaponize that power globally. He breaks down the push to sideline OPEC, the UAE’s dramatic exit, and the political fiction of American “energy independence.”
Oil Was Never Just Fuel — It Was Always the Weapon
One of the clearest lessons of the war on Iran isn’t merely military. It’s structural. Oil is not just a commodity. It is power. It is leverage. It is the bloodstream of the global economy—and increasingly, the preferred instrument of empire.
For decades, the global system has revolved around the petrodollar, a quiet but foundational arrangement ensuring that most of the world’s oil is bought and sold in U.S. dollars. Even today, an estimated 80% of global oil transactions still run through that system. But the architecture is showing cracks. Sanctioned nations such as Russia, Iran, and Venezuela have begun trading outside the dollar, challenging the financial scaffolding that has long underpinned U.S. dominance.
Yet the story is not simply one of decline. Because while the dollar faces pressure, the United States has quietly secured something arguably more consequential: control over production itself.
In just over a decade, the U.S. transformed from a major importer into the largest oil producer on Earth, responsible for roughly 14–15% of global output. The shale boom didn’t just reshape domestic energy markets—it rewired the geopolitical landscape. Washington no longer merely polices the system; it helps shape it directly. And in wartime, that shift becomes decisive.
Crisis for the World, Windfall for Big Oil
As the conflict with Iran escalated, global oil prices surged—nearly doubling in 2026. For billions of people, that spike translates into inflation, food insecurity, and economic instability. For poorer nations, it is nothing short of devastating.
But for U.S. and Western oil corporations, the crisis has been a windfall. Profits have soared, with some companies reporting earnings double those of the previous year. As supply chains fracture and traditional exporters are destabilized or cut off, American firms have stepped in—expanding exports to Europe and Asia and filling the void left by war.
The pattern is unmistakable: global pain, concentrated gain.
The Strait That Can Shake the World
At the center of this crisis sits one of the most strategically vital chokepoints on Earth: the Strait of Hormuz. Before the war, roughly 20% of the world’s traded oil passed through this narrow corridor each day. When Iran moved to disrupt it, the message was not subtle—it was existential.
Shut the strait, and the global economy trembles.
This is what modern warfare looks like: not just territory and airspace, but shipping lanes, pipelines, and market flows. Control the flow of oil, and you control the tempo of the world economy.
Breaking OPEC, Rewriting Power
Another quiet earthquake has reshaped the landscape: the United Arab Emirates’ withdrawal from OPEC. On paper, it looks bureaucratic. But historically, OPEC represented something radical—a collective attempt by Global South nations to control their own resources and wrest power from Western oil giants.
Weakening OPEC weakens that collective leverage. And it strengthens something else.
Washington has never opposed cartels in principle—it has opposed cartels it doesn’t control. The long‑term objective has been consistent: ensure that corporations aligned with U.S. power, not sovereign states, set the terms of the global energy market.
The Myth of “Energy Independence”
The familiar talking point insists that the U.S. is “energy independent,” insulated from global chaos. It isn’t.
Oil is priced globally. When prices spike, everyone pays—regardless of where the oil originates. The U.S. still imports millions of barrels per day, and its infrastructure depends on specific grades of crude it does not produce in sufficient quantities. “Independence” is political messaging, not economic reality.
From Oil Shock to Food Crisis
And here is where the crisis becomes catastrophic. Oil is not just fuel—it is fertilizer, transport, and the backbone of modern agriculture. As energy prices surge and supply chains fracture, farmers worldwide are already facing shortages.
The likely result is grimly predictable: rising food prices, shrinking harvests, and widespread hunger. This is not speculation. It is the logical downstream effect of an energy shock of this scale.
The Real Takeaway
This war is not contained. It is not regional. It is not temporary. It is systemic.
It is reshaping how power works—who controls energy, who sets prices, and who pays the cost. And as always, the burden falls downward: onto workers, onto poorer nations, onto the global majority.
Meanwhile, at the top, the machinery hums. Profits rise. Influence expands. The line between state policy and corporate interest blurs even further.
Oil was never just fuel. It was always the weapon. And now, it is being used exactly as intended.
The West’s bubble of illusion about Israel – and about itself – is finally being burst
The anti-racist left are demonised as Jew-hating bigots for trying to burst the West’s long-established bubble of illusion by noisily flagging both the atrocities committed by Israel, supposedly in the name of Jews, and the complicity of their own governments in those atrocities.
Jonathan Cook, May 2026, https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/west-bubble-illusion-israel-about-itself-finally-being-burst
The genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in Lebanon exhausted the West’s moral legitimacy. Now Iran is slowly exhausting the West’s military primacy
or decades, two irreconciliable narratives about Israel and its motivations have existed in parallel.
On the one side, an official western narrative portrays a plucky, besieged “Jewish” state of Israel, desperate to make peace with its hostile Arab neighbours. Even to this day, that story dominates the political, media and academic landscape.
Time and again, or so we are told, Israel has held out an olive branch to “the Arabs”, seeking acceptance, but is always rebuffed.
A largely unspoken subtext suggests that supposedly irrational, bloodthirsty, Jew-hating regimes across the region would have completed the Nazis’ exterminationist agenda but for the West’s humane protection of a vulnerable minority.
A Palestinian counter-narrative, accepted across much of the rest of the world, is choked into silence in the West as an antisemitic “blood libel”.
It presents Israel as an ethnic supremacist, highly militaristic state – armed by the US and Europe – bent on expansion, mass expulsions and land theft.
On this view, the West implanted Israel as a colonial military outpost, there to subdue the native Palestinian population, and terrorise neighbouring states into submission through relentless and overwhelming displays of force.
Palestinians cannot make peace, or reach any kind of accommodation, because Israel pursues only conquest, domination and erasure. No middle ground is possible.
The proof, note Palestinians, is Israel’s long-standing refusal to define its borders. As its military power has grown decade after decade, ever more extreme political agendas have surfaced, demanding not just Israel’s takeover of the last remnants of the Palestinian territories it illegally occupies but expansion into neighbouring states like Lebanon and Syria.
Drunk on power
Here are two conflicting narratives in which each side presents itself as the victim of the other.
Two and a half years into a series of Israeli wars against the peoples of Gaza, Iran and Lebanon, how are these two perspectives holding up?
Does Israel look like the frustrated peacemaker facing off with barbaric opponents, or a rogue state whose decades-long aggression has provoked the very retaliatory violence exploited to excuse its constant war-making?
Is Israel a small, reluctant fortress state defending itself, or a western military client so drunk on its own power that it can no more limit its territorial ambitions than a great white shark can stop swimming?
The truth is that the past 30 months have graphically exposed not only what Israel always was but, by extension, what our own western states aspired to achieve through their most favoured Middle East client.
In a moment of imprudence last month, Christian Turner, Peter Mandelson’s replacement as British ambassador to the US, said the quiet part out loud. Washington, the West’s imperial hub, he said, had no deep loyalty to its allies – apart from one.
Unaware his words were being recorded, he told a group of visiting students: “I think there is probably one country that has a special relationship with the United States, and that is probably Israel.”
That special relationship requires the political and media class in Washington’s other client states, such as Britain, to shield the West’s Sparta in the Middle East from critical scrutiny.
So glaring have Israel’s atrocities become that the British government announced last month that it was shuttering its Foreign Office unit tracking war crimes – citing the need for cuts – rather than face further exposure of its collusion in those crimes.
If the British government refuses to monitor Israel’s war crimes, don’t expect more from the establishment media.
For months, Israel has been blowing up village after village in south Lebanon, driving millions of inhabitants from lands lived on for millennia by their ancestors, and it barely registers with our politicians and media.
Israel is destroying Gaza’s water supplies, as it earlier did the tiny enclave’s hospitals and health system, ensuring the further spread of disease, and our politicians and media have barely a word to say about it.
Israel kills journalists and emergency crews in Gaza and Lebanon week after week, month after month, and it raises barely an eyebrow from the political and media class.
Israel declares “yellow lines” in Gaza and Lebanon, demarcating expanded borders that formalise its theft of other peoples’ lands, and this instantly becomes the new normal.
Israel continuously violates ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon, spreading misery and inflaming yet more anger and bitterness, and once again, our politicians and media turn a blind eye.
Which western media outlets are pointing out a starkly revealing fact: that Israel now occupies more of Lebanon than Russia does of Ukraine?
Media bias
An analysis by the Newscord media monitoring group last month confirmed earlier research: that the British media studiously avoid naming ethnic cleansing and genocide when it is Israel – rather than Russia – carrying them out.
Comparing the coverage of the most “serious” establishment British news outlets – the BBC, the Guardian and Sky – with that of Al Jazeera, the study found that UK media consistently choose to obscure Israel’s responsibility for its crimes.
Israel was identified as conducting attacks in Gaza in only around half of British news reports, in contrast to nearly 90 percent of Al Jazeera’s. As Newscord noted: “Half the time, BBC readers aren’t told who killed the person in the story.”
That was graphically illustrated in a notorious BBC headline: “Hind Rajab, 6, found dead in Gaza days after phone calls for help”.
In fact, an Israeli tank had sprayed a stationary car with gunfire even though the Israeli military had known for hours that it contained a Palestinian girl – the sole survivor of an earlier attack – who emergency crews were desperately trying to reach. Israel killed the rescue team, too.
In another revealing finding, Newscord notes that four out of every five BBC reports on casualties caused by Israel’s attacks used the convoluted passive – rather than active – voice, clearly with the intent to downplay Israel’s culpability and savagery.
The British media also actively undermined the enormity of the Palestinian death toll in Gaza by regularly attributing the figures to a “Hamas-affiliated” health ministry – even though the numbers, currently at well over 70,000 Palestinians, are almost certainly a massive undercount, given Israel’s early destruction of the enclave’s government and its capacity to count the dead.
The fact that the United Nations has found the Gaza figures to be credible was mentioned in only 0.6 percent of reports.
Genocidal intent
Similarly, the BBC and the Guardian made the decision to humanise Israeli captives of Hamas twice as often as they did Palestinian captives of the Israeli state.
The inappropriateness of that double standard is underscored by continuing insinuations from politicians and the media that Hamas “beheaded babies” and carried out systematic rapes on 7 October 2023 – more than two years after those claims were utterly discredited.
Contrast that with the media’s effective burial of Euro Med Monitor’s report last month on the sickening practice by the Israeli military of raping Palestinian prisoners with dogs trained for that very purpose.
There has been a flood of accounts from Palestinians held captive by Israel of their systematic rape and sexual abuse, confirmed by human rights groups and by the testimonies of whistleblowing Israeli soldiers and medics. Little of this is making headway in the western media.
Newscord points to a further, veiled problem that skews western coverage: the omission of established but inconvenient facts that would present Israel in a depraved – that is, an accurate – light.
For example, observes Newscord, the BBC has entirely failed to report all but one of the hundreds of clearly genocidal statements made by Israeli officials, from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu down.
It is easy to understand why. Legal authorities usually struggle to make a conclusive determination of genocide because, crucially, it depends on divining intent, which is typically hidden by those committing atrocities.
Starkly, in Israel’s case, not only do its actions in Gaza look like genocide, but its leaders have been crystal clear that those actions are intended to be genocidal. That is behaviour only seen in those intoxicated by a sense of their own impunity.
Once again, the British media have obligingly taken it upon themselves to shield Israel from any legal jeopardy – all in the interests of objective reporting, you understand.
An old story
This is nothing new. It has been the same story since before Israel’s violent creation on the Palestinians’ homeland in 1948, when 80 percent of the native population were ethnically cleansed by Israel from the new, self-declared “Jewish” state. Or when, in the continuing language of deceit employed by western political, media and academic elites, some 750,000 Palestinians “fled”.
The aim has been to manufacture and maintain a bubble of illusion for western publics, one where our own crimes – and those of our allies – remain invisible to us.
Note in this regard the UK government’s determined exclusion of Israel from a recent “independent” inquiry, under former Whitehall bureaucrat Philip Rycroft, into malign foreignfinancial influence on British politics. It was, of course, Russia that was put chiefly under the spotlight.
Predictably, Keir Starmer’s government rejected in April a petition signed by more than 114,000 people calling for a similar public inquiry into the influence of the powerful Israel lobby.
That came as no surprise, given that any such investigation would have risked foregrounding the many hundreds of thousands of pounds known to have been received by Starmer and his ministers from pro-Israel lobbyists.
The same British political and media class so averse to investigating the malign influence of the pro-Israel lobby is also ignoring Israel’s current, systematic destruction of villages and infrastructure across south Lebanon – in flagrant violation of a supposed ceasefire.
Israeli soldiers have told local media that their job is to target all structures indiscriminately, whether civilian or “terrorist”, with the goal of preventing the Lebanese inhabitants from returning to their villages.
That fits with Israel’s announcement that it does not intend to withdraw after the fighting ends, and widespread plans to colonise the occupied lands in Lebanon with Jewish settlers.
Were it not for videos of Israel blowing up Lebanese communities breaking through on social media, despite algorithmic suppression, we might not know about Israel’s wholesale efforts to ethnically cleanse south Lebanon.
Responding to these videos with a rare “mainstream” report on the campaign of destruction, the Guardian sugar-coated the horror faced by Lebanese families discovering their homes gone, along with priceless memories and heirlooms. This experience was described – absurdly – by the paper as “bittersweet”.
Critics note a consistent pattern. Israel is not only levelling south Lebanon; over the past 30 months, it has levelled almost every building in Gaza, too.
But the template for both is of much earlier origin, as every Palestinian learns from a tender age.
Having expelled most Palestinians from their homes in 1948, Israel spent years blowing up some 500 villages one after another – even as Israeli leaders publicly claimed to be begging the refugees to return and western leaders were extolling Israel as the “only democracy” in the Middle East.
Expulsions that the West still pretends did not take place eight decades ago are now being livestreamed. This time, they are impossible to deny, as well as the colonial, supremacist agenda behind them.
Vilify the messenger
If the message inhering in Israel’s atrocities can no longer be disappeared, laundered or normalised – as it was in an age before 24-hour rolling news and social media – then a different strategy is required: villify the messenger.
This is the political task of our times.
The anti-racist left are demonised as Jew-hating bigots for trying to burst the West’s long-established bubble of illusion by noisily flagging both the atrocities committed by Israel, supposedly in the name of Jews, and the complicity of their own governments in those atrocities.
Last month, Starmer’s government forced through the Commons a law allowing the police to outlaw protests causing “cumulative disruption” – that is, repeat protests like those against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The media barely blinked.
This week’s attack on two Jewish men in Golders Green, allegedly by a mentally ill man with a long history of violence, is being quickly exploited by the main parties to prepare for even tighter restrictions on the right to protest.
Britons who try to stop Israeli war crimes, whether by targeting Israel’s factories of death located in the UK or by holding placards in support of this kind of direct action, continue to be treated as “terrorists”, even after a court ruling that the proscription of Palestine Action is unlawful.
With juries often proving reluctant to convict, the British state is openly trying to sway verdicts in its favour. Juries are blocked from learning about the reasons for the targeting of Israeli weapons factories – the accused’s main defence. Judges instruct juries to convict.
Members of the public who silently hold signs outside court are arrested for reminding juries of a long-established right in law to defy such instructions, follow their consciences and acquit – a police abuse contravening hundreds of years of legal precedent, and one the courts appear increasingly ready to condone.
There are gags, being dutifully obeyed by the media, on other secret malpractices designed to help the British government secure the verdicts it needs to stop activism against the genocide. We only know because Your Party MP Zarah Sultana has used parliamentary privilege to draw attention to them.
It was telling this week that, in the current repeat trial of six Palestine Action defendants, five of them dispensed with their barristers for the closing speeches. They noted, darkly, that their legal representatives could not properly represent them due to “decisions made by the court”.
Meanwhile, the Starmer government is pressing ahead with plans to finally rid itself of troublesome juries and let more reliable judges decide these political show trials alone.
Welcome to the rapid unravelling of Britain’s most cherished constitutional rights – needed chiefly, it seems, to protect a far-off country that, according to the International Court of Justice, commits the crime of apartheid against Palestinians and may plausibly be committing genocide in Gaza.
Painful lesson
But, of course, the British government – like the US, German and French governments – isn’t hollowing out its liberal democracy just to protect Israel. It is being forced to such extremes out of desperation.
The West can no longer sustain the bubble of illusion – about its moral or civilisational superiority – in a world of diminishing resources, a world where western elites are willing to cause planetary immolation to protect the fossil-fuel profits on which they have grown obese.
The agenda of the Epstein class is ever more transparent at home, and ever more under challenge abroad. The genocide in Gaza, and the ethnic cleansing in Lebanon, have exhausted the West’s moral legitimacy. Now Iran is slowly exhausting the West’s military primacy.
It is no surprise that a US empire on its last legs – an empire built on the control of fossil fuels – has chosen as the hill to die on the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s largest oil spigot.
Israel was, indeed, implanted in the region eight decades ago as a highly militarised client state whose primary job was to project western – that is, US – power into the oil-rich Middle East.
The US shielded Israel from scrutiny over its oppression of the Palestinians and the theft of their homeland.
In return, “plucky” Israel helped the US construct a self-serving narrative that required the containment and overthrow of secular nationalist governments in the Middle East while protecting backward-looking monarchies that cosplayed opposition to Israel as they secretly colluded with it.
The region’s resulting states, embattled and divided, were ripe for control. They lacked the kind of accountable governments that would need to be responsive to their publics and might ally to protect the region’s interests from western colonial interference.
Now, Iran is stress-testing this decades-old system to destruction. It is forcing the Gulf states to choose: will they continue to serve the US, even though it has shown it cannot protect them, or ally with Iran as it emerges as a new great power, levying fees to pass through the strait?
The West is quickly learning that cheap drones can elude even its most sophisticated detection systems, and that a few mines and gunboats can choke off much of the fuel the global economy depends on.
The bubble of illusion has finally burst. The West is getting its long-overdue comeuppance. The lesson will be painful indeed.
Iranian proposal rejected by Trump would open strait before nuclear talks, Iran official says
By Reuters, May 2, 2026, https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iranian-proposal-rejected-by-trump-would-open-strait-before-nuclear-talks-iran-2026-05-02/
May 2 (Reuters) – An Iranian proposal so far rejected by U.S. President Donald Trump would open shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and end the U.S. blockade of Iran while leaving talks on Iran’s nuclear programme for later, a senior Iranian official said on Saturday.
Four weeks since the United States and Israel suspended their bombing campaign against Iran, no deal has been reached to end a war that has caused the biggest disruption ever to global energy supplies.
Iran has been blocking nearly all shipping from the Gulf apart from its own for more than two months. Last month the U.S. imposed its own blockade of ships from Iranian ports.
Trump said on Friday he was “not satisfied” with Iran’s latest proposal, without spelling out in detail which elements he opposes.
“They’re asking for things that I can’t agree to,” he told reporters at the White House.
Washington has repeatedly said it will not end the war without a deal that prevents Iran from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon, the primary aim Trump cited when he launched the strikes in February in the midst of nuclear talks. Iran says its nuclear programme is peaceful.
Speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential diplomacy, the senior Iranian official said Tehran believed its latest proposal to shelve nuclear talks for a later stage was a significant shift aimed at facilitating an agreement.
Under the proposal, the war would end with a guarantee that Israel and the United States would not attack again. Iran would open the strait, and the United States would lift its blockade.
Future talks would then be held on curbs to Iran’s nuclear programme in return for the lifting of sanctions, with Iran demanding Washington recognise its right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, even if it agrees to suspend it.
“Under this framework, negotiations over the more complicated nuclear issue have been moved to the final stage to create a more conducive atmosphere,” the official said.
Reuters and other news organisations already reported over the past week that Tehran was proposing to reopen the strait before nuclear issues were resolved; the official confirmed that this new timeline had now been spelled out in a formal proposal conveyed to the United States through mediators.
Joint interfaith statement calls for world free of nuclear weapons
May 2nd, 2026, https://www.indcatholicnews.com/news/54916
The following joint Interfaith statement on the occasion of the 11th Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons was released this week. 109 organisations signed the document.
We, as people of faith, join in solidarity with our voices to call upon the leaders of the world to rescue the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) from crisis and to honour its deepest commitment: creating a world free from nuclear weapons.
On March 5, 1970, the NPT entered into force-emerging following the horrors of the previous decades. The Treaty rests on an extraordinary promise: non-nuclear-weapon states pledged not to acquire nuclear weapons, while nuclear-weapon states committed under Article VI to pursue negotiations in good faith toward complete disarmament.
Fifty-six years later, the Treaty’s most fundamental commitment remains unfulfilled. We see the NPT unraveling and a proliferation crisis brewing. The obligation to negotiate disarmament has been deferred, diluted, and in many cases openly dismissed. All nuclear-armed states are modernising their arsenals with new delivery systems and doctrines that lower the threshold for use. The moral authority of the Treaty depends upon the credibility of the disarmament commitment. That credibility is now in crisis.
The Urgency and Risk We Face Today
With the Doomsday Clock set to 85 seconds to midnight, we are now the closest we have ever been to catastrophe. Many who hold power today do not fully grasp how near we have already come to nuclear war. We have survived not because our systems are foolproof, but because we have been lucky. And luck, as the UN Secretary-General said, is not a strategy.
Underlying all of this is a spiritual crisis rooted in the normalization of violence and war as instruments for resolving conflict between peoples and nations. When armed force is treated as a first resort, when military spending eclipses investment in human development, when entire populations are taught to accept the threat of annihilation as a condition of their security, our moral imagination has failed. The acceptance of apocalyptic violence as the final arbiter of disputes among nations is not simply a strategic posture. It is a spiritual sickness-one that every faith tradition we represent has named, lamented, and called its followers to resist.
Our Faith Calls Us to Act
It is our conviction, held in common across our diverse faith traditions, that life is a precious gift. And alongside that great gift comes the responsibility to both care for each other and for this good Earth entrusted to us. Nuclear weapons represent a failure on both counts-a betrayal of our duty to protect one another and to safeguard the planet that sustains all life.
We affirm that genuine security is built on justice, on mutual care, on the recognition that no nation’s safety can rest on another nation’s annihilation. We pray that the future of your children and ours is safeguarded and the fear of annihilation becomes a shadow of the past.
And so we hold hope in this crisis-hope as a bold conviction that the choices of this generation can determine whether the consequences of nuclear escalation are carried into future generations or halted in our time.
Our Call to Leaders Around the World
We call on our leaders to reaffirm the spirit of the NPT as an urgent and binding commitment. We recognise the depth of the divisions among NPT member states. But we refuse to accept paralysis. We call for States to engage in real dialogue, moving beyond entrenched positions, to find the common ground of our shared survival. The challenges are numerous and complex. Yet, we hold hope that our leaders have the courage to prevent another nuclear catastrophe.
On the occasion of the 11th NPT Review Conference, we call on our leaders to honour two commitments above all. First, recommit to Article VI-not in rhetoric, but in action: with verifiable reductions, with a moratorium on new warhead development, with a return to negotiations that includes all nuclear-armed states. The grand bargain of the NPT cannot survive if one half of it is perpetually deferred. Second, center human security in nuclear policy. Decisions about nuclear weapons must be grounded not in the security of states alone, but in the shared security of all people
Faith, conscience and commitment to truly inclusive peace compel us to carry with us the voices of the hibakusha, the downwinders, and all global communities who have experienced and borne witness to the suffering that nuclear weapons inflict. We carry with us the hopes of our children, who deserve to inherit a world where the threat of extinction does not hang over every cradle.
We hold you in the Light. And we pray for you to be a beacon to your children and our children showing the path toward a better future. You have the power to begin creating a world free from nuclear weapons. We are asking you to use it.
Endorsing Organizations: (109)……………………………………………………………………………………………………https://www.indcatholicnews.com/news/54916
New outrage after Israel demolishes convent in Yaroun, southern Lebanon
“They destroy homes and places of worship, and no one stops them,” lamented the parish priest of the village.
L’OLJ / 3 May 2026, https://today.lorientlejour.com/article/1505569/new-outrage-after-israel-demolishes-convent-in-yaroun-southern-lebanon.html
Two weeks after the uproar over the desecration of a statue of Jesus Christ in a village in southern Lebanon, Israeli forces demolished a convent in Yaroun (Bint Jbeil district) on Friday, sparking a new wave of international indignation.
“Let American Christians speak up!!! America can’t stay silent and must stop funding Israel to commit such atrocities!!!” wrote former U.S. lawmaker and far-right figure Marjorie Taylor Greene on Saturday, sharing a post showing the extent of the destruction suffered by the convent and the Sisters of the Holy Savior school.
“The Israeli army razed the convent and the Sisters of the Holy Savior school in Yaroun, Lebanon, yesterday. By what right? What does this have to do with disarming Hezbollah? Israel, wake up—your leaders have lost their way,” responded European Parliament member Nathalie Loiseau, former French minister and a member of President Emmanuel Macron’s allied Horizons party.
According to information obtained on Friday by our correspondent in southern Lebanon from Father Charbel Naddaf, priest of the Yaroun parish, the Israelis did indeed carry out the demolition of the convent and its associated school on Friday, denouncing “a flagrant violation of international law.
According to information obtained on Friday by our correspondent in southern Lebanon from Father Charbel Naddaf, priest of the Yaroun parish, the Israelis did indeed carry out the demolition of the convent and its associated school on Friday, denouncing “a flagrant violation of international law.”
Father Naddaf believes that Tel Aviv’s goal is to “empty the area of its inhabitants and prevent their return,” something the Israeli army manages to accomplish “in the absence of any deterrent.” “They destroy houses and places of worship, and no one stops them,” he lamented, calling on Lebanese authorities and the international community to intervene.
“Violation of all human values”
An Israeli soldier had already caused an international outcry by vandalizing a statue of Jesus Christ in the Christian village of Debel, forcing the Israeli government to announce sanctions against the soldiers involved in this desecration, under the weight of public outcry.
During the previous Israeli ground offensive in southern Lebanon launched during the autumn 2024 war, Israeli soldiers filmed themselves desecrating a monastery in Deir Mimas (Marjeyoun), as well as a statue of Saint George in Yaroun. Several places of worship, including mosques and churches, had already been affected by Israeli bombings, including the same monastery in Yaroun, which was badly damaged.
In response to yet another such incident, the Metropolitan of Zahlé and the Bekaa of the Melkite Greek Catholics, Ibrahim Mikail Ibrahim, condemned in a statement the “crime of destruction” that targeted the monastery and the Sisters of the Holy Savior school, saying that “what happened is not a mere passing aggression, but a blatant and unacceptable violation of all human values and international law, as well as a direct attack on the educational and spiritual mission of the Church.”
Metropolitan Ibrahim stated that “the destruction of this religious and educational place constitutes an aggravated crime against humanity and the land, and respects neither the sanctity of holy places nor that of scientific institutions,” emphasizing that targeting a monastery and a school is tantamount to attacking “childhood, knowledge, and the hope for a better future.” “I call on the international community to assume its responsibilities and not content itself with timid positions that do not measure up to the seriousness of the tragedy,” he insisted.
The “buffer zone” that Israel wants to establish in southern Lebanon stretches as far as eight to ten kilometers from the Blue Line and encompasses dozens of villages, most of which are occupied and where all homes and other civilian buildings are systematically destroyed. In addition to this invasion, the Israeli army continues to bomb, despite the existing truce, villages and towns in the south of the country.
American Press Freedom on the Brink
April 30, 2026, Clayton Weimers, https://www.projectcensored.org/american-press-freedom-on-the-brink/
As World Press Freedom Day (May 3) nears, it’s a good time to step back and assess how journalists and news outlets are faring in our current media climate.
President Donald Trump came back to the White House and picked up right where he left off, insulting and attacking the press on an almost daily basis, suing media outlets, and taking a number of concrete actions to restrict press freedom. Against this backdrop, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) will release its 2026 World Press Freedom Index on April 30.
Every year, RSF scores and ranks 180 countries and territories based on their level of press freedom. The Index evaluates five indicators: political context, legal framework, economic context, sociocultural context, and safety. The United States has declined in each of these indicators and steadily fallen on the Index over the past decade, dropping in rank from 49th in 2015 to 57th in 2025.
It may be tempting to blame Trump entirely for the perilous state of journalism in the country, but that steady decline in press freedom over the past decade spans multiple administrations, with both parties holding power in Washington. Such a prolonged decline points to structural deficiencies that cannot be attributed to a single issue, person, or administration.
Media ownership has become increasingly consolidated among a few media moguls, as outlets have also faced major revenue losses.
Local news is also vanishing, and millions of Americans, especially in rural and low-income areas, now live in “news deserts.”
Time and again, Congress has missed opportunities to enact meaningful press freedom protections, such as the PRESS Act, while local and state governments have chipped away at press freedom.
Violence against journalists has risen to stubbornly high levels, according to the US Press Freedom Tracker. And in the last decade, eight journalists in the US were killed for their journalism or while working.
And through this tumultuous period, public trust in news has plummeted.
Now, on top of that overall troubling context, a White House openly hostile to journalism is exacerbating an already fraught situation. Since returning to power, Trump, along with his advisors and allies, has dealt devastating blows to journalism, setting dangerous precedents and inflicting enduring harm.
From limiting journalists’ access to government buildings to cutting public media funding to targeting and threatening disfavored media outlets, the administration has regularly violated press freedom.
While these individual incidents are scandalous, and often unconstitutional, it’s easy for them to be washed away into the constant churn of the news cycle. Put them all together, though, and one conclusion is unavoidable: Trump is waging an all-out war on press freedom and journalism.
Trump promised to be a dictator on just “day one” of his term, but the totality of his anti-press campaign signals that the self-proclaimed “Peace President” is sinking to the depths of authoritarian regimes. His war on press freedom affects all five indicators RSF measures to compile the Index: political, legal, economic, sociocultural, and safety.
Political context
On his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order “ending federal censorship,” effectively eliminating government monitoring of misinformation and disinformation.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr has also weaponized the independent agency to investigate news outlets with coverage that the presidential administration disagrees with.
The administration removed thousands of US government pages that hosted information ranging from vaccines to climate change, vital resources for journalists and the general public alike.
Reporters have been barred from, or had their access severely restricted at the State Department, Air Force One, the Pentagon, and even a section of the White House previously known as “Upper Press.”
Legal framework
In addition to the president’s numerous lawsuits against media outlets, his administration earlier this year raided the home of Washington Post journalist Hannah Natanson and confiscated her personal and professional devices, a truly dangerous and unprecedented assault that puts thousands of Natanson’s sources at risk and is likely to scare off future sources from speaking with journalists. Journalists like Don Lemon and Georgia Fort have been arrested and threatened with criminal charges while doing their work.
Economic context
Trump led the charge to eliminate federal funding for public media. He’s also inserted himself into media company mergers and acquisitions, putting his thumb on the scale to ensure his political allies take control of American media outlets—a move eerily reminiscent of Viktor Orbán in Hungary and even Vladimir Putin in Russia.
Sociocultural context
Trump’s near-daily attacks and insults against journalists have set an example for others, with journalists now facing online and public harassment while doing their job. The bar for attacks against journalists is undeniably lower today thanks to Trump. RSF’s 2024 investigation into the state of press freedom in swing states found journalists reporting alarming instances of direct threats to their safety by local politicians. Threats against journalists by elected officials that once seemed inconceivable have become de rigueur.
Safety
Journalists faced a spike in physical violence by law enforcement and federal agents while doing their work. This was most evident as journalists covered widespread protests against the administration’s sweeping crackdown on immigration in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
Press freedom around the world is in trouble, as RSF’s Index has shown in recent years. Notably, the Trump effect extends beyond US borders. The American retreat from foreign aid led to the withdrawal of millions of dollars that supported independent media in developing economies around the world. In one striking example, a safety training session for journalists in the Amazon was abruptly canceled because of the USAID shutdown.
Authoritarian leaders are further emboldened to attack the press with the knowledge that the United States is no longer championing press freedom. When Serbian authorities raided the offices of the country’s largest fact-checker, they cited X posts by Elon Musk in his capacity as the leader of DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) as evidence of the media organization’s crimes. That evidence? Accepting a USAID grant.
This is a moment of crisis for American media. During the twentieth century, press freedom—and free expression more broadly—saw a gradual, if uneven, expansion. Now we’re heading in the other direction for the first time in generations, and RSF isn’t the only organization that’s noticed. The Varieties of Democracy Institute’s 2026 Democracy Report found that US freedom of expression had declined to World War II levels. Freedom House also docked the United States in its latest global report, with freedom of expression cited as a leading factor in democratic backsliding.
We can’t lay all the blame for the state of American press freedom at the president’s feet, but Trump has taken a troubling situation and turned it into a full-blown crisis that we must urgently solve. Our very democracy is at stake.
Clayton Weimers is a recognized leader in press freedom who serves as North America Director for Reporters Without Borders (RSF). He and his team defend press freedom across the English-speaking Americas and advance RSF’s global priorities to advocate for journalists and everyone’s right to information. His writing on press freedom has appeared in publications such as the Guardian, Newsweek, The Hill, and The Independent. He originally joined RSF’s DC team as Deputy Director for Advocacy after a career in political campaigns. He has degrees from the University of Chicago and Pitzer College and a borderline unhealthy relationship with the Chicago Cubs and Everton Football Club.
Israel’s war on water-depriving Palestinians in Gaza of water for at least nearly two decades, if not longer
It’s part of Israel’s multi-layered manufactured misery in Gaza, long before October 2023
Eva Karene Bartlett, May 01, 2026, https://evakarenebartlett.substack.com/p/israels-war-on-water-depriving-palestinians?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3046064&post_id=196084075&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email EXCELLENT ILLUSTRATIONS ON ORIGINAL.
When I lived in Gaza, I documented Israel’s systematic destruction of wells & cisterns in the formerly-rich agricultual land in eastern & northern Gaza, also noting:
“(Following the Israeli December 2008/January 2009 war on Gaza) A UNDP survey following the attacks found that nearly 14,000 dunums of irrigation networks and pipelines have been destroyed, along with 250 wells and 327 water pumps completely damaged, and another 53 wells partially damaged by Israeli bombing and bulldozing. Water has been further contaminated by chemical agents used by the Israeli army during its war on Gaza…”
Palestinian farmers often had to resort to trying to irrigate their land by carting jugs of wateron donkey carts over land rutted by Israeli tanks and bulldozers (which routinely invaded to tear up farmland and destroy crops).
On top of depriving Palestinians of their ability to collect water, Israel cut off the natural flow of water to Gaza.
On top of this, Israel ensured Gaza’s coastal waters remained polluted by sewage, never allowing Palestinians to properly maintain and treat sewage, pumping into the sea being the only option to avoid having sewage flood the streets (as happened many times).
Back in 2014 when I wrote an indepth overview of the many sadistic policies Israel employed to ensure Gaza was unliveable back then, I noted:
“Damage to the coastal aquifer from over-extraction will be reversible in 2020 if no action is taken now, a 2012 UN report notes. At the moment, 95% of water in Gaza is undrinkable according to WHO standards.”
Do read the full overview:
-on how Israel has been deliberately starving Gaza since the 2000s, including by drastically limiting imports; shooting on farmers & fishers; destroying agricultural land and stealing or destroying fishing boats
-on the 2008/9 & 2012 Israeli wars on Gaza, which I documented real time from on the ground & in ambulances in northern Gaza
-on Israel attempting to quash popular unarmed resistance by firing live ammunition at protesters (long before the 2018 Great Marches)
-on Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s sole power plant and crippling of their electricity, meaning we went without electricity for 14-18 hours on good days, 20 or more hours on bad days (which were the majority), and how this impacted sanitation, hospitals and personal lives
-on the Israeli bombings not reported by Western media, and not during Israel’s sociopathical wars on Gaza…and the sonic booms campaigns were terrorized the population, the sound very much like actual bombs, in relentless campaigns
-on how these, and more, contributed to stunted growth in children and other malnutrion related diseases, as well as anaemia in women, rampant diabetes, and other food and preventable water related diseases – https://ingaza.wordpress.com/2014/01/01/observations-from-occupied-palestine-in-gaza/
This was all 10 or 15 years prior to October 2023. Zionist propagandists’ justifications for their savagery are simply empty talking points
Israeli violence against Palestinians echoes Holocaust – ex-Mossad chief
Ongoing attacks in the West Bank pose an “existential threat” to the Jewish state, Tamir Pardo has said
28 Apr, 2026 https://www.rt.com/news/639222-israel-violence-palestinians-holocaust/
Violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank echoes attacks on Jews during the Holocaust and poses an “existential threat” to Israel, former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo has said.
Israeli settlers live in communities built in the West Bank, a territory Israel captured in the 1967 Six-Day War and which Palestinians seek as part of a future state. Successive Israeli governments have backed or tolerated the settlements for security, political, and religious reasons.
Pardo spoke to local media on Monday while touring Palestinian villages that have come under settler attacks in recent months.
”My mother was a Holocaust survivor, and what I saw reminded me of the events that happened against Jews in the last century,” Pardo said. “What I saw today made me feel ashamed to be Jewish.”
His comments come amid a surge in settler violence across the West Bank, with groups carrying out repeated raids on Palestinian communities, torching homes and vehicles, vandalizing property and assaulting residents, according to witnesses and human rights organizations. In the latest incident, two Palestinians, including a 14-year-old schoolboy, were killed last week after gunmen opened fire near a school.
Attacks occur on a near-daily basis and intensified during the US-Israeli war on Iran between February 28 and April 8, rights groups said. Yesh Din recorded 378 incidents over that period, in which eight Palestinians were killed and around 200 injured.
Pardo said the settlers behind the attacks, and the Israeli government’s failure to stop them, were creating the conditions for a future October 7-style assault from the West Bank, referring to the 2023 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people and saw 250 taken hostage. Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to the attack. More than 72,000 Palestinians were killed and over 172,000 injured in Israeli airstrikes and ground offensives, according to Palestinian health authorities.
The former Mossad chief warned that the violence unfolding in the West Bank could lead to a similar event, albeit in a different and potentially more severe form given the region’s complexity, adding that Israel was “sowing the seeds” for such an outcome.
“The myths of ‘Russian aggression.’”
RAND was as Cold War-ish as any think tank serving the U.S. government was bound to be during those decades, and this makes its conclusions here all the weightier. The Russians are not coming, to turn the title of the old Alan Arkin comedy upside down. They pose no military threat either to Europe or the United States and do not intend to do so. As history shows, it is essentially reactive and acts defensively. We have had this from RAND for six years.
A RAND study explodes the West’s ‘Irrussianality.’
29 APRIL—’Arte, ‘the’ Franco–German television channel, broadcast a documentary earlier this month titled L’Europe dans la main de Poutine? “Europe in Putin’s grip?” opens with a scene in the Kremlin on 18 March 2014, when President Putin announced the formal annexation of Crimea after a referendum concluded two days earlier. This film is available simultaneously with a two-part doc’y entitled “Putin’s Secret Weapons,” which purports to review the Russian Federation’s “state-directed terror,” its routine theft of Western technology, its “opaque network of spies,” its stockpiles of hypersonic missiles, and so on. “The country could strike Europe within minutes,” the film advises viewers.
Russophobic paranoia of this sort is nothing new, of course. You can go back to Czarist Russia’s 19th century modernizations and find evidence of it, and then on to the British defeat in Crimea (1853–56), the Red Scare that followed the Bolshevik Revolution, the second Red Scare of the Cold War decades. I trace the current wave to Putin’s 2007 speech at the Munich Security Conference, where he assailed the United States’ pretensions to global preeminence. Then came the cynically manipulated Russophobia Donald Trump provoked when, as he rose to political prominence in 2016, he advocated a new détente with Moscow.
What we have seen since the Biden regime intentionally provoked Russia’s February 2022 intervention in Ukraine ranks with any of these previous occasions as measured by the fear-mongering, the war-mongering, and the manufactured delusions that are now woven into daily life, as the just-noted documentaries suggest. This is especially evident in Europe, where unimaginative “centrists”—incompetent to a one, in my view—have been as deer in headlights since Trump II stepped back from Washington’s profligate support of the bottomlessly corrupt regime in Kiev during the Biden years.
French, Belgian, and British troops are just now completing three-months of “war-gaming” in the field—ground forces, armored vehicles, paratroops, underwater divers—in the most extensive such exercises since the Cold War. The three Baltic states are provocatively permitting the Ukrainians to launch drone attacks from their territory into northern Russia. Johann Wadephul has made the certainty of a Russian attack within five years—four at this point—a standard warning in his public pronouncements since Chancellor Merz named him foreign minister last year. Berlin and Paris are in talks to extend France’s nuclear deterrent to the rest of Europe. With the Merz regime in the lead, the Continent has begun dismantling its once-admirable welfare systems in favor of a cross-border military-industrial complex of its own.
Anyone paying attention can discern without much effort that the threat of “Russian aggression” in Europe is a construction with no basis whatsoever in fact. Christian Müller, a Swiss journalist with a long record as an editor and commentator, has chosen this moment to push this reality into the faces of those—including every “centrist” now in power across Europe—who cynically conjure a threat from the East that simply does not exist.
Müller now publishes and edits Global Bridge, an online journal with many distinguished contributors. (Distinguished or otherwise, I am among them.) This week he republished a piece that first appeared in 2021. It is based on a RAND Corporation study that had recently appeared under the title Russia’s Military Interventions: Patterns, Drivers, and Signposts. The full, 186–page research report is here. It is replete with graphs and tables that put Moscow’s security policies in an historical context that goes back to 1946, when the Soviets were rebuilding after the extensive sacrifices the defeat of the Reich required of them. It analyzes all the interventions with which readers may be familiar: There is Afghanistan in the 1980s, Georgia in 2008, Syria in 2015. (The Ukraine intervention, of course, was still to come.)
RAND was as Cold War-ish as any think tank serving the U.S. government was bound to be during those decades, and this makes its conclusions here all the weightier. The Russians are not coming, to turn the title of the old Alan Arkin comedy upside down. They pose no military threat either to Europe or the United States and do not intend to do so. As history shows, it is essentially reactive and acts defensively. We have had this from RAND for six years.
In the RAND report’s language:
Russia engaged in combat only when it felt the necessity to respond to a development on the ground that posed a pressing threat. Moscow sought to achieve its objectives using coercive measures short of military intervention: It undertook combat missions, judging from the two case studies, only when it felt forced by circumstances…. In short, although Russia generally seems more reactive in its decision-making about combat interventions unless its vital interests are directly threatened, Moscow might decide to be proactive in special circumstances (particularly relating to events in its neighborhood).
Given the mounting intensity of the purposely, dangerously cultivated Russophobia now spreading across Europe, Christian Müller could scarcely have chosen a more propitious moment to call our attention once again to the RAND study. Not only does the research discredit all suggestions of “Russian aggression.” The analysis also explodes the notion of “Putin’s Russia”—an egregious trope in the press coverage for many years now—as sheer (please excuse us) bullshit.
The Floutist is pleased to join Global Bridge in republishing this important piece. We are also pleased to feature the acute observations of Paul Robinson, a noted Russianist at the University of Ottawa. The piece first appeared on 6 October 2021—three months before Moscow sent draft treaties to Washington and NATO headquarters in Brussels as the proposed basis of negotiations, four months before Russian forces entered Ukraine on precisely the basis the RAND report describes.
Christian Müller.
The RAND Corporation, a world-renowned U.S. research and consulting firm, boasts 1,800 employees in more than 50 countries, who collectively conduct research and communicate in more than 75 languages, and of whom over a thousand—more than half—hold doctorates or even multiple doctorates. RAND is therefore not simply one of countless so-called think tanks. And what is particularly important to note: RAND’s largest clients are the U.S. State Department and the U.S. military: the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. These government clients account for more than half of all RAND revenue.
RAND, this truly gigantic research and consulting firm, has now examined the military behavior of the Soviet Union and Russia since World War II, and especially since the end of the Cold War in 1991. The result is remarkable. RAND demonstrates that Russia’s military interventions are now marginal compared with those of the Soviet Union, and, above all, that these interventions were always linked to an imminent loss and never aimed at gaining additional territory or influence—that is, they were always used to defend the status quo.
RAND’s comparison between the Soviet Union and Russia: The military operations of present-day Russia (red) are no longer comparable to those of the Soviet Union before 1991 (blue) – Figure 3.2 on original
Paul Robinson, a professor at the University of Ottawa specializing in geopolitical relations and well-known in Canada and the U.S., has closely studied the 186-page RAND report on the Russian military and reviewed and commented on its content on his web portal, Irrussianality. A few of his findings are quoted below as a summary:
A few years ago, I discussed the potential relevance of prospect theory to Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Prospect theory states that people are more willing to take risks to avoid loss than to gain. This corresponds to the well-known psychological tendency toward loss aversion. Losing something bothers us much more than not gaining something. In the world of international relations, this means that states are more likely to use military force when threatened with loss than when seeking to acquire something they do not yet possess. It is therefore interesting to see this confirmed in a new study by the RAND Corporation entitled Russia’s Military Interventions: Patterns, Drivers, and Signposts, which analyzes instances of Russian military intervention in the post–Soviet era. The conclusion: One of the main motivations is the prevention of loss.
Elsewhere in Robinson’s work: “In any case, according to the study, it is wrong to see Putin as primarily responsible for Russian military interventions.”
As quoted by Robinson from the RAND study:
If we examine all of Russia’s interventions that meet the threshold described in this report, it becomes clear that most took place before (!) Putin came to power…. Most importantly, there is now a broad consensus among Russian elites on foreign policy issues. There is little firsthand evidence to suggest that Putin’s personal preferences are a major driving force behind Russia’s interventions.
Paul Robinson:
Russia intervenes when it feels threatened by a loss of status, stability, or security in its immediate neighborhood. It does not intervene to pursue “aggressive” or “imperialist” goals or to distract from domestic problems. And it is not a question of Vladimir Putin. Russia will have the same interests and preferences regardless of who is in power.
And once again, Paul Robinson:
In short, all claims that Russia wants to export its authoritarian ideology, destabilize democracy, support the “Putin regime,” or that Russia’s military interventions are driven solely by Putin’s aggressive personality are false.
This graphic from the RAND study shows that military interventions were even more numerous during the time of Putin’s predecessor Boris Yeltsin (1991-1999) than since under Vladimir Putin’s presidency. (As a reminder, Yeltsin’s second term was only possible thanks to financial support from the US under Bill Clinton .)
Paul Robinson’s final paragraph:
The RAND report ends with a short series of recommendations for U.S. policy. Primarily, the U.S. should avoid putting Moscow in a position where it feels it is about to suffer a major loss in its near abroad. As a think tank report, this is a remarkably sober and sensible recommendation,… which I don’t have much to criticize. Essentially, it boils down to not cornering the bear. In this case, it’s clear. The RAND report contradicts the currently prevailing narrative that Russia is bent on aggression and must be reined in by any means necessary, including incursions into its near abroad. If this RAND report is correct, then the [current NATO incursion to Russia’s borders] is just about the worst thing you can do. But I doubt anyone is listening.
Is nobody listening?
Anyone closely observing current events in the EU, and especially in Germany, must conclude that it seems no one among current or future top politicians is actually listening…. A new project has just been announced: The E.U. intends to provide additional training for Ukrainian officers. Training for military deployment against which adversary? Against Russia, of course. To paraphrase Paul Robinson: Everyone—the U.S., NATO, the E.U., and Germany—is trying to corner the Russian bear, knowing that this is precisely when it will begin to fight back. And this cornering is always justified by the same argument: Russia is aggressive, Putin is an aggressor.
Let’s see if at least RAND’s best clients, the U.S. State Department and the U.S. military, read RAND’s latest comprehensive study—and perhaps even take it to heart.
Central Asia celebrates 20 years as a nuclear-weapon-free zone
By Nargiz Shekinskaya, 30 April 2026
Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan was once the Soviet Union’s primary testing ground for nuclear weapons. Today, in an age of rising nuclear threats, the Semipalatinsk Treaty – which saw a group of Central Asian countries renounce nuclear weapons in 2006 – is more relevant than ever.
The accord, which brought together Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, enshrines the voluntary commitment of these States not to develop, acquire, test or deploy nuclear weapons.
“Nuclear-weapon-free zones (NWFZs) are not only historical achievements but also living instruments of regional security, non-proliferation and nuclear risk reduction,” says Christopher King, Chief of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Branch at the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA).
Nations bound together
He notes that the Central Asian zone stands as an example of effective regional cooperation, bringing the five countries under a legally binding commitment.
“Such zones contribute to transparency, confidence-building and risk reduction, and they can help maintain a practical bridge between regional security concerns and global non-proliferation and disarmament architecture,” Mr. King adds.
First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan Yerzhan Ashikbayev, who is leading the country’s delegation at the 2026 review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, also believes that its significance extends far beyond the region.
“The contribution of the Semipalatinsk Treaty to ensuring security not only in Central Asia but also beyond its borders, is undeniable,” he says.
According to the diplomat, the creation of the zone reflects a shared commitment by the countries of the region to strengthen peace, stability and security, and to overcome the legacy of nuclear testing.
Commitments questioned
Today, amid growing geopolitical tensions, some experts question the durability of such agreements. However, Mr. Ashikbayev disagrees. “On the contrary, in such critical periods the zone demonstrates that its existence is a positive factor,” he argues. Kazakhstan, he added, remains committed to multilateral diplomacy, with the further development of the zone forming part of that policy.
The Central Asian experience is drawing interest in other regions of the world but, as Ashikbayev pointed out, the establishment of such zones must be a sovereign decision of the States concerned.
At the same time, the legacy of the nuclear past continues to be felt today, particularly around the former Semipalatinsk test site, but rehabilitation programmes are under way.
A modern oncology centre has been established, and parts of previously restricted territories are, following a thorough assessment, gradually being returned to economic use.
The Central Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone
- Mr. King and Mr. Ashikbayev took part in a round table organised by Kazakhstan at UN Headquarters on Wednesday, marking the 20th anniversary of the Central Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone.
- Participants discussed how the agreement contributes to strengthening international security in an increasingly unstable global environment.
- The event took place on Tuesday, on the margins of the 2026 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, currently underway at UN Headquarters.
- The event was recorded and can be seen on UN WebTV.
Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones
The following treaties form the basis for the existing NWFZs:
- Treaty of Tlatelolco — Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean
- Treaty of Rarotonga — South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty
- Treaty of Bangkok — Treaty on the Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone
- Treaty of Pelindaba — African Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty
- Treaty on a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Central Asia
Nuclear fears resurface among younger generations amid global tensions.
By Conor Lennon, , https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/05/1167426
The threat of nuclear Armageddon, a constant worry for many who grew up during the tense decades of the Cold War, is becoming a cause for concern for a growing number of young people.
For decades, the possibility of the Soviet Union and United States starting a civilisation-ending nuclear confrontation was the pre-eminent fear of many people growing up in the 20th century.
Whilst the real possibility of this cataclysm never went away, it was supplanted in the minds of younger generations by existential concerns that seemed more pressing, such as the climate crisis and rogue artificial intelligence tools.
But the shadow of a nuclear conflict has never gone away, even if, in part thanks to the 56-year-old nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), nuclear weapons have not been used in a war since the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
The return of nuclear rhetoric
And, in recent years, nuclear rhetoric has been making a comeback, prompting the UN to reach out to young activists and explain why these weapons can never again be used in a theatre of war.
“Nuclear war wasn’t high on my agenda, to be honest,” says 30-year-old Natalie Chen, “and the same goes for my peer group, but disarmament is definitely a major concern, in the context of current conflicts such as the war in Ukraine, Gaza and Iran.”
Since becoming a member of the Youth Leader Fund for a World without Nuclear Weapons (YLF), a programme run by the United Nations, Ms. Chen, a UK-based arts producer from Hong Kong, has been learning more about the complexities and key principles of nuclear disarmament, and why nuclear weapons continue to pose such a major risk to world peace.
Ms. Chen took part in an event on Thursday at the Poster House museum in New York, organised by the Government of Japan and supported by the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA), which featured artworks developed by participants from the second cohort of the YLF.
The programme aims to provide the knowledge activists need, in order to be more effective in their disarmament and peace and security advocacy. “I’ve learned how the political process can be powerful if we, as young people, are part of that process,” says YLF participant Abdul Mustafazade, an artist who uses digital media to make global issues more engaging.
“The language of disarmament can be very technical, and I have learned how to use art to make it understandable.”
A new generation of threats
Izumi Nakamitsu, the head of UNODA, argues that there is an urgent need to explain to young people why this is a key issue, and bring in new generation of experts who have grown up with modern threats, such as AI and cyberspace hacking, which didn’t exist when the NPT was created.
“For about 30 years, following the end of the Cold War, we were fortunate not to have to worry too much about nuclear weapons,” says Ms. Nakamitsu, “but geopolitical tensions have returned, and one of the problems with the disarmament community is that they are always looking back to the way things were discussed in the past.
“But there are new challenges, such as the integration of AI into nuclear command and control, that are very scary to talk about.”
The event took place on the sidelines of the 2026 review conference of the NPT, taking place at UN Headquarters until 22 May.
Ms. Nakamitsu accepts that the technical language can be hard to follow, but the half-century-old treaty remains as important as ever.
“A world without the NPT would be much less secure because many more countries would be looking to possess nuclear weapons, which would make their use much more likely. Before the treaty was agreed, it was predicted that there would be 30 or 40 nuclear weapon states. That didn’t happen because of the NPT.”
The normalisation of nuclear weapons
The Youth Leaders Fund is one of the ways in which the UN is helping young nuclear disarmament advocates to understand complex military doctrines so that they can hold nuanced debates and be taken seriously by the deterrence community.
It is also a way to push back against the normalisation of nuclear weapons use, something that deeply concerns Ms. Nakamitsu, a Japanese national.
“It’s creating the very dangerous narrative, that a small, ‘low yield’ nuclear weapon can actually be used on the battlefield. That is wrong. The bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki would today be categorised as low-yield nuclear weapons.
It is absolutely crucial to keep the memory of what happened alive, and I hope that my country will continue to do so”
“We are waiting for Nuclear Waste Services to Come Up with Recommendations on Siting….”
Marianne Birkby, May 02, 2026, https://radiationfreelakeland.substack.com/p/we-are-waiting-for-nuclear-waste
“We are waiting for Nuclear Waste Services to Come Up with Recommendations on Siting….”
But meanwhile ‘we are already building new nuclear reactors which would produce even hotter nuclear wastes. Hot nuclear wastes are in the pipeline for which there is no “away” in blatant disregard of the Flowers Report: “There should be no commitment to a large programme of nuclear fission power until it has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that a method exists to ensure the safe containment of long-lived highly radioactive waste for the indefinite future.”
Well it is safe to say that not only is there reasonable doubt that a method exists as no country has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that they can contain high level wastes indefinitely without repackaging – but there is also no where NO WHERE willing to be the ultimate nuclear guinea pig in the UK. Unless that is you count the four members of Copeland now Cumberland Council that said on behalf of the region, ‘hey yes let’s sacrifice the safety of Cumbria and her neighbours for nuclear £bungs’.
Good on Wera Hobhouse LibDem MP for Bath for asking the questions.. Click for video on facebook
If scientific facts are uncomfortable to us, well don’t worry. – they can be changed
Some recent studies of adolescent heath find that depression and anxiety are becoming more common in teenagers. It’s attributed to personal factors like suffering loneliness and bullying. And I certainly don’t doubt the importance of those factors. But could it also be that the state of the world, little background situations like global heating, or imminent nuclear war, are causing some to worry about their future?
There are many teenagers now who turn out to be having very different, unusual, thinking patterns. This reality is now recognised, and health experts work to ease the load on neurodiverse children. Sometimes I wonder if these differently thinking people are in fact more reasonable than the rest of us. They know that things are crook. And whom to believe , in the barrage of information in today’s world?
Well, we used to believe the scientists, those highly trained people who studied the world’s environment, and public health issues, and technical safety issues. But they’ve been telling us some very worrying stuff, especially relating to the heating planet, rising sea levels, shortage of fresh water, disappearance of many natural species. And there’s more – the prevalence of plastics and toxic chemicals in our environment, even in us. And the risks of more pandemics – it’s all too much. Too much factual information.
And indeed, in our 21st Century media environment, we are swamped with too much information, and so much of it in very brief formats, from innumerable sources. Not just for teenagers, but for everybody – whom to believe?
Well, if the scientific facts are gloomy, what to do about this, so that we can all feel better?
Donald Trump, in his inimitable way of simplifying, shortening and making clear the issue, always comes up with answers. And his administration is steadily putting these comforting messages into practise. it doesn’t really matter what the facts are. KellyAnn Conway explained that there are alternative facts. She’s gone from the White House, but quite likely to be back, if Trump manages to get another term as President. For the Trump government, alternative facts really are the way to get done whatever Trump and his greedy backers want to get done.
All 22 members of the advisory board that oversees the US National Science Foundation (NSF), a leading funder of fundamental science, were fired on 24 April without explanation. Every member of the NSF’s National Science Board (NSB) received an e-mail on Friday afternoon saying that “on behalf of President Donald J. Trump”, their positions were “terminated, effective immediately”.
The National Science Foundation board establishes NSF policies and approves major NSF awards, alongside advising Congress and the president. Congress’s National Science Foundation Act of 1950 established the NSF as an “independent agency” and created the board.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science commented on the sackings – “the latest in a string of erratic decisions that are destabilizing not only the National Science Foundation, but all of American science”
The reason given (much later) for the sudden removal of all board members was that they were appointed by the president, but not confirmed by the Senate.
At this stage, nobody seems to know who will replace the 22 removed board members. The likely new Director will be Jim O’Neill. If confirmed, Jim O’Neill would be the first non-scientist or non-engineer to lead the agency. He is a biotechnology investor, and has been working in powerful positions in the Trump administration, implementing Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s program against childhood vaccinations.
It’s not as if this anti-science move is a new thing for the Trump government. It’s really just the culmination of a series of actions to weaken, discredit and defund science.
I guess that we shouldn’t be so surprised if non-scientists will now be taking over the funding and program decisions for science in the USA. After all, Trump’s record is one of making appointments of dubious relevance to the task required – e.g. a real estate developer, Steve Witkoff for the job of international peace envoy. And Trump himself, elected as a great business-deal man, despite the string of Trump business bankruptcies
I really wish that I knew an answer to this disturbing trend – as people lose faith in science and scientific expertise. It seems to me that comedians are our best hope at the moment, in pricking and bursting the bubbles of absurdity that come from cowardly media and political leaders, apparently scared to offend the USA leadership. We need the Lewis Carrolls and Groucho Marx es of today. And so, especially do today’s young people need those voices of truth in a world of alternative facts.
Key US science panels are being axed — and others are becoming less open
A Nature analysis shows that the Trump administration has terminated more than 100 advisory committees to science agencies — and reduced the transparency and independence of those that remain.
Last August, the DOE terminated six FACA panels that provided advice in areas such as high-energy physics, scientific computing, and biological and environmental research. The DOE has since consolidated these discipline-specific panels into one overarching body called the Office of Science Advisory Committee (SCAC).
“How good is the advice coming from a committee of people that probably only have passing knowledge of some of the areas?”
By Max Kozlov, Alexandra Witze & Dan Garisto, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01301-5
President Donald Trump and his administration downsized US science by historic margins last year as it reduced the workforce at federal research agencies by tens of thousands of people and terminated thousands of research grants. But another set of cutbacks in federal science has drawn less attention.
Across the government, the administration terminated more than 100 independent advisory panels, comprising university scientists and other outside experts who help to guide national science priorities.
The cuts — driven by a February 2025 executive order aimed at shrinking federal bureaucracy — target committees that agencies rely on to assess biomedical and environmental policy, provide guidance on setting research priorities and ensure transparency in how the government makes science-based decisions.
The scope of these committee terminations is unprecedented, a Nature analysis finds (see ‘Cancelled committees’). For example, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which includes the National Institutes of Health, disbanded 77 advisory boards — more than one-quarter of all its advisory committees — in 2025. By contrast, in fiscal year 2024, the agency terminated just two committees.
A similar pattern of committee closures played out at other agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Energy (DOE). At NASA, more than half of the advisory boards were disbanded.
These panels, which are governed by the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), are typically staffed by researchers and other experts from outside the government. Some of those that were closed in fiscal year 2025 had been advising on topics such as organ transplantation, HIV prevention, high-energy-physics research and planetary science.
The February 2025 executive order’s stated purpose was to “minimize Government waste and abuse, reduce inflation, and promote American freedom and innovation”. And some scientists and agency employees said there can be sound reasons to streamline FACA committees by combining some or eliminating ones that no longer serve a purpose. But many researchers say that the scale of the administration’s efforts greatly reduces the amount and quality of advice that the government receives from the scientific community and businesses, as well as organizations that represent people with diseases such as Alzheimer’s
Researchers who spoke to Nature say that by terminating such a large number of scientific advisory committees and not replacing the vast majority of them, the administration is cutting off federal agencies from independent outside expertise. At the same time, it limits the flow of information from the government to the scientific community and the public.
“That two-way street, I think, was invaluable,” says Juan Meza, an applied mathematician at the University of California, Merced, who formerly served on two panels at the NSF and the DOE that have been disbanded. “We could act as ambassadors in both directions,” he says.
The terminations aren’t the only changes to advisory committees that the administration rolled out last year. Nature found that the US government has sharply reduced the number of open FACA meetings — by more than 50% for some agencies — at which the public could observe deliberations and provide input. Some agencies substantially reduced the number of public reports they issued.
And in some other cases — including the prominent example of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) that makes recommendations on vaccines — the federal government has drastically changed the composition of the committees, removing people who disagree with its stance and installing ones who agree. Last week, the Trump administration abruptly fired all 22 members of the board that advises and oversees the NSF. As a rationale for the terminations, a White House spokesperson pointed to the 2021 Supreme Court case United States v. Arthrex, Inc., which it says “raised constitutional questions” about the board’s membership and the fact that its members are not confirmed by the Senate. The spokesperson said the White House aims to update the law so that the board can “perform its duties as Congress intended”.
Researchers say that the elimination of panels and other changes seemingly contradict the Trump administration’s promise, outlined in an executive order on ‘gold-standard science’ on 23 May last year, to improve transparency in federally funded science and in science-related decisions taken by federal agencies.
“The fewer of these advisory panels there are, it inherently diminishes the transparency of the entire operation,” says Carrie Wolinetz, who previously administered several advisory panels as the former head of the NIH’s science-policy office.
The White House rebutted these claims. Spokesperson Kush Desai says that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the “federal government’s glut of redundant, taxpayer-funded advisory committees did little to meaningfully inform policymaking for the benefit of the American people”. “The Trump Administration is eliminating the bureaucratic bloat and taking a hands-on approach to ensure that policymaking is driven by Gold Standard Science.”
Biomedicine behind closed doors
The 77 committee terminations at the HHS in 2025 represent a sharp departure from historical levels. Since 1997 — the full extent of publicly available FACA data — annual terminations have exceeded ten only once.
In 2025, the number of open HHS committee meetings also decreased, Nature found. In the ten years before 2025, the average number of committee meetings open to the public was 255. But in 2025, there were just 91 (see ‘Closed science’).
There are many more closed meetings at the HHS in any given year because most of the FACA committees assess research grants, a process that is kept confidential. But in 2025, the ratio of open to closed meetings dropped from an average of over 9% for the previous ten years to 4%, representing a shift towards closed meetings even outside the grant-review process
Among the disbanded groups was one charged in 2023 with making recommendations on research into long COVID and treatment for millions of people with the condition in the United States. The committee was a unique bridge between patients, federal science agencies and policymakers, says Ian Simon, the former head of the HHS Office of Long COVID Research and Practice, which was eliminated amid the government downsizing last year.
The committee was “designed to give patients a significant voice equal to those of researchers and physicians”, Simon says, and its closure is a blow to research. “It is very hard to see how these actions will advance the work that’s needed to understand long COVID and other infectious chronic conditions.”
Other panels terminated by the HHS include the Advisory Committee on Organ Transplantation, which advised the agency on policies regarding organ donation, procurement and equitable allocation, and the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, tasked with reviewing current nutritional science to inform the federal government’s dietary recommendations. The federal government subsequently issued new dietary guidelines in January without the committee’s input, a move that sparked controversy among some nutrition experts who argued that aspects of the revisions bypassed the scientific consensus.
The downsizing of HHS advisory committees is starker than the 2025 termination numbers suggest: some of the FACA committees are also meeting less often than in typical years or have not met at all since Trump took office again.
For example, the NIH leadership has historically relied on the Advisory Committee to the Director and the congressionally mandated Scientific Management Review Board — both of which have not been officially terminated — to navigate major agency reorganizations or funding shifts, says Wolinetz.
But the NIH leadership did not convene either of these panels last year as the agency cut thousands of projects on disfavoured topics and reduced the autonomy of each of its institutes by centralizing peer review and other administrative functions.
Wolinetz says that it’s smart to consider, on a semi-regular basis, whether each committee is still serving its purpose and justifying its taxpayer cost; some panels can become obsolete “vestiges”, she says.
But by terminating so many committees and not consulting others, Wolinetz says the federal government loses a crucial mechanism for ensuring that its decision-making is transparent and subject to scrutiny, including by the public. Advisory committees act as a “locus of public engagement that federal agencies can’t do on their own” about issues the government is grappling with, she says. The actions seem at odds with the ‘radical transparency’ at HHS that is a stated policy goal of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, she says.
She also worries about cases in which the Trump administration has not terminated committees — but instead drastically changed them.
For example, last June, Kennedy abruptly fired all 17 members of ACIP, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s premier vaccine advisory panel. Claiming that the panel was plagued by conflicts of interest and acted as a “rubber stamp” for the pharmaceutical industry, Kennedy reconstituted the committee with appointees whom, he argued, would bring outsider scrutiny. However, scientists and medical organizations contend that some of the new members have a history of promoting vaccine scepticism, a position long held by Kennedy.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) sued the HHS over its changes to ACIP. In March, a federal judge temporary halted the installation of Kennedy’s picks for ACIP, ruling that the selections probably violated federal law requiring that such panels be fairly balanced in terms of expertise and viewpoints. The HHS later revised ACIP’s charter to broaden its scope and focus on the risks of vaccines.
Kennedy also overhauled the HHS’s Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, terminating its existing members and appointing a slate of new ones. The new slate has drawn criticism from some autism researchers who argue that it includes people who are aligned with Kennedy’s disproven claims that autism is a preventable condition linked to vaccines and environmental toxins.
These reconstituted committees were not “formulated in the traditional highly vetted manner” outlined in each panel’s charter, Wolinetz says. Instead, they seem to be “constituted to support particular predetermined points of view” and are being “used to certify policy actions the administration wants to take”, she adds.
Emily Hilliard, an HHS spokesperson, told Nature that the agency’s actions were in accordance with a White House order to terminate unnecessary advisory committees, adding that “these previous committees allowed the United States to remain the sickest developed nation despite spending $4.5 trillion annually on health care, driving unsustainable debt and worsening health outcomes.” The HHS will continue to convene committees as necessary, she added.
The HHS did not respond to requests for comment about other issues, such as criticisms of the way the agency changed the composition of the vaccine and autism panels.
Loss at the NSF
The NSF, which is the premier US funder of fundamental research across all areas of science and engineering, also sharply restricted its advice pipeline last year by terminating 14 of its 52 advisory committees. These had provided the agency with advice in areas such as engineering, cybersecurity and geosciences. (All but one of the panels that review grant applications for the NSF remain active.)
Meza served on one of these terminated bodies, the Advisory Committee for Mathematics and Physical Sciences, and was also an NSF programme officer from 2018 until he left in 2022. He says that such panels can provide valuable information to agencies; for example, the committee he served on informed the NSF that the research community had concerns about the lack of support for mid-sized laboratories. Heeding the advice, the NSF established the Mid-scale Research Infrastructure opportunity in 2016 to support what it called “a ‘sweet spot’ for science and engineering that has been challenging to fund through traditional NSF programs”.
The NSF declined to comment on the criticisms about the changes in its advisory committees.
Consolidation at DOE
Last August, the DOE terminated six FACA panels that provided advice in areas such as high-energy physics, scientific computing, and biological and environmental research. The DOE has since consolidated these discipline-specific panels into one overarching body called the Office of Science Advisory Committee (SCAC).
Meza, who served on the terminated Advanced Scientific Computing Advisory Committee, worries about the loss of specific expertise. “How good is the advice coming from a committee of people that probably only have passing knowledge of some of the areas?” he asks.
Persis Drell, chair of the SCAC and a physicist at Stanford University in California, acknowledges the worries researchers have raised. “In a time of turbulent change, I totally understand all of the concerns that are in the community,” she says. Drell adds that she hopes to reassure the scientific community that the SCAC is listening and is serious about helping science at the DOE. “I have two goals: one of them is to ensure that we have a strong basic science foundation and the other is that we are able to make progress on the strategic pillars that the administration has put forward,” she says.
There are many more closed meetings at the HHS in any given year because most of the FACA committees assess research grants, a process that is kept confidential. But in 2025, the ratio of open to closed meetings dropped from an average of over 9% for the previous ten years to 4%, representing a shift towards closed meetings even outside the grant-review process.
Among the disbanded groups was one charged in 2023 with making recommendations on research into long COVID and treatment for millions of people with the condition in the United States. The committee was a unique bridge between patients, federal science agencies and policymakers, says Ian Simon, the former head of the HHS Office of Long COVID Research and Practice, which was eliminated amid the government downsizing last year.
The committee was “designed to give patients a significant voice equal to those of researchers and physicians”, Simon says, and its closure is a blow to research. “It is very hard to see how these actions will advance the work that’s needed to understand long COVID and other infectious chronic conditions.”
Other panels terminated by the HHS include the Advisory Committee on Organ Transplantation, which advised the agency on policies regarding organ donation, procurement and equitable allocation, and the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, tasked with reviewing current nutritional science to inform the federal government’s dietary recommendations. The federal government subsequently issued new dietary guidelines in January without the committee’s input, a move that sparked controversy among some nutrition experts who argued that aspects of the revisions bypassed the scientific consensus.
The downsizing of HHS advisory committees is starker than the 2025 termination numbers suggest: some of the FACA committees are also meeting less often than in typical years or have not met at all since Trump took office again.
For example, the NIH leadership has historically relied on the Advisory Committee to the Director and the congressionally mandated Scientific Management Review Board — both of which have not been officially terminated — to navigate major agency reorganizations or funding shifts, says Wolinetz.
But the NIH leadership did not convene either of these panels last year as the agency cut thousands of projects on disfavoured topics and reduced the autonomy of each of its institutes by centralizing peer review and other administrative functions.
Wolinetz says that it’s smart to consider, on a semi-regular basis, whether each committee is still serving its purpose and justifying its taxpayer cost; some panels can become obsolete “vestiges”, she says.
But by terminating so many committees and not consulting others, Wolinetz says the federal government loses a crucial mechanism for ensuring that its decision-making is transparent and subject to scrutiny, including by the public. Advisory committees act as a “locus of public engagement that federal agencies can’t do on their own” about issues the government is grappling with, she says. The actions seem at odds with the ‘radical transparency’ at HHS that is a stated policy goal of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, she says.
She also worries about cases in which the Trump administration has not terminated committees — but instead drastically changed them.
For example, last June, Kennedy abruptly fired all 17 members of ACIP, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s premier vaccine advisory panel. Claiming that the panel was plagued by conflicts of interest and acted as a “rubber stamp” for the pharmaceutical industry, Kennedy reconstituted the committee with appointees whom, he argued, would bring outsider scrutiny. However, scientists and medical organizations contend that some of the new members have a history of promoting vaccine scepticism, a position long held by Kennedy.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) sued the HHS over its changes to ACIP. In March, a federal judge temporary halted the installation of Kennedy’s picks for ACIP, ruling that the selections probably violated federal law requiring that such panels be fairly balanced in terms of expertise and viewpoints. The HHS later revised ACIP’s charter to broaden its scope and focus on the risks of vaccines.
Kennedy also overhauled the HHS’s Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, terminating its existing members and appointing a slate of new ones. The new slate has drawn criticism from some autism researchers who argue that it includes people who are aligned with Kennedy’s disproven claims that autism is a preventable condition linked to vaccines and environmental toxins.
These reconstituted committees were not “formulated in the traditional highly vetted manner” outlined in each panel’s charter, Wolinetz says. Instead, they seem to be “constituted to support particular predetermined points of view” and are being “used to certify policy actions the administration wants to take”, she adds.
Emily Hilliard, an HHS spokesperson, told Nature that the agency’s actions were in accordance with a White House order to terminate unnecessary advisory committees, adding that “these previous committees allowed the United States to remain the sickest developed nation despite spending $4.5 trillion annually on health care, driving unsustainable debt and worsening health outcomes.” The HHS will continue to convene committees as necessary, she added.
The HHS did not respond to requests for comment about other issues, such as criticisms of the way the agency changed the composition of the vaccine and autism panels.
Loss at the NSF
The NSF, which is the premier US funder of fundamental research across all areas of science and engineering, also sharply restricted its advice pipeline last year by terminating 14 of its 52 advisory committees. These had provided the agency with advice in areas such as engineering, cybersecurity and geosciences. (All but one of the panels that review grant applications for the NSF remain active.)
Meza served on one of these terminated bodies, the Advisory Committee for Mathematics and Physical Sciences, and was also an NSF programme officer from 2018 until he left in 2022. He says that such panels can provide valuable information to agencies; for example, the committee he served on informed the NSF that the research community had concerns about the lack of support for mid-sized laboratories. Heeding the advice, the NSF established the Mid-scale Research Infrastructure opportunity in 2016 to support what it called “a ‘sweet spot’ for science and engineering that has been challenging to fund through traditional NSF programs”.
The NSF declined to comment on the criticisms about the changes in its advisory committees.
Consolidation at DOE
Last August, the DOE terminated six FACA panels that provided advice in areas such as high-energy physics, scientific computing, and biological and environmental research. The DOE has since consolidated these discipline-specific panels into one overarching body called the Office of Science Advisory Committee (SCAC).
Meza, who served on the terminated Advanced Scientific Computing Advisory Committee, worries about the loss of specific expertise. “How good is the advice coming from a committee of people that probably only have passing knowledge of some of the areas?” he asks.
Persis Drell, chair of the SCAC and a physicist at Stanford University in California, acknowledges the worries researchers have raised. “In a time of turbulent change, I totally understand all of the concerns that are in the community,” she says. Drell adds that she hopes to reassure the scientific community that the SCAC is listening and is serious about helping science at the DOE. “I have two goals: one of them is to ensure that we have a strong basic science foundation and the other is that we are able to make progress on the strategic pillars that the administration has put forward,” she says.
-
Archives
- May 2026 (62)
- April 2026 (356)
- March 2026 (251)
- February 2026 (268)
- January 2026 (308)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (376)
- September 2025 (257)
- August 2025 (319)
- July 2025 (230)
- June 2025 (348)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
nuclear-news 