An MoU Is Not Peace—It Is Misleading Language That Paves the Way for More War
The reality is that this MoU, if it is signed, is not a peace agreement. It does not end the Iran war
What an MoU means in the context of a war is confusing and misleading. Is the war over when it is signed? Or is it a pause until there is a misunderstanding?
Kathy Gannon Substack, June 14, 2026, https://scheerpost.com/2026/06/14/an-mou-is-not-peace-it-is-misleading-language-that-paves-the-way-for-more-war/
As with so much surrounding the Iran war, which the United States and Israel began in February, truth has been elusive and words have lost much of their meaning.
A cease fire agreement does not cease the firing. A peace agreement is not an agreement. Instead it is a Memorandum of Understanding.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and U.S. President Donald Trump have been claiming on social media, of course that there is an agreement on the Iran war and says Sharif “peace has never been this close as it is now.”
What exactly an MoU is in the context of a war is a bit of a mystery. Also an MoU has an inoffensive, business-like sound to it. It’s as if the brutal reality of war, the deaths of innocents, homes destroyed, children killed, is made invisible behind the inoffensive MoU. It is manipulative and it should be more than a little offensive to anyone who values words and reality.
And what does it even mean?
Is the war over when it is signed? Or is it on pause until/if the Memorandum of Understanding is misunderstood? Who decides whether there is a misunderstanding?
Can an MoU be interpreted as a peace agreement? Would breaking an MoU be a declaration of war? If it is, would the U.S. administration this time be required to seek permission to go to war?
The reality is that this MoU, if it is signed, is not a peace agreement. It does not end the Iran war, a war that has killed nearly 4,000 Iranians, destroyed homes, and devastated countless lives. Nothing is over. It is simply a pause in fighting while the warring sides agree to talk about the issues, they have been unable to resolve until now, like the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s nuclear enriched material.
If one peels away the layers, this MoU, if it is signed, appears to be little more than a 60-day breathing space for President Donald Trump, who is desperate for an off ramp. This MoU allows him to kick the war down the road until he can recover some political ground at home ahead of the November mid-term elections in the United States?
If the MoU opens the Strait of Hormuz to unfettered traffic and gas prices at the pumps in America (which really is all that matters to most Americans), Trump will be able to tell mid-term voters he was right all along: The pain at the pumps was temporary.
This latest “peace has never been this close” moment is not hopeful—it is manipulative, detached from reality, and dangerously effective at normalizing memorandums as a substitute for real peace.
If this is where we are headed, wars may no longer end at all. They will simply be deferred—one evasive compromise, one sanitized memorandum, one future battlefield at a time—while innocents are killed, families are torn apart, and homes are reduced to rubble beneath the deceptively harmless language of an MoU.
NATO collapsing in 2026? Can’t come soon enough – Walt Zlotow
A case can be made for creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) when it was founded April 4, 1949. Originally just 10 Western European countries plus the US and Canada, NATO ensured no further Soviet expansion beyond the block of Soviet satellite nations Stalin established following WWII.
Of course, one can debate whether NATO was necessary at all. A was ravaged Russia, had neither the will not the means to expand anywhere beyond the buffer it had created to protect itself from a third invasion from the West in the 20th century. NATO may had more to do with expanding US imperial power in Europe and enriching the Military Industrial Complex than protecting Western Europe from unlikely Russian invasion.
Regardless, when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down on November 9, 1989 and the Soviet Union followed along December 26, 1991, NATO should have joined both in the dustbin of history. Indeed, the US, under President George H.W. Bush, spent much of 1990 negotiating the reunification of Soviet Eastern Germany into Western Germany, something Soviet Russia would have thought unthinkable. The pro in the quid pro quo was that NATO would never expand one inch eastward toward Mother Russia from its then western membership of 16 nations. Russia could even imagine that NATO, like The Warsaw Pact, would go away.
Big Russian mistake. With the US now the world’s sole superpower, the US abrogated any détente with Russia regarding NATO expansion, much less existence. Russia was to be permanently consigned to second class European status. Beginning under President Clinton in 1999, the NATO added 14 former Soviet aligned nations cementing NATO hegemony in Europe and ensuring an ever weakened Russia.
By betraying the former Soviet Union after its collapse, NATO morphed from a theoretically defensive to an overtly offensive organization. Russia was just one of NATO’s offensive moves. In 1999, NATO bombed Russian ally Serbia for 78 days to kick Serbia out of Kosovo, turning Kosovo into a failed province of the West. In 2011 NATO intervened in the Libyan civil war, bombing the Gaddafi regime and Gaddafi himself into oblivion. Libya remains a failed state 15 years on with much of Africa destabilized in its wake. Even the revered Barack Obama laments NATO intervention in Libya as his biggest presidential mistake.
But nothing compares to NATO perfidy in Ukraine. NATO proposed membership to Ukraine in 2008 to further isolate Russia from Europe. When six years of advancing NATO membership failed due to Ukrainian President Yanukovych partnering with Russia, NATO, led by Obama, simply overthrew him in 2014. Even worse, Ukraine began murdering Russian leaning Ukrainians in Donbas on Russia’s border by the thousands with NATO’s help. Worse Yet, NATO suckered Russia into agreeing to the Minsk I and II agreements that Donbas could achieve autonomy under Ukraine sovereignty to bring peace to Donbas Ukrainians. That was a subterfuge to build up the Ukraine military to finish off the Ukraine separatists in the Donbas. After 8 years of this duplicity Russia had enough, invading in February 2022 to end NATO, Ukraine aggression.
Four and a half years on, Ukraine is on life support, not from the US, which has largely bowed out, but from European NATO, which is still throwing billions of Euros on Ukraine’s lost cause. EU leaders, Especially UK’s Starmer, Frances’s Macron and Germany’s Merz claim Ukraine can win, reclaim all lost territory and save Western Europe from a likely Russian attack as early as 2030.
Long before 2030, Starmer, Macron and Merz will be gone, as well as the Ukraine that existed before the NATO offensive blew it up. NATO may be gone as well and good riddance if it is. Russia has no designs on Western Europe or all of Ukraine. They simply want their sensible security concerns met that have been foolishly rejected by NATO since the Soviet Union went poof in 1991 and NATO, led by the US, used it crush Russian integration in the European political economy.
Had the US and NATO exercised an iota of sensible diplomacy there would have been no war destroying Ukraine. Europe would be enjoying cheap energy and other trade with Russia fostering mutual economic growth. Current NATO leadership would have favorable approval ratings instead of ones worse than President Trump. Right wing European opposition parties would remain on the fringe instead of poised to assume power. European treasure could be spent uplifting the commons instead of destroying Ukraine.
Pivoting away from supporting NATO and the senseless Ukraine war is the one sensible Trump foreign policy. He’s too busy blowing up the world’s economy over Iran to care about NATO. Starmer, Macron, Merz, along with NATO secretary general Mark Rutte, remain in denial that the hopeless war they’re supporting is not only wrecking their careers and their countries; it may spell the end of NATO. It cannot come soon enough.
Europe’s recent peace overtures are war by other means
Zakharova accused the ambassadors of promoting a “dead-end Zelensky formula.”
She said: “The leaders of these countries are pretending, through their statements, to be calling for peace, but in reality they are putting forward unacceptable conditions, increasing the production of long-range weapons for Kiev and generally taking steps towards the militarisation of Ukraine and Europe.”
European overtures for renewing diplomacy with Russia smack of hypocrisy and duplicity.
June 12, 2026, https://strategic-culture.su/news/2026/06/12/europes-recent-peace-overtures-are-war-by-other-means/
After four years of zero diplomacy, multiple rounds of economic sanctions aimed at crushing the Russian state, and hundreds of billions of euros fueling a futile war in Ukraine against Russia, European capitals are lately abuzz with calls for opening peace negotiations with Moscow.
No doubt part of the shifting policy is due to the economic mess that Europe has created for itself by cutting off energy trade with Russia. Escalating energy costs are destroying European industries and imposing crippling financial hardship on millions of its citizens. Realizing the self-inflicted disaster, European capitals are desperate to appear to be normalizing relations with Russia and resume affordable energy supplies.
France and Italy are advocating the appointment of an envoy to engage with Russia to resolve the conflict and the lifting of anti-Russian sanctions.
Last weekend, the leaders of Britain, France, and Germany – the so-called E3 – stated that they would “help mediate” a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia. The Ukrainian puppet president, Vladimir Zelensky, was feted in Downing Street on June 7 by Britain’s Keir Starmer, France’s Macron, and Germany’s Merz. They proposed taking the lead in negotiations from the United States since President Trump seems more preoccupied with ending the war against Iran.
Various names have been suggested as to who could serve as an interlocutor representing Europe. Angela Merkel, the former German Chancellor, and former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi are two names that have been put forward. Finnish President Alexander Stubb has also been suggested. It’s unlikely any of them would be acceptable to Moscow, especially Merkel, mainly due to her past role in covertly undermining the 2015 Minsk Accords, thereby sowing the seeds for war that erupted seven years later.
The telling – almost laughable – thing is the paucity of any European figure with credibility as an envoy.
The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, has become a laughing stock over her rank incompetence. Her Russophobic ranting has rendered her redundant in conducting foreign policy. So much so that there is a revolt among European diplomats against what they declaim as her “dysfunction”.
This week, Europe sent three ambassadors to Moscow to renew some form of dialogue. Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Mikhail Galuzin, met with representatives from Britain, France, and Germany. The Russian foreign ministry said it was open to hearing what Europe had to say.
However, Galuzin reportedly gave the visitors short shrift, reminding them that Europe cannot pose as mediators when it is a participant in the war against Russia.
Following the meeting on Thursday, Maria Zakharova, the foreign ministry spokeswoman, dismissed the European mission as not serious about addressing the challenge of finding a peace settlement.
Zakharova accused the ambassadors of promoting a “dead-end Zelensky formula.”
She said: “The leaders of these countries are pretending, through their statements, to be calling for peace, but in reality they are putting forward unacceptable conditions, increasing the production of long-range weapons for Kiev and generally taking steps towards the militarisation of Ukraine and Europe.”
If Europe were serious about peace, it would stop arming the Kiev NeoNazi regime and show some meaningful acknowledgment of Russia’s long-held demand to deal with the root causes of the conflict.
Europe’s backing of the Kiev regime’s call for an immediate ceasefire while expanding Ukraine’s ability to carry out deep strikes on Russian territory with European-manufactured drones, killing hundreds of civilians over recent months, is just a cynical ploy to rearm the proxy regime and give it some respite in order to resume the war with more lethal vigour at a later stage.
The duplicity of the European politicians goes back to the treachery of the Minsk Peace Accords in 2015 and the sabotage of the Istanbul peace negotiations in April 2022. That has culminated in the biggest war in Europe since World War Two, with millions of casualties and a real threat of spiralling into open war.
Europe’s governments and its EU and NATO bureaucrats are still wedded to the ideology of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia. So, too, it seems is Washington, despite Trump’s talk of wanting peace.
Arming the Nazi regime in Kiev at an increasing pace while calling for a superficial ceasefire is proof that the European leaders are not authentic in their belated espousal of seeking diplomacy with Russia.
Former German foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel (2017-2018) recently pointed out a shameful truth when he said that Europe lost its chance for diplomacy in 2021.
Back then, the EU leadership and the American Biden administration both repudiated Russia’s earnest efforts to negotiate a way to avoid war in Ukraine. Moscow had clearly set out its objections to NATO expansion, in particular, the absorption of Ukraine into the military alliance, and it proposed rational solutions for collective security. Russia’s diplomacy was rejected out of hand by Washington and Brussels.
The Europeans and the Americans were bent on provoking Russia into an armed confrontation with their proxy Ukrainian regime that they had installed in the 2014 coup and weaponized. Diplomacy was rejected because the NATO axis calculated that it could defeat Russia with war and economic strangulation, or, as some Western politicians admitted, “total war”.
The European agenda, as reflected in demands for an immediate ceasefire without any cognizance of Russia’s arguments about historic claims and indivisible security, demonstrates that European leaders are not yet ready or willing to engage genuinely and meaningfully.
As 18th-century Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz might put it, their recent overtures for political talks are simply war by other means.
New Billionaire Jared Kushner Is Mired in Conflicts of Interest as “Peace Envoy”
Kushner’s current fundraising efforts with Gulf state regimes, through which he aims to personally profit, raise serious concerns over conflicts between his business interests with regional states and his diplomatic role as a top Trump administration negotiator.
Jared Kushner, like the rest of the Trump family, uses the White House for personal enrichment.
By Derek Seidman , Truthout, June 12, 2026, https://truthout.org/articles/from-peace-envoy-to-billionaire-kushner-makes-a-killing-in-white-house-admin/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=8d7f421301-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_06_12_06_45_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-16ee3bf6a0-650192793
Kushner is now a billionaire,” proclaimed Forbes in September 2025 of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. While just over half of Kushner’s wealth — $560 million — comes from his family’s real estate empire, what’s catapulted Kushner into billionaire status is the growth of his private equity firm, Affinity Partners, formed in 2021.
“[T]hese days,” said Forbes, Kushner is “laser-focused on Affinity.”
Kushner is not an experienced investment manager. His key clients are Gulf state sovereign wealth funds — hugely wealthy state-owned coffers that invest revenue generated by fossil fuel sales — overseen by the same regimes with whom Kushner is now involved diplomatically as a U.S. “special envoy for peace.”
That Kushner personally profits from, and is currently trying to raise billions from, the same actors he’s negotiating with, raises code red-level alarms over potential conflicts of interest. Moreover, two of Trump’s sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, have been tied to a slew of business deals connected to companies that are benefitting handsomely from federal government contracts.
“The degree of shamelessness is unprecedented,” Jeff Hauser, founder and executive director of the Revolving Door Project, a watchdog group monitoring the U.S. executive branch, told Truthout. “The degree of unity among elected Republicans to not speak about the Trump progeny, and their corruption, is the worst conspiracy of silence in American political history.”
Affinity Partners
Jared Kushner founded Affinity Partners in 2021, and he is the firm’s sole owner. Forbes estimates Affinity was worth $215 million as of September 2025, up from $170 million in October 2024. Through Affinity, Kushner recruits wealthy clients and invests their money through funds that acquire stakes in different companies.
Affinity currently has $6.2 billion in assets under management. According to the Israeli financial paper Globes, Kushner earns “a commission of 1.25 percent on investors’ capital.” Forbes says that Affinity’s investors “pay about $60 million per year in fees.”
The New York Times also reports that Affinity has earned an estimated 25 percent rate of return on its investments since 2021. Private equity investment firms often get a double-digit percentage cut on client returns.
Affinity’s biggest clients are Gulf state sovereign wealth funds. According to The New York Times, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which invests the kingdom’s oil profits and is led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is “already the largest and earliest investor in Affinity,” having invested $2 billion with the firm after Trump’s first term ended. As part of that investment deal, Saudi Arabia was also given “the first chance to invest during any subsequent attempts by Affinity to raise funds,” said The New York Times.
The sovereign wealth funds of both the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar were also early investors in Affinity Partners, with the UAE investing over $200 million in Kushner’s firm.
“Most of Affinity’s investors came through connections Kushner made while serving in the White House,” wrote Forbes.
Kushner is currently trying to raise $5 billion or more in new funds for Affinity. As part of this effort, The New York Times reported in March 2026 that Affinity representatives had met with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and that the United Arab Emirates and Qatar “are also expected to be asked for more” as the fundraising efforts should “stretch on for the better part of this year,”
“Staggering Conflicts of Interest”
Kushner’s current fundraising efforts with Gulf state regimes, through which he aims to personally profit, raise serious concerns over conflicts between his business interests with regional states and his diplomatic role as a top Trump administration negotiator.
“There’s an enormous conflict of interest when you have somebody who had never been a money manager like this before, and who is all of a sudden building massive funds based off a handful of foreign investors with an interest in buttering up the Trump administration,” said Hauser.
Hauser said it’s “not unprecedented” for well-connected family members or friends of presidents to influence U.S. diplomacy. But, he adds, “it is very susceptible to abuse, and I think it’s being abused here,” and government reforms are needed in the wake of Kushner’s current “diplomatic exploits.”
The potential conflicts of interest have been highlighted by some members of congress. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) has opened an investigation into what he labels Kushner’s “foreign entanglements and staggering conflicts of interest.”
“From the standpoint of the American people, your decision to act in these two roles — one public for the government and one private for personal profit — creates a glaring and incurable conflict of interest,” Raskin wrote in a letter to Kushner.
Kushner’s diplomatic efforts have included helping to design and advance the Abraham Accords, which aims to normalize relations between Israel and key Gulf States; carrying out negotiations with Iran, whose retaliatory strikes have been aimed at nations like Saudi Arabia and the UAE; and working on Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace,” which several Gulf states, including top Affinity clients, have joined.
Kushner’s Portfolio Companies
Read more: New Billionaire Jared Kushner Is Mired in Conflicts of Interest as “Peace Envoy”Affinity Partners’ most significant deal has been its $55 billion acquisition in 2025, in partnership with Saudi Arabia and other investors, of the video game giant Electronic Arts, maker of popular franchises like Madden and Sims. The transaction, which has garnered protests from gamers and developers, would be the largest-ever private buyout of a publicly-traded company. It’s currently in its final stages of approval.
Under the deal’s terms, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund — which already had a 10 percent stake in Electronic Arts — will own 93.4 of EA, while Affinity Partners will own 1.1 percent. For Saudi Arabia, the deal advances two separate but intertwined aims: diversifying its economy away from overreliance on oil revenue, and partnering with a member of the Trump family as the deal seeks regulatory approval from the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment, chaired by Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent
Affinity Partners also invests in smaller AI and financial companies, including U.K. digital bank OakNorth, AI infrastructure firm Universal AGI, and the fintech start-up company Revolut. Forbes reports that Kushner recently launched a new San Francisco-based AI start-up with the prominent Israeli-born venture capitalist Elad Gil. The firm, Brain Co., also raised funds from Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong and LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman.
Raising more potential for conflicts with his diplomatic role, Kushner also has stakes in several Israeli companies, including $1.68 billion in Phoenix Financial, one of Israel’s leading insurance and financial companies. Affinity is Phoenix’s top shareholder and has seen a five-times return on its investment.
Affinity is also invested in the Israeli Shlomo Group, one of Israel’s largest holding groups with big investments in the auto sector.
Kushner, TikTok, and the Trump Web
Jared Kushner is also embedded in a wide web of business figures advancing the Trump agenda — which could be seen in the January 2026 deal that created a U.S. spinoff of TikTok.
Kushner’s Electronic Arts deal is co-led by Silver Lake, a Los Angeles-based private equity firm. As Truthout previously reported, Silver Lake is also a 15 percent stakeholder in the new U.S. TikTok. The firm’s co-CEO Egon Durban sits on the seven-member board of U.S. TikTok.
In 2025, the Wall Street Journal reported that acquiring Electronic Arts was Durban’s “dream deal,” but that “the pieces began to fall into place” for the acquisition only after Durban “began spending time with Jared Kushner.”
Silver Lake also owns Endeavor, whose portfolio includes TKO Group Holdings, the parent company of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), the mixed martial arts corporation that is chummy with Donald Trump.
Durban and Silver Lake are close business partners with Michael Dell, the megabillionaire chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies who is also part of the U.S. TikTok ownership group with Durban. Dell has cast himself as a Trump ally by donating $6.25 billion toward the president’s so-called “Trump Accounts” program, which creates investment accounts for U.S. children.
Billionaire Yuri Milner, another U.S. TikTok investor, previously invested $850,000 in a real estate company started by Kushner in 2015. Jon Winkelried, the billionaire CEO of TPG Global, a private equity firm represented on U.S. TikTok’s board, also previously served as a strategic adviser and partner for Thrive Capital, an investment firm overseen by Jared Kushner’s brother, Josh Kushner.
The Trump Sons
If Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, may be personally benefiting from his closeness to the president, so too might be two of the president’s own children.
Donald Trump Jr. is a partner with an investment firm called 1789 Capital, which he says is dedicated to “patriotic capitalism,” and which has seen its assets under management boom from $200 million to $3.5 billion over the past year.
1789 Capital has made investments in companies that have gone on to benefit from federal contracts. For example, the Trump administration helped secure a $620 million loan for Vulcan Elements, a rare earths firm, months after 1789 Capital acquired a stake. Other 1789 Capital portfolio companies that benefit from federal contracts include rocket propulsion start-up Firehawk Aerospace, quantum computing company PsiQuantum, and AI group Cerebras Systems, as well as SpaceX and Anduril. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have also been linked to other drone makers, including Unusual Machines and Powerus, that have secured federal contracts.
Trump Jr. told the Financial Times that he is “very involved in the strategic decisions regarding where to invest” the resources of 1789 Capital.
The Financial Times also reported that Eric Trump accompanied his father on his recent state visit to China at the same “a company linked to him and the US president’s family” — Alt5 Sigma, a Las Vegas-based financial technology company — “explores a deal” with Chinese chipmaker Nano Labs that U.S. lawmakers says is tied to the Chinese Community Party. Eric Trump is an “observer” on the board of Alt5 Sigma, while Zach Witkoff, the son of top Trump aide Steve Witkoff, chairs Alt5’s board.
The Financial Times also reports that a shell company backed by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump is set to merge with a critical minerals group that last year secured up to $1.6 billion in U.S. government backing to mine tungsten in Kazakhstan. Now, that group is asking for $400 million more from the government.
Holding Politicians to Account
While Donald Trump may be struggling in the polls, his family, financially, is doing just fine.
Hauser told Truthout that much of Donald Trump’s “economic interest” is tied to “increasing the wealth of his kids,” including his son-in-law Kushner. “When they are engaged in these types of overseas actions, they are carrying Trump’s interests with them inherently,” said Hauser.
But, Hauser adds, the law treats adult children of presidents as wholly independent from their parents, allowing “relative impunity” for their intermixing of business transactions with diplomatic roles or close familial relations.
“The law is just not written to address this type of situation,” said Hauser.
But Hauser sees hope in past U.S. history, which he says has always experienced vicissitudes of political corruption and revulsion against corruption that propels reform through both legal avenues as well as social ostracization of bad actors.
“Political corruption cycles tend to be cyclical,” he said. “Hopefully this is [the] nadir, and we can all be angry enough and hold our politicians to account such that they start to clean this up, and we can switch from a vicious cycle of ever-increasing corruption to a virtuous cycle of greater integrity.”
Gaza Genocide, Inc.: The Permanent-Conflict Industry
Imran Khalid for Foreign Policy in Focus, 12 June 26 https://scheerpost.com/2026/06/12/gaza-genocide-inc-the-permanent-conflict-industry/
The international community’s approach to conflict resolution has undergone a profound and dangerous structural shift, moving away from the pursuit of political settlements toward the permanent administration of crisis. This transition is vividly apparent in Rafah, where the newly established National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) has begun overseeing a reconstruction process stripped of any path toward genuine sovereignty or political renewal. What is being built instead is a sprawling, technocratic bureaucracy designed to manage human suffering indefinitely, transforming a site of active geopolitical dispossession into a permanent administrative holding pattern.
The rollout of Phase Two of the Trump administration’s Comprehensive Gaza Plan—secured with a UN Security Council endorsement—exposes the nakedly corporate logic underpinning modern foreign policy. By placing a “Board of Peace” stacked with billionaire financiers and political hawks like Marco Rubio, Tony Blair, Jared Kushner, Ajay Banga, and Marc Rowan in charge of post-conflict governance, Western hegemony has effectively financialized geopolitical containment. The plan treats Gaza not as a nation deserving of self-determination but as a high-risk economic asset to be secured, stabilized, and folded into regional trade corridors while its population remains permanently disenfranchised.
This containment model carries severe consequences both for the occupied population and the broader global order. For Palestinians, it institutionalizes a bleak daily reality of endless aid lines and checkpoints under an international apparatus that has traded the promise of liberation for technocratic stabilization. Globally, this reveals a deeper systemic reality: the traditional assumption that regional conflicts are temporary shocks awaiting a diplomatic fix has completely collapsed.
For global political and economic elites, perpetual instability is no longer a failure to be corrected but a baseline structural condition around which modern global capitalism is choosing to organize itself.
A Shift in Logic
In the twentieth century, major conflicts were viewed as massive disruptions to globalization. In the twenty-first, globalization is rapidly adapting itself around endless disruption. Entire corporate, financial, and bureaucratic systems now operationalize instability as a baseline condition rather than a temporary shock.
Private-sector logistics firms are securing long-term contracts to manage continuous delivery corridors into high-risk zones. Maritime conglomerates are permanently adjusting pricing models and routing assets around Africa as a structural business reality. Digital and physical infrastructure protection has transitioned from an annual insurance check-box to a core operational expense that drives tech-sector hiring and venture capital investment.
Markets are internalizing this shift. Oil prices no longer spike the way they once did after escalations because commodity investors increasingly price in chronic, localized instability rather than assuming systemic collapse. Capital markets are no longer asking whether a crisis will end but whether it can remain geographically contained. That distinction changes everything for how corporate treasuries allocate capital.
Gaza and Ukraine
Gaza illustrates this vividly. The NCAG’s reconstruction mandate and the Board of Peace’s integration of Gaza into the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) show that crisis management itself has become a growth industry. Reconstruction is not about closure; it is about embedding instability into global supply chains.
This economic adaptation mirrors a deeper systemic fatigue within international governance. The post-Cold War era operated on the logic that major conflicts eventually reached closure, whether Bosnia after Dayton or Northern Ireland after the Good Friday Agreement. Today, that logic is spent.
Instead of diplomacy aimed at structural architecture, modern institutions are becoming highly efficient at administering instability rather than ending it. The UN’s Resolution 2803 did not declare peace; it endorsed a framework for managing crisis indefinitely. The NCAG’s mandate is to restore services under conditions of volatility, not to deliver closure.
Ukraine offers a parallel. Western institutions have become adept at stabilizing financial flows, managing refugee integration, and sustaining military aid—but without a credible path to settlement. Sudan’s humanitarian corridors are similarly managed as permanent relief operations. Gaza’s plan institutionalizes this model: reconstruction without resolution, administration without settlement.
Normalization
The third transformation is occurring inside the human infrastructure of the modern workplace, driven by algorithmic fatigue and the workspace paradox. The digital age has fundamentally altered how societies, consumers, and employees process global trauma.
Previous generations experienced major conflicts sequentially. Today’s professional workforce experiences them simultaneously, continuously, and instantly. In any given hour, a professional’s algorithmic stream displays corporate Slack messages alongside real-time updates from Gaza, Ukraine, Taiwan, and climate disasters.
This continuous exposure has created a dangerous psychological paradox. The global workforce is more emotionally connected to macro-level crises than at any point in history, yet constant exposure is triggering widespread psychological numbness and professional exhaustion. Public and corporate outrage surges rapidly, then stabilizes into fatigue. For leaders, managing a workforce under the weight of this continuous cognitive load is a quiet crisis in itself.
The ultimate danger of the era of permanent crisis is that it becomes intellectually and socially normalized. Once corporate strategies and public expectations internalize the assumption that global disruption never truly ends, ambition contracts. Leaders stop pursuing long-term expansions because planning horizons narrow from years to weeks. Innovation takes a backseat to survival and containment.
History offers a stern warning: the late Roman Empire did not collapse because every frontier failed simultaneously. It declined because permanent emergencies became routine, and tactical crisis management slowly replaced strategic renewal.
The modern international order risks entering a similar phase. Gaza, Ukraine, and shipping vulnerabilities matter immensely for their immediate human and material costs, but they matter even more because they reveal the new template of global operations. Trump’s Gaza plan, with its NCAG, Board of Peace, and IMEC linkage, is not just a reconstruction blueprint. It is a case study in how global institutions now design for permanence of crisis rather than its resolution.
The challenge for the next generation of business leaders is not simply navigating the next disruption but learning how to build sustainable, human-centric enterprises when disruption is the baseline condition. The permanent crisis economy is here: industries are monetizing instability, institutions are administering it, and workforces are absorbing it.
Gaza’s reconstruction framework, endorsed by the UN and operationalized by Trump’s Board of Peace, crystallizes this reality. It shows that the world’s most powerful actors are no longer promising closure. They are promising management.
For commerce, governance, and society, the task is clear: to resist the temptation to normalize crisis as the only horizon. Otherwise, the machinery of global order will become a treadmill of containment, and the ambition for renewal will fade. The permanent crisis economy may be the present reality, but it must not become a permanent destiny.
How Zionist Lobbying Has Reshaped Global Politics
13 June 2026 Dr Andrew Klein, PhD, Australian Independent Media
The Branch That Reaches Across Oceans – How Zionist Lobbying Has Reshaped Global Politics
“The branch is not the tree. The tree is still standing. And the tree – the tree is justice.”
The Branch That Reaches Across Oceans
The “Greater Israel” project is not a secret. It is not a fringe fantasy. It is being marketed in London, in Montreal, in New York – real estate roadshows advertising properties in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. The UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices warned in November 2025 that “Israel continues to expand its presence and control of territory in Palestine, Syria and Southern Lebanon,” and that Israel’s “constant claims to a borderless ‘Land of Israel’ are incompatible with a just and lasting peace.”
This is not merely a Middle Eastern conflict. It is a global project – one that relies not only on military force, but on an extensive apparatus of lobbying, financial influence, and the suppression of dissent in Western capitals.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman warned that the “Greater Israel” project poses dangers not only to neighbouring countries but also to Europeans: “Even the Europeans are not safe, because the Zionist regime does not hesitate to openly declare its colonial and racist ambitions in forms such as ‘greater Israel’.” Whether one accepts the Iranian framing, the fact that the project is cited by adversaries as a casus belli indicates that it is not a secret.
The scale of political interference is not unique in spirit – it is an extension of historically brutal colonial behaviours, morphed into a new scale in line with modern communication systems. The Roman Empire bribed Germanic chieftains. The British Empire divided and ruled India. But the contemporary Zionist project operates within a rules‑based international order that was supposed to prevent exactly this kind of extraction.
And it operates with the active complicity of Western governments – not because they are powerless, but because their political systems have been captured.
The Machinery of Influence: AIPAC and the American Political System
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is the most visible node in a vast network of lobbying organisations that influence US Middle East policy. A 2024 academic study published in the Hasanuddin Journal of Strategic and International Studies found that “the AIPAC lobby is deeply rooted in US policymaking structures, ranging from vice‑president, and higher‑echelon staff, to parliament members.” The study noted that since 2021, AIPAC has expanded its activities to include direct participation in political campaign contributions, effectively buying access to the highest levels of American government.
The study’s conclusion is stark: “Such overly foreign influence on national policymaking has the potential to harm America’s long‑term relationships and interests in the Middle East if the US can’t make the barrier for foreign interference toward its national interests.”
This is not a fringe argument. Ilan Pappé’s comprehensive study, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic, documents how “over a century of aggressive lobbying changed the map of the Middle East.” Pappé details how pro‑Israel lobbies convinced British and American policymakers “to condone Israel’s flagrant breaches of international law, grant Israel unprecedented military aid and deny Palestinians rights.” Anyone who questioned unconditional support for Israel, “even in the mildest terms, became the target of relentless smear campaigns.”
The mechanism is not subtle. It is the same mechanism that has always operated in systems where political survival depends on campaign contributions. The donor class – in this case, a network of Zionist organisations and aligned right‑wing groups – buys influence. Politicians who comply receive funding, electoral support, and protection from primary challenges. Those who dissent are targeted, smeared, and often defeated.
This is not a conspiracy. It is a system.
The Silencing of Dissent: Academic Freedom Under Attack
The suppression of criticism extends beyond electoral politics into the realm of ideas. A 2024 academic paper in the journal Milel ve Nihal examines how “political lobbying, financial influence, and allegations of antisemitism are strategically employed to establish a cultural hegemony that determines what discourse is acceptable” in US universities.
The paper, titled “Zionism and Academic Hegemony: The Intersection of Power, Knowledge, and Suppression in the United States Universities,” draws on Michel Foucault’s theory of power‑knowledge and Antonio Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony to analyse how “Zionist organisations influence higher education frameworks, research priorities, and public discourse.” This manipulation, the paper argues, “serves to marginalize, silence, or delegitimize critical perspectives that oppose or challenge Israeli policies and actions, especially those related to the occupation of Palestinian territories and human rights violations.”
The paper provides specific examples, including the rescinded job offer to Professor Steven Salaita at the University of Illinois following his criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza on social media. The case is not isolated. The paper documents “additional examples including the suppression of pro‑Palestinian viewpoints and the punishment of students and faculty who advocate for Palestinian rights at various prominent U.S. institutions.”
The paper concludes that “Zionism’s influence is not limited to isolated cases but creates a widespread atmosphere where academic freedom is restricted.” Universities, “meant to be pillars of free thought and critical inquiry, increasingly become arenas where dissent is suppressed and ideological conformity is imposed.”
The weaponisation of antisemitism accusations is central to this strategy. Criticism of Israeli government policy is routinely conflated with hatred of Jews. The effect is to chill debate, to intimidate critics, and to protect the settlement enterprise from scrutiny. As one reviewer of Pappé’s book noted, the strategy involves “cracked down on dissent in the Labour Party, and relentlessly smeared critics.”
The Australian Connection
The pattern is not confined to the United States and the United Kingdom. Australia has its own history of Zionist lobbying and political interference – a history that remains largely unexamined in mainstream discourse.
The Australian example is particularly instructive because it reveals how the machinery of influence operates even in a country geographically distant from the Middle East, with no historical responsibility for the conflict, and no strategic interest that would justify the degree of alignment with Israeli policy.
The mechanisms are similar: campaign donations, community lobbying, and the weaponisation of antisemitism accusations to silence critics. Australian politicians who question Israeli policy face organised opposition from Zionist organisations. The media environment is shaped by the same dynamics of donor pressure and editorial alignment.
The result is a foreign policy that is not in Australia’s national interest – AUKUS, the uncritical support for US Middle East policy, the silence on Israeli atrocities – but is dictated by a donor class whose primary loyalty is not to Australia.
This is not a fringe observation. It is the conclusion of the same structural analysis that applies to the United States and the United Kingdom. The only difference is scale.
The Geographic Safety Nets
The “Greater Israel” project is not merely ideological. It is infrastructural. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://theaimn.net/how-zionist-lobbying-has-reshaped-global-politics/
Senate wants to force US to share sensitive intel with Israel
A measure in a must-pass bill would dramatically increase Israeli access to American secrets
Paul R. Pillar, Responsible Statecraft, Jun 10, 2026
Buried deep inside a 192-page intelligence authorization bill is Section 622, titled “United States-Israel Intelligence Sharing Enhancement.” It would require the president, acting through the director of national intelligence and as necessary the secretary of defense, to “expand and enhance intelligence sharing with the Government of Israel” on a list of subjects that encompasses almost every topic of intelligence interest in the Middle East.
The bill, put forward by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, would prohibit any suspension, reduction, or limitation of such sharing “except on the basis of a specific and identifiable national security concern determined by the President.” Any such exception would require a report to Congress within fifteen days detailing not only the reason for the change but also the categories of information involved. The same report would require an assessment of the anticipated impact on regional security and various other matters.
This proposal is one of several recent moves by those in Washington who carry the Israeli government’s water to keep the United States tied to Israel despite plummeting support for the country among the American public. The most salient form of U.S. support to Israel has been more than $300 billion in economic and especially military assistance. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has tried to get ahead of the declining public support and avoid embarrassing losses by suggesting it would be fine with him to phase out the military aid.
Israel’s strategy and that of its U.S. supporters is now to rely on ties with, and support from, the United States that are not as salient as the military aid with its prominent price tag. The strategy includes forms of military integration that are less visible than congressionally appropriated grant aid and therefore less publicly accountable. Section 224 of a defense authorization bill currently in the House of Representatives embodies this form of integration.
The mandating of intelligence sharing carries this strategy further by moving it into the shadowy world of relations between intelligence agencies. That world is even farther removed from public visibility and accountability than the defense integration, and even less likely to stimulate thoughts about American taxpayers’ money going to a foreign country. So far, Section 622 of the intelligence bill has received less attention than Section 224 of the defense bill.
The notion of legislating an intelligence liaison relationship in this way, with any foreign country, is bizarre……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The current ill-advised war with Iran demonstrates the sharp divergence of U.S. and Israeli interests. After being the principal influence on President Donald Trump’s decision to launch the war, Netanyahu’s government has been sabotaging efforts to end it.
It currently is doing so mainly with relentless attacks in Lebanon that have killed thousands and displaced over a million people. The divergence of objectives was reflected in an expletive-laden phone call last week between Trump and Netanyahu that was mainly about those attacks.
Attacks that sabotage diplomacy are among the Israeli operations that might use shared U.S. intelligence. The United States also will be blamed for aiding other violent Israeli operations because of the “enhanced” intelligence sharing, even if it were no longer paying for Israeli arms.
The supposed escape clause in Section 622 of the intelligence bill would in practice be so cumbersome as to be useless. The required report to Congress would dump the issue on Capitol Hill, where the Israel lobby would quickly depict it as a question of being for or against the security of Israel. The mandated intelligence sharing in the bill thus would tie the president’s hands and prevent any administration from using management of the intelligence liaison relationship as leverage to deter destructive conduct by Israel. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-intelligence-israel/
Most Israelis oppose Netanyahu’s re-election as Trump says PM ‘may quit politics’
Trump continues to call the premier a ‘wartime prime minister’ as Netanyahu faces ongoing internal opposition and a long-delayed corruption trial
News Desk, JUN 10, 2026, https://thecradle.co/articles/most-israelis-oppose-netanyahus-re-election-as-trump-says-pm-may-quit-politics
A poll published by an Israeli research center on 9 June has revealed that most Israelis do not want Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to run in the upcoming election.
The poll was released by the Viterbi Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research at the Israel Democracy Institute, based in occupied Jerusalem.
It was conducted between 31 May and 5 June.
According to the results, 61 percent of Israelis believe Netanyahu should not run in the elections. Thirty-five percent were in favor of the premier running.
The number of Israeli Jews who are opposed to his running stood at 57 percent, while 39.5 percent of Jewish Israelis believe he should run.
Among the Palestinians with Israeli citizenship living in the territories ethnically cleansed during the 1948 Nakba, 83 percent are against Netanyahu running in the election, according to the poll.
Eleven percent of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship support his candidacy, the poll added. A recent poll revealed a significant deterioration in the global reputation of Netanyahu and Israel.
The survey was published amid growing uncertainty over Netanyahu’s political future following comments by US President Donald Trump, who claimed the premier may want to step back from politics.
Trump told ABC News on Tuesday that he was unsure “if Bibi even wants to continue.”
“I don’t know, he’s had an amazing career. Does he want to continue? Because, you know, he’s a wartime prime minister. We will very shortly win the war one way or the other, and you know he’s a wartime prime minister,” Trump added.
Likud has since responded, saying that Netanyahu will run in the upcoming election.
Netanyahu is mired in a years-long criminal trial over corruption and other scandals. The trial has seen near-constant delays.
The prime minister has also failed to resolve the Haredi draft crisis plaguing Israel, with ultra-Orthodox Jews (Haredim) still avoiding conscription and opposition parties criticizing the ruling coalition for placing secular reservists at the forefront of the conflict.
Israeli army leadership has warned of a collapse in the reserve forces, and troops are taking heavy losses in battles against Hezbollah in south Lebanon.
Since Netanyahu’s government came to power in late 2022, illegal West Bank settlements and annexation plans have expanded dramatically, and a genocide in Gaza has taken place.
Tel Aviv has also continued to wage brutal wars on multiple fronts, including Lebanon and Iran.
The draft crisis and other long-standing issues between Netanyahu and the opposition have prompted former premiers Naftali Bennet and Yair Lapid to merge parties in a bid to challenge the prime minister politically.
The Entire Human Species Has Been Turned Into A Profit-Generating Machine
Caitlin Johnstone, Jun 12, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-entire-human-species-has-been?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=201685469&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
The human species has essentially been transformed into a giant machine to generate profit for corporations.
Under capitalism, humanity exists to serve the interests of the corporation. We are all livestock; beasts of burden used to carry margin expansion forward from quarterly statement to quarterly statement. Enjoyment of life has no value other than the extent to which it can be used to increase the net worth of the shareholders.
That’s why everyone’s so unhappy. We’re not living with purpose. We’re not working together to build a better world and a better future, we’re just pulling levers to turn gears to make the arrow line go up on the graph in the conference room. It’s a hollow, pointless way for people to live.
It makes our whole culture vapid and soulless.
Music is made to be as profitable as possible, which means giving it the broadest possible appeal using formulaic song structure calculated to cause a chemical response in the largest number of human brains.
Movies are designed to draw the largest possible box office revenue at the lowest possible risk to studios and investors, often by just rehashing a movie that’s already proven successful in the past or by slapping together a story about an IP with pre-existing mass appeal.
Food is made to be fast and addictive rather than nourishing.
Healthy human connection has been commodified as social media intertwines with friendships and dating apps insert themselves into the development of romantic relationships.
Human sexuality is being warped and twisted as internet porn normalizes violence and degradation for the maximum number of clicks.
Attention and engagement have been monetized, creating an information ecosystem dominated by conflict and gossip designed to appeal to our baser instincts.
Advertisement is injected into every possible corner of our waking sensory experience, with any available space where the eye might rest or the ear might listen being flooded with psychological manipulation compelling us to consume. They’ll start running commercials in our dreams the instant they have the technology to do so.
You spend eight hours at the office working to generate corporate profits, then you come home and consume products to profit other corporations. You need your beer and snacks to unwind, your streaming services and social media to distract your mind from the stress of it all, your online clothing purchase to try to feel good about yourself, and your prescription drugs to get to sleep at night. People live their entire lives like this.
And that’s those of us who are lucky enough to be living in the global north. In the global south you get wage slavery and exploitation with far more toil, far less relaxation time, and no cheap products made by impoverished workers on other continents with which to comfort yourself.
All of humanity has been roped into this mess. And for what? To make the numbers in some bank accounts increase. To get some green arrows pointing upward on the stock exchange. To enable a few billionaires to buy islands and elections.
All while destroying the biosphere we all depend on for survival.
This, we are told, is the best possible system we could possibly be living under.
I personally do not believe this is true. I personally believe we can have better. Those who benefit from this current arrangement are going to assure us it’s impossible and do everything they can to stop us from changing it, but we do have the means to reclaim the wealth, dignity and happiness that they have stolen from us.
They built this whole machine on our backs. All we need to do is stand up.
Legal Profession Revolt Against The UK Judge Whose Job Is To Protect Israel’s Genocide
Proscription has led to thousands of people, most of them elderly and including upstanding members of British society – from magistrates and doctors to army veterans – facing convictions for “supporting terrorism” for holding up placards stating: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”
Judge Johnson so rigged the trial of anti-genocide activists that 1000s of legal professionals have urged him to step down from the sentencing hearing. But Johnson’s dirty work is not yet complete
SCHEERPOST, Jonathan Cook Substack, June 11, 2026
The trial of the Filton Four reaches its climax on Friday. Judge Jeremy Johnson will decide the sentences of four Palestine Action activists found guilty of criminal damage – after two juries refused to convict them of far more serious charges brought by the British government, via the Crown Prosecution Service.
Keir Starmer’s government failed to secure the convictions for aggravated burglary and violent disorder it so desperately needed. They would have helped retroactively justify its decision to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation – the first time in British history that a direct action group, which targets property, has been proscribed.
Starmer’s hostility towards Palestine Action is personal. It has been a massive thorn in his side during Israel’s near three-year genocide in Gaza.
From the outset, Starmer suggested that Israel had the “right” to withhold food, water and power from the 2 million Palestinian residents of Gaza – a crime against humanity for which the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is wanted by the International Criminal Court.
Starmer’s complicity in the genocide has only been underscored by Palestine Action, which has targeted Israeli factories operating in the UK run by Elbit Systems that supply Israel’s genocidal army with killer drones for use in Gaza.
The so-called Filton trial derives its name from an Elbit factory in the Filton neighbourhood of Bristol that Palestine Action targeted in August 2024. Efforts to destroy these Israeli drones came at a time when Starmer was under enormous popular – if little political – pressure to end British arms sales to Israel.
PR crisis
Proscription, however, has not worked out well for Starmer. It has entangled him in a self-inflicted public relations crisis of almighty proportions.
Palestine Action activists have been held in remand without trial for an unprecedented period of time, far in excess of the normal maximums, and in especially harsh conditions that have treated them as if they were terrorism suspects, even though their arrests long precede the group’s proscription last year.
These sustained abuses led to a prolonged hunger strike, and a desperate government and media campaign to justify their mistreatment.
Proscription has led to thousands of people, most of them elderly and including upstanding members of British society – from magistrates and doctors to army veterans – facing convictions for “supporting terrorism” for holding up placards stating: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”
This popular backlash cornered the High Court into declaring the proscription unlawful – a decision the government is appealing. That has led to another unprecedented situation: police are still arresting people for holding the placards, despite the courts ruling that the basis for such arrests is unlawful.
The law has never looked more of an ass………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Rigged trials
Judge Johnson has done precisely nothing to counter the overwhelming impression that the Filton activists’ prosecutions were entirely political. He quite openly rigged both trials in manifold ways, as former British ambassador Craig Murray has set out………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Gagging order
But even with the convictions for criminal damage secured under these rigged conditions, Judge Johnson is still in a position to cause more harm to the rule of law. He is due to sentence the Filton Four on Friday……………………………………………………………………………………..
Remember, all this is happening as Starmer’s government makes unprecedented moves to end many jury trials in Britain, leaving us to the mercy of judges like Jeremy Johnson……………………………………………………………………………..
If this is all starting to look like theatre, that is because it is. In dictatorships, these are called show trials. Everyone understands that the outcome is predetermined. Everyone understands that justice is non-existent. The verdict is entirely political. It is a faux-legal rationalisation of what the security state wants.
Judge Johnson is the perfect judge to play that part…………………….https://scheerpost.com/2026/06/11/legal-profession-revolt-against-the-uk-judge-whose-job-is-to-protect-israels-genocide/
Non-corporate nuclear-related news this week
Some bits of good news – How To End A War: Lessons from Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Juan Manuel SantosMangrove forests stage a comeback. French Polynesia Protects Biodiverse Ocean Area Twice the Size of Arizona Teeming with Life
TOP STORIES. Reactor reboot at world’s largest nuclear plant highlights flaws in Japan’s radioactive waste plans.Is America ready for a nuclear explosion in space?
‘Burn for us’: The real message of US-EU ‘nuclear sharing’.
FIFA, Eurovision expelled Russia but Israel has Impunity.
Chas Freeman: The Greater Israel Project Is Collapsing Under the Weight of Endless War.
AI to double data centre power and water consumption by 2030, UN researchers say.
Climate. Record winter temperatures in Antarctic raise fears over speed of climate breakdown
AUSTRALIA.
- Technology unravels strategy and the weakness of AUKUS
- AUSTRALIA’S SECRET EMBRACE OF U.S. NUCLEAR PLANNING
- SUBMISSION: Radiation protection for workers and members of the public under AUKUS.
- Freedom Of Information to die? Albanese’s nuclear strike on transparency.
- From the archives – Freedom Of Information win as Information Commissioner rebukes Defence secrecy.
- Resisting radioactive racism in Australia.
- Nuclear test survivor’s daughter calls on First Nations communities to speak up on AUKUS
- Greens warn nuclear submarines deal risks war with China as Albanese says Aukus ‘full-steam ahead’ .
- Investigating the Foolish: The AUKUS Public Inquiry is Announced.
- More Australian news at https://antinuclear.net/2026/06/07/australian-nuclear-news-week-to-13-june/
NUCLEAR-RELATED ITEMS
| ATROCITIES. Visual data reveals extent of systematic Israeli white phosphorus attacks on south Lebanon: Report. More Palestinians killed by Israeli military and settlers across occupied West Bank in last 3 years since Gaza hostilities than previous 17 combined – Oxfam. Israel Has Engineered a Deadly Shortage of Medications and Health Care in Gaza. |
| CLIMATE. A nuclear war between India and Pakistan could destroy the ozone layer. |
| CIVIL LIBERTIES. Natasha Walter: Labour’s workaday repression of protest doesn’t alarm us – But it should. |
ECONOMICS.
- We economists have done the maths: ‘growth’ is a doomed strategy – there is a better way.
- Rolls-Royce strikes nuclear deal with Japan, likely to be tax-payer funded – ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2026/06/14/6-b1-rolls-royce-strikes-nuclear-deal-with-japan-likely-to-be-tax-payer-funded/
- Campaigners demand answers over Sizewell C costs and completion date. Are the Sizewell C financing arrangements a model for other European countries? Sizewell C to move work offsite ‘as much as possible’ amid skills crisis. Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) defends Sizewell C funding which puts risk on taxpayer. – ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2026/06/12/5-b1-department-for-energy-security-and-net-zero-desnz-defends-sizewell-c-funding-which-puts-risk-on-taxpayer/
- United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) commits £20M to UKI2S fund for fusion innovation .
- Screwed again: small investors to bail out billionaires from SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
| EMPLOYMENT. Planned strikes suspended at nuclear site. Industrial dispute on Hinkley C site sees large police presence. |
| ENVIRONMENT. Hinkley Nuclear plant could be delayed again by demands to protect fish – ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2026/06/14/6-b1-hinkley-nuclear-plant-could-be-delayed-again-by-demands-to-protect-fish/ |
| EVENTS. 25 June- THE PUKE ON NUKES. 26 June – Radiation Trainwreck at the NRC / Join the Protect Better Campaign . Protect Sazan Island from the Trump family!. Protest to be held at Calderbridge nuclear waste meeting. |
| HISTORY. How Israel Planned The Gaza Genocide Decades Ago. How The CIA Conjured Ukrainian Nationalism. Tortured US history with Iran goes back 73 years, not 47. |
MEDIA.
- Western Media Normalize Ethnic Cleansing of Lebanon by Viewing It Through Israel’s Eyes.
- Media’s Ceasefire Fiction Masks Continuing War.
- Revealed: USAID, National Endowment for Democracy & Open Society Quietly Bankroll Cuba’s “Independent” Media In Push for Regime Change.
- Honorable Mention to “HIBAKUSHA – WANDERING SOUL“
| OPPOSITION to NUCLEAR . Sizewell C: the Unanswered Questions. |
| PERSONAL STORIES. Stewart Lee: Quick – dangerous ideologies are storming the beaches – Has anyone reserved a sun-lounger? |
POLITICS.
ROSATOM report.
Trump’s Sedition Act for Israel.
Fusing the US Military and the Israeli Defense Force
POLITICS INTERNATIONAL and DIPLOMACY.
- The view from Moscow: The future of nuclear arms control exists, but the path is hard.
- IAEA board passes resolution demanding Iran report uranium stocks.
- Is the Ceasefire Dead? (w/ Alastair Crooke) -The Chris Hedges Report.
- The Gazafication of Lebanon: How Israel Exports Destruction and Washington Protects It.
- Trump news at a glance: president claims Iran ‘no longer want a nuclear weapon’ amid peace deal hopes.
- 𝐍𝐄𝐓𝐀𝐍𝐘𝐀𝐇𝐔’𝐒 𝐆𝐀𝐌𝐁𝐋𝐄 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐂𝐀𝐍 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐒 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐒𝐎𝐋𝐃𝐈𝐄𝐑𝐒 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐈𝐃𝐃𝐋𝐄 𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐓.
- ‘The Humiliation Just Compounds’: Trump Tells Netanyahu Not to Bomb Iran, Then Israel Strikes Anyway. Trump and Netanyahu: The odd couple.
- Why Europe Embraced Authoritarianism For Israel.
- International People’s Tribunal (IPT) invites representatives of the United States Government and the Government of the Republic of Korea to participate in Proceedings on Korean Victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Atomic Bombings.
RADIATION. NUCLEAR HOTSEAT. Women, Children At Greatest Risk from Nuclear Radiation – UN Report by Mary Olson, Dr. Amanda M. Nichols
SAFETY.
- No electricity at Zaporizhia nuclear power plant after attack, IAEA says.
- Experts Warn Against Handing Impact Assessment of Nuclear Projects Over to Captured Regulator.
- Shipment of nuclear waste from Sellafield heads to Germany, raising safety concerns.
- UK to Extend Life of Sizewell B Nuclear Plant by 20 Years !
- The timeline for restoring operations at the Chornobyl nuclear waste storage facility following Russian shelling remains unknown – IAEA . Power returns to Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant after prolonged outage, IAEA says.
- Incidents. IAEA warning after drone hits used fuel facility near Chernobyl. Another deadly explosion casts shadow over Hanwha Aerospace’s cutting-edge image
| SPACE. EXPLORATION, WEAPONS. Space Force needs to prepare for an ‘in-person’ moon conflict with China, new report argues. United Nations Open-ended working group on the prevention of an arms race in outer space in all its aspects (“OEWG on PAROS”) |
| SPINBUSTER. The push to lift Ireland’s nuclear ban: Going nuclear or nowhere? Beyond the Propaganda: The French Uniqueness and the New Nuclear Dead End – Excerpts at https://nuclear-news.net/2026/06/14/6-b1-beyond-the-propaganda-the-french-uniqueness-and-the-new-nuclear-dead-end/ Hegseth Compares D-Day Troops to Europe’s Migrants. Israel Could Solve Its PR Problem By Simply Ceasing To Be Evil. |
| TECHNOLOGY. Can small nuclear reactors deliver for Europe? Nuclear-fusion firm says plant will deliver electricity to grid — but big questions remain. |
WAR and CONFLICT.
- US Begins Another Round of Attacks on Iran.
- War crime -US ‘precision strikes’ cut water access to 20,000 people in southern Iran.
- Putin Powerfully Rebuffed The Hawks Who Want Him To Attack NATO.
- Russian drone hits nuclear fuel site near Chernobyl – ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2026/06/12/5-b1-russian-drone-hits-nuclear-fuel-site-near-chernobyl/
- Battle for Kiev 2022: The Battle That Never Was [i].
Nuclear weapons spending surges to record high of $119bn, report says .
Britain has become third-largest nuclear weapons spender – CND. UK overtakes Russia as Labour hike nuclear weapon spend by 17 per cent. UK Navy nuclear submarine fleet stuck in dock while awaiting maintenance.
North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons, says Kim Jong-un’s sister. Kim Jong Un vows to build nuclear-armed navy with ‘secret underwater weapons‘ as he tours warship with his daughter.
| WOMEN. A Collective Call by the Women of the World. |
SMRs axed from New Brunswick Power’s energy plan
it has become increasingly clear that faith in small modular technology is fleeting.
Looming integrated resource plan likely to leave out new nuclear, a dramatic change from the last plan the utility released
Adam Huras, Telegraph Journal, Jun 09, 2026
NB Power’s new plan to meet New Brunswick’s electricity needs likely won’t include any new nuclear power, according to the utility.
It’s a dramatic change from the last plan the utility released just three years ago that relied heavily on adding small modular nuclear reactors over the next decade as a linchpin to meeting demand.
And it’s a move that raised eyebrows when first delivered by NB Power CEO Lori Clark at a major industry forum last week in Saint John set up to push forward new nuclear power in the province.
“In the short term, our integrated resource plan would say it’s gas plants, batteries are part of the solution going forward,” Clark said at the Pioneering New Nuclear in Atlantic Canada forum at the Saint John Trade & Convention Centre. That’s despite her openly backing new nuclear as the solution.
Clark also stated that legislation calls on the utility to pick the lowest-cost option to meet demand.
It means new nuclear power will largely be ruled out in a plan that’s soon to be released.
In a statement to Brunswick News, NB Power spokesperson Tracey Stephenson confirmed a new integrated resource plan, to be released in early fall, “focuses on least cost options” and, as a result, “it is likely that new nuclear will not be a part of the base case.”
Stephenson added that “existing nuclear” will be included in the plan.
“Sensitivities will be provided for new nuclear.”
Clark made clear her interest in pursuing additional nuclear capabilities in New Brunswick………………………………………………………………………..
Regardless, the new plan looks to say something different.
NB Power must release a new integrated resource plan every three years to reflect the changing energy landscape and customer expectations.
It ultimately lays out several likely scenarios NB Power can take in the decades ahead to balance demand for more power, calls from customers to keep rates stable, federal mandates, and provincial government direction.
The plan just three years ago was based heavily on small modular nuclear reactor development.
“SMRs are a critical part of the future of electricity in New Brunswick,” reads the 2023 plan. “They provide a unique opportunity for New Brunswick to offer stable and predictable carbon-free generation.”
Four scenarios developed by NB Power in 2023 banked on at least 450 megawatts of power from SMRs by 2034-35.
That ranged upward to 750 megawatts.
The only analysis that removed SMRs from future projections suggested the need for “extreme volumes of wind and solar builds,” over 4,000 megawatts, would be needed in its place.
Under the province’s Electricity Act, NB Power is legally required to seek out the lowest-cost options for energy generation.
That said, amendments to the act passed into law by the former Higgs government in December 2023 mandated the utility to purchase electricity generated by small modular nuclear reactors, even if it wasn’t the lowest-cost option.
Then-Energy Minister Mike Holland said that may have prevented power purchase agreements with SMR operators.
NB Power said in an email that “the mandate regarding the purchase of electricity from small nuclear reactor technology remains,” while pointing to the provincial government for further clarity.
With the Holt government in power, it has become increasingly clear that faith in small modular technology is fleeting.
Two SMR companies that have set up in New Brunswick have both pushed back timelines.
Amid delays, NB Power has said it’s completing pre-development work at Lepreau to accommodate a wide variety of SMRs working towards commercialization, giving the utility the flexibility to eventually choose a viable winner that might not be a made-in-New Brunswick design.
Energy Minister René Legacy said last October that the Holt government wasn’t interested in building a “first-of-a-kind” SMR at Lepreau, adding they’re “always the most expensive.”
Those words came after the federal government pledged $2 billion toward the building of four small modular nuclear reactors at Ontario’s Darlington nuclear plant, with that model now becoming an eventual option for New Brunswick.
More recently, Premier Susan Holt unveiled what she called an “action plan” in response to an independent review of the troubled utility’s finances and its recent pattern of large rate increases for customers.
That said, it delays decisions on things like splitting the Point Lepreau nuclear generating station into its own separate company, as well as a recommendation to build a second larger nuclear reactor at Point Lepreau.
Clark also stated that legislation calls on the utility to pick the lowest-cost option to meet demand.
It means new nuclear power will largely be ruled out in a plan that’s soon to be released. https://tj.news/new-brunswick/smrs-axed-from-nb-powers-energy-plan
Trump news at a glance: president claims Iran ‘no longer want a nuclear weapon’ amid peace deal hopes
Washington and Tehran express increasing optimism that weeks of halting negotiations may be drawing to a close – key US politics stories from Saturday 13 June at a glance
Guardian staff, 14 June 26, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/14/trump-news-at-a-glance-president-claims-iran-no-longer-want-a-nuclear-weapon-amid-peace-deal-hopes
Donald Trump says a deal with Iran to end the war would be signed on Sunday, and that the strait of Hormuz would be “open to all” immediately after.
Iran had offered a different timeline earlier in the day, but nonetheless signalled an agreement was in the offing, as both the warring parties and their mediators expressed increasing optimism that weeks of halting negotiations were drawing to a close.
“The Deal is scheduled to get signed tomorrow, and immediately after it is signed, the Hormuz Strait is OPEN TO ALL,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform. Since an 8 April truce paused the worst of the fighting, Trump has repeatedly insisted a deal was near only for the wrangling to drag on.
The Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmaeil Baqaei, had said earlier on Saturday that the date of the signing was yet to be determined, but “it will not be tomorrow”. However, he added: “The possibility of this happening in the coming days cannot be ruled out.”
ROSATOM report
Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine has profoundly altered the
political and strategic environment in which the Russian state nuclear
corporation Rosatom operates. Not only has the war intensified scrutiny of
the corporation’s role in nuclear safety, energy security, and
international governance, but it has also highlighted the extent to which
Rosatom functions today at the intersection of technology, state policy,
and geopolitical influence.
In this report, we at Bellona continue to
analyze Rosatom during wartime. We argue that Rosatom can no longer be
understood solely through the traditional framework of a civilian nuclear
operator or global technology supplier. Rather, it has increasingly emerged
as a multifunctional state instrument—combining industrial, strategic,
and political roles both within Russia and internationally.
Several broader
conclusions emerge from the report: Rosatom’s wartime role has deepened
institutionally and politically, reinforcing its function not only as a
nuclear corporation, but as a strategic component of Russian state policy;
The occupation of the Zaporizhzhia NPP represents a challenge to
established assumptions in nuclear governance, exposing gaps in
international mechanisms designed to respond to conflict involving nuclear
infrastructure; Despite sanctions pressure and geopolitical disruption,
Rosatom has maintained significant external reach, particularly through
long-term projects in the Global South and through forms of nuclear
diplomacy that remain politically resilient.
Bellona 11th June 2026, https://network.bellona.org/content/uploads/sites/4/2026/06/ROSATOM_report_2026_ENG.pdf
The push to lift Ireland’s nuclear ban: Going nuclear or nowhere?
“You can go into Harvey Norman in the morning and buy a solar panel. You can’t go anywhere and buy a small modular nuclear reactor.”
By Louise Byrne, RTE, 12 Jun 2026
From the backbenches of Fianna Fáil in recent months has emerged a political push to lift the ban in Ireland on nuclear power generators.
What’s behind the move to ‘go nuclear’ now? And is it a viable option, or a distraction from already proven renewable technologies?
In the late 1970s Ireland had its own version of Woodstock. Thousands of demonstrators descended on Carnsore Point to attend carnival-like protests against the development of the country’s first nuclear plant.
ESB engineers had chosen the Co Wexford site for its low population, stable geology and access to the Irish Sea for plant cooling.
Minister for Energy at the time, Desmond O’Malley dubbed the protesters “members of the flat-Earth society” hindering Ireland’s entry into the atomic age.
Yet the scale of opposition, the discovery of gas off Kinsale and the Three Mile Island accident in the US eventually led to the withdrawal of political support for the Carnsore Point project.
The u-turn was so pronounced by the late 1990s legislation was introduced to veto any future nuclear production.
Two Acts contain legislative blocks – the 1999 Electricity Regulation Act and 2024 Planning and Development Act, but there is no constitutional impediment to nuclear power. And for the first time in decades, the issue is back on the political agenda.
Fianna Fáil TD James O’Connor has introduced a bill which would reverse the legislative ban. The proposal has been supported by both the Taoiseach and Tánaiste……………………………………………………………..
Green Party leader Roderic O’Gorman described the idea as Government “kite flying”.
“The nuclear industry promises to deliver at a cheap price on a reasonable timescale but it doesn’t happen,” he told the programme.
“We should double down on delivering renewable energy, cutting bills for consumers and giving us energy security.”
Going nuclear, or going nowhere fast?
The war in Ukraine has highlighted our dependence on imported fuel and the argument goes that nuclear power may provide an additional low-carbon alternative to fossil fuels; one that can complement renewable sources.
The optimism of nuclear proponents lies in new technology called Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). These are smaller reactors that require less cooling but that can produce up to a third of the power of large, conventional reactors.
Prefabricated units can be manufactured, shipped and installed on site, making them more affordable to build than large power reactors, according to the Institute for Atomic Energy Agency.
However, the new technology is still in development and is years away from being deployed at scale, said Dr Paul Deane, Senior Lecturer in Clean Energy Futures at University College Cork.
“There’s lots of uncertainty around the costs and capability of the technology and big questions on what you do with the nuclear waste.”
While keeping an open mind on its potential, Dr Deane cautioned that SMR technology was not yet commercially available.
“You can go into Harvey Norman in the morning and buy a solar panel. You can’t go anywhere and buy a small modular nuclear reactor.
“When something doesn’t exist in the commercial world everyone is able to be right and wrong about it because we’ve nothing to benchmark against.”
The delivery of nuclear power requires supply chains with a steady supply of raw materials as well as large workforces of highly specialised engineers. China and Russia are the only countries currently with operational small reactors, although Canada is developing the first such facility in a G7 nation.
“They started building it last year. It’s probably going to take about five years for it to be developed but then we’ve got to see, does it work?,” Dr Deane said.
For people like Roderic O’Gorman, the obvious step to improve our grid capacity while meeting climate goals is not untested nuclear technology, it’s investment in battery storage and renewable generation.
“Spain made a call after the Ukraine war to go with renewables, to go with solar. They now have the lowest wholesale electricity prices in Europe,” he said
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Small Modular Reactors are among the technologies being examined by the Sustainable Energy Authority as part of its Decarbonised Electricity System Study. It will present the Government with a range of options for decarbonising Ireland’s electricity system post-2030.
A draft technical report noted “SMRs are not expected to be available before 2045. Moderate scale deployment may be possible by 2050, but it is plausible that no nuclear fission will be deployed by 2050.”
“Optimistic scenarios” envisaged that SMRs could complement renewables by providing stable, low-carbon baseload power needed for grid stability, but legal complexity, upfront investment, and public acceptance remain significant hurdles, the report said.
The SEAI has cautioned that the report is provisional. “Subsequent work, that is currently under way, will provide a more precise assessment of the potential for the (decarbonising) technologies to be adopted within the Irish electricity system.
“Specific conclusions should be based on the final publication.”
Safety concerns have also not gone away, according to anti-nuclear activist Adi Roche who cited Russia’s occupation of the Zaporizhia nuclear plant in Ukraine as evidence of the technology’s inherent security flaws.
“Nuclear facilities themselves can function as potential radiological weapons — “dirty bombs” whose consequences could be catastrophic without a single warhead being deployed,” she wrote in the Irish Examiner.
………………………………………………. Environmentalists contend that every euro invested in an Irish nuclear energy project is money that isn’t spent on green energy, grid resilience or large batteries that could smooth out renewable supplies.
There is no need, they argue, to revisit the Carnsore Point debate.https://www.rte.ie/news/primetime/2026/0612/1578039-the-push-to-lift-irelands-nuclear-ban-going-nuclear-or-nowhere/
1 This Month
22 June – Virtual Event –Climate Change: New Data, New Debate
Monday, June 22, 2026 2:30 p.m. – 3:15 p.m. CT
YouTube. Register here
Protect Sazan Island from the Trump family! https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/protect_sazan_island_from_the_trump_family_loc/?bqFCVab&v=174511&cl=22707147157&_checksum=5e9dde668860e8231c33699735e16a1fbf22ab2cb01da50c999fe8732b9775ef&utm_source=email&utm_medium=blast_email&utm_campaign=174511
25 June- THE PUKE ON NUKES
Thursday, June 25, 2026
7pm Central Time (8pm ET, 6pm MT, 5pm PT) UTC – 5
From NRC & DOE Deregulation to Techno-Fascist Billionaires Going Nuclear, Plus a Few Songs from Atomic Cabaret REGISTER
26 June – Radiation Trainwreck at the NRC / Join the Protect Better Campaign – https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/4ZlZ5_qLSHGiLSCg8FF6Bg#/registration
Cuba Is Not a Failed State – It Is a Besieged State
PETITION: “Global Appeal to Endorse Palestinian Right of Return of Refugees”
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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