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AUKUS Pillar 1 should be scrapped, report says

ICAN Australia urges a rethink of US alliance agreements

By APDR•Nov 8, 2026, https://asiapacificdefencereporter.com/posts/aukus-pillar-1-should-be-scrapped-report-says

A comprehensive examination of the AUKUS submarine deal to date is recommending it be immediately scrapped and a Plan B cost-effective alternative implemented immediately to ensure a capable submarine service.  A Royal Commission into how the disastrous defence pact was conceived and allowed to continue for as long as it has, is also required.

Report is available at aukuspublicinquiry.com.au.

The independent, crowdfunded Public Inquiry into AUKUS has found that the security partnership will not succeed in any of its stated aims and constitutes a gross waste of public monies – up to half a trillion dollars if nuclear waste management costs are included – that compromise our national security and sovereignty. The inquiry report included 17 recommendations, including that Australia urgently develop a comprehensive National Security Strategy, suspend plans for a US naval base near Perth, cease seconding RAN submariners on US submarines and that an urgent Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) audit of the AUKUS program be undertaken and the results made public.

Lead Commissioner Peter Garrett said that AUKUS represented an absurd cost for submarines of highly contested utility that may well never arrive. “After carefully considering all the material presented to us, we conclude that AUKUS is the worst, most costly and riskiest defence decision ever made. AUKUS compromises our national security, erodes our sovereignty and commits us to any future conflict in support of US war plans.  AUKUS definitely does NOT keep us safe.”

A substantial number of Australians – including a former Prime Minister, five former Foreign Affairs and Defence Ministers, senior academics and recognised military experts, unions, community groups and citizens – presented to the Inquiry across 10 day-long hearings in 8 cities around Australia since it launched in June.

ICAN Australia urges a rethink of US alliance agreements


ICAN Australia urges a rethink of US alliance agreements and says Australia must sign the nuclear weapon ban treaty Hosting US nuclear-capable forces is increasing the risk to Australian communities, and that risk is set to grow, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) Australia said today.

The AUKUS Public Inquiry’s report, Surrendering Australia, released last week, warns that AUKUS opens the door to nuclear weapons hosted in Australia. It finds the Force Posture Agreement does not prevent the US deploying them here, and that Perth would be a likely nuclear target in a US-China conflict. The report, and recent events, point to what’s currently here and what’s coming:

  • Now: US B-52s landed at RAAF Base Tindal, near Katherine, on 1 September. The base has been upgraded to host them, and at least half of the US B-52 fleet is nuclear-capable.
  • From 2027: US and UK nuclear-powered submarines will rotate through HMAS Stirling, beside Rockingham.
  • After 2032: US Congressman Michael McCaul says it is “logical to assume” rotating US submarines could be nuclear-armed.
  • Next: The report names Port Kembla, Newcastle and Brisbane as possible east coast submarine bases.

The report urges the government to recalibrate the US alliance around Australian sovereignty, rescind ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ and honour Labor’s commitment to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Associate Professor Tilman Ruff, founding chair of ICAN and contributor to the inquiry said: “The US will neither confirm nor deny whether its aircraft and submarines carry nuclear weapons, and Australian governments say they ‘understand and respect’ that policy. This level of secrecy is unacceptable in a modern democracy. Communities like Katherine and Rockingham are carrying a nuclear risk they were never asked about. We don’t even know whether emergency and medical services have been told what they might face. Our agreements with the US leave the door open to nuclear weapons operations being launched from Australia, and each new deployment pushes it wider. We need to rethink those agreements, including AUKUS Pillar 1, and sign and ratify the nuclear weapon ban treaty. That would replace don’t ask, don’t tell with a clear legal line – no nuclear weapons hosted here.”

November 10, 2026 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, politics international | Leave a comment

Ralph Nader: Democrats Will Squander Their Victory Unless Voters Fight Their Corporate Masters

November 7, 2026, SCHEERPOST, Joshua Scheer

Defeating Donald Trump at the ballot box will mean little if Democrats preserve the corporate rule that helped bring him to power. The ballots have been counted. The danger now is that Democrats will mistake a repudiation of Donald Trump for permission to keep serving the billionaires who own American politics. On The Chris Hedges Report, Ralph Nader warns that an electoral landslide can become another exercise in betrayal if voters allow the party’s corporate leadership to turn public anger into empty promises, toothless investigations and business as usual.

For Nader and Hedges, the battle now runs directly through the Democratic Party—and through leaders such as Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, whose allegiance to wealthy donors, military contractors and the Israel lobby they argue has repeatedly smothered demands for change. A party that celebrates defeating MAGA while leaving Americans trapped in medical debt, poverty wages and corporate exploitation is preserving the conditions for the next authoritarian to exploit.

Nader calls for replacing the party’s leadership and building organized pressure for universal health care, a living wage, prosecution of corporate criminals and Trump’s impeachment. Voters delivered the victory; now they must make those they elected fear the consequences of betraying it. Otherwise, he and Hedges warn, the celebration could become the prelude to a more dangerous backlash.

Nader lays out an agenda of universal health care, a living wage, corporate criminal accountability and impeachment, backed by relentless pressure from constituents. Without that mobilization, he and Hedges warn, Democrats risk repeating the broken promises and economic abandonment that fueled the authoritarian backlash in the first place………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://scheerpost.com/2026/11/07/ralph-nader-democrats-will-squander-their-victory-unless-voters-fight-their-corporate-masters/

November 10, 2026 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

The U.S. Has $50 Billion for Nuclear Waste and Nowhere to Put It

By Haley Zaremba – Nov 07, 2026, https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/The-US-Has-50-Billion-for-Nuclear-Waste-and-Nowhere-to-Put-It.html

  • Finland has licensed Onkalo, 22 years after construction began, to take up to 6,500 tonnes of uranium in spent fuel buried 400 meters down.
  • The U.S. holds about 97,000 metric tons of spent fuel at nearly 75 sites in more than 30 states, and Yucca Mountain, its only legally designated repository, has had no development money in over 15 years.
  • The Nuclear Waste Fund holds more than $50 billion, and a gridlocked Congress has to sign off before a dollar moves.

Finland and the United States are exemplifying two opposing approaches to managing the mounting problem of spent nuclear fuel. Finland is about to open the world’s first permanent nuclear waste disposal facility. The United States is stuck in a cycle of endless political turnover and resultant gridlock about how to address the more than 90,000 metric tons of spent fuel sitting in temporary facilities around the country, posing a mounting public health hazard and tax dollar sink.

The Onkalo site (named after the Finnish for ‘cave’) will encapsulate radioactive spent nuclear fuel in copper canisters designed to safely store the hazardous materials, and then store them 400 meters (1,312 feet) under the ground within the bedrock, where they will be insulated with shock-absorbent clay. The canisters are designed to safely store the waste for 100,000 years, after which the radioactivity of the uranium within will be neutralized due to natural exponential decay. The repository will be able to store up to 6,500 tonnes (7,200 tons) of spent nuclear fuel. When it reaches maximum capacity, it will be backfilled, sealed and handed over to the Finnish government for maintenance and oversight.

Just last month, Finland’s Onkalo facility secured its official operating license from the Finnish government after construction began 22 years ago. This may seem like a remarkably long timeline, and it is indeed remarkable in several ways.

Onkalo is a remarkable feat of engineering. The political achievement is just as striking,” states an op-ed published in the Washington Post this week. “Finland kept its nuclear waste program on track for more than four decades, weathering changing governments and keeping its host municipality, Eurajoki, at the table.” By contrast, “In the United States, where nuclear waste policy lurches from one administration to the next, that consistency is almost unimaginable.”

Finland and the United States are exemplifying two opposing approaches to managing the mounting problem of spent nuclear fuel. Finland is about to open the world’s first permanent nuclear waste disposal facility. The United States is stuck in a cycle of endless political turnover and resultant gridlock about how to address the more than 90,000 metric tons of spent fuel sitting in temporary facilities around the country, posing a mounting public health hazard and tax dollar sink.

The Onkalo site (named after the Finnish for ‘cave’) will encapsulate radioactive spent nuclear fuel in copper canisters designed to safely store the hazardous materials, and then store them 400 meters (1,312 feet) under the ground within the bedrock, where they will be insulated with shock-absorbent clay. The canisters are designed to safely store the waste for 100,000 years, after which the radioactivity of the uranium within will be neutralized due to natural exponential decay. The repository will be able to store up to 6,500 tonnes (7,200 tons) of spent nuclear fuel. When it reaches maximum capacity, it will be backfilled, sealed and handed over to the Finnish government for maintenance and oversight.

Just last month, Finland’s Onkalo facility secured its official operating license from the Finnish government after construction began 22 years ago. This may seem like a remarkably long timeline, and it is indeed remarkable in several ways.

“Onkalo is a remarkable feat of engineering. The political achievement is just as striking,” states an op-ed published in the Washington Post this week. “Finland kept its nuclear waste program on track for more than four decades, weathering changing governments and keeping its host municipality, Eurajoki, at the table.” By contrast, “In the United States, where nuclear waste policy lurches from one administration to the next, that consistency is almost unimaginable.”

According to federal law, the United States has just one official nuclear fuel repository site – Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, which congress hasn’t provided funding for in over 15 years. But in reality, approximately 97,000 metric tons of hazardous spent nuclear fuel are sitting stranded at nearly 75 sites in more than 30 states, housed by communities that never consented to this arrangement. And while the United States federal government has made attempts to redress this sloppy and piecemeal approach, it has allowed deadline after deadline to lapse as political turnover continues to relegate nuclear waste storage to the back burner.

The United States’ political spin cycle is not just affecting its ability to commit to long-term nuclear waste disposal and management projects, it’s negatively impacting the nation’s overall energy policy, to the detriment of taxpayers. As noted by the Atlantic Council in a report on United States energy policy published last week, “political volatility has become an energy cost” as each successive regime change has scrapped or otherwise overhauled the energy progress of its predecessor over the last several federal election cycles.


“Technology-specific incentives amplify that cycle,” notes the Atlantic Council. “They can accelerate deployment, especially for growing industries, but they also tie project economics to the political durability of a particular credit, grant, mandate, or regulatory interpretation.” This means that an abrupt change in priorities every four years causes a major and expensive disruption to federal funding cycles, which makes projects like the long-term management of spent nuclear fuel nigh on impossible to achieve and sustain.

It’s not that the United States doesn’t have the money –  the country’s Nuclear Waste Fund holds over $50 billion. “But spending the money requires approval from a Congress racked by partisanship,” concludes Vincent Ialenti, a former Energy Department program manager, in his Washington Post op-ed. “This is a precarious framework for commitments measured in decades.”

November 10, 2026 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Public Inquiry into AUKUS recommends recalibrating Australia’s relationship with the US

November 5, 2026, https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/public-inquiry-into-aukus-recommends-recalibrating-australias-relationship-with-the-us/

The four-month AUKUS public inquiry has recommended a recalibration of Australia’s relationships with the United States and China, including the cancellation of nuclear-powered submarines.

The launch of the commissioners’ final report, Surrendering Australia – The AUKUS Deception, coincided with US mid-term elections that significantly reshaped the American political landscape.

“Yesterday, the people of the US recalibrated their relationship with the US government, rejecting the policies of President Trump.  Now is the perfect time for Australia to do the same,” said Leanne Minshull, co-CEO of The Australia Institute and one of five public inquiry commissioners.

Recent polling conducted on behalf of The Australia Institute found just 16% of Australian voters now consider the US to be a ‘close friend’ of Australia.

The AUKUS deal is sending hundreds of billions of dollars overseas but it also has a clear way out, the first step being to give the US and UK one year’s notice of withdrawal.

“In a cost-of-living crisis, redirecting hundreds of billions of dollars allocated to AUKUS would not just boost our national security but our economic security as well.”

The full Commissioners’ Report can be found here

November 10, 2026 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, politics international | Leave a comment

Virulent US Russophobia hindering Trump from ending Ukraine war that is destroying Ukraine

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL, 7 Nov 6

Now that he’s a Lame Duck with nothing to lose, President Trump should ignore the rampant Russophobia infesting US politics and end Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The war was provoked by Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden in February 2022. It was a despicable foreign policy initiative, totally avoidable, that has consigned Ukraine to failed state status. Nearly five years on Ukraine is near collapse to further Biden’s lust to complete the destruction of Russia as a viable rival to America for supremacy in Europe and beyond.

Now upwards of seven million Ukrainians are fled, wounded or dead. They’ve lost over a fifth of their best land never to be returned. Capitol Kyiv is becoming unlivable and may be a ghost town this winter with no power to heat homes or businesses.

After Biden squandered over $150 billion of our precious treasure to salvage his failed proxy war involving only Ukrainian blood, Trump signaled he’d end the war on day one of term two. But the Russophobes who control the levels of power in the national security state: the military, intelligence agencies, the weapons makers, war loving, anti-Russian academics, mainstream media, all ganged up to distract Trump from achieving his goal for 655 days now.

Besides ferocious opposition from the Russophobes, Trump is bogged down in his lost criminal war in Iran that blew up the US economy and was the biggest factor in his massive congressional defeat Tuesday.

But while he’s completely paralyzed, unable to admit defeat in Iran to turn around the economy, he can end the Ukraine war with one phone call. He must ring up Ukraine President Zelensky and tell him all US support in weapons, intelligence, logistics, domestic aid is over. But Trump must go further and remove deep state officials working against his efforts to end the war. He must fire anyone in the CIA and military refusing orders to stop supporting Ukraine attacks on Russian oil and other Russian infrastructure.

Without any further US support, Zelensky will be forced to end the war on Russia’s sensible, non-negotiable terms. No NATO for Ukraine. Ukraine to be forever neutral between East and West, not a proxy puppet of the US to isolate Russia from Europe. No return of Donbas and adjacent oblasts. Security guarantees for the remaining Ukraine rump state. That is the best Ukraine can achieve short of complete destruction, which is what will occur if the war is not ended swiftly.

Trump can do this unilaterally as Europe is essentially broke because they stupidly cut off cheap Russian energy when they joined Biden’s crazed proxy war. Without US aid they cannot support Ukraine alone. European leaders are totally ut of touch with their people who want nothing to do with continuing their senseless, failed war destroying Ukraine. European leaders’ approval ratings have tanked and they face removal from office by opponents promoting the people first.

Russian President Putin is not the new Stalin or new Hitler. Trump is not a Putin puppet or a traitor to Ukraianian democracy. Ukraine betrayed democracy when they conspired with the US in 2014 to overthrow their elected president to wage war on Donbas Ukrainians for simply practicing Russian culture. They betrayed democracy when they believed joining NATO to weaken, isolate Russia from Europe was in their national interest. In doing so they’ve largely destroyed their country with no end in sight.

In the US, the traitors to Ukraine democracy; indeed, Ukraine’s very existence, are the US Russophobes ferociously promoting endless proxy war with Russia in Ukraine with the potential to go nuclear. Trump must ignore them and seek to end this madness forthwith.

November 10, 2026 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

America’s Nuclear Revival Is Running Into a Fuel Supply Wall

By Haley Zaremba – Nov 06, 2026,
https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Americas-Nuclear-Revival-Is-Running-Into-a-Fuel-Supply-Wall.html

  • Foreign suppliers provided 93% of the uranium delivered to U.S. reactors, so progress on domestic enrichment still leaves the front of the fuel chain exposed.
  • Only five plants worldwide convert uranium at scale. Per the National Interest, the West needs about 44,000 metric tons of feedstock a year and has roughly 34,000 tons of capacity.
  • Urenco USA’s New Mexico plant covers about a third of U.S. enrichment demand and says its expansion is ahead of schedule and on budget, but Russia still holds nearly half of global enrichment capacity.

The United States boasts the largest nuclear power production capacity in the world, but decades of insufficient funding and policy support is now posing an existential threat to the ageing sector. In the past decade, the United States has added just one new nuclear power plant to its fleet, while many more plants are drawing close to being decommissioned, at a time when clean, round-the-clock energy production has never been more needed. The Trump administration has been bullish about restoring the country’s nuclear energy sector to its former glory, but growing the country’s nuclear energy capacity raises a new problem – where to source the nuclear fuel to power it.

Countries around the world are racing to build up nuclear power capacity as the artificial intelligence boom places unprecedented strain on global power supplies, the war in Iran sustains volatility in oil and gas markets, and decarbonization deadlines draw nearer. As a result, competition over scarce enriched uranium supplies has ramped up at a rapid pace. As a result, U.S. nuclear energy now “faces fuel supply chain vulnerabilities, with tight uranium supplies, geopolitical risks, and rising costs,” threatening both existing reactors and advanced reactor development, according to a January report from Stanford Energy.

The geopolitical risks inherent to current nuclear fuel supply chains represent a key and growing concern. The world’s nuclear energy fuel supply chains are extremely geopolitically fraught. At present, just five plants in the entire world operate large-scale uranium conversion, and nearly half of global enrichment capacity is controlled by Russia. And if Russia decides to cut the United States off, or vice versa, the alternative could be even worse.

“The West needs more converted uranium than it can process, and cutting off Russian supply could leave its reactors dependent on a single Chinese facility,” an article from the National Interest warned earlier this week.

The United States boasts the largest nuclear power production capacity in the world, but decades of insufficient funding and policy support is now posing an existential threat to the ageing sector. In the past decade, the United States has added just one new nuclear power plant to its fleet, while many more plants are drawing close to being decommissioned, at a time when clean, round-the-clock energy production has never been more needed. The Trump administration has been bullish about restoring the country’s nuclear energy sector to its former glory, but growing the country’s nuclear energy capacity raises a new problem – where to source the nuclear fuel to power it.

Countries around the world are racing to build up nuclear power capacity as the artificial intelligence boom places unprecedented strain on global power supplies, the war in Iran sustains volatility in oil and gas markets, and decarbonization deadlines draw nearer. As a result, competition over scarce enriched uranium supplies has ramped up at a rapid pace. As a result, U.S. nuclear energy now “faces fuel supply chain vulnerabilities, with tight uranium supplies, geopolitical risks, and rising costs,” threatening both existing reactors and advanced reactor development, according to a January report from Stanford Energy.

The geopolitical risks inherent to current nuclear fuel supply chains represent a key and growing concern. The world’s nuclear energy fuel supply chains are extremely geopolitically fraught. At present, just five plants in the entire world operate large-scale uranium conversion, and nearly half of global enrichment capacity is controlled by Russia. And if Russia decides to cut the United States off, or vice versa, the alternative could be even worse.

“The West needs more converted uranium than it can process, and cutting off Russian supply could leave its reactors dependent on a single Chinese facility,” an article from the National Interest warned earlier this week.

In recent years, leadership in the United States has made considerable inroads toward building up domestic uranium production and conversion capabilities, as it has benefited from being one of the rare forms of energy supported by both the Trump and Biden administrations. Just last month, the National Enrichment Facility, located in Eunice, New Mexico, announced that its planned expansion is ahead of schedule and on budget. Currently, the singular plant converts enough uranium to cover about one-third of U.S. enriched uranium demand, with plans to raise enrichment output by more than 50 percent to reach 7 million separative work units (SWUs) as reactor demand grows.

The country is indeed getting closer to establishing nuclear fuel independence – but it still has a long way to go. And in today’s geopolitical climate, no one knows just how much time we have before a supply chain snag could cause the next global energy crisis. At present, a whopping 93 percent of the United States’ raw uranium for nuclear fuel is coming from foreign markets. If those supply chains dry up, it won’t matter how much uranium the country is capable of enriching.

And the issue is not limited to the United States alone, but to Western nuclear power markets in general. “To keep the lights on in the West every year, the nuclear reactor fleet requires approximately 44,000 metric tons of uranium feedstock. Western supply lines [including the United States, Canada, and France] are estimated to have processing capability of just 34,000 metric tons when fully operational,” the National Interest details. “Traditionally, reactors have relied on Russian or Chinese fuel producers to make up the shortfall, but as global trade corridors constrict and relationships become contentious, over-reliance on Russian or Chinese nuclear fuel could represent a serious national security risk.”

November 10, 2026 Posted by | ENERGY, USA | Leave a comment

US offers $20 million reward for intelligence on Iran’s nuclear programme

The State Department promises cash and relocation for insider details on Tehran’s atomic network, as Trump asserts the adversary is desperate to end the conflict.

Middle East Online, Saturday 07/11/2026

WASHINGTON — The United States is offering a bounty of up to $20 million, alongside potential resettlement abroad, for actionable intelligence regarding Iran’s nuclear programme, the US military announced on Friday. The move comes as President Donald Trump reiterated that Tehran is eager to conclude an agreement to halt the eight-month-old regional conflict.

The bounty is being administered through Rewards for Justice, a long-standing State Department programme established in 1984 to offer financial compensation for information that safeguards American lives and national security interests.

In a statement published on X, US Central Command (CENTCOM) confirmed the scope of the appeal, noting that the initiative seeks verified details concerning Iran’s nuclear programme, including its enrichment facilities, specialized hardware, and affiliated personnel within the scientific and research community………………………………………..

The diplomatic bounty arrives amidst sharp contradictions in Washington’s rhetoric. Trump has repeatedly maintained that previous strikes effectively destroyed Tehran’s nuclear infrastructure………………………………….

Regional mediation remains intensive as diplomats race to stave off any fresh escalation. On Tuesday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian confirmed that his administration continues to pursue a resolution through dialogue.

Even so, lingering military friction remains visible. Earlier in the week, Trump indicated that American forces still needed to neutralise a limited number of remaining objectives, pointing specifically to the contested site at “Pickaxe Mountain” in central Iran—a suspected subterranean facility whose nuclear function Tehran has consistently denied. https://middle-east-online.com/en/us-offers-20-million-reward-intelligence-irans-nuclear-programme

November 10, 2026 Posted by | Iran, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Chris Hedges: Defeating Trump Is Only the Beginning

ScheerPost Joshua Scheer, November 7, 2026

In this live Q&A, Chris Hedges examines the midterm results and warns that a Democratic victory alone will not extinguish the forces driving American fascism. He discusses the fight against corporate control within the Democratic Party, the influence of the Israel lobby and why organized pressure from workers and social movements remains essential to meaningful change.

The Democrats’ midterm victory has opened a window for change, but Chris Hedges warns that the conditions that propelled Donald Trump to power remain intact. In this live Q&A, he argues that corporate domination, economic abandonment and a political establishment unwilling to confront either will continue to nourish American fascism—even after an electoral defeat for MAGA.

Hedges examines the coming struggle between the Democratic Party’s leadership and those demanding universal health care, workers’ rights, an end to arms shipments to Israel and a break with billionaire influence. Taking questions on impeachment, Christian nationalism, the Israel lobby and political organizing, he warns that another Democratic failure to deliver material improvements could produce an even more dangerous authoritarian backlash. The decisive question, he argues, is whether unions and social movements can build enough power to turn an electoral opening into lasting change.

November 10, 2026 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

America’s AI backlash will change the world


Global sell-off continues after scores of anti-data centre candidates win election

The city of Harwood in North Dakota does not have much to put it on the
map. With a population of 794, the town is best known for a heroic
operation in 1997 when locals built a five-mile wall to keep out floods, as
well as its wonderfully relaxed local motto: “It’s all good.”

Harwood’s easygoing nature became more apparent this week when it became
the only place in America to vote in favour of data centres. Around 325
voters, three quarters of turnout, voted against a proposal to slow large
industrial developments including data centres. The measure, if passed, may
have affected plans for a $3bn (£2.2bn) development by the tech company
Applied Digital near the town.

The vote was conspicuous by being unique.
There were 47 local referendums on data centres this week; 46 voted to make
it harder to build the giant facilities that are crucial to artificial
intelligence. Combined with a blue wave that elected many anti-data centre
Democratic candidates, the results sent a straightforward message. Despite
the promise of jobs and investment, Americans do not want data centres
where they live – if they want them at all.

Telegraph 6th Nov 2026, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/11/06/americas-ai-backlash-will-change-the-world/

November 10, 2026 Posted by | technology | Leave a comment

Zelensky wants another $175bn for 2027: Europe doesn’t have it

. Zelensky is now talking about a rise from roughly $100 billion to $155 billion next year. The EU is already cutting education and social programmes to fund the present level

Meanwhile Ukraine’s own economy is already in advanced collapse.

A conversation with Ben Aris of BNE Intellinews

Ian Proud, Nov 06, 2026, https://thepeacemonger.substack.com/p/zelensky-wants-another-175bn-for?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3221990&post_id=223752719&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Zelensky’s latest demand for yet more money collides with two hard realities: Europe does not have it, and Russia continues to outproduce the West in the munitions that decide late-stage industrial wars. ben aris of bne IntelliNews, whose recent analysis of defence production costs cuts should provide a cold shower to those who cling to the hope that the arithmetic of war will eventually turn in Ukraine’s favour.

Nominal Russian defence spending is about $210 billion against America’s near-trillion. On purchasing-power terms the gap narrows to roughly 60 per cent. Once you price the actual outputs—$1,000 for a Russian 155 mm shell versus $4,000 for its American counterpart—the effective capacity closes further. Artillery, missiles and especially drones are where the disparity bites. Russia has scaled cheap, mass-produced systems; the West still fields small numbers of expensive platforms such as the MQ-9 Reaper at $30 million apiece. Trump’s instruction to double interceptor production has been met with timelines stretching to 2030. Ukraine cannot wait that long.

Europe’s fiscal position makes the gap unbridgeable in the short term. Zelensky is now talking about a rise from roughly $100 billion to $155 billion next year. The EU is already cutting education and social programmes to fund the present level; demonstrations in Berlin are the visible result. Debt ratios in France, Italy and the UK leave little room for further borrowing, and Germany’s relative strength won’t help it convince and increasingly anti-war public. Globalisation has hollowed out the industrial base that would be needed for a rapid wartime surge to bring the nations of Europe on a par with Russia. Turning car plants into tank factories smacks of panic production.

Meanwhile Ukraine’s own economy is already in advanced collapse. Metals production, a pre-war export mainstay, has fallen to zero. Grain shipments through Odessa are repeatedly interrupted, with stocks rotting in fields and silos. The power grid is being systematically dismantled at the substation level; Kyiv has gone dark and three remaining nuclear plants cannot feed a grid whose connections are being destroyed. Debt has crossed 100 per cent of GDP. Trade deficits with the EU have widened sharply as tariff exemptions lapsed and weapons purchases were added to the import bill. Demographics are worse still: millions of women and children have left and show little incentive to return to a ruined economy and a generation of missing men.

These facts render the usual political slogans—“Ukraine must win,” “EU membership is the destination”—impractical. Full membership of the EU for Ukraine will never happen precisely because it would expose the Common Agricultural Policy to Ukrainian volumes that, on present rules, could cost the EU budget on the order of $186 billion a year. That is far more than the yearly sums tipped into the proxy-war effort thus far. As I have said many times, that helps to explain why the Eurocrats keeping kicking the war can down the road.

Net recipients of EU budget support such as Poland and Hungary would become net contributors and would veto. On which, I wrote about this over two years ago for Responsible Statecraft…. A watered-down association agreement is the more realistic commercial outcome for Ukraine; the ability to trade with all nations including Russia, neutrality and limited armed forces remain the political terms Moscow has repeated since 2022.

Late-stage wars are settled by who can put more metal in the air and on the ground. Russia has been doing that since the first months; the West’s production response has a multi-year lag built in. Europe’s public finances and Ukraine’s residual economy cannot wait that long.

The rational course is therefore a negotiated settlement that freezes the line, limits force levels and restores trade, before the remaining productive capacity and population base of Ukraine disappear entirely. The alternative is a rump state whose reconstruction costs will still fall, in large part, on the same European treasuries that are already running out of money.

November 9, 2026 Posted by | EUROPE, Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Media Obscure Enormity of Trump Corruption

The second Trump administration is far more corrupt than Trump’s first administration, and stands out as the most corrupt administration in history. Trump has made no qualms about the fact that he is going to exploit his position as president for self-enrichment. In fact, he has said that he was a fool in his first term for overlooking the opportunities for self-enrichment, given the president’s exemption from the conflict of interest law (18 USC 208).

Julie Hollar, November 5, 2026, https://fair.org/home/media-obscure-enormity-of-trump-corruption/

Particularly since the Citizens United ruling, US politics has been awash in corporate and billionaire money, with both parties taking gobs of cash from corporations that have direct interests in government policies. But President Donald Trump has taken corruption to new and breathtakingly bold levels.

“I have never seen such open corruption in any modern government anywhere,” said Harvard professor of government Steven Levitsky (Guardian, 6/17/25).

So, it’s probably not surprising to hear CNN (10/21/26) report that voters are increasingly “concerned about corruption,” ranking it only after the economy and the cost of living as a top concern. In a Gallup poll (9/2/26), a record-high 89% of respondents said they believe corruption is “widespread throughout the government in this country.”

But what might be surprising is that, according to a recent NBC poll (10/18/26), a majority (56%) say corruption “is equally a problem among elected officials in both parties.” (Among those who find it worse in one party or the other, 25% point to Republicans and 17% point to Democrats.)

Why would a majority of the public believe that Republicans and Democrats are equally corrupt? A FAIR study suggests that media play no small role: The US media system has given more coverage to the most prominent allegations of corruption under Biden than to those under Trump.

‘The most corrupt administration in history’

During his first term, Trump refused to divest from his business interests, raking in millions through them from foreign governments and people with interests before his administration. His solicitation of Ukrainian intervention in the 2020 presidential campaign led to his first impeachment trial.

After the GOP-controlled Senate (with Mitt Romney as the sole Republican exception) voted to acquit him—and after the Supreme Court ruling granting the president impunity for virtually anything done in office—Trump unsurprisingly entered his second term with far greater boldness. He essentially operated a pay-to-play administration that engages in regular shakedowns of major corporations and offers pardons to those with political or financial ties to him.

There have been repeated accusations of insider trading under his administration. Trump made $1.4 billion from the cryptocurrency industry in 2025 alone, including $635 million from his $TRUMP memecoin, which was gobbled up by not only true believers but also those seeking political favors. (While Trump profited from fees on trade activity, investors have lost a total of $3.8 billion because of the memecoin’s unsurprising collapse.) In perhaps the most brazen incident of corruption, Trump accepted a Boeing luxury jet worth an estimated $400 million from the Qatari government to use—after spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on security upgrades—as his presidential plane.

Craig Holman of Public Citizen told FAIR:

The second Trump administration is far more corrupt than Trump’s first administration, and stands out as the most corrupt administration in history. Trump has made no qualms about the fact that he is going to exploit his position as president for self-enrichment. In fact, he has said that he was a fool in his first term for overlooking the opportunities for self-enrichment, given the president’s exemption from the conflict of interest law (18 USC 208).

The corruption is led by Trump, but it’s been enabled by his party since their first impeachment acquittal. In Trump’s second term, the Republican-controlled Congress has refused to investigate any of the corruption scandals, implement stronger ethical standards, or include safeguards in cryptocurrency regulation to prevent Trump (and other political officials) from profiting off it.

Unequal allegations

During Joe Biden’s election campaigns and presidency, the GOP attempted to paint the former vice president as the pinnacle of corruption. When they took control in 2023, House Republicans launched an oversight committee investigation into the Biden family’s foreign business dealings during his vice presidency. They found that relatives and associates took in a total of $10 million from foreign companies during his tenure, but despite months of investigation, involving interviews and thousands of documents, the committee provided no evidence of Biden’s knowledge or influence. (It did lead to an unsuccessful impeachment inquiry.)

As perhaps the most memorable story in the right’s campaign to make the Biden family known as the “Biden Crime Family,” readers will be familiar with Hunter Biden’s famous laptop, which purportedly contained evidence of corruption on the part of his father. First published by the New York Post (10/14/20) just weeks before the 2020 election, the laptop story was pushed by the right for years and even continues to this day, despite its failure to show any actual evidence of corruption.

So on the one hand we have unsubstantiated stories of Biden family corruption, totaling $10 million in alleged graft, and on the other, we have stories of Trump corruption that total in the billions, some of which will be hard to legally prove Trump’s direct involvement (insider trading) and others in which Trump isn’t even trying to hide his self-enrichment (most of the rest, including the Qatari jet).

If the US had a media ecosystem in which those stories received attention relative to their importance, it wouldn’t even be close: Trump corruption coverage would overwhelm that of Biden.

The laptop and the ‘crime family’

In the distorted media ecosystem we are subjected to, reality is reversed. FAIR searched Media Cloud’s US–National dataset, which indexes 246 online outlets including all major corporate outlets, as well as right-wing sources like Daily Caller and left-wing sources like the Intercept, to compare attention to the two prominent Biden stories and two of the most prominent Trump stories.

When the New York Post (10/14/20) “broke” the Hunter Biden laptop story, it prompted a huge spike of attention that has never fully gone away. Coverage increased in spring of 2022, when outlets like the New York Times (3/16/22) and Washington Post (3/30/22) published pieces that helped revive it; coverage became particularly intense the next year, which saw the GOP inquiry and the Justice Department criminal investigation.

FAIR’s search found a total of 12,161 stories that mentioned “Hunter Biden” and “laptop” from the Post story’s publication through Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 race (10/14/20-7/21/24). Right-wing outlets led the way, but MediaCloud showed even centrist outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today and Newsweek in the top 20 outlets in terms of volume of coverage.

Coverage of the GOP investigation into Biden’s alleged “crime family,” which began in January 2023 and was led by House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R–Ky.), drew similarly high averages and peaks of coverage, and also largely petered out after Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race (1/1/23–7/21/24). In that year and a half, MediaCloud recorded 4,887 stories mentioning “Comer” and “Biden” and “family.”

Not all of these stories necessarily accused Biden of corruption; some centrist reports did work to debunk the false right-wing claims. But those big centrist outlets published enough prominent stories with murky headlines like “Biden Faces Conflict of Interest Questions That Are Being Promoted by Trump and Allies” (New York Times, 5/1/19), or explaining that the Hunter Biden case throws a “new wrench” in “the 2024 election” because “Democrats will have a harder time highlighting Trump’s indictments,” to muddy the narrative and legitimize the GOP accusations (see, e.g., CJR, 10/29/19; Press Watch, 8/14/23).

The Qatari jet and insider trading

Compare the quantity of these Biden corruption stories to coverage of the Qatari jet, a story that broke on May 11, 2025, and continued as Trump poured taxpayer dollars into its security upgrades. In the nearly year and a half from the story launch through the end of October 2026, the media produced 3,364 stories on the jet. That means that in approximately the same amount of time, media covered the investigation into Biden family corruption almost 1.5 times more than the Qatari jet. (Note that like the Biden stories, FAIR did not filter out jet stories that did not accuse Trump of corruption.)

Accusations of insider trading in Trump’s second term began in April 2025, when large call options were placed on the market shortly before Trump announced a 90-day pause on tariffs, sending the market soaring. They continued as more such suspicious and lucrative trades happened just before major Trump announcements on Venezuela and Iran, including within Trump’s personal holdings.

Coverage of Trump and insider trading from the first accusations (4/10/25) until the end of October 2026—a month longer than the Qatari jet coverage—has totaled 2,614 stories. The Biden family inquiry, at 4,887, got 1.9 times that amount.

Hunter Biden’s laptop, which dominated news headlines for longer, overwhelmed the Trump stories by far more. It got 4.7 times the coverage of insider trading under Trump and 3.6 times the coverage of Trump’s Qatari jet.

Even measuring them in terms of percentage of all news stories during their respective time periods, the Biden stories got far more coverage, with the family corruption story and the laptop story each averaging .10% of all content, while the Qatar jet averaged .06% and insider trading averaged .04%.

‘So vast as to be a new phenomenon’

This isn’t to say there’s no coverage of Trump’s corruption that attempts to put it into proper perspective. The New York Times editorial board () ran a lengthy editorial in January that tried to put a dollar amount to Trump’s self-enrichment just in the first year of his second term: $1,408,500,000.

The New Yorker (), looking a bit more broadly and including his first term, came up with a conservative total of $4 billion.

Times columnist Jamelle Bouie (4/22/26) wrote:

To say that President Trump is corrupt is to somehow understate the size, scope and magnitude of his corruption.

It is as if you were to describe a modern thermonuclear device as a “bomb.” That is true enough, but it is not quite the truth. It does not capture the nature of the thing in full.

So it goes for Trump’s corruption, which is so vast as to be a new phenomenon in American politics.

Yet, just as media factchecking falters under the sheer number of Trump’s lies, these isolated efforts at contextualization fall increasingly short as Trump’s corruption balloons to nearly unimaginable proportions. That’s especially true as most right-wing media outlets’ interest in corruption would appear to apply only to Democrats.

One of the most important jobs of any media outlet in a democracy is to hold those in power accountable. Democracy doesn’t work if the public doesn’t know or understand what’s happening in their government. As polling shows, people clearly care a great deal about government corruption, but if they have little sense of its mechanics, scale or worst perpetrators, they can’t easily address it. With the midterm elections suggesting a mandate for rooting it out, there’s no more critical time for journalists to step up and shine the line—brightly and consistently—on what our elected and unelected officials are doing to us.

November 9, 2026 Posted by | media | Leave a comment

Iranians prepare for fire, fury and nuclear fallout at Pickaxe Mountain.

No one knows exactly what the underground facility is for but as Trump
debates renewed war, Tehran is giving out iodine tablets and survival
advice. or as long as the regime in Iran has kept the kind of secrets that
put it in the crosshairs of the regime in America,

it has buried them deep.
From Natanz to Fordow, Isfahan to Bushehr, the nuclear facilities we can
see are often matched by those that we cannot. Despite the constellation of
satellites examining every square foot of Iranian territory and the best
efforts of intelligence agencies in the US and Israel, nobody can quite say
exactly what is going on at Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La, the complex hewn from
granite known as Pickaxe Mountain.

That it exists is beyond doubt.
Satellite photos cited by President Trump prove that much. But not much
more is known, even to the vast majority of Iranians. This week, though,
that has started to change. A video being shared on Iranian social media
illustrates how the regime is increasingly concerned that Trump will order
a strike on Pickaxe, where the Ayatollah’s best nuclear scientists are
now rumoured to be working. A little over a mile south of the Natanz
uranium-enrichment complex in central Iran, the complex is believed to be
beyond the reach of conventional weapons.

Times 6th Nov 2026, https://www.thetimes.com/world/middle-east/article/iranians-prepare-us-nuclear-attack-pickaxe-mountain-9grz5mznq

November 9, 2026 Posted by | Iran, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The nuclear waste repository in Finland designed to outlast modern civilisation – how exactly have the engineers future-proofed their facility?

The first engineered structure built to last for 100,000 years is about to begin operations. The hope is that Onkalo, deep below ground in Finland, will offer a safe place for the country to store nuclear waste?

By George Bass and Jacklin Kwan,, New Scientist 3rd Nov 2026

There’s a timeless quality to the tunnels at Onkalo. And that’s the point. Carved into the rock more than 400 metres below ground, these passageways are part of a facility built for the long term. The extreme long term.

In fact, facilities such as Onkalo “should exist intact for at least 100,000, if not a million years”, says Allison Macfarlane at the University of British Columbia in Canada, who previously served as chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the US. “Those are geologic timescales.”

Onkalo is Finland’s answer to one of the more tricky questions posed by nuclear power: what do you do with the waste? We are going to have to get much better at answering it, given nuclear power is expanding again, driven partly by the hunt for low-carbon energy.

There’s broad consensus that burying the waste is the best option. But there is a catch. Radioactive elements can remain dangerous on timescales that make normal engineering look absurdly short-term. Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Giza is around 4500 years old. Some nuclear repositories will have to contain their contents for more than 20 times longer. Before the waste becomes harmless, civilisations may rise and fall, and ice sheets may come and go.

An earlier attempt to store waste on geological timescales failed spectacularly after just a few decades. The engineers at Onkalo, and at a handful of similar sites now being planned or built around the world, think they can do much better. So, as Onkalo prepares to accept its first waste shipments in the coming months, how exactly have the engineers future-proofed their facility?………………………………………. (Subscribers only) https://www.newscientist.com/article/2595321-the-nuclear-repository-in-finland-designed-to-outlast-modern-civilisation/

November 9, 2026 Posted by | Finland, wastes | Leave a comment

PETITION – Stop Japan’s Failed Nuclear Plant Waste Coming to Cumbria

November 2026, https://www.change.org/p/stop-japan-s-failed-nuclear-plant-wastes-coming-to-cumbria

We the undersigned demand that Cumberland Council put their constituents and neighbouring areas before the interests of the nuclear industry and halt the plan to bring volatile liquid sodium coolant to the Port of Workington from the failed Japanese Monju reactor.

Cumberland Council plans to import sodium coolant, a type of nuclear waste,  thousands of miles from Japan to Cumbria, for processing at the Port of Workington, just 885m from Northside Primary School and nearby  residential areas including many towns and villages.  One of the best sites for birds in Cumbria, Siddick Ponds would be just 500 metres away.

Sodium coolant is extremely hazardous, and carries a high risk of violent explosion or fire if exposed to air or water.

It may also contain radioactive elements.

Further concerns include:

• Less than a mile from Northside Primary School, the proposed chemical plant is being designed to convert the hazardous coolant into caustic soda.

• Caustic soda is also a hazardous material and carries enormous risks to the environment including over decades if spilled.

• £4.5m of the Workington Town Deal government funding is being used to develop this site, despite the development planning to employ just 20 people over a period of 7 years.

• The Workington Town Deal  was promoted as being for the public benefit, not for creating profit for a handful of private nuclear businesses.

• The £25m that the site construction phase is predicted to generate is meaningless compared to the certain risk our children and local environments would face as a result of the site’s operation and the £Billions that would likely be required for clean up following operation of  this proposed  chemical plant for Japan’s failed fast breeder nuclear reactor wastes.

Further Info

Japan’s prototype fast-breeder reactor (FBR), ‘Monju’, was a disaster from the start. It was shut down due to an accident less than 9 months after achieving criticality, and remained closed for 15 years. Reopening in 2008, a second accident closed it for good. Overall, Monju generated electricity for exactly one hour after achieving criticality in 1994 and will cost £Billions to decommission.

Fast breeder reactors use liquid metal as a coolant – usually liquid sodium, which violently explodes on contact with air and water.   Dounreay, which ran the UK’s own Fast Breeder Reactors, processed the coolant onsite at both reactors.   Sodium coolant at Dounreay did contain radioactive caesium.

Cumberland Council are partners in the plan to bring the Monju’s sodium coolant to the Port of Workington.

Ironically, ‘Monju’ was named to represent transcendent wisdom in Buddhist tradition.  It has achieved neither wisdom nor its stated aim of electricity generation apart from one hour’s worth.    Campaigners in Japan have been working to “Stop the Monju” for many years.

Despite only producing electricity for just one hour, the Monju has produced tonnes of chemical and radioactive waste some of which the operators the Japan Atomic Energy Agency now want to ship thousands of miles to Cumbria instead of dealing with in Japan.  We say No!

We the undersigned demand that Cumberland Council put their constituents and neighbouring areas before the interests of the nuclear industry and halt the plan to bring volatile liquid sodium coolant to the Port of Workington from the failed Japanese Monju reactor.

For more info please see BRIEFING sent to all Cumberland Councillors

November 9, 2026 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Artemis II launch tore a hole in Earth’s atmosphere, say scientists

The launch of Artemis II caused three distinct disturbances in Earth’s ionosphere

Iain Todd, : November 6, 2026, https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/news/artemis-ii-launch-tore-a-hole-in-earth-atmosphere

NASA’s Artemis II mission caused enormous disturbances in Earth’s atmosphere that scientists say could have disrupted GPS and other communications.

The pre-print study by scientists from National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan found that disturbances created by the launch of the Artemis II rocket were stronger than those caused by any other rocket launches to date.

The team say the research could point to future problems caused by increasingly powerful rocket launches becoming more frequent.

A mission around the Moon

The Artemis II mission was arguably the biggest spaceflight story of 2026.

It launched on April 1, 2026, taking four astronauts on a 9-day journey around the Moon and back.

Artemis II travelled further beyond the Moon than any mission before it, using the Moon’s gravitational pull to slingshot around it and begin the journey back to Earth.

It was the first crewed mission to the Moon since the Apollo programme and marked a key stepping stone in NASA’s plans to establish a permanent human presence on the lunar surface.

A disturbance in Earth’s atmosphere

Yet despite the success of the Artemis II mission and its popularity, a pre-print study published in Geophysical Research Letters says that the launch of the Artemis II rocket and subsequent rocket burns caused three distinct disturbances in Earth’s ionosphere.

The ionosphere is the region of our atmosphere that reaches about 80–640 km (50–400 miles) above Earth’s surface.

It’s at the edge of space, marking the boundary between Earth’s lower atmosphere and the vacuum of the cosmos.

The first ‘disturbance’ caused by the Artemis II mission occurred during the rocket’s launch from Kennedy Space Center, generating shock-acoustic and gravity wave modulations.

But the next two upper-stage burns were much stronger than the initial liftoff.

An hour after launch, a second disturbance came via the ‘apogee raise burn’, which is an engine burn used to increase the Artemis II spacecraft’s altitude.

About 25 hours after lift-off, a third was caused by the ‘trans-lunar injection burn’, which is used to put the spacecraft on its journey towards the Moon.

That apogee raise burn “triggered shock waves and unprecedented large-scale disturbances that elongated 50° longitude across North America,” the study authors say.

“This is the first time a single space mission produced three instances of ionospheric disturbances over the same region during successive orbit manoeuvres.”

Rocket launches, GPS and self-driving cars

One of the key points made by the authors of this pre-print study is the effect that future rocket launches could have on technologies like GPS systems, drones and self-driving cars.

While they found that there was no widespread GPS disruption caused by the Artemis II lift-off itself, they did record changes in the ionosphere that could potentially cause problems during future rocket launches.

Such disturbances could disrupt communications on Earth by, for example, disturbing radio signals.

And rocket launches could affect other technologies on Earth that rely on GPS for positioning, such as self-driving cars and drones.

Read the full study at essopenarchive.org

November 9, 2026 Posted by | space travel | Leave a comment

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