Ukraine war briefing: Kyiv denies its drone ‘deliberately’ hit Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant
Russian atomic energy agency claim that drone strike damaged Europe’s largest nuclear plant just a ‘propaganda ploy’, Ukraine military says. What we know on day 1,558
- Russia’s state nuclear energy company Rosatom said on Saturday a Ukrainian drone had struck the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Europe’s largest, but had not caused damage to key equipment. Rosatom’s head Alexei Likhachev called the incident “deliberate” and said it left a hole in the wall of a turbine hall. “This afternoon, a Ukrainian kamikaze combat drone struck the turbine hall building of Power Unit No. 6, resulting in a subsequent detonation,” Likhachev said in a statement.
- The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant was captured by Russia in March 2022 and remains close to the frontline in the south-eastern Ukrainian Zaporizhzhia region. Kyiv military have denied Russian claims as “yet another propaganda ploy”, saying its troops did not strike power unit No. 6 at the plant. “Ukrainian servicemen act strictly within the international humanitarian law and are fully aware of the consequences of any actions targeting nuclear facilities,” the military said in a statement. “At the relevant section of the frontline, there was no active fighting during the incident, and no weapons were used.”
- The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Saturday said it has been informed by the Zaporizhzhia plant that a drone had struck a turbine building at the site. IAEA chief Rafael Grossi expressed serious concern about the reported incident. “Attacking nuclear sites is like playing with fire,” he said. The IAEA’s team has requested access to examine the affected turbine building first-hand, the agency said in an X post.
- Ukrainian drone strikes caused fires at more Russian oil facilities overnight into Saturday, Russian officials said, in what appeared to be the latest attack on Moscow’s oil industry. Authorities in Russia’s Rostov region said falling drone debris sparked a fire that damaged an oil depot and tanker in the port of Taganrog, while officials in the neighbouring Krasnodar region reported a fire breaking out at an oil depot in Armavir for the same reason.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on X noted the Krasnodar attack and said: “We are rightfully bringing the war back to where it came from.”
- Russian tennis players at the French Open about their stance on the war, after her third-round exit at the French Open. Oliynykova lost in straight sets to Russia’s Diana Shnaider. The Ukrainian said players from Russia were allowed to participate in international tournaments even though they openly took part in events sponsored by Russian companies linked to the war effort or even after what she said was promoting the positions of Russia in relation to the war on social media.
Netanyahu directs army to occupy 70 percent of Gaza
When asked about taking 100 percent of Gaza, the Israeli prime minister said, ‘First 70 percent. We’ll start with that’
News Desk, MAY 28, 2026, https://thecradle.co/articles/netanyahu-calls-for-army-to-occupy-70-percent-of-gaza
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he has given directives for the Israeli military to take control of 70 percent of the Gaza Strip, Israel’s Channel 12 reported on 28 May.
“At this point, we are fully in control of 60 percent of the territory of the Gaza Strip … and my directive is to get to … 70 percent,” Netanyahu said in Hebrew during a conference held by the Ein Prat Leadership Academy.
During the speech, one audience member shouted that Israel should take “100 percent” of Gaza. Netanyahu responded, saying that “We’re going in order,” suggesting this was the long-term goal of his government.
“First 70 percent,” he says, “we’ll start with that.”
Last week, Netanyahu publicly acknowledged reports that the Israeli military currently occupies 60 percent of the territory in the strip, significantly more than the 53 percent allowed under the terms of last September’s ceasefire with Hamas.
Ministers in Netanyahu’s government say they want to completely occupy Gaza and expel its nearly 2 million Palestinian inhabitants to make way for Jewish settlement of the strip.
Jewish settler leader and Israeli minister Orit Strock called the months after the Hamas attack of 7 October a “time of miracles,” because it gave Israel the pretext to conquer the strip.
Shortly after 7 October, Netanyahu called for committing genocide against Palestinians, comparing them to the Amalekite people, who were exterminated, including women and children, by the ancient Israelites according to the account in the Book of Samuel in the Jewish holy book, the Torah.
Israel has killed over 72,000 Palestinians, the majority women and children, since the start of the war over two years ago. Thousands more are missing and presumed lost under the rubble.
According to satellite imagery analysis, approximately 81 percent of all structures in the Gaza Strip have been damaged due to Israeli bombing as of October last year.
As a result, nearly 1.9 million Palestinians – about 90 percent of Gaza’s population – are internally displaced and homeless. Many live in tents or make-shift shelters. Conditions remain dire with severe shortages of food, medicine, and clean water and sanitation that will continue to cause indirect deaths long after the Israeli violence in Gaza ends.
In April, Reuters reported that rats and parasites are spreading through Gaza’s tent camps, “biting children’s fingers and toes as they sleep, gnawing through people’s few remaining treasured possessions, and spreading disease.”
The news agency spoke with Khalil Al-Mashharawi, who said that a rat bit the hand and toes of his 3-year-old son and that he himself was bitten.
“They strike in our sleep,” said Mashharawi, 26, who lives with his wife and children in the ruins of their house in Al-Tuffah neighborhood in northern Gaza.
“They may disappear for a day or two before they strike again, (forcing) their way under the tiles of the floor of the house.”
Israeli claims about an Iran ‘threat’ were always a lie. Now we have proof
The disinformation about Iran should have been all too glaring back in 2006, had any of it been reported properly – just as it should be now, two decades later, were western journalists doing their job rather than acting as stenographers for Israel and the White House.
This is another swindle, like Trump’s “Board of Peace”, which dresses up US and Israeli criminal aggression and genocide as peacemaking.
It is not Tehran led by unhinged, genocidal megalomaniacs threatening the security of the region and the world. It is Tel Aviv and Washington
Jonathan Cook, Middle East Eye, 30 May 2026
ould it be that Israel’s 30-year narrative about Iran – one that persuaded US President Donald Trump to wage a criminal and disastrous war of aggression – was always a fiction, an invention cooked up in Tel Aviv?
Far from Tehran posing an existential danger to Israel, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed for decades, might Israel’s real fear be that a stronger Iran would undermine its unique leverage over Washington, threatening its status as the region’s sole – and unmonitored – nuclear power?
Might large parts of the globe be facing economic meltdown simply so that Israel can remain the Middle East’s top dog – an unaccountable apartheid state committing genocide against the Palestinian people and ethnically cleansing southern Lebanon?
We got a definitive answer last week, care of the New York Times. It is an uncompromising yes to all of these questions.
The newspaper reported that Netanyahu not only mis-sold Trump on the idea of quick regime change in Iran following a short “shock and awe” bombing campaign. He also identified to the White House who was going to replace Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme religious leader.
Extraordinarily, according to the Times, Netanyahu named the man for the job as former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The aim at the start of the air campaign was for Israel to kill Khamenei, then liberate Ahmadinejad from house arrest by striking the guards who were confining him.
Presumably, Ahmadinejad was then supposed to storm the citadel and seize the keys to the palace. But only Khamenei’s assassination went according to plan.
Ahmadinejad, who had reportedly been consulted on the scheme beforehand, is believed to have been injured in the Israeli strike near his home. He got cold feet, possibly suspecting he was being set up for assassination too, and went into hiding. His current whereabouts and medical condition are unknown.
Ultimate bogeyman
Neither US nor Israeli officials would comment to the Times on the alleged regime-change plot, a scheme that the newspaper called “audacious”. That is the understatement of all understatements.
The idea that Ahmadinejad had the popular support, let alone the religious authority and military muscle behind him, to take on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s crack military force responsible for protecting the clerical regime, is for the birds.
That anyone in the White House took this plan seriously, let alone acted on it, is a genuinely staggering notion. But the proposition that Ahmadinejad could retake the reins of power in Iran is possibly the least preposterous part of the scheme.
While younger readers may not recognise Ahmadinejad’s name, everyone else should. He made headlines on an almost weekly basis during much of his eight-year presidency, starting in 2005. Why? Because Israel turned him into the ultimate bogeyman.
After neighbouring Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was toppled and executed in 2006, following an illegal invasion by the US and Britain, Ahmadinejad was hyped as the new implacable threat to regional peace.
Claims about Ahmadinejad first breathed an illusory substance into Israel’s now-unchallenged script that a supposedly fanatical, deranged Iran would leave no stone unturned in seeking to destroy Israel. Ahmadinejad, we were told time and again, was seeking to pursue a nuclear bomb – even after Khamenei had issued a religious edict in 2003 strictly banning its development.
In 2006, Ehud Olmert, then the Israeli prime minister, warned the world that Ahmadinejad was a “psychopath of the worst kind”, adding: “He speaks as Hitler did in his time of the extermination of the entire Jewish nation.”
Olmert was echoing a panic-inducing campaign led by Netanyahu, then Israel’s opposition leader, that Iran needed to be attacked immediately to save Israel and the world.
“It’s 1938 and Iran is Germany,” Netanyahu told a meeting of American Jewish leaders that same year. “And Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs.” Of Ahmadinejad, he said: “Believe him and stop him … He is preparing another Holocaust for the Jewish state.”
Under Ahmadinejad, Iran was supposedly hellbent on destroying Israel, turning it into a giant Auschwitz. Also in 2006, Netanyahu told Israeli Army Radio: “Israel would certainly be the first stop on Iran’s tour of destruction.”
Ahmadinejad was so unhinged, Netanyahu said, that he would not stop at Israel’s eradication: “Iran is developing ballistic missiles that would reach America, and now they prepare missiles with an adequate range to cover the whole of Europe
‘Genocidal intent’
A short time later, Israel’s fear-mongering operation reached a crescendo in London.
Netanyahu told members of the British parliament that Ahmadinejad had to be urgently brought before the International Criminal Court – the war crimes court in the Hague – for his “messianic apocalyptic view of the world”.
Irony of ironies, Netanyahu – who 20 years later is a fugitive from that same court, accused of crimes against humanity for starving the people of Gaza – emphasised Ahmadinejad’s supposed genocidal intent towards Israel. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Smoke and mirrors
Two decades ago, the message from Netanyahu was clear: Ahmadinejad was so rabidly antisemitic that he deserved to be compared to Hitler.
Ahmadinejad was so eager to pursue a nuclear weapons programme that he was prepared to defy the country’s supreme religious leader. He was so mentally unstable that he was ready to use those weapons to exterminate Israel, even though such a move would ensure a retaliatory nuclear counter-strike on his own country.
Lest we forget, Ahmadinejad had a reputation for such ruthless crackdowns on political opponents that Amnesty International noted in 2014 that his rule had “sounded the death knell for academic freedom in Iran”.
Yet, fast forward two decades, and Netanyahu reportedly now thinks Ahmadinejad is the best person to lead Iran; the person for whom it was worth killing Khamenei, Iran’s most influential opponent of nuclear weapons.
Iran has won the war. Trump and Netanyahu now face a reckoning
The New York Times reports that in recent years, there were strong suspicions inside Iran that Israel, Britain and the US were cultivating ties with Ahmadinejad and those around him – suspicions that now seem to be confirmed by Israel’s apparent regime-change plan.
The newspaper further reports that Ahmadinejad had recently travelled to both Guatemala and Hungary, countries with very close ties to Israel.
Does any of this make sense? And yet for western media, the fact that Netanyahu was championing Ahmadinejad as Iran’s saviour, and that the US administration wholeheartedly bought into this idea, is little more than “surprising”.
In truth, it wrecks Israel’s entire narrative about Iran. It is a telling reminder of the yawning gap between what we have been told about Iran for decades, and what has actually been going on.
Image and reality bear almost no resemblance to each other. This has all been smoke and mirrors.
‘Wiped off the map’
In my 2008 book Israel and the Clash of Civilisations, I pointed out that nothing Israel was telling us about its Middle Eastern rival could be accepted at face value – least of all Israel’s assertion that Ahmadinejad was a Jew-hating “new Hitler”.
Many of the claims promoted 20 years ago by Israel about Ahmadinejad’s genocidal intent stemmed from a mistranslation of a speech in which the Iranian leader had quoted the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who led the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
According to western politicians and media, Ahmadinejad had called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” – widely portrayed as an ambition to launch a nuclear strike on Israel.
In fact, Ahmadinejad had been repeating Khomeini’s observation that Israel could not survive indefinitely in the form of an illegitimate Jewish supremacist state oppressing another people. He was pointing out that Israel’s days as a racist state were numbered, just as apartheid South Africa’s had been.
The sentiment behind Khomeini’s statement should be much clearer in the present circumstances, when it is Israel, not Iran, that has been busy wiping people off the map – in Gaza and southern Lebanon.
Similarly, Israel and its western allies made a great deal of noise in 2006 when Ahmadinejad called what was widely misrepresented as a “Holocaust denial” conference in Tehran. In fact, Ahmadinejad had organised what was intended to be a provocative – and to some, offensive – stunt to challenge western taboos about Israel and underscore the West’s hypocrisy towards Muslims.
Ahmadinejad’s point was twofold: firstly, if Muslims are not entitled to have their beliefs and sensitivities respected by westerners – as evidenced by the 2005 “Danish cartoon affair” and the “free speech” defence for presenting caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad – why should westerners expect their own sensitivities about Israel and the Holocaust to be exempt from challenge?
He also wanted to dissect the western belief that someone else, the Palestinian people, should pay a heavy price, including decades of dispossession and abuse, for the West’s crimes against Europe’s Jews.
Horror show
The disinformation about Iran should have been all too glaring back in 2006, had any of it been reported properly – just as it should be now, two decades later, were western journalists doing their job rather than acting as stenographers for Israel and the White House.
The lies, now as then, serve the same end: to justify crushing Iran – then through sanctions, later through the addition of illegal bombing – so that Israel’s right to trample over the lives of people across the region without consequence can be protected.
Iran, now refusing to release its chokehold over the Strait of Hormuz and the global supply of oil, is demanding that the price include an end to US backing for the Israeli-directed horror show in the Middle East.
Like a spoiled toddler, Trump is thrashing around – while cashing in on the volatility of the oil markets – trying to impose the old rules, when the terms of the confrontation are no longer under his exclusive control.
His latest tantrum – one cooked up in Tel Aviv as much as Washington – is that most Arab states, including Iran’s neighbours in the Gulf, be forced to sign the so-called Abraham Accords with Israel. This is being presented as the framework for a regional “peace deal” involving Iran. In truth, it is the very opposite.
The accords are designed to cement Israel’s status as the Middle East’s top dog, subordinating Arab states’ interests to Israel’s, and thereby isolating Iran in the region and leaving the Palestinian people and Lebanon to a genocidal Israel’s mercy.
This is another swindle, like Trump’s “Board of Peace”, which dresses up US and Israeli criminal aggression and genocide as peacemaking.
What the past 20 years of lies and misdirections have sought to hide is a simple fact: it is not Tehran that is led by unhinged, genocidal megalomaniacs threatening the security of the region and the world. It is Tel Aviv and Washington.
Since the pair launched their criminal war of aggression against Iran three months ago, Tehran has shown restraint, acted with caution, and displayed a willingness to negotiate in good faith. Too bad there are no responsible adults on the other side with whom it can make a deal. https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israeli-claims-about-iran-threat-were-always-lie-now-we-have-proof
Global Appeal To Endorse Palestinian Right Of Return Of Refugees
Workers’ World. May 30, 2026, https://scheerpost.com/2026/05/30/global-appeal-to-endorse-palestinian-right-of-return-of-refugees/
Please join the global appeal to organizations to endorse the Palestinian refugees’ call to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the enforcement of U.N. Resolution 194 pursuant to Article 15 of the Rome Statute Concerning the Ongoing Denial of the Right of Return of Palestinian Refugees by signing the following petition.
We, the undersigned, call upon the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC to initiate an investigation pursuant to Article 15 of the Rome Statute into the ongoing crimes associated with the forced displacement of the Palestinian people and the systematic denial of their right to return to their homes and lands since 1948.
The mass displacement of Palestinians during the Nakba was not a closed historical event. The continued prevention of refugees from returning to their homes, villages and properties constitutes an ongoing and continuous crime under international law. This prolonged policy of exclusion, dispossession, persecution and denial of fundamental rights has subjected millions of Palestinian refugees to decades of statelessness, discrimination and injustice.
We affirm that the ongoing denial of the right of return may constitute crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute, including persecution, forcible transfer of population, apartheid and other inhumane acts. Furthermore, the continued destruction and depopulation of Palestinian villages and the systematic obstruction of return may also amount to war crimes and could rise to the level of genocide when examined within the broader framework of intent, destruction and erasure of a protected national group.
This petition further asserts that the ICC possesses territorial jurisdiction over these crimes, because their effects continue to extend into the territory of State Parties to the Rome Statute, including the State of Palestine and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, where millions of Palestinian refugees continue to reside.
We therefore urge the Office of the Prosecutor to:
- Recognize the ongoing forced displacement and denial of return as continuing international crimes under the jurisdiction of the Court.
- Open a preliminary examination and investigation into policies and practices that prevent Palestinian refugees from exercising their internationally recognized right of return.
- Accept and document testimonies of Palestinian refugees as part of an official legal process aimed at preserving evidence and advancing accountability.
- Uphold and reinforce the principles established in international law, including U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194, which affirms the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and receive restitution and compensation.
- Contribute to international efforts seeking justice, accountability and a just and lasting resolution to the Palestinian refugee question.
We believe that justice delayed cannot erase the rights of millions of refugees whose displacement remains an open wound in modern history. The continued denial of return is not merely a political issue but a matter of international criminal accountability and fundamental human rights.
The voices and testimonies of Palestinian refugees must no longer remain outside the framework of international justice.
Palestinian refugees’ associations and depopulated villages in collaboration with One Democratic State of Palestine, Law for Palestine, have launched a global appeal to organizations (human rights, international law, Palestine solidarity movements and antiwar, anti-imperialist movements; labor, women’s and students’ unions; political parties and leaders) to endorse the Palestinian refugees’ call to the ICC for the enforcement of U.N. Resolution 194 by signing this statement at tinyurl.com/EnforceUN194.
Labour’s plans to limit judicial reviews of nuclear projects would ‘harm democracy’
This is disturbingly similar to what Donald Trump did earlier this year when he gutted the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the US Environmental Protection Agency
This is disturbingly similar to what Donald Trump did earlier this year when he gutted the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the US Environmental Protection Agency
by Tom Pashby, 28 May 2026, https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2026/05/28/labour-judicial-review-limit-harm-democracy/
Plans by the Labour Government to make it harder for communities to oppose infrastructure projects near them, such as nuclear power plants, have been criticised by campaigners and a legal expert.
The Treasury announced on 20 May that the chancellor was expected to:
use Parliament to drive through power plants and infrastructure [by giving] Parliament the authority to approve critical energy schemes and better protect infrastructure projects from judicial review.
People with concerns about major infrastructure projects – sometimes called nationally significant infrastructure projects (NSIPs), which includes nuclear power plants – are able to request that judges review applications for building NSIPs.
Those judicial reviews have the potential to bring an end to projects if judges agree with arguments put forward by people pursuing the reviews.
Now, the government is proposing to give government proposals for some major projects “the same status as laws passed by elected decision makers,” according to one legal expert who spoke to the Canary, which appears to “have significant constitutional implications”.
Treasury announcement
The announcement by the Treasury said:
The headline proposal would allow Parliament to designate and approve the most important clean energy projects as being of ‘Critical National Importance’ (CNI), reducing the exposure from judicial review on all but human rights grounds.
This would help deliver the government’s commitment to accelerate new infrastructure development and drive growth, including much-needed projects like new power stations and offshore wind farms.
For all other nationally significant infrastructure – including transport and water projects – the government will introduce a fixed legal challenge window, at the end of which the planning consent could be updated to address any legitimate issues.
Plans to give government proposals same status as acts of parliament ‘concerning’ – lawyer
Leigh Day is a law firm “established to combat injustice,” its website says.
The firm has represented a variety of clients who have used judicial reviews to oppose major infrastructure projects.
Leigh Day partner Ricardo Gama told the Canary:
The government appears to be introducing further limits on communities’ ability to have large infrastructure decisions examined by the courts.
The suggestion that projects with political backing should enjoy the same status as acts of parliament, but be spared parliamentary scrutiny, is concerning.
It appears to have significant constitutional implications because it would alter the relationship between government, parliament and judges, giving government proposals the same status as laws passed by elected decision makers.
Limiting legal challenges ‘harms democracy’ and reduces ‘oversight of the nuclear industry’
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament general secretary Sophie Bolt told the Canary:
The government is cynically using the crisis in the Middle East to justify limiting transparency and the ability of local communities and campaign groups to appeal the railroading of costly and dirty nuclear power projects.
Limiting the appeals process harms democracy and much needed oversight of the nuclear industry – but will not change the fact that nuclear power relies on the dirty process of extracting and processing uranium for fuel and leaves a legacy of toxic waste that lasts for generations.
The government’s plan to cut regulations and limit the scope for judicial reviews essentially means this industry will be more dangerous.
This is disturbingly similar to what Donald Trump did earlier this year when he gutted the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the US Environmental Protection Agency.
Anti-Sizewell C campaigners rail against notion that Sizewell C was delayed by judicial reviews
A Stop Sizewell C spokesperson told the Canary:
If Sizewell C was genuinely delayed by judicial reviews, why did the National Audit Office (NAO), who would have spoken at length to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) and Sizewell C during their enquiries, not say so?
In October 2025, the Treasury put out a statement saying:
Backing the builders not the blockers, the government will work with the judiciary to cut the amount of time it takes for a judicial review to move through the court system for nationally critical infrastructure projects by around half a year, like Sizewell C.
Then, in May 2026, a National Audit Office (NAO) report about Sizewell C poured cold water on the idea that judicial reviews had delayed the project. It explained reasons for delays and judicial reviews were notably absent from the list.
The NAO report said:
DESNZ started formal negotiations with EDF for SZC in 2021 and initially expected to reach ’financial close’, when contracts take effect, by the end of March 2023. DESNZ and HM Treasury made a final investment decision (FID) in July 2025, having agreed terms with EDF and other private investors.
This was 4.5 years after negotiations started and at least 28 months later than originally planned. The project was delayed several times, including by the 2024 General Election; responding to feedback from potential investors and the government’s internal assurance processes; and longer than expected negotiations with EDF and the other investors. Financial close was reached in November 2025.
The Stop Sizewell C spokesperson continued:
If the Chancellor is going to persist in using such offensive language, she really ought to get her facts right.
A Together Against Sizewell C spokesperson echoed Stop Sizewell C’s perspective, telling the Canary:
Labour still doesn’t get it – we cannot build a sustainable future by weakening our environmental safeguards and legal rights.
Reeves’ draconian policy change is built on the false premise promoted by the nuclear industry and right wing lobbyists that Sizewell C was excessively delayed by judicial review challenges – this does not stand up to scrutiny.
Reeves’ plans will need to be scrutinised by MPs and peers, and the challenge to the Prime Minister’s leadership means it is unclear whether the government will be able to command the confidence of the House of Commons to enable the Chancellor’s plans to make it harder to judicially review some major projects.
Nuclear energy is too slow and too expensive for the energy transition.
In terms of CO2 emissions, a nuclear power plant can compete with wind turbines and solar panels. Otherwise, however, the disadvantages and inertia outweigh the advantages.
May 27, 2026, Mario Petzold, https://www.golem.de/news/studie-kernenergie-zu-langsam-und-zu-teuer-fuer-die-energiewende-2605-209099.html
A study by the Öko-Institut commissioned by the Federal Environment AgencyThe report certifies that nuclear energy has an excellent climate record. According to the report, CO2 emissions per kilowatt-hour (kWh) fed into the grid are at the same level as those of photovoltaics and wind power.
In all other crucial aspects, however, nuclear energy exhibits numerous practical disadvantages. The study therefore considers a scenario in which nuclear power plays a decisive role globally to be unrealistic.
The cost of electricity generation is a major obstacle to the rapid spread of this technology. The authors estimate costs of 15 to 19 cents per kWh in Europe and 15 to 16 cents per kWh in North America. In contrast, wind power and photovoltaic electricity cost significantly less than 10 cents. Onshore wind power is estimated at an average of 3.6 cents per kWh.
Practical reasons speak against nuclear energy
But it’s not just the pure costs that argue against the rapid expansion of nuclear power plants. The annual addition of capacity would have to be at least 30 gigawatts (GW) per year, which corresponds to 25 to 30 large nuclear reactors.
In recent decades, the rate has been around 10 GW, which was just enough to compensate for the output of decommissioned nuclear power plants. According to the study, such a significant acceleration in construction seems unlikely.
And even if the number of planned projects were to increase, the long construction time of up to 20 years alone argues against nuclear energy playing a relevant role in global energy production by 2050.
Furthermore, the interaction with renewable energy sources is extremely poor. The controllability of nuclear power plants is minimal and requires a certain lead time. In contrast, a high share of wind and solar power in the energy system necessitates rapid load changes, which nuclear power cannot provide.
Climate change is an obstacle to nuclear power
Besides the risks posed by a serious reactor accident, which cannot be reliably quantified, climate change itself also hinders the expansion of nuclear energy. A location by the sea would be ideal, because sufficient cooling water with virtually constant temperatures is available.
However, rising sea levels and increasing extreme weather events are increasing the risk of unforeseen incidents precisely in these areas. Along rivers, heat waves, droughts, or heavy rainfall could jeopardize the reliable operation of a nuclear power plant.
Overall, the study authors assume that, in the best-case scenario, nuclear power plants will be able to supply nine percent of global energy production in the future. This corresponds to the current share and requires an increase in the current rate of expansion of nuclear reactors. In 1996, the share was still at 17 percent; according to the study’s calculations, it is most likely to be between three and four percent by 2050.
Beyond the Yellow Line: Israel Seizes More of Gaza
30 May 2026 Dr Binoy Kampmark AIM Extra , https://theaimn.net/beyond-the-yellow-line-israel-seizes-more-of-gaza/
While eyes remain peeled on Israel’s increasingly violent and expanding campaign in Lebanon, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is proving ever more predatory with the Gaza Strip. With aggrandizing impunity, more territory is being acquired for familiar reasons: Hamas is on the run and needs to be crushed further (the organisation is proving oddly resilient and contradictory to Israeli objectives here); Palestinian autonomy, even in so small an area, would be a future threat to Israel unless heavily invigilated and policed; and, well, there is that old desire to ethnically cleanse the territory.
Speaking at a conference on May 28, Netanyahu outlined his plans for further seizures. “We are currently squeezing Hamas; we now control 60% of the territory of the Strip – you know this. We were at 50, we moved to 60. My directive is to move to…” (at that point, an enthusiastic voice in the crowd interjected with “100”). Not wishing to state it that obviously, the PM went on to say that the IDF would “go step by step. First of all, 70. Let’s start with that. We’re pressing them from all sides, we’ll deal with the remnants.”
On May 27, the Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz wrote on his X account that the government “had pledged to eliminate everyone who led the October 7 massacre, and that is what we will do.” The agenda of elimination in the Strip is an ongoing one, with the announced killing of Hamas military commander Mohammed Odeh giving him a certain febrile glee. “The fourth commander of the Hamas terror organization’s military wing in Gaza was eliminated yesterday and sent to meet his partners in the depths of hell.” Hamas would never be allowed to “rule Gaza civilly or militarily.” Katz also went further, suggesting with heavy ominousness that the “plan for voluntary emigration from Gaza” would commence “at the proper time and in the proper manner.”
The fact that the IDF had already gobbled territory to a hefty proportion of 60% had already breached the terms of the US-brokered ceasefire effective since October 10, 2025. (The original amount was 53%). In mid-May, Netanyahu, in remarks made at the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva on the occasion of the 59th anniversary of the unification of Jerusalem, boasted that Israel had, over the previous two years “shown the world what immense power is inherent in our people, in our state, in our army, in our heritage.” The most important thing was breaking “the barrier of fear. We brought our hostages home, to the very last one. Today we control 60 percent.”
This should have come as a surprise, but such breaches and violations are common fare in Israel’s singular interpretation of ceasefires. (Pro-Israeli critics naturally overlook this, seeing, instead, a stubborn Hamas outfit that refuses to disarm while committing its own complement of ceasefire violations.) The ceasefire in Gaza has proven a particularly bloody one for Palestinians, with 738 having perished since October last year. In January, Haaretz was already reporting on the westward shift of the Yellow Line. According to Laurie Bouvier, a geographic information systems expert working for Doctors Without Borders (MSF), the 60 percent figure was an accurate one, and likely to change given ongoing expansion with new yellow blocks identified in such neighbourhoods as Zeitoun in Gaza City.
The Hamas-run government media office described Netanyahu’s promise of seizing 70% of territory as “a dangerous escalation.” According to its head, Ismail al-Thawabta, “any attempt to impose a new reality of occupation in Gaza is null and illegitimate.”
From New York, the United Nations spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric also added the views of the organisation by stating that, “One hundred percent of Gaza should be for the Palestinian people.” The UN had “been calling on Israel to pull back from its occupation from the so-called yellow line, and that will continue to be our position.”
The United Nations children’s agency UNICEF has expressed concerns the seizure of even more land by the Israeli forces will only worsen a situation where food, water and hygiene are lacking. UNICEF spokesman Salim Oweis, speaking from Gaza to reporters based in Geneva, noted how people had “been crammed into around 40 percent of the space.” They were “sheltering among broken buildings, rubble and mounting solid waste.” The suffering this was causing children was becoming “widely apparent: children with respiratory infections, acute watery diarrhea, and more than half of all households reporting skin diseases.”
This will only be seen by the Israeli authorities as another sob story, the needless tearjerker disseminated by international organisations and commentators who should know better. There is an agenda to implement with necessary ruthlessness, Palestinian officials to kill along with their families, political emasculation of Palestinian will to achieve and, ultimately, a Strip cleansed of Arabs in favour of the Jewish state’s bright and noble citizens.
The Big Tech Campaign to Fast Track Nuke Energy. Senators Whitehouse and Booker Take the Lead in Congress
The ADVANCE Act passed 393-13 in the House and 88-2 in the Senate, where only Markey and Sanders voted no. Both senators have repeatedly opposed building new nuclear plants due to environmental concerns, such as the ongoing absence of a long-term solution to the nation’s roughly 100,000 tons of radioactive waste.
Last May, Trump signed a series of executive orders to radically overhaul nuclear safety oversight, citing the ADVANCE Act as justification for transforming the NRC’s culture, directing the agency to approve new reactors within 18 months, and consult with DOGE on a wholesale revision of its regulations. Since then, the administration has secretly overhauled nuclear safety rules, proposed to severely cut inspections and radiation standards, exempted new reactors from environmental reviews, and triggered an exodus of 400 NRC employees since Trump took office.
CAPITOL HILL CITIZEN, By Peter Castagno, May 2026
In September 2014, a Google engineer hosted a private meeting at the company’s Mountain View headquarters. The guests included a nuclear energy investor and staff from the influential think tank Third Way.
By the end of the meeting, the small group agreed to “fund a bit of work in DC” to influence policy in favor of nuclear energy. That meeting set in motion a decade-long campaign that would transform Democratic politics on nuclear energy – and leave the regulatory framework governing atomic safety vulnerable to the most aggressive deregulatory assault in its history.
The Trump administration leveraged the bipartisan legislative architecture that Democrats helped build to gut the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Ross Koningstein – Google’s former director emeritus of nuclear energy R&D – hosted the Mountain View gathering.
As he explained in a 2024 article, the tech giant quietly supported Third Way, the Clean Air Task Force, ClearPath and other advocacy groups for over a decade, helping lawmakers craft pro-nuclear legislation.
Third Way and its partners have since taken credit for “creating an entirely new policy discussion around advanced nuclear energy,” helping draft overhauls to nuclear policy, and working “behind the scenes” to shift Democrats’ nuclear views.
In the early years of this effort, public support for nuclear energy was at a low point. In 2016, Gallup found a majority of Americans opposed nuclear energy for the first time since it began surveying the issue in 1994. Only 34% of Democrats favored it. By 2025, that figure climbed to 46% of Democrats – a 12-point change in less than a decade.
That shift coincided with a surge of Silicon Valley nuclear investment and advocacy. Jeff Navin, a lobbyist for Bill Gates’ small modular reactor (SMR) startup TerraPower, described 2015 as a pivotal year for nuclear support in Capitol Hill.
At that year’s Paris Climate Talks, Gates announced the Breakthrough Energy Coalition with co-investors including Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Richard Branson. Peter Thiel, another top Silicon Valley nuclear investor, published – The New Atomic Age We Need – a New York Times op-ed within the same 48-hour window.
Breakthrough Energy has since grown into a $4 billion juggernaut spanning venture capital, philanthropy, and policy advocacy, with $7.9 million in direct lobbying expenditures since 2020
Breakthrough Energy has since grown into a $4 billion juggernaut spanning venture capital, philanthropy, and policy advocacy, with $7.9 million in direct lobbying expenditures since 2020.
Taken together, Breakthrough entities and the Gates Foundation have given more than $60 million to the key pro-nuclear groups that reshaped policy, the majority since 2022.
This includes more than $20 million to Third Way, over $10 million to the Clean Air Task Force, more than $9 million to ClearPath, and nearly $4 million to the Breakthrough Institute. Laying the groundwork for Trump Third Way’s ties to Gates go beyond receiving more than $20 million from his philanthropies.
The think tank’s most recent 2024 tax filing lists lobby firm Boundary Stone Partners as its top contractor for ‘strategic consulting.’ Third Way has paid Boundary Stone Partners over $2 million since 2020, while the lobby group was simultaneously providing “comprehensive legislative and strategic support” to Gates’ nuclear firm TerraPower, which paid it $900,000 in lobby fees over the same period.
Former Office of Nuclear Energy chief of staff Andrew Richards, who led Boundary Stone Partners’ nuclear practice until March 2025, is now TerraPower’s vice president of government affairs. Jeff Navin, Boundary Stone Partner’s co-founder, has long helped coordinate Third Way’s nuclear strategy. He was Terra- Power’s director of external affairs until last April.
Navin and Josh Freed, Third Way’s energy and climate chief, approached the White House together to set up its first nuclear energy summit. Before joining Third Way, Freed was a senior advisor to the Gates Foundation. Gates has also exerted influence directly. He told Bloomberg in 2022 he had quietly lobbied elected officials including former Senator Joe Manchin, for years on federal climate policy, helping secure tax incentives for nuclear energy in the Inflation Reduction Act.
The billionaire told the former West Virginia senator that coal workers could potentially transition into building reactors for TerraPower – he donated $2,900 to Manchin in May 2022, months before the IRA’s passage. Manchin would later lead the ouster of Democrat NRC commissioner Jeff Baran, who frequently raised concerns about safety issues of experimental SMRs like TerraPower.
TerraPower’s client case study for Boundary Stone Partners notes it successfully lobbied for bills, including the 2024 ADVANCE Act. The law required the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to rewrite the language of its mission statement to promote the benefits of civilian nuclear expansion.
Victor Gilinsky, who served as a NRC commissioner in the Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations, observed the bill showed “every sign of having been written by interested parties and with little vetting” in a 2024 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists op-ed. He warned the subtle shift in language could open the door to severe consequences, eroding the agency’s independence to expedite licensing of experimental reactors.
“TerraPower foresees selling hundreds of such reactors for domestic use and export,” Gilinsky wrote in a 2024 analysis. “The new law is largely directed at clearing the way for the rapid licensing of such reactors by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). It does so in part by providing additional resources but also—more ominously – by weakening the agency’s safety reviews and inspections in the name of efficiency.”
The ADVANCE Act passed 393-13 in the House and 88-2 in the Senate, where only Markey and Sanders voted no. Both senators have repeatedly opposed building new nuclear plants due to environmental concerns, such as the ongoing absence of a long-term solution to the nation’s roughly 100,000 tons of radioactive waste.
During his floor speech, Markey expressed skepticism that rapidly licensing experimental nuclear reactors was justified on climate grounds.
“It’s shortsighted to me to make such a herculean effort to promote new nuclear technologies when we’re yet to solve the longstanding problems resulting from our existing nuclear fleet,” Markey said in his floor speech. “To this day, the Navajo Nation is dealing with the legacy of uranium contamination, including more than 500 abandoned uranium mines and homes and water sources polluted with elevated levels of radiation.”
TerraPower-linked groups were heavily involved in pushing the ADVANCE Act through Congress and celebrated its passage, including the nation’s most prominent industry group, the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI).
The NEI and Silicon Valley have deepened their relationship in recent years. Amazon is now a dues-paying member. The CEO of X-Energy, backed by $500 million in Amazon investment, sits on NEI’s board, alongside TerraPower CEO Chris Levesque and Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte – whose firm was seeded by Sam Altman and Peter Thiel. NEI’s PAC has donated hundreds of thousands to the ADVANCE Act’s Democratic champions, including a total of $66,000 to Congressman Frank Pallone (D-New Jersey), Ranking Member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Pallone and several other pro-nuclear Democrats have since expressed alarm at the Trump administration’s interpretation of the law they enacted.
Last May, Trump signed a series of executive orders to radically overhaul nuclear safety oversight, citing the ADVANCE Act as justification for transforming the NRC’s culture, directing the agency to approve new reactors within 18 months, and consult with DOGE on a wholesale revision of its regulations. Since then, the administration has secretly overhauled nuclear safety rules, proposed to severely cut inspections and radiation standards, exempted new reactors from environmental reviews, and triggered an exodus of 400 NRC employees since Trump took office.
Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) and Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) each gave closing remarks at a nuclear energy summit in 2016. Third Way partnered with the Nuclear Energy Institute to host the Washington event.
In Third Way’s telling, the summit marked the beginning of a years-long partnership with lawmakers who “continued to champion” the nuclear legislation it helped write.
In 2020, the Democratic Party included support for nuclear energy in its national platform for the first time since 1972. That year, the Democratic National Committee paid digital consulting firm Bully Pulpit International more than $30 million.
From 2017 to 2023, the Nuclear Energy Institute paid the same firm $6.4 million to frame nuclear energy as “critical in the effort to lower carbon emissions” – achieving, according to Bully Pulpit, “consistent positive attitudinal shifts among DC elites and policy influencers.” Bully Pulpit was co-founded by former Obama campaign staffers.
The firm that helped elect Democrats was simultaneously taking millions from the nuclear industry to shift Democratic opinion. Booker became the face of Democrats’ nuclear shift during his 2020 presidential campaign.
He disparaged anti-nuclear Democrats, which a Gallup poll found made up 57% of the party at the time, during a 2019 interview: “As much as we say the Republicans when it comes to climate change must listen to science, our party has the same obligation to listen to scientists.” Booker’s framing is inaccurate.
On whether decarbonization requires nuclear energy, expert opinion is deeply divided – with leading experts including Daniel Kammen, Arjun Makhijani, and MV Ramana contending that 100% renewable pathways are viable. Yet this framing – disputed by leading experts – nonetheless became the political rationale for a sweeping legislative agenda Booker and Whitehouse would champion for the next half decade.
The senators were primary architects of the legislative architecture that the Trump administration has since used for maximal deregulation. This includes The ADVANCE Act and the 2019 Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act (NEIMA), which directed the NRC to create a new licensing pathway – called “Part 53” – for experimental reactors.
The Trump administration issued its Part 53 rule in March. It allows applicants to propose reactors in densely populated areas and use fast-tracked reviews from the Department of Defense and Department of Energy as evidence for their safety, and lacks specific guidance for carrying out systematic risk analyses.
As ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, Whitehouse has repeatedly lambasted Trump administration officials for gutting nuclear safety standards.
“Despite so much commonsense, bipartisan work, the Trump Administration has upended progress in a flamingly partisan manner,” he said at a June 2025 hearing. “In this case, by DOGE-ing the NRC in flagrant disregard for nuclear safety, for the bipartisan direction of Congress, and for the law.”
The purpose of the hearing was to consider two Trump nominees, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and EPA assistant administrator Usha-Maria Turner. Whitehouse voted against the EPA nominee due to her history of working in the fossil fuel industry: “The corruption and conflicts of interest are happening in plain view. For that reason, I will not support this nomination.”
However, Whitehouse voted in favor of Wright, a former fossil fuel executive and board member of nuclear startup Oklo. He withdrew his support a month later in protest of the Department of Energy’s “hostile takeover” of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Yet despite his vocal concerns about the dangers of ongoing nuclear safety rollbacks, Whitehouse introduced the Nuclear Refuel Act in June 2025 and voted to move it to the Senate floor in October 2025.
The bill would streamline new nuclear reprocessing facilities, which separate fissile material from spent fuel. The extracted materials are then repurposed for use as reactor fuel, but also can be used to create nuclear weapons.
As over a dozen experts explained in a July 2025 letter to elected officials, security and economic concerns have long prevented the U.S. from using plutonium for civilian nuclear fuel. Experts warned a U.S. reprocessing program could lead to the spread of nuclear weapons technology – President Carter banned the practice after India used it to make a bomb in 1974 – and weaken U.S. diplomats’ ability to discourage other countries from similarly extracting weapons-grade plutonium from their fuel.
The Senate EPW press release for the Nuclear Refuel Act featured a celebratory statement from Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte, who plans to use plutonium-bearing fuel for his breeder reactor. This comes as the Trump administration aims to transfer 20 tons of plutonium to private industry while cutting security standards meant to safeguard against the theft of nuclear materials.
Unlike Whitehouse, Markey has opposed this effort: “Oklo Inc., a nuclear technology start-up, is the main company interested in receiving plutonium from [the Department of Energy],” Markey wrote in a September letter to Trump. “Oklo is also, with DOE’s support, building a $1.7 billion reprocessing plant in Tennessee. Your Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, served on the Board of Directors of Oklo until his confirmation in February.
In 2024, Wright and his wife also made contributions to your presidential campaign totaling about $458,000 and made contributions to the Republican National Committee of about $330,400.” Whitehouse and, to a greater extent, Booker have also received generous support from nuclear interests, including at least $200,000 from Breakthrough Energy and Google leaders.
Holtec executives donated $68,100 to Booker’s committees in 2022, while the New Jersey firm was under a state criminal investigation for defrauding tax credit applications and under national scrutiny for safety violations.
That year, Booker helped pass IRA nuclear subsidies Holtec is now using to restart its Palisades plant. Whitehouse’s most recent financial disclosure reports holdings of at least $1.8 million in tech giants invested in nuclear expansion, including Google, Amazon, and Meta.
Whitehouse invests up to $5 million in Nvidia, which recently announced a partnership with Oklo for the AI-assisted fabrication of plutonium- bearing fuel.
Whitehouse and Booker also received donations from nuclear policy lobbyists, including $13,500 from KDCR Partners, a firm paid more than $4 million since 2020 by TerraPower, Breakthrough Energy, NEI, and Google to lobby on nuclear policy.
KDCR’s founder was President Clinton’s deputy assistant for legislative affairs, one of multiple veterans of Democratic administrations recruited by the nuclear industry to shepherd its agenda through the party. In the mid-2010s, the Nuclear Energy Institute retained consulting firm Kivvit – co-founded by David Axelrod, Obama’s chief campaign strategist and senior advisor – to help create the “Nuclear Matters” front group. As the Climate Investigations Center noted in 2016, Kivvit explained how its Nuclear Matters operation implemented a robust public affairs campaign, which includes advertising, sponsored event series, media relations, grasstops recruitment, third-party advocacy, and targeted social media engagement.”
Nuclear Matters is funded almost entirely by NEI, but it describes itself as “a national coalition of grassroots advocates, working to inform the public and policymakers about the clear benefits of nuclear energy.”
But the shell group transfers nearly its entire revenue to PR firm APCO Worldwide, which has received more than $20 million from Nuclear Matters and its parent nonprofit since 2016.
Nuclear Matters’ first president Neal Cohen was the former president of APCO, where he helped develop Phillip Morris’ PR playbook. Carol Browner – former Clinton EPA administrator and Obama climate advisor – is Nuclear Matters’ most prominent third-party recruit. The group has paid her at least $850,000 since 2018.
Browner recanted her formerly anti-nuclear views in a 2014 Forbes op-ed and announced she was joining a bipartisan “public education campaign” alongside former Senators Evan Bayh and Judd Gregg, to whom Nuclear Matters has paid $345,000.
Bayh received $1.95 million from a lobby group that represents nuclear clients during the same period. Nuclear Matters lists Third Way among its partners and the groups frequently collaborate.
Browner represented Nuclear Matters at the 2016 Third Way summit where Whitehouse and Booker gave closing remarks – in a room that also included Google’s Koningstein, Oklo’s future CEO, and TerraPower – a meeting Third Way later described as the milestone that launched a decade of successful bipartisan nuclear advocacy.
When Gates announced Breakthrough Energy at the 2015 Paris Climate Talks, he asserted the impending climate catastrophe brought an urgent need for “high risk” investments in clean energy technologies.
The billionaire struck a different tone a decade later in a public memo ahead of the 2025 UN Climate Change Conference.
Gates explained he still views climate change as serious, but not a “doomsday” level threat, and advocated a different approach to address it – one that benefits his nuclear company.
The first priority in Gates’ memo is to lower the “Green Premium” – “the cost difference between the clean and dirty way of doing things.”
Gates wrote he was hopeful he could bring down TerraPower’s 50% Green Premium, before advocating government leaders promote policies to fund and support Green Premium technologies.
Amazon-backed SMR startup X-Energy similarly noted its reliance on government support in its recent IPO filing. Yet while its technology is supported by more than a billion in public funding, X-Energy has an “Intellectual Property-driven business model” to generate “attractive free cash flow” from the use of its complex proprietary technology.
Gates built his fortune on Microsoft’s copyright and patent protections. He co-founded TerraPower with former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold in 2008, as the first spinout company of Myhrvold’s patent portfolio firm Intellectual Ventures. TerraPower – which has so far received more than $2.5 billion in government funding – already has more than 500 patents.
The Trump administration greenlit TerraPower to begin construction of its first plant in March, nine months ahead of schedule. The company credited Trump’s May executive orders and bipartisan reforms that Third Way and its partners helped create for the rapid timeline.
Experts, such as Union of Concerned Scientists director of nuclear power safety Edwin Lyman, excoriated TerraPower’s rapid approval, noting the NRC itself conceded the reactor had unresolved safety issues in its reviews.
Balancing Act at the New York Times: Nicholas Kristof Wrote About Israel’s Sexual Torture of Prisoners, the Next Day Isabel Kershner Penned More Unverified Rape Allegations Against Hamas
Robin Andersen, SCHEERPOST, May 30, 2026
The New York Times attempted to ‘balance’ Nicholas Kristof’s documentation of the systematic rape of Palestinians by Israeli forces with yet another unverified rape ‘investigation’ claiming that Hamas had weaponized sexual violence on October 7. It was written by the paper’s pro-Israel Jerusalem-based reporter, Isabel Kershner.
Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times Op-ed piece titled The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians, published on May 11, was based on documentation and grueling victim testimonies of rapes that Palestinians have experienced at the hands of Israeli security forces. Brutal and sadistic acts of sexual torture are described in a piece that triggered enormous attention even though human rights organizations have been documenting these same crimes for years now.
The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has documented Israel’s sexual torture of Palestinian men, women and children calling the “Israeli prison system a network of torture camps.” Save the Children reported in July 2024 that Palestinian children in Israeli detention were facing “disease, increasing starvation, [and] abuse including sexual violence.” A Palestinian women’s rights organization warned that their documented 75 cases of rape and sexual violence against Palestinian women amounted to about 1% of what was actually happening in Israeli detention. Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor’s extensive report published on April 13, 2026, emphasized that the sexual torture was so bad it amounted to “another genocide behind walls.” They identified its purpose as a “systematic destruction of the body and identity.” The report emphasized the scope of “criminal responsibility,” by the collusion of state institutions that were creating impunity.
In a discussion about Kristof’s piece, Francesca Albanese, who has also documented brutal Israeli torture sites, told Al Jazeera’s UpFront that she had given a long interview about sexual torture to the New York Times as early as February 2024, but nothing came of it. Albanese went on to say she didn’t understand why the Times piece should have been “more important” than the extensive documentation of human rights monitors. But when Kristof finally acknowledged that Palestinians were being tortured and raped by trained dogs, (corroborated by a soldier) in Israeli prisons, it made headlines in the US and sent shock waves through Israel’s hasbara apparatus.
The agenda setting New York Times is a “paper of record,” with a journalism staff of 3000, about 7 percent of all journalists working in the US. The paper has also been a reliable source of pro-Israel messaging for years, especially after October 7, so when a well-respected human rights journalist wrote such an op-ed in its pages it was a public relations disaster for Israel and its propaganda machine went into high gear to counter the bad press. Zionists and genocide supporters protested in front of the Times building. Netanyahu was so outraged that he threatened to bring a defamation lawsuit against the paper. The Israel Foreign Ministry called the piece “blood liable” and accused Nicholas Kristof of writing “an endless stream of baseless lies and propaganda” that turned the “victims into the accused.”
It should come then, as no surprise that the paper attempted to “balance” Kristof’s essay by publishing a piece the very next day, on May 12, about another “two-year investigation” by Israel, that “concluded” that sexual violence by Hamas was widespread on October 7. Isabel Kirshner’s piece attempted to breathe new life into the thoroughly discredited and debunked original Times’ front-page ‘investigation’ titled Screams Without Words. Screams was first published on December 28, 2023, just as the South African legal case against Israel’s genocide was being presented to the International Court of Justice, and it served as a significant denial and justification for Israel’s genocidal violence at the time. Screams without Words can be described accurately (and has been) with the same words used by Israel’s Foreign Ministry to falsely describe Kristof’s piece; “an endless stream of baseless lies and propaganda.”
The timing of the now infamous rape story of 2023, along with its extravagant claims to evidence not found in the front-page article, had much to do with why, almost immediately, the piece drew critical attention from media analysts, independent investigative reporters, and human rights organizations. Withering criticisms of the story included an essay in Medium, calling it “crappy journalism,” saying it offered a “lesson on selection, slanting, and charged language, and why using words in these ways constitutes a poor substitute for solid evidence and reasoning.” An Egyptian feminist non-governmental organization (NGO) Speak Up, called the article a “disgraceful investigation,” and shamed the Times for claiming to provide readers with definitive evidence, while actually offering no evidence at all. Independent US investigators such as Electronic Intifada, The Grayzone, The Intercept, Mondoweiss and others, roundly debunked the fictionesque inventions continued within it. Sixty journalism professors wrote to the New York Times calling on the paper to commission an independent review of the article. It was “troubling to professors of journalism to see such a shoddy article be published without a retraction or an investigation,” Professor Deepa Kumar told Democracy Now! ………………………………………………………………
The paper’s 2026 version of the Hamas rape story was penned by one of the Times’ most reliably pro-Israeli reporters, Isabel Kershner, and this new ‘investigation’ once again takes seriously, discredited Israeli sources that Kershner claims to be independent and reliable…………………………………………………………………..
Isabell Kershner at the New York Times
Kershner has been providing positive reporting for Israeli Security Force for years now. With Kirshner, polishing the image of the IDF is a family affair. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Balancing legitimate reporting that includes reliable witness testimony confirmed by multiple human rights investigations over a period of years cannot be not done by publishing unverified allegations from discredited sources. Alan MacLeod noted a recuring media pattern here that applies to the New York Times’ reporting on Israel; “whenever scrutiny intensifies around Israeli abuses against Palestinians, major Western outlets redirect attention toward unverified claims against Hamas to justify Israel’s genocide in Gaza.”
Balancing Kristof’s rare acknowledgment of Israeli war crimes with reporting by a pro-Israel, biased journalist citing discredited sources repeating unverifiable allegations was a shameful, and failed, attempt to appease the state of Israeli as it expands its crimes of war and occupation into Lebanon for a Greater Isreal. The Times would do better to simply report the truth and stop catering to hasbara and the false narratives that facilitate Israel’s on-going genocidal violence.
Material from this piece was drawn from Chapter 4, “A Compromised Media Landscape,” and from Chapter 8, “The New York Times Rape Story: War Propaganda and Trauma Porn,” in The Complect Lens: US Media Coverage of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza, by Robin Andersen
Robin Andersen is professor emerita of media studies at Fordham University and an award-winning author of a dozen single- and co-authored books. Her work examines film, television, and media coverage of war, the environment, politics, and elections. She edits the Routledge Focus Book Series on Media and Humanitarian Action, serves as a Project Censored Judge, and contributes to the annual State of the Free Press. Andersen is on the Board of Directors of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), where she also writes regularly, and is an Izzy Award Judge for the Park Center for Independent Media. Her writing has appeared in CounterPunch, LA Progressive, The Progressive, Salon, Common Dreams, and ScheerPost, among others. https://scheerpost.com/2026/05/30/balancing-act-at-the-new-york-times-nicholas-kristofs-wrote-about-israels-sexual-torture-of-prisoners-the-next-day-isabel-kershner-penned-more-unverified-rape-allegations-against-h/
Nuclear-related news – not the corporate versions
Some bits of good news –The largest ever private sector school meals commitment will feed 366,000 children across East Africa.
British beavers stop underground station flooding – As floods get worse,Britain Tries a new solution: beavers.
The French City That Champions Its Trees
TOP STORIES.
An Open Letter to Chancellor Friedrich Merz – for peace in Ukraine – Jeffrey Sachs.
Arming for extinction: Barbarism With Better Software: Pope Leo Warns of the AI Future
The climate cost of militarism – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2ZUrzGohCI
The Trump administration’s reckless attack on radiation protection will have long-term consequences for public safety.
Climate Global heating is making hajj ever more dangerous, report finds. Global temperatures to reach near-record highs in next five years, report finds. Extreme Heat Headlines Obscure The Scale Of The Crisis.
AUSTRALIA.
- Nuclear powers are expanding their arsenals instead of disarming- Australia doesn’t have to be complicit in this.
- The Sound of Silence: Australia’s Complicity in the Face of Evidence.
- The Suicide Note: How Australia is Dismantling the Journalism it Needs to Survive.
- “Don’t mention the genocide”
NUCLEAR-RELATED ITEMS
| CLIMATE. Wildfire Crews Race to Keep Fierce California Blaze From Former Nuclear Reactor Site. ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2026/05/28/1-b1-wildfire-crews-race-to-keep-fierce-california-blaze-from-former-nuclear-reactor-site/ |
| CIVIL LIBERTIES. New breed of political prisoner arises in Britain as anti-protest sentences rise. |
| ECONOMICS. Nuclear Power and Other People’s Money. |
| ENERGY. Nuclear needs to build up to 8,000 SMRs just to catch up with wind and solar- By 2035, they might have 5. Energy Department takes steps toward allowing plutonium, historically used in weapons, in nuclear fuel. |
| ETHICS and RELIGION. The culture of power, and normalization of war in the time of artificial Intelligence -extract from Pope Leo’s Encyclical. How do you justify a war? |
| EVENTS. 1 June Webinar – The High Cost of Nuclear Power – Register 2 June Beyond Nuclear and Nuclear Information and Resource Service present an expert briefing on nuclear energy 6 June – WEBINAR -Get Inspired by Protests Against Military Bases! |
| HEALTH. Nuclear test veterans hope for justice as secret files are released -ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2026/05/28/1-b1-nuclear-test-veterans-hope-for-justice-as-secret-files-are-released/ |
| HISTORY. 128 years of US exploitation, degradation of Cuba continues on steroids. |
| HUMAN RIGHTS. Yet Another Escalation In The Empire’s War On Activism And Journalism. |
| INDIGENOUS ISSUES. Federal appeal court upholds First Nations victory to protect wildlife at planned nuclear waste site – ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2026/05/30/2-b1-federal-appeal-court-upholds-first-nations-victory-to-protect-wildlife-at-planned-nuclear-waste-site/ |
| LEGAL Anti-nuclear group take on Sellafield for the second time in legal row . Israel Ramps Up Demolitions of Palestinian Homes Ahead of Fall Elections. Legal Victory for Kebaowek First Nation and Allies vs. Proposed Radioactive Megadump. |
MEDIA.
- Warmongers Keep Generating AI Atrocity Propaganda About Iran.
- From Occupation to Erasure: How Legacy Media Failed Gaza.
- With .potential Iranian deal on the horizon, MAGA media’s drawing red lines
- Trump’s government-wide NDA (non disclosure agreement) seeks to silence whistleblowers.
| PERSONAL STORIES. Bully Trump pivots from strong Iran to weak Oman – Walt Zlotow |
| PLUTONIUM. U.S. Turns Cold War Plutonium Into Nuclear Fuel. Trump plan to give start-ups plutonium harvested from Cold War–era nuclear weapons is risky, experts say. |
POLITICS.
- Inside the broligarchy: Is big tech running US politics? Carole Cadwalladr talks to DW News.
- The False Promise of Nuclear Power: Why Scotland Doesn’t Need New Nuclear.
- The Israeli Knesset just voted to dissolve itself, but this won’t end the Gaza genocide
- It’s the genocide, stupid.
- Israel has a master plan to relocate thousands of Palestinian Bedouins to a giant ghetto .
POLITICS INTERNATIONAL and DIPLOMACY.
Can the Imperial Core Be Reformed? Chris Hedges and Aaron Maté on the Collapse of the Global Order.
Cuba Is Not a Failed State – It Is a Besieged State.
Time for US to deescalate confrontation with China over Taiwan.
Trump’s Retaliatory Withdrawal: America Punishes Europe for Refusing to Join Its War with Iran.
| TECHNOLOGY. A troubled nuclear future. |
| WASTES. Europe could source half its critical materials from waste by 2050, study finds. |
| WAR and CONFLICT. Even American war hawks now admit Iran is defeating the US – and it will change the world. Memorial Day: The Glorification of War, Not War’s Victims. |
| WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES. Norway becomes ninth country to come under French nuclear deterrence scheme. Deadly drone dangers. Huge injection of public money to build nuclear submarines at Barrow-in-Furness. |
How the War on Terror Created the Age of Trump (W/ Matt Kennard) | The Chris Hedges Report
SCHEERPOST, Chris Hedges Report, 28 May 26
In the United States, but also around the world, fascism is on the rise again, similar to what occurred in Germany and Italy after World War I. Its foot soldiers in the US include right wing extremists who enter the military, where they are welcomed and encouraged, for empowerment and training. The current Trump administration, includes Christian Nationalists, such as Pete Hegseth who heads the Pentagon, and openly supports fascist and Zionist leaders — Javier Milei in Argentina, Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, to name a few.
To understand the rise of neo-Nazis in the US military and law enforcement, Chris Hedges speaks with British investigative journalist Matt Kennard. For his new book, “Irregular Army,” Kennard interviewed hard-right veterans who were open about enlisting to gain the skills they need to wage RaHoWa, a Racial Holy War, at home.
The book demonstrates that the War on Terror gave rise to the Trump presidency. He cites the repressive powers granted to the state under the Patriot Act, the rise of the Imperial Presidency, the loosening of restrictions on qualifications for military recruitment, the cover up of atrocities committed by military members in Afghanistan and Iraq and the epidemic of PTSD as factors that allowed White Supremacy and racism to flourish in the United States government and military brass.
Hedges asks if an even more extremist body politic could develop. Kennard’s response is that many alarm bells are ringing: “I think that we’re on a slippery slope and things have been normalized now that we wouldn’t have even believed could be normalized a long time ago.” The fact that those in power do not have a cohesive strategy provides a ray of hope, but if we are to develop strategies to stop the rise of fascism, we must first understand the social and political factors that underlie it.
Transcript …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://scheerpost.com/2026/05/28/how-the-war-on-terror-created-the-age-of-trump-w-matt-kennard-the-chris-hedges-report/
Why Congress and senior officials must deny Trump a ‘nuclear escape’ in Iran
Bulletin, By Paul Slovic, Rose McDermott | Analysis | May 26, 2026
The most frightening possibility in the ongoing Iran war is not simply that the United States could deepen its involvement. It is that a US president whose own decisions helped create the crisis could come to see nuclear escalation as the clearest path out of humiliation, stalemate, and existential loss.
That risk should not be dismissed as fanciful.
Early in the war, Axios reported that the Pentagon was developing options for a “final blow” against Iran that could include a massive bombing campaign, the use of ground forces, and even deep operations to open the Strait of Hormuz and possibly secure highly enriched uranium buried deeply underground. The same report said some officials believed a crushing show of force might create leverage in talks or simply give President Donald Trump something with which to declare victory. The scenario under discussion is not a narrow raid but a wider escalatory pathway in which troop exposure, political embarrassment, and the desire for a dramatic concluding act could converge. That is precisely the type of setting in which nuclear danger can grow.
Recent events underscore the urgency of this concern. In late March and early April 2026, President Trump threatened strikes against Iranian energy and nuclear infrastructure if Tehran did not accept US terms, at one point warning that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” Later that month, he posted an AI-generated image of himself holding an assault rifle under the words “NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!” while again pressing Iran to “get smart soon” in negotiations.
These threats illustrate how readily catastrophic violence can be recast as justified leverage, necessary for demonstrating resolve, or framed as a moral necessity rather than as an unthinkable humanitarian disaster.
Putin in Ukraine, Trump in Iran. The parallel to an earlier analysis of Vladimir Putin, threatening to use his nuclear weapons in Ukraine, is uncomfortable but real. As we have argued in Foreign Affairs, the central question is not whether a struggling Putin is rational in some abstract sense, but how known psychological forces could shape his perception of losses, humiliation, and escape routes.
Nuclear escalation becomes more likely when a leader feels backed into a corner, when military efforts are failing, and when the line between preserving personal power and preserving the state begins to blur.
The same pattern could arise for Trump in Iran: Nuclear escalation becomes more likely when a leader’s personal standing becomes fused with a nuclear objective—when retreat begins to look like humiliation. Trump has recently framed the Iran conflict in such absolute terms. Asked about Americans’ financial hardship amid rising prices, he said, “The only thing that matters, when I’m talking about Iran: They can’t have a nuclear weapon. I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation.”
Yet the military picture appears far less decisive than that rhetoric suggests. IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi reportedly said that much of Iran’s near-bomb-grade uranium may remain buried in surviving tunnels at Isfahan, despite Trump’s earlier claims that US strikes had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program. The Strait of Hormuz has become a continuing strategic and economic crisis; Iran’s missile and nuclear assets, as well as its geographic control of oil transport, remain central to its bargaining position; and US forces have already suffered casualties. In such conditions, Trump may see further escalation not as reckless, but as necessary to rescue a failing policy, protect his image of dominance, and reclaim the appearance of control and alleged victory.
This, of course, does not mean Trump will use nuclear weapons. But it shows that the pathway of nuclear escape deserves sober attention now, before events narrow choices.
Psychology of bad choices. The danger is not only deliberate evil but the ordinary psychology of bad trade-offs under stress. Research with an Iran war scenario eerily similar to the one Trump may create shows[1] that support for nuclear strikes can rise when projected US troop casualties rise. This research also shows that psychic numbing weakens sensitivity to mass suffering, that comparative framing can make one horrific option look relatively better than others and therefore more acceptable, and that punitive dispositions are associated with greater support for nuclear use. These findings identify the psychological levers that can distort our leaders’ judgments in a crisis……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..https://thebulletin.org/2026/05/why-congress-and-senior-officials-must-deny-trump-a-nuclear-escape-in-iran/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=The%20Trump%20admin%20s%20attack%20on%20radiation%20protection&utm_campaign=20260528%20Thursday%20Newsletter
“Our Hands Are Dirty”: Jeffrey Wernick on America’s Founding Principles, Foreign Entanglements and the Moral Cost of Empire
Invoking George Washington, John Quincy Adams and the American abolitionist tradition, Jeffrey Wernick argues that permanent foreign attachments and endless war have pushed the United States far from the values it claims to defend.
XCNEERPOST, May 28, 2026, Joshua Scheer
Jeffrey Wernick delivers a sweeping and deeply provocative meditation on American foreign policy, arguing that the United States has abandoned the very principles its founders warned were essential to preserving the republic. Drawing on George Washington’s farewell address and John Quincy Adams’ warning that America “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy,” Wernick contends that modern U.S. policy has become defined by permanent alliances, military entanglements and moral contradictions that the founders would have viewed as dangerous to both liberty and republican government.
At the center of the speech is a sharp critique of America’s relationship with Israel and the broader logic of interventionist foreign policy. Wernick argues that U.S. support for occupation, military domination and endless regional conflict cannot be reconciled with the founding ideals of consent of the governed and universal human equality. At the same time, he rejects the cynical argument that America’s own historical crimes somehow excuse present injustices. Instead, he insists that the nation’s history of slavery, colonialism and war should deepen the obligation to resist repeating those patterns — not normalize them.
Moving between constitutional argument, moral philosophy and historical reflection, Wernick frames the current moment as a crisis of American identity itself: whether the country will continue down a path of empire and permanent war, or recover what he describes as the original American tradition of diplomacy without domination, commerce without conquest and principles applied universally rather than selectively.
Transcript
Our Hands Are Dirty: A Question of American Values
Jeffrey Wernick
In 1796, George Washington gave a farewell address to the American people. In it, he gave one specific warning: avoid permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.
He didn’t say avoid trade.
He didn’t say avoid diplomacy.
He said avoid the permanent attachments — the standing commitments that would entangle America in disputes that weren’t its own, generate domestic factions whose loyalties divided, and corrupt republican judgment with what he called:
“Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists.”
That sentence was written 230 years ago. Read it again. It describes our present moment with uncomfortable precision.
Twenty-five years after Washington’s address, John Quincy Adams stood as Secretary of State and faced calls for America to intervene on behalf of the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire. The Greeks were a sympathetic cause. They were fighting for freedom. They wanted American support.
Adams refused.
And the words he used to refuse have come down through American history:
“She goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”
He went further. If America went abroad in search of monsters, he warned:
“She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.”
This was the American foreign policy tradition at its founding.
Not isolationism.
Commerce with all nations.
Diplomacy with all nations.
Temporary cooperation when American interests required it.But no permanent attachments.
No going abroad to fight other people’s wars.
No identification of American interests with the interests of any particular foreign country.That tradition has been almost entirely abandoned in modern American foreign policy.
And it wasn’t abandoned through democratic deliberation. It was set aside quietly through executive arrangements and political pressure until departing from it required explanation, while maintaining it became invisible.
When we accept the modern framework as the natural baseline, certain questions become almost impossible to ask — the very questions Washington and Adams considered foundational.
Should the United States maintain treaty-equivalent commitments to foreign countries without ratified treaties?
Under the founders’ framework, the answer is obviously no. The Treaty Clause exists precisely to prevent permanent attachments from forming without Senate deliberation.
When such attachments form anyway through executive agreements, lobbying pressure and political momentum, they bypass the constitutional architecture designed to prevent them.
Should American military resources be expended defending another nation’s territory when that nation has chosen not to enter a treaty that would create reciprocal obligations?
Again, under the founders’ framework, no……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
American forces have expended more strategic missile defense ordnance defending Israel than Israel itself has expended defending itself.
This is in service of a war Israeli leadership reportedly pushed the United States to join.
Iran is not invading the United States.
Iran has no capability to invade the United States.Iran signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968 and accepted the most intrusive nuclear inspections regime ever applied to any country under the JCPOA.
Israel has not signed the NPT, has no IAEA inspections, and maintains an undeclared nuclear arsenal.
The state that accepted inspections is treated as the proliferation threat.
The state that refused inspections is treated as the legitimate party demanding constraints on the inspected one……………………………………………………………………………………..Permanent military rule over millions of people who have no voting rights in the government controlling their lives, no freedom of movement, no citizenship and no realistic political path to acquiring any of these — that is government without consent of the governed.
Exactly the kind of illegitimate rule the founders identified when they applied the analysis to themselves………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
So let me ask the question plainly:
Is it an American value to conquer, occupy and permanently subjugate another people?
Is it an American value to treat some human beings as less than fully human?
No…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Europe could source half its critical materials from waste by 2050, study finds
Europe could source half its critical materials from waste by 2050, study
finds. Recovery systems could help the region reclaim up to 5.7 million
tonnes of critical raw materials (CRMs) that are currently thrown away,
reducing European reliance on imported materials and strengthen supply
chain resilience.
The findings were published as part of the Future
Availability of Secondary Raw Materials (FutuRaM) project, which seeks to
map Europe’s ‘urban mine’ of unused or wasted metals and minerals lost in
discarded products, industrial residues and demolished infrastructure
across the EU27+4 (EU, UK, Switzerland, Iceland and Norway).
CRMs –
including rare earth metals, lithium and cobalt – underpin a host of modern
technologies, from smartphones and electric vehicles (EVs) to solar panels
and wind turbines. But currently, when these technologies reach the end of
their usable lives, many of these important materials are discarded, too.
Edie 27th May 2026,
https://www.edie.net/europe-could-source-half-its-critical-materials-from-waste-by-2050-study-finds/
Former Ambassador Joe Hockey says he is nervous about AUKUS – and wants Australia’s Prime Minister Albanese to cold-call Trump
Matthew Knott, May 26, 2026, https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/joe-hockey-says-he-is-nervous-about-aukus-and-wants-albanese-to-cold-call-trump-20260526-p600oa.html
Former ambassador to Washington Joe Hockey says he is worried about the possibility the United States will not supply nuclear-powered submarines to Australia as promised under the AUKUS pact because of faltering American production rates.
The former treasurer also urged Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to make a habit of cold-calling US President Donald Trump to improve their relationship and influence his thinking on world affairs.
Under the AUKUS plan, the US is supposed to sell three Virginia-class attack submarines to Australia, starting from 2032.
But senior US navy officials have warned that US shipyards must start pumping out significantly more submarines to have any spare for Australia, raising the possibility of the defence force being left with a capability gap.
Hockey, who served as Australia’s top diplomat in Washington from 2016 to 2020, told the National Press Club that “for the first time, I’m a little nervous about the Virginias, and that’s after a few conversations on the Hill”.
The US, he said, “just has not got the production of the Virginia up to speed”.
Hockey’s remarks are notable because he runs a Washington-based lobbying firm that represents major defence companies and he has been a passionate champion of AUKUS.
His remarks differ from Richard Marles, Defence Minister, who told this masthead last week that there was “zero possibility” of AUKUS coming unstuck.
Asked whether there was a growing danger the sale of Virginia-class submarines could be delayed or pared back, Hockey said: “I think the risk has increased, and we need again to have a full court press on the ground in Washington.”
He said that “we’ve got to prove that we’re ready for the Virginias here and display the physical capability to house them and to support their presence here, not to give the Americans any hook not to deliver”.
Hockey did not join calls for Australia to develop a “plan B” for AUKUS, saying it was not like Albanese could “go down to Bunnings” and buy a fleet of alternative submarines.
Hockey singled out US Deputy Secretary of War Steve Feinberg as a powerful official that Australia needed to court to ensure Trump’s vow that AUKUS is going “full steam ahead” is followed through.
“We’ve got to get political buy-in, more political buy-in, so that the people who are actually making the decisions on US procurement are keeping us at the top of the list,” he said.
Urging Australia to seek closer integration into US supply chains, Hockey said there was “no problem at a military-to-military or bureaucracy-to-bureaucracy level, it’s just a question of whether they can actually build the Virginias fast enough”.
Trump’s former acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, agreed with Hockey that it would be “really, really, really difficult” for the US to build enough submarines to provide any to Australia, despite strong bipartisan support for AUKUS in Washington.
“There’s going to be technical difficulties building that many submarines,” he said.
The US Navy’s chief of naval operations, Daryl Caudle, said last year: “The only way we’ll ever make good on the AUKUS agreement is that we get to the 2.3 [build rate], and it is my goal to make good on that.”
The US is currently producing around 1.2 boats a year, meaning production will need to increase significantly to hit the 2.3 build rate figure.
Hockey said US allies were “really missing” a figure like the former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, who developed a close relationship with Trump in his first term and spoke to him regularly on the phone.
Hockey lamented that among world leaders, “there’s no one that picks up the phone, they’re afraid almost to pick up the phone to the president [and] have a conversation.
“I mean, he answers phone calls from random journalists around the world, and it’s not hard to get his cell number, and he answers it,” he said.
“I’d encourage the prime minister to ring him occasionally. I mean, what have you got to lose? Australian prime ministers have been confidants of US presidents more than people realise, and I think the president of the United States is missing that back channel of advice.”
It has become something of a running joke among American journalists about how easy it is to obtain Trump’s phone number and call him for stories.
Albanese last year said he had Trump’s phone number after he remarked during an election debate that he’s “not sure that he has a mobile phone” and that texting a fellow world leader is “not the way it works”.
1 This Month
1 June Webinar – The High Cost of Nuclear Power – Register
6 June – WEBINAR- Get Inspired by Protests Against Military Bases!
Cuba Is Not a Failed State – It Is a Besieged State
PETITION: “Global Appeal to Endorse Palestinian Right of Return of Refugees”
of the week– Nuclear Reactor Information Task Force
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