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Adi Roche: My nightmare is that the next Chernobyl event occurs at Chernobyl itself

There may be an impression 40 years on that Chernobyl is something which happened a very long time ago and no longer poses a threat to the world, but the reality is very different. Chernobyl is not something from the past – Chernobyl is forever. The impact of that single nuclear incident can never be undone; its radioactive footprint is still affecting countless millions of people.

For the first time in history, nuclear facilities have been weaponised in active warfare. This is not Cold War rhetoric – it is a new and terrifying reality. If we remain silent, we are playing with a loaded gun.

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There may be a view that the nuclear disaster is an event from long ago and no longer poses a threat, but the reality is very different

Adi Roche, Sat Apr 25 2026 – https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026/04/25/adi-roche-my-worst-nightmare-is-that-the-next-chornobyl-could-be-chornobyl-itself/

At exactly 01:23 on the morning of April 26th, 1986, a chain of events in Reactor No 4 at Chernobyl nuclear power station in Ukraine triggered the world’s worst nuclear disaster.

The first of the explosions blew a 1,000-ton roof off reactor No 4 as though it was the lid of a saucepan, and a second, bigger explosion disintegrated the reactor core, rocketing tons of deadly radioactive material high into the night sky like a blazing meteor.Only 3 per cent of the reactor’s nuclear fuel escaped in the first catastrophic moments. Up to 200 tons of uranium dioxide fuel remains buried in the broken heart of reactor 4.

In that instant, the world changed forever.

A new word, Chernobyl, entered into the history of world disasters and the history of the world with deadly and frightful force. The sun shone, the wind blew, rain fell – and so did the deadly radioactive poison with it.

A nuclear catastrophe does not conclude when the cameras leave. It seeps into the soil, the water, the food chain, and embeds itself in the DNA of all living things. It passes silently from one generation to the next, creating what has become commonly known as “Chernobyl lineage”, as the damage and devastation leans into the next generation.

For four decades, I have walked beside the victims of this tragedy. I have held children whose tiny thyroid glands were attacked by poisonous radioactive iodine 131, as their small bodies mistook it for naturally occurring safe iodine. I have listened to some of “liquidators” – the 800,000 young men, including many conscripted, who were sent into the convulsing fires of hell with shovels and bare hands to contain the inferno – describe running across radioactive rooftops for 60 seconds at a time, knowing that every second shortened their lives. We missed a far greater nuclear explosion at Chernobyl by a hair’s breadth because of these brave men. Without the intervention by the liquidators, there would have been even further widespread contamination and radioactivity on a global level.

“To those who saved the world” are the words on the monument to the liquidators at the site in Chernobyl. Hailed as heroes in 1986, they are now discarded and forgotten, their ill-health dismissed by the authorities as being unrelated to their exposure to extraordinary levels of radiation and the lack of adequate safety precautions. Many of them paid with their health and their lives. Today, too many of them battle for pensions and medical care while their suffering is dismissed or minimised. Their self-sacrifice cannot be overstated.

There may be an impression 40 years on that Chernobyl is something which happened a very long time ago and no longer poses a threat to the world, but the reality is very different. Chernobyl is not something from the past – Chernobyl is forever. The impact of that single nuclear incident can never be undone; its radioactive footprint is still affecting countless millions of people.

It is impossible to say whether we are over the peak of the consequences of radioactive contamination, or whether we are just on the threshold. The consequences will last for up to 20,000 years. Other disasters are vying for the world’s attention while Chernobyl has been relegated to history, even though the latency period for some cancers is estimated to be up to 60 years – so the worst could yet be to come.

[ ‘Sometimes I can’t sleep at night’: Adi Roche warns of nuclear risks of Ukraine conflict as she picks up peace awardOpens in new window ]

The ghost of Chernobyl was dragged back into headlines on February 24th, 2022, as Russian troops drove tanks through the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone on their way to Kyiv. Places such as Chernobyl’s Red Forest, regarded as among the most radioactive landscapes on Earth, became a military corridor, and deeply radioactive soil that had lain undisturbed for decades was churned up again. Radiation does not need a passport. It does not respect boundaries or borders, travelling wherever the wind takes it. Soon after, Russian forces occupied Europe’s largest nuclear plant in Zaporizhzhia. For the first time in history, nuclear facilities have been weaponised in active warfare. This is not Cold War rhetoric – it is a new and terrifying reality. If we remain silent, we are playing with a loaded gun.

‘We must call for nuclear facilities to be declared permanent “no war zones” under international law. Attacks on nuclear sites must be treated unequivocally as war crimes’

Nuclear power plants were always considered globally “off-limits” because of their deadly catastrophic potential. The collision between warfare and nuclear energy has created a threat with consequences not just for Ukraine, but for Europe and the world and all the generations yet unborn. This weaponising of nuclear facilities has resulted in a collision between warfare and nuclear power, which is a whole new threat with potentially devastating, unimaginable consequences for humankind for centuries to come. This is nuclear terrorism.

The issues associated with Chernobyl have become even more urgent, particularly following the Valentine’s Day 2025 drone strikes on the nuclear power plant, further escalating the war. The impregnable sarcophagus that is meant to protect humanity from radiation is scarred and breached, heightening the risk of another nuclear catastrophe and bringing with it a sense of foreboding for wars of the future.My worst nightmare in this conflict is that the tragedy of a second Chernobyl would be unleashed on the world. The next Chernobyl-type event could happen at Chernobyl itself.

Ireland knows something about solidarity. Compassion became our calling card and is the heartbeat of our society.

That is needed now more than ever. The Irish proverb “Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine” hasnever been more apt.

We must call for nuclear facilities to be declared permanent “no war zones” under international law. Attacks on nuclear sites must be treated unequivocally as war crimes.

The “war” that has been waged by what happened at Chernobyl is a silent, invisible but deadly one. No associated smells, no visible signs – nothing to forewarn you of danger.

Deadly radiation flows in rivers, towns, streams and forests. It clicks endlessly, ferociously, in Geiger counters, into the silent numbness that is, and sadly always will be, Chernobyl

If we fail to learn from Chernobyl, we betray those who died and those who still suffer. If we fail to act, we risk repeating the unthinkable. Chernobyl is not history, it is a warning. We cannot, will not, turn away.

Adi Roche is the founder and voluntary chief executive of Chernobyl Children International

April 30, 2026 Posted by | safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Perspectives on nuclear power

Jens Weibezahn ab, Björn Steigerwald b, Arman Aghahosseini c, Christian von Hirschhausen bd, Mark Z. Jacobson e, Christian Breyer c Energy Policy (accessed), Scidence Direct, 26th April 2026

Highlights

  • •Nuclear competitiveness hinges on optimistic cost and financing assumptions.
  • •Renewables plus flexibility dominate least-cost decarbonisation pathways.
  • •New nuclear plays only marginal role under realistic system conditions.
  • •Empirical data contradicts optimistic nuclear deployment scenarios.
  • •Nordic case shows nuclear role shaped by policy and financing limits.

Abstract

This study reassesses the role of nuclear power in low-carbon electricity transitions under prevailing cost, finance, and system conditions. Using harmonised international data and observed 2024 operational metrics, we conduct a modelling-based stress test that evaluates how nuclear power performs when realistic construction, financial, and flexibility assumptions are applied.

The results show that large nuclear power shares in prior modelling studies emerge primarily under optimistic conditions: Low overnight capital cost, reduced financing risk, or constrained renewable energy portfolios. When empirically validated inputs and full flexibility options are included, least-cost system pathways are consistently dominated by renewable energy-based portfolios complemented by storage, demand response, and existing dispatchable assets, while new nuclear power contributes only marginally.

Empirical project evidence from recent builds corroborates the modelling results: prolonged construction duration and extended financing exposure significantly elevate effective project cost, irrespective of nominal levelised cost estimates.

The Nordic region provides a natural comparative lens, revealing divergent governance models and public acceptance trajectories across Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Norway, yet a shared economic constraint shaped by financing structure, risk allocation, and system alternatives.

Overall, the findings indicate that under current techno-economic parameters and financing environments, renewable-centred energy portfolios form the cost-optimal foundation for power sector decarbonisation. Nuclear power remains a system- and policy-specific option that can contribute where governments assume substantial construction and financing risk and offer long-term capital recovery mechanisms. Transparent modelling assumptions and explicit financing terms are therefore essential for credible assessments of future nuclear deployment. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421526002752

April 30, 2026 Posted by | ENERGY | Leave a comment

EU economic sanctions ramp up NATO war plan on Russia

Two-thirds of the EU loan – some €60 bn – is reportedly allocated for military aid. Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, said that the first tranche worth €45 bn will be transferred to Ukraine within weeks and that it would be used to increase the production of aerial combat drones

Strategic Culture Foundation, 24 April 2026, https://strategic-culture.su/news/2026/04/24/eu-economic-sanctions-ramp-up-nato-war-plan-on-russia/

The European Union announced its 20th round of economic sanctions against Russia this week. The bloc of 27 nations began imposing sanctions on Moscow when the conflict in Ukraine erupted in February 2022. Every six months, the EU has been extending these economic measures, which Brussels claims is support for Ukraine to “deter Russian aggression.”

The 20th round of sanctions unveiled this week attempts to go much further in inflicting damage on the Russian economy. It was flagged as the biggeset package yet and a “multi-layered targeting of key sectors” of the Russian economy, primarily its energy industry.

It is tempting to dismiss the EU sanctions policy as feeble and a form of insanity. The bloc keeps repeating an action expecting a different result each time, when the record shows that the action of sanctions is having little detrimental impact on Russia. If anything, it is the EU that has suffered an economic downturn as it unilaterally cut itself off from Russian oil and gas, the traditional source of affordable energy feedstock for European industries. Russia’s economy has not crashed as was anticipated when the sanctions were first imposed more than four years ago. In fact, the Russian Federation has maintained a robust economic performance as it finds alternative markets in Asia for its oil and gas products. The soaring price for a barrel of crude due to the reckless U.S.-Israeli aggression on Iran has given Russia a further boost.

However, it would be a mistake to simply brush off the EU sanctions as futile and self-defeating.

There is a more blatant and sinister aspect to the new round of sanctions. Brussels is nakedly showing its war agenda. The new measures aim to restrict all sectors of Russian energy production, including “exploration, extraction, refining and transportation.” The EU is endeavoring to tighten restrictions on “third countries” to prevent Russia from circumventing existing embargoes on shipping, port access and trade. Whether these new measures achieve their objective of “crippling the Russian economy” is debatable. But it is the belligerent intention – stated now with more determination – that is significant. The EU is brazenly laying out a plan to strangle Russia in conjunction with upping the military threat.

It is the accompanying developments that are ominous and which give full meaning to the economic measures.

This week the EU hailed that its €90 billion ($105 bn) loan to Ukraine had finally been approved. That financial aid was blocked by Hungary since December. But with the recent election loss for Viktor Orbán’s government, Budapest’s veto has been lifted under the new prime minister, Péter Magyar. EU leaders were ecstatic that the financial transfer to Ukraine can now go ahead.

Two-thirds of the EU loan – some €60 bn – is reportedly allocated for military aid. Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, said that the first tranche worth €45 bn will be transferred to Ukraine within weeks and that it would be used to increase the production of aerial combat drones. “Drones from Ukraine for Ukraine,” she said by way of trying to give the impression that the EU is not a party to the war.

An EU leaders’ two-day summit held in Cyprus on April 24-25 was reported with celebratory mood. Von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa, along with the EU’s Foreign Affairs Commissioner, Kaja Kallas, were cock-a-hoop at the “breakthrough” of releasing the largest single financial package to Ukraine so far in combination with the new economic sanctions aimed at drilling down on Russia’s economic core. Attending the summit in Cyprus was Ukraine’s nominal president, Vladimir Zelensky, who reportedly joined the EU leaders for dinner to discuss new developments.


It gets even more sinister. The Kiev regime has been stepping up deep air strikes on Russian energy and other industrial infrastructure. There is no doubt the regime is being assisted with NATO expertise in finding such wide-ranging targets in Russia’s vast territory. This week, for example, a drone strike hit an industrial facility in Novokuybyshevsk in the central Samara region, nearly 900 kilometers southeast of Moscow and nearly 2,000 kms from the warzone in Donbass.

Clearly, the EU’s economic strikes are designed to reinforce the damage that NATO is trying to inflict with drones and missiles on Russia’s industrial base. These are not separate initiatives but an integral war strategy.


In announcing the latest round of sanctions Kaja Kallas could hardly contain her Russophobic glee. “Today we have broken the deadlock. On top of the €90-billion loan for Ukraine, we have adopted the 20th sanctions package,” she said.

Deceptively, the sanctions were billed as “increasing pressure on Russia to stop its brutal war of aggression and engage in meaningful negotiations towards a just and last peace.”

That’s a cynical con – a con that is betrayed by the EU’s own stated objective of “crippling” the Russian economy. How can one have a “just and lasting peace” by crippling a country?

The real purpose of the funds that EU citizens will have to pay through decades of indebtedness is to escalate NATO’s war in Ukraine against Russia. The economic sanctions are war measures aimed at maximising the impact of military attacks.

Other developments this week raise the stakes to even more sinister levels.

French President Emmanuel Macron and Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk discussed joint nuclear weapons “scenarios” in a bilateral summit in Gdansk. The French leader wants to share his country’s nuclear weapons capabilities with other European countries. It is reported that French and Polish warplanes will begin joint exercises on flying nuclear weapons in the Baltic region. This is evidently meant as a threat to Russia. It amounts to Paris and Warsaw carrying out training exerises for nuclear strikes on Russia.

In yet another provocative development, it is reported that Britain is leading a NATO Joint Expeditionary Force to formulate a naval plan to blockade the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad located between Poland and Lithuania. Kaliningrad provides Russia with vital port access to the Baltic Sea.

The European NATO leaders are concerned that U.S. President Donald Trump has lost interest in the “Ukraine project” against Russia owing to his reckless war with Iran. That is why they are ramping up the war effort against Russia while telling barefaced lies about wanting to achieve “lasting peace.”

So far, the EU’s economic sanctions against Russia have been an abject failure. But the failure of economic measures is no longer the point. It is what they reveal about an intensifying NATO war plan against Russia.

Moscow has repeatedly called for a negotiated end to the conflict while the EU and NATO accuse Russian leader Vladimir Putin of “not wanting peace.”

People can make their own minds up about who the aggressors are. NATO is at war with Russia and is not interested in negotiations. Criminally, the NATO aggressors are creating a boiling frog situation for Russia. The European russophobic leaders seem to want war at any cost.

April 30, 2026 Posted by | business and costs, EUROPE | Leave a comment

  Satellites launched for coming war on China

Space Development Agency launches first operational satellites

By Courtney Albon, Sep 11, 2025, https://www.defensenews.com/space/2025/09/10/space-development-agency-launches-first-operational-satellites/

The Space Development Agency launched its initial batch of operational satellites on Wednesday, kicking off a 10-month campaign to deliver more than 150 satellites to low Earth orbit.

The 21 satellites, all built by York Space Systems, flew on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The spacecraft are part of SDA’s Transport Layer, designed to provide fast, secure communication capability to military operators.

The launch represents a new phase for SDA, which since 2019 has been crafting plans for a large constellation of government-owned missile tracking and data transport satellites in low Earth orbit. Its first spacecraft, Tranche 0, launched in 2023 and 2024 and have been used to demonstrate capabilities like laser communication between satellites, with the ground and recently between a commercial partner’s satellite and an SDA terminal installed on an aircraft in flight.

Once on orbit, the Tranche 1 satellites launched today will build on that work. Following initial payload health and safety checks, the spacecraft could start providing operational capability to combatant commands and other users within four to six months, according to acting SDA Director Gurpartap Sandhoo.

“This is the first time we’ll be able to start working with our COCOMs, our joint force to start integrating space into their operations and getting the warfighters used to using space from this construct,” Sandhoo told reporters prior to the launch. “This is the first time we’ll have the space layer fully integrated into our warfare operations.”

SDA’s first user group, whom Sandhoo called “early adopters,” includes military operators in the Indo-Pacific. This initial work is key, he added, to familiarize the services and combatant commands with the capability SDA can provide.

“Doing the warfighter immersion is going to be critical because they have to get trained on this and we have to provide this capability,” Sandhoo said. “That’s what Tranche 1 will start doing.”

Tranche 1 will include 154 satellites — 126 for the Transport Layer and 28 for the Tracking Layer. The first 21 spacecraft will bring a limited coverage and capacity, but that will increase over time as more reach orbit.

Starting with today’s launch, SDA plans to fly a new batch of Tranche 1 satellites each month for 10 months, with six of those missions carrying transport spacecraft and four flying missile warning and tracking satellites. The first few launches will be dedicated transport missions, but Sandhoo said tracking satellites will start to fly early next year.

The next mission is slated for mid-October and will feature satellites built by Lockheed Martin.

By the end of Tranche 1, Sandhoo said, SDA hopes to be providing regional capacity. Tranche 2, scheduled to start launching in late 2026, will further expand the constellation’s reach.

The agency is making headway on future missile tracking capabilities beyond Tranche 2 — which could provide essential support for the Pentagon’s Golden Dome missile shield — but the longer-term future of the Transport Layer is uncertain. The effort is fully funded through Tranche Two, but the Space Force has paused work on Tranche 3 amid an ongoing study considering whether the constellation is the best solution to meet the U.S. military’s data transport needs.

Sandhoo said the stalled funding will delay SDA’s plans to expand from regional to global transport coverage.

April 30, 2026 Posted by | space travel, USA | Leave a comment

Israel Kills Journalist in Lebanon After “Hunting” Down Her and a Colleague

 April 25, 2026, By Sharon Zhang, https://scheerpost.com/2026/04/25/israel-kills-journalist-in-lebanon-after-hunting-down-her-and-a-colleague/

Israel targeted the slain journalist’s colleague with three strikes, including one on an ambulance she was in.

Israeli forces killed journalist Amal Khalil and wounded her colleague, Zeinab Faraj, on Wednesday, firing multiple strikes on the journalists in southern Lebanon in Israel’s latest attack on journalists covering its violence across the region.

Khalil and Faraj were taking cover in a nearby house after an Israeli strike near their car, while they were out reporting on an Israeli strike on another vehicle. While at the house, Khalil reached out to family and Lebanese officials, notifying them of her location, but Israeli forces bombed the house, collapsing it. 

Rescuers pulled Faraj from the wreckage, but Israeli forces fired at emergency workers trying to reach Khalil, delaying her rescue, according to Lebanese officials. Khalil’s body was only recovered hours later from the rubble.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces also fired, for a third time, on the ambulance transporting Faraj to the hospital, Lebanese media reported, in an incident described by critics as the Israeli forces “hunting her down.” Faraj underwent surgery at the hospital and was brought to stable condition.

Khalil was a veteran reporter for the Al-Akhbar newspaper. The left-wing journalist was raised under Israeli occupation in the 1980s in southern Lebanon, and was driven by a desire to chronicle daily life in south Lebanon under constant threat of Israeli invasion and bombardment.

“On a personal level, resistance means everything to me,” Khalil said in an interview, translated from Arabic, with The Public Source last year. “Through my work, I have tried to be in solidarity with these people — the people of the land.”

Khalil was also an animal lover, and devoted her free time to rescuing and sheltering stray cats in her family home in Baysariyyeh, in southern Lebanon.

“This was a blatant murder. This was a targeted assassination,” said independent Lebanon journalist Courtney Bonneau. “The Israeli army committed multiple flagrant war crimes this afternoon, during this incident.”

Lebanon’s prime minister, Nawaf Salam, said in a statement that the strikes on the journalists were war crimes. 

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemned Israel’s targeting of the journalists as a “brutal and recurring crime.” “Khalil, an unarmed civilian journalist, remained trapped under the rubble for more than seven hours while the Red Cross was prevented from reaching her,” said Sara Qudah, Middle East and North Africa regional director for CPJ, in a statement.

The multiple strikes on the journalists are seemingly part of a practice by Israel to strike the same or similar locations multiple times in order to kill targets and then attack the people who come to rescue them.

Just a week before the killing of Khalil, Israeli forces carried out a “quadruple-tap” attack on Mayfadoun, in southern Lebanon. Israel struck the city, then struck three more times as successive waves of paramedics arrived on the scene. In all, the attacks killed four medics and wounded six others, The Guardian reported last week.

April 30, 2026 Posted by | Israel, media | Leave a comment

Antisemitism and Israel: A challenge to the Australian narrative (Part 1)

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has delivered the 21-page report, ‘Torture and genocide: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967’, dated 19 February 2026. Albanese’s team outline the depths of depravity and inhumanity to which the Israeli regime has now sunk in its attempted destruction of the Palestinian people.

By Evan Jones | 27 April 2026, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/antisemitism-and-israel-a-challenge-to-the-australian-narrative,20974

A provocative Royal Commission submission by Dr Evan Jones argues that Australia’s antisemitism debate cannot be separated from Israel, Zionism and their political influence.

Submission to the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion

Part 1

General

This submission can be reduced to one word — Israel.

There you have the answer to your inquiry. Dismantle apartheid Israel and see so-called “antisemitism” disappear overnight, save for a small ineradicable but prosecutable fringe

There is really no reason for this Royal Commission at all, as the problem is self-evident. The Commission will not solve the problem that it was formally established to resolve because its agenda is diversionary. Indeed, it will compound the problem because it will, in all probability (as it is seemingly intended to do), reinforce the influence of the Australian Zionist lobby and thus the ongoing impunity of Israel.

The problem arises from the conflation of two forces.

One: Israel is a nation founded on terrorism and wilfully sustained on deep-seated racism.

We know that nation-states are perennially born of violence, expropriation and repression (Australia as a case study), but Israel is a pronounced variation on a common colonialist theme. Israel was born of naked terrorism against an entire (non-Jewish) indigenous population. It was explicitly created and has been sustained as a racist apartheid state. Its borders have never been determined, envisaging ongoing expansion (lebensraum) — “from the river to the sea” (and beyond).

Palestinian Israelis (descendants of those whom the Zionist terrorist gangs failed to expel) are second-class citizens. Palestinian non-Israelis, under Occupation and under martial law, are denied the most basic human rights. Gaza has been a concentration camp since Sharon supposedly “disengaged” from Gaza in 2005.

The sadistic murder of Gazans since October 2023 is reminiscent of the Germans’ feverish pursuit of Jews and Bolsheviks after Operation Barbarossa in June 1941. Israel has long undermined United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) personnel and facilities, which attempt to instil a modicum of humanity into a population long starving from Israeli blockages. Israel endorses carnage by fanatical settlers on West Bank Palestinians, murdering and destroying Palestinian livelihoods at will — for which they enjoy absolute immunity.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) murder children with pleasure. Children are imprisoned indefinitely for throwing stones. Adult prisoners are tortured and murdered. Israel wilfully murders foreign dignitaries (most recently, the Iranian National Security Council chief Ali Larijani, reputed “moderate” and skilled negotiator), which highlights that mass murderer Benjamin Netanyahu has put to words what has been the manifesto of all Israeli leadership: there will never be a Palestinian state (September 2025).

Long-term ethnic cleansing has now turned to genocide, ongoing in defiance of the formal “ceasefire”. Israel destroys essential infrastructure, murders aid workers and journalists — because it can. The journalist murder count is now further “totting up” in southern Lebanon.

Representative — this month (March 2026) marks the 23rd anniversary of the crushing of American Rachel Corrie by an Israeli bulldozer.

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has delivered the 21-page report, ‘Torture and genocide: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967’, dated 19 February 2026. Albanese’s team outline the depths of depravity and inhumanity to which the Israeli regime has now sunk in its attempted destruction of the Palestinian people.

Some excerpts:

Torture has always been a central feature of Israel’s dispossession of Palestinians. Yet, since October 2023, Israel has employed it on a scale that suggests collective vengeance and destructive intent.

Torture is not confined to cells and interrogation rooms. Through the cumulative impact of mass displacement, siege, denial of aid and food, unrestrained military and settler violence and pervasive surveillance and terror, the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) has become a space of collective punishment, where the destruction of the conditions of life turns genocidal violence into a tool of collective torture with long-term mental and physical consequences for the occupied population.

During its Mandate in Palestine, Britain used torture as one of the counterinsurgency tactics honed in Ireland and later imparted to Zionist militias; such practices, a colonial legacy, were then absorbed into the Israeli security apparatus before and after 1948 as a tool of repression and a preventive measure against Palestinian resistance. From early State-building and through decades of occupation, Israel has practised and condoned coercive violence as a structural component of its apparatus of domination.

An ecosystem of discriminatory legal frameworks and abusive operational practices has metastasized, encompassing Israeli military detention sites and prisons.

Since October 2023, torture in detention has, been used on an unprecedented scale as punitive collective vengeance — a clear feature of genocide. All Palestinians have been treated collectively as “terrorists” and “security threats”.

For her luminous competence, commitment and courage, Albanese was subject to comprehensive oppressive sanctions by the unhinged U.S. Trump Administration in July 2025.

Israel defies all international institutions and laws that proscribe the abuse of state power. Israel’s lobbying and propaganda regime (hasbara) is probably the most extensive of any state in history. Israeli authorities lie about the state’s forces’ actions without remorse.

The Israeli state is a parasite, receiving over US$300 billion (AU$418.7 billion) in aid from U.S. governments since 1950 (a great deal of which flows back to U.S. weapons manufacturers), supplemented by an estimated US$2 billion (AU$2.8 billion) per annum in donations from overseas Jewish “charities”, propped up at the country taxpayers’ expense. In particular, the Jewish National Fund directs funds to obliterating indigenous history in historic Palestine.

In short, the state of Israel is a pariah state, a barbaric regime, an abomination.

Two: All self-described “official” Jewish representative organisations in Australia support and lobby for Israel unreservedly. It is a full-time occupation. 

Such “representative” organisations oppose basic human rights for Palestinians under Israeli control. They socialise their children into “a love of Israel” in Jewish “faith” schools. Some of their children are currently enrolled with the IDF to kill Palestinians.

Such organisations lobby Australian governments to support Israel, inhibiting Australian governments from adopting a principled stance towards Israeli criminality. They harass media management and editorial, thus gaining privileged access to and biased coverage from media outlets that the public relies on for supposedly unbiased information and opinion. Their ridiculous defences of Israel (op-eds, letters, buying off journalists) are published with great regularity. Anti-Zionist Australian Jews (vide Louise Adler and so on) and their organisations (the recently formed Jewish Council of Australia) are pilloried, indeed “excommunicated”.

In essence, Australian Jewish “representative” organisations act as a fifth column for a foreign state against Australian national interests – naturally antagonistic to ‘social cohesion’.

One and two in combination.

The Australian Jewish community, by virtue of its “official” representatives, courageous dissenters excepted, is complicit in Israeli genocide. And not just passively but actively. There has been no mea culpa on the part of executives of the key Jewish organisations (such as ECAJ, ZFA, AIJAC). Nobody in the Jewish community that underpins these organisations has sought to overturn the leadership of these key organisations in order to reorient their agenda and priorities.

In short, Israel and the “official” Australian Jewish community are joined at the hip.

It is not unrealistic to infer that the Bondi attack (and multiple incidents simply labelled “antisemitic”) is blowback for Israel’s character and actions and its local support network. The Israeli machine thus puts the security of global Jewry at risk (indeed, its own Jewish population) and doesn’t care.

A Zionist foot soldier is published in The Sydney Morning Herald (22 March), in denial regarding the intimate connection:

‘While David Leser’s article (SMH & Melbourne Age, 20 March [2026]) raises some thought-provoking points, it falls into the trap of attributing antisemitism in Australia to the actions of the Israeli Government. No other national or ethnic group in Australia is held to account for the actions of governments in countries overseas. So why is it considered reasonable for Jews in Australia to be relentlessly discriminated against for the actions of the Netanyahu Government?’

After the Bondi Beach murders, Israeli flags were well represented among the flower collections and mourners. Israel is apparently seen as the mother ship, the source of solace for those suffering, yet it is the ultimate cause of that suffering.

This bizarre anomaly is enhanced when the Zionist Federation of Australia (as befits its name) initiated the idea of inviting the Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, to Australia, subsequently legitimised and authorised by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and dragging the Governor-General into the sordid process.

Another foot soldier grasps the connection but declines to understand the implications (SMH, 9 January 2026):

‘President Herzog is the legitimate head of state of the internationally recognised democratic state of Israel, rightfully invited to commiserate with Australians after the appalling terrorist atrocity at Bondi, in which predominantly Jewish people were murdered and injured.’

One notes in passing that Israel is not a democracy but an ethnocracy — no amount of affirmation is going to change the lie and the blind spot in the letter writer’s eye. To repeat, Israel is apparently seen as the mother ship, the source of solace for those suffering, yet it is the ultimate cause of that suffering. ‘Rightfully invited’ — really?

Herzog is not a passive head of state but an active participant in Israeli barbarism. Herzog comes to Australia, spends a token moment with victim families and survivors, declines to visit the fire-bombed Orthodox (non-Zionist) Adass Israel synagogue (“for reasons of security”) and spends the bulk of his time playing Israeli politician (‘not the time for a two-state solution’, meets with ASIO and so on).  

The implication is ugly. Those murdered at Bondi are being instrumentalised (as with Netanyahu’s treatment of Hamas’ Israeli hostages) in the defence of the state of Israel and its current genocidal agenda. Appalling, no?

April 30, 2026 Posted by | Atrocities, AUSTRALIA, Israel, politics | Leave a comment

Antisemitism and Israel: A challenge to the Australian narrative (Part 2)

By Evan Jones | 27 April 2026, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/antisemitism-and-israel-a-challenge-to-the-australian-narrative,20974

Part 2

The Commission’s Terms of Reference

‘AND the determination of the Australian Government to respond to the attack, and the factors leading up to the attack, as a matter of urgency by addressing antisemitism within the Australian community, including since 7 October 2023.’

Investigating the factors leading up to the attack could and should have been the responsibility of the mooted and more suited Richardson review. A royal commission is not the most appropriate vehicle towards this end.

Any investigation regarding “antisemitism” in Australia has to put Israel front and centre. The “official” Jewish community, AKA the Zionist lobby, naturally wants to exclude it.

The appalling Segal Report contains no substantive reference to Israel (my dissection here and here), thus being not merely worthless but disingenuous (vide Gwenaël Velge’s summary of the counter-Segal Greenslade and Briskman report, Not in Our Name: Jewish Australians Speak Out) and dangerous. Ditto the absence of any substantive reference to Israel in the most recent annual report (December 2025) of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (sic) (dissected here).

‘AND that the Australian Government has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism.’

This submitter is frankly gobsmacked to find that this fraudulent “definition” has been officially adopted. The definition has been widely criticised, including by one of its originators, Kenneth Stern. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition is essentially about demonising criticism of Israel. Any proposed definition of antisemitism that attempts to delineate the terms on which one is allowed to criticise Israel without censure is automatically illegitimate.

The adoption of the IHRA definition nullifies any legitimacy that the paraphernalia of a royal commission might have and destroys any prospect of an honest analysis and a substantive functional prognosis. This adoption of the IHRA definition gives the impression that the Royal Commission, even inadvertently, will serve as yet another front for the pro-Israel lobby.

With the Royal Commission proceeding based on the IHRA definition, it can only turn into an inquisition. It can have nothing intelligent or ethical to offer about real antisemitism and can have nothing to offer in terms of genuinely dealing with it. It will be remembered as a squandering of the significant money that funds it and for the farcical theatre that is its essence.

‘AND recognising that strengthening the national consensus in support of democracy, freedom and the rule of law (social cohesion) provides the strongest defence against antisemitism and other forms of religious and ideologically motivated extremism.’

This sentence reads like it was written by AI. Who wrote this rubbish? One cannot have social cohesion as long as a particular Australian community coheres and operates actively as a fifth column in support of a foreign rogue state and influences Australian politics, both foreign and domestic, and media towards that end.

AND that hearing from the Jewish Australian community will be important to informing the recommendations of your inquiry and recognising concerns relating to educational and cultural institutions, and other sections of Australian society.’

Which ‘Jewish Australian community’? Is this obscurantism a product of naivete or of cynical contempt? Is the pro-Israel lobby running this show? Will anti-Zionist Jews and their organisations be consulted? Will anti-Zionist non-Jewish organisations (which have Jewish membership), such as the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, be consulted?

‘…and recognising concerns relating to educational and cultural institutions…’ Meaning? Which and whose concerns? Is this an oblique reference to forthcoming censorship, sackings, institutional defunding and hasbara implants as foreshadowed in the Segal Report?

To the Honourable Virginia Bell AC

We do… appoint you to be a Commission of inquiry, and require and authorise you to inquire into the following matters:

(a) tackling antisemitism by:…

This section is at the heart of the Commission’s Terms of Reference misdirection. Misdiagnosed symptoms are highlighted rather than causes.

The authorities need to cut the umbilical cord between the Australian Jewish community (including demolishing the pernicious influence of its Zionist leadership) and the criminal state of Israel.

In particular, (a)(iv) deserves comment. The ‘mental health and wellbeing of Jewish Australians’? No doubt the Commission hearings will consider the mental health of anti-Zionist Australian Jews who experience the mental anguish of seeing Jewish Israelis acting like Nazis (and supposedly in the name of global Jewry), but who also suffer the obloquy of abuse by the Australian Zionist Jewish establishment for their ethical stance.

As for the mental health of Australian Zionist Jews, tied inexplicably to a racially supremacist Israel, it is a psychopathology and to their own account — save that their aberrant mental state has the Palestinians (and now the Iranians and, once again, the Lebanese) as its ongoing victims.

Zionist Jewish University students, fresh from their “faith” schools with their “love of Israel” and now nurtured in the bosom of the Zionist Australasian Union of Jewish Students, find their “sensitivities” affected by campus protests against Israeli genocide. So as not to upset these sensitive souls, inured to the genocide of lesser ethnicities, campus protests have to be shut down.

If the Commission is concerned with shoring up the ‘mental health and wellbeing of [Zionist] Jewish Australians’, it is not an agenda that any Australian imbued with ethical sympathies (which includes anti-Zionist Jewish Australians) could have any tolerance for.

‘(b) making any recommendations to assist law enforcement, border control, immigration and security agencies…’

Is this code for inhibiting access to refugee status of people escaping Israeli onslaughts and who naturally take a dim view of Israel’s modus operandi?

‘(c) examine the circumstances surrounding the antisemitic Bondi terrorist attack…’

This was supposed to be the focus of the Richardson review, but that was merged inappropriately into the Royal Commission’s framework. Now Richardson has retired, recognising the Commission’s structured dysfunctionality. The most important subject for investigation is now without a suitable home and personnel to proceed.

‘(d) make any other recommendations… that would contribute to strengthening social cohesion…’

The means to strengthening social cohesion is to dismantle the pro-Israel lobby in Australia and for the Albanese Government to develop and sustain a principled foreign policy. By contrast, the Terms of Reference of this Commission appear to direct the Commission’s operations to enhance that lobby’s influence and to ignore and to implicitly condone the Government’s cowardice.

Methinks that the Royal Commission’s slip is showing. One gets the strong impression that one is in for more than farce. Rather, the Australian public is in for an authoritarian state run in the interests of an Australian Zionist mafia, with which the current Australian Labor Government is already in cahoots (and the Liberal Opposition even more craven).

April 30, 2026 Posted by | Atrocities, AUSTRALIA, Israel | Leave a comment

Trump to America…’No dough for the Commons. I need it for my criminal wars’

Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL. 26 Apr 26, https://theaimn.net/trump-to-america-no-dough-for-the-commons-i-need-it-for-my-criminal-wars/

President Trump has a bizarre way of demonstrating his claim of being the Peace President deserving the Nobel Peace Prize

He spent his first term raining down tens of thousands of bombs on 7 countries posing not a whit of danger to the Homeland. He assassinated a top Iranian general in Baghdad, a monstrous war crime. He withdrew from Obama’s Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) which silenced Iran’s nuclear bomb potential and should have ended the isolation of Iran. Instead, it set the table for Trump’s senseless, now failed war on Iran 8 years later that may crash the world economy if not ended soon. That is madness.

Trump’s obsession with murder and mayhem worldwide has collateral damage to every sensible domestic function of government. Trump has spent 10 years trying to demolish Obama’s Affordable Care Act, a relatively meager improvement to America’s failed health insurance system to the less fortunate. He hasn’t spent dollar one to fix it. He’s ignored our crumbling infrastructure. He’s invested zilch in green energy while the world overheats relentlessly.

But Trump sure has invested in war. His last term one National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) budget in 2021 was a massive $740 billion. His first in term two for 2026 crashed the trillion mark by $42 billion. But mimicking Al Jolson in ‘The Jazz Singer’, Trump proclaimed ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet.’ His 2027 NDAA sours to $1,500,000,000, a 44% increase. Combined with massive tax cuts for the billionaire class, Trump’s profligate military spending has goosed the national debt by $10 billion in his first 6 years.

While silent about spending on the Commons to improve life for all Americans, Trump is ecstatic about his trillion and a half bucks for endless wars. “We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of day care. “It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare — all these individual things They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal.”

To paraphrase first predecessor Obama, ‘Yes you can…yes you must.’

On April 7, 1967, exactly one year before he was gunned down, Rev. Martin Luther King courageously spoke out against the Vietnam War at New York’s Riverside Church, ahead of a massive antiwar rally. In ‘A Time To Break the Silence’, King decried, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

Under Donald Trump’s endless, senseless wars…America’s spiritual death is here.

April 30, 2026 Posted by | politics, Religion and ethics, USA | Leave a comment

American “Micro-Militarism: Or How Defeat in the Iran War Will Accelerate American Global Decline

 SCHEERPOST, April 25, 2026 , Alfred McCoy

Writing more than 2,000 years ago, the Greek historian Plutarch gave us an eloquent description of what modern historians now call “micro-militarism.” When an imperial power like Athens then, or America now, is in decline, its leaders often react emotionally by mounting seemingly bold military strikes in hopes of regaining the imperial grandeur that’s slipping through their fingers. Instead of another of the great victories the empire won at its peak of power, however, such military misadventures only serve to accelerate the ongoing decline, erasing whatever aura of imperial majesty remains and revealing instead the moral rot deep inside the ruling elite.

There is mounting historical evidence that America is indeed an empire in steep decline, while President Donald Trump’s war of choice against Iran is becoming the sort of micro-military disaster that helped destroy successive empires over the past 2,500 years — from ancient Athens to medieval Portugal to modern Spain, Great Britain, and now the United States. And at the core of every such ill-fated war-making decision lay a problematic leader, often born into wealth and prestige, whose personal inadequacies reflected and ramified the many irrationalities that make imperial decline such a painful process.

During that demoralizing downward spiral, imperial armies, so lethal in an empire’s ascent, can err by plunging their countries into draining, even disastrous “micro-military” misadventures — psychologically compensatory efforts to salve the loss of imperial power by trying to occupy new territories or display awe-inspiring military might. Although such micro-militarism often chose targets that proved strategically unsustainable, the psychological pressures upon declining empires are so strong that they all too often gamble their prestige on just such misadventures. Not only did such disasters add financial pressures to a fading empire’s many troubles, but in a humiliating fashion, they also invariably exposed its eroding power while exacerbating the destabilizing impact of imperial decline in the capitals of empire (whether Athens, Lisbon, Madrid, London, or Washington, D.C.).

In our moment, when the bombs stop falling and the rubble is finally cleared from the streets of Tehran and Beirut, the impact on U.S. global power of such a de facto defeat will become all too clear — as alliances like NATO atrophy, American hegemony evaporates, legitimacy is lost, global disorder rises, and the world economy suffers.

Let me now turn from the disasters of the present imperial moment to the lessons of history to explore the sort of lasting damage that Donald Trump’s micro-military misadventure in the Middle East might be inflicting on this country’s declining imperium…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

America’s Defeat in the Strait of Hormuz

Another date likely to prove all too significant when it comes to the history of imperial decline is February 28, 2026. The place was Washington, D.C., home to what had been history’s most powerful imperial state that had dominated much of the globe for nearly 80 years through a mixture of military alliances, deft diplomacy, and economic leadership. By then, however, cracks had distinctly begun to appear in its edifice of power as U.S. global hegemony faced an increasingly strong economic challenge from China, its massive military suffered two searing defeats in Afghanistan and Iraq, and its economic globalization produced an angry populism at home.

After a populist campaign based on promises to restore both working-class prosperity and America’s global power, Donald Trump took office a second time in January 2025 promising a “golden age of America,” a “thrilling new era of national success” in which the country would “reclaim its rightful place as the greatest, most powerful, most respected nation on earth, inspiring the awe and admiration of the entire world.” Born to wealth and privilege himself, Trump returned to office convinced of his unique “genius” for leadership and believing that “I was saved by God to make America great again.”

Wielding raw economic and military might to compel obeisance from friend and foe alike, the president, inspired by a delusional sense of divine mission, began attempting to bend the world to his will. But during his first year in office, nothing seemed to work as planned. Indeed, most of his initiatives produced the sort of backlash that only served to show how far the United States had fallen from 1991, when the break-up of the Soviet Union made it the world’s sole superpower.

On April 2, 2025, on what he called “Liberation Day,” Trump announced a roster of punitive tariffs to protect domestic manufacturing largely from Chinese imports that faced an initial duty of 34% — later raised to a fully punitive 100%. But at their October 2025 meeting in South Korea, China’s leader Xi Jinping forced Trump to back down by cutting U.S. access to his country’s storehouse of strategic rare earth minerals.

In January, with his tariff initiative losing its luster, Trump plunged the NATO alliance into crisis by demanding that Denmark give him the island of Greenland, threatening to impose new tariffs on European allies unless they complied. Within a week, however, vociferous European resistance had led him to retract that threat at the Davos economic summit, claiming he was satisfied with NATO’s offer of a “framework of a future deal.”

On February 28th, 2026, with his tariff initiative failing and his Greenland gambit checkmated, Trump joined Israel in a seemingly bold strike on Iran that soon had the makings of the sort of fateful “micro-military” maneuver that appears to go with imperial powers in decline.

In the first few days of war, U.S. and Israeli bombing killed Iran’s leadership, destroyed its navy, and eliminated its air defenses, leaving the country seemingly prostrate before the might of America’s air-power juggernaut. After a week of devastating bombardment that seemed to stun the world with its lethality and precision, on March 6th Trump demanded that Iran offer an “unconditional surrender” and signal its capitulation by “the selection of a GREAT & ACCEPTABLE Leader.” In exchange, he promised that the U.S. would “work tirelessly to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction.”

But much as Nasser had done at Suez in 1956, Iran’s leadership reversed the war’s geostrategic balance by closing a critical maritime choke point in the Strait of Hormuz. By striking five freighters with drones in the first week of war, Iran’s leaders, taking a leaf from Nasser’s geopolitical playbook, effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz to tanker traffic, cutting off gas, fertilizer, and oil shipments that plunged the world economy into an unprecedented energy crisis. By the end of March, Iran’s chokehold over the strait was so tight that it began collecting “tolls” from freighters to permit passage.


Blindsided by the Strait’s unexpected yet utterly predictable closure, on April 5th, Easter Sunday, an unsettled Trump posted a social media message saying: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!” He added: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH. Praise be to Allah.” Two days later, Trump threatened that, unless Iran opened the Strait of Hormuz, he would attack its civilian infrastructure so severely that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

After the collapse of subsequent negotiations between the two sides at Islamabad, Pakistan, on April 12th, Trump plunged ever deeper into the Iran quagmire, ordering the U.S. Navy to “begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz,” and “interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran.” With characteristic bluster, he added: “We are fully ‘LOCKED AND LOADED,’ and our Military will finish up the little that is left of Iran!”

Even if Trump destroys Iran’s infrastructure or eventually negotiates a face-saving peace deal, by every metric that really matters, Washington has already lost its war with Iran. Like all weaker powers in asymmetric warfare, Tehran has been willing to absorb relentless punishment, while inflicting pain that the dominant power can ill sustain. The U.S. will soon run out of targets in Tehran, but Iran has a whole world of damage that its cheap drones can do to the elaborate, exposed petroleum infrastructure on the south shore of the Persian Gulf.

Like Britain at Suez in 1956, Washington will likely pay a heavy price for its “micro-militarism” in the Strait of Hormuz. Close allies, the bedrock of U.S. global power for 80 years, have refused any military support for Washington’s war of choice, prompting Trump to call them “cowards.” In response to his thundering threats of civilian and civilizational destruction (both war crimes), Trump has been condemned by world leaders. Oblivious to the dangers of war in a region that is the epicenter of global capitalism, Washington is now proving ever more dangerously disruptive of the global economy, making China look like a far more stable choice for world leadership. Moreover, while the U.S. military has proven its tactical agility in destroying targets, it clearly can no longer capture meaningful strategic objectives.

With its alliances in tatters, its world leadership forfeited, and its aura of military might evaporating, the only trajectory for U.S. global hegemony now seems to be downward (like so many great powers of the past). By the time Trump’s micro-military misadventure in the Strait of Hormuz is over, the decline of U.S. global power will have accelerated drastically and the world will be trying to move beyond the old Pax Americana toward a new, distinctly uncertain global order.

Alfred W. McCoy, a TomDispatch regular, is the Harrington professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change (Dispatch Books). His new book, just published, is Cold War on Five Continents: The Geopolitics of Empire & Espionage.

https://scheerpost.com/2026/04/25/american-micro-militarism-or-how-defeat-in-the-iran-war-will-accelerate-american-global-decline/

April 30, 2026 Posted by | politics international | Leave a comment

Jeffrey Sachs: Trump’s Failure in Iran Exposes the Crumbling Myth of U.S. Hegemony

 April 25, 2026 , ScheerPost Staff, https://scheerpost.com/2026/04/25/jeffrey-sachs-trumps-failure-in-iran-exposes-the-crumbling-myth-of-u-s-hegemony/

Jeffrey Sachs has been warning for years that the “unipolar moment” was never real — and in this conversation with Glenn Diesen, he lays out the clearest case yet. Trump’s failure in the Iran War, Sachs argues, didn’t just expose the limits of one administration. It exposed the limits of the entire post‑Cold War American project: a foreign policy built on illusions of dominance, ideological entitlement, and a refusal to accept a multipolar world already taking shape.

Sachs traces the long arc of Western hegemony — from the European empires to Washington’s brief moment of post‑1991 triumphalism — and shows how the Iran conflict has become the breaking point. The U.S. could not impose its will on Tehran. It could not bend Russia through sanctions. It cannot contain China’s rise. And yet its political class continues to behave as if history stopped in 1991.

This interview is not just analysis. It’s an autopsy of an empire that still believes it is immortal.

April 30, 2026 Posted by | politics international, USA | Leave a comment

From the 1953 Coup to Today: Jeffrey Sachs Explains America’s Endless War on Iran

 April 25, 2026 Joshua Scheer, https://scheerpost.com/2026/04/25/from-the-1953-coup-to-today-jeffrey-sachs-explains-americas-endless-war-on-iran/

Jeffrey Sachs doesn’t raise his voice — he doesn’t have to. In this wide‑ranging conversation with Tucker Carlson, Sachs lays out a devastating, historically grounded indictment of U.S. foreign policy, the manufactured “Iran threat,” and the decades‑long fusion of American empire with Israel’s regional ambitions. What emerges is not a hot take but a cold, clinical autopsy of a war machine that has slipped beyond democratic control.

From the 1953 coup to the present blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, Sachs traces how Washington’s obsession with dominance — and Israel’s pursuit of permanent military supremacy — has pushed the world to the brink of a conflict that could collapse the global economy in weeks. He dismantles the nuclear‑weapons narrative, exposes the bipartisan addiction to sanctions and covert warfare, and warns that the U.S. is now trapped in a crisis of its own making.

This is one of Sachs’ clearest, most unflinching interviews to date — a map of how we got here, and a warning about what comes next if the “grown‑ups” don’t seize the wheel.

Jeffrey Sachs Warns: The U.S.–Israel War Path Toward Iran Is Leading the World Into Economic and Political Collapse

Jeffrey Sachs has spent decades advising governments, studying development, and watching empires rise and fall. In his latest interview, he delivers a stark message: the United States and Israel are steering the world toward a catastrophic confrontation with Iran — and the window for avoiding disaster is closing fast.

A Global Crisis Triggered by a Manufactured One

Sachs argues that the current crisis is not an accident but the predictable outcome of decades of U.S. interference in Iran, beginning with the 1953 CIA‑MI6 coup that toppled Iran’s elected prime minister. That single act — the theft of Iran’s sovereignty and its oil — set the stage for 70 years of hostility, sanctions, proxy wars, and regime‑change fantasies.

According to Sachs, the present escalation is driven less by Iranian behavior than by Washington’s refusal to accept that Iran slipped out of U.S. control in 1979. The “Iran menace,” he says, is a propaganda construct — a way to justify endless pressure on a country that has not invaded another nation in more than a century.

The Strait of Hormuz: A Choke Point for the World Economy

Sachs warns that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz — a direct consequence of the spiraling conflict — has already triggered a global economic emergency. Oil, gas, fertilizers, petrochemicals, and metals flow through this narrow waterway. With it blocked, the world economy is “reeling,” and the clock is ticking.

The off‑ramp exists, Sachs insists: de‑escalation, diplomacy, and reopening the strait. But it requires political maturity — something he argues is in short supply in both Washington and Jerusalem.

Israel’s Parallel Agenda: Regional Dominance at Any Cost

Sachs draws a sharp distinction between U.S. and Israeli motives. For Washington, Iran represents a rebellion against American empire. For Israel, Iran is the last major obstacle to full military dominance across the Middle East and North Africa.

He argues that Israel’s political leadership — backed by a powerful U.S. lobby — has long sought to neutralize Iran not because of nuclear fears, but because Iran resists Israeli hegemony. This, Sachs says, is the real engine behind the push for confrontation.

The Nuclear Lie

One of Sachs’ most forceful points is his dismantling of the nuclear narrative. U.S. intelligence agencies have repeatedly stated that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapon. Iran has sought international monitoring and compliance frameworks — including the JCPOA — only to see the U.S. sabotage its own agreements under pressure from domestic political forces aligned with Israel.

Calling the nuclear rhetoric “Orwellian,” Sachs argues that the real goal is regime change, not nonproliferation.

A War That Would Reshape the World in Weeks

Sachs warns that a U.S.–Israel attack on Iran would not be a limited strike. It would trigger a regional war, destroy infrastructure across the Gulf, and plunge the global economy into chaos. Within weeks, he says, the world would look “profoundly damaged,” with the risk of escalation into a global conflict.

This is not hyperbole, Sachs insists — it is the logical outcome of the current trajectory.

The Real Question: Who Is Steering U.S. Policy?

Throughout the interview, Sachs returns to a central theme: the absence of democratic control over U.S. foreign policy. Decisions of war and peace are being shaped by lobbies, political vanity, and imperial reflexes — not by the interests of the American public.

The result is a government that no longer serves its citizens, a political class insulated from consequences, and a foreign policy apparatus that treats global stability as collateral damage.

A Final Warning

Sachs’ message is clear: the U.S. and Israel are playing with forces they cannot control. The world is at a fork in the road — diplomacy or disaster — and the people making the decisions are the least equipped to choose wisely.

For Americans, the stakes are not abstract. Sachs argues that the economic, political, and moral costs of this conflict will fall squarely on the public, not on the leaders who helped create it.

April 29, 2026 Posted by | politics international, USA | Leave a comment

UK nuclear industry in lobbying blitz ahead of Scottish election

THE UK nuclear industry ramped up its lobbying of MSPs ahead of the Holyrood
election, the Sunday National can reveal. An investigation based on the
Scottish Parliament’s lobbying register has revealed that activity has
reached an all-time high, with industry groups, business organisations and
unions increasingly looking to reverse the Scottish Government’s
opposition to the building of new nuclear power stations.

In 2025, 32 MSPs
were lobbied across 14 separate meetings – the highest levels recorded to
date. Compared to the previous year, this was more than three times the
number of MSPs lobbied and almost double the number of distinct meetings.


So far in 2026, 12 MSPs have already been lobbied across seven separate
meetings in the run-up to polling day on May 7. The majority of recent
lobbying has been carried out by the Nuclear Industry Association, which
held a series of meetings with MSPs in Holyrood in 2026.

On March 24, 2026,
representatives from the association met several Labour and Tory MSPs. The
discussions focused on the role of nuclear energy and calls to reverse the
Scottish Government’s opposition to new nuclear development.

At another
meeting on February 20, 2026, the association spoke to Tory MSP Douglas
Ross, raising the “importance” of nuclear power to Scotland’s energy
future. The register also showed involvement from other organisations. On
February 25, 2026, for example, the trade union Prospect met with Net Zero
Secretary Gillian Martin to raise concerns from its members about the
future of the energy sector, including nuclear.

The French state-owned
energy company EDF Energy, which owns and operates Torness nuclear power
station, also lobbied 20 MSPs in 2025. Patrick Harvie from the Scottish
Greens said: “The nuclear industry may be a cash cow for lobbyists, but we
don’t need or want it in Scotland. “We cannot afford to waste time or money
on a costly and unsustainable energy source that will take years to go
online while leaving a toxic legacy for future generations. “If we are to
have a cleaner and greener future, it needs to be based on the vast
renewable resources that we already have in abundance rather than a dated
and dangerous false solution like nuclear.”

 The National 26th April 2026, https://www.thenational.scot/news/26052414.uk-nuclear-industry-lobbying-blitz-ahead-scottish-election/

April 29, 2026 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Norway says “nuclear renaissance” too expensive

April 23, 2026, https://beyondnuclear.org/norway-says-nuclear-renaissance-too-expensive/

Report illuminates new reactors can’t compete with the accelerating growth of renewable energy 

The “Survey and assessment of the status of available nuclear reactor technologies and designs” published on March 16, 2026 as the final report on Norway’s energy policy was made public on April 8, 2026. It was prepared by the international team of energy consulting and architectural firms, the US-based Amentum and the Oslo, Norway-based Multiconsult Group, on government contract by the Norwegian Nuclear Commission. The Commission was established in June 2024 to evaluate the inclusion of nuclear power in the Scandianavian country’s energy policy. The consultants were tasked to review the current global status and trends of nuclear reactor technologies, including their readiness, flexibility, supply chains, and costs.

Norway has never sited, constructed or operated a commercial atomic power plant. But back in 2022, the M Vest Group Norway (M Vest Energy AS), a Norwegian oil and gas corporation, through its specialized subsidiary Norsk Kjernekraft, established partnerships with the nuclear divisions of  the UK’s Rolls-Royce and the French startup Hexana and lobbied the Norwegian government to promote and advance the development of atomic power in Norway.  Following the Commission’s examination of the consultants’ report, Reuters news service announced the Commission’s decision, “Norway should not work towards nuclear power generation now, commission finds.”

Interestingly enough, Norway currently gets 89.9% of the nation’s electrical power from thousands of hydroelectric facilities sited across the country with wind power running a meager and distant second (8.6%). Still, Norway is well on the way to generating 100% of its electrical power from renewable energy.  Even though Norway is currently producing an electricity surplus, the nuclear industry found its way into pressuring the Norwegian government to get with a Scandinavian “nuclear renaissance” to accommodate the projected AI/data center revolution with its own fleet of light water Small Modular Reactors (SMR) and Advanced Modular Reactors (AMR). While the report’s commissioned focus is on Norway, it shines a bright light on the much ballyhooed but still not-ready-for-prime-time nuclear power technologies now pushed worldwide.

Norway’s report confirms that the new promises of nuclear power provide little more than a “spike in promotional materials and many bold claims around technology, cost and schedule over the past 3-4 years, combined with hype associated with the energy demands created by Artificial Intelligence.”

The Norway survey astutely finds, “Given the nuclear sector’s claims that modularisation will deliver factory-build quality and increase the speed of construction, thereby reducing finance costs, it is not surprising that these technology families are attractive, but the arguments are not yet proven.”

Despite the absence of any final construction cost figures given a handful of western SMR or AMR construction projects have only just started, the Norwegian analyses expect first-of-a-kind SMR designs to be significantly more expensive than the few completed large gigawatt nuclear reactor on a per-kilowatt basis. That said, the first-of-a-kind Vogtle units 3 and 4 finished in Georgia were first estimated at a cost of completion for $14 billion were finally finished and commissioned at an estimated $35 billion.

The Norway-commissioned analyses also predict higher fixed operation and maintenance costs on a per-kilowatt basis for SMRs compared to large Generation 3 reactors at Georgia’s Vogtle 3 and 4 units.  Additionally, the Commission report predicts that yearly nuclear fuel costs for SMRs could be as much as 82% higher than those for large gigawatt reactors due to “lower plant density and shorter burnup cycles.”

Other predicted first-of-a-kind SMRs costs that will be “Probably Higher” than the large gigawatt reactors will include: Nuclear Waste (post ten years operation); Long Term Nuclear Waste Disposal; Spent Fuel (post ten years operation), and; Decommissioning.

The report’s combined findings on all these uncontrolled costs appear to be the most impactful analyses that dissuaded Norway from opening Pandora’s nuclear energy box at this time.

We all should all be dissuaded, given the demonstration that renewable energy is significantly more affordable, faster and more reliable to deploy from a broad range of resources (photovoltaic solar cells, on and offshore wind, hydro and tidal power, etc). We can now couple that with economically deliverable utility-grade energy storage over a widening range of systems. Why are we being given the bums’ rush into a nuclear future with its unpredictably high financial risks, unreliable and increasing significant construction cost overruns, recurring project cancellations and abandonment with sunk costs, uninsurable severe nuclear accident risks, and ultimately the unresolved biological isolation of nuclear waste that offers only environmental liability without a watt of benefit to future generations?

April 29, 2026 Posted by | business and costs, EUROPE | Leave a comment

LEST WE FORGET – REMEMBERING THE HUMAN IMPACT OF THECHORNOBYL DISASTER

Scottish Campaign to Resist the Atomic Menace (SCRAM), 24th April 2026, https://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/SCRAM-Chornobyl-press-release-.pdf

The Scottish Campaign to Resist the Atomic Menace has issued a reminder of the huge
human cost of the Chornobyl disaster in Ukraine to mark its 40th anniversary this Sunday,
26th April. Studies indicate a result of the disaster of between 16000 and 40000 fatal cancers.
Others claim these estimates are very conservative.(1,2)


Pete Roche of SCRAM said: “The contrast between what happened 40 years ago in Ukraine
at the Chornobyl nuclear plant – and the proclamations of today’s nuclear industry that it is
not dangerous or dirty – could not be greater. Chornobyl contamination was widespread
across Europe and is estimated to result in anything between 16,000 and 40,000 fatal cancers,
possibly many more.


“Whilst we haven’t experienced a full meltdown at a UK nuclear plant to date, the industry’s
record in the UK is not a clean one. These include the serious 3-day reactor core fire at
Windscale in Cumbria in 1957 and other accidental releases of highly radioactive material
into the sea and the local environment, and in Scotland the waste shaft explosion at Dounreay
in 1977.


“Both Torness and Hunterston power stations in Scotland suffered significant cracking in
their graphite reactor cores over time, and there have been numerous shut downs over their
years of operation but thankfully did not result in the type of full scale regional emergency at
Chornobyl or in Japan at the Fukushima plant in 2011. The inherent danger is there despite
nuclear public relations efforts, and the legacy of toxic waste will be with future generations
for hundreds of years. 40 years after the disaster, it is still highly vulnerable from the conflict
in the region. Wind turbines, hydro plants and solar panels don’t carry these risks.

“After the reprocessing at Sellafield was abandoned, highly radioactive reactor fuel elements
will now be stored on UK nuclear sites well into the 2100s. No safe solution has been found
other than looking for eventual deep burial at a location yet to be determined, that will need
guarded for hundreds if not thousands of years.


“On the positive side of the debate over energy, with Scotland’s huge renewable resources,
nuclear is not needed. Scotland can power itself, and export clean, green power to other
countries – and combine that with energy storage, flexible green power and an upgraded grid
system. The revolution in renewable energy is already well underway and is globally
unstoppable. New nuclear power has no place in a clean, green energy system, and certainly
not in Scotland.”


A recent Survation poll of 2000 people, indicated that a majority of Scots preferred renewable
energy over nuclear to tackle the climate crisis and be most effective at reducing energy bills.
It also found that the nuclear industry was the least trusted to ‘tell the truth aboutits products, costs, pollutants and safety record.’ (3)

The campaign group says nuclear is not needed and is an expensive distraction that will do
nothing to tackle the climate crisis, calling instead for a 100% renewable energy system to be
committed to by the next Scottish Government after the May election.

April 29, 2026 Posted by | health, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Poll Finds Just 4 Percent of Democrats Support Increasing Military Aid to Israel

 By Sharon Zhang, April 25, 2026 , https://scheerpost.com/2026/04/25/poll-finds-just-4-percent-of-democrats-support-increasing-military-aid-to-israel/

Separate polling found this week that Congress’s disapproval ratings have tied their all-time high of 86 percent.

New polling has found that just 4 percent of Democratic voters support increasing military aid to Israel, marking a massive rift with congressional Democrats at a time when other polling has found that disapproval of Congress has tied its all-time high.

The Economist/YouGov polling released this week found that only 11 percent of American adults say that the U.S. should increase military aid to Israel, including only 4 percent of people identifying themselves as Democrats — and only 23 percent of Republicans.

Meanwhile, the polling found that 56 percent of Democrats say the U.S. should decrease military aid to Israel, including 35 percent who say the practice should stop altogether. Just 19 percent said the U.S. should maintain current levels, while 20 percent said they were not sure.

This is a huge departure from the stance of Democratic leaders in Congress, who support military funding for Israel or even want to increase it.

Last week, for instance, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) was one of only seven Democrats to vote against the advancement of a measure to block the sale of bulldozers to Israel introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont). He was joined by figures like Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania), one of Israel’s staunchest advocates in Congress.

Even though Sanders’s resolutions didn’t pass, the vote was seen as a major shift among Democrats, with more Democrats voting to block the sales of certain weapons to Israel than ever before — even if the caucus leader disagreed.

Schumer, a longtime supporter of Israel, said in February that supporting aid to Israel is, in fact, a top priority of his.

“I have many jobs as leader … and one is to fight for aid to Israel, all the aid that Israel needs,” he said at a gathering in New York City. He bragged that, under his leadership, U.S. aid to Israel has grown more “than ever, ever before,” and said: “As long as I’m in the Senate, this program will continue to grow.”

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has also stuck to its positions of backing Israel and its political apparatus in the U.S. Last year, one of its committees rejected a measure for an arms embargo on Israel, while the party also voted down a resolution to limit the influence of dark money on Democratic races, including the spending from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Meanwhile, approval of Congress — which has done virtually nothing to stop or stem the flow of weapons to Israel, despite public opinion — has hit record lows. 

Gallup polling released this week found that the proportion of Americans who disapprove of Congress’s job performance has hit a record high of 86 percent — tying the record set in 2015. Meanwhile, Congress’s approval sits at a lowly 10 percent, just one point above its record low of 9 percent.

April 29, 2026 Posted by | public opinion, USA | Leave a comment

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